struck last spring. It was powerful protection. I wore my ribbon dress. Green ribbons, white ribbons, black and rose. This was my ceremony.
I fixed the food just so. All the things John liked. Fried chicken. Lima beans. Mashed potatoes. Carrot salad with raisins.
I heard the truck in the yard just before 6:00. I took a deep breath. Smoothed my hair. Said a prayer. I heard the screen door shut and then John was in the kitchen. He stood in the doorway, a bunch of red roses in his hand. He was wearing the shirt I’d given his brother Philip last Christmas, so I knew where he’d spent the night. His hair was combed down neat. He looked like a school kid showing up at my door to pick me up for a date.
“Jesus Nellie, I’m so sorry. I’m gonna spend the rest of my life making it up to you, I swear.” He winced when he looked at me. My left eye was swollen and black, my lips were swollen, my cheek had a big bruise on it. I looked a mess. He didn’t mention my clothes, although I was in what he called “Squaw gear.”
“Come on baby. You just got to forgive me. It’ll never happen again, I mean it, cross my heart. Here, sweetheart.” He held out the flowers. I took them but didn’t say nothing. I put them in the sink. He came to put his arms around me from behind. I cringed as he squeezed my bruised ribs.
“Don’t,” I said.
“OK, OK. I’m sorry.” He put his hands up like I was holding a gun on him and backed away. “Christ. I really am sorry, Baby. I don’t know what got into me. You know how much I love you.”
“I fixed some food for you. Fried chicken. Your favourites,” I said.
“Oh, Honey, you’re just the best. I knew you wouldn’t stay mad at me.” He hugged me and this time I let him. His arms felt so good. For a second I felt safe there. Then I pushed him away.
“Sit down.”
John swung his long leg over the back of the chrome chair and sat, a grin on his face. I opened the oven and brought the plate I’d kept warming over to him. Then I went back and leaned up against the kitchen counter, next to the open box of rat poison. He picked up his knife and fork.
“Where’s yours?” he said.
“I’m not eating. This here’s special food. Just for you, eh?”
“I don’t want to eat alone, Sugar.”
“But I want you to.”
He looked puzzled. He looked down at his plate. Looked back over to me and then his eyes flicked to the box of poison. The colour drained out of his face.
“No,” he said.
“Why not?” I asked, folding my arms against my chest.
“You eat it,” he said.
“Fine,” I said. “See, it just don’t matter to me anymore.” I made a move toward the table, leaned over the plate, brushing my heavy breasts against his shoulder. I took the fork out of his hand and shovelled up a gob of mashed potatoes. I chewed it up and swallowed. He looked at me. I offered him the fork.
“Go ahead,” I said.
“No. Eat some of the chicken.”
I cut off a piece of chicken and ate it. “Um, um. I sure am a good cook. Yessir. That’s one thing you’re gonna miss.”
He pushed his chair away from the table and stood up.
“What’re you talking about?”
“I going home John. I’m leaving you.” I felt it then. Knew my heart had just broken.
“You ain’t going nowhere.” The colour rushed back into his face, his eyes dark and cloudy.
“Yes I am. And, John McBride, you’re going to let me walk out that door and drive back to where you found me. You know why?” I walked back over to the counter and stood near the poison. “Because if you don’t, you will never eat another meal in this house without wondering. You will never get another good night’s sleep.”
“Bitch!” he said, in a rush of air like he’d been punched. He made a move toward me.
I stood my ground, drew myself up and out, became full of myself and my own spirits.
“You will never hit me again and live.” I spoke very slowly, softly. “Is this what you want to be doing when you go to meet your maker, John?”
He heard me. I watched my husband’s face crumple. He slumped down on the chair and put his head in his hands.
“Don’t leave me. I’m begging you. Don’t go.”
I walked into the bedroom and picked up the bag I’d packed that afternoon. I carried it back into the kitchen. I picked up the keys to the truck from where he’d left them on the hook beside the door.
“You take care now,” I said. “I’ll have Jimmy drop the truck back later.” I closed the door behind me, and started walking, but I could still hear him crying. I stopped by the shed and put down a tobacco tie and some corn and seed for the rats, saying thank you. I didn’t see them, but I knew they were around.
Walking to the truck was like wading through hip deep mud, but I made it.I drove down the road back to the rez and felt like I was dragging my heart all the way, tied to the back of the bumper like an old tin can.
BARBARA’S MOTHER’S RUG
When I was thirteen, I went to a party at Barbara’s house. Which was a pretty big deal for me. I wasn’t a weirdo or anything, not in any specific way. Medium height, medium weight, medium face, medium bright, but I just couldn’t seem to fit. I wasn’t part of the group. Any group. Not that I hadn’t tried enough of them.
I was the kid who ended up shuffling around hanging on the edge of things. Often on the receiving end of some stupid prank. Cayenne pepper up the nose (Come on, just smell this!), tent caterpillars down the blouse, or demands I do something outrageous to prove my worthiness. Eat worms or cover my shoes in dog shit. Good for a laugh but not on the ‘A’ list as far as party invitations went.
Barbara lived a couple of streets over from me in the subdivision that had replaced the farmer’s fields of a few years before. Barbara’s group were new-neighbourhood kids who hadn’t yet discovered my reputation for being a fifth wheel.
Barbara’s parents were out for the evening and the house was filled with maybe ten or twelve teenagers. The house was awash in the too bright light specific to suburban houses of the 1960s. White walls with prints of wide-eyed children, pale blue shag carpeting, a sterility of taste. There was a crocheted dog covering the extra roll of toilet paper in the bathroom, orange and brown flowered wall-paper in the kitchen, glass topped coffee tables with chrome legs and Lazy-Boy chairs with TV trays in front of them in the ‘rec’ room.
We were listening to records and smoking cigarettes. I was feeling faintly nauseous. Cigarettes always made me feel like that and it took years of near puking to get me successfully addicted.
I didn’t know this group well, and I didn’t think I’d be hanging out with them for
