My father’s hands were soil. My mother’s were rain.

 

Julian Merrow-Smith - Three Lemons on a French Cloth | Postcard from Provence, 2009    (source)

 

 

Nature speaks to us. We just have to remember how to listen. (p. 15*)

“You like lemons, do ya?” he asked.
She nodded.
“I like how yellow they are,” she said. “How can you not be happy with all that yellow?” (p. 16*)

My father’s hands were soil. My mother’s were rain. No wonder they could not hold one another without causing enough mud for two. And yet out of that mud, they built us a house that became a home. (p. 24*)

“Look up, Betty.”
He gently guided my face to the sky with the back of his hand under my chin.
“Somewhere up there is heaven,” he said. “And we’re a little to the south of it. That’s where south of heaven is. It’s right here.” He stomped the ground beneath us. “It doesn’t matter where you are or where you’re goin’ because you’ll always be south of heaven.”
“I be south of heaven.” In great wonder, I looked up at the sky.
“Ain’t nowhere else to be,” he said. (p. 43*)

Dad knew then that in loving Lint, there would be bridges to cross and they would not always be easy. In preparing for this, Dad said we were not to talk about our brother with outsiders.
“They’ll only send him away,” Dad told us when Lint was in the field foraging for rocks.
“Where would they send him?” I asked, unsure of who “they” were.
“To dwell in a house of scorpions,” Dad said. “These scorpions will sting him until he forgets how to talk. More than that, they’ll try to fix him, but all they’ll really do is chase him out of this world.” (p. 82*)

We struggled to understand Lint. One minute he could be happy. The next, a shadow seemed to cross his face. Dad said it was something none of us could understand, but something we all needed to try to.
“It’s not his fault if he cries or says things that are a little peculiar,” Dad told us. “Dust enters into his ears and makes a great racket in his head. A racket we can’t understand because we don’t have to suffer it like he does. But he’s still your baby brother. His feet still run to us. It’s his mind that runs somewhere else. We have to be respectful of him. (p. 83*)

That Halloween when Mom called me into her room to dress me in my costume, I walked in knowing exactly what I wanted.
“Cicadas,” I told her. “I want to be a princess with a dress made of cicada shells. I want wings, too. Wings made of violets and—”
“And I want to be a queen with the vagina of a virgin,” she said, “but that ain’t gonna happen now, is it?” She applied a fresh layer of lipstick to her already red lips. “Anyways, princesses do not look like you, Betty. That mud-colored skin and stringy hair of yours. You ever seen a princess look like you?” (p. 94*)

He laughed before saying, “You know, the Cherokee didn’t have no princesses.”
“It doesn’t mean I don’t wanna be one,” I said.
He nodded. “When I was your age, I wanted to be someone else, too.”
“Who’d you wanna be, Dad?”
“Someone important. You know why I call you Little Indian?” He stopped drawing and looked into my eyes. “So that you know you’re already someone important.” (p. 99*)

While Mom was away, Fraya dropped out of school. Dad was so disappointed, he painted the top step of the front porch black.
“Because a step has died here,” he told Fraya.
“Steps don’t die, Dad,” she said.
“It died, Fraya, because you stopped walkin’ up it to a better life.”
“They’re just porch steps, Dad. They get us in and out of the house is all.”
“You know when folks have called me stupid,” he said, “don’t you know I’ve felt it? All because I’m a full-grown man with a third-grade education. It’s a bitter place at the bottom of the steps, Fraya, and I should know. I’ve spent my whole life down here, only able to stare up to the top. You know what’s there at the top?”
“What’s there?” Fraya asked.
“It’s a good look at the world,” he said. “You’re able to see all of it. From there, you get to decide which part of this great big world God made just for you. But by droppin’ out of school, Fraya, you’ll never climb to a better life at the top of the stairs. You were gonna be the first person in our family to be able to say you were educated. You didn’t have to leave school. This isn’t what your mom would want for you. You can still go back. I can paint the step white again. Resurrect it. Steps don’t have to die forever.” (p. 110*)

“I want Mom to come back.” Fraya spoke directly to Flossie. “Just because I’m helpin’ around the house don’t mean I’m tryin’ to take her place. Isn’t she more than housework? Than the food on the table? Me doin’ those things ain’t bein’ Mom because bein’ her is somethin’ only she can do.” (p. 112*)

Dad reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a cratered rock.
“This here is the unripe star I picked,” he said, passing the rock to me.
When he pulled up his pant leg, he showed me a purple discoloration on his right kneecap.
“I banged my bad knee on that big ol’ tree trunk as I was climbin’ it and got this here bruise.” He laid his hand on his knee. “When folks ask why I limp, now I can say I busted my knee climbin’ the tree of stars.”
I looked closer at the purpled discoloration. It was the same staining he had on his fingertips from the blackberry jam at breakfast.
“Ain’t no star,” I said, holding up the rock. “Just some river litter you got from Lint. And that ain’t no bruise. It’s just you playin’ around with jam.”
“I never thought you’d ever stop believin’, Little Indian.” His voice seemed crushed beneath the weight of the sadness setting his brow. He dropped his eyes as if the ground could have an answer.
“I believe you went to the moon, Dad,” I said, but it was too late.
He put his weight on his left leg and slowly stood.
“Naw,” he said, “it’s like what ya said. It’s just a rock. Nothin’ more. It is silly to think I could ever fly to the moon, huh? Not an old Mr. Nobody like me.”
I had put another crack in an already broken man.
He dropped his shoulders as he turned to walk away. (pp. 121-122*)

“Dad says the eagle flies higher than any other bird,” Fraya said as she cradled the jar. “He says most folks think it’s a vulture that flies the highest. But they’re wrong. It’s the eagle. Dad says it’s why their heads are white. Eagles fly so high, the tops of their heads touch heaven and turn the feathers white in how holy that touch is.”
[...]
Keeping her eyes on the eagle, Fraya got a pencil and a piece of paper out of her dress pocket.
“I come out here to write my prayers,” she said as she tore the paper evenly into three pieces. “You two can write your prayers, too. Then the eagle will fly ’em up to God.”
“Ain’t no bird gonna give God nothin’.” Flossie smacked her lips.
“She will.” Fraya looked at the eagle as if they were old friends. “Dad says so. That means it’s true.”
Fraya looked ready to cry at the thought. I realized then that not only did Dad need us to believe his stories, we needed to believe them as well. To believe in unripe stars and eagles able to do extraordinary things. What it boiled down to was a frenzied hope that there was more to life than the reality around us. Only then could we claim a destiny we did not feel cursed to. (p. 123*)

“Don’t need to sit in a pew to get the word of creation,” Dad would say. “All ya have to do is to walk the hills to know there’s somethin’ bigger. A tree preaches better than any man can.” (p. 126*)

My mother hailed from Joyjug, Ohio. She was a woman so lovely, mirrors grieved in absence of her. She was much more than her beauty. But no matter how many miles of fantastic wonders I saw inside my mother, she was already gone to me in a million different ways, even when I thought she was right in front of me. This was no more apparent than that February of 1963. (p. 165*)

Sitting on the stage, I wrote everything Mom had said. I sometimes had to shut my eyes to keep from reading what I was writing and reliving it all over again, but I did not lay my pen down. I wrote as if it was flooding from my fingertips. All the cruelty, all the pain, I wrote it all in a story that was destroying me even as I created it.
I folded the pages against my chest. I tried to suffocate them as I went into the garage for an empty jar and a hand shovel.
Back at A Faraway Place, I crawled under the stage and broke the cold earth with the shovel. When I got the hole dug, I placed the story inside the jar as I repeated what my mother had said.
“Bury ’em so deep, no one knows about ’em except for them and us.”
I twisted the lid on the jar as tight as I could. Then I buried the story alive, making sure it was deep enough, a wolf wouldn’t smell blood on it and dig it up. (p. 174*)

What do you do when the two people who are supposed to protect you the most are the monsters tearing you to pieces? No wonder Mom still hurt. She hadn’t been loved enough. (p. 178*)

There is calm, even amidst the storms. (p. 182*)

He was only seven then, but this was Trustin’s gift. That he could draw a storm and make you feel the lightning in your bones. (p. 183*)

“I started out life as nobody,” he said, “but because your momma made me a father, I have a real chance to end my time on this earth as somebody worth rememberin’. Why the hell would I run away from that?”
“You are somebody worth rememberin’, Dad,” I said.
He wrapped his arm around me and pulled me against his side. (p. 186*)

I caught a lightning bug. It hurt my palm to kill it. But I did anyways. I find it hard to remember to believe there is light in this world. (p. 198-)

My father was extraordinary with a piece of wood. I could spend hours watching him work. Ever since I’d broken the jars of plums, my father had picked up on his carving. I think it was a solace to him. To be able to hold wood and craft it so clearly it could not become something you did not will it to be. Maybe this is why I also found respite in watching him work. I knew he would never carve anything as awful as what Leland had done.
[...]
More than turtles and maps, I wished my father would whittle us enough money to buy ourselves a past, free from brutality. One where daughters do not have to fear their father in the bedroom. One where sisters do not have to fear the approach of their brothers. If only we could buy ourselves away from the Grandpappy Larks and Lelands of the world. (pp. 212-213*)

I stepped close to the tree and saw each of our names carved into the bark.
“I cut ’em in there when we first moved here.” Dad ran his fingers into the grooves of my name. “Anytime I start thinkin’ I’m a man with no treasures, I come out here in the rain and I see my diamonds. You asked me if I wished I were rich, Betty, but I ain’t a poor man. With all these diamonds, how can I be? You ain’t poor either, Little Indian. It’s the same thing the men on those boats came to learn. No matter if we can’t find a single penny in our pockets, we got the wealth of the world between us.” (p. 216*)

“ ‘He really loves you,’ the hag sittin’ beside me said. ‘Folks think it’s when they beg you to stay, but it’s when they let you go that you know they love you so goddamn much.’ (p. 225*)

It was then I realized the thing that Fraya had told us would happen to our bodies had happened to Flossie.
“I thought you’d be happy you started,” I said.
“You ever been happy with a pain in your stomach, Betty?”
“But you wanted the bra and the—”
“I wanted those things for myself. This is forced upon us.”
“Fraya said it don’t hurt that bad.”
“She only said that so we wouldn’t be scared, Betty. Besides, I’m not Fraya. And this ain’t her body. It’s mine.” Flossie glared at me. “And don’t you tell anyone it’s happened. I don’t want ’em thinkin’ they’re gonna look at me any different.”
“Fraya says it means you’re a woman.”
“Why we have to bleed to earn it?” Flossie slammed her fists on the mattress. “What happens when we get old and it stops? What then? We stop bein’ a woman? Ain’t the blood that defines us. It’s our soul.” She held her hand on the bridge of her nose, the exact place Dad always told us our souls were. “Souls don’t have a monthly cycle. Souls just are.” She curled up, holding her stomach. “Do somethin’, Betty. It hurts.” (p. 231*)

“That’s why I become a whore,” she said as she drew more crescents. “I was so afraid of bein’ sent away, I laid with every man I could. They don’t try to cure a woman who beds men. They pay her. Funny thing is, my parents didn’t mind me bein’ with a hundred men. There was less shame in that than bein’ with one girl.”
[...]
I have lived ninety-seven years on this earth. All I have to show for it is me, alone in a bedroom, starin’ at the reflection of a woman who was too afraid to be herself.”
She looked from her reflection to mine.
“Don’t let it happen to you, Betty. Don’t ever be afraid to be yourself. You don’t wanna live so long only to realize, you ain’t lived at all.” (p. 275*)

“Some men know the exact amount of money in their bank accounts,” she continued. “Other men know how many miles are on their car and how many more miles it’ll handle. Other men know the batting average of their favorite baseball player and more other men know the exact sum Uncle Sam has screwed ’em. Your father knows no such figures. The only numbers Landon Carpenter has in his head are the numbers of stars in the sky on the days his children were born. I don’t know about you, but I would say that a man who has skies in his head full of the stars of his children, is a man who deserves his child’s love. Especially from the child with the most stars.” (p. 304*)

“Why’s a girl gotta change when she wears makeup?” I leaned back against the porch rail and dug my nails into the wood. “Why can’t I be the same wearin’ lipstick as I am when my lips are bare? Shouldn’t it matter more what comes out of my lips than what is worn on them?” (p. 324*)

I realized then that pants and skirts, like gender itself, were not seen as equal in our society. To wear pants was to be dressed for power. But to wear a skirt was to be dressed to wash the dishes. (p. 332*)

“You wanna be a star?” Mom began to braid Flossie’s hair.
“More than anything.” Flossie bopped in the seat.
“Then let me tell you what I should have told you a long time ago. You’re the type of star who only shines when there’s no other stars around.”
Flossie looked at Mom through the mirror.
“I can get shinier,” she said. “I can work on it. I’m only sixteen.”
“If you go to Hollywood,” Mom said, “you’ll be surrounded by the biggest and brightest stars there are. You’ll be average there. Hollywood doesn’t put average on the screen. But here in Breathed, as a Silkworm, you’d be the brightest star as a rich man’s wife. You’ve seen how I struggle. Barely able to afford lipstick and hosiery. You want that for yourself?”
Flossie quickly shook her head.
“These opportunities don’t come around every day, girl,” Mom told her. “The older you get, the harder it’ll be. You’re Flossie Carpenter, right? You’re gonna get with a man anyway.”
Flossie shot Mom a look through the mirror.
“Might as well be one with some money,” Mom continued. “Set yourself up for an easy life. Cutlass is a good boy. His family are good folks.”
“But I don’t love him.”
“Even if you don’t care for him now, after a while, you’ll find he’s a lot easier to love than you ever thought possible. Especially after you carry his seed.”
“His seed? You mean have his kid? No way.” Flossie shook her head. “I don’t want no kid.”
“You have to want one, Flossie. Cutlass is havin’ fun is all and once he’s finished, he’ll throw you away. It happens time and time again to girls like you.”
“Girls like me?” Flossie asked.
“If you have his child,” Mom continued, “you’ll have a claim. It’s the only way to secure your future as a star.” (p. 337*)

Other times, I dream she’s a mother in a simple cotton dress. A woman with her hair up in a ponytail and two toddlers, one clinging to each of her legs as she holds and stirs a mixing bowl in the crook of her arm. Batter already on the end of her nose while she smiles as if she has mapped heaven and found it is a straight shot through dirty diapers and glasses of half-drunk juice.
More often than not, I dream she’s a white cat in a blizzard. I always lose her in the way snow can fall. I can only hope she has seen the way I have loved her all of these years. (pp. 356-357*)

My parents looked at one another and smiled. Perhaps they were headed toward friendship. If only they could connect back at those places they last left each other when they were young enough to believe poems could be written for the two of them. Old angers are mostly faded now. Guilt still remains. That’s something that refuses to be shorter than eternity. (p. 373*)

It occurred to me then that to be a child is to know the cradle rocks both toward the parent and away from them. That is the ebb and flow of life, swinging toward and away from one another, perhaps so we build up the strength for that one moment we will be rocked so far away, the person we love the most is gone by the time we return. (p. 403*)

“A girl comes of age against the knife, Betty.” She softly tucked my hair behind my ears before kissing me on the forehead. “But the woman she becomes must decide if the blade will cut deep enough to rip her apart or if she will find the strength to leap with her arms out and dare herself to fly in a world that seems to break like glass around her. May you have the strength.” (p. 426*)

 * as indicated on my e-book reader

Tiffany McDaniel - Betty (Knopf, 2020)