A Veritable Household Pet, page 11
I first noticed the orange prescription bottle shortly after our dismal Christmas. It was sitting on the kitchen counter next to the fridge, and I could only assume Mother left it out by mistake. The label read Kelly Gregory, Take as Directed, Valium. Even though it wasn’t Thorazine, holding the bottle made my fingers sweaty, and I set it back down on the counter with a rattling clunk.
I left the bottle where it was, but I wrote down the name of the medication and spent my afternoon in the library reading about diazepam, better known as Valium. There were articles touting its effectiveness against anxiety, insomnia, and alcohol withdrawal. This last made me pause—could Mother be considering sobriety?
I shook my head, chasing away the fanciful idea. Our garbage bags were heavier and louder than ever, the bottles clanging together like cymbals.
The articles I read also indicated that Valium should not be taken with alcohol, and that the medication could result in ‘suicidal thoughts.’
For God’s sake, I couldn’t withstand another parent taking the easy way out. What was Mother thinking? Was she thinking at all? If she died, who would take care of Darla and me? We had no close relatives—Mother and Father were both only children, and all of our grandparents were dead. We’d be herded into the foster care system like sheep, where we’d likely be split up. Nobody would be able to care for Darla properly. She’d probably end up in a horrible institution somewhere, the one thing Mother had fought so hard against when she’d still had the will to fight, and I’d be in no position to get Darla out.
The thought was unfathomable. To tell you the truth, I didn’t care about Mother’s health. My mother, as I knew her, had died long before, and the person who barely kept the roof over our heads and the liquor cabinet fully stocked was no more than a useful ghost. I cared only about her role in our lives and the protection a living parent, however mentally absent, provided.]
Ma stayed away from me, for the most part, and that was okay with me. She smelled of cigarettes and sweat, and she often slurred her words worse than I still did.
“Has your mother ever hurt you?” Mrs. Knowles whispered to me one day during our lessons.
“What?” I asked, and Mrs. Knowles hushed me. Ma was still sleeping in her bedroom.
“Has your mother ever struck you?” Mrs. Knowles whispered again.
I stared at her, trying to figure out how to answer. I didn’t want to be ‘not good’ again.
“No,” I said.
Mrs. Knowles’ eyebrows pinched again, and I prepared myself for her to be angry with me.
“Do you have enough to eat? Does she care for you properly?” Mrs. Knowles asked.
Between Mrs. Knowles and Ellie, I ate fine. As for the caring for me part, I didn’t know how to answer, so I just nodded.
Mrs. Knowles’ eyebrows were still all scrunched up, but she stopped asking me questions and stopped whispering.
[Scribe’s note: Mrs. Knowles stopped me on the sidewalk at the corner of Beech and Sycamore on my way home from school one day. She looked sheepish and tired.
“Ellen, I’m concerned about your mother,” she said.
I held my breath. I knew Mrs. Knowles’s intentions were good, but her meddling made me uneasy. If Mrs. Knowles had a mind to call the authorities, Darla and I could be ousted from our home even while Mother was still alive.
“Why?” I finally asked, when the silence became awkward.
“She’s… well, Ellen, she’s unkempt,” Mrs. Knowles said, and I tried not to laugh. That was her biggest complaint?
Mrs. Knowles continued, “I heard from Jason Crouch that your mother has been making mistakes at work. She brought him a chicken sandwich with a pickle instead of his brisket, and the whole town knows Jason is allergic to cucumbers. She may be trying to hide it, but people are starting to notice, Ellen.”
I shrugged. What did she want from me? If I didn’t have capacity for Darla right then, I certainly didn’t have—nor did I want—capacity for Mother’s issues.
“You know,” Mrs. Knowles said, and she leaned even closer into me, gripping my wrist. She smelled of sugar cookies and lavender. “You and Darla can come stay with me whenever you need.”
I stared at her. Could she be telling the truth? It was as though I was drowning and she’d thrown me a life preserver. “Really?” I said.
She nodded resolutely. “Really. David and Mitchell are grown and out of the house, and Mr. Knowles is at work far more often than he’s home. I could use the company.”
“Thank you,” I said, for lack of anything better, even though her closeness made me nervous.
I tried to turn away, but Mrs. Knowles squeezed my arm, hard. “I’m serious, Ellen,” she said, her voice raspy. “You and Darla can stay with me, if anything happens.”
I wondered what she meant by ‘anything.’ Did she see Mother’s decline as starkly as I did, even though Mother tried so hard to hide her true self just as much as she hid Darla?
“Thank you,” I said again, and she finally released me.
“Take care of yourself, dear,” she said, then continued on her way down the sidewalk.
It was nothing much—a hushed conversation on a neighborhood sidewalk—but it changed everything.]
1974
Ma found me at the kitchen table, finishing my bread and jelly. Ellie had just left for school, and Mrs. Knowles wouldn’t come until later. Ma usually never got up this early; she didn’t come home from the restaurant until I was already asleep.
“Close your mouth,” Ma said. I didn’t know my mouth had been open, but sure enough, when I poked my chin with a finger, it was hanging low, and some chewed bread was starting to slide past my bottom lip. I did as Ma asked, holding my jaw closed to finish chewing.
Ma shuffled past me and grabbed an orange bottle off the kitchen counter. She twisted it open and shook a few pills into her hand. They looked like candy, and my mouth started to water more, which made it hard to keep myself from drooling, which I knew Ma hated. She filled a glass with water from the sink, threw the pills into her mouth, and gulped them down. The sound was very loud in the quiet kitchen, and it made me want to laugh.
I couldn’t hold it in, even though I knew Ma would be mad at me. She was always mad at me, so what did it matter? I let my laughter out in a little snort through my nose.
Ma whipped around to face me. “What’re you laughing at?” Her eyes were slits, and her voice was low and mean, like a dog growling.
I shrugged instead of answering. I knew if I spoke, I’d spray breadcrumbs all over the table.
Ma walked past me to one of the cabinets in the living room and pulled out a bottle of something brown. She unscrewed the cap and took another loud gulp. I couldn’t remember if she’d always been such a loud drinker. The thought brought another snort out of me.
“Shut up, you moron!” Ma yelled at me, slamming the bottle onto the coffee table. Liquid sloshed onto the wood. Ma used to get angry at me or Ellie when we’d put a glass on that table—she said it would leave a ring and ruin it, and we couldn’t afford new furniture. I guessed the rules didn’t apply anymore. I was more confused by her actions than the words, which floated over me like balloons.
Ma kept staring at me as she picked the bottle back up and noisily drank more. I couldn’t help it—the laughter kept coming.
Ma capped the bottle and put it back in the cabinet. When she turned to face me again, her cheeks were red. “I’m so goddamned sick of this shit,” she said, then walked back to her bedroom and slammed the door.
Ma had cursed! Again! I guessed this was just something she did now. I shoved my last bite of bread with jelly into my mouth, then ran to my room and pressed my face against my pillow. I could keep my food in my mouth and keep Ma from hearing my laughter, which, like vomit, just wouldn’t stop, even though I wanted it to.
I know Mrs. Knowles came not long after that, and we did our lessons, and we had lunch, which was spaghetti with meatballs. Mrs. Knowles cut up my noodles into little pieces so I could eat them with a spoon.
That’s the last thing I remember from the day Ma died.
1974
[Scribe’s note: I’m glad Darla doesn’t remember the rest of what happened that day.
After school, I’d planned to go to the library to study, as I typically did. When I arrived at the library and started unpacking my books, I realized I’d left my chemistry text at home. We had a quiz the following day, so it was the only book I really needed. I would rather have died than ask another student in my class to borrow theirs—the ridicule and mockery that would earn me would have been too much.
So, I repacked my book bag and headed back home, resolved to do my studying in my room.
It was pure luck that brought me home in time.
When I entered the house, I half-expected to see Mother at the kitchen table, drinking black coffee and smoking a cigarette. She wasn’t there, but an empty mug in the sink and the ghost of cigarette smoke told me I’d just missed her, that she was still close.
The last thing I wanted to do was run into Mother. I found her unbearable to be around, with her violent mood swings, her anger, the way the events of our lives had completely hollowed her out, left her more of a shell than Darla ever was. It’s safe to say I resented Kelly Gregory, because she’d so willingly given up everything that made her my mother. What she was now was nothing more than a husk, the bits and pieces of her shattered soul clattering around inside.
I grabbed a brown-spotted banana from the pantry and scurried toward my room, tiptoeing past Mother’s closed bedroom door. If I were lucky, she’d still be sleeping, and our paths wouldn’t have to cross today.
As it happened, luck is a fickle thing.
As I passed Darla’s door, something gave me pause. Her door was shut, even though those days, it was typically wide open. Ever since Mrs. Knowles had started coming around, Mother had eased up on locking Darla in. What would be the point? Darla’s existence was no longer a secret confined to the four walls of our home.
I set my book bag on the ground and crept closer to Darla’s door. I pressed my ear to the cheap wood, and that’s when I heard it.
Muffled groans. The shake of the bed frame hitting the wall. And then—a voice.
“Hold still, goddamnit!”
It was Mother. Of course it was.
I didn’t waste any more time. I twisted the knob and burst into the room, where I found Darla supine on the bed, Mother straddling her. Mother’s gnarled fingers were gripping a fat pillow and pressing it over Darla’s face. Sweat dripped off her forehead from the effort, as Darla thrashed like a hooked fish at the bottom of a boat.
“Mother!” I screamed, but she didn’t seem to hear me—or if she did, she didn’t care.
I crossed the room in two strides and grabbed Mother’s upper arms, the stringy muscle barely covering her fragile bones. If I squeezed too hard, I felt I’d be able to snap them into pieces.
I considered it, and I’m not ashamed to tell you that.
Instead, I sunk my fingers deeper and pulled, putting my entire body weight into the movement. Finally, I managed to wrench Mother to the floor, hurling her with as much force as I could muster. Without Mother holding her down, Darla sprang up like a jack-in-the-box, the pillow, a would-be murder weapon, falling to the floor with a soft thud.
Darla wailed, in between sucking in huge lungfuls of air. Her eyes were red. If I had gotten there even a few seconds later, Mother probably would have succeeded in killing her daughter.
Mother lay sprawled on the floor, her housedress having flown up to her upper thighs, which were nearly as sticklike as her arms. Like Darla, she was heaving from exertion.
“What have you done?” I yelled, throwing my arms out wide, as if to increase my volume.
Mother pushed a wisp of gray-brown hair out of her face and turned to spit on the carpet. “What I should have done a long time ago,” she said, the venom in her voice pungent and deadly, even as she slurred her words.
I shook my head, angry at Mother for her monstrousness, angry at Darla, as unfair as it was, for her helplessness, and angry at myself most of all, for my lack of foresight. How had I not seen this coming? Mother was a ticking time bomb, descending ever deeper into alcohol and substance abuse. Deep down, I knew I never intervened or told anyone because I hoped Mother would quietly die at a convenient time, such as when I was over eighteen and fears of the foster care system couldn’t hold me hostage anymore.
Clearly, Mother had no intention of fading quietly away… on her own, at least.
I turned to Darla, who had managed to catch her breath, and was staring at Mother with her usual placid expression on her face.
“Are you okay, Darla?” I asked, laying a hand on her cheek. It was hot to the touch.
“I don’t know,” she said, and even if it was her automatic response, it was probably the truth.
Mother snorted angrily from her position on the floor. At last, she tugged her dress down, so we would be spared the sight of her wasted legs, the purple veins crisscrossing like highways under her lily-white flesh. “She hasn’t been okay for years,” Mother said, rather petulantly. “Fucking idiot.”
Something snapped inside of me, and in that moment, a plan formed in my mind, whole and complete and perfect.
“Darla, I’m going to get you a glass of water, okay?” I said. Darla nodded, as if she didn’t care one way or the other.
I looked toward Mother. “Get out of this room,” I snarled. Mother stared at me, as if seeing me for the first time.
“You ungrateful little bitch,” Mother said, beginning the laborious process of hauling herself up from the dusty carpet.
“Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, huh, Mother?” I said, surprised at my own cheekiness. Mother’s attempted murder had unlocked a nastiness inside me, and I was happy to let it take me over. It made me feel strong, invincible.
Mother regained her feet and scuttled out of the room like a spider, hissing as she went. A few moments later I heard the creak of a cabinet being opened, the clink of a bottle, then the slam of Mother’s bedroom door.
Perfect.
With Mother out of the way, I rushed to get Darla some water, then brought it back to her bedside. She took it from me without a word and drained half the glass in one go, runnels of it streaming down her chin. She wiped her mouth on the sleeve of her blouse, then laid back down against her pillows.
“Get some sleep, okay?” I said. Darla nodded, the ghost of a smile on her lips, as though she knew what I was planning and heartily approved.
When I left Darla’s room, I reengaged the lock on the door. I didn’t want Darla wandering out while I was doing what needed to be done. I didn’t want her implicated, but I also didn’t want her bearing witness.
What would I have done if Mother had actually killed Darla? Would our lives have been any better? I thought not. Darla was like a dog, something that didn’t cause too much trouble, didn’t ask for much, and, most importantly of all, offered an unconditional human warmth that was so hard to come by in this world. Even though I’d pulled away from her over the past few months, letting Mrs. Knowles take my place, Darla still gave me purpose. She kept me from sliding into the same oblivion that had swallowed Father. The same oblivion that was about to swallow Mother.
I refused to be swallowed.
In the kitchen, I pulled a tumbler glass from the cabinet. Mother’s orange bottle of Valium was still on the counter near the refrigerator. According to the dosage information printed on the side of the bottle, each pill contained ten milligrams of the diazepam drug, and Mother’s doctor had directed her to take two pills per day. I already suspected she was taking more than that, and had possibly developed a tolerance for it. To be safe, I poured every last pill—some fifty or so—into a plastic bag, pulled a rolling pin from a drawer, and began crushing the pills into powder. I worked as quietly as possible, not wanting to alert Mother.
Finally, all that remained in the bag was a light blue dust that looked like tainted baking soda. I poured all of it into the tumbler, then retrieved a bottle of Jack Daniel’s from the liquor cabinet. It was already half-empty, but it didn’t matter. I filled the glass nearly to the brim, then used a spoon to stir until the powder had dissolved.
I didn’t bother knocking on Mother’s door. When I entered, she was curled on her bed, weeping and mumbling incoherently. It was possible she’d already had several doses of Valium that day, and who knows how much alcohol on top of it. I was only doing her a favor, after all—bringing her her two favorite medications of choice.
“Mother,” I said, when she didn’t react to my presence.
“What do you want,” she mumbled, head still pressed into her dirty blankets.
“I’m sorry,” I said, the lie rolling off my tongue smoothly. “I shouldn’t have grabbed you so hard.”
Mother looked up at me, her face sallow and tearstained. “No, you shouldn’t have,” she said, as if trying to regain the maternal authority she’d relinquished many years before. “I should punish you.”
With difficulty, I managed not to roll my eyes. “Here,” I said, offering her the glass. “I brought something for you.”
She squinted at me, suspicious, and for a second fear gripped my heart. What would I do if she wouldn’t drink every last drop willingly? I could hold her down and try to force the liquid into her mouth—after all, she was so thin and weak she would be no match for me—but I didn’t want to have to do that. It felt… inelegant.
