A Tiny Upward Shove, page 4
Willie heard all his life he was a difficult birth—an umbilical cord wrapped around his neck. Meg always secretly wondered if that was why it took him a while to figure things out, and his speech was so hard to understand—a thud of heavily tongued sounds. Her body could be to blame. The rough terrain. Later he’d get notes sent home that said this set him back in school and kept him from having very many friends. People warned Mother all the time about how slow he was, but nobody said, You think you’re helping by putting this kind of terror in him, but really you’re building a pakshet man, you’re building a ticking time bomb of a person. Nobody knew.
* * *
Willie did not have any of the things other boys his age had. He never had the same clothes other boys wore. His clothes were all hand-me-downs, sometimes from his sister and sometimes even from his brother, although he was younger than him.
What they did have, though, was a small general store in town beside the Lougheed Highway. Sometimes kids his age would come in, and he’d try to win their favor by slipping them gifts of hot dogs or candy.
He’d been set back in special classes but his memory … wooooweeee. Willie Pickton can tell you in perfect detail about a day when he was only two. He lived in a chicken coop. It was a thatched hut, small and wooden, and rimmed with chicken wire. He, his brother, and his sister shared a twin bed on a metal frame that folded in two and could be tucked away during the day. He, being the smallest, slept curled up at their feet on the bottom. He can tell you about how, at just two years old, he was sent to lift a floorboard under their little coop bed to get cold water from a spring that ran down below.
* * *
Ordinarily, his father, Mr. Perrish Pickton, was a quiet-mannered man. He began his days at the first touch of light, clanging buckets of hay and milk. Willie’s brother, Elder, usually got up around that time too. They’d linger along the property of pigs and a couple of calves and some chickens until Willie’s mom, Mary Margaret, padded her way into the kitchen to make breakfast. Willie’s mother always looked irritated, even when she was just thinking, even when she was just waking up. Like a naked mole rat. She was perhaps the final sure choice in Perrish Pickton’s lousy life. She’d met Perrish in a coffee shop. He shot in across from her on a bright yellow bench seat and plopped a warm slice of apple pie with a mound of whipped cream right in front of her face and said, Eat up, sweetie, we’re going to celebrate. And she shot back a question of a look and he said sure as day, We’re gonna get married someday. She was much younger than him. Sixteen years younger. This all seemed like a hoot to her but entertaining enough so that with not much more persistence, he soon had his way.
She had been hiding from her parents in the diner. If her mom was at home, she considered Meg a nuisance, and if her mom wasn’t at home, she was in the hospital visiting her father. Meg had so wished her father would hurry up and die already. All those Sunday hospital visits, the putrid sterile smell, the contagion of grief or illness, or both. The saucy bland foods required little to no chewing, canned meats and applesauce, making it comfortable and easy for teeth to be removed and floating in glasses everywhere. There was no surface free of dentures. She knew her father loved ribs, loved meats; he loved chewing things.
For this reason alone, she wanted him to be put out of his misery. This was also a reason for her to marry this man. To escape the ghost life that awaited her most Sundays.
* * *
Mary’s morning routine was accompanied by her bodily agitated barks and wheezes. She’d stretch her two big fists to the center of her back and push in until she heard her spine crack. She shuffled into her slippers and made the family breakfast out of whatever Father plunked in the center of the table in a bucket. That’s how they called each other, Mother and Father. Most often eggs, though sometimes it was just bread and lard, and Willie does not remember a day in his upbringing without bacon. He used to dream his hands turned into hooves and he was released from all his schoolwork. No more school. Just bucking and wheezing and squealing.
* * *
Willie might also tell you glad and proud about a day when he was six years old, sitting in his dad’s Maple Leaf truck. The sun was still up. The truck’s seats were lumpy, and some wires were poking into his side, so he scooched over to the driver’s side. Father was in the house, letting the engine warm up. Some pigs, about ten or so, were squealing in the back of the truck, their hooves clicking and bouncing against the flatbed. Willie will even tell you that he remembers thinking the pigs knew where they were headed. He’d woken up that morning thinking, Bessie.
Bessie was a prize sow. A fat sow who had three droves of piglets. Bessie with her smile and her soft adoring eyes. Willie cared for Bessie, hugged her and put water on her, and snuck her handfuls of his own dinner food. One of his first words was Bethie. Willie just knew that Bessie was the one sow who would make them rich. He dreamt that he was going to get a thousand dollars for her. He dreamt he was going to be famous for Bessie. Traipsing her around a ring of cowboys. His chest out, shoulders back, a rope tied around Bessie’s neck. Bessie just as proud—her snout pointed to the heavens. Willie was excited to make an impression on everyone, but he most wanted to impress Mother, even if she wouldn’t be there.
But every year, two months after the pigs’ showing and depending on whether or not they placed, the sows were slaughtered. Part of him wished the pigs would just hurry up and be slaughtered. Not so they could be rich but to put the pigs out of their misery because every moment longer, every grunt and shuffle and snort, was an invitation for him to love them more. Because under all the bathing and feeding and hair brushing and those days when you doll up a sow and prance her around a ring, a kid who grows up on a farm knows the animals he is raising are food. Willie was gonna drive his prize Bessie to the show; his thick brain had no room to wait, no patience for Father. Sitting in the driver’s side, Willie stretched out—moved the handle on the top of the steering wheel to drive and pressed on the gas like he’d seen Father do. And VROOOOOOOMMMMM the truck sputtered back in reverse and smashed right into a tree.
* * *
Perrish Pickton was a master farmer in the town. He was in good health, reserved, strict. Maybe the reason Willie remembers this incident so well was because of the beating he got afterward. His father liked to teach him lessons in a quiet sort of way. But the loss of the Maple Leaf, which was quite a collector’s item, along with the loss of the pigs that they were going to take off and slaughter proper, this was all enough for his dad to erupt into a thwacking maniac. Perrish Pickton grabbed a wooden spoon, he took the spoon and bam bammed little Willie’s arm with it. Willie was dazed. He smirked. This was not the right response. Perrish threw down the spoon and began hitting Willie with his closed fist. Just when he thought he was tired or he’d hit his son enough, he’d remember about his truck or all the money they’d lost on those pigs and he’d get a second wind. A third wind. A tenth. Then Willie lay bombed-out in the lot, mixed into the jumble of broken pigs and truck parts and gravel and false hope of slaughter money.
When Willie was around eight, his brother, Elder, was experimenting with language; when they’d play their robber games, he’d shoot off into the air and holler out fiery words like Whore! And Fuck this shit! Willie didn’t know all that he meant, just that this was the big blast of the game now. One night he came in after dark from doing his chores. If the lights were on in the kitchen, he could see Father sitting there at the table with a drink in his hand and Mother cleaning dishes. But one time, she walked by and Father reached up and grabbed her on her waist. She stood still. Like it was her duty. His hands made their way around her butt. As he rubbed and rubbed, she got stiff. She didn’t like it—her body said she didn’t like it—but she stood there still.
Willie ran into the pigpen. He bent down low at his waist. At first, it stank. He sucked it all in with his nose. All the shit and mud and pig sweat. All that pink skin and pink hairs and black hairs and spots, and there was the all-brown pig and those with the spots. She doesn’t like it. She doesn’t like it. She doesn’t like it. He screamed it three times. His cheeks brushing past the bodies of the pigs, their wet noses slobbering on his face. He went straight to the middle. They made a racket oinking and coughing and squealing and their faces against his, he even felt teeth on his butt, but they weren’t fighting him; they were just trying to make room. They were screaming about what he was screaming about. She doesn’t like it! they said with him, and drowned him out, and he slept there with them. That was the night they made him king. The moment they made him king was when he made it to the middle, and he stood up tall and threw off his shirt and screamed, She doesn’t like it, and she does it anyway. WHORE! FUCK THIS SHIT! And they all went quiet and looked at him, and it was like they had an understanding from that moment on they were gonna fuck this shit.
* * *
People have always teased Willie about being slow, but he never had much schooling. The last day he went to school, he had a complaint from his teacher about his grooming. It was the smell all the kids used to tease him about. They said he smelled like a pig or the poop, and it was because he liked to stay out there with ’em pigs, and he spoke to them all the time in their special oink language. But also, he hates the shower. The firm beat and feel of the shower. He likes to soak his skin deep into the water but keep his head dry. Gotta have the eyes dry so he can see for any sharp objects.
One day he walked into the kitchen when it was still light out, and the windows were clouded with steam from Mother’s hot water, and she was standing there washing dishes. This was shortly after his father, Perrish, had been dead. Elder and Laura were off working in the store, and Meg and Willie were already steady in a bleak routine. He slowly handed her a note. She snatched it from him.
What’s it say? she asked.
I dunno. He said that ’cause it was the truth.
Ya don’t know what it say?
Nah, ma’am. ’Cause he remembered to call her ma’am, and he looked around, and there was no real sharp object is what he was looking for, and he only saw that there was maybe some kitchen knives.
It says you smell like shit is what it says.
Sorry, ma’am.
Yes, you sure are. Now, why don’t you clean up and stop smelling like all the damn pigs?
Yes, ma’am.
Get yourself undressed and get ready for a bath now!
He still looked around to see what he was gonna get hit with ’cause he knew something was coming, he could see her face and cheeks trembling like they do when she’s about to boil. He started to try to take down his pants, but they got stuck around his ankles.
Ah, you dumb shit, you’re supposed to take your shoes off first!
When he stood up, she had a big pot filled with boiling water, and she threw it on his penis. His whole body a scalding color red. He yelped and curled up into a ball. She grabbed her broom from the corner and started thwacking him with it.
Hey, if you wanna smell like a pig, I’ll thwack you into the bathroom like a pig.
He couldn’t help but pee on the floor there.
What is that, piggy? You gonna make a mess of my kitchen, piggy?
No, ma’am. Her cheeks were really shaking now. He was scared, and he peeked over the counter at the knife. Her eyes caught his—she followed his gaze over to the counter. He tried to look away. Too late. She grabbed the knife. He scrambled to his feet and ran toward the bathroom. She chased after him. She had him in her grips when he fell. He scooted back on his butt. She held the knife to his cheek.
You get your bum up and get yourself clean and never come home with another note again, or it’s the last one you’ll get, you hear?
There were glazed yellow fly strips studded and plump with fly bodies out by where Elder and Willie were talking, enough yellow ribbons to obstruct their view. Day-weary pigeons grazed past Elder, then a fly buzzed in front of his face just as he clapped his hands.
Willie must’ve gotten out of breakfast at the strip joint because a short while later, I heard his heavy, slow steps go in a different direction, while Elder slammed shut the truck door and started the engine to warm her up. I stayed listening in that hall closet, felt the reverberations drilling against our heart.
The truck peeled out backward and then onto the Lougheed Highway. He cranked up some heavy metal as he drove, he took a corner sharply. The same trees Marina saw from the night before whizzed overhead. Some of them still laced with the spirits of lost women, their schoolyard chant bleating with the cries of getimgetimgetimgetim.
A murmuration of starlings above, eerie and maganda, set off by a change in season, an attempt to flee their prey. Swooping and intricately coordinated, like Lola’s fingers passing along her rosary. Hail Mary Full of Grace. Like soldiers, dancers, a swarm of soccer players—they moved together.
THE PLASTIC PALACE
The year 1982 was a time of cruel plastic runners that protected the carpets. The sharp tips that were supposed to meld into the floor often flipped back and wound up driven into Marina’s knees. Ma and Marina called Lola’s house the Plastic Palace. A cool salty breeze swooshed over the Monterey Peninsula, sand dunes for miles, the town smelling like sea animals, ice plants, with a sardine cannery off in the distance. Fewer than ten miles away, a forest blanketed with redwoods. Every day was a day for sand in the shoes. Seaports were Marina’s six-year-old heart’s delight—the crowded Edgewater Carousel, ship-clogged, fish, and sewage-scented cities.
This is where they lived with Marina’s lola. It was in this house in Seaside and at that time when each of Lola’s kisses tasted like a funeral: Jean Naté, tears, and Mary Kay lipsticks. Maybe it was her handkerchiefs, and her rosary beads clutched tightly in her palm. Or the painting of Lola and Lolo in the living room—their eyes dark wet pearls, their hands clasped like they knew one of them was due to die the next day. The house had a smell of burning charcoal and soured fish. There were paintings on the walls, one of Maria Lobo, her hair with jasmine flowers. In the hallway, there sat a small velvet picture of a young boy with wings, riding boots, a sash belt, and a feathered hat. If Marina moved past the paintings, she felt their eyes track her movements. Her favorite painting was of a cluster of boys—little brown skeletons with paper lanterns of various shapes and colors, suspended from the end of bamboo poles and decorated to each boy’s desire. She liked the colors against the tropical backdrop, and when it rained outside, she imagined the small lanterns swaying toward the sky. She felt the painting was most alive in a storm. When she was younger, barely able to reach it, she’d run to the painting and kiss it when the sky turned gray. She gently brushed all the little backs of the little boys, hoping to keep them warm. On All Saints’ Eve, Lola covered the windows and mirrors with flags and multicolored damasks; the whole place burst with the smells of bibingka baking and explosions of music. Marina never thought it strange, this small house by the sea; it’d taken her much longer, growing older and moving away, to realize every home wasn’t like the one on Harcourt Ave.
It was there she was suspended between the harshness of life and the strange festival of death. Lola visited her espiritista twice a week every week. Occasionally, she took Reena with her. They walked the alley behind Lola’s house. One house had a German shepherd that jumped out of nowhere—its long face launched over the gate barking at them. Lola cussed at the dog, Ay nako! Stupid lunchmeat bastard! She walked ahead with her handbag thumping against her polyester pants. Always a different handbag to match her different pants. Filled with gum and Kleenex and three types of reading glasses. Marina knew when Lola wanted to walk fast because she put on a pair of canvas tennis shoes over her knee-high nylon stockings.
Marina carried her own purse, a metal Wonder Woman lunch box with a skinny blue handle. In an attempt to appear important, she stuffed it with marbles, a couple of sticks of gum, and Kleenex too. Lola told Marina stories of how misbehavior would lead to her demise.
Sometimes Marina got impatient, and she’d interrupt—Is this the one about the time the roaches crawled in your ears at night? Or about the time you heard babies crying in the well in your little village? Is this the one about the time Lolo’s spirit got angry and made a bunch of knives fly around the kitchen like darts? Is this about how I am the prettiest one? Is this about the aswang?
As they stepped into the street, Be careful! We will get runned over by a car. And then you and I will have broken legs, Lola Virgie warned.
Then can I have a wheelchair? asked Marina.
No, you will be a handicapped. No wheelchair.
No wheelchair?
Wheelchairs are a thousand dollars. Do you know how much is a thousand dollars?
No.
A car is a thousand dollars.
But it’s not even the size of a whole car.
Yes, but the parts are from somewhere special. And I myself have arthritis, so I cannot push a wheelchair. Someday you will have to push me in the wheelchair.
I’ll push you in the wheelchair, Lola! Even if I’m in one too. I’ll build special muscles so I can push you.
If you want to build special muscles, then you need to eat your dinner.
I do eat my dinners.
Even your vegetables.
