Chapter 2
We live in the same house with my Aint Lyn and her two kids. Me, Mama, Jason and Phil sleep in one bedroom and Aint Lyn and her kids sleep in the last one.
Don’t tell nobody but Aint Lyn don’t wear no nightgown or pajamas when she goes to bed, she just sleeps in her regular clothes. She says it’s in case of the house maybe catchin’ on fire. Sometimes I start thinkin’ about that at night and I get real scared and I ask Mama if I can sleep in my regular clothes but she says, “the house ain’t gonna catch on fire so shut up and go to sleep!” I do sleep better when she says that.
One time I decided I was gonna sleep without underwear so I reached under my nightgown, slid ‘em off and stuck ‘em up under the bed. Then Mama came in and Phil blabbered out that I was sleepin’ naked and she said only bad girls do such things so she pulled my nightgown up, whipped my butt hard and made me put ‘em back on. Now I have to wake up all night long just to yank ‘em outta the crack of my butt.
Hey! That reminds me.You know why God made your butt crack straight up and down instead of from side to side? So your butt won’t make a sound like bub, bub, bub, when you go down the slidin’ board. Good one, huh? Jason told it to me. He’s funny like that. Only he said the ‘A’ word instead of butt. He says lots of bad words when Mama ain’t around. He’s way braver than me. I ain’t never tasted soap but Jason and Phil have both blown lots of bubbles.
I try real hard to keep Mama from gettin’ mad at me. When Mama starts breathin’ hard, Jason and Phil run outta the house so fast. I never ever run from Mama. I like to think its cause I’m just better behaved than my crazy brothers but it’s really cause my legs just can’t run when they’re scared.
Mama always says the same thing when they run away. She tells me, “don’t you worry about those boys, they have to come home sooner or later and when they do they will surely get theirs.” Then she says to me, “give me your hand.” Sometimes she makes me take off my clothes so she can make it hurt real good. I don’t like it when she does that so I start beggin’ and beggin’ but it don’t never do me no good.
One time when we all went to Church, I heard Mama tell Mrs. Payne that she made me go without my stockin’s so I could show off my candy stripes. Mama was smilin’ when she told it but when she turned her head away Mrs. Payne looked at her like she was from another planet. Mama didn’t see her do it but I sure did. I hated it cause the people looked at me but when I looked back at ‘em, they just looked away real fast. It made my face feel like it was red hot and ugly.
That was the time I had made Mama the most mad. The time when I looked down and saw my blood ticklin’ its way down the back of my legs and I just stood there thinkin’ about candy canes. It was slap, sweatin’ hot summer time! And there I stood, dreamin’ about candy canes. I swear my brain acts like its done broke sometimes.
That day was plumb sticky hot outside; like when the air is so thick and steamy you just don’t even wanna breathe it in, so to cool down some, me, Jason and Phil decided to squirt each other with the hose pipe.
I ran up in the house to go get on my bathin’ suit but I couldn’t find it nowhere on the bedroom floor. Mama was talkin’ on the phone in the livin’ room so I ran in there, askin’ her if she’d seen it. She covered up the phone with her hand, tellin’ me it was in the washin’ machine and for me to go get it myself so I dragged a chair outta the kitchen, onto the back porch, climbed up and reached down into the machine. It was stuffed plumb full of clothes that was all wet and twisted up together so I had to pull ‘em all apart and when I finally found it I ran back to the bedroom and yanked it on and then I took off back outside to play.
We was havin’ a good time laughin’ and squirtin’ each other. Jason and Phil like stickin’ the hose pipe down their pants and then turnin’ sideways to make it look like they’re takin’ a pee. One time when I was a real little kid I tried to stand up and pee so I could be just like ‘em but it ran straight down my legs makin’ a giant sized mess on the floor so now I just sit down like a normal girl.
Anyways, we was havin’ so much fun squirtin’ each other and then all of a sudden the back door slammed and there stood Mama. Right away I got scared cause she didn’t say nothing to none of us, she just walked over to the bushes and broke off a switch. When she started yankin’ off all the leaves I dropped the hose pipe and looked over at Jason and Phil, fear flutterin’ around like butterflies inside me.
When Mama turned around her eyes was starin’ straight at me and I started to cry but she told me to get myself in the house right that minute. I looked back over my shoulder and I could see sadness and relief all mixed up in the eyes of my brothers and I knew that the minute Mama got me inside they would run as fast as their legs would let ‘em. I don’t blame ‘em, though. If my legs had let me, I would’ve run, too.
When we got up in the house Mama started screamin’ about how hard she works. Thinkin’ please God please God please God, I told her I was sorry but she kept on and on and her eyes got real dark and hard like. They don’t even blink when she gets like that!
Grabbin’ my arm she pulled me over to the washin’ machine and screamed that I had dropped something clean on the floor after she had been workin’ hard all day, cleanin’ and doin’ the washin’.
The mop bucket and another bucket was sittin’ beside the washin’ machine and she said I had dropped a shirt outta the washer into the bucket. I told her I was sorry and I didn’t mean to but she still picked up the bucket and slung it at my face. She did it so fast that I didn’t have time to hold my breath. I can’t never go in the water without holdin’ my breath and pinchin’ my nose so the nasty stuff went in my eyes, up my nose and in my mouth and I was chokin’ and gaggin’ like I was gonna throw up.
I always pretend like it was the mop bucket that she picked up. It’s not the same thing as a lie because people pretend when they play games and that’s okay, right?
Anyways, when she told me to get into the livin’ room I didn’t wanna go in there because we had company, but I always have to do whatever big people say.
She told me to give her my hand and then she told me that it was gonna hurt her way more than it hurt me and even though I’m only seven years old, I know that big people lie because when she started hittin’ on me it hurt so bad my brain was screamin’ right along with my mouth.
I knew she was finished with me when her breathin’ was more like a real tired breathin’ instead of that angry animal breathin’ and she told me to go stay in the bedroom and think about how bad I am. I didn’t wanna think about that because thinkin’ about that always makes my tummy feel sore so I laid across the bed with my face stuffed in my pillow and waited for my eyes to stop cryin’.
I was wishin’ we didn’t have no company because he laughed at me. I don’t understand how that can be funny. I think something must be really bad wrong with me, don’t you?
Anyways, I pray to God all the time. Preacher Loude says if you ask you will receive. So I always ask for the same thing. I say, Dear God, it’s me, Wanda who’s supposed to be Rhonda. Please please please make me good so Mama won’t hate me. Amen.
My legs was hurtin’ real bad and burnin’ like they was on fire so I reached my hand back to touch a hurt spot and that’s when I saw the blood. Since I didn’t wanna make a big mess on the bed I grabbed a roll of toilet paper off Mama’s night time table and started cleanin’ myself up. Then I heard the door open and Mama came in. She looked at me and told me to lay down on the bed and she would be right back.
I thought for sure she was gone to get another switch and I started beggin’ God to please come take me away but then I heard the door open and tried to make my cryin’ stop.
Mama sat down beside me on the bed and I felt something thick and cold touch one of my hurts. I opened my eyes and saw the jar of Vaseline and then I breathed. She rubbed it on me real slow and soft and it felt so nice and I had almost pulled all the sadness back inside me but then she started cryin’ and boom! I got scared all over again.
It was a different kind of scared from when I thought I would get another whippin’. It was a scared because your Mama’s cryin’, kind of scared. You see, more than anything in the whole entire world, I hate to see my Mama cryin’ cause I don’t know what to do to make her feel better and stop.
She had her face hid down in her hands so I sat up and put my hand on her arm. I promised her I would be a better kid but she just cried harder. She told me she was sorry and that made me feel all mixed up but I told her I was sorry, too. She asked me if I would forgive her and I said yeah, I already did. She hugged and kissed me a lot after that and I got to wear long pants the next day. But then the day after that she made me go to church without my stockin’s because she said she wanted everybody to see my candy stripes. Sometimes my head hurts hard from tryin’ to figure out big people.
