Sourland by Joyce Carol Oates
Georgia said defiantly, “I hope to God he stays that way.”
A few months in Ransomville, we’d begun to forget Herkimer. The shingleboard house on Half Moon Creek we’d almost come to believe, as Momma said, had been flooded and swept away by Hurricane Charley. The glowering man who wasn’t my daddy and had no wish to pretend he was. Now I was Mickey and not Aimée, I behaved with more confidence. I became brash, reckless. I infuriated my aunt and my mother by careening around the house at high speed, taking the stairs from the second floor two and three at a time, slapping my hand against the wall for balance. (Unlike Sonny, I sometimes missed a step and fell, hard. Skidding down the remainder of the stairs to lie in a crumpled heap at the bottom. The pain made me whimper but embarrassment was worse, if anyone happened to have noticed.) Another roughhouse game if you could call it a game was running and sliding along the hall on my aunt’s “throw rugs” Lyle imitated me, in a shrieking version of bumper cars. When Momma was home she scolded and slapped at me—“Aimée! You’re too old for such behavior”—but more and more, Momma wasn’t home.
Aunt Georgia’s was the kind of household where a single bathroom had to suffice for everyone and the hot water heater was quickly depleted. The kind of household where a shower, a bath, was an occasion. I hid in wait to catch a glimpse of Sonny hurrying into the bathroom barefoot, bare-chested and in beltless trousers, pajama bottoms, or white Jockey shorts dingy from many launderings, quick to shut the door behind him and latch it. Slyly I would draw near to hear him whistling inside as he ran water from the rusty old faucets, flushed the toilet, showered. I drew Lyle into teasing Sonny with me, rapping on the bathroom door when Sonny was inside, managing to jiggle the latch-lock open and reaching inside to switch off the light, to provoke our cousin into shouting, “Put that light back on! God damn!” More daring, we crept into the steamy bathroom when Sonny was showering, pushed aside the shower curtain so that I could spray Sonny with shaving cream from his aerosol can, all the while shrieking with laughter like a cat being killed. Nothing was more hilarious than Sonny flailing at us, streaming water, trying to grab the shaving cream can out of my hand. Once or twice I caught a glimpse of Sonny’s penis swinging loose, limp and seeming not much longer than his longest finger, innocent-looking as a red rubber toy between his narrow hips. In his rage, Sonny wouldn’t trouble to wrap a towel around his waist. The sight of my cousin’s penis did not upset or alarm me. If I’d been asked I might have said Anything that is Sonny’s, anything to do with Sonny, could never cause me harm.
Furious and flushed with indignation, Sonny lunged from the dripping shower stall to shove Lyle and me out of the bathroom with his wet hands, and shut the door behind us, hard.
“Damn brats!”
Of course, Sonny would exact his revenge. If not immediately, in time. Somewhere, somehow. We would not know when. We trembled in anticipation, not knowing when.
It would be years before I glimpsed another penis on another young male. And more years before I saw an erect penis. In my naïveté taking for granted that adult men looked like my boy cousin surprised naked in the shower. In my naïveté taking for granted that, like my protective boy cousin, no man would truly wish to harm me.
That environment my aunt Agnes would say, after Sonny was arrested. Those people, that way of life my aunt would speak in disgust as if any sensible person would agree with her. And I would want to protest It wasn’t like that! I would want to say I loved them, we were happy there, you don’t understand.
“If I could trust you, Dev’a. My mind would be more at peace.”
It was difficult to interpret my aunt Georgia’s tone of voice when she spoke like this to Momma. She didn’t seem to be scolding or sarcastic. She didn’t sound reproachful. She laughed, and she sighed. (Fattish people sighed a lot, I knew. Like they were made of rubber pumped up like a balloon and when they felt sad, air leaked out more noticeably than it did with thinner people.) The way Momma murmured in reply as if she was too much in a hurry to be angry, “Georgia, you can trust me! I’m an adult woman,” I understood my aunt and Momma had had this conversation before and that, on her way out of the house, Momma would pause to kiss Georgia’s cheek, squeeze her hand and say, in her taunting-teasing way, “And you can mind your own business, Georgia. Any time you want us out, we’re out.”
This hurt my aunt, I knew. (It hurt me, overhearing. Momma was so careless in her words slashing like blades.) So Georgia would say no she didn’t mean that, didn’t want that, Momma had to know she didn’t want that.
Through the winter and into January 1981, Momma sold perfume in a department store at the mall. Then, Momma was “hostess” in a restaurant owned by a new friend of hers. Then, Momma was “receptionist” at Herlihy’s Realtors whose glaring yellow and black signs were everywhere in Chautauqua County, and Mr. Herlihy (who drove a showy bronze-blond Porsche) was Momma’s new friend.
It seemed that every few days, a new friend called Momma. Male voices asking to speak with “Devra Stecke” but Momma wasn’t usually home. Some of the men left names and telephone numbers, others did not. Some of the men my aunt Georgia knew, or claimed to know, others she did not. This was an “old pattern” repeating itself, Georgia said. Complaining to anyone who would listen how her younger sister who’d already had such turmoil in her personal life was “growing apart” from her—“growing estranged”—“secretive”—and this was a signal of trouble to come.
Sonny roiled his mother by saying, in the way you’d explain something to a slow-witted child, “Ma, the fact is: Aunt Devra has got her own life. Aunt Devra ain’t you.”
The plan had been that Momma, Lyle, and I would live with my aunt Georgia only for as long as Momma needed to get a job in Ransomville, find a decent place for us to live, but months passed, and Momma was too busy to think about moving, and Georgia assured her there was no hurry about moving out, there was plenty of room in the house. My aunt’s daughters were grown, married, separated or divorced, and dropped by the house with their noisy children at all times, especially when they wanted favors from their mother, but Georgia liked the feel of a family living together day to day. “Like, when you wake up in the morning, you know who you’ll be making breakfast for. Who you can rely upon.”
It began to be that Momma “worked late” several nights a week at Herlihy Realtors. Or maybe, after the office closed, Momma had other engagements. (Swimming laps at the Y? Taking a course in computers at the community college? Meeting with friends at the County Line Café?) If Momma wasn’t back home by 7 P.M. we could expect a hurried call telling us not to wait supper for her, and not to keep food warm in the oven for her. Maybe Momma would be home by midnight, maybe later. (Once, our school bus headed for town passed Momma’s car on the road, headed home at 7:45 A.M. I shrank from the window trying not to notice and wondered if my little brother at the front of the bus was trying not to notice, too.) In winter months when we came home from school, ran up the snowy driveway to the old farmhouse so weirdly, thinly painted looking in twilight like a ghost-house, sometimes only our aunt Georgia would be home to call out, “Hi, kids!” Georgia would be changed from her cafeteria uniform into sweatpants and pullover sweater, in stocking feet padding about the kitchen preparing supper (Georgia’s specialties were hot-spice chili with ground chuck, spaghetti and meatballs, tuna-cheese-rice casserole with a glaze of potato chip crumbs); or, having lost track of the time, sitting in her recliner in the living room watching late-afternoon TV soaps, smoking Marlboros and rapidly sewing, without needing to watch her fingers, one of her crazy quilts—“Look at this! How it came to be so big, I don’t know. Damn thing has a mind of its own.”
Georgia tried to teach me quilting, but I hadn’t enough patience to sit still. Since I’d become Mickey, not Aimée, seemed like tiny red ants were crawling over me, couldn’t stay in one place for more than a few minutes. Momma said it would be good for me to learn some practical skill, but why’d I want to learn quilting, when Momma hadn?
Georgia Brandt’s quilts were famous locally. She’d made quilts for every relative of hers, neighbors, friends, friends-of-friends. For people she scarcely knew but admired. Georgia’s most spectacular quilts sold for two hundred dollars at the women’s co-op. She was modest about her skills (“I’m like the momma cat that’s had so many kittens, she’s lost count”) and scowled like Sonny if you tried to compliment her. It was difficult to describe one of Georgia’s quilts for if your first impression was that the quilt was beautiful, the closer you looked the more doubtful you became. For there was no way to see the quilt in its entirety, only just in parts, square by square. And the squares did not match, did not form a “pattern.” Or anyway not a “pattern” you could see. Not only did Georgia use mismatched colors and prints but every kind of fabrics: cotton, wool, satin, silk, taffeta, velvet, lace. Some quilts glittered with sequins or seed pearls scattered like constellations in the sky. Georgia said she could see a quilt in her mind’s eye taking form as she sewed it better than she could see a quilt when it was spread out on the floor. A “crazy” quilt grew by some mysterious logic, moving through Georgia’s fingers, grew and grew until finally it stopped growing.
People asked my aunt how she knew when a quilt was finished and Georgia said, “Hell, I don’t ever know. I just stop.”
May 1981 my cousin Sonny turned sixteen: bought a car, quit high school, got a job with a tree service crew.
Aunt Georgia had begged him not to quit school, but Sonny wouldn’t listen. He’d had enough of sitting at desks, playing like he was a young kid when he wasn’t, in his heart. The tree service job paid almost twice what he’d been making working part-time and he was proud to hand over half of his earnings to Georgia.
Georgia wept, but took the money. Sonny would do what he wanted to do, like her deceased husband. “Now I got to pray you don’t kill yourself, too.” We picked up the way Georgia’s voice dipped on you.
Sonny, the youngest member of the tree service crew, soon became the daredevil. The one to volunteer to climb one hundred feet wielding a chain saw when others held back. The one to work in dangerous conditions. The one to be depended upon to finish a job even in pelting rain, without complaining. He liked the grudging admiration of the other men some of whom became his friends and some of whom hated his guts for being the good-looking brash kid who clambered into trees listening to rock music on his Walkman and was still fearless as most of them had been fearless at one time, if no longer. “Hey Brandt: you up for this?” It was a thrill to hear the foreman yelling at him, singling him out for attention.
Sure, Sonny wore safety gloves, goggles, work boots with reinforced toes. Sure, Sonny insisted to Georgia and to Momma, he never took chances and didn’t let the damn foreman “exploit” him. Yet somehow his hands became covered in nicks, scratches, scars. His face looked perpetually sunburnt. His backbone ached, his muscles ached, his pale-blue eyes were often threaded with blood and his head rang with the deafening whine of saws that, on the job, penetrated his so-called ear protectors. Away from a work site, Sonny still twitched with vibrations running through his lean body like electric charges. One evening he came home limping, and Georgia made him take off his shoe and sock to reveal a big toenail the hue of a rotted plum, swollen with blood from beneath. Momma cried, “Oh, sweetie! We’re going to take you to a doctor.”
Sonny waved her off with a scowl. Like hell he was going to a doctor for something so trivial.
Drinking, the men were apt to get into fights. With men they met in bars, or with one another. Sonny was an accidental witness to an incident that might have turned fatal: one of his buddies slammed another man (who’d allegedly insulted him) against a brick wall so hard his head made a cracking sound before his legs buckled beneath him and he fell, unconscious. (No one called an ambulance. No one called police. Eventually, the fallen man was roused to a kind of consciousness and taken home by his friends.) On the job, Sonny tried to keep out of the way of the meanest men, who’d been working for the tree service too many years, yet once, in the heat of mid summer, one of these men took exception to a remark of Sonny’s, or a way in which, hoping to deflect sarcasm with a grin, Sonny responded, and before he could raise his arms to protect himself he was being hit, pummeled, knocked off his feet. His assailant cursed him, kicked him with steel-toed boots and had to be pulled away from him by others who seemed to think that the incident was amusing. Sonny was shocked, thought of quitting, but how’d he quit, where’d he work and make as much money as he made with the crew, so he reported back next morning limping, favoring his right leg that was badly bruised from being kicked, a nasty cut beneath his left eye, face still swollen but Sonny shrugged it off saying, as he’d said to his mother and his aunt Devra, “No big deal, O.K.?”
We began to notice, Sonny was getting mean. He was short-tempered with his mother, even with his aunt Devra. The kinds of silly jokes Lyle and I had played with him only a few months before just seemed to annoy Sonny now. One evening Lyle crept up on Sonny sprawled on the sofa, drinking a beer and clicking through TV stations with the remote control, and Sonny told him, “Fuck off.” His voice was flat and tired. He wasn’t smiling. His jaws were bristling with dark stubble and his T-shirt was stained with sweat. Whatever was on TV, he stared at without seeming to see. Compulsively he poked and prodded a tooth in his lower jaw, that seemed to be loose.
Poor Lyle! My brother crept away wounded. He would never approach Sonny again in such a way.
I knew better than to tease Sonny in such a mood for he didn’t seem to like me much any longer, either. I hate you! I don’t love you. Fall out of some damn tree and break your damn neck, see if I give a damn.
These brash-Mickey words I whispered aloud, barefoot on the stairs a few yards away. Where I could watch my boy cousin through the doorway, slumped on the sofa poking at a tooth in his lower jaw.
In the fall, Momma had her hair trimmed in a feathery cut that floated around her face and made her eyes, warm liquidy brown, look enlarged. She was living her secret life that left her moody and distracted vehemently shaking her head when the phone rang and it was for her and whoever wanted to speak with her left no name and number only just the terse message She’ll know who it is, tell her call back.
She was still working at Herlihy Realtors. Unless she’d quit the job at Herlihy Realtors. Maybe she’d been fired by Mr. Herlihy? Or she’d quit and Mr. Herlihy had talked her into returning but then after an exchange she’d been fired, or she’d quit for a second, final time? Maybe there’d been a scene of Momma and her employer Mr. Herlihy in the office after hours when everyone else had departed, when the front lights of HERLIHY REALTORS had been switched off, and Momma was upset, Momma swiped at her eyes that were beginning to streak with mascara, Momma turned to walk away but Mr. Herlihy grabbed her shoulder, spun her back to face him and struck her with the flat of his hand in her pretty crimson mouth that had opened in protest.
And maybe there’d been a confused scene of Momma desperately pushing through the rear exit of Herlihy Realtors, blood streaming from a two-inch gash in her lower lip, Momma running and stumbling in high-heeled shoes to get to her car before the man pursuing her, panting and excited, could catch up with her.
Maybe this man had pleaded Devra! Jesus I’m so sorry! You know I didn’t mean it.
Or maybe this man had said, furiously, snatching again at Momma’s shoulder Don’t you walk away from me, bitch! Don’t you turn your back on me.
It was 9:50 P.M., a weekday night in December 1981. Aunt Georgia picked up the ringing phone already pissed at whoever was calling at this hour of the evening (knowing the call wouldn’t be for her but for her sister Devra who’d been hiding away in her room for the past several days refusing to talk to anyone even Georgia, even through the door, or her son Sonny who’d been out late every night that week) and a voice was notifying her that it was the Chautauqua County sheriff’s office for Mrs. Georgia Brandt inf
Aunt Georgia was stunned as if she’d been struck by a tire iron herself. She’d had to ask the caller to repeat what he’d said. She would tell us afterward how her knees had gone weak as water, she’d broken into a cold sweat in that instant groping for somewhere to sit before she fainted. She would say afterward, over the years, how that call was the second terrible call to come to her on that very phone: “Like lightning striking twice, the same place. Like God was playing a joke on me He hadn’t already struck such a blow, and didn’t owe me another.”
Sonny would say Well, hell.
Sonny would swipe his hand across his twitchy face, he’d have to agree Some kind of joke, like. How things turn out.
Cupping a hand to his ear, his left ear where the hearing had been impaired following a beating (fellow inmates at the detention center? guards?) he refused to speak of, refused to allow Georgia to report saying You want them to kill me, next time? Chill out, Ma.