Star (Wildflowers 2)

It wasn't just because I was ashamed of her, which I had every right to be. Momma had done so many things to make me want to stick my head in the sand. I used to hate to meet up with any friends of mine from school whenever I was with Momma. Not only was there no telling what she would say or do, she usually had bloodshot eyes and smelled like OneEyed Bill's Bar and Grill down on the southeast corner from our apartment in West Los Angeles. There was a barstool in the place that practically had Momma's name on it. I heard that if she came in and there was someone sitting on it, he or she would just move off and look for another stool--or stand.

When I was just seven, Daddy used to send me to fetch her when he had come home and found she wasn't there making dinner for us. I hated going there, but even then I knew Daddy was sending me because if he had gone instead, they would have had an all-out fight that would turn physical. Daddy would even get into a fight with some other bar customer who felt he had to protect Momma or might even have been flirting with her and wanted to show off.

Sometimes it took so long for me to get her to leave and go home with me, I would start to cry. That usually made her mad because all the other barflies would make fun of her and tell her to go. There was nothing Momma hated more when she drank than anyone telling her what to do. It was like lighting a wick on a dynamite stick. She'd fume and fume and she'd get real nasty and explode into curses and maybe even throw something or swing at someone, especially Daddy, or me for that matter. When Rodney was a baby, I'd have to worry about him crawling around on the kitchen floor because there still might be pieces of plates she had smashed against the wall.

But my hestitation over telling things about her came from another place inside me. Despite what I always told Granny, I hated hating Momma. Mixed with all the bad memories were lots of good ones. There were many times when she had held me and had sung to me and had fixed my hair and kissed me. She used to call me her Precious and she used to dream big dreams for me. All those memories were planted in someplace special in my heart too, and I couldn't help feeling like I was betraying them when I told about all the bad things.

For now, though, that seemed to be what Doctor Marlowe wanted me to do. From the way she talked about it, holding the bad down was like trying to keep poison in your body.

"I can't remember exactly when my momma started drinking," I began, "but it was always a lot and it was always bad, especially for me and my brother Rodney:'

They all lost their smiles and their eyes became hard and cold like the eyes of those who had seen terrible things happen and knew what I was going through in just talking about it, for there was no way to talk about it without reliving it. Remembering made me a five-year- old girl again, brought back all the demons, all the dark shadows that haunted my bedroom after something awful had happened between Momma and Daddy.

The monsters were a part of me now, dormant, lying around and waiting to be nudged by the sound of someone shouting, by the sight of some poor child playing in the gutter because his mother was neglecting him, by the wail of ambulance sirens or police sirens, or merely by the sounds of someone crying in the darkness, someone as alone and afraid as I had been and maybe forever would be.

"When I think back on it now, it seems to me that there was always a lot of drinking going on. Momma smelled from it so much, I used to think it was a kind of perfume she wore," I said.

Misty laughed.

"Of course, I wasn't very old when I thought that.

"Sometimes, she would just let me stand there by the door and pretend she didn't know who I was. I was afraid to call to her. I knew how mad that made her. Finally, she would look at Bill and say, 'My ball and chain is home from work,' and they would all cackle and tease her, and she would blame me.

"'Why did he have to send you here?' she would snap at me.

"'He wants you to come home and make us supper, Momma,' I would tell her and she would shake her head and mimic me.

"She'd stare at herself in the mirror behind the bar for a few moments and then finish her beer in a gulp and get up a little wobbly.

"'What's for dinner, Aretha?' someone would shout.

"'My heart,' she'd scream back and whoever was there would laugh and laugh. 'Go on,' Momma would tell me. 'Get outta here. You made enough trouble for me.'

"I'd wait for her on the sidewalk. Sometimes she'd come right out and sometimes, she'd start up again and I'd have to go back inside and then she'd come.

"Usually she wouldn't say much as we walked home, but when she did it was almost always about what a big mistake her whole life was.

"'That man who calls himself your father promised me Easy Street,' she'd claim. 'He said we'd live in a nice house in a nice neighborhood and I'd have a yard for a garden like my momma has. Not some rat hole four- room dump that it doesn't even pay to clean. You wipe the dust off the table and it just floats back a few minutes later. I told him why bother with it when he complained about my housekeeping.'

"She'd stop and look at herself in a store window and maybe make a small effort to fix her hair and straighten her dress. It was funny how no matter what happened between her and Daddy, Momma always wanted to be pretty for him.

"Momma's about five feet six. No matter how much she drank, she didn't seem to lose her figure. She never grew those big hips many women her age got from eating and drinking the worst stuff. Daddy would say all the booze went to her head and soaked her brain instead. I always thought she was pretty and only looked ugly when she got real drunk. Her lower lip sags and her eyes droop. Daddy told her he couldn't stand looking at her when she was like that, and one time, when they had an all-out slam-barn, he put a pillowcase over her head and tied it at her neck so that she spun about and whipped her arms wildly, knocking things over, falling over a chair, and kicking like some wild animal."

Cat's mouth was wide open. Jade looked like she might throw up and Misty bit down on her lower lip and looked at Doctor Marlowe. It occurred to me that their parents probably only threw nasty words and threats at each other and probably mostly through their expensive attorneys. Most likely, they couldn't even imagine their mothers and fathers trying to do physical harm to each other. The stuff I was telling them and was about to tell them, they saw only in the movies or on television.

"That wasn't the worst thing," I said, "but my daddy was generally an easygoing man."

"Easygoing?" Jade asked snidely.

"I can't recall him ever lifting his hand to threaten me or my brother Rodney, but when my momma got real drunk so that she slobbered and cursed and called him all kinds of dirty names, he lost control of himself, that's all.

"Once, when I was still only about five, I remember him trying to scare her by smashing a plate on the floor. She went even wilder on him, however, and scooped out cups and saucers, glasses and bowls from the cabinet, sending them flying every which way and screaming 'You want to see something break, Kenny Fisher? I'll show you something break.'

"The only way he could stop her was to wrap his arms around her and hold her down. She tried kicking at him and even tried to get her head down low enough to bite his arm. She'd bitten him plenty of times before, but he's a strong man and he lifted her and carried her to their bedroom where he threw her on the bed and practically sat on her while she flared about, slapping at him, until she grew exhausted and passed out.

"When he came out of the bedroom, he had scratches on his neck and his arms that were still bleeding. I was too scared to move. In fact," I said glancing at Doctor Marlowe, "I think I peed in my pants."

The others were gaping at me as if I was something from out of space. You all asked for it, I thought, well, I'll give it to you.