The Angry Woman Suite Read Online Free PDF Page B

every morning, and playing the trumpet at the NCO club after work, into the wee hours.
    Sometimes Mother went to the NCO club to listen to Daddy play, leaving the neighbor lady to watch over me and Bean. But more often it was just me and Mother and Bean home alone at night, and those were my favorite times, when Bean and I’d climb into bed with Mother and I’d spoon against Bean’s backside, pretending Daddy didn’t live with us anymore and that Mother loved me like before, and so of course I loved Mother like before, while Bean curled into Mother’s tummy.
    “Too well,” Daddy answered Uncle Buster. “I don’t think it’s natural for sisters to be so close. I grew up in a houseful of women, so I know. Horrible women. And the oldest has a streak to her, did you notice? Look how she picks on Bean. Like a baboon with her young. Pick, pick, pick. Stop picking at your sister, Elyse.” Daddy laughed, like he’d said something funny, but I’d heard the edge and I watched Daddy closely, watching him watch Uncle Buster watch Mother, worried I’d done something more than pick at Bean; worried I’d get hit after Uncle Buster left, and that Mother would dance her sparkle dance all the way off into the sunset, leaving me to fend for myself. I worried until my ears rang from clenching my jaw, and my face felt pulverized. When Uncle Buster left, Mother immediately tucked me and Bean into bed, and right after that I heard her tell Daddy he was being ridiculous. Their voices got loud, and Mother let out a yelp—and I closed my ears to the headboard knocking against the wall between us, to Mother’s moans and Daddy’s grunts. I got out of bed and climbed into Bean’s crib and snuggled up next to her.
    It was Daddy’s night off and it started well enough. But sitting down to dinner, Mother, for some reason, started in on how rough it had been “living like white trash in a railroad house, growing up about as close to the tracks as you could get, not even far enough away to be on the wrong side of them.” But Daddy said, “Ha, that’s nothing,” and then talked of women who murdered, “scattering remains left and right.”
    Mother tried interrupting him—she was always interrupting and just when Daddy was getting to the part about the murders. Daddy, though, wasn’t the least bit fazed; he kept right on talking and Mother got to looking more exasperated the more Daddy talked, until it looked like she was starting to hate him. Suddenly she picked up a knife and threw it across the table in Daddy’s direction—it missed him by a hair. Nobody moved. I scarcely breathed. My mother was a lady, not a knife-thrower.
    Daddy, who’d been carving the roast beef when Mother threw the knife, drew his face in like a prune and said that was it. That was finally IT. Mother stormed from the table, into the bedroom, and slammed the door, then opened it and slammed it again, and that’s when Daddy yelled that if she slammed that door one more time he’d take it right off its hinges.
    Things started coming apart. Mother didn’t holler, but she opened the door and gave Daddy a look.
    That’s when Mother slammed the door with all she had—and that’s when I took it upon myself to scream for Mother, plopping down on the floor and pounding at it with my fists and hollering for all I was worth. I glimpsed Daddy’s prune mouth go tighter, but he didn’t say anything. He went and got a screwdriver and unscrewed the bedroom door from its hinges, then laid it on the floor beside the coffee table. I screamed the entire time. Then Daddy scooped me up and carried me into the bathroom, slammed that door behind us, dumped me into the bathtub and turned the water on. I choked on a scream and struggled to my feet. He switched the water over to the hand hose and pointed the nozzle at me.
    “Stop screaming!” he suddenly screamed. The water was a hot piston in my throat, gagging me, and I slipped and fell, clawing at the sides of the tub.