Killing Frost

When I was just a baby of eight, Momma would wake me up to watch the red sun bleed through our green oak trees. We would climb slowly to the top of the roof, where the grey sky was deliciously dusted with a handful of the Lord’s bright stars, and she tell me stories of when I was too little to remember. She laid with a rolled up dress underneath her neck, and I would tuck my face deep in her armpit which always smelled of grass and morning dew.

Her voice was deep and rumbling, and   first she tell me how I was born dead, at least that’s what she say. The police had just told her that Daddy died when she started in labour right there on the front porch. The ambulance couldn’t hurry enough, cause we lived deep in the forest where usually some peace and quiet was. I had come out her belly with the long, slimy feeding tube wrapped around my neck, and Momma said I was the color of the ready eggplants we had out in the garden. I couldn’t make a single peep from my throat, and Momma said it is usually that babies screech louder than a hawk when they leave their Mommas. As the police was wrestling with the tube from my neck, she made a prayer to God: Oh, please oh please God. Let my baby live. Then she felt Daddy’s rough fingers touch her cheeks cause the Lord sent him down to save us, and I started wailing louder than the ambulance that had just pulled through our stony driveway. They wrapped me up  in a shiny, silver blanket that was meant to keep new babies warm, and laid me in the arms of Momma as they packed the both of us in the truck. The sun had found its way through the back windows of the truck, and Momma said I looked like a yellow baby canary who was seeing the world for the first time. I yawned and stretched in the golden light like I was a rising from a bed, just like an adult person. You was the most beautiful baby that was ever born. At least that’s what she told me.

After the sun was high above the trees we get a working on chores, even though I tell her that they stupid. She always smack my mouth when I tell her those kind of things, on account for me talking back when a child’s supposed to keep quiet. She say that God loves a girl that obedient and that no man is gonna want to court a girl who’s always yapping her mind. I tell her that I just eight years old and that I always speak my mind, even if a man tells me no. She’d smack my mouth so hard my cheek be bright red for a week. Sometimes I’d feed the chickens, but the chore I liked the best was when I got to milk Betty-cow. That’s what I named her on account of her chewing like my Aunt Betty who came over every Sunday to help with the wash. She was ornery, that Betty-Cow, and never took a liken to people touching her tits even when they was as swollen as a spanked hide. One day she almost clear knock off my head with her leg, and if Momma hadn’t pulled me away, I’m sure my body would be buried next to the garden beside Daddy.

Nap time was after taking care of the animals  and right after lunch, Momma and I would work in the garden. My favorite was when she sing ‘cause her voice sounded like soft, tiny pebbles falling onto the moist ground and sometimes like a happy sun shower. She always sing the same song she said Daddy and her danced to.

“I left my darling the other day

We started quarreling, I went away

But now I wish I was back

I love my baby, indeed I do

and who knows maybe she loves me too

and that’s just maybe and that won’t do”

In between verses, she’d usually tell me to pull out little grass that was stuck in between the flowers. She say that the flowers would be choked if I didn’t pull the weeds out of the dirt, and to always make sure that I get the tiny, evil roots that hide deep under the earth.. It was extra hard in the summer when rain hadn’t came down for three weeks, and the rough soil would scratch my hands. Momma had hands that felt like the skin on a chicken’s foot , and would reach right in as though the dirt was as soft as bread dough. She said that before I was born, she had softer skin than a baby, and Daddy would do all of the farm work. She tell me that Daddy would leave in his own truck early in the morning when she still sleeping, and when he come back he buy her things like vases to put flowers in , and beaded pillows that were only meant to look at. When Daddy died, Momma had to sell all of the things that Daddy had in the house so that she could buy the farm. They were gonna kick her out of the house, even though she had me, and I was an extra cute baby. I work hard after she mention Daddy, and I tell her that I’d take care of the gardening, just like he did. She would always laugh at me when I said that.

We get tired of working right as the sun rested against the tip of the pine trees, and Momma always made me happy when she say “Let’s eat!”. Most the time we have eggs fried in the middle of two hollow pieces of bread, which Momma named for short: soggy crunch. I especially liked how the hard white eggs would bleed yellow when I poked it with a fork. Even though I wasn’t supposed to, I always lapped up the juices with my tongue when I ran out of bread. Momma said ladies ate only with forks, and how you gonna find a man if he don’t think you a lady?  She always ate less than what I did, and when I asked her why she say that she need to watch her figure since her body already full grown. “Childs need good food to get tall. Especially a young baby girl like you.” She say.

Sometimes at night I get scared cause it so dark outside, and we don’t have much candles to light our room. Momma’s say matches cost money, and money is something that is hard to find, like water in the middle of July. We used to have the lights on the ceilings but they was too expensive, and they cost extra more money than matches. But she say not to worry cause nothing bad ever happened so far away from everything. Our house was just a tiny thing of two rooms including the kitchen, and it was hidden deep in the woods where usually privacy is.  Bad people don’t take a liken to climbing through thistles and bushes, and they would mostly get lost before finding our place. She told me that Daddy used to say you can’t trust people who live in the outside cause they wanna take everything you love.

If I got too upset from the noises the forest kept making, Momma would wrap me in a soft blanket and light a candle- even if we only had one match left which we was saving for emergencies. Then she read me a story from the book Daddy had given her when they married. On account of her living so far from a school, Momma never learned how to read proper, and Daddy was teaching her the letters before he got hit by the car. He had piles of books about plants, stars, and even poetry (which is like a song, but without music), and would always read them a’ loud to Momma. The book Momma would read a’ loud was a poetry book, and it was the color of a rooster’s red crown. Sometimes she’d let me hold it if I ask polite enough, although she say be careful cause it is the most treasured thing she have instead of me. The guy who had wrote the poem was named frost like the winter, and was dead like Daddy. She say that her heart was aching so bad when God took him away, that she forget everything he say about the letters. It’s a too bad to cause Momma says that there were some beautiful words in the poems. Sometimes she point to a funny symbol and say “That’s a P, Sandra, That’s a P.” I nod as though she made sense, but to me it looks like the prints of Betty-cow’s hooves in the dirt. She says that although she don’t know how to read, she still remember the story, and would turn every page even  though there wasn’t a single picture. Momma talk out loud as though she was following a tapping foot, and I pretend she was reading straight from the pages. When she spoke about the “miles to go before I sleep”, she always repeated it twice, so my eyes would feel really sleepy.  I thought she was real smart when she do that. We were lucky that we didn’t know how to read cause our memory was better then the normal peoples cause we had no way to write anything down. At least that’s what she told me.

It was just usually Momma and Me at the farm, except from an occasional visit from the man named Luis who knew my Daddy from when they went to school. He was always bringing us bread and candles, and Momma would wash her face extra good if she know he was coming over. His visits had started at one time a week, and then became three times a week, and now he comes early in the morning and doesn’t leave till after I go to bed. Momma smiled every time she saw him as though her corn had grown without any bugs inside. She never talk about Daddy around him, and I always had to sleep by myself as though I was a grown up. When he leave she talk about how handsome he was, even though he was the ugliest creature I had ever saw, and I have seen my share of horrible looking animals in the woods. His voice was pleading and high like a pig about to get cut for eating, and every time he laughed his throat squealed in pain. His shiny, bald head was like an egg, and one time I even imagined cracking him open and eating him with my bread before I prayed to The Lord to forgive me for thinking such a thing. What I hated most about him was his right hand which Momma said was ‘deformed’ during his time in the belly, which I think means that the Lord hates him. His fingers were shorter than mine and looked like tiny carrots that ended in a sharp point. I imagine that Betty-Cow would have quite a fuss if he ever tried to touch her tits.

One day I had woken up to the sound of smooching in the kitchen, and I had run downstairs to see Luis putting his lips on my Momma, his tiny, sharp fingers stroking her soft cheeks.

“Momma!” I yelled, running up to them. “What are you doing?” I placed my palms together, and worked my body in between them, pushing them apart with my hands. They looked at each other and giggled as though they had a secret to not tell me, which made me mad cause Momma and I have secrets only.

“It’s ok, Sandra.” Luis said, placing his left hand on my shoulder. I brushed him away like he was a biting spider, and looked up at my Momma.

“But Momma, you told me that nice young girls only kiss those men who they really love, or else they are a s**t for the rest of their lives and most likely go to hell cause The Lord hates s***s.”

“Sandra.....” Momma’s voice warned.

“But it’s the truth! Remember? You tell me that good girls keep they legs closed cause that’s the teachings of the Lord!” I demanded, placing each one of my hands in hers. “And here you is, kissing a man!” They laughed again, and both they cheeks turned a rosy red.

“Stop a’laughing at me or you’ll both regret it!” I said, wagging my fingers at them and slamming my bare feet on the wooden floor. Momma stopped laughing and leaned down to pick me up.

“It’s okay baby.” She cooed, rubbing her cheeks against my forehead. “The Lord is happy cause me and Luis are gonna get married, just like he desires us to do, right Luis?” Luis smiled big at me and held my Momma’s hand. My hand. I grabbed Mommas cheeks and pushed them close together so her lips looked like a fish.

“Listen Momma,” I whispered, “you forgetting about Daddy. He be sad if you marry.” She sighed real sad like and pulled away from my hands.

“Sandra,” She said, tears drop leaving her eyes as she blinks, “Your Daddy’s dead, and I am a lonely girl with no man. Luis is wonderful, and he promise that he’ll take care of us. Right Luis?” He looked straight at me as though we was having a staring contest, and nodded. I spat in his face. Momma dropped me on the floor and I went running to my room like my pants was on fire.

“SANDRA,” Momma yelled.

“No don’t, Carly,” I heard him say, “give her time.” Their voices got softer, and I imagined that they were whispering mean secrets about me.

I stomped around the room, breathing rough and muttering curses that Momma said would send me straight to hell. I thought about my Daddy, and how Luis would try to garden with us. He couldn’t garden with such a wimpy little hand, what was Momma thinking? I opened the drawer which my Momma kept the frost book, and ran out to the kitchen. They was sitting on the kitchen table all calm like, and he was reading some newspaper. Momma looked up at me and smiled. I dangled the bright red book above my head and opened it up. Her smile fell and she gently reached out towards me.

“No.” Momma whispered, knowing what I was planning to do. “Sandra please don’t baby.” What I did next haunted me for years, and even now that I am old, and grey and can’t remember hardly anything- I still can see my Momma’s terrified eyes when I ripped the poetry book, page by page. My face was scrunched with all the might in my tiny eight year old body, and as I tore each page she just sat there:  most likely unbelieving that such a devil child could have left her womb. The child she catered to every day: fed and comforted, betraying her because of a kiss.

I kept waiting for her to stop me. To grab my hair and smack me across the face, just like when I say something that’s against the Lord, but she just sat there. When I was finished all that was left were the two cardboard pieces that had blanketed the pages ever since my Daddy died. Now they lay naked and exposed, intermixed within each other. I dropped the book cover on the floor, and my Momma slowly fell  to the tile floor on her knee’s.

“Oh, Jacob.” She said softly, running her fingers against the yellowed pages. “What have I done?”