The Angry Woman Suite Read Online Free Page B

sometimes that sadness just comes out, and he gets a little testy.”
    “Testy?”
    “Mad. Daddy gets mad. He loves you very much, though, Elyse, and it’s our job to let Daddy know how much we love him back. Sometimes that means being very quiet.”
    Bean nodded gravely, as if she understood this, but I asked, “But why’s Daddy sad?”
    “Because,” Mother said, “the music died. Rock and roll killed it.” Mother blew a stray lock of her hair out of her eyes, rinsing Bean. Sweat beaded on her forehead. I stared, fascinated. I’d never seen my perfect mother sweat. She said, “And then there was that business with the women who brought him up, and those horrible deaths—”
    “Deaths?” Duck bumps sprouted on the back of my neck.
    Mother got brisk, shaking out towels to dry me and Bean in. “Forget what I said. Just never you mind.”
    Mother’s words made me more unsure, and I was seized by a new, sudden yearning to super -classify everything, to try and make better sense of Daddy’s sadness so that our move might conform to an adventure I’d have a little more control over. But I couldn’t classify anything; I didn’t have enough information. And I couldn’t ask questions; I was supposed to be quiet. So the remainder of our journey to Mississippi was silent, and by the time we got to the furnished house in Biloxi that a friend of Daddy’s had rented for us, I had begun obsessing over “horrible deaths,” and my tongue was near swollen from biting down on it to keep from asking who had died so horribly—and what “horribly” meant specifically.
    It was late at night and Mother put Bean in a crib, and me to bed, and I fell hard asleep, only to awaken in the middle of the night on soggy sheets; I’d wet the bed. And then I cried for the second time. I cried from shame, for wetting myself, and I cried for Papa and for the way he’d always encouraged me to start conversations. I cried for his thrilling stories and games and the way he’d wrap blankets around me at night, like hugs. I cried for Grandma and Aunt Rose, their raucous laughter. I cried for walls lined with cabbage roses. I cried because I’d never known such misery. I cried until Mother came to me, until she gave me her special kisses, until she changed my sheets and tucked me back into bed, and I clung to her, loving her madly.
    And every night after that, for the longest time, I wet the bed and cried for Mother, and every night she came to me.
    I was not a stupid child.
    But one night Daddy came for me instead. I heard him before I saw him and stopped crying, struck dumb by the noise he made, clapping his hands hard, furiously. His face, when he flung the bedroom door open and snapped on the overhead light, was purple with rage. I cowered against the headboard and screamed. Stark naked, Daddy glowed white, except for the long sausage-like thing dangling between his legs, which was red as his face. He yelled at me to piss off! And then he yelled for Mother to come and get her worthless child, and then he slammed the door shut behind him and stalked off.
    Who was that man?
    I raked the blanket with my fingers, waiting for Mother to come soothe me, to explain about the man who looked just like Daddy—but then after what seemed forever and no Mother, I gathered the tattered shreds of my bravery around me and got up to shush Bean, who’d started squalling when I’d screamed. Then I crept back to bed and waited some more.
    Mother never came.
    And as the night wore on I became convinced of the reason why. The man who looked like Daddy had done something awful to Mother, maybe using that long, red thing of his to hit her with, probably even killing her with it, because she had such a worthless child. I cried silently, so I wouldn’t get Bean to squalling again. I cried from my heart, from that place where I’d put Stephen Eric for safekeeping. I cried all through that night, desperate over what had happened to Mother, and petrified over