Those Winter Mornings
On those windswept weekday mornings in West Virginia, asphalt driveway crusted with snow, my father would get up early, put on his boots and an old coat and exit through our front door into the blue hour to get the motor running. That fifteen-year-old station wagon would stall if not warmed up properly and might not start again. My father would sometimes have to push it down the hill to get the engine going, my younger brother Bill and I sitting quietly in the back seat, the smell of alcohol already on my father’s breath, like sour rotting apples.
The three of us rarely spoke a word while driving to school. Father was too drunk. Bill and me, too afraid. Father would sometimes say how lucky we were. He’d be slurring his words—loud, slow and raspy. “You little punks could easily walk,” he said. “I never got a ride to school.”
I responded to my father only once. I’ll tell you about it, so you understand. “Most of the kids in my class get a ride.” I said. And then there was silence. I regretted my words as soon as I'd spoken them. I held my breath. My hands trembled because I knew what was coming.
Father was six feet, three inches tall. He towered over me. He pulled over to the side of the road, took off his thick, leather belt and made sure I never said that again. Three fiery blows and my back was bleeding and burning. Bill was small for his age. Little hands covered his teary eyes and quivering cheeks. Bill was ten years old, four years younger than me. “Please stop, please stop,” Bill softly repeated again and again. I clenched my teeth and tried not to scream. “I’m sorry Bill,” was all I said. Father didn’t say another word.
Mother came into my bedroom that night but didn’t say anything about what had happened. Bill and I shared a small bedroom. Mother read us a story about a happy family that owned a family farm. She stroked my forehead and rubbed Bill’s back. I fell asleep as she read. I usually felt calmer when she was around. But mother never did anything to stop my father, and I can’t forgive her for that. I had to sleep on my side for a month and couldn’t sleep through the night because of the pain. I still have the jagged red and purple scar on my back from father’s brass belt buckle.
Mother was usually the only one with a job. Without her, we never could have paid our bills. She left for work before sunrise and was on her way before we left for school. She cleaned other peoples’ homes in the next town over and took three buses to get there. She wasn’t paid much. I’d often be tired from the night before, unable to sleep due to the cracks and slaps and my mother’s whimpers coming through the kitchen door. Sometimes I could see traces of the bruises on her face and arms, despite her best efforts to cover them up with makeup and long sleeve shirts.
Mother had a history of being abused. Her own father hit her and told her she was no good. I heard her talking to her older sister Beth. “I’ve married my father. George is a drunk. He hits me and tells me I’m a shit. Just like Dad used to do. I’m trapped, and there’s no way out.”
Despite her years of abuse, Mother had a soft heart. She went to church every week and prayed every night. Mother was a vegetarian. She said she couldn’t eat animals because they are living things. She was kind to strangers, generous with panhandlers. She’d introduce herself and give one of them a dime—which we couldn’t afford. We were so poor she wouldn’t spend more than a quarter to buy me a second-hand pair of pants and a shirt at the local thrift store.
Mother said that she loved me. I believe that she did. She once told me, “if I could have chosen what kind of a boy you’d be, you’d be no different.” I guess she didn’t know how afraid I was. Or how unhappy I was. And how much I disliked school. And I guess she didn’t know that sometimes I wished I was dead. That I thought about killing myself. If I could have chosen, I would have been a very different boy.
I’ll tell you more about elementary school. Ours was in the next town over. I don’t like to talk about it, but I’ll say what I can stand to say and think about. I didn’t do well. I was uncomfortable and anxious. My classmates knew my father was a drinker. Some knew he beat my mother. That was the most humiliating of all. For people to know your father is a wifebeater. But I never spoke about it. I was too ashamed. I could hardly bear to look at my mother’s bruises—those red and yellow blotches, sometimes they were dark purple or brown.
One of my classmates also had a father who drank too much. He lived two houses down from me. “Oh man, I know what you’re going through,” Chip would say. “My father gets drunk, screams, and chases me around the house. One time, he choked my mother until she passed out. The police came but didn’t do anything. I have to run outside to get away from him. Sometimes I hide behind our neighbor’s big beech tree.”
I remember I used to hide from my own father behind that same beech tree, with its long branches and thousands of green leaves that turned red and brown in the fall. In the winter, that tree was of no use to me at all. One time, I ran into Chip hiding behind it. It was a windy and unusually cold fall day. The leaves were turning brown. “We’ll stay here together until it’s safe to go home.” I said. Chip didn’t say a word. He was shivering. We stayed huddled together under that tree for the rest of the afternoon before heading home.
Chip was my friend for a year. We played in the woods nearby. We’d climb up trees and hang from their branches. Those long, thin branches seemed to be reaching for the sky, like a baby reaching for his mother’s outstretched hands. They cast light and shade across the forest floor. Depending upon the season, the earth was covered with soft brown leaves, green carpet-like moss or wildflowers of red, yellow and orange.
Chip had a sense of humor. He could sometimes make me laugh. I rarely laughed before I met him and didn’t laugh much after our friendship ended. “How do you throw a party in outer space,” he’d say. “You planet.” And I’d laugh. “What did the policeman say to his stomach. You’re under a vest!” And I’d laugh some more. Chip enjoyed watching me laugh. “What do you give a scientist with bad breath? Experi-mints.” Chip would be laughing so hard he’d double over.
I remember once when Chip was climbing a tree that looked like it was dead and rotting. “What do trees wear to a pool party?” Chip asked me. “Swimming trunks,” he said. I wasn’t laughing because Chip was wrapped around a branch, ten feet above the ground, that looked like it was about to break. I was horrified. I said, “you better get off that branch, Chip, because it looks like it’s going to snap.” “No, it won’t,” he said. Then there was a cracking sound, the branch broke, and Chip fell hard to the ground. He broke two ribs, tore his rotator cuff and cried for an hour. He was crying so hard I held his hand until the ambulance came. Chip later said he should have listened to me. “Don’t worry,” I said. “No one ever listens to me. My father ignores everything I say, and my mother doesn’t listen to me when I say she should leave him.”
Chip and me never climbed trees again. His parents wouldn’t let him. Chip later moved out of town, which was just a couple of small buildings and twenty or so slight, wooden houses holding the town’s residents. Our town almost looked temporary, like it could be dispensed with at any time without much effort. I never saw Chip again. His father got a job as a construction worker on the other side of West Virginia. His mother ran off with a coal miner from a company town ten miles down the dirt road from where we lived. I had no other friends. I have no idea what became of Chip or his family.
My mother was a kind of friend. I could sometimes talk with her about the things that were bothering me, like being anxious at school, about not fitting in. She never had a lot to say about herself, but she’d listen. She did say she liked to get up early for work and that mornings were her favorite time of the day.
There were subjects my mother wouldn’t talk about. “Father hits you, he needs to stop,” I’d say. “He says he’s going to stop. And his father hit him, so it’s not surprising,” she’d say. “You need to leave him,” I said. “Let’s you, me and Bill get out of here and never come back.” “I won’t talk about that,” was all she’d say. And she wouldn’t. And she’d never talk to me about her own father. There were things I wouldn’t talk with my mother about. I never talked with her about running away from home. And I didn’t tell her I thought about killing myself, about stepping in front of a speeding car or jumping off the bridge down the road and letting the river carry my dead, floating body away.
The last time I was in that rusted car on the way to school, I brought a can of beans with me. It was carefully hidden in my backpack with my schoolbooks, my homework and the jelly sandwich my mother made and packed for me the night before. Mother always made me lunch for school. I’d been storing up cans of food in my school locker for months, planning my escape.
As we drove off, the car smelled like stale Parmesan cheese. There was fresh vomit on the front passenger seat. Red flowers and red and orange leaves covered the limbs of the red maple trees that lined the sides of the road. I kept my tears to myself. I was terrified father would figure out my plan. He was apparently out of bourbon that morning. “Your mother spent the money she made last week on you fucking kids. If I don’t get another drink soon, I’m gonna blow my brains out. Or maybe yours, Gary.” Those were the last words I ever heard father speak. I was as angry as I’ve ever been. If someone had handed me a loaded gun, I would have shot and killed him.
It wasn’t easy carrying out my plan. I had to save some money. I pulled up neighbors’ weeds, walked their dogs, and wiped the car windows of passersby to save up enough silver in an old, dirty sock in my bottom dresser drawer to buy a one-way ticket out of that place. I could only work when father was passed out because he would take away my earnings if he caught me. It took me the better part of a year for that sock to get heavy enough with quarters and half-dollars. It was early summer, and the school year was almost over. I was in the eighth grade. I got onto a Greyhound bus after school that day, my backpack filled with cans of food and a one-way ticket to Louisville, Kentucky in my trembling hand. It took me four hours to get across the State line, and I never returned.
I was homeless for the first few months after leaving West Virginia—tired, hungry and afraid most of the time. And five hundred miles from my home. I spent most of my time in a local family park, with its closely cut green grass, muddy ponds and large playgrounds. I slept under a one-hundred-foot, black walnut tree with dark timber. I ate lots of walnuts and used a sharp rock to crack their thick, hard shells. It was summertime, so I didn’t get too cold on long, sleepless nights.
I was pretty much left to myself. The police didn’t bother me much. Mothers kept their children away from me. They must have thought I was some sort of misfit, someone to be avoided. And maybe I was. I’m sure I looked like I was, unbathed and ragged. I begged for spare change from strangers to buy food. What else could I do? If the person was wearing a watch, I’d ask, “do you have the time?” And then, “can you spare a dime. I’m not greedy, just hungry.” My success rate was about one in four.
An old man named Rick befriended me when he saw me sitting on a park bench. The sun was hidden from view that morning, and I was wet and shivering under black rain clouds. Rick asked me what I was doing. No one had asked me that before. He had kind eyes, maybe a man I could trust. “I’m homeless. And I ran away from home.” I said. “My father beat me, and no one would help.”
Rick invited me to stay with him. I accepted. He welcomed me into his home with a glass of milk, two pieces of stale bread, and an apple with holes in it. I hadn’t eaten in two days, and an otherwise third-rate meal never tasted so good. I still like to eat apples but haven’t had a walnut since.
As soon as I was eighteen, I moved out of Rick’s place. I was so used to my father’s abuse I didn’t know how to respond to Rick’s kindness and generosity. It made me uncomfortable. I never heard from Rick or saw him again. I’ve lost track of his whereabouts. I wouldn’t have made it without him. He probably saved my life. I should have kept in touch with him.
I started writing to Bill after I moved out. I’d been thinking about him and wondering if he was all right. He’s been coming to visit me every few years for the last twenty years or so. I like that. Bill’s married and has two grown sons. His wife, Mary, teaches second grade to kids with learning disabilities. Bill’s family still lives back in West Virginia in the same little town I grew up in. There wasn’t much to that place. I’m surprised it’s still there.
I once asked Bill if he loved his wife. “Yes, very much,” he said. “But I had to work on forgiving Mom and Dad first. That was hard. Five years with a counselor. Cost me most of my savings. My counselor would say to me, ‘Bill, you’ll never be happy if you can’t learn to forgive. Your dad was a bad man. But it’s also true he’s still hurting you when you continue to carry his anger around inside of you. Maybe your mother was too afraid to do something. But she had a long history of being abused and she married her father. That’s not unusual for abused women.’”
“You weren’t embarrassed to see a counselor?” I said.
“I was. It’s not easy to admit you need help. But I went anyway. And one day, I was no longer angry. I could make a fresh start. I dated a few women, and then I met Mary. We were married in a year. I love spending time with her and our boys.”
“Thank you, Bill, thank you for sharing.” I said. “That means a lot to me.” But to tell you the truth, it didn’t make much sense to me. I guess I don’t really know how to feel. Or how to forgive. And I can’t imagine going for counseling. I wouldn’t know what to say or how to say it.
Bill tells me mother never left my father but that the beatings stopped after he had a heart attack and then a stroke. Bill says father never stopped drinking and lived for only six or seven more years after I left home. Father always looked older than he was. His thin hair was prematurely white, his eyes pale and blurred, his skin leathery and wrinkled.
Bill says he’s not angry with me for leaving him. But I don’t really believe it. I did take most of the beatings from our father before I ran away. Maybe Bill is grateful. I would like that. But we don’t talk about it. Sometimes, my father looked like he was going to hit Bill. I think those were the only times I was courageous when dealing with his abuse. I’d stand between the two of them to shield Bill. Or I’d say “pick on someone your own size,” or “do you like to beat up ten-year-olds?” Or something like that. And then father would turn his wrath towards me and leave Bill alone. The belt was less painful when I was protecting my brother. “Did father beat you more after I left home?” I’ve asked Bill several times.
Bill says that when father died, he was found sitting rigidly under an oak tree in the woods, a mile from our home. Bill found him. The coroner said he died from heart disease and liver failure. He’d been missing for seven days. Bill says that when he found him, father’s hands were tightly clutched around a half-filled bourbon bottle, and his open mouth was still half-filled with bourbon. Some of his teeth were missing. His body was bloated and smelled like rotting meat and rotting eggs. His skin had turned red. I’m sorry to say that it didn’t make me unhappy to learn of my father's condition when they found him. Bill tells me that only four people came to his funeral, including him and my mother.
I never saw nor heard from my mother again after I left home. She never responded to the many letters I wrote to her. On occasion, my letters included a few dollars meant for her and Bill. She probably thought I deserted her. And I did, I can’t deny it. I can only try to explain. I’d been battered for years. She’d done nothing to protect me. She couldn’t even protect herself. She never should have married my father. And she should have left him. I thought I was losing my mind, that I was going to die, and didn’t know what else to do. I guess I’ll just have to live with what I did. Maybe you can understand.
Bill told me a few years ago that mother had passed away the year before. She was still cleaning homes on the day she died. I had planned on going to visit her one day and had been thinking about it for years. Bill says she was much thinner and paler when she passed and that the good people from all twenty or so of the houses in our neighborhood came to pay their respects at the memorial service he’d organized for her.
I slept very little that night. I lay in bed looking out the window until the blue hour came. I got out of bed, after dozing off, when I heard my mother say to me in a dream, “Gary if I could have chosen what kind of a boy you’d be, you would be no different.” I tidied up my apartment and then swept and mopped the floors. I watched a strong sun rise. It’s a strange feeling to know that your parents died years before you learned anything about it. It makes you feel like you were never really a part of anything.
I’ve stayed in a few different apartments over the last twenty-five years. I’ve never owned my own home. I never had enough money for a down payment or a mortgage. I don’t think I would have enjoyed doing the repairs and upkeep anyway. I’m still living in Louisville. The one-bedroom apartment I have now has a double bed, a beat-up sofa, a scratched coffee table, a dresser and a couple of old rickety chairs. The cheap wood floors are unevenly spaced and cracking from age, and the white paint on the walls is chipped in a few places. The floors are worn free of varnish from tenants who preceded me. But the place suits my needs. My rent is cheap, and my monthly social security check almost covers it.
I spend many hours these days playing cards on the table in my living room, usually solitaire. It helps me to pass the time. I’ve overheard one of my neighbors calling me “that old man.” A young man in his twenties who goes to the local community college. I suppose his name for me is accurate. My once curly brown hair is thin and white and lays flat on my head. I often walk with a cane. I probably look ten years older than I am. A doctor told me the bones in my hips are worn down, that I have no cartilage left, and that I should get my hips replaced. Forget it. I don’t trust doctors and won’t let one cut me. I haven’t had many doctors’ appointments. But when I have, they took little interest in me because I wasn’t making much money and was being seen at a reduced rate. I don’t have the money for surgery now anyway.
I never married and stay in my apartment most of the time. I prefer things that way. I never had any children of my own. I think it’s better that way. I wouldn’t have known what to do with them. I’ve never seen a happy child, and I’ve never seen a happily married couple. I’ve seen very little happiness in this world’s people and things.
I can tell you I had a girlfriend for a while about fifteen years ago. She was the only girlfriend I ever had. I met Sally at a local bookstore in the used books section on one of those rare occasions when I ventured into downtown Louisville. It was unusual for me to be in a bookstore. I read about a book a year and almost never buy them. But there I was.
“What do you like to read?” she asked me. She’d seen me looking at her, I think. My face probably turned red because I had no answer. I’d never thought about what I liked to read. “What do you like to read?” I asked. “Fictional short stories,” she replied. “Short stories about people who’ve overcome difficult obstacles and hurdles in their lives.”
Sally had long brown hair, a slim body and glowing, penetrating blue eyes. She smiled a lot. She was almost beautiful. She was elegantly limbed and walked with a soft, light charm. Her voice was tender and soothing.
Sally always reads a lot. She started to read when she was just a little girl. She told me that reading helped her to set goals for herself and learn how to be happy. Sally worked at the local library. She had a reading group where she read short stories to elementary school kids. Kids seemed to be drawn to her. Her reading sessions would frequently have twenty-five or thirty kids. And their parents would often be there too. Sally was five years younger than me. She couldn’t have children of her own because of a problem she’d had with her ovaries as a child.
I could talk to Sally. She was easy to talk to. I told her about my family and my escape from West Virginia. She was interested in what I had to say and didn’t interrupt me. She didn’t put me down. We took long walks together, sometimes in the family park where I’d stayed. The black walnut tree was still there, and mothers still came with their children to play. I told Sally all about Rick and how he’d rescued me. We’d sit on her sofa and talk for hours. Sally would sometimes gently rub and softly kiss the red and purple scar on my back. I saw her maybe twice a week for ten years.
“Gary, if I could take away your pain, I would,” she said. “I care about you. I know you’re a good man. But I know you’re a hurting man.”
“It was hard to leave Bill and my mother behind,” I told her. “But I didn’t know what else to do. So, I saved myself. Maybe it was a selfish thing to do.”
Sally and I got along well. We made love in her apartment. I enjoyed that and think that she did too. But how do you really know for sure? How could I be certain she wasn’t faking her pleasure to please me?
Sally said that she loved me. After we’d been going out for ten years, Sally asked me if I would marry her. “It doesn’t make much of a difference to me,” I said, “but I will if you want me to.”
Sally asked me if I loved her. “How would I know?” I said. “I really know nothing about that.”
“I was in love once before, fifteen years ago,” Sally said. “I knew I was in love because I got butterflies in my gut and a fluttery feeling whenever he was around. I get those same feelings when I’m with you, Gary.”
“I don’t think I’m in love with you but I’m not really sure,” I said. “I’m happy to see you, but I don’t get butterflies or a fluttery sensation in my gut when I do.”
Sally asked me why I would marry her then, if I didn’t love her. She was crying as she spoke. I didn’t understand why she was crying. I’d said I would marry her, which was what she said she wanted.
Sally moved out of her apartment over the next few days and left town. I didn’t know she was leaving and only learned about it from a neighbor after the fact. When I heard, I cried in my bedroom for hours, with the door closed and the lights off. On his most recent visit, Bill said I should have married her.
Much to my amazement and surprise, Sally knocked on my door yesterday. I hadn’t seen her for almost five years. She didn’t look a day older. She was wearing a new dress and new shoes and had a fancier hair-do—shorter, straighter and a different color. Her blue eyes seemed larger than I remembered. When I looked at them, I felt like they were holding me and drawing me out of myself. Sally said we’d had some good times together, that she was back in town, and was wondering if I’d like to have dinner with her. “Sometimes you can love someone without completely understanding who they are or why they do the things they do,” she said. I think she was talking about me.
I’ll be having dinner with Sally this evening. It’s her birthday next week, and I’ll get her a present. I’m not sure what to get her. I have a few ideas but nothing solid yet. I’ll have to think hard about it because I want her present to be special.
I was excited to see Sally and felt butterflies in my gut and a fluttery sensation the moment I saw her again. I wondered if it was just my imagination. Or perhaps it was just wishful thinking. I’ve heard from others that people can grow. Bill certainly has. He’s a far cry now from the frightened ten-year-old boy I used to know. Do you think it’s strange that I should change? I don't know. I think Sally knows me better than I know myself, so I think I’ll ask her.
It’s been a long, cold winter. We’ve had a lot of snow. My mother used to say that she loved the crisp, clean smell of the cold. The mornings are darker this time of year, and I only get a short slice of direct sunlight through my living room window. It won’t be warming up for a few more months.
In the mornings these days, I go downstairs and make myself a pot of coffee. It takes me the better part of a day to finish it. I’ll eat a piece or two of toast with jelly. I may dunk the toast in my coffee. I like to watch the children walking to elementary school on the sidewalk in front of my house, their backpacks strapped tightly to their little backs. They’re filled with books, their homework and the lunches their mothers have carefully made and packed for them. I wonder what their fathers and mothers are like. I wave at the children through my kitchen window as they hurry on by. One of them waved at me once. The asphalt sidewalks can be slippery when they’re crusted with snow. Sometimes, a child will slip and fall. Then they pick themselves back up and continue on their way.
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