Safe House

It's another Friday afternoon like so many other previous ones. He has come home drinking and his taken out his gun to clean it. He makes me sit at the kitchen table to watch. He puts one bullet in the chamber and gives it a spin and then points it at my head. He taunts me by asking me if I feel lucky today. I say nothing and he just laughs and goes back to his ritual cleaning. He is a hateful man when he drinks. I feel sorry for him though, his momma abused him as a child, so he drinks to forget about it. I get up from the table and walk to the back-screen door and latch it so Charlotte can't come busting in. She comes home from playing with her friends at 6 p.m. every day because she knows that is when he expects dinner on the table. Today he is extra drunk for this time of day, he must have knocked off work early and went drinking with his buddies. He yells at me to sit my ass back down; he didn't tell me I could get up; he says. I sit back at the table and listen to him bitch about how hard he works to take care of me and that damn brat as he calls Charlotte. His anger intensifies, he is yelling in my face and spit is flying from his bourbon smelling mouth. Charlotte comes to the door and yells for me to open it. He whirls around towards and still has the gun in his hand. I push him away and go to the door and tell Charlotte to run to granny's house and don't worry I will be there later, and we will be safe. He yanks me by the back of my hair, I slam the back door and lock it giving Charlotte one last command, " Run!"

I stand at the back door that my mom just slammed in my face. I

wait a minute and I hear my Dad yelling and cussing at her. I hear a thud against the door. I do what she told me to do and I run. I run through the back path of Mr. George's vegetable garden. We would go hungry if it weren't for him and his garden. I hate that damn garden though. I hate picking vegetables knowing that I wouldn't be eating if not for this labor. My friends eat vegetables from cans, they don't have to go work for their food. I jump the fence into Mr. George's yard, he is sitting on the porch smoking, he doesn't

ask me any questions, I have done this many times before.

I run down the dirt road named LeHigh Avenue. There are seven

houses between Mr. George's and my granny's house and five of them are my cousin's houses. The ones in their yards just wave at me, they don't know why I am running, my momma always told me to never tell anyone about Daddy's beatings. He would get arrested, she said and then she wouldn't be able to take care of me alone and I would get taken away from her. The only one that knows is my granny and she knows she can't do anything other than keep me safe at her house. She's 80 years old and she don't breathe real well. She has something called emphysema and she goes to the hospital a lot. But this doesn't keep her from dipping her Three Thistles snuff and spitting it into an old Campbell's soup can with a Kleenex in the bottom to keep it from splashing. She has beautiful white hair and she wears men's clothing. I have never seen her in a

dress even at church. She fishes with a cane pole in the creek for her dinner and she is always sitting on her stoop looking at nature she says waiting for the breeze to blow. She whistles for the wind and it comes. I am almost there and then I can quit running. I am safe at her house.

I am sitting on the stoop trying to catch some breeze, my lungs

are very tight, and I am wheezing. I probably should go to the hospital but it's Friday night and I know June won't be able to get the car and take me, especially with Charlotte huffing and puffing at the end of the driveway. I know she has run here from her house. Her face is red, and she has been crying. Well, Tilly, I think to myself, you just tell that child that you are whistling for the wind to come cool things off. She always believes that story when you

can't catch your breath. I spit my snuff into the can and wipe my mouth with my Kleenex.

Charlotte comes running up the stoop steps and throws herself into the rocking chair next to me. She's so upset she is hiccupping as she tries to tell me her momma slammed the door in her face, and she heard bad things happening behind it. I tell Charlotte I need a haircut and to go fetch the large bowl in the kitchen and get the scissors out of the drawer next to the sink and the hair comb next to my bed. She comes back with everything and is confused looking. I tell her to comb my hair and put the bowl on my head, then use the scissors to trim the hair sticking out from under the bowl. This was so surprising to her that she stopped thinking about what was happening at her house. The breeze came up and my chest let loose and the wheezing stopped. Night was falling, we went inside, Charlotte washed her feet in the tub and fell asleep in my bed, knowing she was safe for the night. I sit and rub her hair thinking to the Lord, what is going to happen to this child when I die?