Honesty in Secret

One Saturday, Daddy took me to the bar-be-que

joint with him. “Dirk Wilson’s Bar-B-Que” it said on the big

chimney for the bar-be-que pit. The “Dirk” part wasn’t really

Daddy’s name. His real name was Thomas. The whole name of

the place came from puttin’ Daddy’s last name with the first

name of the partner he had when he had his first bar-be-que

joint. Daddy said it had gone bankrupt when his partner ran off

and left town with a waitress and took all the money with him. I

don’t remember what Daddy said Dirk’s last name was. But I

sure remember what Daddy said to me when we got to

the place and took me to the back office. We was gonna have

what he called a “man-to-man talk.” That idea scared me to

death. I was thinkin’real hard on all the things he might’ve been

goin’ to talk about. I had known him, once in a while, to have a

 “man-to-man talk” with me when he found out somethin’ you did.

Well, that’s not what he wanted to talk about this time

He sat down at his big brown desk in the back office

of the bar-b-que joint, pointed at the black leather couch, and

had me  sit down on it.

“Willie,” he said, lookin’ at me straight in the eye and serious,

like this was, for sure, a real man-to-man talk, “you know your

Mama drinks too much, don’t you?”

So we got to keep her from hittin’ that bottle so much. The

doctor said she could even die drinkin’ like she does.”

“How we gonna do that?” I asked him.

“We—that’s you ‘n me ‘n Mckee, gonna have to find out all the

places that she hides her bottles, and then empty ‘em out and

throw ‘em in the trash,” he told me.

“Mama ain’t gonna let me ‘n Mckee nowheres near those

bottles she keeps hid all ‘round the house,” I answered..

He pushed his lips together a little more, leaned back in his

 chair, and smiled at me.

“You’ll just have to do it while she’s out or asleep,” he said.

 “Just think about how much help it’ll be to your Mama.”

I, for sure, did not want Mama to die. The very thought made

me feel panicky and all frazzled inside.  

So I told Daddy that me ‘n McKee would try.

“Yessir,” I said, “but she’s sure gonna fuss.” I was thinkin’ ‘bout

That plastic belt of hers.

“I’ll let her know I told you to, and why,” Daddy said, lookin’ all

pleased at me. I really felt good. ‘Cause Daddy didn’t get to look

 that pleased with me too much. and I felt real good inside. Like

I was finally gonna make him proud. And I was gonna save

Mama’s life, too, even though she probably didn’t want me to

He stopped talkin’, then, and said we’d better go on out to the

car. He had to take me home.

That night I opened Mama’s door real quiet and careful to stick

my nose in and see if I could smell paregoric. That was how I

checked to see if she was sleepin’ sound. If I smelled the

 paregoric, then she had opened the bottle to take some so she

could sleep. Well, I smelled paregoric and alcohol,

both. So I knew that unless Mckee did somethin’ dumb and  

loud, then it was safe to tell him Daddy’s plan on

how to get Mama to stop drinkin’ so she wouldn’t die of it.

“When do we start?” he asked me when I got through tellin’

 what Daddy had said. ”I guess we’re supposed to start now,” I

told him. I already knew where some of the bottles was, and

Mckee, he knew where a lot more was.

 It was scary to think of what Mama might do if she caught us

with all her empty  bottles. And you knew that if she couldn’t

find ‘em where she put ‘em, she would tear up the house

lookin’ for ‘em and probably find where we had hid the

empties. So we thought for a little while and decided to put ‘em

in the burn pile.

Later, Me ‘n Mckee saw Mama go by the livin’ room on her way

 to the kitchen. We heard her movin’ around in the kitchen,

openin’ drawers and movin’ stuff around in ‘em. Finally, she

started to cussin’ under her breath, real low, like she didn’t

want anybody to hear it. But as she searched,

she got a little louder. Then she stomped in the bathroom and

 started       lookin’ in the cabinets in there. Soon we heard her

throwin’ things as she tried to find the bottles we had emptied

 and thrown out. Me ‘n Mckee was scared to death. Mama

finally began to screech and carry on in the

bathroom ‘til we thought she had to have broken everything in

 the room, includin’ the toilet.

After I don’t know how long of this, things suddenly got real

quiet.

They stayed quiet. I went to look if she was okay.

Mckee came in our bedroom with me, then.

“Is she OK?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I told him. “She’s sittin’ on the commode lid,

cryin’ into her hands. I don’t think she even knew I came in.”

“What’re you gonna do?” Mckee wondered.

“I dunno,” I answered. “I’m just gonna see if I can help her, I

suppose.”

“Is she gonna be all right?” he asked.

When I looked at him, his eyes was all full of tears and startin’

To get red and puffy-lookin’. “Yeah,” I said. “Go look after the

little kids while I go look after Mama.”

I tied up my shoes and screwed up my nerve and went in to see

Mama. This time when I eased in the door, she had stopped

cryin’. She looked at me in a funny, sad way, and then she

began to talk to me real sweet, like she did before she drank so much.

“Come here, Willie,” she said, pointing to the tub. “Sit down ver

here. I want to tell you a story.”

I crunched through all the trash on the floor and sat on the tub,

facin’ Mama. Except for her eyes bein’ so puffy, she looked as

pretty as an angel there, smilin’ at me. I coulda’ sat and just

looked in her eyes with her lookin’ at me that way all night. I

smiled back. “Once upon a time,” she began, “your Daddy and I

fell in love. We loved each other so much, we could hardly wait

until we had our first baby. Because we knew that baby would

be the result of our promise to love each other forever. Your

Daddy was the handsomest man I ever saw: tall, dark, with his

bright blue eyes and dark, black hair. We got married,

and before you knew it, I was going to have my first child. I

knew God would give me a little boy, just like his Daddy, tall

 and good-looking. Somebody I could be proud of.”

Mama’s eyes went sorta hazy, like she wasn’t lookin’ at me no more, and her voice began to change a little.

“Then you came along. You were long and skinny, and your

Daddy said you looked like a drowned rat.”

She gave a funny little laugh, and as she went on her voice

wasn’t sweet anymore, and it kept on changin’, and it got

harder and harder the longer she talked.

Right then, I didn’t want to look at Mama no more, ‘cause she

changed somehow, right there while I was lookin’ at her. She

 wasn’t sweet anymore. The way her eyes was lookin’ at me,

there wasn’t no sweetness in ‘em, just a look like she was cryin’

on the inside and mad as fire on the outside.

“So I finally figured out that the man I loved so much didn’t love

Me as much. He stole my love and he went behind my back.”

She looked at me real sad, and for a minute I thought I saw the

sweetness come back in her eyes.

“When my first baby was born, it was before all that, though. I

loved that first baby just as much as I loved that man. He was a

sweet baby. I figured even if he wasn’t handsome yet, he would

be when he grew up, and I loved him just because he was mine,

 and I knew, just like I knew his Daddy loved me, that my little

Willie loved me.” Then Mama’s eyes flared up like they could

shoot bullets through me.

“Then I found out about your stinkin’ Daddy’s cheatin’ and goin’

behind my back!” Now she was talkin’ like she had to spit every

word out by itself from behind her teeth. And she was gettin’ a

little louder.

“Now I find out I’m right about you, you little rat! Your Daddy

called it right. You are a little rat, and you probably should’ve

been drowned to boot!”

I started to cry.

“Don’t you dare cry at me, you snivelin’ little rat!” she shouted.

“You’re just like your Daddy! You made me love you by bein’ so small

and tiny. Then I find out you don’t love me at all. You love goin’

behind my back and stealin’ from me! Where’d you put all my

bottles, Little Rat”

I didn’t know that breakin’ the bottles was gonna make my

Mama not love me anymore. I felt all dead on the inside, and I

was scared to say anything at all. I didn’t know how to say

 anything when I had made my Mama not love me anymore. I

slipped of the edge and into the tub accidentally, when Mama

stood up to yell at me. I knew I had cut myself

on somethin’ in the tub, but it didn’t even hurt, ‘cause I had

topped feelin’ anything after I found out I had made my Mama

 stop lovin’ me.

“I’ll show you, Little Rat,” she screamed. “I’ll show you and your

Daddy both!” Then she left, scatterin’ everything on the floor

all over the place, kickin’ at it as she left the bathroom.

I got up, feelin’ like some huge bubble in my chest was gonna

popopen, except that it couldn’t, but it hurt real bad, while my

insides still wasn’t feelin’ anything. After I stood up, I noticed I

was drippin’ blood all over the place from where a broken

 bottle in the tub had cut my butt. But I didn’t feel that either. I

got out a towel and I tied it around my bleedin’

backside and looked out the bathroom door. I didn’t see Mama.

Not anywhere. I looked in her room and walked into the

kitchen, but nobody was there. When I looked in the little kids’

bedroom, they were all layin’ there in their beds, peepin’ out

from the covers at  me in the dark. They was all so quiet. When

I looked in me ‘n Mckee’s room, he was sittin’ on

the bottom of our bunk bed, eyes all wide and scared-lookin’.“

Mama leave?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he answered, “she slammed the car doors and screeled

off into the night. You didn’t hear her?”

“No.”

“What’d she say?” he asked.

“Nothin’,” I answered, “Go to bed.” Then I went back to the

bathroom and started to clean it up. I hoped that if Mama saw

when she got back that I had cleaned up the mess, that she

 would know that I really did love her. So I got a bag and went

back in the bathroom, and I started pickin’ up the mess. By this

 time my butt was hurtin’ pretty good where the glass had stuck

 in it. So I looked at it in the mirror. I couldn’t see it real good,

but I could tell it was cut kinda deep. It was still

bleedin’ when I took the towel off of it. We was out of

Mercurochrome, and I was scared to put the iodine on it that

Mama used on our really bad sore places ‘cause that stuff hurt

 some kinda terrible on a cut. I figured the pain would knock me

out on a deep cut like this one was.

So I just tied the towel back around me to keep it from bleedin’

on my clothes. Then I put my pants back on over it. I started

cleanin’ up in the bathroom again.

There was so much stuff broke all over the floor that I decided o

bring the kitchen garbage can in the bathroom to put the stuff

 in there. Most of the stuff she threw while she was pitchin’ her

 fit musta been glass, cause it was all over the floor. All the

shampoo bottles and such was broke. For some reason the little

 bottle of aspirin didn’t break, and neither

did Daddy’s Vitalis bottle that he used on his hair. I got the

broom and the mop and the yeller-painted tin dust pan with

 the white flowers on it that Mama kept in the kitchen and took

them to the bathroom with me.

I swept up all the glass from the bottles onto the dust pan.

Then I had to stop and figure out how to get the pieces of the

little blue-and-white Mary figurine out of the mess. Mama

loved that Mary figurine, so I figured she’d probably want to

glue it or somethin’. I knew it would be trouble for me if I threw

 it away.  I finished up by usin’ some of the big towels in the

 bathroom closet to wipe up the dampness off the floor. It was

 about midnight.

There was blood soaked through my pants where the towel

was. I was feelin’ a little sick at the stomach, and woozy, too,

like I was spinnin’ ‘round in one place too much. Then we got

 everybody fed and diapers changed and all and went to bed.

I waited up to see what was gonna happen when Mama got

 home this time, ‘cause I was scared to go to sleep and wake up

havin’ her tell me she didn’t love me no more. Or that I was

 worthless and all, like she’d done’

Bein’ hurt on the inside like that was bad enough. If I happened

to be havin’ one of my nightmares, it would’ve been like wakin’

up from one nightmare into another one. I’m not too sure I

could’ve figured out whether I was really awake. I ended up

fallin’ asleep any way.

That next afternoon, before Daddy was goin’ back out to the

 place, he and Mama was sittin’ together in the livin’ room bein’

lovey-dovey at each other. I was out in the back yard, where

they had told me ‘n Mckee to take the little kids out to play,

when I heard Daddy and Mama both

callin’ me inside. I went in there, and Daddy said, “Willie, I

understand you’ve been breakin’ up Mama’s bottles.”

I looked at Mama, and she wasn’t lookin’ at me. She had her

big, beautiful brown eyes cocked kinda sideways at Daddy. I

said, “Yessir, just like you told me to.”

“I never told you to do any such thing,” he said, all reasonable-

soundin’,

just like the world and everything in it hadn’t just turned all

upside down on me. I thought I hadn’t heard it right.

“Yessir, you did. You took me in the office down at the Place

And said we could help Mama and keep her from dyin’ of

alcohol.” “No, Willie, that’s not what I said,” he answered, all

calm—like I hadn’t just talked back to him. “What I said was

 that Mama would kill herself drinkin’ if she didn’t stop, and

 that I wished all them bottles would just break. You took it on

yourself to do the breakin’.”

Now I was more scared than if he was drunk and screamin’ at

me. I didn’t know why he would say that. I thought maybe he

 forgot, like grown-ups do when they tell you things sometimes.

“No,” he said, “I just wanted you to try to help Mama by talkin’

 Her out of drinkin’ and stuff. Those bottles you broke up cost a

 lot of money.

And your Mama needs to drink a little bit, ‘cause the doctor

 told her it would help some of the pain she’s been havin’ from

this pregnancy.” I just looked at ‘em. I couldn’t say a word,

‘cause I didn’t have breath in my body. I felt like when I had

stepped on a rake and the handle had hit me in the face and

knocked the breath out of me. I was a little dizzy

from it, too.

“Willie, you just apologize to your Mama.

I just was barely able to say I was sorry, ‘cause it was so hard to

breathe.

“Now, “ Daddy said, “I’m not gonna spank you for breakin’ up

All those bottles and throwin’ away so much money, but I want

you to spend the rest of the day in your room, thinkin’ about

 how you need to be honest. Remember, honesty is the best policy.”

I turned around and tried to go to my room, but I tripped over

My own feet. Him and Mama laughed. I couldn’t hardly see,

 now, cause I was tryin’ not to cry and have to hear Daddy call

me a crybaby. I got up some way or other and stumbled back in

my room, with Daddy laughin’ like there was some huge joke

about it. I fell on the bed and beat up the pillow `til I cried

 myself to sleep. I know the Bible says to love your

Daddy, and I do. But right then, I didn’t like him very much.