The Homemaker — Part I

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The Homemaker

by Susanna Ives

South Georgia

My school bus had passed the old Victorian home every weekday. It stood like an elderly church lady — graceful in decay — among the spreading pecan trees. The paint had flaked off and exposed the gray wood bones beneath. One side of the balcony had collapsed and fallen at a slant below. The windows were broken out on the top floor, letting the rain blow in from the summer heat storms that rolled up from the fields in the late afternoons.

I would sit on those torn vinyl bus seats, with my head pressed against the cool window and my stomach tight from leaving my parent’s trailer, where the air was tinged with the sour smell of flat beer and the sweaty bodies of my father’s friends passed out on our sofa. I would imagine how the old house once was: pristine white, with matching porch swings and a yard blooming with pastel lantana and white and pink azaleas. The characters from whatever romance I had stayed up reading the night before would lounge on the porch swings or watch the moonlight from the balcony. I saw myself there, too, except I looked different. I was slim, no curves at all, and attired in an old-fashioned white dress with lines of lace and tiny buttons running down the bodice. I would be in the kitchen, pressing dough into a pan, making pies with the pecans that dropped from the trees, letting the golden scent of butter and brown sugar warm the rooms of my fine home.

In the last month of my junior year at the Tri-county high school, I sat in front of the guidance counselor’s metal desk. Mrs. Stowe had fat eyelids and cheeks, tight lips greased with lipstick and loose skin under her chin. Her hair was a reddish-brown, but I could see gray roots growing out from her scalp. Her office was a cinderblock room painted cream. On the walls were posters of well-dressed young people holding textbooks and looking out with bright gleaming eyes as if they could see a horizon of career happiness in information technology or nursing.

Mrs. Stowe held my academic record in her short, blunt fingers. “So,” she began, as her eyes scanned the document, searching for my name. “Amber Turner. A two point eight.” All she needed to know. She laid down my record and clasped her hands together. “You’ll be graduating next year. Have you thought about what you’re going to do?”

In my mind, I tried to squeeze myself into the posters where I stood beside the pretty people with my flat dull brown hair — “stringy” my mom called it — hanging about my shoulders, my equally dull gray eyes and a loose floral blouse that hid my oversized breasts. But I didn’t see a glorious horizon sitting in a swivel chair and staring at a computer monitor or thumping people’s arms searching for veins to stick. Instead, there I was, in my starched white dress, standing on the porch of that old house, holding a vanilla cake with fluffy seven-minute frosting.

“Umm, I like cooking and, you know, stuff,” I mumbled.

Mrs. Stowe nodded her head, encouraging me to continue, as if I had considered my future in terms as hard as the folding chair I sat in. But whenever I thought of my life — my real life and not the time I spent drifting in romance novels or daydreaming about the house — I felt weighted, like an anchor stuck at the bottom of a silent murky lake. I wasn’t as smart as the other girls, didn’t have their Britney Spears sparkling beauty. They were slim, cool and clear, like the expensive perfume bottles on the cosmetic shelves at the mall. I had curves — lots of them — and breasts that belonged in those movies my father’s friends watched.

“You’ve only got another year of school,” Mrs. Stowe said. Although she was staring right at me, her eyes were flat and appeared to look at nothing. She must have grown tired of delivering the same lecture to students she believed were too stupid to understand. “You need to start thinking about how you’re going to support yourself. You just can’t float through life thinking Mommy or Daddy or somebody will take care of you.”

I made a small whimper as my hands gripped the cold metal edges of the chair. Mrs. Stowe nodded her head, as if she thought she had somehow pierced me with her words. My mouth felt sticky like I had just eaten potato salad. I wanted to cry, You have no idea, do you? But I remained silent.

“Now, I have some computer tests you can take that will help you figure out careers you’d be suited for,” she said.

 

That summer, I was on the steps outside the trailer reading an Amish romance novel I had bought at Goodwill. The air in the late afternoon was sticky with the humid heat. My skin stunk of mosquito repellent and sweat pooled in my bra. But I preferred being out in the burning sun rather than inside, where I could hear the cursing of my dad’s friends, high on meth, shouting at NASCAR on the TV.

Sharee’s blue Focus sped down the highway that ran in front of our yard. The car windows were rolled down, and the hard bass of a 50 Cent song boomed like thunder. She sped up the drive, and the dogs ran out to chase the car. Her older brother Jeff was in the passenger’s seat, and another guy I didn’t recognize sat in the back. Their bare shoulders were sunburned. The way Jeff stared at me, dark and hungry, made my stomach hurt.

“Amber, come on, girl!” Sharee shouted and patted the car door. Her eyes were rimmed with heavy black liner and her dyed blonde hair was tangled by the wind. “Let’s order some pizza and watch a movie at my house.”

Jeff mumbled something to the other guy and they both snickered.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“Now, y’all shut up.” Sharee smacked her brother’s forearm. “They’re drunk,” she told me. “I can kick their asses if you want me to. C’mon.”

So I got into the back seat next to Jeff’s friend, a guy with spiky blonde hair and acne pitting his cheeks. He didn’t say anything but sat, hunched, sucking on a cigarette.
Jeff turned and eyed me, his gaze fixing on my breasts.

“Dude, let me sit next to Amber,” he told his friend. The blonde guy didn’t show any expression but compliantly pushed opened the door.

“Hey, babe,” Jeff said, as he slid in next to me. He had a skinny hairless chest and wore an orange swimsuit and flip-flops. The side of his lip rose in a part smile, part sneer, and he edged closer until our shoulders touched. His skin felt like wet rubber. I shoved myself against the door so I wouldn’t have to touch him and wrapped my arms about myself.

As we drove, the thudding bass pounded my eardrums; the hot breeze rushed against my cheek and tossed my hair forward. Ahead, I could see the old house. Fat bushes of pale pink, yellow and white lantana grew up its sides.

“Stop!” Jeff shouted above the roar of wind and hip hop. “I gotta take a piss.”

Sharee made a fast turn, the brakes squealed and I was flung against Jeff. I felt his hand brush across my breasts, as if by accident, and I jumped away. The car bounced up the rutted dirt driveway and stopped at the back of the house. Jeff headed into the high grass in the pecan grove behind the house, his flip flops popping against his heels.

I got out, shaded my eyes and gazed up at the abandoned home. The kitchen extended off the back to form an L with the rest of the house. The rooms opened onto the porch or balcony that wrapped around the back. If I lived here, I thought, I would stay on the top floor and leave the doors open at night, letting in the breeze sweetened with honeysuckle.

“Why don’t they just tear this place down and put a trailer park here or something?” Sharee said. She had told Mrs. Stowe that after graduation she was going to help her Daddy in his growing trailer park enterprise.

I walked up the steps, feeling the rotting wood give under my feet. On the back door was a metal latch and padlock. I carefully stepped on the sturdiest wood planks as I edged down the porch, wary of the dirt daubers flying about their muddy nests in the corners. I cupped my hands on the tall windows and tried to peer inside. The leaded glass distorted the thin wood slats running horizontal on the walls. This had been a bedroom. Someone had taken black spray paint and written “fuck you” and drawn an inverted pentagram – the devil’s symbol. Otherwise the space was bare but for a blackened fireplace framed by a carved wood mantel.

“Let’s go inside,” I heard Sharee say behind me.

The porch creaked; Jeff’s friend stepped up with the cigarette still in his mouth and the tire iron from a car jack in his hands.

“Hey, don’t do that,” I said.

But he had already swung, and the glass shattered. He hit the window again and again, smashing away the sharp edges and broken wood. “Go in,” he told me through his cigarette.

I ducked and stepped inside. My sneakers crunched on the broken glass and dry dirt. The air was sticky with powdery dust, and orange wasps swarmed around the naked light sockets in the high ceiling. I followed the dim light to a short hall that opened to a living room and staircase. My nerves tingled like they did at church sometimes, and I closed my eyes. I could feel the residual energy from moments that had passed.

Sharee and Jeff’s friend shuffled in behind me, breaking the silence.

“My dad says you can reuse the wood in places like this,” she said, scanning the walls and ceilings. “That they make some pretty floors in fancy houses.”

I said nothing and headed up the stairs to get away. I had to be alone. On the second floor, the air was stale and hot in my lungs. Four doors emptied off a central room. I slipped into a bedroom with tall windows that overlooked the pecan grove. Again my nerves crackled, like a current had passed over my body. I felt the house all over me, as if it had been waiting, watching me pass in the school bus all those years.

I heard the popping of Jeff’s flip-flops. I turned to leave, but he blocked the doorway.

“Amber, baby,” he said, walking toward me, forcing me deeper into the room. The bulge in his orange swimsuit swelled.

“When are you gonna let me see them big tits of yours, huh?” he asked, taking my arm. He leaned down and licked my neck with the tip of his tongue.

“Let go of me, you jerk,” I said, pushing at his chest.

“Now, don’t be like that. You know I was kidding.” Yet he kept his rubbery grasp tight on me.

“I said –” A gun blast cut through the air and rattled the cracked window glass.

“Shit!” Jeff shouted and shot out of the room. “C’mon!” he called back at me. I stayed frozen.

“I done called the po-lice!” A man’s voice boomed out. “Y’all better get on outta there!”

 Part II –>