Читать книгу Little White Squaw - Kenneth J. Harvey - Страница 8

PROLOGUE: THE WOODS

I am on my back in the snow gazing up at the small brown hand with fingernails chewed too short from worry. It is my son Jody’s hand, reaching out for me on a bitter cold March morning in 1986. Jody is only sixteen. He had taken care of me from a safe distance all night as I drank steadily and sank deeper into depression. He pretended to be engrossed in one of his video games, but every time I moved to collect another beer or make a trip to the bathroom I glimpsed the concern in his eyes.

“Why don’t you go to bed, Mom?” he suggested. “You must be tired.”

I shrugged and said, “Later.” No matter how much I drank, the alcohol ceased to affect me. It might as well have been water.

When I set off into the woods behind my house, it was still dark. Dressed only in a T-shirt and jeans in the near-zero temperature, I had no idea where I was going. I only knew Jody was following me, afraid for what I might do. When he saw me lie in the snow, he ran up and put his hand out to help, as if I’d simply fallen, but then noticed I was motionless, as if I desired to rest on the soft snow.

I am crying, filled with horrific shame to have him see me this way after all the promises I’ve made. But I am living in a land of immeasurable blackness and defeat, a place of suffocating emotionless weight where the body is the curse that must be extinguished.

I know my kids have had enough, so I decided I’d walk away and die. Eliminate the parent and the kids would be fine. It made perfect sense.

“C’mon, Mom,” Jody now insists, his breath misting greyish-white in the air. “You have to get up.”

The snow feels comforting beneath my back as I stare up at trees that should be beautiful but only provoke my grief. Try as I might, I can’t see their beauty.

“Come home,” Jody urges, his voice quavering. “You need to go to bed.”

“Go back,” I whisper, shutting my eyes. How many times has he covered up for me so I can pretend my life is normal? Calling my boss to tell him I’m sick with the flu when I’m actually hung over Hiding bottles when a relative drops by …

“Mom, please.”

When I open my eyes to regard him, tears are ready to spill from his big brown doe eyes. Gentle. Trusting. What sort of ugliness have those accepting, docile eyes witnessed because of me and my men?

“Your mother’s no good. I just want to go to sleep.”

“Mom, you have to get up. I love you.” His trembling has increased. I watch him shiver, yet can’t feel a thing.

“Jody, please go home.”

“You’re the only mom I got.”

I raise my fingers numbly toward him. Perhaps to touch his face, to smear a black streak across one so dear to me. Jody takes the opportunity to grab my hand with both of his. In a moment I’m sitting up, looking at him. My son. He’s holding my coat open for me to slip my arms into despite the fact he’s only in a T-shirt. I am on my feet. I’ve risen. Jody wraps the coat around my shoulders, and I pull him in under with me. We are like one person, huddled beneath the warmth.

I let him lead me back to the house.