Call Me Cockroach: Based on a True Story Read online

  Half asleep, I could hear Aunt Macy knocking on my bedroom door and calling my name. “Tuesday… Tuesday, you’d better get up and get ready; you have to be at work at ten; don’t you?”

  Oh yeah, my job at McDonalds. I’d forgotten all about it. I didn’t feel like going to work. I hadn’t slept the night before from thinking about my argument with Mama. I lay still and pretended to be asleep, hoping Aunt Macy would go away.

  Her knock became urgent. “Tuesday Leigh Storm, it’s time to get up!”

  She called me by my full name whenever she wanted to get my attention. She’d picked it up from Grandma Storm. Since Grandma Storm’s death, Aunt Macy had taken on many of her mother’s traits: whistling as she worked around the house, playing the piano regularly. She’d even started dressing like her, wearing floral patterned blouses and strings of pastel pearls.

  Aunt Macy opened the door. I could hear her walking across the room toward my bed. “Get up honey,” she said, rubbing my shoulder. “It’s your first day on the job; you don’t want to be late.”

  I jerked my shoulder back. “I’m coming! Give me a minute!”

  “No need to get snippy with me, missy!” she said. “What’s the matter? Are you sick?”

  “No, Aunt Macy, I’m fine; I just don’t feel like getting up right now.”

  “Maybe you should forget about the job and take a break this summer before going back to school in the fall.”

  “I don’t want to quit my job, and I have plenty of time to get ready.” I rolled over in bed and turned toward her. “And I’m not going back to school in the fall.”

  “What?”

  I sat up. “I’ve changed my mind.”

  “What do you mean you’ve changed your mind? You were so sure social work was what you wanted to do.”

  “I’ve decided I don’t want to be around abused kids. It would only remind me of what I went through. I want to forget about my past and go in a different direction.”

  “What brought this on?” She sat on the edge of my bed. “Did something happen yesterday between you and your mama?”

  “We had it out and I told her I never wanted to see her again.”

  “Well that might not be such a bad idea, but don’t quit school.”

  “I’ll still go to college, Aunt Macy, I promise, but not right now, and not for social work.”

  “What was said yesterday? Would it help to talk about it?”

  “It’s not what was said, it’s what wasn’t said.”

  “Tuesday, you know your mama is never going to admit what she did to you. She couldn’t live with herself if she did. Don’t you see? It’s to her advantage to forget that part of her life and she expects the rest of us to forget as well.”

  “All I wanted to know was why only me?”

  “Have you ever thought maybe she doesn’t know? And even if she does, is there any answer she could have given you that would’ve made a difference?”

  What answer did I want to hear from Mama? Were there any acceptable reasons she could have given me for beating and torturing me, anything that would have satisfied me, put it all into perspective, made me say, Oh that’s why you did it. Well in that case I understand.

  “Why are you making excuses for her, Aunt Macy?”

  “I’m not making excuses. I happen to know the injuries from her fall down the stairs were not as bad as what your daddy let on. He was hoping her concussion was an explanation for her actions. Personally I never fell for the whole amnesia thing in the first place. I think she remembers every minute of what she did. Believe me, I’m not taking up for her, I’m merely telling you what I’ve observed over the years about human nature. What she did to you is too awful for her to acknowledge, and the mind has its ways of protecting us from things we can’t process. She’s somehow managed to make it all go away, and she expects you and everyone else to go along with her, like they always have.”

  “Just once I wish somebody would admit it happened!”

  “It happened, Tuesday! There!” Her eyes were watery. “And I know now from what it has done to you it must have been a thousand times worse than I could ever imagine.”

  “Then why didn’t you do something to help me?”

  “Sweetie, every day I hate myself for not doing something. There’s nothing you can say that would make me feel any worse than I already do. But the truth is your grandma and I didn’t know how bad your life was then. Your daddy led us to believe it wasn’t a big deal. He said Rose was having some problems from her concussion and had a tendency to take her frustration about Audrey’s death out on you. He told us that’s why he brought you to stay with us every summer—to give her a break. Maybe we believed him because we wanted to, because we didn’t want to think he’d let something bad happen to one of his children.”

  “But he was lying—to protect Mama!”

  “Well then, why didn’t you tell your grandma and me the truth about what was going on?”

  “I’m not sure. I think I thought you already knew.”

  “It doesn’t matter anyway because there’s nothing either one of us can do about it now.”

  Crawling around her, I got out of bed and started digging through my drawer for some underwear. “I told Mama I gave Audrey the flu,” I said.

  “Not that nonsense again!”

  “It’s not nonsense!”

  “Why’d you tell her? To hurt her?”

  “No!” I slammed the drawer shut and turned around. One look at her face and I knew I was had. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

  “Did it make you feel better to hurt her?”

  “No; not really.”

  “Okay, forget about Rose for a minute. Think about you. You need to realize for yourself that you’re not to blame for Audrey’s death. She could have caught the flu from any one of you in the family. She probably already had it before you gave her the gum. Besides—God love her—Audrey had a bad case of polio. She had already lived longer than the doctors said she would.”

  Aunt Macy got up and walked to me. She took both my hands in hers. Touching was how she showed her affection, but it sometimes made me uncomfortable. “Do you want to tell me everything your mama did to you now? I may not like what I hear, but I’ll listen and I promise I will believe you.”

  I retracted my hands. “No, Aunt Macy, I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Not ever again. Silence seems to work for everybody else; maybe it will work for me too.”

  CHANGE ON THE HORIZON

  Aunt Macy hummed as she prepared dinner. Even though I didn’t know the name of the song, I recognized the tune because I’d heard her play it on the piano. Her skin glowed and she had a playful new spark in her eyes. She still had on the dress she’d worn to work—a simple yellow A-line she’d sewn herself. Aunt Macy had worn the same hairstyle since as far back as I could recall—chin-length wavy layers that were now gray. She was not a beautiful woman. It wasn’t that she’d lost her good looks when she reached the south side of middle age, as some women do. She’d never been beautiful, even when she was younger, but like Grandma Storm, she had a chiseled, handsome face.

  She was preparing what we had always called hamburger hash, a dish Grandma Storm used to make, which was a mixture of ground beef, stewed tomatoes and potatoes. Aunt Macy usually only served hamburger hash on special occasions, but it was the middle of June. Her birthday had long passed, and mine wouldn’t roll around until the next month. I couldn’t think of any other reason there could be to celebrate.

  “Yum, hamburger hash,” I said, as we sat down to the table. “Are we celebrating my birthday early?”

  “No, but I do have some good news.”

  I became excited. “What is it?”

  She picked up a butter knife and pointed across the table. “Pass me some cornbread and I’ll tell you.” She took a piece of cornbread from the plate, and then scooped some margarine from a tub of Blue Bonnet.

  “Well, what’s the good news?”

  She lo
oked over her cornbread as she buttered it and grinned like a schoolgirl. “Edwin and I are getting married!”

  I swallowed hard the bite of hamburger hash I had in my mouth. Aunt Macy was in her mid-fifties, and she had been divorced for over ten years. If she was ever going to remarry, it was time. She and Edwin had been dating for more than a year now. He took her dancing, and out to eat at least twice a week. He made her happy; I could tell because she smiled a lot whenever they were together. I liked Edwin too; he’d always been nice to me. Although I was thrilled to hear of Aunt Macy’s impending marriage, the thought of her having a life of her own—a life that wouldn’t be centered mostly around me—made my heart drop and sent my thoughts racing. Where will I live? Who will take care of me?

  I pushed aside my selfishness. “When?”

  “We’re thinking about a May wedding. Nothing fancy, just a small church service. Or, Edwin was telling me about some wedding and honeymoon package deals they have in Florida. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

  “It does sound like fun,” I said, with what felt like a sickly smile on my face.

  “Aren’t you happy for us?”

  To keep from hurting her, I tried to feign excitement. “Yes!”

  “Then come over here and give me a hug!” As we held each other, I hoped she couldn’t feel my heart pounding.

  “I’m happy for you, Aunt Macy, really, I am. Guess I’m shocked because I wasn’t expecting the news.”

  “Now, of course we’ll be living at Edwin’s place. He has a very nice home. And you know you’re welcome to live with us until you finish college and get on your feet. Edwin and I have already discussed it and he’s fine with it.”

  Sure he is, I thought. I’m sure he’s thrilled about a soon to be twenty-year-old freeloader living in his spare bedroom. “That’s kind of him. But Aunt Macy, you forgot, I’m not going back to school this fall.”

  “You could change your mind… you really need to be thinking about when you’re going back. Working at McDonald’s won’t get you very far.”

  “I know, I know. I promised you I’d go to college and I will, but not this fall. I need some time to decide on a new major.”

  That night I couldn’t sleep for worrying about how I would take care of myself after Aunt Macy and Edwin were married. Even if I did move in with them, I could only stay there a short while. Aunt Macy’s words rang clearly in my head: You are welcome to live with us until you finish college and get on your feet.

  But I wasn’t ready to go back to school. I wanted no part of social work, or anything else having to do with abused kids, and I couldn’t think of another degree offered at the community college that interested me. Until you get on your feet doesn’t mean forever. Aunt Macy had done right by me and the time had come for her to have a life of her own—a life without me in it. Before I went to sleep, I made a goal to find a way to live on my own before the wedding in May.

  My job at McDonald’s may not have been a viable way to support myself, but I sure did like it. The structure of working there reminded me of my childhood summers with Grandma Storm and Aunt Macy. Everything was predictable and controlled like it had been at Grandma’s house. Every day I put on my uniform, stood behind a cash register and pushed buttons that read Big Mac, medium shake, and large fries. The ease of the job and the orderliness of the environment was comforting.

  Sometimes I went out with my friends from work, and we did what most young people with dead end jobs and no blueprint for the future did in the 80’s—we drank, cursed life, and passed around a joint while we solved the world’s problems. I was particularly drawn to a girl named Sheila. She bleached her hair and went braless. She wore tight jeans and big hoop earrings that skimmed her shoulders. She drank until she was drunk and smoked pot daily. I thought she was coolest person I’d ever met. Alcohol was the glue that bonded Sheila and me. On our days off, she would drop by with a six pack of beer. I provided the tomato juice, and we made poor man’s bloody Marys, and sipped on them while we watched soap operas.

  Like most young girls, Sheila thought she was invincible. She talked to strangers and took walks alone at night. She drove her car fast, while holding a beer between her thighs and putting on mascara in the rearview mirror. I, on the other hand, feared almost everything. I had no way of knowing for sure, but I believed, during my childhood, I’d bumped shoulders with Death a few times. That I’d been a breath away from drowning when Mama held my head under bathwater, or when I blacked out briefly after she’d slung me to the concrete floor of our garage. Like most people who’ve been brutally attacked, I’d lived the ugly truth. I knew there were sick souls with dark intentions in the world, people with flesh and bone and real hearts pounding within their chests who do the unthinkable, people who manipulate those around them and feed off control and the sense of power it brings them. And sometimes they may even be our parents. This fear had kept me safe and out of trouble while I was in high school. But now, I found myself wanting to skim my toe along the surface of danger. That’s why I liked hanging out with Sheila.

  On July 11, my twentieth birthday, Mama didn’t call me and ask to get together like she had on my eighteenth and nineteenth birthdays. It was a sign she had taken what I said in the restaurant seriously. Good, I thought.

  The weekend after my birthday, Sheila, her boyfriend, Kevin, who was one of the assistant managers at McDonald’s, and I went out to celebrate. To us, celebrating meant drinking, so our first stop was the liquor store.

  We were sitting in Kevin’s car in the liquor store parking lot waiting for him to come out with our alcohol, when a rather loud, beat up burgundy Mustang pulled up beside us. The driver, a young guy with thick, black hair that hung in ringlets around his neck, was the only one of the two people in the car I could see clearly. He seemed familiar to me, but I saw a lot of people while working at McDonald’s, so I figured he was one of them.

  “Either one of you old enough to buy alcohol?” he asked.

  “No, but our friend, Kevin is,” I said. “He’s inside now getting ours.”

  “Think he would pick me up a six-pack? I’ll give him an extra five for his trouble.”

  “I’m sure he won’t mind,” I said. “Hey, do I know you?”

  “I don’t know. Do you?”

  “You seem really familiar to me. Do you live in Nashville?”

  “No, I’m from Kentucky.”

  “You’re kidding!” I squealed. “I used to live in Kentucky. What part?”

  “Sullivan.”

  “Sullivan in western Kentucky?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “This is weird; I lived in Uniontown for a while!”

  “Did you go to Uniontown High?”

  Suddenly I remembered where I’d seen him—at Uniontown Middle School. I remembered thinking he was cute, in a bad boy sort of way. “No, I moved away before high school, but I went to junior high there. That’s probably where I saw you.” I held my breath, praying he wasn’t one of the boys who’d made fun of me because of my greasy hair, or the way I smelled, or the stupid clothes I wore.

  “Sorry I don’t remember you.”

  Thank God. “My name is Tuesday Storm. What’s yours?”

  “Chad Sutton.” He gave me a smirky smile and narrowed his dark eyes. “Did you say your name is Tuesday Storm?”

  My heart sank. He does remember me! My greasy hair, my high-water pants. Oh my God—my smell! I felt my face flush. “Yes,” I said, sheepishly.

  “That’s about the coolest name I’ve ever heard! It’s like you’re a storm on Tuesday.”

  By this time, Kevin was coming out of the liquor store. I asked him to buy Chad some beer and he agreed to go back in for it. Chad gave Kevin some money, then leaned back in his seat and lit up a cigarette.

  “So, what are you doing in Nashville?” I asked, for the sake of conversation.

  “We’re going to the AC/DC concert. You like AC/DC?”

  “Of course,” I said, trying to sound coo
l, even though I didn’t have a clue who they were.

  “What are you guys doing?” he asked.

  “Just hanging out after work.”

  “Where do you work?”

  “McDonald’s across from Vanderbilt.”

  Kevin came out of the liquor store with a six-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon. Chad took the beer and with a wave of his hand, drove away.

  “He’s cute,” I said.

  “I’m surprised he didn’t ask you for your number,” Sheila said.

  “Guess he didn’t like me.” As I watched him drive off, something Mama had once said to me echoed in my head. Honestly, I don’t know how you’re going to make it on your own. I mean I always had men standing in line to take care of me, but with your face I doubt you’ll be able to find anyone. What if she was right?

  “Trust me, he likes you,” Kevin chimed in. “A guy doesn’t carry on a conversation with a girl past hello if he doesn’t like her. He’s stupid for not asking for your number. Hell, I’d ask you out myself if I didn’t already have a girlfriend.”

  Shelia punched him in the arm. “Hey!”

  “Ah, Kevin, that’s sweet,” I said, knowing he was only being nice.

  “I mean it. You’re good-looking.”

  Sheila punched him again.

  His words made me cringe. I wasn’t used to compliments and didn’t know how to react to them. I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that there were people who found me attractive. Examining my reflection in the side mirror of Kevin’s car, I could see why Mama had called me horse face. I had a long jaw line and cheekbones that were set high and pronounced. I’d read somewhere that bangs make your face appear shorter, so I’d recently gotten my dishwater blond hair cut in a shag. My hair had never grown to a normal thickness because Mama had pulled it out so much when I was younger. I wore my new bangs swooped to one side to cover the bald spots in front. My eyes were the only feature I liked. They were Daddy’s doleful eyes, and every time I looked in the mirror I saw him. He had passed his acne on to me too, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as his had been. I was okay with my body. Mama never said much about the way I was built, except that I wasn’t developing like other girls my age. I still didn’t have boobs, but I was tall, thin and athletic. I had a swimmers body.