had always like to read and she talked about writers she liked for a little while and Ray Bob and her agreed on how they liked some of them, and Momma said she loved to read too but never got the chance because she was working double shifts to keep the money coming in, which was a lie, but Gran knew better than to call her on it just then, and then…it is hard to explain but something came into the room with that lie, like a smoke, like Satan himself was there and we were his little dolls he was playing with and having just the best old time.
Ray Bob turned to me and locked those blue eyes into mine and the hair stood up on the backs of my arms and on my neck because I saw that he could see right into me right through to my deepest secrets, that he could see the evil working deep in me and that he thought that it was kind of cute. And I saw that what was looking into me was something that not even Ray Bob knew about in his own heart, which was the scariest thing about it, like you’re playing in the river and all of a sudden you realize you’re not where you thought you were, not on a safe sandbar but out in the main current and there was no bottom under your feet and the river had hold of you. I had thought I was the wickedest thing going but right then I knew I was just paddling in the shallows of it.
He had a deep, pleasant voice like a TV announcer, and he said how about you, honey, you a reader too? Momma broke in and said oh she wants to so bad but she’sdyslexic, we tried everything, and where she dug up that word I don’t know, maybe retained against need from one of Mrs. Barrett’s lectures, but he paid her no mind, just kept boring inward and stripping me with those eyes, and he said, oh, I think Emmylou can read pretty good when she wants to. Gran spoke up and started to say no, really Ray Bob, she can’t read a lick but I cut her off and said Ican read, my own voice seeming to come from some other little girl. He said go read us something honey.
Now as part of her act Momma had gone up into the attic and brought down her grandfather’s family Bible and dusted it off and sat it on a doily on the sideboard next to the table, like we had Bible reading every day, and so I just had to reach out and grab it and I opened it at random with the blood pounding so hard in my head that I saw red spots. It was I Kings 14 that the book opened to and I read At that time Abijah the son of Jeroboam fell sick And Jeroboam said to his wife, Arise, I pray thee, and disguise thyself that thou be not known as the wife of Jeroboam and get thee to Shiloh: behold there is Ahijah the prophet, which told me I should be king over this people.
I read the next verse too about the cracknels and the cruse of honey and then Momma yelled real loud and said that it was a miracle that she had prayed for so long and came over and dragged me off the chair and gave me a hard furious hug. Over her shoulder I could see the look on Gran’s face, the shock of betrayal. I guess she had really wanted to make me into a little her, someone who would enjoy the things she did, books and good music, and might attend the limited cultural events available to the Caluga County bourgeoisie, maybe a girl to take on trips to Atlanta or Miami, who’d go on to a four-year college like she did, only not get pregnant in junior year and have to drop out, and here I was, all what she wanted but keeping it hidden, and then trotting it out for the likes of Ray Bob Dideroff. She aged about ten years while I was looking at her. After a while, me showing off my reading prowess to Momma and Ray Bob, she kind of busied herself with clearing the supper things away. Of course, she never read to me anymore, or called me on how come I did that to her. She kind of faded out of our lives after that, nothing violent, but Ray Bob didn’t much care for her, stuck-up was the word mostly used and also she wasn’t church and she was a member of the ACLU, which was more than enough to put her in his bad books. Actually, now that I think of it, nearly everyone Momma knew from before was in Ray Bob’s bad books, an imposing set of volumes, and I guess that should’ve told us something, but did not, Momma being so happy to finally be on easy street.
Gulf Avenue was the actual name of the street we were on, a big two-story brick on a five-acre plot that me and Momma moved into after the wedding. Momma was in her glory those first couple of months, I have to say, Ray Bob could not do enough for her, and the rest of us might as well have been invisible. She got rid of her old Ford truck and drove around in a yellow Mustang convertible that had belonged to the first Mrs. Dideroff and that Ray Bob had kept nice and clean in his garage. I had my own room and on the other side of the wall was their bedroom, from which nightly I could hear them going at it, which even at nine I knew what it was. I guess he had not got much nooky since Louellen had left, him being a pillar of the church and all and Wayland being a small place, so he was making up for lost time and Momma was certainly willing enough. However, around six months into the marriage, when I guess Ray Bob’s tank had been pretty much drained to normal, I noticed a change around the place. There was a night when the sounds from the other side of the wall were not what they had been, Momma yelling real loud and high not the kind of words you would expect from a saved church lady and the low rumble of Ray Bob’s voice. (I never heard the man raise it once, he was the kind who you do what he says without him ever having to.) Then her voice went up real high and cut off and I heard some thumps, not the thump of the bed but other kinds of thumps. Momma stayed in bed the whole next day, and the day after that she walked kind of stiff and didn’t say much. Ti Joe had whapped Momma once in a while when they were both drunk, but this wasn’t like that. There was not a mark on her I could see and I peeked at her in the bathroom. So I was mystified, but they did not have the answer in the World Book that I could see.
I started fifth grade with a new name, Emmylou Dideroff, since Ray Bob said that we were all one family and should have the same name. Two weeks after school started, on a Friday, I came home in the afternoon and Momma was not there, and the yellow convertible was missing from the garage. She was still gone when Ray Bob got home. He was real calm about it and gave me one of his looks that you better not lie to me and asked me if I knew where she was and I said no sir I do not. Then he made some phone calls. Later that night I heard sirens.
They found Momma down in Dixie County, she was speeding and a local cop pulled her over and called Ray Bob because of the registration and he went down and brought her back. I didn’t see her then or for a while after, because Ray Bob said she had a nervous breakdown and it was sad but we all had to pray real hard for her to get better. Ray Bob’s uncle Doc Herm Dideroff ran a kind of rest home in Wayland Beach, they called it a rest home, but what it was was a place where rich people could kick the habit while not running into anyone they knew, one advantage of it being in a no-account place like Caluga County, Fla. So Momma was put in there for her nervous breakdown and got the electric shock treatments to straighten her out, or so I overheard, and I imagined Doc Herm making her stick her finger in a light socket with her feet wet, a picture I kind of cherished because I was pretty mad at her for running off and not taking me and didn’t think even for a minute about what might have been the reason for her to do a stunt like that. What I was thinking about then, may God forgive me, was how I could turn this event to my profit, and at first I was worried that because Momma was no longer around I would lose my position in the family.
But the next day, Ray Bob took me aside, actually he came into my room and sat on the frilly rocker Momma had bought, and said that God sometimes sends travails into our lives to test us to see if we be worthy for the kingdom, and that he wanted me to know that whatever happened he would be there for me just like I was his own natural child. Then he asked me what I was reading and it was Kidnapped by R. L. Stevenson and he said that had been a favorite of his when he was a boy, and he asked me if I liked people reading to me. The answer to that was no, but I sensed that the answer that he wanted was yes, and he picked up Kidnapped from where it was on my bed and said come sit on my lap and I’ll read to you and that’s how it started.
I never did figure out whether Ray Bob could see and hear the shiny man like I could, or whether he had his own route to the power of Satan. I write shiny man now because that is what he seems to me in retrospect, although I don’t recall calling him that as a child, no more than you would call your conscience or your bodily needs by names. He was just there in my head or sometimes something bright would cross my field of vision, bright as sunlight on dark waters, beautiful as a tiger, and I knew it was him. And he is here too, now, attached to me, by cords of steel, you are supposed to be exorcised when you enter the church but maybe it doesn’t work the way it did once, maybe even the priests don’t believe in him. You saw him I know and then you decided to forget like most people do, he’s learned how to slide off the memory. Can he break me even now, while I am in God’s hands? Only if I let him and God help me God help me I still want to, my intention to resist is rotten it always has been I want to slide down into it again away from the crushing light. He doesn’t want me to
No stick to the story, little Emmylou.
Anyway Ray Bob had the devil in him of some kind. Momma sure knew it, and after she got back from her six weeks in the rest home she never gave him a lick of trouble until the very last. They sent her home with a big white plastic bottle of Librium caps so she would not cause any more problems, and with that one exception, she did not. She seemed pretty happy, all told, not that I cared at the time.
The sounds on the other side of my wall resumed, although not with the frequency of before and also with a few new ones, one a long grunting wail that it was hard to recognize came out of Momma, kind of a surprised sound like she had not expected whatever it was to hurt so much. Ray Bob told me at the time that he couldn’t believe
