Final Appeal

“Am I supposed to clap?”

“You’re tough, you know that?” He gets up to go, but I still can’t look at him. I have a thousand questions for him, but only one keeps burning in my head.

“Did you hit me?” I ask, when he’s past me.

“What do you mean, hit you?”

“When you drank, did you hit me?”

“No. Never.” His voice sounds louder; he must have turned around to face me. “Why?”

“I’m remembering things.”

He’s silent for a moment. “You’ll have to ask your mother about that,” he says. I hear him call good-bye to Maddie and leave by the screen door.

It closes with a sharp bang.

“Roarf!” Bernice says.

  21

I spend a long time at the dining room table, feeling awful as Maddie sits enchanted by her tape. What is he saying? That my mother drank too? That she was the one who hit me?

It never even occurred to me.

I’m not sure what to do; I can’t process it all fast enough. I can’t even deal with the fact that I have a father now. What does a grown woman want with a father? And is there room for a mother, especially one who would wallop a child? Then a more urgent concern pops into my head.

Maddie. Has my mother beaten her, ever? My God. I close my eyes. From time to time Maddie gets bruises, but she told me they were from falls. And first grade has been so difficult for her; her first year in my mother’s care. It all fits, and it sickens me. Would my mother really hit Maddie? It would be beyond belief, except that she apparently hit me, too.

When I was Maddie’s age.

What’s been going on in my own house? Maddie knows, but I have to pick the right time to ask her. It preoccupies me as I cook and serve dinner. Afterward, I clean up the dishes and let Bernice slobber over every plate, a silent payback.

Later, at bathtime, Maddie relaxes in a full tub of Mr. Bubble. She makes a blue rubber shark swim among plastic goldfish, hidden beneath the sudsy meringue. I sit down on the lid of the toilet, watching her. Now might be the right time.

“How’s that water, button?” I say.

“Want to see a tornado?”

“A tornado? Sure.”

She grabs her nose and turns over once in the tub. The water swirls around her and she comes up smiling, wet hair stuck in tendrils to her cheeks and chin. “Did you see?”

“Amazing.”

She looks askance. “You weren’t watching.”

“I was watching, it was cool. Like a whirlpool, right?”

She sinks into the bubbles up to her chin.

“So Mads,” I begin, as casually as possible, “what do you and Grandma do in the afternoons?” The shark plunges into a swell and Maddie doesn’t answer. Maybe she’s avoiding it; maybe it’s a child’s typical inattentiveness to adults. Or hers to me. “Mads?”

“What?”

“Do you have fun with Grandma while I’m at work?” Dumb. A leading question.

She nods and the shark leaps across her tummy.

“What do you guys do?”

“Watch TV.”

I’m relieved at this answer for the first time ever. “Cartoons?”

She nods at the shark, who nods back at her.

“Tapes, too?”

“Yeah. Yes.”

“Don’t you ever just play?”

She nods again. The shark nods, too.

“What do you play?”

“Can I have Madeline in the tub?”

“Of course not, she’ll get wet,” I say reflexively, then think again. Maybe Maddie can say something through Madeline that she can’t say to me directly. “I’ll let you this time, but not in the water, okay?”

“Yeah!” The shark dances for joy as I fetch the doll from Maddie’s room and bring it back. I sit cross-legged on the rag rug beside the tub.

“Hey, Maddie,” I make the doll say.

“Hey, Madeline,” Maddie says cheerily. She abandons the rubber shark.

“What games do you play with your grandma?” the doll says. “Gimme the dirt.”

Maddie giggles. “What’s ‘the dirt’ mean?”

“The gossip. The news. The real truth. I want to know everything.” The doll’s yellow felt hat bobs up and down.

Maddie sits up in the bathtub, focusing on the doll as if she were real. “We play lid,” she says.

“What’s lid?”

“It’s a game, with a ball and a lid.”

“That sounds boring.”

Two slick knees pop through the bubbles; she wraps her arms around them. “She chases me around when she loses.”

“My grandma does that, too. She’s a bad sport. I hate her.”

“Does she pinch you? My grandma pinches me.”

I feel my heart skip a beat. “Pinches you?”

She nods. “She chases me around and pinches my butt.”

“Hard?”

She shakes her head. “Just for fun. When she loses. Anyway, she doesn’t catch me ever because I’m too fast. I’m faster than the boys. Do you like boys?”

“No, I hate them more than grandmas. Does your grandma ever get mad at you and yell?”

She looks blank.

“Tell me!” the doll screeches. “Tell me, you little brat! Tell me everything!”

She giggles and unsticks a wet strand of hair from her cheek. “It’s a secret,” she whispers, growing serious.

“A secret?”

“A real secret. Something Mommy doesn’t even know.” Her blue eyes glitter.

“A secret from Mommy?”

“Grandma said she would never find out.”

I feel sick inside. “I know. Mommy’s so stupid. Tell me.”

“I can’t. Grandma said Mommy would be mad if she found out and yell at me.”

“I bet she wouldn’t.” The doll flops up and down in frustration, cloth mitts falling at her side.

“Uh-huh,” she says emphatically. “My mom yells a lot. She says it’s because she has to do everything and I don’t help.”

Guilt washes over me like a tsunami. “My mom yells all the time, too. She’s a jerk. A big, fat, stupid jerk.”