The Round House

He give ’em to you?

There’s no he. It’s just you, baby. Lemme go. The crack of a slap, a cry. Don’t. Please. Joe’s out there.

Doan fucking care.

Now he was calling her names one after another.

I got up and went to the door. My blood pulsed and swam. The poison that was wasting in me thrilled along my nerves. I thought I’d kill Whitey. I was not afraid.

Whitey!

There was silence.

Come out and fight me!

I tried to remember what he’d taught me about blocking punches, keeping my elbows in, chin down. He finally opened the door and I jumped back with my dukes up. Sonja had put the lamp on. Whitey was wearing yellow boxer shorts patterned with hot red chili peppers. His fifties hairdo hung off his forehead in strings. He put up his hands to slick it back and I punched him in the gut. The punch reverberated up my arm. My hand went numb. I broke it, I thought, and was exhilarated. I swung at him again but he pinned my arms and said, Oh shit, oh shit. Joe. Me and Sonja. This is just between us, Joe. Stay out of it. You ever hear of cheating? Sonja’s cheating. Some prick gave her diamond earrings—

Rhinestone, she interjected.

I know diamonds when I see ’em.

He let me go and stepped away. He tried to reclaim some dignity. He put his hands up.

I won’t touch her, see? Even though some prick she’s stringing along bought her diamond earrings. I won’t touch her. But she is dirty. His eyes rolled toward her, red with weeping now. Dirty. Someone else, Joe ...

But I knew that wasn’t true. I knew where those earrings came from.

I gave ’em to her, Whitey, I said.

You did? He swayed. He’d had a bottle in the room. How come you gave her earrings?

It was her birthday.

A year ago.

Asshole, what’s it to you! I found those studs in the bathroom at the gas station. And you’re right. They aren’t rhinestones. I think they are genuine cubic zirconiums.

Okay, Joe, he said. Fancy talk.

He looked tearfully at Sonja. Propped himself against the door. Then he frowned at me. Asshole, what’s it to you! he muttered. Some way to talk to your uncle. You crossed a line, boy. He held out the hand with the bottle and pointed his middle finger at me.

You. Crossed. A. Line.

Well, she’s my aunt, I said. So I can give her a birthday present. Asshole.

He killed the bottle, threw it behind him, swelled big, and leaned forward. You got it coming, little man!

There was a splintering crack, and he sagged, his arms clutching his head. Sonja kicked him out of the doorway onto the living room floor and said, Step around him. Watch the glass. You come in here, Joe.

Then she locked the door behind me.

Get in, she said, pointing at the bed. Go straight to sleep. I’m sitting up.

She sat down in the rocking chair and put the neck of the broken bottle carefully on the side table at her elbow. I got into the bed between the sheets. The pillow smelled like Whitey’s tart hair gel and I pushed it away and lay on my arm. Sonja turned the light off and I stared into the lightless air.

He could be dead out there, I said.

No, he ain’t. That was an empty. ’Sides, I know just how hard to hit him.

Bet he says that about you, too.

She didn’t answer.

Why’d you say that? she said. Why’d you say you gave me them earrings?

Because I did.

Oh, the money.

I’m not stupid.

She was quiet. Then I heard her crying softly.

I wanted something nice, Joe.

See what happened?

Yeah.

It’s like you said. Don’t touch the money. And where’d you put the earrings?

I threw them out.

No you didn’t. Those are diamonds.

But she didn’t answer. She just kept rocking.

The next morning Sonja and I left early. I didn’t see Whitey.

He’s gonna walk it off in the woods, said Sonja. Don’t worry. He’ll be good for a long time now. But maybe you better stay with Clemence tonight.

We rode to town, no music. I watched the ditches out the side window.

Let me off right now, I said as we passed by Clemence’s and our turnoff. Because I quit.

Oh, honey, no, she said. But she pulled over and stopped the car. Her hair was up in a ponytail, a green bow tied around it. She wore a flashy green track suit with white piping, and spongy shoes. That day she had painted her lips a deep carmine red. I must have given her a very long tragic look because she said, Oh, honey, no, again. I was thinking something of this sort: that deep red of her lips, if it were printed on me, kissed on me, would become a burning solidified blood that would brand itself into my flesh and leave a black seared brand shaped like the lips of a woman. I felt sorry for myself. I still loved her, worse than ever, even though she had betrayed me. Her blue eyes had a devious sheen.

Come on, she said. I’m onna need help. Please?

But I got out of the car and walked up the road.

The back kitchen door was open. I walked in and called out.

Auntie C?

She came up from the cellar with a jar of Juneberry jam and said she thought I had a job.

I quit.

That’s lazy. You get back there.

I shook my head and wouldn’t look at her.

Oh. They at it again? Whitey’s back at it?

Yeah.

You stay here then. You can sleep in Joseph’s old room—the sewing room now, but anyway. Mooshum’s in Evey’s room. I set up a cot for him there. He won’t sleep on Evey’s soft bed.

That day I helped Clemence out. She kept a nice garden like my mother used to and her snap peas were in already. Uncle Edward was working on his backyard pond, trying to get the drainage and flowage just right, measuring mosquito larvae, and I helped him too. Whitey dropped my bike off, but I never went out and saw him. We ate fried venison with mustard and browned onions. Their television was as usual in the repair shop sixty miles away and I was sleepy. Mooshum tottered off to Evey’s room and I went to Joseph’s. But when I opened the door to the room and saw the sewing machine wedged in next to the bed and the folded stacks of fabric and the wall board covered with hundreds of spools of bright thread, when I saw the quilt pieces and the shoe box labeled Zippers and the same heart-shaped pincushion only Mom’s was dusty green, I thought of my father entering our sewing room every night and how the loneliness had seeped from under the door of the sewing room then spread across the hall and tried to get to my bedroom. I said to Clemence, You think it would bother Mooshum if I bunked with him?

He talks in his sleep.

I don’t care.

Clemence opened Evey’s door and asked if Mooshum minded, but already he was lightly snoring. Clemence said it was fine, so I shut myself in the room. I shed my clothes and crawled into my grown-up cousin’s bed, which