The Neon Bible Page 4

  "Look in her mouth, Aunt Mae, that's where it's bleeding from." I was holding Aunt Mae by the arm because she was about to go back upstairs.

  "No, David, no. I don't know what to do. I'm scared. She might be dying."

  "Just look in her mouth, Aunt Mae. That's where the blood is coming from." I must have really looked anxious, or half mad, if someone can look that way at seven years old. Anyway, Aunt Mae stopped pulling away from me and said, "Alright."

  She opened Mother's mouth and stuck her finger slowly in. At that moment Mother moaned again and closed her teeth. Aunt Mae screamed and pulled her finger out fast. When she had quieted down enough, she stuck it back in again and said, "I don't know, David, but all I can see and feel is that a tooth has been knocked out. Let's pray that it isn't anything more."

  Later, when we had Mother upstairs, Aunt Mae got around to asking me what started all this. I began to tell her, but I remembered Poppa hadn't passed me on the stairs earlier. I jumped up and started going through all the upstairs rooms. Poppa was nowhere, so I went back to Mother's room and told Aunt Mae that Poppa was gone.

  "When I heard all the crying and noise, I got out of bed and was almost knocked down by your father running through my room. He went out the window onto the porch roof," Aunt Mae told me as she changed the ice pack on Mother's cheek to another place. Mother hadn't come around yet, but she was mumbling and her eyes were flittering.

  Then I wondered what had happened to Poppa. I didn't want to see him again, but I was curious to know where he had gone. I went downstairs and onto the porch. All his things that he bought were gone. The moon was shining so white on the cinders in the yard that they were shining like diamonds. It was a still night in the valley, and the pines on the hill were swaying just ever so slightly. Down in town people's lights were going off in their windows, leaving only a few neon lights on Main Street still burning. I could see the big neon Bible all lighted up on the preacher's church. Maybe it's lighted up tonight, too, with its yellow pages and red letters and big blue cross in the center. Maybe they light it up even if the preacher isn't there.

  I could see the old section where we used to live, even the exact house. There was somebody new living in it now. I thought about how lucky they were to have a nice house in town without cinders in their yard and four feet of clay under that. Mrs. Watkins lived next door. All the lights were out there. She always told us how early she went to bed. She never had any fighting in her house. She got a nice check from the state for teaching school, too, so she never had to fight with her husband over that.

  I leaned back against the porch post and looked at the sky. All the stars were there. It was such a clear night that you could even see some that you only saw about once or twice a year. My legs were beginning to get cold from the air that was setting in, and I wished I was old enough to wear long pants. I felt little and small from the cold and the stars, and I was frightened about what was going to happen to us with Poppa gone. My nose began to hurt in the tip. All of a sudden the stars got all blurry as the tears filled up my eyes, and then I began to shake hard from the shoulders, and I put my head on my knees and cried and cried.

  The last neon sign on Main Street was just going out when I got up to go into the house. My eyes felt funny because my lashes were stuck together and the lids were sore. I didn't lock the front door. Nobody in the valley ever locked their door at night or any other time. The seeds were gone from where Poppa had put them near the kitchen door, so he must have come to get them when Aunt Mae and I were upstairs taking care of Mother. I wondered if Poppa had gone forever. I wondered where he was now. Back in the hills, or maybe down in town somewhere.

  All of a sudden I realized I was hungry. In the kitchen the hush puppies that Mother had made were on the table in a bowl. I sat down and ate some and drank a little water. The fish were in the pan where Mother turned off the fire when Poppa came in, but they were cold and greasy and didn't look very good. Over my head the one bulb that hung from the electric cord was pretty greasy too, and it made long shadows after everything and made my hands look white and dead. I sat with my head in my hands and ran my eyes over the design in the oilcloth on the table again and again. I watched the blue checks turn into the red and then into the black and back into the red again. I looked up at the light-bulb and saw blue and black and red checks before my eyes. In my stomach the hush puppies were heavy. I wished I hadn't eaten anything.

  Upstairs Aunt Mae was covering Mother as I came into the room.

  "She'll be alright, David," Aunt Mae said when she saw me in the doorway. I looked at Mother, and she seemed to be sleeping.

  "What about Poppa, Aunt Mae?" I was leaning on the door.

  "Don't worry about him. There's nowhere else for him to go. We'll have to take him back when he shows up, though I can't say how I want to."

  It surprised me to hear Aunt Mae talk like that. I'd never heard her talk sensible that way before. I always thought she was afraid of Poppa, and here she was deciding what to do about him. I felt proud of her. She made me lose some of the frightened feeling I had. Behind her the moonlight was shining into the room so that it made her look all silvery around the edges. Her hair was down on her shoulders, and the light made every separate hair shine like a spider's web in the sun.

  Aunt Mae looked big and strong. Just standing there, she looked like a big statue to me, a silver one, like the one in the park in town. She was the only one in the house that could help me, the only strong person older than I was. I ran to her all of a sudden and stuck my head in her stomach and held my arms tight around her back. She felt soft and warm and like something I could hold on to that would take care of me. I felt her hand on my head, petting me softly. I squeezed her tighter until my head went in her stomach so much that it hurt her.

  "David" -- she ran her hand down my back -- "Are you afraid? Everything will be alright. When I was on the stage, I was hurt worse than you are now. I was never really very good, David, as an entertainer. I always knew that, but I loved the stage, and I loved to have the spotlights blinding me and the noise of a band under me. David, when you're on a stage and you're singing and you can feel the beat of the band shaking the boards on the stage, you feel like you're drunk. Yes, you do, baby. The stage was like liquor to me, like beer or whiskey. It hurt me at times, just like liquor hurts a drunk man, but it hurt me in my heart, that's what made it different. I was lucky whenever I got a job in some little dance hall in Mobile or Biloxi or Baton Rouge. What did I get paid? Just enough to live in a cheap hotel and buy a new costume now and then.

  "There were times, David, when I didn't know where my next meal was coming from. Then I went into the dime store in whatever town I was and got a job. The last few years they wouldn't even give me a job there because they want young girls, and I had to work as a cleanup woman in the hotel I was staying in to get enough money to leave town. Then I'd do the same thing in the next town usually.

  "I never sang good, honey, but when I was younger at least I was better-looking. Sometimes I could get a job just because I looked good in my clothes. The men liked me then. They came just to see me, and I went out a lot. They made promises, and I believed the first few, but after I saw how I was fooled, I was hurt, hurt so that I thought my heart would break. Then I couldn't hope to be honest to any man by letting him marry me, because you see, he'd be getting a used-up piece of goods, so to speak. After that there was nothing but my career, and that was slowing down. I couldn't take any more after those last ten years. No one would give me a job, not even some of those men who had made promises to me. The ones I had given so much to wouldn't answer the phone when I called. They had all married other girls and had grandchildren. Those were the times when I sat in my hotel rooms and cried on the smelly pillows. All the other women my age could look out their kitchen window and see the wash drying on the line, but all I could see out my hotel window was a dirty alley full of old papers and lushes' broken wine bottles and garbage cans and cats and dirt.
Was I hurt then, David? I wanted to commit suicide with the old rusty razor blades in those cheap bathrooms. But I wouldn't let those other people make me kill myself.

  "The last job I had before I came to live with you all was in a real dump in New Orleans. I don't know why the man hired me, because he was a real tough dago with an eye on the cash register. He had about five girls he got from the bayous around town who did strips. They took their clothes off while three or four hopheads played some music. He got a lot of seamen from the boats in town for customers. They sat right under the stage and grabbed at the girls' ankles while they danced, or moved around, anyway, because they were just Cajun girls who came to the city on a promise and fell for it the way I did once.

  "It was my second night there, and I didn't feel like going on because the musicians were so full of dope they played my music all wrong the night before. I had to keep the job, though, because I owed on my room and I needed some cash. When I went out, the lights were on me and the music was beating, and I felt better. The sailors were noisy that night like always, but there was one big one sitting near the door who began to laugh and call at me when I started singing. I was just going into the second chorus when I hear the dago shout from behind the bar, 'Watch out, Mae!' Before I knew what he was yelling about, I felt something hit me hard on the head. It turned out that sailor threw a beer bottle at me, a big, thick brown thing. Those Cajun girls were so good to me, honey. They paid for the doctor who brought me to and fixed my head, and they paid the hotel and got me a train ticket when I said I wanted to come here.

  "I was hurt that all those years ended that way. I wanted to be happy with you all here, but I've made the people in the town hate me, and I didn't want for that to happen. I've always dressed bright, and maybe I went on the stage to show off, but no one ever paid any attention to me in the cities. Here I've been just a sore thumb, David, you know that. I know what they think of me here, and I didn't want them to.

  "I never told anyone these things, David, not even your mother. Maybe it was good to save them for now when I could show you how small your hurt is next to all the ones I have."

  I looked up into Aunt Mae's face. I couldn't make out the expression on it in the shadows, but the moonlight shining on her cheeks showed how wet they were. I felt a warm drop fall on my forehead, and it tickled as it ran down my face, but I didn't move to wipe it off.

  "Come on, David, you can sleep with me tonight. I feel lonely."

  We went to Aunt Mae's room, and she helped me take off my clothes. I waited by her window while she put on her nightgown which she always wore. I felt her come up beside me.

  "David, do you pray every night before you go to sleep?"

  I told Aunt Mae that I did sometimes, and I wondered why she wanted to ask me a question like that. I didn't think she ever thought about praying.

  "Come kneel with me by the window, David, and we'll pray that your mother feels well tomorrow and that nothing happens to your Poppa tonight and that you and I. . . that you and I won't be hurt too bad tomorrow or ever again."

  That seemed like a beautiful prayer, so I looked out the window and began, and my eye fell on the neon Bible below and I couldn't go on. Then I saw the stars in the heaven shining like the beautiful prayer, and I began again, and the prayer came out without even thinking, and I offered it up to the stars and the night sky.

  Three

  The next morning Aunt Mae got me up and dressed me for school. Mother was alright, but she was still sleeping, so Aunt Mae said she'd make me some breakfast. I never saw Aunt Mae do anything in the kitchen, and I wondered what she was going to fix. While I was washing my face, I heard her getting ready downstairs, slamming the icebox and walking back and forth in the kitchen.

  When I came down, the food was on the table. She had a pile of biscuits in a bowl, so I took one and began to butter it. The bottom was all burnt, and the inside was still wet dough. I was hungry, though, because all I had the night before was the water and hush puppies. She brought a pan to the table with some brown fried eggs floating around in about two inches of fat. There was such a proud look on her face that I said, "Oh, Aunt Mae, those look good," when I saw them. That made her happy, and we sat and ate the eggs and biscuits like they were real fine.

  I got my books and the lunch Aunt Mae made for me and left for school. There were a lot of things on my mind. Where was Poppa? I thought he'd be back at the house in the morning, but I hadn't said anything to Aunt Mae, and she didn't talk to me about it. Then I remembered that I didn't do the work in my copybook for Mrs. Watkins. I couldn't get in any more trouble with her, so I put my books and lunch down by the side of the path and got my pencil out and sat down. I could feel the seat of my pants getting wet from the dew on the grass, and I thought how funny that was going to look. With the copybook slipping off my knee every time I went to write a letter, the page began to look bad. My A's looked like D's, and sometimes my commas slid all the way down to the next line. I finally finished it and got up and pulled the little wet blades of grass off my pants.

  I still had to get off the hill and cross town to get to school. The sun was up pretty well now. That meant that there wasn't too much time. Something felt heavy in my stomach, and I was sure it was those eggs and biscuits of Aunt Mae's. With the taste of the eggs still in my throat, I began to belch, and belch hard. Belching always made my throat feel hot, so I started to breathe the cool hill air through my mouth. It made me feel a little better, but the burning was still way down, in my chest, and it stayed there.

  I got off the hill onto a street and decided to take the shortest way I could. It was the street right behind Main where they had all the little restaurants and mechanics' shops. Usually I went another way, through the pretty houses, because I liked it better.

  Here they had old boxes in the gutter and old hubcaps and big garbage cans covered with flies that had such a strong smell I had to hold my nose when I passed. It was dark in the mechanics' places, with old cars on wooden blocks or bodies without wheels hanging from chains. The mechanics sat around in the doorways waiting for some business, and every word they spoke had "Christ" in it or "damn" or something like that. I wondered why Poppa had never been a mechanic, and thought that maybe he had been at one time, or maybe his father, because he never told me anything about his family, my grandpeople.

  The mechanics' places were mostly tin garages with old oilcans out in front and in the alleys. When it rained there, the water in the gutters was never clear but had purple and green colors on it that made any kind of design you wanted when you moved the water with your finger. I don't think the mechanics ever shaved, and I wondered how they got all the grease off their skin when they went home at night.

  There was one of those little restaurants between almost every mechanic's shop. They were named the DeLux Kitchen or Joe's or Kwik-Meal or Mother Eva's or other names like that. In front of every one there was a blackboard with the food they were having for the day, and it was always something like beans with rice or pork chops with beans or beans and chicken. I never knew how they could sell food so cheap, because there wasn't any meal that cost more than fifty cents. It must have been that they didn't have to pay much for the buildings they used.

  The barroom was on this street too. All along the front they had fake marble with neon lettering around the door and windows. I never saw what it looked like on the inside because it was always closed when I passed in the morning. I don't suppose anyone was meant to look above the first floor. The marble and neon stopped there, and the rest up to the roof was old weatherboards, brown and gray. There were three windows up there, big long ones that led onto a wooden balcony like all the old buildings in town had on the second floor. In the morning they were usually closed, but sometimes they were open and things were drying out on the balcony. They must have been women's underwear, but not like any I'd seen at home. They were made out of black lace with little shiny red rosebuds sewed on them in different places. Sometimes there were sh
eets hanging out too, or pillowcases or black net stockings like no one in town wore. When I got to Mr. Farney's room in school, I found out who lived there.

  There were plenty empty lots along the street too, just like all over town. The only thing different was that they weren't kept clean like the others. They had big weeds in them, and sunflowers and wild violets. The mechanics threw their old oilcans and car parts in them when there wasn't enough room left in the alleys or the gutter. Next to the barroom they had one full of old rotting chairs and beer cases where about ten mangy cats lived. Of course the cats were all over here, in the empty lots and everywhere. They hung around the back doors of the diners for food, and you could always see them climbing in and out of the garbage cans with their ribs showing through their fur. I often thought of what a hard life these cats had and how if people only took care of them what nice pets they could be. They were always having kittens, but I knew what Poppa would do if I brought one home. Once I saw him throw a brick at a cat that was in our yard, a little one that I was trying to give some old meat to.

  When I got to the end of this street, I just had to turn left to get to the school. The boys and girls were beginning to go in when I was about a block away, so I ran to be sure I wouldn't be late. My face was all red, and I was out of breath by the time I got to Mrs. Watkins'. I was the last one to take my seat, which was in the front row "right under her eye." She got down off her platform and came over to where I sat. I didn't look up at her, but my eye followed the pattern on her dress, a bouquet of faded flowers.

  "Well, class, we have someone who just got here on time today."

  I thought I could make out one of the flowers to be a daisy.

  "He's one of the poor folks that lives up in the hills and don't have the money to buy an alarm clock."

  Some of her pets in the class giggled -- the preacher's daughter by his first wife, her niece, the boy who stayed after school to beat out the erasers. Now I saw that the flower wasn't a daisy but really a white rose. She hit me with her knee.