A Death in the Family - Memoir (and)

I was nine years old in June 1965. School had just let out for the season and in little more than a month, I would be ten. On Sundays we might feast on pieces of fried bologna, tomato gravy and kale—with a salad plate to the right of each place setting with a piece of lettuce and half of a canned pear resting on top. Alighting the pear would be a dollop of mayonnaise. When it was served, the meat was placed on top of a slice of white bread and then crowned with something Mom called tomato gravy—which was nothing more than canned tomatoes heated together with flour and milk. The men in our house—my father, my brothers and I—particularly liked to grab whatever bread was left in the center of the table so as to sop up the gravy that remained on our plates.

After dinner, it was always a bath and in bed by 7:00. That was one of the things that made me realize our family was different from others. No matter what time of year it was—fall, winter, spring or summer—we always had to be in bed by 7:00. Even though daylight-savings had already had plenty of time to kick in—and the summer sun was still pretty high in the sky—the Jordan boys were in bed and lights out by 7:00.

Our bedroom was small. Ronnie’s bed was against a wall on one side of the room while Ricky and I shared bunk beds against the other side. As we lay in our beds, we could hear Buck and Gladys Perkins starting to argue from the house next door. The summer heat not only meant that we anxiously awaited a breeze making its way into our room—but on a regular basis, we also waited for Buck to come home and begin his drunken tirade. My brothers and I would laugh quietly at the words that came from the house next door—words we were forbidden to say—but it sure was entertaining to hear them from the house next door. As we lay there wondering what kinds of obscenities Buck would say next, our laughter slowly faded away…because our father had already finished off a six-pack of Schlitz before we had even gotten into bed.

Daddy was a man filled with rage. He hated his own father who had beaten him and his mother. He was angry at those who said he wasn’t good enough to be the husband of their daughter and sister. He was angry at a mother who said that he was too much like his father. And this night, he brought that anger home to my mother, my brothers and me.

It was the middle of the night—around three o’clock in the morning I later figured. That’s what the clock in the kitchen said when it was all over…after everything quieted down. When I first heard the noise, I wasn’t sure what it was. Someone was screaming. It was Ricky. He was lying in the bed just above me—screaming and crying—crying and screaming—over and over again.

“Ricky, shut up!” Ronnie shouted in a hoarse whisper. Ronnie was curled up in his bed—holding his hands over his ears. Ricky only screamed louder.

“What’s wrong?” I asked waking up from a deep sleep.

“Shhhh!” Ronnie whispered again. “Mumma and Daddy are fightin’.”

Woven throughout our conversation were the sounds of dishes breaking and my parents screaming at one another. All I could make out were a lot of ‘goddams and shits’ being uttered by my father. Mumma was pleading for him to stop. After a long few minutes, the sound of crashing dishes ended. Clumsy footsteps crunched across a floor of broken glass; heavy, heaving sobs now came from the living room. Ronnie, Ricky and I climbed out of bed and looked out from the doorway of our room. We stared into the living room where the deep cries had been the loudest. There, my father lay collapsed into a heap on the vinyl couch. With each breath his body heaved up and down. His greasy black hair was tousled and strewn across his head. As he turned to look at us, his face glimmered from snot and saliva mixed together and smeared across his cheeks and chin. My mother saw us looking through the doorway and quietly beckoned us to come into the living room.

“Tell y’ Daddy you love him, boys,” she said with tears streaming down her cheeks. The look on her face filled me with fear and pity. “Go on,” she continued, “give him a kiss and tell him y’ love him.” We looked at my mother to see if there was any hint of insincerity or mockery—but there wasn’t. She only stared at our father with an empty, mindless gaze. She stood just a few feet away from us—in limbo … in the doorway between the living room and kitchen. Behind her, we could see the kitchen floor. There lay what must have been a thousand pieces of broken bone china. Fine fragments of dinner plates, dessert plates, cups and saucers—a wedding gift from a family friend long ago—were now strewn across the floor. What had moments ago been the only beautiful thing that my mother ever owned—now was nothing more than tiny bits and shards of glass carpeting our kitchen floor.

As I walked over and kissed my father lightly on the forehead, he reached up and grabbed my arm.

“I love you, Ran,” he slurred as he kissed me. The smell of whiskey and vomit blew into my face. As he let me go, I backed away and stood behind Ronnie as he, too, cried.

“Y’ Daddy loves you boys,” my mother said still managing a vacant smile. Ricky was till sobbing—wiping his face with his hands. “Y’all go on back to bed now,” she said. None of us answered her; we only turned to walk back to our room.

The next morning, Daddy left before my brothers and I got up. No one said a word about the events of a few hours before. In the weeks that followed—as the days and nights got hotter—it became our duty not to talk about the thing that had happened. Not to say anything to our friends, or each other.

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