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A Death in the Family
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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