Careful
Lisa Tucker
When I was four years old, my mother and I left Mississippi to escape my father. This was after he'd dislocated her shoulder, cracked her ribs, and broken her nose twice. We started in Birmingham; then we went to Pulaski, Tennessee, then up to Chicago, then down to Little Rock, then up again to Fairfield, Iowa, and then down again to Raytown, Missouri, where we finally settled after my father got remarried when I was eleven. If you connect the dots on a map, it looks like an M that's missing half of one of its legs.
Most of the time, he didn't come for her, but the threats were enough to keep us moving on. The one and only time Mama ignored a letter from him was in Tennessee, and within a week, my father showed up at the diner during her shift. We had to leave town in such a hurry, maybe that's why I still remember that move more clearly than any of them.
Mama had spotted his white Oldsmobile through the big glass window of the restaurant in time to escape out the back door. It was the middle of the morning and raining puddles when she pulled me out of the girls group in Mrs. Weaver's second grade class. For the first hundred miles or so, she was too nervous to talk or even tell me where we were going. Her eyes kept darting back and forth, checking in the side window and the rearview mirror for the Oldsmobile. She was listening hard for the thump that would mean one of the boxes of our stuff had fallen out on the highway. "I should have put on a tarp," she said. "Even if the wind doesn't blow them away, they're going to be soaked through in this rain." I told her we could do it now, but she refused to stop the truck. Even when I had to pee, she just handed me an empty canning jar and told me to do my best, then gave me a pile of napkins to wipe off the dribbles on my legs and the vinyl seat.
It was only when the gas gauge said empty that she pulled over into the Texaco station. We were somewhere in north Kentucky and my father was nowhere to be seen, but still, Mama went to the full service lane so she wouldn't have to get out. I told her I was hungry and she gave me a box of crackers. "That'll have to do until we get to Chicago," she said. "Sorry."
By the time we hit the middle of Illinois, she seemed a little calmer, but she was still tapping her fingers against the steering wheel and cursing under her breath because the rain hadn't let up and the windshield wipers on the truck weren't working that well. The only thing that seemed to make her happy was saying out loud that at least we had somewhere to stay in Chicago. Mama's best friend Dee from the diner had given us the address of her cousin Sylvia who lived on the north side of town. Dee said Sylvia was kind of a "weird bird" because she was fifty-two and had never been married, but Dee also said she was sure Sylvia would be happy to help us get settled.
When we showed up at her townhouse around ten-thirty that night, Sylvia wasn't surprised, but she wasn't particularly happy either. She didn't offer us any food even though her refrigerator was crammed full with thick orange slices of cheese and three kinds of jelly and a big Tupperware container of leftover spaghetti. She told us the living room floor was the only place she had for us to sleep, even though the house had an upstairs and I could see at least three doorways from the bottom of the staircase. Mama didn't say anything but thank you, and the next morning, she washed her face and arms in the kitchen sink because she didn't want to impose on Sylvia by asking to use the shower. She got dressed in her best black knit suit, the one she wore to Grandpa's funeral, and we set out to find her a job.
Mama had made up her mind that this time, she was going to get what she called a "real job." Real jobs had insurance benefits and vacation time and best of all, a desk to sit down when her feet started to hurt. The summer before, she'd picked up an old electric typewriter at the flea market and checked out a teach-yourself-to-type book from the public library. I would set the kitchen timer for her so she could do the test in the back of the book. She got up to seventy-five words a minute with only one error, unless you count leaving out a comma or period here and there. Those mistakes were so tiny; Mama said she just didn't notice them.
Real jobs are in offices, so we headed to what Sylvia called the Loop and what Mama called downtown. We picked up the bus a few blocks from Sylvia's place, since Mama figured it would cost too much to park the truck in the city. We had the Want Ads from Sunday's paper; Sylvia had given them to us before we left. It took us awhile to find our way around Chicago on foot, but we kept going and made it to six different companies before lunch. I waited in the lobby, or outside the building if they didn't have a lobby. Mama said if anyone tried to talk to me except a policeman, I was to walk away quickly like I knew exactly where I was going. "But don't go farther than a block or so," she added. "You might get lost."
She didn't stay long enough in any of those places for me to get scared. "They'll keep my application on file, or so they tell me," she said, each time sounding more discouraged. "By the time they get around to calling, if they ever do, I bet Sylvia doesn't even remember us anymore."
We had lunch in a tiny hamburger place, no tables or booths, just a counter where you had to eat standing. "At least we have an address and phone number to use," Mama said. "You can't get a job without those. Sylvia's like a godsend." I mumbled something about Sylvia seeming grumpy and Mama frowned. "She doesn't owe us anything, Josephine. Everything she does for us is charity. Remember that." I said okay, but I still thought Sylvia wasn't nice like the people back home. Even the hamburger man wasn't nice. He gave me a dirty look just for asking where the straws were.
It was about four o'clock in the afternoon when Mama finally got an interview. We'd taken another bus out to a factory on the west end of town. I was supposed to wait on the side of the building in a field, mostly dirt, clumps of grass here and there, nothing around but a row of huge silver upside down V's where they'd strung the power lines, crisscrossing the sky like ugly scars. I sat on a flat rock and waited until my rear got cold and my legs felt stiff; then I decided to walk around the field to see if I could find the train I kept hearing. Back home I would sit in my rocker for hours and watch the trains go by. It made me feel so peaceful, like nothing could go wrong.
When I got to the end of the field, I realized that what looked like a woods was really just a few trees that covered up a sharp cliff that led straight down to a railroad yard. I pushed the branches out of the way to look, but I was careful not to get too close to the edge.
It was almost dark. I'd gone back to where Mama left me three times but she wasn't there. I was sitting at the bottom of one of those trees, counting the cars on the trains that passed, trying to tear apart an acorn with my fingernail, when I pushed up the back of my jacket under my head so I could lie down and rest, just for a minute. I fell asleep; I was dreaming of riding on one of those trains, when I suddenly realized the sensation I had of moving wasn't part of the dream. I must have rolled to the edge of the cliff in my sleep and now I was wide awake and going down it sideways, my hands trying to grab a branch or a rock to stop myself, but everything I touched came with me, hitting the inside of my arms or my chest as it rolled downward to the bottom, where there was nothing soft to land on, only gravel, and next to that, train tracks.
When I hit the gravel, I didn't lose consciousness but my head was throbbing and pretty much everything on me was tender, even my hair, which had caught a twig on the way down and was now a knotted mess. I lay there for a few minutes, pulling out pieces of gravel from the palms of my hands. I sat up, looked under my coat and realized the wet spot I felt on my shoulder was blood. I remembered when Mama bought that jacket she'd said it was nylon and could take anything. She was right. Even though I was ripped up, it was just fine. Unfortunately my pants weren't as tough, and they were shredded at the knees. I had also lost a shoe somehow. None of this mattered to me though. Now that I was alive, all I cared about was getting back up in the field so I'd be there when Mama came looking.
There was no way to climb up where I was, it was too steep, and so I walked around, hoping to find a place where the cliff would become just an ordinary hill. I was limping a little but I knew my foot wasn't broken because I could put weight on it, which was the real test according to this kid Brendan who had broken his foot last year jumping off the roof of our house. I walked and walked until finally I found a dirt path up. I slipped a few times but I made it, and as soon as I came out into the middle of the field, I saw Mama and a tall man standing by the front door of the big gray factory.
The man had his back facing my direction, but Mama noticed me. Even in the dark I could see her sticking her finger out, motioning me to stay put, and then scratching her hair, casually, so the man wouldn't know. I wanted to stay put, but I just couldn't do it. I rushed over to where they were standing. As soon as I got close enough to Mama to smell her lemon hand cream, I burst into tears.
She put her hand down on my shoulder, not hard, but harder than she normally touched me. I was so surprised, I wailed even louder. She told the man, who turned out to be the department manager, that I was her daughter. And she apologized for bringing me along to the interview.
"Why are you crying?" he said, looking down at me. "Did you hurt yourself?"
Naturally, I felt like my mother should have asked that first, not some stranger, but his voice sounded friendly so I glanced up at him and nodded my head.
"She's fine," Mama said, taking her fingers and pressing on the very place where my shoulder was torn up and bleeding. "She's just tired," she added, pressing again.
I knew that pressing was a sign for me to be quiet and I knew that Mama couldn't have realized she was hurting me, because my jacket covered up the blood, but still, I was mad. I was almost killed and she wouldn't even look at me. She hadn't even noticed my missing shoe.
The man asked if I wanted to go inside and get a candy bar from the vending machine. Mama sighed loud and long, which I knew meant I was supposed to say no, but I looked away from her and said yes.
When we got into the building, the florescent lights were so bright I started blinking. We didn't even make it past the front entrance hallway before the man, Mr. Norford was his name, let out a gasp because blood was dripping from the bottom of my jacket sleeve onto the blue carpet.
"See, Mama, I am hurt." I felt justified and more than a little smug.
Mr. Norford got me a Hershey Bar before he drove us to the hospital. I had to sit as still as possible while the emergency room doctor put three stitches in my shoulder and then used a silver tool to pull a chunk of gravel out of my left palm. Mr. Norford told me I was very brave. He said his three kids would have screamed bloody murder if they'd had to go through this. The doctor and two nurses smiled and patted me like I was a little princess. Mama thanked Mr. Norford for doing this for us: once in the hospital waiting room, and again when he dropped us "home"—that is, in front of Sylvia's house—about three hours later.
Now that I'd had all this attention, I was starting to feel a little guilty. Mama was so quiet. I figured she was upset because I'd ruined the interview. I was about to apologize when I heard Sylvia's voice perk up as she congratulated Mama for finding a job so quickly. "I guess you'll be looking for an apartment tomorrow then?"
I was sitting on Sylvia's living room floor next to our bags, holding a stuffed turtle that I'd found in the back seat of Mr. Norford's car. He'd insisted on giving it to me, despite Mama's protests. "My son doesn't play with it anymore," Mr. Norford said, winking in the rearview mirror. "He won't even miss it."
"Mr. Norford hired you, Mama?" This meant I might see him again. Maybe even get more toys his kids didn't want.
"Yes," she said softly, before she turned her attention back to Sylvia, who was giving her advice about good, cheap places to look for an apartment.
Later, when we were lying on the floor with the lights off and Mama still hadn't said more than a couple of words, I turned to face her. "I know I did wrong not staying put like you told me. I'm sorry."
"No," she said, quickly and a little bit sharp. "You didn't do a thing. You've got nothing to be sorry for."
"Why're you upset then? Don't you want your new job?"
"Sure I do." Her voice sounded far away. "I want a lot of things, Jo. But sometimes I'm not so good at doing all of them at once."
"You can do it," I told her, because that's what she always told me when I felt bad.
"I can try," she whispered. "And I promise you, I'll try harder in the future."
The next morning, we set out early to find our perfect apartment. It was late afternoon when we decided we'd found something good enough. A one bedroom, on the third floor, with a small balcony, big enough for my rocker, Mama pointed out, ignoring the fact that she hadn't had time to grab my rocker when she left.
The landlord had already taken our money and gone downstairs to his place. We were standing on that balcony, just the two of us, when she leaned down and put her arm around my shoulders, but awkwardly now, too gentle, the way she usually touched me. I always figured it had started when I was a tiny girl, and her body was so broken by my father that reaching for me actually caused her pain. It took me a long time before I understood that it was a choice for her, and a hard one at that: to try to love without causing any harm.
"Well, here we are then," she finally said, standing up straighter. The street was busy and noisy: guys with boom boxes, cars honking, and lots of kids laughing and talking and yelling about nothing. But I knew Mama and I would get used to it before long.
"Here we are," I repeated, and carefully took her hand.