Ann-Elizabeth
MAMA’S BOYFRIEND calls him Idiot.
I’m seventeen years old, but if there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that the only idiot living in our house is Lance, my mama’s boyfriend.
His real name is Henry. At least that’s what we called him before Mama let Lance move in, and he decided that my dog could no longer live inside or be referred to as Henry.
“That’s a damn stupid name for a dog bred to be a killer,” he had declared with his usual air of pseudo-authority. “A grandpa-name like that’s not gonna change what he is down deep.”
So, just like that, he now lives at the end of a chain in our backyard. Lance put a big padlock on his collar, and the chain is looped around a tree. From my bedroom window, I can see the worn dirt path that now forms the outer perimeter of Henry’s world.
While I’m at school, Henry walks the farthest edge of the circle, waiting for me to come home. I know this because our neighbor, also known in the trailer park as Crazy Sadie, screamed the information to me from her front porch one day as I was getting off the bus. I don’t know if she’s actually crazy or not, but her appearance doesn’t do a lot to make you conclude otherwise. Her hair stands out in frizzy strands of electricity. Her eyes are shock-wide behind thick, round glasses with dark brown frames, and she has this constant look of having seen something no one should ever have to see.
“Hey, Ann-Elizabeth! That dog of yours is going to walk his legs off one of these days. From the time you leave in the morning until the minute you get back in the afternoon, he never stops except to take a drink of water out of his bucket. I think you might need to have his head checked.”
It would have been easy to make the obvious comparison between the pot calling the kettle black and all that, but I decided I needed to be a bigger person than that and didn’t.
You’re probably wondering by now why a girl like me living in a trailer park outside Nashville, Tennessee with a neighbor named Crazy Sadie would have a fancy name like Ann-Elizabeth. As a matter of fact, I once asked Mama about this, and she said, “You’re old enough to know by now, hon, that you didn’t exactly win the lottery where mothers are concerned. I figured a good respectable name was the one thing I could give you to let the rest of the world know what kind of girl you’re going to be when you grow up.”
Just so you know, I don’t see my mama as a loser, even though that’s how she sees herself. I don’t really even remember the first time I realized that. It’s like something I’ve always known, way before memory ever got a foothold in my brain.
I do know that her daddy, my grandpa, saw her as the worst thing that ever happened to him. Her mama, my grandma, got pregnant at sixteen. Grandpa, out of some sense of duty, or who knows what, married her. He then spent their whole life together yelling at her for the burden she had saddled him with in the form of my mother.
Other than that, I don’t know a lot about Mama’s growing up years. I do have a clear picture of why she never imagined herself getting anywhere in this world. Grades didn’t come easy to her, but beatings apparently did. Every time she brought home a report card that contained mostly C’s or worse, she had to stay home from school while the bruises on her face faded enough that she could go back without any questions being asked by the teacher.
When I was seven, I found an old diary of hers in a box of stuff we were moving from a house we’d been renting and had to leave because we could no longer afford the rent. The journal fell out, and instead of putting it back like I should have, I stuffed it under my shirt and read it late that night in my new bedroom.
The thing is it was like I was reading about someone I had never met. I was able to get through most of it by pretending that was true. At least until the last few pages. Then the image of my mama who worked twelve hour days just to keep a roof over our heads began to merge with the child who had poured her heart into an old yellowed journal. A little girl who never remembered being told anything other than that she was too stupid to ever amount to anything. And that the government was just wasting its money on her public school education.
I don’t guess there’s any wonder why she dropped out at fifteen and ran away from home.
I used to question how a father could tear down his own child the way my grandpa did my mama. Somewhere along the way, I decided he must have really hated himself and that making her seem less probably made him feel like more. I know. Twisted, right? But then no one ever called human beings simple, did they?
My mama repeated her own mama’s history in me, although she’s never told me I was a mistake. In fact, she calls me the only real blessing she’s ever had in her life. I know she believes that to be true.
We’ve never been anything but poor. But if you don’t count the times we’ve been evicted from places where we’ve lived, I loved our life until Mama started dating Lance.
One thing Mama is and always has been is beautiful. At the convenience store where she works, it’s shocking to walk in and see her standing behind the counter of such an otherwise grimy place. My guess is Lance recognized the pearl that appeared in that worn out old oyster the day she started working there. That’s the kind of guy he is. He sees things worth taking advantage of, recognizes when he actually has a shot at doing so. Then he uses every morsel of charm God gave him to snake his way into his target’s heart.
He has this way of figuring out what someone needs, and then he becomes exactly that. Like a human chameleon. Until he gets what he wants, anyway, and then you get to see the real Lance.
At this point, you’re probably thinking I’m sounding a little melodramatic. But not really. I just think there are some people among us who have no desire to use whatever gifts they have for anything other than their own self.
The first couple of months that he lived in our house, he would come home after work, clean up fast and have supper waiting on the table when Mama got home. He even let Henry stay in the house. Although I guess in hindsight I should have figured out what was coming. He started to complain about Henry sitting on the couch, Henry shedding hair on the floor, Henry looking like one of those dogs people use to fight.
“You know they turn on their people out of the blue and attack them for no reason?” he had said one night at the supper table, his accusation followed by a loud burp no doubt prompted by the last can in a six-pack.
When he first started saying these things, he said them with a kind of lightness that made you think he was kidding. Unless, that is, you happened to catch the look in his eyes, which I had a number of times.
When he began to suggest that it would be better if Henry lived outside, I pleaded with Mama to make him stop saying it because it was unthinkable to me that he would sleep any place other than in my bed beside me at night. Since the day we’d found him almost four years ago, he’d never slept anywhere else.
The Saturday afternoon we brought him home, Mama and I had gone in to town for groceries. There’s this long stretch before you get to our trailer park that dips down and rises back up again. Henry had been sitting in the dip smack dab in the middle of the road, barely six weeks old, like he was waiting for whoever had dropped him there to come back, the expression on his face not yet one of fear, but expectation that surely, they would.
As soon as we got close enough to see the condition he was in, I wondered how he could ever have thought they would come back for him. But then, like my mama, I guess if you’ve never been treated better, you don’t know to expect better.
At first, Mama kept her foot on the accelerator. “Ann-Elizabeth, you know we can’t afford a puppy,” she’d said with a sigh. “I can barely feed the two of us.”
“He’s in the road!” I yelled. “Somebody’s going to hit him!”
She didn’t start to pull over until we were fifty yards or so past him, me looking back, and instantly crying for the pitiful little soul who had thought we were going to be the ones to stop for him.
When she finally stomped the brakes and started backing the car up, I sobbed in outright relief.
Henry began trotting toward us, his tail tucked with uncertainty. He must have known we were probably his last hope and worth the risk.
“Hurry up and get him,” Mama said with resolution in her voice. “And watch for cars, Ann-Elizabeth!”
If anyone had witnessed the whole thing, Henry and I must have looked like one of those scenes in a movie where two people who’ve just realized they’re in love run toward each other across some lush, green field. Our field was asphalt, but the love was instant.
I had barely even leaned over before he jumped up and into my arms, anchoring his little paws to my shoulders. My heart clenched with an unbelievable feeling of happiness and joy.
I was actually glad for the awful person who had left him there, glad because it meant this puppy was now mine. I was never going to let anything bad happen to him again.
I never thought then that it wouldn’t be true.
I hopped in the back seat with him huddled against me, mainly so Mama wouldn’t have to look at the two of us and possibly have time to rethink her decision. And two, because as soon as I realized he was covered in seed ticks, I knew they were going to be all over the car by the time we got home. I would need to find a way to clean them out before she saw them.
When we got to the trailer, I hustled him around back and used the water hose to get rid of all the loose ticks still on him. Hoisting his thin little body up, I carried him in the house and found a towel to dry him off. Then I grabbed a few slices of bread and a bowl of water from the kitchen and took him back outside where I set to work picking off ticks for the next two hours.
There were hundreds, and it was a miracle the poor little thing had any blood left in him with all those things trying to suck the life out of him.
Mama called out the back door several times, asking me what I was doing. “Just spiffing him up a bit,” I told her. Even though his coat was dull and dry with lack of care or nutrition, I wanted him looking his best when she laid eyes on him again.
When I was done with the tick-picking, I gave him another bath with some liquid soap and dried him with a new towel. He couldn’t have weighed more than ten pounds soaking wet. His ribs stuck out like he’d never had a decent meal in his life. When I thought to wonder about whether he had any brothers or sisters, I closed my mind to what might have happened to the others. I simply couldn’t think about it.
All my efforts to make Henry impressive had not led to a willingness on Mama’s part to let me have him. That night, when she came to tuck me in, he was already asleep, snuggled up in the curve of my left arm, his soft little head resting on my shoulder.
Mama sat down on the bed next to me, rubbing her hand across my hair. “Ann-Elizabeth,” she said, “we can’t keep him.”
The words felt like someone had just dropped a box of rocks on my chest. “Why?” I could barely hear myself saying the word.
“It costs a lot of money to take care of a dog. He’ll have to go to the vet for shots. We’ll have to buy food for him every week. Have him neutered.”
“What’s neutered?” I had asked.
“So he can’t cause a girl dog to have babies.”
“Well, how would he do that? He’ll always be with me.”
“Ann-Elizabeth-”
“Mama, I’m keeping him,” I said, squeezing him tight against me.
I can still remember the shock on her face. I had never spoken to her in a voice anywhere near this one. Never had any reason, really, to defy her. I didn’t want to then, but I already loved Henry like I had never loved anyone in the world except Mama herself. I didn’t care what I had to give up if it meant we could keep him.
“You can use part of the money you spend for me on his food,” I said. “Or I’ll just share mine with him. And I can do chores for some of our neighbors to help pay for the vet.”
To her credit, I could see how hard it was for Mama to stand her ground. But in spite of all my pleading, she shook her head and stood up. “I can’t take on anymore responsibility, Ann-Elizabeth. I’m barely making ends meet as it is. You’re going to have to let him go in the morning, okay?”
And with that, she left my room.
I cried most of the night, hugging Henry so tight against me, it was a wonder he could sleep at all. But he did. I guess he was that exhausted. I thought about running away from home the way Mama had when she was a girl and taking Henry with me, but I had no idea where we would go or how we would feed ourselves. So I just lay awake, staring at the dark ceiling above my head and wondering why life had to be so unfair.
The next morning, I didn’t get up at my usual time. I stayed in bed, holding him, unwilling to face what was ahead.
There was no avoiding it when Mama knocked on my door and said, “The animal control truck is here, Ann-Elizabeth. Come on and bring him out. I’m sure they’ll be able to find him a good home with someone who can afford to take care of him. At least we kept him from getting hit by a car yesterday.”
I could hear by the note in her voice that there was no point in arguing with her. The tears slid down my face, with no other sound coming from me. I stood up, and Henry rubbed his face against my neck, not looking at Mama, as if he too knew something awful was about to happen, but there was nothing he could do to change it.
I walked past Mama and out of the room. She followed quietly behind me and then stepped in front of us to open the door and lead the way out to the blue and white truck parked in our driveway.
The man standing there waiting for us wore a brown uniform. A gun hung in a holster around his waist. He glanced at the watch on his left wrist, an impatient look on his face, as if he had other places to be, and we were wasting his time. He opened a panel on the side of the truck. The door had a vent on it, but the inside was dark and scary-looking. I would sooner have put myself in there than let him put Henry in, but he just reached out all of a sudden and took him from me, like he wasn’t mine, like he didn’t belong to anybody, but was just a piece of county property without value.
Before I could say a word, he had shoved the now-whining Henry in the side door and slammed it shut. “Y’all have a good day, now,” he said.
An audible gasp burst out of my throat. I turned and ran back inside the house, crying so loud now that it made my own ears hurt, and I didn’t care if I did sound like a child. In my room, I threw myself on the bed, my heart feeling as if it were going to shatter into a thousand pieces. I have to tell you I just wanted to die right then. I couldn’t even begin to imagine the fear Henry felt or what was going to happen to him now. I thought of the awful stories I’d heard about the county pound and the fact that it had been built right next to the landfill and what happened to the dogs when they were put to sleep because nobody wanted them.
I don’t know how long I lay there, sobbing. But I never heard the door open. I didn’t know Mama was even in the room, in fact, until she sat down on my bed, and then I felt the soft, furry face nuzzling into the corner of my neck.
Shocked, I bolted up and stared at Mama who was looking at me with pure apology in her eyes.
“Why?” I asked, not letting my gaze go to Henry yet because I was sure this had to be some awful joke that would end up not being true.
“I really believed they would try to find him a good home,” she said. “I would never have called if I hadn’t thought that. I asked the man just now how likely it was that he would be adopted. He said because of his breed, that probably wasn’t going to happen. You pretty much never ask for anything, Ann-Elizabeth. I’m sorry for being so selfish, honey.”
I threw my arms around her neck then and hugged her so hard that in between us, Henry squealed in protest. We both started to laugh, pulling back to let him wriggle free, his little tail thumping against us.
I really believe love gets built around certain moments in our lives. This was one of the moments that made me know for sure I would always love my mama no matter what else she ever did or didn’t do.