Every crack of the bat echoes in my fuzzy brain. I sit on top of a picnic table with Bebe and Shay, watching our men pound balls in separate cages. I think maybe there’s a bet going between them to see who hits the most, but I’m long past remembering the details.
My last intelligent thought was how we should build a batting cage in Rawlins. In my spaced-out brain, I do wonder if we already have one, but I never figure out the answer before losing interest altogether.
Shay and Bebe talk about their kids. I know Bebe has two daughters and I suspect she’s pregnant based on the snippets of their conversation. Shay, though, might or might not be the mother of the boys she mentions. I think I’m supposed to know the stories of these women, having met them through Ginger years ago. Unable to keep track of people’s kids, I just nod and smile.
Nearby, Glitch pounds away at the balls shooting out from the machine. At some point, he asks if I wanted to give it a try. I shake my head and wish I hadn’t drank so much so quickly.
“Darby suggests I drink cream soda to help with my morning sickness,” Bebe tells Shay.
Hearing Darby’s name sends a booze-induced shudder through me. Joker’s ex-wife holds a special spot in Little Memphis. First, she lost her son, and then her marriage failed soon after. Despite their divorce, she remains close to Joker and the club. Under different circumstances, Darby would fit right into the crew. Like when an asshole broke into her house and, rather than hide like a bitch, she blasted him dead with a shotgun.
Much like Ginger, Darby helped plenty of women over the years. Gave them a place to crash, found them jobs, and got them back on their feet. Two of the women she helped sit next to me right now.
My mother’s face flashes in my mind, and I nearly reach out to touch her. I remember sitting on her lap and playing with her thick brown hair. She would hold me tight against her as if afraid to let me go. Her eyes were often swollen and bruised. Her lips always busted. I can’t remember a time when she wasn’t beaten down.
Or when the smell of booze didn’t linger on her breath.
The same kind of cheap alcohol I now reek of. Drinking killed her, but my father made her life unbearable without the poison to dull her pain. Now I’m overwhelmed by my feelings for Glitch, and I immediately reach for booze too. I guess I’m not so different from the woman I’ve viewed as weak.
Why hadn’t she found a woman like Darby to help her? Shay and Bebe were lucky, but my mother never got the chance. She was alone in a place where she felt alien, trapped, and abandoned. No one cared about her in the US. Not my father’s family in Texas or our old neighbors who couldn’t deal with her broken English. No one fucking cared about her like Darby cared for these women or how Ginger watched out for me.
“It’s okay,” Bebe says while rubbing my back.
I realize I’m shaking. Crying too. Resting my face on my knees, I wrap my arms around my legs and work to steady my sobs.
My mother wasn’t a bad person. She didn’t deserve to die so young or live so painfully. She made one single mistake in her life. Once she married my father, her fate was sealed.
Except it wasn’t. She could have run away from him. Taken me and run to the police or a shelter. She could have even gone to a neighbor and asked for help. They might have laughed at her or called my father, but maybe they would have told her how to get free. She didn’t know the way things worked in this country, and those people could have helped her. Did she even try or did she choose to drink away those thoughts until the booze killed her and left me to fend for myself?
“Clove, don’t cry,” Shay says, now sitting on the other side of me.
These strangers attempt to comfort me in the way no one ever did my mother. People must have noticed her bruised face. Didn’t they see the constant marks on her throat from where my father choked her while screaming that she was an ugly whore? Did they notice and not care?
Or did some try to help and my mother refused? Was she too proud or afraid to leave her suffering for the unknown?
I have so many questions for her. I wish I could hold her like she did me and ask her why she didn’t save us. But I’ll never know the answers or comfort my long-dead mother.
“Why am I thinking of this now?” I ask Shay and Bebe. “I didn’t think about my mom for years, but now she’s always in my thoughts. I see her everywhere. What’s wrong with me?”
“That’s normal,” Bebe says. “Grief often springs up unexpectedly. I find myself thinking of my dead sister at the most random times. Sometimes when I’m happiest, I’ll feel guilty that Sabine can’t be happy too. Or I’ll get depressed that she will never see my kids or share experiences with me. I’ll even get angry at random times. You have to accept that grief doesn’t rise up conveniently like on the anniversary or when we’re prepared. It hits us when our guard is down like when we’re happy or relaxed.”
Bebe’s words make sense. I’m relaxed in Rawlins. Boredom and restlessness aren’t problems I’ve dealt with before. Now they torment me. I’m edgy a lot too as if terrified of an unseen problem. Could these memories and unanswerable questions explain my fear? Is my life so fucking easy now that my past can rear its ugly head?
Glitch said my moodiness was related to the cold season. The holidays don’t help either. My friends are settling into domesticated lives. Christmas was a festive time for everyone except me. As the odd woman out, I felt alone in a crew of women with people to love.
Through my tears, I look at Glitch swinging at the balls. He cares about me, even though I refuse to let myself care too much about him. If loneliness leads to these painful memories I’m drowning in, could letting him closer help me be me again?