Authors: Leigh Byrne
I was sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of Audrey, holding one of her cold, stiff feet in my hands. Mama was beside me with the other foot, showing me how to use gentle pressure with my thumbs to roll away the loose, cheesy flesh from between Audrey’s toes, and scratch off the more stubborn patches with my fingernails.
The dead skin that accumulated on Audrey’s feet had to be tended to on a regular basis. Not because it itched, or was uncomfortable to her in any way; she couldn’t feel anything south of her hips. And not because of how gross it looked, all yellow and crusty—but because of the smell, nauseatingly sweet, like meat when it first begins to go bad. If the skin wasn’t cleared away, at least weekly, the smell of it would first permeate every surface in the bedroom Audrey and I shared, and then waft down the hallway, gradually claiming the rest of the house.
“It stinks,” I whined.
“Then breathe through your mouth,” Mama said.
“I
am
breathing through my mouth, and I can still smell it.”
“Shush before you hurt your sister’s feelings.”
Mama always called Audrey my sister, but she wasn’t really. She was only my half sister because she had a different father than my brothers and me. Mama said he deserted her after she got pregnant, and she had to drop out of high school when she was only seventeen and take care of a baby all by herself.
She handed me a bottle of Rose Milk. “Try adding some of this.”
I pumped a mound of the pink lotion into my palm, slathered it between my hands, and began rolling away the skin on Audrey’s feet, like Mama had showed me.
“Still stinks,” I mumbled under my breath.
“
Tuesday,
not another word!”
I loved how she said my name in her syrupy, Southern way, like,
Tooos
-de. I loved my name too. I was named after the beautiful actress from the sixties, Tuesday Weld.
“I had my mind all set to name you Marilyn, you know, after Marilyn Monroe,” Mama had explained. “Then a few hours before you were born, out of the clear blue, one of the nurses at the hospital up and asked me, ‘Has anybody ever told you that you resemble Tuesday Weld?’ Well, I figured it had to be a sign. I mean, it was the perfect name for you, because you were born that night, and it was on a Tuesday!” She leaned in to me and whispered, “Actually, it was seven minutes past twelve, Wednesday morning, but it was still dark out, so it felt like Tuesday to me.”
Mama liked to name her kids after famous people. Audrey was named after Audrey Hepburn, and she wanted to name my older brother, Nick, after Charlton Heston. But Daddy stepped in and vetoed the idea, insisting his firstborn be his namesake. He couldn’t think of anything to save my younger brother, James Dean, though.
Mama got up, lit a cherry incense stick, and stuck it in an empty bud vase on Audrey’s dresser. As I watched the thin smoke spiral up into the room, I thought about death.
My only experience with death had been the previous summer. It was hot that day, hot enough, as we say in the South, to fry bacon on the sidewalk, and so my brothers, Nick Jr. and Jimmy D., and I had brought our game of hide-and-seek inside our house to cool off under the air-conditioner.
It was my turn to hide. I was standing in the living room trying to decide between behind the couch, or under the drop leaf table, when I got the idea in my head that it would be neat if I could slip outside and hide in the bushes in front of the house. I was sure my brothers would never look for me there.
I could hear them in the kitchen counting…eighty-nine… ninety…ninety-one, so I eased open the door to go out. As I stepped onto the front porch, Jacque, Mama’s toy poodle, came from nowhere, weaved through my legs, and dashed out into the yard.
Jacque, a hyper dog, had always been confined to a leash whenever we took him out because Mama was afraid he might run into the road. Now, unrestrained in the open yard for the first time, he was crazy with his freedom, darting in all directions.
I knew Mama would be upset with me if she found out I had let him loose, so I chased after him, thinking I could catch him and bring him back inside before she realized what had happened. But Jacque was fast, and I was no match for his sharp side-to-side movement. I was determined, though, and driven by my fear of getting into trouble. So after a feverish pursuit, resulting in two grass-skinned knees, I did manage to trap him between some bushes and the mailbox.
Quickly, I dove to grab him. But he dodged away from me. I dove again, and this time he ran through the bushes, and into the road, right in the path of a yellow Volkswagen Beetle.
The next thing I remember is hearing three sounds at once: the screech of car brakes, a yelp, and a thud. I rushed into the road, the asphalt scorching the bottoms of my bare feet, and found Jacque lying in front of the Volkswagen, motionless. He looked like he had stretched out for an afternoon nap, except his tongue hung from the side of his open mouth, and blood trickled from one nostril.
Daddy, Mama, and my brothers came running out of the house to see what all the commotion was about. Mama let out a painful gasp when she saw what had happened, and then covered her mouth with both hands. Daddy bent down and felt of Jacque’s neck, pronounced him dead, and scooped up his limp body from the road.
We all, including the teenage girl who was driving the Volkswagen, followed Daddy into the backyard, and formed a quiet circle around him, while he dug a grave under a mimosa tree. We stood there in awkward silence for what seemed like the longest time, watching him toss shovel after shovel of dirt over Jacque’s body.
Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. “Daddy, did Jacque hurt when he got hit by the car?”
Everybody turned and looked at me at once.
Daddy stopped digging, wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his wrist, and propped one arm on the shovel. “Oh, no, honey, it all happened so fast he didn’t feel a thing.”
“How did he get outside in the first place?” Mama asked no one in particular.
“He ran through my legs when I was going out the door!” I piped up. “He was so fast I didn’t even see him coming!”
“What were you doing going out the front door?” she asked.
“We were playing hide-and-seek, and I wanted to hide in the bushes.”
“You know better, Tuesday!” she scolded. “You know you’re not allowed to play in the front yard!”
“I’m sorry, Mama!”
“Sorry isn’t good enough this time, young lady. Maybe if you had done as you were told, Jacque wouldn’t have been killed!”
She turned her back to me and walked into the house. It would have hurt less if she’d whacked me across the face with the shovel.
In the next few days, Jacque, who had once been ignored by everyone in the family except Mama, suddenly became the greatest dog that ever lived.
“I miss him so much!” Nick said. “Remember when we gave him a bath, and he shook soap bubbles all over us?”
“He was so cute when he was wet!” Jimmy D. added.
Mama was truly heartsick, though. She never came right out and blamed me for Jacque’s death; she didn’t have to. I could tell by the cold distance she created between us. But with time her sadness waned, and she threw away Jacque’s squeaky toys, and the blanket he had slept on in the garage. With every remnant of him gone from our sight, it didn’t take long for our family to forget all about him and turn our attention, and affection, to our other dog, a cocker spaniel mix named Rusty.
The burnt part of the incense became too heavy to support itself any longer and fell, splattering gray ashes on top of the dresser. It was in that instant that it hit me, with absolute certainty, that I wanted what had happened to Jacque to happen to Audrey. I knew it wasn’t likely she would be hit by a car, but I wanted her to die, somehow, and for someone to come and take her body away, along with all her stuff. After her death, Mama and Daddy would be sad for a while, like they were with Jacque, but they would get over the loss, and in time forget all about her and turn their attention to me, their other daughter.
Everyone said it should have already happened anyway. They said it was a miracle Audrey had lived to be sixteen. She caught the polio virus when she was a baby, and according to Mama, ever since then she had been either sick or on the brink of sickness. And there had been countless trips to the emergency room. Once she stopped breathing in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, and the paramedics had to perform a tracheotomy to keep her alive. The procedure left a bright pink heart-shaped scar smack in the middle of her throat, a fitting reminder that she had cheated death.
Audrey and her sickness consumed far too much of my mama’s life, far too much of my life. Without her our family could go anywhere we wanted, places we had never been able to go before, like the theater, without worrying about whether or not we could take her wheelchair. I thought if only she were gone, our lives would be perfect, our family would be perfect. But I was only seven years old; I didn’t know how to make someone die.
“Good morning, angel!” Mama said, as she stood in the doorway, yawning. She entered the room, tying the belt of her house robe.
Audrey’s face lit up. “Morning, Mama!”
Mama passed by my bed on her way to Audrey’s. “And look who else is awake!” I leaped up and ran to her side, flinging my arms around her waist.
With me glued to her hip, she went over to the window and raised the blinds. “How are you feeling this morning?” she asked Audrey.
A shaft of sunlight shot across Audrey’s eyes. She snapped them shut. “Just fine.”
Mama looked down at me and stroked the back of my head. “Tuesday, do you want to help me get ready for your sister’s bath?”
I didn’t. I hated helping with Audrey’s bath. I hated anything to do with taking care of her. But I loved being around Mama. “Sure,” I answered, faking enthusiasm, and followed her into the bathroom.
Our bathroom had barely enough space for both of us to squeeze into at once. Every room in our house in Spring Hill, Tennessee, was small, and our family of six was cramped. A three-bedroom ranch was the best Daddy could afford on a teacher’s salary. But when it came to the necessities in life, we never wanted for a thing. At night we went to bed with our bellies full—Mama knew how to make a bag of pinto beans and a ten-pound sack of potatoes go a long way—and we kids always had at least two outfits and a new pair of shoes to start school every year.
Mama pulled two rusty-edged, white enamel washbowls from under the bathroom sink and filled them with warm water from the tap. One bowl of water would be used to wet the sponge and lather the soap for Audrey’s bath, and the other, to rinse the soap off.
“Why can’t you put Audrey in the bathtub?” I asked.
“Now, Tuesday, you know the answer to that question. You know your sister can’t sit by herself.”
“She can sit by herself in her wheelchair,” I pointed out.
“Why can’t she sit in the tub? I’ll help you put her in.”
“I’ve explained this to you before, Tuesday. Audrey’s muscles don’t work, that’s why I have to strap her in her chair to keep her from falling over.”
“But she doesn’t even try to sit up. Maybe if you didn’t strap her in, she would try to sit on her own.”
“That’s enough, young lady!” she snapped. “Now hush up talking like that before she hears you.” She lifted one of the bowls of water, and headed out the door of the bathroom. “You get the soap and the towels, and I’ll come back for the other bowl.”
I took the towels and soap to Mama. She arranged them, along with the wash bowls and a sponge, on the bedside table. Then she undressed Audrey and draped one of the towels over her lower body for privacy. She dipped the sponge into one of the bowls of water, and rubbed it against the bar of soap.
“You’re a living angel; that’s what you are,” Mama said soothingly, as she eased the sponge onto Audrey’s chest, and worked it in a circular motion.
“Oh, Mama, you always say that,” said Audrey.
“That’s because it’s true, honey!”
Mama lifted Audrey’s right arm—which was nothing more than a misshapen mass of flabby flesh dangling at her side—and ran the sponge under it a few times. When she was satisfied, she moved on to the left arm. We called Audrey’s left arm her good arm because it was leaner than the right, and stronger in comparison, but it wasn’t of much use to her because her left hand was rigid, and clamped shut. Still, she tried to do simple tasks with her good arm, to comb her hair, and brush her teeth, but it was a major struggle, and she was always exhausted afterward. Whenever she attempted to eat on her own, most of her food ended up on the floor, and when she went to pick up a drink, she knocked it over instead.
Audrey was shivering, and her lips were turning purple. “I’m getting cold,” she said.
Mama quickened her pace, sliding the sponge down the sides of Audrey’s thick torso. “You feel okay, don’t you?” she asked, reaching up and touching the back of her hand to Audrey’s forehead. “I mean, you don’t feel sick, do you?”
“No, Mama, I’m not sick, I’m just cold.”
“You need to start doing your frog breathing exercise again.”
“But I feel fine.”
“You know as well as I do that could change at any minute. Besides, there’s a flu going around right now, and you know you catch
everything.
”
“But I hate frog breathing; it’s hard!”
I’d seen Audrey do her breathing exercise before. All she had to do was suck air into her lungs in tiny gulps, hold it for a while, and then let it out again. Gulp, gulp, gulp, and then exhale. I thought she wasn’t trying, like I thought she wasn’t trying to sit on her own.
“Frog breathing isn’t hard, Audrey,” I butted in.”You’re just lazy!”
“You shut up!” Audrey snapped back. “You don’t know nothing anyway. You’re just a little twirp!”
Mama gave me a stern look as she removed the towel that was draped over Audrey’s legs. “Audrey, honey, I know frog breathing is hard,” she said. “Tuesday doesn’t know what it’s like to have weak lungs. But even though it’s hard, you still have to do it.”
From the waist up, Audrey was a fully developed sixteen-year-old girl, but her legs never caught up with the rest of her body. They were frail and shapeless, with prominent, zipper-like scars that started at her knees and went all the way to her ankles. The scars were from an operation she had where surgeons removed bones from her legs and put them in her back to correct her severe scoliosis. The surgery left another deeper, fleshier scar that ran the length of her back.
When Mama finished Audrey’s bath, she dressed her in a blue sweatshirt, black polyester pants, and bobby socks, which she folded down at the top, making sure they were perfectly even, as if it mattered. I couldn’t figure out why she took so much care in dressing Audrey when nobody outside the family ever saw her, except the doctor when it was time for her checkup, and a tutor who came two or three days a week.
Mama stepped back and took a look. “Now, you’re all set. Ready to get into your chair?”
Audrey nodded, and Mama slid one arm under her neck and the other behind her knees. “Here we go,” she said, “on three.” They counted together as she lifted Audrey from her bed and carefully lowered her into her wheelchair. “You can watch television now,” she said, bending to flip the footplates of the wheelchair down. “But later on, you’re doing your breathing exercises.”
She gathered up the towels and washbowls. I followed close behind her as she headed out of the room. She stopped when we got to the door. “Tuesday, you stay in here and keep your sister company. I’ve got a mountain of laundry to do, and I don’t need a tagalong.”
I stomped back over to Audrey, sat on the floor in front of the television set, and pouted.
Later, like we did every Saturday afternoon, Audrey and I watched her favorite show,
American Bandstand
. As the teenagers on television did the funky chicken, and the swim Audrey rocked her head back and forth, and waved her good arm around, trying to mimic the dancers as best she could.
When it was over, she wanted to see what was going on out in the backyard, so I pushed her to the window. I propped myself on the side of her wheelchair, and we stared outside together without saying a word.
It was an unseasonably warm day for the middle of February. Mama was taking advantage of the early sampling of spring to hang the clean laundry out on the clothesline. Jimmy D. was riding his bicycle in a tight circle on the back patio, the training wheels squeaking as he went around and around. His golden blonde hair, which Mama had recently given a Beatle cut, was glistening in the sunlight. He and I both had the same color hair that Daddy had when he was a boy. We both had green eyes too, like Daddy’s. My older brother, Nick, was farther out in the yard playing croquet with a couple of the neighborhood boys. He favored Mama, with amber eyes and strawberry-blonde hair.
Audrey soon got bored with watching people do things she couldn’t, and decided she wanted to listen to one of her Beatles albums. The one way she was like every other teenage girl in 1970 was that she worshipped the Beatles.
I had no more than wheeled her over to the record player when she said, “Play ‘Get Back’ first.”
“Wait a minute,” I said, trying to slip the album from its cover, “let me get it out.”
She giggled. “It’s my favorite song.”
As if I didn’t know. She had me play it most every day, over and over. I had the lyrics memorized, and knew exactly where it was on the album too. “I know it’s your favorite!” I said, and put the needle in the right groove on the first try.
“Tuesday, can you dance?”
“I don’t know; I guess so.”
“Well, let’s see you try. Start moving around like they do on
American Bandstand
.”
I tried to remember the dancers I’d seen on television. I twisted my butt, and shook my head back and forth. My long, stringy hair stung my cheeks as it slapped across them. “Like this?”
A big smile spread across her face. “Yeah, that’s right!” she squealed. “Keep it up!”
Seeing her happy filled my heart with eagerness, eagerness to please her, to keep her smiling. I shook my hips with even more verve, this time trying with great concentration to hit the rhythm of the song. But her smile, rare as a lunar eclipse, was big and bright one minute, and then, all at once gone, sinking behind the darkness that always claimed her.
“Move your arms,” she said.
I lifted my arms, but I wasn’t sure what she wanted me to do with them, and she couldn’t show me, so I did the first thing that came to mind. I flapped them, like a bird flaps its wings. “This way?” I asked.
“No, silly, not like a chicken! Swing them from side to side, you know, like the dancers on
Bandstand
!”
I swung my arms to and fro in front of my body.
“Yeah, that’s it! Now twist your hips!” She directed her eyes down to my waist, then back up to my face again. “And bend your knees some too.”
She watched me for a minute, and then leaned back in her chair, closed her eyes, and swayed her head to the music, as if in her mind she was dancing along with me.
Closing my eyes too, I became lost in a fantasy of my own. I imagined I was a ballerina like the tiny one in the jewelry box on Audrey’s dresser. As I arched my back and lifted my arms, forming a circle above my head, in my mind’s eye, I could see my graceful reflection in a diamond-shaped mirror surrounded by blue satin.
I twirled all around the room, twirled and twirled, until I bumped into my bed, and fell backwards onto the floor, landing smack on my bottom, legs splayed.
Audrey opened her eyes and laughed when she saw me. Embarrassed, I jumped up. But the minute I stood on my feet, the room started to spin around me, and I fell back down again. She laughed even harder, which caused me to start laughing. The more I laughed, the more she laughed. Our laughter was robust and fearless. It sprang from a place somewhere deep inside of us, a place we didn’t even know existed, and gave us a glimpse of what things might have been like between us had we not been isolated by our differences.
All at once she stopped laughing, and fell forward in her chair. She was top-heavy, so she lost her balance often, but still, each time it happened, she freaked out. “Help me!” she called to me, her face red from straining to hold herself up.
Still dizzy, I struggled to my feet, but instead of running to help her, like I usually did, I stood there watching her from across the room. A vision of her tumbling into the floor face first popped in my head. “Try to pull yourself back on your own,” I said.
“I can’t, stupid!” she shouted. “Help me up! Hurry, I’m falling out of my chair!”
“Yes, you can!” I insisted. “Try really hard.”
“Mama!” she cried. “Maaa-maaa!”
Through the window, I could see Mama in the backyard hanging sheets on the line. She plucked a clothespin from her mouth and pinned the corner of a pillowcase, and then picked up the empty laundry basket and started for the house.
A bolt of fear shot through me. “Okay, I’m coming.” I rushed to Audrey’s side and pushed her up straight in her chair.
“Now fix me so I won’t fall over again,” she said.
Having done it many times before, I knew exactly what she meant. She wanted me to reposition her in her seat so her weight would be more evenly distributed. First I secured the latch that locked the wheels of the chair, and then got behind her, wrapped my arms firmly around her chest, and gave her a sharp tug up and back, using my weight for leverage.
Then I walked around her chair and stood in front of her, clamping my hands together in a begging position. “Don’t tell Mama, Audrey, please, please don’t tell her. She would be mad at me for letting you fall.”
Before she could answer, Mama walked in and lifted the arm of the record player, stopping the Beatles in mid-lyric.
“Okay, angel, it’s time for your breathing exercises.”