Crapalachia: A Biography of Place (6 page)

So he drank and finally pointed again to the newspaper beneath his chair and giggled.

Then Ruby talked for him and told me what he was saying. “Old Nathan says he wants to get him a woman out of the personal ads.”

Nathan giggled.

 

I sat and laughed at him and said: “Oh god, Nathan. There’s no sense in you looking for a woman. These women are all liberated today from what I hear.”

Nathan laughed at me and wagged his finger around and around his head like we were all crazy.

“I know you don’t want a crazy one.”

Ruby said, “No, he’s looking for a crazy one.”

Then he held his arms out wide. He wanted a big fat crazy woman.

I said: “Yeah, Nathan, you’re gonna have a hard time finding you a woman who’s gonna feed you let alone give you a bath.”

Ruby said: “He don’t care, just as long as he gets him one without a ring on her finger.”

I said: “Well, Nathan, I’m sorry to tell you but there’s probably not too many out there looking for a 50-year-old man who still lives with his mother. They usually want a man who has his own place.”

Nathan giggled and pointed to his bedroom with a look on his face like—
Oh I have a place of my own
.

 

I wrote to one of them in the personal ads. We waited for weeks. We waited another week.

 

She never wrote back.

 

The next month Medicare gave him what he wanted though. Medicare sent over a home health nurse to help three days out of the week. Nathan had a look in his eyes that said,
Thank god for fucking Medicare.

 

Her name was…

The first day she was there Rhonda walked by the table and Nathan smacked her on the butt.

Rhonda stopped and said: “Nathan you better keep your hands to yourself or I’m gonna tell your momma on you.”

And then Ruby laughed from her La-Z-Boy behind the table and said: “Yeah old Nathan, he likes the women.”

Then he smiled and laughed and threw his head back, circling his long skinny finger around and around his noggin which meant:
You’re crazy. You’re crazy
.

Then he pointed to the big ceramic hog on the table with the giant balls.

“What?” Rhonda said.

“Nathan says his man parts are like that hog,” I told her.

He tried smacking her on the butt again. So Rhonda twisted Nathan’s ear and went to put in a load of laundry. Then she did the next chore Ruby had lined up for her.

 

Over the next couple of years she started doing all kinds of things.

She cooked the dinner.

She washed the dishes.

She cleaned off all of Ruby’s knick knacks.

She made the beds.

She ran the sweeper.

She moved the knick knacks so Ruby could see ’em better.

She ran the sweeper.

She picked up the medicine over in Rainelle.

She stopped at Rogers’ grocery for Nathan’s bananas.

She came back and cooked supper.

She washed the dishes.

She cleaned the bathroom.

She pushed Nathan in front of the television.

She put him to bed.

She listened to me tell her how I wanted to go away. I wanted to go away to school. I wanted to be a famous writer.

 

But Rhonda was really there because of Nathan’s feeding tube. It was just a peg tube sticking out of his stomach and it was all pusy and nasty and sick-looking. It stunk too because you could smell the inside of his stomach. One time I was watching her feed him. He pointed down at the tube and complained about how it was stinking. Rhonda sat there getting ready to pour Nathan’s Ensure into the feeding tube.

 

She was feeding him strawberry bubblegum Ensure and so she held the feeding tube and joked with him. “Boy, Nathan, this Ensure doesn’t smell too bad.”

Then she opened the Ensure and took a swig.

Nathan laughed and wiggled his finger around and around his head, before pointing at her:
You’re crazy. You’re crazy
.

Then he pointed at his feeding tube and held up six fingers which meant he wanted a six-pack.

Rhonda laughed: “Oh gosh, Nathan—I’m not going to get you a six-pack. You’re about as bad as that man of mine.”

Then Rhonda started talking to him. She poured the Ensure in the tube and the tube sucked it down. The old tube
gurgled gurgled
and
gargled
and
gurgled
it all down.

After they were done Nathan touched Rhonda’s leg and then he held Rhonda’s hand and listened to her talk.

“Yeah, Nathan, Sean’s been real mean here recently, drinking and hitting me.”

Nathan took his hand and threw it towards the door and this meant:
Well kick his ass out
.

He pointed to his foot which meant,
I’ll kick his ass for you
.

Rhonda smiled and said, “I know but where would I go?”

Nathan pointed to his bedroom.

Rhonda grinned and whispered, leaning forward: “And I could come in here and live with you? Is that what you’re saying?”

Nathan nodded his head.

 

 

I didn’t even think anything about it until a couple of months later when my Aunt Bernice came over and she was smoking her cigarettes.

She said: “Well I just hope everything works out all right.”

I was like, “What? What are you talking about?”

Aunt Bernice smoked her cigarette and then blew the cigarette smoke
foooooo
.

Then she said: “Well I think it is obvious. He’s in love with her. You can see it in his eyes. He’s in love with her.”

 

 

So I started paying closer attention. I realized it a couple of weeks later. I was sitting in the living room with Nathan, watching
Walker, Texas Ranger
and then Benny Hinn. Then Rhonda came in and said: “Okay, Nathan. It’s time to go to bed.”

Nathan shook his head and pointed to the clock for more time.

Rhonda said: “Oh no, you’re the one who said you needed to be on a schedule. So we’re gonna put you on a schedule. It’s 9:30 and you know what that means?”

She stood him up and took off his sweatpants.

 

Then Rhonda put Nathan in the bed and started to tuck him in. Nathan just lay there and giggled and then he reached out and tried to touch her breasts. Now instead of moving like she usually did, Rhonda just sat there. Nathan reached out some more and touched her breasts again.

She said: “Nathan, you better not do that.”

Then she was quiet and grinned: “You’re rotten to your core.”

Nathan touched and then touched some more. They weren’t giggling anymore.

I went into the other room to leave them alone, but when I sat down on the couch, I could still see them saying goodnight.

 

Nathan sat up in his bed and Rhonda started doing the hand signals she used to help communicate with him. But now they were whispering to each other and I heard Rhonda say: “Okay now. I gotta go.”

And then she pointed to her eye.

Then she pointed to her heart.

Then she pointed to Nathan.

Then Nathan was quiet and he did the same thing.

 

He pointed to his eye.

I
.

 

Then he pointed to his heart.

Love
.

Then he pointed to Rhonda.

You
.

 

Rhonda kissed him goodbye and said: “Well you just look at my picture, and I’ll be back in the morning.”

And so she left and Nathan just sat there and looked at Rhonda’s picture in the moonlight.

I tried talking to Nathan, but he was too busy looking at it.

And so he stared at the picture beside his bed.

It was a picture of Rhonda.

It was a picture of the woman he loved.

 

This went on until Ruby started getting jealous.

“He don’t need no woman. All he needs is me,” I heard Ruby say one day.

And then one evening Ruby told Rhonda right to her face: “Well you’re just a fat old thing. Big around as can be.”

Rhonda told Ruby she didn’t have any room to talk. But then Rhonda started crying. She left. This went on for months.

 

After that Ruby started complaining about how Rhonda kept coming in late and how one night Rhonda didn’t show up at all. Then one night Ruby told her not to come. Rhonda left crying again, and Nathan lay in the bed and didn’t say anything. PISSED OFF.

The next day I went into Nathan’s bedroom and he was still in bed.

I said: “How are you doing, Nathan?”

He didn’t say anything.

I asked him how he was doing again.

He still didn’t say anything.

I twisted his ear.

He didn’t even act like I was there.

He turned over in his bed, staring at Rhonda’s picture.

He started watching soap operas again, but then it happened. One day on the soap opera, the actress he loved was walking across the street, and her husband’s crazy ex-wife hit the gas and ran her over. Her husband was there and held her in his arms as she died.

And so I imagine that Nathan just sat there unable to do anything, listening to her whisper, “I love you. I’m so sorry I didn’t do more to love you. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

And then… “I’ll love you forever.”

So Nathan watched her die and whispered it inside his head,
I love you too
.

And now it wasn’t an actress anymore he watched on TV, but a beautiful woman he had loved for a long time.

So nobody really knows what happened. I was outside when I heard Ruby scream.

I came running inside. There was a drawer on the floor and newspapers. Ruby said, “I was in the back room and when I came back the poor thing was like this.”

There was a set of knives on the counter beside the sink. He was in front of his chair. The chair was turned over. His legs were beneath the table. He was on his back. There was a steak knife sticking straight out of his chest.

There was an ambulance. Lights were flashing around and around.

There was a stretcher… ambulance guys… bringing Nathan out on a stretcher.

And then the back of the ambulance.

 

 

He tried to take his own life, but he survived. He didn’t die.

 

 

So after Nathan’s knife wound, he didn’t do much of anything but sit around at the kitchen table and watch it all go by.

One day I was sitting at the table with him, and he leaned over on his elbow and started rolling his 7UP bottle back and forth like he was bored.

Back and forth.

Back and forth.

He breathed a soft sigh and batted his eyelids.

He had movie star blue eyes.

 

So he sat and I wondered if he was thinking about the fact that he was the one who stayed. He was the one who sat watching his younger brothers when they were little boys, and then watching them leave the house when they were grown men.

He was the one who stayed because he had to stay. He was the one who was sitting at the table now, where he was always sitting, remembering how his brothers returned with their young wives, all pink and pretty, and pretty and pink, and pink and pretty, and pretty and pink and pink and pink and with accents from faraway places.

And then a few years later, returning once more with pink children of their own.

 

So I felt his muscle and laughed, trying to make the quiet go away.

But he was quiet now because he knew he would never have any of this. I saw what he saw sitting there—that there would be no brides or babies. There would be none of this. He blinked and breathed another soft sigh with a look on his face like…

Oh shit I’m trapped in my body
…

Oh shit I’m trapped in my body
.

And so there was no more Rhonda.

There was no more Rhonda until after Nathan died.

After the wake was over, and the funeral was over too, and everybody was walking away, I went back to pick up something, or help my aunt walk back through the mud.

I looked up, and when I did, all the way in the back of the crowd of people was a woman.

It was a woman all by herself.

It was Rhonda.

She was crying so hard that I thought she was going to fall down.

 

She was crying and her chest was going up and down, up and down, and she was trying to walk back to her car.

 

A couple of months later, on a bright evening, just before the sunset, I went by the grave. It was fall and there was this glow over everything, and it was so bright. And it was all still there—the gravestone and the old tree, and the old flowers were there too. But now there was something new in front of Nathan’s gravestone. It was a little teddy bear covered in fur and there was a little note beside it. So I opened it up and saw a picture of a heart, and beneath the heart was a note that said, “I love you, and I’ll always love you Nathan.” It was just like in the soap opera. And then beside the heart was a single name. It said…

 

…Rhonda.

 

But wait.

I have decided to stop for a moment.

 

I want to stop for a moment before they die. I am not ready yet.

 

I want to stop and remember them for a moment as they were, when we were all together, when they were still alive. I want to remember Ruby’s food and Ruby’s table and Nathan’s laugh.