You Can Never Spit It All Out Read online

  He never quite got over that death.

  His parents dressed him up in a passed-down suit, black of course, for the funeral. They themselves held their hands in front of them as the pinewood coffin was lowered into the ground, glints of new nail heads decorating the edges of the coffin's lid, like blue jean studs, but he couldn't stop his shoulders from shaking. If you put Misty in the ground, I can't confide in her any more. She won't touch my ears no more.

  Little Roy was in a bad place. And a bad place is no fun to be.

  But then, when he went back to school after Summer break, he was assigned to the class of Miss Abergine. That was the first time he ever fell in love. He'd sit at his school desk and just stare at her. She was real pretty, her eyes and her cheekbones and her smile, in a way his mother and the other girls in the hollow weren't. Her voice was so soothing, lilting and humorous, and she spoke French every so often. Small wrists, long fingers, with the most delicate knuckles he had ever seen, fingernails that looked so thin they made him think of the bones of angels.

  His hand was always the first that shot up to answer a question, even if he didn't know what to say. Standing on his feet, in his embarrassing clothes, he'd blush bright red, blurt out whatever he could.

  When she'd smile at him, it was such a kind smile, such a gentle smile, he'd shuffle his hand-me-down shoes, grin like a dog.

  Halfway through that year, he was headed to school one day, the same boring walk up the country road where there was nothing but his thoughts, and at the bend in the dirt road, a splay of flowers hanging out over the road's edge. He had passed that shoot of growth on that bend each day, and each day noticed the tapered tips were starting to form heads, but from what little color he could see in the heads as they swelled and fattened, he thought the blooms would be yellow. But in fact this day of their sudden bloom, when the flowers had overnight miraculously uncurled wide open, sixteen joyous arms celebrating the sun, he saw the flowers were blue. Like her eyes. Getting down on his haunches he picked them, down by the base of their stems. Hid their length and color inside his shirt, up against his bare skin. Their light touch, leaf tips and soft petals, tickled his skin, in a way he hadn't felt awareness of his skin before. Not as a boy is aware of his skin. And of course, walking into the small school, he could smell their aroma. He sat at his desk all day with them in his shirt, watching her. When classes were finished, he let the other boys and girls trail out, then marched up to her desk, and pulled the long stems out.

  But by then, so long without the earth to nurture them, or water to quicken them, the flowers themselves dropped off as he retrieved them, so all he had to hold out to her were tall green stems. He gave them to her anyway. Burst into tears. "Their heads fell off!"

  She took the stems from him. This close to her, to where he could see the buttons on her blouse, her long brown hair curled around the backs of her ears, the pale freckles across the bridge of her nose, he thought he would lose his balance. "I'm going to imagine how beautiful these flowers looked when you picked them, and of all the flowers I ever receive from men in my life, these flowers will always be the flowers I remember first." Tilting her head, smiling, she put her palm on the side of his face. And in that moment, feeling her warmth against his cheek, which before he had only dared imagined, he knew what love is. Putting someone else's happiness above your own.

  Summer got closer every day, birds building nests, black branches reaching up with green buds, and although Summer had been his favorite time of year, because of its freedom, now he dreaded its approach, because he knew that meant school would be ending, and he wouldn't see her again. Maybe never. His last day of school, all his classmates stood in a line in the classroom to shake Miss Abergine's hand. He hung back so he'd be the final one. He stuck his hand out, eyes mooning, trying to be the brave little man as she shook his hand with the same hand that a month before had held his cheek for a moment. She didn't say anything, so he just straightened his shoulders and turned to leave, trying to hold in his tears under he got outside, under the trees, but then she said, "Roy?" And she bent her head towards him. Took a fat book out from the front drawer of her desk, and opened it in front of him. And there on the page, across the black words, were the pressed green stems of the flowers he had presented to her. "You try to preserve what's good."

  He grinned all the way home.

  An unhappy boy he was, in his family home. He moped. Listened to the radio all day, listless. His mother stood by the chair he was slouched in a couple of times those first few weeks, asking if he was okay. "I can hear Ben and Kevin down by the river, looking for frogs. Don't you want to go outside and be with your friends? It's a beautiful day. Get some color in your cheeks." But he had no interest. A few days after that, he was sitting at the kitchen table, staring down at his fingers, while his mother boiled greens. Back to him she said, "Guess who I ran into today?" He didn't make any effort to guess. "Miss Abergine." Head lifting, suddenly alert. His mother said nothing more, tapping her wooden spoon against the cast iron skillet, gray steam rising. "Yeah?" "Yeah! She had a message for you." "What would that be?" "She said to me, Tell Roy I'm looking forward to seeing him again in the Fall, when school starts again." "Yeah?" "Yeah." He ducked his head, excited. His mother just went back to stirring those dark greens, small smile on her face. In later months, Roy turned against his mother, but a couple years afterwards, he thought of this otherwise unremarkable day, his mother's casual comment, and realized how much she had done for him. And felt ashamed at how he treated her once she was on her deathbed.

  That news about Miss Abergine returning in the Fall perked him up, and he went back to playing outdoors again, and finding time on the front porch to study an English to French dictionary he sent away for in the mail, memorizing certain words, even though his pronunciation and grammar (unbeknownst to him) was terrible, laughable.

  But then one day, in the sweet, yellow-treed afternoons of August, he decided to pay his Uncle Hollis a visit. Uncle Hollis was his father's older brother. He lived further up the mountain than most, in a two-room shack with no running water, no electricity, and no windows. So going into his shack was like going into a wooden cave.

  Uncle Hollis came out on the front porch cradling a shotgun. "Well hey, Roy." What he always said when he saw his nephew. Bald head and a big nose. Looked like he enjoyed fighting, and in fact he would occasionally wind up in jail for using his fists to make another man's face bleed.

  "Thought I'd visit."

  Uncle Hollis glanced over his shoulder, at the interior of his shack. "Glad to see you." Thought a while. "What are you now? Twelve?"

  "Yes, sir."

  He leaned his shotgun against the side of his shack. "Tell you what. I'll have to check, because it ain't my call. But maybe you're old enough to be initiated. We'll see. Your daddy's inside."

  Roy came forward, beckoned by Uncle Hollis' impatient fingers. "Initiated? Into what?" His mother didn't like Uncle Hollis. Didn't like him one bit. He had a way of getting whatever he wanted, by any means. Whenever Uncle Hollis would visit, she'd stay in the back room as much as possible, and if the uncle insisted to Roy's father she come out, she'd come out in a dress that had the hem down by her ankles.

  "Come on in, boy. Be a man and find out. Or be a little girl and run back down the hill in your pretty little pink dress."

  "I'm no girl. Don't say that."

  "Stubbornness! Maybe you are a man."

  Inside, it was dark and hot. Uncle Hollis picked up a lit kerosene lantern, its swing in his right hand swaying light across the interior, illuminating a few chairs, a bench, some animal skins, a row of full bottles with no labels.

  "Don't see my dad."

  "Course you don't. He's in the back room. The bedroom. You can't see through walls, right? You're not Superman, are you?"

  "No, sir."

  "Nobody's Superman in my house, except me. Everybody else just Clark Kent. Hey Carl, I got your boy here. You want he should come in back? Maybe
join us? Wet his little beak?"

  Muffled sound from the bedroom.

  Uncle Hollis tilted his bald, big-nosed face. "Well, all right then."

  He lifted the lantern, casting a yellow flicker that made the doorway to the bedroom glow. "After you, little man."

  Roy had to go through the doorway, because if he didn't, Uncle Hollis would think he was a girl. He lowered his jaw so his uncle couldn't see him swallow, then stepped into the back room, thinking about that day at the kitchen table with his mother, and how the world of women was so much different from the world of men.

  The bed took up most of the room, and first thing he noticed was there wasn't one person on the bed, there were two. He could only see them up to their armpits at this point, but it was clear, the lantern light falling over their naked bodies, one was male, and one was female.

  "That you, dad?"

  A man's hoarse voice in the darkness. "You ready for this Roy?"

  So that was his father's cock he was looking at, curled half-hard on top of his thighs. Hairier than his, but looking weaker.

  The woman's legs shifted, but his father held her down with a hand disappearing up above her shoulders.

  To Roy's side, Uncle Hollis got out of his clothes, tossing them sideways, his cock erect. Once he was naked, he walked to the head of the bed, put the lantern down on the table beside the pillows.

  Lantern where it now was, Roy could see the two yellow faces, his father, and his school teacher.

  Had he thought about what she looked like naked? Of course. But not in a carnal way, or at least not much that way. More like a statue or a painting, something to admire. But now she was black pubic hair, small breasts, staring eyes.

  Uncle Hollis thumped the back of Roy's shoulder. "You kinda like Miss Abergine, right? What your dad told me. Think she's so high and mighty, and delicate and such. Riiight? Well, let me show you something you need to learn."

  Naked, Uncle Hollis walked over to the foot of the bed, his back wet with perspiration. Leaning over, grinning, he slapped the insides of both her knees, like you'd slap a dog. "Carl, would you oblige your older brother please with nine o'clock and three o'clock?"

  As Uncle Hollis lay his wet stomach on top of Miss Abergine's, Roy's father reached around the uncle's ass, grabbing both of Miss Abergine's ankles, spreading them far, far apart.

  "Are you raping her?"

  Uncle Hollis grinned. "You tell me, boy!"

  As Roy watched, his uncle slid his cock up inside the school teacher, slid it up some more, then, as her head rolled back and she let out a gasp, slid it up the rest.

  He felt himself get hard, his uncle's ass bobbing up and down between Miss Abergine's spread thighs.

  When Miss Abergine raised both her forearms off the untidy pillows, crossing them around the back of his uncle's neck, Roy wet his lips.

  Halfway through, Miss Abergine wrapped her legs above Uncle Hollis' bobbing ass. The bald head twisted around, grinning up at Roy. "You see, Roy? They all like a good fuck. Even the fancy ones."

  After that, Miss Abergine didn't show up for Fall classes. Rumor was she went away for a while. When she did return, mid-semester, she was trim again, and never talked about her mysterious absence. She didn't speak French much anymore.

  Roy, young as he was, started fucking a lot of women. Those women in the nearby towns who had the same casual attitude towards sex men have. A lot of times, all he remembered was the humidity of it, the herbal smell of heroin rising off the wet flesh under him.

  Now let's talk about Audrey.

  From an early age, she knew she was second-born. One of the few objects her parents had in their shack was a small photograph on the wall of her older sister. A photograph of a baby pretty much newly born, eyes still shut. Her father would sometimes stand in front of the picture, especially if he had too much to drink, which he often did, swaying, and touch with his fingertips the baby's face. But her mother never did. Even though she drank too. As Audrey got older, she came to realize the smallness of the photograph was because it was only of the baby's face. Someone had long ago cut the picture with scissors so all that was left was the baby from the chin up, the rest of her body thrown away.

  When Audrey got old enough to talk, she asked, "What was my older sister's name?"

  Her father raised his head. "She never lived long enough to give her a name."

  "What did she die from?"

  Her father would reach sideways for his drink. No ice cubes in the drink, because they couldn't afford ice. "She just died. It was quick."

  Audrey knew from the time she knew anything that her family was poor. Even poorer than the other families in the hollow, and those other families were poor as well. Just not as poor as Audrey's family. What she heard much, those early years, from her parents was, "Can't afford it." When Audrey was still a little girl, she used to sometimes play with a girl her own age just down the road. One time she toddled down that dirt road, arms waving for balance, because walking takes a while to get right, and this other little girl, her friend, such as it was, had a small baby in her arms. Audrey was enthralled. "Can I hold her?"

  And finally her friend let her. But the baby wasn't warm at all. It was cold, and its skin was hard. Its eyes just stared straight up, at the sky. "This baby's dead!" Her friend laughed at her. "This ain't no baby! This here's a doll. It never been alive. It just look human if you look from a distance. It made out of plastic!" Her friend rapped her tiny knuckles against the baby's forehead, gleeful she had an advantage over Audrey. "That sound alive, or hollow? It′s a fake baby, just to play with. To do things with it you can′t do with a live baby."

  Audrey, of course, was mortified. But fascinated. A fake baby that′s all yours? That you can hold in your arms, and take places with you? Talk to it? Whisper your secrets? When she got back to her parents′ shack, she excitedly explained what she had seen, asked if she could have a doll.

  Her father′s face closed down. "Can′t afford it."

  So Audrey never got a doll growing up. What she did instead was carry around some of her old baby clothes, and pretend it was a doll. But some of the other kids in the hollow, they were a bit mean, they started calling her Crazy Audrey, bending their knees behind her in a semi-circle as she tried to ignore them, thinking about her mother, looking up at all the interesting tree branches. So she had to not walk around with the baby clothes anymore, although she cried bitterly the first morning she decided to not take the baby clothes outside with her like she normally would, petting them, telling the blouse cuffs and collar how sad she was that she had to leave them behind. Those are the loneliest tears, with the most salt in them, the tears of a small child giving up.

  When she got to grammar school, one of her classes was Home Economics. That was where girls learned how to cook. And part of that initiation into the adult world, they had to chop onions. Now that first day, when each girl stood in front of her table with a yellow onion on the tabletop next to a knife, Audrey had no idea what to do. She had never seen an onion before. What was it? It certainly didn′t look like something she′d want to eat. It had hair at one end. It looked like a deformed baby′s head, but no eyes.

  Most of the girls cut into their onions matter-of-fact, chatting to each other, but Audrey, even side-glancing, had trouble figuring out what to do. Finally, Miss Wilson, the teacher, had to mold her elderly hands, veins and age spots, around Audrey's young knuckles, and guide her blade. As she sliced down, Audrey's eyes smarted so much tears wet her eyelashes. Unlike her fellow classmates, who had cut up bushels of onions over their young years in their families′ kitchens, because their families could afford onions. Audrey, red-eyed, thought, even when it comes to onions, my poverty is evident. Miss Wilson told her, in a quiet voice, sensing Audrey′s embarrassment, After you chop up as many onions as these other girls have, your eyes won′t smart as much. So that day forward, Audrey showed up at Miss Wilson′s class an hour before, volunteering to chop any onions that were need
ed for the day′s instruction. She determinedly sliced her way down through a whole lot of onions, wanting to get her eyes used to the sulfur, so she wouldn′t stand out. Miss Wilson would give her a pale-lipped smile. "You got determination, girl." Audrey, staring down at her latest onion, slicing her blade into the dry yellow skin, wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist. "After a while, you stop crying, right Miss Wilson?" Miss Wilson nodded, furrows in her face. "Yes my little sweetheart, after enough cuts, you stop crying."

  But one advantage Audrey did have over all the other girls in the hollow was that she was real pretty. Real pretty. Some of the most beautiful girls are born to poor families. Why is that? She′d take the breath away from a fluttering angel. Hair that was so light it was barely blonde, and the bluest eyes. Nothing wrong with brown eyes, or black eyes, or green eyes, or any other color eyes, but there′s something about blue eyes. And hers were the bluest of all, so that when you saw them, you stopped for a moment. Those eyes weren′t something you expected to see during your day. And when you looked into them, trying not to stare, especially when they were in a child′s face, it was like what was looking out was a better world, a kinder world.