Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 73537 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 368(@200wpm)___ 294(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73537 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 368(@200wpm)___ 294(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
23
Micah
I wanted to rage. Destroy something. Tear the wall down brick by brick. The only thing holding me together was Dolly in my arms.
Pepper had said she was fragile. She knew about this. She had stayed, for fear of Dolly doing this to herself.
My arms tightened around her, and I watched as her shoulders rose and fell with a deep breath.
“When I was nine years old…” she began, and I realized what she was about to tell me.
Part of me wanted to tuck her in my arms and carry her far away from that memory. Tell her not to say it. I didn’t want to cause her any more pain. But the sane part of me knew she was trusting me. She was opening up, and I had to let her do this. I needed to know. If I was going to help her, I had to know what I was dealing with.
I reached for her hand and threaded my fingers through hers, then held it firmly. With her eyes locked on our hands, she seemed to relax some.
“It was my dad’s forty-ninth birthday. My mom was making his favorite meal—meatloaf. She’d made him a buttercream cake the night before, and I was so excited about getting to eat a piece after church. I’d made him a card.” She paused as a sad smile came and went just as quickly to her lips. “I went to find him and give it to him. He…he had gone out to the garage earlier, and he did that often to tinker with his model cars and listen to the radio. He liked country music, and Momma believed it was a sin, so he only played it out at his workbench with the volume real low. He was good about things like that. Respecting Momma’s beliefs when I don’t think he really agreed with her much. He never said it though.”
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I prepared myself for the rest. I knew it was coming, but I wasn’t sure I could handle seeing the pain on her face as she told me. My thumb caressed hers as I waited.
“He had taken the green rope, which he used every December to tie the Christmas tree to the roof of our Volvo wagon, to hang himself. I…I found him there. In the garage. Hanging by that rope. I think I was in shock. I remember feeling sick, then numb. I had to tell Momma. Someone had to get him down. It looked awful. It was a terrible sight to see.
“I went back to the kitchen to tell Momma, and the dread of her reaction when she saw him made every step I took harder and harder. I counted them. Those steps. Every last step I counted. From the spot where I had found him until I stopped in the kitchen to tell my momma that Daddy was hanging in the garage. One hundred twenty-two.” She whispered the number. “One hundred twenty-two steps.
“Momma raced to him, screaming and wailing. The rest gets blurry. Our neighbor heard her, and he came. The cops came. Church people came and brought food.
“The next few weeks, Momma closed herself away. She didn’t eat much. When I tried to get her to, she refused. She rarely left her room. When I hadn’t shown up for school in two weeks, they finally called, but I answered. They wanted to talk to Momma, but she wouldn’t pick up the phone.
“That was when…that was when my dad’s older sister, Naola, came to stay with us. She was stern and even more religious than Momma.”
Dolly stopped talking again and shifted in my lap. The faraway look in her expression as she continued to stare at our hands was breaking my heart.
“Aunt Naola had never come around much when my daddy was alive. I found out soon enough it was because she didn’t approve of my momma…and, by extension, me. While Momma stayed locked in her room, Aunt Naola decided to right the evil in me—or that is what she called it. She…she told me my daddy had hung himself because he saw no other way out of the life he had. That he was stuck with me and Momma and he preferred eternal hell over us.”
“She would tell me my momma was crazy, mental, and that I had her disease. We had a devil in us, and he’d eventually kill us, the way we had killed my daddy.” She inhaled deeply and let it out. “She would get me out of bed at night and tell me the demons had come for me. Then, she’d push me out onto the back porch and lock the door. Leaving me there with the demons. They never came, of course, but I was terrified nonetheless.”