The Ugly Cry Read online

  The nurse pulled up a little stool and sat at the end of the cot, her face close to my toe. When she was done, I lifted my foot to check it out. It didn’t look like anything had happened from the front. But when I bent my foot over my knee, I was able to see the thick, wiry stitches sticking out like the bristles on a hairbrush.

  “Keep a Band-Aid on it until we get her in for a checkup,” the nurse said to Mom.

  But we never would come back. Luke said it was a waste of money, and Mom didn’t protest. A few weeks later, after it looked pretty well healed, I used the scissors Mom kept in the bathroom cabinet to snip the knots and pull the threads out myself.

  * * *

  —

  “You and Cory are having dinner with Julia and Reuben tonight.”

  I started to protest but stopped myself. It was a Saturday; Mom was working nights at the hospital, which meant Luke was responsible for dinner, which meant we probably wouldn’t eat. I was pretty sure that Julia was a weirdo, but at least they had food. “Okay.”

  “Wear clean clothes,” Mom said as she left for work. I didn’t even know if I had clean clothes.

  I walked into my bedroom. I didn’t have any furniture aside from the bed; a few things were on hangers, but most of my clothes were scattered on the floor of the closet in loose piles. The overhead light was the only one in the room. I flipped the switch and started digging through the mess. I missed having a dresser. My face started to feel hot, already anticipating the embarrassment I would feel when I showed up to dinner wearing a sweatshirt that smelled like last week’s lunch. I pulled a white-and-green horizontal-striped knit sweater out of the pile. There was a ketchup stain near the neck from where someone jokingly threw a fish stick at me during lunch. It was funny at the time, even though the lunch monitor yelled at us. Looking at the dried-up crust of ketchup now just made me feel like I was a loser.

  I knew how to hand-wash a stain, but all I had was the bar of Ivory soap that every single person in the house used to wash their bodies. I turned on the tap for a few seconds, just long enough to get the fabric wet without it being soaked. I started rubbing the soap on the ketchup stain, pushing into the knits and purls, hoping Ivory was just as good as proper laundry detergent. The stain turned from red to light pink, then, after a few more minutes of scrubbing, looked like it was almost gone. The corner of the bar of soap was worn, reminding me of a corner you might fold to keep your place in a book.

  I didn’t account for the sweater absorbing so much water, though. The top half was completely soaked. The whole sweater sagged as I held it up to wring it out, twisting out as much water as I could. When I unfurled it and held it up again, it was still wet and now deeply wrinkled.

  We didn’t own a hair dryer. Every white friend I knew had one standard issue; girls were starting to talk in homeroom about how hard it was to dry their hair in the winter mornings and how sometimes it would freeze into hard strands. Mom used to do my hair in complicated braids and styles; now she would just tell me to wash it every once in a while, make sure I combed through it, and let my pillow suck all of the extra wetness out of it while I slept.

  I took the sweater back to my room and locked the door. I put my undershirt on quickly, scared Luke would ask for a massage while I was getting dressed for dinner. He mostly came into my room at night, when everyone was sleeping, to press and rub against me, but lately he had started asking me to give him massages during the day. He’d call to me from the bedroom, where he spent most of his time.

  “Dani. Dani, come here.”

  I would crank their bedroom door open slowly. Bedsheets hung in the windows in place of curtains, making the unmade bed and clothes-strewn closet muted, even in the middle of the day. If he wasn’t already facedown on the mattress when he called to me, he made a big show of turning over, groaning and stretching and pushing the sheet aside.

  “Come rub my back.”

  He made me sit on his front once, but looking at his face while I sat on his naked body made me so nervous I shook uncontrollably, so he never made me do it that way again. Usually he made me straddle his butt, sometimes reaching back to push my knees against his hips so that I wouldn’t fully sit up when I tried to reach the top of his back. I didn’t know how to give a proper massage, and I was afraid to make him angry.

  “What should I do?”

  “Just press your hand here and rub it in a circle,” Luke said, pointing to a spot on his shoulder or lower back. His groans made me feel like there were rocks dropping into my stomach the way we dropped rocks into the river on the footbridge in Stanley-Deming Park. I didn’t want to press too hard; if I hurt him, he would hit me for sure. Making him happy was even worse.

  “Push harder. Yeah, like that.” He always asked me to push hard enough that I had to rock against him. Sometimes he moved one hand underneath him while I gave him a massage; the way he moved it made me think he was rubbing his belly the way Mom used to rub mine when I had a stomachache. Luke would groan really loud, his hand not moving but still underneath him, and I’d rub his back until I heard him snore, finally feeling safe enough to leave.

  Now I needed to keep him away while I got ready, but I was nervous about the lock; if he tried to come in and wasn’t able to, he might smack me in the face like last time, when I wanted to do my homework without Cory interrupting, so I pushed the button on the door handle to keep him out. Only it wasn’t Cory trying to get in while I was going over my vocabulary words. He pushed the handle, then said, “Dani, open this door.” I scrambled from my bed and opened it. I tried to apologize, but his palm was against my temple before I finished the “I” in “I’m sorry.” I thought that only cartoon characters saw stars, like when Wile E. Coyote fell off a cliff, but when my head bounced off the wall with the force of his slap, white dots appeared everywhere. It was like I was looking through gauze, even though my eyes were wide-open.

  “You don’t lock the door unless I tell you to lock the door,” he said, walking into the bathroom.

  I had felt funny for the rest of the day after that smack, like I was floating in a lake, hearing everything from just under the surface of the water. I didn’t want to show up to dinner with the landlords feeling that hazy. I put my wet sweater on over my undershirt and quickly unlocked the door.

  I was excited to see the inside of the landlords’ house, but we didn’t get farther than the kitchen. The parents had us sit at the small round table to the left of the main door they used to enter the house.

  We were already sitting at the table when Reuben came downstairs. His short brown hair was slicked against his forehead with sweat; his pallor was chalky, and dark circles ringed his eyes. As he hunched and shuffled over to the table, his mom pulled out a chair for him.

  “Hi, I’m Danielle.”

  “Hi,” he said, without meeting my gaze. He was moving the food around with his fork. Mom had told us that Reuben had just had some major surgery, so I tried to take the pressure off and talk to Julia and her parents instead.

  About two minutes after he sat down, Reuben let out a loud growl. I put down my fork and looked at him. He had his arms wrapped around his tummy, and his head was dropping toward his lap. He groaned again, and this time it morphed into a scream as he raised his head and bent his body over the chair backward. It looked like something out of The Exorcist, which of course I had seen because I had no proper supervision in my life.

  Reuben’s mom jumped up and stood behind him, but he was up and moving. Hunched, he swiveled around, almost running right into his mom, who grabbed him by the shoulders. “Do you need your medicine?” Reuben said no and ran to his room. She grabbed a bottle of pills from the kitchen counter and followed him in.

  I felt bad for Reuben, but I also couldn’t shake the other thing I was feeling: pure jealousy. I definitely didn’t want whatever he had. But his mom was so nice and attentive and loving. They had dinner at a table a
nd a trampoline to jump on. They were safe. They were loved.

  I couldn’t remember the last time I felt that way.

  * * *

  —

  When Mom had the baby, they named him after his dad. They called him Little Luke. I hated that name. I called him the Baby.

  He was cute, all round cheeks and black eyes. He made funny sounds, and he liked to look around, even though Mom told me he couldn’t see anything yet. Luke was supposed to be taking care of the Baby now that Mom worked nights as a nurse’s aide, but he frequently left us alone, preferring instead to drive to the city. When he took off, I did it instead.

  I got pretty good at feeding him. I watched Mom while she prepared his bottles, eager for any time I got to spend with her, even if I was just shadowing her in the kitchen. Sometimes she’d make a joke, the old Mom I used to know peeking her head out around the shadow of the tired, sigh-filled woman she was now. Most of the time she just talked to herself in a low whisper, as if she was checking things off a list she compiled in her head. I watched, so that I could help. If I helped enough, maybe the old version of Mom would stick around longer, until she was back to being the kind of woman who would swing branches to protect me.

  I carried the Baby to the kitchen and ticked the steps off in my head, working with one hand while I bounced the Baby on my shoulder with the other. Rinse out a bottle. Put in the powdered formula with the scoop already in the container, just one. Carry it to the sink. Put in some water. Shake shake shake. Put it back on the counter. Grab a small pot. Fill it with water. Put it on the stove, now that I was allowed to use it out of necessity. Turn the dial and watch the flames roar to life. Turn it down—you don’t want it boiling, just warm. Watch the water and rock the baby. Put the bottle in, only for a couple of minutes. Take it out. Hold the Baby and the bottle in the same hand; squirt some on your wrist. Walk to the couch, sit down, hold the Baby in your lap. Keep his head up a little. Feed him. Take the bottle out of his mouth every minute or so—he has to breathe. Put him back on your shoulder. Bounce him and pat his back until he burps. Tickle his little belly for a few minutes, because making him laugh makes you happy. Check his diaper. Change his diaper, but don’t forget to wipe his testicles, because sometimes he shits so much it goes up his back and all over his front. Wrap the diaper into a small package, cinch it closed with the sticky tabs on the side. Put him back in his crib. Sit with him in the dark, until he sounds like he’s sleeping. Check the Timex alarm clock next to Mom’s side of the bed, and note the time: 4:00 a.m. Grab the diaper. Creep out of the bedroom like a cat burglar. Say a secular prayer—please, please don’t wake up again until Mom comes home. Please. Throw out the diaper in the kitchen. Crawl back into your bed. Stare at the ceiling.

  I was ten years old.

  I wasn’t sleeping a lot. New sisterhood was exhausting.

  It surprised me how much Luke loved the Baby. “My son,” he would say, lifting the Baby out of his crib and holding him up so high he almost touched his back to the ceiling. “I love you.” Things evened out a little with the Baby around. Luke still hit me, still emerged from the bedroom wide-eyed, sweating, and looking for violence. But the Baby made him happier. He liked seeing a little version of himself walking around in the world. His childish sense of humor matched well with an audience that couldn’t even use its neck muscles yet.

  I was nervous every time he held the Baby, knowing intimately how quickly his moods shifted. But he never showed an ounce of his evil to the Baby. I assumed he hated all children, but it turns out he was selective.

  When the Baby was just a few months old, Luke announced that Davon was coming to live with us.

  “Who’s that?” He said it so matter-of-factly, but I’d never heard that name before.

  “My son.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “In the Bronx, with his whore mother. But he wants to come stay here, so I’m gonna go get him.”

  I had no idea Luke had another kid. I looked at Mom.

  “You know—Davon!” She acted like if she said it loud enough I’d suddenly remember something I’d never been told. Where were we even going to put another kid? I felt sick. Luke was adding to his team, and soon I’d be outnumbered.

  Davon was seven years old. He had a broad face and tiny body. The Baby was the spitting image of Luke; Davon must have looked like his mother. Mom and Luke put a mattress on the floor in Cory’s room, which he was now going to share. “It’s not fair,” Cory whispered to me in the hallway as we went to our rooms. He didn’t like the arrangement at all but knew there was nothing he could do about it. Luke was not someone who debated.

  Davon was rambunctious in the way that all seven-year-olds are, testing boundaries by saying no and wearing his defiance like a second skin. He was loud. Wild. He needed too much attention in a house where there was already so little to spare. His transition to the country life must have been disorienting, but I didn’t think about that. He annoyed me instantly, leaving little room for sympathy.

  He had only been there for a few weeks when it happened. The day was otherwise unremarkable—I woke up hungry, went to school hateful, and came home scared. Luke was home, sniffing and wild-eyed. Mom was at work. The school must have called while Cory and I were on the bus, not knowing that an unhinged beast would answer.

  When Davon got off his bus and came into the house, Luke grabbed him and shouted, “Did you push someone at school?” Davon protested; Luke smacked him for lying. “Get in there.” Davon was already crying from the smack as Luke pushed him into Cory’s bedroom. I will never forget the way he held his hand to his face, his mouth open but soundless, tears streaming over his pinky finger as he walked into the room. I ran to my room, which shared a wall, and heard every sound of what came next.

  To say that Luke beat Davon mercilessly is an understatement. I knew what it was like to be hit, I knew what it felt to be terrorized. But he never beat me so badly that my blood left dripping stains on the sink. He never kicked while I scrambled to the bathroom, ran to find a way out, leaving finger trails of blood where I tried to grasp the door, the knob, the floor, anything. Making it to the bathroom only to have Luke follow with an extension cord and whipping, punching, kicking.

  I listened to Davon scream in the bathroom, right across the hall. I moved to the floor near my closet and pulled my knees up to my chin. He might come for me next. I crawled into the closet and hid, wishing I could push myself through the wall and disappear.

  After, Davon was quiet. Possibly unconscious. I was too afraid to come out of my room to check on him. I eventually heard Luke send Davon to bed. I stayed in my room all night, listening through the wall as Cory tried to console Davon while he wept.

  The next day, he sent us all to school. Cory left for school before I did, and Davon’s bus was later than mine, so we didn’t see each other. I was numb, terrified by the notion that Luke’s viciousness could be the new normal.

  The cops showed up shortly after Cory and I got off the bus at the end of the day. Mom was home, finally, and opened the front door when they knocked. When I came around the corner and down the stairs to stand next to her, she was crying. She hugged me against her while she talked to the cops. Of course she hadn’t known. She had just gotten home herself. Yes, she worked nights. I heard fragments of the conversation as they walked Davon out of the house to the ambulance.

  Any other children in the home. Can’t be allowed within one thousand feet of the two older children. No, never again. Arrested. His teacher called Child Protective Services. Firearms. Child’s mother lives in the Bronx. Drugs, both of them? Both of them. What kind? Cocaine. Heroin. Crack. Not sure about her. Okay. And you? Never. Nothing ever? Okay. Court date. Jail. Bail.

  I was transfixed by the blue and red lights bouncing off the tree trunks, small dots of light piercing through the trees and catching on Julia’s trampoline. When Luke was brought out of
the house, his eyes were wide, but he walked with an easy calmness, his arms handcuffed behind his back. He was biting his lip when they pushed his head down and lowered him into the police car. I pulled away from Mom as she went inside the house but waited outside until the police cars and ambulance left.

  I needed to see it for myself.

  That he was really gone.

  11.

  Ugh. None of this is even clean. Who even lives like this? Animals.”

  Grandma was sitting on a chair in her kitchen, giant black garbage bags full of our clothes surrounding her. Outside the windows the sky was black, and owls were hooting from the barn. We’d already been at this for hours.

  One of the garbage bags was split open between Grandma’s knees; she straddled it as she pulled out our clothes. In the stark overhead light of her clean kitchen, everything looked positively filthy.

  “God, I just bought this for you! Already stained.” Grandma was throwing clothes around the kitchen on hyperspeed, upset by everything she touched. The ash of her cigarette was inches long; she was so mad, she forgot to smoke.

  “When is Mom coming back?” I asked.

  Grandma silently dug into the next garbage bag.

  * * *

  —

  Mom must have taken time off work after Davon’s beating, because she was home with the Baby for a couple of days. We didn’t talk about what happened. Cory and I would ask about Davon, and whether he was coming back; Mom would wearily reply, “I don’t know.” I tried to hold on to the feeling of Luke not being around—I felt lighter, less scared, less anxious. But the good feeling was always punctured by reality. He would come back, one day.

  A few days after the incident, Mom took Cory and me to Grandma’s house for the weekend. I didn’t know it at the time, but she was going to bail Luke out, and he couldn’t legally be near us until the child abuse case with Davon was settled. “I’m taking the baby to the Bronx to see his other grandma,” she said, lugging my book bag out of the back seat of the landlord’s truck. “I’ll be back soon.”