When I got up in the dark that night to get in bed with my father, Betty was missing and I was scared, but I found her sitting on the couch in the living room. She looked bereft, and when she saw me, held out her arms. “Who will take care of Alan?” I asked. “His father,” she said, “and everyone in town will keep an eye out for him. People will help him. He won’t be lonely.”
I lay on the couch with my head in her lap for the rest of the night; she did not shoo me or run me away. After my father got up, Betty made cinnamon rolls, the kind she always managed to tear apart trying to get out of the container, the kind that came with icing that made her scream out when it squirted suddenly from the tube.
. . .
Lunch today is clam chowder from a can. Betty sticks the dirty spoon in the pocket of her robe. Something is clearly worrying my mother, and therefore I am worried too. Our moods fold into each other’s more and more as the days pass. “What is that stuff you drink at Christmas?” she asks once more. “What is that stuff called?”
“Eggnog,” I say. “Eggnog.”
She gets obsessed.
. . .
Betty is cross, moored to the couch. She frets, but will not move or get ready to leave for the hairdresser’s. She fumbles her way to the refrigerator, refuses to put on her clothes, and remains in her nightgown and robe. “I’ll get dressed in a minute,” she promises, as usual. “I will in a minute.”
I ask again, “Please, go get your clothes on, please, please, please.” She looks away, does not respond, shifts into a position that suggests even greater fixedness. As I leave to take my shower, she picks up her book, oblivious to my concerns, to the demands of the world. Something in her has just let go of all that.
. . .
When I was eleven or so, my parents were going out and I was trying to get my mother moving, for my father, who was waiting in the car, as always. Betty was standing at the mirror in her bathroom, struggling with makeup from tubes and jars, nervous, fitful, irritated. Her hands shook as she struggled to apply mascara, not a task at which she excelled. The other mothers were jealous of Betty’s appearance. But my mother wasn’t sure enough, inside, to believe what everyone else saw.
“Go,” I wanted to scream. “Go.” I knew what it was like to always be kept waiting. I always had to wait for Betty too. At school, everywhere, our Chevy was always last to round the corner.
Mammy was putting something into the oven. I was sitting on the bed in the midst of a pile of dresses, selected and rejected, tossed off. On Betty’s dresser, her cigarette had burned down to the very end. I took a puff before stubbing it out; it was glamorous, but a fire hazard. Mammy, who was to stay with me that night, was always there, never said she couldn’t come. Whatever she was doing she put it aside for Betty and me. She knew my mother needed to get out, that she got blue and just went to bed when she didn’t.
In the garage, my father gunned the engine of the Impala. I heard him yell, “What the hell is the matter, Betty? Quit your dillydallying.” My mother turned from the mirror, muttering, “Ugh . . . ugh, ugh, ugh,” then stuck her tongue out at me and grabbed her purse. Finally.
“Your father,” she said, “thinks I’m hard to put up with.” She loved to give him a little trouble.”
It wasn’t a rare thing for my father to get angry; once, the bookkeeper at the yard and I watched as, red-faced, he slammed his fist down on his desk, changing my notion of what a person might be capable of on a day of hard trials. But he rarely exploded at me. Suspicions of some reserve of rage lurking inside my father’s powerful frame would probably be unfounded. He carried what was probably the normal amount of anger. Stored up, though, it was released in sudden storms that left him red-faced and almost tearful.
. . .
Determined to get my mother out the door, I am back in the family room, showered and shaved with still-wet hair. Betty brings her book closer to her eyes, hides her face. I lose it. When my mother refuses to act like herself, I get angry, because it scares me.
“Mother, get ready, now,” I demand. “We should have left at twelve.” With every word, my voice grows firmer.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I told you again and again.” Then I lose patience completely and raise my voice. You might say I almost yell. You might say I almost give up.
Shocked and hurt, she seems disbelieving. Slowly, she manages to lift herself off the couch, but falls back. She tries again and again. Her face is red, ashamed. When I go to her room to check on her, I find her lying on her back in bed, legs lifted as high as she can manage, trying to get her pants on as best she can.
When Betty is finally dressed, I take her hand and lead her toward the car where she rebels against her seat belt. When she demands water for the trip, I stop at Abel’s convenience store, where early in the mornings whiskery men in old boots gather in groups to smoke and cuss out Obama. “He should just head back to the asshole factory where he came from.”
“How’s your mama?” asks Destiny, who rings up my gas. Everywhere I go, people inquire after Betty. They want to stop in, bring food, help. They miss seeing her.