WILLODEAN (THE CUPITOR CHRONICLES Book 1) (42 page)

Jesus every loving Christ! I was doing the exact same thing, 
now
, except I didn’t have a backseat full of kids to screw up. I was devastated. I needed advice. I needed help. 
And who do I call?
 I call my mother. 
What?
 
Beep—beep, back the truck up Willodean.
 Okay, let’s stop right and sort this out. 

One
: It’s a baby Jesus mother Mary miracle moment of sheer absurdity when I decide to call Lena Hart for 
anything
—but for relationship advice? 
Really Willodean, really?
 As a child I looked at my parent’s relationship with pure, unabated confusion as to how those two came together in the first place. But here I am, sure as shit on a shingle dialing her number. I fully expected a star to pop up in the horizon and three wise men barge in on camels presenting gifts of motherly love and declaring, “You are making a wise decision Willodean.”

I mean, what was I thinking? 
Seriously, we have never, ever, in a bazillion years discussed anything remotely serious in nature. I mean, sure, she’s my mom and all. She birthed me, fed me, and did the normal every day care taking 
southern—keep—your—distance—it’s—alive—
kind of thing. This was the extent of it. I thought every daughter mother relationship was like ours. So—when I call her, you can bet your sweet bippy that me, 
yes, me
,
Willodean Hart,
 is crashing and burning. 
Indeed.
 

I was wrecked, in love with love, broken. A woman who suddenly realized the enormous consequences of her impulsive broken knob decisions. At this fragile moment, all I needed to mend my heart and soul was a compassionate ear, a little grace, a little motherly advice. I needed to not feel so alone in the world, with my thoughts, regrets, and awful decisions. I felt controlled by things that were out of control which intensified my need to control even more so. A vicious cycle.

I needed Lena Hart, my mother, my flesh and blood to tell me it was okay and that everything was going to be just fine. I didn’t need lectures or antidotes or I told you so’s. 
I needed my mother.
 Maybe for the first time, I finally admitted that I needed her. I needed her arms to hug me from the other end of the phone. I needed her lips to tell me that people make mistakes. Maybe she’d share a little of her story to make me feel better, not so alone in the world. Considering I know nothing about her, whatsoever, this would be a miracle story I’d probably cherish. I wanted her to tell me it’s perfectly okay to make bad decisions, it happens all the time, chipper up, spit-spot, get on with life, start over. I wanted her to pass the phone to dad and he’d say, “Well, honeybun, did you learn anything?” And then in a few years, long after the annulment was signed and I had a new wonderful life, we’d all laugh and talk about how silly I was to believe in fairy tales, romances and bullshit like that.

“Hello.” She answered as if I was a pesky sales man. The cork popped off my 
never-talk-to-my-mother bottle
 and I spewed like old champagne wet with regret. She tried to cut in a few times but the bitter bubbles drowned her out. When the bottle was empty, I met the bedfellow of my childhood as familiar to me as my own hand. The brutal sounds of dead air churned on the other end of the phone. It was the dead zone. The pink elephant sat on my chest taking breath. I fell into that state of awkward self inflicting punishment I had always known. Ghosts slithered out from the phone receiver, crawling from the tiny holes that held our voices, until they hovered a large cloud over the bed. 
I waited. I hoped for hope. Waited for hope. Dreamed of a knight in shining armor—HOPE.
 In my heart, my mother said, “Chalk it up as a lesson learned Willodean and move on.” Her normal negative voice would be replaced with a more positive bubbly one and I’d nourish in the encouragement. “Life will get hunky-dory, you’ll see. There is a big world out there. Time for you to see it. No time like the present.” Her voice primed with affirmations. Her sure footed ladder of positivity would allow me to climb new heights. “You’ll find your way. I just know it. Keep at it. Love is out there.”

Instead, I could hear her breathing on the other end. My heart broke with every second that passed. Looking back on it now, if she would have gave me a speck of sand, just a mere itsy-bitsy tiny molecule of anything but negativity—
anything
—I believe with certainty, my life might have turned out different. Maybe I’d had the strength to leave, pack my shit in a suitcase and march straight to the court house. 
Oh. But. That. Didn’t. Happen.

Looming Lena, dark cloud of doom did not say the words I needed. 
No. Not at all
. Instead, I was pelted with 
I told you so’s
 as thick as hail chunks. The more Lena talked, the more I felt obligated and tangled up in southern duty. A stampede of pink elephants roared and charged through the house, ravaging everything in sight. Th
e conversation turned one sided.  It was hard to keep up.  Pr
etty soon, it wasn’t about me at all. It was her life, her pains, her marriage, her stuff. 
How does this happen?
 

“You made your bed now you lie in it.” 
She said finishing me off. 
Pink elephant kick to the gut. The spittle of damnation from her lips, so fluid and raw, I thought it would seep through the lines of the phone and fry anything it touched. No sympathy, no words of motherly wisdom, no consoling hope of tomorrows.

“Whaaat?” I said desperately in unbelief. My voice rasped with hurt, disappointment, confusion. 
What were you thinking Willodean? What did you expect?
 My inner dialogue devil was having a field day. The
one
time I admit to myself that I need her—which is by the way, the hardest motherfucking thing, I have 
ever
 done in my life.
And I get this?

“You made your bed now you lie in it.” The mantra of her words repeated themselves in my head. The dialogue devil mocking them. 
There is no hope. No hope for you Willodean. No hope.
 
Now go make your bed. Lie in the mess you made.

When I could no longer stand the demented megaphone in my head, I slammed the receiver down. A wailing cry baby was wrestling inside of me. My chest rose and heaved, my breath labored, my eyes watered, and my lips quivered.
No. Don’t do it.
 Don’t give in to her. 
You will not cry Willodean. You will not break. You will not cry. Do you duty. Do not cry you big baby.

I don’t know how long I sat on the bed I made. I was joined by my bedfellow, 
silence
. The dead zones of dead zones. I had never felt more alone; 
God forsaken alone.
Trapped. No way out. And so without hope, I pushed the child down, and locked her inside the room, inside the house. In a glazed trance of duty and southern etiquette, I got up from the bed I imperviously made and walked to the kitchen. I opened the cabinet beneath the spice rack and took out the brand new aluminum pan my mother gave us as a wedding present. I saw my stone reflection in its pewter hue like a crystal ball.

“That’s a good southern girl” My mother said smiling through it. “It’s our duty to make them happy. That’s the way it was meant to be.” I
n her bluest of blues, I saw myself. 
I slammed the pan down on the stove and turned the dial. I grabbed the Hamburger helper out of the cabinet and poured it in the pan. I went to the refrigerator and took out a pound of meat along with a bottle of teq
uila. I found two shots glasses and filled them up.  I drank them quickly.  The burn was like new flames in my throat. 
I walked over to the stereo and turned it up full blast. Ironically, the perfect song played out from the speakers and I sang the lyrics out loudly, as if I wrote them myself, inside the house that built me.

Sometimes I feel I've got to Run away

I've got to Get away
From the pain that you drive into the heart of me

The love we share
Seems to go nowhere
And I've lost my light
For I toss and turn I can't sleep at night
[Chorus]
Once I ran to you (I ran)
Now I'll run from you
This tainted love you've given
I give you all a boy could give you
Take my tears and that's not nearly all
...Tainted love (Ohh)
Tainted love…

I sang at the top of my lungs. I danced around the kitchen, spoon in one hand, shot glass in the other. One, two, three shots, till I lost count. The big pan of stroganoff boiled over. Branson would be home soon. Maybe I’ll make him a pie. 
A man’s heart is through his stomach. Right?
From that day forward… 
I took the punishment of my sins. I lay in the bed I made—until it almost killed me.
 

In hindsight, I have no idea why I needed my mother’s approval to begin with? 
Why didn’t I just leave on my own accord? Why did my mother’s opinion weigh so heavy on me? For that matter, why does anyone’s opinion carry so much weight with me? It’s like I can’t make a fucking decision for myself, so I look to others to do it for me. What the hell?
 Something inside me grew bitter, sour, bad tasting and anger festered. It was like the vision of the angels who burned from the inside out, thrashing about possessed of something dark. I’m not sure who I was more upset with, myself, my mother, or Branson. 
Maybe all three.
 I drank so I couldn’t see or feel the dark angels inside me but I could still hear their screams.

I drank to forget. Branson drank to forget.
 We both drank to forget our mistake, our bed, our lie. We were walking, talking bottles of liquor, clear and transparent, empty without anything to give—to each other—to anyone. Our reflections mirrored off each other. Neither of us liked what we saw—so we drank. Hide the truth. Deny its presence. I didn’t understand him. He didn’t understand me. Every day I walked a tight rope in eggshell shoes, stranded above a dark bottomle
ss abyss that waited to swallow me.  I tried to get out, remove myself, run, or do something to change how I felt, but ended up in the same sorry mess. 
It was an endless search to find a place, a fit in this world, a peg in this
 marriage, simply a centerpiece of me. 
I needed to fit somewhere but where? I needed a crown on my head and a mold for my feet, a centerpiece to say this is where I belong,
right here, right now.

But everywhere I looked, numbness, absence, emptiness—in my marriage, on my skin, in my heart, in my mind, inside the house. The inner devil dialogue told me to do more, be more, love more, change, you’re not good enough, drink more, be someone else, put on a mask, don’t be yourself, be better, be different, be more, go, go, go, busy, busy, busy, more, more and more.
I was on a collision course just waiting to crash. 

The more my needs were unmet, the more I depended on a man for my lack. 
Branson was unavailable to meet my needs and it drove me batty. I desperately latched onto him trying to gain some sort of control. The weight of his emotions so attached to mine, I could barely separate them from my own. 
He was sad—I was sad. He was happy—I was happy. If he didn’t feel good, I didn’t feel good. If he was angry, I thought it was something I did or didn’t do, so I hunkered down more.
 The whole world seemed to ride on my shoulders and the tightrope beneath my eggshell feet was thread bare.
“But No,” I screamed.  “
No, Willodean. You cannot break
. What will happen if you break?” 
I poured another drink. I took a pot out of the cabinet. I opened a bag of spaghetti. I turned the radio on loud. I sang. I danced. I cooked. I silently hoped for a better tomorrow. 
I made my drink. I made my bed. I lived the lie.

On rare occasions something dark leaked out of me. It came in a fury of rage during routine fights with Branson. “Stupid, lying, crazy bitch.” He said glaring at me with disgust. Hate foamed in the corners of his mout
h. The argument was about money but no matter what the argument was about, I was always a bitch. 
No money, how we spent money, how hard he worked for money, how much money we didn’t have, and no matter what I did, right or wrong, or in attempt to fix it, make it better, it all came back to me.

“How dare you question me?” He said clenching his fist. A missile of spit particles flew through the charged air between us. 
I lost my breath.