The Phoenix of Birmingham II

The Phoenix of Birmingham
Part II


         The echo of the car door closing and the still-open window couldn’t keep their eyes drawn away from her hands.  Her sister saw them as grotesque; her brother saw them as claws in evolution; but Margaret saw them as beautiful.  They were so hideous they could only be seen as beautiful; otherwise one would have to turn away.  Several of her fingers were missing nails, but those that had them, had deformed parts of nails painted a dull red color, much the color of blood, and would have matched her lipstick, had they been able to focus on her face.

         After Margaret’s comment about her rising from the well, no one had spoken.  The old woman sat calmly, quietly whistling to herself with her hands clasped between her knees as they stared at her.  After all, she was a ghost.  She’d only be noticed if she chose to be.


“Usually I wear gloves.”

“Usually you wear gloves?  What are you talking about?  Who are you?”

“Do you really need to ask, Rigel?  My dear boy, you were never a bright child, so sensitive and all that, now were you?  Tell him who I am Clarice.”

“I don’t know who you are.  You could be any old battle ax climbing on board for a free ride.  I guess we could drop you off somewhere.”

“You’re sure you don’t know who I am?  Margaret, look closely and tell them who I am.” She said nervously.

“You’re the woman who ascended from the well, Mom.”

“The oldest and the smartest, you come through as usual.  Yeah, I’m the woman who rose from the well.  I could never stay in that well; thrown there, but not destined to stay.  That was simply not to be.  There was enough water to break my fall, but not enough to drown me.  Then it was a matter of shinnying up the well and fleeing for my life.  But first, I had to decide I deserved to live.  It didn’t take me long to decide.”

         There was more deafening silence as the words sank into the very lining of the leather seats.

“I think someone should tell the driver to depart.  It won’t be long before the press starts peaking through that open window trying to figure out who’s all in here.”

“Mr. Charles.  Please take us home.  Better yet, take us to the office.  We’ll have more privacy there.  All these cockroaches will be hanging out in my kitchen if we go home.”

         They drove on, no one knowing quite what to say as they all continued to stare at the old lady’s hands.  Each was painfully painting a picture in their minds of her clawing her way out of the well.

         Finally, Margaret asked the questions begging to be asked, “What happened to your hands?  Is that from scratching your way out of the well?

“No silly.  I wish I could say that.  I have come up with multiple different stories, but no, not from the well.  These hands were burned.  I thought of telling you they were worn from praying.  I did pray a lot.  I prayed you children would survive.  Almost as much as I prayed you’d eventually believe you were better off without me.”

         The car went silent again.  They could only hear the hum of the air-conditioning and the smooth shifting of the automatic transmission.

“How can a mother say that?”  Rigel asked.

“Yeah, how can you say that to us?  You bore us and then you abandoned us.  Now you tell us you prayed we’d be better off.  How can a mother say that to her children?  I have children and I could never say that to them.”

“Please.  Look at me.  All of you look at this face.  You think it’s easy to speak the truth?  It’s not, but sometimes it’s best.  I was brought up lying.  After my mother died, my father married a barren woman and every year he brought home a different child and added them to our house.  I swore I’d never live as my mother lived.  I was the first to go off to college and had serious dreams, but instead I married the first man who looked at me.  I lived through a lie of a marriage and I lived through the lie of its death.  When I tell you I prayed you’d be better off without me, it’s instead of telling you I wished you were all dead.  I did.  I’m not proud of it, but I did wish it.  I prayed on it.  We didn’t have rape back then.  It was a man’s conjugal right.  Every time your father had his conjugal right, I prayed you died in my womb.  I prayed I’d die right along with you.  You have no idea how hard I prayed.  Fear and weakness is not easy to live with.  You have no idea.”

“Maybe we do, Mama.  Only, we wished he was dead.  I never wished I was dead.” 

         It was Clarice speaking in a voice she didn’t recognize as her own. 

“I did.  I wished I were dead all the time.  I wished I’d died when he cut my throat.  The only thing that kept me going was wishing I could die and recognizing that it wasn’t going to happen unless I did it myself and I was too afraid and weak for that.  Then staying alive just became a habit.  I just died inside and seeing you again, Mama, I’m not sure I’m not just dying again.”

“What on earth are you talking about, girl?  I thought your neck was like that from some botched-up plastic surgery?”

“You’re not the only one with scars, Mama.  I got scars of my own; some on the inside and some on the outside.  It actually helps that some are on the surface.  It pulls me away from the others.”

“Mama, did you really think you were the only one he hurt?  Look at us.  You thought he’d spare his children.  He hurt us because he could no longer hurt you.  He didn’t have an outlet, except with his daughters.  If Margaret hadn’t come to my rescue and me to hers, we’d both be dead.  Now that I think about it, you would have gotten your wish, wouldn’t you?”

         The Cadillac went silent then, but their ears rang with the quiet.  As they approached her office towers, Margaret couldn’t figure out why they should go in.  It appeared everything had been said.  They had a mother.  That mother was alive.  That mother wished they were dead, or had never been born.  They agreed with her.  They wished that mother had remained dead.  She probably agreed.  So, there didn’t appear to be anything left to say.

         As Margaret searched the faces, all looking at the floorboards, she realized they were all scarred.  They were the family of scarred people Frankenstein’s children.  Instead of feeling depressed, she noted she got a little giggle out of it.  She began to laugh.  She tried to stop by clearing her throat.  She giggled again.  The others looked at her like she was insane.  Perhaps, she was.  Maybe it was her insanity that had kept her alive.  All these years, she had thought it was rage.  Maybe it kept them all alive.

         She continued to laugh as she climbed out of the car and crossed the lobby and keyed her personal express elevator to the top floor.  She watched as the others entered the elevator and the doors closed.  She snorted.  She had to hold onto the elevator bars to keep from falling over or dropping to the floor.  It didn’t appear anyone else saw the humor.  Too bad for them, she thought.

         They went up several floors before her sister joined in, then her brother.  Their mother continued to look at them like they were crazy people.  She began to look at the knobs for the emergency button, just in case she had to leave in a hurry.  Maybe the alarm would alert the security guard and he could summon the police before they killed her.  If only she had something to fend them off with.  She tried to remember everything she had in her handbag.  Maybe she had a nail file.  She looked from one face to the other for a clue who would crack first and lunge for her throat.  She hadn’t planned on them being insane. 

“It must be from your Daddy’s side of the family.”

         When they saw the unmistakable look of terror on their mother’s face as she desperately rummaged through her handbag, they truly did lose it.  As they laughed, coughed and tried to support one another, she looked up to see that she finally began to see the humor.  She let out a small giggle.  It was all-downhill from there.

“He would just die; that son-of-a-bitch would kill himself if he saw you kids laughing on the very day they planted his sorry ass in the ground, now wouldn’t he?”

         None of them answered as they continued to sputter and cough.  When they reached Margaret’s office, they finally began to catch their breaths.  Later as they sat about her boardroom, had drinks, and looked at the walls, a sinking suspicion of the unsaid crept back into the room.  It appeared to hit them all at once as they all turned to stare at Rigel.  He had nowhere to turn.

“How did you know?  We never told you.  You certainly didn’t look surprised in the car.”

“Yeah, tell us Rigel?  Mom could have guessed because she knew what a crazy asshole he was, but you, how did you know?”

“Rigel, tell your Mama how you knew.  Don’t hold back.  It’s not healthy.”

“It’s amazing.  It took you twenty years to verbalize secrets I already knew, and you can’t figure out how I knew?  Think about it.  Mom, you got your abuse from Dad and you gave it to us by abandoning us to fend for ourselves.  I imagined he threw you into that well, and I imagined you climbing out.  I waited twenty years for you to return.  You gals got your brand of abuse.  You ran to one another’s aid, and somehow you gave it back.  You got your scars and I imagine you gave Dad his.  Then you both ran away to your rooms and later off to school.  Nobody looked to see what was going on with Rigel.  Rigel’s too slow and too stupid to figure out what’s going on.  What did you think he would do with those scars, huh?  Keep them?  He never kept any of the others, so why would you expect him to keep those?  I was the only one left; the only other soul in the house, not a man, but a weak being nonetheless, right?  So yeah, that son-of-a-bitch shared those scars with me.  But I’ll be damned if I going to pass them along.  I’m keeping them.  They end with me.  It all ends with me.”