The porch had also started to rot. Most of the banisters and railing had given way, and the floorboards had turned spongy and slick with mold and algae. It became a real problem when you had to go down under the house to use the toilet at night, and each of us had slipped and fallen off the porch at least once. It was a good ten feet to the ground.
“We have to do something about the porch situation,” I told Mom. “It’s getting downright dangerous to go to the bathroom at night.” Besides, the toilet under the house was now totally unusable. It had overflowed, and you were better off digging yourself a hole in the hillside somewhere.
“You’re right,” Mom said. “Something has to be done.”
She bought a bucket. It was made of yellow plastic, and we kept it on the floor in the kitchen, and that was what we used whenever we had to go to the bathroom. When it filled up, some brave soul would carry it outside, dig a hole, and empty it.
ONE DAY WHILE Brian and I were out scrounging around on the edge of our property, he picked up a piece of rotting lumber, and there among the pill bugs and night crawlers was a diamond ring. The stone was big. At first we thought it was just neat junk, but we spit-polished it and scratched glass with it like Dad had shown us, and it seemed real. We figured it must have belonged to the old lady who had lived there. She had died before we moved in. Everyone had said she was a little loopy.
“What do you think it’s worth?” I asked Brian.
“Probably more than the house,” he said.
We figured we could sell it and buy food, pay off the house — Mom and Dad kept missing the monthly payments, and there was talk that we were going to be evicted — and maybe still have enough left over for something special, like a new pair of sneakers for each of us.
We brought the ring home and showed it to Mom. She held it up to the light, then said we needed to have it appraised. The next day she took the Trailways bus to Bluefield. When she returned, she told us it was in fact a genuine two-carat diamond.
“So what’s it worth?” I asked.
“That doesn’t matter,” Mom said.
“How come?”
“Because we’re not selling it.”
She was keeping it, she explained, to replace the wedding ring her mother had given her, the one Dad had pawned shortly after they got married.
“But Mom,” I said. “that ring could get us a lot of food.”
“That’s true,” Mom said, “but it could also improve my self-esteem. And at times like these, self-esteem is even more vital than food.”
Mom’s self-esteem did need some shoring up. Sometimes, things just got to her. She retreated to her sofa bed and stayed there for days on end, crying and occasionally throwing things at us. She could have been a famous artist by now, she yelled, if she hadn’t had children, and none of us appreciated her sacrifice. The next day, if the mood had passed, she’d be painting and humming away as if nothing had happened.
One Saturday morning not long after Mom started wearing her new diamond ring, her mood was on an upswing, and she decided we’d all clean the house. I thought this was a great idea. I told Mom we should empty out each room, clean it thoroughly, and put back only the things that were essential. That was the one way, it seemed to me, to get rid of the clutter. But Mom said my idea was too time-consuming, so all we ended up doing was straightening piles of paper into stacks and stuffing dirty clothes into the chest of drawers. Mom insisted that we chant Hail Marys while we worked. “It’s a way of cleansing our souls while we’re cleaning house,” she said. “We’re killing two birds with one stone.”
The reason she had become a tad moody, she said later that day, was that she hadn’t been getting enough exercise. “I’m going to start doing calisthenics,” she announced. “Once you get your circulation going, it changes your entire outlook on life.” She leaned over and touched her toes.
When she came up, she said she was feeling better already, and went down for another toe touch. I watched from the writing desk with my arms folded across my chest. I knew the problem was not that we all had poor circulation. We didn’t need to start doing toe touches. We needed to take drastic measures. I was twelve by now, and I had been weighing our options, doing some research at the public library and picking up scraps of information about how other families on Little Hobart Street survived. I had come up with a plan and had been waiting for the opportunity to broach it to Mom. The moment seemed ripe.
“Mom, we can’t go on living like this,” I said.
“It’s not so bad,” she said. Between each toe touch, she was reaching up into the air.
“We haven’t had anything to eat but popcorn for three days,” I said.
“You’re always so negative,” she said. “You remind me of my mother — criticize, criticize, criticize.”
“I’m not being negative,” I said. “I’m trying to be realistic.”
“I’m doing the best I can under the circumstances,” she said. “How come you never blame your father for anything? He’s no saint, you know.”
“I know,” I said. I ran a finger along the edge of the desk. Dad was always parking his cigarettes there, and it was ribbed with a row of black cigarette burns, like a decorative border. “Mom, you have to leave Dad,” I said.
She stopped doing her toe touches. “I can’t believe you would say that,” she said. “I can’t believe that you, of all people, would turn on your father.” I was Dad’s last defender, she continued, the only one who pretended to believe all his excuses and tales, and to have faith in his plans for the future. “He loves you so much,” Mom said. “How can you do this to him?”
“I don’t blame Dad,” I said. And I didn’t. But Dad seemed hell-bent on destroying himself, and I was afraid he was going to pull us all down with him. “We’ve got to get away.”
“But I can’t leave your father!” she said.
I told Mom that if she left Dad, she’d be eligible for government aid, which she couldn’t get now because she had an able-bodied husband. Some people at school — not to mention half the people on Little Hobart Street — were on welfare, and it wasn’t so bad. I knew Mom was opposed to welfare, but those kids got food stamps and clothing allowances. The state bought them coal and paid for their school lunches.
Mom wouldn’t hear of it. Welfare, she said, would cause irreparable psychological damage to us kids. “You can be hungry every now and then, but once you eat, you’re okay,” she said. “And you can get cold for a while, but you always warm up. Once you go on welfare, it changes you. Even if you get off welfare, you never escape the stigma that you were a charity case. You’re scarred for life.”
“Fine,” I said. “If we’re not charity cases, then get a job.” There was a teacher shortage in McDowell County, just like there had been in Battle Mountain. She could get work in a heartbeat, and when she had a salary, we could move into a little apartment in town.
“That sounds like an awful life,” Mom said.
“Worse than this?” I asked.
Mom turned quiet. She seemed to be thinking. Then she looked up. She was smiling serenely. “I can’t leave your father,” she said. “It’s against the Catholic faith.” Then she sighed. “And anyway, you know your mom. I’m an excitement addict.”
MOM NEVER TOLD Dad that I’d urged her to leave him. That summer he still thought of me as his biggest supporter, and given that there was so little competition for the job, I probably was.
One afternoon in June, Dad and I were sitting out on the porch, our legs dangling over the side, looking down at the houses below. That summer, it was so hot I could barely breathe. It seemed hotter than Phoenix or Battle Mountain, where it regularly climbed above a hundred degrees, so when Dad told me it was only ninety degrees, I said the thermometer must be broken. But he said no, we were used to dry desert heat, and this was humid heat.