Redneck Press with Fried Chicken and Coffee

"You'll kill a plant if you touch it when you're bleed­ing," she told me. "Leaves will shrivel, fruit drop from the vine. Not just any blood. Mind me, I'm talk­ing the monthlies."

Mama raised me up with super­sti­tion. In the way flow­ers strain to the sun, I grew in her direc­tion of sus­pi­cion and doubt. Famil­iar shel­ter, all her spit-shine and coun­try lore. As a girl who'd skipped her month­lies, too early for her own good at fif­teen, I was dulled to shame by my error, so I caved to Mama's aggrieved face and capa­ble arms.

"Learn from one who's been down that road," she said. Her pointer fin­ger tapped her chest, hint­ing at a woman and a secret I'd not before con­sid­ered. I glanced at the wed­ding band she wore.

She said, "We don't need peo­ple with their ques­tions nosey­ing in. Best to keep your con­di­tion under wraps."

Pre­ston com­plained that Mama was hold­ing me hostage, but don't you know her cap­tiv­ity appealed to me? Half the time I wanted Pre­ston so bad my belly ached; the rest of the time I shud­dered at what he and I'd set into motion. Such see-sawing made me sick. The doc­tor ordered bed rest my final months, he said Mama and I bet­ter enact a truce or there'd be hell, and extra hos­pi­tal bills, to pay. The one time in her life she must have suc­cumbed to out­side demands. Our unsaid peace wob­bled only when Pre­ston rang from the National Guard and she dis­con­nected his calls.

I reached out my arm and protested as she hung up the phone, "He just wants to offer what­ever he can."

She arched her eye­brows. "I'd say he's labored over you enough."

Preston's ghost loomed in our door­way while what he'd given grew inside me, most ten­der of ten­der shoots. Along with my womb, he quick­ened my blood. We weren't mar­ry­ing, but for me, there was no forgetting.

Mama wouldn't let us drive to the JP. She said, "You must be out of your mind, with that boy going over to the desert. You'd be wed­ding a corpse. Mark me."

Her pre­dic­tion scalded me, and know­ing how she banked on pre­mo­ni­tions, I thought maybe this time she'd had some word from the other side, and so I told Pre­ston, "Wait. Just let's wait."

Already on his way out of North Car­olina, what could he do but lean into my plea and nod yes? He had a body lan­guage that super­seded every­thing else the world threw at me.

"Cold hands warm heart," Mama said, chaf­ing the bot­toms of my swollen feet while I lay list­less and lovelorn in bed, use­ful for noth­ing but the nurs­ing to come. At my low­est, she sparkled her most cheerful.

She boiled the essence out of any root veg­etable, turnips and rutaba­gas, in par­tic­u­lar. Made the house stink for days, and only she ate it. God knows I had no appetite. What she didn't boil, she fried. Fried chicken, fried white­fish, fried oys­ters, fried pork chops with bread­ing from crushed up saltines. In the refrig­er­a­tor, a Crisco can held re-used grease she'd dip into.

I lay in bed, trapped by the fumes. Each day, some assault­ing smell she brought to me on her skin: lin­i­ment, or Vick's Vapo-rub, Ivory soap, ammo­nia, scorched but­ter, moth balls. It took half the win­ter for our wool coats to shed the peppermint-dead odor from when she'd packed them away dur­ing sum­mers. I wor­ried my own child would suf­fer the shame of a smelly coat fes­ter­ing in his locker dur­ing win­ter school days. At dis­missal, "What's that smell?" some kid would say, while he stood wrig­gling into stiff sleeves and mit­tens darned like socks. And, "Pee-you"—my baby tak­ing it per­sonal, the way I had.

When the time of my "con­fine­ment," as Mama termed it, reached its end, the hos­pi­tal set me pan­ick­ing for no other rea­son than anti­sep­tic pinched my nose in the way moth balls did.

Non­sense, I know, but my mind linked moth balls with steril­ity. I waxed a lit­tle hys­ter­i­cal and they wouldn't give me any­thing for calm­ing because of the baby.

After twenty-two hours labor, my hips were clearly not going to slide apart enough; they put me under, and cut. Mama acted like surgery can­on­ized me. This was the one break in her life­long relent­less­ness. To my mater­nity bed she brought daisies from the yard atop a wicker bas­ket of belly bands to tie around my newborn's mid­dle. "So his belly but­ton doesn't pop out when he cries too much," Mama said. As if she expected me to let Luke lie there and wail, instead of grab­bing him up to me every time he fussed and offer­ing him my breast, which I alone could give.

Her eyes flick­ered while the baby latched on and my milk let down. "What?" I said. "It's what new­borns cry for."

"That, or a chang­ing," she said. She chipped at my moth­erly ini­tia­tives. We were back home, where she acted queen, and her words churned the bit­ter­ness in my abject heart.

When Luke, as tod­dler, suf­fered his grandma's scold­ing, she said, "A lie will black-spot your tongue. Boy, you remem­ber I told you so." Half the time she wouldn't even use his name.

He gagged from hang­ing his mouth open too long, watch­ing for his tongue to darken in my hand mir­ror off the dresser.

She gave me an eye­brow raised, imply­ing, "See? He's got some­thing to hide. Deceit­ful from the start."

She said, "You've got to be on watch with a child, or she'll pitch over to the devil's side with the first whiff of temptation."

"He," I said. "He."

I feared a lit­tle that Luke would grow up like me, lured by things requir­ing a lie: money left in plain sight, an open door, taste of fire. For me, the final blow had been the breadth of a man's shoul­ders, he and his warm prox­im­ity blot­ting out the sun. A sweet and final blow.

"Hell-bent," she said, "pure and simply."

Mama was the stake train­ing my vine. I was tied to her, impris­oned or freed from my bed, ever directed by her strong will, twisted by choice not my own. I didn't have the gump­tion to get out from under her since my baby and I stayed with her while I worked at my GED. Once Pre­ston returned from Iraq, I snuck out to him when I could with Luke, to let the daddy know his boy, to let me and him re-acquaint.

Dot­ing on Pre­ston and Luke, and fak­ing out Mama when I had to, I didn't have it in me to seek employ­ment, too. We sur­vived on her social secu­rity and my aid for moth­ers with depen­dent chil­dren. I learned to com­plete all the gov­ern­ment fil­ings applic­a­ble. That alone took for­ti­tude. Luke started string­ing sen­tences around about the same time can­cer robbed Mama of her voice box. "A bab­bling child can drive you crazy," I bet she'd say, if she could talk. And she'd declare me "sloth­ful," watch­ing me work a pen­cil on the forms across from her there at the kitchen table instead of accom­plish­ing some­thing more indus­tri­ous with a clean­ing imple­ment or a yard tool in my hands.

When it got to the point she no longer walked, she rang a bell, the same bell she set beside me dur­ing my post natal recov­ery. I'd rung it into all man­ner of song and she'd still take her good natured time attend­ing me. "Did I hear you call­ing?" she'd say, finally appear­ing, sweat on her brow and short of breath like she'd been run­ning the laun­dry through a wringer when we both knew a per­fectly good Whirlpool sat in the base­ment. Exas­per­ated, I'd prob­a­bly fallen into sleep by the time she showed up, maybe even wet myself. She'd cuss me up one side and down the other while she fresh­ened my post-partum linens.

Now I changed the sheets. First her voice. Then her blad­der and bow­els. Work­ing around a stub­born, unfor­giv­ing, voice­less woman—there's a dif­fi­culty. Fac­ul­ties robbed from her one by one, you'd sup­pose she'd shrink with each loss, but she smacked me when­ever I stood within reach. I ducked and dodged, finally got her bed proper.<
br />
I had help.

She couldn't talk but I heard her. What's he doing here, she wanted to know.

Luke's father, her most unwel­come guest, moved my mama's bones on the mat­tress. She was so weak she couldn't shrug him off as I knew she'd dearly love to. She saw Pre­ston now anchored my vine, and her eyes blazed damnation.

"He keeps my knees from drag­ging the ground," I told her, still feel­ing like I had to make excuses but breezy in know­ing she couldn't object.

The man beside me in this sick room stood stal­wart to the very last. We held hands against the air, bad for breath­ing, puls­ing erratic from Mama.

Know­ing finally this was the time she couldn't fight and beat me, I said, "We have the Chapel of the Holy Spirit reserved sec­ond Sat­ur­day in April."

Maybe she thought I meant for last rites, but Pre­ston and I were plan­ning a wed­ding, with the sick room door clicked shut and her behind it, hang­ing on. Her eyes took the glazed and far-off look. I prayed aloud at her bed­side to the angels she used to blas­pheme. Her lips moved when mine did, the lines around her mouth engraved, her cheeks shiny over her bones. She was wear­ing her death mask and I wanted to let her know I would be all right.

I said, "Preston's here and he's staying."

She reared up like a cat in reverse, scari­est thing I ever saw, her boney chest ris­ing, her head deep in the pil­low, neck noth­ing but ten­dons, her fin­gers grip­ping the sides of the fit­ted sheet. She could hiss, and she did.

"Yes, Pre­ston," I said, stroking her down, hiss­ing then myself. "Shhhhh."

She stayed rigid on the bed. Her drenched night shirt began stink­ing worse than usual. We didn't let Luke in until after the preacher and the doc­tor both pro­nounced it and the top sheet had been drawn. Then we sang hymns as fam­i­lies do.

After we mar­ried in the spring, Pre­ston shoul­dered Mama's spade into the dirt where she rested, where I pledged to bury the seeds she saved. I shook them in their enve­lope, rel­ish­ing them a lit­tle longer, with my boy, antsy as any tod­dler had a right to be, stomp­ing my shoes.

"Quit your danc­ing," I said, hold­ing Luke still by his slight shoulder.

Pre­ston paused his work, cut the shovel's blade in the clay so the thing stood all on its own. He grasped the han­dle and stood tall—he might just have been stretch­ing his low back, eye­ing me with a need and judg­ment that shaved at the resis­tance she'd planted. We both knew Mama's every cau­tion had become a flea trapped in my ear. He'd work no fur­ther, he said, until I released our boy.

Luke hop-scotched while I scat­tered seed by the hand­ful. Pre­ston enveloped him in a wrestler's hug, daddy and son shout­ing and cut­ting up in the over-watered grave­yard grass, and I wanted to cross Mama to the both of them, but I froze, until Pre­ston looked up from where he bent over Luke like a horse to his oats, and I swear, chan­nel­ing a lit­tle of my mama's bite, said, "You got two strong legs. Now walk on over here."

Born and raised in Cincin­nati, Donna feels very nearly south­ern, what with that Ohio River and Ken­tucky prac­ti­cally part of her back yard. On her mother’s side of the fam­ily every uncle and male cousin has been a truck dri­ver. Before trucks they drove wag­ons, mostly ice deliv­er­ies to the bars in Over-the-Rhine, an inner city neigh­bor­hood in the heart of down­town Cincinnati.

Donna’s sto­ries have appeared or are forth­com­ing in dozens of print and online pub­li­ca­tions, includ­ing Nat­ural Bridge, Hawaii Review, Merid­ian, Gar­goyle, Broad River Review, Hur­ri­cane Review, Front Porch Jour­nal, Beloit Fic­tion Jour­nal, Sto­ry­glos­sia, Inso­lent Rud­der, Turn­row, Night Train, Juked, Smoke­long Quar­terly, Another Chicago Mag­a­zine, and Ginosko.