Chapter 22

At one time, my brother and I were very close. We did pretty much everything together, from playing in the backyard, to running around town and camping out in a pup tent down by Morris Creek just north of town.

We were close in a way only two siblings can be. When Manny was hurt or scared, I tried to comfort him. That’s what big brothers were for, or at least that was how I saw things.

As children, both of us had our own bedrooms, but we always slept together each night. One night, it was in his room, the next, it would be mine. We would make up stories, most of them were tales intended to scare the crap out of each other.

He had an imagination and could make up stories that would make me want to sleep with the covers over our head. I’ve read all of Stephen King’s books, but none of them had the same effect as some of the tales my brother told me.

I don’t know if we stopped doing everything together because of the age difference and we wanted to hang out with kids our own age, or what. But even then, we got along better than a lot of brothers. There were the occasional arguments, but none of the go out in the backyard and bash each other’s brains in things so common with other brothers.

He was a good and gentle kid, so smart and creative. If I couldn’t figure out how to make something work, all I had to do was take it to my brother. He would fix it and be so proud. I have yet to find anybody who loved animals more than Manny. All the pets we had so long ago, Manny took care of them. If we couldn’t find him, Manny was out playing with our dog.

I have missed him so much, the old Manny, not the new version.

As we sit at the kitchen table, I hear Mom come into the family room. She turns on the stereo. On comes One Day at a Time, sung by some old lady who sounds like has a sinus problem. Mom joins in quickly. Her singing is not anything I would wish on my worst enemy. She sounds like some old shocks that need oiling.

This is Mom’s favorite song. I remember back through the years as she changed with the times. It used to be an old 33 rpm record player. Gradually, she switched to eight-track tapes, about five years after everybody else.

In the 1980s, Mom joined the cassette generation. But it wasn’t until the 2000s that she went digital. Now, she has a little stereo system next to a television that is only on when she feels like watching Trinity Broadcasting Network. She’ll only watch it if the Crouchs are on. They are the founders of the station, an old man who wears his pants way too high and his wife, who wears really strange wigs, a color that I can never determine. Mom listens to old gospel music constantly. I’ve heard every song so many times I can sing along, not that I would want to.

Blessed Assurance will be next, I know that for a fact. It will be sung by the same old lady. It’s strange that I never knew her name, I guess it’s because I never wanted to know. The Old Rugged Cross will be on deck next, followed by Amazing Grace. Some time in the past, gospel music associations and record producers must have decreed that Amazing Grace be a required component on all old-time gospel music albums.

I don’t mind the music, although if I listen to Christian stuff, I tend to favor the newer stuff. If it is less than fifty years old, Mom doesn’t think it's of moral value.

Once, the choir director at her church, The First Baptist Church of Langford, tried to slip in a newer song. She raised a fit and stormed out of the service, the only time that ever happened. Mom spent the next week complaining to all the deacons and the preacher about this “terrible event”, her words, not mine.

All her old blue-haired friends must have joined in and I guess the church has not had any contemporary music since then. I did catch her listening to I Can Only Imagine by MercyMe once, and she actually seemed to enjoy it, until she busted me for snooping on her.

“She still can’t sing,” Manny observed.

“No, but I guess the only time she’s really happy is when she’s listening and singing along to those old songs,” I chimed in.

“Yeah, and when she’s talking to the old ladies.”

As if on cue, the phone rang. Mom turned down the music and scurried off in search for the phone. It could be a friend calling! She would have to relay all of tonight’s activities over and over, then once again, just in case the person on the other end of the phone missed it the first four times.

Then they would try to solve all their friends’ problems, without being asked, of course, and share any relevant information they had discovered during the day. I once made the mistake of accusing her and the old women of “gossiping”. Mom was offended and informed me that they weren’t gossiping, they were only talking about things they had heard.

That pretty much summed up my definition of gossiping, but she did not concur. Once it was available, mom had call waiting added to the phone, to avoid missing any phone calls. Something might be happening, after all. But she had to get rid of it after a month. Mom would wind up having three or four people on hold and couldn’t keep track of who she was talking to or what it was about.

I could hear her in the family room. She had tracked down the other phone, a cordless one that was at least ten years old and was ready to be replaced. If she makes the call, Mom prefers sitting at the table Manny and I are occupying. She only uses the other phone if somebody calls her, or if she is going to the restroom. Then she’ll take the cordless phone and place it on the floor.

She doesn’t much like talking while on the toilet, but Mom doesn’t want to miss a call. Important events do not wait until she has relieved herself.

I could picture her in the next room. Mom would have the phone to her ear, leaning against the wall with her legs crossed. She didn’t wear shoes in the house, of course, and the toes from one foot would be playing with those from the other foot, having a little competition to see which side could slide in and between the other toes.

“Why hello, Verna!” she began. “Yes…uh huh…okay…really? Well, I’ll be! You will never believe what happened to me this evening!”

I tuned her out. Manny was drinking his Coke and shaking his head.

“Some things never change, do they?” I asked.

He nodded. For him, a lot of things had changed.

“You remember Molly, right?” he asked.

I returned the nod. There was no way to forget her. Manny fell hard for her. I didn’t think she was any good, an opinion my parents shared and constantly told my little brother.

“I guess I was sixteen when we started seeing each other. Anyway, she turned up pregnant. Do you remember that?”

Do I ever. I hid out for a week. Every time one of the parents was in the house with Manny, they pounded him, treating him like he had committed every crime in the book, and then invented some. They were so disappointed in him for being so stupid to get involved with such a trashy “slut”, a word Mom used only once that almost made me swallow a chicken leg whole.

A lot of it had to do with how that would affect the family name and what people would think of them. In the early 1980s, it was not acceptable practice in Langford, Oklahoma, to have a child actually father a child out of marriage. The shame!

Manny took it all in. He was too happy and wouldn’t let them steal his joy.

“One day, Molly came up and told me that she had aborted the baby,” Manny added.

I nodded again, a memory I never wanted to replay. Manny was so devastated. I tried to console him and right the situation, but couldn’t help. What Molly had done triggered his downfall.

“I couldn’t believe she did that without telling me about it,” he added. I could see the tears developing in Manny’s eyes, even after all these years and so many drugs. “Then, she up and moved after that, never telling me why or where she was going.”

My little brother was gutted by that. It was like somebody came in and replaced the Old Manny with a new version, one that was certainly not better.

“That tore me a new one,” my little brother said. He grabbed a napkin from Mom’s holder on the table. It has a cheerful little farmer on one side with his tractor on the other, keeping those napkins straight and proper. He wiped away some tears and blew his nose. Manny dropped the napkin on the table. I hoped he picked that up before Mom found it. I doubted she would approve of somebody using her kitchen table as a disposal for a used snot rag.

“I’m sorry,” I said. Wow, that was certainly a moving reply. But I didn’t know what to say about it. There were a lot of people in the wrong. All I could come up with were two hollow words that are used so often, but mean so little.

“That was it for me. I didn’t care about anything or anybody. I started doing some bad stuff after that, Bubs. Anyway, guess what I found out after Molly moved?”

I had the bad feeling that my brother was going to tell me something that I didn’t want to know.
“What?” I asked, needing to hear what happened, but certainly not wanting to hear it.

“You remember Molly, her family was dirt poor. She didn’t have any money and could never afford to pay for an abortion. Plus, all her family was here. Molly didn’t have anybody to go live with when she left.”

Manny got his napkin back and used it again, blowing his nose once more. I’m the type of person who will use a napkin to blow my nose only once. I would have to be pretty desperate to use a napkin a second time. Then, I surely wouldn’t drop the doubly-soiled napkin on Mom’s kitchen table, the same place where we usually eat our meals. The old ten-second rule would no longer apply on any food I dropped on this table, for sure.

“Molly had a cousin that was a year younger,” he added. “I cornered her one day to try and find out where Molly was. She didn’t want to tell me and I had to give her some pot to get her to talk. Her name was Mary Beth, I believe. Anyway, she finally told me what really happened.”

Manny brought both hands together and put them in front of his mouth. He turned his head to the side and stared at the refrigerator for a long time. Finally, he continued.

“I found out how Molly could afford to have an abortion and move.”

He stalled. I motioned for him to continue.

Manny looked at me in the eyes and I could see a hurt that I could never imagine.

“She said that somebody paid Molly to have the abortion and to move,” my brother added. There was only one person who would do that. I knew the answer before Manny said it. “It was Dad.”

Whatever feelings I had for the man evaporated at that moment. I felt physically ill and never wanted to see him again, except to tell him off. He had tried to destroy my life, and had destroyed Manny’s.

He was crying hard now and the words were barely audible.

“Our father paid her to kill the baby and move away,” Manny continued. I got up and moved across the table and hugged my brother. I doubted this would make him feel any better, but there was always that chance.

To the people outside my family, they thought my father was the real deal. He never missed a church service and attended all the community events. He was a deacon in his church and always put on a good show. But he had paid a girl to kill an unborn child, one that would have been his grandchild.

Manny actually put his arm around me and laid his head on my side. I wondered how long it had been since anybody held him, somebody who didn’t want anything from him, no cash or drugs in return.

He was crying, quite loudly. I could barely hear Mom relaying her exciting evening. I wondered how she would describe the sheriff almost choking on his chewing tobacco, but then decided I didn’t care.

“Does Mom know?” I asked.

“I don’t think so,” he replied. “She wouldn’t have gone alone with it.”

No, she wouldn’t. That was crossing the line.

I let go of him and started walking toward the door into the family room.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

I stopped and turned around.

“I’m going to go tell Mom what her husband did,” I answered. I turned around and started to push on the door. There is a swinging door between the kitchen and the family room. As kids, we used to line up on both sides and try to hit the door at the same time, to see who could force the door into the other one’s side.

“Hang on, Bubs,” he added. I stopped again, my fingers just short of the door, and turned around. “There’s more.”

Chapter 23