Burn Down the Ground Read online

  Surely he isn’t looking at us. We’re just sitting here.

  I raise my eyebrows and point to Dad. “Him?” Dad, finally aware that something is happening, turns his head in the direction of where I’m looking.

  The warden knows Dad is deaf, but he still shouts at full volume and overemphasizes each word so Dad can read his lips. “YES, YOU!”

  The warden curls his index finger back and forth with each word as he commands Dad, “You! Come! Here! NOW!”

  Dad struts over, cool as a cucumber.

  “WHAT’S IN YOUR MOUTH?” the warden demands. Dad opens wide and shows a mound of chewed gum resting on his tongue.

  The warden gets a crazy-eyed look and nearly pops a vein as he screams, “WHERE DID YOU GET THAT?”

  Without hesitation, Dad points straight to me.

  My head spins. Not only are we busted, but Dad has ratted me out. I smile at the one-eyed murderer seated nearby, watching the events unfold. Hoping the warden will think I’m deaf, too, I act unfazed by what’s happening.

  The warden holds out a garbage pail and Dad spits out his wad of gum.

  Just like school.

  I squirm at seeing Dad being scolded like an unruly child. Dad is no longer the cool Danny Zuko of his youth, but a pathetic institutionalized version of himself. He saunters back to his seat as if nothing has happened.

  “What’s wrong?” I sign, with the most innocent face I can muster.

  “Not supposed to have gum.”

  “Oh. Sorry,” I say with my own overexaggerated mouth movements to make sure the warden sees.

  I sip my Dr Pepper, but my hands are trembling and soda dribbles down my chin. Dad laughs. “You’re shaking? You’re scared? Pussy!”

  REPO MAN

  Our unforgettable night dancing at the yacht club party was one of the few times I saw Dad that year. Things at home were deteriorating between Mom and Dad. He wasn’t home as often, even when he wasn’t working. During one particularly prolonged absence, I confronted Mom.

  “Where’s Daddy?” I asked her, dozens of times over the course of three or four days.

  “I don’t know, Kambri,” Mom sighed.

  “What if he had a wreck?”

  “He didn’t have a wreck.”

  Why doesn’t she care? Why doesn’t she call anyone?

  I fretfully paced the driveway. I had tried preoccupying myself with my library or puzzles in Games magazine, but any creaking sound made by the trailer caused me to race outside to see if Dad was home. I preferred to stay outside and pick fleas and ticks off our dogs, a pair of boxers named Duke and Duchess and an American Eskimo pup named Cookie that Maria had given me. If the dogs were off on their own adventure, I drew patterns in the dirt with my big toe or shot baskets at our hoop, now about regulation height.

  Dad’s disappearances had become regular occurrences over my thirteenth year, ever since I started working at the Walden Yacht Club and fireworks stand.

  What if he’s dead? What will we do?

  Mom gave me terse answers highlighted with exasperated sighs, which confused and frustrated me. I was no longer a kid. I was a teenager with responsibilities. I had even managed to work two jobs. I was accustomed to handling adult transactions, including interpreting conversations that were oftentimes inappropriate for my age. If my father’s frequent absences were troubling her, I didn’t know why she wouldn’t talk to me about it. Since his deaf friends were all in Houston, I wondered if he was too tired to drive home so late and slept on one of their couches instead. It seemed odd that Mom never panicked like I did.

  This day, when I finally saw my father’s car advancing down our driveway, I ran to meet him.

  “Where have you been? I was worried!” He smiled. To my annoyance, he looked amused that I had raced to greet him. “I’m sorry. I was with friends,” he signed.

  Dad grabbed the basketball and signed, “Let’s play a game of ‘Around the World.’ ” Discussion about his absence was abruptly dismissed.

  Mom and I spent hours playing competitive rounds of backgammon or the card game Skip-Bo, but my father and I never challenged each other. Although I didn’t play on a team anymore, I was thrilled to be asked to play basketball, especially by Dad. I took an early lead, scoring basket after basket. On his turn, Dad made a few. But after a miss, he elected to take a risk to start from the beginning. He missed again and my lead doubled.

  The only other time my father had seen me play was the night I had flubbed the easy layup. Now I was down to my final shot for the win. As I took aim from the three-point line, Dad attempted to distract me by squealing and hollering. Despite his efforts, the ball went in.

  “I won!” I signed, overjoyed.

  “No, no, no!” Dad signed. “You didn’t win yet. Rules say you’re supposed to shoot two three-point shots in a row.”

  “No!” I scoffed, grinning from ear to ear. David and I didn’t have such a rule. But Dad insisted and tossed me the ball. Again I sunk the basket. Dad continued to improvise and complicate the conditions of winning but I thrived in the challenge, making shot after shot on my first try. He and I laughed in amazement.

  “Okay, to win the game, you must shoot from half court, backward with your eyes closed,” my father signed.

  I stepped up to the line Dad had drawn in the sand, took the ball, pinched my eyes closed, and tossed it. We stood frozen, watching it hurtle through the air and swish through the basket.

  Nothing but net.

  I jumped up and down, screaming with victory as Dad finally conceded defeat.

  As we went inside the trailer, I realized that Mom had never bothered to leave her bedroom to greet Dad. Undoubtedly she knew he had arrived. She would have felt the trailer vibrating when his car pulled into the driveway.

  When Dad did stay home, he was nursing a hangover. Mom called his boss to give lame excuses on his behalf, cars not starting, nonexistent dental appointments, and family crises. His body betrayed the lies. Every pore reeked of liquor as he slept off his previous night’s antics. The consequence of getting fired didn’t bother him. Construction work was abundant and his skills unparalleled, so he figured other jobs were available. But the oil bonanza was slowing. Although the industry crash wouldn’t hit until 1986, Houston’s boom development had stalled. Dad’s reputation for drinking on the job and insubordination were threatening his future opportunities.

  To make matters worse, Mom lost her job when HeliFlight Systems went bankrupt, and she found work as an independent contractor for the Texas Rehabilitation Commission, where she helped deaf people and others in need find work. But her invoices were never paid on time, so her income was sporadic and unreliable.

  My parents always pinched pennies but now Mom was floating checks to cover groceries. Excesses of the past Christmas, when we were lavished with videogames, telephones, and televisions, exhausted any line of credit. I think my parents knew they were close to filing for bankruptcy and had gone on a spending spree. However, Mom tried to protect us from their money troubles, but I knew. I was the one who fielded the calls from the bill collectors.

  “Yes, may I speak to Mrs. Crews, please?”

  “She’s not home right now.”

  “What about Mr. Crews?”

  “He’s deaf.”

  The creditors resorted to threatening me when no adult was home. “Tell them if they don’t pay the outstanding balance, the electricity will be shut off.” The stress was devastating Mom. Her once lush red hair was thin and dull. She looked like she might go bald at any time.

  One afternoon, I went home to find her vacuuming my bedroom, which she had stripped of all my belongings except my bed frame and my library collection.

  Out of breath from her furious efforts to clean, she announced that our trailer was being repossessed.

  “Today?” I asked.

  “Yes, today,” Mom puffed. “Now go through your books and pack up the ones you’re keeping.”

  I began loading a couple of carton
s with my most treasured selections. I packed my binder labeled “Library Records,” my Choose Your Own Adventure books, and everything by Agatha Christie. The rest went into a pile to be thrown out. I tried to minimize how upset I was at destroying the collection of books I had cherished. I rationalized that I had already read those books anyway and I had outgrown running my own library. I was distraught but knew there was no use in pouting.

  When I was done, I found myself in the kitchen running my finger along the markings on the wall indicating David’s and my heights over the years. Mom stopped packing the last of her pots and pans, came to my side, and put her arm around my waist.

  “Look how little you were. You still have about four more years to grow. Girls don’t stop growing till they’re about eighteen.”

  A lump formed in my throat. Didn’t the bank know it was more than just a trailer?

  “Why can’t we keep it?”

  “We weren’t gonna live in the trailer forever anyway. Now we can finally build that dream home we’ve been talking about all this time.”

  We’re not building any dream home. We’re moving into the shed with Charlie Brown.

  I retreated to my empty room. I was flushed with anger and my stomach was clenched. My pens and pencils were gone, moved somewhere with my desk, so I dug through my purse to find one. All I found was a mostly dry bottle of mascara. I scraped the inside of the tube with the wand and scrawled “FUCK Y” in big black letters on my wall.

  “Kambri!” Mom shouted. “Stop that!”

  I didn’t know she was there. I spun around, as tears streaked down my face. “Why do you care? The bank’s just gonna take our trailer anyway! I want ’em to know they suck!”

  “The more they get for the trailer, the less we owe on our loan. Now come on and help me finish packing.”

  “FUCK Y” is all I wrote, but I figured the people at the bank would know what I meant.

  Dad divided the shed in half lengthwise with plasterboard walls. One side was turned into a kitchen with a small living room, where Mom and Dad could sleep on one of our two maroon hide-a-bed sofas. The other side served as a bedroom for David and me. We separated out sections with a pilly blue blanket hung with clothespins from the tin roof. Mom bought a new breaker box and installed wiring, lights, plugs, and a 220-volt circuit to power the avocado-colored refrigerator we took from the trailer and a used electric stove we bought to match.

  The shed had an overhang where Duke, Duchess, and Cookie stayed with Charlie Brown to keep warm or safe from the rain. Now, however, our family needed the square footage beneath the overhang. Dad transformed half of it into a bathroom by installing a sink, toilet, and tub that he hooked up to our existing septic system. The other half he turned into a closet for all four of us to share. Charlie Brown would have to make do without.

  Since meeting Maria, I was smoking at least a pack of cigarettes a day. We’d drink two bottles of Boone’s Farm wine every Saturday night in the stables of the horse auction, which attracted the attention of older boys looking for a good time. They were more than happy to oblige Maria’s request for a hit off their joint, and I did what she did, oblivious to consequences. Mom may not have known about the booze and pot, but she had caught me smoking red-handed, and, worse, discovered an unfinished letter I was writing to a pen pal graphically confessing to my sexual exploits with a seventeen-year-old stoner who drove his mother’s Buick with the seat pushed back so far his feet barely touched the pedals. I was an “Easy Lover” after all and lost my virginity in the backseat of his mom’s car.

  Hanging out with Maria was influencing my choices in the worst possible ways. My lack of participation at school, my drug and alcohol use, and my promiscuity coincided with our tightening friendship. As if those weren’t serious enough, I had also gotten into trouble with the law on more than one occasion.

  January 1985 was the first time I found myself hauled off to the sheriff’s office. Maria and I had gotten into a fight. She’d been prank-calling me. I’d been returning the favor, but being the overachiever type, I went overboard. I called her more than one hundred times on Christmas Eve, using several phones in the offices behind the fireworks stand. Mom and I had been working there for the holidays, and the office manager was kind enough to let us use the office bathroom.

  A trace put on Maria’s parents’ phone incriminated me. The police contacted the office manager, who in turn contacted Donna and Cash Price. The Kingfishers didn’t press charges because, luckily, Maria confessed to having started the whole thing. Even though I didn’t face legal repercussions, Mom and I still lost our jobs at the fireworks stand.

  Maria and I patched things up afterward and, by summer, we were back to being best friends. One afternoon, Maria stopped by our modified shed accompanied by our new neighbor Curt and his younger brother Junior. The four of us went into the woods headed toward the creek. Regrettably, we were sidetracked by a more malicious adventure.

  “Did you hear ’bout Haley’s dad?” Junior asked as we trekked down the path.

  “Yeah,” I said. “My mom told me.”

  Haley’s father, Phil, had succumbed to cancer after a long battle. He had been diagnosed about the time we moved to Montgomery. The rest of the family had left town, abandoning the house they were building in mid-construction.

  “Let’s go check it out,” Maria said.

  We weren’t certain if the place was deserted permanently, or if the Millers had gone on an extended vacation. Montgomery was filled with shells of long-forgotten dream homes. Living there wasn’t easy. Newcomers usually arrived filled with optimism, like us, but got discouraged when they realized how far away from family, conveniences, and health services they really were. Many times people just abandoned their efforts. Money ran out, isolation set in after heavy rain closed the access road, plans changed, or, in Haley’s case, someone died.

  “My mom told me they’re visiting family somewhere in Massachusetts,” I said. “They’re probably moving there.”

  When we got to the site, the outside of the home was covered in black tar paper prepped for fresh siding. The blank canvas begged to be defaced and Curt wanted to be the first to mar it. He commanded us to find him something to write with.

  Junior broke open the back door and found white bars of soap in the utility room.

  Curt took a bar and wrote “FUCK YOU” in big block letters.

  I liked Haley and her brothers. I had practically grown up with them, whereas Maria and the boys were new to Montgomery and had only known them a few months. I hated the thought of the Millers coming home to see their home covered in profanities, especially when they were in mourning. But I didn’t have the courage to stop Curt, now joined by Junior, from continuing their graffiti. I ran to find Maria, who had slipped inside.

  Wandering through the house, I was mesmerized at how big and beautiful it was. It had two stories with at least four bedrooms and three bathrooms and brand-new appliances in the kitchen. This was a dream house. Jealousy, even anger, swept over me. Haley’s family called this “home,” and my family was living in a shed.

  I saw Maria in the utility room and asked for a task. She handed me a box of Tide and a bottle of Clorox and said, “Here, dump these out.” I poured out the entire contents of laundry detergent and bleach in the washer and dryer and smeared the bathroom walls with toothpaste before Curt called us to flee.

  In a matter of days, the phone rang. A neighbor had seen us running through the woods and investigated. The police were called out, but because we were all juveniles, nothing of real consequence would happen to us. Curt was the oldest, and he was only fifteen. Punishing us wouldn’t change the fact that the house was a mess and the Millers were due home any day.

  Dad was disgusted with me. “Phil was a good man,” he signed. “You should be ashamed.”

  Truthfully, I had never been more ashamed of myself, but I could find no adequate way to express it.

  The neighborhood rallied together and held a kanga
roo court. Since the boys were away for the rest of the summer, their mother appeared on their behalf. Maria and I, accompanied by our parents, gathered before the assembly in the living room of Mr. and Mrs. Blankenship’s trailer. Mr. Blankenship—or Mr. B., as we kids called him—was serving as judge, jury, and executioner at the proceedings. A leathery-skinned, looming man, Mr. B., dressed in his denim overalls, belied his true grit. I once saw him twist the head off an eight-foot rattlesnake with nothing more than a pair of pliers.

  I sat on the Blankenships’ couch with my hands folded and squeezed between my thighs, my head hanging low.

  “Now one of you girls wanna tell us what happened?” Mr. B. asked.

  I had spent the days after the vandalism trying to ease my conscience by justifying my participation. Curt and Junior had inflicted the worst of the damage, and the Millers were planning to move away anyhow. Besides, the Millers seemed rich enough to pay for repairs. But with every adult face in the neighborhood staring at me, including my own infuriated and shamed parents, my excuses seemed ridiculous. I knew I had to accept responsibility. I explained the story from start to finish, quivering and sobbing throughout my narrative. Mom interpreted for Dad, who sat next to me on the couch.

  “Who wrote them nasty things on the walls?” Mr. B. growled.

  “Curt and Junior!” Snot bubbled out of my nose before streaming down my lips and chin.

  “She’s just blaming my boys ’cause they’re not here to defend themselves,” Curt and Junior’s mother protested.

  “No! That’s not true! I didn’t write that stuff, I swear,” I blubbered. “I just messed up the bathroom. I promise. I’m so sorry.”

  The attention turned to Maria.

  “Maria, what do you have to say?”

  I looked at Maria. She hadn’t shed a tear. She looked unfazed and even annoyed at being a defendant in the Blankenships’ trailer in the first place. She shrugged and mumbled a halfhearted “sorry.” I was in disbelief. She glanced over at me with a derisive smirk.

  The neighbors agreed that if Maria and I cleaned up the damage we had caused before the Millers returned home, they would not impose further punishment.