Burn Down the Ground Read online

  Now that I knew that teenage boys were impressed by cars, I went to work ready to share my good news. “We’re getting a new car, too.”

  “Oh yeah? What kind?”

  “A Thunderbird.” I vibrated the word the way Mom did.

  Kerry seemed interested so I kept on bragging. “Yeah, my mom said it’s silver with a maroon interior. They’re picking it up from the lot on Friday.”

  “Drive it over when you get it so we can check it out.”

  When I came home and found a strange gray car sitting in the driveway, I was confused. This wasn’t the car mom described.

  “Whose car is in the driveway?” I asked.

  “That’s the Thunderbird,” Mom said. “Pretty nice, isn’t it?”

  Mom had made the Thunderbird sound so enviable. As it turned out, it was the unsexiest vehicle around. It was a boxy, ugly hunk of metal, something a grandparent might drive. To top it off, ours was used and the silver paint was more of a dull gray, almost like a primer coat.

  “It doesn’t look new.”

  “It’s a few years old.” Mom smiled. “But it’s new to us.”

  Mom’s willful optimism annoyed me, because it placed me in an awkward predicament. Every day at Showbiz, Kerry asked me when I was bringing by the Thunderbird to show him. I would have rather run a marathon in the Chuck E. Cheese suit than have anyone at Showbiz see that gray heap of metal. It screamed hardship, which was not befitting the new “Kambri Crews” image. I came up with a different excuse each time. By the end of the week, it wasn’t an issue. Dad had been in an accident.

  “Where’s that new car you were talking about?”

  “My dad wrecked it!”

  “Already?”

  “Yeah, my mom said he hit a deer.”

  “A deer? Where’s he gonna hit a deer around here?”

  I shrugged. My father’s explanation to Mom seemed plausible to me. Dad had wrecked nearly every car we owned except for the Toyota. Once he totaled a Caprice Classic driving it home from the sales lot. I thought he was just cursed to be accident prone.

  The Thunderbird collision had left the driver’s side looking like a peeled-open sardine can. Mom and Dad weren’t bothering to get it fixed. The headlight still worked, so I guessed it wasn’t worth the money to worry about the aesthetics.

  One evening, as my father drove me to run an errand, we were waiting at a red light when a police car pulled up behind us. Dad kept his eye on him in the rearview mirror. When the light turned green, I waved to get his attention. “Green light.”

  Dad signed the ASL word “officer,” then mimicked using a CB. “The officer is on his radio.” He shook his head angrily and continued: “He’s watching me.”

  We weren’t speeding and hadn’t done anything else illegal, so I shrugged.

  “I hate cops,” Dad signed, baring his teeth.

  I knew he did. He made sure to remind me of that anytime a police officer was anywhere near. “Once I got pulled over for speeding. I pointed to my ears and shook my head no to show the officer I was deaf. I acted out writing on paper and pointed to the glove box. When I reached for it, whack! He hit me on my hand with his baton and then shook his finger at me. Again, I pointed to my ear and shook my head and signed writing on paper. I reached to open and whack! He hit me again. D-I-S-C-R-I-M-I-N-A-T-E,” Dad spelled.

  As we drove through the intersection, the lights on the police car started flashing and the siren began to wail.

  “Told you,” Dad signed, and shook his head, lips pursed and nostrils flaring.

  “You interpret what I tell you.” Dad had a cautious look on his face and repeated, “Don’t ask questions, you just say what I tell you, okay?”

  “Okay,” I signed, annoyed that he didn’t trust my interpreting.

  When the cop approached he took a slow walk around the Thunderbird, inspecting every inch of it.

  “What’s he doing?” I asked.

  Dad shrugged as he fished out his driver’s license from his wallet. The officer approached my father’s window, and Dad handed him his license. He then pointed to his ear, shook his head no, and pointed at me.

  “He’s deaf so I have to interpret.”

  The officer looked over Dad’s license and said, “All right, tell him I pulled you over because you’re missing a front license plate.”

  That didn’t make sense to me. The cop had pulled up behind us. How had he seen the front of the car? But he was an officer of the law, so I didn’t want to question him or make things worse for my father.

  I interpreted to Dad, who nodded his head in understanding. “Tell him I got into a wreck,” he signed, and pointed to the peeled-back fender. “I have it. I just never put it back on.”

  I thought that the explanation made Dad seem lazy and disrespectful of the law. I decided to tweak his story. “He said he got into an accident and it fell off.”

  “Well, in that case, you’re better off getting new license plates,” the officer continued as I signed to Dad. “Because if someone found the plate they could use it to commit a crime.” He handed the driver’s license back to Dad, who looked confused.

  “No, I have it at home.”

  “It’s okay, Dad.” I signed back before telling the officer, “Okay, we’ll be sure to do that, sir.”

  “Show him the hat.” Dad reached into the back and grabbed a NYPD baseball cap from the dashboard that Mom got after helping build helicopters for the New York City Police Department.

  “No, let’s just go.”

  Ignoring me, Dad pointed at the NYPD logo. “Tell him your mama works with the New York City Police.”

  “He doesn’t care, Dad,” I protested.

  My father put on the hat and gave the officer big thumbs-up and A-okay signs. I felt embarrassed for him being unable to express himself the way he wanted to. Finally, the officer let Dad go with a verbal warning and walked back to the patrol car.

  As we drove away Dad signed, “Whew,” by wiping imaginary sweat from his brow. “Lucky.”

  By this time, I had my first real boyfriend, named Brad. I had met him my first day in town when Michele came over to be my friend. She had pointed him out when she was describing the eligible boys in the neighborhood.

  “And there’s Brad,” she had said. “I don’t like him, but I just know he’ll like you.” Michele looked over my shoulder. “Speak of the devil, here he comes. Hey!” Michele called. “Come meet Kambri.”

  “This is Brad.”

  “What’s your name?” Brad asked.

  “Kambri.”

  “Like the car?”

  “No, Kambri. K-A-M-B-R-I.”

  “Well, I’d still take you for a spin,” he said with a cocky, lopsided smile.

  Tall and handsome, Brad was a junior at Richland and played on the football team. His dark hair was trimmed in a fresh buzz cut, a drastic difference from all the shaggy mullets in Montgomery. He drove his own 1969 Chevy Impala, a tank of a car that he paid for with money he earned as a grocery bagger at Safeway. He made sure to be home every night to care for his disabled mother. I couldn’t have designed a better boyfriend in a lab.

  Brad and I went out every weekend. Though I had a midnight curfew, I usually missed it by an hour or so. It never mattered. Mom was an “early to bed, early to rise” kind of woman and couldn’t hear a thing once she took out her hearing aids for the night.

  Living on Grove Street meant easy access to bars. The forty-five-minute drives to drinking halls were now unnecessary. As a result, Dad could find his way home most nights instead of going missing for days. He frequented the Dallas Association of the Deaf, which didn’t close until two in the morning and was about twenty minutes away. I had it down to a science.

  One particularly close call came after a night out watching a Richland High basketball game and drinking beer at a bonfire party. Brad drove me home, where we were surprised to see the Thunderbird parked in the driveway. The glow of our television beamed through the gauzy curtain
s of our living room window. Dad had beaten me home for the first time ever. My heart stopped.

  “Shit! Turn off your headlights.”

  I scampered out of Brad’s Impala and he slowly drove away with the headlights still off. I creaked open the front door and braced myself for Dad to jump up off the couch. As I slipped inside, my father didn’t move a muscle. He was passed out cold and snoring, with his head tilted back and mouth agape. I broke into a sprint to my bedroom, running on my tiptoes even though we now lived in a house on a concrete slab. My room was spinning, but I changed into pajamas, tousled my hair, and smeared my eye makeup. I inspected my look in the mirror, then ventured into the living room to pretend I was emerging from a deep sleep.

  I touched Dad’s arm, but he didn’t stir. I pushed a little harder. He smacked his mouth and licked his lips but never opened his eyes. I grabbed his shoulder and jerked it back and forth with big shoves. He lifted his head and opened his eyes with a squint to shield them from the bright light of the television. He looked around the room as if he was trying to recognize where he was. His eyes crossed, so I waved my hands in his face so he could focus. He was smashed.

  “Dad, go to bed,” I signed.

  “Where were you? It’s late.”

  “The TV is too loud and you woke me up.”

  He was stinking drunk but still remembered that I hadn’t been there earlier.

  “Why weren’t you home?”

  “I was in bed,” I signed. “I’ve been asleep, see?” I pointed at my pajamas.

  Dad teetered backward to get a better look at me.

  “Come on,” I continued. “Go to bed.”

  Dad didn’t argue—he was too busy trying to stand. He slung his arm around my shoulder and leaned on me as I directed him to the hallway leading to our bedrooms. As we passed my bathroom, he made a pit stop and slammed the door shut behind him.

  I stumbled to my bedroom and crawled into bed, marveling at my good fortune, only to hear a loud crashing noise from another room. I dashed to the hallway and yanked open the bathroom door.

  Dad was flat on his back in the tub, pissing everywhere. After losing his balance, he had grabbed the shower curtain to stop his fall. The rod had given way and the shower curtain had fallen on him like a blanket. As he struggled to free himself, urine was spraying the shower, floor, toilet, walls, and by a narrow miss, me. I ran to Mom, who was fast asleep.

  I shook her awake and signed, “Mom, hurry! Help!”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Dad!” She leapt out of bed and followed me to my bathroom. When Mom saw him passed out in the tub and covered in urine, she ordered me to bed.

  Seeing my father splayed out and exposed should have made for an awkward moment in the sober light of day. But the next morning was like any other. As drunk as he had been, I wasn’t sure if Dad had any recollection of the night before. He sat on the couch watching football and reading the paper. Out of embarrassment, I avoided eye contact with him. I was certain Mom would have something to say, but Mom acted like it had never happened. I followed her lead.

  Mom and Dad were in financial trouble again. “They always say the only things guaranteed in life are death and taxes,” Mom sighed, as she read through another notice from the IRS. During the weeks before the trailer was repossessed, they took the advice of a shady businessman back in Boars Head. He had convinced them that taxes were illegal and had given them a book, The Great Income Tax Hoax: Why You Can Immediately Stop Paying This Illegally Enforced Tax. As desperate as they were, they had accepted it as truth. They were always seeking their “fortune” in one scheme or another, and they always ended up on the losing side. That shyster back on Boars Head had led Mom and Dad into a whole heap of trouble. The IRS had tracked them down and began garnishing Dad’s wages at the cabinet company. Dad’s way of fighting back was to quit working altogether, giving him plenty of time for hanging out at the Deaf club in Dallas.

  After a night out, Dad was usually found in the kitchen dancing in place to imaginary music while stirring a pan of potatoes or a pot of boiling pasta. If I bristled at the idea of eating his unusual creations, he got annoyed.

  “What’s that?” I wrinkled my nose at the sight of scrambled eggs, sausage, and onions sprinkled with Tabasco sauce and wrapped up in a tortilla.

  “B-U-R-R-I-T-O,” Dad finger-spelled. “The Mexicans at work taught me.”

  “A burrito with eggs?” I scoffed.

  “Don’t make a face like that. Taste it first before you decide.”

  With trepidation, I took a bite and, as usual, was astonished at how good it was. Dad was pretty handy at whipping up meals around the house, especially greasy concoctions. He had even picked up a few shifts at Bennigan’s across the street from our rental house. But one day when he was supposed to be working, I was surprised to see him sitting on the couch reading Popular Mechanics.

  “Why are you home?” I signed.

  “They fired me.”

  “What? Why?”

  Dad screwed up his face and shook his head back and forth. I sat down to watch him tell his story.

  “I was chopping up onions and tomatoes and popped a few pieces in my mouth. The manager got angry. He shook his head and finger no and mouthed, ‘You can’t do that.’ I shrugged and mouthed back, ‘Okay, sorry.’ ”

  “Why couldn’t you do that?”

  “I don’t know. Who cares if I eat a few pieces? But, okay, fine. Whatever. I went back to chopping and cooking, but when I cook I’m used to smoking. We’re not supposed to smoke in the kitchen, but I got a real bad craving. You know me. I need my cigarettes. I opened the back door to have a few puffs. The manager ran over yelling and pointing to my cigarette and shook his finger no. Then he pointed to the parking lot and mouthed, ‘Go! Leave!’ ”

  Dad shrugged as if to say, “Whatcha gonna do?”

  We stared at each other for a moment as I thought about it.

  They seem pretty uptight. I did that all the time at Showbiz.

  As that thought entered my mind, I realized that it was as if I heard my own voice speaking to me. Then it struck me: What about my father? Since he had never been able to hear, what happened when he thought to himself? I had never even considered this before.

  “Dad, how do you think to yourself?” I signed.

  He was taken aback. “What do you mean?”

  “When you’re just sitting around, lost in thought, what happens? For me, I hear my own voice.”

  Dad’s chin wrinkled and he shook his head slowly. “I don’t know,” he signed, baffled. He picked up his magazine and resumed reading while I stared at him, contemplating for the first time how different our day-to-day lives were.

  I had broken plenty of kitchen rules at Showbiz. I had stolen bites of mushroom caps, sips of Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers, and nibbles of birthday cakes.

  If he had been able to hear his manager coming, he could have tossed out his cigarette and shut the door. He can’t just go out and get any job.

  Dad lowered his magazine and signed, “I see my hands.”

  “What?” My thoughts fell away and my father’s face came into focus.

  “I see my hands,” he repeated. “You asked what happens when I think to myself. I see my hands signing like they’re in front of me.”

  “Really?”

  He stared off into space for a second before nodding. “Yes, I see my hands.”

  “Cool.”

  We both broke into big grins at our discovery. A scene from the film The Miracle Worker, based on the life of Helen Keller, flashed in my head and I asked my father, “Can you say ‘water’?”

  “Whaa-er,” he replied.

  I shook my head no and signed, “Watch my mouth and tongue. Water.” Using techniques I saw in the movie, I held Dad’s hand up to my mouth and repeated the word again. “Now you.” We went back and forth until he perfected it. We only worked on it for about twenty minutes. I was surprised at how easily he mastered it.

&nb
sp; Too bad we never spend any time together. I bet I could teach him more.

  Dad asks a guard for the time—11:30 A.M. Our visit is halfway over. His attitude becomes more serious when he pulls a slip of paper out of a shirt pocket. It is a long list of items he wants to review with me before our time runs out. No more fun and games; it’s time to get down to business.

  “Send me information about Dennis Rodman. A guy here and I argued about him. He says that Dennis never played in college, just in high school and then the NBA. But I bet him a pint of ice cream that Rodman played in college in a small Oklahoma town. I really want to make him shut up and shit his pants.”

  Dad is still up to his stubborn, argumentative ways, but unlike his early days behind bars, when he spent a lot of time fighting, he now relies on my Internet access to resolve disputes. Dad has always been a gambling man and since he has a head for trivia, ranging from sports and celebrities to history and current events, he does what any man in his situation would do: He turns it into a moneymaking opportunity. In jail, money’s equivalents are stamps, writing supplies, and food. For Dad, a pint of ice cream is as good as gold, ranking third behind the ability to hear music, and the Dallas Cowboys. “You know what my favorite ice cream is?”

  “Strawberry,” I sign without hesitation.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because when Mom would bring home a gallon of Neapolitan, David got vanilla, I got chocolate, and you always ate the strawberry.”

  Dad smiles, checks Rodman off the list, and adds, “I guess you’re tired of hearing about ice cream. Ha.”

  Dad picks up where he left off on his list of things to discuss before our visitation is over. “Buy me new eyeglasses. These are broken from fighting, fighting, fighting,” he signs by striking his fists against each other over and over again. He is, of course, referring to the fights during his early jail days.

  Dad says he can sketch out the style and his prescription so I can buy them. The next time I visit, I can wear them as though they’re mine at the security check-in. Then, during our contact visit, we can swap out his old, broken glasses with the new pair I have smuggled in. “Don’t worry. You won’t get caught. Everyone does it.”