The Good Fortune Harvest
Later, through my grogginess, I hear my mother coming in. The familiarity of the jingle of keys in the kitchen door is comforting.
When I see her, she looks remarkably the same, only a few pounds of aging around the middle. She still wears the expectant smile of a teenager.
“Oh honey,” she says, reaching out to take me in her arms. “I can’t tell you how good it is to see you.” I hug back with the same reserve I have always applied to her enthusiasm. As we pull away, I notice a bloody gash on her hand between her thumb and index finger.
“What’s this?” I blurt out, uneasy at the sight of my own mother’s blood.
“Mr. Benny bit me again,” she says casually. “Damn fool.”
“Bit you?” I ask, even more horrified.
“Dementia’s got him. I’ve been sitting with him so his wife, Lucy, can run errands. He’s a biter.”
My mother is a hospice sitter. She sits with the terminally ill, waiting with them for their impending departure from life. She started doing this a year after our Father died. She didn’t handle any of the deaths in the family all that well, so we were all taken aback by her decision to enter this line of work. Then again, the deaths in our house came suddenly, and each one provided a great deal of its own shock value. I think she takes comfort in knowing her patients’ deaths are planned.
“Andy and Frank are both coming over in a minute,” she chirps as she goes to the sink to wash her wound.
“Does Frank know Andy’s coming?” I say, shocked, because if so, I cannot believe he will set foot in this house at the same time.
“Yes. Why?” she asks, as if she has no recollection of Andy’s ostracism by most people in this family, particularly Frank.
I just look at her curiously. A diluted red liquid runs off of her hand down the sink’s drain. Now that most of the blood has been washed away, the cut doesn’t look as bad as it did before.
“Ma! Andy’s gay, that’s why,” I say, exasperated.
“So?” she asks innocently.
“So Frank told him if he ever saw him again he would kill him. He said that right there in that parlor you see through that doorway!” I remind her.
“Honey, that was time ago. Don’t pay Frank no never mind. Him and Andy gets along fine. Now you unpack this sack, while I go upstairs and get out of these clothes.”
My mother prides herself on having correct speech. Excruciatingly enunciating each word that comes out. When she is upset, she slips into the country parlance from where she comes, adding s’s indiscriminately. I catch a glimpse of the five small bruises this man’s teeth have left on her hand as she walks out. I did not mean to upset her, and I’m happy that Frank is coming over with Andy, but it just seems, well, odd.
I begin taking the groceries out of the bag. A bottle of rum, a carton of cigarettes, and a smaller sack with three very plump tomatoes. A bunch of mint tied with a string and a loaf of fresh bread. I realize I am hungry. A car comes around the gravel drive, and from the window over the sink I see Frank and Andy. Frank has added considerable weight to his already large frame, but Andy looks the same. Handsome. I remember the day Andy told us he was gay as if it were yesterday. It must have taken every bit of courage he could muster.
Father was sitting in his chair in the parlor waiting for my mom to bring him his Coca Cola. Frank was telling him about all the cars he had sold at the lot, and how they were starting to carry this new line of cars made in Japan. Lou was playing pitch with Omar outside in the field. Laura and Teréz were smoking French cigarettes on the front porch. Andy pulled up outside and yelled to Lou to come inside a minute. He gestured to Teréz and Laura to follow him in.
I followed my mother into the room, carrying a basket of sweet biscuits that I had just pulled out of the oven. I recall Andy standing on the far side of the room, he was ushering Lou in ahead of him. He seemed anxious, as if he was about to announce his plans to get married or something big like that. We all stood there looking at him, and then I noticed how nervous he really was, and my stomach knotted up and I set down the basket of biscuits on the chair beside me and unconsciously put my hand on my mother’s shoulder.
“Father, Mom,” Andy said, very formally. “I have an announcement to make.”
Then there was a long pause as Andy looked around at each of us, eye to eye.
“What is it honey?” my mother said, easing a tension inside of her, inside us all.
“Mom, Lou,” Andy continued, chewing his lip. He turned to Frank who was standing next to him, “Frank. I have an announcement to make.”
Frank laughed and said, “We got that part, pal.” Then he laughed again.
Andy chewed his lip and tried to utter the words that I am sure he must have rehearsed a hundred times before coming over. But no words came out of his mouth. The color in his face washed out, and I thought he was going to just fall forward, when finally he said, “Father. Mother. I am a (cough) homosexual.” Then louder, he reiterated in a stronger voice, “A homosexual.”
We all drew a collective breath. My Father’s black eyes began to shine red as they did when he got upset. My mother took a step back and I caught her up in my arms.
Frank laughed uneasily and said, “And I’m the pope.”
Andy put his hand on Frank’s shoulder and said, “No Frank. It’s true. I am gay.”
Frank jerked Andy’s hand off his shoulder so fast, you would have thought it had burned straight through to his bones. Teréz came from across the room and put her arms out to hug Andy, but Frank got in the way. His ears were flaming scarlet at the tips and I thought he was going to hit Andy first and ask questions later.
“What kind of shit is this? No brother of mine is a goddamn queer.” Then he shoved Teréz out of the way and pushed Andy backward a step. “Man, someone’s fucking with your head.”
“Hey,” Lou said, coming to the defense of his wife. He grabbed Frank’s hand and shouted, “Watch it Frank.” Meanwhile my Father’s eyes grew redder and redder in the center. He was working his lips tightly back and forth the way he would do when you knew all hell was about to break loose.
Frank started venting on Lou. He pushed him first and then said, “Don’t put your goddamn sissy hands on me, you faggot.”
“Who are you calling a sissy?” Lou said, drawing back his fist as if he were about to throw a punch.
At that moment, Jack walked in the front door, his daughters scurrying in from behind his legs. His wife, Margo, carried a brown paper sack of pecans from their yard.
“What the hell is going on here?” Jack asked my Father.
Father sat back slowly in his chair, his eyes on fire. “Your brother here says he is a goddamn pussy. What do you think of that? Did you ever know a Behar that was a pussy? Now you do. Just look at that pathetic piece of shit.”
No one said a word. Jack looked at each of our faces in the room to make sure that what he had heard was what everyone else had heard. I could detect Andy’s heavy sighs from across the room. My Father rose up out of the chair and went after Andy so fast that none of us were able to see it coming. He screamed, “You pathetic piece of shit. You’re a disgrace to this family. To my name. You piece of shit.” But before he could lay a hand on him, the women in my family drew in fast, circling Andy with a wall of flesh.
My mother yelled boldly, “Don’t you lay a finger on him! You let him be!” My Father stared her down as if she were some raggedy-ass beggar off the street. “Woman, don’t you tell me what to do. This is your fault. Your doing.”
“This is ridiculous,” Teréz shouted. “Andy, you go on now. Go on out of the house.”
But Andy wouldn’t budge. Teréz had wedged herself between Lou and Frank. Mom had one hand on Father’s arm, and Laura was positioning herself between Lou and Frank and my Father. I held Omar by the shoulders and pointed him the direction of his cousins and sent them all scurrying toward the kitchen with the basket of biscuits.
“Andy, do what Teréz says,” I shouted at him from the doorway, holding my arms out to either side to prevent the children from getting in the room.
“I can’t Sis,” he said with tears in his eyes. “They have to know it. They have to hear it. If not now, when?”
My Father turned at that moment and slapped my mother across the face with his full on open hand. I heard the smack of her delicate skin being struck by thunder, but before I could get there, she had already fallen over the chair.
“Don’t you dare hit her,” Laura yelled at him, spit flying from her mouth. “You’re the one whose not a man in this house!”
Then my Father took two steps back and roared like an animal. He lunged for Laura, but Lou and Frank had gotten in the way. I could see the blood boiling up to the top of his eyes. Pupils dilating black to carmine. He tried to get around Lou and Frank, to grab Laura, but he couldn’t. He bellowed another primordial sound.
Then, he began striking his own head. Hitting himself hard as he could with clenched fists. One blow followed another. “This is what you are doing to me!” he shouted, red eyed at Andy. His face turned scarlet, his words cut the air like a stone sharp blade. “This is what you piece of shit of a man is doing to this family. To me!”
Lou and Frank tried to keep my Father’s hands down by his side. Teréz was shocked, she fell into a nearby chair crying out in choking sobs. The children stood pressed together in the doorway, each one blubbering and confused. Jack went over to Andy and demanded that he leave right then and there.
A stream of tears ran down Andy’s face, but he wouldn’t turn away. He murmured under his breath, “No. This is who I am. No! I’m part of this family just like you. I won’t go.” As if this too had been rehearsed so many times before.
“Andy please,” my mother begged from the chair. “Please honey. Go on now.”
“Mom?” Andy looked at her. “Sis?” he said to me from across the room. My heart was breaking in two, but the kids were upset and all I could think of was keeping them out of the line of fire.
Lou and Frank were still wrestling with my Father who was carrying on an incomprehensible conversation with God about what sins he might have committed in life to deserve a faggot for a son. He looked up several times and told my mother vehemently that this was her fault. That she had done this to him.
We knew she had hell to pay, but my mother was crying too hard to absorb his insults. But she knew too. She had always known.