Paullina Simons - Tully

After a few moments, Tully let go of her, and as mother and daughter backed away from each other, they saw they were both covered with blood. They stood there for a long moment, looking at each other dumbly. Hedda stared at her own hands, her own shirt, and then at Tully. Tully stared at her mother and then held up her unstitched wrists, which had opened up. Having been recently cut again – for the first time in three years – they had had no time to heal and were bleeding profusely onto Tully’s palms and fingers and down to the floor in the hall. Drops of dark blood formed red quarters on the black and white tiles. Tully pressed her wrists to her chest.

Hedda started screaming. ‘You slut, you liar!’ she shrieked. ‘You slut! You liar!’ And then, out of breath, she lunged again for Tully, who, calmer now and prepared, backed away fast, to see her mother fall on her knees, get up, and lunge for Tully again. And again. Trying to move away, Tully became slower and calmer, as if too much tension and anger weakened all her defenses. But she knew it was not tension and anger that was calming her down, for the light-headed feeling turned into the familiar Whoooshhh , and she saw not Hedda in front of her, but the waves and the rocks. Rocks blended in with the visual unreality of her mother, her mother screaming at her for being a slut and a liar while Tully stood there and bled.

‘What are you saying, you crazy woman, what are you accusing me of?’ Tully said weakly, holding her wrists to her chest. She knew she had little time. Her legs were buckling under her, and she wanted to hold on to a chair or sofa, yet couldn’t while holding on to both her wrists.

‘You’ve been fucking since September!’ screamed Hedda.

Tully lost all her sensibilities. She charged at her mother, flinging her hands in front of Hedda, her wrists spitting blood into Hedda’s face. ‘Since September? September! You mean since September ’72, don’t you, Ma! Since September ’72, right, Ma, starting with your brother-in-law – my Uncle Charlie! Right, Ma? Right?’

Hedda, supporting herself by leaning against the back of the couch, looking at Tully and breathing hard, shook her head and hissed, ‘This will all come to a complete stop, do you hear me? You will not be a slut and a liar under my roof!’

Glowering at Tully, Hedda went for her again, but fell on the floor, spent, and from the floor said, ‘Not while you are living in my house, do you hear me?’

‘Great!’ said Tully. ‘Fuck you!’ She wanted to shout it, but she had nothing left in her to shout with. Her split wrists shouted ‘Fuck you!’ all over Hedda’s face and floor, while Tully turned and stumbled up the stairs and into the bathroom.

Hedda lay there until she got her breath then stood up, wiped her face with her sleeve, and went upstairs. She found Tully on her knees in her room, in front of her bed, wrists sloppily bandaged, stuffing clothes into milk crates.

‘What are you doing, Tully?’

‘I am getting the hell out of here, Mother,’ said Tully, not looking at her.

‘You are not leaving this house.’

‘Uh-huh. Right.’

‘You aren’t leaving this house! Tully! Did you hear me?’

‘Mother, did you hear me ?’

‘You aren’t going anywhere, sit down and calm down. You’re hurt. You been cutting yourself again.’

‘I don’t want to talk to you anymore, Mother. Get out of this room and leave me alone.’

‘Tully, don’t you fucking talk to me like that!’ Hedda shrieked, and started toward Tully.

Tully got up off her knees and, standing up straight, legs apart, both bandaged hands in front of her, pointed the long barrel of a .45 pistol at Hedda Makker.

Hedda stopped cold and stared at the gun.

‘Where did you get that?’ she whispered.

‘Mother,’ said Tully. Her voice was weak, but her eyes were those of a madwoman. ‘That doesn’t matter. What matters is that I am leaving and I am not coming back. You must be familiar with that, Mother, your family leaving you and not coming back?’

Hedda flinched.

Tully laughed. ‘How could I say that to you, Mother? Because you’re fucking nuts! That’s how! And you’re making me crazy, too.’ She lowered the gun but continued to stand legs apart in front of her mother.

‘Put the gun down,’ said Hedda.

‘Mother, I want you to leave this room. I will be out of your house in just a few minutes.’

‘I don’t want you to go,’ said Hedda. ‘I lost my temper.’

‘Too late,’ said Tully.

‘I don’t want you to go,’ repeated Hedda dully.

‘Ma!’ Tully screamed. ‘Get out of this room right now so I can get out of this house! Do you hear me?’

Hedda did not move.

‘Because I’ll tell you something, and you might be surprised to hear this. If you try to stop me, if you come near me, or if you go crazy on me, I will kill you. I will shoot you dead, do you understand?’

Hedda stared at her daughter.

‘I will shoot you like a crazy rabid dog in the middle of the street and spare you the rest of your life!’ screamed Tully, panting. ‘You might think I have some bad feelings for you, but Mother, I hate you. Hate you! Now get the fuck out of my room!’

Hedda stretched out her hands and took two steps toward Tully.

Tully lifted the gun, cocked it, and before Hedda could move any further, pointed and fired a foot away from Hedda’s face. The explosion was deafening, but the bullet slipped into the wall near the door, making only a small neat hole in the Sheetrock. Tully shuddered.

Hedda stood motionless. Tully recocked the gun and said, ‘Ma. Get out of my room, because next time I won’t miss.’

Hedda did not turn around, but backed up toward the door, opened it, and staggered out.

Tully put the gun down, went over to the phone, and yanked the cord out of the wall, not giving Aunt Lena a chance to call the police. Thirty minutes later, Tully got into her not so new car and drove out onto the Kansas Turnpike.

It was night, and Tully drove and drove, heading west, with $800 in her pocket and a gun.

Everything hurt.

She suspected that something in her was broken: either her nose, or her ribs, or both. She didn’t know. And then KW AZ put out a tornado alert and Tully stopped the car.

It was unbelievably windy, particularly here, she thought, in the middle of Kansas in the middle of the Great Plains. The highway was pitch-black. The prairie must be all around me thought Tully. There were no stars, and no other cars. There was only Tully, two hundred miles west of home, and a tornado. She pulled over to the shoulder on I-70, ran down the slope, found a ditch, collapsed in it, and promptly lost consciousness.

When she came to, it was morning and raining. Her body ached and her wrists throbbed. She crawled up the embankment, got into her car, turned around at the next exit, and drove 150 miles east, back to Manhattan, to DeMarco & Sons. Her quest for the west had brought Tully as far as WaKeeney on the Central Plain.

In Manhattan, Robin took care of her. Tully spent forty-eight hours at Manhattan Memorial, where the doctors reset her nose for the second time in her life, bandaged up her two cracked ribs, and put a half dozen or so stitches in each of her wrists.

She stayed with Robin for two weeks, until the middle of June. Tully didn’t really want to stay with Robin, but she didn’t have much choice. He was at work most of the day, anyway. She drove around and shopped and spent some time at the library. Sometimes she went to Topeka to see Julie. Tully did not see Julie very often.

In the evening, Robin and Tully went out to dinner or to bars or movies or nightclubs. Once, Tully entered a dance competition with a handsome Kansas State dance student, and when they won, she said to him that she’d never met an Irish guy who could dance, and he told her he’d never met anyone who could dance like her. They won two hundred dollars. He gave her half and bought her a drink. Later that night, she and Robin had a ranting, jealous fight.