Freddie Owens - Then Like the Blind Man - Orbie's Story

“Victor honey? I’m so sorry,” Momma said. Then she started to cry too.

The Battle of the Alamo was over.

I could hear them through the wall.

First Victor, blubbering and mumbling like somebody under water.

Then Momma in a smooth sad voice saying, “Victor honey, it’s all right. I didn’t mean to. I was just mad was all.”

I lay in bed, looking up into the dark. The room was pitch black except for the window over Missy’s bed, backlit by a sky of sparkling stars. Pinholes to heaven, Momma called them. She said nighttime was just a black sheet with pinholes God put over the world so people could sleep. Said He left the pinholes so no matter how dark it got, people could still see heaven’s light.

A white square slipped in against the wall opposite my bed. Car lights. It slid over Missy’s teddy bear, over the Indian war bonnet Momma got me for Christmas. I could hear crickets chirping outside the window, Missy sleeping in the bed across from mine.

Victor and Momma’s bedsprings started to creak — soft and slow at first — then louder — then faster and louder. Then like a train, squalling, blowing clouds of lightning and dirty black wind.

“Orbie? What is that Orbie?” It was Missy, sleepy-talking from her bed. “What is that? You sleep?”

“Hush,” I whispered. “Momma and Victor’s making a train.”

That Dark Thing would grow. It would get big.

“That ain’t no train,” Missy said, awake now.

The springs began to beat even louder — faster. Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive!

Momma cried out, “Oh! Oh Victor!”

Missy jumped into my bed. Her baby doll’s plastic head whacked me in the face.

“Get back in your own bed!” I said.

“I’m scared Orbie.” She pushed her back up against mine.

I was scared too, and mad at Victor. Mad at Momma. I wanted to jump up. Run in there. Save Momma. Then I heard her turn over in bed. Laughing.

We had a screened-in porch with jalousie windows you could angle out to let in air. That was in the summertime mostly when Momma fixed on people’s hair. Momma liked to fix on people’s hair. She was good at it too, and she didn’t cost a bunch of money, not like a for real beauty operator would. She was going to go to beauty school some day she said, but there was no telling when that would be.

A lot of people came over to get their hair done. Jenny Dee Danielson, Opal whose husband had lung cancer, Sheri Slabodnik, Mrs. Brown, the Lane sisters from church who sang pretty. Then there’d be people in the neighborhood like Pat Nichols who was a Mormon, a great big fat lady who wore black slacks with sweaters stretched tight over big giant titties. Her and Momma would argue on the Bible. Sometimes they’d get to arguing on Joseph Smith or Jesus or if you could have more than one wife, if that was okay with God. Momma said it wasn’t. Pat Nichols said it was.

All kinds of people would come over. Momma would work on them, even when her eye was puffed out, the bruised skin covered with layers of cracked makeup. Nobody said anything about it except old nosey Mrs. Profit. She came over one day to get her hair fixed. Momma had put silver clips in it and was trying to trim up the ends. Bone skinny Mrs. Profit, the skin peeling off her hands, sitting in Momma’s beauty chair — smoking one cigarette after another.

I was running my dump truck along a board propped up at one end with a brick. Momma’s Victrola was going like usual. And like usual she was too busy to change the records so the last one on the stack a happy Sunday song called This Little Light Of Mine played itself over and over again.

At first Mrs. Profit didn’t say anything about Momma’s eye. She started in on old man Slabodnik and his accordion instead. The music he played sang out over the neighborhood. I liked it. Kids in the neighborhood did too.

“Why, he’s disturbing what little peace they is around here!” Mrs. Profit said, her voice like fingernails on a blackboard — so screechy-keen it near made my teeth hurt.

Momma tried to go along with her. “Lord, Mrs. Profit. I hope you don’t mind me playing my records then?”

“Course I don’t. You don’t play’em all over the neighborhood like he does. I tell you what’s the truth Ruby. If I had me a gun I’d shoot that thing of his. Shoot him too!”

“Now Mrs. Profit, you don’t mean that.”

Mrs. Profit gave Momma a dead-on look. “Where did you get that eye Ruby?” The question came so quick Momma’s mouth dropped open. “That Polack hit you, didn’t he?”

“Mr. Slabodnik?” Momma said.

“No, Victor!” Mrs. Profit screeched.

“Victor?” Momma touched the cracked patch of makeup next to her eye. “Why no, Mrs. Profit. I got this on the car door while I was getting the groceries.”

“Groceries?”

“Why yeah. I slipped on one of Orbie’s roller skates.” Momma pointed a skinny black comb my way. “Isn’t that so Orbie?”

What really happened was our secret. I liked having secrets with Momma. I liked having the go ahead to lie.

Momma winked. “Go on. Tell Mrs. Profit.”

“Yeah, Mrs. Profit. Momma banged her head on the car door.”

Mrs. Profit’s splotchy hands were joined at the fingertips, pushing at one another. A spider doing push-ups on a mirror. “You got to get the hell away from him Ruby.”

“Now Mrs. Profit. Don’t be talking that way.” Momma walked around to the back of her. With the comb she pulled up a wall of black hair and started trimming along the edge. “That’s Orbie’s Daddy now.”

“He ain’t my real Daddy!” I said too loud.

Momma looked at me over the top of Mrs. Profit’s head. She puckered her lips like a fish and shook her head for me to shut up. “Victor’s been real good. Why, he even went to prayer service the other night.”

Mrs. Profit knitted her eyebrows together. “That’s right Orbie. He ain’t your real Daddy!”

“Orbie, go on outside and play hon; ain’t no need of you being in here with us old women.”

“Aw, Momma. I got my truck and everything in here.” I knew there wasn’t any use arguing though, not with Momma mad like she was. I picked up my truck and the board and the brick and went outside. I went around the porch where Momma was fixing on Mrs. Profit’s hair, slammed the truck down in the yard and hit it with the board. Right away I got a bad feeling because of its being a present from Daddy.

I looked around the yard. It had holes and patches of dirt. Toward the back of the fence sat a rusty swing-set with a broken seat. One of the legs had pulled loose from the cement. Water dripped from a spigot under the kitchen window onto a green hose that lay in a tangle next to Daddy’s old push-mower. A smell of rubber and burnt grass came up from there. I could hear Momma and Mrs. Profit through the open jalousies.

Mrs. Profit’s voice screeched over the happy Sunday song. “I seen him over here! Hungry like a man!”

Momma was mad. “Mrs. Profit, you don’t know nothin’!”

“…not two weeks in the grave! Nice my ass!” It was Mrs. Profit again.

“Why we didn’t start to go out, it was almost a year!”

“Yeah. But even ‘fore that…”