I wish this was the only life I ever had, light coming in and ceilings high enough to breathe and windows and doors thrown always open. If a lizard skitters in, blue-tailed and fast, I watch him dart up the wall or into a baseboard crack. If the rain blows in, I don’t mop it up. I stand in the door hoping the smell will soak into the boards of the house to keep for days when the sun is shining. Even when it’s cold I leave the house open, letting snow flurries collect on the rugs. The twins are like me, used to all kinds of weather. They’re not sensitive to heat or cold, so I’m not careful with them. I know how it feels to be kept inside and how it will winnow away at your mind until you feel like nothing. Even with the baby rabbit to care for, being pent up in that house by the tracks finally became too much to bear. One gray morning at the beginning of October, rain beating and wind blowing and leaves plastered everywhere, my restlessness came to a head.
It was cold enough to need a fire and I went out to the woodpile, careful to avoid looking at the door in the house’s foundation. I stamped my shoes bringing in the wood and left them on the kitchen mat. John was watching football in the front room. He didn’t look at me as I got a fire going in the stove. I went to sit beside him, drawing a quilt around my shoulders and pressing my chilled body against him where he leaned on the couch arm. I needed his nearness to keep me sane. I needed back the loving John I had married. He stiffened, fingers curled around the glass he drank from, not moving to touch me. I kissed his neck, his jaw, his cheek. My heart sank when he wrenched his face away.
“Let’s go for a ride,” I said.
“Weather’s too bad,” he muttered.
“No it’s not.” I bit down hard on my lip. “You just don’t want to.”
“What if I don’t?” He turned on me, eyes bloodshot.
I rose from the couch and began to pace the floor. “I have to get out of here,” I told him. It was more a plea than a statement. “At least for a while. Give me the keys.”
“Where you going? Back to Granny?”
“I don’t know,” I said, voice cracking. “But I hate it here.”
John put down his drink. He sat forward on the couch. I knew I should hush before it was too late. “What do you mean? There ain’t nothing wrong with this place.”
“It’s too dark in here,” I said, unable to help myself.
“We’ll fix it up, then. I’ll hang you some wallpaper.”
“No,” I said. “Nothing can fix it.”
His jaw tightened. “You better watch yourself, Myra.”
I wanted to stop but I couldn’t. “I want to see Granny,” I said, close to tears.
He slammed his glass on the coffee table. “Quit being a suck baby.”
Something snapped in me then. I snatched his ashtray from the table in a plume of soot, white butts fluttering down like confetti, and threw it against the wall. It bounced off and skidded across the linoleum. We stared at it together, a silence descending over the room. Then John blinked up at me in disbelief, mouth hanging open. I thought it was going to happen at last. He was going to hit me. But just as he got up from the couch, the baby rabbit’s high squeal shattered the stillness. John’s face went pale. He jumped up, knocking over his glass. “What in the hell?” he said, looking toward the sound with big eyes. For a long moment I stood rooted in place. Then I took off running for the end of the hall. John caught up to me at the closet, the rabbit’s pitiful cries trapped inside. I plastered myself against the door but he shoved me out of the way so hard I stumbled and fell. He tore open the closet and followed the sound to the water heater. He knelt and pulled the shoebox out of the shadows. I begged him to give it to me but he didn’t answer. I watched his back as he stared into the box. After what felt like a lifetime, he stood slowly and turned to me. “Have you lost your mind?” he asked softly.
I thought of lying but there was no reason to. “I found it under the house.”
He studied me, face blank and unreadable. “No telling what all diseases you’ve brought in here,” he said at last. “That thing might have rabies.”
“It’s just a rabbit.”
“Looks like a rat to me.”
“It’s not a rat,” I whispered. I tried to get past him but he blocked my way.
“I don’t care what it is,” he said, dangerously calm. “It ain’t living in my house.”
Then he turned, raised his foot, and stomped the box with his boot. The squealing stopped. I stood gaping at it. John passed me, knocking into my shoulder, and walked out of the house. After a few minutes I heard the car start up and spin out of the gravel lot. I went to kneel over the box. Inside the rabbit’s back feet were kicking. I took its broken body into my palm one more time. A childhood memory came to me, of standing in a tobacco field plucking worms from sticky green leaves. At the end of the row I found a quivering mouse, sides laboring with rapid breath. It was sick, maybe poisoned, and small like me. I shut my eyes and twisted the baby rabbit’s neck until its legs were still.
In the days afterward, I thought more about my mother. I went outside one night when John was gone drinking and saw the dark hump of my mountain in the distance, beyond the scattered twinkle of lights. I stood on the tracks she died on, stretching out of sight before and behind me. I looked down at my feet and saw that the rocks were stained. I knelt to pick one up and imagined it was her blood. I closed my eyes and a cold wind came rushing down the tracks. It was a fresh smell, a breath of woodsy air different than cinders and pollution. I opened my mouth and breathed it deep. My kin-folks were so close. I couldn’t go up the mountain, because it would be hard to get back before John came home from work. He might drive up there after me and hurt me in front of Granny. I couldn’t stand that. But I could go to the pool hall and try to find some of my people. I was willing to risk that much. I made up my mind to go when Monday came.
There was no money in my purse but I’d been stealing a few dollars here and there from John’s wallet when he was passed out drunk. I had folded the bills and put them in a coffee can under the sink. I bathed and dressed and walked to the neighbor’s house to call a cab. Pit bulls lunged barking and whining at the ends of their chains when I stepped into the yard. A grizzled man wearing an unbuttoned western shirt opened the door. I asked if he had a phone I could use. For a long, anxious moment I thought he might say no, but then he opened the door wider to let me in. He stood watching suspiciously as I talked on the greasy phone hanging on his kitchen wall. I told the driver I wanted to go to the pool hall on Miller Avenue and went outside to wait in the yard.
The car that came was a dented Oldsmobile with a cracked windshield. The man who opened the back door for me had two missing front teeth. He tried to make small talk on the ride across town, but I ignored him until he gave up. He pulled into a gravel parking lot in front of a low gray building. There was no sign but I knew by the neon inside that this was the pool hall where my parents had met. As I walked across the dusty lot, gravel crunching under my shoes, I tried not to think what John would do if he came home to an empty house. I hesitated for only a moment before pushing open the door.
It was so dim inside after the bright sunlight that I was almost blind. I moved between the shabby pool tables to a snack bar where hot dogs turned in a glass case and fountain drinks gurgled. The man wiping his hands behind the counter had a round belly and great hairy forearms, but little hair on his head. “Help you?” he asked.
“No. Well, nothing to eat. I’m looking for somebody that used to come in here.”
He grinned and took a smoldering cigarette from an ashtray on the counter. “A lot of people come in here, sweetheart. What’s the name?”