She was looking at Shelly, but she was moving towards Dad, stumping sideways on her cane like some kind of crab. Shelly tried not to glare at her: it seemed like Mom just couldn’t give Dad a chance.
“And why, I’d never think to take my two children out to steal tar from a construction site! On a night just two days I’d been out of jail!”
Dad was grinning now. He held out the basin in front of him as Mom came nearer. The metal of it made a bonging sound as he lifted it an inch or so.
“Good thing,” she said, raising her free hand and touching the rim of the basin, “my husband’s come home to set things right!”
“Careful, Dornie,” Dad said. “Don’t want to get yourself into a state.”
Mom still wasn’t looking at Dad — she didn’t stop looking at Shelly, and Shelly could see by her narrow eyes that Mom was working herself into quite a state indeed. If that state had been directed at Shelly, she would have been frightened for herself — but tonight, Shelly was just a channel, a way for five years and a day of bottled-up rage to get to Dad.
So Shelly just watched as events unfolded.
Mom’s fist tightened around the edge of the basin, and she shifted her weight so she didn’t need the cane under her and could lift it into the air so as to swing it. “I’ll give you a fuckin’ state,” she said in a low and terrible voice, finally turning her angry eyes to focus right on Dad. The basin began to tip toward her under her weight. Dad smiled, and the metal bonged again.
There was a third bong, and it seemed as though Mom’s already-unsteady footing slipped, and the basin overturned. Mom yelped, and tried to yank her hand away. Dad’s grin opened up into a toothy smile, and he let the basin fall to the floor. Shelly shut her eyes as it hit — thinking about all the tar inside it, and how it’d be to clean up tar, how long it would take and what kinds of solvents she’d need to do the job to Mom’s standards.
But when she opened her eyes again, she saw there’d be no need — the old shag carpet didn’t have a drop of tar on it, because the tar baby was all over Mom.
It had taken hold of her hand first — two twig-boned fists grasped her fingers, and it must have used her fingers to swing on because all of a sudden its skinny tar-black legs were wrapped around her elbow. Mom was wearing a bright yellow tank-top, no sleeves, so it hadn’t gotten on her clothes right at first. But as Mom reached over with her free hand to try and yank the tar baby off, she pushed the thing’s back against her chest, and that did it. She was a mess.
Mom looked like a big bat as she lifted both arms away from her, strands of tar making a web between them and her chest — where the tar baby seemed to have fixed itself. “Get it off!” she hollered. “Get this fuckin’ thing off me!”
Dad was laughing so you could hear it now. He bent over and slapped his blue-jeaned knee, and fell down to his knees and laughed some more, shaking his head.
“Look at that,” he said. “Damn me if it’s not suckling off you, Mama!” And he howled.
Sure enough, thought Shelly, it did look like the tar baby was suckling. Somehow, it had managed to get turned around and now its face — or at least the front of its head; the tar baby didn’t really have a face — mashed into Mom’s left breast, like it was taking milk.
With nothing there to hold it up, the tar baby started to peel away from Mom’s tank-top; and for a second, as it turned first to face the ceiling and then forward, Shelly thought she could make out a little grinning face on the thing — mouth open, thin snot-strands of tar between upper and lower jaw, and tiny little button-eyes, staring up at Mom’s tit. But the face went away as the tar baby turned, and it was just a mound of hardening tar again. Mom’d stopped hollering, and she’d started to sob. Dad picked up the basin from where it’d fallen on the floor, and held it under the tar baby. It fell into it with a bong.
Everyone stood silent. Mom was covered in tar — somehow, it’d gotten on her face and into her hair; it smeared down her shoulders and onto her hands like lines of thick, black finger-paint. Mom looked up at Blaine, and cleared her throat.
“Blaine honey,” she said, voice calm and reasonable. “Fetch your Mom her cane.”
Blaine did as he was told, but when it came time to hand the cane over, he didn’t get too close to Mom. Shelly didn’t blame him. Mom took the cane, propped it against the floor and pushed herself to her feet.
“I’ll just put the baby in the basement then,” said Dad, to no one in particular. He whistled as he carried the basin into the kitchen and down the stairs.
“You mean the tar baby,” said Shelly, but Dad was beyond hearing.
Dad drank beer from a bottle at the kitchen table, and Shelly sat with him, sipping her Coke from the can. They didn’t speak at all while the shower ran; Dad had just stared out the window into the dark yard, drank his beer, and occasionally reached over to pat Shelly on the hand.
For her part, Shelly just watched him. She hadn’t seen Dad since she was just five — not properly anyway, not outside of a prison visitation — and he was for all practical purposes a complete mystery to her. He had last gone to jail for armed robbery — he’d used a hunting rifle to rob a grocery store in Huntsville with his buddy Mark Hollins, who’d gotten off as an accomplice and did hardly any time in jail at all. Shelly tried to imagine her father doing such a thing, and found again that she couldn’t. When she’d gone to see him with Mom and Blaine, he was always laughing and gentle — even when Mom egged him on. It wasn’t that there was any doubt he’d done the robbery; Dad had confessed to it and pleaded guilty when it came time to go to court. It was just that Shelly couldn’t see how he’d done it, pulling out a gun and telling someone to hand over their money or they’d get it. Dad just seemed… too nice. Compared to the rest of the family, that was.
Finally, the shower shut off, and Dad squinted at the ceiling, like he was gauging something there.
“Out of hot water,” he said.
“Maybe she’s clean now,” said Shelly.
Dad just shook his head. “Soap and water won’t do a thing to tar. Your mother should know better.”
Shelly nodded as though she understood, and swallowed the last of her Coke.
“She’ll know better now,” said Dad, staring back out the window.
They sat quiet again, as Mom stomped wet-footed on the floor upstairs and the vestiges of water drained from the bathtub through the old pipes under her feet, over their heads. Shelly squeezed her Coke can as if to crush it, but she didn’t have the strength and the side just popped. Dad started at the sound, then smiled, and reached over to put his big hand over Shelly’s. “Let’s both squeeze,” he said. Dad’s thick fingers pushed on Shelly’s, and for a minute she felt like he was crushing her against the can. But the metal crumpled easily under their combined grip, and Shelly laughed when Dad let go of her.
“Teamwork,” said Dad. “That’s what this family’s going to be about, from now on, little girl.”
“Teamwork?”
Dad nodded sagely. “Most families do it, you know — ours is just peculiar that way. Or it has been. We’ve been like a bad cell block in a bad jail; we’re always fighting and squabbling and hurting each other. Won’t be the case any more.”
Shelly looked up at her father, who was staring back out the window. It was true what he said; they were like a bad cell block in a bad jail, or at least they were always hurting each other. Dad had a point.