FORT WORTH, TEXAS, 1954

The squeaky hinges on our front gate sound too strained. Roy’s quick footsteps up the three steps and across the boards of the front porch scream he isn’t in one of his minor moods. No, this is major. Of course, it is—Mother dropped by the tool factory today. That always causes a three-part tempest. It’s Friday, too, so Roy has more than likely hit the bar before coming home. I hug my stomach to ease the familiar ache threatening to gnaw me in two. Mother flies into my room and throws a small lavender sack into my lap.

“Hide this, sugar!”

“More? Gosh, Mother—”

“Shh!” She darts out of the door with short blond curls bouncing on top of her head. In the hall, she pivots and dons a radiant smile. It never fails to flabbergast me how she can evolve into a silk-draped butterfly merely by wielding that smile and doing her wiggly, high-heeled walk.

“Roy, you’re home,” she breathes.

I say breathes because that’s how my Mother talks to Roy, or any man, for that matter. Her words sparkle from her throat like a mint breeze doused in Chanel No. 5, and the effect it has on the male species makes me laugh. No, not aloud, or like it’s really funny, because it isn’t. Usually, it makes me angry, especially when I’m sick to death of the whole reaction squall that happens around her and want to get on with things that matter.

I close my door to shut out their antics. I pry open Mother’s lavender sack. Crumpled bills. I count them quickly and throw them in my sock drawer. A glimmer of joy pulses through me. We have enough. We have enough…

I prick my ears to listen—from habit actually—to see which part of the storm is happening now. Sometimes, each part is long and drawn out. Other times, it moves quickly into the next phase. Lately, how it goes is a game of chance.

Roy’s loud voice means they’re still in the Opening. That’s when he accuses her of flirting with every Tom, Dick, and Harry on the factory floor. When he’s drinking, which is often now, he’ll cuss her out, too.

I’ve been the third party to this performance for thirteen of my sixteen years. I know by heart how it goes and all the things that cause it. This time, it’s triggered by Mother’s trek to the tool factory where Roy is the floor foreman. She’s been dragging me along for those lunch visits since I was a little girl.

We’ve had various cars over the years, but the one that seems to stir folks up the most is the one Roy bought her last year after being meaner than a scorpion—her red Crosley wagon. As soon as she drives into the front lot of CowTown Tool Factory, someone spots her through the front-glass window. Word spreads like a Texas range fire that Ellie Cranston is on the premises.

The people in the front office grin to high heaven and tell her to go right on in to see Mr. Cranston. By the time she steps behind the counter and bobbles through the swinging doors with her covered tray of Roy’s lunch and wearing her skintight dress and heels, every eyeball that isn’t blind is glued to her.

Here’s where it gets stupid. Roy makes her bring his lunch to the factory at least once a month. I know it’s to rub it in that he has a woman every man drools over, but then… he gets angry at the same time because everyone ogles her. He knows the routine, so I figure he’s so prideful of her he can’t see straight but too hateful and jealous to enjoy it in a sensible way. The result is always a fight.

Mother’s part in the beginning is to be dainty and horrified. She widens her lined eyes so big, they look like they’ll fall out. She makes breathy sounds of shock and surprise and denies that she did anything wrong. Actually, she didn’t do anything but be true to the person she is every day of her life.

The next part of the storm is beginning because I don’t hear Roy anymore. That means he’s standing with his hands in his pockets rattling change. He stares out the front window and shakes his head like he doesn’t know what on earth he’s to do with such a loose woman. I hear Mother talking, so she’s working hard to convince him there’s no man on earth but Roy Cranston who could ever own her, handle her, etcetera, etcetera. Soothing words. Lying lips.

The last segment of the storm is why Mother and I are about to drive away from here forever. My fists clench as I open my bedroom door to eavesdrop. Used to, it would end with Roy letting Mother talk him into the bedroom so she could make up for her supposed transgressions. Or, she’d sit on his lap and coax him into taking his shoes off and reading the newspaper while she finished cooking supper.

That was before.

About six months ago, Roy’s drinking got heavier, sometimes on weeknights, and he began accusing Mother of trying to leave him or of having an affair. He said she was more than likely hot and heavy with the milk-delivery man for all he knew, and that she was a common slut. He started roughing her up. Not bad in the beginning, but more all the time. After the first few times, he’d go buy her something to make up—a bottle of perfume or even a dress, skimpy and tight so he could love it and despise it at the same time.

One time I heard him sobbing. I snuck down the hall and there he was on his knees on the kitchen floor blubbering about how he wasn’t man enough for her and how she was going to leave him. Mother was dripping soft words over him and holding his head. She looked up and made wild hand gestures for me to get out of there before he saw me.

I’ve tried to talk to her about it, but she says sometimes men have problems of their physical selves, and it makes them crazy. I think I can figure out what that means, and it makes it even more obvious we have to leave before Roy puts Mother in the hospital, or worse. He was the one who married her almost as soon as he met her thirteen years ago when she was nineteen, had a three-year old kid, and was slinging hash and dipping up cones at the Woolworth’s lunch counter. He knew exactly how attractive she was and how men react to her.

A scream sends me rushing to the living room. Roy is pulling Mother across the living room floor by her hair. She’s grabbing his hands and thrashing like she’s about to be thrown off a skyscraper. I grab a lamp off the divan side table and throw it on the floor. The rose-painted base shatters into porcelain pieces.

“Turn her loose, or I’ll call the cops, Roy Cranston! I mean it!”

Roy looks dazed, like he doesn’t know who I am. He gazes at Mother and back at me. Whiskey fumes assault me from across the room.

“Kat… uh, hey sis. I wasn’t going to hurt your mama. I love her. I’m-I’m sorry. Don’t you know how much I love this woman?”

He thrusts a shaking hand in his pocket, pulls out his car keys, then rushes out the door. I hear his car backing out of the driveway and the engine gunning as he drives away.

I’m instantly on the floor beside Mother. “Are you okay?”

Her right cheekbone is bruising as I stare at it.

“That’s it, Mother. No more. That fifty-two dollars you gave me brings our total to two-hundred and seventy-eight dollars. We can leave now.”

Mother sits up straightening the bodice of her dress. “Do you see my other shoe, sugar?”

I spy it by the armchair and bring it to her.

“Did you hear me? We can escape. Your folded clothes are waiting underneath the old tablecloth in my closet. I’ll grab the travel cases from the garage. I’ve been ready and waiting for a month. Even my books are in a box and ready to go. Twenty minutes and we’re on the road.”

Mother pats her curls with both hands. “I bet I look such a mess.”

“Mother!”

“I hear you, Katherine. Yes… I’m-I’m ready to go.”