Southern Legitimacy Statement: Born in Jackson, Mississippi, I attended Millsaps College and more recently completed my MFA in Creative Writing at the Mississippi University for Women. I have lived in New Orleans for twenty years but built a log cabin on the Bogue Chitto River, deep in the Mississippi woods. My time there heavily influences the nature of my writing.
Seeing Red
“That’ll never grow,” I said to Ben. We stood in the kitchen as he separated out live curly willow branches from a withering orchid arrangement sent to me after my dad died. He rinsed the vase, filled it with fresh water, then placed the branches back inside. He paid no attention to what I’d said, and he set the vase closer to the kitchen window, hoping a little more sunlight would help the branches root.
I hoped they wouldn’t.
He walked to the bathroom and washed his hands, sensing I was on the verge of a rant over how in the 10 years we’d been together, he’d found an inch to plant something every day, many days more than once. Whether seeds from a chili pepper he’d cut or seeds from key limes I’d squeezed for pies, planting for him was a religion and discarding what might grow was a sin. Our backyard had become a jungle and our sunroom a menagerie of mismatched pots containing cuttings he’d swiped on late-night strolls along the Mississippi River or dying plants he’d spared from the Lowe’s clearance rack.
But that’s not what I was thinking when Ben paid no attention to what I’d said, walked to the bathroom, and washed his hands. I stood at the kitchen window, thinking how he should’ve known that the curly willow branches reminded me of how my dad’s corroded artery blew out after his botched cancer surgery and how I didn’t get the chance to say goodbye. Some days, it felt better that way. Other days, I revisited our memories and dug for new ones. Mostly, I wondered what to do with the pewter urn of ashes his wife had handed me in a cardboard box as we stood in the Waffle House parking lot.
Do you have to put the fucking curly willow branches in the fucking kitchen window is what I’d felt like saying.
Not long after, I noticed the vase of curly willow branches was gone. And whether they ever rooted went unnoticed until I sat quietly on the porch one morning. I looked up from my coffee cup and recognized one of those branches; its crimped leaves inched around the front corner of our house. As intrigued as I was at first, the better part of me felt double-crossed. I rose from my chair and peeked around to discover a tree but ripping from the ground what Ben had brought to life wasn’t in my nature and an overreaction I sensed I’d later regret.
The following spring, the curly willow tree reached past our roof, and a pair of cardinals nested in its center and hatched a brood. Ben found one of the babies dead in the backyard, but the spring after that, a cardinal appeared and inhabited the tree again. We wondered whether he was the father returning or a surviving cardinal looking for his home. Either way, his electrifying color, and his physique, and how defiantly he moved about signaled he was a male. He’d sing a loud string of whistles, speeding up and ending in a slow trill then dart to the powerline overhead or perch on the picket fence. On occasion, he’d appear in the backyard and watch me. Once he even flew into the sunporch then around the kitchen, but he always returned to the curly willow tree.
In our more tender moments, I’d compliment Ben on how beautiful of a tree ours had grown to be. And examining the cardinal’s habits gave us something to talk about—time we’d likely have spent panicking over homeowner’s insurance premiums tripling, or the eight-hundred-dollar electric bills, or the hurricane Ida damage I hadn’t yet repaired because my homeowner’s insurance company had gone bankrupt. After another beer or glass of wine, we’d inevitably argue over how unfair he thought it was that I owned our house and how he had nothing to show for it, or how his sleep apnea kept me awake all night and how I’d lay awake watching the TV I never wanted in our bedroom.
As was my routine, I’d sit on the front porch with my coffee before logging into work, waiting for the sun to rise and for the cardinal to land in the curly willow tree. He’d whistle and study himself in the hall window but began undergoing a change, slamming himself into the window at hourly intervals throughout the day and until dusk. As startling as his behavior was, I grew used to the noise, thinking it better for him to work out whatever he was going through on his own. Inwardly, though, I toiled at my desk and absorbed my fear over whether he’d break through the glass or if covering the window would mean he’d fly away and fly away for good.
Around the same time, sitting in the back yard by the fire, listening to music, and scrolling through his phone for someone to talk to became Ben’s nightly routine. Sometimes he’d invite a buddy over and pretend he hadn’t, saying his buddy was just passing by. Other nights, he’d slip to the pub and chat with anyone else looking for a drinking buddy then rattle around in the kitchen before slowly creaking up our old staircase.
Sometimes he didn’t come home at all.
When Ben did come to bed, it was always within the first few hours of morning, just as Sanford and Son reruns came on. But the quieter he tried to be, the clumsier he became. I’d reach for the remote and raise the volume to drown out his snoring but mostly to hear every word when LaWanda Page would tell Redd Foxx off. In a most memorable episode, she bailed Fred, Lamont, and Rollo out of jail for getting caught up in a pornographic film factory raid. When she arrived at their cell with her Bible, they had just finished eating their brown bag supper of fried bologna sandwiches, warm milk, and a Tootsie Roll Pop. Fred cut his eyes at her then yanked his Tootsie Roll Pop from his mouth to tell her to shut up.
“You just keep suckin’ on that sucka, sucka,” she snapped then clinched her jaw, giving the audience time to clap and enjoy our laughter. “And when I pull your chain, you bark. Otherwise, don’t you say nothin’,” she shouted between the bars, nearly shaking her wig loose.
Like Ben and his drinking buddies, none of them connected their ridiculous circumstances to their poor decision making, whether guilty of a crime or not. And no matter how many times they rolled their eyes or turned their backs or hurled insults, as Ben had, they needed her help and couldn’t stand it. To drive her point home, she stepped in front of the bailiff, demanding that he keep “them heathens locked up” until she read Isaiah chapter 42, verses five through seven about how The Lord will open eyes that are blind, free captives from prison, and release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness.
But it was I who needed my blind eyes opened, to be freed from prison, and to be released from the darkness of my dungeon. Far too long I’d lain awake and excused what caused me to suffer. But when I’d close my eyes to pray, the image of the dead baby cardinal Ben had found in the backyard would spring to mind. How Ben had cradled it in his hand so tenderly reminded me of the Ben I’d known since fifth grade, the Ben I’d pledged the rest of my life to, but also the Ben who didn’t come for me when I called to tell him I was spotting.
I was four months pregnant then, and he was installing a shower across town with another one of his drinking buddies. He couldn’t abandon the job, he explained, but I sensed that he felt I was exaggerating my concern and seeking his attention. Being viewed as needy or demanding over asking for his comfort was not a disposition I cared to assume, so I drove myself to the hospital for the doctor to confirm what my instincts had already told me. There was no heartbeat, and the following week I miscarried at home. Ben sat in the chair next to our bed for two days—no expression, no words, and no cradling–as I labored and labored and until I flushed the toilet.
Loss compounded by loss resulted in me maintaining mastery over my emotions. Me not falling apart, Ben perceived as detached. And what I knew as methodical and rational, Ben felt was uncaring. Deep down, though, I was mad as Hell, but I no longer cared. I no longer cared to the point I searched through Ben’s phone. And I no longer cared to the point I no longer cared that he’d blame me for what he’d been hiding. Me betraying him would become the argument—not that he went to where he said he wasn’t going, or that he texted his ex for a picture of her breasts, or that he and his artist friend, whose perfume he’d come home reeking of and whose couch he’d sometimes sleep on had exchanged nearly one-thousand messages.
Watching that episode, I realized I’d had enough. So many episodes had come before—Ben showing up late for our first Thanksgiving still drunk from being out all night, or me finding his soggy wallet and shorts on the front sidewalk after he and a drinking buddy swam in the Mississippi River following a drunken night out in the French Quarter, or him and his favorite drinking buddy fist fighting at a Popeyes drive-through in Slidell but splitting before the cops got there—only for his favorite drinking buddy to flip his car three times and end up in the hospital as Ben Ubered home.
I was mad as Hell. I was also aware that when a woman shows it, it seems sudden to her man because she’d let herself put up with it far too long. But as love so often goes, I couldn’t imagine life without Ben. Rivaling my anger for their rightful place in my consciousness were memories of camping and cooking redfish in a cast iron skillet over the fire, or the sun pushing against the Lake Pontchartrain horizon on our way back to the city, or the BLTs with my mother’s tomatoes we ate on our first date and every anniversary after. I could recognize Ben’s stride from a mile away, and he knew just how to take my hand as we’d cross the Oxford square, drinking beer from Solo cups, and cheering for the Ole Miss Rebels.
Do you have to put the fucking curly willow branches in the fucking kitchen window came to mind just before I asked Ben to leave. That he moved in with his artist friend around the corner came as no surprise. Even still, my heart softened when I heard his red Ford Ranger rattle to a stop then rev and reverse half-a-dozen times before barely squeezing in my narrow brick driveway. He cracked open a beer, lit a cigarette, and looked to the empty space where the curly willow tree had been. To gather himself, he rearranged the tools in his truck again and made room for the rest of his belongings.
“I see you had our tree cut down,” he remarked without looking at me.
“The new insurance company said it was too close to the house and had to come down or they’d cancel my policy,” I answered.
“I wonder where the cardinal will make his home,” he observed. He shut his tailgate then reached for my hand.
I shrugged and gave his hand a squeeze, “Something tells me he’ll be just fine.”
