IDABEL ALLEN

Headshots: Pushing Through

First published by Idabel Allen in 2017

Copyright © Idabel Allen, 2017

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Contents

Pushing Through 1

Pushing Through

It’s time, I know it, and there isn’t any way around doing what

needs doing. I just have to push past everything until that

front door is shut behind me. And that’s what I’m going to

do. Just push past. But not right now because right now I can’t

stop staring at my reflection. I’m there, in the mirror, not

fading away ghostlike and uncertain, but solid, real in a way I

haven’t been in my twenty-six years. I see my flat dark hair

already starting to streak silver, my muddied complexion, and

big, brown, cow eyes. I see my father’s blood in me flowing

from that strong Irish line that had worked its way from county

Cork, crossing the ocean to Virginia and then on into Hazard

County Kentucky.

The line had stopped in Hazard, but it doesn’t have to. Not if

I am strong enough to rewrite and reroute my history.

But breaking loose isn’t easy, never had been. Not when I’ve

been right where I’ve been every day of my life. Not when the

only job I’ve ever had was scanning groceries. That and taking

care of the house. It’s all I was ever trained for, all I was ever

good enough for. It’s no kind of preparation for jumping up

and starting a new life, and I know it.

And if all I saw staring back at me from the mirror was my

same old worn out reflection I wouldn’t even think or dream

or wish on another life. But I see something else flickering

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HEADSHOTS: PUSHING THROUGH

in the mirror, something I can’t hardly recognize or believe.

Hope. It isn’t just in the mirror, but in me as well born from

that miraculous ticket burning electric in my jacket pocket.

I tell my reflection, “You can do this. Just be strong.” But it’s

too much, this reflection of mine, too filled with my past and

present. To look on it any longer makes the ticket and all its

possibilities seem less real. But I’m not about to let anyone or

anything take away this hope in me, not this time. All I have to

do is push through that front door, and I’m going to, but in a

minute, after this stomach-squall settles.

I sit onmybedand smoothawrinkle frommypatchworkquilt,

touching where the different pieces of the fabric come together

and bind themselves to each other. I think how life is this way,

connected like a large puzzle, and wonder what happens when

one of the pieces comes up missing or is removed? How does

this affect the whole?

I don’t dare dwell on this, so I pick up Pogo, my stuffed

schnauzer, and press my face into his fuzzy fur. I inhale our

shared life together, imagining I can still smell the scent of

cotton candy from the carnival where Daddy pitched dimes to

win Pogo.

Only, I can’t call him Daddy anymore, not since I was seven

and he stopped being my father. But I never stopped being his

daughter, not then at least. I used to look for him everywhere,

hoping he’d see me, see how I was aching to be his little girl

again. Hoping he’d start being my daddy just as suddenly as he

stopped. Only I didn’t see him for a real long time, not since

he stopped coming to see Mama and me.

But all that changed when he came into the market where I

sacked groceries, and still, do. I was fourteen when he came

through my line with his other daughter, his real daughter,

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PUSHING THROUGH

Jenna. She is exactly seven years younger than me, blonde,

petite, outgoing; everything her mother was and everything I

am not.

I watched him with this daughter, whose birth forced him

to choose between one daughter, born out of wedlock to one

of his bank employees, and his wife’s first born. It wasn’t

much of choice. Anyone would have chosen the daughter of his

marriage. I understood or figured I did.

But carrying his groceries out to his Cadillac, watching

my father and his real daughter joke with each other, laugh

together, be familiar in a way I had once been familiar with him,

I stopped trying to understand. It wasn’t the loving attention

he poured on his adoring daughter that made my arms go

numb and my feet stumble. It was the dollar tip he held out

to me, looking me full in the face without the slightest hint

of recognition that I was his blood, his child even though we

share the same eyes, the same forehead, and mouth.

I was nothing to him. He wasn’t ever going to be my daddy

again.

So I put him aside, out of my consideration. But still, when

I close my eyes, he is there, in my head, his arms all muscled

toughness, his warm brown eyes tender, understanding. I feel

his hand soft on my back once more as it had been from my

earliest memories. Still, I think he’ll step into our cramped

trailer and set things right.

Even now, with that ticket in my pocket, my heart yearns for

that knock on our door. Instead, I get Mama’s voice roaring

from the living room.

“Teeny! You hear me? My pill!”

For a moment it feels like someone is tightening a vice-grip

on my throat. I swallow once and say, “Yes ma’am,” wanting

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HEADSHOTS: PUSHING THROUGH

to add, my name is Mandy, not Teeny, but I don’t.

In the living room, Mama’s massive body is taking up the

whole couch. She’s been sitting there for years nowwearing the

same dingy blue cotton nightgown, just about the only thing

that fits her anymore. She eats and sleeps on the couch, only

rising to use the bathroom or make her doctors’ appointments.

Her only interest lays in the television before her and the food

on her plate.

Mama scratches her dark head that had years before always

been carefully styled and colored Marilyn Monroe blonde. But

she’d stopped taking care of her hair and anything else a long

time ago. Just gave up was all. She says, “You forget I was

supposed to have my diuretic thirty minutes ago?”

“Sorry, Mama. I was getting ready for work.” I bend down

and pick up the dirty dishes stacked on the floor next to Mama,

holdingmy breath to keep from gagging on the warm funk that

surrounds her. All the while I’mworriedMama’s going to reach

down and snatch that ticket frommy pocket even though she

doesn’t know anything about it.

“You call being a cashier at Pick Pack work?" my eldest step-

brother, Joe, asks from the recliner, unshaven and unkempt

in his ratty flannel housecoat and white tube-socks. “You

should have quit that after high school. Got you a real job,

like dancing.”

I act like I don’t see or hear Joe. But when I move towards the

kitchen Joe sticks his leg out and blocksmy way, nearly causing

me to drop my armful of dishes. I try not to tremble, but I can

feel his black eyes oozing all over me. He takes a drink of beer

and says, “Hey Mama, could you see that? Teeny dancing?”

“Joe, that’s not nice,” Mama reprimands, giggling. “Why

you want to set her up for failure? Teeny’s fine at the Pick’n

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PUSHING THROUGH

Pack. She makes a few dollars there. What’s she gonna make

dancing with them tooth-pick legs and that iron-flat chest?”

Mama and Joe laugh hard while I stand there like I ain’t got any

sense but to just stand there and take it. And that’s what I’ve

done, for years now, just take it and take it and take it all.

Mama adds, “And that look on her face? Walking ‘round like

she done smelled sourmilk all the time. And wearing them owl

glasses too.”

Usually, I don’t say anything when they pick at me, but that

ticket is in my pocket, and the front door is real close, so I

get the nerve to say, “Least I work. Least I’m not living off a

disability check.”

This gets Joe on his feet lightning fast and just like that he’s

burning my face with his hot beer breath. All my new-found

nerve vanishes and I’m cowering once again before Joe. He

says, “I ain’t too disabled to put my size eleven boot up your,”

“That’s enough!" Mama pounds her meaty fist on the end

table. “Sister, watch your mouth. It ain’t Joe’s fault his back is

shot. He didn’t ask to get hit by that beer truck.” Mama falls

against the couch, barking coughs through her slab of a hand.

“See what you done, getting me all agitated,” she gasps. “Get

my pills.”

I say, “Yes ma’am,” my voice sounding all puny again. In

the kitchen, I dumpmy dirty dishes on top of the dirty dishes

already filling the sink. A dull, familiar pain fills my head as I

think of all the stained and crusted dishes I scrub every night

after work and the fresh stained and crusted dishes waiting for

me every morning.

It was endless, and not just the dishes. Chip bags, beer cans,

ice cream tubs, cheese wrappers and more, so much more,

overflowed from the trash can onto the floor. Globs of ketchup

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HEADSHOTS: PUSHING THROUGH

and mustard and jelly and syrup sit like unformed statues on

the countertops amid a layer of mouse droppings.

When Joe hollers, “Hey tit-less, grab me a beer,” I slip my

hand into my jacket pocket and touch the ticket. Just push

through, get that door behind you.

Then I close my eyes and see the sand and the water and the

hot sun that never gets cold, and the blue sky that never drops

snow. The Texas coast, that’s what my heart is set on. I think

of the brown-skinned people with their Spanish words waiting

for me, Mandy, not Teeny, down south. That’s exactly where

I’m heading just as soon as that door shuts behind me.

When I hand Mama her pill, she downs it without even

looking at it or wondering if it is the wrong pill, perhaps a

fatal pill. I doubt Mama has ever wondered about this, but I’ve

imagined it, in my head, often. Then I wonder about the quilt

and the missing piece and my stomach flip-flops about forty

times. Soon, I’ll be the missing piece. I look at Mama and

wonder will I be missed.

Then Joe says, “’Bout damn time,” and snatches the beer

frommy hand. At least his eyes are on the television and not

on me. It’s been eight years since the accident and Joe’s spent

most of that time drinking in the recliner or at the bar across

the highway where Perry Winters got knifed last year. If Joe

wanted more out of life at forty, it didn’t show. I used to feel

sorry for him, thinking life had worn him out early on. He’d

been alright when I was younger, when he still had a job at the

processing plant.

But ever since he crawled into my bed last month I know he

is an evil man. I fought him off the first time but was unable

to the next. He hasn’t come back, but I know he will, which is

why I have to push through that door and get south.

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PUSHING THROUGH

It worries me, what if I’m pregnant? What would I do with

a baby? But I think of that ticket in my pocket, and I know

everything will be alright. If I’m pregnant, I’ll have the baby

somewhere warm. And I won’t care that Joe’s the father so

long as we are far away from him.

“Lotto number time,” Mama announces with her cigarette

jutting out from her doughy face. “You know that person won

theMega-lotto last Saturday ain’t even showed up in Louisville

to pick up the money? Said the winning ticket was from right

here in Hazard County. Who you think got it?”

“How the hell would I know?” Joe growls. “If I knew I’d track

that fucker down and he wouldn’t have to worry about turning

nothing in. I’d take care of it for him.”

“I know that’s right,” Mama says, blowing a steady stream

of smoke from her loose mouth. “If I had that ticket I’d take

all that money and get out of this dump. That’s the first thing,

right off the bat. Then I’d get me a maid,” she shoots me a

sidelong glance, “a real maid that knows how to clean. Really

clean. I’m sick of living like a pack of hogs.”

“Know what I’d do,” Joe asks, arranging six lotto tickets on

the arm of the recliner. “I’d buy me one of them, Russian

women. They ain’t got jack-shit over there. Bet I could swap

her for a case of pork’n beans. What you think Mama?”

“Pork’n beans!” Mama slaps her massive thigh. “Ha!”

“Man, I bet themRussianwomenknowall kinds of crazy stuff.

I bet she could show my ass something,” Joe says longingly

before shaking his head in disgust and exclaiming, “Goddamn

beer truck! Minnie wouldn’t have left my ass if I still had my

job at the plant. They was going to make me supervisor once

Elton retired. Supervisor...” Joe swears softly under his breath

and takes a long drink of his beer.

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HEADSHOTS: PUSHING THROUGH

“Shush now, they’re starting.” Mama and Joe sit forward

expectantly as if everything they had everwantedwas suddenly,

maybe within their reach.

The room falls quiet. As the numbers pop on the screen

Mama and Joe check and recheck their tickets. I don’t draw my

ticket frommy pocket. I don’t need to. Instead, I let my fingers

rest on it, the feel of it quieting my rushing blood since last

Saturday.

“Motherfuck!” Joe rips his tickets in half. “I got shit for luck,

that’s what I got.”

“I don’t want to win none of that small money anyway.”

Mama tosses her tickets aside, picks up a stale piece of pizza

from the end table and chomps it in half in one ambitious bite.

“The Mega-lotto, that’s what I’m after,” she says through her

mouthful.

I watch her, this woman on the couch, thinking where is she,

mymother? What has happened to her, to us? I try to see her as

she had been years before when she was younger and smaller.

She was always up doing things; hanging wash out on the line,

scrubbing the kitchen floor, kneading biscuits, even winning

a Twist dance contest at the fourth of July picnic. But more

than that. She had once run through a green meadow with a

homemade dragon kite soaring above her and me fast at her

heels. She had once carried me on her slim hip down a crooked

mountain trail, me too little to continue without her help, me

needing her, relying on her.

It was all so very long ago, and yet my heart yearns for the

mother who had once clung to me on a rollercoaster, shrieking

with laughter as we plummeted earthward. And I ache once

more not the loss of my father, but of my mother, who could

console me like no other, who once had loved me like no other.

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PUSHING THROUGH

But that mother was not to be found in the mountain of flesh

whose life was slowly being consumed by the very things she

consumed: the cheap nutritionless food, the endless supply of

pills.

No, my mother had disappeared, not abruptly as Daddy had,

but slowly, over time, little by little. When he left her, she lost

touch with friends, stopped going to church, did everything

she could to keep from doing anything that resembled living.

When everyone started looking her way and talking out the

sides of their faces, she stopped going to work. Just stopped

working and sat down on that couch where she’s been sitting

for years. That was all for her.

When Joe belches again, I know it is time. I stand before

Mama and say, “I’m going now,” thinking this is your chance

Mama, now. One look, one word and I am yours, here, forever

to care for you. To love you even.

ButMamadismissesmewith a flapofher trunk-like arm. Her

eyes never leave the repulsive drama playing out on television.

This is all she can spare me. Though this is nothing new

and I should expect it, and do expect it, it still hurts. But

then the beach is there, in my head, the golden sand warm

and welcoming, the music intoxicating and exotic. It’s there,

waiting for me and in four hours I’ll be in Louisville. A few days

later, once the ticket has been cashed and mymoney settled,

I’ll be in Texas. After that, the future is a blank slate. I can go

and do and be whatever I want to be. Only, I never considered

what that would be; I never had reason to. But I’m ready to

consider it and a great many other things now.

As I push open the door to leaveMama says, “Mandy Louise?”

I pause, hating the faint hopeful beat suddenly pulsing in my

chest. She called me Mandy Louise, called my name just as she

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HEADSHOTS: PUSHING THROUGH

had that day I trailed behind her with the green kite stamped

against an achingly blue sky, and we had run together barefoot,

through the overgrown grass, mother, and daughter.

It is what I have been waiting for, that glimmer ofmymother,

my real mother and it is there in the way she called my name. I

remember all the reasons I love her, have always loved her and

I am ready to do anything, give anything for her to be that real

mother once again.

I turn to her, my thundering heart near bursting as I say, “Yes

ma’am.”

Mama looks at me fully. “Think you can pull your head out

your butt long enough to remember to bring some ice cream

home? Chunky Chunky Choco-Nut, hear?”

My heart flatlines, right there in my chest. I say the only

thing I can say, the only thing she’ll understand. I say, “Yes

ma’am,” and then close the door gently behind me.

The End.

Headshots is available on Amazon. For more information, go

to www.idabelallen.net.

NOTE: Thanks for reading. If you are of a mind, please be

sure to write an honest review and let me know what you think

of Pushing Through.

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