[©2010 BY CLINTON09; ALL CHARACTERS OVER THE AGE OF 18; NO EVENTS DESCRIBED ARE TRUE]
I suppose my little story begins in New York. My father, Malcolm, had gone to a good Southeast Conference school and ended up representing a New York firm in Birmingham, Alabama. Every year he had to attend the directors' meeting in the New York area. There he met my very New York area mother. It was a mismatch but Sue was still single and was introduced by a friend on the board. Under pressure from her own parents and friends about being 'married', she had a quick romance and marriage. That was 18 years ago, which coincidentally marks my age.
At first everything was great; mom accepted moving to the south and giving up shopping, museums, designer clothes, and her network of friends. It was a fair tradeoff to have a proper married life.
There was a sudden bit of good luck, followed by dark changes. Not much sooner had they gotten hitched and settled into their Birmingham digs when the company was bought out. My father got a silver (not quite gold) parachute, which still tallied a cool million. Surrounded by affordable farms, we could and should have been set for life. That's where the trouble began.
Some people are at peace with the world, and some are a cauldron of upheaval. Unfortunately, we all learned that Malcolm was the latter. With domestic tranquility at hand, he instead wanted to REALLY enjoy his good luck. So, he bought a mini cotton plantation, just 200 acres, but with a colonial style home right out of "Gone with the Wind". It was fantastic, at first. He was attentive to everything and everything seemed to work somehow. The heat of a southern summer, however, can break any man. We had a drought one year and the cotton turned brown and then black, exactly as if it was burnt. This comes with the territory, I read, and certainly shouldn't have caused my father to fall apart. I mean, it was not like we actually depended upon the cotton revenue for any day to day needs.
In the event, it did weigh upon his mind. He turned to the 'holy water' of the south: Jack Daniels. That stuff is smooth, but by the third glass he was as drunk as a skunk. And though he was a quiet and reserved southern gentleman when sober, he was a nasty brute when soused. Unknown to me, one time mom had accused him of fooling around. Her nose was 'loosened a little' by accident, as he told the nurse at the clinic.
Mom was so embarrassed to return north confessing this humiliation, and so fearful of leaving me alone in his clutches, that she never filed a formal complaint.
One day, he was in the city, watching 'Bama play the dreaded Florida Gators. Mom came into my room, which was (I'm not kidding) the former slave quarters just outside the back door of the kitchen. We had modernized it to be sure. Anyway, she came into my room, sagged resignedly in a bean bag chair, and asked me to turn off the Alabama/Florida game.
I refused, but muted the sound.
I asked mom, who never ever visited my quarters: "Mom, what's the deal? It seems like there's been an unspoken war or something declared; dinners are a stone silent affair. What gives?"
Mom sighed: "Your father has been getting drunk more and more. At first I thought it was the g-ddamn cotton drought or weevils or whatever the hell was going on. Then, I noticed that our 'touching' had declined from three times a week, to once a week, to nothing per week. I asked him about that, and he was evasive. I hired a firm in Birmingham to tail him when he went to the city (i.e. Birmingham); I was ashamed to do that and did not tell you. I got their report today. I knew it was bad, because the detective agency courier was a partner, and she didn't have the heart to look me in the eyes or hang around. As her 4 by 4 zoomed away in a plume of dust, I opened a dossier. It showed your wonderful father with some floozy bar fly in the city. I hated to admit to myself, but what really got me angry was that she was far from gorgeous, pretty, or even plain. She was just an available tramp, and in his charcoal mellow mood, she would do. The pictures followed them to a motel where, I hope, he disappointed her like he's done for me for the last 17 years. Now, I have to decide what to do. Help me, Jim, please."
As her very well spoken Manhattan-tinged speech ended, she broke down in tears. I rushed over, picking her up from the low beanbag chair, taking her into my powerful (from cotton baling) arms, and hugged her. It was the first time I had hugged her since I was a pre-teen. I held her away from me, "Mom, dry those tears, everything will be all right. You have in your hands all you need to get either a great divorce or a submissive guilty man in marriage, your call. But first, you have to stop crying." It was at that moment that I realized that she wasn't on the floor. I was holding her up at the waist. I lowered her down, and as a woman, and mother, her hands sought out my arms exposed in the old fashioned sleeveless t-shirt. I was very tanned from working the fields along with the undocumented aliens. Lifting the bales of cotton was immensely difficult, given that father never bought the more modern automated machines. As a result, my arms had become huge (22 inches) but moreover, they were incredibly strong. Farm work did that and I paid a price every night with sore muscles that ached till morning...
I wiped mom's last tears as she absent-mindedly caressed my swollen arms. She squeezed them to feel the power but also the security, they represented. She got up on her tiptoes, stretching her perfect hourglass figured five foot two inch frame, and put her ruby lips against mine.