An American Story by Debra J. Dickerson Page B

hand-me-down everything were one part of the problem; the other was Daddy’s tendency for mayhem. Once, when we’d thought him away, he’d snuck up on a group of us playing gin rummy, that game of de debil. He passed through, seeming unconcerned. But that was just a diversion. He slipped upstairs, ran back down with his belt, and beat us all. The cousins and neighbors ran, but not us Dickersons. We knew that running was defiance, crying was contradiction. We’d gritted our teeth and took our blows like men, like marines, like Dickersons. No one came to our house after that; we wouldn’t have let them if they’d tried.
    The whipping Bobby got for the desk caper was a turning point for Mama. Though I’d begged, though her sisters had begged, she would not discuss leaving. What God had joined together . . . But Mama overheard Wina and me laying plans to run away and accepted that it had to end. That she had to leave this foolish, doomed man who could not tell the difference between fear and respect.
    In the spring of 1973, while he was away driving his truck, we moved across town to a safe house. Safe, because he wasn’t there.

CHAPTER TWO
    â€”——
    WHISTLING WOMEN
    It was raining the day we left.
    It was spring but still early yet, and the last of winter’s chill seeped in through the big crack in my bedroom window. Through the connecting door, I could hear Mama moving around. Eyes still closed, my ears strained, but no use. He didn’t want to be located. No telling where he was.
    Wordlessly, we finished our morning tasks and took the breakfast seats we’d occupied forever, then waited for him to sit so we could eat. Ignoring us, he finished making his lunch, fumbled around at his desk in the hall, spent a few minutes in his basement. His point proved, we sat and waited. Finally, he sauntered back in, sat, and blessed the table.
    Sitting to his left, my sister Dorothy said a Bible verse and everyone followed suit clockwise around the table. Then it was my turn. There was a long silence.
    My heart was so full of bitterness I thought I might choke. I contemplated speaking from my heart on this last day under his thumb, as I had fantasized about so often. A million things—curses, pleas, memories, confessions, questions, all the things I might have said, all the things I would never say—coursed through my mind. I watched the ever-present storm clouds of his hellish temper gather on his face as I wasted his precious time.
    We’re leaving, you crazy bastard! I thought, and I knew my eyes were dangerous.
    Mama cleared her throat. She was right. I couldn’t risk pushing him too far, not today.
    Jesus wept,” I said with all the authority I could muster.
    Then, all of a sudden, breakfast was over and he was gone. I have been fatherless ever since.
    My mother managed pretty well that day for a woman who was dooming herself to eternal damnation. We flew all over the house, my mother, Dorothy, Wina, and I, carting off the few possessions we’d be taking with us. We’d been stockpiling castoffs in preparation for this day. This time, I hadn’t minded scavenging through the piles at the VV; now, we had a reason to settle for others’ discards. Given the sin she was already committing in leaving her husband, my mother would not compound it by absconding with one whit more than necessary. We left him the furniture, the dishes, the pots and pans, the bedding. The house.
    For all my righteous anger, once our labors began I found myself feeling sorry for my father. Then I found myself feeling angry for pitying him. Then I didn’t know what I was feeling, just that I felt bad.
    I had begged my mother to tell him we were leaving. The thought of my father coming home to a house empty of his wife and children broke my bitter little heart. How could he help knowing the truth, that those he saw himself as protecting had fled him like a pestilence. I knew