The Burning Winds of Truth

FICTION The Burning Winds of Truth Jeanne Bryner THE RAWLINGS' KITCHEN IS CANDY-APPLE PINK, and its curtains are red gingham tiebacks. I remember Marlene Rawlings, radiant, on her wooden ladder, humming Patsy Cline's Sweet Dreams of You as she spread the lush color back and forth with her roller. She was happy the way Liz Taylor was before Mike Todd was killed in that awful plane crash. She was pretty the way mothers are pretty in turquoise pedal pushers and striped blouses tied at their waist. Even with her black hair in bobby pins under a bandana, she could turn a sweeper salesman's head. Most women lose their waistlines after six kids, but not Marlene. When everybody in the projects had a yellow kitchen, she wanted a pink one. She said in West Virginia, near her high school, she'd worked the counter at a drug store soda fountain. A river of root beer foamed over vanilla ice cream, and boys whistled when she bent over the cooler. Here, in Ohio, her kitchen was small and crowded with necessary things: a gray table, and four red vinyl chairs (duct tape covered the pushed-out stuffing). Years of metal shavings pitted the green linoleum. The steel mill left its handprints everywhere. Marlene Rawlings made a rich chocolate cake with white icing she called mayonnaise cake. The days she baked, every kid in the neighborhood hoped to be in her yard. They loved the way that cake melted down slow and soft, better than butter on biscuits. In 1968, it was hard to hold onto hope and people. Three boys from our town died racing their convertible. Marlene Rawlings found an almond sleeping in the flesh of her right breast. It never sat right with me that a person who fought so hard against yellow would end her days being just that color. Even the whites of her eyes became little ponds of gold floating in her sad blue stare. Ted Rawlings works at the mill with my husband, Walt. Sometimes they ride together. At first, Ted missed work to go with Marlene for her treatments, but after so many he'd leave his care and ask for help from the neighbor women. We made a schedule around what was left of Marlene's life. She never missed a treatment, and her kids never missed a meal. In the end, her requests were few: Could we move the 63 green couch closer to the kitchen so she could see the kids eating, doing dishes and homework? Would somebody make an appointment for a family photo before all her hair fell out? Yes. Yes. It was done. With all the kids around her and Ted, with the baby on her lap, she looked blessed. Her children were moons circling a sunset in that house. She didn't lie there counting moments on her kitchen clock. No. She mended torn trousers and read "There Was a Crooked Man" to the baby and fell asleep folding socks. During supper, she'd push food around her plate, close her eyes and memorize the kids' voices rising and falling and praying over pancake suppers. Every other dose, she refused her pain medicine. When a woman dies, it's hard to say who hurts the most. Ted kept his sadness in his pocket like a penknife. The girls sobbed a raw wounded-animal pain at her bedside and, later, at the grave. The boys cried in spurts, like rain in the spring: first a storm, then a slow steady pace. The boys were younger. Sorrow's a chain which grows longer, heavier with age. The women in the neighborhood? We were numb and secretly glad it was not us in the white box. We were drawn to the needs of the children and to moving Marlene's couch back under the living room window. I busied myself showing the oldest girl, Tennessee, how to wash six loads of clothes in a day and still have time to make supper. At seventeen, Tennessee was tall and slender and board-stiff when anyone tried to hug her. I'm not supposed to know this, but Twila Rawlings...