The house was quiet. Every so often, a rumble of laughter from the television in my father’s study made its way to our bedroom. I brushed my doll’s hair and listened for Daddy’s footsteps. My sister Claire, older by two years, which made her six, hummed "This Old Man" as she looked at the pictures in her book.

Finally, the sound of heavy feet. My father cleared his throat. A door opened down the hall.

"Good night, Junebug. ’Night, Butterbean." The door shut before my sisters finished saying, "I love you, Daddy." He walked a little farther.

Another door opened. "Good night. Don’t study too late."

His pace quickened. I tossed my doll and her hairbrush into the wicker basket near my bed. Claire set the book on her nightstand. We jumped into bed, just as the door opened. Daddy stood there, a smile spread across his Clark Kent face. My sister and I lay flat like soldiers in our matching blue nightgowns, waiting. With three long strides he stood at my bedside, pulling the covers up to my chin and tightly tucking the edges under my arms and legs.

"Good night, Daddy," I said, feeling as if I had been stuffed and sewn between the sheets like the feathers in my quilt. His smile broadened, and he bent down farther to touch his lips to my forehead. The smells of cologne, cigarettes, and whiskey tickled my nose.

"Good night, Sweetheartsabean."

He turned to tuck in Claire. "’Night, Ugaboo," he said, hemming her into her bed sheets.

I watched him head to the door. As he reached for the light switch, my sister and I said, just like always, together, "I love you, Daddy."

"I love you too, darlings." He paused for a moment to flash us another smile. His teeth were stained the color of old newspaper, but still I thought my father was the handsomest man in the world. "Sleep tight and don’t let the bedbugs bite." He pushed the frames of his glasses up against his eyebrows. Just before his suit disappeared behind the closed door, he switched off the light. The paneled, windowless room turned black as licorice.

We called it The Darkroom. A room no one else wanted.

Momma had found out she was pregnant with me, number seven, just as they got the final drawings for our maze-like brick house on Canterbury Street in Lafayette. The architect squeezed in a seventh bedroom by pushing out the walls of a hall closet, stealing a few feet from an adjacent bedroom. As the two youngest at the time, Claire and I got The Darkroom. With the births of my little sister and baby brother, we numbered nine children, two boys and seven girls. We came along roughly every two years, except for a gap of six years between Yvette and Chess. After Chess followed Aimee, Penny, Nanette, Claire, me, Anne, and finally, Nickey.

Soon after Daddy left, I fell asleep. My body had just become heavy when the lights flicked on again. The bright yellow light burned my eyes. I squinted at Momma, swaying in the doorway, breathing hard, dressed in her pink nylon nightgown.
"Get out of bed now!" she slurred, closing the door and stumbling toward us.

I struggled against the tight bedspread. It wasn’t good to keep Momma waiting. I looked over at Claire, her face buried in her pillowcase, her mess of straight brown hair going off in a thousand directions. I wanted to scream, "Get up, Claire! Don’t make Momma madder!" But I didn’t make a sound.

Momma stormed over to me, ripped off the covers, and yanked me out of bed. Then she grabbed Claire and dragged her to her feet. She stumbled, still half asleep. We took our places, silent, side by side, in the middle of the room. Towering over us, in a low, hard voice, Momma muttered, "Pull your panties down."

Quickly, gathering our gowns up to our chests with one hand, we slid our cotton underwear down to our ankles with the other. We watched to see who Momma would choose first. When she grabbed Claire’s arm, I looked straight ahead. On the wall I could see Momma’s shadow, her hand swinging across Claire’s skinny shadow.

Blinking away the shadows that kept trying to make me cry, I shivered. In my mind I climbed up on the painted horse in the backyard and pushed on the rubber handles till I was swinging back and forth, back and forth. Every time I heard the stinging slap on Claire’s behind, my body grew stiffer and stiffer. What had we done to make Momma so angry?

When it was my turn, I squeezed my bunched-up gown tighter and secretly hoped that Momma was tired, worn out from hitting Claire. She never was. She always managed to save enough anger to give me my fair share. As she held me in place and struck my bottom, I stood as still as I could, the tears rolling down my face, trying not to jerk away.

Every time she cocked her arm, she nearly fell over, pulling me down with her. When she stumbled, I dug my toes deeper into the carpeting. I was scared that she’d fall down on top of me and I’d never get out from under.

I prayed Daddy would come. But he didn’t. He never did.

Momma finished and then gave me a hard push. Her words smelled like vodka. "Get back into bed and go to sleep. I don’t want to hear a word out of you."

We reached down and pulled up our panties, the elastic scratching against our tender bottoms until it snapped into place. Panting and nodding, looking happier than she had when she came in, Momma turned away and flicked off the light as we climbed into our beds and pulled up the covers. When my sister and I were alone again, I let out my breath. I heard Nanette’s door open and shut. Yelling. I grabbed my pillow and climbed into bed with Claire. We held each other tight, lying on our sides. We took turns softly rubbing circles on each other’s backs.

Snot and tears ran down my face. I rubbed my nose in my pillowcase, sniffling. Why didn’t Daddy stop her? I pictured him sitting in the dark leather chair in his study, a cigarette burning in the owl ashtray full of butts and ashes, his eyes glued to the ten o’clock news while he sipped his Jack Daniel’s and Coke.

Nanette’s bedroom door opened and shut again. My older brother and sisters were next. Claire’s hand stopped moving. Her fingertips pressed into my shoulder blades.
"Rise and shine, sleepyheads." We blinked.

Momma was standing at the doorway, her dark brown hair pulled neatly back and twisted into a bun. Steady on her feet, bathed and dressed in her yellow knit slacks and pressed blouse, Momma held out two mugs of warm coffee-milk.

"Time to get up," she said.

Claire and I yawned and carefully pulled ourselves to a sitting position, crossing our legs under us like Indians. I lifted my face as Momma bent down. Quickly I touched my lips to her soft cheek and then pulled away. My kiss of silence. My kiss of pretend.

"Good morning, Momma," I said, taking one of the mugs she held out. Then, Claire surrendered a peck and took the offered cup.

"After you drink your coffee, help your little sister get dressed, and then come to breakfast," she told Claire, firm but sweet-like.

She was all smiles as she left, the saintliest mother in the world. I took a big sip of the sugary, creamy coffee. Vodka amnesia?

I turned to look at Claire. Her left pinkie automatically rose to her mouth. She chewed on her finger as ferociously as she did her crayons, straws, and pencils. We drank our coffee-milk with our gowns stretched taut over our knobby knees and listened to the others make their way to the kitchen. Of the three big meals Momma prepared every day, breakfast was the quickest, often just grits, bacon, and toast. Soon we’d be free to play in the backyard.

Morning dew sprinkled my bare ankles as I skipped past the new merry-go-round and swing set that Daddy had purchased from the company installing play equipment in the oil-center park. I tore a honeysuckle flower from the vines creeping along the chain-link fence that separated our backyard from the neighbors and their gang of kids. The fence sat on the edge of the coulee where we collected tadpoles in spring. But it was early June and already the ditch stood dry, cracked, and full of weeds.

After licking the drop of nectar, I yelled, "I want to get on!" Sitting next to each other on their ponies, humming to the music of the carousel, Nanette and Claire pretended not to hear or see me. "Stop, I want on. I’m gonna go tell Momma," I warned, hoping they hadn’t heard her station wagon drive off just moments earlier. My mother and all the other housewives, white women we knew who didn’t work, were heading down to the Winn Dixie, it seemed, to exchange pleasantries with their butchers for an extra nice cut of meat, to trade gossip for laughs. Strange accents from other parts of the country filled our local stores and schools as families poured into South Louisiana so the men could find jobs at the big oil companies.

That threat worked nearly every time. Nanette slid off her horse and walked over to the switch to turn it off. I stood next to the carousel, waiting for the horses to slow down enough so I could jump on.

"You’re a baby," Nanette taunted.

"No, I’m not." I grabbed a cold, damp metal bar. Nanette flipped the switch back on and the carousel jerked forward.

"Baby, baby…" Claire joined in. Eleven months apart, they looked like twins with their matching brown eyes and long hair. Even Grandma couldn’t keep their names straight half the time.

"I am not a baby. I’m four," I spat. "Anne is a baby, and you’re stupid."

"Sticks and stones may break my bones but words…" Nanette yelled.

"I hate you!"

"We hate you too," they yelled back, even though none of us meant it. After Daddy, I loved Nanette and Claire best in the world.

"Wanna go swing?" Nanette asked Claire. They dismounted and jumped down, leaving me to figure out how to get off the moving carousel.

I could get off the horse by myself, but someone had always turned off the merry-go-round before I jumped to the ground. Thinking about the jump, making myself scared, I rode that horse for a long time before I gathered the courage to climb down and go to the edge of the carousel. I looked over at my sisters, swinging, not looking back at me. They absolutely were not going to help, and I was not a baby. I took a deep breath and jumped down, falling and skinning my knee.

I blew on the red scrape. It hurt but I didn’t cry. I lived in the only house on the block that had a merry-go-round, and I could get down by myself, no matter what.

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