Chapter Twenty-Nine

Marge was a knot of worry. Her letter must have gotten there by now, but there was no word from Whitney. Her relationship with her daughter was obviously fraught with tension, but what made Marge so sad was the thought that they had never really been at peace. She supposed when Whitney was younger, before Walt had come along and after Lenny died, there was a small blip of time when it was just the two of them, and there was no way to avoid that fact. It had been good, those small moments, when she could hold her daughter’s small body in her arms and sniff at the top of her head. She was so childlike, even more so than other children who seemed to be built like army tanks nowadays. She was delicate and soft. She was like Marge’s little doll.

But now she was just a woman edging thirty in a high security women’s prison, her delicateness a curse now more than anything. It pained Marge to think about it, to think about what her daughter had experienced that Marge couldn’t muscle through and detract with a wave of her fist. It kept her up most nights while Walt was snoring in the darkness. She’d pad against the cold floor until her feet met carpet in the great room. They had that, a room they called “great.” It was a luxury that came with marrying Walt, just like the new tooth she had implanted in her gums and the nice outfits from Dillard’s that didn’t stink of somebody else’s body odor. She was what they called “moving on up,” but Marge was in no position to enjoy any of it.

All she wanted was for her family to be together. And now her grandson had been taken from her too.

If Whitney’s delicateness wasn’t in her favor, she knew Travis’s blackness would be similar for him, if not worse. She had known racism all her life being from Helena, and even though it never sat right with her, it was also something that had nothing to do with her. She was a white woman. She had her own problems. But fate (or God’s design as Walt would put it), had positioned her just so, and now racism wasn’t just a thing that bothered her. It was the evil that would never stop breaking her heart.

Travis wasn’t a perfect boy. She knew that. Nobody was. But he had such a good heart, and his grandfathers (both Franklin and Walt) had taught him all the things that kind of heart could cost him. But that cousin of Travis’s, that Douglas, he was one of those people who was more snake than man. They slither into your space and won’t be satisfied until their poison takes you down with them.

“What do I do, Walt? I hate that boy. Look what’s he’s done. Look how he’s ruined us.”

“Oh, Marge. We’re not ruined. We’ve been given the opportunity to grow. We should take it.”

“What’s that you’re prattling about? Growing? We’re not houseplants for goodness sakes!” They had been out shopping at J.C. Penney's with Garrett, trying to find him new pants that had buttons instead of a zipper. It was a harrowing feat, considering he was a full-grown man now. Marge knew some of the shoppers were staring at them, although now, years later, it didn’t bother her so much. And it shamed her knowing it wasn’t just because Walt was by her side. It was also because she had money and looked nice now, so for all their rude stares, it didn’t matter. She had finally won.

“I mean this hurts. And sometimes the hurt is the proof that God is ripping away all the things that have been keeping you from Him.”

“You mean like my grandson?” Marge said, holding up a pair of corduroys the color of cow dung against a moaning Garrett.

“I mean like your expectations for Travis and for Whitney too. The worst has happened, Marge, against your will. You can’t change things. You’re not in control.” Walt mistakenly took the pair of pants out of her hands, thinking she was pleased with them. There was a trapped rat feel in her bones. Control. She hadn’t had it much with Lenny, and then some stranger came and took whatever she did have left right out of her hands. She wouldn’t have thought it that way, though, after what happened in the alley by the bakery—that she was trying to gain control over either of her children, considering neither of them ever played ball. Maybe Travis was easier, especially once Whitney went to prison. Marge was the only mother in his life, save for the few trips she was able to take Travis to see her daughter. She was able to mold him into the good boy he was. Until, of course, he tried to prove he wasn’t.

“Everything will be okay, Marge, just like it’s always been. God hasn’t failed us yet.” Walt was the only person on earth who could bring God into a conversation without sounding trite. For Walt, God was literally there with them in J.C. Penney’s just as concerned about how ugly those dung-colored pants were as Marge was. That was the God Marge wanted to know, but it seemed like knowing Him meant giving up those ties to the people she loved. Ties or nooses? a voice in her head had the audacity to ask. She ended up buying the ugly pants just to shut it up.

When they got back home, she thought about that growth. It was hard looking in the mirror and not thinking about it. It was like she had been a dying flower that was finally getting the chance to drink. And now that she was well fed and sitting in the sun, her hair had grown fuller where it once was sparse. Her complexion was healthier, and she had lost fifty pounds in the time she had been married to Walt. For so long, it had been him, her husband, her knight in shining armor who had been her saving grace. But he never saw it that way. According to Walt, it was Jesus who had made his heart pure, made him the kind of man to love a boy who had a hard time loving him back, a grandson whose mother was locked away, and a woman who felt as weak in the head as she did in her bones. But if Jesus was the reason the four of them had existed so long within Walt’s love, then why was He so intent on tearing them apart?