Screen Door Slam

Screen Door Slam

By: Calvin Moreau   First published in “The Voice of La Puente”Winter 2011

One day last winter, I stood on my crutches waiting to go out the front door at La Puente. Just ahead of me a little girl, about five years old, pushed the screen door open for her mom. The rusty old spring made a sound that reminded me of another door I’d heard when I was about her age.

* * *

I remember bits of 1961 and bits that Mama told me. I was five that year living in Metarie, a suburb of New Orleans. It rained a lot in New Orleans and it rained a lot the day Mama and Daddy took me to the park to ride the rides and see some animals. Even in the rain it was fun, until Daddy got mad at all the rain. He said we had to go, but Mama was already putting me on the merri-go-round, so he had to wait—and he hated to wait. Every time I went around I saw Daddy’s face stabbing me with his eyes. I remembered his belt. I knew he hated me, so I kicked the horse to make it go faster and faster.

As soon as the ride was over he snatched me off the horse and carried me to the car, splashing in the ankle deep water on the sidewalks. Mama put me in the back seat and dried me off with a towel, while Daddy tried to start the car. He cursed the old Studebaker ‘cause it wouldn’t start in the rain. He said something in the motor had gotten wet so we had to sit there and wait until it dried. Mama turned on the radio and we all watched the water get deeper outside.

I saw another car try to leave, but it stopped in the middle of the parking lot. Daddy laughed and said, “The idiot should have known he’d flood out the engine. Hell, the water is up to the doors now.” The radio said three of the pumps that were supposed to keep the city from flooding were not working, but they were expected to be fixed soon. Mama said that would make the water go away and Daddy said the city was too stupid to even pump water. After a bunch of songs played on the radio the rain stopped and Daddy yanked the towel out of my hands, cursing ‘cause I’d gotten it wet, and raised the hood to dry the wet thing on the motor.

Daddy cursed the whole way home. He cursed the rain, he cursed the flooded roads, and he cursed the songs on the radio. Mama sat quiet. I stared out the window at the pretty houses going by, the ones the nicer people lived in. When we passed the corner bar I knew our ugly little house was only a block away. Daddy parked in the driveway and we all went inside the front door to the living room. The bed was against the far wall and to the right was the kitchen and bathroom. The kitchen door led to the driveway, but Daddy never used it. He said it was a back door. He got dressed in some dry clothes and went out the front door to the bar.

It was getting dark outside while I played with the screen door. I liked the way the spring squeaked when I swung it open and closed, and the sound of Mama frying fish and the cicadas chee-weeing outside. The wet air smelled good, and so did the fish. It all seemed like a jungle, till Mama got tired of the June bugs flying in and asked me to close the door. So I just played with the spring, thinking about Daddy.

“Mama… why is Daddy mad all the time?”

“He’s not mad honey. I think he’s just hurting inside.”

“Why?”

“Remember I told you his first wife died? Well I think he still misses her.”

“Oh. Well why does he hate me then?”

I jumped when the spatula slammed hard on the edge of the big black skillet. Mama was crying when she told me, “He doesn’t hate you. He just…I don’t know. He just hurts inside. You know we both love you. You’re all we’ve got now.”

“No. I know he hates me, just like Johnny next door throws rocks at me—same thing Mama.”

We weren’t very happy that night, and then Daddy came home.

The front door swung open, banged against the wall, and Daddy stumbled in yelling at Mama. I saw that he was drunk, drunker than he’d ever been. I had to pee so I ran into the bathroom where I usually felt safe when he came home drunk. There was a little stool that he’d made for me when he was happy one day so I could reach the rim of the toilet and pee like a man. I was flying above the water when I saw a cigarette butt floating like a battleship. I aimed and blew it to pieces. Then there was a loud bang in the kitchen, like something heavy hitting the floor. When he stopped cursing I slipped into the kitchen to see what happened.

Mama squatted on the floor putting a fish back into the skillet, crying. Daddy was in the living taking off his wet clothes when he took the gun out of the dresser drawer and said, “If you two are still here when I wake up, I’ll kill you—both of you.” Then he set the gun on the table by the bed, and laid down to go to sleep.

Mama was on the phone when I went back into the kitchen. She hung up and told me to help her get some of our things together. We waited until Daddy was snoring hard, then we packed some stuff into a suitcase. The back door of the kitchen made a sound like a cross between a squeak and a screech. Squreech. I held the door open for Mama and asked her, “Where are we going, Mama?”

She said, “To stay with Aunt Jessie for awhile. Come on, the cab is here.”

I’ll never forget the sound when I let go of that door. Squreech…Slam!

* * *

Back at La Puente the little girl asked her mom, “Where are we going?”

Her mom said, “We’re going to our new home.”

“Will Daddy be there?”

“No honey, never again.”

“Good”, she said. Then she let go of the door—Squreech…Slam!

Had our screen door slammed tonight in Alamosa, fifty years later, the cab would have taken us to La Puente; there just aren’t enough “Aunt Jessie’s” any more.