Before Women Had Wings (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

244 Pages·1997·0.87 MB·English

by  Connie May Fowler

BEFORE WOMEN HAD WINGS

by Connie May Fowler

Published by:
G. P. Putnam's Sons
200 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10016.

Copyright 1996 by Connie May Fowler
BOOK JACKET
INFORMATION

PRAISE FOR
Connie May Fowler

"There is no denying the depth of Connie May Fowler's talent and the breadth of
her imagination." --The New York Times Book Review

"Fowler makes us cry when her characters cry and laugh when they laugh. And
that is true magic." --Atlanta Journal and Constitution

"Strong prose ... Rings real and authentic."--Los Angeles Times

"Like Faulkner, Fowler has a trusting and attuned ear. Her characters are right on
the money."
--The Miami Herald

"Fowler's real gift is that she manages to present the ponderous problems her
characters face with a style and grace that takes your breath away."
--St. Petersburg Times
"Fowler creates powerful intimacies ... bold, honest and intelligent."
--The Washington Post

Before Women Had Wings "made me shiver and ache. Connie May Fowler has
done it again-- told a story about humanity, in many ways a mirror of anyone's
childhood, if you subtract nearly all the good, multiply the humiliations, divide
the loyalties, and add a double shot of bourbon and meanness.
"Stinging with tenderness, this is her best yet--a necessary story with an
unstoppable emotional force."
--Amy Tan

"Fowler's deeply moving, triumphant third novel brilliantly conveys a child's
bewilderment .... She sweeps the narrative along with plangent, lyrical prose ...
and establishes herself as a writer of formidable talent."
--Publishers Weekly

"Connie May Fowler's voice is strong,
honest, painful, and redemptive. She writes about the dream of love and home
with unswerving accuracy. This is her best work yet."
--Kaye Gibbons

My true name is Avocet. Avocet
Abigail Jackson. But because Mama couldn't find anyone who thought Avocet
was a fine name for a child, she called me Bird. Which is okay by me. She
named both her children after birds, her logic being that if we were named for
something with wings then maybe we'd be able to fly above the shit in our lives.
So explains Bird Jackson, the narrator of Before Women Had Wings. She takes
us from the shadows of an abandoned Florida citrus grove to the glare of a
sprawling city and the transient world of The Travelers Motel. There she meets
Miss Zora, a healer whose prayers over the bones of winged creatures are meant
to guide their souls to heaven.
Starstruck by a dime-store picture of Jesus, Bird fancies herself "His girlfriend"
and embarks upon a spiritual quest for salvation, even as the chaos and fear of
her home life plunge her into a stony silence. In stark and honest language, she
tells the tragic life of her father, a sweet-talking wanna-be country music star;
tracks her older sister's perilous journey into womanhood; and witnesses as her
mother--a bitter woman haunted by a violent past and an alcoholic present--
makes a courageous and ultimately devastating decision. But most profound is
Bird's own story--her struggle to sift through the ashes of her parents' lives and
to make sense of a world where fear is more plentiful than hope, retribution
more valued than love.
In Bird Jackson, Connie May Fowler has created a tender, vivid narrator through
whose finely wrought voice we experience a fusion of myth and hard-core
reality, dreams and daily certainties, and the journey of a young girl who forges a
new idea of herself and, in the process, soars to meet the challenge of her name.

Connie May Fowler is the author of two previous novels, Sugar Cage and
River of Hidden Dreams. She lives in Florida with her husband, Mika Fowler.
Jacket design by Honi
Werner
Jacket photographs
Copyright 1996 by Mika Fowler Book design by Brian Mulligan
ALSO BY CONNIE MAY FOWLER

SUGAR CAGE
RIVER OF HIDDEN DREAMS

I would like to thank my husband, Mika, for helping me face my ghosts. I am
indebted to my sister and brother--Deidre Hankins and Jimmy Friend--for
allowing me to reopen old wounds and for so graciously sharing with me their
childhood memories. I also must thank Joy Harris and Faith Sale--their ever-
present strength inspires and sustains me. To my mother and father-- Lee and
Henry, who passed away before I could ask the questions that mattered--I can
only whisper, "I hope I got it right." To Laura Gaines, Carolyn Doty, Kim
Seidman, and Col. James Friend, I offer heartfelt and enduring gratitude. And, of
course, many thanks to Atticus for standing guard.
FOR FAITH

We will have the wings of eagles when the fallen angels fly.
--Billy Joe Shaver
BEFORE WOMEN HAD WINGS
Back in 1965, on a day so hot that God Almighty should have been writhing
with sick-to-the-stomach guilt over driving His children out of the cool green of
Eden, my daddy walked into our general store, held a revolver to his head, told
my mama that he couldn't take any more and that because of her harsh ways and
his many sins he was going to blow his brains out.
Seconds earlier, when it had been just Mama and I in that dusty old store, I'd
been thinking about food. Sweets, to be exact. I used to suffer craving spells.
Still do when I get to thinking about things. I don't know what spurred the want
back then, a want for sugar that was so strong I would grind my teeth flat until
my needs were met. Could it be that my deep yearning was caused by a sadness
bred in the womb, a dark past we're helpless to undo or make right, a history we
have no memory of once we're birthed into this world? Are there events so
ancient and awful that our fresh lives are spoiled even before the cord is cut, so
we keep craving?
These are questions for which I haven't a single answer. In fact, answers aren't
part of my nature. Details are what I'm about--stacks and stacks of details--the
bones of my family, calcified vessels, the marrow chock-full of wishes and
regrets. In my mind I pick up the bones one by one--a leg bone, a hip, then a
spine that looks like a witch's ladder. Before you know it, this skeleton made of
memories is rattling me.
I was six years old, dressed in my yellow shorts set--it had white rickrack tacked
around the neck--standing in front of the pine bins that were full to overflowing
with sweets, trying my hand at whistling in an attempt to get my mama's
attention, hoping that she would look up from the black ledger book and its long
columns of numbers that evidently foretold our future, wanting her to smile and
say it was okay to eat a honey bun --my favorite food in the entire world--betting
that she would not snarl at me to get the hell away from the sweet bins because
didn't I know it was almost lunchtime, when Daddy staggered in through the
front screen door and, without saying hello, proceeded on with that revolver.
Held it down by his side and let his arm dangle back and forth, as if the
gun were nothing more than a toy, something he might throw across the room.
My mama, whose name was Glory Marie, looked up from her work. Her face
slid from distraction to annoyance, and I prayed that my guardian angel, who so
far in my life had proven to be an elusive helper, would materialize in front of
the counter with its clutter of jars filled with pigs' feet, beef jerky sticks, BC
Powder packets, bug spray, pickled eggs. Prayerful words welled up inside me,
whirled through my head: Please, angel, whisk me away. Take me to your house
in the clouds, just for a little while, just for today.
I looked at the black muzzle of the gun and my daddy's freckled fingers wrapped
around its handle like five pale, unsteady snakes. Come on, angel, come on.
Mama said something under her breath--probably a curse word, she knew a lot
of those. Then she picked up her perfectly sharpened pencil, pointed it at Daddy,
dartlike, and said, "Billy, put down the gun. You're scaring the children,"
although he could not have been scaring my big sister, Phoebe, because Mama
had sent her down the road to Mrs. Bryson's to deliver the lard and flour she'd
ordered.
My daddy's blue eyes were crazy--thunderhead wild, my mama always called
them--you know, that look of madness as if a person's knotted-up, Devil-haunted
soul has been forced into the small space inside the sockets, flashing despair,
anger, and hurt like a warning light: Do not enter; do not cross; do not attempt to
soothe.
"Glory, I mean it. I'm sick and tired of trying to make it in this godforsaken
world. You and the girls will be happier with me gone." Daddy's voice was loud,
trembly. He was crying.
I shut my eyes, and on the backs of my eyelids I saw Mama get up from behind
the desk and put her arms around Daddy and coo, "Everything is going to be
fine. Yes, baby, I love you. Your daughters love you." If I'd been her, I would
have done that.
But my daydream did not come true. When I looked again, Mama was still
sitting, thumping that pencil against the coffee-stained pages of the ledger. When
she spoke, her words pounded into me as if she were a fancy-footworking
prizefighter: "Jesus,
Billy, you're behaving like a fool."
A shadow passed over my daddy's eyes. His lips curled into a grimace, then a
grin that was all heartache and threat. He looked past my mama at nothing in
particular, and I feared he might be staring into the unknowable face of Our Lord
and Savior.
Daddy raised the revolver to his temple, and for a split second the gun seemed
alive, a blackbird flapping. In a voice too steady for the circumstances, he said,
"I swear to sweet Jesus, you're gonna be sorry, Glory Marie."
Then he slipped the weapon into the waistband of his pants--an eerie satisfaction
bouncing across his face--and he stormed back out the front screen door.
I expected the door to bang shut, but instead it only whispered because my big
sister caught it on her way in. She was sweaty, red-faced, looked as if she'd just
stumbled through a mess of stinging nettles--always did when there was trouble
at home, which was almost all the time. I heard Daddy's car engine turn over and
rev. Phoebe asked, "Mama, where's Daddy going with that gun?"
"Shush, girl," Mama said as she faced the window and watched Daddy peel out
of the driveway. She picked up the phone. Its heavy black receiver looked too
much like the revolver. Crows outside in the pecan tree started cackling. I ran
over to Phoebe and threw my arms around her.
Mama's voice spilled over me: "Yes, Chuck, this is Glory Marie. Billy's got a
gun. Says he's going to shoot himself. Can you send an officer after him? He's
headed north, toward town. Try Moccasin Branch. He's threatened before that if
he ever killed himself it would be by the river. And can you please send a cruiser
over for the girls and me?"
After a series of okay's and I think so's, she hung up the phone, gathered her
pocketbook and cigarettes, and told us to go outside and wait for the police. But
I couldn't move. My muscles and bones turned to rubber. So I stayed put,
clinging to Phoebe. She wasn't going anywhere either.
Mama was a pretty woman. I didn't look a thing like her. She had black hair and
black eyes, and I figured her to have been
Indian although she never confessed to such a thing. I was red-headed-near-to-
blonde, with my daddy's thunderhead-blue eyes, and I'd blister under the sun
before you could say squat. Phoebe looked like Mama's child with all that
darkness--skin and hair and eyes and all--but even shared looks didn't make the
two of them close. No, she wasn't a woman you could get close to on a regular
basis.