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IDABEL ALLEN
Headshots: Pushing Through
First published by Idabel Allen in 2017
Copyright © Idabel Allen, 2017
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise
without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy
this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means
without permission.
First Edition
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Contents
Pushing Through 1
Pushing Through
It’s time, I know it, and there isn’t any way around doing what
needs doing. I just have to push past everything until that
front door is shut behind me. And that’s what I’m going to
do. Just push past. But not right now because right now I can’t
stop staring at my reflection. I’m there, in the mirror, not
fading away ghostlike and uncertain, but solid, real in a way I
haven’t been in my twenty-six years. I see my flat dark hair
already starting to streak silver, my muddied complexion, and
big, brown, cow eyes. I see my father’s blood in me flowing
from that strong Irish line that had worked its way from county
Cork, crossing the ocean to Virginia and then on into Hazard
County Kentucky.
The line had stopped in Hazard, but it doesn’t have to. Not if
I am strong enough to rewrite and reroute my history.
But breaking loose isn’t easy, never had been. Not when I’ve
been right where I’ve been every day of my life. Not when the
only job I’ve ever had was scanning groceries. That and taking
care of the house. It’s all I was ever trained for, all I was ever
good enough for. It’s no kind of preparation for jumping up
and starting a new life, and I know it.
And if all I saw staring back at me from the mirror was my
same old worn out reflection I wouldn’t even think or dream
or wish on another life. But I see something else flickering
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HEADSHOTS: PUSHING THROUGH
in the mirror, something I can’t hardly recognize or believe.
Hope. It isn’t just in the mirror, but in me as well born from
that miraculous ticket burning electric in my jacket pocket.
I tell my reflection, “You can do this. Just be strong.” But it’s
too much, this reflection of mine, too filled with my past and
present. To look on it any longer makes the ticket and all its
possibilities seem less real. But I’m not about to let anyone or
anything take away this hope in me, not this time. All I have to
do is push through that front door, and I’m going to, but in a
minute, after this stomach-squall settles.
I sit onmybedand smoothawrinkle frommypatchworkquilt,
touching where the different pieces of the fabric come together
and bind themselves to each other. I think how life is this way,
connected like a large puzzle, and wonder what happens when
one of the pieces comes up missing or is removed? How does
this affect the whole?
I don’t dare dwell on this, so I pick up Pogo, my stuffed
schnauzer, and press my face into his fuzzy fur. I inhale our
shared life together, imagining I can still smell the scent of
cotton candy from the carnival where Daddy pitched dimes to
win Pogo.
Only, I can’t call him Daddy anymore, not since I was seven
and he stopped being my father. But I never stopped being his
daughter, not then at least. I used to look for him everywhere,
hoping he’d see me, see how I was aching to be his little girl
again. Hoping he’d start being my daddy just as suddenly as he
stopped. Only I didn’t see him for a real long time, not since
he stopped coming to see Mama and me.
But all that changed when he came into the market where I
sacked groceries, and still, do. I was fourteen when he came
through my line with his other daughter, his real daughter,
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PUSHING THROUGH
Jenna. She is exactly seven years younger than me, blonde,
petite, outgoing; everything her mother was and everything I
am not.
I watched him with this daughter, whose birth forced him
to choose between one daughter, born out of wedlock to one
of his bank employees, and his wife’s first born. It wasn’t
much of choice. Anyone would have chosen the daughter of his
marriage. I understood or figured I did.
But carrying his groceries out to his Cadillac, watching
my father and his real daughter joke with each other, laugh
together, be familiar in a way I had once been familiar with him,
I stopped trying to understand. It wasn’t the loving attention
he poured on his adoring daughter that made my arms go
numb and my feet stumble. It was the dollar tip he held out
to me, looking me full in the face without the slightest hint
of recognition that I was his blood, his child even though we
share the same eyes, the same forehead, and mouth.
I was nothing to him. He wasn’t ever going to be my daddy
again.
So I put him aside, out of my consideration. But still, when
I close my eyes, he is there, in my head, his arms all muscled
toughness, his warm brown eyes tender, understanding. I feel
his hand soft on my back once more as it had been from my
earliest memories. Still, I think he’ll step into our cramped
trailer and set things right.
Even now, with that ticket in my pocket, my heart yearns for
that knock on our door. Instead, I get Mama’s voice roaring
from the living room.
“Teeny! You hear me? My pill!”
For a moment it feels like someone is tightening a vice-grip
on my throat. I swallow once and say, “Yes ma’am,” wanting
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HEADSHOTS: PUSHING THROUGH
to add, my name is Mandy, not Teeny, but I don’t.
In the living room, Mama’s massive body is taking up the
whole couch. She’s been sitting there for years nowwearing the
same dingy blue cotton nightgown, just about the only thing
that fits her anymore. She eats and sleeps on the couch, only
rising to use the bathroom or make her doctors’ appointments.
Her only interest lays in the television before her and the food
on her plate.
Mama scratches her dark head that had years before always
been carefully styled and colored Marilyn Monroe blonde. But
she’d stopped taking care of her hair and anything else a long
time ago. Just gave up was all. She says, “You forget I was
supposed to have my diuretic thirty minutes ago?”
“Sorry, Mama. I was getting ready for work.” I bend down
and pick up the dirty dishes stacked on the floor next to Mama,
holdingmy breath to keep from gagging on the warm funk that
surrounds her. All the while I’mworriedMama’s going to reach
down and snatch that ticket frommy pocket even though she
doesn’t know anything about it.
“You call being a cashier at Pick Pack work?" my eldest step-
brother, Joe, asks from the recliner, unshaven and unkempt
in his ratty flannel housecoat and white tube-socks. “You
should have quit that after high school. Got you a real job,
like dancing.”
I act like I don’t see or hear Joe. But when I move towards the
kitchen Joe sticks his leg out and blocksmy way, nearly causing
me to drop my armful of dishes. I try not to tremble, but I can
feel his black eyes oozing all over me. He takes a drink of beer
and says, “Hey Mama, could you see that? Teeny dancing?”
“Joe, that’s not nice,” Mama reprimands, giggling. “Why
you want to set her up for failure? Teeny’s fine at the Pick’n
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PUSHING THROUGH
Pack. She makes a few dollars there. What’s she gonna make
dancing with them tooth-pick legs and that iron-flat chest?”
Mama and Joe laugh hard while I stand there like I ain’t got any
sense but to just stand there and take it. And that’s what I’ve
done, for years now, just take it and take it and take it all.
Mama adds, “And that look on her face? Walking ‘round like
she done smelled sourmilk all the time. And wearing them owl
glasses too.”
Usually, I don’t say anything when they pick at me, but that
ticket is in my pocket, and the front door is real close, so I
get the nerve to say, “Least I work. Least I’m not living off a
disability check.”
This gets Joe on his feet lightning fast and just like that he’s
burning my face with his hot beer breath. All my new-found
nerve vanishes and I’m cowering once again before Joe. He
says, “I ain’t too disabled to put my size eleven boot up your,”
“That’s enough!" Mama pounds her meaty fist on the end
table. “Sister, watch your mouth. It ain’t Joe’s fault his back is
shot. He didn’t ask to get hit by that beer truck.” Mama falls
against the couch, barking coughs through her slab of a hand.
“See what you done, getting me all agitated,” she gasps. “Get
my pills.”
I say, “Yes ma’am,” my voice sounding all puny again. In
the kitchen, I dumpmy dirty dishes on top of the dirty dishes
already filling the sink. A dull, familiar pain fills my head as I
think of all the stained and crusted dishes I scrub every night
after work and the fresh stained and crusted dishes waiting for
me every morning.
It was endless, and not just the dishes. Chip bags, beer cans,
ice cream tubs, cheese wrappers and more, so much more,
overflowed from the trash can onto the floor. Globs of ketchup
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HEADSHOTS: PUSHING THROUGH
and mustard and jelly and syrup sit like unformed statues on
the countertops amid a layer of mouse droppings.
When Joe hollers, “Hey tit-less, grab me a beer,” I slip my
hand into my jacket pocket and touch the ticket. Just push
through, get that door behind you.
Then I close my eyes and see the sand and the water and the
hot sun that never gets cold, and the blue sky that never drops
snow. The Texas coast, that’s what my heart is set on. I think
of the brown-skinned people with their Spanish words waiting
for me, Mandy, not Teeny, down south. That’s exactly where
I’m heading just as soon as that door shuts behind me.
When I hand Mama her pill, she downs it without even
looking at it or wondering if it is the wrong pill, perhaps a
fatal pill. I doubt Mama has ever wondered about this, but I’ve
imagined it, in my head, often. Then I wonder about the quilt
and the missing piece and my stomach flip-flops about forty
times. Soon, I’ll be the missing piece. I look at Mama and
wonder will I be missed.
Then Joe says, “’Bout damn time,” and snatches the beer
frommy hand. At least his eyes are on the television and not
on me. It’s been eight years since the accident and Joe’s spent
most of that time drinking in the recliner or at the bar across
the highway where Perry Winters got knifed last year. If Joe
wanted more out of life at forty, it didn’t show. I used to feel
sorry for him, thinking life had worn him out early on. He’d
been alright when I was younger, when he still had a job at the
processing plant.
But ever since he crawled into my bed last month I know he
is an evil man. I fought him off the first time but was unable
to the next. He hasn’t come back, but I know he will, which is
why I have to push through that door and get south.
6
PUSHING THROUGH
It worries me, what if I’m pregnant? What would I do with
a baby? But I think of that ticket in my pocket, and I know
everything will be alright. If I’m pregnant, I’ll have the baby
somewhere warm. And I won’t care that Joe’s the father so
long as we are far away from him.
“Lotto number time,” Mama announces with her cigarette
jutting out from her doughy face. “You know that person won
theMega-lotto last Saturday ain’t even showed up in Louisville
to pick up the money? Said the winning ticket was from right
here in Hazard County. Who you think got it?”
“How the hell would I know?” Joe growls. “If I knew I’d track
that fucker down and he wouldn’t have to worry about turning
nothing in. I’d take care of it for him.”
“I know that’s right,” Mama says, blowing a steady stream
of smoke from her loose mouth. “If I had that ticket I’d take
all that money and get out of this dump. That’s the first thing,
right off the bat. Then I’d get me a maid,” she shoots me a
sidelong glance, “a real maid that knows how to clean. Really
clean. I’m sick of living like a pack of hogs.”
“Know what I’d do,” Joe asks, arranging six lotto tickets on
the arm of the recliner. “I’d buy me one of them, Russian
women. They ain’t got jack-shit over there. Bet I could swap
her for a case of pork’n beans. What you think Mama?”
“Pork’n beans!” Mama slaps her massive thigh. “Ha!”
“Man, I bet themRussianwomenknowall kinds of crazy stuff.
I bet she could show my ass something,” Joe says longingly
before shaking his head in disgust and exclaiming, “Goddamn
beer truck! Minnie wouldn’t have left my ass if I still had my
job at the plant. They was going to make me supervisor once
Elton retired. Supervisor...” Joe swears softly under his breath
and takes a long drink of his beer.
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HEADSHOTS: PUSHING THROUGH
“Shush now, they’re starting.” Mama and Joe sit forward
expectantly as if everything they had everwantedwas suddenly,
maybe within their reach.
The room falls quiet. As the numbers pop on the screen
Mama and Joe check and recheck their tickets. I don’t draw my
ticket frommy pocket. I don’t need to. Instead, I let my fingers
rest on it, the feel of it quieting my rushing blood since last
Saturday.
“Motherfuck!” Joe rips his tickets in half. “I got shit for luck,
that’s what I got.”
“I don’t want to win none of that small money anyway.”
Mama tosses her tickets aside, picks up a stale piece of pizza
from the end table and chomps it in half in one ambitious bite.
“The Mega-lotto, that’s what I’m after,” she says through her
mouthful.
I watch her, this woman on the couch, thinking where is she,
mymother? What has happened to her, to us? I try to see her as
she had been years before when she was younger and smaller.
She was always up doing things; hanging wash out on the line,
scrubbing the kitchen floor, kneading biscuits, even winning
a Twist dance contest at the fourth of July picnic. But more
than that. She had once run through a green meadow with a
homemade dragon kite soaring above her and me fast at her
heels. She had once carried me on her slim hip down a crooked
mountain trail, me too little to continue without her help, me
needing her, relying on her.
It was all so very long ago, and yet my heart yearns for the
mother who had once clung to me on a rollercoaster, shrieking
with laughter as we plummeted earthward. And I ache once
more not the loss of my father, but of my mother, who could
console me like no other, who once had loved me like no other.
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PUSHING THROUGH
But that mother was not to be found in the mountain of flesh
whose life was slowly being consumed by the very things she
consumed: the cheap nutritionless food, the endless supply of
pills.
No, my mother had disappeared, not abruptly as Daddy had,
but slowly, over time, little by little. When he left her, she lost
touch with friends, stopped going to church, did everything
she could to keep from doing anything that resembled living.
When everyone started looking her way and talking out the
sides of their faces, she stopped going to work. Just stopped
working and sat down on that couch where she’s been sitting
for years. That was all for her.
When Joe belches again, I know it is time. I stand before
Mama and say, “I’m going now,” thinking this is your chance
Mama, now. One look, one word and I am yours, here, forever
to care for you. To love you even.
ButMamadismissesmewith a flapofher trunk-like arm. Her
eyes never leave the repulsive drama playing out on television.
This is all she can spare me. Though this is nothing new
and I should expect it, and do expect it, it still hurts. But
then the beach is there, in my head, the golden sand warm
and welcoming, the music intoxicating and exotic. It’s there,
waiting for me and in four hours I’ll be in Louisville. A few days
later, once the ticket has been cashed and mymoney settled,
I’ll be in Texas. After that, the future is a blank slate. I can go
and do and be whatever I want to be. Only, I never considered
what that would be; I never had reason to. But I’m ready to
consider it and a great many other things now.
As I push open the door to leaveMama says, “Mandy Louise?”
I pause, hating the faint hopeful beat suddenly pulsing in my
chest. She called me Mandy Louise, called my name just as she
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HEADSHOTS: PUSHING THROUGH
had that day I trailed behind her with the green kite stamped
against an achingly blue sky, and we had run together barefoot,
through the overgrown grass, mother, and daughter.
It is what I have been waiting for, that glimmer ofmymother,
my real mother and it is there in the way she called my name. I
remember all the reasons I love her, have always loved her and
I am ready to do anything, give anything for her to be that real
mother once again.
I turn to her, my thundering heart near bursting as I say, “Yes
ma’am.”
Mama looks at me fully. “Think you can pull your head out
your butt long enough to remember to bring some ice cream
home? Chunky Chunky Choco-Nut, hear?”
My heart flatlines, right there in my chest. I say the only
thing I can say, the only thing she’ll understand. I say, “Yes
ma’am,” and then close the door gently behind me.
The End.
Headshots is available on Amazon. For more information, go
to www.idabelallen.net.
NOTE: Thanks for reading. If you are of a mind, please be
sure to write an honest review and let me know what you think
of Pushing Through.
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