No Exceptions [Excerpt]
It’s late morning on the Blackest of Fridays, the day after Thanksgiving, 1982. My mother, alone in the kitchen, cuts the sum of a chicken into its parts: wings, thighs, breasts. A short kitchen knife balances in her right hand.
Her left hand pulls wing from breast. The chicken skin in her fist is thick, slightly gelatinous, and has bumps where feathers used to be. She splits the slippery skin across the chest, exposing firm, pink flesh. She presses the knife into the sweet spot, the slight indentation where wishbone divides breasts. The blade pushes down, scraping the hard edge of breastbone and slides between ribs. Knife pulls out, thrusts in. There is no blood where flesh severs lengthwise along the sternum.
On this Black Friday morning, Aunt Jean and Grandmommy Oscar, my father’s sister and mother, sit across from each other at the dining room table. They have come to our house for the very long Thanksgiving weekend. Over the years, they have mostly learned to tolerate my mother the shicksa and the four kids. Well, they don’t actually like us, my aunt told me casually one Hannuka as she carried a bag of wrapped presents for us, but they love us. Lately, though, my aunt has been talking to my father about his marriage. She tells him he should leave. My mother is sure of it.
This morning Aunt Jean is doing the books for my father’s medical practice. Her mother keeps her company. Aunt Jean has ledgers full of numbers and notations spread out in a wide arc in front of her on the white cotton tablecloth.
In the kitchen cutting chicken, my mother’s jaw muscles clench and unclench. She goes through the motions of being a housewife, but she lives in a dark sea, chased by shadows. My father’s threats. The way he beats the children. The way he mocks her, tells her she’s stupid and worthless. The way he twists a knife into every soft spot. Her energy, her will, are at an end.
My mother married my father because he was wrong. He assured her, a former Catholic school girl, that his medical training guaranteed she would not get pregnant. Now, twenty years and four children later, she’s been beaten down. She is completely financially dependent on my father. She knows for a fact that she will die alone in a gutter if he leaves her. She knows he’s being pushed to leave – and she’s figured out who is pushing him.
My mother sits at the kitchen table with the chicken splayed open before her. Aunt Jean does not understand my mother’s position. Aunt Jean has a profession and supports herself. She lives the single, lesbian lifestyle in New York City with no kids and no financial obligations.
My mother lifts her head suddenly and stands. She rebalances the greasy knife in her hand. From the kitchen, she walks through a small alcove, past a push-button telephone mounted on the wall. She enters the dining room.
/
“Anyone who kills another person should be executed. No exceptions.”
Nancy’s words careen across the chemistry table. I pull my head up, surfacing from a trance. How long had Nancy held back these words as they snorted in the dust, hooves pawing the ground, bucking and railing to get out the gate? Finally released, her words trample me underfoot.
My eyes focus in on Nancy, a pimply Nordic Mack truck. Nancy and I are both on the crew team but we’re rarely in the same boat. I can’t remember speaking with her at all in the six months since Thanksgiving.
Two girls I’d known since seventh grade Hebrew school form the rest of our group. Surrounding us, five other sets of high school seniors sit on tall wooden stools around high-legged tables. Strewn across thick, black tabletops are glass beakers with mystery liquids, piles of powder, Petri dishes, measuring spoons. Exhaust fans whisk quietly overhead.
Did I hear Nancy right? I examine her from a glazed distance, my mind slowly slipping into gear.
Nancy and I go to The Baldwin School, an all girls, college prep school. It was founded in 1888 in a private home as “Miss Baldwin’s School for Girls, Preparatory for Bryn Mawr College” and later took over a Victorian resort hotel. The main building has a huge rounded entry made of heavy stone, topped by a high red turret. I pass through a medieval portal when I walk through that door.
Across the table, Nancy’s sharp blue eyes bead at me, her contempt thickening the air between us. Our chemistry teacher, a tall German with a high tire tube of a belly, begins her instructions.
/
The day after Black Friday, I visit Grandmommy Oscar in the hospital. I piece together bits of information from snippets of conversations into a semi-coherent story:
My mother walks in from the kitchen to the end of the dining room table, chicken grease on her fingers, knife in her hand. She turns towards my aunt.
“I am going to kill you.”
My aunt and grandmother lock eyes then look at my mother. Aunt Jean says, “Barbara, we love you.”
Something – I don’t know what – makes my mother hesitate. She turns and walks back to the kitchen.
/
I hold Nancy’s glare for just a second across the chemistry table. The hatred in her eyes is Old Testament. She would smite me if she could. It’s simple: a life for a life. No exceptions.
In the six months since Thanksgiving, Nancy’s comment is the most direct reference by any classmate to what happened. Or at least it’s the first one I’ve registered. Some have garbled out “I’m sorry” with a quick look in my direction. Some ask vaguely how I’m doing. I answer just as vaguely. Where would I even start? Though I’ve been in classes with most of these girls since I started Baldwin in seventh grade, I haven’t been close with anyone since my best friend left for boarding school in ninth grade. I don’t fit in with any group: not the jocks (though I row and play basketball), not the druggies (I quit smoking pot in tenth grade and only drink with my little brother from our parent’s liquor cabinet), not the nerds (though I get good grades), not the Jews (supposedly my “tribe”), not even the misfits.
Even so, I haven’t before felt like my classmates are against me. If I ever think about it, I assume their silence is like mine – awkward, embarrassed, uncertain. Nothing my classmates have experienced in their seventeen years has prepared them for a bloody deed like this so close to home. Then again, what has prepared me?
I drop my eyes back down to the table. I dare a sideways glance at my lab partners. Of course they heard Nancy, but neither of them says a word. Instead, they busy themselves setting up the experiment. One pours clear fluid into the tall flask and the other spoons black powder into the Petri dish. Mrs. Carter tells us that the catalyst is manganese dioxide powder and the reactant is liquid hydrogen peroxide. She tells us that the catalyst, without itself being changed, will sever the bonds between water and oxygen molecules in the hydrogen peroxide.
/
Do my aunt and grandmother believe my mother? Do they have time to run? To call the police?
They are still sitting at the table when my mother returns to the dining room, her determination renewed.
Does she say it again, “I am going to kill you”?
Do they say anything to her like “We love you” or “Don’t do it” or “Please”?
My mother steps directly in front of my aunt. She raises the knife over her head.
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Phyllis Writes 