The Bens Excerpt 2

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With Dad’s job and mom’s diminutive size, Ward became more and more my responsibility.  

At age 22, he became my full-time duty.  

That was the year my parents died aboard a ferry in Scotland. Durward, who had just turned 14, was given to me.  

Grandma died eight years later. Grandpa only lived a year after that. Then, the Burton house—Bens on Burton—became mine though I didn’t visit it. Not until later. 

The Bens on Burton sits on a cove—a cul-de-sac of water—on Lake Burton. Tucked into the foothills of Appalachia, Burton is surrounded by forests where mountain laurel tangles get so thick that brush-clearers call them “devils” because they curl in tightly-wound fists at the edge of the road. The first explorers of the area would sometimes have to climb over these devils. And because going through their thick intertwined branches is impossible, they would snake over their tops in a swimming motion called “swimming the devil.”  There’s also a vicious looking Wineberry, whose raspberry-like fruit is tasty, but with stems covered in long, blood-red bristly thorns, it daunts even the invasive kudzu. The roads are gravel, but dutifully maintained. In part because if they were not, the forest growth would ravenously take back what once belonged to it. Luckily, the dirt roads are busy enough now that any plant venturing out too far is cut off in its pursuit.

 Lake Burton wasn’t always how it is now: million-dollar mansions built on pristine estates that would look at home in Fitzgerald’s West Egg. The original valley roads were carved out for the sole purpose of loggers in the Northern foothills of Appalachia. In fact, one of the primordial Harvesters still sat decaying in a forgotten clearing of green behind The Bens. The old GA Power lots are big and rare. Our house, Bens on Burton, sat stubbornly on one of these old large lots. During those dog-hot summers I remember thinking that Bens on Burton hunched into its cove. An old red-capped dandy staring fixedly at the waters, waiting for something to emerge from the clubrush-clogged depths.  Like I said, I have always been an imaginative child.  We stayed at The Bens on Burton a lot as a family, my parents, Durward, and me (grandpa, thinking himself hilarious, named it The House of the Bens because his name was Ben and my father was Ben Jr).  And Ward and I stayed there for three weeks after grandpa’s death. I hadn’t been able to force myself to stay there until then, because, well, because it hurt too much.  What happened during those three weeks was too otherworldly to stay much longer. Ward became increasingly erratic in his behavior, and eventually my brother got too violent, and I had to make a very difficult decision.  

 I’m jumping ahead. Sorry. Time is muddy.   

Let me start with Durward. Ward was…is…the golden boy—literally. He has the lightest gold-brown eyes with sprinkles of green. His hair is white as flax. As a kid, he had light-brown freckles all over his little body as though someone had blown glitter on him. When Ward was born, my father was elated to have a little boy to teach all the boy things to. Unfortunately, when Ward turned four, it became very clear that he would never learn the boy things. My brother was diagnosed with Pervasive Developmental Delay Not Otherwise Specified Concentration Echolalia.  

Did you get all that? It’s a mouthful. PDD-NOSCE. Basically, Durward will not age mentally past about three years old and his verbal skills are virtually nonexistent. He can repeat back  what you said, but he cannot create sentences or even phrases on his own. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t comprehend most of what is happening. He does understand, in his own way.

  I remember one afternoon sitting on the back porch of our Atlanta home with Ward when we were kids. He must have been about five years old. He was still in the throes of his white-food phase, making him tiny and skeletal. Durward was doing a self-soothing behavior where he hit his palm on the picnic table and repeated a snippet of song he knew, his stick hands thapping the wood, rocking back and forth so that his birdchest tapped the table in perfect rhythm. “Sigh Rickity-Tickety-Tin. Drowned her father in the creek. Sigh Rickity-Tickety-Tin. Drowned her father in the creek. Sigh Rickity-Tickety-Tin. Drowned her father in the creek.”  

I recognized the melody as an old song my grandmother would sing while gardening. “Ward? Are you singing grandma’s song?” He looked over to me as though just noticing I was there. His eyebrows raised in astonishment. “Grandma’s song.” He replied as though surprised at himself. Then he suddenly became frustrated; he wanted to say more. To break out of his linguistic cell. 

His face crumpled in on itself, and he jutted his lower teeth out like snaggletooth bulldog, squeezed his eyes shut, flapped his hands. “RICKITY-TICKITY-TINN!” he screeched angrily. Startled crows flew from the tops of the trees. Trying to ease his aggravation a little—I softly sang the rest of verse, while reaching out one of my fat little hands to touch his bony shoulder. 

“She drowned her father in the creek. The water was bad for a week. The water was bad for a week. So we had to make due with gin. With gin. With gin. We had to make due with gin.”   Ward smiled at me and cupping his hands together, clapped them next to his ear in beat with the song. He looked at a corner of the roof as though something perched there, encouraging his accompaniment.  I continued: “Her mother she could never stand. Sigh Rickity-Tickity-Tinn.  Her mother she could never stand so a cyanide stew she planned.  Her mother died with a spoon in her hand. And her face in a hideous grin. A grin. A grin.  Her face in a hideous grin.”   

Several versus later, after killing her baby brother and confessing to the police, the song’s protagonist had been put to rest. Ward was quietly singing the Rickity-Tickity-Tinn refrain as I bathed him in preparation for bed. He curled into sleep singing the song’s three nonsense words over and over, thapping his palm softly against his heart. He also thapped his chest and sang that refrain in the hospital. But that was later. In the darkness with beeping rhythms to accompany him, he sang it to me again as I prayed over him—or called out—something.  Ward’s the reason I became a social worker. I watched how difficult it was for my parents to secure services for Ward. I wanted better for us all. I took care of Durward often which deepened our connection. 

The rest of the world carried anxiety and social awkwardness, and I preferred my books and music.   My parents, on the other hand, enjoyed travelling. So when they announced they were taking a trip “to the homeland,” I thought nothing of it. By that time, Durward had full time school, a state-appointed care-worker named Esther, and after school therapy. My job was steady; I was gaining a good reputation with the adult transition services of Georgia’s special needs Medicaid program. I thought my life was coming together just as I had planned. “Have fun!” I told them as they marched their bags to the cab at the top of the driveway. Had I known I would never see them again, I would have said something better. 

A week later, I got the call from Ward’s care-worker. Her thick Haitian accent rolled my name out mournfully. “Ms. Philyameen? Ya need come down here.”  

“Esther? What’s going on? Is Ward okay?” “Yes, Miss. Please come to the house.”  

I knew. 

Even before I hung up, I knew it was my parents. I don’t remember driving to their suburban Atlanta home. Flashes of memory from those weeks layer over one another like polaroids. Esther coming and going with Ward in tow. My grandmother showing up and cooking. Grandpa driving Ward to school and back home after physical therapy.  I remember Grandpa talking on the phone. His accent getting heavier when he spoke to Scottish authorities. 

“A ferry accident on the trip out to Isle of Mull? Were there any others that were lost? What d’ya mean they fuckin fell?”  

They fell. 

Apparently together. I imagined them holding hands, arms spread like wings, and falling face first into black waves. In actuality, I have no idea. Their bodies were never recovered, but a witness reported seeing them fall in. The ferry was stopped; Argyll water authorities searched for hours. The search was complicated by several seal colonies who kept getting in the way of the boats. No one found them. Weeks of searching and no one found them. 

During that limbo of death-that-is-not-death-confirmed, I did not imagine they were waiting for us. I did not think that they had been mislocated and would turn up on somewhere wondering why everyone was upset. I did not imagine these things, because I knew they were dead. I knew they’d been swallowed by those dark waters as surely as I knew my grandparents were in the next room and Esther was with them, trying to make Ward understand that Mom and Dad weren’t coming back. I don’t know if he understands. What is death to someone like Durward?  

Everything passed as a dream. I was not aware of what happened around me. Grief’s watery lenses coloring my perceptions so they were glimpses of reality filtered through streams of pain: Grandma cooking in the evening, singing to Durward who repeated the refrains back to her while sprawled on the kitchen floor. Grandpa on the phone with lawyers. Esther getting Ward’s clothes ready for the next day. She ended up moving into my parent’s house with me. She lived at the Atlanta house even after she married Danny. I was a bridesmaid at her wedding.  

Grandpa’s cigarette-rasp from the living room: “Yea I know. We’re with her. Yes. Legal guardians but Christ we’re too old for this shit. Naw. We’ve got some kinda state lady that takes care of him a lot durin tha day. Aye. Philomena’s copin’ I guess. We’re all copin. What a fargin mess.”  

Memories, like film of someone else’s life: Esther handing me a glass of wine—cold, white. Me getting up and getting dressed each day. Sleepwalking through work. Grandpa planning the memorial service for my parents. Grandma tutting over my ever-depleting body fat. She’d pack more and more food for my lunch and sadly put it all back in the fridge when I brought the pack home unopened. Ward falling into his weird eating habits again. Grandma giving in to them, much to Esther’s dismay. We had worked for years to get Ward out of the white-foods-only obsession. But there Grandma was, singing while scraping the tomato sauce off a pizza, and carefully redepositing the mozzarella cheese back on top.  

“Fer fark’s sake, Vavs! Stop treatin’em like a goddam king. Yer undoin all the work they done fer’em! Makem go ungry if he doesn’t want t’eat it right!” 

Grandpa, a white-hair halo floating around reddened, notched ears, roaring from the living room couch. The couch where my dad and I watched David Bowie in Labyrinth. The couch where mom showed me how to create intricately patterned bead bracelets. 

 I didn’t even notice when Grandma and Grandpa left. I guess it was a couple of months after the memorial service for my parents—sans bodies of course, just their photographs standing on easels at the front of Cammon’s funeral parlor. I just walked into the house one afternoon, dropped my purse on the front table, and noticed that it didn’t smell like them. 

That it was too quiet. Esther leaned around the kitchen wall, one black curl flopping into her eye. “Hey, Ms. Phil. Danny gone pick up Ward from afterschool.”  

“Esther. Stop calling me Miss. Just call me Phil. Okay?”  She snorted from behind the kitchen wall. I could smell cashew chicken and my stomach grumbled. As though sensing my body’s response, Esther called. “Dinner is one hour. Want some chocolate?” It was September because it was still warm in Atlanta, but I remember thinking that Esther’s hot chocolate would be perfect in a few weeks. Too steamy now.  “No, love. Thanks. Going to shower. Be out in a few.”  “D’ja call that boy yet?” 

 I pretended not to hear her. That boy—Dell King—was my supervisor, and he was not a boy. He must have been ten years older than me. I thought of his salt-and-pepper beard, bushy but not too long, as I got into the shower. Liddell. Dell for short. He’d seen me through my parents’ death and my subsequent adopting of Ward. I had to go through all sorts of forms, forms that Liddell spent hours helping me fill out. He was so patient with me. He explained how to secure the money from my parents’ annuities. How to legally recuse myself from my current lease so I could move back into my parents’ home. How to ensure Durward would be granted to me after my parents were declared legally dead in the United States even though we never recovered their bodies. He had kind, hazel eyes. His hands were rough on the palms when he laid them on top of mine.  I turned the water to cold.