Southern Lady Code: Essays(15)

One of Mama’s parenting mantras was: “Oh, Helen Michelle, I have yet to begin to embarrass you.”

I have no memory of what we did for the first half of my birthday party. I remember eating pizza at cafeteria-style tables with the stools attached when Papa turned off the lights.

He rolled out a cart with a TV the size of a convection oven. The electrical cord dangled off the back, the prongs barely scraping the floor. So, the TV went where the wall outlet was. One group of kids collectively stood and scooted their table closer for a better view.

Papa slipped a tape into the VCR and announced that we’d be watching a scary movie. “Cat People starring Nastassja Kinksi,” he said as if the Tuscaloosa Blockbuster rivaled Cannes in the South of France.

I have no memory of how far we made it into that movie. I couldn’t tell you who else was in it or if any of them actually turned into cats. All I remember is that the movie was black and white, and at some point my friend Laurie, dressed like Coco from Fame in legwarmers and a ballet skirt, reached over to the TV knob and switched it off.

Something was happening to our left, just inside the round house by the glass door.

A man was yelling at Mama’s classmate. He was a stranger. He was bearded. He held a wallet. It was not his wallet. It was another man’s wallet. He shouted that he’d found the wallet, another man’s wallet, under their bed. So, this man was married to Mama’s friend and she had cheated on him.

And he was furious.

How furious?

He shouted, “If I can’t have you, nobody can!”

And then he pulled out a gun.

It was a handgun, which he didn’t hold over his head like a warning. He pointed that gun straight at his wife, who backed toward Mama.

She said, “No, no. Please. No, please, no no no, don’t do it.”

Mama, I will never forget, looked the gunman straight in the face, put her hands on her hips, and said, “You are ruining my daughter’s party!”

Talk about rude. Threatening to murder your wife in public was a far worse social offense than dropping an unwrapped Baby Ruth bar into a punch bowl.

“I’m gonna kill you!” the man roared at his wife. “I’m gonna kill you!”

But none of us Alabama eighth graders ran.

We melted off our stools and slid under the tables. A few years later in high school a kid would pull a gun at lunch and we would again melt under the same kind of tables in exactly the same way.

Laurie remembers being the last one standing at my party. She emailed me recently, “I was staring at the dude with the gun and watching the whole thing, wondering what happened to him that he got to this point? Like from a thirteen-year-old’s perspective, so basically: WHY ARE YOU SO MESSED UP? And then I also remember someone tugging on me to get DOWN. Was it you, Helen?”

It was me. Because cower is what you did when you saw a man with a weapon.

Every man we knew carried a weapon.

Our principals patrolled the halls with wooden paddles. Some drilled holes in the inch-thick wood in shop class so the paddles whistled when they swung. One vice principal never sat because he kept a yardstick down the inside back leg of his pants. We’d all been threatened or spanked at school or hit at home with a switch or a belt.

And everyone’s parents had guns.

To this day, there’s a semiautomatic, double-stack 9mm Beretta in Papa’s nightstand and .380 Sig Sauer in his car. Not to mention the revolvers and pistols he purchased or inherited from his father that he will pass on to my sister and me. What I will do with them when I get them I do not know. “It’s an heirloom” is Southern Lady Code for cold steel and ammunition.

Papa raised us with the knowledge: “If you find a gun, it’s loaded.”

Guns are not toys. You don’t play with guns. If you point a gun at someone, you’ve already fired it. If someone pulls a gun on you, you don’t turn your back and run and make yourself a target.

Kids were crying under the tables.

Laurie says, “I remember somebody really crying. Like hard, hard, hard.”

Me, I remember doing the math: A gun has six bullets, there are thirty-three of us. I remember my judgment: if Mama’s friend wasn’t such a slut, this wouldn’t be happening. And I remember looking to Papa: How are you going to save us?

Laura remembers, “The guy pointed the gun at your dad.”

And Papa said, “Let’s take it outside.”

He opened the glass door and the man followed him out.

Only Mama and the young woman were at a vantage point to see through the glass door. The rest of us crouched in darkness.

And then there was quiet.

And then there were gunshots.

And then Mama screamed. She pointed at what she saw through the glass door and screamed so loud and so long that I swear, decades later, my ears are still ringing.

And I thought: My father is dead.

And then, there he was: Papa bounding into the round house with the gunman. The gunman was smiling. His wife and my parents were smiling. Papa said, “Okay, listen up, kids! We’re gonna break you into teams of five and see who can remember the most about what just happened!”

Mama passed out legal pads and pens.

It had all been a joke. Papa had hired two actors from the University of Alabama for twenty-five dollars apiece and staged the whole thing.

And now we kids were crawling out from under the tables, wiping our faces, and scribbling furiously.