Big Cherry Holler - Adriana Trigiani [124]
“Come up, Ave. Come up and git her.” Worley pants. Otto attempts to crawl toward Etta, but he is afraid to disrupt the precarious balance of their weight on the roof, so he stops. I dig the feet of the ladder into the soft earth and climb up quickly. I feel confident when I get to Etta’s feet and can get a grip on her legs. She feels so small in my arms, I remember what it was like when I could control everything to keep her safe. I carefully pull her toward me. Worley lets go when I have a good grip on her. Then, using Etta’s weight, I slide her onto the first step of the ladder, shielding her with my body.
“Do you think you can climb down?” I ask her. Etta barely whispers a reply, and we descend the ladder, one step at a time. I try not to look to the ground below, it seems so far away. With each step I take, and each one Etta takes, I breathe a little easier. When we reach the ground, Otto and Worley are there to help us off the ladder.
“Sorry about that, Miss Ave. We thought she was safe up ’ere with us,” Otto says quietly.
“That’s okay,” I tell him. Then I turn to my daughter, who examines the palms of her hands, streaked with a little blood, where the shingles burned them during her downward slide. I wince. I have never been able to stand it when she bleeds.
“Come on, let’s wash up.” I take Etta into the house, and hold on until we are out of Otto and Worley’s earshot. I don’t think I have ever been this furious at her.
“What in the hell were you thinking, Etta?” I yell so loudly, she is taken aback. “You are not allowed on the roof. You know that. I don’t care who is here doing what, you know the rules. You could’ve fallen and broken your neck.”
“But I didn’t!” She turns on me.
“What?”
“I didn’t!”
“Because you’re lucky. Lucky I was there to catch you!”
“Yeah, I’m lucky you were there,” Etta says in a tone of voice I’ve never heard before.
“Are you mocking me?”
“What do you care anyway?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You don’t care about me.”
“Where do you get that idea?”
“All the time.” Etta storms off and up the stairs. I follow her.
“Stop right there!”
She turns and faces me.
“That’s a very cruel thing to say to me. I care about you. Of course I care. But when you do something stupid, something you know you’re not supposed to do, you can’t turn around and blame me for it. You’re the one who’s wrong here. Not me.”
“That’s all you care about. Who’s right and who’s wrong.”
“Watch your tone.”
“You just don’t want me to die like Joe. That’s all.” Etta slams her bedroom door shut. For a moment, I think of honoring her privacy, but my anger gets the best of me. I throw the door open.
“What is the matter with you?”
Etta cries on the bed. She is sobbing so hard, harder than I have ever seen her cry before. My heart breaks and I go to sit beside her. She pulls away.
“Go,” she says through her tears.
“No. We need to talk about this.”
“I don’t want to talk to you. I want Daddy.”
When I attempt to reach out to her again, she gets up off the bed and goes to the old easy chair with the broken foot and throws herself into it and away from me. I have never seen this sort of emotion from my daughter, and I am stunned. But I am also so hurt that I don’t know what to say. So I rely on my rule about being consistent in my discipline. I’m not going to let her off the hook. “Dad is not going to bail you out of this one. You need to think about what you did this afternoon. And about the way you talked to me.”
I leave the room and close the door quietly behind me. I walk down the front stairs and go through the screen door to the porch. I sit down on the steps as I have done so many times at twilight. Otto and Worley pack up their truck without saying a word. They take full responsibility for Etta being on the