The Glass Castle_ A Memoir - Jeannette Walls [32]
“You want me to beg from my mother again?” Mom asked.
“Goddammit, Rose Mary! It’s not like we’re asking for a handout,” he yelled. “She’d be making an investment.”
Grandma was always lending us money, Mom said, and she was sick of it. Mom told Dad that Grandma had said if we couldn’t take care of ourselves, we could go live in Phoenix, in her house.
“Maybe we should,” Mom said.
That got Dad really angry. “Are you saying I can’t take care of my own family?”
“Ask them,” Mom snapped.
We kids were sitting on the old passenger benches. Dad turned to me. I studied the scuff marks on the floor.
Their argument continued the next morning. We kids were downstairs lying in our boxes, listening to them fighting upstairs. Mom was carrying on about how things had gotten so desperate around the house that we didn’t have anything to eat except margarine, and now that was gone, too. She was sick, she said, of Dad’s ridiculous dreams and his stupid plans and his empty promises.
I turned to Lori, who was reading a book. “Tell them that we like eating margarine,” I said. “Then maybe they’ll stop fighting.”
Lori shook her head. “That’ll make Mom think we’re taking Dad’s side,” she said. “It would only make it worse. Let them work it out.”
I knew Lori was right. The only thing to do when Mom and Dad fought was to pretend it wasn’t happening or act like it didn’t matter. Pretty soon they’d be friends again, kissing and dancing in each other’s arms. But this particular argument just would not stop. After going on about the margarine, they started fighting about whether or not some painting Mom had done was ugly. Then they argued about whose fault it was that we lived like we did. Mom told Dad he should get another job. Dad said that if Mom wanted someone in the family to be punching a time clock, then she could get a job. She had a teaching degree, he pointed out. She could work instead of sitting around on her butt all day painting pictures no one ever wanted to buy.
“Van Gogh didn’t sell any paintings, either,” Mom said. “I’m an artist!”
“Fine,” Dad said. “Then quit your damned bellyaching. Or go peddle your ass at the Green Lantern.”
Mom and Dad’s shouting was so loud that you could hear it throughout the neighborhood. Lori, Brian, and I looked at one another. Brian nodded at the front door, and we all went outside and started making sand castles for scorpions. We figured that if we were all in the yard acting like the fighting was no big deal, maybe the neighbors would feel the same way.
But as the screaming continued, neighbors started gathering on the street. Some were simply curious. Moms and dads got into arguments all the time in Battle Mountain, so it didn’t seem that big a deal, but this fight was raucous even by local standards, and some people thought they should step in and break it up. “Aw, let ’em work out their differences,” one of the men said. “No one’s got a right to interfere.” So they leaned back against car fenders and fence posts, or sat on pickup tailgates, as if they were at a rodeo.
Suddenly, one of Mom’s oil paintings came flying through an upstairs window. Next came her easel. The crowd below scurried back to avoid getting hit. Then Mom’s feet appeared in the window, followed by the rest of her body. She was dangling from the second floor, her legs swinging wildly. Dad was holding her by the arms while she tried to hit him in the face.
“Help!” Mom screamed. “He’s trying to kill me!”
“Goddammit, Rose Mary, get back in here!” Dad said.
“Don’t hurt her!” Lori yelled.
Mom was swinging back and forth. Her yellow cotton dress had gotten bunched up around her waist, and the crowd could see her white underwear. They were sort of old and baggy, and I was afraid they might fall off altogether. Some of the grown-ups called out, worried that Mom might fall, but one group of kids thought Mom looked like a chimpanzee swinging from a tree, and they began making monkey noises and scratching their armpits and laughing. Brian’s face turned dark and his fists clenched up. I felt like punching them, too, but I pulled