Blood Read online

  Who would trade her emotional star showers and black holes for someone else’s? Who would trade her parent for someone else’s knowing that there is no such thing as an impeccant one? Maybe what families teach us is how to forgive before we have to go out in the world and do it with people we’re not kin to. In some cases, they teach us how not to.

  In any case, better the devil you know.

  A Visitor

  I bought my first piece of real estate when I was twenty-seven, a small condo in Nashville, Tennessee. After closing and moving in, I decided to paint every wall in the place myself. It was quiet one night as I concentrated on getting the line around the molding above the floor perfect and felt some rather cold air drift in the door and settle around me. I knew I hadn’t heard the door open or close. I didn’t move. I was scared at first and wasn’t sure what to do, but the cold wasn’t moving. It was air, but more than air. It held some kind of energy and I suddenly knew it was Daddy. I sat still and acknowledged to myself that he had come to see me, to check on me, to do the most he could do. Then I simply said, “Come on in.”

  Photographs on Shelves

  There are two photographs sitting on a bookshelf in the living room of our apartment. One is of Mama. She is standing in Dry Creek with her arms wrapped around her first cousin Amanda while Sissy and another one of Mama’s first cousins, Little Jane, look on. The other is of Daddy astride our horse, Betsy. Bullet, our Blue Heeler, is on the ground below, sitting beside them.

  John Henry periodically gets them down and points at them, seems to study them. This morning, he went to the one of Mama before we left for school. It doesn’t always shake me but it did today. I tearfully told him that was his grandmama—my mama—and that I missed her too. He hugged me and patted me on the back.

  I CRIED DURING MY YOGA CLASS TWO DAYS AGO. Sometimes I feel like a fool in there, in the chichi, semiprivate studio that I attend four or five times per week. Neither of my parents would know Triangle Pose from a trapezoid. I feel like an imposter on the mat. In my heart I know I’m no kind of true seeker at all, just poor white trash from Alabama who’s going to get kicked out during Cat-Cow because her credit card wouldn’t go through or something. I remind myself about the part of me that is in between the two halves of them. The part of me that is me and not them. The part that can choose something that hasn’t anything to do with them.

  Namaste. They both could’ve used a little Om in their lives.

  I get as much as I can, but yesterday I couldn’t balance. Every standing-leg pose or high lunge sent me teetering around like some rubber chicken. I could find a focal point—outward focus is not my problem—but it provided nothing in the way of balance as I flailed. It was humiliating. Work it out on the mat, they say. First do the yoga, then do the things, they say. I work hard. I try. Not only at my yoga practice, but at my balancing act outside of that quiet little room I’m in so often.

  I struggled through. God knows I’d rather be publicly beheaded than accused of being a quitter of anything—I sometimes give until it makes no sense—but once I got into Child’s Pose at the end of the class, I began to bawl like one.

  “Why couldn’t I balance? What’s wrong with me today?” I asked myself. And then, there it was. The answer came when I was still, as it so often does. “Of course you can’t balance, you silly fool. No human being could balance all you’re carrying on your shoulders today.”

  Those shoulders that I push to their limits even though I know the right one is weak and damaged from years of toting heavy bags through airports and strumming a guitar. Those shoulders that I say are stronger since I became a mother, and that might be true, but I’m still picking my son up and holding him even though he weighs over fifty pounds now, his feet dangling somewhere around my knees. Those shoulders I ought to rest sometimes but hardly ever do and instead push, push, and push some more. I am unkind to myself. I considered that for a moment. Tears came again. Then I thought, “You are two days away from being forty-five. You have now officially outlived both of your parents. That would twist anyone up and you think you’re supposed to be peaceful and able to hold Half Moon without your monkey mind telling you you’re going to fall off a cliff if you take a foot off the ground?”

  The confused mind. The unsettled mind. The chattering mind. The uncontrollable mind that gives in to whims and fears and tells me I’m not good enough, that I will never be good enough, that I’m going to end up like they did.

  Pay attention. Breathe.

  I wept and hid my face in my towel, not making a sound. I perfected that art years ago. I can cry and neither move a centimeter nor utter a blubber, but I’m certain the teacher knew. She came over and put her hands on my back. You don’t have to see to feel.

  Yoga reveals to me every emotional strength and weakness. I’m sure most of us who end up on mats do so for that very purpose, to find out about ourselves. Maybe we go in thinking it will feel good, that we’ll reap the physical rewards and somehow become enlightened, but if you do it often enough for long enough, you start to find out things and it becomes harder and harder, not easier. What I’ve found out about myself is if a pose involves turning my head from one point and finding another, I can barely move. I’m terrified I’ll fall over. No trust.

  The trust she would’ve naturally had for the voice in her head will be absent. You will have taught her the voice is amiss.

  I know enough about myself to know that anything that requires a focused discipline is very likely good for me. I tell myself, even challenge myself, to stick with it. I tell myself I will never be good at it, and that’s kind of the point—to laugh, to let go, and to forgive myself if I fall over or out of a pose. I remind myself to quit with all the challenging. That’s kind of exactly not the point.

  I went to the mat again yesterday. I lay down. “Open up to me, Mama” went through my brain just as a random thought would. I had made no concerted effort to bring her forward; it came out of nowhere.

  “She was protecting you.” The words rushed into my mind as fast as a ghost would whoosh down a hallway.

  Holy Shavasana. Where did that come from? A song was playing that triggered some memory and wrested my heart. It happens all the time. My mind tries to hold it closed—it knows I’m not ready for what I feel coming, and music always opens it up. But wait. Am I supposed to believe that just because I lie down on a yoga mat and all of a sudden send out a thought to someone who’s been dead for over thirty years that the one I get back is real or is in any way the truth?

  Well, why shouldn’t I? It means just as much as anything else, doesn’t it?

  Protection.

  There is a 4½ inch in greatest dimension contusion on the anterior surface of the left forearm, 2 inches above the hand.

  I stood over her and looked at the baseball-glove-sized, eggplant-colored bruise that had formed on her leg.

  I try to find compassion for the girl in me who only wants to believe her daddy didn’t kill her mama on purpose, and maybe it’s still not that simple. Maybe there’s more to the story. I’m sure there is and I still want to believe that he didn’t mean to take her too. But I only know what I know, I only know what I heard, I only know what I saw. I know about the threats he made to kill us all. I know that he was violent with her and in general. I know that he had a gun in his van, that he pulled it out that morning and she ended up dead and it was he who pulled the trigger. He made that hollow-point go into her chest and exit her left breast and then go into her left bicep and stop.

  One shot. 1—2—3—4. Next shot.

  Guns

  I am farther away from them now than I have ever been. The sight of a gun unnerves me—all that shiny metal clicking and clacking, heavy in a hand. Maybe that’s how much fear weighs. It weighs as much as the gun you tote. You think you can ward off your fear if you have one.

  Nah.

  My first husband talked me into buying a pistol. He said it was for my protection. Idiot twenty-two-year-old that I was,
I went to the sporting goods store with him and filled out an application to buy one. I was approved and bought a Beretta .25-caliber pistol. He took me out to the woods close to his mother’s house to practice shooting it and after that it stayed in the desk in the entryway of the home we shared, loaded but with the safety on.

  I took the pistol when I left and gave it to John Henry’s father. He said he would dispose of it.

  I do not like firearms around me. I will cross the street if I see a cop because they carry them. I don’t like the sounds they make, I don’t like the damage they do, I don’t like the power they possess. There must be a rush that comes with shooting something—I can’t think of anything else a gun would bring to a person. I can only think of what one can take away.

  HE MIGHT’VE TOLD MAMA WHAT HIS INTENTIONS WERE that morning. He might’ve told her it was time for him to do what he knew, and she knew, and we all knew he’d eventually do. She was probably trying to stop him. She always tried to stop him.

  She would not have died that morning if it had not been for his decisions.

  I’ve been looking for a reason for his decisions—looking for the why to this story—and there just isn’t one that makes it all come together. I’ve tried to reconcile what he did and what he showed us with the potential I’ve been told he had in him. I’ve been trying to figure out how someone who had so much could mistake it for so little, but I’m never going to come to any conclusions about him. I’ve fought like the devil against reducing my parents to my daddy’s final act—I don’t believe anyone deserves that—but it’s damned hard to think about anything else some days. I started writing all of this down so I could try to see my way through it and here I am just as in the dark as I ever was. All I can reconcile is my own feelings about what happened to us. I will always have to work at that too.

  TODAY IS MY BIRTHDAY. I CAN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT neither of my parents making it to this age. They are stuck in time and I am not. Not yet. It strikes me this morning that if I’m lucky, really lucky, I might get forty-five more years. That’s probably pushing it. I let my mind settle on the idea that it’s at least half over as I simultaneously wonder what another year will hold. Who knows? We don’t ever know. I don’t even know who I will be a year from now. Who will I be if I don’t wrestle with this story anymore? What if my struggle with it is too big a part of me to give up? Who do I become if I’m not trying to come to terms with my parents and my childhood? Another thing strikes me—I’d like to know.

  I was up before five this morning. I went to my desk as I always do but today I found a note.

  A. May you have the best birthday of all the birthdays you’ve ever had. I love you. H.

  I smiled as I realized that a pot of coffee was already made for me. I sat down with a cup and with all of these words and thought, “What now? I think I’m done here.” There are more parts I could recall, more anecdotes I could tell—my childhood and my life beyond it have been full—there are more questions I could ask. But nothing else really applies. I could make a list of things I wish had turned out differently, things I wish I’d gotten to share with my parents, but there’s no need for that. I am quite sure that forty-five years ago on this day my mama and daddy didn’t think things would turn out the way that they did. I’m sorry that they’re gone, but they are. Dead and gone. All I can do, and all that matters now, is that I forgive them. All that matters now is that I forgive myself.

  It seems as if I’ve spent my life just trying to be okay. It took me a while to develop some semblance of what that means to me and how to get it. As with most of us, it’s day-to-day. Standing still when I find it and appreciating the miracle of that accomplishment instead of just rushing to the next thing is the charge. Becoming wise enough to know that I’ll remain at least somewhat broken and letting go of the idea that I shouldn’t be is another one. Day-to-day will have to do. I will cry over my parents a million more times and shake my head at just how bad it hurts to have lost them. I will laugh with my sister as we share, with any hope, many more afternoons thumbing through the dog-eared memories of who we were and how we survived it all. I will hold my son close and keep helping him get him through this world with as much wisdom and grace as I can muster. I will still tussle with myself and this life, I will make things more difficult than they should be, I will make more art, and I will keep learning about love. If luck is on my side, I’ll wake up to a lot more precious happy-birthday notes.

  The brown cowboy hat still hangs on my closet door, I still study my hands that hold the memory of my mama’s, I drink coffee out of her coffee cups every afternoon and sometimes have imaginary conversations with her, I still collect magazines, and Daddy’s briefcase is still on the top shelf of the bookcase to the right of my desk. Maybe I will add these pages to those already in there. They are my contribution to our history. There is no resolution to this part of it other than the one that there is, and whether I like it or not, time dwindles. I whisper to myself that I can stop, that it’s all right to let it rest. I’ve got new stories to tell now.

  THANK YOU

  TO LAURA NOLAN, for your belief in this story and in my ability to tell it, and for your constant encouragement, invaluable guidance, and abundant grace.

  To Renee Sedliar, for seeing me and what I saw, and for making that vision more beautiful with your own keen eye and endless sensitivity.

  To Robert Polito, for not only adding so much richness to my life as an artist, but for also helping me find a structure for this story.

  To Steve Earle, for the example with a capital E.

  To Danny Goldberg, for the early reads, encouragement, and important introductions.

  To Jessica Doran, for invaluable and loving childcare.

  To Jane Smith Courtois and Katharine Moorer Henson, for filling in the blanks.

  To Leon Harris, for the stories about Daddy.

  To Anthony Arnove, for being a great friend and advisor.

  To Anna Devries, for being the first person to suggest I could do such a bold thing as write, and for showing up when I finally did.

  To Dr. Maya Angelou, for the nudge.

  To Shelby Moorer, for the memories shared and otherwise, and for your never-ending encouragement and fiery faith.

  To Hayes Carll, for quiet confidence when I didn’t have it, first reads, patience, and most of all, for your love.

  To John Henry Earle, for being the reason.

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ALLISON MOORER is an American writer and singer/songwriter who has released ten critically acclaimed albums. She has been published in American Songwriter, Guernica, No Depression, Literary Hub, and The Bitter Southerner, and has been nominated for Academy, Grammy, Americana Music Association, and Academy of Country Music awards. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and lives in Nashville. You can learn more about her on her website: www.AllisonMoorer.com.

  PRAISE FOR BLOOD

  “[Moorer’s] written this book like a symphony. It is expansive, and its three parts feel like movements. Moorer fills them with prose that has the sharp honesty of the greatest songwriters.”

  —The Bitter Southerner

  “Allison Moorer is known for songs of ragged, poetic honesty—and for the emotional clarity of her country western ballads. Her debut memoir exhibits these qualities and more.… Moorer eases into the heat of memory and trauma and returns with a tale of sisterly love and protection, of self-examination, recalling the ways she learned to avoid her alcoholic father’s tempestuous rages.… A series of riffs on family objects gives this intense, necessary book room to breathe before it brings yet more truth to a childhood more than survived.”

  —Literary Hub

  (one of the most anticipated books of 2019)

  “Grit and grace, beauty and pain, on every wise page. Allison Moorer has given
us a memoir as bloody, rich, and complex as red Alabama clay.”

  —Alice Randall,

  author of The Wind Done Gone

  “Blood is the most vulnerable work you’re likely to read for quite some time.”

  —Rick Bass,

  author of For a Little While

  “Written with brave, clear-eyed compassion for all involved, Allison Moorer’s Blood is an astonishing and moving meditation on family inheritance and acceptance. Despite her family’s singularly tragic circumstances, Moorer tells a universal story about the things our parents pass down to us—what we learn to be grateful for, what we release ourselves from, and what we simply leave alone.”

  —Jennifer Palmieri,

  author of Dear Madam President