THE HEAT IN BECKLEY
Julia Kanno Tlou
The heat doesn't get better at twilight. Everybody thought it would a long time ago. They
would pull their card tables on the lawn, the men would take the old pickle jars full of moonshine
out of the cooler and sip from them. The women would unleash nappy-headed babies from inside
of the house and let them roam the yard. Still, the heat would be too much to bear. Grandmomma
used to say the heat in Beckley, West Virginia was like the devil himself coming for a visit. The
heat could turn a sane person insane. Like that time at church when Billy the cook was
downstairs stirring a pot of greens and onions with a nice slap of pork in the middle. All the
women came running up the stairs with their black jelly thighs wiggling, the fake fruit on their
church hats shaking in unison with their heads as they clicked their tongues. "Oh, Lawd! Lawd!
Help him!" they yelled.
All us kids went downstairs because we were nosey and hardheaded and wanted to see
what crazy Billy had done now. Grandmomma said it seemed like one minute he was making the
greens and the next he grabbed the knife and cut off his own tongue. It fell into the pot and boiled
with the pork. Grandmomma said it was the heat.
"The heat done boiled up his brain" she said, and rolled her eyes.
On the hottest days, there was no place to run. My cousins would be in the yard crazy as
hell shooting shells from their BB guns into the abandoned cars in the yard. My uncles would be
drunk sitting talking about their women like they were dogs wearing their white T-shirts that the
union supplied them. I remember how they would smell. Like men. Like musk and sweat and like
some animal. The women would smell like soap and bleach and menstruation. The children
would smell like old diapers, hidden soap, and coconut oil in their nappy heads.
On the hottest days, there would be fights. Heat can make people crazy. My aunts would
be sitting one moment shelling peas into a tin bucket. Rollers tightly wound in their hair. Perhaps
one would be braiding the hair of a fat, screaming child perched between her legs. Another
perhaps nursing a black eye from the evening before. Toothless grins, nappy-headed babies,
heavy titties dripping with milk was all I saw on the porch. They would go from complaining bliss
to hatred in a moment. Perhaps it would be let out on one of us for nothing. A mother suffering
through the cloud of heat as she walked towards the hickory tree to tear a branch from the core
and chase a black bottom across the yard. Whipping and whipping, trying to whip away the pains
of suffering misery that she felt in her own life upon her child. It could be lashed upon a husband,
suddenly after having her senses delayed re-awaken and smelling another woman's thigh scent
upon her man. Running to the kitchen and grabbing a knife, chasing after her man with it.
The men's anger would come out in some the same way and in others different.
Sometimes one of my uncles would raise a fist and make his wife lose a few more teeth. She
would slide them across the table as if she were collecting crumbs from a dinner. Let them fall
into the pocket of her apron while his friends restrained him. At night she would look at all her
teeth in a cardboard box and think of how beautiful she once was.
Grandmomma would want whisky and lemonade on hot days. She would blast the rest of
them for being drunk when she herself would have a bottle of whisky stashed in her bra ready to
pour into a fresh glass. After hours of boiling in the heat, you could see two wet patches on her
chest from where the sweat collected from beneath her breast. She would stand and berate all
her children. She would go down the line and tell them all how low they were, then go lock herself
in the attic and come out only when she was ready. All her children weeping on the lawn.
