Feral Maril & Her Little Brother Carol

By Leslie Tall Manning

Bright but unassuming Marilyn Jones has some grown-up decisions to make, especially after Mama goes to prison for drugs and larceny. With no one to take care of them, Marilyn and her younger, mentally challenged brother, Carol, get tossed into the foster care system. While shuffling from one home to another, Marilyn makes it her mission to find the Tan Man, a mysterious man from her babyhood she believes holds the key to her family's happiness.

 

But Marilyn's quest is halted when her daddy, an ex-con she has never met, is chosen by the courts as the new guardian. Caleb Jones wants something more than a father-daughter relationship. He sends Carol far away, where the boy won't be a hindrance to his plans. Marilyn devises a plan of her own: to locate her little brother, kidnap him, and run away.

 

Independence, however, often comes at a high price.

 

As Marilyn weathers the unexpected and often brutal storms of her childhood and adolescence, hope becomes her ally as she winds through small southern towns, wrapping herself around an assortment of hearts along the way. With unexpected help from a caring social worker, a carnival of misfits, her first true love, and even the elusive Tan Man himself, Marilyn will discover that "family" isn't always what we imagine it to be.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Leslie Tall Manning
• Release date: Apr 20, 2024
• ISBN: 9780960017782

Leslie Tall Manning

Leslie Tall Manning is an award-winning novelist who loves writing about grown-ups who crave change and often discover it in ways they never expected (KNOCK ON WOOD, MAGGIE's DREAM, and GAGA). She also writes about teenagers who believe in independence, often stumbling into it headfirst (RULES OF FALLING, UPSIDE DOWN IN A LAURA INGALLS TOWN, and I AM ELEPHANT, I AM BUTTERFLY). As a private English tutor and writing specialist, Ms. Manning spends her evenings working with students of all ages and her days working on her own writing projects. When she isn't clacking away at the computer keys or conducting research for her books, she loves traveling with her artist husband or strolling along the river in her sweet Southern town. She is proudly represented by the TriadaUS Literary Agency. Partial list of Awards: Indie Brag Award Firebird First Place Book Award Sarton Women's Literary Award NC Author Project Award Library Journal Self-e Selection Taleflick Pick Taleflick Road to Development Finalist Story Monsters Certificate of Excellence William Faulkner Words and Wisdom Finalist International Book Award Finalist Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Finalist

Book preview

Part I

"The more decisions that you are forced to make alone,

the more you are aware of your freedom to choose."

~ Thornton Wilder

Chapter One

The first time Mama screamed me awake was when I was three. I had sleepy-crawled through our single-wide from the living room where I slept most nights to see her standing at the stove with something wet dripping down her arm and screaming she’d been burned. That time was on account of what she called her Special Dream-maker. I told her maybe she ought to stop taking it so much, that maybe it wasn’t as special as she thought, and she leaned down and gave me a good hard smack across the face so I’d stay out of her business, which I tried to do most of the time.

When I was four came the second time. There my mama was on the kitchen floor with a drunk man pressing down on top of her that she brought home from the Big Shots Pool Hall. I took a frying pan and hit him across the top of his head, and when he jumped up and pulled up his pants and chased me out into the yard, I hid behind the big magnolia tree near the long row of mailboxes. I watched him standing there in the driveway, looking around while he rubbed his head, and then he got into his truck and drove off. I stared at the trailer’s front door, not sure if Mama was mad or sad about what I’d done.

I slept right there next to the tree and didn’t wake up till morning when the trash man tapped me on the shoulder and breathed his coffee breath into my face. But at least he was nice enough to carry me back up to my trailer. Mama was mad and sad, but mostly she was mad. She said I could have had a new daddy if only I’d minded my own business. But how was I to know she was shopping around at the pool hall for a daddy? I told her that her screaming made me think he was hurting her, and she told me I wouldn’t know an ass from a horse.

My mama screaming for the third time happened when I was five, only this screaming was louder and scarier.

I grabbed my blankie, the one I loved to death on account of it was given to me by the Tan Man. And even though it was plumb worn out and smelled like the bottom of our hamper, I still kept it to my chest most nights. So I carried it in my arms and shuffled all crusty-eyed from the sofa into the other room.

The kitchen was half dark, the only light coming in from the yellow bulb above our stoop, which was burned out most of the time, but on this night it let me see my mama a little. She was squatting over the Formica floor in her robe, holding onto the edge of the old table like it was keeping her from falling over. Her yellow hair with its black roots covered her face like she was some kind of animal or a movie vampire.

You got to go potty, Mama?

I was returning the favor by asking her that question. It seemed like every time we went to the Walmart with our WIC card I did a potty dance, and she’d ask me if I had to go tinkle, and then she’d take me into that long, blue bathroom over by the deli where we bought our bologna and American cheese.

Mama didn’t answer my question. She was panting like a sick dog, and every once in a while that wild scream would come out of her like she was burning herself with a lit cigarette.

I hugged my blankie.

What’s the matter, Mama?

This was brave of me to ask, on account of that first time, when she’d burned herself with her Special Dream-maker, that smack across my face made her fingerprints sit on my cheek a whole day.

A mockingbird in a nearby tree woke up and started imitating a car alarm. I couldn’t see it from our trailer, but out on the river, the sun would soon be waking up the turtles. Up on the wall, the NASCAR clock’s big hand pointed to the twelve, and the little hand pointed to the four. I knew that meant we should still be sleeping, not screaming in the kitchen by the dim yellow light.

I took a step closer to my mama. Her face was purple, like she was turning into a big plum, and if she’d been pretending, I would have started giggling. But Mama wasn’t pretending.

Mama? I said, sitting down next to her and touching her hot purple face.

That’s when I spotted the lump on the floor, just underneath her, jiggling like a pile of cherry Jell-O.

Mama! I said, taking my hand away from her face and scooching back on my bottom.

Mama lowered herself to the floor and onto her side. She opened her robe and pulled the squirming lump to her naked body. I turned away. I didn’t want to see my mama doing that, whatever that was.

Then I heard the cry. Not my mama’s cry but another. A tiny sound that was more like a hiccup than anything else.

I turned back to see why the lump was hiccupping. And that was when Mama said, Marilyn, this is y’alls baby sister. Come on and take a peek.

Well, right then and there I knew I didn’t want a baby sister. I had Mama all to myself and I wasn’t about to start sharing. She didn’t need anyone but me, and I didn’t need anyone but her. Mama had talked about sending me to kindergarten in the fall, that The State would force me to go, but I decided there wasn’t anything a teacher could show me with chalk that I couldn’t learn right there in our single-wide.

I moved closer to the blob.

That’s a boy, I said, staring at the little floppy thing between its legs.

Once, on accident, I saw one of Mama’s pool hall friends going into the bathroom, so I knew what a boy’s floppy thing looked like.

Mama said, Now you go on, Marilyn, and call the nine-one-one, and you tell ‘em I got myself a new baby girl, and I want one of them EMT’s to come out here and make sure she gonna be alright. Go on now.

I dragged a chair to the wall and climbed up. I picked up the yellow telephone and pressed the three numbers. A lady answered on the other end.

Nine-one-one, she said. What is your emergency?

Mama thinks she got a girl. But it’s a boy.

Excuse me?

It’s a girl! Mama screamed from the floor. Now, you tell that operator to get someone over here. What the hell do I pay them taxes for, anyways?

I whispered into the mouthpiece, Mama got herself a new baby. It don’t got no hair. And it looks like it got upchucked on. Maybe y’all could send someone over to take it away.

The lady said, I’ll send an ambulance right now, honey. Listen, is your mama breathing?

Mama? You breathing?

Of course I’m breathing! What the hell kinda question is that?

I told the lady Mama was breathing.

The lady asked, Is the baby breathing?

Mama, she wants to know is the baby breathing?

Mama stroked the baby’s slimy turtle head which was pressed against her chest.

She’s drinking my milk, she said, only this time she didn’t sound so mean.

I told the lady the baby was breathing and drinking.

The telephone lady said, Now, listen, honey, you just stay on the phone with me until the ambulance gets there. Can you do that for your mama?

I told her I was five and yes I could do that. While we waited for the ambulance, the lady asked me if I would be all alone if my mama went to the hospital, and did I have a daddy. After answering those two questions, she asked some more, but I stopped listening to her because all I could hear was my mama goo-gooing over the new baby that she thought was a girl but I knew was a boy.

Either way, I didn’t want it.

***

The two ambulance men didn’t come by themselves. In a green car behind them came a pretty lady with long black hair that looked like Black Beauty’s tail from one of the books Mrs. Garcia gave me. She swung her ponytail over her shoulder as the men rolled my mama and the baby on a bed to the back of the ambulance.

The lady said her name was Mrs. Chang, and then she held out a stuffed Snoopy that I didn’t like but I took anyway.

What’s your name? she asked.

Marilyn.

Why don’t we go in my car to the hospital, Marilyn?

I wanna go in the amblance, I told her, holding Snoopy by the tip of his snout.

We’ll follow right behind, she said. I promise.

Mrs. Chang pulled one of my old coats out of the closet and stuck my arms in the holes.

This is my raincoat, I said. It was the only coat I owned, but that wasn’t any of her business. I need to wear my rain boots on account of they match, I told her, even though they didn’t match at all. The jacket was gray and the boots were pink. I dug underneath the pile of junk in the closet. She waited while I slid into the boots. I grabbed my blankie from the kitchen chair. Then she strapped me into a too-tight car seat and we drove to the hospital.

When we got there, we stopped by the cafeteria and she bought me a hot cocoa with tiny marshmallows floating on top. I put my blankie over my shoulder and was careful not to spill anything as I followed her into the elevator. She pressed the silver number three.

How old are you, Marilyn? Mrs. Chang asked, smiling at me like I was a puppy she was thinking of buying.

Five.

Do you go to kindergarten?

No.

Are you signed up to start in the fall?

I shrugged.

Does your mother have a job? she asked.

No.

Does your father live with you?

No.

You know where he is?

No.

Do you ever stay home by yourself?

Yes.

Does anyone ever hurt you?

I didn’t answer her, not sure what she meant.

"Does anyone ever hit you?"

There was something in the way Mrs. Chang was asking that made me more afraid to tell her the truth than getting hit.

No.

We got to the third floor. The walls were pink with blue stripes. The hospital ceiling lights made my eyes blink fast. Even though I didn’t like the Snoopy doll, I hugged him like he needed me.

Does your mother ever sleep for days at a time? she asked.

She gets tired sometimes.

Does she ever forget to feed you?

I can cook all by myself. I know how to cook macandcheese and hotdogs and pan-fried PBJs, and sometimes collards when Mrs. Garcia brings them from her garden.

Does anyone ever come to your house to visit your mother?

"I live in a trailer."

"Does anyone ever come to your trailer to visit your mother?"

Sometimes.

Do the visitors ever give your mother money?

"She give them money. Mama says it’s charity."

I see…

But she don’t give charity no more, I said.

Oh? When did she stop?

Christmas Day. She told me she was all used up and didn’t want her Special Dream-maker no more. And she’d buy me all kinds of presents at the after-Christmas sales with the money she saved. I got a new bicycle with training wheels. Even though I knowed how to ride a big-kid bike, so I taked off them baby wheels and throwed ‘em in the trash.

Mrs. Chang smiled again. Do you have any relatives in North Carolina? Anyone who lives nearby? Anyone who would let you stay with them if you wanted to?

About all I could think of were cartoon people.

I could live with Dora, I told Mrs. Chang.

Is she a relative?

"She’s a explorer."

We stopped outside a hospital room.

Why don’t you go and visit your mother. I’ll give you some privacy. Mrs. Chang walked back down the hallway, her ponytail swishing like she was keeping away flies.

Mama! I shouted as I clomped across the room in my rain boots.

She was sitting up in a bed that plugged into the wall. Her hair was twirled into a bun on top of her head. For the first time ever, she looked like a princess.

The baby wasn’t anywhere in the room.

My boots did a secret happy dance.

Mama took my hand. She didn’t do that often, so I let her.

Did you give it away? I asked.

Give what away?

She looked sleepy, like her eyelids were filled with pebbles.

"It," I said.

She gripped my hand hard till I could feel the bones wanting to crack.

No, I didn’t give it away, she said. "And it’s not an it. It’s a baby."

I pulled my hand away and moved next to the chair by the window where Mama couldn’t reach me without getting out of bed.

"A boy it," I whispered.

It’s a girl, Mama said.

But I seen it.

Seen what?

The floppy thing.

That was the umbilical cord.

A smiling nurse came into the room. She held a baby in her arms. It was all wrapped up in a white blanket like a Halloween mummy.

All fingers and toes accounted for, the nurse said as she handed Mama the mummy-baby. Then she picked up a clipboard hanging from the end of the bed. Do you know the time of birth?

I’m not sure…

Four o’clock, I said.

The nurse said, You can tell time?

The big hand was on the twelve and the little hand was on the four.

Well, you sure are smart.

As she wrote the time on the sheet, I thought, I am way smarter than that stupid baby ever will be.

The nurse asked my mama, What is your full name so we can put it on the birth certificate?

Ashley Memphis Jones.

And the father?

Mama said, plain and dry as an old biscuit, No one.

And the baby’s name?

Carolyn Memphis Jones.

The baby started crying.

He don’t like his name, I said.

"Her name," Mama said, shooting me a look that could rip off a person’s face.

The nurse said, Oh, no, Ms. Jones, your baby is a boy.

I always wanted two girls, Mama said. One named Marilyn, after my grandma, and the other named Carolyn, after my sister. They’re both passed.

I understand, the nurse said. And you can name him anything you like. But your child is a boy.

Two girls, Mama said like a deaf woman. Marilyn Memphis Jones and Carolyn Memphis Jones. Two sweet little bookends.

The nurse said, You may want to take a look for yourself, ma’am.

I added, I seen the umbrella cord.

The nurse laughed as she reached for the baby, I’ll show you.

Mama tucked him under her blanket. Don’t you touch my baby!

I was only—

"Y’all just go and write that name there on your silly worksheet so you can hand it to your boss and not get into no trouble. Go on now. Carolyn. Memphis. Jones. Write it down like a good nurse."

The nurse took her pen and wrote the name. Then she handed the clipboard and pen to Mama so she could sign on the line.

When the nurse left, Mama said, I’m tired. Let me alone with Carolyn. Then her eyes shut.

I tiptoed to the bed. Mama was already snoring. I leaned into the tiny baby’s face. He stared up at me with eyes wrinkly like an old man. His cheeks were fat like a dead chipmunk I’d poked at one time with a stick. Even so, there was something sweet about the baby. Maybe it was on account of he smelled like powder and his lips looked like mine. His baby cap was sliding off of his bald head, and I pulled it down over his tiny ears so he wouldn’t catch a cold.

The nurse walked me down to the waiting room where an old lady sat crying into her hands and a teenage boy watched a morning talk show on the TV hanging on the wall. I curled up in one of the extra stiff chairs, pulled my blankie over my head, tucked Snoopy under my cheek, and before I could think of a lullaby, I fell sound asleep.

Chapter Two

Carol was a boy.

Mama started crying while she stared at the wet diaper in her hands like it was from outer space.

I wanted to say I told you so, but Mama’s tears were coming fast, so instead I put my arms around her.

Mama froze.

Don’t you never call him nothing but Carol, you hear me?

Yes, Mama.

And I never did.

Mama treated him just like you’d treat any boy, with trucks and toy guns instead of Barbies and plastic groceries. When Mama was all done giving him her breast milk, I fed him jarred peas and apple sauce, gave him baths with the water only up to my ankles, and changed his dirty diaper when Mama wasn’t in the mood.

But by the time Carol was two, I knew there was something wrong. He might have looked like a normal boy, with happy eyes and straight white teeth, and a laugh that made you want to play with him all day, but I wasn’t fooled. Mama didn’t know it, or at least she didn’t act like she knew it, and since I was only seven, I had a hard time explaining it to her.

During reading time in the spring of first grade, our teacher read One Fish Two Fish Green Fish Blue Fish till the class knew it by heart. I tried to teach my little brother what my teacher showed me and the other kids. Carol was sitting in the beat-up high chair at the kitchen table. Mama was taking a nap on the sofa, so I had to watch him till suppertime.

I pulled up a chair and sat beside Carol. I was going to teach him some things, just like a real teacher. I poured out a fistful of Toasted O’s onto the plastic table attached to the high chair. I started counting the O’s, and each time I did, I slid one over to the right. One, two, three… He watched me like he was learning something, but then he said, One, one, one, one, one… I started over. One, two, three… and he grabbed a handful of cereal and shoved it in his mouth, all the while saying, One, one, one, one, one, and spitting out crumbs everywhere.

I thought maybe he needed to see me do it, so I held up my fingers and told him how many. Then I asked him to repeat what I’d said.

One, he said.

"No, Carol. Watch. One, two, three, four, five. I have five fingers up. How many fingers do I have?"

I was very patient in the beginning.

One, he said.

No. Five.

One.

Five.

One.

"Five."

One.

"Say it. Five. Five! FIVE!!!"

Well, Mama woke up to see me leaning over Carol screaming the number five like his hair was on fire, and she plunked straight down on a kitchen chair, threw me over her legs, and spanked me till I begged her to stop.

He’s a retard, Mama, I cried. He don’t know his numbers…

Don’t you ever call him that! Each time she smacked my sore butt, she said, He’s-a-ba-by! You-did-n’t-know-your-num-bers-when-you-were-a-ba-by!

But I did. I knew my numbers and my letters and my songs. All of them. By the time I was two. So I figured Carol should know them as well.

Please, Mama. He needs to see a doctor. He’s got something wrong with his brain—

Well, that was not the right thing to say. Mama threw me off of her lap and I landed hard on the floor, right where Carol was born as a blob.

By the time I’d stood up, Mama was standing next to the stove. She pulled her Magic Spoon out of the kitchen drawer where she kept it hid way in the back behind the pizza menus and packs of matches from different bars. She told me more than once that if I even thought about touching her Magic Spoon, she would pulverize me. And I was smart enough to know by the tone of her voice what the word pulverize means.

Go give Carol a bath, she said.

I still had tears on my cheeks, but she didn’t know on account of she had her back to me and was holding up her Magic Rubber Band.

Some of my crying was because Mama was a liar. She was going to take her Special Dream-maker after she swore that she wouldn’t. She had even crossed her heart.

I grabbed my brother from the high chair and set him on the floor. I took his hand. Even though he could barely talk, he was a super fast walker, especially for a two-year-old.

But Carol’s brain couldn’t seem to keep up with his legs or anything else. For months I tried to help him, just like I tried to help my mama stop believing that her Special Dream-maker would make things better. They must have been two peas in a pod, I thought, on account of I couldn’t teach either one of them a damn thing.

***

While I was making all A’s in the second grade, Carol proved he was smart, only he showed it with his body instead of his brain. At three, he’d been climbing out of his crib for over a year already, and dancing in front of the TV whenever a Disney song came on that he liked. Sometimes I’d find him playing hide-and-seek by himself and hiding in the closet. Only he didn’t hide behind the coats and old shoes and junk on the closet floor. He hid up on the top shelf, and when Mama or I opened the door, he’d shout, Ha-ha! like he was a magician and had just turned a rabbit into a horse.

Carol’s magic trick got all of us in hot water on a rainy summer Saturday. Mama was out getting groceries at the Walmart, and Carol and I were sitting on the floor against the sofa watching The Little Mermaid for the hundredth time, since we only had three videos: that one, Dora the Explorer, and Lion King. I started dozing off, and my eyes must have shut for a time, because when I opened them again, Carol was gone.

I looked in the two bedrooms and the bathroom and the kitchen. Carol? Where are you? I opened the closet, expecting him to be sitting up there on his favorite shelf, but he wasn’t there. I slid open the sliding glass door in the living room and stuck my head out.

Carol! I called through the pouring rain. The bullfrogs in the marsh behind Sunshine Estates were making a happy commotion.

Mrs. Garcia’s front storm door was right across from our back door. She shouted across the yard, Problemo?

Have you seen Carol? I asked.

"Sí."

Where is he?

He over there.

I shook my head. I looked already.

You not look everywhere.

He ain’t here, I said, fanning out my arms.

Mrs. Garcia’s crooked finger pointed to a place over my head.

I stepped onto the small back deck into the drizzle and looked up. A pair of dirty bare feet dangled down. I walked down the three steps backward. I could see all of him now, sitting up there in the rain, like one of Santa’s elves taking a break on account of it being summer.

Carol! What are you doing up there?

He laughed like he’d just seen a bird poop on my head.

I said, If Mama sees you on the roof, she’ll kill you.

And then I remembered it wouldn’t be Carol who got killed.

Carol, you are a bad, bad boy! I shouted, as the cool rain dripped into my collar and chilled my back. How did you get up there, anyhow?

Ha-ha! he laughed.

I stormed all the way around the trailer in the mud. One of the windows was barely low enough for me to pull myself onto the frame. Even if I did, I’d never reach the roof’s edge. And even if I did reach the edge, I’d never be able to pull myself up. And if I could pull myself up, I might come tumbling down. Then again, so could Carol, which was a thought that terrified me. It wasn’t very high, because we only had one floor, but if he landed on his head…my stomach grew queasy just thinking about it.

I rounded the side of the trailer and up the back porch steps. I stood below his dirty feet again. By now I was soaked to the core.

Mrs. Garcia said from behind her screen, "I call policia."

No!

Already do it. They on their way.

And that was when it all began.

The fire truck came, and then a police car. You’d think there was a fire or a robbery by all the commotion in the Sunshine Estates Trailer Park. One of the firemen used a ladder and talked Carol into climbing onto his back.

While Carol was being rescued, one of the policemen asked me questions: Where was my mother? My father? How old was I? How old was Carol?

Mrs. Garcia told the officer she was watching us while Mama was gone, and that she’d only turned her back for a minute. I don’t think the cop believed her though, because he kept asking me questions.

One of his questions was could he come inside the trailer.

I’m not allowed to have strangers inside when my mama ain’t here.

Well, he didn’t come in, but within ten minutes, here comes Mrs. Chang herself, driving through the oyster shells in her big green car. Her long, black hair was wrapped up in a bun on top of her head like a hair-hat. She wasn’t a stranger, so when the policemen and firemen left, she sat with Carol and me on the couch and waited for Mama to get home.

Which she finally did.

Four hours later.

Smelling like liquor.

When Mama came through the door, the first thing she saw was Mrs. Chang sitting there all snug in our living room like Mary Poppins.

At first Mama behaved well,