In the Gray Cloud

It started out with scrolling on my phone, catching up on local news.

There were three horrific crimes in the headlines, and I can’t get them off of my mind.

My heart started racing when I saw a by-line with the surname of the Lost Girl. I have been waiting in dread to for news about her and those children ever since 2023. But of course, this wasn’t her or her children; it was another child with the same last name, a child who was brutally murdered by her mother and uncle in the 70s. The mother got parole and left town. The father is up for parole again, which is why it was in the paper.

I wish there hadn’t been so much detail about the murder in the paper.

How could anyone do that?

After my heart stopped racing. After I stopped worrying about the Lost Girl and those children. After I took a few breaths and tried to imagine the little girl in Heaven, but couldn’t. I scrolled further and saw another familiar name: the surname of a toddler who was brutally murdered by his parents here in Steubenville, in August of 2020. His mother is in a mental health facility and his stepfather is in prison. This news story was about the victim’s adult sister, daughter of the same mother. The police say she beat her one-month-old son and put him in the hospital this January. The news said she confessed to a friend that she did it because she didn’t want him.

I took deep breaths again.

I kept scrolling and there was another horrific court case: a mother and a father indicted for child neglect, for leaving a baby alone to die.

I have been sick with anger ever since.

What kind of a creature hurts children?

What is it about this part of the country that causes people to lose their humanity and hurt their children?

How do these people go on for generation after generation, hurting their children?

I was so dazed, I was late picking up Adrienne from school.

I drove the mile through our neighborhood, under a gray cloud.

This time of year is so gray in Northern Appalachia. No clean blanket of snow to cover the mud, no grass or weeds to give it color. No buds, no insects, no birds but the pigeons. Just gray, and gray, and gray, and gray, and gray. Sometimes it rains and sometimes it snows, not enough to keep the ground white,  but usually it just sleets. Sometimes the dampness freezes and sometimes it thaws, but whatever it does, there’s no color at all.

It wouldn’t be enough to become an atheist on a day like this, after news like that. You’d have to believe in God, and believe He was a tyrant.

The house where Barbara Barnes grew up burned down last month, early in the morning. Of course, the Barneses haven’t lived there for a long time; it’s been rented out to somebody else. The firefighters were still trying to protect the neighboring houses from the blaze when Jimmy drove Adrienne to school, and she was late because he couldn’t drive around them on the one-way street. By the time I saw it, there was nothing left but one cinder block pillar where the porch used to be, stretching out to the sky like a cairn, white against all this gray.

The church that used to be Tower of Power is under new management, with a new name. They serve lunch to the poor there once a week, and have a Christmas party in December. I hope the new proprietors are as kind as they seem. I can’t help but think of the man who used to run that church, and the crimes he was convicted of.

It would serve this valley right if it never stopped being February.

If the grass never went green again. If the crocuses never opened and the harbinger-of-spring never grew ragged on the lawns. If the ground never thawed enough to put in the peas and onions, and the children never came to my yard to ask to help— that would serve the Valley right. If it never rained or snowed but only drizzled sleet until the whole world froze under a sheen of ice, that would be a just punishment.

My own child was waiting in the bus shelter, happy because it’s almost the weekend, grumpy because that’s what teenagers are.

All I wanted was to be a stay-at-home mom of seven happy Catholic children. All I got was one child who’s better than a thousand children. The loss of my dream of being a mother of many, has been the deepest loss in all my life. Knowing Adrienne, raising Adrienne, being there for Adrienne, has been the greatest consolation in my life.

How can anyone hurt their children?

We drove back through LaBelle, chatting about her day, grumbling about the cold.

Past the corner near where Miss B lives, with her oldest daughter in her 20s and her youngest not yet a year old, a happy family. Up near where the Baker Street Irregulars live, barely getting by, but happy. Almost to where Jimmy’s boy lives, across the alley from the Artful Dodgers. So many wonderful families.

Just up the street there was a mother, younger than me, bent over as if she was trying to touch the ground. She was in the roadway and not on the sidewalk. As I got closer, I saw why.

She was helping a little boy to balance on a bike– one of those very low bikes for the youngest children, the kind with no pedals because you scoot along with your feet. She bent over the boy, hovering, protecting him, guiding him down the street because the sidewalk was so rough you couldn’t ride a bike there. The boy looked to be no more than three years old. He leaned forward, biting his lip a little, staring ahead into the distance, keeping his balance as if his mother wasn’t there.

I drove by slowly.

She and I locked eyes for a moment, and smiled at each other.

I went home with my child, and it was night.