Page 9 of My Thursday Throwback

Chapter 4 – Riding through the Storm

Houston, Thursday Night

The storm raged as high winds blew throughout the city, causing blackouts, fear and loads of torrential downpour. Lula sat in the Fitzsimons’s kitchen holding her bible in one hand and giving Wilke the evil eye as she held her teacup in the other. Wilke sat as if she wasn’t at the table, working on the last of the battery power on his tablet.

Michael had placed sandbags around the house to help stave off the flooding, but he wasn’t certain it would work. The generator had kicked on, and power to the kitchen was all he could afford to run initially. He could not take the chance of having all the food in the refrigerator spoil. His spirit already soured from the interaction with Pip’s hanging up on him which placed him in a foul mood. A mood which had no tolerance for Grandma Lula’s shenanigans.

She, on the other hand, was in the mood to test him.

“I don’t know why he is here,” Lula said through tight lips.

“He’s here for the same reason you are, Grandma. He is family,” Michael replied.

“He ain’t no family of mine and he ain’t no kin to you either,” she hissed, holding her Bible tighter to her chest. “Speaking of family, how are things with that trashy little redhead? I bet her family won’t be accepting of you. They are going to believe that no matter how poor they are, they are still better than you.”

“Thanks for the unsolicited advice and Wilke is family,” he told her.

“He is an adulterer! He is the cause of your mother’s downfall into sin,” Lula spat at Wilke.

Michael, tense, worried about the generator and a hurricane barreling down on the city, reached his boiling point and had enough of Lula’s bible thumping self-righteousness. He’d had enough of righteous indignation by people grasping at false ideas which were truly not their own, but moreover, he’d had enough of the lies and bullshit. Never one to speak out of line to his grandmother, today was not the day for her holy rolling.

“The cause of my mother’s downfall was you,” he said calmly. “You spent her entire life filling her head with sin this and burn in hell that, which is what my father used to control her. Do you know what he called having sex with her? Punishment for her sins. He treated her like shit and she felt she deserved it because of her sins. Had you raised her with a basic sense of right and wrong, she would have enjoyed a happy life with Wilke. She wouldn’t have married a sadistic man who was waiting for his stepdaughter to blossom so he could extend his punishment technique to her.”

Lula’s mouth hung wide open as Wilke looked up in shock at Michael’s words.

“Your sanctimonious holiness, a ruse to cover your own tracks of turning tricks to pay the mortgage after Granddaddy left you, gets on my damned nerves. Put that Bible down and shut your mouth,” Michael said, in a voice so calm it gave Wilke shivers.

“Michael, you will not talk that way to me!” Grandma Lula said, popping out of the chair to her feet like the seat was heated incrementally.

“Sit, your crazy old ass down!” Michael said, raising his voice. “You have no control here. This is my house. The man at this table is my father, maybe not by blood but he raised me to be a good man. He is the reason I sit at your table each Sunday eating indigestible meals, and he is a respectable man. Zelda is lucky to have him as her father and I do give God the honor and the glory for making his heart big enough to accept me and treat me as his own.”

“I’m going to bed,” Lula said in a huff.

“Well, a hurricane is coming, so be careful that no one drops a house on you,” Michael said to her.

Wilke's hands were gripped in a fist.

“You never told me any of that stuff about your Daddy,” Wilke said.

“He was my father. You are my Daddy,” Michael said, laying his head on his folded arms on the table. “I never told you because you would have killed him, then Zelda and I would have been at Grandma’s mercy. I was strong. I have always been strong. I stood between him and my sister. He never touched Zelda.”

Wilke placed his hand on Michael’s head. Heat radiated through his low haircut, and the boy looked tired. So many years he bore the weight of so much pain and pressure to do the right thing. He always did the right thing.

“I taught you right from wrong,” Wilke said.

“Right now, everything feels wrong.”

“Talk to me,” Wilke said softly.

Michael didn’t raise his head. His words almost muffled by his arm. Where do I start?

“I am supposed to meet Pip’s mother, who sounds like a nightmare of a woman who has been milking her daughter for all she is worth,” Michael said. “Wilke, Pip lived in a trailer park with her mother who got them kicked out. The house she lives in now, Scott helped her buy. It is going to be an uphill battle to not only get her moved to Texas but dealing with her mother.”

Wilke’s voice was calming, “So tell me, was your first inclination to save the girl or to run when she told you about her mother?”

“I wanted to save the girl.”

“And now? Do you still want to run or save the girl?”

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