Rising Above Shepherdsville

by Ann Schoenbohm

  Which is just what she said the night I hit Loretta Swinson with the Bible.

  Once we’d gotten back inside and were under the kitchen light, she took one look at my ripped dress and scratched legs, then clicked her tongue. “Honestly.” She shook her head. “Well, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it?”

  If she meant I was more like you than like her, she was right. All the ways you were loose and free, Mama, Aunt Bernie was tied up and closed. In the weeks since I’d arrived, Aunt Bernie had never talked about you. She strictly avoided the subject. It was the one thing we had in common.

  I caught Aunt Bernie looking at me now and again as if I were a specter rising up out of the floorboards. One time, while she helped me make my bed, almost so quiet I could barely hear it, she said, “You look so much like your mother. Sometimes I think . . . she’s right here . . .” But after that Aunt Bernie just shut right up and went back to making hospital corners.

  The night of the Bible thumping, I was ready for her to send me packing. Aunt Bernie dropped her purse onto the counter while I stood waiting for the axe to fall. She dug around in the icebox and spread food on the table—cold chicken, deviled eggs, pickled beets, and a carton of milk. “Are you hungry?”

  I nodded, even though I wasn’t. It would have been an insult to refuse. After only a few weeks in Shepherdsville, I’d discovered that Aunt Bernie believed in food almost as much as she believed in the Lord. She baked and chopped and prepared the ingredients for a meal as if cooking were a calling from the Almighty above.

  Aunt Bernie didn’t say so, but my presence had to be certain relief from her usual meals alone. We ate the cold food. The only conversation taking place was outside between the chirping of the crickets and the trilling of the cicadas.

  Afterward, while I washed and put away the dishes, Aunt Bernie sat in the living room and embroidered with a hoop and needle, by a single lamp, glasses perched on the end of her nose. She had taken to heart President Carter’s words about saving energy.

  Remember how we watched him on TV at the diner that winter, Mama, wearing a cardigan sweater, telling everybody to turn off the lights and turn down the heat? You laughed and talked back at the set. “If I turned it down any lower, Jimmy, I’d be a corpse at the morgue.” You didn’t joke about all the nights we’d spent in the dark because the power had been cut off.

  I was used to the dark. Aunt Bernie kept the house as dim as a cave and wouldn’t use electricity unless it was a dire emergency. If J. C. said there was a crisis, then Aunt Bernie was on a mission.

  I guessed that was what I was, Mama—a kind of crisis.

  She looked up from her work. “Take that dress off. Leave it out on the landing, so I can wash and mend it.”

  Not a word about me hitting Loretta. I figured she was waiting until morning to call Ray at Shirleen’s and have him come get me. A part of me wanted that real bad, but another part didn’t—the part that wanted to be closer to you in any way I could.

  I climbed the creaky stairs up to your old bedroom, where the peeling walls told the story of a girl who’d run away from home a long time before, her things just as she’d left them.

  7

  p-a-s-s-a-g-e

  passage (n.)

  movement from one place to another; a road or path; that which happens between persons; interchange

  Once I’d settled in on that first night at Aunt Bernie’s, under the quilt on your bed, the very one you’d slept under as a girl, and once I’d looked at the same square of sky through the curtains, surrounded by the things you’d once touched, I knew you were there with me.

  It was in your room that I felt the divine power of material things, the precious magic of the objects that connected me to you. Knowing you had walked those floors, looked out the same window at the elm tree in the front yard and the field beyond, or sat at the small wooden desk and thought your thoughts, made me feel like a time traveler.

  Everything in that room told your story. The painted dresser with the cracked mirror under the eaves, where you’d stood and fixed your hair, applying forbidden lipstick before opening the window and shimmying down the tree to meet your friends. The milk-glass table lamp next to the bed, where you’d read off-limits books—To Kill a Mockingbird, The Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies—sneaking them in and out of the house wrapped in brown paper, disguised as textbooks. The desk with its paper blotter, where your doodles—arrows and stars mostly—told of homework you’d done there, where tears had been shed at having to give up high school, and where love letters had been written to a boy you never told anybody about—which led you to leave this room with one suitcase, the same suitcase that I brought back here with me.

  Above the desk a map of the world decorated the wall, confettied with pushpins. Thumbed and dusty National Geographic magazines were still packed into a rickety bookcase near the desk. Each issue had tiny scraps of paper marking articles you’d read—about Bora-Bora, Madagascar, Iceland. For each paper marker, for each place, there was a pushpin on the map. You were a world traveler before you ever left this room, Mama. Long before you packed your suitcase and left Shepherdsville, you imagined and dreamed of going to exotic places.

  Only the farthest you ever got was Lilac Court.

  My very first night at the farm, I slid open the drawer of your desk. In a caddy of nubby pencils and leaky pens, I found your box of silver pushpins. I took out one more pin and pushed it in where I imagined Paint Creek was.

  I shoved your suitcase, crammed with my jeans and T-shirts, under the bed, out of sight from Aunt Bernie’s snooping. My first-place spelling bee championship cup found a spot on the desk next to my blue Webster’s New World Dictionary. On the dresser, I found a place for a Polaroid picture that Ray took of us last summer at the lake. Your arm is draped around me, and each of us is wearing the same smile; a perfect day at Neon Beach that we couldn’t know would never come again. The Bible that Aunt Bernie gave me was stationed on the bedside table, next to the lamp, so I could pretend to be reading it whenever she came in to check on me.

  From then on, every night after Aunt Bernie headed off to bed, I did our usual routine, Mama. I learned a new word. Committed it to memory. Drilled the meaning.

  I’d riffle through the dictionary and pick out a word at random—any word that struck me. I wrote it down in the smiley-face notebook that the doctor at Ross County Hospital had given to me. Then I tore it out, folded it up into a tiny square, and dropped it into the spelling bee cup—one for each night I’d been at Aunt Bernie’s.

  By the time I hit Loretta Swinson with my Bible, I’d put in more than thirty words.

  At the farm I added one new thing to our routine, Mama. Every night I pulled the suitcase out from under the bed, sprang the locks, and took out the only thing of yours I’d grabbed before Ray took all your clothes to the Salvation Army—your Grateful Dead T-shirt. It still smelled like you—Jergens lotion and Dove soap. I wore it to sleep every night and was determined to never wash it. I hid it in my suitcase so Aunt Bernie wouldn’t get it in her head to put it through her old Maytag wringer washing machine.

  The night I hit Loretta, after a mostly silent meal with Aunt Bernie, I took off my ripped church dress and left it draped over the staircase railing for her to wash and mend. I put on your T-shirt and closed the suitcase—the very same suitcase you’d helped me pack the night before finals. I crawled into bed, too tired to choose a word from the dictionary. I turned out the light and waited for the same old record in the jukebox of my mind to play over and over, round and round—the memory of our last night together.

  You seemed happier than you’d been in a long time, as if you were tucking away your troubles. You hummed, laying out my clothes and packing them for the spelling bee, before you left for your shift at the Starliner. “I’m sorry I can’t take you up there, baby. I hope you don’t mind riding with Mrs. Whitehouse.”

  You jiggled change in the pocket of your waitress uniform. “Can�
�t give up Friday night tips.”

  Pulling knee socks out of the dresser and a pressed white blouse from the closet, you said, “I know you’ll do me proud.”

  You ran your hand down my back and kissed my head.

  “Besides, having me there will just be a distraction. You can concentrate better without me pacing at the back of the auditorium.”

  You folded my blouse and plaid skirt gently, then placed a bulky wool sweater on top. “It might get cold.”

  I flopped onto the bed. “I’ll be fine.”

  “You will. I know you’ll be okay without me.” You looked at me with that look. You know the one, Mama. That fierce squint that said, You are my daughter. Not just anybody. My daughter.

  You closed the suitcase with a firm click and ran your hands over its cracked surface.

  “Long time since this old thing has had a place to go. Imagine—spelling finals at the state capitol.”

  You sat next to me on the bed, holding me so close, squeezing me so hard, I could feel how much you wanted it for me. “One more, and you’ll be off to the national spelling bee in Washington, DC.”

  “Mama, let’s just do one thing at a time.”

  “Then you’ll be off to Briarwood Academy. I mailed your application yesterday, smarty. You’ll get in and be on your way to achieve everything you dream of.”

  “Mama, think about what you always tell me. Don’t count your chickens.”

  “Then, you’ll graduate from Briarwood—”

  “Mama, stop it—”

  “And go to Harvard or Yale, one of those places, and then you will travel the world. Paris, London, Spain, wherever you want to go. You’ll just have to put me into your suitcase and take me with you.”

  Then, without warning, a gray cloud descended. You got up from the bed and busied yourself with closing drawers and closet doors.

  “Long time ago, I thought I’d travel around the world, go places. I only ever went from Shepherdsville to Paint Creek—never left Ohio.”

  You patted the suitcase. “This is the only thing I took when I left there.”

  I knew you hated to talk about it, Mama, but I was curious.

  “Mama, didn’t you miss them? Your parents? Your sister? After you left, didn’t you want to see them?”

  You looked away at the floor, face as smooth as lake water, your voice soft. “They’re long gone now. Bernie is still there, but time changes things.”

  “Why don’t you ever go see her? Give her a call?”

  “Dulcie, some things are best left packed away. No use bringing them out and looking them over.”

  Without another word you picked up the suitcase and left it by the door.

  Now that suitcase was back in Shepherdsville, under your bed, where I slept every night.

  I rolled over and closed my eyes, trying not to think about it anymore.

  Like you said, Mama, some things are best left packed away—no use taking them out and looking them over.

  8

  a-t-o-n-e-m-e-n-t

  atonement (n.)

  satisfaction given for wrongdoing; amends

  The next morning I woke to Aunt Bernie calling around, doing a phone tree for my salvation. I could hear her singsongy voice—the one she puts on for church—through the metal floor register next to the bed.

  “Lavinia, it’s Bernice. . . . Yes. . . . Well, I did indeed, and I have to tell you, Dulcie is mighty ashamed of herself.”

  I kicked my feet in protest under the quilt. Ashamed, my butt. Only wish I’d done it sooner.

  “She’d like the opportunity to apologize. . . .”

  I stared at the ceiling. I would rather walk on hot coals.

  This call was followed by another to Reverend Love. “She is a lost lamb, Reverend,” she cooed, “I will have her there for Bible study tomorrow evening. It’s the only way to keep her on the righteous path to salvation.”

  I put the pillow over my head.

  Finally, Aunt Bernie called Ray, her voice different now—schoolteacher-like, firmer, scolding.

  “. . . I hope you plan to drive down here. . . . talk some sense . . . apt to be a juvenile delinquent at this rate . . . embarrassed as all get-out. . . .”

  I flung the covers back, ready for what redemption Aunt Bernie had in store.

  When I went down for breakfast, my ripped Sunday dress was clean and ready to mend, folded on the sideboard. Aunt Bernie was in her apron, rolling pin in hand, a proclamation ready.

  “This morning we are baking a cherry pie. This afternoon we will take it over to the Swinsons.” She frowned at my T-shirt. “Don’t you have a nightgown?” she asked. It’s likely she didn’t have an appreciation for the Grateful Dead. “Put on an apron.”

  I tied on one of the frilly aprons she kept on a hook in the pantry. Aunt Bernie plopped me down on the porch with a bowl of cherries to pit, then roosted next to me in her rocker to mend my dress. She wielded the needle with firm conviction, picking up each stray bit of fabric, joining it with another, tightening and pulling, determined to make the cloth lie smooth.

  Aunt Bernie remained just as determined to not let on that she was provoked. She reminded me of a teakettle near to boiling. When her whistle finally blew, she broke a thread with a snap and sputtered, “Why did it have to be the Swinson girl, Dulcie? Of all the folks in the congregation to pummel with the Good Book, you had to choose Lavinia Swinson’s daughter!”

  She put the dress down with a sigh, laid her head back, and rocked.

  And rocked.

  And rocked.

  The morning settled around us. The sounds of field crickets and an occasional bird filled the silence. I pitted cherries, my hands wet with juice, my fingers stained red.

  I wished I had a way of letting Aunt Bernie know that my hitting Loretta was as unexpected as snow in July. I knew that my Bible whopping was apt to make things worse between her and Lavinia Swinson. From what I’d seen, Mama, Mrs. Swinson had it out for Aunt Bernie but good.

  Like two hens cornered in a cage, they wanted to peck each other’s eyes out. There simply didn’t seem to be enough space for the two of them on this patch of earth. Neither one of them seemed willing to relinquish her position as queen bee at the church.

  I’d seen how they riled each other up like slithering snakes. The tiff between them had begun when I’d first arrived in Shepherdsville.

  Back when she wouldn’t let me out of her sight for fear I’d do something unholy or unbiblical, Aunt Bernie herded me into her car one Thursday afternoon to accompany her to the monthly Ladies’ Auxiliary meeting down in the basement of the church.

  Let me tell you, Mama, you would have thought it was a Sunday. Everybody was dressed to the nines. A dozen country ladies dressed up in their floral prints, adorned with sparkly brooches fished out of jewelry boxes, reeking of eau de cologne, gathered round a table like poker players, doling out cookies and coffee.

  One of the ladies, Mrs. Butler, hair piled up like a beehive with hair spray, had prepared cookies—oatmeal, chocolate chip, and sugar—piled on a tray as high as her hair. There were orange melamine cups filled to the brim with black coffee. Everyone stirred packets of sugar or Sweet’N Low into their cups and sipped in unison like it was a choreographed performance—a ballet where everyone had to maintain the illusion of grace.

  I grabbed a couple of cookies and settled in to watch the show.

  Aunt Bernie was livelier than she was at the farmhouse, asking after this one or that one’s family. She nodded a lot and murmured “Uh-huh,” like she was listening real hard, but I could tell she found them all just a bit silly. Aunt Bernie deflected any and all inquires about her sudden guest with another question to the asker. She clearly wasn’t going to talk about it.

  It being me.

  There was a lot of what I’d call cordiality in that room, Mama, but there was some sharp intention, something slightly dangerous too, like if you didn’t watch out, you’d get a cup of hot coffee poured right into your
lap, along with a sweet, “Oh, I am so sorry.”

  It was Mrs. Swinson who called the meeting to order, thwacking her spoon up against her plastic coffee cup with a rap-a-tap-tap.

  “Ladies, let’s get started. I printed up an agenda for this afternoon.”

  She handed out smeary mimeographed copies that left purple ink on everyone’s fingertips as they passed the sheets around.

  “First of all, we need to address the issue of flowers for the chapel in July. Given our budget, we’ll have to get creative. Number two, we should discuss getting out a calendar to take meals over to the Taylors, since Noreen’s had her baby.”

  Mrs. Swinson took a big breath in, drawing up her chest, her pearl necklace clicking round her neck.

  “Lastly, I know that we aren’t in charge of how much the church pays the choir director or who gets hired. That has been taken care of in the past by the pastor of the congregation. Reverend Love has made some decisions recently that I think we should approach him about. He might not be aware of how we have always done things.”

  There was silence in the room. Hair-sprayed heads looked down at the table, suddenly mighty interested in their cups.

  Mrs. Swinson kept going, getting louder and more insistent.

  “I think the choir robe allotment money should be looked into. What is being proposed is just not in keeping with the way we like to do things, and I believe we should voice our opinion on this matter. I’ve prepared a petition sheet for everyone to sign that I will present to Reverend Love on behalf of the Ladies’ Auxiliary.”

  Aunt Bernie set her cup down with a clatter. “Lavinia, what in the world are you saying? Reverend Love has done a fine job. He’s been here less than a year, and everything he does, you find a beef with. It is not for us to get into the business of running the church. Besides, that choir robe allotment should go to fixing the furnace before winter.”

  Mrs. Swinson squared her shoulders against the force of Aunt Bernie’s conviction and glared down the table at her. She brushed some invisible crumbs off the table as she gathered wind in her sails.