In West Mills

by De'Shawn Charles Winslow

  After they hugged, he used his rough thumbs to wipe the tears from Knot’s cheeks. His expression was serious, the one he used when he used to look into her and her sisters’ mouths, searching for cavities. Knot told him about everything that had happened at the house with Dinah. She told him everything. The truth. He leaned on the front of his desk and clasped his hands together like a dead man in a box made of strong cedar. Knot put one of her hands on his as if she were testing to see if it was still warm.

  “I’m sorry to hear ’bout ya troubles, Knot,” he told her. “Folk say it’s an awful, awful thing to see ya child go before you do.”

  “Pa”—she touched his shoulder—“the baby ain’t—”

  “That child’s in the hands of the Almighty,” he said. “Okay? Make ya peace wit’ it, Knot. Make ya peace wit’ it.”

  The pain she saw in his bloodshot eyes was almost enough to weaken Knot’s knees, but she stiffened her legs. I already kneeled enough for one day.

  “Do this for me,” her pa said. “Go visit wit’ Iris. I’ll talk to ya mama and see if I can’t make things right ’tweenst y’all. She ain’t the only one that’s vexed by yo’ doings, though. I need you to know that.”

  “Pa, I ain’t mean to hurt—”

  “Well, what did you mean to do, Azalea?” he asked. The same bloodshot eyes seemed to be piercing hers, searching for anything to help him understand where he’d gone wrong.

  “Pa, please listen to me. I made a—”

  With a clenched first, he pounded the stack of large dentistry books that sat in the center of his desk. “Go to ya sister’s!”

  He called me Azalea, she thought to herself on the way to Iris’s house. She was too stunned to cry about it. I don’t know when the last time was he called me that.

  She was only a year old when her pa had given her the nickname. He had told her of how she would often reach up to one of Dinah’s whatnot shelves to get ahold of some small ceramic ornament. Whenever anyone else tried to get the ornament from her, she would hold it as tightly as she could with both of her small but fat hands. He had said that Knot would ball her little body up almost into a knot so that they couldn’t get Dinah’s ornament.

  “You’d just giggle ’til ya got tired,” her pa had told her. “We had to wait for ya to get tired ’fore we could get stuff from ya. Wouldn’t be long ’fore you’d be right back at that shelf, messin’ with ya mama’s whatnots.”

  Two days passed and Knot hadn’t heard or received anything from her pa. The waiting was torturous, as was Iris’s lecturing, which began on the second day. Iris did not say a word to Knot on the first day. If it had not been for the brandy Iris’s husband Leonard kept at the back of a kitchen cupboard—his rule was that the brandy could be sipped only on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s—Knot was sure that she would have lost her mind.

  Leonard and their four sons were in Edenton for the week, visiting Leonard’s family. Knot couldn’t have been happier about that. The children and their Aunt Knot this, and Aunt Knot that. Leonard and his Don’t say this and Don’t say that in front of the boys. With all that was going on, Knot wouldn’t have lasted even an hour in their home if they had all been there.

  “Pa’ll forgive me, right?” Knot asked, pacing back and forth in front of Iris’s butcher table. The two of them had eaten dinner in silence: tomato stew with chicken. Knot hadn’t had much of an appetite, but she forced down one bowlful.

  Iris did not look up from the yellow quilt she was knitting. “I don’t know, Knot. You’ll have to wait.”

  “ ‘I don’t know, Knot. You’ll have to wait,’ ” Knot mocked in a very high-pitched voice. “Ain’t you got nothin’ to say besides that? Shit.” Iris kept knitting.

  Knot felt like she did back when she was a little girl waiting for Dinah to decide what her punishment would be for kissing boys behind the church during worship services. Even then, when Knot would ask Iris what would happen to her, Iris would say, “You have to wait, Knot.” And she would wait. The punishments came, went, and it would all be over.

  With elegance and poise, Iris worked the yellow yarn and the two wide silver needles. Although Knot had never taken up arts and crafts—reading had always been her passion—she had enjoyed watching her sisters’ hands working fabrics and thread. As a young girl, she sometimes fell asleep watching the rhythm of their hands’ movements.

  Iris was still as petite as she had been when they were teenagers. If Knot hadn’t seen the four pregnancies with her own eyes, she might not believe they’d occurred. And that chin. Mary, Iris, and Knot all shared their pa’s V-shaped chin. But only Knot had the copper-red hair.

  Just as Knot was preparing to ask Iris once more what she imagined their parents had discussed, there was a knock at Iris’s front door, followed by a “Yoo-hoo!”

  Knot wondered if Mary and Iris had, like the scriveners in the British novels, sat to write two copies of the same fire-and-brimstone sermon. The difference was that Mary hadn’t made eye contact with Knot while she preached. And, having spoken to their mother, Mary had more to add.

  “The B-word,” Mary said, looking at Iris. “She called Mother the B-word.”

  Knot noticed that Mary hadn’t called their mother Dinah Bright, and it annoyed her. She also noticed how much weight her eldest sister had gained since she’d last seen her.

  “Anybody ever grab yo’ sore titty before?” Knot said to Mary.

  “I refuse to speak to her,” Mary told Iris.

  “Mary,” Iris scolded. “Please behave like the grown woman you are.”

  “I most certainly will not,” Mary shot back.

  “Then carry yo’ big ass back up the road where you come from,” Knot retorted. The three sisters were silent for a minute. “I ain’t mean to call her a bitch.”

  “Knot!” Iris shouted. Her yarn and needles landed in the center of the table. The needles chimed.

  “I was mad and it just come out! Shit!”

  “That’s no excuse,” Iris said. And after she picked her knitting back up: “Well, new motherhood will make you say and feel strange things. On many a day I’ve wanted to—”

  “Iris!” Mary exclaimed. She took a deep breath, held it, and released it dramatically. “Where’s your child, Knot?”

  “Oh, you back to bein’ a grown woman now?”

  “She gave her baby boy to strangers, Mary,” Iris said. “To strangers!”

  I couldn’t tell Iris the truth. Bad as she wants a daughter, it’ll surely kill her to know I gave mine away.

  Mary’s swift approach reminded Knot too much of Dinah’s grab-and-squeeze earlier that week. Going to her nephews’ bedroom, where she’d been sleeping and drinking the stolen brandy, was the right thing to do, she decided. So she went.

  “What in God’s name have you done, Azalea?” she heard Mary say from the bedroom. And then: “Why has she always had to be so damn different?”

  “Mary!” Iris said.

  “Right down to the hair,” Mary went on. “You know, our grandfather had that copper-red hair.”

  “Which one?” Iris asked. Knot could tell that Iris was tired and that she was just humoring their eldest sister.

  “Pa’s pa,” Mary replied. “You two are too young to remember him. But he had that copper-red on his head. I’m so grateful I didn’t get it. So grateful.”

  It was her powder-dry mouth that convinced Knot to get out of bed. Having drunk what was left of Leonard’s holiday-only brandy when she’d run away from Mary and Iris, and after all the crying and sweating throughout the night, Knot wondered if there was even enough water in Iris’s well to quench her thirst.

  In the kitchen, she dipped out and drank three cups of cool water before sitting at the table. She was tired. If she had to bet on how many hours she’d slept, she’d put her money on two. If I thought maybe Iris would let me lay ’round a while, I’d go right back to bed.

  “Knot!” Iris called from her garden, just off from the back porch. �
�Come out here, please.” Knot sat on the edge of the porch, waiting for the day’s oration.

  “Leonard’s going to be awfully upset when he finds his brandy all gone,” Iris said. Gently, she separated tomatoes from their vines. “I hope this is just something to get you through this … other problem.”

  And because Knot had already told Iris one of the biggest lies of her life, she thought she might as well tell another.

  “Just to get me through, Iris.”

  As Knot stood to go back into the house, Iris said, “I imagine you don’t want to talk about this, but—”

  “But you want to anyway.”

  Iris was smiling now. She looked up at Knot, and the bright sun bounced off the greased part she had combed in the middle of her head. She said, “I am Dinah Bright Centre’s daughter, aren’t I?”

  Iris asked Knot how her labor had gone. Had it been easy or unbearably hard? Of course it was hard, Knot told her. But had Knot felt as though it would be the last thing she did on earth, as Iris and Mary had described it? No.

  “Yeah,” Knot said to Iris. “I just knew for sure God was callin’ my number.”

  This time the knock at the door was not Mary. It was not anyone Knot knew. It was a young fellow with a mouth full of gauze.

  “You Knot Centre?” he said as best he could.

  “I am.”

  “Doc Centre send me with this,” he said, handing her a piece of paper, folded and sealed with a dime-size drop of red wax. And when Knot told him to come inside while she looked for a nickel, he said, “No need, ma’am. Doc Centre jus’ pull my tooth out my head for free!”

  In her sister’s yard, with the fall sun warming her, Knot read her pa’s letter.

  Our Dear Azalea,

  We were truly sorry to hear of the illness you suffered in recent months, and we are most grateful to God that you have survived and are now doing well. However, we must not ignore the fact that you brought the infirmity upon yourself by dishonoring the laws that God set forth in his Holy word. In doing so, you have brought us great pain. We have indulged your inclinations toward rebellion far too many times. And for that we must ask you to depart from us.

  When the Lord instructs us to welcome you back into the fold, we will write to you. Please do not come to our home until you have received an invitation signed by me, or by your loving mother.

  We do this because we love you, and because we love our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We pray that you will take care of yourself for your continued good health and growth.

  Love,

  Dr. George Washington Centre and family

  The yellow quilt that Iris had been knitting looked nice lying on the healthy grass. It looked as though it had been made for that exact purpose.

  “It’s pretty,” Knot admired. “But all that work just to lay on the ground?” Damn. I sound like Dinah Bright sayin’ that.

  “I won’t tell you who you sounded like just now,” Iris said, echoing her thoughts. And after she read their pa’s letter, she said, “They’re just making a point, Knot. You’ll see. Give it a month or two. I promise you, in a month or two, they’ll be—’’

  “Shut up and sit here with me a lil while, Iris,” Knot interrupted. And when Iris tried to hug her, she pulled away. “Just sit with me.”

  On Monday afternoon, with her valise in one hand and the yellow quilt tucked under the opposite arm, Knot walked to the store where she would catch the bus back to the place she now thought of as home, where she knew Otis Lee Loving would tell her she always had family as long as he lived.

  There were two benches in front of the store. Neither of them had White or Colored written anywhere on them. But since there was a white woman—she looked to be around Knot’s age, red-haired, smoking a long cigarette and wearing a white dress (after Labor Day?) that fit her like an apple fits in its peel—sitting on one of the benches, Knot sat on the other.

  In her mind, Knot played eeny meeny miney mo to help her decide whether or not to reread her pa’s letter. Maybe she’d find something tender, more forgiving, in her pa’s words if she gave it another once-over. Miney mo told her to read it again. So she did. The second read was only another spear in Knot’s side. Oddly, it made her think of Pratt’s last letter (that goddamn Pratt), the one announcing that he’d leave if she didn’t take better care of herself and love him more. Her pa’s letter asked her to go away and take better care of herself.

  Dinah say she burned the letter she got that was ’bout me. Good idea. That white woman might have a match.

  If Knot had had any idea that in order to borrow the red-haired white woman’s matchbook, she’d have to hear about her failed marriage, she would have never gone over to what she assumed was the White bench.

  “Those are my fucking children!” the woman said to Knot, pointing north. She took a drag from the long cigarette. They hadn’t formally introduced themselves, but Knot had secretly nicknamed her “Fancy.” “That’s the part she keeps fucking forgetting.”

  Fancy was waiting on the Raleigh-bound bus. She had arrived in Ahoskie the same day Knot had, to visit her children who lived temporarily with Fancy’s mother. Fancy put emphasis on temporarily. Knot had already gotten the match. But I ain’t gon’ stand here and light the letter in front of her. She’ll be wantin’ to know my business.

  “Well, have a safe tr—”

  “Those rascals barely listened to a fucking word I fucking said all weekend long!” Fancy shouted. “But she’s got them hanging off her every word.”

  “How many you got?” Knot asked, noticing the woman’s black high-heeled shoes for the first time. She and Fancy were standing a few feet away from the White bench. Fancy, unable to answer with words because she was taking a drag from her cigarette, held up two fingers. She turned her head to the right, in the opposite direction of Knot, and blew the smoke out. Because Fancy had called her children rascals, Knot assumed they were boys.

  “Two girls,” Fancy said. “Redheads, both of ’em. Like their mama.” She smiled and ran her fingers through her own hair, which was cut short; it hung just below her earlobes. “I fucking love them from head to toe. Don’t exactly have a choice. But I’m sure you know that feeling. How many do you have?”

  “None,” Knot said. She felt as though she’d seen someone looking for something precious, valuable—and she’d been the one who had stolen it. “Just nephews.”

  Fancy looked at Knot’s bosom and then her own. “Lucky woman, you.”

  At least another twenty minutes passed before Knot’s bus arrived. By that time she had heard Fancy—her real name was Joanne, but she went by Jo—say fuck and fucking enough to last a lifetime. And Knot now knew more about Jo’s estranged husband than she’d ever known about Pratt. Pratt Fucking Shepherd.

  Jo had quoted First Corinthians 13:11 when she spoke about her husband.

  “He was my childish thing, Miss Centre,” she had said. “I had to fucking put that childish thing away.”

  With her pa’s letter still crumpled in her hand, Knot thought of the line about how he’d indulged her for far too long. If she were honest with herself, he was right. She’d believed her pa would always accept any and everything she did, even if she didn’t accept all she did. Childish, maybe. But it was her right, she believed. Her right to do something differently from the way Dinah Bright, Mary, or Iris would do them. And Knot still felt—and couldn’t imagine herself ever feeling differently—that letting that baby girl go was the most grown-person thing she’d ever done.

  “You goin’ to have another one of yo’ cigarettes?” Knot asked. And when Jo was about to light it, Knot said, “Here.” She struck the match against the White bench and lit Jo’s cigarette. Then she lit her pa’s letter.

  Pa’ll come around soon. I know he will. This lil note’ll be good as trash.

  Back in West Mills, Knot found housework on both sides of the bridge. Two households, three days a week at both, paid her more than teaching ever had. And now that people
had heard that she was well again—free of the pox and with no scars, the rumor went—they began requesting her bread puddings. She had Valley to thank for speaking so highly of them. And to thank him, on the weekend after Thanksgiving, she invited him out for a drink at Miss Goldie’s Place.

  “Valley!” Knot shouted across the table. The man at the piano was playing heavy-handedly. “Now, I know I been drinkin’, but I’m pretty sure you the only man at this table who ain’t told me how nice I look tonight.”

  “It won’t do me or you any good if I said it,” Valley quipped, shaking the dice.

  Their eyes met, and they both bent over in howling laughter. The other men at the table looked at each other and shook their heads. By the looks on their faces, one would think they smelled boiled eggs.

  “You know what, Knot?” Valley asked. “I look good tonight, too, damnit. You ain’t said a word ’bout that.”

  “I got a good reason for that, too,” Knot answered. Valley and the others at the table all looked at her, smiling and waiting. “The Bible say, ‘Thou shalt not lie’!”

  There was raucous laughter at the table. Valley laughed so much that he had to stand up to breathe, bringing a smile to Knot’s face. While she had been happy to be back near old-faithful Otis Lee, Valley was the one with whom she had the most fun. He had always accepted Knot just as she was, and she offered him the same courtesy in return.

  While Knot had met a few men like Valley—men who shared their beds with other men—he was the only one she’d ever been close to. Soon after Knot had moved to West Mills, she’d met Valley at the schoolhouse, where he had been hired to build a new set of steps for all three entrances.

  One day the children had all gone home for supper, and Knot had sat on one of the windowsills eating a cheese sandwich and sipping from the flask she had brought in her cowhide book sack. The first thing Knot had noticed about Valley was his height—six feet three inches, she’d estimated. His pretty face was the runner-up. It looked as though he had never frowned in his life. But when she’d seen how carefully he handled the building materials, and how he had so diligently aligned the steps with the doors, she knew he was also smart. It might take some time for me to get used to them damn cornrows, though.