by Julie Kibler
Lizzie sighed. There was truth to May’s taunts. Luckily, this far out from the big house, chances of anyone hearing her were slim. But if anyone happened along nearby, they were done for. “You said no matter what, I was to keep you tied up until you was done with the shakes,” she said.
May kicked at the bucket near her feet, filled with her own slop. She shrieked, “I’ll shit on the bed, and you can clean that up, too, if you don’t let me go!”
Lizzie sighed. May was vile, but her profanity couldn’t conceal her generally refined way of talking. She hadn’t always been this way. Lizzie would leave the bucket close and hope May used it. She’d clean up her mess whether May toppled it or not. Others had done it for Lizzie, and she prayed she had the stomach now. May hadn’t had to go much yet anyway, for she’d been brought to the Home starving, having eaten nothing but grass or sawdust for days—and whatever vermin she might have caught.
Lizzie hurried to finish the chores she’d started. She swept the crumbs of May’s supper off the loft’s edge to keep varmints out, then propped the broom in a corner. “I’ll be back with breakfast, or your dinner if I can’t get away.”
“Don’t bother,” May growled. “I’d rather die here than in that hellhole with all you useless whores.”
“It ain’t a hellhole. If you can bear these next days, you might see yourself clear to a new life. These are good folks who’ll care for you like they done for me—if you don’t ruin it again.”
“So many goddamn rules,” May said. “Everything is an abomination. A simple smoke, or heaven forbid, the tiniest crumb of bacon.” She twisted her lips in a self-righteous frown. “The LORD GOD says this…the LORD GOD says that…” By golly, she did look nearly like Gertrude, and Lizzie barely caught herself from laughing.
Sure, the rules weren’t easy. Lizzie had had no notion that being saved could be so exhausting. And this new life was better a thousandfold, but it didn’t erase the past. Sometimes Lizzie struggled something awful. Her old nature lied, saying comfort from the bottle or the needle or the tin was better than “putting away earthly things.” But it only led one way: to a shallow grave, not even a wooden box to shield her skin and bones from worms.
May’s face changed again, and Lizzie saw something new—and genuine—in her eyes: pain, so much, and the only reason Lizzie kept trying. May couldn’t live with that pain forever. She cried out, “My skin is crawling, like ants biting every single inch of me. It burns so I can’t stand it. Please, Lizzie, bring me something for it!”
Lizzie tightened her muscles again. “You know they don’t keep medicines.”
“You can find some!” Tears rolled down May’s cheeks now, with real sobs shaking her.
Lizzie sympathized, for she still got that dreadful sensation. When it came, she went off on her own for a spell, so as not to take it out on the others. She was lucky to have that for her excuse to go to May now, but even white lies were a slippery path. If the lying was for good, she wondered, could that maybe make it right with the Lord?
May kicked against the floorboards, and her muffled yelling carried in the wind as Lizzie hurried back to the house. She’d tied rags across May’s mouth every time she’d left, hoping the screaming might ring less sharp, but the noise was still something to behold from a woman as bedeviled as May.
That night, Lizzie had prayed as she walked back to the house. Simple prayers were still all she knew. She hoped they were enough. She’d prayed for May, that she’d be able to push through and see the light. She’d prayed for Mattie. If Lizzie’s gut told her right, things would get worse for her beloved friend before they got better. And she’d prayed for her Docie, that she’d never in her life need to make the kind of choices the erring girls had. Please Lord.
The third day—the day Mattie caught her leaving the barn—Lizzie had climbed the ladder to the loft, braced for May’s usual spite. But as she reached the last rung, she’d gasped, thrusting her breakfast crockery down on the planking and screeching May’s name. She’d left her on her back earlier, but May had dragged herself around until she practically hung from the post where Lizzie had bound her, face down in the hay, purple from her weight on the rope.
“May! What’ve you done?” Lizzie dropped to her knees to see if May breathed. Would May being carted off by the undertaker, and her by the police—for murder!—be the price for Lizzie’s lies, never mind her intentions?
Wispy breath still warmed May’s mouth, but she didn’t respond. Lizzie was close to full panic before May’s eyes fluttered. She coughed weakly. “Water…” Her voice was like gravel.
Lizzie pushed and pulled May to a proper lying-down position, then held the jar to her lips. “Oh, May. I thought you was dead.”
“Wish I were.” May took a long pull, water tracking down her chin and neck. A person would think she was forty, as worn as she looked, though she was surely closer to twenty. Many showed up at the Home looking like hags, but May was maybe the worst they’d seen.
“You feel that bad, you might be near to kicking the habit. Time you stop this nonsense and count yourself lucky to be alive.” Lizzie’s chest still heaved from fearing May had been dead. She was lucky too. She shivered in the heat to think how it could have gone. She made herself breathe slowly. “You want your breakfast? It ain’t much, what with Gertrude breathing over me.”
Lizzie’s mind wandered while May forced down the cold toast and mush. She was determined to clean May up while she was in a quiet mind. “If I bring soap and a clean nightshirt later, promise not to hurt me?”
“Why do you keep trying?” May’s voice, less rough now that she’d taken food and drink, was still aged as an old woman’s. “What good’ll it do? I’ll be back on the streets in a week. I’m not meant for anything better.”
Lizzie knew the poison of apathy. But if she could change, why couldn’t May? “Look. The Lord changed me. He can change you too. You just got to believe it.”
“Oh, hon, I just want to be sound enough to get my business in order. I’m a whore—never will be anything else. But I’m a good one.” She straightened her shoulders. “A year ago, I was entertaining the most powerful men in town at the finest house in Dallas. If I get clean, they’ll take me back.”
May was fooling herself. No respectable whorehouse—respectable being relative—would take her. Even prostitutes had a class system. That burned-out horse carriage where Sister Maggie Mae and Gertrude had found her was the lowest rung. If anyone let her back in the cribs, even, it’d be a miracle—and not the holy sort.
“They’re not taking you, and you won’t survive on the streets. You got to let me help.”
But May shook her head. “You know I’m not going to make good.”
“I’ll be back, likely after dark,” Lizzie said. “You hold on. I’m your strength for now. No more twisting yourself to where you might not be breathing for real next time I come.”
May had nodded wearily. It was enough. And that evening, while Lizzie bathed her, she was a lamb.
Today, after the confrontation with Gertrude in the hall, Lizzie had waited until after the babies were settled for afternoon naps before she sneaked out. May was docile again. Anyone but Lizzie might have trusted her. Not yet. There’d be more of what she’d been through the last three days, though easier with each round.
May gobbled what Lizzie brought like it was a bear’s spring breakfast. It was Mattie’s, who’d pushed it on Lizzie that morning, saying she was too hot to eat anyway. It worried Lizzie, but she took it. May couldn’t chew or swallow quickly enough. Then she pleaded. “Tell them I’d be grateful for one more chance. I’m in my right mind now.”
Lizzie shook her head. “You ain’t ready yet.”
May sighed through her nose. “I’ve never been better, not for years. The thought of another chance with you girls thrills me. I hope Sister Susie can find it in her heart to fo
rgive the broken window. I’m ready to see what the Lord has in store.”
Lizzie reared back and laughed at May’s talk, obviously for show. “Oh, honey. You got to take my word for it, like I gave mine that I’d keep you safe from yourself.”
May’s shoulders drooped.
“You talk like you’re from good people,” Lizzie said. “You got a mama somewhere?”
May drew in on herself. Genuine tears wet her cheeks. She must have been a handsome young lady once, with bright hair and eyes like light in a wood. “She’d no more admit I was her daughter now than when she turned me out.” She scoffed. “Even if my tutor hadn’t been married, my mother thought we were above him. And when I showed up carrying his child, his wife sized me up as though I weren’t the first—and wouldn’t be the last—gullible girl to knock. She asked if he had business with me, and when he shook his head, the door hit my face.”
Lizzie sighed. The story of the ages.
“A woman gave me a room in exchange for work, but first she gave me something for my trouble and time to rest from the cramps and bleeding…” Her voice faded. “Then I was in her debt. She said I needn’t stay longer than it took to repay her. But you change once you give yourself away for money.” May shrugged.
It was the longest speech she’d made, but no different from many Lizzie had heard in the months she’d been at the Home. It was always the man who took what he wanted, and always the woman who lost everything.
* * *
—
Back at the house, the nursery was dim, with the babies still napping and Bertha with her feet up, catching a rest too. Her labor would begin any time. Lizzie had the urge to look in on Docie.
She’d be down the hall in the big playroom by now, eating her snack with Alpha and the older children, already awake from their rest time. Mr. Gus, the old Negro who fixed things for them, had cut a little window high in the playroom door and filled it with glass so the mothers could peek without riling the children. Lizzie was nearly too short to reach it. She rose as high as she could and almost fell through the door, which hadn’t been properly latched.
The scene was chaos. Alpha had tipped his juice cup, and juice had spread everywhere on the floor. Jewel was mopping him and the floorboards with the same rag while the rest ran a wild circle around them. Her helper was nowhere to be seen—a relatively new girl who was always threatening to leave.
Lizzie settled the kids in a corner with a wooden train, while Jewel finished cleaning up and then collapsed in her chair. “Bless your heart, I thought you’d never come. Irma’s gone off to who knows where.” She sighed. Then looked up. “Where’s Docie?”
Lizzie stilled. “I was about to ask you.”
Jewel shook her head. “I sent her down the hall to find you.”
Lizzie fled from the room. Docie wasn’t in the water closet. She could go by herself now, but she always seemed to wait until Lizzie could take her. She clumped downstairs, more alarmed. Docie wouldn’t go down alone, she didn’t think, but Lizzie hurried to rooms that would be accessible to a child not quite four years old. The kitchen was empty, filled only with the aroma of their roasting dinner while Mattie and Gertrude worked outside in the kitchen garden. Olive had been sent to bed after lunch, her late-term swelling likely worsened by the tension in the kitchen. Lizzie hoped her labor would go quick and easy, during the day, with nobody wandering the house or property at odd times.
She ran to the front of the house now and threw open the front door. Where to begin—the fields? The creek? Heaven forbid, the old barn—or the road! They rarely had motor traffic in front of the Home, but it wasn’t hard to imagine Docie trampled beneath the feet of a horse and carriage, the driver pushing to see how fast he could go.
Lizzie’s leg throbbed, and she limped to peer one way and then the other. The road was silent, no floating dust to signify a vehicle had been by lately. As she turned away to go check the new barn, where the kids liked to visit Mr. Gus’s mules, she heard a shout.
“Lizzie, I need you immediately!” Sister Maggie Mae Upchurch hollered and waved from her home across the road. Lizzie nearly stumbled, running as fast as she could. Maybe Docie had been hurt, and they’d been looking for Lizzie while she was off in the barn. Her face burned with fear and shame. But when she arrived at the porch, Sister Maggie Mae looked appalled, not frightened.
“What’s happened? Is it Docie?” Lizzie said, relieved but still dreading the answer.
Sister Maggie Mae gestured for her to follow. She marched inside and upstairs to a hall lined with her children’s bedroom doors. From an open one, Lizzie heard the giggles of girls. She saw Miss Ruth and Miss Alla Mae, two of the Upchurch daughters, first. They were seven and ten, already in school, and couldn’t have been home long.
“Girls, tell Mrs. Lizzie what you told me.” Sister Maggie Mae pursed her lips and paced the floor. The girls hung their heads. Docie was in the room. She raced to clutch Lizzie’s skirt, hiding her eyes from Sister Maggie Mae. Their youngest, a boy Docie’s age, grinned from the bed.
“Girls?” Sister Maggie Mae gave them a look.
Alla Mae didn’t budge, but Ruth sniffled.
“Ruth, honey?” Lizzie said. “What’s happened?”
Ruth spoke to the floorboards, so soft Lizzie strained to hear. “We saw Docie on the big porch on our way home from school. We waved and she came running.” The Upchurch children weren’t allowed to set foot on the property without one of their parents. “She wanted to come play, and we forgot to ask permission.”
Lizzie relaxed. She wasn’t angry. She was simply relieved.
“And then what?” Sister Maggie Mae said, for apparently that wasn’t all.
“We played house. We made Docie the mama and Willie the daddy.” Ruth whispered it.
“When I found them, your daughter and my little boy were in the bed,” Sister Maggie Mae said. “They were under the covers…kissing!”
Lizzie half wanted to laugh. Kids played house, didn’t they? She’d done it when she was little. But then she thought of the time her stepbrother said they’d play house down by the creek, and she almost gagged. And she could see how it looked.
“Of course I’m not angry with her…” Sister Maggie Mae sighed now that she’d expressed her dismay. “Girls, what were you thinking?”
Alla Mae spoke up now, and Lizzie saw a spark in her eyes. “We didn’t say to. She wanted to kiss him,” she whispered, pointing at Docie.
Panic flashed in Sister Maggie Mae’s eyes, but Lizzie knew a lie when she saw one, even from a ten-year-old child. She wouldn’t argue with an Upchurch, however, no matter how young.
On their way home, she held Docie close, inhaling the scent of her hair and sweaty neck, more aware than ever that her past had placed a curse on her daughter. People would always look at Docie the way Sister Maggie Mae had after Alla Mae made her accusation.
“Honey,” she said. “I know you love your friends.” She wouldn’t shame Docie.
“Mama!” Docie said. “They said I should get in the bed with Willie and kiss him on the mouth! Aren’t they funny?” She giggled. Lizzie fought anger. They were only children…
But lives had been ruined before by those who didn’t know any better.
“Where were you, Mama? I looked everywhere.”
“I’m here now,” Lizzie said. “But never leave the big house on your own again. Promise?” Lizzie gripped her tight as she carried her upstairs. She kept Docie in the nursery to finish the day.
If she hadn’t been in the old barn that afternoon, it would never have happened. She couldn’t do this any longer. It was time to turn May loose.
CATE
Grissom, Texas
1998
River dropped me off after we returned from Carr City, and I went inside the coffee shop, as if starting and ending the day with the truth coul
d make up for what I’d neglected to tell my parents about the in-between.
I sat alone with a frappe and my thoughts, but when I walked to my car, I saw a note under one of my windshield wipers. My mom or dad never checked up on me when I went somewhere to study or just hang out. They trusted me completely. I panicked, afraid something had happened and they’d had no way to contact me.
But the note was from Jess.
Your mom said you’d be here. Where ARE you?
Call me ASAP! BIG news!!
My conscience twinged. I hoped Jess hadn’t called my house again after she left the note. Instead of going straight home to field questions on the kitchen phone, though, I went by her house. I had a good idea what she wanted to tell me.
Prom was approaching quickly. Our church had no strict rule against dancing, unlike some other conservative denominations. We were expected to use common sense, and of course, to “leave room for Jesus!” Our youth group leader encouraged us to stick with youth group members for school dances to avoid uncomfortable—or risky—situations. “The Devil you know…” he’d say with a wink at the boys.
Neither Jess nor I had been holding our breath for dates, though, and I’d felt no more than half-wistful regret. Even if I had an acceptable date, I’d be miserable at prom. Any natural grace I’d possessed as a child had fled after one summer of astounding growth. At the end of seventh grade, I’d barely topped five feet. When eighth grade began, people I hadn’t seen all summer gaped. I hardly recognized myself, and certainly not my new long limbs. In high school, the track and cross-country coaches salivated and recruited me on the spot. After I leveled out at five feet nearly ten inches, however, it seemed every remark about my height was followed by a hurried, “But you have such a pretty face!”—leaving me with the unsettling sense I was not quite feminine enough now that I was so tall.
At prom, while everyone else on the dance floor swayed like gazelles, I would flail like a newborn giraffe, and during slow dances, the whole world would notice visible sweat stains under my arms and my hands in all the wrong places—at least that was how it would feel.