Call Your Daughter Home

by Deb Spera

  “She died in the mill pond, she died in the mill pond, she died in the mill pond, standing on her head.”

  His body floats in the reeds. Easy prey.

  2

  Mrs. Annie Coles

  Every time the telephone bells ring, I am amazed. For the first few weeks, hello seemed too insignificant a word to say, though I hated the formality of stating the name of residence, then self. “This is the Coleses’ residence, Ann Coles speaking,” sounds ridiculous. I’m me announcing me. A simple hello in the quiet of my own home should suffice. My husband pulled more strings than I can imagine, and gave me not just one telephone, but two—one for the house and one for the Sewing Circle. All of Branchville has benefited from my husband’s foresight, and now here we are, the first rural town for miles to be connected to the modern world.

  “The bells” is what Edwin calls the ring, and now that phrase has stuck. To pick up the telephone and hear in your ear the voice of another person, it could be any person, speaking to you from where they are, in some other house or place of business where a completely different life is going on, is remarkable. Life has all at once grown exponentially larger than I could have ever dreamed. Electricity, the automobile and now the telephone have made it clear that possibility is endless for an enterprising mind. I can only imagine what it must have felt like to navigate a flat earth only to discover its roundness. But the astonishing part, for me, is what comes after any great discovery. The “aha” of wonder fades, and the “why not” takes up its rightful place in the world. By then one thinks, of course. After only one month, it’s as if the bells have always been a part of our lives. July is, all at once, ancient. The new has swept in and made itself a presence. Now instead of walking through the house and outside to the automobile, I must stop to pick up a telephone call.

  Two long bells designate the call is meant for our residence, so my pivot from the dining room to the parlor is as natural as breath. I’ve made the mistake and answered only once when the call wasn’t meant for us, long enough to hear Mr. Laing, the proprietor at the mercantile, learn of his father’s death. That fixed me. I’ve exercised caution since. Though I am not a superstitious person, the contraption has brought only good news to this house. I find myself always hurrying to answer as if I am a child running after St. Nicholas for fear of missing a gift, so I’m a bit out of breath by the time I arrive to pick up the receiver.

  “M-Mother, I have n-news,” Lonnie says. It is a challenge for my son to speak. The fact that he has made a telephone call is testament alone to the marvelous invention. This is the boy who refused to turn five on his birthday for fear of school. His will is there, but his courage is still in its infancy, but better late than never, even at forty-eight. I’ve said that phrase long enough that perhaps he is beginning to believe.

  “Tell me,” I say.

  “A c-call c-came.” He sighs heavily, already frustrated by his affliction. “B-Berlin’s of Charleston is interested in the m-menswear line.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “Yes, b-but, they want a m-meeting to see the shirts in person, on M-Monday.”

  Lonnie’s earned this moment if for no other reason than for having done this without me. He’s the one who had the notion for expansion, did all the research on the newest electric sewing machines and calculated how quickly productivity would pay them off. He designed the shirts, chose the fabric and sent the inquiries. For months he’s had a string of rejections, losing hope after so many no’s. I told him his defeatist attitude was foolish; good is good and right is right. He is the future. He says that’s what a mother is supposed to say, but I disagree. Lonnie has a creative mind and a flair for business. I’m not blinded by this simple fact because he is my son. I know the talent my children possess just as well as I know their weaknesses.

  “Relax and enjoy your victory,” I tell him. “I’ll be there straightaway. We’ll solve it.”

  My first thought is, here is your reason to go to Charleston. It’s been too long, and now I have cause. The second is, Lonnie needs a proper celebration. He’s always been in the shadow of his older brother, particularly when it comes to his father, but he’s come into his own and his efforts now exhibit reward. There must be a keepsake for such a momentous day. Papa always said, “If we don’t celebrate the small movements forward, we forget they existed at all.”

  * * *

  The attic is fifteen degrees hotter than the rest of the house. The heat is stifling even for me, a woman rarely bothered by temperature. The smell of the room is odious. Something must have crawled up here and died, though I don’t see droppings. I try to lift the attic window to clear out the stink but it’s stuck from age, so I give it a bang on both sides and it budges somewhat. Creaking it open a few inches, I make a mental note to return to close it later. We’ve had more than one animal that’s crawled up and died in this old space. This attic has so many things compartmentalized and hidden away it’s a wonder our past doesn’t collapse in on us. In one section there’s a tin bathtub that Edwin himself was bathed in, his parents’ bedroom furniture, stuffy old things, and all of his late brothers’ effects, two boys who died of disease before he came along. In another section is the rocking horse our daughters used to fight over. Sarah carried the facial scar from Molly’s scratch into adulthood. It sits among many things that brought us pain. After my boy Buck died, I boxed his things and made Edwin put everything here, in the attic. And then again after our daughters left so abruptly, and in such anger, I removed their things from the rooms they occupied and placed them here. I don’t know what I was thinking. Perhaps by extracting the remnants of their presence I was excising the pain of their absence? I must remember to clear this room before next summer. I’d hate to have the boys inherit our ghosts.

  The past is finished, and there are new seeds of possibility sprouting in every direction. I aim to continue toward the new crop. To have a revelation of sorts, a second wind at my age is what our maid, Retta, would call a blessing. Though, to me, God is no more real than the Easter Bunny. I’d rather place my faith in science. Still, I’m willing to concede she has a point and a new wind blows.

  At the back of the attic I find the old cherry chest my father gave me when I was a young girl. This is all that exists of me before I met my husband. My father filled this chest with things he felt I’d need for marriage. He was a pragmatic man, unsure of what to give a motherless child, a girl no less, on the most special day of her life, so he filled it with my mother’s things—jewelry, crystal, china, beautiful and delicate laces and silks from around the world—so that I might have my old home within the new, a piece of my past for the future. He knew instinctively what would settle my restless spirit. I didn’t understand my father then, but I do now.

  This old chest contains what little I have left of the man. The wooden box is no longer stylish but I haven’t the heart to throw it out. To do so would be akin to discarding my own father. I’ve not grown that callous. I heft it open and peer within. Tucked away in the corner beneath my christening gown is a small square red box, loose with age and lined with black velvet. My father’s pocket watch lies inside like a prize, gold with an inscription from my mother to him on their wedding day. He carried it wherever he went. On every continent in the world, at every moment of the day, he said my mother reminded him of time and how quickly it passed. The woman made sense, that’s all I can say, and I wish I’d known her. To hear Papa talk of her, she must have been a queen, but now that I am old, I only wonder what the sound of her voice was like. It would be enough to know that.

  I open the back of the watch and, with the small key from the box, wind the thing ’til it jolts to life just as it did some forty-five years ago when I last wound it in my father’s hand on his deathbed. Time continued to lurch forward long after he stopped breathing. This will be just the thing Lonnie will appreciate. If nothing else, perhaps it will remind him of the time he wast
es being afraid of the world.

  Before I take my leave I stand and listen. I enjoy the house to myself on occasion. Retta fought leaving work early, but I told her she does no one a service by working herself to death, particularly me. There’s such a difference in the quiet when everyone is gone. Sound travels well in this old place, even from up here, the clock in the entry hall, distant shouts of men across the property, the creaking and settling of the floorboards beneath my feet. This place has an identity all its own. It’s a rare moment when I get to stop and listen to its voice.

  * * *

  The drive to the Sewing Circle is pleasant enough; cotton is being harvested on the other farms this week, so workers stop and shade their eyes from the sun as I pass. None of them are yet accustomed to a woman driver, though they’ve seen me behind the wheel countless times. I raise my gloved hand outside the window and give a wave to the Negroes in the fields and they wave back. Their presence reminds me this is the week of our old harvest. Our first year of tobacco as main crop has thrown us all off-kilter. It requires a different care, to which I am unaccustomed. There are three stages to a harvest now instead of two: the picking, the curing and then the selling. Cotton was so much simpler.

  The workers, with their bags slung to one side, are stark against the dotted white fields and high sun. They sway in unison as they move from plant to plant and row to row. They are singing old songs from their ancestry. I lean my ear to the open window to catch the music, but the rush of wind and the roar of the engine make it impossible.

  The cotton is starting to come back, but the remnants of the blight are still sore on the eye. Tobacco will be our much-needed savior. There are no tobacco fields south of our farm. All eyes are on Branchville and Orangeburg. If we do well at market, next year come this time there will be a diversification. Every field south of Orangeburg will yield a different crop.

  Edwin and our eldest son, Eddie, have fretted in the barn over that tobacco for weeks now. I’m grateful a small corn harvest has consumed them for the better part of this week. They’re going to worry themselves sick about that tobacco, and there’s no reason for it. Worry is something I’ve never understood. What good does it do, except drain possibility from the day? Like father, like sons, I suppose. They certainly didn’t get that from me. My daughters, however, had pragmatism. They left us without ever looking back.

  The women at the Sewing Circle are steady at work over their machines. I see Lonnie through the glass window that separates our office from the women, sitting in my chair with his head bent forward. He has a circular spot as big as a silver dollar at the top of his scalp just like his father’s. I give the ladies a hello as I wind my way through the machines to my son. They smile or call to me; their hands never leave the cloth they are sewing. I love the sound of the machines at work in unison. If I close my eyes the sound could easily be a train starting its engines and coming to life. This factory may as well be a train for the places it will take us. I’ve no doubt that in one year’s time, if all goes according to plan, we will double in size, and put to work twice the number of women we have now. For a business that started with six seamstresses in the back room of a church, we’ve done quite nicely for ourselves.

  Lonnie doesn’t raise his head as I come through the door. Three sample shirts in blue, brown and yellow are laid before him, inside out, as he examines the stitching. He picks up the scissors next to him, poised to make the first cut.

  “Don’t even think about it,” I tell him.

  He lifts his head and looks at me, his face contorted with despair. He labored over those shirts, and has done them three times over, insisting they aren’t right.

  “They are perfect. Don’t do another thing.”

  “No, the stitching is weak at the p-pockets. They won’t last a m-month.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, they will last years if cared for properly.”

  He looks from the shirts to me, drops the scissors on the desk and hangs his head. I lay the package I brought in front of him. He looks up inquisitively and I nod for him to open it. He does so with great care, just as he did when he was small. He personified everything then, his mittens, the Christmas tree, wrapping paper, treating every inanimate object as if it had a soul that could be hurt. He even went so far as to speak in comforting tones to the objects of his attention. I turn the shirts to their proper side and fold and stack them as he opens the tissue paper inside the box. Lonnie turns the watch over in his hands, examining it, and I’m once again amazed at how alike he and Papa’s hands are.

  “That was your grandfather’s and now yours. He was the most entrepreneurial man I know, and you are very much like him.”

  “He started sooner than m-me.”

  “Late starts in life have no less relevance than early ones. In fact, I would argue they have more relevance. Experience in life can only be judged by the obstacles one has to overcome to get it.”

  I strip my hat from my head and he stands, offering me the chair. He pulls another alongside me.

  “I think you should do the m-meeting,” he says.

  “Absolutely not,” I say. “This place will be yours within a year. You must learn how to converse with the outside world sooner or later. Besides, you’re the person who best understands the product.”

  “I c-can c-coach you.”

  I stare at him for a moment, then lift my pen from the inkwell and a sheet of paper from the top drawer.

  “What would you have me say?”

  I write everything he tells me, how much each shirt costs to make, the time it takes to make them, pattern and color choices. He’s near perfect in his elocution. I hand him the sheet of paper, covered front to back with all he’s said, and tell him to memorize it. He sits and stares at his own words.

  “We’ll practice on the train.”

  He lifts his head with hope.

  “I’ll make the trip with you, but the meeting is yours alone.”

  He closes his eyes and shakes his head no.

  “Stop,” I say, and he pinches his nose and folds the paper into fours. I take it from him and place the paper and watch into the pocket of the shirt he wears, the one he made for himself. “Now that is a sturdy pocket.”

  He nods his head and straightens his spine before going to do his afternoon work on the floor. I open the books to look over our accounts while he sets the chair against the wall. The telephone rings on the desk before Lonnie is out the door. He tenses and waits, while my hand hovers above the receiver, one long and one short bell, not for us. He smiles from relief and walks out to the table of fabric, lifts a bolt of colorful burlap cloth with an array of large flowers displayed and unspools the material. Laying it across the counter he cuts the material with a long straight blade into clean rectangles, measured to size, and stacks them neatly so each woman can retrieve as needed.

  It was Lonnie’s idea to use colorful prints to make seed bags. He noticed how women in town used the old ones for aprons, dresses and bedcovers, and brought it to my attention; strange how I never noticed. Now it’s all I see. Half the women in the Circle are dressed in discarded sacks. The room is awash in red, blue, yellow and green, flower and geometric patterns, each dress styled and adorned differently. Some have ribbons at the waist and buttons at the collar, some are no more than the original sacks with holes for arms and head. You can spot dress designs from the same family as easily as you can spot the poorest in the crowd. Mothers and daughters sit shoulder to shoulder dressed in matching outfits not unlike how I used to dress my own daughters. Once I made my girls matching dresses with wings and watched them sail around the house for weeks claiming to be fairies. Those were the days when magic was very real; fireflies were fairy horses and lilac fields were summerhouses of the kingdom.

  Whole generations have come and gone in the Circle, and for a moment I’m nostalgic for all that my workers have that I no longer do. Each o
ther. When I am finished here in this place, on this earth, will I miss them? Is missing something that hasn’t yet happened as potent as missing that which already has?

  I reach for the telephone directory Lonnie ordered at the beginning of the summer. He’s marked and circled clothing shops in the yellow pages of the manual of every store in Charleston. I, too, have done my own study of two separate pages of the book, though no one would ever know to look: Mr. and Mrs. Morgan Abbott, my daughter Sarah’s telephone number, and Mr. and Mrs. Fitzgerald Osteen, Molly’s residence. I was both thrilled and terrified when I found my daughters in these pages. All the early memories of them came back to life when we installed the telephone, and then when I saw them registered, another cascade of recollections, good and bad, appeared, just like magic. Fifteen years it’s been since I’ve seen my girls. I know they are older, but in the wake of this invention, memories of their youth have flooded my mind—another aha. I’ve memorized their telephone numbers from staring at them so regularly. Surely if my son can overcome his fears, I can overcome mine and call his sisters. Do I have anything to lose? Hasn’t the time come to mend fences?

  * * *

  It is still early when I return home, and I’m relieved to find Edwin absent, once again claiming the peace of the house for myself. Stripping my driving gloves off, I lay them across the dining room table and walk straight to the parlor. I perch on the sofa and pick up the telephone. When I last spoke with our daughters, we fought over respect and their unwillingness to give it. By the time the fight erupted, Sarah and Molly had been living in Charleston for well over a year, visiting with us sporadically, and even then only a few hours at a time, when it suited them, usually around dinnertime. I found it rude and said as much. Sarah cried, but Molly got her back up and said she held Edwin and me both responsible for Buck’s death and the demise of our family. It was a blow in light of how Buck died, and I withered under the accusation. Edwin was furious and threw them out of the house. I knew then as well as I do now she didn’t mean what she said. She was angry. She lashed out. Sides were chosen. The boys picked us.