by Deb Spera
Harlan’s mother answered the door, and I wondered if she already knew what I was about to tell her. Either way she didn’t let on. That’s a woman who’s grown used to hiding. I know that kind of woman. She was plain-faced, nothing to look at, and bone skinny like most folks these days. Older than me, but I can’t say how much. Hard times age a body. Her dress looked like it had had little flowers on it at one time when it was new, blue flax maybe, but they faded away. She invited us inside, but I wanted no part of her house. This business could be seen to on the porch.
“My daughter’s with child,” I told her, “and it’s on account of your boy.”
She took a hard look at Lily, and her face fell, then she called backward through the door to her son. He came to the door pulling a shirt over his head, and mother and son stepped outside together.
“Is it true?” she asked Harlan.
He shrugged.
“It’s true,” I said. “She’s got the belly to prove it.”
“Then he’ll make it right,” his mother replied, but she didn’t look at me, only him.
Two heads taller, he looked down at his mother and said, “She’s the one who bewitched me.”
“She’s thirteen and you’re nineteen,” I said. “She don’t know nothin’ about such things.”
“She knows enough. Maybe she learned it from her mama?”
Harlan’s mother slapped him hard across the face. His face turned red with her palm, and he dug his hands so deep into his pockets I could see the boy in him.
“Go fetch the Reverend,” she told him. “Do it now before your daddy comes home. He’ll be easier on you if it’s already done.”
The reminder of his daddy and what his daddy could or would do was enough to get him off the porch and on a fast run to town. His mama turned and went back inside, leaving us alone. Lily sat on the steps with her back to me. She’s got spite in her wider than a river. Alvin lives on in Lily, maybe in all of us.
When the Reverend came from his dinner table, napkin still around his neck, I signed my daughter as wife over to a boy who is likely no better than the husband I killed. I left her on the porch steps by his side. Neither of us said goodbye.
* * *
It’s too late for me, too late. I was a fool to think it wasn’t. I sit on top of Mrs. Walker’s bed working late into the night on my girls’ dresses. I am in Mrs. Walker’s house, surrounded by Mrs. Walker’s things, but all the good she was won’t rub off on me. Goodness don’t matter no how. I can’t see how it ever did. My mama was good, and it didn’t matter. We all live and we all die, that’s it. Good don’t feed nobody or clothe nobody. Good don’t change facts. Good ain’t no good when you got babies to feed. It’s all a big lie. Lily has stepped beyond my reach. Maybe I should have let Otto have her. Can’t say which is worse. What’s done is done, there’s nothing left to save. Lily’s sisters cry in the bedroom next to mine.
“Stop your wailin’,” I holler through the wall.
I can’t take all that noise. It riles the bone under my eye. They stop, but I still hear their whimpers. Now the young ones are afraid of me, too. Good. They should be. Fear’s somethin’ useful.
Mary calls out from the other side of my bedroom door, but I don’t answer. She creaks open the door and sticks her head through.
“Leave me be, Mary,” I tell her.
“Mama, I’m making you a present,” she says. “You want to see?”
“No, I don’t want to see, I want you to leave me be.” She minds and closes the door behind her.
Retta said there was a reckoning happening all around me, that’s what she said. Is Alvin the reckoning? She said I got to turn him loose. I got to turn him loose? I thought I did that when I pulled the trigger. It’s him that needs to turn us loose. He needs to go on to the fires of hell where he belongs. Maybe it would have been better for him to kill me, I don’t know anymore. I’m lost. How do you fight evil? Mama would help me if she was alive. She would have been a light for my girls. She would’ve loved them the way she did me. They could have had something beautiful to remember like I do.
“I wish you was here,” I whisper to my mama in the sky, though I know the foolishness of the wish. She’s gone. Thinking otherwise is just the mind playing tricks on itself.
19
Retta
Our wagon is piled so high with tobacco a good wind could tip it over, so Odell asked Roy and his wife, Sue Ann, to stop by and give us a ride to church. They’re a good family, with four children, three boys and the youngest a girl, named Comfort. Them children mind so good that I never once heard or saw Sue Ann raise voice or hand to them, though their daddy’s had to take them out to the woodshed a time or two. Can’t see how that ain’t necessary with boys. That’s what they understand. Roy’s a railroad man like Odell was, and Odell loves Roy like a son. Sue Ann’s good people, but she’s got no time for friends and small talk. That will come when she’s gets the children raised, but for now, she’s got them working and reading and writing. They all go over to the colored school during winter. It’s a long walk, but they don’t mind. This family ain’t had one bit of bad luck, and I hope they never do.
Roy puts a wooden box on the ground so Sue Ann and me can climb up in the back of the wagon. Sue Ann’s had the children stack hay and put tablecloths over it so we can rest easy. We sit up close to where the men are to join in conversation. Sue Ann and Roy have so many questions for Odell about the two new mares in our corral and his trip to market, they don’t notice the distance between us. Odell’s happy to answer, acting like he’s carrying the Ten Commandments to market instead of a wagon full of tobacco that will be used to make cigarettes.
Odell tells Roy how smart the horses are, how they listen to his hands through the reins like he’s touching skin. All I know is they got wild in them. Roy had to come over and take our old mares to stay on their land. He took them ’til Odell comes home, so I won’t have to bother with them. I feared for those old horses when the new ones showed up in the yard. All that brayin’ and snortin’ and stampin’, they could smell the female in each other.
Roy and Sue Ann’s boys sit at the end of the wagon with their sister between. All eight legs dangle over the back. It’s a little party for them to be riding in the lane to church with us, like we’re a one-wagon parade. All of Shake Rag smiles and waves as we pass, but I cannot share their joy. It’s been empty of Mrs. Walker for days. Empty as can be without my friend. This lane’s become a hollow tree.
The heat’s broke, and you can smell the first of autumn if you try. It rides in the breeze like gardenias. Everybody, colored folk and white, is out today. Gertrude and her three girls is walking to church, too, all of them in clean new clothes and braided hair. They don’t speak to nobody and nobody speaks to them. Mabel told me what’s become of Lily, and I can’t help but wonder if she ain’t better off for it; though between Gertrude and Harlan it’s a close call. Gertrude’s got bottles hanging off the oak trees by the kitchen door, and the front of the house. Likely she thinks that spirit tree is gonna catch what ails her, but no glass bottles can stop what you carry past them. I know sure as I’m sitting here her husband’s dead, but she ain’t saying. Anybody holding on to that kind of lie’s got trouble.
I put a smile on my face when I see Mary and raise my hand off the sideboard as we roll past. She gives me a little wave, too, but stops when her mama gives her a poke in the back. Mary takes a few more peeks. She’s little and can’t help herself, but her mama and sisters ignore me. I’m fine with that. Long as Gertrude does what’s right, we won’t have a problem.
Old Canaan Baptist church holds fifty-seven Negro congregants most Sundays, and more during holidays and summertime. It sits in the middle of a wide field surrounded by oaks older than what anybody remembers. Behind the church is the cemetery where Mama, Daddy, Willie and all of Odell’s people is buried. Wooden headstones with our p
eople’s names written in paint mark every grave, and each family plot is circled with white pebbles and shells. Mama wanted shells around her grave ’cause she said the sea brought us to these shores and the sea will take us home. “The seashell holds the immortal soul,” she said. That is what our people believed on the shores of Africa from whence we came. Our own sweet baby girl, Esther, will rest here one day alongside me and Odell when our time comes. When our girl died I couldn’t bear the thought of her laying up here without me or her daddy, so Odell buried her in the side yard by the house so she could be close to us, and he built me that sling so I could lay beside her. I got a shoebox of seashells sitting in the closet, waiting for the day we can all go home together.
Our old clapboard church ain’t got nothing but a dirt floor, but the benches are sturdy and made of good, strong Carolina pine that my own daddy fashioned long ago. There’s no bell to pull when it’s time to worship, but we all come on time just the same, filing in one after another, the young and the old, the weak and the strong.
Me and Odell, along with Mabel, Bobo and Myrtis, are the oldest living members. There was a time before the boll weevil blight we had a good number of old folk, but hunger and disease favor the old as well as the young. Just three months ago we lost Mr. Baker to the swamp fever. I still miss seeing his skinny little behind sitting on the side, jumping up to do whatever anybody needed. He was a stooped old man, but he had more energy than a sixty-year-old body, let alone an eighty-five-year-old one. It was a blow to us all when he went, even though we had sense enough to know he was likely to go first. The oldest of us sit together in the front pew, a reminder to everyone in that church that one of us will likely be next to travel on the sea back to the Promised Land.
Since Mr. Baker died, Odell has taken up his work, standing to the back of the church greeting folks and giving out hugs; only today he takes Mr. Baker’s seat by the wall in the front of the church. He’s mad. There ain’t no reason he can’t help from where we sit, but he needs distance from me. He wants to act the child, let him.
Sue Ann stands up and sings “His Eye Is on the Sparrow” to start the service. It’s an old song, one I was born knowing. Her voice is as sweet and clear as the bird itself. Her girl, Comfort, dances alongside her mama, and soon folks is swept up with the same abandon as the child. One by one they stand and sway, Odell, too, but I got no use for dancing. When the song’s done, Preacher steps to the pulpit to deliver the word.
Gertrude
Mama and Daddy sang in the choir when Berns and me were small, so we sat alone during service. I bothered Berns to no end with my wiggling, so Mama asked Miss Thompson to sit in the pew alongside us to make me mind. She sat on one side of me with Berns on the other so they could corral me. Miss Thompson had no husband or children of her own and she was kind to me. She’d bring a pencil and paper for me to draw and write on during that long hour. I never listened to the sermons but I did understand I was in God’s house, so I figured whatever my prayers might be, if I wrote them down and left them somewhere in His house, He would know where to find them. I wrote down many prayers and hid them throughout the church, trusting God would read each one.
One Sunday the Reverend spoke of Matthew 9:22, “‘Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, Take heart, daughter, for your faith has made you well.’”
I was drawing at the time but I remember him saying, “I want to talk today about the prayers of a child.”
Then he pulled from an envelope all the prayers I wrote, and he read them one by one for everyone to hear and showed each for them to see. Then he asked me to stand, making public what I thought private. Though my parents looked at me with pride, I was ashamed and never did it again.
Though I haven’t been back to this church since I married Alvin, some of the people here today are old enough to remember me from that long ago time. Old enough to remember how Mama and Daddy helped with the church, old enough to remember me and Berns getting confirmed at twelve years old. But I find no memory of them in my mind. These people don’t care about me, and I don’t care about them. I’m just here to make right what ain’t. After today, my youngest, like their sisters, will have their place in heaven.
Near the end of worship service, I stand and say to the same Reverend who married off Lily, “My two youngest daughters, Alma and Mary, have yet to be baptized.” My family stands alongside me like how we practiced. Everybody likes baptisms, even at the end of a long sermon. Baptisms send people into the rest of their day like they’ve renewed a vow they’re happy to keep. The Reverend calls us forward, and Berns leads us out of the pew to the front of the church.
We face the Reverend with our backs to the people. Edna stands to my right, Marie and Berns to the left. I hold Mary and Alma by the shoulder in front of me. They listen to what the Reverend says, holding hands in their matching blue dresses with little white collars. Edna is in the brown of Mrs. Walker’s everyday dress, and I’m in the black of the other. It took me two days to sew the dresses, and all of yesterday to finish them. Though the girls are shoeless, we are clean and presentable enough to stand before God.
“It’s an honorable thing when we dedicate our children back to God,” Reverend says. “And an honorable thing when parents are willing to promise the child, or in our case here today, children, these two little girls, to their Maker.”
He looks at me and says like he’s God’s own personal messenger, “When you surrender your children back to God, you are promising to raise them up in the way of God so one day they will be a servant to Him. That’s what baptizing is all about.”
Retta
“Brothers and Sisters, walk with me to the Bible.”
Bobo calls out, “We’re here, Lord.”
The Preacher looks up and says, “When Jesus sought out Thomas eight days after He was resurrected, it was because Thomas doubted Jesus. Doubted what his brothers had told him was true. Thomas doubted.”
“Amen,” is whispered as folks settle into the spirit.
The heat in the room is almost intolerable. Mabel’s passed her cardboard fans down the row. I’m grateful for the relief.
Preacher says, “Jonah himself doubted when he ran from God. We all know how that turned out.”
“Yessir, we sure do.”
“What does the Bible tell us about Jonah,” he asks us, “huh? What’s it say? The Lord’s word came down upon Jonah and the Lord told Jonah, to go, where?”
“Ninevah,” we tell him. We know our Bible.
“That’s right. Why’d he need Jonah to go to Ninevah?”
Sister Myrtis calls out, “To put a stop to their wickedness.”
Myrtis’s whole head turned gray by the time she was thirty years old. Said it was her children that did it. Since her husband, Bobo, wouldn’t raise a hand to them, it was she who ran after them every time they made trouble. Finally she made them children cut their own switch off the tree. The long march to the apple tree and back is what set them straight, and I told her so.
“To put a stop to their wickedness,” Preacher says. “God saw a problem and sent His servant to fix it. But Jonah didn’t want to go, did he?”
“No, sir, he didn’t.”
“He ran,” a child shouts.
“That’s right, child! He ran away from God. He took a ship out to sea in the opposite direction of where God told him to go. So God sent a terrible, powerful storm. The ship was tossed on the waves and looked to be lost, but Jonah knew what the others on the ship did not.”
I wonder if Odell remembers that tomorrow he takes leave of me, if that has crossed his thoughts. Maybe he’s eager for it.
“Jonah knew it was because of him God sent the storm. He could not bear to have all of his brothers on the ship lose their life because of him, for they were on the sea a good while, and he had come to know these men as men do who travel long distances together. Ain’t that right, Brother Bootles?”<
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“That’s right, Preacher,” Odell says back.
“Jonah told the men to toss him into the sea so their lives could be spared. They were afraid but did as he asked, and what happened?”
“The sea was calmed,” we say.
“The sea was calmed. A giant fish came to Jonah and what did that fish do, children?”
“Swallowed him,” they cry out.
He laughs, pleased with our young. “Swallowed him up whole. That’s what happened. The Bible tells us so. Ain’t that right?”
“That’s right.”
“Jonah made a promise to God that if he lived, he would do as God asked and go to Ninevah. He would tell the people there that God was displeased with their wickedness. God heard him. And what did that fish do? Children?”
“Spit him out,” they holler.
And all the parents holler back, “That’s right, that’s right.”
“Even though he was afraid, Jonah went to Ninevah, he followed what God wanted him to do, he reached for God in his fear and doubt. A lot of times when we go through our problems or circumstance, that’s when the devil has us. You hear what I’m saying?”
“Yes, sir,” we answer.
“I seen and I heard people say they locked Jesus out of their lives when He did not come when they wanted Him. He saw my hurt and my pain and my loss, but He did not come like Preacher said, or like the Bible said, so I gave up on Jesus. I’m within now. My doors are shut and He is on the out. But just ’cause you give up on Him, don’t mean He’s given up on you!”