by Deb Spera
This house sits in a tunnel of wind. The floors rise and buck beneath my feet. Every wall rattles. The windows in the bedrooms are open. The girls must not have known what was coming until it was upon them. Hail spills through and balls of ice lie melting in puddles alongside my bed, spreading from one to the other to form a tiny river that disappears between the floorboards into the hidden space below where Mrs. Walker’s letter and eight dollars sit. Maybe someone will find them and do the right I couldn’t.
When I step away from our house and into the road toward the Coles family’s plantation, I am blown sideways and struggle to stay on my feet. My chest is gripped so tight it hurts to breathe. Fat, cold rain hits like hard rocks. When I come up the back walk to the kitchen, I nearly knock, then remember to knock is to ask. I am not here to ask. I come to lay claim. The door is locked, so I knock out the glass with the butt of my rifle, reach through and turn the knob.
The kitchen is empty and dark. No sound comes from within the house. To the right is a room and in it a single bed with a white crocheted cover. Behind another door is a pantry, a room as big as where my daughters sleep, filled with rows and rows of food in jars with bright gold lids stacked neat in straight lines—enough here to last for years. Past the kitchen is the dining room where hurricane shutters are closed and locked, but in the dim light I see fine china and uneaten food on the table. My stomach turns at the sight.
Through the dining room is the finest parlor I’ve ever seen. A sofa covered in deep blue velvet faces two high-back chairs as fine as thrones, drenched in the same cloth. Between them on a round mahogany table sits a crystal vase filled with bright white turkey feathers, so clean you got to wonder about the bird they come from. The howl of the wind is mixed with the sound of my raggedy breath, nothing more. My girls ain’t never been without sound. Even in their quiet I know where they are. I try to holler up the stairs from the foyer, they got to be hiding somewhere, but am felled by the grip on my chest. I lean to cough up the deep mucus that clogs my throat, but I cannot. I pound my chest and push my stomach to get it up and out, but only a piece comes out. The whole of it will not leave.
I rest on a velvet chair and close my eyes. My head throbs. How nice it would be to sit, to live, to eat here and to never want for nothing. I let go of Berns’s gun, and it falls to the carpet, making only a muted thump. Resting my head against the side of the chair, my hair falls across my eyes. It is filled with living things. When I raise my hand to see what has come to feast, I find it covered in ants. Something bigger moves to the corner of the room. I am being watched.
“Help me,” I say turning in its direction.
Then I see him, Alvin, crouched and waiting. I reach for the gun but am too sick and too slow. The cold of the steel touches my fingertips, too late—he leaps from his hiding place and is upon me. I fight best I can for I know his plan. He will take me first and then our children. I cannot save them. They are their father’s prey now.
27
Retta
Me, Miss Annie and these three children been sittin’ in the dark on the dirt floor of the root cellar for the whole of the night and still there’s no sign of this storm weakening. The kerosene in the lantern is getting low. Miss Annie’s white face glows yellow in the light. She’s in pain, I know from how she holds her mouth, rigid, but she don’t complain. The shelves in the cellar hold wood boxes filled with turnips, beets and carrots. Cabbage heads hang along the wall. In this light they look human. This storm is coming off the east from the ocean. I seen enough in my lifetime to know it’s got to run itself out ’til it can’t go no further. Each county past us will be hurt less than the one before. By the time it gets to Odell, I pray it will be no more than an afternoon shower.
When we first come down to the cellar Edna cried for the darkness of it so I lit the lantern to calm her, and Miss Annie said, “We are completely shielded, there is no need for tears. Nothing can hurt us here.”
Mary and Alma crawled up next to her until one by one they fell into slumber with their heads in her lap. All night Miss Annie patted their backs and stroked their heads. Neither of us has slept, and we stopped talking hours ago. There ain’t nothing to say. We both know what’s been exposed. Now we got to sit with it through the storm.
My grandmother kept a place for runaway slaves under her cabin floor. It was dug out just big enough for three people to hide. When I was a little girl she showed me. Mama didn’t like that. Wanted me only to have memories of freedom. Said I was too young to be told such terrible things.
“How she going to know how bad things can be in life if she don’t got nothing to compare it to?” Grandmother asked.
Grandmother told me later she kept one colored man in that hole for almost a year ’til folks finally give up looking for him. White folks wanted him dead for a crime he didn’t do, so he sat there and waited for his chance at freedom. That’s a long time to live in a hole in the ground for a notion you only heard about. Finally Grandmother told him he couldn’t live there no more, but by then he was too afraid to leave.
“Listen to what I tell you,” Grandmother said to me. “If you reach a point in life where it feels there is only dark around you, that’s ’cause there is. You got to find the light. A hole can be a haven, but you can’t stay in a hole forever. What’s dark must come to light. Every person needs the sun.”
Edna fidgets in her sleep and wakes with a scream. Her sisters jump from their deep sleep and remember where they are. They sit upright in the dim light and stretch.
“You’re all right,” I tell Edna. “You’re safe.”
She breathes heavy like she can’t catch her breath.
“My ears hurt,” she says.
“Mine, too,” Mary says.
“Just the pressure from the storm. We’re coming to the eye,” Miss Annie explains.
Alma asks, “Is this what it feels like to be a caterpillar in a cocoon?”
“I expect so,” Miss Annie says.
“That’d make us butterflies,” Alma says.
Mary stands and raises her hands above her head and brings them down like wings.
“My ears are gonna bust. I got to get out of here,” Edna says and stands so fast she hits her head on the low ceiling above.
“We need to wait ’til the wind dies down,” Miss Annie says.
“Then we can take a stretch before we settle in for the rest of what’s coming,” I add.
“We been in here a long time. I got to get out,” she says and runs for the steps. We both try to stop her, but she is young and quick. She pushes the door above our heads, and the wind catches and flings it open. She is out in the storm before I can reach her. The wet comes in on our heads. Mary tries to come up behind me, but Miss Annie pulls her back by her dress. Alma yanks her sister from Miss Annie, who looks stricken by their betrayal.
“Stay here! I’ll get her,” I shout above the noise. “Ya’ll got to help me with the door.” Then I am up and out in the storm. It’s morning. Palmetto trees bend sideways in wind that nearly knocks me over. The rain hits my body so hard it’s sure to leave marks. I wrench the metal handle up from the ground and push my whole body against it. Miss Annie grasps the handle with her good hand, and with Alma’s help they pull it closed. Across the fields the tobacco barn is in ruins. Boards hang and sway from the frame like wind chimes. The land is changed in the hours since we been underground. The damage done here will take years to rebuild. Only the house remains the same.
Edna squats against the side of the house relieving her bladder. The sky flashes bright with lightning. One arm’s thrown over her head, and the other hikes up her skirt. I march through the wind and mud. When I get to Edna she climbs up me like a cat trying not to drown. I wrap my arm around her waist, and we hold on to one another so we don’t blow away. We scoot around the side of the house and tumble through the open kitchen door like we’ve been pushed from be
hind. There is broke glass on the floor, and the whole of the kitchen is wet with rain and tracked with mud that leads out the kitchen and into the room beyond. Somebody is here.
“Are we going to die?” Edna asks me between sobs.
“Listen to me.” I give her a little shake with both hands about the shoulders. “We’re coming to the center of the storm. The back half will be as bad as the front but no worse. Ain’t none of us gonna die today.”
Edna rights her shoulders, then wipes the tears from her face with the back of her hands, though it does no good. We are drenched to the bone. I strike a match against the box on the stove and light the lantern that hangs from the wall. The room brightens.
“Go in yonder to my room. In the closet are towels. We got to get dry. I’m gonna fetch some aspirin from the washroom for Miss Annie’s hand, and get more blankets.”
I follow the mud through the door, and the smell rises to meet me as I come through the dining room. Death has a smell that once you’ve had it in your nose, you never forget. I hold the light before me so I can see the path. I hear the wheeze and rattle of breath. I know that sound with a mightiness that takes me back many years. I lift the lantern, and light is shed to the deepest corners where I find Gertrude standing with a rifle in the corner of the parlor like a trapped animal. Her eyes are glassy with sickness. It’s a wonder she can stand.
She moves her lips over and over, saying, “My girls.”
“You got fever,” I say. She lifts the gun she’s holding at her side, cocks back the hammer and aims it at me. I lay the lantern on the coffee table, lower my hands and tell her the girls are safe. But she don’t let go of her aim. Outside the wind quiets and the gray light of morning moves through the slats of the hurricane shutters, brightening the room as it travels across the floor. We will have a dangerous calm soon with no way of knowing how long it will last.
“Need my girls,” she says through two rough breaths.
“Edna, come in here, honey,” I yell to the other room. When Edna comes through the swinging door rubbing her head dry with a towel, I say, “Come slow, girl.”
She lowers her towel and stands stock still—like a deer who’s heard an unexpected sound. “Your mama’s here, and she ain’t feeling good.”
Edna jumps and, despite what I say, runs across the room. I lay my hand out in front of me so she knows to mind. She takes heed and stops, then comes around the corner easy.
Gertrude grasps the wall with one hand to steady herself when she sees Edna.
“Mama,” Edna cries and tries to run to her mother, but I catch her by the arm and pull her back.
“Don’t go near her, child. You’ll catch your death.”
Gertrude sways and tries to speak, but her cough comes up rich and phlegmy. She is strangling on herself. The rattle in her chest is loud and harsh. In the bleached morning light, blackness rises like steam from her mouth.
She says to Edna, “Sisters.”
“She wants Alma and Mary, honey,” I say. “You need to go fetch your sisters.”
Edna looks at me panicked. “I’m scared to go back out there.”
“Listen to the wind,” I tell her. “You hear how the storm is quieter? We’re coming to the center. Run now and fetch your sisters while there’s time. Your mama needs to see them.”
Edna takes another look at her mama, then runs to do our bidding. I step toward Gertrude, and she slides along the wall, dropping the gun to her waist. The girl works for every breath she takes, and I am all at once struck by a memory from long ago. It comes clear as day, like somebody reached in and pulled it to the front of my eyes. Gertrude’s mother, Lillian Caison, is before me now, wild-eyed and naked with fear.
Gertrude’s chest heaves.
“Your mama’s in the room with us,” I say.
Gertrude looks past and around me but can’t see what I can. Don’t know what I know. It was winter when Lillian Caison come running up out of the woods naked, scared as could be. She was all scratched up from running through bramble. I don’t know how long she’d been loose. Her mind was long broken with something none of us could see. I heard about what was happenin’ to her. By then her husband was tying her to the furniture to keep her from running naked about the town. She’d done it twice before, but on this day it was me she found and ran to me with arms outstretched, screaming and crying with such fright.
“My children ain’t my children no more,” she cried.
I dropped what I was carrying and caught her with both arms. She held on to me shaking with fear.
“What is it?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”
“Demons have gathered in their souls,” she shrieked for the world to hear.
Miss Lillian was terrified of what she thought was happening to her children. It was real as the day to her. By then I had lost my own child and knew what it was to be mad with that kind of fear and pain.
The old grandfather clock in the parlor ticks from one second to the next. Loud enough that I realize the wind has nearly disappeared.
Gertrude whispers, “Mama?”
“That’s right,” I tell her. “Did you know your mama and me was pregnant at the same time?”
She listens.
“You’re an October baby like my daughter, Esther. Pregnancy suited your mama, same as it did me. Not everybody goes easy for the whole nine months, but your mama and me was lucky that way. Oh, she couldn’t wait to have you. I could tell. She rubbed her belly like she was aiming to tame you.”
Gertrude’s eyes fill up and spill over her face. I step closer.
“We found ourselves running into each other all the time, though we never did plan it that way. One day right about this time of year we was both tending to our shopping. Oh, it was hot and us both so big and ready to pop like milkweed in August. By that time I’d get winded after just a few steps. Did you get that way when you had your babies?”
Gertrude nods and I come closer.
“I was past my time for the baby to come and I knew if I sat down that day I’d likely not get up, so I leaned against an old stone fence so I could catch my breath. When I looked down Main Street, there was your mama opposite me, not three yards away, doing the same thing. We caught each other’s eye and laughed so hard I couldn’t hold my bladder. It spilled over right there on the street. We were at the mercy of our daughters even before we met them.”
Gertrude opens her mouth and lets out a moan. I take another step to her, but the rush of energy that comes through the back door shakes her from the state she’s in. The blackness gathers around, and she tilts her head to listen, focusing on the sound of footsteps moving through the house toward us. She stiffens and lifts the gun, taking aim at the doorway where her children will enter, and I am all at once struck with a terrible knowing of what she aims to do.
“Stop! Your mother is in this room.”
Gertrude swings the gun to me, but what strength she has to stand is lost. She falls sideways against the end table and shatters Miss Annie’s crystal vase that holds turkey feathers. They fly through the air. The gun falls and discharges, though I can’t see where. The children scream from the dining room, and I run to catch Gertrude and lay her on the floor.
“Retta?” Miss Annie calls.
“Don’t come in here.”
Gertrude struggles to breathe through all that clogs her swollen throat. Seeing her so stricken makes my heart tender for what I know is happening. As surely as I am a mother without a child, Gertrude’s girls are soon to be without their mother.
* * *
When my daughter died I missed a thousand things about her. She was all sass. As soon as she could talk she would tell anybody what she thought about anything. She had her mind made up by the time she was two years old and didn’t mind sharing it. It worried Odell how she used her tongue to say what she thought. But I told him it would serve her.
She could see the wrong in a person before they could see it in themselves. She knew. I expect she could see things the way I do—maybe stronger. Had she lived she would have been a force in Shake Rag. When she was no more than four years old, I was giving her a bath in the kitchen, and she was washing her baby doll doing just like I did her.
She asked me, “Was you a baby once?”
“I sure was,” I told her.
“Daddy, too?”
“That’s right.”
“Where’s your mama?”
“She’s gone to be with the Lord.”
“Are you going to be with the Lord?”
“Someday, but no time soon.”
“Am I going to be with the Lord?”
“Not for a long time.”
“Is it nice there?”
“Nicer than anything we know.”
“I want to be with the Lord.”
“No, child,” I said. “Don’t say that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I want you here with me.”
“I’m here, Mama,” she said patting my arm. “Don’t worry. I’m right here.”
When she got sick she asked me if she was going to be with the Lord. I told her no, and she said, “You don’t have to lie, Mama.”
Even with her dying breath I told her she was going to be fine. I didn’t have the courage to tell her the truth. As mothers, don’t we owe our children the truth? I ought to have had more strength, but I didn’t. My girl looked at me with such fright. Maybe I could have calmed her with the idea of heaven, but I couldn’t let go. In the end it was her that let go of me, and I never found her again. Lord knows I looked in every place I could think to look. I looked at the stars ’til my eyes burned when I shut them. I looked in the garden when the plants crept up from the ground, and I looked to my dreams but my sleep left me. The veil over my eyes grew dark. All the light in the world was gone.