Blackwater: The Complete Caskey Family Saga

by Michael McDowell

  “Surveying for what?” asked Sister.

  “Well, for the levee of course,” said Oscar. Elinor put down her fork with a clatter.

  . . .

  Oscar knew nothing about pregnancy except that it required nine months. So he calculated the birth of his daughter nine months from the day Elinor told him he was going to be a father, as if she had been impregnated the night before and somehow knew it. He was overjoyed to learn that he would have to wait only seven months—his daughter (of that he was certain, for Elinor had said it) would be born in May.

  That night, while Elinor was undressing and Oscar was rising from his prayers at the side of the bed, he said, “Elinor, I think you ought to give up the school.”

  “I won’t do it,” returned Elinor.

  “You’re pregnant!”

  “Oscar,” she said, “do you think that I want to sit in this house all day long with Miss Mary-Love perched on one shoulder and Sister perching on the other?”

  “No,” he admitted, “I suspect you wouldn’t be partial to that.”

  “Oscar,” said Elinor, going over and drawing back the curtain so that the moon could shine into the room, “it is time we moved into our new house.” She raised the screen and leaned out the window. Looking to her left, she could see the house that had been built for her: large, square, and stolid, rising from a pitted lake of shining sand, with the dark pine forest sighing softly behind it.

  “Oscar,” Elinor went on, “that house was our wedding present. We have been married for six months and we are still living in the room you had as a little boy. Every time I hang up a dress I see your old toys in the back of the closet—they’re still there, and I don’t have anywhere to put my shoes! The house next door has sixteen rooms and not a single person in any one of them.” She got into bed.

  “Mama will be lonesome when we go,” Oscar ventured.

  “Mama will have Sister,” snapped Elinor. “Mama will be able to look out her window—without even getting out of her bed—and see if we are up and stirring in the morning. Mama can lean out the back door and shake her mop in my face. Oscar, we’re not going to the end of the earth. We’re moving thirty yards away. And what you got to remember is, I’m going to have a baby. We’re going to need that house.”

  “I know it,” said Oscar uncomfortably. “And I’ll talk to Mama.” A thought suddenly occurred to him. He turned on his pillow and looked into his wife’s face. “Elinor, let me ask you something. Did you get pregnant just so we could move out of this house?”

  “I would do anything to get you out of this house, Oscar. I would go to any length,” replied Elinor, then turned over and went to sleep.

  Oscar talked to Mary-Love, but she wouldn’t hear of his leaving her. Mary-Love objected that the house wasn’t furnished yet; Mary-Love declared that there were bats upstairs and Bray hadn’t been able to kill them; Mary-Love pointed out that before Oscar and Elinor moved into the house, she’d have to find them at least two colored women to work there, and every decent colored woman in Perdido was already taken. Elinor was pregnant and shouldn’t have to run a house all by herself, going up and down stairs all day, worrying about linens and cushions. And to make certain that Elinor and Oscar did not move one day when she was out of the house for a few hours—in remembrance and imitation of the circumstances of their wedding—Mary-Love made surreptitious visits to the water board and the Alabama Gas and Power Company and forced them to promise not to turn on the water, electricity, and gas before she gave her written consent.

  Oscar gave in. “I cain’t fight Mama,” he told his wife with a despairing sigh. “She’s always got one more argument than I have. And Lord, Elinor, the only thing she wants in this world is to take care of you while you are pregnant! I don’t know why you don’t sit back and enjoy it!”

  “There is not room to sit back in this house, we are so cramped!”

  “There is room enough here,” said Oscar mildly. “Elinor, we will go next door just as soon as our little girl is born. Listen, you know that little room behind the kitchen?”

  “I know the one you mean.”

  “I was thinking we might put up a cot in there and make Zaddie sleep there all the time. Keep you company, keep care of our little girl. Zaddie loves you to death, and I know she’d like nothing more in the world than to come live with us.”

  This was a large concession. If that innocent and salutary arrangement came to pass, Zaddie Sapp would be the only black in the entire length and breadth of Baldwin County—the largest, though not the most populous county in the entire state—to live in a white household.

  “I think that’s a good idea,” said Elinor with a grimace, “but, Oscar, let me tell you something. I’m not won over. I’m not going to let you buy me off with promises about Zaddie’s sleeping arrangements. I think we ought to go next door, and I think we ought to go next door tonight!”

  “There aren’t even any sheets on the bed!”

  “I will go to Caroline DeBordenave and borrow them if I have to!” cried Elinor.

  “We cain’t do that,” said Oscar.

  “You can’t do it,” Elinor corrected. “You can’t go against Miss Mary-Love. That’s all.”

  “Then you talk to her,” said Oscar. “You stand up to her.”

  “It’s not my place,” said Elinor. “I refuse to be accused for the rest of my life of taking you away from Miss Mary-Love.”

  So Elinor and Oscar remained in Mary-Love Caskey’s house for the entire term of Elinor’s pregnancy. Despite Mary-Love’s remonstrances, Elinor still rowed Bray’s little green boat to the school every morning with Grace perched in the prow, and she didn’t miss a day for sickness. Mary-Love and Sister knitted baby clothes and went to Mobile to pick out a set of nursery furniture. Ominously, however, when this suite was delivered, Mary-Love had it placed not next door, but in a spare bedroom of her own home. When Oscar returned from the mill that afternoon, Elinor took him upstairs, opened the door of that room, and pointed at the wicker bassinet that was still wrapped in brown paper—but she didn’t say a word.

  “When the time comes,” Oscar promised in a low voice, “I will put down my foot.”

  The time came sooner than anyone expected. After school, on the twenty-first day of March, Grace Caskey stood on the mooring dock while Elinor tied the boat to the iron ring of the outermost piling. Grace gave Elinor a hand and helped her up onto the weathered pine planks of the dock. This was an awkward operation on account of Elinor’s extended belly. Elinor put a hand to her forehead, closed her eyes for a moment, and said, “Grace, will you do something for me?”

  Grace said, “Yes, ma’am.”

  Elinor said, “Go tell Roxie to fetch the doctor. Then run over to Miss Mary-Love’s and have Ivey turn down my bed.”

  Grace hesitated. “Are you sick?” she asked in a trembling voice.

  “Grace,” said Elinor with a weak smile, “I am about to have my little girl!”

  Grace ran off, as excited as she had been on the day that Miss Elinor got married.

  . . .

  Two hours later, Elinor Caskey—with Sister holding her left hand and Ivey Sapp holding her right and Mary-Love mopping her brow—was delivered of a three-pound little girl. The child was so small that for two months she had to be carried around the house in the hollow of a feather pillow. By Elinor’s decree and Oscar’s consent, she was to be called Miriam Dammert Caskey.

  Chapter 12

  The Hostage

  Miriam didn’t look like Elinor; she took after Oscar and all the other Caskeys. This fact alone would have endeared her to Mary-Love, even had Miriam not been the first of her grandchildren. She had the Caskey hair, hair that was no color at all, and the Caskey nose, which wasn’t quite straight but certainly couldn’t have been said to be hooked or bulbous or too little or too extreme in its formation or size.

  Miriam had been born on Monday. Zaddie took a note to Miz Digman’s house that evening to say Elinor wouldn’t be at
school the following morning, but hoped to return on Wednesday. And Elinor did return on Wednesday, though Mary-Love cried in protest, “You are leaving your two-day-old baby alone!”

  “Not exactly alone,” remarked Elinor. “In this house there are you and Sister here and Ivey. Next door are Zaddie and Roxie. If the five of you can’t handle it, then call up Oscar—he’ll be coming by here five times to look in on her, anyway.”

  “I would have thought,” said Mary-Love, “that you would have been going to give up your class.”

  “But I’m not, though,” said Elinor. “What would Miz Digman think of me! What would my Indians think!”

  “But poor old Miriam...” cried Mary-Love.

  “Miriam is two days old, like you said,” Elinor pointed out. “She doesn’t know me from the man in the moon. Sister, you go in my room and open my closet door and put on one of my dresses—you pretend you’re me when you’re leaning over the crib.”

  In the months following Miriam’s birth, Elinor did not press her husband in the matter of his promise. Miriam was tiny—was there ever a child who was tinier?—and wanted much attention on account of her size and general frailty. The baby had very white skin beneath which, on all parts of her body, you could see a delicate tracing of blue veins. She scarcely ever seemed to cry, and Ivey said confidingly of this phenomenon to Roxie, “That child don’t have enough breath to go around—breathe and cry too. That child just cain’t do it, and if she sees the other side of two years of age, why I will toss her directly across the Perdido River and let Bray catch her on the other side!” Roxie tended to agree.

  Four rolled blankets were placed in the bassinet in the bedroom that lay between Oscar and Elinor’s room and Sister’s. Within that rectangle of security lay Miriam all night long, quiet and unmoving, and Sister—who had specially asked for the privilege of administering the two o’clock feeding—often had to wake the baby for it. But sometimes, turning on a soft lamp in the corner and creeping over to the bassinet, Sister would find the little girl looking up at her with a tiny smile, as if saying, Sister said, Oh, Sister, you cain’t sneak up on me!

  Miriam grew quickly and increased in strength. Sister and Mary-Love, who were there at the house all day long while Elinor was at the school, quickly began to think of the baby as their own and to resent, the least little bit, Elinor’s hour or so with her in the late afternoon. They would snatch Miriam away from Oscar, whom they considered insufficiently schooled in the ways of handling undersized infants.

  “Lord, Mama,” Oscar protested, “I ought to know as much about it as Sister!”

  “You don’t!” cried Sister. “Oscar, I can just see you dropping that child head-first on the floorboards...”

  Oscar thought himself happy. He had a baby girl who was very pretty and very well behaved—he told James he thought they could have taken Miriam to morning service and she wouldn’t have made a peep. And Elinor seemed to be satisfied with the arrangement—she no longer thought of moving into the house next door, or if she thought about it, she no longer mentioned it. Miriam had changed all that, Oscar was sure. Elinor needed Mary-Love and Sister to take care of the baby while she was teaching. “I know Elinor loves Miriam to the bottom of her toes,” he confided to James, “but I’m not so sure Elinor wants to take care of Miriam twenty-four hours a day. And that’s exactly what Mama and Sister want to do!”

  Oscar, however, had erred in this interpretation. He found it out on the Sunday that Miriam was christened. It was the middle of May and the weather was hot and the Caskeys were sweltering in their pew. Mary-Love leaned across Sister every two minutes, and with her handkerchief wiped the perspiration from Miriam’s tiny brow as she lay quietly in Elinor’s arms. Between the pastoral prayer and the sermon Oscar and Elinor and Miriam were called to the front of the church and the service of baptism was read over Miriam Dammert Caskey. The preacher lifted the mahogany cover of the silver baptism basin—a gift of Elvennia Caskey many years before—and was about to dip her fingers into the water to sprinkle the infant’s head, when she stopped in consternation.

  Oscar looked down into the basin. The water that filled it was muddy and red.

  The preacher whispered: “Oscar, I don’t know how...”

  “Go ahead!” Elinor said with a smile. “It’s just old Perdido water.”

  The preacher gingerly dipped her fingers in the water and flicked it over Miriam’s brow. The child smiled up at her mother.

  After the service the family all had dinner together at Mary-Love’s, and in honor of the occasion everyone remained in his Sunday clothes. As the ham was going around in one direction and a plate of ground-beef patties in the other, Elinor said: “School is over in one week and two days.”

  “I know you must be glad,” said James. “I know it’s hot up there in that classroom—you got the sun shining in all afternoon long.”

  “That’ll be on Tuesday week,” went on Elinor, unmindful of the interruption. “And I got to be there on Wednesday to check in books. So Thursday week,” she said, looking up and all around the table, “Oscar and Miriam and I will be moving in the new house...”

  Hell broke loose. Sister was so upset that she didn’t eat another bite. Mary-Love in her distress attacked her plate and consumed in a few moments twice what she normally would have eaten in the course of an entire day. Oscar pleaded, “Oh, y’all, please, let’s talk about this later.” James sent Grace out of the room. Ivey and Roxie stood listening on the other side of the kitchen door.

  “I’m not going to say a word about it,” said Elinor. “There is nothing to talk about. That house next door is Oscar’s and mine and we intend to move into it. That house was our wedding present and it is just sitting there with sheets all over the furniture!”

  “Oh, who cares about that old place!” exclaimed Mary-Love, though she spoke of the largest and most expensively built house in the whole town. “We’re talking about Miriam! You cain’t carry that child over there!”

  “Why not?” demanded Elinor.

  “Who’s gone take care of her?” wailed Sister.

  “I intend to,” snapped Elinor.

  “You don’t know how!” cried Mary-Love. “Oscar, I forbid you to move your child out of this house. Miriam would shrivel up and die!”

  Miriam lay in a small crib in the adjoining room. Mary-Love rose precipitately and ran and picked the child up, comforting her and promising in whispers that she would never leave her grandmother. Sister got up too and caressed the baby as Mary-Love rocked it in her arms.

  “Every one of you can go on about this for as long as you want,” said Elinor. “But Oscar and I are going to leave this house.”

  “Why?” cried Mary-Love. “Why do you want to leave this house?”

  “Because I can’t stand it here!” said Elinor savagely from the table. “I am sick to my death of looking out the window every morning and seeing that great big house next door that’s supposed to be mine, except you keep it locked and you hide the keys from me! I am sick to death of tripping over you and Sister every time I want to look at my own child! I am sick to death of having my closets filled with dead people’s clothes! I am sick of having to report every little movement I make—where I’m going, what I’m doing, and who I’m doing it with. It’ll be bad enough to live right next door, with you and Sister waltzing in at every hour of the day, but at least there I can put hooks up so that you have to knock. Oscar is my husband, and Miriam is my baby, that is our house! And that is the reason Oscar and I are moving out!”

  “Elinor,” said Oscar, in despair.

  “Oscar,” said Mary-Love wildly, “you are not leaving this house with this darling child! You are not gone let that woman have the care and feeding of this precious infant!”

  “Mama, if Elinor feels—”

  “Elinor doesn’t feel!” cried Mary-Love, swinging the baby back and forth in her arms with such energy that Sister placed herself to catch Miriam should she be accidentally hurled out of th
at embrace. “That’s the whole point. She’s not a mother to this child! Sister and I are! You will be ruining this child if you take her away from us!”

  Elinor sat still with an expression of disgust on her face. She pushed away her plate. “Ivey,” she called out, “come on in here and clear off—nobody feels like eating any more!”

  Ivey came in with Zaddie behind her to clear off the table. In normal circumstances no one would have said a word before the servants—even though everyone was certain that those in the kitchen had heard every word—but these were not normal circumstances, and Mary-Love went on above the clatter of plates and silverware and glasses. “Oscar,” she said in a low, awful voice, “I forbid you to leave this house with Miriam.”

  “Mama,” said Oscar plaintively, “you promised Elinor and I could leave as soon as Miriam was born. And ’cause Miriam was so puny, Elinor was sweet enough—”

  Here Mary-Love snorted in contempt.

  “—to stay on for a few months and let you help take care of her. But now school’s over and Elinor’s gone be home all the time.”

  “What about the fall?” demanded Mary-Love. “What’s gone happen in September? Is Elinor gone hang Miriam on a hook on the porch while she’s down at the school?”

  “I’m not going back to teaching,” said Elinor quietly. “Edna McGhee doesn’t like Tallahassee after all. I told her she could have the fourth grade back.”

  “Doesn’t matter!” cried Mary-Love desperately. “You’re not gone have this child!”

  “We are leaving this house,” said Elinor calmly.

  Mary-Love handed the infant to Sister, who held Miriam close to her breast as if to protect her from the violence of Mary-Love’s and Elinor’s words. Mary-Love advanced to the table and stood behind her chair, grasping the back with white-knuckled fingers. “Go on then,” cried Mary-Love, “go next door with my blessing. I’ll give you the keys today. Sister, go get the keys! I’ll give you those keys this very minute and you can move over there this afternoon. I’ll give you candles and a kerosene lamp and Zaddie will fetch you water. Tomorrow, I’ll have the electricity and water and gas turned on. Ivey will carry over your clothes.”