by Kate Whitsby
“I’m tired,” he whispered into her ear.
“Don’t go to sleep now,” Alma told him. “It will be time to get up soon.”
He pulled back, but they still couldn’t see each other in the darkness. “What time do you think it is?”
“Look over there,” she replied. “You can see light coming through the crack under the door.”
“Don’t tell me we’ve been lying here awake all night,” he growled.
“What do you think we’ve been doing all this time?” she asked.
“Do you think anyone heard us?” Jude whispered.
“No,” she answered. “We didn’t make nearly as much noise as Papa snoring. You heard him in his chair, and then we heard him come over to bed and he started up again. It’s the same every night. Amelia and Allegra usually sleep right through it. If they didn’t, he surely drowned out any noise we made. But we didn’t make any.”
“I hope not,” Jude returned. “I wouldn’t be able to look them in the eye, if they had heard us.”
“Why not?” she asked. “We’re married. What do they think we’re doing in bed together? Telling stories?”
“You know what I mean,” he shot back. “It would be better if we had our own house.”
“And where are you going to build this house?” she asked. “And who are you going to get to help you build it? And where are you going to get the money to pay them? This is the way people live around here. Every family I know for a hundred miles in every direction has four or five generations living in one room under one roof.”
“I know,” Jude replied. “It’s just so…..”
“Poor?” she offered.
“I was going to say rustic,” he returned.
“What alternative do you suggest?” Alma asked.
“I guess I can’t suggest one,” he replied. “Because I don’t have one to suggest. I have a couple dollars in my wallet and the clothes on my back. I guess we’re stuck here.”
“Is it really so bad?” Alma asked.
Jude sighed “I guess I’ll become used to it in time. I guess I won’t be staying up all night with you forever. After today, I’ll be too tired. I’ll be used to sleeping with you in this tiny bed, and I’ll be more interested in rolling over and going to sleep than anything else. We’ll just have to figure out a way of sleeping here together without kicking each other out of bed.”
Alma giggled under the blanket. “I have to get up now. It wouldn’t do for the others to wake up first and find us still in bed together. I’ll get dressed and get the fire going and get breakfast made. Do you want to relax here for a while?”
“I’ll get up with you,” Jude told her. “There’s no sense layin’ around, wasting good daylight.”
Alma brought her face up out of the blankets. Jude stroked the hair away from her face, and they kissed long and leisurely. Alma drank the dew from his lips, the heady liquor of a man.
Some little noise outside the house put an end to it. Maybe it was a drop of moisture falling from the roof. Alma jumped a little when she heard it. Then she gave Jude one last peck on the cheek and hopped out of bed.
She changed into her work clothes in the closet. By the time she came out, Jude was standing in the middle of the room with his boots and hat and gun belt on. He smiled when he saw her.
“What?” she asked.
His eyes scanned her up and down. “You’re wearing your disguise.”
Alma gave him a kiss. “Don’t forget me.”
“I won’t forget,” Jude told her.
Alma smiled. “Then I can do what I have to do. As long as I know that you remember, I’ll be okay.”
She braided her hair and went to poke up the fire in the fireplace. The flames leapt up around the tinder as she mixed and patted out the dough for tortillas. Allegra woke up when Jude opened the door to go outside, and the next moment, the whole family burst into activity.
Allegra took a sip of water from a bucket in the corner, ran some of the water through her hair with her fingers, and stuck her hat on her head. She never did anything more to prepare herself for the day’s work, and she never changed her clothes. Alma didn’t even notice anymore. She gave up nagging her about it a long time ago.
Amelia changed her clothes behind the curtain and combed and braided her hair. She washed her face and rinsed out her mouth. Then she went outside and examined the sky. She followed the same routine every day, even in the height of summer, when the weather didn’t change and everyone knew it would be blasting hot and dry for months.
Their father went straight from his bed to his chair by the fire. Alma finished making the tortillas, and by the time she set them on the table, her sisters came back and sat down at the table.
Alma watched Allegra take a tortilla off the stack and stuff it into her mouth. She saw the meal unfolding as if for the first time. “Where’s Jude?” she asked.
Allegra glanced over her shoulder toward the door and balled her tortilla up inside her cheek. “I don’t know.”
“He just went out to the barn,” Amelia told her. “I just saw him go in there.”
“Someone should tell him we’re eating,” Alma suggested.
No one moved from the table.
She stared at them a moment longer. Then she left the house and went out to the barn. She found Jude brushing down his horse. “Breakfast is ready.”
“I’ll be right there,” he called over his shoulder.
“You better come now,” she told him. “There won’t be anything left in a minute or two.”
He turned around and stared at her. Then he dropped his brush and accompanied her back to the house.
When they got inside, Alma sat down at the table with her family and started eating the warm tortillas. Jude stopped halfway between the door and the table and observed them eating. He glanced at the stack of tortillas on the plate, then at his new in-laws eating them one after the other.
He looked at Alma sitting with them. Then he turned on his heel and strode out of the house.
Chapter 17