“The summers wan’t all bad, contrary to what you might be thankin’. Harvestin’ didn’t take but a few weeks; then Little Ed, Mary, ’Lis’beth, Thomas, Sarah—they’d all run out the house, headin’ to who knows where. Sometimes I’d see ’em in the woods ’hind the house, takin’ cover from the sun and heat—and from they mama.” Beatrice chuckled dryly. “By summer’s end, after spendin’ part of it workin’ in the fields and the rest of it outside playin’, they’d all look like little raisins, even Little Ed, who looked more like a banana than a grape at summer’s beginnin’. They paid a pretty price tryin’ to hide from me, but I guess they figured it was worth it.”
At her granddaughter’s expression she smiled, although there was little true humor in it. “Yeah, I knew they was tryin’ to get away from me. They hated bein’ out there in the sun, but they hated bein’ round me mo’. Cain’t say as I blame ’em ’cause I wan’t no fun to be round in them days.” She ignored her granddaughter’s snort.
When Evelyn finally spoke, she sounded far away to her grandmother, as if she had to muster all her courage to voice her thoughts. “So you didn’t really try to keep track of their whereabouts? They just ran wild?”
“Ran wild? No, they wan’t runnin’ wild. I knew where they was, gener’ly, and yo’ mama was always there, standin’ in the way tween me and the chillun. Takin’ care of ’em when I was down, especially after . . .” She shook herself to disentangle the tiny hands that wanted to hang on to her hemline and drag her back to those long-ago days. She wouldn’t have far to go; the pain was always nearby.
“’Lis’beth was meant to be a mama. I was there when she had Lionel. Graham was at work in Raleigh and couldn’t get there in time. The way she looked at that baby when he was born, like she couldn’t believe he was all hers and at the same time, like she wonted to give’m to me.” Beatrice cut her eyes at Evelyn. “The same way she looks at you now.”
Again Evelyn snorted.
“The same way I looked at . . .” Beatrice blinked up at the sun and swallowed. “. . . at Little Ed. Somebody was always ready to come back and tell me when he got into somethin’. ’Course you know he always been a thief.”
“Granny B!”
“Gal, I knew it from the beginnin’. Just by lookin’ at his hands. To be such a little thang, he had some big hands. When he was a baby, people used to say, ‘Man, look at them hands! My, yo’ baby got big hands!’ Somebody said he was either gon’ be a piano player or a thief—and you know we ain’t never had no piano.”
Evelyn laughed out loud.
“If it ain’t the truth, then you can knock me down right where I stand,” Beatrice asserted without a trace of a smile. She stood there feeling and looking like she was ready to fight. But then she moved her lips in the direction of a smile, melting away the tension like a scoop of ice cream on a hot sidewalk.
“By the time they made it back home, they was covered in dust and dirt, knees and elbows ashy and scratched from clambering through and over fences. It was by God’s grace and mercy they never got blood poisonin’, lockjaw, or somethin’ worse from all that rusty wire and broken glass. They’d be standin’ there with faces pressed up ’gainst my do’, hands over they eyes tryin’ to see through the rips in the screen, hopin’ they looked pitiful enough for me to let ’em in. They didn’t mind if I shooed ’em straight to washin’ up at the basin ’cause they just wanted to be inside, away from that blazin’ sun.”
Beatrice’s stories danced in the air between the two until at last the women turned onto Carrot Lane. It took them considerably longer to get back. She noticed Evelyn growing stiffer and sorer as the walk dragged on, barely keeping up with her own snail’s pace. At the door Evelyn collapsed on the top step, as hot, ashy, and sweaty as Beatrice’s children.
“I’ll brang you some ice water. Now hush, gal. I might as well po’ you up a glass while I get one for me.” Ignoring Evelyn as the girl half rose from her spot, Beatrice extracted her key from the front pocket of her blue- and gray-checkered housedress and opened the door.
She trudged into the house to get Evelyn water, but when she returned, she found her granddaughter asleep on the lounge chair—in practically the same position Beatrice had found her before their walk. “That chile, nuthin’ but a baby herself. Ain’t a bit of good.” She downed the water herself and headed back inside. There, she retrieved the electric window fan she kept behind her bed and set it up on the porch, aiming a soft whir in Evelyn’s direction. When she returned to the front room, she gathered her remaining dregs of energy, climbed onto the sofa, stretched out her legs, and promptly dozed off.
——————
More than an hour later Evelyn slowly swam up from sleep.
“Time to come in, gal. That’s enough rest for now.”
Evelyn stood lazily, yawning. Funny, Granny B always seems to know how much sleep I need or don’t need. All in all, she did feel refreshed, considering that morning’s thousand-mile trek. She stretched and yawned again and noticed that the sun rested lower in the sky. Evelyn opened the screen door and stepped into the front room, turning her back on Granny B’s neighbor working in her yard and the faint sounds of children arguing over a ball.
Evelyn ambled on through to the back of the house. She knew where she’d find Granny B. Expecting to see a bushel of raw vegetables that needed cutting, peeling, or shucking or yet another basket of laundry, she stopped short when she turned the corner into the kitchen and found Granny B sitting at an empty table—save for a familiar, oddly shaped brown box.
“What’s that?”
“Gal, quit talkin’ out the side of yo’ mouth and come sit down. We ain’t got time for you to play like you don’t know what this here is.”
“Why’s it here, Granny B?” Her heart thump-thumped in her chest. For Evelyn, that box represented the eruption of trouble in her life, much as Eve’s first taste of the forbidden fruit.
“Don’t start gettin’ nervous. I ain’t accusin’ you of nuthin’—not this time. I got somethin’ I need you to do for me.”
Evelyn spoke directly to the box. “Does this have anything to do with our conversation last night?”
“Yes, it do.” Granny B snapped her fingers in front of her granddaughter’s nose.
Trance broken, Evelyn’s eyes locked on her grandmother’s face. “How so?”
Granny B opened the box and removed a leather book held closed by a rubber band. She plunked it on the floor beneath her chair. Then she poured out the box’s contents. Letter upon letter slid onto the table.
Evelyn recognized the handwriting from the letter she still held hostage in her desk at home.
Granny B read as she stacked them, “Ed. Sarah. ’Lis’beth. Ruthena. Mary. Thomas.” She sighed. “Milton. . . . All these letters. I wonder what they would mean to the chillun to get a letter like this in the mail, just outta nowhere?”
Evelyn said nothing.
“Yeah, I just wonder.” Granny B’s fingers riffled through the small tower she’d created. “Well, what’s done is done.” She snapped back to the present and stood. “Hope an egg salad sandwich is enough for you. You ain’t gettin’ picky on me, being pregnant and all. I got apple slices and some juice to go ’long with it.” Granny B retrieved two plates Evelyn hadn’t noticed and set them on the table with a soft clink.
Despite her nervousness, Evelyn’s stomach rumbled. Obviously, egg salad still appealed to her and the baby. She reached for a half sandwich. “Thank you,” she murmured.
Granny B pushed aside her own plate along with her granddaughter’s appreciation. “I sat up in that room thankin’ a lot last night ’bout what you said, ’bout tellin’ ever’body what’s goin’ on. I asked myself, ‘Should I call? Should I get ’Lis’beth to drive me to ever’body’s house so I could tell each one in person?’ But I can’t really do that, can I?” Granny B looked up from the small pile of letters. “Mary live all the way over in Washington, and that ain’t no drive round the block. L
ittle Ed locked up, and I don’t fancy visitin’ him in no prison, seein’ him ’hind bars. Ain’t nobody got time for all them phone calls.”
She didn’t look at Evelyn as she spoke. Granny B’s eyes followed her fingers as they caressed each name before moving on to the next.
“After stayin’ up more’n half the night, I decided I would clean out my steamer. When I opened that trunk, there sat this box. I went to set it aside, but somehow . . . I knocked it over, and all these letters come flyin’ out. Went all over the place. And that’s what made me thank, ‘Beatrice, you can write your own letters.’ Nobody cain’t interrupt me while I’m sayin’ what I got to say, and I can save time and money. And then I thought that I might as well send these letters from that no-’count Henton, too, ’cause I guess it ain’t right that they won’t never see ’em, even if he dead and all. I’d either have to send ’em or burn ’em up. So . . . I guess they might as well read ’em. I mean, it won’t kill me, will it?” Granny B smiled stiffly.
“So you’re going to write everybody a letter and mail it with the letter from Granddaddy?” Evelyn couldn’t imagine Granny B sitting down to write a grocery list, let alone some heartfelt letter telling her children that she was dying. “Why haven’t you sent the letters before now?”
“No, I ain’t writin’ nuthin’. I’m leavin’ that to you. And wan’t nobody’s business before now.”
“Me? I thought you said you should be the one to tell them.”
“I will be the one. Will you just hush?” Granny B dug out her handkerchief and wiped beads of perspiration from her brow. “I been thankin’ ’bout how Henton got help writin’ his letters—he had to, ’cause I ain’t never seen him write more’n his name. Barely even that. So then I thought, ‘Bee, you can do the same. Put that worr’some girl to work.’ If you wont to, you can explain that you’re writin’ the letter, but that it’s really from me. You know, say it right at the very beginnin’. Get it out the way. Then, you just start talkin’—or writin’—usin’ my own words.”
Granny B jabbed a finger into the table. “Now, my words exactly, Ev’lyn. You can clean it up some, but other than that, you say what I wont you to say.” Granny B stared at Evelyn for a second. “You hear me?”
Evelyn nodded slowly. “I understand, Granny B. But do you think this is the same as telling them yourself? Isn’t this a little impersonal?”
“Impersonal? How much mo’ personal I got to be? I’m tellin’ ’em somethin’, truth be told, they don’t really have to know, but I figure I oughta. It’s gon’ be in my words, but I just wont them to understand exactly what I’m sayin’, and I know you can help me do that.”
“Okaaayy.”
“Listen, I don’t care if you agree or not. I just wont you to help me. Will you?”
Evelyn could see this meant a lot to her, and she was glad Granny B planned to share such a critical part of her life—her death—with the people whom she had effectively shut out for decades. “Of course, Granny B. I’ll help you in any way I can. You say you want me to include these, too?” She pointed to the letters on the table between them.
“But I don’t wont you to read these. These is private. They ain’t got nuthin’ to do with me. Or you neither.”
Has she noticed there’s one missing? “I know. You’re right. So when do we start this project? If we start now, we should be able to get them all done by this afternoon.” Evelyn lifted the lid on the empty box. “I don’t see any paper or—” Suddenly a familiar horn blew outside, and then Evelyn heard a car door slam. The hoopty?
Granny B walked toward the noise.
“What’s going on?” Evelyn raised her voice to get her grandmother’s attention. “Granny B?” Evelyn followed her to the front room. She suspected who it was but not why she was there.
“I called ’Lis’beth, and she come to pick you up. That’s her now.” After Granny B pulled her bags from the closet by the door, she turned to face Evelyn.
“But what about the letters? I thought you said—”
“You thank I’m gon’ say it in a sentence or two? It gon’ take me some time to get all my thoughts together. And we both know you got some business of yo’ own to straighten out ’fo’ you can help me get the wrinkles out of mine.” Granny B pushed open the door as her daughter ascended the steps. “’Lis’beth.”
Lis looked at Evelyn first, then at Granny B. “Hey. Y’all all right? I wasn’t expecting you to call about picking Evelyn up so soon.”
“I wasn’t expecting it either.” Evelyn retrieved her bags.
“I got those. Is everything okay? Something didn’t happen, did it?”
“Ain’t somethin’ always happenin’? We’s alive, ain’t we?” Granny B blocked her daughter from coming farther into the house and kept Evelyn right where she was. “But I got thangs to do, and this girl all right. She should be able to manage them stairs fine over at yo’ house, if that walk we took today mean anythang. So if y’all excuse me, I’m gon’ change those sheets on the beds. I’ll go ’head and latch this screen door after y’all so nobody cain’t come in.”
“Well, okay,” she answered as if she had a choice. “You know, I could have picked you up in the morning. I had to reschedule a consultation at the salon to come out here, Mama was so determined that I come right this moment.”
“You’ll have to take that up with her.” Evelyn stepped to the door, but not before sneaking in a peck on her grandmother’s cheek, something she rarely did in the past but planned to do more often while they still had her on this side of heaven. Evelyn waited until her mother had reached the front step before going through the door herself. “Granny B, I’ll see you soon?”
Granny B watched as Lis pranced to the car. She latched the screen door. Her eyes held Evelyn’s. “I be in touch.”
PART TWOThe Children
Chapter Eleven
ELISABETH, AGE 10
Beatrice said Elisabeth and her doll got on like a mother hen and her nest of eggs. Henton had fashioned Hattie Mae’s body from cotton ticking and scraps of cloth and her hair of tangled black yarn. The doll’s unblinking eyes, one stitched on higher than the other, convinced Elisabeth she could really see and feel the world.
Hattie Mae had no nose to speak of, and a single pink ribbon formed her mouth. No doubt about it, Hattie Mae was ugly, but she was Elisabeth’s baby. Hattie Mae didn’t talk back, give her orders, punch her, or steal her last spoonful of grits. Hattie Mae just maintained her same stoic expression, providing a pillow when Elisabeth’s pallet got too hard for her to stand at night.
“Gal, if you don’t put that doll down and get to scrubbin’ them flo’s . . . ,” her mama would growl. But Elisabeth wouldn’t put Hattie Mae down for anything. She would tuck her baby into the waistband of her skirt and get down on her hands and knees and scrub the floors or fold the laundry or clean the washroom. No matter the task, Elisabeth kept Hattie Mae close by.
But as much as Elisabeth loved Hattie Mae, she would have buried her in the backyard in the deepest hole she could find to get her hands on Suzy. Anytime Elisabeth got a chance, she walked slowly past the large storefront window, her eyes glued to Suzy’s silky blonde curls; her pert, perfectly centered nose; her pouty crimson lips that matched the merry blush in her cheek; her vapid blue eyes that invited you to love her, cherish her, and hold her dear. Elisabeth had never told anybody about her one-sided love affair with the soulless doll, and her desire for it had mushroomed because she couldn’t share it.
Unspoken perhaps, but her love for Suzy had not gone unnoticed. And one Saturday morning, Little Ed took great pleasure letting Elisabeth know just what he knew.
Elisabeth was sweeping the front yard. All the other Agnew children busied themselves with chores—everybody except Little Ed, who sidled up to Elisabeth as she scraped the hard-packed earth by the neighbor’s shrubs. Elisabeth sensed him watching her. From time to time, she shifted Hattie Mae to a spot under her waistband that wasn’t as hot and sticky.
Then suddenly, just a second after she forgot about Little Ed, he snatched Hattie Mae from her hideaway.
He held her aloft. “She sho’ is an ugly ol’ thang. ’Specially when she up against that white doll you really wont.” Little Ed wrinkled his nose, his delicate features scrunched up as he took a whiff of Elisabeth’s prized possession, her only possession. “And she stank, too. Don’t smell new like I bet that doll in the winda smell.”
Elisabeth dropped the rake and tried to reach for Hattie Mae, but Little Ed held her behind his back. “Now, hold on a minute, gal. What’s yo’ hurry?”
“Little Ed! Give me back Hattie Mae! I wan’t botherin’ you!” Elisabeth tugged on his right arm and then his left as he switched Hattie Mae from his right hand to his left and back again. “Little Ed—”
He had a slight frame and was two years younger, but he was wiry and lithe, and of course nobody could match him when it came to those hands of his. He flattened his palm and extended his fingers over Elisabeth’s nose. She smelled pine needles, sweat, and—What was that?—Sulfur8 before he sent her reeling. She lay there wishing the dirt would just swallow him up whole, right where he stood. Dirt to dirt and all that.
“Now that I got yo’ ’tention, you might wont to take me up on my offer.” Little Ed dangled Hattie Mae by a strand. Her eyes stared at Elisabeth. Her arms hung askew as she swayed back and forth, back and forth.
“What are you talkin’ about, Ed? And give me back baby Hattie!”
Little Ed threw the doll at Elisabeth as if Hattie Mae meant nothing to him—because she didn’t. “Girl, take that ol’ thang. But I could get you somethin’ better, let me tell you. Somethin’ like that doll—what’s her name? Sally? Sadie?” Little Ed turned and strolled away.
She stepped on one of Hattie Mae’s tiny arms to chase Little Ed. “It’s Suzy. What do you mean, you can get me Suzy?”
“It’s like I said: I can get it fo’ ya.” He sucked in his bottom lip and shrugged. “I know how to get in the sto’.”
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