“Miss Trotter! Miss Trotter! You’re here! You’re here! At last!”
“As sure as you’re born,” Miss Trotter said. “As sure as you’re born.” She had a grip on that cane in one hand and the picture of her parents in the other. Both she and JimmyTrotter carried knapsacks on their backs, his bigger than hers, but it looked like they carried all that they had left. Uncle Darnell and I helped them out of their bags and took them. Miss Trotter was winded after having walked the distance, and her skirt was wet from about her knee to her feet. Fern petted Sophie and Butter and told them not to be afraid of Caleb. Caleb kept up his dog song. Big Ma praised the Lord and started to fuss over Miss Trotter. Mr. Lucas took a rope from JimmyTrotter and led the cows up to the house.
“You’re wet, Auntie,” Big Ma said. “You’ll catch your death.”
“Death ain’t caught me by the ankle yet,” Miss Trotter said, but she was shivering. “Guess I keep right on stepping.”
“The tornado destroyed the walkway so we went through the water,” JimmyTrotter said. “Had to go all the way down to the shallows. Cows didn’t like it much, but we’re here.” And Miss Trotter started to hum a song I knew: “Wading in the Water.”
By this time Ma Charles was making her way down to us. Miss Trotter stopped humming and fussing once she caught sight of her ambling toward us all. Big Ma fussed at Mr. Lucas to “help Ma,” and Ma Charles refused Mr. Lucas’s hand when he tried to help her. I figured she didn’t want her sister to see she wasn’t as steady as she once was.
Sophie mooed, which sparked Butter mooing, and Caleb had never quite stopped crying his dog song. It just got louder. But not one of us spoke a word. In fact, Big Ma placed her hand over Mr. Lucas’s lips to keep him from speaking. Then Miss Trotter, digging that cane in the ground with each step, made her way to Ma Charles.
“Sister,” one called out.
“Sister,” the other called out.
JimmyTrotter described everything. How the tornado came their way and took down half of the barn and most of the house. That they had only two minutes to get to the crawl space under the house and that Miss Trotter wouldn’t go without Mama and Papa so JimmyTrotter had to get the photograph from the mantel.
“It’s all just kindling,” Miss Trotter said. “’Cept for Papa’s chair. Tornado threw it good, but JimmyTrotter found it up a tree.”
“I didn’t think I’d get it down, but here it is.”
Mr. Lucas offered to take a look at it and make sure it was sturdy but Miss Trotter wouldn’t let him touch her father’s chair.
“House shaking on top of us, this way and that,” Miss Trotter said. “The wind was having its way. Wasn’t nothing we could do but pray.”
“Prayer works,” Ma Charles said.
“Didn’t I say don’t go poking in the sky?”
“Through God’s heavens,” Ma Charles said. “You must have heard me saying it. Tell ’em,” Ma Charles said to me. It seemed the first time anyone had said anything at all to me. All I could do was nod my head yes and remember that I still had to face my father. In the middle of this one good thing, my belly started to ache.
“I knew it was trouble when I felt that air, sister.”
“Cold here,” Ma Charles said.
“And heat stirring there,” the other finished. “It’s all that stirring up. Sending men into space and hurling them back down. Poking holes where they need not poke holes.”
“Electric storm is the ma and pa,” one said.
“And the tornado is its wayward child,” the other said.
“There wasn’t a finer teacher than Miss Rice.”
“Surely and truly,” the other said.
“It’s a wonder we still have Sophie and Butter,” JimmyTrotter said. “You wouldn’t know the barn to see it.”
“What barn? Just a pile of sticks. House too. Kindling.”
“Like the henhouse!” Fern cried.
Everyone spoke on about the tornado. Things brought down. Some homes standing. Some split apart into nothingness. But I stayed silent, like I didn’t have a right to the family sounds. I was at the table but I was watching. On the outside.
“What is a barn, or a henhouse?” Miss Trotter said. “What are two cows? I’d give those cows and more to see my sister with all her greats.”
And then they began to pray for Vonetta. Moan for her. Cry for her.
“My line had sons. Nothing but sons,” Miss Trotter said. “It was all we could do to keep the Trotter name going for Papa.”
Then Ma Charles said, “My line has daughters. The names add on, but we keep the bloodline going.”
“I’ve got—” Miss Trotter started.
“Each other,” Big Ma said, before they could get a squabble started.
One said, “Sister.”
The other said, “Sister.”
Things went well between them until one said, “Mrs. Hazzard.”
Then the other said, “Massa Charles’s property,” and I thought they would never stop.
Big Ma said, “You two are worse than those three ever were.”
But there were only two of us now. Two. Big Ma started to cry. And then Fern and I started. Mr. Lucas said, “Come on, Ophelia. I’ll take you to your room. You need to rest.”
Then Ma Charles said, “You stay here, son. Where I can see you.”
And Miss Trotter said, “Young folk.”
And my great-grandmother agreed. “Young’ns.”
Three Dog Night
After all of the eating, talking, praying, and being among family, the house finally fell quiet. No one paid Caleb any mind, baying and carrying on into the night. He hadn’t been the same since Sheriff Charles gave him Vonetta’s nightie to sniff. He had “the scent” and kept pulling at his chain and baying.
The churning of things both bad and unknown kept me awake. It was mostly being in our room. Feeling the before and the now in every corner. Caleb’s noise didn’t help any more than knowing my father must have driven the Wildcat as far as Virginia by now. Or North Carolina.
All I had wanted was to have every single one of us under one roof. Now, with so many of us, and Papa and Mrs. coming, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I crept by Mr. Lucas, who was asleep on the sofa, and picked my way through my uncle and cousin camped out on the living room floor. I hoped the floorboards wouldn’t give me away. Thanks to Mr. Lucas, our floors didn’t creak as much as Miss Trotter’s old wooden floors. Uncle Darnell turned over and I froze at the door, but neither he, JimmyTrotter, nor Mr. Lucas woke up.
I stepped out on the porch in my bare feet. Caleb wouldn’t stop barking. His chain never bothered him before. He had been content to sit in the sun and watch the chickens scratching around in the chicken run. But now he tugged at the pole, spiked down into the ground extra hard by Mr. Lucas.
I listened to him and heard something familiar in his song. It was more than Caleb wanting to be free of his chains. He made the same sounds as when Sheriff Charles came riding up in his police car and again when Miss Trotter, JimmyTrotter, Sophie, and Butter came from out of the pines. I never thought about a meaning behind Caleb’s baying. Only that he made his noise. But now I could hear that Caleb’s third dog song—two during daylight and one at night—was a song to announce an arrival.
Still, I said, “Hush, boy.”
Caleb wouldn’t hush. He pulled at his chain and sang louder.
I turned on the porch light. I saw movement in the dark. A person approaching. My eyes combed through the dark for a better look but all I could see was the figure that was now coming through the field and moving toward the house.
I didn’t move. I only watched. The dog kept crying as the figure came closer. Then she was upon me. It was my mother. Cecile.
She hadn’t even gotten fully to the porch but she was already speaking. “They find Vonetta?”
I had to stop myself from saying, “No, ma’am,” knowing my mother wouldn’t like that southern talk. I said, “No, Cecile. They
didn’t find her.”
“Your father here?”
“Not yet,” I said. I wanted to hug my mother but she didn’t open herself to let me. So I stayed where I was. All she wanted from me were answers, so I gave what I had. “Uncle Darnell said the way Papa drives, he and Mrs. will be here just after noon.”
“Mrs.?”
“Pa’s . . . wife.”
“Her name is Marva,” Cecile said flatly.
“Yes, ma’am.” It slipped out. I knew right there my mother hated the South in me. She cut me up with her glare.
Then Uncle Darnell came to the door and pushed it open. “Sis!”
She clomped past me—her footsteps heavy, like I remembered, and hugged his neck so hard. They stood there wrapped in each other. Her eyes shut tight. I heard her say to him, “I never meant to leave you.” Something she’d never said to me or my sisters.
Then he spoke into her neck. “I know, sis.”
“I just couldn’t stay,” she told him.
He said, “I know.”
I was right there but on the outside. It didn’t seem real. My mother, wild-eyed and tired, suddenly here. Close enough to touch, although she didn’t reach out to me or let me touch her. But I smelled the coconut oil in her hair and the sweat of someone who’d been marching ten miles. When I thought I had the right to hate her, she was there. Right there. But not for me to touch. Except for the big drawstring bag slung around her shoulder that hit me when she went to hug Uncle Darnell. The bag was soft and full, its punch dull against my side. It was a bag I knew she’d made of old clothes.
My mother stomped on the welcome mat to shake the dirt from her boots and went inside with Uncle Darnell. I stayed outside with Caleb, who was now back to baying and pulling at his chain.
I stayed out on the porch all night and didn’t slip back inside until nearly daybreak. Cecile slept in the living room next to Uncle Darnell as if they had fallen asleep talking. Mr. Lucas now lay on his back. But JimmyTrotter had moved from his spot. I walked through the living room into the kitchen and out the back screen door. There was JimmyTrotter with Sophie and Butter.
He had one of Big Ma’s mixing bowls on the ground and sat at Sophie’s side. “Come on, girl. Come on, Sophie.”
I sat at his side. “Maybe she can’t.”
“I’m hoping she can,” JimmyTrotter said. “It’s too early for her to be dry. We don’t have much use for a milk cow that don’t milk.”
“Don’t let Fern hear you say that.”
He gave a weak smile. “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll try breeding her in a few months. Maybe she’ll give me a dairy cow. We sure haven’t been lucky lately. Both Butter and Sophie gave us bulls.” He shrugged. “Couldn’t keep them.”
Even as he spoke, I didn’t quite believe him about breeding Sophie to try for another milk cow. I think he said those things because they were hopeful things. I think he said those things for me.
“Who’s that woman?” he asked.
“Cecile,” I said.
“Cecile, as in your mama? All the way from Los Angeles?”
“Oakland.”
“Same difference from where I’m sitting.” He looked up at the sky. “She flew to get here. A red-eye from Oakland to Montgomery, I’ll bet. I’m figuring on a Boeing 707 or a DC-8. You know they’re coming out with commercial planes almost as fast as the speed of sound. Wouldn’t mind flying one of those.”
“Is that so?”
He gave up on milking and set the mixing bowl aside. He kept looking to the sky. “My model planes are all smashed,” he said. “If only I could have saved the Warhawk—or my brother’s bomber. I only had time enough to grab Miss Trotter and the picture. Had to get the picture. She wouldn’t move without her mama and papa.”
“Onchee,” I said.
“Onchee is right.”
I told him I was sorry about his model planes when I wasn’t. A model plane wasn’t a sister, but JimmyTrotter was the only one speaking to me. And he had lost a brother, a mother, a father, and a grandmother. All at once. He knew.
“Wanted that Cessna, too. Last kit my daddy bought me.” He wasn’t really speaking to me. Just talking into the sky. “All of them gone.”
Out of the blue I said, “It’s not my fault.”
“I didn’t say it was.”
“She’s my sister. I want her back.”
“I know, Delphine.” Then we said nothing for a while.
“You must be glad to have your mama here,” he said. “Even as sad as things are.”
I knew from that he didn’t believe we’d get Vonetta back but I couldn’t think that way.
“Cecile’s not a mama,” I told him, but not angry or snippy. I was just stating a fact.
“What do you mean?”
“She’s Cecile. That’s all.”
He nodded like he understood, but I knew he didn’t. We’d never run out of things to talk about before but we hardly had anything to say to each other now. I figured he’d stop talking to me like everyone else. And then Papa would be here and it would get worse before it got better. And it might never get better.
JimmyTrotter got up from his stool and I stood with him.
“Darnell’s going back with me to pick through what’s left. Maybe we can find some photos or something.”
“I’ll come too. I can help.”
“Cousin Del, you don’t want to see the house. Tornado hit us hard. Radio says it was a two but I think it was a level three.”
There it was. His nice way of saying, Leave me alone. I don’t want you around. I said, “Cousin, I just don’t get it.” He waited for me to finish. “Why did it take down your house and Mr. Lucas’s house? Why is ours still standing?”
JimmyTrotter shrugged. “House is here. But you still got hit. Hard.”
You Are the Hill
I followed Cecile as she walked inside each room looking for Big Ma. When she found her she said, “Mrs. Gaither. I’m here.” I expected Big Ma to be thrown for a loop or to jump out of her skin. There was no reaction from Big Ma, as far as I could see. She cocked her head, crossed her arms, and said, “I see that.”
There were no more words between them so I led my mother to the room that Ma Charles and Miss Trotter now shared. I said, “Ma Charles, Miss Trotter, this is our mother, Cecile.”
Cecile said, “If it was a good morning, I’d wish you both a good one. Instead, I wish you’re both well.”
“Daughter!” Ma Charles cried. “Come over here so we can look at you.”
My mother walked up to them like she was home.
“Didn’t have to tell us who she is,” Miss Trotter said. “That’s your face, right there,” she said to me. “The other ones, too. But that’s you.”
It was the one small burst of pleasure I felt, even though my mother and I hadn’t hugged or really spoken to each other. Not really.
“Wake up, Fern.”
“No.”
“Wake up, Fern.”
She kept her eyes shut. “Is Vonetta here?”
I said a soft no. She slumped over to give me her back.
“Wake up, Fern.”
She pretended to be asleep.
“Little girl. Get out of that bed.”
Fern sprang up and screamed. She ran to Cecile, bulling her head into Cecile’s belly like she was trying to get back inside of her. Cecile picked her up and hugged her tight and swung her around.
I wanted nothing more than to be invited in, but I stayed where I was. I never knew I could feel so awful, so jealous, but I couldn’t make those feelings go away.
Cecile put Fern down on the bed, sat with her, and told her she wasn’t leaving until we found Vonetta. I almost backed out of the room but Cecile said, “Don’t go nowhere,” and continued talking to Fern. Now she faced me. “All right,” Cecile said. “What happened?”
“It’s Delphine’s fault Vonetta’s gone,” Fern said.
Cecile turned to me. “Speak up, Delphine.”
I didn’t know what to say because it was true. It was easier to agree than to explain, so I said, “Yes. She left because of me.”
My mother put her head down, cupping her forehead with one hand. It looked like she was praying but I knew she wasn’t. I took a step toward her, then one away from her.
“I told you to look out for Vonetta.” Her voice trembled like she was fighting herself. And then she spoke louder. “I told you but you don’t listen!” She was up on her feet and Fern shrunk inside of herself. Shrunk into the ball I wanted to shrink into to protect myself. “You’re hardheaded. You think you’re grown and you know everything.”
I stepped back, fearing the worst.
“And whose fault is that?” Big Ma was in the doorway, right behind me. “Who do you think you are, coming in here yelling at these children? I won’t stand for it. You need to leave this house. Now!”
Big Ma was no match for my mother, but I knew she meant what she said.
Cecile seemed to grow bigger but she stood where she was. “I’ll leave when my child is found and not a minute, hour, or day sooner.” Cecile was the mountain. The crazy mother mountain. It was the calm in her voice that was crazy.
“Minute? I can get the sheriff up here in a minute,” Big Ma said, while Fern said, “No, Big Ma. No, Big Ma.”
Big Ma said, “This is my house. If I say you go, you’re going.”
“Get the sheriff,” my mother said again, calm. Too calm. “I’m here for my child. I’ll stay out there with the dog but I’m not going until I see my child.”
Uncle Darnell was now in the room and stood between Big Ma and Cecile. Mr. Lucas tried to calm everyone down and then Ma Charles made her way into the room.
“This is my house. My house,” Ma Charles said. She turned to Big Ma. “Ophelia Fern Charles Gaither, don’t shame me.”
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