by Lisa Wingate
“Avery,” I repeat more loudly this time.
“Av’ry who?”
“Stafford.” I purposely haven’t offered that information until now. But I don’t want to leave here without answers, and if this is what it takes, this is what it takes.
“You Miss Judy’s daughter?”
My heart starts pumping so hard I can feel my eardrums pulsating. “Granddaughter.”
Time seems to slow down. I lose all consciousness of little-boy chatter, and tractor talk, and big Bart, and chickens clucking, and the cow swatting flies, and the endless song of a mockingbird.
“You wanna know ’bout that place next door. ’Bout why she go there.” It’s not a question but a statement, as if this woman has been waiting for years, knowing that sooner or later someone would come asking.
“Yes, ma’am, I do. I’d ask my grandmother, but to tell you the truth, she’s not doing all that well mentally. She can’t remember things.”
She shakes her head slowly, her tongue making a soft tsk, tsk, tsk. When she focuses on me again, she says, “What the mind don’t ’member, the heart still know. Love, the strongest thang of all. Stronger than all the rest. You wanna know ’bout the sisters.”
“Please,” I whisper. “Yes. Please tell me.”
“It ain’t my secret to tell.” She turns and shuffles toward the house, and for a moment I think I’ve been dismissed, but a quick glance over her shoulder tells me otherwise. I’m being asked to follow her inside.
Told to.
I stop just past the threshold, waiting while she opens the slant top on an oak secretary desk and draws out a dented tin crucifix. From beneath it, she takes three rumpled sheets of paper originally torn off a yellow legal pad. Even though they’ve been wrinkled and then straightened, they don’t look particularly old, and they’re certainly not of the same vintage as the pressed tin piece.
“I only took it fo’ safekeepin’,” the woman says. She hands me the tin piece and the papers separately. “That cross been Queenie’s, long time ago. Miss Judy write the other. It’s her story, but she never write the rest. They decide they all gon’ carry it to they graves, I guess. But I figure somebody might come askin’ one day. Secrets ain’t a healthy thang. Secrets ain’t a healthy thang, no matter how old they is. Sometimes the oldest secrets is the worst of all. You take yo’ grandmother to see Miss May. The heart still know. It still know who it loves.”
I look down at the crucifix, turn it over in my hand, then unfold the yellow sheets. I recognize the handwriting. It’s my grandmother’s. I’ve looked at enough of her daybooks to be certain.
“Sit down, child.” Bart’s mother guides me to a wing chair. I half sit and half collapse. The top of the page reads:
PRELUDE
Baltimore, Maryland
August 3rd, 1939
The date of my grandmother’s birthday and the place she was born.
My story begins on a sweltering August night, in a place I will never set eyes upon. The room takes life only in my imaginings. It is large most days when I conjure it. The walls are white and clean, the bed linens crisp as a fallen leaf. The private suite has the very finest of everything….
I float through time, tumbling back years and decades, moving through space to a hospital room in August 1939, to a tiny life that enters the world and leaves it in the same moment, to blood and grief and an exhausted young mother who sinks into merciful sleep.
There are the whispered conversations of powerful men. A grandfather who, for all his wealth and position, cannot save his tiny grandchild.
He is an important man…a congressman, perhaps?
He cannot rescue his daughter. Or can he?
I know of a woman in Memphis….
A desperate choice is made.
This is where the written story ends.
And where another story begins. The saga of a fair-haired infant girl who, if Georgia Tann’s sordid history is any indication, is taken from her mother immediately after birth. Falsified papers are signed, or perhaps the exhausted new mother is simply told that her child was stillborn. The baby is spirited away in Georgia’s arms, secretly delivered to a waiting family that will claim her as their own and bury their desperate secret.
The tiny girl becomes Judy Myers Stafford.
This is the truth my heart has been reaching for since the day I saw the faded photograph on May’s nightstand and was struck by the resemblance.
The photo in the nursing home is of Queenie and Briny. They aren’t just people from May Crandall’s remembrances. They are my great-grandparents. River gypsies.
I might’ve been one myself had fate not taken an unthinkable twist.
Bart’s mother moves to the space beside me. She sits on the arm of the wing chair, and rubs my back, and hands me a handkerchief as my tears flow. “Oh, honey. Oh, child. The best thing is to know. I always tell ’em, best to be who you is. What you is deep down inside. Ain’t no other good way of livin’. But it ain’t my decision to make.”
I’m not sure how long I sit there, the old woman patting and soothing while I contemplate all the things that kept the children of the Arcadia from one another. I think of the way May explained their choices: We were young women with lives and husbands and children by the time we were brought together again. We chose not to interfere with one another. It was enough for each of us to know that the others were well….
But the truth is, it wasn’t enough. Even the ramparts of reputation, and ambition, and social position couldn’t erase the love of sisters, their bond with one another. Suddenly, the barriers that created their need for hidden lives and secret meeting places seem almost as cruel as those of brokered adoptions, altered paperwork, and forced separations.
“You take your grandmother to see her sister.” A trembling hand squeezes mine. “They the only two left. The only two sisters. You tell them Hootsie say it’s time to be who they is.”
CHAPTER 24
Rill
The whippoorwill call tries to take me from my dream, but I push it away and hold on. In the dream, we’re all on board the Arcadia…Briny, and Lark, and Fern, and Gabion. We’re drifting down the wide Mississippi full out in the middle, just like we own the deed on the whole big river. The day is clear and fine, and there’s not a tugboat or a barge or a stern-wheeler in sight.
We’re free. We’re free, and we’re letting the river take us south. Far, far away from Mud Island and everything that happened there.
Silas and Zede are with us too. And Camellia and Queenie.
That’s how I know the whole thing isn’t true.
I open my eyes and toss off the blanket, and for a minute I’m sun-blind and lost. It’s the middle of the day, not nighttime. Then I realize I’m curled in the skiff with Fern, and we were squirreled up under the ragged canvas, not a blanket. The skiff is tied to the back of the Arcadia, heading nowhere. It’s the only place we can go to rest during the day and be sure Briny won’t sneak up on us.
The whippoorwill call comes again. It’s Silas, I know. I look for him in the brush, but he’s got himself hidden.
I wiggle from under the canvas, and Fern wakes up and grabs my ankle. Since we’ve come back to the Arcadia, she’s scared to be by herself even for a minute. She’s never sure whether Briny will push her away so hard she falls down or grab her up and hold her so tight she can’t breathe.
I answer the whippoorwill call, and Fern scrambles up trying to see into the woods.
“Ssshhhh,” I whisper. When we snuck out to the skiff this morning, Briny was rambling around with a bottle of whiskey. He’s probably asleep on the porch by now. I just can’t be sure. “We better not let Briny find out Silas is here.”
Fern nods and licks her lips. Her tummy rumbles. She probably knows that Silas’ll bring us something to eat. If it weren’t for Silas and Old Zede and Arney, we would’ve starved to death in the three weeks we’ve been back on the Arcadia. Briny hasn’t got much need for food. He mostly lives on
whiskey now.
I lift the canvas up for Fern. “You go back under there a minute.” If Briny sees that Silas came over and starts into a fit about it, I don’t want Fern in the way.
I have to peel her off to put her back under the canvas, but she stays.
Silas is waiting in the brush. He hugs me hard, and I bite my lip to keep from crying. We move off a little farther together, but not so far that I can’t hear Fern if she needs me.
“You all right?” Silas asks when we sit down in the clear spot under a tree.
I nod. “Fishing wasn’t any good this morning, though.” I don’t want to ask for food, but I’m hoping that’s what’s in the little poke he’s carrying.
He hands over a bundle no bigger than two fists, but it means a lot. Zede’s supplies are running low, and he’s got Arney to feed too. She’s moved onto his boat, where she’ll be safe. Zede wanted Fern and me to go too, but I know Briny won’t hurt us.
“Some flapjacks and a little salt fish. An apple you can split up.” Silas leans back on his hands, pulls a breath, and looks through the brambles toward the river. “Briny any better today? He comin’ around at all?”
“A little.” I’m not sure if it’s true or if I just want it to be. Briny mostly wanders around the boat and drinks and yells at night. Then he sleeps it off during the day.
“Zede says we’ll have rain this evenin’.”
I’ve seen the rain signs too. It worries me. “Don’t come back and try to untie the lines again, all right? Not yet. Maybe in a few more days. A few more days, and I think Briny’ll be ready.”
For two weeks, we’ve stayed in at the bank across from Mud Island while the weather’s turned colder. Even though Silas and Zede warned Briny it’d be easy for the police to find us here if they come looking, Briny won’t let anybody unhitch the shore lines. He almost shot Silas’s hand off for trying. He nearly shot poor Arney too. I gave her some of Queenie’s clothes to use, and Briny decided she was Queenie, and he was mad at her for dying.
“Just a little longer,” I plead with Silas.
Silas rubs his ear like that’s not what he wants to hear. “You oughta bring Fern and come onto Zede’s boat with me. We’ll move her down into the main channel and see if Briny don’t come along.”
“Just a few more days. Briny’ll get better. He’s gone out of his head for a while, that’s all. It’ll pass.”
I hope I’m right, but the truth is that Briny doesn’t want to leave Queenie, and Queenie’s buried in the thick Mississippi soil not far from here. A Catholic priest said final words over her, Zede told me. I never even knew my mama was a Catholic. Until I lived with the Seviers, I didn’t even know what that meant. Zuma wore a little cross like the one on our shanty wall. She’d hold it and talk to it sometimes, just the way Queenie did, but not in Polish. The Seviers didn’t care for that too much, because they’re Baptists.
I figure, either way, it’s a comfort to know my mama was buried proper and a preacher was there to say prayers at her grave.
“Zede wants you to tell Briny that, in four days at the outside, he’s moving our boat, and if Briny don’t want to come along, he’s taking you and Fern off the Arcadia. You’re goin’ downwater with us.”
“Who’ssss out’ere?” Briny’s voice booms from somewhere near shore. The words are thick with leftover liquor. He must’ve heard Silas talking. “Who’ssss out’ere round?” Briny comes crashing through the brush and dead grass.
I grab the poke, tuck it under my dress, and shoo Silas away. Briny staggers around while I slip away to the skiff, gather up Fern, and take her to the shanty.
Briny finds us there when he finally comes back. I pretend like I’ve just fried the flapjacks up in the skillet. He doesn’t even notice there’s no fire in the stove.
“I got supper almost ready.” I make a show of dishing up plates. “You hungry?”
He blinks and scoops up Fern and sits down at the table and holds her tight. She watches me, her face pale and scared.
A fist grabs my throat. How am I going to tell Briny that Zede’s only waiting four more days? I can’t, so I say, “Flapjacks and salt fish and apple slices.”
I put the food on the table, and Briny sets Fern in her place. It feels just like we’ve been having a proper meal together every single day. For a while, everything’s like it should be. Briny smiles at me through dark, tired eyes that remind me of Camellia.
I miss my sister, even if we did fight all the time. I miss how tough and stubborn she was. How she never gave in.
“Zede says, four days yander, the currents’ll be good, and it’s time to take to the river. Go downwater where the fishin’s fine and the weather’s warm. He says it’s time.”
Briny braces an elbow on the table and rubs his eyes, shaking his head slowly back and forth. His words are muddled, but I hear the last few anyway. “…not without Queenie.”
He gets up and heads for the door, grabbing his empty whiskey bottle on the way. A minute later, I hear him rowing off in the skiff.
I listen until he’s gone, and in the quiet that’s left after, I feel like the world is coming down around me. When I was at Mrs. Murphy’s and then the Seviers’ house, I thought if I could just get back to the Arcadia, that’d fix everything. I thought it’d fix me, but now I see I was fooling myself, just to keep on going, one day to the next.
Truth is, instead of fixing everything, the Arcadia made everything real. Camellia’s gone. Lark and Gabion are far away. Queenie’s buried in a pauper’s grave, and Briny’s heart went there with her. He’s lost his mind to whiskey, and he doesn’t want to come back.
Not even for me. Not even for Fern. We’re not enough.
Fern crawls into my lap, and I hold tight to her. We wait out the evening listening for signs of Briny, but nobody comes. He’s probably gone into town to hustle pool halls until he can get some more to drink.
Finally, I tuck Fern into her bunk and slip into mine and lay there trying to find sleep. There’s not even a book to keep me company. Everything that can buy whiskey has already been traded off.
Rain starts before I fall asleep, but there’s still no sign of Briny.
I find him in my dream. We’re whole, and everything’s the way it should be. Briny plays his harmonica as we picnic in the sand along the shore. We pick daisies and taste honeysuckle. Gabion and Lark chase after little frogs until they’ve caught a whole jarful.
“Ain’t your mama pretty as a queen?” Briny asks. “And what’s that make you? Why, Princess Rill of Kingdom Arcadia, of course.”
When I wake up, I hear Briny outside, but there’s no music. He’s hollering into the deepening storm. Sweat sticks the bedsheet to my skin, so I have to peel it off as I sit up. My mouth is pasty and dry, and my eyes don’t want to clear. The air around is black as pitch. Rain rattles the roof. The woodstove has been filled and the damper must’ve been turned wide open, because it’s crackling and whistling and the room is boiling hot.
Outside the shanty, Briny cusses a blue streak. A lantern flashes by the window. I swing my feet around to get up, but the boat sways crazy wild, knocking me back onto the ticking. The Arcadia bobs side to side.
Fern rolls clean over the rail on her bunk and tumbles onto the floor in a heap.
All of a sudden, I know…we’re not tied up onshore anymore. We’re on the water.
Silas and Zede came and cut us loose after Briny got back. That’s the first thing I think. He’s out there hollering because he’s mad they did it.
But just as quick, I’m sure they wouldn’t set us adrift at night. It’s too dangerous, with the logs and sandbars and the wakes from the big boats and barges. Silas and Zede know that.
Briny does too, but he’s half out of his mind out there. He’s not trying to get us to shore. He’s daring the river to take us. “C’mon, you blaggard!” he hollers, like Captain Ahab in Moby-Dick. “Try ’n’ win! Take me! C’mon!”
Thunder booms. Lightning crackles. Briny cuss
es at the river. He laughs.
The lantern disappears from the window, then bobs up the side ladder as Briny climbs onto the roof.
I stumble across the room to check on Fern and put her back in her bunk. “You stay there. Stay until I tell you different.”
She grabs my nightgown, croaks out, “Noooo.” Since we’ve been back on the Arcadia, she’s been scared to death at night.
“It’ll be all right. I think the lines came loose, that’s all. Briny’s probably trying to get us back ashore.”
I hurry on, leaving her there in the bed. The Arcadia wobbles as I stagger across the floor, and a tug blows its horn, and I hear the creaks and pings of barge hulls, and I know that bigger wakes are coming. I reach out for the door and grab on just in time. The Arcadia rises up a wake, then tips hard coming down. Wood slides through my fingernails, driving splinters underneath. I fall forward, land on the porch in the cold. The boat nods the other direction, spinning sideways to the current.
No, no! Please no!
The Arcadia rights herself like she’s heard me. She rides the next swell clean and slick.
“You think you can take me? You think you can take me?” Briny yells from up top. A bottle shatters, and glass tumbles down from the porch roof, glistening in the night rain and the tug’s searchlight. It seems to fall slow. Then it plinks into the black water.
“Briny, we’ve gotta get her ashore!” I yell. “Briny, we gotta tie up!”
But the tug’s horn and the storm whip my voice from my mouth.
A man someplace yells curses and warnings. An emergency whistle sounds. The Arcadia rises up a huge wake, balances like a dancer on tiptoes.
She lists as she falls. Cold water rushes over the porch.
We spin sideways to the river.
The tug’s light sweeps and catches us.
A piece of drift aims itself for our bow—a giant strainer tree with all the roots and dirt still attached. I see it just before the light moves on. I scramble for the boathook to push it away, but the pole isn’t where it should be. There’s nothing I can do but hug the porch post and yell to Fern to hang on and watch the tree hit, its roots spreading around the Arcadia like fingers, catching my ankle, turning, and pulling hard.