Between, Georgia

by Joshilyn Jackson

  Bernese ran out to meet her with equal force and volume; I was only three, but their enmity was obvious, and I understood enough to realize I was somehow the heart of it. The brawl on my front lawn trained me to look for and interpret the subtler signs that told me how deeply my adopted family despised my birth family and vice versa.

  I was raised in my mother and Genny’s quiet, well-ordered house at the end of Grace Street, playing with my boy cousins and, later, the tagalong girl-child Aunt Bernese produced when I was nine. The Crabtrees, Ona especially, paced at the periphery of my life, staring hungrily in at me.

  Ona Crabtree was half crazy, all mean, perpetually drunk, but she had a junkyard dog’s sharp memory for injuries against her person. She’d hated all things Frett from childhood: Ona and Bernese first bonked heads when they met up on the jungle gym behind The First Baptist Church of Between. Genny, fresh off a Baptist summer-revival high and aching to fulfill the Great Com-mission, shyly invited Ona to come on in to Sunday school with them. Ona accepted, but Bernese eyed Ona’s filthy sundress and added, “Run home and change first. We wear our nicest things to God’s house.”

  I’m sure it never occurred to her that perhaps the sundress was Ona’s nicest. Ona offered me that story ten thousand times as proof that Fretts were “fancy-pants faker Christians.” She never stopped hating them, and after she learned we were genetically connected, she never stopped hounding me. No one ever had a clue who my father was. Not even Hazel, and she’d left town. If not for Ona, I’d have been a Frett free and clear. As it was, my mother and her sisters stood over me like she-bears guarding a shared cub, ever vigilant and suspicious.

  The war that would tear up our little town percolated mostly under the surface, with an occasional minor skirmish cropping up here and there. Bernese routinely cut Ona dead in the market, and when I was growing up, the Crabtree boys egged the Frett homes every Halloween. (Or they did until the year Bernese spent all night crouched in her front bushes with a loaded shotgun. Those boys came sauntering down to the end of Grace Street just after three in the morning, and Bernese waited until she could see the whites of their eyes before she discharged the gun into the air, scattering them.)

  At eighteen I moved an hour away to study anthropology at the University of Georgia, but my absence did not make the Frett and Crabtree hearts grow any fonder. I came home every other weekend, and after I graduated, my stays became longer and more frequent, so the wounds remained forever fresh and open.

  The feud ebbed and renewed in a thousand small ways even during my absence, receding and resurging before it reached crit-ical mass and exploded. The Fretts blamed the escalation on the Crabtrees, and the Crabtrees blamed it on the Fretts. And I, the only one who might have stopped it, was caught up in a battle of my own that was raging through the half of my life I lived in Athens.

  Later, when I knelt in the ruins of Between, sifting through drifts of ash and bits of twisted metal and scorched glass, the thwarted archaeologist in me insisted that the only way I could have prevented the war would have been to strangle myself with my own umbilical cord before I pulled my first breath. I never became that archaeologist. My BA prepped me for grad school, but I didn’t go, so I can’t place much store in my findings. I ended up a sign language interpreter, but I’m a good one. I may not be able to reach into the past to reconstruct my family’s losses, but I can read the signs around me and meld them into a single story. One I believe is kissing cousins with the truth.

  The morning of the day it all went to hell, I don’t know if it was Jonno or the phone that woke me up. Jonno was in the habit of groaning and muttering himself awake, and he went off at about the same time the ringer did. I looked at the clock and then rolled over and put one hand over his mouth. His eyes opened, and under my palm, I could feel his mouth stretching into a smile.

  We’d had our very last ever goodbye sex the night before. For about the twenty-second time.

  “Morning, Nonny,” he said cheerfully, his words muffled by my palm.

  I said, “Do not talk or make any noise. No reasonable human being calls this early, so that has to be Aunt Bernese. She cannot know you are here. Understand?”

  He nodded at me, and as I took my hand away, I added, “And don’t smile at me.”

  He obediently made his mouth into a straight line, lowering his eyebrows as if taking me seriously. His dirty-blond hair was tousled and flopping in curls over his broad forehead. He looked beautiful, and he knew it. I rolled away from him, onto my side.

  I grabbed the phone off the charger and said into it, “I’m not driving over there today, Bernese.”

  “Who asked you?” she said. “You sound like you’re still sleeping.” Behind me, I could feel Jonno uncoiling, stretching like a big cat and rolling toward me, pressing his naked length against my back. I shoved my elbow at him, but he ignored it and nestled closer. His body felt warm and pliable, and his morning erec-tion was nosing at my thigh.

  I said, “I overslept a little. I have three jobs today, and I need to get going. I can’t leave town and drive down there.”

  “You said that yesterday. But I thought you’d want to know that Stacia’s been up next door pacing since before sunup. I can see her through the window, going back and forth, back and forth, all in a lather. Your mama’s flat miserable.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “If Mama needed me home today, she would have said so. I’m booked solid all week, and I have my court date on Friday. I’m coming Saturday, and Mama knows that.”

  Bernese went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “She spent all day yesterday in her studio, digging around in her boxes of doll heads and humming and pacing and unwrapping and feeling all over the faces and then wrapping them back up and driving everybody rabid-dog crazy. And Genny! She catches your mama’s moods like stomach flu, and I had to stop her from picking fifty times yesterday. This is going to end with her in bed for four days, if not in the hospital.”

  “Give Genny a Xanax,” I said, shoving at Jonno’s legs with my feet. He scooted away from me, but not far. I could still feel his body radiating heat behind me.

  “She won’t take a pill in case your mama chooses a doll head and is ready for her to start sewing the body and clothes. And she’s already into the paranoid part. She wouldn’t eat the apple-sauce I brought her because she said I had probably snuck her a pill in it.”

  “Which I am sure you had!” I said.

  There was a tiny pause, and then Bernese said, “It’s still paranoid for her to think that.”

  “No, Bernese, that’s not paranoid. That’s smart. You know, if you don’t want Mama to be this unhappy and get Genny all riled, you could quit selling off her doll heads.” Jonno started playing itsy-bitsy spider in the space between us, one hand finger-walking down my spine.

  “If you would come over here and help her pick one . . .”

  Bernese said.

  I rolled over onto the spider, pinning it under my back. I gave Jonno a look that could have withered a whole rain forest, but he grinned back at me, the tent in the sheet telling me he was completely unwithered.

  “That’s not going to happen,” I said to Bernese. “There are a finite number of heads. Quit selling them.”

  Even as I said the words, I knew they were futile. Bernese had the artistic sensibilities of a handful of blackberries, and even if she had been gifted in that way, Mama and Genny were a perfectly closed unit of Artist and Craftsman. There had never been room for Bernese inside their doll-making process, so from the time they were young women, she had busied herself finding markets for their products. She’d used the appealingly tragic combination of Mama’s talent, her deafness, and her incipient blindness as a hook. Exploitative, yes. Also effective. After a couple of years of traveling to doll-making and toy conventions on Mama’s behalf, Bernese hooked up with an Atlanta lawyer, Isaac Davids, and together they negotiated a huge contract with Cordova Toys.

  Cordova still mass-produced a popular line of dollhouse dolls t
hat were based on Mama’s work, and craft stores all over the country sold reproductions of her molds so hobbyists could cast their own dolls. At this point, there was no financial reason to sell any more of Mama’s original dolls, and every doll she gave up seemed to take a bite out of Mama. But Bernese couldn’t bear to pull her thumb out of any Frett pie, and stopping would sever her tenuous connection to Mama and Genny’s work.

  “It’s for a museum,” Bernese said sanctimoniously. “And anyway, did you see how much they offered? But Genny can’t take this. She’ll pick and then she’ll chew and weave and bang until she knocks herself unconscious. And by the way, Fisher’s mad at you, too. She sulked her way through her egg this morning.”

  “Fisher’s naturally sulky. Tell her I’ll be there on Saturday, Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, and don’t you call me again today unless you are personally on fire,” I said.

  Before I could hang up, Bernese was talking again. “Wait one second. Fisher was hoping you’d show yesterday, so you better talk to her if you really aren’t coming.”

  Jonno lay quietly beside me with his hand still trapped beneath my back. I asked, “And who told Fisher I was coming home early?” But I already knew the answer.

  “Let me get her,” said Bernese, and thunked the phone down hard enough to make me pull the receiver away from my ear. I hammered my heels into the mattress in frustration; I would happily have hung up on Bernese, but never Fisher. My earth revolved around that child’s sun. Fisher’s mama was Lori-Anne, Bernese’s tagalong girl-child. Lori-Anne had Fisher at sixteen and almost immediately crapped out on motherhood. Bernese and Lou were raising Fisher, but I felt like she was at least a third mine.

  As a baby, Fisher was colicky, and Bernese had needed a break from the daily four-hour screaming sessions. Mama was immune to screaming, but Genny couldn’t bear it, so Mama would take Genny to their studio while Bernese and Lou were off working at their store. For six months, I spent every Saturday and Sunday afternoon walking Fisher back and forth at Mama’s house. The doctor recommended swaddling, so I would wrap her tightly in blankets until she was a roly-poly tube with a round, angry face on one end. She reminded me of one of Bernese’s caterpillars, wailing and squirming, a limbless bundle of rage trying to flip itself out of my arms.

  Mama’s house was built in a circle around the central staircase.

  The foyer flowed into the living room and then the big eat-in kitchen. An archway in the kitchen led to the dining room, and the dining room opened back onto the foyer, closing the loop. I would walk baby Fisher around and around, as if the downstairs were a racetrack, while she screamed magic screams that seemed to require no pause for inhalation. After a few hours, she’d switch to bleating, breathless screams that sounded like an enraged goat.

  Toward the end, she did a series of short, coughlike screams, one after another, and the pause in between made me think every time maybe she was finished, and then another would come, and another, until I was ready to throw her off an overpass.

  But I fell in love with her every afternoon when she at last wound down and dropped into a boneless sleep. I would stand swaying to the music of silence, Fisher a solid string of limp weight in my arms. I would loosen her swaddling clothes and then lie down beside her and curl inward, becoming her protective shell. I was mesmerized by the grassy smell of her baby sweat and the way her fingers would clutch my shirtfront or my finger as she slept. I couldn’t stop rubbing my cheek against the skin of her fuzzy head.

  By the time she’d outgrown the colic, I was addicted to her. I doubled my twice-monthly visits home and brought over a third of my clothes from Athens. I hung them in my childhood closet beside a goodly portion of Fisher’s pink and yellow wardrobe, and then I blew a couple hundred on a prime portacrib. Jonno’s band was booked solid most weekends, and Saturday was Bernese’s busiest time at her store. It suited everyone for Fisher to spend her weekends with me at Mama and Genny’s, so Fisher had grown up as addicted to me as I was to her, and woe betide me if I did not show up on days when Bernese told Fisher I was coming. Days like today.

  I heard a rustle and a click, and then Fisher’s dour little voice filled the line. “Hey, Nonny.”

  Jonno chose that moment to finally pull his hand out from underneath me. He sent it wandering across my hip to my belly.

  “Hi there, Woolly-Worm,” I said. I sounded breathy. I cleared my throat and pulled ineffectually at Jonno’s wrist. “What are you up to?”

  “Grampa is about to walk me to the bus stop,” Fisher said.

  “Grandma said you were coming over today?”

  “Grandma made a mistake,” I said into the phone, and then I looked at Jonno and added to both of them, “It’s not happening today.” Jonno ignored me and slid his arm around my waist, pulling me closer. I smacked at his hand. “I wish I could come, if only to see you. But I have a lot of work.” I put one hand over the mouthpiece and hissed at Jonno, “Go pee that thing down and get your clothes on. Out!”

  Fisher was saying, “Nonny, but please can’t you? We could go to Henry’s store and us both could get books. In the window, Henry has this new book about what’s inside frogs. It shows half a frog.”

  Jonno grinned, unrepentant, and rolled away from me. “You have to hang up sometime,” he said softly, and got out of the bed.

  “Who is that?” demanded Bernese. “Is that a man talking?”

  “Bernese?” I said, and flapped my hand at Jonno, frantically trying to shush him.

  “Yes,” said Bernese. “Fisher’s on the walk-around phone. I’m on in the kitchen.”

  Jonno said, “I thought Fisher had the phone.”

  Bernese said, “You do have a man over there! Nonny! You are still married, you know.”

  “Until Friday,” I said.

  “So today it’s adultery. And on Friday it will be fornication.

  You can go to hell for either, last I checked,” Bernese said tartly.

  “Fisher, hang up,” I said, as Fisher said, “What’s formication?”

  “Hang up, Fisher,” said Bernese.

  “Okay, Grandma,” said Fisher, and I heard the click of a disconnect. Jonno chuckled, gathering his scattered clothes. I grabbed my pillow out from under my head and half sat to hurl it at him.

  He dropped his jeans and caught it. He set it gently on the foot of the bed, bowing and running his hands over the pillowcase like a maitre d’ smoothing a tablecloth, mock-fussy and officious. I flung myself onto my back and stared up at the ceiling.

  “Who’s that over there?” Bernese demanded.

  “None of your business,” I said.

  Jonno said, “Tell her it’s me and get her off your ass. Even a Southern Baptist will let you do it with your husband.”

  “That’s Jonno!” Bernese crowed triumphantly. “I recognize his voice! You’re back with Jonno?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Sounds to me like you are,” said Bernese.

  “Goodbye, Bernese.”

  “Wait, Nonny. If you’re back with Jonno, you don’t have to be at court on Friday, so there’s no reason not to get on home. I am telling you, your mama is in a deep need, and there you sit, hard-hearted as Pharaoh.”

  I said, “Mama’s not on the other end of this phone asking, Bernese. You are. And Jonno and I are still getting divorced.” I sat up, my free hand clutching the covers up over my chest. “On Friday. Four P.M.” I fixed Jonno with a steely gaze as I said it, reminding him. He held up his hands in surrender and went into my bathroom.

  “I’m done having to be quiet, huh?” he said, and released a mighty pee that went thundering down into the toilet bowl.

  “Aunt Bernese, I have to go get ready or I’m going to be late.”

  “Give Jonno my love,” said Bernese.

  “No,” I answered, and clicked off.

  Jonno flushed the toilet. His back was framed perfectly in the doorway. Jonno, damn him, was delicious from most angles, but he looked particularly goo
d from behind. I groaned and slipped one leg out of bed, fishing around on the floor for my T-shirt. I clutched it with my toes, pulling it up into the bed with me.

  Jonno turned sideways, offering me his Roman profile as if it were a present, and gumming up my toothbrush in exchange. He was still outlined by the door, but this was due more to the ridiculously tiny size of my bathroom than any planning on his part. Probably. I pulled the T-shirt on over my head and got up.

  “Shove over,” I said, and crammed into the bathroom with him. I pointed at my toothbrush. “I need that.”

  He obediently passed it over. I stuck it in my mouth and brushed while he leaned around me and spat. When I looked up, I could see him watching me in the mirror, grinning smugly, his arms folded across his broad chest.

  “What?” I said.

  He shook his head, raising his eyebrows innocently. “Not a thing.”

  I spat and rinsed. “No, what?”

  He gave me his patented naughty-little-boy look and said,

  “You’re going to cancel those jobs and go see your mama today, aren’t you?”

  “No,” I said. “Get out of here. I have to shower.”

  He took a half step forward and wrapped his arms around my waist from behind. I’m a tall girl, but Jonno easily topped six-three, and he had to bend deep at the knees to nuzzle the back of my neck. He started chanting, “You’re going to Betwee-een,” in a soft singsong to the tune of “Nanny-nanny-boo-boo.” “You’re going to Betwee-een.”

  “Stop it,” I said, but his warm breath was stirring the hairs at the nape of my neck, and I was already leaning back against him.

  He bent deeper, one hand dropping to my inner thigh and running up to cup me between my legs while the other went forag-ing under the T-shirt. “You’re going to Betwee-een.”

  “I said I’m not. Stop that singing, you brat.”

  He stopped singing, but he didn’t stop touching me with one hand, opening the bathroom drawer with the other and fishing out a condom. He tore the wrapper with his teeth, and as he was rolling it on, he whispered, “I heard what you said, but you’ll give in and go see your mama.”