Between, Georgia

by Joshilyn Jackson

  My eyes met Henry’s, and he mouthed, “Morphine,” tilting his head slightly to indicate the IV drip.

  “It’s not a coma. She’s sleeping.”

  “You don’t know,” Genny said. “It might be a coma.” I caught her hands and set them gently back down on her stomach, but the moment I took my hands away, she bent her arms at the elbow again, lifting her palms toward the ceiling. “Is she breathing? Poke her a little.”

  “She’s fine. Your Nonny’s here, and you can sleep now, widget.

  I’m going to fix it all.” I caught her hands again and pushed them gently down, and her eyelids lowered with them.

  “Those dogs,” she said. Her words were slurred. “I smell their breathing. My shoulder hurts.”

  “You need to sleep now,” I said, soothing and soft. “Does this button make the morphine come? Let’s push it.” I put the box in her hands, and she gave it a tap.

  “I can’t sleep because of those doctors. Who knows. And those dogs. What if they get loose? They could track me. They could track me to here, and I’d be sleeping, so I wouldn’t know to run,”

  Genny said.

  “I won’t let them,” I said.

  “Uh-oh, am I falling down?” Genny said, and her hands relaxed under mine. I eased backwards. I thought she was asleep, but then she said, “What if I’d died, Nonny? What would happen to dear Stacia? You mustn’t let me die, because what would Stacia do?”

  “You didn’t die, and you won’t die,” I said.

  Genny didn’t say anything else, and after a moment even her pursed mouth relaxed and she was truly out.

  I turned to Henry. “Did they admit you, too?”

  “Not at all. That dog took out a chunk of me, but all I needed was a stitch job and a shot of antibiotics that they kindly put right into my ass. I went back home to clean up and make sure the store was locked, then came back here to check on Genny and your mother.”

  “Has Genny been picking?” I asked.

  “No. Fluttering and fighting sleep, but she hasn’t tried to hurt herself,” he said.

  As I straightened up, Henry and I were exactly eye to eye. He was wearing one of his millions of white button-down shirts. This one looked buttery soft and expensive, a leftover from his stint as a software developer in New York. It was tucked neatly into khaki pants that had a crisp seam running sharp to his oxblood loafers.

  His shoulder-length hair, something else he’d brought back from New York, was gathered and bound into a neat ponytail behind him.

  “Do you think you’ll be able to open up your store tomorrow?”

  “I think so. On the other hand, I don’t think anyone has ever died from not getting a book,” Henry said.

  “Thanks for coming back and sitting with Genny and Mama.

  You didn’t have to do that.”

  He raised his eyebrows and looked at me over the lenses of his small round glasses. “Sure I did, Nonny Jane. We’re almost not unrelated.”

  I grinned back at him. This was our running joke. Henry was a transplant from the Louisiana branch of the Crabtree family tree. A couple of years ago, while Fisher and I were hanging out with him at the bookstore, we had tried to work out exactly how we were connected to each other. We’d ended up pulling out a long string of register tape so we could make a flowchart. The Georgia Crabtrees often had babies before they had high school diplomas, and after tracing our way back through their short generations and his family’s longer ones, we figured out we were fourth cousins, three times removed. On paper, anyway.

  I’d never said it out loud to him, but I didn’t think we were related at all. Henry’s father, Reau, was your typical Crabtree: red-haired, freckled, tall, pale. When he was a young buck in Lafayette, Reau got into trouble and was given the choice of jail or the army. He took the army, which was an odd choice for a Crabtree. The general Crabtree consensus was that you got better drugs in prison.

  The army turned him into a mechanic, and he liked it. On pass in Lafayette, he fell in love with a young woman who already had two divorces behind her. He married her a month after their first date. She came with a lot of baggage, including a world-class case of manic depression and a reputation for taking her marriage vows lightly. She was a sloe-eyed Cajun with a junk-French accent so thick it had to be at least partially fake. She never lost it, and even Henry had retained a bit of a Cajun slur to his S’s.

  Henry, half a head shorter than any Crabtree ever born, looked like her if she’d been painted one shade darker. She’d been sallow, but he was olive-skinned. Her eyes had been milk chocolate, but his were almost black. His younger sister was as redheaded and weedy as her daddy, though there wasn’t even a lick of Reau visible in Henry. But since Reau had buckets of the legendary Crabtree rage and a gun collection, folks didn’t exactly line up to point that out.

  Henry had been seven when Reau opted out and moved the family to Between. Reau worked for Ona as a mechanic, and Henry’s mother bought space on the square for her bookstore.

  Reau, who had both enjoyed a stint in the army and married a book lover, was considered the Crabtree family loon. Which really, there’s so much irony there, you could mine it for years and never have the vein run out. But when Henry was about twelve, Reau proved he was a true Crabtree after all: He got drunk as a goat with some of his buddies, and they decided to hike out into the woods with twelve-gauge shotguns and vaporize some squirrels. Reau leaned his gun up against a fence post, and as he was climbing through the barbed wire, he knocked the gun over and blew a large and unforgiving hole in himself.

  Henry’s mother moved her abbreviated family into the apartment over her store. That was after my aunt Bernese had opened her museum, and Between was becoming a must-stop spot for the kind of people who liked to pack up a camper and go see freakishly large balls of tinfoil and Mary statues that wept blood on Easter. The tourist traffic kept the bookstore alive, and since they lived over it, they managed to scrape by even without Reau’s salary. I think Ona may have helped them some.

  Growing up, Henry and I weren’t close. He was a good four years older than me. But I spent my allowance at the bookstore and my afternoons at his house, playing with his sister, Lily.

  Henry was a constant presence, reading or tinkering with one of the old computers he was always dragging home. I didn’t mind him being around, but I never crushed on him or anything, in spite of the fact that he looked like Johnny Depp. As a teenager and young man, he hadn’t quite grown into himself. He was quiet, introverted, and his face was so fine-boned he was almost beautiful. These things rendered him asexual to me.

  When I went off to UGA, Henry was still living at home, taking care of his mother and working freelance as a computer programmer to keep the bookstore afloat. His income meant Lily could say yes to her partial-scholarship offer and escape to Sa-vannah State.

  My junior year, Henry’s mother died. Her liver quit on her.

  Next I heard, he’d left Between. Bernese was irritated because he wouldn’t sell her the bookstore so she could expand. He wouldn’t even sublet, although the move looked permanent. He had up and married a woman he met over the Internet, some kind of an art dealer who lived in New York City.

  Bernese got to see her before I did. “Pretty thing, but weird-looking,” she told me.

  “Like dressed weird?” I asked, curious.

  “No. Dressed nice. I bet you her shoes cost more than my car.

  But she was mutty-looking.” Then she added in hushed tones, as if telling me something dirty, “I’m not sure, to look at her, but I think she might be part black.”

  “Good grief, Bernese, who cares,” I said.

  “Well, none of us do. But how do you think that’s going to fly with Crabtrees?” Bernese said.

  I saw her point.

  Two years later, Henry came home pulling a small U-Haul trailer behind his car and quietly reopened the bookstore. He didn’t go back to New York, and his wife was never seen in town again. Rex Gentry, Between�
�s lone mailman, told me—told everyone, really—that letters and fat envelopes came and went between Isaac Davids’s law office and a practice in New York. Then the letters stopped, and then Henry took off his wedding band.

  In the years after his divorce, Henry and I had drifted into a close friendship. We both were obsessed with good novels and good coffee. Fisher adored him, and I had come to depend on Henry’s companionship on my long weekends home. I should have known I would find him here, taking care of Mama and Genny.

  Mama stirred, and I quickly moved to sit in the chair beside her bed. Her hands flew up into the air, exactly like Genny’s had.

  I reached over and drew a heart on her shoulder. I always did that when I came into a room she was in, so she would know that I was there and it was me. She made my name sign, questioning, still half asleep, and I drew the heart again. She exhaled in obvious relief and said my name out loud.

  My mother rarely spoke, and when she did, when she said my name in her high-pitched, scratchy voice with the vowels drawn out long so that it sounded like “Nah-ay-nay,” it flooded my stomach with immediate, visceral love.

  Her hands were reaching to find mine, and so I gave them to her. My mother had lady-shaped hands, small with tapering fingers, but her nails were kept short and plain and her palms were callused. I signed, telling her everything I knew she’d want to know, first of all that Genny was going to be fine. I told her where she was and what had happened, and that I was here and Genny was in the next bed sleeping, and that Henry was here as well. As I signed, her quick hands skimmed over and around the shapes my hands and fingers made, reading me like Braille.

  When I told her Bernese had shot the Bitch, she lifted one shoulder in an eloquent shrug and signed, Good.

  She had questions, of course, so I gave her my hands and answered them, interpreting what both of us were saying for Henry as I signed, so that instead of thinking in English or ASL, I thought between them. Mama made me go through what had happened several times, reconstructing it from her experience and questioning Henry, who had witnessed it.

  “At first I didn’t realize it was the dogs. I could only think, ‘I am being killed.’ ” When I spoke for Mama, I did so directly, in first person, but there was rarely any confusion about whether I was speaking for Mama or myself.

  Mama felt down the side of the bed to the control buttons and jacked up the bed until she was sitting. She signed, I was sure I was going to die, and I thought what would Genny do. I was so afraid. What would Genny do if I had died?

  You didn’t die, and you won’t die, I told her.

  What about the other two dogs? Mama signed. Did Bernese shoot them?

  I shook my hand no, and Mama’s lips compressed. Tell her to go back and shoot them. She’d better, or we’ll never get Genny home.

  I did not interpret this exactly for Henry. I said only, “She’s worried about Genny, Henry. Excuse us for a second? I need to talk to her.” Henry nodded and went to sit in the other chair. He didn’t bother to look away. Henry could slowly grind out the alphabet and sign a few phrases, but he didn’t know enough ASL

  to follow the conversation. I stopped interpreting for him and signed to Mama, I’m taking care of it. I am going to go talk to Ona Crabtree.

  And say what? Mama demanded. Genny is going to be gobbling Xanax and picking herself bloody until she feels safe.

  I started to outline my game plan, but my hands stilled. Ona Crabtree was in the hospital hallway, as if mentioning her name had somehow conjured her. She stared me down with a flat gaze as she walked slowly past the open door. Fear trickled icy cold down the length of my spine, and Mama felt the pause in me. She was signing before I could pick up the conversation, asking me what was happening.

  Henry, sitting by Genny’s bed, had his back to the door. By the time he turned to see what had caught my attention, Ona had disappeared on the other side of the doorway.

  What? What? Mama signed impatiently, shaking my quiet hands. I wanted so badly to lie, but I couldn’t lie to her. That was Genny’s rule. If it happened in Mama’s presence, if it happened in the room with her, Genny insisted that we never hide it.

  Bernese still refused to get that, and 80 percent of our ugliest family fights began with Bernese saying, “Don’t say this to Eustacia, but . . .” While she was saying it, Genny would be simultaneously signing, Don’t say this to Eustacia, but . . . into Mama’s hand.

  I signed, Ona Crabtree is here. I spelled out Ona and used our name sign for Crabtree, snapping one hand in a quick pinch like a claw and then dropping it in the same movement I would use to sign “low.” It was more complicated than a usual name sign, and it carried a negative connotation. We never used it to refer to Henry. It didn’t bother me; the fact that my mother had so named them was only more proof that she thought of me as wholly her own. I looked at the doorway. Ona was passing again, going the other way.

  Henry said, “What is it?” I shook my head at him; I did not want Ona to hear me talking about her. Mama started to respond, but I told her I would be right back and stood up. She didn’t let go of my hand.

  With her free hand, she signed, Why is Ona Crabtree here?

  “What’s happening?” said Henry.

  He was quick enough to have seen Mama and me spelling out

  “Ona.” I brought my free hand up to put my finger to my lips, hushing him. For Ona’s benefit I said, “Mama is wanting a drink; will you pour her some water?”

  Henry gave me a long, level gaze that said more eloquently than words that he knew I was full of crap. Then he said, “Certainly,” and went to the table between the beds where a small plastic pitcher of ice water sat along with two cups. Ona Crabtree passed the door once more. She was like a shooting-gallery duck, appearing and disappearing, reversing and appearing again.

  To Mama, I signed, Let me go find out.

  She let go of me, and I said to Henry, “Can you stay a few more minutes? I need to go see when they’ll release my mother.”

  Henry nodded, giving me another assessing gaze. He was trying to hand Mama the water, but since she hadn’t actually asked for it, she was surprised by its sudden presence in her hand.

  I went out the door, leaving it open. Ona was moving away from me, down the hall. I followed her. She looked over her shoulder to make sure I was coming and then picked up the pace.

  She rounded a corner, and I hurried to catch up, my heartbeat in-creasing and my hands shaping themselves into fists. The coiled anger I had felt on Jonno’s porch was unfurling again inside me.

  I felt like a predator going after a stringy beast made of tendons and gristle. When I turned the corner, Ona was waiting right there for me, and she clamped my arm in a bony grasp. I started, and before I could speak, she turned and began dragging me ur-gently up the hallway.

  “You could have come in the room,” I said, but I let her tow me along.

  “I don’t want to talk with Henry right now. I want to talk with you,” she said. “And what’s Henry doing here? Those Fretts didn’t get enough with you, they have to put a claim on Henry, too?”

  She didn’t wait for me to answer but toted me back past the bank of elevators, then into a recessed alcove that held vending machines. She let go of me, but I still felt pinned under her twitchy gaze.

  “Whicha one of them got bad bit?” Ona said. She was wringing her rough hands. “The blind one or the crazy one?”

  “It was Genny,” I said. Ona looked at me impatiently. I glared back at her. “You know which is Genny.”

  “So not the blind one,” Ona said. “That’s good. I swear, I didn’t want it much to be that blind one.”

  I said, “You’re talking about my mother.”

  Ona lifted her upper lip, baring her teeth like a nervous horse.

  Her teeth were gray around the edges and oddly flat. My front teeth had been flat like that before braces.

  She was in her early sixties, and she had lived every one of those years hard. She still lived ha
rd, and her face showed it. But I could see my face under it, in the good high cheekbones and the narrow jaw. I had her nose, too, long and skinny and a little crooked, and about a third of her freckles. She was shorter than me now, hunched with age, her shoulders curving inward, but in the pictures I had seen of her as a young woman, she had my body, leggy and long-waisted with not enough on top. I didn’t say anything, and she relaxed her mouth and looked away, turning her head to the Coke machines.

  “What happened?” I demanded. “Why did it happen? Who screwed up closing the gate?”

  She shrugged. “I think it might well could have been Varner.”

  Varner was the most recent in her long chain of common-law husbands. “We got into it pretty bad the night before when we was closing up the station. He went stomping out the back. He was pretty drunk.”

  “Why do you even have dogs like that? They’re dangerous if you don’t get them properly trained. And you had to know they hated Genny.”

  She shrugged again. “They’s good dogs, Nonny. Cost me more than four hundred apiece as puppies. Maybe I knew they had a little mean to them, but you want a guard dog to have some mean. You got to know I never thought they’d eat nobody. Not unless somebody came in the parts yard that wasn’t supposed to.”

  We stood there silently looking at each other. She added, “Not like you ever ast me to get rid of them.”

  “I told you I thought they were a menace.”

  She couldn’t quite meet my eyes. “You never said get rid of them.”

  I turned my back on her and took two steps away, then faced her again. “I don’t think I can talk to you right now.” But I didn’t leave. I couldn’t leave until I knew she wasn’t going to call her brother over in Alabama, assuming she hadn’t already. I had to know my family was safe.

  She lowered her eyebrows and looked up at me from under them, thrusting her chin out. At last she jerked one thumb at the Coke machine and said, “You got any change?”