by Louise Welsh
“You all right, Mrs. Kelly?” Zeke asked, studying her face. Hilton did the same. She was perspiring, and her cheeks were redder than usual underneath her thin cocoa-colored skin.
“Just fine. May have had a fainting spell is all. I hope Hilton didn’t send you into a fright.”
Zeke mumbled something about how it wasn’t a bother, although he was annoyed. Hilton barely noticed Zeke slip back out of the house because his eyes were on Nana. His tiny hand still tingled from the memory of the cold flesh he’d touched, as unhuman as meat from the butcher. Nana’s smiles and gentle manner frightened him in a way he didn’t understand. He stood watching her, his tears still flowing.
Nana glanced at him several times over her shoulder while she tried to scrape burned stew from the bottom of her good iron saucepan. The scraping sounded grating and insistent to Hilton. For the first time in his life, Hilton wondered if Nana might ever do anything to try to hurt him.
Finally, Nana said, “You go on out of the way now, Hilton. Supper’s late today. Don’t give me that face now, pumpkin. Nana’s not going to leave you.”
Hilton wanted to take Nana’s fingers and squeeze them, to see if the cold was still there, but she hadn’t reached out to him and he wouldn’t dare touch her if she did. Hilton felt something had changed, maybe forever. He went outside to play with a three-wheeled wagon he’d found, but he wasn’t really playing. He was sitting on the front stoop, rocking the wagon back and forth in front of him, but he barely knew where he was or what he was doing. And, as he’d sensed, things were different after that day he found Nana on the kitchen floor: She began to wake up crying out from bad dreams. He watched her get out of bed for a glass of water in the moonlight, her nightgown so soaked with sweat he could see all the lines of her body as though she wore no clothes. Many nights Hilton went to sleep alone because Nana would stay up humming and writing hymns on the porch. She said she did this because she couldn’t sleep. Hilton knew the truth, that she didn’t want to. Maybe she had met the boogeyman.
It was fine with Hilton to be alone, because it was hard for him to sleep with Nana there. Her sleep breathing sounded different to him, the breaths longer and drawn farther and farther apart until he was sure the next one wasn’t coming, but it always did. Once, he counted a minute between her breaths. He tried to hold his own breath that long, but he couldn’t.
Nana was confused all the time now. She would get cross with him more easily than before, and she’d smack his backside for no good reason. One day Hilton was smacked when he didn’t bring home cubes of sugar he knew she had never asked him to bring.
This went on for nearly a year, and Hilton began to hate her. He was afraid of her for reasons he didn’t know or want to know. She’d never hurt him, not really, and on the rare occasions he touched her now her skin felt warm, but his memory of that day in the kitchen was too strong.
All of this changed the day Hilton took his first ride on a Greyhound, sitting at the back, of course, when Nana and their Belle Glade cousins took him to Miami for the Kelly-James family reunion. Twice before, Nana had stayed home and his women cousins drove him to the reunions to meet his kin, but she decided to go this year. The smells coming from Nana’s picnic basket and the wonder of the flat, endless Florida landscape through the bus window were enough to make Hilton forget his fear.
The reunion was at Virginia Key Beach, and Hilton had never seen anyplace like it. This was a beach in Miami for only colored people, and folks of all shapes and shades had flocked there that day. Hilton had become a good swimmer in canals near Nana’s house in Belle Glade, but he’d never seen so much sand and the trees and a green ocean stretching to forever. He’d always been told the ocean was blue, so the sparkling green ribbons of current were a wonder to him. Anything could happen on a day like today.
No one warned Hilton about the undertow, and he wouldn’t have understood if they had, but Nana did tell him he could only go in the water if he didn’t go far; this would have been enough if Hilton had minded like he should have. Nana, who was helping the ladies set up picnic tables, pointed to the orange buoy floating out in the water and said he could go only halfway there. And Hilton said “Yes, Nana” and ran splashing into the water knowing that he would go exactly where he wanted because in the water he would be free.
He swam easily past the midway point to the buoy, and he could see from here that it was cracked and the glowing paint was old. He wanted to get a closer look at it, maybe grab it and tread water and gaze back at all those brown bodies on the sand. And it was here that he met up with the undertow.
It was friendly at first. He felt as though the water had closed a grip around his tiny kicking legs and dunked him beneath the surface like a doughnut then spat him back up a few feet from where he started. Hilton coughed and smiled, splashing with his arms. He didn’t know the water could do that by itself. It was like taking a ride.
The buoy was now farther than it was before the ocean played with him. It was off to his left now when it had been straight ahead. As Hilton waited to see if he could feel those swirling currents beneath him again, he heard splinters of Nana’s voice in the wind, calling from the beach: “Hilton, you get back here, boy! You hear me? Get back here.”
So the ocean was not free after all, Hilton realized. He’d better do as he was told, or he wouldn’t get any coconut cake or peach cobbler, if it wasn’t too late for that already. He began sure strokes back toward the shore.
The current still wanted to play, and this time it was angry Hilton was trying to leave so soon. He felt the cold grip seize his waist and hold his legs still. He was so started he gasped a big breath of air, just in time to be plunged into the belly of the ocean, tumbled upside down and then up again, with water pounding all around his ears in a roar. Hilton tried to kick and stroke, but he didn’t know which way was up or down and all he could see was the water all around him specked with the tiny ocean life. Even in his panic, Hilton knew not to open his mouth, but his lungs were starting to hurt and the tumbling was never-ending. Hilton believed he was being swept to the very bottom of the ocean, or out to sea as far as the ship he’d seen passing earlier. Frantically, he flailed his arms.
He didn’t hear Nana shout out from where she stood at the shore, but he’d hear the story told many times later. There was no lifeguard that day, but there were plenty of Kelly and James men who followed Nana, who stripped herself of her dress and ran into the water. The woman hadn’t been swimming in years, but her limbs didn’t fail her this one time she needed to glide across the water. The men followed the old woman into the sea.
Hilton felt he couldn’t hold his breath anymore, and the water mocked him all around. It filled his ears, his nose, and finally his mouth, and his muscles began to fail him. It was then, just as he believed his entire fifty-pound body would fill with water, that he felt an arm around his waist. He fought the arm at first, thinking it was another current, but the grip was firm and pulled him up, up, up, until he could see light and Nana’s weary, determined face. That was all he saw, because he went limp then.
He would hear the rest from others who told him in gentle ways about Chariots to the Everlasting and that sort of thing. One of the James men had been swimming closely behind Nana, and she passed Hilton to his arms. Then she simply stopped swimming, they said. Said maybe she just gave out. Nana’s head began to sink below the water, and just as one of the Kelly men reached to try to take her arm, the current she’d pulled Hilton from took her instead. The man carrying Hilton could only swim against it with all his might toward the shore. Many people almost drowned that day.
When Hilton’s senses came back to him and he was lying on the beach, caked in gritty sand, all that was left of Nana was her good flowered dress, damp and crumpled at the water’s edge.
So what the gifted old folks, the seers, often say is true:
Sometimes the dead go unburied.
NOBODY KNOWS MY NAME
Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates (b.1938) was born in Lockport, New York and was raised on her grandparents’ farm in Erie County. She began her education in a one-room schoolhouse, was the first in her family to graduate high school, and is a graduate of Syracuse University and the University of Wisconsin. Oates has published over seventy books and has been awarded numerous accolades for her work. She is Professor of Creative Writing at Princeton University.
She was a precocious child, aged nine. She understood that there was danger even before she saw the cat with thistledown gray fur like breath, staring at her, eyes tawny-golden and unperturbed, out of the bed of crimson peonies.
It was summer. Baby’s first summer they spoke of it. At Lake St. Cloud in the Adirondack Mountains in the summer house with the dark shingles and fieldstone fireplaces and the wide second-floor veranda that, when you stepped out on it, seemed to float in the air, unattached to anything. At Lake St. Cloud neighbors’ houses were hardly visible through the trees, and she liked that. Ghost houses they were, and their inhabitants. Only voices carried sometimes, or radio music, from somewhere along the lakeshore a dog’s barking in the early morning, but cats make no sound – that was one of the special things about them. The first time she’d seen the thistledown gray cat she’d been too surprised to call to it, the cat had stared at her and she had stared at the cat, and it seemed to her that the cat had recognized her, or in any case it had moved its mouth in a silent miming of speech – not a “meow” as in a silly cartoon but a human word. But in the next instant the cat had disappeared so she’d stood alone on the terrace feeling the sudden loss like breath sucked out of her and when Mommy came outside carrying the baby, the pretty candy cane towel flung over her shoulder to protect it from the baby’s drool, she hadn’t heard Mommy speaking to her at first because she was listening so hard to something else. Mommy repeated what she’d said, “Jessica – ? Look who’s here.”
Jessica. That was the word, the name, the thistledown gray cat had mimed.
*
Back home, in the city, all the houses on Prospect Street which was their street were exposed, like in glossy advertisements. The houses were large and made of brick or stone and their lawns were large and carefully tended and never hidden from one another, never secret as at Lake St. Cloud. Their neighbors knew their names and were always calling out hello to Jessica even when they could tell she was looking away from them, thinking I don’t see anybody, they can’t see me but always there was the intrusion and backyards too ran together separated only by flower beds or hedges you could look over. Jessica loved the summer house that used to be Grandma’s before she died and went away and left it to them though she was never certain it was real or only something she’d dreamt. She had trouble sometimes remembering what real was and what dream was and whether they could ever be the same or were always different. It was important to know because if she confused the two Mommy might notice, and question her, and once Daddy couldn’t help laughing at her in front of company, she’d been chattering excitedly in that way of a shy child suddenly feverish to talk telling of how the roof of the house could be lifted and you could climb out using the clouds as stairs. Daddy interrupted to tell her no, no Jessie sweetheart that’s just a dream, laughing at the stricken look in her eyes so she went mute as if he’d slapped her and backed away and ran out of the room to hide. And tore at her thumbnail with her teeth to punish herself.
Afterward Daddy came to her and squatted in front of her to look level in her eyes saying he was sorry he’d laughed at her and he hoped she wasn’t mad at Daddy, it’s just she’s so cute, her eyes so blue, did she forgive Daddy? and she nodded yes her eyes filling with tears of hurt and rage and in her heart No! no! no! but Daddy didn’t hear, and kissed her like always.
That was a long time ago. She’d only been in preschool then. A baby herself, so silly. No wonder they laughed at her.
*
The terrible worry was, for a while, they might not be driving up to Lake St. Cloud this summer.
It was like floating – just the name. Lake St. Cloud. And clouds reflected in the lake, moving across the ripply surface of the water. It was up to Lake St. Cloud in the Adirondacks when you looked at the map of New York State and it was up when Daddy drove, into the foothills and into the mountains on curving, sometimes twisting roads. She could feel the journey up and there was no sensation so strange and so wonderful.
Will we be going to the lake? Jessica did not dare ask Mommy or Daddy because to ask such a question was to articulate the very fear the question was meant to deny. And there was the terror, too, that the summer house was after all not real but only Jessica’s dream because she wanted it so badly.
*
Back before Baby was born, in spring. Weighing only five pounds eleven ounces. Back before the “C-section” she heard them speak of so many times over the telephone, reporting to friends and relatives. “C-section” – she saw floating geometrical figures, octagons, hexagons, as in one of Daddy’s architectural magazines, and Baby was in one of these, and had to be sawed out. The saw was a special one, Jessica knew, a surgeon’s instrument. Mommy had wanted “natural labor” but it was to be “C-section” and Baby was to blame, but nobody spoke of it. There should have been resentment of Baby, and anger and disgust, for all these months Jessica was good and Baby-to-be bad. And nobody seemed to know, or to care. Will we be going to the lake this year? Do you still love me? – Jessica did not dare ask for fear of being told.
This was the year, the year of Mommy’s swelling belly, when Jessica came to know many things without knowing how she knew. The more she was not told, the more she understood. She was a grave, small-boned child with pearly blue eyes and a delicate oval of a face like a ceramic doll’s face and she had a habit of which all adults disapproved of biting her thumbnail until it bled or even sucking at her thumb if she believed she was unobserved but most of all she had the power to make herself invisible sometimes watching and listening and hearing more than was said. The times that Mommy was unwell that winter, and the dark circles beneath her eyes, and her beautiful chestnut hair brushed limp behind her ears, and her breath panting from the stairs, or just walking across a room. From the waist up Mommy was still Mommy but from the waist down, where Jessica did not like to look, the thing that was Baby-to-be, Baby-Sister-to-be, had swollen up grotesquely inside her so her belly was in danger of bursting. And Mommy might be reading to Jessica or helping with her bath when suddenly the pain would hit, Baby kicked hard, so hard Jessica could feel it too, and the warm color draining from Mommy’s face, and the hot tears flooding her eyes. And Mommy would kiss Jessica hurriedly, and go away. And if Daddy was home she would call for him in that special voice meaning she was trying to keep calm. Daddy would say Darling, you’re all right, it’s fine, I’m sure it’s fine, helping Mommy to sit somewhere comfortable, or lie down with her legs raised; or to make her way slow as an elderly woman down the hall to the bathroom. That was why Mommy laughed so much, and was so breathless, or began to cry suddenly. These hormones! she’d laugh. Or, I’m too old! We waited too long! I’m almost forty! God help me, I want this baby so badly! and Daddy would be comforting, mildly chiding, he was accustomed to handling Mommy in her moods, Shhh! What kind of silly talk is that? Do you want to scare Jessie, do you want to scare me? And though Jessica might be asleep in her room in her bed she would hear, and she would know, and in the morning she would remember as if what was real was also dream, with the secret power of dream to give you knowledge others did not know you possessed.
*
But Baby was born, and given a name: ____. Which Jessica whispered but, in her heart, did not say.
Baby was born in the hospital, sawed out of the C-section as planned. Jessica was brought to see Mommy and Baby ______ and the surprise of seeing them the two of them so together Mommy so tired-looking and so happy, and Baby that had been an it, that ugly swelling in Mommy’s belly, was painful as an electric shock – swift-shooting through Jessica, ev
en as Daddy held her perched on his knee beside Mommy’s bed, it left no trace. Jessie, darling – see who’s here? Your baby sister ______ isn’t she beautiful? Look at her tiny toes, her eyes, look at her hair that’s the color of yours, isn’t she beautiful? And Jessica’s eyes blinked only once or twice and with her parched lips she was able to speak, to respond as they wanted her to respond, like being called upon in school when her thoughts were in pieces like a shattered mirror but she gave no sign, she had the power, you must tell adults only what they want you to tell them so they will love you.
*
So Baby was born, and all the fears were groundless. And Baby was brought back in triumph to the house on Prospect Street flooded with flowers where there was a nursery repainted and decorated specially for her. And eight weeks later Baby was taken in the car up to Lake St. Cloud, for Mommy was strong enough now, and Baby was gaining weight so even the pediatrician was impressed, already able to focus her eyes, and smile, or seem to smile, and gape her toothless little mouth in wonderment hearing her name _____! _____! _____! so tirelessly uttered by adults. For everybody adored Baby, whose very poop was delightful to them. For everybody was astonished at Baby, who had only to blink and drool and gurgle and squawk red-faced moving her bowels inside her diaper or, in her battery-operated baby swing, fall abruptly asleep as if hypnotized – isn’t she beautiful! isn’t she a love! And to Jessica was put the question again, again, again Aren’t you lucky to have a baby sister? and Jessica knew the answer that must be given, and given with a smile, a quick shy smile and a nod. For everybody brought presents for Baby, where once they had brought presents for another baby. (Except, as Jessica learned, overhearing Mommy talking with a woman friend, there were many more presents for Baby than there had been for Jessica. Mommy admitted to her friend there were really too many, she felt guilty, now they were well-to-do and not scrimping and saving as when Jessica was born, now they were deluged with baby things, almost three hundred presents! – she’d be writing thank-you notes for a solid year.)