Gone Too Long

by Lori Roy

  Chapter 59

  IMOGENE

  Today

  The lake is dark, and just beyond the sandy bank, the wind whips up the water. Imogene listens but hears nothing of Garland or Christopher. No voices, no shouting or crying. She calls out over the wind and the churning water.

  “Garland.” She lifts onto her knees and screams again. “Christopher, I’m here. It’s Imogene.” As she walks toward the water, she peels off her shirt and steps out of her jeans that will weigh her down. The day she nearly drowned was the last time she tried to swim. Mama wanted her to take lessons after that day, but Imogene refused. She would always remember the pull of something down below and how easily she had been willing to surrender.

  The water rolls first across her feet. It sweeps past her, the cold burning the cuts and welts she must surely have there, climbs higher up the sandy patch of ground, and retreats. Back and forth it rolls, each time reaching higher. She continues to cry out as she walks and then tries to run, driving her knees high so her feet clear the water. The waves break on her thighs and then pull at her waist.

  “Christopher,” she screams. “Toward me. Pull your arms toward my voice.”

  The water sprays Imogene’s face as she stretches to reach the bottom with her toes. She bounces forward, crying out. Up ahead, the water begins to glow. She turns, coughing and spitting and pulling the hair from her face. It’s a set of headlights, shining into the lake. She follows the glow, pulling now with her arms because her feet no longer touch. She lifts and lowers with the water. As it throws her higher, she kicks and pulls to ride it to the highest spot, and for a moment, she sees it. A head maybe, a set of shoulders, but then she’s down again, coughing and spitting. She struggles to stay in the light’s path because the wind and the water are pushing her off course.

  Jo Lynne was never an athlete in school. Imogene was the one who played volleyball and basketball and ran track every spring. But as a swimmer, Jo Lynne was always graceful and strong. Even before Imogene sees her, she knows it’s Jo Lynne swimming this way, her arms cutting through the water, her kicking feet powering her through the wind and waves. She glides past Imogene, slicing the cone of light as she swims closer to the middle of the lake, where Imogene always imagined her real daddy was waiting just beyond. Imogene reaches with her arms and kicks toward Jo Lynne’s wake, fights the pull of the wind to stay in the light’s center, kicks to keep her head above water, and continues to scream for Christopher to swim toward her voice.

  Pull with your arms. Kick with your feet. Trust yourself. Look at the bottom and pull and kick. Imogene forces her face into the water, feeling it again, the pull of something from down below, something that was hoping for her that day when she was twelve and now is hoping for Christopher. And then a thought. She could be wrong. Garland may have taken Christopher someplace else, and now she’s trapped here in the middle of the lake. She tucks her head, causing her body to flatten out and ride on top of the water, reaches with her arms, one after the other, and struggles to keep her kick below the waves. When she needs a breath, she lifts her head, and each time, her feet begin to sink as she does. And each time, she screams Christopher’s name.

  Chapter 60

  CHRISTOPHER

  Today

  The man drags me through the water, one arm looped around my chest. I’m on my back but can’t keep my legs from falling. He’s pulling us with one hand that reaches out and digs down into the water over and over. I’m crying now because I don’t believe Mama is here, but I don’t want him to know because that will make him angry and he might let me go. Mama always said to never make him angry. She told me to talk like I’m a rose, sweet and flowery, to men like this, but to be a cactus inside. The cactus will always survive.

  The water fills my mouth and I cough and I try to spit it out. We’re lost in the darkness. My skin feels rubbery for being so cold, and my feet drag behind me and are falling toward the black bottom. When we started walking, the water barely touching our toes, he said the water’s deep and asked did I know what deep was. I said no, and he said that’s how far the water will cover you over if you don’t stay with me. You can’t breathe underwater. You know that, right? So hold on tight.

  When he came for me, I was waiting. He didn’t tell me when he’d come but he said we’d go when it turned dark and he’d knock on the window and I would know it was him. So even though it wasn’t all the way dark, when I heard the tapping, just like he said I would, I pushed up on the window like he showed me and he tore the screen. When I crawled out, I fell on my knees and tried to tell him that I saw Mama’s necklace, but he told me to be quiet. His voice made me cry just like I’m crying now, and I tried to make myself stop. Play the silent game, Mama would say when I felt like crying and knew I shouldn’t. Buckle your mouth up and twist a lock, and she’d use two fingers to twist a lock on my mouth that wasn’t really there. But I couldn’t stop myself from crying because when I fell, I put a tear in my new pants and a red scrape on one knee and I wanted to see Mama’s necklace again. I tried to walk fast like he wanted me to, but I couldn’t because I didn’t know where to look. I never knew how big the outside was even though Mama told me. Bigger than you can see, Mama would say. Bigger than your arms can stretch or your voice can carry.

  It was dark when we started walking but not so dark as it is now. I never saw a dark sky before, and I hoped to see stars that glittered up there. Mama told me all about the stars and planets and the moon, and sometimes we would turn off the big light and shine the little light through a box poked full of holes. Tiny specks of light danced on the ceiling, and Mama said that’s what stars are like. Except this sky was dark and there was lots of wind that blew my hair, and there was wet rain, too, on my face. All of that together made me cold as I walked with the man, and Mama would be angry because I took outside without a coat. We never took outside time without a coat because you just never knew. I was happy when the man stopped walking and pulling on me and handed me a coat he brought special for me. He held it while I slipped my arms in each hole. It was puffy and I was warm when he took my hand and said, this way. He said to leave the coat on all the way into the water. It’ll keep you warm.

  After I put the coat on, the man smiled and asked me, did I know about the lake, about it being a magical place? I nodded because Mama told me heaven was there at the lake and it was just waiting for us every day we took outside time. We would soak it up because that’s where hope was and happiness and all kind of loving, and I knew that’s where Mama would be.

  The man stops digging in the water when a cloudy light stretches out over us. I can see the water now, except it’s black and everything is black and we’re still lost. Maybe there isn’t a bottom under all this water. Maybe the water goes on forever and Mama is lost in it just like we’re lost. I try to look for her in the smoky yellow light, but the water sprays my eyes and runs up my nose and I can’t make it stop. The water is picking us up and pulling us back down, over and over, but mostly it’s pulling us down, and I spit more of it out of my mouth. I never knew water would pull with all its might to drag me down to a black bottom I can’t see. Mama always said I was full of might—that means strength, that means you’re mighty—but the water is mightier than me or the man. We’re bobbing straight up and down now. I think I hear a voice. It’s a yelling voice but the water is louder than anyone can yell, and then his arm begins to loosen around my chest and then it’s gone. I kick my feet, reach for him. My coat, my new special coat to keep me warm, is heavy and pulls me, and the water pulls me. I can’t say his name, am never allowed to say his name, but I do.

  “Mr. Garland,” I cry, and I cough because the water spills into my mouth. “Mr. Garland.”

  But he’s gone. And the black water has hold of me now. I slap with my arms but they don’t much move because my coat is too heavy for me. You’re getting too big, Mama would say as she climbed the stairs with me on her back. It made her stronger to have me as extra on her back. Up and
down she would go, only carrying me on the way up, and I would go down on my bottom, and when I got older, I would hold the railing and walk by myself. Now my coat is too big and I’m not strong enough.

  Another arm digs down into the water and wraps around my chest. I think it’s an arm. I’m lifted and I suck in air but I suck in water too. More coughing. More spitting. The arm isn’t big like Mr. Garland’s and not as strong. It’s Miss Jo Lynne. I remember her from the kitchen. Miss Jo Lynne with the sweet frosting. She’s telling me lay your head on the water, press your belly button to the sky. But the bottom is still grabbing at my feet and legs and pulling hard and we go under and back up again. Miss Jo Lynne coughs like me. She wraps her arms around me and tugs at my coat. She cries out, screams I think because the zipper won’t unzip. We practiced zippers, Mama and me. Zippers and shoelaces. Miss Jo Lynne is crying and screaming right in my ear and telling me to take it off. Take it off.

  She’s kicking now and the land is getting closer. We’re not going toward Mama anymore. My heavy coat pulls at me and Miss Jo Lynne is crying as she kicks us toward the sandy spot where the trees don’t grow. Someone is calling for me. I think it’s Mama again and I kick and twist but the hands hold tight. I spit water and shake my head because it’s in my eyes. I hear my name again. Someone is screaming for me. Someone who knows me. It’s Imogene with the red, wiry hair. I see her. I kick and reach because that’s what she’s telling me to do, but my heavy coat is pulling at me. Imogene is screaming my name. Miss Jo Lynne’s hands are gone and Imogene hooks an arm around me like Mama would do when she toted me to bed. I’ll carry you like a sack of taters, Mama would say. Imogene is spitting and coughing and the land is getting closer. Now she’s screaming for Miss Jo Lynne. Come back, she’s screaming as she digs in the water. And then I feel it under my toes, the sandy ground. We fall on it, Imogene and me, and we lie there breathing, and I think Mama is gone.

  Chapter 61

  BETH

  Earlier today

  I can feel that it’s almost morning. It’s the time people most slip through the cracks. The seam between day and night or night and day. There’s a sogginess to the air. Sometimes I’d wake and Mama wouldn’t be home, and I’d find her on the porch, asleep in a chair. Her hair would be damp from the heavy, wet air, her clothes limp like they just came from the washer. I’d shake her and she’d come inside. I can feel that moment of touching Mama’s warm shoulder and of wanting to cry because I didn’t know why Mama was so unhappy that she’d sprinkle oleander leaves in a cup of hot water or drink whiskey until it killed her. I can feel it so hard, that moment of waking Mama and knowing she was broken inside, that it’s weighing me down, and even though it’s almost light, I have to walk on the road where the walking is easier because I’m just that tired.

  Later today, after the air has dried out, someone will see the broken window in the back of the thrift shop. I know for certain Tillie will find the necklace I left, but I can’t know for certain he will call Imogene, though I believe he will because I know he loves her. Imogene was married to Tillie’s son, and Imogene’s baby boy was his grandson. Everything Imogene lost, Tillie lost too. I know he loves her, and I believe he will help. Eddie knows everyone in town, that’s what he’s told me all these years. And the people he knows will protect him and not care about a person like me. But I know all about Tillie because I know all about Imogene, and that’s why Tillie is the one person who might care about a person like me. He’s the one person who might help me.

  Eddie gave me the necklace the day he asked did I want to be a family, a real family. I kept it and wore it, not so we’d be a family but because the necklace was a way of being close to Imogene and her mama before her and hers before her. Imogene was strong enough to survive having a different daddy and a family who died, so I could be strong too. Other than Christopher, Imogene is the only other person I’ve really known all these years, though she hasn’t known me. Her life is really the only one I’ve lived.

  When Imogene’s little baby and her husband died, I believe Eddie was scared, maybe more scared than he’d ever been in his life, that he’d die too and never have a family of his own. He’d be a man who left nothing behind but hate. I’d read everything I could ever find about the Ku Klux Klan in all the books Eddie brought me over the years, even read once about the man who I believe was Eddie’s great-great-grandfather. Eddie would be no different from all the men I saw in all the black-and-white pictures I found in those books. He’d be nothing but a tattered robe and limp hood and would never be remembered. I think Eddie knew that too, and that’s mostly why he always talked about Imogene. In the beginning, I thought it was because she had it worse than him. But I was wrong. He talked mostly of her, because even though she eventually lost it all, for at least a time, she had everything. She is strong in a real sort of way, isn’t always afraid. She is a cactus who doesn’t much bother trying to look like a rose.

  I know that sound. It’s like childhood sneaking up on me. It’s tires on a gravel road. I think of Ellie and Fran. They’ll be big as me now. I imagine they’re still riding on that bus to Macon for the field trip. They’re sipping sweet tea from a can and their heads are tipped together and they’re telling stories about the day they’ll finally see me again. They’ll tell me all about the things I’ve missed, the names of every teacher and the jobs they had each summer and what color they painted their bedrooms. I can’t remember their last names anymore, but I think I’ll know them when I see them. I think they’ll know me too.

  Yes, that’s childhood sneaking up on me.

  Every night during the warm months of spring, Mama and I would sit on the porch and wait for that first white, velvety magnolia bloom to show itself. When the bushes finally bloomed, those were the happiest weeks, at least for Mama. We’d sit in the plastic chairs she called lawn furniture, close our eyes, and breathe in that scent. I would sip powdered lemonade that made my lips pucker, and Mama’d sip whiskey on ice. Breathe it in good, Mama would say of the sweet scent, ’cause it ain’t going to last.

  I always knew Mama was thinking about something other than magnolias when she breathed in those flowers. She was thinking about something that had already come and gone, like a time before I was born. Lord, how I wish I could grow up all over again, she’d sometimes say. Mama saying things like that would make my insides ache and even leave me crying because the days and weeks wouldn’t stop passing by, not for anybody, and one day I’d be sorry my sweet youth was gone. But I had Mama for a while, and I had Christopher too. Nothing lasts forever, that’s what Mama always said on those nights we sat in the plastic furniture, as if breathing in the scent of those flowers was like breathing in life itself.

  The tires are inching forward now, and behind me, the sun is up. It’s warm on the top of my head. I pull the jacket I’m still wearing tight around my shoulders. It’s his jacket, heavy flannel. My lids flutter from the glare bouncing off the white gravel. The road is rough under my feet because I never found the grandma’s gardening boots, but it’s good to feel the tiny stones and the soft, dry dirt between my toes. It’s something real after so much of nothing for so many years. So simple and so beautiful. The engine is rattling too. One ankle wobbles, and I stumble. I right myself and keep walking. This is the way back to the house where Christopher will be sleeping. Soon enough, Tillie will see the broken window. He’ll call Imogene.

  The tires have stopped moving. They’re quiet. I walk through patches of shade that bounce across the road—the sun shining through the branches that shift overhead with the wind. Leaves rustle. Something creaks. A door opening, I think. And it slams closed. He’s brought the smell of fire with him. It reaches me before he does.

  As I continue to walk, I can’t feel my feet. In Mama’s front yard, the grass weaved itself between my toes and up around my ankles and rooted me to that spot. I couldn’t move that day, couldn’t run. And I can’t run now. The seam between night and day has passed. Imogene will know what the n
ecklace means. She loved her boy like I love Christopher and she’ll want to save him because she couldn’t save her own son. No one will want it more. No one but me.

  I don’t scream like Alison or Julie Anna. Not even as he grabs my shoulders and yanks off the jacket I’m still wearing, his jacket. Not even as I’m pulled from my feet, off the road, and down into the wet, grass ditch and into the trees where the ground is covered with brittle pine needles. Not even as the sunlight is blocked and the air turns cool. I don’t scream.

  Even Now

  In August 2017, Unite the Right organized a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. During the two-day event, 250 participants, which included white supremacists, white nationalists, and Klan members, carried torches, firearms, clubs, Confederate flags, and various Nazi symbols in their efforts to unite the various hate groups and protest the removal of a Confederate statue. Significant violence occurred when the white supremacists met with counterprotesters. At approximately 1:45 P.M. on August 12, a self-proclaimed white supremacist drove his car into a crowd and killed a thirty-two-year-old counterprotester and injured nineteen others. The perpetrator of these crimes was ultimately convicted of, among other things, first-degree murder. Shifting remarks from the forty-fifth president of the United States, which included a hesitance to condemn the hate groups by name while instead choosing to cast blame on both sides, were met with great criticism. In the days that followed, the president insisted there were “fine people on both sides.” White supremacists, associated with various groups, openly praised the president’s seeming reluctance to specifically name them or hold them accountable.