by Cheryl Reid
Nelly slept, propped in the wingback chair. Louise brought me water. The church ladies filed by and touched me with their warm hands. Surely even they had gossiped about me letting the postman walk up our front steps. “Tomorrow will be hard for her,” they said, casting their eyes in Nelly’s direction. “Marina too,” they said. “She was her daddy’s girl, and he was so proud of her, always bragging about her latest accomplishment.”
“Yes,” I said as politely as I could. I was as proud of her as he had been. Who did they think we were? They had no idea the misery that happened within these walls.
They brought Marina a chair. “Sit, Marina.” She would obey for a moment, then stand again and move the chair away.
The masculine voices drummed—Michael, Eli, Father McMurray.
Marina remained standing, nodding, talking softly to the visitors, the Catholics from the parish, then the Lebanese from neighboring towns as far away as Birmingham and Florence, then Michael’s parents and the businessmen Elias knew. Electric fans whirred. The windows were wide open, but the air was stagnant, unbearably hot, weighing on us all, hanging like the black veil I would wear this evening at the Rosary and tomorrow at his funeral Mass.
Marina used her chair to prop open the screen door. More flies buzzed in.
“Shut the screen, Eli,” I said, but he did not hear.
With Michael and Eli beside her, Marina stood with her sorrowful face and her hand resting on her belly. To those who questioned it, Michael explained in his lawyer’s tone, “Grandmother could not bear the idea of the funeral home.” He sounded official, authoritative, like the mayor of the town.
No one blinked at his answer. “Terrible heat today,” they said, but they spoke in code. They meant the funeral home would have been cooler.
Like a statue of Mary, Marina stood, long-suffering but certain of purpose, receiving all who came to pay their respects. Her face was wan. All the blood in her body would be pooling around the baby and into her swollen ankles. Gravity pulled. It pulled and pulled. I wanted to cry for her. She would see. I brought her another folding chair, a glass of ice water, and without a glance or word to me, she sat for a moment and drank.
She must be exhausted, I thought. Her head must ache with worry for all of us and the baby inside her. How could she hold court, reign over his death so expertly, with a child in her womb? I closed my eyes to remember when she was inside me, the feeling, the beautiful flutter, like a bird’s wings in a flash of blinding sun. The baby moves, like swimming through water, only the water is inside and the swimming comes from the inside out, a joust of an elbow, a leg, or a knee and the pressure on the pelvic floor, persistent like a soft wet weight pushing down, down, down. How beautiful to get lost in a moment that only a mother and child have. This burial would be done tomorrow, and we could move on. We could put this torture past us.
A fly buzzed near my face. “Michael, please shut the screen door.”
“No, Mother.” Marina’s eyes met mine. “I need the air.”
“The flies.” I crossed the room to shut the door. “The food is out.”
“Leave it open.” She whispered to me. “Go back to your place.”
When Sophie and Lila came, Marina picked the girl up. Lila looked alarmed. “Be careful,” Lila said. But I thought, Let her. Let her lift the forty-pound child and her water will break and then we can take her away from this miserable business.
Behind Marina, Lila stood, watching and waiting to catch her if she fell. Soon Marina’s baby would be here. Marina held Sophie, despite the discomfort she must feel. She would be a good mother. I felt elation inside, like a spring breaking though ground, to watch my daughter and the love she had to give. I was biding my time to get to the joy.
Marina put Sophie down and Sophie ran to me. She wrapped her arms around me and hugged sweetly.
Marina resumed shaking hands, nodding, thanking every person for coming. She told them how much her father would have appreciated it and motioned them into the house. People circled. Their voices rose like steam from a hot bath, lifting to the ceiling, veiling everything. Their dry lips moving over teeth, a nod. Yes. The frown to acknowledge his death. Thank you for coming. Eyes shifted to the dining room and the blanket of food over the table. The excess seemed grotesque. Marina’s silver forks and spoons flashed in the afternoon light moving from plates to mouths. The Catholics would stay for the Rosary. The others, the Protestants, would leave, appalled to think we prayed to Mary.
Nelly wanted to say a Rosary for each decade of his life, but the priest and Marina convinced her one Rosary with meditations would suffice. Why—my skin crawled, as if ants marched up and down my legs, biting—why had I let Nelly have the visitation in my house? I reminded myself: to get to the better part with Marina.
People stood about on my carpets, staring at him and then averting their eyes to the small plates held beneath their chins to catch crumbs. They had come not for me or him, but to attend to this morbid ritual. Or maybe they had come for her. Marina could sway people to her way.
Sophie’s weight on my lap felt good. Her eyes stuck on him, the juts and crags of his forehead, the hollows of his cheeks. A fly landed on a lock of his pomaded hair. I did not shoo it off. She turned away and buried her warm nose into my neck. My eyes landed on his shoes, polished to a high shine, without a single crease or scratch. Marina had bought him new shoes. She had bought me new clothes and him new shoes. She had dressed us up for the show. Heat swelled off of Sophie. She was like a quilt thrown over me on a hot day, but I did not let go.
Lila touched my shoulder and I felt comfort. I imagined that was how her horses felt, her calming presence, that everything would be okay now that Lila stood beside it.
“Gus will be here soon,” she said. “Everything going okay?”
No, I wanted to say, but I bit my tongue.
Her blue eyes scanned my face. “Your papa is outside.”
I looked out the window and saw my father standing in the front yard. I put Sophie down to go to him.
Cars lined Poplar Street. Low gray clouds had moved in. The sky threatened more rain. A snapping, hot wind blew off the river. The neighbors’ houses were dim and quiet. I could hear the chatter flowing from my house. The clink of coffee cups and plates. Verna sat on her porch. Her eyes followed me. I did not wave or speak and neither did she.
The lights glowed and the colors of the garden burned bright against the gloomy sky. Papa’s hat jutted over his eyes as he stared into the rambling branches of the fig. Perhaps he was tracking the branches, like the past, one year after the other, hoping to find the moment when things had gone wrong with me. This tree sprawled ten feet wide and ten tall. He had brought a shoot from his yard and he and Elias planted it before Marina was born. Figs for prosperity. The branches hung heavy with fruit. He pulled a fig and ate it like a disinterested bull chewing grass in a field. Papa picked another one, peeled the purple-brown skin, sucked the garnet-colored flesh, tossed the remains, and began again. The mockingbird flew down and strutted toward him. Wary of my father, but wanting the remains of his fruit, the bird opened and closed his wings and flashed the white bands of feathers. He filled and emptied his chest like a tiny bellows. Papa did not notice. He took a white handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his hands. He adjusted his hat to the crown of his head.
I walked through the grass, the earth claiming the heels of my shoes. “Papa,” I said. My fingers glanced the back of his suit, damp with perspiration. He shrugged at my touch. “Did you walk here in this heat?”
“Down the path.” He did not look at me. “Isn’t that what you do?”
“Yes,” I said.
“A shame these will go to the birds.” He reached into the tree and pulled another. “You should take what you can with you. Or a shoot and plant it. Stay rooted to where you are from.”
“You look pale.” I did not want to discuss my leaving so freely. He looked confused and tired. If I left, I would not be able to look after h
im. “I’m worried about you.”
“Worried about me?” Papa would not look me in the eye. He wiped his hands on a handkerchief. He grunted. He looked out at the street. “I am old. I’ve lived my life. But what are you going to do?”
I looked down at my shoes and stepped out of them. My stocking feet sank in the warm grass. I took a fig leaf to wipe the mud from the heel. “Come inside and get a cold drink. It’s too hot out here.”
The screen door slapped. Sophie stepped onto the porch stairs. She and Papa locked eyes for a moment, then she cut back into the shadows by the rocking chairs.
“When you were a girl,” Papa said, “you took pennies from the drawer and slipped them under the back door to the kids and they’d buy candy and then you’d slip them another. Around they’d come again.”
Lila came out to the porch to retrieve Sophie, but Sophie refused. “No. I don’t want to go in there.” She did not budge from her spot.
“I couldn’t figure where they got more money.” Papa looked at the ground and scratched his head. “She had died and I didn’t have it in me to punish you.”
I picked a fig and held it out to him.
Papa coughed. When he caught his breath, he cast his eyes up to the light glowing around the edges of a gray cloud. “I should have said no. I should have been stronger when he came asking for you.” Papa would not look at me, as if he would turn to salt if he did. “I thought maybe I was wrong about him. And you were so stubborn . . . It doesn’t matter now.”
My skin prickled.
“Do you remember her?” He took the fig from me.
“Yes.” I looked for the face of the young man that was my father. He had grown thick and bald and pale. I wanted to hear his stories.
Gus walked up the drive. He saw Sophie and Lila on the porch. He looked at Papa and me talking. “Go inside,” Gus said to Lila and Sophie. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
“You heard Daddy,” Lila said, and Sophie knew that meant business.
Lila eyed me, as if asking, did I need her to come stand beside me? Gus headed up the porch stairs to usher them in.
“We’ll be there in a minute,” I called to Sophie. She reluctantly went in with her mother. But I agreed with Sophie: I did not want to go inside. All I wanted was to send people out of my house and go in the garden and work at the weeds, pull the ripe tomatoes, the okra, the runners of mint that had strayed outside their limits.
“You’re like her. Your mother.” Papa wiped his forehead with the pink-stained handkerchief. He might as well have told me he loved me. He rarely mentioned her. “You work hard like she did.”
Gus lit a cigarette and stood on the top step of the porch. He was like a muscled bulldog, short and stout, keeping a watchful eye on the road and the people coming and going. He saw Papa and I were talking and he gave us space.
“But she had joy.” He stuffed the handkerchief in his breast pocket. “He stole that from you.”
“I won’t leave Marina.” I felt a stubborn refusal. “Or the baby.”
Papa stared at the house buzzing with people. “Marina won’t have you when Nelly is finished.” He shook his head. A look of disgust crossed his face, maybe because of Nelly or maybe for what he thought I had done to Elias.
Sophie broke free of the house, past Gus’s reach. The screen door slapped shut in her wake. She landed against my legs. She held tight. “I don’t want to go,” she said. “I want to stay with you.” She held on until Lila came for her, and then she darted around the tree.
Lila gave chase to Sophie.
“Why can’t I stay with Aunt Annie?”
“Little vixen,” Lila said with a smile on her lips. The chase had become a game and Sophie giggled and ran past us to the backyard.
Gus stood on the stairs as the Protestants began to leave. He looked apologetic for his wife and daughter’s gleeful play on such a somber occasion. He did not want to embarrass me or Marina.
“Nelly won’t stop if you don’t leave.” Papa’s eyes were wet from heat or worry. “She wants you to suffer.”
Sophie screamed from the backyard. “I don’t want to go. You can’t make me go.”
I felt as if I had stepped into a trap, unsure how to escape the danger I was in. I wondered if this uncertainty was what Elias had felt when he knew that he was dying, or what Mr. Washington felt leaving Riverton, or later, when he learned that they had burned his house.
“Have you heard any news about Mr. Washington?” I asked.
Papa shook his head and flung an uneaten fig on the ground. The mockingbird flew down and pecked at it. “A damn shame he tried to rise above his station.”
Papa’s words angered me, because there was some truth in them. Orlando Washington was driven from town because he wouldn’t stay in his place, but I envied that he had taken a chance and acted on his own. Thea would have been proud of him, but that was a bitter consolation because he’d never set foot here again. I’d caused him and myself trouble. Thea would be angry with me for asking him in. Why had I thought I could sit at the table with Thea’s son and no harm would come? If I had turned Orlando Washington away, as everyone else did, if I had ignored my feelings of kinship to his mother, if I had left well enough alone, maybe Elias would never have hurt me again, and he would be alive, and we would be waiting together for the phone to ring, Michael on the other end telling us Marina had delivered a healthy child.
I looked up into the fig tree. Hundreds of figs hung on the branches. It would be a shame to let it all go to waste. I had let so much go to waste.
“Some customers came by today on account of Eli helping him.” Papa’s collar was wet. Circles of sweat spread through his suit on his back and under his arm. Papa began to cough and he bent over when he could not stop.
Gus bounded off the porch toward us. He put his hand on Papa’s elbow. “Come in and get some water,” he said.
Papa spit into his handkerchief and let Gus support him. The coughing had sapped his energy.
Lila flushed Sophie from the backyard. The girl ran screaming into me. “I don’t want to go.” Her cheeks were red.
Gus put an end to Sophie’s antics by swooping her up and handing her to Lila. “Just take her home.”
“No,” Sophie wailed.
I don’t want to go either, I wanted to say to her.
Papa watched Sophie. “It’s my fault I raised you there,” he said.
Lila mouthed Goodbye, and I felt sad, how the sight of Lila and Sophie made me wish for those years with Marina, if only I could have focused on Marina and not the store, not Elias, if I could have been patient like Lila. I wanted them to stay here with me now.
Papa raised his voice. “I let you grow up there. She died and I couldn’t leave.” His face was ravaged in worry, as though he could change history if he solved the riddle of what went wrong.
“That’s over now,” I said.
Gus prodded Papa toward the porch, but he did not budge.
“Elsa told me to move you—to build the house I had promised your mother.” Papa’s words were frenzied. He looked pitiful, as if asking for my forgiveness. “Elsa said you shouldn’t be in Blacktown.”
A steady stream of townspeople, Marina’s friends, and Elias’s Rotary and business folks stared as they passed us. Michael’s parents left too, even though they were Catholic. Marina must have convinced them to go home.
“After he hit you, I should have put you all in a car and driven you away.” Papa moaned and the pain in his voice sounded like Nelly’s.
“That’s enough,” Gus said. He was aware how odd we looked standing out in the heat and how Papa’s words were garnering attention. “It’s time for the Rosary.” Gus put his hand on Papa’s shoulder.
Papa shook Gus off. “I should have killed him myself. But I was too afraid I’d never see your mother again.” Papa would never risk a mortal sin. “I saw what he did. I told you to stay with me but you had your mind set.” Papa had worked himself into a frenzy.
> “You need to cool off.” Gus tried to steer Papa to the house. In my brother’s face, I saw the little boy who had looked to me for direction.
“This heat is getting to you, Papa,” I said. “Let’s get you in the shade.”
Papa’s eyes, pale and weak, searched my face. “Vega would have stopped him. She would never have let harm come to you.”
Warm tears fell on my cheek. I wanted Papa to be sure of me, to believe me innocent—I wanted to be innocent, for his sake, but I had disappointed my father, and no denial of mine could erase his doubt.
Gus managed to move Papa toward the house and I followed.
Gravel crunched in the drive. We turned to see Ivie. His shoulders hunched and his walk was crooked.
“He’s already drunk,” I said.
At the sight of Ivie, Papa spit on the ground and Gus stood taller. Their bodies tensed.
Ivie ignored us and ducked into the house as the last of the Protestants left.
Papa said, “I told Ivie you could live with me.”
“Why would I do that?” I would not go from being Elias’s wife back to my father’s daughter.
“He said you can’t.” Papa’s cheeks flushed red with anger. “That drunken ass said you have to leave.” Papa shook his head. His eyes brimmed with tears.
“It’s not up to Ivie what I do or don’t do.”
Gus tugged at Papa’s arm. “Let’s go in.”
“I will not pray for his soul.” Papa clenched his jaw. Sweat or tears rolled down his cheeks. “I won’t go in.”
“Come sit in the shade, then.” Gus led him up the stairs. “Under the fan.”
Papa relented. He said, “My prayers will be for you.” He squeezed my arm and hobbled to the chair where Sophie had been.
At the door, I slipped my shoes back on. I stepped inside with Gus and hoped it would be over soon.
“He is so angry,” Gus said. “I don’t blame him.”
Dishes of food covered every surface and the house smelled of a high holiday—maybe the last this house would see with me in it. Gus parted the churchwomen to get water for Papa. When he returned to my side, he handed me a glass of water too. He said, “It is going to be a long night.” The cold glass felt good against my wounded hand.