All the Finest Girls

by Alexandra Styron

  “But of course, that’s no excuse,” continues the thing impersonating Mom, her smile melting under Mrs. Akins’s gaze. “She’ll have to work harder, I know.”

  Mrs. Akins nods once, definitively, and twitches her mouth like a rabbit. (Mrs. Bunny Akins. That explains her name.)

  I have been caught. Weeks ago Mrs. Akins, the headmistress of the private school to which I’ve been transferred, sent a note home with me. I placed it on my mother’s desk, where it stayed until she came back from shooting. I didn’t tell Mrs. Akins that Mom was away, didn’t tell her I wouldn’t give the note to my father. That if I did, he might notice me. And if he noticed me, the nothingness I carefully tended would explode in a blistering fire of what kind of idiot and just like your mother and outrageoutrageoutrage. So I dropped the letter on Mom’s desk, where it disappeared under weeks of other mail. Then it was homecoming and clatter and boxes wrapped in bright paper and Oh, you’re getting so big, I missed you so much and days more till Mom found the envelope with Mrs. Akins’s crisp cursive on the front. Gosh, Snooks, what’s this? This isn’t like you at all.

  I’ve never seen these dishes before, or the silver service that Lou took from the high cabinet and polished yesterday. Please come for Sunday tea, Mom wrote to Mrs. Akins on one of her thick blue notecards. As if we do such things all the time. Sit around in our best clothes sipping from china every day at five. The crinoline lining in the dress Mom brought me from someplace You will too wear the dress, Addy, I-am-your-mother! is rubbing a rash on the back of my legs. Mom fidgets with her locket, primps her hair, and keeps talking, though I can’t hear her anymore. I’m watching Mrs. Akins, who studies the furniture, the walls, my grandfather’s paintings, while Mom babbles on. This was the wrong idea, inviting her here, the silver, the paintings. This will only make things worse. Mom is a dumbhead, just like Dad says. Your mother is a dumbhead. Look what she’s done this time. My God, Addy, what was I thinking?

  “We’re not into excuses, Mrs. Abraham. We like to look for solutions,” says Mrs. Akins with a sigh.

  “Of course. I just meant, well, I read to Addy all the time and she’s such a terrific reader. We’re readers, Mr. Abraham and I, and of course visual people. I just meant I’m not very good at the other subjects myself, so — ”

  “If you’ll forgive me Mrs. Abraham …”

  “Barbara, call me Barbara, oh yes, please!” says the Thing. She looks suddenly like the baby squirrel I found in the driveway, her eyes still darting about though her body has gone still, lifeless. “What do you think?”

  “I don’t take any pleasure in this kind of thing, but, well, I’m wondering if there isn’t something bothering her, something at home, which might account for her grades.”

  “No. At home?” The Mom Thing looks to the air, searching, shakes her head. “Nothing at all, nothing I can think of. Is that what you think?”

  My ears have begun to ring. They are speaking about me as though I am not here.

  “I don’t know. But I have found that to be the case when children, when they work below capacity. When they are in distress.”

  “Mmhmm. Yes, I see,” says Mom, nodding. “You know, I have been away a bit. Perhaps — ”

  I am a cockeyed painting, a surprising sofa Mom has never seen. “— she’s just missed me.”

  Mrs. Akins looks at me and twitches her pink nose.

  “Perhaps.”

  Mom’s taut face lights up. She likes this idea.

  “Come here, Snooks,” she says, gesturing broadly with her arm. Robotic. “Come on over here. Have you been missing me? I’m not working at all this summer. My husband wants me home someamazingflower and then we’ll be going to my mother’s by the shore. I’m certain seventh grade will be better for Addy. Sit here, sweetie. No? You don’t want to sit down? OK. Let me — here — let me fix your barrette. Oh. All right, that’s fine hatethosefuckers. Yes, Bunny, you know I think you’re right. That’s probably the whole thing. I know I hated it when my mother traveled. Have you missed me, lamb-chop? It’s been rotten of me to be away. Have you missed me?”

  “Get off me.”

  “Sweetie —”

  “Fucking let go!”

  Mom, finally, is silent. I can hear my own blood in my ears. Mrs. Akins looks down at her teacup, runs a finger along the brim. A little gust of air pushes through Mom’s nose. She touches at her throat, looks at Mrs. Akins, and smiles weakly.

  “Can I go now?” I ask, wanting to run and somehow leave myself behind. Get away from me.

  “Um. Sure,” Mom says, her hand again on her locket. The veins in her neck pulse beneath her opalescent skin. Real looking, human.

  “Sure, Addy,” she says. “You run along.”

  In the kitchen, Lou stands over the sink, a crisp tang of early spring coming in the open window. She is singing to herself as I come up quietly beside her, taking a carrot and peeler from the cutting board I do not ask, O Lord. Lou moves over to make room but doesn’t look at me. Under her dark hands moves the greasy yellow goosebump skin of a chicken.

  Joy is like restless day but peace divine like quiet night

  The peels drop and stick against the wet metal basin as I turn the carrot round and round. Lou’s body is warm next to mine. She gives a tug and out pop the giblets, which she scoops into a bowl. Beneath the spume of running water beats the chicken’s heart still. Thump thump thump.

  Lead me, O Lord

  When I’ve whittled the carrot down to a fine point, Lou places her long fingers over my hand.

  “Dat’s enough, Addy. Yah too lawless wit it. Make dem halves and den yah do de others.”

  Till perfect day shines

  The insides of the chicken quiver as Lou lifts the bowl to the side. I’m stripping another carrot when Lou stops me, flecks of chicken skin stuck to her nut brown hand.

  “Yah jes’ expressing yahself now?”

  She gives me a gold-tooth smile, jabs her hip where it meets my waist.

  “Dat teacher is only trying to learn yah. Yah a lucky girl and aren’t even knowing it, yah know. Wit all dat you got and yah fussing and scrapping. Some people don’t even have a mumma who loves dem. You a smart girl. Too smart.”

  Lou doesn’t know what I’ve done, what I’ve said to Mom. I want to keep this from her, my badness, most of all. I move the carrots to the butcher block island so I can halve them as Lou has said. When my mother’s heels ticker-tock on the polished wood, I tilt my head back to my task. Sorry. There it is, jammed up against the back of my throat. Not moving.

  Mom carries a checkbook, which she lays on the counter before tearing the paper from its binding. Her face is hard again as plaster. She is startled suddenly by the pots hanging above the island. Where-did-those-come-from? But she doesn’t look at me.

  “Louise, don’t let me do this again,” she says.

  “What’s that, Mrs. Abraham?” Lou replies, holding in her hands the shining, now lifeless heart.

  “I’m late paying you, aren’t I?”

  “Oh, it’s arright.”

  “No, it isn’t, not at all. You ought to be paid promptly. For your work.” She places the pale green rectangle beneath my nose. Lou’s name dances across the page in Mom’s curvy hand. In the lower left corner, my name. FOR: ADDY. A fresh thought, unforeseen, stings me like a spray of gravel to my face.

  “Louise.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Abraham,” says Lou, turning now. The shiny black curls on her head have wilted from steam off the hot running water.

  “We’re going to spend some time together, just us, in the evenings. As a family. So I want you to think of the nighttime as yours. To do what you want. OK?

  “And Mr. Abraham is very cross with the amount of television Addy watches. I’m putting a stop to that.”

  “Yes,” Lou says, chewing the inside of her lip.

  “I’ll finish up here, all right? Why don’t you take a break.”

  When Lou leaves the kitchen, I move back to the sink. Dropping th
e carrots — like body parts, like fingers — in the disposal, I watch them whirr away.

  18

  MARVA, I DISCOVERED that day, knew everyone. All along our route to the Eldertown bus, townspeople stopped whatever they were doing and offered their condolences. So sorry, Mrs. Cassell, they said, or We prayed for yah last night, Marva, we and de chilren both. Her bag held firmly in the crook of her elbow, Marva kept up a breakneck pace across the ridge road, responding to each neighbor without a hitch in her stride. Bless you, Opal. See yah tonight, she called over her shoulder. Have faith in Jesus, Mr. Lewis. She nyah suffer no more. Come on by tonight. And Arright, Daphne, arright. We’ll see yah tonight. Marva was not lacrimose or sentimental; her mind was too firmly fixed on the next order of her seemingly endless business. Her breakdown at dinner the previous night was, I would have bet, the only crying she’d done over her sister’s death.

  At the final turn in the road before we reached the bus stop, a barefoot woman in an amazingly dirty housedress appeared, walking in the opposite direction. Keeping hard up against the dense overgrowth of green along the side of the road, she shuffled along with her head bent low and dragged behind her a pallet of burgundy-colored nuts. When she sensed us near her, she stopped and turned her head fully away, like a child sent to the corner.

  “Good morning, Olive,” Marva called, slowing up at last.

  The woman cut her eyes toward us, and I could see a deep scar running along one cheek all the way back to a puffy brown cauliflower ear. When she at last recognized Marva, she lifted her chin and her brow gently softened.

  “Yah taking care of yahself, dear?”

  Olive was still for a long moment, then covered her eyes with her hand.

  “Yah bring in dat washing me left on de line, and me be seeing yah Monday.”

  Marva and I continued on, leaving Olive just where she stood with her face buried in her hand. Marva waited till we were around the bend before she spoke again.

  “She retarded, dat girl. She got herself married to Vere Edwards, mean and foolish man from de big Edwards family on de hill. He used to beat her till he nearly dead her. One night she took his gun and when he came at her, she shot him. After dat nobody was speaking to her because she kill him and he an Edwards. She cyaant barely care for herself. Wanders around in dat pitchy-patchy dress. Sells nutmeg to de ships, and gives herself to de boys back of de school. Me help her wit chores, make sure her eat right sometimes.”

  Marva sucked a tooth, shook her head. I wondered how many other luckless people Marva did for, how many hours in the day there could possibly be to prop and mend and apply balms of every nature. Maybe Lou’s death was some tiny secret relief. I suspected that it would be for me anyway, a thought I tried quickly to banish. It wasn’t much longer before we rounded another curve and the oily smell of an old diesel motor drifted in on a breeze.

  Looking at it from the outside, I found it hard to believe we were getting on that exhausted gray whale of a vehicle. The hubcaps pressed into the tar, the front end listed, even the stairs looked already filled to capacity. The Eldertown bus resembled not so much a bus as a tin of pressed ham. I got in line behind Marva, breathed once, twice, and tried to ward off my inevitable attack of claustrophobia. This was not going to be easy, I thought. But by the time I grabbed the railing, the clot of people had magically disbanded and the stairs had become an open pathway. Inside the bus, dozens of women somehow pushed toward the back and made an empty row of seats for us. Marva, head held high, moved into a window seat and motioned for me to take the one beside her. I noticed that with the exception of the bus driver, there was only one man on his way to town. The women looked at me, then bent their heads in private conversation. An enormous woman about Marva’s age, with a box of mangoes in her arms, made her way forward and leaned down to us. Her breasts, at my line of vision, were titanic.

  “Where you get dis milkweed, Marva?” the woman said, looking me over as if I were a goose going to market.

  “Lulu’s lickle girl she cared for. Came fi de funeral.”

  The woman leaned back to get a better look at me. I was getting used to this weird St. Clair ritual of inspection. Losing interest quickly, she leaned back in to talk to Marva as the bus made a perilously sharp, speedy turn.

  “Annie came home yesterday.” The woman began to whisper, checking this way and that to see if anyone was listening. “Say she hear Errol acting funny, yah know, strange, down at Foxy’s.”

  Marva put up a flat palm.

  “Don’t bad-talk him, Termuda.”

  “Me just saying, yah know.”

  Thermuda straightened herself up and started talking with the woman at her elbow. I got a bad feeling and began to think maybe Derek hadn’t been talking in metaphors the night before after all. For all I knew, Errol could be a homicidal maniac, a Raskolnikov in a prison of his own making. I didn’t know what to think.

  “Philip and Derek had another fight last night. On the way back from Clifton’s,” I said quietly to Marva, who had turned her attention to the countryside passing by the window. She sucked her cheeks. Taking the plunge, I continued.

  “Do you think Lou, Lulu, would want Errol to be there?”

  “Of course,” Marva said. “What stupid question is dat? Of course.”

  “Well, Derek said Errol killed her. Or practically did.”

  Angry now, Marva turned and looked at me, eyes bulging. “Kill her? Lawd. Dat’s pass ridiculous. Dey were going to be together again. Me cyan sure you of dat. From jes’ four days pass me knew it was true.” She spaced her next words out, to make herself perfectly clear. “Dey were going to be together. Believe me. Believe me. Kill her? Errol did no such ting.”

  “But God, Marva, they’d been apart for so long.”

  “Only because her so stubborn. If her weren’t so headstrong, she could have back dat man. Believe you me. He was always wanting her.”

  “What makes you think she would have had him back? Now and not before?”

  “Because I know! She my lickle sista and I know! She having a change of heart. She dress up when she fell in de water like dat? Well I know where she thought she were going. She had a change of heart! For years seemed like she wouldn’t see him. For years! He wrote her, sent her flowers, lickle stories about Philip. Ting and ting. He tried to see her, but she would nevah let it. Philip, he begged her finally, say to her, ‘Please, Mumma. Life is too short and he suffered and he’s sorry. Do it for me, leastways.’ And Philip is right, you know? Life is too short. If I could have one day, one day, wit my Josephus again!” Marva pressed a hard finger into her breastbone. “Me give up everyting for it. Me swearing it. And dere Lulu, refusing dat man.”

  I don’t know what made me so contrary, but before I could stop myself, I’d waded deep into the conversation.

  “Yeah, but Errol married someone else,” I said.

  Marva shook her head in exasperation and then began to root around in her purse.

  “Patrice? Of course he married Patrice!” Marva was looking for something, pulling her Bible, a fat comb, a small bottle of hand lotion, from her ample bag, pushing wadded up Kleenexes around, unzipping compartments, and all the while talking so that soon the entire bus had their eyes trained on her. “He have a child wit her from de first!”

  “Before Lou?”

  Marva sucked a tooth.

  “What dem boys been telling yah?” At last she found what she was looking for. From a leaf of Kleenex that had been tucked into the smallest pocket of her handbag, Marva drew a thin gold braided band, one that looked vaguely familiar to me.

  “Yah see dis? A promise ring. Errol, him a give it to Lulu long time pass. She weared it till him gwan married Patrice, den she put it away. Since her sickness she too drawn to wear it anyway. It woulda fall off. But not even one week ago, she ask me, she say, ‘Marva, can yah get a lickle bitty chain? Me wanting to wear dis round my neck.’ She was going to be wit him again. I know. Now I don’t know how Derek and Philip tell i
t, but it’s complicated. Not some simple ting. It’s not.”

  During the hour or so we spent on that overcrowded bus, traversing the St. Clair hills, Marva set me straight. Hearing her talk was a little like traveling somewhere you’ve only known from a picture postcard. The happy people aren’t as carefree as they look, the sun rarely sets so brilliantly, the shining palace turns out to be a shambling relic held together with cheap mortar and tin. And, standing perception on its ear, neither is the distant vista what it appeared in two dimensions. The undistinguished, fuzzy background turns out to be the gateway to an entire, unimaginable ecosystem. Ultimately, Marva’s version illuminated for me, unrefracted, a vast landscape that had been wholly, stubbornly obscured.

  “I’m not saying she have a choice,” Marva stressed after she’d explained what Lou’s boys had managed to omit over the course of the previous day. “She loved him before she knew, and den it was too late fi turning back.”

  Apparently, at the time that Errol first set eyes on Louise, in Bobsled’s back office, he already had a wife. Not a wife in the technical sense, but with Patrice he shared an apartment owned by her father, Foxy, and a two-year-old little girl named Christine. For a man who had grown up without much but his looks, it was an arrangement too good to pass up. He was glad for the security, for the job, and not least of all for the companionship. “He liked de performing, but even more he liked being wit a body,” said Marva. “Errol always hated to be alone. Dat was what he couldn’t abide.” As time passed, however, he became restless, and chafed at the ordinariness of it all.

  “Yah have to know,” Marva continued to explain as we bumped along the high road, “dis was a crazy time down here. Before independence. A spirit went and catch us all back den. We all of us were seeing a chance for tings bigger and better. We didn’t want anymore to be owned by a person. And you know Foxy, he really owned Errol. Even if Errol felt comfortable on de one hand about it? Him still struggling to be free like de rest of us. So when he met Louise, and Michael, him want him for Parliament, it was just a kind of — Boom — like it all come together.