The Girl Called Ella Dessa: Will she ever be cherished for the inner beauty beneath her scars?

by Karen Campbell Prough

  “Bold? That’s not true! What do you say? Besides, he isn’t your real father.”

  “Well, perhaps he’s right.”

  “He’s jealous. He wishes he were our age. Please, let me hold you.”

  “We should go back.” The hands fought, fingers entangled. “Please?”

  “You turned sixteen in August. See, I remembered.” His voice grew muffled, as if he spoke through cloth or something else. “Hmmm, your hair smells like summer sunshine. I bet you never had anyone tell you that. You’re my sunshine.”

  “I want to go back.” The voice trembled with uncertainty. “Let go.”

  Ella drew a rapid breath and held it. She pressed her fingers against her lips and pushed them into her teeth—to keep any sound from escaping. Her crouched position caused her thighs to burn and ache.

  “No, I want my kiss.” The black legs closed the distance between them. The heavy folds of the skirt seemed to wrap themselves about the legs, enveloping them in gray waves. “You promised me two months ago after the evening service. You said, the next time we saw one another you’d kiss me. So—it’s now.” His left hand disappeared.

  The skirt dipped and moved away but abruptly swung back into position alongside the black pants. “I don’t think we should.” The teasing tone in the female voice faded, and a frantic tremor took its place. “You’re hurting my arms. Please, take your hands away.”

  The legs stiffened and braced themselves. “No. You promised.”

  The skirt rippled as if shaken. “Take your hands off me!”

  “Give me one kiss. Just one.”

  “No!” A plain cotton petticoat showed under the swaying hem. The skirt lifted higher and exposed a black stocking and high-cut shoe. “Don’t do that. Please. It hurts.”

  “Quit fighting me.” The resounding slap of a hand hitting bare skin echoed like an explosion in the quiet woods. “Keep it quiet. You want your father to come running? Come here.” The sound of material tearing accompanied his words.

  The hiccupped noise of shocked sobs made Ella shut her eyes, but her ears still heard the girl’s hysterical protest. She smashed her face against her bent knees. She trembled and sought to blot out sounds on the other side of the log wall. Fright caused her to feel as if she might wet her clothes.

  Oh, God, make him go away. Make him let her go!

  “Ella Dessa! Where are ya?” The demand rang in the clear air.

  Pa!

  A smothered curse followed the shout. The black pants strode away and moved into the deepening dusk under the trees.

  The gray skirt swung in the opposite direction, as the girl fell against the side of the rustic springhouse. Two shaky hands grabbed at the dried saplings forming the short overhang. Hoarse sobs died to a muffled whimper.

  “Ella Dessa?” Pa’s voice sounded close—too close.

  She didn’t budge. She wondered if her pa heard the muted sobs. Where was he? The sun was gone. Only an orange glow showed on the mountaintop. She shook with chills, and her wet toes ached.

  The skirt rippled and snagged a mossy log. It made its way along the length of the wall and hesitated at the front corner. Ella heard her pa call again, but he seemed farther down the hill. The skirt fluttered and running legs took it away from the vicinity.

  She rose from her cramped position, scrambled to the door, and pushed it open. She ducked under the low header and loosened her skirt’s hem from the waistband. Her shaky legs carried her into the cleared field by their cabin, just as Pa rounded the front corner.

  He yanked her to an abrupt stop. His clothes smelled of aged sweat and fire smoke. “Leigh’s goin’ to speak a few words. Where’d ya git off to?”

  She gulped for breath and avoided his snappish eyes. “I was in the woods, thinking ‘bout Mama.”

  Droplets of tears slid along her cheeks. Pa’s fingernails bit deeper into her arm. The pain reminded her of the hands she saw through gaps in the logs. Immediately, her eyes swept over the silent mourners assembled in the dusky light.

  No gray skirt.

  More than one man or boy wore dark pants. Who was the guilty one? Was he even present? She winced at the increased pressure on her arm.

  “Please. It hurts.”

  “Don’t run off, ag’in.” He released her arm and grabbed his right hand with his left, in order to stop its involuntary movement.

  With her head bowed, she sought refuge among the women. Their calloused hands reached to comfort her. Laura Stuart snatched her tight to her ample bosom. Ella leaned into the cushiony warmth.

  Leigh Chesley cleared his throat. His bespectacled eyes swept over the men, women, and children. After years of filling in when the circuit rider couldn’t make a stop, Leigh had recently agreed to be the cove’s preacher.

  He lifted a hand for silence. “It’s always hard to know where to start with a sorrow like this. What do I say to bring comfort? Whilst he walked on earth, Jesus would’ve placed his hand on our beloved Meara and raised her. But he ain’t here. We must face the dismal fact of death, but also the rewards death brings to those who go before us. Then, we must hold fast ‘til we see our coming Lord. Hope for peace as you trust in him like the Bible says.”

  “Amen.” Laura kissed the top of Ella’s head. “You poor child—so pitiful. May you have peace.” Her breath smelled like the chicory coffee she brewed and drank all afternoon.

  Ella squirmed and wanted to break free from the hands holding her, but she wasn’t quite willing to leave the warm nest provided by the woman’s dress and chubby arms. She didn’t like everyone gawking at her. She wasn’t pitiful.

  Her freezing toes hurt. She balanced on her right foot and drew her left foot higher under the dress. She tried to warm her foot by snugging it against the back of her right leg.

  “As darkness settles on us, some of you will sit up with little Ella Dessa and our brother, Jacob. A few of you will make your way down dim, foreboding trails to your homes. I’m going to ask God’s protection on those leaving tonight and God’s blessing on those staying.” His next words were softer. “We’ll hold Meara’s burying at daybreak, yonder on the hill, where the men placed her grave. Shall we bow our heads and thank God that Meara’s been released from this earth and welcomed into the wonderful light of Heaven?”

  Leigh prayed a short prayer as the inky fingers of darkness gripped and enclosed the clearing.

  The prayer ended. Women led little children into the cabin’s crowded warmth, but Ella stayed behind. She felt forgotten.

  Torches crackled to life and lanterns glowed. The odor of oil and smoke mixed with the strong and earthy bouquet of rotted leaves and horse manure. Two mongrel dogs snarled with exposed teeth and circled each other. Men collected scattered tools and hitched horses and mules to wagons and carts.

  She watched torches weave amongst the seven wagons, as a few men climbed into high seats. She shivered and counted three wagons pulling out as a group. They had tight-wrapped torches stuck into hollow poles tied near the drivers. The ride down the mountain would be risky in the moonless night.

  Within minutes, the last wagon bumped over rocks and disappeared. In the crisp fall night, the torches flickered through the woods like misplaced summer fireflies.

  Silence descended, until a man added logs to the campfire, and a screech owl called from the woods. Sparks and flames brought light and sound to the adjoining clearing. Her body shook with chills, but she resisted the urge to walk past the topless coffin and enter the cabin’s warmth.

  “Ella?” Rebecca Foster stuck her head outside. “Oh, there you are. Child, what are you doing in the dark? Come in. It’s cold. We can’t have you taking sick.”

  “No.” She shook her head at the tall, lissome woman with black hair. “A little while longer. Please?”

  Seeming uncertain, Rebecca stepped closer and studied her face. “You all right? Katy would like for you to come inside.”

  Katy Stuart was ten. Normally, Ella would’ve been thrilled to talk to a f
riend, but she had no desire to go inside where Mama’s body lay. “Tell her I’ll be there, right soon.”

  She watched the door close.

  A gathering of eight men and three teen boys circled the fire. They talked and warmed their hands. Most of the faces were strange to her. She mulled over what took place by the spring. Which one of them had attacked the girl? And where was she now?

  The cabin door opened.

  “Ella Dessa, we need you to come in. Rebecca told me you lingered behind. We can’t keep worrying about you out there in the dark. Come here, child.” Laura reached for her arm and tugged. “Come. We’ll all be with you.”

  She thought, be with me? Why do I need you with me? Instead of asking questions, she bowed her head and submitted to Laura’s insistent clasp on her upper arm. But she had hardly turned her back to the fire when she heard her pa’s rumbled laughter.

  A man chuckled and made a sarcastic remark in return.

  With a surge of anger, she shrugged off Laura’s hand. “I hate him.” Her fingers clung to the door. How can he laugh? Mama’s dead.

  “Ella Dessa? What’d you say?” Laura sounded shocked.

  “Nothin’.”

  “I think you did, but I’ll overlook it—seein’s how things are. Come inside and see if you approve.”

  “Approve?” She swallowed in an attempt to dislodge the thickness in her throat.

  “Of course. Come with me. We placed the cooling board on the table, ‘cause of the cabin being small—without much room. I figured we needed seats more than the table.”

  The heat in the room hit her in the face. The cabin overflowed with downcast faces and sad eyes contemplating her every move. Laura led her to the table. Mama’s body lay face up on the narrow board.

  Granny had managed to clothe Mama in her faded-blue Sunday meeting dress. Its folds covered her skinny legs. Seven carved wooden buttons decorated the bodice. One large piece of unbleached muslin hid the hole-drilled wooden slab from view, and a sprinkling of embroidered roses decorated one hemmed corner. Copper coins covered the lids of her mama’s wonderful blue eyes.

  Everyone waited for her to speak, but the clog in her throat grew thicker. Conversation trickled to a stop. An uneasy hush overflowed the room.

  “It’s … it’s very nice.” She choked on the words. “That were Mama’s finest pretty dress.”

  The dead infant occupied the stiff bend of Mama’s blue-clothed arm. A generous woman supplied a decent shawl to wrap the baby. His perfect white face seemed chiseled out of mountain marble. A miniature bonnet covered his head—a bonnet cut and hand-sewn from a piece of unbleached muslin. With doubled white thread, a line of delicate embroidered roses fanned out along the top. Two scraps of blue ribbon made the tie, and the frayed bow hid the infant’s tiny chin.

  Ella felt herself tremble.

  The ache in her chest threatened to consume her. She pressed her hands to her face and sobbed, and Laura’s arms enclosed her in a soft cocoon. Ella wailed until pure emptiness pushed away the throbbing in her heart and the crying stopped, but Laura continued to coo and cradle her as if she were a baby.

  Talk resumed.

  Granny Hanks moved through the crowded room and laid a bony hand on her shoulder. “Ella Dessa, eat a mite. Ye haven’t touched a thing all day. Laura, take her to the chair by the fire.”

  She sank into the only chair in the room, besides an old rocker moved near the table, and dried her face on her skirt. Her whole body felt drained of strength, but she surveyed the room. Pulled away from the table, one bench crowded the space near the fire. Three girls, slightly younger than her, occupied it. They sat, thigh to thigh. They chatted and warmed their hands, but avoided her eyes.

  The second bench remained near the table. Two elderly women used it and kept vigil over the bodies. Three women stood close to the table, talked in whispered voices, and sent searching glances in her direction. A fourth woman sat in the rocker and cradled a sleeping baby. Dark hair covered its round head. A chubby and dimpled hand protruded from a fold in the blanket.

  Ella fought tears, swallowed, and averted her gaze from the healthy infant. A borrowed quilt covered her parents’ bumpy bed. Six children, varying in age, from crawlers to four years, sprawled together in a mixed fashion—legs and arms entwined—all sound asleep. The fire’s flames danced irregular hints of light over their peaceful forms.

  Two boys, about the age of eight, sat on her pa’s bear pelt. Its shaggy bulk covered the clay floor near the table. With their hips and shoulders touching the wall and their blond heads close together, they played with a stack of her wooden blocks. She couldn’t recall their first names. She knew they were twins, orphaned by a winter sickness that took their parents two years before. Leigh and Naomi Chesley, with no children of their own, felt God compelled them to raise the boys.

  While bent over the fireplace, Velma Clanders stirred the contents of an iron pot hanging from a hook. She tapped a wooden spoon on the pot’s rim and smiled over her shoulder.

  “I hopes you’re hungry, Ella Dessa.” The wide gap between her front teeth showed in the fire’s light, and her words always had a slight whistle to them. Her thin dark hair slipped from a haphazard bun at the base of her neck. Little spikes of hair stuck out, resembling a miniature porcupine.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  Ella liked Velma. The woman always treated her like an adult and didn’t expect perfection in manners. The summer before, she had walked up to help Mama put in a garden—said it was a relief to get away from her younguns.

  Velma, her husband, and five children were considered newcomers to the rest of the mountain families, because back in the spring, they had moved into a vacant trapper’s cabin on Pelter’s Creek. Friendly, talkative, and talented in decorative stitching, Velma loved to participate in any social gathering. She fast became a regular at Naomi’s, where quilters met each month to escape life’s hardships.

  Was it only last month her mama had sewn a shirt for one of Velma’s boys, while others sat around the perimeter of the quilt frame?

  “Velma?” She tried to think of a nice thing to say. “Where’s your children?”

  “Agatha Hood agreed to have ‘em all night at her place. She loves children. I knew I couldn’t keeps up with ‘em. Honey, you’re gonna loves what I fixed. Of course, that’s besides the chicken. I mixed fresh bear gravy with the last veg’ables from my spent garden. The men’ll eat outside and us women inside. Did Granny tells you some of the men will sleep in the barn and in the wagons that remain?”

  “No.”

  “They will. We’re much too crowded in here. Can’t walk, hardly. Guess you kin takes those girls to the loft with you if they can’t stays awake. Us women will stand in for you during the night hours. I can’t do less for your mama. Bless her soul. She never complained about her lot in life. I’ll miss her quiet comfort and helping hands.”

  “Thank you.” She felt numb to all the kindness. Her eyes chanced another look at the three girls. Laura’s redheaded daughter, Katy, sat with them, but the faces of the other two were only vaguely familiar.

  Katy gave her an uncertain smile. “We might try to stay up all night.”

  “That’s nice.” Ella didn’t care what they did.

  The aroma of food caused her to feel light-headed, and her stomach grumbled. She wanted to eat, but it seemed unfitting with Mama lying on the table. Squeezing her eyes shut, she hoped to blot the room out of her mind and get control of her thoughts.

  What was Pa laughin’ about? How can he be so evil?

  “Ella Dessa?” Granny shook her shoulder. She held a steaming plate of food with hands flecked with suds—as if she had just taken them out of a pan of wash water. “Velma were askin’ if ye wanted a piece of warm bread with yer meal.”

  “Yes, I’d like bread.” She tried to focus her eyes. Had she fallen asleep sitting up? “Thank you.” She accepted the plate of sliced chicken and a gravy-flooded mixture of vegetables.

&nb
sp; Granny laid dark bread on the side of the plate. “There. Eat an’ then we’ll fill the plate fer another. There ain’t enough of ‘em to go ‘round.” She wiped chapped hands on the apron tied to her bone-thin waist.

  “They could have this.” She set the plate in her lap. Its warmth felt good on her thighs, but her stomach protested at the idea of eating.

  “No. You eat.” Granny hobbled toward the side of the bed. She spoke to someone in the shadows behind a large piece of muslin, which Ella’s mother had hung over a rope, tied crosswise in the corner, for privacy. It made a curtain of sorts when pulled out from the wall. “Fern? What’s the problem? Why are ye sittin’ back there on the bed?”

  “I—I’m watching the babies.” A tall teenage girl stood, her oval face lit by the fire’s glow.

  “The babies are asleep. Ye can leave ‘em.” Granny tugged the curtain out of the way. “Come, eat with Ella Dessa, an’ keep her company.”

  The dark-haired girl held a crumpled piece of white material in her hands. “I’m also doing mending.”

  Ella lifted the piece of bread to her lips. But she paused—open mouthed. She recognized the low voice and the full gray skirt. The pale-faced teenager was the girl she had heard by the springhouse.

  Chapter 4

  “Fern, I know ye can’t see behind that curtain.” Granny’s raspy voice grew irritated. “Git out by the fire.”

  A child rolled over on the bed and whimpered.

  Fern nodded and clutched the material to her fully developed chest.

  “Katy, let Fern set there. Go help yer mama carry food.” Granny’s scrawny arms showed below rolled sleeves. She flailed her hands in the air, letting Katy know she better move.

  “Yes’um.” The red-haired girl jumped to obey. Her lumpy thick braids bounced. “I’ll talk to you later.” Her hand caressed Ella’s shoulder as she slipped past.

  Fern sought a place on the bench and crowded the two younger girls. a beige wool woven shawl hugged her narrow shoulders. A knot held it closed. She fixed troubled eyes on the item in her lap. Her unsteady fingers pushed a needle in and out along a tear extending from the shoulder seam and down the front of a plain muslin blouse.