by Ninie Hammon
She takes a deep, shaky breath. Then another. She suddenly grasps the child and crushes her to her chest with a strangled sob and then releases her.
“Come on, now,” she says, with a sniffle and wipes away the tear that has escaped to slide down her cheek. She forces a shaky smile. “We got to go now.” She gestures toward the passenger side door. “Over there. Can’t get out on this side else we’ll step in a puddle of pee.”
She reaches past the child and opens the door. Angel scoots across the seat and hops out. Princess picks up the knapsack with the ax in it and follows her. Taking the child’s hand, she leads her down the hillside toward the river.
The moving picture of her memory stopped there. Because beyond that was the darkness. Her precious gems were only light. And this was one of the brightest of them, golden light. When she basked in the warm glow of that light she could feel the softness of Angel’s skin, smell her sweet breath, and hear the night sounds of the slow, muddy river outside the car window.
As she lay on her back on the bunk, she wondered if everybody had gem memories like that, or if other people had so many memories, none of them were as powerful and special as hers. Or maybe other people hadn’t been careful, as she had, to preserve the light of their memories, treat them like the treasure they were and not allow them to go dim.
She sighed. It was likely she’d never know the answer to that question, that it would be like countless other mysteries she’d carry to her grave. If that was the way of it, there was nothing to be gained by poutin’ about it.
She closed her eyes again. And there was nothing to be lost by warming her fingers on the warmth of her gems, either. Nothing to save them for. She could burn them all completely out; it didn’t matter anymore.
She reached down into her mind, and thought about the wind in her face and the moonlit sky. And the cell glowed warm and golden again.
Wednesday
May 8, 1963
Chapter 13
Wanda parked her car next to a cottonwood tree and walked through the dew-sparkled grass beside the row of headstones. She hadn’t been to the cemetery since the funeral, but she was certain she remembered where the grave had been. She’d marked the spot that day, when the casket was still sitting on the ground with the blanket of roses on top under the funeral home marquee.
She stumbled, but caught herself before she fell. A little unsteady on her feet. Just tired. Didn’t have anything to do with the medications she was taking. Medicine that was supposed to make her sleep, only it didn’t. Medications for depression, too. Wanda knew how to write prescriptions for what she needed. She also knew better than to mix the two—sleeping pills and depression meds. So she was careful, didn’t do it very often.
She needed rest, that’s all. No, that wasn’t all she needed, but what she really needed she couldn’t have.
She stumbled down the little stone path past platoons of headstones standing at attention, casting long shadows in the dawn light. She was headed to the back of the cemetery. That’s where she remembered it, in the back corner under a cherry tree.
Then Wanda spotted it and gasped. It looked so eerily familiar, a distorted flashback that swam in the tears in her eyes.
The tree was awash in white blossoms and delicate white petals frosted the ground beneath it. When they’d buried her, the tree had been bare, but snow-covered, shedding pure white tears on the crowd of mourners around her grave.
There was a black granite headstone now, set at the base of the tree. Wanda walked slowly to it and read the inscription out loud. “Melanie Cunningham McIntosh. Born: June 16, 1923. Died: November 3, 1962. Beloved daughter, wife, mother.”
“And friend,” Wanda whispered. “Beloved friend.”
A breeze sighed through the cherry tree and blossoms settled slowly out of it into Wanda’s hair.
“Melanie, I need to talk to you.”
But that wasn’t really true. She didn’t need to talk to Melanie. She needed to listen to her. To hear her soft voice, and that laugh of hers that made you feel so … included.
Wanda’d been holding it together pretty well until Melanie died. She’d met the minister’s wife almost five years ago. She’d come to Graham because one place was as good as another when you didn’t care where you lived, and she’d inherited a small farm a few miles south of town when her aunt died.
She’d tried, in the beginning at least, to put her life back together: she’d gotten a job working in the emergency room at the local hospital. Melanie worked there, too, had been an OR nurse like Wanda, so they’d had something to talk about. Truth was, Melanie hadn’t reacted at all to Wanda’s face, and you couldn’t say that about many people. That’s what had jumpstarted the relationship.
But Wanda couldn’t handle the pressure of a job. Her nerves were shot. She quit before she got fired and retreated to the old farmhouse on Harrod’s Creek Road.
And then that girl had tracked her down, the little sister of one of the girls she and Paul had helped. Wouldn’t say how she’d found Wanda, just started sobbing. Said she was pregnant. Please, could Wanda do something? She had nowhere else to turn!
Wanda hadn’t wanted to do it, but the girl had the same desperate, hopeless look all those wounded soldiers had had. They’d all believed their lives were over, destroyed, but Wanda had patched them up, then helped them learn how to use artificial limbs, how to get around in the world again. She’d put hope back in their eyes. The pregnant fifteen-year-old sobbing on her front porch believed her life was over, too. There was no hope in her eyes.
So Wanda had helped her. And after her, another one. And then another. Word somehow got around, she didn’t know how. Girls came to her from all over, were glad to go to a place in the middle of nowhere far from home to have their “problems” fixed.
Within a couple of years, Wanda was as busy as she and Paul had ever been. Had thousands of dollars stuffed in shoeboxes and in the backs of drawers all over the house. Not that she gave a rip about the money. In fact, she’d considered in the beginning performing the service for free, but quickly realized she needed to charge for it. Charge a lot! So the girls were serious, had thought it through and were sure this was what they wanted. She’d slowly accumulated the equipment she needed, set up a surgery in the basement. Over and over, her shiny silver pans filled with bloody remains. She had a pit out back where she burned the “tissue.” That’s all it was—tissue! She refused to acknowledge the presence of tiny limbs, arms and legs, and little faces.
But after awhile, the images began to dominate her thoughts, to haunt her, and her world started to fall apart.
She’d turned to Melanie then, when it got bad that first time.
It had started with a lone baby crying. She heard it one night as soon as she switched off her bedside lamp. It was a far-off cry, a wail carried on the wind. Wanda thought it was a real baby. She leapt out of the bed, ran out to the front porch, actually expected to find that somebody had left a newborn on her steps. But there was no child and the night was silent. The cry started up again, though, when she went back to bed, as soon as she turned out the light.
That scared her! She sat up the whole night, shaking. The next night, it happened again. After a week of no sleep, she was desperate.
She drove into town, looking to find a church. Looking for absolution. Looking for … she didn’t even know what she was looking for. Just somebody to talk to before she went stark, staring mad.
She lurched through the big oak front door of New Hope Community Church, sank down in a pew on the back row, and sat there shaking. Then someone called her name.
“Well, hello there, Wanda.”
She looked around and at first couldn’t locate who’d spoken to her. Then she saw Melanie McIntosh—her head, anyway. She was on her knees on the floor between the front two pews.
“Melanie?” Wanda hadn’t seen Melanie since she’d quit her hospital job. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m trying to find th
e earring I lost Sunday. I was hoping it’d be right here on the floor, but I don’t see it.” She stood up and dusted off the knees of her jeans. “Can I help you with something?”
“I was … is there a minister here?”
Melanie came around the end of the pew and up the aisle. As soon as she got close, she could tell something was wrong.
“Are you all right, Wanda? No, of course you’re not. Can I sit with you?”
Wanda nodded and she sat. When Melanie told her “Reverend McIntosh” wasn’t in, that was the first Wanda knew Melanie was married to the preacher. Then they’d just talked. Wanda was vague about what had sent her running to the church, said she was having trouble sleeping. Melanie didn’t probe or push.
Later, Melanie told Wanda to call her if she wanted to talk some more.
Wanda called. Often.
She never did tell Melanie specifically what was bothering her, though she suspected after awhile that Melanie had figured it out. She was a smart woman. Wasn’t likely an accident Mel steered the conversation in that direction, sometimes. “Life’s precious, you know—a gift from God,” she’d said more than once. Melanie had gently urged Wanda to talk to Mac. And Wanda met the man once when he brought his wife out to her farm to pick strawberries. Seemed like a nice enough fellow, but by then, Wanda was feeling much better.
She was over the hump. Oh, she’d gotten a little stressed out before, but she’d learned to pace herself better since then. The blackness that had formed a picture frame around her vision had slowly receded as she spent time with Melanie. All she’d needed was perspective, some human interaction. She’d just needed a friend.
But Melanie got sick. And suddenly, she was gone. So quick.
Wanda’s world grew steadily darker through the winter following Melanie’s death and didn’t brighten with the coming of spring. Then the light went out altogether on April Fool’s Day.
The girl had been fat, so it was hard to tell how far long she really was. And she’d lied. Said she was only four months. Looking back, Wanda was certain Paul would have caught it. But she wasn’t as good as Paul. Truth was, Wanda was no good at all without him.
The fat girl’s baby plopped out into the shiny metal dish—crying.
And Wanda had silenced it. Put her fingers around his little neck and squeezed. Only for a few seconds, that’s all it took, and he was quiet.
But he started crying again that night. And he brought his friends.
“Melanie,” Wanda said softly, as the cherry tree sprinkled blossoms into her hair, “I need you, Mel. Please! I patched up those soldiers, hundreds of them, and what did it get me? A useless medal and a face that scares children. Turned me into a freak! I gave all those girls their lives back and now I’m the one whose life’s falling apart and there’s nobody here for me. I’m all alone.” She tried to stifle the tears, but the pain and loneliness escaped in a wailing moan and then she was crying in deep, heaving sobs that wracked her body. “I swear, I never meant any harm!” she cried out in anguish to the wind. “You know that, don’t you, Melanie? I was just trying to help.” She paused. “Can you hear me? Melanie?”
She waited, listened. The breeze picked up, gently ruffled the tree leaves. Made a sound like a little baby’s laughter.
Chapter 14
When Mac went in to pay for his gas at the Texaco station on his way to the Iron House to see Princess Wednesday afternoon, he bought three candy bars—a Butterfinger, a Baby Ruth and a Hershey bar. It had occurred to him the night before that Princess probably hadn’t had a candy bar in years, if indeed she’d ever had one.
Yeah, he’d been thinking about her. Thinking way too much about her, as a matter of fact, found that he replayed his meetings with her in his head the way golf addicts replayed every shot on all eighteen holes when they got home from a game. He’d been totally preoccupied with what had developed into a certainty in his head that Princess’s step-father had lied about her age. Probably because he was enraged at what she’d done, though he sensed from Princess’s reaction to the mere mention of Jackson Prentiss’s name that there was certainly no love lost on her part, either.
He’d considered—even had the receiver in his hand a time or two—calling Oran and talking to him about it. Being tried as an adult and sentenced to die at age fifteen would surely be grounds for all sorts of legal maneuverings, a stay of execution, certainly. Perhaps a whole new trial.
But how could he prove Princess was telling the truth and not just confused? He couldn’t, not in three days.
And to be brutally honest, what would it accomplish if he could? She was still guilty. She’d still be convicted. Oh, she’d probably get a prison sentence this time instead of the death penalty. Though in Oklahoma, even that wasn’t a foregone conclusion. Oklahoma handed down more death sentences than any other state.
But what if she did get a prison sentence? Oran said she could never go into “gen pop” because she was a baby killer and because she was Jackson Prentiss’s daughter. So she’d have to remain in some form of isolation. Was it right to condemn the little bird of a woman to more years alone? She’d said she had made her peace, that she was ready to die. How humane would it be to interrupt that process after all this time?
He stepped up to the counter to pay for the candy and his gasoline, acknowledging as he did that he was probably just taking the candy along as a peace offering because Princess wasn’t going to like the report he’d be giving her about his heart-to-heart talk with Joy.
It’d be short; there hadn’t been one. The squalling alternator belt under the hood of his car had finally snapped on his way back to town from the Iron House yesterday and by the time he got it repaired, it was almost dark.
He could hear music playing in Joy’s room, somebody wailing “ … come on, baby, do the loco-mo-tion…” Whatever happened to Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and Tommy Dorsey? Now that was music!
He knocked on her door to tell her there was a whole new selection of casseroles, but she called out that she didn’t want any supper, that she had a migraine. It did occur to him to wonder how she could stand music that loud if her head hurt, though he said nothing.
She didn’t come out of her room the rest of the night. Sitting at the kitchen table alone, he choked down what tasted like chili, clam chowder, and Italian wedding soup all stirred together under a layer of cheddar cheese. When he rapped gently on her door as he went to bed, there was only silence.
And no, he didn’t need Princess or anybody else to tell him that his relationship with his daughter was drifting farther out to sea every day. How did other single parents do it? Mourn the love of their lives and comfort a child at the same time? On the rare occasions when he felt strong enough to talk to Joy about Melanie, she was distant, preoccupied. Whatever he said was wrong, made her cry and withdraw further. Sixteen years old with the rocket fuel of hormones in her veins, you never knew which Joy you’d encounter from one moment to the next.
Melanie had been so close to Joy, actually seemed to understand her and her world. She’d listen patiently as Joy gushed about Bobby Darren and Frankie Avalon. Or fix brownies when Joy’s friends, Beth and Shirley, came over to watch American Bandstand, danced the mashed potato, the swim, and the watusi with the three girls in the living room while Mac listened to a football game on the radio in the den. Mel even understood Joy’s teen-speak. She’d tried to translate some of it for Mac once, but he got so lost on the subtle differences between a jerk, a flake, and a nerd that she’d given up on him.
In Mac’s eyes, his teenage daughter was a totally alien life form and he had absolutely no idea how to have that heart-to-heart conversation with her he’d promised he’d have—and knew he needed to have, regardless of Princess’s phobias. He had to tell Joy he was resigning his pastorate. And why. That was not a conversation he was looking forward to.
The young man who checked him out had been in his confirmation class last year. His name was Joel. After he dropped the candy bars
into the sack, Joel cast a quick glance from side to side.
“Pastor, can I ask you something?”
Mac missed the desperation in the boy’s words.
“Sure, if I can answer you quick. I’ve got an appointment; somebody’s waiting for me.”
“Are you … are you sure there’s a God?”
Mac felt like the ground had tilted up and left him staggering, trying to relocate his balance.
He stared at the boy, stupefied.
“’Cause, see, I look around, and there’s war, starving babies in India…”
Ah, the standard starving-babies-in-India question.
A derivation of the starving-babies-in-China and the starving-babies-in-Africa questions. Usually followed by: can God make a stone so heavy he can’t lift it? There’d been a whole section in his apologetics class in seminary devoted to answering those.
He reached out, picked up the candy-bar sack and looked the boy sadly in the eye.
“There’s only one thing in life I’m sure about, son. And that is there’s no way to be sure about anything.”
On the way to the Iron House, he saw storm clouds building in the southwest sky.
His escort through the hallways and staircases of the administration building to the envelope room today was a short, stocky colored man. Or was the correct term negro? Or black? Mac never knew anymore what he was supposed to say. Everything was shifting, changing. What was acceptable yesterday was offensive today. To keep from putting his foot in his mouth, he usually found some way not to mention race at all.
This guard wasn’t nearly as meticulous as the Polish wrestler had been about his belongings, said he could keep his pen as long as he showed it to the guard when he went in and again when he left.
Mac was careful to keep his billfold in his pocket. Good thing, too, because that was the first thing Princess said when he saw her.
“Did you bring it? A picture of your little girl. Did you remember?”