The Seventh Mother

by Sherri Wood Emmons

  “How ’bout some more coffee, then?” Resa asked.

  The woman nodded in silence, her head low.

  I followed Resa into the kitchen. “Who’s that?” I asked, nodding at the table she’d just left.

  “That’s Damon Rigby and his wife, Shirley. Poor thing, she just ain’t got no backbone at all.” Resa shook her head. “If I was married to Damon, one of us would be dead by now, and it sure as hell wouldn’t be me!”

  “Ya’ll keep your gossip to yourselves,” Harlan growled from behind the counter, slamming down a slice of pie and a cup of coffee. “Ain’t none of our business.”

  He handed me another plate. “Table seven,” he said.

  I carried the plate to the table and smiled at the young man in the booth. His greasy hair hung low over his forehead and he slouched like he was half-asleep.

  “Anything else?”

  He shook his head. “Thanks, Emma. I’m good.”

  As I worked the dinner rush, I kept glancing at the table where Damon Rigby was shoveling pie and ice cream into his mouth, while his poor wife sipped decaf and never raised her eyes. It made me angry, angrier than I’d felt in a long time.

  When they finally left, I bused the table, collecting a very small tip for Resa, not even ten percent. What a jerk!

  That night as we cleaned tables and mopped the floor, I asked Resa, “So what’s the deal with that Rigby guy?”

  “He’s bad news,” she said, grimacing. “A real bully, always has been. Even when we were kids in school he was mean. I don’t know why Shirley stays with him. Don’t know why she married him in the first place, except maybe because he had money. He owns that car lot out on Greensburg. Inherited it from his daddy.”

  I sighed, thinking of the women I’d known as a child. “Maybe she doesn’t think she has a choice,” I said.

  “Honey, this is the United States of America!” Resa leaned against the mop and frowned at me. “Of course she’s got a choice. She just ain’t got no backbone.”

  “I knew a lot of women like that back home,” I said. “They didn’t feel like they had any choice. It’s the way they were raised. If no one ever treats you like a real person, you kind of start thinking maybe you’re not. Like maybe nothing good happens to you because you don’t deserve it.”

  She stared at me. “Well, hon,” she said after a pause, “you are the living proof that you always get a choice. You could’ve stayed where you were and been like that. But you didn’t. You got a spine. I don’t see you staying with a man who treated you the way Damon treats Shirley.”

  I bent over to wipe a table. I didn’t want Resa to see my cheeks, which were hot and red.

  “Sometimes, it takes a little help, is all,” I said.

  “Now you listen to me, Emma.” She walked over and put her hand on my shoulder. “I know it ain’t pretty to watch, but Shirley’s marriage is her own problem. Don’t you go getting any ideas about trying to save her. Damon Rigby is bad news. You don’t want to cross him.”

  “Resa’s right about that,” Harlan yelled from the kitchen. “You stay the hell out of his way.”

  I nodded. “I’m not going to do anything stupid,” I said.

  “That’s my girl.” Resa beamed at me. “I knew you were a smart one the minute I laid eyes on you. Well,” she laughed then and flicked me with her washrag, “when I could tear my eyes off that man of yours. Lord God almighty, he is a fine-looking man.”

  I smiled at her and then laughed. “He is nice to look at, isn’t he? I feel pretty lucky.”

  “And your little girl’s a beauty, too.”

  “Oh,” I stammered. “Jenny’s not my daughter. I’m kind of her stepmom, I guess. But not really.”

  “Ya’ll ain’t married?” Resa looked me up and down.

  I shook my head. “We only met in June.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” she said. “I thought you were an old married couple. And the way that little girl looks at you, you could be her mama.”

  I smiled and shook my head again.

  “Don’t wait too long,” she said, walking toward the kitchen. “A man like that, you gotta snare him up while you can. Make him put a ring on your finger.”

  I laughed again and followed her to the kitchen.

  “I’m good,” I said. “I’m happy just the way things are.”

  “That’s because you’re still young and pretty,” Resa said. “Wait another ten or fifteen years and you’ll wish you’d married him before you got old. Hell, when I was your age I’d already been married and divorced. I knew if I didn’t get married again soon, I’d be an old maid all my life. Probably turn into one of those crazy old ladies they find dead in a house with twenty cats or something.”

  “If you don’t finish up here and get yourself home, Earl might just be gone,” Harlan said. He sounded mean, but he was grinning at her. “You could still get in on that crazy-cat-lady thing.”

  She laughed and swatted at him. “The day Earl McCoy tries to leave me is the day you’ll find him dead with his balls cut off and mounted on the wall. Ya’ll ready?”

  Harlan turned out the lights and locked the back door, then walked with Resa and me to our cars. He was a cantankerous old man, but he walked us to our cars every night.

  “Good night, Emma,” he said, nodding at me. “You did a good job today.”

  I smiled as I drove home, surprised at how much that small compliment had raised my spirits.

  Jenny was spending the night with Lashaundra and Brannon had left for work by the time I got home. So I got a can of beer from the fridge and sat down to watch Criminal Minds on the television. Brannon always laughed at my addiction to the show.

  “That’s going to give you nightmares,” he said again and again. “I don’t know how you can watch that stuff.”

  “I don’t like the gory parts. I just like watching how the team solves the crime. It makes me feel better, somehow, to know there are people like that in the world, people who can solve murders and things.”

  He just laughed. “It’s TV, babe. It doesn’t work like that in the real world.”

  I wondered if he was right. But I still watched the show every week, hoping that there really were people like ones in the behavioral analysis unit, people who could track down and catch the bad guys. I wished they were in Campbellsville, Kentucky, right about now. I wished I could call them and ask them to check in on Shirley Rigby.

  13

  Jenny

  After Thanksgiving, Daddy started working a lot of overtime. At first it was five ten-hour days a week, then five twelve-hour days. Emma and I didn’t see him very much. He dragged home in the morning, kissed Emma and me, and went right to sleep. And because he was going into work earlier, there was no one at home on the nights Emma worked at the diner. Some nights I spent at Lashaundra’s. But sometimes I just went to the diner with Emma. I ate dinner and sat in a booth, watching whatever was on the television or reading until closing time.

  “Hey, Jenny, do you want a brownie?” Resa asked as she walked by my table.

  “No thanks.”

  “Well, how ’bout some cocoa with marshmallows?”

  “Okay,” I said, smiling at her over my book. “Thank you.”

  “What are you reading?” she asked as she set the cocoa on the table.

  “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.” I held the cover up for her to see.

  “Traveling pants? How do pants travel? Is that like Harry Potter?”

  “No.” I laughed. “It’s about these four girls who are best friends. And they travel different places during the summer, and they send the pants back and forth. And the pants fit all of them, even though they’re not all the same size.”

  Resa shook her head. “Why would anyone write a book about a pair of pants?”

  “It’s more about the friendship,” I explained.

  “Oh,” she said, nodding. “That makes more sense. You’ve got to have friends. They’re the most important thing in
the world.”

  Emma stopped by on her way to the kitchen. “Friends are important,” she agreed.

  “Daddy always says family is the most important thing.” And by family, he meant me and him.

  “Honey, let me tell you something.” Resa plopped down in the booth across from me and rested her elbows on the table.

  “Boyfriends come and go. Hell, sometimes husbands come and go. But your girlfriends are your girlfriends forever, no matter what. Don’t you forget that when it comes time for you to start dating. Don’t ever let a boy get between you and your girlfriends. You hear me?”

  I nodded solemnly, even though I didn’t have any girlfriends except for Lashaundra, and I was never going to date a boy.

  “Order’s up!”

  Emma and Resa hurried back to the kitchen and I returned to my book. The pants were in Greece right now with Lena. And so was I.

  Later that night, I yawned and watched while Resa mopped and Emma wiped down tables.

  “You know,” Emma said, “husbands don’t always come and go.”

  Resa laughed. “I know, honey. But sometimes they do. I mean, look at my ex. He took off with a younger, thinner, blonder girl while I was pregnant with my first. He never even looked back.”

  “That was mean,” I said.

  “Well,” she said, smiling at me, “he was just my practice husband. You know, the first pancake?”

  Emma laughed, but I just looked at her.

  “The first pancake?”

  “Okay, listen,” Resa said. “You know how when you make pancakes, the first one always gets thrown away? Either the griddle’s too hot and the pancake burns, or it’s not hot enough and the batter spreads out too thin. Either way, the pancake ends up in the trash. That’s how my first husband was. I practiced on him. Hell, we’ve all got a first pancake.”

  Emma laughed, and I looked at her, suddenly afraid.

  “Is Daddy your first pancake?” I asked, before I could stop myself.

  “Oh, Jenny.” She leaned down to hug me. “Don’t worry. Your dad isn’t my first pancake.”

  “You mean you were married to someone else?” I stared at her.

  Resa stopped mopping and turned to look at Emma, too.

  Emma’s cheeks colored and she stood for a minute not saying anything. Then she sat down beside me and wrapped her arm around my shoulders.

  “I got married when I was very young,” she said. “I wasn’t even sixteen. And . . . it didn’t work out. So I left.”

  “But I thought you ran away from home when you were seventeen.” My head was spinning.

  “I did,” she said. “But not from my parents’ home. I ran away from my husband. He was not a nice man.”

  “Ah,” Resa said softly.

  “Yeah.” Emma nodded. “That’s why I got so upset about the way Damon Rigby was with his wife. Because his wife . . . well, that was me when I was fifteen.”

  “Does Daddy know?” I whispered.

  Emma sighed and squeezed my shoulders.

  “Not yet,” she said. “I wanted to tell him. I know I should have told him. But . . . it never seemed like the right time.”

  “Well, you’re gonna have to tell him now.” Resa’s voice was firm.

  “She’s right.” Harlan’s voice made us all jump. He stood behind the booth, a towel in his hands. “The man’s got a right to know. And, if he’s a real man, it won’t matter a lick.”

  As we drove home, I watched Emma carefully. She looked the same as always, but different, too. She got married when she was only four years older than me, to a man who wasn’t nice to her. I’d always thought that Emma was strong, but she seemed afraid now.

  “Are you scared to tell Daddy?” I finally asked.

  She nodded, and then smiled at me.

  “A little bit, I guess. I should have told him a long time ago.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  She sat still a moment and then sighed heavily.

  “I was embarrassed, I guess. It seems so stupid now. It’s just, where I was raised getting married that young was normal. And people don’t understand it. Some people I told early on treated me like I was a freak after they knew. I didn’t want to do that with your dad.”

  She sighed again. “I guess I just want us to be normal, like a normal family.”

  “Do you think he’ll be mad?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But I have to tell him. I should have told him before I told you.”

  “You don’t have to tell him that I know.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t want to lie to Brannon. That’s no way to maintain a relationship. I’ll just . . . tell him, I guess.”

  We came home to a dark trailer. Daddy was at work.

  Emma changed into her pajamas and made a cup of tea. I watched her from my bed.

  When she turned out the light, I said, “I don’t care about it, you being married before. And I don’t think Daddy will care, either.”

  She walked to my alcove, leaned over, and kissed my cheek.

  “Thanks, Jenny. That means a lot.”

  “Emma?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I love you.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut and waited to see what she would say. I heard her take a quick breath and when she spoke, I could tell she was crying.

  “I love you, too, Jenny. And I love your dad.”

  She walked to the bedroom, but she didn’t close the door. I sat up in bed and looked down the hall, to where she sat on the bed, her head in her hands. Then I saw her kneel on the floor beside the bed, fold her hands, and bow her head. She was praying.

  So I prayed, too.

  Dear God, if you’re there, please let Emma stay. Please don’t let her go away.

  14

  Emma

  The day after I told Jenny about my past, I woke up feeling anxious and tired. I’d had bad dreams all night, dreams of Colorado City, my parents, my husband, my little sister. I tried so hard not to think about the past, to let it stay in the past. But the conversation at the diner had stirred it all up again.

  I rose and made coffee, sitting at the table in the trailer, listening to the soft sounds of Jenny sleeping. She was so beautiful, her dark hair tangled around her shoulders, so quiet and innocent. She was the same age Clarissa had been when I left. God, Clarissa would be almost eighteen now. I hadn’t seen her in more than six years.

  The door opening startled me, and Brannon came in, the cold wind following him through the door.

  “Hey, babe.” He bent over and kissed me, then dropped into the seat across from me.

  “Hey,” I said, rising. “Let me get you something to eat.”

  He leaned back in his seat and yawned, stretching.

  “I’ve got leftover meatloaf and potatoes, or I can make you some eggs.”

  “Leftovers are good,” he said. He rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes and yawned again.

  “How was work?”

  “Same as always,” he said. “It’s getting busier every day, more people on the floor. Some guy almost ran me over with a cart.”

  “I hate that you’re working so many hours.” I put a plate into the microwave and stood behind him, rubbing his shoulders.

  “It’s good money,” he said. He took one of my hands and kissed it. “But I sure do miss you.”

  I kissed the top of his head and whispered in his ear, “Well, Jenny was up kind of late last night, so she’s sleeping pretty soundly. We could . . .”

  He kissed my hand again and shook his head. “I can’t, babe. I’m sorry. I’m just beat.”

  “It’s okay. Maybe tonight Jenny can stay at the Johnsons’ and we can have some time to ourselves when you’ve had some sleep.”

  It was Saturday. Brannon wouldn’t go back to work until Monday night.

  “That sounds good.”

  He tilted his head back and I leaned in to kiss him. Even exhausted and dusty, he was beautiful to look at
.

  After he’d eaten, he headed for bed, and I heard him start snoring almost the minute his head hit the pillow.

  After Jenny got up and we’d had breakfast, we climbed into the SUV to drive to the local Walmart. We were going to buy decorations for Christmas, and I wanted to get Brannon’s Christmas gift.

  “These are cute.” I held up a strand of star-shaped lights. Jenny nodded, and I put them into the cart.

  “Look!” She pointed toward the Christmas trees, all brightly lit and shining with ornaments and tinsel. “I wish we could have one.”

  “I know,” I said. “But none of those will fit inside the trailer.”

  We walked among the trees, each one prettier than the one before. At the very back, we saw it—a small tree, just two feet tall, with lights of blue, purple, green, and gold. Tiny glass ornaments hung from the branches, sparkling in the lights.

  “That one would fit,” Jenny said, touching an ornament with one finger.

  “It’s perfect. Let’s get it.”

  “Really?” She looked at me, her blue eyes wide.

  “Sure, why not?” I found a boxed tree and we gathered lights and ornaments. Jenny was as excited as I’d ever seen her.

  “We’ve never had a real tree before. Can we get a star for the top?”

  We put a small silver star into the cart. I couldn’t help smiling, watching her prance up the store aisle. It was one of the only times I’d seen her really act like a kid.

  “Now,” I said, “we need to get something for your dad.”

  “You mean like a tie or something?”

  I shook my head, laughing. “What would Brannon do with a tie?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I never got him anything before. Not from the store, anyway. I used to make him stuff for his birthday.”

  “Homemade gifts are the best.”

  She shook her head. “I want to buy him something this year. I’ve been saving my allowance. I’ve got twelve dollars.”

  We wandered through the store, looking at and rejecting several shirts, world’s-best-dad coffee mugs, colognes, and baseball caps. None of them seemed right.

  “Maybe we could get him some fishing gear. He likes to fish.” She looked up at me. “What do you think?”