Beloved Mother

by Laura Hunter

  Rafe leaned over the child and squinted against the dark. “What color’s her hair?” he whispered.

  The question addled Anna. Lily’s hair was no hair. Still a lap baby, the baby’s scalp was covered with colorless fuzz. Now at less than a year, she had a little, but not enough to hold a hair ribbon. Had he never seen a baby?

  Rafe bent close, then stood. Lily slept in a drawer taken from the bureau across the room. “She can’t have my family’s hair. You know that.” He spoke, his back toward Anna, as if he dared the baby to sprout hair with him standing there watching.

  Anger surged through her body. “Damn it, Winston. You come barging in here acting like I can wave a wand and color her hair. Are you crazy?” She stepped back. “I can’t cast spells like some granny.” She tilted her head. “Winston Rafe, are you drunk?”

  Anna watched as he circled his attention around the room, looking first to the window, with its white curtains, then the open closet, her clothes hanging next to Clint’s. His eyes stopped at the dresser mirror, most of its back silvering gone. There he stood, Anna noticed, reflected in a gauzy haze that presented him almost featureless. He ran his fingers through his wavy hair.

  “Family hair,” he said. “It’s chestnut, my mother always said. Said there was none other like it.” He swallowed. “Maybe she’ll be blonde? Like you?”

  Anna took a deep breath and mumbled, “I don’t know, Winston. There’s no way to tell as yet.” He had not answered her question about being drunk. She felt the warped reflection in the mirror watching her.

  Anna had many nights envisioned having Winston here. Now that he was, the bed looked severe, its dusty rose chenille spread stretched so taunt no wrinkle rippled the surface. The elation she had imagined had never entered the room. She looked back at the mirror’s curvy image. Her face mocked her. She saw a face she had never seen before, the face of a fallen woman. Tears came before she could stop them.

  That night was the first night Winston came inside Anna’s home. Lily was seven months old.

  The rain defies Brother Moon’s command and plummets onto Breakline Mining Camp. It drenches the tipple and moves south toward the end of the camp.

  As soon as Winston Rafe stepped out of Clint Goodman’s house, rain dropped in broad sheets, drenching Rafe as he walked back to the Queen Anne house on the rise.

  After Rafe left, three weeks of emptiness and yearning consumed Anna. She stumbled through days and fought pre-dawn nightmares before she admitted her body needed Winston Rafe. She convinced herself that he whispered to her, calling her. One late July evening, she bundled Lily in a light blanket, walked out the back door, and climbed the rise to her rock ledge.

  At first, she did not see him. His approach startled her. “I didn’t expect you to be here,” she said.

  “Neither did I.”

  Later, Anna would ponder on whether he meant he had not expected to return to their ledge or whether he didn’t expect her to return. Neither mattered. She had never suspected when she lured Clint away from Ruth that she had taken such a precarious road. Nor did she have an idea how painful the resulting wreck would be.

  Lily slept in a bower away from the ledge’s rim. Anna sat on the edge, her feet hanging loose in the dark. A cool night breeze blew down the mountain.

  Winston lit a cigarette and said, “You got to take Lily and Clint and leave.”

  “What’d you mean?”

  He stared out over the camp. “I’m transferring Clint over to Big Mama #2 next week.”

  She shouldn’t have expected anything more, she told herself, but she had.

  “Gladys is pregnant. Told me last night. She won’t tolerate having a kid walking around that favors her own child. Almost the same age.” His voice grew louder with each statement.

  “Gladys is pregnant.” Anna’s voice came out flat.

  “You got to go. What if the more Lily grows the more she favors me?”

  “She won’t.” Anna interlocked her fingers to steady their trembling. “I swear she won’t.” Wind whipped up, calling for rain in the night.

  “Anna, listen here. . .”

  “No. I’m not going.” Anna rubbed her hands down her thighs to dry her palms.

  “Anna, I’m not a begging man, but you got to go. You don’t have a choice. Don’t make me do something I don’t want.”

  “Clint adores Lily. He’s convinced she’s his.” She refused to look at Winston. This change was something he had told her to expect, but she never really thought it would come to such a betrayal. Gladys. Pregnant.

  “He’s never questioned her looks.” Anna kept her voice low so as not to wake Lily.

  “Anna,” he pleaded. “Anna?”

  Winston’s command had hit deep. Anna did not want to plead, but his argument left her defenseless. She had no idea what to say. “It’s been almost a full year. He hasn’t questioned her yet.” She whirled around and stood behind Winston. “We’re settled here. Now that I have Lily, wives talk to me. I have friends.”

  “Go home, Anna. Get settled back in Covington. You have family there.”

  “I’m not leaving, Winston. Not next week. Not ever.” She lifted Lily, cradled her child close and started back toward the camp house.

  Rafe called after her, “I told you all along. I can’t claim the child.”

  “Shut up,” Anna barked.

  “Don’t push me, Anna,” were the last words she heard.

  Brother Moon takes on extra iridescence to help Anna down the mountain. He reminds himself not to mention his actions to Sister Sun or Great Spirit. They will not approve of his interfering.

  Chapter 13

  The next morning before dawn, first a tapping on the door, then three heavy fist licks, and Anna woke.

  “Mrs. Goodman, open up the door. It’s me, Seth White. Juanita’s old man. Open up.” The voice spoke in a loud whisper.

  Anna opened the door, clutching her quilted housecoat, arms crossed over her bosom. The earthy smell of dry dirt overwhelmed her. Clint lay on the porch, his left leg folded up under his body. Dried blood covered his forehead and left ear.

  “We found him when we was going to the mines a while ago. Looks like one of the coal trucks must have hit him.” Seth White rolled his felt hat with both hands. “He was almost in the ditch.”

  “Thought you’d want to know before we took him to Doc’s,” said a voice out of the darkness.

  Anna stared at Clint’s face. His dark eyes looked like silver buttons on a white shirt. But big. Big like white balls. They bulged out as if something had slammed against the back of his head making his eyes try to pop out the front. His body seemed so small, like a child’s, like it had shrunk since he left last night for work. It was the first time in months that he hadn’t worked a double shift, and he came home like this.

  Inside the house, Lily cried out from a night fright.

  “What’s the matter with him?” she asked.

  Great Spirit calls out to Brother Moon. “Where have you been? You were supposed to tell Sister Sun to brighten the sky early today. Why is she lagging behind?” He speaks to himself, “Or did I forget and order a storm cloud for this morning?” He scratches his head with a massive lightning bolt.

  “I told her, Great Spirit, but you know how it is with her. She gets caught up in her sparkle and loses track of time.”

  “Looks like I’ll have to throw a few asteroids out her way. Get her attention,” Great Spirit says as he moves away. “Seems nobody does anything right these days.”

  The men looked around at each other. “He’s dead, Mrs. Goodman,” Seth whispered. “Hit by a loaded truck.”

  “Somebody run him down.” Anna twisted her hands round and round each other. “I know it.”

  “No. A accident. Nobody to blame.” Seth searched for the right words to calm Anna. He waited for her to scream. “Maybe it was the light,” Seth offered. “Maybe Clint was on the fringe.” He skimmed the faces behind him. “Nobody around here wanted Clint
gone. He’s a good man. A good worker.”

  Anna’s eyes squinted against the pre-dawn sky. Such a deep, deep black. Was this the darkness that Clint lived in every day? She squatted on the porch at Clint’s feet. “What’s wrong with his leg?” She looked up to Seth. “Why don’t you fix his leg?” She extended her hands, palms down, and moved them back and forth, as if to cover him or swat away some unknown creature and keep it from lighting on his body.

  “Yes ma’am, Mrs. Goodman. I’ll do just that.” Seth signaled for the men to back away. “Here you go.” He lifted her. “Just let’s go back in the house. I should’ve brought Juanita with me. I’ll send one of the men for her right now.” He nodded to a shadow in the crowd.

  Lily cried again, more demanding.

  “I’ll have her mix you up strong toddy, and she can sooth the little one.” Seth half-walked, half-dragged Anna into the house and left her lying on Clint Goodman’s bed.

  Anna tossed about. “Go,” she mumbled. The word tolled in her head like an iron gong announcing a community death.

  “No. You stay right here,” Seth said.

  Without looking, Anna reached for the company Bible by the bed and clutched it to her chest. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. The Word of God rattled in her head like a loaded train on uneven crossties.

  Juanita found Anna glaring at the ceiling, unresponsive. She reached into her sweater pocket and brought out a small vial of belladonna berry juice.

  Winston Rafe propped against the thick trunk of a sugar maple. His jacket, a pale gray, blended into the bark of the tree. Although it was a warm day, he pulled his head into the collar and looked under his brows at the group of mourners by Clint Goodman’s open grave.

  “Sister Sun, are you looking after that child?” Great Spirit calls.

  He has returned to Turtleback weary from listening to what is spinning around in Benjamin Spock’s head. He realizes that he should have listened more closely before letting him send out a manuscript for a how-to book on what man should already know. Maybe he needs to stop the publication. Common Sense Book of Baby & Child Care. Humph. It just might turn out like that artificial snow somebody made up in Mt. Greylock. Those Massachusetts people will have people thinking they can change the weather on a whim. Even had the gall to use one of my own clouds. Now every other person will be believing they can change the world into being what they want. Great Spirit mumbles on, until he sees Clint Goodman’s gaping grave. And he remembers it all.

  “Yes sir. I truly am,” says Sister Sun.

  At least forty off-shift miners and their wives waited for the service to begin. Their backs created a dark hedge blocking Winston’s view of Anna. Unable to see Anna, Winston stepped from behind the tree and walked to the edge of the crowd. Anna sat in a folding chair the funeral director has draped in green felt.

  Anna’s hair, blonde as the day he met her, hung across her face. From time to time, a puff of breeze lifted loose tendrils, fanning their length, pointing toward him. He willed his feet not to walk closer.

  Wind wafted the minister’s lamentations across the cemetery. The July air hit Winston and drew his attention to the minister. The man had a reputation for using the right words at the right time. He could quote scripture out both sides of his mouth, some said. Winston had sent Gabe to Covington to get him and tell the man to say what Anna needed to be said. All the afterlife promises and such. Gabe paid the man with a ten-dollar bill. He better be good, or Covington Presbyterian Church would be finding another preacher.

  Buying a minister was the best he could do. He should not have tempted Fate by delaying Clint’s transfer to Covington. Anna had family in Covington. Maybe she would go now. But if she left, he had to know she would be safe. And the child. The child needed to be safe. He might not be able to make them happy, but surely, surely he could keep them safe. He walked toward the crowd as they moved away so the diggers could cover Clint’s pine box.

  Gabe stepped up from behind Anna and placed his hand lightly on her shoulder. Rafe walked to Gabe and gripped his shoulder. Gabe was his son. He would do what Rafe told him.

  Anna returned to their camp house after the funeral. The effects of Juanita’s belladonna berry juice had left her groggy, and she wobbled when she tried to walk. She needed to lie down with Lily and rest. She couldn’t remember a full night’s sleep since Winston had sent her to Clint’s bed a little over a year ago.

  The night when she refused to leave Breakline plodded through her memory. She questioned refusing to leave. She questioned Winston and who he was away from her. Winston would not have had one of the miners run Clint down with a coal truck, but the possibility played in her mind. The fact that she had been so adamant about staying would not leave her alone. Such thoughts muddled through her mind and clogged her ability to think about what to do.

  Anna knew the regulations. Dead miner. Widow had two weeks to get out of the camp. Winston had told one night about a disabled miner over in Kentucky who had been allowed to stay in his camp house and was paid for a job he never did. The mine owner fired the miner, the supervisor and the commissary worker, all the same day. Here in Breakline, Winston was the owner, at least in word. Gladys wouldn’t know if Anna was allowed to stay on.

  She had not seen Winston at the funeral. Clint had been one of his best workers, one of the most respected miners in camp. She felt it right that Winston should come. He at least owed Clint that much. But had he come, Seth or Gabe might have seen the real Winston. Yet she questioned why she would think that anyone else would see through Winston Rafe. She had not. Or she had ignored what she had seen. Her mind shifted back and forth, arguing with itself about what to believe. Conflicted, she wasn’t able to rest.

  Two days after Clint Goodman was laid in the ground behind Unity Church, Anna packed a satchel, tucked Lily in the Red Ryder wagon Clint had bought her and set off for the commissary. As she neared the building, guilt and fear forced her eyes to the ground. Uncertainty dogged her. Did her actions have the power to kill another person? Before Clint’s death, she had put God and His power to control lives out of her mind. It had been one way of allowing herself time with Winston. Might Clint’s death have been her doing? Might Clint’s death be her punishment from God? Her pa once said, “Not doing something at all can be as bad as doing something, even when it’s wrong.” She had defied Winston by not leaving. She had defied God with her adultery. And now Clint was dead and buried.

  When she arrived at the commissary steps, she stopped. She could not remember what she had intended to say, nor to whom she intended to speak. She gazed at the three wooden steps between where she stood and the closed screen. She realized she could not get the wagon with its large wheels up the steps, and she would not disgrace herself by calling for Winston Rafe to come out and face her. She wiped unexpected tears from her face and rolled her daughter back over the packed dirt path to the company-owned house she had shared with Clint Goodman these past eight years.

  The week after Clint’s death, what Anna had believed was secret erupted throughout the camp much like a flash fire. No one she knew would benefit from the telling. She eliminated people she knew one by one. Winston would never have spoken. He valued his status too much. She had rarely seen Granny Slocomb after Lily’s birth. The granny’s son, Briar, who wandered the camp and worked at cleaning the commissary? No. She had never heard him speak. But the women now knew and they let her know they knew. Wives glanced away when she met them in the camp. A tall, brown-headed woman grabbed her children by the hand as they started across the ditch bridge Anna was crossing and shooed them in the opposite direction.

  Alone, except for her baby and Juanita who stayed mostly inside, Anna found herself helpless against stares. She began rousing Lily and going to the commissary as early as possible, trying to squeeze in a time while other mothers were setting their children down to breakfast. While there, she glanced up each time she heard the door open. If she did unintentionally meet some woman, she slipped into a
narrow aisle and turned away as if she could not be seen.

  Anna loaded her burden of guilt on her back and staggered through each day under its weight. She prayed to her God that Gladys would not hear the truth. If word climbed the rise to the big yellow house, she, like Hagar, Abraham’s whore, would be cast into the wilderness.

  Anna did not know where she had garnered the strength to accept the beginning nor could she recall the precise time when she decided that she had no choice but to accept the leaving. What would drive her out of Breakline Camp was the touch of her child’s hand, the smell of clean hair when she pressed her face to Lily’s head as the child slept in her arms. It was the knowledge that to place her child gently in her crib would be time never regained, so she rocked her infant, cradled her in her arms in a selfish need for her own comfort.

  Two more weeks passed before she attempted to see Winston. Turtleback, ever a shadow over the camp, trapped the night’s coolness in its shade and held it there, awaiting the sun. The idea that Winston might be at one of his mines rather than the commissary had not come to her. Again, she tucked Lily in her wagon. At the commissary, she wrapped Lily tight in a light blanket, parked the wagon in the shade by the porch and mounted the steps.

  Gabe, at his usual place behind the cash register, opened his mouth to reprimand whoever had slammed the screen door. When he saw Anna alone, he asked, “Where’s my little Lily?”