The Past Is Never

by Tiffany Quay Tyson

  Weeks passed, then months, and every time I spoke with Granny Clem she sounded farther away. I called less often. The calls were expensive. Willet never complained, but I felt bad running up bills I couldn’t pay. I got tired of hearing Granny Clem’s reports about the babies and the women who had them. I didn’t want stories about people I hardly knew; I wanted answers about Daddy and Pansy. I talked about it with Willet, but his focus shifted to Cheryl and his work with Audie. He didn’t seem to care about why we’d come to Florida in the first place. He definitely didn’t want to leave.

  That spring, we got a stretch of rainy days that kept me inside the apartment long enough to start going crazy. The driving gray rains turned the streets into shallow rivers. Alligators came up with the water and I saw one of the gray beasts lumbering across the parking lot of our apartment building. It was the start of the wet season. Iggy warned me it would come. I spent one whole day watching soap operas and daytime talk shows until my brain went soft. I ate grape jelly on saltine crackers for lunch and dinner. I drank coffee all day long. It reminded me of the days following Pansy’s disappearance, when we lived off caffeine and mush.

  Willet kept the photos and the animal carvings on the dresser in his bedroom. I spent hours moving them around like puzzle pieces and willed them to give up their secrets. At night, the rain fell so hard it sounded like gunshots hitting the windows. The thunder came in waves, booming for minutes at a time. When we heard thunder back home, people said it was the Devil beating his wife. I figured the Devil’s wife couldn’t take much more. One morning I woke to a strange silence inside the apartment. Rain fell outside, but something was missing inside. I half sleepwalked to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee and nearly cried when I realized I couldn’t. I flipped the kitchen light switch, but the overhead fixture didn’t hum. I put my ear to the phone and was relieved to hear a dial tone. I called Cheryl’s house to talk to Willet. He told me the electricity was down there, too.

  “It’s out everywhere,” he said. “Look outside. You won’t see the first light.”

  He offered to come get me, but I didn’t want to be stuck at Cheryl and Audie’s house any more than I wanted to be alone in the apartment.

  “Can’t you come home?” I asked.

  Willet said he couldn’t abandon Cheryl with the electricity out. He said her father was more confused than ever.

  “What about me?” I asked. “Why don’t you worry about abandoning me?”

  “Goddamn, Bert, you’re a grown woman. No one’s abandoned you. If you were in trouble, I’d be there and you know it. I ain’t gonna come running because you’re bored. Audie says the electricity’ll be back soon. Just sit tight.”

  I slammed the phone down and stared at the cold coffeepot. I peeled mold off a loaf of bread and ate the stale bits with butter and cinnamon sugar. I hoped it would make me sick. I fetched the photos and the animal carvings and spread them out on the kitchen table. It was the room with the most windows and the only place in the apartment where I could see more than shadows on a day with no sunlight. I found a half-burnt taper and a chipped candleholder in the junk drawer. I lit the candle and stared at the collection for a long while, moving the pieces around and trying to make sense of things. I wished I had magic powers like the witches in the fairy tales. I wished for the gift of prophecy. I fetched the quarry rock from beneath my pillow and brought it to the table. I found the old book of fairy tales, the one I used to read with Pansy, and brought it in, too, even though I knew those stories by heart. I looked at all the things I’d assembled. It seemed like the answers should be there somewhere. I picked up the book of fairy tales and it flopped open to “The Devil and His Grandmother.” I never liked the story much. I couldn’t understand why the Devil’s grandmother would betray her own flesh to save the souls of a few strangers. I didn’t like it when she tricked the Devil into handing over the answer to the riddle. Even the Devil, I figured, ought to be able to trust his own grandmother.

  I read the story aloud, squinting to make out the words in the dim, shaky candlelight. The story was just as I remembered and I knew when I condemned the grandmother I was siding with the Devil, but I didn’t care. I held the quarry rock against my chest. The warmth grew and spread like kudzu during a warm, wet summer.

  That’s when it came to me. Alone in the cold gray kitchen, surrounded by the bits and pieces of my own riddle, I knew. Granny Clem was no better than the Devil’s grandmother when it came to tricks and secrets. I wondered if she knew more than she let on. But if Granny Clem had the answers, whose soul did she hope to save?

  I laid the photo of Daddy and Uncle Chester and the girl on top of the book of fairy tales and moved the candle closer so I could study the image. I squeezed the quarry rock in my fist. It warmed and turned hot. My palm burned red. The candle flickered as if a breeze were blowing through the kitchen.

  I’d never get any answers if I didn’t ask the right questions. I pulled the phone cord across the kitchen table and sat with my shrine of photos and carvings. Granny Clem answered on the second ring. She asked me about Willet and about Florida. She told me about a woman who’d lost her baby to miscarriage in the twenty-first week of pregnancy. Granny Clem buried the stillborns in a special corner of her garden and fed the unfulfilled mothers bitter herbs she grew from the soil covering the gravesite. The herbs were supposed to prepare the women’s bodies to give birth in the future, but I suspected the ritual was more psychological than physical. Anyway, I didn’t care about Granny Clem’s business or some strange woman’s lost baby. I had no space for sympathy. I needed answers.

  “Tell me about Daddy,” I said. The gray rain seemed to soften everything. Even my voice sounded faint. “Tell me about Daddy and Uncle Chester and the girl in the photo.” I heard Granny Clem breathing, but she didn’t say anything. “Why won’t you tell us about the girl? She looks just like Pansy. You know she does.”

  “Oh, Bert, it was such a long time ago.”

  I twisted the phone cord around my index finger until the tip turned white and cold. “You’ve told me older stories,” I said. “Why won’t you tell me this one?”

  “Your brother had no right to take that photo from me.”

  “What difference does it make? Daddy’s dead. Mama’s dead. There’s no one else to ask. It isn’t fair.” I pulled my finger from the cord and watched blood flood the tip. It turned bright red, faded to pink.

  “This phone call must be costing a fortune,” she said.

  I laughed. “Have we ever asked you for money?”

  “I’ve given you plenty of money through the years.”

  “You paid me for working.” Spit flew from my mouth and landed on the pages of the fairy tale book. “I earned that money. You came to us and asked for me. You said you needed me.” As soon as I said it, I knew it wasn’t true. Granny Clem didn’t need anyone. So why did she come for me the year after Pansy went missing? Did she feel guilty about what she knew? Or did she want to keep me close and keep me busy so I wouldn’t go snooping around?

  Granny Clem let out a long breath. I could almost feel the warmth of it in my ear. “I knew your mother wouldn’t take money from me. I gave you work because it was the best way I could think of to help your family out after Earl left.”

  “So you lied about needing me? Just like you lie about everything else.”

  “I loved having you work with me.”

  “Just like you lie to all those children growing up with the wrong parents. What do you think they’ll do when they realize they don’t look like anyone else in their family? How do you think they’d feel if they knew some old woman sold them to the highest bidder?”

  “That is not how I work.” She sounded angry. “I don’t take bids.”

  “You might as well,” I said. “All those babies in the wrong homes—”

  “In better homes,” she said. “With better lives.”

  “That’s not why you do it.”

  “What do you know about why I
do anything? I expect more of you.”

  Thunder boomed and the lights flickered, but didn’t come on. It seemed right that I’d be left in the dark. My conversation with Granny Clem wasn’t shedding any light on our family mysteries. The way she danced around the truth was infuriating. “I know what you expect,” I said. “You expect me to keep my mouth shut and not ask questions.”

  “I expect you to understand that plenty of children are born to the wrong mothers and all I’m trying to do is set things right.”

  “You’re not God,” I said. “You don’t get to decide what’s right.”

  She laughed. “Do you see any evidence God cares about the babies born in the Mississippi Delta? Or in Florida, for that matter? Maybe he gives a damn about children born in New York City or Los Angeles, but I don’t believe he spares a thought for the children I deal with. I don’t believe he thinks of me and I don’t believe he ever spared a moment for you.”

  The truth of her words hit me hard. Of course I’d side with the Devil. Siding with God was never an option. Either he didn’t exist or he didn’t care about us.

  “Someday,” she said, her voice softer and less angry, “when you have children of your own, you’ll understand.”

  “I won’t.” I stood and paced the small kitchen. “I won’t bring a child into this world. I won’t risk it.”

  “You’re young. You’ll change your mind,” Granny Clem said.

  The phone cord wrapped around me as I paced. “You don’t know me.”

  “For heaven’s sake, I know you better than you know yourself.”

  I spun to untangle myself from the twisted cord and felt a rush of dizziness. I leaned against the table. The carving of the alligator slid and tumbled to the linoleum.

  “Bert?” Granny Clem’s voice came to me from nearly a thousand miles away. “Bert?”

  If she wouldn’t tell me what she knew about Daddy and Pansy and the girl from the photo, then what did we have to say to each other? Every piece of our relationship was a lie and if I could go back and undo the hours I’d spent working with her, I would. I hated her for being right about God and for pointing out one more way in which I didn’t matter.

  “I know you’re upset …” Granny Clem kept talking, but I was done listening.

  I set the receiver on the table alongside the book, the photos, and the carvings. Her voice sounded no louder than a mouse’s squeak. I walked out of the apartment and into the pouring rain. The parking lot was empty but for a half dozen cars and an alligator who seemed to be camping there until he could reclaim his usual spot near some river.

  I was barefoot and I wore nothing but one of Willet’s old white T-shirts, the same thing I slept in most nights. Within seconds, the shirt was plastered to my body and I was as good as naked if anyone cared to look. No one did. Or, if they did, they didn’t think it worth braving the storm to confront me. I stared at the long gray alligator and dared him to come and get me, but he never moved. He must have figured I wasn’t worth the effort. Or maybe he knew, just by looking at me, he was no match for the beasts in my own family.

  When Willet came home, I was sleeping facedown on the couch, still wearing the soaked T-shirt. I’d left the door to the apartment standing open and the cheap living room carpet was soaked from the rain blowing in. The phone beeped incessantly where I’d left it off the hook on the kitchen table. I had no idea how long Granny Clem stayed on the line after I walked away and I didn’t care. The photos and the carvings and the book were still scattered across the table, but at some point I must have grabbed the quarry rock. I had no memory of it. When Willet shook me awake and I opened my eyes to the light and hum of restored electricity, I felt the painful tenderness of a bruise beginning between my breasts. I’d been sleeping with the quarry rock pressed against my flesh. The bruise was twice as large as the rock, as if I’d slammed it against my chest in wide, violent strokes.

  “Jesus Christ!” Willet stood over me looking both angry and confused. “I’ve been trying to call you for the past hour.”

  I rolled onto my back and peeled the wet cloth of the T-shirt away from my skin. It was cold in the apartment. The air conditioning had kicked on when the electricity came back. I shivered. Willet’s face wavered in and out of focus. He pulled me from the sofa and ran a hot bath. “You’re going to make yourself sick.”

  I sank into the warm water and breathed in the clean, hot steam. I pressed my fingers to the bruise on my chest and wondered at the force required to make such a mark. I had no memory of the past four hours. I couldn’t say how long I’d stood in the rain in the parking lot or whether I walked any further. I couldn’t say if I’d approached the alligator or if I’d backed away from the beast, but I swear I could feel his scaly skin against my palm. Maybe I’d imagined him or he lived in my dreams along with the creature from the haunted woods and Bubba’s alien visitors. I’d spent the past five years swallowing Granny Clem’s stories and lies. I couldn’t tell the difference anymore between what was real and what was a fable. Fairy tales seemed every bit as plausible as Granny Clem’s stories and I felt like Snow White, awake after a long, drugged sleep.

  HIS DAUGHTER SWAM TO the edge of the quarry and hoisted herself from the water. Dark clay caked across her thighs. Her arms circled his waist. He lifted her and cradled her soaked body. The sky rumbled and cracked. Rain fell, but not an ordinary rain. This was an angry rain. The thing in the water wanted his child. It took Fern’s baby and it took Ora and now it wanted Pansy. He ran, holding her tight. He hunched over her body, as if he could hide her from God or the Devil. The woods swallowed him up and he took a few wrong turns, though he knew every inch of these dirt paths. Lightning cracked. The sky turned glass bottle green then dipped to black. Something hummed and pulsed in the sky. Someone watched him. He felt the eyes following him through the woods. The ghosts ran alongside him until he found his way and burst from the trees just a few yards from his parked truck. The ghosts receded.

  He tucked the child into his truck and drove. He was a hundred miles down the road before he came back to himself and realized what he’d done. His daughter sat beside him asking question after question. What’s wrong, Daddy? Where are we going? Why can’t Bert and Willet come along? What about Mama? What about supper?

  He considered turning around. He could take her back to Loretta and everything would be like normal, but there was no normal for him or for this child who looked so much like his sister. He should have done this when she was born, when he first saw the birthmark on her leg and those odd teeth, when he saw how her skin wasn’t pale and pink. Pansy looked nothing like her brother and sister. In fact, she was Fern made over. Whenever he looked at Pansy, he saw his sister as a child. Earl knew that if Ama had lived, she would have grown into a child just like Pansy. It was as if, somehow, Fern’s baby had been reborn. He’d failed to bring Fern’s baby back from the waters of the quarry. He wasn’t about to let another child be swallowed into the evil pit. He did what he should have done six years earlier—he took the child to Fern.

  FIFTEEN

  THE WET SEASON SETTLED from early days of deluge to weeks of on-again, off-again rain. Rivers swallowed their banks and when Iggy took me out on the water, we rushed in spots where we used to float. We no longer used our paddles to dig out of the shallow spots. Some of the mangrove tunnels hung so low across the rising water we couldn’t float beneath them.

  Summertime heat combined with the rain to create a breeding ground for mosquitoes. I slathered on bug juice whenever I stepped outside. Even so, my arms and legs were dotted with swollen, itchy bumps. When I complained, Iggy said the plants and animals of the Everglades needed the extra moisture to sustain them through the dry season.

  “This rain ain’t for you and me, Bert. God sends this rain for better creatures than us.”

  I told Iggy I wasn’t sure I believed in God. He said God existed whether I believed in him or not.

  Iggy saved me that first summer. Without him, I’d have b
een too lonely to live. Willet was happier than I’d ever seen him. He liked working with Audie, and he made more money than he’d ever made working construction. He was crazy about Cheryl. He never talked about searching for clues about Daddy anymore.

  I borrowed his truck a few times and drove to Chokoloskee on my own. I cruised through the streets of the island, searching the face of every child I saw. The store where we’d met the old man and his grandsons closed that year. The owner fell ill and no one else in the family stepped up to run the family business. There were more lucrative ways to make a living in the Everglades.

  In June, I turned nineteen. We had dinner at the Crab House to celebrate. Willet gave me a silver bracelet with a dangling canoe charm and gave me the keys to his truck. He’d bought a new car for himself, a brand-new silver Mustang.

  “I might need the truck every now and then,” he told me. “But it’s yours to drive.”

  Audie and Cheryl gave me charms for the bracelet, an alligator and a dolphin. Iggy gave me a tiny magnifying glass charm.

  “Cause you’re always searching for something,” he said.

  After dinner, they took me to the marina and Willet pulled a tarp off a pair of bright blue kayaks.

  “This one’s yours,” Willet said, rocking one of the boats with his foot.

  I couldn’t believe he’d bought me a boat. I’d never received anything but a slice of cake and a few cards on my birthday. “Who is the other boat for?”

  “Me,” Willet said. “But Iggy can use it or Cheryl might want to take it out.”