The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay

by Beverly Jensen

  “Don’t worry, Della,” Avis had called, “I’ll get the mud. And the shit. And the piddle. I’ll get it all.” Then she had taken the cow’s head between her hands, kissed the white star on its snout, and led it out of the house. “Come on,” she’d whispered, steadying the calf. “We’d better start moving or Della’ll have our heads.”

  Avis knew that calf was hers. Tater was her cow mother, but Avis was her real one. She’d spent the rest of the day boiling up water and scrubbing the rug, while Idella watched and gave unwanted instructions. But Avis didn’t care. She had decided to name the cow Bossy, because that was a cow name, and she was the perfect little cow.

  Now Avis stood at the edge of the field. She had already looked in the woods. She’d followed all the cow paths. Only the reedy, muck-filled swamp was left. Avis had been listening for Bossy’s bell for over an hour. The other cows had been in the barn before she’d set out to get them. It got dark sooner in September, and the cows reacted. Tater was the lead cow. She’d come back early, clanging her bell, moaning to get her teats squeaked. Molly and Queenie had followed behind.

  It was Avis’s job to round up the cows every evening. She could hear Tater’s lead bell clanging through her sleep. But it was Bossy’s little tinkle of a thing—Dad had gotten her her own bell—that snuck into Avis’s dreams and sometimes woke her. She’d dream that Bossy was being chased down by dogs. She’d wake up in a sweat and sneak out to the barn, past her sleeping sister, past Dad’s snores. He was often asleep at the table, his head on crossed elbows, too tired or drunk to go to bed. She’d take the oil lamp from in front of him—sometimes it was still lit—and go out to the barn.

  She’d find Bossy nestled on top of her hooves in the stall, breathing out that warm, musty steam breath. Avis would get down in the hay and put her head on Bossy’s belly and breathe it in. “There’s my girl,” she’d whisper. “Safe and sound.”

  Bossy was the first thing in Avis’s life that she’d gotten new. Everything else was handed down from Idella or sent in boxes at Christmastime from Aunt Martha and Uncle John. Idella always got the pick of the litter. She’d get the box from the mailman and open it and take the best. She denied it, but Avis knew she had a few things stuffed under her mattress. There were some girl things, a few dresses, that Idella was hoarding. Avis had caught a glimpse.

  She knew that people felt sorry for them, and that’s why neighbors sometimes gave them clothes. She’d see Mrs. Doncaster and Mrs. Pettigrew watching them walk across their fields. They’d be whispering and shaking their heads. Avis could tell they were talking about them, and she hated it when they’d call her over and ask her how tall she was now and how much she thought she weighed—even how old she was. She lied. “I’m going on seven,” she’d say sometimes. “I’ll be sixteen next month,” she’d yell at them a few days later. Both neighbors had known her since she was born. They could figure out that she was twelve if they were that interested.

  They’d known her mother, too, for a lot longer than Avis had. They knew what her mother’s laugh sounded like and what her smile had been like. Avis had only ever seen two pictures of her mother, and she hadn’t been smiling in either one. Avis remembered little flickers of sounds that might be her laugh. But she wasn’t sure about her smile, her teeth. Somehow their knowing these things—women who happened to live next door—and not Avis, her own daughter, made her mad.

  Avis wanted secrets. She wanted privacy. She didn’t want to tell those busybodies how old she was because then they’d be wondering why she was still straight as a board with no breasts in sight. Not that she wanted breasts. She didn’t. She had no use for them. They’d be a nuisance. But Idella was getting them. They weren’t much to look at, not that she let anyone. Idella’d been taking her baths lately when she was sure no one else was home, but Avis had come running in yesterday and caught Idella climbing out of the big tin tub in the kitchen. Avis had been shocked to see the pink-tipped bulges before Idella covered herself quick with her arms. Avis had felt betrayed.

  The neighbor women knew better after a while and stopped asking Avis for information. She’d see them calling Idella over. Idella was always so polite. They’d invite her in. She’d come home smiling, hiding a brush or a hairpin. Idella’d squirrel the things away in her side of their room. Not that Avis gave a damn.

  Della’s hair wasn’t much better than Avis’s, but it was blond. She was always washing it and fooling with it and tying it with rag ribbons. Avis wasn’t going to be putting rag scraps into her hair. She’d rather have nothing than wear rags instead of ribbons.

  Dad always said their mother had the most wonderful hair. Sometimes Avis took her mother’s braid out of its envelope and looked at it. She felt it and smelled it and held it up to the sunlight to see the veins of reddish gold. Avis’s hair was mousy next to it. She did anything she could to keep it off her face and not have to look at it.

  Aunt Francie had beautiful hair like Mother’s. She and Mother had grown up on that nice big farm, the one where Francie and Avis’s grand-parents still lived—where Maddie was. It was about thirty miles away. Sometimes, out of the blue, Dad would say, “Load up the wagon. Feed the chickens. Let’s go visit your Aunt Francie.” One of the Doncaster boys would milk the cows. Dad loved Aunt Francie, too. He didn’t care so much for Gram and Grampa, but he loved Aunt Francie. She was stylish all the way. She must have reminded him of Mother. Everything about her was beautiful and womanish.

  Avis took a step into the spongy bog. It was darker in here. Cat-o’-nine-tails towered ominously overhead, their brown tips like spears. Some were snapped over. Their seeds had burst, and fluffy bits stuck to her clothes when she brushed them away. Avis got two mosquitoes with one slap right on her cheek.

  She tromped without heed through the reeds and brambles. It was slippery, and her feet kept scudding out from under her. They got sucked with a thwop into the oozy places like she was stepping down into molasses. “Della’ll kill me when she sees me,” she whispered.

  Her insides were acting queer. Where was Bossy? Why couldn’t Avis hear the bell? She’d been crashing around too much. Reeds were bent and pushed every which way, but it could have been Avis herself who had moved them. She didn’t know what direction was what. She stopped and looked up at the sky. One star was peeping from way up there. She called one last long time, “Bosssyyyyy.”

  Avis didn’t move. She stood, eyes closed, and listened hard. The reeds scuttled and scraped one another; the mosquitoes hung in midair around her head. She blocked them out. She clenched her teeth and slowed her breathing and concentrated. Then she heard the faintest of tinkles. Her hands knotted so tightly into fists that the nails pushed into her bones. Again. It was coming from behind, it was off to the left. Avis made herself stay and listen again. There it was.

  She forced herself to walk slowly in the direction of the bell. It was dark, hard to see where to step. Sometimes she sank up to her knees. It was a bad place here. Then Avis saw what must be her. She could just make out the familiar bob of her head.

  “Bossy, Bossy my girl,” Avis whispered to her as she approached. She didn’t want to startle the weary cow. Bossy could not get up. She had sunk into the mire. “Oh, what a pickle you’re in.” Avis knelt and kissed where she knew the white star to be. “You poor dear. And you’re getting eaten alive.” She flung her arm hopelessly into the teeming darkness. She bent down and whispered into Bossy’s flicking ears, “I’m not gonna leave you. I’m not goin’ nowheres. I’m here.”

  Avis’s hands were shaking as she raked them lovingly over Bossy. She pressed her face round and round into the gnarled wetness of the muddy hide. She loved the strong, familiar smell of cow and swampy mire. “Oh, Bossy!” she cried. “Bossy, don’t you go!”

  It was full-out dark when Avis finally heard Dad and Dalton calling her. “Well, I’ll be damned,” Dad said, swinging the lantern way over his head and letting the beam fall onto their huddled figures. “A sorrier sight I’ve yet t
o see.” Avis’s body was pressed against the cow. The bottom halves of both creatures were sunk into the mud.

  It took both men to get Avis out and all three of them to get Bossy to her feet. Dalton led the cow to higher ground and on out. Dad picked Avis up in his arms without a word and carried her toward home. Her wet legs dangled from his elbow. She rested her head against his shoulder and looked up at the stars. They were all there. Her hands clasped the back of his neck. She could feel the warmth of his chest and arms right through his shirt. Avis could tell, even in the darkness, that Dad needed a shave. Up ahead she could see the silhouette of Dalton and Bossy, the little bell still tinkling. She was afraid to look at Dad’s face. He held on to her tight, she could feel the hard muscles, but he wasn’t mad. She didn’t think he was mad. She hoped he wasn’t going to be mad.

  “Best take everything off,” he said, putting her down at the doorstep. “Drop ’em in a pile. Della’ll clean ’em or burn ’em in the mornin’, whatever seems best. I’ll send her out with a blanket. We’ll scrape the mud off you tonight and boil you in the morning.”

  “Like a potato.” Avis smiled hopefully up at him.

  Dad laughed. “Like a potato.” He started to go into the house and then stopped, his hand on the door. “You did a good job, Avis, bringing in the cows. You saved Bossy.” That was all. In he went, to have his cold supper, to pour a glass of whiskey.

  Avis stood staring after him. Then she looked down at the remains of her skirt and blouse and shoes. She was as filthy as she’d ever been. And that was saying something. Jesus God, she was as filthy as a human could be on this earth.

  Idella came to the door holding a lamp next to her cheek. She looked out at Avis, standing like a mangy animal in the darkness, and handed her a rag and a blanket. “Here, get off what you can and wrap that around you and come on in. It’s late.” Then she smiled and shook her head at her sister. “Just don’t come too near me.”

  Avis peeled the reeking clothes from her body, scraping off the mud and muck, and wrapped the blanket around her thin shoulders. The blanket felt good. Idella held the door open.

  “Dirtier than the devil on a Saturday night,” Idella whispered, laughing, as Avis passed her.

  “That’s me,” Avis answered, snickering, “in a pig’s eye.”

  That got them going. Avis raised her foot and threatened to plant it on Idella’s skirt. “Right there in the middle of your arse—now, won’t that look pretty?”

  “Don’t you dare, Avis,” Idella warned her. “Don’t you get those smelly swamp feet near me.” They climbed the stairs together, giggling. Idella’s long, thin arm held the lamp high, leading the way to their bedroom.

  Idella’s Dress

  July 1924

  Idella was the only one around the house. Dalton was in the barn, Dad had gone off somewhere—back into the field, probably—and Avis was picking blueberries. The highbushes by the edge of the pasture had ripened in these last few days of July heat, and she had set out this morning to get them before the Doncaster boys found them.

  Idella would have liked to go, too. Just to get out. But she had to stay and scrub Dad’s and Dalton’s work clothes. They were full of those “goddamned burr things,” as Dad called them. “They’d scrape the skin right off a bull’s ass,” he’d said, throwing them in a pile at her feet. “Here, Della, clean these damned things.” Never a please. Never a thank-you.

  Idella stood now at the stove, boiling up water. It was too hot to be boiling anything, let alone the likes of this. The clothes reeked of manure and mud. She’d had to pick through them, pulling out the spiny prickles and thorns. Her fingers were sore from the sharp points. She had gotten a stick from the edge of the woods out the back of the house, and she lowered the stinking mass of clothing into the big tin washtub, the one they took their baths in. When the kettle of water was boiling, she lifted it off the stove, wrapping her skirt around the hot wire handle, and held the kettle as high as she could with both her hands. Turning her face away, she poured the water down over the clothes and stirred them with the stick. Steam rose up around her and made her hair all stringy. She kept trying to brush back strands with the top of her shoulder. Her nose itched, and she gagged from the heavy smell of the steaming manure.

  There was no end to it, she thought, the things to be done. She was sixteen years old next week, and she’d never gotten to be a child, not one day in her life since Mother died. Idella carried the empty kettle over to the water pump and filled it again. “This’ll take half the day,” she muttered. “They’ll put ’em on and go right back out into it.”

  It was then that she heard the mailman’s car come puttering down the road toward the house. Most days he kept on going past the farm, but today he was turning in. She could tell by the nearness of the sound. Maybe there was something for her. Maybe Dad got her something for her birthday. He’d given Bossy to Avis two years ago. Twelve years old and she got a cow for her birthday. Avis was always out there in the barn bothering the poor thing. A cow. That’s about the last thing on this earth that Idella needed—something else to take care of.

  The Sears catalog might be coming anytime now—maybe that was it. Idella could think of no better way to spend an afternoon than looking through its pages and making up orders in her head.

  The mailman’s car was near the house now. She put down the heavy kettle and ran to the open door. Mr. McPhee, the only mailman she’d ever known, was making a cloud of dust right up to the door with his old roadster. It was one of the few cars around, and everybody knew the sound of the motor.

  “Hey there, young lady!” he called as he yanked the car to an abrupt stop, leaving the motor running. “You Hillock girls get taller and skinnier every time I see one of you. I’ve got a package here. It’s got ‘Idella Hillock’ written on it. Should I send it back?”

  He made this joke every time he brought something special. It might be clothes from Aunt Francie. He smiled through his open window, purposely making her wait a little. Men thought teasing was so funny.

  “Well,” he said finally, “if you’re sure you want it.” He reached to the back seat and lifted up a large brown box. “Something for the lady of the house. I got to open the door here just to get it out.”

  Idella walked up to the car door, wiping her hands on her skirt. She wanted to reach in and just grab the box. “Here you go, young lady.”

  It was Aunt Francie’s beautiful script across the package, no question. Idella held the box so tightly that the corners pushed at the insides of her elbows.

  “Thank you, Mr. McPhee.”

  “How’s your dad? What’s Bill Hillock been up to? No good, I suppose?”

  “He’s out working the field today.”

  “Tell him I’ll see him tonight.” The men played cards on Saturday nights, sitting around the table and drinking. They played at Dad’s house because there was no woman to shush them and make them go home. “I’m going to whip the pants off him. Tell him to wear two pair.”

  “I’ll tell him. Bye, Mr. McPhee.”

  Idella walked right past the stinking tub of work clothes, past the filled kettle of cold water she’d left on the floor. She paid no heed to the stove, its fire pouring heat into the stifling July air. She walked up the stairs and into the bedroom that she shared with Avis, closing the door behind her with a foot. A fly, embedded in the folds of a curtain, buzzed in response to the jolt. Tippie, the Doncaster dog, barked. Idella went to her open window and looked out. No one was coming in from the field or the woods. Dalton was clanging away on something in the barn. He never came into the house anyway unless it was supper.

  She sat on her bed and stared at the script. Even her name, “Idella,” looked pretty when Aunt Francie wrote it. Her fingers found the edge of the brown paper and pulled it off in shreds.

  The box’s flaps fell open. She lifted back tissue paper with her fingertips. It was something blue, a deep gray-blue. There was a collar, and tiny black buttons. Idella stood
and unfurled a dress of the most wonderful material and shape and color. She held it at arm’s length. It had velvet on the collar and cuffs. Black velvet! And the waistline was low, below the hips, like Idella had seen only in catalogs. And it was short! It was above the ankle, she could tell just by looking. It was beyond beautiful.

  Holding the dress by her fingertips, she walked up close to the dresser that had been her mother’s and stood before the mirror. She could see herself only from the waist up. A pock in the mirror distorted the line of the shoulder. Avis had done that, made that hole, flinging her shoe off one night. Always fooling around. There’d been a stone in her shoe, and it had flown out and pinged the mirror. You could never have anything nice.

  “Yoo-hoo! Della!” Avis. She was coming back from picking. “Della, come help me drag these damn buckets.” She was coming across the field, her mouth preceding her as usual.

  “Quit your yelling!” Idella called through the open window. Then she laid the dress across her bed and carefully folded it. She placed it under the tissue paper. There was a note lying in the box, a letter from Aunt Francie that she hadn’t seen. Idella slipped it into her apron pocket.

  “Della! Where are you?” Avis was in the kitchen. “I left a bucket in the field. My arm’s about pulled out by its roots.”

  “Hold your horses!” Idella opened the door enough to call down to her and then closed it again. She slid the box as far back under the bed as she could. Avis was tromping up the stairs.

  She opened the door. “What the hell have you been up to?” Avis surveyed the room. She was always so suspicious, afraid she’d get left out of something. But Idella wasn’t going to show her the package from Aunt Francie till she was good and ready.