by Leah Weiss
Through my haze I try to remember what could have riled Walter. Yesterday… Musta been that man in a dusty suit who knocked on my screen door. When I showed my face, he stepped back, polite. Asked if he could get a drink of cool water from the well. I said that be fine. He took his drink and left with a tip of his hat. I stayed inside the screen door the whole time with the lock hook in place.
That peckerwood don’t know how much his sip of water cost.
I wake with my face wet with tears and my body weighed down. Feeling helpless does that to me. It would be years before fate and guts stepped in to stop Walter’s beatings and save me and Baby Girl…but what for? Carly grew up in unhappy skin. Swore she’d never walk in my shoes. Swore she’d travel a different road. Find a better path. She likely ended up a fool like the lot of us.
I hear sobs cross the hall. I don’t go look. That room’s been empty a long time.
• • •
Sunday morning, Marris comes on back to the kitchen and don’t shout out her name. Her face is flushed with excitement when she comes in, but it goes plain when she sees me.
“You not ready?”
I butter my third biscuit and add a scoop of blackberry jam.
“What for?”
“That teacher that’s come on board this year’s gonna be at church this morning. Thought you woulda heard.”
“You know good and well I don’t do church. And why would I give a rat’s ass bout a teacher?”
“They say she’s taller than six foot.”
“Hmm.” I take a bite of biscuit, and the butter squirts out on my chin.
“And pretty old, as teachers go.”
“Uh-hmm.” I wipe my chin with the back of my hand and lick it.
Marris runs out of selling points but won’t give up. She says, “Well, it’d be something different to your morning, won’t it?”
I stand and say, “Let me get my hat.” Scraps of last night’s ugly hang round, and going to see a giant old teacher sit in Preacher Perkins’s stuffy church and be stared at by the righteous might be the spice I need. I stick my black straw hat on my head, jam the hatpin in the top, and walk out the door.
Marris drives her truck with the muffler shot to hell so everybody hears us a ways off. Pieces of road rush by in rusted-out places in the floorboard; I keep my feet off to the side. We park at the Rusty Nickel and walk the rest of the way up the hill cause it looks like a homecoming crowd come to see the show.
“I ain’t gonna stand,” I declare to Marris, me huffing up the incline. “Need me a seat. I’ll faint if need be.”
“Don’t get your drawers in a pinch, Gladys. Let’s get inside first before you start to act pitiful.”
Church is full. I set my eyes hard on the back of Ellis Dodd’s puny head and make him squirm in the seat I wanna sit in. He turns, sees me, and gets up quick to stand in back next to Marris. Now I got a good seat on the end of the second row near the teacher woman in front.
Even when she sits, you can tell she’s a big one. Bigger than me, and that says something.
On the other end of the front row is Prudence Perkins, Preacher Eli’s sister. She sits upright like she swallowed a rod but not the divining kind. She turns her head and stretches out her chicken neck to cut ugly looks at the teacher on the other end. Prudence don’t like nobody, but she must not like the teacher extra. I wonder how that could happen so quick? The teacher lady’s been here little better than a week from what Marris told me.
Church always got a smell bout it that don’t sit right with me, and it gives me the itches. Maybe it’s that fake hope that hangs in the air, frustrated cause nobody gets much back from praying. Maybe it’s all that joy the preacher splashes on like toilet water when he tries to make the afterlife special when bout anywhere is special next to Baines Creek.
Preacher Eli still stands outside to say his hellos to folks coming inside, and we’re packed tighter than toes in a shoe too small. I elbow Fleeta Wright so she scoots over and don’t bump up on my sore hip.
We wait cause we got to, and everybody studies on the teacher. Her dull hair’s cut too short for any respectable woman from these parts. She glances round, her eyes wide behind thick glasses, and wiggles her fingers at the Dillard girls, Pearl and Weeza. They grin and try to wave back, but their mama, Jolene, holds their hands down like it’s a sin to wave in church.
Fleeta Wright leans over and whispers to me, “Been a long while, Gladys. You forget the way to the Lord’s house?”
Her breath smells of garlic and onions, and I wrinkle my nose so she knows.
I answer back, “I know my way round all right. I come when it suit, not cause I have to.”
Fleeta rolls her eyes and crosses her arms over her fat bosom.
Folks get fidgety now and clear their throats. They getting tired of waiting for the show to start. I look down at a glob of blackberry jam stuck on my dress. I pick it off and eat it.
Preacher Eli finally walks to the front, stands behind the podium, and looks round at everybody. He nods like he’s surprised we’re here when we just walked past him at the door.
“My fellow friends in Christ…” He starts the usual preacher yammer and uses his loud church voice, which is silly cause the back wall ain’t but thirty feet away.
I knew the two Eli Perkins preachers what come before this one, and they was all stumpy men who told poor-to-middling jokes like it was part of their job. They was okay as far as preachers go and not too pushy. I told em not to darken my door. I don’t have need for the rules they sell, so they pretty much leave me be.
Like usual, Preacher starts with a joke.
“I went by Roosevelt Lowe’s the other day.”
He starts talking bout that old man what lost his leg in a hunting accident years back and don’t have good sense to be pissed at his buddy who done the shooting.
“And the good man that he is, I overheard him talking to the Lord. He said, ‘God, what’s a million years like to you?’ God said, ‘Well, Roosevelt, it’s like a second.’ Then Roosevelt asked, ‘What’s a million dollars like to you?’ And God said, ‘It’s like a penny.’ Then Roosevelt got around to the point and asked, ‘Well, then can I have a penny?’ and God said, ‘Just a second.’”
The teacher smiles and I hear Marris giggle in back, then the Preacher giggles too, but for the life of me I don’t know why. Nobody’s gonna get a million dollars, least of all Roosevelt Lowe and his wood leg. And what good is a second anyway?
Now the joke’s over that’s a waste of time, Preacher says, “I begin this morning’s service with the glorious news that the Lord has indeed blessed us richly in the person of Miss Kate Shaw, who’s come up from the valley to guide our children to read and write. Proverbs 22:6 says, ‘Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.’ This is why we’re here today, my friends. We train our children to be soldiers of the Lord, and Miss Kate Shaw has come to help.”
When Eli says we’re training soldiers of the Lord and puts teacher lady in the mix, she shakes her head no no no. She looks right at Preacher Perkins, but he don’t pay her no mind. Prudence looks the teacher’s way with a hateful grin on her face and I don’t know why, so that gets my interest up just a bit, but I still nod off.
When I come to, that teacher lady stands next to Eli and makes him look pint-size, which won’t hard to do. He sits down, and she talks about losing her job and looking for a new place to teach. What kind of god-awful news is that? We’re used to crumbs up here. Now this here’s a teacher who’s crummy all on her own.
Baines Creek is getting the bottom of the barrel with this woman. She won’t stay long. Marris was right for me to come today cause I’d be hard-pressed to understand what I see and hear if told from somebody else’s lips.
Her and Preacher walk out first and wait at the door to say their good-
byes. That’s when I see Sadie in the back row looking extra pitiful. Haven’t seen her since she showed up a week back, then slinked downstairs at first light. Forgot she goes to church from time to time. She’s got on long sleeves and a skirt dragging the ground. One eye’s swoll and her bottom lip got cut. What’s outta sight must be extra bad, but her baby bump’s still there.
Grandgirl’s had a tough time of it lately and it’s her own dern fault. She don’t have a ounce of gumption and her backbone’s wormy soft. She’s gotta look after herself better than this. I can’t do it for her. Nobody ever looked out for me.
Marris puts an arm round Sadie’s shoulder. I elbow my way through so I’m behind em in line, and I’m stumped when the teacher takes the girl’s hands and says, “So good to see you again, Sadie Blue.”
How them two know each other?
Then the teacher says, “Thank you for your help. I met Jerome Biddle and he’s agreed to chop wood and get me ready for winter.”
“This here’s my aunt Marris,” Sadie says, then they move down the steps and it’s my turn and I say, “Hello, Eli. Hello, Teacher,” and before I can even say I’m Sadie’s granny, I get nudged on down the steps and put out in the yard with Marris and Sadie, all done.
I gotta stand there and wait while folks come up to Marris and give her a hug and a pile a thank-yous for the supper and the pies and the clothes she give em, when I know they take advantage of her nature. All she gets back is a thank-you. It’s poor trade to me.
People head over to the soup pot that’s been cooking during service. I won’t eat that slop, though it smells good today. Heard tell one time somebody put a snake in it. Folks ate it anyway.
When I finally get a word in edgewise from all the visiting, I say to Sadie, “How you know that teacher?”
“Came to help Saturday last” is what Sadie says while she cuts her eyes over to Roy Tupkin, who’s got nerve enough to stand in the tree line outside church land. Billy Barnhill, Roy’s partner in sundry crimes, fidgets from one foot to the other while Roy leans against a tree, smoking a cigarette. Like always, his eyes are slits like a rattler’s.
“Help do what?” I say and look back at Sadie, who still stares into the woods with a pull that won’t natural.
“Get set up for school.”
Marris sees Roy and Billy, too, and her face wilts. She pleads. “Honey, you come on home with us. Let us tend to you and give you a place to rest. You need to be with folks who love you. You and your baby need to be in a good place for a while. Right, Gladys?”
I don’t pour syrup on Sadie and beg. Won’t do any good. Plus I know when I’m not needed. Every time Sadie cuts her eyes over to Roy, he pulls her away from here with his stare. Sadie won’t leave with Marris and me so I don’t waste my breath.
She says, “I best get back to Roy,” in a little-girl voice, then walks away and waves at the teacher and Preacher like she’s leaving regular church and going home to a fried chicken dinner. That girl could break your heart if you let her.
We climb in the truck with the windows down, and when Marris turns the starter, it backfires like a gunshot. Only the teacher pays any mind. She ducks and laughs nervous.
“Well…” Marris says after we turn round and head downhill, and I know I’m gonna get a earful about that tall teacher who wears britches and got hair chopped off, who nobody in the valley wants so she come up here to beg for a job, and we get leftovers like always.
All Marris says is, “Roy needs killing.”
• • •
I sleep under a extra quilt cause of the nip in the air. I wake up with a stiff neck, a sour belly, and Walter on my mind, and the day goes down from there.
I put on my housedress, and when I put my arm through the sleeve, it rips. I add two sweaters against the chill, then open the bedroom door and the knob comes off. Wearing bedroom slippers, I stub my toe on a loose board and bleed like a stuck pig. When I reach the stairs, the top step tilts, and I bounce down the steps on my fanny. I land upright at the bottom, my legs splayed, my head dizzy.
What a nasty tumble!
I take stock, wiggle my fingers and toes, and turn my neck. Nothing’s broke, though I’ll have bruises the size of flapjacks on my backside for sure. I sit till I get my wind back before I stand. If I got killed or hurt bad, nobody’d find me cept Marris. Good thing she comes most every day. I grab holt of the newel post to pull up on, and damn if it don’t almost give way. I bawl like a baby and can hardly catch my breath from crying.
I’m scared.
There, I said it, dammit. I’m scared.
My house is falling down with me in it. There’s no two ways about it. Another leak in the roof, a window that won’t open, one that won’t close, a rotten step broke through. I wouldn’t mind if I was to die soon, but truth be told, I still get round pretty good. Can shoot a tin can at ten paces, and my constitution’s sound. The way things are going, my house will fall down before my time is up. Then what? I’d be in a pickle is what. This morning’s put me in a bitter mood, and there ain’t a quick fix for it.
Marris comes through my front door and yells out her name while I look out the kitchen window and don’t move. She starts talking right off.
“Got your mail from Mr. Turner. He drive by delivering when I come, so I saved you a walk to the mailbox.”
Last night’s dishes are piled in the sink, and supper scraps are in the skillet. Marris reaches for the coffeepot. It’s cold and the coffee’s old. She looks straight at me for the first time, and her tone turns pitiful tender. “You okay?”
I don’t say. Tender makes me close in on myself. I wait till she asks again like I know she will.
“Honey, it’s me, Marris… You okay?”
“I know who you is, for God’s sake. And no, I’m not okay. And there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.”
I bump Marris out of the way with my hip, ignore my body aches, rinse and fill the old coffeepot, bang it harder than need be, and make fresh coffee.
“I’m old and wish I was dead.” I spit out the bitter words as I spoon coffee grounds into the basket.
“You don’t mean that, Gladys.”
“Don’t tell me what I mean! I know what I mean.”
The coffee perks, and I scrape last night’s scraps into a bucket and chuck dirty dishes back in the sink. Marris waits. She sits like a schoolgirl with her hands in her lap. I feel her eyes follow my doings. When the perking’s done, I fill two cups, then sit cross from her.
“It’s this old house,” I start, then add, “and Walter.”
“Walter? Where’d that thought come from? Your sorry husband’s turning to dust going on eighteen years.”
“I know that.”
“He can’t hurt you no more. Let go of that fear. He got what he had coming.”
I hate that Marris knows some of my business. It’s what she don’t know that’s the bad.
She don’t know I locked Walter outta the house in the meanest thunderstorm these mountains saw in a long time. He had kept on drinking till he passed out in the mud.
She don’t know I come outta the house and worked his limp body cross the yard and leaned him on the iron plow at the edge of the road, him loose and heavy, slipping from my wet hands so I gotta pull him by the very belt he beat me with.
She don’t know I got the piece of tin from under the porch that went on a old doghouse long before. Laid it over Walter like a blanket and held it down with a felled tree branch, with him leaning on that rusty plow. The howl in the woods from that storm was like screams of a banshee let loose and the haints that live in this house of Walter and mine saw what I done and don’t stop me.
I put him in the path of danger and turned my back on Walter, is what I done. Went inside my house, closed the door, and looked out that front door window at the storm that stirred the world into a frenzy. Rainwat
er dripped off me and puddled on the floor at my feet, and I shivered with a chill that rattled my teeth, but I stayed put.
I prayed hard to the devil cause my prayers to God won’t never answered. I tried to find somewhere else to lay my eyes besides that tin blanket over Walter. I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t turn away for nothing. It’s like my feet growed roots, and my eyes watched till lightning found him and lit up the night. The very next minute that storm turned tame and calm as you please, all the fight gone out of it now that the deed was done.
I went out to him, folded over a towel, and grabbed the edge of the charred tin that’s hot. Dragged it off Walter’s body and burned my fingers through the towel, but don’t let go. Pulled that blackened tin in back of the house, cross the creek, and up the hill. Stashed it behind a felled tree and piled on dead leaves. Then I come in the house, climbed my steps, and crawled into my bed in all my wetness. Wrapped my quilt over my head and put my fingers in my mouth cause they burned something bad…but they don’t burn like Walter.
Marris come up on him next morning.
• • •
Last night’s wanderings back those years let me know sins don’t go away. I don’t want Marris to look clear through me to my weak spot.
I whisper, “Go home. I need time to myself,” and my ragged voice bout tears in two. I’ve collected the same worrisome thoughts for so many years that they’re stuck deep in my marrow, and today they hurt almost more than I can bear.
“You got time to yourself every day. I won’t go nowhere just yet.”
She sets her mouth in that way of hers that pisses me off, but today in a good way.
“Talk to me, Gladys. I’m your friend.”
“I’ll say what I wanna say when I wanna say,” I answer gruff and take my time, surprised I let her stay in my house when I feel like this. I’m putting things together.
Times like these I wonder if I ever been happy. From the start there’s been a film of dingy on my days. I’ve always done woman’s work; man’s work, too. Woke up with work to do and went to bed before it got done. I see some folks walk easy and carry peace on their shoulders, but I been chained to a iron life.