by Leah Weiss
In the quiet of the night she whispered bits of truth to me. Nobody else said, “They shame to say it was your great-granddaddy gambling that won us this place. They kind of leave that out of the telling, don’t they?” She laughed when she said it. Nobody cept Nana ever said a sin brought us to Baines Creek and give us a home.
Another time, she said, “Your mama got two stillborn babies between Brother and you, don’t you know. Babies got started, but their little lumps fell out in the chamber pot when your mama’s pains come early. They was no bigger than a doe’s heart. Your daddy held em in the palm of one hand, they be that small.
“Church said a baby who never breathed on this earth can’t be baptized, but Eli done it anyway. He built little coffin boxes for em and buried em in a corner of the cemetery cause your mama cried. Your mama and daddy worried bout them lost babies, and where the good Lord put em since they won’t go to heaven.”
Another night, she said, “Do you know what Eli means, child? Did they never tell you? It means Defender of Men. That’s what my Eli and your daddy do. They defend all men.”
Even being four, I wondered who defended us girls. I was too shy back then to ask. Now I know—it’s nobody.
I smelled Nana’s leaving on the night she died. The oil lamp stayed lit so Death could see to take the right one. It was just Nana and me when she pointed to the table Granddaddy built for her when she was young, when she could stay warm on her own. I got out her Bible from the drawer. The old book was falling apart from so much studying. I fit her fingers round it, and she pulled it to her milky eyes to read by the light of the lamp.
I should have been scared by myself to know Death was close, me being four, but Nana’s face was peaceful and the smell won’t bad. I missed her already and she won’t even gone. When she passed, who would tell me the truth bout my people? Who would get the tangles outta my hair without the hurt? Who would sing “Jesus Loves Me” and make me believe?
More than Nana’s feet turned cold that night, and me and my blanket couldn’t make her warm. When Nana whispered, “Sweet Jesus, I’m ready,” I heard him take her, like an open window with a breeze going out stead of in.
I took the news to Mama.
• • •
I sit up in the evening’s gloom, foggy headed, but my headache is gone. I still feel the chill of cold bones against my spine and know Nana’s been close. Brother is in the other room peeling potatoes and onions for stone soup cause I hear the peeled ones get throwed in the water bucket. I wonder how many times he cut his finger tonight and leaked blood on potato flesh. He cuts the skin thick and wastes a lotta potato. I keep quiet. Stone soup is his business.
I don’t get up yet. I think about my dream and when Nana left, and her old Bible sitting in the drawer. That same table that sits by my bed used to sit by Mama’s married bed. Mama often laid her hand on that table and patted it tender like she done a child’s head. She never told me why she done such a thing. Now, I run my fingers over the smooth walnut top, and they glide to open the drawer all the way like they got a mind of their own. I take the drawer outta the tracks. I turn it over.
That’s when I find it.
On the bottom.
Tacked in place.
A letter.
Mama’s name is on it. Not to Mrs. Eli Perkins Jr., like she was on this mountain. Not to Adelaide Perkins like she was all my days to family. Not even to Adelaide Adams, the name she was before Daddy claimed her for his bride and Brother and me came to be.
The envelope reads: To Addie.
My first thinking is Why’s this letter tacked to the bottom of Nana’s drawer?
Then I get me a odd thought about that scrap of blue in my quilt, and my heart beats fast.
I wonder if this letter changes things.
On this day of my finding, I don’t pull out the two tacks that hold it in place. Don’t lift the letter from its secret spot careful-like so it don’t tear. Don’t unfold the piece of paper that got folded a long, long time ago. I put the drawer back where it goes, right side up, and I keep Mama’s secret safe another day. Now it’s my secret, too.
• • •
That big, old teacher has come to church today, and everybody makes a ruckus about nothing. Everywhere I go the week past, there’s a buzz. At the Rusty Nickel, folks who ain’t seen her speculate bout her size and her particulars and why she came to be here. Word got around her and me talked, so when I’m out and about, folks pester me.
Timid Alice Dickens asks me, “Do we got a man on the mountain as big as she be?”
Laura June Mayhew, who’s usually mealymouthed, asks, “Is it true she wears man’s trousers and don’t even own a dress?”
Fleeta Wright, who’s as big as a house and twice as ugly, whispers the question on everyone’s mind: “Prudence, you think she be of immoral persuasion, being like she is and all?”
I do the Christian thing and speak the truth: no, yes, and yes, though I have no proof. Some things just make sense.
Brother’s all thumbs this morning. He irks me something fearful, him a man of the Lord who don’t pay close mind to what’s right in front of him. He sticks his nose in books and looks for answers. He prays with his eyes closed and asks for answers. All he’s gotta do is look and use the brain God give him. Case in point: Miss Shaw. Something won’t right with that woman.
Miss Shaw’s visit to church pulls strangers outta the weeds. Gladys Hicks hasn’t been to church since Eli went to convention last and he stayed through a Sunday and we got a traveling preacher who played with fire to make a point. He was plenty entertaining, but he almost burnt down the church.
Today, Gladys marches right on in and steals a seat cause she makes Ellis Dodd squirm and get up. The regulars should be the ones to get the seats. I try to give Gladys a nasty look cause she’s pushy, but for spite, she don’t look my way.
Her grandchild Sadie Blue slides in the back row and looks like she’s been hit with a sack of nickels. That girl had a bad stretch with Gladys’s stinginess, then she married that Tupkin boy cause she don’t keep her legs together. She should know when you sin against the Lord, punishment comes to the light a day. Her bruises are proof: Sadie Blue got in a family way without a ring on her finger. She’s lucky the boy married her, even if he is from the bottom of the barrel.
I won’t listening to Brother’s sermon cause I got my own thoughts, but nothing prepares me for Miss Shaw to butt in the middle of Brother’s talking, stand, and talk to us under the Lord’s roof. She’s bold-faced is what she is. A brazen hussy. What kind of teacher says to strangers she got fired for doing something shady, then expects a howdy-do and come on in? Miss Shaw will soon be gone by her own hand. The looks on folks’ faces say they won’t happy one bit. Still, after the service, they line up to shake her hand and tip their heads on the way out.
After Brother washed the soup pot, he gets home from church and says, “I think it went quite well, don’t you?”
Even when it comes straight from the horse’s mouth, Brother still wears blinders.
• • •
Today, I’ll read Mama’s letter.
It’s been a temptation all week tacked under that drawer. Like a piece of chocolate wrapped in foil I saved, today’s the day. I close the door to my room—though I’m home alone—and sit on the edge of the bed. I pull out the drawer and turn it over.
The letter’s still there. It won’t my imagining. I take a butter knife and pry up the two tacks holding it in place. The tacks leave rusty holes and a pressed outline in the paper.
How did this letter come to Mama? Was it slipped to her at church? Left in a special spot? When did Mama tack it under this walnut drawer her daddy made? Did she count on me to find it someday, resting every night two feet from my sleep?
I lift the opened flap and slide out a single folded piece of lined paper and one square photograp
h. The picture is of a teenage boy and a pretty girl. The sun shines in their eyes so they squint. They stand close together in front of a two-story white house with a mountain behind. The boy’s shirtsleeves are rolled up neat, and his arms are strong. His striped tie is loose at the neck of his collared shirt. He’s got a dimple like another boy I used to know. Light-colored hair sweeps to the side. The girl has got a satin ribbon in her curly hair. The boy is a full head taller than her, and he’s got his arm around her waist like it belongs there. She wears a store-bought dress with puffed sleeves, little buttons down the front, and a thin belt at the waist.
In the black-and-white photograph, the dress could be sky blue with specks of red on it. The girl could be Mama, but that boy won’t Daddy. Daddy’s hair was dark till he got sick and turned it white. Daddy never was taller than Mama. I never saw the boy in the photograph. I don’t think he’s from round here.
The letter crinkles loud in the quiet when I unfold it, and I’m glad Brother won’t home. The ink is faded so I step to the window for more light to see better. I feel funny is what I feel, cause I know these are Mama’s private words she put in a secret place.
That don’t stop me. I read the letter that belongs to nobody now but me.
August 21, 1917
My darling Addie,
I have to leave you, sweet girl, to prove I’m the man you deserve. I’ll come back. Promise you’ll wait. We both have this picture of a perfect day. We’ll have more days like this. I’ll carry this picture over my heart everywhere I go until I’m with you again. Wait for me? If you do, it’ll mean everything.
All my love forever,
David
I read the letter three times real quick, then count the words David wrote long ago. Seventy. That’s how many words Mama held on to cause they mattered. 1917 is on the back of the picture like on the letter. That’s near the end of the Great War that Daddy don’t go to cause his feet was flat. Mama don’t marry Daddy till 1918, and the next year Brother come along.
All my love forever, David. No sweeter words have I ever read. David asked her to wait. Mama had a perfect day. She had a picture to prove it, and somebody to wait for who won’t a Eli.
Questions swirl in my head. Did David die in the war? Did Daddy know about David? If he did, was he jealous? I never know a boy to write words soft enough to break a heart, or tack to the bottom of a drawer.
I read the letter again and learn it by heart, David’s words to Addie in the blue dress. Mama maybe thought she took this secret to her grave. Now it’s mine. I put the letter and picture back in the envelope. I press the two tacks back in the holes. I put the letter back on the bottom of the drawer. I slide the drawer closed.
I lay my fingers on the blue cloth in my crazy quilt. Funny, what started out as one question about this scrap of blue now growed to a long list of questions I’ll never get answers for. Every time Mama looked at that blue, it told her what could have been.
Then, I lay my fingers on Susie Domer’s rose I cut from her shawl and stitched to my quilt long ago. My stitches won’t as neat as Mama’s, but they hold okay.
• • •
Like I planned that autumn so long ago when Susie and me was sixteen, her shawl—left at the bend in the river where good girls don’t go—told a lie her daddy believed. She shamed her family. Her daddy said he couldn’t show his face with a daughter who don’t know right from wrong. She gave away the milk for free when the cow’s the prize. She got beat by her daddy’s hand is what she got, then she got sent away for good. She don’t take that shawl with her. How could she with all the trouble it brought her? She left it at church on the back pew, like a going-away present for me. I cut out that rose like she cut out my heart.
I remember thinking back then, The hurt will stop when Susie leaves town. The hurt will stop when Thomas shows me his dimple again. But Susie left and Thomas turned off his dimple. He stayed in a sour mood over a second-rate girl with a lisp who didn’t know how to bake a pie.
For a while, I watched for him at church, but he turned so dull over time, I hardly knew he was there when he come. Then he was gone off the mountain for real. I don’t believe it when somebody says he went and married Susie Domer. That thought makes me sick.
That same bad feeling I had with Susie Domer is one I have for Miss Kathleen Shaw. Nobody steals what’s mine without payback. That big woman stuck a chunk of ice in my chest when she got Brother to say her name special from the start, her old like him and a jasper to boot. A plan starts private in my head, then digs deep in my brain and takes hold like greenbrier.
Miss Shaw likely got her own kind of shawl—it just looks different. I’ll find it and use it against her. She’s a slick one though. Said right out loud she was fired from her job so she don’t shame easy. How do I lay blame on somebody who don’t have the good sense to be guilty? I gotta get close to this one. Brother once preached on know thine enemy. This is the right time to do that.
• • •
I head to the Rusty Nickel with a short list of supplies scribbled on a scrap of paper. Mooney might be open and he might not, but it’s not supplies I need.
I come to the schoolhouse and look in the windows at a odd sight. The children twirl and whirl with their arms up and out, and old Miss Shaw does the same thing. Even through closed windows I hear their voices singsong, Autumn leaves are falling down, falling down, falling down. Autumn leaves are falling down, yellow, red, orange, and brown!
At the end, little heads drop from sight as bodies fall to the floor and giggle. Then the door flies open, and boys and girls with rosy cheeks spill out and swirl past me. I’m shot through with envy at simple joy that won’t mine, and anger grabs me so tight I can’t breathe. Miss Shaw finds me in the yard with my lungs not working, and I gasp for air. She takes my arm.
“Prudence, please come inside and rest. You look like you’ll faint.”
Against my will mostly, she pulls me up the steps into the schoolhouse and tells me to sit. I stay put and watch while she crosses the floor, dips me a glass of water from the spring bucket, comes back, and wraps my fingers round the cup. She lifts it to my lips, then sits close to me, looks down on me. Charity pours outta her sad cow eyes.
“You feel better?”
I wanna claw them pity eyes out of their sockets.
“I’m fine, Miss Shaw.” I hold it together. Don’t want feelings to spill over the edges.
“Kate. Please call me Kate.”
I open my mouth to say her name, then close it. Her name don’t slide over my lips easy cause my mouth is dry even with the sip of water.
When I stay quiet, she looks at the paper in my hands and says, “You have a list to get at the Rusty Nickel. May I help? Is Mooney even open today?” Miss Shaw stretches her neck out and looks out the window. I see a mole under her chin and a crease of dirt in the fold of skin.
“I manage on my own.” I set the line of my lips firm. “If he ain’t open, that’s okay.”
“Looks like you’re in luck. The door is open. I’ll walk over with you. I need to pick up a couple of things myself.”
Lord, if that woman don’t pull me to my feet and walk me down the steps, gabbing on!
“Never did thank you for your help the day I arrived. Your directions were perfect.”
Is she funning me? I made her walk the creek to her cabin on her own that first day, and I been careful not to say a civil word to her since.
She’s gonna be a tough nut to crack.
We walk in the Rusty Nickel and Mooney says, “Hello, ladies,” and I don’t answer. I pick up stuff I don’t need and pretend to read my list and wait while Billy Barnhill pays for his dipping snuff and Grapette soda. I stand back cause he stinks. He always looks like he crawled out from under a rock. He’s Roy Tupkin’s shadow, so seeing him by his self makes him look lost. He leaves without a word or tip of his hat, t
hen Miss Shaw starts yammering to Mooney.
“Thank you for helping with Roy Tupkin the other day.”
“No need to say a thing, Kate.” Mooney calls her by her familiar name.
“He was outta line is what he was.”
“I was surprised he listened to you.”
Mooney leans in. “Me, too,” he says, and they chuckle too easy for my blood. He adds, “Like I said, that boy better stay under the radar or trouble will rat him out.”
“Well, thanks for standing up for me.”
“Just don’t be alone with him if you can help it. Roy’s a stick of dynamite, and you don’t want to be round when something sets him off.”
I’m about to leave cause I ain’t finding gossip I can use, when Miss Shaw asks, “Any mail?”
Mooney reaches under the counter and hands her a couple of letters and a slick magazine. On top is a small cream-colored envelope with fancy writing. The careless woman leaves her mail on the counter and walks over to the bean bin and asks Mooney the difference between two kinds of beans. He gets off his stool and walks over to her. I scoop up Miss Shaw’s top letter, slip it in my pocket, and walk out the door. I remember to say, “I’m fine now. Gotta go. Bye,” and put the stuff on the counter I don’t need.
My heart thuds like a hammer against my ribs as I hurry cross the clearing, past the church, and outta sight of the store, proud of myself. I can’t believe my luck. I don’t know what’s in the envelope, but I got private words sent to Miss Shaw that I’d never know bout if I won’t brave. Like Brother said, “Know thine enemy,” and that’s what I’m doing.
I hear an odd sound on the walk home and find it’s me humming! I never hum, but today, I hum “Jesus Loves Me” and I think of Nana and wonder if she’s proud of me cause I’m brave.
I pat my pocket to hear the paper crinkle. It’s like a Christmas present. I can’t figure Miss Shaw has friends who’d write her a letter. If she had friends, why’d she run away from the valley and come here where she’s not wanted? How could a body just pick up and go somewhere strange if somebody missed her back there?