“You want to know how I come to clean things so good?”
Sophie nodded.
“Make all those white ladies feel like they been living in a pigsty before. Make them feel dirty.” And in the next breath Sally switched right over to a different topic, without so much as missing a beat. “So I know there’s some kind of a good reason for what you’ve been doing. But it’s got you in a whole heap of trouble, sure enough.”
And it caught Sophie completely by surprise, for here she had been wondering how on earth she could have failed to recognize Sally, even though Sophie hadn’t thought of her in a long time. Not until Miss Ruth started all that fuss about the book discussion group. And Sophie had never even thought to try and find out what had finally happened to her or where she lived. Or anything.
Through all of those thoughts, Big Sally’s incomprehensible statement intruded.
“Trouble?” Sophie finally managed the word. What on earth is she talking about?
“Yes, trouble,” Big Sally repeated. “‘Cause Miss Ruth’s been over to Miss Anne’s this afternoon, and she knows all about you going down to that old fishing cabin of Miss Anne’s papa’s.”
“Oh, Lord!” Sophie breathed, and it was definitely more prayer than a lament.
“Sure enough! Amen to that!” Big Sally agreed.
“But how?’’
“Guess she’s been spying is all. That’s no surprise to you, is it?”
“No, but...”
“No buts about it. You should have known somebody’d find out. This town? Thought you’d keep something a secret in this town?” Big Sally’s sidelong gaze and slowly shaking head answered her own question. And also implied—most silently—that Sophie had been one big fool.
“What does she know, other than I’ve been going there?” Sophie asked. For if Miss Ruth had been spying and had followed her to the cabin, maybe she knew about Mr. Oto being there too. Oh, Lord!
“She doesn’t know nothing else. And she won’t. Miss Anne done made sure of that. “
“And what do you know?” Sophie asked, for suddenly it had dawned upon her exactly what she and Big Sally were discussing.
“I know it all,” Big Sally answered. “Miss Anne unloaded the whole thing on me just a little while ago.’’
“You know about him?” Because whatever Big Sally called “the whole thing” just might not be the whole thing. Couldn’t be, Sophie was thinking desperately. Because even Miss Anne doesn’t know everything. What all has happened between Mr. Oto and me.
“And now I’ve seen your face this afternoon, I know a lot more than Miss Anne does.” Again, the voice intruded into Sophie’s spinning thoughts. “So I know it won’t do any good telling you not to go down there again.’’
“Oh, but I won’t go again, “ Sophie said simply. Because whatever it took to keep him safe was what she would do.
“Well, that’s a blessing I sure didn’t expect,” Big Sally sighed. Then she looked at Sophie for a long time with those deep and somber eyes. “But if you do decide to go down there, you come get me. I’ll go with you. Stay outside and make sure that old busybody don’t come near the cabin.’’
As she spoke, Big Sally obviously felt an immediate pleasure toward the vague idea of waylaying Miss Ruth on a dark path by the river. And the thought must have occurred to Sophie, too. So that in the midst of that deadly seriousness, Sophie and Big Sally looked at each other for a long, silent moment before Big Sally’s eyebrows shot up into the very edge of her hair and she started speaking suddenly and with an animation that Sophie could never have imagined.
Her voice fell to a deep and vicious whisper. “Dark as midnight down there. Me standing there in that deep, old dark. Me! Big as a mountain! Black as the night! So can’t nobody see a thing! And along she’ll come, snooping and sniffing, just like a old dog after hisself a girlfriend!” Here, she scrunched her shoulders, wrinkled her nose as if at some unpleasant odor, and moved her head from side to side—sniffing and sniffing.
Sophie watched and listened almost in disbelief—wondering at the same time how Big Sally—Queen Sally—could make herself look almost exactly like that dried-up little Miss Ruth.
“Jump out at her!” Sally’s sudden voice booming and the great arms thrown wide. “Me! Bigger’n her by a hundred, a thousand times! Jump right on her! Throw her down on the ground! Yank them ugly pink bloomers off her ugly old white ass! Wrap ‘em ‘round her head like the rag my mama had to make me wear wrapped ‘round my head and then hook her up high on a big tree limb and leave her like that, squealing and hollering and flapping around just like a old scarecrow! Leave her there forever and ever! Amen!’’
Sophie was coming closer and closer to doing something like clapping her hands, but she didn’t know if it was because of Big Sally’s vivid description and wild gesticulations or because the mere idea of anyone’s doing such a thing to Miss Ruth filled her with a surprising sense of delight.
And maybe that’s why—when Big Sally shouted “Amen!”— Sophie shouted “Amen!” right after her, her own voice startling her. And it certainly startled Big Sally, too. For one long moment, she gazed incredulously at Sophie. Because it was the very first time in Sally’s whole life that she had found anything to be amusing.
So that the corners of the big mouth moved upward, involuntarily, higher and higher until they finally succeeded in lifting the large, heavy upper lip. The edges of straight, gleaming teeth appeared, and the teeth grew larger and larger, until the entire bottom half of her face seemed to have been replaced by a huge, expansive, dazzling smile.
“Hallelujah!” Big Sally shouted, lifting her grin toward heaven and bringing up her hands so that the white palms looked as if they were waiting for the Great God Almighty Himself to drop something into them.
“Yes! Hallelujah!” echoed Sophie.
“It’s so good!” Big Sally yelled.
“Yes, it is! It’s good!” Sophie repeated after her.
“You got to have bad feelings toward some folks!” Sally yelled. “‘Cause they do things that’s bad!’’
“They sure do!’’
“And you got to have good feelings about other folks!” Big Sally yelled. “‘Cause they deserve good feelings. They deserve to be loved!’’
“Yes, they do!” Sophie answered.
But by now, she was so caught up in the whole thing that she didn’t even know what the words meant. That is, not until she realized that Sally had fallen silent and was gazing at her with big, luminous eyes that were so deep and so kind, Sophie felt she could fall right into them and drown in complete happiness. Having someone look at her like that. With love. The way Mr. Oto looked at her, but different. But still love.
“What?” Sophie asked her finally, after they had gazed at each other silently for a long time, each caught up in her own thoughts.
“You hear what you said?” Big Sally’s voice was soft.
“What?” Sophie repeated, senselessly.
“That some folks deserve to be loved.’’
“I said that?’’
“You sure did. And you’re one of them.’’
“What do you mean?” Suddenly, Sophie felt close to tears. But she didn’t know why. Maybe it had something to do with all the praising and the hollering she’d done. Mama always said that kind of thing can get people all stirred up so they don’t know what they’re doing or saying anymore.
“Means it was good for you to love Henry,” Big Sally said simply. “And it would have been even better if he’d loved you back.” Sophie drew a sharp breath, but Sally pretended not to notice. She simply went on: “And now it’s good for you to let somebody else love you, now Henry’s gone. Been gone. And if somebody loves you, it don’t matter where he came from or what he looks like. Or nothing.”
But Sophie was wondering what on earth Sally was saying. How did she know about Henry? But more importantly, how did she know about Mr. Oto? His feelings for her? And her own feelings for him? Did
Miss Anne know about this and tell her?
“How did you know?” Sophie asked in a very serious—almost accusatory—tone. “Miss Anne didn’t tell you.” Sophie didn’t realize how emphatically she knew that, until she heard the conviction in her own voice.
“No. Miss Anne never said such a thing, And she sure don’t know about it, else she would have told me.” Big Sally answered. “I’m the one figured it out. Didn’t take much, though. ‘Cause I know that look on your face.’’
“Look?”
“I saw it the first time you looked at me after your mama made you quit coming to play. Then, years later, when my mama brought us back for a weekend, I saw you one day when Henry was coming down the street, and you all spoke in passing. That’s all it was. But I saw your face. Saw it, too, when we all found out he wasn’t coming home from the war. This time, I want to see that in your face for somebody you can have.’’
“But he’s going to be gone, too,” Sophie said, and a deep and lasting sigh followed her words like a door closing.
“No.” Big Sally said the word with the finality of someone who has absolutely no doubt. “He won’t go without you. Not if you go with him.’’
To that, Sophie had no response. She was remembering how fully she had expected the great crane to step out of the bushes. And if he had, she would have gone back to the cabin. Gone away with him.
But where? Sophie was thinking. In this whole, wide world, where is the place we could go? No. War robbed me before, and war will rob me again.
“I wish you could see your face,” Big Sally’s voice broke through Sophie’s thinking. “Look just like a dead bird.’’
Yes, Sophie thought. Those poor, eyeless little things. And Sophie’s own voice out of her childhood: Why do you keep them, Mama?
Because nothing lasts, Sophie. One minute they’re pretty and alive and flying from tree to tree. Next minute, they’re stiff and cold on the ground.
“Well, you think on it,” Big Sally said at last. “And if you decide to go down there to him tonight, you come get me. Knock on that little back window. I’ll hear you.’’
“Yes,” Sophie answered. “You’ll hear me.’’
“But let me tell you this: If you go down there tonight, you’re not to come back. You go on and go away with him. You hear me?’’
“I hear you.’’
“So you either go or you stay. One or the other.’’
“Yes.”
Big Sally stood, silently, looking at Sophie. Stood there for so long that finally, Sophie looked at her, expectantly. And then Big Sally spoke with great deliberation and also with kindness.
“I didn’t never see Henry look at you the way you looked at him.”
It was the last thing Big Sally said to her old friend. Only her clumping footsteps in the grass and then silence.
It took that long for Sophie to hear exactly what Big Sally had said.
He did! Sophie was tempted to yell into the emptiness Big Sally left behind her, but something stopped the words.
He did love me!
Very clearly and right before her eyes, Henry’s smile floated in the moisture-laden air. But something tight in her throat. Lodged there, deeply entrenched and completely immovable.
He loved me! The silent words fluttered weakly against the back of her eyes and then were still. Blessedly still.
Sophie, sitting on the riverbank, where she had always taken the grief, to mix it with solitude. Grief for the lost love who had existed, at first, like a tiny pinpoint of far- away light. Light that would never have begun glowing at all, had Henry come home from the war. Because then, it would have been the gaze of his eyes that always looked slightly beyond her. The polite smile whose roots never reached his heart.
But when he was lost, that sad, sweet light began to grow, fueled by her own deepest dreams. Until, at last, the glowing image of her imaginary lover had stood in her full sunshine. And had stayed there, young and beautiful and alive and in love with her. For over thirty years.
A thing to keep forever. Like sad little mummy-birds in a box on the pantry shelf.
Dear Lord!
Chapter Thirty
Miss Anne said:
When Big Sally came back, she came right into my room and sat down on the side of my bed.
“It’s all taken care of. You don’t need to worry about it,” she said.
“But taken care of, how?” I asked, because I was really used to knowing what was going on. Certainly, I trusted Big Sally—I’d better trust her, what with the secret I’d blubbered out to her. But I still wanted to know.
But she just looked at me and smiled. Why, I’d never seen her smile before in her whole life. Never even heard of such a thing. Her smiling.
Looked just like a big old sphinx, she did.
Chapter Thirty-one
For hours, Mr. Oto stayed under the cot, just as silent as a ghost. No longer out of fear—for his heart had stopped its frantic thudding when he knew that Miss Ruth was looking at his painting of Sophie as the Crane-Wife. Loathing, then, had replaced his initial fear. And grief. So that, even after she was gone for a long time, he was immobilized by the most incredible exhaustion he had ever felt. Too tired, almost, to wonder if she would figure everything out about him.
When, finally, he felt some semblance of his strength returning, he came out from under the cot and the first thing he did was to look at the painting. Look at Sophie sitting in the chair, with the sunlight on her pale arms and the hat shading her face. The loose tendrils of hair by her cheek. Behind her, the distinctly sensual figure of the great crane, with the wing-feathers somehow one with her arms. The great, purple eyes filled with passion.
But what he also saw in the painting—that which no one else would be able to see—was Sophie’s mind focused on that particular sky over where the ocean and the river came together. The place of no edges. Of oneness. Of infinity.
He kneeled down on the floor before the painting, sat back on his heels, and continued to gaze at it—meditating over it—for the whole remainder of the long afternoon. Because in the moment he saw it again, he resolved that he would look at it as long as he pleased. That he would not move. Not hide. No matter who came— even if it was Miss Ruth. He would not move.
He never stirred until the long, slanted fingers of sunlight came beneath the bottom of the torn blanket over the window. The wind rising— he could tell from the whisperings of it in the tall Australian pines. And an aroma in the breeze that crept around the edges of the blanket. The aroma of moisture and warm, Gulf air. A storm, perhaps.
Finally then, he stood and bowed deeply to the painting once again before he began moving quietly and deliberately about the cabin—gathering and folding the sheets from the cot, removing the towel from where it hung on a nail near the door, taking the remaining cans of food and the last bottle of water, and carrying everything out into the back of the cabin. Into the deepness of dusk beneath the great trees. There, he dug a large hole with his hands in the soft, sandy soil and placed those things in it. And covered them up most carefully, being sure to brush a little pine straw and a few bits of dried grass over the place where he had dug.
The cabin now was a vacant stage—where the happiest hours of his long life had played themselves out. The painting, alone, remained, still resting on the wooden box against the wall.
He took it into his hands with great reverence and slowly rolled one side of it inward until he painting was no longer a painting, but a cylinder of white paper. This, he tucked carefully into his belt and then looked around the cabin once more before he lifted the blanket for the last time, went out into the yard, and walked off toward the ocean through the ever-deepening dusk.
By the time he was close to the shore, the darkness was complete and the wind had begun whipping in hot, moist gusts that fluttered his trouser legs and shirtsleeves. As he came up over the last sand dune, the wind drove the sharp and stinging sand right into his face, so that he found himself
squinting painfully at an entirely different ocean from the one where he and Sophie had been together, the night before.
For in place of that dark expanse of rolling water glistening in the moonlight, this ocean was glowing with ghostly froth—like a wild, living thing that was trying to escape from its confines. Yesterday’s long, easy waves that lifted slowly to curl over into creamy froth upon the sand were replaced by choppy, black wavelets whose foaming tops were shaved off by the wind and hurled through the air.
Leaning against the wind, he walked across the short expanse of beach and into the churning water, where he removed the rolled painting from his belt.
“I give to you, my Crane-Wife, the great dream of your spirit. I return you to the ocean and the river. No one will ever gaze upon you with irreverence, and I will love you forever.’’
He lowered the painting reverently into the black, churning water, and held it under while the waves battered against his knees and splashed salt water into his eyes—holding it until he felt the paper growing heavy in his hands, absorbing the ocean water. The current lifted it from his loosened fingers and pulled it away. It reappeared briefly in the uppermost portion of yet another angry wave, sodden and undulating like a flounder, while the strong undertow tugged at his knees.
How easy it would be, he thought. To have the ocean take me also, here and now. Only a kneeling would do it.
But his knees did not bend. Because giving a painting to the ocean was easy. For the frothing waves would lift away the paint. So that if ever the paper washed upon some shore, it would be just that—paper. Not a painting.
But if he gave himself to that same ocean, and if his body later came ashore, he would still be recognized. Even in death, he would still incriminate Miss Anne. And Sophie. So he did not kneel.
Sophie and the Rising Sun Page 15