Pammy couldn’t stop shaking. She shook for the rest of that summer, and the only thing that made her stop was sitting between my legs and letting me practice on her hair. I learned French braiding after James died. I worked on Pammy’s red hair until it looked like something out of a magazine, and even though in the past the adults wouldn’t have let us wear our hair in fancy braids, nobody seemed to notice or to care.
Mustard and Barley had a fight and didn’t talk to each other for nearly a month. Even though Grandpa Herman made them pray together and hug, they went their separate ways afterwards. Barley stayed in the woods as much as he could, and Mustard just stomped around, his head hung down to hide his strange eyes.
I didn’t do much of anything except keep watch over everybody else and study their mouths, the way they dropped down a little more than before. I listened to the quiet. It was quiet all the time. And sometimes when I’d think that things had gotten too quiet, I’d strain my ears and hear sounds that must have been there all along, voices whispering, sewing machines buzzing, tractors thumping across the holes in dirt roads.
Every time I went into Bethany and Olin’s house, Bethany grabbed hold of me and cried. But I didn’t have any tears to share. I’d just stand there like a post, being something for Bethany to cling to.
I went into James’ bedroom right afterwards and sifted through his drawers without asking. I took one of his flannel shirts and wore it all the time, even though it was still summer. When I buttoned it over my dress, it bagged down like my heart, and I liked the way it looked and wouldn’t take it off. It had a little bit of smell left in it, and I promised myself that I wouldn’t forget that smell.
It was only a couple of weeks after James died that school started again, and even though Mamma tried to get me to take off James’ shirt, I wouldn’t. I wore it every day, and if anybody made fun of me, I don’t remember it.
“Get that thing off and let me wash it,” Nanna tried.
“No, ma’am,” I said. “I don’t want to be without it.”
“You can put it right back on.”
“It’s not that dirty,” I claimed.
“But it was dirty. It was stained with food I’d spilled, though I hardly ever spilled food before, and it had grease all along one arm from helping Daddy work on a tiller.
“How about if you put on another one of James’ shirts. Will you do that? Just until I get this one washed? It’s starting to carry an odor, Ninah.”
So I agreed. Nanna walked over to Bethany and Olin’s to get the clean shirt. I stayed on her couch. And when she handed it to me, I took it to the bathroom to change, even though I had on a perfectly good dress beneath it.
I was too big to sit in Nanna’s lap. Way too big. But when she settled in her rocking chair, I went and sat with her, slinging my long legs over the side so it wouldn’t put too much weight on her brittle bones.
“My old girl,” Nanna said, and patted my back.
“Tell me a story,” I begged her.
“I’m tired,” Nanna said. “I been working all day, and all you been doing since you got home from school is moping around. You tell me a story.”
I laughed. “What story do you want to hear?”
“How about the story of the day before James died?” she whispered.
“Why do you want to hear about that?” I said, trying to sound normal but hearing my voice scratching up towards despair.
“Because it’s a story I believe you need to tell,” she answered.
And I almost told her. I wanted to tell her. But there was so much that came before the words, so much sadness, and it was like my breath was racing down a big flight of stairs, letting itself out one step at a time. Then just when I’d get to the bottom and think I was going to be okay, I’d steal my breath back in one big gulp, and start leaping down again until it was all out of me.
“I’ll tell you a story,” Nanna said while I cried. “I’ll tell you about Liston and Maree Huff. You ever heard of them? They’re good people, live out in the country with their family. God-fearing, soul-searching people. The kind of people you’d want to be with except when something goes bad. Because when things go bad, Liston and Maree turn into measuring cups. You know what I mean?”
“No,” I wheezed.
“Measuring-cup people always think about quantity. Half a pound of this or a whole cup of that. And for grief, you only get so much—just like you only get so much happiness or so much sickness. They ain’t particularly stingy with it, but they just figure half a cup ought to be enough for everybody. So when they’re mixing up their cake, they put in just the right amount, and if it comes out not tasting sweet enough for you, then the problem ain’t their lack of honey, it’s your sweet tooth. But the truth is that that cake might not be sweet enough for them either. And if that’s the case, they shovel in forkfuls of bad cake and think about candy while they’re eating it, and pretend.
“Everybody’s worried about you, Baby,” Nanna said. “They just don’t know what to do for you. Your mamma and daddy think that if they ignore it, it will go away, all the pain you got in your little heart. They figure that if they don’t mention it, then you won’t have to feel it. And they don’t want to remind you of the thing that makes you hurt.”
“I loved him, Nanna,” I told her.
“I know, dear.”
“No, it was special,” I tried.
“Of course it was. And he loved you too.”
“Do you know what we did? We let Jesus speak through us. We prayed that Jesus would show us his love through the other person, and it worked.”
Nanna rocked me, on and on, patting me almost too hard and letting me stay there even though I must have been hurting her with my weight. I was so tall by then.
“Do you have any idea what made that boy want to leave this world?” she asked me finally.
“No,” I lied, and started whimpering again.
“That’s okay,” Nanna consoled. “You can tell me about it later if you feel like it.”
She was just at home with lies as she was with the truth. For that, I was grateful.
But the shirt didn’t smell the same after Nanna washed it, so I kept the other one on.
I’m sorry about your friend—James,” Ajita Patel told me one day when we were supposed to be dressing out for gym. “Raj told me that he died this summer,” she added awkwardly. “That must have been really hard.”
“Yeah,” I said, privately cursing my eyes for trying to betray me again.
“Is that his shirt?” Ajita asked.
I nodded.
Ajita had dropped her skirt and was working her shorts up over her hips, over her too-white underpants that came all the way up to her waist, the way mine did. She was the only person I knew who wasn’t Fire and Brimstone and still wore underpants that came all the way to her waist.
The year before when I’d dressed out, I’d always pulled my shorts up before I took my dress off.
“Are you going to do gym today?”
“No,” I told her. “Mr. Groves, he won’t let me wear it in there.” I held onto the tail of James’ shirt and stood there.
“Can you leave it in your locker for just a little while?” she coaxed.
I shook my head and walked away.
I knew I would fail gym. Nothing concerned me less. I spent the hour sitting in the bleachers with a heavy girl who didn’t want to take off her clothes for other reasons.
I watched Ajita doing her stretches, her jumping jacks, her sit-ups. I watched the class break into teams and then begin a game of volleyball, the teams rotating so that everybody got to serve.
I wanted to serve. I could have hit that ball so hard it went through the basketball goal at the far end of the gym.
I didn’t think about anything important, sitting there. Just the stale air and the hardness of the bleachers beneath me, like a church pew.
When it was Ajita’s turn, she held the ball in her left hand, smacked it with her right f
ist, and sent it soaring over the net, where somebody else missed and she got to serve again.
If I could have held that ball, I would have put it under my shirt, James’ shirt, to see what it would feel like to carry something beneath my clothes besides nettles.
It wasn’t long before I knew. Nights, I’d lay flat on my back, wearing just my thin nightgown and James’ shirt. I’d lift my neck and peek down to the place where the bones of my pelvis reared up, and I’d look at the place between them, where nothing had ever been but flatness, like the plains, and I could see the beginning of a mountain.
But it wasn’t a mountain. It was hardly even a hill. My clothes still fit in the mornings, but by afternoon, I could tell that they were getting too tight.
I tried not to think about James. I figured if everybody else could pretend he’d never existed until the pain let go, I should be able to do that too.
I’d never been able to sleep on my back. I’d always slept on my stomach, like a normal person, but I couldn’t do that anymore, not with the breasts that grew and grew and ached with it.
I wanted to talk with Nanna, but I could never get her alone. After school in the pack house, I untied tobacco with the other women, ripping away the string, tossing the cured leaves onto burlap sheets, and hurling the sticks onto the pile to be collected and used again. Even the smell of tobacco, the smell I loved, made me sick, and every motion of my arms irritated my sore chest.
I wanted to talk with Ajita Patel, but then I remembered her little-girl underpants and knew that I couldn’t.
There was nobody to talk to, nowhere, without James around.
But Corinthian Lovell was in my classes that year. She’d failed again. I couldn’t figure out why she hadn’t dropped out of school. She had to be almost seventeen, and she couldn’t have been learning much because she only showed up half the time.
She sat at the back during home economics. I decided one day to talk to her. Not to tell her about me or James, but to find out about Ben Harback, to ask if she’d seen him. Or at least that’s what I told myself I was doing.
We were on the sewing machines that day. Corinthian, who hadn’t brought in a project to work on, was sitting at the back, filing her nails, waiting for the bell to ring so she could leave. I folded up the big skirt I was making before it was time and told the teacher I needed to use the restroom.
Corinthian didn’t look at me at all. She never looked at me. But that day, needing somebody to talk to more than ever, I stood in the doorway, whispered “Corinthian,” and motioned her to come out.
She picked up her books unapologetically, waved goodbye to the teacher, and followed me through the door.
“What?” she said disdainfully.
“I need to—ask you something.”
“Well?”
I knew there was no time for small talk, so I just blurted out. “I think I’m having a baby, and I don’t know what to do.”
“What?” she shrieked. “You?”
I looked at the floor.
“Well, goddamn, Ninah—that’s your name, isn’t it?”
I nodded.
“Well, shit!” she said. “We can’t talk about it here. Come on.”
“Where are we going?” I asked her, but I was already behind, and she led me out the side door, out into the bus parking lot. She kept looking back at me, breaking into a shocked laugh that made her dimples sink.
“Didn’t your boyfriend die?” she asked loudly. “I mean, I’m sorry about it and all. But isn’t he dead?”
“Yeah,” I said, and bit my lip.
“Well, is it his? Was it his?”
“I guess so,” I muttered.
“You guess so? Holy shit. Do your parents know?”
“No,” I said. “And they’re gonna kill me—if it’s true.”
“Goddamn, I guess they might kill you for that at Fire and Brimstone.”
I hadn’t meant it. I’d never really thought they might kill me until she said it that way.
“Have you taken the test?” she asked.
“What test?”
“The pregnancy test, dope,” she chided, then added, “I’m sorry,” because I was crying, and then “It’s okay,” because I was on her shoulder when she probably didn’t even expect it.
She smelled like perfume, sprayed on hard, and I thought she must have squirted it all in one place for it to be so strong. It made me feel like I might throw up, so I backed away.
“Do you have any money?” Corinthian asked me.
“Uh-uh,” I said.
“That’s okay. We’ll figure something out. Come on.”
I followed her out to the highway, looking back every few seconds to see if any teachers were chasing us, but I guess they had better things to do. Up ahead, Corinthian was calling out to the air, “Whee, Jesus!” and laughing like I was the biggest joke she’d ever heard.
“You ever cut school before?” she yelled back.
“No,” I said.
“Whee, Jesus,” she said again.
We didn’t have to wait long before a man in a pickup stopped. The first couple of cars had driven by, so Corinthian had yanked the elastic out the bottom of my braid and undone it. All that hair flying loose beside the highway—it was a strange feeling, and pretty soon, I was laughing a little too.
“Take us to Kmart please,” Corinthian said to the driver. “If you’re going that far.”
He smirked and drove along quietly, which was probably a good thing.
Right before he let us out, he said, “You gals want to smoke some?” but Corinthian told him we didn’t have time and thanked him.
She knew just where to go in the store. It was so big, with so many things for buying, and I didn’t want her to know I’d never been there before.
“I don’t have any money,” I reminded her.
“You don’t need any,” she said. “Come on.” And she picked up a pregnancy test off the shelf, plucked it away from so many others just like it, and she led me straight into the bathroom where she locked the door.
“You just have to pee on that little stick,” she said.
But I’d never even peed in front of another person before—except maybe Pammy at the edge of a tobacco row when nobody else was looking—and even then Pammy looked away.
Corinthian Lovell stared right at me.
“Go ahead,” she said. “Pee on it.”
But I couldn’t.
“Ah, Jesus,” she moaned. “You’re one of those shy bladder people, ain’t you? Just bite your little fingernail. It’ll come.”
So I did it, blushing, trying not to pee on my hand but doing it anyway.
“Now we’ll just leave the little plastic thing in here beside the commode and pretend to shop. We’ll come back and check it in fifteen minutes.”
But we didn’t have to wait. Before I’d even finished washing my hands, the little sign was turning red.
“Oh, girl,” she said. “You’re pregnant all right.”
I couldn’t figure out what I was doing in there with her, in the bathroom of Kmart with a stolen pregnancy test. I already knew I was having a baby. I’d known for two months.
Since the day that James died, Olin hadn’t been the same. Bethany couldn’t let the mourning hold her down too long—because she had Pammy and Mustard to take care of. But Olin kept sinking deeper and deeper. He wouldn’t go into the church after James’ funeral. Grandpa Herman said prayers out loud for him, saying he’d slipped into the quick-sand of despair, the quagmire of doubts.
I knew that it worried Grandpa Herman for one of his strongest supporters to stop attending church. I couldn’t figure out why Grandpa was so understanding, and then I remembered that he’d lost a son himself. Grandpa kept saying that he hurt for Olin, but that he wouldn’t find peace until he reached back out to Jesus. They talked a lot, Grandpa and Olin, but even Grandpa’s presence wasn’t enough to penetrate whatever Olin was walking through.
It must have been the th
orns. I secretly thought that Olin must be lamenting the way he’d turned James’ bed into a briar patch that time he’d soiled it.
I wondered what his bed looked like.
Church was totally different without James or Olin or even Ben Harback. Nobody received the gift of tongues. Mamma still held her hands up to God, but I could tell by the way she walked, slow, like an old lady down the church steps, that he hadn’t filled them with his love.
I was almost sure that the rapture had come and gone, and with it, God’s love had exited Fire and Brimstone for good. It seemed so ironic to me that our tight-knit community, where everybody ate together and prayed together and slept so close we might as well have been in the same bed, hurt so independently. It was the one thing we couldn’t do as a group. Everybody felt it differently, and nobody talked.
Except Nanna.
“How long you planning on keeping that secret under your shirt?” she said to me one day while we were canning the last of the tomatoes. It was nearly time for the frost. Wanda and Laura had taken the rest of the mason jars into the kitchen to wash, but I was outside with Nanna, cooking down the red paste.
I didn’t even answer her.
“I been thinking about it a lot, Baby, and I swear to you, I don’t know what will happen when your blind mamma finds out—or Herman either one. Liston shouldn’t be so much of a problem, but your mamma ... Lord, child.”
“How did you know?” I whispered.
“I’ve known for a time. I been waiting for you to tell me, but you’re getting as tight-lipped as the rest of them.”
“Nanna,” I said. “It’s not what you think.”
“No?” Nanna said. “What you reckon it is then? You swallowed a watermelon seed?”
I knew what I should be feeling was tears, the same tears I’d been coughing down for nearly three months. And the guilt—of breaking the law and letting everybody down and causing James to take his own life. But all I wanted to do was laugh. Not the happy kind of laughing. The kind that comes out sounding like thunder, or a shotgun blast, breaking the day with a big ear-crunching kind of jolt.
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