Lizabeta shuddered, remembering. Poor John Henry!
Not everyone in the Rapids was so friendly to John Henry. As he'd been in Sparta, John Henry was sometimes tormented by boys and young men who shouted crude, cruel names (Freak! Idiot! Loony!) and threw stones at him, chasing him like a pack of dogs until he retreated to the Braam farm to hide. Once, Lizabeta saw him limping into the barn and found him huddled in the hay in the corner of the barn where the horses were stalled, shivering, hugging his knees to his chest. "John Henry! Did someone hurt you? Who has hurt you?" Lizabeta asked, but John Henry refused to answer, only muttering, "Bad thing! Bad thing!" Lizabeta said, incensed, "Tell me who hurt you, John Henry. I'll tell your uncle Walter and he'll see that it doesn't happen again," but John Henry just repeated, stubbornly, "Bad thing! Bad thing!" Lizabeta was incensed on John Henry's part, yet more as Walter Braam's wife, for it seemed to her an insult, an insult against the Braam family, that anyone in the area should dare to torment Walter's nephew, knowing who John Henry was and where he lived. Lizabeta stooped to touch John Henry's shoulder, but John Henry recoiled from her with a whimper, as if her touch scalded.
He wants to be alone, Lizabeta thought. Like a wounded animal, to lick his wounds.
Among most of the Braams it was believed that John Henry didn't feel pain, or cold, or heat, as other people did. John Henry had to be called indoors sometimes, so he wouldn't freeze his fingers and toes shoveling snow after a blizzard, and John Henry had to be prevented from working in an open field or repairing roofs in blistering hot sunshine. If John Henry injured himself in a fall or cut himself and bled all over his clothes, he was likely to chatter and joke about it—"Bad thing! Bad thing! O-kay!"—as if he were embarrassed by his own clumsiness and eager to change the subject; for John Henry understood that his value was in his work, and in his willingness to work, and his place with the Braams was a matter of work. On his face, hands, and forearms were numerous scabs, scars, burn marks. His shaved, stubbled head bore scars and dents. His pale blue eyes leaked moisture that ran in grimy rivulets down his face but were somehow not "real" tears, for John Henry didn't cry, not as a "normal" person might cry.
John Henry had to be called John Henry, and both these names had to be equally sounded, for if you called him just John—or teased him, as Walter's sons sometimes did, with variants of his name like John-John or Hen-ree—John Henry would become anxious and agitated, as if he'd been scolded. Why this was, no one seemed to know. Or why John Henry only ate hot oatmeal, which he prepared himself, for breakfast, morning following morning; or why John Henry could not bear to see any animal killed, and shuddered at the sight of meat, and refused to eat any meat, just vegetables, potatoes, coarse brown bread. John Henry favored certain of the farm animals but not others, as if there were personal animosities and feuds among them that only John Henry and the animals could understand. Many times John Henry got into quarrels with animals and chickens; you could hear his high-pitched voice at a distance. (Was John Henry serious or just pretending? Lizabeta wondered if he might be both simultaneously.) You could tease John Henry if you teased him gently: "John Henry! The moon is looking in the window at you." Or, "John Henry! There's one of your 'garden angels' checking up on you." (An ugly black crow on a fence railing, which did seem to be tilting its head and fix ing a yellow eye on John Henry.) You could cajole credulous John Henry into seeing things with his watery eyes that weren't there: human faces, human figures, animals, angels in the foliage high overhead, in contorted rock formations, in clouds. Especially clouds fascinated John Henry in their unpredictable variety, in the way they appeared out of nowhere and seemed to move in the sky of their own volition—coming from where, and going where? Slack-jawed, head flung back, John Henry was capable of staring at the sky for long entranced minutes, claiming afterward that he'd been watching "God's thoughts" which had gotten loose from "inside God's head." More entrancing even than clouds were airplanes passing overhead, a relatively rare sight: John Henry dropped whatever chore he was doing to run into an open field and crane his neck, gape and wave excitedly and cry what sounded like "Me! Me! Me! Me!" (For one of John Henry's wishes was to be an airplane pilot someday.) In the village, Lizabeta was embarrassed and annoyed by John Henry's noisy excitement when trucks of a certain size and heft passed by on the country highway, and by John Henry's enthusiasm for the Buffalo & Chautauqua freight train that thundered through on an erratic schedule, drawing him to the railroad embankment, where he waved and shouted as the cars rattled past. Lizabeta said, "John Henry, it's dangerous to get too close to a train—you know that, don't you?" and John Henry fixed her one of his quivery looks, smiled, and said, "Aunt Liz'beta, that train knows me."
Lizabeta laughed. For John Henry was so funny, wasn't he. And he adored her, and the children. So good with children, a child himself.
Except John Henry was clumsy with what he called "ladies' things"—breakable objects, or objects that involved some sort of ritual or fuss. His big paddle-hands couldn't be trusted with lifting little Alistair, though John Henry loved to watch the baby being bathed by his aunt Lizabeta, afterward dried tenderly in a soft towel and powdered with special white baby powder; John Henry never minded taking away soiled diapers to drop into a bucket of strong-smelling ammonia, in preparation for being washed. (No disposable diapers in those days, in the Rapids!) John Henry was thrilled to be asked to "watch over" Agnes and Melinda when they played outdoors; inside the house, Lizabeta could hear the three of them chattering together, and John Henry's voice occasionally lifted in a mimicry of her scolding voice: "Mama says no. Mama says no." There was a rowdy game played by Agnes, John Henry, and Bessie the Labrador retriever that resembled tag; Melinda, whose legs were still too short to carry her with much speed or strength, had to watch from the sidelines. Lizabeta noted disapprovingly that her elder daughter, Agnes, shouted at John Henry as if they were the same size and age; Agnes was bratty, and bossy. Lizabeta dreaded her hurting John Henry's feelings by calling him a cruel name that Agnes might have overheard him called. John Henry adored his little cousins, was eager to carry them on his shoulders or give them piggyback rides, amid much squealing and laughter. Once, to her horror, Lizabeta happened to glance out a kitchen window to see John Henry crawling on his hands and knees in the grass and Agnes straddling his back, thumping his head and neck with her fists, crying, "Giddyup, horsie! Giddyup, horsie!" as John Henry winced with pain. Lizabeta called from the window for Agnes to stop at once!
She knew that John Henry would insist it "never hurt." Nothing done to him, especially by children, ever registered as hurt with John Henry.
It was in the dry, scorching heat of August 1951 when Lizabeta was hanging out laundry that she happened to see, on the far side of the back yard, little Melinda pulling off her pink cotton T-shirt because she was too hot, and getting her head caught in the neck so that she staggered in circles shrieking for help, and there came John Henry to Melinda's rescue, stooping over the struggling little girl and removing the pink top, in the same gesture trying to force it back down over Melinda's head, for John Henry had seemingly been trained, as Dorothy would grimly say he'd been disciplined, not ever to remove clothing from a child, any more than from himself, except in the absolute privacy of his bedroom or in the bathroom. Melinda was flailing her arms in protest, tearing at the T-shirt in a fit of temper, managing to pull it off again and this time tossing it onto the ground. No.
Lizabeta saw John Henry staring at the three-year-old girl's bare, smooth chest, the tiny flat breasts, tiny nipples; John Henry was unsmiling, hunched over Melinda, his strained face gleaming with sweat and his hands uplifted, not touching the child, not daring to touch the child, but staring at her, unmoving. In that instant a cold rush of panic coursed through Lizabeta like an electric current, and the conviction came to her with the force of a truth already known but not acknowledged: He can't live here. He can't stay with us. He will have to leave.
4.
"Stay here! Do
n't follow me."
Lizabeta snatched at a jacket hanging on a peg by the kitchen door and stepped outside. Bare-headed in the wind, breathless and shivering with a strange sort of exhilaration, and dread.
It was early October. At last the drought had broken. Six days of pelting rain and intermittent gale-force winds had made the old Braam house quake and shredded and splintered limbs from the ancient elms that towered over it. The Black River was said to have risen more than a foot, and the Spill once again rushed with a single churning whitewater stream cascading into the river. Restless from being trapped indoors for so long with fretting children and elderly invalids, before even the sky cleared on the final day of rain Lizabeta hurried outside.
Especially Lizabeta was worn down by Agnes, who'd been running and shrieking like a demon on the stairs, "playing" by making a racket and tormenting her younger sister, refusing to eat, refusing to take her nap in the afternoon, throwing off Lizabeta's restraining hands with little cries of insolence. Hate Mama! Hate Mama!
Lizabeta hadn't heard. A mother does not hear. All you can do is ignore. A child like Agnes, a fever that will pass.
For the past six days school had been suspended. Part of the Braam Road had been washed out. Traveling to Sparta to work in the early morning, returning from Sparta at dusk, Walter and his sons had to drive fifteen miles out of their way on partially flooded roads. Walter had brought home a few groceries from Sparta; there hadn't been any deliveries to the general store in the village, where Lizabeta usually shopped. Nor had Lizabeta been able to get into the village, in any case.
Elsewhere in Herkimer County, on lower ground, there'd been serious flooding. Roads, bridges washed out, houses destroyed, several deaths. Yet it was a time of exultation! For now the October sun shone through dripping foliage with a fierce blinding light that made Lizabeta's eyes hurt in the way that, at times, Agnes's fierce insolent face made Lizabeta's eyes hurt.
Choked with rage, wanting to whisper to the child, "Yes, and I hate you too. Bad, bad girl."
Her younger daughter she loved. Melinda, who smiled at her mother with love and the neediness of love. And little Alistair she loved. But not Agnes. No longer.
It would pass, this feeling. It was a fever that would pass. As Lizabeta's mother-in-law, Mrs. Braam, had told her, the willful little girl would "come round."
Of course. Lizabeta understood. Six-year-old Agnes was not a demon but an energetic little girl, a bored and restless and fretful little girl who didn't really hate her Mama but loved her Mama.
Yet Lizabeta had to escape, for just a few minutes. Alone, so that she could breathe, for just a few minutes. In the bright gusty damp air, riddled with droplets of water from the trees that fell on her bare head and face like rain, Lizabeta walked swiftly, blindly. She would hike along the lane, through the fields, and to the riverbank; there was a path there. On rocky soil she would hike to the Spill, then return, a half-hour perhaps, had to breathe and had to be alone, oh but she was out of breath, panting for breath; since the baby, since the babies, Lizabeta had gained weight, her belly and her breasts were slack, fatty thighs no longer a girl's supple muscled thighs but the thighs of an older woman creased and puckered and it disgusted her, made her want to scream, how the fleshy insides of her thighs rubbed together now, a damp slapping sound, a sound Lizabeta was sure others could hear, her stepsons Daniel and Calvin, her husband's nephew John Henry, whose habit it was in Aunt Liz'beta's presence to quickly avert his eyes from her even as he chewed at his lower lip.
Those raw yearning boy's eyes. She'd seen from the start.
Wanting to scream at them, as at the children: I am more than this, my body. A woman is more than her body.
As she neared the hay barn, her feet in ratty sneakers already soaked through, Lizabeta heard a cry behind her and turned to see Agnes on the back porch, calling something after her in a petulant, high-pitched voice. Lizabeta shouted at her: "Get inside! I said—get inside! Don't follow me! Bad girl!" Her voice was choked with rage, she hadn't known how much rage, shaking her fist at the child and threatening to go back to hit her.
When Agnes hesitated, Lizabeta ran a few steps in her direction with her fist raised.
You wouldn't. Would not ever. Strike that child. Not ever.
With a final defiant shriek, Agnes ran back inside the house.
Lizabeta hoped that no one was watching: elderly Mrs. Braam, or Mrs. Braam's sister. The shades at their first-floor windows were drawn, which was a good sign. Walter and his sons were at work, and where was John Henry? Somewhere outside, clearing away storm debris.
Lizabeta walked on. She heard one of the horses wicker in the barn; a rooster was crowing querulously. There was storm debris everywhere: broken tree limbs, mud sloughs, a barnyard glittering with reeking puddles. Liquid manure, floating manure, the manure of horses and cows, and the special stench of rain-rotted hay, the stench of rotting flesh, for something must have died, drowned and died and was rotting now somewhere close by. Lizabeta averted her eyes, tried not to breathe until she was past the barnyard.
Not ever. Would not. Strike a child. I would not.
It may have been that Mama had slapped fretful little Agnes. In a sudden fit of frustration, despair. Not in dislike of the child. Not in hatred of the child.
No one had seen. Agnes had cried, screamed, kicked and thrashed in childish rage, but Agnes had already been screaming and thrashing, and no one had seen, and no one would know. Except Agnes, who would learn to respect her mother.
Discipline was necessary with willful children, the Braams believed. Certainly Walter thought so. Even now Walter sometimes threatened his grown sons with blows, or did in fact hit them, or shove them, if they provoked him; you could see the flush of resentment in the young men's faces, you could see their clenched fists, but neither ever struck his father in return. They were likely to slink away, abashed and sullen. But they respected their father, Lizabeta knew.
But not me. Not ever.
Lizabeta walked hurriedly, stumbling in soft, spongy earth, her hair whipping in the wind. Her heart pounded with a kind of frantic jubilation. The air shone with moisture; everywhere she looked there was a wet, glittery beauty; patches of sumac were beginning to turn, vivid orange, red-orange, assaulting the eye. Only vaguely was she aware of branches slapping at her face, thorns catching at her clothing. Somehow the back of her left hand was threaded with blood; she'd been scratched without noticing. Fear touched her, suffused her. So swift the sensation came and departed, she was left with only its memory, glancing down at herself, the bulky jacket, which reminded her of her swollen belly, the heaviness of her pregnant body.
Why she'd fled the house: it wasn't just the children, nor the elderly ailing women, damned leaking ceilings, so much housework to be done, and that evening's meal to be prepared, but she was in terror that she was pregnant again. And Alistair only thirteen months old!
For the past week, in a daze of apprehension, Lizabeta had been counting days on the calendar. The lightest of pencil marks, so that no one glancing at the large glossy International Harvester calendar that hung on the kitchen wall would notice. Repeatedly she'd counted, backward and forward. And the days were becoming too many: thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four. Can't be. No!
She could not bear it, the moment of telling. Approaching the man, the father. A woman believes that she is pregnant and must inform the man who is the father of the child, and this man, who is the father, will respond visibly to her words. The look in his eyes, the tightening in his jaws.
"Jesus! Don't tell me."
This time, he might say, "Lizabeta! Goddamn, this can't be."
Walter hadn't wanted a third child, not at his age. Yet he'd come to love his baby son, it seemed. Not that Walter spent much time with his baby son, or with his young daughters. But he loved them, as Braam men loved their children, at a distance. The care and love of children was women's work exclusively.
Your son, isn't he beautiful?
This time, this fourth pregnancy, so soon after the third, Lizabeta could not imagine speaking of, which words she must choose, how Walter would react—she could not.
Lizabeta walked swiftly away from the house. Hardly knowing where she was going. Only she had to hurry: to run! She had never once resisted Walter's wish to have sex with her, she would not have imagined for a moment that any wife might resist her husband. Their lovemaking was apt to be abrupt, impulsive. Walter sometimes "took care"—as he called it—but more often, if he'd been drinking and had come home late from Sparta, he did not. To a man like Walter Braam, sex was a weakness: to indulge in it was a concession to weakness, not to love or tenderness. Walter would accept responsibility for this fourth pregnancy in seven years, for Walter Braam was a man to accept responsibility; yet at the same time he would blame Lizabeta. She knew.
Lizabeta paused to glance about: where was she? Her feet, the lower parts of her legs, were wet; she was chilled, uneasy. The sun that had been so bright a few minutes before was now partly obscured by clouds and had taken on a wan, sullen glare. The autumnal air had turned colder. Lizabeta had been following the partly overgrown path beside the river, away from the house. Away from the farmyard. If this land was still Braam property, it no longer resembled farmable land but, hilly and rocky, with outcroppings of shale or granite in layers like gigantic steps, it had the look of a great, ancient ruin. Close by, the river rushed swollen and mud-colored, the highest Lizabeta had ever seen it. "Black River"—Lizabeta shaped the name aloud. For no one in the Rapids ever called the river by its map name. There was nothing of blackness in it now; after a week of rain the river more resembled a massive flooded ditch. Ahead, just visible through a stand of badly shredded, peeling birch trees, was the series of steep misshapen hills, the rock formations known locally as the Spill. Lizabeta could see rock strata and glittering falling water in a noisy stream, spilling into the river below. Lizabeta smelled the water, she smelled mud. Her nostrils were assailed by a rich, stupefying odor of decay.
Give Me Your Heart Page 17