by Amy Sorrells
The words came out of her mouth and twisted my belly like I might throw up. The burning down my spine moved up my shoulders and down my arms and the blackness swirled around me.
“I said, ‘Come here,’ Anniston!”
Jed grabbed my hand and the two of us walked together toward Princella. I held his hand like I’d never let go. I wasn’t sure I ever could.
“What in God’s name have you done here, the two of you?” she hissed, when we got up close to her. I caught another big whiff of that medicine smell. Only then I knew it wasn’t medicine. She’d been into the drink out in her car.
“Do you realize you not only ruined this dance for yourselves, but for every single one of the cotillion members here tonight? A formal apology will be expected. From both of you.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
“Yes, ma’am,” said Jed.
Mrs. Gadsden made her way to where we stood, as Princella dissected Jed and me with her steely eyes. “Princella, I think that’s enough.”
“And you!” Princella ignored Mrs. Gadsden and turned to Jed. “Who do you think you are coming in here as a guest and turning this place into a veritable night club, encouraging the band to play that horrid music! How dare you, with your bent-up legs and—”
“Princella …” Mrs. Gadsden moved alongside Princella, put a hand on her shoulder and tried to stop her, but I knew Princella was like a train, flying too far and fast down a track to slow down, no matter whose body stretched across the rails.
“—and your stupid eyes. How can you see to walk straight, let alone dance with my granddaughter? You should be ashamed to be a guest of a Harlan, the mess of a child you are. I’ve cleaned up enough messes in my family than to have to put up with the sight and likes of you. Now get out of here, and don’t you ever show your face around my family—or this circle of people—again!”
Though Jed had tears in his eyes, he stood up straighter and did not reply.
“He will not leave without me.” The words, thin and shaky, surprised me as they fell out of my mouth. Fear like pins and needles ran up and down my legs.
Princella’s hand grabbed my upper arm and squeezed so hard her fingers pressed down to my bones. “Then both of you leave! Get out of my sight!”
My right eye lost all vision and the side of my face hurt like a baseball bat hit it after Princella pushed me away with one hand and slapped my face with the other. The force knocked me to the ground. I wiped the wetness of my face, thinking it was tears, but my white glove smeared with blood. The cut on my cheek stung like fire.
Without looking at anyone, I ran. I ran as fast as I could out of the ballroom. Out of the hotel. Into the night. I ran. And ran. And I didn’t look back.
Apre dans tanbou, la a se lou.
“After the dance, the drum is heavy.”
CHAPTER 20
Anniston
Tears poured down my face. I didn’t wait for Jed and only slowed down when I heard him calling after me.
“Anni! Wait up!”
I couldn’t talk, because sobs took over my breathing.
“Anni. C’mon. Hold up!” Jed limped up next to me, but he didn’t say anything more. He listened to me cry while we scuffed toward town. Though Jed walked right next to me, I felt so alone. I couldn’t figure out where I fit in anymore. I used to be sure, when Daddy was here and our family was whole. I knew I oughta feel sure of my place with Mama and Ernestine, and part of me was sure of Jed. But now everything mixed together—the shooting, what Cole did, Princella … Where was the holy trinity in all of this? Where was that verse twenty-nine Ernestine talked about?
I considered taking my questions directly to God about all that, but words for prayer felt stuck. Reaching for God felt like reaching for a safe place in those dreams where I’m running from something evil but I keep falling down. The evil presses closer, and my legs weaken. Felt like the harder I tried to reach for God, the farther away He got, and the more my heart fell to pieces.
As we trudged along, the heat of my hurt kept some of the cold away. We were in for a late frost. The skies spat bits of near-frozen rain at us. Through my tears, I saw the wilted magnolias on my wrist and cried harder. The cracks in the sidewalk jumped up at us at uneven intervals, making it impossible to avoid stepping on them. I always played the step-on-the-crack-and-you’ll-break-your-mother’s-back game. No matter what. And since I couldn’t avoid stepping on the cracks that night, I imagined Princella’s back breaking every time my foot fell against another jagged divide.
Without me realizing it, we’d walked all the way to the front of the Bay Spring Public Library. The front light shone down on the steps but did nothing to bring color to the deep blue and gray of the night. Streetlamps cast light on the world and created angled shadows as if we were on a stage, as if nothing in the last hour really happened at all.
Jed set me down on the steps and put his jacket around me. “Wait here,” he said, then ducked around the corner. I figured he was headed toward the trailer park. For what, I wasn’t sure. But anywhere other than that cotillion was okay with me. I pulled his jacket tighter around me and watched my breath as it froze, then disappeared. Same breath that froze and disappeared the night Daddy died. I leaned my head back and searched for Orion the Hunter, the Big Dipper, or any familiar constellation, but the clouds were too thick. No stars shone. I wondered if the world would ever be warm again.
A rumbling came closer, and an old, yellow-and-white pickup truck with dim headlights came around the corner from where Jed disappeared. Sitting at the driver’s wheel was the same woman from the beauty shop who Jed had thrown money at. She stopped the truck at the curb in front of where I sat. Jed hopped out of the passenger side. “C’mon. We’ll take you on home.”
“That your mama?” I whispered in his ear, grateful for his arm he offered and entwined around mine.
“Foster mom. Yep.” He gave me a boost up into the high truck cab, then hopped in next to me. “Hettie, this is Anniston. Anniston, my foster mama, Hettie Devine.”
“Ma’am.” I offered my gloved hand, then pulled it back, ashamed of the blood staining it.
“Humpf.”
Being as that was the one and only sound she made, I couldn’t tell if she felt annoyed with me or with being out in general, but at least I had a warm ride home. Her face was smooth like someone who might be Mama’s age, but her strawberry-blonde hair, done up in a too-tight permanent wave, and smudged streaks of makeup under her eyes made her look much older. Heat flowed through the truck’s vents and warmed us. Our breath steamed up all the windows as she insisted on fixing me up. She leaned in close, and I could smell cigarettes on her as she dabbed peroxide onto the cut on my face.
“I called your mama and told her I’m bringing you home,” Jed said, putting his arm over my shoulders. “She’s awful concerned.”
Mrs. Devine taped a piece of gauze over my cheek, pressing the tape down a little too hard.
If Daddy were here … I wish he was here.
Jed and I didn’t say anything all the way to my driveway. It bothered me that he didn’t want me to see where he lived, but not as much as my cheek, which really smarted. On top of that, my heart split wide open thinking back to what Princella said into the microphone about him. Shame made it hard to even look at him. I needed to let him know I was sorry for the whole mess. I couldn’t stand the thought of losing him on top of losing Daddy. But after all she’d said, how could he possibly want to still be my friend? I put my hand on top of his and let it stay there, hoping what remained of our friendship would melt away the chill in our fingers.
Jed gave Mrs. Devine directions, and I let her drive me as far as the driveway.
“Sure you don’t want Hettie to drive you up to your house?”
Mrs. Devine glared at Jed, as if to say she’d already done more than her share of good for him for th
e day.
“I’m sure. I’ll be fine. I need to walk a bit. Thanks for loaning me your jacket, Jed. I’ll be warm enough.”
“Well … Okay.” Jed stood beside the door of the truck as I climbed out. His forehead wrinkled up, indicating he wondered whether I should be left to walk alone. But part of him knew and understood.
“Thank you, Mrs. Devine.” I tried to smile at Jed, but tears came instead. “Thank you, Jed.” I stood with the truck door open a minute, letting the frosty air free up the tightness in my chest. “See you soon?”
“See you soon, Anni. See you soon.” He leaned down and kissed me gently on the temple opposite from where Princella hit me. When he backed away, sorrow played in his eyes, a sorrow more for me than for him.
The wheels of the truck crunched off down the road, and I turned toward our driveway, black and endless under the cloud-covered sky. Walking past Comfort’s house, everything Princella said back at the dance hurt so bad I couldn’t go home and face Mama and Ernestine yet. I veered toward the creek, but instead of going there, I walked past it to the graveyard. The place didn’t scare me at night. Peace blanketed the earth there, a silent, holy place where time stopped and sleep came to weary people.
Lights from Comfort’s house shone into the graveyard, making the tombstones cast long, tilted shadows. Stories and wonderings filled my mind as I wandered between the stones. I passed the Cossey family, all eight of them killed on November 4, 1924, when their car stalled on a railroad track before a freighter came around the corner out on Bone Hill Road. The youngest child had only been nine months old and the oldest child, a boy named Patrick, one day away from turning thirteen like I am now. Rumors say if you’re out on Bone Hill Road at the time of day when they died, you can still hear the wailing of the young ones on the wind. But I don’t believe that. Folks turn crazy when they talk about ghosts and such, making up any sort of story to make a tragedy creepier. I passed several more white stones belonging to Civil War soldiers, several Harlans among them. Then I came to a large, grassy section, in the middle of which sat the two largest, newest, gray granite stones in the cemetery, awkward and out of place compared to the older, simpler stones around them.
COLE HARLAN
MARCH 19, 1941–NOVEMBER 23, 1979
BELOVED SON
THERE HATH PASS’D AWAY A GLORY FROM THE EARTH
Centered between “Beloved son” and “There hath pass’d” was a photo of my uncle, already yellowing beneath the hard, clear covering. He looked nice enough, smiling and wearing an Alabama Southern football jersey. He had dark hair like Princella’s and Daddy’s, and green eyes like Comfort’s. Nothing about the photo let on to what happened on November 23 or that he was responsible for any of it. The only evidence was Daddy’s grave a few feet away with the same date of death. Vaughn got one of those double gravestones for him, the kind where they’d bury Mama next to him someday and carve her name and death date in alongside.
REYMOND HARLAN
JANUARY 23, 1943–NOVEMBER 23, 1979
BELOVED HUSBAND, FATHER, SON, AND BROTHER
No nice quote or scripture added. No photo. Just the letters of Daddy’s name sunk into the mottled slab of stone.
Just dead.
I knew good and well that hating someone was a sin, but I couldn’t help but hate Cole for taking Daddy from me. Princella worshipped the ground Cole walked on, and it hurt something fierce she cared more for a dead person than for the living, breathing ones around her like me, and especially her own daughter, Comfort, who she paid no attention to despite her being hurt so badly.
“Why?” I said out loud, looking Cole’s picture in the eyes.
“Why?” I screamed at Cole’s grave, throwing first one, then a whole bunch of half-rotten sticks fallen from the great oak at the place I figured Cole’s head lay. I threw sticks. Then I threw clumps of grass. Then I threw dirt and rocks and whatever else I could find. I dug and clawed at the ground for anything my hands could fit around to throw at his easy-smiling face. I didn’t have a white dress to keep clean and hold me back anymore, since a mess of blood, dirt, and grass stains covered it.
At some point, I stopped throwing and curled up in the half-wet grass, my back pressed up against Daddy’s gravestone. I stared at the creek and tree limbs swaying in the drizzle-laden black night, groaning against the weight of the wind, dappled by the light from Comfort’s porch.
Komansman chante se soufle.
“The first steps of singing are breath.”
CHAPTER 21
Comfort
I am asleep, but the crying wakes me. At first, I think it must be the wind whistling through the crack in my bedroom window. But when I rise to close it, I know. I’ve done enough crying myself lately to know the difference between a sob of grief and a sigh of the wind. As I move toward the window, I hear the crying, louder.
Not unlike my own, the cries come in and from the depths of night, muffled but for gasps of air between sobs. I walk to the front door and pull it open far enough to peer into the fog rising around and swirling through the arms of the pecan trees and the great oaks sheltering the graves beyond.
Leaving the house in daytime is one thing.
Leaving in the middle of the night is another.
I feel like the disciple Peter, knowing I am called, hearing Jesus tell me that opening the door will bring freedom and not pain … that pressing through the mist will bring relief and not more shame.
I pace, fighting against my fear and the want—the need—to help.
“You’re dead, and you can’t stop me,” I say, hoping Cole can hear me in his grave. “You can’t defend yourself now. How does that feel? I might just tell the whole world what a sick and pathetic man you were, and you can’t stop me. You thought I was meek and quiet and compliant. But you were wrong. My secret, the one you told me never to tell, the one locked in a place you could not reach no matter how deep you thrust your knives into my soul, is that I was strong. I was smart enough to make myself dead, more dead than you are now, whenever you hurt me. So you may have taken my body, but you did not take my soul. Even this last time.”
I open the front door and pull Ernestine’s quilt around me.
The darkness is not dark to Me, child. Night shines like the day. Darkness is as light to Me.
I hear You, Abba.
Still, my chest quivers with fear, and my rain boots, rubber hard from so many days of cold and disuse, form to my feet as I plod toward the cries of the hurting girl across the graveyard. Of course I know it is Anni before I reach her, crouched there against her father’s gravestone, pressing herself close to the granite as if straining to hear his heartbeat once more.
“Anni,” I say.
Comfort, the Spirit whispers.
“It’s okay, baby.” I help her stand and pull her to me.
I hold you like you hold her, says my Abba.
I wipe her tears with a threadbare spot of the quilt and feel the warmth of liquid affliction against my fingers.
I hum as we walk together toward Oralee and Ernestine, shadows standing in the backlit doorway of the looming, pillared house, and I hear Abba singing over us both:
I’ve cleansed you with My tears of blood
and the sweet, salty water of My tears.
You are beautiful.
You.
The real you,
whole and unscathed.
You made it through the fire.
You really can come out.
The light is bright, but it can heal
if you step into it.
The light outside the safety of my little house is bright, and I squint, even at this late hour, as if bandages, wrapped around my eyes for too long, have been removed. I strain to hear the song of Abba, and like a Raggedy Ann, I can see the heart on my chest that says I am real, but I cannot feel that it is
so, even with Anni’s shaking body tucked in beside mine as we walk.
Maybe I don’t have to feel real yet.
Maybe, for now, opening the door is enough.
Se aprè batay nou konte blese.
“It is after the battle that you count the injured.”
CHAPTER 22
Anniston
As the quilt wrapped gently around my shoulders, I couldn’t say I was surprised. I’d heard the footsteps before they reached me and knew.
Comfort pulled the quilt snug and put her arms around me. “Let’s go home, baby.”
Her voice, a whisper, sounded like a long-lost melody. The smell of lavender in her long blonde hair washed over my pain and smoothed over bumpy places in my heart like the roll of the sea over a hacked-up beach. We walked, silent, past her front porch where the asters lay wilted from the frosty rain. I put my arm around her waist and the bones of her back and ribs stuck out like my dog’s, Molly’s, when we first found her as a stray.
Comfort’s eyes fixed on mine, and I could see hers water up. Sadness swept over me again about the whole night, the whole of unspoken hurt and untold wanderings, the whole of the pain hidden by this pecan-covered piece of land.
Mama and Ernestine stood on the front porch as we made our way up the drive. When we got there, they near knocked me off my feet, both of them hugging me like they hadn’t seen me in weeks. And maybe the me who came home that night hadn’t been seen in a while.
Maybe not ever.
Mama hugged Comfort next, and when they parted, tears streamed down their faces.
Mama got down on her knees this time. She held my face in her hands like looking into a glass wishing ball, then shook her head with sorry. “She’ll be in the grave, too, if she ever lays a hand on you again.”
Someone set a glass of warm milk and three of Ernestine’s oatmeal-praline cookies on my bedside table before I climbed into bed. I pulled a loose string from the fraying corner of the Joan Walsh Anglund sheets. Images of happy boys and girls playing and dancing covered the pillowcases and bedspread. Molly curled up against my stomach and let out a long sigh.