The Butcher's Daughter

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Come to visit.”

  “Well, that’s . . . that’s just . . .” She looks down, and then up again, eyes filled with tears.

  “What’s the matter, child?”

  “We have a funeral to attend tomorrow. Calvin’s friend died, and . . .” She shakes her head, anger flaring. “Well, Ernie didn’t die. He was murdered. Because of the color of his skin.”

  Marceline’s throat goes dry.

  “We’re broken up about it, me and Calvin,” Bettina goes on. “Everyone is. A gang of young white men ran him down. You just can’t imagine—”

  “Oh, but I can. I can, indeed.”

  “So you’re welcome to stay with us, but I just wanted you to know—”

  “I don’t need to stay with you, child. I got a place of my own.”

  “What?”

  “Three blocks up and around the corner, with a tree right outside the window.”

  “You’re going to live here?”

  “For now.”

  “But . . . what about Cyril? Is he here, too?”

  “Cyril,” she says, lifting her chin, “is gone. Murdered.”

  “Our Cyril . . . gone? How? Why?”

  “Because his daughter has a buckruh mama, and she is married, and her husband is in the Ku Klux Klan. So I brought her here, to live with you and your husband. You can keep her safe.”

  “You want us to harbor a white woman whose husband kills Black people?” Bettina asks, darting a glance around to make sure no one is listening. “In times like these? In a place like this? Auntie, that’s just—”

  “Not the woman. The baby! Her name is Amelia, and—”

  “No. No!”

  “But—”

  “You can’t put our lives in danger!” She takes a step closer, hissing, “I just told you, our friend was murdered! What do you think is going to happen to us with a white baby under our roof?”

  “She’ll look Black. No one will ever know that she—”

  “No! Auntie, I’m sorry. I love you, and I loved my cousin Cyril. But Ernie Fields was dragged through the streets, dead. His wife is destroyed. She can barely stand. She and her girls are terrified for their own lives. I can’t risk Calvin’s life. Or my own.”

  “What about the baby?”

  “You raise her!”

  Marceline shakes her head. “She needs a mama and a daddy.”

  “Then find them for her. But it can’t be Calvin and me.”

  Bettina turns and walks away.

  Marceline looks down at the basket. “Don’t you worry, child. One way or another, I’ll get you home, with them.”

  Oran whistles his way to his door Friday evening with a brown paper bag tucked under his arm, eager to present it to his Gypsy. But when he steps inside, the lights are off and the place feels empty.

  “Where the hell did she go?” he mutters, feeling around for a switch.

  “I’m here,” his daughter’s voice says in the dark.

  “What, sleeping? It’s not even—” He finds the switch and flips it.

  Gypsy isn’t sleeping. She’s sitting on the couch. Just sitting.

  “Hey! What happened?”

  She says nothing.

  Oran scowls. “Answer me when I speak.”

  “It works both ways.”

  “What?”

  “I answer your questions, and you answer mine.”

  He fixes her with narrowed eyes, waiting for her to squirm. She doesn’t. Not his Gypsy. She stares right back at him, chin lifted in defiance.

  His fingers loosen around the paper bag, prepared to drop it and turn into a swinging fist.

  No. Not now. Not with her.

  Later. In Brooklyn. Tonight, that’s all that matters. He has to keep her in line, so she doesn’t get in the way.

  “You been marching around with those women’s liberation freaks?”

  “No. You been to any pubs lately?”

  He laughs. “Guess you been marching around with the Women’s Temperance, then. You don’t have to worry about me. I went to work, and I came home. Not straight home—stopped off along the way, but not for a drink. I got you a little present.”

  She eyes the bag. “Money?”

  “Listen to you. Money?” he mimics in a falsetto. “Money? That the only thing that matters to you?”

  “No, it isn’t. Where’d you get your watch?”

  He looks down at his empty wrist, then back at her. “What?”

  “The gold one. The antique.”

  Oh, that watch. He’d worn it to work last Monday, and a couple of deadbeats spotted it and followed him to the subway. He knew they were about to mug him, but a beat cop came along. Oran jumped on the subway, came home, and put the watch away in a drawer. He’ll sell it someday, when the heat dies down on Fergus Ferguson.

  Lousy SOB deserved what he got. All Oran wanted was a job, to provide for his Gypsy.

  Now she’s acting like a spoiled brat, asking nosy questions . . . making him uneasy.

  “Why are you asking me about the watch?”

  She shrugs.

  She doesn’t know. She can’t know.

  Yet she’s looking at him as if she does. As if she’s weighing whether to answer his question, and how.

  “No reason.”

  Oran studies her another moment.

  Forget it. Brooklyn. Tonight. Do what you need to do.

  He tosses her the paper bag. “Here.”

  The bag lands on the couch beside her. She doesn’t touch it, or even look at it.

  “I got you a present. Open it.”

  She picks up the bag, dangling it from two fingers like a dead rat.

  His jaw clenches. “Look inside.”

  “Later.”

  “I said look inside.” He can feel his eyes bulging, muscles straining, fists itching. He will do whatever it takes to make sure tonight happens. His prophecy must be fulfilled.

  But at what cost?

  Gypsy obeys his command.

  She opens the bag. Gives a little nod. Looks up at him, wearing a strange smile. “Chocolates.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Mother’s Day

  Sunday, May 12, 1968

  Fernandina Beach, Florida

  “Melody, dear?” Honeybee knocks on her bedroom door.

  “Come in.”

  The door opens. Her mother is there in a dainty dress the color of lemon icebox pie, with matching shoes and hat.

  “Are you feeling any better?”

  “Not really.”

  She can feel Honeybee watching her, as she has been for two days now—watching Melody as if she’s afraid to turn her back, lest she, too, might disappear.

  “Are you sure you don’t need me to stay here with you?”

  “No. You go on to church with Daddy. I’ll be all right for an hour. Truly, Mother. I need you to go to church and pray, like we said.”

  “I will. I’ll pray for you, and for our dear little Martina.”

  “Pray for all of us. Yourself, and Daddy . . .”

  Y’all are going to need all the prayers you can get. You’re going to be just devastated when I vanish.

  “I’ll pray, darling. And I’ll be home before you know it.”

  “Happy Mother’s Day,” she manages to say, and Honeybee smiles.

  “Thank you. And, Melody, dear . . .”

  Please don’t, Mother. Don’t talk about what we’ve lost, and how we have to stay strong, and we can get through this together.

  “I want you to know that you’ve done me proud, holding your head high through the worst ordeal a woman can face.”

  “Well, I . . . I’ve had a good role model, now haven’t I?”

  “Wherever she is, Martina’s got a guardian angel watchin’ over her.”

  Ellie.

  “Oh, Mother . . .” she chokes out, and rolls over, staring bleakly at the wall, hot tears stinging her eyes as Honeybee leaves the room, closing the door be
hind her.

  Her heels tap down the hall, down the stairs. Moments later, the front door slams. A car engine starts. The tires roll away, carrying her parents away to church, away, away . . .

  Melody stays still, eyes closed, fists clenched.

  Are you a mother, or a daughter? You have to choose.

  But she’s already made her choice.

  She throws back the coverlet. She’s fully dressed beneath, wearing her turquoise dress with the Peter Pan collar and bow at the neckline.

  You look purty as a picture, Cyril will say when he sees her, and the thought of that, of him, propels her out of her room, down the stairs, and out of her parents’ home. She’s halfway down the block before she remembers she won’t be coming back here.

  She turns to take one last look, but the view is obscured by a magnolia tree in full bloom, and tears.

  Gypsy wakes up before dawn remembering a morning years ago, when she’d stirred from sleep expecting to see her mother.

  Linda had been there the night before, been staying with them for a week, at least, maybe two by that time.

  Then one morning she was gone, and their mod shag carpet was gone, too. Yet she’d left behind her shabby orange-and-brown-patchwork bag filled with worldly possessions.

  “Why would she steal our rug and leave her stuff?” Gypsy had asked her father.

  “Because she’s crazy, man.”

  “Where’d she go?”

  He shrugged. “She just split.”

  “Do you think she’ll come back to get her bag?”

  “I don’t think she’ll ever come back again.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m a prophet, you dig? You won’t miss her, right?”

  “Right. She’s a drag. We don’t need anyone around but us.”

  That’s how it’s been, ever since. She’s never longed for a mother, certainly not her mother—

  Until now.

  But she has only Oran, and there’s something wrong with him. Terribly, terrifyingly wrong.

  Friday night, she’d pretended she’d eaten the chocolates he gave her and feigned a deep sleep. Because she didn’t know what else to do. Because she knew, she knew . . .

  No, you didn’t know. Not yet. Not then.

  Not even when he’d leaned over her and whispered her name.

  “Gypsy. Hey, man, you awake?”

  She forced her breathing to stay calm, willed her closed eyelids not to twitch, and even managed to not flinch when he poked at her.

  Convinced she was out cold, he’d left.

  Just before dawn, he returned and immediately ran a bath. She heard him vigorously scrubbing, muttering to himself. She heard the water drain, heard him scouring the tub. She smelled bleach.

  She’d spent yesterday at the library with a pile of schoolbooks, avoiding him. When the library closed and she had no choice, she trudged home. Passing a newsstand, she’d seen a headline.

  BUTCHER STRIKES AGAIN: FAMILY SLAIN IN BENSONHURST

  She hadn’t bought the paper. She hadn’t found somewhere else to go. She hadn’t called the police.

  All of those things had occurred to her.

  But she’d continued home as if nothing had happened. Wanting, needing, to believe nothing had happened.

  The apartment was empty. Oran hadn’t left a note.

  She dug out the chocolates she’d hidden the night before.

  She’d examined them, chipping with her fingernail wherever she could see that he’d tampered with the coating, and finding a grainy white substance mixed with the fillings.

  She ate them. All of them, methodically, forcing slick, medicated goo down her throat as tears ran down her face. Then she lay down, praying she’d never wake up.

  Now she has.

  She drags herself out of bed, wrapped in a blanket.

  “You up already?” Oran calls from the next room.

  “Yes.”

  He appears in the doorway, dressed in his priest collar, wearing a trench coat and fedora she’s never seen before.

  “Do your Bible reading and then get busy. Lotta news today.” He touches the tip of a long umbrella to a stack of Sunday papers. A faint smirk slithers across his face, as if he has a secret.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Just . . . things are going on. And if you go out, be careful crossing the street. There was another hit and run a few days ago, and—” He pauses to peer at her. “You listening to me, man?”

  She clears her throat. “Where do you think she is?”

  “What?”

  “It’s Mother’s Day. I’m wondering why she never came back.”

  “Who?”

  “Who do you think?”

  “How would I know?”

  They lock eyes.

  “Don’t waste time thinking about your mother, man. I never think about mine. You have all the family you need.” He taps his chest, just below the clerical collar.

  “You? You’re one person! Maybe I need—”

  “Not just me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Psalm 127.” He walks to the door, opens it, and slams it closed behind him.

  His footsteps retreat down the hallway. She grabs the Bible. It falls open to John.

  “He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”

  She flips back to the psalm.

  “As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.”

  She tosses aside the Bible and turns to the stack of newspapers.

  The one on top, the Amsterdam News, has a front page story about a Negro bellhop being killed in that hit and run Oran had mentioned. She tosses it aside.

  There it is—headline news in the New York Times. The Brooklyn Butcher struck Friday night in Bensonhurst, slaughtering four family members in their beds: Joe and Rose Costello, their twelve-year-old son, Danny, and Rose’s mother, Margarita, who lived with them.

  He’d allowed the teenaged daughter to live. Raped her.

  “What are you doing?” Gypsy whispers. “What have you done?”

  She has to get out of here. Before he comes back. Before she loses her nerve.

  She dresses quickly, pulling on galoshes and the water-repellant coat she’d bought last week with the money her father had stolen from a tavern owner before he killed him.

  Fergus Ferguson.

  Friday night, lying awake after Oran left, she’d remembered why the name had been familiar. Her father had met her mother at Fergie’s Inn years ago.

  Still, her mind attempted to expel the possibility.

  “None of this matters. Paradise is waiting for us, Gypsy.”

  Now she shuts out his voice because she can no longer deny the truth—about Fergus Ferguson. About what her father had done Friday night, and twice before, to two other families. Other girls, around her age . . .

  Sisters . . .

  “No.”

  She whirls, looking around the apartment. She needs something, some kind of proof. If only she hadn’t eaten the chocolates.

  She goes to the next room and digs through his top drawer. The watch isn’t there. He isn’t stupid. The press mentioned it had been stolen from the murder scene. Of course he’d gotten rid of it, only—

  She opens another drawer and there it is.

  Not even hidden.

  He isn’t stupid. Nor is he careless.

  “You and me, we’re the chosen ones, Gypsy, baby. No one else matters. They’ll be gone, just like that . . .”

  Hands trembling, she turns over the watch. The letters FF are emblazoned on the back.

  She squeezes her eyes shut and sees the image of a horse etched in her own flesh. Oran’s words sear her brain.

  �
�In case one of us forgets and loses her way.”

  She almost had.

  “But I’m about to find it back, you son of a bitch.”

  Gypsy pockets the watch, ties a plastic rain bonnet beneath her chin, and walks out the door.

  Through the rain-spattered windshield, Melody spots the weathered bridge that will take her across the Intracoastal at last. She glances in the rearview mirror to make sure, once more, that she isn’t being followed. The puddle-cratered road stretches empty behind her.

  Even back in town, the streets had been Sunday-quiet as she scurried away from her parents’ house on foot. Folks were staying indoors out of the drenching downpour, most likely in church or celebrating Mother’s Day with their families.

  Such a cruel twist, Melody breaking Honeybee’s heart on this day of all days, turning her back on the woman who gave her life and raised her right and has stood by her throughout this ordeal.

  But Melody is a mother now, too, and she needs to hold her child again like she needs to breathe.

  Crossing the threshold into the home she’d shared with Travis, she expected to feel something. Not guilt, necessarily, or even regret. Perhaps just nostalgia for the belongings she was leaving behind. But she seemed to have used up all her emotions, and had no desire to linger. She grabbed the keys to Travis’s car.

  Time to stop looking back, and start looking ahead.

  Making the turn onto the bridge, she doesn’t see the two young boys and their fishing poles. Perhaps the weather’s kept them home today, or they’re with their mama.

  Mother’s Day, and Melody will soon be cradling her baby girl in her arms. But not soon enough. It’s always slow going, bumping along the wide road that bisects the island. Today is worse with the rain, but she’s heedless of the potholes, no longer worried about Travis’s precious car.

  Later, she and Cyril will have to decide how to get rid of it. Maybe sink it in the Intracoastal after dark, or deep in the marsh behind his house. They can’t keep it, and they can’t sell it. She can’t risk being traced back here.