by Carolyn Wall
Mercifully, nobody asks me more about my husband.
“Dammit to hell,” Wheezer says. He’s looking at the people next door.
Auntie sits up straighter in her webbed chair. “News does travel.”
On the other side of a half-acre of tall grass, two figures stand where my mother’s house used to be. One is stick-thin, curved of shoulder, and flapping her arms. Knees bent, her arms are raised like she might fly away. She’s squawking and wailing, making the noise of a hundred sick chickens. Her hair is wispy and white, and beneath a cotton gown, her veined legs are a road map. I know who she is, and I know the man with her, dark and dignified and leaning on a cane. Millicent Poole and Reverend Ollie Green.
My throat has gone dry. “What are they doing?”
“Millie Poole,” Shookie says. Her voice is smug. “She’s shakin’ up Satan.”
Wheezer, still leaning forward on his chair, gives me a devilish grin. “Miss Millie comes down every so often so she can—dust the place.”
“What?”
“She’s riddin’ the property of demons, Clea. She thinks after your mama and those others died, it left bad juju. She’s afraid it’ll spread down to her place.”
“Y’oughta go over,” Cousin Bitsy says, “say hey.” It’s the first time since I arrived that she’s spoken to me.
That hundred feet would be the farthest I ever walked.
Auntie shrugs. “Place belongs to you now. Do what you want with it.”
No, thanks.
Auntie says stiffly, “Now and then Cunny has Ernie Shiloh come and mow down the weeds. He hauled off what lumber he could use.”
“Uncle,” I say, “I owe you for that.”
“No,” he says. “You settle with Ernie.”
I remember how that charred flooring and timber stood across the narrow field for so many years. What an awful thing to have next door. No wonder I went away and lived on the curb and took razor blades to my arms. The truth was, I hurt so badly inside, I needed someone to see. It took me God’s long time to learn that.
I realize suddenly that the night has grown cool. The Reverend lifts a hand and stumps into Auntie’s yard. His smile is huge. He hugs me and calls me Sister Clea, an appellation accorded grown women in the church. I imagine he’s retired and been replaced by now.
Millicent Poole scuttles over too, her feet in dirty bedroom slippers. She’s sighted me, and she shakes a crooked finger. “That fancy car—I shoulda knowed it was you!”
Her voice is raw—probably from years of drugs. “That’s all right,” she rasps. “Don’t you bother to get up, little girl, or say howdy-do. All these years, I’ve done your work for you. See that concrete, them broken pieces?”
The old flooring. Part of the kitchen. A piece of staircase, lying on its side. A broken pipe.
“Bad spirits live under there,” she says. “You should be prostrate in that field, begging forgiveness. Doing good works.”
I do good works.
“Now, Millie—” the Reverend says.
Millicent lifts her chin, her frail self wobbling. “Girl, you’re just the devil in one of his clever disguises. You get yourself over to church on Sunday and confess your sins. You’re a grown woman now—” She paws the air, catching rays of light and dust that only she can see. Her knuckles look swollen and sore. “It’s time you paid for your sins.”
I recall the gray goose that ate up her garden that one day, and how I tried to do right. I think of the opium pipe, and how afraid I was. Although I could now make three of Miss Millicent and could knock her over with my hand, no time has passed. I need somewhere to run.
The screen door creaks open. “Mom,” Luz says. “Harry’s having nightmares again.”
I go to my children.
My heart feels like some rickety place. Like there’s nowhere safe to put my feet. It has something to do, I think, with the way my houses keep falling down.
28
In the morning, there’s bacon and a spoonful of scrambled egg on Harry’s plate. He has his spoon in his hand; he slept that way. I was fearful that he’d poke his eye out or run it down his throat, but he’s using it now to chop at the yellow egg.
Auntie’s at the stove, turning hotcakes. She says to Harry, “Honey, you go on and pick up that bacon in your fingers. That’s the way it’s done around here.”
And Harry does. He takes an almost-bite. I want to fall on the floor in relief. Now, if we can get him to talk …
Luz has already eaten. I pour a cup of coffee, hug Harry, and kiss the top of his head, and Luz’s too.
I try to figure how many years I’ve been gone. In this big kitchen, not much has changed. No dishwasher has been added, no microwave. I wonder if I’m welcome enough—or at home enough—to run dishwater in the sink for the washing up. I do it anyway, and squirt in liquid soap, begin to dunk the sticky plates. On the porch, a dryer has been installed alongside the washer. I guess the clothesline, where I used to play among the sweet-smelling sheets, isn’t used anymore.
Auntie brings the plate of hotcakes and the warm syrup jar. She stirs sugar in her mug and gets right to it. “Clea, all of us, we read your book.”
The book. I began it the day Dr. Ahmed gave me the steno pad in the hospital. When it was finished, I called it Halo. I’d changed the characters’ names, at the urging of my editor, and I’d fudged with the places, making up towns, renaming the river. I hadn’t fooled anyone here, nor did I expect to.
“You said bad things about us.”
“No.” I sip my coffee. Too hot. “I said bad things about Mama. I needed to say them.”
“You ran off,” Auntie says, as if she has a whole list. “In the dead of night.”
To save myself.
Those were the bad years. After False River, before Belize.
I went to live where nobody cared, just sat on the sidewalk and watched shoes go by. I had street people to learn from. When it rained I held cardboard over my head. I could walk two blocks to a food line, and when I needed to pee I went around to the alley, although most didn’t bother.
That was just the beginning.
“I went to college,” I said. “Got a degree.”
Luz has been watching me, her eyes big and round. She knows about the book and has asked to read it, but I won’t let her. Here in this house, though, things are going to come out.
I set my coffee down, give her a smile, and watch Harry toy with his breakfast. In just the last couple of days, his face has grown pale, veins blue at his temples, his eye sockets too big. I’ve heard of children who had to be fed intravenously, and that also makes me afraid. Fear breeds fear—had I not learned that myself, bound to a bed in a psychiatric ward?
What we put into the world, we get back a thousandfold.
When I’ve finished my coffee, I’ll go upstairs to Call, and I’ll give thanks, in advance, for the return of Harry’s appetite.
Meanwhile, I say, “One bite, little guy?”
He rubs an eye with the flat of his hand.
I’m no more rested than when I went to bed. Last night I lay awake, thinking that Millicent couldn’t be more wrong. Whatever sins my mother committed, and wherever she is now, she made her hell right here, where I could see it. I sometimes stepped inside it with her.
Being away from here was what saved me. I’m grateful to those people who reached out to me in the streets and clinics and basements. And among the Belize Sisters, I learned that life is the hard part. As will be the next life, and the next. Only between is there real, true rest.
There was always comfort in this house. Aunt Jerusha and Uncle Cunny gave me what was never required of them, and as soon as I calm my nerves and screw up my courage, I’ll walk next door, find whatever concrete or timber may be left, and I will spit on it and curse it.
Then Miss Millie will have something real to work on.
After that, I’ll have to deal with the law. There’s probably no statute of limitations on murder.
> I sit at the table and swallow a mouthful of coffee. My eyes are on my boy. I say, “I think babies remember God.”
Auntie looks over at me. Bitsy has come down, and she fills a plate.
I say, “I wish Harry could tell me what God looks like. Or that he could show me heaven on a map.”
No one says a word.
“I think that’s why they can’t speak,” I say.
Bitsy pours syrup.
I smile, making conversation. “Babies have these funny little toes and dimpled bottoms. They’re—you know—fresh from the earth and the sky and wind, but not allowed to speak of it. I wonder where that memory goes.”
Over the rim of her cup Auntie says primly, “They say we got brain parts we never use.”
“They look so innocent. When Harry was two, he had hair like the down of a baby duck.”
Now that I’m here in Auntie’s house, I hate that I’ve kept Luz and Harry from her. Then I look over at Bitsy. Her eyes are more heavy-lidded than usual.
“Auntie,” I say, rising. “May I use your phone? I’ll pay for the call. I’d like to tell the sisters where I am. My cell phone—”
—was lost in the collapse of my house in Dandridge.
While Bitsy eats, I call Sister Isabel, murmur something vague, I’ll be gone awhile. Will you cover my assignments? I’m sorry, but the files and lesson plans were on my desk. When the house came down, they blew away on the wind.
Sister Janice and Sister Grace crowd around the little phone and say We love you, Go with God, and Stay in touch.
Do not worry, they tell me.
I climb the stairs to the attic for a few minutes of Call. But the only things that come are quakes like fissures trying to open inside me. I get up and gather our dirty clothes. One of Thomas’s socks is stuck in a sleeve. For a moment I wish I had a match.
How can I think that?
Because, of course, it’s all coming back. I’ve come back too, and brought my own demons with me.
Then I hear a truck, a pickup—the county sheriff’s? I run down the stairs to put my arms around my kids. But it’s Uncle Cunny.
He throws his hat on the table. He runs a hand over his hair. “Another storm’s swirling up out in the Atlantic. It’s headed for the gulf.”
Shookie’s folding clothes at the table. I see now that her legs are thick as tree trunks. She wears a pair of bedroom slippers that once were pink and fuzzy. Her steps are short and shuffling.
“God’s sake,” she says. “All this weather’s more than a body can take.”
“Put a dollar in the jar on the shelf,” Auntie tells me. “For the laundry. Pays for hot water and soap.”
If we stay here very long, I’ll have to transfer money from our bank to one in Greenfield, or even Jenerette, which is closer. If we stay here long, I’ll need to find a job. But it won’t be, will it—not long at all. And anyway, that’s assuming Auntie will let us stay in this house that’s already so full. On the other hand, she and her sister are getting older, and Bitsy’s no hand at anything.
When I come down, Auntie leaves the table and turns on the TV. “Lord, Cunny, what are they sayin’?”
He shakes his head. “Already a hurricane, and they’re calling it Greta. You can bet your fine china we’ll take a hit.”
29
Auntie’s broiling chickens in the oven. I go outside to study the sky. Bitsy comes too.
I recall how, on Saturdays during those post-fire years, I’d help Auntie with the baking. It was the strangest thing—rolling out pastries, or when I iced a cake, I seemed to stand on higher ground. Uncle loved it. I made coconut cream pies that were whipped and high and perfectly set. For that one, I think, he kissed my cheek.
“How’ve you been doing, Bitsy?” I say now.
There’s this thing about Bitsy: She seems as surprised when she speaks as when she’s spoken to. “I guess I been fine.” After a couple minutes pass, she says, “Inside, though, I got the depression.”
I say, “Oh?”
In a voice as breathy as spring, she says, “You a good mama?”
“I—think so. I hope so.”
“I had me a baby girl,” she says. “Only you didn’t know.”
Cicadas are trilling in the oak trees. Through the screen I see Auntie moving around in the kitchen, Shookie coming out of the bathroom, straightening her undies, her slip, and her dress.
“Excuse me?”
“I had me a little bitty baby. She pale, but they say she darken up.”
I stare at her wide face, her squinchy eyes and thick lips. Is there something beautiful about Bitsy? Somewhere?
“When?” I said.
“You was here.”
“I was?”
“I went to the hospital. You stupid to not notice I’s so big.”
The hospital? I remember that. Something was wrong with Bitsy’s blood. Or blood pressure. Shookie stayed here. She came with a valise and her crocheting—a great ball of cotton with a hooked silver needle sticking through. I never questioned where Bitsy was. I knew for a fact that high blood pressure came to folks who ate too much.
She nods her great head. “I went to the hospital, and they pulled this little gal outa me, an’ I heard her cry.”
She was right—how stupid I was! How could Bitsy sleep around and not get pregnant? If Shookie couldn’t buy her daughter a bra, she sure didn’t have her on birth-control pills.
But this is something else. Something more, and it’s colored pale pink.
“You had a baby,” I say softly. “What happened to it?”
“They didn’t let me keep her. Was something bad wrong, they said. But I heard her cry. I called her Felicia.”
“That’s a pretty name.”
And for the first time ever, Bitsy turns a smile on me, the corners of her mouth going up, lips parting.
“You have really nice teeth,” I say.
Auntie has her hip to the door, and I hear Miss Shookie talking on and on.
“Bitsy?” I say. “I’m sorry they took your—Felicia.”
She shrugs her big shoulders. “I guess she died. Mama wouldn’t let me keep her, anyways. She up there now—” She points.
I nod and look up. Clouds have moved in, thick, gray, and forlorn.
“It okay,” Bitsy says. “My baby girl, she think I fine. She say I’da made a good mama, change her diaper, comb her hair.”
The heat and the cicadas and the world spin around me. Bitsy’s words stick.
My baby girl, she think I fine.
30
Wheezer comes home for lunch. We eat cucumber sandwiches and celery and sweet pickles—Luz’s favorite. And potato chips and pecan pie.
Bitsy watches Luz; Luz’s eyes are on Auntie; Wheezer studies me.
“Sorry for staring, Clea,” he says. “You’ve grown up, is all. You got real pretty, and you’re a fine writer too.”
“You read my book?”
At this, Luz looks up. She holds Auntie’s book in her lap.
“ ’Course,” Wheezer says. “It was a good read. You were brave to tell the truth.”
“In the eye of the beholder.”
“It’s your truth that counts. I read it twice.”
Wheezer’s story was greater than mine, although that was one thing being crazy had taught me: Nobody’s pain gets discounted. Size does not matter. I wonder how Wheezer has dealt with his past.
I shift my eyes to Harry. Auntie has brought him his yellow bowl. He sorts through a few dry Rice Krispies, picks up a couple and puts them in his mouth. I don’t know whether to celebrate or keep quiet and let him be.
“In case y’all haven’t heard,” Wheezer says, draining the last of his fruit jar of tea, “there’s another storm brewin’.”
Auntie nods, sighing.
Harry has taken a shine to Uncle Cunny Gholar and, for the last couple of hours, followed him around like a puppy. Now Uncle announces that he and Harry should “throw one in the water”—meaning minnows
on a hook.
“I believe we can catch us a fish at Duck Creek,” he says.
Harry sits up, and his eyes go round.
“After lunch?” Uncle asks him.
Harry nods once.
“Not until he eats a little more,” Auntie says.
Wheezer pushes back his chair. “Listen, Clea,” he says, “let’s take a walk by the river.”
“Can I come too?” Luz wants to know.
“Sure,” Wheezer says.
She brings her book.
I tell Harry I’ll be back in a minute and bestow kisses on the top of his head.
But he has eyes only for Uncle Cunny, who’s eating a second piece of pie.
It’s one of those smothery afternoons that only this part of Mississippi, with its moist deltas and hot southern sun, can know. The sky, though leaden, still looks blameless. The air is heavy with fragrances—grass and the lily of the valley that grows in deep shade. No leaves rustle in the oaks, where gray moss hangs down. Even the birds have gone to sleep. The river is silent too—not one water frond or cattail is stirring. Oddly, not one bluebottle hovers on the surface.
Wheezer takes up a rock and skims it, perfect, across the still water. Luz knows how to do this; Thomas has taught her. She finds her own flat rock, finds the angle of elbow and wrist, and imitates him.
“I see you’re reading the Bible,” Wheezer says.
“It belongs to Miss Jerusha. There’s nothing else here to read. My books—”
“I have some in my room. You’re welcome to look. I’m guessing you’re a very high-level reader.”
“Very,” Luz says, giving her glasses a shove, although they haven’t slid down.
We walk for a while, along the bank, toward False River.