All the Forgivenesses

by Elizabeth Hardinger

  Mama made a rumbling noise and turned over. “What? What?”

  I acted like things was normal. I didn’t know what else to do. I said, “It’s just me and Dacia, Mama.” I stood Dacia on the floor and walked over and pulled the curtains and opened the window a crack. “It’s a nice day,” I said. “William brought a mess of rabbits last night, and I smothered them for dinner. Let’s eat in the front room, want to?”

  Now I was back at the bed, reaching out my hand to help her, and when I got a good look at her, I froze. Her face was waxy, with skin hanging down off her cheeks, and her eyes was sunk in dark hollows. Her eyelids was fat and wrinkled like crepe—when had that happened? And she smelled. I hadn’t never smelled a woman so rank.

  She shrunk away from my hand. “Just bring me some broth. I’m wore out.”

  Now Dacia jumped onto the bed. “Me too, me too!” She started bouncing like she done, and she got Mama to swaying, and it looked like Mama might throw up.

  “Stop it! You’re gonna make Mama sick!”

  “She don’t care! She likes it!”

  “She don’t neither!” I hollered, and I reached over and grabbed Dacia off the bed. She squirmed and kicked—she’d growed, and it hurt—and Mama said, out of breath, “Leave her be, Bertie—ain’t hurtin’ nothin’.” She got to coughing.

  I turned Dacia loose, and she crawled next to Mama and give me a hateful look.

  “I’m sending for the doctor,” I said.

  “Where’s Opal at? And the babies?” Mama said, and I sucked in air. I’d forgot about them. I hurried into the front room. Opal, she was setting in a chair at the table, swinging her legs. She couldn’t hardly see over the tabletop. The babies was laying in their baskets, waving their arms.

  A cold, wet breeze was coming through the windows I’d left open, and the room felt icy. I feared for the babies—you didn’t dare let a baby get a chill, they could die in a day’s time—and I run and closed the windows. Then I grabbed some sticks from the woodbox and stoked up the fire in the stove.

  I heard Dacia giggle from Mama’s room. For a minute I was glad Mama had somebody to keep an eye on her while I took care of the little ones, but then I thought, a little girl, especially a wild one like Dacia, couldn’t look after a growed woman that’d taken to her bed like that.

  For a moment I had a vision of Mama in her bed, only it had sides like a coffin. I blinked it away.

  * * *

  Next morning I seen Mama had coughed up blood in the night, and there was a mottled rash on her neck that looked like leather boots with raindrop stains on them. I asked her what was it, but she just turned over.

  I walked across the road and knocked at the big house. Alta Bea’s mother opened the door. “Alta Bea’s in school today, Bertie. She’ll be—”

  “I know,” I said. “I’m wondering, could you send a hired man to fetch the doctor? My mama’s poorly.”

  “Where’s your dad?” she said, looking around like he might be stooped down behind me.

  I felt hot all over. “Working.”

  “Come in then,” she said. “I’ll get Wilber to drive you into town.”

  “Could he—I mean, I need to stay with the babies.”

  She looked vexed, but only for a moment. “You go on home. We’ll get the doctor.” She started to close the door, and then she looked at me and smiled. “Don’t worry, honey. She’ll be fine.”

  When the doctor come, I went in the room and watched him give Mama a shot like he done before. I was ready for it this time, but it still made my toes curl under.

  Back in the front room I asked him, “What’s she got?”

  He shook his head. “I wouldn’t worry about it, little girl. Just needs rest.” He pulled out a piece of paper and wrote on it. “You could be a big help to her—mind the other children.”

  “How come she coughed up blood?” I said.

  He dipped his chin and looked at me through his eyebrows. “This time of year.” He finished writing and left the paper on the table. “See your daddy gets this.” I seen it was a bill.

  Mama purred for a while and went to sleep. She stopped coughing, but her rash was still there the next morning at first light when I checked on her.

  * * *

  After that, Mama’s rash come and gone. Sometimes it was on her back, her eyelids, her cheeks, one time on her hand. I got to where I washed her ever day—she fought it more than a child would—and then turned the sheets. I tried to wash them to where she never slept on one side twice, but didn’t seem to do no good. Her rash would come and go without no reason, seemed like. Might be gone for a week and then come back.

  I didn’t have no time to fret about Mama, I told myself, and so Dacia was the one kept her company hour after hour. And as she got to be more of Mama’s pet, seemed like Dacia got mouthier and meaner. I had a feeling of dread about where Dacia would end up, spoiled like she was, and I couldn’t help but wish Mama wouldn’t be so easy with her.

  I confess I felt the pangs of envy. I didn’t envy Dacia herself but the way Mama made over her, always had. I knowed envy was a sin, and wrath and pride was sins, and I had them, too, and I knowed better—I had been taught the word of the Lord. And besides they hurt, and there wasn’t no place for the pain to go. So I swallowed them feelings down deep as I could.

  Ain’t no place deep enough to where they don’t eat at you anyhow, whether you know it or not, but I didn’t know that then.

  * * *

  Spring come, and Daddy resumed horse trading. Said if we was going to have the doctor come ever Goddamn day, he had to bring in more money. Of course we never had the doctor ever day, only ever month or two, and all he ever done was give her more dope. I heard him tell Daddy one time that she just wasn’t of a mind to look after all them children. Made me so mad I come to tears, but wasn’t no use arguing with no doctor, or any other growed man, come to that.

  Soon’s the ground thawed enough to work, William and Buck started hiring theirself out again. By summer, they was boarding away for weeks at a time. Here would come an envelope with money, and Mama’d send me to town to pay against the store bill. It never got all paid that I knowed of, but they let us trade there anyhow. We wasn’t the only ones. Sometimes I give some to the store, and the rest to the landlord.

  Now Dacia, seemed like whenever I passed by Mama’s door, Dacia was in there chattering. She got to telling herself stories about taking trips in a flying wagon. Or her and Mama would be going horse trading, just the two of them, and all the sudden the horses’d take off flying, and they’d go to someplace she never been to before, but it was nice there. There was lots of stories about her and Mama going on trips. I didn’t know if Mama heard these tall tales or slept through them.

  Me, I had more than I could do, looking after the twins. Even one baby, it’ll take up all the time you’ve got and then some. With twins, when one gets to crying, the other’n will start up, too, and the sound of it grinds against your spine. James and John, though, seemed like they wasn’t babies for long. They crawled early, they walked early, and they was talking to each other, seemed like, before they was a year old. Then next thing I knowed, they’d got to be toddlers, and they was all the time asking why was the bugs green and what was this and this and this, like children does, boys particularly, and they’d holler “look at me, look at me” whenever they done something new, which the days was full of. They run from morning till night, and seemed like they broke or tore up most everthing they put their hand to that was in their road. They swallered things you couldn’t picture how they got the notion to put in their mouths, like hairpins and marbles. They put beans and buttons and tacks in their ears or up their nose. Their ways added up by the end of the day, sure enough. But there was other times, too, like when they was out in the yard at dusk chasing lightning bugs, marveling at the glow in their hands, or when we was all laying out on a blanket looking at the stars, which they couldn’t hardly get over the wonder of, or even when you got them was
hed and their hair squeaked when you stripped off the water—things I kept in my heart like a treasure and took out ever little bit to look at. I reckoned them kind of times was how come Mama kept having babies.

  But Mama, she was living in her bed, her and Dacia.

  Now Opal, she was only a couple years older than the twins, but you most never seen her underfoot. I truly don’t remember her at that age. If you went to look for her, why, she’d be setting in the corner sucking her thumb or loving on a rag doll or a blanket, content to be by herself, seemed like. She was like a ghost baby, which I’d heard people talk about back home—the one in the middle of the family who nobody can remember later on. I hate to think the reason Opal kept to herself like she done was because I needed her to, but I reckon she did.

  I do remember one time, when I put her to bed, she begged me to tickle her back. I reached under her shirt and run my fingertips, hardly touching, round and round on her bony little back. She got the goose bumps and laughed till she couldn’t hardly breathe. We both got to laughing. Opal, she was a child knowed how to make do with the smallest little scrap of nothing, as far as attention.

  Mama, when I needed somebody to show me how to dig things out of the children’s ears and noses, seemed like she would rally for a while. She was the one knowed what to put on their bug bites and what kind of potion to give them for their fevers and how to get them to mind and what dangerous things it would be all right to let them do. I didn’t know none of that yet. Many’s the time I sent them to her to get permission. If they come to me with a problem, I’d tell them, go ask Mama. She might be sick, but it never occurred to me she wasn’t in charge. I counted on her for the things I didn’t know, and I learned ever day how many things that was.

  * * *

  Dacia, now, like I said, she spent a lot of time with Mama. But when she was with me and the children, seemed like she couldn’t help but act hateful, and things would get out of hand too fast to wait for Mama’s word. One day the colander went missing, which I needed to drain my noodles. I rummaged through the top drawer of the little chest we had next to the stove. I asked Dacia had she saw it.

  “How comes you to ask me?” she said. “How come I’m always the one?”

  “What’s a colander?” Opal said. She was a slow talker.

  “That thing with the holes—you know,” I said.

  “Holes?” Opal said.

  I shut the top drawer and opened the middle one, though I knowed good and well it was just rags and towels. “You know, like a bowl. You strain things with it. Blue painted.”

  Dacia laughed. “She don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Stop picking your toes in the house,” I said to her.

  “You ain’t my mama.”

  I pawed through the linen drawer. No colander. Meanwhile, my noodles was laying there in their cooking water, getting mushy.

  Nobody hardly used the bottom drawer—the pull on the right side was missing, and there was a bent nail in the hole. So you had to grab aholt of the nail and press the nailhead hard against the hole to lever it. You opened the drawer a little at a time, unjamming it, left and then right.

  Now Dacia jumped up off the floor. “It ain’t in there,” she said. “Don’t look in there.” She reached out to take aholt of my arm.

  “Lord, what’ve you got hid in there?” I leaned over and fought with the drawer till all the sudden it popped out, and the junk spilled out on the floor.

  “Damn it!” I seen right away that there wasn’t no colander. “Clean this up,” I said to Dacia. “Hurry up, before somebody steps on—”

  Dacia quick pounced on something and hid it behind her back. I saw a flash of white.

  “What have you got? What’re you hiding?”

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “Feathers,” Opal said.

  I reached to grab Dacia, and she took off running. I don’t know why she done that—she knowed I could outrun her. I grabbed aholt of her skirt just as she got to the door. I felt it rip as I pulled her toward me, and I grabbed a handful of material and yanked her hard enough I know it hurt her around the waist. I turned her around and grabbed the feathery thing out of her hands.

  Evidently it was something she’d made—two pieces of corrugated cardboard tore into ovals, about the size and shape of Mama’s turkey platter. Dacia’d stuck white chicken feathers into the folds of the cardboard. There was dried blood smeared on the quills and matted in the downfeathers and the hairs, and there was tiny, crooked trails in the cardboard where the silverfish had chewed on it. There was a string that held the two pieces together. I turned it over in my hands. I tried to picture what in the Sam Hill it might be.

  Now I knowed the kind of things children done, the strange, secret things, but Dacia was like to confound me. She done things, like peel the labels off unopened store-bought can goods, that she didn’t get nothing out of but grief. She stole things she had no earthly use for. She’d get up in the night and set out on the porch and fall asleep out there and like to freeze to death. And she’d set there on Mama’s bed telling stories wasn’t nobody listening to. And now this. What was this get-up supposed to be? An Indian headdress? And why hide it in the junk drawer? Who’d want it?

  “What was you thinking, bringing this filthy thing in the house?” I said to her. “It’s got blood on it, and look here, see these holes? That’s bugs done that. I wouldn’t wonder it’s drawed ants into that drawer! Or maggots! Ain’t I got enough to do without cleaning up after your filth? Well?”

  Dacia looked down at the floor. “It’s just something I made to play with.”

  She was like to lie right to your face, and I couldn’t hardly abide that. “Go cut me a switch, liar.” I put the feathered thing on the table.

  She never said no more, just went outside and come back with a green twig and stood there with her back turned toward me. When I seen she’d stripped the leaves off of it—to give it more sting—I didn’t have the heart to whip her. I just swatted one leg a little bit.

  She eyed the feathery thing on the table and said, “Could I keep it? Out in the smokehouse?”

  I throwed my hands up. “The rats’ll eat it—don’t you know nothing?”

  But she snatched it off of the table and run outside, and that was the last we seen of it.

  * * *

  We was living close to the bone, and you’d think it couldn’t keep on like that, but it did, for five years. Mama’d be puny for weeks, and then one day she’d get better, and she’d wander out into the front room with her slippers on. I’d say, “Mama! You’re up!” and she’d act like it was normal. She’d walk to the stove and scramble some eggs, or she’d wash out a diaper, and Daddy’d sleep in the bed with her that night.

  One time I remember, she made a green-apple pie, though she forgot to peel the apples. Dacia remarked on it. I told Mama it didn’t make no difference, it was a wonderful pie, but Mama set at the table and bawled and never tried to hide it. The twins started up bawling, too, and Opal, she looked stricken. Mama never said a word, just got up and went to her room and got back in the bed.

  Ever little bit, Alta Bea’s mama would send over food. She’d say they was expecting company but the company didn’t come after all, so would we help them eat up this ham before it went bad? Things like that. I reckon sometimes she give Mama money, too, though Mama never said so, being proud. Alta Bea’s mama, she was awful good to us.

  Alta Bea, whether she was bringing food or not, she’d come over and visit. Just blended in, seemed like. First thing she always done was ask me, how was Mama doing. I’d say, “Some better” or “The same.”

  Sometimes me and her—and probably Opal dragging the twins in a little wagon—why, we’d go for a walk. Alta Bea’s folks had two or three sections of ground, and she knowed all the secret hiding places out in the pastures or in the tree rows or down in the washes. Might be a tumbledown outbuilding, maybe a shed or old homestead cabin, or just a stone foundation with burn
t timbers laying around. You might find some odd thing—a curry comb, a perfume bottle, halter fittings. You might see tracks of a wildcat or a coyote. One time we found a nest of baby field mice no bigger than the end of your finger. The children begged me to take them home, which we did. We put them in a shoebox and fed them grass, but of course they died overnight.

  Alta Bea went through grade school and then skipped some grades in high school and graduated. We heard she got all As, which she always had, and evidently high school wasn’t no harder for her than grade school.

  All that time she never stopped nagging me, go to school, go to school. Most days, I sent Dacia—and Opal when she got big enough—but I didn’t go as regular, only when Mama had the strength to look after the twins. And when we had shoes to wear, which Mama insisted on. If we had one pair, we’d take turns going. The schoolteacher, Miss Snow, she come to the house once in a while, and I’d make sure to send the children regular after that, at least for a week or two. Miss Snow seen how it was for me, and she’d leave me books to read from. I liked stories about talking animals best, but if a book was about people, I liked stories about kings and queens and pirates. She left me them kind, along with arithmetic and geography and other school subjects. She also left paper for me to practice my penmanship, which I did sometimes at night.

  Alta Bea loaned me books, too, of course. It took me a long time to finish Five Little Peppers and How They Grew. I didn’t like it much. Didn’t seem like much of a made-up story, just real life. Me and Alta Bea talked about it like she wanted to, but we got into an argument as usual and she run home.

  Alta Bea also give me their old newspapers. Papers is handy—ain’t nothing better for washing windows—and I got plenty of use out of them. But I read them, too, whenever I had a minute. Alta Bea and them, they took the Obsidian Gazette, which come ever Wednesday. I most always read that one. The Kansas City paper, which come in the mail ever day, why, I at least looked over the titles when I could.

  Between the two of them, Alta Bea and Miss Snow got me in the habit of reading. I learned a lot that way.