All the Forgivenesses

by Elizabeth Hardinger

  I got John on his back and knelt next to him. I lifted up his shirt and seen that the rope was tied around his chest, and there was some slack in it before it looped around his neck. There was a red rope burn from his underarms up his shoulders where his weight had pulled on him. His eyes was big with fright, and he was crying. James, he was standing there bawling, too. It wasn’t hard for me to imagine how Daddy’d painted them boys a picture of how funny this trick would be. But if they ever did think it was funny, which I doubt, they didn’t no more.

  Daddy was laughing so hard he like to lost his breath. Tears was on his face.

  “What happened? What happened?” Alta Bea’s mother come running up with Opal, and one of the hired men followed, carrying a hay fork. Her and Opal was out of breath, and the hired man looked pale and shooken.

  I petted John’s face. I seen the heels of my hands was skinned and bleeding, with bits of sand buried in them, and now I felt it.

  Daddy leaned over and closed one nostril with his finger and blowed snot onto the ground. “You!” He pointed at me. “You should see your face!”

  I got to my feet, speechless with wrath.

  “What happened here?” Alta Bea’s mother said. “Is everyone—”

  Now Daddy left off laughing and bent over coughing for a while, finally letting go a glob of spit. He straightened up and wiped his face with his hand. “This ’n—this ’n—she ain’t never in her life knowed how to take a joke!”

  “Daddy, he hung John for a joke,” Dacia said to Alta Bea’s mother, who got a bewildered look on her face.

  Daddy looked down at the ground and shook his head. “Her mother, now, that one, she had a sense of humor.”

  Shame, burning shame, swept over me, and fury. I run and grabbed the hay fork from the hired man and turned toward Daddy. He took a couple steps back, and I held up that hay fork like a spear and run at him, aiming it at his heart. Drunk as he was, he still managed to step aside, and it got him on the arm, leaving a long red gash. You could see the bone and the meat, and I was surprised how much blood. Daddy yowled and fell down, grabbing at his arm like it had a two-day tick on it. He kept on yowling.

  “Die, you old fool! You Goddamn goat!” I hollered. “Die!” I screamed like a banshee, rageful.

  The children hollered, Alta Bea’s mama hollered, and the hired man wrapped his neckerchief around Daddy’s arm.

  Daddy started bellowing at me, and I bellowed back, and Alta Bea’s mother took aholt of me and drug me down the path into the house and pumped up a pitcher of water and had me to drink some, me and Dacia and Opal all three. Directly the twins come in, hanging their heads and bawling. Alta Bea’s mother wetted a towel and wrapped it around John’s chest. Dacia, she told her the whole story of what happened, and then she told it again. When she started to tell it a third time I told her to hush, and she give me a hateful look and went into the bedroom.

  Grateful as I was for our neighbor’s help, I suffered wave after wave of shame. Not for stabbing Daddy—I despised him, and I felt like I could never in this life forgive him—but for how bad things had gotten for the children who Mama had give me charge of. I knowed I had fell short of my duty to them. I was relieved when Alta Bea’s mother left the house, which I never would have imagined I would feel. I was glad, too, that Alta Bea wasn’t home and never seen what happened, though I imagine she heard plenty about it.

  The hired man, he took Daddy into town and got him sewed up. Fifty-two stitches, I heard. One thing I knowed—I couldn’t leave them children with their own daddy. No telling what kind of fool drunken thing he might do.

  * * *

  We didn’t see Daddy around the place for four-five days. When he come back, he had William and Buck with him, sent for from Kansas. Out the front window I seen them walking up to the house, and I went out on the front porch. I stood there with my arms folded. Daddy stopped a ways from the porch and said he was sorry, it was the drink made him do it, he was still grieving Mama, he knowed better, he wasn’t going to drink no more. He never looked me in the eye.

  “There’s work needs done around this place,” I said. “You mean to do any of it?”

  “You got a mouth on you. I’ll thank you to remember who—”

  Buck stepped in front of Daddy. “He said he ain’t going to drink no more. All’s he can do, Bertie.”

  William, he just frowned.

  “Me and William, we’ll be staying home for a while,” Buck said. “We talked it through. Daddy can sleep out in the barn with us. We’ll keep an eye on him.”

  I looked at William, but his eyes was cast down.

  “He gives you any trouble, he answers to us,” Buck said.

  “William?” I said.

  He nodded, still looking down.

  “He gives me any trouble, he better hope he don’t answer to me,” I said.

  Daddy, he squinted in my direction and snorted like a bull, but he didn’t say no more.

  “You hear me?” I said.

  The look he give me was pure bile, and I give it right back. Couldn’t help it, seemed like.

  Chapter 8

  Alta Bea’s mama, she sent over a pork butt for us to have on that first Thanksgiving Day without Mama. I roasted it with turnips and onions and made biscuits. William and Buck, they made sure to be there. Buck had went to town and brought home a bag of horehound candy for the children. I give them each a piece before dinner to keep their mouth busy, what with all the good smells in the house. Horehound wasn’t their favorite kind, but they took it anyhow. I was glad to have it—it’s good to have in the house for coughs. Me, I had squirreled away some oranges, one each, for a surprise. I set aside my grief for the day. I wanted the children to have good memories of Thanksgiving.

  Daddy showed up in time for dinner. We hadn’t seen him for a while, and here he walked in with his hat in his hand. He’d took a bath and combed his hair, and he smelled of Bay Rum toilet water. He brought a bucket of apples, which he claimed he picked himself. “Wonders never cease,” William said to me in my ear. Daddy and Buck, they went and set out on the front porch, talking. We had the door open to let in some air, and you could see their breath.

  William drug Mama’s trunk in from the bedroom and put a cloth over the top of it for the children. He brought in some fruit crates for them to set on, and he’d borrowed two extra chairs from somewhere for the table, so everbody had a place. I’d cooked some of the apples in the pan with the pork, and it was sweet and juicy. We had a feast like we hadn’t had in a good long time, since before Mama died.

  Halfway through, Opal said, “Dacia, do Alta Bea.” I don’t know what made her think of Alta Bea. With Opal, you never knowed what she was thinking.

  “Alta Bea! Alta Bea!” The twins got to chanting, like children will at that age.

  Dacia put down her spoon. Seemed like she loved it when we asked her to do her imitations. Now she put her nose in the air and looked around the table. “Well, well, well,” she said. “Who might all you folks be?”

  James and John, they started up laughing. Not that they really knowed what was going on, but they could tell it was supposed to be funny.

  Dacia broke into a smile and then stuck her nose in the air again. “When’s the hired man gonna get here to do up these dishes?” she said, and everbody busted out laughing, even me.

  “And I need somebody to wipe off my bottom!” Well, of course the twins screamed at this, but the rest of us, our smiles faded. We all thought the world of Alta Bea. She was always friendly even if she did have some strange notions. She couldn’t help how she was raised no more than nobody else. It was all right to make fun of her, but now Dacia was being mean.

  “Wipe off my bottom!” James screamed, and then John.

  “Ha ha ha,” I said. “Eat your dinner now, else you won’t get no orange.”

  “We got oranges?” Opal said, almost in tears.

  Now the twins jumped up and started dancing around the room shouting, “Oranges, orange
s, oranges,” and I myself got to laughing so hard I come to tears.

  * * *

  After dinner, Daddy said he had someplace to be and left the house. We put the twins down in Mama’s bed and shut the door. Dacia, she went outside to play with the dogs and get out of doing dishes—not that she said nothing about the dishes, just the dogs—and Opal set her foot to the treadle, like she had been teaching herself for months. I didn’t know what she was working on, but I reckoned it was a Christmas present. The twins didn’t have no fancy Santy Claus stockings—we just hung up their regular socks—and maybe she was making them some. Come Christmas, she give the boys stockings with embroideryed lambs, stars, and angels on them.

  So me and William and Buck cleared off the table. I washed, William wiped, and Buck put away.

  “How come you ain’t singing?” Buck asked me. “You always used to sing when you done dishes.”

  I scrubbed a fork and didn’t say nothing.

  He started in singing but soon trailed off. “Don’t you like singing no more?”

  “Don’t like much of nothing, tell the truth.”

  “Ain’t you bearing up?” He flipped the towel over his shoulder and put his hand on the back of my neck.

  I shook it off. Then I throwed the dishrag in the water, and greasy drops flew up on the wall. “I’m bearing up! Don’t nobody say I ain’t bearing up!” It just boiled out of me. “Who said that? Dacia? What’d she say? Can’t nobody say I ain’t a good mother to them children!”

  “Oh, Bertie,” Buck said. “You’re having it the worst of any of us.”

  “Quit saying that! Everbody just quit creeping around me like I’m some kind of a china doll! I ain’t!” I felt like a fool, hollering at him, when I was trying to prove how good I was bearing up. I felt my shame, tell the truth, and I took off and run out the back door. I heard Opal say something, sounding worried like she was like to do, but I run out on the porch anyhow.

  I leaned my hands on the pump and started bawling like a baby. William, he come out and put both of his big arms around me and held tight on to me while I cried. He never told me not to, he just let me. Buck, I seen him standing back by the door.

  It took me a long while to wind down. A couple times, when I thought I was about to get control of myself, it started back up again. But the time finally come when I was just standing there gulping air and shivering. Buck come and wrapped my shawl around me. The two of them, they was in their shirtsleeves.

  “Me and Buck been talking,” William said.

  “We was going to wait, but seems like the time’s come,” Buck said.

  I pulled out my hankie and blowed my nose. “For what?”

  “The children, they’s too much for one girl,” William said.

  “Even you,” Buck said.

  I took in a ragged breath.

  “And Daddy, he ain’t much help.” This from Buck.

  “Worse than no help,” William said.

  I filled up my chest with cold air and got to coughing. They waited.

  William took aholt of my elbows and turned me to him. “I been seeing this girl, Dora Darling. We’re fixing to get married come spring.”

  I opened and closed my mouth like a fish. “How’m I supposed to pay bills?” I wanted to feel glad for him, but I didn’t have it in me.

  He took a deep breath and said it all at once: “Dora, she said, her and me, we can take in the twins.”

  All the tears went out of me, and all the breath at once. I swallowed. “Oh, is that a fact? The two of you’s deciding things now?”

  “You got to hear us out,” Buck said. He looked serious, which he hardly ever done.

  “I don’t got to hear nothing,” I said. “Who do you think’s been looking after them boys since the day they was born? Ain’t nobody going to—”

  William gripped my arms till they hurt. “I got me a job—I’m taking over the grain elevator in Trenton,” he said. “It’s only fifteen mile. You can come and see them whensoever you feel like it.”

  “You listen to me, the both of you.” I looked from one to the other. “Nobody’s taking my twins—not you, and not this Dorie, or whatever she calls herself.” After months of confusion and dread, it was a pure relief to have no doubt about something. I knowed my brothers wasn’t going to get the best of me. I never felt so sure of nothing before.

  “Bertie,” Buck said.

  “You know Buck’s been wanting to open a barber shop in town,” William said.

  “You think I don’t have things I’m wantin’? This ain’t about wantin’.”

  “I took a place, corner Fifth and Adams,” Buck said. “It’s got rooms over.”

  “Did you now.”

  William said, “Daddy can live up there. Old man can visit with the customers while they’s waiting.”

  I give a bitter laugh. “And you think Daddy’s gonna go along with this wild hair? You got the same daddy I’ve got? You ever knowed a man had more pride? And live in town? Where’s he going to keep his horses?”

  Buck shivered. “We stick together, won’t have no choice.”

  “Far as his horses, he’s pissed that away pretty much,” William said. “And it’s not like he’s doing you no good around the farm. He’s got to see that.”

  “Oh, you ain’t forgot about me, then. What’ve you got planned for me? Walk the plow with Opal pulling it? Sell my favors to pay the rent?”

  William let go of me so fast he like to throwed me on the porch floor.

  “It ain’t like that,” Buck said. “We got to think of the children’s sakes. It can’t go on like it’s been.”

  “We thought—well, we thought you might find an old lady in town needs took care of, get room and board for the three of you girls,” William said, like he was coaxing a willful calf. “Me and Buck, we could help with expenses, too.”

  Nobody said nothing. We stood there blowing steam out our mouths.

  “I don’t want you here no more today,” I said after while. “I want you to go to wherever Daddy’s gone off to, or wherever the hell you want to, but leave my house.”

  “You got to hear us out,” Buck said again, but William, he’d already jumped off the porch, and he was walking away stiff-legged as fast as he could.

  “You mind me, Buck,” I said. “Ain’t nobody taking a one of my children, not a one. You do what you want to—I don’t care if I don’t never see neither one of you again. But don’t you think nobody’s going to raise up them boys but me.”

  He opened his mouth, but then he shoved his hands in his pockets and walked off after William.

  “Nobody!” I hollered after him.

  Then I set down on the steps and wadded up my shawl and pressed my face in it and screamed till my throat give out, because I knowed they was right. I seen my future, and the children’s, and I knowed we couldn’t all stay together.

  But the notion of losing the twins, after Mama give me the sacred task of raising them, it hollowed me out. I’d knowed them since they took their first breath in this world. I knowed their boyish ways, their fascination with natural things, their pure joys, their bright, wild hearts—I knowed them like they was my very own. If I had to put up with Dacia, how come I couldn’t at least have the boys for consolation? Of course, this thought shamed me. I had to let the twins go for their own sakes, not mine, or what was love for? And in that moment, I realized I did love them, which I’d never thought about before, or thought about what it meant. And my sorrow was greater than my shame, and I cried into my shawl for a long time.

  * * *

  That night, I felt like my eyes was swole to bursting. Sleep didn’t come, so I wrapped up in a blanket and went outside and set on the front porch. The air was cold and clear, and the stars felt close. When I seen a falling star, I thought about something Alta Bea had told me—how it took millions of years for us to see a falling star after it happened way out there. I remembered the yellow-white light beams I used to see in the woods back home—sparkling w
ith insect wings and crumbs of leaf and dust—and I tried to picture light beams so far away they didn’t reach the earth for millions of years.

  “What’re you doing out here?” come Dacia’s voice from behind me, and of course I like to jumped out of my skin.

  “Jesus Christ!” I said.

  “You swore.” She hadn’t lit a candle nor made a sound. She was standing there in the dark.

  “You like to scared the daylights out of me.” I turned around, but I couldn’t hardly make her out in the shadows.

  “You said ‘Jesus Christ.’ You ain’t going to Heaven.”

  I turned back around. “That’s not something—”

  “You won’t see Mama. She’s in Heaven, which you know good and well.”

  I didn’t want to get in a fight with her. “Why don’t you come and sit by me for a minute?” I patted the spot.

  She didn’t answer.

  “You’ll catch your death of cold. Come on.”

  Again she didn’t say nothing, and I looked around to see was she still there. I seen the toes of one foot on the porch floor. I turned back. “If you ain’t going to come and sit by me, then go on back to bed.”

  “No.”

  I don’t reckon she could have said nothing that would shock me more. “What did you say to me?”

  “You can’t tell me what to do no more.”

  “Dacia. It’s late. Don’t make me—”

  “You ain’t my mama.”

  I stood up and brushed the dew off my skirt. “No, I ain’t. But I’m the one that’s stuck with you.” I hated how bitter that come out.

  Now she stepped forward. “I know something about Mama you don’t.”

  “What.” My teeth was on edge. I heard it in my voice.

  “She wanted to go to Heaven for a long time. She never wanted to take care of us no more. She wasn’t bearing up.”

  “Hush, that’s . . .” The word that come to me was blasphemy.

  “She told me.”

  “That’s a lie.” I took a step around her to go back in the house.

  She reached out her hand, and I stepped back. I realized Dacia had hardly never touched me in no kind of a way.