I ain’t never forgot how I felt that winter. It’s like you’re a bug crawling around in a circle that don’t get no bigger nor smaller, and you don’t feel like you have no reason to keep crawling, but you do. The memory of throwing my baby on the floor kept floating into my mind, lit onto me like a moth, brushed against me, drug down my spirit while I was doing some everday thing. There it was, there it was, and there it was again—when his face touched me, I throwed the baby down on the floor. I did.
Sometimes life scrapes your insides raw.
* * *
Alta Bea had her baby in April, and Harold come and got me in the car. When I seen the baby’s face I about fell over, she was so pretty. I told Alta Bea, said, “She’s the prettiest baby I ever seen, look at that hair!” Alta Bea had that angelic look new mamas get, kind of dazed, and she said, “Can I go to sleep now? Bring me a cigarette. Is she normal?” They called the baby Alice. Being around the baby, even just smelling her, it made me feel like there was hope in the world again.
I stayed and helped for a week and then come ever little bit for a month. Alta Bea, she was a big healthy gal, and she recovered well. On Decoration Day her and the baby and Harold come over and walked up to Will’s grave with me and Sam and the girls. Mrs. Whiteside, she was right—the lilacs was blooming, and there was plenty of them to decorate the grave with. To my mind, there’s no flower smells as good as lilacs, no perfume as sweet. Mrs. Whiteside, she’d also had a headstone put in, which later that day me and Sam went back up to the house and thanked her for. She stood at the doorway and never asked us in, and she acted like she was embarrassed we was even thanking her. I was just as glad we didn’t go in. It had been a hard day already.
Alta Bea, she started calling like she done before, only now she’d bring Alice with her. Alice was an easy baby—a rag doll, soft-jointed and roly-poly, not stiff and unhappy like some babies is. She was a balm to my misery, sure enough.
I remember one time, Alice must’ve been about two months old, me and Alta Bea was setting at the table visiting and drinking coffee. I was holding the baby stretched out on my forearms and facing me, and she blinked her little eyes whenever I laughed.
Alta Bea asked me, had I heard the latest rumor about the war in Europe.
“Don’t hardly pay attention no more, heard so many.” I stuck my lips out and burbled, and the baby pulled her head back and smiled.
“My neighbor said it was in the Kansas City paper. They might call up Harold and Sam’s unit.”
“Not the National Guard.” I shook my head. “I don’t believe that. They ain’t the army.” Sam and Harold, right out of high school they’d both joined up with the 35th Division of the Kansas and Missouri National Guard. Wasn’t no war going on then, and they needed the pay. Dora, she’d wrote me that William and Buck had registered for the draft but wasn’t called up. William was deferred because he run the co-op, and Buck had a low draft number.
“I hope you’re right,” Alta Bea said. “I don’t know what I’d do if I had to take care of Alice day and night.” She made a face. “It feels like I’m walking knee-deep in calf’s-foot jelly. Like I’m always about to fall asleep, but I never quite get there.” She fidgeted with something in her pocket, her silver cigarette case I reckoned.
I didn’t know what to say. Harold wanted her to get a girl to come in, but Alta Bea wouldn’t have no stranger in the house.
“It’s a struggle to even think,” she said.
I nodded. “Seems like they fill up all the time there is, sure enough.” I pulled the baby up to my nose and smelled of her hair.
“I’ve never watched the clock so much in my life,” Alta Bea said. “You know, counting down to the next thing—lunch, her nap, her next bottle, Harold coming home. The next thing. It seems to take forever.”
I swung Alice up and back, and she took to giggling. When I looked up at Alta Bea, a big smile on my face, I seen she had tears in her eyes. If I didn’t know better, I would’ve swore she was jealous.
“Here, Mother, you take her for a while.” I held her out.
But Alta Bea stood up and carried her coffee cup to the stove. “Do you think it’s possible to be too wrapped up in your children?”
I thought about that. “Well, you can spoil them, if that’s what you mean, but I don’t think you can love them too much.”
“No, I mean—can you make your own happiness depend too much on theirs?”
This was one of them things Alta Bea said to me that didn’t make no sense. I said, “You can’t make nobody happy if they’re bound and determined not to be.” I was thinking about Dacia. But then when I tried to remember something I’d done especially just to make her happy, the only one was that time in the smokehouse when me and her and Opal played house and Dacia mimicked people and I laughed, and we sung songs. It stung I couldn’t remember any other times. I told myself there must be some, I just couldn’t remember.
Alta Bea’s face crumpled. “There’s so much to think about—and nothing to think about.” She got out a cigarette and held it unlit between her fingers. “You’ve known me forever. You knew me as a girl.” She leaned over toward me. “Don’t you remember how I used to be?”
I smiled. “Remember that time we played with paper dolls? And your mama, she—”
“For Christ’s sake!” She smacked her hand on the table, and the baby startled. I stretched her out on my legs and rocked her.
“Now I can’t think about anything beyond, you know . . .” She looked around. “Supper.” Her mouth wrinkled.
“Oh! That reminds me,” I said. “What time is it? I ain’t even shelled the beans yet.” I started to get up.
She put out her hand. “Will you watch her for a minute?” She put the cigarette in her mouth and slumped out the door to the porch.
I felt like I should go after her and keep her company while she smoked, but I didn’t. I just set there and petted Alice and smelled her. Alta Bea, when she got to talking this way, she made me jumpy. I was glad we’d finally made the last payment on the note we owed her, though she still had a way of making me feel obligated to her.
* * *
Summer come, and then fall, and then it was Will’s birthday. Me and Sam talked about it that morning and decided we’d just go visit the grave by ourselves. I said, maybe the girls wouldn’t notice the date. But at breakfast Dacia said, “Isn’t nobody going to say nothing about the baby’s birthday?” so the four of us went up there. It turned out Opal had made him a little stuffed duck with big, floppy lips that was supposed to be its beak, which she left at the grave. Dacia wanted to stay home from school, but I made them both go.
Ever day, bit by bit, it felt like us four was getting used to things as they was. Dora wrote at least two times a week, and ever little bit she sent drawings or things the twins had made, and she said she always had them kiss the envelope where she sealed it. I did the same—wrote and sent things, I mean—but the girls was too big to be kissing no envelope, both of them.
I lived for Dora’s letters. Wasn’t hardly a day went by I didn’t think about the twins, wondering what they was up to at a given minute.
I still carried an ache inside, and once in a while a terrible feeling come over me, but now it seemed like the kind of pain you get when you’re healing. The pain meant that the wound had blood feeding into it, so you knowed it would eventually seal up and scar over.
* * *
Then when spring come, in April 1918, why, Sam and Harold’s unit did get called up for the Great War. We got a letter, and they only had a week to get ready. I know me and Alta Bea took them to the train, and I know Sam kissed me so hard it hurt my mouth, but that’s all I remember. It never seemed real at the time, no part of it. It was like I was walking through fog in a dream. Things went on like usual all around us—me and the girls and Alta Bea—but Sam and Harold was gone.
Partly just to keep ourselves busy, me and Alta Bea started putting up a lot of food on her stove. With the free ga
s, you just lit the stove and it would stay how hot you put it. It stunk, and you had to light it ever time with a match and that scared me a little, but it was the first modern machine I ever used that I liked better than the old way.
One day when we was canning beets, two-three months after the men left, Alta Bea sliced into her finger with the knife. She swore and started crying, and then she said, “And I’m pregnant again!”
What was funny was, I was late, and just that morning I’d reckoned I was expecting, too. But I never said so now, not wanting to steal her thunder.
I jumped up and grabbed a rag to bind up her finger. We was standing side by side over the sink, and she put her arms around me and pulled me close and took to sobbing. “It must have happened the night before they left,” she said. “I was up late seeing to the baby, and Harold wouldn’t wait for me to put in the diaphragm, and I was out of the jelly.” She swore again and cried into my shoulder while I stood there and held on to her. After while she pulled away and set down at the table and blowed her nose.
“He did it on purpose,” she said. “He knew I—”
I couldn’t stand it no more. “I am, too.”
“What?”
“Expecting.”
Now her tears stopped and her face lit up. “Bertie,” was all she said, and in such a kindly way. I felt at peace. I loved my house again. I loved my life. I felt like I was woken up.
Wasn’t but a couple days later, when the girls was at school, I was on my knees scrubbing the floor when I felt a hot stream flowing out of me. For a moment I just stayed like I was. I told myself I had wet my pants. But when I looked down, it was blood all right. I laid on my side and pulled my legs up. I heard a noise and then realized it was me, wailing, when a cramp hit me. After while I half turned on my back and set up. I didn’t have a lot of clothes to spare, but I knowed, in that instant, I would throw out that skirt.
Then I felt glad I hadn’t told the girls or wrote to Sam yet. I wouldn’t have to tell them nothing.
When I felt well enough to get up, I pulled myself out of my skirt and set on the chair. I started wadding up the skirt, and in the folds I seen the gray tissue, and inside it, the kidney bean with the two black dots. I don’t know what I thought it would look like—like a whole baby, only smaller, I reckon—but not this odd small thing. I leaned over and touched it with my fingertip—soft, sticky, hardening a bit as it cooled. Didn’t give off no smell different from the usual coppery stink of blood.
And then I felt myself break to pieces inside. Thoughts come through that’d been hidden in me for a long while. It seemed like the very flesh of my children bore God’s rebuke. There was plenty of reasons. I stabbed my own daddy, I wished him dead, and I was short with Dacia, impatient with her ways, and most of all, jealous of how Mama’d ruther spend time with her, even as a baby, than me. And Mama, how come I left her and went to the backhouse, and her all alone when she died? Worse yet, I never kept the family together. On her deathbed she’d give me a sacred task, to look after the children, and I failed it—I let things get worse and worse till there wasn’t nothing to do but everbody go different ways. And Will, when his cold face touched me I throwed him on the floor. And Timmy, I hadn’t thought about him for a long time, Timmy who I let wander off and drown in the Tenmile, wedged in the rocks. And then in spite of all I done wrong, God had give me Sam, who loved me more than anybody ever had, and now I’d lost two of Sam’s children, and who knowed when he would come back from the war so we could try again? Or if? I wondered, would I ever have children of my own, and the very thought made me lose all my breath.
When I come to, I had to hurry to get everthing cleaned up and throwed out before the girls got home.
The next time I seen Alta Bea I told her I was mistaken, it was just my cycle being late, and I real quick asked her, what about them Lister’s towels, did they work better than rags when you had your flow? And how much did they cost? And had Alice got a new tooth? Felt like a new tooth coming in, there, could she feel it? And had she got a letter from Harold lately?
As time went by I felt my black misery calling to me, only this time I pushed it away. I seen clear, as clear as anything I ever seen, that this time it would kill me if I let it. I felt like I couldn’t dip a toe in it, I had to harden myself against it, and day by day I stared straight ahead and swallowed back my feelings and got stronger. I found out, I could wake up ever day and do what had to be done, and I let it be enough.
Chapter 18
As the months went by and the war went on, there was letters to be wrote ever day, and chickens to dress and ironing to do. Mrs. Whiteside, she give me work, and other people did, too. We needed it. In the war Sam was only making half of what he done when he was home. We got by, is all.
Me and Alta Bea, living outside of Wiley and not being churchgoers, we didn’t get to town much. Alta Bea wasn’t one to neighbor with the folks in Oil Hill, neither. When me or her did leave the house, it was to go to each other’s house. She got the paper, and we kept up with the war news that way. We’d read about battles at the Marne, the Meuse-Argonne Forest, the Belleau Wood—places I had no idea where they was or how to say them—and then months later we’d get a letter and find out if Sam and Harold had been in them. Hardly nobody in Wiley went to the war, being farmers or oil workers. It seemed far away.
I did take pleasure in Opal, couldn’t help it. She had a bright and happy spirit, and though she was quiet, there wasn’t no dimming her light. No matter how much gloom hung over the house, she went around acting happy, always curious. When she wasn’t sewing or in school, why, she’d run all over creation. She’d leave the house in the morning and not come home till dark set in. She loved playing in the oil field. Liked the racket, I reckon. Liked to watch the men, liked to listen to them holler. Probably heard some coarse language, and that probably sent a thrill up her spine, something a child like Opal craves ever little bit.
But Dacia, seemed like she couldn’t hardly stand to be in the same room with me. She’d bring up Will. She’d ask me questions she knowed the answers to, like she was a young child, just to be mean. Was he still in the ground, and wasn’t he cold? Had coyotes dug him up? Didn’t they dig up dead people? Did somebody shoot him, she asked me one time, and I told her of course not, now go do your chores and leave me be. She knowed where my sore places was, seemed like, and she delighted in poking them. Or not so much delighted as wondered what would happen and had to find out.
Just to torment me, she taught Opal a chant they done at school during recess—Kaiser Bill went up the hill to get a peek at France, Kaiser Bill come down the hill with bullets in his pants. Dacia thought it was dirty because it said “pants,” and she thought she was getting away with something, getting Opal to sing a dirty song. Of course the joke was on her, because it wasn’t about underpants. But Dacia relished it anyhow.
Ever time she poked me like this, I felt like the cords in my neck would bust, but I muffled my wrath and left the room ruther than give her the satisfaction.
I had bad dreams ever little bit. When I couldn’t sleep at night, I talked to Sam—pretending like he could hear me—and told him my troubles. I tried to picture him in a muddy hole in the Argonne Forest, listening to the big guns booming a few miles off, like he talked about in his letters, but I couldn’t. I woke up tired and mean. I jerked the skillet around and broke the eggs, slammed the plate on the table.
Alta Bea had the baby in October, another girl. Named her Ruby. I helped with this one, too, though I never took as much pleasure in it as I done with Alice. Even with a new baby it felt like life was mean and small, there was a filthy, bloody war on, and things might go on this way forever.
To our great relief the war ended in November. But a lot of the soldiers didn’t come home right away, Sam and Harold included. Sam wrote me from France that they never knowed, from day to day, was they coming home. Christmas come and went, and no Sam. I felt a cold fury inside. How come he couldn’t come home? He wr
ote me, be patient, which was just like him. Wasn’t nothing to do but wait.
That was the winter of the big flu. A couple dozen people we had connections to in Wiley and Oil Hill come down with it. Mrs. Whiteside, she laid in bed for six weeks with a fever and couldn’t hardly get her wind, but she got over it. I was worried Alta Bea might catch it, and her with two babies at home, but she never did.
I got the girls to school most days. In January, Dacia broke her arm playing Crack the Whip on the ice. She cried and asked for Sam, wanting him to play her a song on his teeth like he done. I told her to quit acting like a baby, didn’t she know we all missed him.
* * *
The day come, March 15, 1919, when I got a telegram from Sam saying him and Harold had arrived in New York City. Soon’s they could get a seat on a train, they’d be home. I bawled that night till my throat was raw.
Wasn’t but two weeks later, why, Sam and Harold did get home. Me, Opal, Dacia, and Alta Bea and her two girls went and met them at the train. Harold, he stood there for a minute blinking and looking around like he didn’t recognize nothing. But then Sam clapped him on the back, and Alta Bea and me and the girls, why, we pretty near run them over. At first Alta Bea’s babies screamed like they’d been shot, but we wasn’t surprised. Takes a while for little children to get used to growed men.
Sam, he like to busted his face smiling, and after while Harold put his arm around Alta Bea’s neck and wouldn’t hardly let go. I thought she might lose her balance.
We had Alta Bea’s car, and it’s hard to picture how we all got into it. I think Dacia, and maybe Opal, too, stood on the running boards.
Alta Bea drove. “Hard to believe it’s been three years since we moved to Kansas,” she said.
“Hard to believe it’s been a year since you left,” I said to Sam.
“Ain’t hard for me,” he said. “I believe ever damn minute of it.”
“War’s over!” Harold hollered. “Time to get rich, fat, and happy!” He stuck his head out the window and let the wind blow his hair. “No more oil field work for me! War’s over! You’re looking at a lease-grafter!” He brought his head back in and grabbed aholt of Alta Bea. “Time to get cracking! Gonna be a boy next time!”
All the Forgivenesses Page 22