All the Forgivenesses

by Elizabeth Hardinger

  Sam waited till I stopped laughing. “We can’t just think of ourself no more.”

  “But changing jobs? Living in the oil field? After all that, what if Dacia comes back?”

  He shrugged. “They’re here now, the three of them, ever day.” He stared down at the table. “For them, a day’s a long time.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Their mama—that might happen, or might not. Meanwhile, they need to be fed and looked after ever day, rain or shine.”

  We each thought our own thoughts for a while. Pretty soon I said, “What do you think Mama meant—Dacia was her on the inside, and I was her on the outside?”

  He shook his head. “Nobody ain’t nobody else, seems to me like.” He lifted the saucer to his mouth and drunk.

  “I’m serious.” I heard the irritation in my voice.

  “Fact is, we may never know what Dacia was thinking. We got to live with that.”

  I shivered. “I don’t see how, when you don’t know, day by day, is she going to come back after them. I don’t see how.”

  “Them kids need you to, Bertie. You and me both.”

  “I don’t see how,” I said.

  “I don’t expect it’ll get any easier, time goes by.”

  We both set for a while. Then he said, “You know me and Murphy’s been friends for years. He’ll do right by us.”

  “You been independent all your life pretty much. You think you can work for somebody else?”

  “Shit.” He got up, smacked his chair against the edge of the table, and dumped out the rest of his coffee in the slop bucket.

  I felt the sting of his reproach, but I couldn’t understand what we was arguing about.

  “You coming to bed?” he said.

  “How come you’re mad?”

  “I ain’t mad.” He stomped off to the bedroom.

  I set there asking myself, what was he wroth about? What was we fighting about? And that same old question—what did Mama mean? What in the Sam Hill did she know about me inside? Far as I could tell, she only ever paid attention to my outside. It seemed like this was a deep-down mystery I could never get to the bottom of.

  I pictured Dacia living in that tent, cold in the cold and hot in the heat. Wasn’t no doubt she had suffered, and all alone except for a man I wouldn’t cross the street to say hello to, and, time was, neither would she. But me and Sam had suffered, too, with her leaving home like she done, no note or nothing. All the years we dangled, not knowing. I wouldn’t wish that on a dog.

  I hated feeling like so much in my life come down to Dacia. She was like a hair stuck in my mouth, always had been. I couldn’t swallow her down, couldn’t spit her out.

  * * *

  The next day was a Sunday, so we all had breakfast together after chores. Trouble would only eat if you put one bite on his plate at a time, which Hiram done.

  As we was finishing up, Sam said why didn’t we all get in the truck and take a ride. Sarah like to had a fit. She loved riding in the truck almost as much as she loved riding a horse.

  Soon’s Sam turned west, I said, “We going to the Murphy field?” To the best of my recollection, it was eight miles west and two south.

  “Just giving the children a joyride,” he said.

  “Joyride!” Sarah hollered. She was setting in between the two of us. The boys, they was in the bed of the truck.

  Sam started singing “Comin’ Round the Mountain,” and me and Sarah picked it up. I knowed good and well what he was up to, and sure enough, when we got to the Murphy field, he turned in there. It had derricks and pumpjacks scattered around like Whiteside’s, but Murphy’s also had a dozen tarpaper houses in a row along the dirt access road. Sam pulled up by the first one, closest to the main road.

  We all set there and looked at it. First thing I noticed, it was set permanent on cement blocks, and not just laying on skids. Plus, somebody had built a porch on the front. I didn’t think I could live without a porch.

  But the house itself, it looked forlorn. Not like the Whiteside house had when we first got there, with things broken and falling off and the siding getting eat up by bushes, but like a house in a fairy tale—dark and droopy, a place where elves or goblins might live. Wasn’t hardly no trees to protect it from the wind. Tin roof, now that would be noisy. And not much more than a stone’s throw from the closest oil rig. Bound to smell.

  “Oh my,” I said.

  “Oh my,” Sarah said. Sounded so much like Dacia I like to swallowed my tongue.

  “Water pump’s right in the kitchen!” Sam said. “Come on, you’ve got to see the inside.”

  The house was hot as an oven inside, and dark. Five rooms, but it seemed smaller because it was so dark, and it never had no lean-to you could use as a summer kitchen. It was decent, but it wasn’t near as nice as our house at Whiteside’s.

  One thing, though. The floors in the front room and the kitchen had linoleum tacked on. It looked brand-new, and it had pink cabbage roses on it. I loved that linoleum, tell the truth, not just for the roses but because I love a floor you can scrub clean. Wood can soak up grease till you can’t hardly get it out. I suspicioned Sam had something to do with that linoleum.

  The children run through each room, looked for a second, and then run out the door to look around out there. Me and Sam ended up in the front room by ourself.

  “What do you think?” he said.

  “Pretty roses.”

  He smiled.

  “Seems like we’d be going backward, though,” I said.

  The smile faded. “You don’t like it? Gas heat? Gas stove? Pump in the kitchen?” He looked bewildered.

  “I don’t want to leave the Whiteside house. I love that house. Remember—”

  “It’s Will’s grave, ain’t it?”

  I took a big breath.

  “We can visit it anytime you want to,” he said. “Anytime.”

  “I know.”

  “What, then?”

  I looked around. “I want to stay where we’re at.”

  Now he took aholt of my arms. “You know we can’t.”

  I swallowed hard.

  “You know we’ve got to do this,” he said. “The house, the job, all of it.” He never said “for the children’s sake,” but I knowed that was what he meant.

  I twisted out of his arms and walked over to the kitchen window. Outside, it looked bleak. We was only just off the road. Trucks went by regular, and dust hung everwhere. There was bound to be rocks and sand burrs, and, with hardly no trees, seemed like the wind would scour everthing down to the nub. Smell of oil outside, and tarpaper inside. I wasn’t used to luxury, for sure, but this was a step down, couldn’t he see that? And for what? What if Dacia come waltzing into town next week?

  I said to him, “But what if she comes back for them?”

  “Which are you more afraid of—that she will, or she won’t?”

  I stiffened. There was a silence, and then I just said it. “If she don’t come back, I can’t never tell her how wrong I was about Mama. How sorry I am. No way to ask her for forgiveness. But if she does come back . . .”

  Now he walked up behind me and tried to embrace me, but I pushed him away. Still looking out the window, I said, “Can you imagine how much she must hate me? I wouldn’t blame her.”

  He took aholt of my wrist and put his mouth close to my ear. “She ain’t never coming back.”

  I cried out, and this time when I tried to pull away, he held on tight. He said, “The way I look at it, she’s another one we lost.”

  I started bawling and kept at it for a while. I couldn’t stand the idea of Dacia being lost like me and Sam’s own children, lost to us and lost to her children, and her soul lost in the wilderness. I wanted her and me to set down together, to talk it all out—patient and kind and merciful, the both of us—just gaze at each other in compassion and say all the things, answer all the questions, admit all the lies and jealousy and pride and fear that had built up between us back when we har
dly knowed each other. I wanted to be able to believe her, believe everthing she said, about Mama or anything else, get to know her truly. I felt like I had a deep and abiding love for her which I never had give voice to, and I needed to hear it maybe more than she did. I had always had a secret picture in my mind, of me and her setting calmly together, and just now this picture played in front of my mind’s eye, and I craved it, I craved speaking and hearing the plain truth of her life and mine. I didn’t see how I could surrender them children to her without it. And yet it felt like it was a dream, a fairy tale that would never come true.

  Finally, I asked Sam, “How come she done it? How come her to send them here, do you think?”

  “Turn around. I said, turn around.”

  I sighed and turned to face him.

  “Same reason your Mama give you her children.” Now he took my face in his hands and looked at me and said, slowly, “To save their lives.”

  I begun trembling. I so wanted to believe him. If he was right, if Dacia felt like I would be a good mother to the children, maybe me and Dacia—maybe it could come true.

  I was full of feelings I wasn’t brave enough to share with him, so I turned back around. I felt hot, more than I could bear, and I reached over and tried to raise up the window. I had to lean way over on my tiptoes, but even when I pushed my hardest, it wouldn’t budge. I felt my fear turning to wrath, like it often done.

  Sam spooned me and worked on lifting the window.

  “Stop it,” I said. “You’re hurting my neck.”

  “Move then.”

  I slipped out from under him and watched him wrestle with the window. “I don’t like this place,” I said.

  He made an angry noise and throwed his hands up. Then he turned to me. “How come you to be so hard? Just when things is going so good for us?”

  I seen it wasn’t no use—we could go back and forth like this forever—and I just didn’t have the heart for it, on top of everthing else.

  I give a big sigh. “Where we going to put the chickens? I ain’t moving here till you get me a chicken house built.” I felt how twisted my lips was.

  He glared at me for a second and then give me a small smile. “Hiram, I expect he’ll build you one, you ask him to.”

  * * *

  Opal took time off of work to help me pack, and she walked up to the big house with me to tell Mrs. Whiteside we was moving. I about died when Mrs. Whiteside busted into tears right there at the door, which was about the last thing I expected. She had always seemed like a tough old bird to me, bearing the pain from her crippled bones without hardly a word. I looked at Opal, who stood there like me, her eyes wide.

  In a minute Mrs. Whiteside turned inside and limped over and set down heavy in her cushion chair. Opal went into the kitchen and got her a glass of water and set it on the table next to her.

  She took out a hankie and wiped her eyes, though she ignored the water. “How come don’t you want to live here anymore?” she said to me. She acted like Opal wasn’t even there. It occurred to me she seen Opal, the one that made her daughter-in-law’s wedding dress, as hired help.

  I explained about Sam’s new job, the free house, the free gas, the pension.

  “Don’t be that way,” she said.

  “What way?”

  She glared at me. “I don’t need the rent. I could let it go as long as need be.”

  This surprised me. It never would have occurred to me to ask for such a thing.

  She set up straight as she could. “I grew up in that house. I can’t have strangers living there.”

  “We was strangers when we moved in.”

  “And what about your baby?” she said. “Who’s going to decorate his grave?” Now she frowned at Opal, but Opal just gazed back without no expression.

  “We’ll come over regular,” I said.

  “With strangers living in the house?” she hollered.

  I felt myself start to crumple. I never imagined she would act like this. I looked over at Opal, who give a little shrug.

  “People are so ungrateful,” she said. “They don’t appreciate what you do for them.”

  Now that made me mad. “I’m a lot of things, but ungrateful ain’t one of them.” I felt my knees shaking.

  “Me too,” Opal said, sweet as a child.

  Mrs. Whiteside leaned back and took in a noisy breath. “Well, I never.”

  “Well, I never neither,” Opal said, smiling.

  Mrs. Whiteside stared at her for a second and then me. “I can’t have strangers living there.”

  Opal said, “Well, that ain’t none of our affair, of course.”

  Ain’t none of our affair, of course—now that wasn’t nothing I could imagine myself saying, but I felt how perfect it was. I almost laughed, I was so proud of her. But I didn’t, out of fear of offending Mrs. Whiteside.

  Then the two of us nodded to her and hustled out of that dim, sorrowful house. As we made our way down the hill toward home, I said to Opal, “I still feel sorry for her.”

  She shook her head. “Don’t waste your pity. She don’t want it.”

  “What does she want, then?”

  She laughed. “For you to do everthing she says, is all.”

  This startled me, raw as it was, but I felt like she was right. Mrs. Whiteside helped us, but she wouldn’t let us help her, or thank her, and that way she kept us on her string. She reminded me of Mama in this way. She didn’t look like her or talk like her, sure enough—Mrs. Whiteside was short with people, and Mama, if she was unhappy with you, she was long. It was the difference between Kansas people and people back home, I reckoned. But Mama and Mrs. Whiteside was alike in one respect—the both of them would have their way or know the reason why.

  As for Opal, she had growed up and learned how to deal with the world, all right. I didn’t know where she got it from—Lord knowed I didn’t have none of it—but I felt like there wasn’t no limit to what she might do in this life.

  Chapter 25

  It was August when we settled into the Murphy house. Sam, he nailed scrap boards up on the inside walls, and I pasted newspapers over them to cut the wind. Then me and Hiram painted over the newspapers, but I didn’t like how it looked—mealy—so I pasted up more newspapers to cover it up. We stuffed rags around the window frames to plug up the cracks where they never fit tight. In me and Sam’s bedroom we hung up the picture of me and my brothers at Daddy’s grave.

  Hiram, sure enough, he built me a chicken house, and out back of it he built a fortress for Trouble. Seemed like Hiram could build anything he set his mind to. Don’t seem like a hidey-box made out of crates and scraps would amount to much, but Hiram set down a little rock foundation first, and he used a bowl of water to see that things was level as he went along. He figured that out by himself, which like to amazed Sam no end.

  Opal never moved with us to the new place. She decided it was a good time to go out on her own. It wasn’t no surprise—she’d been sleeping over at the shop more and more and saving up her money, and she had all the work she wanted. She found her a second-floor room downtown, and Sam took her few things to town in the truck. She made curtains and linens and got herself a secondhand couch she fitted with slipcovers. I give her some of Mama’s embroideryed dishtowels I’d put away for her. I always reckoned I would give them to her when she got married, but seemed like she was going to end up an old maid. Whenever any bachelors come sniffing around, she shooed them off. Said she was too busy. I recollected how I’d spurned the man teacher because he couldn’t give me no children, but Opal, she seemed content not to have any, or anyhow to wait till she was older. I never said boo about it. She knowed her own mind, and I felt like she had ever right to live like she wanted to.

  After she moved into town, we put all three children in the second bedroom. It seemed strange there wasn’t nobody sleeping in the front room.

  * * *

  And true to his word, why, Sam had me to go outside one day not long after we moved, and the
re was a car parked next to the house. He told me it was a 1920 Hudson, though that didn’t make me no never mind, since I didn’t know one kind from another. It was a closed car, I seen that, and it had electric start—I’d told him not to bring home no crank-start car if he wanted me to drive it. And it had four doors and a backseat for the children. I must say, it was handsome.

  I asked him how much it cost.

  “Wouldn’t have bought it if I didn’t have the cash money,” he said. “Of all people, you should know that.”

  He had me to get in the driver’s side, and he stood leaning against the open door. I seen right away the car was too big for me. “My feet can’t reach the pedals.”

  “How about the gear shift?”

  “What’s that?”

  He throwed back his head and laughed, which made me furious. I swung my legs around and waited till he got out of my way. Then I climbed down out of the car and slammed the door and walked toward the house.

  “Come on, Bertie,” he called after me. “Don’t be like that.”

  I stopped and turned back to him. “I hope you don’t think you’re the one gonna teach me to drive.”

  “Who else?”

  “I know somebody.”

  “Not Alta Bea?” he said, but I never answered.

  * * *

  When I called Alta Bea, it was the first time I used our telephone. She kept laughing and telling me I didn’t have to holler, she could hear me. I never have liked to talk on that machine. You can’t see the person you’re talking to—don’t seem natural. I got used to it eventually, but I don’t like it.

  Now Alta Bea was tickled I asked her to show me how to drive. Soon’s her and the girls got to the house, she brought out a bundle wrapped in a heavy wool blanket and put it in the back, and the girls and Sarah crawled into the backseat. Hiram said there was too many girls in the car, so he’d stay home and play with Trouble while we was gone.

  I’d made me a cushion, which I set in place in the driver’s seat, and then I climbed in. Alta Bea told me what the foot pedals was for and had me to push on them. It took more push than I expected, but I done it. Then she had me to shift the gears, which wasn’t too hard on the forward ones, but I like to never got it into reverse. You had to push it in and then yank it clear to the right, past fourth, all the while holding in the clutch with your foot. They didn’t make cars to be drove by nobody my size, for sure. But I got it in reverse finally, and off we went. I killed it a few times, like a person will, and I about put us in the ditch the first time I turned a corner, not realizing you had to slow down first and how hard it was to turn the steering wheel. And that spark doodad on the steering wheel you had to play with when the motor started knocking—I like to never got the hang of that.