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The Solace of Water

Page 16

by Elizabeth Byler Younts


  I didn’t answer right away but listened to the sloshing of the water. “Sorta. She don’t really care—as long as I don’t make no trouble.”

  Emma was quiet for a bit—maybe thinking. What’s she got on her mind to be thinking on? She only had one child. Probably her husband was working at a good job. She was home alone. It seemed like it was easy to be Ms. Emma. But right now she got these burden lines going across her forehead and water trickling down the sides of her face.

  “I’ll take your help then,” Emma said. “I’ve always wondered what it would be like to have a dau—to have help.”

  I swallowed hard when she almost says daughter. I almost wanted to walk—no—run away because it just ain’t right to talk like that. Could put ideas in my head. But it does give me a thrill. I was so used to being the daughter who let Mama’s boy die and got no good inside. What would it be like to be a different kind of daughter?

  “Why you pin your dress like that?” I took off my light sweater; it was steamy in the basement.

  “Keeps it away from the motor.” Then Emma showed me how to hang up the clothes that were already washed. I already knew how to hang clothes. Mama taught me when I was real young and could reach with a stool, but I wanted to learn Ms. Emma’s way. Like I was her daughter. Like she almost said.

  She seemed to shake off a bit of that burden she was wearing and laughed at me when I didn’t want to touch her husband’s drawers. She even let me push some laundry through the wringer and pulled my hand away just before it got wrung up with her dresses. My hands were soaked and wrinkled and weren’t so different from hers by the time all the laundry was hung. It felt good to work. It felt good that somebody wanted me around.

  When she handed me a lemonade on her front porch, I took it and sipped from it quickly. It was a hot day and I had sweat through my clothes. Then she handed me the flashlights. The big one felt heavy and so did Miss Emma’s expression.

  “It was next to the stream about halfway between us,” she said. “When did you leave it out there?”

  “When I— Sometimes I walk out there when it’s still dark.” It was a half-truth. “I like the woods.”

  She watched me, but I just looked off ahead. They had this big barn on the other side of their drive and the road ahead of that was quiet. Then I watched the laundry flapping in the breeze and the rushes around that big pond blowing. Everything being pushed by the wind. I wish it would just blow me away.

  “I like the woods too,” she said and set her hand on my shoulder.

  I turned toward her and she had an expression on her face I wished Mama would still give me. She used to. She used to look at me like I was all she ever wanted. Not like she liked me better than the others, but just that she was happy with me. But it was buried deep down with Carver and it won’t never come back.

  “Does your mother know you’re going in the woods—when it’s dark?”

  I shook my head. “No, ma’am.”

  “You shouldn’t keep things from your mother.” She took a sip from her lemonade. “Will you promise to tell her?”

  I lied and said I would. Mama didn’t want to hear nothing from me. I would smooth things over with her and tell her just enough so that if Ms. Emma asked about it again, I could tell her that I had. Or something like that.

  “Your blisters look better than last night. Why did you lie about the nettles and the blisters? Nettles can’t be confused with flowers.”

  I was surprised that quiet, soft Ms. Emma would just come out and say stuff like that. I shrugged. “Just got confused.”

  She didn’t say no more.

  Ms. Emma hugged me when I left late that morning. I didn’t deserve that hug. She shouldn’t have given me nothing like that.

  When I walked home, I got this itch to do something I knew Emma wouldn’t like. Johnny wouldn’t neither. Something that would make Daddy sad and that Mama wouldn’t care about.

  I sat down by the water and I used my sweater to pull up more of them stinging weeds—nettles. I unbuttoned the top of my dress and pressed the wild plant against my chest—by my heart. I let the tingling spread through me. My blood stirred up all over my body. I heard a deep moan and it took a moment before I realized it was coming from me.

  I kept on until the tingling wasn’t coming from the plant anymore, but it was my chest tingling. The blood in my veins did it on their own. With my hand still covered by my sweater, I threw the used-up weed into the stream. I couldn’t let Mama or Emma see nothing. Or Johnny. Being confused about a plant once might be okay, but if they saw blisters on my hands again, they would know I was lying. They’d make me stop.

  I didn’t want to. Especially now after this second time was even better than the first. I was afraid maybe the first time wasn’t real— that the relief I got from them wouldn’t happen again. But it did. The numbness of grief and guilt just fled when the nettles were against my skin. They were all I felt then. I pulled some more out and wrapped them in my sweater. I needed them for later.

  I went to Miss Emma’s once more that week. Just like she was ready for me, she gave me a slice of pie. It was delicious and tasted like kindness and love and knowing someone. She also taught me to darn socks. When I had Johnny’s socks in my hand, I rubbed the nubby fabric between my fingers. It made me feel funny inside. It made me feel.

  Then the next Sunday at sunrise, Johnny was at the water’s edge before me. He was waiting for me this time. He was making two marks on a small tree nearby. Later he told me that it was a birch tree and the marks were to count our meetings. He had this big smile on his face that made me forget for a minute that I killed my baby brother. It didn’t happen long but just for half a blink I got to feel that something that came with his smile. Why did he smile at me anyway? What made me special enough?

  I doubt I’ll ever get the answer to that but don’t care. He was my only friend now—besides his mama.

  “How long you been here?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Ten minutes.”

  Before I sat next to him I looked at his socks. Were those the ones I darned? My thumb rubbed on my pointer finger where I stuck myself with the needle.

  “What are you thinking about?”

  “Your socks.” I smiled. It was the same one I used to give the neighbor boy I was kissing when I should’ve been watching Carver. The thought rattled me for a moment.

  “My socks?” He looked at them.

  “Your mama teached me how to darn them.” Now I couldn’t take my mind away from the last time I was with a boy and what happened. And how my flirting killed my baby brother. Just talking to Johnny would get me into trouble again. Who would die this time when I sinned?

  “How are your hands?”

  “They fine.” I showed him. “It was nothing.”

  I said it like I meant it but I didn’t. It wasn’t nothing. It gave me something else to feel for a bit instead of the guilt. Didn’t know how it did that, but it did. Thinking on this stuff made me run my hand over the cotton fabric of my dress. If Johnny wasn’t with me, I would do it now when I felt a little nervous or bothered or needed to feel that good hurt. Because I wanted it so bad, I had to take some deep breaths so I wouldn’t start acting crazy. I needed to calm down.

  Could I sneak some in with me to church? Maybe I could sit on it with the weeds under my dress or just put it right in my underclothes.

  Water splashed on my face. “What you do that for?”

  “Just wanted to see you laugh,” he said.

  I forced myself to smile. He didn’t know why that bugged me. He didn’t know about Carver.

  “What you do at church?” I changed the subject and church was all I could think of.

  “We sing a little and then there’s preaching. Sometimes it goes longer than it should.”

  “That’s about like our church.” I waited for a second. “Ours goes a little long sometimes too. Usually ’cause of all the singing. Not ’cause of the preaching. Daddy’s our preacher, you kn
ow.”

  “Mine’s a deacon.”

  Our eyes met and we smiled, like we saw how similar our lives are.

  “Why you meet me here?”

  He shrugged. “You’re not like other girls around here.”

  “Because I’m colored?” I wanted to raise my eyebrow like what Mama did, but I didn’t.

  “Well, you’re different from the other girls in my church.” He nudged me with his elbow. “But you’re from somewhere else and I wanted to get to know you.”

  He paused.

  “And you’re pretty.”

  My face felt warm. “I gotta go.” I got up.

  I wished we met more often. Last Sunday he touched my hand when he washed it and when we lay back in the grass. I wanted to feel that again almost as bad as I wanted the stinging weed against my skin. They were so familiar to me I could find them fast now. But his touch had to be given to me. I couldn’t just find it lying around the woods somewhere.

  He got up and faced me and, like he’d read my thoughts, his finger grazed my jawline before I had time to flinch. “I like the color of your skin.”

  I leaned my head away out of embarrassment—far enough that I lost the touch of his finger. My skin color was never given good attention, unless it was from Daddy’s sister Edna. She was possessed like a she-devil with her light skin and said I wasn’t quite as light as her, but pretty light. So when Johnny said something I ain’t never heard before, I just about wanted to be a turtle and crawl into a shell.

  “What’s this?” Johnny turned over my collar where a patch of fresh blister had peeked through.

  “Nothing.” I buttoned up the top button.

  “That was a blister—like your hands.” He grabbed my arms.

  “It ain’t nothing.” My voice squealed, but I didn’t try to get out of his grip because he didn’t make me afraid.

  He looked at me so hard I thought my face would crack. “Are you doing it on purpose?”

  How had he figured it out? Now he would never want to meet out here in the woods. He wouldn’t want nothing to do with me.

  “I’m not doing nothing.” My voice was even higher. “I gotta get back. Mama’s gonna notice if I don’t hurry.”

  But he just held me, and even though his hands were tight, he wasn’t rough.

  I thought he was gonna kiss me. Did I want him to? Would I even let him? But I realized I was crazy because he let go of me.

  “Why are you hurting yourself?” His brow got all wrinkled like.

  “It don’t hurt.” I was honest this time.

  “But the blisters. That can’t feel . . .” He shook his head. “But why?”

  I shrugged.

  “I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

  “But it helps.” I put my hand on my heart. All my sadness bubbled up and my voice didn’t work well when I talked again. It warbled like it was running over the creek bed. “I hurt real bad because I killed my brother.” I swallowed. “The nettles cover that hurt a little.”

  “What happened?”

  I paused for maybe a whole minute.

  “I wasn’t watching him and a real bad thing happened.” I told him what that real bad thing was—I whispered it because I couldn’t say it out loud. But I didn’t tell him I’s kissing on a boy when it happened—I didn’t want him knowing that. I told him how Mama hated me because of it. How the stinging nettles made my blood turn alive again.

  Then he held me real close with his arms around me. At first I didn’t know what to do. But then I put my arms around him too and tucked my head in close to his chest. I smelled his soap— probably Ivory—and a hint of cigarettes. I heard his heart.

  I didn’t know a boy could be like that. Hold me without trying to touch me in places he shouldn’t. Mama and Daddy didn’t know that a few boys had tried to touch my bosoms and tried for somewhere else. I always slapped their hands away, but the boys just laughed.

  The neighbor boy tried to but I didn’t slap him away. Ever since, though, I couldn’t say his name. But I said it in my mind today. J. D.—that was what everybody called him. But his real name was John David.

  As Johnny stood in front of me in them woods, I wondered if it was a second chance at being good. Maybe God was testing me to see if I would sin again and again.

  DELILAH

  Of course the little white church couldn’t heal my heart. Nothing could do that. Even if it could, it wouldn’t happen in a month. A month with weekly visits to the grocer where a white man does his best not to act like he’s better’n me. I don’t hate him for trying. Each week we go to church and today the pews were full.

  A pile of new families coming who, by the end of service, were clapping and having themselves a good ole time. Malachi made a point of talking to every adult, every child—everybody. He was made for this. I had been too—before.

  We all ate together for Sundays and, like a good preacher’s wife, I got it all laid out. Chicken, greens, black-eyed peas with salt pork, and a couple of pound cakes and plenty of sweet tea. We got a whole mess of biscuits too. They usually got eaten up first.

  All this work made it look like I was meant for this life of a reverend’s wife, with all its thinking of others first and putting self last. To take care of the needs your husband couldn’t.

  But I knew the truth.

  I knew I wasn’t that kind of wife no more, not in my heart, anyhow. There’d been a time when I relished it. My husband filling hungry hearts and I’d fill the hungry bellies—not that I made all the food, but serving it out and making sure everyone got enough— that was what I’d loved most. But I was so darned empty now—I couldn’t do no filling.

  Sparrow stayed in her room now during these lunches. Harriet always took a lunch up to her, even though nobody asked her to. She just did it because that’s the kind of girl she was. Maybe I taught her to be that girl once, but I know it’s not because I’ve been teaching her how lately.

  Later, when I was sitting up in bed, I knew I should’ve been happy with the day. Malachi was.

  All I could do was think of how empty I was sitting there looking at my purse full of Carver dirt. I had planned on putting the dirt in a canning jar so I could see it better, but I hadn’t done it yet. It just came with me everywhere as if it were Carver. Once I grabbed it forgetting what was inside, but the weight of it was a quick reminder.

  I was angry that I’d forgotten. My baby boy deserved better than that. My baby boy deserved better than most of what happened in his little life. What was God thinking giving him to me? About giving Sparrow to me? What was I thinking giving Carver to Sparrow that day?

  Oh, the weight of grief.

  It was so heavy and I couldn’t put it down. That would be like walking away from Carver and letting him die all over again. I put the handbag on my lap and opened it. The dirt inside was dry and still. It’s the same dirt it was before but it looked different. It was lighter. There wasn’t no life in it because I took it out of the ground. There weren’t no seeds inside ready to grow. No moisture from the earth or the sky. No nothing. It would need water if something was going to grow out of it. Water for life—the idea of that choked me.

  It was the dirt of the dead.

  Malachi walked in and paid no mind to my sitting there with Carver’s dirt on my lap. Sometimes I think he should sit with me and get angry all over again that we lost our child, and then other times I think that if he came near me, I would slap him. At first we had both grieved and it was the glue that held us together. But then he started acting like himself again and I had to carry his grief along with mine. Didn’t take long for it all to become mine.

  I closed the handbag and set it back on the nightstand again. Malachi was sitting up in bed reading when I slipped under the covers with my back to him. It was too hard to be soft for him or anyone anymore. There had been a day when all I could think about was how much I loved being a mother and a wife. I never told nobody but I also loved what happened in the darkness of our bedroom.
Knowing another life might form but if not, at least he and I enjoyed each other. Wasn’t that what Solomon wrote about? Wasn’t that what made all the ladies in Sunday school blush if Solomon’s songs from the Bible was ever referred to, even if not in mixed company? I just didn’t feel nothing like that now.

  “Can you believe how many new folks we had today?” Malachi spooned up next to me.

  I closed my eyes and arched my back away from him. “Mmhmm,” was all I could say.

  “Did you hear the singing?” His voice smiled so hard it broke my heart. No, I hadn’t noticed because I hadn’t cared. “I’m thinking of asking Brother Daryl to lead our songs. What do you think?”

  He nuzzled my neck and I knew what he wanted. He was my husband, of course I knew his ways. We hadn’t done nothing like that since Carver. He’d been as patient as a man could be.

  “Maybe it’s a little soon.” Too soon for Brother Daryl, he’d only come twice, or too soon for what he wanted—I left the interpretation up to him.

  “Nah.” He took a long pull of my scent. “Sister Liberty was just as excited to be at church as Daryl.”

  “Gracious sakes, that name,” I said before I caught my tongue.

  “Oh yes, that name. Now those were wise parents to give her that name.”

  I knew a Bible verse was coming. He had the voice and the inspiration.

  “‘Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.’” His arms wrapped around me in the moment after his quote from somewhere in the New Testament. His arms got tighter. He got closer.

  I wanted to run away. The weight I’d gained in my grief and the heaviness of the grief itself was stuck to my hips, butt, thighs, and heart. Because of that his hands felt like a million spiders crawling on me. I wanted to claw out of my skin. It wasn’t his fault. I just didn’t want to be touched no more. Didn’t want no pleasure— didn’t seem right.

  “I think asking Brother Daryl would be fine,” I said, trying to keep my mind on the conversation, thinking maybe it would distract him into church business instead of other things. But it didn’t. Now he was stroking me from my waist down the curve to my hip and down to my knee.

 

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