The Solace of Water

by Elizabeth Byler Younts

  “No. Go to the cellar. I can’t do this. Get a bottle. Get two,” he growled.

  “We can—together.” My throat was too filled with emotion and the yell that had scraped against it.

  Even in the darkness I could almost see his eyes come to life. He pushed me away and leaned over the side of the bed and sat up with his legs hanging over the side. He lowered his head and groaned. I touched his back and it was as slick as if he’d just showered. The bed beneath him was soaked.

  “Go get me a bottle, Emma.” He spat his words as he grabbed the small tin trash can and retched.

  There had been a time several years ago that we’d gone through something similar. Our bishop came unannounced when John was drunk. I somehow distracted the bishop from noticing and pretended to check for a fever and took John to our bedroom. The bishop seemed concerned but never questioned it. We went through the withdrawal from the alcohol for a week because of our guilt, but then John returned to his sin as a dog returned to its vomit.

  My heart still grieved over that time over ten years ago. I’d told him if he took another drink, I’d know he loved the drink more than Johnny or me. I’d promised myself I’d never have another child with him. Though I’d wavered in my herbal practices before that and promised my sister I’d quit. Sometimes I did for months at a time. But it was never long enough to regain the trust I needed in my husband or God. I always returned to my deceitfulness.

  Considering this as he pleaded with me to get him a bottle made me angry. Wherever that overflowing of love had come from, it was gone minutes earlier. And now I felt angry and hurt and back to those early years when I’d wished so much for him to stop drinking.

  “I won’t.” I moved away from him.

  In the dim moonlight his face was ragged and looked older than I’d ever seen. It was jarring. I couldn’t even see the handsome man he used to be. Not behind his raging eyes, not tucked in somewhere between his anguish and pain.

  “Please, Emma, I can’t do it. Will you do this for me?”

  “I won’t.”

  I barely got my words out when he lunged for me. He pinned me to the mattress with his forearm tightly on my shoulders, the pressure almost at my throat, and was on all fours on top of me. His sweat dripped on me and I struggled to get free. He wasn’t hurting me but maybe showing me that he could if he so desired.

  “Stop it, John,” I yelled and with no great effort pushed him away because he was weakened.

  “I’ll send Johnny away if you don’t get a bottle.”

  I stopped and turned. “What?”

  “I wrote to Mem and Dat.” His breathing was labored, but he still found the strength to stand to his full height. “I told them what’s been going on with Johnny. Dat said he could fix him up fast.”

  “Because you can’t.” I spat my venom at him. “Because you’re a drunk and you can’t fix anything.”

  He still shook and was wet with sweat but had gained some leverage with me with this. “I’ll do what I please.” He stumbled toward the stairs. I hoped he’d stay there in the cellar to drink.

  I looked over at my drawer that held my herbs and the precious words that came from the nature around me. Neither held what they used to anymore. The herbs not only had kept me from the possibility of losing another child but also had kept me from an honest marriage. And my book full of poetry lines and thoughts—I had nothing left to put in there.

  How had we gotten to this place in our marriage? Our sin and destruction needled so deeply into my soul, I couldn’t breathe.

  John didn’t acknowledge my panicked breathing when he staggered back into the room. All that mattered was the one open bottle and the two more he brought with him and how little I cared about what happened to me anymore. I wanted—needed—the pain to go away.

  DELILAH

  I could just about see the whites of Sparrow’s round eyes from a distance when she came tearing through the haze of the woods. She was screaming. I was at the sink finishing breakfast dishes. The last time I had heard her scream like that was—well, I didn’t have to say when it was. Why was she in the woods? What was she doing? Who died?

  “Mama, Mama.” A tug comes to my skirt and when I turned around, all I could see was Carver. I gasped. “Water?” he said.

  Carver’s asking for water? That don’t make sense. Sparrow’s screams were coming closer.

  “Mama.” She was yelling it by the time she flew through the screen door. “Mama, come, you gotta come.”

  “But Carver,” I said out loud, and when I did I got hot in my face. Of course this ain’t Carver. It’s George. Her scream took me back. I wished she’d just leave me alone. But when I wished it was Carver, did that mean I’d rather have Carver than George? I hated myself for the mistake.

  “Mama,” George kept saying and yanking at my skirt. “Water.”

  “Mama,” Sparrow interrupted. Her eyes were round, white, and wild. “It’s Ms. Emma. You gotta come.”

  It took me a few moments to get my bearings.

  “What you talking about, girl? Ms. Emma?”

  Sparrow was breathing so heavy she couldn’t get her words out. She came at me and yanked my arm and tried to pull me toward the door. Her fingers pinched my skin and I pulled out of her grasp and swatted at her. I missed.

  “You got to come now.” She broke up her words like I did when I really meant them. I looked in her eyes. She was afraid and serious. It was different from Carver though. I didn’t see the guilt like before.

  “Mallie,” I yelled but my eyes stayed right on my daughter. The boy came running down the stairs like the devil after him. Probably used my mean voice without trying to.

  “Yes, ma’am.” He stood there like a little soldier.

  I gave him strict instructions to stay inside or in the backyard away from the road with Harriet and George. George was pulling at my skirt the whole time for a drink. I told Mallie to do that first. He always took me seriously and I’d threatened him with a braided-up switch, so I knew he would obey.

  “Mama.” Sparrow’s eyes bulged when she yelled and waved at me to hurry.

  As I ran toward the front door Mallie was already getting a cup down for George. He was using a calm voice and neither of them even looked at Sparrow or me.

  When I ran my legs rubbed together like a bunch of matchsticks starting a fire. It was hot and getting hotter. Once we got into the woods, the sun wasn’t beating down on us no more and it did cool me off a little. It wasn’t until we was halfway that I started slowing down. My side had a stitch and I needed to walk for a few minutes. Sparrow was far ahead of me and came running back.

  “What’s the matter, girl? Why does Ms. Emma need me?” I asked between my breathing.

  “She won’t wake up. She just groaning and she was—” Sparrow pulled my arm and I tried again to keep running.

  “She what?” I stopped and huffed and puffed a little. When Sparrow didn’t answer me right away, I raised my eyebrow at her. “She what?”

  Sparrow bit her lip before answering me. “She smelled like Uncle Thomas—but without the aftershave.”

  I was still catching my breath when I realized what she meant.

  My brother Thomas was old and broken up. We wouldn’t see him for months but then he would come around, pass out drunk on our couch for a few days, and then be gone. The children would watch him at a distance. He always tried to cover up his booze smell by wearing too much aftershave. It didn’t help like he thought it did.

  “All right.” Now I knew what we were dealing with and started running again.

  We were close to the pond when I saw blood running down Sparrow’s leg. “You got your monthly?”

  “No, ma’am.” She cleared her throat—that always meant she was hiding something. She looked back a little but then turned forward and kept running. “I fell yesterday and cut myself. It must have come open.”

  “You cut yourself falling? Where?”

  “Mama, don’t worry ’bout th
at right now. We got to get there.” She waved at me to hurry up. There was only one other time I ran so fast and I took it hard to recall those memories.

  When Emma’s house came into view and we ran across the warm grass, I got nervous. I wasn’t invited. Marlene’s boy Kenny was all busted up for loving the wrong color of woman. What if I got arrested for running headlong into a white person’s house? I stopped at the bottom of the porch steps.

  “Sparrow, I can’t,” I said between deep breaths.

  “Mama, you gotta.” She wasn’t crying but she might as well’ve been.

  “She a white woman. This a white man’s house. I can’t just barge in there.” I turned in a circle, thinking it over. Then I turned back to Sparrow who was still standing on the porch just looking at me. “Why you act like you know this place anyhow?”

  She breathed in a few times. Looked away over top my head. Her forehead furrowed and then she looked back at me. “I been coming here every Monday and some other times ever since that day she had cake with us.” She started to cry. “Ms. Emma and I do laundry and she taught me to sew. She wants to teach me how to bake and garden.”

  I don’t know if I should laugh or cry. What did my daughter and this woman think they was doing? Playing house with each other? I was on the other side of the woods tending to my little ones and they was over here pretending to belong to each other. So when I was getting hot and sweaty doing laundry at my house and Harriet was helping me like a good girl, Sparrow was helping another woman that weren’t even her mother.

  Then I thought about all them Mondays when Sparrow’s meek voice had asked if I needed her help. I always told her to just go and do something. So what did I expect? I didn’t want nothing to do with Sparrow ever since Carver. I hadn’t given her none of myself ever since he gone. Ever since she let him die.

  “Please, just come. She needs you. I don’t know what to do.”

  My sensibilities flew somewhere out of my head and I bounded up them stairs after Sparrow and through the front door. The house was so still inside a chill went through me. Breakfast dishes were lying around. A greasy pan rested on the woodstove. Broken eggshells lay around on the countertop, their insides pooling. I just knew this couldn’t be normal.

  “This way.” Sparrow waved for me to follow her up the wooden staircase.

  They were just about the tallest open stairs I’d gone up in a long time, but the wood didn’t creak none. Sparrow was up at the top in no time, springing on her toes. I took longer than she wanted, but I was tired from the run and felt spooked being in a house I wasn’t invited to. What would Malachi say?

  “She’s in here.” Sparrow waved me over to a room when I got to the top. I could see the corner of a white metal bedpost. Then she pushed open the door.

  I stood in the doorway. If the room wasn’t so disheveled it would’ve been pretty—elegant even. It was so simple and so white. The quilt on the bed had some other colors on it, but there was more white than anything. The curtains were a light blue and made the walls seem whiter. The chest of drawers and nightstands were a darker wood but they looked nice and clean. The windows were open and the curtains moved in time with the breeze. But that’s where the nice stopped.

  I stepped in farther. I smelled the sick inside. It did smell like my brother Thomas.

  But what wasn’t nice was the way Emma lay there. The sheet was only covering her from the waist down. But she was all over naked. Her breasts was bare and she had gotten sick on herself. It was in her hair and on the sheets around her.

  I took the sheet and covered her. My heart was hurting because I got a bad feeling about all this. Nobody like me should be seeing a nice white lady like her lying naked in her own filth.

  I looked around and all that prettiness I first saw was gone. There were empty bottles rolling around on the wood floor. The top drawer of the chest of drawers was cracked open and her undergarments were hanging out. Some type of gray-green powder was all over the place. A small glass jar open on the floor. It wasn’t empty but looked like it was what the powder had been in.

  I don’t touch nothing though. I know better than to touch white folks’ stuff.

  What was going on in this house? I didn’t know. And here my daughter been spending time with this woman and I think right now that she must be a drunk and have a hangover. Who did she think she was, caring for and coddling my girl when she got this kind of filth in her heart?

  “Mama,” Sparrow said and I was reminded that she was with me. She was standing next to Emma’s bed like she wanted to touch the woman but didn’t know what to do.

  I walked over to where Sparrow stood and happened to kick one of the empty bottles. It clinked against the metal bed frame.

  “Move over,” I said and stood in front of Emma. “Ms. Emma.”

  I repeated her name a few times, but she didn’t do nothing. Sparrow elbowed me—it said do more.

  I let out a little groan when I exhaled. This was not a good idea. I shouldn’t be here, I kept thinking.

  I took the woman by the shoulders and shook her a little. At first she felt like a limp rag. But the second time I did I could feel her muscles under my hands coming awake. I shook her a little more and said her name again. I ain’t seen a hangover like this in a long time. She got herself good and drunk.

  My brother Thomas did this often enough to yell profanities at my children when they were too loud. Sparrow had asked me once if drinking would kill him. I remembered telling her, “Maybe, if he drink enough for his fat rear end.”

  I got a bad feeling about Ms. Emma. How much drink would it take to poison her good? She was so skinny. When I touched her shoulders I could feel how bony she was.

  “Ms. Emma,” I yelled and she made a low groan. I looked at Sparrow. I shook her harder and yelled louder.

  Her eyes fluttered a little and a low, sad sound came out of her mouth again.

  “Ms. Emma,” Sparrow said and pushed me away. She’d started crying and I hated that that bothered me. I ain’t seen Sparrow cry since Carver died and her first tears were over a white woman? That just don’t sit well with me. She barely even knew this woman. “You gotta wake up. Come on, Ms. Emma.”

  She put her face on Emma’s chest and cried. Then a few moments later Ms. Emma’s hand rose and she weakly rested it on Sparrow’s nappy head. Her fingers tapped a little.

  Sparrow jumped up and was about two inches from Emma’s face. “I knew you was in there. I knew you would hear me.” She sniffed from all her crying. “I knew you ain’t dead—you just couldn’t be dead.”

  I wanted to leave the room because it just about turned my stomach to see my daughter act that way about another woman. But I knew that Emma was in trouble—with these empty bottles, the powder all over the place, and a whole houseful of secrets or lies or both. She was going to fess up today whether she liked it or not.

  I pulled Sparrow up by her shoulders, which felt meaty and strong compared to Emma’s, and I took charge.

  EMMA

  I was walking through the woods and the sun beamed through the trees so brightly I squinted. It was a beautiful day. But then the trees went against me. They started bending down and hitting me. They whipped me around and pulled me one way and then the other. Then one tree, a big beautiful willow, grabbed my shoulders and shielded me from all the others. And it told me to wake up.

  Wake up?

  I didn’t want to. I wanted to just walk in the forest for the rest of my life.

  The willow tree kept shaking my shoulders and told me again to wake up. To open my eyes.

  It was so hard though. I didn’t want to.

  But then I heard a sparrow singing. The bird flitted around and I wanted so much for it to stay with me. But it didn’t. So I tried to reach for it and tell it not to fly away. It told me to open my eyes too. And for this little helpless bird, I would do anything.

  The first thing I saw was the chocolate-colored skin of Delilah. It seemed very strange to see her and I tho
ught I was dreaming. My eyes didn’t want to stay open. I opened and shut them over and over again. Every time I opened them they stayed open a little longer. I never knew how heavy eyelids were. And my head had never hurt so bad before.

  When they opened a little longer I saw Sparrow too. I inhaled deeply and looked about me. John? Was John hovering over me? And the events of the previous night came back. He’d drunk his fill before falling asleep. But I didn’t want to be with myself anymore. I had lost my dignity with each swallow. I folded myself back into the bed somehow and hoped I would never wake up.

  I was no longer Emma Mullet.

  I was just pieces of her. Hollow. If I looked in a mirror, I wouldn’t have a face anymore because I wasn’t me. I was gone.

  “John?” I asked and it was so hard to speak.

  “Your husband ain’t here, Ms. Emma,” Delilah said. “Do you want me to find a way to get him? Where do he work?”

  I shook my head and groaned the word no. I let it linger in my mouth as long as I could and it tasted like a small bite of freedom to declare outside of my own mind that I did not want my husband with me in this dark moment. There was a small bit of strength caressing my skin. My head ached though. And I was afraid if I sat up I would throw up the nothing that was left in my stomach, or maybe I’d vomit up my heart, stomach, and all the lies that I’d eaten for so many years. I wasn’t alive anymore on the inside anyway.

  “Sparrow came and fetched me.” Delilah was talking so loudly.

  I squinted, but when my eyes closed she shook me as hard as that willow tree so I opened them again. And the trees hadn’t been beating me, they had been keeping me alive so I wouldn’t walk too far away from myself.

  “I’m going to sit you up now. You need to get up and get some air and some energy.”

  I groaned when she pulled me up and she said something about how I felt like an overgrown doll. I felt as empty as one.

  Sparrow straightened my pillow and Delilah helped me lie back. The room started spinning. My stomach reacted and I began dry heaving. Nothing came up. I had nothing inside. Nothing left.