The Solace of Water

by Elizabeth Byler Younts

Just tell him.

  “Nah schtopes, Johnny.” John pointed a thick, calloused finger at our son and told him to stop, then turned it on me.

  I looked at his hardworking hand with his finger close to me, pointing at my heart. It shook. I looked at his face. His eyes pleaded with me. I could hear his words asking for me to forgive him and to help him start over.

  “Emma, geh ins haus.” While his order was only whispered, I knew I needed to obey and go into the house.

  “Mem.” Johnny’s exasperated tone made me hesitate, but not long.

  John’s gaze left me. The weight of it was somewhere else entirely, but it wasn’t on me. I should have been glad, but I felt loss instead.

  I went inside and left the three of them outside.

  When someone was voted in as a deacon or preacher in our church, they left that position only through death. But what about sin? What about the death of their righteousness and soul? Was there such a thing?

  SPARROW

  My feet splashed in puddles and through wet grass and hit against the rocks. Mama was rough with me walking through Emma’s yard, but when we was out of view it got real hard. She pulled me through them woods like I was some kind of dog. She had me by the collar of my dress and if her hand fumbled she’d grab my sleeve. I’d closed the front of my dress when we was inside Emma’s house, waiting. But not all the buttons was there no more. Mama had popped some of them off like dandelion heads.

  We was both breathing heavy, but sometimes she would say something like, “I just can’t believe you,” or “A white boy,” or “Here we go again.” She even stopped once and let go of my dress. She tried to talk but that irritated laugh of hers came out more often. Like she just couldn’t believe how stupid I was. ’Course she right.

  “Didn’t I tell you boys was off limits?” Her finger jabbed at my face.

  I nodded.

  “But you didn’t listen and you go and kiss that boy?”

  I nodded.

  “What was you thinking?” She turned in a circle, shaking her head. Then returned to me. “What. Was. You. Thinking? And stop nodding your head at me. Answer me.”

  I didn’t say nothing.

  She smacked my cheek. Hard.

  I looked over her shoulder and then she grabbed my dress again. This time the front was rolled up in her fist. Another button popped off. “Oh no, you don’t try to run away from me.” She whipped out her mean smile. “I saw you looking past me like you was ready to run. I have had enough of that.”

  We walked, her pulling me, a few more steps. Then she turned toward me again. “You hear me, girl, loud and clear.” Her voice was shaky and with lots of breathing. “You gonna stand by me, walk by me, sit by me, and lay by me. You ain’t gonna have any time without me.”

  My eyes filled.

  “And do you know why?”

  My vision was so blurry, but I wouldn’t blink out them tears.

  “Because you can’t be trusted with nothing.” That word nothing came out with a spray of spit. “And every time you so close to me you know it’s because you are like nothing. Because girls who are something can be trusted and don’t act like they’s nothing.”

  The tears were hotter than I thought they’d be when they finally trailed down my sweaty face. Mama had them too.

  “You crying now?” she asked. “Where was all this crying when you let your brother drown under that river? When you should’ve been watching him instead of kissing J. D.? You let that happen. You. And it was all because of a boy.”

  I was full on crying now. I didn’t know how to stop the crying when it started. That’s why I hadn’t cried before.

  “Stop crying.” Her words lashed me hard.

  My tears wet my neck and slid down between my bosoms. My knees hit the hard earth. I kept crying.

  “Get up.” She pulled at the shoulders of my dress. “Get up.”

  “I can’t, Mama,” I said between heaving. “You don’t want me to anyhow. Just leave me here.”

  “Get up.” Her voice got a shudder to it now. She pulled at the back of my collar but it didn’t even move me an inch.

  “I killed him, Mama,” I yelled into the ground, but I know the words make it to her ears and might’ve reached all the way down to the water in the earth and gone all the way to Carver.

  “Don’t you talk about him. Don’t you talk about him.” Mama’s voice was wild and full of poison.

  “Then we can talk about me, Mama. You like to do that, don’t you? You talk about how bad I am all the time. Especially that day when J. D. was kissing on me and I let him and I liked it.” I spit out my words like they was pure water.

  “You a little tramp, that’s what you are. A tramp that don’t care ’bout nothing but herself.”

  She’d never called me that before. I couldn’t even say it. I’d said it before about the girl down the street—everybody did. She was doing it with just about every boy who wanted her. I never done that. I never showed my body to nobody and I never let the boys touch me down there.

  “No, I ain’t. I was just kissing. I didn’t let him touch me there or there.” I sat up and pointed to my chest and between my legs. For a split second I watched the tops of the trees swaying and I felt bad that they got to hear all our ugly yelling. Then I kept at it. “He tried, you know. He was trying when Carver was calling for me. He was calling my name, Mama. He was calling for me. ‘Birdie, Birdie,’ he kept saying. But he called it three times before I looked because I couldn’t get J. D.’s hands off of me.”

  “But you was still off with him—kissing—when you should’ve been watching. Don’t you blame it on that neighbor boy and make it sound like it was his fault because he was trying to feel you up. You shouldn’ta been kissing on him nohow.”

  She was right. I never should have walked away from the river. Mama and Daddy and every other adult told us that a hundred times. I didn’t listen. It was still my fault. I had picked J. D.’s kissing over keeping my baby brother alive. He got four years on this earth and died. I got ten more than him and I wasn’t deserving. Nobody had to tell me that. I just knew it.

  “I know.” I yelled so loud I heard birds fly away.

  She ain’t never spoke to me about that day but for what I was doing. Even the little that Daddy tried to tell her of what I told him, she wouldn’t listen. I didn’t even know if she knew that the whole reason it happened was because George and Carver was just trying to be like Daddy. Now Mama hated me and sometimes I wondered if she hated Daddy too.

  “They was playing preacher, baptizing each other in the river.” My voice was like a crow’s caw. Ugly and raspy. I wanted her to know this stuff in case she didn’t, because I wanted her to hurt as bad as I did.

  “Stop it.” Her words were captured inside her wailing cry. “Don’t you talk about it. Don’t you talk about him.” She wagged her finger at me before she turned and started walking away from me.

  She’d walked away from me every day since Carver died. Her steps were heavy and like her joints was hurting every time she stepped. Like she was carrying a load on her back. She was wearing her old blue dress. The same one she was wearing that day, and I wondered if she even realized it. I remembered it because everything that day was stuck in my head like a picture that don’t move or change except that Carver went from smiling to dead every time that picture came up.

  “He pushed George to the big log that stuck out. But he couldn’t catch it himself.” I’m quieter now but I know’d she heard me. “That’s when he started yelling for you.”

  Mama stopped walking and just stood there facing the other way, away from me. I could see her shoulders shake and her whole body shudder.

  DELILAH

  My eyes were open but all I saw was flashes between white and black in front of me. Like my vision was going and I didn’t want to see nothing no more.

  I hadn’t let her tell me nothing about that day. Not Malachi neither—but he tried and he would say things I didn’t want to know. Li
ke how Carver was playing preacher and trying to baptize George. But I didn’t want to hear about how my baby died. I just knew he died, drowned under that Alabama River. Didn’t nobody need to know more than that.

  I didn’t think nothing could make it worse than it already was— losing a child. But baptism. Wasn’t baptism supposed to bring you a new life? It brought my baby death. I didn’t want to hear nothing more about that. Nothing. But that girl kept talking and my legs couldn’t move. I just fell on the dusty old trail under my feet.

  “Carver saved George, Mama, but couldn’t save himself. I jumped in but I couldn’t get to him. He was yelling for me and you one second and then he wasn’t. I couldn’t find him. He was under there somewhere and I couldn’t find him, Mama. But I looked. I looked until the police pulled me out.”

  The girl had been wet all over when I saw her. Shivering and acting crazy like. The swimsuit dress my aunt made for her was torn and it just about showed too much of her. Her legs was scraped all over and she got a big gash on her calf where you could see too much of the stuff inside. But she won’t let nobody help her. They had to hold her down so she didn’t jump back in that dang river. My sister Deborah had to fight with her to get her stitched up, but I never bothered myself with it. Later that night Deborah also gave the girl something, don’t even know what, to make her sleep.

  Gave it to George too. He was just having fits all over the place. Wetting the bed and slapping, biting, and scratching everybody that came close. Lost most of the handful of words he said. Only kept a few.

  That mark on her leg, though, always stared at me. It got infected once and Deborah had to deal with it. But now it was just ugly and puffy. But it go along with all them other cuts she got. Like she didn’t want that to be her only mark. I never did see the old Sparrow again from that day on—the one I’d raised. I reckoned she was dead somewhere in that old Alabama River too.

  But I didn’t grieve for her. I just grieved for my baby boy.

  SPARROW

  I was glad Mama kept her face turned away from me because I wouldn’t have been able to look at her. I heard her heaving great big sobs now and she stepped backward, like she couldn’t hold herself up, and collapsed. She don’t get up neither. Not for a good long time. She moaned for Carver over and over. I don’t know when she left but she did.

  She left me in them woods alone. But the trees was still moaning Carver, Carver. The birds didn’t sing those nice pretty songs, but instead it sounded like Carver, Carver. Slow and sad and like it came from deep in the ground, his name growing inside the dirt like a seed. The warble of the stream was low and deep, and when the rain came, I felt like God was saying Carver, Carver in the thunder.

  I went back to that day. I could feel the crispy grass between my toes while we walked to the river. I could feel the hold on my hand and the pull of my heart. As I hid behind the bushes with J. D., I could feel his few kisses on my lips. They made me warm all over. There was laughing and giggling and running back toward the river.

  But I knew I wasn’t there. The birds were singing and the sun was up high now. I been out here for a couple of hours just lying in the trail.

  An arm came around me, but my eyes just saw the ground in front of me. I let that somebody lead me away. They sat me down in a chair somewhere. I obeyed and didn’t care who was with me or what would happen. A towel was pressed against my head and hair and I felt the wetness lift off of me some. My mess of a dress was taken off me. I don’t know if I lifted my arms on my own or not. I didn’t have a lot of control of my body no more. My wounds were dressed with nice hands. But I couldn’t see nothing much. My eyes were about swollen shut ’cause of all the crying and they just didn’t want to see nothing. Then the hands put another dress on me. It didn’t fit just right and it didn’t feel right but I didn’t much care.

  I knew I walked somewhere and then I heard Daddy’s voice and another voice. I knew them both, but I couldn’t think about who the other one was. I just stood there until Daddy took my arm and he walked me up to my room. I thought he asked me about eating something, but I couldn’t say nothing. I knew enough that I was on my bed so I turned to face the wall away from Harriet’s bed and from Daddy who stood there. I kept my eyes from his face because I think seeing him would kill me dead.

  But then I think, Ain’t I already dead?

  EMMA

  It was late afternoon when John found the strength to drive me and Johnny into town. He knew that we needed to see the church that he and Danny had driven into with Arnold. I didn’t know how John was managing after he’d been shaky and weak the whole day. Maybe it was because he knew it was something we had to do. Something we’d never had to do before—contend with our local police to see what must be done and not just our Amish church.

  No one talked the whole way into town. I wasn’t sure if Johnny was even breathing, he was so quiet. It was later in the day, but we knew we needed to go make things right. We didn’t want another boy getting blamed for something Johnny had done. Perhaps John realized our son needed a father.

  When we got there I was surprised to see so many people there. The damage was bad. Worse than I’d imagined. The yard had deep tire grooves through it and the hole exposed the inside of the church.

  A police car was there and several Negro families, but I only recognized Malachi. No one seemed to notice us as we parked a short distance away. John tied the horse on one of the hitching posts placed sporadically throughout the town. He walked stronger than I thought was possible and had Johnny’s shoulder under his grip. He told Johnny to tell the police what he’d done. I walked behind them.

  The Negro families moved over a little when we arrived, and as I stepped on the other side of Johnny I looked around and listened. The same large police chief was there and a tall Negro man was talking to him. Deedee’s husband stood next to him and patted his shoulder, as if trying to keep him calm.

  “We’ve been talking about this for hours in our homes and now here,” Malachi said. “We know Kenny didn’t do this.”

  “Unless you can prove he didn’t, we will put a warrant out for his arrest for the destruction of public property.” The police chief leaned back and folded his arms. He seemed to think a lot of himself as I’d seen this same stance on several men in our church I tried to avoid.

  “My son has something to say.” John’s loud voice brought everyone’s attention.

  No one said anything. Everyone just looked at us.

  “What was that, Mr.—?” The police chief made one step toward us and squinted.

  “John Mullet,” my husband said plainly.

  “Mr. Mullet, then. I’m Police Chief Crabtree.” He cleared his throat and looked around at all the eyes watching the exchange. “I’m sure you don’t have anything to offer in this situation.” He fixed his belt around his big belly. “This isn’t anything you need to worry about. We are keeping the town safe for peacekeeping folks like you.”

  John held my gaze as he patted Johnny’s shoulder.

  “It was me,” Johnny said just loud enough to be heard. “My friends and I were drinking and we ran into the church—it was an accident. We didn’t mean to do it.”

  The murmur that resulted among the dozen people who stood by was louder than expected. I heard everything from how it was typical that a colored boy was blamed for what a white boy did to how it was a good boy who would step up and confess his wrongs.

  “Surely you’re not saying that you—?” The chief’s eyebrows knit together and he gestured toward the gaping hole in the church. “But you don’t drive cars.”

  “My friend, who’s not Amish, was driving, but we were both drinking.” Johnny looked at his dat, who gestured for him to continue. “I want to help pay for the repairs and do as much of the work as I can myself. I know carpentry.”

  “Now, son,” Chief Crabtree said with a great big smile on his face. “Aren’t you just a stand-up fella?”

  He continued to give Johnny accolades for hi
s uprightness and I watched as the spirit of the Negro community declined. Their young man had just been threatened with arrest for the damages and my son had been given a pat on the shoulder and a smile.

  I felt myself shrinking and wished I’d stayed home. The police chief, John, and Johnny walked toward the church and continued to talk about what the repairs would look like and how much it might cost. I was standing there alone. I’d never felt so exposed.

  “Next time tell your son to fess up before my boy gets accused and we have to defend him for hours,” a tall woman yelled over at me. I could see she’d been crying and she still held a handkerchief.

  Several others agreed with her and I didn’t know what to say. I just stood there. I thought of all the things Deedee had told me about all the rules they had to follow in order for them to survive in a society that wouldn’t give them equal rights because of the color of their skin. How could I defend myself or my son? He had done wrong.

  Then after a few quiet moments Deedee came from behind the crowd and padded through the churchyard to stand by me. “She done her job. She brought her boy here to make things right. The boy done what he was supposed to do.”

  “But why did they wait so long?” the same woman as before yelled. “You know what we’ve been through today, Deedee.”

  Deedee looked up at me and pursed her lips a little. Her whole face was ashen and tired looking. My face probably looked the same in her eyes. I knew she was still upset at how the morning had gone. Who wouldn’t be? I still didn’t understand all that had happened. And I knew she knew that it had been Johnny all the while but hadn’t turned him in to the police. Maybe she knew we would do the right thing. Did she have more faith in my family than I had?

  She stood with me as proof of that.

  DELILAH

  I walked through them woods holding on to that dang green Amish dress that Sparrow came home wearing. I made sure to gather up every pin and weave them through the fabric, and I put it in one of Emma’s baskets she had brought one day. It was full of herbs and friendship that time though. If I hadn’t used up them herbs already, I would’ve thrown them out or given them back too.