The Solace of Water

by Elizabeth Byler Younts

  Just because I stood by Emma at that white church didn’t mean I wasn’t upset. And it didn’t mean that any of us missed how Police Chief Crabtree treated the Mullets differently than the Carters. Was that the Mullets’ fault though? And if the tables were turned, I was sure that Emma would’ve stood with me. I hoped anyhow.

  Couple of days had passed by now and Sparrow was still little more than a rag doll. She wouldn’t eat or talk or do nothing. Nothing I did worked. But all I did was try to get her to listen to me, thinking she might snap out of it. But I knew she wouldn’t. She was done hearing me. I don’t know but to just leave her be for a time. Malachi said I was wrong.

  Right now, though, I want to take back the dress and the basket and tell Emma that she got no right putting an Amish dress on my daughter. She got no right to bring her by and walk away without no explanation, leaving Sparrow for Malachi to find standing on the front porch. She got no right making my girl prefer her over her own family. Sparrow ain’t Emma’s daughter. She ain’t her kin. She ain’t her color. She ain’t her religion.

  It don’t matter that I don’t know what to do with Sparrow or what I think about her. She was still mine and Emma got no right to coddle her. I couldn’t get out of my head how that girl was begging to be Emma’s servant.

  I put on a church dress and my hat and my nice shoes, even though it was Thursday. It did make it harder to walk through the woods and creek. With all the rain we got on Sunday it been dry ever since. Like bone-desert dry. Like we-ain’t-never-gonnaget-more-rain sort of dry. It was like all the water in the air got harvested up and stored up someplace else.

  When I left the woods and entered Emma’s yard, I took a deep breath. The problem with this business was that I liked Emma and it pained me to lose her as a friend. It wasn’t that I never liked no white woman before. In Montgomery there was a church, a white church, with a group of ladies who came around sometimes—to be nice. At first I didn’t like them because I didn’t want no handouts from white people—I didn’t want them to act like they were missionaries to us—but when I gave them a chance, I saw they weren’t doing that. They were all either old schoolteachers or nice white folks and wanted to stop drawing lines between the races and instead learn from each other.

  Still not always sure what they wanted out of us, but they were real nice folks. Otherwise, I had only worked for white ladies. And I don’t think that a lot of white ladies got colored lady friends. We all just keep to ourselves and what we know and what’s easier. Wrong or right, that was how I saw things.

  When I saw Emma on her porch I stopped my step. I stood there for a second and watched. She wasn’t wearing her normal bonnet but just a knotted handkerchief. I done that so many times, just like that.

  When I started walking again my feet brushed the dry grass and she noticed me. It was almost like the air around me was pulled into her inhale. She stood. My steps felt like when you walked through water. You got to push your legs harder and watch for a sure step.

  “Can I get you some lemonade?” Emma said when I stood at the bottom of the porch steps.

  “No, ma’am. I just came by to deliver back your things.”

  “Deedee.” Emma’s voice dropped at the end, like her tone said, Why you acting this way?

  Why wouldn’t I though? Come on, Emma. Your boy kissed my girl. You dressed my daughter in your clothes like she was your daughter. I wanted to say that but I didn’t.

  “Will you at least come and sit for a minute?” she asked.

  I done my own big inhale and exhale and took those steps up and sat opposite of Emma. She had beans she was snapping in a bowl. Her hands still got a few bandages on them and I wonder why.

  When neither of us spoke for a few minutes, she started. “I’m sorry about Sunday.” Her voice was so thin. Like a starved piece of voice that was just about ready to break.

  “It don’t matter now.” I didn’t meet her eyes. Not like all of Sunday was her fault, but I didn’t say that. “I brought back your basket and the dress.”

  “Dress?”

  “You didn’t think she should keep it, did you? You shouldn’t have put it on her to begin with. She ain’t your daughter, Emma.” My anger rose and I’d slipped and called her by her first name instead of using Mrs. Mullet or ma’am. I wanted to show her that we wasn’t friends no more. I got up and put her things next to the big stainless steel bowl of green beans.

  “I don’t know what you mean. This is my dress but I never put it on her.”

  “On Sunday?” I wrinkled up my face. “You brought her back and she was wearing this dress. She had that salve all over her cuts too.”

  “Deedee, I don’t know what you mean. I didn’t leave my home except to go into town—with Johnny.” Her voice faded at the end.

  “What you talking about?” I pulled back my chin and looked at her like she must be losing time or just crazy or something. “Then who—?”

  Then I knew. Emma knew also.

  “Johnny,” we both said.

  But we both knew it wasn’t the kind of right answer that was right. It just made more problems. Now I got to worry about her being naked in front of a boy. I got to worry about if that boy done something to my daughter. And if she ever got a baby in her belly, Lord help me, I would send her away.

  “He wouldn’t do anything to her,” Emma said like she reading my thoughts.

  “What you mean, he wouldn’t do nothing to her? He already done something to her.” I shook my head with a laugh that I hoped told Emma she was stupid. “Your boy kissed my girl. You want your white son kissing on a colored girl?”

  She inhaled but didn’t answer.

  “He undressed her and put that dress on her.” I pointed to the ugly green dress sitting there.

  “You don’t know if he undressed her. She could’ve put that dress on by herself.”

  “You don’t know what Sparrow’s been like, Emma.” I started yelling and stood. “She don’t eat, don’t talk, don’t make no noise even. When I wave my hand in front of her face, she don’t blink. She don’t do nothing but lie there in her bed. She peed the bed and didn’t mind to lie in it.”

  “What?” When Emma stood she upset the bowl of beans and it made a loud hollow sound against the wood porch floor. “I need to see her.”

  “No, you don’t.” I wagged my finger at her. “You got to stay away. Don’t you see this is your fault?”

  “My fault?”

  “And your son’s. He done caused her to get all messed up in her head. She don’t know what’s up or down no more. They been meeting in them woods of yours. And then your son kissing on her and probably kissing on that redheaded Amish girl also. And who knows who else. And maybe it was more than kissing.”

  “But, Dee—”

  “He getting drunk and driving cars into places and then colored boys getting blamed for it.” I spat out the words. Why was I the only one who saw the problem here? “Don’t you see? You white folks just do what you want but we get the blame.”

  “But, Deedee, I thought—well, when you stood by me—” She stepped toward me.

  “Don’t you get it? What are you, stupid? Your son is as dumb as you and as drunk as your husband.” It didn’t matter that I regretted it as soon as I said it. She wasn’t dumb. But I couldn’t stop my tongue now. “You best get ahold of that son of yours.”

  “And what about Sparrow?” Emma’s voice was as thick as tree sap and she got some courage coming into her all at once. “She came to me like a little girl looking for a mother.”

  “Don’t you talk about Sparrow.”

  “Why? Because you can’t face how much you’ve hurt her?”

  “You need to stop talking.” I wagged my finger again, then stepped down the porch. Then I turned around to throw a few more words at her. “She ain’t your daughter. You don’t got no daughter and you don’t know nothing about mine.”

  Her husband came out just then. He looked like a ragged piece of man. His hair was too l
ong and stuck to his forehead. His shirt was hanging out partway and it was a good thing he was wearing them suspenders because his pants looked so big on him, I think they would’ve gone right down to his ankles.

  His gaze landed on me and then Emma and then back on me. “What’s this?” He was breathless with just those mite words.

  “You aiming to dry up, Mr. Mullet?” I threw my words out to him so fast he twitched a little. “I know all about you and what you done that the church too naive to see.”

  “Deedee, don’t,” Emma said with the force of an invisible wind.

  “Y’all think you better than everybody else, don’t y’all? Like y’all above everybody?” I almost got to laugh now, seeing the two of them standing on that porch acting like they don’t know all they done.

  “My wife hasn’t done nothing to be ashamed of.” His tone was so honest it surprised me. He believed what he said—like he got some saint for a wife who been putting up with his drunk ways for years.

  “You a fool for not knowing that for years—years—your wife been taking birth control herbs.”

  Emma hung her head, weeping. John looked over at her and back at me when I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. And my own tears burned my eyes.

  “Now you know, like you should have all this time.” I was ashamed of my words. Emma looked at me for a moment with all that water in her eyes. She stepped around her overturned bowl and left. John followed her inside.

  Then I stood alone. I knew I’d done wrong but I couldn’t take it back. My fear had taken over my mouth. What was worse was I didn’t want to be honest about what I was afraid of but I cried the whole walk home. When I got there and found Malachi sitting at the kitchen table looking at the checkbook, I was so angry with myself I got nasty with him.

  “You counting all our money?” I said real mean like.

  Malachi didn’t pay me no mind so I kept biting.

  “When you found Sparrow on the porch, she wasn’t alone, was she?”

  “Dee,” he said in that voice that always meant leave it be.

  “You tell me the truth, Malachi Evans.”

  He tapped the pen on the table a few times.

  “It was the boy.” He looked at me.

  “And you didn’t think you should tell me?”

  “It wasn’t important right then. Sparrow was.” He stood and the scrape of the chair against the floor plucked my nerves. “But you don’t seem to be worried about her, do you?”

  “Don’t you talk like that to me.” I glanced over toward my bedroom where my purse sat filled with Carver dirt. I had this vision of two purses sitting there, side by side. What if I lost her? I shook my head. No. That wasn’t going to happen.

  “I can’t fix her, Mal.” My voice broke so hard my throat hurt.

  “You don’t need to fix anyone—you just need to forgive her for what was an accident. Carver’s death was an accident.”

  “I can’t!” The little ones at the television turned at my hollering but I didn’t care. “I can’t do that. It just hurt too much.”

  “Dee,” he started with his nice, soft voice, but I interrupted.

  “I think maybe I should call my sister.” I looked away from my husband. “The little ones and I will go back to Montgomery—at least for a while. Maybe you can get through to Sparrow. But I can’t.”

  EMMA

  I remember my mammie telling me once that sins didn’t go away with the setting and rising of the sun. Sin remained in its state of needing forgiveness and would still have consequences even after the sun rose and set on it—and then there was the guilt.

  “I’m sorry,” I told John when he closed the door behind him.

  “It’s true?” He choked on his words. “All these years?”

  I couldn’t speak so I just nodded. My tears heated my whole face.

  “But you said—” he started but didn’t finish.

  I knew what he was thinking though. I’d told him those first few years that it was up to God, not us. My first lie. Then, after several years of no pregnancy and after so many bottles my husband had consumed and after so many powdered herbs I’d swallowed, I told him it was because of his drunkenness. I told him we couldn’t conceive a child as long as we had a hidden sin. My second lie. But I believed it. I believed that God didn’t want us to have more children because John was a drunk and I was a liar. He didn’t know my hidden sin though. He didn’t know that I was too afraid to have another child. Because of the pain of loss. Because of him. I had made the decision for us without him.

  I couldn’t go back. It was the truth. And now he was trying to change and my lies had surfaced. If we weren’t a drunk and a liar anymore, then who were we?

  “You didn’t even care that she died,” I cried. I’d never said that to him and how it broke my heart. His ignoring me had hurt as much as losing her. “You never even looked at her or helped me bury her. I had to do it alone.” I pointed toward the woods.

  “I wasn’t in my right mind. I hadn’t thought things through about—the baby. You wouldn’t talk to me. You were so angry, I didn’t know what to do.” He threw his hands in the air. We’d never spoken like this to each other. “You were so sad and I couldn’t fix it.”

  I considered what he said. There was some truth to it. He was right that I wouldn’t talk to him. I retreated into a new hiding place—the woods, my words, into my quiet—anywhere but near him.

  “How could I talk with you? You were drunk all the time.” I threw my accusations back at him.

  He sighed. “I know and I’m sorry. I can’t take it back though.” His attention didn’t waver from my eyes. “I did wrong. I admit it.”

  I couldn’t respond. I was still so angry and the feelings I had when I placed that tiny box into the damp earth were sown into my soul. He wasn’t there. He cared more about his wine than he did me.

  “I did see her though.” His voice filled the heavy quiet. “The morning you buried her.” Tears fell down his cheeks and his face contorted. “I’ll never forget the way she looked. And I still visit her grave sometimes.”

  “The black-eyed Susans,” I whispered.

  It was not long after I’d buried her that I found black-eyed Susans scattered everywhere around the tiny grave. Because no one knew where I’d put her grave, I had convinced myself it couldn’t have been John. I’d stuffed it away and anytime those flowers lay over her grave again, I always refused to believe they were from him.

  “I always thought of her as a Susan—since that day.”

  I took in a sharp breath. He had named her too.

  “I’m sorry—about the herbs.” I meant my words, but my voice sounded hollow and empty. I looked up at him and saw the eyes of the young man I’d married. A ragged face and body encased those eyes, but he was in there and, oh, how I’d loved him. I began to weep and lowered my gaze to my lap. “Forgive me, John.”

  He watched me for a long time, but I couldn’t return his gaze. How could I plead for his forgiveness when I had not extended it myself?

  “I forgive you, Emma,” he offered too early and too filled with grace. I was undeserving.

  In these moments realization settled into me. I had not harvested any wild turnip to dry. There was still some time, but maybe somewhere deep inside of me I knew it was time to stop. The secrets and lies had made my soul more barren than my womb.

  John and I didn’t talk about the herbs again. As far as it appeared, he had moved beyond that with the unspoken expectation that I would not continue lying to him. And I wouldn’t.

  The sun set and rose even while the consequences of our closely held sins lingered and wrapped around us like vises. If sin was a river, I would’ve drowned long ago. I was drowning even now.

  I saw my years of lying to my husband in the growing of the grass. When the trees blew I heard the secrets between Johnny and Sparrow. When the sun roasted the gravel on the drive, making it hot to walk across, I thought of John’s drunkenness and desperation to start anew—b
ut not knowing how. The dips in the driveway from old puddles, the dry eaves, the thin air that didn’t wave in the distance was John pleading for my forgiveness that I wouldn’t give. I’d based my lies and secrets on my husband’s sin and I could not get out of the web I’d created.

  I had not cooked a hot meal since that Sunday morning when our lives crashed before us. John was in bed most of each day. He hadn’t gone to work at all this week and I didn’t know how to help him. I was afraid for him. Could not drinking kill him?

  Since he learned about my lies I thought he wouldn’t want my help, but he accepted it every time. When I held his shoulders when he couldn’t keep down a bite of food, he would always turn toward me with sorrow-filled eyes and thank me. When I climbed into bed finally, as late as possible, he would move ever so slightly toward me. Just enough to where his back grazed my own rounded back. Like he needed to be near me, to know I was there.

  Dealing with Johnny did not have the same softness to it. He had returned to work but kept to himself when he was home. He wasn’t leaving the house in the evenings anymore though. For that I was grateful.

  “Did you do anything more to Sparrow than kiss her?” I blurted out over a cold dinner of egg salad and tomatoes.

  Johnny shook his head.

  “What about the dress you gave her? My dress.”

  “She was lying in the woods—alone.” He banged his fist on the table.

  “Johnny,” I reprimanded.

  “Sorry,” he said quietly.

  I waited for a few moments.

  “Did you undress her?” I swallowed hard.

  “I promise I didn’t look at her.” He looked into my eyes and I knew he wanted my understanding. “Have you seen her cuts?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She hurts herself because she’s so sad. They’re all over her legs and she has scars in—other places. I tended to the fresh ones.”