by Ninie Hammon
Angel smiles the most beautiful smile Princess has ever seen and nods her head vigorously.
“Uh-huh,” she says, and begins to scrawl marks across the words of the song on the page: “…Lifted up was He to die; ‘It is finished!’ was His cry …”
She gives the child a brief hug, doesn’t dare hold her longer for fear Angel will feel how violently Princess’s whole body is shaking.
“I’ll be right back, sugar.” She kisses the little girl tenderly on the forehead, lingers for a moment, then turns and bolts down the aisle and out the front door of the church. She makes it all the way outside before she bursts into tears, sobbing so hard she can barely stagger back across the road to the woods. She collapses there, crouches behind a tree trunk and peers through a bush at the building.
Her face twisted in a monstrous cramp of grief, her pimpled cheeks slathered in tears, she gulps out great heaving sobs without making a sound. She watches, bawling silently, until a man and woman burst out the front doors of the church. The man has Angel in his arms.
“You were there, watching?” Mac was stunned. “Melanie and I found her and rushed out to see if we could catch whoever’d left her there. But there was nobody, not a car in the parking lot, nobody.”
“I was hid good in the bushes,” Princess said, her voice thick. “I seen you, the both of you, and I knew you’d take real good care of my Angel.”
She put her head in her hands and cried, but just for a moment before she shook it off, looked up resolutely, and continued her story.
“After you went back inside, I got in the car and high-tailed it back the way I’d come, back toward that town on the other side of the Three Forks River, the one had a circus with flashing lights, the town in Oklahoma. I’s about to get myself arrested and I wanted it to be in another state, so nobody’d ever even think to look for Angel in Arkansas.”
Mac marveled that a young girl had figured all that out.
“And on the way back to that circus, I stopped and …” She looked sheepish again. “I … well, I stole a chicken.” She looked stricken. “I’m sorry I done that Rev, I truly am, but I didn’t have no choice. I prob’ly had enough money left to pay for it, but I didn’t want no farmer to remember later that I bought it off’n him.”
Jonas spoke gently. “I don’t reckon the Good Lord was a-keepin’ score on that one.”
“I took the chicken out in the woods and chopped its head off and squirted the blood all over me and on that white, store-bought dress of Angel’s. Made as big a mess as I could. I’s careful not to let no chicken feathers get on nothin’, though. Then I stuck that piece of Angel’s hair to the bloody ax, put it and the dress in my knapsack, got back in the car and drove to that town where the circus was.”
She described parking the car on a side street several blocks from the vacant lot where the tents were set up.
“You know, they never did figure out I’s the one stole that car. Least they never said nothing to me ’bout it.”
Then she gathered up her knapsack and headed toward the circus. Everyone who saw her gawked, poked their neighbors and pointed.
“I musta looked a sight! Them bumps on my face, my hair all tangley, goin’ ever’ which way from the wind a blowin’ it and blood all over me!” Princess managed a small laugh. “Folks was probably talkin’ ’bout it for years afterward.”
She walked into the crowd waiting at the gate to buy tickets, stopped and stood staring up at the blinking lights.
“I knew they’d give me a fit, and they sure ’nough did. When I woke up, all those people was a-starin’ down at me—includin’ the sheriff. I looked up at him and said, ‘I just killed Angela Marie Prentiss. I chopped her head off, cut her into little pieces with a ax and throwed the pieces in the Three Forks. She was two years old.” I made it sound terrible as I could so wouldn’t nobody doubt what I said was true. And nobody ever did.”
Princess stopped and sighed. “I didn’t care what happened. I’s hurtin’ so bad in my heart I wouldn’t a cared if they’d a strung me up and hanged me on the spot. I’d lost my precious Angel. I didn’t have nothin’ to live for.”
Her purple eyes looked deep into Mac’s. “When I run out of your church and left that little girl a’sittin’ on a pew waitin’ for me to bring her a drink of water—I died that day! My life was over.”
Chapter 23
Joy grabbed her books and bolted out of American history class so fast she almost knocked down the teacher, a doddering old man whose memory was failing him. Just before class let out, the students had managed to convince him that he’d never assigned the homework he wanted them to turn in.
She hurried down the hall, not meeting anyone’s eyes, rushing to get out of the building before Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee got out of their last class, home economics, down by the gym. She didn’t have the time or the emotional energy to talk to her friends right now.
How could she stand there watching Beth blush when a cute boy said “hi” to her in the hall?
Or worse—listen to Shirley gush about what a “dreamboat” the President was, giggling that he and Jackie must still “do it” because she was pregnant. The First Lady was going to have a baby and the whole world was celebrating.
Well, nobody was celebrating Joy’s pregnancy. It was so not a cause for celebration that Joy was about to … ?
To what?
Kill her baby.
The words formed in her head as clear as a church bell on a cold morning. Joy literally staggered from the force of them, ducked into the girl’s bathroom by the auditorium door and stood trembling in one of the stalls, sucking in great gasps of air to keep from being sick.
She hadn’t let herself go there, had tackled any rebel thought, grabbed it by the scruff of the neck, stuffed it down into a trunk in a dark corridor of her mind, and then sat on the lid.
But there it was, right in front of her. Reality. She was about to drive out to a creepy house in the country where a filthy old woman was going to—
No! It’s not a baby! It’s just … cells, a glob of cells, that’s all!
You couldn’t kill something that wasn’t alive. It wasn’t human, a person. Not yet. It was just … potential life. An it. A thing that she had to get rid of or her life would be totally ruined. Facing her friends, the members of her church, her father pregnant was totally unthinkable. She would do absolutely anything to keep that from happening.
Determination calmed her. She would be strong. She had to be. There was only one way out. And once it was over, she could pick up her life where she’d left it and go on. Everything would be fine tomorrow. She just had to manage somehow to get through today.
She’d worn a skirt, a black one with a can-can slip, and she’d stopped by the drugstore on her way to school that morning and bought a whole box of Kotex. She’d done everything the woman had instructed her to do—except find someone to drive her home. As she pulled the big white car out of the school parking lot and headed toward Route 79, she actually prayed, the first time she’d prayed in … since her mother died.
“God, please … What will I do if that woman turns me away? Please help me!”
But she didn’t really believe God would help her do what she was about to do. She was on her own.
As Joy drove south from town on Route 79, she took no notice of the ugly black storm clouds building in the sky ahead. Her hair was always encased in an Aqua Net Hair Spray suit of armor to maintain her Annette Funicello flip; on particularly windy days, she wore a headscarf. But she wasn’t even thinking about her hair now. The day had turned off unseasonably hot and muggy and she rolled Mr. Wilson’s window down and let the wind blow in her face. Her hair broke free of the hair spray’s hold on it and danced around, tickling her nose. She took deep breaths of warm air that smelled of rain and tried to wipe her mind completely clean, to blot out everything, to think no thought of any kind.
Into that emptiness, images formed, pale and dreamlike.
She
is riding in a car at night, bouncing on the seat as wind blows her hair into her face. She is laughing and the woman driving the car laughs with her. But the woman is not her mother. It’s someone she’s never seen before, but who looks eerily familiar.
Though indistinct and blurred, the images seemed remarkably real. But when she concentrated, tried to get a better look at them, they dissolved, disappeared, puffs of smoke from the red embers of a dying fire.
By the time she pulled up in front of the house where honeysuckle trellises entombed the porch, she had a speech all mapped out in her head, knew exactly what she would say when the woman wanted to know who was going to drive her home. She’d tell the woman … Joy suddenly realized she didn’t even know the woman’s name, didn’t know what to call her.
What difference did it make what her name was? It’s not like they were going to exchange Christmas cards.
She sat for a few minutes, her fingers gripping the steering wheel so tight her knuckles were white, trying to control her breathing and stop her heart from pounding. She could feel every beat of it in the big vein in her neck. But she couldn’t calm down and decided it didn’t matter anyway. So she got out of the car, crossed the dirt yard, and stepped up onto the splintered boards of the porch. She didn’t even have to knock. The woman opened the door before she had a chance and looked anxiously out over Joy’s shoulder toward Mr. Wilson parked just outside the yard.
“You didn’t bring anybody with you, did you?” she wanted to know. “Somebody to drive you home? You said you didn’t have anybody, isn’t that right?”
Joy launched into her speech.
“No, and I know you said I had to, but I couldn’t find—”
The woman cut her off.
“It’s all right,” she said, and seemed to relax. She turned and fixed her eyes on Joy for the first time. When she spoke again, her voice was hollow-sounding. “I’m going to put you to sleep and then everything will be fine. You won’t need anybody to drive you home.”
Joy was puzzled, but so relieved that she wasn’t going to be turned away, she didn’t dare ask any questions.
The woman made no move to let her into the house, just stood there, like she was dazed. Her face was so distorted Joy couldn’t read the look on it. The moment drew out until Joy finally remembered the money. She reached into her pocket and took out the envelope that contained the $100 she had withdrawn from her savings account yesterday.
“Here’s the rest of the money, the final payment.”
The woman took the envelop and tossed it carelessly onto a table by the door, then stepped back and gestured for Joy to come in.
“My name’s Wanda,” she said. “And I’m going to take very good care of you, just like your mama would want me to. In a little while, it will all be over. Over and done with. Forever.”
Joy stepped into the house and the woman closed the door behind her.
* * * * *
When Princess finished her account, she sat with her hands folded on the table in front of her. She was swaddled in stillness, but power and intensity throbbed beneath it, a hand grenade wrapped in a silk handkerchief.
Jonas was the first one to find his voice.
“How old was you, Missy, when all this happened?”
“When they arrested me, I just had turned fifteen years old. Jackson lied, told ’em I was seventeen, so I’d be tried as a adult. They couldn’t give me the death penalty less’n I’s a grownup.”
Silence again.
“Why?” Mac asked tenderly. “Why’d you do it, Princess?”
She looked down at her hands folded on the table, then spoke one word with a thousand shades of loathing.
“Jackson.”
The hair on the back of Mac’s neck began to stand up. She still wouldn’t look at him or Jonas, just stared at her hands. She pulled in a deep breath and held it. After a heartbeat of silence, her siren’s voice spoke words crafted from razor blades and jagged glass. Words you couldn’t even get near or they’d slice you open all the way to the bone.
“Angel ain’t my little sister. She’s my daughter. Mine … and Jackson’s.”
Mac couldn’t breathe. Every speck of air had been sucked out of the room by the nightmare horror, bald and almost smoking, a truth so unthinkable it lay beyond the drapes and furnishings of his simple, ordinary life.
Princess was Joy’s mother?
And Jackson Prentiss was Joy’s father!
“I’m sorry Rev. I know it’s hard to hear a thing like that. But you asked to know the whole of it, and there it is.”
Jonas was struggling, too. His face had turned gray and he was mumbling, “ … red hair. That fella did have red hair.”
“Jackson told on the stand how Mama died havin’ Angel, said that’s why she was so precious to him—’cause his wife give her own life for her little girl. Made the jury feel so sorry for him.” Princess lifted her head and Mac fell back from the rage and loathing in her eyes. “Well, Mama never done no such a thing! She died of a fever, and ’fore she was even cold in the ground, Jackson up and says I got to marry him. He always had looked at me funny, made my skin crawl, but I never thought … Shoot, it was just a couple of weeks after my birthday; I’s only thirteen.”
Thirteen years old!
“I said no, said I wasn’t gonna do it! And he tore into me somethin’ fierce. Come up side my head with a piece of firewood and I liked to a-died my own self. That’s when I started havin’ them fits, after he beat me that time.”
Mac was filled with an inarticulate, maniacal rage so powerful it swept every other emotion out of his soul. For the first time in his life he knew without doubt that he could strangle the life out of another human being with his bare hands.
“One of the elders in the church performed the ceremony, said it was legal in Arkansas and maybe it was.” She made a humph sound in her throat. “Guess Jackson finally come to his senses though, thought better of marryin’ a little girl when I got … in a family way. He yanked me out of school and wouldn’t let me set foot outside the house so’s nobody’d see. Made me tell people Angel was my little sister, that he’d ’dopted us. Wouldn’t let her call me Mommy, neither. She’s the one turned Emily Prentiss into ‘Printhess.’”
She sat back in the chair then and her eyes stared at a distant nothing.
“That shack we lived in didn’t have no runnin’ water and I had Angel there one day while Jackson was at work in the sawmill. I was just a kid myself, didn’t have no idea what was happenin’ to me or what to do. It’s a miracle of God either one of us lived through it.
“Jackson come in that night, musta heard the baby crying outside. All he said to me was, ‘It a boy or a girl?’ When I told him it was a girl, he said we’d call her Angela, after his mother. I figured he could call her whatever he wanted; I’d already give her a name. ’Cause from the very first moment I held that squirmin’ little’un in my arms, bloody and white stuff all over her, I knew who she was. She was a Angel.”
Princess described how Jackson had gone back outside to the well and drawn a bucket of water. He brought it back to the house and warmed some up so Princess could clean herself and the baby while he scrubbed up the mess of the birth. He heated up a can beans for supper and brought Princess a plate while she lay in the bed with the baby.
“The next day, it was back to normal. He never paid no attention a’tall to that child. Oh, he got drunk and brought her home this lacy, white, store-bought dress one Christmas, but lots of times we didn’t have no food to eat and I had to go a-beggin’ from the coloreds at the bottom of the hill. He went back to … messin’ with me, just like he always done, but right after Angel was born was when I got that stuff on my face, my chest and my back, them awful bumps. Jackson hated that, said it made him sick, that I’s so ugly it made him want to puke when he looked at me.”
Jonas spoke softly, the venom in his words as poisonous as a snake bite. “Somebody ought to of put a shotgun barrel down that man’s pa
nts and blown his privates out the back side of his long johns.”
Princess actually smiled.
“I didn’t care that he acted like Angel wasn’t there. That just meant she was mine, all mine.” She looked sunshine out her eyes at Mac and Jonas. “I don’t have words fine enough to say what a gift she was to me, how my heart filled up to burstin’ ever day with lovin’ her. Ever’ breath I took, I took for her; ever’ thought was ’bout my Angel. She was everything good and beautiful and holy in the whole world, all wrapped up in a little girl with red curls.”
The sunshine left Princess’s eyes.
“Jackson never paid her no mind a’tall until that day when she was two, the day I’s telling you about that I give her a bath in the washtub.”
Angel’s bubbling laughter is the most joyous sound Princess has ever heard. She’s sitting on the floor with the child and reaches out to tickle her again when the front door suddenly bangs open and Jackson stomps in, looking meaner than a mason jar full of hornets.
He’s obviously been drinking, but even with his speech muddy, Princess has no trouble understanding him.
“Heard about your little party this afternoon at the bottom of the hill,” he roars at Princess, then turns on Angel. “I know what you done, too, Little Miss Priss.”
Joe Dan had told Jackson! Princess had seen the man, one of the elders of Jackson’s little church, drive by in his pickup truck, staring out the window at them. She should have known he’d go find Jackson at Shakey’s Tavern and fill his ear full about it.
Princess and Angel had gone down the hill as soon as the child woke up from her afternoon nap. Bess Washington, the nice colored lady in the shack by the road, had told Princess a couple of weeks ago that her cat was about to have kittens and Princess wanted to show them to Angel.
The four little critters were adorable! Two of them had mostly white fur, one had white and brown spots and one was black as a lump of coal. Angel had fallen in love with that one. Wouldn’t hardly put it down the whole time they were there.