by Leisha Kelly
I lowered our turtle to the ground, and the stubborn thing drew his head inside the shell as far as he could without letting go of the stick. Some people were that stubborn. Good thing Sarah had brought me a fat stick.
Rorey touched the turtle’s back first, then the tips of its feet, which made Katie squirm.
Not to be outdone, Harry tried his best to find the hidden tail and, that failing, sat down and pushed against one side.
“Big!” Berty declared, much to Rorey’s satisfaction.
“Grab him, Sarah!” Harry challenged.
“I like lookin’ at him okay,” Sarah told him. “But I don’t wanna touch him. Mommy didn’t neither.”
“I’ll help you hang your wash,” I told Lizbeth. “But where do you want this fellow for now, out of the way of these kids?”
“In the corncrib, I guess. He won’t get outta there. We’ll cut him up this mornin’ so he can soak some hours afore supper. Be best that way.”
Katie looked even greener than she had before, the poor child.
“Look out!” Harry teased her. “He could chomp your whole big toe clear off!”
Rorey laughed.
“Leave her alone, you two,” I warned and quietly took Katie’s hand.
“You know how to cook it?” Lizbeth asked me.
“No. My grandmother told me about it, but I’ve never done one myself.”
“I know enough. I helped Mama more’n once at it. You want me to teach you?”
She looked pleased with the notion, so I said yes. Extra knowledge of anything was a good thing, I figured, especially in times like these. The one time I’d eaten turtle before, when I was a child, I hadn’t especially liked it, but just like Samuel and my cornmeal mush, you learn to eat what’s available.
“We’ll be wantin’ onions to go with it,” Lizbeth told me. “You want I pull some from the garden, or should we find us some wild?”
“We’d better let what’s left in our gardens get bigger. I’ll get the wild.”
“Berries!” Berty hollered, peeking into my pail and snitching two or three.
“Are there any more?” Lizbeth asked. “I was thinkin’ to check ’em sometime today or tomorrow.”
“No. This is almost all of the raspberries. But there should be quite a few blackberries. More than last year. Maybe we could all go picking together when the time comes.”
She happily agreed. I knew she loved it when I came over. For the change of pace and the help.
Carefully I pulled our turtle to the corncrib and shut him in, stick and all. I was glad to get him away from Harry and glad to be done with moving him, at least for now. He was heavier than he looked.
Then I helped Lizbeth get her wash on the line. Memories flooded back as I hung up the yellow bib that Emma had made for baby Emma Grace when she was born. Of course, it’d been too big then, but here it was, still being used now. And the vest Wilametta had made in the fall to give to George, thinking ahead of a Christmas she didn’t live to see. He still wore it, and Lizbeth washed it carefully as if it was something sacred.
Hanging up towels, I thought of Emma over here struggling to help Wilametta bring her tenth child into the world breech. How scared I was, called on to help in such a task as that! But the baby’d been fine, and strong and healthy ever since. Far worse was the night, months later, when Emma and Wila both went to be with the Lord and there was nothing I could do to help either one of them.
Emmie Grace started pulling at my dress, and I smelled something most definitely stinky. “Is she telling you now?” I asked Lizbeth.
She looked at me and her baby sister from behind a sheet and smiled. “Sometimes. After the fact. You want I change her?”
“I will.” I picked up the little tike, and she played with my hair all the way to the house. I knew where the diapers were. I knew where everything was here, almost as well as my own house. And all the Hammond kids knew where our things were too, we were back and forth so much.
I could’ve changed Emmie in the sitting room, but I went and laid her on the bed where she was born, where her father and probably several kids slept at night even still. Sometimes it was strange being in that room. As though Wilametta could still talk to me there. But I felt more connected to Emma at home, outside. Especially in the garden, which she’d loved.
Little Emmie giggled when I pinned her diaper, which neither of my children had ever done. She had stick-up-straight hair, still short and fine. Strawberry blonde, like her mother. I smiled to think of her being so happy. Lizbeth had done well, filling her mother’s shoes. Maybe we’d all done well.
I stepped out on the porch in time to see Berty running past the house chasing a goat.
“Harry!” Lizbeth was yelling. “You shut that gate and don’t you open it again, you hear me!”
“Harry let a goat out,” Sarah ran up to tell me.
“I noticed.”
Katie stood beside the new porch pillar that Samuel had made when he spent some time this past spring helping George with some vital repairs. She looked a little lost. And frightened by everything going on around her.
“I promise you we’re not always this wild,” I told her. “Would you and Sarah like to keep Emmie here on the porch for me? And I’ll help round that goat in.”
Both girls were pleased to have the baby left in their charge. I called to Berty and told him to sit down and quit chasing the goat. Then I reached up and pulled a little branch from the nearest maple tree and led that silly goat back to his pen with the branch just out of his reach. He thought I had quite a prize, I guess, and I threw the branch in once I had the gate shut. He had to shove past two other goats for his leafy share.
Harry watched the whole thing and thought it was hilarious. So Lizbeth made him sit on a stump and stay there. She was done hanging out the laundry by then, and she turned her attention back to me.
“Mama let turtle soak overnight sometimes. But she said if you get ’em in the morning an’ let ’em soak all day, they’re all right by supper too. You wanna do that?”
“Whatever you think.”
“I didn’t know what we were having for supper,” she confessed. “This is such a blessin’.”
I was glad I’d brought the turtle, because I knew what she meant. Their garden couldn’t keep up with their need, and their pantry might be barer than mine. We had our work cut out for us this summer, gathering in everything we could. Lord help.
Lizbeth salted down a washbowl of water to have ready, and then she brought the doomed old turtle from the corncrib and whacked off its head. She started cutting immediately, looking up at me with a smile.
“Some folks stick ’em in boilin’ water, shell an’ all. But we won’t have to do that if we leave him soak in the salt water and then stew him good with some milk after a while. Be some fine soup, an’ it’ll go further than fryin’ him. That’s good too, though.”
She cut off the bottom plate first, then cut the rest of the turtle loose from shell, gutted it, and started cutting the meat in pieces to plop right away into the water. She saved all she could, even off the legs, but set the bones aside.
“I won’t boil ’em like you’d do a chicken’s bones,” she said. “Mama didn’t think turtle made good broth. That’s why you gotta soak it, then cook it in milk. The bones is the dog’s food for today, if that’s all right with you.”
I couldn’t remember whether Grandma Pearl had said anything at all about boiling turtle bones, so I didn’t say a word. Whiskers would appreciate the carcass. He’d been rather sparsely fed recently.
“So who’s the girl you got with you?” Lizbeth suddenly asked me.
I guess I’d thought we might just be here a while, with Lizbeth never even noticing the extra child. She hadn’t looked Katie’s way or seemed to pay the slightest bit of attention. For some reason it had never occurred to me that she might ask. And now that she had, I was unsure what to say. “Um, she’s Katie. Kin of Samuel’s. Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
My cheeks burned, realizing I should never have said such a thing. How foolish of me! Now I was stuck giving some kind of explanation. “His brother brought her,” I said quickly. “He says she’s kin, but we don’t know for sure her family.”
Lizbeth was looking at me sideways. “That’s plenty peculiar, Mrs. Wortham.”
“I know.”
“So where was she the other night when we saw him there?”
“In the car.”
She shook her head. “Well, how come he knows her well enough to bring her to visit, but he still don’t know her people?”
“Oh, Lizbeth, I don’t know. He’s difficult. And he just left her without answering all the questions, and to tell the truth, we’re not sure what to do.”
My words came out in a rush, and for a moment she was quiet. I knew I shouldn’t be talking so much, confiding in her like she was an adult friend. What was the matter with me? The poor child had enough to think about.
“You want to sit a spell?” she asked me. “This whole thing’s got you all wore out, I can tell.”
“No. We should just go back and do a little more picking on the way home. You can have the turtle. I’m glad to bring it.”
“We thank you for it. But are you sure you’re not wantin’ to sit? The berries an’ whatever else can wait, you know.”
“No. We should go.”
I glanced over to the porch, where Rorey had joined Katie and Sarah. The three of them were happily occupying Emma Grace with one of the cloth balls I’d made for the little boys last Christmas.
Knowing Harry couldn’t sit still for long, I would have expected him to be up off that stump and clamoring for the turtle shell to play with. But he didn’t come. I took a look around the farmyard, and he was off the stump, all right, but I didn’t see him anywhere. Or Berty either.
“Lizbeth, where are the little boys?”
“Oh, prob’ly in the barn,” she said without a trace of worry. “They’re always playin’ ’round there. They don’t get into too much, most times.”
“I’m going to check,” I told her. “Sarah!” I hollered toward the porch. “Did you see where Harry and Berty went?”
“No!” she called back.
“They’s ’round here somewhere,” Rorey yelled. “They was just here a minute ago.”
I had a funny feeling in my stomach then, kind of like the first time I was over here and noticed what precious little attention Wilametta was paying to those little boys. And now Lizbeth got so busy she just took for granted that her brothers would stay in their boundaries while she was working. I should have checked sooner. Because with Harry, you never knew for sure.
I checked the barn and hayloft. No little boys. I checked the goat pen, the outhouse, even the chicken coop, and found nothing. They weren’t up a tree or in the garden. So even though Harry and Berty weren’t ones to play in the house when they could be outside, I headed there, not knowing what else to do.
“Harry! Bert!” Lizbeth called, sounding more aggravated than worried. But I was glad she was looking now. Those boys were only four and almost six years old. Somebody should know where they were.
Surely if they’d gone in the front door, the girls would have seen them. So I went toward the back door, thinking, I don’t need this, none of us need this. Lord, help us find those boys.
I was almost to the back steps when the little hooligans scurried out from under the porch at me like wildcats, screeching and carrying on just to see me jump.
Sarah darted around from the front porch to see what the commotion was about and only smiled when she saw them. “Oh, good. You found them.” And she went back the way she came.
“Harry! Berty!” I scolded when I had my breath. “Don’t you ever do such a thing again! If you want to play hiding, you tell somebody first. Do you understand?”
Little Berty nodded right away. But Harry had started snickering and turned his head to yell at Lizbeth. “I scared Mrs. Wortham! Made her jump clean outta her skin!”
Lizbeth wasn’t impressed. “Oughta whup you good for pullin’ somethin’ like that! Didn’t you hear us callin’?”
“Yes, but—”
“I don’t wanna hear no but. Next time we’re callin’, you answer, or Pa’s gonna hear about it! You unnerstand?”
He nodded, still snickering to himself. I knew that the threat of George hearing about it was not much of a deterrent.
“Go get the goats some water. An’ don’t you let one outta the pen again!”
The boys ran off, hopefully in obedience, and Lizbeth shook her head. “I swear, those two make me wonder if I’m thinkin’ straight wantin’ to be a teacher one day.”
“You’ll do fine as a teacher,” I assured her. “And they’re normal boys, for the most part. It just worries me a little that something could happen if they were to wander off alone.”
Lizbeth nodded. “Franky caught ’em one mornin’ on the way to the pond, figurin’ to go swimmin’ all by themselves. Harry might a’ been all right. But Berty can’t handle water a’tall without somebody there. We had to tell ’em if they ever tried that again we’d switch ’em good. An’ I think they learned their lesson.”
“I hope so.”
I started walking around to the front of the house, thinking to tell Sarah and Katie it was time to go.
“Thank you again for the turtle,” Lizbeth told me. “God uses you, Mrs. Wortham. Pa said we were gonna have to kill a kid of the goats before long to make it through the summer if things don’t get better. That or chickens, an’ I don’t want to do neither for thinkin’ on the winter’s need. Joe an’ Sam’ve been tryin’ to hunt, but they haven’t had no better luck than Willy at fishin’. And here you bring in somethin’ with no more than a stick.”
“Tell them to keep hunting. Keep trying. And we’ll do what we have to do.”
“Sorry to hear ’bout your cow.”
“So am I.”
“You got what you need for supper over there?”
Her eyes were filled with gentle concern. It was so like her to think down the road a little. Asking about supper when we hadn’t had lunch. Considering winter in the heat of July. “Yes, Lizbeth, we’ll have the leftover cornbread with fresh milk over it. And I’ll be gathering what I can in the timber on the way back.”
Suddenly I thought of those berries in my pail. Not many. But they would be such a treat for this teenage girl who’d been too busy with responsibilities to go and pick. “Lizbeth, I’d like you to have those raspberries.”
“Oh, Mrs. Wortham, I couldn’t do that. You already gave us the turtle, and that was . . . that was a godsend.”
“I want you to have them. Mix a little batter for a cobbler, maybe. That way they’ll go further.”
She hugged me. And it wasn’t till she let go that I saw her tears.
“I think I’d go crazy if it wasn’t for you,” she said. “I know I shouldn’t be worryin’, but I can’t seem to help it. We’re eatin’ ever’thin’ the garden can bear, an’ I’m afraid there won’t be nothin’ left to can. The fields aren’t lookin’ so good, it’s been so hot an’ full a’ grasshoppers, an’ I know that bothers Pa. What are we gonna do when the flour runs out? If we have to start killin’ the stock, we won’t have no livin’ left for next year.”
“There’ll be a way,” I told her, hoping my words didn’t sound hollow. “We’ve gotten this far. We’ll make it. The good Lord will take care of it.”
“I wish I had your faith.”
I didn’t know what to tell her. Seemed like it was Emma’s faith speaking out of me, or God’s own, seeking to give her comfort. I didn’t feel very big in faith myself.
“You s’pose you’ll be keepin’ that girl for long?” she asked me rather timidly.
“I don’t know. As long as she needs us, I guess.”
“Emma picked the right folks,” Lizbeth said. “You’re a saint, same as her, Mrs. Wortham. I b’lieve you’d help everybody
in the country if you could.”
I turned away from her, suddenly tight inside. She just didn’t see. She didn’t see all the doubt and turmoil swirling around in me. It was a wicked heart, not a saintly one, that had me doubting my husband and speaking words of faith I didn’t feel.
“Sarah! We should start back now!”
Rorey came running around the house almost smack into me. “I wanna go with you! Can I go back to your house?”
“Rorey Jeanine, you’ve already been there,” Lizbeth scolded.
“But . . . but if I don’t go back,” the girl protested, “I won’t be able to make clay stuff with Sarah an’ Katie! That’s what they’re gonna do, an’ I wanna do it too!”
“I should take the little boys along,” I told Lizbeth. “Or Emma Grace, and let you have a break.” I said the words, sounding saintly again, I suppose. But I only felt tired of it all and didn’t really want even one more child to see to today.
Maybe she knew. Or maybe she was just being kind. “No. You got enough to think on without the littlest ones. If you don’t mind Rorey, she can go an’ make a clay pot or somethin’, but I want her to come back by supper.”
“Ahh—” Rorey began to protest.
“Don’t you want to brag on the turtle you helped catch?” Lizbeth asked her. “An’ eat some?”
“All right,” the girl relented.
“You can all come if you want,” Lizbeth told me. “I can stretch a soup pot. Ask Mr. Wortham an’ see what he says.”
Sarah was walking Emmie down the stairs in Lizbeth’s direction. “We gotta go?” She let go of the baby’s hands when they got to the shaggy grass and turned to get the waiting bucket of clay. But Katie just stood at the base of the porch steps looking at me. I hadn’t called her, I realized. Only Sarah.
“Come on, Katie,” I said quickly. “Time to go home.” A poor choice of words, maybe. It wasn’t Katie’s home. At least not for long, surely.
I grabbed my picking bag and the two empty pails, leaving the berries behind for Lizbeth’s cobbler. Maybe we would come tonight. It was as much my meal as the Hammonds’.