by Lois Battle
But the root of her pain was not what others would say, but what she herself knew and feared. What if Evie kept running around with Jasper? What if anyone had seen Lila in that drunken state with that man—whoever he was (she’d combed her mind for possibilities but hadn’t come up with any). She would never have guessed that Lila would be unfaithful to Orrie. How could the girl hurt the poor man so? Why would she take the risk of compromising her own reputation and wrecking Orrie’s future? Because if it came out, it wouldn’t just be local gossip; it would be statewide news. And who would have thought that Lila would be the catalyst for that awful fight? It was as though Lila were paying them all back for a lifetime of deeply held grudges Josie hadn’t even known were there. And Cam. She’d known from the moment she’d seen her that something was wrong, but of course Cam hadn’t seen fit to tell her. Cam had never confided in her, and she’d best face the fact that she never would. Thank goodness Reba had told her, in strictest confidence, that Cam was worried about her job and had just broken up with a man she was still in love with. Her intuition told her that there was even more to it, though it was hard to imagine what problem could top a failed love affair and financial insecurity. But now Cam had left—just as Bear had always left—without apology, probably without regret, without even a decent good-bye.
The pressure of Margaret Crosby’s eyes almost made her want to shrink down so that she could not be seen. Cam always said it was superficial to care what people thought of you, but what was wrong with wanting the good opinion of your neighbors, or being proud of your reputation? It was a fine thing to rise above pride; but you had to have pride to do it.
Glancing across the center aisle, she saw Cuba’s family. They took up an entire pew. As she looked at them she could hear Cuba’s comments on each of them. Sitting closest to the center aisle was Thalia, Cuba’s eldest, so much like her mother that she might as well have been a clone. A high-school principal, Thalia usually dressed conservatively, but tonight she was sporting a Carol Little ensemble in a jungle print. She’d been the first in the family to get a degree, but had never married. (“Smart as a tack, but unlucky in love. Part be her own fault—she won’t hardly look at a man ’less he be a professional, an’ how many black professional men you see lining the streets callin’ out for a wife.”) Josie guessed that the infant on Thalia’s lap must belong to Cuba’s eldest son, Russell, who sat next to her.
Both Russell and his wife, Eugenia, who was bending to whisper a warning into the ear of their fidgety six-year-old son, were stiff as mannequins in a department-store window. Russell wore a lightweight tan suit, suitable for either winter or summer; Eugenia in a beige shirtwaist with a cocoa blazer, showing no more flash than sizable engagement and wedding rings and gold-rimmed glasses. (“They be squeezed in the middle-middle class, like some two-hundred-pound woman trying to wear a waist cinch. Both workin’ extra jobs ’cause they got to have a house with two bathrooms, they both got to have new cars, Russell got to have his computer. And half the time they forgets to give me anything for taking care of their childrens, an’ you know how groceries do mount up.”)
Shalalla’s mother, Bernice, still so country that she was wearing a large “lady” hat, sat next to her fidgety nephew. In her late twenties, the best-looking of the bunch, she’d dropped out of college to marry a star basketball player who’d never made it into the big leagues. Now she was living back with Cuba, chasing her ex for child support, and studying to pass a civil-service exam. (“I tolt her that being good-lookin’ could be more bad news than good, but did she listen?”) Cuba’s younger son, Seth, was beside Bernice, his dreadlocks tucked into a red, black, green, and yellow knitted cap, a ring in one ear. He was, Cuba said without apparent irony, her “black sheep”—arrested for possession, now on parole, living out of a van and peddling posters and handmade jewelry at concerts and county fairs. Next to Seth, a young woman who must be Alethea, Antoinne’s mother, her hair braided and piled high, gold loops almost sweeping her shoulders, painted eyebrows raised to show she was there under sufferance (“She think she the queen of the Nile, her head held so high she don’t see the leaks in her boat”). And finally, Cuba’s father, who also lived with her, sitting ramrod straight but looking frail and ashy. Dear God, Josie thought, Cuba has raised five children, mostly by herself. She’s buried two husbands, seen her son arrested, and now she’s raising her grandchildren and taking care of her father. Who am I to complain? She turned her eyes to the altar.
The lights dimmed. A skinny woman in a pink dress with glasses as thick as the bottom of Coke bottles, her hair ironed into mar-celled waves, came out from a side door behind the altar and took her place at the piano surrounded by pots of poinsettias and baskets of food. A big-bellied man followed her and sat down behind a set of drums. Shalalla and Antoinne scooted up the aisle and squeezed in next to their great-grandpa. Josie expected the choir to file out onto the altar, but nothing happened. A baby whimpered. Someone coughed. Children started to wiggle and whisper. Then, as though she’d purposely waited until the audience was off-guard so as to shock them into attention, Cuba’s voice rang out from the rear of the church in a heartbreaking, powerful call: “Oh, Lord, you know I won’t turn back ...” (Josie remembered Cuba saying that the other choir members had wanted to start with “Silent Night” but either by force of personality, or because she’d done the lion’s share of work sewing the new robes, Cuba had prevailed.) “Oh, Lord, you know I won’t turn back ... ,” Cuba sang again. She was echoed by a deep baritone, then a pure as sunlight soprano repeated the call, as though they were singing out to one another across the marshes. The accompanist brought three resonant chords from the piano, and the choir started down the aisle, each carrying a lighted candle, their voices joined in harmony. Cuba, resplendent in her multicolored dashiki bound with gold tape, her head wrapped in a twist of matching fabric, led the way, chin thrust forward, so that her dewlap disappeared and she looked like a younger, stronger woman. As she passed Josie’s pew she cut her eyes over to her for the briefest moment, taking it all in, and giving, though her expression hardly changed, a look of understanding. Josie swallowed hard. A white couple, obviously tourists, sitting in front of her, clapped their hands self-consciously in time to the music.
After placing the candles in a sand tray in front of the wooden cross, the choir arranged itself in a double semicircle. Cuba led them through hymn after hymn, each more confident and heartfelt than the last. Some of the congregation clapped along, others hummed or called assent. Some took off their sweaters and jackets. The emotional temperature also rose and Josie, alone in her thoughts, had a strange sensation: it was as though she were sitting at a campfire on a very dark night, protected not only by the animal warmth of the others, but by the realization that each and every one of them had hopes and fears, sorrows and joys, unique in their particulars, but somehow shared.
The choir swayed and hummed as Cuba raised her hand, and, in a sad and sonorous voice, said, “As we think about the birth of the baby Jesus, we also think about His mother. When she birthed Him this night, she didn’t know what she’d have to face down the line, when they brought His body down from the cross and laid it in her arms. This night, her labor was over, and she held Him in her arms, all squallin’ and new—and all she felt was joy. You mothers out there you knows what I mean.” The drummer beat a swift, syncopated rhythm and the choir rocked into a vibrant, joyful reggae: “Mary had a little baby, yes, she did, yes, she did ...” Josie was smiling, hands folded in her lap, her head down. It wasn’t until she felt a tear drop onto her hand that she realized she was weeping. She reached into her purse and, not finding a handkerchief, wiped her cheeks with her index finger. The moon-faced woman pressed a pocket-size package of Kleenex into her hand and patted it. Josie felt no sense of embarrassment, only a gratitude that further opened the floodgates. Her tears flowed silently and easily, washing her clean, releasing all her heartache like a long, gentle sigh. She understood it all. And she coul
d forgive them all. She could even forgive herself, because, after all, as Dozier had said, she’d done the best she could.
Sixteen
“EUREKA!” REBA YELLED when she saw the lights of the ramshackle country store with a deserted fruit stand at the side and a single gas pump in front. “It looks like something out of a horror movie, but at least it’s open. I was afraid we were going to run out of gas and have to sleep in a ditch.” Cam had said she didn’t want to get on the highway so they’d been driving on back roads to Charleston for over an hour.
“I’ll get the windshield, you get the gas,” Cam said as they rolled up and got out. Slapping at her left buttock, which had developed pins and needles, Reba squinted at the self-serve instructions. “When I was a kid, men in little caps and bow ties used to run out and do all this for you,” she complained, struggling with the nozzle.
“Yeah. Yeah. When you were a kid you could get candy for a nickel and everybody who graduated from high school could read.” Cam yawned, pressed her hands into the small of her back, and looked up at the moon above the piney woods. “ ‘That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, The happy highways where I went, And cannot come again.’ ”
“You make that up?”
“Hardly. Think it’s A. E. Housman. In high school I had this tough old English teacher who thought memorization was a mental discipline. Made us learn poems and famous speeches. We hated her for it, but you know, they’re about the only things I can quote. When we get back on the road, I’ll give you Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.”
“I don’t think you can top your rendition of ‘Me and Bobby McGee,’ but you can try.” Not wanting to talk about their swift and unhappy departure, they’d been singing ever since they’d left Josie’s house—working their way through the Beatles, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, the Supremes, moving back to Gershwin, Porter, Berlin, and, finally, harmonizing on patriotic songs and TV jingles.
“I’m not going to take sarcasm from a Jew who can’t remember ‘Hava Nagila.’ ” Cam bent forward and stared at the ground next to the pump. “There’s a bucket of water here, but no sponge. Guess I’ll go get some paper towels from the ladies’ room. You want anything?”
“I was saving my appetite for tomorrow’s sumptuous feast but I guess I might as well break down and have a Snickers.”
“Look, I’m sorry we had to leave.”
“Hey, it’s all right. I mean, I thought I was going to be in a production of The Christmas Carol, but it turns out I’m in a remake of Thelma and Louise.”
“You think we shouldn’t have left?”
“Not like that. Not without even saying good-bye to your mother.”
“I told her I was leaving before I went upstairs. And when we came back down they’d all gone to church. What were we going to do? Stick around for the next round? I mean, Reba, both Jasper and Lila were so rude to you and—”
“Cam.” Reba got the nozzle into the tank and pushed up the lever to start the gas pumping. “I cater upscale soirees, remember? If I got my feathers ruffled every time some drunk insulted me ... okay, they may do it with a little more style in New York, but hey, what’s the diff? A drunk with a chip on his shoulder is a drunk with a chip on his shoulder.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
Cam was grim. “Right. For once it wasn’t my fault.”
“I mean, you weren’t the one who was boozed up.”
“Yes, that was an unexpected reversal. Jasper’s always lit up, but Lila? I’ve told you she’s always been Miss Priss. And to disappear like that, then turn up drunk after she’d clearly been out with some guy? It’s crack-up time. But I still don’t understand why she took it out on me. She and I have had some major fights in the past, but I thought she’d forgiven and forgotten.”
“Hey, the grass may grow and the flowers may sprout, but nobody ever forgets where they buried the hatchet.” The trigger of the nozzle kicked back in Reba’s hand. “What the hell’s wrong with this?”
“Don’t clutch it, just apply steady pressure.”
“Oh, like you know a lot about not clutching and being steady,” Reba teased.
“Here, I’ll pump the gas, you go pay and get us something to drink. ”
“What do you want?”
“I’ll decide when I come in. I have to use the ladies’ anyway.”
By the time Cam went into the sloppy little store, Reba was already deep in a conversation with the lank-haired female clerk behind the counter. Cam nodded hello and looked around for the RESTROOM sign. The woman said, “You gotta have the key,” and held up same, tied to a piece of wood almost as big as a walking stick. Cam took it and headed toward the back of the store, passing a stand of girlie magazines, TV Guides, tabloids devoted to murders, incest, 350-pound Siamese twins, nine-year-old pregnant girls, and the ever-pressing question of “What Does Oprah Want?” There were wire racks of paperbacks and country-and-western tapes, a spattered HELP YOURSELF counter with Styrofoam cups, a pot of coffee the color of tar, paper napkins, packets of sugar, Cremora, relish and catsup, a two-gallon container of neon-yellow mustard, and hot dogs like huge, diseased fingers revolving on a spit in a plexiglass heat box. The restroom reeked of Lysol and stale cigarette smoke. The rusted “Sani-seat for Your Protection!” container on the wall was empty. Not trusting what she knew to be true—that your chances of contracting a disease from a toilet seat were about a million to one—she heard Josie’s early warnings and used the last of the paper towels to cover the commode. After washing her hands with several squirts of foul-smelling industrial-strength pink soap, she shook off the water, dried her hands on the seat of her pants, and started back toward the cash register, this time going down an aisle crammed with canned corn, Chef Boyardee SpaghettiOs, chili, evaporated milk, cold remedies, No-Doz, Pampers, potato chips, pork rinds, and Cracker Jacks, and a stand-up freezer crammed with Popsicles, six-packs of beer, Coke, Eskimo Pies, busted boxes of fried chicken, and milk, which was what she was looking for. She reached to the back of the shelf, checked the date on a quart carton, and carried it up to the cash register.
“You’d be surprised,” the clerk was saying to Reba. “Quite a few folk driving through, even on Christmas Eve. Some, you know, jes’ needin’ to get out of the house for a bit, but others ... Hey, a man I know drives a hire car come through ’bout ten minutes ago, carrying some outta town fella all the way from Walter-boro to the Charleston airport. Fella come down for some family do and there was some kinda bust-up an’ the fella’s cousin wouldn’t take him to the airport.” She shrugged as though she understood chaos to be the natural order of things, her ice blue eyes wandering back to the tiny TV perched above her head in the rack of cigarettes.
“You aren’t afraid being here alone?” Reba asked.
“Well, sure. All kinda holdups and murders in convenience stores, but ...” Without taking her eyes from the TV, she reached underneath the counter and pulled out a gun. Seeing Cam wince, she put it back, said, “Didn’t mean to scare you ladies,” and started toting up the bill. “Including gas, that’ll be forty-one-fifty.”
“Forty-one-fifty!” Cam gasped.
“Well, now, thirty for the gas, four for these li’l ol’ flags, three for the snuff . . .”
Cam stared at the mess on the counter: two miniature Confederate flags, a couple of tins of Peach Tree snuff, a package of something called Road Kill Snack.
“Souvenirs,” Reba explained with a hunch of her shoulders. “And this Snickers bar and a pack of Marlboros.”
“And the milk.” The woman snapped open a brown paper bag, held it at the edge of the counter, and scooped in everything except the quart of milk, which Cam was still holding. “You gonna drink that now?”
Cam nodded.
“Mostly it’s men an’ kids that be into milk. I s’pect it’s because they weren’t proper breastfed. Got this trucker comes through—looks like Sylvester Stallone—but he downs ’bout a gall
on of milk standin’ right here in front of me—but most women, they won’t be into milk less they’re pregnant. Don’t want the calories. I know when I was carryin’ Erika I jest couldn’t get enough. Craved milk and ice cream. Hell I woulda eaten chalk, any damned thing that . . .”
“Gave you calcium,” Cam said as Reba pulled bills from her wallet and shifted her weight, showing that she was anxious to leave.
“Don’t know about that, but I sure did crave milk.” The woman gave them their change and a tired smile. “Merry Christmas. Now you girls take care.”
“Thanks, we will,” Reba said over her shoulder.
“Good God!” Cam shuddered as they walked into the night. “Have you ever seen anything like the crap in that store?”
“Yeah. Everything that you’d need to sustain a life that’d make you want to kill yourself:”
“Want me to take over now?”
“No. I’ll keep on,” Reba said, getting into the driver’s seat and snapping her seatbelt shut.
“And you know what’s crazy?” Cam asked, prying open the quart of milk and taking a long swallow.
“It was all crazy, Cam,” Reba told her, flipping on the high beams and pulling on to the darkened country road.
“She was right. I usually don’t like milk, but I really craved this. Isn’t it amazing that the hormones would kick in this fast?”
Reba nodded glumly. “Okay if I turn on the radio?”
“Please don’t,” Cam said. “You most likely won’t be able to get anything except Christmas carols and I’d either scream or cry if I heard a Christmas carol right now.” They rode on in silence, Cam deep in thought, sipping the milk. “You think it was wrong to leave like that, don’t you?” she asked suddenly.
“You already asked me that. It didn’t seem fair to punish your mother.”
“I wasn’t punishing my mother. I just couldn’t stand to be there any longer. I mean, they insulted you, too.”