“Then why didn’t you?”
“You know why.”
“Jewel, please don’t pursue this. Nothing good will come from it.”
“I didn’t stay with them because I could never leave you.”
“That’s not so,” says Freddie. “I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”
“Sure, you can fry an egg when you are hungry and wash your drawers when they are dirty. But remember how you cut your hair when I was living in Charleston. How long would it have been before you made a complete spectacle of yourself?”
“If you were living in Charleston, then you never would have known. You didn’t stay with Mr. Landry or Mr. Potts or Mr. Odom, for that matter, because you are a greedy, greedy woman who couldn’t wait to get her hands on their money.”
“I didn’t stay with them because I am loyal to you. I have always been loyal—to you! Only you. Why can’t you see that? Appreciate what I do for you?”
“Because you drive me crazy. You are always at me. At me. I would appreciate if you just left me be. Please.”
“When Papa . . . died . . . I didn’t say anything because I knew how he had treated you. I thought perhaps it was fair.”
“Are you saying this has all been my doing?”
“No, I am saying I have always chosen you—over Papa. Over Mr. Landry. Over Mr. Potts. Over Conrad.”
“So what? What do you want from me?”
“I want you to listen to me! That is what I am saying. Listen to me! You think you are so smart, that you have it all figured out. You didn’t even tell me that it was the day you had arranged to remove Conrad. You just decided. And that was that. Why didn’t you tell me? You didn’t have that right. We were in this together. I did everything I was asked to do, but you didn’t trust me enough not to tell me.”
“No,” says Freddie. “I didn’t.”
“I hate you,” says Jewel. “For that. And for the thousand hurts you inflict on me every day. For thinking that living here with you is enough for me—for anyone. Did you think that you could just eliminate Conrad and that I would allow you to keep her here? Just because you had a mind to. I know that is what you were thinking. I know that is what you had planned. And you thought that you would just decide to do it and I would agree.”
“Yes,” says Freddie. “I wanted her to stay here—with me.”
“You would choose her.”
“Yes. Yes, I would choose her.”
“Then I am glad she is dead. I am glad I killed her,” Jewel says, smoothing out her apron. “You are not the only one who can decide these things.”
“No,” says Freddie. “She died in childbirth. A terrible tragedy, but no one’s fault.” She knows, however, even as she speaks that what she says is a deceit, knows that what Jewel says is true. Has known it from the moment she saw Jewel on the steps covered in Isabelle’s blood. To hear it, though, to have it become real made her fear the sky will crack and the sun rising over them will fall from the heavens and that the night stars will pour down around them, that she will come unrooted from the earth itself and float away into oblivion. It cannot be. It cannot be.
“All it took was a jab,” Jewel says, balling up her fist. “To her belly. I hated that little slut. And to think you would imagine you could . . . Never! A jab. And then . . .”
“You are a lying bitch. I will never forgive you this!”
“I killed her. As sure as I am standing here. By myself. I planned it. Day by day. No one knew. Not even you. Hell, you even went to the store to buy me some Dairyland. A little bit in her grits. In her eggs. In her fig preserves. Just enough so that when it was time for the baby, she would have bled out. Easy as that. Over and done with. But you would not wait for that. You forced my hand.”
“No,” says Freddie. “It isn’t true. It cannot be true. If I thought it was true, I would sell my share of the farm and leave here forever, and you can talk yourself to death, you stupid, vain cow.”
“Believe me or not,” says Jewel. “She is still dead and buried.”
“Why are you telling me this? Don’t you know that I could do worse to you than what I did to him?”
“I am not afraid of you. Any more than you should be afraid of me.”
“Why didn’t you just kill me as well? Then you and Mr. Odom could have lived here without any bother. I wouldn’t be here to spoil it for you.”
“You don’t understand at all. We had an agreement, Freddie. You are my sister—and we had an agreement between us. I was prepared—am prepared—to honor that. I cannot confess to understand what it was you felt for that girl, but it did not fit into our plans. Just like I knew that I could not keep Conrad here forever. But there is no way I could allow you to have her here.”
“Allow me?”
Jewel reaches over and picks up the teacup and saucer, holding them out in her hands. “Allow you. Just like I allow you to drink from this stupid cup every morning. This damned saucer.” She leans over close to Freddie, the cup and saucer between them. “You know, every morning I get up and I want to smash these precious pieces of yours to bits.”
“They don’t bother you,” says Freddie. “They have nothing to do with you.”
“I hate them. I hate them simply because you love them so much. I hate them because they mean something to you. Something that belongs only to you. But I do not smash them. I allow you to drink your coffee out of the goddamn saucer like a field hand every morning. I allow you to put on your work pants and your work boots and your men’s shirt and stomp around the field. Because you are my sister and we made an agreement that this would be our life together. But you cannot change that agreement without my consent.” She raises her left hand, which holds the saucer, as if to toss it against the wall. “Do you understand me?”
A sharp knife cuts behind Freddie’s eyes and she winces with the pain. Her ears ring with faraway bells. Bees bite at her fingertips and toes.
“Do you understand me?”
“Yes,” Freddie cries. “Yes, I understand. What I don’t understand is why people can be so cruel.”
“To get what we want,” replies Jewel. “To endure the atrocities that life thrusts upon us. Now, I am going to make breakfast. I will call you when it is ready. Then we are going to drive into Florence and I am going to shop for new linens. And when I am done, we will have lunch at the Skyview. And then we will come home.” She puts the cup and saucer on the table next to Freddie. Freddie ponders them for a moment; forgotten objects from a museum they seem to her.
Freddie climbs out of her chair with difficulty. She cannot breathe. The sunlight scorches her eyes and the ringing in her ears has turned to a shrill, piercing alarm. She lumbers down the stairs and across the yard with only one thought in her mind—to throw herself onto Isabelle’s grave, to beg her forgiveness. For bringing her here. For wanting her to stay. For thinking that things could be different.
But she does not even make it to the edge of the yard before the ground melts beneath her and swallows her like a molten green lake. The grass fills her mouth. She feels the pulse of the sunlight in her veins. She watches sideways as an ant crawls up her arm. When she tries to shake it off, she discovers she has turned to stone.
7
Freddie lives for twelve years after her stroke, dying in 1965. Jewel does not move her to a rest home as many would have done, but keeps her at the house, hiring a full-time nurse to attend to her. Accommodations have to be made, of course. There is no way to carry her from one level to the next, so Freddie’s bedroom is moved downstairs into what had been the dining room. Jewel takes over the larger bedroom for herself. The nurse sleeps in the room where Isabelle had died.
The stroke leaves Freddie paralyzed completely on her left side. If she can speak, no one knows, since she does not. If she is able to see, to understand, no one can tell since she does not respond. The nurse tells her friends that Jewel is a dutiful, doting sister. She insists on feeding Freddie at every meal, talking to her in
soft, soothing tones. And in the morning, she makes her coffee for her, and after the nurse has wheeled Freddie to her resting spot in the parlor or the kitchen or the porch, Jewel brings it to her and holds the mug—which reads, WORLD’S BEST SISTER—to Freddie’s lips until she has finished every drop.
The nurse drives Jewel wherever she needs to go—to Lur-delle’s, to church, to her committee meetings. Jewel also has Mr. Ray’s work crew construct a ramp from the kitchen steps so the nurse can push Freddie to the car so she can accompany them on their outings.
One such event is the dedication of the Bramble window at the Christ the Shepherd Methodist Church. The women of the Stained Glass Committee put forth a petition to name the window in honor of Jewel and her family since she has experienced more hardship than a good Christian should have to. As an expression of her appreciation for this gesture, Jewel increases her donation by $2500. Jewel gives the nurse some money to buy a new dress for the dedication ceremony, and on the day, the nurse wheels Freddie down to the front of the church so she can sit next to Jewel, who has the place of honor in the front pew.
There is a great celebration in her honor, and a covered dish dinner afterward in the reception hall. During the dedication, the preacher says many kind things about Jewel, about her willingness to help those in need. He makes special mention of her kindness in tending to her infirm sister, and those sitting close enough swear they can see a tear flow down Freddie’s cheek.
Jewel lives for over twenty years after Freddie’s death, dying in 1987. By then, she has sold off nearly all the land to a developer who plans to build a country club and golf course residences for people in Morris. He even consents to calling the development Bramble Estates, so people will know it had been part of the farm. As for the house, she gifts that to the State Historical Society with the provision they maintain the house and grounds for visitors.
But for all her good works and donations, Jewel cannot fend off the punishing march of age, and she ultimately has to be taken to a private nursing home in Florence, when she is found by her caretaker one morning wandering without her nightgown out on the highway. When she is coherent, Jewel tells everyone that she hates the place, hates the food, wants to go home. In her less lucid moments, she weeps for Freddie, a name that means nothing to the people at the nursing home, who assume Freddie must be the name of a dead husband or child.
When she dies, Jewel is returned to the Bramble Farm, as it is known by everyone in the low country of South Carolina. Most of her friends from Christ the Shepherd Methodist Church have died or are in nursing homes themselves, and she is buried next to Freddie in a simple ceremony attended only by the funeral home staff. Her tombstone is identical to Freddie’s, with only her name and dates of birth and death to mark the difference. And there they lie, side by side, to this very day.
Sandra and the Snake Handlers
1
Before Carson’s death, if you had asked Sandra to explain how the universe worked, she might have told you that we are all connected in the mind of God, each of us to one another, not in a way that you can see really, but more like the way you can trace the outline of a shape using the stars. See, there is a fish. There, balanced scales. It took imagination and faith to believe. And not simply that we are connected to each other, but to everything—to ourselves. So that if you could somehow manage to draw your finger from one event in her life to another, you could sketch the outline of her being—see how she fit into the whole scheme of things. However, if you were to ask her the same question after Carson’s death, she would probably have told you to go fuck yourself—or that you better learn that God loved no one, no thing, and His creation was nothing more than a festering puncture in the empty sky, waiting to swallow us whole. So was she changed by her husband’s death.
It was staggering really, the way Carson’s death caught Sandra totally off her guard. Sure, she understood that people died—she wasn’t a nitwit after all—she had studied to become a LPN before she married, and even worked at a nursing home. And since Carson would have been sixty-two the next month, they had attended plenty of funerals for men younger than he. Still, the reality of his death was stunning, like the hailstorm that came without warning and destroyed her hydrangea bushes last August. People had called that freakish, a caprice of nature. Carson’s death, they told her, was God’s will. Take your pick. She couldn’t see any difference between the two.
The way it happened was like this. It was the year after Hurricane Floyd and all the terrible flooding that followed. Sandra and Carson had not evacuated. They never did. She always had plenty of canned goods in the pantry, and there was a generator in the garage if the power went out. They had lived long enough along the coast to know what to do, how to prepare. They had weathered plenty of storms together: Diana and Hugo. They both remembered Hazel as well, though Sandra was still a young girl and lived with her family in the mountains when that storm had struck. Still, this was different. Floyd was a slow-moving storm, so there was plenty of time to anticipate and prepare. At church on the Sunday before, there had been plenty of talk about when and where the storm might come ashore. A group of men agreed to meet on Tuesday to board up the Bramble stained glass window if the storm’s course hadn’t changed. Helen Hobbs said she would host a group for a vigil to “pray the worst of it up the coast.” Sandra thought that seemed mean-spirited and petty—why should they benefit from someone else’s misery? She did not want to believe that God worked like that. But that had been before.
On The Weather Channel, Floyd covered a space the size of Texas, and what no one predicted was the torrential, unrelenting rain. It began early on a Thursday morning, the sky deep and terrible, trembling with wind and thunder. For hours they sat as the rain began—hard, fierce, angry. She imagined Noah’s family sitting in the ark, waiting for the skies to open and wash away the sins of the world. How hard that rain must have been. How long that rain must have lasted. But she knew what Noah and his family had lived through could have been no more awful than this—it was as if God Himself was pelting the earth. It came in waves, hard sheets of water blowing sideways through the trees. They had covered all the windows with plywood, and when the power failed just after noon, they sat in the gray twilight, Carson fiddling the dials of the transistor radio to get the latest updates. Often there was a snap of a tree limb cracking away from the trunk; occasionally, the crash of a whole tree coming down. What they couldn’t see were the tree trunks that had uprooted themselves and lodged in the drainage pipes next to the highway so that the rushing water could not pass through. It didn’t take long for the water to begin to rise. Higher and higher it came, over the roads, over the driveways, up into the yard. When Carson opened the door to get a glimpse and cast the flashlight over the front yard, it was as if their house sat marooned in the middle of a giant murky lake. Off in the distance, Sandra could see her patio furniture drifting away in the dark.
It was three days before they could leave the house. Even after the rain stopped, it took a long time for the water to recede. When they finally ventured out, they discovered cushions and chairs and couches washed up along the sides of the road like debris from a shipwreck. Sandra would never forget the dead pigs—swollen and bleached along the creek bank near the house. The news told them to boil all the water and to be careful and watch for snakes. There was a story that one woman had found a nest of moccasins living in her oven when she returned from evacuating. The thought of snakes terrified Sandra.
Carson had hugged her and told her that once again God had spared them. There was damage, but nothing they couldn’t repair. They were luckier than so many others. How wrong he was.
The men from FEMA and the State Department of Transportation, officious sorts with large bellies slung over ill-fitting pants, men consumed by their new sense of importance, came by to tell them that they needed to widen their drainage ditch—so that the next time there was a storm, the water could flow more easily. Sandra knew that was just so much n
onsense—when there was that much water, it did not matter how large the hole was for it to go into, it would still overflow and flood. They left measurements with Carson and told him the backhoe would be around in a week or two.
When the backhoe arrived, it dug a trench that was nearly seven feet deep at least and as wide as it was deep. Sandra never minded the new ditch. In fact, it gave her an odd sense of security to have the separation from their house and the highway. It reminded her of a moat, like in the stories of castles and knights. But Carson wasn’t pleased one bit. He said it was a scar on the land. That it ruined their property value. “Might as well be living in a trailer with a bunch of tires painted white to mark the driveway. That damn thing is good for only one thing—a pit for every piece of trash to dump their cans and bottles.” So, he hired a second-year student in turf management from the community college to come over and instruct him how to blend the ditch into the landscape. Which he did. It took another backhoe and two extra workmen a solid day to even out the ditch so that it became a part of the total fabric of the place, and Carson was pleased with the result. But the incline was still steep and the ditch was over six feet deep at its center.
The day of the accident, a Saturday, Carson was out riding his Toro Lawn Master just like he did every weekend. He was deeply proud of their home and the four and a half acres surrounding it. He had spent the better part of the year restoring and improving the house and the yard after the hurricane so that what damage had been done had been erased. Shaded by pecan and dogwood trees, the house itself was a modest, three-bedroom brick ranch, set back from Highway 905 at the end of a long gravel driveway. Flowering shrubs and plants rotated in the beds along its border—azaleas and agapanthus in the spring and summer, mums and pansies in the fall, purple-frilled ornamental cabbages in the winter. Sandra would have preferred to have lived in Bramble Estates, where you had neighbors close by, but Carson said there were too many rules there, and he didn’t want anyone telling him what he could do with his own land. They had plenty of room out back for a vegetable garden as well, and Carson kept the portion of the property that was lawn manicured like an enormous putting green.
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