by Bev Marshall
Lil’ Bit slept with Mama and Daddy that night. I tiptoed into his room to his crib to say a private good-bye, but the white sheet was stretched smoothly across the empty mattress. When I opened the door to Mama’s room, I saw Lil’ Bit’s blue cotton rump sticking high in the air. His face was turned to Mama and his thumb was centered in the perfect O of his mouth. Mama and Daddy lay on their backs, their open eyes staring up at the ceiling that must have seemed like a giant coffin lid. I backed away from them and fled to my cold bed, where I lay in my own casket until the morning sun ruthlessly forced me to get up and become an only child again.
I didn’t see Lil’ Bit go. I didn’t kiss him good-bye. I didn’t help load the boxes and bags into the truck. As soon as I awoke, I pulled on my blue jeans and shirt and ran out the front door to Sheila’s house. Stoney had gone on the milk run in Daddy’s place since he needed to be with Mama and Lil’ Bit, and Sheila was waiting for me on the porch. “I figured you’d come up,” she said, as I pushed my two hundred pound legs up the steps. “Let’s go for a walk.”
May is an unpredictable month in Mississippi. Some years it is a summer month, hot and humid, so that all the town kids drive out our way to cool off in the river. Other times May is a spring month with a constant breeze that caresses our faces and cools our bodies. This day was perfect, a wind-kissing day, a day we Southerners brag about to our Yankee friends. Sheila and I set off slowly marching through the woods beside her house. We didn’t talk for a long time, and when we came upon a doe with her white-spotted fawn, we stood motionless until the mother lifted her head and nudged her baby away from view. There were words and pictures in my head. I heard my voice saying, “They’re giving him some crackers to take in the truck. He’s crying and calling our names. He doesn’t want to go.”
We had been walking for hours I think. I know we missed breakfast because I remember hearing Sheila’s stomach growling like a hungry dog’s. I didn’t know where we were, but I didn’t care. I would let my Best Friend take me wherever she wanted to go.
I later realized we were on the Whittingtons’ property standing in a field of clover; we stood for a moment looking over the waves of vivid crimson stretched out before us. Above the field, the noontime sun sat like a golden orb in the sapphire blue sky. “Wow,” Sheila said. “Ain’t it pretty?” And then she pulled me farther out into the field. Taking my shoulders, she turned me around. “Now stand right there. Don’t move,” she said. I obliged her. Sheila pointed to the ground. “See your shadow?” I looked down and saw the outline of two legs, two hanging arms, a torso, a big round head. I nodded even though I wasn’t at all sure the figure was me. Sheila looked back and forth from me to the sun. She danced from foot to foot, rocking left, then right. Shading her eyes with her hand, she stared up for a long time, and finally, she yelled out, “Okay, take a step. Now.” I wavered for a moment, and then understanding and remembering, I lifted my foot and walked into my shadow.
On the way home, Sheila skipping along beside me, stopped and said, “This shadow will pass. The sun will come out again. It always does.” When I left her standing on her porch, I walked home both full and empty. Nothing would ever replenish the empty cavern Lil’ Bit had left in my heart, but I had been given something on this day. I walked on toward the sad quiet house, longing to feel Mama’s arms wrapped around me, but knowing somehow that my scrawny limbs were the strong ones now.
CHAPTER 9
Mama took to her bed after Lil’ Bit was taken from us. She had been grieving for over a week when I finally asked Sheila for help. Of course, she had been lending a hand from the get-go by cooking and cleaning and picking the early beans that second week in May. But Mama hadn’t gotten out of bed and there was a sour aroma in her room. Sheila said it was the smell of sorrow, but I think Mama just needed a bath.
Sheila was bringing in a washtub of snap beans when I asked her if she knew of anything we could do to get Mama up. She set the pan in the sink and wiped her face with her forearm, then walked to the table where I sat braiding the hair of an old doll I had rescued from the attic when Daddy had carried Lil’ Bit’s empty high chair up there. Sitting on the chair beside me, she pulled on her ear. “Hmmm. I got to think on it some. We know the why of it; her heart is broken.” I nodded. “So now we needing to figure out the cure for heartbreak.”
“If there is one,” I said, giving the doll’s brown hair a yank.
Sheila looked up at the white globe on the ceiling. “Well, if you got a cold, honey in whiskey is good. If you got stomach gripe, baking sody helps that.” I frowned. She wasn’t going to be much help if she was searching for a physical remedy. But she ignored my glum puss and went on. “Now let’s see, wasp stings, tobacco and spit, blood root tea cures several maladies.”
I was out of patience with her. My voice was too loud. “Sheila, she doesn’t have a physical aliment. It’s what’s in her head that’s the problem.”
“No, Annette, it’s not. It’s her heart, and it may be the blood too. They’re connected, you know.”
I gave up. “Okay, so what’s the medicine for broken heart and sad blood?”
“Dancing.”
“Huh?”
“Dancing. It makes your heart beat real real fast and makes your blood swoosh like lightning all through your body. When you get up to racing speed, you start to feel better ’cause you’re throwing out all the bad blood and the arrow in your heart comes loose and you can pull it out.”
I saw the picture of a broken heart in her mind. It was a red valentine heart with cupid’s arrow striking diagonally though it, rending it into two jagged pieces. “But, Sheila, even if that were true, Mama isn’t going to get up and dance. She won’t even come in here for meals; Daddy’s been carrying a tray to her all week, which he brings back practically untouched.”
My Best Friend looked me in the eye and said, “Wanna bet?”
I would have lost the bet, of course. When we went into Mama’s dark room, the first thing Sheila did was pull up the shades, throwing light across the rumpled bed. I opened the window and breathed in the crepe myrtle and magnolia blossoms that grew beside the bedroom wall. No matter if Sheila was right or not about the smell of sadness, Mama just plain stunk. She struggled up to a sitting position and held her hands to her face. “No, it’s too bright,” she said.
“Now, Miss Rowena, you know the sun is good for putting roses in your complexion,” Sheila said, beginning to pull the covers off the bed.
“What are you doing?” Mama said when the sheet got ripped off her thin legs that needed a shave worse than Daddy’s three-day-old beard.
“I’m airing.” Sheila grabbed Daddy’s pillow and pulled off the case. She sniffed it. “Ummm, smells like hair tonic. Mr. Cotton must try to look good when he goes to bed.”
Mama was flabbergasted and speechless. I looked over at her and my own heart ripped a little. Her brown hair was so greasy it was nearly as black as the deep dark crevices beneath her eyes. She was pale, and dry spittle made a little white trail from her mouth toward her chin. Mama was pathetic, and I nearly started crying right then, but Sheila wasn’t having any tears in this room on this day.
She was laughing. “Lordy, Miss Rowena, I seed you got purple violets embroidery on this case. There ain’t nothing prettier than a field of them, is there?”
Mama wasn’t going to answer, but Sheila waited and stared at her so hard, it was like Mama got hypnotized and had to answer. “No, no I guess not.”
Sheila must have felt encouraged by this as she smiled and twirled around flapping the pillowcase like it was some beautiful scarf a dancer was showing off. “You ever seed the dance of seven veils?”
Mama was in a trance. “What?” Her voice was so weak I could barely hear her.
Sheila lifted the pillowcase and drew it over her nose and mouth. Her eyes met mine, and I knew she was remembering Salome, the hoochy koochy girl we had seen at the fair. She began to dance, humming a strange tune that captured the essenc
e of the veil dance. She flipped the pillowcase over her hump and rubbed it like a towel between her shoulders. I stole a look at Mama’s face and saw a hint of a smile.
When Sheila stopped dancing, she bowed, and after my enthusiastic clapping began, Mama did smile and clapped twice before she began to fall back into her bed. But Sheila was as good a miracle worker as Jesus, and before Mama’s head hit the pillow, her hands were on her arms pulling her back up. “Wait, I got an idea,” Sheila said, plucking at the ribbons on Mama’s pink nightgown. “First we need to get you out of this old bed and into the tub.” She turned to me. “Annette, you go get some magnolias, and camellias, all the flowers you can hold and bring ’em in here.” I nearly saluted. Sheila was in complete control of me and Mama now.
When I returned with an armload of flowers, they were in the bathroom, Mama naked in the tub, and Sheila sitting on the side. This was the second time I had seen a full-grown woman naked, and I marveled at the difference between Mama’s breasts and Sheila’s. I wanted Mama’s. They floated in the water like two pink sponges tipped with tiny brown rudders. They were buoyant and beautiful, and I nearly wished I were an infant again so that I could rest my head on one and pull the other to my lips. Before I had time to take in the rest of Mama’s body, Sheila grabbed all the flowers from me and threw them in the tub. Mama squealed, but then smiled as she lifted a magnolia to her face and buried her nose in its yellow center. She cried, but this time no painful howl rose up to pierce my heart. These tears were soft and gentle, grateful tears, release tears, and I stored them in my mind for later in my life when I would need such healing tears myself.
When Mama, her body and hair clean and sweet-smelling at last, reached for another gown, Sheila’s hand stayed hers, and she went to her closet and pulled out Mama’s best blue chiffon. “No, this. Please?” She didn’t need to beg. Both Mama and I would do her bidding, even if she asked us to burn our best Sunday dresses.
By the time Daddy came in for supper, which we hadn’t cooked, Mama, Sheila, and I had formed a chorus line and were high-kicking like vaudeville show girls. “What’s this?” Daddy said, but he knew and his relieved smile landed on his wife’s face. Turning to Sheila, he lit up even more. “How’d you do it?”
Sheila ducked her head, suddenly shy and uncertain of what to say, I guess. “She gave Mama a flower bath and taught her the ball-and-chain shuffle,” I said.
Mama smiled, and Daddy held out his arms to her. He looked over at me and Sheila, both of us grinning like fools. “Thank you, Sheila. Thank you for bringing our Rowena back.”
I didn’t know what Sheila meant when she said, “I’m the one owing you thanks.”
CHAPTER 10
LLOYD
When they brought her body out of the cornfield, I was sitting on her porch beside Stoney. He was paring his nails with a pocket knife, and without raising his head, his eyes followed the men making their way across the yard with his dead wife laid out on the stretcher. “Well, I reckon she won’t be coming back” was all he said. They should’ve covered her. Her nightgown was hiked up around her waist, and I could see the blonde hairs between her legs matted with mud and blood, and I wondered if she’d been raped before she closed her eyes on this world. Whoever killed her must’ve thought about it. She had an appeal. I won’t say she was a beauty or anything close to it, but there was something about her that beckoned thoughts of putting your hands on her.
Clyde Vairo was strutting like a rooster around the ambulance, slapping his hand against the passenger door to signal Bob Underwood to take off for the funeral home where Casey Pottle would later perform an autopsy. Clyde looked up on the porch at me and Stoney before he hollered out for nobody to leave because he was commencing a murder investigation. I’d known Clyde since our school days and we were friends, but not the kind that invites each other over for dinner. Clyde was the same age as me, thirty-five, but he was single, and Rowena didn’t like me hanging around with bachelor types. Still I knew Clyde was depending on me for help. The murder had occurred on my land, in my cornfield, and Sheila had worked for me for over two years.
So I got our sheriff a little table set up with a couple of folding chairs, and he began questioning folks in the shade of the oak tree in Sheila and Stoney’s front yard. Stoney had gone inside the house and Clyde walked up on the porch and called him out. Figuring they’d be a spell, I walked back to the house to check on things while they sorted out the events of the morning. I was worrying about Rowena; she gets herself upset over nothing, and this day had certainly been something to get worked up about. I was thinking too that I was going to need somebody to help with the afternoon milking since Stoney wasn’t gonna show up. I wanted to stop by the barn and take a big swig of whiskey from the bottle I kept in the overhead cabinet, but I decided that itch would have to wait to get scratched.
The weather was holding for now, but looking up at the charcoal clouds socking each other in an angry sky, I knew there’d be more rain before nightfall. I hurried on home, and when I reached the back porch, I heard Rowena’s voice. She was on the telephone with her mama, and I stood at the door listening to her steady stream of words spewing out like cow piss over the few miles of wire between daughter and mama. I knew they’d be a while, so I settled onto the porch rocker and pulled off my mud-caked boots. The rain-soaked cornfield had sucked at our legs, and my calves ached with the effort of sloshing through the muddy furrows. I had been walking down a row near the fence line certain Sheila was gonna be found dead when I heard Cal Martin’s shout. It was like when my best milk-producer Jersey, ole Gowan, had pitched head first into the gravel pit. I had gone lookin’ for her knowing all along that she was destined for butchering. As I walked over to the men standing in a tight circle around her body, I already knew. I had known since early morning when I’d come back from the milk run that the girl was gonna turn up murdered. On my land.
I rocked back and listened to Rowena’s voice. “Oh, Mama, I don’t know where Annette is. The child has been running over the place like a wild Indian all day. You know she loves Sheila like a blood sister.” She paused waiting on instruction from her mama. That was the way it was between them. Mama was the rudder on all three of her daughters’ ships, and Rowena was the one most glad to hand the wheel over to her. Mostly, her meddling concerned raising Annette and taking care of the womb that held what she called our “miracle baby” so I didn’t care if the old lady came around so often. What irritated me about her though was them constant little sayings she doled out for every crisis large or small. I could imagine her telling Rowena right now some proverb that would make Sheila’s death seem like a blessing. I closed my eyes dreading the scene I knew was coming when Annette realized that Sheila wouldn’t be running down to our house ever again.
I stood up and looked over to my right where thirty or more people were still milling around reluctant to go home, afraid they’d miss something if they did. Leland Graves, the reporter for The Lexie Journal, was talking to some of them, writing down their thoughts in the little notebook he carried everywhere. I doubted anyone had much to tell. I guessed only a few of them knew her to speak to. She was a good worker though. I’ll say that for her. She could wash fifty bottles in less time than it took to milk three cows. When I started into the house, it dawned on me that I was gonna need to hire another hand down to the dairy for sure, and I damned to hell whoever killed Sheila. There would be plenty more trouble to come from this and some of it would be mine.
Looking back now, I wonder why I ever hired Sheila in the first place. No women had ever worked in the dairy; it wasn’t a place for the fairer sex. Whenever Rowena came down to the barn for something or other, she looked like a bright flower sticking up in a pile of cow shit. It was a man’s place.
No, I do know why I gave her the job. Rowena was the reason. She heard at church from one of her busybody friends that Sheila Carruth was getting the tar beat out of her at home, and if somebody didn’t get her away from her old man,
he was gonna kill her someday. So I agreed to give her a place to live and a job washing bottles, sweeping up, the chores the niggers usually did. And look what happened. Dead anyhow. A blind man couldn’t miss seeing the irony of it all.
She came while I was in town buying a sewing machine for Rowena’s birthday. Rowena tried to act surprised when I got home with it, but she knew all about it. Two weeks after we married I found out that it was useless to try and keep secrets from her. Her mama said all her daughters had powerful woman’s intuition, but Rowena’s knowing went beyond that. She met me at the door, grinning big, and behind her Annette was biting her lip. I shrugged and said, “Well, it’s in the truck. Where you want it?”
Rowena laughed. Rose up on her toes and hugged me tight. “I’ve got a place cleared in Lil’ Bit’s room, in front of the windows. He’s asleep now though, so let’s wait to bring it in until he’s up.”
We walked out to the truck and she oooh’d and aaah’d over it. Annette was dancing around, impatient with her mama about something. She pulled her back from the machine. “Tell Daddy who’s here. Tell him about Sheila.”
Rowena’s bright face clouded over. “Lloyd, the girl came early. She’s down at the smokehouse. I sent Digger out there with some things to help her get set up.” Her eyes filled with tears. “She’s just pitiful. It breaks your heart to look on her.” She pressed her lips together and then said, “Lloyd, she’s got a hump on her back. Maybe some kind of growth or tumor. I don’t know. She’s so tiny I don’t know if she’ll be able to do much down there.”