What the River Washed Away

by Muriel Mharie Macleod

  I move around the house, spying through lace curtains. In one bedroom I find the boy sitting at a small table looking like he’s back on his homework. He looks the studying kind.

  I go looking for his sister. That’s who I crossed the Mississippi river to see.

  She’s got a real nice room, it’s spotlessly clean, with pretty pictures of flowers on the walls and a neat row of dolls lined up on a painted basket-chair in a corner. She’s just sitting there on her small, neatly made bed, holding one of her dolls and swinging her legs as she rocks to and fro. Her poor little face is all I need to see. I see she’s waiting and hoping it isn’t going to come tonight, and I see she has nobody looking out for her and no place ever feels safe. I see all that fear, and hurting in her that she doesn’t know what to do with. I see all that wondering why her mother doesn’t ever come in the middle of the night to stop it.

  Mrs McIntyre opens the back door and empties a bucket into the trash.

  Albert says we need evidence: well, it looks to me like this little girl’s got some of it. I don’t know if she’s ever going to give it up against her daddy, but one thing I do know, and she doesn’t know it yet, is that I’m going to do for her what nobody ever did for me. I’m going to make it stop, make her safe.

  I creep away and get back to the main road. I have more luck, I guess it’s one of those days, and a bus pulls up in five minutes. Back downtown I catch another one home to Marksville and make it up to my room long before midnight.

  The time has come to tell Mambo.

  It’s pouring with rain next morning, but the deluge has stopped by the time I pitch up at our cabin. I know Quince is off working and Rochelle is already at school, so Mambo will be alone.

  Our cabin hasn’t been that dull old place I grew up in since Quince quit liquor and Mambo got back earning. It’s still a simple kind of place, never going to be anything else, but it’s got two bedrooms now, even if they are tiny, and with Mambo’s green fingers there isn’t a yard growing like it all around. The pink paint is cracking on the outside, but it’s still looking fine, and all that old newspaper we stuck up a long time ago is gone from inside. Mambo told me Quince cursed and cursed for a whole weekend trying to clean the flour-and-water mix off the walls before he could paint it white.

  Mambo is out front picking fresh mint.

  ‘Arletta! I’s pickin’ all this mint ’fore it takes right over round here. I’m gonna be giving it away ’cause it’s growing like nobody’s business. Take some when ya go, Errol do somethin’ with it.’

  ‘Bit wet for gardening Mambo.’

  ‘What ya doin’ here girl? I ain’t expecting to see ya at all.’

  ‘We alone Mambo? Quince working?’

  ‘Ya poorly?’

  ‘No. But I need your help. I came out here to tell you about something, and then I’m going to need your help sorting it out.’

  ‘Hell, that sure do sound serious. Let’s sit outside, it’s clammy. How the hell it so damp and clammy at the same time? Huh?’

  ‘Humidity. A breeze would be nice.’

  ‘Hey, ya ain’t working? What’s up? Ya notice that gate got fix?’

  I didn’t even notice that. Too much else on my mind.

  ‘You’ve got that man trained good Mambo.’

  ‘What’s up Arletta?’

  Mambo’s got her hands full of fresh-picked mint. I think right then that I’m always going to remember the smell of Louisiana’s good wet earth and mint dripping with rain.

  Mambo cocks her head. She’s wondering what I’m doing out there in the middle of the working week.

  ‘Sit down, Mambo. I’ve got something I need to say. Something that happened a long time back.’

  ‘What girl? Ya frightening me.’

  She sits in Pappy’s old chair out on the porch – it’s still rocking – and fans herself with the bunch of cut mint. The fine water spray off the leaves is as refreshing as the smell.

  I lean on the doorframe and start talking. No point in putting it off, been doing that long enough.

  ‘It happened when I was alone out here, and I got left out here a lot …’

  ‘I knows it Arletta. I look back and I don’t know how I gotta be crazy like I was; I was just flying high bein’ Mambo round here when Grandma passed on. I was too young to be knowing so much ’bout other folks’ business and be telling ’em how to fix it. That make me crazy, I reckon.’

  That’s the way it was for Mambo. Everybody came and listened to her anyways. Everybody took her stuff because it’s always been the best there is.

  ‘Having Rochelle teach me what being a ma is all about, and I’m gonna go to my grave feeling bad about the way I was when y’all were just a chile.’

  ‘You were young too, that’s all.’

  ‘I was crazy girl …’

  ‘Let me speak. Please.’ I take a deep breath. ‘First time it happened was when Mr McIntyre was kinda taken with you.’

  ‘Mr McIntyre?’

  ‘What he really wanted was to get at me …’

  ‘What ya say?’

  I see she’s dreading what all at once she guesses might be coming. I waited a long time for today, it’s what’s always been wrong and she’s about to hear what she could never figure out. Her lips turn pale and draw back. Her eyes stare wide and unblinking at me.

  ‘I’m telling you now because what was going on with me has just happened to somebody else. She’s just eleven years old Mambo, and they weren’t even sure at first if she was going to survive it. She said a name I know about, so the police got in touch with me. Errol told them about me, I had told him just …’

  ‘The police? What ya telling police that ya ain’t tell me Arletta?’

  ‘When I was left out here, Mr McIntyre used to come out all the time, he was always on his rounds, watching for you leaving. They do that, that’s how they know …’

  ‘Who Arletta? Ya ain’t telling me …’

  ‘Mr McIntyre was raping me for years Mambo, since just after Pappy died.’

  The scream coming out of my Mambo sounds like heaven split open and let go of its thunder. Like her soul is rent apart with it. Roosting birds empty out of the trees with a great whoosh. The earth beneath the cabin is shaking.

  ‘Mambo, stop, listen …’

  ‘No! No! Not that Arletta. No, not that. Pleeease no, don’t tell me that.’ She’s up and clinging to the porch for support because her knees have given way. Her face is twisting with tears and fury. ‘No Arletta, please no. I knows something wrong, I always knows something gone wrong, but not this!’

  She throws herself down on the wet ground.

  ‘Not this Arletta! Please not this! I let this happen to ya? My own chile. No! Please, not my chile, my baby girl!’

  She half rises out of the mud and staggers, almost on all fours, towards her crop of herbs. Her hands reach into the wet dirt and she starts rubbing great clumps of it into her hair. Her eyes are wild and red like fire. Suddenly she straightens up, throws her arms up to the dark heavens and screams at it, like I never heard.

  ‘MA-A-A-MBO!’

  I fall back with the power of her voice calling her own Mambo. That scream is reaching way beyond the grave. That scream is reaching back through all our Mambos, the Dessalines, back to Haiti and all the way back to the Fon in the old country.

  ‘MA-A-A-MBO!’

  I don’t know if I’m just thinking these dark clouds are coming down low with all her bellowing, but I know it’s frightening me.

  ‘Mambo, stop this and listen to me.’

  ‘No Arletta, please no! Don’t tell me this.’

  I’ve never seen my Mambo this way. Except for the time she got wind of that Pawnee bitch, and when the spirits take a hold of her up in the mule barn, she’s always been in charge of herself, as far as I ever saw. She’s been in charge of herself and everybody round her all her life. Now she’s going right out of her mind, seems clean out of control, more than I ever saw anybody, about what happ
ened to me when she was leaving me alone and wiggling off like this world was nothing but what she could make of it. I guess all that guilt she was too young to feel at the time finally got a hold on her.

  She lurches about in the mud, I don’t know what she’s saying or what tongue she’s using, but the clouds sure are rolling down lower in the sky. I don’t understand any of the old tongue, never could. She gets as far as the trees at the edge of Pappy’s land and starts beating herself with a stick so hard I see blood coming with every strike, still mumbling. When I try grabbing it we do battle till we both fall down. She’s looking as wild as any madwoman could and breathing deep, like a mad bull.

  ‘Mambo, it’s in the past …’

  She looks up at me with those eyes red and crazy, dirt and blood covering her face, hair tangled up with grass and twigs, white teeth snarling. She looks just like one of those evil spirits I’ve seen her raise up at Lamper Ridge mule barn.

  ‘No, Arletta, ain’t in no past. I’m gonna kill him.’

  ‘Mambo, get up. Listen. I need your help. Listen. Please.’

  She pulls herself upright, eyes full of hatred. Mambo is terrible, but I never saw any hatred in her till now. She staggers a little, then reaches out to pull me close.

  ‘Arletta!’

  When she says my name it sounds like a hurting is let out of her belly. Her grip is so tight I feel I’m going to smother on all that muck clinging to her clothes. She starts swaying like she’s going to go slipping into one of her trances.

  ‘Mambo, let me go. It’s all right. It’s all right.’

  She keeps swaying. Mumbling starts up again.

  ‘No Arletta, it ain’t all right. Ain’t never gonna be all right.’

  ‘I want to tell you everything about it. I want to tell you something I did. Mambo, will you listen?’

  She lets me go and I wipe her face with her skirt. She nods but tears are coming now and they don’t stop all through my sorry story. Her mumbling goes on, a low sound like Mambo is only halfway listening to what I’m saying and halfway gathering fighting forces from someplace else.

  We sit down, past caring that the grass is wet and rain is falling again. When I ask if she remembers that I tried telling her about Mr McIntyre just after it started, her voice doesn’t sound like my Mambo at all.

  ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘When ya go telling me, I thought, with all them newspapers ya always reading and all, that maybe ya just making it up. I s’pose I was thinking ya just wantin’ attention, since that’s something I ain’t never give ya enough of.’

  She’s sniffling and wiping her nose in her skirt.

  ‘It’s okay, Mambo. That’s all a long time ago, I just want to tell you everything. It’s time, Mambo. It’s time.’

  ‘Arletta, I was real scared somebody was gonna hear ya talking that way. Back then talking that way was gonna get us a lynching. Still could. Folks lynched for a lot less honey. Him being at the bank and all. I was scared for ya honey.’

  The rain pours down. Her hair sticks to her forehead and her beautiful face is washed clean. She’s staring into nothing and looking like a woman who just found out she’s been conned her whole life. I guess that’s about right. And I’m counting my Mambo isn’t going to go for that at all.

  I tell her all about what they did to me and she weeps, mumbling into the rain on her face. I tell her about Mr Seymour and what I did with my slashing. I tell her about Nellie, and about how she used to sing, and how I heard her singing to Eveline in her hospital room. I tell her about what Nellie told Eveline to tell me.

  ‘I’ve been carrying this with me every day of my life, Mambo, and I don’t want to be carrying it no more. In all these years nobody ever stopped them, they ain’t never been caught.’

  ‘Well, now they’s caught good. Net closed in. Law and Mambo.’ She gets up. ‘And I’m telling ya this, child of mine, Mambo is getting there first. I hope they ready for what’s coming. I hope they ready for it.’

  ‘I’m ready Mambo, ready for what we need to do. You should have seen that little Eveline, she’s lucky to be alive. They need stopping, and nobody else is doing it. And like Nellie says, I’ll go away as soon as I’ve seen it done.’

  Mambo is wiping her face.

  ‘One thing at a time Arletta. Ya ain’t going nowhere. I’m gonna take care of this. Don’t be worrying about that. Arletta, ya my flesh and blood and I’s gonna take care of this. This here about payin’ for all that shit done to my child, my li’l girl, this here about revenge, and Arletta, ya know how good I am at revenge.’

  Mambo dries her eyes, the heavens rumble. I sure know what the fight looks like when it’s coming up in her. Here it comes.

  ‘Hell, I ain’t ever done nothing else for ya. I even asked ya to leave at fourteen years old,’ she sniffs. ‘And look at ya now. Come like a young lady I’m right proud of. I sure am proud of my own daughter. Look at ya, honey, a lady now. Ya turn out a lady who knows how to talk right and I toss and turn some nights feeling the devil’s own guilt about how I was with y’all, and Pappy. I sure do.’

  ‘You feel guilty, Mambo?’ I say that quietly because I never got round to thinking she ever felt guilty.

  ‘Well, hell, if I didn’t before, and believe me girl, I did, I sure feel sick about it now. I feel sick on hearin’ this, Arletta, and Mr McIntyre better start counting his happy sunrises, ’cause he ain’t got too many of them to be lookin’ forward to. No he ain’t.’

  She wipes herself down and straightens her shoulders. Mambo and me are both tall, and she is up to her full height now, dress covered in wet mud, hair tangled up with dirt and leaves. She looks like she’s just spent a fortnight up in the mule barn and that suits me fine, because I don’t care what she’s going to use, how fearful she’s going to get, just so long as we do what needs doing.

  ‘Mambo?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘You know Mambo, we finally found a real use for one another. We’re going to be doing what we got to do for one another.’

  She nods and a little smile curls up the side of her lips. She’s madder than I have ever seen her, but I know she’s pleased about that.

  ‘That may well be,’ she starts walking back towards our cabin, ‘but this is my trouble. I’m taking care of this.’

  ‘No, Mambo. Because of Rochelle. We’ve got to think of Rochelle.’

  She stops right there and turns her head to the side, in that way of hers.

  ‘Whatever happens Mambo, we’ve got to make sure everything is okay for Rochelle. I want to take care of it so nothing is blamed on you. You can help me, Mambo, I need your help, there’s no way I know what I’m doing without you, but I’m going to take all the blaming there is if it starts going round. I get a feeling it’s going to, so whatever happens, whatever we do, I’m going to be leaving, for China, England, anywhere, someplace nobody knows who I am. You’re going to stay here and do right by Rochelle.’

  Her neck stiffens. I can see she’s tearing apart.

  ‘Do right by Rochelle, Mambo. That’s the thing. Do right by her.’

  Her head hangs down in front of her.

  ‘She’s going to college, I’m going to see to that, and when she gets a good life, she’s going to give you a good life. I’m seeing to that too.’

  ‘Now, how the hell ya goin’ be doin’ that?’ Mambo turns to look at me, hands on hips, head cocked to the other side.

  ‘Have a wash, Mambo, and I’ll tell you. We’re going to talk. You look like an old ju-ju queen covered in all that dirt.’

  She points at me.

  ‘That’s ’cause I am girl. That’s ’cause I really am.’

  The old wiggle is still there as she turns and walks off. She lifts her head up to the dark clouds and throws her muddy hands in the air.

  ‘And I’m the best there is McIntyre.’

  She reaches the cabin before I do and comes back out holding up her old fish knife. After years of sharpening, the blade of that knife has gone deadly thin. I
shiver at the sight of it.

  ‘This it?’

  ‘Yes Mambo, that’s it.’

  ‘Well, Mr Seymour ain’t seen the last of this. It’s still got his name all over it. Crying out for more of his blood, I’m telling ya that. It’s bellowing for blood!’

  While she washes herself with water from the barrel, I fix a couple of moonshines with plenty sugar and a bunch of freshly picked mint. It’s been a long time since I tasted liquor, the first not pushed down my throat. Sometimes I’d have so much forced on me that I’d be staggering to Sugarsookie Creek – even fell in a few times. I chip at the icebox and take the drinks out to the porch. Rochelle will be back on the school bus and I have a lot I need to be saying before she gets home.

  When Mambo comes back out onto the porch she’s wearing fresh clothes.

  ‘That’s better Mambo.’

  The rain is coming down in sheets. We stare into space and listen to the din it’s making on the tin roof. I notice the porch doesn’t leak like it used to.

  ‘How is Quince doing?’

  ‘He’s changed, settled down, I guess, even doin’ more round the place, like that gate. He’s fetchin’ wood for putting the fence all round, he says. Even gettin’ himself out there, making noise about them laying water pipes down this way. Says it ain’t gonna happen for years, mind you, but ain’t never gonna happen at all if folks don’t get on out there shoutin’ for it.’