Three Rivers

by Tiffany Quay Tyson

  “What have you been doing?” Her mother’s voice croaked like a bullfrog.

  “I made you a special drink.”

  She held the glass to her mother’s lips. Should she be wearing gloves even now? Her mother sipped and then took a larger gulp. “It’s sweet,” she said.

  “You like it sweet.”

  Her mother nodded. Genie pulled the glass away; maybe it wasn’t too late to stop this. Her mother grabbed for the drink.

  “Is it too weak?” Genie asked. “I can fix a fresh one.”

  Her mother pulled the glass to her lips, took long greedy gulps. “It’ll do.”

  Too late to stop anything, Genie realized, and better that way. Her mother was miserable, pathetic. Genie would do what her father couldn’t; she would set her mother free. She would free herself. She stroked her mother’s filthy hair, a film of grease against her palm. “Finish it up before the ice melts.”

  Her mother did as she was told. Geneva, for she was Geneva now and not a frivolous Genie, waited. “It’ll be better this way,” she told her mother. “You’ll see. You’ll be happier now.” Her mother’s face turned gray and she clutched at her stomach. She gasped. She clawed at her throat, retched and convulsed. Her bowels released and the stench that filled the room sent Geneva to the window. She flung it open and allowed fresh air into the room for the first time in years. When she turned around, her mother was dead.

  Geneva couldn’t let anyone see her mother in such a state. Her mother deserved better than that. She bathed her with lavender-scented bath soap and a bucket of warm water. The breeze from the open window mingled with the clean scent of soap, and the stench of despair retreated. Geneva washed her mother’s greasy hair, dried it with the softest towel she could find, and brushed it until it shone. She pulled her mother’s finest nightgown from the closet, an ivory satin gown with lace around the hemline. It looked like a wedding dress. The soft fabric slid across her mother’s limp body. Geneva pulled clean sheets over her mother and made the bed around her. Then she set to work on her mother’s face. Moisturizer, a hint of cream rouge, a wash of pale pink lipstick, the barest brush of eye shadow; it was subtle but perfect. Geneva stepped back. Her mother was beautiful. For the first time in years, she seemed content, peaceful. Geneva draped a quilt across her mother’s legs, folded the soft fabric prettily. In life, her mother was a terror. In death, she looked like the subject of a dreamy painting. Geneva kissed her mother’s forehead and then, impulsively, pressed her lips against her mother’s cold lips. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

  Geneva hauled the gloves, the old bandanna, and the soiled sheets out back, where she buried them among the graves of the family pets. Only then did she call the doctor and report that her mother had asked for her pills.

  “How many did she take?”

  “I don’t know,” Geneva said. “How many did you give her?”

  Geneva’s father put a notice in the paper that said his wife had died after a long illness. He buried her in the Baptist cemetery and he got back to work. Geneva was too old to return to college. She’d seen too much to go back to the life where she was nothing more than a pretty girl. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, she woke in a panic, certain that she could hear her mother’s voice calling for her. She married Bruce against her father’s wishes. She was pregnant when her father walked her down the aisle, her stomach filled with a secret weight. On her honeymoon in Florida, she miscarried. She stared down at the bloody mess in the toilet while her new husband begged her to hurry up. They had dinner reservations at a restaurant on the beach in Fort Walton. She flushed and fixed her makeup in the cloudy hotel mirror.

  When they returned home, her father tried to teach Bruce how to run the farm. Geneva went to see Pisa. She told her about her mother’s death, about the baby, about Bruce. Pisa laid hands on her stomach. “There are plenty more babies to be conceived. That one was not meant to live, just as your mother was not meant to live.”

  “I didn’t know what else to do,” Geneva said. “I thought it was the best thing. Now I don’t know. Maybe I’m being punished. Maybe no baby will want me.”

  “You should look to the future,” Pisa told her. “You cannot live your life if you are always looking back.”

  * * *

  She was twenty-six and heavy with a baby due any day. She waddled through the house, preparing meals for her father and husband. They teased her about being fat, but when she looked in the mirror, she knew she was more beautiful than she’d ever been. She rubbed her stomach with oils that Pisa gave her. The baby inside her turned over as if swimming with pleasure. “It’s a daughter,” Pisa said. Geneva worried about raising a daughter. A boy, it seemed, would be easier. Geneva promised herself that she would never hold her daughter too close.

  * * *

  She was twenty-nine and her daughter was bouncing up and down on her bed. “Fatty fatty, two by four, can’t get through the bathroom door.” The smell of Bruce’s cigarettes made her nauseated. Geneva hoisted herself from bed and waddled into the bathroom. “Mine,” Geneva said, rubbing her hands against her swollen belly. A boy would be easier.

  * * *

  She was forty-one and her son was reborn as an angel. She loved him twice as much. Her daughter was someone she barely recognized.

  * * *

  She was fifty-one, and her life was slipping away. She opened her eyes and saw her daughter. “Mama.” Her daughter’s voice came to her as through a canyon. She clutched at Bruce. Bruce would save her. She reached for his hand, but his bones crumbled to dust beneath her grip.

  Her body was lifted up and set down again. God was trying to decide whether to keep her. She heard voices, and when she opened her eyes, she saw lights so bright they made her head throb. Angels or demons surrounded her; she could not distinguish. A cold pinch on her arm sent a wave of warmth through her body. It was the darkness that her mother embraced, the darkness she’d fought for so long. It was a comfort, and Geneva understood why her mother succumbed to it.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  AFTER THE FLOOD

  The floodwaters receded, leaving behind piles of soggy debris and the threat of sinkholes along paved roads. A series of downed power lines sparked alongside the blacktop of Highway 49. The air filled with dangerous smells: sulfur, gasoline, ammonia, mold. Search and rescue teams abandoned their boats and moved across the land on foot or in recreational vehicles normally used for hunting game. Now they hunted bodies, dead or alive.

  A child was found inside an antique armoire, his body curled like a comma around a stack of hand-embroidered dish towels. The child was unmarred by the water, and the firefighter who found him thought he was sleeping until he lifted the boy’s stiff body. The firefighter, best known for his temper and his time as the star quarterback of the local high school a decade before, broke down and called out for his mommy.

  An old lady, maybe the oldest lady in the whole county, rode out the storm on the roof of her house, shielding herself and her three basset hounds with a roll of gardening tarp meant to keep frost off tomatoes. She had to carry each of the hounds up to the roof, hoisting their saggy, heavy flesh through an open window onto a second-story balcony, and then pulling them up one at a time. Everyone laughed, imagining the ninety-pound, ninety-nine-year-old lady lifting the dogs with their long ears and short legs and woeful howling up onto the roof. And how did they get back down? Someone always asked this, chuckling at the very idea.

  A man who’d been a drinker his whole life, who was well known as nothing but a sorry drunk, fell suddenly sober for the first time in two decades and saw the face of God in the storm clouds. He was cured of his craving for whiskey. “Just don’t want it no more,” he said with a look on his face that told you that this lack of wanting was a miracle too big to explain.

  Another woman, said to be eccentric by polite people and downright loony by folks who were less genteel, was discovered naked and filthy in bed with her
dead husband. Her leg was broken and she was so dehydrated that her lips had turned white. Her hair—her thick, black, shiny curtain of beauty—had gone completely silver. Some people said she looked like a witch, something they’d always kind of suspected. Other people said she looked like an angel, like someone who’d seen God and then been returned to earth.

  These were the stories people told in the days after the flood. Redemption, miracles, supernatural visions, close brushes with God. Not since Noah and Moses and Abraham had there been so many people receiving messages from on high. Everyone, it seemed, knew someone who knew someone who swore each tall tale was the gospel truth.

  Melody was inclined to believe none of it, except of course the part about the woman with her dead husband, the woman whose hair turned suddenly silver, though Melody suspected the transformation had more to do with the corrosive floodwaters stripping away Miss Clairol than with any sort of divine intervention.

  She stroked Mama’s hair, wiry and coarse between her fingers. At the shelter, everyone said her mother was dead. Sheriff Randall was the one who told her that her mother was alive and had been airlifted to a hospital in Memphis. Melody’s first thought on seeing Mama was that death might have been a blessing. Her body was broken, her face marked with lines Melody hadn’t seen before and, of course, there was the loss of that beautiful black hair. When Melody found herself alone in the hospital room with Mama for a few brief moments, she was struck with the dark thought that she could spare Mama the pain of recovery, the pain of seeing herself suddenly aged. A pillow across her face or a bit of poison inserted into the tube delivering medicine, either would do the trick. As soon as she thought it, she went cold. When had she become capable of such thoughts?

  “Melody?” Mama opened her eyes.

  “I’m here, Mama.”

  “Don’t hurt me.”

  It was like her mother had read her dark thoughts. Melody flushed with shame. She called for the nurse, who adjusted the drip attached to Mama’s arm. Mama slipped back into unconsciousness.

  “She seems scared.”

  The nurse made a note on a chart. “Who knows what she’s thinking. She’s been through a terrible trauma.” The nurse looked at Melody. “So have you. You should get some sleep.”

  “I know,” Melody said. “I will.” She knew she wouldn’t, not anytime soon. She didn’t mind. Since the storm, she’d been busy and useful. It felt good to be useful.

  “The painkillers sometimes cause strange dreams,” the woman told her. “We’ll start weaning her off as soon as we can.”

  The woman in the bed across the room called out, “Praise Jesus!” in a high-pitched voice.

  “See what I mean?” The nurse disappeared behind the curtain to tend to the woman, another flood victim.

  Melody had asked about a private room, but the hospital was crowded. Since they rolled the woman in, she’d been telling the same story. This woman swore she’d seen a man in the water, a man unfazed by the rushing currents and the swirling depths. The man, she said, floated past her as gently as if he were out for a leisurely swim. The man had dark hair and skin the color of cedar. “He didn’t walk on water,” the woman told Melody. “It was more like he was part of the water.” The woman thought she’d seen Jesus and that he had saved her. She was rescued moments later and had been close to drowning. “Thank you, Jesus!” she shouted. “Praise Jesus!”

  Bobby pushed open the heavy door and entered the room with Liam. The child’s mouth was covered in something. Chocolate? “Come here.” She pulled Liam onto her lap and used a tissue to wipe his face. He grinned at her. It was blackberry jam smeared across his lips. Slightly better than chocolate, Melody figured. Obi would not approve of too much junk food. Her stomach ached when she thought of Obi. There was no word of him, and Melody wanted to believe that no news meant he was alive somewhere, hiding and waiting. Pisa seemed to believe that was true. How had she put it? She said she could feel her son’s “essence in the physical world and not yet in the spiritual realm.” It had not been difficult to track down Pisa. Many women knew her, knew where her house stood three counties away. The sheriff managed to find a phone number and get the woman on the line once the phones were restored. Melody filled her in, told her that her grandson was safe and her son was missing. Melody explained they were heading to Memphis with an emergency crew to see her mother. “I’d like to bring Liam along,” she said. “The roads to get him back to you won’t open for a few more days at least, maybe a week. I’ll bring him to you as soon as I’m able. I promise.”

  She handed the phone to Liam and let him talk to his grandmother until the volunteer in charge of the phone started shooting her dirty looks. The phone lines were only sporadically in use, and people were waiting for a turn.

  Today, just three days later, when the man on the news announced the roads were open, Melody prepared to make the drive. It would be even better to wait a few more days, she knew. There would be traffic and still some detours, but she had promised. She would get Liam to his grandmother by nightfall.

  Her mother’s eyes fluttered opened again. The fear was gone, but she didn’t seem to recognize Melody.

  “Mama,” Melody said. “This is Liam, do you remember Liam?”

  Geneva stared at the boy, a blank expression on her face.

  “This is Obi’s son, Pisa’s grandson.”

  At the mention of Pisa, Mama’s eyes flickered. Somewhere, beneath the drugs and the trauma, Mama remembered. The nurses told Melody to talk to her, to be conversational, normal. Melody read to her. She bought a newspaper and read from different sections. Mostly, she read news from the style section, beauty tips and Hollywood gossip and fashion advice. She avoided news of the flood, which filled the front section. Occasionally she read a dry article from the business section or something about national politics. Mama drifted in and out of sleep. She seemed to be dreaming even when awake.

  “We’re taking him home,” Melody said. “We’re going back today.”

  “You’re leaving me?”

  “Just for a day. Bobby will stay with you.”

  “We’re a family,” she said. “You can’t keep secrets from me.”

  Melody didn’t know what kind of secrets her mother thought she was keeping, but she played along. “I wouldn’t dream of keeping secrets from you, Mama.”

  “I’m going to tell you all about the shed. We can’t have secrets.”

  “I can’t wait to hear all about it. It sounds like one hell of a story.” Melody wondered if she meant Old Granddaddy’s toolshed or some other shed long gone. Her mother seemed haunted by memories and kept mixing up the past with the present.

  Bobby stood beside Melody. “Mama, Mama, Mama.”

  “Angel boy.” Mama reached out and took Bobby’s hand. She squeezed her eyes shut. Fat tears rolled across her temples and into her hair.

  “You’ll be okay here today?” Melody asked Bobby. “I’ll be back tonight. It’ll be late.”

  “My boy,” Mama said. “My beautiful boy.”

  “Come back,” Bobby said.

  “I promise.” She touched his arm, was grateful he didn’t pull away. “I’ll drive like the wind.”

  At the shelter, after sitting for hours with Bobby and Liam on the hard bleachers, she’d stood to stretch her legs. Bobby grabbed her arm and begged, “Don’t!” People turned to stare at them as Melody shushed Bobby and tried to pull away. He was scared of being left alone. Melody stayed by his side. She and Bobby and Liam walked the floors of the shelter together and made a game of it. “Jumping jacks,” Bobby would call out, and the three of them would stop where they were and perform a set of ten. “Somersault!” Liam called, and they rolled across the dirty floor. Melody tried to enlist the girl from the boat to join them, but the girl sat hunched in a corner like a rodent, feasting on handfuls of sugary breakfast cereal. Maurice had disappeared. The crowds in the gym were segregated, not by any formal agreement but just because that’s the way things were done.
Bobby understood that Maurice could not sit with him and that he could not join the large, dark knot of people on the far side of the gym.

  Liam told them stories about white dogs and hawks and coyotes. He spoke of his father as if he would see him soon. Melody hoped that was true. She knew Boggs had neither arrested Obi nor brought him in for questioning. The sheriff told her Obi had disappeared into the storm. Could he survive? Melody hoped he could.

  The sheriff asked her about the girl who’d been rescued with them. “Deputy Boggs thinks she knows more than she’s saying. Deputy Boggs thinks she’s hiding something.”

  “I don’t know anything about her,” Melody said.

  “I’m sorry about your father.”

  He turned to leave. Melody called after him. “If you do find Obi, what will happen to him?”

  The sheriff shrugged. “All we have is the story from the girl, and she seems confused. No one else has reported a thing. No missing persons report, nothing. Boggs only wanted to question him. He may have been overzealous in his efforts. He feels terrible about scaring the man. Unless we find some evidence to support the girl’s story, I don’t know what we’d charge him with.” Sheriff Randall dropped his head and scuffed his foot against the floor. He wrapped her in a big bear hug that left her gasping. “Tell your mama that I said hello. You take good care of Genie, you hear?”

  * * *

  Now Melody handed Liam over to Bobby, asked her brother to wash the child’s face. “We’ll be leaving soon.” She turned to her mother. Seeing her laid out in a hospital bed took Melody back to the day of Bobby’s baptism. Back then, she was filled with terror and fury, and she realized she’d carried those feelings around for a solid decade. But no more. Somewhere in the midst of the storm, her terror and fury were washed away. Back then, her mother said she’d saved Bobby and she didn’t have the strength to save Melody, too. Now Melody knew she didn’t need saving, not by her mother and not by religion. “I’m going to see Pisa,” she said. “Is there anything you want me to tell her?”