by Ella Parks
Her hair was down on her shoulders, darker than brown but not really black. Her eyes were deep brown. Her skin was translucent. Her smile took over her entire face turning attention to full lips and straight white teeth. She was slender with a small waist, while the buttons on her blouse strained with the effort of covering her chest. Within a few minutes I realized both my boys wanted her. I could never remember a time when they ever competed against each other, they had always been each other’s champion but in the space of a few minutes that changed. They didn’t ask my approval before they hired her. I don’t believe anything I said would have mattered anyway. I listened to them offering her one of the houses, offering her anything she wanted, both of the bidding for her attention, and I listened, staying silent, but sensing trouble the way someone can feel a storm coming, not really understanding the dark brooding I felt but feeling the darkness heavy pressing on my heart.
I started having dreams, dark dreams, that I could not remember, that woke me leaving me scared for reasons unknown. I would wake up thrashing and crying but never with any memory of what I had dreamed. Billy would hold me until my trembling stopped. He would eventually fall back to sleep, tired from the previous day, still holding me close, while I huddled as close to him as I could get, wide eyed starring into the darkness of the room, terrified of something, not knowing, what it was.
The lack of sleep began to take its toll on me, leaving me tired and edgy. I tried to play my fears down for Billy’s sake, but each dream pushed me farther and farther into terror. I felt the dreams were some kind of warning or some premonition of something that was going to happen. I started fearing anyone I loved being away from me, jumping at the slightest sound. Doc thought it might be a stage in a woman’s life, but I didn’t think so. I had not thought of Miss Barnhill in years, but now her memory came back to me as I remembered the words, she had told us all those years ago. How much misery we could have spared ourselves if we had understood what she was trying to tell us. I could still see her face pained with her knowledge and ours confused, not understanding our danger. I wondered if this was going to be the same circumstance where by not remembering or understanding I could not avoid heartache. I knew she must be dead by now, she had been so old all those years ago, but still her memory pulled at me making me wonder about her so called second sight, and could she help me if she had still been alive.
I asked Billy one night in the darkness.
“Do you remember what Miss Barnhill told us that afternoon?” I felt his body go still before he pulled me closer to him.
“Yes, I remember.”
“Everything she told us happened.”
“She didn’t tell us we would manage to live happy ever after.”
“No, she didn’t say that. Maybe that was too far down the road for her to know.”
“Could be baby.”
“I think the telling of it hurt her. That is why she looked so hurt.”
“Oh, my sweet Lucy, you don’t know how I wish I could take everything that has ever hurt you and take the pain myself. How I wish I could do the suffering instead of you. I love you so very much!”
“I know Billy; I feel the same way about you. I am just so scared this in another one of those times that not knowing something will hurt us. I am just so scared! I know she must be dead by now, but if she was still alive, she might know something.”
He was quiet for a few seconds before he said.
“She is still alive. She seemed so old to us because we were so young, but she is still alive. She must be in her late eighties by now, but I believe her Mother lived to be a hundred and two years old.”
I inhaled sharply as I asked.
“Do you think she might be able to tell me something?”
He hesitated briefly, as he seemed to be deciding how to respond.
“She might be able to. I know there are many things that go way past my understanding, but even if she can, I don’t know how that could help.”
“Billy, if we had understood what she meant that day, we could have run away, we would not have been separated.”
I felt him take a deep breath, “Lucy, I know how you suffered. You had unspeakable things happen to you. You were treated so very cruel. I can’t even begin to describe the pain it causes me to know what you had to endure. There was not a second in all the time we were apart that I did not live with the pain of knowing you were hurting. I wanted to steal you away and surround you with my love, protecting you always. I would gladly die to help you in any way.”
I thought about him running to me as Barry lifted the gun toward him; I remember he did not stop until all the family held him to the ground. I opened my mouth to tell him I knew how he felt, but he went on.
“I lashed out to God, not understanding why all that had to be, when all we wanted was to be together. I still don’t understand it and don’t think I ever will, but Lucy think for a minute, even if we had understood, how do we know we would have had a good outcome from running? We were so young, what if we had run into even more trouble than we had at home? I do believe Miss Barnhill knew something, but if she knew we would find each other again, she didn’t mention that. Think for a minute what could have happened to the two of us. We knew farm work, but we didn’t know the ways outside our little world. You are very beautiful. What if I had not been able to protect you? What then, Lucy? What if it had been more than one man to put his hands on you while I was held down again? I have lived with knowing the defeat of not being able to save you; what if it had been worse?
“No, Billy you can’t think like that.”
“It is true Lucy. I was too young, and not mature or smart enough to know how to do anything about him taking you.”
His words pulled at my heart, making it ache hearing the pain in his voice.
“Please don’t feel that way my love. We were just kids then. I think it was out of control by the time Papa agreed to it and there was nothing to be done about it anyway.”
“That is what I am telling you my darling. For whatever reason, it was out of our control, both mine and yours. We were beaten before we knew there was a battle, but had we known, we have no reason to believe we would have been safe running away. Sometimes we are better off to let God do our fighting for us. There are a lot of terrible bad things that can happen in life, but there is also great joy, things change from day to day. I don’t know what your dreams mean. I worry about them too, but I don’t think going to Miss Barnhill is the right answer.”
He pulled me toward his face as he kissed my wet eyes, whispering over and over how much he loved.
“We will get through whatever it is together my love, but let’s let God fight it, let him fight for us,” was the last thing I heard him say before his kisses took my mind somewhere else.
15
I was just leaving the clinic for the day when I heard the roar of the engine coming up the drive, moving too fast for it to be a normal visit. As the driver stopped the truck slid before coming to a jarring stop. A man jumped out screaming.
“He’s hurt----he’s hurt bad. The horse kicked him----kicked him in the head, he is hurt bad!”
Doc must have heard the commotion because he had come out running toward the truck.
The driver was still screaming,
“Help him---- he is hurt bad!” He walked to the bed of the truck and I saw someone covered with a quilt, I could not help but think that rough ride could not have done whoever was hurt any good. Everyone else was running toward the truck as I watched Doc lift the quilt up. There was a lot of blood, so much blood I couldn’t tell who it was. The men gently lifted him up, carrying him to the clinic. I followed while Jenny tried to calm the driver of the truck.
There is always a terrible feeling when doctors see a wound that is so bad, they fear it can’t be fixed. Doc said it was something doctors and nurses had to live with, he said when th
ey stop getting that feeling they need to stop trying to heal. I had seen enough of the wound to realize this was going to be one of those times, but they all moved fast in a unit. Doc had taught me some skills but nothing like this. I stayed back bringing water and cotton, close in case they needed me but out of their way. As they cleaned the blood, I heard Doc say.
“Oh no it’s BJ!”
My mind was blank as I wondered who BJ was. I couldn’t place the name, but clearly, they all knew him, even Mark and Markus.
I heard Mark take a sharp intake of breath and I tried again to pull his name from my memory. I walked closer toward them and asked Doc.
“Doc, who is BJ?”
“It’s Lilly’s oldest son.”
I stood there silent trying to remember if in all those years I had even heard his name called. I stood shamed to think I had never even considered asking his name, only thinking of him as Lilly’s oldest son. I couldn’t remember Lilly calling him by name, just referring to him as, my boy or your boy when she talked to Barry about him.
As they worked on him, I remembered the last time I had seen him at Barry’s funeral. I remembered his hard and bitter eyes as he looked at me. I remembered him at the door with Lilly the night she came asking for money. I stood there watching Doc as he worked knowing he must have seen him many times in the years past, and Mark, and Markus, they knew they were trying to save their half -brother; because unlike Barry’s claims, I never had any doubt who his father was.
They cleaned the wound with carbolic acid, packed ice around his head, while keeping his head slightly elevated.
“We have done all we can do for him. His diagnosis is not good but there is nothing else to do except keep a close watch on him. I suspect he will start having seizures soon from the pressure of the swelling. I hope the ice will keep it down some, but if it gets worse, we will have to make an opening for it to drain.” Doc said as the shrill cry from the front entrance cut him off. It was Lilly coming to check on her boy.
“Where is my BJ? I want to see my boy. Where is my boy...?” Her voice high and tearful. I walked out of the room and slipped quietly into another room closing the door behind me. I knew it would not be helpful for Lilly to see me now in the mist of her pain. I could hear as they went to her, telling her the news about her boy. I heard her painful cries as she sobbed.
“Oh, my poor boy….my poor boy, he never had a chance, never a chance. His Daddy never wanted him, claimed he didn’t belong to him although he knew he did. He could look at him and know he was his, but he didn’t want him because he didn’t fit into what he wanted at the time. He said he wanted boys but when I gave them to him, he turned away from them, claiming two others but never mine.”
I could hear voices trying to comfort her, while I wondered how they felt about what she was saying.
“He loved me, I know he did, but he would never make it right with us, never make it right. Oh, my poor boy! How can a boy grow up feeling good about himself if his Daddy turns his back on him? Still BJ has been good, so good to me and his brothers, and now this!”
I listened to her as they led her to his room and heard her cries as she stood beside his bed. I knew she must be looking at the face of the boy she had raised that was now a man but still very much her baby, her boy. I had seen his wounded head; the pity burned in me as I wept bitter tears that only someone that loves a child can understand. I sat in that room, listening, wondering for the first time what the years had done to her. I thought about her harshness toward me when I first went to the house as a young girl, scared out of my mind. I thought about the night I had my boys, remembering crying out to her begging for help, my mind went back to the time she had come to the house telling me her children needed food. Oh God, what a sorrowful bunch we had been! She was right in saying Barry had not treated her children good, but he had not treated ours good either. He had wanted our boys, but not to love and cherish. He had only wanted them to be an extension of something in him, something to make him feel prideful but he never let himself enjoy the spirit of them. He never really knew them as his children. To him they were property, something to flaunt and to control. I had always known how much Lilly loved Barry, in spite of everything he had done. It seemed he couldn’t do anything to kill her love for him; he must have loved her too, he was always with her. I still couldn’t understand why he had not stayed with her, why he had pulled me away from Billy, knowing how much I loved Billy and how much I feared and hated him. Why did he use force with me when Lilly was so happy to be with him? I trembled as I thought of how much pain Barry had caused. I had not known his family, but I wondered how he come to feel such a sense of entitlement that he felt he could control everyone around him. Billy opened the door to the room I was in. I didn’t ask him how he knew where I was, I just flew into his arms, letting his shoulders carry some of the pain. He held me close while my tears soaked his shirt.
16
We all started the long process of caring for BJ. Molly made clear broth that we slowly dripped into his mouth as he lay comatose. One of us set with him around the clock. I took my turn too, still leaving when Lilly would come to visit. He stayed unconscious for four days. I was there when he finally opened his eyes, confused as to where he was, and why I was there beside him wiping his face, but he didn’t try to raise up.
“Thirsty, I am so thirsty!” He said with a slow unsteady voice. I gave him small sips, cautioning him to go slow. His need for water was strong, and he wanted more than sips, but I knew he couldn’t handle much at one time.
“Go slow, it will make you sick if you drink too much you will throw it up. Go slow.” He looked at me, his eyes unreadable as he drank the water I offered, but his thirst was so great he would have taken it from the devil himself, and judging by the way his eyes harden, it appeared he thought he was that is what I was.
“I don’t know what you remember, but you had a bad accident. It is important that you stay still. You don’t need to move around much.” I straighten the sheet over him and wiped his face with a clean wet cloth. He flinched, while I pretended, I had not noticed.
“Your Mother has been very worried about you. She has been here checking on you almost every day.” I told him breaking into the forbidden subject of Lilly, but I felt it would offer him comfort. He didn’t answer just closing his eyes as if that would make me go away. I pull my chair a little away from his bed, before setting back down. He was still too sick to be left alone. I waited a few minutes before I offered him more water. He didn’t say anything but accepted it, still racked by his horrible thirst. It wasn’t long before Molly came in carrying his broth, with the eye dropper we had been using to put the broth in the side of his mouth. It was always a slow process trying to feed him while trying to keep him from chocking, but a necessary one to keep his body strong enough to heal.
“He woke up a little while ago and drank some water. He has kept it down. I don’t think we will need the dropper today.”
“That’s good news, very good news” she said as she put the bowl of broth on the table beside the bed.
He opened his eyes again to see moving slightly to see who had come in the room.
“Do you want me to feed him?” She asked keeping the question short, offering even though it was still my shift, knowing I understood her reason for asking.
“No, I will feed him, he will have to get used to me anyway, if I don’t take a turn it will make it hard on everyone else.” I didn’t bother to try to whisper because it was true, and the sooner he accepted it the better it would be for the both of us.
“Would you find Doc to let him know BJ is awake?”
“Yes, I will, and I will bring a spoon instead of the dropper.
I sat silent until she came back with the spoon, then I pulled my chair closer to him once again. I pretended not to see the hostility as he watched me putting the cloth under his chin to catch any spills, but he opene
d his mouth when I brought the spoon to his mouth. He was hungry, finishing all the broth. We didn’t talk as I cleaned his face again before moving my chair slightly away again. He closed his eyes, asleep once again until Doc came in to check on him.
“I hear our patient is finally awake. That is a very good sign.”
“Yes, and he took all of the broth.”
“Good, good, if that stays down alright, we will get you some more in about an hour. We will try to build your strength up a little at a time. We don’t want to move too fast though. Glad to see you awake BJ, glad to see you awake. You had us worried for a while. You were hurt really bad son. To tell you the truth, your waking up is nothing short of a miracle.”
I noticed BJ’s eyes had soften considerable when he looked at Doc.
Within the next few days he moved slowly from broth to mashed food, that we spoon fed him. I kept on taking my turn to set with him, tending him each day as he took the food I offered, even accepting my arm as he slowly began walking again.
We didn’t talk about anything except what he needed or how he was feeling. He still slept a lot, but I either bought a book or hand sewing to do as I sat quietly while he slept.
His eyes would follow me though, deep eyes that I couldn’t read as I cared for him. One day I was setting beside him he seemed more restless than usual. He was asleep but jerking movements seemed to disturb his rest, causing him to moan. I reached for his hand, hoping the touch of someone would comfort him. I had his hand in mine, and I pulled it upward toward my lips as I asked God to heal him. When I opened my eyes, his was focused on mine, steady watching my face. With his hand still against my lips, he said. “What are you doing?”
I moved his hand away from my lips and moved it back to his side.