In the winter Birdie’s mother got sick; for a year father and daughter tiptoed around the dark house, waiting for her to recover. During that time Birdie’s father seemed to forget her entirely, as if what he’d always suspected, the basic fragility of women, had been confirmed. After her mother’s death the house stayed dark. Every morning her father walked to his law office in town; every evening he came back drunk, was fed by Ella Mabry and put to bed in his clothes. By the time Birdie went off to Hambley, she no longer knew her father. She hadn’t known him in a long time.
He drove her to Hambley himself, a hot August day in the middle of a drought, dust in her hair and in her mouth, through the open windows a smell of hay. She would study sacred music; she would learn to play the organ. There had been no discussion of whether or why. Her father had arranged everything himself.
While she was away at school, he married a widow he’d met on a trip to Richmond. Birdie found out that winter when she came home for Christmas vacation. When they pulled up to the house, Helen was standing on the front porch, hugging herself in a homely gray coat. She was tall and plain, with a long equine face and dull brown hair cut short like a man’s. At dinner she sat in Birdie’s mother’s chair. Once Birdie had walked past her father’s bedroom and seen Helen at the dressing table using her mother’s hairbrush.
After Christmas Birdie went back to Hambley. By summertime she was married and pregnant, living in Missouri with someone else’s parents.
THEY RODE to the bus station in the rain; the taxi cost three dollars. Birdie tipped the driver, then paid for their tickets with her last twenty. She’d already spent her one paycheck from the luncheonette: phone, electricity, the rebuilt transmission for the car. As they waited for the bus, she gave Charlie a quarter.
“Go get yourself a soda pop,” she said.
It was done: her last dollar broken into coins. She felt the urge to celebrate. All summer long she’d waited for this, the end of the end, when whatever it was she’d been dreading for months would finally happen. Here I am, she thought. Come and get me.
Then she remembered that her father was dead.
THEY SAT at the front of the bus, Charlie and Jody and their mother; over the driver’s shoulder they could see the road stretching in front of them. The driver wasn’t tall but he had dark hair, thin on top. He looked a little like Charlie’s father.
His mother leaned against the window, holding Jody in her lap; her hair was still damp from the bath, leaving a wet mark on the glass. Underneath the seat was a small suitcase packed with their clothes. Through the window Charlie watched the streets go past: stores and offices, then houses, then woods and open fields. The sky was beginning to darken. He’d drunk a whole bottle of grape Nehi at the bus station; his stomach hurt from the bubbles.
The bus ride took three hours. “Montford, Virginia,” the driver announced. Grandma Helen was waiting for them inside the station. She wore an old coat over her dress; her long face looked pale and tight. “Where’s Ken?” she asked. “Isn’t he coming?”
“He’s in Missouri,” said Charlie’s mother. “Visiting his father.”
They drove to the house in Pappy’s station wagon, loud inside from the rain. They drove through the small town and out the other side of it, a long country road that wound through a forest.
“We never even got him to the hospital,” said Grandma Helen. She explained how Pappy had been upstairs shaving, how she’d never even heard him fall. It was the water that finally got her attention, seeping through the kitchen ceiling. Pappy had left the water running; the sink overflowed, the drain clogged with soap.
“I kept trying to call you, but no one answered,” she said. “I was about to send a telegram. There must be something wrong with your phone.”
They turned off the road onto a dirt path paved with chunks of red rock. The path looked beaten smooth by the rain; on either side of it, the ditches overflowed with pinkish mud.
For supper they had ham sandwiches and coleslaw. His mother wore a dress and stockings. Halfway through the meal she turned to Grandma Helen.
“Where’s Ella?” she said. It was the first she’d spoken since the bus station.
“I’m afraid we won’t have her until Monday,” said Grandma Helen. “It’s unfortunate timing. Her boy—what’s his name?”
“Curtis,” said Charlie’s mother.
“Curtis is getting married tomorrow.” Grandma Helen reached for Charlie’s plate and heaped it with more coleslaw. “A girl from Alabama. He met her down there when he was in the service. Apparently her people are all staying at Ella’s, though I can’t see how that’s possible in such a small house. Ella said she’d be cooking all weekend.”
Charlie’s mother said nothing. She did not eat, just moved the food around her plate with a fork. A while later she pushed away her plate and went out the back door.
THE RAIN had stopped; a pale moon glowed through the wet clouds. Birdie left her shoes at the back door and stepped into a pair of her father’s boots. The boots were cold inside, worn smooth all around; he’d had them specially made to fit his large feet. Daddy, she thought. For the first time in hours, something nipped at the edge of her. She exhaled; the feeling passed.
She followed the dirt road to the pond, nearly black in the low light. In the distance an owl hooted; the frogs and crickets were strangely silent. She peered through the woods. Through the trees she could make out the lights of Ella Mabry’s house, a tiny bungalow on the other side of the forest. She heard strains of music in the distance, a barking dog, full-throated Negro laughter.
She squatted at the edge of the pond; the hem of her dress grazed the muddy ground. Her father had taught her to swim in the pond, his big hands under her belly as she kicked and smacked at the water. “Don’t let go,” she told him a hundred times. “I won’t,” he said a hundred times back. Then once she looked back and saw him ten feet behind her and realized she was swimming. Her mother was terrified of water; she sat in a lawn chair and covered her eyes as Birdie and her father splashed and ducked. “I can’t look,” she’d say, peering between her fingers. Finally she stopped coming; she lived indoors the bright afternoons, the folded lawn chair gathering dust on the back porch.
Birdie circled the pond, protected on three sides by dense forest. In summertime it felt perfectly secluded; only when the leaves fell did you notice how close the house was. Anyone swimming in the pond would be clearly visible from the dirt road, but that had never mattered; the road was seldom traveled during the day and never at night. Birdie looked back toward the house and imagined a figure coming down the dirt road, a big man with a heavy step.
Her father had been drunk the night he found her and Curtis in the pond. He’d left his car downtown at the Legion and walked back to the house. Except he hadn’t stopped there; for reasons she never understood, he’d walked past the house and continued down the dirt road, his footsteps quiet on the gravel. He must have seen them first and gone back to the house for his hunting rifle.
She and Curtis sprang apart when the first shot rang out, the water suddenly cold against her chest, her thighs, all the parts of her that had been touching him. Even before she knew what was happening, she was sick with the loss of him.
“Daddy!” she cried.
He fired another shot into the air, wild-haired, his face white in the moonlight, tears streaming down his cheeks.
“Get out of here, you nigger bastard,” he barked. Then he lost his footing on the muddy bank.
“Run!” Birdie cried. “Run!”
Curtis tore through the water: a slick flash of skin, a gasp of breath. Her father stumbled, then righted himself. He fired a third shot. Curtis disappeared into the woods, leaving his clothes behind.
The rest her memory skipped: weeks, a month. The next thing she remembered the summer was over, and her father was driving her to Hambley.
The doorbell woke her, the first of the covered dishes. All morning long, women would come with baked ha
ms, chicken and dumplings, casseroles of every description. When Birdie’s mother died the church women had filled the chest freezer with food; she and her father had eaten sympathy casseroles for a month.
Hushed female voices filled the downstairs hallway and floated up the steps: Sally Beauchamp, Birdie guessed, or Marion Simpers or Betsy Peale. She had gone to school with their daughters; as a girl she’d been to birthday parties at their houses. The women had lived in Montford their whole lives and knew more about Birdie’s family than she did: which great-grandfathers had drunk or gambled, made money or lost it, hit their wives or fallen asleep in church. There was nothing malicious in their talk. Montford’s only movie house had closed when Birdie was small; for entertainment there were four churches and the public library. Under such conditions gossip was inevitable.
There was a knock at the bedroom door. “Birdie,” Helen called. “Mrs. Peale would like to say hello.”
“I’m not dressed,” said Birdie. “Please thank her for me. Tell her I’ll see her in church.”
Her dark dress hung in the closet, losing its wrinkles. They want to get a look at me, she thought. They want to see what an abandoned woman looks like. Since moving to Richmond she’d visited Montford three times, just her and the children; Ken could never be persuaded to come. She knew perfectly well how it looked to the Betsy Peales of the world—her turning up with two babies and no husband. At the time it had enraged her. I’m married! she’d wanted to shout when she passed them in the street. I have a husband! Now she knew the gossips had been right all along.
She slipped on a housecoat and went downstairs. The children sat at the table dressed and ready, eating scrambled eggs.
“Where’s your grandma Helen?” Birdie asked.
“Upstairs,” said Charlie. He wore long pants and a white shirt; next to his plate lay a child-size blue necktie.
“Where did that come from?” Birdie asked.
“Grandma.” Charlie covered his toast with a thick smear of butter. “Do I have to wear it?”
Birdie heard rapid footsteps overhead, Helen bustling about the bedroom. She looked up. The kitchen ceiling was cracked in one corner, the plaster beginning to crumble: the spot where the bathroom sink had overflowed.
“Bring it with you,” she told Charlie. “You can take it off after church.”
She sat at the table between the children, watching them eat. Footsteps climbed the back porch, a knock at the kitchen door. Through the lace curtains she saw familiar brown eyes, a dark, heart-shaped face.
“Ella!” she cried.
She opened the door. Ella Mabry wore the same black dress she’d worn to Birdie’s mother’s funeral. She’d put it on especially for the visit. She’d have to change again when she got home, Birdie thought, something festive to watch Curtis get married in.
“Little Birdie.” Ella opened her arms and hugged Birdie to her chest. “I had to come and see you. I been feeling bad all morning.” Her hair smelled of cooking and lilac perfume; her shoulders felt very small. Birdie’s throat tightened. Age had worn away at her like a bar of soap. One day she would simply disappear.
Ella looked around the kitchen, at the covered dishes sitting on the counter. “You going to have your hands full with the luncheon.”
“We’ve got lots of food,” said Birdie. “I’m sure it will be fine.”
“They can come eat they own casseroles, isn’t that right?” Ella chuckled. “Better put them in the icebox. You don’t want to leave them setting out.”
Birdie busied herself with the casseroles. Her back to Ella, she asked, “How’s Curtis?”
A brief silence: forks on china, Jody slurping her milk.
“He doing just fine,” said Ella. “I guess you know he getting married today.”
Birdie’s chest ached; a lump rose in her throat. “Helen told me. A girl from Alabama, is that right?”
“Maple,” said Ella. “Her name going to be Maple Mabry. Isn’t that something?”
Birdie turned to Ella. “Do you like her?”
“She’s a good girl. Not like that other one.” Ella glanced at the children and lowered her voice. “You know he got a little boy already, from that girl he was fooling around with. He seven years old already.”
Birdie’s heart raced. “I didn’t know.”
Ella beamed at Jody and Charlie. “Look at these children. How they growing.” She gave Charlie’s shoulder a squeeze. “This one look a little skinny to me.” She took the frypan from the stove and scraped the rest of the eggs onto his plate.
“I wished I could stay and help,” she said. “I wished I would have known.”
“Don’t you worry,” said Birdie. Her voice shook. “You go on now. Go and have a good time at that wedding.”
She clasped Ella again, a quick contact of chest and shoulders.
“Your father was a good man,” said Ella, “even with his faults.”
And she turned and was gone.
THEY FILED out from under the tent, past the big box where Pappy lay. Charlie followed his grandma Helen; he made a game of keeping up with her long legs, taking two steps for each of hers. His sister watched him over his grandma’s shoulder, thumb in her mouth like a baby.
The box was closed but Charlie had seen inside earlier, at the funeral parlor. He hadn’t wanted to, but his mother made him. Come say good-bye to your pappy, she’d said. The man in the box was wearing a suit. Charlie had never seen Pappy wear anything but an old brown sweater; in summer, a blue checked shirt.
At the edge of the cemetery, cars were lining up.
“Birdie,” said Grandma Helen. “You go and ride up front.” She pointed to the big gray station wagon they’d transported the box in. The chrome hubcaps and bumpers gleamed like silver; the back windows of the car were hung with curtains. “They’ll take you back to the house.”
“No,” said his mother. “You go ahead. I’ll take Daddy’s car and meet you back there.”
“Are you sure?” said Grandma Helen.
“Of course. You take the baby. Charlie can ride with me.”
She took him by the hand to Pappy’s big sedan. The car started with a powerful sound. His mother turned sharply, struggling with the steering wheel. The car rolled down the road, leaving the others behind.
“Where are we going?” said Charlie.
“To town. I need to stop at the store.”
It was a small town: churches, a gas station, a flashing red light at the main intersection to slow the traffic. A little grocery store sat at the corner, no bigger than a garage. His mother parked at the curb and stepped into the street, leaving the engine running. In a moment she came out of the store with a paper sack.
“Hold this a minute, button,” she said. “Just till we get out of town.”
Charlie looked inside the bag, though he already knew what it was. The two bottles of wine sat heavy in his lap. His mother drove past the post office, the fire station, the newspaper stand. They passed under the flashing light and followed the road that led to Pappy’s.
Outside the town they pulled over to the side of the road.
“Let me have that sack,” said his mother.
The bottle had no cork; she screwed it open with her bare hand. She took a long drink from the bottle and sat a moment with her eyes closed. Then she took off her hat and tossed it into the back-seat.
“Roll down your window,” she said. “Get some air in here.”
Charlie did. They got back on the road.
“Where are we going?” he said.
“Back to the house.” She took another drink from the bottle. “There’s a whole houseful of people waiting for us.”
“What people?” he asked.
His mother laughed. “Just people.”
She stepped on the gas, filling the car with wind. Her hair blew crazily around her head; it seemed like something separate from her, a cloud of reddish smoke. On either side trees rushed past; farmers’ fields, houses and barns. The car raced
past the dirt road to Pappy’s house; Charlie recognized the mailbox marked J.W. BELL disappearing behind them.
“You missed the turn,” he said.
“We’re taking the scenic route.” She drank, then set the bottle in her lap and gripped it between her thighs. Her hands were white on the steering wheel. The road curved sharply, then climbed a steep hill. The engine roared.
“Hang on to your hat,” she said, though Charlie wasn’t wearing one and hers lay on the floor behind the seat. At the top of the hill, the road dropped sharply into a hollow. His stomach lurched as they sailed down the hill. His mother laughed; wine splashed from the bottle into her lap.
They followed the road up another hill. At the top the car slowed.
“Why are we stopping?” he asked.
“I want to enjoy the view.” She cut the engine and stepped out, taking the bottle with her. Charlie followed and sat next to her on the hood. They stared down into the valley, at a small house surrounded by parked cars. Chairs had been set up in the front lawn.
“What are they doing?” he asked.
“They’re getting married.” Down in the valley people settled into the chairs. His mother pointed to the house. “See them? That’s the bride and groom.”
Charlie squinted. A dark couple stood on the porch, the woman in a white dress and hat. For a long time his mother didn’t speak, just sipped quietly from the bottle.
“Button,” she said finally, “get me that other bottle.”
Charlie got the sack from the car and handed it to her. She lay her empty bottle on the ground; the opening was caked with her lipstick. Then she opened the new bottle and took a drink. Down below the people began to clap. A wind blew through the valley and up the hill, carrying voices, music, laughter.
“That’s it,” said his mother. “It’s done.”
She slid off the hood, stumbling a little.
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