by Lynne Hinton
All of Smoketown gathered at the church, mothers clutching to their children, men fidgeting in their pockets. The preacher spoke of heaven and a final resting place, but the people could only wrestle with the question of whose boy was next. The choir sang and the family read the cards of sympathy and condolence, but nobody saw this funeral as a celebration of a homecoming. A child of their own had been hunted down and killed and even though religion was the only salve they had to rub on the festered places in their spirits, it was not enough. It was never enough.
They left the church and gathered at Ruth’s house, the way they always did after festivity or disappointment. The food was hot and plenty, but no belly was filled with delight or satisfaction on this occasion.
Ruth and Miss Nellie passed around bowls of canned beans and plates with pieces of fried pork, but the dishes just came back, still warm and full. They walked around with pitchers of iced tea and a pot of coffee, but no one seemed to want any food or drink. Everyone stood around, silent and empty.
Even with the windows closed and the doors shut, it wasn’t hard to hear the scream of Ruth’s next-door neighbor. She was resting and unprepared; so that when she felt that first contraction of labor, a full minute of searing, perfect pain, she yelled with a force that pushed her from the bed.
“Lord, it’s that girl for sure; the baby is coming! I’m going to need some help.” Ruth put down a pan of salted rinds and went to her bedroom to get her coat.
Earlene Petite stopped rocking. Reverend Irvine quit picking at his teeth and saying, “Dear Jesus.” Even Masie Williams ceased shaking her head from side to side, glancing up in disbelief. The house grew as quiet as Miss Nellie ever knew it could be. The air was heavy and sad; and they swallowed, aware of the thickness of their tongues and the dryness at the back of their throats.
Everyone stared at the ceiling or at their feet and still nothing moved.
“Well,” Ruth said as she returned to the room, pulling her arms through her coat, “ain’t nobody gonna help?”
Miss Nellie glanced up, trying to get a better picture of her daughter with an attempt to understand where such a pristine force as her love could have been born and grown. She knew that Ruth never thought about how much she gave away. She never realized who got her last piece of sweetbread or the first taste of stew. She never questioned if something from around the house was missing or when somebody was going to pay her back if they stopped off to borrow thirty cents before going into town. Her mind always seemed to be on higher things and it was that spirit of complete unselfishness that brought these mourners there in the first place.
Most everyone knew of the only time when Ruth was less than charitable and since they were partly responsible they could not hold that against her, not that they ever would anyway. That deed was justified and buried and never resurrected for discussion or afterthought. She was a woman with a soul as gentle as dusk. And that’s why no one could look her in the eye when she starting making steps toward delivering the white woman’s child.
It was Josiah Smith who finally spoke and it surprised everyone in the house that he was the one to name it. Having always and only been a man of quiet suffering, he had been the picture of submission.
Josiah never fought or ran off when the white man tore up the deed to his father’s land, causing his family to lose the only thing sharecroppers ever really dreamed of. He didn’t make threats about how he was going to get revenge like his brother did before he had disappeared late one Christmas night. He didn’t protest when his nephew was arrested and whipped after a white woman said he winked at her while walking down the street and he didn’t flinch when the police picked him up because he looked like a man who had stolen chickens from a farmer in town.
He had borne his injustices like a man who understood to fight would be to lose. He had kept silence like it was a vow, managed humility like he was studying to be one of Christ’s chosen disciples. He had been beaten down, lied to, laughed at, and stolen from; and he had never demonstrated a flicker of anger or resentment.
But something had happened in this storm. Something deep and far inside him had weakened and cracked. Like the tops of the pines that lay strewn all around them, split and fallen, he was broken by what had happened to a teenage boy who had only wanted to play ball. And he was finally unable to hold his tongue while his neighbor and friend was planning to dole out charity and goodwill on a day of such sorrow.
He cleared his throat and spoke with a strong but stretched voice. The others turned to him, curious and disbelieving. “Miss Ruth, you gonna go and bring another white child in this world when ours being killed out?”
It was an innocent question and simple; but he did not lift his eyes nor did he feel the room as it swayed and then steadied. He did not see the uneasy pats of hands on legs or the shaking of so many heads.
Ruth stopped and turned to the question, to Josiah, and the people of Smoketown gathered in her house. She was suddenly aware of the air’s heaviness and the consequences of evil. There had just been a lynching, a boy kidnapped and murdered; and everyone, including the kind and gentle Ruth, knew that justice would never be served.
She went around the room peering into the faces that told the stories of all the painful memories that each soul bore. The “yes, mams” and the “no, sirs” that held them down under the iron hand of oppression. The simple truths about where they could and could not go for dry goods or use the toilet or even ask a question. The envy that ate away at the bottom of their hearts for those who walked within a lighter shade and could pass into a world that all the others only watched from a distance. The wide-eyed fear of a mother when a son doesn’t come home from an afternoon of playing with his friends.
When she reached Masie Williams’s face, she had to turn away and close her eyes, the mother’s sorrow so new and so tightly bound. Then she took off her coat and walked over to the woman who used to clap her hands together when she laughed, always saying, “Mercy!” as if the laughter was going to kill her.
Now the laughing woman was hollow. And Ruth knew that she would never again call out for mercy because she could not understand what it could possibly do for her now.
“Mrs. Williams, what happened to your baby was wrong, as evil as the world can get, and I know your heart is splitting. I know you can’t see how you gonna move through tomorrow with your son’s blood smeared across your mind.” She knelt down in front of the dead boy’s mother, her knees tired from years of praying and scrubbing, her joints aching from the cold.
“But, Mrs. Williams.” Ruth took a breath and swallowed hard. She steadied herself on the principle of grace.
“One dead child is no good reason for two.” And with that and one long and deep pause of sympathy she gave to everyone, she eased herself up from the floor and walked to the door, leaving a house empty of pardon and full of grief.
It was bad. Not only the labor but also the confused presence of a five-year-old whose soul had been throttled. Not only the lack of supplies and assistance but worse was Mattie’s decision not to allow the baby to be born. As far as she was concerned, this whole thing was a mistake and she just wanted the error erased and her life to return to the way it was before the storm.
She screamed out for a drink because she was tired of flesh tearing and the push from deep inside her. She was tired of the needle-sharp ice and the rain that battered her sleep. She was weary from the howling wind that ripped around the corners and snuck in beneath doors and across sills of windows. She was spent from the weight of her belly and the story that washed across her dreams of how it came to happen.
This conception was not like Roy’s. The baby, this life, transpired over months of Mattie’s short youth. Months of the first love that Mattie Jacobs had ever known; and because of the hungry scars it left, it would be the last. And as she fought the delivery, trying hard to forget, the memories rained down.
Paul Wade was just passing through Red Banks, Mississippi, when he first
laid eyes on Mattie. She was walking on the side of the road, her sandals tied and swinging from her shoulder. Her dress, damp, catching in between her legs while she sauntered through the tall grass, stopping to pick up stones and pitch them to the wind. Paul had hitchhiked up from Panola County where he was running from bad debts to folks you only owe once. And although he was in a hurry to get out of the state, he stopped the driver and jumped from the back of the truck trying to catch up with the young beauty who tossed rocks like a boy.
Paul Wade was quite the charmer and he folded Mattie up and slid her in his breast pocket before they ever got to Walker’s Mill, just a mile from her daddy’s farm. She, of course, did some folding of her own; and the bends of her smile left him shortsighted and weak-minded and he soon forgot that he was running.
It seemed only natural after their meeting that they would set up house together. And they moved to a shack up near the dip in Arkabutla River and decided to be born all over again. Mattie left Roy with her parents, trying to forget how hard her father could swing a belt, thinking that maybe since he was a boy, it wouldn’t hurt or maybe her father wouldn’t hate him as much.
She went to the river pretending not to have noticed that a black cat darted across her path just moments before that truck passed her and backed up, pretending not to have seen how Crazy Etta eyeballed her in town, lacing her fingers in and out of each other like she was delivering the makings of a curse. She went to the river for a little piece of happiness and she pretended not to have remembered anything before this man from Panola County followed her home.
And the river was sweet water and clear. And the days were easy and long. The nights cool and hushed. And they thought of nothing except where her back curved and the saltiness of his skin, the loose way he laughed and the rose of her cheeks. That was enough to fill each other’s dreams and steal away any other memories.
Roy never asked about his mother. He assumed she was gone for good and it did not make him sad. He bore the brunt of her punishment and he never wished for anything except maybe wings and a tiny bit of sky. He was surprised when she came back, but it did not cause him any change of emotion or shift in feelings toward her. Instead, he only noticed the difference in her that was marked by twigs twisted and caught in her hair and a blank space in her eyes where he used to see light.
Mattie was down past the river in a hot spring when she heard the shot and felt the icy finger run along her spine. She hurried to get out of the water, but she got tangled in some branches that hung low near where she bathed. She called out Paul’s name, hearing only the panicked kicking of the water and the ripping of her hair as she fought to get free.
After some time she finally grew tired from the struggle and hung from the tree in defeat. She looked up and saw a tongue gliding over lips and a wisp of smoke that drifted from the barrels of a gun pointed at her head. A man watched, enjoying the scene beneath him, aroused as the naked Mattie battled with a river tree.
She focused on the dark holes aimed at her eyes as she dangled like a fish caught on a hook. Another shot rang from the shore and Mattie saw the barrels lower as the bullet hit right above her head breaking apart the branches and dropping her into the warm water. The weight of the limb pushed her deep beneath the surface and when she came up, the thought of fighting and the gunman were gone.
Mattie found and picked up pieces of her lover that had been blown away in the blast. Along with arms and legs and a shattered face, there were tiny scraps of clothing and slender patches of skin. There was muscle, tight and spongy, and puddles of blood that she tried to lift from the dirt and hold in her arms. She picked up shards of glass and small smooth stones and could not decide which parts came from him and which parts did not. Without knowing for sure she piled them all together and placed them in the rowboat they had used for fishing.
She unstopped the hole in the bottom, pushed the boat offshore, and watched as all the pieces she could and could not name as being Paul Wade, all the things he was and was not, floated to the middle of the river and went down.
When she arrived at her father’s house she did not smell of river water, nor did she give the appearance of a woman who had ever bathed in tenderness. She simply headed to her bedroom, grabbed some of her belongings, and headed north, feeling a stirring inside her that she was sure would drown or at least evaporate with time. Her five-year-old son ran behind her, catching up with her before she could send him back home.
“Mattie, you got to help! Push girl, push!” Ruth was all sweat and worry; her arms pressed between closed thighs, her fingers trying to find a passageway.
Mattie felt herself begin to fall into the arms of a gnarled river tree that wrapped around her waist and began to pull her down. She struggled to keep the knotty hands from forcing her into the water and she fought the thorny branches that tangled around her, holding her back from reaching the shore. She shoved forward and felt a thrust come from the smooth muscles that lined her womb as she watched the water mark rise.
“Mattie, you hear me? Mattie, girl, hold open your eyes, look at me! LOOK AT ME!”
Mattie opened her eyes and saw the frantic face of her neighbor, but just above Ruth’s head she saw the silver barrels of a shotgun, a darting tongue, and a trail of smoke. She felt the smooth muscles tighten and the limbs snap behind her neck.
“O Lord, Mattie, O live, child, Lord, let this child live.” Ruth was chanting and praying and trying to find a way to pull at the crown of the baby’s head that was just beginning to show.
Mattie saw the spinning bullet as it left the barrel followed by a small blue flame. She felt the kicking and the squirming of her feet and arms and something else as she tried to break free from the twisted bough. She lifted her spine and gave out one loud and powerful yell that for her was the pain of a bullet flying through flesh and for Ruth was the energy behind just enough of a push to allow her to reach her hands in and grab on to a bloody, fighting baby.
Finally she curved her fingers around the tiny head and yanked the baby out. Ruth backed away from the bed and fell against the wall, the child stretched and struggling in her arms. “Mattie Jacobs, it’s a girl. One fine messy girl!”
Ruth hurried to clean out the baby’s mouth and waited for the pitch of a newborn’s lungs. The infant squirmed and flinched and wrinkled up her face and then finally squalled out her existence. Ruth laughed in the pleasure of her success and laid the baby on Mattie’s belly.
Mattie opened herself up when the bullet passed through her and she saw the face of Paul Wade as he leaned across her and blew a kiss. She glanced up expecting to see the smile of her lover and instead saw the head of a little girl with blood smeared along her cheeks.
“I believe this one is more stubborn than you, Mattie. I expect she’ll need a strong name for such a fight as this.” Ruth was standing between Mattie’s legs cleaning up the afterbirth.
It was a long time before the new mother spoke. Ruth cleaned up the mess on the bed and on the floor, washing off the blood and mucus that had spilled all around them. She wrapped the baby in a clean towel and was looking out the window, watching as her friends and neighbors were leaving her house, when Mattie finally called out.
“You named her, Ruth.” The woman, spent and delivered, reached up and touched the child on the head.
Ruth walked over and placed a clean piece of linen between the new mother’s legs and moved up to stand beside the baby. “What you mean?” she asked, surprised but glad to hear Mattie speak.
“Maybe your God didn’t hear. But I heard.” She kept her eyes closed. The baby stilled upon her mother’s belly.
“O live, child. O let this child live?” Mattie repeated the prayer she had heard her neighbor pray and then she whispered the baby’s name as she fell back into the mouth of the river. “O live, Olivia.”
Rise up ye Earth and speak the Truth
of Dark, of Light, of Pain
For the human tongue is slow to tell
what
hands and hearts will stain.
Children play near open graves,
a fire so close they smell.
Prophecy loosens a stone cold heart
but cannot keep it from hell.
—ES
Three
Reverend Ely continued to function in means beyond himself. When Cy Gauldin mentioned in passing the young woman’s delivery and the newborn infant who was not allowed to nurse, the Reverend walked to the store on his own initiative, bought a box of Carnation milk, and even rounded up bottles and nipples. All done without the prodding of church ladies or a written request from the county services agency.
Before he went to see Mattie and give her the things he had bought for the baby, he visited those touched by the fingers of the storm. He said prayers, listened to confessions, and even wiped the tears of the bereaved, all with appropriate warmth and professional empathy.
He drove old Miss Coble to the hospital and helped Willard Neese gather wood for his stove. He picked up medicine for little Floyd Dodder and took blankets to the gypsies. The tall, ungainly parson was known for his kindness and his quiet manner; and since he continued his acts of mercy, folks just thought Reverend Ely was carrying on. And though he never tried to hide his wounds, most of them did not attend to his slowed gait or the bandages wrapped around his hands.
Hardly anyone saw that just below the surface of his forced smile and wedged in between his words of pardon and assurance there raged a gaping hole. Thread pulling thread, the conviction of a clergyman began to unravel. Bit by bit, a small tear widened and frayed ends spread farther and farther apart exposing his already tattered soul.
Floyd Dodder recognized it; but his mother thought he was only acting feverish when he fought the words of Scripture the preacher tried to read. Marvella Coble saw the empty space; and believing that it represented the fast-approaching plane of death, she shouted out, “Dear Jesus,” when the preacher reached for her. Ule Ubanavich, the old gypsy woman, tried to give him a small leather bag of roots and cloves of garlic to ward off evil spirits that loomed too near him, but he politely refused and she could not change his mind.