by Leslie Wells
I dress the pork up with some turnip greens, and it looks edible. I dab a little more water on it with a dishrag and rub on more salt to flavor it. I take the dish outside to a plank balanced on two rocks, which is the table they will serve themselves from. More men have come, and they are standing around in groups unscrewing their mason jars. Good, let them drink themselves silly before they start to eat.
I turn to go back into the kitchen. At least I can’t hear their gibes, although I can imagine what they are saying about my limp. I’m sure Aaron has made it known to them he married me purely out of pity—another fiction of his that I’ve seen him mouth at Christ on the Cross—so they’d feel no compunction about mocking me. I’m sure he’s told them all kinds of spiteful things about me, that I’m a bad wife, can’t cook worth heck, possibly that I’m crazy. I know I sound and probably look crazy too. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen my face, but I imagine it’s not a pretty sight. Aaron has a prohibition against mirrors, which actually suits me fine. And of course, I’m not really even his wife.
I go back into the kitchen and pick up the bowl of corn. I hate making so many trips outside, but with my unsteady gait I can only manage one dish at a time. No one tries to speak directly to me, which is good. Aaron is involved in what looks to be a heated discussion with Sam Jones and another man, one I don’t know. He’s waving his arms about and opening his mouth wide, teeth flashing in the waning sunlight.
Soon they’ll light a fire in the pit in the yard. They will sit on the ground holding their plates in their laps and drink until they drain their jars dry. Then the discussion will become even more animated. Sometimes two of them get into a fight, but they are always pulled apart by the rest. I wish someone would smack Aaron good upside the head, but so far that hasn’t happened.
I make it back up the steps and into the kitchen for the last dish, the potatoes reeking with onion. I’m so sick of the sight of the food that I don’t even bother scooping a little into a bowl for myself. I’ll go upstairs with a piece of bread and a raw potato; that will be enough supper for me. I pick the heavy platter up and sidle over to the door. This one is tricky, but I manage to make it down the steps without spilling any of it and over to the plank.
When I look up, I accidentally meet Ed Bean’s eyes.
—help you with that, he says.
I set the platter down, his hands holding the other side of the plate, and straighten my back without looking up at his face. I’ll pay later for any kindnesses any of them show me, so I don’t want to encourage it. I used to be afraid of Father, but I must say Aaron far outdistances him in imagination and cruelty.
I make it back up the kitchen steps without incident and without anyone noticing me. I look out the dirty windowpane and see them hunkering over the food, filling their plates greedily and sitting down on the grass. Aaron drags a couple of pine branches over to the pit and lights them. I hope the sap spits in the heat and pops on their bare arms. Soon he’ll have a roaring blaze going and their real meeting will take place. At times I’ve been tempted to try to decipher what they’re saying purely out of curiosity, but the punishment would not be worth the prize if I got caught spying.
I cut myself a dry piece of bread and begin to peel a potato. I feel the floor vibrate behind me, and suddenly there’s a hot body leaning into my back. I catch my breath and whirl around. It’s Sam Jones, groping at me with his huge meaty hands.
—shouldn’t wear such a purty dress if you don’t—
—Mmm! I protest as loudly as I can. I try to push him away, but he comes back at me, scissoring my bad leg between his legs. I can’t help crying out in pain.
—real wildcat underneath them—
I realize I haven’t dropped the paring knife. I twist my wrist around and scrape it along his arm. He opens his mouth wide and jumps back. Suddenly Aaron is at the door, squinting his eyes at me.
—the salt? he says. He looks at Sam. —Need something? All the food’s out there.
Sam shakes his head and blunders out the door. Aaron comes over to me, but I scurry around the table to avoid his cuff and grab the salt cellar out of the pantry. I thrust it at him and he grabs my wrist hard.
—around. May need more—
I shake my head adamantly and point upstairs. I don’t want to stay down here any longer. Aaron gives me a hard stare and takes the salt out of my hand. He whirls around and darts out the door. Hands shaking, I grab my piece of bread, leaving the half-peeled potato on the table, and go up the stairs fast despite the pains shooting all the way up my leg.
• • •
I’m being forced into a huge dark gunnysack. There are scratchy branches in the sack, the pine needles scraping against my legs. I fight the men who try to put me in the sack, but it’s no use; I feel their hot breath on me and see their grumbling. They are angry because the pork was tough. They want to hang me over the fire in the sack, cook me, and then eat me. I twist and turn, but the drawstring is drawn tightly around my neck. I see the faces of Sam Jones, Ed Bean, and Merris Coombs, who has a fishhook stuck in his tongue. I struggle and then I awaken.
Aaron looms over me in the dark, pushing into me. His hands squeeze my neck, tighter and tighter. A high thin scream comes out of my mouth. I can’t get my breath, I claw at his hands, but they continue squeezing the breath out of me. His heavy weight on my chest, thrusting, thrusting. His toenails scratching my legs. He stops for a minute, grinning at me insanely, and releases my neck.
I take in big gulps of night air, sweet and cool. He grabs my face roughly and turns my head to the side. He pokes a finger into my ear, then turns my head to face him again.
—Sometimes I wish I couldn’t hear everything, he sneers. —Lot of things just aint worth hearing.
I try to breathe softly, hoping he’ll get off of me and go to sleep.
—You got your breath? he asks, his lips slurring over the words.
Slowly I nod my head, afraid to take my eyes off his face.
—Good.
He smiles, and suddenly his hands are around my neck again, tighter than before. The thrusting starts. I am choking, I am drowning. This time I struggle desperately until at last I pass out.
Chapter Twelve
I awaken before the sun comes up and go downstairs to light the oven. Aaron will sleep until noon if I’m lucky, and I’ll be able to feed Joshua breakfast and get him out of the house before Aaron comes down with his thundering headache. If I knew drinking something gave me a headache like that, I’d avoid it like the plague. But that’s too much common sense for Aaron and most men I’ve observed.
I step out into the dewy yard. Nettie, our old mule, nickers at me in hopes of something to eat, but we haven’t had any feed for her for months, and she’s had to make do with grazing weeds at the edge of the field. I stand next to her, scratching her behind her ears for a few minutes before I gather up several pine branches and take them into the kitchen. I poke them into the oven, scrape a match on the iron cooking surface, and light the fire.
I back into the table and accidentally knock a spoon off of it. Then I stand looking at the stairs for a few minutes until I’m sure I didn’t wake him up. Even when he’s not suffering the ill effects of drink, I try not to awaken Aaron before I’ve got things going. He hates coming down to a cold kitchen with no fire and no bread frying. In the better times we had eggs and an occasional piece of bacon, but it’s been a long while since we had that. Our one chicken doesn’t lay, or if she does, she hides them where I cannot find them. My mouth waters as I conjure up these delicacies, and I deride myself for even thinking about them.
I chew a hard rind of bread and begin scraping off the dishes from the night before. The plates are filthy, having sat in congealed grease all night. If I can get these dishes washed and set out to dry, get Joshua up and dressed and give him a piece of frybread, and put Aaron’s breakfast in the frying pan for him, then we can leave the house in peace long before he wakes up.
I go out t
he door again and grab the bucket sitting by the back steps. I got dressed upstairs in the dark, so I haven’t yet seen what’s making my legs so sore. It’s still very gray outside, but when I reach the rise a glimmer of sun haloes the far hill and I pull up my skirts to see. I can’t hold back a shudder as I view the bite marks going up and down the inside of each of my legs, the tender skin chewed and rechewed so it’s raw and sore.
I imagine this took place after I blacked out. It infuriates Aaron when I’m not awake when he’s choking me. Usually I try not to faint, because if I do I’ll be in more pain the next morning. One night after I passed out he took a piece of burning tinder from the fireplace in our bedroom and scored it up and down my feet so I could not walk the next day or the next. The blisters oozed and burst, oozed and burst, for weeks afterward.
I pull down my skirt and limp along the path to the spring. My neck is still sore; I can just imagine what it looks like. When I get back to the house I’ll tie a piece of rag around my throat in case I run into anyone. Not that I really care anymore what anyone thinks. But Joshua might see the marks; he’s getting to the age where he notices things.
Going along this path reminds me of the trail to the creek that I used to take through our woods back home. Same cold tin pail in my hands, morning light flickering on the leaves, branches tickling my face and arms and making them wet with dew. Sibby and I had so many good times at that creek, skinny-dipping in the sweltering summers. There was a big old muscadine vine that hung right above the widest part of the water. We’d make a dam with rocks and mud and strip off our clothes, then swing from the vine out over the water and splash into it. Falling buck naked into the cold water was a delicious shock.
More than once, walking home from school in April when it was already hot, we’d stop and hike up our skirts and wade in. Occasionally Sally Bowden, who lived on a neighboring farm about two miles down the dirt road from us, would accompany us. She’d always have to stop at the creek to scrub off the lipstick she’d put on at school. None of our parents would have tolerated our painting our faces, but some girls dared it once they were on school grounds, knowing Mrs. Spender didn’t care.
Sally would scrub and scrub at her mouth, splashing it with creekwater. The smears of crimson made her look like a circus clown that had been left out in the rain. I had never dared to paint my mouth. When I first met Aaron, I had contemplated going into Job’s store for a tube of lipstick, but never got up the nerve. Now the idea of wanting to please him in that way seems like someone in another life, and I guess it really was.
I reach the spring before I know it. I wade in and dip my bucket into the deepest part. Thin gray minnows swirl into the pail as I fill it with the icy clear water. I scoop them out with my cupped hand. The motion sends me back to when Sibby and I used to spend hours at our creek catching crawdads. We’d bring a couple of our mother’s big mason jars down with us, then squat on a rock in the middle of the creek and watch carefully. After a while, you’d see a little claw or a whisker poking out from under the rock. Then an arm. Finally the whole crawdad would appear, slowly edging out from his protective cave.
You had to be very patient; the minute he saw a shadow, he’d dart back under the rock. Finally when he was out in the open water, moving quickly across the smooth sandy bottom, we’d submerge the jar and scoop the crawdad into it with our hands. One day we caught twenty-two of the little creatures. They looked just like miniature lobsters, and many times Sibby bemoaned the fact that you couldn’t eat them. People did in places like Louisiana, I’d read, but our variety was too small—only a couple of inches long.
One day, I caught the best one either of us ever had: a huge black crawdad, double the size of any we’d ever seen. We named him Granddaddy and let him go reverently at the end of the afternoon. We always let the crawdads go; we wanted to keep the creek well stocked, and there was nothing to do with them at the house, anyway. But they provided hours of pure entertainment for us.
I smile at the memory, then sadden when I think of how long it’s been since I saw Sibby. I heave the bucket and struggle uphill with it, then back down to the house. With my limp it is impossible not to spill some, but I get back to the kitchen with most of it intact. Thankfully Joshua is still upstairs, asleep. I put the bucket on the stovetop to heat and dip a rag into it to wipe some of the blood off the inside of my legs. My skirt is covered in beggarlice from the woods, and I pick them off and throw them outside.
Later, after I’ve washed the dozens of dirty dishes and fried some bread in lard, I go upstairs to awaken Joshua. He stretches, eyes still closed, and I stroke his warm back until he peeks at me. It is already hot in the dark little room, and I carry him naked but for his drawers downstairs, where he lets me dress him without protest. He wants two pieces of frybread, so I have a dry crust. Aaron always likes his breakfast just so, three pieces of frybread and a cup of chicory waiting so all he has to do is pour in the hot water. I set out Aaron’s plate and cover the fry pan and wash Joshua’s plate and his face and then pull his hand to indicate we are going outside. Joshua’s expression brightens. He loves to do anything out of doors. He follows me out of the house and into the woods.
• • •
We take our time going to the creek, Joshua pulling on muscadine vines and examining various stones and gathering pinecones to float in the water, and me having to stop and rest whenever my foot hurts too much. I am one big ache with my throat still feeling choked and my inner legs bleeding from the bites and my clubfoot aching the way it always does in the morning. But even with the pain, it is good to be alone in the woods with a few hours of freedom before the day gets hot enough to smother. I hope that Yellow Scarf will be there today. The thought of seeing her spurs me on again whenever I falter.
The sun is shining through the trees, and the creekwater swirls clear, showing the pretty brown sand at its bottom. Some women have dammed up the other end with logs so that this part is nice and deep for bathing. I draw in my breath when I see a movement through the trees, but then I see an ocher blur and know it is Yellow Scarf and her children. I call her that in my mind because she usually covers her head with a yellow rag. I wave and they wave and we all approach the water.
Yellow Scarf sits down on the bank and digs her toes into the mud. Joshua peels off his shirt and runs over to her boy, Tyree, and girl, Yvonne. I have learned their names from watching Yellow Scarf as she calls out to them. Soon they are splashing around happily, Joshua’s skin glistening white in the water, the others’ brown faces and arms made darker by being wet.
Yellow Scarf is the only person I have run into in this new community who doesn’t seem bothered by my infirmities. She seems to accept me with nothing but friendly incurious interest. And there is added safety in the fact that since she is a Negro and lives in the Bottoms, no one Aaron knows would hear that I take Joshua to the creek to bathe. He’d have a hissy fit if he knew I spent time around any other women—particularly a colored woman. Ever since my mistake with the government lady where we used to live, he’s made sure I never have a chance to communicate with anyone else. Not that you can do a lot of communicating when you can’t hear and you’re forbidden to talk.
Joshua and Tyree are running up the bank and swinging on a grapevine, dropping off into the water. Yvonne opens her mouth in a giggle of delight whenever one of them splashes her. I lie back on the warm sandy bank and let the sun soak into my body through my thin dress. Yellow Scarf smiles at me and does the same.
—Nice mornin, she begins, turning her head toward me so I can see her face. She seems to know I can read her lips and interpret her words, even though I do not reply. I nod in response to her greeting. We have fallen into this pattern of communicating, where she talks and I either nod or hum acknowledgment.
—Squash are comin up fine. I got me about a dozen tomato plants gonna be ripe soon. You ever plant tomatoes? They’re easy. They spring up like weeds once you get ’em going. I like me some fried tomatoes, little
pepper and salt. John say I salt ev’ything, and I do. I even like salt on my cucumbers.
I nod, smiling in agreement. I’ve salted cucumbers, too. The bite of the salt goes well with the cool, crunchy green taste.
—You ever salted a watermelon? They’s good with salt. Not cantaloupe, though. But a nice melon’s tasty with a little salt. Your boy like melon?
I shrug, indicating we haven’t had any. When she smiles, her face warms up and she is pretty, I think.
—have to bring you some of my melons. I got some Sugar Babies you’d think you’d died and gone to heaven when you bite into ’em. Yvonne! Don’t you splash your brother, hear me? I’ll tan your hide! she shouts at her little girl, who is romping around with the boys. —Kids, she sighs. —These chirren don’t know how easy they have it. When I was their age, I was pickin cotton in the field, day in and day out. I remember gettin home and bein so tired, all I could do was lay down and cry.
I nod, thinking about that. I’d had my share of hard chores growing up, as we all had, but I had worked in the fields after I was thirteen, and only as a summer job when school was out. I wish I could share my experiences picking tobacco with her, to compare it to cotton, which I’d heard was harder, and to let her know I’d worked hard as a child, too. But I don’t dare let Joshua see me talking.
—didn’t want my chirren to have to work like I have, Yellow Scarf is saying. —I want to give them a better life, somehow, but we got to get out of the Bottoms to do that. If John gets steady work this fall we could move. I’ve got a cousin down to Dry Fork that knows of a house we could have for not much. Comes with five acres, not too rocky. I’ve got a mind to go, but John don’t want to leave his mama. I say, Bring her with us! We’ll have room, if we can get this house my cousin told me about. But he say his mama don’t want to move, she been here all her life. I say, Man, you want to get eaten alive every summer when the skeeters hatch? Just cause you been doin it since you was little don’t mean you have to keep on doin it!