The Curing Season

by Leslie Wells

  I slink out the back with Joshua and get along home to fix some dinner. I spy some purple-and-white turnips poking up out of a field on the way, and Lord forgive me, I pull them up and bring them home in my apron to round out our meal. Walking with the heavy knobs jouncing in my skirt, I remember how Sibby and I used to love to eat them raw. We’d dig up a few turnips, scrape off the tough outer skin with her pocketknife, and eat them just like that. If I had something to cut with, I’d peel me one right now. When we get home, I’ll give Joshua a piece of one raw before I boil them. The thought makes me feel a connection with Sibby. I wonder if she is now home after church, cooking dinner for Mother, WillieEd, and Luke. Or maybe they are at Charlie’s mama’s house sitting down to a big dinner with all their in-laws and cousins.

  A wave of self-pity washes over me. Why couldn’t I have found a normal husband, like every other girl seemed to find? I’d long ago concluded that Aaron had sought me out because he perceived that I was naive and weak. I must have seemed like easy pickings to someone like him. And I hadn’t asked for much—I never wanted someone handsome or rich; I’d just wanted someone to care for me, someone to love me back. The injustice of it stings me until I look down at Joshua, escorting me like a little man. At least one good thing has come of this union, I remind myself. The thought is some comfort to me as we walk home.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Joshua and I walk down the woods path to the creek. My anticipation is that of a giddy girl; the thought of conversing with Nita has been like a lifeline to me all week long. I am tempted to try to remove my earplugs to see if I can hear her, but Aaron checks them every so often, and he’d be able to tell if I had taken them out. It is another Thursday, the day I can usually count on seeing her.

  But when we descend the bank, my heart sinks. The creek has shrunk to a tiny trickle in the heat. Dry brambles stick up like spindly arms where once cool water swirled around them. Wondering, Joshua and I walk along what was the creekbed, our bare feet making swirling lines in the loamy sand. Joshua is speechless at this change of events. I point to the ground and motion that the water has gone away, trying to indicate that it has dried out in the sun. When he looks up at me, tears are streaming down his cheeks.

  —Why it go? Why the creek go away? he cries, and buries his head in my skirt.

  I kneel down and hold him, feeling the sobs shake his little body. I breathe into his hair and wish I could soothe him with words. Maybe if I dared just this once . . . but this is dangerous thinking. I am on the verge of murmuring to him when he turns around in my arms. I look up and see Nita and her children, the same look of amazement on their faces, standing on the opposite bank.

  Tyree and Yvonne jump down into the sandy bed, and Joshua runs to join them. Soon they are all kicking up dust and kneeling to examine the rocks that once were covered with water. Nita picks her way through the brambles and vines and approaches me.

  —Looks like our bathin come to a stop for a while, til this drought breaks, she says. —Whyn’t we take the chirren over to that big field behind the tree stand over there? They can play in the grass and not get so dusty.

  I nod and motion for Joshua to follow us. The children are loath to leave the creekbed, but the lure of a new place to play entices them. Soon they are running ahead of us down the path. I have never been on Nita’s side of the bank, and I am interested to see it. When the children are far enough ahead of us, I say,

  —I was hoping you come. Today.

  My throat feels dusty and dry, unused to speaking, since I haven’t had the chance to for a whole week. For a moment I think she hasn’t heard me, or that perhaps I merely whispered when I thought I spoke aloud. But then she looks at me and says,

  —I was hopin you’d be here, too. But I wondered if you’d talk today. I thought maybe you’d be too spooked about it to talk to me again.

  I smile. —It’s all I’ve thought about, all week long.

  I am about to say more, but Tyree comes running back to us, holding a tiny frog in his hand.

  —A frog! He peepeed on me! he laughs, holding the creature up for us to see.

  —You better wipe your hand off if you don’t want to get a wart, Nita tells him.

  Tyree quickly drops the frog and wipes his hand on his pants. Joshua and Yvonne squat down to watch as it hops into the underbrush. We wait to speak until they are satisfied with the frog’s progress and go hurtling down the path again.

  —I’ve never been over on this side before, I say.

  —This a big old pretty field. Somebody cut it down so the grass aint so chiggery. I take ’em here sometimes when I don’t want them to get wet. There’s an old train trestle back of that field I keep them away from, but other than that it’s a nice place to play. Lessus see if we can find some blackberries. Last time we picked enough for a cobbler, but they might be dried up with all this parchin heat.

  —I love blackberry cobbler, but I never knew how to make it.

  —Oh, that’s easy. You just do a reg’lar pie crust, put it in a square pan if you want, with extra pieces for the top. Dump in the blackberries, sugar, butter and some milk. It’s better with cream, if you have it, but milk’ll do in a pinch. It’s real good with some homemade ice cream.

  —Do you have an ice cream crank?

  —John’s mama do. Boy, your hand gets tired turnin that thing. That old rock salt is hard to churn with those big lumps of ice. But then once it gets creamy you can spin it right along. I usually let John do the first few cranks til it gets goin. Tyree can take a good turn now too. It’s hard work, but worth it when you taste that vanilla ice cream meltin on that old blackberry cobbler.

  —You’re making me hungry, I say. —Thank you again for those tomatoes and squash.

  I start to warn her about coming to our house, but then I hesitate. The moment seems too nice to spoil.

  —Oh, it won’t nothin, Nita replies. —We had lots extra. I’m makin my own self hungry, talkin about cobbler. What you want to bet they aint a berry to be found in this heat?

  We reach the clearing and step out into the big open field. It is indeed beautiful; tall green grass standing high, yellowing on the ends from the lack of rain; wild honeysuckle along the edges of the trees; curled-up blue and purple-and-white cornflowers waiting for nightfall to open. The children are playing tag, tickling each other with pieces of long grass.

  —Here’s the berry bushes. Looks like maybe they are some berries that aint dried up.

  We walk over to the bushes that stand in the shade of a few oaks bordering the clearing.

  —Not enough for no cobbler, but enough to pick and eat, Nita says.

  Sure enough, there are some berries that haven’t dried up. They are huge, larger than hickory nuts, and full to bursting with juice. Several collapse in my hand as I pluck them, and I eat them on the spot. The sweet berries warm my tongue with their ripeness. We motion the children over and they come galloping and prancing, pretending to be horses. We feed them from our hands. Joshua’s bluestained smile is one of pure happiness. I show him how to pick the berries without getting pricked by the thorns, and he goes about rapidly picking and popping them into his mouth.

  Nita begins collecting some berries in her apron, holding a corner of it up with one hand while she picks, and I do the same. Tyree bolts off to explore the far edges of the field, and Joshua soon follows. Yvonne eats awhile longer and then goes to join them. I am hungry for more exchange, eager to continue my conversation with Nita.

  —Aint they good? Nita says when Yvonne is out of earshot. —Nothin like berries right off the bush. Why don’t we sit down in this shade and rest awhile?

  We ease down to the ground, careful not to spill our bounty.

  —I used to pick them with my sister, I volunteer. —We never made cobbler though; we’d just be greedy and eat everything we picked ourselves. Sibby’s big weakness was hickory nuts and walnuts. I could get her to do anything if I’d promise to help her crack hickory nuts. She did a wee
k’s worth of my woodchopping once in return for a five-pound bag I’d stored up all summer.

  Nita laughs. —Lawd, we use to fight over our chores. My sisters and I hated to carry water up from the spring, and my brothers hated to slop the hogs. Once in a while we’d trade with them, but come a time, we’d always decide the other ones had it the worst.

  —Sibby used to try to get out of washing dishes. She’d leave soap on them or not dry them all the way, then I’d have to go behind her and make sure they were done right. My mother had enough on her hands without us causing her more work, I explained. —And I didn’t mind doing dishes. I was better at the things where I could stand or sit to do them. Bringing wood in was one of the hardest things to do, with my leg. I just don’t have good balance when I go up and down steps with something heavy in my arms.

  Nita glances over at my foot. —You got a clubfoot, right?

  She says it so naturally that somehow I do not feel embarrassed or ashamed.

  —Yes, that’s right. I was born with it.

  —Does it bother you much? I’ve noticed you limpin once in a while, she says with a sympathetic look.

  —It hurts at the end of the day. Makes me tired more than anything. I can’t walk as fast as most people. But I’m used to it, I say, hoping my intonation is light. I don’t want Nita to think I’m a crybaby.

  —That musta been hard growin up. Chirren aint long on sympathy, that I’ve noticed.

  I think for a moment, and decide to be honest. —It was kind of hard. The kids in school picked on me, but then they picked on others, too, for being fat, or slow, or poorer than anyone else. When I was little I remember grown-ups saying how easy children have it, but I never could figure out what they were talking about.

  Nita makes a motion that looks like she is snorting. —Can say that again. Pickin cotton, ooh is that hard work. That made housechores seem like nothin. They started us pickin when we were eight or nine, I reckon. I never worked so hard before or since.

  —How long were you doing that? Until what age?

  —Oh, I want to say til I was ’bout sixteen, seventeen. Then I had my troubles with a boy I met, then my baby died. All those years were bad uns.

  I’m not sure if I am supposed to ask about her boyfriend, or not. Nita is being so open with me that it makes me feel I can tell her things about my life, too.

  —It must have been horrible to have a baby to die, I say. —I can’t even imagine how hard that must have been.

  —It was, Nita says, staring off across the field. —I never thought I’d get over it. The boy, his daddy, was long gone. It was just me and the baby alone for a while. She got a fever one night and in the mornin she was gone. I still dream about her sometimes, her little hands and feet. They had to shut me up for a while after that. I went stark ravin mad for about a year.

  We sit in silence for a few minutes, Nita remembering. Anything I can think of to say would be wrong. Finally she continues,

  —I tried to hurt myself a few times, things like that. My mama did for me as much as she could, but when she was out workin she had to lock me up in a room with nothin in it so I wouldn’t do nothin to myself. I ’bout went stir-crazy in there. An old lady who lived near us would check on me once in a while during the day, try to get me to eat. She’d sit and read the Bible to me, lick her fingers to turn the pages. I ’member the sound of her quavery voice in that hot room, the pages raspin. But a lot of it I can’t recollect, and prob’ly a good thing too. Mama said I’d scream and fight her, tryin to break things or get to the knife. Finally after about a year I got better and they could let me out.

  —How old were you then? I ask.

  —Twenty. I was twenty years old, and I felt like I’d lived three lifetimes.

  —You met John after that?

  —’Bout six months later, she says, shaking her head. —He the best thing that ever happened to me, I can tell you that. No tellin where I’d be if he hadn’t come along.

  Her words make me think about my situation. Aaron was probably the worst thing that had happened to me, like the boy who’d come and gone when Nita was seventeen. But maybe there was hope for me yet. Maybe at some point in the future I’d be telling a friend like Nita about my past life with Aaron, and saying about a new man, no telling where I’d be if he hadn’t come along. It gave me hope to know that Nita, too, had once been in the depths of despair and had made her way out. Maybe there was a way out for me, too.

  —You said you met him at your friend’s family reunion?

  —Yeah, my friend Sally. She and I go way on back. She kept tellin me she had someone she wanted me to meet. I won’t in no mood to meet anybody, after what I done been through. I was just gettin to the point where I could wake up and get out of bed without havin thoughts of doin away with myself. I won’t in no frame of mind to meet any man. But Sally kept insistin, sayin, Come on, just come. Just meet him and see. So I went to her daggone family reunion.

  Nita smiles, shakes her head, and tucks her hair up under her scarf.

  —There was John, sittin with Sally’s cousin. They was friends. He come over the minute Sally and I got there. It was an outdoor picnic, and it was workin alive with family from three states there. Some of ’em, like me and John, won’t relatives, but just friends invited along. But most of ’em were related some kind of way. John come over with a big smile on his face, looks right at me and says, You must be Nita. Just like that. Not, Here’s how I know Sally’s cousin and here’s how I sorta know Sally and know about you. Naw, none of that. Just, You must be Nita, with a smile on his face. At first I thought he might be laughin at me. You know, maybe he’d heard I was the crazy gal they shut up on accounta her baby died. But after we started talkin I knew he wasn’t laughin. He was serious as sin. We talked all through that reunion, never even bothered to eat. And you should see the food at some of them family wingdings! I got home and my mama ask me whose pickled peaches and fried chicken I done et, and when I told her I didn’t eat a thing, she was fit to be tied.

  I laugh with her, the eerie sound echoing in my head.

  —My family didn’t have reunions, but I went to one of Sibby’s friends’ reunions once. I remember I ate until I was sore.

  —Well, I would have, if it hadn’t been for John. He took up all my attention. I told my mama I was goin to marry him, and she looked at me like I needed to spend a little mo time shut up. I said, No, you wait and see. This the man I’ma s’posed to marry.

  —And John felt the same way.

  —Reckon he did. We upped and ran off and got married by a j.p. a month later. We didn’t have but a one-room cabin to live in, a shack really, but we was just like two lovebirds. We had Tyree a couple of years later and you would think he was the only baby born in the world, the way John carried on. Same thing with Yvonne. I was afraid he’d be let down after havin a boy, but he was tickled to have a girl. She a real daddy’s girl, too. She know if she want anything, she jus’ has to ask him real pretty and he’ll do his darndest to get it for her.

  Nita looks at me carefully, her face serious now.

  —Reason I’m goin into all this is, I’ve been down and low, about as low as anybody can get. And then I was lucky enough to meet someone made me happy. It has nothing to do with who you are, it’s just chance and luck. I was lucky, an’ that’s all there is to it. When you’re down low, it seems like you’ll never get out. But then something can happen and your luck can change. You just have to be open to helpin your luck along. If I hadn’t of gone to Sally’s reunion, I never would’ve met John, and no tellin who I’d have hooked up with after that. Maybe no one, maybe someone worse than that first boy. But I did, and I met John, and here I am. And if I can get us moved out of that skeeterhole we livin in, my life will be complete.

  She leans back as if to rest, then pops up.

  —Lawsy mercy, we done forgot to check on the chirren. Where they at? Ty-reeee! Yvonne! Joshua! Where you all?

  I pull myself up and look acros
s the field. There’s not a child in sight, but then I see the tall grass in the middle of the field waving and I know that they are there. Finally their forms are visible above the grass as they walk toward us. They are holding their hands out in front of them, clutching something. As they get closer I see the weathered brown husks of cicada shells.

  —We finded these locusts! Yvonne shouts at Nita. —Look! We finded lots of them!

  Joshua runs up, clutching his shells in his hands. He’s held them so tightly that he’s crunched some of the fragile bodies. They have collected dozens of cicada shells that the creatures have shed on the trees lining the clearing. Boys in my school used to scare girls with those shells, putting them in their hair. They never bothered me, but some girls pretended as if they were terrified of them; an act to goad the boys on, I always suspected. Joshua crams them into my apron pocket, crushing them further, and Tyree and Yvonne pile their shells up on the ground. Then they run off to find more.

  —You all stay round close! We gonna have to be goin home soon, Nita calls to their retreating backs. —Locust shells, she says, fingering one. —Them cicadas sure kick up a racket down by us. They bothersome near your house? she asks.

  I look down. She has forgotten. I look up and say,

  —I can’t hear them, but I imagine they do.

  —Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot. We was talkin along so good, I forgot you can’t hear me. You must be a natural lipreader.

  —I’ve gotten used to it, I say.

  —So it’s been a year since you . . . couldn’t talk?

  I nod.

  —And you wasn’t born deaf? she asks, a worried look on her face, as if she is afraid of what I will tell her.