Ya-Yas in Bloom: A Novel

by Rebecca Wells

  Then suddenly everything stopped.

  Myrtis took a breath, which she had been holding in ever since the car left the road, and looked up. She saw the rearview mirror, splintered, and her crazily fragmented image stared back at her. She looked away—somehow it was unbearable to look at that mirror. She looked down at the plastic seat cover, still warm from sitting all that time in the afternoon sun. She’d just Windexed those seat covers that very morning. Now there were smears of blood on the front cover. She looked down, and there were drops of blood on her beloved shirtwaist dress. As she looked, a few more drops fell. She began to cry. And then she couldn’t stop crying. She couldn’t stop. It was like parts of herself were breaking off from her and floating inside the car and then outside into the green surroundings. She was dimly aware of a part of herself detached and watching and saying: Now Myrtis, here you are, having a hissy fit. No better than those bad little Walker children. Get a hold of yourself! But for once, she could not get a hold of herself. All she could do was cry. She could not even catch her breath. Whoever Myrtis had been, she was all broken to pieces now.

  When she stopped crying, it was getting toward dusk, and she had begun to hurt all over. She moved her arms and her legs. They hurt, but they worked. She carefully opened the car door, since the window on the driver’s side had broken, and sat a minute. Then she stepped out of the car. She didn’t know where she was, but all around her were stalks of sugarcane taller than she was, as far as she could see. Behind and alongside the car, she saw that the cane was crushed. There was a wide swath of smashed cane stalks that made a crazy, wavering path away from the back of the car. The car listed toward the right—she’d either run the right front tire into a hole, or it had blown out, she couldn’t tell which. She did not know what to do next, so she just stood there, feeling like her brain had flown apart during the accident, and some vital pieces had been mislaid.

  Suddenly, she became aware of something moving behind the car. There were crunching and swishing sounds that Myrtis recognized as footsteps, and she gasped. It was dangerous for her to be out here alone at night in the middle of some field. Something was coming to get her! She began to sing loudly. She was in a wilderness of her own creation and saw nothing but fear. She prayed not to the Catholic god that the Vivi Abbott Walker crowd sang to, but to her Baptist god, the real true and only Lord.

  For a moment she did not recognize her own voice; she turned as though the voice must be coming from some other woman as she heard the words:

  “Stand up, stand up for Jesus, Ye soldiers of the cross!

  Lift high His royal banner

  It must not suffer loss

  From vict’ry unto vict’ry His army shall He lead.

  Till ev’ry foe is vanquished And Christ is Lord indeed.”

  During the last line of the hymn, two young black men appeared from a tangle of crushed sugarcane stalks next to her car.

  Myrtis screamed with all her might, every cell in her body contributing to that yell reverberating through the green field. Then everything went dark.

  “Myrtis? Myrtis, honey?” She heard her name spoken from a long distance. She blinked her eyes open, but was blinded by harsh white light and closed them again immediately. So this is what death is like, she thought. I’m in heaven, and I’m blinded by the light.

  “Oh, Lord, Myrtis!” This was Harlan’s voice. Myrtis’s eyes popped open. Harlan’s head came into view as she painfully raised her head. Her neck and back were very sore. She was stretched out on something very hard, under bright fluorescent lights, in what looked like a hospital room.

  “Oh, honey, what happened to you? They called me from the hospital. I was home with the children, waiting on dinner.”

  She was silent for a moment. Then she spoke, haltingly.

  “Well, I was driving home…and there was this truck, and…and then, these black men…”

  “Oh, Myrtis, no! Honey, no. Did they, you know…hurt you?” he whispered.

  “Oh, God in Heaven, no!” Myrtis was so alarmed she sat straight up, sore neck and all. Had they raped her? She remembered being terribly afraid they would. But she felt perfectly normal down there. Surely you’d know if something like that happened.

  “No, Harlan, all they did was run me off the road.” Better nip this in the bud, she thought. I can’t have people even wondering if those black boys touched me, I could never live that down. “I was just driving on the bayou road, and this truckload of niggers came barreling around the corner. Driving all over the road. Just wild, like apes behind the wheel. I didn’t even have time to react.”

  “Myrtis,” Harlan said, “we were just worried to death when you didn’t come, and it was so late. Your mama said she hadn’t seen you, and then that Miss Gremillion at the hospital called and said they was bringing you in.” This was the most he’d said at once the entire time they had been married, and this time Myrtis just let him keep on talking. She was more worn out than she’d ever felt in her life.

  She actually dozed for a little while, and then this young handsome doctor came in and checked her over. He picked shards of glass out of her arms, cleaned and bandaged the right side of her head where she’d whacked it against the rearview mirror. He smiled and told her she had been very lucky. She’d had a concussion, he explained to her, and they were going to keep her overnight for observation, just to make sure she was all right.

  Before long, Harlan came back into the room, and with him were officers from the Louisiana State Patrol. Officer Jimbo Thurman of the State Highway Patrol strutted into the hospital room, and Myrtis could feel her body tighten. Had she done something wrong? Had she caused all this? And if she had, would they ever be able to find out? It was her word against those niggers, that was all there was to it. Officer Thurman walked straight over to Myrtis’s bedside.

  “Mrs. Harlan Spevey?” he asked, although it was obvious that he knew exactly who she was.

  “Yes?” She was so tired and sick of it all, she wanted to tell him to go away and leave her alone. Couldn’t he see she had been through enough? “The Lord is a shield unto them that put their trust in him,” she prayed.

  “I need to talk to you about your car accident. Your car was pretty banged up. Might not be a total loss, though,” he said, trying to chew tobacco discreetly at the same time. “And the Vanderhovens’ canefield ain’t looking so good neither.” He looked around like he thought this might be funny, but Harlan and Myrtis didn’t smile.

  “Officer,” Myrtis said hoarsely, “before yall go bothering respectable people, yall need to do something about those niggers who almost took my life today.” She was a hospital patient. She was a victim. She got right to the point.

  “Well, you’ll be glad to hear that they’re already in custody. We arrested them at the scene for reckless driving. We’ve impounded their truck and suspended their driver’s licenses. They won’t be running any roads for a good while,” Officer Thurman said.

  Officer Thurman pulled out a form and asked Myrtis questions about the accident. But Myrtis said she could not remember much. She did not remember the truck that hit her, other than the fact that it was big and green. It was upon her before she knew it, she said. When Myrtis was asked by the policeman to tell him what happened, she said the boys had run her off the road, and that was that.

  She had walked through the valley of the shadow of death, and now here she was, sitting in St. Cecilia’s Hospital, the Catholic hospital, when they certainly should have taken her to the Garnet Parish Hospital, which did not have nuns as nurses, with their ridiculous, scary headgear. She had lots of bruises and cuts, not to mention a concussion. They all agreed that she was lucky not to have been hurt a lot worse.

  Finally the state trooper left, and Harlan went down to the cafeteria to get himself a cup of coffee. Myrtis was left alone in the hospital room. The bed opposite hers was empty. The light in the room was strange; she could hear low noises in the hall; she looked at the sterile room: the sink, the p
lastic chair next to her bed, the window through which all she could see was darkness.

  She tried to pray, but all she could think about was that conversation with that heathen Vivi Abbott Walker. She had tried to save Vivi and keep the little Walker children safe. Myrtis’s body shook with rage, remembering how Vivi had behaved. If Vivi had not upset Myrtis so bad, none of this would have happened. This was all Vivi Abbott Walker’s fault. That woman had ruined everything for Myrtis, all along, ever since high school. If Vivi Walker had been behaving like a normal Christian person, a real wife and mother, none of this would have happened. “Why,” Myrtis asked aloud, “does the Lord make to suffer those who love Him the most?”

  DAUGHTER OF GOD

  Edythe Spevey, November 1994

  For too many years I hated children. Then when I realized how bad I wanted one for my own, it was too late for me to bear one. No matter. There is more than one way to skin a cat. I may not be able to carry a child, but if I pray hard and regular to Jesus, He will deliver. He will extend His hand and guide me. Guide me to the right mall, where a bad mother has ignored her precious child for the last time. And I will take the little one. Take her to be with me. The Lord may have taken away my capacity to make the child, but He did not dim my mind.

  It makes me sick to the stomach the way the mothers treat their children. It is pitiful. It is a sin. Everywhere you turn, they are too interested in their own lives to care for the child. They do not deserve what they have. They deserve to have the girl child taken from them while they talk with their friends about meetings and jobs. When they drop them at day care and run off to live their lives like they had not been blessed with a holy little child. When they act like they still have control over their lives, which they don’t. Because once a baby comes into your life, everything changes, and you lose control, lose your flat stomach and your fine five-year career plan.

  Don’t think I haven’t watched, both people and TV. Don’t think I don’t read. Don’t think I haven’t thought about this. Don’t think I haven’t prayed about this. Don’t think I haven’t talked to my mother about this at the home. She is the one who first suggested it. All kinds of truths can come out of the minds of Alzheimer patients if you but know how to listen.

  My mother, Mrs. Myrtis Spevey, lives at the Harmony Home on the highway outside Thornton. I go see her every single day. She is the one who brought me into this world and carried me those hard nine months. She is the one who has taught me everything I know. I bow down to my mother. It makes me nauseous that people have not realized what a wonderful lady she is and all she has done in her life. How I wish her true wisdom had been recognized before Alzheimer’s took her and swirled her mind around.

  My brother Ronnie and I share the cost of her care, and he goes to visit her once a month. The other brother has abandoned his responsibilities altogether and no longer deserves to even have the name Spevey. In my book, he should be forced to wander around in the world as just “Tim” and then just see what that brings him one day when he has to go to the Social Security office or the emergency room.

  But I am the one who brings Mother her clean clothes every day that I wash in my own machine because she does not want her clothes washed in the machines at the home. My mother has given her life to me. It is nothing to give mine to her. She is one of the reasons I want my baby. To hand it to her as she lays in her bed at the home and let her coo and love my baby the way grandmothers do.

  I will find her, the child who is meant for me. I will not force myself upon her. No. When the time is right, she will come to me. She will walk right over. She must give me a sign. That is what Jesus did. He always gives signs. Right and left, the Savior is always giving us signs. And the eyes to see those signs are still intact in His little ones. Oh, I will know when I meet the right one. There will be none of the devil’s doubt to cloud my vision when the time of ripeness comes.

  Until then, I have my list of places to look. I have the list on my refrigerator door, and I make check marks to be sure I cover each location at least once during the week. This is my basic list:

  Magnolia Park

  Thornton City Park

  All 7-Eleven convenience stores

  Piggly-Wiggly Supermarket

  Toys-R-Us

  John Robert Bolton Recreation Center

  The Garnet Parish main library

  Jefferson branch library

  Hollywood Video

  Video Schmideo

  Parking lot across from Montessori School

  Area around Our Lady of Divine Compassion Kindergarten

  The Thornton Mall

  The Mall of Cenla

  Cenla Cinema

  The video stores are especially good. When the working mothers go in there, they show their true colors. Only one mother in ten pays any attention at all to the gifts God has given her. Most of them are too interested in the New Releases and a few of them in the Foreign Film section. Their poor children crawl on the floor or stand and stare at the screen where Satan’s trash is playing. The mothers have the right haircuts and the expensive child seats in the brand-new minivans, but not one of them really knows how to love her child.

  Now me, I will smile and play with the children while their mother is busy, but I will not so much as touch one of them. I will not do that until the right child gives me a sign. Then I will move fast and sure.

  It galls me no end that the Video Depot lady told me to stop coming in her store so frequently. She said, “It makes us a little uncomfortable the way you come in so regularly and never check out a tape. You are making some of our customers nervous.”

  This made me sick. “This is a free country,” I told her. “I can go where I want.”

  She said, “Do you even own a VCR machine?”

  I said, “Mind your own business, please. This is America.”

  And I know I could go in there any darn time I please, but I am not going to patronize a place that would treat a person like they did me. I deserve more respect than that.

  When God closes a door, he opens a window. I found me a larger store, the Blockbuster next to the big Walgreen’s with the drive-through window. That is where I get my medication, so it is very convenient. Blockbuster has rows and rows of movies. And a good place for the children to play. They sell popcorn and soft yogurt, so it’s a popular place for the ones I am interested in.

  Don’t think I do this all the time. I am not some kind of freak. Since I quit working Intake at the Veteran’s Hospital, I have not just sat on my hands.

  I quit Intake because of Larry Reidheimer. Lying scum. I quit because of his lies to me. Lies about giving me a baby. Said he had everything it took.

  How it happened was, I went to Dr. Roland to evaluate my female organs. Even though I am not military, I got a discount at that hospital due to my Intake position. But Dr. Roland said to me, “Ms. Spevey, in terms of conceiving, I afraid you are not a good candidate. You are in an early menopause. I don’t usually see women your age who are this far into menopause, but you most definitely are. In addition, you are obese. The loss of at least eighty to ninety pounds is essential. You are also borderline diabetic. I suggest you concentrate on your own health rather than the delusion of having a child. I want to make it perfectly clear: the chances of your conceiving are, as we say, slim to none.”

  I ran into Larry just after that visit. We had known each other from around the hospital, him working lab tech and me in Intake. And I don’t know what made me, but I told him everything. I told Larry how it gnawed at me to have a baby, and about the doctor killing me the way he did with his pronouncement on the lateness of my body.

  The next day, Larry told me he had looked at my charts, and what the doctor said wasn’t true. Larry said he could help me, he might be able to do something for me. He said, “Edythe, if you open your legs just right, I could help you.”

  But he didn’t do a damn thing except make me sin against Jesus Himself. Twenty-seven times I sinned with Larry, nothi
ng blocking his sperm from me, and him saying God would bless us soon. Twenty-seven times. It makes me puke to think about it. All the fluid dripping out of me. Sometimes I would lay there and actually picture that a baby was swirling around, trying to take form inside all that stickiness.

  But it was all lies. I was dry and old inside. Larry the Satan liar just laughed. He said, “Well, it was fun trying, wasn’t it, old girl?”

  He will suffer. God will see to it that the man will suffer. And if God should give me a sign to aid in the punishment of Larry Reidheimer driving his silver Corvette, I will not shrink back.

  As far as the being overweight goes, I have been a large girl since high school. That is what Mama told me: “Edythe, you are not fat. You are simply a big-boned girl.” I would lose this weight if I thought it would help God give me a baby. I could lose one hundred pounds if I knew that is what God wanted. Don’t think I couldn’t.

  Before God let me know that a little one would be mine, hate was high for children in my heart. High hate for their noisemaking for no reason. High hate for the poop and the running and all the questions and disturbing everything you own. All I wanted was to go on with my work and have an orderly day. Come home in the evening and watch the news, like I do. Eat a decent meal, without having someone throw up all over me or get up under my feet like roaches.