by LOTT, BRET
Bessy was first, and opened the door, which gave a small creak that seemed big as a boulder in the empty hall. We tippy-toed out, and I pulled the door to behind me without letting it click shut. None of us looked at each other, but instead at the darkened leaded glass window at the end of the hall, where Mrs. Archibald and Mrs. Winthrop roomed together.
We turned, headed off down the hall, and I saw that the girls didn’t have shoes on, and I worried a moment at what they knew and I didn’t, them having planned down to accounting for the sounds shoes made in an empty hall, their shoes, I figured, hidden away in their pillowcases.
I stopped, leaned against the wall and, the pillowcase in one hand, reached down with the other and worked off my shoes.
Cleopatra and Bessy were already at the end of the hall, stood at the doorway into the stairwell. Not five feet from them was another door with a glass window, this the small anteroom, more a large . closet, where Tory slept, and as I pushed myself away from the wall, my shoes in hand, a light came on inside.
Cleopatra saw it first, and turned to me. Bessy shouldered into the stairwell, left Cleopatra there and staring at me, but then she, too, disappeared inside, and I was left running toward the stairwell door, hoping to get there before it fell shut, and before Tory opened his door to whatever he’d heard to set him off in the first place.
And I made it, planted my bare foot inside the doorjamb just as the door came to. If I hadn’t been out of breath and scared and angry all at the same time I would have hollered at the pain of the heavy door on my foot, but I only leaned into it, pushed it open.
I turned. Tory stood in his doorway, watching me. His eyes were full and wet, no white to be seen, and he reeked of whiskey. He had on the same clothes he wore every day, the overalls and red workshirt, the workboots scuffed and muddy.
I froze, remembered him handing back and forth the belt, back and forth, back and forth.
He did nothing, only met my eyes with his, slowly shook his head. We looked at each other that way for what seemed an hour, him and his face and the gray flecks in the nappy hair. And for a moment I pictured what he must have seen, a scared white girl with her shoes in one hand, everything she owned in a pillowcase in the other, in her eyes the stunned fear every girl in here must have carried in her eyes, fear he’d seen every day he’d worked here.
Then that moment was gone, and he stopped shaking his head, pushed closed his door. A few seconds later the light inside went out.
I breathe again, slipped into the stairwell, eased the door closed.
Bessy and Cleopatra were at the small service door at the bottom of the stairs, Bessy working something in the keyhole.
Cleopatra turned to me, whispered, “What happened? ” “Nothing, ” I said, and found the lie easy, something in how Tory’d shook his head and in how quick that light’d gone out that made me say it. “Nothing at all, ” I said, and knew, too, that I wasn’t a part of them, they’d asked me along for pity’s sake, perhaps, or because I could offer them something they couldn’t get on their own.
Bessy got the door unlocked, pulled it open, and October night air filled the stairwell. I shivered, pulled the coat closer to my neck, and followed them out.
By daylight we were a few miles from Picayune, the two of them together a few steps ahead of me, the sun coming up behind us. Already my shins’d started to hurting, the step onto hard ties awkward, every tie too close together, ever other tie too far apart.
I was hungry, and my arm hurt from carrying the pillowcase, and my heart hurt, too, for not being in the midst of the two of them up there, in on whatever secrets they knew about the world and about each other, until, finally, I just stopped, moved off to the gravel beside the tracks, and sat down.
They kept on walking, kept on talking and giggling, the sun shining brighter on us as it hit the tops of trees, spilled out over everything.
I caught on the air the smell of bacon frying up somewhere, and my stomach seemed to catch fire.
I hollered, “Hey, ” waited for them to turn.
They didn’t.
Then I hollered, “Why’d we escape in the first place? ” just loud enough for them to be afraid I’d said it too loud.
Bessy was first to turn around. She stared at me, pillowcase in hand, and then Cleopatra turned. Neither was smiling. Cleopatra only looked at me a moment or two before her eyes started scanning the woods that tunneled us in here.
I looked down at the gravel, took a handful of it in my hand, felt how cold it was, felt how hungry I was, felt how far we’d walked only to end up here. Nowhere I knew.
A minute later they stood next to me, their black leggings and shoes right next to me, Cleopatra a few inches behind and to the side of Bessy.
I said, “I’m hungry.” I let a few pieces of the gravel slip between my fingers, disappear into all the rest of the gravel. I said, “Or did you forget about that part of things? ” “Didn’t, ” Bessy said, her word dead, as though she wished, maybe, I was too. “Not at all.”
Cleopatra gave a little laugh. With one foot she twisted a small circle in the gravel.
Bessy didn’t move. I said, “And? ” “There’s a house ahead, ” she said. “Not more than a mile. We’ll eat there.”
She turned, moved ahead. Cleopatra stood next to me a moment more, her toe twisting another quick circle in the gravel. She whispered, “Come on, girl, ” and before I could look up to see whose side she may have been on in all this, she’d turned, was already headed up the tracks.
And there was a house up the tracks, just as Bessy’d said there’d be, we’d come around a wide bend, crossed a small trestle over a black backwater creek, and’d come upon a small blue house, the roof all battered tin, the chimney puffing out smoke thick as gray cotton.
As soon as we saw it, Bessy put up a hand to us, then turned, moved right past Cleopatra and me and back along the tracks. We looked at each other. Cleopatra said, “What’s going on? ” Bessy said nothing, only walked, and of course we followed.
When we got back to the trestle, only a hundred yards or so from where we’d seen the house, Bessy stepped off the tracks and down the creek bank. She set down her pillowcase, reached in and brought out the blue dress she’d worn her first day in at the school, and we knew what to do.
Cleopatra and I moved down the bank, too, opened our pillowcases, brought out our clothes. By then Bessy’d already taken off her jumper and underdrawers and leggings and blouse, so that she stood before us naked. I saw for the first time her breasts, how full and rounded they were, the nipples up and hard in the cool morning, and I saw the dark hair she had between her legs, the wisps of it thicker than mine.
Then my eyes went to her belly, and to two long scars there. They ran from just below her belly button up to her ribs, her skin all goose-pimpled up, the two scars parallel to each other and purple and the width of a fingernail, and I couldn’t help but shiver at what I saw, at what I didn’t know. She stood before us naked without a single breath of embarrassment or humility, and I felt my breasts shrink into themselves as I took off my blouse, my back to the two of them, felt, too, a cold, sharp twist of pain across my own belly.
I dropped my jumper, quick put on my old dress, hurried into my coat.
I glanced over my shoulder once to see what Cleopatra was doing, saw her there in just her underdrawers and leggings, her back to us, too, as she shimmied into a dress I recognized from nowhere, then remembered she’d been brought in before me. When she turned around, she’d become someone else altogether, the dress, a pink one with a white satin ribbon round the waist tied off in a bow, was a little small on her, but every inch beautiful, from the bit of lace at the neck to the pink ribbon at the hem, and I imagined all the town fathers buying that dress for her as some sort of farewell gift, feeling sorry and pitying her and at the same time glad to rid their fair town of a hellion with a brick. She was beautiful in the dress.
Our eyes met a moment, then hers broke from mine to look d
own at the dress. She smiled, said, “I haven’t had this on since the day I was brought in, ” words which didn’t mean a thing, just the only ones she could muster at this moment, the three of us suddenly who we were before we’d been pushed into the Mississippi Industrial School for Girls. Just three girls, and I wondered if Cleopatra knew of the scar on Bessy’s belly, wondered if she’d heard Bessy’s story about it, envied her if she knew and at the same time wanted none of it.
Bessy was down on her knees now, and Cleopatra and I watched as she stuffed into her pillowcase the blouse, then the jumper, leg i gings and underdrawers. She stood, went down to the water, brought back a big rock, moss-covered on top and muddy on the bottom, and dropped it into the pillowcase, then twisted the open end into a knot, lifted the bundle.
She looked at us, and smiled. There were her teeth, all perfect and simple and white, and I thought again of what you could not see, the scars, the deep purple and chill of them.
She laughed, the sound dry and hard in her throat. She looked from me to Cleopatra. Then she turned, went down to the water. She said, “Won’t ever be needing these again, that’s for goddamned certain.” She swung the bundle back, brought it forward, and let it sail out into the middle of the creek, where it hit with a loud splash, and disappeared.
She turned to us, still smiling, and walked right between us, up the bank. Then she was up on the tracks.
Cleopatra wouldn’t look at me, and though she was first to follow Bessy, this time she hung back a few extra feet, the three of us spread out along the track, only two of us with pillowcases now, headed for that blue house with the tin roof.
We squatted behind bushes next to the house. Bessy reached into them and pulled back a few branches, peered through. From where I sat all I could see was smoke lift into clear blue air, disappear with the wind up there.
Bessy whispered, “Nothing to this one, ” and let the branches fall back into place. She turned to me, no smile now. She whispered, “Now you find out why we took you on in this here little venture, ” and she reached a hand over near my face.
I flinched, pulled away quick, afraid she might lay fists on me for whatever reason she had in mind.
But her hand reached my face all the same, and she touched my cheek with the back of her fingers before I could do anything else. The touch was soft, and for a moment I wondered if she weren’t thinking of her own face, her own skin, her breasts. Her face still bore the marks of the fight she’d had with Cleopatra months ago, the split eyebrow, a bruise high on her left cheekbone that’d never wholly disappeared, now a red spot the size of a pea, a small scar at the base of her chin.
And as she touched her fingers to my cheek once again, reached up to my hair, tucked a lock of it behind my ear, I wondered, too, how long she’d been trading on her face, that skin, her breasts and the hair between her legs. Long enough, I realized, to let her stand as she had with no clothes on, and long enough, too, to end up with scars like she had.
“Yes ma’am, you little sugartit you, you’re right along with us here because you come from money, you do.” Her eyes met mine now, and she brought her hand to my cheek again, let it rest there. Then slowly she took hold of my chin. “You come from money, ain’t nobody in that shithole school don’t know that.” She was smiling, and I cut my eyes over at Cleopatra, squatting right next to us. Her mouth was open, her own eyes going from Bessy to me and back.
Bessy whispered, “Now you’re going down round to the front door of that shanty, and you going to knock on that door, and when whoever it is lives there comes, you going to engage them in some sorrowful story.”
She started holding tighter to my jaw, pressing hard on my chin, on my teeth, my mouth. “And they going to believe you, they are. Because you come from money, and folks with none, whether niggers or crackers, can smell it on those that do, and they’ll believe whatever it is you have to say, because they can smell that money on you. They always do, and you telling your little story will divert their sorry-ass attention for a while. So you lie your sweet little virgin ass off at that door to whoever it is comes.” She paused, held tight my chin a moment longer, then let it go. I took in a breath, looked at her. She smiled again, tucked a lock of hair behind my other ear. “Now you go.”
I did. I didn’t even look to Cleopatra again, didn’t think of her, only thought of those scars and the sound that rock and her clothes made into the black water beneath the trestle, and before I knew what was happening I was coming round the front of the house the blue clapboards, I could see up close, were ancient, the paint blistered and cracked and falling off and I was heading to the door, gray wood with only a small hole where a knob should have been.
I knocked, and the door opened a moment later. There stood an old nigger woman, her hair white, skin black as any nigger’s I’d ever seen before, her eyes set deep in her head and even blacker than her skin.
She had on a filthy apron, was wiping her thin hands with it.
Before I could even open my mouth, she was smiling, and I knew what Bessy’d said was true, people without money believed the ones who had it, and I didn’t even let her say one word to me as I started in on a story about how I was a little girl whose mother had died recently, and whose grandmama, who owned a mansion up in Purvis, had sent me down to New Orleans for a new dress, and how a swindler, a good-looking young man named Rutledge, had stolen all my money from me, and how I had no other choice of getting back to Purvis than to walk.
The nigger woman frowned, drew her eyebrows up, gave her face a tilt to one side, listening to it all, and when I got to the part about my satchel and all my belongings in it being stolen by that swindler Rutledge, the nigger woman reached out a hand and touched my cheek.
This time I didn’t pull away, though, I only let her touch me, and for a moment as I went on with my story about how I needed help back in the right direction and how I would be able to give her a reward from my grandmama’s cashbox, I let my eyes close. This nigger woman’s hard and callused fingers touched my cheek even more gently than Bessy’d done when she’d started giving my instructions, and suddenly I fell back into my own place in Purvis, pictured in my mind Molly touching me, pictured the old kitchen, the walls, the cupboards, the butcherblock stained black with years of blood. I pictured all of that while I heard myself tell the story of a girl’s mother dying of a fever in an upstairs bedroom, and I found myself telling her, too, of a father who was a logger and who’d broken his neck, and heard, too, of the soft memory of a brother, a small baby who’d died when the girl was only a young child herself. All this time my eyes were closed, the nigger woman’s hand on my cheek, and I felt tears coming, felt them spill out my eyes and down the cheeks of a girl telling her story as a lie, none of it the truth but the truth all the same, my story only to divert her sorry-ass attention for a while, while Bessy and Cleopatra did whatever it was they were going to do here.
That was when I opened my eyes, the story of my life cut short by the sound of a pan knocked to the floor inside the shack, and the nigger woman brought her hand down from my face, turned to the inside of her house.
There stood Cleopatra, holding a skillet with the hem of her pink dress, in the skillet bacon frying up, eggs in there with it. Inside the room was only a fireplace, a metal grate of some kind hooked in there, on it a battered and steaming black kettle. A busted-up chair leaned against one wall, a quilt heaped in one corner. The back door of the place stood open behind Cleopatra, and the light silhouetted her in a way that made her seem bigger than she already was. I saw all this in an instant, the time it took the nigger woman to turn from me to her home. She turned back to me, and I saw in her puzzlement at what was going on here, her old eyes taking everything in and trying to piece it all out. Still Cleopatra only stood there, looking at the two of us, her mouth still open.
From behind her stepped Bessy, who looked first at the woman, then at me. “For god’s sakes, ” she said, “this here’s just some old nigger shanty. We didn�
�t even have to send you out on your story, ” and she moved to the fireplace, with the hem of her own dress took hold of the kettle. “Grits, ” she said, and looked at the nigger woman, smiled, nodded. “Much obliged, ” she said. She turned, was gone out the back door.
Cleopatra backed toward the door, disappeared.
The nigger woman took a step toward the back door, but turned to me, looked at me, her face no longer filled with the puzzle of this all, but with the stunned and milky look of a dead animal’s eyes. She just stood there, looked at me a long moment.
I ran, took off round the back of her house, saw a pillowcase up on the rise where the tracks lay. When I got to it, I caught sight of the last bit of Cleopatra, saw her running into the woods on the other side of the tracks, the pan in hand. She’d already disappeared from the waist down for the brush back there, Bessy, I figured, was already buried.
Cleopatra stopped, turned. She called out, “Come on, girl, ” and waited an instant before she turned back to the woods, started off again. The last thing I saw of her before she was swallowed up entirely was the back of her head, the short growth of hair there, long tendrils of hair on either side of it trailing back with what small wind she made running.