by LOTT, BRET
Because we woke one morning in September of 1945, and looked at each other while the sounds of the house started up like every morning. But the look we’d given each other wasn’t anything like the one we’d had the morning I told him I was pregnant with Brenda Kay.
This look was one of bewilderment, neither of us certain what was going to happen to the baby in the cradle next to us.
That morning in September I was to bring Brenda Kay to Dr. Beaudry’s office for another set of shots, her needing them every six weeks, as per Dr. Basket’s direction. The routine of each visit had been in motion since April of the year before, when the war was in full swing, and we were winning, and James’ letters home were filled with more and more good news of how they were all squashing the great Empire of the Sun with each push of their bulldozers, each hammer driving home a nail.
But that morning there was no money, and no prospect of it, other than what Leston said to the empty room, to the air in there that seemed suddenly too close, too thick, “We’ll sell off two of the steers. See where that puts us.”
“Leston, ” I said. I didn’t move, didn’t touch him.
He pushed back the sheets, got up.
The shots cost money twenty-three dollars each time and the doctor visits cost money two dollars each time and the trips into New Orleans every three months cost money. And now we had no JF. WFL l . money.
We had five steers and three cows by that time, what money we’d been able to squirrel away and not put back into the stump business invested in them.
“How much longer will she have to keep up with the shots? ” I said to the room, to Leston’s back, though I knew the answer to that better than he did, for as long as she needed them, Dr. Basket’d said, which I took to mean, For as long as she lives. Back then she wasn’t yet two years old, the age Dr. Basket’d said she wouldn’t live past, and I couldn’t help but imagine sometime the shots would stop, and we might see ourselves clear of this. But I’d hoped at the same time for a trainload of shots for her, her visits every six weeks for the rest of all time and eternity, for us marching up and down those stairs to Beaudry’s office above the hardware store until we were all so old we had to be carried. I’d only asked my question to hear it, as if with my words Leston’d know I felt as scared as he did about what the future would give.
But he was the one lost his job, the one who’d already let go everybody.
In September of 1945, only Toxie and JE came over, where they would stand outside in the early morning dark, lean against the truck and smoke while I made breakfast, portions so much smaller then that I had to remember how to cook little batches of grits, remember to crack open only six or seven eggs and not three dozen. They smoked and smoked, and after breakfast the three of them would just drive off, Leston in the lead in the pickup, JE and Toxie following in the flatbed. They showed up in the early afternoons, maybe only one stump on the flatbed one day a week.
We sold off the two steers, then the rest of the cattle, one by one, while nothing like a real job came close to Leston. Finally JE and Toxie stopped showing up, and I’d taken the job at the grammar school, and the boys and Annie took to selling vegetables from our garden out front of the house, all to pay for what I’d committed us to with my words to Dr. Beaudry on a morning what seemed decades ago.
It was Cathe ral to tell me of the job opening up over to the grammar school, one of her cousins leaving, moving north to the city of Detroit.
After supper the day she told me of it, the children all bathe and in bed, I finally worked up the nerve to inform Leston of my plan to go over to Bailey the next day, and ask for the work.
Leston was in the kitchen, leaned against the countertop, and I came up next to him, put my hands together. I said, “Leston, I’m going to ask for work in the cafeteria at Bailey.” They were the words I’d rehearsed all day on my own, and I thought my voice’d seemed honest enough, sincere enough. They’d come out as clear and strong as I’d intended them to.
Because it was nigger work, serving up food at the cafeteria. It was nigger work, plain and simple, and I figured my words would need to be as strong as I could make them for my husband. I’d figured he’d rage on at me and this news, my husband a man who’d been the boss over nearly a dozen niggers himself at one time. Now here was his wife, readying herself to go join their ranks, serve up food to white kids who, he and I both knew, would rush home to their own mommas with the news of Mrs. Hilburn ladling up food for them.
He turned to me, his mouth straight, eyes blank. He said, “Guess you figured there’s no sense in asking me. Figured you’d just tell me what you were going to do, whether I wanted you to or not.”
I looked away from him. He was right, I hadn’t asked him a question, but’d only told him. I’d already decided I was going down there to Bailey bright and early tomorrow, whether he said yes or no. I knew I’d be down there at the cafeteria door, Brenda Kay in my arms.
Because it was a life we were saving. It was Brenda Kay we were saving, and it didn’t matter where the money came from, because we were saving our daughter’s life.
He looked at me a long moment, opened his mouth and closed it like he was gasping for air, or was drowning at the bottom of some deep well.
But he made no sound, until finally he whispered, “You do what you think best.”
He turned from me, dumped his cold coffee in the sink, then stepped out the back door, where I knew he’d stay for a while, smoking away.
He left me there in the kitchen, alone with the decision I’d made, a decision that was no decision. I’d wanted him to approve, wanted him to at least nod his head, or touch my cheek, or even put his arms around me, something to let me see he knew what I had to do. I needed that touch from him.
But it was a life we were saving, I told myself enough nights after that, when Leston started staying up with his coffee, just staring out the window above the kitchen sink, where I found him every time I (, came downstairs and begged him back to bed. And it was a life we were saving, I told myself enough days the children went on to school in clothes mended and patched so many times there was no telling what was the original material and what I’d been able to pick up at the piece goods store.
It was a life we were after, I thought enough times we got checks from James, me feeling guilty for the gift of the money from a son trying to put himself through college, him a married man now. Guilty, because each time I got a check from him I felt relief, as though the only good thing I felt for my firstborn and his wife was thanks for the money they sent.
But it was a life we were after.
One morning in 1946 James’d simply showed up at the house with a girl on his arm, a brassy blonde who chewed gum and wore high heels so tall she staggered like she was blind drunk while walking up the ruts in our dirt drive, the two of them dropped off like visiting dignitaries by one of the three taxis Purvis had to offer.
We all smothered James, who looked as much like a man as I knew he ever would, him in his uniform, and then we hugged him separately, first Annie, then Wilman, Burton, and finally Billie Jean, the two of them exchanging looks like they’d thought they’d never see each other again.
Then I gave over Brenda Kay to James, his sister a little over two years then and with the startled, dazed look her green eyes almost always held, her small hand touching his chin, his nose, his cheek.
That was when he finally turned to the girl beside him, said, “Y’all, this is Eudine, my wife.”
She stopped chewing her gum, swallowed it, and put out her hand to me.
“Eudine Hilburn, ” she said, smiling and parting her red lips to show big white teeth. “Formerly Eudine Trahern, late of Dumas, Texas, ” and she laughed, put a hand up to her mouth to make like she was being modest. She had on a bright blue skirt that stopped right at her knees, a jacket the same color, a white blouse with an open collar, and just as much makeup as any one of those girls we’d seen in New Orleans.
“I guess I’m
just a ding-dong daddy from Dumas, Texas, ” she said, still laughing, her hand still out to me.
I paused a moment, looked at her, then at my oldest son. Here was another of those moments a mother doesn’t want so much to see, evidence of her children growing up and away, and I thought again of the dinner when he’d been only sixteen and told us of his heading off to war. I hadn’t thought heavily on what exactly I’d expected him to do once he was out of the service, but nothing I ever imagine’d come even close to this, a gum-swallowing Texas girl with hair no natural color on earth.
I took her hand because it was the polite thing to do, and shook it.
As soon as we’d let go, she reached to James, took Brenda Kay out of his arms, and held her. “Now this here’s the one I want to take a hold of, ” she said, and started to bobbing with Brenda Kay, jostling her just the smallest way. This Eudine took one of Brenda Kay’s hands to her lips, gave her the littlest kiss, said, “This here’s the one I’ve heard so much about, this here little baby-cake, ” and she held Brenda Kay close.
Eudine never looked at me to see if I was taking any of this in, measuring her to see if she was worthy or not of my oldest boy. She was only holding Brenda Kay, and holding her close, not afraid at all.
I looked to James, wanted to tell him with my eyes that she was welcome here, that as far as I could see she would make him a good wife, all this just from the touch she’d given his baby sister.
But he was looking toward the house behind me, his chin set and high.
I turned.
Leston stood on the porch. His hands were on his hips, his feet spread shoulder width.
“Leston, ” I called, already trying to settle myself between the two of them. We’d seen James only twice since he’d joined up, both leaves ending with Leston inside the house, me driving James back into town so he could catch his bus. Now James was out of the service altogether, who knew what would come.
“Congratulations, ” Leston said. “I don’t suppose you’ll be moving back in.”
James took off his hat, held it in both hands. Eudine, next to him, whispered baby talk into Brenda Kay’s ear. Burton and Wilman and Annie stood around James, and I watched my oldest son, looking for what he would do to follow up taking off his hat, whether he’d put his arm around his new wife, move toward his daddy, what.
But it was in his eyes I saw what he was up to, how he wasn’t afraid to let them meet Leston’s any longer, how they’d seen enough of this world and all it contained, had worked and sweat with enough men to make certain this moment wouldn’t be anything he couldn’t handle. I could see in his eyes and how they just rested on his daddy’s that he was already gone from this place.
“Moving to Texas, Daddy, ” he said. “Going to college, Texas A&M.” He paused, swallowed, though his eyes were steel, heavy on Leston. “Not sure what I’m going to study, but I’m going to study all the same.”
Leston crossed his arms, seemed to stand even taller. He said, “Don’t be expecting any money out of this household to be helping you on your way.”
“College, ” Billie Jean whispered, and I turned, saw her standing next to Eudine, Eudine smiling her big-teeth smile at her.
“Don’t need any money, Daddy, ” James went on. “Uncle Sam’s seeing to that, for the most part.”
He finally looked down, let his eyes fall on the hat in his hands, ran the brim round once, twice. In the move was so much of his daddy that there shouldn’t have been any doubt in anyone’s mind, no sorrow lost, no grief over his moving out. James’ leaving us now was the only real thing that could take place.
We’d all gone silent for one long terrible moment, a silence that seemed to shout out to us all that Leston, my children’s father, my husband, had nothing left to offer, no business his children could take over, no money even to lend out. The only thing left was wandering through woods to old haunts, where stumps’d been exploded years before, so he could pick up from the forest floor the remains of those days, and sell them in bundles to niggers. Only that.
Now James belonged to one Eudine Hilburn, late of Dumas, Texas, and so the only thing I could do, the only thing anyone on the face of this earth with any ability to see the obvious could do, was to go to James, hold him as close as I could ever hope to hold my child, and with that hold say good-bye the best way I knew to do.
It was a life we were saving, and with the checks James managed to squeeze out to us, with the money from Billie Jean, with the money from the kindling and the grammar school, even the change from the vegetable stand outside, we’d managed to get here, to this day, a Saturday picnic to celebrate Brenda Kay’s first steps. Five years, when they said she’d live two. Six feet across the front room floor, when they said she’d never walk.
But there was something else I was looking for, too, something I wanted to try out on Leston, and as I packed into the picnic hamper the fried chicken I’d made up the night before, Sunday’s dinner already cooked and ready to eat, I couldn’t help but feel myself a sinner at having on my mind anything other than that picture of Brenda Kay walking across the rug. So we would have beans and rice for dinner tomorrow. We were celebrating, and I was ready to talk to Leston about something I figured on changing our world all for the better. I wanted to talk to my husband, the man who, it seemed for all intents and purposes, had pulled up stakes in this family, given up in the face of his baby daughter and the fact of no jobs.
I stood in the quiet of a Saturday morning kitchen, watched through the window Burton and Wilman throw into the pickup two old inner tubes, patched and repatched, leftovers from when we had the big trucks, while inside I folded cloth napkins so thin you could see right through them, put them in the hamper. Next I set in a jar of pickled okra I’d put up late last year, then bowls filled with potato salad and black-eyed peas and cold cheese grits, each of them covered with sheets of wax paper I’d used at least a half-dozen times apiece and tied off with old bits of twine.
I looked back out the window, the morning sun outside shining through me, and I decided right then I’d try out the word I wanted to use on Leston, even though we’d be out there to celebrate my baby’s walking.
I’d offer him the word, one I hadn’t yet uttered aloud, too afraid of the sound it’d make, at maybe how far off and ridiculous the idea might seem. I decided I’d try the word out on him, because he was my husband, no matter how deep that well he’d fallen into no matter how hard he was gasping for air inside God’s will for his life. He was still my husband, and I was still his wife.
“California, ” I whispered, then tried it again, a little louder, but still so quiet I knew I was the only one could hear, “California.”
“Momma, ” Brenda Kay cried, her voice coming to me from her bedroom upstairs, the room Anne’d had to move from, the room that’d been James’ so long ago. The word came out in the same taut, high pitch it did every time, as though it might be lodged in her throat, her choking every time on the only word she knew, my name.
Burton threw a coil of rope and an old wooden crate into the bed of the pickup, for what I couldn’t say, and Brenda Kay cried out again, “Momma!
” “Jewel, ” Leston said from somewhere in the house. “She’s calling.”
But I let myself say the word once more, felt it there in my mouth soft and foreign and clear.
CHAPTER 13.
IT WAS IN THE READER’S DIGEST I FOUND OUT ABOUT IT. THAT WAS THE only magazine I let come into the house, and I’d kept it a secret, that money I spent on it. Cathe ral was the only one who knew about it, her taking care of Brenda Kay when I was out to the grammar school, us paying her a quarter a week to see after her, watch she didn’t crawl off somewhere we couldn’t get her, spoon-feed her lunch. Oatmeal was Brenda Kay’s favorite.
And there were weeks, too, especially around when we were getting ready to take Brenda Kay for her shots, when we couldn’t even pay her the quarter. But she didn’t complain, never spoke one word out of line about our situatio
n. She’d always quote the same verse to me when those weeks came up, “And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye? For sinners also lend to sinners, to receive as much again, ” she’d say to me, and smile. “Luke chapter six, verse thirty-four, ” she’d say, “the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, ” and she’d turn, head off for home.
The mail came near one-thirty each day, and I was usually home by that time to get it, Cathe ral my only witness as I tore off the crisp brown wrapper, my Reader’s Digest the highlight of the month. Even James’ checks coming to us couldn’t compare, because there was always surrounding those bits of paper the feeling of dread at how hard it was for them to give it, the obligation they had to feel to help save James’ little sister. On occasion there’d be a letter with the check, lways written by Eudine, whose handwriting was the fanciest I’d ever seen, her capital letters big and swirly, her dots big circles floating above the i or j. In the letter she would talk about James’ grades, about her job as a secretary for the athletic director and how her typing capabilities fared, her word per minute rate creeping up slowly, on into the fifties now. But beyond that there was nothing in her letters, just the simple everyday things Eudine must have thought might comfort us.
Even more seldom came photographs, one was of James in his full uniform, standing before a barracks of white corrugated metal. The photo was slightly blurred, and you couldn’t quite make out the look on his face, whether he were smiling or just squinting into the Texas sun full in his face. In another photo stood Eudine and another girl, the two of them as good as twins, grinning at the camera and standing before what seemed the same barracks building. On the back Eudine had written Clarenda and I, out front of the apartment. It was in this way I found out that they were living in a barracks. She’d never made mention of that before, and the check that accompanied it, ten dollars made out to Mrs. Leston Hilburn, seemed even harder to surrender to Billie Jean at the bank.