by LOTT, BRET
Shadows of bulrushes started to fall across us, and I held Leston even tighter, closed my eyes.
Later, heading back, I said, “Leston, we can do better by our family.”
They were the only words came to me for all the thinking I’d done on how to tell him.
“How so, ” he said, and pulled the paddle through another stroke. The sun was still high, a little behind me, and shone on him, gave even more color to his face. He was on his third cigarette since we’d finished in the bulrushes. This was the first we’d spoken. l l
“I have an idea, ” I said, and stopped. This was it, where all I’d thought over was going to come out.
“I have an idea, ” I said, “that we ought to think on moving from here.”
He was quiet, pulled through another stroke. He said, “From Purvis.”
“From Purvis, ” I said. “From, maybe, Mississippi.”
“You want to move to New Orleans, ” he said, the cigarette at his lips bobbing with his words. It wasn’t a question, but what he’d figured the answer to all this. “Or thereabouts, ” he went on. He stopped paddling a moment, thought better of it, started in again. “Driving in to New Orleans every few weeks to see a doctor don’t make it necessary to move there.” He drew on the cigarette, the tip going bright.
“Not New Orleans, ” I said, and swallowed hard. I said, “Not New Orleans. But to a place where Brenda Kay can get what she needs, a place where there’s an opportunity for things.” I paused. “Things for all of us.”
“Things, ” he said. “Things.”
“Like good care. Like something akin to a school. Like maybe a school or something for Brenda Kay.” I swallowed again. “Jobs, too. Good jobs.”
He brought the paddle from the water entirely, laid it in his lap again.
He squinted at me, took the cigarette from his lips, shot out smoke.
“Who put these big ideas in your head? ” he said. “One guess.”
“No one, ” I said, and then I said, “The Reader’s Digest is where.
There’s a place in California where ” “California, ” he said, and with that he flicked the cigarette, this one not even halfway done, off into the green water, picked up the paddle, and started in.
“California, ” I said again, “is where there’s a school for Mongoloids, ” and I stopped, my last word big and clumsy and strange out here on water, beneath a spring sky, a word that cut off whatever others were lined up in me, stopped them all.
“California, ” he breathe , the word almost lost in the whisper he gave.
He pulled the paddle out again, set it across his lap. He sat up straight, brought a hand to his forehead to block the sun.
He wasn’t looking at me, but behind me and to my right. I scooted around in my seat, tried to see behind me.
We were out fifty yards or so from where we’d put in, afternoon shadows darkening our picnic spot. I couldn’t see Annie anywhere, nor Burton or Wilman.
But there lay Billie Jean on her back on the red wool blanket, Brenda Kay straddling her, the two of them lost in whatever game they were up to.
Billie Jean turned her head, saw us. “Hey! ” she hollered from where she lay, and waved.
Slowly Brenda Kay’s head turned our way, and after a moment that seemed to last longer than all the time Leston and I’d been away, her voice came to me across that green water, traveled as slow and precise as the sun across the sky.
“Momma! ” she cried.
CHAPTER 17.
ALL I COULD HEAR WAS THE RINGING IN MY EARS, THE LOUD RUSH OF blood through me that choked out everything else, whatever sounds were around me as I ran through the halls of the same hospital my baby Brenda Kay’d been born in, just ahead of me Wilman, his strides long and easy, a man now near on tall as Leston. He was way ahead of me, and had to stop now and again, in his eyes as he turned the fear and pain of what he already knew, what he’d already seen.
Finally, somewhere in the middle of a hall on the second floor, he held out a hand to me, and when I made it to him I took it, held it tight, and we ran together.
He slowed down, pointed to an open door to our left, and I let go his hand, went on into the room without waiting for breath, without waiting for the ringing to stop.
Inside were doctors and nurses, all huddled round the bed. But as I came near they parted, stood aside for me. I didn’t even look at them, only at the bed, and at Brenda Kay Lying there.
“My momma! ” she screamed, “My momma! ” and her arms went up to me, arms, I thanked God, that hadn’t been burned in the fire, and I saw that her eyebrows, eyebrows that’d been the same fine auburn of her hair, had been scorched off, me still knowing so little of what happened, only the few words Wilman’d forced out to me on the ride from the cafeteria here.
Only that there’d been a fire, and that Brenda Kay’d been burned.
“I’m here, honey, I’m here, ” was all I could say, those the best words I could offer. “I’m here, my baby, I’m here. I’m right here.”
As I hugged her, held her tight to me, I listened to her crying, heard her sob in a new way I’d never heard from her before, a cry too deep, too strong. And I thanked my God I could be here, and found myself cursing Him in the very same breath.
I held her.
She feel asleep in my arms, her own arms gone limp as she gave in to it, but I held her close in her sleep another ten or fifteen minutes, just to let her know I was there.
Still, she whimpered in her sleep, and when I finally let her go, the sound of her whimpering was thick in the air, the soft and quick moans she gave out blasting to pieces, finally, that ringing in my ears.
Even as the doctors started in on telling me what’d happened, it seemed their words were only being built around my Brenda Kay’s pain. Every whimper she gave blotted out a phrase or two of what healing I could hope for, what the chances of her legs being usable again were, how long before skin might come back.
Her whimpering even whited out most of what I saw, so that none of the doctors had faces, voices, just as the nurses hovering round me and Brenda Kay were only women in white dresses, all their hair the same color.
Not until one of those nurses took hold my hand and as one of the doctors pulled back the sheet that lay across Brenda Kay did things come alive for me. It was as if I’d entered the room brand-new and unafraid, my eyes cold as I looked at my baby daughter’s legs, saw what God’d deemed necessary at this point in her and my life both, a point three years past when I’d started in on my husband to move us away from this place.
What I saw, Her legs had been burned up to midthigh, her right worse than the left. I took in without blinking, without swallowing, the image of blackened skin on her right leg from her ankle on up, skin rumpled and bunched and black, burned on the top and sides, the little I could see of the backs of her legs pale pink where the fire hadn’t found her out. Her left leg wasn’t as badly burned, but the skin there, too, was bunched and blistered where the fire had crept, from midshin to just above her knee, skin gray and red and mottled, already oozing.
Then her smell came to me, the smell of burnt flesh, the sour smoldering and stink of her Lying there.
I closed my eyes, closed them, and felt the air in the room rush past me, as though the roof were lifting off, me with it, and I disappeared.
Wilman squatted before me. I was in a chair, I knew, in a hospital hallway, and this was my son, Wilman, his face close to mine, his forehead wrinkled, mouth pursed, eyes searching for something.
Me, I saw. He was looking for me, and I blinked a few times, took in a breath.
“I fainted, ” I said, and I tried to stand, felt my legs do nothing, gone to sleep of their own. I pushed on the arms of the chair, tried to get my legs to work, to move me.
“Momma, ” he said, and placed his big hands on my shoulders, held me down. “Momma, ” he said again, “you need to have a seat here. You need to sit here for a while. That’s what the doctor said.”
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I’m right here, I thought, right here, and still his eyes were looking for me, searching my face for some sign of recognition, as though it’d been me who’d been burned, my face consumed by flame, and for a long moment, and then for many days and weeks and months and years I wished it’d been me in there on the hospital bed, and I asked myself again, because it seemed there would never be anyone else I could ask this, not even my God Himself, Is this how He smites on us?
Cathe raltd been the one to blame, because blame was what I was after, blame the only thing I had the right to here. My baby’d been burned to where every waking moment she spent for the first two weeks in that hospital were taken up with her crying, holding on to me fierce and hard, leaving bruises on my shoulders I could see in the hospital bathroom mirror when I washed myself at night.
She’d been watching over Brenda Kay like every day I worked at the cafeteria, and the story I’d been handed by Billie Jean and Wilman and even Annie was the same, but it was the story handed them by Cathe ral, my children’d all been at school or work themselves, Cathe ral was sweeping up in the boys’ old bedroom, Wilman the only one living there now.
Burton’d moved out to California five months before to find whatever fortune he thought was there, that idea of California planted by me through all the quiet conversations I’d had with Leston on the subject, me talking at him from across the kitchen table in the middle of the night for the last three years. I’d talked about and showed him and read to him the literature I’d received, brochures shiny and crisp that outlined what the National Association for Retarded Children could do for Brenda Kay out there in Los Angeles. And Burton’d overheard, and Burton graduated from Purvis High and worked a summer at the ice cream plant in Columbia and took in enough money to buy a run-down pickup truck and move. Nothing to it, Just pure and cold resolve in my son, and as he’d driven off, waved back at us through the small window of the cab, I couldn’t help but envy him and at the same time feel glad I’d handed him on something I could lay claim to, that resolve. He’d gotten a job out there right off, working at a muffler shop welding mufflers onto cars, all the thousands and thousands of bright and new and perfect cars he saw out there every day. Now and again he sent a dress to Billie Jean or Annie or Brenda Kay, and postcards once a week of piers and seagulls and violet mountains and short green trees clustered with bright oranges. And I’d gotten a hat, burgundy with a tiny veil across the front brim. I hadn’t yet had enough nerve to wear it into our church, . L where I could just imagine the words that’d pass between women, The mother of a retarded child strutting in with a hat like that!
I swar!
And, too, he’d sent his daddy a lighter, a brass and stainless steel lighter Leston carried with him everywhere he went, even in the pocket of his pale green coveralls, his uniform for work at the ice cream plant. He worked piling fifty-pound sacks of sugar onto pallets five days a week now, the job his son had left behind.
Though Leston hadn’t approved of Burton’s moving, still deep in my husband the clouded and hopeless dream of his sons following him into a lumberyard of his own someday, Leston carried that lighter with him to work every day, filled it every morning whether it needed it or not with lighter fluid from the thin blue and yellow can he kept on the mantel.
It was a beautiful lighter, and I wondered often enough how much money Burton really made out there in all that sun and in amongst all those cars. But mostly I wondered when my husband was going to roll over and give in to what was so clearly best for my family, so clearly best for Brenda Kay. That lighter, I figured, was a fine start, a piece of California in his coveralls every day, there in his hand with every cigarette he lit.
That same resolve in Burton was what made James a good example of what you could do when you took hold of your life, made it do what you wanted of it, he was in veterinarian school at A&M now, would be out next summer, practicing on his own. And I had a grandchild, too, baby Judy, after Eudine’s mother. A baby girl with fiery red hair and green eyes yet again, and who I hadn’t yet held. It was a baby they’d planned on having, Eudine’d told me when they’d first called to let us know we’d be grandparents and aunts and uncles, and that notion made me shine inside, the idea one could plan on a child and be smart enough to determine what would happen to your future.
When we’d gotten the phone call near three A. M. one morning ten months ago, James breathless on the other end, the line crackling with interference at some point between here and Texas, I’d said right off to him, “Count em up. Count up her fingers and toes, make sure there’s ten of each, ” but right then I’d felt the hollow promise that measure really meant, my Brenda Kay’d had ten of each.
Every time I asked one of my children again how the burn had happened, I could see Cathe ral giving out the story, saw her stone still except for the small words she formed, eyes half-opened, her face all straight as she gave to them what she reckoned was God’s will in this situation, she’d been sweeping, and heard Brenda Kay scream, dropped the broom right there, ran downstairs to see Brenda Kay in her blue corduroy overalls and white shoes and white blouse, standing in front of the hearth with fire swarming up her legs. Brenda Kay screamed and screamed, then took to running. Cathe ral chased her through the front room and on into the kitchen, managed to pull her down from behind and lay on her a moment until the flames’d gone out.
When the story came to this point I always closed my eyes, tried to imagine the scene and what that warmth, that heat was like, Cathe ral herself ended up with blistered skin on her right thigh, her thin cotton dress scorched, her heavy leggings keeping her skin from burning any worse.
But I couldn’t imagine that heat, couldn’t feel that pain. I couldn’t feel what it was like for Cathe ral, because it was blame I was putting on her how could she leave Brenda Kay untended at the hearth? How could she? and I wanted no piece of me feeling sorry for her, feeling there was any way she couldn’t be the one to fault here.
Instead, all I could hear were the words Cathe ral told my children Brenda Kay was screaming, “My momma! My momma! ” even as she lay flat on the floor, Cathe ral rising, finally, and going to the sink, filling with water the first thing she could find, a pan I’d cooked that morning’s grits in, then rolling Brenda Kay over onto her back, her calling out my name even louder, finding inside her own self that new deeper and stronger sob and scream as Cathe ral poured cold January water over my daughter’s burned legs.
Then Cathe ral laid blankets over Brenda Kay, laid as many as she could find, and ran out to the road, started to waving down any car passing by out there.
At this point, too, I closed my eyes, imagined what it was somebody’d see if they were driving by at that moment, a crazed nigger woman, arms up in the air and hollering, that Cathe ral, the one we all knew spoke in tongues and was given to holy fits for the Lord. That’s what they’d think, I knew, and so it was God’s blame, too, Him giving her that reputation, and me the first to have seen it come upon her that day out back of Missy Cook’s mansion. Now the end result, not one car stopped for a half hour, seven cars passing her by as she screamed and hollered and waved.
It was a nigger, finally, to stop for her, Eleazer Campbell the insurance salesman, one of only three niggers in the county who had a car to drive. He’d been the one to pull over, follow her into the house, lift up Brenda Kay and all the blankets heaped on her. My baby’d passed out by then from the shock and the pain, Eleazer Campbell the one to drive her to this hospital, Cathe ral in the back seat with Brenda Kay’s head in her lap, stroking her hair, stroking it.
They got to the hospital, and when the nurse at the desk saw what was on, she’d called two nigger orderlies, who took my baby daughter from Eleazer Campbell’s arms, him standing just outside the hospital doors, knowing enough not to even try coming inside. And Cathe ral behind him, her own burns tended by somebody else later on.
But first she told the nurse who my daughter was, told her Wilman was a junior at Purvis High
, that he should be called first, that he could handle it all from then.
She drove with Eleazer Campbell back to the house to clean things up.
To get ready, she told my children. And the first thing she saw when she came back in the house was that thin blue and yellow can of lighter fluid, empty, scorched, the paint bubbled like the skin on my baby’s legs, around it scorched black bricks, the black leading a trail into the fireplace, the fire now only embers. Brenda Kay’d reached up to the mantel, and’d pulled the lighter fluid down, and’d squirted it all over everywhere, and’d been taken up by flames jumping out the fireplace. It was a wonder, “A blessing from God above ” were the words Cathe ral’d ended the story with each time she’d toid it to my children, that our home didn’t burn down to the ground.
Why didn’t she call me? I wondered every time I heard the story. We had a telephone there in the house, too, why didn’t she call?
But I never asked that out loud, because I knew the answer, blame had fallen square on her, and she’d known it.
Cathe ral hadn’t tended properly to my child, hadn’t kept her out of reach of the lighter fluid. Hadn’t called me away from ladling out dumplings and gravy to children at Bailey Grammar School while my own retarded child burned at my home. Blame was hers, hard and pure and cold.
CHAPTER 18.
DOCTORS SPOKE AT ME, WHISPERED AT ME, WALKED THE HALLS WITH me, nurses smothered me, hugged me, touched me, members of the congregation cried on me, prayed for me, fed me and my family with an endless parade of covered dishes, my children held my hands, brought me flowers, brushed my hair, my husband held the brim of his hat in his hand, and turned it.
I stayed in that hospital room with Brenda Kay for a month, through all the changing of the dressings on her legs, through all the whimpering and crying, through the stench rotten skin gave off. I stayed for a month in the hospital room, doctors saying she’d take pneumonia, that she’d not walk again, that she’d be lucky if gangrene didn’t settle in.