JEWEL

by LOTT, BRET

  I smiled, came toward him. A piece of me was ready to surrender to it all, to this point he was trying so very hard to make by visiting these old places, we had come a long way in our lives, had beaten more than most people were handed out. That house six feet above ground on the bayou was, in some ways, a palace. Our boys and girls were men and women now.

  And as I came nearer him, I remembered those mornings with the children even sharper, even clearer, remembered the tussling and fighting between Burton and Wilman and Annie, her tagging along, and I remembered Billie Jean when she was only a girl, before she’d lost the piece of herself she’d given to Gower Cross, and before she’d found, I could only imagine, the heavy and ugly knowledge only going through a divorce could bring.

  I moved closer to Leston. In spite of all the waves I wanted crashing l l in my head and the feel of cold, thick fog round me, even in spite of all we had to do in California to save our baby daughter, those waves and that gray started to melting away with each minute we stood out here in the sun beside our old house. This was our home, I was beginning to see. And I was headed straight for what, I figured deep down in a place I was about to stop listening to, would certainly be our deaths, Leston’s, mine, Brenda Kay’s.

  Still, I touched his chest with one hand, smiled up at him, the sun lighting his face. Here was the man I’d sworn allegiance to, the man I’d married, the one who came even before all the Before this house brought with it. Before, though it seemed there’d never existed such a time, even Brenda Kay. This was the man. I am your wife, I heard rise up in me, and smiled at the man who’d built this home for us.

  I let my hand go to his face, placed my palm at his cheek, gently rubbed there with my thumb, this touch just the smallest utterance of the dying language of love our bodies’d once spoken. This was Leston.

  I said, “You know I love you.”

  He reached up, took my hand, and I could feel the strength in him, in his calluses and rough skin and bones and muscles.

  He said, “I love you too, Jewel.” I said, “Scene of the crime, ” still smiling.

  “Scene of the crime, ” he said. He grinned, let go my hand.

  He put his hands in his back pockets then, looked past me back toward the barn, just my husband after all, this moment of closeness maybe a bit too much, or maybe just enough, he shrugged, still grinning.

  Without letting his eyes light on mine, he said, “Think I’ll have a go look to the shed. See what shape she’s in.”

  He glanced down at me, shrugged again, and started away. “Brenda Kay, ” he called out, “you want to come see the old barn and shed I built?

  ” “Momma? ” Brenda Kay said. She was waiting for me, eyebrows up, mouth open, those white teeth.

  “Brenda Kay? ” Leston said. He was next to her now. He was still smiling, but I could see it was something he had to think about. He knew what was going on, his own daughter stood next to him, but waited for me to nod, to signal what she should do.

  Leston put out a hand to her, him turned to the barn, Brenda Kay turned to me. He reached down, took hold her hand, gave it a small shake.

  “Come on now, ” he said without looking at me. “Let’s go.”

  Brenda Kay’s hand was dead in his, her eyes still trained on me. I said, “Now you do what your daddy says, ” and I nodded, smiled.

  She turned, went right away with Leston, and I watched the two of them march off hand in hand along a path clouded over with green.

  I turned back to the house. Scene of the crime, I thought, and I went to the steps up to the kitchen door, steps I’d mounted too many times to count, after calling my children in from the woods, or hauling up the breakfast plates the coloreds stacked on the ground next to the bottom step, or carrying up the wind-dried sheets and towels and clothing, and I thought of the sheets I’d hung earlier this afternoon, wondered if they’d be dry by the time we got home.

  I stood at the bottom of the steps, put one hand on the rail, and suddenly all those times I’d mounted them didn’t seem such a burden, such a chore, and I saw I was about to hit the bottom of that abyss Leston’d led me to, the one I’d tottered over and into all by myself.

  It was my resolve I was about to lose, I saw.

  I lifted a foot, set it on the first step up. This was comfortable, the wood strong and sturdy, exactly what I needed to feel beneath me while I carried up a load of laundry or a child with a skinned knee or an apron full of summer squash or corn, and so I took another step, and another, let my hand on the rail guide me up and up, closer and closer to the kitchen door window.

  Finally I made it to the top of the steps, stood on the little porch there. I cupped my hands to the window, looked in at my own kitchen, and knew it was me, me, I wanted to glimpse walking across the floor in there, a skillet of bacon and eggs in my hand, my apron for a potholder, and hoped, too, I’d see Burton and Wilman come tearing into the room, Annie right behind them, trailing nye-nye and crying for them to wait for her. It was all of that I wanted to see, and knew I would if I let myself, let the ghosts of past lives, ones I’d thought for years were behind me, breathe all over in me, illuminate this old kitchen.

  And suddenly there was movement inside, a swirl of color and shape before my eyes so that I had only time enough to swallow, feel my heart lurch and heave with what I saw. I staggered back a step, saw before me a girl in a flowered dress as she swung open the door, a hand to a hip, her head to one side.

  She said, “What y’all want? ” and I saw her dirty blond hair fall off one shoulder, saw smeared red across her lips, her bare feet.

  She was just a girl, a girl no older than and I’d had to think a moment on who she seemed no older than, and the only girl who came to mind was my own baby daughter, my Brenda Kay, tromping round in a broken-down barn just then.

  “Well? ” the girl said. She quick tilted her head the other way, a hand still at her hip, the other on the doorknob.

  “I ” I started, but didn’t know how I might lead her to see what I’d hoped I might find inside my old kitchen.

  “We, ” I said, and now she’d taken to tapping a toe on the floor, the I I floor painted a dark red, and not the old stained wood we’d had it.

  “We just were looking at the place, ” I said.

  “We saw you, ” she said right out, but then her face lost its edge, retreated to reveal she was in fact only a girl, no woman in charge of this place. She blinked, said, “I saw you, ” and brought her head up straight, let go the doorknob, put that hand to her hip. She gritted her teeth, tried to regain whatever power she’d had over me, but she’d lost it.

  “Somebody in there with you? ” I said, and crossed my arms.

  She gave the quickest glance to her left, tried to see behind her without looking all the way. Then she drew in a breath, seemed to kick her elbows out at her sides even broader, hold her shoulders even higher, and I knew I was wrong about how old she was, knew only then she was at most fifteen.

  It’d been in the hair, the color and snarl of it, that I’d misjudged her age, and in that lipstick, the dress. It was a Saturday-night dress, puffed short sleeves, the skirt just above the knees, the flowers in the material a shade too bright, the neckline cut just a breath too low.

  The dress buttoned up the front, starting at the waist, and as she brought up her shoulders I could see where she’d missed a couple buttons, the two below the top one. It was a dress a little too tight for her, a girl with breasts, I could see, that’d send her at her age out to find lipstick, to color her hair this shade, to buy a cheap dress a size too small, and I wondered who her momma was, and where she might be, and who the boy inside the house with her was.

  Because as she stood taller in some child’s attempt at intimidating an old woman who’d seen all I’d seen about the way this world works, from the quick and simple death of a father to the slow and hateful one of her mother, from the birth of a retarded child to the arc of a basketball in a high school gym, I saw between the open f
ront of her dress the two curves of flesh where her breasts met, small turns of pale-milk skin men lived their lives to find, where only minutes before, I knew, some boy most likely no older than herself had found strange comfort, a feeling I figured must be foreign and familiar at once, some memory of a mother’s breast buried deep inside him, at the same time a dream of the future, of the moment when he might enter her and the world would be his, so that memory and the future were locked in the same moment, the same touch of tongue on flesh, the body able to accomplish with no more than mere human touch what it was I wanted in my life, to remember what’d gone before me, but to push out to what might be.

  Only then did I see I hadn’t yet fallen into the abyss, but still tottered there, still stood with my toes on the edge, about to fall toward the end of a life that’d be spent here, in Mississippi, among the bones of my old dead lives, ghosts or no ghosts. I said, “You’re showing, honey, ” and nodded at her chest.

  She looked down at herself, saw the buttons, started doing them up, when from behind her came the boy’s voice, “Tell em to head out.”

  She still fumbled with the buttons, glanced at me, said, “You heard that.”

  I said, “My husband built this house, ” and I turned, not because of the boy’s words, but because there seemed nothing more to say. I took each step down from the porch one at a time, savored them for what they were, past history.

  But when I reached bottom I turned, looked up at her, and it seemed there was something else I wanted to say, on my own tongue words I figured might help her, and might help me.

  She stood with a hand back on the doorknob, the other at her side.

  I said, “Don’t let a man speak your mind.” I paused, said, “You want us out, you tell us.”

  She took a breath, glanced behind her again. She stood straight again, said, “You head on out now.”

  “Fine, ” I said, and I nodded at her, smiled.

  She closed the door, but stood at the window a moment. She turned her head away from the glass, and I could see through the window her shake her head, that dirty blonde hair moving back and forth in long locks.

  Then she faced me again.

  I put up a hand, gave a small wave, hoped whatever it was happened here wouldn’t be lost on her, or on me Her face was blank, no look to it at all. Just her eyes on me, that hair down the sides of her face, her smeared lips.

  Then she raised a hand, gave the smallest of waves, just a shake of her fingertips, but enough to make me wonder what my life would’ve been like if my last child, the daughter named after my husband’s dead sister, were born a normal child, and I wondered if that child inside the window might well have been named Brenda Kay, her momma out to work somewheres Bailey Grammar, serving up lunches right now to summer school kids her daughter shut up in an empty house right now while a boy had at her, the two of them finding the surprise and sorrow of love.

  And I felt then, too, some of the burden and joy, perhaps, that Cathe ral might’ve felt by passing on words I could use, giving to me fair warning of the life to come while she stood here at the bottom of these steps on a cold March night, me there at the top of them while from behind me spilled warm kitchen light, light that fell out onto the cold hard-packed ground out here, light that seemed to illuminate Cathe ral herself.

  The girl turned her head from me, nodded to the boy I couldn’t see, the boy I was glad I’d never lay eyes on. Then she quick turned back to me, her mouth and eyebrows and eyes filled with nothing, and she disappeared.

  Leston opened Brenda Kay’s door, and she climbed in. I was already in the front seat, windows all down, my forehead and neck and chest and back all drenched in sweat. I hadn’t wanted to stand outside the car while I waited for my daughter and husband to come back. I just wanted in the car, wanted gone from there. Leston closed Brenda Kay’s door, came around to his side, climbed in.

  He put the key to the ignition, started up the car, and I looked at him.

  He seemed scared somehow, his face flushed even more than it would for the heat. He smiled too hard at me, wouldn’t let his eyes meet mine for more than an instant. He faced forward, both hands on the wheel, and I wondered if he hadn’t been out scouring the woods behind the place, looking for a brass lighter.

  I said, “What happened? ” “Nothing, ” he said, shrugged. He put a hand to his shirt pocket for another cigarette, came up empty. “Maybe the heat. I don’t know.”

  I looked out the windshield, said, “Where to next? ” “Well, ” he said, and looked straight ahead. He blinked a couple times, said, “Figured I named the first place, Brenda Kay told us to come here.

  Figure it’s your turn. You tell us where.”

  I was quiet a moment, the only sound the low hum of the engine. I said, “Cathe ral’s.”

  I turned to him. He was already looking at me.

  I said, “Take me to Cathe ral’s.”

  A slow smile came to him. He said, “You want to make amends. That right?

  ” I could lie to him, I knew, just agree to what he figured could be the only reason I’d want to see her. Or I could deal him the truth, hand him all I knew, which is what I decided to do.

  I said, “I don’t know why. But please do it.”

  He lost the smile, pulled away from me until his back touched his door.

  He said, “Oh, ” then turned in his seat. He reached a hand to the gearshift on the column, put it in gear. “Okay, ” he said, and we were gone, and as we pulled away I imagined behind us the face of a young girl, a girl I decided right then to name Brenda Kay, a bigbosomed girl whose momma wasn’t home, a girl who watched us from an open window, behind her the voice of a boy, calling for her, giving out her name again and again, while she watched us disappear off the face of the earth. I CHAPTER 37.

  NELSON SAT OUT FRONT IN A ROCKER NOT MUCH DIFFERENT THAN THE one that’d been thrown on a fire in a backyard in Purvis. Leston parked the car in front of the house, and Nelson stopped rocking, slowly stood while Leston climbed out the car.

  Calling the place a house was giving it more credit than is due, it was a shanty on the right side of an ancient road, to my left a wide field of sweet potatoes, and suddenly all of it was too much like the shanty I’d stood in front of and’d spilled a story to a colored woman while Cleopatra Sinclair and Bessy Swansea stole her food. I got a cold shiver just then, the feeling an ugly surprise in all the heat.

  Nelson seemed thinner, shorter, and wore thick glasses, though there wasn’t any doubt it was him as he stepped off the small front porch, an old man with steps as ginger as Brenda Kay’s had been out in the Gulf, each one measured and certain as he headed for the car. His head was down, and slowly he shook it back and forth. One hand was in his back pocket, the other to his forehead, a cigarette between his fingers. He talked to himself as he came toward us. Only when Leston saw he wasn’t going to stop, was headed right up to the hood, did Leston finally close his door, slowly come round to meet him.

  I watched all this from the front seat, Brenda Kay asleep behind me, it’d taken almost forty-five minutes to find the place, neither Leston nor me remembering exactly where they lived. I’d been here only once before, couldn’t remember why. I only remembered a huge live oak that’d grown halfway out into their road so that the road jogged out the way of it. When we finally stumbled onto that queer bend in the road, the tree grown even bigger, the branches hanging even lower to the road, I knew we were only a few minutes away, and I’d said, “Brenda Kay, we’re going to see Cathe ral, ” and turned in my seat to face her.

  She’d nodded off, her head back and lolling side to side, mouth open, hair matted down on her head. The growth was so thick back here, so close to the road and the car, we weren’t moving fast enough to cool things down.

  Nelson stopped in front of the car. He was old, older than I could have imagined, his hair gone white, wrinkles at his throat, the glasses magnifying his eyes so that in the late afternoon light they were huge and wet.

>   “Mister Hilburn? ” Nelson said, and brought the hand down from his forehead, the other out of his back pocket. He leaned back as though he couldn’t bend his neck, and looked at my husband.

  “Nelson, ” Leston said, and put out a hand.

  A moment or two passed between them before Nelson looked down from Leston to his hand, then slowly put his own hand out, and the two shook.

  Three or four nails on Nelson’s hand’d gone bad, the nails themselves white and crumbled and dead.

  He said, “We heard you was here, ” and smiled, slowly shook Leston’s hand. “We was wondering if you’d stop in.” Leston let go Nelson’s hand, said, “How’d you know we were back? ” “Word, ” Nelson said, and nodded, satisfied at his answer.

  He turned to me, sitting there in the front seat and taking all this in as though it were some performance, staged right off the front of the car just for me. Nelson nodded, said, “Miss Jewel, ” and put his hands in his back pockets.

  I climbed out then, made careful not to close the door too hard for fear of waking Brenda Kay. I walked to the end of the fender, nodded.

  Though I felt I ought to put out my hand, let him shake it, I didn’t.

  I only smiled, looked at Leston.

  “Nelson, ” Leston started, rubbed the back of his neck. “We come by to say hello.” He paused. “You looking good.”

  “No complaints, ” he said, and slowly shook his head, the move exaggerated for how slow it was. “Just growing old in the Lord, ” he said. He looked up at Leston, still smiling, and said, “How you doing youselves? ” “Fine, ” Leston said. “Fine. Just out looking around at the old haunts, old stomping grounds.” He swatted at a mosquito on his arm, smiled.

  Nelson turned to me, his whole body moving, even his feet, as if his back were a board, unable to bend. He faced me, said, “You bring along yo’ beautiful daughter? Missy Brenda Kay.”

  I nodded, smiled at him. “Right here, ” I said, and turned, made for her window.