by Bev Marshall
I didn’t tell her that Jehu had already told me about the call. I stared at my flowers. It had been a good day, a good day, and it was getting worse, a lot worse, like me after the trial.
Mama’s voice was calm, way too calm to suit me. “Now, let me just tell you what all has happened, what I’m thinking, and what I’m going to do.” She lifted her purse from the floor. She’d made notes on her lavender paper. “I’ll just go through the facts one by one.” Her unpolished fingernail followed the list down the page as she talked. “First. Judge Middleton drew my case for the trial. This isn’t good. He’s not sympathetic to women, he belongs to New Hope Church, and he and his wife have never been able to have children. So all of that means I would definitely need to go with a jury trial.”
“I thought we’d already decided that anyway,” I said.
“Yes, but I wanted to see if there was a chance of just having the judge hear the case, so we wouldn’t have to select a jury. But Mr. Albright said he wouldn’t feel as confident with Middleton as he would another judge. So back to where we started, I asked Mr. Albright if I had any chance of getting off with a jury if you didn’t testify.” She tried to smile and failed.“I thought maybe I could give a stellar performance like Pop suggested, but Mr. Albright said even if I were Elizabeth Taylor it wouldn’t make any difference unless you testified, too.”
My hopes had risen and then fallen, but I was an actress, too. I shrugged as if she’d said we were out of milk again and I’d have to eat dry cereal. “So I’ll testify like we expected. So what?”
Mama didn’t answer for what seemed like minutes. I heard Gaylord calling, “Daisy, come. Daisy, stop.” I noticed one of the carnation stems was tangled with another and not getting any water, and I reached over, pulled it out, and reinserted it in the vase. Mama’s lips were moving silently like she was practicing what she was going to say, and a dread came over me like I’d never felt before. My charade couldn’t last. “Mama, please. What is it?”
She closed her eyes.“Layla Jay, I just can’t let you testify. I’d never forgive myself if you did.There’s enough gossip going around all over Zebulon already, and after you take the stand, there won’t be a person within fifty miles who won’t have heard about Wallace raping you.”
“The judge can order the courtroom cleared when I testify. Miss Louise told me that.”
“Yeah, but do you think the jury and the other people who’ll be there won’t tell afterward? You know all the juicy details will leak out.”
“But if I don’t testify, Mr. Albright said you’d get convicted.”
“Right. So there’s only one door left to open for my freedom.”
I took deep breaths, tried to slow my galloping heart. I couldn’t have another attack. I had to find out what she meant. “What door?”
“It’s called a plea bargain. Mr. Albright is going to ask Mr. Abadella, the prosecutor, to meet with us to discuss a plea bargain.”
I thought of the banner over the Black and White Store on Main Street. “Bargains galore!” A bargain meant getting something cheap. What did the DA have to sell? And then suddenly I knew. He owned the store, and Mama was going to ask him to give her a bargain. Less time in jail. I prayed I was wrong. “What’s a plea bargain?”
“It’s a negotiated deal between the prosecution and me. In other words, I’ll say I’m guilty, that I meant to kill Wallace, and then Mr. Albright will ask Mr. Abadella for a reduced sentence.”
“Mama, no!”
“Honey, my mind is made up.The meeting is all set for day after tomorrow. No more waiting and worrying.We’ll just get it over with.” She wadded up her list and tossed it on the table beside the vase of carnations.
“But you can’t say you’re guilty.You didn’t mean to kill Wallace.”
Mama sighed. “Maybe I did. I don’t know what I meant to do anymore. I know I never hated anybody as much as I hated Wallace when I saw him on top of you.”
I was shaking so violently my voice wavered like an old old lady’s. “But you’ll go to prison. Please don’t do it. I’ll testify. I don’t care what anybody thinks. I don’t care. Please, Mama, please.”
Mama moved over to the couch and pulled me against her, wrapping her arms around me in a viselike grip. She kissed the top of my head, and I thought of the night after my birthday party when she had said, “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for my girl.” She had meant it. She was willing to go to prison for me. “There’s still a chance I could get probation or maybe even get off.”
“No, you won’t,” I said. My fingers dug into her back and I couldn’t tell whether the tears that fell between us were hers or mine.
When we finally let go of each other, we both sniffed up mucus and wiped our faces, but tears eked out as we talked. Mama said she would still need my help. And as she unfolded the plan she and Mr. Albright had discussed, a minuscule hope resurfaced inside me.
Mama asked Mervin, Papaw, and Miss Louise to stay away because we needed some mother/daughter time alone. She didn’t tell them what we were going to do.“We’ll wait until it’s over. I don’t need their advice. This is just between Mr. Albright and me and you. Our secret.”
We stayed up most of the night outlining and redefining our plan.We would still follow our original ideas of what to say and how to act, even how to dress. I was to wear a Sunday dress, no makeup, socks with flats. In other words, I was supposed to look like a ten-year-old instead of a sexy fourteen-year-old.“We can’t do anything about your height,” Mama said, “but an Ace bandage will hide those breasts.” As we schemed on through the night, I pretended we were rehearsing for a stage performance.We were the stars of a Broadway play. But every now and then as I modeled dresses for Mama’s appraisal, we would look into each other’s faces and see terror mixed with sorrow mirrored in our eyes.
The sun was casting a pale pink light into my bedroom when exhaustion finally overtook us and Mama and I dropped onto my bed with our arms around each other. Just before she fell asleep, Mama whispered, “Mr. Abadella has four daughters.That’s lucky for us.”
I didn’t think we were lucky, and even if we were, we needed more than luck.When I closed my eyes, Grandma’s radiant face appeared. She was smiling, nodding her head in approval. Mama’s sacrificing her freedom for me was exactly what Grandma wanted. She was proud of Mama. I opened my eyes. But what did she think about me? She knew I was going to lie to the DA, break the commandment “Thou shall not bear false witness,” but I hoped she understood that this time I was lying for the right reason. I wondered if God granted plea bargains.Was obedience to His commandments absolute, or was there, in Papaw’s words, any wiggle room? I thought of all the prayers I had offered up. Most of them requests. And I thought of the ones God had answered and the ones He hadn’t. He hadn’t shown me the way to kill myself, but He had given me breasts and Jehu. Now I wished I didn’t have those breasts, but I couldn’t regret asking for Jehu’s love. I’d prayed over and over for God to send the Holy Spirit down to me, and He still hadn’t done that. How did He decide which prayers to answer and which ones to ignore? Was there even any point to my asking Him to save Mama from prison? His mind was probably already made up.
I prayed anyway.“I don’t know if you will answer this one or not,” I said, “but I’m asking anyhow. Mama needs your help, and I need your forgiveness for what I’ve done and what I’ve got to do. Please send the Holy Spirit down before day after tomorrow. You know we can’t get through this alone. Amen.”
Chapter 32
THE MEETING WITH THE DA WAS ON FRIDAY, CRUCIFIXION DAY, and Thursday held lots of surprises before we bore crosses of our own. Mama and I woke up at ten and had to hurry to get to the office by our appointment time at eleven o’clock. Mr. Albright wanted to talk to me about what I was to say to Mr. Abadella, but I felt I was already well rehearsed.
He was waiting for us by the receptionist’s d
esk. Miss Kathleen was taking notes with her head bobbing up and down like one of Papaw’s chickens pecking worms out of the ground. Mr. Albright shook my hand and waved us back to his office. “No calls,” he said without looking back. I figured Miss Kathleen knew better anyway, but as we walked down the hall, I heard her faint “Yes sir.”
We sat in our usual places, Mama on the couch, Mr. Albright and I in matching leather chairs.There was an ashtray on the coffee table, and as soon as Mama sat down, she opened her white purse and got out her Luckies.When she took out a cigarette, Mr. Albright leaned forward and whipped a silver lighter out of his jacket pocket and lit her up. He was prepared for us, and somehow this underpinning made me even more scared than I already was.What he said next really worried me.“Layla Jay, how’s my son?”
I had no idea what to say. “Sir?”
“Jehu. I believe you see him more than his mother and I.” He was smiling.
I wasn’t going to start this meeting with a lie when there’d be so many coming out of my mouth later. “He’s fine,” I said. “I know he wasn’t supposed to see me; Jehu told me, but ...”
Mr. Albright held his pleasant expression. “Kind of a meant to be thing, huh?”
“I guess,” I said, looking over at Mama for help. She was staring at the bookcase like she was in the library searching for a good read.
He crossed his legs and reached for his yellow legal pad on the coffee table and said,“It’s all right. His mother and I had a talk with him last night. He’s allowed to see you, just not too often. Okay?”
“Okay.” Why are we talking about Jehu, I wanted to ask. We had much more important things to discuss than teenagers in love.
“Now, let’s get down to it,” he said, and now I saw that he was trying to help me relax, feel safe when we “got down to it.”
Mr. Albright suggested questions Mr. Abadella might ask and seemed happy enough with all of my answers. Occasionally, he would suggest another word like stepdaddy instead of stepdad. “Sounds less grown-up,” he said. I caught on quickly. I was a fast learner, and I had been Mama’s understudy for handling men for years.
After Mr. Albright deemed us prepped for our meeting, I asked him what time we were supposed to come back the next day. “Not here.We go to him,” he said. “Eight-thirty. He has to be in court by ten-thirty. Your mother knows where to go.”
My heart skipped a beat. I had thought we’d be right in this room in familiar surroundings, in the room I loved so much. Going to the DA’s office was going to add to my fear. I looked at Mama, and she shrugged. “That’s the way they do this, Layla Jay.We’ll have to follow his rules.”
Just like God, I wanted to say. And how could I follow all the rules when I didn’t even know what they were?
MAMA AND I WENT FOR HOT FUDGE SUNDAES, but mine melted in my hand before I’d taken a few bites. “Let’s take a drive. Sitting around the house all afternoon is going to drive us crazy,” Mama said.
I agreed and we took off in Wallace’s Galaxie, speeding past the County Co-op, Mississippi Power and Light, and Mac’s Hardware, and then we left civilization behind as Mama turned off the highway onto an unpaved road. “Where we going?” I asked.
“You’ll see. Let’s pretend we’re pioneer women traveling across Indian Territory.We’re on our way to the prairie where our men are waiting and worrying about us.”
I patted the seat between us. “Is this our covered wagon?”
Mama laughed. “Yeah, it is.” Driving with one hand, she fished a brush out of her purse and handed it to me. “Here’s your shotgun. Use it if you have to.” Mama had never been this silly, and while I smiled along with her, enjoying the playacting, I could feel my organs knotting up with anxiety.This was a little too weird, even for Mama.
We passed a row of shacks with colored people sitting and standing on their porches, fields of yellow withered cornstalks, red plowed earth that awaited the fall crops of peanuts and mustard, turnips, and collards. The rutted road jostled me against the door over and over, and I rolled up my window against the dust billowing into the car. Mama was driving too fast, and when we came upon a cow standing in the middle of the road, she slammed on the brakes and skidded us sideways. I squealed, but Mama didn’t say a word. She shifted into reverse, turned the wheel, and rocketed us back forward, accelerating quickly to the same speed we’d been going. “Should have shot him,” she said to me. “Next time, take aim.”
Somehow Mama seemed to know the road. She would let up on the gas just before a curve like she knew it was coming up even when I couldn’t see it and there were no warning signs. We crossed a one-lane wooden bridge over a little creek and she pointed to it. “Mills Creek,” she said. “Used to be much bigger.”
“You know where we are?”
“Yep, used to come out here all the time with Pop when I was a little girl.”
When she didn’t say more, I asked, “Why? What did you do out here?” I was sure they weren’t visiting the residents, who were all colored people.
“You’ll see in just a minute,” she said.
We drove maybe two more miles before she turned into a graveled drive with a posted sign PRIVATE PROPERTY on it. “Whose is it?” I asked looking down the long stretch of three-stranded barbed wire.
Mama didn’t answer me. She pulled the set of keys out of the ignition.“Get out,” she said.“I want to show you something.” I followed her to the locked gate, where she used one of the keys on her ring to open the padlock.
“Is this all yours?”
Mama grinned.“Come on.” And she set off walking across the field, a mosaic of white-top sedge, Queen Anne’s lace, yellow goldenrod, pink bull thistle, and purple milkweed. It was a glorious spectacle worthy of a movie scene.
I hurried to catch up. Wiping sweat from my brow and lifting my hair from my neck, I followed her through the waves of suffocating heat. After we trudged up a small hill, I looked down and saw a beautiful sparkling pond surrounded by pines as tall as any I’d ever seen. “Oh, it’s beautiful,” I said.
Mama scampered down the hill, and when she reached the pond, she kicked off her shoes and sat on the bank dangling her legs into the water. I joined her and splashed the cool water up my burning legs.“Did you buy this land?”
“No, Pop did. When I was a little girl, he bought it for me. Eighty acres of timber, the pond, and that creek I pointed out to you. It meanders over this way and runs all the way across the back of the property line.”
I swatted a mosquito. “But why didn’t we ever come here? Why didn’t you ever tell me about it?”
Mama lay back on the grass. “Because I was hardheaded and stupid and thought I knew everything.When I was a teenager, I told Pop to sell it, that I’d rather have the money than some old land with nothing on it but red dirt and trees. We had a terrible fight, one of the only times I think Pop and Mama agreed on anything. They told me they weren’t selling it, that it would always be here for me, and that someday I’d come to appreciate it.” Mama sat up and swept her arms around her.“The deed is still in Pop’s name, but he’s told me many times that he’d sign it over to me if I would promise not to sell it.” Mama grinned. “I knew better than to make him a promise I wasn’t going to keep. I figured someday, after he was gone, I’d sell it and use the money to go to France, maybe buy a villa and live there.” She looked down at her damp dress.“But I’m going to prison instead. I never imagined that I’d be sitting here with you wishing we lived in a house on this land.”
“You don’t want to go to France anymore?”
“No, not anymore. All those years I hated living in the country, scheming to get into town and away from my roots, and look what’s happened to us. Sometimes we have to get what we want to know that it’s not what we thought it was.” She shrugged. “There’s no place far enough away to escape who you are. I was raised in the country and it will always be a
part of me no matter if I go to France or Timbuktu.” She stood up and offered me her hand. After she pulled me to my feet, she placed her hands on my shoulders.“I wanted to bring you here today to show you your legacy. I don’t know how long my sentence will be, but on every day of it, I’m going to close my eyes and see all of this, just as it is now with you and me standing beside the pond. And that’s going to be my strength and my goal. I’ll have a dream to hang on to, something to give me courage when I need it.” Mama twisted me back and forth and smiled. “Now don’t you feel like a pioneer woman out here in the wilderness? When I get out, maybe we’ll build a log house with a stone fireplace. We’ll ask Mervin to move in, and he can bring all of his little stone animals and people out here to live with us.”
“I’d like that,” I said. I was crying, but I was smiling, too.
THAT NIGHT I WOKE UP AGAIN and again to look at the clock as it ticked away the hours until our meeting the next morning. When I heard Mama stirring in her room, I knew she hadn’t slept much either.Throwing back the covers, I went to my closet and pulled out my little girl dress. It was finally time to begin preparations for my performance. Staring at myself in the mirror, I leaned forward and whispered to my reflection.“You’re ten, you’re a little girl.” I took a step back and thought that I could never pull it off. I was just too tall and my breasts were still visible. Mr. Abadella would see right through our ruse, wouldn’t he?
When Mama came out of her room, I felt better. She had transformed into June’s mother. She wore pink lipstick and a light dusting of blush, just enough to give her a healthy glow, and she’d pulled her hair back with little silver barrettes shaped like musical staff notes. Her dress was perfect. It was mint green, full-skirted with a cloth belt around her small waist, and trimmed with a white lace collar and dainty white buttons. She wore low white patent heels and held a matching clutch purse. She spun around. “What do you think?”