Sometimes Callie said, “I wish they’d hurry up and learn a new piece. I’m getting tired of that one.”
But the three perspiring musicians in the parlor went over and over the same simple notes, exclaiming with pleasure when they finished without mishap.
Jessica, listening from the kitchen where she helped with the dishes, felt left out of the fun. She began to wish she had practiced her piano, like Mama said. Now and then during the day she sat down and worked for half an hour. But her fingers were unruly, her timing erratic. She usually wound up thumbing through old Étude Magazines, which their music teacher had given Leonie, and engaging in mortal combat with some composition that had a romantic title. Callie never let this go on for long.
Sometimes at night, when Matthew and Tom were too tired for lessons, they joined the others on the porch. Mathy wouldn’t rest until Tom played the harmonica, and he wouldn’t play unless she agreed to sing. The musicale usually opened with a wild rendering of “Three Blind Mice,” Tom making the harmonica squeak and Mathy carried away with laughter. After that, everybody sang together. Sometimes they sang “The Butcher Boy,” the ballad Tom was singing that day when they found him in the creek. He had taught them the words. It made them laugh at first, remembering where they had heard it. But it was a lonesome tune, full of backcountry woe, and now when he played it they joined in softly. On those evenings Jessica floated upstairs in sweet melancholy and gazed dreamily into the mirror, remembering Marvin. Evangeline parted from Gabriel. It was all so beautiful and tragic.
One hot humid day, shortly after noon, Tom collapsed in the hayfield. Matthew brought him to the house in the wagon and drove off in the Ford to get a doctor.
“A little too much heat,” the doctor said and suggested that Tom take it easy for a couple days.
Callie put him to bed in the parlor. “Can’t let the poor little thing be sick in the barn,” she said. She spread clean ironed sheets on the spring cot and propped him up on pillows. During the hot part of the day, she kept the blinds pulled, so that the room looked cool and deep. The girls thought the whole affair marvelously dramatic. They ran in and out with potato soup, glasses of water, and lumps of ice in clean rags. Mathy brought him ferns and colored rocks and read him stories. Leonie played the piano for him and now and then allowed Jessica to join her for a duet. Jessica could manage the bass without too much trouble.
One afternoon while Tom was sleeping, Jessica tiptoed in to lower the blinds. When she turned around, Tom had opened his eyes and lay watching her thoughtfully. “Jessica,” he said in a musing tone.
“What?”
“Nothin’. Just ‘Jessica.’ I never did know anybody named that before. I knowed a Jessie once and a boy named Jess. But that’s not the same thing.” He went on looking at her with that same serious, thoughtful expression. “You look like a Jessica,” he said.
She laughed self-consciously. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. You just do.”
She fussed with the window curtain, making the gathers even. “You want a piece of ice?”
“I’d be much obliged.”
She brought him the ice and went upstairs to her room, where she stood at the mirror and considered herself. She turned her head sideways, lifted her hair and let it down again, pushed up the tip of her nose, and stared at her eyes for a long time with a little frown of concentration. You look like a Jessica. Now what did he mean by that? She smiled coyly into the mirror, like some girl on a calendar. Then she made a horrendous face at herself and turned away.
“Jessica?” came her mother’s voice from the kitchen.
“I’m coming.”
By Saturday night, Tom felt well enough to go to town with them. The ladies of the Renfro Methodist Church were giving an ice-cream supper that night, and Callie was taking ice cream and cake. Tom sat in the back seat between Mathy and Jessica, with the freezer between his feet.
“You girls treat me right good, I might buy you a disha ice cream,” he said.
“Better save your money, boy,” said Matthew.
“Why, I’ve got to buy this here Mathy a disha ice cream! If I don’t, she’s going to write a letter to my schoolmom and tell her I been chasin’ other gals!”
“I am not!”
“Why, didn’t you tell me you was? Didn’t you chase me up a tree with a corn knife yesterday and make me promise to buy you some ice cream?”
“I did not! Papa, he’s making that up!”
“Well, I’m going to buy you some anyway, to be on the safe side. I don’t want you spillin’ no beans to my gal.”
Mathy beat him with her fists. “I bet you haven’t got a girl.”
“I bet I have.”
“Why doesn’t she write to you then?”
“She don’t know where I am.”
“Why don’t you write and tell her?”
“ ’Cause I can’t write, that’s why!” He laughed. “That a good enough answer for you, Miss Priss?”
At the church, Tom unloaded the freezer and left them. He came back presently, wearing a new straw hat, hunted up Mathy and escorted her to a table, where they ordered two kinds of ice cream and cake. Callie, who was helping serve, came up and shook her head. “I declare, you’ll be sick, both of you.”
“No, we won’t, Mrs. Soames,” Tom said. “Soon as we finish here, we’re goin’ right over to the drugstore and buy some castor oil.”
“Oh, Tom,” said Mathy, “you’re so silly!”
Callie laughed at them. “Well, don’t eat any more tonight. Tom, you hadn’t ought to spend your money on her.”
Mathy ran off to play with the other little girls. Tom went around to help the ladies. As he came up from the street, where he had emptied a freezerful of ice water, he saw Jessica standing at the edge of the lawn. “Hi!” he said.
“Hi. Where’s Papa? I want to ask him for some money. I need a new hair ribbon.”
“He’s around here somewhere. Come on, I’ll buy you a disha ice cream.”
“Oooh,” said Jessica, patting her stomach, “I’ve already had some. I’m full.”
“Aw, you can eat another dish. Come on!”
Jessica lifted one shoulder. “All right. I reckon I can always eat more ice cream.” She slid onto a bench at one of the sawhorse tables. “My, but it’s hot!” She lifted the hair off her neck and fanned with her hanky.
“Here, I’ll help you.” Tom unfolded his pocket handkerchief and flapped it at her. “You got perty hair.”
“I hate it. I wish mine was yellow, like Leonie’s.”
“I like it brown and shiny, like yours.”
“Oooh, I don’t.” Jessica wiped the sweat off her forehead. “Whew! I guess you need ice cream on a night like this!”
“They got some mighty good-smellin’ banana ice cream back yonder. I opened the freezer for Mrs. Latham.”
Jessica made a face. “If it’s hers it’s liable to have eggshells in it. Or chicken feathers or something! She’s kinda messy with her cooking.”
“Glad you warned me. How about Mrs. Barrow’s? Hers looked pretty good.”
“Hers always tastes thin. She’s too stingy to use separated cream. That’s what Mama says. Mrs. Buxton always has good ice cream, though. Let’s ask for hers.” She waved at the lady coming toward them. “We want some of your ice cream, Mrs. Buxton. I hope there’s some left.”
“Why, I think there is,” said the lady. “I’ll fix you children a nice big dish.”
Jessica went down the list of church ladies and the quality of their cooking. Mrs. Sells’s devil’s-food was always four layers high and the icing tasted peculiar; Miss Serena Hicks put raisins in her ice cream; and so on. She and Tom had barely finished when Callie appeared in front of them. “Jessica, you come back here and help us awhile.”
“All right, Mama. Thanks for the ice cream, Tom.”
“You’re welcome.” He went off down the street.
“Tom bought me some ice cream, Mama.
Wasn’t that nice of him?”
“You stay back here with us, now, and help us out. We’re gettin’ busy.”
“Mama, do you think Papa would let me buy a new piece of ribbon? I need one real bad.”
“I don’t know, but I want you to stay around here with me. We’ll see about the ribbon later.”
The stores closed before Jessica could get away. But she didn’t care. She had nibbled at cake and ice cream all evening and wasn’t feeling too well. When they got home the house was so hot she insisted she would never go to sleep. Mathy was of the same opinion. After some amount of wheedling, Callie allowed them to drag the spring cot out to the yard.
Tom had already gone to the barn. When he started his nightly serenade, Jessica and Mathy joined in, singing. The three of them yelled back and forth and the girls acted silly and Matthew had to speak sternly to the whole lot of them from the upstairs window. They quieted down at last, and when Callie glanced out, a half hour later, the girls were fast asleep with the sheets pulled up to their chins.
Toward morning, when the moon had set and the sky begun to gray, Callie awoke and glanced again out the window. There was only one girl on the cot below. Jessica was nowhere to be seen. Instantly a kind of fear shot through Callie that had an old familiar taste. She threw a shawl around her shoulders and slipped downstairs.
“Mathy?” she whispered, shaking the little girl’s shoulder. “Where’s Jessica?”
“I don’t know,” Mathy said sleepily.
“Did you hear anyone—was Tom—”
“What’s the matter, Mama?” said Jessica, behind her.
Callie whirled around. “Mercy, honey! Where’d you go?”
“Down to the toilet.”
“You scared me to death!”
“Where did you think I was?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t think. Go on back to sleep now, both of you.” She tucked them in and, stooping quickly, kissed Jessica’s cheek. “Mama loves you,” she said and went back to the house.
“Where did she think I was?” Jessica murmured.
6
Jessica hated Sunday afternoons. The mornings were fine. She liked the hustle-bustle of breakfast and dressing for church. Sunday clothes were a nuisance, but they looked nice even if they were uncomfortable. (Callie often fretted because Jessica so resisted ladies’ clothes; she still clung to her girlish dresses with easy skirts and nothing that bound her or cut off her breath.) It was pleasant to sit in Sunday School with your friends and gossip between Sunday School and church and settle down then for the sermon and feel a hush come over you. The minister was an old man, dry and thin as a page in the Bible and full of fine words that made a good sound through the church. Brother Ward didn’t holler and pound like a lot of preachers; he merely leaned across the big open Bible and talked, and you listened and felt better.
And then to come out into the bright Sunday noon with that exalted feeling. You were so clean and so light and the sky shone; everyone was friendly, and there was ice cream for dinner! Jessica liked Sunday morning.
But Sunday afternoon was a different day. It was a lonesome time. The farm no longer seemed like home. Nothing looked familiar and nothing was real. You were caught up, stunned, in the heat and stillness; you couldn’t get out and no one could get in. And you were lonely in a way you could not describe.
The people around you changed, too. They took naps. They sat on porches and rocked and fanned, read Sunday School papers and stared at the road. Now and then a buggy, and once in a great while a car, passed by, raising a cloud of dust that hung in the air for a long time before it fell back to earth of its own weight. The house was under a spell, like the castle that slept for a hundred years. Even the spiders slept in their webs. A floor board creaked, a fly buzzed, a page rustled. That was all, except for the dismal sound of the locusts in the trees.
On Sunday afternoons Leonie wrote letters to friends and cousins, she studied her lesson for the following Sunday, and she practiced piano—all with a frowning seriousness of purpose. But Jessica was too miserable to do anything that mattered.
On the afternoon after the ice-cream supper, she wandered through the house for a while and at last sat down in the back yard with a volume of Longfellow’s poems. The wind mourned around the barn. She thought she would perish of longing, though she wasn’t sure what for. Except that she longed for Monday. Dear Monday, with its cheerful coming and going and people doing things.
Inside, Leonie had begun to practice piano. Up and down the scales she went, heavy-handed but accurate. Up and down, up and down, as monotonous as the locusts. Mathy came with her pencil and Big Chief tablet and sat under the tree. She was drawing a picture of a ladybug. As she drew she sang to herself.
“You spotted snakes, with double tongue
Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen;
Newts and blind-worms do not wrong;
Come not near our fairy queen.”
“Where did you get that song?” said Jessica.
“I made it up. Not the words, just the tune.”
“Where’d you get the words?”
“Out of a book.”
“What book?”
“I don’t know—one of those books in there in the bookcase. What’s a newt, Jessica?”
“I don’t know. We’ll have to ask Papa.”
“Listen!” said Mathy, raising her hand. “I hear an air-a-plane!”
They jumped up and ran to the barnlot, scanning the sky. But there was nothing in sight. “You probably heard the locusts down in the timber,” Jessica said.
They sat down again under the tree. Mathy tried to draw a picture of a plane, and Jessica went back to “Evangeline.” The afternoon seemed endless. Do re mi fa sol la ti do, went the piano…do ti la sol fa mi re do. Tom, who had been asleep in the front yard, came around to the well.
“Pump me a fresh drink,” said Mathy.
“Git the bucket and I’ll fill it up.”
She brought the bucket and dipper and they both had a drink. Then she pumped while Tom washed his face under the spout and ran his wet hands through his hair.
“Here, I’ll help you,” she said. She dribbled water on his head.
“You watch out now, Miss Priss.” Tom flicked a few drops in her face.
“That feels good!”
“Have a little more.” He splashed her again.
Mathy lifted a dipperful out of the bucket. Tom ran and she chased him. Just as she took aim, he dodged around the tree and the cupful of water struck Jessica. She jumped up, laughing, and ran to the house for another cup. The three of them began to chase each other around the yard. They laughed and yelled and got wetter and wetter. Hearing the commotion, Leonie came out to see what was going on. She got a cupful of water full in the face.
“You stop that!”
Mathy screamed with laughter. “I didn’t mean it! I was trying to hit Tom.”
Leonie dived for the water bucket and joined the fight. The girls’ hair began to stream wet and stick to their necks. Their cotton dresses clung to their bodies, molding their legs and little breasts. Tom’s shirt and his Sunday pants were soggy.
While Mathy and Leonie fought it out by the pump, Tom hurdled the back fence to get away from Jessica. She darted through the gate and they faced each other across the water trough.
“I’ll throw you in!” he panted.
“No, you won’t either!” Jessica lifted a double handful and threw it across at him. Tom bounded over, hooked an arm around her neck, and forced her head back on his shoulder. With his free hand he scooped up water and splashed it in her face. Jessica screamed and struggled, but he held her fast. The air was full of shrieks and laughter and flying water. Sunday afternoon had burst open like a jail and there was riot in the back yard. Into the midst of it, Matthew’s voice snapped like a bull whip. “Here now! That’ll be enough!”
Mathy, chasing Leonie with the water bucket, turned and saw him and with a look of manic glee flung the whole
bucketful over his head.
It was in the evening after lamplight when Callie came upstairs. The insurrection was long since over. Wet clothes hung on the line; Mathy had been spanked and Jessica and Leonie sent up to their room for the rest of the day. They were lying on the bed laughing when Callie appeared in the doorway.
“Jessica, will you come in here a minute, please?”
Jessica went into her mother’s room, and Callie closed the door. “Sit down, honey. Mama wants to talk to you.”
Jessica felt suddenly as if she had swallowed a grindstone. If there was anything that filled her with dread and gloom, it was one of Callie’s heart-to-hearts.
“It’s about Tom,” Callie began.
“What about him?”
“Last night. I don’t think it looked nice, him buying you ice cream.”
“Why not? He bought Mathy some ice cream.”
“I know. But that’s not the same thing. Mathy’s just a little girl. You’re getting to be a young lady now, Jessica, and you have to be more careful around boys.”
“But that was just Tom!”
“That’s it, honey. I don’t think it’s very nice, you settin’ up at a table in public like that, with the boy we hire to help us on the farm.”
“Oh.”
“People’ll start thinking you’re his girl.”
“Oh, Mama!”
“Well, they will. People talk, no matter how innocent you are. And I don’t want ’em thinkin’ the superintendent’s daughter has to go around with no hired hand. It’s embarrassing to Papa.”
The Moonflower Vine Page 9