by Gin Phillips
I looked to Lois for support; she shrugged.
I didn’t blush. But I didn’t like to feel like I was on display with everyone looking at me. With boys and most grown-ups, you ended up feeling like they were holding up some yardstick to you. I didn’t like being measured was all.
“I’m only sayin’ it because I have this—”
Ella interrupted me. “You do not have a hump in the middle of your nose, so don’t get started on that. We don’t want to hear about it anymore.”
Arguing with Ella was a waste of energy. So I stopped talking. Scanning the trees as we passed, I jerked to a stop. Tucked into the pulled-back bark of a pine tree, the cicada shell was almost invisible. Brown and crisp, slit down its back. I crunched through the weeds and leaves over to the tree, hiking up my navy skirt to avoid the brambles.
“Wait a second,” I said to Ella and Lois, barely loud enough for them to hear. They were a good twenty feet ahead of me then. But they stopped and backtracked, not looking at all surprised.
“Found you one?” asked Lois.
“Mmm-hmm.” I pried it off gently, not breaking the little leg husks. It stuck to my collar like it’d been waiting to get a nicer home than that dirty bark. I’d add it to the box under our bed at home. I liked to keep enough to wear them sometimes in winter. They kept real well if you were gentle with them. And I didn’t wear them out in public, of course. Just at home.
Ella looked disgusted. “I can’t believe you throw a fit if your hair musses, but you’ll wear a bug like it’s made of diamonds.”
“It’s not a bug. The bug’s gone. It makes its own sculpture of itself and leaves it behind.” I didn’t usually do my shell collecting with an audience. It seemed more serious—and a lot quieter—when I was alone.
“It’s skin,” said Ella, wrinkling her nose.
“I know,” I said. “But look how perfect it is.” It was my first memory of something that was not Mama or Papa or warm fire or dinner table. I’d been wandering around in the backyard, while Mama was hanging clothes on the line, and I came across a cicada shell, which, of course, looked just like the one I’d just found ten years later or so. They weren’t creative creatures. I stared at it until Mama pulled me away, and when she did, I pulled it off the tree. Crushed it in my hand with a grip not used to being gentle. I was horrified that I’d killed it, and Mama kept telling me it wasn’t alive to kill. But the next time I found one, I picked it up as gentle as if I were holding a butterfly by the wings.
Ella had plopped herself down on a stump, hands on her hips, just like her mama did when Ella sassed her. “If you’re not partial to Henry Harken, what about Tom Olsen?”
Tom lived next to Ella and Lois, and he served as our personal messenger service. When they had a message for me, he’d ride his bike over to our house, give me the note, then wait until I’d responded and carry it on back to the twins. He had pretty gray eyes with long lashes like a woman’s. I’d mostly noticed his eyes—I’d had time to look because he never looked straight at me, mainly looked over my shoulder or kicked his bicycle tires. But he was always smiling, showing his barely crooked teeth to the space over my shoulder. His eyes and crooked teeth seemed nicer to me than Henry Harken’s expensive clothes.
“What about Tom Olsen?” I said. I fingered the cicada lightly, checking if it was stuck good.
“Don’t you think he’s absolutely divine?”
“Ella…” She thought most boys were absolutely divine.
“Well, the first basketball game’s at the end of the month, and I’ll go with Hanson, ’course.” He’d been calling on her for six months—her parents weren’t as strict as Mama and Papa, so boys had been walking her home ever since she turned fourteen. “I want his cousin to take Lois, and Tom could take you. We could the six of us go together.”
“With the boys?”
“Yes,” she said patiently, hands still on her hips. “That’s what makes it six. With no boys, it’d be three.”
“Likely that’s the highest math she can do,” said Lois.
“I don’t think Papa would let me.”
“You could ask him,” pointed out Lois. “It’d just be as friends. And all six of us would be together the whole time.”
“Hanson’ll drive us. He’s got loan of a car while his brother’s working in Kentucky.”
I’d never ridden in a car with anybody but Papa. He got the first car in Carbon Hill, and the five years since then, he’d been carting everybody around. Relatives needing to go to the doctor, men riding to work with him, shopping trips to Birmingham. Sometimes he’d get woken up in the middle of the night to go get the doctor if somebody was having a baby. I think Mama’d ridden in the car twice other than going to church on Sundays—every time she was about to get to go somewhere, somebody squeezed in and took her place. And she’d stay there at home, smiling at us and waving from the porch as we left.
Leta I WISHED THEY HADN’T’VE COME ON CANNING DAY. I know word about the baby must’ve spread all over town before the sheriff even carried him off, but somehow the women all waited a week to drop by. And then all at once, like locusts.
Midway through the morning, with two pots boiling on the stove and the fire going strong, even with the windows open, my face was red with the heat. No matter how often I swiped at my forehead, I could feel the salty drops running down my cheeks and upper lip. My dress was wet under the arms. I was pouring more sugar into the pickles when I heard a shout at the front door.
“You home, Leta?”
“Come back to the kitchen!” I recognized the voice—Charlene Burch from down the hill. Small woman, big eyes, voice like train brakes squealing. She stepped into the kitchen, nose lifted.
“How many jars of pickles you done?”
“Six quarts so far. Second batch has another day to go. Just got sugar left.” I moved to the first bowl, the smell of vinegar sharp and strong, and carried it with both hands out to the back porch. I poured the vinegar off, then came back in and started to carry the second bowl out to do the same.
Charlene had set down at the table and was biting into a sliced pear from a bowl. It’d been soaking in sugar overnight, and she took tiny, mousy bites like it was a piece of chocolate. “Didn’t grow cucumbers this year,” she said. “Kids ain’t too fond of ’em.”
“The boys doin’ good?” I asked, calling over my shoulder as I stepped on the porch. “Jolie gettin’ on well at the high school?” Jolie was their oldest, a year ahead of Virgie.
“They’re all just fine. Our youngest is startin’ a paper route next week—bring in a little extra. Yours gettin’ on?”
“All right as rain.” I poured the sugar on the cucumbers, covered ’em with a towel. Water in the reservoir was hot enough to start on the preserves.
“Not upset by the poor baby?”
I filled up the pot halfway, ladling water slowly. “Not so’s you’d notice. Tess was real shook up at first.”
“She saw the woman—that’s what I heard at the post office.”
“Just shadows.”
“Who do you think would do it?”
“Can’t say.” I leaned over and pulled the sugared pears away from her.
“Think it might have been Lola? Lord knows she’s got plenty young’uns around.”
I sighed. “She’s a sweet woman. She’s got a good heart.”
“There’s somethin’ about her, though. Can’t ever tell what that one’s thinkin’. Or Eleanor Lucid—she’s never been quite right. Living like she does with no man or children around. Wouldn’t know what she might do.”
I stirred while she talked. Charlene never expected much talking back. She kept right on, and I never did understand where she thought Eleanor Lucid could’ve got her hands on a baby, touched in the head or not.
Anna Laurie Tyler came in when all the pear preserve jars were lined up on the back porch, lids off, cooling. I was starting the figs.
She looked near tears when she came through the door
—she’d come up the back way like she did a few times a week. She was just a’staring at the well when I looked over.
She felt my eyes on her and looked up. “Up for company?”
“Come on in and set a spell,” I called back.
“So this is where he was. It’s a horror—just makes your blood run cold.”
She seemed to think it must’ve been a girl, Virgie’s age or so, not married. She named a few women’s daughters she thought were the most likely. I put her to work stirring figs while I started scalding more quart jars.
The Bingham sisters—married, though, so they weren’t really Binghams anymore—came after lunch. Didn’t even sit. They wanted to know if the baby had marks on him, if it looked like he’d been beat. Seemed they thought they’d heard a baby screaming too loudly at the neighbor’s place the week before.
“Not normal baby hollerin’—sounded different. I told Johnny it made shivers run down my spine,” one of them whispered. “Haven’t seen that baby in days and days.”
The next one had heard it was two babies. And the one after that thought his head had been missing. Those two helped me lay the paraffin over the preserves.
Celia stuck her head through the door before the girls and Jack were due home. “Got a porch full of preserves out here,” she called. “And looks like you’ve done gone and pickled yourself along with the cucumbers.”
I smiled to see her. My apron was splattered with vinegar and fruit juice, my hands flecked with wax. My head felt hot enough that I swore I could feel my brain swelling with the heat. I did feel unsteady, light-headed. “Get yourself in here, Celia.”
“You get yourself out here. Get some cool air on you.”
“I ain’t even started supper.”
“Won’t be startin’ nothin’ if you keel over into the stove.”
I took off my apron and followed her. The back porch wasn’t as social as the front—it looked out over the trees instead of the road. “Like some tea?” I asked, pausing at the door.
“Sure would,” she said, but grabbed hold of my arm and steered me outside. “Stay there.” She disappeared, then popped back with two glasses, walking over to the silver pitcher near the well. She pulled back the cloth covering it and poured the tea quickly, without spilling a drop.
“Need to drink you three or four of these,” she ordered. “Done sweat out all your fluids.” Her dark hair was sleek as ever, curls smooth and tidy tucked into a twist. I’d never seen Celia sweat, even though she could crank the Model T with one hand or snatch up a bale of hay like it was a toddler.
The tea tasted good. Sweet enough to cut through the layers of fumes and hot air stuck in my throat.
“Saw all the cluckin’ hens come through here,” she said. “Showin’ Christian concern?”
I smiled again, nearly chuckled. We were standing right by the well, and all I could think was how much I’d like to pour a bucket of water on my head. Or have a run down to the creek like one of the girls. “Mainly they was namin’ names. So horrified by it they just can’t quit talkin’ about it.”
Celia finished her tea and pulled out her snuff. It was an awful habit, but she’d done it for the eighteen years I’d known her. Got to where it seemed like another woman pulling out her sewing. She pulled her fingers back from her mouth and narrowed her eyes at me. “But you ain’t talkin’?”
“About it?” I breathed out, ran my fingers over my hair. “Don’t see no reason for it. It’s done. That baby’s in a better place.”
“What about his mama?”
I’d thought about that, but I’d ladled it into a jar and sealed it up tight. “Ain’t my concern. That’s for the sheriff.”
I’d got the preserves done—pear and fig—and pickles’d be done the next day. Enough to last through next spring, plus a jar or two for Albert’s brothers who were bound to come by looking for whatever they could get. Just had the beans left to do.
Tess WE COULD GO OVER THE LIST ONLY IN OUR HEADS during church—no pencils and paper—because you had to sit straight and pay attention the whole time or you’d get a pinch on your arm from Mama. If I was caught writing, Papa’d probably whip me when we got home. Virgie was too old for being whipped.
It was awful hard to sit still, because even though there was a breeze outside, all the bodies heated up the one room like so many person-sized fireplaces. We all sweated except for Papa; most everybody’d picked up a fan from the stack by the door on the way in. Square with little folded pleats, they advertised Garrett as “sweet, mild snuff,” which made it sound like taffy or mints. During prayer, all you could hear was those paper fans whuh-whuhing through the air, and the old men hacking up phlegm. (I asked Papa about that one time and he said it was the mines that did it, made your spit hard and solid where it caught in your throat. Then Mama came in and he had to stop explaining because she didn’t care for us to discuss spit and the like.)
The Baptist church had a stained-glass window, but we had no color in ours. The steeple had been reattached with metal bolts after it got blown off once, but other than that little reminder of some sort of excitement a while back, it was a dull building. Just two columns of pews, small windows, plain wood floors. Nothing to look at but the people.
There were lots of hats and nice dresses and shiny shoes with ankle straps. Virgie wore a two-piece green dress that Mama said was starting to fit too tight. It was hard for anything to fit her too tight—she didn’t stick out anywhere. Mama’s corset, which Virgie helped cinch, made her seem softer and rounder under her navy blue dress and jacket. Papa just looked uncomfortable in his tie and white shirt that Mama ironed early in the morning along with the tablecloth. Mostly the other men looked as itchy as Papa in their suits, but the women looked scrubbed and pleased in their getups. We’d had plenty of time to look at everybody since most of the church had come up asking about the baby and wondering how we were doing, especially me. But most of them hardly looked at me when they asked how I was holding up, and nobody let me get more than a word out before they asked what it looked like and how we got it out and who we thought did it. Papa sat there not saying a word, and Mama answered mostly with shrugs and tight smiles and “Couldn’t say.”
The preacher was friendly looking with white hair puffed up like a cloud and a young face. He led singing, too, better than most of them, his big, deep voice settling in my belly like a swallow of hot soup. He’d come in town for a contracted meeting, so we’d be back at church most nights, probably. Maybe he’d be up at Winfield or Eldridge some of those nights, and we might stay home, depending.
The first song we sang was the bleeding sheep song.
Tho your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow
Tho they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool…
We sang about washing a lot. Water and blood.
Lola Lowe wasn’t there. Other women were, with their babies in plain sight, and I checked them off the list in my head. We still had Pride Stanton and Mrs. Taylor—I thought LeAnne was her first name—to check for sure, along with Lola Lowe. Those three lived fairly close and we knew them a little bit, so it made sense to see about them first before we got to tracking down anybody else. I made a note in my head to say that to Virgie.
Ms. Genie had to pop her two-year-old on the hand during the prayer because he was making a fuss. It shocked him long enough that he was quiet a few seconds, then he started howling. But the man saying the prayer (he had a steady, bee-buzzing voice that made you nod off during his prayers) was saying “Amen” anyway, so she shoved the little boy’s face into her chest, her hand wrapped around the back of his head, and carted him outside, where she probably wore him out. Then came the Lord’s Supper, which Virgie took and me and Jack didn’t. She’d been baptized in the creek two summers ago, and ever since then, she got to have the sip of grape juice and bit of bread that looked so good as it passed by late in the morning with dinner still an hour or so away.
A better song came next, wi
th a sweet soprano part that poured over you.
When peace like a river attendeth my way
When sorrows like sea billows roll
Whatever my lot thou hast taught me to say
It is well, it is well with my soul.
I fidgeted, wishing the pews weren’t so hard, and Papa looked at me so quick I almost missed it. I settled down and just twitched my toes as a compromise.
The sermon wasn’t shouted, not even an occasional word, and the warm-soup voice made my eyelids heavy. I looked over at Maddie Reynolds, an apple-shaped woman with lots of yellow hair. She was holding her baby, who’d been asleep the whole service. She swayed side to side just a fraction, eyes flickering down at him every few seconds.
And we thought she might have killed him.
Finally we were out, Papa and Mama getting caught up talking, and me headed to the door, wanting some cool air. And, I swannee, that slick-haired boy Henry Harken was waiting for Virgie outside, asking if he could walk her home.
Virgie OH, I JUST ABOUT DIED WHEN I SAW HENRY HARKEN standing there in his Sunday suit. But I was already at the top of the stairs before I noticed him, and he’d seen me for sure. So I walked on down the steps, sure everybody was watching and thinking how I’d never before had some boy waiting for me. He didn’t even go to church with us—he was a Methodist. His church was only a few blocks away, but I knew it couldn’t have gotten out at the same time we did. I wondered how long he’d waited.
I watched my feet going down the steps, proud that I’d shined my lace-up shoes and that I’d gone to the trouble of putting on garters. My green two-piece dress, belted at the waist, was the nicest I had and my favorite length, tea-length, halfway down my calf. It’s the most flattering to your legs. I smoothed my white gloves as I stepped, trying to make it look natural. Soon enough, though, I was at the bottom step, and Henry’s black shoes and gray pants were in front of me.