by Lori Roy
“I’m sorry, Annie,” Mama says, her head still buried in her arms. “I thought Ellis was here again. Thought he’d come back, but we just left him, didn’t we?” She lets out a laugh that might turn into a cry. “Don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Grandma looks angry, Mama,” Caroline says.
“Don’t you worry about that,” Mama says and throws open her door.
“Is she with you?” Grandma shouts, stepping down to the second stair and shielding her eyes with one hand to get a better look in the car. She limps as she does it, which means she’s angry enough to forget about pretending. “Annie,” she shouts out again. “Is Annie with you?”
“Yes,” Mama says. The panic in Grandma’s voice grabs hold of Mama. She pulls open Annie’s door and yanks her from the car. “Annie’s here. She’s fine.”
“Inside,” Grandma says. The cut on Grandma’s face has healed over, but as she waves an arm at Annie, Mama, and Caroline, she can’t hide the blue bruising on it that only seems to have worsened since the fall. “Inside, the all of you.”
Grandma’s lavender is simmering again, and they all sit around the table—Daddy, the sheriff, and Miss Watson. Grandma is calming them all, which means something has happened. Abraham Pace stands behind Miss Watson, one hand on her shoulder, looking small for the first time in his life.
“She looked just like her,” Miss Watson says, pointing a finger at Annie as she crosses into the kitchen. “I’d have thought it was Annie staring in my windows if I didn’t know better. Was it, Annie? Was it you?”
Annie shakes her head and takes a step backward. Mama wraps an arm around Annie’s shoulder and draws her in tight.
“What’s happened?” Mama says, shifting herself around so she stands between Miss Watson and Annie.
Black smudges frame Miss Watson’s eyes as if she’s been rubbing at them or wiping at them and she’s smeared her eye makeup. Her chest shudders every time she inhales, and her hair has yet to see a comb or brush this morning.
“Then it was Juna I saw,” Miss Watson says, looking up at Abraham. “Even after all these years, I still knew her. Would know her anywhere. She looked just like Annie. Exactly like her.”
“You need to hush that talk,” Abraham says, smoothing a hand over her hair and locking eyes with Daddy.
It’s nearly out for everyone to hear. Miss Watson saying Aunt Juna looks like Annie, exactly like Annie, is as near to the surface as the secret has ever been in this house.
“Says someone was poking around her place last night.” Grandma leans in so she can whisper to Mama. “Says she got a close-up look. Says Juna looked right in her window.”
“You can’t leave me no more, Abey,” Miss Watson says. “Promise you won’t leave me no more.”
Abraham looks around the room, his eyes passing over every one of them. He’s apologizing in that silent way families have of apologizing to one another.
“I won’t leave you. And we’ll be married before you know it. Ain’t that right, Mary?” he says to Grandma, who is watching out the kitchen window and not much listening to Abraham. “Ain’t that right, Sarah? They’re going to see to a perfect day, aren’t you? A perfect day and we’ll be married. Juna ain’t going to ruin that. Ain’t no one going to ruin that.”
“Did you find cigarettes?” Annie asks, pulling away from Mama and stepping up to Miss Watson. “And did she have eyes like mine, as black as mine?”
Miss Watson’s eyes stretch wide. Even small as they are, they stretch open until they look almost like normal eyes. She nods, slow at first and then faster.
“Why is she here, Annie?” Miss Watson says. “What have you done to bring her here?”
“Don’t you ask such a thing of this child,” Grandma says, pushing between Mama and Annie to stand at Annie’s side.
“Please,” Mama says. “Let’s not stir up trouble. It was probably a neighbor, Abigail. Or kids, kids pulling a prank.”
“I’d rather stir up trouble,” Grandma says, “than see something befall this child.”
“Mother,” Daddy says, “you’ve no call to say that.”
“No call to say what?” It’s Caroline. She’s standing at the end of the table, staring at Miss Watson.
“Your Uncle Dale died because I didn’t speak my mind back then,” Grandma says. “Or rather I did speak my mind, but no one cared to listen. I knew that girl was bound to bring heartache, and I’ll not have it happen again.”
Mama takes a backward step.
“I’m sorry, Sarah,” Grandma says. “I don’t mean no harm, but I’ll not let you make light of what this girl’s telling us.”
“That’ll be quite enough,” Sheriff Fulkerson says, rubbing his forehead and lifting a hand to Annie so she’ll not answer Miss Watson’s questions. “Let’s not have this get the better of us.”
The men who came from Lexington told Sheriff Fulkerson he was a damn fool for wasting their time. They drove all that way to see what killed a woman old as Mrs. Baine? Old age killed her, they said. No trauma to the head or any other part of her. No bullet hole. No knife wound. No bruises around her neck. Sheriff Fulkerson asked if those men knew of Juna Crowley. They smiled when they said they did and then silenced themselves as if waiting for the sheriff to try to explain how Juna Crowley and the girl who looked just like her had one damn thing to do with this dead old woman. The men would have called Sheriff Fulkerson a damn fool all over again if he had tried to explain. Instead, he said none of those things, and the men from Lexington had patted him on the back and said that folks who grow old have a way of eventually dying.
“John, how about you and I take a drive,” the sheriff says. “Let’s us have a look around Abigail’s place.”
Pushing back from the table, Daddy pulls on his hat. “That all right with you, Abe? Caroline’ll see to Abigail. Take her upstairs, let her clean herself up.”
Abraham nods and pulls out Miss Watson’s chair as she stands. Caroline walks toward the living room and waits there for Miss Watson to join her. As she waits, Caroline keeps her eyes on the floor, won’t look at Annie. She’s remembered about the café and Lizzy Morris and Annie saying she saw Jacob Riddle in that well, and she’s back to being angry.
“Well,” Abraham says, his voice normal again and looking his usual size now that Miss Watson has left the room. “Look at here.”
He lifts one of Annie’s hands, the hand that holds the deck of cards Ellis Baine gave her.
“Here’s that deck I was looking for the other night.”
He takes the cards, tosses them in the air, and catches them one-handed. When Miss Watson was in the room, Abraham had shrunk in on himself, but with her gone, he’s looking happy, expectant, excited even. He’s all of those things because he believes it now for sure. First Annie saw her and now Miss Watson saw her. Aunt Juna is home.
“Thought I lost these,” he says as he tucks the deck in his shirt pocket, leans forward, and shouts after Miss Watson. “See there, Abigail,” he says. “Our luck is turning already. Found them cards we was missing. My lucky deck of cards.”
• • •
ALL AFTERNOON, ANNIE’S been watching for Aunt Juna from the bedroom window, but she sees Ellis Baine instead. She’s high enough to see the whole of the Baines’ place. He walks from his house, across the porch, and over to the well where Annie found his mama. He leans there, not drawing water, not doing anything, or maybe doing everything by standing where Annie can see him. He couldn’t possibly see her staring at him from such a distance, but he turns his head real slow the way a person does when he feels someone watching him, and it would seem he is looking in Annie’s direction. She steps away and presses herself flat against the wall, listening, though not sure what she’s listening for. But he doesn’t know which room is hers, couldn’t possibly know. She steps back where she can see and tries to decide if she’ll tell about the cards.
She spent most of yesterday and all of last night thinking about Abraham Pace and
those cards. It means something that they are his, though she doesn’t know what. Ellis Baine will know, but she isn’t altogether sure telling him is something she should do. She’s still deciding when she hears the creaking and whining.
From her other bedroom window, she can also look down on the whole of the drive leading up to the house. She sees Ryce long before he drops his bike at the back porch. He’s here on his lunch hour again, one day after Annie saw Lizzy Morris at the café. Lizzy probably told him all about it last night. Probably told him Annie Holleran was, at the very least, wearing proper undergarments.
After dropping his bike, Ryce unrolls the one pant leg he’s all the time rolling up so it doesn’t get caught in his chain, walks up the stairs, across the porch, and knocks on the back door. Because the screen door doesn’t bounce in its frame and the hook latch doesn’t rattle for being left to hang loose and unhooked, Mama must have locked up tight when she left for town.
“Hello,” Ryce says, his voice drifting up to Annie’s open window. “Mrs. Holleran? Annie?”
Another knock. And then another. He stands at the back door a full five minutes, knocking and calling out. More and more, Ryce favors his daddy, not so much the look of him but in other ways. Ryce is already taller than his daddy and is more lean than stout. He gets that from his mama. He shares something different with his daddy, something subtle and not so altogether easy to name. Certain words he strings together, a way he nods his head while at the same time puckering up his lips, the posture he takes on when standing with his feet planted a shade too wide and his arms crossed.
Folks must see the same in Annie. Those who knew Juna Crowley must see Annie growing into her mama, taking on her ways and inclinations. Annie likely stands in a particular fashion that reminds folks of Juna, probably molds her face into an expression that is so like something Juna once did, must utter some phrase Juna was prone to uttering. Or maybe all that similarity comes from living with a person, soaking up a person, for all of sixteen, seventeen, or eighteen years. Sounding just like his daddy, Ryce keeps calling out, but no one except Annie is home to hear.
Daddy left early to make a run to the lumberyard. He’s picking up wood for cheap to build a few makeshift tables. Grandma is expecting more people than ever to come on Sunday, and late last night she decided they didn’t have enough seating and couldn’t Daddy find a way to give her more. Mama, Caroline, and Grandma went into town with Miss Watson to shop for something new and something blue and to stop her from worrying that Aunt Juna is back to ruin all her plans for a happy life. Annie had told Daddy she would be going to town with Mama and Grandma, and she told Mama and Grandma she’d be going to the lumberyard with Daddy. Everyone believed her, and now she finds herself home alone.
The sheriff, Abraham Pace, and Daddy searched Miss Watson’s house. They checked every window and rattled every door to show Miss Watson her windows were shut tight and her locks were working fine. After searching for half a day, Daddy came home to say Miss Watson might have a taste for whiskey, same as Abraham, although they did find a few cigarette butts outside the house. Annie asked were they snapped almost in two. Daddy said yes.
“Jesus Christ,” Ryce shouts from the drive.
Though Annie can’t see him, she imagines he’ll have laid his head back and is shouting up at her open window.
“What the hell do I have to do, Annie?”
Annie sits under the window, her knees bent up, arms wrapped across them and her face buried there, as Ryce walks around the house, shouting out the same. Eventually, Ryce will tire of Annie. He’s a good enough boy—that’s what Daddy’s always saying as if he’s somehow, for some reason, bracing himself for a lifetime of Ryce Fulkerson at the family table—and so Ryce will do what’s polite. He’ll try to soothe Annie by pretending it never happened, or maybe come right out and say he’s already forgotten it. But Annie will never forget. It’s no longer the memory of Ryce Fulkerson seeing her everything because of a rain-soaked shirt that is causing her this pain. Now Ryce is all tangled up in the lie Annie told about seeing Jacob Riddle down in that well and the hurt Annie caused Caroline by telling it. Ryce standing outside, shouting for Annie to please come out and talk to him, is nothing but a reminder of what a hurtful, selfish thing Annie has done.
Another five minutes pass, and finally that front tire of Ryce’s starts creaking and whining and slowly fades away. Ellis Baine, however, is still leaning up against that well, waiting for Annie.
21
1936—SARAH AND JUNA
THE ROOM IS dark except for the glow of a single kerosene lantern that sits near the bed. Juna lies on her back, the round bulge in her stomach straining her skin until it’s taut like a stretched hide. She coughs—a deep cough that rattles in her chest. It’s the cold air that burns her lungs. Outside, the wind rushes down the hill and past our small house, whistling through the cracks in the walls and the ceiling and around the one small window. Every night, rushing and whistling and it never stops.
The wet cloth on Juna’s forehead has turned stiff with the cold. I douse it in water kept warm by the fire, wring it, blot it to her face. At the end of the bed, near Juna’s feet, I fuss with a wooden stool until it’s positioned just so. As I move through the lantern’s smoky light, I throw long, dark shadows. Placing one hand under Juna’s right knee, I lift it and, with the other hand, push on her shin until her leg is bent. I do the same with her other leg, help her to sit up, and show her how to hook her arms under each knee. It’s what the women told me I should do. None of them would come but instead taught me what to do and how to do it and wished me well.
“God damn this cold,” Juna says.
I press Juna’s knees up and out. Strands of her long yellow hair have pulled loose from the cotton kerchief she wears. Even in the dim light, her cheeks and forehead shine and have the same pink glow she’d have after a day walking the fields under a full sun.
“Push now. Don’t stop until I say.”
When we knew the day was getting close, I pasted strips of cloth in the room’s one small window. I cut feed bags in long, thin strips and soaked them in flour and water I mixed up on the porch. It’s meant to keep out the cold, cut the draft, but even as I lower myself onto the stool, cold air settles in around my ankles and brushes past my cheeks.
“You’ve got to push harder,” I say, and silently, I count to ten. “Keep on. Keep on pushing.”
The room is like a box, sealed up tight so no one can see inside. But really it’s not so tight. Streams of icy air stir up the flame in the lantern, scattering its yellow glow. It moves across Juna’s face, lighting up a sliver here and a sliver there. First her left eye. It catches the light, reflects it back. Then the side of her face, the hollow in her neck, the strands of hair clinging to her forehead.
“I’m too cold,” Juna says, dropping her hold on one knee so she can wipe the hair from her eyes. “God damn this cold.”
“That don’t matter,” I say. “This baby is coming.”
It’s too early, far too early. That’s what the women said when I told them I thought the time was near. They shook their heads, counted on their fingers, discussed the last full moon and when we’d expect another. Too early, they said. So early it might be a blessing. Just over five months, they counted. Five months since Joseph Carl planted the child. Too little time. If it is to come, it’ll never draw a breath. Too tiny. Not yet ready for this world. It might be a blessing.
Behind me, the bedroom door opens. The rest of the house isn’t sealed up, and cold rushes into the room. The small lantern dims. Juna falls back on her elbows. Her face disappears in the weakened light and appears again after the door closes. Footsteps cross the wooden floorboards.
“Not fitting for you to be here,” I say, knowing it’s Daddy without looking.
He doesn’t answer, but a few more steps cross the wooden planks that run the length of the room and then fall silent. The cigar crackles as he sucks on its end and smoke settles in over
Juna and me. A single chair is pushed up against the wall, yet he doesn’t sit. Instead, he stands, arms crossed, feet spread wide. It’s what he does, what he always does. Next to the other men, he’s not so large and not so smart and not so good with his crop. He’ll stand like he thinks a man should.
“I’m seeing something,” I say.
I can smell him. In the small room, closed up tight with floury strips of cloth, his odor takes no time reaching me. Even over the cigar smoke filling the air, I smell him. I close my eyes as if that will stop me from breathing him in. It’s sweat, sour and moldy; damp socks rinsed and pulled on again before they’ve dried; strong coffee warmed over two, three, four mornings until the pot is empty.
“It’ll be harder now,” I say, lifting my head until my eyes lock on Juna’s.
It’s what the women told me. When you see the head, they warned, she’ll want to stop. Make her push harder. Make her push until it’s out.
“Harder you push, quicker she’ll be here.”
“She?” Juna says. “You said she. Can you see?”
With that one word—“she”—the baby is real. She has tiny fingers with paper-thin nails, pink skin, and clear eyes.
“Haven’t gotten to that end yet,” I say. “But won’t Abraham be proud? You’ll be his special girls, the two of you.”
The smell of Daddy is stronger. I taste him in the air. Juna begins to pant, and I know with every short breath, she’ll be tasting him too. I think she’ll look at him in that way she does, that she’ll tilt her head just so, raise a brow, make him afraid so he’ll leave. But she does nothing, says nothing.
“Push,” I say again.
The women told me to make Juna push or she’d starve the baby of her air.
“Push, Juna. She needs you to push.”
There it is again—she. Every week and then every day, Juna grew larger as the baby grew. She plumped up to look more like me, softer, rounder. Her upper arms grew so large we cut the seams in each sleeve of her cotton blouses, and her cheeks and hips rounded out in a way that will probably stick with her long after the baby is born.