by Leah Weiss
I open my mouth like a baby bird. I swallow the first spoonful. Then another.
“Take it slow. Only a few mouthfuls every quarter hour until your stomach remembers what to do.”
I reach out and touch Mama’s white hair. Without thinking of protection or deceit, I say, “You look like Trula Freed.”
Mama says, “I do?” and her hand strokes her head softly like you do a kitten. Her wrist is frail as a reed. “It was Trula’s cures that carried us through,” she explains. “When the doctor couldn’t get the fever under control, she brought the purple honey that showed up last summer. Said it was the cure waiting for the sickness it would heal.” Mama says the mystic’s name with respect. “So many good people helped. Flossie Rose and Tiny Junior. Yancy, Sugar, Gertie and her sister Clara, and Miz Elvira. Friends from church. So many souls turned something bad into goodness I can never repay.” She tears up and leaves the room with Daddy behind.
Bert and Lydia turn quiet, and I’m tired from little effort. Lydia leans down and whispers, “You still stink.”
Chapter 22
Bert: Crossing Over
We take naps like Baby Girl. Mornings and afternoons and as soon as the sun sets, we fall into bed cause we can’t help it. It took everything we had to fight the sickness. When we wake, food cooks in the oven. Washed sheets hang on the line. More wood is chopped.
But this last day of ’43, it’s only the Browns and me at the house. Miz Brown ties on her apron and starts making angel food cake, and I sit at the table, separating eggs and beating the whites for her. The cake goes in the oven, and she looks at me odd.
“What’d I do, Miz Brown?” I’m quick to take blame.
“It’s what you haven’t done. You’ve been a rightful member of our family for half a year but still call us Mr. and Miz Brown like visiting company.”
“What should I call you? It don’t seem fittin to call y’all Ma and Pa.”
“I agree. Those were your parents’ names. The children call us Mama and Daddy, so is that different enough for you?”
I get goose bumps looking at this kindhearted woman, and I’m glad I’m sitting down, cause my knees woulda buckled. “What will everybody think if I act highfalutin?”
“Dear Bert.” She reaches for my hand, hers flecked with flour and minus her wedding band cause her fingers are too skinny. “They’ll say what took you so long. We’ll tell them at supper.”
And we do. I try not to wear out their new names that first evening, but the temptation is strong. “Mama, would you pass the biscuits, please?” I grin when I say it. A few minutes later, I say, “Daddy, can I warm your coffee?”
While me and Lu do dishes, the radio plays “Everything I Love.” Lu whispers, “That’s their favorite Glenn Miller song.”
Daddy pulls Mama into his arms, and they dance round the kitchen floor, and he croons my haven in heaven above.
We rest, then rise, and on this last day of the year, in the heart of the dark, we wrap up in blankets and sit in the cold on the porch. Lydia says, “What’s the New Year gonna feel like? How will we know it’s really here?” She cuddles up on one side of me on the swing and Cora on the other. Oma’s quilts are tucked all around. The brittle stars hang close to the ground. “Is there gonna be a glowing light? Will it make a funny sound?”
“I don’t think so,” I say, but I don’t rightly know. I never stayed up to bear witness to a new year. Mama’s white hair glows in the dusk, her sitting in a rocking chair with Daddy behind her smoking a cigarette, leaning against the house. Doc Robertson says her hair might stay white the rest of her days. He says some sicknesses take more out of a body than others.
Mama explains, “The New Year will come without fanfare except when we light the sparklers Uncle Nigel gave us.”
“Which way is it coming from? Over there?” Cora yawns, then points to where the sun rises.
“It doesn’t come from a direction,” Mama says. “It settles over the land when it’s time, and everything looks the same but is different.”
There are long pieces of quiet for us to think or rest our tongues from talking, cause these ain’t regular days. I think of the folks who took care of us being sick. Tonight, we ate chicken and dumplings from Gertie’s sister, Clara. Then we ate the angel food cake that Mama and I made.
In my piece of quiet, I think back to those sick days making me worthless as weeds. Sometimes Sugar and Gertie tended to me. One time, Sugar cried and her mama spoke words meant for private. “You hush them tears, child. You don’t help your brother Whiz one bit cause you cry. He smart and doing all he can to stay alive. When he come home, he’ll look for the good you been doing. Like now. Helping these sick folks.”
“Is he gonna die?”
“Where’d you get such a notion? He as safe as can be, hunkered down somewhere. Whiz Mayhew got more things to think about than sending us his words. He’ll write when he got time. But keep him in every prayer. Don’t want the Lord to forget bout our boy.”
I been told Whiz Mayhew was a regular in the Brown house before the army had need for him. He would hunch over the kitchen table with a stack of books and wear down the lead in a pencil. Mama said he graduated top of his class. His army picture was in the paper for getting a medal for being brave, and Mama took the whole newspaper that day to Gertie. He’s called Whiz cause he’s a whiz at everything. I wonder if the Mayhews got a letter from him yet.
Grady talks first. “Now why are we sitting out here freezing instead of sleeping?” He yawns and pulls his blanket tighter.
Lu says, “It’s peaceful. I hear my heart beating.”
“Me, too. Me, too,” the little girls chime in, hardly giving time enough to hear their hearts beat.
Mama says, “Right now, nothing stands between the ten of us and the miracles we’ve witnessed the past year. Nothing to distract us from a new beginning, perched on a pinhead of possibility. I believe the best year of our lives starts tonight.”
“How you figure that?” I wanna believe her.
“Well, we’re different now. A year ago, we didn’t know you were coming, and now you’re one of us. A year ago, we didn’t know Baby Girl was even a wish. Or that the gall-double-dang flu would take us to our knees, or that our honeybees would make purple honey to cure us, or that our friends would fight hard for us. I believe this New Year will see the end of the war, and Everett and Wade will come home where they belong. I believe that with all my heart.”
Helen says, “Amen.”
Irene starts singing “Silent Night.” Everybody sings except Baby Girl, who does her part as baby Jesus. The cuckoo clock chimes midnight. Grady lights sparklers. We stand in a line at the edge of the porch, looking out on a new world. The sparklers fizzle. We hear a hum. The hum grows louder. It can’t be honeybees. They don’t survive outside in the cold. But a hum is coming this way, coming from the east, coming across the field.
Grady sees them first. Airplanes. A line of them. They rumble over the land. They fly low in front of the buzzing sound behind. My stomach cramps cause this don’t look right. Planes don’t sneak low in the night in the Carolina dark. We hold hands tight. The New Year is here.
But what has come with it?
1944
Chapter 23
Lucy: Riddles And A Mystery
I haven’t had a dream since the flu left me unbalanced, and I wondered if I ever would again. Then a dream comes and it’s grim.
It’s a pale day spitting ice when a man comes to the door and knocks three times. Through the curtained window, I see his ragged army uniform. He carries a dusty rucksack, and his boots are muddy. The man could be our Wade Sully, but his nose is smashed flat. Dried blood circles coal-black eyes. His mouth is sewn shut with coarse twine. The sour of rot slides through the cracks of the door. I work to let him in, but when I turn the glass doorknob, it spins like a top and won’t stop. I sh
out through the door, “Wade Sully, I see you. I’m trying to let you in. Helen and Baby Girl need you. Don’t go.” But the army man turns and walks away, and the back of his head is a wolf’s face with brittle eyes and teeth a tangle of bloody thorns. Suddenly, Tiny Junior is there and presses a scrap of paper against the glass and says, “Miz Lucy, is this what B-A-D looks like?”
I bolt upright in the bed that holds Bert and the lumps of Lydia and Cora nesting between, and I clutch my pounding heart. My skin is clammy through my flannel nightgown. The faint smell of rot lingers in the air. Lydia mumbles from under the quilts, “What stinks?”
“Bad dream. That’s all. Go back to sleep.”
But I don’t go back to sleep even though traces of morning are far away. Why did I dream about Wade now when it’s been six weeks since the MIA telegram? He’s been on the periphery of my family all my life, eating at our dinner table, shooting marbles with Grady, listening to Oma’s odd tales, courting Helen like a lovesick puppy. He’s Baby Girl’s daddy, and now he’s missing, and my sister is a hollowed-out shell of herself, different from the weakness left behind by the gall-double-dang. Helen was always shy, but now she’s a turtle locked inside hardness.
When the sun comes up, I drag myself out of bed, but Mama still keeps us home from school till we’re stronger. I feel so puny, I don’t even miss going to school, and our days are lackadaisical and erratic. We are a quiet household until Lydia hears the crunch of the mailman’s tires. She squeals, “He’s here, he’s here,” and the coming of Mr. Jules changes things. Out of respect, he hand-delivers letters from Everett instead of leaving them in the mailbox to wait. Today, January tenth, is the first letter of the year.
Lydia is happy to have her favorite mark for one of Everett’s riddles. She strikes as the mailman opens his car door. “What two things can you never eat for breakfast, Mr. Jules?”
The patient man plays along. “What can I never eat? Hmm… Ice cream?”
“What two things,” Lydia clarifies, then adds, “and you can eat ice cream for breakfast. I did that.”
Mama with the white hair steps out on the porch for the letter. She wears one of Oma’s old sweaters, her thin arms folded against the chill. Mr. Jules finishes the riddle game and I listen through the door.
“Liver and onions? Two pigs feet?” the mailman guesses.
“You saying silly stuff. But you’re still wrong. Give up?”
“I’m afraid so. If I didn’t have mail to deliver…” was how he ends riddle time.
“The answer is dinner and supper. What you can’t eat for breakfast…get it?”
“You are a clever girl,” he chuckles, hands Mama the mail, and adds, “Thought you’d want to know I passed a government car half mile back. The uniform man was asking for the Mayhew place.”
“Oh, sweet merciful heavens,” Mama whispers, then comes in the front door with Lydia trailing behind.
“Mr. Jules likes my riddles, doesn’t he, Mama? Lucy says I bother him.”
“Did not.”
“Did too.”
Mama says, “It’s good you tell Everett’s riddles. When you stop, the riddle’s life is over.” Mama reaches for her coat on the hook. “Every time I hear you tell one, I feel Everett here with us.” She taps today’s letter in her hand. “And tonight we get a new one, and I want you to wear it out and spread it to kingdom come. Right now, I need to go see the Mayhews.”
Lydia and I follow her into the kitchen. Helen is hanging washed diapers on the inside line. The outside lines are full. Seven-week-old Baby Girl sleeps in a laundry basket padded with a blanket.
“Want me to come?” I say.
“Where?” Helen wrings out another wet diaper.
“The Mayhews. Gertie and Yancy may have had a visit from a government man. I’ll be back directly.”
Helen’s mind is fragile, and with those few words, she starts shaking. Mama slips out the back, and Helen takes Baby Girl into their bedroom and shuts the door. I finish wringing out and hanging the diapers. They drip drip drip.
My little sister pulls a chair to the counter, climbs up, and reaches on the top shelf for Oma’s glass paperweight made by our great-grandfather. The one he made a hundred years ago when he wasn’t making marbles. The one brought down from the attic the night Lydia schemed to get the wolpertinger to live in her room. In the center of the paperweight are purple forget-me-nots made from glass caning. The flowers are the color of the rare purple honey Daddy found last summer in his hives. The purple honey Trula Freed found healed us from the sickness.
Oma used to explain how the paperweight was made, and it sounded impossible: chunks of glass melted in marble crucibles in wood-fired ovens so hot they turned glass to liquid. Then the molten glass was manipulated with odd tools called a blowpipe, tweezer, punty, jack, and shears. Illustrations in our encyclopedia explained the ancient process. But it still seems impossible.
Lydia looks inside the ball and says, “I don’t hardly remember what she looks like.” She rubs her stubby finger on the smooth surface.
“She was an old woman. You know what they look like.”
“Yeah, but what made her special?”
“Everything about Oma was special, but that was on the inside, not what she looked like.” I’m sad our grandmother is fading from Lydia’s memory.
“Where is she? In heaven?” My sister holds the paperweight up to the window and brings it close to her eyes and turns toward me. Her eyes are magnified orbs, lopsided, deformed. She is five and a half years old, and most of her life has been flavored by war.
“Her body’s in the cemetery, but her soul’s in heaven with God.”
“Can we go see her? I got a question.”
“We can’t visit heaven. It’s not a place we go till we die, but what’s your question? Maybe I can help.”
“You don’t know. You gotta be in heaven.” Lydia licks the paperweight and wipes the ball with her sleeve.
“Don’t spit on that.”
“Why not? I’m only cleaning it.”
“Use the washrag. That’s all. Don’t spit on it. That’s being disrespectful.”
“This is glass, Lucy. It doesn’t have feelings.”
“What’s your question?” I ask again. My little sister looks serious. She’s getting thinner and there’s a residue of sickness on her perfect skin, but she’s still the prettiest of the lot.
To avoid answering me, she drills me with old riddles. “What has a head and a tail, is brown, but has no legs?”
“A penny,” I quickly say.
“What room do ghosts never go in?”
“The living room.” Then I pull her back on point. “I think you’re bluffing. You don’t have a real question.”
“I smell her sometimes,” my little sister says and stops me cold when I remember the smell of rot in last night’s dream and Lydia’s whisper about stink.
“You mean the spices she cooked with or her body powder? Or is it the mothballs in her sweaters?”
“No, her chewing gum. Oma whispers to me. When I sleep. That cinnamon stuff. I smell it when she whispers in my ear.”
I didn’t think there was any Dentyne left in the house, but I must be wrong. Otherwise how could Lydia smell it? We children like Rain-Blo bubble gum and Mama prefers Chiclets. Only Oma chewed Dentyne, because it didn’t stick to false teeth. Lydia must be confused.
She puts the paperweight back with great care and says, “I wonder if Oma saw Wade Sully yet. She’s looking for him.”
Lydia glows unnaturally, but no one’s here to bear witness but me. She is backlit by the winter sun through the window, but there’s light inside her that glimmers on high like a firefly, then it’s gone. I stare at my tiniest sibling, this pure soul climbing down off the counter and putting the chair back in its place, her corduroy overalls patched at the knees, her cheeks
now sallow and pale. Does she comprehend what she said? That reference to Dentyne gum and an intimate tie with Oma beyond death that I envy? Oma has never given me a sign from beyond, and I’m disappointed. I thought I’d be the one she’d reach out to.
Bert confided that she went to see Trula Freed on her own at Helen’s request. That she got a convoluted message because Miz Trula fell and forgot Bert’s name twice and said Wade was alive and then he was dead. Bert should’ve told me she was going. We should have gone together, but we didn’t.
I feel like I’m on the outside looking in.
Now Lydia has created a different ruffle in time that confounds me. I’ll keep her premonition to myself. The truth will come out one way or the other.
Chapter 24
Bert: Birthday Bash
January is special cause it holds me and Lu’s birthdays. Mine is on day twenty-two and Lu’s is day twenty-nine, so I’m seven days older than her. This is our first January sharing birthdays, and we turn fourteen. Aunt Fanniebelle asks the two of us to come for tea and stay Saturday night at her big house on my real birthday. “It’ll do the girls good to have a change of scenery after the sickness,” she tells Mama, but I ain’t so sure. I never been inside the big house at the end of Main Street. It’s got gardens and a fishpond and a portico, but Lu says it’s got secrets, too. I hope they ain’t in dark places.
“Only need to bring your toothbrush,” her aunt says, so it’s us looking out the parlor window, watching for Uncle Nigel, after eating my chocolate birthday cake at noon dinner and me getting a new green coat that hangs to my knees. I got it on and my toothbrush in the pocket wrapped in a clean handkerchief when Lu’s uncle Nigel pulls up front at three o’clock on the dot.
“Ladies, I am the chauffeur at your service,” he says all stiff and funny and gets us to giggling. He opens the back door, and we climb in his fancy car.