Three Novellas
Page 11
II
Henry and Mary
Mary never did learn to talk, just kind of grunted or cried or screamed for things and pointed. And she had this embarrassing habit of touching her private parts in public. Old Henry beat her when she did that but after a while it became clear to him that she wasn’t about to learn anything, not talking, not restraint, nothing. So he just kept her home and never went out himself either.
His wife had passed when Mary was born, a young girl herself when he married her, maybe thirteen, fourteen, maybe too young for childbearing. Mary’s mother had been the daughter of a miner dying of black lung and a mother who lived in another world and them with eight children, Mary’s mother being the youngest. Henry married her as a favor, taking her in, feeding her, was fifty himself at the time. Her name was Elvira but no one called her that. He himself just called her “girl” because that was what she was. And he called Mary “girl” too, but she didn’t know the difference. When Elvira was dying she had asked him to call her by her name because no one ever had. It seemed important to her also that her child be named Mary for the blessed virgin, Elvira being Catholic, and she didn’t even know then if it would be a boy or a girl.
Henry was hoping for a boy to help out with chores but he got a girl and he took care of her as best he could. After Elvira passed, that’s all he did. He just took care of the girl and read his Bible and took care of the stock, what there was left of it. He kept a small kitchen garden but gardening was woman’s work and he never cottoned to it. Just some corn and beans and potatoes and he hunted and fished and they ate fine. Neighbors were in the food stamp and restaurant business: they’d get the food stamps and then fix meals for cavers who came from the cities: Pittsburgh and Detroit and D.C., even New York City…but Henry wouldn’t do that and anyway, cavers came on Sundays and he wouldn’t even wash his face on a Sunday. He knew folks thought him too religious and they made fun of his girl.
He always talked politely to her even though she didn’t respond, even when he beat her, when he used to beat her, but he stopped that long ago. She didn’t understand and couldn’t talk. She only made noises when she wanted something to eat or had to use the toilet. When she got sleepy she would fetch a blanket and curl up wherever she felt most comfortable, on the floor by the stove in winter, out on the porch in summer. He bathed her and helped her with the most private functions as if she were an infant and when she was twelve and began to bleed, he cried every month with her, both of them horrified by the sight of her blood. But then he would hold her and rock her and calm her down and he would sing in a sad tuneless voice the hymns that he knew. This was their life, Henry’s and Mary’s.