Rising Above Shepherdsville

by Ann Schoenbohm

  Loretta, as perky as a parakeet, always tweet-tweeting to be the center of attention, sat up straighter in her chair next to me and raised her hand.

  “Reverend Love?”

  “Yes?”

  Loretta smoothed her skirt, then deliberately wound one long red curl around her finger. She stared at me like I was a curious bug she’d uncovered and was ready to squash.

  “What about what Dulcie’s mother did? Doesn’t a person who does that go straight to hell?”

  She looked innocently at Reverend Love as if she’d eaten a cream puff, smug satisfaction in her eyes. She was quite pleased with herself.

  Quite pleased.

  Until I hit her smack on the head with my Bible.

  5

  t-r-a-n-s-g-r-e-s-s

  transgress (n.)

  to step over, pass over; to go beyond

  Loretta grabbed the top of her head, her eyes so wide, I thought they’d pop out. Neither one of us moved. I don’t know who was more shocked, Mama—me or Loretta. Reverend Love’s mouth was a big round cavern. An “oh” escaped from it, before all measure of commotion broke loose. Everyone jumped to their feet, chairs clattering to the floor in a jumble of clanking metal and loud shouts.

  Missy Spangler bawled like a baby in all the ruckus due to Loretta having accidentally hit her in the eye with an elbow. Matt Jensen shook his fist at me. Jason hooted. The other boys chanted, “Fight. Fight. Fight,” egging Loretta to hit me back. Eventually Loretta hollered—a delayed reflex kicking into the cerebral cortex of her pea-size brain.

  “Ow!”

  Then she said it again in such a way that suggested she hadn’t gotten it right the first time. “OW!” She continued on like that as though she were stuck. “Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow.”

  Reverend Love raised his voice to be heard over all of it.

  “Stop it, y’all. Right now.”

  Nobody heard him. He picked up one of the metal chairs and banged it on the floor so hard, it caused an echo. We clapped our hands over our ears in unison.

  He roared as if he were Moses parting the waters with the power of his voice.

  “Sit down. All of y’all. Now!”

  Everyone froze—a game of statues with Bibles.

  Reverend Love waited, breathing hard, his face dripping wet as if he’d run through a sprinkler. He struck me as being surprised at himself. Maybe he hadn’t known he had it in him to take charge until that very moment. He appeared to be satisfied, giving the impression that he’d wanted to yell that way for a good long time.

  He boomed like thunder, enjoying himself thoroughly, “Now, open your Bibles, shut your mouths up, and . . .”

  He seemed at a loss momentarily, then sputtered, “Memorize the books of the Old Testament in order.” He paused. “Then in reverse order. Whoever doesn’t know ’em, gets pew duty.”

  Pew duty meant wiping up the pews after church on Sunday, a job nobody wanted. Wiping up that particular sticky residue of sweat, prayer, and heat was not for the fainthearted.

  “Dulcie, come with me.”

  I followed Reverend Love back up the rickety stairs to the main floor by the entry hall, off the main doors. The church office was deserted except for ancient Mrs. Bushnell, who was typing up church bulletins. Reverend Love went directly to the watercooler, filled up a little paper cone of water, gulped it down, filled another, and gave it to me. He led me to a bench by the front doors, sat, and patted the spot next to him. I sat down, balancing the water, trying not to spill.

  “Well, that didn’t go so well, did it?”

  I shook my head and gulped my water.

  “Look, I know Loretta intended to get under your skin. But I can’t have you hitting anybody, plain and simple. Even if they are asking for it.” He poked the tattered carpet with his toe.

  “Y’all will have to ask each other for forgiveness, you hear?”

  I shrugged. The voice in my head answered him straight from Kentucky, loud and clear: Y’all will have to wait until the second coming before that happens.

  “Come on, now. We can get along if we try, can’t we?”

  My shoulders stuck in a permanent hunch. If I had to lay eyes on Loretta again, I’d spit up blood.

  “I have faith in you, Dulcie.”

  The inability to tell him not to waste his faith made me crumple the paper cone cup into a little ball and squeeze it hard.

  Reverend Love patted my knee, then got up from the bench.

  “I’ll have Mrs. Bushnell give Bernice a call to come get you. I think that’s best, don’t you?”

  I wanted to tell him that he might as well drive me to purgatory and drop me off.

  “You go on and wait outside till your aunt arrives. I best get back downstairs before somebody burns the place down.” He paused. “I’ll have a talk with Loretta after Bible study about her remark.”

  Reverend Love headed into the office, then stopped in the doorway. He leaned out, holding the doorframe with one hand.

  “Dulcie.” He looked over the top of his glasses. “I know you might not think so, but the Bible does come in handy sometimes.” The side of his face lifted, a sly hint of a grin threatening his seriousness.

  I couldn’t help but smile at that. He really wasn’t so bad, Mama, considering he was a preacher. Reverend Love and I had an unspoken agreement, it seemed, to look out for each other. We were both on the same end of the stick with that crowd downstairs, and besides, we shared the secret of the swan’s nest.

  After he went back downstairs, I opened the front doors and wandered outside, glad to be free of the church.

  Lightning bugs twinkled, tiny sparks in the darkened fields around me. I sat on the concrete church steps and watched for Aunt Bernie’s headlights, my stomach tight.

  I couldn’t explain to her that I’d had to stick up for you, Mama, about you not being a sinner.

  About it all being my fault.

  I couldn’t explain to Aunt Bernie how it had been, the night before the spelling finals, when you’d helped me practice my spelling list and I’d gotten stuck on the word “premonition.”

  You seemed so tired, Mama, when you squinted at the list.

  “ ‘Premonition.’ You know this one.”

  “P-r-e-m-i . . .”

  “We’ve gone over this list twenty times, Dulcie. You know this. Start over.”

  “Mama, I don’t have to go.”

  “Of course you do,” you said. “Now, come on. We need that trophy. I’ll put it next to the other one at the Starliner, along with your picture. Briarwood Academy will have no choice but to give a scholarship to a girl who’s got two trophies under her belt.”

  You’d mailed the application the day before, and we both knew it was a long shot for a scholarship. Briarwood took only one scholarship student a year, but that didn’t stop you from acting like it was a sure thing.

  “P-r-e-m-e-n . . .”

  But no matter how many times I tried that night, it wouldn’t come to me.

  When I came to Shepherdsville, I had no way to tell Aunt Bernie that if I hadn’t gotten into the car with Mrs. Whitehouse to go to state finals—if I hadn’t left you alone—if instead I’d gone back and stayed with you—if only I’d done that, Mama, you wouldn’t have turned on the oven to bake those cookies Ray insisted you were aiming to make.

  “Premonition.” Webster’s definition: “a feeling that something bad will happen; a forewarning.”

  After you were gone, Mama, the spelling came to me with no trouble at all. I just couldn’t say it out loud.

  Aunt Bernie pulled her car into the parking lot of the church, the sound of her wheels on the gravel like a giant munching boulders. She drove up to the steps where I sat, creeping toward me, cutting her headlights as she came nearer.

  In the yellow glare from the light on the telephone pole, I could make out Aunt Bernie’s posture—I could tell from the set of her head and the way her hands gripped the wheel that I was in for a night of crossed arms and pursed
lips.

  P-r-e-m-o-n-i-t-i-o-n.

  Could Aunt Bernie even understand how things were at Lilac Court? That Ray and me had to watch out for you sometimes, when you’d get sad? Would she understand that Ray had every right to dump me in Shepherdsville? If only I’d told him about you, things might have been different. How could I explain that I didn’t tell Ray because he’d been driving weeks of back-to-back long hauls? That I didn’t want to bother him? I could tell he was tired of it, Mama. Tired of trying to make things better. I needed him to think things were okay with you.

  I should have told Ray how you didn’t laugh much anymore, Mama—how you slept all the time when you weren’t at work, or hardly ate—how I’d wake up in the middle of the night and hear you cry out. But every time Ray came home, I pretended nothing was wrong.

  I couldn’t explain to Aunt Bernie that I did what you told me to do that last morning, rather than listen to the voice in my head that said, Stay. Don’t you leave her alone. I walked straight out the screen door and got into Mrs. Whitehouse’s car and headed off to win that trophy.

  How could I tell her the worst thing of all, Mama?

  That when Mrs. Whitehouse asked if that was my mother who’d come out onto the steps, in her robe, waving, blowing me a kiss, I pretended I didn’t hear, and just continued telling Joann Benson what Nelson Lenderman had said on the bus the day before, like it was the most important thing in the world? That I didn’t look out the window at you and wave back?

  How could Aunt Bernie understand why I didn’t look back? Or understand that when Mrs. Whitehouse’s car turned out of Lilac Court that morning, the spelling of the word “premonition” was easy on my tongue, the definition repeating in my head.

  “Premonition”: “a feeling that something bad will happen; a forewarning.”

  I walked across the gravel of Redeemer’s parking lot to Aunt Bernie’s car, carrying my Bible close to my chest like a shield, even though I knew it wouldn’t help me explain a darn thing. Before I slid into the front seat, I looked up at the starless sky, the memory of the swan rising into the heavens now replaced with darkness.

  6

  r-e-q-u-i-e-s-c-a-t

  requiescat (n.)

  a prayer for the repose of the dead

  Aunt Bernie didn’t say a word the whole way back to the farm, Mama. She played the radio, music from WGOD—the religious radio station transmitting from a small white house at the edge of town with a miniature tower perched in the front yard. She did the station’s accounting twice a week and always had it tuned in while she was in the kitchen or in her car.

  When the farm report came on, interrupting the gospel music, she switched to a news station. Her finger pushed the buttons under the dial as if she wanted to poke somebody in the eye. I rolled down the window and let my arm float in the breeze.

  The newscaster’s voice spilled out into the night as we passed through town. Some guy with a complicated name had taken over the country of Pakistan, and the Cincinnati Reds had won their baseball game against the Atlanta Braves. After the sports, Aunt Bernie switched the radio off.

  We drove through Shepherdsville in silence. The one stoplight in town gleamed red, a silent eye in the night. Everything was closed up tight, windows dark, empty sidewalks—a ghost town, except for me and Aunt Bernie.

  We turned onto Victory Road, the world around us flat, except for the rising corn whispering alongside us. All the land on this road had belonged to us Dixons for a hundred years, Aunt Bernie told me, but she had sold off parcels over the years, so she could keep the farmhouse. Since I had your last name, Mama, knowing that this part of Shepherdsville had once belonged to our family made it seem precious, something besides our names that connected me and you and Aunt Bernie.

  The farmhouse where you grew up, surrounded by an endless ocean of cornstalks and soybeans, seemed like a tiny island isolated from the rest of Shepherdsville. I couldn’t see why Aunt Bernie stayed there by herself, Mama. It seemed like the loneliest place on earth, but I had to admit, it was strangely beautiful in its way.

  The day Ray drove me there, I woke up from a nap in the truck cab and felt transported, like Dorothy to the Land of Oz, when they changed the scene to technicolor on the television. The greens seemed greener and the sky hung right above our heads, a tint of blue that I’d only seen in a crayon box. It certainly was far from anyplace that hinted at civilization, like a proper Kroger or a Sunoco station or even a White Castle.

  Ray blew out a puff of smoke and gestured with his arm, taking in all the expanse around us.

  “Welcome to God’s country.”

  He didn’t appear to have much regard for it—he flicked his cigarette butt out onto the road.

  Ray slowed and turned down a dirt road, and in the distance I glimpsed Aunt Bernie’s farmhouse. It was just how you’d described it, Mama. Like a place out of time.

  The white farmhouse, covered with blistered paint, was tidy. Intricately carved posts ran along the front porch, where a faded green rocker sat, along with a small wicker table. Above the door was a star made of tin with a design punched into it. I remembered that you’d said your daddy made things as a boy at his father’s machine shop. Next to the house was a silver silo, an old red barn, and an outbuilding where a rusty tractor sat like a skeleton. Next to the barn was a small pigpen where two hogs lay on their sides, resting in the heat.

  When we stopped in front of the farmhouse, Ray’s resolve seemed to melt, Mama. He leaned on the steering wheel, his voice tight.

  “This is for the best, girl. You gotta know that.”

  I got out and slammed the truck door. Hard.

  Ray got out my suitcase and the Kroger bag. I carried the small box from Littleton Funeral Home.

  Aunt Bernie came out onto the porch. The first thing I noticed was how she looked like an older version of you, Mama, except weathered, carved out of stone. Her eyes reminded me of storm clouds, gray and a little threatening. It didn’t look like she smiled much. She wore seriousness like a black cloak.

  Aunt Bernie opened the screen door for us, letting us in without a word. The porch door led into the kitchen—the cleanest kitchen I’ve ever seen. It shined in the sun, the gleaming toaster shooting rainbows of light all around us.

  Through an arched doorway was the living room, with a fireplace and wood mantel. A nubby brown couch sat in front of the fireplace, draped with a crocheted afghan, just like the one in our trailer. Two stuffed armchairs with lacy sleeves on their arms faced an old television with legs. A wood cabinet with glass doors held a handful of figurines and painted china. Pictures of country landscapes hung higgledy-piggledy, itching to be straightened, and a big painting of the Last Supper took up a whole wall above the television.

  It was comfortable—not fancy at all—but boy, Mama, was it spic-and-span. The side tables were shiny with polish, and the throw rug looked like no one had ever set foot on it. It was still and quiet—like a museum—like Aunt Bernie was the sole caretaker of an exhibit where a family had once lived. You could almost imagine a mysterious circumstance somehow made them disappear, and it was her duty to kept it exactly how it had always been. I was afraid to move for fear of touching something and messing it up.

  She looked at Ray, her mouth pursed. “Thank you for bringing her. I’ll see to her well-being, I can assure you.”

  Ray’s eyes were watery, focused on his feet. He gave me a quick pat on the shoulder. I stood, unmoving, still holding the box.

  His eyes flickered my way. “I’ll unload your bike.”

  He asked Aunt Bernie from the doorway, “Okay if I put it in the barn?”

  Ray ducked out the screen door, and that was it. I was alone with Aunt Bernie, my only living relative—a woman who clearly didn’t know what to do with a twelve-going-on-thirteen-year-old niece who’d appeared suddenly in her kitchen, with a sourpuss face.

  I stood rooted to the spot with the little box. My suitcase and the Kroger bag rested at my feet. With all my b
eing, I wanted to run outside to catch Ray before he pulled out of the drive, and scream, “Don’t you dump me here, Ray! Don’t you dare. Take me home, right now!”

  Except I don’t think either one of us knew where home was anymore, Mama, without you in it.

  Aunt Bernie tried to take the Littleton Funeral Home container from my hands. But I wasn’t letting go. That little box was all I had of you.

  We proceeded to have a tug-of-war over that box, Mama.

  “I’ll take this now,” she said.

  I shook my head. I was trying to be polite, but considering the circumstances, I didn’t have much choice but to be defiant.

  She looked me firmly in the eye. “I’ll just put it over here on the mantel. That way you’ll know where it is.”

  I shook my head harder and gripped the box tighter.

  “Dulcie, you needn’t be stubborn. . . .” She grappled for words as she pulled the box toward her. “We’ll just put it . . .”

  It.

  Clearly she didn’t want to say aloud what we both knew was in there.

  She made one final firm tug, and my sweaty palms released it, before she was aware I’d let go.

  The box tumbled to the floor.

  It landed sideways, the top askew. The small plastic bag inside the box had split and spilled its contents—a dusty trail along the clean wood floor.

  Welcome home, Mama, I thought.

  Aunt Bernie’s face drained of color, her eyes blinking and uncomprehending. Then she flew into action. “Get the broom and dustpan. That closet there.”

  I wasn’t sure if she was frantic because her floor was dirty or because her sister was spewed all over it.

  By the time I’d found the broom and dustpan, Aunt Bernie had already gotten a plastic bucket with soapy water and a washrag. While I held the dustpan, she swept up ashes. We upended them into the box. Aunt Bernie wiped up the floor lickety-split, as if the spill hadn’t happened at all.

  After bringing the box to the mantel, Aunt Bernie placed it there among some knickknacks, where it looked out of place next to a gaudy vase filled with plastic flowers. She tidied up, then looked at me and said, “Honestly.”