Call Your Daughter Home

by Deb Spera

  “Emily Ann,” the maid tells her, “you know you ain’t supposed to be out here with no shoes on.”

  The child scurries back inside. I stand, take the glass from the girl and drink every drop of water. I was so thirsty. I hadn’t realized until now just how much. Sarah’s maid offers to telephone Molly, but I decline. I thank her for the drink and steady myself on the rail.

  On the street, I hire a carriage to take me to the train station. The smell of gasoline from automobiles coupled with the stench of horse manure sours my stomach. I arrive to the station early. Dropping the pralines in the rubbish bin, I sit on the bench to wait for Lonnie and watch the trains as they come and go. An hour or so later, he comes running down the platform empty-handed and flushed with excitement.

  “One hundred shirts, M-Mother,” he says. “Berlin’s wants one hundred shirts f-for their stores in Charleston and Chicago!”

  He throws his arms around my shoulders; so happy he doesn’t notice my gloom.

  The conductor cries, “All aboard.”

  Lonnie helps me up the steps and down the aisle to a seat by the window, then hands the tickets to the conductor. He sits alongside me and stammers through his victory while I pretend to listen. It’s the end of a workday, so the car is full of people returning home to their families, they will all be home in time for supper. The train gathers momentum and pulls out of the station. Oh, I’ve left my hat in the carriage. But never mind, who cares about an old woman’s naked head? Pretense, at this age, is long gone.

  9

  Gertrude

  There’s no shade to shield me from the sun as I walk the short cut to Branchville along the railroad tracks, but no matter, the true heat of the day is almost gone. The sun is low in the west while the moon has already risen in the east, like one is chasing the other around the sky. Soon it will be dark, but I know the way. I got my gun and as much as I can carry folded up in a sheet slung over my shoulder. A cast-iron skillet beats against my hipbone with every step. There’ll be a bruise there by morning.

  I want my brother. Get to Berns is all I could ever think of when I was hurt or needed something. I always knew if I was with him he would help me best he could. I want him now. I can confess to Berns, and he will help me like he always has. When I was little he let me run along after him. He’d be in the fields working, and I’d be alongside him asking so many questions that he finally said he needed quiet to think. One time, not long after Mama took sick, I asked what he was thinking on, and he told me what was on his mind.

  “Everything has the pull of gravity,” he said. “The bigger the mass, the bigger the pull. That’s why the sun is so strong and why it pulls all the planets around in its orbit. And the earth has a gravitational pull that causes the moon to orbit around it, and the moon’s gravitational pull is so strong it moves the tides.”

  I asked him what that had to do with what he was thinking about, and he said, “It makes me wonder about people and if we pull things around and into us, into our orbit.”

  “Like a magnet?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said, “like a magnet.”

  “Maybe that’s how prayer works,” I said. “Like a magnet that pulls good to bad.”

  He looked at me then like I was somebody new to him. Not just his little sister, but somebody with thought and wonder just like him. After that he took to telling me things he thought I should know. Berns never lied to me or I to him, even for a joke.

  The sun is long down when I come up through the woods, but the waning moon lights my path. Dishes clank in the distance, and with my good eye, I see Edna and Lily by the pump cleaning the supper dishes. Once past the outbuildings I can make out Alma through the window wiping down the kitchen table. Even from here I can tell the weary has left. All she needed was food. I come upon Berns standing outside the barn looking into the sky. He looks so tired. He don’t sleep like he should.

  “Everything where it should be up there?” I ask.

  He jumps, surprised to be caught.

  He looks me over and asks, “Where’s Mary?”

  “Left her with Old Black Retta on Friday,” I tell him.

  “Mary’s in Shake Rag?”

  “I’ll get her back tomorrow.”

  “Gertie.”

  “Berns don’t, not now.”

  He looks to the sky and lets go a heavy sigh. If Mary troubles him, what I’ve got to say will keep him from a lifetime of sleep. I got to dole this out in pieces. At the kitchen table I tell my girls to gather ’round. We sit in a somber circle. The lantern at the center of the table casts yellow light and shadow over the room and all their faces. Berns and Marie stand side by side leaning backward against the kitchen counter. He’s got his hand covering hers and both their legs are crossed at the ankle in the same direction. Outside, the whip-poor-wills call. Autumn is coming. In a few weeks’ time it will be nesting season.

  “Your daddy is gone,” I tell my girls. “He’s left and ain’t coming back.”

  “Good,” Lily says.

  “Where’d he go, Mama?” Edna asks.

  “Don’t know but we’re on our own now, and we got to make good. I got a decent job and a place for us to live right here in Branchville.”

  Alma busts into tears.

  “Don’t cry at the supper table,” Lily tells her sister.

  Alma wipes her face with the back of her hand, but she can’t stop crying, so I pull her to my lap.

  “Everybody’s got to work if we mean to eat. Berns, Marie, I thank you for what you done for us. I hope we can do for you one day.”

  Marie sits and joins our circle, but Berns hangs back, watching. I look up and meet his eye ’til he looks away and out the back door. Marie reaches across the table to hold Edna’s and Lily’s hands and smiles like there’s something she’s just remembered to say. Marie would’ve been a good mother. Better than me.

  She says, “Hearsay in town that the rains this past Saturday got so bad they flooded all the old slave cabins over at the Magnolia plantation. Hearsay folks had fish swimming in their parlor.”

  Berns claps his hands and says, “Noooo.”

  Marie shakes her head with conviction. “Yes. That’s what they said down at the railroad station. Old boys in town say they overheard the passengers talking about it while they were coming up from Charleston. Said the river left its borders.”

  “Fish swimming in the parlor! Imagine that!” Edna says and starts a fit of laughter so hard that everybody can’t help but join in. Her mirth is contagious. Lily makes a fish face and that starts everybody up again. Even Berns laughs.

  “You girls run outside and catch lightning bugs while I talk to your mama,” Marie says.

  That’s where she don’t know children, only Alma and Mary still chase the light because they’re young. The older girls got no interest, but they go anyhow, happy to be on their own. Berns walks to the hearth and pulls down his rifle from where it hangs above the mantel. I want to tell him not to worry, but I don’t.

  Before he gets out the door I say, “I got to take Edna to the swamp with me tomorrow to round up what’s left.”

  “How much you got left to carry?”

  “Two loads of kitchenware and linens.”

  “Leave Edna. I’ll come with you.”

  “We can do it without you, Berns. Ain’t no need to leave your work.”

  He looks at me and says, “Alvin comes home and finds you two leaving he’ll kill you both. We’ll leave at dawn.”

  Before I can say anything more he’s out the door. Marie fixes me a cup of coffee like I’m company, and I welcome the bitter.

  “How’s your eye?”

  “I can’t see out of it yet, but I expect it’ll be all right.”

  “You going to be able to see to sew?”

  “I can see to walk. I guess I can see to sew.”

>   “You sure he’s gone?”

  “Time will tell, I reckon, but I believe we’ve seen the last of him.”

  Berns’s weakness for me is a worry for Marie, though she ain’t ever said so. Back in the day he used to talk more, but the older he’s got the more he’s gone quiet. Why that is I can’t say, but I can guess. Marie knows how to draw him out and give comfort. She will tell Berns what I said. He’ll sleep.

  Me and the girls lie on a pallet in my old bedroom. Alma lays up next to me long into the night. Neither of us can sleep with all that’s happened.

  “Mama,” she whispers after Edna and Lily have fallen off to sleep. “I ain’t crying ’cause Daddy’s left. I’m crying ’cause I’m glad he’s gone. That’s a sin. Will I go to hell?”

  “No. One sin ain’t bad.”

  I wrap my arms around her until finally we sleep.

  * * *

  Berns ain’t never seen the place where we live. It’s the backside of nowhere, and I am ashamed to show it. When we moved to the swamp, Alvin forbade my brother to come visit, so I told Berns to stay away for fear of what Alvin might do. Berns heeded the warning, but he wrote me regular and made me write back, so he wouldn’t worry. At Christmas they sent along a little package with candy and soaps Marie made for the girls. No matter how many of them letters Alvin got to first, I never stopped looking for them, and they never stopped coming. I do believe they were intended for Alvin, too, as a reminder somebody was watching. Somebody cared.

  Berns and me don’t talk the whole way to the swamp. I wish he would say something, so I can say my piece, but he don’t, so we walk in silence. We come through the swamp barefoot and quiet so the wildlife don’t know to hide. It teems all around. The ridge is clear today, a big difference even from yesterday. I walk ahead of my brother through the vines and across the path. Two baby gators sit atop the same tree I crawled up not two days ago, sunning in a strip of bright light. It ain’t ’til we are upon them that they turn and leap into the water. I point, though I know Berns likely already spied them. He was taught to see the land, same as me. Daddy’s blood runs through both of us. When we come to the clearing, he looks at the house and says, “This it?”

  “This is it.”

  He walks to the pump, pulls a long drink, then soaks his head in the cold stream of water, and I do the same. Berns climbs the stairs behind me and comes through the screen door. I got what’s left of what we own tied up in two quilts ready for the journey.

  He stops at the door and looks around. I see my mistake. I’ve scrubbed us of this place. Alvin’s nowhere to be seen. Berns knows, same as me, sometimes what ain’t there is as telling as what is.

  “How many times in all these years you reckon he hit you?” he asks.

  “One too many,” I say. I take hold of a quilt, throw it over my shoulder through the loop and heft it up with my right hip, but Berns don’t move, just stands there popping his knuckles on both hands.

  “You know where he went?” he asks.

  My brother is asking a question. He’ll ask once, but not again. What I thought would be easy, ain’t.

  “Don’t know. Don’t care.”

  He nods his head a slow yes before crossing the room and bending to pick up his load. When he straightens, his eyes are filled with unshed tears, and I’m sorry, sorry my soul is added to his fret, but before I can say so, he says, “Let’s go,” and leads me from this place.

  We go back along the footpath, over the ridge and through the swamp like we just done, like I done days before, like my husband done every day since we first moved here. There was some kind of promise then, of steady work, if nothing more. That’s all gone now.

  The cicadas and bullfrogs holler their chorus. Once we get to the other side of the swamp to the main road where the railroad tracks begin, I lay my burden down to catch my breath. I can’t help but look back. I can’t say what I’m looking for. I can’t say what I’m thinking. I’m just looking, caught in a river of thoughts so deep I can’t pull out ’til I hear Berns say, “Leave it be, Gertie. That’s dead and gone.”

  Dead and gone, dead and gone. I heft up my load and follow my brother on home.

  10

  Retta

  Mrs. Walker’s in the lane this morning and I’ll be damned if Sugar ain’t by her side. The dead and the living right next to each other like it was an ordinary day. Sugar pecks around her feet like she is a tree for shade. It’s a powerful thing to need a friend when you can’t have her. There’s things that can only be shared among women, things menfolk want to fix but can’t, things too late for fixing. Mrs. Walker might say different, but she wouldn’t offer no suggestions as to the how of the fixing. She’d just lend her ear to the problem at hand.

  Mrs. Walker come to town just two years after my Esther died, some nineteen years ago. Word followed that her husband killed a man in a fishing camp over a plate of food. Knifed him with the blade he used to clean fish. She told me after he got home she caught him around the side of the house washing the blood from the knife. He handed her the string of fish and walked past her like nothing happened. After he got sent away to prison, she was alone in the world and not of her own volition. Nobody talked to her and nobody helped her, so she had to leave that life. When a woman marries and takes her husband’s name she is forever bound by his action and not her own. It ain’t right, but that’s the way it is. When Mrs. Walker got here, every white woman in town stuck their nose up at her. I said “how do” first time she moved into that house across from Shake Rag, and she always spoke back.

  One evening she was sitting up on the porch and hollered out, “What’s your name?”

  “I’m Oretta Bootles.”

  “Oretta, why don’t you come and sit a spell? Have some sweet tea?”

  I told her no, thank you, I had to get home to my husband. I was thinking I can’t be seen sittin’ on no porch with a white woman sipping tea, what would people say? There was a time I worried about that, but no more. She asked regular and one spring day I said, “Don’t mind if I do.”

  There was no harm in the woman. She welcomed me to her porch and then to her kitchen for sweet tea and coffee. I never been to Charleston but when she talked, it came alive in my head. She said the bells from the churches on Sunday morning called to one another like mockingbirds for a full thirty minutes before services. As soon as I started living with the expectation of having a friend by my side through old age, I found her dead on the kitchen floor. Now the whole world is upside down in thought and action, and my days are filled with worry about what I can’t see that’s waitin’ around the corner.

  * * *

  By the time I get Odell out the door and clean the dishes, Mary still hasn’t stirred. I forgot how hard it is to rouse a tired child. She sucks her two middle fingers when she sleeps. I hate to wake her, but the day presses. I found a nightgown and some underthings of my daughter’s that I kept stored, and dressed Mary in them after her bath before bed. I never thought they’d see use again, but I’m glad they have.

  Yesterday scared the child. After I drew the curtains shut, she ran to the window and snatched up the nickel before I could gather my thoughts. She clutched it in the same fist that held the other coin and said, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” over and over again. The shame in her runs deep. I sat her on my knee, patted her back and looked at the crochet she had done.

  “Look at what a fine blanket this is gonna be,” I said. She quivered at my touch.

  I stilled myself and said, “Mary,” and she listened. “Only the finest child could make a blanket like this. This ain’t no easy task. You got the gift of crochet.”

  She listened as I talked. I got her calm, then we both went back to our work. The rest of the day a piece of my mind stayed with her in that room. I’ve refused to call this child by name since she came into my care, like that would protect me from feeling somethin’
. Senseless. Mary is her name and I aim to call her by it.

  * * *

  Mary asks to be carried this morning so I lift her up and set her on my hip. Reminds me of a time long ago. I don’t scoot around Mabel today. Got to deal with her sooner or later. Mabel and Mrs. Walker are laid out on either side of a straight line like they’re something to choose between. Mrs. Walker’s attention is on Mabel, who’s digging in her pocketbook for something that must be awful small for the time she takes to find it. Mrs. Walker laughs with her head back like she did when she’d get tickled. She always could help me see Mabel different than I do.

  “Gonna be a hot one today,” Mabel hollers out. “You’d think now that September is upon us we might have some notion of autumn.”

  The sun ain’t even broke from the horizon, but Mabel fans herself with one of the cardboard fans from the funeral parlor like it’s noon. She’s got a drawer full of fans from all the kin she’s buried these past five years. I reckon I ought to feel sorry for the woman—she’s lost two sisters, a brother and a husband—but I can’t see how any of them deaths have changed her. I don’t know how a soul ain’t altered by all that death; Lord knows I am changed by my losses. But not Mabel, she goes on seeing what she wants to see and ignoring what she don’t, like me carrying a white child in my arms. Just pretends what’s really happening ain’t. I never saw anything like it. We take up our walk together side by side toward Mrs. Walker.

  “Where is her mama?” Mabel finally asks.

  I give Mabel a taste of her own medicine and ignore her. I stop in the lane beside Mrs. Walker, hoping Mabel will move on, but she stops and waits alongside us. Mrs. Walker and I turn toward her house, which sits quiet and dark under tall pecan trees. I stand by my friend and she by me. We got our toes in the yard when the first crack of sun rises from the fields.

  “Lookie here, Mary,” I say. “This is the house you’re gonna be living in after today.”