Call Your Daughter Home

by Deb Spera

  “Another white woman on the corner of Shake Rag? It ought to go to a colored family,” Mabel says.

  I hold my tongue for the sake of Mary who wiggles with joy, plants both hands on my face and kisses me on the nose like I just gave her the biggest present in the world. Sugar pecks at my ankles breaking the spell, and Mrs. Walker fades into the morning light. I feel her go right through the center of me. Takes my breath away. I shove Sugar in the behind with my foot to get him to move toward home.

  “Looks like that rooster don’t like your house no more,” Mabel tells me.

  “Never did.”

  “Preacher come by Sunday evening?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  No sense in lying, she’s got eyes in her head. She don’t say nothing, just waitin’ for me to confess, like she’s my sister.

  Finally I ask, “What is it you want, Mabel?”

  She thinks about it and says, “You got an open spot down at Camp this year? My niece needs her a job. She’s got two young’uns and a husband who ain’t got work.”

  “I don’t know yet.” That’s the truth.

  “All right, but if you got needs, you think about her.”

  I got to think about her niece now, too, a woman with an able-bodied husband? Never mind Mrs. Walker, Mabel is the empty vessel here. No matter how much you do, nothing is ever enough. She is a hungry ghost.

  I don’t lock Mary in our room today. I remind her of the need for quiet, which is silly given the quiet that already lives in her, but I repeat it anyway ’cause that’s what we do with children. Nelly comes to the door an hour early like I told her, and I bring her by her hand into the room. I take up Mary’s hand, too.

  “Mary, this here is Nelly. Nelly, this is Mary. Nelly’s been a friend of mine for all her life. Nelly, Mary has been a good friend to me for three days now. She can crochet better than a grown woman.”

  Mary holds out the blanket she’s worked on so Nelly can see, and Nelly steps forward to look at it, hiding her smile behind her hand. Mary smiles, too, the quickest I’ve seen her do with anybody yet. We stand in a cluster. I give Nelly’s hand a squeeze and she squeezes back. One of us will be by Mary’s side until the day is done.

  After breakfast, Miss Annie retires to her sitting room upstairs to write out invitations for Camp. She’s got a sick headache that even coffee won’t cure, so she’s stayed home from work. Says she’s fine, but she’s not. I’ve known her long enough to read the signs. She’s holding her jaw how she does when she’s mad, so tight it’s no wonder her head hurts like it does.

  Eddie tumbles through the door like he’s still a boy. He’s slight like his brother. They both got full heads of red hair, only where Lonnie is pale and soft, Eddie is muscled and brown from working outside with his daddy. He teases me same as he did when he was a boy and lifts every pot lid to peer under, then snaps at my behind with a dishcloth. You’d think now he’s grown he’d quit, but he still dances around me in circles singing the song he made up as a child. “Butter beans, butter beans, How I love those butter beans, fresh and green, what reigns supreme, is Retta’s pork and butter beans.”

  Miss Annie delights in his spirit. Around his daddy, though, he’s all business, just like Mr. Coles. It’s a wonder how a grown man can be one thing one minute and another the next, but he can. Neither he nor Lonnie have brought home a woman they will have, or one that will have them, even with all their money, but Eddie don’t seem to mind. I think both boys might be happier with a kind woman by their side, but it ain’t my business to say. They seem content living together, just the two of them. I shoo him out to go see his mama. She’ll feel better when she sees him.

  There’s a ham in the oven for supper, and from my room off the kitchen, Nelly peels potatoes to boil for potato salad. She sits with her back against the wall and her feet up on the chair by the bed. Her legs got some swelling in them, and I can see the tired in the girl. Nelly ain’t used to hauling around extra weight, and I know the broken veins on her legs got to hurt, but she don’t complain. It’s good to sit for even part of the day when you’re carrying heavy like she is. Mary sits alongside with the yarn between them. When I go to check on them, I pause at the door and listen to Nelly telling Mary a story.

  “The bad ones came upon a village with a plan to kill the women. The women knew they must take action so they changed themselves. One woman became a snake, another a gator, and the others changed to birds. They hid and waited. The bad ones got tired of looking and went on their way, leaving the village in peace. The next day all the women came back, and the village had a feast to rejoice in their return.”

  Mary wonders at the notion of turning into something other than what she is. Children can’t see that for every day they are on this earth, they are changing. I suppose God designed it that way to spare us the fear of what change means.

  * * *

  The men have had their heads together in the dining room since supper. Eddie sits next to his daddy at the head of the table. They’ve been sittin’ for near on two hours looking over maps and wagon routes to Florence. No way around the hazards of the journey. They talk about how long it’ll take to get through two different swamps—nobody wants to be in those waters after dark—versus the time they lose to skirt them.

  “Give me a best-and worst-case time line,” Mr. Coles asks two of the men. Four others do arithmetic on paper to see how many wagons they’ll need to cart the tobacco to market. The tobacco fella from PeeDee has been here a week to oversee the preparation and trip. Pete from PeeDee, that’s what he calls himself. He ain’t nothin’ more than an old country boy done good. Flue Tobacco’s been growing up in Peedee for over five years now, since before the blight. Mr. Coles has been watching them up in the northern part of the state for two of those years. Miss Annie said he walked the house at all hours when the boll weevils come, worried all the time about the next planting season. When Pete from PeeDee wrote and told him bugs don’t like tobacco, that sealed the deal. I think he figured—well I know ’cause Mr. Coles and Eddie discussed it regular—that if the state grew enough tobacco it could be rid of the boll weevil population altogether. Chase it on elsewhere like it did when they come up to us from Texas.

  Pete used to work at R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, and now leases himself out to help new farmers get into the tobacco market. He’s promised a good price if the crop is as good as what they had last year. Said last year’s crop was an all-time high; practically double what it was the year before, up from twenty to forty cents a pound. This year, he claims, will be more. If I hear that man say “All-time high,” one more time, well... He got here a week ago and is staying over at the boardinghouse until it’s time to go to market and runs his mouth like nothing I ever seen, asking foolhardy questions no outsider needs to know the answer to. People in town, white and Negro alike, cross the street when they see him coming for fear of having to hear his life story or tell theirs.

  When I bring the hummingbird cake and coffee into the dining room, Mr. Coles watches me place them on the sideboard and put out the plates and forks so they can help themselves when they’re ready. The table goes silent while I work. I keep my hands steady. Mr. Pete ain’t used to that kind of silence.

  “Miss Retta,” Pete says, “I’ve eaten the best meals of my life since I got here. Where’d you learn to cook so good?”

  I get so flustered I nearly drop the handful of silver I’m holding. Ain’t no white man ever called me Miss Retta. When I turn to answer, all them men are looking at Pete from PeeDee like he’s from a foreign land. The man that don’t have enough sense to know not to talk to the Negro help when he is a guest for dinner at a table such as Mr. Coles’s. Eddie is about to bust a gut trying not to laugh. Mr. Coles stares for a long hard while before Pete swallows, finally understanding what he didn’t before.

  Mr. Coles says to me without looking, “That’ll be all, Retta.”

 
I am happy to return to the confines of the kitchen, but the telephone rings in the parlor and Mr. Coles tells me to answer.

  “This here’s the Coles residence,” I say into the speaker.

  “Retta, it’s Sarah. Is Daddy in the house?”

  Oh, I ain’t heard her voice in the longest of times. She sounds so proper, I can’t believe it’s the same child I helped raise.

  “He’s in the dining room, sweetheart.”

  “I need to speak with Mother.”

  “I’ll get her for you.”

  “Who is it?” Mr. Coles hollers from the next room.

  Miss Sarah hears and says, “Please, Retta, don’t tell him it’s me.”

  “Business for Miss Annie,” I holler back.

  “Oh, thank you, Retta,” she whispers. “I miss you so.”

  “You just wait right there,” I tell her softly. “I’ll go and get your mother.”

  “Yes, all right. Please hurry.”

  Miss Sarah. I remember that little blond head and those bright blue eyes. She was a sweet little girl, but her loving, kind nature gave way to fear of her own shadow. Miss Molly, though younger, was her big sister’s protector. Molly learned from her sister what not to do just as much as she learned what to do. That child wasn’t afraid of nothing but her daddy, and she’d even fight him if it were to stand up for Sarah. When I get to Miss Annie’s room I find her sitting at the desk staring out the window.

  “Miss Annie, Sarah’s on the telephone.”

  She jumps in her chair and turns.

  “She’s there now?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She sets her mouth in a straight line and rises to her feet. When we get to the parlor she marches to the telephone, picks it up and says, “I have nothing to say to you,” and without a single pause, lays the receiver back in the cradle.

  “Miss Annie?” I say. “That was your girl, Sarah.”

  “I’m aware, Retta,” she says. “I’m such a fool.”

  She grabs her head with both hands and sways. I hurry to her side.

  “Should I fetch Mr. Coles?” I ask.

  “No,” she says. “Not a word to him.”

  I help her back up the steps and get her to the bed. Her color is the same as the white spread she lies against. I place a hand on her head to feel for fever, but she’s cool as can be. Cool in this heat. I never felt such a thing.

  “Draw the curtains and sit with me, Retta. Just for a moment. I’ll be fine. I just need to rest my eyes.”

  I set one hip alongside the bed, and she puts her hand in mine and holds it tight, like she needs to be pulled up the mountainside. I rub my thumb slow over the back of it ’til she settles herself and sing the hymn she likes best.

  “There is a balm in Gilead, To make the wounded whole, There’s power enough in heaven, To cure the sin sick soul.”

  11

  Gertrude

  When we get to the house I tell Berns to leave our things on the porch so I can sort them. He drops the load he’s carried and takes his leave. He will send the girls to me when he gets home. I told those girls there better not be a single chore left for him to do by the time he gets home.

  Marie told me Mrs. Walker died on a Monday and that Retta found her, but nobody can say why she was in the house of a white woman she didn’t work for. Nobody knows how old Mrs. Walker was when she died, just that she kept to herself at the Sewing Circle. Never put up a fuss, just did her work and went home. Didn’t have no living family and paid for her own funeral two weeks before she died, like she knew it was coming. Marie said her death took the wind out of everybody she worked alongside. Reminded them of what’s coming.

  Mrs. Walker’s house is made of gray-and-white clapboard. It’s small but sturdy, and sits far enough back from the road that nobody knows your business, but close enough to run for help if you need it. A bright red pump sits outside on the back porch, just steps away from the kitchen door. Water that close can’t help but make life easier. Pecan trees are filled with nuts, ripe and close to ready. We got some shucking to do, but there’s more than enough. A vegetable patch sits out near the clothesline, but it has been picked clean of beans, tomatoes, peppers and squash. Two ripe watermelons sit in the empty vines. I pick them before the raccoons get them and lay them up by the screen door on the back porch. There may be time enough yet for a small fall crop of potatoes, but only if we get the seed in quick enough. In the middle of the yard sits a green outhouse with a red roof. The inside is clean and without snakes. It’s a good yard, well kept and with plenty of possibility.

  I carry one watermelon and roll the other with my foot through the back door and into the kitchen. There’s a pot of burnt oats on the stove that must be what Mrs. Walker was making when she died. It’s a wonder the house didn’t burn down. It’s a good pan, and I can use it if I can get the burn out. She’s got everything here that’s needed to start a house. There’s flour, lard, cornmeal, dried beans and white rice in jars lined up on the counter. A whole cabinet is filled with canned vegetables, likely what she picked from the garden. There’s a full sack of grits and another half sack tied shut with a rubber band. There are three jars each of scuppernong and fig jelly, most likely a trade or gift since they’re so few. Mrs. Walker could have survived off what she has here for six months or more, but for us there’s enough for a few months. We’ll have to add to it to make it through winter but this is more than I seen since I was first married and more than the girls have ever known.

  Through the kitchen is a parlor with a wood furnace set against the wall furthest from where I stand. On the end table by an orange sofa sits a package wrapped in brown paper with a note on top that says, “Oretta, I made you this dress. You’ll need to take out the hem, but the color will be nice for you.”

  I undo the string and open the paper. Inside is a navy blue dress made with good quality material. It’s got a white collar and pockets. Why wouldn’t Retta take the dress after she found Mrs. Walker? Sitting right out in the open, a brand-new dress? That’s a curiosity. If she didn’t take it, she must not have wanted it.

  Beyond the parlor are two small but good bedrooms side by side facing out toward the road. Mrs. Walker’s bedroom has a four-poster bed made of oak and a matching dresser with a round mirror. The other bedroom is empty, like it’s been waiting for somebody to come along to use. I got the ticking for two more mattresses. We just need the corn shucks to fill them. Lucky for us there will be plenty of those lying in the fields this time of year.

  Two more dresses hang in Mrs. Walker’s closet, one for work and one for Sundays. They’re old-timey, and too big for any one of us, but I could get two, maybe three dresses out of them if I count one for Mary. Mrs. Walker’s bed ain’t made—like she’s just stepped away for her morning chores. There’s time and sun enough left for me to wash and dry the sheets if I do it quick before the girls get here. Mrs. Walker slept with a bottom and top sheet so thin they’ll dry fast in the late afternoon sun. When I yank them free, there is a wobble in the board beneath my feet. No nails hold down the board, like it’s loose on purpose. I lift it, careful of what lies beneath. Snakes, like most evil things, like the cool of under. Below the board is an old wood box with carvings on the sides. There is no lock. When I open the lid I find it empty and wonder for its purpose. I leave it where it was found and place the board back in its home. There’s no time to ponder such things. I pull the sheets from the bed and cart them outside to be washed. A cold wash will have to do, though they should be boiled since we don’t know what killed her. I lay the wet sheets in the wringer by the tub and turn the handle to squeeze them dry, then pin the sheets to the clothesline. They snap in the breeze.

  There is work to be done, but this house will keep us warm and dry in the coming months. The quiet here is like a heavy blanket draped over a mighty object. Even the dark whisperings of my mind are still. Thi
s house feels like a reward.

  Somewhere nearby, a screen door slams and a child laughs. A whistled tune is carried through the air to my ear as clear as a songbird, though I don’t know the melody. I have neighbors near enough for me to hear them and them to hear me. I am all at once reminded of other lives beyond the one I have lived.

  12

  Annie

  I should have kept the girls with us during the summers when they were growing up. If I had put them to work the same as the boys, maybe things would have turned out differently. Hindsight is tricky business. I was naive to think my friend Mirabelle would benefit Sarah and Molly, perhaps add to their education. When she volunteered to have the girls summer in Charleston, I knew she would expose them to the finest music, literature and parties, all the social gatherings I missed as a young girl. Mirabelle was always at the top of our class in school, even beating out the boys. She read every book imaginable—Austen, Twain, Shelley, Brontë, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky—and read one every two days. Her circle of friends, the ones I inherited through her when I came home, was vast. My daughters loved summers there, but they were altered in those years. The circle of refined and privileged women I grew up with never understood real work. Mirabelle was no different. She grew up kept and remained so even after a late-in-life marriage. She never had children of her own and doted on mine. In truth, I felt sorry for the woman.

  “If a man ever marries me, it will be because I win him with my mind,” she said often with a sly smile. “We all know what I am not.”

  She finally married a widower when she was in her late thirties. He was a rich, fat oaf, overindulgent and prone to grandiosity. His vitriolic hatred of “Yankees,” as he was wont to say, never fully spilled onto me because of Mirabelle’s and my friendship. But she knew what my father was, and still never put a stop to her husband’s talk. That should have been the first warning. My mother’s Southern heritage saved me from the man’s spew, and he treated my girls with courtesy, but touted his opinions with regularity, and I found it troublesome. It was Mirabelle I trusted. It was because of her I allowed the visits to continue for all the summers of their teenage years. They came home with so much, “Mirabelle said this, and Mirabelle did that,” that I finally told them over dinner one night, “You do know Mirabelle isn’t your mother?”