by Deb Spera
In the end it wasn’t her husband that fanned the flames of rancor, but Mirabelle herself. She knowingly usurped my position. She didn’t think I should be working outside the home and said as much.
“A woman’s mind should remain purely focused on bettering herself and the lives of her children,” she told me with that fake and sticky kindness. “Especially given the circumstances.” The circumstances of death she meant. She didn’t approve of me working after the death of my son, but what good would I be to anyone sitting around drowning in grief. I like working and am proud of what I have accomplished.
“I’m only thinking of the children,” she said, as if she were their mother. When I heard of her death I was glad.
“You’ve gone quiet,” Edwin says as he pushes his plate away. “What’s on your mind?” All that remains of the meal he’s eaten is the bone from the steak. The man is always hungry at the end of the day. Retta removes the dinner plates to the kitchen. There is a violet haze across the sky that deepens as the sun sinks low. The billowed clouds turn to dark purple bruises across streaks of pink and gold. What’s on my mind? Deception and its many faces. My husband is right. I’ve raised selfish girls.
“This headache has fatigued me, that’s all,” I respond, though my headache has dissipated. Sustenance has pushed it from the front to the back of my head, and what’s left has settled at the nape of my neck.
“Shall we call for the doctor?” he asks.
“No, no,” I tell him. “I’ll be fine.”
It’s a moderate night, the mildest we’ve had in ages. September is always a relief. There is no breeze, but the honeysuckle is still sweet in the air, and the cattle call to one another in the distance. I refer to these late meals as our European dinners. I prefer late suppers in the summertime. They are a peaceful and elegant transition from a day of hard work. But tonight, nothing helps. My mind is fixed in a trap I cannot escape.
“Do you ever wonder why he did what he did?” I ask Edwin.
“Who are you talking of?” he asks.
“Buck.”
His face darkens. Retta refills the sweet tea and lays a small plate of lemons by my glass before disappearing back to the kitchen.
“What good can come from this kind of rumination, Mother?”
“Don’t you ever wonder?”
“Of course I wonder, but what good does it do? He took that explanation with him, didn’t he.”
The telephone rings in the parlor, two long bells, but I’m not running to answer as I normally do, and Edwin asks, “Don’t you want to get that?”
I can’t tell him I have listened to the telephone ring for the better part of the day. I can’t say I’ve avoided answering, that I know who it is and I’m in no mood to hear the story I know has already been manufactured for me.
“It’s rung several times this afternoon, but every time I answer, there’s no one there,” I lie. “I’ve run myself silly answering the thing and for naught.”
He scrapes back his chair and walks to the telephone himself, picks up the receiver and says hello three times before finally hanging up. When he returns to the table, he shrugs his shoulders and I mimic him. Retta cuts a fresh lemon meringue pie and serves the both of us. I tell her to go home, that I’ll see to the dessert dishes. She reluctantly acquiesces. Edwin watches me while I eat. The sugar turns my stomach.
“Stop looking at me as if I’m going to implode,” I tell him. “It’s just the headache talking.”
The telephone rings again, and this time it is me who is up and out of my chair, and across the room. My heart is in my throat when I answer, but it is not Sarah or Molly on the other end of the line; it’s the tobacco man, Pete, asking for Edwin. I call for my husband and hand him the receiver. I know from Edwin’s countenance the news isn’t good.
“Will leaving sooner make a difference?” Edwin asks, turning away from me. I retreat to give him privacy. When the call is complete, he comes back to the table, takes his seat and fishes a cigarette out of his shirt pocket.
“The commodities market is shifting, which could impact the price of tobacco,” he finally says. “We have to leave a week sooner than anticipated if we are to be first to market.”
We spent a small fortune changing the crop from cotton to tobacco. Just getting the barn ready so the tobacco could cure properly was expensive, let alone the cost of labor to oversee the finicky crop.
“Can you do without Lonnie?” I ask. “We’re under deadline.”
“For what?” he asks and then listens without expression while I tell him of our son’s accomplishments.
When I am finished he exhales a trail of smoke and says, “So you lied about going to Columbia?”
“I didn’t lie per se. We wanted to surprise you.”
“A lie is a lie, Mother. Is there anything else you mean to tell me, or is that it?”
“Oh, honestly, Edwin, I thought you would be pleased. It’s a financial boost for us. You know how we need the money.”
“Good for you then,” he says without meeting my eye.
“It wasn’t me. Lonnie did this, every bit of it.”
“Please, Mother, I know good and well you helped him.”
“Only to encourage, Edwin. That’s all.”
“All right. Good for him,” he says, “but he can’t stay behind. I need him.”
“It’s in both our interest to have him stay, Edwin. Surely you can find someone to replace the boy.”
“No, Annie,” he says, stubbornly. “Have you heard a word I said?”
“Edwin, I’m leaving the Circle to Lonnie. You’ve got Eddie to help you with the plantation. He’ll be running this place when it comes time. Lonnie needs something, too.”
He opens his mouth to speak, but I stop him, “Before you fight me on this, you should know I’ve made up my mind.”
He sits back in the chair and takes a long draw from the cigarette before saying, “What about the girls?”
For a moment I’m afraid he knows my secret.
“What about the girls?” I ask.
“You once wanted to leave them the business.”
“That’s a cruel thing to say.”
“I don’t know, Mother. One day you miss them, the next you are cutting them out of the Circle. What am I to think?”
“I want Lonnie to have the Circle,” I say when I trust myself to speak.
“Our son is a goddamn thumb sucker. You’ve run that business for thirty years. If you need help, put one of the other women in charge. The boy goes with me.”
He stamps his cigarette out in the leftover meringue and gets up from the table. The Circle has long been an unspoken source of conflict for Edwin and me but not because of any outlandish jealousy for my time and attention. Papa provided me a substantial trust and prevented Edwin from touching it, Papa’s parting shot to my husband for not following proper channels and asking his consent for my hand in marriage—at least that’s what Edwin believes. The trust stipulates I can never leave the money to my husband, only to my children. The slight was surprising, for not once in all of our marriage did Papa show any underlying tension. But it was there all along. Edwin saw what I could not.
The plantation is in the red. With the loss of three straight years of cotton, we’ve nearly milked our bank account dry. It pained Edwin’s pride to ask me for the tobacco money, and, of course, I was happy to contribute. I’ve never viewed it as my money; it’s always been ours. I did what I could without hurting the Circle, and the bank helped with the rest. No one, not even the boys, knows the truth of our financial predicament.
He comes out of the kitchen wearing his hat, the automobile keys in hand. “I’ll need every available man I can get if we’re to leave within the week. I’ve got to get the word out tonight.”
Loud chirps and the beating of frantic wings interrupt my hu
sband’s departure. Two cardinals fly down the steps and through the parlor. They are confused, flying toward and into dusk-lit windows. I hasten to open the front door in hopes they will find their way to the light. Edwin folds a newspaper and stalks them while I try to shoo them to safety. One makes it free to the trees in the front yard, but the other flies back and forth from the dining room to the parlor, and perches on the end table. Edwin corners the animal and in one swift move strikes the creature. He scoops it from the floor in the folds of the paper.
“Is it dead?” I ask, and he opens the paper for me to see. A female cardinal lies between the pages on its side, stunned, one eye blinking.
Edwin carries her to the front porch, and I follow. I always thought of female cardinals, not unlike seagulls, as the unfortunate gender of their species. The males sport such stunning plumage while the females are a dull shade of brown with few sharp features. Seems unfair. Edwin flings her to the yard and returns inside, but I stay and watch as the other bird flies down from a low branch to land beside her friend as if in vigil. Inside the telephone bells ring twice. I listen as Edwin answers. After three escalating hellos he shouts, “Goddammit, stop calling here,” and slams down the telephone.
13
Retta
When Mary and I approach the lane we see that every window of Mrs. Walker’s house is open. The chattering of girls reaches our ears long before our feet touch the yard. Mary walks faster, but she don’t let go of my hand. A dance of sounds catches my ear, cabinets and doors opening and closing, a tribal beat to an old song I used to know. Gertrude’s got them girls working. Every rug’s been pulled outside and hung over the porch rail to beat. Every dish from Mrs. Walker’s cupboard sits in a basin by the pump ready for wash. The smell of fresh corn bread in the oven comes up through the yard and out to the road. Mrs. Walker’s dresses, my friend’s clothes and underclothes, her towels and sheets, washcloths and aprons hang out on the clothesline like it’s any ordinary day.
Mary hears her kin and hollers out, “Alma!” And wham, out the kitchen door and off the porch flies a girl twice as tall as Mary, but not much bigger ’round. Mary runs to her sister laughing and tries to knock her down, but the girl just grabs Mary and twirls her around in circles. The rest of the family follows with the screen door swaying between each arm that pushes it open, two more girls, followed by their mother. Her eye still bears the mark of her husband’s fist, but the swelling’s come down some. There are no fresh marks that I can see. He does not follow nor do I hear his footfall in the house. Maybe he ain’t here. Maybe that’s why they’re so happy? He was a rotten egg from the start, always itching for a fight. Always found something to occupy myself with when I saw him in the street. Most everybody I know did the same. Some meanness you got to steer clear of, otherwise it finds its way to you.
The girls cluster ’round Mary, pulling and tugging, and I watch the bunch of them together. They all got the same straw-colored hair; you’d know they’re family if you was to see them in town, together or separate. They’re all bone thin, and not a one of them has shoes. They’ll have a time of it come winter. I’m meddling now, looking on too long, at what no longer concerns me.
Gertrude calls to me from the center of the yard, “Thank ya!”
I wave at her so she knows I heard, and Mary runs back and hugs me around the knees. I pat her on the head and watch as she runs back to her mother and sisters. They are a sight for these old eyes. Before I turn back to the road, before I free myself of this promise I made four long days ago, I am flushed with a blinding heat, so hot I fear my knees will give way. My vision is disrupted. The yard and all the air around is filled with black dots that blink wherever I turn my eyes. But they ain’t dots, they’re bugs. Black bugs, swarming and clouding all I see. They come in a frenzy, sounds and all, and leave just as quick when I shake my head to get them loose of me and come back to my senses. What was beautiful and simple only a moment before, this reunion of family, is tainted by what I could not see then but do now. He’s here, on the porch, watching. Alvin. I see him. I know that lanky slouch. Yes, I can see him. And I got to wonder if he was the redbird’s promise.
* * *
At home I’ve chopped tomatoes and pepper to add to the rice, and by the time I hear the horse bells coming up the lane, the red beans are near finished. Odell is late tonight. I got three plates pulled out when I remember it’s just the two of us. Left again, I think to myself. The thought comes so fast it feels like I’ve been struck. Having Mary reminded me of a time when there was always three of us around the table. And now that she’s gone, there is another kind of reminder. I thought I got used to the empty of the house, but now that it’s quiet again, the hole feels twice the size.
I was two months pregnant the first time I met my baby girl. Odell and me waited ten long years for a child, and when I finally blossomed all of Shake Rag rejoiced alongside us. It was spring, and I was working in the garden at the end of a long workday trying to get my seedlings in the ground after a spring frost. I was digging down on my knees when she come to me clear as the day is long, a baby in the garden, fat and black as could be, sitting up strong and raising her arms to the sky in sheer wonder. Some of my spirit left me then. Like a picture in a book, I watched my own face lean down next to my child. I lay my own cheek next to my baby’s cheek and felt skin so soft and new.
“Hello, my daughter,” I heard myself say, as if I had said it out loud, only I didn’t. It was a voice inside me, loud and clear.
When the pieces of me came back together I stood to get my bearings. I was a middle-aged woman then, though still young enough for childbearing. The day was clear, but the sky was full of hawks hunting. Birds of every kind swooped and squawked to fight them off. I didn’t stop to make sense of what that meant, I just rushed to meet Odell at the station after he got off work.
“We’re having a girl,” I told him when he stepped down off the train.
“How you know?” he asked.
“I met her.”
“Woman,” he said, “you are something else.”
He was used to my ways by then. We was so happy. I was too young to know there is no such thing as any one thing. Everything, even great happiness, has another side. Turn over a leaf and see how the front and back differ.
It ain’t ’til Odell sits down to eat, I notice he’s started without prayer. I suppose what’s bothering me is bothering him, too, though he would never say so for fear of hurting me. Getting a man to talk about what troubles him is like digging in winter soil. So I ask, “What is it, O?”
He lays the fork aside and folds his hands together. “I saw Mr. Coles on my way home from Bamberg this evening. He was leaning up against his automobile out by Mortgage Hill like he was waiting on somebody.”
“Uh-huh.” I don’t trust myself to say anything more.
“When I come through he put out his hand to stop me. Said they were short a man and a wagon to cart tobacco to market.”
“What’s that got to do with you?”
Odell drops his head from the weight of my question. He gets weary of me.
“I ain’t saying nothing against you, Odell, but you got no business hauling that crop to market. I heard the men talkin’, it ain’t safe. There’s at least three, maybe four days’ ride to Florence through swampland, likely more, and the same home. It’ll be too hard on you.”
“I drive a wagon all day, every day, Retta. This ain’t no different.”
“There’s a big difference come the end of the day when you’re camped in a swamp, old man.”
“Preacher’s hired, too. We’ll look out for each another.”
“Preacher’s young and you’re afflicted.”
“So what? I got the energy. I ain’t dead. It’s useful work. I’m pent-up going from corner to corner looking for any piece of dirt I can find for a scrap of money, depending on my wife to provide.”
&
nbsp; There it is. I asked and there it is. That’s it then. He’s going. It don’t matter what I want. He’s gone past that and found his reason. We stare each other down.
“What’s he gonna pay?”
“Twelve dollars a day, same as all the men driving the wagons. Equal wage.”
“What about your hands?”
He holds both out in front of him across the table, strong and sure with nary a shake in either.
“What about them?”
I can’t eat no more. I can’t talk no more. I can’t think no more. I leave the dishes for tomorrow and go to bed. I know when I wake the kitchen will be clean.
* * *
When our child died Odell was gone to work. He didn’t sleep the night before, but he made me sleep, made me go to bed ’cause he saw how crazy out of my mind I was with my poor girl. She was drowning in sickness and neither one of us could do a thing about it, though we all tried everything we knew, including the doctor. Odell had to work that next day. There wasn’t nothing to be done about it. I don’t feel like it was my fault that I slept, and I don’t feel like it was Odell’s fault that he didn’t. We did what was put in front of us. We did what good parents do. What happened there was God’s fault. Our girl died at three o’clock that afternoon. Esther Marie Bootles. She was eight years old.
On the rail line, that very same day, Odell caught fire near Columbia shoveling coal for the engine. He was dead on his feet, not in control of his faculties; otherwise he would’ve known the boiler was stressed. He don’t remember it blowing, only remembers waking up with his legs on fire. Railroad lost two good men that day; Odell’s friend, Vernon, lost his life and Odell, his leg. He went over and over what happened for years, the way I still go over and over Esther dying, but no matter how much we look at what happened, no matter how many times we think back to what might have been if we could’ve done one thing different, no matter what, we always come up the same. We live over and over in the happening only to be left with what’s already done. That’s the day I stopped asking God for help. Took me a long time to understand that I had to give to get. I don’t dispute God’s existence. I never did stop believing, but He ain’t who He’s made out to be. I don’t much trust Him and I reckon He don’t much trust me, but we got ourselves an understanding. And that’s the best I can do.
