by Deb Spera
“Norris boys will be by this afternoon,” Retta tells me, wiping her face with a dish towel.
“Excellent,” I say. “I’ll go to the slaughterhouse and give them a head start.”
“Miss Annie, let them boys do everything, that’s what you pay them for.”
“Nonsense, the work will do me good. I’ll just unlock the boxes and lay out the knives. They can handle the rest.”
I tell her we’ll have a guest for supper, and she says the yard boys caught a mess of trout this morning. Said every time they cast a line they got a bite, like that in itself was a small miracle.
“Who are the Norris boys?” Edna asks as I am leaving the kitchen.
“Only the very handsomest brothers in the county,” I say. “There are seven of them.”
“Seven brothers, imagine that,” she says. “Their poor, poor mama.”
Upstairs I change into my work dress, fasten the buttons up the front, then scoot next door to Edwin’s room to retrieve the keys to the slaughterhouse. In the nightstand next to his watches are the keys to the many locks around the plantation. I slide the fat ring of them neatly over my wrist, where it dangles like an odd charm bracelet.
The air outside has turned thick and orange. So thick the stench of animals welcomes me long before I’ve gone around the slaughterhouse to the pigpens. We have three pens and each holds ten hogs. Pigs are intelligent creatures. Years ago there was a farmer from Greenville who used a pig to find his missing child, but it is common knowledge that pigs are pack animals and can turn vicious if their numbers become too large.
I am astonished to find our pigs lying individually in deep holes. I’ve never seen anything like it, and for a moment I think the farmhands have played a trick. But piles of dirt lie beside each hole, and it becomes clear on closer observation the animals created the holes themselves—as if they have dug their own graves. Thirty fat pigs lie like soldiers in trenches ready for war.
Though they are reluctant to move I push and poke them up from their holes until I find two fat sows that satisfy. They are big pigs, upward of four hundred pounds, and will feed family and guests enough pudding, ribs, roast and bacon for the entire week of Camp. The rest of the drift will get a reprieve but only until our return. All of October will be bloody work.
Separating the sows is not easy. The braying from the lot of them is deafening. The other eight crowd, attempting to dissuade me of my actions, but I slap the two sows forward and into the holding pen so the boys will know which I have chosen to kill. By the time I have entered the slaughterhouse, the pigs have retreated to their holes, and the two I’ve separated have begun to dig.
When I was ten years old and living in New York City, I came upon a street urchin charging all the children in the neighborhood a penny to see a human hand. Everyone paid, I did as well, but when he opened the box to show his prize, I immediately recognized the ruse and called him out.
“That’s not a hand, that’s a pig’s foot.”
Perhaps he thought because I was rich and well-dressed I wouldn’t recognize the animal. Perhaps he assumed I was an easy mark or maybe my accent gave me away as the enemy, but I’ll never forget the look on the boy’s face. I called him on his lie, and for a moment I relished his discomfort until he struck me across the face and broke my nose. God, I hated that city, so much barbarity. I think of that story every year come pudding time.
Along the south wall of the butcher shop Edwin has fashioned a long row of a dozen wooden boxes, all under lock and key, that contain all that is needed for slaughter. Though most everyone you meet in this county live with their houses and barns open to whoever may visit, Edwin, as was his family before him, is a stickler for locks. He feels it prudent to dissuade even the best of men from temptation. We have abundance, and there are those who believe what is ours should be theirs.
Edwin is the one who always prepares for butcher. This is his domain. He gets the stations ready before the men come, so they’ll go right to work. During slaughter, they talk like henhouse chickens, laughing and kidding one another, telling stories about this one or that one’s daddy. The young ones boast of their adventures with girls and brag about how they handle a knife or gun until the older men grow weary of the game and turn their tongues on the boys’ youth and naiveté. It’s all in good fun, and the young demonstrate patience at the teasing, though it’s sometimes tinged with cruelty.
The keys to the boxes are clumped together on Edwin’s key ring by size. Even so, it takes me many tries to find which key unlocks which box. I finally fling them open one by one. On top of the first box lies Edwin’s checklist naming what each subsequent chest contains. Aprons, gloves and canvas tarps are neatly folded beneath. In the second box are the blades and knives. Some date as far back as Edwin’s great-grandfather. Only Edwin handles these; it is a patriarchal duty, a generational tradition. The knives and blades are locked in a box within the box under another lock and key, reminiscent of one of those Russian doll sets. The key to the second box is separate from the others on the ring. Why not keep them together? The knives and saws are each housed in rich soft leather weathered from age. I like the sharp contrast of the smell of the leather and the steel that lies within. The box is far too heavy for me to move, so I drag it to the front of the chest, so the open lid will not slam shut, and reach in to extract the holsters one by one. The saws lie on top next to the other like puzzle pieces. Edwin has tamed the things. I remove and lay them alongside one another on the table. The knives are stacked along the bottom in neat lines like dominoes. When I lift the first butcher knife from the box, the eighteen-inch blade slips from its sheath and I make the stupid mistake of trying to catch it with my right hand. It slices through my palm, and I jump from its trajectory to save my feet. My skin is like paper these days, and the cut is deep. I clutch my apron to stanch the flow. It doesn’t hurt. Not at first. The deeper the wound, the less pain, initially anyway. By tonight the throb will have set up house.
I can’t see how I was so careless. I pick up the knife by its wooden handle and return it to the sheath, but the knife doesn’t go all the way in; something is blocking the way. With my good hand I reach in and find at the bottom a soft pink rag with little crescent moons. What I didn’t see before, I see clearly now. Every knife protrudes from its pouch. I lift the next knife from the box and slide it from the leather, laying it on the floor next to me, then reach in and find something hardened and bunched tight along the bottom—a stick? I give a yank to loosen, and it comes up in one awkward bundle, clumped and brown with age. Not its, they, them, there are four things here. Each is separate, but each is the same. I pull them apart to see what they are, and am incredulous with my find. They are underpants, four pair of children’s underpants.
24
Retta
I am the last living member of my family—the very last. Born the day freedom came. Soon after, Daddy and my older brothers took leave of me, Mama and Willie, and set out to make their own way in the world. Daddy hoped to find a job up north so he could send for us. But they took on debt, and white people don’t like to be owed nothing—especially by Negros. They rounded up my brothers and daddy, put them in a chained pen with hundreds of others and set them to work hard labor to pay off that debt. But no amount of lifting and digging and hauling made what they owed less. It was there they all caught sick and died.
We didn’t know nothin’ of it ’til years later when Willie went hunting. He found a record, and on that record was our family name. Next to our name was the money owed, the words 3 males and the dates they each deceased—no first names was recorded. They died within days of one another, so we don’t know who went first, in between or last. There was some comfort in knowing they was together, though it is my hope Daddy died first so as not to bear the loss of his children.
It was Mama who showed me and Willie the work they done and how the town was better for them being in it.
Mama said, “All your people built this town. Slave folk built the stores and churches, and the shelves and pews within. They built the funeral parlor and the coffins for the dead.”
She’d say, “We all born the same, we all die the same, ain’t no difference in that truth. But when you a Negro, you got to watch your mouth. What’s said can’t be unsaid, what’s done can’t be undone and what white folk do, don’t concern you. We’re put here on this earth to work, that’s all. If your daddy and brothers would have been happy enough with that fact, they’d still be here today.”
Every thing and body has its place is what she meant. What I remember has always been the same. The railroad has always come through and taken folks to and from other places, just like it took my daddy and brothers. The Coleses’ houses and outbuildings have always been here. Cotton’s always been grown—least ’til now. The town’s still got the same stores owned by the same families. Truth is I know every bit of Branchville from the time I can remember. Only Shake Rag is new, and even that’s already forty years old. When we found this patch of land, we finally found our own place.
This girl Edna don’t understand her place, don’t none of her sisters know either. Since Edna come for work this morning she ain’t stopped runnin’ off at the mouth. She talks like the whole town agrees. It’s a wonder she thinks at all. There’s a lot to learn if you know how to keep your jaw clenched; otherwise the world is full of blind fools. Maybe she can be taught, but at fifteen you’re a fully formed person, and the likelihood of any real learning is finished. She’s been here for half a day and already she’s fed me a line of bull about her daddy.
“He’s got a good job up north in Detroit making automobiles. When he gets enough money we’re gonna go live with him in a big house with a yard. Daddy says Detroit is big so we’ll have to get used to city livin’, but I think I was meant to be in a city. I’m a city person.”
She’s told herself this story so many times she believes it. But I know the darkness that hangs around her mother’s neck, and likely hers, too, with a man like that for a father, so I hold my tongue.
“In the big city every house has indoor plumbing, every single one. Can you imagine?”
“No, I can’t.”
“Imagine a whole room just for your toilet needs. I never seen a real bathtub. Hearsay they got one right here in this house.”
“They got two,” I tell her.
“Oh, please, can I go see? I think I could spend a whole day just walking around this house looking at all the things they got.”
“No, you can’t, and when Mr. Coles gets back, don’t let him hear you talk like that. It’ll be your last day if you do.”
She pulls grapes from the stem and sighs.
“I never seen so much food in my whole life. Do you eat what they eat? We gonna eat dinner soon? What are we gonna eat?”
She don’t even take a breath between sentences.
She pops a grape in her mouth and says, “I never tasted anything so sweet. Try it,” she says and pushes it to my lips. I’m so surprised I let her.
“You listen to what I’m saying, girl?”
“Yes, you said not to walk around,” she says. “Someday I’m going to have a big house just like this and a whole passel of kids. Me and my husband will go to balls and such. I’m going to wear bright-colored dresses, not ugly old brown. We’ll have darkies working for us just like how Miss Annie’s got you. Maybe you can come and help me with my own children. Would you like that?”
This child’s got no sense of what’s real.
“Stop asking so many questions. Use your ears and not your tongue.”
“I can’t help it.”
“Can’t help it? You can help it. Just keep your mouth closed.”
I’ve no sooner got the words out of my mouth than Edna claps her hand around hers and points out the window to what’s beyond. Miss Annie is coming across the backyard with her hand in the air, wrapped and dripping with blood.
Edna flies out the back door untying her apron, flinging it behind her as she goes, and I follow, trying to keep up. Miss Annie stumbles and falls to her knees. Edna comes along the other side, but Miss Annie waves her off.
“I got her,” I tell Edna. “You go fetch the doctor.”
“No,” Miss Annie cries. “That’s who’s coming for dinner.”
She looks at Edna and says, “Go tell the Norris boys never mind.”
Edna looks at me confused.
“I don’t know where they live,” she says.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Miss Annie says. “Tell the yard boys.”
Edna stands looking at me unsure of herself, but before I can tell her what to do, Miss Annie screams, “Do as I say.”
“They’re in the barn,” I tell Edna.
She turns and runs for the barn.
“What is wrong with that girl?” Miss Annie asks.
I help her up, but before she comes through the kitchen door, she puts a hand against the house and leans over to vomit in the bushes. I hold her from behind and pat her back while everything comes up.
When she gets her breath she says, “I’m all right.”
But she ain’t. There’s a tremor in her whole body. She shakes like she’s freezing. “Let’s sit you down so you can show me where you’re hurt.”
“Show you where I’m hurt?” She laughs like I said the funniest thing she ever heard, laughs all the way across the kitchen. By the time I get her to a chair at the table, I can’t tell whether she’s laughing or crying. I wet a clean rag and unwrap the cloth that she’s used to press the wound. There is a deep gash on her right hand.
“Miss Annie, it’s a bad cut, but nothing a few stitches won’t fix.”
She mumbles under her breath like she’s arguing with somebody.
“Dirty liar,” she says.
I hurry to fetch the brandy, and she knocks the glass from my hands when I try to get her to drink. It shatters and splinters on the floor.
“I didn’t ask for that.”
“Miss Annie, are you sick?”
She looks at me and her eyes fill with tears.
“Am I the last to know?” she asks.
“Last to know what?”
“All these years. I am an old woman whose whole life has been nothing but a lie.”
With her good hand she reaches for the bloody rag she came with but it’s beyond her grasp. “There, Retta. Take that and see. Tell me I am wrong.”
I unfold the rag and understand right away what’s upset her. I see the little crescent-moon designs on the cloth beneath the blood. These belong to a child. Miss Annie goes quiet. When I finally get the courage to look at her, she says what I been dreading for more years than I know.
“They were hidden away, Retta. Locked and hidden away. There are more. So many more.” She puts her hand to her mouth, like she’s trying to catch the words that come out.
“Sweet Jesus,” is all I can say.
“Tell me what I’m thinking is wrong. Tell me I’m wrong.”
I take a deep breath and say it. “You ain’t wrong.”
Miss Annie sits in fret until the fret gathers into me.
“Go to the slaughterhouse, Retta. Take Edwin’s keys. Lock up what I found before someone sees. Hurry, Retta! Go!”
I am shaking when I take the keys to do as I am told.
Black clouds gather in the east and lightning flashes within them. Animals cry in their paddocks. Sheep, cows and chickens all bleat in loud choir. I open the chicken coop, and do the same with the paddocks. The creatures fly and run to the woods. They’ll come back after the storm. They always do. Edna runs to me from the tobacco barn.
“I done like she said.”
“Good girl,” I say.
She jumps when thunder rolls across the sky.
“I got to g
et home. Mama ain’t there.”
“She still ain’t come home? It’s been three days.”
Eyeing the storm clouds, she says, “I got to go. She’ll be mad if I don’t see to my sisters.”
“Go get them. They can stay quiet in my room until you finish helping with supper.”
Inside the slaughterhouse, my eyes take a moment to adjust in the darkness. When they do I spy a pile of silver blades lying one atop the other. Each blade is separated from the container that held it. Between them sits two stacks of children’s underpants, girls separated from boys, twenty-two pair in all.
“Keep your mouth shut, Retta,” Mama said when I told her what I suspected. “You don’t know nothin’ for a fact.”
I listened to her, but Lord, Lord it plagued me. Now I wonder if trouble won’t find you again and again if you don’t speak the truth. I wonder if you got to call what you see by its proper name, to cast out the sin within. I leave the knives on the floor of the slaughterhouse and gather up the children’s underthings. Holding them I feel what was dead come to life. I lay them inside the box, close the heavy lid and fasten the lock, but Miss Annie’s wishes don’t matter any more than mine do. The truth is in the open.
25
Annie
“I’m afraid I cannot stay for supper,” the doctor says when I come up to the door behind Retta to greet him. “A storm is blowing in and I shouldn’t be caught out.”
He’s covered in Spanish moss that has been tossed from the trees by the wind. He picks it from his shirt and hat as he addresses me.
“Retta, please bring a glass of wine for the doctor.”
She disappears to do as I asked.
“I’m sorry, Ann, I really musn’t. I know it’s late notice, but I’ve been so busy I haven’t stopped to heed the barometer.”
