The Darkest Child

by Delores Phillips

  Sam, carried away, jumped up and down on the floorboards which caused Laura and Edna to cease coloring, and Martha Jean to stare at him quizzically.“Pee?” he said between bouts of laughter. “She said it was pee?”

  Had they been just a bit more subdued, they might have heard what I heard as Tarabelle turned to leave the kitchen.

  “It feels like pee,” she mumbled.

  Sam pulled himself together first.“C’mon, boy,” he said to Wallace. “Let’s walk over to Logan’s store.We gon’ get us some Nehi and celebrate our new sister.”

  And I was relieved because I knew Sam was going to tell Wallace what went on between men and women, Wallace would tell me, and eventually I might share it with Tarabelle.

  eight

  My dread of leaving Martha Jean alone, with only Laura and Edna as her ears, was shared by Wallace. “What if somebody comes in? She wouldn’t even hear ’em. She can’t hear if somebody knocks on the door, ”Wallace protested.“I ain’t going to school. It ain’t gon’ hurt nothing if I miss one day.”

  “Martha Jean gon’ be awright,” Harvey assured him. “Ain’t nobody coming out here.You going to school, Wallace, so you might as well shut up and get dressed.”

  Sam leaned against the back wall behind the stove, grinning at the exchange and smoking a cigarette. He wore the same overalls he had worn the week before, and they were still relatively clean.

  “I’m trying to think, Wallace,” he teased, “who gon’ come out here and bother Martha Jean? Who you think?”

  Wallace did not have to think about it. He was ready for the question. “A stranger,” he said, “or the insurance man, or the ice man, or Mr. Poppy, or dirty ol’ Mr. Harper who brings the coal.”

  “Why they coming?” Sam asked.“You done went and ordered ice and coal, and didn’t tell nobody?”

  “Get yo’ clothes on, Wallace,” Harvey said. “You talking ’bout people don’t wanna come when they got to.”

  “Bang, bang,” Sam teased, pointing a trigger finger at Wallace. “You gon’ shoot all them people wit’ yo’ cap pistol, Wallace? Make me wanna stay home and watch. I can just see it now. Mr. Poppy come to the door and ask for his rent, and you shoot him through the heart wit’ yo’ cap pistol.They put you on the chain gang for shooting people, boy, and that’s worse than any school I know of.”

  Wallace stood up under Sam’s taunting, but finally went back to the kitchen and made a show of getting dressed.

  After Harvey and Sam left, I poured warm water into the washbasin and began my morning bath. Tarabelle came from Mama’s room where she had slept for the past two nights. She didn’t say anything, but as she swept by me on her way to the kitchen, she purposely shoved my arm, and water sloshed from the basin.

  I turned to stare at her and saw that she was wearing her white, cotton dress—the one with the tiny rose pattern and short sleeves. It was more suited for spring, but no one was going to tell her that.

  “Grits,” she grumbled, coming back into the front room. “I’m sick and tired of grits. Oughta be something else in the world to eat besides grits all the time.”

  “I want grits,” Laura said.

  “You would, ”Tarabelle snapped. “You always want something. I’m glad I’m getting out of here today.Never nobody to talk to but a dummy and two whining brats.”

  “There won’t be anybody to talk to at the Munfords’, either,” I informed her.

  “Huh,” she snorted. “That’s what you think. Might not be nobody after today, but today you gon’ be talking to me. Don’t tell me you thought you was running off to school.”

  “I am going to school. Harvey said we have to go to school.”

  “Wallace might be going, but you ain’t. Who you think gon’ show me where these people live? I ain’t never been to no East Grove.You just expect me to walk up to some house and start cleaning? Tangy, you gon’ show me the house, where they keep things, how they like things, and how to do things. I ain’t working today, sister. I’m gon’ be watching you.”

  “Come on, Tara,” I pleaded, “I missed school on Friday.Mr. Pace is gonna be upset with me.”

  “So?” she asked, moving in to stand nose to nose with me.“Who you think you are? You think ’cause you can read a little bit better than the rest of us that it makes you special or something? You ain’t special, Tangy. Ever’ time you gotta do something, you whine.You just like Laura and Edna, whining all the time ’bout everything.”

  She grabbed the undershirt that I was about to slip over my head and tried to yank it from my hands.“You think you special, Tangy?” she repeated, tugging and stretching the shirt.

  “Yes!” I shouted, and pulled the shirt with all my strength.

  My beautiful sister chose that particular moment to loosen her grip. I stumbled backwards and fell to the floor, bringing the basin of water with me, soaking the undershirt.

  Edna began to cry, and Laura shrieked for Wallace who came rushing in from the kitchen.

  “I don’t need Wallace,” I croaked from beneath a black oxford that was firmly planted atop my naked chest.Tears sprang to my eyes.“Mama said we don’t fight each other,” I whimpered, and the heavy shoe was immediately replaced by a gob of saliva. I could feel it oozing across my ribcage, and I used the wet shirt to wipe it off.

  “Silly, ”Tarabelle said, as she turned on her heels and marched across the hall.

  “I’m gon’ tell Mama on Tara,” Laura said with such sympathy for me that I felt ashamed for myself and for Tarabelle.

  “Ain’t nothing to tell,” Wallace said, helping me to my feet, although I did not want his help. He refilled the basin with warm water, then turned his attention to Laura and Edna.“C’mon,” he told them, “Martha Jean’s got breakfast ready.” On his way out, he stopped long enough to whisper, “Tara’s just a bully.You’ll get her one day.”

  Alone in the room, I thought about bravery and common sense, exploring the thin line that separated the two. I was not a brave individual, and common sense told me that my strength would be no match against Tarabelle’s, but I was not afraid of her, either. Not really afraid.

  Fear was a thing I understood all too well. It was a malignancy that had spread throughout my body until my mother, in her godly wisdom, had diagnosed and cauterized it.

  I stared at my reflection in the basin of water, remembering that day vividly, and shuddering from the memory.

  I am ten, sprinting the miles between Plymouth and Stump Town with sticks and stones pelting my thin winter coat, being chased by four girls who are no bigger or older than I.

  “Pee baby, cry baby, pee baby, cry baby,” they yell from behind me, and I run even faster.

  “You’d better run.”

  “Ugly, stinky, tar baby.You’d better run.”

  Their words hurt worse than the rock that draws blood from my scalp, and the stick that bounces off my leg and does not draw blood. I run with fear pumping through my veins. My notebook and pencils are scattered somewhere miles behind me, and I am trying desperately to reach the safety of my mother’s arms, screaming her name in my flight.

  I round the bend, running from Fife Street to Penyon Road, and I see my mother. She is standing on the front porch, staring down past the field and directly at me. She turns her back and opens the front door. I think she is going inside, deserting me in the presence of my enemies, and I scream for her again.

  “Mama! Mama!”

  Martha Jean and Tarabelle emerge from the house. My mother rushes them toward the road, and they obey. My warriors charge the battlefield without armor, attacking my predators, pulling clothes, and hair, and skin, drawing blood and screams of terror, as I fall to the dirt, panting and crying.

  Above the noise of my pounding heart and panting breath comes the distinct sound of bone cracking. I turn my head slowly and see three of the girls running back toward Fife, and the unlucky fourth sitting on the road, holding her right arm with her left hand.

  Tarabelle circles the girl onc
e, then turns her cold eyes on me, and before I can blink, she rams a knee into the girl’s face. Martha Jean, a long red welt running from ear to chin, helps me to my feet and delivers me into the waiting arms of my mother.

  Mama makes herself comfortable in an armchair and pulls me onto her lap. She strokes my hair, then wraps an arm around my back, drawing me closer to her heart.With her other hand, she motions to Tarabelle, and my sister steps away from us. Mama brings her arm around and under my thigh, pinning my body to hers.“You a Quinn, baby,” she says softly.“We don’t run from nobody. Nobody! Do you understand that?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I mumble against her breast.

  “You gotta fight. Don’t take nothing but swinging yo’ fist.You understand that?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I’m gon’ make sho’ you understand it,” she says, loosening her grip on my thighs.“Hand me that poker and hold her feet, Tarabelle.”

  Tarabelle clamps down on my feet, immobilizing me.There is no time to cry out as my mother brings the searing fire iron down onto my leg. I swoon from the pain, and my mother’s voice trails me as I enter into a darkness that is death and float deeper still into Hell. “I done branded you a Quinn, girl. Don’t you ever run from nobody else long as you live.”

  Much later, the next day or the day after that, my mother’s face comes into focus before my eyes. She opens her mouth, and the strong smell of onions assaults my nostrils.“It wouldna burned you so bad if you’da been still,” she says.

  I remembered wanting to fade back into the darkness, but being unable to. I will forever wear a brand on my lower left leg that I am able to hide beneath a sock. Sometimes when I am most afraid, I touch my scar to remind myself that I am not a coward. I am a Quinn.

  nine

  Velman Cooper was standing beside the flag pole when I came out of the post office, empty-handed, on Friday afternoon. “Hey, little sister,” he called when he saw me. “I was kinda hoping you’d come by today.Where’s Martha Jean?”

  “At home,” I answered irritably. “She doesn’t go everywhere with me.”

  “Stop trying to be so mean,” he said, smiling and exposing the gap between his teeth.

  “What happened to your tooth?” I asked.

  “Got it pulled out. Something you don’t ever wanna have is a bad tooth. Had me walking the floors. Felt like somebody was hammering away at my mouth and my head at the same time. I was crying like a baby.That was years ago when I was still in Dalton, but I ain’t never gon’ forget that pain.”

  “Oh, is that all?” I asked flippantly.“I thought somebody knocked it out.”

  “Ain’t nobody bad enough to knock my teeth out, little sister.”

  “I bet one of my brothers could,” I said, and immediately regretted my remark, because I had the feeling he was not being arrogant now, but was only trying to get a smile out of me.

  “Maybe, and maybe not,” he said with a smirk. “I been asking around ’bout yo’ family. People say you got some pretty tough brothers, but I don’t know that they could knock my teeth out.”

  “What else do people say?”

  “Not much.”

  “Liar.”

  “Yeah, you right, I am lying,” he admitted, “but what people say ain’t hardly worth repeating.”

  “How about worth believing?” I asked.

  “You can’t believe everything you hear, either,” he said.“People had me dead once. Said I had been struck by lightning under Miss Thatcher’s peach tree. I musta been about eight or nine. Me and some mo’ boys was out there stealing peaches, ’cause Miss Thatcher had the biggest, healthiest peach tree in Dalton. All of a sudden the sky got just as dark as night, and Gabriel commenced to calling my name, ‘Velman.Velman.’ He wadn’t blowing no horn, but his voice was howling out my name. He had done seen what we was up to and he knew it wadn’t no good.

  “I looked up and saw him standing there in midair, swinging his horn in his right hand and staring down at me. Gabriel is a Negro, little sister. Don’t let nobody tell you he ain’t. He’s a big fat black man, darker than soot, and he was standing on a cloud. Every time he opened his mouth the wind howled. He raised that horn, and rain fell on us like rocks, and lightning zoomed ’round our heads. We didn’t know whether to run or just stay put, so we did a little bit of both. Some of us took off running, and some of us stayed under the tree waiting for the rocks to stop.

  “All of a sudden—whack—something hit me upside my head and I fell to the ground.Wadn’t nothing but a peach done got shook loose from the tree, but by the time I got back on my feet, I was the only one under that tree.Them other boys had done took off and told my mama I was dead, done been struck by lightning.”

  “You’re making that up,” I said, trying to keep from laughing. “You’re just trying to change the subject.”

  “No, I ain’t, either. My mama come running through that yard wit’ tears and rain mixed on her face, crying that her boy was dead.

  That ain’t nothing to lie about.”

  He’d ended his story, and I realized that I wanted him to continue. I enjoyed the sound of his voice and the way his hands occasionally swept though the air to place emphasis on some of his words.

  “Why you staring at me like that?” he asked, and I averted my eyes, but did not deny what was obvious.

  “I’ve got to go,” I told him.

  “Wait a minute,” he said, placing a hand on my arm to detain me.“I got something for Martha Jean. It’s in my car.”

  “What is it?”

  “You’ll see.”

  I followed him to his car which was parked in the same spot as when I had first seen it a week ago. He opened the passenger door, reached into the back seat, and withdrew a large, brown paper bag.

  “Here, take a look,” he said, handing the package over to me.

  I opened the bag and was surprised to see a brand new, navy blue cloth coat. I stared at the dark fabric until Velman took it from my hands.

  He held the coat up by the shoulders and peered over the collar at me.“You think it’ll fit her?” he asked.

  “Velman, you can’t give that to Martha Jean,” I said.“Mama will have a fit.”

  “Trust me, little sister.Yo’ mama ain’t gon’ have no fit. I found that out before I went and spent my money.”

  I did not know how to respond to that. Before me stood a man who had seen my sister, to my knowledge, only once.He had never seen nor spoken to my mother, and yet he thought he knew them both. My jaw tightened and anger escaped from my nostrils in little whiffs of frost.

  “What have people been telling you about my mother?” I snapped.“And about my family?”

  “What you think they been telling me?”

  “Can’t you ever just answer a question?”

  “Depends on the question,” he said, taking the bag from my hands and placing the coat inside. “I guess I’ll have to find out where you live so I can take this coat to Martha Jean.”

  “She doesn’t want to see you,” I said quickly.“She doesn’t even like you. She thinks your hair is a mess, and you talk too much.”

  He laughed.“She told you all of that, did she? Well, she can tell it to me when she sees me this evening. I’m gonna take this coat to her just as soon as I get off work.”

  I snatched the package from his hands. “I think you already know where we live,” I said angrily.“You also know that our mother doesn’t take kindly to visitors.”

  “Yep. I know all that, but I also know yo’ mother ain’t there right now. I hear she’s in the hospital.”

  Velman Cooper had asked questions about my family, and he had gotten answers. Someone had warned him not to come to Penyon Road, though, or he would have done so by now. I was certain of that.

  With the package tucked under my arm, I stepped out onto the sidewalk, and heard him say, “Next time you come, you bring Martha Jean wit’ you.”

  As I spun around, I saw him leaning against his car with his
hands shoved into the pockets of his gray uniform pants, and a grin on his face. “I’m not bringing my sister to see you,” I hissed. “You’re a grown man.You should find yourself a girl your own age.”

  “A girl my age is called a woman,” he countered, “and that’s just what Martha Jean is—a woman.”

  He stood there with that idiotic grin on his face, and I thought for just a second that I was bad enough to knock his teeth out.

  “I don’t like you,” I said, “and if I tell my brothers that you’re chasing after Martha Jean like some old dog, they’ll break your neck. Maybe I won’t even give her this coat. Maybe I’ll drop it in a ditch on my way home.”

  “Yeah. That oughta be easy for you to do since you got a nice warm coat,” he responded. “And by the way, there’s something in that bag for you. It’s a red scarf to tie around your beautiful hair.”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I rushed off down the sidewalk toward home.At the bend on Penyon Road, I reached into the bag and found the scarf at the bottom beneath the coat. I took it out and tied it into a bow around my ponytail.

  ten

  Harvey and Sam had both put in a full day of work. They were dirty, tired, and hungry when they arrived home at a little before dark.When they were done eating, they stood side by side in the front room by the coal stove while Martha Jean cleaned the kitchen. It was their secretiveness, their whispering, that caused me to close my schoolbook, stare at their backs, and strain to hear what they were saying.

  “You think Hambone gon’ come?” Harvey whispered.

  Sam shrugged his shoulders. “I doubt it, but we’ll see.”

  “I don’t think I want no parts of this.”

  “Ain’t gon’ hurt you to listen to what Junior gotta say, Harvey.”

  Harvey slowly shook his head. “I don’t know ’bout this, Sam. I think we asking for trouble.”

  “We already got trouble. If you don’t know that, maybe you don’t want no parts of it.”