The Darkest Child

by Delores Phillips

  We heaved her onto the bed, and she lay there hollow-eyed, stiff, and speechless.

  For several minutes, Miss Pearl sat on the bed beside Mama and tried to coax her into telling us what had happened, but Mama was like a dead woman with wide open eyes, and her body remained rigid the whole while we worked to get a dress over her head and her arms into the sleeves.

  “We gon’ have to get Doctor Mathis out here,” Miss Pearl said. “I don’t like the looks of this, Tangy Mae.”

  I nodded, and went into the front room to get dressed. I had changed from gown to clothes, had my coat in my hand, and was in the hallway near the door when Mama spoke. Her voice had the quality of a frightened child just awakened from a nightmare.

  “Pearl,” she whimpered.“Pearl, I knew you’d forgive me.”

  “I’m here, Rosie. I need you to tell me what happened,” Miss Pearl said.

  Still holding on to my coat, I eased back into my mother’s room. She was lying flat on the bed with her eyes open, just as she had been for the last hour or so, but now her right hand was groping the air for something unseen.

  “Junior came,” she whispered.“You remember Junior, don’t you, Pearl? Junior Fess? He came in through the window and cut Chadlow’s throat.”

  A frown creased Miss Pearl’s brow as she stared at Mama.“Rosie, Junior been dead for nearly three years now.”

  Mama sobbed and her body twitched on the bed. “I know, Pearl. I know,” she said. “Chadlow killed him. Now Junior done come back and killed Chadlow. He came in through the window. I seen him.”

  Miss Pearl glanced in my direction and rapidly waved a hand toward the door. I knew she wanted me to rush to get Dr.Mathis, but I was transfixed.

  “Rosie, how you know Chadlow killed Junior?” Miss Pearl asked.

  Mama seemed barely able to get the words out.“I was wit’ him when he done it,” she whispered. “He beat Junior wit’ a crowbar ’til Junior was all broke up in pieces on the ground, but he wadn’t dead. Chadlow coulda stopped. He coulda stopped, Pearl, but he wouldn’t. He made me help him hang Junior from that tree. I didn’t wanna do it, I swear I didn’t. Junior was begging me to help him. ‘Help me, Miss Rosie. Please, Miss Rosie, don’t let him kill me.’ But Chadlow had done made up his mind, and wadn’t nothing I could do.”

  “Oh, my God!” Miss Pearl groaned, and stepped away from the bed.

  Mama’s groping hand now reached toward the sound of her friend’s voice.“Don’t leave me, Pearl. It wadn’t my fault.”

  Miss Pearl came over to where I had braced myself against the bedroom wall. “You know you can’t repeat a word of this, don’t you?” she asked.

  With downcast eyes, I nodded. I couldn’t even look at the woman who had delivered me into the world. Miss Pearl held me tightly to her chest, and we both wept. Across the room, Mama never turned her head in our direction. She relaxed her hand, made a gurgling sound, then she lay still—perfectly still.

  When Angus Betts arrived at the house, Miss Pearl and I were still in Mama’s room trying to decide what to do. Miss Pearl had feared Mama would blabber her tale to the doctor if he came out, and now here was the sheriff.

  Angus Betts stepped into Mama’s room with the intention of questioning her, but he could not rouse Mama from her stupor. “How long has she been like this?” he asked.

  “’Bout a hour,” Miss Pearl answered.

  “She tell you that Chad is dead?” the sheriff asked.“I talked with Bo and Frances.They claim nobody else was at the house, except Chad and Rozelle.They say they heard screaming, and by the time they reached the room, Chad was dead and Rozelle took off running, screaming about ghosts.”

  He leaned over the bed, examined Mama’s eyes, lightly slapped her cheeks, but she did not respond. “It’s a mess,” he said, “but we know Chad wasn’t killed by a ghost. Sooner or later somebody has to talk. How long you say she’s been like this?”

  “’Bout a hour,” Miss Pearl repeated.

  “How the hell did she drive a car all the way down a dark road in this condition?” Angus Betts asked, more to himself than to us. “For all I know she may have been the one who killed Chad.”He studied Mama’s body, her open, hollow eyes, the rise and fall of her chest, then he turned to me.“Help me get her in the car,” he said. “I’ll take her over to the hospital. Morris is still out at Bo’s seeing after Chad.”

  fifty - seven

  We were not sure what was going to happen with Mama, I told Laura when she came home from school.The news of Chadlow’s murder was all over town by now, and if Mushy or the others wanted to know more, they would have to come to me. I had not been out of the house since helping to carry Mama out to the sheriff ’s car. I had spent the day thinking of how I would prepare Laura for the changes I knew we had to make.

  For the second day in a row, we took peanut butter and crackers to the front steps. More traffic than usual moved back and forth on the road, and Laura watched the road with interest while I watched her. She was nearly nine. I wondered if I was mature enough to repair some of the damage Mama had done to her. I knew I had to try.

  “Laura, do you know it’s wrong . . .” I began, but stopped when she turned to face me. Her proudest moments were when she lifted items from the stores in town to please our mother. Admonishing her for stealing was not the way to start. I was guilty of the same thing and of so much more. Perhaps I wasn’t the right person to address my sister’s morals, but I could think of no one else. Laura liked fairytales. Maybe I could start with a fairytale, tell it with sincerity, tell it enough times that she would believe it to be true.

  “What?” she asked.

  Forcing a smile to my lips, I said, “Do you know where I was born?”

  “Right here,” she answered, “in this house.”

  “Nope,” I responded lightly.“I was born in a paradise—a beautiful paradise—beneath the sprawling branches of a live oak tree. You were born there, too.My first remembered sight was of morning glories climbing the boards of a white picket fence. My first remembered sound was the melody of our mother’s voice singing a lullaby.”

  Laura propped her elbows on her knees and listened with curiosity.

  “Mama’s hands were soft and had the fragrance of Jergens lotion,” I said.“Do you remember that fragrance, Laura?”

  She shook her head.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said.“One day it’ll come back to you—it’ll all come back, Laura—the way we rolled down grassy slopes over sweet grass and four-leaf clovers, and how we ran barefoot over earth as soft as sand, and chased butterflies under a golden sun and fireflies under a silver moon.”

  In the fading daylight, my sister smiled at me. “Was Miss Pearl there?” she asked.

  “Yeah. She would come in the evenings, especially during the winter. She would stand in front of the coal stove, and sing to you. She didn’t bring white socks back then. She brought little frilly dresses and pink bonnets.”

  “We had a coal stove in Paradise?” Laura asked skeptically.

  I laughed.“We didn’t stay in Paradise all the time. Sometimes we would come to this house.”

  “I don’t wanna know about this house.Tell me about the Paradise.”

  “Well, there was a pond with crystal clear water.The water was so clear that we could see all the way to the bottom. On the bottom there were violet, emerald, and ruby rocks that sparkled in the sun. The earth would stop revolving just so the sun could shine down on that pond. Sometimes we would leap into that cool water and feel it tingle all over our bodies.You let the water flow between your fingers and toes, then you would laugh, and your laughter was contagious.”

  “What’s contagious?” Laura asked. “I don’t think I ever knew how to swim, Tangy.”

  “You didn’t swim.We kept you afloat just so we could hear your laughter.”

  Laura rested her head on my lap.“What else?” she asked sleepily.

  “Sometimes Harvey, Sam, and Wallace would go all the way to the fa
r side of the pond, and they would come back with fish. While they were gone, the rest of us would stroll the grove of trees and fill our baskets with walnuts and pecans, apples, peaches, and pears.”

  “I think I know where that Paradise was,” Laura said. “It was behind our house, and the gully was the pond. Is um right, Tangy?”

  “Am I right,” I corrected.“Maybe that’s where it was.The where isn’t important.The important thing is how much fun we all had.”

  Laura yawned.“Can we go back there one day?” she asked.

  “I hope so, Laura,” I answered. “I’ll tell you more about it tomorrow. Right now you need to go in and get ready for bed.”

  She didn’t want to move, but I kept nudging her head away from my lap, until she finally got up and went inside. I stayed on the step staring up at a moon that was not the silver moon of my fairytale. I was thirsty from the peanut butter and crackers, and a little chilly from the cool March night, but unlike Laura, I could not move. I had to wait and hear what the voice out of the night would say to me. For the last few minutes of my fairytale, I had known he was there.

  He said nothing, so I whispered, “Please, don’t say you did it for me.”

  “I did it for you.” Crow stepped out of the darkness at the side of the house. “I did it for you and because it needed to be done. Don’t make me lie to you, sugar.”

  “Mama thinks it was a ghost, and now she can’t even speak.You nearly scared her to death.”

  Crow said without a trace of sympathy in his voice, “She’s lucky to be alive.” He sat on the bottom step and looked out toward the road.“You know I gotta leave here, don’t you?”

  “No one knows it was you,” I said.

  “Rozelle looked me straight in my eyes just as I cut that man’s throat. Seems like she wanted me to do it. Held her screams ’til I was out the window and halfway cross the yard. But it’s just a matter of time before she talks.”

  “I wish you hadn’t done it, Crow.”

  “Nah, sugar, you glad I done it.You knew I was gon’ do it.You’ll forgive me for putting you through this, but you wouldn’t never forgive me if I’da left here without doing something.”

  “You’re wrong, Crow. I thought you were already gone. I never expected you to come back and kill anybody. I guess I don’t want to believe that my father is a murderer and my mother has been frightened out of her mind, because where does that leave me?”

  “I don’t know where it leaves you,” he answered. “I hope it leaves you safe.You shouldn’t be so quick to judge others, but I guess I am a murderer.A murderer is a murderer whether he kills one or one hundred, and I’d kill a thousand for you. So where does that leave you, sugar?”

  I stared down the steps at the moonlit face of my father.Tears sprang to my eyes. “Loved?” I asked. “You don’t even know me, Crow.”

  “I know my blood runs through yo’ veins. I know the hurt I felt when I saw yo’ back. I didn’t know I could hurt like that for anybody, except my mama.Whether you believe it or not, Tangy, I do love you.And if you gon’ sit there and cry for somebody, don’t cry for that dead man. Cry for me—or Rozelle.”

  “I’m not crying,” I lied, “but I don’t think I could love anybody enough to kill for them.”

  Crow sighed deeply. “Yeah, you could,” he said. “That’s one of the reasons I came back.You give yo’ heart like it’s water.You need to keep enough of it to love yo’self.Now, tell me you wouldn’t kill for that Velman.”

  My mouth opened and closed. I thought about it, then said, “Maybe I’d die for him, but I don’t know that I would kill for him.”

  “Humph,” Crow grunted. “That’s the easy way out, sugar. But let’s just say I had died for you, who woulda stopped that man the next time around?”

  No one had ever stopped Chadlow before, so I had no answer for Crow.

  He stood. “I left my car parked in some bushes over on Canyon,” he said. “I better get on outta this ol’ messed up town before somebody catches me. Rozelle could be telling them white folks about me right now.You take care of yo’self, sugar.And don’t lose my mama’s number. She always knows where I am.”

  He started across the yard, and as I watched him go, I felt cheated and betrayed—as if he had given me something special, then had quickly snatched it back.

  “Crow,” I called.

  He stopped, turned, looked up at me.

  “I think I could kill for you,” I said.

  “I hope not,” he said, as he started to walk again.

  “Crow.”

  He stopped once more.

  “If you ever come through this messed up town again, don’t look for me,” I said.“I won’t be here, but your mother will always know where I am.”

  fifty - eight

  Crow had been wrong about Mama. She had not been talking. In fact, she had not so much as mumbled a single word since being carried away from Penyon Road nearly a week ago. Mushy and Tarabelle came out to the house, pretending that they didn’t care what happened to Mama, but they did care.They asked too many questions not to care.

  It was Wallace who had the answers.“They sending Mama to a hospital in Milledgeville,” he told us.“It ain’t really no hospital. It’s an insane asylum.They say Mama crazy outta her mind.”

  “I knew it!”Tarabelle exclaimed. “I always knew it.”

  “What’s Harvey saying ’bout all of this?” Mushy asked.

  “He say it’s the best thing for her, ”Wallace answered.“She don’t even know him. I went to see her, and she don’t know me, either.”

  “Maybe it is the best thing,” Mushy agreed.“Tan, you and Laura get y’all’s things together and come stay wit’ me ’til we know how long Mama gon’ be gone.Where she leave the key to that car?”

  “Don’t mess with her car, Mushy,” I said.“You know she doesn’t allow anybody to drive it.”

  “If I can find that key, I’m gon’ mess wit’ it,” Mushy said. “We can be using that car. If y’all help me find that key, we gon’ ride straight on back to the flats in that car, and there ain’t a damn thing Mama can do about it, and since she can’t talk, there ain’t a damn thing she can say about it, either. Now is it?”

  I relinquished the key, and as Mushy took it from my hand, she said, “Y’all gon’ be staying wit’ me and Richard. I ain’t gon’ have nobody turning up they nose ’bout nothing I do, so, Tan, you can leave all that kinda shit right here on Penyon Road.”

  She and Wallace went out to the field to start the car, but Tarabelle stayed to watch me and Laura as we shoved our clothes inside paper bags. “Mama still got that box of hair under the floor in her room?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I answered.

  Tarabelle went out to the kitchen, then came back through the room with a hammer in her hand.When she crossed the hall and stepped into Mama’s room, I turned to look down at Laura who seemed to be on the verge of tears.

  “Do you understand what’s happening?” I asked.

  She nodded slowly. “They sending Mama away somewhere ’cause she crazy, and we going to stay with Mushy.”

  “It’s still here,” Tarabelle called from Mama’s room. “I’m gon’ dump it out. I knew she was crazy when I first saw this shit.”

  By the time I reached the bedroom, Tara was standing with the empty metal box in her hand. She had dumped the hair into the hole made by the missing floorboard.“Well, that’s that,” she said, then glanced around the room as though she wanted to destroy something else with the hammer. “Tan, you oughta take some of Mama’s clothes to wear to school. She got all this nice stuff she done bought when she ain’t never bought us nothing.” She dropped the hammer and the box on Mama’s bed, and began to pull dresses from the line of ropes that held Mama’s clothes.

  I sorted through Mama’s dresses as Tara pulled them down but I said, “Tara, Mama’s not dead. She’s just in the hospital for a while. She’ll come back and look for these things, and I’ll be the one she’ll be
angry with.You won’t know anything about it.”

  “Well, it’s up to you, ”Tara said.“You can keep right on looking like Twiddle Dee Dum for all I care, but I hear that when people go off to one of them crazy hospitals, sometimes they don’t never come back. So you can take these things and wear ’em, or let ’em stay here to dry rot. It’s up to you.”

  I shoved most of the dresses into a paper bag, then helped Laura to do the same with her things. When we were done packing, Tarabelle, much to my chagrin, used the hammer to knock the shelves from the walls of Mama’s room. She busted the radio and the windup clock, broke the windowpane, and ripped the mattress to shreds.

  All I could do was think what if. What if Mama started to talk today, and they sent her home? What if she walked in, saw this mess, and went crazy all over again? But what if I tried to stop Tarabelle and she turned the hammer on me?

  The noise of her destruction brought Mushy and Wallace back into the house.They surveyed the damage, then Mushy looked at Tarabelle, and asked, “Did you have to do this?”

  “I had to do it, ”Tara answered.

  Mushy nodded.“Let’s get outta here.”

  Wallace drove the dirty, banged-up car away from Penyon Road, and at my insistence, we stopped by the Garrisons’ to inform Miss Pearl about Mama.

  “That’s one woman sho’ done had it hard,” Miss Pearl said. “Everybody in this town done been mad at her at one time or another, but they can’t stay mad at her long.”

  “You been mad at her for more than a year.That’s a long time, Miss Pearl,” Mushy said.

  “Nah, Mushy. I was mad at her for ’bout a week or two, then I started to miss her, but I wanted her to come to me to say she was sorry. She never did, but that’s Rosie for you. I don’t care what nobody say, she always done the best she could by y’all. Ain’t too many women, young as she was when she first started having babies, coulda kept all y’all fed, clothed, and under the same roof.”