by Leisha Kelly
“Let me take her,” Lizbeth suddenly offered. “Prob’ly due for changin’.” She leaned to claim Emma Grace from my arms but turned her face away from me at the same time. Little Berty grabbed hold of her clothes with a shriek, and Harry plunked his thumb in his mouth and stood there looking bewildered. I would’ve gone to Franky, who had bowed his head clear to the floor, but before I could get up, Rorey climbed on me. She buried her face into my blouse as Sarah clung tight to my arm. It was too much without Samuel here. Too much grief. Too many to comfort.
Franky let out with a wail, sudden and piercing. It nearly stopped my heart from beating. Clutching the baby tight, Lizbeth turned and looked at him, herself as white as lily root. Bert was bellowing loud now, but Franky got strangely quiet. Rorey was quivering in my arms, and Sarah stood looking at me and biting away at her lower lip. It was Harry that finally walked over and sat down next to Frank. With one thumb still in his mouth, he put his other little hand gently on his brother’s back and just sat there.
“Get Berty, Kirk,” Lizbeth commanded. “I gotta change and feed this baby.” She wiped at her face with one sleeve and turned to me with a look of utter dismay. “Oh, land! Mrs. Wortham, did your husband remember the diapers? The others ain’t dry yet.”
“Diapers?”
She didn’t have to answer. I knew her predicament. The poor child had been sent off in a hurry unprepared, and she was still unprepared. Numb or not, I had to roust myself out of the gloom that was swallowing me up inside. There was so awful much to do just to get these kids through a day of normal living, and I had to do for them. Emma was right in what she had told me. I had to help them all through this. It might be a while before George was able.
“I used a dishtowel already,” Lizbeth told me, her eyes near closed and puffy. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“We’ll use another one for now, and I’ll cut that old linen cover for you.” I stood, pulling Sarah and Rorey along with me. “You girls want to help? Bert, you come too. You want to help me measure?”
Of course, it was far from a practical notion, asking a three-year-old to do any measuring, but at least I could pull him off Lizbeth for a while and get him to quit his bawling. He was looking at me like he was suddenly afraid of his shadow, but at least he was quieter. I looked over at Harry and Frank but decided it best to let them be.
Robert had gone upstairs, presumably after Willy, his best friend, and I thought it better to leave that alone too. Kirk was watching me with his angry eyes as I grabbed one of Emma’s old dishtowels for Lizbeth and began to lead the little girls into the other room.
“Do you suppose we ought to start some lunch before long?” I asked him, hoping to find a way to enlist his help. That’s about the only thing I could think of right then—get them all busy at something.
“I doubt anybody bein’ hungry,” he said. “Ain’t nothin’ you can do to make things all right, Mrs. Wortham. No sense even tryin’.”
“We have to try,” I countered. “We have to do something.”
I scooted Rorey and Sarah and Berty into Emma’s bedroom while Lizbeth went to change the baby. I hated being in Emma’s room; it rubbed me raw inside to see her empty wheelchair by the window, the pretty, hand-sewn quilt on the bed, the little silver bell and all of the other treasures on her dresser. But the sewing things were in here, and all the extra cloth things in the house were on a shelf in Emma’s closet.
Blinking away tears, I reached the scissors and measuring tape out of Emma’s woven sewing basket and pulled down the heavy linen sheet that she had told me once would make decent tea towels. I gently spread it across her bed and asked the girls to smooth the corners. I could barely see what I was doing, but I knew I’d have to be all business and find a way to keep them from breaking down all at once again.
I let Bert unroll the cloth measuring tape and had Sarah fetch me straight pins, and then I measured out four squares, letting Rorey read off the numbers. She was still trembling, looking at me with eyes deeper than Willard’s pond, surely wondering what I would do next. What any of them would do next.
I marked the squares with straight pins and started cutting.
“Mama was real sick,” Rorey said so softly I could barely hear her.
“Yes, honey.”
“I holded her hand.”
“I remember. I bet she was real glad of it too.”
“Will we ever see her anymore?” Her lip quivered when she said it, and I looked at Berty. He was wrapping himself up in the tape measure but watching us at the same time.
“Yes. Yes, honey, we will. She’s waiting up in heaven now for the day when you and all the rest will join her there. You’ll see her again, and it’ll be a joyous good time.”
“Will it be a long time?” Sarah asked me.
“I don’t know. Nobody really knows.”
“I wish we could all die,” Rorey proclaimed. “Right now, and go and see Mama.”
Berty suddenly banged his head against the hard wood at the foot of Emma’s bed. At first I thought it was an accident. But then he did it again. And again. “Mama,” he muttered. “Mama.”
I dropped the scissors and picked him up. He clung to my neck so tight it hurt. But his little legs were kicking at me just the same. The poor thing didn’t know what he wanted. He just knew that for some terrible reason things were not the same. Emma Grace was wailing in the other room as if she knew it too. I tried to look at his forehead to see if he’d done it any real damage, but he kept his head ducked and wouldn’t let me see.
Suddenly I heard the back door open, and for a minute my heart leaped with relief, thinking it might be my husband. But it was far too soon. With Bert still in my arms, I rushed to the kitchen. Harry was leaning his head down against Frank now, who hadn’t moved a solitary inch. But I saw the blur of a head out the window and rushed to open the door.
“Kirk!”
He was standing in the yard in his coat, his whole face red and his fists clenched as if he were ready to fight me. “I’m goin’ home.”
“Please, Kirk. I need you here a while. Your brothers and sisters need you here.”
“They need their mama! Or at least their pa! I’m gonna fetch him to get us home. We don’t belong up here no longer. You ain’t workin’ down there no more!”
I’d have to talk to him like he was a man. There was no other way around it. “Your father’s grievin’. He’ll be up here when he’s able. And Joe’s over there to help him. At least till my husband or your brother Sam gets back, I need you to help me. You’re the oldest boy here.”
The anger drained away from his face. “Sammy ain’t home?”
I hadn’t given that a minute of thought. But we had no way of knowing how far Sam Hammond had gotten in the storm, or where he was. Lord have mercy. Such a thing to worry Kirk with now.
“He’s probably in Belle Rive,” I suggested. “Or with the doctor on the way. It’s so much slower going with all this snow.”
“All night, and he didn’t come back?”
“He probably got to town and was stuck there till this morning. He might—”
“Shut up! You don’t know! You don’t know nothin’!”
In my arms, Berty started bawling again. He was hearing too much, little as he was, and he didn’t know how to handle any of it.
“Did Mama go peaceful?” Kirk suddenly asked, his voice cracking just slightly.
“Yes. She was peaceful. She asked me for a hymn last night. She told your father how much she loved him. And she loved all of you too.”
Kirk was quiet for a moment, standing there in the snow, and I hugged Berty closer, knowing I should take him back in. But I didn’t want to go yet, not without his older brother.
Kirk was only twelve, too young to take on the business of what had to be done. But he was thinking along those lines anyway. “That hymn you did,” he asked me solemnly. “When it comes time for the buryin’, would you do it for her again?”
I only n
odded. There was no way I could talk.
His fists unclenched. “If Pa and Joe don’t come by supper, I’ll have to go home for the goat milk for Emma Grace. Your husband give the rest of us what the cow let, but she ain’t never had cow. Mama was nursin’ her and just give her goat milk for extra or if she took sick. She said goat’d set better on her stomach, but we’ll be outta what we brung before long.”
“All right. If they’re not here by tonight, you can go for the goat milk. Joe might appreciate your help with the milking anyway.” I turned to go back in the house, confident now that he would follow me.
“Mrs. Wortham?”
“Yes?”
“You want I grab a armload or two a’ wood while I’m out here?”
My Samuel kept the basement stocked, and I knew it wasn’t near empty yet. But this was what I’d wanted, what Kirk needed. A way to push on, do something useful, go on with living.
“Yes. Thank you so much. It’s under the overhang at the east end of the barn.”
He took off at a run, his too-long hair flipping behind him in the sudden breeze.
“Let’s get you inside,” I whispered to Bert.
“Kirky!” the little boy said.
“He’ll be right in. He’ll be okay.”
Willy and Robert had not come downstairs, and I just let them be. With a prayer for strength, I opened the potato bin that Emma’s husband had made long years before and got Sarah and Rorey started on counting out potatoes into a dishpan. I sent Frank to the basement for an onion, and he seemed shocked that I would speak to him. But he went quickly, with Harry following on his heels. I tried to set Bert down, but he started wailing, to which teary-eyed Rorey just shook her head.
“Is he used to being held?” I asked her.
“No, ma’am. He ain’t been held hardly since he learnt to walk, not that I remember.”
Of course, that didn’t seem likely, but a six-year-old’s memory could be pretty short. With three of his fingers in his mouth and his nose running, Berty looked close into my face and then laid his head on my shoulder. Oh, how Emma had loved these kids! How I needed her help with them right now! It wasn’t right that they’d lost their mother this way, without even Emma to fall back on. It’s not right, Lord!
I watched Lizbeth across the room, talking to her baby sister and offering her a bottle. She seemed calm, remarkably so. But there was a hollowness about her now too. Some special spark was gone, leaving her looking almost unreal.
She began to sing, whisper soft, but the sound of it drifted over the room like the ripples of a stream. Everyone else was quiet as Kirk came back in with wood for the woodbox. His cheeks and fingers were red with cold. No gloves. Had he had gloves when he left home yesterday? Oh, dear God, why did they have to be so poor? And we had nothing to give them.
It was a chore, supervising those little girls at cutting potatoes with Bert still clinging to me. I let him sit on the counter close to me just so I could have my hands free to get the pot and the parsley and everything else I’d need to throw together potato soup enough for everyone. Franky was a good long time getting back with that onion, but I didn’t say a word about it. He stood by me for a minute, watching me with bloodshot eyes until I realized it wasn’t me he was looking at but Emma’s old cuckoo clock on the kitchen wall. He stood a long time, motionless and silent, just watching the little brass pendulum swing.
“It’s running,” he said.
“Yes. Emma said it always did run well. Same as the mantle clock.”
“It oughta stop. Don’t you think they oughta stop?”
He had such a strange look on his face that I wasn’t sure at first how to answer. “No. I don’t think there’s anything to a notion like that. I hope they both keep right on for a long time yet.” I thought of Albert Graham suddenly. Would he want them, perhaps, or more of Emma’s things? He had every right, of course.
“If they keep runnin’, would Emma like that?”
“Honey, she’d have no need thinking on such things. I bet she’s so happy to see Willard, she’s fairly dancing, and with two feet too.”
But Franky just shook his head. “I think she’d like it.” He didn’t say anything else. He just walked away from me.
I had the potatoes in the pot and had started mixing cornbread batter, so I turned back to my fixings. Harry had set himself down on the kitchen floor at my feet, and Berty was still on the counter beside me. There was no sound from Robert and Willy upstairs. Kirk was holding the baby now, and Lizbeth was washing all of their breakfast dishes, silent as a stone. Little Rorey was standing on a chair, fishing one dish at a time out of the rinsepan to dry. Then she would hand her dishes to Sarah, who was standing on another chair, putting things away in the cupboard for me. We were all quiet. Methodical. As if somehow life depended on us just pressing on this way, whether we felt like it or not.
We were all completely unprepared for the sudden crash from the next room. Something heavy, shattering glass. I handed Berty into Lizbeth’s wet hands and ran for the sitting room.
Franky stood beside the fireplace. He didn’t look at me. He didn’t look up at all. He just stared at the fragments at his feet. Emma’s beautiful Seth Thomas mantle clock. Ruined.
“Franky!” Lizbeth hollered from behind me. “What in tarnation was you doin’ with that?”
“You done it now,” Kirk added. “You know you ain’t supposed to touch nothin’ that ain’t yours, stupid.”
The little boy didn’t say a word, just kept staring. I moved closer. Franky didn’t move a muscle, didn’t make a sound.
“What happened?” I asked when I was close enough to see the tears glistening on his face.
“Mama’s dead,” he said. “Now Emma too.”
I stood for a moment, unsure of his thinking. He already knew Emma had died. That clock was one of her prized possessions, precious to her because it had been a favorite of Willard’s. But the breaking of it couldn’t affect her now.
“Franky—”
“I was just meanin’ to wind it. I knowed you gotta wind ’em.”
He shouldn’t have touched it. He had no business even trying, and it angered me that he had dared to do so without saying so much as a word to me about it first. But thankfully I had the good sense not to let my anger show.
“I didn’t mean to bust it,” he said, looking ghostly white. “I liked Emma plenty good.”
His ankle was bleeding where a shard of glass must’ve struck him, but he stepped away and wouldn’t let me touch it.
“Franky…”
His lips were quivering, and suddenly he turned and fled, past all of us and back to the kitchen.
“Franky!” Lizbeth hollered after him. “You come back in here and help clean up the mess you made!” She turned to me with a frown. “So awful sorry,” she said more quietly. “He ain’t thinkin’ just right. Was it espensive?”
Before I could answer, I heard the back door slam shut. I ran for the kitchen, hoping I’d be quick enough to see where the little boy was headed. But by the time I reached the door, he was already out of sight.
In a moment I could hear a faint sort of sobbing coming from almost directly under my feet. So I stepped off the porch in a cold wind and looked down through where one of the lattices had come loose from the porch front.
“Franky?”
He was under there, all right. Just where Samuel had found him before, snuggled up to the back wall and crying his eyes out.
“Franky, won’t you come out?” I asked him gently. “Accidents happen.”
Kirk was right behind me, having left the baby in the house with Lizbeth. “Get your sorry self outta there!” he commanded. “It’s bad enough, what all we gotta think about, without you carryin’ on, makin’ it worse!”
I looked away from Franky and over to Kirk. “Kirk,” I said, “check the soup pot for me and make sure the oven’s got good and warm.”
He looked at me skeptically.
“Go on. Please
. I’ll talk to him.”
Shaking his head at me, Kirk went back in the house.
Franky hadn’t moved.
“Honey, I know you didn’t mean to. It’s awfully cold out here. Won’t you please crawl on out? We can sit inside.”
He turned his back to me and curled up in a ball. These Hammonds, I thought. What is it about them, anyway? For their thinking to get so befuddled, Franky and his father both. I knew it was the grief doing it to them. But I resented it almost like Kirk did, because you had to stop what you were doing, just to save them from themselves. You couldn’t even do your own grieving. You couldn’t take the time.
“Franky?”
He wasn’t paying any attention to me. So I got on my hands and knees in that snow and crawled underneath, thinking to pull him out the way Sam had. But something in his choked sobs stopped me. He was calling on God.
“Franky?”
“I didn’t mean to hurt ’em, Jesus. I didn’t mean to do it. I wish that Mama and Emma ain’t never had ’em no clocks. Then I couldn’t hurt ’em none. Then I couldn’t bust things up.”
I crawled in quickly and laid my hand on his arm. “Oh, honey, you didn’t hurt them. The clock had nothing to do with any of that.”
“But I busted Mama’s clock too,” he sobbed. “I knew she was gonna die. It’s true what Arthur Whistler told me. And it’s my fault! I know it is!”
“Franky—”
“I wanna be dead too!”
“No, you don’t.”
He grabbed me so suddenly that I almost fell on my side. He was clinging to me so tight it hurt, and crying into my collar. He seemed small as a baby just then, and if I could’ve stood in that crawl space I might’ve picked him right up and carried him inside.
“Franky…”
He didn’t even seem to hear me. “Jesus,” he was crying. “Jesus. Jesus.”
I had to take a deep breath. “Your mama and Emma are with him now,” I whispered. “And they’re happy.”
“I don’t want ’em to be mad at me…”
“They’re not! None of it’s your fault.”
“But I know—”
