No Dark Valley

by Jamie Langston Turner

  Aunt Beulah agreed to come over the next day, but not till after church, of course. She hesitated before asking Celia timidly if she’d like to come to church with her, to the Believers of Christ Church on the other side of Dunmore. “Or maybe you were planning to go to Bethany Hills, since that’s right down the street,” she said. Celia let her know quickly that she hadn’t planned any such thing and would just meet her at Grandmother’s house the next afternoon whenever Aunt Beulah could get there.

  “Oh, but we want you to eat dinner with us,” Aunt Beulah said. “I couldn’t stand it if I thought you had driven all the way here from South Carolina and then didn’t eat at least one meal with us. Can’t you come over first and let me feed you some pot roast? We usually eat sometime around one. I always put our dinner in the oven on Sunday morning, so it doesn’t take too long to get it on the table once church lets out.” She paused, then added, “It would just be your uncle Taylor and me and you.” She was smart, Aunt Beulah was, no doubt realizing that Celia wouldn’t want to take a chance on having to eat at the same table with any of the other aunts.

  Celia put her off, though, claiming the need to use every minute on Sunday to go through stuff before she had to leave Monday afternoon and promising Aunt Beulah she’d come over for a meal when she came back to Dunmore this summer to tie up all the loose ends.

  “But what will you eat?” Aunt Beulah asked. Regular meals had always been a major concern among Grandmother and her sisters. Celia put her off again, assuring her she’d be fine, that she’d probably grab something at Popinjay’s Burgers on her way over to her grandmother’s house.

  Finally she got off the phone with Aunt Beulah and resumed flipping channels on the television. Sometime after midnight she sat through a mindless sci-fi movie called Alligator, in which a man-eating alligator lived in a sewer and terrorized Chicago. On another weekend night it might have been funny, something to laugh about later with Ollie or Connie at the gallery or maybe Elizabeth Landis or Bonnie Maggio after a tennis match, but tonight she simply sat on the bed and thought about what a sad thing it was that people spent time and money making such movies and, even sadder, that other people actually watched them from beginning to end.

  Every time a commercial came on, though, she quickly changed to another channel. Commercials made her jittery now, ever since that one she had seen for the first time a month or so ago. She’d had no idea they made commercials like that. It had come out of nowhere, starting deceptively with a little soft piano music and two hands scooping out two holes in some dirt. Then each hand dropped a seed into one of the holes and smoothed the dirt over it.

  A second later the hand on the left had dug back into the earth and removed the seed, leaving an empty hole, but on the right a little sprout had appeared, then green leaves. And still the innocent tinkly piano music had continued, and Celia hadn’t caught on, although she should have seen what was coming and rebuked herself afterward for being so slow. The rest of it happened so fast she couldn’t even reach for the remote to turn it off.

  On the side of the screen where the little plant was growing came a swift succession of superimposed images—first, a closeup of a baby laughing, then one crying, then one a little older reaching up to slap at the keys of a piano, then one chewing contentedly on a cob of corn, then a toddler taking his first unsteady steps, then a preschooler smashing his face against a windowpane, then an older child running through a sprinkler, and finally a little girl stooping to bury her face inside the golden cup of a daffodil. And as the piano music faded away, the words Choose Life, along with an 800 number, came across the screen, and a voice said soothingly, “Facing an unexpected pregnancy? Call for help.” By the time it was over, Celia knew what it must feel like to fall from a great height and land on a hard, immovable surface. The commercial probably hadn’t lasted more than a minute, but it had been a long paralyzing minute.

  Before that, she had always been able to see the dangerous commercials coming. There would be some giveaway image at the very beginning, a baby sitting inside a tire, for example, or a little kid eating breakfast cereal maybe, something that would warn her: Turn it off! Pretty soon she responded almost instinctively, before the picture even showed up on the screen. She had even grown a little smug about the way she was able to protect herself by sensing what was coming. And then along came that stupid Choose Life commercial to catch her off guard.

  And movie theaters—she had grown wary of those, too, ever since Ward had taken her to The Cider House Rules, that awful movie about the orphanage that was also an abortion clinic. She had been ambushed by that one, had felt like she was being slowly asphyxiated as she sat trapped in the middle of a row at the theater.

  * * *

  She didn’t get much sleep that night, nor had she expected to, not within the city limits of Dunmore, Georgia. She got up early Sunday morning and headed to her grandmother’s house after eating a package of small cake doughnuts from the vending machine in the motel lobby. She knew better than to try to get anything to eat at Haynie’s Dinette because Haynie Peeler had always prided herself on not opening her doors on Sunday. She knew something like that would never have changed over the years here in Dunmore.

  By eight o’clock Celia was at her grandmother’s house sorting through things, and she kept at it by herself for a good six hours. Her aunt showed up around two, and they worked hard for another four hours. Celia was glad that at least the refrigerator had already been emptied and cleaned. The aunts had done that when Grandmother had gone into the hospital two weeks before she died.

  At six o’clock Aunt Beulah apologized profusely for having to leave but explained to Celia that it was her week to staff the library table at church before and after the evening service and then work in the nursery during the service, and she just hated to ask someone to substitute for her because it would mean that person wouldn’t get to hear the sermon. “They do try to pipe in the preaching to the nursery,” she said, “but you only get to hear bits and pieces of it in all the hubbub.” She chuckled and added, “Some of those babies can really set up a ruckus. Why, the last time I was on nursery duty, this one baby—”

  But Celia cut her off quickly, thanking her for her help and telling her she understood completely. She went to the front door ahead of her aunt and held the screen door open for her, repeating her thanks and saying whatever nonsense came to mind just to fill up space until Aunt Beulah was out of the house and safely on her way. Celia left a couple of hours later, since the electricity was turned off and daylight was fading.

  * * *

  On Monday morning when she unlocked the house, she felt the smallest whisper of hope as she realized she’d be leaving Dunmore this afternoon. Only a few more hours, thank goodness, and this trip would be history. Around ten o’clock she folded over the flaps of the last box of old books and magazines and glanced at her watch.

  The Holiday Winners would have already started their weekly match back in Derby by now. She wondered how it was going. Nan Meachum was having to play singles today since Celia wasn’t there, but Celia knew she would do fine. Besides having a strong all-around game, Nan was so cranky she often unnerved her opponents, closing out matches before anybody else had even started a second set. It struck Celia that exactly two weeks ago right now, she had been playing the first set of her exhausting tennis match against Donna Cobb. She shook her head. That had been an entertaining little lark compared to what she had been doing here at her grandmother’s house for the past couple of days.

  She walked to the window facing the railroad track, lifted the cheap vinyl window shade, and gazed out toward the woods beyond. It wasn’t much of a woods, really. The whole scene looked bleak and beaten down. The pine trees were scraggly and stunted along the track, and a small misshapen dogwood tree, looking like some kind of mutant species, leaned sideways at a crazy angle and bore only a smattering of pink blossoms along a couple of scrawny branches. Along the banks of dry red dirt grew a snarl of blackbe
rry bushes. No doubt they would produce their usual abundance of fruit later in the summer, but right now they looked totally unmotivated.

  Celia thought about the small deep pond farther back in the woods. She could imagine its waters having stagnated over the years, now emitting a greenish vapor that floated through the woods like a phantom. A little boy had drowned in that pond years before Celia had come to live here, and her grandmother had warned her about it constantly. Once during her senior year of high school, out of spite, Celia had run off into the woods one night, knowing Grandmother would follow her with a flashlight, which she had.

  Celia had simply circled back to the house and was soaking in the bathtub by the time her grandmother came back. She remembered feeling so proud of herself as she heard footsteps come down the hallway toward the bathroom, then stop outside the door. “Celie, you in there?” her grandmother had called sharply, rattling the doorknob, which was of course locked.

  Celia remembered scolding herself at the time for laughing out loud, for as soon as her grandmother had started back down the hall, she realized she should have kept absolutely quiet. That would have been the perfect answer to the question. Ansell was always telling her that silence was the best way to show contempt—not answering back, not even laughing. Ansell had always told her she was too quick to offer an apology or explanation. “You don’t owe anybody anything,” he was always saying. “Never let people figure you out. Always keep ’em guessing.”

  Before she left for home this afternoon, Celia thought now, maybe she would walk into the woods and see if the pond was still there. But she immediately dismissed the idea. There would be no pleasure in seeing it again. The thought of worrying her grandmother sick didn’t hold any of its former appeal, and all Celia could picture now as she remembered the pond in the woods was the beam of a flashlight bobbing up and down along its edges in the black of night.

  The storage building that used to be her grandparents’ little neighborhood grocery store was off to the right, next to the narrow dirt road that led out to the abandoned Boy Scout camp. The store had always been a sad sight, in Celia’s opinion, and it was even more so now, with its peeling paint, sagging screen door, and grimy windowpanes. Sitting a little lopsided on cement blocks, it appeared that the ground had shifted, or maybe the building itself had. Maybe the cement blocks had gradually sunk deeper into the earth over on the side of the store where her grandfather used to keep the heavy cooler of soft drinks and the freezer of ice cream and Popsicles. Anyway, the perspective seemed slightly off, as if a child had drawn it without the aid of a ruler.

  My inheritance, Celia thought. All mine. But all the humor had gone out of it now that she was actually here. She shifted over a little and looked out the other direction, toward the back of the house where the garage stood. Her grandmother had always called it “the barn” because it was big enough for a car, a truck, a dilapidated tractor, all her grandfather’s old tools, and a couple of animal stalls, where her grandmother had at one time kept a few goats. It had two broad doors that hung crookedly and were secured by a padlock, if secured could be used of such a flimsy arrangement.

  It surely wouldn’t take much effort to break down one of those doors, both of which appeared ready to fall off the hinges. Celia wondered briefly where the key to the padlock was. Maybe it was one of the extra ones she had gotten from the lawyer—on the cheap key ring with the little glow-in-the-dark plastic disk on it stamped with the words Jesus saves.

  She wasn’t at all eager to find the key, though. The thought of opening the barn and having to look at and dispose of whatever ancient, rusted, mildewed junk was out there gave her a sick, oppressive feeling. She had had her fill yesterday and this morning of going through somebody else’s useless, worn-out things. And to think, she had just gotten started. She would have her work cut out for her when she came back later this summer to finalize everything.

  Celia moved away from the window and walked to the kitchen. She stood in the doorway and looked at the things she had laid out on the old porcelain table the day before, things she had set aside to think about keeping. If someone had asked her months ago what she would want from her grandmother’s house, she would have instantly replied, “Not one single thing.”

  But the tabletop was quite full. It had surprised her to realize how unobservant she must have been when she lived here every day—or rather, how her memory had shut down once she left. All the things on the table were things she remembered her grandmother using regularly, but it was only in seeing them again after all these years that her memory was stirred. She doubted that she would ever have thought of them again if she hadn’t come here and started going through Grandmother’s cupboards and drawers.

  She walked over to the table now and picked up the set of hand-held beaters, with the little crank wheel on the side and the label Mister Mixer imprinted on its metal handle. She could picture her grandmother standing right here at this very table holding the top handle of the Mister Mixer tightly with her left hand and turning the little crank with her right hand so that the beaters whirred around in whatever batter she happened to be mixing up, most often corn bread or sweet muffins. Sometimes she used the beaters to whip up evaporated milk, which she would mix in with Jell-O and call dessert. That was about as fancy as dessert had ever gotten at Grandmother’s house.

  Since her grandmother had had no countertop to amount to anything, the porcelain table served an all-purpose function in the tiny kitchen. Positioned as it was, directly in the center, it took up most of the space, leaving about two feet on all four sides. Depending on which side of the table you were sitting at, you could easily reach over to the stove, refrigerator, sink, or dish cupboard. Grandmother’s kitchen made Celia’s apartment kitchen back home seem spacious.

  She put the Mister Mixer down and picked up one of the plates. She ran a finger around the scalloped edge, then set it back down with the others. She couldn’t believe it yesterday when she had seen that the robin’s-nest plates were still in the cupboard, all five of them, along with four other plain white plates she had never seen. She didn’t care anything about those, but she had set the robin’s-nest ones on the table to take home with her. She certainly didn’t need any more plates, but somehow she couldn’t stand to think of selling them at the yard sale Aunt Beulah was going to help her with when she came back in June, nor of donating them to the Salvation Army if nobody bought them at the yard sale.

  Celia sat down wearily at the table and closed her eyes. She hadn’t slept well last night, again. She had dreamed a whole string of short troubling dreams, not about babies this time, but about old women. Or rather about one old woman—an old woman chasing chickens through the yard, chopping weeds with a hoe, hanging threadbare clothes on a line, driving an old Mercury Comet, bending over a big black Bible. She had kept waking up all night wishing dawn would come.

  Sitting here at Grandmother’s kitchen table, Celia could almost imagine that it was twenty years ago and if she opened her eyes, she might see her grandmother, with her blue bibbed apron tied around her waist, which for some strange reason had always appeared to be higher up than a normal person’s waist, somewhere around the middle of her ribcage. Under the apron, she’d be wearing a shapeless old dress the color of catfish or gravel.

  Biscuits, that’s what she’d be pulling out of the oven. She’d scoot them off the baking sheet with a spatula, dumping them into a basket lined with a clean dish towel, then set them on the table along with the old glass syrup dispenser. First you opened up your biscuit and put a pat of butter in the middle and closed it back up. After the butter melted, you laid it open and drizzled the syrup over both halves, then ate it with a fork for breakfast.

  But first you prayed, or you sat and tried not to listen as Grandmother prayed, on and on and on. In the background the Christian radio station would be blaring out some gospel song or some rabid preacher’s hellfire sermon. But over the top of that, droning on and on, would be Grandmother’s
voice, flat and businesslike, going through a whole litany of entreaties for divine assistance—everything from weather concerns to Aunt Clara’s migraine headaches to the missionary family in Cameroon whose house had burned down.

  A sudden knock at the front door startled Celia. It must be Aunt Beulah. She had said she’d drop by today before Celia left. “Come on in!” Celia called, then remembered she hadn’t left the front door unlocked this morning. She walked quickly to the living room, and as she swung the door open, she said, “Sorry, I meant to—”

  She stopped and stared at the two people standing on the other side of the screen door, neither of which was Aunt Beulah. The man, tall but slight of frame, spoke first. “Good morning. We thought we saw somebody here over the weekend.” He was wearing a navy polyester knit sport shirt, the pocket of which was stuffed messily with note paper, two pens, and a pair of glasses. He had a receding hairline, and the hair he did have was as wispy as duck down. Celia had the vague feeling that she knew him.

  The woman, almost as short as Celia herself, could have been the man’s twin sister except for the extreme difference in height. Here it was again, another married couple who looked alike. At least Celia assumed they were married. The woman’s hair, a washed-out brown going to gray, was thin and nondescript, and both of them looked as if a good stout wind could carry them off. She wore a plain white blouse and a denim skirt and carried a small straw purse that gaped open at the top and exposed everything inside, which, like the contents of her husband’s pocket, seemed to be stuffed in haphazardly.

  The woman did have one arresting feature of her own, though—a pair of amazingly blue eyes, a darker blue than your average blue eyes, with a slight tinge of something close to violet, the color Celia imagined the South Pacific to be, although she had never seen it. Or maybe the summer sky right before twilight in Wyoming, though she’d never seen that, either. “We just wanted to stop by and say hi,” she said to Celia. “We knew Sadie real well.” She was talking louder than a woman her size normally talked and certainly louder than she needed to. It was a Sunday school teacher’s voice.