A Long Time Gone

by Karen White

  I wanted to call after Mrs. Shipley to see if she’d been telling stories about this dog being hard to catch, but she’d disappeared back into City Hall.

  Chloe laughed at the unexpectedness of it, and the sound made me smile. “Looks like he wants to come home with us.” Her eyes met mine. “Can he?”

  I looked at the dog, who was definitely grinning, so I said, “For now. We’ll just foster him until we can find his family, or a new one. I won’t send him to the shelter.”

  I saw a corner of her mouth lift as if she were fighting a smile. I continued. “We’ll have to get him checked out at a vet to make sure he’s healthy and to see if he’s microchipped. And we’ll have to put up posters with his photo so if somebody’s looking for him they can find him.”

  She might have jumped a little, but not enough that I could accuse her of having enthusiasm, then happily got into the backseat so the dog could remain comfortably where he was.

  On the drive home, I told Chloe about Tommy’s dog, Cotton, and how much he’d loved him and how smart that dog had been. But the whole time I was talking, I felt the weight of the watch on my wrist, and imagined I could hear the words whispered into my ear: I love you forever.

  Chapter 33

  Carol Lynne Walker Moise

  INDIAN MOUND, MISSISSIPPI

  MAY 1986

  Dear Diary,

  I am back home. It always seems that no matter what roads I take and how far away I go, the road always brings me back to Mississippi and the old yellow house I was raised in. I wonder if we’re like the birds that way. Having some sort of compass in our hearts that brings us back time and again, if only for a short while.

  I’ve been back a few times to see Tommy, to let him know that even though I couldn’t be with him all the time, I still loved him, and that I was doing the best thing I knew for him by leaving him with Bootsie. She and Emmett and Mathilda have taken such good care of him, and when I’ve seen him running through the yard with Cotton, I’ve known in my heart that I’ve done the right thing. Maybe by leaving him behind I have proved that I’ve been a good mother to him.

  He has a forgiving soul. He’s always on his best behavior when I’m home, saying “yes, ma’am” and “no, ma’am” and using the table manners Bootsie taught him. I know he does this so I won’t leave. That he believes that there’s something imperfect in him that makes me want to leave. And no matter what I say to him I can’t change his mind. Yet each time I return, he’s the first one out the door, him and Cotton running as fast as they can—the dog running a little slower than he used to—and Tommy throws his arms around me like I’ve been gone forever and I won’t be staying long. Which, of course, is how it’s always been. I still hope that one day I can get over this sickness of mine and stay long enough to tell him my leaving has never been about him, but my coming back always has been.

  And here I am, back again. I’m forty-one years old and I’m pregnant. It’s been ten years since I had Tommy and I haven’t gotten pregnant. I guess I just started thinking that I couldn’t.

  Michael died five years ago of a heroin overdose. We’d been together all that time, sleeping in parks and getting odd jobs and searching for food from garbage cans. Every once in a while I’d go see the Kellys, and Dolores would give me money for a bus ticket home. I never used that money for anything but the ticket, and that’s how I got to see Tommy. But I couldn’t stay clean for too long, and before I knew it, I would leave again, the demons at my back. I’d hear Tommy’s cries in my head that long bus ride back to the West Coast, and they’d only go away once I got high again.

  After Michael died, I thought about going back to the Kellys and getting my old job back. But they would have wanted me to stay clean and I couldn’t have done it. I was more afraid of disappointing them than myself, so I went back to the ranch, where they gave me a garden patch and told me to grow vegetables.

  It’s funny how all of Bootsie’s teachings that I’d tried my best to ignore somehow seeped into my brain anyway. Or maybe I was born with a knack for growing things. But my vegetables were the ones that were loaded into the van and sold at farmers’ markets. It was the first thing I’d ever done for myself that hadn’t turned out to be a disaster, and I was proud of myself.

  But then I found out I was pregnant. I could have stayed at the ranch and let my child be raised by groups of mothers and fathers, but I’ve known since the moment I found out I was pregnant that this baby is going to be a girl. It was nothing scientific, and I didn’t even need Dr. Kelly to tell me. It was just something I knew. Maybe it was a mother’s intuition—something I hadn’t thought possible with me.

  Dr. Kelly had been thinking about retiring, but Dolores told me that I would still be welcome in their home, and to bring my babies to see them. It’s nice to know that my children have people on the West Coast who love them and would care for them. But I’ve also always known that the farm in Indian Mound, Mississippi, is the best place to raise my children. I just wish I’d realized that when I was younger.

  I never thought I was one for family tradition, but since I’m having a girl, I needed to be home. I want her to be born in the old black bed where I was born, and Bootsie before me. I didn’t want to be the first Walker woman to break the tradition. That’s why I went to Dolores and asked her to call Bootsie. And that’s why I’m home in time to give birth to my baby girl.

  Bootsie is nearly beside herself with happiness. She loves Tommy with all her heart, but there’s something about a girl. I think we both see this precious soul as a second chance for both of us. We want to teach her everything we’ve learned so that she won’t repeat our mistakes. I imagine that’s every mother’s dream for her children, but this little girl will be born with generations of mistakes she’ll need to overcome.

  Bootsie and I have been working hard to get the nursery ready, painting the old crib and rocking horse, and hanging on the windows pink curtains that she and Mathilda made by hand. There are little embroidered butterflies on them that they each stitched without a sewing machine. Bootsie’s even hand-painted pink butterflies on the walls—a skill I hadn’t known she had. I only hope that it really is a girl, or else a boy who really likes pink.

  Bootsie has a lot of good advice, too, about little babies and feeding them and getting them to sleep. I guess she’s always known these things, and always been an artist, and I just never bothered to know it. I guess that sometimes it’s hard to see something that’s right in front of you when you’re too busy only seeing what you want to.

  I’ve been thinking about names, but I haven’t told Bootsie, because I know she’ll want to argue about it. I remember sneaking around and reading Gone With the Wind when I was twelve—sneaking it because Bootsie thought it was too racy for me to be reading—and I fell in love with the name Scarlett. I’m pretty sure Bootsie will have a fainting spell when I tell her, and that she’ll try to talk me out of it. But we Walker women are a stubborn bunch, so I guess we’ll just have to wait and see who is the most stubborn.

  My daughter is due in only three weeks, and while I’m excited, I’m nervous, too. About the future, mostly. Worried that this contentment I feel right now won’t last, and that as soon as she’s born I’ll feel the demons on my back again, the need for oblivion that I know I want just because I’ve grown used to it instead of needing it. Dolores said that’s addiction, but I’m not sure. I argued that if I was addicted, I wouldn’t have been able to stop when I was pregnant both times. She just smiled and told me that mothers can do extraordinary things to save their children, and how she’d known a woman who’d lifted a school bus off of her child’s leg.

  I’m still not sure. And I won’t know until my baby girl is born. I already love her with all my heart, right alongside there with her brother. I know I will always love her. I just don’t know yet if I can be strong enough for her and Tommy to stay for very long. Or if I can love them enough
to leave them behind.

  Chapter 34

  Adelaide Walker Bodine Richmond

  INDIAN MOUND, MISSISSIPPI

  JUNE 1926

  The rains began sometime around the end of May, the dark clouds scuttling in like a mama bird covering her nest. It had rained just about every day since, and the Farmers’ Almanac wasn’t offering any good news. Uncle Joe and John spent a lot of time looking up at the sky and shaking their heads, the furrows in their fields now ribbons of silver spreading out toward the horizon.

  But the new plants in the fields with their tops barely above water were the least of their worries. Engineers came in to look at the levee in Greenville and other places near us on the river, and they said there was nothing to worry about. Uncle Joe wasn’t too sure, having never put much store in what engineers who’d never planted a seed had to say; nor had he seen that much rain for that long since he’d been farming. John tried to reassure him, reminding him that he couldn’t control the weather no matter how much he looked up at the sky or clucked his tongue.

  I barely noticed the weather. I was in the family way again, and Aunt Louise had made it her mission in life to make sure I gave birth to a healthy baby. I didn’t tell anybody the news for the first two months, afraid to admit it even to myself. Afraid that by speaking it aloud, I’d alert whatever it was that had taken my first three babies from me.

  But Aunt Louise could tell, she said, by the light in my eyes that had been missing since the Harvest Festival. She immediately put me to bed, made up the guest room for John, and called the doctor—in that order. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that John came into my room each night and slept beside me, his hand resting on my stomach. And when I awakened in the morning, he was always gone, leaving behind his scent on my pillow.

  I imagined it was times like that when a woman needed her mama, and I missed mine just as much as I did the day she went walking along the Tallahatchie Bridge and never came back. But she did a good thing, too, in leaving me in the care of Aunt Louise, who has always loved me almost as much as I imagined my own mother would have.

  I enjoyed listening to the rhythm of the rain on the roof, finding it as soothing as a lullaby. And I read a great deal, with my feet propped up by pillows arranged by John and Aunt Louise, and even once by Sarah Beth, who visited me on her infrequent trips home from Newcomb. She brought me books, bought for me in New Orleans and borrowed from her mother. Books by Zane Grey, and Edith Wharton, and Sinclair Lewis. She’d even managed to find a copy of the banned book Ulysses, and although I never would have admitted it to her, I understood why it had been deemed pornographic. But I loved it, and loved all the books that broadened my life’s experiences, and allowed me to have adventures outside the four walls of my bedroom and the watery world outside my window.

  Every once in a while I’d find myself fretting over the vegetables in my garden, and my flowers, worried that I’d left them to the mercy of Aunt Louise’s gentle but clumsy fingers. But I knew she’d tend them to the best of her abilities, whether gardening was her calling or not. She would care for them and love them because I did.

  I’d fallen asleep right after Aunt Louise had removed my supper tray and closed the blinds to block out the light, although the clouds hardly made that necessary. I was still dozing when I heard the latch on my bedroom door turning. I opened my eyes and smiled when I saw Sarah Beth, looking lovelier than I’d ever seen her.

  “I hope I didn’t wake you. Your aunt said you were resting but that I could sit by your bed until you woke up.”

  She leaned over to kiss me, and I smelled cigarette smoke and liquor as she helped me push myself up in the bed, rearranging the pillows behind my back. “I spend so much time sleeping that I’m glad of any excuse to keep my eyes open.” I smiled at her. “How is it that you manage to look so beautiful on such an ugly day?”

  She blushed, her smile secretive, and I waited for her to tell me that she and Willie were engaged. But she said nothing, leaving me to wonder what was making her so happy, and why she wasn’t telling me.

  “How are you?” she asked, her voice bright. But when I looked into her eyes, I saw something there I couldn’t name, something that wasn’t joy at all.

  “I’m doing well. So’s the baby. Dr. Odom says it will be here by the end of September. Just three more months of me lying in this bed.”

  She shuddered. “I don’t think I could do that. Lie in bed all day with nothing to do.”

  “You’d be surprised at what you would do to protect your children. Even those who aren’t born yet.”

  Sarah Beth looked at me oddly, as if I’d just read her mind, and I wondered if her strange mood was from the alcohol I’d smelled on her breath. She stood and began wandering around my room, picking up framed photographs and reading the spines of books, but I had the strangest feeling that she wasn’t really seeing any of it.

  She was staring at her reflection in my dressing table mirror. “Can you keep a secret?”

  “Of course,” I said. “I’ve always kept your secrets.”

  I saw her reflection, her secretive smile. “I’m in love.”

  I sucked in a breath, but before I could ask who with, she stopped me with her finger to her lips. “Shhh,” she whispered, then moved to sit in the chair Aunt Louise had placed by my bed for visitors.

  “So tell me, what does it feel like?”

  “What?”

  “What it feels like to have a baby growing inside you. We’ve done just about everything together for so long, it feels almost wrong that you’re going through this without me.”

  Her words surprised me, seeing as how even as little girls she hadn’t wanted to play house or make-believe with dolls, or anything that might suggest something domestic. Despite her mother’s desperation to have a child, once Sarah Beth was born it seemed that Mrs. Heathman’s job was over, and all the day-to-day tedium of child rearing was given to a succession of nannies and maids.

  “Well, you’re going to college without me.”

  She waved her hand at me. “But this is different. You’re growing another human being. You and the man you love.” I blushed at the intimacy of her words, but she didn’t seem to notice. Leaning forward, she asked again, “So what’s it like?”

  “It’s wonderful,” I said, placing my hands on my swollen belly. “It’s like Christmas morning and my birthday all rolled into one.”

  I looked down at my hands, my fingers empty of rings because they had grown too tight, but the blue of my watch poked out from the long sleeve of my nightgown. I placed my hand over it, hoping she hadn’t seen it. I couldn’t let her borrow it. Not now, when it had become something I hung on to during the tedious days, waiting until John finished at the shop or in the fields and could come see me.

  John continued on as Mr. Berlini’s account manager, a job that occupied as much time as it took of his conscience. He’d been spending more time at the jewelry store, staying past closing often enough for me to comment on it. When I’d asked what he’d been working on, he’d just said he was busy with a gift for a man’s beloved wife. I’d been peeved that another man’s wife would keep him away from home, and deliberately had held back all of my curious questions.

  “It’s like the butterfly’s boots,” I said to Sarah Beth, borrowing one of her new phrases she’d come home from college with. I’d meant to cheer us both up, me from my ruminations regarding John and his absences, but also her. There was something in her mood that was as peculiar as snow in summer.

  Sarah Beth didn’t smile, and I wondered if she’d heard what I said. A flash of lightning lit the room, closely followed by a rumble of thunder.

  “Can you feel it?” she asked quietly.

  I nodded. “When I sing, she’s like a little frog in there. Like she’s trying to dance.”

  “She? You know it’s a girl?”

  “I don’
t know for sure, but when I dream, I see a little girl. Of course, I’d be happy with a boy who looks just like John, but a girl would be sweet, too. I think Aunt Louise would love to dress a baby girl. The next one can be a boy,” I said lightly, trying to bring up her mood.

  Lightning exploded in the sky again, making my bedside lamp flicker, then go out. Sarah Beth leaned forward, her eyes reflecting the light from the window. “What does it feel like? When she’s moving.”

  I thought for a moment, never having been asked before to describe it. “It’s like when you’re swimming and a fish brushes up against you. Except you’re not scared, because you know what it is.”

  She stared at my belly under the sheet, then looked in my eyes again. “Sing something. Sing something and make her dance.”

  I frowned, thinking hard, until my mind rested on the song sung by the four Negroes at the Harvest Festival. “‘Oh, shine on, shine on, harvest moon, up in the sky.’”

  I felt the little brushes from inside my belly, and took one of Sarah Beth’s hands to place on top of it. At the first little kick, she lifted her hand as if she’d been stung by a bee, then put it back to feel two more flutters.

  Sarah Beth sat back in her chair and I watched as her gaze darted about the room, and I wondered if she was looking for her purse and the flask she usually kept inside. But she hadn’t come in with it.

  Her eyes returned to me. “I finally asked my mother.”

  “About what?” I asked, wondering if I’d missed part of a conversation.

  “About why my name isn’t in the family Bible. Remember that day when we went to the old cemetery and found all those baby graves? And you said we should look in the Bible to see if they were my brothers and sisters?”

  I nodded, remembering that day clearly, as well as my wedding, when I’d seen her and Angelo Berlini talking in the graveyard in front of those same stones.