A Long Time Gone

by Karen White

  “Make good choices!” I called out, only half joking, and knowing Chloe heard me when I saw her roll her eyes.

  Tripp had stepped out of his car and was helping Mathilda from the passenger seat, and I understood why he’d brought the car instead of his truck. It practically took a pole-vaulter to get in and out of the pickup.

  “‘Make good choices’?” he said as I approached.

  I shrugged. “I didn’t know what else to say. I heard it in a Lindsay Lohan movie once.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “And see how well that worked.”

  Ignoring him, I turned toward the car. “Hello, Mathilda. May I help you out?”

  “Thanks, but I’ve got it,” Tripp said. He let his gaze rest on my lips for a moment, and I blushed, remembering the last time I’d seen him, when he’d kissed me. And I’d kissed him back.

  Tripp held one of Mathilda’s arms while she walked, her other hand leaning heavily on a cane. She wore slip-on athletic shoes with little white socks, her ankles so thin it looked like they might snap if she stepped down too hard. The two paused when they got to the bottom step, and I could tell that Tripp wanted to just pick her up—all eighty pounds of her—and lift her to the porch. Instead he waited patiently as he helped her negotiate each step.

  When they made it across the threshold and into the foyer, it was as if the old house sighed in recognition, and I imagined the shadows welcoming back Mathilda, who had helped raise four generations of Walker women.

  Cora rushed into the foyer to take over, kissing her grandmother’s cheek and then removing her shawl before escorting her into the parlor. Which left Tripp and me alone.

  “You’re not going to run off or anything, are you?” he asked.

  “Of course not. Why would I?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Just seems to be your knee-jerk reaction when you start feeling hemmed in, is all.”

  Without responding, I turned my back on him and headed toward the parlor.

  “Exactly like that,” he said to my departing back.

  “Can I get anybody something to drink?” I asked, ignoring him.

  Cora scooted a chair up to her grandmother’s. “You sit down here, Vivien; let me worry about that. I know you two have a lot of catching up to do.”

  I thanked her and sat down next to Mathilda, taking her hand in mine. “I’m glad to see you’re feeling better and could come to supper.”

  She looked confused for a moment and then nodded. “Oh, yes, I’m feelin’ much better. Even have a bit of an appetite.”

  Tripp, who’d come in and sat on the sofa, covered a cough with his hand, and I remembered how he’d compared her appetite to that of a horse.

  “I’m glad to hear that. Cora and I have been cooking up a storm all day—all your favorites.”

  “And peanut-butter pie for dessert?” she asked.

  “With whipped cream even. I used Bootsie’s pie recipe, so although it most likely won’t be just like hers, you might still enjoy it.”

  “I know I will,” she said, patting my hand. “But first you want to hear my stories. I ain’t gettin’ any younger, so I guess I needs to start talkin’. That ol’ Shipley woman—she already asks me things, but I don’ like her, so I pretends I don’ remember nothing. But I likes you, Vivien. I likes you a lot.”

  I raised my eyebrows and met Tripp’s amused gaze.

  We made small talk about the weather, and a little gossip about the nurses at Sunset Acres, and how everybody was excited that a male resident—a rarity in nursing homes—had recently moved in. He still had his own teeth—another rarity—and was fought over on bingo night for the various all-girl teams.

  I waited for a lull in the conversation before I decided to bring up the questions that had been running through my mind all day. “I don’t know if Cora told you, but we’re pretty sure of the identity of the body found in our yard.”

  She tilted her head, her sightless eyes staring at something I couldn’t see.

  “We believe it was my great-grandmother Adelaide. Bootsie’s mother.”

  She nodded, as if she wasn’t surprised to hear it, and I was wondering if she’d understood.

  I pressed on. “Adelaide was supposed to have drowned during the flood of 1927. But it now appears she didn’t.”

  Cora entered and brought us glasses of sweet tea and lemon, pressing a napkin-covered glass with a straw into her grandmother’s hands.

  I waited for her to take a sip before asking my first question. “Did you know Adelaide?”

  Mathilda nodded. “Everybody know Miss Adelaide. She just a little bit older than me. Sweet girl. Kindhearted.” She leaned down to take a sip of her tea from the straw. “I works for Mr. Heathman—he the president of the bank. I works for the family, and Miss Adelaide she be friendly with the Heathman girl. That how I knows her.”

  I sat back, confused. “But I thought you worked for my family.”

  She looked in my direction, doing an exact imitation of Carol Shipley when I asked if I could take those newspapers home with me. “Let me finish my story. When Miss Adelaide had her baby, Miss Bootsie, I lives with her here in this house to take care of they both. I stays on when Miss Adelaide got drowned, to help Mrs. Bodine—that be Adelaide’s aunt—raise Miss Bootsie. I never did go back to the Heathmans on account of them losing everythin’ in the crash.”

  “S. B. Heathman—is that their daughter?” I asked, remembering the name in the news accounts of Adelaide’s disappearance, as well as from the wedding announcement.

  “Sarah Beth. They was best friends they whole lives. But Sarah Beth was as wild as Adelaide was sweet. Maybe that’s why they was friends. She settled down, though. After she got married and had her baby. Became a proper churchgoer, she did. Even ran a soup kitchen from her own home until her daddy killed hisself and the bank took the house.”

  I closed my eyes, trying to remember where I’d seen the Heathman name besides the newspapers. It seemed important, somehow, but I couldn’t remember other than that it had been recently.

  My mother entered the room and Tripp stood and offered his seat, but she sat down at Mathilda’s feet, and the old woman reached for her hair, stroking it. She hadn’t needed to ask who it was, as if they were both fifty years younger, and Carol Lynne was sitting at her feet like she’d done as a girl.

  Tripp leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped. “Do you remember if Adelaide had any enemies—anybody who’d want to hurt her?”

  Mathilda shook her head. “Not Miss Adelaide. She was an angel. Her husband, John, they was so in love made your heart hurt to see ’em. He was a real good man—he run the jewelry store on Main Street till he die. Such a nice man, an honest man—even though he was buyin’ and sellin’ liquor.”

  “He was a bootlegger?” I asked, surprised. Even I had no idea we had any skeletons in the family closet. Just one in the yard.

  “In a way, yes. And he loved Adelaide more than I ever seen a man love his wife. But everybody loved her. And I never seen a mama love her baby so much as Miss Adelaide loved her Bootsie. Maybe Carol Lynne and the way she loved you and Tommy, but it was close.”

  I watched as the dark fingers stroked my mother’s hair, and I wanted to tell her that she was wrong, that my mother had never loved anybody but herself. But I caught Tripp’s eyes and something in them made me stop.

  “The little ring she wore around her neck, do you remember that?” I held my breath, remembering the last time I’d mentioned it and how she’d feigned exhaustion. But maybe now—now that we knew it was Adelaide in the grave—she’d have no reason to hold back.

  She leaned down to take a sip from her iced tea, then nodded. “Her husband, he made that for her. He gives the other one to Bootsie. I remember she cry happy tears when she show it to me. I went with her and the baby to get they picture taken. Bootsie lookin’
at me in they photo.”

  I recalled Bootsie’s face, how she was smiling at someone and pointing her finger, wearing the little ring.

  “Do you know what happened to her ring? I’ve looked for it all over, and can’t find it.”

  She sat back in her chair and sighed, her hand still stroking my mother’s hair. “It been a long time. I don’ think I can remember the last time I see it.”

  Tripp straightened. “When was the last time you saw Adelaide?”

  The old woman laughed, her chest almost concave with the exertion of it. “I be an old woman and you expects a lot from this brain of mine. But I do remember seeing her the day she die. I remember it ’cause it the day the levee broke and the water started coming in.” She was silent, her eyes moving back and forth as if she were watching a movie of the muddy waters of the Mississippi flooding the streets and houses.

  “I remember later that day, when the water finally reach us up near the huntin’ cabin on account of it bein’ on high ground. The sound, you never heard such sound. Like a roar, and then theys people cryin’ out and shoutin’ and everybody runnin’ for the higher ground. Mr. Bodine, that be Adelaide’s uncle, he had it all planned so we be safe.”

  “But Adelaide and Bootsie didn’t evacuate with the Bodines, right?” I asked.

  “No. She got a phone call and said she had to go meet John. She took the baby with her; she ain’t gonna be separated from her baby. And she knows she got an hour, maybe two, ’fore the water comes in.”

  Tripp cleared his throat. “And Sarah Beth? How did she get the baby? Because in the newspaper they say she was the last one to see Adelaide alive.”

  Mathilda didn’t answer for a long moment, and I thought maybe she hadn’t heard him.

  “I don’ know for sure, ’cept John never saw her again, and Sarah Beth just say Adelaide come to her house and gave her they baby, sayin’ she gots to go to New Orleans in a hurry, and nothing Sarah Beth could say would stop her.” Her old hand stopped moving and my mother lifted her head.

  “And Bootsie had on the ring when she left with her mother?” Tripp asked.

  “No,” the old woman said. “I don’ think she did.”

  An odd smile crossed my mother’s face, making her look like a little girl caught doing something bad. She looked up at Mathilda, put her finger to her lips, and said, “Shhh.”

  Tripp leaned forward and grabbed a handful of peanuts from a dish on the coffee table. “So nobody would have wanted to hurt Adelaide, but we know that’s not true, because she didn’t bury herself under the tree.” He popped the nuts into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully.

  “No, there wasn’t nobody,” Mathilda said, her gaze directed at Tripp, and for a moment I thought she was trying to tell him something. And then I remembered she was blind.

  I thought of the watch, and how Adelaide’s husband said she’d been wearing it when she died. “When you last saw her, was she wearing her blue watch? The one her husband gave her?”

  “Oh, yes. Never saw her without that or her necklace—’cept a few times she let Sarah Beth borrow it.”

  Tommy came in then, wearing a clean shirt and his hair wet at the hairline as if he’d just washed his face. He greeted Mathilda with a kiss on her cheek, then pulled my mother to her feet. “Cora said supper’s ready and we can get started.”

  He escorted my mother to the table while Tripp and I escorted Mathilda, her hand as delicate as a bird’s foot perched on my arm. We sat her at the place of honor at the head of the table, and listened as she identified all the food using her sense of smell—collard greens made with fatback, butter beans, fried okra, and pulled barbecue pork from the Hopson Commissary that I’d driven for more than an hour each way to get. She had some of everything, and I watched in amazement as she ate all that was on her plate and asked for seconds of the candied yams that I had made using Bootsie’s recipe. It came from the tattered and worn “receipt” box—that’s what she’d called it—that had been used for generations of the women in my family. I’d thought of it often while I’d been away, how Bootsie knew them all by heart but used the recipe anyway, and was already thinking about how I should pull out the crumbling recipes and digitize them for future generations. Assuming there would be any.

  I found I had no appetite, my mind too full of everything Mathilda had said, of my great-grandfather being a bootlegger, and how Adelaide had been wearing the watch the last time Mathilda had seen her on the day she’d died.

  My mind drifted away from the conversation Mathilda and Tripp were having about the food, and how she liked the new pastor at her church. I looked down at the watch, twisting it slowly on my arm. Where was the ring? We already had the watch, but why had it been in Emmett’s box?

  I looked up to find Tommy watching me. “Not hungry?”

  “Not really. And I want to make sure that Mathilda doesn’t leave hungry.”

  I smiled as I looked over at Cora dipping another spoonful of candied yams onto her grandmother’s plate.

  He grinned, then pointed his chin at my watch. “If you want, I can see if I can make it work, though if it was in Emmett’s box he probably already tried.”

  “Sure—thanks.” I took it off my wrist, then slid it across the table toward him.

  We finished the meal while Mathilda asked me about Chloe and what I’d been doing in the last ten years, and I told her without going into any of the thorny details. We talked about her grandkids and great-grandkids, and even the price of cotton.

  After we’d cleared the dessert dishes and packed several Tupperware containers with leftovers for her to take back with her, Tripp announced it was time for them to leave, because he was too old to stay up late.

  Cora settled her shawl around her shoulders, and then Tripp and I escorted her back to the car. I buckled her seat belt around her, then kissed her cheek. “Thanks so much for coming. I hope you got enough to eat.”

  She patted the stack of Tupperware on her lap. “Not to worry. I gots these if I get hungry in the middle of the night.”

  I laughed and pulled back, but she touched my arm. “You done chasin’ ghosts?”

  I remembered what my mother had said when we’d visited Mathilda at Sunset Acres. She’s been chasing ghosts.

  “I don’t . . .” I stammered. “I don’t understand.”

  “Good night, Vivien. We talks some more later.”

  I stood. “We will,” I said. “And I’ll remember to bring food,” I said to the closed door.

  I stopped to pet the dog on my way in, then moved to the kitchen to help Cora with the dishes. My hands were deep in dirty water when I recalled where I’d seen the Heathman name.

  Quickly drying my hands, I pulled Mrs. Shipley’s book off from the top of the refrigerator, where I’d stashed it. Tommy walked in, reaching into the cookie jar despite the huge meal he’d just eaten. He was as slim as a boy, yet ate everything in sight. It wasn’t fair.

  I placed the book on the counter and opened it, the pages falling open to my family tree.

  “What is it?” Tommy asked, a cookie crumb dropping on the page.

  I wiped it off, my finger running down the lines of the tree. “I remembered where I saw the Heathman name—it’s on our family tree.” My finger stopped. “Right here.”

  He leaned down and read out loud. “‘Sarah Beth Heathman Bodine. Married William Henry Bodine May 1927; son Emmett John Bodine born November 1927.’”

  “She was Emmett’s mother. Adelaide’s best friend married her cousin, William, and their son was Emmett. I wonder why Mathilda didn’t mention it.”

  “Maybe because she figured we already knew that. Or not.” He reached into the jar and grabbed another cookie. “Sarah Beth as in the same Sarah Beth who was the last person to see Adelaide alive?”

  “Yep.” I nodded as he chewed, dropping more crumbs on the page.
<
br />   “That’s not all,” he said, eyeing the family tree again.

  “What?”

  He tapped his finger on Emmett’s name. “Looks like Sarah Beth and William had a shotgun wedding.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, staring down at the page, not sure I knew what he was pointing at.

  “Emmett was born only six months after they were married.”

  “Wow. You’re right.” I stared at it for a few moments, wondering if it meant anything besides two people not wanting to wait until their wedding night.

  Tommy grabbed another cookie, then left the kitchen. I closed the book and returned to the dishes, glad to have something to keep my hands occupied as my brain ran in circles. I brought the book out with me onto the porch to wait for Chloe, the dog happy to keep me company.

  I rocked in the chair, trying to read the history of Indian Mound, to channel my thoughts, but I kept returning to my conversation with Mathilda as she’d left, and wondering what she’d meant about chasing ghosts.

  Chapter 42

  Adelaide Walker Bodine Richmond

  INDIAN MOUND, MISSISSIPPI

  APRIL 2, 1927

  I sat underneath the cypress tree, reading a novel and enjoying the cool breeze and a rare day without rain. I could feel the moisture creeping through the blanket, the water no longer far from the earth’s surface. Here in the delta we were used to the river’s vagaries, how for years it would flow where the farmer wanted it to, slipping dutifully between the levees like a snake, waiting for its moment to strike. We were due for a major flood. We just didn’t know when.

  Bootsie sat in her carriage, playing with her little feet the way babies do. I’d given up on putting shoes on her, as she always pulled them off. I had enough blankets tucked around her to keep her warm, and she didn’t seem to mind the breeze on her bare toes. The cool wind made her laugh and show off her new tooth, and dried the drool on her chubby chin. Even while teething, Bootsie had remained cheerful and content, making me feel as if I must be the best mother ever.

  I caught a movement from the back of the house. Mathilda stood at the kitchen door, watching as a figure approached me, walking quickly. I couldn’t tell immediately who it was, or recognize the hurried gait. But I could tell from Mathilda’s wringing hands that it was an unwelcome visitor.