The Stone Flower Garden

by Deborah Smith

  My head snapped back as if she’d hit me. By then Swan was beside me, and she twisted Clara’s hand off my arm, then pushed me toward Matilda, who took me by the shoulders. Swan and Clara faced each other. I felt dizzy with the words Clara had just hurled at me. “Stop, right now,” Swan said to Clara between gritted teeth.

  But Clara peered gleefully around her. “Darl, your great-grandmother never married A. A. Hardigree. But she decided she wanted to be a lady and raise her daughters as if they had a name, so she burned the whole damned town down and made sure A. A. fried in the process. Then she produced a marriage certificate and a will, so she got the quarry. And that’s when she and her daughters became Southern ladies. We dragged little Matilda, our darkie half-sister, along for charity’s sake.”

  “If you stop now,” Swan repeated, “I’ll give you the money you want, and you can leave.”

  “You know what your grandmother did to me, Darl? She sent me off to a goddamned reformatory when I was sixteen years old. A prison for girls. Run by goddamned nuns. That’s where I spent two years. She got rid of me—because I talked about our family. I told the truth. I caused trouble. Matilda got to stay and have Anthony Wade’s baby, but I got sent away.” She leered at Swan and Matilda. “But I always come back, don’t I? I’ll always talk. And you’ll always have to live with it.”

  “Not anymore,” Swan said. Swan slapped her hard enough to click Clara’s teeth together. Clara put a hand to her jaw and stared at her sister with slitted eyes, tinged with fear. The look on Swan’s face was the same as the killing look she’d given poor Preacher Al.

  Swan hit Clara again. Not a slap, this time, but a full broadside with the flat of both hands to Clara’s chest. Clara stumbled backwards. Swan stepped lithely after her, shoved her, then drew back a hand and slapped her once more. Matilda screamed. I yelled, “Watch out!” Clara stumbled against the terrace wall and grabbed wildly at one of the marble swans. Her hand latched around one of their elegant marble necks.

  But my grandmother’s minions were not about to save the one person who could destroy everything Swan had built. Clara’s fingers clutched frantically but slipped off. She fell over the terrace wall, twisting as she went, disappearing down the sheer drop.

  I didn’t see her hit the marbled lip of the koi pond below, but I heard the godawful thud, just like Preacher Al’s. I leapt to the terrace wall. Swan threw out an arm and blocked me. I was so upset, so blind with horror, I might have easily plummeted over out of careless hysteria. Matilda joined us. We three stared at the scene below.

  Clara floated, face-down, in the pond. Bubbles rose around her head. “She’s still breathing,” I yelled. I writhed from Swan’s grasp and ran to the steps. By the time I reached the bottom Swan and Matilda were quick on my heels. I was about to climb into the shallow pond when Swan locked both hands around my waist. “We’ll pull her out,” Swan said calmly. “You run up to the house and get the first-aid kit. Hurry. Don’t take time to phone for help or tell Karen. Don’t say a word. Just go inside.”

  That made sense. “Yes, ma’am!” I bolted back up the steps. When I turned at the top I saw that Swan had not gotten into the pond, but instead had Matilda by the shoulders and was talking to her in a voice so low I couldn’t hear the words. Matilda gestured toward Clara and tried to pull away, but Swan shook her lightly. Then Swan climbed down into the pond. She waded to Clara and stood over her, but made no move to turn Clara over. Bubbles still flooded the surface around Clara’s head, but Swan simply prodded Clara’s shoulder with a finger. Matilda, frozen on the pond patio, turned her back on the scene and covered her face.

  I didn’t know what to think—what were they doing, what did it mean? I raced inside the mansion and dragged our first-aid kit from the kitchen pantry. I was sobbing for air when I galloped back down the terrace steps with the kit clutched in my arms. Swan and Matilda sat on the pond’s marble border. Matilda pillowed Clara’s head on her lap and bent over her, crying silently. Clara’s mouth and eyes hung open. There was no color in her face. I dropped to my knees and held out the kit as if it contained a full team of doctors. “I have ointment, and gauze, and . . . ” My voice trailed off. “I should have run faster . . . ”

  Swan’s flat blue stare silenced me. “No. There’s nothing we can do.”

  I uttered a long cry of despair and hunched over my useless first-aid kit. Swan sat there as I gagged and cried, calmly waiting. She looked over at her sister’s corpse and stroked a strand of wet hair from Clara’s forehead. There was the slightest tremor in her fingers, but she gave Matilda a steady look. “This is my doing, not yours.”

  “No. I let you do it.” Matilda clasped a hand along Clara’s lifeless cheek. “I always prayed we could change her. I never understood why she had to hurt herself and everyone else, too.” Matilda bent her head over Clara’s again. She smoothed Clara’s hair back from the dark red splotch on one temple, where her head had struck the patio edge. “I’ll stay with her while you call the police.”

  Swan didn’t move. Matilda raised her head. They traded a charged look, Swan’s gaze flat and decisive, Matilda’s going from bewilderment to shock. “Swan,” she said.

  “I confronted Preacher Al yesterday and he fell off the catwalk. Today I argued with Clara and she fell off the terrace.”

  “This was an accident. No one’s going to accuse you of deliberately—”

  “Clara left town two days ago. In my mind, she simply never came back.”

  “Swan, we can’t, we can’t just—”

  “You know gossip doesn’t go away, and you know how it can come back to haunt us. Clara has hurt us enough. I won’t have her blood smeared on my reputation—or yours—for the rest of our lives.”

  “But on top of everything, you’re suggesting—”

  “After what she’s done to us over the years, does she deserve to hurt us even more?”

  Silence. Matilda’s face took on an expression I had never expected. Pure loathing filled her eyes. “No. You’re right.”

  Swan nodded. I sat there staring at Clara’s dead face, nausea surging in my stomach and up my throat, my fingernails scraping bits of bright paint off the first-aid kit. “What—what’s going on?” I finally managed to whisper.

  My grandmother looked at me without blinking. “We’re going to bury Clara in the woods. And never tell a soul.”

  I have very little memory of the rest of that day, or the night that followed it. I know that old Carl McCarl lumbered from the driver’s cab of a huge furniture truck that evening, drove Clara’s red Trans Am up a ramp into the truck’s vast interior, then carried it away. I know that late that night when Karen and I were in bed Matilda and Swan dragged Clara’s body, wrapped in a sheet, to the Stone Flower Garden.

  I followed them in the darkness and hid on the knoll above the garden. I watched them dig the grave by lantern light near the base of the flower statue, and put Clara’s body in it. I watched Matilda say a prayer over the shallow, open hole. Swan put a hand on her shoulder, but showed no other sign of compassion. And then, they covered Clara with dirt.

  I staggered back to the mansion and waited on the patio by the pool, sitting cross-legged under the light of a lamppost. When they climbed the terrace stairs they took one look at me and halted. I asked, “Are we murderers?”

  Matilda knelt down, held me tightly and told me, “No, don’t ever think that way.” But my grandmother, less willing to spin the truth, looked me straight in the eyes. “We did what had to be done,” was all she said.

  I didn’t leave the mansion for a week. I dreamed at night of the ground erupting in the Stone Flower Garden, of Clara crawling out and walking, mildewed and ashen, through the woods and up the terrace steps, into the mansion, up the stairs, into my room. Preacher Al floated along behind her. Blood dripped from his ears and his gaping mouth. Clara and Preacher Al wouldn’t confront
Swan. Swan would stare down even the dead. But me, they could get to.

  Why did you let me die? Clara asked. She loomed over me, ghastly and evil, dripping dirt and worms. Why didn’t you hurry faster with that first-aid kit? Why didn’t you at least bury me in the vault with our family? Why didn’t you speak up? I’ll haunt you the rest of your life. Preacher Al moaned at me. The sins of Jezebel are on you, too, now.

  One night their faces dissolved and Swan’s replaced them. I jerked upright and there she was, in the flesh and the darkness, leaning over me. She looked angelic in her creamy white robe and nightgown. The smallest hints of gray had recently escaped from her brunette hair at the temples, but even so her hair cascaded around her face with vital life.

  She stroked my hair away from my sweaty brow and laid the backs of her cool fingers on my cheek. “Don’t dream,” she ordered softly. “It will all be better in time. You’ll forget what happened but remember why we did it. And you’ll be stronger for that wisdom.”

  She killed Clara. If I don’t do what she wants she might kill me, too. That grotesque thought entered my mind like a snake and curled around me. “I’m fine,” I lied, shivering under the covers. “I’ll never tell anybody.” For a moment she was silent, and something in her deep blue eyes said she might admit her own pain. But she got the better of herself. “Good,” she answered.

  The next day I forced myself to go to the garden and make certain Clara hadn’t left. I couldn’t make myself go all the way into the glen I’d once loved so much, so I halted a few yards up the slope. Swan had carefully pulled the loam, filled with tiny roots, back into place. It hid the disrupted ground like a mat. My grandmother’s talent for covering up Hardigree sins was remarkable.

  Suddenly I heard a rustling sound. Bile rose in my mouth. Clara must be clawing her way up. I swayed weakly. “Darl!” It was Eli, cresting the opposite ridge, so tall and gawky and bespectacled yet so dear and gentle. He hurried around the edge of the glen and halted before me, his dark eyes filled with concern. “Where have you been?” he demanded urgently. “I’ve been here every day, waitin’ for you.”

  “I’ve been sick, that’s all. With the . . . the flu.”

  He touched my cheek. “You got no fever. You’re cold, not hot.”

  “I’m almost well.” I turned my face helplessly into the palm of his hand. It was an adult gesture, romantic and sensual, and yet as innocent as my desperate loneliness. He didn’t look much better than me, his eyes tired, his skin pale. “I’m going to hug you,” he said, and then he did it, just holding me deep in his long, boyish arms, and me holding him. He caught his glasses in my hair. After awhile we both stirred awkwardly and stepped apart.

  “My pa doesn’t know what to expect. Have you heard anything?” Eli asked. I shook my head. I think Swan had promised Matilda to leave the Wades alone for now. Too much happening too fast would only draw more attention. Eli studied me urgently. “Has Clara come back yet?”

  Swan had told me exactly what I must say if anyone asked me that question. I looked up at my best friend and true love, and I lied. “She went home to Chicago.”

  The breath soughed out of him. He shut his eyes, then opened them.

  “When?”

  “Right after that night at Neddler’s. Swan made her leave town. I didn’t know about it ’til later.”

  “So you didn’t really see her go, yourself?”

  “No, but she . . . went.”

  “Thankyougod,” burst out of him in one word. He grabbed me by the hand and pulled me down the hill. He sat down on the bench not more than a foot from Clara’s burial spot. Although he tugged for me to sit beside him, I braced my knees and stared at her hidden grave. A wave of sickness overcame me. “I have to . . . go.” I ripped my hand from his then stumbled up the slope of the glen, where I fell to my knees and vomited milky water. He hurried after me, knelt and put an arm around my shoulders. “You are still sick. Come on. I’ll walk you home.”

  With his help I got to my feet. Leaning against him, holding one of his hands in a knot against the pit of my stomach, I made it all the way to the base of the terrace, where I looked at the koi pond and vomited again. Then I pushed him away and ran up the stone steps without looking back.

  Eli took the first punches and gave them back with a force that made his attackers grunt. But the older boys were thick-shouldered football players for the Hardigree County High Warriors, and he was outnumbered. In less than sixty seconds they left Eli sprawled among the metal trash cans outside the loading dock of the school cafeteria. Blood speckled him from a cut over one eye, and his ribs hurt. He gasped for breath. “Next time get you some niggers to help you fight,” one boy said. And the other added, grinning, “Hey, he can just call his kin, can’t he?”

  After they walked off, Eli found his glasses under a trash-can lid. The aviator frames were twisted and broken. He climbed to his feet. The world without glasses was a blur, a prison. He made his way slowly around the school’s perimeter to the road in front of the school, then into the woods for a two-mile hike to the quarry. It took him over an hour because he kept blundering and getting lost. When he reached the quarry he waited in the woods by the back lot where the employees parked. Late that afternoon Pa finished for the day and walked out to the truck.

  Eli stepped forward, half-blind, bruised, his head throbbing. Pa strode up to him, clasped his face beneath the chin, and studied him painfully. “Can you take it, son?”

  “Yeah. Can you?”

  Pa nodded. The knuckles of his right hand were swollen. One of the rednecks on his crew had said, “Maybe I don’t have to listen to no orders from the son of a nigger lover.” And Pa had showed him why that idea wouldn’t work.

  “Get in the truck,” Pa said. “I’m takin’ you over to the eye doctor to order you some new glasses.”

  Eli nodded. He climbed gingerly into the truck. As they drove they said nothing. Eli couldn’t bring himself to ask about that night at Neddler’s. Clara was gone. That was all that mattered.

  Eli went to the Stone Flower Garden every day, but Darl never returned. He stopped going to the garden and instead chopped wood outside the cottage until his shoulders ached and blisters wet his hands. One cold afternoon Bell watched him worriedly. She darted forward like a bundled snowman in her quilted jacket and sweatpants, snatched up the frayed kindling as it spewed from his ax, then stacked it on the cottage’s marble stoop as if he might split the stone next.

  Eli levered the ax into the top of a log with a furious downswing. Darl doesn’t want anything to do with me now. She won’t say so flat out, but me being Anthony Wade’s grandson is what makes her sick. Wades are nothing but trouble to her family now.

  Maybe Wades were nothing but trouble to themselves, either. Maybe the good luck was subtracting from itself, not multiplying. Matilda Dove had told Mama not to come back to work at the mansion, at least not for now. And though Swan hadn’t fired Pa at the quarry, Mr. Albert suddenly didn’t have any accounting work for Eli to do after school each day.

  Eli swung the ax again. He still looked at Pa with gut-level misery because Pa had lied to Mama about seeing Clara at Neddler’s late that night. Maybe Pa just didn’t want her to know Clara had come onto him, that she’d followed him—how that looked. But it wasn’t right, it was a fracture in the solid stone of Pa and Mama’s trust for each other, and Eli’s trust in Pa.

  Eli sent a shard of wood flying with the next cut of the ax. Bell cried out as the slender stick of rough wood hit her in the mouth. She clasped her hands to her face and began to cry. God, seven years old but sometimes she was still like a baby. He ran to her and pried her hands away. Blood oozed from a split in her lower lip. “Oh, Baby Sister, I’m sorry.” Unbidden and surprising tears formed in his own eyes. He scrubbed them away but they returned.

  Bell stared at his tears in shock, and her own tears halte
d. “Eli,” she moaned, and patted him on the cheek. “Nothing used to make you cry. What’s the matter?”

  Eli shook his head. He was her big brother, a man in his family, and it was two weeks before Christmas, a good time trying desperately not to turn bad. Yet he had never been lonelier in his life, because Darl had deserted him.

  Our luck’s running out, he thought, but didn’t say it.

  Chapter Eight

  Christmas finery draped Marble Hall inside and out. All the main rooms downstairs hosted trees covered in ornaments and lights. Every table held a glittering holiday centerpiece. Pots of red poinsettias filled every corner. I saw red blood and Clara’s red Trans Am every time I looked at them.

  Matilda brought Karen over one afternoon, and she ran upstairs to my bedroom. I sat in a pink-pillowed window seat, just staring out toward the terrace, the woods, the Stone Flower Garden. Karen sat down opposite me. “What are you doing?” she asked brightly.

  I could only look at her and think of all the things she didn’t know. That not only was her grandmother Swan’s half-white sister, but her grandfather was Anthony Wade. That our grandmothers had started their lives as the daughters of prostitutes—an image barely formed in my mind but vivid with horror. That she and Eli were cousins. That she and I were, too. Only I was privy to such secrets. The Hardigree curse.

  “What are you doing?” Karen demanded a second time. “Fool. Are you listening?”

  “I’m trying to think straight,” I said. “I don’t feel good.”

  “You’ve had the flu longer than anybody I’ve ever known.”

  “I’m a slow healer.”

  She frowned at the stack of heavy, leather-bound books on the floor by my feet. I’d brought them up from Swan’s library. Hoisting one volume into her lap, she hooted at the pink slips of stationary I used as bookmarks. “What are you reading?”