Reviving the Hawthorn Sisters

by Emily Carpenter

  Intrauterine stroke, upper extremity hemiplegia, permanent nerve damage in my right arm . . . Intrauterine stroke, upper extremity hemiplegia, permanent nerve damage in my right arm . . .

  It was my private affirmation of reality. I’d been diagnosed soon after birth. When I was a toddler, my mother had flown us down to Alabama. She told me that Dove prayed for me—for hours. Apparently, I’d cried my eyes out the whole time, but nothing happened. My tiny arm still hung limp.

  Mom doubled down and in the ensuing years, dragged me to church visits, tent meetings, and healing conferences, all in her quest to fix my arm. Eventually, when I wasn’t healed, she persuaded herself that my arm must be a gift given to me by God. When it ached, she claimed it was a sign from Him. When it twinged, she said a miracle must be just around the corner.

  But I grew impatient with divine signs and lackluster wonders. All I wanted was an arm that worked well enough to pass a driver’s test. So one bright spring day, without my mother’s knowledge, I bought myself a plane ticket, flew down to Alabama, and demanded my grandmother give me the miracle I’d been waiting for. The miracle I deserved.

  I didn’t get it. Instead, I got a big dose of the truth.

  Dove’s terrible secret.

  That first night Mom and Danny and I spent in Dove’s Pasadena house, I lay in the guest bed and lifted my arm straight out in front of me. I studied it closely, taking note of the developing muscles, the smooth skin and light strawberry-blond hairs. It was a nice arm, I thought. An arm any sixteen-year-old girl should be proud of.

  I rotated my palm, slowly, deliberately, in each direction. Then I carefully, one by one, curled each finger of the right hand inward with my left. Thumb, index, ring, pinky—until only the middle one was left sticking straight up in the air. I held the finger there, tall and proud. It may take two hands to get the job done, but it could be done.

  “Rest in peace, Dove,” I said to the ceiling. Then I rolled over and went to sleep.

  Chapter Four

  Tuscaloosa, Alabama

  1930

  In the hours since breakfast, Ruth Lurie had come up with a doozy of a plan.

  No one would’ve thought it, the way she was meandering aimlessly across the east lawn of Pritchard Insane Hospital’s grounds, weaving around the patients and attendants like she hadn’t a care in the world. But she did have a plan, and she considered it to be a good goddamn gravy one, if she did say so herself. If all went well, by this time tomorrow, she’d be gone.

  Over her faded blue-and-white checked cotton dress, she wore one of the aprons from the kitchen, which was a mite unusual for her, if anybody’d had a mind to notice. Another oddity: she’d come outside to the hot yard for recreation time, even though she usually stayed in the cool to play gin rummy with Eunice and Ethel, the sweet old twins, epileptics both, who cried whenever one of them happened to beat her. But nobody noticed the apron or the fact that she was outside instead of in, and that gave her courage.

  In the sunbaked yard, a handful of patients flitted here and there, like a swarm of listless flies. Dell, a boy her age who’d been born here and was now motherless like her, played marbles alone on the patch of dirt under the boughs of a hawthorn tree. The tree wasn’t big, but it was leafy and provided a cool spot. The low branches were still loaded with tiny bright-green thorn apples, which would be good for jam when they ripened.

  Beside Dell, the Major sat on his chair, singing snatches of his favorite marching song from the War, the parts his addled brain could remember. He’d been wounded at the battle of Spanish Fort when he was a young boy and had never quite recovered, so his family had put him in Pritchard. He couldn’t possibly have been a real major, but that’s what all the attendants called him.

  “Sittin’ by the roadside on a summer’s day,” the Major sang to no one in particular. “Talkin’ with my comrades to pass the time away. Lyin’ in the shade underneath the trees. Goodness how delicious, eating goober peas . . .”

  The silly song provided a pleasant distraction. Took her mind off the incident earlier that morning. Just after breakfast, as Ruth had hurried down the corridor of the women’s ward on her way to the laundry, Jimmy Singley, one of the attendants, had snagged a fistful of her skirt and dragged her into one of the empty, unlocked dorms. He’d pushed her against the wall and breathed his stinking tobacco and pickle breath onto her face.

  “Thirteen years old tomorrow. Happy birthday to you, little Ruthie.”

  She’d steeled herself for whatever Singley was about to do. Round about spring of last year, the fella had taken an interest in her. He’d started following her wherever she went—down to the laundry and the vegetable garden, to the day room when she played cards. He never spoke except to fling taunts. And his only touches were slaps, pinches, and the occasional hallway tussle that she’d been able to wriggle loose from.

  He liked her; she could tell. And she wasn’t no dummy. If she was smart and played a gambler’s hand, he might prove useful.

  “Listen close,” Singley said in the half-light of the deserted dorm. “I’ve got something real serious to talk to you about. I’m going to put you in the nursery, right after supper.”

  “The nursery? Why? I ain’t done nothing wrong.” She studied his slicked-back grease spill of hair, the sleepy eyes and rounded shoulders, but they held no clue.

  “For safe keeping. Listen. I’m gonna put you in the nursery, then right at midnight, I’ll let you out and take you to the auditorium.”

  “What’s in the auditorium?” she asked, suspicious.

  His lips parted in a smug grin, and she felt another blast of his stinking breath. “A birthday present for you. What do you think about that, Little Miss Priss?”

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “What is it?” he mimicked her, then laughed. “Can’t tell you that, little gal, or it wouldn’t be no surprise.”

  She edged toward the door. “I have to go.”

  He put an arm out, blocking her. “Now wait a minute. Just hang on.”

  “What?”

  “Let me get a hug before you go.” He bounced on his toes in anticipation. “Just one little hug. I promise I’ll be sweet.”

  He reached for her, but without even thinking, she slapped his hand away. He caught her wrist and pushed her back. Hard, cracking her spine against the wall. She’d been lucky up until now, always managing to get away from him. But today Singley seemed possessed with a new determination. He pressed against her, determined and quite a bit keyed up, judging from the thing poking into the side of her stomach.

  “It’s fine work, holding on to your virtue,” he said, releasing her. “But I’m telling you . . . one day you’re gonna have to mind me.”

  She mustered up a saucy look and gave it to him, even though she was quaking inside. “Well, all right then. Get on with it.”

  He ducked his head, suddenly shy.

  “I said get to it, pecker! Give me that hug.”

  “Don’t you be giving orders to me. I give the orders.” He kicked the doorjamb. “Anyways. What I come to say is my uncle Robert from Enterprise has come to visit for a few days at my mother’s house. And what do you know, turns out he’s a preacher!”

  “What about my present?” There was no doubt that whatever he had up his sleeve wasn’t good, but she thought it was better to know sooner rather than later. So she could be prepared.

  “Hold your horses, gal. We were having supper the other night at my mother’s house and I ask him, ‘Do you only do preaching?’ And he says, ‘That’s what preachers do, ain’t it?’ And I say, ‘Preachers do weddings. Do you marry folks?’ And he says, ‘Why sure, now and then.’ And then he says, ‘You figuring on getting married, Jimmy? You got yourself a girl?’”

  Singley laughed a nervous laugh, and Ruth got cold all over.

  He puffed his chest. “So I say, ‘Sure I do, I got a girl prettier than you ever seen. She’s got hair like red silk and eyes like the sky. I say, you ain’t
never seen nothing like my girl, not in all the places you’ve traveled.’”

  She might’ve been cold, but Singley felt like an oven. He felt like a radiating sun, shooting out molten tongues of burning hot fire.

  “And then he says, ‘Well, Jimmy, she’s gotta be a grown woman. She’s gotta be of age or I can’t marry you.’” Singley could barely contain himself. His lips split into a wide, gap-toothed grin. “And you are! You’re of age—thirteen years old, as God’s my witness. So your birthday present, Miss Ruth Lurie? Well, it’s the Reverend Robert T. Singley, right here at Pritchard, declaring us man and wife.”

  For the first time since she’d been a bitty little girl, Ruth felt pure terror. It wiped her mind clean and locked up her limbs. And for a moment, she believed she was going to piss the floor right where she stood. But she hadn’t, and eventually, Singley let her go.

  Now, out in the hot yard beside the bloom-wreathed hawthorn tree, the Major was still mumbling his song. Ruth gave the old man’s shoulder a reassuring pat and squatted down beside Dell. The boy knuckled down with his big blue shooter, squeezed one eye shut, and surveyed the marbles in the circle of dirt.

  “Put ’em up, dead duck,” he said.

  The shooter clacked, making two marbles spin out past the line.

  “Couldn’t find nobody to play?” Ruth asked.

  He grinned over at her with his one open eye. It was the exact color of the shooter, a soft cornflower blue. Just like hers. When she was younger, she used to pretend she and Dell were brother and sister. She’d let him crawl up in bed with her and scratch his back. To get him to sleep, she’d describe the house where they would live together one day. A room for you and next door’ll be mine. But that had stopped, in time, as the attendants didn’t let the boys and girls mix past a certain age. She missed him, especially on cold nights. His little body had been hot as a furnace next to hers.

  Now he waggled his eyebrows at the hollow knot in the tree behind him, just a few feet up from the roots. It was where he hid the marbles he won off other patients. It was also a place where they liked to hide little gifts for each other and the Major: A wrapped toffee from Ruth. A broken celluloid comb from Dell. A double acorn from the Major.

  “Couldn’t find nobody else who wanted to lose their aggies.” He looked up at her. “You want a go?”

  “Aw. I don’t reckon I feel like making a little boy cry today.”

  He stuck his tongue out at her. “Skeered,” he muttered and went back to his game.

  The Major kicked a foot over his knee. “Better watch yourself, girl. He’ll be taller than you next week.”

  “And I’ll thrash you,” Dell added.

  “It’s a date.” She ruffled the boy’s hair and went off to find another attendant, Mackey, who was watching a group of men play horseshoes.

  “Can I pick blackberries?” she asked him.

  He glanced at her, disinterested.

  She held up her apron. “I won’t go far. Just around the edges of the wood. I’ll take ’em straight to the kitchen.”

  He grunted an assent, and she ran around the far edge of the building, toward the kitchen door. She slipped in, past the bustling cooks and patients in charge of chopping onions and washing dishes, and let herself into the laundry. The room was clouded with steam and rang with the chatter of patients and the clanking of the metal wringers. She sidled to the big glass-paned door that led out to the corridor and untied her apron. With her teeth, she tore one string and stuffed it into the hinges of the door. Then she turned back, leaving the way she’d come.

  Half an hour later, back in the yard, she found Betty hunched over the Major. Betty liked to smear her poop on the windows, and now she’d removed the old man’s cap and was in the process of poking her crusty fingers into the crater on the top of his head where a Union ball had smashed into his skull. Ruth marched up and pushed her away. Betty howled, but Ruth didn’t pay her any mind. She carefully smoothed what remained of the Major’s white hair over his ruined scalp and replaced his cap.

  She kissed his cheek. “Goodbye,” she whispered.

  Chapter Five

  Tuscaloosa, Alabama

  Present

  “There are things known and unknown, and in between are the doors.”

  I turned to see a woman in her late thirties standing behind me. She wore a strapless blush sundress and there were freckles across the pale skin of her chest and arms. A dark braid hung over one shoulder, secured at the end with a brass and ivory barrette in the shape of a bird.

  She looked flustered for a moment, then she laughed. “Sorry. Sometimes I just blurt out whatever comes to mind. It’s Jim Morrison, I think. Or it sounds like the kind of dippy shit—oops—” She grimaced. “—stuff, he would say.”

  Her accent made me think of every Flannery O’Connor and Eudora Welty short story I’d ever read in school. Pure Deep South. I smiled at her.

  She offered her hand. “Althea Cheramie. I knew your grandmother. Sorry for the cursing.”

  The name caught me, but only for a half second, and I recovered. This was one of the women from the family Dove had stayed in Alabama for.

  “It’s fine.” I shook her hand. “Eve Candler.”

  “I know.” She pulled me into a hug. I smelled cold water, like the smell of a creek, sweet flowers, and rich, dark earth. I felt dizzy for a moment, caught off guard by the embrace and the overwhelming sensation of being transported somewhere else. Somewhere old.

  “I’ve looked forward to meeting you for so long,” she went on. “I only knew Dove for a short time, but she was very special to me. I named my daughter, Ruthie, after her.”

  I nodded, trying not to let my feelings show. It wasn’t this woman’s fault, but what my grandmother had done for Althea Cheramie was more than she’d ever done for me. But that was Dove, through and through. Ready to go to the ends of the earth for a stranger.

  “I have a box of Dove’s things for you in the car,” Althea continued. “There were some odds and ends, things she left in her house in Tuscaloosa when she moved back to California. The new owner just recently found them in the attic. I haven’t gone through it, but I think there’s some interesting stuff. Pictures and newspaper clippings.”

  “Great,” I said. “The foundation has catalogued and archived most of her belongings. But they’re always happy to have more.”

  “I could’ve mailed it to you—I’ve had it for months now, but I don’t know . . .” She paused. “I guess I sort of hoped I could give it to you in person.”

  Someone jostled me, and I stepped aside to let them pass.

  “Go. Do your thing. We can catch up later.” Althea waved at a broad-shouldered man in a tan suit who was herding two small children, a girl and a boy, up the walk.

  I let myself be herded into the grand reception room and absorbed by the well-dressed crowd, then found a quiet corner to review my mental notes. The people here were the movers and shakers of Alabama. Politicians, business owners, and even a smattering of coal, timber, and iron ore heirs and heiresses. There was more money and political influence squirreled away in this state than anyone suspected. My job was to get it out of their pockets and into the foundation’s coffers.

  Just as a server in crisp black put a flute of champagne in my hand, Mom appeared at my side with an older couple in tow. “Eve, I’d like you to meet the Lusters,” Mom said. “Darrell and Margaret. I was just asking them if they’d allow you and Griff to interview them for the documentary. Maybe after the dedication?”

  “That would be perfect.” I shook hands with the silver-haired couple. “So nice to meet you.”

  These were the big fish—Margaret and Darrell Luster. Darrell had started a successful commercial construction company back in the sixties. Margaret was the sole heiress of a fried chicken franchise out of Birmingham, now all over the country. The couple had all but signed on the dotted line agreeing to give the Jarrod Foundation over seven million dollars spread out over the next five
years. Hooking them had been a huge relief, for me especially, but now my stomach dropped just at the sight of Mom commandeering them. Sweat slicked her temples and her hands danced at the woman’s shoulders.

  I switched the flute I was holding over to my right hand and concentrated on a steady grip. My mind immediately calmed in response to the small action of therapeutic habit, and I felt the rest of me relax too. “We’re so grateful for your interest in the foundation, Mr. and Mrs. Luster. And for your incredible generosity. And yes, I’d love to get something on tape, if you’re open to being on-camera talent.” I turned to Mom. “You should head to the dais. They’re probably looking for you.”

  I gave her a gentle push and she disappeared into the crowd. When I turned back to the Lusters, Margaret was staring intently at me. A birdlike woman wrapped in a sculptural pantsuit with a pair of enormous earrings that looked like welded hardware dangling from her lobes, she took my free hand in hers as if we were the only two people in the room. Her watery eyes laser-focused on mine.

  “I’ve listened to every one of Charles Jarrod’s sermons,” she said in an even more syrupy accent than Althea’s. “Even a couple of bootleg tapes from the 1930s.”

  I tried not to let my discomfort show on my face. She was one of the Dove and Charles super-groupies, as Danny and I used to call them (before Mom heard us and put a stop to it). Harmless, mostly, if you didn’t count the handful who’d broken into our house in the years since Dove’s death. They’d only ever done it when we were gone. And only taken cheap mementos—photos of Dove, a pair of her earrings, a scrapbook of her old pamphlets. These items were talismans of their hero. And in their world, one that operated not on logic and reason but on incomprehensible divine magic, a piece of Dove meant a piece of God.

  But these folks were also our bread and butter, so I knew what to do. Suck it up and fawn.