by Ninie Hammon
The sunshine left Princess’s eyes.
“Jackson never paid her no mind a’tall until that day when she was two, the day I’s telling you about that I give her a bath in the washtub.”
Angel’s bubbling laughter is the most joyous sound Princess has ever heard. She’s sitting on the floor with the child and reaches out to tickle her again when the front door suddenly bangs open and Jackson stomps in, looking meaner than a mason jar full of hornets.
He’s obviously been drinking, but even with his speech muddy, Princess has no trouble understanding him.
“Heard about your little party this afternoon at the bottom of the hill,” he roars at Princess, then turns on Angel. “I know what you done, too, Little Miss Priss.”
Joe Dan had told Jackson! Princess had seen the man, one of the elders of Jackson’s little church, drive by in his pickup truck, staring out the window at them. She should have known he’d go find Jackson at Shakey’s Tavern and fill his ear full about it.
Princess and Angel had gone down the hill as soon as the child woke up from her afternoon nap. Bess Washington, the nice colored lady in the shack by the road, had told Princess a couple of weeks ago that her cat was about to have kittens and Princess wanted to show them to Angel.
The four little critters were adorable! Two of them had mostly white fur, one had white and brown spots and one was black as a lump of coal. Angel had fallen in love with that one. Wouldn’t hardly put it down the whole time they were there.
Bess’s youngest, Willie, a three-year-old with great big ears, was the only playmate Angel had ever had. They’d wandered over to the creek together with two of the kittens and sat petting them while they dangled their toes in the inch-deep water.
Princess was standing on Bess’s porch, asking about her tomato plants, when she heard a truck coming. Didn’t hardly have no traffic at all on that road, so she was surprised to see Joe Dan’s pickup come around the corner. Wasn’t no time to hide, so she made like she didn’t care that he seen, just waved at him real big as he drove by.
But she saw how he was gawking at Angel and Willie. She looked over at them and the two children were sitting there holding hands!
“Joe Dan saw you with that little nigger boy!” Jackson yells at Angel and the tone of his voice terrifies the child. She jumps up off the floor and starts to run, but Jackson grabs her arm, like to of yanked it out of the socket.
Princess leaps to her defense.
“You leave her be!” she shrieks, but never even makes it to her feet before the back of Jackson’s hand connects with the side of her face. The blow knocks her sideways into the wood stove, her head bangs into one of the metal legs and the world goes dark.
She hears Angel’s sniffling beside her as she comes to. When she opens her eyes, the child’s face swims blurry in front of her and the room spins. She closes her eyes for a few more moments and opens them again. Angel’s face is clear. Her left cheek is an angry red, her left eye swelling. She’s gonna have a shiner. And her bottom lip is split.
“Printhess!” she squeals when she sees her mother’s eyes are open, and throws her arms around her neck. Princess struggles to sit up with the child clinging to her, then cradles the trembling child in her lap, rocks back and forth, crooning, “Shhh now, hush. You’re okay.”
“Oh, no she ain’t,” Jackson says from the doorway. Princess whirls around and he is leaning on the doorframe for support.
Princess sucks in a little gasp of terror, but instead of advancing on them, Jackson sneers, “It ain’t okay for any kin of mine to truck with black savages!”
Princess wants to tell him that the “black savages” fed his kin when he’d left them to starve while he drank up all the food money. But she would never dare to say such a thing. Jackson spits on the porch, turns and marches off down the hill.
She holds Angel until the child stops trembling, then puts her down and starts supper. Jackson doesn’t come back, so the two of them eat beans and cornbread and sing silly songs as Princess washes up the dishes.
Then she gets Angel’s bath ready. She has just gotten the little girl’s hair all soaped up when she hears Jackson’s heavy boots on the front steps. She turns and he is standing in the open doorway. He has a beer in one hand and a little black kitten in the other.
“Kitty!” Angel squeals and reaches out her hands for it. Princess feels a cold stone in the pit of her stomach.
“What are you a-plannin’ to do with that cat?” she asks fearfully. But she knows the answer.
Jackson doesn’t reply, just finishes the beer, curls his lips up in a cruel smile and holds the animal out to Angel by the scruff of its neck.
“Gimme kitty,” Angel pleads and tries to climb out of the washtub to get to the cat.
“You’re gonna kill it, ain’t ya?” Princess says.
“No, I ain’t,” he says. He pauses, then purrs quietly, “But she is!”
Princess gasps.
He steps to the cabinet where she set the bean pot to dry, drops the black kitten down into it and puts the lid on top.
“Get her dry,” he commands Princess, “and I’m gonna show her how to treat a nigger cat!”
Princess shuddered at the memory. Mac and Jonas were both so sickened they couldn’t speak. Then she took a breath and continued the story.
“So I turned where he couldn’t see, and I rubbed soap in Angel’s eyes a-purpose! And she started screaming, yelling, and carryin’ on. He waited, but she just kept a-cryin’ and he couldn’t do nothing with a squalling child so …” She stopped. “‘Truth is, I forgot all about that cat in the pot. Never give it another thought. Had too much else on my mind.”
She turned in the chair toward the window and gazed out at the little town in the Indian Bluffs.
“I stood there pourin’ water over Angel’s head, her a-cryin’ while I tried to figure out how I was gonna get her out of there. I knew then he was gonna hurt her. Beat her, sure. But hurt her worse than that. He was gonna turn her into a mean, miserable, spiteful monster just like he was, squeeze all the love and laughter out of that little girl and fill her plumb up to the top with meanness and hate. He was gonna steal her soul. And wasn’t no way in the world I could protect her.”
She turned back to the table, rested her hands on it and looked earnestly into Mac’s face.
“Time we got off that train, Angel’s face was just about healed up and I had me a plan. I done a lot of thinkin’ as that cattle car bumped along the track. I figured out there was only one way to end it. I couldn’t get away from him. Sooner or later the money’d a-run out and he’d a-found us. And if I’d of just left Angel someplace, Jackson woulda tore up the whole country ’til he found her. Not ’cause he cared anything about her, but because she was his. The onliest way in the world he’d a-give up on her was if she was dead.”
She fell silent again, took in a shaky breath, and then the stillness settled over her. Princess was finished.
Mac shook his head in wonder at her incredible story, then reached out and placed his hands over hers. In the silence, he looked tenderly at the frail mother who’d willingly paid an incredible price to save her little girl in the only currency she had—sacrifice.
Chapter 23
Joy grabbed her books and bolted out of American history class so fast she almost knocked down the teacher, a doddering old man whose memory was failing him. Just before class let out, the students had managed to convince him that he’d never assigned the homework he wanted them to turn in.
She hurried down the hall, not meeting anyone’s eyes, rushing to get out of the building before Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee got out of their last class, home economics, down by the gym. She didn’t have the time or the emotional energy to talk to her friends right now.
How could she stand there watching Beth blush when a cute boy said “hi” to her in the hall?
Or worse—listen to Shirley gush about what a “dreamboat” the President was, giggling that he and Jackie
must still “do it” because she was pregnant. The First Lady was going to have a baby and the whole world was celebrating.
Well, nobody was celebrating Joy’s pregnancy. It was so not a cause for celebration that Joy was about to … ?
To what?
Kill her baby.
The words formed in her head as clear as a church bell on a cold morning. Joy literally staggered from the force of them, ducked into the girl’s bathroom by the auditorium door and stood trembling in one of the stalls, sucking in great gasps of air to keep from being sick.
She hadn’t let herself go there, had tackled any rebel thought, grabbed it by the scruff of the neck, stuffed it down into a trunk in a dark corridor of her mind, and then sat on the lid.
But there it was, right in front of her. Reality. She was about to drive out to a creepy house in the country where a filthy old woman was going to—
No! It’s not a baby! It’s just … cells, a glob of cells, that’s all!
You couldn’t kill something that wasn’t alive. It wasn’t human, a person. Not yet. It was just … potential life. An it. A thing that she had to get rid of or her life would be totally ruined. Facing her friends, the members of her church, her father pregnant was totally unthinkable. She would do absolutely anything to keep that from happening.
Determination calmed her. She would be strong. She had to be. There was only one way out. And once it was over, she could pick up her life where she’d left it and go on. Everything would be fine tomorrow. She just had to manage somehow to get through today.
She’d worn a skirt, a black one with a can-can slip, and she’d stopped by the drugstore on her way to school that morning and bought a whole box of Kotex. She’d done everything the woman had instructed her to do—except find someone to drive her home. As she pulled the big white car out of the school parking lot and headed toward Route 79, she actually prayed, the first time she’d prayed in … since her mother died.
“God, please … What will I do if that woman turns me away? Please help me!”
But she didn’t really believe God would help her do what she was about to do. She was on her own.
As Joy drove south from town on Route 79, she took no notice of the ugly black storm clouds building in the sky ahead. Her hair was always encased in an Aqua Net Hair Spray suit of armor to maintain her Annette Funicello flip; on particularly windy days, she wore a headscarf. But she wasn’t even thinking about her hair now. The day had turned off unseasonably hot and muggy and she rolled Mr. Wilson’s window down and let the wind blow in her face. Her hair broke free of the hair spray’s hold on it and danced around, tickling her nose. She took deep breaths of warm air that smelled of rain and tried to wipe her mind completely clean, to blot out everything, to think no thought of any kind.
Into that emptiness, images formed, pale and dreamlike.
She is riding in a car at night, bouncing on the seat as wind blows her hair into her face. She is laughing and the woman driving the car laughs with her. But the woman is not her mother. It’s someone she’s never seen before, but who looks eerily familiar.
Though indistinct and blurred, the images seemed remarkably real. But when she concentrated, tried to get a better look at them, they dissolved, disappeared, puffs of smoke from the red embers of a dying fire.
By the time she pulled up in front of the house where honeysuckle trellises entombed the porch, she had a speech all mapped out in her head, knew exactly what she would say when the woman wanted to know who was going to drive her home. She’d tell the woman … Joy suddenly realized she didn’t even know the woman’s name, didn’t know what to call her.
What difference did it make what her name was? It’s not like they were going to exchange Christmas cards.
She sat for a few minutes, her fingers gripping the steering wheel so tight her knuckles were white, trying to control her breathing and stop her heart from pounding. She could feel every beat of it in the big vein in her neck. But she couldn’t calm down and decided it didn’t matter anyway. So she got out of the car, crossed the dirt yard, and stepped up onto the splintered boards of the porch. She didn’t even have to knock. The woman opened the door before she had a chance and looked anxiously out over Joy’s shoulder toward Mr. Wilson parked just outside the yard.
“You didn’t bring anybody with you, did you?” she wanted to know. “Somebody to drive you home? You said you didn’t have anybody, isn’t that right?”
Joy launched into her speech.
“No, and I know you said I had to, but I couldn’t find—”
The woman cut her off.
“It’s all right,” she said, and seemed to relax. She turned and fixed her eyes on Joy for the first time. When she spoke again, her voice was hollow-sounding. “I’m going to put you to sleep and then everything will be fine. You won’t need anybody to drive you home.”
Joy was puzzled, but so relieved that she wasn’t going to be turned away, she didn’t dare ask any questions.
The woman made no move to let her into the house, just stood there, like she was dazed. Her face was so distorted Joy couldn’t read the look on it. The moment drew out until Joy finally remembered the money. She reached into her pocket and took out the envelope that contained the $100 she had withdrawn from her savings account yesterday.
“Here’s the rest of the money, the final payment.”
The woman took the envelop and tossed it carelessly onto a table by the door, then stepped back and gestured for Joy to come in.
“My name’s Wanda,” she said. “And I’m going to take very good care of you, just like your mama would want me to. In a little while, it will all be over. Over and done with. Forever.”
Joy stepped into the house and the woman closed the door behind her.
* * * * *
When Princess finished her account, she sat with her hands folded on the table in front of her. She was swaddled in stillness, but power and intensity throbbed beneath it, a hand grenade wrapped in a silk handkerchief.
Jonas was the first one to find his voice.
“How old was you, Missy, when all this happened?”
“When they arrested me, I just had turned fifteen years old. Jackson lied, told ’em I was seventeen, so I’d be tried as a adult. They couldn’t give me the death penalty less’n I’s a grownup.”
Silence again.
“Why?” Mac asked tenderly. “Why’d you do it, Princess?”
She looked down at her hands folded on the table, then spoke one word with a thousand shades of loathing.
“Jackson.”
The hair on the back of Mac’s neck began to stand up. She still wouldn’t look at him or Jonas, just stared at her hands. She pulled in a deep breath and held it. After a heartbeat of silence, her siren’s voice spoke words crafted from razor blades and jagged glass. Words you couldn’t even get near or they’d slice you open all the way to the bone.
“Angel ain’t my little sister. She’s my daughter. Mine … and Jackson’s.”
Mac couldn’t breathe. Every speck of air had been sucked out of the room by the nightmare horror, bald and almost smoking, a truth so unthinkable it lay beyond the drapes and furnishings of his simple, ordinary life.
Princess was Joy’s mother?
And Jackson Prentiss was Joy’s father!
“I’m sorry Rev. I know it’s hard to hear a thing like that. But you asked to know the whole of it, and there it is.”
Jonas was struggling, too. His face had turned gray and he was mumbling, “ … red hair. That fella did have red hair.”
“Jackson told on the stand how Mama died havin’ Angel, said that’s why she was so precious to him—’cause his wife give her own life for her little girl. Made the jury feel so sorry for him.” Princess lifted her head and Mac fell back from the rage and loathing in her eyes. “Well, Mama never done no such a thing! She died of a fever, and ’fore she was even cold in the ground, Jackson up and says I got to marry him. He always had looked at me f
unny, made my skin crawl, but I never thought … Shoot, it was just a couple of weeks after my birthday; I’s only thirteen.”
Thirteen years old!
“I said no, said I wasn’t gonna do it! And he tore into me somethin’ fierce. Come up side my head with a piece of firewood and I liked to a-died my own self. That’s when I started havin’ them fits, after he beat me that time.”
Mac was filled with an inarticulate, maniacal rage so powerful it swept every other emotion out of his soul. For the first time in his life he knew without doubt that he could strangle the life out of another human being with his bare hands.
“One of the elders in the church performed the ceremony, said it was legal in Arkansas and maybe it was.” She made a humph sound in her throat. “Guess Jackson finally come to his senses though, thought better of marryin’ a little girl when I got … in a family way. He yanked me out of school and wouldn’t let me set foot outside the house so’s nobody’d see. Made me tell people Angel was my little sister, that he’d ’dopted us. Wouldn’t let her call me Mommy, neither. She’s the one turned Emily Prentiss into ‘Printhess.’”
She sat back in the chair then and her eyes stared at a distant nothing.
“That shack we lived in didn’t have no runnin’ water and I had Angel there one day while Jackson was at work in the sawmill. I was just a kid myself, didn’t have no idea what was happenin’ to me or what to do. It’s a miracle of God either one of us lived through it.
“Jackson come in that night, musta heard the baby crying outside. All he said to me was, ‘It a boy or a girl?’ When I told him it was a girl, he said we’d call her Angela, after his mother. I figured he could call her whatever he wanted; I’d already give her a name. ’Cause from the very first moment I held that squirmin’ little’un in my arms, bloody and white stuff all over her, I knew who she was. She was a Angel.”
Princess described how Jackson had gone back outside to the well and drawn a bucket of water. He brought it back to the house and warmed some up so Princess could clean herself and the baby while he scrubbed up the mess of the birth. He heated up a can beans for supper and brought Princess a plate while she lay in the bed with the baby.
