Back to Bayou Sabine: A Novella

by Lauren Faulkenberry

  Three more women squeezed in next to us, and my chest tightened. We stepped closer to the corner to give the ladies some room, and Kate whispered, “Are you OK?”

  The room began to blur.

  “Yeah,” I breathed.

  “Liar. What’s the matter?”

  I glanced around the chapel, letting my eyes rest briefly on every woman wearing black. Most of the people there were older, close to Vergie’s age.

  “What if my mother’s here?”

  “What?” she said, so loudly that a few heads turned.

  I bowed my head and whispered in her ear. “My mother could be here.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “I thought your mother was dead.”

  “I never said that.”

  “Enza, you certainly did!”

  “I said she was as good as dead,” I whispered. A woman stepped up to the pulpit and started to sing a cappella, a hymn I didn’t recognize.

  “I can’t believe you,” Kate said.

  “Well, to me she was dead. I never expected to see her again and certainly hadn’t planned on it happening here.”

  “Shit,” she muttered, and put her sunglasses back on.

  ~~~~

  When my mother left, I’d pestered my father for explanations, but the only thing he would say was, “She no longer wants to be with us.” Now and again, I’d heard them fighting but hadn’t thought anything of it. After all, my friends said their parents yelled at each other and slammed doors. It seemed my parents were just like everybody else’s.

  Everything had happened quite simply. My mother was there one day when I went to school, and then when I came home, she was gone. She’d left no phone number, no address, and Dad said the best thing I could do was pretend she’d never been in our lives at all.

  Over the years, I’d made up all kinds of scenarios to fill in the blanks. Sometimes I imagined her running away with another man. Then later, after college enlightened me, another woman. Why else would she leave so suddenly? What else would shut my father down so completely?

  Sometimes I’d picture her flying to the West Coast, or driving to Canada to start her life over in a completely different climate. When I was younger, I pictured her working in a diner or a café, maybe even in Europe, because didn’t runaway mothers want to get as far away as possible from their homes?

  When I got older, I wondered if it was something sinister my father had done. There were days when I fantasized about seeing her again, trying to imagine what I could say to her, what she would say to me.

  Sometimes I imagined she’d left us because she had a terminal disease and wanted to spare us the hurt of watching her die. That made it easier for me to understand why she had never, ever tried to get in touch with me as years went on.

  In my mind, she had left everyone she knew, including Vergie. After all, if she could cut ties with her own daughter, she could easily cut them with her mother too. But now, standing in the back of this stuffy little church, sweat running down the backs of my thighs, I realized I could have been dead wrong about all of it. My mother could have moved back to her native Louisiana.

  She could be right here in this room.

  It was the simplest answer of all, and I’d never allowed myself to think it might be true.

  It was the most crushing answer of all.

  There was a shuffling as everyone stood and opened their hymnals again. The organist started up, and the air vibrated as they launched into I’ll Fly Away. My heart hammered against my ribs, and I fanned myself with the booklet. The voices around us grew louder until they filled the church and spilled out the windows, and a flash of memory hit me like a punch—Vergie pulling weeds in her garden, her big floppy hat hanging over her eyes as she sang the same verse—Hallelujah by and by, I’ll fly away. I felt a catch in my chest as the tears came, and then the room closed around me so tight it felt like my ribs would crack.

  I pushed past Kate and muttered an apology as I squeezed by a man near the open door.

  Outside wasn’t much better, but there was a hint of a breeze. The sky had darkened as rain began to drizzle, but the katydids droned on. I strode out into the grass.

  “Enza,” Kate said, rushing to me. “Are you OK?”

  My chest heaved with each breath, but still the yard spun around me.

  “I just needed a minute,” I said.

  She nodded, rubbing my back like I’d been choking.

  “Did you see her?” Kate asked, looking back in the church. “Is she here?”

  “No. It was just so hot in there. I felt like I was going to faint.”

  She steered me over to the front steps, and we sat. The music from inside seemed to fill the whole sky. For a long time, we said nothing as I tamped down the memories of my mother and Vergie that had begun overlapping like double-exposed photographs. Was my mother still alive, or had she met some tragedy? Would I even recognize her if I saw her today? And if I did, what in the hell would I say to her?

  Would she recognize me?

  “Do you want to leave?” Kate asked.

  “No.”

  When it started to pour, I stood and pulled Kate to her feet. “Come on,” I said. “Everybody’s going to wonder who the two strangers are that don’t have sense enough to come in out of the rain.”

  Kate nodded and went inside first, squeezing into a spot against the back wall, close to the door. The people standing by us shuffled a few steps to their right to make room. I ended up right by the door so I could feel a breeze against my back. On the other side of the doorway was the man who had given up his seat. The pale gray of his suit made his blue eyes look so striking that I held his gaze entirely too long. When he smiled and nodded a greeting, I felt myself flush and quickly looked away. I was failing miserably at this incognito business.

  Kate nudged me again as her lip curved ever so slightly upward.

  I knew she was partly teasing, trying to put me at ease and make me think about anything besides my mother and Vergie.

  I mouthed the word, Stop, and turned back to the preacher, who was thanking us all for coming out to celebrate Vergie on this dreary day.

  ~~~~

  Thunder rumbled beneath the hymns as the rain went from a soft patter to a roar. The lights flickered, but the preacher’s voice rolled on with a rhythm so similar to undulating waves that it had to have been carefully rehearsed. Lightning crashed around us, filling the room with blue light. The little church seemed to shake with the force of it all. I swallowed hard as everyone stood for the preacher’s last words.

  I tugged on Kate’s elbow and nodded toward the door. She winced as thunder crashed overhead.

  “It’s pouring,” she said.

  “Let’s make a break before everybody gets chatty.”

  I couldn’t see who was in the front pews, reserved for close family, and I didn’t want to. We were jostled away from the open door as people moved to the front and greeted each other. I gently pushed my way toward the door but got intercepted by a lady in a dark blue skirt suit.

  “Isn’t this weather just awful?” she said, blocking my exit. She was holding a gardenia that was bursting from its tiny pot. Her hair was gray, with streaks as white as the flower’s blooms.

  I glanced behind me and saw Kate being nudged right into the path of the man in the light gray suit. A few seconds later, she was talking to him, smiling her megawatt smile. They both looked my way, and I turned my back to them.

  When the lady with the gardenia stepped closer, the sweet scent filled the air between us, and I thought of Vergie, picking the same ruffled blossoms from her garden by the porch. When she cut a few for a vase, their scent had filled the whole house.

  The woman cocked her head and said, “You must be Martine’s daughter.”

  “Oh,” I said. My throat tightened at the mention of my mother’s name. “I’m just a—”

  “You’re the spitting image of her. Is she here? I haven’t seen her in ages.”

  I stammered, but
the words wouldn’t come. I glanced toward the front of the church, looking for anyone else who looked like me, and felt a surge of panic.

  “I’m Florie,” she said, wrestling the plant so she could take my hand in hers.

  “Nice to meet you,” I said, my voice shaking.

  She squeezed my hand and smiled, then thrust the gardenia at me. “Would you take this for the family?” she said. “I won’t be able to wait in that long line. Tell them I’ll just come by the house later.”

  “But I’m not—”

  “Thank you, sugar,” she said, and hobbled past me out the door. A young woman rushed up with an umbrella and walked her down the ramp to a waiting car.

  I turned back to Kate and saw the preacher hugging a woman with dark brown hair pulled up in a bun. When she turned toward me, I held my breath. I stared at her, rooted in place, but shook the thought away when she turned to talk to someone else. Pull it together, I told myself. But then another woman about her age gave me a long hard stare, and I felt my heart clench like a fist. I’d thought many times about the day I might see my mother again. I’d imagined all the things I might say to her, then decided the chances of seeing her were too slim to give it any more attention.

  But now it seemed all too likely. I turned and bolted out the door, holding the gardenia against my chest.

  The rain was cold against my skin. I ran into the field in front of the church and stood in the grass, lightning streaking all around me. The sky was a charcoal gray, with not even a sliver of sunlight. I’d convinced myself that my mother had vanished entirely, and I’d accepted that as truth. The thought of bumping into her, having to speak to her, made me feel so sick I could barely breathe. Rain dripped down my arms and chest. I felt the warmth of tears and then heard Kate’s voice over the rain.

  “Hey!” she called. She wobbled over, her high heels sinking in the grass. Behind her, the man in the gray suit was standing in the doorway. He moved toward us like he might follow her, but an older man stepped up and shook his hand, grasping him by the shoulder. As he spoke to the older man, he kept looking our way like he might chase after us.

  “Let’s get out of here before we get struck by lightning,” Kate said. She grabbed my elbow and steered me to the car. We walked quickly through the grass as the sky lit up all around us. She flinched as she opened my car door and the ground shook with thunder. All I felt was the cold of the rain as I glanced back at the church. Kate stared straight ahead, chewing on her fingernail. The rain hammered on the roof of the car.

  “Let’s just go,” I said, tossing the floppy hat into the back seat. My head was starting to hurt, but the tears wouldn’t stop.

  I hated to cry.

  “I can’t see anything,” Kate said. “Give it a few minutes.”

  Lightning flashed around us as a few people dashed for their cars. Most of them were still in the church, waiting out the rain. The sweetness of the gardenia filled the car.

  “Please,” I said, feeling my chest tighten. My mother was like a myth. I’d thought of her that way for so long that I’d never allowed myself to believe she could also be leading a perfectly average life somewhere else, not too far away even. And that she could cross paths with me at any point in time. Right then, I realized I had always thought of her as dead, because that was the only permanent gone I knew.

  The other kinds of gone hurt a hell of a lot more. Other kinds of gone involved a choice.

  “Enza,” Kate said, nodding toward the church. “Do you think she was in there?”

  “I don’t know. I wouldn’t know her if I saw her.”

  “Wouldn’t you, though?”

  I coughed as I fought back sobs, gripping the plant in my lap to stop my hands from shaking.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said. “Please, Kate. Even if we only go a mile.”

  She started the car and eased out of the grass and onto the gravel road that led back to the highway. The rain hit the windshield in sheets, so she drove slowly, both hands on the top of the wheel. Her brow was furrowed, her lips set in a hard line.

  “I wish I’d known this about you,” she said. “About your mother.”

  “I’d convinced myself she didn’t exist any more,” I said. “But what if she does?”

  Kate’s eyebrow arched as we skidded through a deep puddle and the car swerved. “Doesn’t change anything,” she said. “Once you get out of here, the chances of you seeing her are as slim as you want them to be.”

  Chapter 5

  I set the gardenia in the window of our room at the Dauphine Inn and fell asleep thinking of summers with Vergie.

  Kate lay sprawled in the bed next to mine, sleeping diagonally just because she could. She snored quietly between slow breaths.

  Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Vergie’s bright blue eyes and gray hair, the way her eyes had wrinkled at the corners when she smiled at me. I remembered her fishing in the lagoon behind her house, both of us rolling our jeans up to our knees, sitting on the dock so we could splash our feet in the water. She teased me, telling me a catfish would bite our toes if we didn’t bait the hooks well enough. We’d pack sandwiches for lunch so we could stay out there all day. It was like escaping to a whole different world.

  Sometime after two, I got up and crept out of the room, careful not to wake Kate. The inn had a courtyard with a small garden and a rock path. The wild roses and honeysuckle were so sweet I could almost taste them on my tongue. I lay in the grass for a long while, staring up at the stars. The sky was clear, but the moon was so bright it was hard to draw a line between the few constellations I could remember. Vergie had taught me some of them—Orion, Cassiopeia, Cygnus. I couldn’t see much of anything in the sky in Raleigh, but out here she connected all the stars, dragging her finger through the air, telling me about heroes and goddesses, creatures I wished might protect me someday. She’d made everything seem magical. She’d made me feel like I was more than ordinary, and that was a feeling I’d long forgotten.

  When I caught myself dozing off in the grass, I went back inside, opening the door softly. Kate rolled over when I shut the door, but she didn’t wake. I pulled the sheet over me and breathed in the scent of gardenia, wishing I could go back to when I was sixteen and do just one thing differently.

  ~~~~

  In the blue-tinted moonlight, I was walking through a field. The hay was high, up to my waist. I walked with my arms out beside me, letting the hay touch me as I moved along. An arm slipped around my waist, and then another pulled me close. I leaned back against a muscular frame, and those arms tightened around me, pulling me against a taut body that was familiar, but somehow not. I smiled as a stubbly cheek slid along my neck and lips grazed the curve of my jaw.

  He whispered my name as his hands roamed over my hips, underneath the fabric of my dress. The light strokes of his fingers tickled my skin until his grip tightened, and I slid my hands along his forearms, wishing he would use them to lay me down in the grass.

  He turned me toward him, cupping my face in his hands. He kissed me with a fierceness that made me shiver, and when I opened my eyes, I was startled by the intense blue of his eyes. His fingers traced a line along my shoulder, my ribs, as if committing the contours to memory. He slid his hands along my back, pulling me closer, and there was nowhere else I wanted to be.

  I awoke with a jolt and sat up in bed. I looked to my left, thinking surely I wasn’t alone, but there I was with the sheets twisted at my feet, the extra pillow tossed on the floor. The man from the funeral was not there, but I’d half expected him to be.

  “What’s the matter?” Kate asked. She was across the room, pulling on a pair of jeans. “Nightmare?”

  “Not exactly,” I said, feeling flushed.

  I shook my head, trying to knock those thoughts right out of my brain. I could still feel the warmth of his hands, the way they had squeezed my hips when he kissed me. Ridiculous, I told myself, having dreams about a man you saw for ten minutes.

  But I’d n
ever had one that vivid before.

  “Sex dream,” Kate said.

  I frowned.

  She grinned, pointing her finger at me.

  “You know, that’s a really annoying habit you have,” I said.

  “You mean skill,” she said. “A highly sought-after one, I might add.”

  “Let’s just get some breakfast.”

  “Was it about Sexy Gray Suit Guy? He’s excellent dream fodder.”

  “What if I said yes?”

  “My grandma used to have psychic dreams,” Kate said, grabbing her purse.

  “It was not a psychic dream.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I’ll never see him again. I’ll probably never see any of this again.”

  ~~~~

  In the inn’s dining room, mismatched antique chairs sat around small tables. Several places were set with china mixed and matched by color palette. We chose a table by the window, and I poured two cups of coffee into teacups with handles so tiny my fingers barely slipped into them.

  “What should we do today?” Kate asked. She flinched at the chicory and added more milk.

  “You’re dying to go downtown, aren’t you?” I said.

  She raised her eyebrows, sipping her coffee. “I wouldn’t mind being a tourist.”

  I stared out over the field, watching cows graze in the pasture beyond the inn.

  “Let’s go be tourists, then,” I said. “Vergie took me all over, so she’d like it if I showed off her fair city to somebody else.

  Chapter 6