by Irene Latham
“I’ll be back for that chicken,” Mrs. Cobb said. “But first I’m going to deal with your neighbors here. The Bennetts.”
Dear Lord, Mrs. Cobb was right in front of the cabin!
“Just do what I do,” I said, grabbing Etta Mae’s hand. “You ain’t a witch, and I ain’t neither. But if this is the end of Mama’s life, I won’t have the last thing she sees be Mrs. Cobb taking away everything we got.”
Etta Mae squeezed my hand. “Ludelphia Bennett, as I live and breathe, that lady ain’t coming into this cabin.”
Her eyes glowed as they looked into mine, and I knew whatever happened, we was in it together.
The Witches of Gee’s Bend
WE CROUCHED INSIDE THE CABIN AND LISTENED to what was happening outside. We was waiting for just the right time to make our move.
“See here, Mr. Bennett,” Mrs. Cobb said. “Ain’t nothing you got that don’t belong to me now.”
“But my wife, she’s real sick, Mrs. Cobb. If you take that ax, won’t be no way for me to chop wood for keeping her warm. And we got a new baby too, just three days old.”
“Rose!” I said aloud. I’d forgotten about Rose.
Etta Mae patted my arm. “She’s fine, don’t you worry. Mrs. Irvin’s been looking after her.”
I took in a deep breath and let it out real slow. Just as soon as this was all over, I was gonna see Rose for myself. I was gonna hold her in my arms and rock her back and forth.
Outside Daddy went on talking. “Please, Mrs. Cobb! Me and my boy here, we’ll work extra hard. I promise we’ll make it up to you next planting season. Just give us some time, Mrs. Cobb. All we need is time.”
Daddy’s words seemed to echo in the silence that followed. For just a moment there was no screaming or snorting, no sound at all. My mind went back to that poor armadillo in Mrs. Cobb’s barn. Hold on, Patrick. Then boom!
Was it the right time yet? My insides was so knotted up, I wasn’t sure. So we kept waiting.
When Mrs. Cobb spoke again, her voice was all business. “Gentlemen,” she said, “get the animals first. You get me every single one of them chickens and put ’em in that sack with the others. Get the tools too. The ax, the shovel, the pitchfork. And whatever feed you can find in the barn.”
“Please, Mrs. Cobb.” I knew it was my daddy, but I ain’t never heard him beg before. It didn’t sound nothing like him.
“And don’t forget that mule,” Mrs. Cobb went on. “You listening, gentlemen? I want that mule.”
I squeezed Etta Mae’s hand and pulled her toward the door. Now was the time. Wasn’t no way Mrs. Cobb was taking Delilah!
Just before we stepped through the doorway, I remembered the knife Mama kept lodged in the wall. The one Etta Mae had put under Mama’s mattress and used to cut Rose’s cord. I yanked it out of the pine log, then together me and Etta Mae pushed open the door.
“Basheeka basheeba balloo!” I moaned as I walked onto the porch. I waved the knife in circles above my head, careful not to bump Etta Mae. “Basheeka basheeba balloo!” I said it louder. “Basheeka basheeba balloo!” we hollered together as we shook and spun our bodies. The knife danced in the air above us.
From the spot where she was standing next to the corner of the barn, Delilah started to bray. I knew just as long as she could see me, she wasn’t gonna stop.
Mrs. Cobb dropped her ledger and looked at me and Etta Mae. She held tight to her shotgun and pressed her other hand against her ear. “What in the world?”
I stabbed the air with the knife, and spit shot out of my mouth. “We’re the witches of Gee’s Bend! Pass through this doorway and you will die!”
Mrs. Cobb took three steps back as Delilah kept up her braying.
“You!” she shouted, pointing a finger at me. “I knew you was a witch!” I waved my arms in the air and moaned like I was possessed by the devil.
“And you!” she hollered at Etta Mae. Mrs. Cobb’s eyes widened and she stumbled just a bit.
I wanted her gone, so I grabbed the knife handle with both hands and started shaking my body the way it shook when I rode in that motorcar.
So help me, Lord, she was not coming inside this cabin.
Etta Mae glanced at me sideways, then started up with a throaty noise that sounded like something from the deep dark woods that you couldn’t see but knew you should run from.
Ruben shot a look my way and I real quick thumped my eye patch same way he always did. His eyes widened and he nudged Daddy in the ribs with his elbow. That’s when I knew he understood what we was up to.
“Please, Mrs. Cobb!” Ruben said over Delilah’s braying. “My mama’s in there dying all because of them witches.” Ruben looked over at Daddy, who kept his eyes to the ground. “Don’t want something bad to happen to you too!”
Mrs. Cobb pressed her hand harder against the ear as Delilah brayed over and over. “Somebody shut that mule up!”
At first nobody moved. It was like they was all frozen by Delilah’s racket and the sight of me and Etta Mae moaning and shaking and spinning like wild tornadoes.
It was Ruben that broke the spell. “I can take care of that mule for you, Mrs. Cobb. But first you got to give me the gun.”
Mrs. Cobb’s eyes went all dark. Then, just like in my dream, she lifted the shotgun and aimed.
I closed my eyes. I heard the shot and waited for it to knock me down.
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
“LUDELPHIA!” ETTA MAE’S VOICE FILLED MY EAR. “Ludelphia, she’s leaving! Mrs. Cobb’s leaving!” I opened my eye. I looked down at my body. I lifted my feet one at a time.
I was whole. She hadn’t shot me at all.
When I looked up, the men had already mounted and was heading on down the road. Mrs. Cobb walked toward the wagon, her shoulders slumped forward. The shotgun dragged behind her, leaving a trail in the dirt.
Was she crying? Was Mrs. Cobb crying? She looked so beaten down, I almost wanted to run over and tell her everything would be okay. I was all mixed up inside because I knew Mrs. Cobb had lost things too. Wasn’t no excuse for what she’d done, but I couldn’t help remembering that picture on her wall.
Mrs. Cobb slapped the reins and the wagon began to roll away. The men followed behind her, and soon as they was all past the chinaberry tree, I jumped off the porch to where Daddy was standing at the bottom of the steps.
“I’m sorry, Lu,” Daddy said, holding me in his arms.
I wrapped my arms tight as I could around his waist. It was me who should be sorry, not Daddy.
He stroked my braids. “Ain’t never seen a mule so disagreeable.”
Delilah. She wasn’t braying no more.
I pulled away from Daddy so I could get a look at her. That’s when I knew what Daddy was sorry about.
Delilah was lying flat out on the ground, and Ruben was on his knees beside her. She wasn’t making a single sound, and she wasn’t moving neither.
“Delilah,” I cried, running toward her. I knelt next to Ruben and I could see there was a hole right through the center of her neck.
Oh, Delilah! Why on earth did you have to go and make all that racket? Why couldn’t you ever just keep quiet?
Tears wet my cheeks. What was wrong with Mrs. Cobb that she had to up and kill critters when they was just doing what comes naturally to ’em? Wasn’t no reason for her to shoot Delilah. No reason at all.
When Ruben threw his arm around my shoulder, my whole body began to shake with crying. For as long as I could remember, Delilah had been there waiting for me every morning by the barn. She was always there no matter what.
“It’s all my fault,” I said, burying my face into Ruben’s shoulder.
“Lu,” Ruben said, pulling back to look me in the eye, “you just saved the cabin!” He pressed my head to his chest. “We still got our pots and our quilts and our butcher knife. It’s gonna be okay, Lu. Everything’s gonna be okay.”
“But I couldn’t save Delilah.” Tears kept coming down my cheeks and no
se. “And I can’t save Mama.”
“Only God can do that, Lu,” Daddy said. He wrapped his arms around me and Ruben, and he squeezed so hard I thought my ribs would break. “Only God, you hear?”
When I looked up at his face, his eyes was shining. He stroked my cheeks with his big thumbs, tender, like I was a little child. “I won’t have you blaming yourself, Lu.”
Daddy held my face like that till I nodded. “Now, you and Etta Mae go get cleaned up while me and Ruben take care of Delilah. Can’t have your mama seeing you like this.”
Soon as Daddy let me loose, I turned back to Delilah. I gave her one last stroke between the eyes. That’s when I knew it could’ve been me lying there on the ground. If Delilah hadn’t been braying like crazy and if Mrs. Cobb hadn’t swung her shotgun, it could’ve been me. In a way Delilah had saved my life.
I wanted to go in the cabin right that minute and tell Mama there was some things that no matter how fine the cloth, no matter how straight the stitches, there was some things that was never gonna go in a quilt. Like how loud the quiet was now that I knew Delilah was never gonna bray again. Some stories you just got to hold in your heart.
I looked around the yard for the bucket, but it wasn’t noplace in sight. I reckon it was in the back of Mrs. Cobb’s wagon.
Me and Etta Mae walked down to the spring together, but we didn’t say nothing till we was there. So much had happened it was hard to know what to say first.
Etta Mae pulled her dress over her head and set it on the ground. “Soon as Aunt Doshie told us what Willie Joe said about the ferry busting loose, I knew you was in trouble, Lu.” Etta Mae smiled. “Me and Ruben went all up and down the river looking for you. Even had to spend the night in the woods. Wasn’t till this morning that we decided to check Camden.”
I picked at the bits of cotton and feathers on my arms. Wasn’t nothing more Etta Mae and Ruben could have done. “If you’d come too soon, then I might not have gotten to taste a genuine Coca-Cola.”
“A Coke? Did it fizz all the way down your throat?”
“That’s right.” I grinned. “Sure do wish you could have been there to play Mrs. Cobb’s piano. It was so big it nearly took up the whole room.”
Etta Mae splashed water onto her arms. “Was it maple, like the one I played in Mobile?”
“No, black. The shiniest most beautiful black you ever did see.”
“Listen to you,” she said, a grin coming across her face. “You done been out in the world, Ludelphia. All on your own.” The smile disappeared. “You don’t need me no more. Not like you used to.”
“Sure I do,” I said, my teeth chattering. “Ain’t nobody else in Gee’s Bend that can suck the poison out of a bee sting good as you.”
Etta Mae smiled, then her face got all serious. “Lu, you know I loved that baby, Sarah, more than anything. Broke my heart when she died.”
I grabbed her hand. “I know, Etta Mae. The doctor’s wife told me what happened. She said it wasn’t no fault of yours.”
Etta Mae’s fingers squeezed mine. “Wasn’t your fault about Mrs. Cobb neither. You hear me, Lu?”
I knew what she was saying was true. But tears came into my eyes again anyhow. In just three days, my whole life had changed. Wasn’t nothing I needed that wasn’t right here in Gee’s Bend. And wasn’t a thing that could happen that I wasn’t strong enough to get through.
“Mercy, it’s cold,” Etta Mae said, rubbing the goose bumps first from my arms, then from hers. “Reckon we best get on back.”
Real quick we dunked our dresses till the water ran clear. Once we was dressed again, I grabbed a handful of that bloody cotton. It would dry out, and nobody but me would ever know about it. But when it came time to set my quilt top up in the frame, I was gonna stuff them bits right between the seams. So I wouldn’t never forget that part of my story.
Etta Mae went to her cabin, and I went to mine. Ruben met me just inside the door where he was sweeping the glass pieces off the floor. The room still smelled sour, but somebody had thrown open the window shutter, so it didn’t seem bad as before.
“What about Delilah?” I said as I walked across to where Daddy was sitting on the edge of Mama’s bed.
“Wish we could’ve buried her, but ain’t a shovel left in Gee’s Bend,” Daddy said. “So we dragged her up near the swamp.”
I swallowed back tears. Poor Delilah. Just wasn’t fair what happened to her.
Daddy patted the bed beside him as Mama slept. “I know it’s hard,” he said. “But I reckon the old girl’s in a better place now. Don’t know what we would have fed her nohow. Mrs. Cobb done took every scrap of corn and grain in that barn. Gonna be hard enough feeding ourselves.”
“What about Mama?” I wrapped a quilt around my wet shoulders and sat next to Daddy.
“Lu, you was the one that went to see the doctor. What did he say?”
I hung my head. Might as well go on and tell him. “Doc Nelson said wasn’t nothing to be done.” I remembered the little brown bottles. “He said wasn’t no medicine yet for pneumonia. And that morphine Mrs. Nelson gave me . . . ain’t a drop of it left.”
Daddy sighed and rubbed his eyes. Then he put his hand on my knee. “We just got to keep on doing what we been doing. I ain’t seen no more blood since you left. She ain’t no better, but I don’t reckon she’s no worse neither.”
Ruben stopped his sweeping and leaned against the broom. “Seems like she’s breathing easier since you got back, Lu. I think she knew you was gone before.”
I leaned over so I could get a good look at Mama. Was it possible? Was it really possible that Mama might make it? That she might hold and nurse her new baby girl?
“Daddy,” I said, “I want Rose back. Now that I’m here, ain’t no reason for her to be up at the Irvins’. She belongs here. With her family.”
Daddy pressed his lips together and nodded. “Don’t reckon you need me to tell you it’s all right to go get her. Not when you big enough to go all the way to Camden on your own.”
My heart started beating real fast. Was Daddy mad at me? With everything else that had happened, I sure couldn’t take him being mad at me.
“Daddy,” I said, my voice shaking.
He grinned then. Wasn’t a big grin, but I knew what it meant. “I’m just glad you made it home safe and sound, Lu. That’s all that matters.”
I threw my arms around him and buried my face in his neck. “Thank you, Daddy.” His skin was sticky with sweat and he smelled of dirt. I don’t reckon there’s a smell in the world better than that.
“Go on, then,” he said after a minute. “Best go before it gets dark. I’ll sit here with your mama while you and Ruben go fetch Rose.”
I turned to give Mama one last look. “Be right back, Mama. I won’t be gone so long this time. And when I come back, I’m gonna bring you your baby girl.” Mama didn’t say a word, just lay there sleeping.
“You want these?” Ruben said as I walked away from the bed. He held my quilt top, the soggy paper sack and a scrap of yellow cloth in his hands.
I looked him in the eye. “Thank you, Ruben. Not just for this, but for coming after me.”
“When you didn’t make it home for supper, I knew wasn’t no choice but for me and Etta Mae to go find you.”
I rolled down the top of the bag. “It wasn’t anything like I thought it’d be.”
Ruben thumped my eye patch. “Now you know.”
The evening air was cool as me and Ruben set out on the footpath to Pleasant Grove Baptist Church. As we walked past the Pettways, I saw Etta Mae sitting with her mama and daddy on the front porch.
“Ain’t got nothing left,” Mrs. Pettway said as she rocked herself back and forth. And I reckon it was true. Even that chicken Mrs. Pettway had held so tight to was gone. Wasn’t no animal sounds coming from under the cabin or in the barn.
“Well, we got them hogs up there in the woods,” Mr. Pettway said. “They’ll come back when it’s feeding time.”
“But we ain’t got no knife to butcher ’em with or a skillet or a single potato.” Mrs. Pettway’s voice was more like a whine. “And it’s getting colder by the day. How are we gonna live? You tell me that. How are we gonna eat and keep ourselves warm?”
“Shhh, Mama,” Etta Mae said. “Shhh.”
But it didn’t do no good. Mrs. Pettway kept right on rocking and crying. And I reckon she had every reason to carry on. Wasn’t nothing none of us could say that would change the way things was. So me and Ruben just kept on walking.
Sure enough, the windows of Pleasant Grove Baptist Church was lit with candles and inside we could see the place was packed full of folks. And it wasn’t even a Sunday.
Inside the room was too loud to talk, and it made me think of all them ladies at the Red Cross drive. Folks was crying, and over and over again I heard the words “Mrs. Cobb.” It was like a hurricane had blown through and now everybody had to talk about every little thing that happened. Where they was. What was said. What they lost.
Aunt Doshie was there, sitting in her usual spot. For once she wasn’t saying a single thing to anybody. Just sitting there listening.
As we made our way toward the front of the church where Mrs. Irvin always sat, Reverend Irvin stood to address the crowd. “Children of the Lord,” he began, his tall, thin body swaying.
“Mrs. Irvin,” I said as folks quieted and began to take their seats, “thank you for helping with the baby.”
Ruben smiled at her. “Don’t know what we would have done without you.”
She pulled the quilt away from Rose’s face. “Your mama’s doing better, then?”
I sucked in my breath and didn’t hear a word of Ruben’s answer to the question.
“Rose!” I said. “Baby Rose!” Her eyes was closed and I could see her tiny black eyelashes. I reached out my arms and next thing I knew, Rose’s warm body was right up next to my heart. Her cheeks looked fuller to me, her face more round. She was already growing.
I stroked Rose’s hair. “Can you believe it, Ruben?”
