by Leisha Kelly
Lizbeth seemed a little uncomfortable with the idea of me tagging along. “I guess. It’s Ma usually goes.”
I nodded to the girl, who looked somehow old and young at the same time. “When is her baby due?”
“Any day. We’ll be fetchin’ Mrs. Mueller this time, Ma said. But I’d kinda like to come after Emma too, long as she’s willin’. Or you. It don’t hurt to have help enough. You got experience, ain’t you? A little anyhow, with two children.”
I was a bit shaken by their approach to this child’s birth. Just gather up the neighbors, whether you know them or not. “Wouldn’t your mother like a doctor?” I asked.
Both girls shook their heads. “Takes too long. Costs too much too.”
“I don’t know that I could do much,” I told them. “And Emma would have a hard time getting over there quickly.”
“That’s what wagons is for, ma’am,” Lizbeth said with a look I might have gotten had I told her I’d been born in a cave.
“Is your mother doing all right, then?” I asked timidly.
“Well enough, in her shape.”
“If you need anything, come say so,” I heard myself saying. Maybe these Hammonds took what they wanted sometimes, but maybe they still needed us to care about them, just like Emma insisted on doing. “You’re welcome anytime. Tell your folks. Okay?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Lizbeth said, clearly surprised at what I had said. “You can come over too. Ma ain’t mad at you. Not none. She even tol’ me she’d like to meet ya, an’ I know she means it. You’ll come, won’t ya? How ’bout today?”
“Today?” I could hardly picture myself suddenly showing up in front of Wilametta Hammond, a total stranger. But why not do it? I could bring her a shortbread to go with her strawberries. Emma had wanted to give them something, and maybe that would do nicely. Maybe we’d even end up friends.
When the girls had left with their bowl of berries, I took the milk in and found Emma frying her flapjacks.
“I seen ’em out the window,” she said. “Hope you told ’em they can’t do that every day.”
“I did.”
“They’s good kids, though. I like havin’ ’em around once in awhile. Oughta get Sarey together with that Rorey ’fore long. Wouldn’t they just hit it off?”
“They invited me to come see their mother.”
“You oughta go. And take Sarey. It’d be just the thing.
Wilametta’ll talk your ear off, but you’ll like meetin’ her.
And Sarey’s liable to ’come best of friends with Rorey and her little brothers, them bein’ neighbors and all.”
When Sarah came downstairs about two minutes later, she was mightily disappointed to have missed meeting the neighbor girls. But she quickly got excited with the idea of visiting them. She skipped along behind me all the way to the henhouse and was just as pleased as I was that three of the four hens had eggs that morning. I decided to let one of them just set. Emma was happy with that. She said the hen’d be glad to lay more, and with God’s blessing we’d have chicks running around in less than a month.
While we’d been outside, Emma had boiled sugar in a little water for syrup. We finished off every flapjack she made, and the rest of the bacon from the Dearing store.
“Great breakfast,” Robert said, and went off to school with a smile on his face.
Right away, I mixed up a shortbread and got it in the oven. I didn’t want to leave Emma alone, so I knew I’d have to get to the neighbors’ and back by lunchtime, when Sam had to leave to work on Mr. Post’s roof. Sam was a little apprehensive about my visit to the Hammonds’, but then told me to greet George for him.
Before long, the kitchen was clean and the baking was done. I laid a clean towel over the batch of muffins meant for us and wrapped the hot shortbread in another towel. Emma gave me simple directions to the Hammonds’ farm and then set to work, sorting through a lidded basket we’d found at the bottom of one of her boxes. With the shortbread cradled in my arm, I set off walking through the timber to the Hammond house. Sarah, with a handful of daisies, skipped merrily along at my side.
The walk was lovely. The blackberries had already lost nearly all of their flower petals, and I made the delightful discovery of a mulberry tree not fifty feet from the creek. Oh, that would make some fine jam!
As we walked near the pond, it occurred to me that the cattails along one end would be dry and woolly come fall. I thought I might be able to pull off enough fluff to stuff a pillow or two. If it didn’t smell funny. I couldn’t remember if dry cattails had a smell.
We arrived at the Hammonds’ in less time than I’d thought we would. Sam had described the place to me, but still I was surprised. It was worse than I’d expected. Like nothing had been bought, painted, or fixed in half my lifetime. Rorey and two poorly dressed little boys crawled out from under a porch that looked as if it could fall on them. They were dirty as little piglets when they ran up to greet us, and squealing just as loud. I hesitated to turn Sarah loose to play with such a bunch.
“Stay with me,” I told her. “Till we meet Mrs. Hammond and you give her your daisies.”
George was nowhere around, nor were any of the bigger boys. Lizbeth was in the side yard, hanging clothes on a line that leaned so far she had to bunch things up to keep them off the ground. She looked tired and was paying very little attention to her younger siblings. But when she saw me she looked surprised. So much so that I thought I’d scared her. Then she saw the pan under my arm and smiled.
“For us, Mrs. Wortham?”
“Yes. A shortbread to go along with those strawberries.”
“Oh, that’s what Mama wanted. And I ain’t had time to get to it yet. That sure is nice.”
She took the shortbread quickly in her hands, as if she feared I might change my mind. Then she ushered us up the porch steps, each of which seemed to slope at its own separate angle, and led us through the dusty, cluttered house to her mother’s bedroom.
Wilametta Hammond was an extremely large woman who would have been large even if she weren’t so immensely pregnant. The wood-frame bed she was propped up in didn’t look like it could hold her. The floor all around was cluttered with all manner of things. An old shirt. A filthy sock. A dented teapot. A broom handle. As if someone had merrily tossed things about and then let them lay.
I could hear Mrs. Hammond’s coarse breathing from the doorway, though she wasn’t asleep. Her chubby pink fingers gingerly held a cloth to her forehead. She looked exhausted just laying there, the sweat forming little streams down her face, though the room was cool.
She hardly moved when Lizbeth ushered me in, but managed to show her excitement just the same.
“Lordy, you’re the neighbor, now, ain’t’ ya? Ain’t ya? And me lookin’ so frightful! Oh, come in anyway! I was a’prayin’ you’d want to visit sometime!”
“Mrs. Hammond—”
“Oh, please call me Wilametta.”
“Wilametta—”
“Looky there what a precious doll you got!” She gestured toward Sarah, not giving me a chance to string three words together. “C’mere, you sweet thing!” she cooed. “Let me look at you.”
Sarah looked up at me with her eyes wide. I nodded to her and gave her arm a little pat, and she bravely went just close enough to the bed to drop her daisies on Mrs. Hammond’s very round middle.
“What’s this?” Wilametta exclaimed, her blue eyes round and wide.
“For you,” Sarah whispered. “I picked ’em.”
Wilametta scooped up the greater part of the bouquet and took a long hard sniff. “Oh, these is nice. And ain’t it the sweetest thing you ever did see, her bringin’ ’em to me? You thought of it all by yourself too, didn’t you, child?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Sarah answered timidly, reaching backward to take my hand.
“Such an angel.” Wilametta’s smile was pretty and friendly, but then she shocked us both with a sudden bellow.
“Rorey! Rorey, child!”
/> The poor little girl had followed us in and was standing almost right behind me, though her mother hadn’t seen her. She jumped and was at her mother’s side before I could have shaken a stick.
But Wilametta had turned her attention to Sarah again. “Did you ever see a baby goat where you come from?”
Sarah shook her head.
“We got you a treat, then. What’d you say your name was?”
“Sarah.”
“Ah, that’s a beautiful name. It’s Bible too. Did you know that? And I knowed a Sarey once that could sew the finest dresses you ever hoped to see. They looked like they come from some New York factory, and it was all by hand.”
Finally she turned her head and acknowledged her young daughter, who stood waiting patiently. “Rorey, be nice now and take little Sarey to see Shuck and Billy, will you?” She smiled up at me. “That’s twin goats we got out back. Sure hope they’s the only twins we ever have ’round here.” She laughed and gave Rorey a nudge in Sarah’s direction.
Rorey didn’t need any more prompting. She grabbed one of Sarah’s hands and gave her a little pull. “C’mon,” she whispered. “You’ll like Shuck and Billy. They got head bumps where the horns is fixin’ to grow.”
Sarah looked up at me again, still uncertain. I told her she could go, but just to see the goats. She seemed relieved at that, but the instruction was as much for me as it was for her. Hard to tell what sort of things children could encounter around here unsupervised.
“You ain’t gonna let her play?” Wilametta questioned. “She don’t have to come right back in! We needs a chance to sit and talk. Long as they leave the pigs alone, there ain’t nothin’ dangerous out there.”
“She’s not used to a farm just yet,” I explained, hoping Wilametta wouldn’t realize that I didn’t feel right giving Sarah the same liberty on this farm that I gave her on Emma’s.
“She brung shortbread,” Lizbeth piped up. “I set it in the window. You want I bring you some?”
“No,” Wilametta said, suddenly more quiet. “No, not yet.” She watched Sarah go out the door with Rorey, then turned her attention to me. “I jus’ don’t understand it,” she said. “You let us at the berries. Now you come bringin’ shortbread. But George said your husband weren’t no friendlier than a polecat in the cornfield. You sure he don’t mind you off here with us?”
“No. He doesn’t mind. He said to tell George hello,” I said, a bit surprised that anyone would think Sam unfriendly.
“George’ll be surprised,” she told me. “He took it in his head that your husband don’t like him none. Sure is nice of him to send a greetin’.” She looked at me a minute in silence. “I thought we was in for a feud,” she finally said. “You bein’ here’s relieved my mind some over that. Lizbeth, get the woman a chair.”
I watched the older girl scurry to the next room and drag back a chair that looked homemade, with a woven back and spindly legs. She scooted it right up beside the bed, and I sat in it reluctantly, somehow not wanting to be within reach of Wilametta’s big pink arms.
“Hard to understand Emma these days,” she said. “We always been the ones takin’ care a’ things for her. We always put in field for her and kept the ’quipment up, you know. We even offered her to stay here, long time ago, ’fore you come on the scene.”
What was I to say? I could see why Emma wouldn’t want to stay with the Hammonds. She liked an orderly, pretty farm and would have a hard time with people who didn’t even seem to notice what frightful shape their place was in.
“No offense, you understand,” Wilametta continued. “But we’d a’ done just anything for her! Don’t really know why she’s picked you up. She’s so good-hearted, though. Wouldn’t never turn out a stray or nothin’.”
I still said nothing, and she laughed nervously. “Not that you’re strays, now! I didn’t mean that. But her giving you her place, it don’t figure as ordinary, you know that. Seems by rights—”
She stopped suddenly, perhaps realizing that this line of talk was not such a good idea. I’d certainly heard more than I wanted to.
“She hasn’t given us her place, Mrs. Hammond—”
“Well,” she said slowly, with obvious relief. “Ain’t that a welcome thing to hear! But I don’t understand what you’re doin’ there, then. We didn’t move in till we had us a good agreement—”
She stopped again, her face turning from pink to red. “Maybe it’s time for some shortbread.”
But I’d noticed what she’d said. And I wouldn’t let her change the subject so easily. “Did you get your property from Emma, then?”
Wilametta’s eyes turned cold, and I immediately regretted my question.
“We signed papers good and legal with Willard,” she puffed. “More’n twenty years ago! And we was entitled too, seein’s George’s pappy worked this land ’fore him! But you, comin’ all the way from God knows where! What you got for these parts is beyond me!”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Hammond. I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“Maybe it’s city ways, I dunno. But you ain’t especially easy to be neighborly to. That’s what George told me.”
We were both quiet for a moment, and I tried to figure out what I could say without making matters worse. Even to excuse myself and go home might be considered rude now.
As I sat there, I noticed one of Sarah’s daisies slide off Wilametta’s large dress and fall to the floor. Without a thought, I leaned forward and picked it up. The others were still in her lap, and I saw that there would be room enough on the bedside table, which already held a worn Bible, a dishcloth, and a candle, for a vase of flowers.
“Would you like them in water?” I asked. “They’d look so cheery there on the table beside you.”
She stared at me as though I’d spoken in Greek, but then her face began to soften. “You surely don’t need to do that,” she said. “Lizbeth! Come an’ put these flowers in some water!”
Lizbeth rushed in from wherever she’d been, gathered the flowers, and went back out again. Mrs. Hammond certainly had obedient daughters. She might have had a husband who was rude and a home that seemed to be falling apart around her, but the conduct of her daughters spoke well for her.
Lizbeth was back in no time with Sarah’s daisies in a quart jar dripping with water. She set it on her mother’s end table without wiping the bottom or setting anything beneath it. I thought of the ring the water would make on the old oak, but I didn’t say a word.
“I do ’preciate your thoughtfulness,” Wilametta told me.
“Bringin’ a cake and all. I s’pose you’re tryin’ to be all right in the ways you know, and that’s kind of you.”
“I was thinking I might offer to keep some of the children sometimes,” I said quickly. “So you can rest once the baby’s born. We’re needing feathers for another mattress, if you expect you’ll have any to spare, and I’ve no other way to pay you for them.”
“It’ll be some time ’fore we have enough again to stuff a mattress,” she said. “We do fine too, with the children. They can see to themselves, for the most part. Every one of ’em knows what they ain’t s’posed to be about. And they mind too.”
“That’s wonderful, Mrs. Hammond,” I told her sincerely. “A lot of children don’t mind.”
“Mine do. They fetch the belt if they don’t. But you got you a pretty nice little girl too.”
“Thank you. How old is your Rorey?”
“All of six. And ready to help me with the newborn, she is. I do hope it’s another girl. I got me seven boys a’ready. That’s enough for one woman.”
I couldn’t help but smile and acknowledge that it was. I found it hard to imagine what life would be like if I had nine or ten children running around instead of two. What a lot of food they must need in this house!
“Rorey’s so small, though,” I said. “And Lizbeth surely has her hands full too. Isn’t there something you could use some extra help with?”
“I’m just hopin’ yo
u let us at the berries, that’s all. Emma always let us have all the berries we want. Blackberries too. Dewberries. And hickory nuts in the fall.”
“We can surely share.”
“Good hearin’ you say that. You can be jus’ completely sure I won’t forget.”
“I won’t forget either.”
“George says you’ll run us out our home, just as soon as Emma dies. We meant to pay all along, you know, but the crops ain’t been so good, year after year.”
There was a twinge of fear in her eyes, and I realized that the Hammonds owed Emma for more than the cows and the use of one field. She must have carried them patiently, or maybe forgiven them entirely, over and over for years now.
What would they do, really, if Emma died tomorrow and a bank or a lawyer or an unsympathetic relative stepped in and took a look? The Hammonds had reason to fear.
“We should be friends,” I suddenly said.
“We might could be that, I suppose,” Wilametta said cautiously. “Don’t know ’bout our men, though. They can be more hardheaded.”
“Sam’s really nice,” I told her. “He’d never cause you any trouble.”
She frowned. “But you need more’n feathers, don’t ya? He ain’t got you fixed up very well, George says. What’re you eatin’ over there?”
“We’re managing all right. And Sam’s been working hard.”
“I know one thing. Even if we ain’t got cash, George always makes sure we got plenty enough to fill our bellies. We ain’t never short of good meat and butter, that’s for sure. You want to stay for lunch?”
“Thank you, but I can’t. I need to go back and cook for Sam and Emma before Sam leaves.”
She sat up in surprise. “Leaves? Where’s he goin’?”
“To help Mr. Post on his roof. In exchange for the fence work he did for us.”
I didn’t say anything more about Sam working for the Posts, figuring it might create hard feelings somehow. It was unusual that Mr. Post hadn’t gotten himself another local man that he’d known a lot longer.
Wilametta was looking ready to say something else when we heard a crash and a scream and a whole garbled series of yells outside. I jumped from my chair, thinking I’d heard Sarah’s voice among the jumble.
