“The last thing he needs is a mama to treat him like a little boy,” I said. I’d never been so mad at another woman. I could see how Muir had been burdened all his life by a mama that worked to control him, like he was just a part of her ambition and desires.
Muir stepped between us and said, “This is shameful. We must pray about this.” He dropped down on his knees, and Ginny looked away and then dropped down on her knees too. I had no choice but to kneel down also. Muir prayed that there would be concord and love in the family and in the household. He prayed that the two women he loved would be friends and love each other. By the time he’d finished Ginny was crying and I had tears in my eyes too. All three of us stood up and hugged each other. Such a thing would never have happened in my family. Ginny was an emotional person, and all her anger was gone.
But I could see it was only a matter of time until we clashed again. She had such a strong will and was used to getting her way. I’d heard stories about all of the troubles she had with her husband, Tom, about the brush arbor meetings, about her going against his wishes. She was a woman who meant well, but she also meant to have everything on her own terms.
So when Muir left to go to Fort Bragg with Papa I moved back to Mama’s. I couldn’t bear to think of staying in the house with Ginny all week while Muir was away. And besides, I had to walk all the way across the pastures and get my feet wet every morning to catch the ride to the mill when I stayed at the Powell place. It was much easier to walk to the church from Mama’s house.
“You don’t need to move out,” Ginny said when I told her. “You know you’re perfectly welcome here.”
“I think Mama needs me to help her,” I said. “And it’s easier to get to the cotton mill in the morning from there.”
“You must do what you think best,” Ginny said. When Ginny wanted to be cold she could talk like some high-class educated woman, not a mountain farm woman. It was always surprising to see that change come over her. Her family had always had more money than mine. But it was still surprising to see her act like a high-toned lady.
It pleased Mama that I was moving back to the house. While Papa and Velmer was away she had to take care of the horse and cow, the hog and chickens, all by herself. She had to make the garden and can peaches, hoe corn and gather fodder, chop kindling and carry wood for washing. She’d always done those things, since she was a girl on Mount Olivet, but she was getting old. Sometimes I was astonished at how frail she looked. When I got home from the mill every evening I helped her work. We picked blackberries at the edge of the pasture and canned tomatoes. I helped her wash windows.
Every month when she got the allotment from the government that Troy had sent home from the Air Corps she put it in a bowl on the top shelf of the china closet. I don’t think she ever spent a dime of Troy’s money for herself. The only money she spent was what she got from selling eggs and butter at the store. She kept that money in the drawer at the bottom of the china closet. When she opened or closed the drawer you could hear the coins rattling.
“Troy said to use some of that money for everwhat you need,” I said.
“That money is to be saved for Troy,” Mama said. “When he comes home from the service he will need to build a house for him and Sharon.” There was a spot in the pasture near the big cedar tree where Troy had said he’d like to build a house. He’d showed me the level place where we used to play kick ball in the evenings after supper when we was kids. It was a perfect spot.
“I hope Muir will build a house when the war’s over,” I said.
“Let’s hope it’s not on the mountaintop,” Mama said, and laughed.
IT WAS LATER in the fall when I begun to think about Ginny and feel a little sorry that I’d left her house and never did go back to see her. She was after all my mother-in-law and a good woman, however high handed she could act at times. She was Muir’s mama and had been awful nice to me when I first got married and went to her house. It’s true she wanted everything done her way. She wasn’t like Mama at all. But then most people want things to go their way.
I kept thinking what I could do to be good to Ginny. I seen her at church and smiled at her, and once or twice I’d gone with Muir to visit her on weekends. But I knowed I needed to show more respect to her. It come to me I should go to visit her myself and I should take something; I’d take her a pie. We’d had a big crop of pumpkins that summer in the field between the orchard and the garden. When frost killed the pumpkin vines it looked like the field was full of orange moons and planets. I cut up one of the big ones and made three pies, and after I got off from work the next evening I took a pie and walked across the pastures to the Powell house.
It was a pretty time of year because the hickories on the hill was dark gold and the black gum trees was turning purple and some of the oaks was bright red. The sun was out but it was cool in the shade. I could smell apples on the breeze coming from the Powell orchard. It was cider-making time and I wondered if I might find Ginny making cider. She always made gallons of sweet cider in the fall.
But when I climbed through the fence and passed the springhouse I didn’t see her by the cider mill. The press was standing beside the smokehouse and a basket of apples set on the ground nearby. She must be getting ready to crush the apples. Yellow jackets and bees circled around the basket.
Among neighbors and kinfolks we didn’t even knock on the door in those days. We just hollered out to let people know we’d come and opened the door and walked right in. I wanted to seem friendly to Ginny and I called out “Hello” and stepped into the kitchen. But she didn’t answer back and I didn’t see her either.
“I brought you a pie,” I said. After the bright light outside I couldn’t hardly see into the living room. I figured she must be down the hall in one of the bedrooms. But just as I stepped into the living room my foot hit something and I stumbled forward and the pie went flying out of my hand. I fell on my knees and elbows, and when I got up and looked in the dim light I seen it was Ginny laying on the floor that I’d tripped over.
“Ginny, what’s wrong?” I said. I bent down close and seen her eyes move. She made a gagging sound but didn’t say nothing. She stirred one arm a little.
“What is wrong?” I said again. And then I seen the water on the floor. She had dropped something. No, she must have wet herself. She laid there helpless except she could move her eyes. It come to me she must’ve had a stroke: that was why she couldn’t talk.
“I should get you to the couch,” I said. Ginny was a tall woman. She was bigger than me and in later years she’d put on a little weight too. I tried to think how I could pick her up and get her on the settee. I tried to put my hands under her arms and lift her. She was so heavy I could just barely get her head off the floor. Even if I could drag her to the couch I couldn’t lift her onto it.
There wasn’t nothing to do but go somewhere for help. For there was nothing I could do for her. But something should be put under her head and a blanket or a quilt should be spread over her. It was cold down on the floor. I looked around the room and stepped in the mess the pie had made when it hit the floor. I tried to wipe the pie filling off my shoe before running to the bedroom. There was a quilt folded up on the trunk in her bedroom and I grabbed that.
Covering Ginny with the quilt, I told her I had to go get help. I’d run to Fay’s house and I’d be back as soon as I could. We would lift her onto the settee. I don’t know if she could understand me or not. But her eyes moved and I hoped she understood I was going for help.
I run out of the house and past the springhouse and the molasses furnace. When you’re in a hurry distance stretches out ahead of you and the place you want to get to seems to retreat the harder you run. I crossed the pasture, climbed through the fence, and skirted the edge of the big gully. I climbed up through pines and laurel bushes to the field below the old schoolhouse. Limbs hit my face and pine cones rolled under my feet.
Fay and Lester lived in the house on Green River Road just beyon
d the church. I cut through the line of junipers around the churchyard and went around behind the church, thinking that was the shortest way. But they’d let all kinds of honeysuckle vines and briars grow up there and I scratched my arms and legs fighting a way through.
But when I got to Fay’s yard I was relieved to see that Lester’s car was there. He must have just got home from work. I run up the steps and opened the kitchen door. But when Fay and Lester come into the kitchen to see who it was I was so out of breath I couldn’t hardly talk.
“Ginny,” I gasped.
“What about Ginny?”
“In. . . the floor . . .”
“In what floor?” Lester said.
“Her house,” I said. “Must’ve had a stroke.”
Fay’s face turned white as the sand in an hourglass. “Oh no,” she said.
“You’ll have to drive us down there,” I said to Lester.
“Let’s go,” Lester said. “I’ll get my keys.”
Fay had her hands over her mouth. She looked around like she was confused. I handed her the sweater that was on the back of a chair. My chest hurt, but I was beginning to get my breath again.
“No,” Fay said. “Somebody has got to go to the store and call an ambulance.”
“We need to go see about Ginny,” I said.
“I’ll drive you down to the house and then I’ll go call the ambulance,” Lester said.
Fay run into the bedroom and got little Duane who’d started to cry because of all the excitement. He was only about two years old. “Everything will be all right,” Fay said to him. After we got in the car it seemed to take forever to reach the Powell house. I got out and opened the gates three times and closed them after Lester drove through. Fay just set in the front seat holding Duane and wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. When we finally reached the house Fay and me got out and Fay put Duane in the back seat. Lester turned around to drive to the store where the telephone was.
Fay wouldn’t go into the living room until I went in ahead of her. It was even darker in the house now and I couldn’t see a thing as I looked into the living room. As my eyes adjusted a little I gasped, because Ginny didn’t seem to be where I’d left her. Was it possible she’d moved or that somebody had moved her?
And then I seen her laying there under the quilt perfectly still. I’d misremembered where she was, maybe because I was so surprised and scared before. I pointed to her on the floor and Fay turned away like somebody had slapped her in the face.
Kneeling down, I said, “Ginny, Fay is here. We’re going to put you on the couch.” Her eyes was open and I expected them to move, but they didn’t.
“Lester has gone to call an ambulance,” I said. “We’re going to take you to the doctor.”
I thought I seen her eyes move and I bent closer. But her eyes was fixed, not looking at nothing. I put my ear next to her chest but couldn’t hear no heart beat. I was going to tell Fay to help me move her to the settee but seen there wasn’t no use now. Lester could help us when he come back. I didn’t know how to tell Fay that her mama was dead.
“What is this mess on the floor?” Fay said.
“That’s a pumpkin pie I made. I dropped it when I come in and seen her there.”
“I don’t think we can lift her,” Fay said.
“We don’t need to lift her now,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“Fay, Ginny is dead,” I said.
“No!” she said and pushed me away. She bent down over the body and then stood up and walked to the cold fireplace and started to cry. The clock on the mantel chimed five o’clock. I felt guilty somehow, like it was my fault, though I couldn’t say why. Maybe I should have come to see Ginny before. She’d been all alone down there. And then I remembered I’d have to tell Muir. I’d have to send a telegram to him at Fort Bragg. I hated to do that. Somehow it seemed my fault that his mama had died.
It was getting dark in the living room and I lit a lamp on the table by the couch. “You set down,” I said to Fay. “I’ll clean up this pie on the floor.”
There was nothing to do but scoop up the sticky pie filling with my hands and put it back in the plate. And when I’d got up all the mush I would bring a wet rag from the kitchen and scrub the floor. And I’d take a towel and wipe up the wet spot by Ginny’s body. It was what Mama would have done.
AS SHOCKED AS I was by what had happened to Ginny, so unexpected, so awful, I thought having to break the news to Muir was the worst of all. There is no worser news you can give a person than the death of their mother. Even though Muir and his mama had fussed and quarreled a lot, I knowed how much he’d depended on her. He was her favorite. All her ambitions and hopes had been placed on her younger son. I wished I didn’t have to be the one to tell him.
And I admit I felt some guilt too. Not that I blamed myself for Ginny’s death. I don’t reckon anybody could have prevented that. No, what I blamed myself for was ignoring my mother-in-law all those months. After we quarreled and I moved out of the Powell house I’d left her alone. She was a proud woman, and she was determined to have her way, but she was still Muir’s mama. I’d failed in my duty. Taking that pie down there after staying away so long seemed like a silly gesture.
Trying to think clear, like Mama would have done, I told Fay and Lester that I would get somebody to drive me to the store at the cotton mill to send a telegram to Muir and then I’d come back and help them lay out the body. I’d never done anything like that before, but as the daughter-in-law it was my job to help prepare Ginny’s body for a funeral and burial. There had not been a funeral in my family since Ma Richards passed away when I was still a girl.
Lester said he’d drive me to the store hisself, but I told him he’d better look after Duane and stay with Fay who was on the couch sobbing. I would ask somebody to come and help lift Ginny’s body onto her bed. Besides, somebody had to be at the house when the ambulance come, to tell them it was too late, they could just go back to town.
“You will need a cooling board,” Lester said.
That was a name I hadn’t heard in years. A cooling board was a flat thing made of wood on which a corpse was laid to be washed and kept straight so it would fit into a coffin. “I don’t know where we might find one,” I said.
“I’ll go see what I can find,” Lester said. “An old door might do.”
I found a lantern on the back porch and lit that to carry across the pasture. Though I was familiar with the trail past the molasses furnace and across the branch and through the grove of pines to Papa’s pasture, it all looked different in the glow of the lantern. Shadows swung around bushes as I walked like they was mocking me. Dew sparkled as if a thousand toads was watching me. A whippoorwill called somewhere up on the hill like a ghost lamenting some awful deed.
When I got to the house and told Mama the news she said she’d go right down to the Powell house to see what she could do to help. I don’t know why I’d told Lester somebody would drive me to the store, for Papa was away at Fort Bragg and there was nobody else with a car or truck. I guess I was so stunned I just wasn’t thinking. I give Mama the barn lantern to carry back to the Powell house and I took the flashlight. There was no choice but to walk to Lum’s store on the highway and get Lum to drive me to the cotton-mill company store to send the telegram.
As I walked along the road, following the spot of light from the flashlight, I rehearsed in my mind what I’d say in the telegram. Would it be better to say that Ginny was bad sick and Muir should come home at once? Would it be better to say she’d had a stroke but not say she’d died? Or would it be better to tell the truth at once and say “I’m sorry. Ginny has had a stroke and died. Love, Annie.” I kept saying over and over in my mind one short sentence and then another. In the end I seen I had no choice but to tell Muir the truth, however awful it was. If I told him Ginny had merely had a stroke he’d rush back home hoping to see her alive, and he’d find I’d not told him the truth.
Lum was nice en
ough to not only drive me to the store at the cotton mill to send the telegram, but he drove me all the way back to the Powell house. Lum was Ginny’s cousin. He come inside to see what he could do to help.
Lester had found an old door in the shed and washed it off and dried it and laid it over four chairs in the living room. Mama and me helped Lester and Lum lift Ginny’s body off the floor and place it on the door. She was almost as long as the door.
“You men go on about your business,” Mama said to Lum and Lester. “Annie and me will wash her and put her in clean clothes.”
Fay was still crying on the couch where Duane had gone to sleep and Mama suggested to Lester that he take Fay and the boy home. Once again I was astonished at how calm Mama was when things had to be done. When bad things happened she seemed to know just what to do. Her confidence and patience made the rest of us calmer too.
When the others was gone and we was alone in the house with Ginny on the cooling board Mama placed lamps on chairs around the body.
“Help me take off her clothes,” Mama said.
I DON’T KNOW what I would have done without Mama’s help that night. I’d never laid out a body before, but Mama had done it many times. She’d prepared Ma Richards for burial when she was just a young wife. And she’d helped neighbors with the sad ritual all her life. She started a fire in the cookstove and heated water and we washed Ginny thoroughly and soaked a handkerchief in camphor and laid it on her face. Ginny, who’d always been so spirited she was a little scary, was now growing cold as a lump of clay. All her enthusiasms and will and knowledge had vanished from the earth, or was returning to the earth. Except that a lot of it had been left in Muir.
I went to Ginny’s closet and got what I thought was her best blouse and skirt. She’d always wore dark clothes, with fancy white blouses. I guess she thought of herself as a kind of deaconness or even minister. I picked her silkiest and whitest blouse, one with pleats down the front, and a long black skirt like she wore to church. And she had a silver brooch with amethysts that I pinned on the blouse. It was way in the night when we finished and I told Mama to go on home.
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