This Bitter Earth

by Bernice McFadden

  Clemon saw the symptoms, and knew Bertie was with child even before she’d realized it. He watched her go from picking at her food to eating five times a day. He heard her in the outhouse retching and he watched her as she slept late into the mornings.

  Bertie Mae’s brothers knew and whispered about it amongst themselves. They made it a point to save an extra biscuit for Bertie or bring in fruit they stole off of the town carts.

  Ciel didn’t seem to notice at all.

  Day after day they watched Bertie in anticipation of the moment Ciel became aware that her daughter was with child and without a husband.

  One evening during dinner as Ciel raised her glass to drain the last few drops of water from it, she stopped, just as the rim of the glass was about to touch her lips, and looked blankly at Bertie for so long that all the conversation that had been going on around them stopped.

  “You better cut down on that eating, gal, you getting as big as a house. I can’t afford to feed you as it is. You gonna have to find work soon and fend fer ya self. Either that or find a man that will marry ya homely ass,” Ciel finally said, and then drained the glass of its contents, before placing it back down on the table and excusing herself.

  Bertie looked at the faces around the table. Everyone had their eyes on Ciel’s back.

  “Who going to do them dishes?” she asked before disappearing into the bedroom and closing the door.

  A sigh of relief as thunderous as a falling elm settled around the table.

  Clemon walked into the bedroom to find Ciel seated in front of the window, naked all but for a sheet wrapped around her ankles, babbling in a language Clemon did not recognize. He had heard these ramblings before and had ignored it, but tonight the moon was full and Ciel’s madness had been dormant for much too long. He decided, as he eased himself out of the room, that he would have to confront Bertie Mae.

  Bertie was out on the back porch, a quilt wrapped around her shoulders, her eyes staring out into space.

  “Bertie, I gotta speak to you,” Clemon whispered.

  Bertie blinked and then smiled before pulling the quilt tighter around herself and positioning her body in a way that would help camouflage her stomach.

  “Yes, Clemon?”

  Clemon gulped and took a step closer to Bertie before speaking again. “I know you got a baby coming and from the looks of you I see you already done made up your mind on keepin’ this child, but I got to ask you where you plan on keepin’ this child?”

  Clemon expected surprise, even denial, but all Bertie gave him was an easy smile.

  “Bertie, listen, your mama gonna find out soon ‘o later ’bout your situation. She about to get ready to go through one of her spells, and if things haven’t been clear to her recently, they gone be clear to her now. I believes if you come to her—I’ll be right there wit you—if you comes to her and tell her what the matter be, maybe—”

  Bertie cut him off with a bitter laugh. “Maybe what, Clemon? Maybe she’ll understand? Who you been sleeping with the past year? Not my mama, ‘cause my mama, Ciel Brown, she don’t understand nothing.”

  Clemon took a step backward. He had never heard Bertie speak that way, ever.

  “Is the man who done did this to you gonna take responsibility?” Clemon asked, still stunned by Bertie’s response.

  “He don’t know nothing ‘bout this,” she said, opening the quilt and rubbing her stomach. “I ain’t seen or heard from him since we ...” Her words trailed off and for a moment she was the young innocent girl Clemon had grown to love. “Well, I ain’t seen or heard from him,” Bertie said again.

  Clemon looked over his shoulder before creeping closer to her. “He gotta know, though. I mean, he was the only one there, right?” Clemon knew he was overstepping his boundaries and asking the question for his own selfish reasons, but he felt he needed to be direct with Bertie Mae, didn’t make any sense to beat around the bush now.

  A look of surprise spread across her face, but she said nothing.

  Clemon cleared his throat and straightened his shoulders. “Well, do you know his name?”

  Bertie Mae shook her head and laughed. “Of course I know his name, but that don’t matter, he got his own life to live.”

  Clemon insisted, pushed and practically begged until Bertie got up and said good night, leaving him alone to the porch and its blackness.

  Two days later, Ciel walked in on Bertie as she struggled to pull her nightgown down over her stomach.

  “Mama, I—” was all Bertie was able to get out of her mouth before Ciel attacked her.

  “Whore, whore, whore!” Ciel screamed as she pounded Bertie across her shoulders and back.

  Clemon rushed in and grabbed Ciel by her shoulders. “Ciel, stop, stop!” he screamed as he struggled to pull Ciel off of Bertie.

  Ciel turned on him, wild-eyed. “You did this to her. YOU! You always wanted her. Why? Why? Wasn’t I good enough, wasn’t I good enough?”

  Clemon put his hands up to protect himself and stepped backward. “Ciel, now Ciel, I ain’t touch that child and you and I both know it. Now—”

  Ciel didn’t let him finish. She pounced on him, clawing at his face and ripping at his clothes.

  Bertie slipped around them and stumbled out of the house and onto the front porch, where she collapsed.

  Ciel found her curled up on the ground in a pool of blood. The sight of the blood pulled at something deep inside her, something maternal, some might say. The sight of her daughter’s blood and her swollen stomach snapped Ciel sane.

  “Get her legs,” Ciel screamed at Clemon, who was standing behind her with his hands clasped around his head. “Hurry up!” she yelled as she slipped her hands beneath Bertie’s armpits.

  Together they carried her into the house and rested her gently down onto Ciel’s bed. The baby was coming, and it was coming fast. Bertie’s screams traveled deep into the night. She called out to God, but mostly she called out for Joe.

  Her blood loss was hefty. The midwife told Ciel she might look into having the undertaker come in and measure Bertie. Clemon had the preacher come in and pray over her.

  Three days later, Bertie’s eyes fluttered open.

  When she awoke, the first person she saw was Margaret Slate, who lived on the other side of town. She was buttoning the top of her dress and smiling down at something Bertie couldn’t yet see.

  “Ciel!” Margaret yelled as she turned her one good eye on Bertie. “Lord, girl, you put a scare on all of us. But I told your mama, she young, strong, she’ll pull through.”

  Bertie tilted her head to see the middle drawer of Ciel’s bureau pulled out. Margaret peeked in, adjusted something and then turned back to Bertie.

  “She sho’ is a fine baby. You done real good.” Margaret patted Bertie on the hand before giving her a toothless grin. “She a greedy thing too. But she full for now. I’ll be back in about two hours, she ready to eat again then.”

  Bertie wanted to see her baby. Her daughter. She tried to lift her head, but the room swam around her.

  “Margaret been nursing your baby while you been sick. You know she had them twins a few months back and got plenty of milk.” Ciel’s voice floated in from the doorway. Bertie could barely make her out in the shadows.

  “Still got some decent people ‘round here,” Ciel said and then stopped to pick something from her teeth.

  “You had a fever for a while and you lost a lot of blood, but I believe you should be okay in a couple of days.” She glanced over at the open drawer and then back at Bertie. “Then you and your baby gotta go.”

  Ciel disappeared into the shadows and Bertie allowed the darkness to swallow her again.

  Chapter 6

  BY the time Sara finished her story dawn was coming in pink and blue, and roosters all across Short Junction announced the beginning of another day.

  Sugar shivered in the early morning chill that suddenly consumed the room as her mind slowly digested the information Sara had just unloaded
on her.

  “That’s how I ended up with you?” Sugar asked, even though she already knew the answer.

  “She didn’t have noplace else to leave you and she was afraid of taking you with her. Afraid that she would end up crazy like her mama and do to you what her mama did to her.”

  Sugar hugged herself and rocked a bit before she asked the next question. Sara had, Sugar thought quite conveniently, left Shonuff Clayton out of the remainder of the story.

  “What happened to Shonuff Clayton?”

  “Who?” Sara said, suddenly developing amnesia.

  “Shonuff Clayton, Sara. What happened to him?”

  Sara turned and looked out the window. She took a deep breath but said nothing.

  “Sara, please.” Sugar needed to know. Needed to hear it.

  “I loved him, you know?” Sara said in a voice that should have belonged to a child.

  “Sara,” Sugar pleaded. “That part is just hearsay.” Sara spoke slow and quiet. “I don’t much believe it myself, but seems you need to know.” She turned her head so she could look at Sugar full in the face.

  “Some say, the whole time Joe was courting your mother, Shonuff was watching. Well, he worked ‘longside Joe for some time, laying tracks, digging ditches and such. Shonuff never much liked work, didn’t like getting his hands dirty, he said,” Sara said with a sorry laugh. “He had pretty hands, you know, delicate like a woman’s.” A look of nostalgia spread across Sara’s face.

  “People talk, you know,” Sara said and then bit down hard on her lip. “People make up things in place of things they don’t know about, you know?”

  Sara’s eyes were wet, and she’d left out the part about how she came across Bertie Mae in town one day, how she’d run her fingers through Bertie Mae’s hair, complimenting her on its thickness and shine before turning and walking away with five strands of Bertie Mae’s hair locked between her fingers.

  She wouldn’t tell Sugar about the handkerchief, the blue-and-white one that had belonged to Bertie Mae, the one she used one day to mop the sweat from Joe’s brow as he shot craps at the side of the house, beneath the hot sun.

  She would leave out the night that Shonuff made love to her, not even speak on the fact that his touch was intoxicating and when he requested the objects he’d asked her to secure for him, she had gladly handed them over to him.

  She loved him.

  Those things, those things she’d keep to herself.

  “Some of the menfolks that worked with Shonuff and Joe said that they had had words about Bertie Mae, low angry words.”

  Sugar nodded her head.

  “Well, like I said, he was jealous of them two, Joe and your mama. Don’t know why.” Sara’s voice was filled with spite. “But he was, and set about taking care of them. Or so the story goes.”

  “Taking care of them?” Sugar was confused.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, how did he do it, Sara, how did he take care of them?”

  “I don’t know how,” Sara said and waved her hand.

  “You know, Sara, tell me.” Sugar’s voice was stern.

  “I only know what was said.”

  “What was said?”

  “Well, I heard that he went to the Hastings woman down in Ashton, had that something belong to your mama, something else that belonged to Joe. He gave them to that woman and she said she’d fix it so that Joe couldn’t have your mama, ever.”

  “A roots woman?” Sugar’s body relaxed. “Black magic?” Sugar laughed.

  “Some call it that,” Sara said, throwing her a sly look.

  “Mama died of cancer and Joe is alive and well, Sara,” Sugar said, laughing harder this time.

  “Evil kill off more than one generation, Sugar,” Sara added, and began rocking again. “Evil stick around longer than good sometime, infecting people that had nothing at all to do with the deed.”

  Sara’s words struck Sugar and her skin went cold. “What you saying, Sara?”

  Sara wouldn’t respond.

  “Shonuff had a child?”

  Sara gave Sugar an odd look. “Why you ask that?”

  “Did he have a child?” Sugar asked again. All of the pieces coming together now.

  “A boy, from some white woman, born a year or so before you.”

  “That boy, he got a name?”

  “He christened Edgar after his daddy,” Sara said a little too quickly.

  Sugar looked at her real hard, she knew Sara was keeping something from her.

  “What you say, Sara?”

  Sara swung her head around and her eyes seemed as dark and piercing as the blackbirds that had attacked the house earlier. “I said his Christian name be Edgar, but they called him Lappy.”

  Sugar flinched with each syllable that rolled off of Sara’s tongue.

  The words that dropped from Sara’s mouth were too evil to be true. This was a nightmare and soon, very, very soon, Sugar thought that she would wake up and none of what she had heard would be true.

  “I loved him, he was the only man I ever loved. Seems as though he was the only man I had the opportunity to love,” Sara said. “I been carrying that around with me forever. Seems like forever anyway,” Sara added and the rocking chair came to a sudden halt. “Telling you don’t make it hurt so much now.” Her voice seemed far away as she spoke into the soft morning light. “Yeah, I’d say the pain is ‘bout gone,” she said and smiled.

  Sugar looked at Sara and saw the woman that had stubbornly loved her for as long as she could remember and now she understood why.

  “Uh-huh, I’d say, the pain is all gone now.”

  Sara turned to look at Sugar. “Uh-huh,” she sounded again before the chair rocked backward one last time and went still.

  Her eyelids fluttered and then closed. The smile remained, and Sugar knew that Sara had not slipped into slumber, but into the royal blue-and-yellow light of the afterlife.

  Sugar’s breath quickened and then slowed, and for a long moment it seemed as though she was looking out at the world from inside a bubble. The room seemed airless and quiet until the high-pitched squawk of a blackbird shattered the silence and left Sugar gasping for air.

  The blackbird was perched outside her bedroom window and it watched Sara with great curiosity before turning its attention to Sugar.

  The blackbird cocked its head a bit before tapping its beak impatiently against the windowpane. It was an insistent tap, as if it were trying to remind Sugar of some forgotten task.

  It went on like that for some time and then the long wail of the winter wind sent the bird fluttering off to the safety of the bare limbs of a nearby oak tree.

  “I’m glad it don’t hurt no more, Sara,” Sugar said before stepping across the hall toward May’s room.

  Chapter 7

  Most of Short Junction turned out for Sara’s funeral, hands heavy with casseroles, fresh baked bread, shortbread cookies, cherry and peach pies. They came in twos, dressed in black, brown and gray, faces just as flat as their wardrobe, shuffling instead of stepping.

  May sent Sara out in true Lacey fashion. Sara was laid out in a brilliant purple frock that ruffled around the neck and wrists and May had someone go all the way to Little Rock to buy Sara a shiny new pair of patent leather shoes.

  Sugar would always remember how long and bizarre the mourner’s reflections looked in the glossy black leather of Sara’s shoes.

  Sara was laid out in the parlor and she looked small and pale against the dark wainscot of the walls and heavy dark drapes. Her face was so heavily made up that she looked like one of the ceramic china dolls that graced the dressing table in her bedroom.

  “It’s too much, I think,” Ruby had ventured when May started dabbing more blush on Sara’s cheeks.

  “No, it’s not,” May snapped. “She always liked rouge. You know she did, Sister.” May’s tone was harsh, but Sugar didn’t miss the grief that rolled alongside her words. “Just because she dead don’t man she gotta look it.”

/>   Her statement was ludicrous and Ruby just shook her head and gave Sugar a sad look.

  Sugar would take a washcloth to Sara’s cheeks when May wasn’t looking. She would tone down the red, make things right, just as Sara had done for her.

  They buried her on their land, just as they had buried their mother and Sugar’s mother, Bertie Mae.

  The preacher came and said some words over her body and then stayed until the casseroles, tin cans of cookies and cake plates were empty.

  “Such a loss,” he said as he cupped May’s hands and then Ruby’s in his own. “She will be missed,” he breathed as he donned his hat and looked up at the sky. “Looks like we gonna be getting some more snow,” he commented as he pulled on his leather gloves.

  “Looks that way,” May agreed and closed the door.

  Sugar knew, even as she sat on the couch in the parlor and stared at the wallpaper that was graced with tiny horses and carriages, that death wasn’t done with the Lacey home. She knew she’d be there until the only voice that echoed through the halls was her own.

  “Let me help,” Sugar said when Ruby and May began removing the crystal glasses and bone china plates.

  “You ain’t in no condition, Sugar,” May responded without looking at her. She was staring at a half-eaten cookie that someone had carelessly placed on the coffee table. “Look at this,” she said in disgust as she snatched it up. “People just don’t have no respect.” May brushed the crumbs off into the palm of her hand and started to move out of the parlor.

  May moved in a large circle, cutting left, close to the wall, and then right and out the door. Ruby and Sugar blinked at each other. May had just walked through the parlor as if Sara’s coffin were still there.

  “Jesus,” Ruby sighed and sat down on the couch.

  Sugar never mentioned what Sara had shared with her during the hours before she died. She buried it alongside the other secrets she kept deep inside her.