Designated Daughters

by Margaret Maron

  A moment later, her lips twitched with sudden amusement. “And one of ’em’s a cowbird egg, Brack. He still don’t know and he could eat that pretty little goldfinch with a spoon…Love’s blind, ain’t it?” Abruptly, her brow furrowed. “It ain’t love, Jed. Sister says y’all are like two hound dogs after a bitch in heat…So hot, so hot. All that work and that last batch of soup ruined…Mammy just set and cried till dark. Oh, Jacob, Jacob, Jacob!”

  Distressed, Jay-Jay grasped her hand. “It’s okay, Mama. It’s okay.”

  “Annie Ruth always did want a lot of babies…babies. Annie said…Oh, those precious baby girls! He signed a note, but I’m sure he never paid it.”

  Here in May, the days were still getting longer, but as shadows lengthened across the grounds outside, Aunt Rachel talked on and on, gesturing with her hands and half rising up from the pillows, her blue eyes flashing. She talked of babies, fires, and unpaid debts, of someone who beat his wife and of cowbirds and vegetables and broken jars. She relived the grief of Jacob’s death over and over, the joy of Jay-Jay’s birth, and whether someone named Ransom might like her as much as she liked him.

  Unlike Aunt Sister, who could be chary with her words, Aunt Rachel had a gift for mimicry and dramatic narratives. As a child, I loved it when the adults got together to play and sing and amuse each other with community news and gossip. Aunt Rachel seldom named names even though she lived some twenty-five miles away at the other end of the county from us and it was unlikely that we would know who she was talking about. Mother’s theory was that she liberally embellished her tales, and certainly it was true that she could make crossing the road to mail a letter sound funny.

  Aunt Sister’s wit was as dry as Daddy’s but more caustic and usually at someone else’s expense, while Aunt Rachel’s was warm and self-deprecating, which was probably why such a cross section of the wider community had gathered. Family members, church friends, longtime neighbors, and former customers came and went as word spread through the community that she was talking again. Several of the younger cousins were using their cell phones to catch her ramblings.

  “Annie worried that he wouldn’t amount to much if she didn’t help him, but she made him promise…He kept it all, though, didn’t he? Just like her Easter basket. Ate all his chocolates and hers, too. Always wanted what he wanted, didn’t he?…I’m real glad she never had to know…break her heart right in two. She said my tomatoes held their flavor the best…Mammy’s seeds. So hot to be canning, no wonder Jacob went to the creek, and not just for Letha neither. Corn…okra…” A smile curled Aunt Rachel’s lips. “Remember when Sally put a tomato in Brack’s chair and he sat down on it and Jay-Jay…” Her voice trailed off into hoarseness and Sally leaned over with a spoonful of crushed ice to moisten her mother’s mouth.

  Aunt Rachel swallowed and said, “Jay-Jay?”

  My cousin leaned forward, clasping her bony hands even tighter. “I’m here, Mama. It’s okay. I’m here.”

  “Where’s Jacob? Won’t y’all supposed to be helping Kezzie?” She paused as if listening. “Yeah, she come by but leave her be, Jed. Jacob saw her first. She’s too fast for y’all anyhow. That bathing suit!” She began to giggle. “Hazel was so proud of that fancy new bathing suit…Six dollars for it at Hudson-Belk’s but soon as it got wet, it showed everything she had. She said Rufus’s eyes like to’ve popped out of his head ’fore she could get a towel…”

  The words came with more difficulty as if rasped from raw vocal cords.

  Sally looked at the aide. “Shouldn’t she ought to rest now? She’s been talking for hours.”

  “Since about noon,” the aide agreed.

  Her minister stepped forward with a worn leather Bible in his hand. “Maybe if we pray?”

  He was a young man, but his voice held pulpit phrasing and we all automatically bowed our heads. “Lord God, who healed the lame and gave sight to the blind, we thank you for the precious gift of words that you have bestowed on this family—”

  “…and if it’s a boy, we’ll name him Jacob Jedidiah,” Aunt Rachel croaked. “Oh, Sister, why? Where was Billy? Or Ransom? Why’d he sneak off to the creek like that? You reckon Letha told him she’d be there? Be just like her, wouldn’t it? Stirring up trouble?”

  So much grief laced her words that the minister fell silent.

  “Sing,” Daddy said suddenly. “Remember that time when she was so sick with the whooping cough we thought she was gonna cough herself to death and Mammy made her easy by singing to her? Remember, Sister?”

  With tears in her eyes, Aunt Sister took a swallow from the Pepsi can in her hand and began to sing in a soft low voice.

  Sleep, Rachel, sleep.

  Just count your daddy’s sheep.

  Her daughter Beverly joined in. We’ve always made music together and over the years, made-up lyrics have replaced some of the original ones. Soon a half-dozen voices or more added harmony to that old lullaby.

  Now mammy shakes them sleeping trees

  And dreams drift softly down like leaves.

  Sleep, Rachel, sleep.

  After two more verses, Aunt Rachel’s hoarse voice dwindled into silence. Her lips continued to move, but no sounds came out. When her clear blue eyes closed, we automatically began to step back quietly. Seth stretched out a hand to help Daddy to his feet and her son-in-law did the same for Aunt Sister.

  Both are in their eighties now but still straight of back and steady on their feet once they’re actually standing.

  “How’d we get so old, Kezzie?” she whispered. “Set too long and everything wants to seize up.”

  As she turned to follow him, someone bumped her arm and her Pepsi went flying, landing in the middle of the bed. Brown liquid fizzed from the can and soaked into the sheet covering that frail body.

  “Oh, dear Lord!” Aunt Sister gasped.

  We all held our breath, expecting Aunt Rachel to waken, but she lay motionless except for her lips, which still formed silent words.

  “Don’t you worry,” said the aide. She stepped forward to raise the bed to working level. “Why don’t y’all go get some supper? I’ll change her sheets and freshen her up a bit.”

  Even Jay-Jay realized that freshen her up a bit meant she was going to change his mother’s gown, and he joined the general exodus.

  I realized I could use some “freshening up” myself, but by now there would be a line in the public restroom. Although there were several rooms on this floor, Aunt Rachel’s was the only one being used, so I ducked into the darkened room across the hall and tried the bathroom door. It was locked.

  “Just a minute,” said a female voice from within and a moment later, I heard a flush and the rush of running water, then a very pretty young woman stepped out, one arm in a pale green summer cardigan.

  “Sorry,” she said and held the door for me. As she put her other arm through the sleeve of her sweater, a button caught in her necklace and pearls went flying everywhere.

  “Oh no!” she cried and immediately began picking them up. “I knew I should have had them restrung.”

  I helped her finish picking them up, then she left and I went on into the bathroom. As I was washing my hands afterwards, I spotted a gleaming pearl that had bounced onto this tiled floor. I retrieved it from where it had landed between the wastebasket and the wall, then walked toward the elevator and staircase, which lay around the corner at the end of the hall. There was no sign of the girl, so I dropped her pearl in my purse and joined the others. People were voicing their regrets as they left, all telling Sally and Jay-Jay to be sure and let them know if there was anything they could do to help in the coming days.

  Sally almost looked her real age and Daddy and Aunt Sister were clearly tired, but they didn’t want to go home. An open wooden staircase led down to the hospice family room on the next floor, part of the original main core of the hospital before new wings were built, and they did agree to go that far when the preacher said that some of Aunt Rachel’s prayer group had
set up a makeshift buffet of cold cuts and salads.

  “I believe I could eat a ham biscuit if anybody’s brought some,” Aunt Sister said, and Daddy allowed as how a deviled egg might taste right good.

  The minister paused at the bottom of the worn oak steps and assured them that the funeral service would include all the hymns and readings that Aunt Rachel had requested when she gave him instructions after her first stroke back last winter.

  “Although I’ll be glad to stay with y’all tonight if you want me to,” he said.

  “That’s okay,” Sally said. “We’ll be fine.”

  After sitting so long on hard straight chairs, though, they were glad for the overstuffed chairs and couches and Aunt Sister gave a sigh of pure pleasure as she settled into a soft leather sofa.

  While grandchildren and cousins gave them goodbye hugs, I fixed them both plates and then went back for one of my own, stopping to say a word here and there to the church women, who gave me sympathetic smiles.

  “Poor Sister,” said one of the older women. “First Rufus and now Rachel.”

  “At least she’s back home now and got all y’all,” said another.

  Uncle Rufus retired some twenty years ago. The children were grown and off on their own, so he and Aunt Sister had sold their house, bought an RV, and turned into gypsies. With relatives scattered from California to Florida, there was always a friendly driveway where they could park for a few days and even a few weeks when they came through Colleton County. The high price of gasoline and his tricky heart had brought them home for good two years ago. They traded their last Winnebago in on a used doublewide, and Daddy let them put it on a piece of land he owned a few miles west of the farm, over towards Fuquay. While Uncle Rufus was out picking butter beans in their garden last summer, his heart stopped beating. A neighbor saw him fall, but he was gone before the rescue truck could get there.

  My two aunts had talked about moving in together now that both were widowed, but before they could decide which home to give up, Aunt Rachel’s stroke had made that moot.

  “At least Rufus didn’t linger like Rachel,” said another of their friends. “It’s awful hard on the family if it takes so long.”

  Someone vaguely familiar was talking to Minnie, someone I seemed to connect with politics since Minnie acts as my campaign manager and has always been active in the party. She waved me over.

  “Deborah, I don’t believe you’ve met James Collins?”

  “Please. Call me Jim. Both of you.” He was short and solidly built, with a bald head and the largest nose I’d ever seen on a face that small, but his friendly smile soon made me forget his looks. Especially when Minnie reminded me that he had donated to my campaign last fall.

  “I hope I thanked you properly,” I said. As a judicial candidate, my donor base is so small it doesn’t take long to send each of them a personal note of thanks.

  His smile broadened. “You did,” he said. “In fact, yours was the only handwritten thank-you I got. Refreshing.”

  When I got back to Daddy and Aunt Sister, the aide was there. A cheerful little butterball, she said Aunt Rachel’s breathing seemed to be shallow, but otherwise she was resting easy, so Sally encouraged her to go get something to eat. They themselves had almost finished and were back to talking about Aunt Rachel’s amazing burst of speech.

  “Such a gift,” said Sally as she accepted another plastic cup of sweet iced tea. “Right before y’all got here, she was talking to Dad like he was still alive and they’d just got married. It was so sweet. I just wish she could have stayed at that part of her life instead of going back to when the twins died.”

  “Funny,” said Jay-Jay. “I’ve been hearing that story all my life about somebody who bought a bathing suit that got transparent when it got wet, but Mama never said who it was, so I didn’t know that it was Hazel Upchurch or that Uncle Rufus was one of the men who saw her.”

  Daddy grinned. “Me neither. Rufus ever talk about it, Sister?”

  Aunt Sister rolled her eyes, but her daughter Beverly laughed. “He did to me. Told me to always wet a new bathing suit before I wore it in public.”

  Aunt Sister chose to ignore that and gave a disapproving frown as she reached out to adjust Sally’s purple jersey top, which was in danger of slipping off her shoulder entirely.

  We’re all used to Aunt Sister’s prudery and Sally just smiled.

  “What was that about cowbirds and goldfinches?” I asked.

  Aunt Sister frowned and shook her head and Sally didn’t seem to know either.

  Daddy gave a half smile. “Cowbirds don’t build a nest or raise their own chicks. They just lay their eggs in somebody else’s nest. Sounds like she knew somebody that was raising a cowbird.”

  “What I want to know is who was Letha?” asked Sally. “I don’t ever remember hearing that name.”

  “And who was Ransom?” asked Jay-Jay, equally curious.

  Although both had worked alongside their parents on the truck farm and at the vegetable stand, both had left for easier office jobs in Raleigh as soon as they finished high school.

  “Ransom?” Aunt Sister’s wrinkled face softened with a smile. “Your mama had such a crush on him. What was his last name, Kezzie?”

  Daddy cast his mind back over the years. “Barber? Barton? I can’t rightly remember. His people came from Georgia and they moved back after a few years. Barkley?”

  “Barley!” Aunt Sister exclaimed, delighted to have retrieved the name. “And he had a brother named Donald. Nice-looking boys, both of them. I believe their daddy worked as a lineman for the power company so he got moved around right much.”

  Sally spread some chicken salad on a cracker and handed it to her brother. “He was Mama’s boyfriend?”

  “Not really. Rachel was only fourteen that summer and Mammy wouldn’t let us go off in cars till we was sixteen. And then it had to be at least two couples.”

  “Really?” Sally was amused. “Bet if I know Mama, she bent that rule a time or two.”

  “And Mammy bent a peach switch across her legs, but that didn’t stop her from sneaking down to the creek to meet him once in a while.”

  Daddy smiled at Jay-Jay. “If he hadn’t moved back to Georgia, I’m thinking your last name might be Barley now.”

  Aunt Sister shook her head. “Naw, now, don’t you remember? After Jacob drowned, she wouldn’t have nothing to do with any of them boys.”

  “That’s right.” Daddy’s smile faded. “She blamed them ’cause they didn’t save him. Blamed Jed, too, didn’t she?”

  “Blamed who for what, Mr. Kezzie?”

  I turned and saw that Dwight had come in unnoticed.

  “Where’s Cal?” I asked, half expecting to see our son with him.

  “He and Mama went to pick strawberries over at Smith’s Nursery.” Then to the others, “She sent y’all her regards.”

  “You eat yet, Dwight?” asked one of the church women who’s known him since childhood and doesn’t stand on ceremony even though Dwight is now Sheriff Bo Poole’s second-in-command.

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Then you need to let me get you some of my turkey casserole.”

  She bustled off to the buffet and Sally said, “What happened with Dotty Morefield and her brother, Deborah? Did he win?”

  I shook my head and she gave a triumphant fist pump.

  “Why were you and Marillyn Mulholland there? Are y’all friends with Mrs. Morefield?”

  She nodded. “I don’t know her as well as Marillyn and the others do. Her mother died last year before I joined the Daughters, but she still comes by once in a while.”

  “Daughters?” I asked.

  “Designated Daughters,” she said, licking a fleck of chicken salad from fingers that sported bright turquoise nails that matched her leggings.

  She smiled at my look of puzzlement. “They got the name when the first members began meeting at the senior center at least twenty or thirty years ago. It’s stayed the same
even though Charles is a man and Kaitlyn, the one pushing the wheelchair, is a granddaughter and JoAnn’s a niece. Everybody’s a caregiver and we meet to bitch or cry or share ways to cope with the lemons life’s handed some of us.” She patted Jay-Jay’s hand. “Not that this has been a lemon for me. Jay-Jay’s been over every week since Mama’s moved in with me after her first stroke. But some of them—like in court today? Some people don’t want to do anything for their loved one and yet they’re right there with the U-Haul when it’s time to clean out the house. You wouldn’t believe the stories I’ve heard.”

  “Want to bet?” I said, totally jaded after five years on the bench.

  Before either of us could start citing chapter and verse, the aide stopped to tell Sally she would be with Aunt Rachel if they wanted her. She had a piece of pecan pie on a paper plate and took it with her around the corner of the staircase to where the elevator was.

  Sally and I had just seated ourselves near Daddy and Aunt Sister—she with pie, me with a steaming cup of coffee—when we saw the aide reappear at the top of the stairs. She hurried down them, almost stumbling in her haste. Her round face white with shock, she leaned into our group and spoke to my cousins in low urgent tones. “Sally! Jay-Jay! Come quick. Miss Rachel’s dead!”

  “Dead?”

  For a moment, we sat stunned. Less than forty minutes ago, we’d seen her in animated conversation, talking and laughing. True, it was with friends and family long gone, but still…to slip away that quickly?

  Sally grasped my hand to come with them and Daddy rose to his feet to follow, too.

  When we got up to the room, Aunt Rachel’s head lay back against the pillow as if she were still sleeping. Her lips were still now, but there was something odd about her face.

  “What happened to her nose?” asked Sally. “Is that blood?”

  It was as if Aunt Rachel’s nose had slightly collapsed to one side. A hairline trickle of red had seeped from her left nostril and collected in the wrinkles at the base of her nose.