Mama Stalks the Past

by Nora Deloach

  When we got to my apartment, Cliff swept me up in his arms and carried me through the front door and straight to the couch.

  Despite the coldness of the night, the wine had warmed me. Cliff’s breath tickled my ear and I started laughing. His arms tightened around me, pulling me closer; I felt locked in a tight cocoon, safe and protected. Murder seemed very far away.

  Through the fabric of my dress, I felt his large hands on my back, warm, strong, pressing me into him. I caught a hint of his scent, and when he kissed me, I tasted wine.

  The phone rang. I jumped in Cliff’s arms. Instinctively, I opened my eyes and reached for the receiver.

  Cliff’s embrace didn’t loosen. “Don’t answer it,” he murmured.

  “It could be an emergency,” I protested.

  “So what?” he said carelessly.

  Again I reached for the receiver, but when Cliff touched my hand, I stopped. Three more rings and the answering machine picked up. My father’s frightened voice filled the room.

  “Simone, for God’s sake, if you’re there, pick up the phone!”

  I squirmed away from Cliff, ignoring his scowl, and snatched up the receiver. “Calm down, Daddy. What’s the matter?” As I listened, my stomach began hurting, a pain that moved from the top to the bottom like somebody had a knife in my gut. “Okay, we’ll be there as soon as we can,” I said, then gently put the phone back onto its receiver. My hands were icy cold and trembling.

  Cliff gave me a direct look, his brown eyes soft, gentle. “What’s wrong? Simone, what’s happened?”

  “Mama has been poisoned,” I whispered, unable to believe my own words.

  Cliff’s eyebrow arched, his mouth opened.

  “She’s in Otis General Hospital fighting for her life,” I told him.

  CHAPTER

  TEN

  This drive to Otis was eerie. Like some kind of twisted nightmare. At times I had the feeling Cliff’s car was standing still, with the lights zooming by as we stayed motionless in the road. We hit Interstate 20, heading east toward Augusta. The wind hissed across the highway. I shivered and hunched my shoulders, trying to work things through my mind.

  We must have passed twenty ten-wheelers, but the big trucks stayed to the right and none followed us when we pulled off onto 125, the highway that took us through the Savannah River Plant. I watched the sky. The clouds whipped overhead like black ships. The full moon slid between them, disappearing, then peeking out again. I shivered.

  “Why would anybody want to kill Mama?” I asked Cliff.

  “We’ll find out,” he said.

  “I keep seeing it in my mind,” I said. “Mama doubling over in pain.”

  He was silent as I spoke, watching me. “Miss Candi is a strong woman. She’ll be all right.”

  Neither of us talked after that. A wintry gust nudged the little car, and I wondered what my father would do if Mama died. The thought made me shudder. I was scared. I folded my arms against my chest and stared out the window.

  We finally reached Boldercrest. I glanced at my watch. One A.M. Why poison Mama? This whole business had turned crazy. It had to be that Mixon land, that cursed soil that someone thought more of than life or death. Why hadn’t she gotten rid of it, I thought in despair. “Whatever Calvin had to do to influence Judge Thompson, he’d do it,” I said, not realizing I’d spoken aloud.

  “What?” Cliff asked, confused.

  My thoughts were moving like a freight train. “No amount of dirt is worth my Mama’s life.”

  Cliff touched my arm. “You’re right,” he said.

  When Cliff and I finally reached the hospital, he dropped me off at the front entrance. I ran inside to find my father. He was in the intensive care unit, standing in the hall like a lost child.

  I took a deep breath to steady myself. The smell of antiseptic stung my nostrils. As I walked toward him, I thought that he looked older, wearier; my heart twisted at the thought that for once he was having to take care of Mama. “Is she going to be okay?” I asked, hugging him.

  “I don’t know,” he said hoarsely. I wondered if he’d been crying.

  It’s difficult for me to say exactly the way I felt now, having to face the possibility of Mama dying. I remembered how she and I talked earlier, remembered how she told me that there was no way to prepare for death. My world had never felt so vulnerable. So scary.

  A doctor came over to speak to us. He said his name was DeFoe. He led us to some chairs near a window and asked us to sit down. “We’ve done all that we can do,” he told us. Cliff, who had joined us, took my hand. He held it tight.

  “Is she going to be all right?” Daddy asked.

  “You’re her husband?” the doctor asked.

  Daddy nodded.

  The doctor was a dumpy-looking man, soft and pale and too heavy, going bald, short of breath. He looked out of tired brown eyes, showing no reaction at all to our pain. “It appears that your wife has been poisoned,” he said.

  Daddy nodded.

  “The sheriff will want to talk with you.”

  Daddy took a deep breath. “I’ll talk to Abe later,” he told the doctor. “Right now I want to know about Candi. Will she be okay?”

  Dr. DeFoe didn’t answer his question. “From her symptoms, we suspect she ingested poison, some form of arsenic, but we won’t be certain until after we get lab results. We’ve pumped her stomach. We’re sending her stomach contents to the state lab in Columbia. They’ll tell us exactly what the poison was.”

  Daddy’s hand trembled; beads of sweat were on his forehead. “Will Candi be okay?” he repeated.

  “She’s in a coma. We’ll know more tomorrow,” the doctor said wearily, then got up and plodded away, his shoulders hunched against the unending misery of his chosen profession.

  Daddy watched the doctor go out of sight. “That’s what I hate about hospitals, doctors. They don’t know nothing and they don’t tell you anything.”

  Cliff put his arm around my shoulders and together we followed my father down a corridor. Doctors, nurses, and orderlies walked past. No one seemed to notice us.

  We found a soft drink machine. Standing at the machine with his back to us, Daddy pulled wildly at the levers. “I can’t get this damn thing to work,” he muttered.

  “I’ll do it,” Cliff said, taking the dollar from Daddy’s hand and turning George Washington’s face the proper way. “Diet Coke?” he asked.

  Daddy reached into his inside coat pocket and fished out a pack of chewing gum. “I don’t drink or eat anything diet,” he said.

  I couldn’t bear to wait any longer. “Tell me what happened.”

  Daddy cleared his throat. His eyes were bleary. “Simone, honey, I’m not sure of what happened. This is what I do know. Around five o’clock Candi called me from her office. She told me she had to stop by the hospital before she could get home for supper. Somebody had reported that a child had been taken to the hospital. The child had signs of abuse.”

  I glanced up and down the hallway. Being here like this made me feel strange, nauseated and dizzy as if I hadn’t eaten all day.

  “Go on, Mr. James,” Cliff encouraged.

  “Candi is the Case Manager who’s on twenty-four-hour duty this week, so she was the one who had to investigate.” Daddy faltered.

  My skin tightened. I searched Daddy’s face for something that made sense of what had happened.

  Daddy shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “When Candi got here at the hospital, there was confusion. Nobody knew anything about an abused child. Candi telephoned me again. She told me to put the baked beans with beef casserole into the oven because she was coming home. Simone, that was the last time I spoke to your mother.” He hesitated. “The rest is what I got from Gertrude. She talked to the people here at the hospital for me.”

  He continued. “Martha Furman, the admission clerk, told Gertrude that Candi came in around five-fifteen saying that the agency had gotten a report that an abused child had been brought in
to the hospital. Martha made a few phone calls but she couldn’t find anybody who knew anything about the child. Martha told Candi that there was no report of an incident. Your mother seemed satisfied. Martha saw Candi leave the hospital. An hour later, Candi returned. She told Martha that she was convinced that an abused child was in the hospital and that she wasn’t going to leave until she found the child.”

  “Sounds like my determined mother,” I said.

  Daddy nodded. “Bowie Thomas, an orderly, told Gertrude that he saw Candi in the hospital parking lot around five-thirty. He remembers because he’d gone out there for a cigarette break. Bowie told Gertrude that Candi was talking to a woman.”

  My heart quickened. “What woman?” I asked.

  “Bowie said he didn’t recognize the woman. She was wearing a coat, and had on a hat. He does remember that she had on white shoes, so he thought maybe she worked here at the hospital.”

  Daddy took another shuddery breath. He pointed toward the corridor that led to the Emergency Room. “Gertrude says that Velma Pickens, the Emergency Room nurse, remembers that Candi came into the ER around six-twenty asking about an abused child.”

  “So, in the hour that Mama first arrived, she talked to Martha, left the hospital, where Bowie saw her talking to the woman in the parking lot, returned to talk to Martha again and finally ended up in the Emergency Room talking to Velma. Is that right?” I asked.

  Daddy nodded. “As far as I know, that is what happened.”

  “Did anybody see Mama leave the hospital a second time?”

  Daddy looked down at the untouched soda can in his hand. “No. Martha told Gertrude she didn’t see Candi leave again, but she did say she felt that Candi had finally given up her search for the child and had gone home. She said she was surprised when she learned that Candi was in the Emergency Room complaining of dizziness and pains in her stomach.”

  I patted Daddy’s arm. “We’ll find out what happened, and we’ll find the person who—”

  “Why would anybody try to kill Miss Candi in a hospital, where she could get medical attention immediately?” Cliff asked. His tone was urgent.

  “That’s a good question.” The deep frown between Daddy’s eyebrows gave him the appearance of being older than he was. “But when I get my hands on the s.o.b. who did this to Candi, I’ll—” He turned away.

  “Take it easy,” I whispered, hoping to calm both of us. I thought about my brothers; they would have to be told. “Did you call Will and Rodney?”

  Daddy was silent and I could see that he was scared stiff of the thought of Mama’s dying. Not calling my brothers meant not having to acknowledge how ill she was. “I’ll call them tomorrow.” He said it curtly.

  “How much of what happened are you going to tell them?”

  I looked at Cliff; his question surprised me. Why wouldn’t we tell my brothers everything?

  “If my guess is right, Will and Rodney are going to want to know who poisoned Miss Candi, who hated her enough to want her dead,” Cliff went on. “For them to understand what has happened here, you’re going to have to tell them about Miss Hannah’s and Nat’s deaths.”

  For an instant, I felt funny, like somebody was staring at me from a distance. Would whoever had murdered the Mixons add my Mama to his list of victims?

  Daddy’s skin was gray. “The doctor said he thought she’d been given arsenic. Abe told Candi that the lab reports showed that both Nat and Miss Hannah were poisoned with arsenic,” he said.

  I tried to say something to him, then crossed my arms in front of me, trying to control what felt like a tumor blossoming in my chest, pushing my lungs and taking up the space they needed to breathe so that I had to gasp out loud to fill them with air. When I couldn’t hold on any longer, I started to cry, feeling oddly uncomforted by my father’s trembling embrace.

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  Nights and days inside hospitals are too much alike. The hours blurred. Saturday morning. Saturday night. There was no change in Mama’s condition. She remained in a coma.

  Sarah Jenkins, Annie Mae Gregory, and Carrie Smalls visited, stopping by the room. I tried not to show my resentment. Their display of concern was only a ploy to be the first to get information about Mama’s condition. Fortunately, other friends from Otis came by, too. Daddy wouldn’t talk to them. It was my job to keep them from gawking at Mama like she was some sort of sleeping beauty. Sheriff Abe visited, too. He stood for a long time, looking down at Mama. Then he promised Daddy he would find out whoever had done this to Mama and left.

  Mama’s room was large and sunny, a long rectangle that had another bed in it. The second bed was unoccupied. My father used the other bed whenever he felt the need, but the truth is he didn’t sleep much.

  Neither did I. I pulled a chair close beside Mama and took her hand in mine; it felt soft and warm, as if nothing were really wrong with her. But her forehead was damp with sweat, her breathing rasped. This whole evil thing felt like an illusion, a deceitful maze of events that must have a way out. Who’d try to murder Mama? A serial killer? In Otis? It didn’t seem possible. Some psychopath who got a kick out of poisoning innocent people? What could be behind Miss Hannah’s and Nat’s deaths? Was Mama, even unconscious, still in terrible danger? Suddenly it hit me. The thought came like a thunderbolt. Could Miss Hannah have known that somebody would kill for her land? Is that why she had entrusted it to Mama?

  Daddy slept restlessly in the other bed. A nurse came into the room. She had a fifty-year-old face and a twenty-five-year-old body. Her uniform seemed perfumed with the sour smell of antiseptic. She nodded at me, but said nothing.

  Silent, she walked around Mama’s bed and checked the electronic gadgets that monitored Mama’s vital signs. Then she made a few notes and left the room. I moved closer to my mother, holding her hand tightly in mine. Please get well, Mama, I prayed. Please.

  Cliff came into the room, and for a while watched me watch Mama. Then, he asked me to come outside with him. I didn’t want to leave Mama but he reminded me that with my father asleep in the next bed, the odds of anybody doing anything to Mama were remote. Still, I didn’t want to leave. Finally, Cliff coaxed me by insisting that I needed a break and some food. I squeezed Mama’s hand and whispered my promise to be back soon.

  Five minutes later, we sat in the lobby. Cliff had bought us coffee.

  “When I telephoned Sidney,” Cliff said, reminding me that it was he who had called my boss and told him of Mama’s situation, “I got the impression that he wanted to speak to you directly.”

  “Sidney called me,” I said. “I spoke to him yesterday. I couldn’t tell him any more than you could. I promised him that if Mama makes any change, I’d call him again.” I sipped my coffee and watched Cliff eat. The coffee was dreadful. “Nat said something,” I recalled.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Nat said the person who hit him over the head had a funny smell.”

  Cliff’s eyebrow rose. “Did he say what kind of a smell?”

  “No. What made me think about it was that nurse who came into Mama’s room a few minutes ago.”

  “Why?”

  “Nurses … Doctors … Hospital workers smell funny, don’t you think?”

  Cliff frowned.

  “It’s the soap they wash with so many times a day. After a while, they smell like it’s coming from their pores,” I said.

  “You think somebody from the hospital attacked Nat?”

  “And maybe poisoned his mother, poisoned him and—” I stopped short.

  “There are other smells that I would consider funny other than the soap that hospital workers use to scrub themselves,” Cliff objected.

  “My cousin Gertrude told Daddy that the woman that orderly saw talking to Mama in the parking lot might have been a hospital worker. Remember, she had on white shoes? The lab report confirmed that arsenic poisoned Mama. A hospital worker could easily get arsenic, don’t you think?”

  “Simone,” Cliff
said. “I know you’re upset but you’ve got to approach this thing with logic. First of all, even if it was arsenic Miss Candi ingested, we don’t know how she got the poison.”

  “Okay,” I said. “But if Mama was given arsenic, the same kind of poison that killed Miss Hannah and Nat. A hospital worker could have easily given it to all three of them, don’t you think?”

  “Working in a hospital makes certain poisons easily accessible, yes,” Cliff agreed. “And I remember reading that during the 1800s and 1900s doctors used arsenic to treat syphilis, but I doubt they use it anymore. Arsenic’s probably too old-fashioned to use as a medicine these days.”

  “I’ll ask Gertrude,” I said.

  Cliff must have noted the chill in my tone. He touched my hand. “Simone, it didn’t have to come from a hospital. You can get arsenic from other places easily,” he pointed out.

  “What other places?” I asked, unconvinced.

  “A hardware store,” he said. “People still use it to kill rats.”

  I shuddered, then drank the last sip of coffee. It tasted distinctly different from the ones Mama perked. Tears stung my eyes.

  Mama opened her eyes at exactly six o’clock Sunday morning, thirty-six hours after she’d mysteriously slipped into a coma. Cliff and I had just talked my father into going home. We were expecting my two brothers to arrive any minute. Daddy needed a shave, and a change of clothes. When he balked, Cliff volunteered to drive him to the house and promised Daddy that he’d make me do the same thing later that afternoon. I kissed them both good-bye and once again took the chair close to Mama’s bed.

  For the first time since I had arrived, I was alone at Mama’s side. I closed my eyes and prayed. “James,” a voice whispered, so softly that I almost couldn’t hear it. “James …” I rushed into the lobby in time to catch Daddy and Cliff before they had gotten out of the door. “Daddy, she’s asking for you!” I cried.

  Seconds later, Daddy was at Mama’s side. “Candi,” he whispered in a voice I’d never heard before. “You’re going to be all right, baby, you’re going to be all right!”