by Amy Sorrells
Rap-rap-rap.
Through the transom, a shadow shifted and light moved. Ernestine turned the knob and cracked the door open a few inches.
“Sorry about that. Come on in.” Comfort’s face was all red and splotchy, like she’d been crying.
“Mushroom, green pepper, and onion. Your favorite,” I said, making my way toward her kitchen with the pizza. The front hall was bright, and a chipped white table, topped with an old lamp shaded with white lace, greeted us. A painting of magnolias bursting out of a basket hung above the fireplace in the front room. Ivory paint covered the walls of every room. Yet despite the brightness, the place smelled empty. Not bad, just musty and unmoving, like a store full of antiques no one had visited or mulled over for a long, long while.
Small, white hexagon tiles covered the kitchen floor, blanketed with red-and-white-checkered rugs. Comfort pulled four pale-blue glass jars out of the cupboard, plunked some ice in them, and poured sweet tea until the ice rose and danced near the top of the glass. As we sipped on our sweet tea, quiet settled among us like the morning fog that hangs between night and a new day. Comfort’s hair, like the sun shining on straw, flowed over her shoulders, and a band of freckles covered her cheeks. Her green eyes, though deep and welcoming like a lake in summer, skirted around us like a cat unused to strangers.
“Thank you.” Comfort took a deep breath and focused on a spot on the floor. “For what you’re trying to do here. Thank you.”
We settled in for pizza and Barbara Mandrell, laughing at the comedy sketches—and the rest of our nutty little town.
“Let’s watch the stars. Want to?” Ernestine suggested before The Love Boat aired. “Those old rockers don’t get enough use. And it’s such a nice evening.”
“Well …” Comfort hesitated. “Okay. Yes, that would be nice.”
“Y’all head on out there. I’ll cook up a pot of popcorn and bring it right out. Got some bacon grease in here, child?”
“In the door of the fridge there. Thanks, Ernestine.”
Comfort grabbed the crocheted shawl from the armchair, and each of us curled up in one of the big wooden rockers rough from peeling periwinkle paint, the same color as the window boxes.
Night turned the whole world velvet. Stars shone brighter. Moonlight bathed our sunburned skin. We rocked and pointed out the few constellations we could remember: Cassiopeia and her upside-down (at least this time of the year) husband, Cepheus; the Big Dipper; the Little Dipper; and Draco. The moon, like a sliver of fingernail, smiled at our efforts to squint out these and the planets like Saturn and Jupiter. I knew one of the big spots on the moon was called the Sea of Tranquility, which is near where the Apollo 11 astronauts landed on the moon. I wondered if our family craziness disappeared if someone were to look down on us from way up there. I imagined myself walking on the silvery surface, and the greatness of space hugging my weary spirit. For the first time since Daddy died, I felt some order around me.
A deep-rumbling car with one burned-out headlight slowed on the road that ran in front of Comfort’s house.
“Comfort! Hey, Comfort! That you?” an unfamiliar, deep voice hollered from the driver’s-side window. The car stopped and idled. In the distance, another pair of lights headed toward us.
“Who’s there?” Mama hollered back.
“Wasn’t talking to you, lady. I said is that Comfort Harlan?” The driver, who appeared to be close to Daddy’s age, pulled the car onto the grass and hopped out of the vehicle. Another man was slumped over, sleeping, in the backseat.
“Jimmy,” Comfort said, taking a step back from the man who came toward us out of the shadows. The edges of his white tank top blew in the wind, and he held a can of beer in one hand.
“It is you, darlin’. Been a long, long time. Didn’t even see you at the funeral. Mighta been nice if you’d shown your face at my best friend’s—your own brother’s—funeral.”
“What do you want?” Comfort backed toward the door.
“Look here, you leave now, understand?” Mama walked toward the man, but he paid her no attention.
A truck pulled to a stop behind Jimmy’s car, and Solly climbed out of the cab.
Hurry, Solly. Please hurry.
“I think you know what I want …”
“That’s enough—get outta here, Jimmy!” Mama yelled, but it didn’t stop him. He came up onto the porch
“Same thing you give all the boys. Same thing you gave your brother all the time. Slut.” Jimmy held on to the l of that awful word with his tongue, slurring it, so it took an extra long time coming out. Then he balled up a wad of spit in his mouth, sending it flying onto Comfort’s cheek.
She crumpled to the floor of the porch like he’d punched her as Solly came flying and pounded a fist into Jimmy’s nose.
Jimmy somersaulted backward into the yard. “Damn you, you son of a—”
“Shut up! You shut your mouth! Don’t you ever come around Comfort again! And if you do, I swear I’ll kill you!” Solly screamed.
“What the—man, settle down. I was just trying to have some fun.” Jimmy wiped his face with his arm. “My face!” he said, his hands and shirt covered in blood.
“You were just getting the hell outta here is what you were doin’! Now git before I sink my boot so far into your rib cage it’ll take half a dozen surgeons to get it out!”
Jimmy scrambled to his feet and ran back to the car, the black night swallowing his car up as fast as it appeared. Solly threw the beer can after him as Comfort buried her face in her skirt. She rocked back and forth, and it took me a minute to figure out if she was humming or mumbling. Then I recognized the song from Sunday school and from what she hummed the night Daddy died:
We are climbing Jacob’s ladder
We are climbing Jacob’s ladder
We are climbing Jacob’s ladder
Children of the Lord.
Solly scooped her up and carried her into the house. Comfort didn’t move or blink. She only stared up at the black velvet night and the stars that shone more dimly and farther away than ever.
“Seyè, gen pitye! What on earth happened to you, child?” Ernestine held the door open as Solly carried Comfort into the house to bed. She hadn’t heard a thing over the sound of all the popping corn. She searched our faces for an answer to her question, but none of us could explain.
Soon enough, Solly was strumming softly on his guitar and talking gently to Comfort from behind the closed door of her bedroom.
“We should leave them be,” said Mama.
“Oui. Let’s go home, child.” Ernestine put her arm around me, and we walked back to the big house. Once we got there, Mama and Ernestine tried to drown out the awfulness of what happened with a new episode of Fantasy Island.
Afterward, since I wasn’t tired, I plopped down on one of the lounge chairs on the back patio, in the middle of Princella’s rose garden, and set about picking the chipped polish off my toenails. Red wheelbarrows, glistening rain, white chickens, and gleaming constellations mixed up in my head, making me seasick, teeter-tottering between the constant struggle to right our wrongs and getting thwacked to the ground again by Princella, the likes of Lorraine Doyle, and loogies from the likes of Jimmy.
The creak of the screen door startled me as Ernestine came out. She pulled a chair up beside me, stuck her nose in the air, closed her eyes, and swayed to some internal song or rhythm. “Ou vle pale osijè de sa? Want to talk about it, child?”
“He called her a slut.” The weight of what Jimmy’d done and the way those ladies at the supermarket spoke tumbled off my chest, and the words splatted like a wet towel at Ernestine’s feet, waiting for her to pick them up and do something with them.
Ernestine shook her head with the shame of it.
“Was she?” I couldn’t help blurting the words out before I could think. I knew what whore meant. I kne
w what Daddy and Qarla told me. But what if Comfort did have sex with boys all over town? What if—with the other secrets in the family—no one talked about this other side of the story and no one wanted to admit it? I jittered all over, fearing how Ernestine would respond to my question. Usually I felt free to ask her anything, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the truth.
She sucked in a breath, and instead of a reprimand, she asked, “What do you think?”
“I don’t know.”
“You think you don’t, but you do, child. Koute kè ou. Listen to your heart. You know.”
“How? I can’t hear anything through this mess.” The sting of anger on my tongue tasted like French fries, too hot and salty, but I couldn’t keep myself from eating more. “Feels like I’m wandering around a graveyard of people who aren’t alive, and every time I think I’ve done something good or we’re on our way to being normal like other families, something like tonight happens. The whole world’s spinning around all normal, ’cept us. So maybe she was a slut. Maybe she did ask for it. Maybe that’s why we’re such a mess, and I can’t make a friend to save my life, and neither can she. All I hear is silence, Ernestine. Silence and my mind screaming with questions. That’s all I hear.”
“Vin isit la ak chita.”
“What?” The more serious she was, the more she spoke in her Haitian tongue, and the more it drove me crazy.
“Sit down in front of me, and let me braid your hair.”
“I don’t want—”
“Sit.”
I knew not to argue with her, so I huffed on over and sat with my back to her. She ran her knobby fingers through my hair and divided it into pieces, followed by the back-and-forth, back-and-forth of the braiding.
“Comfort hummed a song tonight. You know that song?”
“‘Jacob’s Ladder,’” I said. “You used to sing it to me, and we sang it in Sunday school.”
“Mmm-hmm. And do you know what it means?”
“Jacob dreamed about angels going up and down a ladder reaching to heaven. Always reminded me of those escalators at the department stores.”
“Mmm-hmm. And do you know what that means?”
“No.” Good thing she couldn’t see me roll my eyes about the fact I knew I was about to hear her give a sermon. “Ouch!” She’d pulled a strand of my hair too hard.
“Jacob had one of the most messed-up families in the Bible. They was messed up, torn up, and strung out. His mama, Rebekah, was a schemer, and his brother, Esau, was a bitter, jealous man. But Jacob’s father, Isaac, blessed him. That made everyone hate him even more, and left him with no choice. He set out to a new land, which in those days was a big deal. They thought their gods wouldn’t go with them if they left their hometowns. But Jacob’s God—who is the One God and our God—wanted Jacob to know Bondye pa kite pèp li a. He never leaves His people. And He goes right along with them into uncharted territory.”
“What’s that have to do with anything?”
Ernestine wrapped the end of a braid in a rubber band and started in on another row of hair. “Jacob was alone out in the desert. He didn’t have a pillow—just an old stone to rest his head on at night. When he fell asleep in that cold and lonely desert, God came to him in a dream and showed him the angels going back and forth, to and from the earth.”
“I still don’t get it.” I picked at my toenails again.
“Not much to get about it, child. Simply means God comes to us when we’re most alone and got nothing, not a place to lay our heads. Means His angels are always tending to us, taking our pain up to heaven and bringing down peace for our hearts.” She finished another braid. “Look at me.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “Comfort is not and wasn’t ever any of those things that man or anyone else says. She’s alone in a desert, and she can only find cold, hard places to rest. I told you ’bout Jacob so you’d use it to learn to search for your own ladders, places in the clouds where the sky opens up and you can feel the angels pulling pain outta your soul and replacing it with a song. Watch for ladders around Comfort. Look for ladders around your whole family. They’re there. They’re everywhere. If we learn to look. Even in a mess of a situation like this, child, them ladders are everywhere.”
“But, Ernestine—”
“Hush.” She turned my head away from her and began braiding again. “Comfort’s got a battle going on bigger than any of us can help mend, and she’s got to want to get better. She’s got to learn to let the Lord and His angels take her pain. But first, she’s gotta learn to look for the ladders.”
We didn’t say a word, either of us, after that. She kept braiding until my whole head was in cornrows.
I counted the stars again.
And prayed.
That night, when I fell asleep, I dreamed about the graveyard where Daddy lay, shadows of the stones long and wavy, like people reaching toward salvation on those religious TV shows. The trees rattled and whistled an eerie version of “Jacob’s Ladder.” On and on through the rows of stones I walked, looking for ladders, looking for someone.
I found one ladder and tried to climb it, but the rungs broke, every one of them, no matter how high I tried to climb. Legs heavy and my hips stiff, I could barely keep myself standing to take steps. I fell into a big patch of tarry mud, sinking deeper and deeper. The more I kicked back to the surface, the weaker I got. Every time I grasped at the sides for a hard piece of earth, it crumbled, and I sank farther, muck seeping through my clothes and over my chest and up to my neck.
I tried to scream, but nothing came out, and a bony hand covered my mouth, silencing me and pushing me farther into the ground. When I searched for the owner of the hand, I saw Cole’s face from the tombstone laughing and laughing like a madman, like a maniac, hair slicked back with sweat and grave stench, howling so loud the whole world could surely hear it.
Then the other sleeping bodies in the graveyard rose up and laughed too, until the laughter became a haunted song like an organ playing only the black, sharp keys.
Dolo toujou couri lariviere.
“Water always runs to the river.”
CHAPTER 33
Anniston
After Jimmy came by, Comfort quit coming out so much again, except on the occasions she went to work. Solly’s car was often parked at her house, but not near as often as before. He mostly helped in the orchards when he came.
Summer barged in for good, like a boiling pot of okra, fierce and steamy, leaving us feeling slimy and overcooked. One day in early August, Ernestine and I sat under a big oak in the backyard, trying everything we knew to keep cool while pecan pies for the Moonlight and Magnolias Music Festival baked inside. This batch would go in the freezer, along with several other batches made ahead of time, until we thawed ’em out a couple of days before the festival.
“You did a mighty fine job on those pies today, Anni. Bon travay.”
“Thanks.” The hammock I lay on swayed, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Princella and Vaughn’s car rolling down the driveway toward us. They’d been out shopping and who-knows-what that morning.
“Is your mama back from work?” said Princella, looking me over as she exited the car.
“She’s inside resting, ma’am.”
Without hesitating, she walked up to the house, obviously in a huff. Vaughn followed her, nodding to me and Ernestine as he passed.
I leaned over to Ernestine and whispered, “What do you reckon’s wrong now?”
“Lord only knows. Sèlman Bondye konnen.”
My ears tickled trying so hard to hear the conversation inside. “Want some lemonade?” I asked Ernestine.
“Best not go in there, child.”
“I know, but I’m thirsty.” I headed toward the house and heard voices in the kitchen rising as I got closer.
“—doesn’t matter where I go—the Curly Q, post offic
e, Vaughn hears about it at the barber shop.”
“That’s not my concern,” said Mama.
“It oughta be. The Harlans are one of the oldest families in Bay Spring. And I spent years restoring my own personal dignity around here. We cannot allow what happened to Comfort get out, let alone be the topic of conversation at every social and private gathering. No one can ever know about it.”
“How can you say that? People been talking about it nearly a year now. The whole town already knows. It was in the paper. For heaven’s sake, everyone knows it wasn’t toy trucks him and Rey were fighting about.”
Unnoticed, I watched them argue from outside the screen door. Ernestine was right. I didn’t need to bother with getting myself lemonade.
“Cole and Rey were cleaning guns to shoot wild turkey like they did every day after Thanksgiving. An unfortunate mental illness came over Comfort. That’s all the town knows, and I’m here to make sure that’s all they ever know. Vaughn, back me up here.”
“It’s the way it needs to be.” His shoulders slumped, and he would not meet Mama’s eyes.
“The town knows everything, Princella. They always have. Surely you know that. Pretending something different happened doesn’t help anybody. Especially Anni.”
“In that case, you’re free to find your own place to live. Free to give up Rey’s rights to the plantation.”
Mama slammed her hand on the counter. “Princella, I hope you rot—”
Solly interrupted Mama before she could finish cursing. He burst through the front door and screamed, “Oralee! You here, Oralee? I need help!”
Fear emptied me of heat and filled me up with cold panic at the level of alarm in his voice. I pulled the screen door open as he ran into the kitchen, a dark red swath of blood staining his torn-up, sweat-soaked shirt. His chest heaved like a colt after a race.
“What is it, Solly?”
“It’s Comfort. Come quick! She’s in a bad way, and I need help. Vaughn—call an ambulance, now!”
