How Sweet the Sound

by Amy Sorrells

  Comfort tugged at the corner of her bedsheet. “I know. I’m sorry it came to this. I am.” Tears puddled in the bottoms of her eyes.

  “We’re the ones who are sorry, Comfort. We shoulda been doing more to help you—more to help you get help.”

  “Wasn’t nothing you coulda done. I’ve been so tired. Tired of living with a fog of sadness I can’t climb out of. Tired of the stares of folks in town, Jimmy, mamas grabbing their children’s hands and pulling them close when I pass them in the grocery, everyone in town acting like I have something contagious.” She pulled another handful of tissues out of the box and sopped up her nose and eyes.

  “But, Comfort, none of that’s true.” Mama’s voice cracked. “And even if folks have perceptions, you don’t have to own ’em. It’s time to start fighting, taking back the life that belongs to you. This whole family wronged you by being so afraid. We allowed Princella to stuff you into a pit.”

  “A miry pit,” said Ernestine.

  “It’s not your fault, Oralee. After everything happened, I got so tired of surviving. I wasn’t, really. People think death happens when someone’s heart stops beating, but I know a soul can leave a person while they’re still breathing, and you can walk around soulless and empty.”

  Mama wiped her eyes. “I’m tired, too, Comfort. I’m tired, too.”

  “Ladders, children. Look for the ladders.” Ernestine stared out the window at nothing in particular, then got up and sat next to Comfort on the bed. She held Comfort’s other hand. “Bote pou sann dife,” she said. “From Isaiah 61. You feel like the life you been living ended when Cole hurt you—and parts of it probably did—but the Lord has ways of making endings turn into beginnings. You have to help Him out, though. Like the paralyzed man who came to see Jesus for healing, the Lord healed him. He sure did. But then Jesus said to him—”

  “‘Pick up your mat.’” Solly finished the sentence for her.

  “‘Ranmase nat ou.’ Carry that burden and give it to Jesus and then go—go down the new road He has for you and look for the ladders along the way. Nechèl.”

  “I don’t know if I can.”

  “We know,” said Ernestine. “Your friends and family. Reach down in your sweet heart to the places Jesus holds in His nail-scarred hands—places can’t no one touch but Him. Those places are safe. Those places are whole. Take power of the Holy Spirit from those places, and you will see He will form you into something new and strong.”

  A nurse stepped around us, took Comfort’s blood pressure, and gave her a couple of pills.

  “What are they giving you?” Mama leaned toward the bed to get a good look.

  “Dr. Howard—do you know him?—he started me on something called tricyclic antidepressants.”

  “I do know Dr. Howard. Greg. He consults on a lot of the patients who come through the ED and on the floors. He’s exceptional. And he’s constantly reading the latest journals for the latest treatments.”

  “He told me about group therapy, too. A whole group of people who’ve been hurt like me meet every week. He thinks it would help me to know I’m not alone in what I’ve been through. Do you really think there are others like me—enough of them to form a whole group like that?”

  “I know there are. After they’ve been hurt, some come to the ED for help. Other times, in the middle of the night when I’m talking to a patient, they’ll tell me how their father or grandfather, an uncle or family friend, did unimaginable things to them.” Mama choked up again. “No, Comfort, you are so not alone.”

  “Mama, she’s always made fun of her friends who go to therapy, like it’s a disease or something to laugh at. Says family problems should stay in the family. I never thought about talking to anyone about it.” Comfort fiddled with the ends of the ties on the thick, new bathrobe we brought her.

  Ernestine stroked the hand Solly wasn’t holding. “Gettin’ help is anything but weak, child. Gettin’ help is for the strong. Hiding and pretending something never happened is the worst thing of all.”

  Comfort sat up straighter in bed and pushed a stray piece of hair off her forehead. “Dr. Howard said my trauma is a lot like what war vets go through, that trauma mixes up the way all the chemicals and nerves work in the brain. There’s a brand-new name for it. I can’t remember—”

  “Post-traumatic stress disorder?” Mama asked.

  “That’s it. Some depression, too.”

  I thought about Larry and the way he’d been since he came back from Vietnam.

  “Explains why you’re so jumpy,” said Solly.

  “Yeah. Dr. Howard says without medicine taking the edge off my fear, healing’s even harder. But maybe with medicine and help … maybe I can?”

  “Sounds like Dr. Howard gave you a good dose of hope, child.”

  Comfort sat back. “Yes. Yes, I think he did.”

  On the way out of the hospital, we passed Princella and Vaughn coming in. Princella held a vase full of roses from her garden.

  Ernestine leaned close to Mama and whispered in her ear. “Don’t you say nothin’, Oralee.”

  Mama huffed in protest, but when we got close, she politely said hello.

  “Oralee. Anniston. Ernestine.” Princella nodded at us, and Vaughn threw a chewed-up cigar in the bushes. Princella’s hair was done up fancy like she came fresh from the Curly Q.

  “Thank God Solly’s in there with her,” Mama said after we got far enough away from them.

  “Amen.”

  Men Anpil fè chay la pi lejè.

  “Many hands make the load lighter.”

  CHAPTER 39

  Anniston

  That next Monday, I woke up extra early. I’m not sure if something woke me, or if worrying about the approaching end of summer churned me awake. Molly followed me out to the front porch, where I rocked and waited for the newspaper to come. Steam rose from Solly’s Styrofoam Tom Thumb cup of coffee as he sauntered up to our house. The edge of the sky turned from gold to the pale blue of angel wings as he sat in the rocker next to me, and our chairs creaked in similar rhythm.

  “Summer’s ending soon,” I said as a sliver of sun slipped into view.

  Solly studied his coffee, then turned the corner of his eye toward me. “Yeah. I can’t believe it’s the end of August.”

  “Comfort’s coming home soon.”

  He sighed and focused on stirring his coffee. “Yep.”

  “What are you gonna do now?”

  “You sure don’t ease into a subject, do ya, little lady?”

  “I s’pose not. I’m sorry.” I curled my ankles around the legs of the rocker and slumped down, realizing I was prying.

  “Aw, it’s okay. A tough thing to talk about.”

  I tried to keep quiet and wait for him to do the talking. I picked at the fuzzies on my nightshirt while I waited for him to go on.

  “Always did have an eye for Comfort. But it wasn’t until I was about your age that I fell hard for her. She helped at the Crab Shack snack counter, and I brought my allowance to buy snacks from her while my daddy worked on his shrimp boat down at the docks. Once we got to know each other better, she’d go on break when I came, and we’d have a cola together. Her and I, we stayed together through high school, and then we went to the local technical college together too. Her for beauty school. Me for landscaping. Been through a lot, me and her.”

  Sadness fell over his face as he gazed across the meadow toward Comfort’s house. His eyes were so blue, Comfort must’ve nearly drowned in them. “When I got my manager job at the Proper Petal, I asked Vaughn for Comfort’s hand. Never thought that would make Cole—that it would mean the end—”

  “None of us thought any of this would mean all it has.” I put my finger up to the scar on my cheek.

  “I’m so sorry, Anni.”

  “Ain’t nothin’ now. Hurts more on the inside.”
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  “Yeah. Yeah, I bet it does. And I know what you mean.”

  “So did you and Comfort split up? She’s been lettin’ you visit her.” The knot in my belly tightened, wondering if I pushed for too much information again. But he answered quick.

  “Yes and no.” He punched a pattern in the lip of his foam coffee cup.

  “Are you still engaged?”

  The jaw muscles on the sides of his face hardened as he frowned. “No. Not officially. But I’d marry her still, today.” A tear as big as a fly plunked into his coffee, and he set his cup down to rub his eyes. “She sent her ring back to me.”

  “What?”

  “She sent her engagement ring back to me. Right before she cut herself. Postman delivered it the day after she went in the hospital. She put a note in there telling me to move on, that I needed to find someone else whole and unbroken. Someone who wasn’t so dirty. That’s the word she used, dirty.” He put his face in his hands, and the rocking chair squeaked beneath him.

  That was it, then? It was over? Me and Jed were over. Solly and Comfort were over. Would it stop being the end of things? Or was that all life was, a bunch of endings?

  “Mama said she’s coming home next week.”

  He sat back in his rocker and dried his eyes. “Yeah.”

  Surely there was something we could do to move or at least change the direction of the storm hanging forever over our heads. And if I couldn’t change Jed’s decision about us, maybe I could do something to help change the course of things for Comfort and Solly. “Maybe y’all aren’t having a wedding. But maybe we can do something to celebrate, just the same.”

  “I don’t know, Anni. I just don’t know.” He used a lot of effort to push himself up out of the chair and then plodded toward the orchards.

  Se kouto sèlman ki konnen sa ki nan kè yanm.

  “Only the knife knows what is in the yam’s heart.”

  CHAPTER 40

  Comfort

  “I was supposed to get married.” I hardly believe I speak, since I promised myself beforehand I wouldn’t say a word. I might be required to attend the support group for abuse and rape survivors before the hospital will release me, but I don’t have to like it. Maintaining a regular schedule of meals, one-on-one counseling, and journaling—those parts get easier every day. But the support-group counseling—I dreaded that from the first time they mentioned it.

  By this time, the hospital lets me wear my own clothes. I pull my oversize cardigan around me tighter and sink into my chair, cheeks pinking with the heat that comes with revealing more of myself than I intended.

  “Oh, honey chil’.” The woman next to me, a black woman about Oralee’s age and three times as big around, shakes her head with sympathy. The Tab T-shirt she wears strains to cover her enormous bosom. I can’t help wonder what happened to her as she holds out a box of tissues toward me. “I’m Maelle.”

  “Comfort,” I say, reaching for the tissues, grateful to sop up the trail of tears that have hardly stopped since I first looked at my scars. They say that happens—once the scab of pain’s picked off, the weeping comes for a long, long while.

  I wonder about everyone there, same as they must wonder about me. They didn’t call it a rape-survivor group for nothing. Thirty minutes into my first meeting, and my preconceptions about what it would be like are blown away. The metal folding chairs I was sure underprivileged, uneducated, pitiful women would sit in instead fill with faces I recognize. Faces I know. The cashier, Sammy, who works the Piggly Wiggly registers in the early mornings, for instance. She sits across from me, still wearing her work clothes.

  “I wanted to say somethin’ to you all those times you came in the store. But you weren’t ready. And if there’s one thing I learned, you gotta be ready to talk,” she says as soon as I sit down.

  I wonder if this is a group Wynn Culpepper, the girl from the salon, might need someday, same as Cindy Peabody, salutatorian of the high school when I was a freshman. Cindy, sitting next to Sammy, leans down and occupies her toddler, a little boy in denim overalls named Charlie, playing at her feet and chewing on a wooden train engine. “I’m here ’cause I had a nervous breakdown a month after Charlie was born. Didn’t remember anything about my life before the age of ten, but it all came flooding back. My stepdaddy molested me for eight years back then. Mama kicked him out last year after I got up the courage to tell her.”

  Not everyone is as forthcoming about their trauma, including me. All I can tell them is I was supposed to marry Solly.

  “Do you love him?” The woman on the other side leans closer to me. I recognize her as a long-time client of Qarla’s. She had a recent affair with the mayor, if I remember the gossip correctly. Lives alone in a gigantic house on the bay—gated driveway and everything. Her jet-black hair is done up like Jackie Kennedy’s, oversize sunglasses perched on top, and she wears a white tennis skirt, a bright-pink polo shirt with the collar standing up, and a green sweater around her shoulders, its sleeves tied in a loose knot.

  “Vicki, our new guest might not be ready to answer questions yet.” The group leader, Connie, comes to my rescue. She’s an older woman, graying blonde hair pinned in a loose bun, spectacles dangling from her neck. I admire her flax-colored, embroidered kaftan, topped off with a floor-length cardigan draping beneath her and puddling onto the floor.

  “All I mean is if she loves him, she shouldn’t give up on that,” Vicki says to Connie. Then she turns back to me. “Honey, you can get better. Healin’s possible. So if it’s true love, don’t give that up.”

  I consider her encouragement. I do love Solly. I don’t want to give him up. I didn’t know how I’d live without him before all this mess. And if I did feel like answering Vicki, I’d tell her I can’t imagine living without him, still.

  “Sorry I’m late, guys—” the dark-haired beauty bursting into the room stops short when she sees me.

  Mandy Appleton.

  I drop my eyes, unable to look at this girl who said she wanted to be like me. How could I have known how alike we already were?

  She takes a seat on the other side of Maelle. I see her trying to meet my eyes and smile, but I keep my head down.

  The group breaks up after an hour of introductions and folks sharing progress, setbacks, and tears. As I head back to my hospital room and the others head toward the lobby, I feel like a seagull lighting off the end of a dock. Because while it might be a while before I share more, I have learned two very important things today: that everyone around me, and especially the most unlikely ones, carries her own heavy burden.

  And that I am not alone.

  Wè jodi-a, men sonje denmen.

  “See (live) today, but think about tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER 41

  Anniston

  Took some convincing to talk Mama and Ernestine into having a homecoming for Comfort, but once they agreed, we took to planning the best, Southern-fried celebration ever. We didn’t want to overwhelm her, so we kept it to our family and Solly, who, although hesitant, agreed.

  First, we cleaned her little cottage from top to bottom. Ernestine washed and pressed the bedding and curtains. Mama and I scrubbed the kitchen and bathroom with lemon-scented cleaner and followed up by rubbing down the furniture with lemon oil. We cut the prettiest flowers from the garden—verbena, magnolias, carnations, and baby’s breath, jasmine and lavender. Then we stuffed them into vases and jars, buckets and pots all around the house. The ceiling fans whirred, and a bay breeze floated through the windows, opened as wide as we could get them. Vaughn came by to fix a few inside light fixtures and fill the gas porch lanterns outside too.

  Out on the patio, Mama taught me how to make string lamps by dipping crochet string in glue and wrapping it around a balloon, which we popped after the string dried. We were covered in glue by the time we were done. Ernestine used her paints to give the string balls s
ome color when the light shone through them after we attached them to the string of white Christmas lights. Candles flickered everywhere, on the table and floating in a glass punch bowl full of water. Luminaries in brown paper bags lined both sides of the garden paths.

  Mama brought over her antique collection of rose china. None of the patterns matched, but when put together, they turned the table into a harmony of color like a garden itself. Solly picked the menu and brought the food. He said he might’ve liked to be a chef if he hadn’t heard the Lord calling him to landscaping. On an old chalkboard borrowed from the Proper Petal, he wrote the menu and placed it on an easel in Comfort’s front entryway, so she’d see it first thing:

  slaw dogs

  red potato salad with Creole mustard

  biscuits and honey

  pan-fried sweet corn

  PEACH-PECAN pie

  homemade ice cream

  fresh-squeezed lemonade

  And of course, we would play music. Solly brought his guitar. Ernestine brought out her squeezebox, and she let me use her frottoir. I brought Daddy’s fixed-up guitar, so I could join in with the few chords I’d learned since my birthday. And Mama brought a tambourine and a couple of old bongo drums, so whoever had an extra hand used those to keep the beat.

  By the time we organized everything, I don’t know if we were more scared or excited for Comfort to come home. Solly went to pick her up, and waiting for them to come home felt like waiting for Christmas morning. The only guests who didn’t come were Princella and Vaughn. Princella had a headache, and though Vaughn said he wanted to stay—which part of me thought he genuinely did—he stayed home to take care of her.

  It was just as well. Comfort was pale, her face drawn, and circles shadowed her eyes as she climbed out of Solly’s truck cab. Solly’s hand rested on the small of her back as she held up her long, patchwork skirt to climb the whitewashed, front porch steps. With each one, Comfort’s cheeks pinked up and puddles of tears began to rim her bottom eyelids. Still, her voice sounded small, timid. “Hi, everybody.”