Cranberry Winter

by Ruth P. Watson

  “You never had to share. You just aren’t cut out for my lifestyle. One of these days you might come back to me. When you do, I will be waiting.”

  I thought about Simon all the way to the train station. Several times, I stopped to turn around and go back to the jailhouse. I didn’t know what I was going to say, but I felt awful for divorcing him without notice. What could he have done anyway? I thought.

  Before I left, Robert whimpered when I dropped him off at the Halls. Mrs. Hall kissed him and quieted him down, and then she warned me that it wouldn’t be easy to say goodbye to Simon, either. She was right. He was still my knight in shining armor and seemingly, Nadine’s too.

  When I sat down, put my head back, and closed my eyes on the train, Nadine’s old man tapped me on the shoulder. “I heard about Simon,” he said. “I’m glad he is where he belongs. You are too good of a girl for him.”

  I forced a grin. “What did he do to you?”

  “He was messing around with my lady. He kept coming over there, handing her money.”

  I nodded. “Oh, okay,” I mumbled. For some reason, I was numb. What he said did not bother me at all. I assumed telling me was a way for him to move forward.

  Before he walked away, he said, “If you need anyone to talk to, I’ll be right here.”

  I nodded, and closed my eyes.

  It amazed me how the summer and fall had come and gone and now the branches were bare again, the wind swirling as if snow was not far away. I had witnessed yet another murder, and perhaps my husband had been the one who did it, yet he would not say. I learned I had two stepchildren and had gotten a divorce, all in less than a year.

  I had not seen Adam since our encounter at the sandwich shop. I was certain he had moved on with his life. The girl he was with seemed to have his attention. I was sure he was not thinking about me anymore. After all, I couldn’t involve him in my problems. Time had a way of helping to sort out the troubles and kinks in life. I had taken more than enough time.

  All sorts of thoughts came into my mind as I walked toward the boardinghouse. When I opened the door to the house, Miriam, David and Adam were leaving. They were giggling and acting like teenagers. “You’re back,” Adam said. He was dressed in a wool scarf and coat and Miriam had a cloak around her shoulders. It was chilly. He grabbed my bag from my hand and headed up the stairs to our room.

  Miriam stood on the stairs smiling. “We were just talking about you. You have a lot of work to catch up on.”

  “I’ve only been away a week.”

  “It is finals, and we have a lot of homework.”

  I had been reading every night. It had been a soothing way to take my mind off what was going on around me. I was certain I was on top of things at school.

  “I’ve been studying,” I said, and started up the stairs.

  “I put your bag at the door,” Adam said, coming down the stairs.

  I had taken deliberate steps to avoid him at school. I’d go around the building and come in the side entrance to avoid going past the classroom he usually taught in. I knew his schedule and had figured out ways to make myself scarce. Seeing him in front of me on the stairs brought back all the happy thoughts of my times with Adam. And it was hard to keep from smiling at the sight of him.

  “You seem happy,” Adam said, grinning from ear to ear.

  “I am,” I said, returning the gesture.

  “Why don’t you go with us to the sandwich shop? We thought we’d get a bite to eat before nightfall.”

  “Are you all meeting anyone else?”

  Before anyone else could answer, Miriam said, “No, it is just the three of us, and if you come, it will be four. We are celebrating the end of the term.”

  “It is not over yet. I’ll be right back,” I said, going up the stairs. I went into the bathroom and freshened up. I brushed my teeth and patted my hair in place. Then I came back down the stairs. All three of them were sitting in the parlor watching the sparks from the wood burning in the fireplace float in the air and fall as ash.

  Miriam glanced over at David. “It is so romantic down here.”

  David was quiet. He reached over and grabbed her hand. I sat down beside them and gazed at the burning wood too. Adam sat in the chair in front of me.

  “I’m so glad to see you,” he said. “It has been months since we’ve seen each other.”

  “I know,” I said, staring into the fire.

  Miriam said, “You know, we could have something to eat here. I made a cranberry loaf the other night. It is in the icebox.” She got up from the davenport and went in the kitchen. I followed right behind her. I made black tea with honey and Miriam warmed up the bread in the oven before slicing it. After we put everything together, we invited the men into the kitchen.

  The loaf and tea was a perfect way to warm up on a chilly winter’s night. We gathered around the table. We discussed the people on campus and the changes at the school until it was nightfall. Out of nowhere, Adam said to me, “You look different, like you don’t have a care in the world.”

  “I don’t.”

  Miriam commented, “You have a husband and a child. There is no way you don’t have stress.”

  “I guess now is a good time to tell you all. I am divorced.”

  A smile rolled across Adam’s face. “Are you okay with it?”

  “I’m happy,” I said and took a sip of the tea. Miriam smiled.

  After we had finished eating, all four of us decided to take a stroll. We put on our coats and walked from the boardinghouse to the campus of the normal school and back. Adam held my hand so tight it was numb.

  When we came back inside from the bitterness of the winter chill, he said, “I’ve been waiting a long time for you.” He pulled me close to him and kissed me passionately. I could feel the warmth travel all throughout my body.

  READER’S DISCUSSION GUIDE

  1. Why is Nadine so determined to get the attention of Simon?

  2. Mae Lou came to check on Carrie; do you feel she had other motives?

  3. It is the 1920s, why is it important to have Mrs. Hall in the story?

  4. Carrie is growing up and she is taking on a new persona throughout the story. What makes Carrie’s journey so interesting?

  5. Kindred Camm has not done anything at all, yet people are worried about him. Is he an honest threat to the Jackson Heights community?

  6. Pearl Brown has not changed much. Her soul has been sold for her career; is there relevance to this today?

  7. Simon has changed since his introduction in Blackberry Days of Summer. Is he still the man Carrie fell in love with?

  8. The white man remains a mystery throughout the story. What part does he really play in the life of Pearl?

  9. Do you feel Carrie really loves Adam, or is he a substitute for Simon?

  10. Is Adam too good of a person?

  11. When and how is “girl power” introduced in the story?

  12. When Adam decides to move to Petersburg, did you think he would be trouble for Carrie?

  13. Why is it so hard to believe Simon is bad?

  14. How is Richmond, Virginia any different from Jefferson County?

  15. Why is it so fascinating for Carrie to ride the train to school?

  16. Nadine’s “ole man,” as he is referred to in the book, becomes Carrie’s conscience, yet she never seems to let him in. Why?

  17. Simon’s fate was something no one saw coming. Do you feel he will rise up again?

  18. What kind of business do you think Simon is in, and why was he with Bessie Smith?

  19. At what point did Carrie finally become a woman?

  20. What is the significance of cranberries to the story?

  If you enjoyed Cranberry Winter, be sure to check out

  by Ruth P. Watson

  AVAILABLE FROM STREBOR BOOKS

  CHAPTER 1

  CARRIE

  Mr. Camm barely waited for Papa to be put in the ground. The next day he slithered into our house, mesmer
izing Momma with his poison as she lay down with him. That was when all my troubles started.

  I vividly remember the awful day when Papa was summoned to die. It was around two o’clock in the afternoon. The thermometer hanging over the kitchen door read ninety-five degrees, and the gray cotton dress I was wearing clung to my back like molasses to a pancake. Momma sat at the kitchen table gazing blankly out the window. The lines in her face were forged by misfortune and her round chestnut-colored eyes were cloudy with sad tears that trickled down her cocoa cheeks. She blotted her eyes with her hanky, but they continued to leak like a river that had long overflowed.

  “Y’all come on in and sit down,” she mumbled in a voice so muted I hardly recognized it.

  My brothers and I each pulled out a chair and sat down. We were not used to seeing her so broken. Usually she was on her feet handing out orders.

  “Why are you crying? What’s wrong with ya, Momma?” Carl asked, patting her gently on the shoulder.

  Her lips trembled as she said softly, “It’s your papa. He done took sick. He been complaining of a headache and now his lips are twisted to one side. He can’t even stand up. He ain’t doing good.”

  We glanced at each other with puzzled frowns and waited for someone to figure out what to do. But nobody did.

  “What can we do?” Carl asked with the same authority my papa would have used if he’d been feeling well.

  “Be there for him, he’s gonna need you,” Momma said.

  When I saw Papa lying there in the bed helpless, with his eyes rolled back in his head, tears welled up in my eyes. Papa was a big black man, over six feet five inches tall, and strong as a horse. He never smoked or drank liquor the way most men wished away their troubles, mistresses, or debts. We all believed his mind and his body were solid, too strong to be ravaged by sickness.

  Papa had grown up a free man. His daddy had inherited land from his father, given to him by his master, who felt that good service should be rewarded. When the master was fifty years old, dry and nearly dead from pneumonia, he deeded my grandpa some land for all of his hard labor. Yet, even though Papa owned the land, he cut corners every way he could to pay the taxes. Sometimes the profit from his tobacco crop was only enough to break even. He’d help other farmers on Saturday evenings cut down trees or whatever little he could do, all in an effort to make extra cash. He raised pigs, and no matter how many he hung in the smokehouse, our family was only allowed one ham, which was saved and cooked at Christmas.

  When I went into his bedroom and saw him lying there, I fell to my knees and began to pray: Heavenly Father, who’s going to take care of us? We need our papa. Please make him well. Amen.

  Momma was both frightened and saddened by Papa’s illness. During his sickness, she sat in the rocking chair beside his bed all night and watched him sleep, massaging her temples with the balls of her thumbs and holding her head back while staring at the ceiling, waiting for a sign. Dark circles cast shadows under her big, beautiful eyes. Her hair was frizzled, unattended to, and stuck to one side of her head. Papa was the love of her life even though she never seemed to know how to respond to his affectionate ways, especially the nights when he would stroke her cheeks as they sat close on the porch watching the lightning bugs and counting the stars. She’d ease away from his attention, and he would only shake his head. To see Momma showing her love for Papa now was a clear message to us all: our world was falling apart.

  We kept expecting Papa to stand up, stick his big chest out and head right back to the field, anxious to weed the garden, and see if his seeds were sprouting.

  Papa moaned and tossed and turned all night, and then when he had enough, he closed his eyes. It was half past four in the afternoon, so hot outside that a drop of water would sizzle if it hit the dry, red dirt. Momma hung her head low and covered her eyes. That’s when I knew. I cried until my eyes were swollen almost shut. All I could do was grip her shoulders and hold her tight. A part of me died that day with my papa.

  Momma cried out, “I’d seen this day coming. It come to me in my dream the night before it happened; he fell right down in the field, arms pointing east and west, and I couldn’t revive him. He was too stubborn to slow down and rest, didn’t think anybody could work as hard as he could. I begged him the otha mawnin’ to stay inside and he stared me straight in the eyes, put on that ole straw hat and walked out the door. You see, Tuesday was da sun’s day. He lay right down in da sun and began to die. Sho nuff did.”

  Carl drove the two mules down to Aunt Bessie’s to pick her up. We knew that Momma would need the comfort of her sister. I stood in the frame of her bedroom door and watched her take cash out of an old cigar box she kept under her bed. She handed the crumpled money to the rough-looking white man in bib overalls with red dirt glued under his fingernails who’d come from the undertakers. Afterward, he and a field hand put the casket in the front room and left.

  Even before the minister arrived to bless Papa’s body, Momma and Bessie went in the kitchen and took out some herbs from the cabinet. They went into the bedroom, where Papa was still lying, washed his body from head to toe, and then rubbed the herbs on him. They dressed him in the only black suit he owned—the one he wore to funerals and church on Sundays.

  “Bessie, Lord knows that Robert would want us to be strong, but it’s hard,” Momma said, battling back tears. I knew it was tough because crying was a sign of weakness in her mind.

  “He looks like he is just sleeping, Mae Lou,” Bessie said, buttoning up Papa’s suit jacket and staring down at the corpse.

  “He’s been struggling all of his life with the mighty sun suffering for a long while, and now God got him, no more fighting.” Momma said as she folded Papa’s hands across his wide chest. Papa died only a few days after his thirty-eighth birthday.

  Bessie sat down in the high-back chair Papa used to sit in, and she stared Momma right in the eyes. “How you gonna run the farm without a man around?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You need a man, Mae Lou.”

  “Everybody needs a man around, but it ain’t right to think about that now.”

  “Well, it’s hard when ya all alone,” she said, and began to rock as the thought of being alone lingered in the air.

  My papa lay in the front room for two days before I decided to talk to him. After everyone went to bed, I lit a candle and took tiny steps down the shadowed gray hallway to his casket, careful not to knock over anything. The floors creaked and the blackness was all over the country at night. Through the window I noticed only a few stars sprinkled across the midnight sky. I reached the front room without anyone hearing me, and the metal hinge in the casket screeched as I opened it. I wasn’t afraid of dead people because Momma and Papa said that the dead couldn’t hurt you no way.

  An eerie feeling crept over me when I glanced down at Papa’s stiff body and leathery skin, sunburned almost black. Tears leaked out the corners of my eyes as I leaned over his corpse and began to speak to him. The candlelight cast my moving shadow on the wall, but I still wasn’t afraid. I stood sobbing as droplets of my tears lingered on his burial suit.

  “Oh, Papa, I’m going to miss you,” I whispered. “I’m sorry you had to die, and I know this house will not be the same.” I leaned over and kissed his comatose cheek. “I’m going to be okay, though. I’m going to get away from around here and go to college, like you wanted me to do. I promise, I’m going to make you proud.”

  I said things to Papa that night that I should have said before he passed. After I finished, I felt relieved. I dried my tears with the back of my hands and went back to my room. Somehow, I knew that he had heard me. I knew that Papa didn’t want me to cry for him. Aunt Bessie was right, he looked like he was sleeping, free of all labor and pain, a look of peace permanent on his face.

  We grieved for over a week before we buried Papa. If the smell of rotten flesh had not gotten unbearable, he probably would have lain in the front room longer. Members of the New Covenant Ba
ptist Church drove their buggies to our house. Papa was on the board of deacons and everyone respected him. Countless folks brought us fried chicken and ham and potato pies.

  The day of the funeral was hard for us. Saying good-bye to my father felt like something I treasured had been ripped away from my arms. The deacons arrived at our house early on that Sunday morning. And like the day he died, the sun stood at attention and peeked at us through the clouds. They loaded Papa’s body onto a wagon to take to the church a few miles down the road. When they lifted the casket and slid it onto the wagon, I cried out. I’d felt comforted with his stiff body sleeping in the front room. The deacon with the lazy eye told me to be at peace. I went quiet, but snorted back salty tears all the way to the church.

  All during the service, Mr. Camm stood close to Momma as if he knew her and Papa. He even offered her his handkerchief, but she didn’t have tears. She looked up at him and he grinned, like a man does with a pretty woman. He reached over and softly touched her on the arm. She didn’t flinch.

  Papa was buried in the cemetery behind the church, like most of his family. He was buried a few feet from his mother. His daddy was buried in the slave cemetery on the plantation. My brothers fought back tears all through the service, yet Momma still didn’t cry. I suppose she had done all her crying at home.

  Momma stood at the foot of his grave for ten minutes after the service was complete. We were the last people to leave the graveyard. We even waited until the deacons and the grave attendant had covered Papa’s casket with dirt. Then Carl drove us home.

  Nobody said a word. Some of the same people who came with us to the church followed us home to celebrate Papa’s home- going.

  Mr. Camm came, too, though he shouldn’t have been there. I frowned at him, unsettled by his walnut-colored skin and dark, beady eyes set deep in his head. I noticed him peering at me, watching my every move, staring openly without blinking. Words don’t do justice to how uncomfortable he made me feel.

  He had that effect on a lot of people. It was no wonder that so many people wanted him dead.