by Bev Marshall
Later I learned that Sheila didn’t get presents on her birthday. “Birthdays ain’t nothing to celebrate at our house,” she told me. “Ten kids and no money. Just the little ones sometimes gets a candy or box of Cracker Jacks. I’m the oldest, so I stopped being young a long time ago.” She told me this after I had taken a huge piece of birthday cake down to the little dark room that was the smoke house behind the dairy where she would live for over four months. I couldn’t believe that anyone in their right mind would want to live in the place where Daddy used to hang hog carcasses, but Sheila acted like she had moved into the Taj Mahal. Mama told her she had some linoleum left over from the kitchen renovation that a hired hand would put down for her, and she gave her our old blue ruffled curtains for the one window, but looking around the cement walls, I doubted they would help much.
“When you been sleeping four to a bed, this seems like a triple-wide heavenly resting place,” Sheila said, patting the thin single mattress Daddy had dragged out of our attic.
“You don’t have anywhere to put your clothes and things,” I said looking around the empty space. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t been told about something so important as a new person living in our backyard, but Mama said Sheila hadn’t been expected for another week, and I suspected the handprint bruises on her arm were the reason she came when she did.
Sheila smiled. “I ain’t got much, and I reckon I can keep them right here in this bag.” She lifted the satchel onto the bed and opened it. She pulled out a wooden-handled hairbrush, a pair of panties with tired elastic, a toothbrush, a pair of badly worn and scuffed brown shoes, a beige man’s work shirt, a calico skirt, and a small tin of saltine crackers. “In case I got hungry ’fore getting here,” she said extending them in my direction. I shook my head, and remembering the cake, I pushed it toward her.
She fell on it. I stood beside the bed watching as she shoved large clumps into her mouth like a starving mongrel. I had brought a fork balanced on the blue-flowered saucer, but she ignored it, using her fingers to break off chunks of chocolate icing which rimmed her small mouth when she finally licked the last crumbs right off the plate.
“Delicious,” she finally said. “I heared your mama was a good cook. A good woman too.”
I nodded. Being Rowena Cotton’s daughter had been a trial from my first step. People seemed to think I’d just naturally have all of her good traits, and no bad ones of my own. Suddenly, I felt envious of Sheila coming from a family that I had never heard of. The Cottons and the Bancrofts, who were my mother’s people, were well-known in the Lexie County community, and I was constantly being reminded that “other” people did this or that, but “we” knew better. My mother expected more of herself, and unfortunately, of me.
Mama’s goodness had reached its zenith when Lil’ Bit had come to live with us. For nine years I had been an only child, pampered, petted, treasured because, by all accounts, Mama was barren after laboring for two days to shove my reluctant self out into Grandma’s bedroom where Daddy had paced for all forty-eight hours of Mama’s Terrible Ordeal. I still felt some guilt about my part in this horror story, which Mama still whispered to her friends at Baptist Circle Meeting. Mama said that, as soon as Grandma wiped me off and handed me to her, the late afternoon sun dipped in the sky to shine through the screen window so that my head was bathed in golden spots that looked like a connect-the-dots halo. I suspected much later that this story was embellished to curtail any devilish behavior unbecoming an angel.
Looking over at Sheila repacking her bag, humming a church hymn, I tried to imagine being one of ten children. As an only child, I had been reduced to begging cousins to come over for spend-the-nights, creating a cat and dog vocabulary, and summoning Janice, my pretend girlfriend who was so boring and predictable I had finally killed her off when I was six. But being a single child had advantages, too. I was assured of getting the pulley bone when Mama fried chicken, and I always got more toys for Christmas and birthdays than my cousins who had to share Santa’s bounty. But I was lonely most of the time, especially during the long summer vacations, and so when Lil’ Bit came, I was his most ardent fan.
As if reading my mind (Was she going to turn out to be supernatural like my mother?), Sheila said, “Your little brother sure is sweet. How old is he?”
“Nearly six months, but…” I was going to explain that Lil’ Bit wasn’t actually my brother by blood, but decided that would turn into a long story and I had lots of questions jumbled around in my head. “So what’s gonna be your job at the dairy?” I pictured her in boots, shoveling oats into troughs.
“Cleaning mostly. Washing milk bottles, the floor, whatever needs a good scrub. Your daddy says the men ain’t good at woman’s work, and you got to be careful with the milk ’cause of bacteria. I think that’s like a disease you can get.”
“You’re the first woman Daddy’s ever hired,” I said, hoping she realized the significance of this fact and would work hard to please him so I could keep my new Best Friend.
She stopped, belongings in mid-air. “That so? I didn’t think about being the first one. Mrs. Bell, she’s the lady at church who told your mama’s friend about me, all’s she said was she was maybe gonna find something for me to help out.” Leaning over, she pushed her bag against the foot of the bed, then straightened the sheet and white chenille spread Mama had given her. She took a step back, an admiring smile on her face. “Oh, this is just wonderful. Don’t it look nice?”
I disagreed, but I smiled back and shook my head yes. I was burning to know more about that family of hers but I knew it was impolite to ask personal questions of someone you’d only known a few hours. But it was nearly eight o’clock and the sun had turned the light in the room to cotton candy pink, and I decided at that moment that it was best to begin our friendship without rules. “Is the bruise on your arm why you came?” I was nearly whispering, frightened she would be mad at my audacity, which Mama said was unbecoming in a lady.
Sheila looked surprised, not by the question, but by the bruise itself as she raised her forearm and looked at the dark blue finger marks. “Oh that! Oh, no, that’s just where my papa grabbed me. I broke the slop jar.” She wrinkled her nose. “Whew, it were one big mess. I was taking it out and banged it on the wall and it spilled all out. Papa come in the room just then and law law you should of heared the hollering. He slapped me good too.” A frightened, tight look came over her face as her jaws locked for a moment and her eyes opened wider. “I ain’t too clumsy though. I ain’t gonna break no milk bottles. I’m gonna be extra extra careful.”
“Daddy wouldn’t hit you for breaking something,” I said, wondering if this were true. “Least he hasn’t ever hit me, unless you count a regular whipping for big punishments. Even then, he doesn’t hit you hard.”
Sheila shook her head. “My papa says ‘spare the rod, spoil the child’ least once a day, and me being the leastest smart of his young’ns, I reckon there wasn’t never a chance I’d be spoilt.”
I ducked my head, supposing she was thinking I was one of those rotten kids who always gets their way. “Well, guess I’d better go.” I didn’t move, hoping for something from her although I had no idea what.
“Yeah, I better get to bed. Mr. Cotton said milking starts at two o’clock in the morning, and I’m supposed to be there at four o’clock sharp. Oh!” She reached beneath the pillow and brought out the wind-up alarm clock Mama had loaned her. “Better set this for quarter to.”
Still I waited for more as I watched her struggle with the brass key. I breathed in the scent of the sooty walls, the residue of the bodies that had hung from the large rusting hooks above our heads. “Well…” I sighed. And then seeing that she had no idea of how to set the alarm, I took it from her and showed her how to work it. “Well…” I began again, taking up the empty saucer and unused fork. “Guess I’ll say good night.”
Sheila was already wiggling out of her dress, her back turned to me. “Night,” she called. “See you tomorro
w.”
I grinned. “Tomorrow,” I said, knowing now this was the word I was longing for. Her dress slid to the floor, and just before I turned to grab the door handle, I saw the horrible red welts that looked like hash marks across her hump, rising like a huge fiery boil between her shoulder blades. I bolted out the door into the fading light, panting and frightened, and somehow exhilarated by it all.
CHAPTER 2
Mother’s birthday sewing machine was already whirring when I awoke the day after Sheila came. Daddy and his brother Howard had carried it into Mama’s bedroom and set it in front of the west window where Mama had been up half the night, feet pumping, palms on the wheel, her head cocked to guide the fabric beneath the steel needle. By the time I came into her room, she had already sewn up every torn piece of cloth in the house and was stitching around a bib for Lil’ Bit, who was sitting on the floor playing with blue cloth scraps. I picked him up, kissed his fat little cheeks, and jostled him on my hip. He smiled showing his pink gums with two white bumps that we expected to erupt into teeth any day. Leaning over he chomped down on my hand and gnawed my index finger.
“This machine is a marvel,” Mama said turning around on her stool. “It’s even got attachments for buttonholes and fancy stitching. I’ll make you some school dresses this year that will be the envy of all the girls.”
I knew Mama was just saying that because she was always worrying about me feeling left out or jealous of all the attention she gave Lil’ Bit. But I would have sewn things for Lil’ Bit first, too. He was such fun to dress and so cute in the diaper shirts Mama had appliquéd with ducks and cows. “Great,” I said, putting the baby back in the middle of his scraps. “Maybe I could help you cut out some overalls for Lil’ Bit too. Corduroy ones for winter.”
Mama turned back to her machine. “Yes, I’ll teach you to use the machine. We’ll have lots of fun together.”
“I’m going to get dressed and go see how Sheila is making out.”
“Eat something first.” Mama ducked her head and pressed her foot back on the treadle.
I settled for a biscuit drowned in maple syrup and a glass of chocolate milk and headed for the barn where Sheila was just finishing up her first morning’s work. When I opened the barn door, the scent of disinfectant overrode the usual smell of grains and cow shit. The concrete floor was wet, and I stepped over the puddles that had formed in the uneven surfaces. The big double barn doors were open, and the sunlight twinkled in multi-colors on the water all around me. Now that the cows had been let out to pasture, the barn was quiet except for the swishing of Sheila’s broom. She was busily pushing the water toward the open door and hadn’t heard me come in, and I stood for a moment watching her body sway with her strokes. She was wearing the light blue work shirt, the calico skirt, and the scuffed shoes I’d seen her pull out of her bag the night before. Her hair was knotted on her head, but escaped blonde strands fell all about her head, moving in rhythm with her long-handled broom. “Hi,” I said.
She wheeled around, startled out of some reverie. She grinned, pushed her hair away from her face. “Morning. I’m just about done till they come back with the bottles to wash.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Smells like a hospital instead of a dairy.”
She nodded. “Yeah, your daddy said, since I come, he’s gonna have the cleanest dairy in the state. There must’ve been eighty cows pissing and pooping in here this morning.”
I laughed. “Daddy’s got over a hundred head, and three, Wallie, Quinn, and Sal, are about due to drop calves.”
Sheila leaned against her broom. “Why they named men’s names if they’re cows?”
“Oh, we name them after who we bought them from. Wallie Pearson, old man Ted Quinn, and Sal Delilo were the owners before us. Wallie is Shorty’s favorite and Digger likes Quinn best. My favorite is little June; Daddy let me name her ’cause she’s mine. Lil’ Bit’s calf is named after him. Of course, he doesn’t know he owns him yet.”
Sheila hung the wet broom on the nail beside the door, and we walked out into the lot. I climbed on the wooden gate and sat straddled on the top rail. Sheila hesitated a minute and then wrapping her skirt around her thin legs, she pulled herself up beside me. “How come your brother is named Lil’ Bit? He ain’t none too little.”
I had thought everyone in Lexie County knew all about Aunt Doris’s cancer and Lil’ Bit’s birth, but Sheila, living out at Mars Hill, didn’t know our story. “Well,” I said, “When Lil’ Bit was born, he wasn’t anything like he is now. He weighed only three pounds and no one at the hospital thought he would survive. Mama’s sister, my Aunt Doris, is his real mother, but she’s dying of bone cancer, and so she gave him to us.”
I explained to her that Uncle Walter, Lil’ Bit’s daddy, worked for the Illinois Central and couldn’t take care of him and that Aunt Doris had come to our house one day and asked Mama if we would raise him as our own. Since Mama had wanted another baby, but hadn’t been blessed with one, she was glad to get him.
When Lil’ Bit was born Aunt Doris weighed seventy-four pounds, and no one thought either of them would survive. Mama went to the hospital every day, and after each visit, she would come home crying, doubtful that our baby would live. Weeks passed and finally Mama brought Lil’ Bit home to us, but it was hard to believe he would survive. He was so frail, no bigger than a squirrel, and his cries were so weak we couldn’t hear him unless we were sitting near his bassinet. Aunt Doris had named him Lloyd Jefferson Vitter after his real daddy and my daddy, but the nurses all called him Lil’ Bit, and even though rolls of baby fat now encircled his arms and legs, that name had stuck. “Aunt Doris is a little better now. She comes nearly every week to visit him.”
I didn’t tell Sheila how much I hated those visits. Hated them for several reasons, some of them proving that the halo I had worn on my delivery day had tarnished to a deep black. I was scared Aunt Doris would change her mind and one day stride into Lil’ Bit’s room and take him away from us. On the nights after each one of her visits, I would kneel at the side of my bed and pray for her to die before she changed her mind. “Dear Jesus, she’s sick and in pain. Don’t you think it would be best for her to come live with you in heaven where all sickness ends?” I knew He wasn’t fooled by my words, but I kept on. “You see all suffering. She probably wants to die, to live with You on streets of gold.” Then my eyes filling with tears of shame, I said, “Take her. Take her.” I did tell Sheila that, after each of Aunt Doris’s visits, Mama would go into her room with the door shut for a while, and when she would come out, she was quiet for the rest of the day.
When I looked into Sheila’s face, I saw that her eyes had filled with tears. “Your poor Mama.” She shook her head. “I wish there was something I could do for her.”
“There isn’t anything to be done,” I said. “Grandma says we just have to carry the burdens the Lord gives us.”
Just as I was searching my mind for a happier subject, Sheila jumped down from the fence. She had read my mind again. “Hey, what’s the name of the dark-haired boy that milks for your daddy?”
“Dark-haired boy? Oh, Stoney?”
A smile like I hadn’t seen before on a girl except on the screen at the picture show spread across her face. “Stoney.” She said the name with reverence.
I grinned. I had a crush on him too. “He’s good-looking, isn’t he?”
She was blushing, knowing that this time I had read her mind. She nodded. “I reckon he’s about the best-looking boy I’ve ever seed in my whole life.”
Stoney Barnes had come to work for my father only two months before. The Barnes lived three miles from us in a raised white house with green awnings. There were four sons, three living in the house and one married. Stoney was the youngest, but at sixteen, he was already a full-grown man. The first time I saw him he was leaning against the barn door, smoking a cigarette. I watched his lips as they drew on the white paper and then rounded and puffed out the gray smoke in perfect circles. Stoney was ne
arly a head taller than Daddy, and a lot more muscular. The sleeves of his work shirt were rolled to his elbow exposing the blue corded veins of his arms. His hair wasn’t just dark; it was blue-black and shiny, cresting over his brow like a rooster’s comb. But it was his eyes that made me fall desperately in love with him. They were the same blue as the purple-tinged irises that grew beside the barn.
I slid down to stand beside her. “Did you talk to him?”
Sheila shook her head so violently I knew she must have been as tongue-tied as I was in his presence. “All’s I said was ‘Howdo’ when your daddy introduced me to everybody all at once.” She pulled a piece of her hair into her mouth and sucked on it. “He done left, didn’t go with them on the milk run.”
“No, he doesn’t know the route. Daddy and Robert make all the deliveries.” I tried a taste of my own hair and spit it out. “He’ll be back this evening though.” I may have been mistaken, but I remember thinking Sheila’s eyes got brighter at that information, and her little breasts rose up against her shirt. And I think I already knew with a black jealousy filling my gut that Stoney was going to fall in love with plain Sheila, hump and all.
CHAPTER 3
I don’t know exactly when Stoney fell in love with Sheila, but he did. I never doubted his feelings for her although many people did. It was hard to understand how he could love a skinny girl with a hump on her back, breasts no bigger than green plums, and a seeming slowness in her head.
I had never thought of the dairy barn as being a romantic spot, but apparently it was. Maybe it was the feel of the cow teats, the warm frothing milk, the scent of the grains, the holy early morning darkness that held both fading stars and rising pink light.
Each morning, seven days a week, the cows ambled into the flood-lit lot outside the barn where the black and white Holsteins and tan Jerseys huddled together with their heads crowded over each other’s flanks. The Holsteins were better milk producers than the Jerseys, but Jersey milk had a higher percentage of butterfat, so Daddy had bred both about equally. All of them waited patiently, swatting flies, lowing softly until their name was called. Digger, Stoney, Johnny, and Shorty were the milkers. One of them would lean out the door and yell, “Steve” or “Teddy” or “Bell,” and like patients in a doctor’s waiting room, when they heard their names, their heads would jerk up, and they would thread their way to the milking parlor. When a cow entered the barn, she would walk straight to the feed trough where the layers of grain were mixed with shovels, and when she stretched her thin neck toward her meal, the wooden latch on the trough would be lowered and locked into place. As the cow ate, she would relax like most of us do, and then her milk would come down, swelling her pink udder to sometimes an amazing size. After washing the bag with soapy water, strong rhythmic hands reached out to the teats to spray white gold into the bucket. Then after about ten minutes, when the cow was dry, she would be freed and ushered out of the barn.
