Walking Through Shadows

by Bev Marshall

  The cows were in the last livestock barn. Here Daddy moved even more slowly, stopping at every stall to gaze at a Holstein, a Guernsey, or a Jersey. On his face was a look more reverent than Mama’s in church, and his choice of a place of worship was suitable if you took into account the stable story of Jesus’ birth. I figured Daddy would kneel when we got to the temple of the Ayrshires. He didn’t, but when he got a glimpse of the red and white spotted purebreds, he yelled like a zealot. “Look. There they are. The Ayrshires!” I drew back from the foot-long polished horns which curved out toward our smooth foreheads. Mr. Patterson, the owner, showed up immediately. He ranted on and on about the Ayrshires and the Ayrshire Milk Program. He claimed the cow with the jagged red spot shaped like an accordion, was a descendant of Tomboy and Alice, who were famous for walking from Brandon, Vermont, to the National Dairy Show at St. Louis and still producing a record amount of milk on arrival. As I watched Mr. Patterson, rising on his toes, waving his arms, I was reminded of Brother Wells, our last revival preacher. When Mr. Patterson ranted about the ungodly dairymen who didn’t officially recognize the impressive amounts of milk and butterfat his cows produced, his voice rose and fell exactly like Brother Wells’ when he talked about the sinners who didn’t know Jesus. And when Mr. Patterson forcefully grabbed Daddy by the shirt front to assure him the Ayrshires were hardier than any other breed, I could imagine Brother Wells jerking up one of those sinners and shaking him into belief. By the time we finally left the holy barn and headed for the oasis of the midway, Daddy was a convert and the owner of two registered Ayrshires and a brand new trailer for them to ride home in.

  Ultimately the fair both enchanted and repulsed me. It was an island world set apart from normal civilization where children and adults of every description walk side by side anonymously, severed from their professions and neighborhoods and daily routines. The barkers and ticket takers took our money with ingratiating smiles, nodding at our eagerness to be whirled into the air, to throw balls at stuffed cats, and to stare at grotesque humans sitting behind gaudy curtains. But there was beauty, too, in the calliope music, the freshly painted black carousel horse I sat astride, rising and falling in the crisp air as I circled the crowd of waving hands. There was the sweet stickiness of pink cotton candy and the laughter of small children and teddy bears with blue ribbons around their necks, glass beads that glinted like diamonds in the bright sunlight, colored plastic fish with numbers taped on their bellies. And there were other exotic attractions that beckoned us to foreign lands.

  From her raised wooden platform, Salome caught Stoney’s eye as we walked by. “Hey,” she called to him. “Come on over. See me do the hoochy koochy.” She wriggled her hips, making the coins around her hips dance. The sheer green veil on her head was drawn across her nose and mouth, exposing only her eyes, dark with mascara. Her vest was brocaded with golden threads, and her harem pants clung to her hips. Above her bare feet wide bracelets jangled on her ankles as she moved across the makeshift stage. She clicked a pair of finger cymbals at Stoney, and rolled her hips in a wide circle. Stoney stopped walking so suddenly Sheila ran into his back. He turned and stood smiling at Salome until Sheila grabbed his right hand and sunk her teeth into it like a dog clamping on a steak bone. Stoney yelled and jerked away. When he lifted his hand and saw that he was bleeding, his other arm flew up. I heard the slap and the word “bitch” simultaneously as Sheila’s head swiveled toward me.

  I supposed this was the first time Stoney struck her because Sheila’s face registered such surprise. And, watching Stoney’s lavender eyes turn to deep purple, I think he was horrified too. I was righteous, thinking to myself that she shouldn’t have bitten him for just looking, and I wished for Daddy to hurry back from the knife-throwing booth where he was trying to win me a bear.

  By the time Daddy showed up holding a scruffy brown bear with a wrinkled yellow ribbon around its neck, Sheila and Stoney had walked away for a private talk. Accepting the bear with a frown, I wondered if I should tell Daddy what had happened or not, but before I could decide what to say, Salome came back on stage and set her hips to rotating like a big slow-moving fan. This time it was my father she called to. “Buy a ticket, and I’ll show you my hoochy koochy.” I was expecting Daddy to look away and hurry me on to the next attraction. But instead he lifted his eyes and ran them up the harem pants to the exposed navel, where they seemed to pause a minute, before traveling on up to the v-cut of the vest. When he finally lifted his gaze to her oversized red lips, he said, “How much?”

  I gasped out loud. Was he actually going to mount those wooden steps, walk across the stage, and go behind the burlap curtain? He was, and he did after looking down at me and telling me to wait for him right where I stood. I turned my back to stare at the stupid kids who were riding a fake train around a track going nowhere. I made ugly faces at every one of them as they chugged by, waving their chubby hands and smiling at their good daddies who wouldn’t be caught dead in Salome’s den. But no matter how hard I tried to block it out, I could hear the provocative music wafting out from behind me. On the sides of the colorful train, I imagined Salome’s hips grinding toward my father. I saw my mother’s face; her eyes were swollen from crying, mouth open in pain. I hated Daddy and I hated those damned Ayrshires too.

  I don’t know what I might have said to Daddy when he finally came out from behind the curtain and tapped me on the shoulder, because when I turned to stare up into his red face, Stoney and Sheila came running up, holding hands and grinning. I saw that Stoney’s hand was bandaged with a handkerchief and Sheila’s eye had begun to swell. I tried to smile back at them.

  “Well, here you are,” Daddy said in this cheerful fake voice I had never heard before. “We’ve been looking all over for you.” He gave me an even phonier smile. “Haven’t we, Annette?”

  I drew up my shoulders and moved toward Sheila. He was asking me to lie. I thought about Grandma saying something about how the mighty have fallen, from the Bible or some Greek play. And I remembered how she also told me that one small lie like a pebble can grow into a boulder and over time will become a towering mountain. Let Daddy pickax his way up the mountain alone, I thought to myself. But, as if reading my mind, he reached out and pulled me toward him. He bent forward until his face was even with mine. “No harm done, honey,” he whispered. “It was all in fun. Don’t be so hard on your poor old daddy.”

  A whiff of cheap perfume sailed off him and nearly hardened my softening heart back to granite, but when I saw his same old smile, his eyes clear and kind like the ones he’d come with, I forgave him. I nodded; a co-conspirator in his lie, I turned to Sheila and Stoney. “Yeah, we were looking everywhere,” I said.

  After the Ayrshires were put in their new stalls that night and Mama had admired them enough for Daddy’s satisfaction, I lingered at the barn. I walked up to the Ayrshire with the longest horns and looked her in the eye. “I hate you,” I said. “Your real name is Salome, and someday I will butcher you and carry your head to my mother’s table.” The cow lifted her head and stared back at me. When she lowed mournfully out into the dark barn, I knew she understood.

  CHAPTER 8

  I learned about the awful pain that love can bring on the morning Sheila was supposed to come up to our house to make blackberry jelly. Year after year, every jar of Mama’s jelly turned out so perfect it wiggled on your spoon and spread smooth on a biscuit. Mama had promised to share her cooking secrets with Sheila, who told us that her jelly always turned out too runny or too sugary. Our bushes were bursting that May, and I filled several gallon buckets with plump juicy berries. My purple-stained fingers were covered with briar nicks and my waist was ringed with red welts from red bugs who preferred my blood to berries. I was thinking that biscuits tasted just as good with syrup when Sheila came in laughing.

  “Lordeee, lordeee, y’all should’ve seen old Sid down to the barn. Stoney didn’t get her mule collar on fast enough, and she started sucking her milk out ’fore he knowed
it. When he tried to get her head back round, she butted him clear cross the barn.” Sheila sat at the table and laughed hard. “Then Stoney, he got hisself up and went back over to her, and she’s sucking fast as she can, one eye on him. ’Fore he got there she done backed up and turned her tail. I knowed she were ready to kick him like a mule, and he knowed it too.” She looked over at Mama. “And you know what he done then? Stoney lit up a cigarette and walked right outta the barn. He said, ‘Sid, you welcome to your breakfast. I ain’t gonna get killed trying to keep you from it.’ That cow got the best of him.”

  Mama and I laughed, but we were enjoying Sheila more than the story itself. Lil’ Bit, who had been busy all morning stacking blocks on the floor and then knocking them down, heard our laughter and smiled up at us. He said in a most solemn voice, “You funny, Sheshe.” That set us all off again.

  Mama wiped her face on her apron. “Okay, now we’d better get to work if we’re going to get these berries put up before dinner time.” I had already washed all the mason jars, and when Mama went to hand the first one to Sheila, it slipped from her grip and crashed on the floor beside the tower of blocks. We all screamed, “Lil’ Bit, no,” as he reached out toward the glass. Mama grabbed him up into her arms at the same time that Sheila’s arm shot out to move the broken pieces away from him. Her hand came down on a shard and blood began to drip from her palm.

  “Oooh, you’ve cut yourself,” I yelled.

  Sheila held up her hand and licked the blood. The cut wasn’t too deep, but it was nearly an inch long. “It ain’t too bad,” she said.

  When Mama came over to get a closer look, Lil’ Bit started to cry. “Shhhh, Sheshe is okay,” she reassured him. Then she turned to me. “Annette, get some gauze and tape. Run.”

  After we got Sheila bandaged and Lil’ Bit calmed with a cookie, we set about the serious work of jelly making. Mama stood at the stove with her wooden spoon, stirring the first batch that was nearly ready for cooling while Sheila carefully lined up the jars on the countertop. I dumped another bucket of berries in the sink to wash. I remember thinking that Sheila’s accident was a bad luck sign, as I had dreamt about missing teeth only the night before, so when I heard the crunch of gravel, I looked out the window with a shiver.

  I saw a bright red Chevrolet truck pull up beside our old rusted lawn mower that Daddy had set out for Digger to take home later that day. “Mama, company,” I said.

  “Who is it?”

  “Dunno. Can’t tell.” But as those words came out of my mouth, I recognized the man getting out of the truck. It was Uncle Walter, Lil’ Bit’s real daddy, whom we hadn’t seen since Lil’ Bit’s second birthday three months past. He had been spending a lot of time in Chicago working for the Illinois Central, and his visits had been sporadic and brief. Next I watched the passenger door open and saw a woman stepping out. He had never brought anyone with him to visit before. “It’s Uncle Walter and a lady,” I said, which sent Mama across the kitchen to the window. As we watched them walk toward the back porch, I noticed Uncle Walter had a new bounce in his step, and his hands fluttered around him as he talked to the woman and pointed to the dairy barn, the fig tree, our new tractor shed. The lady’s head jerked around looking in whatever direction his finger led her. She was wearing a beautiful orange, pink, and yellow print chiffon dress, and I thought she looked like she was dressed for a party instead of a visit to our dairy. She wore yellow high heels with rounded toes, and I stared at her feet as they hopped like little canaries toward the house.

  “Wellllll,” Mama said, using a lot of air. “Wonder who she is?”

  In the kitchen Uncle Walter introduced her as Gloria. Sheila picked up Lil’ Bit and carried him into the living room where Mama turned on the lights and waved our company to the couch. After he sat down, Uncle Walter introduced her again. This time as Gloria Vitter. Mama and I looked at each other, both of us trying to figure out if she was a relative of Uncle Walter’s that we didn’t know about.

  “We’re married. Got hitched a week ago,” Uncle Walter said, taking Gloria’s left hand and displaying her gold band.

  I waited for Mama to say something, but she was struck dumb. I think we both tried to smile, but we were so surprised I imagine our mouths looked like we had just swallowed iodine.

  It was then, right at that moment, that Mama’s supernatural powers came to her. She reached across and pulled Lil’ Bit out of Sheila’s arms and held him on her lap with her arms folded over his stomach. Uncle Walter kept right on talking about how he met Gloria in the hotel where he was staying and where she worked as the hostess in the restaurant. They hadn’t known each other very long when they both realized they were “meant for each other.” These last words they actually said together, and as I watched Gloria’s hand squeeze Uncle Walter’s knee, I thought about how he cried so pitifully at Aunt Doris’s funeral. I remembered the hurt and dazed look on his face those times when we helped Aunt Doris into the truck after she visited Lil’ Bit.

  I suspected what was coming, but Mama knew before me, and when Uncle Walter stopped smiling and sat up squaring his shoulders, she kissed Lil’ Bit’s head three times. We had never cut his hair, and it hung down below his ears in soft red curls. He looked like a fat little angel, his blue eyes fixed on Gloria’s colorful dress. “So Gloria’s home is in Chicago. Her people all live there and naturally she wants to stay. I can get a transfer, no problem.” I let out a long breath. Maybe Uncle Walter had come to say good-bye.

  I began praying. “Please, God. Please please please.”

  Mama’s eyes were closed and I knew she was praying as hard as me. The silence in the room was terrifying. I could hear the clock ticking all the way from the kitchen. A leaf blowing against the window sounded like a gunshot. I lifted my eyes to Gloria, and saw her pressed lips. She nudged Uncle Walter. He moved away from her on the couch.

  Finally, when we were all about to break into a million pieces from the stillness, Mama’s voice drifted out from above Lil’ Bit’s head. “So you’re moving soon.” The words were whispers, like the sounds of a weak person lying in a hospital bed.

  “Yes, Rowena,” Uncle Walter said. “I’ve got the house up for sale and the land, and I’ll be packing up and going within the week.”

  “This week,” Mama echoed.

  Uncle Walter’s face was chalky, and there were wet circles on his blue shirt beneath his armpits. I was glad of that. I wanted him to feel worse than he’d ever felt in his life. Just then Lil’ Bit pointed to Gloria’s yellow clutch purse which she held in her lap. “Candy,” he yelled out. “I eat candy.” Since Grandma had started bringing Lil’ Bit a peppermint or a chocolate drop in her purse, he had gotten the idea that all purses held treats like these. “I want candy,” he said smiling at Gloria.

  Gloria didn’t understand. “I don’t have any sweets,” she said. She turned to Uncle Walter. “Give him a penny or something, Hon.”

  I almost said, “No, he’ll put it in his mouth and swallow it, stupid.” But Uncle Walter wasn’t listening to her. He stood up, walked over to where Mama sat on the edge of her chair and knelt in front of Lil’ Bit. He held out his hands. “Come here, son,” he said.

  But Lil’ Bit wasn’t interested, and he craned his head around his father’s back to stare at the yellow clutch. He pointed again. “Candy,” he said, his face screwing up with fury.

  Mama looked at me. “Annette, get him a piece of fruit slice.”

  I jumped up and ran to the candy dish, fishing out a sugared orange slice, and raced back to Lil’ Bit, who grabbed it in his chubby hand and stuffed it into his mouth as he said, “Thank you” using the manners we had taught him.

  Uncle Walter hadn’t moved, nor had Mama or Gloria or Sheila. It seemed they were all frozen wax figures, the smell of the sweet candy wafting around their still heads. Mama’s fingers moved when Lil’ Bit’s drool dripped down onto her hand, and without looking, she found his mouth and wiped it with her thumb. I stood right beside her chair,
thinking about grabbing Lil’ Bit and running out the front door. I saw the two of us flying down the road, Lil’ Bit’s overall straps falling down on his shoulders, my tennis shoes tearing up the grass as we sailed out of the yard. My right hand reached out, but Mama took it and laid it on her shoulder. As I stood there ramrod straight, I thought we must look like a tintype photograph in which I was the stern husband with my hand on the shoulder of the sitting wife, a serious-eyed baby seated on her starched skirt. Lil’ Bit did look somber, now that his craving for sweets was satisfied. His round eyes bore into Uncle Walter as if he were memorizing him. Gloria was talking all this time, but I have no memory of what she said. I suppose she was telling us their plans because I heard Mama say, “The house sounds nice.”

  When Uncle Walter stood up, Mama and I knew that nothing could keep him from saying the awful words that would stab our hearts. “We plan to take Lil’ Bit with us.”

  Pieces of the next hour come back to me, but mostly all I remember is the hollow sound of the voices, the sudden heat that made the air hard to breathe. I can still see the pink lipstick smear on Lil’ Bit’s cheek where Gloria kissed him. Phrases come to me. “Wonderful to him,” “Appreciate all you’ve done,” and finally the last hateful sentences as they walked out onto the porch. “We’ll be back tomorrow afternoon. That will give you enough time to pack his things, won’t it?”

  I helped Mama pack his diaper pins, his sweet-smelling baby powder, the appliquéd sunsuits and bibs with ducks and cows on them. I folded the navy sweater and cap set Mama had knitted for him, and we boxed up the toys we had bought for Christmas although it was still months away. Now Santa would bring them to his new snow-covered home. Sheila cried for all of us. She sat on the floor in Lil’ Bit’s room, her tears wetting his undershirts, his sunsuits, his Sunday white shirt with the Peter Pan collar. She sobbed into the blanket we would throw over his head, asking, “Where’s Lil’ Bit?” until he would pull it off and laugh as we screamed, “Oh, there he is!” There he is, we said, but he wouldn’t be there ever again.