by Bev Marshall
It was after one of our Sunday dinners when I inadvertently heard the brothers talking about Sheila. They were sitting in the living room listening to the radio and Annette and I had just finished cleaning up the dishes. I folded the dish towel and walked quietly down through the dining room intending to join them, but I stopped when I heard Lloyd laughing. “Really, Howard. You can’t be serious. Sheila Carruth has a hump on her back, no tits, and a strong wind would blow her off those little stick legs of hers.”
“You just told me she’s stepping out with the Barnes boy.”
“But he’s not you. He’s sixteen and probably hasn’t ever had any of a woman’s candy. First time a boy will settle for anything.” There was a pause then, and he said in a louder voice, “Besides you’re way too old for her.”
I could imagine Howard’s leer when he spoke. “Old enough to have experience. That little filly needs an expert.”
What surprised me the most were the next sentences out of my husband’s mouth. He used the same tone of voice that he spoke in when Annette came home from the Tucker girl’s house with her face painted and handkerchiefs balled up for breasts beneath her dress. “Howard,” he said. “You stay away from the girl. She’s not for you. I mean it. You go messing with her and you’ll have me to answer to.”
After Howard left, I waited for Lloyd to tell me about their conversation, but he didn’t have a word to say, and I decided to take Mama’s advice for times like this and keep the wisdom in my head from falling out my mouth.
So when Stoney proposed, I was greatly relieved. Sheila’s being married would change everything, erase any thoughts men had about her. That’s what I thought back then.
Sheila certainly seemed happy being married to Stoney. During the months that followed, each time she came to the house, she brought her happiness with her, spreading the sweetness of her new life over our house like a blanket of chocolate. Sheila couldn’t stop talking about Stoney, their silly games, their plans for the future. “Stoney said his papa might loan us some money for a new truck. Stoney is wanting one bad,” she told me. I knew better; all the Barnes were tight-fisted. Everyone knew that, everyone except Sheila. However, she was right about Hugh, the oldest son, being good-looking. I saw proof of that for myself one day when he came to our house looking for Stoney.
I remember that it was in early December because Sheila and Stoney had just celebrated their first wedding anniversary and it was the day that we had set to make our Christmas decorations. Sheila and Annette had gathered pinecones in big bushel baskets, and we were daubing gold paint on them with small sable brushes. The three of us were sitting around the newspaper-covered kitchen table littered with cones, ribbons, paint, and glue. Lil’ Bit, dressed in his favorite overalls with a train appliquéd across his chest, was toddling around the room dragging a wooden cow on a string that clacked clacked as he went round and round the table. I remember Sheila’s quick fingers cutting lengths of red ribbons which she handed to Annette to tie on the tops of the cones. We would make wreaths and a table arrangement by adding greenery, nuts, and candy canes. After a while Lil’ Bit got tired and dizzy from running around and he stood by my chair yelling for “duice” which meant orange drink.
“Annette, get him some juice. Maybe we can finish a few more decorations before his naptime,” I said.
Sheila was spinning a small cone on the table, and as we watched the gold and red top, she giggled. “I ain’t never thought of taking an old pinecone and turning it into something so pretty. I’m gonna make some for me and Stoney.” She looked over at me. “We didn’t have no tree last year, but I want to make some paper cutouts and string popcorn and we’ll have us a little tree in the front room.”
Annette got up from the table to search for Lil’ Bit’s cup right then, and Sheila craned her neck around to her. “Annette, you’ll help, won’t you?”
“Sure,” she said. “It’ll be fun.” She rose on her toes and looked out the window. “Mama, company.”
I went to the window and watched a man get out of a brand new Ford truck. Sheila came to stand beside me. “It’s Hugh,” she said. “I reckon he’s lookin’ for Stoney.” Although they lived nearby, I hadn’t met any of the Barnes’ boys except Stoney. Oh, I had seen them all go by in various vehicles from time by time, but I wouldn’t know any of them to recognize on the street. I did know that Hugh was the oldest and married to Earlene Farmer, who was a real snob for no reason at all that Mama and I could see. Her people were from some wild state out west like Utah or Montana. They had two sons; Sheila had told me that they were “corkers,” which meant little heathens most likely. The two other Barnes boys were more like their mama, according to Sheila. “Kinda plain and quieter than Hugh and Stoney. Stoney’s the best lookin’ one,” she had said to me, tossing her chin up with pride.
As I watched him coming across the yard, I disagreed. Hugh was far more handsome than his brother; he was heart-stopping. I walked out on the porch to greet him. As he climbed the steps, I watched the pale yellow shirt and string tie with silver ends coming up toward me. He smiled. Big white teeth, tanned face, a square jaw that would make a young girl’s knees wobble. “You must be Mrs. Cotton,” he said in a baritone that rivaled our best singer at church. I nodded. He reached the porch and bowed at the waist. “I am Hugh Barnes. Stoney’s big brother.”
“I’m Rowena,” I said. “Can I help you?”
Before he could answer, Sheila walked out barefoot with Lil’ Bit wrapped on her hip. Orange juice dribbled down his chin onto the front of her blue house dress, and Sheila wiped at it with her free hand. “Hey, Hugh,” she said. “You lookin’ for your little brother?”
His eyes, black as a raven, left me and traveled over his sister-in-law. He tucked his thumbs into his belt behind the big silver buckle, and I quickly looked away from his privates. “I need my plow point back, honey. You know where he left it?”
“I reckon I do.” She shifted the baby on her hip. Behind her I saw Annette’s admiring eyes and frowned at her.
Hugh saw her too and winked at her. “This your little brother? He’s a fine-looking fellow.”
Annette was struck dumb. “Yes,” I said. “His name is Lil’ Bit.”
Lil’ Bit was shy with strangers, and upon hearing his name, he hid his face in Sheila’s neck.
Hugh reached out to pat the baby’s back, and his hand moved from Lil’ Bit to Sheila’s bare arm. “You look real natural with a baby,” he said. He dropped his hand and returned his thumbs to his buckle. “Want to come up to the house with me and show me where that plow point is?”
Sheila looked down at her bare feet. “I can tell you where it’s at.”
He smiled at her. “But I might not see it. You come with me.”
She hesitated, then turned to me and held Lil’ Bit out. “I’ll get my shoes,” she said and went inside.
Hugh looked around the porch at the ferns and rockers and clay pots of begonias I had started last fall. “Nice place you got here, Mrs. Cotton. I reckon Stoney’s pretty happy working for your husband.”
I knew I should say something, but a chill came over me and was making its way down my back. I shivered slightly and hugged Lil’ Bit tighter. “Thank you. I’m glad Stoney likes it.”
Sheila came out then, leaned over and kissed Lil’ Bit’s cheek. “Bye bye. I’ll be back in just a little while.”
Lil’ Bit held up his hand. “Bye bye bye bye bye bye.”
We all laughed, and then Hugh swept his arm out for Sheila to lead them down the steps. She stopped midway. “Miss Rowena? We’ll finish them decorations soon as I get back. Okay?”
“Sure,” I said, and then I detected something in her face I couldn’t identify. Misgiving perhaps. Guilt. An apology of sorts. It was as if she had felt my uneasiness about Hugh’s eyes on her and wanted to tell me that it wasn’t her fault. I called out to her. “Sheila?” She turned on the bottom step and gazed up at me; the look that bothered me so was still in her eyes.
“Nothing,” I said. “We’ll see you later.”
But we didn’t see her later. Sheila didn’t come back all that day.
That night I lay in bed thinking about Stoney’s brother. Hugh Barnes was arrogant; he knew all three of the females on the Cottons’ porch admired him. He did look like a moving picture star; no doubt about that. I told myself I was just shoveling dirt to make a mountain again. He was her brother-in-law after all. But when I closed my eyes, I saw his thumbs, thick and bulbous, pointing down inside his jeans. I saw his fingers pressing into Sheila’s flesh, and the chill I felt earlier came back over me. I turned to Lloyd and laid my head against his warm body. The rise and fall of his chest against my ear and the soft snores that rose in the dark soothed me like I was Lil’ Bit drifting off to sleep to the rhythm of a lullaby. I opened my eyes and sat up in bed. “A baby,” I whispered to her across the night sky. “Sheila, you need a baby to keep you safe.”
CHAPTER 16
When I thought that about Sheila having a baby, I never dreamed that five months later I would be losing mine. I found that out on a perfect day in early May, the kind of day that makes you grateful to live in Mississippi, where spring begins sometimes as early as February and occasionally continues through June. Annette was in a snit, griping about a few scratches and red bug bites she’d gotten picking blackberries. Sheila’s mood was opposite, buoyant, telling us a story about something or other Stoney had done. A bit later that morning she cut her hand on a broken jar, and Lil’ Bit got hysterical over the commotion, and I remember we had to give him a cookie to calm him.
Walter drove up in the midst of our work, and when I saw the woman with him, I wondered out loud who she was. I was speechless when he told me they were married. I tried to congratulate them, but just as I opened my mouth, I noticed that Walter’s hands were shaking and a line of sweat had appeared around his hairline. He hadn’t come to my house for a marriage blessing. I think I knew then how this day was going to turn out, but I wouldn’t allow the thought to form in my head.
We went into the living room and made small talk, just nervous chatter on my part. Lil’ Bit sat in my lap, shrinking back against me, maybe sensing my discomfort. Discomfort? Rising terror, really. I could feel something hard and cold weighing inside me, hammering against my chest, and I wondered if I might be coming down with a flu. When Walter’s new wife said they would live in Chicago from now on, I knew for certain what was coming. I asked when they would be going, but it really didn’t matter, one week or two, I knew what the verdict would be. I tried to go on. I was mistress of this house, the hostess, a lady taught to use good manners. I inquired politely about the house they would live in. They. All of them.
Lil’ Bit was eating an orange slice, dripping juice all over the both of us when Walter stood up and said the words. “We plan to take Lil’ Bit with us.” There. It was finally said. That wasn’t so bad I told myself. You can survive this, Rowena. Stand up and accompany them to the door. You knew this was a possibility from the first day you agreed to raise Lil’ Bit. Silly woman, thinking he was yours forever. I chided myself thus, like a schoolgirl, as I said things that must have made sense to them because they left my house without calling for Lloyd, or a doctor to commit me to an asylum, which is where, I think, I was longing to go.
But I stayed. Stayed and did what a mother does for her son. I tried to think of it as a trip Lil’ Bit would take, like I was packing for him to go off to camp. I folded his shirts, wrote his name with a laundry pen inside the sunsuits, the sweaters, the little corduroy pants that were so small they seemed like trousers for a doll. I remember Sheila’s tears, Annette’s set face, pale and frightened, Lloyd’s stoic silence. Mama came over to say good-bye, but I wouldn’t talk to her. I stayed in my room listening to her sobs as she kissed her grandson farewell.
Annette left the house before they came. I hadn’t slept all night, and I heard her slipping through the silent house, but I didn’t get up from where I lay with my hand on Lil’ Bit’s soft back. Let her go, I thought. I would run too if only I could. My mind may have already fled from the house that morning. I can barely remember the loading of Lil’ Bit’s toys and clothes, the rocking horse. I suppose Lloyd attended to most of that. What I do remember is the scent of my son snuggled against me, his special smell that isn’t just baby powder or lotion. I would know him in the darkest room from that special scent that is his alone, and if I met him on the street, unrecognizable as a grown man, I would sniff the wreath of scented air that would surround him, and say, “Lil’ Bit, it’s you.”
The days that followed could be few or many for all I know. Lloyd told me that we would go to Chicago someday. He would get someone to mind the dairy, and we would take the Illinois Central up there. We could go in a month, or maybe wait until the fall. Don’t the leaves change to gorgeous colors in the fall? Yes, yes, I said. We’ll go in the fall, and we looked into each other’s collapsed faces, knowing we’d never go.
Everything seemed to wither and rot around me. Trays of food made me gag. Sounds entered my body like roaring cannons. When Lloyd put his hands on me, I slapped them away in pain from the pressure of his light touch. I would hear my baby’s plaintive calls, and I would sit up in my bed, thinking to go to him, until I would look around the dark room and know all over again. I would remember that part of me had died, and the rest of me couldn’t remember how to live.
It was Sheila who saved my life. No, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration. Had it not been for her, I might never have recovered from my partial death. There had been a parade of people through my bedroom hailing me with false cheer, phony promises that life would get better. They told me I would forget. Chicago, they said, isn’t so far away. I closed my ears to all of them. I tried to lock them out, but Lloyd took the knob off the door and sent Annette in with another plate filled with food from the church ladies. I would throw their fancy dishes against the wall until anger left me. Then I fell into another kind of existence where light hurt my eyes, where I couldn’t distinguish between sleep and wakefulness. I drifted through the nights and days, too tired to care that I was lying in my own stink. Then Sheila came.
Annette brought her into my room, and I pretended to be asleep. I couldn’t bear another “You’ll see. The dark cloud will pass.” All lies, lies, lies. I was sick of platitudes and Biblical quotations and voices with false promises. Sheila let the shade fly up, and the noise made me open my eyes, which I quickly closed. “It’s too bright,” I told her in a stern voice, but it was as if I hadn’t spoken. She strode to my bed and pulled the covers off me so violently, I shrank back from her. She started talking about my pillowcases, Lloyd’s hair tonic, nonsense. She was laughing, and I began to take interest in her as I imagine one crazy person attracts another in an insane asylum. She began to dance, and I watched her carry on as though she was not in my bedroom where grief hung in every corner. I think I clapped for her; I know I was scared of making her angry. She was crazy and there was no telling what she might do next. Then I was in the tub, naked as a newborn baby, surrounded by white blossoms and purple and red ones, and there was a lovely scent rising up to awaken my senses, and I felt the warm warm water, and I was an unborn baby floating in a safe, sweet-smelling womb. I caught a magnolia drifting toward me and lifted it to my face. It was as soft as Lil’ Bit’s silky hair, and I remembered the feel of his rust-red curls on my fingers. He was gone, but my mind had returned with the memories of him. I cried then; I wouldn’t die, and I gave myself up to the sorrow of living.
Sheila dressed me and pushed me and Annette into the living room where we danced like show girls on a stage. I was weak and my legs wobbled badly, and when I nearly fell, Sheila grabbed me and lifted me up. I hung on to her strength; I could feel it like a current running into me, giving me the energy to move toward the coming days.
That night I lay in Lloyd’s arms. I was open to his love again because Sheila had given me a great gift that day. The gift of hope. I would feel stro
ng again with the love of my husband, my daughter, my family and friends, and maybe someday I would hold Lil’ Bit in my arms again. I never dreamed that my long-ago hope of holding another child of my own was about to be realized.
I couldn’t believe it. It was a true miracle. Lloyd and I had tried and tried to conceive after Annette was born, and as the years went by, I had accepted that my womb would bear no more fruit. I was surprised, but Sheila wasn’t. “I knowed it,” she said. “When something bad happens, two good things always follow.” This idea was in opposition to Mama’s opinion that troubles come in threes. “Wonder what the other good thing will be,” she said. “Maybe Stoney and me will have a baby too.” When I looked into her yearning eyes that were set on my stomach as she spoke, I said a silent quick prayer that the Lord would bless them too.
After I told Sheila about the coming baby, our relationship changed. Although she was a married woman, often I would catch myself thinking of her as one of Annette’s young friends. I suppose it was her naíveté, or perhaps it was her unwillingness to succumb to the drudgery of running a household. She certainly wasn’t interested in beautifying her home. The first time I went up to the tenant house, I was appalled at the living conditions. Sheila was no housekeeper; there was an inch of dust on every stick of furniture, which was in deplorable shape to begin with. I found a chicken feather on her dinette set and a spider web in nearly every corner. Of course, it is more difficult to keep house with no running water, but the well was only twenty paces from the back door. As I sat on the tattered couch in her front room, I thought about how many hours I spent mopping the kitchen floor, scrubbing woodwork, dusting whatnots, and I wondered what I might do with all those hours if I were more like Sheila.
On one of my last visits to the tenant house, Sheila offered me coffee; Stoney had bought her a really nice coffee grinder, but I declined, thinking of how slapdash she most likely washed her cups. Annette was off somewhere that day, and I now can’t remember the purpose of my visit. I was probably needing something Sheila had borrowed as she frequently left my house with her arms filled with our belongings.
