Tending to Virginia

by Jill McCorkle

  She leans forward in her chair now and glances at that screened door, latched tight and nobody there. She would have sworn she heard somebody there. James knew every curve of that river, had trees that served as markers and he always knew right where they were. And he could sing, Lord in heaven knows that man could sing, and that voice would carry she thought across that river like a skipping stone right on down to South Carolina and back. He’d sing “Red River Valley,” and it made tears come to her eyes to hear that sweet sadness. He’d always turn and look at her when he sang “We will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile.” That shore seemed to go on forever and as it got later the light would come and go from behind those trees, just come and go, and she took off the hat so she could see better, what with it coming and going. They didn’t play “Red River Valley” at the funeral; they wouldn’t have allowed that there in the church. She asked for “How Great Thou Art” because that was her favorite but she hadn’t known his. There were several he’d sing from time to time, “Love Lifted Me” and “Have Thine Own Way” but she didn’t know the favorite. All those years and she never knew which one.

  “Go early with me, Hannah,” Emily had said the day of the funeral. “Let’s go be with him before everybody else comes.” Nobody was there, not even the preacher. “Play something real quiet,” she said and pushed Hannah up toward that altar and then behind it where there was an old organ. Hannah could play by ear, had her whole life, and they sat there side by side, just the two of them and sang so quietlike, “For they say you are taking the sunshine,” and Hannah started crying; Hannah could not even press the keys or sing, so Emily finished it out herself. Hannah’s mouth quivered so and those big eyes filling, her hand clinging to Emily’s arm and Emily had wanted so bad to take Hannah in her arms like she might be a baby and rock her there in front of the church. She wished for a minute that she could grab hold of her own mama and let the tears come. “We’ve got each other,” she told Hannah and patted her hand. “You’ve got a family all your own and your daddy wouldn’t want to see you so upset over him. He’d want you to be strong.”

  Emily didn’t cry, really cry through that whole service because it was too personal and people should not have seen. If she had let herself cry, then they all would have started, Lena and Hannah, and James wouldn’t have wanted such a sad day. She sat through that service and concentrated her mind on Ginny Sue, pulled that child up on her lap and held her there, and while the preacher talked of how good James was, she thought of all the things that she’d tell Ginny Sue; she’d tell of when she met James and she’d tell of her own daddy and she’d tell all the funny stories about Lena, how Lena would try to sneak out of the house to go to school with her chest stuffed up great big with socks when she wasn’t but nine years old and how their mama grabbed Lena there in the front yard and pulled sock after sock out of that child’s dress, said, “There’ll be time enough for bosoms, Rolena Pearson. I wouldn’t go wishing things on my body before it’s time.” Emily caught herself wanting to laugh right there in the church. James had laughed for years over the things Lena had done and she knew that Ginny Sue would laugh that same way, that some day the two of them would be right by themselves and she’d tell those stories one right after another.

  Emily did not cry until late that night when she sat in that glider all by herself, Hannah and Ben sound asleep in that room she had made up for them, Robert and Ginny Sue on a pallet there on the floor near her bed. Just fifty-nine years old then, a widow and a grandmother, the nights getting longer and cooler, spider lilies blooming, leaves turning, and she tried to feel his hand pressing and squeezing her shoulder.

  “Is this the same woman that loves pigs’ feet?” he had asked and she scooped up some of that river water and threw it in his face. “My mama told me that possum was colored meat.” My mama told me if I was goodie that she would buy me a rubber dollie / My auntie told her, I kissed a soldier, now she won’t buy me a rubber dollie / Three six nine, the goose drank wine, the monkey chewed tobacco on the street car line. “Tell them old friends of yours to hush with such silliness there on my front porch,” she yelled out that front door. “Hannah and David got no business hearing it.”

  “Is this the same woman that loves pigs’ feet?” he asked when she turned up her nose at what he was telling of French people eating snails. He was talking of going to war; he was talking of a long time away from home. Would she wait for him? “Maybe I’ll bring you back some snails.”

  “You can go out in the yard and flip over a rock,” she told him. “We got plenty of snails right here in Saxapaw.” Of all the silly things to talk about and right there on her mama’s front porch. Right there in ear distance of Lena who was pitching a fit to get on a train all by herself and go somewhere.

  “You are not but eleven years old, Rolena Pearson,” their mama said.

  “I’ll go see your people,” Lena squealed like a little pig. “I just want to go somewhere.”

  “Will you wait for me?” James asked and took hold of one of her fingers and squeezed it. She was not but sixteen years old. “Promise me that you’ll be right here, just like this.”

  “I hope so,” she told him. “But I can’t go making promises when I don’t know what’ll happen. You might like those snails and decide to stay.” She had wanted to say, “Yes, yes,” but that would’ve been forward. They were not engaged and she was not going to chase him, a man eight years older, a grown man getting ready to cross the ocean.

  She had cried when her shoulder felt so open and uncovered there while she swayed in the glider, Ginny Sue asleep in her arms, those same spider lilies that were there three nights before when her shoulder was covered, that very last night that she had with him, but there were not enough tears in the world to do him justice. There were not enough and the glider swayed back and forth, back and forth, like that swing at her mama’s house and her hand in that cold brown river water. “Now you got to wait for me,” she whispered and stared down at her hands so tired and calloused, so much needing to reach over and feel him there.

  Her hands would be so tired after doing all that laundry, those towels after all them men had come in and bathed, James’s shirts that would be so dirty from hard work by the end of a day. There wasn’t time to stop, had to hire that colored woman to come from time to time, Mag Sykes; Mag Sykes could work circles around anybody in the county. “Let’s sit a spell,” she’d say to Mag and they would while James was at work and the children at school. “Let’s have a little dip,” Mag would say and she would though no one knew of it. Mag knew and James knew that she’d take a dip, but nobody else needed to know. It was none of their business.

  “Mag?” she calls now and this white woman, a white woman in some brown pants and a flowered shirt comes and stands in the doorway. Oh yes, Esther is here. Mag is not here. It seems Esther is related some way, but she can’t think of how, way on down the line.

  “You needing something, Miss Emily?”

  “Did you ever hear of the Saxapaw River?” She takes out that tin of snuff and puts a little in her gum. Everybody knows about that these days. These days, nobody cares if a person takes a dip of snuff what with what’s on TV.

  “Did I ever hear of it?” Esther sits in the rocking chair close by and laughs. “I live on it. ‘Bout to dry up these days, but let a big rain fall and that river comes right up in my backyard.”

  “Hush now,” Emily says and laughs until the tears come to her eyes. “No telling what comes up out of that river.”

  “I ain’t aiming to go look,” Esther says and takes a sip of the iced tea she is holding. “I know a man that found a body washed up once.”

  “Hush now,” Emily puts her hand up to her chest but still can’t stop the laughing. “I bet that give him a scare.”

  “He was crazy drunk, stood there and talked to that body for awhile.” Esther drains the iced tea and gets up. “I’ll have lunch in a second. I bet you’ll have company before too long.”

&nb
sp; “Company?”

  “Well, Hannah will be here, you know,” Esther says. Esther doesn’t dip, which is good; it’s a habit you can fall under. “Hannah said she might see if Lena feels like getting out.”

  “Lena ain’t doing well,” Emily says. “Now don’t you tell that I said it.”

  “Oh no, I wouldn’t,” Esther says and goes back in the kitchen.

  Lena doesn’t live at her house anymore. Lena lives somewhere that she says is like a hotel and a school. Lena has ridden trains her whole life and she didn’t have anything sung when Roy Carter died. Lena was so mad at him when he died that she didn’t even go to the funeral. Lena has been spoiled her whole life.

  “Did you say it’s lunchtime?” Emily calls out but her voice is so quiet that she has to wait until Esther comes back to the doorway to repeat herself. “Lunch did you say?” and Esther nods. “I thought it was closer to suppertime.”

  “Where on earth have you been this morning?” Esther asks, and she has to think a minute. It seems like she’s been everywhere. She has to think real hard like she might be in school.

  “Well, the Saxapaw River.”

  “Lord, I hope you weren’t up in my backyard. The back of my house is a plumb sight what with old hubcaps and them trash men haven’t been to my house in a month I know.”

  Esther goes back in the kitchen and Emily is glad, Esther’s white face so shiny like it might have been greased in lard. Esther sings a song that Emily has never heard before. It’s about somewhere by the name of Butcher’s Hollow and it makes Emily laugh until her chest hurts. “You got to wait for me now, James,” she says. “You and David has got to promise that you’ll wait for me.”

  “I can’t hear you now girl with all that frying,” Esther says and leans around the corner; God, to see Mag Sykes, somebody with a little sense give to them. “What are you saying, honey?”

  “Children should be seen and not heard is what I’m saying.”

  “Well, it’s been a coon’s age since I’ve been called a child.” Esther laughs and goes back to her singing and it makes Emily laugh, just wash those clothes and shell butterbeans and sit down with Mag and have a dip. It makes her laugh until her chest hurts, laugh until she takes a Kleenex from her pocket and holds it up to her eyes. There are not enough tears in the world for it, just not enough.

  * * *

  Lena Pearson Carter wishes she was dead. Roy is. It’s been almost a year since Roy died, her niece Hannah says, but it seems like yesterday or three weeks what with all that hullaballoo going on, making her house like a regular hellhole. And who would’ve thought? Who would’ve thought Roy would throw such a wild party there on the night that everybody said he was dead. There was so much noise a policeman came and he was right nice, not a very handsome man but the Lord can’t heap up everybody’s plate like he did for Roy Carter, and why? Why did the Lord give all that to Roy Carter, brains and looks and her for a wife. “My husband’s cutting a shine,” she told that policeman. “And he’s dead, too.” She had no choice but to tell it. She told the policeman and Hannah and that niggra that came and stole the car. “I hurt,” she said, but not a one of them could do a thing for her; not a one could tell her where Roy had gone.

  Next thing she knew, Hannah had her name stamped in all her underwear and had her here at this school. Old people, God, old and ugly, looking like fools, walk by her door near about all day and some stop and stand there sipping on some old Pepsi-Cola or shit, who knows, like she might ask them to come in and she doesn’t; hell no, ain’t about to ask some old drooling fool into her house. She’s already got one that stays there with her, a woman with the filthiest hair that Lena has ever seen, could fry an egg on a hot day and that woman just walks back and forth. She walks back and forth till it makes Lena dizzy. “Wear out the damn rug!” Lena told her and the fool said, “I will, sister, I will. God willing and I will.” Psshh. God don’t have a thing to do with it; God ain’t at this school and who can blame him? The food makes you sick; they don’t put one grain of salt on one grain of nothing. “I’d love to have me some of them butter cookies,” her roommate says ten thousand times a day. “I’d love some, yes sister, I would, God willing and I would.”

  “Tell God about it then,” Lena had said one day and that woman stopped her pacing and just grinned at her, nodded and grinned.

  “I do, sister, I do.” She went right back to pacing and Lena told her, told her she didn’t have but one sister still on this earth and that her sister, Emily Pearson Roberts, lived at home where she ought to be and not in this school where men pee on the floor if they take a notion and nobody cares.

  “There’s pee on the floor,” she had told that fat woman in the white suit. “And he did it.” She pointed to that old man that chews tobacco all day long without a tooth in his head.

  “Now, let’s not be ugly, Mrs. Carter,” that woman said. God, ugly, ugly and old—all of them are as old as dirt and who in the hell wants to talk to them or to be here at this hotel school where nothing’s going on except some niggras that come on Sundays to sing and play bingo games where you don’t get a damn thing but maybe a comb or a sucker like you might be retarded. “Let’s play for money,” she said one day, “or cigarettes,” and that nurse teacher said “Now, Mrs. Carter.” Lena said stop with that Mrs. Carter shit ‘cause Mr. Carter is dead and the food makes her sick as a dog, sick as hell and people pee on the floor for a person like herself who can still walk to slip and break a neck. She hasn’t learned one goddamned thing, not one, and that’s fine, don’t need such a school; live and learn and die and forget it all. Roy used to say that. Roy said that and he said, “Walk softly and carry a big stick.” He said, “Do unto others before they do it to you.” Damn right. She’s worn this same outfit five days in a row and she don’t care if she wears it for the sixth. They say let’s slip off your clothes and take a little bath, little bath, shit; she ain’t taking off her clothes for people who are all crazy as hell. Can’t even get room service in this hotel, gotta go to the school cafeteria and walk down a line if you’re able and then sit there with people that can’t even get a bite to their lips without dropping it. God, it makes her sick. “You close your mouth so I can’t see,” she told one woman and that woman smiled at her, smiled there with food and no telling what kind of food it was, who the hell knows, hanging there around her mouth and there’s a woman that sits in a high chair the whole damn day with a baby doll hugged up to her bosom and screaming for somebody to “Get Billy, Get Billy.” Lena stopped by that woman’s chair one day and said, “You hush your mouth,” and that woman said, “Get Billy,” and she said, “I don’t know Billy, you get Billy on the phone and shut up, now.” That woman kept right on so Lena went up to that nurse teacher and she said, “You go get that damned Billy and let it stop.”

  “Billy’s dead,” the nurse teacher said. “We’ll move her further down the hall.”

  “Why don’t you tell her he’s dead so she’ll just shut up? Roy’s dead, they say, and you don’t catch me setting there saying, ‘Where’s Roy? Where’s Roy?’”

  “Would you like a Pepsi-Cola?” that woman teacher mulehead tart asked. They think a Pepsi-Cola is next to God.

  “No I don’t want some damn Pepsi-Cola.” She pounded her fist on that counter and stuck out her tongue. “Get Billy” that woman said when she passed and she stopped and took that woman’s doll right out of her arms. It was the ugliest doll baby that she’d ever seen, dirty and ugly; she never in her life kept a baby doll looking so ugly and dirty. That woman stretched her arms to get that doll back, grunting and carrying on like she might be four or five. Lena looked to see if that doll was wearing underwear.

  “That is her doll,” nurse teacher said and took it. “Do you want one of your own?”

  “God, what would I do with it? I never even had babies, real babies, ‘cause I didn’t see any use to them, cry, cry, cry,” she had pointed to the woman who was clutching that doll baby and rocking back and forth.<
br />
  “Well, we don’t take other people’s things,” fat tart said and them legs of hers the size of a barrel.

  “Somebody took my shoes,” she said. “I had nine pair of shoes and somebody took them.”

  “Your niece is keeping them for you.”

  “Hannah can’t wear my shoes so I know that’s not the truth.” She took off her bedroom shoe and held up her foot. “I have little feet and Hannah can’t wear my shoes.” She glanced down them barrels to those white shoes, God, she hates white shoes even in the summer she hates white shoes if they ain’t Keds. “What do you wear, a 13?”

  “Get Billy! Get Billy!”

  “Billy is dead! Dead, dead. Billy is in the school for the dead where we all ought to be instead of this here school Holiday Inn.” That woman stopped rocking and looked at her, tears in them old eyes that looked like if they could see anything, they shouldn’t be able to. “Dead, I say. Billy’s dead.” She leaned closer to that woman and put her own cheek on the other side of that doll’s head. “I wish I was dead,” she whispered and that woman didn’t say a word, just stared off past that baby’s head. Somebody ought to bathe that baby and give it a little milk like she did for Trickie. She’d stand on that back step and without a word Trickie would be there going round and round her legs. Trickie would meow real sweetlike when she filled up that saucer. “That’s why we always run out of milk,” Roy had said. I been out of milk my whole life she told him once.