Tending to Virginia

by Jill McCorkle

  “Were you ever unhappy?” Ginny Sue asks. “Were you ever sorry that you married Gramps?” That Ginny Sue, questions heaped on questions, why is the sky blue and the grass green and why do you like to make hogshead cheese and why did God make Gramps die and how could she have a Uncle David that she never even knew, and why can’t I live in a big house like where Cindy lives and why can’t I be a movie star like Lena and why can’t I stay here with you, Gram, forever? And she has always had to tell that child that she just don’t know all the answers, that she didn’t get but to sixth, and she just doesn’t know anything beyond what is in her heart and that God knows why and when he takes you to your home, it will all come clear to your mind or if it don’t come clear it won’t even matter because you will be able to walk on your legs that can’t move and you will hear words spoken as clear as a bell on a still windless day and that river will never run dry, and the fields will stretch as far out as a body can see, and nobody will be able to hide his ugly face under a sheet and kill those that are good at heart, those that can call up a storm with a little dance. If it don’t come clear, it won’t matter none because you’ll be at home where you belong.

  “Gram? Were you ever unhappy?”

  “No,” she says. “James never caused me to hurt and I knew I had found the best, found the best this world could offer out to me.”

  “Always? You knew that always?”

  “Always,” she says and turns down the sound of the TV, the storm pictures gone now, just some man talking. Always, she repeats in her head. That’s the song that Hannah had played on the piano and sang there after her high school graduation after Ben Turner went home. And David gave Hannah the prettiest picture he had painted of the Saxapaw River and had framed. He didn’t like nobody outside of the family knowing he could do that, sing either, but the two of them sat there side by side on that piano bench, singing while she and James sat there on the sofa and listened. “I’ll be loving you always,” Hannah sang and Emily stared down at that fine diploma that James was still holding on his lap. “With a love that’s true, always.”

  “James never made me unhappy,” she says and changes the channel, then turns the set off. Perry Mason has got old, too old to walk.

  “You are breaking my heart, James,” she had told him and he let go of that leather belt there in his hand and let it slip to the floor, the buckle making a noise like a bucket in a dry well there on the kitchen floor. “David is a grown man now. He’s just graduated high school and he can make his own decisions.”

  “I wasn’t going to hit him,” James said and tried to hand her his handkerchief that Mag had bleached out so white. “Why is it that white sounds so clean and colored don’t,” Mag had asked her and they laughed. There was no soul on earth cleaner than Mag Sykes, her face scrubbed shiny clean with soap, her heart pure as heaven. She didn’t take his handkerchief but put her face in her hands.

  “I just want to talk some sense into him is all,” James said. “I’m all for him joining the service, but why can’t he do like Ben? Why can’t he join in a way that’ll keep him right here in the country? Why does he want to be such a daredevil? Doesn’t know the first thing about flying.” James tried to pull her hands away from her face but she turned away. “He’s being foolish, Emily. Tell him. Tell him that you think he’s a fool.”

  “He wants to learn to fly,” Emily said. “He wants to learn so when he gets out he can go to school and be an engineer.”

  “Like Roy Carter,” James said, staring down at that belt. “Roy has filled his head up with all this, with words that nobody else knows, so let Roy send him to school. He’s already had twelve years.”

  “Things are different now,” she said and she wanted to hug him, to pull him close but she felt her backbone go stiff as a board. Things are different; those were David’s words. “Why can’t he just accept that I want something else?” David had asked her, his bare arms so tan and muscled. “I don’t want to follow in his footsteps. I don’t want my whole life riding on a crop of tobacco, riding on the wind and weather.”

  “What’s different,” James said, “is he’s ashamed of me, ashamed and determined to be anything except like me.” And she rinsed that sink full of bitter tomatoes like there was no tomorrow, like she couldn’t get that shiny red skin clean enough of garden dust. “I think he’s ashamed of both of us.” James turned off the faucet and gripped her wet hands. “He probably wishes you were Lena,” he said. “But he does seem to listen to what you say.” He pressed her hands harder between his own. “Why won’t you tell him? Why are you afraid to tell him that he’s making a mistake?”

  “How do I know?” she screamed, staring at her hands pressed between his, her hands so small next to his. “You are killing me, both of you,” she sobbed, dropped her chin, determined not to look at him until he let her go. “This arguing. You are killing me piece by piece.” He let go of her hands and she stepped back and faced him. “He’s smart, James, smarter than me. You could have done as good as Roy if you had had the chance. Look how much further you’ve come than your own daddy.”

  “I only picked up where my daddy left it all,” he said. “I have never felt ashamed of him.”

  “He’s not ashamed.”

  “I don’t care what he is, Emily. I’ve had it,” he said and left the room while she arranged the tomatoes carefully on the drain board. “I don’t care what he says,” David had said. “It’s my life!” They might as well have roped her legs and taken off in different directions.

  “Gram?” Ginny Sue is asking now. “Did you always feel close to Gramps?”

  “Oh yes,” she says and turns the set back on. “I always did.”

  * * *

  “Get Billy! Get Billy!” that old woman screams and it doesn’t matter how many times Lena tells her to shut the hell up, she doesn’t and the nurse teacher calls Lena down for that.

  “We don’t fight with children here at school, Lena Pearson,” the third-year teacher had said and sent her to sit in the corner and that was fine, she’d sit in the corner until she dropped dead; she’d sit in a corner until a big old black snake came up from the floor and choked her and then that teacher would have to call Lena’s mama and tell that she had killed Lena.

  “Mama is going to be so upset,” Emily said when she stopped by Lena’s chair on her way to recess. “You are not taught fighting at home.”

  “Don’t tell,” Lena begged. “I’ll never fight here in the school house again if you won’t tell Mama.” And she knew Emily wouldn’t tell, and she knew that she’d catch up with that Lily Moore one afternoon after school was let out and whip her good. She did. Whipped Lily Moore good, slapped her face and left a print. “Call my daddy a nigger-lover again,” Lena said, her dress hiked up so she could straddle Lily Moore’s stomach. “I’ll whip you every day for the rest of your life.”

  “She wants Billy and not this doll,” Lena tells the nurse teacher. “I can have this baby. I can.”

  “We’ll get you one,” nurse teacher says. “I’ll tell your niece that you want a baby of your own.”

  “Oh no,” she whispers. “You can’t ever tell I want a baby.” And she lets nurse teacher take her over by the Pepsi-Cola machine and sit down. All she wants is to care for that baby, clean them dirty panties, nice dry panties. She just wants to hold that baby up there to her bosom like she held Pooh and felt that growl there against her chest. You a sweet kitty Pooh kitty, oh poor poor Pooh baby.

  “You can’t tell that I can’t have a baby,” she had told Roy and they were in the side yard there in Florida and feeling that ocean breeze, looking at her name there in that worn out Broadway program. Her name on that piece of paper didn’t make her laugh like it used to. “Don’t tell that I can’t have babies.”

  “You can’t help it,” Roy said and those frogs were croaking and carrying on like the world was coming to an end. “We could adopt a child.”

  “No,” she shook her head. “Then they’d know. They�
�d know that I can’t.” She fanned herself with the program, her body still young and smooth-looking, and no reason, no reason as to why she’d be all dried up with nothing there where it was supposed to be. “Tessy would love hearing that I can’t have a baby, love the fact that she’s got a yardful of dirty children and I can’t even have one.”

  “What about Emily?” he asked. “You can tell her.”

  “No, no, I can’t,” she said. “Emily’d think less of me.” She leaned forward with her head on her knees and cried. “It’s like I’m not even a woman.”

  “No, no that’s not true,” he said. “You’re more of a woman than any of the others.”

  “Don’t tell,” she whispered and waited for him to nod. “Promise me, and don’t you stay here with me if you take in your mind to find yourself a young woman.”

  “Lena, baby,” he said and walked over, sat on the end of her lawn chair, reached his hands out to her, hands she had imagined building her a fine crib, a little playhouse that other children would turn green over when they saw it. “I just want you,” he said but she could see behind all of that, see the disappointment there. He was going to leave her; she knew he was going to leave her.

  “Don’t touch me there, Roy,” she said and cried. “I just can’t bear to be touched.” She was so afraid that he was going to leave her. Any woman with any sense would want him and she’d have to let him go, let those baby kittens go to good homes ’cause they’ve got so many cats living up there under the house to meow so loud and to drink up all the milk.

  “Roy’s gonna leave me,” she tells nurse teacher who is there now, making her pull herself up straight; nurse gives her that doll to hold. “Is this my baby now?”

  “For a little while,” nurse teacher says. “You can share it.”

  “Can’t share a baby,” she says and laughs, pulls its little face up against her breast. “King Solomon done that to find the mama. He said ‘well sir, we’ll just saw this baby in half and the real mama, she said ‘oh no, let her take him then’ and that’s how they know the real mama. The real mama don’t let no flea stay there in the fur.” Nurse teacher smiles at her now, pretty woman if she was smaller and would buy herself some little red shoes. She names the baby Cord Pearson Carter after her daddy and she rocks him there. He’s a tired little baby, a sweet baby, oh poor little tired baby. “Oh no,” she says, “Let her take him then.” And she points to that old woman down the hall. “She can take him if it’ll keep him from being sawed in half. I’m the real mama.”

  * * *

  Cindy goes to work early on Monday morning just so she’ll have a little time to herself before Constance Ann and everybody else gets there. Now she’s sorry that she had Constance Ann over to spend the night, sorry that Constance Ann saw her cry, afraid that Constance Ann is going to think she was crying over Charles Snipes and now will ask a million and one questions. The Charles Snipeses of this world are a dime a dozen and so are the Buzz Biggerses and the Randy Skinners.

  She sits down at her VDT and calls up that little secret file of hers that she keeps hidden, a file that she named “AB” because Constance Ann is squeamish about blood and therefore, wouldn’t bother herself to look. Even if anybody did, it wouldn’t matter, because Cindy has put all kinds of little signs and symbols at the beginning of the file there and then has a long list of big medical blood words. She runs the screen past all of that, past all of her book titles, past the list of addresses and phone numbers of men that she thinks are right cute. She doesn’t do anything with those numbers, of course, because most of those men are married; still you never know when one will divorce, happens all the time. She runs past the addresses, down and past her period chart that she set up for herself so she’ll always know when she’s due.

  When she gets past that, she makes a new heading: REASONS WHY CHARLES SNIPES SHOULD NOT MARRY NANCY PRICE. She has been thinking of these reasons all weekend:

  1. Nancy Price wears her hair like an old woman.

  2. If they have a child, it will have great big ears.

  3. Nancy Price is way out of style.

  4. Nancy Price has a sister that does drugs.

  5. Nancy Price has a sister that can’t sing.

  6. Charles Snipes needs a woman in step with the world because he is not.

  7. Nancy Price is not in step with the world.

  “You’re here early,” Constance Ann says and Cindy zooms that file up to the top where she has all of her blood words. “What are you working on?”

  “The blood data,” Cindy says. “Sometimes I don’t think I’ll ever finish it. I could use some help but I know how you feel about blood words.”

  “Can’t stand to even type them out,” Constance Ann says and bites into a huge apple fritter that she has wrapped in a napkin. “It makes me sick to hear those words.”

  “Words like coagulate?”

  “Stop!” Constance Ann looks at her, that big fritter an inch from her mouth. “I’m trying to eat a little breakfast.”

  “Is that what that is?” Cindy asks. “I thought it was a frisbee.”

  “Oh ha ha.” Constance Ann walks around to her desk. “You’re one to be talking after the way you were falling apart the other night.”

  “Constance Ann, let’s drop it. I don’t ask you to help with the blood data, do I?” Cindy stands up and leans over her desk so Constance Ann will have to look at her. “I have seniority and I could make you type some blood data but I don’t because you are my friend.”

  “Well, the quiz did say . . .”

  “And the quiz was exactly right,” Cindy says, Constance Ann with her mouth dropped open, ready for some more fritter but too surprised to bite it. “I always take the quizzes and I believe they tell the truth.”

  “Why didn’t you say that the other night, then?”

  “I had a bad night is all and I took it out on you because you are my friend.”

  “Thanks, Cindy,” Constance Ann says and looks like she might cry. “And thanks for not making me type all that stuff.”

  “You’re welcome,” Cindy says and sits back down. “Just so you never accidentally have to see those words, the blood data file is named AB.”

  “Well, I’ll never open that one,” Constance Ann says, her words mumbled up with fritter.

  “You can if you want, but you know I thought I’d warn you.” Cindy zooms back to the end of the file when she hears Constance Ann typing.

  8. Nancy Price probably takes quizzes which is stupid.

  9. Charles Snipes is used to better.

  10. Charles Snipes has a son with acne who needs his father to spend time with him.

  By the end of the day, Cindy has a list as long as her leg, and is tired of staring at the VDT and listening to Constance Ann. Thank God she doesn’t have some man expecting her to get home and cook dinner because she is too tired; she’ll swing by Kentucky Fried and get her and Chuckie some snak paks, but first she stops at old Emily’s to check on Ginny Sue.

  Ginny Sue is still all propped up and looking out of it, Emily watching that damned TV with no sound and that hick woman Esther in the kitchen.

  “Hey girl,” Cindy says and squats on the floor beside Ginny Sue. Ginny Sue turns and opens her eyes, asks what time it is. “Monday,” Cindy says. “The day is Monday and the month is July. You’d have a shitload of trouble if you had to talk to a shrink right now.”

  “I’m tired,” Ginny says.

  “I know you are, baby,” Emily whispers and then turns on Cindy. “Why don’t you walk on to where you’re walking?”

  “I came to ask Ginny Sue a question is all,” Cindy says and now she doesn’t even feel like talking to Ginny Sue, doesn’t even feel like telling how Charles Snipes is planning to get married. Nobody cares. Nobody gives a damn what is going on in her life. Ginny Sue has been a touch sick and you’d think it was Armageddon.

  “What do you want to ask me?”

  “I want to ask you why you don’t wake up and prop you
rself up a little, brush your hair and put on some cheek color?”

  “Because she has good sense,” Emily says and points that remote at Cindy like it might be a laserbeam gun.

  “I haven’t felt like fixing up,” Ginny Sue says. “They told me to lie flat.”

  “Well, then tell me this.” Cindy pauses, jingling her car keys. “Why is it that you see couples who look like they don’t go together? You know what I mean and you say, ‘what is that Don Johnson hunk doing with her’ because she is not as attractive as he could do.”

  “Because pretty is as pretty does,” Emily says and turns the set on and up loud. Cindy wishes somebody would take that damn gadget away from her.

  “You never know what that person is really like,” Ginny Sue mumbles. “You might think you know somebody and then you don’t. You don’t know them at all.”

  “Well, I do,” Cindy says, meaning that she does know Charles Snipes; she knows him better than Nancy Price, knows him better than anybody, but all this mumbling is getting her nowhere. It’s just making her more depressed and thank God it’s a good TV show night. This place, Ginny Sue included, is as depressing as her mama’s house. Cindy sees Hannah drive up and decides to go ahead and leave so that she doesn’t get stuck talking to her. “I’ll see you,” she says and heads to the door.

  “Thanks for stopping by, Cindy,” Ginny Sue says. “Sorry I wasn’t good company.”

  “Oh now, you’re good company,” Emily says. “I’ve always said that you were good company to have.”

  “And what about me?” Cindy asks and looks right at Emily.

  “You need to press your slacks,” that old biddy says and Cindy slams the door behind her, tells Hannah she’d love to stay and talk but that she has a million things to do.

  She gets in her car and heads to Kentucky Fried, feeling so mad. Nobody ever says anything that’s nice to her. Her daddy is the only family member who ever called attention to how good-looking she is. “Your mother’s family is queer,” he had told her. “They are the strangest people you’ll ever meet and you’re better off without them.” He was probably right about that, probably right about Charles Snipes. She could do better. She will do better, but it still pisses her off that everywhere she goes people are coupled up. There’s a couple of teenagers hanging out in the parking lot and they are all smooched up like she used to do with Charles Snipes. The boy is in a KFC suit and the girl is wearing a miniskirt which she’s too big to wear. Cindy could wear it.