Tending to Virginia

by Jill McCorkle

“My grandmother is dead!”

  “So is Roy,” Lena says and puffs out a cloud of smoke. “I wish I was.”

  “James said South Carolina is a nice place to marry,” Emily says. “So here we are.”

  “South Carolina?” Lena sits back up.

  “You heard it. South Carolina, Boston, England, all at the same time.” Cindy goes in the kitchen and opens the refrigerator and just stands there looking in.

  “Don’t let all the cold out,” Madge says and fans herself with one of Emily’s old paper fans like the funeral homes used to give out.

  “Don’t, don’t, don’t!” Cindy yells. “Here I am with a child, two husbands under my belt and all I ever get is don’.”

  “I don’t remember coming to South Carolina,” Lena says.

  “You didn’t.” Emily pulls out her tin of snuff. “Me and James didn’t tell you where we were going because we eloped and you stood there at the edge of the yard and pitched a fit because you didn’t want to stay home with Mama.”

  “Well, you must have brought me with you, else why am I here?” Lena drops her cigarette in the ashtray and just lets it burn. “Wedding,” she sighs. “I ain’t about to put on a pair of hose.” Lena sits up straight and looks at Hannah. “I remember coming by car. We all must have come by car, Roy’s Lincoln.”

  “I flew,” Cindy says. “My lover rented a jet and flew me here and Ginny Sue came by Trailways and Mama got brought by some men from another planet.”

  Madge is too tired to say anything, just looks out the window where Felicia is standing in her half of the yard, folding a yard chair and looking up at the sky. Sometimes, Madge can almost see why Felicia chose her way, life without men, and Felicia is not even a big woman.

  “Cindy is teasing,” Hannah says to Emily and Lena. “She made all that up.”

  “I haven’t made a thing since I tried to make me a purse at the hotel school,” Lena says. “I didn’t want to make a purse. Straw shit, cheap straw and so Roy said don’t make a purse, Lena, for godssakes don’t make a purse; I’ll buy you a purse when we go to Chicago.”

  “I’ll not go to Chicago with anyone,” Emily says.

  “It’s not Chicargo, even I know that.”

  “Cindy,” Madge says, still watching Felicia who is now pulling some weeds from around her shrubs. Felicia has probably never had a man that made her do something she didn’t want to do. Felicia has never had a child. Madge looks away from the window when it looks like Felicia is looking in her direction. Madge tries to focus on her card game but she can’t help but wonder what Felicia would think of her, if a woman interested in other women would find her just as unattractive as Raymond had. And what becomes of people who are so unattractive that nobody, not man nor woman, wants them?

  “Don’t marry anybody unless it’s really for love,” Madge’s mama had told her. “You’d be better off right by yourself. A person might as well be right by herself and all alone than to live a life that’s nothing but a lie.” And her mama was so rough-looking, even then; she looked like those pictures of old rough farm women with her worn out high-tops and little pipe. That was a mouthful for her mama to say because she rarely talked at all except to tell Madge to do something, feed the chickens or go get a bucket of water.

  “Tessy knows what she’s talking about.” Madge’s daddy was in the doorway and she hadn’t even heard him come in. Her mama didn’t even flinch with his voice but set her mouth straight and tight with a determined look while she licked the end of a thread and guided it through the needle. Madge waited for her mama to say something but she didn’t and he just stood there, a big man with wild gray hair that he didn’t even cut in those later years. Her mama just kept right on quilting, staring down at those tough old hands. And Madge felt the tension there between them, her daddy’s hard stare and her mama’s spine rigid as a post.

  “What did he mean?” she had asked when her father went out the side door and let it slam behind him.

  “Nothing. Didn’t mean nothing,” her mama said without even looking up. “I’m just saying you’d be better off alone than with a man you don’t love and got no hopes of loving.” And she had wanted to ask her mama questions but those dark brown eyes silenced her.

  “Come live with me and be my love,” Raymond had said. He had a car, an old Bel Air, and when they’d drive down that filthy dusty road into town to go to the movies, he’d put his arm around her and pull her close on that seat. “No wife of mine will ever have to work in a field like a nigger,” he told her.

  “I hear he’s fast,” Hannah had said one day at school. “And he’s a lot older.”

  “Just eight years,” Madge said. “Daddy is ten years older than Mama.”

  “Find yourself a young man,” her mama had said.

  Raymond had taught Ben how to drive, all of them laughing at the way Ben was so stiff and nervous behind the wheel, couldn’t even put his arm around Hannah or smoke a cigarette while he drove he was so nervous.

  “I like it when you drive, Ben,” Raymond said, those wingtips propped on the front seat between Hannah and Ben. “I like having Madge back in this backseat all to myself.” She had to fight that man every inch of the way, fought him right up to their wedding night when she stood in the bathroom in a motel in Florence, South Carolina.

  “I’m ready,” Raymond had called through that closed door. And she had brushed her hair down around her shoulders, taken off the locket her mama had given her, a locket that Madge didn’t even know her mama had. “Just take it,” her mama said. “And don’t tell nobody I gave it to you.”

  “Hope you come with a guarantee little country mouse,” Raymond called and when she opened the bathroom door, he was sitting in the bed with the sheet pulled up to his hips, that blonde hair combed up off his forehead; his large blue eyes were taking in every inch of her. “I’m ready,” he said and lifted a shot glass. Madge would not want to go back; she would not want to relive one minute. She watches Felicia pulling weeds and she is relieved that it’s all over. Now all she has to do is tell Hannah.

  “You could pick the time and place, Hannah,” Madge says. “You know if you feel like you can get away for a day.” Hannah steps in from the bathroom, wiping her hands on a towel. Lena is pacing and muttering now, a towel wrapped around her head.

  “I’ll talk to Ben,” Hannah says and follows Lena. Madge turns back to the window, feeling more hopeful every time she asks Hannah. Soon she will say yes; she will have to say yes. Madge can’t carry it any longer. She is thinking about the words, her letters, when a car pulls up to the curb and stops. Madge sits and waits to see who will get out. Felicia has turned from her weeding and is watching, too.

  “Roy and I used to go to the beach,” Lena makes a face and says, “sh sh shit,” when Hannah starts combing out her hair, her head jerking forward with each sh. “They had sand fleas where we stayed. Roy said he liked the way I hopped around.”

  “Nobody wants to hear of it,” Emily says. “Somebody go to the door. There’s a man on the porch.”

  “Yeah, boy, banjos and all,” Cindy says.

  “There really is a man,” Madge says. “It’s a black man with a Bible.”

  “It’s the nigger that stole the car!” Lena gasps when Hannah goes to the door. “I’d know him anywhere. Come back to finish poisoning me with that gum.”

  “I’m looking for Miss Emily Roberts,” he says when Hannah opens the door. He takes off his hat. “I’m Buddy Sharpey from Little Swamp Baptist Church. I’m the preacher there and Mag Sykes asked me to come.” He nods his head with each word.

  “Mag?” Emily calls, leaning forward in her chair. “Did you bring Mag?”

  “Mama speaks of Mag often,” Hannah says and shows him in. “Mama, this is Buddy Sharpey. He knows Mag Sykes.”

  “Tell him I’ll chew it,” Lena says and Hannah shakes her head, shushes her.

  “Hope I’m not interrupting,” he takes Emily’s hand. “Mag Sykes asked that I come by.” Emily
nods with every word. “She told me to tell you that she has missed you. Said to say that Curie loved you, too.”

  “I knew Curie,” Lena says like a left-out child. “He loved me, too. I’m the one that found him that time.” The man turns and smiles at Lena, nods. He looks just like that one that stole the car; oh boy, you can tell when they’re up to something.

  “I miss Mag,” Emily says, tears coming to her eyes, her voice trembling while she squeezes his hand. “Tell her to come sit a spell.”

  “Miss Mag has passed on,” he says. “Miss Mag has gone home to the Lord.” Emily takes a Kleenex from her pocket and holds it against her cheek. “She asked me a good month ago to come find you but she couldn’t remember your last name.”

  “I’m a Pearson,” she says. “I’m Emily Pearson.”

  “And I’m a Pearson,” Lena says. “I married a Carter and Emily married a Roberts.” Lena pulls away from Hannah and that comb as long as she can. “Have you ever stolen a car?”

  “Of course he hasn’t,” Hannah says and pulls Lena back, looks over at her mama who is staring down at her hands and sniffing. “He’s a preacher.”

  “I didn’t know Roberts,” he says. “Mag just called you Miss Emily and I had to ask around until one of Mag’s children remembered your married name.” Emily just nods without looking at him, smiles when she thinks of that Mag with her hair all braided up under that scarf while she stirred the washtub; Emily would be there beside her adding twigs to the fire and clothes to the water. “I guess I should go,” the man says now. “Got a wedding today. I just couldn’t rest till I had done as Mag asked.”

  “Mag is a good fine soul,” Emily says and watches Hannah lead the man back to the front door. “Curie worked for my daddy,” Emily whispers, ignoring Lena when Lena says it was her daddy, too. “He’d stay there with us sometimes at night. He’d tell mama, he’d say, ‘Miss Virginia, I can’t sleep with your children. They likes to sleep with they feets covered and they heads out and I’m just the different. I likes to sleep with my head covered and my feets out in the air.’” Emily laughs, shakes her head and laughs.

  “I’ve never even heard that one,” Hannah says and clamps the last curler on Lena’s head.

  “I have,” Lena says. “I’m the one that found him there dead.”

  “Bad men.” Emily shakes her head. “My daddy said they were nothing but bad trashy men that done that.”

  “What happened?” Madge asks. She’s tired of playing solitaire, tired.

  “The Klan,” Hannah says. “I guess they were called the Klan then, were they Mama?”

  “Trash,” Emily says and shakes her head. “It was close to dark. My daddy said he was worried. ‘It ain’t like Curie to be so late,’ he said and so he decided he’d ride a piece down the road to look for him.”

  “I went,” Lena says and lights a cigarette. “Me and Roy went in the Lincoln.”

  “You went because nobody could leave that house without you,” Emily says. “Daddy said, ‘I’ll be right back. Curie might have forgot he was supposed to help me put up that meat tonight.’ And when my daddy come back, he looked like he had seen a ghost and he sent me and Lena to the kitchen while he told my mama of how he’d found Curie not but about a half a mile from his own house, tied to a tree and dead, murdered.”

  “Whoever did it, should have been hung,” Hannah says and Madge goes to the kitchen to put up her glass, turns on the faucet and listens to the water while she rinses and rinses that glass. “It’s still going on,” Hannah is saying. “I saw the president of that mess on TV.” Madge takes a deep breath and goes back in. “My daddy never even told me that story,” she says.

  “Harv was too busy tending to Messy,” Lena says and is about to say more but Emily interrupts.

  “Nobody knew who done that to Curie,” she whispers, “and years later when I come to meet up with Mag Sykes, I learned that she was Curie’s baby girl and I hadn’t even known it, hadn’t even remembered Curie’s last name. I mentioned him one day and Mag’s face lit into a smile, said her daddy talked of some children he knew, clean white children that had doll babies like what he wanted Mag to have. Mag even remembered that doll baby that Mama asked me to give to Curie; I didn’t want to give up that baby, didn’t have but two and they weren’t nothing but rags.” She stops and laughs. “Lena cried and said she couldn’t have just one doll because who would that other doll sleep with if she was scared at night.”

  “It was the truth,” Lena says and nods, though now she is as calm and quiet as Emily.

  “My mama said, ‘Emily, you are the oldest and I don’t ask much of you’ and she sent me out to the edge of the road where Curie was waiting and I said, ‘this is for you, Curie,’ and he bent down and kissed my face. He said, ‘my baby girl is going to take good care of your baby, now. You a good child.’”

  “Mag Sykes remembered. ‘I loved that baby, Lord yes I did,’ she said to me that day we remembered it all. Mag could work circles around anybody. She said, ‘Miss Emily, them people had they faces covered up, and my whole life I have stared at white faces, wondering, just wondering if they a part of such bastards.’ I said, ‘Mag, you got every right to say what you say. Filthy, my daddy said they were nothing but filth’ and I told Mag she ought to be afraid, there was reason. I said she ought to be afraid of those that show their faces, too. I said, ‘They are everywhere, Mag, they are everywhere and they will always be there.’ I said, ‘Them that cover their faces and ignorance is bad and the Lord will not have them, but them that show their faces and act proud of their ignorance is worse.’”

  “They murdered him,” Virginia says, the story that Gram has only mentioned in the past becoming so clear and sharp in her mind. “Did your daddy know who any of the men were?”

  “He did,” she nods and wipes the edges of her mouth. “He said he felt sorry for their wives and sorry for their children. He said if we knew that we’d act different to those children at the school and at church, and that their lives was already so bent to misery and ignorance.”

  “Didn’t you have any ideas who?” Hannah asks. “Ever?”

  “I was not a questioning child,” she says. “I did as I was told. I was told that children should be seen and not heard, shouldn’t speak unless spoken to.”

  “I have always hated that saying,” Cindy says. “Everytime I come over here, y’all start on those old depressing stories. This family is full of death.”

  “Just hush,” Madge says suddenly. “You should follow that rule.”

  “Amen, tell it, sister,” Lena says and Hannah can’t help but laugh; she knows that’s a rule that Lena never followed.

  “You know Buzz Biggers went to some of those meetings,” Cindy says to Ginny Sue and shakes her head. “I wasn’t ever going to tell it but I can say whatever I please about him now that we’re divorced.”

  “Well I wouldn’t say it too loud,” Madge says. “You might say it to the wrong person.” Good God, that sends a chill through Cindy.

  “That doesn’t surprise me,” Ginny Sue says. “He made me sick with all of his ‘nigger’ talk. He was such a redneck.”

  “It made me mad, too, okay?” Cindy says. “I left him, okay? I didn’t know he was such a piece of shit until I had him, okay?”

  “All right. All right,” Hannah says and it is like God has spoken.

  “Cindy, why didn’t you ever tell me Buzz Biggers was that way?” Madge asks, staring down at that diamond on her hand.

  “You? Why would I have told you? You’re the one that snatched Catherine right out of public school when we integrated.”

  “Your daddy did that.” Madge says, twists a strand of her hair. “He wanted you to go there, too, when you were high school age but I talked him out of it.”

  “Yeah sure,” Cindy says. “You can say anything you want since he’s dead.”

  “It’s the truth,” Madge says and looks around but nobody knows, nobody knows about those years consumed in baggies and K
ing Tut. Madge takes a deep breath and sits forward in her chair. “He said, ‘If Cindy marries a nigger, it’s your fault.’” She pauses while Cindy smirks, stares down at her toes and shakes her head back and forth. “He said, ‘Hannah and Ben can raise their children like niggers if they want to.’”

  “What?” Hannah faces Madge, her mouth open and face red.

  “She’s lying,” Cindy says. “You know that’s a lie!”

  “Messy was a liar,” Lena says.

  “Get off my grandma, okay?” Cindy beats her hand on the floor with every word. “I’m real goddamned tired of it.”

  “She didn’t mean . . .”

  “And you take up for her.” Cindy stares at Ginny Sue and toxemia or epilepsy, right this minute, she doesn’t give a damn, and nobody in this room is even thinking to defend her daddy. Blessed are the sick she wants to tell them but she doesn’t because Ginny Sue and Emily and Lena and probably even her mama and St. Peter standing there with her face still red would take it to mean them.

  “It’s true,” Madge says. “I feel like most of my life is buried with him, all the things I never told.”

  “Like what, Madge?” Hannah goes over now and touches Madge on the shoulder and though Madge tries to keep herself from shaking and letting it all out, she can’t control herself and just sits there and cries while the sky gets darker outside and the trees blow back and forth with the wind.

  “The weatherman was right,” Emily says. “Showers by afternoon. Thunderstorms today and tomorrow.”

  “Well, I need to get Chuckie before it starts. He’s supposed to spend the night at a friend’s and I’ll just see if he can go on over there.” Cindy stands and speaks only to Ginny Sue. “I’ll come back later when it’s cooled off,” and she walks out of the duplex without once looking back.

  “Is it going to cool off?” Lena asks.

  “Weatherman says not.” Emily cannot understand why Madge doesn’t go on home if she’s to behave this way. A person ought not to show herself to others. Mag Sykes has passed on. “I believe the Lord will see me through,” Mag had said. “This life is nothing but a pathway.” Yes, Emily knows that; this life is nothing but a pathway.