The Day of Small Things

by Vicki Lane

  When I tell her, she breathes a sigh and says well, maybe I ain’t breeding. Then those sharp eyes catch sight of the basket in my arms.

  “What you got there?” she says, pecking at it with that sharp bone-finger.

  I say it is a kitty and that I know she can’t abide them and that I will keep it away from her, but she plucks the basket from my hands.

  “Well, at least this Young David business has made up my mind for me,” she says, holding the basket away from her like it was a snake. “I been studying on it ever since the doctor told me about this new program they got for such as you. You ain’t going to be around to care for no cat. Now take that milk in and strain it and get on with your morning’s work.”

  I do like she says, thinking that maybe when she sees how pretty and sweet Snowflower is, she will change her mind. It ain’t a bit of use to argue with her when she’s like this, I tell myself. When she’s some calmer, maybe after she’s took her tonic in the evening, I’ll talk reasonable to her.

  And if she gets calmer, like she usually does, I’ll ask her what is this program the doctor told her about. I wonder could it be something like school.

  It’s when I’m on my way to the springhouse with the strained milk that I see the Snowflower kitty.

  She is laying on the trash heap out back, all limp and dirty and she don’t move as I come near. There is a buzzing and a ringing in my head and I call her name but she lays still. I know that she is dead but I have to touch her to be sure. My eyes are blurring and the shapes are spinning around me as I reach for the shiny red ribbon, thinking to take it off her to have it for a keepsake.

  I can’t hardly see but it seems the ribbon is untied and the red of it is everywhere and my fingers are wet with it and when I pick up Snowflower Kitty, her head falls back like a red mouth opening and I scream and I scream and

  Newspaper article (from the Ransom Guardian, 5/6/2008)

  A DISGRACE TO THE STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA

  by Martin Wells

  They still live among us, survivors of North Carolina’s almost half-century social experiment with the involuntary sterilization of poor women, otherwise known as “eugenics.” Over 7,600 young lives were changed forever by this brutal program, inspired by a heartless “master race” philosophy of eugenics.

  From 1929 to 1974, North Carolina was one of 33 states that allowed the forced sterilization of white and black poor women, some as young as 13 and 14, in pursuit of “the self direction of human evolution,” as a newspaper editorial cartoon of the time named it.

  It was none other than the U.S. Supreme Court that upheld Virginia’s eugenics program in 1927 despite the fact, recently confirmed by researchers, that Virginia deliberately used forced sterilizations to “preserve white racial purity.”

  This so-called eugenics program was nothing more than a state-sponsored attempt to control certain parts of disadvantaged populations, using mental illness, physical maladies, anti-social behavior, sexual promiscuity, or even homosexuality as the excuse.

  “There were some few who requested sterilization, not wishing to add to their families, but many of them were forced against their will,” the 2004 NCDHHS Eugenics Study Committee Report noted. “In some cases, victims were children as young as 10 who had no knowledge or understanding of the procedure.”

  The young female victims were never told the reason or the purpose of the operations, and only years later, when they found that they were barren, did they learn from their doctors that their ability to have children had been destroyed forever.

  Chapter 18

  The Doctor Papers

  Dark Holler, Spring 1938

  (Least)

  Reckon what’ll become of the quare girl?” asks the fat lady who brought the plate of oatmeal cookies. She has the plate on her knees and she is eating all the cookies her own self. I watch from the front window as she picks up another one and takes a bite. She is setting there in a straight-back chair on the porch, fanning herself and dropping crumbs all down her front.

  Lilah’s mama is setting by her, sewing at some patchwork. She measures out a length of thread, bites it off, and threads her needle before she answers.

  “Fronie did have a brother,” she says, putting a blue patch face-to-face with a red one and beginning to stitch them together along one edge, “same one that brought the old lady here to live with them, but ain’t no one been able to get up with him. I heared that the bank took his farm and they’ve all moved away looking for work.”

  “What about the other children? It was a good-sized family she had, weren’t it? Couldn’t one of them take in that poor creature—Least, ain’t that her name? Hit’s a scandal weren’t nary a one here for the burying.”

  The fat lady has finished the last cookie and is picking the crumbs off her bosom and putting them in her mouth.

  Lilah’s mama lays her sewing in her lap and looks over at the fat lady. “I had forgot; you didn’t move to Ridley Branch till after Fronie lost her man, so you never knowed her before. Yes, she did have a good many children but it seemed like after her man was took and this quare girl was born, Fronie got right quare herself. Couldn’t get along with none of her girls and one by one they married and moved away. And I heard that she good as ran off the last boy when he got married.”

  “Still and all,” says the fat lady, “kin’s kin and seems like—”

  “Oh, believe you me, I’ve searched through ever place I could look for ary sign of a letter with a return address or anything that would tell me where them children went to. I believe several moved to Detroit, but to my certain knowledge, ain’t none of them ever come home, not even for Decoration Day. Not a letter nor a postcard did I find, save for one old one from the boy that was killed in the war. I asked Boaz Wagoner who carries the mail did Fronie ever get letters from away and he said he was pretty sure she never did.”

  The fat lady laughs and nods her head, setting her extra chins to jiggling. “Well, if anyone’d know, it’d be that feller. I declare, I’ve seen him setting under a tree on that old mule of his, looking through every letter and catalogue and reading all the postcards before he’d bring them to the house. You know—”

  Lilah’s mama ain’t paying no mind and she breaks right in. “I didn’t find no letters but I’ll tell you what I did find. There was some papers from a doctor that Fronie had signed—papers about that poor girl of hers. I know that it was always a worry—what would happen when Least got up of an age … for she’s a pretty thing, you know, if she is simple. And they’s some fellers …”

  Her voice drops down to a whisper and she pulls her chair over to talk close to the fat woman’s ear. I hear her say “… showed them to Sheriff Hudson and he said he’d take care of it … institutionalized … solve the problem.”

  I don’t wait no longer. I fling my few things into a poke and slip out the back way. I leave them two whispering there on the porch and light out up the hill for the burying ground. I feel a need to talk to Granny Beck and hope that she will help me know what to do. As I climb the hill, I look at the trees and flowers that I have known all these years and I wonder when I will ever see them again.

  Ever since Mama died, the house has been full of people, all talking a mile a minute but staying clear of me. High Sheriff Hudson, a big fierce-looking man with a deep-crowned black hat, asked some questions of me, but when I ducked my head and looked away, Lilah’s mama said, “You won’t do no good with Least—she’s simple and I believe she’s tongue-tied as well. I ain’t got the first word out of her.”

  They all think that, for when I found Mama laying there, all swole up and no breath in her, I ran down the road like a crazy thing, looking for help. Never in my life had I gone amongst folk, and when I came to the first house, all that I could do was to make sounds and point back up the hill to where Mama lay.

  Ever since then, they have been in the house, poking their noses into the dark corners, looking through Mama’s things and mine, and talking
, talking, talking. If Lilah Bel had been here, it might have been different—I could have told her what happened. But she ain’t. Lilah Bel got married a little back of this and she has gone with her husband to visit his family over to Tennessee. Lilah could have told them I ain’t simple.

  I should have burned up them doctor papers afore I went after the neighbors. Mama had waved the papers in my face and told me what they meant—“Maybe I can’t keep you from whoring around but, aye God, I can keep you from having babies. You just put this idea of going off and getting married right out of your head—you ain’t fit to marry and they ain’t no call for you to breed—your place is here with me.”

  Mama’s grave is next to my daddy’s—a ways off from Granny Beck’s. The red dirt is still fresh and there is a canning jar with some yellow flowers in it, half-buried in the raw red dirt. I reckon Lilah’s mama must have put it there for she was the only one of the folks at the burying who ever come up to the house to visit with Mama. I don’t go near the grave, but the whole time I am talking to Granny Beck, I can feel Mama’s angry spirit clawing against the wood of her coffin.

  “I got to go away,” I tell Granny Beck. “I am feared that if I stay, they will take me to that doctor and fix it where I can’t have babies. And I want babies, Granny Beck, babies all little and soft like my Snowflower kitty.”

  The tears overtake me and I lay there on her grave, just a-blubbering. If only Young David hadn’t gone away—and I remember the story of John Goingsnake and how the Little People kept him hid safe for seven years. I don’t want to be away that long—just till snow flies and Young David comes back. But where can I go?

  Mama’s angry voice is in my head, all jagged edges and hard words but, light as a whisper on the wind, Granny tells me that I must cross the river like John Goingsnake did and there I will find a place to keep me safe. There is a picture in my head of two sisters with dark hair and I know it’s them Granny Beck means.

  Chapter 19

  Crossing the River

  Gudger’s Stand, 1938

  (Least)

  I rise from Granny Beck’s grave and look around, saying a good-bye to this high place where the buds is just beginning to swell on the apple trees at the edge of the woods. I say good-bye to Granny Beck and leave her and the Quiet People—quiet but for Mama, whose anger hums and buzzes in my head all the way down the road till at last I come to the river and its roaring song drowns her out.

  I have but one thought—to get away from them folks and that paper from the doctor that will keep me from ever having babies. I have left a note that says GON TO MY BRUTHER. So now they will know I ain’t ignorant and can take care of myself. Hard as times is, they’ll be glad not to have to take me in and I don’t believe none of them will try to find me.

  Mama’s go-to-town clothes is big on me but I put them on, hoping to look right when I am among folks, and though I am barefoot, I have a pair of slippers in my poke to wear when I come to the bridge. I have a hat too, the kind I have heard Lilah call a cloche. It comes down most over my eyes and puts me in mind of a bucket. But it should hide my face and the marks on it till I get across the river and find the place of safety Granny showed me in my mind—the house by the road where two dark-haired girls live.

  I follow the path along the riverside till I come near to the bridge. There is a sight of folks on the road—wagons with horses or mules, folks afoot or riding—and I think it might be best to wait on crossing till not so many is there to take notice of me. So I find me a place to set, up in the woods above the road, where I can watch the people passing over the bridge and get accustomed to the idea of going out in the world.

  Whilst I sit watching, an automobile comes just a-whirling down the twisty road on the other side, sending up a cloud of dust behind its wheels. It turns up the road to a big house that sits on a kind of bank a ways up above the railroad. In the papers and magazines Lilah sometimes brings for me to look at, I have seen pictures of automobiles with girls and young men riding in them, smoking cigarettes and laughing. Sometimes even, it would be a girl driving.

  Two trains go by while I sit there, one going one way, and in a little while, another one coming the other way. Or maybe it is the same one and it got where it was going and turned around. Lilah has told me some about the trains and how you can pay money and get inside and ride on them to far-off places and I have seen them passing from across the river. Still, it is something new to watch them stop at the little gray house down by the tracks and see the people coming out or getting into the cars. Maybe someday, after we are married, I think, me and Young David will ride on the train together.

  I lean my back against the big old tree I am setting under and close my eyes. The stirring of the wind in the leaves makes me think of the times Granny Beck sung to me at night, soft and whispering so Mama wouldn’t hear. I try to make out the meaning in the sounds. Time was that the Little Things talked to me that way but they have been silent since the day Mama died.

  The hoot of the train whistle wakes me and I open my eyes to see the red car at the end disappearing around a curve. It must not of stopped, for the little gray house is all shut up and there aren’t no people walking around. I don’t see no folks at all, only the red light of the setting sun shining off the windows of the house high up on the bank.

  I study on that house for a minute. It is too big for any family I ever heard of and I wonder could it be the place Lilah told me about—the boardinghouse she worked at back when she was saving up for getting married. She said it weren’t far across the bridge and that she could walk home on her afternoons off.

  “There’s two sisters runs it,” she told me, “but one of them got sick and had an operation so they hired me to help with the chores—just like what I do at home—cooking, cleaning, washing—but now I’m getting paid. They’re awful good to me. I have already bought sheets and towels and a twenty-five-piece bride’s set of Mirro brand aluminum cookware.”

  Well, I think, I can cook and clean and wash. Reckon would they hire me? And I imagine me meeting Young David when he returns come winter, and showing him the sheets and towels and the twenty-five-piece bride’s set of Mirro brand aluminum cookware.

  It is by thinking of how proud my sweetheart will be that I am able to pull the hat onto my head and push my feet into the slippers and then head for that bridge, knowing full well all that I am leaving behind. The shoes make a slapping sound on the planks of the bridge and I stay in the middle after once looking over the side down to where the water dashes against the rocks and birds come flying out from the underside of the bridge. Looking down like that makes me feel all queer and discombobulated and I don’t do it a second time.

  Over the railing and up the river a little ways, I see a tall gray, long-leggedy bird with a long sharp beak, standing on a rock in the river as still as if he is froze. Then all at once he gives a creaking cry, like a rusty old pump handle, spreads his great wings and flaps away, his legs trailing after him, up and up the river till my eyes can’t follow him no more. I watch a little longer, wishing I could go after him.

  But I can’t. And I can’t go back, so I turn my face to the other side of the river. At the end of the bridge there is some more houses or some such. Maybe they are the stores that Mama talked of going to for they have big windows in the front with all kindly of things setting there. The front doors is closed, though I can see a light in the upstairs of the biggest store, the one made of red bricks.

  Dark is coming on and I hasten up the road to the big house, hoping that this is the place Granny Beck told me to seek. I can’t hear her no more now that I’m across the bridge and it comes to me that I’ve left all that behind, on the other side of the river.

  When I reach the end of the road, I stop to catch my breath and look up at the house. And my heart jumps in my bosom for there, setting on the upstairs porch, is two dark-haired women. They have the reddest lips and the pinkest cheeks and their hair is hanging down in fancy curls. Both of the
m has on long coats of some bright shiny cloth; one is poison green and the other is bright yellow with red pictures of some kind on it. The women is smoking cigarettes and laughing, but when they catch sight of me, the one in green stands up and leans over the railing.

  “Hiya, kiddo,” she calls down to me and I can smell a sweet smell like honeysuckle all mixed in with the cigarette smoke. “Are you looking for someone?” She picks a speck of tobacco from her tongue and flicks it off her fingertips while she waits for me to make an answer.

  “I’m looking for work,” say I, keeping my face down. “Is this here place a boardinghouse?”

  The two girls set in to giggling and then the green one speaks up. “I reckon you could call it that—though some don’t stay very long. What kind of work can you do?”

  The other one says something real quiet-like and they both go to giggling again but I don’t pay no mind.

  “I can cook and clean and do the wash,” I tell them, “milk a cow, tend a garden … all them things.”

  They whisper back and forth and then the green one says, “You’ll have to talk to the boss when he gets back, but I believe he might have work for you. Tell me, kiddo, what’s your name?”

  That stops me for a minute. I don’t want to tell it, lest folks from the other side of the river was to come looking for me. Then I look at the one in yellow and see that the red marking on her housecoat is some kind of fancy birds and I think too of the book about Baby Ray.

  “My name is Redbird,” I tell them. “Redbird Ray.”

  PART II

  Redbird Ray

  Gudger’s Stand, 1938

  Chapter 20

  Rebirth

  Gudger’s Stand, 1938

  (Redbird)