The Year's Best SF 11 # 1993

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  Then, when the day was winding down, when the heat let up and Alma sat on the porch with a glass of iced tea, Pru came up behind her and touched Alma gently on the arm.

  “I know you got to see him,” Pru said. “I know that’s what you gotta do.”

  Alma sat very still for a while, then she stood and looked at Pru. “The child’s my kin,” Alma said. “Just because he isn’t whole doesn’t mean I don’t love him all the same.”

  Pru didn’t say a thing. She took Alma’s hand and led her down the front steps. The chinaberry trees had grown tall. Their limbs brushed the screened-in porch by the kitchen out back. The ground all around was worn flat, like it always used to be. Worn where the cistern had stood years before, worn on the path that led out behind the house. Alma could see the twisted ghosts of peach trees inside her head. She could see the smokehouse and the outhouse after that, the storm cellar off to the right, and Papa’s chicken coop. And when she turned the far corner of the house, there was Cush, sitting in a new red wagon by the steps.

  Alma felt herself sway, felt her legs give way, felt her heart might come to a stop. The creature in the wagon looked nothing like a child, nothing like anything that ought to be alive. The baked potato head seemed larger than before, the warped little body parched and seared, dried and shriveled to a wisp. The patchwork pattern of his skin was thick with suppurating sores, pimples and blisters, blots and stains and spots, postules and blotches, welts and bug bites, rashes and swellings and eruptions of every sort. Alma saw the possumlike hands were bent and twisted like a root, saw there wasn’t any hair on Cush’s head, saw Cush had somehow lost a leg, saw the child wore every conceivable deformity and flaw, every possible perversion of the flesh.

  And then Pru sat down on the ground and said, “Cush, this here’s your great-aunt Alma Cree. You was too young to recall, but you seen her once before. You want to try an’ say hello, you want to try an’ do that?”

  Cush looked up at Alma with his black and milky eye, looked at Alma through his misery and pain, looked right at Alma Cree and smiled. The smile was something marvelous and terrible to see. One side of Cush’s mouth stayed the same, while the other side cut a crooked path past his cheek and past his nose, cut a deep and awful fissure up his face. When you hiccup while you try to sign your name, when the line wanders up and off the page, this is how the smile looked to Alma Cree. Cush’s lips parted and secreted something white, then Cush scratched and croaked and made a sound.

  “Haaalm’ah-ah … Haaalm’ah-ah,” Cush said, and then the smile went away.

  “Alma,” Pru said with pure delight, “that’s right. See, Aunt Alma? Cush went and said your name!”

  “That’s real good, Cush,” Alma said, “it sure is.” She felt the sky whirl crazily about, felt the earth grind its teeth and come apart. She hoped to God she’d make it to the house.

  * * *

  “Pru, you can’t take care of that child,” Alma said. “You just can’t do it by yourself. I know you’ve done all you could, but poor little Cush needs some help.”

  “I got help, Alma,” said Pru, looking at her empty coffee cup. “Since I come into money, Cush has seen every kind of doctor there is. They give me all kinds of lotions, and ever’ kind of pill they got. Ain’t nothin’ works at all, nothin’ anyone can do.”

  “Pru,” Alma said, “what happened to his leg?”

  “Didn’t anything happen,” Pru said. “Jus’ one day ’bout a year ago spring it dropped off. Cush give a little squeal an’ I ’bout passed out, and that was all of that.”

  Tears welled in Pru’s eyes. “Aunt Alma, I lay ’wake nights and I wonder just what’s going on in God’s head. I say, Pru, what’s He thinking up there? What you figure He means to do? The farm’s all shiny like Jesus reached down and touched the land. It hasn’t ever been as fine before. The Lord’s took the crazy from my head and got me looking real good, and give me everything there is. So how come He missed helpin’ Cush, Aunt Alma? You want to tell me that? How come little Cush is somethin’ Jesus flat forgot?”

  “I don’t know the Lord’s ways,” Alma said. “I wouldn’t know how to answer that.” Alma looked down at her hands. She couldn’t look at Pru. “What I think I ought to say, what you ought to think about, is you’ve done about everything you can. There isn’t much else you can do. You’re young and you’ve got a life ahead, and there’s places where Cush’d maybe be better off than he is…”

  “No!”

  The word came out as strong and solid as the hard red iron that held the bridge. “Cush is my child,” Pru said. “I don’t know why he’s like he is, but he’s mine. Alma, he isn’t going anywhere but here.”

  Alma saw the will, saw the fierce determination in Pru, and knew at once there was nothing she could say, nothing that anyone could do.

  “All right,” she said, and tried her best to smile at Pru, “I guess that’s the way it’s got to be.…”

  * * *

  Cush liked the winter and the fall. In the summer and the spring, everything that creeped and flew and crawled did their best to seek him out. Fire ants and black ants and ants of every sort. Earwigs and stinkbugs and rusty centipedes. Sulphur butterflies made bouquets about his head to suck the sores around his eyes. Horseflies and deerflies bit his cheeks. Mosquitoes snarled about like Fokker D-IIIs, and black gnats clotted up his nose. Bees and yellow jackets stung his thighs. If a certain bug couldn’t find Cush, Cush would somehow seek it out. With his single bent foot he’d push his wagon down the road. A scorpion would appear and whip its tail around fast and sting his toe.

  His mother tried to keep him in the house. But Cush didn’t like it inside. He liked to sit out and watch the trees. He liked to watch the hawks knifing high up in the sky. There were so many wonders to see. Every blade of grass, every new flower that pushed its way up through the soil, was a marvel to Cush’s eye. He especially loved the creek. By the time he was five, he stayed there every day he could. He loved to watch the turtles poke their heads up and blink and look around. He loved to see the minnows dart about. There were more things that bit, more things around the creek that had a sting, but Cush was used to that.

  Besides, staying indoors didn’t help. Fresh paint and new doors and super-snug-tight screens couldn’t keep the biters out. They knew Cush was there and they found a way in. Anywhere Cush might be, they wriggled in and found him out.

  Cush didn’t think about pain. Cush had hurt from the very first moment of his life. He didn’t know there was anything else. It had never crossed his mind what not to hurt was like. A deaf child wonders what it might be like to hear, but he never gets it right.

  Cush knew there was something different other persons felt, something that he sensed was maybe missing in his life. He didn’t look like other people did, he knew that. Other people did things, and all he did was sit. Sit and look and think. Sit and get gnawed and stung and bit.

  Once, in the late evening light, when Cush sat with his mother on the porch, the fan brought out from inside to try and keep the bugs at bay, Cush tried to sound a thought. That’s how he looked at talk—sounding out a thought. He didn’t try to sound a lot. Nothing seemed to come out right.

  Still, on this night, he tried and tried hard. It was something that he knew he had to do. He worked his mouth up as best as he could and let it out.

  After Pru ruled out strangulation or a stroke, she knew Cush was winding up to talk. “Hon, I’m not real sure what you’re saying,” Pru said, “you want to run through that again?”

  Cush did. He tried again twice. Legs from old bugs, bits of vital parts, and something like liver-ripple tofu spewed out.

  “Whuuuma faar?” Cush said. “Mudd-whuum-spudoo?”

  Pru listened, and finally understood. When she did, she felt her heart would break in two. She nearly grabbed up Cush and held him tight. She hadn’t tried that in three years, but she nearly did it then. “What am I for?” Cush had said. “Mother, what am I supposed to do?”


  Oh Lord, thought Pru, how am I supposed to answer that? Sweet Jesus, put the right words inside my head. Pru waited, and nothing showed up that seemed divine.

  “Why, isn’t anything you supposed to do, Cush,” Pru said. “God made the trees and the flowers and the sky, an’ everything else there is to see. He made your Aunt Alma and he made you an’ me. We’re all God’s children, Cush. I reckon that’s about all we’re supposed to be.”

  Cush thought about that. He thought for a very long time. He looked at his mother’s words backward and forward, sideways and inside out. He still didn’t know what he was for. He still didn’t know what to do. Something, he was sure, but he couldn’t think what. He was almost certain being one of God’s flowers wasn’t it.

  * * *

  The trip wore Alma to a nub. She took to her bed for three days, and slept through most of two. When she finally got up, she felt fine. Hungry, and weak in the knees, but just fine. All that driving, and seeing Cush and Pru, Alma thought, that’s enough to do anybody in.

  She thought about Pru and the farm. How nice Pru looked and how she didn’t seem crazy anymore, and how the land and the creek were all coming back again. Everything was doing fine but Cush. Even Uncle Fry. It was like Pru said. All that good flowing in, and Cush not getting his share. It didn’t seem right. It sure didn’t seem fair.

  Alma looked at the garden and decided it was far beyond repair. She dusted the house and threw the laundry in a sack. She went to the grocery store and back. Late in the afternoon, she got a notebook out and started writing things down. Not for any reason, just something she thought she ought to do. She wrote about the funeral and Uncle John Fry. She wrote about Pru and she wrote about Cush. She wrote about how the land had changed and how the creek was full of fish. Nothing that she wrote told her anything she didn’t know before, but it seemed to help to get some things down.

  Two weeks back from her trip, Alma got a call. Dotty Mae Kline, who’d taught school with Alma for thirty-two years, had retired the year after Alma did. She lived in Santa Barbara now, and said, Alma, why don’t you come and stay awhile?

  The idea took her by surprise. Alma thought of maybe fourteen reasons why she couldn’t take a trip, then tossed them all aside. “Why not?” she said, and called to see when the next plane could fly her out.

  * * *

  Alma meant to stay a week and ended up staying four. She liked Santa Barbara a lot. It was great to be around Dotty Mae. They saw and did everything they could, and even came close to getting tipsy on California wine. Alma felt better than she’d ever felt before. Dotty Mae said that was the good Pacific air. But Alma knew air couldn’t do a whole lot for diabetes, or a heart that now and then made a scary little flop.

  When she got back home, Alma found a letter in her mailbox from Pru. The postmark was two weeks old. Alma left her bags in the hall, and opened Pru’s letter at once. She saw the scrawly hand running up and down the page, and knew this was likely the only letter Pru had ever written in her life.

  Dir Ant Alma,

  I bet yur supriz to here from me. The farm is luking fine. A agerkultr man is bout houndin me to deth. He says he don no how corn can git nin feet hi and cabig grow big as washtubs on a place like this. He says there isn no nutrunts in the soil I said I cant help that. Cush dropt a arm last week. Somethin like moss is startid growing on his hed. Otherwiz he doin fine. Uncl Fry is fine too. Luv Pru

  P.S. Friday last I wun 2 milun dollars from Ed McMahon. Alma heres a twenny dollar bill I got more than I can spend.

  “Lord God,” Alma said, “all that money to a dumb nigger girl!”

  She crushed the letter in her fist. She was overcome with anger, furious at Pru. Things didn’t happen like that, it wasn’t right. All Pru had ever done was get herself knocked up. She hadn’t done a full day’s work in all her life!

  Guilt rushed in to have its say, anger fighting shame, having it out inside her head. Alma was shaken. She couldn’t imagine she’d said such a thing, but there it was. She’d tucked it away and out of sight, but it came right up awful quick, which meant it wasn’t hiding out too deep.

  The anger was there, and it wouldn’t go away. Anger at Pru, who was everything she’d spent her life trying not to be. Mama and Papa and Lucy too. Never bringing college friends home because their folks were black doctors and CPAs, and she didn’t want anyone to know that her family was dirt-poor Alabama overall and calico black, deep-South darkies who said “Yassuh” all the time, and fit the white picture of a nigger to a tee.

  She remembered every coffee-chocolate-soot-gray-sable-black face that had passed through her class. Every face for forty-three years. Her soul had ached for every one, knowing the kind of world that she had to send them to. Praying that they’d end up where she was, instead of where she’d been, and all the time saying in her heart, “I’m glad I’m me and I’m not one of them.”

  Alma sat on her couch in the growing afternoon. She looked at her luggage in the hall. She thought about smart-as-a-whip bright and funny Dotty Mae. She thought about Little Rock and Selma, and she thought about Pru.

  “I’m still who I am,” Alma said. “I might’ve let something else creep in, but I know that isn’t me.” She sat and watched the day disappear, and she prayed that this was true.

  * * *

  In the morning, when she was rested from the trip, when the good days spent in California seemed to mingle with the pleasure and relief of coming back, when she could look at Pru’s letter without old emotions crowding in, Alma got her notebook out and found a brand new page, and wondered what she ought to say.

  Alma didn’t care for things she couldn’t understand. She liked to deal in facts. She liked things that had a nice beginning and an end. Dotty Mae Kline had taught Philosophy and Modern English Lit. Alma Cree had been content with Geometry and French.

  She looked at Pru’s letter. She looked at what she’d written down before. Everything good seemed to fasten on Pru. Everything had came to Cush. The farm was on drugs, on a mad horticultural high. Uncle Fry was apparently alive, and she didn’t want to think about that. Alma tried to look for reason. She tried to find a pattern of events. She tried to make order out of things that shouldn’t be. In the end, she simply set down the facts—though it went against her nature to call them that. She closed up her notebook and put it on the shelf. Completely out of sight. But not even close to out of mind.

  Alma kept her quarterly appointment with Dr. Frank. Dr. Frank said, how are we doing, Alma? and Alma said we’re doing just fine. Dr. Frank’s nurse called back in a week. Dr. Frank wants to make a new appointment and redo some tests. What for? Alma said, and the nurse didn’t care to answer that.

  Alma hung up. She looked at the phone. She knew how she felt, she felt absolutely great. And she wasn’t in California now, she was breathing plain Alabama air.

  Alma knew what was wrong with the tests, she didn’t have to think twice. Everything was fine inside, she didn’t need a test to tell her that, and she’d never been more frightened in her life.

  * * *

  Pru woke up laughing and half scared to death. She sat up and looked around the room, making sure everything was fine, making sure everything was sitting where it should. Pru didn’t like to dream. She had real good dreams now, everything coral rose and underwater green, nice colors floating all about, and a honey-sweet sax off somewhere to the right. Real good dreams, not the kind she’d had before. Not the kind with furry snakes and blue hogs with bad breath. Good’s a lot better’n bad, thought Pru, but I could do without any dreams at all.

  Pru’s idea of what you ought to do at night was go to sleep and wake up. Dreams took you off somewhere that wasn’t real, and Pru had come to cherish real a lot. Once you’ve been crazy, you don’t much want to go back. It’s sort of like making out with bears, once seems just about enough.

  * * *

  Pru drank a cup of coffee and started making oatmeal for Cush. Cush wouldn’t likely touch it, but she f
elt she ought to try. The sun was an open steel furnace outside, and she turned all the units down to COLD. When the oatmeal was ready, she covered it with foil, found her car keys, and stepped out on the porch.

  A light brown Honda was sitting in the drive. A white man was standing on the steps. Pru looked him up and down. He had blow-dry hair and a blue electric suit. He had rainwater eyes and white elevator shoes.

  “What you want ’round here,” Pru said. “What you doin’ on my place?”

  “I want to see the child,” the man said.

  “You ain’t seein’ any child,” Pru said, “now git.”

  “God bless you,” said the man.

  “Same to you.”

  “I’ll leave a few pamphlets if you like.”

  “What I’d like is you off my land now, an’ you better do it quick.”

  The man turned and left.

  “My boy isn’t any freak,” Pru shouted at his back. “I better not see your face again!”

  She watched until the car disappeared. “Lord God,” she said, and shook her head. They’d started showing up about June. She’d put a gate up, but they kept coming in. Black men in beards. White men in suits. Bald-headed men in yellow sheets. Foreign-looking men with white towels around their heads. Pru shooed them all out, but they wouldn’t go away. I want to see the child, is what they said. The way they looked her in the eye flat gave Pru the creeps.