by Rilla Askew
I watched Mama’s face. Her skin was brown and freckled now, like the tan spotted eggs Papa found in a ground nest one time and brought in for me to cook. Back home, in Logan County, my mama’s skin had been pale as milk. “I don’t aim,” Mama said, squinting, “to raise my daughters in a place full of nothing but men and red heathen savages. I don’t by any means intend to do it.” She touched my hair again. I knew it was coming then, and I held my breath.
I had held it, this secret hope and fear, ever since I heard Papa say it that night from my bed in the wagon. Sometimes I dreamed it. I saw me sitting in the seat of the wagon, holding the mules tight in the traces, driving, driving forever back over that land that had unrolled behind us, back down out of the mountains and across the great flat place and the river, east toward the rising sun for a long ways and then, when it was time, and I would know when it was time, turning north again, traveling days, cooking nights, me taking Mama back home. I could feel something coming, and I believed we were leading up to it, there on that morning with the heat rising and the black flies and locusts and the quiet and the children gone. I thought, Today is the day she will tell me.
But Mama pulled her hand away and passed it over her eyes. “He thinks—” she said, her voice strong now, and urgent, but it was not to me she was talking, I only the same to her as a black fly or locust, I not then even there for a witness. “He thinks he can appease me with fences and tree stumps and wild violets planted in a clearing. He thinks . . .” She stopped again, staring, and the necessity drained slowly out of her face. She was quiet a long time, and then she said, and this to me, this direct to me but rising weak, like a halfhearted question, “I was married . . . in a dress . . . of white linen . . . ?”
She leaned back and closed her eyes, her one hand in the place where it lived in a fist against her chest, her other hand brown and limp in her lap. I heard the baby Lyda crying in the lean-to. I knew she had been crying a long time. Mama opened her eyes, wet and milky blue, and she looked down at me. “Honey?” she said. “You know it? I’m never going to see my mama again. I’m never going to see Kentucky. I’m never going to see my home.”
There was a noise then. A great thrashing and yelling, like when Papa and Uncle Fayette had their knockdown-dragout, only it did not rise from the clearing around us but fumbled and smashed toward us from the deep brushy woods. Louder, and coming louder, until at last Papa crashed into the clearing, with the dogs and the man Misely holding Papa’s gun and a dozen blond Misely children and our children whirling alongside him, the dogs barking and jumping and Jonaphrene and Little Jim Dee hollering and jumping, and Thomas waking up on his pallet under the pine tree to join his wailing voice with Lyda bawling in the lean-to, and Mama’s grief drowning in it, disappearing in it like a dead leaf sucked in a whirlpool, because Papa held in his two hands, above the leaping mouths and fingers, the cut and bloodied head of a bear. My papa was grinning. Blood dripped in small plops onto the rock dirt of the clearing.
“Look here, wife,” Papa said. “You nearly lost a husband on this day, did you know it?”
And Mama, she did look, I know she did look. But she looked in that moment like Grandma Billie. Her eyes empty circles.
I had no warning. When the memory first started, I only saw Grandma’s face toward us. Her dress thin like summer. Her eyes empty, rolled up, looking after, on the morning it would not turn morning. But there in the clearing, in the midst of the yipping and yapping and hollering and snapping, the mystery came on me for the first time, and the remembering went dark. I could not see then, only listen, because Grandma Billie couldn’t see us leaving Kentucky forever, but she could hear us: all seven of our family in the wagon, and the new baby crying, Papa’s tongue clicking, his voice—hyah!— the mad rooster crowing, wheels creaking, the mules going thud in the dirt roadbed where their feet fell and Uncle Fayette’s horses even on the hard dirt going clopclop, and Mama, my mama, making that sound like Sudie’s pups, only soft, softer than footfalls, so soft none but Grandma Billie could hear it.
Inside me it was thick dark, like when we started, no light in the nightsky, no moonlight, no stars. There was nothing but sound to surround me, and the sound more permanent and real than any vision, because Grandma Billie’s ears were my ears, her darkness my dark, because I lived Grandma Billie, I lived Mama, and so I knew in that moment I would never see my Grandma Billie again.
I was shaking. The blood dripped, and I could smell it, and my poor papa—I can see now, I could not then, I hated him because I was in Mama—my poor papa, he couldn’t help it. He just went on.
“Liked to killed me, that’s what,” he told Mama, like she’d ever even asked him. “Got between her and them cubs, well, that is something you don’t want to do—” Grinning around at the man Misely. “Two of ’em, fat as little butterballs. I’d been seeing sign back in them roughs a week or so, but now, that is the last thing I had on my mind. Ol’ Dan here jumped her out—” Kicking out at him, grinning. “I never seen anything like it. She’s up a little hackberry, just a-slinging that head around, looking, trying to spot me—I was slipping around to get a good hold to shoot from, all at once, now, here she come down out of that tree slick as grease after me. I didn’t have any idea them cubs were back there. I tell you what, I was wishing for something outside of that muzzle loader—” Nodding at the man Misely, turning the grin upon Mama. “I’s thinking one of Fay’s howdahs would’ve been just about right.” Lifting the great mangled head higher, showing it. “Never even took the time to field dress her, just took her head off and come on back. Look here, got her right in under the chin, and her charging. Just placed my shot, hit her one time and she rolled . . .”
And on and on, telling it, kicking the dogs away, the blood dripping slow and plopping, though you could not hear it, only smell it, going plop, and after a while, plop, in round drops in the dirt. Mama just looking at his face, but she didn’t see him. Mama couldn’t see him. Oh, Papa. Poor Papa. Finally he saw it. He saw she wasn’t seeing, but he never did understand. He just got quiet, and because he did they all did, except the babies and the meat-hungry hound dogs. Papa kicked Ringo, and Ringo yelped once, and then even the hound dogs shut up.
“Demaris. It’s a lot of meat. We can salt it.” Kicked Ringo again, snapping, “Back, now, you so-and-so,” and Ringo just slinking there, not doing nothing. “Salt it and dry it, woman.” Talking gruff, talking man’s ways, and his talk just a lie he couldn’t know or believe, because Papa’s eyes were baffled. Because his head was tucked under. Because what he was doing was begging my mama, and her blind to him, her not able in any way to see my father. “That carcass’ll see us along the whole rest of the way,” he told her, and held the mangled head up like the emblem of bear meat, like the very manifestation of glory, so that it all changed in me, my heart breaking for Papa. I would have fought the whole world then, that she-bear, fought anything, to stop how it hurt to see my Papa be a fool.
Thomas was by me then, trying to make me make a lap, pushing my legs together, trying to climb on me, and crying. Not loud now but forcing it, faking it, his little lying whimper, and I opened my arms for him and made a lap for him. I couldn’t even feel him on me. I just took him to make him hush up. I could hear Papa, only barely, because he was talking soft to Mama. But I could see Papa. I could feel him. I couldn’t feel Mama.
Do you see? I could never hold them all at once together. Some people can do that. Some mothers can do that. It was never given to me to do that but only to love them singly and savagely and only one in one moment, and that is what I never could make any different. And so sometimes I hated them.
“We could go on,” Papa said. “Tomorrow, if we wanted. We don’t have to wait for crops now, we wouldn’t have to stop and hunt any. We could build before winter, ’Maris. We could.”
Mama shaking her head. Shaking her head, and I knew then she had come back from the darkness, she could see him, but nothing was changed by a bear’s head, because
it was never about meat anyhow, not for her, only for some of us some nights when the cramps came and Papa heard Jonaphrene whining.
“I aim to go home, John,” Mama said. She was looking right at him.
Oh, I held my breath then. What could I do then? It would kill me to leave Papa. It would kill me to lose Mama; I would have to take her back home to Kentucky. I would have to. That’s what I thought then, but of course it was never, either, about that. They looked at each other, and it was quiet between them. Between Mama and Papa, and so quiet in the whole world. No sound left but Lyda crying in the lean-to. Oh, I wanted to strangle her to make her shut up.
It was Papa first who broke it. “Matt, git some rope and come with me.” He didn’t move, just stood with the bear head lowered a little, the dogs slinking on their bellies in circles to come nearer. The man Misely made a small move with his shoulder, and then he got still. Me looking at Papa, leaning close against Mama, Thomas wriggling and restless in my lap. Me thinking it was about me. “There’s some under the seat box,” Papa said. And I thought if I did not move, the balance would stay balanced. But Mama put her hand on me. She claimed me, I thought. I expected to die then. Thought I would shatter and die then. But of course I did not. I watched it go back and forth between them, weighing heavy first on one side and then on the other, passing over the hot small space of sunlight, back and forth between them, with the Miselys and children and hound dogs and silent cut bear head for witness, until they settled it finally, their business between them. Watching each other. Mama stood up.
“Reckon you better cut up that carcass wherever you killed it, John,” she said. “I don’t want any bloody bear guts strung here into my clean yard.”
She took a step toward the lean-to, where Lyda was hiccupy crying. Her left hand swung up to clutch the right one in the center of her chest, and she turned and looked at me, surprised a little, and fell down dead in the yard.
I used to tell Jonaphrene, Your mama dropped dead before she ever stepped foot in Eye Tee because she’d made her mind up she was not willing to live here. I used to say, Don’t forget this: Your mama died of a broken heart.
I had to tell Jonaphrene and the others about Mama because when it all happened they were too young. I’d take them down to the rocks by the water. I’d sit on the bank, upon the big slab of rock by the water, and gather the children around me. I’d tell them, Your mama was a beautiful woman, with small hands and brown flyaway hair that fell to her waist when she brushed it. Her skin was the color of thin milk with the cream skimmed off, and her name was Demaris.
Alone, on the rock, I said Mama’s name in silence over and over to myself.
I told them, Your mama was married in a dress of white linen and there were seventy-three guests at her wedding, and on the night we all left Kentucky, when she had to leave behind the cherry chifforobe her brother Neeley made her for a wedding present, it was another aspect that helped crush her heart.
Your mama’s mama was Mary Whitsun Billie and she was a blind woman. She went blind from a fever at ten o’clock one autumn morning in the Year of Our Lord Eighteen Hundred Sixty-seven, and she was born in London, England, where the King of All English-speaking Peoples lives.
The words Mama told me those last days were seared tight in my brain like she wanted, like she always intended, and I don’t believe I forgot a single word.
We buried Mama on that Misely place in Arkansas. We marked her grave with a slab of sandstone standing up on its end. I told myself I would never forget where it was situated under that tall pine tree on the ridge above the water. I still see it.
I don’t know how I would have managed at all if it hadn’t been for the man Misely, because Papa just completely fell apart. It was Misely who pulled Papa off Mama after she fell down dead in the yard. He scattered the dogs where they were trying to get at that bear’s head Papa still had ahold of like a baby crushed bloody between him and Mama, and it was Misely who picked Mama up and laid her out on Thomas’s pallet in the shade. He set Jonaphrene and Little Jim Dee to fanning Mama, minding the flies off, and he sent one of his many whiteheaded children who were all standing around silent and gawking, sent the boy running to the house to fetch his own wife. He made me go in the lean-to and get Lyda and sat me down on Mama’s tree stump with Lyda and Thomas both howling in my lap. He wrenched the bear’s head out of Papa’s hands and threw it over the fence for the dogs to have a feast on, he held Papa down by the shoulders and finally shook him once hard enough to ricochet his head and led him over to the shade where the children were fanning Mama and kicked each of Papa’s legs out from under him and made him sit down.
That same day—I think it was the same day, it went so fast then, I can hardly imagine, but there wasn’t any choice, it was just so hot—that afternoon him and two of his sons went up on the ridge far enough above the water and dug the trench where we were to lay her and tacked together a coffin made of pine planks he’d sent one of the boys home to tear out of the ceiling from the Miselys’ own bedroom, which I did not know then but only much later when the woman told me, and I believed her, because I could not imagine how they could have cut and planed wood for Mama’s coffin so fast. The woman came and sat beside me and taught me how to dip a clean washrag in cow’s milk and give it to Lyda to suck on because she would not take a cup but turned her face away, screaming, the milk dribbling, and we all knew she was not getting enough nourishment because she hardly ever shut up.
This is hard now. My memory is hard here.
You would think that day would be seared tight above all others and it was—it is—in the first part. That morning. But once Mama died, everything just runs together like dreams or what you remember from when you were very little, and all I can recollect are different parts and pieces: the stink of bear’s head, the smell of blood in the clearing, that terrible groaning sound Papa made, children bawling. I remember the sun burning a hot circle on the top of my head. I remember flies everywhere buzzing, the chink of metal upon rock, rock and metal.
I have one picture of the man Misely bending over me, his eyes bright blue, his skin pale as soap. The cracks in his cheeks ran like wheelspokes in all directions. The yellow hair on his chest jumped up from between the buttons of his shirt collar, jumped up like corn shocks, touching his beard, his voice was burred and lilting, and I was thinking not of Grandpa Lodi but of corn people, of scarecrows, of the man Misely as a haunt made of cornsilk and shocks and hard little pale kernels, and he was telling me something I could not seem to hear. This was before he made me go in the lean-to to get Lyda. This was when I stood up once to go to my dead mama and Thomas fell off my lap.
I didn’t know much of human death then, only Granny Lodi laid out on the bed at Grandpa’s house in Kentucky when they took me in to see her, and her mouth and eyes were sunken and she so dried and old that her dying could not seem to matter. I never saw the twisted baby born between Jim Dee and Jonaphrene that died after two days, though I’d heard my cousin Melvina tell it in whispers in the dark beneath the covers and had taken the picture I saw when she told it as my own memory—but that, too, could not seem to matter, because that baby’s head had been only the size of a possum’s. Yes, I knew John Junior, I knew how he coughed and coughed and coughed until at last he shuddered and lifted up a little, rolled his eyes up a little, and then was small and dead and perfect. I knew John Junior, but at Mama’s death I forgot him. What I believed of death then was something of smell and red violence. I’d helped at hog killing since I could remember, had shot and skinned squirrels, had wrung the necks and plucked the guts from the insides of chickens, had watched Papa shoot Sudie between her brown eyes. I’d seen and smelled the bear’s head. I had a recognition for death, but to me it was not real unless the body was broken. I saw my mama dead on the pallet, and I knew she was dead, I understood it, but still I wanted to go to her because I thought I could touch her back to life. But the Miselys would not let me. And though they were good to us and though
I don’t know what would have happened without them, I hated them—truly hated them—for that.
I remember sunset, and I think it was the next day but it might have been the day after, and one of the whiteheaded boys came and hopped over the gate, panting, and said to his mama, “She won’t come.”
I was sitting on the wagonseat where I’d climbed up because I could not abide to sit in the yard. Thomas was playing with my braids, pulling at them like reining horses. I wanted him to pull harder. I wanted him to pull till they would come off stinging in his fists. I was staring at that strange yellow twilight, looking up, my neck aching, at the strip of yellow sky streaked pink and mauve and crimson, long threads of clouds too pretty to look at, delicate, like somebody had painted them, and I was hating those clouds the way I hated the Miselys. Mama was under a mound under the pine tree up on the ridge. Papa was sitting beside her, quiet now, just sitting. I could see his outline darker against the dark hill rising above. The children were quiet in the yard.
The Misely boy shook his head, whispering to his mama. She looked up at me, and then back down at Lyda mewling in her lap. She was trying to get Lyda to drink from the cup again, but Lyda just kept crying and nuzzling the woman’s chest, the cup milk running out sideways. Misely’s wife surely didn’t have any milk—her youngest was nearly as big as Jonaphrene—and I guess she never did have any such thing as a bottle and nipple because people didn’t much have them back then and anyhow those Miselys were too poor. Lyda’s crying was getting weaker and weaker, but I didn’t care because Lyda was Mama’s baby and I thought she might as well die too.
Misely’s wife got up and came to me. She said, looking up at me, her face freckled like Mama’s, “Martha—” and I hated that she called me by that name. “Martha,” she said, “we sent for someone to nurse the little one. We sent for somebody, we did, but she’s not able to come.”
