I awoke close to midnight, feeling shaky and disoriented. I switched on the lamp. ThommaLyn was snoring softly, mouth parted, with her cat-black hair draped across her eyes. She was usually a heavy sleeper. Quietly, I sat up and opened the drawer of my nightstand, pulling out my old diary.
I thumbed through the pages, moving over to the window seat to study my spidery ink marks on the pale blue pages—mostly notes I’d jotted down after track meets about the points I had earned. Then I read the last entry, one of several ink-smeared and tear-stained pages about my cheating ex-boyfriend, Tripp. I traced the sketch I’d made of the pearl ring he’d given me, then scratched my nail across it, ripping the page. I couldn’t help but wonder why Bobby Marshall hadn’t called back yet. I’d come to depend on his company.
I finally turned to the page I’d been looking for, dated 1964, the year I’d gone to Nashville to live with Mama and Tommy. I looked closely at my scrawl: a big old frowny face filled with raindrop tears above the words: Tommy whooped me VERY hard today when I got lost. Tommy, the under-the-bed boogeyman of childhood dreams, had finally crawled out to blacken the day. Wasn’t it bad enough that he had destroyed her spirit? But to do that unspeakable thing with the ribbons . . . ?
Still, a tiny part of me caved to denial. I studied on the sheriff’s preliminary report. What if he hadn’t killed her? What if her refreshments had caught up with her? What if she had done this to herself? I pressed the page to my lips. And doing it on my birthday, well, she must not have loved me very much....
Finding nary a speck of comfort in denials, I tucked my grief into the night and hummed a birthday ditty.
My song drifted through Grammy Essie’s homespun curtains, out my open window, and melded with the distant rail hymn of a midnight train.
6
Burial of the Fourth Sister
Early Tuesday morning, four days after Mama passed, Daddy called softly from the bottom of the stairs, “Muddy, you ’bout ready? Your mama’s service starts soon, baby.”
I pressed the hem of Mama’s nightgown to my cheek one more time and slowly took it off. I spread it out across my bed, careful to smooth out the wrinkles so it looked perfect.
“Muddy—”
“Coming . . .”
I slid on a boxy dress—the only black clothing I had—and examined the snug fit, which left me tugging at the cap sleeves to cover my bare shoulders. God forbid Pastor Dugin, a huge, balding man with a voice like nails across chalkboard, should take note of my immodesty and condemn me to eternal Hell. “I’m going there anyway,” I sighed to my empty room, “just as sure as I killed my mama by leaving her on Tommy’s doorstep.”
Daddy called again, “Muddy, breakfast. C’mon down and try to eat.”
“Coming,” I shouted, as I slipped into heels and then hurried down the steps.
Daddy stood at the kitchen table reading over Mama’s will for what seemed like the hundredth time. The day Mama died, he’d spent hours turning the house upside down looking for her Last Will and Testament, the one they’d had drawn up together the year I was born.
“I am so relieved that she never changed it,” he said. “It’s all written up just how she wanted things. And where she wanted them. Ella will be buried in Summers Cemetery.”
Yesterday, Sheriff Jingles had dropped by and told Daddy that after he’d gone to the jail cell and told Whitlock about Ella’s burial plans, you could hear the ruckus bounce around Town Square like a possessed rubber ball. Rattling the cell bars, Tommy had screamed, “It’s my right to bury my wife in Pauper Field next to my family, where she belongs!”
Sheriff said that the judge had set Tommy’s bail, and that Roy McGee had phoned to say he’d be by sometime this week to post it. But when he told Tommy the good news, Tommy went berserk, said he’d come up with his own bail—that he didn’t want nothing from McGee.
Daddy turned away to wipe his eyes, then folded the document and tucked it carefully inside a kitchen drawer. He cleared his throat and nodded toward the breakfast plates. “Have some of those scrambled eggs and toast.”
“Smells good,” I lied. “I should’ve set the alarm earlier to fix breakfast.”
He offered an empty smile. “Thought I’d give you a break.”
I took a few nibbles of a slice of burnt toast before tossing it unceremoniously into the trash.
We drove all the way to the United Methodist Church in silence.
An usher greeted us at the church steps and escorted us to the front pew. The organist was playing “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” as people filled the church. Soon it was packed with people cooling themselves with cardboard fans advertising Russ-man’s Funeral Home, and a hush fell over the crowd. Pastor Dugin began to speak about life and death and God’s glory. And Mama. It hurt to hear him talk in the past tense.
The rest of the service passed in a haze of hallelujahs and amens, all shrouded in the cloying stink of funeral flowers.
At long last, the organist began to pump out “Shall We Gather at the River?” which was mine and Daddy’s cue to stand and lead the procession from the church. The pallbearers followed, Sheriff Jingles among them. I couldn’t bear to look back at Mama’s casket, but the telltale jangling of his keys told me it was on its way.
At the church door, the usher waited to lead us over to the procession car, Bud Lincoln’s black Mercury, the one he kept spit-shined to rent to Russman’s for funerals. Bud eased out of the lot and followed the hearse past the Unity Baptist Church, the bowling alley, and out toward the Peckinpaw fairgrounds. Patches of bluegrass shimmered in August morning dew.
In the opposite lane, Roy McGee’s car slowed just shy of stopping, then quickly passed. Daddy twisted around and stared hotly at McGee until he was well out of sight.
Our car followed close behind the hearse, winding its way lazily toward Cemetery Road, past the good people of Ella Mudas Tilley’s hometown. I studied the faces of townsfolk along the way. On the sidewalks, people stopped and nodded, nudging their children to do the same. Farm women backed away from their clotheslines and edged closer to the road in solidarity—women who wouldn’t even look Mama in the eye after she married Tommy. Today, the gentlemen and farmers took off their hats and caps. Oncoming cars pulled over to the side of the road and even into ditches as we passed in quiet procession.
We pulled up to Summers Cemetery. Daddy came around to my side and opened the door, leading my body where it didn’t want to go. I paused at the tall bur oak and shuffled toward the cemetery’s big iron gate, afraid to complete our procession.
It wasn’t a fear of the cemetery itself, because I knew the history of most of the 111 graves here in Summers Cemetery, including the four I’d added. The freshest was Patty, buried the year I turned ten, a wolf spider who’d spun a beautiful new web night after night, weaving her orb precisely from the porch railing post to our screen door. It was beautiful. I had become so attached that I wouldn’t let anyone use our front door for a whole month. Then, one morning, I found Patty curled up on the ground beside the door. Heartbroken, I’d covered her in cotton, placed her in a match box, and carried her over to the family plot to bury alongside the others: Ricky, a cranky old barn cat who’d belonged to my grandparents and died of old age; Pauline, the field mouse that Ricky’d caught and delivered to our doorstep; and Speck, the passing monarch butterfly whose short life span had ended on my windowsill. They were all lined up alongside Grammy Essie’s and Papaw’s graves. Now, Mama would join their somber ranks.
Daddy took my hand and nudged me forward, through the iron gate, and toward the fresh grave and that final step to finality.
ThommaLyn stood beside the casket, waiting for me to join her. I searched the faces of the mourners, hoping to see Bobby Marshall. My heart sank when I saw he hadn’t come. Then my eyes lit upon baby Genevieve, snug in Mrs. Whitlock’s arms.
I stepped toward them. “Genevieve,” I whispered over and over, stroking her chubby little cheeks. “I’m here, baby girl. Siste
r will never leave you, I promise.” I kissed the baby’s head, dampening her soft hair with tears. Mrs. Whitlock smiled at me and I saw that she had kind eyes. Genevieve was safe, in steady arms. A lot steadier than mine. I took my place between ThommaLyn and Daddy.
Pastor Dugin took a handkerchief out of his black robe and wiped the August sweat off his brow before giving the eulogy, pausing first to address me and Daddy, then the crowd. He read again from the Bible, the thrum of his voice matching the heightening buzz of the cicadas. Sorrow crept in, sinking deep inside and settling like a handprint in cement. I’d never dreamed my heart could hurt this much.
Time crawled by. I brushed the tip of my shoe over a patch of dandelions and my thoughts drifted to Grammy Essie’s famous recipes—and how she’d be having a hissy right now, seeing all these flowers going to waste. We’d called her the Lion Keeper because there wasn’t a single part of the dandelion she wouldn’t put to good use. I’d spent many a Saturday afternoon helping her and Papaw make dandelion wine, dandelion jelly, and even roasted dandelion coffee. They’d shown me how to pluck all the petals and strip the hulls and leaves, releasing their earthy smells to filter through the house. The wine took about five months to cure, but when it was ready, the family would gather ’round the table and everyone, even me, would receive a mug of the sweet wine. I could almost taste the sugary sweetness, the two tablespoons that Grammy Essie allowed, measured out carefully and passed to me with a wink. “To summer’s sugar,” she’d say.
I gazed across the road to the old Summers Homestead, its 300 acres stretching low and rising like a water snake. Daddy’s ancestors settled the land in 1792. My grandparents’ two-story farmhouse, its hardwood poplar milled right from the Summerses’ treed acres, was now ours. And what was once full of life was now full of nothing but dusty memories and ghosts of yesterday. Gone, all gone.
I looked over to Mrs. Whitlock. From her hip, Genevieve jiggled a new rattle, smiling, lost in its novelty. I tried to draw strength from her sunshine.
At long last, Pastor closed the burial with a blessing for Mama, pausing a moment for spiritual meditation. Then he rang the brass bell four times to signal Mama’s passing.
I bowed my head and pulled from memory one of Grammy Essie’s favorite quotes, by Richard Crashaw, the one she’d taught me long ago, and the one I’d said for her when she crossed. I mouthed the farewell blessing to Mama:
And when life’s sweet fable ends.
Soul and Body part like friends.
No quarrels, murmurs, no delay;
A kiss, a sigh, and so away.
ThommaLyn hugged me before stepping aside. Mrs. Whitlock let me kiss a fussy Genevieve good-bye. I clung to her chubby little hands that had once clung to Mama until Mrs. Whitlock promised to bring her by soon. A line of pinched faces, wearing matching pinched shoes and their Sunday finest, came forward to offer their condolences to me and Daddy, some commenting on the beautiful service.
I waited by the graveside, watching while the last of the mourners made their way out of the cemetery and across the road, walking the gravel path up to the Summers Homestead.
I could see ThommaLyn helping the elders set up folding tables, others spreading quilts and blankets under the shade of elms in the meadow for the supper after the burial.
Daddy stood outside the cemetery gate, chewing on his unlit cigar to allow me a moment alone. I ran my hand over the steel casket and pulled a sunflower out of the funeral spray. Mama’s favorite.
I plucked off a petal and glided the silk across my face, remembering Daddy’s story about the first time he’d come calling on Mama, with roses. Mama had promptly informed him: “It is sunflowers I love, not roses, Adam.”
“And why’s that, Ella?” he’d asked.
She’d raised her head to the sky, and announced, “Because the sunflower is always planted in the north corner of a garden as the protector over its three corner sisters: bean, corn, and squash. They call it the ‘fourth sister,’ just like me.”
Daddy’d cocked his head in confusion. Everybody knew that Mama was the only Tilley child.
She’d answered his silent question. “I had three big sisters, Adam, but they all died soon after childbirth. I’m the fourth. I never knew my sisters, but I will always guard the memories of what could have been.”
Every spring after that, my daddy would load up his old pickup with a bag of seeds and a hand hoe, and head out to the Summers Homestead. He’d spread a quilt down for Mama and she’d read while he worked, stopping to glance up as he labored under sunny skies, knees set on earth’s naked field, carving out row after row. He’d tell Mama he envisioned a hundred rows of sunflowers, and promised, “Soon, they’ll lift up their brown pancake heads to the sky to pay homage to you, my love.” He’d spread out his strong arms in exaggeration and Mama would always laugh, chiding him, “All you’ll do is fatten the deer and coons, Adam.” But he wouldn’t listen, even when the critters came and feasted under the cloak of darkness. Instead, he would curse the beasts and faithfully nurse the few plants that remained.
The field had been barren for years, ever since Mama left with Tommy.
Clutching the sunflower, I lowered myself down onto shaky knees. “Mama,” I whispered, “how could you leave me? Why . . . why do you keep leaving me?”
I curled my fingers around the petals of the sunflower, crushing them together and letting the smashed head fall into the deep belly of earth that hungered beside her casket. Looking out across the graves of my kin, I cried for them, and for Daddy and me, left behind with not one of them to cling to. And for baby Genevieve, whose memories of Mama had no chance to take root and would wither just as surely as these graveside flowers.
Daddy called softly to me.
I looked up and spotted a lone colored woman making her way down dusty Summers road. She walked alongside the cemetery fence, dragging a stick across the iron bars, rattling a broken rhythm that sounded a lot like the mournful song of a rain crow that had filled my heart.
Spent, I scooped up a handful of rich Kentucky soil—soil that had already taken too many, and too much. I stood and let the black dirt sieve through my fingers and fall across Mama’s grave.
7
The Better Cheater
At sunrise, I awoke to the quarrelsome cries of grackles that punched through the silence of the countryside.
I rolled out from beneath the quilt, rubbing my swollen eyes. I cocked my ear. Oddly quiet. It sounded like Daddy was still in bed, an abnormal beginning for a Wednesday morning in the Summers house. ’Course there was no going back to normal anymore. Not after losing Mama. I never thought I’d wake up with her gone—gone forever and never coming back. I couldn’t believe it had been five days since she passed.
Peeling off yesterday’s crumpled funeral dress, I picked out a pair of old blue gym shorts and a T-shirt. What’s the use, I thought. Coach Grider was never going to let females do track. Take a stand, Mama had said. “It’s your right!” I picked up my running sneakers and thought about my first pair, the ones Mama bought me when I first visited her in Chicago for the summer. I was ten. Mama and Tommy’s arguments had followed them from Nashville to Chicago, growing louder—uglier. That’s when I first took up running. After one of their bigger arguments, Mama took me to the city park in Chicago. I’d been surprised to see people running on narrow asphalt paths around the park’s boundaries. I’d asked her why they were doing this. I thought this was a fine thing, especially when I saw a woman doing it. Mama’d said she didn’t really know why but reckoned it might be they’d gotten a case of the “Lonely Lucys” or “Freddie Fidgets” (what Mama always called my unsettling times). I’d wished I could run around the park and give it my Lonely Lucys. Mama’d laughed a little nervously. The way she sometimes did when the Freddie Fidgets latched on to her.
A week later, Mama’d said she wanted to look at ballet shoes for herself. We’d gone shopping and instead of ballet shoes, we came home carrying a box of funny-lookin
g shoes with waffle-iron bottoms for me. I was hooked, and so was Mama. She’d gotten a kick out of predicting who’d be the next runner I’d catch up with and then pass.
I looked out to my practice track that carved across the backfields of Summers Homestead, and studied the paths cut into thick scattered tickseed, morning glory, and joe-pye weed. Normally, my homemade running trail was stubbled, but I could see it had been a while since Daddy last bushhogged.
It would have to do. My body was craving a hard run, an escape from the Lucys and Freddies. I hit the path and scared up a doe and her twins about one minute in. I shook off the surprise and ran the first quarter mile, easing into a natural rhythm. Soon, my gait grew strong, and my breathing was lost to the wilds and I let go of yesterday. My legs escaped the earth as I ran the slopes and wore the paths for six miles around. When done, I lifted my hands to the sky and bargained for a better day. For a good hour I cooled down and walked the meadows, almost enjoying its beginning.
With renewed energy, I went back into the house and took a bath; then I picked out a pair of my widest bell-bottoms and a spaghetti-strapped shirt from the clothing already strewn across my bedroom floor. I was surprised to find that the pockets of my jeans were already full—loose change, a few scraps of paper, a lipstick. And Mama’s recipe card. I pulled it out and pressed it close to me, inhaling the faint scent of lemon. Bittersweet.
I tucked the recipe back into my jeans and turned to the chore of having myself a “normal” morning. I rummaged through my nightstand to find the birth-control package that Mama had bought for me earlier this spring after a visit to her city OB/GYN. She’d had me start on them immediately, and made sure I was kept supplied with them ever since.
I’d shrugged and listened quietly when she’d explained the directions, too embarrassed to ask questions or protest. “It’s your senior year,” she’d said. “You’re going to be smart, get out of here one day, and have a chance at a good life. I don’t want you to even think about tying an apron knot or pinning a diaper until you’ve finished college. That’d be like leaving the birthday party before the cake is served. Here, take them. Just in case. Carry them always.”
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