by Gin Phillips
I kept on rubbing even after he was asleep. He’d feel the difference when he woke.
Virgie IT FELT GOOD TO HAVE JACK BACK HOME, HIS OLD self, only quieter. He couldn’t run into things nearly so well with the casts on his leg and arm. I knew he’d soon enough figure out how to leave his mark with a crutch, though, and that Tess best stop poking at him and learn to keep her distance.
Mama didn’t like to talk about Jack’s accident. She’d talk about it fine if you brought it up—she wasn’t one to shy away from anything—but I could tell she’d rather focus on talk about the chores and our schoolwork and what was going on with relatives. She never mentioned that truck driver or what became of him or how lucky Jack was or how scary it had been seeing him in the hospital for the first time. Jack’s accident was a wild, unpredictable thing, and Mama liked things to be regular and orderly. I always thought I was exactly like her that way, and mainly I was. I wouldn’t ever be like Tess and sling my shoes all over the place, one under the bed, the other propped against the nightstand. I liked them to be pointed in the same direction, their toes and heels touching. But a small part of me, only a small part, wanted to see what would happen if I put those shoes on opposite sides of the room and pointed them in opposite directions.
I’d finished changing my clothes and tying a rag around my hair before Mama had the varnish measured out. So I started sorting through the paintbrushes laid out next to her.
“You remember Robin from the hospital, Mama?” I asked her as she poured out the last bit of varnish into separate pails for each of us.
“That cute little nurse?”
“Yes’m. She was nice…and real good at takin’ care of the patients.”
“I’m sure she was.”
“You ever wish you’d stayed unmarried, Mama? Earned your own money? Moved somewhere far off?”
“Why’re you askin’ me about somethin’ I don’t know nothin’ about?” She set the can down and handed me one of the buckets. She hadn’t spilled a drop of the varnish.
“You never thought about it?”
“Lord, no. Who’s got time for thinkin’? There’s floors to paint.”
We’d have painted the floors earlier if it weren’t for the accident. As it was, the cold wind outside had turned the floors icy enough that I needed to tuck my dress under my knees to warm them. Mama took the kitchen, Tess took the bedroom, and I took the den. I had on my oldest dress, cream-colored belted cotton, with the hem frayed and a dark stain on one arm that wouldn’t come out. I never could figure how I spilled anything on it. But I only used the dress for housework, and it was good for sprawling on the floor and making even, up-and-down strokes with a paintbrush full of varnish. Every fall the floors started looking dusty and dull, and Mama would want to shine them up with a new coat. It was hot work, messy, too, and even with Papa’s old work gloves for each of us—he never wore gloves, so I didn’t know how he managed to have old ones—I still got varnish sloshed on my arms, shellacking down the little hairs. I’d crawl a little too far and stick my knee in a wet spot, then dirt would stick to my knees. A few hairs worked their way out from under the kerchief tying them back, and they got shellacked from me trying to keep them out of my face.
We didn’t keep a fire going with us all working so hard. Jack sat out on the porch—even with the windows open, Mama worried about him breathing in the fumes. I heard him call my name as I was trying to unstick my knee from the floor without setting my gloves against anything.
“What is it?” I answered back, blowing at a loose hair.
“That boy and Lois are walking up the road.”
“Orville?”
“That whistle boy.”
One night before Jack got hit, a boy that called on Lois had brought his cousin Orville from Jasper on a visit. The two boys and Lois came over, and everybody agreed without saying anything about it that I would be the fourth. We just sat on the porch for a while and Papa decided as long as he met any boy involved and we weren’t gone too long, it’d be alright if I went somewhere with a group of boys and girls occasionally. As long as it wasn’t an actual date. The next time Lois’s fellow was in town, they came over and Orville brought me a wooden whistle he’d carved for me to take to Jack in the hospital. He was a sweet boy.
But I didn’t want him dropping by right then with me such a fright. I wished there was some way people could let you know when they were about to show up at your door.
I saw Lois and Orville wave at Jack as they turned up the walk, and I hid myself by the window, peeking out to see how close they were. As I heard them climbing the steps, I yanked off my gloves and did my best to smooth my hair back under my kerchief. I used the inside hem of my skirt to wipe my face real fast. I didn’t have time to do anything about the dress.
“Virgie,” called Lois at the same time she was knocking.
I counted to three, then opened the door. “Hi, y’all. We’re all paintin’ the floors, so I’m sorry for bein’ a mess.”
I could tell by the look on Lois’s face that I really was a mess, but Orville looked calm enough. “Hi there, Virgie,” he said. “Nice to see you.”
He stepped back and held the door open for Lois to come in first. The nicest thing about Orville was he had wonderful manners. He was always tipping his head to me, almost bowing when he said hello. He never forgot to open a door or pull out a chair or walk on the roadside of the sidewalk.
“Sorry we caught you by surprise,” Lois said, waving her hand in front of her nose at the fumes. “We were just goin’ to walk to town to meet some folks and thought you might want to join us.”
“Oh, no, I couldn’t,” I said. “Not like this. And it’d take me ages to clean myself up. I’d need to…” I stopped, not sure it would be right to mention bathing in front of a boy. “I’d need to redo myself from head to toe,” I said instead.
“You look fine,” Orville said, and I could tell that he really did think so. Which was nice enough, but sort of silly.
Lois was still frowning at the smell; I opened the door again and shooed her toward it.
“Let’s go sit on the porch—I don’t want you passin’ out,” I said. I didn’t want them wandering over to where I’d already varnished, either. So Orville held the door again, and we all sat in the rockers on the opposite side of the porch from Jack, who was throwing rocks at a tin can a good twenty feet into the yard.
“I’m sorry, but I just can’t,” I said again. “I couldn’t get ready to go—it’d take way too long.”
“We can wait for you,” Lois said.
“I’m really, really sorry,” I said to Orville. “I’d love to go with y’all but I just can’t this time. I hope I’ll see you next time you come to visit.”
We went round and round about it a little more, and I sat with them on the porch for a few minutes, but I didn’t change my mind. So I brought out some iced tea and we all had a glass and then they left. I could tell Orville was hurt, but I really couldn’t go. I was filthy, and it would have taken an hour or more for me to draw the water and clean up, plus I couldn’t just leave without finishing my part of the floor.
Tess WE ALL FORGOT ABOUT THE WELL WOMAN AFTER Jack’s accident. Pretty much. My nightmares stopped altogether. Neither Virgie nor I mentioned babies or mothers or solving anything. Everybody talked less anyway, so it wasn’t like we’d made any effort to keep quiet about it in particular. Papa and Mama hardly slept, but they tried to act like they weren’t about to fall over. I saw more lines in Mama’s and Papa’s faces, and I could tell Virgie was working harder than ever to help out Mama.
I felt the difference in the house, and I knew I should be all somber, too, but once I knew Jack would be okay, I couldn’t seem to keep still. I’d come back from Birmingham twitching to do something, go somewhere. My head was full of the city. And if I couldn’t go all the way to Birmingham—nobody seemed to be in any hurry to go back, and even if they did, they’d hardly let me explore any—I’d have to make do with
something closer. I thought about Lou Ellen Talbert and those dead babies buried in her backyard. I was curious. With her puckered side and pointy tongue and grown-up ways and buried babies, that girl lived in a world just as different as Birmingham. And it was close by. Lou Ellen wasn’t at school all the time on account of helping around the house while her mama worked outside, but I kept an eye out for her. And as soon as I spotted her at recess one day, I asked if I could come see them babies. She was sitting by herself under a shade tree—I never saw her with other girls much—and she didn’t act surprised that I asked. She didn’t skip a beat before she told me she didn’t think her parents would take to the idea of her parading a friend past the graves like it was show-and-tell, but if I could get out after her parents were asleep, she’d show me.
Sneaking out made the whole thing seem all the more exciting. I made plans to meet her the next night, after everybody else had gone to bed.
I didn’t say anything to Virgie. I thought she’d scold me for thinking about those dead babies when we had plenty to think on right here at home, and she’d definitely scold me for thinking about sneaking out, which I’d have to do. Not that I’d ever asked about staying out late, but neither me nor Virgie had ever gone out past regular bedtime unless we were spending the night with a friend. Papa always talked about not understanding parents who let their daughters stay out ’til all hours of the night. I knew that meant we wouldn’t be like those girls.
I tried to keep from feeling guilty about keeping a secret, telling myself I wasn’t doing nothing wrong, only visiting a friend. It really wasn’t lying if I just didn’t mention it. Wasn’t no reason to feel like I was disrespecting Mama and Papa.
When I came in from school the day I was supposed to meet Lou Ellen, Mama was drawing water from the well, her back to me. I wrapped my arms around her middle and made her “oof.”
“You’re gone squeeze me plumb in two,” she said, not really complaining, reaching around with one hand to pat me as much as she could. “You have a good day, sugar?”
I didn’t say “yes, ma’am” like I meant to. Instead I said, “I told Lou Ellen I’d come over to her house tonight,” all the time wondering why those words were so determined to come out.
“After supper?” asked Mama, not seeming too concerned.
“A good bit after supper. Around bedtime.”
“Why you goin’ over there so late?”
I didn’t like the idea of lying to Mama, but I wasn’t stupid, neither. “We wanted to have an adventure,” I said, thinking as fast as I could. “I never been out that late before, and we thought it’d be fun to be out by ourselves, have the whole backyard for a little while with the moon shining down and not another soul around. It’ll be like we’re the only ones in the whole world, and I bet it all looks so different late at night.”
I thought about just what all that could involve, and I started seeing the nighttime as I described it. “Maybe the crickets get together and play in a big band after we’re in bed. And I bet the owls are out and they have fun tippin’ the birds off their branches while they’re sleepin’, to see if they’ll wake up before they hit the ground.”
“First time I heard you talk like that in ages, Tess.” Mama usually told me to stop daydreamin’ when I started imagining things, but this time she didn’t seem upset about it at all. Instead she smiled, which made her eyes crinkle up like I hadn’t seen in forever, and she ran her hand over my hair. “Never thought I’d miss it like I did. Not scared of possums or boogeymen bein’ out there?”
I shook my head and didn’t correct her that I was only nervous about the fairy-eating possums, not the normal kind. And I didn’t think they’d be out that night.
“You waited late to tell me, didn’t you?” she said, balancing the full bucket of water on the side of the well. “And don’t think I didn’t notice that you were tellin’, not askin’.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am. May I please go? Please? I just really wanted to get out for a little while and do somethin’ different. And Papa always said he don’t want us goin’ out late at night. I figured you wouldn’t let me.”
Mama shook her head, half smiling. “He meant with boys. Don’t know that he’d much care about you goin’ to look at a yard.” She looked up at the ceiling, the tip of her tongue sticking out from her teeth. “But then again, he’s a mite tense lately. Best not to mention it. You just go on and head over there when you need to…but he’ll be asleep when you get in, so be quiet.”
She didn’t even tell me a time to be home, and I made up my mind that it wouldn’t ever do no harm to tell Mama my business. She took it real well.
It did seem like a whole different yard by the time I got to Lou Ellen’s a little after nine o’clock. Usually I watched the dark from the porch, but this time I was walking through it, smashing it down with every step. Not knowing what my feet were going to hit every time had me breathing quick by the time I got to Lou Ellen’s, even though it was a short walk.
She was waiting for me on the porch, an itty-bitty shadow in a rocking chair. The shadow waved, then hurried down the porch steps, her slippers making soft tunk-tunk-tunk sounds instead of the usual thonk-thonk-thonk. Her nightgown came to her knees, and she hitched it up so she wouldn’t get tangled in it. She’d hardly said hello before she was pulling me by the arm past the house and toward the woods. (Even though most of the land was made up of fields, they did have one little patch of pines off to the side of the house.) I was glad for the feel of her hand around my wrist. Everything else seemed unfamiliar. The trees made one giant, dark wall, and with the shadows, the ground had a whole other set of black, flat trees. Patches of moonlight would break through when the branches swayed, and I wanted to play hopscotch on those bright spots. It was as quiet as it was dark—lightning bugs and even the crickets seemed like they were asleep. All I could hear was our feet tiptoeing and the wind blowing the pine trees.
Then my arm was let go, and I nearly ran into Lou Ellen where she’d stopped.
“Here they are,” she said, pointing right in front of the woods.
I was only looking at ground. Dirt, a tuft of weed, and grass here and there. No markers—not even a stone, much less a name.
“Y’all didn’t mark ’em?” I asked her.
“We know where they are,” she whispered. “Papa measured out five steps from the three big pines. There’s a baby in front of each.”
She took a few steps and pointed straight down.
“So you just know?”
“Yeah,” she said like it was obvious.
“And people go on and walk over them like they’re not even there?”
“I don’t know. I don’t.”
I wondered how long I needed to stand there. I wasn’t quite as interested as I’d thought I’d be. But I knew it was only polite to stay a few minutes, so I started thinking about those babies tucked underground, wrapped in a sheet or blanket. I didn’t think about what was under the blanket.
“Why do you suppose we put dead people in the ground?” I asked Lou Ellen.
“Where else you gone put ’em?”
Maybe that was it: no other choice. But I hated the thought of a baby in that cold, hard ground with worms and slugs and roaches rooting around.
“Are they in boxes?” I asked.
“Wrapped in cloth. Least the two I ’member are.”
That made it worse. If it was my baby, I could see thinking our nice cool well with mermaids and sparkling fish was a better place. Maybe Virgie had been right and the Well Woman wasn’t pure evil or out of her head. Maybe she had some good in her. Like Birmingham had some pretty streetcars and also men tucked in coke ovens. It was still an odd thing to do, mind you, turning our well into a grave, but I’d never stared hard at the dirt before and thought what it would be like as a blanket. If I loved something dearly, I’d have a hard time wrapping it up and covering it with dirt like it was garbage you didn’t want the dogs getting into.
I sa
w a shadow move across the only window that had a light, soft but bright enough for me to make out long hair, not electric, but like one of the oil lamps Mama kept around for when we had a thunderstorm.
“Your mama still up?”
“Nah, that’s Aunt Lou.”
“You think she’s noticed you’re not there?”
“Prob’bly, but she’d just think I came out to go down the hill.” She nodded toward their outhouse. “She’s just pacin’ anyway. She don’t sleep too good. Walks around and talks to herself. Don’t know where she is sometimes.”
“She alright?”
“Sometimes. Other times it’s like she ain’t even in the same room with you. Won’t talk or nothin’.”
“Oh.” I started to turn away, thinking to say I needed to head on home, but she kept talking.
“I took her by your place one time, you know. Before she even moved down here. She wanted to get a look at the town when she was visitin’, and Mama sent me out to show her y’all’s house since your papa owns the farm.”
“Why didn’t you come in?”
“Didn’t know you then.”
A thought came to me. I knew why most people had been walking past our house. “Were you out showin’ her where the baby got throwed in?”
“This was before that happened.”
“Oh.”
“She moved down here…well, couldn’t have been more than a couple of weeks later. She’s sort of a gossip. Likes to know about people. Mama knew that, so I was just supposed to point y’all out and tell her about you.”
“So what’d you tell her?”
She shrugged. “That your sister’s real pretty. That your mama and papa give away to anybody that comes askin’, that they’re big on goin’ to church, good people. Your papa don’t never talk down to us or act like he’s better than us.”
