October Suite

by Maxine Clair

  Aunt Maude got off from the mill at five, and Vergie burst out of the bathroom and stumbled down the stairs, greeting her with a garbled story, plenty of tears, and a swollen lip. Aunt Maude had calmed and soothed and whimpered with her and dressed her mouth with Mercurochrome. October had sat alone in their bedroom waiting for whatever was to come next.

  Aunt Maude, her face flat opened the door and stood looking at October for a long time, and then her eyes welled up.

  “What are we going to do?” she said, as if they were all lost. She looked into the air for an answer, then closed the door.

  No one ate dinner.

  Somewhere in what seemed the middle of the night, October was shaken awake, to Aunt Frances’s cast-iron “Get up, Lillian, and get dressed.”

  She had been expecting anything. Vergie had not slept in her bed. Aunt Maude’s voice was an all-night murmur behind her door. Starkly awake, October had gotten herself up and dressed, shoes and all.

  “Get your coat!” Aunt Frances yelled from downstairs and October did as she was told.

  Frances Cooper—fully prepared in nurse whites and her navy-blue cape with the red lining—waited at the front door. Aunt Maude stood at the top of the stairs in her nightgown and watched as October and Aunt Frances went out into the night. October followed Auntie across the yard to the Hopps’, where Mr. Hopp waited on his front porch. Cold night. Cold enough to see his breath huff.

  “Okay, Miss Cooper,” he said to Auntie. “If you’re sure this is what you want to do, come on.”

  Mr. Hopp worked for the city, although his exact job was a question October could not have answered at the time. Whenever he left for work she had heard keys jangling at the hip of his coveralls. This night the keys jangled, too. Silence like the cemetery rode with her in Mr. Hopp’s long low Hudson to the downtown Chillicothe she had seldom seen at night. Corner lamps, cold and glaring, made sharp shadows against the still buildings, empty streets.

  Mr. Hopp pulled up in front of city hall and sat still, looked at the building awhile, then went around the block, into the alley, and stopped behind the building. Fumbled with his keys. Where were they going? October couldn’t imagine what punishment lay waiting—she knew only that Aunt Frances had thought it up, and it would be pretty bad.

  “Okay, let’s see what might be waitin in there for this one,” Mr. Hopp said. Aunt Frances got out of the car and held the back door for October.

  “Come on,” she said.

  Long hallways waited. And echoes. Two white policemen took Mr. Hopp aside to talk, then left. Aunt Frances followed close on Mr. Hopp’s heels and October followed close on hers, down another long hallway that led to an iron door. Mr. Hopp unlocked the door and they entered.

  When Aunt Frances pushed her forward, October saw the cells, eight or ten, side by side. In the half-dark she could make out lumps of bodies sleeping in some of the cells. And one cell door standing open. Mr. Hopp walked over to it, motioning for her to follow. Aunt Frances nudged her.

  “You want to sleep in here?” Mr. Hopp said.

  October shook her head no. Up close, she could see the measly cot with no sheet the stinky slop jar, the dirty stone floor. She wondered about the police—what would they care about a fight between her and Vergie? But she couldn’t guess how far Mr. Hopp could go at the jail, and there was no way to know how far Aunt Frances’s wrath would go.

  A cold stone floor at night, being locked away, having to lie on that cot and use that slop jar—would Auntie do that to her? Was she finally just an orphan?

  Aunt Frances had then opened the cell door farther and nudged her inside.

  “This must be where you want to end up,” she said. Then she said, “This is where your poppa ended up. He died in a place just like this. He started out just like you, fighting all the time.”

  She stepped out of the cell and clanged the door, leaving October inside the bars.

  “Franklin may have given you his sister’s name,” Aunt Frances said, “—that’s something you can’t help. But you’ll not have their ways and live with us, I promise you.”

  Dazzling. So her name really did come from those people—people she knew only as too lowdown and dirty to be mentioned. And what else? Her father had been a character in a storybook, banished to never-never land. She had always thought of him as put away forever. The end. It had never occurred to her that he could die.

  An aunt someone named Lillian, the woman who had raised him? No one had ever bothered to mention this. The whole day had turned into a new life. Her blackberry skin was a given, but until that day the only other family resemblance October had ever taken into account had been the way she favored Carrie or Aunt Frances or Aunt Maude or Vergie. With one word, she had a life times two. She had hurt Vergie more than she had intended. Just happened. And then Vergie had opened a sewer with all kinds of gullies and gutters feeding it. Such a secret. All this time everybody had known.

  October, even at the age of nine, had understood then that she was someone other than herself. That she was different from Aunt Frances and Aunt Maude. Different, too, from Vergie. Unwittingly, Aunt Frances had held a mirror in front of her, and even if she couldn’t yet make out what she saw, she knew this: in more ways than one, the reflection coming into focus looked like a leper.

  After that night, slowly at first, then whenever it wanted to happen, then with a vengeance, the name Lillian had become an accusation. Vergie’s way of drawling out “Lil-yan” could be an excruciating jab or a pin-stick, depending on how raw October felt at the time.

  Aunt Frances and Aunt Maude would step in a little with “All right, Vergie, that’s enough.”

  But they, too, had got in the spirit of the curse. “Lillian” was the epithet when October’s attitude became the stubborn cliff their reason couldn’t climb. They tiptoed, never used the name unless they were put out with her. Otherwise they started calling her “Lily” or “Lily Ann.”

  But she called herself October to herself. October, for the month their mother had died. October, for the lack of any other name that she could put on to say how it felt to become another, stranger person.

  Over time, though, she hardened. Turned her secret into a plan. When she got to seventeen, that was it. Old enough. She learned not to flinch so, and Vergie got tired of trying to use a dull weapon. Aunt Frances and Aunt Maude got tired, too, or guilty. However it happened, at some point they all dropped Lillian from the list of words they could use when they were mad, and replaced it with a permanent Lily for all occasions. Which sure enough proved that the name had kept some evil thing alive for too long. For a time anyway, October was Lillian to the world, Lily at home, and October to anyone who would go along.

  It was always with a good feeling that she remembered the long swoon of puberty. A for-real new person, starting with her body and going on to the music of her own voice, every single nerve ending exposed in every single moment. Without telling anyone, she had fallen in love, first with the deciduous drama of autumn, the pungency of blade and leaf giving up the ghost. Fallen in love with poems, any poem, and with the sound of the flute, or a bird, or train whistle.

  She had fallen in love with the boy who worked in Ford’s grocery store, and because she never caught that boy’s name, she had switched her love to the Reverend’s son, home from Wilberforce College. Because he had never been around for long and had never noticed her, she ventured to speak to a boy in the twelfth grade who said hi to her once. He didn’t need a name. They didn’t need to talk.

  Each night before bed, like the leper in The Good Earth, October had inspected every inch of her new body for white freckles. She was convinced that the brown would return, and since no other spots had appeared, she got it in her head that the sun had protected her, and spent more time outdoors.

  When she had turned seventeen, old enough to give herself a new n
ame, with two aunts who were only relatives, not parents, October found an accomplice. The Reverend’s daughter, Dainty Bonner.

  Dainty wore her hair twisted around a hair-rat, the way women did, in a crown hoop that she set off with jeweled combs. She smoked and had a boyfriend twenty years old. October had fed Dainty bits of the whole orphan story and the evil family she didn’t want to be related to. Tortured friend. And Dainty had agreed that Lillian had never been a name that suited her, and that October stood out. And Dainty had known exactly where, in the courthouse, they had to go to do the thing right.

  October had never done this before. She went to the courthouse unprepared. How could she have known about things like the proof of her birth or birth name, and how much money she would have to pay, and a fail-proof reason for a name change, and the six-week wait for it to be official. And so, on another not-so-brave day, she and her friend Dainty went back to the courthouse. This time she had rifled through Aunt Frances’s cedar chest for papers and emptied her own secret stash for the notary’s fifty cents. This time she had announced her intention to Aunt Frances, who had dared her to leave. This time, with her shorty slung across her shoulders, and her hand on the doorknob, she had disowned the only mother she had ever really known.

  Under “Justification” on the form, October wrote a version of the truth. Instead of pointing to the bloodline, she wrote that Lillian was the name of the mother of the man who had killed October’s own mother. No one would dare refuse her then.

  Her mother had died on October 26, 1931. As she sat with Dainty on the bench outside the notary’s office, a feeling came over her. She had finished something important, and something else had begun. Finally, she could hold on to autumn no matter what the season was, and have the perfect memorial to Carrie. She could have the perfect way to separate herself from her namesake forever—the perfectly unique name for a girl with a dramatic blight on the brown of her cheek, October.

  On the fifth day after Aunt Frances had suffered the stroke, Gene brought Vergie to relieve October at the hospital. Reverend Carter had prayed his ardent prayer, and as they all stood around the bed, a nurse came in with a needle and syringe.

  “We need to check her catheter,” the nurse said. “You-all won’t mind stepping out into the hall for a minute, would you?”

  Out in the hall, October tried to sound like she knew what she was talking about and at the same time not scare Vergie.

  “Vergie, I know that miracles can happen,” she told her, “but remember, we have to be realistic, too.”

  It seemed to October that until she had entered Aunt Frances’s hospital room that day, her own life had not been pinned down. As if at any moment she might be able to put her life in reverse and move into the life she wanted. Redeemable, she thought. But now she was beginning to see that Aunt Frances’s death would nail things down. Up until then she had seemed to have a “real life” waiting somewhere, and one day she would wake up and be in her real life. One where Franklin Brown had not killed Carrie. Carrie was not in the cold ground. Franklin had not died in jail. She and Vergie had not been orphans. In a sense, up until then, Aunt Frances and Aunt Maude had been aunts, not parents. And in some part of her, October had always held out for the possibility of “real” parents. All of it, even the David chapter, could have been a dream, and there was time for it all to be corrected.

  But now Aunt Frances would be the real mother who would be dead and buried, gone forever. Nothing could be changed. October’s messed-up life would be the only one she would ever have.

  Vergie said, “The doctor said that it may take a long time for her to pull through.” October knew Vergie dared not think she might die.

  October thought she ought to make it clear to Vergie. “And, Vergie,” she told her, “it’s possible that she might not be able to pull through—I mean, she might not make it. We don’t know.”

  Fear blazed in Vergie’s eyes. “How can you say that?” She stepped closer to Gene and grabbed his hand.

  “I’m just saying might, Vergie. We have to be prepared for the worst. If there’s anything you want to say to her, you shouldn’t wait. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “Darn it, October, you never look on the bright side. The doctor never said that, and he ought to know.” She wiped a tear with her thumb. Gene put his arm around her, and they went back inside the room.

  On October’s watch the next morning, she had the sense to take her own advice. Say what needed to be said.

  Auntie’s eyes were closed, and October took her time forming the right words. Auntie’s eyes opened and October gave her a chip of ice from a spoon. Auntie stared, and after a few minutes, October could see recognition in her eyes.

  October went into how well she remembered the years, the sacrifices, the fevers soothed, the battles Auntie had mounted against the world for her and Vergie, whether they were wrong or right. As well as she could, she said how bad she felt about bringing a child into the world without a father, and giving him away, and fighting with Vergie. And still she couldn’t find the words to say what needed to be said.

  Auntie never relaxed her gaze.

  October tried again. “There is one thing I want to tell you ...”

  Auntie’s eyes burned.

  “... something I said to you once, a long time ago. And I never apologized, I never took it back. I know you know I didn’t mean it, but I want to take it back now, anyway.”

  Auntie pressed her fingers lightly into October’s palm. She could hear.

  Looking into her mute face, October said, “I just want to thank you.”

  Auntie then made her little humming sound, but kept her eyes fixed on October’s face.

  “Thank you for being my mother.” The tears came then, but October refused to lose the one chance to have it said. “You were a better mother than I ever gave you credit for—better than you ever knew,” she said.

  Auntie pressed her palm, and October knew a smile was in there.

  October wasn’t at the hospital that evening to see Vergie reading the Bible to Auntie, or to see the pain in her sister’s eyes when Auntie had another stroke. She stood next to Vergie, though, all through the next day, as Auntie’s heart marched weakly on.

  It was then that I stood by and held for Frances, my sister. She never opened her eyes or pressed their palms again.

  chapter 14

  On the weekend following the funeral, October made herself comfortable on the side of Aunt Maude’s bed, wondering about her—what she would do without Aunt Frances. She remembered the photograph of the Cooper sisters and wondered what she and Vergie would look like in a few years.

  Right now somebody would have to pick through Aunt Frances’s things, and she didn’t think Aunt Maude was up to it. At the funeral they had had to give her smelling salts. No more scares like that. Gene had taken David to watch the high school band practice and left the women to punctuate the sentence of mourning.

  October heard Aunt Maude’s cane-and-hobble above her, heard her hesitate at Aunt Frances’s doorway, then hobble around up there in that forsaken space, stopping, probably shaking her head, probably weeping, shuffling on.

  After a while, Aunt Maude called downstairs and October went up. Vergie, too, came to hug and soothe.

  “What are you doing up here by yourself?” Vergie asked her. October saw that Aunt Maude had pulled the chest and other boxes from beneath Aunt Frances’s high-up bed.

  “You-all might as well start going through her things,” Aunt Maude said. “I can’t do it by myself. Besides, she already gave me what I wanted most. I’ll put away her quilts for the grands, or at least for David when he’s grown. I’m keeping her brooch.” She stood fumbling with the antique pin, shook her head too sadly, and left them to shake their heads, too.

  October and Vergie dragged the wooden step over the floor and climbed i
nto the high bed with one of the paper-stuffed boxes between them.

  Vergie pulled out a few handfuls of paper.

  “What do you think we ought to do with all this stuff? She kept everything we ever did.”

  “I don’t know,” October said. She couldn’t see herself hauling any of it back to Missouri.

  Vergie began to make piles, sorting. “For instance, here’s my old report card from eighth grade, and yours, too.”

  “You don’t want them, do you?” October asked. Vergie didn’t answer, meaning that maybe she did.

  “I used to wonder why people kept this kind of junk,” Vergie said. “Posterity, I guess.”

  Vergie was fingering a piece of dark blue construction paper, aged to shreds. October watched her unfold the creases and reveal the dried and flaking white flour-paste print of a small hand.

  It looked familiar. “Whose was that?” October asked her.

  “Yours,” Vergie said. “Don’t you remember it?”

  October took the piece of child artwork and spread it on her lap. She stretched her hand over it, trying to believe that this was how small her hand had once been and to remember how she must have dipped it in flour paste and pressed it against the paper.

  “Imagine that,” she said. “I was once this small.” No big deal—just a fondness she felt for the little girl who had made the print.

  Vergie said, “You should take it home with you, frame it.” She was kidding.

  “Yeah, but it seems like a shame to throw it away. In a way it’s better than a photograph. It’s proof that I was alive.”

  For whatever reason, that seemed to rub Vergie the wrong way. “I swear, October,” she said. “Sometimes you can be so wrapped up in yourself. Aunt Frances died, not you.”