by Maxine Clair
“Bags,” Vergie corrected, “and your father’s already got them.”
“Can I see your car?” he asked October.
For going on seven years, October had tried to hold his gaze whenever he looked straight at her. She would have thought that by now that piercing thing wouldn’t get to her.
“You’ll see it in the morning,” Vergie said.
David whined that, shoot, he just wanted to look, and Vergie said all right.
October took him out to see it, let him get behind the wheel and turn on the interior lights. Come tomorrow or the day after, she would take him for a long ride. Her and him.
The next morning, the Chillicothe Blade was full of details. Front page. Archaeologists and historians had descended on them to figure out, once and for all, who the ancient Mound Builders had been, and why mounds.
Two miles south of Chillicothe, near the Hopewell heart, where thirty or forty mounds still stood—many on private property—excavation was about to begin for a new road. The archaeologists had to work fast or bulldozers would erase all traces of this particular piece of ancient Indian history. October thought it might be something for David to see.
Vergie shrugged her shoulders. Maybe, but she wanted him around today. And October understood how that could be true. And so Vergie made a project of ironing all of David’s clothes. No matter that October was there, she wanted to be sure he had enough clean-and-ironed things for two weeks. And she paired up which pants went with which T-shirt, and none of his Sunday socks with his tennis shoes. And “Make him take a bath every night. Don’t let him stay up after nine, either,
cause he’ll try, and Gene don’t have no sense about David and going to bed.”
Ironing board where the high-up bed had once been, ironed clothes stacked and strewn over the chairs, bureau now a catch-all for catalogues and old flowerpots—it felt like blasphemy to have that much clutter in Aunt Frances’s old room.
“When he gets old enough,” Vergie said, “I’m going to make this into an extra room for him. Put in shelves and all.”
October took one of the T-shirts Vergie had just laid out, and started to fold it.
“No, no,” Vergie said “Hang it up or you’ll have to iron it again.”
Vergie went to the bureau and took a sheet of fine-grain stationery from the top drawer. Spoils from Aunt Maude’s days at the mill.
“Write for me while I iron,” Vergie said, and she began to try to capture her life on a piece of paper—the things she did every day and how she did them. Gene’s timetable and his whims, David’s habits—and the warnings he would need—as if once she had the operation she wouldn’t be able to talk.
That evening, on the television news, they showed the mounds site—archaeologists with tools that looked like spatulas and toothbrushes, the pebbles and shards they had already found that, they said, dated back to A.D. 400. They showed ornaments and jewelry, copper things and pottery designs. Sculptured stone and clay pipes that had been carved with bird, bear, and geometric designs. The Mound Builders were artisans, they said. But there were also mollusk shells, remains of wild plants, husks of corn—things Mound Builders ate. They showed an aerial view of the Great Serpent Mound in southern Ohio—the biggest effigy mound in the Americas, they said.
As October sat watching with Vergie in the den, she looked out the window to see Gene’s balding head; he was hosing down his old car out front Cicadas had begun their dusk serenade, and David was somewhere up the street, playing. She could smell the ubiquitous honeysuckle, and see the fringe of violet, the wisteria dangling over the porch roof. What would they leave behind that people would find?
The camera focused in on the face of the newsman, microphone in his hand, spelling out the story of the Hopewell hierarchy that they had unearthed—the human bones, the luminary, his family, his friends. When a priest or chieftain died, they buried his whole life with him, including the voluntarily dead who followed. The newsman turned to a burial mound behind him: the skeletons of two wives, perhaps a sister, a medicine man with implements, a head servant maybe, or a pipe bearer—all of them had accompanied the personage into death.
“Those poor people,” October said. “Buried like that just because he died.”
“It was their way,” Vergie said. “I can understand it. It’s like any other journey,” she went on. “You want to see that they get there safe. Besides, they didn’t want to go on in this life when they could be with him in the next.”
“You believe in that?” October asked her.
“I’m saying I can understand it,” Vergie said. She had a tea towel slung across her shoulder and a basin of green beans in her lap, snipping off the ends of bean pods, snapping them in two.
“Let me help,” October said, reaching for a handful.
“This is it,” Vergie said. “I’m just getting them ready, and that’ll be that. Be sure to cook them long enough. Gene likes them cooked to pieces.”
Already October wondered how she would watch a pot simmer and be at the hospital at the same time. Vergie had to be there at ten A.M. the next day. October and Gene would stay at the hospital while they ran the remaining tests. David would stay at Mrs. Hopp’s until they got back later in the day. Early the following day, October would go with Gene, pray, and send Vergie off to what, October felt sure, would be a safe operation.
In the distance she heard the ice cream truck’s organ grind and closer, David’s whine with Gene about Popsicle money.
“That truck comes around every night,” Vergie said. “He doesn’t need to buy it just because the truck comes. But I guess tonight is special.”
October wanted to buy a Popsicle for him, and Vergie said, “Okay, but don’t let him make a habit out of it while I’m gone.”
October grabbed her purse. “Get me a Neapolitan ice cream sandwich,” Vergie told her. “Get Gene one, too.”
As October and David skipped down the porch steps to the sidewalk, she could smell the sweat and soap, and her hand swept his shoulder.
“They have soft-serve, too,” he told her. She held out change and he cupped his two palms together, then ran ahead to the curb, bouncing and waving down the truck. October let him choose, change his money for loot, and dump the cold load of ice cream sandwiches into her hands without a “thank-you,” then run his slurping way up the sidewalk. Parents—aunts included—were means to an end. And they were shields, too. For David’s sake, Vergie’s operation was to be just a little scar on her stomach. Why? So it wouldn’t hurt anymore.
Once the sun was gone for good, and October could hear David sloshing around in the bathtub, she and Vergie caught the ends of the tight string of the coming ordeal.
Vergie started it. “The garbage man comes on Saturday. Gene forgets sometimes, so be sure the garbage is emptied.”
An advertisement came on for What’s My Line?, showing that Leslie Uggams would be on.
“Gene!” Vergie called. “Come look—they’ve got a colored girl on.”
The glider on the front porch creaked, but Gene didn’t come. Right in the middle of talking about how good Leslie Uggams looked, Vergie said, “David doesn’t like Sunday school, so me and Gene usually let him go with us to the regular service.”
Okay. October asked for details, and they went through the details of Vergie’s hospital room, how was she going to call on a telephone with a three-party line, the problem of slim visiting hours, and, for the hundredth time, what to do with David.
“And I guess you don’t have to stick to the menus if you don’t want to,” she said. October told her that she definitely would. After all, who but Vergie knew what Gene and David liked to eat?
And then, as Vergie began telling her how to fry the fish, October heard the tears that didn’t want to come out.
She reached over and touched Vergie’s hand.
“It’ll be all right, Verge.” And she retold the thing about the two women teachers her own age who had had this same operation and how they had come back to teaching with a new lease on life. But Vergie had the “yeah-buts.” Nothing October could say would turn the picture from doom to picnic.
The news went off, and Dinah Shore came on. Vergie got up to change the channel to Perry Mason, already in progress. She stood beside the console, wiping away invisible dust.
“Let me ask you something,” she said.
“What?”
She faced October squarely and asked, “What would you do if anything happened to me?”
“What do you mean? Nothing’s going to happen to you.”
Vergie sat down again. “People can have operations and not come back, you know.”
“Not many people, and not healthy people,” October said.
“So what would you do?” she asked again.
“About what, Vergie? Are you talking about the house? Gene? David?”
“All that,” Vergie said.
“I’d do whatever you wanted me to do,” October said. She thought for sure that Vergie and Gene had gone over all this before she got there. This could be about a special something October alone could do. But probably it was about David.
“Well, then, here’s what I want,” Vergie said.
“Do I need to write it down?” October asked.
“No.” Vergie said. “I just want your word. That’s all.”
“Tell me and I’ll promise to do it,” October said.
“I want you to promise that if I die, you will never tell David that I wasn’t his mother. That I didn’t birth him.”
Blindsided her. “Vergie—”
“Promise,” Vergie said.
It wasn’t that October had big qualms about not telling him. If he knew, he would hate her. But would he hate her forever? She couldn’t promise.
“Nobody knows the future, Vergie,” she said. “I can’t say what I might think or say or do....”
October couldn’t fault Vergie for asking. In Vergie’s place she would have done the same thing.
In the mean hinterlands, though, where she seldom let her mind wander, October caught a flash of perfect life—David looking up at her, cupping his hands for ice cream money, and Vergie did not exist.
October didn’t promise. On the eve of life-or-death-maybe, they couldn’t even stay in the same room. Vergie went to the kitchen and left October to watch the last few minutes of Perry Mason, where the prosecutor finished grilling the witness. When Perry Mason cross-examined, the truth came out, and the show was over.
Later on, Mrs. Hopp came over to wish Vergie well, and got October to walk her back over the dew-wet grass to her front door. Frail, her arm was a reed bent at October’s elbow. When October got her to her door, she turned her head up sideways again, to meet October’s eyes.
“You’re a lot like Carrie, you know,” she told October. “She was green, but she had a lot of nerve. She went off with that man and never got over it.” She unlinked her arm from October’s and yanked open her screen door.
“She had a heart big as this house,” she said, grabbing on to the door-jamb to help pull herself up into the dark of her house, then turned to hook the screen.
“You take good care of your sister,” she said. “Your aunties would have wanted that.”
In the night, October’s mind wandered back to its usual haunts. Whom did she have in this world, if not Vergie? Vergie would be giving up her womb. And October? She had given away a son and at any moment could decide to have another.
The next day came and went with tests and decent manners at Ross County General.
At six on the morning of the operation, October and Gene left David—scared, but willing to be with Mrs. Hopp—and went to the hospital to wait out the day. They let Gene and October see Vergie for a few minutes before they “took her up.” Sterile, decked out in green gown and bonnet, Vergie lounged on the bed like she was having her toenails clipped.
“I’ve left it in God’s hands,” she told them.
A nurse came and said that they had to cut it short. With Gene sitting right there beside Vergie, holding her hand, October was going to have to get it out.
Maybe it was because she was afraid that Vergie might die, or because she was sure that she wouldn’t or because she was grateful that God had required so little of her lately, or guilty that her aunts were looking down. Whatever the reason, she gave it up.
“I’ll let you two be alone,” she said “But, Vergie, what we talked about yesterday? You don’t have to worry. If anything changes, I’ll do just like you asked me to do.”
She meant it. Maybe she just loved her sister.
The surgery went well. Two days later, Vergie was eating normal food and was strong enough to lean on somebody and walk to the bathroom. Every day at one, October left David with Mrs. Hopp and went to sit and talk with her sister. Yes, the garbage was out, yes, David was eating greens, yes, Gene liked the meatloaf. Every night when Gene left the house for the hospital, October knew he’d be grilled the same way about the same things. The telephone party lines were open for only four hours a day. But Vergie called David whenever she could—just about every day—even just a minute to say hi.
The last thing October wanted was for Gene or David to want for anything that she could figure out and pull together. And it was a stretch. Up by six to make real breakfasts for Gene and any special thing she could think of for the lunch David would eat at Mrs. Hopp’s. She made her own menus and baked something sweet each afternoon. Doing laundry sent her to the catalogue to price the new automatic washing machines. Vergie’s sweeper ate the dust, but it was heavy on the stairs.
The first Saturday after Vergie’s surgery, David came into the dining room while she was dusting, and he had a drawing in his hand.
“Here, this is for you,” he said. “I drew it when I was in kindergarten.”
October took her present from him—looked like an almost-square sun with rays out from all four sides. In brown crayon.
“This must be the sun,” she said.
David looked at it to see why on earth she thought it was the sun. “It’s a cage,” he said. “Momma told me I should give you something I made.”
“Yes,” October said, excited now. This idea of a cage was far, far advanced even for a seven-year-old. This was abstract art. She looked at it again.
“Where was this cage?”
He hunched his shoulders. “It’s like my old baby bed—you know, with the bars and everything.”
“This is mine to keep?” she said.
He said um-hmmm, and told her he could draw her another picture if she wanted him to. But no. This one was precious to her.
That same Saturday, she put David in her car. Vergie was fine. Now that fate wouldn’t be tempted, October decided it would be okay to visit Floral Hills.
David was none too happy. “I just went,” he said. “I had to go on Decoration Day.” But a ride in the Impala was worth the dull end.
The cemetery no longer sold plots—it had run out of space. In the section where Negroes had been buried, she couldn’t tell path from gully or weeds from the shrubbery that lined the paths in the wintertime. Rust rotted the wrought-iron gate, and a few of the bars were missing.
Once they were out of the car, David knew the way and walked on ahead, showing her.
“Momma said my grandmother Carrie looked just like y’all do now, only she was light,” he said over his shoulder. Lumbering along on stout legs, he swung his arms from side to side.
“That’s what Aunt Frances said, too,” October told him. They got to the little gravel path that led to the section where Auntie and Aunt Maude and Carrie were buried.
“Nobody knows where Gran
dpa Franklin was buried, right?”
“Right,” October said.
“Momma said he used to play the piano.” Then David turned around. “Why did he kill y’all’s mother?”
“I guess he was mean. And he probably just went off.”
“Momma hates it when I call him Grandpa Frank—you know, like Auntie Oc.”
October explained how very little love had been lost between him and them.
“I know,” David said, “that’s why I said Grandpa Franklin. What do you call him?”
“Old Man Brown,” October said, partly joking. She and David walked side by side, half on the path, half in the weeds.
“Where do they bury people when nobody comes to get the body? Momma said nobody came to get him when he died. What happened to him?”
How did Vergie know? “All I know is that he died in prison. We never knew when or where. Auntie told us.”
In the welter of operations and death watches, it seemed a hard thing to her, too—somebody dying alone. Even if he deserved it.
“Was I born then?”
“It was a long time ago. Me and Vergie were probably still in high school.”
David tramped down some weeds and walked across several graves. “I don’t believe in bad luck,” he said.
“I probably wouldn’t like it if somebody was tramping all over Aunt Frances and Aunt Maude, would you?”
David side-stepped the next grave. “Unh-unh,” he said.
The stone read, “Carrie Cooper Brown. Beloved sister and mother.” A dried-out potted geranium leaned against the marble slab. October knelt and moved it, began pulling at the weeds. Who were you? How much of you flows in my veins? Already she had lived four years longer than Carrie. David stood back, watching.
“You-all’s mother died a long time ago,” he said.
“She was twenty-seven,” October said.
“I hope I don’t die till I’m a hundred,” David said.
October told him he’d live to be somebody’s grandpa, and he wandered away, looking at headstones.
October moved over two rows, to Frances and Maude, buried side by side, and when David saw her, he came, too, squatted and pulled weeds, watching her like he thought she might cry or something.
