Bloodroot (38 page)

I went to the brocade loveseat, lace doilies draped on its arms. I felt outside myself, in this unfamiliar place with this strange woman who was my aunt. When she came back, we spent a long time looking at the pictures. One of my mother holding me, not smiling. One of her surrounded by other people, a cigarette between her fingers. She smoked. I never knew. These are the things people forget to tell you. When all the pages were turned, we sat in silence. I supposed it was time to go but I wasn’t ready. I couldn’t stop thinking of Imogene’s nervous stories in the car, the troubling sense of being lied to. She waited expectantly, probably for me to say that I should be going, so I said it. “I ought to be getting back.” But I didn’t get up. My body resisted and when she was getting her purse I couldn’t keep quiet any longer. I blurted, “What were they really like?”

She turned to me, startled. “Hmm?”

“All I hear are the good stories. I want to hear all of the stories. Good and bad.”

Imogene put down her purse and keys. She came to sit beside me again. She put her hand on my knee. “Oh, honey,” she said.

“I want to know,” I said.

She grew quiet, looking down, biting her lip.

She looked back up. “But what good would it do? What does it matter now?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Please tell me.”

“You’re sure.”

“Yes.”

“All right. I’ll do the best I can.”

She began at the beginning. “I’ve always been different than them,” she said. “I hated growing up in that filthy house. You couldn’t go barefoot unless you wanted black feet. He tracked it in on his boots. We call him Uncle but he’s not. I figure he’s my grandfather. Grandmother moved in with her sister Lucille, who was married to Uncle. About a year later, Mother was born. I don’t know if Uncle raped Grandmother or if she slept with him. Are you sure you want to hear all this?” I nodded and she went on. “Uncle never was any good. I believe that’s part of why Kenny turned out how he did. It was in the blood. Now Grandmother and Lucille are gone and Uncle’s still kicking.

“We moved in with Grandmother and Lucille and Uncle after Kenny was born. Mother was a bastard, and Kenny and I grew up fatherless, too. But I do remember my father. The three of us lived for a while in a room over a storefront. He had a strong, nasty smell and whiskers. Straggly hair and no teeth, tattoos all over his arms. One of them was a dagger. I don’t know what happened to him. He wasn’t Kenny’s father.

“I was eight when Kenny was born. I doted on my brother, toting him around everywhere and letting him pitch tantrums. But he had the finest blond hair and the sweetest blue eyes, just like yours. He was the cutest little boy, until he got spoiled and hateful. He wouldn’t do his schoolwork and Mother didn’t care. I was the only one that ever tried to encourage him, but what was the use? She let him drop out in the eighth grade. He laid around for the rest of his life after that, except to go out drinking on the weekends. He’d take a job here and there, but he ended up quitting every one of them.

“Kenny’s father, your grandfather, was shot in a bar, I believe. Mother settled down after that. She was still mean as a snake on the inside, though. Sometimes I wonder why I still go over there. I wonder why I still love her. But it’s the same reason you love your mother, and will still love her after I say what I’m going to say. Uncle owned the pool hall where Kenny and Clio met. I had married my husband Gerald and moved out, so I wasn’t around much at that time. But I did get to know Clio, at least somewhat. She had hair like yours, even
longer. She was a fairly nice-looking girl, but not like you. I’ll be honest. There was something odd about her eyes, like the lights were on and nobody home. She couldn’t stand to hang around the house. She got a job and left you with Kenny. I know you’re wondering if she loved you. I think so. She bought you frilly dresses. Put bows in your hair, which you had a lot of, even as a baby. She played with you like a doll. She wasn’t a bad girl. Just restless, and liked to drink. Kenny, I don’t know. It bothered him when you cried. He wanted to sleep late and you woke him up early. He and Mother didn’t watch you very well while Clio was at work. Some days I’d go over there and find you lying in the crib crying with a dirty diaper. You always had diaper rash where they didn’t change you enough, and I’d take you home with me.”

She paused then and looked down at her hands in her lap. I held my breath because I knew she was about to tell me whatever she had been withholding. I opened my mouth to stop her, to say that she was right, I didn’t want to know. But it was too late.

“She dropped you one time,” Imogene said, the words rushing together. “She and Kenny both were drunk. I believe she was on something, too. Some kind of pills. She said you just slipped through her fingers. You hit your head on the floor and Clio thought you were dead. She was out of her head when she called me. I could barely understand her. She wanted me to help her bury you. Said Kenny couldn’t do it, he was passed out, and Mother and Uncle both worked late at the pool hall on Friday nights so they weren’t home. I rushed over there scared to death what I would find. She was standing in the yard pacing back and forth with you, making this awful moaning noise. I jumped out of the car and snatched you out of her arms. I saw right away that you were just sleeping. I believe she would have buried you alive if I hadn’t gotten there fast. I begged Clio to let me drive you to the emergency room, but she was scared they might take you away from her. She could have been right. They might have. But I believe she did love you the best she knew how.” Imogene pulled a crumpled tissue from behind her watch band and dabbed at her eyes. She didn’t look at me. When she began again, her voice was unsteady.

“After a while Mother got tired of babysitting. She wouldn’t do it anymore. Clio started driving you up the mountain and leaving you
with your grandmother when she and Kenny went out. Thank goodness you were with her when your mother and father got killed. Once Kenny and Clio were gone it was like you were gone, too. Your granny didn’t want me to visit, and Mother never tried to. She’s a hard-hearted woman, even being her daughter I can’t deny it. I went up the mountain to see you once anyway. It was a scary place to me, so hidden up there in the woods. But I saw that you were well taken care of. You won’t be able to see this now, and you might be angry at me for saying it, but for you it’s a blessing Kenny and Clio died. Your granny was nice enough to me while I was there. We had peach cobbler and coffee. But she asked me not to ever come back. I understood. So, there’s all of it. I’m your aunt. And I’m glad to see you again.”

I sat staring at her for a long time, unable to speak. A clock ticked loudly in the silence. After a while, it seemed Imogene felt obligated to say something. She looked out the window, where the hammering was still going on at intervals. “You know I told you I’m opening a shop next door?” she asked, voice high with false brightness. I nodded numbly. “Would you like to take a look before we go? These last renters left me with a mess, but it’s a world better now.” I nodded again, feeling like a sleepwalker. “Oh,” she said, glancing toward the kitchen. “I better take Ford a glass of tea. I bet he’s burning up out there.” I waited while she rattled around in the kitchen and came out with a frosty glass. She gathered her purse and keys and I followed her outside on automatic pilot. I went behind Imogene in a daze, the dress I’d put on that morning sticking to my legs in a heat that was uncharacteristic for such an early spring day. She talked with forced enthusiasm about the sign she would have painted with her name in fancy script, and where it would hang above the shop door. I pretended to listen, but her voice was distant and hazy to me.

There was a man coming shirtless down from the roof. “I brought you a drink, Ford,” Imogene said to him. He had long hippie hair, that’s what John would have called it. His chest and belly glistened with sweat. He smiled, showing good white teeth, and drank the tea down with long gulps. “Thank you,” he said.

“How’s it coming?” Imogene asked.

“Nearly finished.” He looked at me with eyes like John’s, but
kinder. Then I noticed his hand on the slippery glass. One of the fingers was missing.

“This is my niece,” Imogene said, “Myra Odom. Myra, this is Ford Hendrix.”

We nodded to each other. The sun was in my eyes. Birds twittered. I felt far away. “It’s funny how Ford and I met,” Imogene said. “We were at a garage sale down in Oak Ridge. This woman had a whole table full of old books, and Ford and I were like kids in a candy store. We got to talking and come to find out, Ford has quite a collection. I’ve been out to see them, haven’t I, Ford? You wouldn’t believe it. And Ford writes novels, too. He’s a regular celebrity these days, had a book signing down at the Plaza.”

Ford grinned. There was a silence. I realized he was staring at me, but I couldn’t concentrate on him or on what was being said. Then Imogene looked over her shoulder, toward her house. She frowned back at us. “Is that my telephone? I’d better go check. It might be Mother. Myra, I promise I’ll hurry back. I know you need to be somewhere.”

“You’re white as a sheet,” Ford said the instant she was gone. “Are you sick?”

I took a better look at him. He was older than me, at least late thirties, a handsome man. Not beautiful, as John once was, but good to look at. “No. I’m not sick.”

He wasn’t convinced. “It might be the heat. Let’s go over here in the shade.” When I didn’t move, he took my elbow. His touch startled me. I remembered the missing finger. I let him lead me under the trees. We sat down and I was grateful for the coolness.

“I didn’t know Imogene had a niece,” he said.

“I didn’t know I had an aunt,” I said. “Until today.”

“You and Imogene never met before now?”

“I wanted to know about my mother. She died when I was one.”

“I see. Did Imogene tell you?”

“Yes,” I said, looking down at the damp print of my dress. “She told me.”

“Ah,” he said. “She told you too much.”

I raised my head, startled. His face was very close.

“You have eyes like my husband’s,” I said, without knowing why.

“Well,” he said. “You have eyes like the Aegean Sea.”

“You’ve seen the Aegean Sea?”

“Yes. It’s very blue.”

“Imogene says you have a lot of books.”

“Yes.”

“Do you read poetry?”

“Some.”

“Wordsworth?”

“One of my favorites.”

“Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.”

“Tintern Abbey.”

“Yes.”

Looking at him, soft hair, soft eyes, all soft, made me forget. Then Imogene was back and we stood up. She seemed hot and nervous. “That was Mother,” she said. “Uncle’s fell out of bed and she can’t get him up by herself.”

“Did she call for an ambulance?” Ford asked.

“No, he’s not hurt. He does this all the time. Myra, honey, I’m afraid we’ll have to run back by the house. I hope it won’t make you late.”

I remembered John and tried not to show my fear. “That’s okay,” I said.

“I can drive her back,” Ford spoke up. I stared at him mutely.

“Oh … are you sure?” Imogene turned to me, brow creased. “Myra, would that be okay with you? I wouldn’t dream of it if I didn’t trust Ford with my life.”

“No, it’s fine,” I said.

“I’m so sorry about this. Will you come back and see me?”

“Yes,” I said. But I didn’t mean it.

In his car I looked through the bug-splattered windshield, half sick on the smell of exhaust. When Imogene’s words drifted to the front of my mind I snuffed them like candle flames, not ready yet to sort them out. I looked at Ford behind the wheel, long legs in patched blue jeans, unbuttoned shirt blowing, one dark strand of hair trailing across his mouth. When he caught me staring he smiled but didn’t speak, somehow knowing I needed silence. I came back into myself with a start when I saw that we were close to the pool hall, turning
onto the street that would take me back to John. Panic fluttered in my guts. “Don’t stop here,” I blurted as we neared the low building. “I don’t want to go home yet.” Ford didn’t seem surprised. He had slowed to turn in but kept on going. I was scared and relieved at the same time. Maybe I would never go back, should never go back, because John would probably kill me. But I didn’t want to think about that. I didn’t want to think about anything. It was easy there in the car with Ford to push it all away.

“What do you want to do?” he asked.

“I want to see your books.”

He looked at me and lifted his eyebrows. That was all. We drove for a long time with the wind blowing. The landscape reminded me of home, farmland unrolling on both sides of the dirt road and the mountains rising up in the distance, but I didn’t want to think about that either. I wanted to be someone else in a strange car with a strange man.

It was a long trailer with a muddy yard and cinder blocks up to the door. Dogs followed at our heels and one came inside with us, a small white mutt with matted fur. The living room was flooded with sun, dust motes dancing, and books piled everywhere. Ford turned to me and smiled awkwardly. We stood regarding each other in the middle of the cluttered room. “Home sweet home,” he said. I looked him over, so different than what I was used to. John was fastidious, at least in the beginning of our marriage. This man was sloppy, sweaty, and dirty. But he had a good face. “Wordsworth,” he said suddenly, and turned to search through the books. I watched his back moving, the chain of his spine under the open shirt. “Yes, here it is.” He brought a slim volume with yellowed leaves. “I found this in Pennsylvania.” He looked at the table of contents, scanning with one finger, and turned the brittle pages. I closed my eyes and listened as he read. “Five years have past, five summers, with the length of five long winters, and again I hear these waters, rolling from their mountain springs with a soft inland murmur. Once again do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs, that on a wild secluded scene impress thoughts of more deep seclusion, and connect the landscape with the quiet of the sky….”

The words sounded more beautiful to me than ever before. I focused on his voice, taking me away from everything, taking me back
to my mountain. By the time he finished I had sunk down on the carpet. The dog came wagging to sniff my face. Then Ford knelt and I pictured his damaged hand when he put his arm around me. “She dropped me,” I said, beginning to cry, and he didn’t ask questions. He only said, “It’s okay.”