The Darkest Child (28 page)

fourty - seven

“S
he’s dead,” Wallace said. “I tried to wake her up this morning, but I couldn’t. Harvey and Mr. Dobson already know who she is. I had to tell ’em, Mama.Wouldn’t be right, Harvey taking care of his grandma and don’t know who she is.”

Miss Pearl’s hand came up to pat my mother’s back.“Ain’t nothing worst than being motherless,” she said.“Makes you feel like you in the world alone.”

“I always been alone, Pearl,” Mama said. “Ain’t nothing new ’bout that.”

Any sadness I might have felt was overshadowed by disappointment. It was as though I had been reading a really great novel when suddenly, right at the climax, I found an entire chapter missing. Now I might never know that significant something that had taken place between the beginning and the ending.

“You can come on home now, Wallace. Ain’t nothing to hold you on Selman Street, and I don’t want you at the funeral.The less people know, the better,” Mama said.

“I gotta go to the funeral, ”Wallace said, “and I don’t wanna come back out here. Somebody gotta take care of Mr. Grodin.”

“I can’t believe this,” Tarabelle said. “Mama, how come you didn’t tell us that ol’ woman was kin to us?”

“You didn’t need to know,” Mama told her. “Nobody woulda knew if Wallace hadn’t got too big for his britches.”

“I’m going to the funeral, too, ”Tarabelle announced.

“You didn’t even know her.Why you wanna go?” Mama asked.

“Just ’cause I can, and you can’t stop me. Today is August twenty-eighth, and I’m eighteen. I’m grown.”

Mama began to laugh. She stomped her feet against the floor and clapped her hands. It was so bizarre that Miss Pearl’s hand ceased its ineffectual consolation and flew to her mouth.

All Tarabelle had to do was pack her things and leave, but she did not do that. She walked across the hall and entered our mother’s room, and the sound of scratching, like a big tomcat clawing on planks, reached us in the front room.

Mama sprang from her chair and rushed toward the room. “What you doing?” she yelled.“Get outta here! This is my room.”

I had followed my mother. I saw my sister prying up the floorboards with her bare hands.

“I wanna know what’s in that box, Mama,” Tarabelle said. “Before I leave here today, I’m gon’ know what’s in that box. What’s so important that you woulda killed us all for?”

“Give it to me!” Mama shrieked, and reached for the box that was still attached, by nails, to the floorboard. It was weathered and discolored, but it was the same box that she had put under the house all those years ago.

Tarabelle managed to pry the box from the board and struggled to free the sliding plate. Mama rushed toward her, and as she did, the plate slipped free. Locks of hair, tied together by moldy, withered ribbons, spilled out onto the floor.

“Hair!”Tarabelle cried.“You woulda killed us for hair, you crazy bitch?”

Mama leapt into the air, mindless of the rusted nails that jutted out from the boards. She landed a foot squarely at the center of Tarabelle’s back. Tarabelle jerked forward from the blow, but quickly sprang back, turned, and swung a board at Mama’s legs. Mama was out of reach.Then, as the board swished past her knees, she moved in determinedly, gripped Tarabelle’s hair with both hands, and stepped behind my sister.Tarabelle dropped the board. Her head snapped back and her eyelids fluttered rapidly. Mama untangled one hand from Tarabelle’s hair, made a fist, and brought it down with all her strength.Tarabelle’s nose seemed to explode, and blood flew everywhere.

Tarabelle was temporarily dazed, but recovered quickly. She twisted her body around and clawed at Mama’s arms. She swung a fist at Mama’s abdomen that connected but did no damage. She steadily clawed and punched until she brought our mother down with her. Mama, with one hand still entangled in Tarabelle’s hair, hit the floor sideways, right over the opening created by the missing boards.Tarabelle’s head was yanked forward with what seemed enough force to snap her neck. Fighting for survival, she opened her mouth and sank her teeth into the flesh of Mama’s calf. The blood from Tarabelle’s nose covered them both.

Mama let go of Tarabelle’s hair. She screamed, bucked and kicked, but could not loose herself from Tarabelle’s teeth.With her free hand, she reached behind her back and made feeble attempts to strike.

Wallace and I moved forward to separate them. I coaxed and tugged at Tarabelle while Wallace restrained Mama’s hand. I managed to get Tarabelle out of the room, and there was Miss Pearl, standing in the hallway, peeling red crepe paper from white socks. She removed one sock from the pair and pressed it against my sister’s bleeding nose.

Wallace was breathless when he stepped from Mama’s room, but Miss Pearl did not give him a chance to catch his breath. “Take Tarabelle out to the yard,” she said.“See if you can’t get that bleeding stopped.”

Wallace looked at me. “I ain’t never coming back, Tan,” he said, his chest heaving.

“Eventually, she’ll come and get you,” I told him.

“She can’t,” he said, staring at me oddly, as if to say, Tan, I’ve got another secret.

M
iss Zadie was buried on the first Thursday in September when the county fair was in town, the weather was still pleasantly warm and the sky was a clear blue. It did not seen a proper time for death.

Laura, Edna, and I were cloaked in heavy mourning, and it had nothing to do with a grandmother we had never known as such. I think we were mourning the loss of stability. The departure of Wallace and Tarabelle brought a bleak finality to all that remained of our family.

Mama crawled from her bed on that Thursday, went out for a short while, and returned to sit in her favorite spot on the front porch. She unscrewed the lid from a Mason jar and began to drink. Fresh abrasions on her face indicated that her bugs had returned, and I think she was trying to poison them with the spirits she gulped from the jar.

Miss Pearl was the only person who came to our house after the funeral. She sat on the porch with Mama and asked for a drink of water. I placed the last of our ice in a jar and dipped water over it, then took it out to her.

“Thanks,” she said, reaching for the jar.“That was a nice service they had for Miss Zadie. Nearly everybody in town showed up. She was well liked.”

“They didn’t know her, ”Mama said bitterly.“Was Tarabelle there?”

“Sho’was. Harvey, Wallace, and Tarabelle. Folks was just shocked that you didn’t come, Rosie.They got yo’ name wrote here on this paper.” Miss Pearl reached into her pocketbook and withdrew a folded sheet of paper. “Folks couldn’t believe it.They kept asking me, and I just went on and tol’ ’em the truth.Ain’t no need to hide it now when it’s wrote on this here paper for the world to see. Got all yo’ chilluns listed here, too.”

Mama wept softly.“Who went and done that?” she asked.“That ol’ woman dead now.Why folks gotta know ’bout me?”

“I reckon the ol’ man done it,” Miss Pearl answered, setting her jar on the porch floor, and leaning over to pat Mama’s back.“Ain’t no need to cry ’bout it, Rosie. She was yo’ mama plain and simple. Ain’t no denying that.”

“She was a liar,” Mama said.“Everything she ever tol’ me was a lie.That hair that Tarabelle went and spoiled—that ol’ woman tol’ me I could hold folks wit’ that hair. It was just a lie, Pearl. All my babies gone. Everybody I ever loved is gone.”

Miss Pearl dropped her hand from Mama’s back, and picked up the Mason jar.“Here, Rosie.You take another sip of this and calm yo’ nerves.We been friends a long time and I ain’t never knowed nobody you loved enough to make you carry on like this.”

Mama drained the last of the corn whiskey from her jar, placed the jar on the floor, then turned toward Miss Pearl. “You think I didn’t love Sam, Pearl? He wadn’t no more than two when I cut his hair, and where is he now? It wadn’t s’pose to be like this. All my babies s’pose to be here wit’
me
—not scattered all over the place. I can’t even get Wallace to come home, and do you know why, Pearl? It’s ’cause that ol’ woman peed in a bottle and tol’ him to sprinkle it on me if I come near him.”

She screamed then, so loud that I jerked back and fell against the door frame.

“Ol’ dead woman piss in a bottle,” she sobbed. “It’ll burn holes in yo’ skin, Pearl. It’ll make warts grow on yo’ face, and that damn Wallace was gon’ put it on me. I’m his mother, and he was gon’ throw it on me.That hair don’t mean shit. All them years, and you seen what happened.You seen Wallace try to fight me.”

Miss Pearl gently rubbed Mama’s arm. “He wadn’t trying to fight you, Rosie. He was trying to help you.”

“Who ever tried to help me?” Mama asked, slapping one palm against her chest.“Nobody but you, Pearl.You the only somebody I got in this world. I ain’t had no mother.That woman—she dead, but y’all don’t know what she was like. She took my hair. I seen her put it in a box, and she said I wouldn’t never be able to leave. She was right, too. I can’t get outta here. Every time I try, something pulls me back. It’s a spell, but it don’t work for me.Everybody leaving me and I can’t go nowhere ’cause I don’t know how to work that spell.”

She leaned forward, as if the pain was too much to bear. I found myself moving toward her. I extended a hand and touched her heaving shoulder, then I brought her head to rest against my abdomen.

“Don’t cry, Mama,” I pleaded. “Please don’t cry. I love you, and I won’t leave you.You can have my hair, but please don’t cry.”

Laura came to stand beside me. She placed her hands on Mama’s knees.“Mine, too, Mama,” she said.“You can have my hair.”

“It won’t work,” Mama sobbed.“All the hair in the world won’t work when she didn’t tell me how to do it right. She never tol’ me nothing. I’m glad she’s dead.”

Miss Pearl pulled a handkerchief from her pocketbook and dabbed at her eyes.“You ain’t glad, Rosie,” she said.“You just hurting the way you s’pose to when you lose a mother. It’s a sad thing.”

Mama leaned heavily against my abdomen and wrapped her arms around my waist. She began to cry harder, and I believed she was grieving for her mother. I knew I felt something for mine. She held onto me until her tears had subsided, then she reached down for the Mason jar and brought it to her lips. It was empty, and she threw it over the side of the porch where it landed and broke in the gully.

“I need something to drink, Pearl,” she said.“I ain’t got nothing. Ain’t nobody left in this house to bring in no money, and I know that man gon’ put us out.”

“You can get a job, Rosie,” Miss Pearl said. “Ain’t nothing to stop you from working. I don’t know why you ain’t married somebody by now.You oughta have a husband taking care of you.”

“I’m going to bed,” Mama said, as though Miss Pearl had not spoken. She rose unsteadily from the chair and braced herself against the porch wall.“I can’t think, and I don’t know what to do.”

I started to follow after her, but Miss Pearl hooked my arm with her own and guided me down the steps. When we were on the ground, she whispered, “Mushy’s in town. I heard it from Shirley that she’s staying at Skeeter’s house. I don’t know how Rosie gon’ act when she finds out.”

“Are you sure?” I asked.“Why wouldn’t she come home first?”

“I don’t know, but Shirley ain’t got no reason to lie. I just wanted to let you know befo’ somebody ’round here lets it slip to Rosie.”

I didn’t know what Miss Pearl expected me to do with the information, but I nodded, then watched her walk up Penyon Road in the heat of the midday sun, and I thought she had to be the best friend anyone could ask for. She was always there for Mama, but Mama never seemed to be there for her.

Later, as I sat in the kitchen with my sisters forking through peas and rice, my mother called me into her room. She was no longer crying, but her gray eyes had darkened like storm clouds. She stared a me for a moment, then wrapped her arms around herself and began to shake.

“Whose is it?” she asked. “Whose is it, Tangy Mae?”

“What, Mama?” I asked in confusion.

She snatched the pillow from beneath her head and held it to her chest, then she bounced her legs against the mattress. “I know you done got yo’self knocked up,” she said. “I went to see them school people this morning—just this very morning—and told them you can go to that white school.You can’t do this to me now, not when that school gon’ start next week.That Mr. Pace say they gon’ pay us what they call a stipend, baby.We need that money, you know we do. How can you do this to me now?”

“I’m not pregnant, Mama.”

“I done seen it,” she said, as fresh tears spilled from her eyes. “What we gon’ do now?”

The curse was with me as she spoke, and I tried to tell her, but she shoved me away.There were no changes in my body, or at least I didn’t think there were, but Mama had seen life in Martha Jean’s body long before anybody else had. Maybe she saw it in me, too. I sat beside her on the bed, a chasm between us, and my voice echoed in hollowness, “I’m sorry, Mama!”

I did not know why I was apologizing, but it seemed the right thing to do, the only thing to do. She wouldn’t listen to me though, and because I could not console her, and she would not explain anything to me, I left her alone to rock the bed with worry.

When the bed ceased to shake and the crying finally ended, I slipped into the hallway and peeked into her room. She was sitting on the side of her bed, her hands moving frantically, pulling at bugs, and I thought for a second that I could see them, too, dripping from her hair, covering her neck, and crawling up and down her arms.

forty - eight

N
obody expected integration to take place, considering the tension that hung over Pakersfield following the fires, but it did. Mama refused my transfer to Pakersfield High, giving up the much needed stipend to retain our dignity.Her reasoning: she would not allow me to parade my swollen belly in front of the town’s white folk (although my abdomen was as flat as a board). She had, however, permitted me to begin my junior year at the Plymouth School. For that I was grateful, but I knew the only reason I was in school was because Mama had not quite decided what to do with me.

Every day I came straight home from school and did whatever she ordered. I cooked, I cleaned, I went to the farmhouse. It was in my best interest to abide by her ever-changing rules, and I obeyed them until one October afternoon when I felt an overwhelming desire to see my sister. I summoned up the courage to leave school and go to Motten Street.

Mushy, wearing blue slacks and a sleeveless white blouse, opened the door for me.“Tan!” she said excitedly.“I was wondering when I was gon’ see you.Wallace been by, and Tara and Harvey. Harvey say he got him a house up there on Plymouth now.You the only one I ain’t seen, and it sho’ is good to see you.”

She made her way to the couch and stepped behind the coffee table where a opened bottle of gin and a single glass stood side by side.“I’m so bored, Tan.The dancing man still at work, Skeeter out chasing after Miss Shirley, and every time Mary Ann goes to sleep, Martha Jean think she gotta go, too.”

“When are you coming out to the house to see Mama?” I asked.

She picked up her glass and finished off the remaining swallow. “You act like you done forgot that Mama threw hot coffee in my face the last time I was here.”

“I haven’t forgotten, but she’s not doing well. Now that Wallace and Tara are gone, and Laura and Edna are at school all day, the house is empty. I think it bothers her.”

Mushy poured herself another drink, studied the glass for a few seconds, then glanced up at me and said, “Tan, please don’t start talking to me about Mama. Do you know y’all live in the only house in the world ain’t got electricity yet?”

I nodded, although I knew it wasn’t true, then I eased down beside her on the couch.“Mushy, you do need to go see Mama.”

“I done told you, Tan,” she warned. “Last time I came here, I didn’t know what I was doing. It was like I was running ’round chasing after my own tail. I wound up leaving here sick on rotgut and rain. Not this time, though.” She shook her head.“Not this time.”

I studied her face, and beyond the mild intoxication I could see a quiet seriousness.“What are you planning to do, Mushy?” I asked.

“I don’t want you to worry about it.You just leave things to me. That’s why I’m here.”

“Mama thinks I’m pregnant,” I said. “She’s been asking Miss Pearl to get it out, but I don’t think there’s anything there.”

We sat in silence until Mushy reached over and squeezed my hand. In an effort to comfort me, she said, “If you are, Tan, it ain’t the end of the world.”

“It would be for me. I’d have to drop out of school, and Mr. Pace would hate me. I’d have to stay in Pakersfield for the rest of my life, feeling ashamed of myself. I’m embarrassed enough already, Mushy. I go out to that farmhouse at night and pretend to be a woman, then I go to school during the day and pretend to be a child. Sometimes I get confused.”

Mushy brought her glass to her lips again. She swallowed hard, then said, “Whorehouse, Tan. Call it what it is. It’s a goddamn whorehouse, not a farmhouse.”

“I don’t think I’m pregnant. I think Mama just said that to keep me from going to the Pakersfield High School. I don’t think she really cares, or she’d stop making me be with all those men.”

Mushy was quiet, and seemed to be considering my statement when Velman came in from work. She abandoned the pain of thinking and offered him a drink, which he refused.

“I’m hungry, not thirsty, ”Velman said.“What’s Martha Jean got fixed in there? I don’t smell nothing.”

“That’s ’cause there ain’t nothing,” Mushy said. “Come on and have a drink.You gon’ need one. I know I do. I done quit my job and gave up my room so I could come back down here.Tan’s pregnant, and I believe to my soul Martha Jean is, too.Why couldn’t y’all just leave me alone? Why y’all have to keep writing them letters to me?”

Velman bit down on his bottom lip and stared at Mushy.“Martha Jean can’t be pregnant,” he said.“Mary Ann ain’t five months old yet.”

“Don’t be stupid, dancing man. She can be, and she probably is. She can’t stay woke long enough to wash her own face, and she can’t butter a piece of bread without puking all over the place. What you think it is?”

The answer to Mushy’s question seemed to wait in the bottle on the coffee table.Velman and Mushy reached for it simultaneously, but Mushy was quicker. “Get a glass,” she said. “I ain’t drinking behind nobody the way pregnancy catching ’round here.”

Instead of going for a glass, Velman turned to his right, moved swiftly down the hallway, and entered his bedroom. He came out a few minutes later dragging Martha Jean with him. Her gray dress was wrinkled, her hair was tangled, and she appeared to be sleepwalking. Velman reached out and playfully stroked her abdomen, but she brushed his hand away. She opened her eyes with what seemed like great effort, then she gave him an angry glare and retraced her steps to the bedroom.

“All day she wouldn’t talk to me or Skeeter,” Mushy said. “I think Martha Jean going through something she don’t know how to talk about. She’ll get over it, though.”

Velman’s shoulders visibly sagged as he turned his back to us and entered the kitchen. Moments later I could hear him opening and closing cabinet doors, and slamming pots against the tabletop. I pushed myself up from the couch.

“Where you going?” Mushy asked.

“He has to eat, Mushy, and somebody has to cook.”

I found Velman standing at the sink doing nothing, except staring down into the dark, dry drain.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

He stepped away from the sink and ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s something, but I don’t know what it is. I think we missing too many words, little sister. I don’t know how to tell her to trust me. I mean, I can make the sign, but it’s like it don’t mean nothing. She never wants me to leave. I can’t go to the filling station or the store without her getting upset. All I can do is go to work, and even then I got a feeling she keeps her eyes on the clock. How do I tell her to trust me?”

“She does,” I said.“She does trust you, Velman. She moved here with you, and she’s shared a bed with you and had your child. She does trust you.”

“That’s not trust!” he said.“That’s called staying alive. She came out here with me to keep that crazy mother of hers from killing her.You think just ’cause she share a bed with me that she trust me? Don’t take this the wrong way, but how many men have you shared a bed with and thought you could trust?”

Through the back door screen came the laughter of children playing outside, and a cool October breeze.Velman ran the palm of his hand across his face and moved slowly toward the door, keeping his back to me.

“Little sister, I . . .” His voice trailed off.

“It’s all right,” I said. “I know what you meant, but we both know that what you and Martha Jean have is different from what goes on at the farmhouse. She loves you, Velman.”

He turned toward me, and the tight, angry expression on his face withered into one of helplessness.“I just wish I could hear her say it. Just once.”

For his sake, I became my sister. At least, that’s what I told myself. I took a deep breath and stepped forward. Before I could lose my nerve or change my mind, I wrapped my arms around his neck, stood on my toes, and kissed his lips.“She loves you,” I whispered. “With all her heart, she loves you. She’d die for you, Velman.”

As gracefully as he did everything, he peeled my arms from his neck and stepped away from me, his back pressing against the door frame.“Are those her words or yours, little sister?”

The screen door banged, and I shuddered from the unexpected sound and from the realization of what I had just done. I started after him, but stopped when I saw that he had gone no farther than the pecan tree in his backyard. He leaned against the tree with his back to the house. He was thinking. Maybe he was thinking that he had made a mistake and that it should have been me he had rescued from Penyon Road.

I sighed wistfully, feeling neither guilt nor shame, and stepped away from the door. As I turned, I saw bare feet and the skirt of a wrinkled, gray dress exit the kitchen. I sprinted across the kitchen floor and glanced down the hallway, but it was empty. I shrugged, took a glass from the kitchen cupboard, and returned to the living room.

Mushy’s legs were stretched lengthwise on the couch and her back was propped against an armrest. Her eyes were closed. I thought she was asleep, but when I reached for the bottle of gin, she tapped the rim of her glass with a fingernail, and said, “Pour me one, Tan.”

“How long have you been sitting here drinking?” I asked. “You’re gonna make yourself sick.”

“I’m trying to work up the nerve to go see Mama. Everybody keeps telling me how I oughta go see my mother.” She gave a bitter laugh.“They don’t know I’m trying my best.”

“She can’t do anything to you,” I said. “You’re grown, Mushy. Why are you still afraid of her?”

“I’m not afraid of her; I’m afraid of
becoming
her.That’s the shit scares the hell outta me. Look at me, Tan. I’m starting to look like her. The other day I was looking in the mirror, and I hadn’t had nothing to drink. Not nothing. And it seemed like to me that my eyes was turning gray, and they was starting to slant at the corners. Sometimes I open my mouth and it’s her words that come out. I came back to save you, Tan. I’m gon’ get you away from her. I’m gon’ save you, and Laura, and little Edna.”

Mushy babbled on for a long time, giving her drunken philosophy of life. She talked about how she was going to kidnap us when she had enough money. She talked about the sheriff and the FBI and how she was smarter than they were. I listened, but mostly I concentrated on the terrible-tasting liquid in my glass, wishing I had left it in the bottle.

Velman eased back into the room during Mushy’s slurred commentary on women. “Just like Lake Erie,” she was saying. “It just stretches on and on, seems like forever. Curtis used to take me down to the lake, and I’d study that water. It came to me that women are just like that lake.They do everything to it, but it’s still beautiful. I wish you could see it, Tan. They fish from it, throw garbage in it, and sail boats in it, but it’s still just as wide and beautiful as ever.That’s what women are like, and we ain’t gon’ run dry. Sell a bit, and five minutes later we just as deep and wet and full as we was before. So what the hell?”

“Damn!”Velman whistled.“What did I walk in on?”

I was relieved that he was able to look at me, and to make eye contact. “Little sister, you mind scrambling me up a couple of eggs?” he asked.

For you, I’d walk on water.

“I don’t mind,” I answered.

The aroma of sausage and eggs brought Martha Jean out of her bedroom. Mary Ann was cradled in one arm as Martha Jean stopped in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. She glanced toward Velman, then stepped into the kitchen and faced me with a cold stare.With one hand, she shoved the handle of the skillet. It crashed to the floor and lay upside down, smothering the eggs. She spotted the plate of sausages on the table, and that, too, went clattering to the floor.

I skirted past her and stepped out of the kitchen.Velman sprang from his chair, and even Mushy brought her feet to the floor and sat in an upright position.The three of us stared through the doorway at Martha Jean as she held Mary Ann in her arms and kicked the shattered pieces of the plate with her bare feet.When she was done, she turned and brushed past me, purposely ramming her elbow against my chest. She returned to her bedroom and slammed the door, shutting us out.

Velman slumped back onto his chair and held his head with both hands, and I could hear Mushy mumbling something to him as I cleaned the mess from the kitchen floor. I could not worry about what they were saying. Martha Jean had witnessed my betrayal. She had seen me wrap my arms around her husband, had watched me taste and inhale him. She had looked inside of me and seen the wanting in my heart. But Martha Jean would have to understand that I needed Velman more than I had ever needed anything else in my life. I would have to make her understand.

“Where did he go?” I asked Mushy when I walked into the front room and did not see Velman.

“He went to get Wallace, and I done called Harvey and Tara-belle to come over.We a mess, Tan.We need to be all of us together. We gon’ sit down, and talk, and heal. And maybe have a drink or two.”

“Mushy, I can’t stay over here. I should’ve been home by now.”

“You can stay. Ain’t gon’ hurt nobody for you to be wit’ us for awhile.When you go home, I’m going wit’ you. Mama gon’ be so happy to see me she won’t even know how late it is,” Mushy said with mock cheerfulness.