The Day of Small Things (13 page)

He kisses me again and takes Snowflower from the basket where she has curled up to sleep some more and lays her between my breasts. He pushes me down real gentle and pulls one side of the quilt over me and the kitty.

“Just you close your eyes and lay there and think of the happy times to come, my little sweetheart,” he says. “Remember, look for me at your door when the snow flies.”

And he brushes my cheek with a kiss so light that it could have been one of Granny Beck’s.

I listen to the sound of his steps going away until it is swallowed up by the calling of the little frogs. I know that I should dress myself and head for home to find a place to hide Snowflower, but it feels so nice here on the old quilt with the smell of him and the softness of Snowflower that I close my eyes and dream of winter.

But it ain’t winter and it ain’t dark no more when my eyes open. The sun is already over the ridgetop and the Snowflower kitty is licking up the last crumbs of sausage meat from the greasy piece of newspaper. I jump to my feet and pull on my clothes as fast as ever I can. I am trying to think what to tell Mama—I could say that I was out hunting branch lettuce or ramps but she will want to know why I didn’t do the milking first.

And where can I hide Snowflower? I push her back in the basket and fasten down the lid. Then I grab up the
quilt and make it into a loose bundle with the basket at the middle.

My mind is working hard as I hurry down the path towards home. If I can keep the kitty hid till the next time Lilah comes, maybe Lilah will take her and keep her safe. There just ain’t no way—

As I come around the last bend before the barn, Mama is standing in the road, the full milk pail in her hand.

“Mama!” I say, “I was up the mountain, hunting for some ramps and …”

Something about the way she is looking at me chokes the lie in my throat. She sets the milk pail down real careful and takes a step forward.

The slap rocks my head back and brings the tears to my eyes. I stand still, my arms around the quilt that is hiding my Snowflower as Mama circles around me.

“And did you find you some ramps? Got a whole poke of em? So many you had to take a quilt to tote em back?”

She pokes a bony finger at the quilt and she circles and circles, poking at the quilt each time she passes. I feel her sharp black eyes seeing right into me. Her hair, which has gone all white in the past few years, is sticking out ever whichaway, and somehow she don’t look like herself.

I remember the story Granny Beck used to tell about the old woman called Spearfinger and a cold feeling runs down my back.

“What’s in here, you huzzy?” The finger stabs again at the quilt and she snatches it from my arms. The basket falls to the ground and the Snowflower kitty looks out but Mama don’t see the kitty for she is holding up the quilt and peering close at it. She squinches up her eyes and brings the quilt up to her face. I reach down quick and push the lid of the basket shut, then pick it up and hold it
close while Mama sniffs at the quilt, like a hound looking for a trail.

All at once she makes an ugly spitting sound and flings the quilt from her.

“You nasty, lying little huzzy!” she cries. “Do you even know the name of this feller you been sneaking out of the house to lay up with?”

I tell her I call him Young David and he is coming back when snow flies to marry me but she only laughs a hateful laugh.

“You believe that, do you? That old woman filled your head with so much moonshine, you’ll believe most anything. When was the last time you had your monthlies?”

When I tell her, she breathes a sigh and says well, maybe I ain’t breeding. Then those sharp eyes catch sight of the basket in my arms.

“What you got there?” she says, pecking at it with that sharp bone-finger.

I say it is a kitty and that I know she can’t abide them and that I will keep it away from her, but she plucks the basket from my hands.

“Well, at least this Young David business has made up my mind for me,” she says, holding the basket away from her like it was a snake. “I been studying on it ever since the doctor told me about this new program they got for such as you. You ain’t going to be around to care for no cat. Now take that milk in and strain it and get on with your morning’s work.”

I do like she says, thinking that maybe when she sees how pretty and sweet Snowflower is, she will change her mind. It ain’t a bit of use to argue with her when she’s like this, I tell myself. When she’s some calmer, maybe after
she’s took her tonic in the evening, I’ll talk reasonable to her.

And if she gets calmer, like she usually does, I’ll ask her what is this program the doctor told her about. I wonder could it be something like school.

It’s when I’m on my way to the springhouse with the strained milk that I see the Snowflower kitty.

She is laying on the trash heap out back, all limp and dirty and she don’t move as I come near. There is a buzzing and a ringing in my head and I call her name but she lays still. I know that she is dead but I have to touch her to be sure. My eyes are blurring and the shapes are spinning around me as I reach for the shiny red ribbon, thinking to take it off her to have it for a keepsake.

I can’t hardly see but it seems the ribbon is untied and the red of it is everywhere and my fingers are wet with it and when I pick up Snowflower Kitty, her head falls back like a red mouth opening and I scream and I scream and

(Least)

R
eckon what’ll become of the quare girl?” asks the fat lady who brought the plate of oatmeal cookies. She has the plate on her knees and she is eating all the cookies her own self. I watch from the front window as she picks up another one and takes a bite. She is setting there in a straight-back chair on the porch, fanning herself and dropping crumbs all down her front.

Lilah’s mama is setting by her, sewing at some patchwork. She measures out a length of thread, bites it off, and threads her needle before she answers.

“Fronie did have a brother,” she says, putting a blue patch face-to-face with a red one and beginning to stitch them together along one edge, “same one that brought the old lady here to live with them, but ain’t no one been able to get up with him. I heared that the bank took his farm and they’ve all moved away looking for work.”

“What about the other children? It was a good-sized family she had, weren’t it? Couldn’t one of them take in
that poor creature—Least, ain’t that her name? Hit’s a scandal weren’t nary a one here for the burying.”

The fat lady has finished the last cookie and is picking the crumbs off her bosom and putting them in her mouth.

Lilah’s mama lays her sewing in her lap and looks over at the fat lady. “I had forgot; you didn’t move to Ridley Branch till after Fronie lost her man, so you never knowed her before. Yes, she did have a good many children but it seemed like after her man was took and this quare girl was born, Fronie got right quare herself. Couldn’t get along with none of her girls and one by one they married and moved away. And I heard that she good as ran off the last boy when he got married.”

“Still and all,” says the fat lady, “kin’s kin and seems like—”

“Oh, believe you me, I’ve searched through ever place I could look for ary sign of a letter with a return address or anything that would tell me where them children went to. I believe several moved to Detroit, but to my certain knowledge, ain’t none of them ever come home, not even for Decoration Day. Not a letter nor a postcard did I find, save for one old one from the boy that was killed in the war. I asked Boaz Wagoner who carries the mail did Fronie ever get letters from away and he said he was pretty sure she never did.”

The fat lady laughs and nods her head, setting her extra chins to jiggling. “Well, if anyone’d know, it’d be that feller. I declare, I’ve seen him setting under a tree on that old mule of his, looking through every letter and catalogue and reading all the postcards before he’d bring them to the house. You know—”

Lilah’s mama ain’t paying no mind and she breaks right in. “I didn’t find no letters but I’ll tell you what I did
find. There was some papers from a doctor that Fronie had signed—papers about that poor girl of hers. I know that it was always a worry—what would happen when Least got up of an age … for she’s a pretty thing, you know, if she is simple. And they’s some fellers …”

Her voice drops down to a whisper and she pulls her chair over to talk close to the fat woman’s ear. I hear her say “… showed them to Sheriff Hudson and he said he’d take care of it … institutionalized … solve the problem.”

I don’t wait no longer. I fling my few things into a poke and slip out the back way. I leave them two whispering there on the porch and light out up the hill for the burying ground. I feel a need to talk to Granny Beck and hope that she will help me know what to do. As I climb the hill, I look at the trees and flowers that I have known all these years and I wonder when I will ever see them again.

Ever since Mama died, the house has been full of people, all talking a mile a minute but staying clear of me. High Sheriff Hudson, a big fierce-looking man with a deep-crowned black hat, asked some questions of me, but when I ducked my head and looked away, Lilah’s mama said, “You won’t do no good with Least—she’s simple and I believe she’s tongue-tied as well. I ain’t got the first word out of her.”

They all think that, for when I found Mama laying there, all swole up and no breath in her, I ran down the road like a crazy thing, looking for help. Never in my life had I gone amongst folk, and when I came to the first house, all that I could do was to make sounds and point back up the hill to where Mama lay.

Ever since then, they have been in the house, poking their noses into the dark corners, looking through Mama’s things and mine, and talking, talking, talking. If Lilah Bel
had been here, it might have been different—I could have told her what happened. But she ain’t. Lilah Bel got married a little back of this and she has gone with her husband to visit his family over to Tennessee. Lilah could have told them I ain’t simple.

I should have burned up them doctor papers afore I went after the neighbors. Mama had waved the papers in my face and told me what they meant—“Maybe I can’t keep you from whoring around but, aye God, I can keep you from having babies. You just put this idea of going off and getting married right out of your head—you ain’t fit to marry and they ain’t no call for you to breed—your place is here with me.”

Mama’s grave is next to my daddy’s—a ways off from Granny Beck’s. The red dirt is still fresh and there is a canning jar with some yellow flowers in it, half-buried in the raw red dirt. I reckon Lilah’s mama must have put it there for she was the only one of the folks at the burying who ever come up to the house to visit with Mama. I don’t go near the grave, but the whole time I am talking to Granny Beck, I can feel Mama’s angry spirit clawing against the wood of her coffin.

“I got to go away,” I tell Granny Beck. “I am feared that if I stay, they will take me to that doctor and fix it where I can’t have babies. And I want babies, Granny Beck, babies all little and soft like my Snowflower kitty.”

The tears overtake me and I lay there on her grave, just a-blubbering. If only Young David hadn’t gone away—and I remember the story of John Goingsnake and how the Little People kept him hid safe for seven years. I don’t want to be away that long—just till snow flies and Young David comes back. But where can I go?