The Hollow Ground: A Novel (21 page)

We stepped away from the shed and stood beneath the trees. Ma looked up to the wild net of bare tree branches above our heads and said, “I was hoping coming back would make me remember my ma better. But it don’t. Every year I can picture her less and less. Every year I lose her a little more.”

We walked back out from the woods and stood in the yard. The wooden shingles at the back of the house were chipped and in need of paint. We stood there for so long I started to shiver and it wasn’t until we saw the curtain in the upstairs window move that Ma said, “That must be the old bitch.” Ma put on her sweetest smile and waved. “Wave and remember to look cute. Uncle Jerry told her about us, but not that we was going to come today.”

Together we made our way to the front of the house where the door swung open and there stood Stepma looking nothing like I imagined. I’d pictured her as Snow White’s wicked stepmother or as a Jezebel-like slut, but never as a roly-poly Mrs. Santa Claus with jam-red cheeks and a grandma smile. She was littler than me and Ma and more than plump. She was bordering on fat. Her brown and white hair curved in soft waves to the top of her neck. But from the way her forehead wrinkled as she took in me and Ma it was obvious she couldn’t see well.

“You’re Elsie Corcoran,” Ma said in the voice she used years ago to sell Tupperware door-to-door. Yanking off her cap, Ma tossed her hair loose. “I’m Dolores Corcoran. The one you sent away.”

Stepma tilted back and swung her hands up in front of her face as if she expected to get hit.

“If I was going to deck you,” Ma said, “I’d a knocked you flat already.”

The woman lowered her hands to just below her eyes where her spread fingers quaked, reminding me of bird’s wings.

“Please,” I said, “Stepma. I mean Grandstepma. Stepgrandma?” I looked questioningly from Ma to the woman and Ma laughed, exclaiming, “Ain’t she a pip?”

Stepma dropped her hands from her face, and we all stood there openly looking at one another, not saying a word.

Finally Stepma tilted her head, taking me in. “My, my. Look at you.” She tongued her lips, an odd expression on her face like she’d just eaten something she wasn’t supposed to.

“I know she looks like him,” Ma said. “My daddy’s one of the few things I remember. That, and how nice to me you was. For the little while I was here with you. That was the unforgivable part. That you could be so nice and then do what you done.”

“So it’s your daddy I look like,” I blurted, brimming with this newfound knowledge about myself, feeling like I had a deeper connection to Ma because of it. Until then I had never felt close to Ma’s family—only to Ma—and I peered into the dim entry of the house wondering what else of me I’d find there.

Stepping onto the porch Stepma looked past us to the street as if she expected someone to come to her rescue.

“Who you expect to see? It’s only me and her. We come to get my ma’s things. And don’t tell me you ain’t got ’em. Bropey told me you do.”

Stepma gripped a hand to her throat as if she might strangle herself. “Bropey? I haven’t heard that name since—”

Ma finished, “Since you dumped me at Saint Augustine’s Orphanage for Girls. Don’t I know it. How ’bout we go inside and give Bropey a call? He’ll tell you he wants our ma’s stuff too. It’s not just me that wants it.”

Wincing, Stepma let loose a sigh. She led us into a dimly lit hall that opened onto a yellow kitchen with a black phone hanging beside the fridge. Lifting the receiver Stepma slowly dialed. “Yes,” she said. “Hello, Norma. This is Jerome’s mother.” When she said “mother” Ma said, “Hah!” and Stepma turned away. Then all she said into the receiver was “I see” and “Fine.”

Behind her back Ma made faces and I made like they were funny but really I was concentrating on Stepma’s voice. It sounded like she had clump of dust stuck in her throat. Finally Stepma said, “Of course, Jerome. You know I only want to help.”

Ma’s clown face went sour. She reached for the receiver at the same time that Stepma hung up.

“He had an appointment to get to,” Stepma said, firmly clicking the receiver into place. She suggested we sit in the living room while she searched for the items in question. “Don’t get your hopes up, though, Dolores,” Stepma said. “Your mother’s things were packed away a long time ago and I haven’t seen them in years.” Stepma held her hand up in a stop sign to Ma’s protests. “I’m not saying they’re not somewhere in this house. I’m just saying, offhand, I don’t know where. I told Jerome I’d look for them. I wish you’d called. I could have saved you the trip. When Jerome comes for Christmas…” Her voice trailed off.

From Ma’s tight smile I could tell she was working hard to hold back the slice of her tongue. “Whatever there is belongs to me,” Ma said. “Me and Bropey. You have no right to it.”

“You’re treating me as if I’ve stolen your mother’s things, Dolores. I don’t want to keep any of it. I just have to find where they are. My husband, your father, God rest his soul—”

“Don’t talk about my daddy to me. Not after what you done.”

In the living room we sat on a checkered sofa facing a Christmas tree with blue lights. Beneath the tree were presents wrapped in paper that was covered with tiny little Santas. Flanking us were two end tables, each displaying photos of Uncle Jerry as a kid. In one of them he rode a bicycle. In another he was dressed in a Boy Scout’s uniform. In still another he stood in cap and gown. There were also photos of Little Jerry and a wedding photo of a thinner and younger Stepma standing beside a man who must have been Ma’s daddy.

Ma sat, glaring through an archway at Stepma who was searching the bottom drawers of a hutch. I reached for the wedding photo and studied Ma’s daddy’s face, amazed to see him wearing an expression I’d seen in photos on my own face, a half smile with a bit of squint.

I shivered, feeling as if one of Marisol’s spirit shadows was somewhere in the room with us. It was eerie to think of what lurked inside you that wasn’t of your own making, that came from ancestors you didn’t even know.

Ma made a noise deep in her throat like a growl and I shifted away from her toward the armrest. I almost felt bad for Stepma, for making an enemy out of Ma, and I had to remind myself of the awful thing Stepma had done, which reminded me of the awful thing Gramp had probably done. I felt sick and told Ma I needed the bathroom but Ma wasn’t listening to me. She’d gotten up to read the tags on the presents. “To Jerry,” Ma read, “Love, Mom. To Little Jerry, Love, Nana.” She made her voice tight and snotty as she read each of them. Her voice was so bitter that her mouth screwed up as she spoke and she didn’t even notice me walk out to find the bathroom. For some time I stood over the toilet waiting for something to come up that never did. When I came out, I heard Stepma announcing, “I’m not saying I did the best I could, Dolores. I’m not saying that.”

Stepma stood in the entry between the living room and dining room, holding a shoe box in both her hands. The plumpness of her cheeks appeared to sag and her eyes darkened.

Ma stood not an arm’s length from Stepma and demanded, “How could you have done it? If you’d hated me that’d be one thing. But you was nice to me. That’s what I can’t forgive.”

Ma stepped forward, wagging her head, and Stepma cowered, raising the box up to her face for protection. On the side of the box written in black ink were the words “Mooney Family Photos.” Slowly Stepma lowered the box. Her eyes, veined red and yellow, roamed up toward the ceiling as she announced, “Forgiveness is the path to glory, Jesus says.”

“Jesus never helped me once.”

“He’s not there to help you,” Stepma said with a wedge of contempt. She held the box out to Ma who warily read the label out loud.

“Mooney’s your mother’s maiden name,” Stepma said. “She and I went to the same school. I was a few years ahead. I didn’t know her well, but I didn’t hear of anybody who didn’t like her.”

“’Course everyone liked her,” Ma snapped and took the box over to the sofa where I followed. Ma looked Stepma dead in the eye and added, “She was an angel. A real angel, not just one pretending to be nice.”

As Ma opened the lid on the box, I sat down next to her. Dozens of black-and-white photos of people lay inside. Groups of unrecognizable children and adults—Ma’s family,
my
family. They stood on rickety porches and in front of old-fashioned automobiles. These people were my family but looking at their unfamiliar bleak faces only made me feel empty inside.

Stepma said she’d check the basement to see what else she could find. We heard a door creak and then the slow thud of her steps downstairs. Ma waited barely a minute before she started rifling the drawers of the end tables, then of the cabinet beneath the TV. I stayed put on the couch, searching through the box of photos. Sometimes flickering beneath Ma’s face was another face, sweet and helpless. A little girl’s face. Ma’s face, young. I knew all I needed to do was find that face in the photo album and I’d have found Ma.

When I hit on a photo of Ma’s daddy standing beside a different bride, I pulled it out to study the face of Ma’s dead ma. There was such a gentleness to the soft roundness of her forehead and to her large doe-looking eyes that for the first time I felt the loss of this woman who would have loved all the hard edges off Ma. I put the photo to the side and then rummaged the rest of the box until I found a photo of a little girl with fat dangling curls. Just a glance and I could see in that girl’s face the shy, tender parts that I sometimes saw in Ma.

I placed the two photos beside me on the couch and closed the box. My limbs felt so quivery I couldn’t move for a few moments. I couldn’t believe I was going to get to give Ma what she craved most her whole life. I was going to get to give Ma, Ma, and at that moment there was nothing in the world I wanted more to do.

By that time Ma had made her way to the kitchen where I found her picking off spoons from a display case on the wall and dropping them into her pocketbook. “Ma,” I said, “I got what we came for. You don’t need to take anything else.” First I handed her the photo of her mother because I wanted to savor handing her the one of herself. “Here, Ma,” I said. “Look. Your ma.”

Ma wiped her hands as if they’d gotten dirty from touching the spoons. When she took the photo, she held it up inches from her nose and her face got all soft and swollen like she’d been crying. She talked about how in the orphanage she used to picture her ma coming to her at night. “But she didn’t look nothing like this. I remembered her wrong. Even when I pictured her I didn’t have her right. She wasn’t even there in my memory.” Ma’s shoulders curved in and her head hung low like she wanted to curl into herself.

But she was in your heart, I thought, but didn’t say out loud. For the rest of my life I’ll regret not saying those words to Ma right then when she needed to hear them the most.

Stepma called to see where we’d gone and when she found us in the kitchen her eyes shifted from one to the other of us suspiciously. In Stepma’s arms was a small box and perched on top of that box was a rusty green and gold tin. I slid the photo of Ma into my pocket as Ma grabbed the tin from Stepma and then handed me the box. “You sure this is everything?” Ma said. “Bropey will know if you’re trying to cheat us. He might be younger than me but he remembers his ma too. And he’ll come here and look through every last inch of this place if he thinks you’re lying.”

Stepma’s mouth pursed like she was about to blow a kiss but instead tears glopped down her chubby cheeks and the flab on her neck quaked.

“Don’t cry, old lady,” Ma said. “This stuff belongs to me. Me and Bropey. You should have given all of it to him long ago. So he could have known his family right from the start. So he could recognize them for God’s sake if he saw them on the street.”

“But he did know his family,” Stepma said. “
My
family. I raised him. I was his mother.”

Ma moved forward holding the tin in her hand like she was about to hurl it. Her words were a growl. “You’re once removed from a mother and don’t you ever forget it. You’re just his stepmother is all.” Ma sucked hard on her breath like she had a sourball of air in her mouth. “You just tell me one thing, Elsie Corcoran. Did my daddy know where I was? Did you even tell him where you sent me?”

Stepma eased down onto one of the kitchen-table chairs. With slow hard circles she rubbed at her hip. “Sure he did. He had to sign the paper to get you there.”

Ma banged the tin down on the kitchen table and Stepma jolted. “Then you tell me what you did,” Ma demanded. “You tell me what you did to make him not come to get me. And you tell me the truth. You was afraid I’d hit you before and I swear I’ll knock your face clean through that wall if you lie to me now.”

Stepma’s fingers stopped in midrub. Her thumb pressed deep into her flesh as her eyes shifted toward the half-empty spoon rack on the wall. Within seconds, though, the surprise on her face quickly became something else and her gaze roamed down the length of Ma’s body until it fixed on the lime green linoleum square beside Ma’s shoe. “If you remember him at all,” Stepma said, “then you remember he did anything he wanted. On his own account he promised never to go get you and at least with that, he kept his word.”

Ma’s voice came out soft and low. “Then you’re a wicked woman for taking that promise. And you can be sure there are some sins Jesus never forgives.”

Stepma’s cheeks turned the color of grits. Her stare broke from the floor and stuck onto Ma’s face. “But I was saving you,” she said. “I saved you.”

Ma squinted and leaned forward like she was trying to see Stepma better. “Saved me? From what? My home? My own brother and daddy?”

“Yes, from your daddy. From him touching you. Don’t you remember?”

Ma took two quick steps across the floor and slapped Stepma’s pasty-white cheek. “You’re a hateful woman. I’m taking my ma’s things and that’s the last I ever want to hear of you and your lies again. All those years my daddy could have come got me but your sick lies kept him from it.” Ma broke down sobbing and stumbled into the living room where she kicked one of the presents beneath the tree. Then she grabbed the box of photos from my hands, told me to take the rest of the stuff and fled outside.