The Promise (17 page)

Him and Bernadette used to take the skiff out on Sunday afternoons if it wasn’t overly hot. After Andre was born, he went too. ‘Just for the doing of it,’ Bernadette said. Now the skiff looked like something that nobody cared about. The keel needed to be scraped. It was covered with thin-shelled barnacles at the water line. The latches that locked the oars in place were crusted with rust. And nobody’d want to get in that skiff, not with rainwater pooling in the bottom and white bird droppings dirtying the seats.

Daddy had wanted to pull it out of the water: it bothered him to see it this way. But Mama told him no. ‘That’s Oscar’s doing,’ she’d said. ‘Maybe it’d hurt him worse to have it on dry land. It’s a lonesome thing, an upside-down skiff with grass growing around it.’

I looked past the skiff to where the mud flats glimmered. The bayou was smooth and sparkled under the morning sun. There were other skiffs out there. Packs of seagulls circled behind them like the fishermen might go soft in their heads and share their catches. Pelican Island showed from here and so did the mainland. A good ways off to my right, a train crossed over West Bay. It was going to Virginia Point on the mainland, its black smoke leaving behind a dirty trail like it wanted to let folks know where it’d come from. There were people on that train; they were leaving Galveston. Maybe some of them were going to places they’d never been before.

My family’s house was the other way, to the west. It was close to the bayou and was raised up on stilts a few feet higher than Oscar’s. From here, the house looked old and rickety, Daddy not believing in paint. He was partial to trees, though, and had planted a few extra salt cedars around it just because he thought it gave the place a cooling appearance. I grew up with those cedars and I figured I’d be looking at them same wind-bent trees when I was old and rickety myself.

I put down my lantern and basket, and edged closer to the marsh. Mud sucked at my boots. I hitched up my skirt to my knees and tucked it around me so I could squat down without dragging the hem. The bayou looked different from here, me low to the ground. It was wider, the stretch from here to the mainland longer. I reached out and tore off a blade of salt grass, then got up and went back to drier land, slipping a little in the mud. I turned around and watched water rise up where I’d been standing and fill my shoe prints.

When I was a girl in braids, there was nothing I liked better than the smell of salt grass. Now, I put that thick blade of grass I’d torn off right up to my nose, smelling its greenness and smelling the sun. And mud, its sour smell was part of it, too.

I wouldn’t be staying on much longer at Oscar’s. I saw that as plain as I saw this bayou. I couldn’t stay to watch Andre turn away from me. And I couldn’t watch that unsettled thing brewing between Oscar and Mrs Williams. He was going to have to find somebody else to cook and clean for them. I didn’t know who but that wasn’t my worry. No, sir.

Tomorrow I’d come right out and tell him to start looking for somebody new. One week, I’d give him one week. And if he asked why I was leaving, I’d tell him the truth. Leastways I’d tell him part of the truth. I wouldn’t say that me and Mrs Williams didn’t get on. I wouldn’t tell him that I saw him in a different light, him being with this new woman. Or that as hard as it’d be to leave Andre, it’d be a harder hurt to stay. I wouldn’t say none of that. But should Oscar ask, this part of the truth I’d lay right out flat. There was no room for me in his house. I’d run my course.

CHAPTER NINE

The Cemetery

I felt Nan Ogden watching from the house as I fumbled with the latch on the barnyard gate. The soft soil in the yard was churned with hoof prints, and flies buzzed around a pile of dung. Water streamed from the chin of the cow that stood at the trough, her unblinking eyes taking note of my every move as I closed the gate and walked toward the barn door. I’d never been so close to a cow, and her size was alarming. So, too, was her udder. It resembled a balloon but one that was lined with swollen blood vessels. I hurried past her.

Andre’s request at the breakfast table to see his mother had chilled me. So had Oscar’s temper. I thought him to be a man of endless patience, but I heard the clipped anger in his voice when Andre insisted on going to the cemetery. I saw, too, the collapse of Andre and at that moment, he was very small and very young. It reminded me again how my presence had upset the balance of this household. When I pressed Nan Ogden to tell me about Andre’s mother, she was sullen and stubborn. She told me only fragments but that had been enough. Bernadette had died of malaria, and she had been expecting a child. Upon hearing this, I felt a sudden ache in my heart for Oscar.

There was pain in Nan’s eyes, too, as she spoke about Bernadette. They had been friends, and I had taken her friend’s place.

During meals, Nan wouldn’t look at me. When I played the upright, she stomped around the house as she went about her duties. I heard the mocking scorn in her voice when I didn’t know that the skillet hung on the peg by the cookstove rather than by the cupboard. But if Nan thought she could unnerve me, she was mistaken. I had faced the women of Dayton. I had held my head high as I took walks past their homes, knowing they shunned me and that they called me harsh names.

Names that I deserved, I thought now, as I stood just inside of the wide doorway and waited for my eyes to adjust to the barn’s dimness after the sun’s glare. I heard a soft whishing sound before I saw Oscar in one of the empty stalls. His back to me, he pitched straw from a wheelbarrow onto the floor, his movements rhythmic and smooth.

I took a few steps into the barn. Its coolness surprised me and so did the smell of fresh hay with a slight undercurrent of dung. The three rows of stalls were empty. Other than the cow at the trough, the rest were in the pasture behind the house. For a moment, I watched Oscar work, his back bending and straightening as he lifted and threw the straw.

He had lost his wife eleven months ago. He might have expected that our marriage would help him to forget her. I imagined, though, that it made him miss her all the more. On Friday, my first day in his home, the evening meal had been awkward, the memory of the Central Hotel magnifying in my mind. Neither Oscar nor I seemed to know what to say. I had managed to burn the fried fish that Nan had left, and the rice had solidified into thick clumps. Andre complained but with good cause, I had thought. When dinner was finally over, Oscar left, explaining that he had his evening chores. ‘If you’d see to Andre, I’d appreciate it,’ he’d said. ‘He’s to wash good, say his prayers and be tucked in by seven-thirty.’ Without looking at me, he’d said, ‘I’ll likely be late, Maisie being poorly with that leg of hers and me being gone these few days. No need to wait up, most likely you’re plenty tired.’

I washed the dinner dishes, my hands stinging from the sharpness of the soap. Under the kitchen table, Andre played with his building blocks but I felt him watching me. This would be a good time to give him my gift, a shiny penny, I thought. Then no. I’d wait until I had him settled. That would end his day on a high note.

I had never put a child to bed before, and I depended on him to tell me what to do. In the washroom, which felt too small for the two of us, Andre stiffened when I cleaned his face with a washcloth. Soap got into his eye and he yelped, hopping up and down. In my hurry to rinse his eye, water splashed over the side of the basin, soaked his shirt, and pooled on the floor.

In Andre’s bedroom, I asked him what he wore to bed. ‘My nightshirt,’ he said, his tone a mix of wonder and disbelief that I didn’t know such a thing. The eyes of Jesus on the crucifix followed me as I turned down the bed. I couldn’t give Andre the penny, I realized. Not here. I imagined him peering at it as I held it out to him, his nose wrinkling, then looking at the photograph of his mother on the nightstand. I’d find a better time, I decided. And a better place.

Once Andre was in bed, I told him to say his prayers. ‘I don’t say them in bed,’ he said. He got up and knelt by the side, the hem of his bed shirt under his knees and his hands pressed together. The bottoms of his feet were dirty. He looked up at me as though waiting for me to begin. When I did – ‘Now I lay me down to sleep’ – he shook his head from side to side, saying, ‘That ain’t right, you’re saying it wrong. I want Daddy.’

‘That
isn’t
right,’ I said.

‘What isn’t?’

I resisted the urge to snap. It had been a long day beginning with the Central Hotel, then the beach road, the house, Nan Ogden, dinner to prepare and dishes to wash. Now grammar lessons. ‘Please don’t say the word ain’t,’ I said. ‘Now let’s say your prayers. Your father is working in the barn, he’s busy.’

After Andre’s prayers, one that was unfamiliar to me, I made him sit on the bed so I could wash his feet with a washcloth. That finished, he asked for a drink of water and after I brought him that, he needed to visit the outhouse. ‘How about the chamber pot?’ I said.

‘But I ain’t sick and it ain’t raining.’

‘You
aren’t
sick and it’s
not
raining,’ I said.

‘Huh?’

‘Please don’t use the word ain’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s incorrect grammar.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Grammar refers to the correct way to speak.’

He poked out his lower lip and looked up at me from under his eyebrows.

‘Now then. You may use the outhouse. But knock on the door first.’

‘Huh?’

‘In case there are snakes.’

‘Miss Nan says to bang on the door. Bang real loud and holler in.’

Oscar was wrong, I had thought. Andre was not in need of a mother. He had Nan.

Now, though, as I watched Oscar pitch hay, I remembered the pain behind Andre’s words when he’d said he wanted to see his mother.

I walked farther into the barn. Along the dirt floor, small drifts of straw were caught against the stall posts, and a cat, sitting on a railing, watched without moving. ‘Oscar,’ I said.

His pitchfork came to a standstill midair, straw caught in the prongs. He turned.

‘I’d like to speak to you,’ I said. ‘About what happened at the table.’

‘Here? Now?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

I walked up the aisle toward him. He tossed the straw onto the floor and propped the pitchfork against the railing. Inside the stall, Oscar waited for me, saying nothing as he wiped his face with a handkerchief. I felt his wariness but wariness was nothing new between us. The memory of what had happened at the Central Hotel – his passion, my hysterical sobs – was a rift that lay between us, seeming to grow with each passing hour.

We stood with the stall railing between us. The top four or five buttons of his blue shirt were unfastened, and on one side, the worn material had fallen back and open. In the barn’s dull light, there were pockets of shadow along his collarbone.

I said, ‘Nan told me about the cemetery.’

He didn’t say anything.

‘Andre’s a child,’ I said. ‘And there have been so many changes. If he’s accustomed to visiting his mother’s grave, then perhaps today is not the time to break from tradition.’

‘My mind’s made up. I told him no.’

‘I understand that. But he wants to put flowers on her grave.’

‘Things are different now.’

‘Very much so. And that’s why you need to take him. He misses her.’

‘He was four. It’s been eleven months. He stopped asking for her a while back. By now, I figure he might not much remember her.’

‘That could be, but you’ve been taking him every Sunday.’

Oscar looked away, his eyes clouding. He took a cigarette from his breast pocket and put it to his lips. He drew in his cheeks as though it were lit. Along the wall behind him, coiled ropes and odd-shaped tools hung from pegs, only the hammers and the saws somewhat familiar.

Oscar put the cigarette back into his pocket. ‘We need to leave soon. Get you to church in time for eleven o’clock services.’

‘Thank you, but I’d rather go to the cemetery with you and Andre.’

He looked at me, his head tilted.

‘If I’m welcome.’

A smile inched across his face.

*

We made the three-mile trip to the cemetery, the horses and wagon scattering seagulls as we traveled the beach road. Andre rode beneath the buckboard and from time to time he made popping sounds as though he were playing some kind of game. Once, he touched the buttons on my shoes, pressing them with his fingers. Startled, I drew in my feet. Then I moved them back to where they had been, close to Andre, waiting for his touch.

It didn’t come. Perhaps the heat turned him as sluggish as I was. I had forgotten to loosen the stays in my corset, and I was lightheaded from the sun. While Oscar steered the horses around the strewn driftwood, I conjured up images of a pastoral cemetery with rolling hills and expansive shade trees.

This, however, was Galveston. City Cemetery was flat, and although it was large, the number of trees could be counted on one hand. Sunken gravel walkways with curbs cut the cemetery into squares. Marble domed vaults and above-the-ground crypts glittered in the sun, hurting my eyes. Monuments with columns and spires, winged angels, and saints with hands clasped in prayer soared, while other graves were marked by small headstones of thin marble. Bernadette had been laid to rest in the Catholic section. Her grave was marked by a gray rectangular stone of granite centered on the top of a one-tiered foundation.

I stood off to the side under my parasol’s small circle of shade. Oscar removed the dried, brittle flowers from the vase attached to Bernadette’s stone. Some of the other graves had fresh flowers but in the heat of the day, we were the only mourners.

Together, Oscar and Andre filled the vase with the daisies we’d brought in the bucket. Sandy water dripped from the flowers’ stems and splattered Andre’s shirt and short pants. His hat was too big, I thought. The tops of his ears were folded over, and one of his black stockings had collapsed into wrinkles above his ankle. He must have taken his garters off while we were in the wagon.

The flowers now in the vase, Andre stood on the foundation of his mother’s marker. He ran his fingers over the carved wreath of ivy at the top of the stone.