Unto These Hills (2 page)

“C’mon, Sunshine,” Mama gurgled with laughter, calling me by the full name she’d given me at birth, insisting I was her ‘sunshine girl.’ “We Acklins are a’gonna celebrate today. School’s out and there’s fun to be had!”

My heart soared because nobody, but
nobody
did
fun
like my mama.

~~~~~

We went back by the house where we dressed for comfort, except for Mama, who remained dressed-up all the way to her spike heels and Francine, who couldn’t actually strip down any more and not get arrested.

I traded my white dress for a modest buttercup-yellow sundress, whose handkerchief type straps tied over each shoulder.

Nana, Mama’s mother, eyed us speculatively. She pulled Mama into the kitchen as Daddy whistled and sang and cut up with Sheila and Timmy on the porch. I could hear her whispering to Mama and edged close enough to hear.

“Ruby, behave yourself, now, y’hear?”

Laughter. “Now, Mama. Don’t be such a fussy-butt. What in heavens’ name do you think I’m a’gonna do? Strip naked and do
the Huckle-Buck
?” More bubbly laughter.

Nana reached up to touch Mama’s cheek and said gently, “Just mind what I say, honey. Ever’thing’sa’goin’ right for you now. You just count your blessin’s and —”

“Aww, Mama,” my mother grabbed Nana in a big ol’ bear hug and kissed her soundly on the wrinkled cheek, “You
worry
too much.”

Ageless, white-haired Nana, a grass-widow, lived near us in her brother Charlie’s single-level village dwelling, several doors from our two-story mill hill house. But she was always on baby-sitting and housekeeping call.

As usual, today the only colorful thing in her apparel was her home-sewn floral apron. Black lace-up shoes and cotton stockings emerged below her nondescript dress. Her snowy hair, now in a sedate bun on her nape, could transform into witchy disarray when loosed at night, especially when she yanked Sheila from sleep and castigated her for bed-wetting.

Still, all these years later, those long nights flash before me, with Nana in her flapping flannel gown, long white hair flying loose, leaning over Sheila’s bed in the wee dark hours, looking chillingly witchy.

“
You done soaked this bed,
you lazy heifer! Too durned
no-account
to get up and walk to the bathroom is what you are.” And I see Sheila’s eyes, sleep-dazed, confused, and humiliated. I now cringe that I said nothing in her defense, even when Nana’s anger strongly peppered her language.

But I cannot go back and relive one day.

To her credit, Nana laundered the urine-soaked sheets and kept a rubber cover over the mattress to protect it. The daily toil must have been backbreaking for a woman her age. Now, past the age she was at that time, in retrospect, I recognize the effort she spent keeping two households up and running; Uncle Charlie’s and ours’.

Nana, despite her horror of Mama’s ways, indulged her green-eyed, utterly outrageous ‘baby’, Ruby, whom God, for whatever His reasons, blessed with a beautiful face and perfect curves that could cause a traffic pile-up.

I understood. Nana couldn’t
help
but adore Mama — despite her visceral condemnation of Mama’s whoring. Neither could I resist her. Neither could my handsome daddy, whose driving force had been, as far back as I could remember, to placate Mama’s incessant quest for thrills and anything zany.

Yet, despite all his efforts, on that lovely May day, during our exuberant family outing, failure smacked him broadside.

~~~~~

We ate an early lunch at Abb’s Corner, the village café hangout located downstairs from the Movie House. Outside steps took us down to the lowest level of the Community Center.
Divorce Me COD
spilled from the jukebox as we piled into a large booth and Daddy splurged to buy hamburgers, fries and tall frosty milk shakes for the lot of us, including sixteen-year-old Francine, who usually by-passed family things.

I hated the divorce song. Soon Frank Sinatra soothed the airwaves with
Night and Day
and I relaxed and counted my blessings that we were
together.

I caught glimpses of conjecture on my sister’s cynical face and I
knew.
She, too, hoped Mama would for once in her screwed-up life be good, and think of us rather than
herself.
I frowned at her, discouraging her dark skepticism.

Afterward, at Mama’s request, Daddy parked the car on the curb near the post office, as close to the Company Store as he could get. Mama hopped out, then stuck her head in the back window, where we huddled, her offspring, beguiling us with
Blue Waltz
fragrance and her incandescent smile.

Her white silk, clingy shoulder-padded blouse, tucked into fashionable pearl-gray, loose-legged slacks, cupped what Francine had informed me were
lush
breasts — much like her own, she smugly added, which had drawn my dismayed gaze downward to my own comparatively small assets, ones that resembled two once-over-lightly fried eggs.

“Can we go, Mama?” whined Sheila.

“
Nonono.”
Laughter, rich as hot fudge, gurgled from her as she reached over to tweak the little freckled nose. “Doncha know I’m gonna get ya’ll each a
surprise
? Even Daddy gets one,” she said in her throaty way, rolling her vibrant greens at Daddy. I was just beginning to realize what everybody meant by ‘Ruby’s bedroom eyes’, when her lids lowered like a silk curtain, exposing only a sliver of sea mist glimmer.

“Now ya’ll be good for Daddy, y’hear? I’ll be a little while.” Her voice oozed slow and thick as honey. She wrinkled her perfect nose. “Promise?”

“Promise,” chirruped everybody except Francine, who considered such compliance unbearably soppy.

Nobody, but
nobody
could stir my butterflies like Mama. Fact was, with her infectious, teasing laughter and melodious voice, she had the power to sweep us all from calamity to ecstasy in seconds flat. And despite her equally quicksilver explosive fights with Daddy, and her loose ways, in that lovely sun-filled moment I adored her.

After all, my brain desperately let fly, this is a new beginning.

At the Company Store entrance, Mama turned and blew us a big ol’ kiss, gazing at us for a long, long moment before disappearing through the double glass doors.

I’m gonna get y’all each a surprise! Even Daddy gets one.
I recall , in that heartbeat of time, I thought how Mama, despite her faults, possessed, when she
had
anything, a generous, giving spirit, fairly shoveling it all out to others.

We kids and Daddy waited patiently in our old 1947 mud-brown Ford, lustily singing
I’m Looking Over A Four-leaf Clover
while Mama shopped. Honeysuckle breezes wafted in through lowered car windows. We tried harmony with
Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree
, but, what with Daddy’s tone-deafness, ended up sounding like a Chinese laundry quartet. Francine and I laughed till we cried while Daddy remained oblivious.

Then Francine, who utterly idolized Hank Williams, did her nasal rendition of
Your Cheatin’ Heart
, as earnest and reverent as I’d ever seen her.

I didn’t take undue notice of Mama’s lengthy absence till Francine cranked up
Hey, Good Looking
, and Daddy’s brow furrowed when he hiked up his wrist to peer at his watch. Sensing the change in him, Francine fell silent, a phenomenon within itself because Francine’s focus usually opaqued anything beyond her immediate whim. Daddy kept checking the time, his brow corrugating deeper by the moment.

My stomach butterflies ceased their flapping, pushed aside by the dread that oozed inside me and settled like cold concrete.

Francine shot me a “
here we go again
” look, rolled her tiger-tawny eyes, almost the exact shade of her hair, folded her slender arms, and shifted to stare stone-faced — yet appraisingly — out the back window at the men perched like sentry hawks on the rock wall curb facing Tucapau Cotton Mill. While disparaging Mama’s whimsical nature, Francine was blind to her own like-quirks, remaining blissfully unencumbered by any big-sister responsibility.

That was left entirely to me. Timmy, at eleven, a small, dark carbon of Daddy, already harbored cynicism in his whiskey golden gaze, one much too somber and vigilant. I had my work cut out just keeping our heads above dank, murky waters that threatened to obliterate our family unit.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” Daddy sprang from the car and dashed into the store, his movements jerky and desperate.

“Where’s Mama?” asked my little nine-year-old sister, Sheila. The picture of Mama, Sheila was perfection with big jade eyes and elegant oval features framed softly by russet and wheat streaked hair. She would someday, I suspected, be the family beauty.

“She’s inside the store,” I said, a bit more cheerfully than I felt. A vague premonition froze the smile that struggled to reach my lips. Instead, I patted her plump little fingers that laced loosely in her lap, their wiggly dance belying her calm demeanor.

Her resignation smote me. Then shot terror through me. I blinked and surreptitiously breathed deeply to allay anxiety, like Nana, in her stoical monotone, always instructed me. I groped for an inside button to turn off my roiling emotions. Finding none, I simply rode the bucking tumult.

Moments later, Daddy reappeared alone, pale as burnt out ashes. His hands trembled as he climbed into the front seat and gripped the steering wheel, anchoring himself as he stared off at some obscured horror, a stunned expression erasing all but ghostly laughter crinkles from his handsome features.

Long tense moments passed. Packed together like little sardines in the car’s back seat, neither of us four kids spoke. Were afraid to. Being accustomed to disappointment didn’t exactly inspire us to reach out and seize it.

I garnered courage. “Where’s Mama?” My voice rasped, quivered.

Daddy’s head swiveled and our gazes collided. The pain in his caused my breath to hitch. “Is she coming?” I ventured tremulously, weak from the inquiry’s effort.

Slowly, his head moved from side to side. “No, honey. She’s not coming.”

Tears sprang to my eyes, of hurt, of anger. Of myriad, unnameable emotions. “Why?” I didn’t want to know.

“Because,” his knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. “She’s gone.”

“Where did she go?” Hysteria shimmied my voice up to shrill.

Francine huffed in disgust, tossed her thick tousled wheat mane back against the seat, and melted into its crease. Sheila didn’t move an eyelash. She sat frozen, her fingers dancing…dancing.

Timmy’s big Cocker Spaniel eyes, focused on me, drew my notice — his dark lashes were as thick as any girl’s — and as I gazed into them, I saw a plea glimmering in the golden depths.
Make it all right, Sunny,
they whimpered.

I gulped at the enormity of his need. Thought I’d drown in it.

Daddy took a deep, ragged breath then slowly blew it out and, as he did so, his lean torso slumped and his forehead connected with the steering wheel. “Only way out was the back exit.”

Hope seized me. “But maybe — maybe she
was
inside and you just didn’t see her. Maybe she was —”

Beside me, Francine’s snort of dismay failed to dash my burst of optimism.

But when Daddy’s dark mahogany head lifted, pity spilled from his eyes, snuffing hope as a fire hydrant’s flush would a candle-flicker. “Mr. Mason saw her duck out the back door, Sunny. She got into a car there.”

“Why am I not surprised?” muttered Francine and viciously crossed long bronze legs protruding saucily from flaming shorts.

Because,
the thought flitted through my reeling brain,
it takes one to know one
and was instantly ashamed of the disdain I felt for my own flesh-and-blood sister.

“What’s wrong?” Sheila’s green eyes gazed up at me with a trust that hit me like a sledgehammer. It scared the daylights out of me. Then, amazingly, calmed me. It made me able to smile at her, to pretend everything was okay. To toss Timmy a feeble wink of encouragement.

And in some fuzzy corner of my psyche my role snapped into place. I would be the kids’ caretaker. On some level I knew.

When Daddy cranked the Ford — an act that declared Mama
gone
— the mundaneness of the revving engine struck me as surreal.

And I knew. Deep, deep inside, I
knew.
Don’t know how or why. But I knew.

Mama was not coming back.

~~~~~

Three things blasted a mill hill woman’s good name to smidgens; sexual immorality, neglecting one’s kids, and a filthy house, in that order. Though Nana’s vigilance spared Mama from the latter, her own folly cost her the entire substance of respectability.

The horror of it all traumatized me in ways I’d never before experienced.

Men began leering at me, a thing that sent me scurrying home to soak for hours in our old rust-stained bathtub, trying to wash away the
shame
Mama had foisted upon me.

“Ruby Acklin’s name is worse than mud; it’s
slime,”
I murmured days later to a sympathetic Doretha as I swirled my straw in watery Coke at Abb’s Corner, where she, Daniel, and Emaline commiserated with me on the turn of events. From the jukebox, Jimmy Wakely empathized with
One Has my Name (the Other Has my Heart
). “People don’t blame you for her mess, Sunny,” insisted Emaline, sweet optimistic Emaline, her green eyes sad as a Bassett’s.

I snorted. “Not only has she done across-the-board adultery, this time she’s run off with the village doctor, who is,” I rolled my eyes, “ten years younger’n her. And to think, I used to think he looked like Tim Holt.” I shook my head in disbelief, scowled and blinked back tears. “Now he’s got horns and fangs that drip blood.” I gazed at my buddy through tears. “
Our blood.”

I sighed heavily. “I’ll bet Doctor Worley don’t appreciate her tomfoolery forcing ‘im from retirement.”

Across the café I spotted teenaged Buck Edmonds, paying for his order and as he turned to leave he blatantly caught my eye and winked. Sneaky-like. So as not to draw Daniel’s attention. Then he nearly collided with Fitzhugh Powers, our village policeman, and his face composed into angelic repose. In blue uniform, Fitzhugh was formidable, a force to be reckoned with by mischief-makers. Underneath, he was every villager’s daddy.