Unto These Hills (21 page)

“Had things not happened as they did — Muffin might have gotten past it. But — later that afternoon, I got the call. Walter had fallen from a three-storied structure and was transported to Spartanburg General Hospital, in critical condition. It was touch and go for days, then weeks; a surgery crisis at every turn.

“But he was strong. He made it. Physically. Mentally — he didn’t. Brain damage. His memory was gone. To him, the girls and I were total strangers. He didn’t want me around him for a long time. He warmed up to Muffin right away. Bonded almost instantly. Of course, she charmed the socks off him. When Muffin sets her mind to win someone over, there’s no stopping her.” I smiled ruefully. “His acceptance of Libby — and of course, me — came slower but when it did, it
took.”

“Strange. At first, we hoped his memory would return but after that first year, then two, the doctors said it was permanent. Of course, seeing Walter today, you know that wasn’t the only change. His personality did a flip-flop. Gone was the take-charge, witty man, to be replaced by one so placid and child-like it breaks my heart.”

I gazed into Emaline’s eyes, still the color of lagoon blue-gray. In their depths, compassion pooled, swam, overflowed. “Muffin has hated me from that day. Says I stole her daddy from her. And — I guess in a way I did. Had he not been upset with me he wouldn’t have been distracted and had the accident.” I gazed at Emaline through fresh tears. “Call it poetic justice. I brought it all on myself because I wouldn’t —
couldn’t
bring myself to love Walter as I had Daniel.”

“Ahh, honey,” Emaline reached to take my hand and squeeze my icy fingers, “love such as that can’t spring forth on command. Passion such as your’s and Daniel’s isn’t always there. Don’t you think you gave Walter all you were capable of giving, Sunny?”

I snuffled and swiped at my wet cheek. “Most of the time I believe I did. Libby’s accepting attitude sort of convinces me I did okay. Other times I’m not so certain. I’m being as honest as I know how to be. I’ve prayed so much over that very thing…wishing and hoping that eventually the
feeling
would come.” I shrugged limply. “It never did. And now it never will.”

Emaline smiled gently, sadly. “At least Walter doesn’t know how you —”

I nodded. “Yeh. Ignorance — in this instance —
is
bliss. So is his lack of sex drive.” Fresh tears scalded my eyes. “I shouldn’t have said that. Isn’t that
appalling?”
I lifted my hands in supplication. “
I’m
appalling.”

“You are
not
appalling, Sunny. You’re human. Sometimes — don’t misunderstand what I’m saying, now — God works in mysterious ways. When Walter lost his memory and sex drive, the situation became more bearable for you. Right?” She went on without waiting for me to answer. “All things work together…He simply allowed it. This way, nobody gets hurt.” She came around the table, wrapped me in her arms and hugged me hugely, soothing me with her warm succor. “You’re still Sunny. And I love you.”

“Thanks, Emaline.” She still was, to me, the wisest person on earth. “I just wish Muffin did.”

“She will. In time.”

In spite of my trust in Emaline’s insight and faith, I wasn’t so sure about that.

Chapter Eleven

Walter once asked me if it ever bothered me, not knowing for certain who Muffin’s father was. I thought about it long moments and then said, “You’re Muffin’s father in every way that counts, Walter.”

What I didn’t tell him was that there were times during those years that I was nearly crazy wondering whose seed I had carried inside me for nine eternal months. The uncertainty haunted me. It was my own private cross to bear. I shared it with no one, not even Walter.

Anyway, that day after I said, “You’re Muffin’s father in every way that counts,” Walter looked at me for a long time, saying nothing and then his eyes filled with tears. “Thank you,” he rasped, uncharacteristically emotional. Before his accident, I could count on one hand the times he’d emoted anything akin to sentimental. Each time he had, it was Muffin-linked. Like the first time she’d said ‘Dada’, his face dissolved into mush.

But there were those times, late into the night, with Walter slumbering beside me, that I ran the faces past me, like a video: Harly Kale, who several years later dropped dead of a heart attack at age forty-five…Buck Edmonds, still living in Tucapau’s Red Egypt section with his wife and three kids, carrying on his late mama’s legacy of hovel-living….

And then there was Bill Melton, Emaline’s grandpa, now in a nursing home with Alzheimer’s. Each time I processed the equation, I always came up with the same solution: none. Had I pursued it as relentlessly as my adrenaline lusted after, I’d have driven myself crazy.

On one level, Muffin was
mine
and I wouldn’t have traded her for all the silver and turquoise in Mexico. With Walter nurturing her, I couldn’t ask for more. Yet — in my weaker times I fantasized that Daniel had fathered her, that when we made love that long ago night, a fluky thing occurred and his seed overrode the fiend’s seed.

That was a dead-end.

On another level entirely, I secretly transmuted into a snarling, vicious predator, stealthily stalking the rapist who’d violated me all those years back. No one — absolutely no one but me knew the searing hatred I carried inside for that black-silhouetted, slimy, despicable monster.

It was a furor that shook me like a violent earthquake. It, and protecting Muffin’s children, were the only passions left from my young years. And like the other, it was one I couldn’t simply ignore. I wanted to.
Prayed
to. No matter how much I psyched myself that I was past it, no matter how much I denied its existence, it was there.

Like a rotten albatross around my neck, I still carried it, night and day, smelling its stench.

~~~~~

“Sunny?” called Sheila from my front screen-door. Through the wire mesh, even fuzzy and ethereal, even in her rumpled casual jeans attire, she took my breath. I rushed to unhook the latch. She stepped through and into my arms, trembling like January leaves in a whirlwind.

“What is it, honey?” I asked, holding her back to get a better look. Her eyes were puffy and red, her full lower lip trembling violently. “Come on, sit down and tell me about it.” I guided her to my tan Naugahyde sofa and seated her, lowering myself beside her. “Spit it out.”

“I’m a lousy mama, Sunny,” she gasped between sobs. “I know I deserve what I’m getting but — when I lost the girls to Curtis, I didn’t know things would turn out like th-this.” I handed her tissues and she paused to blow her nose.

“Ginger won’t even talk to me now she’s married. Cassie’s stopped going shopping with me on Friday nights — says she wants to do things with school friends. Michelle’s mad at me for not showing up for her birthday party last month, even after I explained to her that I was out of town with Jerry, y’know, when I went along on his trip to Las Vegas?”

“How are things going with him?” I asked politely, hoping they were going nowhere. My sister instinctively picked losers, this time being no exception. Sheila’s angst with her kids was commonplace by now.

“I don’t understand Michelle, She’s fourteen now. Old enough to
know
that I need a life of my own.” She snuffled and took out her compact to repair the smudges under her eyes. I quietly watched her, wanting to say how she’d always put herself first. But more and more, I wondered
who am I to judge?

“You know, Sheila, Michelle’s a sweet girl and she loves you. I —”

She whirled about and glared at me. “I don’t think you know her very well, Sunny. There’s this other side to her when she gets ticked off about something.”

I looked at her, slowly shaking my head. “Isn’t that true of all of us? We all —”

“I wish just once, Sunny, that you’d really listen to me and understand.” Her eyes glittered with rage, yet — strangely, not truly
seeing
me. It was as though, during these angst attacks, she was completely into herself, on a stage, alone
,
performing a script she’d written.

“I do listen to you, Sheila. I’ve always championed you, all the way back.”

“Not always,” she said, the anger leaving as quickly as it came. I watched her deflate like a stuck beach ball. “Remember when I begged you not to leave home that time Aunt Tina ordered you out? It just so happened that I was —” She stopped, eyes refilling with tears. She swallowed them back and went on, “I was being molested.”

“But — who?” I asked with both reservation and dread.

“Alvin.”

“My god.” I let that sink in, shocked beyond words. “Did you tell Aunt Tina? Or Nana?”

“Are you kiddin’? After the way Nana reacted about Uncle Charlie? Would they have believed precious little Alvin could do such an evil thing? To them, I was always the wicked one. ‘Little
hot tail, like her mama,’
Nana always said. She laughed bitterly and I saw her hands tremble as she took out a cigarette and lit it. She knew I didn’t like smoking in my house but I decided she was too upset to be reprimanded this once.

She took a long drag off her Virginia Slim and blew it upward, thinking that in doing so, she spared me the second-hand smoke. “And another time. I know you never believed me when I told you Walter came on to me when I cleaned house for you each Friday, after you started to Clemson.”

At Walter’s name my insides knotted into a thousand tight little loops. “Let’s don’t go there, Sheila. That was a long time ago —”

“You barely let the words get outta my mouth,” her lips curled at the corners, and her green eyes slitted, “before you called me a
liar.
Well,
sis-a-maroonie
, he did a lot more than come on to me. I was lettin’ ‘im off easy, actually.” She leisurely stretched out her long tan legs, enjoying swiping at me for long ago grievances. Script-performance again. Sheila’s vindictiveness was notorious and dreaded. Rarely was I its target.

Fact was, I still didn’t believe her accusations against Walter. He’d denied them. And I knew him to be a man of character. A giving man. He’d given me back my honor when he could have simply walked away, like Daniel had done. It still hurt to think about Daniel’s initial abandonment. It hurt even worse to think about his repentant return.

I wet my lips nervously, “Look, Sheila. There’s no need to go back and drag —”

She stood abruptly, eyes glassy green flames, startling me into silence. “You took his word against mine, Sunny,” she said quietly, lethally. “I don’t know that I can ever forgive you for that.”

I looked sadly at her, knowing she’d gone away into herself in that moment. What could I say? Then quite suddenly, she smiled. Sheila was back. Her eyes glimmered so like Mama’s I nearly gasped. “But I love you, so I probably will someday. Outside that time with Walter, you’ve always been there for me. I mean, I can understand you leavin’ when Aunt Tina threw you out.”

Then I was on my feet and we were in each other’s arms, cryin’ like crazy that we’d hurt each other. “You’re still my baby, Sheila. I love you.”

“I know, Sunny,” she smiled wistfully as tears trailed off her chin, her fingers gently touching my face. My poor Sheila…who’d had so little through the years. True, much of her misery was of her own making but in the final analysis, could she have altered her life’s story plot?

During my two years at Clemson College, just before Walter’s accident, I’d read something that now came to mind: “There are only two things which pierce the human heart,” wrote Simone Weil, “One is beauty, the other is affliction.” Sheila certainly possessed beauty. Ah, and the arrows struck her mercilessly, sometimes so thick in their rain as to block the sun. Other times, so subtly that only years later, like now, when the wounds festered, did Sheila even acknowledge they existed.

I watched her leave, chin up, but I saw the slight droop of lovely shoulders and like a comet, a memory from long ago soared in.

Francine and I took a taxi from the Greyhound bus station, silent in mutual concern for our younger sister. Sheila had run away, “…to find Mama,” said the note Nana found on her pillow. She’d called from Atlanta the night before, “ to keep ya’ll from worrying,” she said, but hung up when I’d asked where she was staying.

“I’ve gotta go find her before she gets to Mama.” I began packing, afraid of what Sheila would discover if she found Mama. Instinctively, I knew it would hurt her worse than the initial abandonment.

I’d been surprised when Francine insisted on accompanying me when I set out. Nana offered to tend to Muffin, now a year-old, while Walter worked at the mill. He’d given his blessing to my mission: to find my sister and preserve what little self-image she had left. We’d finally, after all those years, discovered Mama’s whereabouts. Leona, Mama’s old pal, learned from Dr. Brock’s sister, that the couple, now married, lived just outside Atlanta, in College Park.

“You nervous?” asked Francine, fondling her unlit cigarette, ready to pounce on it the moment we emerged to the outdoors of our destination.

“No,” I answered truthfully. “I just — want to get it over with. Put it behind me. I have no illusions about Mama like Sheila does.” In the ensuing silence, with only the motor’s hum reminding me we were in transit, I thought how…somehow, life had taught me to flow. Sheila still fought the rapids

Finally, the cab stopped before a Georgian style, three-story brick mansion, whose immaculately groomed grounds alone intimidated. Beside them, our own straggly, patchy yards would seem afflicted with some rare, exotic plant-eating disease. Neither of us spoke as we disembarked, Francine to linger beside the taxi to light her cigarette, puffing away until her senses deadened, while I marched resolutely to climb brick steps, cross the mosaic porch, then punch a brass doorbell to the right of an enormous, elaborately carved mahogany door.

I rang the bell four, five times.

The door opened, revealing a black maid in uniform. “Nobody’s home,” she informed me politely, yet — something about the way she looked at me said she was lying. Before I could put voice to my suspicions, the door quietly shut.

I rang the bell again. And again. All the while my temper blazed. The nerve of this woman, who is my mother. It’s not enough that she runs off and abandons us. Her maid slams the door in my face. I punched the bell again and again.

I yelled, “I don’t want one cotton-picking thing from you! Do you hear me? I just need to talk to you briefly. And I’m going to ring this door till you speak to me. Sheila’s run away and is trying to locate you. You can either answer the door or the neighbors will be disturbed because I will keep ringing.” I punched again to demonstrate.

After another two rings, the door opened again. I recognized him instantly. The man who’d helped desecrate and destroy our home.

He stared at me coldly. “What do you want?”

I swallowed my indignation while composing my features. “I need to talk with my mother. Sheila’s run away and she’s in Atlanta, trying to find her mama. I’m trying to find Sheila. As I’ve said, I want nothing from you.” The last words came out as cool as I felt. I didn’t care.

His eyes raked me dismissively. “She doesn’t want to speak with you.” The door shut again, more firmly this time. And I knew it was final. Another thing I sensed: this man had kept our mama from us.

I was amazed that I didn’t collapse in grief. I felt strangely detached as I walked back to the cab where Francine dropped her cigarette and crushed it to death with the toe of her snappy slings. “What did that lowlife say?” she snarled, ready for war.

I related our brief exchange, shrugging if off. I’d just started to climb back in the vehicle when another cab wheeled in behind ours and parked. Sheila bounded from it, a look of shock on her face. Even in worn jeans and some boy’s football jersey pullover, she looked stunning. “What’re you doing here?” she asked as I hugged her long and fierce. She squeezed me back so I knew she was glad to see me, had, in fact, wanted to be rescued.

“Looking for you,” Francine spat. “This has got to be the stupidest thing you’ve ever done!” She lit another cigarette with trembling hands.

Sheila whirled on her, hands outstretched in supplication, “Look, I just want to see my Mama. Is that so stupid?”

Francine rolled her eyes and propped against the cab. She swung her arms wide, extending palms up. “Have a go at it, why dontcha? Good luck, kid.” She took a long drag on her cigarette, exhaled through her nostrils, then glared into space.

When Sheila turned to peer at me, confusion marked her features. “What’s she talkin’ about, Sunny?”

I sighed, my pity for her rampant. “I’ve already been to the door, honey. She won’t talk to any of us. Her husband came to the door and as much as ordered us away.”

Before I divined what was coming, she tore off across that flawless lawn, aimed like a missile for the front door. Francine and I took off after her, wanting to spare her more pain and humiliation. But she was faster and began ringing the doorbell and banging on the door, screaming to the top of her lungs, “I want to see my Mama -aaa! Open this door! Now!” She kicked and shrieked nonstop for several minutes. Francine and I peered helplessly at each other and by mutual unspoken consent, stepped aside and let Sheila have her say. I couldn’t help but gloat a mite, knowing the racket would mar the doctor’s reputation.