Unto These Hills (4 page)

But my tears already shimmered, blinding me as I remembered that night….

“Mama — where you goin’?” I squinted up at her from my folding-seat in the
dimness of the movie house. Beside me, Daniel squeezed my hand, sensing my apprehension.

“I’ll be back in a minute, Sweetie.” The drift of
Blue Waltz
did little to reassure me as Mama disappeared up the aisle. Fifteen minutes later, Daniel and I searched the lobby. Something deep, deep inside insisted I could save Mama from herself. Somehow, Daniel understood.

“She went outside. Said she wud’n feelin’ well,” said Lib, the ticket girl, cynicism and pity spilling from her big ol’ curious eyes. Outside, Mama’s rich, lusty laughter sliced through June’s thick, humid evening air. My younger siblings were at home after a long afternoon matinee. Daniel and I came with Mama tonight, at her request. I still wondered why the rare invitation.

“Wait,” Daniel touched my arm to stay me. Then he swiftly moved ahead to the parked car across the street, from whence spiraled Mama’s bawdy, animal noises. I followed him, knowing he wanted to protect me. But it was my mess, not his. Mama and Toy Narson didn’t even see us when we peered through the car’s half-open window.

“C’mon,” Daniel’s harsh whisper wasn’t soon enough. His fingers gripped my arm as he tugged me away and I knew his anger in part was because he’d failed to shield me. Worse still, I knew his rage was at my mama and her stud of the moment, a married man who this very moment rode her in that back seat like a rutting dog.

“My God,” he rasped, looking absolutely ill. “Don’t she realize how loud she is?” The shame of it was too much to bear and I tore off running down the street, tears streaming my face. When riled, I could, in my youth, run like a greyhound and Daniel didn’t catch up till I was nearly home, by now gasping and retching and sobbing intermittently.

“I’m sorry, Sunny,” he whispered as he steered then settled me on our back stoop. “I shouldn’t’a said that.” He turned me into his arms and comforted me with soothing, crooning words. “Don’t let ‘er get to you. She’s not you. Let it go.”

“Now I know why she a-asked me to go with her tonight,” I hiccuped, snuffling. “S-she just wanted to get around Nana. Nana’s been fussin’ at ‘er this week sayin’ ‘don’t see how you can roll over on your back for every Tom, Dick, and Harry’. She just used us, Daniel. And I thought she really wanted to s-spend time —” My sobs recommenced stronger than ever.

This time, Daniel turned me on the step and embraced me to his chest, his voice husky with feeling. “Don’t you dare give up, Sunny. These next four years’ll pass fast and then we’ll be married and nobody’ll hurt you again. Her shame ain’t your shame. Y’hear? It’s-not-yours.”

“It’s e-easy for you to say. Your mama don’t live right here, whoring right under everybody’s nose and —”

“She used to bring men in our house, Sunny. Think that don’t do things to you? So I understand how you feel.” His lips brushed my cheek and lips, soft as a butterfly a’lightin’. “We’ll get through this together, y’hear? Together.”

Daniel always calmed me with that magic word:
together.

Chapter Two

Daddy only came back to visit after that. He wanted to take us up North with him when he found a pipe-fitters job. I always protested. I couldn’t bear to think of leaving the mill hill. And I didn’t want to leave Daniel. Or Emaline. Or Doretha. Or Gladys.

The list was endless. I simply wanted to stay here with my entire village family and the flowing, familiar terrain.

And strangely, I didn’t want to leave Nana, who was the closest biologically I had to a real mama.

Daddy’s next visit proved bittersweet, like persimmons on the cusp of ripeness yet leaving the mouth puffy and cheated. We all were overjoyed to see him. He looked tired yet content to be with us that first day or two.

Then, gradually, the contentment oozed out, and he appeared, to me, to be merely going through the motions of living. The substance of him seemed sucked away by Mama, leaving only a shell of the handsome, once hearty man. A restless energy possessed him at times and he would pace like a caged lion, peering unseeing out the windows, barely lighting to share meals with us.

Then, in a heartbeat, he’d curl up on the couch and pass out, sleeping like one drugged. I’d slide off his shoes and cover him with a blanket, so as not to disturb him when his dozing slid into earnest snores. Several nights, that’s how he slept, an exhausted heap, mouth agape, as though poised for the next horrific venture.

One evening, fired by an agitated surge, he piled us kids in the old car he still drove and parked in front of the village hotel. Daniel even managed to sneak off with us. Francine raised her eyebrows at me, as puzzled as I over Daddy’s obsessive need to light there. Soon, Francine, Sheila, Timmy, Daniel, and I ate leftover biscuits and fried ham in the deserted dining room. Daisy, the cook, served them from the big wood stove’s warmer.

With Sheila’s small hand clasped in mine, I feasted my curiosity about Mama’s workplace — where she’ d served as maid — that daily awed me as I made my way past the formidable white, two-story structure wrapped with a colossal front porch and ivy-bedecked, screened-in side veranda, whose endless oak rocking chairs seemed always occupied.

Daddy, in the meantime, huddled in a far corner with Mama’s friend and former co-worker, Leona, for a whispery, fervent heart-to-heart. Francine and I looked at each other again. Her’s was a knowing smirk, like
only reason Daddy came home was to milk Leona for information about Mama.

I felt heartsick myself that we weren’t enough motivation for Daddy to get past his and Mama’s sick tragedy.

Later that night, back at the house, as Daniel and I sat on the front door step, overhearing phrases from Daddy’s and Nana’s private powwow, I heard “
what she said in that note”
and “…
no use in the kids a’knowin’…”
So, there’d been a note left with Leona.

“What don’t they want us to know?” I muttered fiercely wiping tears from my cheeks. “I used to never cry. Now, seems like that’s all I do. It’s just —”

“I can’t believe he’s doing this,” Daniel muttered through clenched teeth, squeezing my shoulder with his strong arm. “He’s running off, leaving you — just like she did.”

“He’s
lost
without her. Can’t you see that?” Pity for Daddy swamped me. “Mama was his
life
.”

“No. I don’t see, “ Daniel snarled and as his gaze met mine I nearly cried out at the venom in his eyes, the likes of nothing I’d ever before glimpsed. “I don’t see how Robert can desert ya’ll, too. And I don’t see how he could still love a woman so — so
trashy
Where’s his pride
?”

“Daniel!”

He blinked and withdrew his arm from around me. He propped elbows on knees, hung his head and studied his dangling hands for long tense moments. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I shouldn’t a’said that. Pride’s not what it’s all about.”

“No, you shouldn’t’ve, Daniel. I know what she is but she’s still my Mama.” His words smarted, even in the face of what she’d done. “At the same time, I know you’ve got your own devils to fight.” I reached out to rub his shoulder and he turned and pulled me into his arms.

“Sunny, that’s why I love you so much,” he murmured against my hair. “You’re so understanding. So clean and pure. So
not
like Ruby and Mona.” He kissed me then, a gentle meeting of lips, an almost worshipful act. “Don’t ever change, Sunny. I couldn’t bear it.”

I looked deep into his eyes and saw something I’d not seen there before.

Fear.

“Why, Daniel Collins, you’re afraid.” I put my arms around him and squeezed. “Don’t you know that you’ll be the only man in my life. Ever?”

“Promise?” He pulled back to look me in the eye, as serious as I’d ever seen him.

I crossed my heart. “I promise or I hope to die.”

~~~~~

So far, I hadn’t succeeded in getting Daniel back in church after that first time. He remained spooked, not only from feeling ‘hunted’ but, I figured, by the exuberance of it all.

I understood.

Too much emotion threatened Daniel, like liquor does an alcoholic. Should Daniel crack the door, all his feelings he’d so carefully packed and stomped down, could erupt like a volcano. Despite his tightly harnessed control, Daniel could, I strongly suspected, in an eye’s blink, be blasted to smithereens by those feelings.

So, I didn’t, at that time, push him to go to church. Nana wasn’t too keen on me going to such a ‘noisy, peculiar’ church. But oh, how I
loved
the wild liveliness of it and the joy I felt when I stepped through those doors.

Thing was, at that precise heartbeat, I needed a miracle. The trauma of abandonment had left me depleted in many ways. A sense of aloneness riddled me daily. I used to never feel that way. Seemed the day Mama left was a defining time in my life, one that remained like a raw, open wound.

I’d heard Gladys Kale pray over lots of stuff and, soon, her current problem would resolve itself. All except for Harly, her womanizing, drunkard, no-good, sorry excuse of a husband.

So I began to quietly slip out late afternoons into an unoccupied house on our block, nailed a picture of Jesus to the wall and spent hours there meditating, reading the Bible, and just plain enjoying my newfound tranquility. I even took a little battery radio Mama had left behind and played soothing music by Dick Haymes, Frank Sinatra or the Guy Lombardo Orchestra. I’d never felt so liberated. So
all together
. The torture of abandonment eased.

Nana found out
.

“She’s
crazy
,” she’d muttered to my siblings, fully convinced of it. I resented Nana’s attempt to undermine my siblings’ respect for me, though they didn’t seem to give her accusations weight.

Only other relative who even remotely respected the Almighty was Daddy’s Methodist preacher cousin, Wayne Acklin.

Nana’s scorn was bad enough and then, one evening , while on my skinny knees at the empty house, in the throes of worship, I sensed a dark presence enter my private inner sanctum. When my eyes sprang open, there, before me, squatted my worst horror:
Buck Edmonds
, hunkered down, eye-level with me.

Shock sucked the life from me and I plopped flat on my fanny, mouth open, eyes wide.

His mud-colored gaze raked me while his scruffy hand reached out slow-like, as if to stroke my breast. He represented to me in that moment the Devil-Serpent. His full lower lip hung slack like some idiot’s.

My sprightliness caught ol’ Buck off guard as I shot to my feet and hightailed it out the back door. He recovered quick enough to trail me as far as the back stoop, laughing like some demented beast from a Bela Lugosi horror film.

“I ain’t gon’ hurt you, Sunny. C’mon back. Let’s have some fun,” he called as I spanned the alley in record time and hit our steps running
. “Hey! You’d like it.”

Slothful Betty Edmonds, Buck’s mama, had ruined her good name with a filthy house. That, I could excuse. But raising a scumbag like Buck was unforgivable. He was one school grade ahead of me but lots older.

The big joke all over the hill was that the only way to get Buck out of the schoolhouse was to dynamite it. Shoot, I could even overlook his stupidity if he’d
stay-the-heck-away from me!
Just hearing his name made my skin crawl.

I didn’t dare tell Daniel. I could just hear him fussing. “
Whatta’you mean, bein’ in that empty house all by yourself? And it turnin’ night. Are you nuts, Sunny?”
Then he’d beat the crap out of Buck and be in deep dung with Fitzhugh, our village policeman.

So I’d abandoned my private meditations. I still went to church and prayed to the Almighty but toned down any outward displays of spirituality for fear of dire consequences.

I’d had a gut-full of ‘em.

~~~~~

Gladys’ house smelled of vanilla. I loved going to her house on Fridays, when she got revenge on Harly, her sorry, no-good husband, by loading up a heap of groceries at the Company Store and charging them to his account.

Fridays were Banana Pudding Day.

Daniel and I made regular visits there for heaping helpings of her delicious specialty. My younger siblings paired off to play outdoors with her two close-in-age kids, Vince and Sissy, and our time together was fun.

Gladys was then and remains till this day that rare breed who can, in an eye’s blink, change from a serious, elegant woman to a playful child. She looked a lot like actress Ali MacGraw in her younger day. Her kindness is not negotiable. It’s God-given, static, real, and never-ending. She was mine and Emaline’s spiritual role model.

Daniel loved her, too. “Hey, Sunny,” she’d embrace me in welcome, “if I was a few years younger, and single, I’d give you some competition for this feller.” Then she’d hug Daniel like a mama and say, “C’mon in, good-looking.”

Then we’d move on to stupid, silly stuff: Daniel: “Knock, knock.” Me:”Who’s there?” Daniel: “Who wants to know?” Me: “I do.” Daniel: “Well, who are you?”

“Who wants to know?”

“I do.”

And on and on it’d go till Gladys would erupt, “If ya’ll don’t
shut up
I’m gonna take a broom to your hind-ends!”

“I can run faster’n you,” Daniel would counter.

“Now, you don’t know that for sure, do you? I used to be the fastest runner at Tucapau Grammar School.”

“Nah,” Daniel insisted. “You won’t ever catch me. Or Sunny either, for that matter.”

Gladys’ eyes took on a twinkle. “Then you won’t get no Banana Pudding.”

“Hey,” I laughed, “That’s
always
the last word.”

Then there were the times, on pretty days, when we’d go out into the back yard while Gladys hung her laundry on the line and she’d say, “Cut us a cartwheel, Sunny.”

And I would, thrilled to see both her’s and Daniel’s mouths spread into grins and their eyes shine. My acrobatic agility was a huge source of pride for them.

Other times, she’d have her newly bought, company store TV on American Bandstand and Daniel and I would dance. How she loved to watch us. Daniel’s the best natural dancer I’ve ever seen. His movements are smooth as silk yet vigorous.

One day, Gladys’ took me aside, a rare, worried look on her face. “Sunny —”

“What?” I said.

“Sunny —” She hesitated, then came to a decision. “Don’t ever come into my house when I’m not here. I mean — if Harly’s here, and I’m not, don’t come in. I wouldn’t trust him.”

She was as solemn as I’d ever seen her. I nodded. “Remember Ruthie Bonds?” Gladys said kindly. “I feel sorry for that girl and her little one. I don’t blame her for nothin’. It was all Harly’s fault. I know he done what he did to her and —” She looked at me like a mama. “Just mind what I say. Don’t ever let yourself get caught alone with him.”

I nodded, a knot of fear in my stomach as I remembered Ruthie’s near suicide in the big river. And her shame. And I promised myself to heed Gladys’ advice.

~~~~~

I sighed and wiped the plate clean. “I know Daddy loves being with us so I can’t understand why he doesn’t come back to live with us. Anyway, it’s not fair to leave us four kids with you, Nana.” I shoved back a frisson of apprehension that he might come back for us.

“I ain’t complained, have I?” she said in her understated way but I knew she was thinking about it by the way her lips tightened. She couldn’t be happy, saddled with Mama and Daddy’s four kids. Not at her age.
Why, Daddy?
None of it made sense.

But then, logic was beginning to reshape before me.

I don’t know why, but later on that particular November Saturday night, after spending the afternoon with Daniel at the village movie matinee, I broke down and began to weep while listening to the Grand Old Opry. I suspect it was Mama’s favorite songs that set me off.
Faded Love
and
Divorce Me C.O.D
socked me especially hard. All it took was a glimpse of that picture of her on the mantle for the dam to burst.

Looking back, I figure it had to do with the fact that I’d started my period that morning and felt headachy and melancholy. Daniel, sympathetic to my plight, had left earlier in the evening. Cousin Alvin, Aunt Tina’s teenaged brat, was visiting at the time. If you could call being planted in a chair for hours at a time ‘visiting.’ Didn’t matter. If the President himself had been sitting there, the result would’ve been the same.

Mama and Aunt Tina had always been competitive. Hated each other. And here I came along, near albino, the spittin’ image of Aunt Tina. God does have a sense of humor.

Tonight, all that paled in comparison to what I was feeling.

“What’s the matter with you?” Nana snapped, uncomfortable with such an outburst of emotion. Such goings-on simply weren’t done, to her way of thinking. Too much emotion was shameful.

Sheila’s eyes puddled, too, but for me, I suspect, rather than for Mama. Timmy scooted closer, plastering himself to my side, but kept his misty eyes downcast, picking at the loose hem of his cotton shirt. Francine, for once, said nothing. Just watched me, baldly curious.

Alvin, too, watched me. Moments later, he was gone.