Unto These Hills (9 page)

“All our mamas are gone,” Emaline said sadly, stuffing my mated socks into a corner of my small, scarred suitcase.

“Only thing,” Daniel drawled, not unkindly, “your mama didn’t have a choice. Ours did.”

Daniel sprawled on Timmy’s bed, his hooded eyes stalking me. He’d ignored Tom Taylor’s wrathful tirades several times in the last two days to be near me. In private, sitting on my back door stoop, he’d oscillated between silent brooding and hawkish vigilance. Seemed he didn’t miss a single move I made nor a single comment.

“Whatta you mean, you might not ever come back?” he asked that evening, after the packing was done and Emaline had gone home. We sat on the back door stoop, bundled in sweaters and exhaling November vapor into the night. Daniel held my hand, his index gently examining each finger, his voice low and dead.

“It was just a statement — you know, like I’ll die if I don’t ever get to come back.”

His thick lashes lifted then, revealing turquoise irises lackluster with sadness. “Your Nana’ll be here. Surely you’ll come visit her.”

“I guess. I mean — I know we will. Just don’t know
when.”
I sighed and squeezed his hand, wanting to console him yet angry that life was being so
mean
. “Daniel, you know how much I hate to leave. Everything that means anything to me is
here.
This here mill hill just wraps around me like a big ol’ blanket, makin’ me warm and — safe. Chicago’s like —
Mars.
Leavin’ here’s like —
dying.”

He half arose and reached to slide his hand into his jean’s pocket, then pulled out a little rolled up paper bag. “I want to give you something.” He extracted a small box and handed it to me, resettling beside me. I slowly opened it, my vision suddenly blurred with tears. In it was a ring, the diamond was miniscule but it was an
engagement ring, by golly.

His face was as grave as I’d ever seen it. “Someday,” he said quietly, slipping it on my finger, “I’ll buy you one you deserve.”

“Oh, Daniel,” I sputtered, misting up, laughing richly, “I-it’s
beautiful.”
Anything from Daniel was beautiful. “It’s only for a year or two. Somehow, we’ll be married when I finish school. I’ll move back and we’ll both go to Clemson College, as planned.”

“Why don’t you stay with Nana?” he asked, not even trying to conceal the desperation in his eyes, those wonderful,
brave
eyes.

I sighed painfully. “I asked Nana and she said, ‘your place is with your Daddy now, Sunny.’” It had hurt me dreadfully, her rejection. But I understood her need to disentangle from so much responsibility. “Didn’t leave any room for argument.” His broad shoulders seemed to slump even more.

I hugged him. “I need to leave something for you to remember me by.”

He gazed at me for a long moment, his green eyes aglimmer with emotion. “I don’t need anything. I have you,” he laid a callused hand over his chest, “ right here.”

I swallowed back tears, trying to be strong for him. “We’ll write, Daniel. Regular.”

He nodded, slowly, his eyes roaming my features as though photographing each detail. “I’m counting on that, Sunny.”

~~~~~

It hit me like a bolt of lightning the next morning as we Acklins packed the car and prepared to depart:
I’m leaving home
. And
Renie’s dead
. I caved in. Not
Renie. Sweet, sweet Renie with kind eyes and soft words.

It was like losing Mama all over except Renie cared. Turning Emaline and me loose in her kitchen to bake and mess up…letting me help Emaline with chores for matinee movie money…huggin’ and lovin’ on me. She was more mother than my own. Shock coursed through me at the realization. I sank down on the bottom front doorstep as Daddy and my siblings passed with mismatched, scarred luggage, head on knees, and gave way, my grief blending with the cacophony of leave taking sounds.

Then, I felt strong hands tugging at me, pulling me upward. I lifted my head and peered into Daniel’s pain-glazed eyes. He pulled me to him. Another tug on my blouse. It was Emaline. Daniel opened his arms wide to pull Emaline into our circle of love. Then closed them around us both . Emaline moaned,

“What am I gonna do, Sunny?” Emaline moaned. “ My mama’s gone. And now you —”

I had no answer. The three of us stood there, arms wrapped around each other. It was too, too much to bear.

~~~~~

“Shut up that
whining,
Sheila,” Daddy roared from the front seat of our old rust-brown Ford as we crossed the North Carolina State line. Yep, Daddy still drove that old car. He was a good mechanic and somehow kept it a’running. We’d been on the road three hours already and at one-thirty everybody grated on each other’s nerves.

“I-I don’t w-want to leave Polly,” Sheila wailed, echoing what I felt inside.

“You already
have, beetle-brain
,” Francine rasped from the back seat corner,

rousing from her nap to glare bleary-eyed at Sheila. “Case you hadn’t
noticed.”

Of all of us, Francine alone was excited about moving to Chicago. She’d dropped her job like a red-hot poker and was packed before you could say ‘boo,’ totally insensible to Tack Turner’s devastation. Timmy was — well, Timmy was okay as long as I was okay. So I tried to act nonchalant once on the road while my insides twisted and roiled at life’s cruelty.

Lordy, Emaline and I had cried buckets and pleaded with Daddy to leave me behind to stay with her but he refused. In the end, we’d embraced and vowed to write twice a week. How my heart bled for my best friend in her grief. My grief, too. I already missed Renie dreadfully. At least, together, Emaline and I had each bolstered the other. Separated, the sorrow was much keener.

Nana had been peculiarly affectionate at our leave-taking, not hugging but making us promise, “Now, ya’ll take care of each other. Y’hear?”

Seeing what appeared to be tears in her eyes, as we pulled off with our bags and old suitcases stuffed in every nook and cranny, did little to reassure me about this change of worlds.

Daniel hadn’t come to see me off. We’d decided to say goodbye last night. He’d gently kissed me on the lips and held me for a long, long time. And I knew.

Daniel didn’t want anybody to see him cry.

I’d looked back as we drove away and glimpsed him at his upstairs bedroom window. Our gazes locked in that heartbeat and my fingers instinctively moved to cup my ringed finger. I’d insisted on giving him a lock of my hair. He’d solemnly put it in his wallet, taped to the back of my picture. Seeing my gesture from his window, his lips had curved, ever so slowly into a bittersweet smile…. My throat knotted at the memory.

Daddy said very little during all this time on the road, except to issue reprimands to Sheila. He seemed to have lots on his mind. I suspected it had to do with the fact that seeing us again reminded him more of Mama. But then, seeing him did us the same way.

Sheila’s whimpering and crankiness revved up again half way across North Carolina. Suddenly, the car screeched to a stop, barely swerving to a curb and out of the path of traffic.

Francine, limp with slumber, flew from her seat into the floor, as did Timmy. I sat in the front beside Daddy, so I collided with the dashboard, barely escaping injury when my palms quickly cushioned the impact.

Daddy pivoted about sharply and reached over the seat to haul Sheila from where she’d been thrown against the back of the passenger seat to where their noses nearly met. “Shut the
hell
up,” he ordered in a voice I barely recognized as his. “I’ve put up with your sniveling long enough.”

His glare dissolved Sheila’s grief into a hysterical hiccup. Snuffling and gulping back her sobs, she peered glassy-eyed at him and I realized in that moment what moving had cost her. Dear
God,
she had so little.

Daddy seemed geared to continue ranting but instead released her, threw up his hands and turned away, muttering as he cranked the engine, “Why the hell am I fighting to keep you?” Then, he muttered through clenched teeth, “You’re not even
mine.”

I couldn’t bring myself to turn and look at Sheila, who shrank into the backseat corner. The viciousness of it was too much to handle.

If Daddy realized the impact of his words on Sheila or the rest of us, he didn’t let on.

I remember thinking Mama’ s reduced his existence to one not only lacking direction, but wisdom as well.

Years later, before her death, Nana would reveal the irony of that statement. Mama’s goodbye note had revealed her bitterness that Daddy, on their first night together upon his homecoming from the war, had betrayed his promise to never again mention Ruby’s unfaithfulness, one that resulted in Sheila’s conception.

Of course, Mama was good at rationalization. That she already carried on a hot, steamy affair with the doctor was beside the point. That she lied through her teeth every day of her life meant nothing, as did her abandoning Sheila to Daddy’s care, knowing she was not his. What did matter, in her self-absorbed mind, was that Daddy broke a promise.

Hah!

And so, nobody repeated those hateful words. We seemed to accept that if we ignored them, they would go away.

“…you’re not even mine.”

Chapter Five

Oil. The fragrance of Chicago.

Everything was strange, from the color of dirt, what little I saw, to the smell of the atmosphere.

Riding through downtown Chicago, I had my first experience with claustrophobia, certain I was going to die of suffocation. Tall buildings blocked out the sky. I had to look straight up to see blue and the air tasted like petroleum.

On Thanksgiving Day, we moved in with Aunt Dottie. Thus began my year in purgatory, one that passed in a blur. The apartment building, held up by flanking twin apartment structures, faced a mental asylum whose spear-tipped black fence bore portent of my odyssey there…the smell of baked turkey assailing us as we hauled beat-up suitcases up the stairs…both Daddy’s sisters, dark and exotic as plump Spanish flamenco dancers, working as cocktail waitresses at the same lounge, The Top Hat, Daddy’s new drop-by-after-work hangout…Daddy’s absence freeing Francine and Cousin Brandy to streets, men, and deadly cigarette indulgence…. Aunt Dottie’s giving token resistance to the girls’ cigarette habit but since she herself emptied two packs a day, her objections were sounding brass…Daddy’s seeming unawareness of Francine’s shenanigans….

Looking back, I suspect he’d simply given up on her. I figure that decision saved him a lot of frustration and heartache. I know Tack Turner sent her money because she never missed a lick buying cigarettes.

I vaguely remember the wonderful smells of that Thanksgiving — Aunt Dottie had knocked herself out with holiday preparations. Daddy’s other sister, Elsie, and brother-in-law, Glenn, were there as well and they all talked and laughed about old times and how great it was being together again. My grief was such that I cannot recall a word they spoke. Yet amid it all, one memory remains till this day as clear as the peal of a church bell.

I could hardly wait till that first Thanksgiving dinner ended and I could politely excuse myself. I rushed to the large bedroom I shared with Francine, cousin Brandy, and Sheila. Timmy, cousin Eddie, and Daddy shared another room. Only Aunt Dottie had her own private space

I had two letters to write. One to Emaline. Dear, poor Emaline, whose anguish I could feel hundreds of miles away.

And Daniel. My fingers touched the ring. I knew how he’d worked and scrimped to buy it. That it represented our future together struck a deep, resonant chord in me. His beautiful callused hand, pressed to his heart and his husky, fervent, “I’ve got you — right here” rang and swelled in my soul like the
Alleluia Chorus
. I began to write.

“My dear Daniel, how I miss you!”

~~~~~

The following months’ happenings run together in my head. As happens when one is miserable, I repressed much of it. Now, decades later, I recall it mostly in strobe-like snatches…teachers’ Yankee-dialect, at first like a foreign language…our drawled dialect even more baffling to them…self-absorbed Francine back to high school, in new- kid-on-the-block Paradise, ignoring Tack’s letters till she needed money…boys’ eyes drinking her in…Timmy and Cousin Eddie, both pretty tame sorts, bunking, riding bikes, and playing checkers together while Sheila’s new friend, Lindi, who lived across the hall, included her in many of her family activities, a wonderful, uplifting time for my little sis.

Each letter from Daniel tugged my heart toward home.

~~~~~

Daddy met Rosalee Sanchez at the Top Hat. Things quickly grew serious. For a Yankee girl, Rosalee was pretty likeable. Only in her mid-twenties, she was short, bosomy, and round. Not fat. Just fluffy. Nothing like as pretty as Mama but then, not many could hold a candle to Mama’s good looks.

Yet — with exotic Spanish coloring and even features, Rosalee wasn’t bad looking. I took to her right away, seeing as how she drove back the sadness in Daddy’s whiskey brown eyes.

And I knew that, eventually, she would become his wife. Two years later, my prophecy came to pass.

Francine didn’t like her. But then, Francine didn’t especially commit to liking anybody or anything. Except fun and outlandish characters. Especially those with money. Like Tack, whose daddy was a “boss man,” as cotton mill supervisors were called, and who were regarded as a type of royalty. His clout earned Tack one of the higher paying mill positions. So his gifts to Francine kept a’comin’.

~~~~~

Holidays came and went. Memories of Mama surfaced but I brutally shoved them away. I put on a good face. Inside, I was wretched. Being away from Daniel and Emaline and familiar sights and smells made me nearly crazy. I asked Daddy to take us to visit Nana but he said he couldn’t afford it. I wanted to feel Daniel’s arms around me so badly I often hid in my room and bawled.

Nana wrote occasionally, short terse messages entailing cursory bits of village news like Mama’s playmate, Toy Narson, dying in a car wreck and Shirley Cox giving birth to twin girls. Out of wedlock.
At least little Sally’s not alone anymore.
Yet, I knew they would wear the stigma for years to come. I thanked God it wasn’t me.

Emaline wrote long detailed letters of both hope and despair as her grief ebbed and gushed through those long wintry months. Springtime saw a different flavor emerge from the pages of Hallmark stationery, (the Company Store’s very best brand). A strawberry flavor. She began dating a boy named John Davidson and soon, rather than grief, I sensed romance in bloom. I was happy for her.

Daniel’s letters came regularly. My heart did a funny little leap each time I saw the envelope addressed to me with his scrawly handwriting.

~~~~~

To divert my angst that following year, I focused on the North/South cultural differences into which I was thrust. Southern girls considered soft-spokenness right up there with lace on panties. Northern females valued volume. And while a few Dixie chicks — like Mama — drank, most were discreet, considering anything otherwise unladylike. Northern women freely and openly imbibed. Raucous hen parties occurred weekly in homes, highlighted with drinking and hair-tinting, a process of foamy mixtures applied with toothbrushes.

I learned the proof and age of each bottle of liquor in Aunt Dottie’s well-stocked pantry. Games. Those and school activities helped ease my homesickness.

During recess, I joined in a popular game called Rooster Fight. Beside tame southern competition, this one was quite aggressive. The rules were to draw a circle, in which two opponents balanced on one foot. Each draped their arms around themselves, like in a straight jacket. The idea was to bump each other out of the circle. Being competitive and agile, I couldn’t resist the challenge. I won most every time. It made up, in a tiny way, for my deprivation of Daniel and Emaline.

It also vented my anger at being uprooted.

~~~~~

When Francine began coughing more than usual, we all attributed it to her heavy smoking. But when blood showed up in her spit, a big alarm went off.

Turned out Francine had tuberculosis.

She was quickly quarantined in Aunt Elsie’s apartment, since there were no children there and she could have her own quarters. We weren’t allowed to visit her at all, except for Daddy and Aunt Dottie, which compounded my depression. Tack Turner made three trips to Chicago in the coming months to see Francine, defying doctor’s orders to visit her room. And Francine, being so lonely and all, was uncommonly grateful.

Looking back, I do believe Francine’s greatest tribulation during that long health-bout was the aloneness, preceded only by the denial of cigarettes. She’d handled Nana’s switchings much more gracefully than the nearly yearlong, smoke-free lock-up.

I finished my junior year in high school. Daniel sent pictures of himself in cap and gown, that big ol’ grin of his stretching from ear to ear, warming me right down to my toes and drawing tears to my eyes. I hated so much missing his graduation. Finding a solitary moment in my room, I had a good old-fashioned crying spell. I felt deprived of Gladys’ prayers more than ever in that moment.

I wrote him a poem for his graduation gift, following a solitary walk in a nearby park:

EARLY MORNING WONDER
Each lovely joy encountered today
Each sweet sound heard along the way
Down the trail to sense the sight
Back again ‘neath gray sky bright.
Strange to me once again
Common ‘cause its always been
To see, to sense, to hold, to know
You are everywhere I go.
You really are heart of my heart
You really are a living part
Of what I am and am to be.
I am no longer I-but I am we.
How I love you
I do not know
It is just good
To love you so.
Sunny

I was on my own. I prayed as I hadn’t in years.

Lord, please get me home. Someway. I don’t care how. I’m so unhappy here. If you do, I’ll be ever so grateful. Amen.

~~~~~

Our father rarely mentioned Mama anymore. Looking back, I think we all methodically drove thoughts of her away, slowly but surely extinguishing her beauty from our lives, reprogramming ourselves to laugh and sing without her inspiration, denying that much of the luster and brilliance was gone.

That I could tune out hurts was a remarkable revelation to me, one that, more and more, I tapped into.

~~~~~

It happened so quickly, I still marvel. Aunt Elsie’s friend, Bethany, a nurse who’d so faithfully helped out with Francine’s care, suddenly moved to California. Panicked, Daddy sent Nana a telegram to come help out with Francine, knowing how alien such an uprooting gesture would be to her. Such was his desperation.

Courageously, Nana rode a bus, alone, to Chicago.

Nana lasted exactly two weeks.

“I’m a’going home. I don’t like this big city life,” she announced flatly to Daddy. Then coming to a decision, she squared her shoulders and declared, “and I’m taking the kids with me. I can nurse Francine there better’n I can here.” Actually, the doctor had upgraded Francine’s condition somewhat so that we could briefly visit her now. But she was on bed rest to regain her strength.

That was that. No sooner was it said than we were packed and Daddy was driving us to South Carolina. I couldn’t believe it. Even without Gladys’ backup, it was done.

My prayer was answered.
I was going home!