Promise, page 23
* * *
•••
At age fourteen, when Mama began to bleed, the Daughters of Divine Charity, who had raised her, hinted that it was time for her to return to her own people. The only blood that they could honor was the white blood of Jesus, the Son of God. Their own periods were distant in memory, as most of the women of this sect were well over sixty years old, and the Daughters of Divine Charity found themselves in private agreement: A colored girl’s blood was nothing but trouble. Once the bleeding began, they whispered, a Negro girl was liable to steal, fornicate, dance, and preen, to lie to their faces.
The very first time her period happened, Mama had been able to launder her own sheets, unnoticed. But the next month Sister Loretta discovered her in the washroom. It was the second time Mama had wakened, before dawn, and sensed the wetness leaking from her. In the dark, her fingertips sticky, she knew that she was no longer a child.
Sisters Loretta and Prudence also noticed that Jolene’s presence began to arouse the attention of those who came to worship. They noted the watery eyes of priests and monsignors. Deacons lingered as Jolene retreated from the sanctuary. The sisters watched Mama. They worried that they had no words for the things inside them that made them afraid of her dark skin, even as they claimed that she, too, was a daughter of God. This tension could not be prayed away, so they secretly blamed all of their fears on the ripe smell of her blood.
Given the good education Jolene Abbott had received in their midst, and her skills at scrubbing, praying, and playing the organ, they thought it’d be good for her to marry, attaching herself to a pastor and his parish. My mother spoke French and could read some German. She’d set tables for bishops and cardinals, whose heavy jeweled rings shone against the ornate knives they used to slice fine cuts of meat, even as God’s daughters sipped weak broth and chewed dry toast in the kitchen.
The Daughters of Divine Charity had treated Mama as a pet, training her against her own mind, her feelings, and her body. They plied her into kneeling positions whenever they could, threatened by her rapidly increasing height. When she grew as tall as she did, they found other ways to make my mother small. There was a quiet satisfaction in the burns on her hands and arms from cooking and baking in their sunny industrial-sized kitchen. Mute, useful, and gentle, Jolene Abbott, the Daughters decided, would be an ambassador for her race.
* * *
•••
One day, while dusting Mother Superior’s private office in the library, my mother found herself opening a metal cabinet that had always been forbidden to her. Mother Superior, who’d recently begun to be absentminded, had left the key in the lock instead of keeping it on the chain that she wore at her waist, which clanked with shining keys. In the cabinet there was an olive folder with a typed label: Jolene X. The file was as thin as a fingernail. The first sheet of paper was the official intake that contained information that the nuns had never concealed from her. In feminine handwriting, the words Jolene, Negro, Abandoned were written in large letters. But on the second sheet of paper was a postal code with the word Damascus printed inside parentheses. No number given. There were two names written in pencil: Ernestine and Ginny.
Mama’s eyes blurred upon the word Damascus. Why had the Daughters of Divine Charity kept this location from her for fourteen years? Quietly, she went back to work. Later, though, she’d look up the town and how to get there. When she was forced to kneel and to give confession each morning, my mother fought against the fits of rage that danced like holy tongues above her head. These women’s veils of order, of purpose, of sanctity, had concealed the world from her. Like medical tape, it’d been ripped away from her skin so quickly she was breathless.
As the sisters were trained to detect moral turbulence, they sensed my mother’s self-knowledge. They were irritated by the fury she could barely suppress. Because of their sincere affection for Mama, some of the younger sisters actually grieved what they knew would come next.
One evening during dinner, Sister Loretta inquired indirectly about Mama’s temperament, alluding to the weather of her heart.
“You had an address for me,” said Mama, without any pretense. She was finished with their vague dialogues concerning weather reports and the will of God. “I came from a real place.”
Their thin lips squeezed together to suck up the steaming soup without checking first to see if it would scald them. “We believed this would be a better home, dear.”
“Cooking and cleaning day and night for you?”
“Not us, dear,” said Sister Anne. “This is the Lord’s work that we do. We take our vows in the name of our Father.”
“But I’m not like you,” Mama said.
“Well, you were always colored. We’d always thought as much in terms of your future,” said Sister Maria, setting her spoon down with a frown. “We might as well be clear about it. You’ve received the kind of education and upbringing your people would’ve never been able to give you. When you were sent to us—abandoned by your own mother—we saw another vision, another way to continue our mission as servants of the Lord. We’ve given you what we could, given the vows we’ve taken. We gave you the life God could’ve given you had you been born differently. Had you been born with the choices we have.”
Mama heard what was not said but suggested. If she’d been born white rather than colored they could’ve offered her another life, perhaps a family who would’ve wanted her for their own. But being Negro meant nobody, including God, wanted her. The sisters had viewed themselves as her last resort.
“Jolene, you have a choice to make right now,” said Sister Loretta. Her usual melodious voice flattened. “You can choose to stay with us, share this sacred roof of simple living, and continue to work together, with us, to serve God. Or should you prefer to return to your own race, we’ll write letters on your behalf. We’ll help with your enrollment in a fine Negro women’s college somewhere in the south. We’ve sent girls like you to Tuskegee, Atlanta, Mississippi. It’s likely you’d qualify for a scholarship, dear.”
“Oh, a scholarship,” said another of the older sisters. “A scholarship is always nice.”
Sister Loretta cleared her throat. “The third choice is for us to take you back to the poor dust where you came from. Should that be your wish we won’t be able to help you anymore.”
“You’ll punish me for wanting to know who I am?”
“God is our home,” said Sister Loretta. “God’s will is how we live, where we live, and for His will we live. We do not live for the fruits of this world. We know there is another.”
“Damascus,” said Mama, her mouth filling with blood, as she tasted the word and its memory, “is only twenty miles away.”
“Heaven is much closer,” said another sister. They began smiling and nodding. “Heaven is much, much closer.”
* * *
•••
The Daughters of Divine Charity dropped Mama off at the post office.
Mr. Davis, who was sitting on a bench, raised his eyes from his newspaper to watch my mother, striking and long-legged, climb out of a modest station wagon filled with four white women. They drove off the moment the girl got her suitcase out of the trunk, as though they expected at any moment to be held at gunpoint or worse.
Amused, the old man slapped his knees with the paper and used his tongue to move the toothpick, which had been resting between the gap of his teeth since sunup, to the gummy corner of his mouth. He’d observed that one of the religious women buried her crumpled face in a white handkerchief as the young girl turned to wave farewell.
Mr. Davis said hello to Mama.
The only men who’d spoken to Mama for the last fourteen years of her life wore collars around their throats and spoke to her in voices coated in phlegm. Sure, sometimes a man spoke briefly to her at church, or some of the delivery boys asked her questions about repairs and groceries, but she’d never been alone in a man’s presence, much less a Negro man’s company.
“Good afternoon, how you doing, sister? You visiting people here?”
Mama nodded, wiping her face with her hand.
“You got a tongue in there? Ain’t no mind readers ’round here.”
“Sisters say that this is my home,” said Mama. “I was born here in Damascus, sir. I’m fourteen. I think I’m fourteen.”
“You tall for fourteen,” he said, smiling. “That’s good, that’s good. Tall woman is a strong woman.”
She found herself smiling as she gripped the handle of her valise.
“What they call you, gal?”
“Jolene, sir,” she said. “I’m Jolene Abbott, I think. Tried to look up my mother’s name in the phone directory before they brought me back. Her name is Ernestine or Ginny.”
He sat back, rearranging the aged jelly of his thighs, shaking his head. “Hm, well, it’s one Abbott here. She run off long ago then come back. Virginia. And if you call her that she’ll cuss you out. Goes by Ginny. Heard she did some time in Alabama before she called herself coming home. Live far out off Owl Mill. Been there a long time. Didn’t never hear nothing ’bout her having no chirren though.”
“Well, maybe I’m wrong about that woman,” she said, flushing at the thought that her mother was a criminal, or had been. “So my mother must be Ernestine, sir,” she said. “Ernestine Abbott.”
She took in how his face darkened.
“Can’t be,” he said. “You too pretty.”
“The sisters said that there were two names given—Ginny and Ernestine. I saw the paper myself. The sisters said one of them must be my mother.”
“What’s what they say got to do with it? They don’t care nothing ’bout you, quick as they drove off like that. Didn’t stop to see whether you had something to eat or a place to lay your head come sundown. Them nuns there going to tell you anything but the truth. But me? Shit, I already know what that is.”
“I have to find my mama.”
“I already know who that is too.”
“She’s alive?”
“You’re the baby that went missing when Ernestine stole Booby Pearson’s car. Nobody was looking for you, assumed that girl threw you in the river and kept on going to Chicago or wherever. But you wasn’t hers. You belong to Ginny Abbott. All I got to do is look at you to know.”
Mama stared down at the ground.
“Ginny a different woman since she came back,” he said. “More smoke than spark now, but she’s an original through and through.”
“Original what?”
“She’ll tell you,” said the man. Chuckling, he stood up and shook out a ring of keys from his pocket. Patting his belly, which dropped over the band of his crusty denim pants, he smiled again at her. “You had anything to eat, gal? Your height is fine but your width ain’t near where it ought to be. We going to get you a proper appetite.”
“I want to go home,” my mother said. “I’ve been gone fourteen years, sir. My mama’s missed me. I hope she’s missed me.”
“Well,” he said, “you ask her about that too. Everybody ’round here know that Ginny Abbott is a generous woman. Sings like an angel. Most of ’em that take off always come back just ’fore they ’bout to die. Surprised she came back sooner than that.
“Got herself a job over at the factory. Got herself some boyfriends, so I’ve been told. Got a side business—baking pies and selling ’em. Them pies of Ginny’s will cure just about anything that ails you—only woman ’round here who can really cook a meal the way we used to eat coming up. People stingy now when it comes to using real butter and will salt every goddamn thing ’til a tomato will taste like a steak and a plate of spaghetti might as well be a chocolate cake. These women too tired to think about they kitchens the way they used to. Hell, I don’t blame ’em a bit.
“She come back after prison and who knows where. If Ginny Abbott is your mama, you lucky. She’ll get all that nun mess up out of you. Ginny Abbott is a delicious woman and won’t nobody say I’m lying.
“Women like that got to protect who they is.”
22
Mr. Caesar, Mr. Warren, and my grandmother had driven off in that ugly van, taking Daddy away from us. It was like cutting off all the electricity in our house and asking us to figure out how to live by firelight.
As I’d watched my grandmother fussing while she bundled herself against the weather and the journey, I wondered if I’d ever see her again. Watching the way she’d treated Mama with such tenderness had moved me, and it was hard to think of her as an enemy. There was no doubt that my mother and grandmother needed each other. When she whispered to Mama, “I’ll be seeing you, baby,” I was reminded of the sad ballad on a Billie Holiday record Mama played all the time when I was a child. As Ginny said the words, Mama nodded her head before she threw her arms savagely around her mother’s body, squeezing her eyes shut, her lips parting as she mouthed, I love you, Mama.
After she made my mother eat something, Miss Irene mopped and wiped Daddy’s study, removing the candles and evidence of her incense and dried flowers. Checking our refrigerator again to be sure we had plenty of food should our appetites want it, she told Mama she had to take her children home. The little ones needed baths and their own beds. Miss Irene worried about Lindy, who continued to believe she was responsible for Daddy’s death and the loss of Mr. Caesar’s job. Her children would all have nightmares about the fire for a long time. And she wanted to be sure her own house was stocked against the menacing approach of the storm. She offered to have Ernest stay with us, but Mama smiled gratefully and waved the invitation away. “You’ll need Ernest with you and the kids, Irene,” she said. “Don’t worry. That deputy won’t be thinking about us. It’d be too much of a risk. Even for him.”
Nodding, Miss Irene hollered for the twins and Lindy to get into the car and handed the car keys to Ernest, who hugged each of us before he went outside to warm the engine. I pretended that I didn’t see him linger, whispering to my sister. I liked how he made her smile.
“He’s driving?”
“That boy’s seventeen,” said Miss Irene. “Seventeen going on seventy. I guess I shouldn’t complain. He’s hardworking. Always been like that. He’s got patience I don’t have, that’s for sure. Even when he was a baby, like he was waiting for me to figure out how to be a momma. Rarely cried or gave me extra work to do.”
Ezra nestled against Mama’s birdlike shoulder. Her eyes were swollen, her mouth raw. The way they’d driven Daddy away had taken all words from her.
“This is the last thing,” said Miss Irene in a low voice. She took out a small, gleaming pistol and set it down on the unsteady table where our father once piled his books and papers.
“Irene,” said Mama softly, their eyes meeting. “Oh, Irene, I—”
“Ezra knows how to shoot because I taught her.”
“Shoot what?” I said, feeling nervous.
“Long ago, my mama—Ginny—taught me too. It was one of the things I was happy to immediately forget when we left,” said Mama. “Used to be a lot of shooting back in Damascus. Probably still is. Mostly it was white folks shooting. But colored men shot for food, for defense of their property. When they had no choice and it was a matter of white folks going after their wives and children, they used their weapons for other reasons.”
“Well, my sister, let’s hope there won’t be no reasons tonight.” Miss Irene kissed Mama’s cheek and the tops of our heads. Her eyes swept over our scrubbed walls, which were traced by the light of flames. Then she and the Junkett children went off. The gnawing tires of their car made loud mashing noises as the wheels rolled across dense planes of snow.
* * *
•••
The evening fire burned hoarsely in our living room, which was very hot. I thought of our grandmother’s loose teeth and allowed myself a small grin. She wouldn’t have been able to complain about it being too cold, though it was clear that she was equipped to complain about just near anything.
Seated in my father’s frayed armchair, I attempted to fit the back of my aching head inside the shadowy shape of his skull, the proof that he was still with us. Yawning, Ezra was trying to stay awake. Exhausted, Mama’s body folded inside a light sleep at the other end of the shabby couch.
The quiet, save for the sputtering of our fireplace, gave me an uncomfortable feeling, as if I’d eaten too much food. Instead of letting myself drift in the warmth with my sister and mother, my thoughts sharpened as I tried to imagine how we could ever bear such evenings with no father. Questions exploded in my head, sparking from one to the next. When would Mama have surgery for her cancer? How much time did we have before she’d need to go to that hospital in Boston? Maybe Ez and I would stay with the Junkett family. Except that Mr. Caesar’s termination from Hobart meant it was likely that the Junkett family would move on, perhaps returning to Royal, which would please Miss Irene. I tried to imagine finishing my school year in a place like that. Daddy wanted my sister and me to go to college, but there’d be no way we could ever leave Mama alone, especially not here in Salt Point.
The sound of another pair of tires approaching pulled me out of my worry. Immediately, my eyes went to the pistol. It was as shiny and black as the enamel of Mama’s piano. Ezra was already standing with her head tilted in the direction of the car. Her body was tense. Placing her fingers over her lips to indicate that we shouldn’t disturb Mama, she lifted the pistol and pushed it deep inside her dress. We squeezed ourselves in the space next to the holiday tree so that we could see out to the far end of our road.
“Is that a hearse?”
“Hush! Don’t wake Mama,” said Ez, pulling me out of the living room. Opening the front door, we stood side by side in its frame.
“It looks like a hearse but it isn’t,” I said, squinting through veils of snow that twisted like sequined sheets around the porch. Our visibility was limited. “Is it Deputy Charlie?”
•••
At age fourteen, when Mama began to bleed, the Daughters of Divine Charity, who had raised her, hinted that it was time for her to return to her own people. The only blood that they could honor was the white blood of Jesus, the Son of God. Their own periods were distant in memory, as most of the women of this sect were well over sixty years old, and the Daughters of Divine Charity found themselves in private agreement: A colored girl’s blood was nothing but trouble. Once the bleeding began, they whispered, a Negro girl was liable to steal, fornicate, dance, and preen, to lie to their faces.
The very first time her period happened, Mama had been able to launder her own sheets, unnoticed. But the next month Sister Loretta discovered her in the washroom. It was the second time Mama had wakened, before dawn, and sensed the wetness leaking from her. In the dark, her fingertips sticky, she knew that she was no longer a child.
Sisters Loretta and Prudence also noticed that Jolene’s presence began to arouse the attention of those who came to worship. They noted the watery eyes of priests and monsignors. Deacons lingered as Jolene retreated from the sanctuary. The sisters watched Mama. They worried that they had no words for the things inside them that made them afraid of her dark skin, even as they claimed that she, too, was a daughter of God. This tension could not be prayed away, so they secretly blamed all of their fears on the ripe smell of her blood.
Given the good education Jolene Abbott had received in their midst, and her skills at scrubbing, praying, and playing the organ, they thought it’d be good for her to marry, attaching herself to a pastor and his parish. My mother spoke French and could read some German. She’d set tables for bishops and cardinals, whose heavy jeweled rings shone against the ornate knives they used to slice fine cuts of meat, even as God’s daughters sipped weak broth and chewed dry toast in the kitchen.
The Daughters of Divine Charity had treated Mama as a pet, training her against her own mind, her feelings, and her body. They plied her into kneeling positions whenever they could, threatened by her rapidly increasing height. When she grew as tall as she did, they found other ways to make my mother small. There was a quiet satisfaction in the burns on her hands and arms from cooking and baking in their sunny industrial-sized kitchen. Mute, useful, and gentle, Jolene Abbott, the Daughters decided, would be an ambassador for her race.
* * *
•••
One day, while dusting Mother Superior’s private office in the library, my mother found herself opening a metal cabinet that had always been forbidden to her. Mother Superior, who’d recently begun to be absentminded, had left the key in the lock instead of keeping it on the chain that she wore at her waist, which clanked with shining keys. In the cabinet there was an olive folder with a typed label: Jolene X. The file was as thin as a fingernail. The first sheet of paper was the official intake that contained information that the nuns had never concealed from her. In feminine handwriting, the words Jolene, Negro, Abandoned were written in large letters. But on the second sheet of paper was a postal code with the word Damascus printed inside parentheses. No number given. There were two names written in pencil: Ernestine and Ginny.
Mama’s eyes blurred upon the word Damascus. Why had the Daughters of Divine Charity kept this location from her for fourteen years? Quietly, she went back to work. Later, though, she’d look up the town and how to get there. When she was forced to kneel and to give confession each morning, my mother fought against the fits of rage that danced like holy tongues above her head. These women’s veils of order, of purpose, of sanctity, had concealed the world from her. Like medical tape, it’d been ripped away from her skin so quickly she was breathless.
As the sisters were trained to detect moral turbulence, they sensed my mother’s self-knowledge. They were irritated by the fury she could barely suppress. Because of their sincere affection for Mama, some of the younger sisters actually grieved what they knew would come next.
One evening during dinner, Sister Loretta inquired indirectly about Mama’s temperament, alluding to the weather of her heart.
“You had an address for me,” said Mama, without any pretense. She was finished with their vague dialogues concerning weather reports and the will of God. “I came from a real place.”
Their thin lips squeezed together to suck up the steaming soup without checking first to see if it would scald them. “We believed this would be a better home, dear.”
“Cooking and cleaning day and night for you?”
“Not us, dear,” said Sister Anne. “This is the Lord’s work that we do. We take our vows in the name of our Father.”
“But I’m not like you,” Mama said.
“Well, you were always colored. We’d always thought as much in terms of your future,” said Sister Maria, setting her spoon down with a frown. “We might as well be clear about it. You’ve received the kind of education and upbringing your people would’ve never been able to give you. When you were sent to us—abandoned by your own mother—we saw another vision, another way to continue our mission as servants of the Lord. We’ve given you what we could, given the vows we’ve taken. We gave you the life God could’ve given you had you been born differently. Had you been born with the choices we have.”
Mama heard what was not said but suggested. If she’d been born white rather than colored they could’ve offered her another life, perhaps a family who would’ve wanted her for their own. But being Negro meant nobody, including God, wanted her. The sisters had viewed themselves as her last resort.
“Jolene, you have a choice to make right now,” said Sister Loretta. Her usual melodious voice flattened. “You can choose to stay with us, share this sacred roof of simple living, and continue to work together, with us, to serve God. Or should you prefer to return to your own race, we’ll write letters on your behalf. We’ll help with your enrollment in a fine Negro women’s college somewhere in the south. We’ve sent girls like you to Tuskegee, Atlanta, Mississippi. It’s likely you’d qualify for a scholarship, dear.”
“Oh, a scholarship,” said another of the older sisters. “A scholarship is always nice.”
Sister Loretta cleared her throat. “The third choice is for us to take you back to the poor dust where you came from. Should that be your wish we won’t be able to help you anymore.”
“You’ll punish me for wanting to know who I am?”
“God is our home,” said Sister Loretta. “God’s will is how we live, where we live, and for His will we live. We do not live for the fruits of this world. We know there is another.”
“Damascus,” said Mama, her mouth filling with blood, as she tasted the word and its memory, “is only twenty miles away.”
“Heaven is much closer,” said another sister. They began smiling and nodding. “Heaven is much, much closer.”
* * *
•••
The Daughters of Divine Charity dropped Mama off at the post office.
Mr. Davis, who was sitting on a bench, raised his eyes from his newspaper to watch my mother, striking and long-legged, climb out of a modest station wagon filled with four white women. They drove off the moment the girl got her suitcase out of the trunk, as though they expected at any moment to be held at gunpoint or worse.
Amused, the old man slapped his knees with the paper and used his tongue to move the toothpick, which had been resting between the gap of his teeth since sunup, to the gummy corner of his mouth. He’d observed that one of the religious women buried her crumpled face in a white handkerchief as the young girl turned to wave farewell.
Mr. Davis said hello to Mama.
The only men who’d spoken to Mama for the last fourteen years of her life wore collars around their throats and spoke to her in voices coated in phlegm. Sure, sometimes a man spoke briefly to her at church, or some of the delivery boys asked her questions about repairs and groceries, but she’d never been alone in a man’s presence, much less a Negro man’s company.
“Good afternoon, how you doing, sister? You visiting people here?”
Mama nodded, wiping her face with her hand.
“You got a tongue in there? Ain’t no mind readers ’round here.”
“Sisters say that this is my home,” said Mama. “I was born here in Damascus, sir. I’m fourteen. I think I’m fourteen.”
“You tall for fourteen,” he said, smiling. “That’s good, that’s good. Tall woman is a strong woman.”
She found herself smiling as she gripped the handle of her valise.
“What they call you, gal?”
“Jolene, sir,” she said. “I’m Jolene Abbott, I think. Tried to look up my mother’s name in the phone directory before they brought me back. Her name is Ernestine or Ginny.”
He sat back, rearranging the aged jelly of his thighs, shaking his head. “Hm, well, it’s one Abbott here. She run off long ago then come back. Virginia. And if you call her that she’ll cuss you out. Goes by Ginny. Heard she did some time in Alabama before she called herself coming home. Live far out off Owl Mill. Been there a long time. Didn’t never hear nothing ’bout her having no chirren though.”
“Well, maybe I’m wrong about that woman,” she said, flushing at the thought that her mother was a criminal, or had been. “So my mother must be Ernestine, sir,” she said. “Ernestine Abbott.”
She took in how his face darkened.
“Can’t be,” he said. “You too pretty.”
“The sisters said that there were two names given—Ginny and Ernestine. I saw the paper myself. The sisters said one of them must be my mother.”
“What’s what they say got to do with it? They don’t care nothing ’bout you, quick as they drove off like that. Didn’t stop to see whether you had something to eat or a place to lay your head come sundown. Them nuns there going to tell you anything but the truth. But me? Shit, I already know what that is.”
“I have to find my mama.”
“I already know who that is too.”
“She’s alive?”
“You’re the baby that went missing when Ernestine stole Booby Pearson’s car. Nobody was looking for you, assumed that girl threw you in the river and kept on going to Chicago or wherever. But you wasn’t hers. You belong to Ginny Abbott. All I got to do is look at you to know.”
Mama stared down at the ground.
“Ginny a different woman since she came back,” he said. “More smoke than spark now, but she’s an original through and through.”
“Original what?”
“She’ll tell you,” said the man. Chuckling, he stood up and shook out a ring of keys from his pocket. Patting his belly, which dropped over the band of his crusty denim pants, he smiled again at her. “You had anything to eat, gal? Your height is fine but your width ain’t near where it ought to be. We going to get you a proper appetite.”
“I want to go home,” my mother said. “I’ve been gone fourteen years, sir. My mama’s missed me. I hope she’s missed me.”
“Well,” he said, “you ask her about that too. Everybody ’round here know that Ginny Abbott is a generous woman. Sings like an angel. Most of ’em that take off always come back just ’fore they ’bout to die. Surprised she came back sooner than that.
“Got herself a job over at the factory. Got herself some boyfriends, so I’ve been told. Got a side business—baking pies and selling ’em. Them pies of Ginny’s will cure just about anything that ails you—only woman ’round here who can really cook a meal the way we used to eat coming up. People stingy now when it comes to using real butter and will salt every goddamn thing ’til a tomato will taste like a steak and a plate of spaghetti might as well be a chocolate cake. These women too tired to think about they kitchens the way they used to. Hell, I don’t blame ’em a bit.
“She come back after prison and who knows where. If Ginny Abbott is your mama, you lucky. She’ll get all that nun mess up out of you. Ginny Abbott is a delicious woman and won’t nobody say I’m lying.
“Women like that got to protect who they is.”
22
Mr. Caesar, Mr. Warren, and my grandmother had driven off in that ugly van, taking Daddy away from us. It was like cutting off all the electricity in our house and asking us to figure out how to live by firelight.
As I’d watched my grandmother fussing while she bundled herself against the weather and the journey, I wondered if I’d ever see her again. Watching the way she’d treated Mama with such tenderness had moved me, and it was hard to think of her as an enemy. There was no doubt that my mother and grandmother needed each other. When she whispered to Mama, “I’ll be seeing you, baby,” I was reminded of the sad ballad on a Billie Holiday record Mama played all the time when I was a child. As Ginny said the words, Mama nodded her head before she threw her arms savagely around her mother’s body, squeezing her eyes shut, her lips parting as she mouthed, I love you, Mama.
After she made my mother eat something, Miss Irene mopped and wiped Daddy’s study, removing the candles and evidence of her incense and dried flowers. Checking our refrigerator again to be sure we had plenty of food should our appetites want it, she told Mama she had to take her children home. The little ones needed baths and their own beds. Miss Irene worried about Lindy, who continued to believe she was responsible for Daddy’s death and the loss of Mr. Caesar’s job. Her children would all have nightmares about the fire for a long time. And she wanted to be sure her own house was stocked against the menacing approach of the storm. She offered to have Ernest stay with us, but Mama smiled gratefully and waved the invitation away. “You’ll need Ernest with you and the kids, Irene,” she said. “Don’t worry. That deputy won’t be thinking about us. It’d be too much of a risk. Even for him.”
Nodding, Miss Irene hollered for the twins and Lindy to get into the car and handed the car keys to Ernest, who hugged each of us before he went outside to warm the engine. I pretended that I didn’t see him linger, whispering to my sister. I liked how he made her smile.
“He’s driving?”
“That boy’s seventeen,” said Miss Irene. “Seventeen going on seventy. I guess I shouldn’t complain. He’s hardworking. Always been like that. He’s got patience I don’t have, that’s for sure. Even when he was a baby, like he was waiting for me to figure out how to be a momma. Rarely cried or gave me extra work to do.”
Ezra nestled against Mama’s birdlike shoulder. Her eyes were swollen, her mouth raw. The way they’d driven Daddy away had taken all words from her.
“This is the last thing,” said Miss Irene in a low voice. She took out a small, gleaming pistol and set it down on the unsteady table where our father once piled his books and papers.
“Irene,” said Mama softly, their eyes meeting. “Oh, Irene, I—”
“Ezra knows how to shoot because I taught her.”
“Shoot what?” I said, feeling nervous.
“Long ago, my mama—Ginny—taught me too. It was one of the things I was happy to immediately forget when we left,” said Mama. “Used to be a lot of shooting back in Damascus. Probably still is. Mostly it was white folks shooting. But colored men shot for food, for defense of their property. When they had no choice and it was a matter of white folks going after their wives and children, they used their weapons for other reasons.”
“Well, my sister, let’s hope there won’t be no reasons tonight.” Miss Irene kissed Mama’s cheek and the tops of our heads. Her eyes swept over our scrubbed walls, which were traced by the light of flames. Then she and the Junkett children went off. The gnawing tires of their car made loud mashing noises as the wheels rolled across dense planes of snow.
* * *
•••
The evening fire burned hoarsely in our living room, which was very hot. I thought of our grandmother’s loose teeth and allowed myself a small grin. She wouldn’t have been able to complain about it being too cold, though it was clear that she was equipped to complain about just near anything.
Seated in my father’s frayed armchair, I attempted to fit the back of my aching head inside the shadowy shape of his skull, the proof that he was still with us. Yawning, Ezra was trying to stay awake. Exhausted, Mama’s body folded inside a light sleep at the other end of the shabby couch.
The quiet, save for the sputtering of our fireplace, gave me an uncomfortable feeling, as if I’d eaten too much food. Instead of letting myself drift in the warmth with my sister and mother, my thoughts sharpened as I tried to imagine how we could ever bear such evenings with no father. Questions exploded in my head, sparking from one to the next. When would Mama have surgery for her cancer? How much time did we have before she’d need to go to that hospital in Boston? Maybe Ez and I would stay with the Junkett family. Except that Mr. Caesar’s termination from Hobart meant it was likely that the Junkett family would move on, perhaps returning to Royal, which would please Miss Irene. I tried to imagine finishing my school year in a place like that. Daddy wanted my sister and me to go to college, but there’d be no way we could ever leave Mama alone, especially not here in Salt Point.
The sound of another pair of tires approaching pulled me out of my worry. Immediately, my eyes went to the pistol. It was as shiny and black as the enamel of Mama’s piano. Ezra was already standing with her head tilted in the direction of the car. Her body was tense. Placing her fingers over her lips to indicate that we shouldn’t disturb Mama, she lifted the pistol and pushed it deep inside her dress. We squeezed ourselves in the space next to the holiday tree so that we could see out to the far end of our road.
“Is that a hearse?”
“Hush! Don’t wake Mama,” said Ez, pulling me out of the living room. Opening the front door, we stood side by side in its frame.
“It looks like a hearse but it isn’t,” I said, squinting through veils of snow that twisted like sequined sheets around the porch. Our visibility was limited. “Is it Deputy Charlie?”
