Six
The Storm
By the spring of 1965, we were in a state of equilibrium. We were finished having babies. The girls were all healthy, all in school, and doing well—normal, sweet, and ornery as any children. No longer the main reason we needed help, they now worked in the garden and stables. Business was good. A new corral extended out from the stable and we were thinking of adding a second stable. With the new highways complete on two sides of our land, the farm was worth more than we’d ever dreamed possible.
On the morning of Saturday, April 10, 1965, I woke and sat up on the edge of the bed. Everything shifted sideways. But nothing in the dim bedroom had moved. Silently, I checked myself and stood up. The world seemed normal again. Just some odd quirk of the body, an unexplained dizziness that passes over and is gone. Momma would have said a possum had walked over my grave.
The girls woke and we all began our morning routines. Gracie brought in the milk while I started breakfast. Rosie fed the chickens and collected the eggs. Sarah disappeared into the barn to play with the latest stray cat. Jennie and Lil revved up for their normal morning debate. They were arguing about Mister Ed, the TV show with the talking horse.
“I know how they get Mr. Ed to do that!” Jennie shouted. Then she appeared at my side. “Lil’s not listening again,” she fished for my support. She was still in her nightgown. Her bright hair tangled around her shoulders.
“Get dressed. Brush your hair. Brush your teeth.”
She marched away, down the hall toward their bedroom.
“Your sister, too. Breakfast in twenty minutes,” I shouted after her. “And no experimenting on the horses!”
While my hands were in the biscuit dough, Adam kissed me and ran his hands along my sides. He poured himself a cup of coffee, refilled my cup, and set it down next to me. A bar of morning light crossed his cheek. His lips met the rim of the cup. He leaned back against the kitchen counter and talked. The near field needed disking for the alfalfa this week.
I listened to the grain and lift of his voice. How, inside those words about the tractor, were the same familiar sounds, the breath of everything he had ever said to me, every groan, song, and whisper.
Outside the kitchen window, the sun shone in a brilliant slant. The field waited to be turned. The fresh impatience of the morning breeze blended with the kitchen’s odors of bacon and biscuits as I opened the window over the sink. Adam, the girls, and I were at the table passing around the last of the scrambled eggs when my cousin Frank arrived to help with the tractor.
I didn’t like Frank any better now than I had during the brief time he’d been my housemate, but I’d gotten used to him showing up a couple of times a year and disappearing with Adam to work on the truck or the pump. He was a good mechanic. Whiskey and years as a civilian had worn his edge down to the common, guarded bitterness of a middle-aged man who thinks life has not offered him what he deserves. He’d never married, though he was seldom without a woman at his side on a Saturday night. Some men envied him. During the week, he worked at the mill as a mechanic. On weekends, he drank hard.
A flask bulged in his back pocket when he stretched across the table for the syrup, but I didn’t smell anything on his breath.
I didn’t want him working on any motors if he was drinking. As I set a fresh plate of scrambled eggs in front of him, I took a sniff to assure myself that he was sober.
He and Adam finished off the rest of the breakfast, then headed outside to the tractor. Rosie and I set up the two rinse tubs next to the wringer washer on the back porch. She no longer needed a stool to stand on as she swung the heavy wringer head over the rinse tubs.
As we gathered the dirty clothes, the tractor motor sporadically caught then faltered into silences punctuated by Frank’s cursing. Every time he worked on someone’s car, a child acquired a more colorful vocabulary. For once, I was grateful for the noisy, rhythmic chugging of the old wringer washer.
The tractor sputtered and choked through the first load of washing. After a particularly long silence, Adam marched up to the back door. He held up a tattered length of hose. “We need a new one. I’ll be back in a few minutes. Anything you need in town?” he called through the screen door.
“We’re fine. Go on,” I said.
Adam washed his hands at the spigot outside, then drove away in the truck. Frank paced in front of the open barn doors and sucked on his cigarettes. A strong breeze whipped the jeans and shirts on the line.
As I finished hanging up the first load, Adam returned, new hose in hand. Soon the motor came to a steady low rhythm and held. The men’s whoops of congratulations followed. I hauled a basket of wet bed linens out to the line as Adam and Frank attached the disker to the tractor. Frank climbed up and drove to the edge of the field. He turned in the seat and gave Adam a thumbs-up. Adam began picking up the tools scattered on the ground and returning them to the barn.
Then the tractor quieted to an idle. I pushed aside the pillowcase I’d just hung up.
Jennie stood at the edge of the path, shading her eyes as she looked up at Frank. She wore a light blue dress that had been worn down to softness by Gracie and Rosie. She looked tall and thin and faraway. Frank nodded and seemed to be speaking to her. She shook her head, pointing back toward the house. Then he rolled slowly away toward the field, the disker bobbing above the ground behind the broad tires.
I went back to hanging up our bedclothes and underwear.
I’d thrown the last sheet over the line and was smoothing it out when the tractor stopped again. I lifted a damp corner and peered. The tractor stood vacant in the field, the disker turned at an odd angle, one side higher than the other. Half the round blades jutted up. Frank had only gotten as far as the turn at the end of the first row.
He stood behind the disks, looking down as if he had dropped something in the darker streak of freshly turned earth. I thought of the flask in his pocket and the time he’d been alone in the barn. I opened my mouth to let Adam know Frank needed help. But all I got out of my mouth was “Adam.” Something blue lay on the ground in front of Frank. Jennie’s dress.
I ran.
Adam dashed past me. Shoving Frank out of the way, he fell to his knees at Jennie’s side. Beyond him, two of the tilted disks gleamed red.
A broad, bright sash of blood surged across Jennie’s waist toward her hip. A furrow of dirt dented her dress hem. A gash gaped at each ankle.
She blinked calmly up at the sky, freckles bright against her pallor. Her hair the same red as the dirt under her. “I can’t get up.”
Blood bubbled at the slice in her waist. Adam slid his hands under her, lifting. She coughed and smiled up at us. A thin line of blood ran from the corner of her mouth to her jaw and down her neck.
We ran past Frank, sprawled where Adam had knocked him, a dumb animal look of incomprehension on his face, the whiskey flask empty beside him.
Adam ran to the truck, clutching Jennie. I sprinted inside for the keys. Her head slumped against her shoulder as he laid her on the truck seat. The blood sash had expanded to a full skirt. The hem dripped. Adam dashed around the front of the truck and climbed in. With my back pressed against the dashboard, I knelt on the edge of the seat facing Jennie, as he revved the engine.
The steering wheel slipped in his bloody hands. He cursed and tried to dry them on his blood-soaked shirt. Jennie’s pallor deepened. Her eyes opened, distant. The artery at her neck pulsed faintly, then flattened.
Nothing.
I touched her neck, then gripped Adam’s leg. He stopped. We were still at the top of the drive. All we had done was back the truck up and turn it around.
Without looking at her, he stretched one hand out and laid it on her chest. Then his head fell forward onto the steering wheel. We broke. Silence ripped into screams. Adam heaved against the steering wheel. Light filled the closed truck cab, blood filled the air. Her lips were white and motionless.
The four girls stared in through the driver’s-side window. Their faces came apart in recognition. I heard heavy footsteps, and Frank peered in my window.
Adam roared.
He leapt out of the truck. In one motion, he grabbed Frank by the throat and threw him. Frank bounced against the stable wall. Adam yanked him up again by his throat, Jennie’s blood on both of them now. Frank’s feet dangled inches from the ground. Purple-faced, he clawed at Adam’s hands.
“Daddy!” Sarah rushed Adam.
Adam’s shoulders crumpled and he let go. Frank scrambled toward the driveway and ran as Adam sunk to his knees.
Lil stood at the open door of the truck, staring at Jennie, her face equally white. I took her head in my hands and forced her to look away. She turned to me, open-mouthed with horror. I pressed her against my chest. I could not save her from what she saw.
Chaos enveloped the silence at the center of that day. Momma and Daddy arrived as the coroner drove up. Someone—I never found out who—moved the tractor, covered the blood, and cleaned the truck.
The girls vacillated between inconsolable silence and bursts of weeping. Adam stared at the floor, looking up only when one of the girls approached him. Then, he held them, his face vacant. Through my tears, his features had that same not-quite-held-together look that the girls all had when they were born.
That night, Sarah and Lil were already in the bed with me and Adam when we heard crying. “Is that Gracie or Rose?” Adam asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
He left the bed and came back with both of them. We slept, the six of us in a dense tangle, as if in the crowding we would not miss the one who was gone.
I woke more than once in the middle of that night, rising to the surface of consciousness and then falling back into oblivion. Near dawn, I surfaced a final time, forgetting for a moment and basking in the familiarity of the touch and smell of my family. Legs, elbows, breath, and hair. I reached down and touched someone’s leg. Warm, youthfully smooth skin. One of the girls sighed and shifted. One by one we all moved, each reacting and adjusting to the others in a ripple across the bed.
Then I woke fully and remembered why we were all there. The questions crushed into my chest: Why hadn’t I called her away from the tractor? Why had I turned back to the sheets? To the meaningless push of cloth over a wire line?
Everything broke up into pieces. The days after Jennie died were a series of faces; among them, Adam’s face always dead-still and faraway or completely naked and mobile in his cries. I’d never, and have never since, seen a man weep so. It wrenched me, and all who saw him. Most men looked away or offered him whiskey. A few bear-hugged him as if to squeeze out his grief. The women touched him, offering him food and handkerchiefs. To me, his skin was hot, searing.
And the girls, their faces wide-eyed, were stricken with sorrow one minute, then lapsing into their ordinary expressions the next. Lil, particularly, seemed lost. I could not protect them, could not soften or mitigate anything. I could only hold them close.
Every time I sat down, Sarah, who was only six years old and otherwise seemed to be enjoying the attention and commotion, crawled into my lap and silently sucked her thumb, something she had not done since she was a toddler. Momma seemed to be everywhere. She answered the phone. She laid out the bowls of food brought in by neighbors.
I pressed my jaw firmly shut and did not scream or vomit. I touched my daughters and my husband when they were near.
The field waited for the alfalfa seed. The horses leaned out the open stable windows and watched with curiosity as the yard filled with cars and the house filled with the faces of Clarion.
For two days before the funeral, everyone we knew passed through our home. The faces of mothers and fathers who had lost children were the hardest and the easiest to look into.
When people gather after a death, they usually discuss the dead—youthful adventures, funny stories, the arc of an illness or a life. They may recall similar deaths. It is a macabre yet humane thing to do. We keep ourselves from drowning by offering each other small cups of water.
None of the regular condolences applied. No one could say that it was a blessing, that her pain or suffering had ended. No one could say she’d had a long, good life and it was just her time. Many did credit the Lord’s will. Adam flinched every time he heard that.
The second night, I stood in front of the open refrigerator, mindless before the gleaming bowls of food wrapped in shiny aluminum foil, the butter dish in my hand. Momma took it out of my hands and wedged it into a bottom shelf.
“Momma, why do we do the things we do? Why? I could have called her when I saw her near the field. I know Frank drinks.”
“It’s not your fault, Evelyn. Everyone has Frank fixing their cars and everyone knows he drinks. He’s dented up cars, but never anything like this. No one could have foreseen this.”
“But I did see, Momma. I saw her go over and speak to Frank. I was right there. I thought she was safe. What was he thinking trying to give her a ride on the tractor? I went back to the laundry. If I had just . . .”
Momma shook me by the shoulders and made me look at her. “Evelyn, you cannot think that again. Your girls have been near the tractor, the disk, and Frank before and nothing ever happened. But sometimes terrible things occur. The Lord has mysterious ways we can’t understand.”
I looked away and, shaking my head, wept.
The night before the funeral, Momma stayed at the house after everyone left. She’d tucked the girls in and had, I thought, turned in for the night. But when I returned from my bath, I found her in our bedroom, kneeling in front of Adam, who sat on the edge of the bed, his elbows on his knees. She held his face in her hands, directing his gaze at her, just as Granny Paynes had held mine when I gave birth.
“We may not understand how this could be, but it did happen. It was the Lord’s will and we have to accept it.”
“You can have the will of your Lord then,” he growled.
She let her hands fall from his face. “You have four other daughters. They will need you. Bitterness will do them no good. Frank Roe is a stupid, indecent man who drinks too much.”
“I don’t want Frank at the funeral. I don’t want to see him, ever again.” His voice fell ragged and soft.
“Ever, I can’t take care of. But the funeral I can. He will not be there and none will begrudge you.”
As we drove to the church, past the familiar homes and hills, the sky hung high and clear above us. The spring-bright fields and woods seemed to mock us with their greenery. I remembered being a child under such fresh canopy, alone in the woods. I longed to be there again, feral, unaware of my solitude, untouched by grief.
We walked into the church for the funeral service, down the aisle of faces turned toward us. Hands touched us. Comforting whispers broke around us. Hours, it seemed, we sat on that hard pew with Jennie laid out in front of us. Stands of flowers were propped up on either side of the pulpit and her coffin. The odor of chrysanthemums thickened the air.
Only numbness kept me from screaming. Sorrow and confusion came off the girls like smoke, their innocence burning away. Beside me, Adam, with Sarah curled almost fetal in his lap, vibrated. I kept my hand on his leg, not to comfort him but to press down what I felt rising in him, something sharp and dense. I pressed harder and harder till finally he reached under Sarah and took my hand in his. We will make it through this day, I thought.
At last, the service ended, Reverend Paul finished up, and we stood for a final hymn. My throat closed on the notes. Beside me, Adam stood with Sarah in his arms, his lips pressed shut.
Our friends and neighbors lined up to pay their final respects. The immediate family would be last. As Momma passed by us, she reached over Sarah’s head to touch my arm. For a second, I met her eyes. My family began to file slowly past the coffin. Momma paused and laid her hand over Jennie’s until Daddy whispered, “Come on, Lily Mae,” and steered her away. Adam, the girls, and I stepped up to the coffin.
Jennie looked the same—the same perfect child she had been alive, but so still. Completely still.
The girls clutched at me and Adam. The rest of the congregation filled the aisles. Stragglers spread out in the pews behind us. I heard the low mutter of voices, the shuffle of shoes on wood floorboards.
Wordless, beside me, Lil stared down at her sister. I took a last, wrenching glance at Jennie and pulled Adam and the girls toward the door. In the press of the girls around me, I felt Adam let go of my hand. The warmth of him gone.
He turned back to the coffin. His lips parted. I heard that familiar deep sigh and felt the vibration of him, faint and tender, wash toward me. No one else seemed to notice, but the girls exchanged looks.
Adam’s suit jacket tightened across his back. He gripped the coffin’s edge. The timbre of his voice flattened abruptly into a mournful resonance. Spreading, filling the room.
My throat clenched. Anchored by the girls, I could not move fast enough.
“No, Adam. No!” I shouted.
A loud, plosive sob burst from him. For a heartbeat, the church fell silent. Then, as everyone moved again, leaving Adam to mourn, he took a deep, shuddering breath.
His voice slashed through the church, all sweetness gone. A new, searing wail. Jagged and dark. A blade. Through wood and bone it cut. Then it held steady, a vise of static and pain crushing my head and chest.
The girls froze beside me. The hairs on my neck and arms stood up. I pressed my hands to Sarah’s ears.
Momma squinted over her shoulder, one hand out, shielding herself, the other over her heart. Daddy drew his shoulders up. His step faltered. Glaring at Adam’s back, a man wrapped a protective arm around a child who huddled against him. Beyond them, a woman bent, hugging her swollen, pregnant belly, stepped between two pews, and retched. A baby sobbed, red-faced, its cries drowned by Adam’s.
Adam reached into the coffin. The instant his hand touched her, a second, harsh wave lashed the room. The floorboards vibrated under my feet.
The coffin trembled.
Sarah peeled my hands from her ears. The girls dashed to Adam, hugging his waist and legs. Immediately, his cry softened, shifting higher in tone. It rose higher still, and then, like a hand lifting from us, vanished. The pain in my chest and head released. The air suddenly vacant, benign.
Gasping coughs filled the church. Dismay rippled through the remaining congregation. A single rush of footsteps, a door shut. Through the open windows, I heard the sound of someone gagging.
Adam’s hands relaxed. He turned to the girls, touching their heads. His shoulders slumped. He stared, sightless, as the girls took his hands and led him from the coffin.
I slipped my arm through his and shepherded the girls ahead of us. Everyone, even Momma and Daddy, stepped back. No one offered condolences. No one touched us as we passed. A baby cried, full-throated. Someone moaned. Fear and anger were palpable. Odors of sweat and vomit leached through the air.
My skin scorched. Sarah reached back and took my hand. Gracie glanced back over her shoulder at me and her father, her chin quivering. I nodded for her to continue. Rosie looked straight ahead and never hesitated. Lil fumbled for her hand. Adam was solid, inert. The eyes of everyone I knew were on us.
I understood, then. This was more than the end of Jennie’s life.
The graveside service was brief and very quiet. Few came with us. I didn’t look at any faces other than my daughters’. Words were said, but I did not hear them. Numbly, we witnessed Jennie’s coffin being lowered into the ground.
At the farm afterward, Mildred and the other churchwomen who’d left the service early to help with the meal, welcomed us somberly. They’d spread the dining table with bowls and trays of food that people had brought by earlier. The chairs had been pulled away from the table so everyone could serve themselves buffet-style. The smell of ham, sweat, and pies filled the room, which felt too quiet.
Adam sat down in a chair against the wall, his face empty, his hands hanging mute in his lap. The girls gathered around him. Gracie and Rosie seemed to be standing guard, on either side of his chair. Gracie with one hand on his back as she gazed blankly at the floor. Rosie’s eyes darted around the room. Lil and Sarah bunched up between his knees. Adam patted Lil’s head and stroked her long curls as he stared out the window. Her slender hands traced the buttons on his shirt. Sarah bumped against Adam’s thigh and stared vacantly at the food-laden table as she sucked her thumb.
I stood stupefied in the middle of the room, paralyzed until Sarah took her thumb out of her mouth and waved to me as if I was far away. When I took the few steps that brought me to her side, she patted my hip and fingered the cloth of my skirt.
Reverend Paul, Momma, Daddy, Joe, Bertie, and Rita stood awkwardly on the far side of the dining room, as if huddled against some contagion, breaking apart only to make way for the bustling churchwomen. One of the women dropped a ladle. Rita startled and gasped, covering her mouth. Her head swiveled in Adam’s direction. Bertie patted her on the back and whispered something to Momma. I understood then that Momma was responsible for all of them being there.
Joe pulled me into the kitchen. “Bud took his momma home. Mary wasn’t feeling up to . . .” he whispered. His eyes shifted to Adam, then back to me.
“It’s okay, Joe. I understand.” I forced my voice to a normal volume. I had no idea what to say or how to hold my face.
Cole trudged into the kitchen from the back porch, holding a huge platter with a whole turkey. His wife, Eloise, close behind with their little daughter, Tina. Their two boys stood patiently, each holding folded metal chairs. Their eldest son, a little younger than Gracie, gave me his normal, self-conscious nod.
Eloise took the turkey platter from Cole and wedged it onto the table. Cole hugged me. “I am so sorry for your loss, Evelyn.” I bit my lip and nodded, grateful for the simple words and natural embrace. Without hesitation, Cole stepped into the moat of silence surrounding Adam and wordlessly patted his shoulder. Then I realized that Cole and his family must have left the service early, to pick up the food and chairs. I ignored the question on his face as he looked around the nearly empty room. Eloise gave all her attention to carving the turkey. A current of envy went through me. She had a normal husband, an ordinary life.
Momma waved to the boys. “Thank you for the turkey and the folding chairs.” She turned to the boys. “Y’all take those back outside. We’ll bring them in as we need them.”
For a moment, the clatter of the chairs being stacked on the porch covered the silence inside the house. The churchwomen hovered nearby, rearranging the food, their voices dropping to puzzled murmurs as it became clear no other people were coming.
As if on cue, the three younger girls slipped single-file around the islands of adults and disappeared down the hall without a whisper, little blond Tina in the lead, pulling Lil and Sarah behind her. Gracie followed them with her eyes, but did not move. Rosie raised her chin up as if against a strong wind.
The screen door bumped gently behind me and Freddie walked in. I was nearly faint with gratitude to see his face. A normally aloof man, he let me hug him. I hoped to see Marge with him. Or at least one of the gang from the Sunday picking parties. But no one followed him in.
“Reverend?” Momma said.
The room went still. Every head but Adam’s bowed.
The reverend, his arms raised stiffly, asked for the blessing and forbearance of God. Then the eating began.
Everyone collected their food from the side of the table opposite Adam. Everyone, even Momma and Daddy, ate standing, holding their plates, talking in strained whispers.
Gracie filled a plate for Adam. He took it, but did not eat. After a few moments, he leaned over and set the untouched plate back on the table. He did not look up, not even when Freddie walked up to him.
“Buddy. I’m sorry,” Freddie said.
All other conversation in the room ceased. Rita grimaced and scurried out of the room, her heels thumping on the wood floor. Adam turned a blank and brittle face up to Freddie. I fought the impulse to flinch.
Freddie acknowledged Adam’s silence with a nod.
Rosie put her hand on Adam’s shoulder. “Thanks for coming by, Freddie.”
The low murmur of conversation continued around us. Everyone ate and quickly left. With each departure, I felt heavier, as if gravity pulled stronger, as there were fewer of us left in the house.
Soon, only Momma remained. Daddy had taken her big casserole dish out to the truck and stayed there, smoking. The stunned smile affixed to Momma’s face since the funeral had vanished. She turned around in my empty kitchen, a puzzled, fearful expression on her face, a dishrag limp in her hand.
“It’s okay, Momma. You can . . .” The word “go” cracked in my throat. I covered my mouth against what I wanted to say: “Please stay and help me.” I froze, frantic to have her stay and wanting her to leave as quickly as possible.
Her glance bounced around the room, and she pressed her lips together in a shallow, tight smile. She nodded, then left.
I listened to their truck pull away. Immediately, I wanted the girls and Adam. I spun around, suddenly aware that I didn’t know where they were. I ran from room to room. Panic flushed through me and I sprinted through the house again, convinced suddenly that death had taken not one but all of them. I ran to the front porch, calling their names. Nothing. Then the back porch. A flash of white among the woods that flanked the fields caught my eye.
Beyond the apple tree and the twins’ playhouse, in a small clearing of the trees, Adam squatted, his back to me. The girls, quietly pressed around him, did not see me.
I passed the spot where I’d first found Adam and stopped several yards from them. To my right, the field lay still unturned. I felt, then heard, his voice radiate. Loving, sad, and exquisite. Adam extended his arm and touched his fingertips to the middle of Gracie’s chest. Her eyes glistened and grew wide. A tremulous smile crossed her lips.
Adam’s voice swelled, ascending, hot, sharp, sorrowful.
“Adam!” I cried.
They turned as one. Alarmed, confused.
I remembered the shocked faces in the church, the frightened faces at the graveside. “Don’t . . .” I choked. “They’re too . . .”
Adam’s hand fell away from Gracie. He looked down.
A shudder of puzzled shame crossed Gracie’s features as her eyes met mine.
“Just sing, girls! Please, just sing,” I pleaded. “Open your mouths and sing. Like everybody else does.”
Gracie glanced at her father, then back to me. She blinked and cut her eyes quickly again toward Adam, who glowered darkly at me.
She stepped forward. I reached for her, but she did not come into my arms. She opened her mouth and sang, “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are gray . . .” Jennie’s bedtime song. Her voice quavered, then held fast.
Adam strode past me.
I opened my arms and the girls came to me. Sarah cried. Lil bunched silently against me.
Rosie’s voice rose hysterically. “Momma?”
Gracie wiped a tear from my chin. I pulled them in and hugged them. “Just sing, girls. Only singing. Regular singing.” I picked up Sarah and took Rosie’s hand.
“Gracie, bring Lil.”
Unhinged and transparent, I struggled to keep my voice even as I led them up to the porch and handed Sarah to Gracie. “You all go inside. I’m going to talk to Daddy. We’ll be there in a minute. Everything’s okay, girls.”
I found Adam standing in the middle of the stable. The horses huffed, restless in their stalls. His face hardened. His hand shot up in protest, to stop me. “They are the only ones who might be able to . . .” He faltered. “They are the only other ones, Evelyn.”
A dark, violent sorrow for his solitude clenched my chest. I sucked in a deep breath and forced myself to continue. “I know, Adam. But not now. They’re children. How will they handle it? You didn’t see the faces of everyone in the church—they were scared of you.”
He squinted at me.
“People were vomiting. Babies screaming . . .” I stuttered. “It hurt.” I didn’t mention the odd shame I’d just seen in Gracie’s eyes.
His face crumpled. “No,” he whispered and shook his head slowly. “No! If I had only been there. I stopped to put the tools away. I was putting tools away while . . .”
I pressed my hand over his mouth.
He let me hold him. But he was alone within my arms, his skin hot, his sweat sour. “Hush, Adam. Hush. I saw her too, by the tractor, talking to Frank, and I went back to the laundry . . .”
His eyes sought mine and held them for a long moment.
“Hush,” he said. “She is gone.”
He slept that night for fourteen hours straight. I sat up with the girls, the four of them packed into the bed Jennie and Lily had shared. We talked about everything except Jennie and what had happened after the funeral. I longed to protect them from what I’d seen on everyone’s faces. And, yes, from their father’s searing voice, the same voice I cherished so intimately. How much of A. was in them? They were normal girls. How much could that change?
I was alone in my questions.
Finally, when I could hear their four steady breaths, I turned off the lamp and left.
I stood in the dark dining room for a long time, listening to the new silence of my home. I thought of the street where I grew up, of Clarion, of the people I’d known all my life. Their voices, names, and faces so familiar to me, suddenly seemed alien. The town now knew that my husband was a stranger.
I crawled into bed with Adam, spooning up behind him and wrapping my arms around him. Gutted and skinned, I lay there in the pool of Jennie’s absence and tried to hear what was coming.
All night, I dreamed of Jennie’s eyes, so like Lil’s and Momma’s, receding under ice-blue water. The mingled vibrato of all the girls engulfed me. I was helpless and drowning. Out of my element.
After that night, Gracie and Rosie came to Lil and Sarah’s room at bedtime. They sang the good-night songs that Adam no longer sang to them. When I heard them sing, I was haunted by the bargain I seemed to have made with them, by the voices they might have used.
Adam never spoke of it to me again.
To this day, I question my judgment. I regret my fear. I regret my silence.
The Sunday after the funeral, Adam appeared early in the morning at the bedroom door, smelling of horses and hay, his face sallow and motionless. I hooked my garter belt to my stockings, smoothed my slip down, and took a deep breath. He made no move to get ready for church, just shook his head. Then he turned and left.
The small wave of relief I felt shamed me. I put my hand back under my slip to unfasten the garters and begin undressing. He was right. How could we do this? We were staggering, fresh amputees.
Then I stopped myself. I could not acquiesce to the fear and anger I had seen at the funeral.
I heard the girls rustling down the hall. “Hurry, girls!” I called to them. “Or we’ll be late.”
Sarah, who, like her father, had never cared if any of her clothes matched, wept when she could not find two pink socks. She stood in the hall, screaming and waving a single sock. Before I could get there, Gracie and Rosie ran to her. The three of them rummaged in her bureau drawers and pulled out socks until they found two that matched.
Moments later, I discovered Lil standing next to the closet she and Jennie had shared. She tugged her blue Sunday dress down over her belly. It bunched oddly at the sleeves and in the back. The collar of one of Jennie’s favorite dresses, a purple-and-white cotton, peeked out at the neck. Lil spun quickly to face me. “I can do it. I’ll get it,” she said. She reached back, elbows high, and kept her eyes on me while she finished buttoning her dress. Once buttoned up, she quickly straightened the two collars, tucking the collar of Jennie’s dress neatly under her own. Then she turned around for me to brush her hair.
“You look pretty in that dress, Lil.”
She did not smile. In the mirror, she watched me pull her bright tumble of hair up into an orderly ponytail. We contemplated each other in the same mirror Addie and I had first looked at. There were no twins now.
An hour later, we pulled away from the backyard, the girls all combed, calm, and somber in their Sunday dresses. I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw a feather of dust rise from the dry yard. At the far end of the field, Adam, straight-backed and tall, drove the tractor. The disker cut the earth in a neat line that paralleled the distant trees.
We’d missed Sunday school and were among the last to enter for the sermon. Heads turned as we filed into our pew. I felt the congregation’s eyes boring into my back.
Joe turned in the pew ahead of us and smiled quickly, a flash of genuine warmth and concern in his eyes. Beside him, Mary gave the girls a quick wave. Then both of them swept their eyes past us, obviously relieved to see that Adam was not there. Mary gave a subtle nod of approval and whispered to Joe. I remembered the stricken faces and the smell of vomit the week before. Suddenly, I thought I could smell it again and instinctively looked down at the clean floor.
Sarah pressed up close to me and sucked her thumb through the sermon. Gracie sat ramrod-straight, her arm around Lil, who stared ahead. Rosie fidgeted, rearranging her skirt and scuffing her shoes against the floor. Several times, I had to reach across the other girls and quiet her. I have no idea what the minister said.
After the sermon, people stepped aside as we passed by on our way out. On the church lawn, the girls did not linger, playing with the other children, but stayed near me.
I hadn’t seen any of my family since the funeral. As we went down the church steps, Momma appeared suddenly at my side and touched my arm. “Y’all coming to dinner?”
I had nothing prepared for dinner. But my shoulders burned with exhaustion, my face was a mask. “No, Momma. I need to get the girls home to Adam.”
Something unfamiliar flickered across my mother’s face. She glanced down to make a quick, unnecessary adjustment to her purse.
“Bring them by soon, then,” she squeezed my arm.
I drove the girls home, three of them in the front with me, and Rosie sprawled across the backseat. They sat quietly. As we pulled up into the backyard, I realized that none of them had mentioned their father or asked why he hadn’t come to church with us. I shut the engine off.
“Momma.” Gracie leaned forward so I could see her across her sisters. “I don’t want to go to church anymore.” She spoke softly, her face solemn and open, waiting for my response.
The others listened.
Then, from the backseat. “I don’t want to either.”
The thick, sweet burden of their need lay on me like lead. I took a breath and sat up straight. I still felt the burning stares of the congregation. Unbidden, unearned, shame flushed through me, followed by a shudder of defiance. I cleared my throat. “I’ll think about it,” I said. In our vocabulary, that meant an eventual, qualified yes.
People whose children have died do not believe in God the same way everyone else does. The death of a child is an earthquake of the soul. The landscape changes forever. I cannot say I was a believer at that time, but I knew that the church was a link that bound us to others. Now, I felt that link breaking. Did I have to let it break in order to protect my children? To do so seemed a kind of defeat, an admission that my daughters did not—could not—belong there. If they did not belong there, where they were born, where did they belong?
I decided that Gracie and Rosie could stay home from church most Sundays with their father. Special days and holidays, they would still have to attend services. In exchange, they had to cook the Sunday dinner. It would have to be ready to go onto the table when Sarah, Lil, and I returned from church. This seemed to be a reasonable compromise.
Later that week, I stopped by Momma’s near suppertime. I expected to find her alone in the kitchen, making dinner for Daddy. But when the back door slapped shut behind me, the kitchen was empty. The distinct vinegary sweetness of Pearl’s takeout ribs lingered. The theme from Momma’s favorite TV show, Jeopardy, blared from the living room.
Momma stepped into the kitchen and dropped into one of the dining chairs as she motioned for me to help myself to the coffeepot and refill her cup. I dreaded telling her that we would not be coming to Sunday dinners after church.
When I told her, her brow wrinkled with concern. “Evelyn,” she began. I expected a protest of some sort and perceived its beginning in her clipped delivery of my name. But something changed her mind. Her face softened. Instead of objecting, she sighed. “You might be right. Gracie and Rosie are old enough that they should be learning to cook for the family. That’s a good idea.”
Her quick concession shocked me. I swallowed my rehearsed defenses and reasons. As I remembered the pained shock on her face at the funeral, I tried to keep my own expression neutral. Helpless humiliation filled my throat.
“Your brother and sisters will be fine with this,” she added firmly. “You all can take turns feeding your daddy and me each Sunday after church. We’ll rotate among you and y’all can come here for Christmas and Easter.” She grinned. “Maybe Thanksgiving if you play your cards right.”
I heard the relief in her tone and I wondered if Joe, Bertie, or Rita had already had this discussion with her, maybe all of them. “Everybody else’ll be okay with this?” I asked.
“Yes.” She crossed her arms over her chest. She wouldn’t be telling me who objected to having dinner with us. She’d always been the kind of mother who dampened rather than inflamed our tiffs and sibling rivalries. But when she leaned toward me across the table, her voice was low, confidential. “Evelyn. I’m tired. When all of you come with all of your kids, your husbands—that’s more than a couple dozen people crammed into this little house. How about your daddy and I showing up next Sunday at your house? Get those girls cooking.” She did look tired. Suddenly, I was embarrassed by my lack of concern for her and what all of this must have cost her. She had lost a grandchild.
Moments later, as I drove to Rhyne’s store, Momma’s agreement and my certainty that Joe, Bertie, or Rita didn’t want us there for dinner plagued me. Bertie’s disdain alone would have been easy to take; that was her standard response to most of life. But the thought of Joe or Rita wanting to avoid us jolted me. I stopped outside the store, determined for a moment to rush back to Momma’s and demand to know more. But something in me collapsed, a reluctant finality that made me queasy. Everything seemed to be changing.
Inside the grocery store, every face was familiar. I knew each aisle and where to find everything on my short list. A man knelt to squeeze a loaf of bread on one of the lower shelves. Even from behind, I recognized his narrow head and the set of his shoulders. When I was a girl, his family had lived two streets over from Momma. His daughter had a gimpy leg from a fall off the shipping deck of the mill. She was Rosie’s age. Did she know my girls? Had she been at the funeral?
The floor under me seemed to dissolve. I put a loaf of bread in my basket and headed toward the cashier.
As I drove back to Adam and the girls, the pink and yellow light of the sunset shed an unnatural, deeply shadowed light on the houses and fields.
I’d never been a woman to need or keep intimates. I’d always thought of myself as something of a loner, as likely to take solace from the glissando of a mockingbird as from the laughter of friends or family. With the secrecies of being A.’s lover then wife, I’d come to understand how much I relied on the small graces of those I knew but was not intimate with. I had my place among the people of Clarion. Their familiar faces and multiple acknowledgments fed my need to belong as much as the land did. Who would we—me, Adam, and our children—be here in Clarion now, if we went everywhere surrounded by silent questions? Who was he to these people now that they carried the memory of his darker voice in their bones?
I pulled up near the back door and unloaded the groceries. A horse whinnied inquisitively from the stable. I heard Adam’s faint, muttered response. The mingled sounds of the girls—a guitar, the radio, and Sarah’s call to her cat—filtered down the hall as I put away the groceries.
When I’d finished, I took a small empty jar out of the pantry and a hand trowel from the barn. I knelt on the spot where I had found A. and, breaking up the packed clay, scooped a handful of it into the jar. His origin. The only certainty I had. The thing that set me apart from him and bound me to him.
I put the jar on our bedroom bureau among our combs, nail files, and pocket change, next to my bobby-pin box. At night, it was one of the last things I saw before I turned out the light.
Supper the next Sunday was just Momma, Daddy, and the six of us at our house. The meal was cordial, almost formal. No one mentioned Jennie or the funeral. The girls did not ask where their cousins, aunts, and uncles were.
Grief is a powerful river in flood. It cannot be argued or reasoned or wrestled down to an insignificant trickle. You must let it take you where it is going. When it pulls you under, all you can do is keep your eyes open for rocks and fallen trees, try not to panic, and stay faceup so you will know where the sky is. You will need that information later. Eventually, its waters calm and you will be on a shore far from where you began, raw and sore, but clean and as close to whole as you will ever be again.
Adam in his grief neither struggled nor floated. He took on weight and sank like a stone. His surrender was nearly total and his eyes went dead, the brightness of his gaze extinguished. At times, though, he would suddenly flash open, struggling as if grief could be gulped down entire in a single swallow. A puzzled, naked terror would streak across his face then, far beyond any consolation I could offer; he would stop where he was and weep.
I felt myself far downstream, tumbling along trying to keep the girls in sight. I could not reach him. For the first time since I found A. lying on his side in the mud, I felt alone. I did not know what to do.
I wanted him to hold fast to what was left—our four daughters and me—and not let go. I wanted us to stay afloat together. I saw his vacancy as a kind of desertion, as a deep disregard, not just for us, not just for the love that remained, but for life itself. I was afraid for him. I didn’t know what he was capable of or how we would return to each other.
During the day, I was stunned into numbness. Lying in bed at night, I thought of how I could have prevented Jennie’s death, imagining what might have been if I had called her to me instead of returning to that last sheet, stretching it out on the line, smoothing those inconsequential wrinkles while she climbed up on the tractor to join her drunken cousin. Helplessly, I replayed that day. Did she smell the whiskey and his sweat in that last breath she took before she fell and the disk swept across her body? Or did she smell the spring air, the sweet, clean odors of fresh-turned earth?
I allowed myself to consider the infinity of details that might have left Jennie alive. A change of weather the day she died, rain keeping the girls inside. One of us taking longer in the bathroom that morning and delaying Jennie’s walk to the field. A broken washing machine and all the girls pitching in to help do laundry by hand. Sometimes my tracing of consequence and connection went back as far as the war. If Frank had not survived, Jennie would have. The possibilities were endless. I let myself comb through them in small increments. Such thoughts were madness and futility, but they vaulted me into anger and provided a respite from the daily numbness. Sometimes, those were the only thoughts that could engage me.
I did not share these musings with Adam. To speak would have unleashed an endless wail in me as well as him, I was sure. So I shut my mouth on what my heart needed to say. Adam and I learned a new vocabulary of silence.
The girls, in their raw youth, sustained me. They carried the absence of their sister, but they glowed, vibrating with life and health, even as they grieved. I had only to touch them or look at them to be given that. They did not cease being themselves.
Lil, of course, missed Jennie the most directly and actively. Her face often had the same emptied-out look that Adam had. Frequently, I found myself, out of habit, looking past her for Jennie. At times, I could hardly bear to look at her. She was a constant reminder then, as she would be for the rest of her life, of what Jennie would have been.
The twins’ names had always been a single unit: Jennie-and-Lil; Lil-and-Jennie. Now we all stumbled on the lone syllable of Lil’s name. It seemed too abrupt, a fresh wound each time we called her. And every time we stuttered there or paused before her name, Lil flinched.
Soon, the other girls and I began, spontaneously, to call her Lillian, a mouthful that had always seemed too much for a small child. Sarah, particularly, seemed to savor drawing out the full three syllables. Only Adam continued, without any change of inflection or timing, to call her Lil.
I found her once looking at herself in the bedroom mirror, chirping in the secret language she and Jennie had shared. She spoke back and forth in conspiratorial whispers as herself and then as Jennie. After several exchanges, her tone changed to tearful exasperation. When I moved, she caught sight of me in the mirror, froze in embarrassment, then collapsed in tears. “Momma, Momma!” I held her for a long time.
For a while, Lil adopted Sarah as her new twin. They frequently wore identical clothes, something she and Jennie had done only for special occasions. The matched clothes hung loosely on Sarah and stretched tight on Lil, who had grown since Jennie’s death. She even let Sarah into the twins’ “house.”
But then one day at the breakfast table Sarah answered Lil in the twins’ patois and Lil flew into a rage, screaming, “Don’t say that, don’t say that.” It took me and Rosie both to pull her off her sister. That was the end of Sarah as a twin.
During the day, Sarah seemed the least affected by her sister’s death, but she soon began to have nightmares, so frightened of the dark that she stood in the middle of her bed paralyzed, crying and refusing to leave her room. Often her cries woke me and Adam, and we brought her into our room. She crawled into the middle of our bed and clung to us. After a few minutes, her small, bony grip would loosen in sleep.
After Lil beat her away, Sarah began to spend more time with Gracie. They talked about what Jennie was doing in heaven, debating the merits of celestial activities as they collected things to take to the grave—a pretty ribbon, a dead butterfly, stale cookies.
Gracie, more womanly each day, bounced back and forth between a brooding darkness that cut her off from us and a tender solicitousness toward all her sisters. Every time she was alone with me, she told me of her dreams of Jennie.
Rosie, still a stick of a tomboy at thirteen, threw herself into school and the horses. Seldom mentioning Jennie directly, she talked constantly of college, never able to make up her mind if she should become a doctor or veterinarian. In spite of her efforts and interests, her grades flagged. Lack of concentration, her teachers said.
One afternoon, as I carried a basket of folded laundry down the hall, I passed Gracie and Rosie’s room and heard Gracie say, “It’ll be okay. They’ll never know. I can fix it. See?”
Rosie answered her, “I don’t want to. I bet nobody’s asking him to put makeup on.”
“You want Momma and Daddy to know?”
There was a pause.
“Okay, okay. Go ahead.” Rosie sighed.
I made certain to be nearby when they came out of the room. Rosie had a thick swatch of makeup above her left eye, awkwardly blended into her hairline. I pretended I hadn’t seen it.
We made it through supper without comment. Adam didn’t notice. The scrape across her hand wasn’t worth a comment. Minor injuries were part of the stables for her.
Later that evening, when I heard Rosie get out of the shower, I went into the bathroom. She tried to turn her face away, feigning sudden interest in drying her feet. But I waited until she sighed and turned to face me. The bruise on her face was bright blue, an ugly shiner, but there wasn’t much swelling, and her eyes were clear. Another bruise darkened her shoulder.
“Gracie made me put the makeup on,” she said.
“Put ice on it when you go to bed. It’ll keep it from swelling.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And no more fights. Ignore what people say.”
“I couldn’t just stand there and let him say things about Daddy.”
“What did he say?”
Her eyes darted around the bathroom.
“Tell me, Rosie.”
“He said that Daddy hurt his momma. He claimed Daddy had to be ‘of the devil’ to hurt people while they were in church. He wouldn’t shut up.” Tears filled her eyes.
I put my arms around her and discovered that she had to bend slightly to lay her head on my shoulder. I remembered John Thompson’s car veering toward the telephone pole after Addie spoke to him. “Be careful, Rosie. We don’t need anything else to deal with right now.”
She stiffened in my arms, broke our embrace. “I don’t like people looking at us like that.” Her voice hardened.
I touched her forehead, under the bruise. I felt as lacking in explanations as A. had been when he first arrived. A tender shame filled me; I had nothing to offer her. I could see no way to translate what I knew of her father into something her young hands could hold. Solemnly, she watched me as I lifted her hand to kiss her scraped knuckles.
“And the boy, how does he look?” I asked.
“Worse.” She smiled.
I couldn’t help myself. I smiled back.
I heard Rosie and Gracie in the bathroom later. Every morning, until the bruise dimmed to a barely visible yellow, Gracie covered it up, saving face.
After her bruises were gone, Rosie stayed constantly by Adam’s side in the stable or on horseback. I wondered how Adam’s dark grief might alter her affection for him. Part of her, I’m sure, yearned to ride away from the weight of familial grief and love.
Adam, I left to himself. I had little choice. Jennie’s death had sharpened something in him and, to be honest, in me, too. We did not argue or have any direct conflicts, but contact seemed to involve small, invisible cuts. Each was not too painful, but the accumulation stung.
And so we all continued. We did our work. The girls finished the school year. The alfalfa and the garden came in well.
Several times after the funeral, Marge had called to see how we were doing and tell me little bits of Clarion gossip. Her voice had the slightly hushed tones of taboo violation and genuine concern, but she never mentioned the Sunday night gathering of musicians at her and Freddie’s house. And she never referred directly to Adam.
He hadn’t played his fiddle or his guitar since the funeral. One day Gracie brought Adam’s fiddle to me and laid the battered case in my hands. She tucked her hair behind her ears, a gesture that often preceded an important announcement on her part. “I talked to Marge. They’re still having their regular Sunday picking party. She said Freddie would like to see Daddy there. And Grandma says it would be nice to see us one Sunday evening before we head over to Freddie’s.” Gracie, the diplomat. She didn’t ask and she didn’t say I’d fallen down on the job. She just tried to fix things.
The next Sunday, after dinner, I slipped Adam’s fiddle into the trunk when we all piled into the car for an afternoon visit with Momma. Later, as we were saying good-bye to Momma, I shooed Lil and Sarah off down the road toward Marge and Freddie’s. I got the fiddle out of the trunk and strolled toward Freddie’s with it under my arm, Rosie by my side. I looked back over my shoulder to see Gracie tentatively grinning up at her daddy, her arm looped through his.
Sarah and Lil raced ahead of us and clambered up the steps and into the house. Marge’s voice carried past the music, “Well, look who’s here!” She held the screen door open and nodded at Adam as he passed by, her familiar smile forced wider than usual.
The pickers crowding the kitchen watched as Adam entered. No one moved to offer him space. I felt a shriveling heat in my chest. Then Freddie stood. With a grave smile, he extended his hand to Adam. “Glad to see y’all back.” He stepped aside, offering his chair. I was almost faint with gratitude for his simple gesture.
Adam sat, pulled his fiddle out of the case, and began tuning up. The other musicians shifted in their seats and plucked at strings.
The next tune began, a waltz. Adam paused, his bow above the strings a beat past everyone else, a distant look of concentration on his face. Then he plunged in. The tightness in my chest uncoiled a little.
Sarah grabbed Lil’s hand to pull her into the living room to dance, but Lil pressed against my leg and swatted her away. Marge led Gracie into the small space left in the center of the kitchen. They waltzed through the living room, out to the front porch and back, with Rose and Sarah following in exaggerated dips and swirls. Gracie stood taller than Marge now. Her small breasts pressed above the full shelf of Marge’s.
Soon Rosie would be budding, too. My girls’ bodies would ferry them away from this time. An awful joy swelled in my throat and I had no skin, no bone between world and heart.
I wiped my face and picked up Lil, a barely manageable weight for me, and waltzed her across the room.
Gripping his fiddle, Adam played with his eyes closed. The waltz ended and we clapped.
As the next tune, “Pretty Polly,” began, the girls, Marge, and I wandered off to the porch. The girls immediately vanished into the darkness, headed toward the mill. Their voices carried back to us. Marge and I sat in matching rockers.
“It’s good to have y’all here. To see the girls dancing,” Marge said after a moment. “How are you holding up, Evelyn? All of you?” The music wafted down the hall. I strained to keep one ear on the girls and listen for any falter in Adam’s playing. But in Marge’s question, I heard the now-familiar lilt that was more than simple condolences. Few people spoke to me those days. Those who did always asked the same question: “How are y’all doing?” But the questions not asked seemed to resonate in their voice: “What did he do? Will he do it again?”
“Fine. Fine,” I usually answered. I’d hardly done more than exchange greetings with anyone outside of family since the funeral.
I looked at Marge’s plump, sweet profile and wanted to bury my face in her neck and tell her that my husband seemed to be gone, that I saw how others looked at him now, a small, hard glance before their eyes slid over and away from him. I wanted to ask her how it could be that grief gutted me every day, yet my body remained whole and normal, unbloodied. Instead, I said, “It’s not easy, but we’re all doing as well as can be expected.”
She rubbed my hand and I saw in her face that same small surge of relief that I’d seen on others, curiosity followed by relief that I was not going to weep, not utter something terrible.
I wiped my eyes, took a deep breath, then I called the girls onto the porch.
When we got back to the kitchen, everyone sat with their instruments in their laps, their eyes on Adam. He stood at the edge of their circle, bow poised. My pulse quickened. He gave me a glance I could not read. As his eyes skipped across the girls’ faces, he played the first notes of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again” at a dirge-like tempo. The other musicians picked up.
Rosie was the first to begin singing. Soon Gracie joined her singing, then Sarah and Lil. They faced their father as they sang. He bent slightly at the waist, swaying. The natural harmony of the girls’ voices and the mournful tempo filled the room. “Hurrah. Hurrah.”
After the first verse, only Freddie continued playing with Adam; the others lowered their instruments. When the last note ended, no one moved. Adam bowed to the girls. Marge cleared her throat and said, “That was pretty, real pretty, girls. Adam.”
Then someone announced “Haste to the Wedding.” The lively jig sprang up and the room returned to itself. Adam nodded good-bye to Freddie and put his fiddle away. I waved to Marge and corralled the girls toward the door.
Marge followed and stopped us on the steps, her eyes shining. “That was some of the prettiest singing I’ve heard in a long time. Where’ve you been keeping those voices? Come sing something at Sunday school next week.”
On the way home, the girls debated Marge’s proposal. Neither Gracie nor Rosie wanted to give up their new freedom from church. Lil thought it was a good idea, but wanted to sing her favorites from West Side Story. Sarah, who’d been silent during her sisters’ discussion, ended the debate with a single pronouncement: “If they’re going to stare at us anyway, let’s give ’em a good reason.” She looked up at Adam. “If we’re singing in church, you’ll come listen to us?”
He cupped her head, smoothing her hair. “I’ll always be there when y’all are singing.”
The girls sang first at Sunday school services, visiting a different class in the children’s group each week. Depending on what part of the church they were in, I heard them as I sat in my adult class, their close sister harmony resonating down the church halls. My heart beat faster when I heard them, even at home when they practiced.
At least superficially, my family ignored what they now knew about Adam, as they had ignored the obvious fact that Addie’s father was not who she and I claimed him to be. Her situation had been beyond her control, an old story with easily traceable motives. She was clearly a relative and treated as such. Adam, on the other hand, had transgressed in an inexplicable, willful, and literally painful way. No one confronted him, but there was a short pause, an intake of breath, when he walked into a room.
Momma continued to welcome us with unaltered enthusiasm. On the rare occasions now when we were all at her house with my brother and sisters, Momma’s presence tempered Bertie’s judgmental chill. Joe retreated into a kind of jovial formality. Rita never quite lost that startled look around Adam, actually flinching if he spoke with any suddenness or volume. Only Daddy seemed completely unaffected, his smoking and rocking habits uninterrupted.
Momma was the only one to ever ask me outright about what happened at Jennie’s funeral. We were on the front porch, shelling the first of the white acre peas. All of the girls were out of earshot. Momma leaned over and looked straight into my face. “Evelyn, do you understand what happened at the funeral? Has Adam ever done anything like that before?” Her hands were still as she waited for my response.
For the first time in years, I felt the urge to tell Momma the truth about Addie and Adam. But I couldn’t face the possibility that she would not believe me, that she would think I was crazy. The truth seemed too fantastic for the porch we sat on, for the peas we shelled. I pushed away the urge to confide and wiped my tears. “No, Momma, I don’t know what happened. Adam didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”
“I know that. That should be clear to anybody. He was just hurting so much himself. I swear, though, I’ve never felt anything like that in my life and I hope never to again. Hurt so bad I thought my chest would burst. If it had been anyone but Adam, I’d’ve run out of the church and never come back. I’ve heard of people speaking in tongues, but I’ve never heard of anything like that—and how it hurt! It was a peculiar thing.” She pressed one hand against her ear.
I nodded my agreement.
Then she told me her news: “A doctor’s appointment.”
I should have paid attention to that phrase. Momma, like most in her generation, rarely went to see a doctor, only if she was very sick. But when I asked her what was wrong, she waved her hand, dismissing my concern. “I’m bleeding like it’s my monthly. It doesn’t come regular. You know I went through the change years ago, before Sarah was born. Now it’s back. I feel fine. I just want to know if I should be keeping your father on his side of the bed.”
We laughed.
Jennie’s death overshadowed everything then. Grief gutted me, and I relied on Momma.
I was erratic, hugging the girls, afraid to let them out of the house one minute and oblivious to their presence the next. Adam was the same. Momma became our anchor, our consistency. She spent as much time as she could on the farm, and, when she was not there, I knew I could call her. The girls were reluctant to go home when we were at her house and to see her leave when she visited the farm.
So, that day, months after Jennie’s funeral, when we sat on the porch shelling peas and Momma announced that she’d decided to see the doctor, I took little notice and felt no alarm. She’d always been there. My fears were centered on the girls and Adam and what I could not say about or to them. I didn’t look further for more to fear or grieve.
I heard nothing else about her doctor’s visit until the evening Daddy called to tell me that the doctor had sent Momma straight to the hospital. “Female troubles,” he said. “A tumor. They’re taking everything out.”
During the week after her surgery, Momma spent most days in a painful stupor on the couch in front of the TV. But after her bath one day, she asked me to help her into her newly made bed.
Rita had stopped by earlier with clean bed linens and a pot roast for Momma and Daddy’s dinner. Daddy’s shift at the mill would not end for hours. Momma and I were alone. To pass the time and distract her from her pain, she wanted to organize an old shoe box of photos.
She studied a black-and-white photo of me and Addie, taken not long before Addie left with Roy and came back to be my husband. Joe had been the first to arrive one morning to help pull a field of corn. He’d shot the photo to finish off a roll of film he wanted to get developed. In the snapshot, Addie and I stood shoulder to shoulder, smiling into the early morning sun and leaning back against the garden fence by the barn. Addie’s hat threw a shadow across her right eye. My hair hung down past my shoulders.
I’d not seen the picture in years. I remembered Joe corralling us out of the barn, the morning dew still a web of diamonds on the grass, and the press of Addie’s warm arm at my side. Longing streaked through me, not so much for Addie but for that time of simplicity and innocence, a time when there was just the land, the seasons, and inexplicable Addie to reckon with—no babies, no death. Behind us in the photograph, between our two heads, the old apple tree and the place where I found her were visible.
Momma handed the picture to me. “You were like two peas in a pod. It was uncanny. I wonder if she ever found out who her daddy was. I sure couldn’t figure which of my brothers or cousins your aunt Doris had been with. Never a peep out of the men. That poor Hardin boy must have been surprised when Addie popped out with all that red hair.” She gave me a wry smile. “The women on both sides of the family were a little too inclined to follow their hearts instead of using common sense . . . or maybe they—we—were following some other organ.” She laughed at her insinuation and patted my hand. “I’m glad I never saw any of that in you. You were always sensible. You did the right thing.”
“Momma, I never wanted lying . . .” I heard the words come out of my own mouth and didn’t know what I would say next. I wanted so much to tell her about Addie, to have her with me in that secret.
She grimaced in what I took to be pain but then realized was shame, a thing I’d never seen on her face. “I wanted to tell you years ago. Many a time I came near. But I didn’t have the courage, Evelyn.”
Apprehension blossomed in my chest. “Momma what do you know? Tell me.” I took her hand.
“Forgive me, Evelyn. I would have told you, but Robert always said we should let sleeping dogs lie. So the dog just lay and the years passed.” Her face twisted in genuine pain. She pointed to the bottle on her bureau. “Give me another one of those morphine pills.”
After she swallowed, she eased back onto her pillows again and looked out the window. I waited, my throat tight, my heart clattering.
She slapped her palms down on the covers so hard I jumped. “There was this boy . . . a man really, but he couldn’t have been much older than me—twenty-one, twenty-two at the most. They were putting in the new sidewalks and parks downtown. Building the new Piedmont Hotel. Things were hopping around here before the Crash and the Depression.
“Your daddy was courting me then. Growing up in the same town, he’d always been around. But he’d begun to be around more. Making eyes at me. Walking me home from work. Not serious courting. The Starnes boy was doing the same. But I liked your daddy best. He was sweet on me. I could see it in his eyes. I’d never seen him around any other girls, and I knew that whatever was going to happen would be slow in coming. Things weren’t like they are today, but even for those times your daddy was a slow mover, a shy one.
“I was only seventeen, but I’d been a spinner at the mill since we left the farm. I earned more than my brothers and had to work, we needed the money. But I thought a hotel might be better work. So one day, I ran over to the Piedmont right after work to see if they would be hiring women help. Outside, the hotel looked finished, but inside the walls were bare, no mantels, no trim, no lights. A man stood inside the front door, holding some blueprints up to the dying sunlight. A fine-looking man. Dark hair, smoothest skin. And tall—six three, maybe six four. He looked up from those blueprints, and I felt like somebody had slapped me awake.
“I didn’t get a job. But a few days later, when I walked past the Piedmont on my way to the drugstore to get headache powders for Momma, he walked partway with me and introduced himself. Ben Mullins. He talked about places I’d never been. He seemed more of a man than the teenage boys hanging around. He was a carpenter from Raleigh. After the Piedmont job, he was going to work on a big hotel in Atlanta.”
She paused and took a deep breath. Fatigue filled her face, but her voice rang stronger, more determined.
“Well, Evelyn, the upshot of what you really need to know is that I slept with him.” She stopped again to register my surprise.
Why, I wondered, was she telling me this? What did any of this have to do with Addie or Adam?
“We snuck into his room—the first room finished in the hotel. If you went up the back stairs his room was the first door on the second floor. Fancy pink wallpaper on the walls, a nice room.
“He smoked and talked, asking me questions and laughing at some of my answers—but not in a way that put me down. There were books in the room, some open on the bed. He didn’t touch me. When I left, he kissed me on the cheek, gentlemanly. ‘Come back whenever you want. It’s lonely here.’
“I went back as soon as I could get away. One thing led to another and we were on his bed. Afterward, he was all apologetic. He went out and brought pie back to the room for me. I came to his room only one other time.” She’d been looking out the window as if something outside drew her words out of her. But now she turned back to me with renewed urgency.
“He was not a bad man, Evelyn. He was just being a man. He was gentle with me. And I was willing though I knew he’d be moving on to another job when the hotel was finished. But I thought we had more time. Then one day, the hotel was done and he was gone. The place looked like a palace. When I went in and asked about him, a woman at the counter sneered down at my old dress and the cotton stuck to my sleeves, opened a big ledger, and said, ‘There is no Mr. Mullins here.’ ”
I leaned back in my chair, wondering if Momma’s mind was going. Why would she want me to know about her sex life? She’d already told me she was not a virgin when she married. I glanced at the photo of me and Addie.
She continued without pause. “I cried and cried. I mended my little broken heart as best I could and accepted your daddy’s invitation to his family reunion. Ben and I’d been discreet. The hotel had been empty. I’m sure no one saw me coming or going when I went to his room. But someone must have seen us when he walked me to the store. Your daddy was suddenly a lot less shy. Even before Ben left town, Robert had started coming by almost every day.
“Pretty soon—just a week or two after Ben left, your daddy was already hinting about us getting serious. I didn’t encourage him but I didn’t discourage him either.
“One evening, he strolled up the street with a handful of flowers he’d picked. While I waited for him on the porch, it suddenly hit me that I had not had my monthly since Ben Mullins left town.
“We walked down past the grinding mill to the bridge—our usual evening stroll. I was trying not to cry and he kept asking me what was wrong. I told him about Ben and me. His face was awful—shocked, disappointed, hurt. ‘I’ll find the bastard!’ he said. ‘Find him and kill him!’ Then I really started wailing, crying about how my daddy would kill me. Bastard kids just did not happen then. Women in that kind of trouble married the daddy or they got out of town.” Momma stopped, smoothed the covers. When her eyes met mine, I realized with a start that she was waiting for me to say something. She wanted forgiveness.
“Momma, did you get rid of the baby?” I whispered.
“Good Lord, no! I didn’t even know that was possible then. This was nineteen twenty-five, Evelyn. That was you on the way! What I’m trying to tell you is that Ben Mullins is your father, not Robert Roe.”
I stared at the bedspread, feeling what she said flush through me. I couldn’t move.
“Your daddy is your daddy, Evelyn. He raised you. He was back the next day asking me to marry him. I didn’t have to run off like Addie’s momma. You were able to grow up here and know my people. Robert never again mentioned Ben to me or to anyone else that I know of and he claimed you as his own, never treating you any different from your brother and sisters.”
She took my hand in both of hers, pulling me out of my daze. “I’m so sorry, Evelyn. For years I was so ashamed, so grateful to your father.” She cried, her fragile shoulders shaking, her face pale. I held her and we rocked gently.
Then she wiped her eyes. “I took your daddy for a husband though I didn’t love him, not at first. But by the time you were born, I was crazy for Robert Roe. It was a fuller love, a woman’s instead of a girl’s love. That’s why Joe came so soon after you.” She stroked my hair. “Good thing you looked like me and had the McMurrough’s red hair.” Her hand stopped at my temple. “Evelyn? You understand what I am telling you?”
Her hair, dimmed lately to the color of pale straw, framed her face. Suddenly, I saw her face as a young woman’s again, her hair a brilliant copper as when she’d once swept me up out of the creek and held me, dripping wet, in her extended arms. She’d looked at me then as if I was a stranger, unknown to her. Then the awful wailing as she held me close. For decades, I’d thought that moment was about me, but it was about him. I thought I was the stranger, but he was the one she did not know. She’d been looking for him in me! All my life, she’d seen the shadow of another person on me. And she’d never spoken his name to me. At that moment, I did not know her. She seemed smaller now, a frailer version of her old self, as if the surgeons had taken more than her womb and ovaries. Her skin glowed soft and translucent.
I lied: “It’s okay, Momma. It doesn’t change anything.”
Relief brightened her eyes.
I held her face in my hands and looked straight into her eyes. “I have a good daddy. You gave me a good daddy.” She relaxed back against the pillows, her face calmer.
The picture of me and Addie still rested on the pile of photos. Stunned, I put my head in Momma’s lap and wept for her, for my two fathers, and for all the things that never get said or known.