“That chair is just fine where it is,” she says. “Go on, all of you. I want every one of you out right now.”
“Sarah,” Daddy says. That’s Mama’s name. Grandma gave it to Mama before she was even born and it means princess. Daddy’s usually the only one in the house to use it. She’s mostly Mama to everyone else. Daddy says it again in his deep, scratchy voice. At the sound of her name, Mama, Sarah, takes a deep breath and blows it out long and slow.
“My apologies,” Mama says. “Mother, why don’t we see to some breakfast for everyone, and then let’s us mix up a cake for Annie’s day.”
The sizzle in the air was Annie’s first inkling something was lurking. First inklings aren’t so troublesome, and for a week, she’d labored to convince herself Grandma was right. The charge in the air was the lavender coming into bloom. But that empty rocking chair is a second inkling. Second inklings are more dependable still. That chair was rocking forward and backward. Forward and backward. Coming and going. Someone is coming. Someone is going. When an empty rocking chair rocks, someone is coming home again and someone is going to die.
Every Christmas, a card comes, a handwritten letter tucked inside. They arrive in mid-December. Mama keeps the letters to herself and hangs the cards from the refrigerator with a magnet. The signature inside each card is always penned in the same flattened-out, slanted letters. As a child, before she learned her cursive alphabet, Annie couldn’t read the name written inside the colorful cards, but always she knew they had come from Aunt Juna. Annie had hoped when they moved from the north side of town to Grandma’s house that the cards and letters wouldn’t follow. But they did.
While the cards from Aunt Juna hung on the refrigerator for several days, not until Christmas Eve did Mama read the letters. Over supper, after grace was said and before the first fork was raised, Mama would pull the most recent letter from her apron pocket and read it aloud to the rest of the family. These letters grew longer as the years passed. Aunt Juna wrote of her life. She wrote of living in California, where the sun always shone, and of oranges hanging from a tree where a person could pick them and eat them right where she stood. She wrote of pasturelands in the middle of the country that stretched to the horizon and farther still, so far they looked to roll right off the edge of the earth. She wrote of trains and cars and of streets in the northeast where buildings rose up as tall as those California mountains.
And always Aunt Juna wrote of how beautiful Caroline and Annie had grown. When they were children, she said they were precious. Last year, they were lovely young women. Each Christmas, she wrote how wonderful it would be when she could finally, after all these years, see them in the flesh, touch them, hug them, tell them she loved them. And then Mama would refold the letter, press out each seam, tuck it into that same apron pocket, and say what a shame she couldn’t write back. Annie always wondered, but never asked, was afraid to ask, how Aunt Juna knew Annie and Caroline were precious when they were young and lovely now as young ladies. Mama never wrote back, never sent pictures. How could Aunt Juna know the girls were precious and lovely if she lived so far away?
“Aunt Juna will come home now, won’t she?” Annie says. “Now that every Baine is dead, she’s coming home.”
7
1936—SARAH AND JUNA
DADDY CARRIES JUNA home, up the gravel drive and toward the house. I run ahead, and when I near the front porch, I slow to a walk because someone is sitting on the top step. I draw in a few deep breaths and think to holler at Dale to go inside before Daddy gets ahold of him. Daddy will whip Dale for causing all this fuss. Taking a few more steps and glancing back to see if Daddy has seen Dale yet, I hurry ahead so I can warn him without Daddy hearing, but as I walk another several feet toward the house, I see it isn’t Dale sitting there on the step. It’s Abigail Watson.
Still wearing her long-sleeved dress and the same white cap, Abigail stands. A white apron is tied at her waist, and her skirt is stained at the knees, most likely from working in her grandma’s garden. “Something’s wrong,” she says. “Ain’t it?”
“Did you find him?” I ask. “Did you ever see Dale today?”
Her face is small enough to hold in one hand, and she’s reached that stage where her arms and legs have grown too long and thin for the rest of her body.
“I didn’t never see him, Miss Crowley,” she says, taking a swipe at her small, teary eyes with the heel of one hand.