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I sit up in the evening’s gloom, foggy headed, but my headache is gone. I still feel the chill of cold bones against my spine and know Nana’s been close. Brother is in the other room peeling potatoes and onions for stone soup cause I hear the peeled ones get throwed in the water bucket. I wonder how many times he cut his finger tonight and leaked blood on potato flesh. He cuts the skin thick and wastes a lotta potato. I keep quiet. Stone soup is his business.
I don’t get up yet. I think about my dream and when Nana left, and her old Bible sitting in the drawer. That same table that sits by my bed used to sit by Mama’s married bed. Mama often laid her hand on that table and patted it tender like she done a child’s head. She never told me why she done such a thing. Now, I run my fingers over the smooth walnut top, and they glide to open the drawer all the way like they got a mind of their own. I take the drawer outta the tracks. I turn it over.
That’s when I find it.
On the bottom.
Tacked in place.
A letter.
Mama’s name is on it. Not to Mrs. Eli Perkins Jr., like she was on this mountain. Not to Adelaide Perkins like she was all my days to family. Not even to Adelaide Adams, the name she was before Daddy claimed her for his bride and Brother and me came to be.
The envelope reads: To Addie.
My first thinking is Why’s this letter tacked to the bottom of Nana’s drawer?
Then I get me a odd thought about that scrap of blue in my quilt, and my heart beats fast.
I wonder if this letter changes things.
On this day of my finding, I don’t pull out the two tacks that hold it in place. Don’t lift the letter from its secret spot careful-like so it don’t tear. Don’t unfold the piece of paper that got folded a long, long time ago. I put the drawer back where it goes, right side up, and I keep Mama’s secret safe another day. Now it’s my secret, too.
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That big, old teacher has come to church today, and everybody makes a ruckus about nothing. Everywhere I go the week past, there’s a buzz. At the Rusty Nickel, folks who ain’t seen her speculate bout her size and her particulars and why she came to be here. Word got around her and me talked, so when I’m out and about, folks pester me.
Timid Alice Dickens asks me, “Do we got a man on the mountain as big as she be?”
Laura June Mayhew, who’s usually mealymouthed, asks, “Is it true she wears man’s trousers and don’t even own a dress?”
Fleeta Wright, who’s as big as a house and twice as ugly, whispers the question on everyone’s mind: “Prudence, you think she be of immoral persuasion, being like she is and all?”
I do the Christian thing and speak the truth: no, yes, and yes, though I have no proof. Some things just make sense.
Brother’s all thumbs this morning. He irks me something fearful, him a man of the Lord who don’t pay close mind to what’s right in front of him. He sticks his nose in books and looks for answers. He prays with his eyes closed and asks for answers. All he’s gotta do is look and use the brain God give him. Case in point: Miss Shaw. Something won’t right with that woman.
Miss Shaw’s visit to church pulls strangers outta the weeds. Gladys Hicks hasn’t been to church since Eli went to convention last and he stayed through a Sunday and we got a traveling preacher who played with fire to make a point. He was plenty entertaining, but he almost burnt down the church.
Today, Gladys marches right on in and steals a seat cause she makes Ellis Dodd squirm and get up. The regulars should be the ones to get the seats. I try to give Gladys a nasty look cause she’s pushy, but for spite, she don’t look my way.
Her grandchild Sadie Blue slides in the back row and looks like she’s been hit with a sack of nickels. That girl had a bad stretch with Gladys’s stinginess, then she married that Tupkin boy cause she don’t keep her legs together. She should know when you sin against the Lord, punishment comes to the light a day. Her bruises are proof: Sadie Blue got in a family way without a ring on her finger. She’s lucky the boy married her, even if he is from the bottom of the barrel.
I won’t listening to Brother’s sermon cause I got my own thoughts, but nothing prepares me for Miss Shaw to butt in the middle of Brother’s talking, stand, and talk to us under the Lord’s roof. She’s bold-faced is what she is. A brazen hussy. What kind of teacher says to strangers she got fired for doing something shady, then expects a howdy-do and come on in? Miss Shaw will soon be gone by her own hand. The looks on folks’ faces say they won’t happy one bit. Still, after the service, they line up to shake her hand and tip their heads on the way out.
After Brother washed the soup pot, he gets home from church and says, “I think it went quite well, don’t you?”
Even when it comes straight from the horse’s mouth, Brother still wears blinders.
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Today, I’ll read Mama’s letter.
It’s been a temptation all week tacked under that drawer. Like a piece of chocolate wrapped in foil I saved, today’s the day. I close the door to my room—though I’m home alone—and sit on the edge of the bed. I pull out the drawer and turn it over.
The letter’s still there. It won’t my imagining. I take a butter knife and pry up the two tacks holding it in place. The tacks leave rusty holes and a pressed outline in the paper.
How did this letter come to Mama? Was it slipped to her at church? Left in a special spot? When did Mama tack it under this walnut drawer her daddy made? Did she count on me to find it someday, resting every night two feet from my sleep?
I lift the opened flap and slide out a single folded piece of lined paper and one square photograph. The picture is of a teenage boy and a pretty girl. The sun shines in their eyes so they squint. They stand close together in front of a two-story white house with a mountain behind. The boy’s shirtsleeves are rolled up neat, and his arms are strong. His striped tie is loose at the neck of his collared shirt. He’s got a dimple like another boy I used to know. Light-colored hair sweeps to the side. The girl has got a satin ribbon in her curly hair. The boy is a full head taller than her, and he’s got his arm around her waist like it belongs there. She wears a store-bought dress with puffed sleeves, little buttons down the front, and a thin belt at the waist.
In the black-and-white photograph, the dress could be sky blue with specks of red on it. The girl could be Mama, but that boy won’t Daddy. Daddy’s hair was dark till he got sick and turned it white. Daddy never was taller than Mama. I never saw the boy in the photograph. I don’t think he’s from round here.
The letter crinkles loud in the quiet when I unfold it, and I’m glad Brother won’t home. The ink is faded so I step to the window for more light to see better. I feel funny is what I feel, cause I know these are Mama’s private words she put in a secret place.
That don’t stop me. I read the letter that belongs to nobody now but me.
August 21, 1917