Blackwater: The Complete Caskey Family Saga (21 page)

Oscar looked down into the basin. The water that filled it was muddy and red.

The preacher whispered: “Oscar, I don’t know how...”

“Go ahead!” Elinor said with a smile. “It’s just old Perdido water.”

The preacher gingerly dipped her fingers in the water and flicked it over Miriam’s brow. The child smiled up at her mother.

After the service the family all had dinner together at Mary-Love’s, and in honor of the occasion everyone remained in his Sunday clothes. As the ham was going around in one direction and a plate of ground-beef patties in the other, Elinor said: “School is over in one week and two days.”

“I know you must be glad,” said James. “I know it’s hot up there in that classroom—you got the sun shining in all afternoon long.”

“That’ll be on Tuesday week,” went on Elinor, unmindful of the interruption. “And I got to be there on Wednesday to check in books. So Thursday week,” she said, looking up and all around the table, “Oscar and Miriam and I will be moving in the new house...”

Hell broke loose. Sister was so upset that she didn’t eat another bite. Mary-Love in her distress attacked her plate and consumed in a few moments twice what she normally would have eaten in the course of an entire day. Oscar pleaded, “Oh, y’all, please, let’s talk about this later.” James sent Grace out of the room. Ivey and Roxie stood listening on the other side of the kitchen door.

“I’m not going to say a word about it,” said Elinor. “There is nothing to talk about. That house next door is Oscar’s and mine and we intend to move into it. That house was our wedding present and it is just
sitting there
with sheets all over the furniture!”

“Oh, who
cares
about that old place!” exclaimed Mary-Love, though she spoke of the largest and most expensively built house in the whole town. “We’re talking about Miriam! You cain’t carry that child over there!”

“Why not?” demanded Elinor.

“Who’s gone take care of her?” wailed Sister.

“I
intend to,” snapped Elinor.

“You don’t know how!” cried Mary-Love. “Oscar, I forbid you to move your child out of this house. Miriam would shrivel up and die!”

Miriam lay in a small crib in the adjoining room. Mary-Love rose precipitately and ran and picked the child up, comforting her and promising in whispers that she would never leave her grandmother. Sister got up too and caressed the baby as Mary-Love rocked it in her arms.

“Every one of you can go on about this for as long as you want,” said Elinor. “But Oscar and I are going to leave this house.”

“Why?”
cried Mary-Love. “Why do you want to leave this house?”

“Because I can’t stand it here!” said Elinor savagely from the table. “I am sick to my death of looking out the window every morning and seeing that great big house next door that’s supposed to be mine, except you keep it locked and you hide the keys from me! I am sick to death of tripping over you and Sister every time I want to look at my own child! I am sick to death of having my closets filled with dead people’s clothes! I am sick of having to report every little movement I make—where I’m going, what I’m doing, and who I’m doing it with. It’ll be bad enough to live right next door, with you and Sister waltzing in at every hour of the day, but at least there I can put hooks up so that you have to knock. Oscar is my husband, and Miriam is my baby, that is our house! And that is the reason Oscar and I are moving out!”

“Elinor,” said Oscar, in despair.

“Oscar,” said Mary-Love wildly, “you are not leaving this house with this darling child! You are not gone let that woman have the care and feeding of this precious infant!”

“Mama, if Elinor feels—”

“Elinor doesn’t feel!” cried Mary-Love, swinging the baby back and forth in her arms with such energy that Sister placed herself to catch Miriam should she be accidentally hurled out of that embrace. “That’s the whole point. She’s not a mother to this child! Sister and I are! You will be ruining this child if you take her away from us!”

Elinor sat still with an expression of disgust on her face. She pushed away her plate. “Ivey,” she called out, “come on in here and clear off—nobody feels like eating any more!”

Ivey came in with Zaddie behind her to clear off the table. In normal circumstances no one would have said a word before the servants—even though everyone was certain that those in the kitchen had heard every word—but these were not normal circumstances, and Mary-Love went on above the clatter of plates and silverware and glasses. “Oscar,” she said in a low, awful voice, “I forbid you to leave this house with Miriam.”

“Mama,” said Oscar plaintively, “you promised Elinor and I could leave as soon as Miriam was born. And ’cause Miriam was so puny, Elinor was sweet enough—”

Here Mary-Love snorted in contempt.

“—to stay on for a few months and let you help take care of her. But now school’s over and Elinor’s gone be home all the time.”

“What about the fall?” demanded Mary-Love. “What’s gone happen in September? Is Elinor gone hang Miriam on a hook on the porch while she’s down at the school?”

“I’m not going back to teaching,” said Elinor quietly. “Edna McGhee doesn’t like Tallahassee after all. I told her she could have the fourth grade back.”

“Doesn’t matter!” cried Mary-Love desperately. “You’re not gone have this child!”

“We are leaving this house,” said Elinor calmly.

Mary-Love handed the infant to Sister, who held Miriam close to her breast as if to protect her from the violence of Mary-Love’s and Elinor’s words. Mary-Love advanced to the table and stood behind her chair, grasping the back with white-knuckled fingers. “Go on then,” cried Mary-Love, “go next door with my blessing. I’ll give you the keys today. Sister, go get the keys! I’ll give you those keys this very minute and you can move over there this afternoon. I’ll give you candles and a kerosene lamp and Zaddie will fetch you water. Tomorrow, I’ll have the electricity and water and gas turned on. Ivey will carry over your clothes.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” said Elinor coldly.

“Oh, thank you, Mama—” Oscar began.

“Miriam stays here,” said Mary-Love decisively.

There was a moment of terrible silence.

“Mary-Love—” began James Caskey in a choked whisper.

She cut him off. “You get the house, Elinor—that’s what you want. I get that baby—that’s what I want.”

“Mama, you cain’t—”

“Oscar, you be quiet!” said Mary-Love. “What has this got to do with you, I’d like to know!”

“Well, for one thing, Miriam is my little girl!”

“Miriam belongs to Sister and me!”

Sister brought the keys to the new house. She was still holding the baby. Miriam waved her arms about for attention. Sister buried her nose against the baby’s neck and rubbed it there until Miriam laughed aloud.

Ivey came back in and was taking away the last few glasses from the center of the table. “Ivey,” said Elinor, “as soon as you’re done, go upstairs and start packing my things, would you please?”

“Be glad to, Miss Elinor,” said Ivey in a low voice, not looking at anyone else in the room.

Mary-Love smiled triumphantly.

Oscar, shocked, turned to his wife. “Elinor, how can you—”

“Be quiet, Oscar. We are not remaining in this house another night. Not one more night.”

“But what about Miriam?”

“James,” said Elinor. “I want to know if I can borrow Roxie for a while.”

“Ohhh,” said James, “Elinor, I wish you would. Grace and I eat over here all the time anyway. I pay Roxie five dollars a week for sitting down ten hours a day at the kitchen table. She has memorized fourteen chapters of the book of Job!”

Oscar was staring stuporously at his child, cradled in Sister’s arms. Sister had backed away from the table and stood actually in the next room, though visible to all through the opened doors.

“Elinor, are we just gone
leave
her here, while we go next door?”

Elinor folded her napkin and rose from the table. “Oscar,” she said, “we have got a lot of packing to do, and you should change out of those clothes.”

“But our little girl...” Though no one interrupted him, Oscar broke off when a shaft of enlightenment, bright as the sun outside, suddenly pierced his brain. The entire business had been planned. Elinor had seen that the only way to get him out of Mary-Love’s house was to replace him with something that Mary-Love loved even more. And for that reason, Miriam had been born. Elinor had given birth not to a daughter so much as to a hostage. And Miriam had been left at home all day so that Mary-Love and Sister might become attached to her. And Elinor’s feint of going away with Oscar and her daughter had been only that—a feint. She had intended from the first to offer up Miriam—to toss the infant off the back of the sleigh to the ravening wolves so that he and she might escape whole.

Oscar looked around the table. No one else understood—not even Mary-Love and Sister. He caught his wife’s eye, and what he saw there made him realize that he was right—and that she understood that he understood.

“Oscar,” she said quietly, “are you ready to start packing?”

He stood from the table, and dropped his napkin upon the seat of his chair. Mary-Love and Sister stood in the doorway, both with their hands upon his daughter, rocking her back and forth, and cooing.

Within the hour he and Elinor were gone, having abandoned their daughter without another word.

“Oh, Lord, protect us from flood, fire, maddened animals, and runaway Negroes.”

That was Mary-Love Caskey’s prayer before every meal, learned from her mother who had hidden silver, slaves, and chickens from the rapacity of starving Yankee marauders. But in these days, safety from a fourth danger was silently appended both in her own mind and in Sister’s:
Oh, Lord, protect us from Elinor Dammert Caskey.

Elinor, after all, was a woman to be feared. Into the well-regulated lives of the Caskeys of Perdido, Alabama, she had brought trouble and surprise. Having mysteriously appeared in the Osceola Hotel at the height of the great flood of 1919, she had cast a spell first over James Caskey—Mary-Love’s brother-in-law—and then over Oscar, Mary-Love’s son. She had married Oscar much against Mary-Love’s desire. Elinor had hair that was the muddy red color of the Perdido River, but no family connections or financial portion. And in the end, she had taken Oscar away from Mary-Love, carried him to the house next door, and left her own child in payment for the right to take departure.
That
, Mary-Love considered, only showed Elinor to be a woman for whom no sacrifice was too great on the field of battle. She was a formidable adversary to Mary-Love, who had never before had anyone question her sovereignty.

If Mary-Love and Sister had been protective of the infant Miriam before, how close did they hold her now! Two weeks had passed since Elinor and Oscar had moved out, and as yet Elinor had shown no sign of repenting of her bargain. Mary-Love was fifty-one and would never have another child of her own. Sister was just under thirty, and had no prospects of marriage; it was unlikely she would possess a daughter other than the one her sister-in-law had given up to her. They wouldn’t leave the child alone for an instant, for fear that Elinor—watching from behind one of the newly hung curtains of her back parlor—would rush over, swoop the child into her arms, and carry her back in sneaking triumph. Neither of these women intended to relinquish Miriam even though all the world and the law should demand it of them.

Mary-Love and Sister, in the beginning, had steeled themselves against what they imagined would be constant visits from Elinor. They were certain she would make suggestions for a better way to do this or that for the child, would burst into tears and beg to have Miriam for only an hour every morning, would moon over her daughter’s crib, and would endlessly seek opportunities to snatch her away. But Elinor did none of those things. In fact, Elinor never came to see her daughter at all. She rocked placidly on the front porch of her new house, and corrected the pronunciation of Zaddie Sapp, who sat at her feet with a sixth-grade reader. Elinor nodded politely to Sister and Mary-Love when she saw them, or at least when it was impossible to pretend that she had
not
seen them, but she never asked to see the child. Mary-Love and Sister—who had never before been so united upon any issue whatsoever—conferred and tried to puzzle out whether Elinor ought to be trusted or not. They decided that, for safety’s sake, her aloof attitude should be considered a tactic to put them off their guard. So their vigilance was maintained.

On Sundays, Mary-Love and Sister took turns staying home with the child during morning service. One or the other would sit in the same pew with Elinor, nod politely to her, and speak if the occasion allowed. But then Mary-Love suggested, as a taunt to Elinor, that she and Sister should
both
attend church. Elinor, seeing them there together, would realize that little Miriam was alone, protected only by Ivey Sapp—but she would not be able to escape the service and fetch her daughter out. Sister and Mary-Love were always careful never to leave the house on Sunday morning until they had seen Oscar and Elinor drive off to the church together, for fear that one day Elinor might remain behind and purloin her daughter before the first hymn had been sung.

One Sunday, however, Mary-Love and Sister both happened to be away from the front window when Oscar drove off. They assumed that Elinor had gone with him. At church they discovered, to their terrible dismay, that Elinor had remained at home, to tend Zaddie through the mumps. Their voices trembled through the hymns, they heard not a word of the sermon, they forgot to rise when they ought to have risen, and remained standing when they ought to have sat down again. They rushed home, and discovered Miriam sound asleep in the crib that was kept on the side porch. Ivey Sapp crooned a wordless song above her. Next door, Elinor Caskey sat on her front porch with the Mobile
Register
. Nothing in the world could have been easier than for Elinor to walk right across and up onto the porch, hold off Ivey with a stern word, lift Miriam out of her crib, and march straight back home with her. But Elinor had done no such thing.