My Drowning (23 page)

By the time she explained this to me, that same day of my first visit, we had left the graveyard where Alma Laura was sitting, and walked toward the barn to meet the milk cow.

“I have to visit Esther every day,” June explained, “or else she gives only half as much milk the next day. Even Papa says so.” She called her daddy “Papa,” because it was more refined, though she explained this to me much later.

I UNDERSTOOD EXACTLY
what she meant about the word to call colored people, and afterward, never used the word “nigger” again, speaking only of “nigras,” until my daughter taught
me to call them “blacks,” or “Blacks,” as, for instance, “Now we will have to go to school with all the Blacks.” I made these changes in order to be considered a better quality of person than my own family, which has continued to call black people niggers to this day.

Even after June explained the idea to me, I never called my daddy “Papa.” The word rang too gently in my head. When I talked to June about her daddy I referred to him as “your papa.” But my own I named my daddy, always, when I talked about him, which was not often.

But I learned many other courtesies from June. I learned to eat with one hand in my lap, never switching the fork from one hand to the other, as I used to do at home. I learned to keep my elbows off the table and to sit up straight, never hunching over the plate. Eating soup without slurping or blowing across the spoon took me longer, because I only got to practice at her house when there was soup, or at Aunt Addis's when there was chicken stew. At my own house, I slurped and sucked and blew in order to eat faster, so I would get enough before everything disappeared. At June's house, Piggy ate politely or else his papa cuffed him across the jaw. At my house, the boys ate like hogs at a trough, and the girls hardly better. A person had to use both hands in order to keep up.

June Frances taught me that ladies wear gloves nearly all the time, a fact that I had noticed the few times I had ridden into Kingston to Kress's five-and-dime; June's own pair of gloves had been stained with yellowish cat piss and had a smell, but they impressed me anyway. She allowed me to
wear them, and I put them on after she assured me they had been washed in the new wringer-washer. The fabric felt smooth and soft on the calloused skin of my hands.

“I got the stain when I tried to chop cotton with the gloves on,” June confided. “Mama made me pull them off and the cat peed on them at the end of the row. They belonged to my mother's sister Bethany, who is loose and takes up with every kind of man.”

From June I also learned about the behavior of girls with men and boys; and in this case, some of what I learned made me feel better about my own mother and family. A girl was not supposed to associate with boys until a certain age. In my own family, Nora, who was at this age or older, was still not allowed to date boys, talk to boys, or receive letters from boys, and when I told this to June, she seemed impressed with Nora's virtue. “You can't even have any kissing cousins,” June explained, and I replied that we did not. “A man cannot be allowed to see a woman naked, even your brother,” she added, and I added nothing to this, because I knew my daddy liked to watch Nora wash off in the tub.

“If a boy tries to kiss you, what would you do?”

“If it was Cob Granger, I would let him.”

“Cob Granger is as handsome as pictures of Jesus,” June agreed. “But what if it was somebody else? What if it was Piggy?”

We giggled into our palms, because we both thought the idea of Piggy doing anything like that was ridiculous. “I would turn my face away so he couldn't reach my mouth,” I answered. “And if he reached for me, I would back off.”

I AM IN
the present again. The moment hurtles toward something out there, unseen. The illusion that the past still exists, that I can travel in it, surrounds me, but I know that the images of June and me are false ones. I am more real than they are, I tell myself so.

The reassurance helps, because this morning I found Mama in the kitchen of my house, stooped over, looking at the refrigerator, maybe hoping to pour herself a glass of milk. At once I thought to myself, you are dead, you cannot be here.

But she pulled the refrigerator door open even wider; the cold spilled out in tendrils of mist that licked up and down her body. She inspected the food in my refrigerator slowly, the carton of orange juice, the milk, the packages of boiled sandwich ham, the box of cheese. Mayonnaise, relish, mustard, a jar of salsa left here by my grandson, who likes it. Fresh vegetables and fruits. A freezer full of meat bought on sale and wrapped carefully. Canned biscuits, too, so that I would never have to mix another batch unless I wished. My mother inspected every corner of the refrigerator, opened every cupboard, peeped behind every door. I held my breath.

When she left I sat down at the table. She disturbed nothing, she left the kitchen neat. Around me, laid out in tidy squares and smoothly curved shapes, my clean kitchen gleamed.

I remember no expression on her face. I have been sitting here at the table trying to think whether she wore any. Was there disapproval? Could there have been envy? Maybe she was proud that I have achieved this much in my life, that I have a clean kitchen and enough food for months? Even a tiny
bit proud would satisfy me. But I do not remember any expression at all.

UPSTAIRS IN THE
Taylor farmhouse, June led me to the back of a closet where there was no wall. Inky blackness filled the space beyond, a blackness so palpable you could squeeze it with your hand.

“There's a coffin back there, somewhere,” June announced, giving me a significant look.

“Is not.”

“Is too. It is the coffin of Jacob Brown, the man who once owned this farm. He was my papa's cousin.”

I stared into the black space, from which, suddenly, a dusky odor emerged, or I thought it did, like the smell of a dead bird, the musk of decay.

“He died of a mysterious disease,” June intoned, “and the family buried him here, out of sight in the attic, in order to keep the germs from getting into the ground. The germs from dead people are stronger than most other kinds of germs.” She leaned into the blackness. The closet was already dark, I could hardly see her. “We should go look at it.”

“I don't want to go in there.”

“All right,” June tugged her skirt from under her thighs; she always pretended a hard time getting comfortable. “We can sit here then. But sometimes cousin Jacob walks around.”

“He does not.”

She nodded, and I watched the outline of her head in the murk. “Yes, he does,” she whispered, and she made it sound almost sad. “One time I woke up and he was behind me and he had his cold, cold hands around my neck.”

“You're a telling a story.”

“You shouldn't call people a story like that. I woke up and he put his cold, cold hands around my neck, and he began to squeeze, and I could not breathe, but I knew who it was and I gasped, ‘Jacob,' at the last second and was saved.”

My heart had begun to pound, and I could have sworn, for a moment, that I felt icy fingers wrapping my own throat. This was her best story yet. I leaned even farther forward, and June gave me a little shove, and I squealed, “Stop it, June.”

“You don't have to raise your voice.” She shushed me dramatically. “Listen, there's something out there.”

We both listened. June scooted over next to me and hid her face behind my back. “It's just like before,” she muttered against my back, “when he tried to kill me by choking me.”

But there was nothing to be heard except the distant radio. Till suddenly I heard a voice I knew.

When Frog Taylor called us downstairs, we scrambled out of the opening to the attic, and June hurtled down the stairs like a hound after rabbits. I heard my daddy and changed back into my church dress before I went down myself. “My wife needs her at home and so I come on up here.”

“Well, we would have brought her home soon.” Frog's voice rose to a high pitch of politeness. “Albert was planning to run her there in the truck before he laid down for his nap. Won't you, Albert?”

Mr. Albert had laid a toothpick on his lower lip and looked my daddy up and down. “Yep.”

“Well, I can walk her on home now.”

“We can give you both a ride.”

Daddy fixed his eyes on me. From across the room I became afraid of him and wanted to hang back. I wished he would say yes to Mr. Albert and let him drive us home in the truck. But Daddy smiled at me and said, “Your mama sent me to get you, baby doll. She needs help with them younguns.”

I nodded and then took a deep breath. “I had a good time, June Frances. Thanks for asking me to come.”

She dipped her head, like a chicken going after corn, suddenly shy again.

“That was mighty sweet, won't it?” Frog smiled at everybody.

Daddy gathered me to him with a look and we left then, and Daddy never did answer Mr. Albert's question about the ride. We set out walking down their driveway, through the gray dirt of the front yard. Sweetgum balls from last autumn rolled underfoot. Daddy set a brisk pace down the road, and sometimes I had to trot a little to keep up. We headed along the road and then along a path through the woods, one I had walked with Addis once or twice. Soon we were all alone walking in the woods with warblers, sparrows, jays, and whatnot screeching overhead.

“You worried your mama.” He looked at me piercingly as he squatted on his heels rolling a cigarette. “You know it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“She didn't know nothing about you going to eat with the Taylors.”

I looked down at the ground, but I could still tell he was watching me.

“You'll have to get a whipping,” he said. He looked at me
for a long time, and I felt as if my bare skin were knotting and tightening. He licked out the tip of his tongue onto his lower lip. Then he smiled and lit the cigarette and smoked it.

Afterward, instead of beating me, he stood, and we walked down the path. I followed behind him at a careful distance, several steps, but not enough to be conspicuous, like I was trying to run away. We walked the long way, across Piney Creek onto the dry side. Daddy kept ahead of me and only looked back at me one time, when we were in sight of the African Methodist church. Some black children were playing in the churchyard near a juniper tree, and Daddy eyed them, then turned to me. Beard darkened his lower face. His teeth gleamed. Clouds and tree branches were moving behind his head, as if he had put them there. Then he turned and we walked again, without hurry.

We neared the house on the pond side, out of the woods, and Daddy stopped there, under a birch tree, to take off his belt.

He fixed his eyes on me. His voice lowered flat and toneless. “You move a muscle, I'll give it to you twice as worse.”

He moved around me with the belt. I stood there while he lashed me across the legs and arms. I hardly felt any thing while he was whipping me with the soft leather, though I knew he had cut my legs with the belt. I was too afraid to feel anything, because he was still there, moving around me. I hurt later, when he was finished. Beginning as he faced me, looping the belt through his everyday pants. I could feel tears sliding down my face and something wet slid down my legs as well, and I refused to look at him for fear he would take off the belt again. “If your mama had of done you, she would
of done you worse,” he said. “You ought to be thankful.” He walked away, his dogs setting up a chorus under the house.

LATE AT NIGHT
I hear Mama again, shuffling on the clean lino leum. I pull on my robe and tiptoe out of my bedroom, my king-size bed. Even before I round the corner I know she is there.

She has not turned on any light, she has not disturbed anything. But a flux of moonlight traces her iridescent outlines in front of my sink. She has been eating, I am certain of it, and later I will discover that someone has scooped out a new corner of the macaroni and cheese casserole. But now she simply stands in front of the sink, looking out at my flower garden in the moonlight.

All questions freeze on my lips. After a few moments I move into the sitting area from which I can still see her. I look out one window and she looks out the other, and we are faced with the whole garden, the pebble paths and the fish pool and the arbor where I trained wisteria to grow, the climbing tomato plants at the back, the scuppernong vine, the fig bush, and the young, short apple trees, for tonight they all blaze, all the flowers, and every branch bows heavy with fruit or berry, every place I turn. So I am hardly surprised when my mother walks outside, nor am I surprised even when, a moment later, I follow her.

Clouds roll in a high wind, and their mottling across the moon makes it appear the light is moving across my hands, my nightgown, and clinging to my steps. I button the robe at the front in case the neighbors should be watching. Discreet, I move along the slate path.

Ahead, my mother has stopped beside the Japanese maple in its bed of pine straw at the corner of the house. Out here in the dark she seems less substantial, as if she really is a ghost, as if I really might poke my hand right through her, without hurting her at all. But I am reluctant to step too close. I wait, I allow her to lead.

Once, by the hummingbird feeder, she turns and looks at me. I believe it is the first time our eyes meet. A chill sweeps me, and I remember, suddenly, sitting in the open square of blackness in the back of June Frances's closet on that first Sunday afternoon. The chill reminds me of that, made up of the air over a grave or from inside a tomb. My dead mother watches me for a few moments, then turns, and I follow her.

When I am aware again I am halfway across the bare field in back of the house. I do not so much waken there as regain control of myself, recovering my limbs, stopping my forward march. Mama still walks ahead, nearly across the field as I watch. She never hesitates, like my dream. She heads toward the river. She plunges into the woods in her white slip. Moving forward, through darkness, toward water. I glimpse her face slipping under the water. I have not seen the image so clearly for years. The white round pancake of her face slipping under the water, without expression.