My Drowning (6 page)

Suddenly I heard Daddy's voice, and everything got quiet around it. Daddy roared something, and Mama came stumbling out of the crowd with Daddy kicking her backside. Mama stumbled toward the road and Daddy followed her, each kick heaving her forward. “Get your goddamn fat ass to the house,” he shouted, “get these goddamn filthy younguns to the house,” and Nora was running toward the wagon and I jumped up. The chocolate drink splattered on my coat.

Everyone near the store had got quiet. They watched Daddy chase Mama down the road, and Nora dragged the wagon along the edge of the ditch toward our house. They
watched me run, with the chocolate drink bottle swinging by my legs, my coat and skirt flapping high. I heard some of them laughing. The sound echoed for a long time.

WE HURRIED TO
the house. Daddy chased Mama all the way there.

“I didn't want to sit here with these younguns,” Mama wailed, as Daddy whipped his leather belt against her legs. She was climbing the porch, hugging Madson to her, shuddering, while the leather strap cut red welts into her shins. “I was scared.”

We watched from the edge of the yard. We were afraid to go closer.

“Get in the goddamn house.” Daddy lashed the belt back and forth. Mama had almost climbed to the porch, and now the belt landed on her dress. She sheltered Madson against her, or else used him as a shield for her face. She opened the screen and slid through the door. Daddy followed, still roaring.

We hurried to the edge of the porch. We could hear him beating her inside. She cried far louder than when we had to go to the neighbors for Madson to be born. Otis stood close to Nora, who hung her head. Joe Robbie whispered for me to wipe his mouth again, and I stayed near.

After a few minutes Mama's yelling stopped, but suddenly Madson was screaming, and then Daddy rushed through the door and hurtled to the bottom of the steps. He glared at us, pointing his long thin finger. “Get your asses in that house and stay there. Now.”

He stood there while Nora and Otis hauled Joe Robbie up the steps. I sneaked in front of them, afraid to be last.

Inside, Mama sobbed at the sink. Madson lay flat beside the washbasin, his forehead bloody, his cries piercing the house. “Your daddy hit him with the belt,” she told Nora. “He hit him. Poor little thing.”

She sobbed and wiped her forehead. Blood drained around her grimy ankles from the lashes on her legs.

Otis built up the fire. Nora washed Mama's legs. Madson calmed and slept. The belt had struck across his tender forehead, a tiny line of red. Dark, drying blood glistened.

YEARS LATER I
went back to the Jarman's store in the '62 Impala I bought with my own money, earned by working in the elementary school cafeteria. My own children were with me, clean and neatly dressed, and I wore my hair freshly done from the beauty parlor. My dress was sky blue, with a wide white belt, and I wore white shoes, but instead of the white hat, I wore a white rayon scarf tied around my hair. I carried my purse into the store. The reflection of myself in that store window took me back, suddenly, to that day when the monster was loose and Mama walked us to the store for chocolate drinks. I could almost smell the same hint of clean dirt and rain.

Inside, Miss Ruby smiled at me politely though she never recognized me, that time. I bought drinks for all my children, and cold hot dogs, and a loaf of white bread, for the journey. She eyed me over like she might know me, she put on her glasses to work the new cash register and then eyed me over again. She was stooped herself, her skin gone all to pin wrinkles. She handed me my change. For a moment I
wanted to tell her who I was. I'm Ellen Tote, I wanted to say. In a clean dress with a scarf on my hair. But I never said a word. She bagged my merchandise. I paid deposit for the drink bottles, which I hated to do, and drove away.

ALMA LAURA
was born in the house near Moss Pond, months later when the memory of the monster had faded. Mama swelled and sat as before, chewing biscuit through the long day. At the end of Mama's time, Nora left school to take care of her.

Alma Laura emerged from my mother's shrieks into the midwife's hands in midspring. Miss Rilla, the midwife, called us into the house near midafternoon, telling us we had a new baby girl this time. We saw our new sister in Mama's bedroom lying in the cradle. Blankets swathed her pink china face. My heart ached from the first moment I saw her, and she filled an emptiness in me, as if I had been expecting her. As if she were returning from a long journey. She was my baby sister, my own true love, and she erased the hard memory of Madson's coming. When Mama allowed her to suck on a tit, I felt the warmth all through me.

Even that very first day of her life, I sat by the cradle and watched her sleep till the shadows were long and dark. I sat so long and quiet I scared Mama and she screamed for Nora
to take me away. I kissed Alma Laura's burning red forehead and hardly felt Nora's fingernails digging into my arm.

She was sick from the beginning. I could rarely stop thinking about her, I dreamed her at night. In the dream I remember her breath was like fire, and when I lay near her I inhaled the heat into myself, as dry as she. Someone moved the cradle to the fireplace and we slept there, she in the cradle and me kneeling beside her. The house was more silent than it had ever been, we were alone. The wind scoured the house, and I tucked the thin blankets around her. We were out of wood. I hollered for more. But the fire burned faster and I could find nothing to keep it going, and the cold soaked through the floorboards, my socks hardly helped at all and I could not find my shoes.

From dreams like this, I wakened into the cool of a spring morning, the wee hours before dawn, with the baby crying and Mama crying as Daddy cursed them both.

Mama moved to a pallet in front of the fireplace with the cradle beside her. Uncle Cope snored in the kitchen on his big bed. Daddy got his rest.

EVERY POSSIBLE WAKING
minute I spent with the baby. I held the pins while Nora changed the diapers. I was strong enough to push the pins through the diaper when Nora held the diaper for me, except once I stuck her thumb with the pin and she slapped me sharp across the face. It hurt and I cried, but I really did not blame her, and she trusted me enough to let me try again. We changed the diapers neatly. I stroked Alma Laura's wrinkled forehead while she kicked her legs.

Sometimes I sat on the floor or on a stool and cradled her burning body against mine. She was hot as a coal, her face scarlet, her dark hair curled, plastered to her tiny face. I had no images, no fantasies that she was my child, that we were together anywhere but in our kitchen. I simply held her and felt her life. A raging love coursed through me.

“A shitass girl,” Daddy said, “and this one too puny to live.”

“She's fine, Willie. She's gained some weight. Nora and me both think so.”

“Puny,” spat Daddy, “a runt. Look at her.”

“She sucks at me till I'm sore,” Mama rubbed her elbow over her blouse, “she'll get bigger.”

“You should have had a boy like I wanted.”

“You got plenty of boys.”

Daddy sucked snot and ended the conversation. He looked down at the baby in my lap, watching both of us with equal detachment. Carl Jr. said, “Her face is bright red, like Aunt Tula. Ain't it?”

“Tula do look like that, don't she?” Daddy grinned. His teeth were dark-edged. “We should have named her Tula.”

SHE BURNED
. I held her and she burned. I was hopelessly in love with this baby, I held her but she scorched me everywhere I touched her, her tiny mouth and hands, her damp cheeks. Mama held her to suck, Nora and I held her, she slept. Hardly more sound than a whimper, now and then.

I sat by her cradle. During the day the strong sun that fell through the front windows surrounded her in a haze of gold. She tossed her head back and forth in sleep. Mama hardly disturbed her, and Alma Laura ate less and less. Mama stared
down at her, blinking and distracted. I held my breath. Mama's shadow passed away.

“We need a doctor,” but Mama's voice was flat. “We need a doctor for that baby.”

“If you're asking me for money for a doctor, I ain't got nothing to pay one with,” Uncle Cope declared. We were sitting in the kitchen. Uncle Cope gouged a biscuit with his thumb, pouring syrup inside. “I ain't got nothing till the first of the month when I get my disability.”

“That baby needs a doctor. That's all I know.” Mama walked aimlessly back and forth, peering over the edge of the cradle.

Early in the morning we woke to Mama's wailing that the baby was cold, the baby was all cold, and I ran out there to see for myself. Alma Laura lay still and quiet, a small gray shadow in the light from the kerosene lamp, a gray lump of something twisted on itself, and I dropped my hands and refused to touch her, though I could not stop looking.

When she died, there was a lot of fuss, people running around. The deputy sheriff came to look at the body and make some papers. Then the man from the funeral home took away Alma Laura in a car.

She lived three months, three days.

We buried her deep in the ground. Daddy's family bought a small pine box and we took her to the same place where the baby boy was buried, the municipal cemetery in Kingston where Daddy's family owned space. I rode in the truck with Aunt Tula and Uncle Bray. At the graveyard was a big tent with chairs under it, beautiful folding chairs of deeply polished wood, and we sat on them in front of the box where
Alma Laura would sleep. We buried the lump of her in the box, somewhere in that dark hole beneath. Men were preparing to lower Alma Laura into the ground as we walked away. Daddy and Carl Jr. carried Mama away from the grave, each taking her by one arm, as she moaned and hung her head.

At night, when I woke, Alma Laura floated beside me in the air. I was neither afraid of her lightness nor in doubt of her presence. I lay on my side and studied how she hung there, how light. I never tried to touch her, I had no need to do so. It was enough that she returned, that she floated in such a peaceful way.

I passed a birthday. Nora reminded me of the day when it came; no one said anything before. At supper, Mama patted me on the head and served me a syrup biscuit.

“I saw Alma Laura last night,” I said.

“You what?”

“I saw Alma Laura. She came to my bedroom.”

Mama's eyes focused to sharp points, and the fury of her hand crashed against my head. She grabbed me by the hair, slapped me across the face until I was dizzy and my nose ached, then threw me across the room like a sack of sugar. I landed with a bump against the sink, and froze there.

Mama blew out breath like a bellows. “You ain't seen a thing.” The fierceness of her eyes withered me, and I shivered. “Say it again. Say it.” She waited for a moment, and I shook my head to signify I would say nothing.

They left me alone and ate dinner. Because Daddy had not come home yet, the beating was not worse. When he came home, late, Mama served him pinto beans and biscuit, speaking
in a sullen voice about Joe Robbie's doctor appointment.

I hid beyond the doorway till I was sure Mama would not tell. Then I withdrew to the bedroom and sat on the bed by the window.

AT NIGHT ALMA
Laura continued to appear at my bedside, happy and gurgling, toes curling in the air. I told no one. I was old enough to have a secret now, and it made me more conscious of myself.

That she came to me made me feel special. I understood that she knew I always loved her best, better even than Mama who offered her tit.

That I had become more conscious of myself deepened everything, through every moment of the day. Everything I saw became clearer, and the days began to make a river of themselves, running under everything else. In my mind was a chain of memories, and I began to accumulate a past. I began to think, this week we have more food than last week. I began to think, I wonder if next winter we will be as cold as we were last winter.

Alma Laura grew, and I watched her progress when she was with me, and I never wondered how she could be here if she were really dead. I grew. I opened my eyes wide and studied my home. No one had to tell me, this time, when Mama became pregnant again.

THESE DAYS, WHEN
I remember Alma Laura, I remember her the way she was when she finally stopped visiting me years later, after I had eloped with Bobjay. I was pregnant with my first child. She had been with me my whole life till then,
always silent, sitting quietly beside me, as if her presence in my sight contented her. She grew as I grew, a little behind me. Sometimes, when she was not with me, I would see her walking in the distance, usually at the edge of woods or in some empty building near whatever house we lived in. She moved from house to house when we did, not like the ghost of the baby boy, who never found us again after we moved away from the Low Grounds. When I met Bobjay, at a fair in Onslow County, Alma Laura was silently walking beside me, faded in the yellow light of the midway. When I eloped, she watched from the edge of the yard as Bobjay carried me away. In my new house near Rocky Mount, she followed me from room to room. She shared early mornings, late afternoons, times when she could find me alone. Her presence was so familiar, by the last day I saw her, I hardly noticed her at all. I was pregnant, so swollen I could hardly move. Alma Laura sat with me in that little kitchen. She wore the same peach dress I was wearing, much thinner than me, and she smoothed down the skirt once. Then she walked to the door. She turned to me and smiled, and I knew she was leaving. The thought came very clearly in my head. She slid out the door and walked off through the yard into the woods. She stood at the edge of the woods for a while; I suppose she was looking back at me. She vanished into the woods and never came out. I never saw her again.

UNCLE COPE LIVED
with us, off and on, for as far back as I can remember, whenever the rest of his family had enough of him. Uncle Cope liked his liquor and, even on crutches, ran around with the Saturday night crowd of good old boys who hung around the pond. My daddy was famous among his kin for putting up with almost anything, and he appreciated Cope's mean streak, which was the reason Cope always left the metal frame bed he owned in our kitchen, no matter where he might be living himself for any given week of meals.