The Promise (16 page)

She said that like wounds could heal. Wounds stayed wounds. A person just got so they knew that; they just got to where they put one foot in front of the other. But I figured Mrs Williams didn’t know much about sorrow.

Across from me, she pinned me with them blue eyes of hers. She might not know anything about sorrow, but she did know a little something about coming into another woman’s house. It’d haunt me, if I had to do such, thinking about somebody I couldn’t give shape to. I’d want to know. But if somebody was to ask me about Oakley Hill’s drowning, about the waiting for him to be found, and then how he looked, I wouldn’t want to say it. I wouldn’t want to say it about Joe Pete Conley either, how he’d suffered with lockjaw, getting all stiff, and then that burning fever and him likely knowing what was bound to come. I couldn’t put words to none of that, somebody else would have to do it for me.

I said, ‘Malaria took her.’

‘Oh dear.’ Mrs Williams brushed the side of her hand over her part of the table, gathering up a little hill of crumbs. She said, ‘This was last October? Was she in the hospital? Or here?’

‘Here.’

A tight look came over her face, and I guessed what she was thinking. I said, ‘Mr Williams and Daddy burned the mattress. Burned the bedclothes, the netting too. There wasn’t no need for that: folks say it ain’t catching that way. Skeeters carry it; most of us have a touch of it now and again. But Mr Williams had it fixed otherwise in his mind so Daddy went on and helped him.’

‘You have malaria?’

‘A touch.’

‘And Oscar? Andre?’

‘Not Andre. He don’t sit still long enough for skeeters to light on him.’

The corners of her mouth lifted, then she got all serious again. She said, ‘Where is Andre’s mother buried?’

‘In the city cemetery. On Broadway.’

‘Oscar takes Andre to see her grave?’

‘Every Sunday if it ain’t raining. They lay flowers.’

Mrs Williams looked off, her blue eyes going all dim. Her forehead was beaded up with sweat, and her shirtwaist stuck to her skin just above her bosom. She didn’t know that in the summer, nobody cinched their corsets tight or wore high collars. Leastways we didn’t on our end of the island.

She said, ‘Last night at the dance I thought I might meet her family. Her parents or brothers and sisters, if she had any.’

‘There’s only her mama and Mr Williams has nothing to do with her.’

‘That sounds rather ominous.’

I wished she’d talk regular so a person could understand her on the first try. I combed through her words, then said, ‘Her mama lives on Post Office Street. Leastways she did last any of us heard. She drifts over to Louisiana from time to time, her being a Cajun.’

‘Cajun?’

‘She’s a Frenchy. They come from Louisiana mainly. They’re swamp people.’

Mrs Williams’ lips pursed up at that. After a while, she said, ‘I’m not familiar with this Post Office Street.’

‘There’s a stretch of it that ain’t proper, let’s just leave it at that. It ain’t no place to raise a child, especially a girl. The nuns got ahold of Bernadette before it was too late; they got her out of that place and raised her up.’

A kind of quaky look came over Mrs Williams like she had just gotten a mouthful of something bad, and I figured she had. Bernadette’s mother was no good. As for her father, there was no telling who he was, but I didn’t say that. It’d shame Bernadette. Not that she came from bad blood, not all the way. She had a grandma over there in Louisiana, and when Bernadette was little, her mama would leave her there from time to time. ‘Grandmère cooked like nobody else,’ Bernadette would say. ‘And she had a garden like your mama’s, raising carrots, greens, and melons. I used to help her, holding the stakes and patting the ground when she’d put in the seedlings. And Grandpère, he made pirogues, his boats so light they were like herons skimming the Atchafalaya.’

Mrs Williams said, ‘You and she were friends?’

Me and Bernadette were more than friends; we saw eye-to-eye on most things. Once in a while, I’d come by to see her after I’d finished helping Mama at home. I’d be walking through the back pasture and there’d be Bernadette, coming to meet me. ‘I was just now thinking of you, Nan,’ she’d say, that curly black hair of hers coming loose from her ribbon. ‘Just now. And here you are.’ I’d roll up my sleeves, and me and her would scrub clothes or I’d help out with the cooking. She was a little thing. Mama said that was because Bernadette was nothing but a half-starved shadow of a girl when the nuns found her. But she wasn’t scared of hard work. She made this house of hers shine, she was that proud of it. Sometimes she’d sing while we’d do the chores, her calling up swamp songs. For a while, she made me sit at the table so she could teach me my letters. The nuns had taught her to read and write, and she thought everybody needed to know how. But I didn’t like school and how the schoolteachers looked down their noses at me and my brothers, us coming from down the island. ‘It ain’t in me,’ I’d tell Bernadette. ‘I don’t like sitting still. My hand’s fighting this pencil.’ But Bernadette wouldn’t listen. ‘Try again,’ she’d say as she guided my hand.

Other times me and Bernadette talked about the oddness of the world and how there were just enough good times to make the rough patches easier. When Bernadette took to thinking about her mama and worrying about the life she was living, I’d listen, not passing on one ounce of judgment. When I’d get to missing Oakley Hill, she’d say, ‘Tell me about him, me not ever knowing him. Say his name, say it right out loud.’

‘That’s right,’ I said to Mrs Williams. ‘Me and Bernadette were friends.’ She looked to be turning that over in her mind. I said, ‘She was expecting. That’s why malaria took her.’

‘Dear heavens.’

‘Expecting at Christmas or thereabouts.’

Mrs Williams closed her eyes. This house was a-swirl with things not said, Oscar sheltering her from anything that was a few shades off of being pretty. She opened her eyes and when she did, she laid her hands flat on the table. Her skin was white and soft, not red and roughed up like mine. The ends of her nails had been filed smooth and curved a tad on the sides. Her wedding band was nothing like Bernadette’s. Bernadette’s had been thin, Oscar having just bought four Jerseys to add to his farm. But Mrs Williams’ was wide. He’d been willing to spend whatever it took to claim her.

I said, ‘He got you that piano, you know.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Mr Williams went to the city just last week, got it for you then. Had it delivered the very next day.’

‘He did?’ she said, her eyes going wide some. ‘I thought it had always been here. I assumed that Andre’s mother played.’

‘He got it for you.’ Along with that pretty wedding band, I thought. Then, plain as day, I recalled what Oscar told Mrs Williams after she played that moonlight song of hers. It was like he was right here, saying them words again: ‘I’d stand outside your window and listen.’

When Bernadette died, Oscar kept away from other women. But from out of nowhere, letters started flying from here to Ohio. Maybe he’d carried Catherine Williams in his mind for years. Maybe when him and Bernadette sat out at night looking up at the stars, he’d been thinking of this woman with that smile of hers and her figure that turned men silly.

I stood up. ‘I’ve got dishes to wash.’

I washed and she dried the dishes. I didn’t want her help. I didn’t want her standing so close to me, the two of us looking out the same kitchen window. I didn’t like thinking this woman might have flooded Oscar’s thoughts when he was married to Bernadette. Mrs Williams hadn’t asked if she could help, she just took up the dish towel like it was the most natural thing in the world. I kept my mouth shut, saying only what I had to about where the frying pan went and how the spoons and forks had their own places in the drawer. I wanted to be left alone. I wanted to figure out that it wasn’t true about Oscar, him thinking about her for years. I wanted to be able to tell myself that my imagination had gone in the wrong direction. Most of all, I didn’t want Catherine Williams handling Bernadette’s things.

She didn’t wear an apron and that didn’t sit well either. It’d be me scrubbing the dirty spots from her skirts, me washing and ironing her shirtwaists. I heard Mama’s voice in my head telling me that Oscar was paying me to do such work. If the new Mrs Williams wanted to dry dishes, that was her right. This was her house, not mine. Maybe so, I argued back in my head. Didn’t mean I had to like it. Didn’t mean I had to talk to her. Not that Mrs Williams noticed the argument I was waging with Mama. She looked out the window like there was something at the sand hills that only she could see.

It was eight o’clock when Oscar, Andre, and the orphans left for St. Mary’s in the two wagons, the beds packed with containers of milk. As soon as they were on the other side of the sand hills, taking the beach road with the dogs trotting along with them, Mrs Williams sat down at the piano. She had sheet music spread out in front of her but she didn’t play that moonlight song, and I was glad for it. I hurt bad enough as it was.

Mrs Williams didn’t seem to care when some of the piano keys stuck. She just kept on and made the music flow through the house. It flowed through me, too, like it had yesterday, but I didn’t let on. I kept to my chores.

When Oscar and the boys got back around nine, St. Mary’s being nothing but a quick trip, Mrs Williams stopped right in the middle of a tune and went outside. She stood on the edge of the veranda and watched them unload the empty metal containers from the two wagons.

I fried slices of ham and boiled a dozen eggs. Oscar’s cows might not know it, but Sunday was a day of rest calling for a light dinner and an even lighter supper. I had just turned the ham slices in the skillet when Mrs Williams came in from the veranda and went to the bedroom. When she showed up again, she had on one of her fancy hats with feathers and bows. This one was wide-brimmed and made of straw. Without a word, she left the house and took the narrow path that went to the outhouse, holding her skirt above her ankles.

I didn’t know what to make of it when she went on by the outhouse and headed toward the barn. The orphan boys had unhitched the horses and were taking them to the stables on the other side of the barn. Andre was with them, and so were the four dogs. Maybe she took the unhitching of the horses to mean that Oscar wasn’t going to carry her to church, her not knowing the horses needed water and they won’t lower themselves to drink out of the cow trough. It wasn’t like her to pay a visit to the barn, I didn’t know if she’d ever been there. But there she was at the barnyard gate, having all kinds of trouble with the wood latch. More than likely it was swelled up from the sea air.

After some doing, she got it open and knew enough to close the gate behind her. She picked her way through the yard and held her skirt so high that her white stockings showed. When she got close to the trough where Maisie was, she hurried up like she was scared. She didn’t know that milkers weren’t given to chasing women, especially a milker with a swelled leg.

A handful of minutes went by before Oscar and Mrs Williams came out of the barn. Oscar held a bucket. By then, the boys and dogs had left the stables and were on their way to the barn. Oscar and Mrs Williams met them outside of the barnyard gate and they had themselves a big meeting with her in the thick of it. Oscar gave the bucket to Andre and then Oscar put his hand on Joe’s shoulder. See you next Sunday, I guessed they were saying. The orphans were finished for the day and would walk home now. That was how they did, Sunday after Sunday, taking the path from the barn to the sand hills and on down the beach to St. Mary’s. But this weren’t the usual Sunday. No, sir. The orphans headed for the hills but not alone. Andre went with them and so did Mrs Williams.

I could hardly believe my own eyes. She waved the boys to go ahead of her since the path was too narrow to walk any other way but one behind the other. James, being the oldest, led the way. Andre marched behind the orphans, holding on to the bucket, knocking it against his knees. Mrs Williams took little steps in them fancy shoes of hers. She held back some like she didn’t want to get too close to the dogs. She didn’t know they were herders and that they’d keep to her heels no matter what.

Closer to the hills now where the breeze was strong, Mrs Williams’ skirt mashed against her legs. She plodded and sank in the soft, deep sand. Her hand on her hat, she followed the boys. At the pass between the hills, they waited for her to catch up. Once she got there, they took off again, the walking easier since they were on the planks. Straining my eyes, I watched as they slipped out of sight, Mrs Williams the last to round the hills.

The orphans were going home. Like always. But that bucket of Andre’s, I knew what it meant. Andre and Mrs Williams were getting sand hill sea daisies for Bernadette, and Oscar had watched it all. He was at the barnyard fence, standing there like he didn’t want to do nothing but wait for her to get back home.

I turned the ham slices one last time. The butter popped loud in my ears. I took off my apron and hung it on a nail by the icebox. I moved the skillet off the stove and covered the ham with a lid. I got my bonnet and tied the strings under my chin, then started for home, taking the path through the back pasture and stirring up a crop of skeeters. Oscar wasn’t nowhere in sight now. His good sense must have gotten ahold of him and told him to get back to work. I didn’t stop at the barn to tell him I was heading on home and how I’d see him bright and early in the morning. I didn’t feel like it, not one little bit. Not with Andre going off with Mrs Williams.

High up, the clouds were puffy but flat bottomed, and the breeze blew from the gulf. Some of Oscar’s cows stood in the ponds to escape the skeeters. Others were clumped up in the side shade of the salt cedar tree. They watched me as I passed by, my unlit lantern in one hand and the empty basket in my other. I opened and closed the back gate, and stepped over the rusty lace-factory train tracks.

At the bayou now, I stood at the place where the land thinned down into mud and marsh with salt grass poked up in the shallows. Dragonflies darted, flashes of shiny green. Seashells were scattered every which way. Oscar called them whelks, him liking to know the fancy names for such things. He had a skiff here; it was tied loose to the dock, rocking a little as the water lapped. Daddy had helped him build the dock when Oscar bought the dairy. ‘If I’m going to live on an island,’ Oscar had said, ‘I’m going to have me a boat.’