The Promise (24 page)

‘How’s that?’ Frank T. said.

In a hurry to get it out, I said, ‘I’ve already told Oscar, Mrs Williams, too. I’m in need of a change, and that’s what I intend to do. Make a change.’

That kicked up a fuss all right, nobody getting my meaning at first, everybody saying, ‘What?’ and me having to lay it out flat on the table. ‘I ain’t quitting, just leaving,’ I said, trying to make that part clear.

‘I’d call that quitting,’ Daddy said. ‘And Oscar nearly being family. You don’t walk out on family, leastways the Ogdens don’t.’ From there the fuss took a new direction, Daddy asking if this change of mine would pay me ten dollars a week.

‘There’re others out there that pay good,’ I said, but these were just words meant to make me feel better. No other place would be like working at Oscar’s. I knew my way around there good. I didn’t like the idea of going into the city, knocking on the doors of strangers and asking if they were in need of help. I’d never had to do such before. But I liked having money of my own. It gave me a solid feeling. I saved most of it but spent some, buying buttons to spruce up an old dress and picking out high-quality material for a new one. Three months ago, I had a pair of shoes made. I bought for Mama, too, extra coffee because she had a taste for it and bottled remedies for her back pains, her needing it by the spoonful.

Frank T. made some sassy remark about how the sweet-natured, pretty Mrs Williams would surely miss my bossy ways.

‘Leave Nan alone,’ Wiley said.

‘I’m only saying what’s true,’ Frank T. said.

‘Boys,’ Mama said. ‘Stop it, won’t have bickering, not at my table. Bad enough there’s a storm coming. Supper’s over and there’s things that need doing. Now out. Everybody. Out.’ I started to get up. ‘Not you,’ she said. ‘Sit down – the dishes can wait.’

I did, me and her not saying anything, just listening as the men left, their footsteps making the floor shake. I knew what was coming. Mama would remind me about my promise to Bernadette as she’d laid sweating on her deathbed, Bernadette holding my hand until I said I’d look after Andre. After refreshing my memory about that, Mama likely would point out how Andre might have a new mother but Mrs Williams was still getting her bearings, her and Oscar being married just eight days. She ain’t like us, I figured Mama would say and then she’d recommend the merits of me living up to my responsibilities.

She said, ‘This notion of making a change. Whose idea was it first?’

‘Mine.’

She gave me a long look. I held it, not backing down because what I said was true. Then all at once, a kind of sadness settled over Mama. Her shoulders slumped as she took to studying the white dishes on the table. It wasn’t like she was thinking they were dishes that needed washing, but more like she was seeing the scratches made from all the years of scrubbing. There were chips too, mostly on the edges. The dishes were older than Frank T. by a year, and he was twenty-six. Mama bought them a week before her and Daddy got married. Daddy had given her the money.

She said, ‘Nan, you’re a grown woman. Twenty-two years old. When I was that, I was married, had me a baby and was thinking about the next one. But you, you’ve had more than your share of hard times, losing Oakley, then Joe Pete, and now, well, now this.’ Mama stopped. She knew, I thought. Without me ever saying a word, she knew there was a powerful ache inside of me from wanting Oscar Williams.

She slid her hand across the table toward me, working her way past the empty platters and bowls. I did the same with mine, meeting hers, feeling the swelled-up knuckles and knobs on each finger, and knowing my hands would get the same way, hard work doing that.

‘Honey,’ Mama said. ‘There are times when leaving is called for. That’s how I see it. So you go on with this. You’ve given enough to that man.’

I went to bed, Mama’s words running through my head. I would have given more, but things had a way of not working out, leastways not like how I wanted. I was a curse to the men that cared for me. As for Oscar, he’d never carried such thoughts about me, not with Catherine Williams likely fixed in his mind since he was a boy.

I wasn’t the only one restless that night. Everybody got up early. Three-thirty in the morning and Daddy was moving the wood pile up to the veranda. The coffee not even perked yet and there was Mama, using that wood to build a makeshift holding pen for the hog and her piglets. ‘Nan, honey, the bayou’s overflowing a tad,’ Mama told me when I came out on the veranda. I held up the lantern and there it was, water glistening in the salt grass, not more than a handful of yards from the front of the house.

This storm of Wiley’s, it was on its way. Storms pushed the tides in, that was the first sign. Overhead, there wasn’t the first hint of the moon or even the bittiest flicker of a star, the night sky was that clouded. The wind had picked up but it still blew in from the mainland instead of from the gulf. I hurried off to the chicken coop to gather eggs, and them birds were a flutter of nerves, squawking and pecking at my hand. When I left the coop, I stepped into a thin layer of bayou water, it had come up that fast. By the time I got to the house, my boots were muddy and water had seeped in through the seams along the soles. My stockings were wet but there was no time to change, the boys were waiting for me in the wagon. My poncho folded up over my left arm, I handed Frank T. the basket of eggs and climbed up. We were in a mighty hurry, nobody had to tell the other that. The boys wanted to get the milking done, the wagons loaded, and the deliveries made before the weather turned rough.

Leastways the ground was dry once we got a little ways from our place, but that didn’t make the horses, Blaze and Mike, feel much better. They tossed their heads like they wanted to shake off the wind, but there was no getting rid of it. It was a nervous wind, jumpy and jerky.

It made me the same way. At Oscar’s, I burned my fingers when I lit the second lamp. I boiled the grits and cracked over a dozen eggs, getting ready to scramble them before I thought to start the coffee. It didn’t help that I had to cook in my bare feet. My muddy boots were on the veranda, and my stockings were drying in the oven. Oscar and my brothers came in and sat down at the table, and nobody said nothing about my nakedness. Any other time Frank T. would call me a wild Indian or other such nonsense. But not today. In the lamplight, the men were shadowed up with worry and nearly too twitchy to eat.

‘Tide’s high at the beach,’ Oscar told me between mouthfuls. That meant the boys would have to take the ridge road into Galveston. I didn’t even think about eating with them, I got busy making sack lunches. They had just downed the last of their coffee when the rain started up, coming in a fit and drumming on the tin roof. It made us look up at the ceiling like we could see through it, and then Frank T. said to me, ‘Tide’s more than high. It’s clear to the sand hills. Beach is swamped.’

That made my belly flutter; it made the island feel like nothing but a narrow spit of land. Wiley shot Frank T. a look that said, Don’t you say one more thing. That made me wonder what else they weren’t telling me. We’d had high tides and overflows before, plenty of them, the wind doing that. Or sometimes the overflows happened when we had hard rains, the soil the kind that didn’t hold water. But this was different, and everybody knew it. There was something in the air, something big and alive. But folks in the city needed their milk, that didn’t ever change.

The boys left for the city wearing their ponchos. Daylight finally showed itself, puny and thin. It quit raining, and by the time Andre got up, the sky had brightened some with a few patches of blue over the gulf. But there were still dark clouds piled up, and yesterday’s swells had turned into tall, gray waves. Mean waves. They roared as they fought against the north wind from the mainland.

Them waves was the reason I gave Andre an extra-long good-morning hug. I needed to take in that little-boy smell of his, sweetness with a bit of mustiness right below that. ‘Miss Nan,’ he said. He nuzzled close, his words slurred from sleep. His hair poked up in every direction. I made big circles on his back with my hand, taking in the feel of his ribs and his knobby backbone. Then all at once, I had to push back tears, the idea of leaving him hitting me hard. He pulled away from me. ‘Ma’am!’ he said.

There she was, dressed in her green skirt and shirtwaist with layers of lace, and me in my bare feet. This was early for Mrs Williams. I hadn’t heard her stirring in the washroom, but the rain had started up again and was plenty loud. Andre went to her. She put her hand on his head and cupped the back of it. He scooted closer.

‘Good morning, Andre,’ she said, like he was a grown person. Then she said good morning to me, her eyebrows shooting high when she saw my bare feet.

‘The bayou’s overflowing,’ I said. I didn’t know why I felt the need to explain myself but I did. I had to raise my voice to do it, the rain came down that loud. ‘My boots and stockings took a soaking.’

‘Pardon?’

‘The ground’s covered at home.’

‘From the rain?’

‘It wasn’t raining then. It’s from the bayou. Like I said. It’s overflowing and going where it don’t belong. It’s clear to my house.’

The color dropped right out of her cheeks. ‘Is it deep?’ she said. ‘What about your home? Will it get inside? And here? Will it reach us here?’

‘Just covering the ground, like I said. Maybe an inch or two. And we’re up on stilts. Six feet. As for here, this ridge is plenty high. Same for the house.’

‘Miss Nan,’ Andre said. He was still propped up against Mrs Williams, and her hand played with his cowlick, trying to pat it down. ‘Can we go look?’

‘No, sir, not in this rain. Now you go on and get yourself dressed. Use the chamber pot, but, young man, I won’t have any fancy tricks, you hear me? Aim. Aim good. Now scoot.’

Mrs Williams pressed her lips, and at first I thought it was because of what I’d said about Andre’s aim, but that weren’t so. She had just gotten a look at the waves out the windows. Andre scampered off, his fingers trailing along the wall likely leaving smudge marks, but she didn’t take no notice. She was at the middle window now, blinking those blue eyes of hers. Maybe she was trying to make them tall waves out there fit with her notion of Ohio storms.

‘Miss Ogden,’ she said. Her voice was low. I had to get close to hear her over the rain. ‘Have your brothers left for the city?’

‘A good while ago. They should be making their deliveries by now.’

‘And no one was alarmed by these waves? Or the rain? They weren’t concerned about this sky?’

‘They remarked on it,’ I said. ‘Said how the tide’s clear to the sand hills. But children need their milk. Don’t much matter if the beach is swamped and they have to take the ridge road. Folks count on my brothers just like they count on Mr Williams and his cows. Especially on Saturday, milk not being delivered again until Monday.’

‘I see.’ Mrs Williams pulled in some air. ‘So no one is all that concerned. At least not enough to cancel the deliveries. And what you said about the bayou. How it’s out of its banks. Is anyone alarmed about that?’

I could tell what she wanted. Mrs Williams wanted me to say that there were laid-out rules for storms and that this one was doing just like it should. She wanted me to be like Frank T. and tell her we were old hands at this. We were, nobody could say different. But that didn’t mean we turned a blind eye to high tides and riled-up waves. It didn’t mean I liked storms, even if yesterday I thought it might keep me from thinking about Sunday being my last day. I was sorry I’d had that notion. I didn’t like the feel of this air. I didn’t like seeing the bayou sloshing close to my house, and I didn’t like that the beach was swamped. But that didn’t mean I was scared, because I wasn’t.

‘Ain’t nothing new about this storm,’ I said. ‘Not for us. And like I said, what’s happening at the bayou, we call that an overflow.’

‘Oh yes,’ Mrs Williams said. ‘An overflow. I remember now.’ Her tone had lifted around the edges. ‘Oscar mentioned that on the day I arrived in Galveston. Overflows cleanse the city. They’re the reason the sidewalks are elevated and the houses are on brick pillars. It’s a common occurrence in the city, it seems, when it storms. All the more true since the beach there doesn’t have sand hills.’ She looked again toward the gulf and then at me. ‘Not that this appears to be a storm. Not in the true sense. There isn’t any lightning or thunder, and see, it’s stopped raining. Perhaps this is the worst.’ She was close to smiling now. ‘Miss Ogden, to be frank, an Ohio electrical storm is far more frightening than this.’

‘Then I’m purely glad I don’t live up there,’ I said. Her smile went away and that suited me fine. She didn’t know one bitty thing about hurricanes, and I wasn’t going to say another word. She didn’t want to know. And there was another reason for clamping my mouth shut. It could be she was right. This might be all we’d get. Storms were known to play themselves out or maybe they went somewhere else, on down south to Corpus Christi or east to New Orleans. So I went back to the kitchen and did like I’d been doing since Oscar had married this woman. I scrambled more eggs and got the second round of breakfast on the table. When Mrs Williams wasn’t looking, I pulled my stockings out of the oven and stuck them into my apron pocket.

The rain came in squalls, starting and stopping. At the table, Andre chirped away about playing out in the rain, the fun of puddles and making mud pies. ‘But you’ll get so dirty,’ Mrs Williams said, and I said that was what little boys did best. ‘They play in the mud and come into the house to shake it all off.’ She didn’t say nothing after that but went back to eating, taking tiny bites and prissy sips of tea. I got busy washing the skillet.

Out the window, the blue patches in the sky had been overtaken by fast-moving dark clouds. It made the house gloomy. I watched them clouds as I scrubbed, my hands in the dishwater. The wind whipped around the house and the floorboards shook under my feet. Most usually Oscar had turned the cows out in the pasture by now, but not today. He’d kept them in and that meant he was filling their feed troughs. By now the bayou could be washing over the bottom veranda step at my house. Mama and Daddy, I figured, were pumping fresh water before the well flooded. I thought about Mrs Williams, too, my back to her as she ate. She arranged things to make them suit her. Her story about an Ohio storm that split open one tree and burned down a carriage house was nothing, not to me. I didn’t know where Ohio sat but I figured it didn’t have water on all sides.