The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay (18 page)

“All right.” Idella sighed. She sat down next to Avis and started picking out leaves. “I’ll help you make the dough. And I’ll help you to measure. If I don’t, you’ll use all my sugar.”

“I’ll be good, Della. I promise.” Avis reached an arm around and stuck a blueberry into Idella’s ear. “Thank you, Mama bird.”

“Don’t call me that. Avis, so help me, if you start acting up, I won’t do a thing to help you.”

Avis took a handful of berries, stood up, and dropped them down the front of her dress.

“Jesus, Avis,” Idella said, “you’re not fit to live in a house. We should keep you tied up out in the barn with that cow.”

Avis crawled under the table and rounded up the scattered berries. Idella knew that she was excited. Avis loved poker nights. She was a favorite among the men. She’d sit on Dad’s lap like the cat who ate the canary and watch them play by the hour. They teased her and tried to get her to tell Dad’s hands, but she had a face that revealed nothing when she didn’t want it to and a mouth on her that would say anything. The men egged her on something terrible, and she was always after them to give her sips of whiskey.

Idella made herself scarce on these evenings. She’d sneak up to the bedroom as soon as she could. The men made her self-conscious. They started out nice. Most of them she’d known all her life. But the later it got, the rowdier they were.

Dad would always embarrass her. “When you going to get some meat on your bones?” he’d say to her, in front of everyone. “I’ve got me some goddamned stick figures for daughters.” Then he’d reach over and slap her on the behind. He laughed when he said it, but it was his mean sort of laugh, his whiskey laugh. It shamed Idella something terrible.

 

All afternoon the two sisters worked on the pies. Idella knew she wouldn’t be alone till evening. Dad and Dalton stayed out in the fields. There was much rolling of pins and flicking of aprons, but in the end there were three grand pies and a patchwork tart steaming on the windowsill in the summer heat.

When Dad came in, Idella had supper on the table as usual. He was in a good mood—he always was on poker night. “No dessert tonight,” Avis announced before he’d even set down in his chair. “There was no time.” It was impossible to ignore the sweet smell of blueberries and cinnamon that hung in the sticky evening air.

Avis had insisted on hiding the pies on the wooden bench behind the stove. She was going to surprise the poker players when they all got seated at the table. She didn’t even want Idella to be there, she said; she wanted to do it all herself. That was fine. Idella didn’t need to show anyone that she could make pies.

“Damn,” Dad said, looking Avis’s floury figure up and down, “I’d have sworn you were going out to pick berries. I was hoping for pie.”

“Nope,” Avis said. “Those damn Doncaster boys must’ve found ’em. There was nothing there but big footprints. Not one goddamned berry in the whole place.”

“Well, that’s too bad. We’ll have to speak to Fred tonight when he comes. Tell him to shoot those boys.” He winked at Idella.

Avis laughed. “That’d be good. Then next year
I’ll
pick’em.”

“What’s that smell I’m smelling? It smells like horse manure. You smell it, Idella?”

“Nope.”

“How about you, Dalton? You smell it?”

Dalton kept on eating, barely lifting his head from over his plate. He was fixing to leave as soon as supper was over. He never joined Dad’s poker games. “Nope,” he said. “Nothing.”

“Avis-Mavis, puddin’ an’ pie, don’t you smell anything?”

“Nope.” She started giggling and looked down at her hands. “Just Della’s feet.” She could barely get the words out for laughing—they came out in a snort.

“Jesus, Avis,” Idella said, standing to clear the table. “There’s no need to make fun of me.”

“You’re a fresh one, Avis-Mavis, puddin’ an’ pie.” Dad always took to her foolishness, Idella thought. She got away with murder. “You just be sure that tonight you don’t kiss the boys and make them cry.”

Idella felt like she’d been waiting to be alone for days. “Come on, Avis, help me wash the dishes. They’re going to be here soon, and I want to go upstairs and read.”

 

Idella was alone in the bedroom. She had been standing and sitting in her beautiful blue dress for more than an hour, observing her shadow’s silhouette stretch silently across the flowered wallpaper and up to the ceiling. The poker game roared below. She had combed and pinned and parted her hair in different ways. She had watched herself in the mirror and in the reflected lamplight of the bedroom window.

The men had all come. They were settled with their bottles and their glasses around the kitchen table. Avis had uncovered her pies to a roar of applause. The men had teased her mercilessly and praised her nonstop. Avis was in her element. The noise would rise up to the bedroom in walloping bursts and then settle down to the quiet shuffles and flicks of cards being dealt, of glasses being set heavily on the table. Idella could hear Avis’s laugh getting louder and rowdier with the rest of them, as the evening wore on.

Idella went to the bottom of her closet and felt for her Sunday shoes. She reached down into the toes till she found the lipstick she’d been hiding since she’d discovered it going through her mother’s trunk.

In the yellow light, she stood up close to the mirror and uncapped the lipstick. It had a wonderful perfume smell. The rounded end had been worn down by her mother’s lips. Idella leaned in to the mirror and applied the lipstick with trembling fingers. It looked dark and uneven, but she was afraid to try to fix it. She daubed little streaks on each cheek, like she’d seen Mrs. Doncaster do, and rubbed them in with her palm.

Idella looked startling, even to herself, in the mirror. She wasn’t sure if she was pretty—she couldn’t say—but she did look different. The straight drop of the dress’s loose bodice was broken by the small points of her breasts. She’d never worn anything before that showed them.

“Della!” Dad’s voice broke her dreamy solitude. “Della, get the hell down here!” Idella’s chest tightened like it had been suddenly bound. “Della! Get down here and slice us another pie. We’re all of us pie-eyed!” The men laughed. She could hear Avis cackling.

“Come down here, Della!” Dad roared. “We need you to wait on Queen Avis. She can’t be cutting her own pies. Get your skinny ass down here.”

“I’ll be there in a minute!” Idella called through the closed door. It made her so mad—that calling and yelling and loudness. There was no need for it. At the end of poker nights, he always got mean. He treated her like she was a belonging, something he owned, like a horse or a cow.

“Della, get your ass down here!” That was Avis calling. That was Avis! Her voice had an edge to it. Whiskey.

“That little bitch,” Idella whispered. “I showed her how to make the goddamned pies.” She went to the mirror, brushed her hair off her face, and refastened it with the barrette that Mrs. Doncaster had given her. “I won’t stoop my shoulders,” she said to her reflection.

“Della! Get your ass down here!” That wasn’t even Dad. That was one of the men talking to her like that.

The louder they got, the more deliberately she prepared herself. “I’m coming!” she shouted, to stop their yelling. They were down there banging their glasses on the table, the bastards. Idella opened her door and stepped out into the hall. “Quit yelling. I’m coming.”

She stopped at the top of the stairs. The cigarette smoke made her eyes water. The room below was hazy with it. She started to come down slowly, keeping her back straight, not sure of where to put her hands. One by one the men saw her. One by one their voices stopped.

“La-dee-da!” a loud voice called when she reached the bottom step. “Will you look at what’s come down the steps?” Someone whistled. “Bill Hillock, you been holdin’ out on us. Look at what you’ve been hiding.” For a moment there was silence.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Dad whispered. He put his cards facedown on the table and pushed Avis off his lap. He stood, his face flushed from whiskey, watching Idella. His voice got soft. “Don’t you look pretty, Idella. Don’t you look pretty. Avis, look at your pretty sister.”

“She turned into a woman, Bill, when you wasn’t looking.”

Idella thought that was Mr. McPhee’s voice. She stood frozen. The lipstick felt strange and waxy. She forced herself to look into the room, to see each face. She looked at Avis last.

“Where’d you get that dress?” Avis was staring hard. Her voice was low and queer. “Where did you get that dress?” Idella averted her eyes. She turned back to Dad’s flushed face.

“I got me a princess I been raising,” he said. “She’s even got titties on her. Will you look at that.” Idella felt her cheeks go hot.

One of the men stood up. “Let’s drink to the lady,” he said. “Let’s drink to Bill’s Idella.”

All the men stood, scraping back their chairs. They raised their glasses. “To Idella,” they said.

There was a loud crash. “What the hell?” Dad turned behind him. Avis stood in front of the stove. Dark gobs of pie filling were spewed across the wooden floor. Avis scooped a glossy handful and rushed at Idella. She smeared it across the front of the blue dress. “Where did you get it? Where did you get that dress?” She was clawing at Idella. “Where did you get it?”

“Damn you!” Idella cried, untangling the clutching fists. “Damn you, Avis. Leave me be!” She got hold of Avis’s wrists and squeezed them hard.

“You whore!” Avis screamed. “You’re nothing but a whore!” Idella thrust the writhing figure from her. Dad came up behind and pulled Avis away, kicking. “Whore!” Avis screamed.

Idella was shaking. She stood up and looked out into the room of men, her arms covering the smeared dress. Her eyes bored through the smoke to the stunned faces. “Damn you,” she said in a low voice. “Damn all of you in this godforsaken place.” She turned and ran up the steps into her room. She crouched behind the closed door, jamming her fists over her wretched mouth. Avis’s wails, coming now in waves, pierced the floorboards. They matched Idella’s own hopeless sobs.

 

A week later Avis’s dress came. Aunt Francie’s note had said it would. She’d been waiting on an order of lace. The mailman drove up with the box on the seat next to him. Aunt Francie’s writing was unmistakable. Mr. McPhee didn’t tease Idella when she came to get it from him. He handed it to her with a sorry smile and said that he hoped she was feeling better.

She walked listlessly back into the house and up the stairs to the bedroom. She put the box on Avis’s bed and left. She slammed the door behind her, even though it was still hot and the open door let air move through the house a little.

Avis’s dress was forest green with brown tortoise buttons and fancy stitching. The lace was on the collar and at the edges of the cuffs. It was beautiful. But it never got worn, not even once.

There was no life living down there with Dad, you know. I mean, that poor man, God bless him, but what life does a girl have? Just cooking for him and knowing there’s the outside world you can go to and not be stuck there.

No matter what I done, Dad had to have somebody to take his anger out on. And he would blame me for things that I didn’t do or couldn’t do. So he was going to work one morning, he was going fishing, and I decided right then and there, I won’t stay here any longer. I can’t live this way. Why should I take all that anger? For nothing! I made up my mind right there. The mail would go down the road from Bathurst. It was an automobile. A lot of people hitched rides back up to Bathurst in the mail car. So I saw Mr. McPhee when he was going down. He had to go quite a long ways, see, and then come back.

And so when he came up, I watched for him. I told him, “When you come back around this way, I’m going with you.” And I did! I had a suitcase. I don’t know where I got it, but I had it. I packed whatever I owned, and he drove me to Salmon Beach. I got a job taking care of a woman’s new baby, while she laid around in bed drinking tea!

I was nineteen years old. I had to get out of there. You can’t stay like that! Why? Why? When you know there’s a better world out there. With better people.

And when the time come that I wanted to go over to the States to work, as a cook, see, or a housekeeper, I didn’t have enough money to buy my train ticket. And by God, Dad went and borrowed some money from a friend of his and gave it to me, so I could go. He understood, see.

After I bought my train ticket, I had twenty dollars. But when I crossed the line and they asked me how much money I had, I said two hundred. They never looked in my baggage or anything. That’s all there was to it. And that’s how I came to the States.

April 1929

 

Idella had just served the two old ladies their breakfast and had almost escaped back into the kitchen to fix her own. Her fanny was pushing against the swinging door, her hands clutching the empty silver serving tray.