Heaven

  I was seeing the countryside as my true mother must have seen it seventeen years ago. She'd be only thirty-one if she'd lived. Oh, what a pity she had to die so young. No, she hadn't had to die. Ignorance had killed her, the stupidity of the hills.

  How had my mother had the nerve to marry Luke Casteel? What insanity had driven her away from a cultivated place like Boston, so she'd end up here where education and culture were scorned, and the general opinion was who eheck kerrs . . life's short . . . grab what ya kin an run, run, run. Running all through life, trying to escape poverty, ugliness, brutality, and never succeeding.

  I glanced back at Kitty. She appeared to be sleeping.

  A fork in the road ahead. Cal made a right turn that took us away from the dirt road leading to our small, pitiful cabin in the high country. How familiar everything seemed now, as if I'd never left. It all came rushing back, filling me with memories, tingling my nostrils with the familiar scents of honeysuckle and wild strawberries, and raspberries ripe on the vine.

  I could almost hear the banjos playing, hear Grandpa fiddling, see Granny rocking, Tom running, hear again Our Jane wailing, while Keith stayed in close, loving attendance. Out of all this mountain ignorance, all this stupidity, still came the gifts of God, the children, not blighted by their genes, as some might have thought, but blessed in many ways.

  Mile by mile I was growing more impatient, more excited.

  Then came the broad green fields on the outskirts of Winnerrow; neat farms with fields of summer crops that soon would be harvested. After the farms came the houses of the poorest in the valley, those not much better off than true hillbillies. Beyond them, higher up, were the shacks of the coal miners dotting the hills along with the moonshiners' cabins.

  The deepest part of the valley was reserved for the affluent, where all the richest mountain silt was driven downward by the heavy spring rains, to end up eventually in the gardens of Winnerrow families, providing fertile soil for those who needed it least, producing lavish flowers and gardens, so the rich grand houses of Winnerrow could grow the best tulips, daffodils, irises, roses, and every other flower to flatter their beautifully painted Victorian homes. No wonder they called it Winnerrow. All the winners in this area lived on Main Street, and all the losers in the hills. On Main Street, long ago, the owners of the coal mines had constructed their lavish homes, and the owners of the long-ago gold mines that had stopped producing. Now those homes were owned by the cotton-factory owners or their superintendents.

  Down Main Street Cal drove carefully, past all the pastel homes of the richest, backed by the lesser homes of the middle class, the ones who worked in the mines, holding down some overseer or manager position. Winnerrow was also blessed, or cursed, with cotton gins that made the fabric for bed and table linens, fancy knobby bedspreads, carpets and rugs. Cotton mills with all their invisible airborne lint breathed into many a worker's lungs, so they coughed up their lungs sooner or later (as did the coal miners), and no one ever sued the mill owners or the mine owners. Couldn't be helped. A living had to be made. Was just the way things were. Ya took yer chances.

  All this was in my mind as I stared at the fine homes that had commanded my childhood admiration, and in some ways, I had to admit, they still did. See all the porches, the remembered voice of Sarah was saying in my head. Count the floors by the windows, the first, second, and third. See all the cupolas, some houses with two, three, four. Houses pretty as picture postcards.

  I turned again to check on Kitty. This time her eyes were open. "Kitty, are you all right? Do you need anything?"

  Her pale seawater eyes moved my way. "Wanna go home."

  "You're almost there, Kitty . . . almost there."

  "Wanna go home," she repeated, like a parrot speaking the only phrase she knew. Uneasily I turned away. Why was I still afraid of her?

  Cal slowed, then pulled into a curving driveway leading to a fine home painted soft yellow and trimmed with white. Three levels of gingerbread grandeur, perhaps built around the turn of the century, with porches on the ground and second level, and a small balcony on the third that must be the attic. The porches went around the house on four sides, Cal explained as he drew the car to a slow stop, got out, and opened the back door so he could lift Kitty from the backseat and carry her toward the high porch where her family stood motionless and waiting.

  Why didn't her family come running to welcome Kitty home? Why did they just stand up there, bunched together, watching Cal with Kitty in his arms? Kitty had told me they'd rejoiced when she ran off and married at the age of thirteen. "Neva did love me, none of em," I could remember Kitty saying more than once. And apparently from their lack of enthusiasm, they were not glad to see her again, especially sick and helpless--but could I blame them, could I? If she could do what she had to me . . . what had she done to them? They were very generous to agree to take her back, more than generous.

  Hesitatingly, I just sat there, reluctant to leave the cool isolation and safety of the car.

  Up the five broad steps of the porch Cal carried Kitty, to stop at the top between the white balustrades. That family stared at Kitty as I finally made up my mind that Cal needed some support, and it seemed I was the only one he was going to get it from.

  'It was like the story Granny used to tell of how she and Grandpa had just waited when Pa brought home the bride he called his angel, and they hadn't wanted her .. . not at first. Oh, Mother, how painful it must have been for you. How painful it could be for Kitty.

  I ran to catch up, seeing the way they flicked their eyes at me. They weren't friendly eyes, nor were they hostile; all four stood staring as if Cal carried some unwanted alien in his arms. It was clear they didn't really want her, but still they had agreed to take her in and do their best . . . "until it's all over, one way or nother . . ."

  The large, formidable-looking woman whom Kitty resembled had to be her mother, Reva Setterton, dressed in tissue-thin bright green silk, with huge gold buttons parading single file down to her hem. Her shoes were also green, and of course, foolishly, that impressed stupid me.

  "Where can I put her?" Cal asked, shifting Kitty's weight, as Kitty stared at her mother with a blank expression.

  "Her old room is ready an waitin," said the woman, who quirked her thin lips in an imitation smile, then thrust forth her strong, reddened hand and briefly shook mine in a limp halfhearted way. Her auburn hair had wide streaks of white, making it appear that a peppermint stick had melted and formed a fat blob on her head. The short, portly man at her side had a horseshoe ring of gray hair around his pinkish bald pate. Cal introduced him as Porter Setterton, "Kitty's father, Heaven."

  "I'm going to take her right up to her room," said Cal. "It's been a long trip. Kitty had to be uncomfortable and cramped in the backseat. I hope I sent enough money to rent all she'll need."

  "We kin take kerr of our own," said Kitty's mother, giving her daughter another hard look of contempt. "She don't look sick--not wid all that gook on her face."

  "We'll talk about that later," informed Cal, heading for the house while I was eyed up and down by Kitty's sister, Maisie, a pale, insipid imitation of what Kitty must have been when she was seventeen. The pimply-faced, sandy-haired young man named Danny couldn't take his eyes off of me. I guessed his age to be about twenty.

  "Ya must have seen us lots of time," said Maisie, stepping up and trying to act friendly. "We sure did see ya an yer family. Everybody always stared at t'hill--I mean t'Casteels."

  I stared at Maisie, at Danny, trying to remember, and couldn't place them anywhere. Whom had I ever seen in church but the Reverend, his wife, and the prettiest girls and best-looking boys? Miss Deale . . . and that was about it. The best-dressed had also drawn my eyes, coveting what they wore for myself. Now I was wearing clothes much better than any I'd ever seen in Winnerrow's one and only church.

  So far Danny hadn't said one word. "I've got to go and help Kitty," I said, glancing back at the car. "We have our things in the trunk of
the car . . . and we'll be needing them to take care of her."

  "I'll bring em up," offered Danny, finally moving, as I turned to follow Reva Setterton into the house, closely followed by Maisie, as Mr. Setterton followed Danny to Cal's car.

  "Ya sure got some dilly of a name," Maisie said as she trailed up the stairs behind me. "Heaven Leigh. Sure is pretty. Ma, why'd ya go an name me somethin so dumb as Maisie? Ain't ya got no imagination?"

  "Shut yer mouth, an be grateful I didn't name ya Stupid."

  Squelched, Maisie blushed and hung her head. Perhaps Kitty's tales of a nightmare childhood, told long ago to Cal, had been true after all.

  What I could see of the house seemed spacious, neat, and rather pretty, and I was soon led to a bedroom where Kitty had already been put on a hospital bed and was stretched out in her modest pink nightgown. As Cal pulled up-the sheet he glanced at me, smiled, then addressed Kitty's mother. "Reva, I truly appreciate your offer to take Kitty in and do what you can for her. I've been paying nurses around the clock. But if you can manage with one night nurse, I'll send you a weekly check to pay for her services, and the expenses of Kitty's medical needs."

  "We ain't poor," stated Reva. "Done already said we kin take kerr of our own." She glanced around the pretty room. "You kin call me Reva, girl," she said to me. "This used t'be Kitty's room--ain't so bad, is it? Kitty always made it seem we had her in a pigsty. A jail, she used t'call it. Couldn't wait t'grow up an run off with some man . . . first one who'd take her . . . an now look at her. That's what comes of sinnin, an neva doin what she should of . . ."

  What could I say to that?

  In fifteen minutes I had Kitty refreshed with a sponge bath and slipped into a clean, pretty pink gown. She stared at me sleepily, with a kind of wonder in her fuzzy gaze, then drifted off into sleep. What a relief to see those strange eyes closed.

  Downstairs in a pleasant living room we all sat while Cal explained Kitty's strange illness that no doctor could diagnose. Reva Setterton's lips curled upward to display contempt. "Kitty was born complainin bout everythin. Neva could fix nothin up right enough fer her t'like. She neva liked me, her pa, or nobody else--unless they were male an handsome. Maybe this time I kin make up fer all my failures in t'past . . . now that she kin't answer back, an make me madder'n hell."

  "True, true," volunteered Maisie, clinging like a burr to my side. "Ain't nothin but trouble when Kitty comes t'stay. Don't like nothin we do or nothin we say. Hates Winnerrow. Hates all of us, yet she keeps comin back . . ." And on and on Maisie rattled, following me to my room, watching me as I unpacked, and she soon was gasping at the display of all the fancy lingerie and pretty dresses that had filled my closet once Kitty was too sick to care how much money Cal spent on me.

  "Bet she's awful hard t'live with," pried Maisie, falling flat on the yellow bedspread and staring at me with admiring green eyes. She lacked something that Kitty used to have, the vitality, and the toughness. "Kitty's never been much of a sister. She was off an married up time I was old nough t'remember. Neva liked Ma's cookin. Now she'll have t'eat it, like or not." Maisie smirked like a satisfied cat. "Neva likes nothin we do or say. She's a queer one, our Kitty. But it makes me feel sad t'know she's lyin on a bed, unable t'move. What did it t'her?"

  That was a good question, a very good question that the doctors had asked many times.

  When Maisie left, I sank into a tub chair covered with a chintz yellow print and gave it more thought. How had it all begun? After Chuckles was killed? I thought backward, closing my eyes and concentrating, trying again to find a clue. Perhaps it had started the day when Kitty came storming home, furious because half her clients had shown up late for appointments. "Damn crappy women!" Kitty had bellowed. "As if they thinks they're betta than me, an kin keep me waitin like I don't have nothin betta t'do. I'm hungry, got me t'worst kind of appetite--an I keep losin weight! Wanna eat, an eat, then eat some more."

  "I'm hurrying as fast as I can," I'd answered, racing from sink to stove.

  "Goin up t'take a bath . . . ya be finished time I'm back."

  Clickity-clack went her high heels up the stairs.

  I could almost see Kitty up there, ripping off her pink uniform, letting it fall to the floor, stripping off her undergarments, letting them fall as well. Clothes that I'd have to pick up, wash, and take care of. I heard the water in the tub running. Heard Kitty singing in a loud voice, the same song she always sang when she was bathing.

  "Down in t'valley. . . . valley so low. . . owww, owww . .

  Late in t'evenin . . . hear t'train blow . . . owww, owww . ."

  Over and over again, until the song ate into my brain, chewed on my nerves. Just those two lines, repeated until I wanted to stuff my ears with cotton.

  Then the scream.

  That long, horrible scream.

  I'd gone flying up the stairs, expecting to find Kitty had slipped in the tub and cracked her head on the tile . . . and all I found was Kitty standing nude before a bathroom mirror, staring with wide, appalled eyes at her naked right breast. "Cancer, got me a breast cancer."

  "Mother, you'll have to go to a doctor. It could be just a benign cyst, or a benign tumor."

  "What t'hell does 'benign' mean?" she'd yelled. "They're gonna cut it off, slice me with one of those scalpel knives, mutilate me . . . an no man will want me then! I'll be lopsided, half a woman, an I've neva had my baby! Neva gonna know what it feels like t'nurse my own child! . . . Done tole me, they have, I don't have no cancer. But I know I do! Jus know I do!"

  "You've already been to a doctor . . . Mother?"

  "Yes, damn you, YES! What do they know? When yer on yer deathbed, that's when they know!"

  It had been crazy and wild, the way Kitty had carried on, screaming until I had to call Cal, asking him to come home immediately, and then I'd gone back up the stairs to find Kitty lying on her wide bed, eyes fixed on the ceiling, just staring at nothing.

  Darn if I could really remember . . .

  After our first meal in the Setterton home, which was really very good, I helped Reva and Maisie with the dishes; then all three of us joined Mr. Setterton on the porch. On a glider I managed to remind Cal of that day while Reva Setterton bustled about upstairs, forcing food down Kitty's mouth. "She ate it," she said when she was back, sitting stiffly in a reed rocker. "Ain't nobody in my house gonna starve t'death."

  "Reva, a few months ago, Kitty said she found a lump in her breast. And she said she went to a doctor who reported she didn't have a malignant growth--but how can we know if she really went? However, when she was in the hospital for two weeks, they went over her thoroughly and they didn't find anything suspicious."

  For some odd reason, Kitty's mother got up and left the porch.

  "An that's all, all?" asked Maisie, her green eyes wide. "What a dope to clam up until she knew. . . but then again, she's sure got some great ones, ain't she? With that kind, could hardly blame her for not wantin t'know."

  "But," said Cal, sitting close at my side, "her doctors checked her over, Maisie."

  "Wouldn't make no difference t'Kitty," Maisie said with surprising complacency. "Breast cancer runs in our family. Got a whole long history of it. Ma's had both hers taken off. Wears fake ones now. That's why she walked away. Kin't stand t'hear people talk about it. Neva would know it, though, would ya? Our ma's mom had one off. Pa's ma had one off, then died before they could ctit bff t'other. Always Kitty's been scared t'death of losing what she's so proud of." Maisie looked thoughtfully down at her own small breasts. "Ain't got much myself, compared t'hers, but I'd sure hate losing one--sure would."

  Could this be it, explained so simply?

  Something neither the doctors nor I nor Cal had thought of. Her secret to brood over. The reason why Kitty had retreated into a solitary world--where cancer didn't exist.

  Two hours passed, and that was enough for me to sense that something about Cal was different now that he was in the home of Kitty's parents; something that put a distance be
tween us. I didn't quite understand what it was, though I felt relieved and grateful, sensing he no longer needed me as much as he had. Maybe it was pity for Kitty that softened his eyes when he sat beside her bed and tried to hold her hand. I stood in the doorway and watched him trying to console Kitty before I turned and walked away.

  What had happened between Cal and me would stay my most shameful, terrible secret.

  When I was downstairs and on the porch wondering what to do next, I thought of Tom. Was this the day I'd feast my eyes on him--and Fanny as well?

  And Logan--when will I see you again? Will you know me now, be happy I'm back . . . or will you turn away as you did that last time, when your parents were beside you? He'd never said a word to explain his action, as if he thought I hadn't noticed.

  That first night Maisie and I slept together in her room, and Cal was given a cot to sleep on in the room with Kitty. Very early the next morning I was up and fully dressed while the others were still in bed. I had one foot on the step going down when Cal called from behind me, "Heaven, where are you going?"

  "To visit Fanny," I said in a whisper, fearing to turn and meet his eyes, feeling a thousand times more ashamed in Winnerrow than I'd felt in Candlewick.

  "Let me go with you. Please."

  "Cal," I implored, "if you don't mind, I'd like to do this myself. My relationship with Fanny has always been difficult. With you there, she might not talk honestly. And I need to hear the truth and not a pack of lies."

  His voice was gruff. "How swiftly you run, Heaven, the moment you are on familiar territory. Are you running from me? Using any excuse to escape me? You don't need an excuse; I don't own you. You go on, and I'll stay here to tend to Kitty, and make plans for her care with her parents--but I'll miss you while you're gone."

  It hurt to hear the pain in his voice; still, it felt good to escape the house and leave all that behind. Each step I took away from the Setterton home made me younger, happier.

  I was going to see Fanny.

  My feet chose a roundabout way so I'd have to pass by Stonewall Pharmacy. My pulse quickened as I neared the familiar store. I was just strolling by, truthfully not expecting to see Logan just because I was thinking about him and wondering what kind of boy he was by this time. I glanced inside the wide glass windows, my heart almost in my mouth, and didn't see him. I sighed, and then I caught the interested stare of two dark blue eyes belonging to a handsome young man who was stepping out of a sporty dark blue car. I froze, staring back at--Logan Grant Stonewall.