She shook her head. “Well, you sure ought to be tired. After all that preaching you did this week. And all those women pulling on you. Anyway, I bet you’re sleepy, so I’m going to say nighty-night now. That is, unless you want me to hear you say your prayers….”
“No thank you, mam,” he said, taking a sip of the milk. “A preacher like me has to pray to the Lord strictly by hisself.”
He could see the question in her eyes as she looked down into his face. “I guess you right, Revern’ Bliss,” she said, “but I still just can’t get it out of my head that you needs your mama….”
“I don’t have a mama,” he said firmly. “I just have Daddy Hickman and my Jesus.” He set the milk on the table and pushed it away.
“Yes, I know,” she said. “And no papa either, have you?”
“No mam. But Daddy Hickman teaches us that the father of all the orphans is God.”
“Poor lil lamb,” she said. And he could see her moving toward him with tears welling in her eyes and stuck out his hand to halt it there. She hesitated, staring down at his extended hand in puzzlement with that sudden suspension of movement just as the deaconesses had done when the woman had taken hold of him. For a long moment her eyes swam with tears, then she moved past and turned back the sheet, and waited silently for him to lie down. He could see the hurt still there in her eyes but was afraid to feel sorry. She smiled sadly as he moved past and got in and he lay looking straight up at the dim ceiling. She turned to the table and blew out the light. Now she moved to the doorway of her room, her face half in shadow.
“Nighty-night,” she said. “Night-night, Revern’ Bliss.”
“Good night, mam,” he said. He felt sad, lying down now and watching her standing there watching him. She seemed to be there a long time, and then suddenly someone was calling Cudworth, Cudworth, and he looked toward her and she was still standing there and he could hear someone shaking a tambourine and he began to preach and call for converts, looking lonely and yearning as the others responded to the Word, and still there watching as a woman wearing a black veil came down the aisle past the rows of members wearing a thick veil over her face, and he thought, This is my mother, without surprise but a surge of peace, and he took her hand with deep joy and pointed to the bench and watched her going over to take her place upon it. And he was filled with pride that with his voice he had brought her forward at last, had brought her forth from the darkness, and he turned now to exhort the others to witness the power and the glory and the living Word…. But when he looked again she had disappeared. The congregation was gone and a great body of water swirled up where it had been, shooting toward him to wash him from the pulpit. And he was screaming and trying to run, as now the waterspout became a spray of phosphorescent fish shooting at him, sweeping him off his feet now and pulling him across the floor with a loud thump. And now he could hear screaming. And through the dream into the dark he saw Sister Georgia still there bending over him, saying, “Lord, Revern’ Bliss, I thought you was eating too much of that melon for so late at night. Hush now, you’ll be all right. You really are having yourself a time. All scratched and bruised purple like a grape and now this here bad dream. And all you was trying to do was convert a few sinners….”
“No! I wasn’t dreaming,” he said. “It wasn’t a dream. I don’t want it to be a dream….”
“Wasn’t a dream? Well, you might be a preacher but I know all about lil boy dreams and nightmares.” She lit the lamp, looking down upon him with a puzzled frown.
“You was having a nightmare, all right, and judging from that slobber drying on your mouth you was sucking the old sow too. So don’t try to tell me, Revern’ Bliss, ‘cause once in a while the lil boys where I work have trouble just like you been having.”
She came over and helped him back onto the sofa. “Let me see your back, Revern’ Bliss,” she said. “That’s it, take off your undershirt. Now turn round here so’s I can see.”
He saw her bend and could feel the tips of her fingers on his skin. “Lord, look what she did to you! All those scratches. I better get the salve.”
He saw her take the light into the kitchen, then she returned with a small jar in her hand.
“Will it burn?” he said.
“Burn? Not this salve, Revern’ Bliss. It’ll soothe and heal you, though. Hold still now.”
“Yes, mam.” He could feel the cool spreading over his back beneath the soft circular motion of her hand. Then she was doing the scratches on his arms and legs. His eyes were growing heavy again and she said, “There, that ought to do it. This is a wonderful salve, Revern’ Bliss, and it don’t burn or make grease spots either. You’ll feel good by morning.”
“Thank you, mam,” he said.
“You welcome, Revern’ Bliss; and I’ll tell you what we’ll do about that nightmare—you just come and get in bed with me a while and it’ll be sure not to come back.”
She lifted him gently then and he could feel the heat of the lamp come close as she bent to blow out the flame, then they were moving carefully through the dark and he was being lowered to her bed.
“Go to sleep now,” she said. “You’ll be all right here.”
He lay feeling the night and the strangeness of the room and the bed. He could not remember ever being in bed with a woman before and it seemed like another dream. And he thought, So this is the way it is. This is what Body and the others have. Then far off in the dark a train whistle blew and he could feel a slight breeze sweeping gently across the bed, bringing the orange blossoms into the room to fade away in the heat as it died, and he could see the stars in the well again and there came again the rising feeling of falling well-ward into the watery sky, falling freely, well and sky, uply downly skyly, starly brightly well-ly wishing her mother No finish go to sleep No this out there She well-ly she was she very nice to let me see them there she was very nice as sugar and spice nicely well-ly nice are made of are you a lady or a girl Sister Elberta—I sleep? Shake the tree run hide and seek No are you no are you not one like Georgia peaches no shake not the tree was very nice. Will there be any seeds in the well? Asleep? Awake. No stars in my crown. And now he moved close I curl beside, she sighing sleeping soft. Not she close Awake how here? It’s her—
“Thank you for being so nice to me, Sister Georgia,” he said very quietly and waited. But she didn’t stir. Zoom! Slide down the hill. She a-snoring? She sleep pretending? I rise up, her face flowed my eyes rock heavy my head wandering in here out there stars She there she gone she dreaming? She see she sigh she saw the morning stars she singing she well she ward her father who our awake…. There she is. I see like watching real quiet while a mouse came out of its hole and ran around the floor. A feeling of tingling delight came over him. He stared hard, trying to see her clearly in the dark, nodding, thinking, She there. Then before he was aware he had thrust himself forward and was kissing her softly on the cheek. Mother, he said, Mother … you are my mother. And something unfolded within him and he kissed her again. She was what he’d never allowed himself to yearn for. She was what Body’s mother meant to him when he hurt himself or felt so sad. She’s what she said I need. Mother, he thought, Mother, and suddenly he could feel his eyelids stinging and tried to hold it back, but it came on anyway. He stuffed the corner of the sheet into his mouth, rolling to the edge of the bed, crying silently.
Before him the window opened onto the porch and he lay looking through his tears into the shimmering night now lighted with a lately risen moon. Brightness lay beyond the shadows and on the tops of trees and the tears were coming now, steadily, as though they flowed straight from the moon. Mother, mother … He could feel the bed giving as she stirred in sleep and held his breath, thinking Mother, I wish—Mother until it was as though he had yearned to the end of the world, to the point where the night became day and the day night and on until he seemed to float…. Then he was back in the hands of the angry woman, seeing the members freezing and the redheaded woman taking hold of him and her hands white against h
is own and his own white, not yellow as Body said and he thought We are the same—Cudworth am I she called and the others were afraid beneath Daddy Hickman’s sliding horn Cudworth she called me out of darkness for a mother, not you not you not you just one of the sisters…. Then Body was there and they were walking through the thick weeds beside a road and Looka yonder, man, Body said, pointing to something half-concealed in the dirt, saying Peeeeew! And he could see Body hold his nose and spit. Ain’t on my mama’s table, Body said. And he looked again wondering what it was and saying Mine neither. You better spit then, Body said. But when he tried his mouth was too dry to spit and he looked around and the women had him again and his hands had turned white as the belly of a summer flounder….
Suddenly the sound of fighting cats streaked across the night with a swirl of flashing claws and he was sitting up in the bed, looking wildly around him.
She was still there, sleeping quietly. The room was breathless and her odor, warm and secret, came to him, and just then she turned to rest on her back, her breathing becoming a quiet, catchy snore. Somehow all had changed. He shook his head, “No, I can’t sleep with you,” he said to her sleeping face. “I don’t want you for my mother. I’m going back to the sofa.”
Then it was as though a hand had reached down and held him, forcing him to look at her once more, and before he realized it he was looking at the hem of her gown resting high across her round, wide-spread thighs. I’ve got to get out of here, he thought. I got to move. But suddenly he was caught between the movement of his body and the new idea welling swiftly in his mind, feeling his foot dangling over the side of the bed while in the dream-like, underwater dimness of the light, he seemed to be looking across a narrow passage into a strange room where another, bolder Bliss was about to perform some frightful deed. No, he thought, No no!seeing his own hand reaching out like a small white paw to where the hem of her nightgown lay rumpled upon the sheet, and lifting it slowly back, stealthily, cunningly, as though he had done so many times before, lifting it up and back. He watched from far back in a corner of his mind, disbelieving even as he saw the gauze-like cloth lifted like a mosquito net above a baby’s crib—then he had crossed the passage and was there with the other Bliss, peering down at what he had uncovered, peering into the shadow of the mystery. Peering past the small white paw to where the smooth flesh curved in the dim light, into the thing itself, the dark impression in the dark. But what, he almost said…. He saw yet he didn’t see what he saw. There was nothing at all, a little hill where Body’d said he’d find a lake, a bushy slope where he thought he’d find a cave…. It was as though he had opened a box and found another box inside in which he was sure he’d find another and in that, still another—and by then she’d wake up. Yet he couldn’t leave. Fragments of stories about digging for buried treasure whirled through his mind and suddenly he was standing in a great hole reaching for an iron-bound chest which he had uncovered, but just as he took hold of it a flock of white geese thundered up and around him, becoming as he watched with arms upraised a troop of moldy Confederate cavalry galloping off into the sky with silent rebel yells bursting from their distorted faces. He wanted desperately to move away but the cloth seemed to hold him, and now she gave a slight movement and his eyes were drawn to her face, seeing faint lights where before there had been dark shadows…. He jumped, hearing himself say “Oh!” and feeling the film of cloth rolling like a grain of sand between his fingers.
“Revern’ Bliss, is that you?” she said from far away.
“I didn’t mean to do it, mam….”
She sighed sleepily. “Do? What’d you do, honey?”
He held his breath, hearing dododododododododododo!
And again, “Revern’ Bliss?” … dododo….
She stirred and he saw her arm go over as she started to turn only to halt with a deep intake of breath which suddenly stopped and he realized that he had trapped himself. It’s happening and it will be like Daddy Hickman says Torment is, forever and forever and ever … Then as though the other Bliss had spoken in an undertone, he thought, You’re It this time for sure but you must never be caught again. Not like this again—move. When they come toward you, move. Be somewhere else, move. Move!
But he couldn’t move. He was watching her hand reaching out searchingly patting the spot where he had lain. And he thought, She thinks I wet the bed and I didn’t and now her fingers are telling her that it’s dry and if I only had, like the Jaybirds spying on you and telling the ants and telling the Devil, and she’s raising up and her eyes growing wide and I shall be punished for what I can’t even see. Please Lady God Sister Mother.
“Oh!” Sister Georgia said, sitting up with a creaking of the bedsprings, and he felt the sheet swing across his leg and up around her body so swiftly that it was as though she or I’d never been exposed. He could see his upraised thumb and finger making an “O” of the darkness and she was saying, “Oh, oh, oh,” very fast and the night seemed to rush backwards like a worm sliding back into its hole. And he told himself, It was only a dream I am in the other room lying on the sofa where I went to bed and that woman with the veil is coming toward me and I know who she is and I’m overjoyed to see her save her and now dodging waterspout of fish and falling and screaming and now this one will come in a second and lift me from the floor—save me from…
“NO!” she said, “OH NO! Revern’ Bliss, Revern’ Bliss! YOU WERE LOOKING AT MY NAKEDNESS! YOU WERE EXPOSING MY NAKEDNESS!”
He was mute, shrinking within himself, his head turning from side to side as he thought, If I could fall off the bed it would go away. If I had wings I could—
But her words were calling up dreadful shapes in his mind. A black horse with buzzards tearing at its dripping entrails went galloping across a burning field, making no sound…. A naked, roaring-drunk Noah stumbled up waving a jug of corn whiskey and cursing in vehement silence while two younger men fought with another trying to cover his head with a quilt-of-many-colored cloth and he could feel her words still sounding. All the darkness seemed to leave the room. Nearby the cats which had hurtled across the night like a swirling wheel of knives had cornered now, filling the air with an agony of howling.
“You were, weren’t you, Revern’ Bliss?” she said. “Tell me, what was you doing?” And the minor note of doubt in her voice warned him that there was still time to lie, to erase it all with words and he seemed to be running, trying to catch up but he wasn’t fast enough and felt the chance slipping through his hand like a silver minnow. He seemed to hear his voice sounding unreal even before he spoke.
“I didn’t mean to do it, mam, honestly, I didn’t….”
“But you did!” she said in a fierce whisper. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, peeping at my nakedness and me asleep. Sneaking up on me like a thief in the night, trying to steal me in my sleep! You, who’s supposed to be Revern’ Bliss, the young preacher!”
“Please, mam, Please mam. I really didn’t mean to do it. Forgive me. Please, forgive me….”
She shook her head sadly, sitting higher and clutching the sheet around her.
“Oh, you really ought to be ashamed,” she said. “That’s the least you can do. Acting like that, like an old rounder or something that’s had no training or anything. What I want to know is ain’t there any of you men a Godfearing woman can trust! I thought you was a real genuine preacher of the gospel and I was proud to have you staying in my house. You never would’ve had to sleep in any hay around here. But now just look what you done. I guess I been offering my hospitality to an old jackleg. A midnight creeper. I guess you just another one of these old no-good jacklegs. You’re not good and sanctified like Revern’ Hickman at all and it’ll probably break his heart to hear what you done.”
He cried soundlessly now, wanting to go to her, his whole body, even his guilty fingers crying Mother me, forgive me. He felt cast into the blackest darkness, the world being transformed swiftly into iron.
“Please,” he cried, touching
her arm, but she pulled away, refusing to touch him as he reached out to her.
“No,” she said, “Oh no. You get out of my bed. Get on out!”
“Please, Sister Georgia.”
“I said, get!”
“Yes, mam,” he said. He dragged himself from the bed now and found his way back to the sofa and lay sobbing in the dark.
“Sister Georgia,” he called to the other room. “Sister Georgia …”
“What is it, ole jackleg?”
“Sister Georgia, please don’t call me that. Pleeease …”
“Then you oughtn’t to act like one. What is it you want?”
“Sister Georgia,” he said, “are you a lady or a girl?”
“Am I what?”
“Are you a lady or a girl?” he said.
She was silent, then, “After what you done you shouldn’t have to ask.”
“But I have to know,” he said.
“I’m a woman,” she said. “What difference does it make, ole jackleg preacher?”
“Because … maybe if you’re a girl what I did isn’t really so bad….”
She was silent and he lay straining to hear. Finally, she said, “You go to sleep. It won’t be long before day and I have to have my sleep.”
She won’t tell me, he thought, she won’t say.
His tears were gone now and he lay face downward, thinking, I don’t care, the other one is the one for a mother….
It was a bigger tent than ours. The seats went up and around the sides and we had to sit up high at the end over near where the animals were coming through. I was looking down at the pumping and swaying of their backs and at the tops of the heads of the men in red coats walking beside them as they came through. I said, “What kind of elephants are those?”
“Those are African, Bliss,” Daddy Hickman said. “There’s African elephants and Indian elephants.”
“But how do you tell them apart?”
“By their ears, Bliss. The African ones have big ears,” Daddy Hickman said.