Mama Day

  I tried to remember that I was angry and frustrated with myself, not at the people working on the bridge. I had volunteered, hoping to use what little knowledge I had to help them speed it up. But no matter how I reasoned, they would not melt more than a gallon of tar at a time. They were working between cloud bursts, they told me. Why tar more wood than would dry properly in a short period? But they could have put tarpaulins over it if a rain came, and then with enough melted pitch, you could have two crews—one on each end—laying down boards toward each other. And I could calculate it for them, making a diagram, to ensure them that the boards wouldn’t gap. But no, that wasn’t the way things were done here. Parris would only trust his overseeing each board that was laid down, and with two crews, he couldn’t do that. See, this bridge had to last till the next big blow. Two-hour lunch breaks, half-hour quarrels over which plank end should go down first—I gave up. Swimming across didn’t seem quite as impossible anymore.

  Miranda brews her sister a strong cup of chamomile tea to help her rest. It’s pitiful, that slump in Abigail’s shoulders and the dark circles under her eyes. She musta tried everything in her power before she was forced to come out to the other place. The heavy trembling of Abigail’s hands as she brings the cup to her lips is enough alone to make Miranda kill Ruby. She ain’t had to go in that bedroom and see them red splotches around Cocoa’s temples. To bend down and sniff the scalp between the parts of her hair. Yes, that sow had hoped she’d discover the nightshade and think that’s all it was. And hoped she’d spend her time untwisting them threads and washing the poison out of her hair. And then maybe she’d spend even more time thinking of ways to poison her in return. Ruby knows there were so many things she could choose from. She ain’t had to step a foot into the woods; she could reach down in any flower garden. Buttercups. Oleanders. Hyacinths. And who don’t have azaleas in Willow Springs? Morning glories, even? While Abigail sips her tea, Miranda goes to the kitchen window and looks out over the ravished garden. Rhubarb leaves. Cherry bark. Plums. She could take apple seeds and kill her. But all that would take time. And Ruby had hoped to buy herself just that.

  Miranda puts Abigail to bed. Just take a short nap, she tells her. She’d see over Baby Girl until she woke up. When Abigail’s breathing is deep and regular, Miranda goes on into the other bedroom. Cocoa is stirring uneasy in her sleep, them braids flung every which a way across the pillow. Miranda lifts them up in her hand, watching the little red welts that are beginning on her neck and spreading down to her shoulders. She runs her fingertips over one and it causes her to shiver. She ain’t really understood what it meant till now—that killing’s too good for somebody. Naw, death is peace. Ruby deserved burning in that hell which don’t exist. Taking the shears out of her pocket, she begins cutting off each braid. They fall, curled up like worms on the pillow around Cocoa’s face. Miranda has to keep her stomach from heaving at the sight of them. She cuts each off close to the head, and with that done she takes the shears and snips carefully through the plaits woven next to the scalp. The white strings pop out, looking even more like worms. Maggots, really. She’s gotta force herself to go on until each plait is loosened.

  Well, you a frizzly chicken now, she thinks as she combs the spare threads out of the hair that’s left. There’s a half tub of warm water waiting as she leads Cocoa staggering and mumbling into the bathroom. She spreads a charcoal paste on her head, leaving her slouched drowsy in the water, her head thrown back over the rim of the tub. Miranda balls up the sheets and pillowcases around the shredded hair and burns the lot in the back yard. When the fire’s going good, she throws in the wooden comb she used. Only three of them left from what her daddy had carved, and Abigail owned the other two. She shakes her head as her comb goes up in smoke.

  The warm water spraying from the shower on Cocoa’s bent head brings her out of her sleep struggling. Stay still now, Miranda tells her as she massages more of the grayish paste into her scalp, this needs to be soaked in for a while. Them red welts is coming up between her shoulder blades, but Miranda’s got to ignore ’em as she rinses the paste from Cocoa’s hair. That’s out of her hands and she’s doing the only thing she can. Towel her down good, wrap her in flannel ’cause it’s soft and warm, and get her to sit up at the kitchen table to take something nourishing, even with her nodding off again. She’s been almost two days on nothing but boneset tea and chicken broth. But God bless Abigail for helping to clean out her system. Now them charcoal grains done drawn up what’s left of the poison in her scalp. But the rest—well, the rest was just about out of her hands.

  She don’t think Cocoa is gonna remember sitting at that table, having oat gruel and bone marrow spooned into her mouth. But she ain’t gotta remember for it to do her some good, and it’s just as well, ’cause she’d resist her if she saw how awful it looked. It’s like feeding her when she was a baby, propping up her chin, prying open her lips with the tip of the spoon. But it was a grown woman’s body leaning over the table, and for a brief moment Miranda allows herself to wish that it wasn’t so, that she’d never left to go beyond the bridge and still belonged only to them. She had fought for her life when she was theirs and she could fight for it again, give up her own if need be. But what ain’t so, just ain’t so. Baby Girl done tied up her mind and her flesh with George, and above all, Ruby knew it. But Ruby don’t know me, Miranda thinks, she can’t know me or she wouldna done this.

  During our lunch break—or dinner rest, as they called it—I came to check on you. I was relieved to see that Miss Miranda was finally back at the house. She wasn’t a doctor, but perhaps with all of her experience, she could do something for you that your grandmother hadn’t. It seemed that she had. She told me that you had taken solid food and there would be an improvement in a day or so. You’d stop sleeping so much and it wouldn’t hurt your head when people talked to you. And yes, you would definitely recognize me again. But all around the edges of her carefully chosen words was the sense that she was holding something back. It worried me and I wanted to go in and see you, sleeping or not. But Miss Miranda told me to sit down for a minute. Don’t be shocked when you see Cocoa, I’ve cut off her hair. Of course I asked why, and I was answered with a riddle. You have a choice, she said to me. I can tell you the truth, which you won’t believe, or I can invent a lie, which you would. Which would you rather have? What a crazy old woman. All of these people, with their convoluted reasoning, were starting to wear on me. As sick as you were, how dare she play these types of games? What I want, I said, getting up from that table, is some way to get my wife out of this godforsaken place as soon as I can. Surprisingly, neither my anger nor my answer disturbed her.

  Miranda is sitting on the edge of Abigail’s bed when she stirs awake.

  “You there, Sister?”

  “Uh, huh.”

  She lays a hand on her shoulder, telling her to rest easy, George is back and he’s with Cocoa now. Miranda is twirling her walking stick between her knees, watching the carved snakes wind themselves down into the floor and up into her hands.

  “Remember this stick, Abby? Us teasing Daddy, and him saying, ‘Just live on’?”

  Abigail don’t give an answer, ’cause she knows none is needed.

  “Daddy was right about some things,” Miranda continues, her eyes never leaving the cane, “and wrong about others. He was wrong about you, Abby. Him saying you’d never have my strength. But having a sharp tongue and a fiery temper ain’t always the same thing as having strength. I done seen you hold up under many things—when you lost Peace and when we almost lost Baby Girl. I was right proud of you, having the presence of mind to give her a fitting crib name—a name that helped to hold her here.”

  “What are you trying to say, Miranda?”

  “You’re gonna need that presence of mind again, Abby.” Miranda stops twirling her walking stick and frowns down at Abigail. “I got rid of the nightshade Ruby put in her hair. Her vision will be clearing and she’ll stop all the sleeping in a little
bit. But I can’t get rid of all she done to her.”

  The sound from Abigail is a fluttering of smothered birds as a deep trembling starts around her mouth and chin.

  “We ain’t got no more time for tears, Abigail.” Miranda’s voice is harsh. “And you gonna have to see her through this, ’cause I can’t be here.”

  “How bad is it gonna be?”

  “How bad is hate, Abigail? How strong is hate? It can destroy more people quicker than anything else.”

  “But I believe there’s a power greater than hate.”

  “Yes, and that’s what we gotta depend on—that and George.”

  “That boy is from beyond the bridge, Miranda.” Abigail’s voice is bitter. “We ain’t even got his kind of words to tell him what’s going on.”

  “Some things can be known without words.”

  “With or without, how is he gonna fight something he ain’t a part of?”

  “He’s a part of her, Abigail. And that’s the part that Ruby done fixed to take it out of our hands.”

  “George ain’t never gonna believe this, Miranda. Go to him with some mess like this, and he’d be sure we were senile.”

  “That’s right. So we gotta wait for him to feel the need to come to us. I’ll have to stay out at the other place. And when he’s ready, head him in my direction.”

  “That boy’ll never make it, Miranda.”

  “Don’t sell him too short too early. He’d do anything in the world for her.”

  “I know that. But we ain’t talking about this world, are we?”

  “No,” Miranda says, “we ain’t talking about this world at all.”

  We were at it again only for about an hour when they stopped working, almost in mass. But no one had given a signal, that I understood at least. “It’s time to go to the standing forth.” I followed them through the fields in back of the stores at the bridge junction to a little wooden church—and what they meant was a funeral. No flowers. No music. People were coming from all directions, each dressed apparently in whatever they were wearing when they knew the time had come. The men who had been working on the bridge in dirty overalls with tar under their fingernails. Miss Reema in her blue smock from the beauty parlor. One woman with her hair shampooed and a towel around her head. One had on a house coat and fuzzy slippers. Even Bernice and Ambush weren’t in special clothes, but black wasn’t needed to set them apart.

  We filed into the pews, facing the simple pine coffin set up in the front. The minister was there, but he had little to say. When the rustling and moving had quieted, he cleared his throat and said, Charles Kyle Duvall, 1981 to 1985. Who is ready to stand forth? He sat back down and for a while there was silence. And then Miss Reema got up and walked to the front of the church and stood looking down at the closed coffin: When I first saw you, she began, you were wearing a green bunting, being carried in your mama’s arms. You had a little fuzzy patch of hair on your head and your mouth was open to let out a squall. I guess you were hungry. And when I see you again, she said, you’ll be sitting at my dining table, having been invited to dinner with the rest of my brood. It went on like that, person after person. Dry eyed and matter of fact. The minister calling out, Who is ready to stand forth? Someone had seen him in a stroller and would see him again in his own car. If they first saw him walking, they would see him running. Dr. Buzzard got up and had first seen him sucking away on a pacifier, and when he saw him again he’d be more than ready for a handful of his special ginger candy. Always addressing the coffin, and sometimes acting as if they expected an answer back. You liked my toy whistles, didn’t you? the owner of the general store asked him. Well, when I see you again, you’ll be buying my silver earrings for a sweetheart of yours.

  Why did I get the feeling that this meeting wasn’t meant to take place inside of any building? The church, the presence of the minister, were concessions, and obviously the only ones they were going to make to a Christian ritual that should have called for a sermon, music, tears—the belief in an earthly finality for the child’s life. His parents weren’t even crying and I could have cut Ambush’s grief with a knife. He was the next to rise: You were bunching up your fists, angry and small. And I thought I had a fighter on my hands. A golden glove champ, maybe. And when I see you again, you’ll be fighting for the place you deserve among other great men. Surely, Bernice couldn’t take part in this. The woman had gone out of her mind when that child died. But she also stood up, trembling. Her voice could barely be heard. And she turned to the coffin with an air—could it be?—of apology: When I first saw you, you were so very glad to be alive—new and declaring it to everyone. And when I see you again, you’ll be forgiving of your old mama, who didn’t remember for a moment that you were still here.

  And that was it. It took only two men to carry the coffin because it was so small. It was laid into the open grave that was waiting behind the church and covered up. They began to disperse as calmly as they came. I stood there immobile by the fresh grave, trying to sort out the meaning of all this in my mind. Dr. Buzzard’s callused hand applied gentle pressure to my arm. Come on, he said, we got us a bridge to build.

  First she’s to head north. Ruby sees her coming up the main road and goes inside and bolts her door shut. Yeah, run inside and lock your door, Miranda thinks, that’s just where I want you. She stands at the gate and calls her name—Are you in there, Ruby? Well, maybe she don’t hear her. She’ll get a little closer. She stands at the foot of the porch and calls her name. Are you in there, Ruby? She grips the top of that hickory stick as she gives her one more chance. Loud. Are you in there, Ruby? Well, three times is all that she’s required. That’ll be her defense at Judgment: Lord, I called out three times. She don’t say another word as she brings that cane shoulder level and slams it into the left side of the house. The wood on wood sounds like thunder. The silvery powder is thrown into the bushes. She strikes the house in the back. Powder. She strikes it on the left. Powder. She brings the cane over her head and strikes it so hard against the front door, the window panes rattle. Miranda stands there, out of breath, with little beads of sweat on her temples. There’s a long thin crack in her walking cane, running down the back of one snake and cutting through the head of another. She examines it close to make sure it’ll still hold her weight, and then she turns around to head south on the main road. The door don’t open when she leaves, and the winds don’t stir the circle of silvery powder.

  They’re near to calling it quits on the bridge for the day. Some don’t like the looks of the storm clouds building up. Could be nothing but a light shower, and then again you don’t know. The hurricane’s still got folks edgy, but it ain’t uncommon to have rains come and go for a few days after something like that. The matter gets settled when Miranda shows up. She tells ’em that if she was them, she wouldn’t want to be caught near water in a few hours, them’s the type of clouds that hold lightning. There’s still a bit of disagreement, some being anxious to get on with the work. A word to the wise is sufficient, she says under the roll of far-off thunder, but a whole dictionary wouldn’t help some fools. They start clearing up and getting ready for home.

  She’s on her way east toward Chevy’s Pass, taking a short cut along the far edge of the south woods. Them east woods is almost impassable without half the trees blown down, and those patches of suck mud done probably turned into pools. She spies who she was hoping to meet in the distance. Dr. Buzzard is shoring up his leaning beehives.

  “I shoulda figured you’d be hiding here from any real work,” Miranda says.

  “Naw, now you got me wrong again. I was down there earlier, but they had so much help I come on back here a little after the standing forth. I ain’t seen you at the church, though.”

  “I woulda liked to have been there, but Cocoa is right sick and I was with her.”

  “Anything serious?”

  “Yeah, I think it is.” She watches Dr. Buzzard real careful. “Matter of fact, I know it’s serious.”

&
nbsp; “Well, she got herself the best doctor in Willow Springs.”

  “We both know there are some things a doctor can’t do.”

  Miranda don’t try to fill the silence that follows as Dr. Buzzard putters around his hives. “You know,” he finally says, “it was the most amazing thing. That storm took out my still, but it left these hives.”

  “It should be a lesson to you.”

  “I’m thinking of taking it as one,” he says. “The children would be right disappointed if I ain’t had no sweets come Candle Walk. Little Cocoa is fond of my ginger candy.”

  “She is at that,” Miranda says.

  Dr. Buzzard straightens up and puts his hands in his overall pockets with a frown. “How serious?” he asks.

  “Serious enough for you to tell George what I’m sure Junior Lee has already told you.”

  “I figured he was lying.”

  “He wasn’t,” Miranda says.

  “I just didn’t figure Ruby was crazy enough to mess with what was yours.”

  “I got a good twenty years on you, Buzzard. And I done seen people crazy enough to do a lot of things. And she done also messed with what’s his. Tell him what you know.”

  Dr. Buzzard shakes his head. “But that’s a city boy, Mama Day.”

  “Tell him.”

  “He ain’t gonna believe it, so to what end?”

  “To the end that, at least, he’s gonna know what he ain’t believing.”