Blackwater: The Complete Caskey Family Saga

Eventually, Frances Caskey’s health began to improve. Dr. Benquith called it remission. Mary-Love sententiously claimed it was her prayers. Ivey Sapp said it was red Perdido water.

  Frances’s hands became less clawed. Once more she was able to hold a pencil long enough to write a note to Grace in Spartanburg, to say how well she was coming along. She could lift a glass without spilling its contents. She could use a fork, though it would be some time before she regained the strength and agility to employ a knife at the same time. On the porch, she sat in a wheelchair. In the spring of 1936, nearly three years after she was stricken, she was able to take a few steps by grasping pieces of furniture or woodwork and pulling herself along.

  Frances missed three years of school, but she had learned from her mother’s excellent tutelage after all, so when she returned she was put back only one grade. But physically she had grown very little in her illness. The first Sunday that she returned with Elinor to the Caskey pew, Mary-Love ungenerously remarked, “Why, Frances, you aren’t hardly any bigger than the last time I saw you.”

  In the three years of illness, Mary-Love Caskey hadn’t once visited her granddaughter, though on still summer nights she could hear Frances next door whimper from her pain. Mary-Love claimed this neglect was only a reluctance to intrude. She said she had feared that Frances would be disturbed by too many visitors, but this excuse fooled no one. If Oscar had ever felt inclined to make things up with his mother, any such feeling was now completely gone. His mother’s treatment of Frances seemed a piece of conspicuous cruelty to the child.

  Miriam, who had grown tall and thin, said to her sister, “Grandmama said whatever you had was probably infectious, and that’s why I never went over to see you. How on earth are you going to catch up, after being out of school for three years? I don’t imagine you’ll ever catch up, really...”

  There were other changes, besides her sister’s height, that Frances noticed. Perdido looked as if it were falling into decay. Fifteen houses in Baptist Bottom had burned one New Year’s Eve, and no one had yet bothered to clear away the rubble. A line of stores downtown was boarded up, and the windows had been smashed. The ragged curtains in the open windows of the Osceola Hotel blew in the wind.

  Frances often sat in the kitchen with Zaddie, and was astonished by the number of black children who came to the lattice door and knocked softly. Zaddie always had a plate of cornbread or a part of a ham or a slab of bacon for them to take home. Next day the child would return with the plate, and a thank you from its mother.

  Frances asked her mother about this.

  “Nobody has anything, darling. I wish we could afford to do more, but even we don’t have what we used to.”

  Frances shook her head; she understood nothing about money.

  “We’ll be all right,” Elinor assured her. “But while you were upstairs”—Elinor always referred to her daughter’s illness by that euphemism—“your daddy had some hard times out at the mill. He had to let people go.”

  “Is it all right now?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see. Henry Turk, it looks like, is going under. He’s going to have to sell out.”

  “To whom?”

  Elinor shook her head. “To us, I’d like to think. He hasn’t got anything left except his land. He shut down the mill last year. I’d like to get hold of that land, but only your grandmama has the money for that, and I don’t think she’ll put it up.”

  “Why not?”

  Elinor laughed. “Why am I telling you all this? Do you care?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “No, you don’t, darling. You don’t know anything about it, and there’s no reason for you to care one little bit.” Elinor laughed, and held her daughter close.

  . . .

  When Sister Haskew moved away from Perdido in 1926 and took up residence first in Natchez and later in Chattanooga, she insisted on introducing herself to new acquaintances as Elvennia, her given name. By then she was thirty-five, two years older than her husband, and felt that it was high time she was called by a name that was hers alone, and did not suggest—as the title “Sister” did—that her identity was subservient to a familial relationship. In her occasional visits to Perdido, however, nothing in the world could persuade Mary-Love Caskey from calling her daughter anything but Sister.

  This was a minor irritation, however, and no more than was to have been expected from Mary-Love. Sister—or El, rather—was happy in her new life. She liked the sense of rootlessness after so many years of having had such strong bonds to Perdido, to the house in which she had been born, and to her mother. She liked making new friends who knew nothing of what she had been before her marriage to Early, who were wholly ignorant of sawmills and board feet, and didn’t care about her family history. She wrote her mother twice a week, as Mary-Love had commanded, and on alternate weeks wrote to James and to Elinor. Sometimes, when Early was called away for a week or two on a job, Sister would pack her bag and take the train back to Perdido. On these occasions she would always begin to argue with her mother as soon as she walked in the door.

  “Hello, Sister!” Mary-Love would cry. “We cain’t tell you how much we have missed you!”

  “Mama, everybody calls me El now.”

  “Oh, Sister, after all these years, you cain’t expect me to change what I call my little girl...”

  Mary-Love’s little girl was now a woman of middle age, and Mary-Love herself was approaching old age, although she would never admit to such a thing.

  “Sister,” Mary-Love always wanted to know, “are you settled down yet? Have you got you a good cook?”

  “Mama,” said Sister, “I don’t have a cook, I do all the cooking.”

  “Oh, Sister, is that man driving you into the ground and making you work all day long?”

  “Mama, Early and I cain’t afford to have a cook, so I do it myself.”

  “If you lived here, Ivey and I would be able to take care of you. You wouldn’t have to lift a finger.”

  It was usually at this point that Sister, weary of making the old arguments, would simply say, “Mama, Early and I are never gone come back here, and the reason we aren’t is that we don’t want to live with you, because you drive us both crazy.”

  “I don’t think you and Early are very happy in Chattanooga.”

  “We love it there!”

  “I don’t believe that you and Early would be happy anywhere.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If you and Early had been happy all these years away from me, then you would have had children. Now you’re too old for that. And there must be a reason why you leave your husband and come to see me every three months, Sister.”

  “I come to see you, Mama, because every week you are on the telephone for half an hour saying, ‘Sister, why don’t you ever come home?’”

  “If you loved your husband the way you should, you wouldn’t be leaving him so often.”

  Mary-Love didn’t approve of the independence exhibited by her daughter since her marriage to Early Haskew, and it was only a short step from that to disapproval of the man responsible for Sister’s liberation. Because he wasn’t around, it was convenient to attack him; and because Sister was his wife, she must be ever on the defensive. “I’m still not sure,” Mary-Love said soon after Sister’s arrival on a visit in late winter of 1936, “that Early Haskew was the right man for you, Sister.”

  “Who was?”

  “Oh, somebody else. Somebody with a little education. A little polish.”

  “Early attended Auburn. Early’s been to Europe. I never even got to go to college. And I never got taken to Europe, either.”

  “Does he still eat his peas off a knife blade?”

  “He does! And he said one day he’d teach me how to do it too!”

  “Does he eat that way in a restaurant?”

  “Mama, we cain’t afford to go out much.”

  Mary-Love shook her head and sighed. “I hate to see you grubbing for mo
ney, darling, when I have so much.”

  “Then give me some, and I won’t have to grub.”

  “I cain’t do that.”

  “Why not, Mama? It wouldn’t hurt you to send me a little something now and then.”

  “Early would think I was interfering. And I would be.”

  “Early would endorse the checks as quick as they came, I believe. Mama, Early doesn’t make a lot of money, but we get by. I don’t have all the dresses I want, and there are times I don’t have two dollars in my purse.”

  “I did not raise my little girl to live like that!”

  “Then send us some money, Mama.”

  “I’ve been thinking,” said Mary-Love.

  “What?”

  “I’ve been thinking we all ought to have a little vacation. Ought to go somewhere. We haven’t been on a trip in a long time.”

  “If you want to spend a little money on me that way, that’s all right, too. Where do you want us to go? And who is us?”

  “Us is you and Miriam and me.”

  “Not Early?”

  “Early’s gone be working, I would suppose.”

  “Maybe not,” said Sister, hoping to annoy her mother.

  “I was thinking of going to Chicago in the summer.”

  “What for?”

  “It’s been preying on my mind—I would like to see the sights of Chicago before I die.”

  Chapter 38

  Nectar

  Sister knew that her husband had work contracted for the entire summer of 1936. Out of mischief, she said nothing of this to her mother until Mary-Love had consented to pay Early’s way to Chicago. The day after Sister returned to Chattanooga, she called her mother and said, “Mama, Early cain’t go with us after all. He’s got a job with the Tennessee Valley Authority down around Sheffield, so I’m gone be free all summer. Anytime you want to go to Chicago is fine with me.”

  “Oh, Sister, I’m so happy!”

  “So listen, you go on and make reservations, get a bunch of train tickets, and why don’t you see if there’s anybody else who’ll go with us?”

  “Who else would we want, darling?”

  “Oh, James, maybe—and Danjo. Since you’re going to take Miriam,” Sister added, “maybe you should invite Frances too—”

  “Sister, I will do no such thing! I cain’t afford to take the whole world. If Frances came along, I’d have to pay for everything for her, Oscar and Elinor cain’t afford it. Besides, Frances might get sick again, and then we’d have to cancel the whole trip. I guess it’s all right if Danjo comes—he’s a sweet enough child and James will pay for him. It might be nice to have James, too, as long as we could hire on an extra baggage car on the way back for all that stuff he’s bound to buy.”

  James agreed to go, but wanted to bring along not only Danjo but Queenie, and Queenie’s children, too. Mary-Love grumbled at this, but ultimately acceded with enough bad grace to make James feel guilty for having pressed the matter. Mary-Love’s difficulty was not with Queenie herself, but with Malcolm and Lucille. Mary-Love took some comfort in predicting, at least three times every day, that the entire trip would be ruined by that misbehaving pair. Frances was pointedly left out of all these plans. James offered to subsidize Frances’s ticket and expenses, and said to Oscar and Elinor, “Lord, y’all, I’m gone have Danjo and Malcolm and Lucille to take care of, one more is not gone make a bit of difference. I’m just gone put ’em all on different-colored leashes...”

  Oscar was hesitant to accept his uncle’s offer. “Mama is taking Miriam, Mama ought to take Frances, too,” he said. “Besides, James, you are paying for a whole raft of people to go up there. You’re gone spend a fortune before you get halfway to Chicago.”

  “I don’t mind one bit,” James said. This was to be the first great family outing since the onset of the Depression, and James wanted it to include as many Caskeys as possible.

  Oscar remained reluctant to let his daughter go, but Elinor finally interceded. She pointed out that for Frances to be left so conspicuously behind would be harder for the child to bear than all the slights and shabby treatment that she was certain to receive from Mary-Love and Miriam during the trip. After having been so long cooped up in the house, a total change would probably do the child a great deal of good. Frances was fourteen and her mother thought that she ought to see a little of the world.

  So the party for the trip was set at ten: Mary-Love, Sister, Miriam, James, Danjo, Frances, Queenie, Malcolm, Lucille, and Ivey Sapp. Ivey was being taken along to act as shepherdess or beast-of-burden, as needed. Hotel rooms were secured, tickets on the L&N were bought at the Atmore station, quantities of cash in brand-new bills were obtained from the recently reestablished Perdido bank, wardrobes were augmented in Mobile and Montgomery, new luggage was purchased, insurance was taken out, cameras were loaded with film, and letters were sent off to friends whose homes were en route. The flurry of activity astonished Perdido. The Caskeys might have been setting out on an expedition to the South Pole, for all the planning that was going into this trip. They were to leave early on the morning of the first of July, arrive late the following night in Chicago, remain there ten days, and return to Perdido by way of St. Louis and New Orleans, with five days in each city.

  By the end of June the children were frantic with excitement. Sometimes even cautious Frances and diffident Danjo had to be quelled. Sister spent several weeks in Perdido and assisted her mother in the preparations, which would have been a great burden to Mary-Love had Sister not been there to help, and to provide stimulating argument on every point.

  The day before the party was to leave, Mary-Love announced that she intended to pay a visit to the big house next door to inspect the clothes and other necessities that had been packed for Frances. To Sister, she said, “I don’t intend to allow Elinor’s daughter to embarrass us with her paltry wardrobe.”

  “Well, Mama,” Sister pointed out in reply, “even if Elinor has packed Frances a suitcase full of rags, there’s not enough time now to do anything about it.”

  Mary-Love went next door anyway, for the first time in more than five years, since her ineffectual plea for Elinor’s intercession between her and her son.

  “Miss Mary-Love, how are you?” said Elinor at the door, with no more surprise than if her mother-in-law had visited her the day before.

  “I am just about driven into the ground, Elinor.”

  “Getting everybody ready, I suppose.”

  “That’s right. In fact, I just dropped by to make sure that Frances was all set.”

  “I am packing her suitcases this very minute. I imagine that tonight I’ll have to hit her over the head with a hammer to get her to go to sleep.”

  “All the children are excited,” replied Mary-Love.

  “Come on upstairs,” said Elinor, “and see what I’ve packed for her. See if you can think of anything I’ve forgotten.”

  “Why, I’d be happy to do that,” said Mary-Love, though she wondered how it was that Elinor was making her inspection trip so easy. As she followed her daughter-in-law into the house, Mary-Love peered into the darkened front parlor and remarked, “Looks like you have been changing things around.”

  “A little,” replied Elinor. “Miss Mary-Love, it is burning hot outside. Let me get you some nectar.”

  “Oh, Elinor, I am so glad you suggested that! Last week I had a glass of your nectar from Manda Turk, and it was the best stuff I’ve ever tasted. Who gathers your blackberries for you?”

  “I send Luvadia and Frances. Go on upstairs and I’ll fix us both some. I’m a little thirsty too. Frances’s room is right next to the sleeping porch. The suitcases are open on her bed.”

  “Where is Frances?”

  “James drove her and Danjo out to Lake Pinchona. Frances loves to feed that alligator!”

  “Frances is gone fall in one day and get eaten up,” Mary-Love said calmly, as she mounted the stairs.

  Elinor went into the kitchen and said to Zaddie, ??
?You go upstairs and see if Miss Mary-Love needs any help. She’s going to want to undo everything I’ve already done. I’m going to fix her some nectar.” She took out the ice pick and began to chop ice.

  . . .

  “I wish Frances had some prettier things,” said Mary-Love. She had gone through Frances’s luggage, clucking disapproval of what had been packed, how Elinor had packed it, and even of the two small suitcases themselves. Now she was seated on the glider on the sleeping-porch and sipping her blackberry nectar. Elinor rocked gently in the swing and was thoughtfully stirring the overpoweringly sweet nectar that had been diluted with water and ice. “I wish you and Oscar would let me buy Frances some things,” Mary-Love continued. “You two don’t even let me see my grandchild anymore.”

  “Miss Mary-Love,” said Elinor calmly, “that’s just not so. Frances loves you to death—Frances loves everybody—but you won’t let that child near you.”

  “Elinor! How could you say such a thing!”

  “I can say it because it’s perfectly true. Oscar and I don’t spend much time at your house and you don’t spend much time over here either, but we have never tried to discourage Frances from going over to see you. You’re her grandmother, but you don’t ever want to have anything to do with her. You and Miriam treat Frances as if she were dirt under your feet. She lay in that room sick as she could be for three years, and not once did you visit her. I was embarrassed to mention it when anybody asked me about it. It’s hard for me to believe that you could be so deliberately cruel to your own granddaughter.”

  There was no rancor in Elinor’s voice. She spoke as if she stated obvious truths. The very baldness of Elinor’s assertions wounded Mary-Love, who never looked at a thing directly, and now had no idea how to confront her daughter-in-law’s unexpected forthrightness.

  “Elinor! I am shocked. Aren’t we taking Frances with us to Chicago tomorrow? Won’t she and Miriam have the time of their lives?”

  “Maybe,” said Elinor. “That is, if Miriam will speak to Frances—and I’m not convinced that she will.”

  Mary-Love was growing even less certain how to respond to her daughter-in-law. Elinor’s remarks had the substance but not the feel of an attack. Mary-Love temporized by glancing around the porch and commenting idly, “It’s been so long since I’ve been here.”