Sharla tugged at her own ears with her fingers. “You got ears like a mouse.”
Addy Shadd nodded and laughed inside her head. To be told such a thing was humorous when you were old and long past caring about your looks. “You think I look like a mouse?”
“Wish I can make mine stick out.”
“Need a well for all that wishing, Little Girl.”
Sharla squinched her nose. “Emilio says I’m a pig.”
Addy Shadd hid her concern. “That right?”
“Emilio give me a Dilly Bar but he said that’s enough now Pig and he throwed it in the garbage when I only ate half. Claude never done that.”
“Who’s Claude?”
“The janitor what teached me songs.”
“That right?”
“I don’t like it when Emilio throws my Dilly Bar in the garbage. I’ll get it back out next time.”
“No, don’t do that, Child. Don’t get food out the garbage.”
“My Mum said we’re gonna live in a cottage on the lake.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“How am I getting to school in Chatham?”
“Suppose the bus’ll take you.”
“Emilio said he won’t drive me.”
“Well, you don’t pay any mind to Emilio. You are what you are and that’s that and that’s for you to figure out.”
“Mum Addy…?”
Addy Shadd took a long look at the child and had not the heart to say don’t call me that. “What, Child?”
Sharla surprised them both when she put her little brown hand inside Addy Shadd’s crinkled old one. Addy cleared some thought out of her throat and said, “Let’s get you some breakfast now.”
Addy rose and cleared her throat again, moving to the kitchen to study the cereal boxes in the third cupboard. She needed a moment to collect herself and couldn’t look at Sharla when she said, “But then we’re gonna get you on home to your Mama, Honey.”
Sharla knew that Addy Shadd had made a mistake and because she was old she likely didn’t know it. “I’m living here though.”
“I think we better be getting you on home.”
“My Mum said though.”
“I think the best place for any child is with their Mama and that’s where I’m taking you.”
“I’m living here for summer though.”
“Well, I think it’s gonna be better to get you on home,” Addy Shadd said. Her decision was partly to do what’s right for the child and partly because she knew it’d be too much for her to have this sad, unusual child in her home all summer long.
The old woman turned around, sick at the look on the child’s face and the calm way she said, “My Mum’ll hate me though, because I’m bad and I broke them chinas and I ate them cookies and Fawn stolt my envelope and now you don’t want me.”
Addy opened her mouth to speak but it was too late. All the suffering in Sharla’s gut came up and out; no tears but a sob as deep and sorry as any the old woman had ever heard. She went to the child, gathering her bulk in her spindly arms, and though Sharla was heavy and smelled of dirt and piss, Addy kissed her cheek and stroked her thick back, saying, “It’s gonna be all right, Honey. It’s gonna be all right,” even though she knew it wasn’t.
She wasn’t a child to cuddle and the awkward feel of her told Addy Shadd that Sharla hadn’t been touched much in her life. Sharla went stiff, tore away from the old woman, and was out the door without a word.
There were some days when there was no peace to be had and what you thought might happen didn’t and what you never dreamed of did. Addy knew this would be one of those days. She shook a cigarette from her package and lit it while she wondered what to do. The child had either gone to hide or gone back home. If she’s gone back home that’s the end of it. Addy never did get her envelope and long as she never had to see that little girl’s pitiful face once more in her life she could pretend she never knew her at all. But if she’s gone to hide, it’s Addy who’s responsible. No one else would know to go looking.
Addy didn’t cuss and she wasn’t even cross, she just thought here’s what she ought to do and she set out to do it. She plugged the cigarette into her mouth, squinting to keep the smoke out of her eyes, and found her black vinyl purse in the cupboard. She left the trailer, trying to remember where Collette lived and the shortest way to get there. She turned to lock the door, then thinking twice left it open, in case the child returned.
The dry of the lane had been redeemed by the rain and Addy could smell the onions under the earth in her garden. She didn’t leave her trailer much and hadn’t in the nearly twenty years since she moved there from Chatham. She had her groceries delivered and took taxicabs to the Kmart and to see Dr. Zimmer when her legs and lungs gave her trouble.
She’d have liked to chat with the neighbours, but none seemed eager for a visit. Addy was confused in the present, secretive about the past, and she didn’t share trailer-park gossip. Last time she stopped to talk to Nedda Berry’s young mama she’d insulted the woman and didn’t understand how. Bonita Berry was sitting out the front on a broken lawn chair. To Addy it was just an idle comment. “Another coloured family moving out down the road.”
Bonita tapped the ash from her long, brown cigarette, objecting, “It’s almost nineteen-eighty, Mizz Shadd. We don’t say coloured any more. We say black.”
Addy’d laughed at the young woman’s serious face and said, “I been coloured all my life.”
“Coloured is an ignorant word. Black is proud.”
“Never thought to see a day a Negro can’t be called coloured.”
Bonita winced. “Don’t say Negro. Black. Just black.”
“So happens I’m proud to be Negro and to be coloured.”
Bonita Berry wagged her finger, saying, “Those are racial words, Mizz Shadd. Never too old to get with the times.”
Addy Shadd remembered that conversation now and wondered if it was possible to be racial against your own. She inhaled deeply and coughed up a quantity of brown sputum on her hanky. She coughed a little more, trying to be quiet as it seemed the whole mud lane was still asleep. She looked around, thinking she used to know the names of everyone in the nearby trailers, but they came and went now and some weren’t even coloured.
The trailer park was never meant to be separated, but it worked out that a few coloured folks bought up some of the cheaper lots and trailers on the unpaved lane in the sixties. More came and more, and even those who could afford to buy on the paved lanes came to the mud lane instead. It was just natural to want to be near your people. She noticed the same thing happened in Chatham with the Italians settling in that subdivision near the Southside arena. She used to see them when she was working her delivery job for the bakery. They ate strange cold cuts with unpronounceable names and they pierced the lobes of their baby girls and hung grown-up earrings in the holes. The women didn’t think themselves too good for fieldwork come spring though and Addy admired them for that.
And there were Chinese in Chatham now too. There was just the one family with the buffet restaurant way back when, but then a whole other family showed up that were not even related. More and more came and pretty soon it wasn’t unusual to see them on the streets and in the schools. Addy remembered when she was a child, how the bootleggers’d get paid for running Chinamen across the border into America. That made her think of Chester Monk. She made herself wonder why the Chinamen didn’t want to stay in Canada, just to get Chester out of her head.
Addy’s eyesight wasn’t what it used to be but she knew she’d spot Sharla if the big little girl were on the road. Her knees ached and her spine shifted in a troubling way. Dr. Zimmer had given her a smooth cherrywood cane last time she saw him and said her bones were getting brittle. He said an old woman could die from a broken hip so be careful. Addy hadn’t used the cane yet and was sorry now she hadn’t thought to bring it along.
There was a collection of tears buried in Addy Shadd’s throat and she couldn’t say exactly
why. Young Sharla, she guessed, and the sad way about her. But something else too, and when Addy came upon it, it surprised her. Addy Shadd missed her mother. Even after all these years. Even after what Laisa did. Addy longed to watch Laisa’s wrinkled fingers turn a crust for apple pie. To hear her hard voice and look into her soft eyes. To kiss her cheek and smell her throat and say, “I’m sorry, Mama. I’m so sorry.”
As she walked, Addy recalled the lullaby her mother had sung when she was too young to know, then crooned to L’il Leam that whole summer and fall when he lay in bed, sick and near dead. She sang it now, under her breath, hoping it would make her feel better:
Sleep Child, deep Child, Mama holds you near.
Sleep Child, keep Child, nothing need you fear.
May all your dreams be sweet,
And all your days be bright,
Sleep until the sunrise,
My little one, good night.
The storm had swept away the muggy heat, leaving the sky blue and high. The moon was still hanging there, like it forgot it was on night shift and done for the day. Addy thought, it’s a sign, when the moon and sun share the sky, that change is coming, and change isn’t always good.
Chestnuts
THE WIND WARNED RUSHOLME of the storm’s approach. The last of the leaves fled their branches. The grass went brown and the sky grew grey and the squirrels hid nuts they’d never find again.
Laisa woke in her bed with a shudder and it wasn’t from the cold. She’d been shaken and was startled when she turned to look for the hand on her shoulder. No person had touched her. Wallace was still asleep beside her. His body was hot, his breath steady and even. Laisa was afraid. Addy was all she could think, and she rose and hurried to her daughter’s room.
The door to Addy’s bedroom was closed. Laisa, in bare feet, made no sound at all as she approached from the hallway. She was biting her lip because she knew. She was wringing her hands because she knew. It had been whispered to her in her mother’s heart and forewarned by that phantom hand. Laisa held her breath, sure she’d find her girl stiff and cold and laid out on her bed, drowned in a river of blood. How could she forgive herself then, for pretending she hadn’t seen?
She pushed the creaky door open. Addy was not cold and stiff and laid out on her bed, but dressing in the corner of the small frosty room. It was the first time in years Laisa’d seen Addy in her immodesty. Her bloomers were hanging low beneath the growing swell of her belly and her breasts spilled forward, tipped by black plum nipples. Laisa knew, and realized she’d known for some time, that her child was carrying a child. She nodded again and again and thought to strike the girl on her head and her stomach and never stop till she beat them both to death.
Laisa raised her hand and stepped forward, but just then a howl came from somewhere outdoors and took her breath away. She stood still a moment, listening to the sound, only turning when the howl became a word and she could hear her name. “Laisa. Lais-saaaa.”
Again she felt a phantom touch. This time the devil hands pulled Laisa out of Addy’s room and pushed her down the little hallway. She could see the front door was open. There was a crowd gathered on her lawn, exhaling clouds in the cool, crisp air. Why all the neighbours come to my dream? Laisa wondered. Her mind searched her kitchen. Was she expected to feed all those dream people? All she had was a little milk and tea, though she could bring out the preserves if it came to that. Jars and jars of strawberry left over, her children having gone off it for some mysterious reason. And there was bread. Addy making fine bread these days. Though it hurt to admit, her daughter had a better touch with her dough than Laisa ever had.
It was Wallace whose face first appeared to her out of the crowd. Laisa was vexed to see him dressed in nothing but his undergarments and pulled-on, but not buttoned-up, trousers. Dream or no dream, it was disgraceful of Wallace to be weeping—was he weeping?—on the lawn with the rest of the sleepy town, and not even dressed. He had good work in Chatham he ought to be getting ready for, and she’d have a talk with him about that when she woke.
Laisa peered out from behind the front door. It was then she saw Jonas Johnson, a friend of her son’s, and another man, a stranger—the two of them standing over what appeared to be a giant baby swaddled in an old brown blanket.
She made her way through the crowd toward the bundle in the blanket. She felt the dream hand again, squeezing, painful, and turned to see Wallace’s fingers compressing her shoulder. “It’s Leam,” he said slowly. “It’s L’il Leam.”
Laisa shook her head. “Leam is asleep. Leam is in his bed.” She shouted in the direction of the house, “Leam! L’il Leam?!”
Laisa waited, but it was Addy who appeared on the porch. Addy was dressed and had composed herself, but when she saw the spectacle on her lawn, she knew to prepare for some horror she never even dreamed of. She did not stop to catch her breath and she did not look at her mother’s face. She turned to the crowd, aware they were staring at the swollen stomach under her skirt, pleading, “Will y’all kindly go home now. Leave us to this. Please. Leave us to this.”
And the neighbours did, all at once, pull each other away from the awful scene. The five were left there, silent and afraid, Addy and Laisa and Wallace and Jonas Johnson and the stranger who introduced himself to them simply as Remy.
Remy and Jonas had agreed, on the way to Rusholme, that since he was a town boy, and a friend of Leam’s, Jonas should be the one to tell the story. Jonas spoke quietly. “Mr. Shadd, Mrs. Shadd. I’m sorry to tell you a terrible thing happened up at the Detroit River last night.” He paused to check with the Frenchman. “I believe it was all a misunderstanding.” He cleared his throat so he wouldn’t cry. “L’il Leam, Ma’am. He…”
Addy watched as Jonas pulled the blanket from the face of her dead, bloated brother. She did not cover her mouth with her hand or gasp or cry out. Her pain was too deep for such gestures. She listened to Jonas explain how Remy had woken him in the night and told him about the misunderstanding at the river. She heard how the Frenchman had come upon Chester Monk and Leam and Zach Heron fighting at the water’s edge. How he’d witnessed Zach Heron topple into the water and how he’d searched and found L’il Leam’s body floating in the bulrushes. She watched as her mother and father sank to their knees to touch the corpse, not hearing the rest of what was said, for it was said in a whisper. She drew one horrified breath after another, felt Zach Heron’s baby kick, and asked silently, What about Chester?
Jonas came to the end of his terrible tale, and Addy knew when her mother and father turned to look at her that what had happened at the river had happened because of her. It didn’t matter what Laisa and Wallace had been told. It didn’t matter what they believed. The only truth was that Addy was to blame. She watched her father cast his eyes over her round stomach and saw how he hated her. She looked down at her good brother, then back up at Jonas, and shouted once more in her head, But what about Chester?
The stranger, Remy, must have heard her silent scream, for he turned to her and answered, “Chester was stabbed. When I find him, he is clinging to the dock. He has only a few breaths left. Before he slip under the water, Chester say tell you he’s sorry.” Jonas opened his mouth to say more but Wallace wouldn’t hear it. He stood, gathering up his son’s body, and made his way to the house. Laisa followed, not meeting Addy’s eyes as she passed. Remy and Jonas, with nothing left to say or do, returned to their automobile and left.
Addy thought Leam, and then Chester, and sank to the brown grass, shivering. She bent her head to vomit, then wiped her mouth with the sleeve of her dress. She didn’t move away though the mess was steaming and stunk. She knew there were eyes watching from behind curtains in all the nearby windows. And she knew the devil was waiting to see what she’d do next. She tried to stand, but couldn’t. She spread her palms over the cold hard earth and closed her eyes.
Addy thought of L’il Leam and how he’d be buried in the church graveyard in view of the lake, trod upon by the gees
e and gulls and sheltered by the willow. And she thought of Birdie Brown and how she’d like to die too when she learned the news of her only love. She had an idea to go to Birdie and comfort her, but she didn’t think she could stand her own grief and her friend’s too.
The little being in her body struggled and kicked and pushed against her womb. Addy set her hand on her stomach and made a circle. She begged her baby to be a boy and thought to call him Leam so her Daddy would feel tender and disposed to care. She’d live in disgrace and not be welcome at church, she knew, but she was comforted that at least Zach Heron was dead and would never try to claim her child.
The Lord shook the grey blanket sky, scattering a hard cold rain on the ground below. Addy lifted herself from the ground and found shelter on the porch. She sat down in the old rocking chair to watch the rain pelt the earth. It occurred to her that she might be sent South to live with her Aunt Myrtle, and she nearly threw up again at the thought.
Addy prayed that the Lord’d take the pain away. She sat on the porch most of the day, rocking in the chair, avoiding the curious glances from people passing in the rain, nodding to the Pastor with his hard hateful eyes as he hurried by her into her father’s house. Addy tried to make pictures of the future, but could never imagine what she might see, where she might go, who she’d become, or how one day she would die.
It was hard to think forward past her next breath, for nothing seemed right or true or believable. Even now, it was not to be believed that L’il Leam, who only yesterday had grasped her arm as he went out the door grinning and said, “Your sugar pie was good, Addy. Better than Mama’s but don’t say I said,” was dead and laid out in the parlour. And Chester. She could see Chester under the willow that June Sunday in his tight church pants with the berry on his lip. But no matter how she tried, Addy couldn’t picture him clinging to the dock, pierced by the hand of that devil. And no matter that she knew it was true, she could not accept that at winter’s end, Big Zach Heron’s baby would come out that little hole between her legs.