A Parchment of Leaves

  I found that I could look right at Birdie from the mirror attached to my side of the car. I loved to watch her when she was being still like this, when she was being so quiet. I liked to wonder what she was thinking about. Did children ponder the future, and measure the amount of happiness in their lives? Birdie looked out at the passing mountains as if she had never seen such sights. She barely took the time to blink. The rushing wind kicked through Serena’s window, and the air slid up Birdie’s forehead and knocked her bangs around. I felt myself smiling at the sight of my own little girl, acting so big as she sat back there. But all at once I felt a sense of grief that I could not put my finger on. I could not stand the thought of Birdie sitting there alone, being ignored by Aidia as she jabbered and tried to impress Serena. I felt like hiking my leg over the seat and climbing right into the back, where I could put my arm about Birdie’s shoulders and comment on things as they passed.

  “Ain’t that right, Vine?” Serena said with a little punch to my arm.

  “What?”

  “I said, you’ve got to train a man to the way you want him,” Serena said with a wild smile. “Ain’t that right?”

  I kept my eyes on Birdie for a moment longer, then turned my head to Aidia. “That’s why Serena’s man left her,” I said, and Aidia let herself collapse against the backseat as if this was the funniest thing she had ever heard. As she fell back, the wind caught her in a funny way that caused her skirt to fly way up, showing bruised knees and a flash of white panties. She wasn’t even wearing a slip.

  “I’m telling the truth, though,” Serena said when Aidia had settled her arms across the back of the seat again. “I never did let Whistle-Dick raise his hand to me. He did one time, and I took a skillet and knocked his brains out.”

  Aidia did not laugh at this. Her big eyes growed bigger. “You never!” she gasped.

  “I sure as hell did,” Serena said. She cranked up her window real fast and nudged the can of tobacco across the seat with the tips of her fingers. “Roll me one, will you, Vine?”

  “What are you’uns talking about, anyway?” I asked, and pulled a rolling paper from the dispenser. “Has Aaron offered to whup you?”

  “He raised his hand to me,” Aidia said. She laid the side of her heart-shaped face on one arm. “Drawed his fist back on me—you know. But he ain’t never hit me yet.”

  I didn’t look up from rolling the cigarette. It was clear to me by the quaver in Aidia’s voice that he had done just that.

  “Well, don’t let it get started. I growed up in that,” Serena said, and looked over to see if I was finished yet. “Seen my mommy’s brains beat out every day of her life. Women take too much.”

  Aidia’s mouth tightened up, like she had just eaten something sour, or vile. “I won’t take it,” Aidia said.

  For a long minute, nobody said anything else. “Well, let’s not talk about things like that,” I said. “Look at this pretty day.” I put more happiness into my voice than I really felt, but I sure didn’t want to talk about Aaron and Aidia’s marriage. The less I knowed about that, the better off I would be. “Won’t you sing something, Serena?”

  “I don’t want to hurt Aidia’s ears,” Serena said.

  “Sing ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful,’” I said. I wet the crease on the side of the cigarette once more, then run it through my fingers to dry it. I had rolled enough cigarettes for Serena and Saul to know how to do it right. I handed it to Serena, and she laid the cigarette on the valley of cloth where her skirt sunk down between her legs. All at once, she started to sing. Her voice filled the car and sounded so good that I laid my head back against the seat and closed my eyes.

  I wanted to keep my mind from what awaited me for as long as possible. As much as I missed my family, I dreaded going to Redbud now that Daddy had took sick. It killed my soul to see him in such a shape. This song made me think of Saul, when he had sung it while we were courting. We had been on his horse, riding along Redbud Creek on a hot summer day. His shirt had been soaked with sweat and it felt cool beneath my hands—I had held on to his arms and found the meaty place just below his elbow. He had sung off-key, but his voice had been strong, and I had decided right then that I might love him. When we had reached the confluence of the creek and the river, he had swung his thick leg off the horse, then put out both hands to help me down. His hands had felt huge on my sides.

  Now I could not remember the way Saul’s hands looked or felt. I set there with my eyes closed and with Serena’s voice in my ears, and I tried to recall Saul’s back when I rubbed liniment on it. I longed for him in a way that I never had before, to touch his lips or watch the careful way he strode across the yard, like a man stepping over rows of beans in a garden. Lately I had took to showing Birdie a picture of Saul so that she would know what her daddy looked like when he finally come home. Sometimes Birdie took the photograph down from the table and carried it around under her arm, as if it was a doll that she had to have near her.

  Then I realized that Birdie was singing along with Serena. I looked at her through the side mirror. Birdie kept her eyes on the side of the road. We were passing through cliffs that still held the coolness of true winter, and we could feel their shade sliding over us. The cliffs dripped wildly, so that it seemed we were passing through a downpour, and they smelled sweetly of sulphur. Birdie watched the world and sang:

  Each little flower that opens,

  Each little bird that sings,

  He made their glowing colors,

  He made their tiny wings.

  When we got to the mouth of Redbud, I felt the homesickness that always washed over me when I saw the old home place. Already I hated the thought of leaving this evening. It had not been so hard to leave last time because it had been high winter and the warmth of my own little home awaited me over the hills. But today the air held a promise of spring—even if it was farther away than I hoped for—and it would be painful to leave on such a fine evening.

  As we neared the houses, I seen everyone move out onto their porches. Not many vehicles come down into the holler, and they all hurried out to see who it was. One of my little cousins ran out of the woods and trotted along in front of us, slinging his arm high in the air as he hollered, “Stranger coming!” over and over. By the time we had all got out of the coughing car, everyone was standing at the gate. It was a Friday, so all the women had their hair down like black finery.

  Everybody gathered about Birdie like they had never seen her before. My aunts and girl cousins took turns holding her. Birdie seemed to relish their attention and was not scared of their overlapping voices and hands.

  “I don’t believe you all care if I come or not,” I said, trying to muster a laugh. “As long as you got to see Birdie, you wouldn’t care if I ever come.”

  A group of them packed Birdie on into the house. My aunt Hazel kissed me on the mouth.

  “This is my best friend, Serena,” I said, and put my hand on the ball of Serena’s shoulder. “She’s the best midwife I know. She ought to be a doctor, so I asked her if she’d look at Daddy.”

  “I’m pleased to know ye,” Hazel said, and nodded. She was a tall, thin woman who was famous for her unnaturally gray eyes. Hazel sized up Aidia. “Who’s this?”

  “This is my new sister-in-law. Remember Saul’s brother, the one got snakebit? This is his woman.”

  Hazel smiled when Aidia made her shake hands. She was as taken aback by it as I had been.

  “How’s Daddy?” I asked.

  Hazel shook her head and ran her thumb over my cheek. She had been shelling walnuts, and the bitter scent wrapped about my head when she ran her hand near my face. “No better, but no worse. He’s about to get past talking, though. Only your mommy can understand a thing he says.”

  “He used to tell the awfullest big stories in the evening,” I said, talking so I wouldn’t cry. Serena took hold of my hand. “Remember how everybody would set up here and listen to him?”

  Hazel hooked her arm throug
h mine as we walked up to the house. I wasn’t even aware of where Aidia had got off to, but I figured she was following. I didn’t have time to fool with her.

  “It’ll brighten him to lay eyes on you,” Hazel said, and then I could see that there was something that she was not telling me. It was clear to me by the way she cast her eyes down every time she spoke to me.

  All at once we were swallowed up in the other women. They crowded the porch. A couple of my older cousins sat peeling potatoes and dropping them into a bowl of water. My aunts all talked to Birdie at once. One of them drew a shining blade through an apple and offered pieces to Birdie, who ate as if I had not fed her all day.

  The house smelled of sickness and of the scent a body takes on when it is constantly still. I wondered if Mama had become so used to this smell that she didn’t even notice it. It was so strong that it managed to overtake the greasy smell of shucky beans on the stove. It was still early in the day, but the beans would take a while to cook. In the kitchen I spied a skillet of corn bread cooling on the sideboard.

  “Your mommy is over at my house, laying down,” Hazel whispered. “She was up all night with him, and there’s always so many here she can’t never get peace during the day.”

  “Is she wearing herself out?” I asked. Serena held more tightly to my hand, letting me know that she was right there beside me.

  “Why, yeah. I can’t do nothing with her, though. You know how she is—stubborn.” Hazel stood outside the doorway to the bedroom, unsure if I wanted her to go in, too. “We’re fixing a big supper. Marthy has took to eating like a bird.”

  “I should be over here more, tending to her,” I said.

  “We take good care of her,” Hazel said. She let her eyes run over the door nervously, and then I knowed that Daddy must have been bad off. Hazel acted as if she dreaded me going in there. “You have a child to look after, and your own house.”

  Daddy laid propped up on a mass of pillows. I wondered where they had all come from. Had Mama plucked all of the chickens to make comfort for him? His face was more drawn than it had been before, but he had been recently washed. His hair was combed and his shirt was crisp. I was glad that he was not wearing a nightshirt. Mama had dressed him good, as if she had predicted that I would arrive today. On his legs laid a slate with a stub of chalk set atop it.

  I felt overwhelmed by cheerfulness and let it wash out over Daddy. I spoke to him as if nothing had ever come upon him. “Daddy.” I smiled. “I’m home.”

  He tried to nod. His eyes seemed made of water. I thought they might melt right down his cheeks at any moment.

  “This here is Serena,” I said, and she stepped forward. “She caught Birdie when I had her.”

  Somebody had opened his window, and the smell of false spring come in with one breeze and was sucked out by another. The curtains made note of the wind’s comings and goings.

  “Leaving here,” he wrote on the slate.

  “Don’t talk that way, now, Daddy,” I said. Tears come to my eyes instantly.

  He pressed down very hard on the chalk as he wrote. When he offered the slate for me to take, I had to blow a layer of the white dust away before I could make out his words: “Runned off.”

  “I don’t understand what you mean,” I said.

  I felt hands on my shoulders and turned to see Mama standing there. She wore the look of complete despair, a skin that I had never seen on my mother before.

  MAMA TOOK ME out into the backyard, near the garden. There was nothing in it but mustard, left from the fall.

  Mama didn’t waste any time, and she didn’t mince words. “We going to have to leave here, Vine,” she said. “That man has laid claim to this land.”

  “But he can’t,” I said. I felt as if the breath had been knocked out of me. “It’s ours.”

  “We’ve got no proof. The law don’t go by a man’s word, only his piece of paper.”

  I sank down in one of the chairs someone had left out by the garden. I laced my fingers together before me and looked at the ground. I couldn’t think what to do.

  “People have turned on us since that Cherokee boy killed that man in Bell County,” Mama said.

  I put my elbows on her knees and laid my face in my open hands. “I thought that was forgot by now.”

  Mama stood with her hands behind her back. “Things like that smolder,” she said. “We’ve got till the end of the month. All I know to do is go to North Carolina.”

  I could not believe what I had heard her say. I stood very quickly, and a trio of birds in the tree flapped away. “You can’t leave here, Mama. Not that far. I’ll die of homesickness for you all,” I said. “How will I ever see you again?”

  “I don’t know what else to do, Vine.” She bowed her head. “Land’s high here, and we ain’t got no money. We hear tell that in Carolina, the government will give land to full-bloods.”

  All of a sudden I was heaving with tears. I felt as if my insides were being ripped out. It had been so long since I had let myself think of how much I missed them all. So long since I had let grief pour out of me.

  “Daddy always said he never wanted to go there,” I said. “Our people left there ages ago—you’ll not know a soul. Please don’t do this, Mama. Come live with me.”

  “He’s done agreed to it, Vine. There’s no other way. We can’t all live with you. It’s all of us that have to leave. Ever one of us on this creek.”

  When she put her arms around me, it seemed she held on to me so that she would not fall to the ground. Her words quavered in my hair, lacking conviction. “We’ll meet again by and by.”

  Fourteen

  For a long time I denied it to myself. I imagined that they were still right over there on Redbud. In the evenings I pictured them all setting out there on the porch, singing and talking. I heard the little voices of my cousins, smelled the laundry being boiled by my aunts. In daydreams I set with Mama and drank her coffee, felt her hands upon my head as she brushed my hair. I took a cool washrag and soothed the forehead of my father, who wrote me long, comical stories on his slate. Sometimes I would get up in the morning and think of going over there to see them. Then I would remember that they were not there. And the place I had been born in, the place where I had lived most of my life and had courted at and been married at, was gone, just as sure as they was. It was a dead place.

  We heard that Tate Masters had tore down all of the houses. He’d built a new bridge and knocked earth into the creek. What did my great-grandmother Lucinda think as she stood on the cliffs, watching all of this? It was too much to bear. Picturing them going over them big mountains between home and Cherokee, North Carolina. Starting all over again with Daddy wrapped up in quilts in the backseat of my uncle’s car, like a little baby who has no choice but to go where his family takes him. My mother in the front seat, her arms crossed, silent. Her lips tight, hardly ever saying a word. Her heart closed, too.

  Mama wrote me lots of letters for a while. I would let them sit days before I was able to read them. It hurt me so bad to think of my people being so far away that I got sick at the thought of it. Sometimes, after I would read a letter, I would let it drop. I would watch as the breeze carried it down the yard, twisting on the world’s breath. Before it could settle on the creek—where the pencil she always wrote in would have become more black—or caught in the fingers of a tree limb to yellow and grow brittle enough to crack, I ran and snatched it up. I should have just let them go. They were letters from the dead.

  If Saul had not come home that spring, I would not have been able to stand it.

  He come by train, and Aaron drove me and Esme to town to get him. I got in the back. Aidia sat right in the middle of the seat up front, one hand on Aaron’s thigh. Esme was beside her with her hands perched atop her purse and her shoulders held very squarely. Esme said riding in the back made her sick to her stomach, but instead of Aidia getting in the back with me and Birdie, she had just scooted over with a ragged sigh. Birdie sat upon my l
ap and I ran my fingers over her little hands, as pale and soft as dandelion fluff.

  Saul come down off the train and seemed taller and prettier than he ever had been. He had had plenty of sun and was nearly as brown as me. The freckles scattered across his nose were dark and smudged. When he took me in his arms, he smelled of woodsmoke. His lips tasted of lumber, sweet and yellow and full of juice. All the way home I put my hands on him. I wrapped myself about his arm and pressed myself against his legs. He had on dark blue dungarees, which I had never seen him wear before.

  “It’s what they all wear at the lumber camp,” he said. When he spoke to me, he looked me right in the eye. When we were about halfway home, he put his hand on the side of my face and let his fingers go back into the warmth of my neck.

  He held Birdie on his lap and she talked the whole way home. She told him of playing in the creek, of keeping all the feathers he had sent her in the Bible, of Aaron taking her outside to look at the stars of winter. She laid her head on Saul’s chest and he rubbed her back until she had fallen asleep. She was nearly five year old now, but so little, especially laying against his long body. When we got home he packed her into the house and laid her on her little bed, leaning over to kiss her on the lips.

  By the time he had turned from putting her down, my dress laid in a jagged circle around my feet. I peeled off my shift and my drawers and stood there until he come to me and lifted me, his big hands holding me by the backs of my thighs. His skin was so hot that he felt made of a fever. His hands ran over my back, through my hair, down the side of my face. His skin was like water to me, alive and restless. His mouth was hot on my breasts. I straddled him and with each movement I pumped out the grief I had let settle in my belly. With each moan that escaped my mouth—no matter how hard I tried to contain it—there sang away a trouble, a homesickness.