“Revern’ Bliss,” she said, “I don’t think we want to raise us any crop of melons this close to the porch, do you? ’Cause after all, they’d just be under our feet and getting squashed all the time and everything.”
“No’m, I don’t guess we do and I’m sorry, mam.”
“Oh, that’s all right, Revern Bliss. You care for some salt?”
“No’m, I like it just like it is.”
“You really like it?”
“Oh yes, mam! It’s ’bout the sweetest, juiciest melon I ever et.”
“Thank you, Revern’ Bliss. I told you it was a ripe one and I’m glad you like it.”
“You sure told the truth, mam.”
So they sat eating the melon and he watched the fireflies but held the slippery seeds in his fist. Then suddenly from far away he could hear boys’ voices floating to them. “Abernathy!” they called. “Hey, you, Abernathy!” and waited. There was no answer. Then it came again. “Where you at, ole big-headed, box-ankled Abernathy!” And she laughed, saying “That Abernathy’ll be looking to fight them tomorrow, ’cause he’s got a real big head and don’t like to be teased about it.”
“Who’s Abernathy?” he said.
“Oh, he’s a little ole mannish boy that lives down the road over yonder. You’ll see him tomorrow,” she said. “You’ll hear him too, ’cause his head is big and he’s got a big deep voice just like a grown man.”
He could hear the boys still calling as she talked on—until a grown woman’s voice came clear as a note through a horn, “Abernathy’s in bed, just where y’all ought to be. So clear on ’way from here.”
“And who is you?” a voice then called.
“Who you think you is?” the woman’s voice said.
“Don’t know and don’t care!”
“Well, I’m his mother, and you heard what I just said.”
“Well ’scuse us, I thought you was his cousin,” the voice yelled mocking her, and he could hear some of them laughing and running off into the night, calling “Hey, Abernathy—how’s your ma, Abernathy? Hey you, Abernathy’s ma, how’s ole big-headed Abernathy?”
“That part about being in bed goes for you too, Revern’ Bliss,” she said, “considering all you been through with that terrible woman and all. You sleepy?”
“Yes, mam,” he said. He’d had enough of the melon and his stomach was tight. “Where must I put this melon rind, mam?” he said.
“I’ll take care of it,” she said. “Don’t you think you better pee-pee before you go to bed? The privy’s right out there at the back of the lot.”
“But I don’t have to now,” he said, thinking, She must think I’m a baby.… Body says the first thing a man has to learn is to hold his water.
“Well, you will by the time you get your clothes off, so you go on and do it now.”
“No,” he said, “because I don’t have it.”
“Then you do it for me, Revern’ Bliss,” she said. “Because while you might know all about the Bible, I know all about little boys from having to take care of a couple on my job—and even they ain’t the first. So now don’t be ashame and go make pee-pee. After all, I only have but one sofa and us don’t want to ruin it, do us now?”
“No’m,” he said.
So he walked back through the dark and came to grass and growing things and stopped, looking around. But then she called through the dark,
“You can do it right there if you scaird to go clear to the back, Revern’ Bliss; just don’t do it on my lettus.”
He didn’t answer, hearing her low laughter as he walked back until he could smell the hot dryness of lime and sun-shrunken wood. He paused before it but didn’t go in, standing looking down the hill where he could see a streetlight glowing near a house with a picket fence and a flowering tree. The blossoms were white and thick and motionless in the breathless dark and he stood looking at it and making a dull thudding upon the hard earth, his mind aware of the hush around him. Then he looked back toward the house and there was Sister Georgia, a black shadow in the door with the light behind her.
“I told you so,” she said, her voice low but carrying to him sharp and clear. “I can hear you way up here. Sounded like a full-grown man.”
And he could hear her laughing mysteriously, like the big girls when they teased him. He didn’t answer, there were no words to say when a lady teased you like that. He could feel the pulsing of his blood between his fingers and the orange blossoms came to him mixed with the sharp smell of the lime. He turned and looked past the yard with the fence and the tree, to a row of houses where a single light showed. Then the confusion in the tent seemed to break through the surface of his mind, bringing a surge of fear and loneliness….
“Come on in, Revern’ Bliss,” she called. “You can sleep on the sofa without my having to worry now. We’ll leave the door open so the breeze can cool you.”
So he went back across the yard into the house and sat up on the sofa, looking around the room as she stood near the doorway, smiling. There was an old upright piano across the room and he went to it and struck a yellowed key, hearing the dull shimmer of its tone echoing sadly out of tune.
“Don’t tell me you play on the piano too, Revern’ Bliss,” she said.
“No, mam, but Daddy Hickman does.”
“Oh him,” she said, “Revern’ can do just about anything, and I suspect he has too.”
“He sure can do a heap of things,” he said, yawning.
“Oh, oh! Somebody’s sleepy; I better make down the bed.”
He watched her go into a dark room and light a lamp; then he took off his shoes and socks, then his soiled white dress trousers. Then she came back with a sheet and pillow in her arms and he stood up, watching her spread the sofa and fluffing up the pillow and putting it in place. She left then and he could hear her humming softly and the sound of a bedcover being shaken as he removed his tie and shirt. In his undersuit now, he sat looking up at the people in the frames on the wall and at a paper fan with the picture of a colored angel pinned below them to the wallpaper. Wonder are they her mother and father, he thought. Daddy Hickman has some little pictures of his mother and father in his trunk.… He had a brother too.
She came through the door with a glass of milk in her hand and gave it to him.
“You tired, Revern’ Bliss?” she said.
“Not very much, mam,” he said.
“You lonesome?”
“No mam.”
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 sat 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 li’l 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 door
way 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, 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 li’l-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 li’l 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 awhile 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 wellward 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 welly 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 his 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 hi
s body and the new idea welling swiftly in his mind, feeling his foot dangling over the side of the bed while in the dreamlike, 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 gauzelike 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.