Mulberry. Paulette Boudreaux
joint.”
“Don’t put no credence in other folks’ stories.”
“I smell the whiskey on you right now.”
“It’s Saturday night, Dot. Don’t mean I’m drinking every night.”
“I’m worried ’bout these children, Gene.”
“Come on home then, Dot.”
“We been over this. You know there ain’t no nurses up there in the ward with the colored children. Somebody’s got to take care of Ida Bea, feed her, change her diapers and such.”
“She dying, bleeding from her belly like that. If she don’t die she likely gone be a cripple like Harold was. Dying would be better.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“Mama ran herself to the bone taking care of Harold. Sister did Mama’s work, then died like a old woman at twenty-seven. Folks a lot older than her got flu that year. Didn’t die from it though. Even with all the sacrificing, Harold ain’t had what nobody could properly call a life. I used to look at him, all hunched up, slobbering on himself, grinning from ear to ear like some kind of fool, and I’d think, Lord have mercy and put this suffering fool out of his misery.”
“Gene—”
The sudden silence on the other side of the door was like a quick intake of air. I waited in the darkness recalling what I knew about Daddy’s family. His older sister, my Aunt Ida Bea, and his younger brother, Harold, died long before I was born. Before he even met Momma.
“We don’t know what’s going to happen with our Ida Bea,” Momma said. “Doctors don’t even know. Besides, her living or dying is God’s decision.”
“God loosed death in the world. Don’t think he much cares one way or the other about how the dying goes. I seen a lot of bad living and hard dying in the war. Ain’t seen God there for none of it.”
“Maybe the dying you saw wasn’t down to God. Maybe it was down to men.”
“That’s my point, Dot. God didn’t do nothing to stop or start the dying. Whether any of us lives and dies ain’t nothing to do with God. It’s to do with the bad luck of sickness, or the doings of other folks.”
“Just because you don’t believe in God’s help, don’t mean I got to follow suit.”
Momma continued in a smooth even voice like there were strong feelings behind it that she was trying hard to hide. “I believe God is looking down on Ida Bea. I want to be on the right side of what he sees down here. Maybe this time I won’t have to lose—”
“You promised to let that go, Dot.”
“I never promised my heart would stop hurting or that I would stop thinking about the loss of my first-born child.”
I stiffened. Loss of her firstborn? I was her firstborn. I wasn’t lost. Had there been a baby before me?
Momma’s voice was hoarse and her words rolled out slowly when she spoke again. “I stopped blaming you. That’s all. But he’s with me all the time, Gene. Sometimes more real to me than these living ones. Sitting up there in that hospital ward, watching all kinds of sick children come and go, I can’t help but think, what if I’d been there? Maybe Samuel would still be here.”
“There wasn’t nothing you could’ve done for Sam. I’m the one—”
“Gene, don’t.”
“What? Tell me that’s not what you really thinking. You thinking you could’ve kept me from—”
“Stop it, Gene. No matter what you say, I won’t take a chance with Ida Bea. I won’t leave her to nobody else’s tending. The one thing I need from you is for you to take care of these children at home. You got Maddy here to help you this time.”
“I need you here, Dot. My head won’t stay straight these days.”
“You got control. You been controlling your head for better than twelve years. You were doing fine till you started drinking.”
“I started seeing death again.”
“You ain’t in the army now. You ain’t fighting nobody’s war. Why do you keep on bringing all that back up? You can’t let something from that long ago take over our lives again.”
“It comes up on its own, Dot. It comes on sudden. Drink quiets it down.”
“From what I can see, drink just thins out your mind so you don’t see what’s real.”
“I’m near the edge—”
“What edge, Gene? You ain’t got no edge. There’s you. There’s me. There’s our five living children. We all twined up together. I’m doing my best to take care of our sick child. You got to take care of the well ones ’cause I got nobody else to help me. No family, nobody. Lord, Gene. You can’t fail me this time. I won’t stand it a second time. Won’t go through it with you again.”
The silence that grew in the room was soon punctuated with the heavy sound of weeping. Footsteps moved across the creaky floorboards of the kitchen.
“I ain’t as strong as you think. Not like you.” Daddy’s voice was soaked with pain. “I can’t hold on too good without you.”
“You been saying things like that our whole life together. It ain’t that you ain’t strong. You just give up too easy. You don’t get to do that this time. I can’t hold up both ends of our life. With Samuel I counted on you. You let me down. That can’t happen again, Gene. I don’t have it in me to forgive that big again. You promised me things back then. You promised.”
Silence collected inside the house.
I leaned against the door frame. My mind skittered from one bit of information to another, but it kept landing on the same piece—I have a dead brother, Samuel, and Daddy had something to do with his death.
As I stared into the darkness, I started to tremble. My stomach turned in on itself and I felt queasy.
“Olly, olly, oxen free,” Roy Anthony and Earl were shouting in unison from the front yard. “Olly, olly, oxen free.” They sang again. “Maddy, come out, come out wherever you are.”
I was paralyzed in the flat gray air on the back porch, hearing only silence in the kitchen.
“Come on, Maddy—olly, olly, oxen free. You can come out. You safe. We don’t want to play no more,” Roy Anthony yelled, now from the side of the house, frustration rising high and keen in his voice. “Come on, Maddy, we don’t want to play no more. I quit. Come on out.”
I righted myself in the doorway and stood up. Little paisley sparks of color floated in the dark air in front of me. I grabbed the doorknob to steady myself, swallowed some air, and turned the knob.
No one stirred when I stepped inside. Momma was sitting in a chair at the table, her elbows on the watermelon-colored Formica, her face in her hands. June Bug stood on his thin legs, pressed against Momma’s side with his head on her lap. Daddy was standing behind Momma, his fingers slowly kneading the muscles of her shoulders. His face was shiny with tears.
I paused in the doorway. “I need a drink of water,” I said at last.
“Okay.” Daddy said without looking up.
“Go find your brothers,” Momma said through her hands. “It’s getting time for y’all to come inside and go to bed.” Her voice was wet.
When I came back in the front door with Roy Anthony and Earl in tow, Momma was sitting on the edge of her bed with June Bug curled beside her. Daddy was slouched in the stuffed chair across from the bed, leaning back with his eyes closed. He looked gray, like spent charcoal.