Pungo Creek - 1957

It had been Clara’s idea to take the skiff out.

“I’ll make us some banana sandwiches and you dig up some worms.”

“Okay but we better clean up this mess first or Mama will have a conniption.”

Together they had dismantled their playhouse, careful to put everything back where it belonged. Rose watched them silently from the porch swing. Her eyes followed them but she didn’t say a word until Clara came out with the banana sandwiches and a jar of lemonade.

Ivy was crouching near the creek, digging worms in the soft earth. The worms wriggled in her small, chubby hands as she deposited them in an old Luzianne Coffee can. She heard shouting from the back porch and she saw her sister stop dead in her tracks.

“So you think you're so smart? You're not! I’m your Mama, damn it. You're only a nine-year-old snot nose who doesn't know anything but how to be a tramp. You’re just like your aunt. Wagging your little ass, acting all surprised when some boy jumps on it. You don’t fool me for a minute you little whore”

It looked like Clara was about to say something when Rose hauled off and just slapped her across the face. “You ain’t getting nothing you didn’t ask for.”

The bag holding the sandwiches fell from her hand but Clara held onto the lemonade. Then Rose hit her again knocking the jar to the ground. Clara picked up the bag of sandwiches and ran toward the skiff. “Hurry up, Ivy, or I’m going without you.”

Ivy grabbed her can of worms and scurried to the boat.

Rose shouted after them “I am going to murder you both. I swear and be dammed you little brats are going to regret the day you were born.”

Ivy scrambled into the skiff just as Clara was propelling the little boat away from the shore. She could still see Rose on the porch shaking her fist in the air but her words were lost.

“What set her off?” Ivy asked when they had put some distance between themselves and their Mama.

“It’s got nothing to do with you. It’s me she’s mad at. It’s always me she’s mad at.” Clara rowed hard. She stared at a point just over Ivy’s left shoulder. Tears rolled down her cheeks. Her breath came in gulps and she just kept rowing. There was an angry splotch on her cheek. It matched the fading marks on her arms and legs.

After a long time she finally she stopped rowing. The skiff moved forward on its own momentum for a few moments and then everything was still and quiet. Ivy looked around. They were all the way down to Voliva’s Neck. She recognized the old Stokesberry House. She’d only seen it once from the dirt road the day that she and Clara borrowed Uncle Benjamin’s old burro Lucinda and taken her for a ride without asking permission. Mama had spanked them both hard with the Davy Crockett paddle. The old house looked even spookier from the water. It was supposed to be haunted.

“Want to go check it out?” Ivy said pointing to the ramshackle old house. She didn’t really want to. She was just uncomfortable and wanted to distract her big sister from whatever had happened back at the house.

Clara acted like she didn’t hear her. She just stood at the front of the skiff with her hands folded in front of her like she was praying. Then she was gone.

Ivy watched until she lost sight of her older sister’s hair and there were no more bubbles. She sat there for a long time just staring at the water. It was getting dark.

The sun sank lower and lower and finally disappeared. At last she moved. Slowly, as if in a trance, she made her way to the front of the skiff and pulled up the anchor that had been resting on Clara’s stomach. She set the oars in the oarlocks and headed for home. She waited until the sun disappeared behind the pines and only when darkness descended did she pick up the oars and row – back down the creek – past Toppins Point, past the stakes where granddaddy tied up his crab pots. When she passed the old graveyard she lifted the oars from the water. She almost turned around. She almost went back to look for her sister, but it was too late for that and maybe her sister was better off anyway. She kept rowing.

It wasn’t easy. She was only six. Her arms were short and her feet barely reached the bottom of the boat. She struggled to make the little boat move along the creek. When she got back to the house, Ivy pulled the skiff onto the bank and wrapped the anchor rope around the base of the mimosa tree. She remembered that just that morning she and her sister had been playing house under that tree. They had spread old rugs on the ground and hauled chairs out from the kitchen and pretended that the boughs were their ceilings. They had served each other tea from imaginary cups. Their Mama had watched them from the back porch swing, tolerating, for once, their pointless make believe and letting them be children for a few short hours.

Ivy ran into the house where she found Rose half drunk but not too drunk to rouse herself when Ivy came running in crying about how her sister had jumped into the creek and drowned herself.
“If this is one of your pranks I am going to beat the two of you within an inch of your life.”
“It isn’t a prank, Mama, honest. She was praying and the next thing I knew she was under the water and she didn’t come back up.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not lying, Mama. I think maybe she’s drowned. I waited there a long time and …..” Ivy began to sob.

She grabbed Ivy’s shoulders and shook her making her cry harder.

“Mama, we have to go get her,” she gasped between sobs. “Maybe she was just hiding in the weeds.”

“Why the hell did you leave her?”

“I waited and waited, Mama. I got scared. It was dark and we were way down by the ghost house.”

“Run over to Benjamin’s and tell him to bring his boat around. Tell him to hurry.”

When Ivy hesitated she hurried her along with a swat across her bottom.

Rose went to the front bedroom where her aunt lay sleeping on top of the chenille bedspread.

Her Bible was open beside her as usual. “Sarah! Sarah! Wake up. I’m going to have to go out for a while and I need you to get up and look after the baby.”

By the time she had put on her shoes and jacket she heard her brother Benjamin’s boat out front.

“What’s wrong, Rose?” Sarah came out of the bedroom smoothing her apron and touching her grey hair that was held tight by her hairnet. “What’s Benjamin doing here?”

“Ivy and Clara took the skiff out and Ivy came back alone. Benjamin and I are going to find her.”

Rose tried to keep her voice even so she wouldn’t frighten the old woman. She needn’t have bothered. At the moment, Ivy came bursting in, still crying. “Mama, Uncle Benjamin’s here. You’re going to find her, aren’t you, Mama.”

“Come here, child.” Sarah bent over and put her arms around the terrified child. Ivy buried her face in her breast and sobbed.

Rose left them there and ran down the steps to the dock where Benjamin was waiting with a puzzled look on his face. “Ivy said she saw Clara drown down in front of the old Stokesberry place. That girl can swim like a fish, Rose. What happened?”

“You know as much as I know, Benjamin,” she said, lighting a Chesterfield. “All I know is Ivy came in bawling about her drowning herself.” Rose was close to tears herself. She remembered the harsh words just before Clara had run down to the skiff – away from her. She regretted striking her daughter but she couldn’t help herself. She just got so mad sometime. God knows she had thought more than once about killing herself. She wouldn’t drown herself though. She would blow her head off like Marilyn Satterwhite had. She understood perfectly the pain that had brought Marilyn to take her own life with three small children sitting at the kitchen table ten feet away. What she couldn’t understand was why her nine-year-old daughter could be so desperate.

Rose folded her arms and stared straight ahead as Benjamin pointed his runabout up the creek toward the spot where she already knew her daughter had died. She was beyond hope and beyond tears. She just sat there numbly waiting for the inevitable. The moon cast a wide beam of light across Pungo Creek. Benjamin’s boat moved across the water quickly. In just ten minutes they arrived at the spot it had taken Clara more than an hour to reach that afternoon. When the got to the place Ivy had described, Benjamin cut the engine back to idle and reached for his flashlight.

“Benjamin – there…Oh my God. Oh no.”

Benjamin cast his light over the shoreline where Rose had pointed and there, washed up in the reeds and cattails his light came to rest on Clara’s lifeless body.

Before he could stop her, Rose jumped into the creek and swam toward her daughter. She pulled her Clara’s lifeless body from the reed, held her daughter in her arms and wailed.

The sound reminded Benjamin of an afternoon thirty years before - the day that Rose and Pearl were born. That was the first time Rose’s cries had echoed across Pungo Creek. He sat silently watching his sister clutch her dead daughter to her breast. What had his family done to deserve so much heartache?