Pearl waited impatiently on the back porch for her sister. “Hurry up, Rose. We’re going to miss the school bus.”
“Keep your britches on. Give a girl a chance to wipe the dew off her lily.” Rose joined her on the porch, allowing the screen door to slam shut behind her.
“Mama could have a conniption if she heard you talking like that. You’re spending so much time with Madeline you’re beginning to talk like her.”
“Don’t you start lecturing me. I’ve had just about all the lecturing I can stomach.” She paused to light a cigarette before following her sister down the back steps. “I mean it, Pearl!” she warned, anticipating a sermon about smoking.
They walked silently up the lane. When they got to the road Rose turned left and continued walking.
“Where are you going?”
“I don’t feel like being cooped up in a school room today. I’m going over to Madeline’s. I can learn more from her than I can learn in school.”
“Rose, wait! You can’t just skip school. What am I supposed to tell Mrs. Burbage?”
“I don’t care. You can tell Old Cannonball anything you want.”
When the school bus stopped a few minutes later, Pearl got on alone.
Madeline met Rose at the door. “Come on in, Sugar. Your brother’s been gone since dawn and Tina is tending to his brat. Let’s get us a drink and go sit on the porch. I’ve got some news.”
Rose had counted on Benjamin being gone. She knew he was spending more and more time away from home. Between running the farm and his barbershop he had little time for his wife and his son. Madeline had complained to her that Benjamin had lost interest in her. “If he won’t do his duty then there are plenty of other men who will plow that field for him too.”
They settled themselves on the porch and Madeline had poured them both a drink from a half empty bottle of whiskey. “What’s your news?” she asked taking a cautious sip from her glass.
“Well, Sugar, I went out and found myself a man that was happy to have what Benjamin didn’t want. This cracker can’t get enough. He has just about worn my ass out.” Madeline drained her own glass and refilled it. “You’ve barely touched your drink. Don’t you like whiskey?”
“I like whiskey. It’s just…”
“Too early in the morning? Nonsense. It’s never too early for drinking. If I don’t drink early I’m liable to get busy and forget to drink – and then where would I be? Sober that what and I can’t let that happen. Anyway, where was I?”
“You were talking about the cracker that was wearing out your ass.”
“That ain’t all, Sugar. I’m going to have another baby and I know for sure that this one ain’t your brother’s.”
“What are you going to do?”
Madeline leaned back in the swing and rubbed her belly. “I’m going to have myself another drink.”
A Lamb Made of Stone
How could they be twins? Pearl and Rose grew more different as they got older. By the time they were seventeen, they didn’t event look like sisters.
Rose’s face revealed a trace of the Indian blood that had mixed with the Foreman strain generations earlier. Her eyes were the color of the creek on a cloudy day. Her face was always flushed as though the blood was close to the surface. On the rare occasion when she smiled she revealed even white teeth that appeared somehow slightly threatening. She wore her shiny dark hair in the same no-nonsense shingle she had worn when she was six years old. Her perfectly straight hair brushed her eyebrows, the top of her ears and the nape of her neck. Her strong fingers tirelessly pulled weeds in her mother’s garden, gathered eggs and scrubbed clothes on an old washboard. Rose never tired, rarely smiled and seldom sat down.
Pearl – her opposite – was frail and iridescent. Pearl had uncontrollable blonde hair that encircled her head and floated down her back. She wore long skirts and floral print blouses, always with long sleeves to hide her scars. She had crooked, protruding teeth and a habit of hiding her mouth with her hand when she talked or smiled. Her luminous blue eyes were always focused on the horizon. She would pause in the middle of a routine task like shelling peas or whipping in a hem and gaze off into the distance.
“Come on girl. You’re never going to finish that hem if you don’t move faster than that.” Irene smiled as she lightly touched the head of her day dreaming daughter.
“Sorry, Mama. I was just thinking.”
Rose interrupted her. “You’re always ‘just thinking’. Thinking doesn’t get the work done.” Rose deposited a tub of collards on the board next to the pump. “These are the last of the collards. If her highness can tear herself away from her fairy tales, she might get these greens washed and looked before our stomachs grow to our backbones.”
Benjamin limped through the door in time to add his unkind laughter to Rose’s.
Pearl gave her mother a faint smile, folded her sewing and walked over to the tub of collards.
Benjamin’s eyes bore into her as she primed the pump and worked the handle until water gushed over the greens. Pearl rinsed each broad leaf and then examined it carefully for worms before dropping it in the waiting pot. She could feel Benjamin’s eyes on her. The kitchen was quiet while she worked.
Rose broke the silence. “Mama, I forgot to tell you. I saw Aunt Sarah up at the store earlier. She was sure looking worn out.”
“I should go over there and see how they’re doing. That poor woman. She’s probably not eating right. I worry about her living all alone.” As Irene spoke she moved around her kitchen gathering foodstuff to carry over to her sister’s house. “Rose, help me get this down to the skiff. I want to row over there and see her before supper.”
Rose picked up the eggs, a bottle of heavy cream and a loaf of the bread Irene had baked that morning. “I’ll go with you, Mama.”
“Pearl, just put those greens on low. We’ll be back before dark.”
They went out leaving Pearl and Benjamin in the kitchen. From where she stood at the sink Pearl could see her mother sitting in the front of the skiff holding the bundles for her Aunt Sarah. Rose took off her shoes and tossed them into the little boat before pushing it off the sandy bank. Then she hopped nimbly into the boat and took her place at the oars. She heard Benjamin behind her. “Won’t Madeline be wondering where you are, Benjamin?”
Pearl caught her breath as Benjamin’s hands closed around her breasts.
“Please don’t, Benjamin. Please.” Tears were already streaming down her face. Pearl had hoped that Benjamin’s assaults would stop after his marriage to Madeline, but instead they were becoming more frequent. She ignored her until they were alone, but in those moments when no one was around to see or hear he forced himself on her.
“This is all you’re good for Pearl – all you’ll ever be good for.” His hands found her nipples and pinched them hard. Pearl bit her lip to keep from crying out. Salty tears fell into the tub of collards. Her hands reddened by the icy water gripped the edge of the enameled tub.
Benjamin pressed his body against her and let go of her breasts. He unbuttoned his trousers and lifted her skirt. There was no affection in the act. It was for his pleasure only and it was over quickly.
The door slammed as Benjamin left. Only when she heard the sound of his boots on the back porch steps did Pearl open her eyes and release her grip on the tub. Across the creek she could just make out her mama and Rose climbing up the bank to Sarah’s house.
Pearl drew a basin of water and cleaned herself. When she was done she carefully carried the basis to the edge of the porch and poured it over the hydrangeas. Benjamin was nowhere to be seen.
She went back inside and finished washing the collards.
Her mother looked worried when she got home. “Sarah just doesn’t look out for herself. Now that Benjamin has his own place I think she ought to move in here with us. What do you think about that, Pearl?”
Irene paused and fixed her gaze on Pearl. “What’s wrong, honey? You haven’t heard a word I’ve said and you’ve hardly touched your supper.”
“Nothing’s wrong, Mama. I’m just worried about Aunt Sarah.” Pearl pushed her uneaten greens from one side of the plate to the other.
“She just can’t stomach her own cooking.” Rose laughed and waited for the others to join in. When they didn’t she frowned. “Look. We ain’t at a funeral yet.”
Rose’s face revealed a trace of the Indian blood that had mixed with the Foreman strain generations earlier. Her eyes were the color of the creek on a cloudy day. Her face was always flushed as though the blood was close to the surface. On the rare occasion when she smiled she revealed even white teeth that appeared somehow slightly threatening. She wore her shiny dark hair in the same no-nonsense shingle she had worn when she was six years old. Her perfectly straight hair brushed her eyebrows, the top of her ears and the nape of her neck. Her strong fingers tirelessly pulled weeds in her mother’s garden, gathered eggs and scrubbed clothes on an old washboard. Rose never tired, rarely smiled and seldom sat down.
Pearl – her opposite – was frail and iridescent. Pearl had uncontrollable blonde hair that encircled her head and floated down her back. She wore long skirts and floral print blouses, always with long sleeves to hide her scars. She had crooked, protruding teeth and a habit of hiding her mouth with her hand when she talked or smiled. Her luminous blue eyes were always focused on the horizon. She would pause in the middle of a routine task like shelling peas or whipping in a hem and gaze off into the distance.
“Come on girl. You’re never going to finish that hem if you don’t move faster than that.” Irene smiled as she lightly touched the head of her day dreaming daughter.
“Sorry, Mama. I was just thinking.”
Rose interrupted her. “You’re always ‘just thinking’. Thinking doesn’t get the work done.” Rose deposited a tub of collards on the board next to the pump. “These are the last of the collards. If her highness can tear herself away from her fairy tales, she might get these greens washed and looked before our stomachs grow to our backbones.”
Benjamin limped through the door in time to add his unkind laughter to Rose’s.
Pearl gave her mother a faint smile, folded her sewing and walked over to the tub of collards.
Benjamin’s eyes bore into her as she primed the pump and worked the handle until water gushed over the greens. Pearl rinsed each broad leaf and then examined it carefully for worms before dropping it in the waiting pot. She could feel Benjamin’s eyes on her. The kitchen was quiet while she worked.
Rose broke the silence. “Mama, I forgot to tell you. I saw Aunt Sarah up at the store earlier. She was sure looking worn out.”
“I should go over there and see how they’re doing. That poor woman. She’s probably not eating right. I worry about her living all alone.” As Irene spoke she moved around her kitchen gathering foodstuff to carry over to her sister’s house. “Rose, help me get this down to the skiff. I want to row over there and see her before supper.”
Rose picked up the eggs, a bottle of heavy cream and a loaf of the bread Irene had baked that morning. “I’ll go with you, Mama.”
“Pearl, just put those greens on low. We’ll be back before dark.”
They went out leaving Pearl and Benjamin in the kitchen. From where she stood at the sink Pearl could see her mother sitting in the front of the skiff holding the bundles for her Aunt Sarah. Rose took off her shoes and tossed them into the little boat before pushing it off the sandy bank. Then she hopped nimbly into the boat and took her place at the oars. She heard Benjamin behind her. “Won’t Madeline be wondering where you are, Benjamin?”
Pearl caught her breath as Benjamin’s hands closed around her breasts.
“Please don’t, Benjamin. Please.” Tears were already streaming down her face. Pearl had hoped that Benjamin’s assaults would stop after his marriage to Madeline, but instead they were becoming more frequent. She ignored her until they were alone, but in those moments when no one was around to see or hear he forced himself on her.
“This is all you’re good for Pearl – all you’ll ever be good for.” His hands found her nipples and pinched them hard. Pearl bit her lip to keep from crying out. Salty tears fell into the tub of collards. Her hands reddened by the icy water gripped the edge of the enameled tub.
Benjamin pressed his body against her and let go of her breasts. He unbuttoned his trousers and lifted her skirt. There was no affection in the act. It was for his pleasure only and it was over quickly.
The door slammed as Benjamin left. Only when she heard the sound of his boots on the back porch steps did Pearl open her eyes and release her grip on the tub. Across the creek she could just make out her mama and Rose climbing up the bank to Sarah’s house.
Pearl drew a basin of water and cleaned herself. When she was done she carefully carried the basis to the edge of the porch and poured it over the hydrangeas. Benjamin was nowhere to be seen.
She went back inside and finished washing the collards.
Her mother looked worried when she got home. “Sarah just doesn’t look out for herself. Now that Benjamin has his own place I think she ought to move in here with us. What do you think about that, Pearl?”
Irene paused and fixed her gaze on Pearl. “What’s wrong, honey? You haven’t heard a word I’ve said and you’ve hardly touched your supper.”
“Nothing’s wrong, Mama. I’m just worried about Aunt Sarah.” Pearl pushed her uneaten greens from one side of the plate to the other.
“She just can’t stomach her own cooking.” Rose laughed and waited for the others to join in. When they didn’t she frowned. “Look. We ain’t at a funeral yet.”
Under the Mimosa Tree
It was Rose who suggested they should all go to a church on Christmas Eve. Pearl had known for weeks something wasn’t right. As she sat listening to the choir sing about the birth of the Christ child, vomit rose in her throat. She closed her eyes and swallowed hard. Tears filled her eyes. Some part of her knew then that a child was growing inside of her as it has grown inside the Virgin Mary. The similarity stopped there. Pearl spent Christmas day 1944 hoping it was the sausage and crabmeat stuffing that was making her so sick.
Was she the same person who had her sins washed away in the waters of Pungo Creek? Her belly swelled under her loose fitting dress as the baby grew inside of her.
A stew simmered in an open kettle that hung over the hearth. Cinders from the fire rose and settled back into the kettle giving the stew a smoky flavor. The taste sickened her.
In a few months she would be 18 years old. Pearl tried to calculate how long she had carried the child. She estimated it had been at least four months. Soon she would no longer be able to keep her condition a secret.
It had been relatively easy to hide her pregnancy. Shapeless clothes hid her belly. At night she waited until the room she shared with her sister was dark before she slipped from the shadows into her narrow bed and turned her face to the wall.
When she could bear the secret no longer she went to her brother. She waited until an evening when they were alone in the barn. She spoke into the silent darkness. “We are going to have a baby. What should we do?”
He said nothing. Pearl wondered if he had even heard her. But then he spoke. The tone of his voice was never warm when he spoke to her, but that night his words were as bitter, harsh and icy as the winter that had descended on Pungo Creek. “You’re going to get an abortion.”
The next Saturday Benjamin told Pearl to get herself ready, that they were going to Swanquarter. He stopped the truck in front of a rundown, unpainted house. He waited outside while Pearl went in alone.
A man shuffled into the room. He was old. He wore bedroom slippers and a bathrobe. He did not talk to Pearl. He just held out his hand for his money. He motioned that Pearl should follow him. He led her to a small room. In the middle of the room there was a cot with a bare mattress. He gestured that Pearl should take off her underpants and lie on the cot. Then he took a prong-like instrument from the counter and told her to open her legs. Pearl did as she was told. She tried to make her mind fly away so she wouldn’t have to remember what was going to happen next. But the pain brought her harshly back to the present. When she cried out he growled, “If I don’t do this, you will still be pregnant.” Pearl was quiet after that. After a while he withdrew his instrument. “Go home. Your baby is dead. In a few days it will come out.”
The ride home was silent. Not a word was spoken until Benjamin stopped the truck in front of the house. “Tell mama I had to go away for a few days. I have some business to take care of.”
Then he was gone without another word. Pearl went inside and immediately got into her bed. When Irene asked her what was wrong she only said she her menstrual flow was heavy and the cramping awful. Irene brought her daughter a hot water bottle and a draught of whiskey. “Don’t tell anyone I’ve given you spirits. But this should help you, dear.”
Rose was awakened several times during the night by her sister’s moans. “Do you need anything, Pearl?”
“No, sister. I’m sorry I disturbed you. Please go back to sleep.”
The next morning Irene was reluctant to leave Pearl alone while they went to church but her daughter insisted. “Mama, you go on now. You know how bad that choir sounds without you and Rose. I’ll be fine here.”
Soon Pearl’s body was wracked again by pain. It hurt too much to lie still. She crawled from her bed and squatted on the floor. A dead baby fell from between her legs.
She held her daughter in her arms for a time looking down at her perfectly formed body. Then she wrapped her carefully in a piece of blue cloth she had been saving.
She carried her bundle to the edge of the creek where she left it while she went to the barn and returned with a shovel. She dug into the soft earth under the mimosa tree. Then she knelt on the ground cradling the fetus. “I’m so sorry, baby girl. I am so sorry.” Her blood mixed with the earth as she placed her baby lovingly in the ground and covered her, carefully disguising her grave. When she was satisfied she had left no trace, she returned the shovel to the barn and with her last bit of strength she crawled back into her bed where she tried to pray, but could not. There was only one thing for her to do – run away. No one would believe what her brother was capable of. Even if they did, she could not face the shame. She quickly packed her few possessions, walked down the dirt road to the highway and stuck out her thumb.
Was she the same person who had her sins washed away in the waters of Pungo Creek? Her belly swelled under her loose fitting dress as the baby grew inside of her.
A stew simmered in an open kettle that hung over the hearth. Cinders from the fire rose and settled back into the kettle giving the stew a smoky flavor. The taste sickened her.
In a few months she would be 18 years old. Pearl tried to calculate how long she had carried the child. She estimated it had been at least four months. Soon she would no longer be able to keep her condition a secret.
It had been relatively easy to hide her pregnancy. Shapeless clothes hid her belly. At night she waited until the room she shared with her sister was dark before she slipped from the shadows into her narrow bed and turned her face to the wall.
When she could bear the secret no longer she went to her brother. She waited until an evening when they were alone in the barn. She spoke into the silent darkness. “We are going to have a baby. What should we do?”
He said nothing. Pearl wondered if he had even heard her. But then he spoke. The tone of his voice was never warm when he spoke to her, but that night his words were as bitter, harsh and icy as the winter that had descended on Pungo Creek. “You’re going to get an abortion.”
The next Saturday Benjamin told Pearl to get herself ready, that they were going to Swanquarter. He stopped the truck in front of a rundown, unpainted house. He waited outside while Pearl went in alone.
A man shuffled into the room. He was old. He wore bedroom slippers and a bathrobe. He did not talk to Pearl. He just held out his hand for his money. He motioned that Pearl should follow him. He led her to a small room. In the middle of the room there was a cot with a bare mattress. He gestured that Pearl should take off her underpants and lie on the cot. Then he took a prong-like instrument from the counter and told her to open her legs. Pearl did as she was told. She tried to make her mind fly away so she wouldn’t have to remember what was going to happen next. But the pain brought her harshly back to the present. When she cried out he growled, “If I don’t do this, you will still be pregnant.” Pearl was quiet after that. After a while he withdrew his instrument. “Go home. Your baby is dead. In a few days it will come out.”
The ride home was silent. Not a word was spoken until Benjamin stopped the truck in front of the house. “Tell mama I had to go away for a few days. I have some business to take care of.”
Then he was gone without another word. Pearl went inside and immediately got into her bed. When Irene asked her what was wrong she only said she her menstrual flow was heavy and the cramping awful. Irene brought her daughter a hot water bottle and a draught of whiskey. “Don’t tell anyone I’ve given you spirits. But this should help you, dear.”
Rose was awakened several times during the night by her sister’s moans. “Do you need anything, Pearl?”
“No, sister. I’m sorry I disturbed you. Please go back to sleep.”
The next morning Irene was reluctant to leave Pearl alone while they went to church but her daughter insisted. “Mama, you go on now. You know how bad that choir sounds without you and Rose. I’ll be fine here.”
Soon Pearl’s body was wracked again by pain. It hurt too much to lie still. She crawled from her bed and squatted on the floor. A dead baby fell from between her legs.
She held her daughter in her arms for a time looking down at her perfectly formed body. Then she wrapped her carefully in a piece of blue cloth she had been saving.
She carried her bundle to the edge of the creek where she left it while she went to the barn and returned with a shovel. She dug into the soft earth under the mimosa tree. Then she knelt on the ground cradling the fetus. “I’m so sorry, baby girl. I am so sorry.” Her blood mixed with the earth as she placed her baby lovingly in the ground and covered her, carefully disguising her grave. When she was satisfied she had left no trace, she returned the shovel to the barn and with her last bit of strength she crawled back into her bed where she tried to pray, but could not. There was only one thing for her to do – run away. No one would believe what her brother was capable of. Even if they did, she could not face the shame. She quickly packed her few possessions, walked down the dirt road to the highway and stuck out her thumb.
Running Away
“I’m heading to Franklin. I can take you that far.”
Pearl put her suitcase in the back of the pickup truck and climbed into the cab.
“You don’t look so good, Miss. Are you sure you’re alright?”
Pearl was far from all right. They were five miles outside of Franklin when she passed out. She woke up in a hospital bed.
The clean white sheets enfolded her. She closed her eyes and tried to remember what had happened. The last thing she could remember was putting her bag in the back of the truck. Her bag?
“You’re awake. That’s good. You have been asleep for almost 24 hours. You had us worried.” The nurse smiled a Pearl while she checked her pulse. “The doctor will be in to see you soon. Just try to rest.”
“Where is my bag?”
“It’s right next to your bed. I took your clothes to wash for you. They were soaked in blood, honey.”
“Thank you.” That was all she could manage. Soon she would have to face the questions but for now she just closed her eyes and tried to sink back into oblivion.
She was awake when the doctor came in. “If you’re feeling up to it, I need to ask you a few questions. First. What’s your name?”
Pearl didn’t answer.
“Come on, young lady. The questions get harder from here on. Certainly you can tell me your name.”
“Pearl. My name is Pearl.”
“Okay. What is your last name Pearl?”
“I want to leave. I don’t want to stay here.”
“That isn’t possible, Pearl. You were nearly dead when they brought you in. We had to operate. The baby? Was it delivered alive or dead?”
The baby. Her baby. Pearl closed her eyes.
The doctor reached out and touched Pearl on her shoulder.
“Leave me alone. Just leave me alone. Don’t touch me” Pearl screamed and flailed her arms.
“Pearl, listen to me. No one is going to hurt you. We just need to know what happened. Is the baby alive our dead?”
“My baby was born dead. Now, please leave me alone.”
“Where is your family? We need to contact them. They must be worried about you.”
“I don’t have any family. Why won’t you just leave me alone?”
“Pearl, listen to me. You have been very sick. You are going to be fine, but your will never be able to have children. There was just too much damage.”
* * *
The morning she was to be released, the nurse brought her clothes in to her. “Here you go. Washed and ironed.”
“Thank you.”
“Do you have a place to stay? Someone you can call?”
Pearl shook her head.
“I didn’t think so. Listen. My sister Mildred has a spare room. She could use some help. She can’t afford to pay you anything. Just room and board, but it would put a roof over you head until you got straightened out.”
Pearl moved into Mildred Barrister’s spare room. Thanks only to Mildred’s aversion to housework and her charity; Pearl had a roof over her head. Gradually she regained her strength but her spirits did not return.
When Pearl wasn’t scouring, mending, dusting, canning or polishing she wandered through the streets of Franklin. She paused in front of shop windows, gardens, schoolyards – just looking – her face always expressionless. Her lips pressed tightly together. Her hands clasped in front of her. After her walks she always returned to Mildred’s kitchen to cook the evening meal. While she cooked, Mildred sat and chattered.
“This is just about the best quince preserves I have ever tasted, Pearl. What is your secret?”
“Nothing special – just a bit of lime.”
Her mama’s quince preserves. That’s what she missed the most. She made it from the rough skinned fruit Pearl and Rose picked from the low hanging branches. Pearl sat at the table while her Mama peeled and sliced the fruit and sat it boiling in their biggest pot. Soon the smell of quince and lime filled the kitchen and the temperature in the room rose as her Mama’s voice lulled her.
“Tell me about your Mama, Pearl. She must be so worried. Why don’t you write to her?” Mildred’s question brought her back to the present.
“I have written to her.” Pearl had written several letters to her Mama and to Rose, but she had torn them all up.
“Pearl, I was talking to Mrs. Beasley down at the diner. I told her about your cooking and she said she could use a hand during the suppertime rush. She said it gets busy down there this time of year and it’s more than she can handle. I am reluctant to share you but I suppose I could eat my dinner there if I find I can’t stomach my own cooking.” One of the things Pearl liked about Mildred was that she could handle both sides of a conversation with only an occasional nod or murmur from Pearl to keep her going.
Mrs. Beasley was thrilled with Pearl. She was a hard worker, a skilled cook and she was a good girl. “She never gives me a minute of trouble – not like some of those girls that spend more time flirting with soldiers than working.” That’s what she had told Mr. Beasley when he asked her about her new helper.
It’s true that the soldiers that came into her diner tried to flirt with Pearl but she rebuffed them with a quick word and a tight-lipped smile. Mrs. Beasley watched from her perch at the cash register by the door. During an afternoon lull she ambled over to Pearl who was keeping busy filling salt and pepper shakers. “You know, honey, it’s okay to be friendly. You can talk to the boys, Sugar. They’re homesick.”
“I know, Mrs. Beasley, but…”
“You’re a pretty girl. You should have a gentleman friend.”
“I appreciate your interest, but...”
“You’d like me to mind my own business” the older woman laughed.
Pearl smiled. Mrs. Beasley had Mildred’s gift for carrying on both sides of a conversation. She really did enjoy working in her diner. “No, Mrs. Beasley, that isn’t what I meant.”
“It’s all right Pearl. Forgive me. I’m just an old busy body. I just can’t help but wonder what a pretty young thing like you spends so much time alone.”
Pearl was spared the rest of Mrs. Beasley’s observation when several young men in uniform entered the diner.
Mrs. Beasley winked at Pearl. “Well, it looks like we’ve got customers, Sugar.”
Pearl had no interest in making friends with the soldiers that came into Beasley’s Diner. She wasn’t interest in dating. Every time she thought about being alone with a man her mind filled with images of Benjamin’s mistreatment. Her hands trembled a little as she approached the soldiers’ table. “What can I get you?” She smiled without showing her teeth, keeping her eyes on her pad. Mrs. Beasley just shook her head and went back to reading her magazine.
Pearl tried to keep busy reading and writing letters she never mailed. She was homeless and alone. She wanted to be home but she didn’t know where her home was. When had I last called a place home? Pungo Creek? Was there ever a place called Pungo Creek?
Pearl put her suitcase in the back of the pickup truck and climbed into the cab.
“You don’t look so good, Miss. Are you sure you’re alright?”
Pearl was far from all right. They were five miles outside of Franklin when she passed out. She woke up in a hospital bed.
The clean white sheets enfolded her. She closed her eyes and tried to remember what had happened. The last thing she could remember was putting her bag in the back of the truck. Her bag?
“You’re awake. That’s good. You have been asleep for almost 24 hours. You had us worried.” The nurse smiled a Pearl while she checked her pulse. “The doctor will be in to see you soon. Just try to rest.”
“Where is my bag?”
“It’s right next to your bed. I took your clothes to wash for you. They were soaked in blood, honey.”
“Thank you.” That was all she could manage. Soon she would have to face the questions but for now she just closed her eyes and tried to sink back into oblivion.
She was awake when the doctor came in. “If you’re feeling up to it, I need to ask you a few questions. First. What’s your name?”
Pearl didn’t answer.
“Come on, young lady. The questions get harder from here on. Certainly you can tell me your name.”
“Pearl. My name is Pearl.”
“Okay. What is your last name Pearl?”
“I want to leave. I don’t want to stay here.”
“That isn’t possible, Pearl. You were nearly dead when they brought you in. We had to operate. The baby? Was it delivered alive or dead?”
The baby. Her baby. Pearl closed her eyes.
The doctor reached out and touched Pearl on her shoulder.
“Leave me alone. Just leave me alone. Don’t touch me” Pearl screamed and flailed her arms.
“Pearl, listen to me. No one is going to hurt you. We just need to know what happened. Is the baby alive our dead?”
“My baby was born dead. Now, please leave me alone.”
“Where is your family? We need to contact them. They must be worried about you.”
“I don’t have any family. Why won’t you just leave me alone?”
“Pearl, listen to me. You have been very sick. You are going to be fine, but your will never be able to have children. There was just too much damage.”
* * *
The morning she was to be released, the nurse brought her clothes in to her. “Here you go. Washed and ironed.”
“Thank you.”
“Do you have a place to stay? Someone you can call?”
Pearl shook her head.
“I didn’t think so. Listen. My sister Mildred has a spare room. She could use some help. She can’t afford to pay you anything. Just room and board, but it would put a roof over you head until you got straightened out.”
Pearl moved into Mildred Barrister’s spare room. Thanks only to Mildred’s aversion to housework and her charity; Pearl had a roof over her head. Gradually she regained her strength but her spirits did not return.
When Pearl wasn’t scouring, mending, dusting, canning or polishing she wandered through the streets of Franklin. She paused in front of shop windows, gardens, schoolyards – just looking – her face always expressionless. Her lips pressed tightly together. Her hands clasped in front of her. After her walks she always returned to Mildred’s kitchen to cook the evening meal. While she cooked, Mildred sat and chattered.
“This is just about the best quince preserves I have ever tasted, Pearl. What is your secret?”
“Nothing special – just a bit of lime.”
Her mama’s quince preserves. That’s what she missed the most. She made it from the rough skinned fruit Pearl and Rose picked from the low hanging branches. Pearl sat at the table while her Mama peeled and sliced the fruit and sat it boiling in their biggest pot. Soon the smell of quince and lime filled the kitchen and the temperature in the room rose as her Mama’s voice lulled her.
“Tell me about your Mama, Pearl. She must be so worried. Why don’t you write to her?” Mildred’s question brought her back to the present.
“I have written to her.” Pearl had written several letters to her Mama and to Rose, but she had torn them all up.
“Pearl, I was talking to Mrs. Beasley down at the diner. I told her about your cooking and she said she could use a hand during the suppertime rush. She said it gets busy down there this time of year and it’s more than she can handle. I am reluctant to share you but I suppose I could eat my dinner there if I find I can’t stomach my own cooking.” One of the things Pearl liked about Mildred was that she could handle both sides of a conversation with only an occasional nod or murmur from Pearl to keep her going.
Mrs. Beasley was thrilled with Pearl. She was a hard worker, a skilled cook and she was a good girl. “She never gives me a minute of trouble – not like some of those girls that spend more time flirting with soldiers than working.” That’s what she had told Mr. Beasley when he asked her about her new helper.
It’s true that the soldiers that came into her diner tried to flirt with Pearl but she rebuffed them with a quick word and a tight-lipped smile. Mrs. Beasley watched from her perch at the cash register by the door. During an afternoon lull she ambled over to Pearl who was keeping busy filling salt and pepper shakers. “You know, honey, it’s okay to be friendly. You can talk to the boys, Sugar. They’re homesick.”
“I know, Mrs. Beasley, but…”
“You’re a pretty girl. You should have a gentleman friend.”
“I appreciate your interest, but...”
“You’d like me to mind my own business” the older woman laughed.
Pearl smiled. Mrs. Beasley had Mildred’s gift for carrying on both sides of a conversation. She really did enjoy working in her diner. “No, Mrs. Beasley, that isn’t what I meant.”
“It’s all right Pearl. Forgive me. I’m just an old busy body. I just can’t help but wonder what a pretty young thing like you spends so much time alone.”
Pearl was spared the rest of Mrs. Beasley’s observation when several young men in uniform entered the diner.
Mrs. Beasley winked at Pearl. “Well, it looks like we’ve got customers, Sugar.”
Pearl had no interest in making friends with the soldiers that came into Beasley’s Diner. She wasn’t interest in dating. Every time she thought about being alone with a man her mind filled with images of Benjamin’s mistreatment. Her hands trembled a little as she approached the soldiers’ table. “What can I get you?” She smiled without showing her teeth, keeping her eyes on her pad. Mrs. Beasley just shook her head and went back to reading her magazine.
Pearl tried to keep busy reading and writing letters she never mailed. She was homeless and alone. She wanted to be home but she didn’t know where her home was. When had I last called a place home? Pungo Creek? Was there ever a place called Pungo Creek?
Rose Dreams about Pearl
The wind came up during the night. The howling had roused Rose from a disturbing dream in which her sister was floating over her bed. A storm was running up the coast. It would rain tomorrow. She had to pee but she didn’t want to get out of the warm bed. Across the room Pearl’s bed was covered with a rosebud print spread that matched the one Rose had kicked to the floor as she wiggled around trying to get comfortable. Pearl’s bed was pushed up against the windows. The wind caused the forsythia branches to scrape against the glass.
In the dream Pearl had been calling to her. “Come with me, Rose. I don’t want to leave you behind.” It was the same dream she’d had every night since Pearl had run away.
It would have been easier on everyone if Pearl had died. They could have had a funeral. Irene could have dressed her in her new lavender dress and fixed her hair. They could have laid her to rest and found some peace themselves. But she wasn’t dead. She was just gone. When she and her Mama had gotten home from church the house was empty. At first they thought Pearl had just gone out for a walk but when she hadn’t returned by dark they began to worry.
* * *
“Mama. Her suitcase is gone and so are some of her clothes.” Rose had not told her mother about the bloody sheets she had found hastily covered with the bedspread. She had quietly stripped the bed and hidden the sheets.
Days passed with no word from Pearl. When Benjamin came home he gave no explanation for his absence and offered no theories on where Pearl might have gone. Rose thought he seemed even more sullen than usual and she was taken aback by his lack of concern for their sister.
“Benjamin, I don’t understand you. Pearl is missing and you act like you don’t even care.”
“I have my own family to worry about, don’t I? Besides, she’s not missing. She’s just gone and run away. What’s so hard to understand about that? She just got tired of this damn creek. God knows I’ve thought often enough about running but I couldn’t get far on one leg, could I?” He laughed the humorless laugh that always raised hackles on the back of her neck.
Rose studied her brother. She had lived with him for eighteen years but he was still a mystery to her.
In the dream Pearl had been calling to her. “Come with me, Rose. I don’t want to leave you behind.” It was the same dream she’d had every night since Pearl had run away.
It would have been easier on everyone if Pearl had died. They could have had a funeral. Irene could have dressed her in her new lavender dress and fixed her hair. They could have laid her to rest and found some peace themselves. But she wasn’t dead. She was just gone. When she and her Mama had gotten home from church the house was empty. At first they thought Pearl had just gone out for a walk but when she hadn’t returned by dark they began to worry.
* * *
“Mama. Her suitcase is gone and so are some of her clothes.” Rose had not told her mother about the bloody sheets she had found hastily covered with the bedspread. She had quietly stripped the bed and hidden the sheets.
Days passed with no word from Pearl. When Benjamin came home he gave no explanation for his absence and offered no theories on where Pearl might have gone. Rose thought he seemed even more sullen than usual and she was taken aback by his lack of concern for their sister.
“Benjamin, I don’t understand you. Pearl is missing and you act like you don’t even care.”
“I have my own family to worry about, don’t I? Besides, she’s not missing. She’s just gone and run away. What’s so hard to understand about that? She just got tired of this damn creek. God knows I’ve thought often enough about running but I couldn’t get far on one leg, could I?” He laughed the humorless laugh that always raised hackles on the back of her neck.
Rose studied her brother. She had lived with him for eighteen years but he was still a mystery to her.
Madeline Moves Out
Benjamin glared at the baby cradled in his mother’s arms. Irene cooed lovingly at the wrinkled red face while Jess strained to get a look at the baby.
“What do you think of your new baby sister, Jess?”
“I think she’s ugly.” The reaction of the three year old reminded Irene of his father’s response to the arrival of his twin sisters eighteen years earlier.
“Have you and Madeline decided on a name yet, Benjamin?”
Rose held her breath, expecting Benjamin to explode and to blurt out the truth – that the baby their mother was holding was the bastard child of one of his sharecroppers. Instead he only said “Madeline wants to name her Kate.”
“Hello, Little Kate. Give Grandmama a smile.”
Madeline listened through the open bedroom door. She too was surprised by his restraint. Surely he knew!
“Well, Rose and I will be going now and leave you all to get acquainted with this pretty little girl.” She carried the baby into the bedroom and placed her carefully in Madeline’s arms. “If you need anything, send Tina over. Remember, you need to stay quiet for a day or two.”
When his mother and sister were gone, Benjamin went into his wife’s bedroom. “As soon as you can walk I want you out of here. The children – both of them – will stay with me, but I want you out of my house. I don’t care where you go. You can go back to your daddy’s house. You can go to your lover. You can drown yourself in the creek. I don’t give a damn. I just want you gone. The sight of you makes me sick to my stomach”
“Benjamin, I…”
“Not another word, Madeline. I mean it.” He took the baby from her. “You will go or I will choke the life out of you.” He turned and left the room. He carried Kate into the kitchen where Tina was busy making supper and tending to her own infant.
“Tina, do you have enough milk to nurse another baby?”
“Mr. Benjamin, her mama will be nursing that baby.”
“No, Tina. She won’t.” He handled the baby to the startled girl. “Tina, please…”
She unbuttoned her dress and allowed the baby to find her breast. Benjamin watched as Kate sucked hungrily.”
* * *
“I can’t believe he’s throwing you out.” Rose was sitting on the bed watching Madeline pack her trunk. “I can’t believe he is sending you away without your children. My brother really is a monster.”
“Hold on, Sugar. It’s for the best. Howard will take me in but he don’t want no babies and Tina will take better care of Jess and Kate than I ever could. I never even wanted babies in the first place.”
Rose couldn’t believe what she was hearing. How could a mother just walk away and leave her children without putting up a fight? As if reading her mind, Madeline walked over and put her arm around Rose. “Listen, Sugar. Trust me. This is really the best way. Benjamin can provide for them. I can’t.”
“Doesn’t he know that Kate isn’t his?”“Of course, he knows, but he has too much pride to admit it. You get on home now. I’ve got to make myself presentable for my new man. When I get myself settled in, you’ll have to come over for a visit. We’re going to have ourselves some good times, Sugar.”
“What do you think of your new baby sister, Jess?”
“I think she’s ugly.” The reaction of the three year old reminded Irene of his father’s response to the arrival of his twin sisters eighteen years earlier.
“Have you and Madeline decided on a name yet, Benjamin?”
Rose held her breath, expecting Benjamin to explode and to blurt out the truth – that the baby their mother was holding was the bastard child of one of his sharecroppers. Instead he only said “Madeline wants to name her Kate.”
“Hello, Little Kate. Give Grandmama a smile.”
Madeline listened through the open bedroom door. She too was surprised by his restraint. Surely he knew!
“Well, Rose and I will be going now and leave you all to get acquainted with this pretty little girl.” She carried the baby into the bedroom and placed her carefully in Madeline’s arms. “If you need anything, send Tina over. Remember, you need to stay quiet for a day or two.”
When his mother and sister were gone, Benjamin went into his wife’s bedroom. “As soon as you can walk I want you out of here. The children – both of them – will stay with me, but I want you out of my house. I don’t care where you go. You can go back to your daddy’s house. You can go to your lover. You can drown yourself in the creek. I don’t give a damn. I just want you gone. The sight of you makes me sick to my stomach”
“Benjamin, I…”
“Not another word, Madeline. I mean it.” He took the baby from her. “You will go or I will choke the life out of you.” He turned and left the room. He carried Kate into the kitchen where Tina was busy making supper and tending to her own infant.
“Tina, do you have enough milk to nurse another baby?”
“Mr. Benjamin, her mama will be nursing that baby.”
“No, Tina. She won’t.” He handled the baby to the startled girl. “Tina, please…”
She unbuttoned her dress and allowed the baby to find her breast. Benjamin watched as Kate sucked hungrily.”
* * *
“I can’t believe he’s throwing you out.” Rose was sitting on the bed watching Madeline pack her trunk. “I can’t believe he is sending you away without your children. My brother really is a monster.”
“Hold on, Sugar. It’s for the best. Howard will take me in but he don’t want no babies and Tina will take better care of Jess and Kate than I ever could. I never even wanted babies in the first place.”
Rose couldn’t believe what she was hearing. How could a mother just walk away and leave her children without putting up a fight? As if reading her mind, Madeline walked over and put her arm around Rose. “Listen, Sugar. Trust me. This is really the best way. Benjamin can provide for them. I can’t.”
“Doesn’t he know that Kate isn’t his?”“Of course, he knows, but he has too much pride to admit it. You get on home now. I’ve got to make myself presentable for my new man. When I get myself settled in, you’ll have to come over for a visit. We’re going to have ourselves some good times, Sugar.”
Irene Dies
“Honey, won’t you stay home tonight. You’ve been spending so much time with Madeline. Sarah and I hardly see you anymore.” Irene stepped toward Rose and extended her hand. Irene was only sixty three years old, but it was the hand of a much older woman. Years of hard work had left their mark. Her hands were rough and veined. The only jewelry she wore was the simple gold band that her beloved Caleb had given her almost forty years earlier – a lifetime ago. Her gnarled fingers touched her daughter’s shoulder.
Rose stepped back quickly as though she had been burned and turned away to examine her reflection in the mirror. “Mama, I told you. I need to spend time with people my own age. It’s boring here with you and Aunt Sarah.” She reapplied her lipstick and blotted it on an envelope leaving a blood red stain. Why couldn’t her mother understand her need to be young while she still had time? She looked at the reflection of her mother’s face in the mirror. Too soon that would be her face. Those rough hands would be her hands. There was no future for her here on Pungo Creek. She would marry a man like her father and spend her life having his babies and cleaning his house.
“You don’t need all that makeup, Rose. You are so lovely. All that lipstick and rouge just makes you look cheap.” Irene immediately regretted her words. Her daughter’s face hardened. Rose turned back to the mirror and vigorously added more rouge to cheeks that were already crimson. Then she liberally doused Evening in Paris perfume on breasts that threatened to escape from her low-cut bodice.
When she was satisfied with the effect the stalked silently past her mother and hurried out the back door before her aunt could add her own comments about her appearance. Living with the two old women was smothering her. Sometimes she felt like she couldn’t breathe. She envied her sister. At least Pearl had gotten away. Wherever she was, dead or alive, at least she wasn’t trapped here in this house. Her sister had escaped from Pungo Creek.
Rose hurried down the back porch steps and into the yard like a demon was at her heels. Madeline and Howard were waiting for her in Howard’s pickup truck. Madeline slid closer to Howard so Rose could join them.
“What’s the matter, Rosie? You look like you could use a drink, Sugar.” Madeline laughed and handed a bottle to Rose. “Drink up. We have a surprise waiting for you back at the house.”
Rose brought the bottle to her lips. The whiskey burned her throat and brought tears to her eyes but she swallowed hard and then forced herself to take another drink. That one went down easier. Immediately she felt herself relax, the memory of the clash with her mother already receding. Maybe she was just like her father like everybody said. She remembered him. She remembered his wildness. She knew it was that recklessness that had killed him. Her brother had told her that story often enough. Sometimes she thought Benjamin had been glad when her daddy had crashed into that breakwater. She took pleasure in the fact that her Mama had chosen to name her Rose because of the rose tattooed on her Daddy’s arm. She was her Daddy’s girl.
“Girl, you are thirsty tonight.” Howard reached over Madeline to retrieve his bottle.
“We’re going to have a good time tonight” said Madeline patting Rose’s knee. “That dress looks better on you than it ever looked on me. You’ve got the figure for it.”
“Ain’t nothing wrong with your figure that I can see – and I’ve seen it all.” Howard snickered and let go of the steering wheel long enough to grasp both of Madeline’s breasts.
Howard parked the truck next to the dilapidated house. Two hunting dogs roused themselves from the porch and ambled over to the truck to greet them.
“I hope this ain’t my surprise,” said Rose as one of the dogs nuzzled her between the legs.
“No missy. That would be me I expect.”
“Rose, meet my friend, Joe.”
“Pleased to meet you, Joe,” said Rose. The whisky made her act bolder than she was. She treated Joe to what she hoped was a seductive smile and extended her hand. As much as she wanted to adopt the coy and flirtatious attitude that was second nature to Madeline, deep inside Rose knew that what she wasn’t like her friend.
“You and Joe get acquainted. Madeline and I have some unfinished business inside.” Howard lifted the laughing Madeline over his shoulder like a sack of flour and labored under her weight as he carried her into the house.
“Well – I guess it’s just you and me, Rose.” Joe still held her hand. “You’re just as pretty as Madeline said you were. He tightened his grip, pulling her toward him. She resisted at first, and then she let him cover her mouth with his while his hands explored her body. It was happening too fast. She pulled away from him.
“Wait! I can’t breathe.” She pulled away. She had never been with a man except for a brief and embarrassing encounter with Lanny Russ at the Sunday school picnic. Lanny was just a boy. Joe was a man – with a man’s desires. What had she gotten herself into? She wanted to go home. She wanted to stay. She wanted to be home in bed with her Mama tucking her in. She wanted to be lying under Joe with his whiskey breath making her hot and drunk. She didn’t know what she wanted or who she was anymore.
“Let’s go inside,” he mumbled. Without waiting for her response he steered her up the steps and into the house. The room was dark. Guttural sounds came from the bedroom. “Sounds like Madeline and Howard are having themselves a good time. What say you and me do the same?”
“No. I can’t. I need to go home. Please take me home, Joe.”
“You don’t really want to go home, sugar. You just need a little convincing.” He pushed a glass into her hand. “Drink this. It will make you feel better.”
Rose brought the bottle to her lips but didn’t drink. Joe tilted it up impatiently causing the whiskey to flow into her mouth and down the front of her dress.
“Swallow, sugar.” He moved the bottle away and replaced it with his mouth. He pushed her down. His body pinned her to the sofa. She struggled to free herself from his grasp. In the next room Madeline was demanding that Howard fuck her harder. Joe laughed. “Hear that, sugar? Your friend likes it. You’re will too. Just relax. Let me make you feel good.”
She stopped struggling.
* * *
“Sister, come to bed. You can’t sit up all night waiting for Rose. She’s a grown woman.”
“She’s not a woman, Sarah. She’s only 18 – too young to be associating with the likes of that Madeline. I curse the day that Benjamin ever brought that harlot into my house.” As she spoke her breath came in rapid bursts and her hands gripped the arms of her rocking chair.
“Irene, please. Try to relax. You know Dr. Wright warned you about getting excited. I’m going to get your medicine. You should take one of your pills and come on to bed. In the morning we can both talk to Rose – talk some sense into her.”
“Sarah, I have already lost one daughter and I’m afraid I’m losing another one. Why is the Lord testing me?”
Sarah handed Irene her medicine. “Take this, Sister. You haven’t lost Rose and I have faith that one day Pearl is going to walk back through that door and she will explain everything. The years teach much that the days can’t know. But, right now, you need to take your medicine and come on to bed.”
“You go on to bed. I’m just going to read a bit. Reading always calms me down. I’ll be along shortly. You’re right. We’ll talk to her tomorrow. Just hand me my book.”
Sarah handed Irene her worn collection of the plays of William Shakespeare.
When Rose opened the back door she saw her mother sitting by the fire reading. She had hoped her Mama would be in bed. She wanted to sneak in and clean herself. She wanted to wash away the memory of what Joe had done. Tomorrow she would tell her Mama how sorry she was. She would tell her she was right about Madeline. But she didn’t want her Mama to see her like she looked tonight. She crept quietly toward the bathroom but she stopped. Something wasn’t right. The room was too quiet.
She walked closer to the fire. At first she thought Irene was just sleeping but when she touched her hand it was ice cold. “Mama? Mama! Oh, Mama. I’m so sorry…”
Her sobs brought her aunt to the living room. Sarah bent down and kissed her sister’s cheek and took the book from her hands. Tears flowed down the old woman’s cheeks.
“Fitting she should die with this book on her lap. She was reading King Lear. One of her favorites.” She read from the open book.
No, I’ll not weep.
“I should have been with her.”
“Yes. That would have been a comfort to her for sure but, honey, we all die alone. Your mama died as she lived – quietly without being a burden to anyone.” Sarah stroked Irene’s hair. “It will be morning soon. Go wash your face and change into something decent then go over to Benjamin’s and let him know his mother has died.”
Rose grimaced at the face she saw in the bathroom mirror. Tears melded with the garish makeup to produce a clownish effect. She gripped the sides of the basin and brought her face close to the mirror. “I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care.” Then she dropped to the floor sobbing. When she could cry no more she washed her face, changed her clothes and returned to the living room where were Aunt had not moved from her mother’s side.
“I’m going for Benjamin now, Aunt Sarah.”
“That’s good, honey. Look, Rose. The sun is coming up.”
Rose stepped back quickly as though she had been burned and turned away to examine her reflection in the mirror. “Mama, I told you. I need to spend time with people my own age. It’s boring here with you and Aunt Sarah.” She reapplied her lipstick and blotted it on an envelope leaving a blood red stain. Why couldn’t her mother understand her need to be young while she still had time? She looked at the reflection of her mother’s face in the mirror. Too soon that would be her face. Those rough hands would be her hands. There was no future for her here on Pungo Creek. She would marry a man like her father and spend her life having his babies and cleaning his house.
“You don’t need all that makeup, Rose. You are so lovely. All that lipstick and rouge just makes you look cheap.” Irene immediately regretted her words. Her daughter’s face hardened. Rose turned back to the mirror and vigorously added more rouge to cheeks that were already crimson. Then she liberally doused Evening in Paris perfume on breasts that threatened to escape from her low-cut bodice.
When she was satisfied with the effect the stalked silently past her mother and hurried out the back door before her aunt could add her own comments about her appearance. Living with the two old women was smothering her. Sometimes she felt like she couldn’t breathe. She envied her sister. At least Pearl had gotten away. Wherever she was, dead or alive, at least she wasn’t trapped here in this house. Her sister had escaped from Pungo Creek.
Rose hurried down the back porch steps and into the yard like a demon was at her heels. Madeline and Howard were waiting for her in Howard’s pickup truck. Madeline slid closer to Howard so Rose could join them.
“What’s the matter, Rosie? You look like you could use a drink, Sugar.” Madeline laughed and handed a bottle to Rose. “Drink up. We have a surprise waiting for you back at the house.”
Rose brought the bottle to her lips. The whiskey burned her throat and brought tears to her eyes but she swallowed hard and then forced herself to take another drink. That one went down easier. Immediately she felt herself relax, the memory of the clash with her mother already receding. Maybe she was just like her father like everybody said. She remembered him. She remembered his wildness. She knew it was that recklessness that had killed him. Her brother had told her that story often enough. Sometimes she thought Benjamin had been glad when her daddy had crashed into that breakwater. She took pleasure in the fact that her Mama had chosen to name her Rose because of the rose tattooed on her Daddy’s arm. She was her Daddy’s girl.
“Girl, you are thirsty tonight.” Howard reached over Madeline to retrieve his bottle.
“We’re going to have a good time tonight” said Madeline patting Rose’s knee. “That dress looks better on you than it ever looked on me. You’ve got the figure for it.”
“Ain’t nothing wrong with your figure that I can see – and I’ve seen it all.” Howard snickered and let go of the steering wheel long enough to grasp both of Madeline’s breasts.
Howard parked the truck next to the dilapidated house. Two hunting dogs roused themselves from the porch and ambled over to the truck to greet them.
“I hope this ain’t my surprise,” said Rose as one of the dogs nuzzled her between the legs.
“No missy. That would be me I expect.”
“Rose, meet my friend, Joe.”
“Pleased to meet you, Joe,” said Rose. The whisky made her act bolder than she was. She treated Joe to what she hoped was a seductive smile and extended her hand. As much as she wanted to adopt the coy and flirtatious attitude that was second nature to Madeline, deep inside Rose knew that what she wasn’t like her friend.
“You and Joe get acquainted. Madeline and I have some unfinished business inside.” Howard lifted the laughing Madeline over his shoulder like a sack of flour and labored under her weight as he carried her into the house.
“Well – I guess it’s just you and me, Rose.” Joe still held her hand. “You’re just as pretty as Madeline said you were. He tightened his grip, pulling her toward him. She resisted at first, and then she let him cover her mouth with his while his hands explored her body. It was happening too fast. She pulled away from him.
“Wait! I can’t breathe.” She pulled away. She had never been with a man except for a brief and embarrassing encounter with Lanny Russ at the Sunday school picnic. Lanny was just a boy. Joe was a man – with a man’s desires. What had she gotten herself into? She wanted to go home. She wanted to stay. She wanted to be home in bed with her Mama tucking her in. She wanted to be lying under Joe with his whiskey breath making her hot and drunk. She didn’t know what she wanted or who she was anymore.
“Let’s go inside,” he mumbled. Without waiting for her response he steered her up the steps and into the house. The room was dark. Guttural sounds came from the bedroom. “Sounds like Madeline and Howard are having themselves a good time. What say you and me do the same?”
“No. I can’t. I need to go home. Please take me home, Joe.”
“You don’t really want to go home, sugar. You just need a little convincing.” He pushed a glass into her hand. “Drink this. It will make you feel better.”
Rose brought the bottle to her lips but didn’t drink. Joe tilted it up impatiently causing the whiskey to flow into her mouth and down the front of her dress.
“Swallow, sugar.” He moved the bottle away and replaced it with his mouth. He pushed her down. His body pinned her to the sofa. She struggled to free herself from his grasp. In the next room Madeline was demanding that Howard fuck her harder. Joe laughed. “Hear that, sugar? Your friend likes it. You’re will too. Just relax. Let me make you feel good.”
She stopped struggling.
* * *
“Sister, come to bed. You can’t sit up all night waiting for Rose. She’s a grown woman.”
“She’s not a woman, Sarah. She’s only 18 – too young to be associating with the likes of that Madeline. I curse the day that Benjamin ever brought that harlot into my house.” As she spoke her breath came in rapid bursts and her hands gripped the arms of her rocking chair.
“Irene, please. Try to relax. You know Dr. Wright warned you about getting excited. I’m going to get your medicine. You should take one of your pills and come on to bed. In the morning we can both talk to Rose – talk some sense into her.”
“Sarah, I have already lost one daughter and I’m afraid I’m losing another one. Why is the Lord testing me?”
Sarah handed Irene her medicine. “Take this, Sister. You haven’t lost Rose and I have faith that one day Pearl is going to walk back through that door and she will explain everything. The years teach much that the days can’t know. But, right now, you need to take your medicine and come on to bed.”
“You go on to bed. I’m just going to read a bit. Reading always calms me down. I’ll be along shortly. You’re right. We’ll talk to her tomorrow. Just hand me my book.”
Sarah handed Irene her worn collection of the plays of William Shakespeare.
When Rose opened the back door she saw her mother sitting by the fire reading. She had hoped her Mama would be in bed. She wanted to sneak in and clean herself. She wanted to wash away the memory of what Joe had done. Tomorrow she would tell her Mama how sorry she was. She would tell her she was right about Madeline. But she didn’t want her Mama to see her like she looked tonight. She crept quietly toward the bathroom but she stopped. Something wasn’t right. The room was too quiet.
She walked closer to the fire. At first she thought Irene was just sleeping but when she touched her hand it was ice cold. “Mama? Mama! Oh, Mama. I’m so sorry…”
Her sobs brought her aunt to the living room. Sarah bent down and kissed her sister’s cheek and took the book from her hands. Tears flowed down the old woman’s cheeks.
“Fitting she should die with this book on her lap. She was reading King Lear. One of her favorites.” She read from the open book.
No, I’ll not weep.
I have full cause of weeping, but this heart
Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws,
Or ere I’ll weep. O fool, I shall go mad!
She closed the book. “We must weep for her. She was a good woman, Rose. You should be proud to be her daughter.”
She closed the book. “We must weep for her. She was a good woman, Rose. You should be proud to be her daughter.”
“I should have been with her.”
“Yes. That would have been a comfort to her for sure but, honey, we all die alone. Your mama died as she lived – quietly without being a burden to anyone.” Sarah stroked Irene’s hair. “It will be morning soon. Go wash your face and change into something decent then go over to Benjamin’s and let him know his mother has died.”
Rose grimaced at the face she saw in the bathroom mirror. Tears melded with the garish makeup to produce a clownish effect. She gripped the sides of the basin and brought her face close to the mirror. “I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care.” Then she dropped to the floor sobbing. When she could cry no more she washed her face, changed her clothes and returned to the living room where were Aunt had not moved from her mother’s side.
“I’m going for Benjamin now, Aunt Sarah.”
“That’s good, honey. Look, Rose. The sun is coming up.”
Rose Leaves Pungo Creek
Rose was the bakery in Belhaven with Benjamin when she overheard Dottie McCarney telling a customer that her brother Charles had run into Pearl. “He said she’s in Franklin working at a diner. Strangest thing her running away like that.” When Dottie noticed Rose at the counter, she turned away quickly and busied herself straightening up cinnamon rolls that were already straight.
On the way home Rose could talk about nothing else. “Benjamin, we have to go to Franklin and get her. She should be here with her family, not living with strangers. She doesn’t even know that our mama has died.”
Benjamin’s eyes didn’t leave the road ahead. “She left of her own accord. She’ll come home when she’s ready.”
“Benjamin, why did Pearl leave? I know you know more than you let on. You disappeared at the same time and when you came home you didn’t even seem surprised that Pearl was gone.”
“You’re getting all worked up over nothing, Rose. She probably just ran off with some boy. Don’t let your imagination run away with you.”
“I didn’t imagine the bloody sheets I found or that bloody stain on her mattress. What happened, Benjamin?”
“I don’t know anymore than you do. Now either talk about something else or shut up.”
* * *
Madeline and Rose sat together in the front porch swing sipping iced tea. Sarah sat in her rocking chair at the other end of the porch shelling peas. The girls spoke softly and tried to ignore Sarah’s disapproving glances.
“What are you going to do if you find her? What are you going to say to her? What makes you think you can convince her to come home?”
“It would help if I knew why she left in the first place. I’m sure Benjamin knows more than he’s saying.” The very mention of Benjamin’s name always got Madeline riled up.
“Have you ever considered that Benjamin might have been behind her leaving?” said Madeline, loud enough for Sarah to hear her from the other end of the porch.
“Shhhh! What do you mean, Madeline,” said Rose, lowering her voice to a whisper.
Madeline noticed Sarah had stopped shelling peas and seemed to be listening to their conversation. She leaned closer to Rose and spoke so Sarah could not hear. “There was something going on between Pearl and Benjamin. I never could figure it out. He hardly ever said a word to her but when they were in the same room he never took his eyes off her and Pearl always acted like there was a water moccasin in the room.”
Rose leaned back in the swing and took a sip of her iced tea. She looked out at the creek and tried to picture Benjamin and Pearl together. If what Madeline was saying as true it would explain everything but she refused to believe it.
* * *
Madeline was still arguing with Rose when she inexpertly jerked the truck to a stop in front of Beasley’s Diner. “You’re making a mistake, Rose. You haven’t seen Pearl in almost two years. What do you think she’s going to say to you when you show up unexpected with your suitcase in your hand?”
Rose didn’t answer. She was staring through the plate glass window of the diner waiting for her sister to come into view. Maybe Madeline was right, but in the months since Pearl ran away Rose had felt like a part of her was missing. While she and Pearl had never displayed affection to one another there had been an undeniable bond. Now she wondered why she had been so blind to what Benjamin had done to Pearl. When she allowed herself to open her mind to the possibility that what Madeline said was true, everything became clear. Benjamin’s stares and scornful remarks. Pearl acting skittish and nervous around Benjamin. The blood. That wasn’t menstrual blood. They shared their cycles. Always had. Regular as the moon. Why hadn’t she realized it before?
Rose was jolted out of her reflections by the sudden appearance of her sister. She was wearing a gold uniform – almost the same color as her hair. Pearl was balancing a tray in her right hand and holding a coffee pot in her left. She looked thin.
“I’ve got to go, Madeline. Thanks for the ride. I know you think I’m crazy but this is the right thing to do.” Rose jumped out of the truck before Madeline could say anything more. She reached into the bed of the truck for her suitcase and tapped on the side of the truck twice – a signal for Madeline to go.
She stood in the street holding her suitcase for several minutes after Madeline pulled away. Part of her was sure she was doing the right thing. Another part was sure she was making a terrible mistake. “I can’t stand here forever. Might as well get on with it,” she muttered to herself as she pushed through the door of the diner, holding her suitcase before her like a shield.
“Afternoon, Miss. Will you be wanting lunch?” A plump woman put down her magazine and lumbered with some difficulty from her perch behind the cash register. “You can leave your valise here behind the counter. It will be safe.” The woman was smiling at her. “You look might familiar to me. Are you from around these parts?”
“No. I’m not. I’ve traveled a distance today.”
“Well, let’s just put your bag here and get you something to eat.” Without waiting for a response she took Rose’s suitcase and stowed it behind the counter. “You can wash up in the restroom over there and I’ll have Pearl brew up some fresh coffee. You look worn out, honey.”
At the mention of her sister’s name Rose caught her breath. She was surprised the kind faced woman couldn’t hear her heart pounding in her chest but she just stood there smiling as Rose walked toward the restroom.
Rose stared at herself in the mirror. “What were you thinking? What makes you think you have the right to stroll in here and…”
Rose’s conversation with her reflection was interrupted when the door opened and another face appeared in the mirror. Rose’s first thought was how alike their faces were. When she had seen Pearl everyday she only saw the differences. Now she found herself looking into her own face.
“Hello, Pearl.”
On the way home Rose could talk about nothing else. “Benjamin, we have to go to Franklin and get her. She should be here with her family, not living with strangers. She doesn’t even know that our mama has died.”
Benjamin’s eyes didn’t leave the road ahead. “She left of her own accord. She’ll come home when she’s ready.”
“Benjamin, why did Pearl leave? I know you know more than you let on. You disappeared at the same time and when you came home you didn’t even seem surprised that Pearl was gone.”
“You’re getting all worked up over nothing, Rose. She probably just ran off with some boy. Don’t let your imagination run away with you.”
“I didn’t imagine the bloody sheets I found or that bloody stain on her mattress. What happened, Benjamin?”
“I don’t know anymore than you do. Now either talk about something else or shut up.”
* * *
Madeline and Rose sat together in the front porch swing sipping iced tea. Sarah sat in her rocking chair at the other end of the porch shelling peas. The girls spoke softly and tried to ignore Sarah’s disapproving glances.
“What are you going to do if you find her? What are you going to say to her? What makes you think you can convince her to come home?”
“It would help if I knew why she left in the first place. I’m sure Benjamin knows more than he’s saying.” The very mention of Benjamin’s name always got Madeline riled up.
“Have you ever considered that Benjamin might have been behind her leaving?” said Madeline, loud enough for Sarah to hear her from the other end of the porch.
“Shhhh! What do you mean, Madeline,” said Rose, lowering her voice to a whisper.
Madeline noticed Sarah had stopped shelling peas and seemed to be listening to their conversation. She leaned closer to Rose and spoke so Sarah could not hear. “There was something going on between Pearl and Benjamin. I never could figure it out. He hardly ever said a word to her but when they were in the same room he never took his eyes off her and Pearl always acted like there was a water moccasin in the room.”
Rose leaned back in the swing and took a sip of her iced tea. She looked out at the creek and tried to picture Benjamin and Pearl together. If what Madeline was saying as true it would explain everything but she refused to believe it.
* * *
Madeline was still arguing with Rose when she inexpertly jerked the truck to a stop in front of Beasley’s Diner. “You’re making a mistake, Rose. You haven’t seen Pearl in almost two years. What do you think she’s going to say to you when you show up unexpected with your suitcase in your hand?”
Rose didn’t answer. She was staring through the plate glass window of the diner waiting for her sister to come into view. Maybe Madeline was right, but in the months since Pearl ran away Rose had felt like a part of her was missing. While she and Pearl had never displayed affection to one another there had been an undeniable bond. Now she wondered why she had been so blind to what Benjamin had done to Pearl. When she allowed herself to open her mind to the possibility that what Madeline said was true, everything became clear. Benjamin’s stares and scornful remarks. Pearl acting skittish and nervous around Benjamin. The blood. That wasn’t menstrual blood. They shared their cycles. Always had. Regular as the moon. Why hadn’t she realized it before?
Rose was jolted out of her reflections by the sudden appearance of her sister. She was wearing a gold uniform – almost the same color as her hair. Pearl was balancing a tray in her right hand and holding a coffee pot in her left. She looked thin.
“I’ve got to go, Madeline. Thanks for the ride. I know you think I’m crazy but this is the right thing to do.” Rose jumped out of the truck before Madeline could say anything more. She reached into the bed of the truck for her suitcase and tapped on the side of the truck twice – a signal for Madeline to go.
She stood in the street holding her suitcase for several minutes after Madeline pulled away. Part of her was sure she was doing the right thing. Another part was sure she was making a terrible mistake. “I can’t stand here forever. Might as well get on with it,” she muttered to herself as she pushed through the door of the diner, holding her suitcase before her like a shield.
“Afternoon, Miss. Will you be wanting lunch?” A plump woman put down her magazine and lumbered with some difficulty from her perch behind the cash register. “You can leave your valise here behind the counter. It will be safe.” The woman was smiling at her. “You look might familiar to me. Are you from around these parts?”
“No. I’m not. I’ve traveled a distance today.”
“Well, let’s just put your bag here and get you something to eat.” Without waiting for a response she took Rose’s suitcase and stowed it behind the counter. “You can wash up in the restroom over there and I’ll have Pearl brew up some fresh coffee. You look worn out, honey.”
At the mention of her sister’s name Rose caught her breath. She was surprised the kind faced woman couldn’t hear her heart pounding in her chest but she just stood there smiling as Rose walked toward the restroom.
Rose stared at herself in the mirror. “What were you thinking? What makes you think you have the right to stroll in here and…”
Rose’s conversation with her reflection was interrupted when the door opened and another face appeared in the mirror. Rose’s first thought was how alike their faces were. When she had seen Pearl everyday she only saw the differences. Now she found herself looking into her own face.
“Hello, Pearl.”
Together Again
“I knew it had to be you, Rose. You have been on my mind all day. I knew you’d be coming.” It was that old twin thing. Her side had hurt when Rose’s appendix had been about to rupture. Rose always knew when Pearl was about to have an epileptic fit. “I knew that today would be the day I would have to face you. I’ve been going over in my head what I’d say to you.”
“You don’t need to say anything, Pearl. I know why you ran away. I should have seen what was going on. I’m just so sorry.”
The sisters embraced. They clung to one another while their tears flowed freely. No words were needed. The gulf between them closed.
Later as they sat together sipping their coffee, Rose told Pearl that their mother had died.
“Mama’s gone?”
“Yes, Pearl. She died quietly – reading King Lear. I found her when…” She paused. The image of that night came rushing back to her. She closed her eyes trying to blot out the memory of Joe’s hands roaming over her body – the image of herself sprawled across a dirty mattress while her mother was dying. Her sister interrupted her, sparing her from having to recollect further details of that awful night.
“It must have been awful for you finding her like that. Oh, Sister. I should have been there with you.”
“Pearl, I can’t think of any reason to go back home. Mama’s gone and I can’t face Benjamin anymore.”
“What about Aunt Sarah?”
“Aunt Sarah is as tough as an old hen. She will be fine. I need to look after myself. I’ve got to get away from Pungo Creek. If I go back there I will just dry up and blow away. I want to stay here with you. Please let me stay, Pearl.”
“Go wash your face, Rose. I’ll make you some lunch. I’ve got to think about this.”
Mrs. Beasley was watching them from the counter. Her curiosity was getting the better of her but she held herself back with effort as Pearl walked toward her. “She’s my sister, Mrs. Beasley. My twin sister.”
“I knew it! I knew she looked familiar to me.”
“You don’t need to say anything, Pearl. I know why you ran away. I should have seen what was going on. I’m just so sorry.”
The sisters embraced. They clung to one another while their tears flowed freely. No words were needed. The gulf between them closed.
Later as they sat together sipping their coffee, Rose told Pearl that their mother had died.
“Mama’s gone?”
“Yes, Pearl. She died quietly – reading King Lear. I found her when…” She paused. The image of that night came rushing back to her. She closed her eyes trying to blot out the memory of Joe’s hands roaming over her body – the image of herself sprawled across a dirty mattress while her mother was dying. Her sister interrupted her, sparing her from having to recollect further details of that awful night.
“It must have been awful for you finding her like that. Oh, Sister. I should have been there with you.”
“Pearl, I can’t think of any reason to go back home. Mama’s gone and I can’t face Benjamin anymore.”
“What about Aunt Sarah?”
“Aunt Sarah is as tough as an old hen. She will be fine. I need to look after myself. I’ve got to get away from Pungo Creek. If I go back there I will just dry up and blow away. I want to stay here with you. Please let me stay, Pearl.”
“Go wash your face, Rose. I’ll make you some lunch. I’ve got to think about this.”
Mrs. Beasley was watching them from the counter. Her curiosity was getting the better of her but she held herself back with effort as Pearl walked toward her. “She’s my sister, Mrs. Beasley. My twin sister.”
“I knew it! I knew she looked familiar to me.”
Love at First Sight
“Why of course she can work here, honey. I can’t pay her much but she’s kin and we have to look out for our own, don’t we?”
Pearl marveled again at the kindness of Mrs. Beasley and Mildred. Mildred hadn’t batted an eye when Pearl had asked if her sister could share her room. Pearl didn’t know that Evelyn Beasley and Mildred had been worried about Pearl being alone and were both delighted when Rose had shown up on the steps on Beasley’s Diner. After a few weeks observing Rose they began to have second thoughts, but though her behavior concerned them, they never showed it around Pearl.
“They couldn’t be more opposite. Pearl is as meek as Moses and that Rose is as bold as brass. I’ll lay you odds that one catches a husband before my Miss Meow has her next litter.” Mrs. Beasley and Mildred were sitting is Mildred’s tidy kitchen enjoying one of their favorite pastimes – gossip.
“It’s good that Pearl’s sister came to be with her,” said Evelyn helping herself to another slice of applesauce cake. “It’s not good for a young girl to be without family, but I’d have to agree with you. They are as different as night and day.”
“Except for one thing, Mildred. Rose knows her way around a kitchen, same as her sister. Maybe better.”
Rose was young and beautiful. Her waitress uniform hugged her farm girl figure. A nametag was pinned to her breast: Rose. She had a fancy handkerchief folded like a flower pinned on the other breast. As she was picking up her order, Pearl whispered, “Look what just walked in the door, Sister.”
Rose looked up in time to see the most handsome man she had ever seen sit down at the counter. His army cap is tilted over his left eye. His brown uniform shirt is starched and ironed but it is open at the throat and his sleeves are rolled up revealing tattoos on his forearms: “Mother” on the right arm and “USA” on the left.
It was love at first sight. Rose sidled over to the stranger and smiled at him “What can I get for you, soldier?” He grinned at her and responded “You on toast, darling.”
Rose turned away and treated him to the sight of her bottom waving goodbye as she walked slowly over to the coffee pot and came back with a cup of coffee.
He held out his hand. “Since I plan for us to be good friends I should introduce myself. My name is Virgil, but my friends call me Click. You should call me Click and I will call you Bug.”
“But my name is...”
He finished her sentence for her. “… Rose. I know. I can read. But you have this cute little mole on your chin that looks like a bug – so I think I’ll call you ‘Bug’.”
It was plain to everyone that Rose and Virgil had fallen in love. At night in their room Pearl listened patiently while Rose talked on and on about Virgil.
“He is so sophisticated, Pearl. He has lived, let me tell you. He has been all the way to California with his family. He showed me pictures of himself with his brothers and sisters on the rocks at Point Lobos.”
Virgil had grown up in Norfolk, Virginia. At that time Norfolk was of the fastest growing metropolitan areas in the United States. Rose had spent her entire life on Pungo Creek. She had never been further from home than Pantego until she moved to Franklin. Virgil was witty and playful with a weakness for alcohol. He had attended the University of Michigan. Rose dropped out of school in the eighth grade. Even though they had almost nothing in common, in a few weeks they were married. Pearl stood next to her sister as she and Virgil exchanged their vows. Pearl was sure she smelled alcohol on her new brother-in-law’s breath when he kissed her after the ceremony. Mrs. Beasley held a reception for them at her diner and looked the other way when Virgil and his friends took turns sneaking snorts of whiskey. “Normally I frown on drinking but this is a special occasion.”
Soon Pearl was alone again. Rose left to join Virgil at Camp Campbell on the Kentucky-Tennessee line. Her sister wasn’t much of a letter writer but her brother-in-law wrote to her frequently. Pearl looked forward to his letters. His unique back leaning handwriting was easy to spot. His letters were full of news about their new life at Camp Campbell.
Dear Pearl
Your sister would write to you herself but she is too busy teaching the other wives how to make drop biscuits. She was up half the night making curtains and embroidering doilies. I think your sister would embroider my skivvies if I let her. She sure has jumped into married life with both feet.
If you loosen up a little, Little Sister, you’ll catch yourself a soldier too.
Love,
Click
Pearl guessed the real reason Rose wasn’t writing to her was that she was ashamed of her spelling. Her sister’s brief attendance at John A. Wilkinson High School had not allowed her the opportunity to master the fine art of correspondence.
* * *
After the war, Virgil and Rose moved to Norfolk and settled in a pre-fabricated housing development. Broad Creek Village was built to house a wartime surplus of military families. It was self-contained, with schools, police and fire station, shopping center, and recreation facilities all located within its boundaries. Soon Virgil and Rose discovered the Glory Hole – a little tavern within walking distance of their house on South Woodlawn Avenue. They became regulars. Virgil loved to drink and most people loved him when he was drinking. He would sing and tell jokes.
Though she tried to resist, soon Rose developed a fondness for alcohol. The best times were when Rose and Virgil had a few drinks but didn’t get too drunk. They would sing together, laugh and dance. The worst times were when they got falling down drunk and ended up trying to kill each other.
Virgil had trouble holding down a job. He drove a Coca-Cola truck until he got fired for stealing and then a garbage truck until he got fired for fighting. Rose was relieved when he landed a good job at the Ford Plant. She had suspected for a while she was pregnant but didn’t want to say anything until Virgil got a job. The night he came home with the good news they celebrated with chow mien from Ying Lews. Rose waited until they’d taken turns reading their fortune cookies before letting Virgil know about the baby. “You’re going to have to hang onto this job, Honey, because I’m pregnant.”
The trouble started right after the baby was born. Rose became depressed. She stayed in bed, leaving Virgil to take care for himself and the baby. Sometimes Rose stood over the bassinet with her hands stuffed in her pockets – fists clinched – like she was afraid if she took them out she would smother the howling, red-faced creature before her.
One day Virgil came home from the Ford Plant and found the baby shut up in a dresser drawer. “What have you done, Rose?” he cried as he cradled his daughter in his arms.
“I don’t remember. She was crying. She wouldn’t be quiet. I put her in there to make her be quiet.”
“Bug, you have to get a grip on yourself. This is our baby not a stray kitten.”
“I wish it was so I could drown the damn thing and have some peace and quiet.”
Virgil did the only thing he could think of. He called Pearl. “Pearl, you have to come help me. I don’t know what has gotten into Rose but I am afraid she is going to hurt the baby.”
When Pearl hesitated, he pleaded with her. “It won’t be for long. Just until this depression passes. They’ve been patient with me at the Ford Plant, but they aren’t going to hold my job forever. I can’t afford to lose another job. Please, Pearl.”
Pearl marveled again at the kindness of Mrs. Beasley and Mildred. Mildred hadn’t batted an eye when Pearl had asked if her sister could share her room. Pearl didn’t know that Evelyn Beasley and Mildred had been worried about Pearl being alone and were both delighted when Rose had shown up on the steps on Beasley’s Diner. After a few weeks observing Rose they began to have second thoughts, but though her behavior concerned them, they never showed it around Pearl.
“They couldn’t be more opposite. Pearl is as meek as Moses and that Rose is as bold as brass. I’ll lay you odds that one catches a husband before my Miss Meow has her next litter.” Mrs. Beasley and Mildred were sitting is Mildred’s tidy kitchen enjoying one of their favorite pastimes – gossip.
“It’s good that Pearl’s sister came to be with her,” said Evelyn helping herself to another slice of applesauce cake. “It’s not good for a young girl to be without family, but I’d have to agree with you. They are as different as night and day.”
“Except for one thing, Mildred. Rose knows her way around a kitchen, same as her sister. Maybe better.”
Rose was young and beautiful. Her waitress uniform hugged her farm girl figure. A nametag was pinned to her breast: Rose. She had a fancy handkerchief folded like a flower pinned on the other breast. As she was picking up her order, Pearl whispered, “Look what just walked in the door, Sister.”
Rose looked up in time to see the most handsome man she had ever seen sit down at the counter. His army cap is tilted over his left eye. His brown uniform shirt is starched and ironed but it is open at the throat and his sleeves are rolled up revealing tattoos on his forearms: “Mother” on the right arm and “USA” on the left.
It was love at first sight. Rose sidled over to the stranger and smiled at him “What can I get for you, soldier?” He grinned at her and responded “You on toast, darling.”
Rose turned away and treated him to the sight of her bottom waving goodbye as she walked slowly over to the coffee pot and came back with a cup of coffee.
He held out his hand. “Since I plan for us to be good friends I should introduce myself. My name is Virgil, but my friends call me Click. You should call me Click and I will call you Bug.”
“But my name is...”
He finished her sentence for her. “… Rose. I know. I can read. But you have this cute little mole on your chin that looks like a bug – so I think I’ll call you ‘Bug’.”
It was plain to everyone that Rose and Virgil had fallen in love. At night in their room Pearl listened patiently while Rose talked on and on about Virgil.
“He is so sophisticated, Pearl. He has lived, let me tell you. He has been all the way to California with his family. He showed me pictures of himself with his brothers and sisters on the rocks at Point Lobos.”
Virgil had grown up in Norfolk, Virginia. At that time Norfolk was of the fastest growing metropolitan areas in the United States. Rose had spent her entire life on Pungo Creek. She had never been further from home than Pantego until she moved to Franklin. Virgil was witty and playful with a weakness for alcohol. He had attended the University of Michigan. Rose dropped out of school in the eighth grade. Even though they had almost nothing in common, in a few weeks they were married. Pearl stood next to her sister as she and Virgil exchanged their vows. Pearl was sure she smelled alcohol on her new brother-in-law’s breath when he kissed her after the ceremony. Mrs. Beasley held a reception for them at her diner and looked the other way when Virgil and his friends took turns sneaking snorts of whiskey. “Normally I frown on drinking but this is a special occasion.”
Soon Pearl was alone again. Rose left to join Virgil at Camp Campbell on the Kentucky-Tennessee line. Her sister wasn’t much of a letter writer but her brother-in-law wrote to her frequently. Pearl looked forward to his letters. His unique back leaning handwriting was easy to spot. His letters were full of news about their new life at Camp Campbell.
Dear Pearl
Your sister would write to you herself but she is too busy teaching the other wives how to make drop biscuits. She was up half the night making curtains and embroidering doilies. I think your sister would embroider my skivvies if I let her. She sure has jumped into married life with both feet.
If you loosen up a little, Little Sister, you’ll catch yourself a soldier too.
Love,
Click
Pearl guessed the real reason Rose wasn’t writing to her was that she was ashamed of her spelling. Her sister’s brief attendance at John A. Wilkinson High School had not allowed her the opportunity to master the fine art of correspondence.
* * *
After the war, Virgil and Rose moved to Norfolk and settled in a pre-fabricated housing development. Broad Creek Village was built to house a wartime surplus of military families. It was self-contained, with schools, police and fire station, shopping center, and recreation facilities all located within its boundaries. Soon Virgil and Rose discovered the Glory Hole – a little tavern within walking distance of their house on South Woodlawn Avenue. They became regulars. Virgil loved to drink and most people loved him when he was drinking. He would sing and tell jokes.
Though she tried to resist, soon Rose developed a fondness for alcohol. The best times were when Rose and Virgil had a few drinks but didn’t get too drunk. They would sing together, laugh and dance. The worst times were when they got falling down drunk and ended up trying to kill each other.
Virgil had trouble holding down a job. He drove a Coca-Cola truck until he got fired for stealing and then a garbage truck until he got fired for fighting. Rose was relieved when he landed a good job at the Ford Plant. She had suspected for a while she was pregnant but didn’t want to say anything until Virgil got a job. The night he came home with the good news they celebrated with chow mien from Ying Lews. Rose waited until they’d taken turns reading their fortune cookies before letting Virgil know about the baby. “You’re going to have to hang onto this job, Honey, because I’m pregnant.”
The trouble started right after the baby was born. Rose became depressed. She stayed in bed, leaving Virgil to take care for himself and the baby. Sometimes Rose stood over the bassinet with her hands stuffed in her pockets – fists clinched – like she was afraid if she took them out she would smother the howling, red-faced creature before her.
One day Virgil came home from the Ford Plant and found the baby shut up in a dresser drawer. “What have you done, Rose?” he cried as he cradled his daughter in his arms.
“I don’t remember. She was crying. She wouldn’t be quiet. I put her in there to make her be quiet.”
“Bug, you have to get a grip on yourself. This is our baby not a stray kitten.”
“I wish it was so I could drown the damn thing and have some peace and quiet.”
Virgil did the only thing he could think of. He called Pearl. “Pearl, you have to come help me. I don’t know what has gotten into Rose but I am afraid she is going to hurt the baby.”
When Pearl hesitated, he pleaded with her. “It won’t be for long. Just until this depression passes. They’ve been patient with me at the Ford Plant, but they aren’t going to hold my job forever. I can’t afford to lose another job. Please, Pearl.”
Part II - Clara's Story
South Woodlawn Avenue
Everything was going along fine until I came along. I was born in 1949. Mama named me after Clara Bow. Daddy said she was a beautiful silent movie star. “Maybe not silent enough,” he laughed. “She once said ‘the more I see of men, the more I like dogs.’ Are you trying to tell me something, Bug?” He called Mama “Bug” because she had a mole on her chin that looked like a bug. He thought the mole was beautiful. He thought everything about Mama was beautiful.
Right after I was born Aunt Pearl moved in with us. She seemed more than willing to assume the role of mother and she did a good job. Mama watched with a mixture of gratitude and resentment as Aunt Pearl cradled me and crooned to me until my crying stopped “My darling. My darling. I’ll never leave you my little mimosa.”
It was Aunt Pearl who got up in the middle of the night to give me my bottle. Even after mama recovered from her depression, Aunt Pearl took care of me. She changed my sheets when I wet the bed and stayed with me in the hospital when Dr. Castenbaum took out my tonsils. When I was a little older I asked Aunt Pearl what was wrong with Mama. “She just had a breakdown, honey.” That was all she said about it.
When I had my shaking spells, Aunt Pearl held me until the shaking stopped. When I wet my bed, she kissed me and let me get into her bed while she changed my sheets. “It’s okay, Clara. Don’t cry. We can change the sheets. Your Mama will never know.”
Aunt Pearl got a job packing hot dogs at Swift and Company. Her hands were permanently stained with red dye from the hotdogs. When Daddy and I picked her up after work, she always had a couple of raw hotdogs hidden in the pocket of her uniform. I sat in the backseat eating my raw hotdogs while Daddy and Aunt Pearl laughed and talked in the front seat. When I got drowsy, I rested my head on the armrest and fell asleep to the vibration of the road, the comfortable sound of laughter and the smell of cigarettes.
Pearl was content to spend her evenings with me while Mama and Daddy went down to the Glory Hole. She didn’t try to hide her disapproval as she watched Mama put on her lipstick. Mama never wore lipstick unless she was going out for a night of drinking. When she stumbled home, her lipstick would be smeared and she would be fighting with Daddy. Sometimes they fought about Aunt Pearl.
“Maybe you married the wrong sister. I’m not blind, you know. I can see what’s going on right under my nose.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Rose. You’re drunk. Pearl is here for one reason. I couldn’t trust you not to harm our daughter. What was I supposed to do after I came home and found you’d shut her up in a dresser drawer?”
On those nights, Aunt Pearl would lie quietly in her bed, an arm’s length from mine and pray that I would sleep through the fight on the other side of the thin wall. Daddy usually remained unruffled while Mama’s fists pounded his chest. Aunt Pearl knew that if her brother-in-law ever allowed himself to return his wife’s punches he wouldn’t stop until he’d killed her. She also knew that Rose was right. Virgil did have feelings for her and she for him. But neither of them allowed those feelings to go further than a kind word and a sympathetic smile.
The post war baby boom meant I had plenty of playmates. Sheila was my best friend. Our houses faced each other across South Woodlawn Avenue. Since neither of us was allowed to cross the street, we played together, separated by South Woodlawn Avenue, confined to our own front yards.
Daddy told me that soon I would have a baby sister to play with.
Ivy was born in the summer. It was hot everywhere, but especially in the little house on South Woodlawn Avenue. Mama seldom moved from the couch. She spent the whole day smoking cigarettes and drinking Pepsi Cola. I sat on the hassock watching the rotating fan move back and forth across her prone body.
There was a knock on the door and our next-door neighbor Mrs. Evans came in without waiting for an answer. “Rose, you poor child. You look just plain miserable. Do you need anything, honey?”
“I need this baby out of me. This is worse than the last time. Look at my poor feet. They are so swelled up I can’t even get shoes on them.” Mama wiggled her toes for Mrs. Evans. “Blair, could you put a little ice in this Pepsi for me. I don’t think I can move.”
Mrs. Evans took the glass from Mama’s hand. “Can I fix you something to eat, Clara?”
“No thank you, Mrs. Evans. I ate already.” I had fixed myself a mayonnaise sandwich for lunch and washed it down with a glass of milk.
“What a grown up little girl you are. Are your taking good care of your Mama?”
“Yes ma’am. I am.”
I was scared to leave my Mama’s side during the day. Daddy and Aunt Pearl and given me instructions about what I was to do if “anything happened” while they were at work. I was supposed to run next door and get Mrs. Evans and then call Daddy’s work number and tell the lady that answered it was time. I was exhausted from watching and waiting. When Daddy and Aunt Pearl got home I escaped to the front porch, but I could hear Mama and Daddy fussing with each other through the open front window. The fights would usually end with Mama going into their bedroom and slamming the door.
Daddy would come out to the porch and sit down next to me, still in his work uniform. “Don’t sit too close to me, honey. You’ll get your dress dirty.”
I’d ignore him and scoot over next to him. “I love you a bushel and a peck, Daddy.”
He’d answer with “A bushel and a peck …and a hug around the neck?” That was my signal to stand up next to him and give him a big hug.
“Okay, Clara. Sing me our song” I’d hop down the steps and perform the whole song for Daddy.
I love you a bushel and peck
“Beautiful, honey. Doris Day had better watch out. You’re going to steal her job right out from under her.”
That’s how Daddy was. Always smiling and making jokes even when he was tired and things weren’t going his way.
The day they brought Ivy home, Daddy put her in my lap and told me my most important job from then on was to look out for my baby sister. I looked down at her and silently nodded my head. Ivy was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. She was perfect. Daddy showed me how to hold her and warned me about the soft spot on her head. The spot was covered with long strands of dark hair. I loved my sister immediately and began planning all the things I would teach her to do.
There are lots of pictures of Ivy and me from that time. I look happy. My hair is always combed and my bangs are trimmed neatly. Ivy is usually sprawled on her stomach on an army blanket or the living room rug with her thumb in her mouth. She looks happy too. Even in the black and white photographs the colors our ruffled dresses are evident. In one of the photographs I am sitting in a wagon holding a birthday cake while my baby sister and my friends gather round. I pretend to blow out the candles careful to keep my crinoline blossomed dress away from the flames.
We enjoyed all the delights that a growing navy town had to offer in the early fifties. Ocean View Amusement Park was the center of our universe. I loved the rumble of the old wooden roller coaster and smell the ocean air sweetly scented with the aroma of french fries and cotton candy. The Giant Open Air Market was open 24-hours a day. It had a lunch counter where we could get a fountain coke and a banana split while Aunt Pearl shopped.
City Park was an oasis. Located just up the road from where Daddy’s parents were buried, City Park had swings and "monkey bars" to climb on, slides, gardens and an enormous sandbox in a cement enclosure that had been a wading pool before it was shut down by the polio epidemic. There was a large fenced area with farmyard animals, and a big pond where Ivy and I fed popcorn to the ducks. One day when we were at City Park I was trying to get a drink of water from the fountain. I wasn’t quite tall enough and a sailor picked me up. Aunt Pearl ran over and screamed at him. “Put her down! Put her down right now.” The startled Good Samaritan put me down immediately and looked at my Aunt with a dumfounded expression on his face.
“Listen lady. I was just helping your little girl get a drink of water.” But my Aunt Pearl was already dragging me away.
“Don’t ever talk to men, Clara. Don’t ever let them touch you. Do you understand me?”
I just nodded my head, too stunned and confused to say anything.
* * *
“Well, girls. What do you say we pick us up some doughnuts and take a ride down to the lily pads?”
As we rode along we sang…”I must take a trip to California and leave my poor sweetheart alone…..Let me go. Let me go. Let me go, Lover….. Lambsy dotes and dosey dots and little lambsy divvies…” When we got to the canal with the lily pads, Aunt Pearl got stopped the car and we got out to sit for a while by the side of the canal.
“Can you get me a one of those?” I asked pointing to a lily pad about ten feet from the shore.
Aunt Pearl never said no to me. She took off her Trotters and waded out and picked the water lily. I held it in my lap as we continued on. My new short set was now wet and coated with sugar from the Krispy Kreme Doughnuts.
Everything was going along fine until I came along. I was born in 1949. Mama named me after Clara Bow. Daddy said she was a beautiful silent movie star. “Maybe not silent enough,” he laughed. “She once said ‘the more I see of men, the more I like dogs.’ Are you trying to tell me something, Bug?” He called Mama “Bug” because she had a mole on her chin that looked like a bug. He thought the mole was beautiful. He thought everything about Mama was beautiful.
Right after I was born Aunt Pearl moved in with us. She seemed more than willing to assume the role of mother and she did a good job. Mama watched with a mixture of gratitude and resentment as Aunt Pearl cradled me and crooned to me until my crying stopped “My darling. My darling. I’ll never leave you my little mimosa.”
It was Aunt Pearl who got up in the middle of the night to give me my bottle. Even after mama recovered from her depression, Aunt Pearl took care of me. She changed my sheets when I wet the bed and stayed with me in the hospital when Dr. Castenbaum took out my tonsils. When I was a little older I asked Aunt Pearl what was wrong with Mama. “She just had a breakdown, honey.” That was all she said about it.
When I had my shaking spells, Aunt Pearl held me until the shaking stopped. When I wet my bed, she kissed me and let me get into her bed while she changed my sheets. “It’s okay, Clara. Don’t cry. We can change the sheets. Your Mama will never know.”
Aunt Pearl got a job packing hot dogs at Swift and Company. Her hands were permanently stained with red dye from the hotdogs. When Daddy and I picked her up after work, she always had a couple of raw hotdogs hidden in the pocket of her uniform. I sat in the backseat eating my raw hotdogs while Daddy and Aunt Pearl laughed and talked in the front seat. When I got drowsy, I rested my head on the armrest and fell asleep to the vibration of the road, the comfortable sound of laughter and the smell of cigarettes.
Pearl was content to spend her evenings with me while Mama and Daddy went down to the Glory Hole. She didn’t try to hide her disapproval as she watched Mama put on her lipstick. Mama never wore lipstick unless she was going out for a night of drinking. When she stumbled home, her lipstick would be smeared and she would be fighting with Daddy. Sometimes they fought about Aunt Pearl.
“Maybe you married the wrong sister. I’m not blind, you know. I can see what’s going on right under my nose.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Rose. You’re drunk. Pearl is here for one reason. I couldn’t trust you not to harm our daughter. What was I supposed to do after I came home and found you’d shut her up in a dresser drawer?”
On those nights, Aunt Pearl would lie quietly in her bed, an arm’s length from mine and pray that I would sleep through the fight on the other side of the thin wall. Daddy usually remained unruffled while Mama’s fists pounded his chest. Aunt Pearl knew that if her brother-in-law ever allowed himself to return his wife’s punches he wouldn’t stop until he’d killed her. She also knew that Rose was right. Virgil did have feelings for her and she for him. But neither of them allowed those feelings to go further than a kind word and a sympathetic smile.
The post war baby boom meant I had plenty of playmates. Sheila was my best friend. Our houses faced each other across South Woodlawn Avenue. Since neither of us was allowed to cross the street, we played together, separated by South Woodlawn Avenue, confined to our own front yards.
Daddy told me that soon I would have a baby sister to play with.
Ivy was born in the summer. It was hot everywhere, but especially in the little house on South Woodlawn Avenue. Mama seldom moved from the couch. She spent the whole day smoking cigarettes and drinking Pepsi Cola. I sat on the hassock watching the rotating fan move back and forth across her prone body.
There was a knock on the door and our next-door neighbor Mrs. Evans came in without waiting for an answer. “Rose, you poor child. You look just plain miserable. Do you need anything, honey?”
“I need this baby out of me. This is worse than the last time. Look at my poor feet. They are so swelled up I can’t even get shoes on them.” Mama wiggled her toes for Mrs. Evans. “Blair, could you put a little ice in this Pepsi for me. I don’t think I can move.”
Mrs. Evans took the glass from Mama’s hand. “Can I fix you something to eat, Clara?”
“No thank you, Mrs. Evans. I ate already.” I had fixed myself a mayonnaise sandwich for lunch and washed it down with a glass of milk.
“What a grown up little girl you are. Are your taking good care of your Mama?”
“Yes ma’am. I am.”
I was scared to leave my Mama’s side during the day. Daddy and Aunt Pearl and given me instructions about what I was to do if “anything happened” while they were at work. I was supposed to run next door and get Mrs. Evans and then call Daddy’s work number and tell the lady that answered it was time. I was exhausted from watching and waiting. When Daddy and Aunt Pearl got home I escaped to the front porch, but I could hear Mama and Daddy fussing with each other through the open front window. The fights would usually end with Mama going into their bedroom and slamming the door.
Daddy would come out to the porch and sit down next to me, still in his work uniform. “Don’t sit too close to me, honey. You’ll get your dress dirty.”
I’d ignore him and scoot over next to him. “I love you a bushel and a peck, Daddy.”
He’d answer with “A bushel and a peck …and a hug around the neck?” That was my signal to stand up next to him and give him a big hug.
“Okay, Clara. Sing me our song” I’d hop down the steps and perform the whole song for Daddy.
I love you a bushel and peck
A bushel and peck
And a hug around the neck
A hug around the neck
And a barrel and a heap
A barrel and a heap
And I'm talking in my sleep
About you, about you
“Beautiful, honey. Doris Day had better watch out. You’re going to steal her job right out from under her.”
That’s how Daddy was. Always smiling and making jokes even when he was tired and things weren’t going his way.
The day they brought Ivy home, Daddy put her in my lap and told me my most important job from then on was to look out for my baby sister. I looked down at her and silently nodded my head. Ivy was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. She was perfect. Daddy showed me how to hold her and warned me about the soft spot on her head. The spot was covered with long strands of dark hair. I loved my sister immediately and began planning all the things I would teach her to do.
There are lots of pictures of Ivy and me from that time. I look happy. My hair is always combed and my bangs are trimmed neatly. Ivy is usually sprawled on her stomach on an army blanket or the living room rug with her thumb in her mouth. She looks happy too. Even in the black and white photographs the colors our ruffled dresses are evident. In one of the photographs I am sitting in a wagon holding a birthday cake while my baby sister and my friends gather round. I pretend to blow out the candles careful to keep my crinoline blossomed dress away from the flames.
We enjoyed all the delights that a growing navy town had to offer in the early fifties. Ocean View Amusement Park was the center of our universe. I loved the rumble of the old wooden roller coaster and smell the ocean air sweetly scented with the aroma of french fries and cotton candy. The Giant Open Air Market was open 24-hours a day. It had a lunch counter where we could get a fountain coke and a banana split while Aunt Pearl shopped.
City Park was an oasis. Located just up the road from where Daddy’s parents were buried, City Park had swings and "monkey bars" to climb on, slides, gardens and an enormous sandbox in a cement enclosure that had been a wading pool before it was shut down by the polio epidemic. There was a large fenced area with farmyard animals, and a big pond where Ivy and I fed popcorn to the ducks. One day when we were at City Park I was trying to get a drink of water from the fountain. I wasn’t quite tall enough and a sailor picked me up. Aunt Pearl ran over and screamed at him. “Put her down! Put her down right now.” The startled Good Samaritan put me down immediately and looked at my Aunt with a dumfounded expression on his face.
Aunt Pearl knelt down beside me. “Are you alright, honey? Did he hurt you?”
“Listen lady. I was just helping your little girl get a drink of water.” But my Aunt Pearl was already dragging me away.
“Don’t ever talk to men, Clara. Don’t ever let them touch you. Do you understand me?”
I just nodded my head, too stunned and confused to say anything.
* * *
Aunt Pearl bought herself a pink Studebaker Commander with the money she made at the Swift Company. On Saturdays and Sundays she took Ivy and me for rides in her car.
“Well, girls. What do you say we pick us up some doughnuts and take a ride down to the lily pads?”
As we rode along we sang…”I must take a trip to California and leave my poor sweetheart alone…..Let me go. Let me go. Let me go, Lover….. Lambsy dotes and dosey dots and little lambsy divvies…” When we got to the canal with the lily pads, Aunt Pearl got stopped the car and we got out to sit for a while by the side of the canal.
“Can you get me a one of those?” I asked pointing to a lily pad about ten feet from the shore.
Aunt Pearl never said no to me. She took off her Trotters and waded out and picked the water lily. I held it in my lap as we continued on. My new short set was now wet and coated with sugar from the Krispy Kreme Doughnuts.
Goodbye Broad Creek Village
“Virgil, this house is too small for two women. It’s time Pearl got a place of her own. I don’t need her help looking out for my children” Mama paused then added “and my husband. We need some privacy, honey.” Mama didn’t even try to hide that she wished Aunt Pearl would get a place of her own. Our house was crowded and maybe she didn’t like the way I had attached herself to Aunt Pearl. Ivy was getting close to Aunt Pearl too. When Ivy started talking, she called Aunt Pearl “Mama” and she called Mama “Rose”.
“Pearl, I’d be the first to admit I was a mess after Clara was born. I wasn’t ready to be a mother. I am grateful to you for everything you did, but I’m better now. It’s time you got a place of your own. I don’t want another woman in my house.”
Aunt Pearl wanted nothing more than to move out and get a place of her own but she had promised me she would never leave me. My earliest memories are of Aunt Pearl cradling me and crooning “My darling. My darling. I’ll never leave you my little mimosa.”
So she stayed. She resigned herself to spending her life as a silent witness to her sister’s tantrums. Aunt Pearl rarely went anywhere without me and when she did I pouted and whined the whole time she was gone.
I watched glumly as Aunt Pearl put on her makeup and fluffed up her hair.
“Can’t I go with you, Aunt Pearl? Please?”
“Clara, honey, you would be bored to death. I’m just going over to Carol Martin’s to give her a permanent. She doesn’t even have a television. You stay here and look after your baby sister. We’ll have breakfast together in the morning.”
Mama came into our room. “Pearl, stop treating her like a baby. She doesn’t need to be coddled. When will you stop spoiling her?” Aunt Pearl tried to argue with her, but as usual Mama had the last word. Aunt Pearl went to Carol’s.
It was time for bed. Ivy and I were washed and ready for bed but I’d refused to go to sleep until Aunt Pearl got home. Suddenly there was there was a crash. The glass that had been the window of our front door was on the floor. Daddy’s drinking buddy Harold Ray Sheppard was on the front porch. He was bleeding. He was drunk and he wanted to fight.
As he stood there – wobbling – his arm hung at his side and more blood fell onto the porch.
“Get him away from here, Virgil! Get him away from the children!”
I watched as Daddy walked through the glass in his bare feet. He took Sheppard by the arm and led him away from our front door and up the street.
“Clara, get the broom and sweep up that glass before Ivy cuts herself.”
When I was finished, Mama was standing beside me with a pan of soapy water and some old rags “Let’s clean this up.” I knelt beside Mama on the front porch. Together we cleaned up Harold Ray’s blood.
Mrs. Evans stuck her head out of her front door. She didn’t seem the least bit surprised to see us on our hands and knees scrubbing the stoop. “Everything okay, Rose?”
“Yes, Blair, just a little accident. Hope we didn’t wake you up.”
“No problem, Rose. I was up watching my show. If you don’t need any help, I’ll get back to it. That little girl of yours is sure getting big.” She said it like there was nothing unusual about us cleaning blood off our front porch.
I waited until Mrs. Evans had gone back into her house before asking “Mama, why did Harold Ray break our window?”
Rose shook her head and dropped her rag into the pan of water. “He was just drunk, Clara. People don’t need a reason to do things when they’re drunk.”
“Is he going to come back?”
“No, your daddy is making sure he won’t come back. You go on inside and make sure your sister is okay. I’ll finish up out here.”
I left Mama on the front porch and went inside to find my baby sister in the middle of the living room floor crying. I wanted to sit down with her and cry too. Instead I put her arm around her. “It’s okay, Ivy. He’s not coming back. He was just drunk. Daddy is making sure he won’t come back to hurt us. Come on. I’ll tuck you in. This will all be over in the morning.”
I stayed awake for a long time listening for her Daddy to come home, but he never came back. When I woke up Mama was sitting in the living room with Aunt Pearl and Mrs. Evans. Mama looked like she had been crying.
“Mama, where is my Daddy?
“Clara, your Daddy won’t be coming home. I know this is going to be hard for you to understand but…” She started crying again.
Mrs. Evans lifted me onto her lap. “Honey, your Daddy went and got himself killed last night.”
“Blair!” Aunt Pearl gasped. “You can’t just…”
“Pearl, this little girl is going to have to grow up fast. You can’t sugar coat it for her.”
Things happened real fast after that. The next day Mama told me we were moving down to Pungo Creek. “We are taking your Daddy down there to bury him and that will be our new home.”
I was confused. This was our home. Home was the green and white house on South Woodlawn Avenue with the gumball trees in the front yard where Daddy and I had stretched out on an army blanket and eaten bologna sandwiches. I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. I walked from room to room. I stood in the bedroom where Mama and Daddy had slept in their big double bed. The bed had a metal headboard with hundreds of tiny holes just the size of the tips of my fingers. Daddy and I had played a game. He would place his hand behind the headboard and cover one of the holes with his finger. I would try to touch his finger on the other side before he could move it. I liked the sensation of touching Daddy’s fingers through the headboard. I missed my daddy. My heart felt empty. I went into their closet. It was empty but I could still smell Daddy’s Old Spice after-shave lotion. I sat there in the dark inhaling the last scent of my Daddy until Aunt Pearl came and found me.
I walked around the front yard picking up gumballs. I filled the pockets of my yellow dress - the one with the sash that Mama could never tie just right. She always ended up taking me next door to Mrs. Evans’ house. “Blair, will you tie this girl’s sash for me? I don’t know why it always looks cockeyed when I do it.”
I wondered who was going to tie my sash at the place where we were going…the place that would be my new home.
I was miserable when I learned Aunt Pearl wasn’t going with us. I heard her tell Mama that she was moving in with Carol Martin. “I just can’t go, Rose. You know what happened. How can I go back there and act like nothing happened?”
Mama refilled her glass from the bottle next to the sink. She didn’t offer any to Aunt Pearl. “Nobody remembers any of that stuff, Pearl. Life goes on. You always take things too personal.” I sat very still, hoping they wouldn’t notice I was there, but Aunt Pearl spotted me and signaled for Mama to be quiet.
“If Aunt Pearl ain’t going then I ain’t going neither.” I stomped my foot just in case they had missed the significance of my statement.
“Damn, Pearl. She’s just like you. Look at that bottom lip. It’s stuck out a mile like yours always was when you were feeling sorry for yourself. She’s more your daughter than mine. Just like Virgil was more of a husband to you than he was to me. Maybe she should stay here with you.”
“Rose, that’s the whiskey talking. Hush now. She’s upset enough.” Aunt Pearl opened her arms and ran to her. I buried my face in her sweater and cried.
“You promised you would never leave me.”
“I’m so sorry, baby girl. I am so sorry.”
I couldn’t understand why Aunt Pearl wasn’t going with us. What had happened that was bad enough to break her promise? I tried to be mad at her, but I couldn’t. On our last morning together I was sitting next to her on the sofa. She had her arm around me. She didn’t say anything. She just held me close to her. I saw Mama standing at the door watching us with an odd look on her face “Benjamin will be here any minute. If you don’t want to see him, Pearl, you better make yourself scarce.” Aunt Pearl kissed me one last time and then she was gone. The hardest thing about moving was leaving Aunt Pearl behind. Not only had she made my childhood sweet, she had shielded me from my Mama’s insanity.
Pungo Creek
When we stopped in front of the church Mama stayed in the car. Uncle Benjamin took her elbow. “Come on Rose. We need to go in now.” Mama allowed her brother to walk her into the church.
She was stone faced. Her fists were clinched. So were her back teeth. I could see her jawbone moving in and out like she was chewing gum. I edged up to Daddy’s coffin grasping Mama’s hand tightly. “How will he breathe when they close up his coffin, Mama?”
“He doesn’t need to breathe anymore, Clara.” As if to prove once and for all that Daddy’s breathing days were behind him, she closed the lid.
An old lady came up behind us and wrapped her arms around Mama. “You’re back home, Rose. You’re back home with the family that loves you.”
“Oh, Sarah. I just don’t know what I am going to do. How will I take care of the girls?”
“We’ll do that together. I’ve got their room all ready for them.”
Mama’s people had been living on Pungo Creek since Rufus and Harry Foreman settled there before the Revolutionary War. For Mama, Pungo Creek had always meant security and family but now, with Daddy gone, it was just a last resort. With no work and no husband, she uprooted her family and moved us 130 miles down the road to Pungo Creek to live in the house where she was raised.
Mama’s family seemed very strange to me. We moved in with Aunt Sarah. She was the oldest person I had ever met. She was even older than Mrs. Evans. Aunt Sarah had an enormous bosom that started under her wrinkly chin and kept going all the way down to her belly. She refused to wear trousers. She always wore flowery dresses covered up with an apron and she smelled like Vicks Vapor Rub. I learned to tread carefully around her house. Aunt Sarah wasn’t particular about she put her spit can. The spit can had been around since before we arrived and it had the right of way. Aunt Sarah spit Peach Tree Snuff. When she wasn’t spitting Aunt Sarah polished her three remaining teeth with a “toothbrush” she has gummed into a functional device from a green twig. “This is what the Indians used to clean their teeth,” she explained to me as I stood a safe distance away. When she wasn’t polishing her teeth, Aunt Sarah kept her “toothbrush” in her Bible. She was never far from her Bible or her spit can. Aunt Sarah was very proud of her needlework but she never sewed on Sunday. Once she caught me doing embroidery on Sunday and just about had a conniption. “Every stitch you sew on Sunday, you will take out with your nose on judgment day.”
Uncle Benjamin and his family lived up the road from us in a fine white house with wide porches and flower gardens. I could see the house from our front porch. His daughter Kate was a little older than me. His son Jess was in high school. Aunt Sarah encouraged Ivy and me to make friends with Kate, but she warned us to be careful. She told us that Kate was “slow” because of the tumor they had to cut out of her brain. “When they took out that tumor they cut too deep and they damaged her brain.” Aunt Sarah warned us to be careful playing with Kate. “One blow to her head – especially here” she touch the spot where my neck met the back of my head. “Just one tap here could kill her.” I knew exactly where she meant. I’d seen the ugly scar that crawled up Kate’s neck and never completely disappeared in her thin, fine hair.
I was very careful around Kate – never raising a finger against her. Not even when she chased me down the road and stabbed me in the back with a rake.
It seemed like Ivy and I were always over at Kate’s house. Uncle Benjamin spoiled his daughter rotten. She had a playhouse, her own horse and more clothes than she could ever wear. She took piano lessons and dance lessons and bragged that when she was older she was going to charm school. Kate didn’t have to ride the school bus like I did. She rode in with Uncle Benjamin in his green Plymouth and had breakfast with him at the bakery every morning before school. I wondered why Uncle Benjamin didn’t have a wife. When I ask about it he laughed. “Women have ruined my life. I’m better off without them.”
My uncle walked with a limp. We had been living on Pungo Creek for almost a month before I realized he had a wooden leg. Aunt Sarah told me about his accident. “If it hadn’t been for your Mama, he would be making old bones now. She saved your uncle’s life that day. She kept a cool head that day.”
Uncle Benjamin didn’t talk about Aunt Pearl at all and if Ivy or I mentioned her, he made a face like he was sucking on a lemon and got real quiet. Mama said I was imagining things again. “You are so much like your Aunt Pearl. She lives in her own world just like you do. You need to accept the fact that this is your home now. There is no Aunt Pearl to coddle you and you had better get used to it.”
I soon realized that Mama’s kin had always looked down on my Daddy. They never passed up a chance to remind her that she had ruined her life by marrying him and now he had added insult to injury by leaving her a widow. Uncle Benjamin never missed a chance to say mean things about Daddy.
My uncle was a wealthy man. In addition to being a barber and a deacon in the Baptist church, Uncle Benjamin owned most of the land around Pungo Creek. He had it planted in tobacco and took on sharecroppers to work the land for him. Uncle Benjamin even hired me to work tobacco for twenty-five cents at day. Sometimes I worked as a hander. Sometimes I tied the tobacco. The hander gathered up three or four leaves of the green tobacco, putting the stems together and handed them to the person who looped the string around the stems before knotting it around the pole. When the pole was full we started a new one. It was somebody else’s job to carry the full poles to the tobacco barn where they would hang until the leaves were dried out and ready to take to auction in Durham.
Uncle Benjamin hired Mama to work for him full time. He paid her more than he paid me, but expected her to work right alongside the colored field hands. She took her break with them at the store at the end of the road. Uncle Benjamin let Mama charge her snack to his account. She usually brought home most of it to Ivy and me. We could split Pepsi Cola right down the middle. The top half didn't end at the line around the equator of the bottle but just under the line that said "bottled in Jacksonville, NC." Ivy would drink it down to that line and I would finish the bottom half.
Aunt Sarah didn’t approve of our steady diet of Pepsi Cola and Hostess Cupcakes. She would make us “cut-up” eggs when I got home from school. I collected the eggs myself. She let me dip my bread in the molasses can with a lion’s head on it. She also made it her business to see that both of us ate a good supper. She fried up the perch or croaker that we caught in the creek and served it with collard greens and biscuits with quince preserves and chocolate cake. Aunt Sarah was full of old sayings like “The older I grow the more I know because the more I know I don’t know” but she didn’t have much original to say.
She was stone faced. Her fists were clinched. So were her back teeth. I could see her jawbone moving in and out like she was chewing gum. I edged up to Daddy’s coffin grasping Mama’s hand tightly. “How will he breathe when they close up his coffin, Mama?”
“He doesn’t need to breathe anymore, Clara.” As if to prove once and for all that Daddy’s breathing days were behind him, she closed the lid.
An old lady came up behind us and wrapped her arms around Mama. “You’re back home, Rose. You’re back home with the family that loves you.”
“Oh, Sarah. I just don’t know what I am going to do. How will I take care of the girls?”
“We’ll do that together. I’ve got their room all ready for them.”
Mama’s people had been living on Pungo Creek since Rufus and Harry Foreman settled there before the Revolutionary War. For Mama, Pungo Creek had always meant security and family but now, with Daddy gone, it was just a last resort. With no work and no husband, she uprooted her family and moved us 130 miles down the road to Pungo Creek to live in the house where she was raised.
Mama’s family seemed very strange to me. We moved in with Aunt Sarah. She was the oldest person I had ever met. She was even older than Mrs. Evans. Aunt Sarah had an enormous bosom that started under her wrinkly chin and kept going all the way down to her belly. She refused to wear trousers. She always wore flowery dresses covered up with an apron and she smelled like Vicks Vapor Rub. I learned to tread carefully around her house. Aunt Sarah wasn’t particular about she put her spit can. The spit can had been around since before we arrived and it had the right of way. Aunt Sarah spit Peach Tree Snuff. When she wasn’t spitting Aunt Sarah polished her three remaining teeth with a “toothbrush” she has gummed into a functional device from a green twig. “This is what the Indians used to clean their teeth,” she explained to me as I stood a safe distance away. When she wasn’t polishing her teeth, Aunt Sarah kept her “toothbrush” in her Bible. She was never far from her Bible or her spit can. Aunt Sarah was very proud of her needlework but she never sewed on Sunday. Once she caught me doing embroidery on Sunday and just about had a conniption. “Every stitch you sew on Sunday, you will take out with your nose on judgment day.”
Uncle Benjamin and his family lived up the road from us in a fine white house with wide porches and flower gardens. I could see the house from our front porch. His daughter Kate was a little older than me. His son Jess was in high school. Aunt Sarah encouraged Ivy and me to make friends with Kate, but she warned us to be careful. She told us that Kate was “slow” because of the tumor they had to cut out of her brain. “When they took out that tumor they cut too deep and they damaged her brain.” Aunt Sarah warned us to be careful playing with Kate. “One blow to her head – especially here” she touch the spot where my neck met the back of my head. “Just one tap here could kill her.” I knew exactly where she meant. I’d seen the ugly scar that crawled up Kate’s neck and never completely disappeared in her thin, fine hair.
I was very careful around Kate – never raising a finger against her. Not even when she chased me down the road and stabbed me in the back with a rake.
It seemed like Ivy and I were always over at Kate’s house. Uncle Benjamin spoiled his daughter rotten. She had a playhouse, her own horse and more clothes than she could ever wear. She took piano lessons and dance lessons and bragged that when she was older she was going to charm school. Kate didn’t have to ride the school bus like I did. She rode in with Uncle Benjamin in his green Plymouth and had breakfast with him at the bakery every morning before school. I wondered why Uncle Benjamin didn’t have a wife. When I ask about it he laughed. “Women have ruined my life. I’m better off without them.”
My uncle walked with a limp. We had been living on Pungo Creek for almost a month before I realized he had a wooden leg. Aunt Sarah told me about his accident. “If it hadn’t been for your Mama, he would be making old bones now. She saved your uncle’s life that day. She kept a cool head that day.”
Uncle Benjamin didn’t talk about Aunt Pearl at all and if Ivy or I mentioned her, he made a face like he was sucking on a lemon and got real quiet. Mama said I was imagining things again. “You are so much like your Aunt Pearl. She lives in her own world just like you do. You need to accept the fact that this is your home now. There is no Aunt Pearl to coddle you and you had better get used to it.”
I soon realized that Mama’s kin had always looked down on my Daddy. They never passed up a chance to remind her that she had ruined her life by marrying him and now he had added insult to injury by leaving her a widow. Uncle Benjamin never missed a chance to say mean things about Daddy.
My uncle was a wealthy man. In addition to being a barber and a deacon in the Baptist church, Uncle Benjamin owned most of the land around Pungo Creek. He had it planted in tobacco and took on sharecroppers to work the land for him. Uncle Benjamin even hired me to work tobacco for twenty-five cents at day. Sometimes I worked as a hander. Sometimes I tied the tobacco. The hander gathered up three or four leaves of the green tobacco, putting the stems together and handed them to the person who looped the string around the stems before knotting it around the pole. When the pole was full we started a new one. It was somebody else’s job to carry the full poles to the tobacco barn where they would hang until the leaves were dried out and ready to take to auction in Durham.
Uncle Benjamin hired Mama to work for him full time. He paid her more than he paid me, but expected her to work right alongside the colored field hands. She took her break with them at the store at the end of the road. Uncle Benjamin let Mama charge her snack to his account. She usually brought home most of it to Ivy and me. We could split Pepsi Cola right down the middle. The top half didn't end at the line around the equator of the bottle but just under the line that said "bottled in Jacksonville, NC." Ivy would drink it down to that line and I would finish the bottom half.
Aunt Sarah didn’t approve of our steady diet of Pepsi Cola and Hostess Cupcakes. She would make us “cut-up” eggs when I got home from school. I collected the eggs myself. She let me dip my bread in the molasses can with a lion’s head on it. She also made it her business to see that both of us ate a good supper. She fried up the perch or croaker that we caught in the creek and served it with collard greens and biscuits with quince preserves and chocolate cake. Aunt Sarah was full of old sayings like “The older I grow the more I know because the more I know I don’t know” but she didn’t have much original to say.
A Brief Tour of Pungo Creek
Pungo Creek was the most boring place in the world. I knew I didn’t belong there. It would never be my home. I had just washed in with the tide. On Pungo Creek I was encircled by cornfields, attacked by chickens, enveloped by kin and enclosed by loneliness.
I missed my Aunt Pearl. I missed Broad Creek Village. In Pungo Creek there was nothing to do and no one to do it with. There was nowhere to go. If I turned right at the mailbox in about a half a mile I would pass Scott Toppins place. A half mile further up, I would get to Ms. Jordan’s, the last house until I got to the end of the road. Mrs. Jordan was well known for her flowers. She didn’t grow anything you could put in your stomach, but she grew the most beautiful tulips and dahlias you ever saw.
If I turned right at the end of the road I’d get to the bridge that went over Pungo Creek. That was the bridge we watched the fireworks from on the 4th of July. Aunt Sarah told me that once her husband Harvey was in charge of the fireworks. “He got drunk and blew a hole in the bottom of the barge they were using to light off the fireworks. The barge sank taking the fireworks with it. Your Uncle swam to shore. Everybody was real disappointed.”
There was a colored town was on the other side of the bridge and beyond that was Sidney Cross Roads. If I turned right at Sidney Cross Roads I’d get to Sidney Free Will Baptist Church and the little cemetery where Daddy was buried next to Grandmama and Granddaddy and Uncle Harvey. The cemetery was almost full with Voliva’s and Stokesberries resting beside the Foremans, Burgesses and Hardees.
The closest town was Belhaven. Belhaven means beautiful harbor. I guess that might have been true at one time.
There was a one main street. On one end was the gas station. Cane poles leaned against the window next to the squeaky screen door. Inside, the smell of grape soda and Bugler tobacco would just about knock you down. Further down the street was the old John A. Wilkinson School. It looked just like it did when Mama went there. Aunt Sarah told me they don’t tear down buildings in the south. They just let them crumble of their own accord. Mama stopped at the eighth grade. I guess she decided the six-mile trip from Pungo Creek to Belhaven wasn’t worth the effort.
My brownie scout troop met on the second floor of the old school building. I learned to dance the polka and schottische on a peeling linoleum floor.
The school cafeteria was on the main floor. In the morning they sold milk and cookies for a nickel – four cents without the cookie. The lunch was twenty cents. Mama told me I could live without milk and cookies or a hot lunch and she packed me a lunch of potted meat sandwiches. “Money don’t grow on trees, young lady.”
Down the street on the left were the jail and the firehouse. That’s were the welfare department handed out the food to families like ours that couldn’t afford to shop at the Colonial Store. Each month Mama picked up cans of processed meat and peanut butter, shortening and flour. She combined the welfare food with the eggs we collected from the chickens and the fish I caught after school and we made out pretty good.
Just past the firehouse on the right hand side of Main Street was the bakery. There were two entrances. White people went in the door on the left and colored people went in the door on the right. The counter ran down the middle. The donuts and cinnamon buns were the same on both sides of the counter. I went in the wrong door once and all hell broke loose.
Across the street from the bakery was the Ambrose Barber Shop. Uncle Benjamin owned the barbershop. He cut hair there everyday except Sunday. His chair was the one in the back of the shop. You had to walk past all the other chair’s to get to his. They were empty because he was the only barber in the shop. He was the only white barber in the whole town of Belhaven.
Uncle Benjamin sometimes brought by a sack of groceries to supplement the canned meat, flour, peanut butter and sugar we got from welfare. Even I could see his assortment was badly chosen. His sack usually contained items like little powdered wedding cookies, sardines and pickles. I could see the shame in Mama’s face and I would try not to eat any of Uncle Benjamin’s food.
I missed the friends I had left behind. There were only two other girls on the road where we lived - Ivy and our cousin Kate. Ivy was practically a baby and I’d decided right away that Kate was spoiled rotten and I wanted nothing to do with her. Uncle Benjamin’s hostility towards my Daddy made me bitter and the abundance in her life made the barrenness of mine seem even more intolerable. I preferred to play alone.
I missed my Aunt Pearl. I missed Broad Creek Village. In Pungo Creek there was nothing to do and no one to do it with. There was nowhere to go. If I turned right at the mailbox in about a half a mile I would pass Scott Toppins place. A half mile further up, I would get to Ms. Jordan’s, the last house until I got to the end of the road. Mrs. Jordan was well known for her flowers. She didn’t grow anything you could put in your stomach, but she grew the most beautiful tulips and dahlias you ever saw.
If I turned right at the end of the road I’d get to the bridge that went over Pungo Creek. That was the bridge we watched the fireworks from on the 4th of July. Aunt Sarah told me that once her husband Harvey was in charge of the fireworks. “He got drunk and blew a hole in the bottom of the barge they were using to light off the fireworks. The barge sank taking the fireworks with it. Your Uncle swam to shore. Everybody was real disappointed.”
There was a colored town was on the other side of the bridge and beyond that was Sidney Cross Roads. If I turned right at Sidney Cross Roads I’d get to Sidney Free Will Baptist Church and the little cemetery where Daddy was buried next to Grandmama and Granddaddy and Uncle Harvey. The cemetery was almost full with Voliva’s and Stokesberries resting beside the Foremans, Burgesses and Hardees.
The closest town was Belhaven. Belhaven means beautiful harbor. I guess that might have been true at one time.
There was a one main street. On one end was the gas station. Cane poles leaned against the window next to the squeaky screen door. Inside, the smell of grape soda and Bugler tobacco would just about knock you down. Further down the street was the old John A. Wilkinson School. It looked just like it did when Mama went there. Aunt Sarah told me they don’t tear down buildings in the south. They just let them crumble of their own accord. Mama stopped at the eighth grade. I guess she decided the six-mile trip from Pungo Creek to Belhaven wasn’t worth the effort.
My brownie scout troop met on the second floor of the old school building. I learned to dance the polka and schottische on a peeling linoleum floor.
The school cafeteria was on the main floor. In the morning they sold milk and cookies for a nickel – four cents without the cookie. The lunch was twenty cents. Mama told me I could live without milk and cookies or a hot lunch and she packed me a lunch of potted meat sandwiches. “Money don’t grow on trees, young lady.”
Down the street on the left were the jail and the firehouse. That’s were the welfare department handed out the food to families like ours that couldn’t afford to shop at the Colonial Store. Each month Mama picked up cans of processed meat and peanut butter, shortening and flour. She combined the welfare food with the eggs we collected from the chickens and the fish I caught after school and we made out pretty good.
Just past the firehouse on the right hand side of Main Street was the bakery. There were two entrances. White people went in the door on the left and colored people went in the door on the right. The counter ran down the middle. The donuts and cinnamon buns were the same on both sides of the counter. I went in the wrong door once and all hell broke loose.
Across the street from the bakery was the Ambrose Barber Shop. Uncle Benjamin owned the barbershop. He cut hair there everyday except Sunday. His chair was the one in the back of the shop. You had to walk past all the other chair’s to get to his. They were empty because he was the only barber in the shop. He was the only white barber in the whole town of Belhaven.
Uncle Benjamin sometimes brought by a sack of groceries to supplement the canned meat, flour, peanut butter and sugar we got from welfare. Even I could see his assortment was badly chosen. His sack usually contained items like little powdered wedding cookies, sardines and pickles. I could see the shame in Mama’s face and I would try not to eat any of Uncle Benjamin’s food.
I missed the friends I had left behind. There were only two other girls on the road where we lived - Ivy and our cousin Kate. Ivy was practically a baby and I’d decided right away that Kate was spoiled rotten and I wanted nothing to do with her. Uncle Benjamin’s hostility towards my Daddy made me bitter and the abundance in her life made the barrenness of mine seem even more intolerable. I preferred to play alone.
I Make a Friend
I was fascinated by the satellites that the Russians began launching in 1957 and horrified when they launched a dog named Laika with no way of bringing her back to earth. That was about the same time that Uncle Benjamin bought a dog for his daughter Kate. She named it Sputnik.
I’d learned in school that “Sputnik” was Russian for “Traveling Companion”. Sputnik was Kate’s traveling companion. Sputnik followed Kate everywhere and at night she slept at the foot of Kate’s bed. Kate had a lot of things I wished that I had, but the thing I wanted most was a dog. I yearned for a companion like Sputnik.
It wasn’t too long before I got my wish. I found Waggles a few months after Kate got Sputnik. Actually I rescued him. The Norfleet boys had tied him up in the middle of the road. There were two ropes around his neck. One rope was fastened to a tree and the other was tied to a fence on the other side of the road. The little dog struggled to free himself while the boys pulled the ropes tighter.
I couldn’t believe anyone could be so mean. “What are you doing to that dog?” I asked.
“We have a bet on how long it will take before someone comes around that curve too fast runs over this mutt?”
“Will you give him to me?”
“What do you want with this mangy old thing?”
“I never had a dog before and I think I’d like to have one.”
They looked at each other and shrugged. “This is getting a little boring anyway. Sure. You can take him.”
They untied the dog and he ran right to me wagging his tail so hard he almost fell over. “I think I will call you ‘Waggles’. Come on, Waggles. Let’s go home."
Mama wasn’t happy when I showed up with a dog. She complained that we didn’t have enough for ourselves much less a dog.
It was Aunt Sarah that convinced her to let me keep him. “Come on, Rose. It will be fine. He doesn’t look like he’ll eat that much and it will teach her responsibility."
Mama just shook her head and walked out in a huff, but Waggles stayed.
I’d learned in school that “Sputnik” was Russian for “Traveling Companion”. Sputnik was Kate’s traveling companion. Sputnik followed Kate everywhere and at night she slept at the foot of Kate’s bed. Kate had a lot of things I wished that I had, but the thing I wanted most was a dog. I yearned for a companion like Sputnik.
It wasn’t too long before I got my wish. I found Waggles a few months after Kate got Sputnik. Actually I rescued him. The Norfleet boys had tied him up in the middle of the road. There were two ropes around his neck. One rope was fastened to a tree and the other was tied to a fence on the other side of the road. The little dog struggled to free himself while the boys pulled the ropes tighter.
I couldn’t believe anyone could be so mean. “What are you doing to that dog?” I asked.
“We have a bet on how long it will take before someone comes around that curve too fast runs over this mutt?”
“Will you give him to me?”
“What do you want with this mangy old thing?”
“I never had a dog before and I think I’d like to have one.”
They looked at each other and shrugged. “This is getting a little boring anyway. Sure. You can take him.”
They untied the dog and he ran right to me wagging his tail so hard he almost fell over. “I think I will call you ‘Waggles’. Come on, Waggles. Let’s go home."
Mama wasn’t happy when I showed up with a dog. She complained that we didn’t have enough for ourselves much less a dog.
It was Aunt Sarah that convinced her to let me keep him. “Come on, Rose. It will be fine. He doesn’t look like he’ll eat that much and it will teach her responsibility."
Mama just shook her head and walked out in a huff, but Waggles stayed.
The Baby
We hadn’t been living at the house on Pungo Creek too long when Madeline started coming around. She’d latched onto Mama like a snapping turtle. Aunt Sarah told me that a long time ago Madeline had been married Uncle Benjamin and that she was Jess and Kate’s mother. “Your Mama and Madeline stayed best friends after Benjamin threw her out and now it looks like Madeline is determined to start in where they left off” Aunt Sarah didn’t care for Madeline at all and she wasn’t shy about letting Mama know how she felt.
“She’s just trash, Rose. That’s why your brother tossed her out. She isn’t the kind of person you want to have around your girls. Why can’t you make friends with that nice Ruth Jordan or Page Sparrow. They are good church-going women. Those Modlins were always low class.”
“She’s my friend, and I will thank you to keep your opinions to yourself. Just because I’m living under your roof don’t mean you can run my life.”
Aunt Sarah just shook her head, puffed up like a mad hen and went back to her Bible reading.
Every night after supper, regular as clockwork, Madeline would come swaying up the back steps with a cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other. She always wore the same dress. The dress stretched tight across a belly that pooched way out in front of Madeline. It appeared that she arched her back on purpose to push her belly out even further. When I said something to her Aunt Sarah about Madeline’s stomach she whispered back that it came from having so many babies. “She just drops babies like a feral cat and goes on her merry way” Sarah clucked.
I never dared to say anything about Madeline to Mama, but I didn’t have to. “Clara, your feelings stick out all over you. Madeline can tell just by looking at you exactly how you feel about her.” Mama started sending me to my bedroom whenever Madeline came over so she couldn’t see what I was thinking.
Mama and Madeline sat in the porch swing drinking beer and smoking while Aunt Sarah stayed inside and glared at them through the kitchen window.
Mama didn’t know it, but Daddy had left a baby growing inside of her before he went off and got himself killed by Harold Ray Sheppard. As her belly swelled, Mama grew more and more distant. She almost never talked to Ivy and me. When she did it was to yell at us. She started drinking more – not just beer, but hard liquor right out of the bottle. At night, after Madeline went home, she’d stumble inside and go straight to bed with her clothes on.
Aunt Sarah’s pleading fell on deaf ears. She begged Mama to consider the baby that she was carrying. The more the pleaded, the more headstrong Mama became. “Listen, old lady, if there’s one thing I can do, it’s have babies. And I can do it without your help. Now get out of here and leave me alone. And tell those brats to shut up or I’ll cut me a switch.”
When it was time for the baby to be born Aunt Sarah sent Ivy and me over to spend the night with Uncle Benjamin. “It’s best you girls stay over there tonight. Your mama is going to have a rough go of it. I’ll take care of her and send word when it’s time for you to come home.”
When it was time for bed Ivy and I crawled into a tiny bed tucked under the rafters of Uncle Benjamin’s attic, but we were too excited to fall asleep.
We whispered and giggled until Uncle Benjamin stuck his head in and threatened to “blister our behinds” if we didn’t quiet down and go to sleep. He tried to sound mean, but I could see he was smiling when he said it. Reluctantly we turned off the light and lay quietly with the moonlight streaming through the open window that looked out over Pungo Creek. I stayed awake long after Ivy fell asleep. The only sounds in the dark attic were her breathing and the croaking of the bullfrogs that lived in the branch that separated our house from Uncle Benjamin’s. A couple of times I thought she heard Mama crying out but I couldn’t be sure. It was close to daybreak when I finally drifted off to sleep.
In the morning I awoke to the sound of our uncle’s booming voice announcing, “Wake up! You’ve got a baby sister, girls. Get dressed and I’ll fix you some eggs before I send you home to your mama.” As he closed the door I heard him say in a softer voice that wasn’t meant for us to hear “Just what Rose needs – another mouth to feed.”
I didn’t wait for breakfast. I ran all the way home. Aunt Sarah stopped me at the front door. “Quiet, child. Your Mama needs her rest.”
“I want to see my baby sister. What’s her name? Is she all right?” My breath was coming in gulps – partly from the exertion of running from Uncle Benjamin’s house and partly from excitement. Waggles heard me and came running into the kitchen. He curled up his upper lip in a smile, put his front paws on my chest and licked my whole face.
Aunt Sarah laughed. “You’re going to have to wash that dog slobber off of you before you go anywhere near that baby.”
I went over to the sink and washed my hands and face. “Mama promised that if she had a girl we could name her “Laika”.
“We’ll see about that. I’m not sure I want a niece named after a communist dog. Where’s Ivy?”
“She’s having breakfast with Kate and Uncle Benjamin. I couldn’t wait.”
“You must be excited if you’re missing a meal. Come on, but be real quiet. They’re both sleeping.”
I was shocked at how terrible Mama looked. Her face was lined and drained of all color. I touched her cheek. She had turned into an old woman overnight. For a minute I forgot all about the baby. Aunt Sarah put her arm around my shoulder and led me toward the bassinette.
“Hello, Laika. I’m your big sister. Welcome to Pungo Creek.” I stood there for a long time just looking at my new sister. I didn’t realize then what hard times were ahead.
“She’s just trash, Rose. That’s why your brother tossed her out. She isn’t the kind of person you want to have around your girls. Why can’t you make friends with that nice Ruth Jordan or Page Sparrow. They are good church-going women. Those Modlins were always low class.”
“She’s my friend, and I will thank you to keep your opinions to yourself. Just because I’m living under your roof don’t mean you can run my life.”
Aunt Sarah just shook her head, puffed up like a mad hen and went back to her Bible reading.
Every night after supper, regular as clockwork, Madeline would come swaying up the back steps with a cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other. She always wore the same dress. The dress stretched tight across a belly that pooched way out in front of Madeline. It appeared that she arched her back on purpose to push her belly out even further. When I said something to her Aunt Sarah about Madeline’s stomach she whispered back that it came from having so many babies. “She just drops babies like a feral cat and goes on her merry way” Sarah clucked.
I never dared to say anything about Madeline to Mama, but I didn’t have to. “Clara, your feelings stick out all over you. Madeline can tell just by looking at you exactly how you feel about her.” Mama started sending me to my bedroom whenever Madeline came over so she couldn’t see what I was thinking.
Mama and Madeline sat in the porch swing drinking beer and smoking while Aunt Sarah stayed inside and glared at them through the kitchen window.
Mama didn’t know it, but Daddy had left a baby growing inside of her before he went off and got himself killed by Harold Ray Sheppard. As her belly swelled, Mama grew more and more distant. She almost never talked to Ivy and me. When she did it was to yell at us. She started drinking more – not just beer, but hard liquor right out of the bottle. At night, after Madeline went home, she’d stumble inside and go straight to bed with her clothes on.
Aunt Sarah’s pleading fell on deaf ears. She begged Mama to consider the baby that she was carrying. The more the pleaded, the more headstrong Mama became. “Listen, old lady, if there’s one thing I can do, it’s have babies. And I can do it without your help. Now get out of here and leave me alone. And tell those brats to shut up or I’ll cut me a switch.”
When it was time for the baby to be born Aunt Sarah sent Ivy and me over to spend the night with Uncle Benjamin. “It’s best you girls stay over there tonight. Your mama is going to have a rough go of it. I’ll take care of her and send word when it’s time for you to come home.”
When it was time for bed Ivy and I crawled into a tiny bed tucked under the rafters of Uncle Benjamin’s attic, but we were too excited to fall asleep.
We whispered and giggled until Uncle Benjamin stuck his head in and threatened to “blister our behinds” if we didn’t quiet down and go to sleep. He tried to sound mean, but I could see he was smiling when he said it. Reluctantly we turned off the light and lay quietly with the moonlight streaming through the open window that looked out over Pungo Creek. I stayed awake long after Ivy fell asleep. The only sounds in the dark attic were her breathing and the croaking of the bullfrogs that lived in the branch that separated our house from Uncle Benjamin’s. A couple of times I thought she heard Mama crying out but I couldn’t be sure. It was close to daybreak when I finally drifted off to sleep.
In the morning I awoke to the sound of our uncle’s booming voice announcing, “Wake up! You’ve got a baby sister, girls. Get dressed and I’ll fix you some eggs before I send you home to your mama.” As he closed the door I heard him say in a softer voice that wasn’t meant for us to hear “Just what Rose needs – another mouth to feed.”
I didn’t wait for breakfast. I ran all the way home. Aunt Sarah stopped me at the front door. “Quiet, child. Your Mama needs her rest.”
“I want to see my baby sister. What’s her name? Is she all right?” My breath was coming in gulps – partly from the exertion of running from Uncle Benjamin’s house and partly from excitement. Waggles heard me and came running into the kitchen. He curled up his upper lip in a smile, put his front paws on my chest and licked my whole face.
Aunt Sarah laughed. “You’re going to have to wash that dog slobber off of you before you go anywhere near that baby.”
I went over to the sink and washed my hands and face. “Mama promised that if she had a girl we could name her “Laika”.
“We’ll see about that. I’m not sure I want a niece named after a communist dog. Where’s Ivy?”
“She’s having breakfast with Kate and Uncle Benjamin. I couldn’t wait.”
“You must be excited if you’re missing a meal. Come on, but be real quiet. They’re both sleeping.”
I was shocked at how terrible Mama looked. Her face was lined and drained of all color. I touched her cheek. She had turned into an old woman overnight. For a minute I forgot all about the baby. Aunt Sarah put her arm around my shoulder and led me toward the bassinette.
“Hello, Laika. I’m your big sister. Welcome to Pungo Creek.” I stood there for a long time just looking at my new sister. I didn’t realize then what hard times were ahead.
Taxi
The trouble started right away. Mama didn’t want anything to do with Laika. She wouldn’t even nurse her. When Laika cried, Mama would pace around the house with her fists clenched at her side. “If that baby doesn’t stop crying I am going to throw her in the creek.”
I’d carry Laika into my room and try to keep her quiet. I took care Laika the way I’d watched Aunt Pearl take care of Ivy. I sang her lullabies. Warmed her bottles. Changed her diapers. I even moved her bassinette next to my bed so I could take care of her when she woke up during the night. Aunt Sarah promised me that eventually Mama would get better. “It’s just what happens to some women after they have babies. It just affects your Mama worse than other women. It happened to her after you and Ivy were born too. We just have to wait her out. She’ll be herself soon.”
Aunt Sarah was right. Eventually Mama got better. She started combing her hair and stopped going around in her ragged robe. She smiled and actually held Laika. “I can’t believe you let me talk me into naming her ‘Laika’. What kind of a name is that for a little girl?” I didn’t tell her that the name actually meant “barker” in Russian.
Mama said she couldn’t stand being cooped up. “I am going to smother if I don’t get out of this house.” Since we didn’t own a car, she called up Will Davis - the owner of Belhaven’s one and only taxicab – and asked him to pick us up and drive us around. Will pulled into the front yard and honked his horn. Mama called for us to come out. Ivy and I ran out barefooted and climbed into the taxi.
Waggles tried to follow me. “Mama, can Waggles come too?”
“For Christ’s sake. Can’t you stand to me away from that damn dog for two minutes? Shut up and close the door or I’ll leave you here. Will, if that dog gets in your way, do me a favor and run over him.”
I looked at Mama’s face for a sign. I couldn’t tell whether she meant it or not. I was relieved when Waggles ran up the porch steps.
We left Aunt Sarah on the back porch with her hands on her hips, shaking her head and yelling that our dinner getting cold. Off we went – over the bridge, to Letha’s Log Cabin where Mama got beers for herself and Will. Next stop Sidney Cross Roads where Ivy and I ran in to get Dixie cups of ice cream. Then we were all set. Will drove us around – up and down the dark, dusty roads that snaked through Beaufort County. Mama and Will sat in the front of the cab sharing a six-pack. Ivy and I sat in the backseat with Laika between us. The moonlight rides became a tradition. The cab was blue and Will was black. I think he was genuinely fond of Mama and her children…especially the baby who Will called “Muttnik”. No money ever changed hands. Even though Will was colored and Mama was a cracker for sure, on those rides they were as close as brother and sister
I’d carry Laika into my room and try to keep her quiet. I took care Laika the way I’d watched Aunt Pearl take care of Ivy. I sang her lullabies. Warmed her bottles. Changed her diapers. I even moved her bassinette next to my bed so I could take care of her when she woke up during the night. Aunt Sarah promised me that eventually Mama would get better. “It’s just what happens to some women after they have babies. It just affects your Mama worse than other women. It happened to her after you and Ivy were born too. We just have to wait her out. She’ll be herself soon.”
Aunt Sarah was right. Eventually Mama got better. She started combing her hair and stopped going around in her ragged robe. She smiled and actually held Laika. “I can’t believe you let me talk me into naming her ‘Laika’. What kind of a name is that for a little girl?” I didn’t tell her that the name actually meant “barker” in Russian.
Mama said she couldn’t stand being cooped up. “I am going to smother if I don’t get out of this house.” Since we didn’t own a car, she called up Will Davis - the owner of Belhaven’s one and only taxicab – and asked him to pick us up and drive us around. Will pulled into the front yard and honked his horn. Mama called for us to come out. Ivy and I ran out barefooted and climbed into the taxi.
Waggles tried to follow me. “Mama, can Waggles come too?”
“For Christ’s sake. Can’t you stand to me away from that damn dog for two minutes? Shut up and close the door or I’ll leave you here. Will, if that dog gets in your way, do me a favor and run over him.”
I looked at Mama’s face for a sign. I couldn’t tell whether she meant it or not. I was relieved when Waggles ran up the porch steps.
We left Aunt Sarah on the back porch with her hands on her hips, shaking her head and yelling that our dinner getting cold. Off we went – over the bridge, to Letha’s Log Cabin where Mama got beers for herself and Will. Next stop Sidney Cross Roads where Ivy and I ran in to get Dixie cups of ice cream. Then we were all set. Will drove us around – up and down the dark, dusty roads that snaked through Beaufort County. Mama and Will sat in the front of the cab sharing a six-pack. Ivy and I sat in the backseat with Laika between us. The moonlight rides became a tradition. The cab was blue and Will was black. I think he was genuinely fond of Mama and her children…especially the baby who Will called “Muttnik”. No money ever changed hands. Even though Will was colored and Mama was a cracker for sure, on those rides they were as close as brother and sister
The Popsicle
I was hungry all the time. The hunger had nothing to do with how much I put in my stomach. Aunt Sarah managed to keep that full with eggs, quince, potatoes and collards. The hunger I felt was caused by a different kind of emptiness, but I used food to try to satisfy it. I ate all the time. I ate more than anyone in the house.
Aunt Sarah watched me sopping up cut up eggs with a biscuit and just shook her head. “I don’t know how a child can eat as much as Clara does and not gain an ounce.” Aunt Sarah was right. No matter how much I ate, I never gained an ounce. I could count my ribs. Not so with poor Ivy. She didn’t eat a tenth of what I did and she was as plump as a pigeon.
“The child must have a tape worm. She’s going to eat us out of house and home.” Mama was always complaining about how much I ate. The more she complained, the hungrier I felt. I ate in secret. I collected bottles and lugged them up to the store at the end of the road where I returned them for the deposit. I hoarded the nickels Aunt Sarah gave me for the collection plate. I even stole change from on top of Mama’s dresser. I used the small amounts of money I accumulated to buy myself treats.
I bought the banana Popsicle just before the bell rang. I don’t why I waited until recess was nearly over. When the bell rang I realized I wasn’t going to be able to finish my Popsicle so I hid it in the pocket of skirt and hurried back into the classroom. When I got to my desk I slipped the Popsicle out of her pocket and hid it under my desk – for later. I couldn’t bear to throw it away.
At one o’clock Mrs. Mason called my group to the front of the class for our reading lesson. “Bring your Think and Do books, children.”
I reached under my seat for the book and was found it covered with what was once my banana Popsicle.
“Hurry up, Clara. You’re keeping your group waiting.”
I walked up the aisle, holding my Think and Do book in front of me like a tray, trying to keep the banana puddle from falling onto the floor. I took my seat, resting the book on my lap. Maybe Mrs. Mason wouldn’t notice.
“Clara! What is that on your book?”
“I don’t know, Mrs. Mason.”
“Is that a Popsicle stick? Why that looks like a melted banana Popsicle.”
“I guess it could be that, Mrs. Mason, maybe.”
“Did you put that Popsicle in your desk?” I didn’t answer. I could feel my eyes filling up with tears.
“Yes she did, Mrs. Mason. I saw her do it.” It was Sally Woodward – the class tattletale.
At that moment I would have given anything to be able to thump Sally on the head. I looked up at Mrs. Mason through my tears. The corners of Mrs. Mason’s mouth were sneaking up into a smile. Her eyes were smiling too. She got up and took the book from my lap, carried it carefully to her trashcan and allowed the goop to slide into the trash. Then she took her handkerchief from her pocket and wiped off the book before handing it back to me. “Okay class, let’s turn to page 14…. Clara, you read so beautifully. Would you like to start us off?”
Next to church, school was my favorite place. I loved the smell of new books and the pencils and paper that Mrs. Mason passed out. I was way ahead of the rest of the class when it came to reading. Aunt Pearl had taught me all the words in the Little Golden Library Books that she bought for me. I loved the hot lunches that were served in the school cafeteria. The only thing I didn’t enjoy was recess. I usually ended up standing alone waiting for the bell to ring. I just didn’t fit in.
Aunt Sarah watched me sopping up cut up eggs with a biscuit and just shook her head. “I don’t know how a child can eat as much as Clara does and not gain an ounce.” Aunt Sarah was right. No matter how much I ate, I never gained an ounce. I could count my ribs. Not so with poor Ivy. She didn’t eat a tenth of what I did and she was as plump as a pigeon.
“The child must have a tape worm. She’s going to eat us out of house and home.” Mama was always complaining about how much I ate. The more she complained, the hungrier I felt. I ate in secret. I collected bottles and lugged them up to the store at the end of the road where I returned them for the deposit. I hoarded the nickels Aunt Sarah gave me for the collection plate. I even stole change from on top of Mama’s dresser. I used the small amounts of money I accumulated to buy myself treats.
I bought the banana Popsicle just before the bell rang. I don’t why I waited until recess was nearly over. When the bell rang I realized I wasn’t going to be able to finish my Popsicle so I hid it in the pocket of skirt and hurried back into the classroom. When I got to my desk I slipped the Popsicle out of her pocket and hid it under my desk – for later. I couldn’t bear to throw it away.
At one o’clock Mrs. Mason called my group to the front of the class for our reading lesson. “Bring your Think and Do books, children.”
I reached under my seat for the book and was found it covered with what was once my banana Popsicle.
“Hurry up, Clara. You’re keeping your group waiting.”
I walked up the aisle, holding my Think and Do book in front of me like a tray, trying to keep the banana puddle from falling onto the floor. I took my seat, resting the book on my lap. Maybe Mrs. Mason wouldn’t notice.
“Clara! What is that on your book?”
“I don’t know, Mrs. Mason.”
“Is that a Popsicle stick? Why that looks like a melted banana Popsicle.”
“I guess it could be that, Mrs. Mason, maybe.”
“Did you put that Popsicle in your desk?” I didn’t answer. I could feel my eyes filling up with tears.
“Yes she did, Mrs. Mason. I saw her do it.” It was Sally Woodward – the class tattletale.
At that moment I would have given anything to be able to thump Sally on the head. I looked up at Mrs. Mason through my tears. The corners of Mrs. Mason’s mouth were sneaking up into a smile. Her eyes were smiling too. She got up and took the book from my lap, carried it carefully to her trashcan and allowed the goop to slide into the trash. Then she took her handkerchief from her pocket and wiped off the book before handing it back to me. “Okay class, let’s turn to page 14…. Clara, you read so beautifully. Would you like to start us off?”
Next to church, school was my favorite place. I loved the smell of new books and the pencils and paper that Mrs. Mason passed out. I was way ahead of the rest of the class when it came to reading. Aunt Pearl had taught me all the words in the Little Golden Library Books that she bought for me. I loved the hot lunches that were served in the school cafeteria. The only thing I didn’t enjoy was recess. I usually ended up standing alone waiting for the bell to ring. I just didn’t fit in.
Shaking Spells
Each night, after feet were washed and prayers were said, Mama gave me a spoonful of Phenobarbital. She called it my “nerve medicine”. I always insisted on licking the spoon. She told me I should keep my shaking spells a secret. “If anyone finds out, they’ll think you’re feeble minded. Your Aunt Pearl had shaking spells too. I’d wake up and find her shaking so that the bed would be banging against the wall.” I was secretly pleased that I shared my secret illness with Aunt Pearl.
In bed at night I would lie awake for a long time listening to Ivy breathe. I tried to match my breathing to hers as I repeated my prayers. “Now I lay be down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray … I pray…” I always finished with “and please don’t let the shaking spells come tonight, Jesus.”
But they came. Jesus couldn’t stop the shaking spells and neither could I. The white plastic headboard of my twin bed was stained the handprints I left as I gripped the headboard in my attempt to stop the shaking spells. I never could. The trembling came without warning – not nightly but often. They came in spite of the nerve medicine.
I woke up trembling. The bedsprings were rattling. I reached up and grabbed the headboard and tried with all my might to make the shaking stop. I gripped the headboard and prayed again. “Please make this stop. I don’t want to. I don’t like it.” But the epilepsy was too strong. It overpowered me and forced me to loosen my grip. My screams would wake up Ivy who’d crawled into my bed and hold on to me. We shook together for what seemed like a long time. Finally the beast loosened its grip on me and I was myself again. We lay still. The bed now wet with my urine. I always wet her bed when the shaking spell was over.
Ivy thought I was crying because I’d wet the bed. I didn’t tell her I was crying because I missed Aunt Pearl so much.
In bed at night I would lie awake for a long time listening to Ivy breathe. I tried to match my breathing to hers as I repeated my prayers. “Now I lay be down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray … I pray…” I always finished with “and please don’t let the shaking spells come tonight, Jesus.”
But they came. Jesus couldn’t stop the shaking spells and neither could I. The white plastic headboard of my twin bed was stained the handprints I left as I gripped the headboard in my attempt to stop the shaking spells. I never could. The trembling came without warning – not nightly but often. They came in spite of the nerve medicine.
I woke up trembling. The bedsprings were rattling. I reached up and grabbed the headboard and tried with all my might to make the shaking stop. I gripped the headboard and prayed again. “Please make this stop. I don’t want to. I don’t like it.” But the epilepsy was too strong. It overpowered me and forced me to loosen my grip. My screams would wake up Ivy who’d crawled into my bed and hold on to me. We shook together for what seemed like a long time. Finally the beast loosened its grip on me and I was myself again. We lay still. The bed now wet with my urine. I always wet her bed when the shaking spell was over.
Ivy thought I was crying because I’d wet the bed. I didn’t tell her I was crying because I missed Aunt Pearl so much.
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