A Long Time Gone (45 page)

Mathilda was silent for a long moment, and I stood up, agitated again, wondering why it was so important that I know, wishing it had more to do with letting Adelaide rest in peace instead of my need to validate my own past.

She continued. “I don' know what happen at the store. Mr. Peacock, he die that day, too—found his body in Indian Bayou ten days later, and dead men, they don' talk. But my Robert, he at Ellis with his still. The Klan done clean them out, but they's not goin' to let the Klan win, so
they's back and runnin' just as soon as the Klan done tear everythin' up. He there with his wagon, loadin' up jugs of moonshine to save them from the flood.

“He hear a baby cryin' and then he sees Miss Adelaide drivin' her car, and a man he don' know in the backseat holdin' that baby. Afore he knows what's goin' on, he see the man lean forward and then Adelaide, she cryin' and beggin' for the man to let her baby be, to do what he wants with her, but to let her baby be. Then he reach up to her, and she falls over, her head restin' on the window, and Robert sees blood all down the front of her dress.

“Another car pull up next to the other car—Robert say they city folk, because they stop in the mud and the man gets in, but the car ain't movin', 'cause it stuck. So they drag Miss Adelaide and her baby out of her car and leaves them there and they gets in that car and drive away.

“Robert pick up Miss Bootsie, and sees Miss Adelaide, she already gone, and that baby cryin' and cryin' likes she knows her mama is dead.” She stopped speaking, pausing as if we both could see the young mother in the sodden grass, her inconsolable baby lying nearby.

“He see her blue watch, the one she set such store on, lyin' in the mud, and he pick it up. He put Miss Adelaide in the back of the wagon and sits up front with the baby and goes to the Heathmans', 'cause it closest, and 'cause it built on high ground. Miss Sarah Beth, she there all by herself, drinkin' and smokin', and she don' believe Miss Adelaide is gone till Robert show her.

“He say he bring her inside, and Miss Sarah Beth bathe her and lay her out like it be her funeral, then wrap her in sheets till they can bury her, and Sarah Beth, she can hardly breathe, she be cryin' so bad. But she takes care of Miss Adelaide, and then take care of that baby.”

Mathilda began speaking faster, as if to cleanse herself of the story, to unload a burden carried for decades.

“The waters come, more than ten feet in places, and they stay at the Heathmans'. It so cold outside, they leaves the body on the back porch. Robert makes a boat with Mrs. Heathman's dining room chairs, then goes and finds a real boat, and they goes to Miss Adelaide's home and bury her afore anyone come back. The water didn't stay so long up there, that part of the yard being higher than the rest. Sarah Beth say that where Adelaide belong, and where she want to be.”

I was sobbing now, remembering my dreams where I was lying in the hole and somebody was shoveling dirt over my face. Even knowing that Adelaide was already dead, I still couldn't stop thinking of her young life taken, and the daughter who would grow up without her. I stood and walked toward the window, staring out without really seeing anything, but unable to look at Mathilda.

“But why bury her like that? Why didn't Sarah Beth call the police?”

There was a long pause before Mathilda spoke again. “Because it what Sarah Beth done that get Adelaide kilt.” She was shaking her head, as if Sarah Beth were there and she was trying to scold her.

“She don' mean to hurt nobody. She want to make Miss Adelaide worry some by havin' them mens mess with Mr. John a little. Robert say Sarah Beth tell Mr. Berlini's fiancée that she think Mr. John had somethin' to do with Mr. Berlini being in the pond, and that he plannin' on headin' north. She promise to help the fiancée teach him a lesson.” Mathilda shook her head. “As smart as Sarah Beth think she is, she ain't. She don' know it, but she messin' with the wrong people, people who don' give warnin's. People who know how to hurt a man is to hurt those he love most. Robert say it must have been them that makes Mr. Peacock call Miss Adelaide, and they kills him, too.”

I pressed my hand across my mouth, trying to find the right words. “All because Sarah Beth was pregnant and Adelaide wouldn't lie for her to make Willie marry her.” I shook my head. “I don't understand. Why wouldn't Robert tell anybody what Sarah Beth had done? So she could be punished?” I swiped away the tears that ran down my face, hoping she couldn't hear them in my voice.

Very softly, she said, “He don' 'cause of me. 'Cause Sarah Beth and me, we was kin. Blood kin.”

I turned around slowly, recalling what Mathilda had said earlier and what I was only beginning to understand.
Because we knows a secret about the other.
“What?”

“Her daddy and my daddy—they brothers. Our uncle Leon, he in charge of the stills at the Ellis plantation. Sarah Beth's real mama, she half-white, and she die in childbed. But that baby was born beautiful and just as white as cotton, on account of her daddy, Gerald, being a light-skinned Negro. Her daddy, he ain't got no use for a white baby
and no mama, so they left her on the Heathmans' doorstep on account of them having no babies, even though they buried five of them.”

“And Sarah Beth knew that?”

Mathilda shook her head. “Not at first. Her mama and daddy never knows, though I think they's ashamed she found on they doorstep. They never put her name in the Bible 'cause of that, 'cause she ain't worthy to be a real Heathman, and I know it hurt Sarah Beth deep. But that friend of Willie's, Chas, he knows where she come from. He got in a fight with Leon about the price of his hooch, and somehow it came out. Chas told Sarah Beth, tryin' to get some of what she already givin' to Willie, but she say go ahead and say what you want, 'cause nobody believe it. And she right. But she knew. She go to Leon and ask him and he tells her the truth. That's when I found out, too. We was first cousins—her just as white as can be and me darker 'n a raisin.”

I pressed my forehead against the window, needing the coolness of the glass against my skin. “That's why she wanted Willie to marry her. If she had a mixed-race baby with dark skin, Sarah Beth would at least have a husband's name and protection.” I shook my head. “But poor Adelaide, she didn't know. Otherwise she might have done things differently.”

I sat down on her bed, not wanting to be close to her, feeling even more drained than I had when I'd arrived. “Have you known all this time?”

“I figure some out on my own, and what I don' know Robert tol' me on his deathbed. Until then I happy thinkin' she die by accident in the water. When Robert pass, Sarah Beth, she gone, too, so I told myself it be better to let people believe what they already do. I see Miss Adelaide's haint, though. That's why I put up my bottle tree. I just don' know for a long spell who it was.”

She turned her head toward the window. “We all do what we thinks is best at the time. I couldn't bring Adelaide back, so they no sense in taking more lives. Things don' always work out the way we think, and there ain't no way to pay for mistakes except to learn from them.”

My hands were clenched again, and I didn't have the willpower to pull them apart. “So three generations of us Walker women grew up believing that the only way to find ourselves was to leave this place, regardless of who we left behind.” I felt a glimmer of anger, something
I welcomed over the gaping emptiness. “So what happened . . . after the flood?”

“Miss Louise and me raise Miss Bootsie, and Sarah Beth some, too. She and Willie get married—I think they's guilty 'cause of what happen' to Miss Adelaide and feels it's they right thing, and Emmett born six months later. Willie, he stay drunk most of the time, and dies when he stumbling drunk and slips on the marble floor in the Heathmans' house and hits his head. Miss Sarah Beth, she get real involved in her church, and when the crash came, she help feed the poor until her daddy lose his house, and she come live with Willie's mama and daddy.

“She take real good care of Miss Bootsie, like she was her own, and then Miss Louise and Mr. Joe when they gets too old to carry on. Guilt can sure change a person.”

“And John?”

Her face softened. “That man always a gentleman. He run his own watch store, and he treat Emmett like a son, teachin' him things about them watches and clocks, and how to judge the weather by the clouds. He love Bootsie, too, but he leave her raisin' to us womenfolk. I think she look so much like Miss Adelaide it hurt him too much to look at her. He only live 'bout twenty more years. His car crash into a tree one night and he gets kilt. No other car, and he don' drink, so nobody know for sure what happened, but I thinks he just gets tired of livin' without his Adelaide. I figure it a blessin' he never know the truth.”

“And the mob left him alone?”

“I figure they thought he be punished enough, and then Prohibition was over and they's no need for him. He was finally free.”

I held the ring tightly, the little letters on top warming my skin like a mother's touch, too exhausted to decide whether to stay or leave.

“They crows still come back to that cypress tree?”

I looked up at her, surprised that she knew that. “Yes. They do. Even after the tree fell over, they still came back.”

“You knows the story of the crows?”

“You mean that nursery rhyme you used to sing to me? It's kind of hard to forget.”

She shook her head. “No. I means the real story. How they mates for life, and generations of they same family come back to they same nest every year, with everybody takin' turns to feed they babies.
Sometimes one of they chil'ren leave the nest and don' come back for years. But then they do, and the family welcomes they back like they always been there.”

“I didn't know that,” I said, remembering the crows and my apprehension of them—no doubt fostered by Mathilda's nursery rhyme.

“You needs to plant another tree for they crows, so they have a home.”

“Funny,” I said. “Chloe told me the same thing—but because she thought I'd need a place to sit under with my grandchildren.”

“Um-hmm,” she said, nodding as if I'd just explained the miracles of the universe. “So, you done chasin' ghosts?”

“I have no idea. I thought knowing the truth would somehow set me free. Would validate my life in some way. It's like for generations our whole lives have been based on a lie.”

She reached out her hands and I sat beside her again, her fragile bones settling within mine. “No, Vivi. All you Walker women has more love in your hearts than I see in most people—and I seen lots in my days. It take a lot of love for a mother to let go of her own chil'ren. Mos' don' have the strength for that.” She squeezed my hand with surprising strength, the ring digging into my palm. “That what your life be. That what be in your blood.”

I took a deep breath. “I've got to go. Thank you for telling me the truth. It was hard to hear, and I know it was hard to tell it, but I'm glad to know what happened to my great-grandmother. I think we can bury her now—properly.”

“Come back to see me, Vivi.”

I leaned down and kissed her forehead and forced a smile, even though she couldn't see it. “I will.”

“And don't forget to brings me some food.”

“Promise,” I said, gathering up my purse and car keys and letting myself out of the room.

I took my time driving home, stopping first at the Ellis plantation, now a total ruin and barely accessible from the road, then past the old Heathman mansion, converted since I'd been gone to a bed-and-breakfast. Then I returned to the old house Adelaide had loved and where she'd borne her daughter.

As I climbed the stairs inside, I paused by the watermark that
showed how high the water rose during the time of the flood, running my fingers over the plaster as if it could conjure ghosts. Then I went up to my room, where I placed another call to Chloe that went directly to voice mail. I lay awake, staring at the drooping butterflies on my wallpaper until I fell into a deep sleep, where I dreamed I lay on the ground beneath the cypress, the limbs so thick with crows that I couldn't see the sky.

Vivien Walker Moise

INDIAN
MOU
ND
, MISSISSIPPI
JULY
2013

I
spent most of my time in the weeks after my visit with Mathilda in the garden with my mother. Tommy had gone ahead and cut up the old tree and had already fixed my gate and rebuilt the fence. He was now repairing his roof, and promising me that with the wood that was left over, he'd start rebuilding Bootsie's old greenhouse and the garden beds for the larger vegetables that took more space and had longer growing times—melons, pumpkins, squash, and sweet potatoes. And I had plans to plant tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and definitely sweet corn. I had an almost physical craving to be growing something, to be useful. To help fill the emptiness left by Chloe.

Carol Lynne would help me sometimes, pulling weeds or trimming dead leaves, but most of the time she'd sit in one of the green chairs and watch me with a look of anticipation, as if I needed somebody else to remind me that it was time for the second act.

I'd taken over for Cora, and helped my mother get up in the morning and dress so that we could have breakfast together at nine. Tommy and I had even managed to get her to see a doctor, who'd prescribed some pills that might help her memory, and might slow down the loss
of what she still had. It was the best medicine could offer right now, and I finally accepted that she really would never get better. I remembered the resentment I'd had of her and her illness when I'd first returned. The shame burned, but it also made me determined to make it up to her. To make sure we both were here in the moment, appreciating what we had. What we'd always had but had been too busy looking elsewhere to realize.

Our roles had been reversed, and I was now the mother, and she my child. I reasoned it gave me purpose, and when people began to assume I was staying to take care of her, I let them believe it. It was so much easier than explaining that I had no place else to go.

Sheriff Adams had visited Mathilda to hear her story, and when she was finished he'd declared that he could close the case. The final results from the crime lab had come in, letting us know that Adelaide had been five feet, seven inches, about one hundred and thirty pounds, and one foot was slightly larger than the other. No cause of death could be determined, but we no longer needed the bones to tell us how she'd died. I'd felt numb when the sheriff called to tell me, feeling no closure or sense of accomplishment. But it had inspired me to purchase a cypress sapling, bringing it home strapped into the trunk of my Jaguar.

I left voice messages for Chloe every day, having perfected the two-minute message so I could finish before being beeped off. I gave her a travelogue of sorts, telling her what was going on in her plot of the garden, and what Cotton was up to—including how I'd cried when he had to get his shots, and how funny he looked with the cone of shame on his head when I'd had him neutered. More important, I let her know that he had no microchip and nobody had responded to any of the flyers I'd put up everywhere. I told her about Carol Lynne, and how sometimes she'd remember random things, like how mosquitoes liked me but not Tommy, and how when I was four I'd gone trick-or-treating as Dorothy from
The Wizard of Oz
.

I didn't know if she ever listened to my messages, but I kept calling, having nothing but hope to go on. According to the restraining order, I wasn't supposed to. But if Mark decided to take me to court, I could always mention that he'd allowed Chloe to stay with me for more than a month while he was on his honeymoon.

The dog had become my shadow, and I welcomed his company.
Cora had cut back on her hours, since I was there now to see to my mother's needs, and when Tommy wasn't working, he was spending time with Carrie Holmes.

The flowerpots were now all filled with flowers—flowers I'd purchased at a nursery with a muttered apology to Bootsie and a promise that I'd grow my own next year—and I'd decided it was time to start making some of the repairs to the house that had remained undone since Bootsie's death. The house needed repainting, and it would remain yellow. I couldn't imagine it any other color. The gutters needed cleaning, and a few windowsills needed replacing. And the leak in Chloe's ceiling needed fixing. I was almost afraid to stop moving, to stop doing, knowing that if I did I'd start thinking about how Chloe was still gone.

Every evening Cotton would lie down on the front porch until the sun set, his gaze focused on the front drive just in case Chloe reappeared. After a while, I started to join him out there, too, leaving my mother inside in front of one of the TV shows that she seemed to enjoy. Even though I tried to look at everything except the front drive, that was where my eyes always seemed to be fixed when the night finally stole the last light of day.

It was near sunset on a weeknight toward the end of the month when we heard the sound of an engine. I knew it wasn't Tommy—he was driving Carrie and her kids to a Little League baseball tournament in Memphis. Cotton's ears perked up as I sat forward in my rocking chair, knowing it couldn't be Chloe but unable to stop myself. I put my hand on Cotton's collar, then stood and waited until I recognized the white pickup.

“You change your phone number or something?” Tripp asked as he exited his truck.

“No. Why?”

“Because I keep calling and you never call me back.”

“You haven't left me any messages.”

He didn't respond as he climbed up onto the porch and scratched the dog behind his ears.

“You didn't,” I repeated.

“I know. I didn't think I needed to.”

He sat down without being invited.

“How've you been?”

I sat back down in my chair. “Great.”

He looked at me with a raised eyebrow.

“I am.”

“I didn't disagree.”

I sighed, not wanting to have this conversation with him. Because it would lead to dark places where I didn't want to go, to thoughts of the quick fixes that offered me oblivion every time I felt the hurt of Chloe's absence, or when my mother forgot to put on her shoes.

“I enjoyed your article in the newspaper last Sunday. About the blues singer Robert Johnson. Most people don't remember him anymore. Good to know there're a couple of biographies we can check out when the library opens.”

“That's the point. I'm supposed to be getting people excited about the new library opening with my articles. The editor says that it's so popular he might make it into a permanent thing. Which is good, I guess, because the more I work organizing the archives, the more interesting things I'm finding.”

“Can't you take a compliment?”

I blinked at him, trying to remember what it was he'd said that could have been a compliment, and then bit my lip as I realized that I barely knew what one was anymore. “Thank you,” I said. “If that's what you wanted to tell me, you could have just called.”

“But you wouldn't have answered, so we'd be back at square one. If I didn't know better, I'd think you were avoiding me. But then I thought, ‘Why would Vivi be avoiding me?' I can't imagine. Unless she's afraid I'm going to ask her questions she doesn't want to answer. Kind of like it's always been between us.”

I moved to stand but he put his hand on my arm. “Don't worry. I really just came over to give you this. I cleaned it up so you can wear it if you want.” He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a long chain with a little ring dangling from the end. “I thought you might want this back, now that you have the matching one.”

I raised my eyebrow in question.

“I went to visit Mathilda and she told me. I wish I'd been there with you. I'm sorry—I knew it would be a sad story, but I didn't quite expect that.”

I held out my palm and the ring touched my hand first, like an anchor, the chain pooling on top of it. “Thanks.” I reached around to the back of my neck and unhooked the chain where I'd been wearing the other half of the ring. While Tripp watched, I matched them up so that we could read them together for the first time.
I love you forever.
I slid the ring from my small chain and put it on the bigger chain before hanging it around my neck as if it had always belonged there.

Tripp slid back in his chair as if preparing to stay a while. “Jessica from Butler's Funeral Home called to let me know they'd be handling the arrangements and to have the crime lab send them the remains. You could have called me directly, you know.”

“I guess. I've been . . . busy.”

He pushed back and forth on his rocker, silent as always.

“I have been,” I said, wishing my voice didn't sound so defensive. “I've signed up for a couple of classes at the junior college. Thinking maybe I'd like to be a landscape architect. Might as well have something to do while I'm here taking care of Mama.”

I fell silent, and the two of us seemed to be waiting each other out. My hands gripped the arms of the chair, my knuckles whitening as I listened to the soft creaking of the chairs and the sounds of the cicadas saying good night.

Tripp finally spoke. “Have you talked to Chloe?”

I stood. “I have to go in now. Thanks for stopping by. . . .”

Tripp stood, too, and took my arm. “Vivi, stop trying to run every time you feel uncomfortable.”

“I'm not running. See? I'm here.”

“I see. And I'm glad to know you're staying here to take care of your mama, and I'm glad you've found some peace with her. God knows you both deserve it. And you're doing your gardening and you're writing your articles and you're taking classes—and that's all great. But are you happy?”

For once I had no answer, and I reversed our roles, standing there without saying a word.

“Do you remember what I told you?”

“Please, Tripp, just go.”

“You can run all over this earth and never find what you want until you know what it is you're looking for.”

I turned, and the dog didn't turn with me. He stayed next to Tripp, as if picking sides. As if I could take one more loss.

“Tommy gave me your mother's diary to read—said it would help me understand you a bit better.”

I frowned at him, promising myself I'd have words with my brother later, but Tripp didn't look apologetic.

“That and what I've learned about your family ever since that tree fell down tells me one thing for sure: You didn't come from a line of quitters. They made lots of mistakes, but they always came back. And they fought hard to come back. Look at your own mother, Vivi. How many times did she fail to stay clean? And she kept trying until she could. And even Bootsie. She was beaten so badly that she had to go away for six years and find her way back for her daughter. It's never been about their leaving. It's all about the fight in them that brought them back. That's who you are. That's your people, Vivi.”

I remembered Mathilda saying the same thing, and for a moment I thought maybe that was where he'd heard it. Or maybe I was just the only one stupid enough not to have figured it out.

He moved down the steps, Cotton following him with his eyes as if he wanted to go with him. I grabbed the dog's collar just in case.

“Call me if you need me. You've got the number. But I don't think I'm going to be calling you anymore. You've got to figure out what you want, and nobody else can tell you what that is.”

I just stared after him until his truck disappeared. It felt like I'd already spent a lifetime standing here on this porch or in the drive looking back, watching people disappear from my life.

The touch of my mother's hand on my shoulder startled me. She was looking at the fading puff of dust from Tripp's departing truck. “I miss her.”

Chloe
. “I miss her, too.”

“Is she coming back?”

I shook my head. “No. I don't think so.”

“Why not?”

I tried to think of something to say that was close enough to the truth. “Because she's very far away.”

“Then why don't you go get her?”

I met my mother's eyes, prepared to argue with her logic. To tell her
that it wasn't that easy. But Tripp's words hounded me, battered at my brain and made it impossible for me to open my mouth with any argument at all. About the one true thing. About who my people were and all they'd given me. About being happy. And suddenly it was as if that window where I'd only been seeing a sliver of light had been thrown open, the whole world suddenly shimmering with possibilities.

I looked at my mother again, seeing for the first time the girl she'd once been, the woman who'd failed so many times but hadn't quit. The mother who'd waited so long for me to stop chasing my own ghosts and come home. I hugged her tightly. “Thank you, Mama. Thank you so much.”

“You're welcome, Vivi.” She pulled back, her eyes searching mine. “For what?”

“For teaching me more than I ever realized.”

She touched my cheek, and for a moment I thought she recognized me, who I was right then, and she smiled at me. Her real smile, the one I remembered. “I love you, Vivi.”

“I love you, too, Mama.”

And then the look was gone and she was just smiling at me. I grabbed her hand and led her inside, while behind us the red ball of sun melted into the rich alluvial soil of the Mississippi Delta.