Blackwood Farm (19 page)

“Goblin went sort of mad on account of my state. He began to pinch me incessantly, and trying to lift my left hand, and rushing towards the computer and making gestures that he wanted to write.

“I remember staring at him as he stood over there at the desk, beckoning to me, and realizing for what it's worth that his pinches weren't any worse than they had ever been, and that he couldn't make the lights blink more than very little, and that when he pulled my hair I hardly felt it, and that I could ignore him without consequence if I chose.

“But I loved him. I didn't want to kill him. No, I didn't. And the moment had come to tell him what had happened. I dragged myself out of the chair and I went to the computer and I tapped out:

“ ‘Lynelle is dead.'

“For a long moment he read this message and then I said it out loud to him, but I received no response.

“ ‘Come on, Goblin, think. She's dead.' I said. ‘You're a spirit and now she's a spirit.'

“But there was no response.

“Suddenly I felt the old pressure on my left hand, with the tight sensation of fingers curling around it, and then he tapped out:

“ ‘Lynelle. Lynelle is gone?'

“I nodded. I was crying and I wanted now to be left alone. I told him aloud that she was dead. But Goblin took my left hand again and I watched it claw the keyboard:

“ ‘What is dead?'”

“In a fit of annoyance and heightened grief, I hammered out:

“ ‘No longer here. Gone. Dead. Body has no Life. No Spirit in her body. Body left over. Body buried in the ground. Her Spirit is gone.'

“But he simply couldn't understand. He grabbed my hand again and tapped out, ‘Where is Lynelle dead?' and ‘Where is Lynelle gone?' and then finally, ‘Why are you crying for Lynelle?'

“A cold apprehension came over me, a cold form of concentration.

“I typed in ‘Sad. No more Lynelle. Sad. Crying. Yes.' But other thoughts were brewing in my mind.

“He snatched for my hand again, but he was weaker on account of his earlier efforts, and all he could type was her name.

“At that moment, as I stared at the black monitor and the green letters, I saw what looked like the reflection of a pinpoint of light in the monitor, and, wondering what it could be, I moved my head from side to side to block the light or get a clearer look at it. For one second it became distinctly the light of a candle. I saw the wick as well as the flame.

“At once I turned around and looked behind me. I saw nothing in my room that could have produced this reflection. Absolutely nothing. Needless to say, I had no candles. The only candles were on a hallway altar downstairs.

“I turned back to the monitor. There was no pinpoint of light. There was no candle flame. Again I moved my head from side to side and turned my eyes at every possible angle. No light. No reflected candle flame.

“I was astonished. I sat quiet for a long time, distrusting my senses, and then, unable to deny what I saw, I tapped out to Goblin the question, ‘Did you see the candle flame?' Again there came his monotonous and panicky answers: ‘Where Lynelle?' ‘Lynelle gone.' ‘What is gone?'

“I went back to my chair. Goblin appeared for a moment, in a vague flash, and there came the pinches and the hair pulling, but I lay indifferent to him thinking only, praying only in a bizarre way of praying backwards, that Lynelle had never really known how badly she was injured, that she hadn't suffered in her coma, that she hadn't known pain. What if she had seen the car careening into the truck? What if she had heard some insensitive person at her bedside saying that her face, her beautiful face, had been crushed?

“She never suffered. That was the story.

“She never suffered. Or so they said.

“I knew I had seen the light of that candle! I had seen it plainly in the monitor.

“I murmured to Goblin, ‘You tell me where she is, Goblin. Tell me if her spirit went into the light.' There came no answer. He couldn't grasp it. He didn't know.

“I hammered at him. ‘You're a spirit. You ought to know. We are made of bodies and souls. I am body and soul. Lynelle was body and soul. Soul is spirit. Where did Lynelle's spirit go?'

“He gave nothing back but his infantile answers. It was all he could do.

“Finally, I went to the computer. I wrote it out: ‘I am body and soul. The body is what you pinch. The soul is what speaks to you, what thinks, what looks at you through my eyes.'

“Silence. Then came the vague formation of the apparition again, translucent, face without detail; then it dissolved.

“I went on typing on the computer keyboard: ‘The soul—that part of me which speaks to you and loves you and knows you—that part is sometimes called spirit. And when my body dies my spirit or my soul will leave my body. Do you understand?'

“I felt his hand clamp onto my left hand.

“ ‘Don't leave your body,' he wrote. ‘Don't die. I will cry.'

“For a long moment I pondered. He had made the connection. Yes. But I wanted more from him, and a terrifying urgency gripped me, a feeling very near panic.

“ ‘You are a spirit,' I wrote. ‘You have no body. You are pure spirit. Don't you know where Lynelle's spirit has gone? You must know. You should know. There must be a place where spirits live. A place where spirits are. You
do
know.'

“There was a long silence, but I knew he was right beside me.

“I felt him grip my hand. ‘Don't leave your body,' he wrote again. ‘I will cry and cry.'

“ ‘But where is the home of the spirits?' I wrote. ‘Where is the place where spirits live, like I live in this house?'

“It was useless. I typed it out in two dozen different ways. He couldn't grasp it. And it was not long before he began to ask, ‘Why did Lynelle's spirit leave her body?'

“I wrote out the description of the accident. Silence. And finally, his store of energy being exhausted and there being no rainfall to help him, he was absent.

“And alone, cold and frightened, I curled up in my chair and went to sleep.

“A great gulf had opened between me and Goblin.

“It had been widening for all the years that I knew Lynelle, and it was now immeasurable. My doppelgänger loved me and was as ever fastened to me but no longer knew my soul. And what was all the more ghastly to me was that he didn't know what he was himself. He couldn't speak of himself as a spirit. He would have done so if he could. He could not.

“As the days dragged on, Aunt Queen made plans to go off again to St. Petersburg, Russia, to rejoin two cousins she had left waiting there at the Grand Hotel. She prevailed upon me to go with her.

“I was amazed. St. Petersburg, Russia.

“She said in a very sweet and winning way that it was either go to college or see the world.

“I told her plainly I wasn't ready for either. I was still hurt by Lynelle's death.

“I said that I wanted to go, and in the future I would go with her if she called me, but for now I couldn't leave home. I needed a year off. I needed to read and absorb more fully many of the lessons that Lynelle had taught me (that really won the day for me!), and to hang around the house. I wanted to help Pops and Sweetheart with the guests. Mardi Gras was coming. I'd go with Sweetheart into New Orleans to see the parades from the house of her sister. And we always had a crowd at Blackwood Farm after that. And then there was the Azalea Festival, and the Easter crowd. And I needed to be home for the Christmas banquet. I couldn't think of seeing the world.

“When I look back on that time I realize now that I had slipped into a state of profound anxiety in which the simplest comforts seemed beyond reach. The gaiety of the guests seemed foreign. I felt afraid at twilight. Large vases of flowers frightened me. Goblin seemed accidental and unmysterious, an ignoramus of a spirit who could deliver me nothing of consolation or companionship. I was apprehensive on those inevitable gray days when there was no sun to be seen.

“Perhaps I had a premonition that there were terrible times to come.”

9

“NOT SIX MONTHS
had passed before Little Ida died in my bed one night, and it was Jasmine who found her when she came to wake me for breakfast, wondering why her mother had not come down. I was hustled away from the bed with crazy gestures and summonses and blank looks from Goblin and finally Pops dragging me out of the bedroom. And I, a spoilt brat who had just woken up, was furious.

“Only an hour later, when the doctor and the funeral director came, did they tell me what had gone down. Little Ida was the angel of my youth as surely as Sweetheart was, and she had died so quiet, just like that.

“She looked tiny in the coffin, like a wizened child.

“The funeral was in New Orleans, where Little Ida was buried in a tomb in St. Louis no. 1, which her family had had for well over a hundred and fifty years. A host of colored and black relations were in attendance, and I was thankful that it was all right to cry, if not even wail out loud.

“Of course all the white people—and there were plenty from out our way—were a little more subdued than the black people, but a good commingling shed tears.

“As for my mattress back at home, Jasmine and Lolly flipped it over. And that was all there was to that.

“I framed the best picture there was of Little Ida, a photograph taken of her at Aunt Ruthie's house in New Orleans during Mardi Gras, and I hung that on the wall.

“In the kitchen now there was general crying, Jasmine and Lolly sobbing about their mother whenever the mood came on them, and Big Ramona, Little Ida's mother, went silent and quit the big house altogether, sitting in her rocking chair all day for several weeks.

“I went out there again and again with soup for Big Ramona. I tried to talk to her. All she said was: ‘A woman oughtn't have to bury her own child.'

“Crying came and went with me.

“I took to thinking of Lynelle constantly, and now Little Ida was mixed up with it too, and each day it seemed that Little Ida was more dead and gone than the day before.

“Goblin accepted that Little Ida was dead, but Goblin had never been too crazy about Little Ida—certainly he had loved Lynelle more—and so he took it rather well.

“One day when I sat at the kitchen table paging through a mail-order catalog, I saw that they had flannel nightshirts for men and flannel gowns for women.

“I ordered a whole slew of these, and when the goods arrived, I put on the nightshirt in the evening and went out to Big Ramona with one of the gowns.

“Now let me clarify here that Big Ramona is called Big Ramona not because she's big but because she is the grandmother on the property, just as Sweetheart might have been called Big Mama if she had ever allowed.

“So to go on with my story, I came out to this little mite of a woman, with her long white hair in its nighttime braid, and I said:

“ ‘You come on and sleep with me. I need you. I'm alone with Goblin and Little Ida's gone after all these years.'

“For a long time Big Ramona just looked at me. Her eyes were like two nickels. But then a little fire came into them, and she took the gown from me and looked it over, and, finding it proper, she came into the house.

“Thereafter we slept spoon fashion in that big bed, flannel to flannel, and she was my bedfellow as ever Little Ida had been.

“Big Ramona had the silkiest skin on the planet, and, having kept her hair long all her life, had a great wealth of it, which she always plaited as she sat on the side of the bed.

“I took to sitting with her as she went through the ritual, and we talked over all the trivia of the day, and then we said our prayers.

“Now Little Ida and I had pretty much let prayers go by the boards, but with Big Ramona we prayed for everybody in one fell swoop, reciting three Hail Marys and three Our Fathers and never failing to add for the deceased:

Let perpetual light shine upon them, O Lord,

and may their souls and the souls of all

the faithful departed rest in peace.

“Then we'd chat about how it was a blessing Little Ida never knew real old age, or suffered illness, and that she was surely up there with God. Same with Lynelle.

“Finally, after all that, Big Ramona would ask if Goblin was with us, and then she said:

“ ‘Well, you tell Goblin it's time to sleep now,' and Goblin settled down beside me and kind of merged with me, and off I went to sleep.

“Gradually, over a period of several months, a semi-calm came over me entirely due to Big Ramona, and I was astonished to discover that Pops and the Shed Men, and even Jasmine and Lolly, credited me with kindness to Big Ramona in her time of grief. It was all our grief. And Big Ramona was saving me from a kind of dark panic which had begun in me with Lynelle and was now creeping closer with the loss of Little Ida.

“I took to going out fishing in the swamp with Pops, something I'd never been all that crazy about before. I got to like it out there as we poked our way through in the pirogue, and sometimes we went deep into the swamps, beyond our usual territory, and I got a kind of fearless curiosity about the swamps, and whether we might find Manfred Blackwood's island, but that we did not do.

“One afternoon, late, we came upon a huge old cypress tree that had a rusted chain around it, grown into it in parts, and a mark carved on it that looked to me to be an arrow. It was an ancient tree, and the chain was made of large links. I was for pressing on in the direction of the arrow, but Pops said no, it was late, and there was nothing out there anyway, and we might get lost if we went any further.

“It was all the same with me because I didn't entirely believe all the stories about Manfred and the Hermitage, and I was sticky all over from the humid air, and so we went home.

“Then Mardi Gras came, which meant that Sweetheart had to go to her sister Ruthie's house, and this year she really didn't want to go. She claimed she was feeling poorly, she had no appetite, not even for King cake, which was already arriving daily from New Orleans, and she thought she might be coming down with the flu.

“But at last she decided to go into the city for all the parades, because Ruthie was depending on her and she didn't want the crowd of her elderly aunts and uncles and all her cousins to be disappointed that she wasn't there.

“I didn't go with her, though she wanted me to, and though her cough worsened (she called Pops every day and I usually spoke to her too), she did stay for the entire time.

“On Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent and the very day she returned, she went to the doctor without anybody prodding her to do it. Her cough was simply too bad.

“I think they knew it was cancer as soon as they saw the X rays, but they had to do the CAT scan, and then the bronchoscopy, and finally a biopsy by needle through Sweetheart's back. These meant uncomfortable days in the hospital, but before the final pathology report came in Sweetheart was already breathing with such difficulty that they had put her on ‘full oxygen' and had given her morphine ‘to lessen the sensation of gasping for breath.' She was in a half sleep all of the time.

“At last they broke the news to us in the corridor outside her room. It was lymphoma in both lungs and it had metastasized, meaning she had cancer all through her system, and they did not expect her to last more than a few days. She couldn't choose for herself whether she wanted an attempt at chemotherapy. She was in a deep coma, her breath and blood pressure getting fainter all the time.

“My eighteenth birthday came and went with nothing much to mark it, except that I got a new pickup truck and drove it back to the hospital as fast as I could to watch by the bed.

“Pops went into a protracted state of shock.

“This big and capable man who always seemed to be the one making the decisions was a shuddering wreck of his former self. As Sweetheart's sister and aunts and uncles and cousins came and went, Pops remained silent and inconsolable.

“He took turns with me in the room, and so did Jasmine and Lolly.

“Finally Sweetheart's eyes opened and would not be closed, and her breathing became mechanical as if she herself had nothing to do with the rhythmic heave of her chest.

“I ignored Goblin. Goblin seemed senseless to me, a part of childhood to be repudiated. I hated the mere sight of Goblin with his inane look of innocence and questioning eyes. I felt him hovering. Finally, when I could endure it no longer, I went down into the pickup truck and told Goblin that what was going on was sad. It was what had happened to Lynelle and to Little Ida, that Sweetheart was going away.

“ ‘Goblin, this is bad,' I told him. ‘This is awful. Sweetheart's not going to wake up.' He looked grieved and I saw tears in his eyes, but maybe he was only imitating mine.

“ ‘Go away, Goblin,' I said. ‘Be respectful and decent. Be quiet so that I can watch with Sweetheart as I should do.' This seemed to work some change in him and he ceased to torment me, but I could feel him near me day and night.

“When it came time to shut off the oxygen, which was by then the only thing keeping Sweetheart alive, Pops could not be in the room.

“I was in the room, and if Goblin was there I didn't know it. Aunt Ruthie and the nurse had the orders from the doctor. Jasmine was there and so was Lolly and so was Big Ramona.

“Big Ramona told me to stand close to the head of the bed and hold Sweetheart's hand.

“Off came the oxygen mask, and Sweetheart didn't gasp for breath. She just breathed with a bigger heave of her chest, and then her mouth opened just a little and blood poured down her chin.

“It was a horrible sight. Nobody expected it. I think Aunt Ruthie went to pieces and somebody was calming her. My focus was on Sweetheart. I grabbed a wad of paper tissues and went to blot the blood, saying, ‘I've got it, Sweetheart.'

“But more and more blood came, sliding down her chin, and then Sweetheart's tongue appeared between her lips, pushing out more blood. Someone handed me a wet towel. I gathered up the blood, saying, ‘It's all right, Sweetheart, I'm taking care of it.' Pretty soon I had all the blood. And then, after four or five widely spaced breaths, Sweetheart breathed no more. Big Ramona told me to close her eyes, which I did.

“After the doctor came in and pronounced her dead, really dead—I went out into the hall.

“I felt a dreadful elation, a horror that seemed manic when I look back upon it, a hideous safety from the consequences of Sweetheart's death due to the giant hospital enfolding us, the seamless fluorescent light and the nurses at their station very nearby. It was wild and pleasurable, this feeling. It was as if no other burden on earth existed. It was a great suspension, and I hardly felt the tiled floor beneath my feet.

“Patsy was standing there. She was leaning against the wall, looking all too typical with her huge yellow hair, wearing one of her fringed white leather outfits, her nails glittering with pearlescent polish, her feet in high white boots.

“Only then, as I stared at her, at her painted mask of a face, did I realize that Patsy had never come to the hospital once. I went into a silent stammer. Then I spoke.

“ ‘She's dead,' I said, and Patsy came back fiercely:

“ ‘I don't believe it! I just saw her on Mardi Gras Day.'

“I explained that the oxygen had been turned off and it had been very peaceful; Sweetheart had not gasped or suffered, she had never known of any danger, she had never known fear.

“Patsy suddenly flew into a rage. Dropping her furious voice into a loud hissing whisper (we were near the nurses' station) she demanded to know why we had not told her we were turning off the oxygen, and how could we do such a thing to her (meaning herself); Sweetheart was her mother, and who gave us the right?

“Pops appeared, coming round the corner from the visitors' waiting room, and I had never seen him so angry as he was then. He whipped Patsy around to face him and told her to get out of the hospital or he'd kill her, and then he turned to me, shaking all over, choked up and silent and trembling, and then he went into Sweetheart's room.

“Patsy made a move towards the door of the room, but she stopped and turned to me and said a stream of mean things. They were statements like, ‘You're always the center of it. You were there, weren't you? Oh, yes, Tarquin, everything for Tarquin.' I can't clearly remember what her words were. Lots of Sweetheart's people were gathering. Patsy went away.

“I left the hospital, got in the pickup truck, vaguely aware that Jasmine was climbing in the seat next to me, drove over to the Cracker Barrel Restaurant, went in and ordered lots of pecan pancakes, slopped them with butter and ate them till I was nearly sick.

“Jasmine sat there opposite me, nursing a cup of black coffee and smoking cigarette after cigarette, her dark face very smooth and her manner calm, and then Jasmine said very distinctly:

“ ‘She suffered maybe about two weeks. Mardi Gras Day was February twenty-seventh. She was at the parades. And here it is March fourteenth. That's how long she really suffered, and that's not all that bad.'

“I couldn't speak. But when the waiter appeared I ordered more pecan pancakes, and I put so much butter on them they were swimming in butter. And Jasmine just went on smoking, and that's how it was.

“The undertaker in New Orleans did right by Sweetheart, as she looked exquisite against the satin in the coffin, with her makeup just the proper way. There was a little eyebrow pencil where she always wore it, and a shade of Revlon lipstick that she loved. She was in her beige gabardine dress, the one she wore in spring for the tours, and there was her white orchid on her lapel.

“Aunt Queen was inconsolable. We clung to each other through much of the proceedings.

“Before they shut the coffin, Pops took the pearls from around Sweetheart's neck and the wedding band from her hand. He said he wanted to save these things, and he heaved a sigh and he bent and kissed her—the last one of us to do it—and the coffin was shut.