Burying the Honeysuckle Girls (11 page)

It was a lie. A ridiculous lie. My father had put her in an institution and, in despair, she’d killed herself. But Dad couldn’t tell that story. An aneurysm in the ambulance on the way to the hospital looked infinitely better on his resume. It put him in the role of the sympathetic widower, made people want to vote for him.

I, on the other hand, wanted to find my father and smash both my fists into his face. I clenched into a curve over the comforter. Balled my fists.

Jay spoke. “So then, after all that, Elder just showed up out of the blue at Walter and Val’s to take Trix home?”

“Well,” Rowe said. “Not exactly.”

I sat up. Snuck a look at Rowe.

“After Bienville Square, when Trix asked me to take her to Birmingham, we stopped at a gas station.” His face sagged, and he seemed to take a deep interest in the pattern of the carpet between his feet. “Trix was asleep. While I was filling up, I found a pay phone. I called Elder and told him where we were. I told him he should come get her. It was my fault.”

I didn’t care anymore what Rowe Oliver thought of me, whether he was afraid of me or not. I turned away, hid my face in the disgusting hotel comforter, and wept.

Chapter Fifteen

October 1937

Sybil Valley, Alabama

As the days passed, Jinn kept thinking about the dismembered calf, her wine money, and Hollywood. She’d seen in the paper that one of Myrna Loy’s pictures was playing over in Chattanooga. It was called
Double Wedding
, a comedy with William Powell. She didn’t know him either but thought she would definitely like seeing it. She wondered if a person could just walk into a movie house alone.

She was thinking about the movie on her walk home from church, Walter and Collie trailing behind her, when she opened the door of their cabin and saw Howell in the kitchen. He was sitting at their small table, a glass of lemonade to his right and a wad of cash to his left. She pushed the kids back onto the front porch.

“Shoo,” she said. “Go play.”

Her mind worked quickly—she tried to imagine how Myrna Loy might stand and look at her husband, if by chance she found herself in this situation. She took a couple of deep breaths and smoothed the wisps of her hair that had sprung from her bun. Walked to the kitchen and stood in the doorway.

Howell pointed at the pile of bills on the table, then looked at her with raised eyebrows. His silence filled the warm room until Jinn felt a bead of sweat roll from her armpit into her elbow. She finally spoke.

“It’s my wine money,” she said, voice trembling.

“This ain’t no goddamn wine money. Try again.”

“It is.”

“You telling me Sadie and Jane Tifton and Aggie and them bought six hundred dollars’ worth of honeysuckle wine off a you?” He said
honeysuckle wine
like someone else might say “dog shit” or “head lice.”

I can go to Hollywood,
Jinn thought.
I can get a screen test.

She could also call the ladies from Chattanooga, for that matter. Ask them to drive her away in their silver dragon, show her where the buses left for California. She thought of that and, in the same instant, knew she would never do such a thing. Who would make sure her mama was looked after? Not her daddy. Not Howell. And the kids . . .

“Jinn?”

“I’m in business,” she said, her voice a croak.

“That so?”

She nodded.

“So, while I’m breaking my back, digging holes and planting pine saplings to put food on the table for this family, you got this—this
wine
money—tucked away in a hidey-hole in the cellar.” She swallowed, and he banged his palm on the table. “I will not have my wife hiding money from me. It ain’t fitting. It ain’t respectable.”

She nodded again, fast.

Then he told her how he’d found her out. While he was in Chattanooga buying a tractor part, he’d happened into a store on Market Street. The proprietor, deducing Howell was a man of discernment and extra cash and might have possibly worked up a powerful thirst since the law forbade saloons in this part of town, escorted him to a special room in the basement. There in neat rows on the shelves sat a dozen slim blue bottles of honeysuckle wine. Machine-printed labels with a honeysuckle vine curling around the gilt edges proclaimed, “Jinn’s Juice—The Most Refreshing!”

He came home (after buying one of the bottles and tasting it to make sure that, yes, by God, it was his wife’s honeysuckle wine), gone down to the cellar and smashed all the jugs. Including the jug with the money. Only it wasn’t one hundred dollars anymore. By that time, it had grown to six.

“Why were you hiding this money?” He leapt up. “What were you planning on doing with it?”

“Nothing.”

“You planning on running off?”

“No.”

“You got somebody on the side? Tell me, girl, were you gonna run off, leave me and the kids?”

She began to tremble and she could feel tears threaten, but she told her feet to stay planted right where they were. This wasn’t nothing she hadn’t heard a thousand times. And she could make it through to the end. She just had to tough it out.

Shy don’t set the world on fire.

“It’s Stocker, ain’t it?”

“No.”

“Goddamn Tom Stocker.”

“No, Howell. No.”

“Goddamn my-daddy-struck-gold-in-Georgia-so-all-I-do-is-sit-on-my-ass Tom Stocker. You know, I been to Georgia, little lady. And I ain’t heard nobody over there talking about Tom Stocker’s daddy. Mr. Gold Strike. Mr. Fancy Britches. Ain’t nobody over there ever heard a Tom Stocker’s daddy, which makes me think he got his money other ways.”

Jinn didn’t move. She didn’t even blink or breathe.

He cocked his head to the side and eyed her. “Why you think that peckerwood never got married?”

“He did, to Lucy.”

“I meant after she passed. He’s got a boy. Why hasn’t he got married again?”

“He’s still in love with Lucy.”

“Now Jinn, you know that’s bullshit. He’s in love with you.”

“No.”

For a minute, Howell looked tired of this line of argument, and his eyes roamed around the kitchen. He rubbed his jaw. Rubbed and rubbed and rubbed, until his blond beard bristled and his cheeks flushed a deeper red. Jinn’s heart spiked, a tiny leap of hope in her breast. Maybe he was done. But she was wrong, because when he turned back to her, she could see his eyes had hardened.

“I should tell your daddy,” he said in a low voice. “That’s what I should do.”

The hope melted away inside Jinn.

No.

He smiled at her then, a mean smile. He could probably see on her face his threat had frightened her. He straightened, puffed out his chest, and laid his hands flat on the table. He studied his nails, unusually neat for a farmer.

“If I tell your daddy, he’ll sure as shooting know how to handle this.”

“Howell—”

“I should drag you by the hair over to your daddy’s right now, that’s what I should do.”

“Please—”

“You’d tell
him
the truth, wouldn’t you?” She clasped her hands together underneath her apron to keep them from shaking. She would not run. She would not.

“Please, don’t tell him,” she whispered. “Please.”

He came at her, his hands already fists, and she curled herself toward the floor. She had one fleeting thought before he reached her: she hoped the children had, for once, disobeyed her and gone far, far past their property line.

He picked her up off the floor, squeezing her so hard she thought her ribs would snap. She gasped for air. Then, just when she thought she was going to faint, he spun her and slung her outward, sending her flying across the kitchen and into the table. Her head hit the corner and snapped back, and she fell to the floor. He walked to her, stood above her, panting. She cracked open her eyes and looked at his boots, so close to her now. They were old, caked with dried mud. There was blood on them too, from a rabbit or a squirrel. Or a deer he’d stolen from the mountain.

She forced herself to speak as steadily as she could. “I was saving the money for Walter. For college.”

The boots shifted a little, then headed to the sink. She heard the water run, and next thing she knew he was holding a dripping dishrag beside her. She took it, pressing it against the back of her head. No blood, thank God, but there was a nice-size lump.

“You shoulda said something.” His voice was gruff.

“I know. I’m sorry, Howell. It kinda snuck up on me.” The lie, the stuff about Walter and college, had come out as slick and easy as a six-pound baby. She should be ashamed. The truth was, the idea of saving the money for her son had never even occurred to her. She’d only ever thought of herself.

She decided to chance a look at her husband. His face had softened, his eyes glazed over. He was staring past her, lost in some kind of dream. Maybe one of Walter going to college over in Georgia, graduating in a cap and gown. Setting up a law practice or going to medical school. His eyes focused then, and he shook his head.

“I don’t like you keeping secrets. A woman can’t carry around money like this behind her husband’s back. It ain’t right.”

“Okay.”

“It don’t reflect on the husband.” He looked down at her and heaved a great sigh. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do with you, Jinn.”

He’d shuffled to the other side of the room, like the matter was done, but a voice in her head told her it wasn’t. It couldn’t be over and done, just like that. The voice told her to watch out, step careful. It sounded a lot like her mama.

Howell offered her his hand, and she took it. To show him the matter was settled, that he didn’t have anything to worry about, she smiled the most winsome smile she could muster. A Myrna Loy smile. After he helped her up and patted her bottom, he gathered up the scattered money, folded it neatly, and slid it in his pocket. She tiptoed out to call in the children.

Later that night, around about midnight, Jinn woke to an empty spot beside her in the bed, voices drifting up from the porch. She recognized them right away: Howell and her daddy. She couldn’t hear their words exactly, but she knew what was being said, all the same. They were making plans for her.

Chapter Sixteen

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Birmingham, Alabama

I awoke, cotton-mouthed and sweaty, and looked at the clock. A little after three in the afternoon. I was in my underwear, cocooned in the sheets. I must’ve shucked off my dress sometime in the night.

Jay was sitting on the other bed, in his boxers, on his phone and his iPad. He must’ve sensed I was awake, because he half turned, muttered into the phone, and hung up.

“The lawyer again?”

“Yep.”

“I don’t want to talk to him.”

“You don’t have to. You thirsty?”

He tossed me a bottle of water, and I guzzled it. He smiled at me, which made me think about how heinous I must look. Bed-head hair, sheet-creased skin, dragon breath. I felt like I hadn’t showered or eaten in days. I extricated myself from the sheets and put my feet on the floor.

And then everything from Rowe’s story came back to me—the Haldol, Bienville Square, Walter and Val, and the gun. But in the center of all of it, the question still remained: what had really happened to my mother? How had she died?

We’d been together that night, my mother and I. I remembered it in flashes, a kind of murky slide show of the past. I heard her voice, telling me to wait for the honeysuckle girl. But after that, it was so hard to pull the bits and pieces of memories together into a coherent story.

I suddenly straightened. “What’s the date?”

He quit tapping. “The eighteenth.”

Panic knifed through me.

“I need to figure out what the hell happened to my mother and my grandmother and stop this fucking freight train before it runs me over.”

He’d let Rowe go while I slept. Put him in the elevator and told him to catch a cab home. I think he expected me to blow up over that, but I was strangely still exhausted and decided to let it pass. The truth was, we couldn’t hold Rowe forever. And I had other things to do.

Jay also said he had come back to bed and held me all night. This part, I remembered—feeling him against me every hour or so when I woke up. I wasn’t used to sleeping with someone. Usually it made me feel hemmed in, claustrophobic. But something told me he was the only thing keeping me from going over the edge. So I clung to his arm all night like it was the only thing between me and utter despair.

“Well?” I said when he’d finished talking.

“Well what?” Now I had his full attention, bare chest, boxers, and all. The sight was more than a little disconcerting. I tried to stay focused on my anger, but I could feel it dissipating. Ebbing away.

I threw up my hands. “Didn’t you hear what Rowe said? I have to do something before it happens to me too. I have to get a handle on this before Wynn forces me into some horrible facility.”

“And to do that, you need to be strong. Well rested. Right?”

I sighed and massaged my temples. This line of conversation was going nowhere. I needed to keep my eyes on the task at hand. My birthday was only twelve days away. Less than two weeks to figure out what this thing was.

“Find anything interesting?” I gestured to the iPad.

He looked at the screen. “I was returning an email to my parents. They’re in France, headed over to Tuscany for a wine tour. The apartment they leased is empty for the rest of the month. I can get you an expedited passport in twenty-four hours. We could be in Paris by Friday and you could spend your birthday walking around the Louvre and stuffing your face with croissants and macarons.”

“No.”

“Can I ask why not?”

“Because, Jay, that’s all I need—to lose my shit overseas and get locked up in some French nuthouse like Fantine or whoever.”

“They put her in a hospital, I believe, because she was dying of tuberculosis.”

I shook my head. “Smart-ass.”

“Just tell me where we can go, Althea, where you’ll feel safe. Tell me.” He sounded wounded now. Maybe a little pissed that I wasn’t going along with his European getaway plan.

I swung my legs around the bed. “Give me the iPad, and I’ll tell you.”

I did a quick search and flipped it around to him.

“The Jefferson County Department of Health,” I said. “That’s where I want to go. You can get information there about anyone who’s died after 1908.”

“Information?” He looked at the screen. “What kind of information?”

“A death certificate.” My fingers hovered over the tablet. “Listing time and location and cause of death. And we find out if Val was telling the truth. If my mom was ever at Pritchard. And what she died of—an aneurysm or an overdose. Or something else.”

The next questions hung in the air. If my mother had been checked into Pritchard, how could she have gotten a hold of enough pills to overdose? And why had my father been lying to everyone about it for over twenty years? Had he been involved somehow?

I had to face it. My father had been a politically ambitious man saddled with a troubled wife. She was a problem that needed solving. He could’ve killed her. Easily. She had no family looking out for her. No one would’ve blinked an eye if he put her in the state institution. Walter, who, for whatever reason, was on the verge of finishing himself off, didn’t seem like he’d be the one to spill the family secrets. And Val, poor tormented Val, she wouldn’t stand up to either Elder or her husband.

One thing was obvious: if my mother had indeed died under suspicious circumstances, Elder Bell, the state’s attorney general, could’ve easily covered it up. He could have altered the death certificate too, if he’d been really careful. I still needed to see it, no matter what it said.

I tossed the iPad aside and hugged the sheets around me, hunching deeper into myself. Even if my father had done the unspeakable, even if he had killed my mother, that still wouldn’t explain what had happened to my grandmother and my great-grandmother—why they disappeared when they turned thirty too.

Something inside me, a residual thread of those women still buried in my DNA, told me it was much more than a random coincidence. It was a mystery, but one that had to be solved very carefully. If I stepped wrong, Wynn would have me committed. To him, I was a liability. Nothing but an item in the loss column of his personal asset sheet. And probably a threat to his becoming governor. But why he was so determined to label me schizophrenic and have me locked up forever, I couldn’t comprehend. It seemed so extreme.

I thought of what he’d said about Dad’s will—I’d inherit my share as long as I was under psychiatric care. So maybe all this had to do with money. Maybe I was due to inherit a bigger amount than I realized. I wondered if Wynn had been named my legal guardian. I’d heard people did things like that. I needed to talk to somebody with expertise. A lawyer.

I dropped my head in my hands. What I needed—probably more than a lawyer—was a therapist. I had no business carrying drugs around in my purse. I should talk to someone, a professional, about taking some sort of preventative medication, in case this thing was schizophrenia. But there was the risk that, after confiding in someone, a doctor, I’d open myself up to legal action. If Wynn got to the doctor somehow, he could convince him to lock me up. How would I be able to help myself then?

I have to get out of here. I’m running out of time.

And then, another thought:
I can’t let Jay see me like this.

I clenched my jaw in frustration. Why was I even thinking that way? Why did I care? I was acting like a high-school girl, like Jay and I were conducting an actual, real relationship. Which was ridiculous. We weren’t.

God.
What was wrong with me? I’d quit everything else. Why couldn’t I just send Jay on his way?

He’d turned back to his phone and was texting away like mad. I surveyed the way his back curved over his phone, the lean muscles, the ridges of his spine. His skin was smooth and golden. Perfect.

“You should go,” I said, pulling the words out of the air. “Back to Mobile.”

He looked up from the glowing screen in front of him. “What?”

“I don’t know.” I twisted the corner of the sheet. “Don’t you need to be looking for a new job or something?”

“I’m working at my dad’s construction company. Doing the books. Tax consulting.”

“Shouldn’t you be . . . consulting, then?”

“I have some flexibility.” He straightened. “Do you want me to go?”

“It’s not that. I just think you could probably find something more productive to do with your time than chasing down my drug-dealer buddies and giving me sponge baths. Or trying to lure me down to Orange Beach or Paris.”

“I don’t know.” He grinned. “It’s not such a bad gig.”

“I’m being serious.”

“I am too.” He was gazing at me. “There’s nothing that could happen here that’s going to change how I feel about you, Althea.”

“How you feel about me?”

His eyes dropped and his face reddened. He looked nervous, I thought. Guilty, even. Or maybe I was imagining things. Looking for something that wasn’t there, some reason to doubt him and send him away.

I spoke again. “I’m not trying to be difficult. It’s just I don’t even know what that means.”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. I just want to be here. Helping you.” He scratched at his scruffy jaw, then met my eyes. “Okay. Look, Althea, this is really hard for me to admit, but I kind of need this. I need to focus on something right now, something bigger than me that actually matters, instead of sitting in my parents’ house feeling sorry for myself.”

His face was deeply flushed now, eyes bright. He was either extremely embarrassed or lying. And I had no idea which to believe.

He was playing the knight in shining armor in this scenario, that was for damn sure. The guy with a getaway car and limitless credit card. And the fact was, I needed those things. I had to have them. So maybe I wasn’t just distracting myself with the eye candy and possibility of sex, but I was using him all the same. The way I always used people.

But he was letting me. It might be for selfish motives but he was sticking around, and this was good for me.

“If you really want to stay, I’m not going to turn you out,” I said. “Because, as a matter of fact, I could use a ride to the Department of Health right now. They need a next of kin to request a death certificate.”

At the Department of Health I sat on a plastic orange chair under the glare of fluorescent lights and filled out the death-certificate-request form. Mom’s full legal name, name of spouse, parents’ names. Date: her thirtieth birthday, October 5, 1987. Mobile County.

As I moved to turn it in, Jay stopped me. “Why don’t you fill out two more?” he whispered. “For your grandmother and great-grandmother.”

I asked the clerk for two more forms and filled them out with what spotty information I had. I turned in all three, paid the fee, and settled down to wait. She came back with three pieces of paper and a receipt.

There was one Certificate of Failure to Find—for Jinn Wooten—and two death certificates, for Collie Crane and Trix Bell. I flipped to Collie’s certificate first. The date of death marked 1962, the place Tuscaloosa, with the cause listed as “Intentional Injury.”

“Suicide?” Jay asked.

“I guess. There’s nothing more here. Other than her husband’s name was David.”

“Tuscaloosa County means Pritchard, right?” he asked.

It had to. No one had ever mentioned anyone from her mother’s family actually living in Tuscaloosa County. Jay shook his head in disgust as I shuffled the paper to the back of the pile. My mother’s certificate lay on top. I rested it on my knees, skimmed the basic information, then skipped farther down:

M
ETHOD OF
D
ISPOSITION:
Cremation
P
LACE OF
D
ISPOSITION:
Oak Park Crematory

L
OCATION:
Tuxedo, Mississippi

D
ATE
P
RONOUNCED
D
EAD:
October 5, 1987
T
IME
P
RONOUNCED
D
EAD:
4:11 a.m.

C
ITY OF
D
EATH AND
Z
IP
C
ODE:
Mobile, 36607

W
AS
M
EDICAL
E
XAMINER OR
C
ORONER
C
ONTACTED:
No

“Tuxedo, Mississippi?” Jay said.

“Her father’s people were from Mississippi. The Cranes. I knew them, sort of. It was only Collie’s side that nobody talked about.”

“So your mother’s ashes are buried hundreds of miles away,” he said. “How convenient.”

I skipped down to the bottom of the page, the box marked “Medical Certification,” and continued reading:

PART I: I
MMEDIATE
C
AUSE OF
D
EATH:
Seizures