Standing at the Scratch Line (93 page)

“That boy in-between is Elroy,” the mother superior announced. “He’s full of mischief, but still a good boy.”

The fear now rose up out of Serena’s stomach and squeezed her heart in its cold grasp. She swallowed and asked, “May I see him at closer range.”

The mother superior gave Serena a long look before she turned to the nun and asked, “When is the under-ten boys’ recess over, Sister Theresa?”

“They have five more minutes, Mother Katherine,” the nun replied.

The mother superior turned to Serena and said, “Why don’t we return to my office? The boys will have to pass it to return to their classroom.” Serena nodded and followed the mother superior downstairs and back to the office. They stood at the door awaiting the boys’ passage.

Serena was aware that the mother superior’s dark eyes were scrutinizing her, but she did not return her piercing looks. Serena stared down at the floor and waited. The sound of boys’ voices flooded the hall as a door opened from the yard and thirty or so young boys walked in, two abreast. Their voices fell silent as soon as they saw that the mother superior was standing outside her office with a strange lady. As soon as Serena saw Elroy, fear gripped her. She felt as if she were being choked to death from the inside. Elroy looked like an older and darker version of Jacques. He was definitely King’s son.

Serena stumbled backward into the office and collapsed onto one of the small wooden chairs. If she took Elroy home with her, LaValle would lose his primacy as the oldest. An orphanage-toughened boy would hold sway over him. Elroy and Jacques would be King’s favorites and LaValle would be the forgotten child. LaValle did not have the fiber to compete with either Elroy or Jacques. If Elroy was introduced, every advantage that LaValle now had would be eradicated. Serena couldn’t do it to him. He was her baby. She could not make a decision that would hurt him for the benefit of someone else’s child, particularly when that someone was Mamie. Serena just couldn’t do it.

“I see you recognized you husband’s son,” the mother superior said in an even tone. She had followed Serena into the office and had watched her for several minutes before speaking.

“I saw no such thing!” Serena replied irritably. “This has just been a tiring day.”

“I see,” observed the nun. “Well, what do you wish to do now?”

“Here is the three hundred dollars I promised,” Serena said, counting out the money. “But just in case that child really is my husband’s illegitimate son,” Serena emphasized the word
illegitimate,
“I will send two hundred dollars a year for his upkeep and education. Perhaps, I’ll send extra money during the Christmas season for presents for him.” Serena closed her purse and prepared to go.

“I cannot accept that,” the mother superior answered calmly, but her smile indicated that she saw through Serena’s veil of lies.

“Why not?” Serena asked, vaguely alarmed that she might not be able to comply at all with Sister Bornais’s directives.

“We cannot accept gifts for one child that cause them to be treated differently than the other children who are also wards here. If you donate money, it must be for the benefit of all the children.”

“Fine! I’ll send three hundred a year!”

“Wouldn’t it be better to give this boy a home? It is apparent that you see his father’s features in his face. Why are you trying to buy with money that which is better purchased with love?”

Serena stood up. “I don’t see that my private affairs are any of your business!”

“You’re right. Only the children are my business. Perhaps you’ll reconsider and let your husband come back and see?”

“My husband’s too busy for chicanery! Thank you for your time!” Serena walked out of the office, down the hall, and out the front door before she took a deep breath. The rain had begun to fall again and there was a rumble of thunder in the dark gray skies. The car was waiting for her and Serena tumbled in to the backseat as big drops of rain trickled down her face and neck. Since she had left Amos and LaValle at the hotel, it was a long, quiet ride back to Port Arthur. The car was entering the city when she discovered that she had forgotten her coat at the orphanage.

S
 A T U R D A Y,  
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It was three years after Tini had been killed that Serena received the letter from New Orleans informing her of Della’s fourth and final miscarriage. The scrawled letter was blotched by the stain of tears, and the lines of Della’s normally neat penmanship were uneven and ragged, looping across the page like uncoiled springs. But the thoughts communicated by the words were themselves tightly wound spirals of steel that leaped off the page and then slowly corkscrewed themselves into Serena’s heart. The last miscarriage was the hardest and had nearly taken Della’s life. Now she would never be able to have children.

The letter fell from Serena’s hand. She could not bear to finish it. It was too painful. She sat down in a maroon wing chair in the parlor of her West Oakland home. In the distance she could hear the wailing sound of the Southern Pacific as it pulled into the train station. Through the lace curtains a shaft of sunlight left a geometric pattern on the floor. Outside the parlor window she could hear the sounds of men laughing as the Pullman car porters stomped down the steps of the rooming house next door and headed for the depot. The sunshine and the laughter were discordant with the shadows and sadness that she felt.

Sister Bornais’s words regarding the curse were never far from her mind: “
. . . It might even spread to yo’ family members, to yo’ sisters and yo’ brother, stopping yo’ kin’s seed from flourishing, makin’ you the only chile from yo’ family that bears chil’ren. You best take heed and pay the price to make that spirit move on!
” It had been difficult at first for her to believe that Sister Bornais’s words had substance and power. She had assumed them to be merely syllables mouthed by a crone, but as years passed she discovered the words had all the force of an invisible wind that was capable of ripping apart everything that humans could construct.

Each time Serena received word of one of Della’s miscarriages, she would increase the amount of money that she annually sent to the Oblate orphanage. Each miscarriage was a lance thrust into her soul. She felt personally guilty for her sister’s misfortune, yet she did not change her course. She could not abandon LaValle. Despite the firmness of her decision, sometimes Serena felt that she could not face another day with a smile and an easy heart. The joy seemed to be seeping out of her life. She let herself be bound tightly by the responsibilities of her daily life and moved from duty to duty with the lifelessness of an automaton.

In 1929, when news of Tini’s death had reached her, at first she had thought it was unrelated to the curse, that it was an accident. But when she arrived in New Orleans and the details were revealed to her, she realized that the curse was still manifesting itself. Tini was buried in a closed coffin and the funeral was a drab, depressing affair. Tini’s husband, a young man from Baton Rouge, was completely distraught. Her father, who had been ostracized by his children, stood off to the side, a defeated man, smelling of cheap alcohol. Della, dressed in black, stood silently at the graveside with dry eyes; her tears had been expended on her two previous miscarriages. During the funeral only Amos looked at her, and there was an unspoken accusation in his eyes. It was a turning point in their relationship. Even after they returned to California, he rarely spoke to her unless circumstances required it.

Tini had been killed by Jethro. After the service, Serena’s Aunt Ida told how it had happened. After Tini’s baby had been stillborn, she had fallen into an incommunicative and listless stupor that lasted weeks. One day while her husband was at work, she had ridden a horse over to visit her father’s farm. Her father was out plowing the lower field with Homer at the time. Tini went into the barn and had tried to get Jethro out of his stall with a whip. When she entered his stall, the mule kicked her in the head and chest. She was already dead when her father returned from plowing. As soon as Aunt Ida said that Tini had entered Jethro’s stall, Serena knew that her youngest sister had committed suicide. Tini would never have had anything to do with Jethro if she was in her right mind.

The last thing Serena did before she left New Orleans was take a buggy out to her father’s farm. When she pulled into the yard behind the house, he came out and stood on the porch. She could tell that he was yearning for a kind word or smile from her, anything to knock down the wall that separated them. He was a broken man who had discovered that all he had worked for was meaningless without the love of his family. As far as she was concerned, it was a lesson learned too late. She picked up the carbine that she had wrapped in a blanket and got down from the wagon. Her father looked down at the gun and back at her face. He did not turn away. He thought he was looking at death. He smiled as if he wanted her to shoot him, to free him from the weight of living. Understanding him, she smirked; she was not going to help him escape the pain. She went into the barn and shot Jethro, slowly emptying the carbine’s magazine into the mule’s body and taking pleasure in the animal’s brays of distress. She threw a hundred dollars on the straw and returned to her buggy. She drove away without a word to her father. It surprised her how much she still hated him.

Sitting in the wingback chair, Serena watched as the pattern of sunlight moved slowly across the floor. It did not seem possible that there could still be a sun in the sky given all the shadows and darkness in her life. Daylight itself seemed like a memory. The world had become a pattern of variations in gray and the sunlight could not illuminate her vision. She picked the letter up off the floor, and crumpled the pages in her fist, sitting silently, staring at visions of what might have been: her nieces and nephews at a family picnic; the high-pitched laughter of Tini tinkling across the top octaves of the happy exchanges; the warmth of a large and loving family. She sat for several hours without moving.

At four-thirty Serena heard the front door being unlatched and then footsteps running up the stairs. She knew it wasn’t LaValle or Jack (as he preferred to be called) because the boys always worked at their father’s pool hall after school, until five-thirty. The step was too light to be King, so she deduced that it was Amos. She exhaled and waited for him to come down so that she could tell him the news from New Orleans. When he did come downstairs, she heard him dragging something heavy down the steps. She called to him. “Amos! Amos, please come here!”

He walked into the parlor and stood in front of her. The boy was gone and in his place was a handsome young man. As he stood before her, she saw both her mother and her father in him. His build and the shape of his head came from his father, but he had his mother’s laughing eyes and delicate, full lips.

“Why didn’t you stop in to say hello?” she asked.

“I didn’t know you were here,” he answered in a preoccupied fashion. He shifted his weight from foot to foot as if he was anxious to be on his way.

“I have some sad news from Della,” Serena said with an exhalation of breath.

“I know already. I talked to Della yesterday.”

“You spoke with her?”

“Yeah, I talked to her before she went into the hospital on Monday.”

For some reason it surprised Serena that Amos would communicate more regularly with Della than she did. As she was mulling this fact over she said, “This is a grim and terrible day for our family.”

Amos shook his head and grunted disbelievingly. “Like you’re really concerned! The only one you care about is LaValle!”

Serena sat for several seconds in silence, shocked by her brother’s words. “I beg your pardon?” she demanded.

“You heard me,” he retorted impudently. “Like you really care about Della’s miscarriage!”

“How dare you!” she shouted, for his words had driven something sharp into her chest. “As long as you live under my roof, don’t you ever talk like that to me again!”

“I thought it would come to that! I knew you’d play that card! So I’m moving out today. My trunk is packed and in the front hall!”