Vinegar Hill (14 page)

“I do believe that's true,” Mama said grimly.

But Salome knew it was
she
who had been spared by the Lord for a purpose known only to Him. One Sunday during Mass, she saw each Station of the Cross spring to life. She watched, horrified,
as Christ was scourged, mounted upon a rough cross, thrust into the cradle of the sky. Tears came to her eyes, but as she looked around, she saw the rest of the congregation was unable to hear the lash of the whip, unable to smell the sour breath of Christ as he gasped for air. Children were playing with the hat clips, trying to snare flies with long pieces of hair. Fathers drooped in their seats, resting sharp chins on their chests. The faces of the mothers wore distant looks, and Salome felt with her mind how they were planning dinners, tallying crops, wondering where they had mislaid a thimble, a piece of calico, a letter.

She burst into strangled sobs, hands clamped over her mouth. People exchanged knowing glances; Mama had had a sister who died young, convinced she could fly from the milkhouse roof, coaxed by angels no one else could see.
Es ist im Blut
, they said,
it's in the blood
, and they shook their heads as Mama led Salome from the church, weak and trembling, barely able to walk. In the wagon, Mama slapped Salome across the mouth.

“You need to get some sense, young miss,” she said. “You think you're some kind of saint, is that it? Tell me why God would send a vision to some dirty-minded gal! Sounds like it's the Devil you got whispering in your ear.”

“It weren't me the Devil wanted all them years,” Salome says to Mama now. But there is no one to hear; she peers stiffly beneath her bed, she glances into the gaping black mouth of the closet, she looks out the bedroom door down the hallway into the kitchen. The apartment is empty; Salome is relieved. She snaps on the radio and listens to a strange man's voice speak of places she will never go, people she will never see, and she is comforted despite the smell of her flesh, the knot of hunger pulsing inside her like a child.

 

At dawn she wakes up abruptly clear-headed; she fills the bathtub with water and scrubs the dried skin around her elbows and ankles
and knees. She works Ivory into her hair, rinses it clean, untangles the worst of the mat of curls at her neck with a stainless steel comb. Now she wants to fill her mouth with cheese and bread, soft ripe bananas, coffee rich with cream. But the brief spurt of energy has been washed away, and she bends over coughing, coughing, a sound as hollow as a dog's angry bark. A tiredness enters her body, and she can't bring herself to put on her coat and step into the first sweet day of sunshine Holly's Field has had in weeks to walk downtown to buy food.

In the kitchen, she eats Spanish olives from the jar, squirts the last of the ketchup onto a spoon. She searches the cupboards for something she might have missed, knowing she ate the last preserves for supper, yellow beans, swallowing them cold from the jar. She rearranges the shortening can, the dark bottle of vanilla, the baking soda and blackstrap molasses. Sunlight plays on the brittle geraniums lining the windowsill, and their leaves are patterned with maroon crescents which warn of their longing for sunlight, nutrients, warmth. At the bottom of the cookie jar, Salome finds the remainder of one of Ellen's gifts: the crumbling heels of a loaf of homemade bread, still soft inside a piece of plastic wrap. She toasts one, spreads it with shortening, keeping the other for later. Even her jaw feels heavy; she concentrates hard on chewing, pausing for breath between swallows.

Several times a week, all through the month of January, Ellen came in the night to knock on Salome's door, startling her as she listened to the radio.
Go
, Salome hissed through the chain,
this is no time for you to be out
. But always Ellen coaxed her way inside, a
Kuchen
or a jar of apple butter in her hands. She sat down on the couch as if she'd been invited, and talked about uninteresting things. She gave Salome vitamin tablets for her cold, fresh soft fruit, a pair of warm wool stockings—she seemed a nice enough girl, if lonely, but one night she began to pry.
What was your sister
like when she was young? What do you remember most about your mother
? It was then that Salome realized she came not for company, but for information.

“You'll learn nothing from me,” Salome said, and she showed the girl and her cherry crisp to the door and locked it. She felt Ellen standing on the other side, craftily waiting for Salome to check if she was gone so she could slip back inside. In the morning, Salome found that cherry crisp beside the door, frozen solid in the pan. She left it there for one day, for two. Several nights later, Ellen's knock came at the door, but Salome got into bed and pulled the quilts up over her eyes. The next day, the cherry crisp was gone, and Ellen did not return with her questions.

Now, Salome can almost taste that cherry crisp, the tart bite of fruit smothered in sweet sweet crust. Mama made cherry crisp each summer. Once, when Salome was a little girl and Mary-Margaret just a baby, Pa stole a crisp off the porch where it was cooling. He gave a bite to each of the dogs, just enough to stain their muzzles guilty pink. Then he beckoned Salome and the boys into the barn, where they divided it, hot and sticky, with their fingers, the barn cats stamping impatiently, sipping the air with their noses.

When Salome opens her eyes it is late afternoon; her cheek is flat against the cool Formica table. She has dreamed about two small children, toddling twin boys with lips and skin the pale blue of china. They babble silently and, though Salome searches their faces, she cannot understand what they are saying. One takes a bite from the other's cheek; the skin tears away easily. The cheekless one bites his brother's mouth, tugging his tongue out by the roots. Both children seem delighted as they consume each other's ears.
Stop!
Salome shrieks, but they bend to swallow each other's genitals, and Salome knows that there is no hope now, they are voracious, and after they are eaten up there will be nothing left.

It takes her a long time to hear the knock at the door, a series of
thumps
followed by laughter. The whorl of hunger in her stomach tightens. She pulls herself up and walks to the door through the bright dream of fever, marveling at the way the kitchen table and chairs, the countertop, the dying geraniums and rubber garbage pail all look so small. She is a giant, each foot falling to the floor from a great distance, and when she gets to the door it is a long reach down to find the knob.

The twins are at the door. Salome recognizes them immediately, even though they are so much older and their cheeks and ears are whole and pink. Horror swallows her greeting, and she waits, staring at them, wondering what they want. They look at each other and giggle. Each carries a paper bag: one holds a box of cookies in his hand.

“Um,” they say together. Then one says, “You wanna buy some cookies for the Middle School Marching Band? We got chocolate mints and Savannahs.”

“And those cracker ones,” the other boy says. “We got samples here if you want to try some, but it takes six weeks to get your order. We're trying to go to Canada, I mean, if we sell enough cookies by Easter. They're only a dollar twenty-five.” He holds out a box of cookies and Salome can smell the sweetness through the garish cardboard wrapping.

Surely they have come from beyond the grave, knowing so well how to torment her. “Come in,” she says gruffly. If she doesn't let them see she is afraid, perhaps they'll go back where they came from, to that terrible world between God's Kingdom and the sorrow of the Pit. Undoubtedly, they wish to entice her there; they are lonely, they long for a woman's touch to soothe the burn of unconsecrated soil against their skin. The boys step inside, wrinkling their noses, and Salome can see Mary-Margaret in their faces. The scornful high cheekbones, the slender beauty. Yellow hair the color
of paint. She tries not to imagine the taste of mint, the thick melt of chocolate on her tongue.

“What do you want from me?” she begs them. “Honor thy father and mother, the Good Book says it. I had to do what Ma told me.”

The boys look at each other. “It's just a dollar twenty-five,” one of them says. The other is looking past the dirty dishes in the kitchen to the cluttered living room, breathing through his mouth.

“I never done nothing to either of you while you lived,” Salome says. “I pray for your souls every day.”

The boys are watching their feet now, moving toward the door, but suddenly Salome cannot bear to see them go. She had chosen their granite stones from the wall below the barn, chipping them free with the pickax, and as she lifted those stones to the wheelbarrow, she'd felt a searing pain deep in her womb. This is the pain that burns her now as she remembers how she hauled those stones to the rise overlooking the house where the earth was loose from rabbit burrows, where a shovel could puncture the cold clay crust and bury itself in soft peat. “I dug the graves,” she cries out to them. “I freely admit that to you. But I did not help you die.”

One of the boys giggles, a high nervous cackle, and in that sound Salome hears the hollow wail of an infant. She smells the birthing room; sees Mary-Margaret's flushed face; hears the clop of Fritz's heavy boots as he moved in and out of the doorway, smoking, letting the cold air in. “There ain't nothing wrong with you,” he said. “Lots of gals drop babies without half the commotion you make.” And Mama's face as she stared after him, hatred raw in the set of her lips.
Over my dead body
, she said,
will he lay claim to either of these sweet children
.

Salome starts to cry and reaches for the closest boy, but he wriggles out of her grip, dropping his bag of sample cookies. “I never
done you no harm,” she begs, but both boys duck past her and slip out the doorway, their sneakers squeaking on the icy steps. Salome stares after them, rubbing a pinch of her dress between her fingers.
Not my will, but thine
, she prays, imagining their long trip back to the netherworld. And just as suddenly as they have disappeared, she understands they are messengers, and that, once again, in His own way, the Lord who will not let a sparrow fall has provided for His own.

She lifts the bag from the floor. It is filled with boxes of cookies, some opened, some sealed. Her hands shake as she selects a chocolate mint. She chews once and swallows, the shards scraping her throat, and then she is filling her mouth with chocolate mint cookies, peanut butter cookies, shortbreads, sesame crackers, white flour, sugar, egg. The pleasures of the body flood her soul, and she feels the first rush of energy run through her veins like new, strong blood. That night, as she climbs into bed, she glances down the hallway into the kitchen to note the proud sleek shine of the countertops, the chairs neatly fencing the table, the swept floor. Tucked in the refrigerator, safe from mice, are three boxes of cookies for tomorrow, the day after, the day after that. By then her legs will be steady again. She'll walk to the bank, cash her Social Security, fill her cupboards with all the food she can carry. She falls asleep with her full stomach rising and falling under her hand as light spills across her face from the round, high moon that wavers above the water treatment plant.

M
ary-Margaret feels the changes deep inside her body. At first, she does not understand. Mornings, she is dizzy and nauseated; she creeps to the kitchen, one hand trailing along the wall for balance, and sips at the tea Ellen makes for her, not speaking, afraid she might vomit or weep. Her ankles are swollen, grotesque, and though she tries to keep them hidden beneath the hem of her robe, that gal won't leave her alone.
You want me to fix you some Epsom salts?
she asks.
You think you should see a doctor?
But Mary-Margaret waves her away. She's short of breath. She cannot think. She sits at the piano for hours, hands draped loosely over the keys.

At night, she lies awake watching the pale green limbs of the clock beside the bed. There is something familiar about the way she feels, but the memory teases her, swimming the edge of her consciousness, just out of reach like a half-forgotten song. Then, one afternoon as she lies down for her nap, she feels tiny hands grip the ladder of her ribs. The babies have grown back inside her; they clamp their mouths tight against her lungs, nursing air, knead
ing at the tender tissue with their fists. Mary-Margaret pounds her chest and sides, her soft flat belly, but she cannot shake them loose.

She tries hot baths and enemas. She clips a novena from the weekly paper:
Thank you Saint Jude for favors granted. Pray to Saint Jude for all your needs for 9 consecutive days, say 3 Our Fathers, 3 Hail Marys, and 3 Glorias
. But as the days pass, the babies only grow bolder, kicking their feet when she speaks the Holy words, climbing up and up until they lick at her heart with half-formed tongues. She remembers how they were born so small, wrinkled as lambs, and squalling. She hadn't wanted any more children. She had had enough with the nausea, the swelling of her feet, the bite of the slimming corset she wore so the vulgar push of her belly wouldn't show. She had had enough with Fritz's rough hands. After James was born in '36, she spent six months in bed, sick with what the doctor called
milk poison
, but what she knew was a sickness of the soul. Soon after that she made up her mind to go against God and Nature.

You be grateful what you got
, she told Fritz the day she got back to her feet,
you won't get anything more out of me. Go into town to fill your needs, go in the barn with the pigs for all I care
.

For the next year she was strong as Mama, strong as Salome, strong as the women she met in church who looked their husbands in the eye and never carried an arm in a sling or favored a fresh-crushed foot. She slept in the boys' room with the thick oak door bolted shut; during the day, she carried a knife. Each day, she worked hard, digging bushels of potatoes and onions from the garden, splitting her own kindling at dusk, and as the months passed, the residue Fritz's body had left on her washed away like soft lard soap. She slept deeply at night, her little sons draped warm as cats against her sides, with no rough hand to pinch her throat, no thick wedge of flesh rasping away inside her. Fritz eyed her at the supper table.
I got me forty acres, you know two sons ain't enough for all
that
. Once, he brushed his hip against hers, but he stepped out of reach of the quick wink of steel, and then Mama stood behind him with a chunk of stove wood.

I told you not to interfere
, he said to Mama.
Remember how I warned you
.

He surprised Mary-Margaret one cold, bright January day as she lifted her skirts in the backhouse. She did not have time to think. He hit her once in the forehead with a brick and pulled her out into the snow. Blood ran into her eyes as she ran blindly, her only thought to move, to keep moving, until the brick found the back of her head. Then she lay still as he emptied himself inside her, and when he finished, he pissed yellow circles around her body. The warmth of his urine melted the snow and stung against her face. She prayed for a miracle even as his seed took hold, but she had been the one to defy God's will, to refuse the marriage bed and the new souls it might bring.
Not my will but thine be done
, Christ cried out to God from the agony of the Cross, and Mary-Margaret understood that it had not been a prayer but a torn white flag. Whatever God wanted He would take as His due. If Christ could not resist, how could she?

When Mama found out what had happened, she made a special secret tea to shake the seed from Mary-Margaret's womb, but though she held the cup to Mary-Margaret's lips, Mary-Margaret refused to drink from it. She knew now that God would have His way, if not through this child, then another. But perhaps, if she became small enough, God might start to overlook her. Perhaps, if she kept His commandments, lived by His rules, He wouldn't take notice of her ever again. Surely the Heaven that followed this life would make up for whatever she'd suffered. And so she knocked the cup from Mama's hands and prepared for another birth.

Willow
, Mama said,
you may bend but you won't break
, but Mary-Margaret knew that she was broken, her limbs clipped and
bound for kindling, her trunk chopped off at the knees. This pregnancy was worse than the others. Mornings, she lay helplessly in bed, waiting for Mama's strong arms to lift her out of the sheets still damp with Fritz's smell, to hold the basin while she vomited, to slap her feet until she had enough feeling to lower them to the ground. Then she braced herself against the wall as Mama tightened the stays of the slimming corset that hid her shame from the eyes of the neighbors, the children, the parishioners, the priest. After that, it was all Mary-Margaret could do to walk downstairs and help get breakfast for the hungry little boys.

By the eighth month, Mama had to slit the corset so Mary-Margaret could breathe. One day, Mama even suggested she go downstairs indecent.
He never looks at you
, she said.
You be sitting at the table and he might not even notice
. But Fritz did notice, and in front of the boys he told her how she disgusted him.
You go on back upstairs
, he said,
and don't come down till you look like a Christian, not some heathen gal with your business hanging out
.

“To him, we're no more than the animals,” Mama said, as she laced Mary-Margaret back into the corset. “But I'm going to fix it so he knows we are worse. He won't want nothing to do with you after that.”

“He will never leave me alone,” Mary-Margaret said.

When her time drew near, Fritz went to Milwaukee to fetch Salome, who moved through the house like a shadow, frightening the little boys with her strange and silent ways. Mary-Margaret sat in the kitchen, sipping shepherd's-purse tea to help bring on the labor, and hating her sister for her simple, silent body. Salome had never been sullied by a man's coarse touch. Salome's belly had never filled up with blood and guts that turned themselves into a child. Salome, like the Saints, was a Virgin, pure, and she would sing with the angels someday, her small, plain mouth opening wide to release a music that Mary-Margaret could only dream of hear
ing.
Mary-May is a gift from God
, Mama had said when Mary-Margaret was a little girl. But Mary-Margaret knew now she was no gift to anyone, slow and obese, breaking wind, chained to the earth by the cruel will of God while Salome rose before her eyes.

It was a cold fall day when she went into labor; the night before there had been a mild frost, but the ground still squished beneath her boots as she dragged herself to the house from the backhouse, warm water flooding her thighs. Inside, Fritz sat on the good parlor couch, rubbing tallow into his boots. The little boys sucked on their fingers as Mary-Margaret followed Mama up the stairs to the bedroom, and the eyes of the older boy went curious and wide.

Throughout the birth, she screamed with rage, but eventually her voice weakened, faded, then dried up altogether. She could do no more than hiss by the time Mama pulled the babies' bodies from her own, their wet skin steaming in the chill. Their cries brought Fritz, who stood in the doorway as Mama and Salome scrambled to cover Mary-Margaret properly.

“Don't wait up on me, Sweetheart,” he leered. “I'm going out to celebrate my two new sons.”

Mary-Margaret closed her eyes. Beyond all doubt she wanted to be dead, but she did not die, and in the morning, when she woke, the cradle beside the bed stood empty.

“Where are they?” she asked Salome, who was sitting at the foot of the bed. “I want to touch my babies before he does.”

But Salome dropped her head into her hands. “There are no babies,” she said, and she was shaking. “You better talk to Ma about all that.”

“Where are they?” Mary-Margaret said again, but Salome was yelling, “She's awake!”

When Mama came into the room, she held Mary-Margaret's face between her hands. “He had no right to those children,” she said, “after all he done to you.”

Still, Mary-Margaret did not understand.

“Look at how he is with Mitch and Jimmy,” Mama said. “What I done, I done for these babies as well as for you,” and she helped Mary-Margaret to her feet, neatly made up the bed, opened the windows to air out the room, and took the bloody linens to the barrel to be burned. When Fritz came home, bleary-eyed with beer, they were sitting in the kitchen as if it were any ordinary day: Mama, Mary-Margaret, and Salome, the boys wearing bibs and eating scrambled eggs. “What, you up already?” he said, but Mama just shook her head: what did he mean? They were eating breakfast. It did not take long for him to discover the two small graves on the hillside overlooking the house, but Mama laughed at him and said they were dogs' graves, God knew he'd killed enough of them over the years.

“What babies?” Mama said, and she laughed at him for weeks. “So drunk you can't remember how many boys you got? Any more boys you think you got coming, they'll be in your imagination too. Crazy old man, the next thing you know we'll be calling up the neighbors to put you away.”

For years, Mary-Margaret would catch him looking at her in the horrified way she had once looked at him, as if she were a piece of rotted meat, rancid and foul, and a deep satisfaction warmed her because she knew that he was afraid.
She-devil
, he'd said to her.
Just to hear your voice makes my skin crawl
. It made up for the nights she lay awake, trying to remember those newborn faces, weeping for those starfish hands. It almost made up for the anguish she felt after Mama died, when she dreamed of Mama writhing in eternal fire and heard her voice as clearly as if she were still living.

What I done, I done for you
.

But the will of God is more powerful than women. On the ninth day of the novena, Mary-Margaret begins to weep, for once again her prayers have been ignored. She doesn't go with Fritz to Senior
Citizens' anymore. She doesn't linger after Sunday Mass to shake Father Bork's smooth hand. She doesn't call Salome to come over and curl her hair. She is a tree, axed and bound for kindling, submitting her life to God's will the way Mama would not. Now she spends the days sitting quietly on the couch, watching “Let's Make a Deal,” “The Dating Game,” “Jeopardy.” Outside her window, it is finally spring, but Mary-Margaret doesn't notice. In her mind, it is a cold, bright January day, the snow stinging her forehead and chin. She feels the great weight on her back, hears the sharp grunts in her ear. Over and over she prays the prayer she whispered as a new bride,
Lord, help me to accept what I cannot change
, until the beginning of it and the end of it run into each other, the way you cannot tell when one breath ends and the next begins.