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| Photo by Lisa Chizuka |
Mama
washed laundry in the big copper bucket in the back yard. Not their own laundry,
a course, the rich folks’ laundry. Them that came in fancy motorized vehicles
that banged and popped, them that dropped their baskets at the edge of the dirt
strip pretending to be a street, and went on their way without so much as a
“howdy-do.” They returned at dusk, hand Mama a few dollars, and leave as quick
as they’d come.
Every
now and again Jacob tried to talk to them, but they’d just look down their long
noses at him and keep walking. His little sister Jessie never talked to them.
Jessie never talked to anyone; not even Mama and Jacob. Not anymore. Not since
daddy got to her.
Scrunched
down upon spindly legs and bare feet, Jacob stared at the small motionless
pebbles,
those he saw with his mind’s eye as his marbles, in the circle he had drawn
in the dirt at the bottom of the two rickety front steps. Grimy and gray in
reality, their brilliant color rivaled their smoothness in his
imagination-skewed vision. Most days he spent hours lost in the angles of this
game, but today his mind was as scattered as the pebbles when he flicked them
with his shooter. His cousin Howard was coming to stay for three whole days.
He’d never met his cousin, never had someone to play with other than his silent
sister for more than a few hours at a time. His stomach flopped with excitement.
He heard its growl above the silence and the wind.
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| NASA/JPL/Cornell/USGS |
By
the time the wagon wheel’s rumble reached them, Jacob’s feet—washed every night
before bed and prayers—were as filthy as the ground now tattooed with his footprints.
“Mama,”
he called out, his voice cracked to a squeak then swirled around the house on
the unrelenting wind. “They’re here.”
Wiping
pruny hands on her faded calico dress, Mama came round the corner. She smiled
at her son, at the excitement in his bucktooth grin, the spark in the dark
brown eyes that looked just like hers. She put a loving hand on his shoulder
and they walked toward the slat board-sided wagon. Mama looked over her
shoulder, sending her smile toward Jess who sat on the porch in the tattered straw
rocking chair. Her doll, perched face out in her lap, shared Jess’s vacant
gaze. Jess hadn’t moved since morning; she rarely did.
“Hey,
Martha.” The large man driving the wagon doffed his straw hat as he pulled the
horse gently to a stop.
“Hey,
Fred.” Mama looked up, shielding her eyes from the sun with a red-skinned hand.
“Me
and Gail sure do ‘ppreciate this,” Fred said, wiping the sweat and dust from
his eyes with a worn, washed out green bandanna. "And don't worry none. Anyone who asks will think he's with his grandmother back east."
Mama nodded; answering only with a tight lipped smile.
Fred turned his jowl-heavy chin over his beefy shoulder. “Come on, Howard, get on out.”
Mama nodded; answering only with a tight lipped smile.
Fred turned his jowl-heavy chin over his beefy shoulder. “Come on, Howard, get on out.”
The
wagon bounced as a young blond boy jumped out the back. He stood, one hand
holding a lumpy burlap sack, the other shoved deep in the slash pocket of his indigo
overalls, his long legs reaching the ground many inches beyond the bottom of
his pants.
“Our
pleasure. Be good for the kids to have some company,” Mama said. “How’s Aunt
Clara?”
“Still
holdin’ on, far’s we know. We’ll let ya’ know more when we get back.”
Mama
nodded, lowering her head, and rubbing the back of her neck as she sometimes
did. She gave Jacob a tender push.
“Well,
go on. Bring your cousin in the house.”
Jacob
shuffled forward, dragging his bare feet as if he hadn’t been waiting for this
moment for days. As he walked toward his cousin, wondering why Howard was so
much taller than he even though they were both twelve-years-old, he noticed a
small drawstring bag hanging from around Howard’s neck.
“What’s
that?” Jacob asked by way of greeting, squinting up at the unfamiliar but not
unfriendly face above him.
“Marbles.”
Howard replied.
Jacob’s
smile spread so far his dry lips cracked.
*
“I’ll
be back in a couple hours,” Mama said, pushing her once pretty blue hat firmly
down on her head. “I’m goin’ to town to get somethin’ special for dinner, in
honor of Howard bein’ here and all.”
“Thanks,
Cousin Martha.” Howard stood, nodding his long, freckle-covered face. “Mighty
nice of you.”
Mama
smiled. “You two keep a good eye on Jessie, ya’ hear?”
*
“What’s
this one?” Jacob held a marble up before his eyes like a delicate treasure.
“Cat’s
Eye,” Howard answered, his gaze flicking over his shoulder to Jessie, who still
rocked in the fraying chair, her baby doll held firm but lovingly in her lap.
“What’s wrong with your sister?”
Jacob
looked up at Jessie, at her pretty, vacant face, the brown eyes she shared with
him and her mother, the tousled dirty blond hair. “She’s just quiet.”
“Whaddya’
mean quiet? Seems like she don’t talk or nothin’.” Howard took more marbles out
of his bag. Jacob didn’t seem to mind talking long as he could look at the
marbles.
“No,
she don’t…much,” Jacob replied, reaching out for the little gems hungrily.
“How
come?”
Jacob
shrugged. “Dun know for sure. She started talkin’ when she was little, but then…”
Jacob’s
gaze flicked up to his cousin’s curious face as his tongue twisted on the
unspoken words.
“Well,
then we ran away from daddy. She ain’t never talked since.”
Howard
sat down on the puffy dry earth. “Why’d you run away from your daddy?”
Jacob
wondered if Howard had as many marbles as he did questions. “Just got too hard
for him, I guess. He done take the hard out on us.... So we ran.”
That
was hard for Mama too, Jacob knew. He saw it in her eyes sometimes, like she
was on the edge of a cliff looking down, not wondering if she’d fall, but when.
Most times the look went away, especially when she looked at him and Jessie. No
matter how tired or how hungry, she gave to them what they needed most, herself.
She taught them how to play checkers with colored pebbles in squares she’d
drawn on the floor. She read stories from borrowed books, acting out the parts
and using different voices. And always, always, she loved them, delighted in
loving them.
Jacob
raised his eyes back to his sister. “She’s a good girl.”
Howard
turned back to Jacob and shrugged. That seemed enough for him.
*
Neither
boy noticed when she stood up, crossed the porch, and descended the crooked stairs.
When her shadow fell over him, Jacob jumped.
“What
the hell?” The words slipped out of his mouth before he could catch them. He worried
if Mama heard, then remembered she wasn’t back yet. He watched Jess amble away
toward the dirt street with slow, plodding steps.
“Where
she goin’?” Howard jumped up.
Jacob
didn’t answer, couldn’t. He stood and followed Jess.
“Where
you goin’, Jess?” He called, catching up to her with quick dust puffing steps.
Jess
kept walking. She seemed so small with her little feet and hobnobbed, skinny
legs. Jacob wondered if all eight-year-olds were as small as she.
“You
all right, Jessie?” Howard walked beside Jacob, who walked behind Jess. The
girl didn’t answer him either.
A
few feet from the street, Jessie stopped. Jacob and Howard stopped. The boys
looked at each other. Silently they circled around the still girl to stand
before her.
Jessie
stared straight down. Jacob and Howard looked down too. Jacob’s thin brows
furrowed on his smooth, sun kissed skin. Where did the hole Jessie stood in
come from? Had it been there before?
“What’s
wrong, Jessie?” Jacob asked, his thin whisper wafting away on the never-ending
wind.
Jessie’s
head rose slowly. Her unblinking eyes protruded from her gaunt face as her lips
fell
open in a gruesome gash. Her scream, when it came, shattered any peace
that ever lived here.
“IT’S
COMING!”
*
The
days passed far too quickly and Jacob learned the sadness of separation at
Howard’s leaving. His cousin promised to come again and bring more marbles,
maybe even give Jacob some of his own. That night they played another game with
Mama, he laughed so hard his stomach hurt. When Mama tucked him in bed, her
love covered him as completely as the dry dust covered the earth and his sadness
disappeared. He felt guilty ‘cause he never told Mama about Jessie, about her
walk and her scream. He didn’t want to make things worse for Mama; he wasn’t
sure she could take it.
*
The
pounding woke them up; it shook the earth beneath the clean, bare wood floor
and quivered deep in their bellies. Jacob was afraid to move, he found only enough
courage to open his eyes. Jessie lay beside him; her bulging eyes bore into his
as if she’d been staring at him for hours, waiting. This time she whispered.
“It’s
coming.”
Jacob
bolted upright with a gasp. His Mama stood at the open door, her silhouette
dark against the pale early morning light. She stared out at the distance, the
tip of one rough skinned thumb stuck between her teeth. Jacob ran past her onto
the porch. Small figures moved about on the horizon. Three wagons huddled
around them, long poles—longer than any Jacob or his Mama had ever seen—stuck
out the back. For hours they watched the men, watched as they dug deep holes in
the earth and rammed the poles in them. The newly raised poles reached out from
the earth, skeletal fingers beckoning to the heavens.
One
by one the men emptied the wagons and drove them away. One creaking conveyance
roared toward them. Jacob ran out to the street, waving his hands until the man
driving the wagon pulled up on the reins.
“What
you doin’ out there, mister?”
“Why,
we puttin’ in e-lectricity poles, boy. They bringin’ e-lectricity out here. And
then something called tel-o-phones.” As if that explained everything, the man
whipped the reins and continued on his way.
Jacob
ran back to Mama.
“They
puttin’ in somethin’ called ‘lectricity and telpones.” Jacob stood at her feet,
looking up into her eyes. “Is it gonna be all right, Mama?”
Mama
looked down and Jacob saw it, that standing on the edge of the cliff look. But
this time it was worse, this time the fear turned her eyes into dark shadowed
hollows in her blanched face.
She
shook her head with the slow futility of denying inevitability.
“He’ll
be coming now.”
The
End
(c) Donna Russo Morin 2007
(c) Donna Russo Morin 2007
