JEWEL (52 page)

Brenda Kay turned to him, swatted at the back of her neck, and I could see already a small circle of sweat at the base of her back.

Leston held high the worm, quick twisted it onto Brenda Kay’s hook, and I saw her shiver with his movement, with the way the worm simply slipped through the hook.

Leston moved to the edge of the dock, dropped the line into the water.

He was trying hard to smile, I could see, and he made again the circles in the air, talked at Brenda Kay again, and handed her the pole. !

!

_ L She wouldn’t take it this time, only stared at where the bobber sat in the water.

Leston smiled harder, most all his teeth showing now, and held out the pole to her. She still wouldn’t take it. Then he pushed it at her, his move nothing giant, nothing hard, just a gentle push, the pole touching her arm.

She moved quick away from the touch, her eyes on the water.

That was when I turned on the faucet, started rinsing off my hands.

I’d seen enough in just these few moments. I’d seen enough, and there flashed through my head the image of Billie Jean what seemed centuries ago, her bent over at the waist, Leston with his belt pulled out and ready to bring down on her, we three out behind the barn at the old place. I saw in my head the lipstick on Billie Jean’s face, saw her eyes looking up at me, and heard Leston’s whispered words at me, Go on inside, he’d said, and because all those years ago it’d been his job as the daddy to administer the punishment, I’d turned and headed back to the house.

I knew he wouldn’t try that on Brenda Kay, figured maybe the most he might do out there would be to let his voice go even harder, push the pole a little stronger at her. But I trusted a part of me right then, the part that signaled something might happen if I weren’t out there quick enough.

My eyes on Leston as I worked the dough off my hands, I realized I couldn’t remember him ever spending any time alone with her, spending any piece of his life with just her and her alone. It was a fact, a huge and awesome truth that hit me like a revelation, her life and how it’d been spent had always been in my hands, and always would.

Certainly he loved her, had never been one to be ashamed of her, as far as I knew.

But there came to me no pictures of the two of them alone, just me and every day of my life since she’d been born taken up with taking care of her.

So how, I wondered, could I ever let Brenda Kay’s life get out of my hands this way, so far out of my hands I’d thought she could go out fishing with her daddy? He was a man who had no idea, I was certain, how to take care of his baby daughter, how to talk to her the way I did, take her to the bathroom, bathe her, read to her, hold her hand and trace the letters of her name even while she cried through it all.

He had no idea at all.

And suddenly I saw Mississippi for what it was, enemy territory, deep and troubled and ugly, even here with my husband to protect me, care for me as he thought fit. This place would never be the same place he’d thought it would be by our simply moving back, taking up residence in the place he’d seen his glory come and go. This was not the same place.

Nor was I the same woman. Just as there’d been lives I’d passed through on the way to this detoured one, maybe there’d been different meson that same road, different Jewels. Right now I wasn’t the same Jewel Leston’d had to tell to take care of herself that morning lifetimes ago, the first morning I’d known Brenda Kay was in me, him perched on the edge of our bed and smiling at the promise a next new child had held out back then. I’d been a different Jewel that morning, a morning even before Cathe ral’d come and stood outside our kitchen to call down the curse of God on me, reveal to me the truth of the hardship of this life, a life that’d started in Mississippi and that, if my husband had his way, would end here.

But I wasn’t going to let that happen. I took hold the hand towel hanging from the oven door handle, started drying my hands, and looked out the window one last time before I went out.

There stood Brenda Kay, still out on the dock, but facing the kitchen window now, eyes trained right on me as though she’d known I’d seen it all. Her mouth was open, her bangs already a little wet with heat.

Behind her stood Leston, still trying to pass off the rod to her. He’d lost the smile, his words heavy and hard at her, though I still couldn’t make them out for what they were. Maybe they were words of encouragement, maybe he was swearing at her not paying attention. I didn’t know. All I knew was that she was looking to me, waiting for me, and that I was already on my way.

I went out the kitchen door and down the stairs, nearly ran through the yard back of the house and out onto the dock.

“Here she comes, ” Leston said, his jaw clenched. He dropped the pole, let it hit the dock with the wooden clatter he knew it’d have. He turned from her, from me, and headed out the end of the dock, cast out his line. “Saving the day, ” he said almost in a whisper, but one loud enough for me to hear.

I said nothing. I only made it to Brenda Kay, put an arm round her shoulder, led her off the dock and through the yard, up the stairs and into the kitchen.

A little before two Leston came in with the mail and milk and bread.

Since we’d moved here he was always eager to find reason to go to town, ride up onto the blacktop road in his Lark Regal. Then he’d park in one of the slots in front of the only grocery store in town, a little place Wilman would call a “Mom and Pops” for how small it was. Getting milk and bread was no chore, nor was picking up the mail from the cluster of eight or nine boxes a mile up the road.

I was at the washing machine, pulling out sheets and making ready to put them on the line. I still wasn’t speaking to him.

He set the brown paper sack on the counter, and held up two pieces of mail.

“Looky here, ” he said, and held them until I looked up, saw what he had in his hand, an envelope and a postcard. I saw, too, he still had the same smile when I’d awoken this morning, the same impervious smile, the one that seemed to shout at me we’d never leave this place, that this was the end of the rainbow.

He dropped them on the table, where Brenda Kay sat coloring in one of the books Barbara’d bought her, the transistor radio next to her and turned to low. Country was the only music she could find down here, no more rock and roll. Right now it was Jim Reeves singing out low and sad.

“Well, ” Leston said, and gave a thin whistle. “Bugs Bunny with blue fur.” He was looking at the coloring book, then grinned, said, “From Eudine and Annie.” He tapped the mail without looking up at me. He squatted next to Brenda Kay, said, “That’s a pretty picture, Brenda Kay.”

“Thank, Daddy, ” she said, a sky-blue crayon in her hand, her still scribbling away.

I lifted the basket of wet sheets, set it on top of the washer, and went to the counter, put away the milk, then picked up the mail from the table.

I looked at the envelope first, saw it was from Eudine, her big and looping letters a dead giveaway. The postcard, then, would be from Annie, and I hid it away in my apron pocket, saved it. I loved Eudine, certainly, but I wanted to go slow with word from my daughter, savor it and any word of life out there in Los Angeles.

I crossed the kitchen to the counter, leaned against it as I opened the envelope. Inside was just a two-sentence note on a piece of scratch paper “Sorry this took so long to get developed. Will write soon as I can breathe! ” and signed only with a big E. Inside, too, was a photograph, a color one of all of us standing outside their house in Leveland when we’d stopped in on the way here.

Leston, the tallest, stood at the left, awkward and stiff next to Eudine. He had an arm on her shoulder, her holding onto his hand. She was smiling, her lips that same bright red as always, though she’d started wearing her hair up and close to her head, and there were the tiniest wrinkles beside her eyes. Next to her stood Brenda Kay, both hands at her sides, her looking off to the right at something none of us’d ever know. Next to Brenda Kay was me that’s me, I thought as I looked at the picture, me a black-haired and smiling old woman who seemed even shorter than I thought, my arms thin and I aged round the baby I held in my arms, baby Jane, grandchild number four from James and Eudine. In front of me stood the two boys Mark and David, both tan and barefoot and wearing only shorts, both with crew cuts, both with their faces screwed up into monkey grins at the camera. Next to me stood Judy, my first grandchild, her already thirteen and smiling, her head leaned over and resting on my shoulder. Those pigtails she’d had in the grocery store parking lot in Big Spring, Texas, ten years ago had given way to long tresses of strawberry blonde hair she wore curled and loose. She had on jeans and a shirt of her daddy’s, the front tails of it knotted just above her waist so you could see the tiniest bit of her midriff, and though you couldn’t tell it by the photograph, I knew she’d already gotten a young woman’s curves, Eudine’s mouth running all through dinner about the number and size of the boys who’d already started to coming round. There we were, all of us in the photograph. Except for James.

I held it in my hand, touched at the images of my grandchildren with my fingertip, all the while a piece of me sorry it hadn’t been me to take the picture instead of him. I wanted his image there in front of me right now instead of this old and tired woman smiling out at me. Then I found myself looking at the images of his children and his wife and his retarded sister and his momma and daddy, just trying to muster an image of James in my head, trying to see in all of us something of him.

And now I knew I was growing old, because all I could get together was a gray outline, like a picture out of focus, him at the dinner table, him in a uniform, him shaking his daddy’s hand ten years ago. Only that.

“What she send? ” Leston said. He stood next to me, reached for the picture.

I handed it to him, said nothing. But, like all day long, that silence didn’t seem to matter to him.

“That’s a fine picture, ” he said. “Those boys of his, ” he said, and gave a short laugh. “Two goobers, ” he said.

I turned from him, moved to the table, pulled out a chair across from Brenda Kay. I sat down, brought out the postcard.

It wasn’t a picture postcard, but one of those preprinted ones, “This Side Of Card Is For Address” and a three-cent Liberty stamp printed in purple on the one side, her message on the other. But I looked first at our address written out in Anne’s fine, solid handwriting, “Mrs. Jewel Hilburn, Mchenry, Mississippi” and I wondered what she’d thought of when she wrote that out, wondered what she’d remember of this place from her childhood.

I turned the card over, slowly read it.

July 13, 1962 Dear Momma Just a short note while I have a minute this morning. We are all moved, but are still putting away boxes & such.

We bought a beautiful Coldspot refrigerator from Sears. It is really a dream & has a large freezer section. Barbara had a Tupperware party & I stocked up on all kinds of goodies that will come in handy. Laura seems to like her new room just fine, although she has to call me every now & then just to make sure I’m still here. It seems like there are a million bratty kids around here, but at least there are children for her to play with. She is now quite proficient at feeding herself, you should see her. In fact she gets real mad if you try & help her.

Guess that’s about all the room I’ve got. Love, Annie , That was it.

Just the note she said it would be, nothing more. There were things I could take from her words, I knew, the image of Laura, alone in a room and happy until she saw she was alone, then calling out, a Tupperware party at Barbara’s, Barbara like always bubbling over and happy at everything, a shiny new refrigerator. But that was it. I couldn’t even picture the new house they’d bought, only knew it was in Torrance, sat at the peak of a hill in a new tract of homes.

Leston said, “Soon’s you have the sheets up, we can take our drive.”

I looked at him. I said, “So long as it’s not Gulfport, ” and broke my day-long silence.

He laughed, reached a hand up to his hair, smoothe it back. He said, “Not to Gulfport.”

“Dive? ” Brenda Kay said, and we both turned to her.

“Yep, ” Leston said. “Surprise destination.”

She looked at me, puzzled. “Supise? ” I nodded. I still had the postcard in my hand, hoped that maybe by just holding onto it something else’d come to me, a picture of that house, the sound of Laura’s voice.

Maybe even the sound of waves crashing that foggy morning, a sound that seemed suddenly fading in me this day, a day I felt I was fast losing hold of. I couldn’t even picture my oldest son.

I said, “Your daddy’s got some surprise up his sleeve for us, ” and I smiled at her, turned to the washing machine, took up the basket. I went to the back door, turned and pushed open the screen door with my back.

I said, “You want to come out back, help Momma put up the sheets? ” “No, ” Brenda Kay said right out, no hesitation. She was still coloring away, her eyes never leaving the paper.

Leston looked at me. He shrugged.

He said, “I’ll be out front, ” and turned, headed out to the front room.

A moment later I heard the front screen door open, close, next his slow footsteps on the porch.

Outside I put up the sheets, clipped and clipped and clipped, my arms aching with the work of it. The slow afternoon breeze was almost as wet as the sheets, and I hoped it wasn’t too late in the day to be putting them out.

But what I hoped most for, and what I never heard, was Brenda Kay s voice come down to me from that kitchen window, her calling out to me like baby Laura, making certain she wasn’t alone.

CHAPTER 36.

I WASN’T LONG IN FIGURING OUT WHERE WE WERE HEADED. I KEPT MY mouth closed about it, figured I’d let my husband believe in his ability to surprise me for as long as I could, so when we turned left, headed on 13 up toward Carnes, there was nothing left for me but to sit back, see how he planned to play this out.

We drove on through the woods, trees reaching over the highway. Once, a little while north of Lumber ton on 11, when the trees seemed to stretch out over us for as far ahead as you could see, Brenda Kay hollered out behind us, “Tree tunnel, Momma! ” and both Leston and I laughed, him shaking his head, grinning.