Mama Rocks the Empty Cradle (17 page)

Mama nodded. “Abe will have to question Timber,” she answered absently. Mama shifted in her chair like she didn’t want to talk about Cricket, Timber, or Warren. “Carrie,” she asked, finally getting to what was really on her mind, “you know much about Buck Ponds?”

Miss Carrie glanced at each of her companions before answering Mama’s question. “I know as much as to be known about the old coot,” she admitted.

Mama took a deep breath, leaned back, then crossed her arms in front of her, as if she was preparing her mind to take a journey. “Good,” she said, clearly satisfied.

A glint of surprise flashed in Carrie Smalls’s dark eyes; a deep scowl formed between her eyebrows. I would have sworn that she wanted to know why Mama had asked about Buck Ponds. This was not
the way I expected her to look. After all, never before had these women needed understanding to recount details of their neighbors’ lives.

“Tell me about Buck,” Mama said.

Carrie Smalls replied, “His mind was bad, he did crazy things—”

Sarah cut in. “Nobody had much to do with him after they found out what he did.”

Carrie turned to Sarah. “That’s ’cause what he did wasn’t
natural
.”

Annie Mae Gregory, whose eyes had large dark circles around them like a raccoon’s, added, “Especially to his own.”

Sarah Jenkins leaned forward. “When Buck’s wife, Rebecca, died twenty years ago, this county saw the biggest funeral it’d ever seen.”

Carrie nodded. “That’s a fact.”

Sarah seemed pleased. “Folks came from all over—Course, I always thought Rebecca was a little on the silly side.”

Annie Mae Gregory spoke. “I expect the news from the church board was what killed her.”

Carrie’s thin neck stretched further. “I’d have killed
him
’fore it killed me,” she said firmly.

Mama listened quietly. I groaned to myself. It took forever to pull a coherent story out of these three. I blurted out, “Did Buck Ponds kill his wife?”

Sarah Jenkins looked over at me, surprised by my question. “Buck might as well have taken a knife and plunged it into Rebecca’s heart.”

“When she found out what he done, it killed her,” Carrie said.

Annie Mae Gregory nodded. “Most folks agreed with you.”

Mama frowned. “What did Buck Ponds do that was so bad that it caused his wife to die?”

Sarah Jenkins’s thin body twitched like she’d felt a chill. “It’s too contemptible to tell.”

I couldn’t help wondering what anybody could have done that was too contemptible for these women to gossip about. But for once I was too smart to make a sarcastic comment. I sat down and tried to be patient.

Mama leaned forward. “I’d like to know,” she prompted.

Carrie Smalls’s face hardened. “When Buck Ponds died, not more than five people showed up at the church. And I was told not one of them went with his body to the cemetery.”

“Serves him right,” Sarah added. “ ’Cause of what he’d done, they wouldn’t let those poor little things be buried in the church’s graveyard.”

I stood up, exasperated, but Mama’s eyes flashed toward me. I got her message: I sat back down.

Mama smiled, a different smile from the one she’d had earlier. Her meaning was clear. She was going to sift through the tidbits of information these women were giving one crumb at a time until she got what she wanted. “I suppose I should remember Buck and Rebecca,” she mused, “but I can’t for the life of me place them.”

Sarah Jenkins shook her head. “Rebecca died
while you was all over the world running after the government and that husband of yours.”

“Daddy was in the Air Force,” I had to say.

Sarah ignored me. “Buck lived on his place like a hermit until he died a little over six months ago.”

I’d had it. “Tell us what happened and stop beating around the bush,” I pleaded.

Mama eyed me again, but this time she didn’t say anything.

Sarah looked at me as if she didn’t care that this dialogue was getting on my nerves, then she turned to Mama. “Mind you, Candi,” she said, lowering her voice. “I ain’t saying Buck was the
only
one responsible for what he did.”

I was amazed at Mama’s patience. But I sensed this story was so important for her to hear that she was willing to let these women tell it in their own way.

I turned to look out into the garden, to watch the sunlight slant through the oak tree. There wasn’t anything for me to do but to wait. Mama seemed determined to get what she wanted without pushing.

Annie Mae Gregory spoke. “That gal was ten, but she should have told Rebecca what her daddy was doing to her.”

“So, the Pondses had a child, a daughter?” Mama asked.

The three women nodded. Sarah Jenkins belched. “The Lord is good,” she declared. “ ’Cause that girl turned out better than anybody would have thought she would.”

“Especially since things like that spread through the town and people have such long memories,” Annie Mae Gregory added.

Mama’s eyes sparkled.

Annie Mae Gregory sighed deeply. “About twenty-two years ago, Buck Ponds had unnatural relations with his only child, his daughter. I suspect ’cause she was so young and her body wasn’t fully formed, it was natural that she would give birth to sickly twin boys.”

“What happened to the two babies?”

“Those two twin babies died four months after they were born,” Sarah said candidly, like she was proud of knowing the fact.

“Who was the midwife who waited on the Ponds girl?” Mama asked.

“Lucy Bell Childs,” Carrie Smalls said.

Mama’s eyes shone brighter than the morning star. She breathed deeply as if now she understood all.

Annie Mae Gregory spoke. “Somehow or another, Rebecca Ponds found out that Buck had got the girl pregnant. The poor woman got sick when her grand-babies came; she was doing even more poorly when they died. When the preacher and the other church members wouldn’t let those two poor babies be buried in the church cemetery ’cause of how they were conceived, it was too much for Rebecca to bear. She died three days later. Her sister, Cassie Tuten, who lives on the county line between Rome and Otis, came and took the girl to finish raising her.”

“Where were the twins finally buried?” Mama asked.

“I declare, Candi, I don’t rightly know. Nobody had anything else to do with Buck.”

“It would be against the law to bury the children on his own property,” I said.

“Simone,” Mama said, “in Otis, the burial laws aren’t as strict or as enforced as they are in a big city like Atlanta.” She addressed the women again. “Did this girl have any more children?”

Annie Mae Gregory shook her head. “Naw, but she got married.”

Carrie Smalls added, “She’s done pretty good for herself, don’t you think?” she asked her two companions.

When they nodded, I could see that Mama was satisfied, she’d learned all she needed. “I suspect that girl, who is now a woman, lives here in Otis, doesn’t she?” Mama asked.

“Lord, yeah,” Carrie Smalls exclaimed. “She’s been living here ever since the first day Isaiah Smiley married her!”

W
e had a whole lot of reasons to be thankful this Thanksgiving weekend. Mama’s feet were better; she had returned to work. And to her kitchen.

But there was another very special reason. If you’d looked at Yasmine, you’d see that she waved graceful hands, tinted nails glossed to perfection. On both her and Ernest’s ring fingers were matching wedding bands.

Yasmine had told Ernest he had the option of marriage and the baby or she’d abort. The next morning Ernest woke her early and carted her off to City Hall to get a license. Three days later, Cliff and I joined them as they were married in a civil ceremony.

Mama’s table was set. The delightful aroma of the
twenty-five-pound roasted turkey stuffed with a corn-bread-and-pecan dressing wafted from the center of the table. There were also cranberry sauce, candied sweet potatoes, macaroni and cheese, collard greens, white rice, field peas and okra, string beans and white potatoes, carrot souffle, and homemade yeast rolls. My mouth watered at the sight of it. Mama had used her best china, her silverware and crystal. Her guests: Cliff and I, Ernest and Yasmine, my brothers Rodney and Will and, of course, my father.

It was Ernest who turned the conversation to the kidnapping of Cricket’s baby. “Miss Candi,” he said, “I heard you cleaned up another one of Otis’s scandals.”

Mama looked like she was thinking back as she surveyed our questioning eyes without answering Ernest. Daddy’s fork swung in midair. “If it wasn’t for Candi,” he bragged, “Lord only knows what that crazy woman would have done to that poor baby.”

“James, I don’t think Birdie would have harmed little Morgan,” Mama murmured.

Daddy looked at Mama like she was being too modest. “She’s on Bull Street in Columbia. Like I said, ain’t no telling what she’d have done to that poor kid if you hadn’t told Abe where to find them.”

I leaned over and whispered to Cliff: “Bull Street is the state hospital for crazy people.”

Cliff nodded.

“Tell us about how she stole that baby and why
she did it,” Ernest urged Mama. “Start from the beginning.”

Mama leaned back and surveyed her waiting audience. Then she said, “When Birdie was ten years old, her father got her pregnant,” she began. “The poor child delivered a set of twin boys. But those babies died when they were only four months old.”

“Tell them how Lucy Bell Childs got involved,” I prompted.

Mama’s eyes flashed at me, but she continued. “During the time, Lucy Bell Childs was the prominent midwife here in the county. It seemed that all of her babies contracted some fever which caused them to linger sickly until they died, about six months after their birth. The talk got around that Lucy Bell carried the fever, so she ended up with the sickly babies, nursing them until they died. She buried them in the little cemetery in the back of Rose’s mobile home.

“Like I told Simone earlier, the burial laws ain’t as strict in these parts as in a big city, and the laws that we do have ain’t fiercely enforced. Once you’re out in the country, past the town limits, things get so slack people can do most anything they want to as long as nobody complains. So, since nobody complained, Lucy Bell decided to bury those babies in the little cemetery in the back of Rose’s mobile home.”

“I didn’t even know there was a cemetery behind those trailers,” Daddy volunteered.

“I didn’t either, James,” Mama said. “But, from the first time I noticed when Simone and I visited
Rose to pay our respects over Cricket’s death, I was intrigued. It was like something drew me to the little graveyard, something made me think that it was tied to Morgan’s disappearance.”

I nodded. “That’s why she had me crawling around on my hands and knees taking pictures of the tombstones.”

Mama smiled. “Back to Birdie and Lucy Bell Childs,” she said, returning to her story. “Even though Lucy Bell no longer worked at delivering babies, Birdie’s mother, Rebecca Ponds, called on her to help Birdie during her labor.”

“For heaven’s sake, why?” Yasmine exclaimed.

“Yasmine, honey, I don’t rightly know,” Mama answered. “I can only guess that it was because Rebecca was too ashamed to call in another midwife or even to take Birdie to a doctor or a hospital.”

Nobody spoke, thinking of poor Rebecca’s shame and misery, all those many years ago.

“But it’s important to note that Lucy Bell didn’t take care of these twins like she’d taken care of the other babies she delivered, the ones who’d caught the fever.

“Lucy Bell Childs must have grown to love the twelve babies she took care of, because she made her grandson, Dan, vow to take care of the cemetery.”

“Nightmare must have been about fifteen at the time,” I said, chewing a piece of sweet potato.

“How did you figure that Birdie had stolen the baby, Mama?” my brother Will asked.

Mama looked across the table at her son. “When
Rose brought me the note that she’d found in one of Lucy Bell’s old books, a list of names was with it. Simone and I compared the names on the list to the ones on the tombstones.”