The Day of Small Things (6 page)

(Least)

I
have waited the longest for Lilah Bel to come back. So many things has happened that I want to tell her about—starting with Brother and his girl getting married in Ransom and going off on the train and how Mama took on.

Brother come home one Sunday evening after spending the day in Ransom and as we et our supper he begun to talk about how he could make enough money in the car plants up North to send some home and we would be better off than if he stayed here on the farm. He was all worked up and talking fast and couldn’t hardly set still but kept jumping up and pacing back and forth, holding his cornbread in one hand and talking between bites.

“I saw Tony Lee Warren in town—he was home for Decoration Day—and he said he knowed the feller what does the hiring at the River Rouge plant and was I to come right on, he’d guarantee I’d get a job. You’d not credit how much they’re paying, even to fellers just starting.”

Brother stopped and stared across the table at Mama, who was setting there all pinch-mouthed and scowling. “Mama, don’t you see—there’d be money to hire the plowing done. You and Least can raise a big garden—you don’t need me fer that. And it’d just be for a year or two, time to get a little ahead with some cash—”

And then Mama jumped up out of her chair and come around the table at Brother. Her glass had knocked over when she sprung up, and buttermilk begun to run across the tabletop and off of the edge. She didn’t pay it no mind, though, just hauled off and fetched Brother a slap across his face so hard that his head rocked to one side.

“Hit’s that painted huzzy behind this, ain’t it? Got you by the pecker and now—”

“Mama!” Brother balled up his fist and pulled it back like he was going to strike. He stood there, just a-trembling all over, his nose holes all opened up like a great angry bull. “You best not say one more word iffen you want me to pass another night in this house. I swear, I’ll not stay to hear such—”

But Mama wasn’t paying him no mind; she was shouting out dreadful-sounding words, which I’d never heard most of them but I could tell they weren’t fitten. I set still there at the table, watching the thick buttermilk dripping slow to the floor. When it had all run off and Mama and Brother were still hollering, I stood up quiet-like and went out the door.

In my secret place I could still hear their voices but I couldn’t make out the hateful words. I curled up in the big smooth hollow between the roots and listened for the drums. I hoped that they would come out soon for I felt the alonest I ever had.

Up amongst the roots was the last of my corncob babies. I had wrapped her in an old cloth and put her to bed there a long time ago when Lilah laughed at me for playing with such. I reached out for the dolly and pulled her to me and held her up against my cheek. “My pretty little baby,” I whispered to her, “don’t you cry, your mama’s here.”

Lilah Bel come at last but she is all different now. She don’t want to do nothing but play brush arbor revival and talk about Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Lilah says that I am a sinner and must come to church and get saved but I told her she knew Mama didn’t let me go nowhere on account of my spells. Besides, Mama says that ever since my daddy died, she ain’t got no use for Jesus.

But Lilah Bel says all I have to do is to say that I love Jesus and then I won’t have to burn in Hell forever. Lilah tells me all about Hell and what kind of place it is and what happens to folks who go there and I cover my ears and shake my head no. Then she tells me about Jesus and what bad folks done to Him and the story is most as awful as the one about the hatpin lady but this time I don’t take a spell. I just do like she says and get down on my knees and say that I love Jesus and will love Him forevermore.

“I don’t know,” says Lilah Bel. “By rights you had ought to be dipped in the water with the preacher saying words over you. Let’s go to the deep place in the branch and do it again. But first you need to go get you unses’ Bible so I can read out of it after you get saved.”

“What’s a Bible?” I ask her and she tells me it is a big old book with God’s words wrote down in it.

“Well,” says I, “there is several books on a high shelf in Mama’s room where she keeps the extry lamps but don’t no one ever touch them. I believe they was my daddy’s.”

Lilah studies on it some and decides we can get along without a Bible. So we go to the deep place in the creek and I start to take off my nice dress which she ain’t said nothing about, she has been so busy saving me. She sees me start to undo my buttons and draws up her mouth.

“Oh no,” she says, “you got to keep your clothes on! God don’t like nekkid people.”

That don’t make sense to me for she has told me that God, who is really Jesus and also the Holy Spirit, made the first man and the first woman along with all the animals and everything else there is. (This was back when He was just called God—the other two names come later, Lilah says.) Anyhow, what I wonder is, if God don’t like nekkid, why didn’t He just make people with their clothes already on them, like He done possums and coons and birds and such?

But I hold my tongue and wade out in the cold running water in my new dress. The water is up to my knees and the hem of the dress is dragging and wet.

“Am I saved now?” I ask her, but she shakes her head and says I got to get wet all over, even my head.

“I’ll come in and do like the preacher does,” she says and walks right into the water like it weren’t there. She stands behind me and with one hand she pinches my nose shut and with the other she pushes me under.

My eyes are open and I can see that there is a whole other world under the water—a green world with more Little Things that I had never known of—Little Things that squirm and wiggle and give off light and tiny sounds. I begin to feel quare like there is someone calling me and
I try to shake off Lilah Bel’s hands so I can follow the voices that sing in my ears.

But Lilah Bel holds tight to my nose and my head and then I am back up out of the greeny dark into the light and the air. Lilah Bel lets go of me and she is praying so hard that the words all run together and don’t make no sense. I leave her standing there and climb up on the bank and begin to wring the water from my new dress.

When Lilah finally gets done, I ask her am I saved. She says that I am and at last I get to tell her about Brother and his girl going off to Detroit and about the old lady who is coming to live with us.

(Granny Beck)

I
knowed the first minute I seen the child Least that she had the Gifts—could read it in her eyes—though it was likewise clear she hadn’t no idea of what the Gifts are and how she might use them. But she is nearing the age when they’ll be at their strongest, whether for good or bad, and the most like to do her harm. Perhaps that’s the reason that things has worked out this way—so that I might be here to help her through this time—to teach her of the Gifts and of the Threefold Return, as well. Lord knows I fought like one thing against coming to live with Fronie, but now that I’ve seen the child, I know it was meant.

Not a one of my young uns had the Gifts—folks say it often skips a generation. There was a time, though, when I thought that Fronie might—but ever when I tried to tell her about the Gifts, she’d sull up and scowl at me like I was crazy. Finally I seen she was one who could have had them, but had turned away. It may have been that her
refusing the Gifts is what has soured her, making her discontent so that she is always hungering for what she’s missed.

Me and Fronie never could agree. She was my oldest girl and seemed like, as the babies kept a-coming, I just didn’t have the time to ever get to know her. Looking back in my memory, I see her a lap baby and then I see her when first her monthlies come on—that was when I thought I saw the signs in her face. And then I see her riding off behind that feller she married—off to his home on the other side of the county. I don’t remember no in between—though reason tells me that she was in our home for sixteen year. Why I can’t recall her face during all that time, I couldn’t say. I know that she was there helping with each new baby—but I can’t call to mind her face, except for them three times.

After she married, a year or more might go by without me seeing her or hearing aught of her and her family. I did send word that I would come help when the first babe was born and again with the rest but each time she made it clear that she didn’t want me there.

And after so many years, to be dumped on her like an unwanted dog.

This morning Bevan brung me in his truck with my plunder about me and my old Delectable Mountains quilt over my legs. It is my legs that have give out on me, not my eyes or ears, and I could hear ever word Fronie and Bevan was saying. And I could see her face, so much older than I remembered and with deep furrowed lines down either side of her mouth to where I doubt she could smile if she tried. Bevan was standing on the bottom step to the porch and she on the top like she would bar him from coming up, but he had his say nonetheless.

“Fronie, you agreed to it and I told you we’d be here today. Me and Emma Ray’s had the care of her ever since she got so crippled up. We never asked aught of you in all those years. But Emma Ray’s mama and daddy both are in a bad way. The bank has took their farm and they got nowhere to go but to us. We can’t look after three old folks. Emma Ray has done for Mama like a daughter all this time—I reckon you can take your turn now.”

I knew and she knew that she would have to give in—it’s just her nature to be hateful. Between them, her and Bevan managed to get me up to the porch. I can make out to hobble a little but I can’t do no good with steps.

“She’ll have to have Least’s bed,” Fronie said, looking at me like I hadn’t got no sense. “I can fix the child a pallet for now.”

Her and Bevan hauled my few bits and pieces into the house and I could hear them still squabbling. She hadn’t spoke an actual word to me yet but finally she come out and give me a pie pan with some cornbread on it and a glass of buttermilk.

“Me and Bevan is going out to the barn. I want to see can he help me hang that stall door the bull broke down.”

“Thank you, Fronie,” I said, hoping that things between us might begin to improve, “I always did love cornbread and buttermilk. And I thank you for taking me in—I’m right sorry to be a burden.”

Her mouth bunched up like a hen’s behind and then she said, “It don’t matter; I’m used to burdens.”

She turned to go and then, recollecting herself, asked me did I need to use the chamber.

That’s the worst of old age—coming round after so many years to where you’re weak and useless as a little baby again. Fronie helped me back to the room I’m to have and pulled the pot from under the bed. She stood there waiting, tapping her foot as I did my business.

When I got done and started back for the porch, Fronie grabbed up the pot.

“I’ll dash this out in the branch,” she said and made for the back door, calling over her shoulder, “If Least decides to show herself, tell her I got a job for her. Tell her she’s not to go wandering off till I talk to her. The child ain’t got much sense but I reckon the two of you’ll get along just fine.”

When I got back to the porch, I went to studying the yard and what all I can see of the place where I am like to be spending the rest of my days. The road runs close to the house and I’m glad of that—it’s right pleasant, when you can’t do nothing but set, to watch folks in their comings and goings. Not that the road appears to me in much use, but you can’t tell—someone might come up this way now and again.

I seen there was some big boxwoods over to one side and a straggly yellow bell bush but not another flower in sight. Most women would make a flower bed or maybe have some in pots on the porch but there ain’t nothing of the sort here.

Oh, the pots of flowers that lined my porch railing back when I had my own house—and how proud I was of the show! Bevan’s Emma Ray loves flowers—law, in springtime her thrift is a sight on earth—the way it lays like a blanket over that old stone wall—purples and pinks and a white that most burns your eyes when the sun hits it. And the peonies …

But ain’t no use thinking on that. Emma Ray has her children to help her and Bevan does his part too. Maybe when her man was alive, Fronie had more time for flowers. Still and all, I believe she’d be a happier somebody could her eyes light on a rosebush now and again.

I wish I could help her someways—instead here I am, taking up more of her time and making things harder. Bevan has said he will try to send money every month to help out—I don’t eat much; maybe the money will ease her load. And I can still snap beans and suchlike—

There was a rustling in the boxwoods and I could just make out a shape slipping along behind the leaves. At first it worried me but then I figured it must be the child—Fronie’s least un and the only one still at home. Bevan told me he’d heard the poor little thing is simpleminded and bad to take fits. Another worry for Fronie.