The Devil in Canaan Parish (7 page)

My grandmother was proud of me. She called me Amy Lee, which was the name my mother gave me.
 
She told me my father didn’t know how to spell it, and so he wrote “Amelee” on my birth certificate, “but that’s not your real name,” she said, “your real name came from your momma, not your father. Don’t you forget that!”
 
I got the feeling that Grandmother did not like my father much.

 
Grandmother always took me with her to visit friends, and they all said that I was the prettiest little girl they had ever seen. I took dance classes, ballet and tap.
 
Grandmother said that my momma was a wonderful dancer and showed me her toe shoes that she kept in the closet on the top shelf.
 
I held them in my hands, the pink silk worn in several places, and thought of my mother whirling and twirling across the stage.
 
I didn’t understand why my beautiful, smart, talented mother decided to leave Lafayette and live way out in the country with my father.

“Grandmother,” I asked one night while she was brushing my hair, “how did my momma meet my papa?”

Grandmother stopped brushing my hair for a moment.
 
Her lips pursed as though she had eaten something sour.
 
Then she sighed a great sigh.

“Well, I guess you would ask that eventually.
 
Honey, your grandfather, my late husband, was an oilman.
 
He worked mostly in Jennings at the oil field there, managing the men.
 
He would go for several days at a time, sometimes the whole week, and come home on the weekends.
 
Your momma and I used to visit him from time to time,
 
you know,
 
bring him fresh clothes if he needed them,
 
maybe a basket of cookies and cake.

Your grandfather was so proud of your momma!
 
He used to love to show her off and tell everyone that she was going to go to college and be a schoolteacher.
 
She was the apple of his eye!
 
She loved to visit him.

There were a lot of men who worked for your grandfather.
 
Most of them were poor folk, Cajuns like your daddy who came to Jennings to get some work.
 
Well, one day your momma was visiting your grandfather and your daddy started talking to her.
 
He was older than her and he would flatter her and say sweet things to her, and she, being so young, thought that she was in love.

When your grandfather found out, my goodness he was mad!
 
He told your momma she could never see that boy again, and she wasn’t allowed to go and visit him at the field anymore.
 
It was the harshest that your grandfather had ever been with her.
 
Sometimes I think maybe he shouldn’t have spoiled her so much when she was a young girl, because she just didn’t take this punishment well at all.
 

We didn’t know it, but your daddy started coming here to our house to visit her, and she’d sneak out at night with him, and then one day they just up and eloped!
 
Went all the way to Arkansas where they could get married, because your momma was only sixteen.
 
They were gone for three days.
 
I was frantic, I tell you!
 
Your grandfather had every lawman in the parish out searching for her.
 
When she finally came back, she told me they’d gone up to Texarkana and got married by a justice of the peace there.

Your grandfather was furious!
 
He turned her out of the house, though I begged him not to.
 
Your daddy said it didn’t matter, and that he’d find work and take care of them.
 
For a while he was working here in Lafayette, but later that year, you know, the big crash happened, and there was no work for anyone anymore.
 
So your daddy took your momma – my precious baby girl – back to those swamps he came from!”

At this, grandmother started crying a little.
 
I put my hand up on her cheek, and she kissed it, and then wiping her eyes, she continued,

“Well, I got letters from her from time to time.
 
She tried to be cheerful in those letters, but I knew that it was hard for her.
 
She wasn’t used to working so hard.
 
He had her doing the cooking the cleaning, you name it.
 
They didn’t have two pennies to rub together, and sometimes I’d send her a little money when I could.
 
She kept having baby after baby too.
 
I don’t know how she managed it.
 
And they were all boys.
 
All boys!
 
She wanted a little girl so badly.
 
And when she knew she was going to have you she wrote to me.
 
I still have that letter.
 
Do you want to see it?”

A wave of excitement came over me.
 
A letter from my momma!
 
I could barely contain myself.
 
Grandmother saw the delight on my face and grinned.
 

“Alright then, I’ll just get it for you.”

She went back to the closet in my room, reached up on the top shelf again and carefully pulled down an old hat box.
 
She set it down on my bed and opened it gingerly. With trembling hands, she picked up an envelope from the top of a pile of letters, pictures, dried flowers, and other small treasures in the box.
 
She pulled the letter from the envelope and handed it over to me.
 
I took a deep breath and read it:

Dearest Mother,

I am writing to tell you some good news.
 
I am going to have another baby, but this time, I am sure it will be a little girl!
 
I want to name her Amy Lee.
 
Don’t you think that’s a good name?
 
I want to dress her all in pink and put pretty ribbons in her hair, just like I used to wear.
 
Won’t she just be a little doll?

I hope that you and daddy are doing well.
 
I wish that daddy would let me come and visit. Maybe he’ll change his mind when he knows he’s going to have a granddaughter!
 
I so want to see everyone.
 
I miss you and Daddy and Gladys so much. . .

The letter continued on, but Grandmother took it out of my hands.
 
She smoothed the worn paper lovingly, and then put it back in the envelope.

“That was the last letter I ever got from your momma,” she whispered.
 
“I didn’t know she had died until months after you were born.
 
Can you imagine!
 
I wanted to go and get you myself, but your grandfather was still too bitter and angry to hear of it.
 
But, a little while after he died, I did come and find you, and so, here you are, child!”
 
She gave me a hug and kissed my cheek.

“And now, young lady, it is very late and you have school tomorrow and need to go to sleep!” I nodded and sank down beneath the covers, so happy to know that my momma had wanted me! Grandmother tucked me into bed and then turned off the light.

I lived with my grandmother for five wonderful years. It was the summer after I turned ten, and I was eager to be starting the fifth grade in the fall. One day, Grandmother wasn’t feeling well. She went and got in her bed, and Gladys told me she was alright and just needed to rest for a while.
 
I read to her at night for a few days.
 
But then, she seemed to get sicker and sicker, and in a few weeks, she was dead. It happened so quickly.
 
I could not believe it.
 
The funeral came and went and still I did not believe it.
 
Gladys sent for my father.
 
She didn’t know what else to do with me, so she packed up my things and put me on the porch, and I waited there until my father drove up in his old pick-up truck to get me.

Chapter Five

The first morning after Melee came to stay with us, I woke up to the smell of fresh coffee and bacon frying in the kitchen.
 
I am always amazed at how quickly the sense of smell can take me back to my childhood, and the memories invoked are never purely happy. Most of the time, I try to evict from my mind as soon as they enter, but this morning I allowed them to drift in and set up temporary residence.
 
Lying in bed, I kept my eyes closed and saw a picture of myself as an eleven-year-old boy.
 

It was 1934, and my mother, my little sister Gracie, and I were living in Ida Mae Wilson’s boarding house in Savannah.
 
My father was on the road to Atlanta, trying to scrape together enough to buy more wares to sell, and he had left us behind.
 
I didn’t mind.
 
It was one of the few times when I could rest from our nomadic existence.
 
When I felt that we had a home, even if it wasn’t ours.

My mother helped Mrs. Wilson with the cooking and the washing and in return she allowed the three of us to sleep on cots in a small bedroom next to the kitchen. I used to earn pennies searching through garbage cans and parking lots for empty coke bottles and sometimes run errands or deliver milk for shopkeepers. Mrs. Wilson made breakfast each morning for the boarders and anyone else who wanted to pay the 15 cents.
 
The eggs came from the chicken coop in her back yard, and Mrs. Wilson would serve them up with grits, biscuits and strong coffee. Mrs. Wilson’s sister lived on a farm near Americus, and visited on occasion, bringing bacon and ham from one of her slaughtered pigs. It was those times I loved the most, because my mother would hand me a biscuit with two small pieces of bacon tucked inside and send me to eat on the back steps.
 
It was often the only meat I would eat for an entire week.
 
I loved the way the bacon grease soaked into the biscuit, making the crumbs cling to my fingertips.
 

Sometimes homeless men, wanderers and vagabonds, would come to the back steps and eye up the food in my hands.
 
They’d ask me if I had any left, and I’d send Gracie inside to tell our mother.
 
Mrs. Wilson would come to the door, usually with a pie tin full of scraps and leftovers and hand it out to the men.
 
They’d scrape every last bite, and then take a drink from the garden hose, before tipping their hats and going on their way. Sometimes Gracie would perform for them while they ate.
 
At six years old, she was a laughing angel child, her hair done up in curls so she could be just like Shirley Temple.
 
She would beg me to take her to the picture show and sometimes I’d have enough to pay the 20 cents for both of us.
 
She loved
Bright Eyes
, and she’d dance and sing “On the Good Ship Lollipop” to the delight of these weary, downtrodden men, many who had little girls of their own somewhere, waiting for their daddies to send home the money that never came.
 

One day Gracie was dancing around the kitchen and fell. She was crying really hard, and when my mother picked her up she noticed she had a fever, and carried her back to her little cot.
 
She stayed there for days, complaining of a headache, and I would visit her and promise to take her to a picture show as soon as she got better.
 
A few nights later, she tried to get out of bed for a drink of water, and fell down again.
 
My mother called to me and told me to go and get the doctor.
 
I saw the fear in her eyes and I ran.
 
Running through the heavy Savannah night, the tears flooding my eyes, I didn’t know what was wrong with little Gracie, only that the fear on my mother’s face filled me with an emptiness worse than any hunger.
 

All the next day my mother was locked in the little room with Gracie and the doctor.
 
Mrs. Wilson sent me outside with stern eyes and told me not to disturb them.
 
It was killing me not to know.
 
I was sick with worry and sat on the top of the back steps, glued to the screen door, waiting for any sign, any word, that little Gracie would be alright.
 
Mrs. Wilson came to the back door with a can of dried corn and told me to go feed the chickens and clean out their coop.
 
It was a hot, smelly job, and I hated it.
 
I was afraid of the chickens and how they would peck at me when I tried to gather the eggs up from under them.
 
The rooster was even more terrifying, and I was careful to lock him out of the pen while I cleaned the coop.
 
He would be furious and would strut up and down outside the wire, cocking his head to the side and spitting at me.
 
It was the perfect job to give my mind a little peace from the worry that consumed me.

It’s funny how quickly death can come.
 
That day it came as I walked back toward the house carrying a basket of eggs, the filth of the chicken coop still on my hands.
 
It came with the doctor walking down the back steps, pausing on the bottom one to wipe the sweat from his bald head with a handkerchief and donning his hat.
 
He nodded at me and then back at the house, said he was sorry and then walked away.
 
I didn’t understand why he was sorry, but I felt the basket slipping out of my hands, saw the eggs falling, the eggs for tomorrow’s breakfast falling to the ground and spilling out in a mess of white and gooey yellow.
 
It came with the sound of my mother’s wail from inside the house, and the sound of her stifling it, and when I ran through the back door and into the kitchen and burst through the door of our little room, no longer banned to the outside, I saw her sitting on the floor next to Gracie’s cot, her shoulders shaking with her sobs.
 
It came with the sight of Gracie’s curly hair, plastered with sweat to her still little head, her lifeless hand extended out from the cot and held tightly in my mother’s.