The Weight of Blood (17 page)

Birdie

Birdie was suspicious of Lila at first. Her own people had lived in Henbane since the 1800s, and after a while you forgot that your family was ever from anyplace else, that a hundred-odd years ago they were from Kentucky, and
they
were the new folks in town.

When Lila came, there weren't many new folks, nothing to bring them in—certainly not jobs. Every once in a while retirees would show up, looking to live out their golden years in the Ozarks, but most of them figured out pretty quick that it was nothing like the brochures. They all seemed confused not to be welcomed with open arms, but it took time to let people in. Sometimes it took generations. There were people in Henbane who'd never seen a Negro or an Oriental. Back when she was little, before Birdie had seen anyone much different from herself, her uncle came home from a street fair in Arkansas and talked about seeing a real live black man on the Ferris wheel. Birdie and the other kids likened it to seeing the bogeyman. When Lila showed up in town, supposedly from Iowa, folks saw right away that she wasn't any ordinary midwestern girl. Something about her looked exotic, that thick black hair and those unusual pale green eyes and what looked like more than a tan. It had folks guessing, was she one of those half-breeds? Part Indian? Arab? Some sort of Mexican? That was before they started in on the witch talk and worse. She was different; people gossiped. Birdie was one of them, and she wasn't shy to admit it.

She'd heard Carl had been flirting with the new girl over at the restaurant, had seen him driving her over to his house, and she didn't know what to think. Boys'll be boys, for one—they see something pretty, they go on point. She didn't guess it was more than that. She never thought a Dane would up and marry an outsider. And she sure as heck didn't want the girl living right down the road from her.

Rumors had started up, witchcraft and all that. You only had to look at the girl to imagine something supernatural at work, like a spell to make herself irresistible. Hogwash, mostly, but Birdie had no plans of getting anywhere near her until Carl called and said she was in a bad way and needed doctoring. Birdie had never turned down a Dane's request for help, and even though she wasn't a real doctor and hadn't taken any kind of oath to help people, she loaded her supplies in the truck and went on over. She wasn't trying to be saintly. Part of it was plain old curiosity, not unlike her uncle staring at the Negro on the Ferris wheel.

Carl told her that Lila had been attacked, but he didn't say who had done the attacking. Birdie shooed him out of the room while she examined the girl, who lay there limp as a flour sack. Though her bruises weren't fresh, it was hard to say how old they were. Once Birdie got under her clothes, she saw a bigger problem. The bite on Lila's breast—it had to be human, though that was a hard fact to swallow—hadn't been cleaned up right. It wasn't as bad as it could have been, but it could get worse without care. Birdie set to work mixing a poultice of tobacco and mullein leaves and called her cousin for antibiotics. For nearly a week she tended to Lila, applying fresh poultices and doling out pills. Whenever Carl came in to see Lila, Birdie made sure she was covered up. As the swelling and redness eased, she could see more clearly the marks on Lila's breast, the individual lines and points, and though she knew plenty of people with crooked teeth like the ones that had made those marks, she immediately thought of Crete. Some while later, when she heard that Joe Bill Sump had disappeared around the time she was called to treat Lila, she wondered if he'd been the attacker. Then she remembered he was missing teeth up front and couldn't have been the one who had left the mark.

Birdie was a bit perturbed, seeing Lila in Althea Dane's bed while Althea herself was stuck in a nursing home. Even when Althea's health started to decline, she was a good neighbor. She was cordial, kept her distance, and brought pies at all the right times. Birdie and her husband, Sy, used to make music with Althea and Earl back in the days when their kids were small. Sy played dulcimer and taught Birdie, though she never got to be as good as him.

A couple weeks after Lila recovered, she came knocking at Birdie's door just like an ill-mannered traveling salesman. Birdie opened the door but stood in the crack so Lila couldn't see inside.

“I brought something for you,” Lila said. “Carl said you like squirrel.”

Birdie looked at the foil-covered plate the girl carried, Althea's china pattern peeking out. Lila didn't look like somebody who could cook good squirrel, though Birdie had no choice but to let her in, since she'd brought something.

“They're dumplings,” Lila said, carefully setting them down on the kitchen table. “My grandmother's recipe. Except for the squirrel.” She smiled hesitantly.

“Much obliged,” Birdie said, walking back toward the front door.

“I can't thank you enough,” Lila said, “for helping me. I truly appreciate it.” Her eyes were all watery, and Birdie hoped she wouldn't bring up the unspoken confidences between patient and healer. Birdie hadn't said anything to anyone about the bite and had no desire to talk about it with Lila, either. Just then the girl's eyes caught on something behind Birdie, and her face lit up.

“I've never seen an instrument quite like that,” she said.

Birdie moved out of the way so Lila could get a better look. “It's a dulcimer,” she said. “My husband's.”

“I play piano,” Lila said. “Played. Not in a long time. I was sort of terrible.”

Birdie didn't offer to let her hold the dulcimer. “It's nothing like a piano,” she said. “You set it in your lap and pluck it. He had a hammered one, too, you play with the little mallets, but I passed that one on to my oldest boy.”

“Maybe you could show me how it works sometime. I'd love to hear it.”

“I'm no good,” Birdie said, showing her out the door. She felt a little guilty after the girl left. She'd brought an offering of thanks, after all, and Birdie had been less than neighborly. Alone in the kitchen, she peeled back the foil and examined the dumplings. She thought about scraping them into the dog dish outside the back door, but she lifted the plate and sniffed first, and they smelled decent. She licked one, tasted butter, and took a bite. It was better than any regular dumpling. Better than
her
dumplings. Over the next few days, she ate them all, wondering how that strange girl had performed such a miracle with squirrel.

Carl

There was a moment, as Lila told him about the baby, when everything went haywire.

It felt like his heart had stopped pumping blood and let it all drain down to his feet. He was warm and woozy, on the verge of passing out. His eye twitched. His ears rang. Lila seemed to wilt as she waited for him to speak, and he gathered her in his arms and held her. It was all he could do
. I love you
, she said. He told her he loved her, too, which the good Lord knew wasn't enough to describe his feelings, but he couldn't say the other things he was thinking, the greedy, giddy, kid-on-Christmas-morning thoughts that were flashing through his brain.
I got her. She's mine. She'll stay.

There were practicalities to tend to: fix up a nursery; get Lila to a doctor for some of those horse-pill vitamins; visit Mama at Riverview and share the news. Before any of that, he was going to marry her. He left her there on the landing and sped over to Crete's house to ask him for Grandma Dane's wedding ring, which he knew good and well his brother had no use for. It took a bit of haggling, but Crete finally gave in.

Later that night, as Carl was checking his closet to see if he still owned a tie, Joe Bill, who mostly drifted in a dark current of his consciousness, floated to the surface. He didn't know what had happened between Joe Bill and Lila, what he had done to her, but the possibility was there. He didn't want to bring it all up again, drag her through painful memories, but he had to know.

He went to her room and curled up next to her on the bed. She was awake, and she took his hand and kissed the calloused knuckles, then gently pressed her warm mouth against his palm. They hadn't made love since the attack. It was hard to believe there'd been only the one time, at the homestead, and he wanted, needed, that feeling again, to be enveloped by her, her scent, her taste, her heat. First he had to know
. It doesn't matter,
he said.
It doesn't change anything, not my feelings for you or the baby.
She let go of his hand, waited.
Joe Bill, when he … did he … did he force himself on you …
?
She looked him in the eye.
No
, she whispered, her mouth moving toward his, kissing him in a way that drove all thoughts of Joe Bill below the surface. And then she was slipping out of her nightgown, helping Carl out of his clothes, and he pressed against her for the first time in so long and felt that everything was right, everything was as it should be. It was true what he'd said, that his feelings for her wouldn't change. But though he never would have admitted it to her, he'd lied about the baby. He wanted a child with her, but he wanted it to be his, theirs. When she told him Joe Bill hadn't raped her, it was like being yanked back from the edge of a crumbling cliff. Rescued. Because he didn't know how he could have lived every day looking at a child with another man's face, knowing what that man had done to his wife and what he himself had done in revenge.

They got to work on the house right away. Once he gave Lila free rein, she wasn't shy about freshening up the place. She was careful with family mementos, not moving a single thing in the china cabinet except to dust it, leaving Mama's room just the way it was. Everything else, she tackled with a vengeance. Gabby came over and helped her scrub the place down. They left no crevice untouched, wiping out every cabinet, drawer, and closet, oiling creaky hinges, polishing woodwork, dusting ceilings. Furniture was rearranged, slipcovers sewn, rugs aired out, curtains washed and mended. They spent one whole weekend taking all the pictures and knickknacks off the walls, rolling on fresh paint, and then hanging everything back up. When they finished, each room was a different color: yellow kitchen, green bedroom, pink bath. The halls were bright robin's-egg blue, the baby's room delicate lilac, because Lila felt certain she was having a girl. Carl wasn't a fan of the rosy bathroom, but he would have let his wife paint polka dots on the roof if it made her happy. All the windows stayed open while the paint dried, and the house felt fresh and new; it would always be his old family home, but now it was Lila's home, too.

Carl came home one evening after a day of baling hay—he was taking any job he could that would keep him close by—and found Gabby and Lila in the kitchen with the music blasting, dancing around like a couple of crazies. Lila both aroused and intimidated him with suggestive moves unlike anything he'd seen at local dances, but when he asked where she'd learned how to dance like that, she just laughed and grabbed his hand, and they tried out a line dance Gabby had taught her. It was something, to see her so at ease, laughing and having fun. He could have watched her like that all night. He was glad she had Gabby to keep her company. As flaky as Gabs could be, she was a good, loyal friend.

Carl visited Mama several times after the wedding, trying to smooth things over, but he imagined it was hard for any mother to accept that her son had gotten a girl pregnant and married her at the courthouse. It wasn't the proper way to do things, no question. The situation was made worse by Mama's condition, which had deteriorated to the point that the mother he remembered rarely made an appearance. Mama had become the angry, paranoid woman he'd seen in brief flashes throughout his childhood, though Dad and Crete had hidden her episodes as best they could.

From the very beginning, Lila had a hard time with the idea of his mother being separated from the family. He came to realize she hadn't left the bedroom untouched purely out of respect but because she expected Mama to move back in. She begged him to bring Althea home, promising to take care of her. He argued that it would be difficult to take care of a parent and a baby at the same time, but he knew it didn't make any difference to Lila. She'd lived with her grandma from the time she was little and couldn't imagine childhood without her.
Your mother is still alive
, she said, and he could see how much it hurt her that her own parents were dead, that they'd never know their grandkids. He didn't have high hopes that it would work out, but he couldn't argue with Lila. He couldn't
not
give her what she needed from him, if he had the power to give it.

Lila wanted Althea's room to be perfect for her homecoming. She scrubbed the wood floor and made the bed with fresh linens, fluffing the pillows against the headboard and folding the chenille duvet across the bed just so. She cut zinnias and asters from the garden and arranged them in Mama's milk-glass vase on the dresser. Carl kissed her goodbye, and she smiled in the way that made him want to keep kissing her instead of leaving her behind to make the drive to Riverview. She had plans to bake bread and fix vegetable soup from Althea's own recipe so dinner would be ready as soon as they returned. She'd even picked mint from the herb bed outside the kitchen, so she could try to make tea like Ransome's.

Mama sang to herself the whole way back to the house and seemed in good spirits. Maybe it was the right thing to do, Carl thought, bringing her home. Lila was four months pregnant, and there would be plenty of time to work things out before the baby came. Maybe they could somehow be the family his wife wanted. Lila opened the door for them as they stepped onto the porch, and he saw her smile waver as she laid eyes on Althea for the first time. His mother barely resembled the curvy, laughing blonde in the old family photos he'd shown Lila; her hair was thin and gray, cropped short like a man's, and her flesh kept close to her bones. Her mouth puckered into a frown.

“So there's the witch,” Mama said, stopping to glare at Lila. “I ain't scared of you.”

Lila pressed her lips together, shot Carl a determined look, and held the door open wider.