Tomato Girl (19 page)

I lifted Jellybean out of my purse so he could walk around the flat rocks. He chirped and fluttered his baby wings. “You love the sun, don't you Jellybean?” I stroked his head with my finger. His green color was fading now, as it always does when chicks grow.

Tess held out a bit of her pie for Jellybean. He stumbled over the rocks to reach the treat, nibbling one piece, then another. When the crumbs were all gone, he climbed into her hand. Tess laughed. “You greedy boy.” She stood up and walked with him toward the river. If Daddy hadn't been there, I would have reached out and taken back my little chick. I didn't want Tess to hold anything that belonged to me.

Trying to ignore her, I gathered up the empty Coke bottles and paper wrappers, and then put them inside the brown bag. This was the first car we had owned in a long time, and I didn't want it to get dirty.

Daddy swigged the last of his Coke, then called to Tess. “Don't go too close to the edge. I don't want to end up fishing you out of the river.”

Tess blew Daddy a kiss and shook her behind in his direction to make him laugh. She took a few more steps, then yelled, lifting her right foot suddenly, as if she'd stepped on something sharp. She tottered, her arms spread away from her body to help her gain her balance.

I watched Tess's hand open and my chick fall.

His small body hit the dark rock, slid into the river, and was gone.

J
ELLYBEAN'S PALE GREEN HEAD
surfaced, then disappeared again as he bobbed like a rubber bath toy in the swirling water.

Daddy yanked off his boots and socks and jumped into the river. His arms made large arcs in the river, but he couldn't keep up against the swift current. Like a seed or leaf tossed into wind, Jellybean's small body followed the water's flow.

Tess ran along the edge of the bank. “Please hurry, Rupert, please!” She dug her fingers into her short hair.

At first, I didn't do anything: didn't cry, or scream, or run along the bank. I felt numb, like a thousand bees had stung me all at once. Inside my head, I heard the blood hum in my veins. Then the humming in my head swirled and broke into a gushing noise. My knees trembled, and I stumbled forward, taking a few small steps before I broke into a run. I headed up the hill, toward the woods.

Stumps and fallen branches slowed me. I brushed against pine needles, scratching my arms and legs. I thought of Hansel and Gretel and the bread crumbs they scattered so someone could find
them. It didn't matter that I had no bread crumbs. I didn't want to be found.

The woods, however, were not deep, and I quickly came out the other side and found myself back at the water's edge, at a point where the river made a bend. Too tired to return, too numb to turn in a different direction, I ran down the sloped bank, slick with mud, then waded into the water.

Without thinking, I kept moving, going out further, letting the water take me. I wanted to be carried to some other place. Any other place. Not here.

Face down in the river, I let myself float like a piece of driftwood. Everything was cloudy, dreamy, and not quite real, just like a slow-motion movie. There were no sounds at all, and yet voices filled my head. Hymns, poems, and chanted words I couldn't understand. I didn't even recognize the voices, but somehow that didn't seem strange to me.

For the first time in days, I didn't feel afraid anymore. Here, there were no dead babies, tomato girls, or sick mothers. In the river, I could float myself to sleep.

Behind closed eyes, my mind drifted. I could hear voices, but the loudest noise was the water, roaring as it filled my body, pulling me down.

I don't remember Daddy lifting me from the river. I don't remember his large hands holding onto me so tight I would find bruises on my arms two days later. My body on the bank, spitting up water and coughing—I do remember that—and Daddy's mouth over mine, blowing breath into me. Tess stood or knelt somewhere to my side, crying, “Breathe, Ellie, breathe.”

The blue sky came back to me in pieces, like a jigsaw puzzle, then the green undersides of leaves, and my father's face.

I hurt all over. My arms and legs ached, and deep inside, my lungs and throat felt raw.

I coughed again and tried to swallow. “Jellybean is dead,” I said.

Daddy nodded. He already knew, of course. I just needed to say it. Words made it real. Words made sure I couldn't pretend it was another way. Make-believe is a dangerous game. I'd learned that from watching Mama.

“I didn't mean for it to happen, Ellie. I stepped on broken glass, and lost my balance. I am so sorry. Oh, please forgive me.” Tess spoke between sobs. She showed her bleeding foot as proof.

What could I say? As awful as Tess could be, I knew she'd loved Jellybean, too. She hadn't dropped him on purpose. But my little chick was dead, and he was all I had. Mama had secret worlds inside her mind and Daddy had Tess. Jellybean had been mine. Now he was gone.

Anger rose in me like a serpent's head, and I spat words at Tess. “You should've been more careful. When you're holding something that belongs to someone else, you don't take chances.”

On the ride home, I curled up on Daddy's lap while Tess drove. I moved in and out of sleep. I felt cold, even with Daddy's shirt wrapped around me.

My stomach churned with a sick feeling, but I was too weak to cough up more water. Too numb to cry, I buried my face in my father's neck and tried to remember to breathe.

B
ACK HOME
, D
ADDY
told Mama to stay away. “I'm not going to let you upset her, Julia. Ellie needs rest.”

Mama leaned against the wall, rubbing the sides of her head. She hadn't bathed while we were gone. She wore the same dirty nightgown and hadn't combed her hair. Around her neck, she'd tied the pale, blonde braid made from Tess's hair. When she saw me in Daddy's arms, she yelled at Tess, “What did you do, you whore? What did you do to my child?”

“Just keep walking,” Daddy told Tess.

With me in his arms, Daddy followed Tess upstairs. Mama trailed behind us, her voice shaking. “You tell me what she did! Rupert, tell me!”

Daddy didn't answer as he kept walking.

Over his shoulder, I saw Mama, her face tight, her lips drawn inward. As she came up behind Daddy, she tripped on the hem of her gown and fell. Mama groaned, and then began to sob. I squirmed in Daddy's arms. The sound of Mama crying called to me. Even though I felt weak and numb, I needed to go to her.

Daddy held me. “No, Ellie, don't fight.”

His firm hands and voice stilled me.

Tess started back down the stairs as if to help, but Daddy wouldn't let her. That seemed cruel at the time, but maybe Daddy knew that would be worse. The wrong person's touch when you are hurting can set loose something wild inside you. I'd seen times when my father had walked around Mama, careful not to touch her until she calmed down.

“Leave her alone,” Daddy told Tess. “I'll take care of Ellie and come back to help her.”

U
PSTAIRS
, T
ESS HELPED
Daddy pull off my wet clothes and lower me into the bathtub. Tess offered to bathe me, but Daddy said no, he'd come too close to losing me to leave me just yet. Tess kept apologizing. “I didn't mean it … It was an accident …”

Daddy reassured her. “I know. Nobody is blaming you. Please, just go rest and let me take care of Ellie.”

Tess didn't leave the room. She sat on the toilet and waited while Daddy bathed me.

As the hot water poured over me, I began to cry again, tears for my drowned chick and for the dead baby in the cellar. I cried for Mama, left alone at the bottom of the stairs, and for Daddy's worried eyes. I even cried for Tess, sitting on the toilet with her hopeless face in her hands.

Daddy cried, too.

He washed me gently, as if I were a new baby, rubbing soap in my hair, and over my skin. His hands made my blood flow under
my skin, and I began to feel warm again, at least on the surface. No amount of warmth could reach the places inside where I felt hollowed out. If someone peeled away my skin, I knew they'd see a rib cage and nothing more, just a dark empty hole where my lungs, stomach, and heart used to be.

After drying me with a clean towel, Daddy dressed me in pajamas and combed the tangles from my wet hair. He tucked me in bed, wrapped me in thick quilts, then kissed me before he went downstairs. He didn't try to explain or say anything to make it all better. He knew he couldn't. There are times when words won't make a bad thing better. Those are the saddest times of all.

As I began to fall asleep, I heard scuffing sounds and voices arguing. Daddy's voice deep and even; Mama's shrill and rising, always rising. Mama said all the bad words. Faster and louder. She wouldn't be quiet. Daddy shouted, “I'm warning you, Julia. You have to control yourself.” More bad words, loud and sharp.

I plugged my ears with my fingers as Mama's cries rose through the floorboards and threatened to drown me again.

The rest of the afternoon and evening, I floated in and out of sleep. Several times I heard Mama wander into the hallway, asking to see me.

Daddy kept watch in the hallway. Each time Mama came near, he guided her back to her room.

In a way, I was glad he kept Mama away. Part of me wanted to run to my mother, to climb onto her lap and have her stroke my hair and tell me everything would be fine. But that mother had disappeared like a magician's dove. I didn't know the magic words to bring her back.

D
ADDY BROUGHT ME
chicken soup in a blue bowl with saltine crackers and a glass of milk. He propped me up in bed, my head against my pillow, and spooned the noodles and broth into my mouth. The soup tasted good and familiar. I felt safe with Daddy beside me. I wanted to tell him everything then, about
how I hadn't gone to the cellar to get Mama the onion, how the baby had died and I'd put it in the freezer. I wanted to tell him how sad I felt about Jellybean, and how hard I wished Tess would go away.

Instead I swallowed the warm, salty soup and tried not to cry again.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, Tess brought a shoebox into my room. Wearing a black dress and a dark scarf tied around her head, she climbed onto my bed. Bright sunlight shone through the window telling me I'd slept very late.

“I think we should bury Jellybean. Seems only fitting, but I'll leave it to you to decide,” she said.

“He's inside there?” I rubbed my eyes, still swollen and sore from the tears.

Tess nodded. “Last night, after everyone went to sleep, I took the new car back to the river. I walked the edge of the water until I found Jellybean's remains.”

I sat up in my bed. The way she said
remains
made me scared to look. Sometimes turtles and fish feed on small, dead things. “Does he look bad?”

“Oh, no, not at all,” Tess assured me. “I got to him before anything else did. I fixed him as good as I could, Ellie.” She almost sounded proud of herself, and I wondered if she could even see her own fault.

I took the box from her hands and steadied it on my knees. Part of me didn't want to see, and I almost decided to tape the box shut and not look. Maybe it would be better to remember my chick as he'd been only days before. Another part of me wanted to see him inside the box, to make myself face the hard good-bye. My little chick deserved that much.

Opening the cardboard lid, I peeked inside, slowly at first, until I saw Jellybean, his tiny body laid out on a bed of Daddy's white handkerchiefs. Tess had tied a little black bow around his
neck and placed one of my embroidered doll pillows under his tiny head. I touched him lightly, tracing his cold, stiff body with my fingers.

“I thought we could bury him beneath the crab apple tree.” Her voice sounded hopeful, like a question.

I nodded. “That's a nice place. He'll like it there.”

Tess left the room to make plans with Daddy for the funeral. She came back a short time later and gave me the details. I heard her voice, but my mind could barely focus on words.

While I brushed my teeth and dressed in dark clothes, Daddy put Mama in her room and went for Mary Roberts.

M
ARY GAVE A
fine eulogy, the best one since the summer we'd buried the gray tomcat we'd found dead in the road. She recited lines from the Bible, and the parts she could remember of a poem that began, “I heard a fly buzz when I died,” which didn't exactly fit, but was a nice gesture.

Daddy took a shovel from his shed and dug the grave, a perfect little rectangle under the crab apple tree. I wished Mama could have been there, but Daddy said no, and I knew he was right. Still, I wished she was there.

Tess held the box until my part came, which was the hardest. Because Jellybean belonged to me, I had to lower him into the open ground and throw in the first fistful of dirt. No one else could do it, only me.

My hand shook as the grainy, black soil slipped through my fingers to pepper Jellybean's box. This is the part where everyone most wants to cry, when the dirt covers the coffin. It is final then. The one you bury in the ground isn't coming back.

Mary Roberts wrapped her arms around me, and I hid my face in her soft hair.

Daddy shoveled the rest of the dirt in place while Tess arranged wildflowers in a blue Maxwell House can and sang “Amazing Grace,” her high, clear voice lifting through the leaves.

For a long moment, I closed my eyes and wished a heaven for my little chick filled with yellow sunflowers and perfect blue skies.

Then I heard a door slam, and I opened my eyes. Over Mary's shoulder, I saw Mama walk out of the house, still dressed in her soiled gown.

Before the funeral, Daddy had wedged Mama's door closed. Somehow, she'd worked her way free.

Mama ran across the backyard, toward us, her arms lifted in the air like a bird about to fly. She screamed, the sound sharp and deep, like a wild animal. Her voice startled us all, even Daddy.