Chapter Seven

 

“It was a hard life.” Calvin sucked water through a straw, then turned to his sister. “Terrible hard in them old days. And about six months after Mama died, our Pa brought her home.”

 

Farmington, Maryland

March 1930

 

It wasn’t the dead of winter or early spring, but some mostly gray time in between. Flora was a tall, thin woman with long, yellow hair that fell in greasy strands over her forehead. When she brushed it away with her hand, young Calvin could see her small eyes, set close together and gray as rainclouds. The cornflower-blue cotton dress hung loosely over the angles of her shoulder blades. She was barely more than a teenager, but seven-year-old Calvin decided to hate her the first time he ever laid eyes on her.

His father gathered all the kids around him and Flora in the kitchen. Though it was still morning and not even warm inside the room, his blue shirt darkened along his back and under his arms. The veins on the sides of his neck stuck out like cables. But somehow light found its way inside his blue eyes and picked out little green and gold specks deep within them.

Calvin knew he had something serious to tell them by the way he pulled the sack of tobacco and papers from his shirt pocket. Rolling the cigarette slowly, he studied it, smoothed it and then lighted it quickly, before crushing the burning match between his thumb and forefinger.

Knowing what was coming and not ever wanting anyone to take his mama’s place, Calvin stared out the kitchen window at the light curving along the wall and tried not to listen to the words his father said.

“This here’s my wife, your new mama. You young’uns better behave yourself and be nice to her, or I’ll whup the living daylights out of you. Do you hear me?”

Calvin heard him, all right, but the words dropped around him like a hundred pebbles onto a gravel road. He knew right then he’d never be nice to her, or love her either, knew this to the innermost ache in his heart. How could his father drag some strange woman home to be their mama, decide without a word to any of them? It wasn’t fair. This greasy-haired Flora would never be his mama.

Ignoring everything else, Calvin stared into the thin darkness between the kitchen floorboards. He wondered what had fallen through those cracks over the years and imagined small pieces of silver jewelry. He envisioned all sorts of treasures hidden between them, pictured jewels that could buy him a way out. Gold coins that would whisk him aboard a pirate ship and away from this Flora whose lap he would never climb up on. She hadn’t held his hand or cared for him when he was sick or afraid, hadn’t carried him to the window to name the stars, and Calvin knew she never would. He was a difficult child and not so easy to love. He’d been told so often enough by his grandmaw.

“This here’s Evie.” His father said, pointing. “And Allie and Calvin and Pam. Them little ones over yonder is Nellie and Ron. They don’t remember nothing about their mama. Should be easier with them.”

Little Ron grabbed at a shaft of sunshine. When his hand went right through it, his face was amazed and disappointed at the same time.

“Howdy. I’m right pleased to meet y’all.” Flora’s eyes shone.

The sun peered over the barn and fell across the farmhouse porch, tumbling bright and yellow through the kitchen windows. His father dropped his arm around Flora’s shoulders.

Calvin glared at them. “I hate her,” he whispered to Evie. His eyes pooled but didn’t spill. His anger masked his despair, and even as he proclaimed his rage, his loneliness grew tighter, closed in on his heart. Flora was nothing like his mama, and he wished he could cry, but the sadness never quite found its voice again. It stuck in his throat, unable to move, and it lived there for a long, long time.

Flora was too young, he’d someday think, and it probably wasn’t easy for her either, inheriting six kids and an alcoholic husband in the middle of a depression. Maybe she did the best she could, but he was just a little boy then and couldn’t see it from her eyes. He really longed for a hug or someone to reach down just once and ruffle his curly, red hair and read him a story before bed. But Flora couldn’t know that. And no hugs or bedtime stories came Calvin’s way. He believed she didn’t like him, thought he was a troublemaker and a bad influence on the other children. When she’d caught him smoking behind the barn, she smacked him hard on the rump and made it clear he was selfish. And good for nothing.

As the months passed, Flora settled in and made some progress with the other children, especially the younger ones. Calvin stood in the doorway as she read to Nellie and little Ron from a book of fairytales she’d brought with her. Ron perched in her lap, and Nellie nestled close beside her in the chair by the parlor window—a chair where his mama sat when she read to Calvin about the stars.

He stood watching Nellie flip the pages.

Flora’s left hand rested on Nellie’s leg while her right brushed Ron’s hair away from his forehead with her fingertips. “Are you my little boy, Ronnie?” she whispered in his ear. “Say ‘yes, Mama.’”

Calvin fought the urge to shake his little brother when he said “yes.” Flora was not his mama. His mama had black hair, and her eyes were big and dark brown. She smelled real pretty, like the lilacs that climbed the porch trellis in the springtime. He needed to convince Ron how much his mama loved him. Remind him of the way she’d rocked him to sleep at night. He needed to convince his little brother that calling Flora his mama was a big mistake. But he didn’t say anything.

Although Calvin longed to see the pictures in the book, he never ventured into the room or moved a step closer. But after dinner, while the rest of the family cleaned up the kitchen, Calvin crept into the parlor. He picked up the book and turned its pages, fascinated by the colored drawings, ran his fingers over the treetops and thatched roofs of the cottages, not quite believing it was only paper.

Calvin didn’t know what made him rip the pages out and crumple them, and he didn’t know why he hid them beneath the ashes and chips of wood in the stove. He slipped the remainder of the book under his shirt, took the stairs two at a time, and raced into his room to hide it under his mattress.

It was as if he wanted to prove himself as malicious as Flora believed him to be. No one trusted him, and that knowledge turned him inside out. That’s when he knew his shadow was leading him. Or maybe the devil the preacher was always going on about. One thing was for certain, all Calvin could do was follow the dark spot on the ground in front of him.

The next evening, after supper, Flora asked Calvin if he’d seen the book. He held his face perfectly still, his eyes straight ahead, focused on the way the light in the hallway formed a white circle around her.

“What book? I haven’t seen your dumb, old book.” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

She placed her hands on her hips and glared at him. “You’re lyin’, and I know it. Look at me. Now where’d you put that book?”

“I didn’t put it any place. I never even seen your gawd, dern book.”

She slapped him across the face, the first of many slaps. Calvin laughed out loud, but the sound cracked midway and turned into something else—something not quite human. A sound that sent Flora to her knees. She reached out to touch Calvin’s shoulder, but he shifted too fast to feel it.

Her arm lowered, and she seemed to fold in on herself. “I’m sorry, Calvin. You got my dander up.”

But Calvin didn’t stop to listen. He raced to the barn. The evening air hung heavy, like invisible chains all around him.

As if he’d unzipped himself and all his insides spilled out all over the hay-strewn floor, Calvin knew Flora was right. He was selfish and useless. He lied and didn’t even know why or what made him tear up that beautiful book when he actually yearned for her to read it to him, not just to Nellie and Ron. Why didn’t he ask instead of destroying it? Calvin didn’t understand his unwillingness to give Flora a chance.

He peered out the loft window at the purple sky and the darkening earth. Even they seemed pitted like two enemies, each hating and wanting to consume the other. Calvin longed to run inside and throw himself on the floor at Flora’s feet, apologize and confess about the book and all the other things he’d done, all the things he’d lied about. His stomach churned the way it did when he’d drunk sour milk. He made a thin retching sound.

He wanted someone to love him so badly, a desire that ached everywhere, his fingers, his calf muscles, and his toes. It paralyzed him, and he lay in the hayloft without moving until the sky blackened and all the windows in the farmhouse darkened. Only then did he creep across the side yard and up the trellis to his bedroom.

Flora never mentioned the book of fairytales again. Calvin didn’t tell her how much he wanted her to read to him, either, but he vowed to try harder. A few days later, when Flora asked Calvin and Pam to run to the Farmington store for a sack of flour, he went willingly.

“Sure. We’ll get it for you. Be back in no time.”

The morning sun rose brightly and slanted through the maples, taking up what little moisture the night had left behind. On the way home Calvin and Pam tossed the flour sack back and forth like a football, darting in and out of the trees and catching it on the run. When it dropped in the gravel near their drive, the bag split at the seam, and white clouds of flour drifted up and settled on the rocky lane.

Pam’s nose crinkled up like it always did when she got scared. “We’re in a heap a trouble now, Bugs. Flora’s gonna whup the living daylights out of us. And we got no money to buy more.”

“Don’t worry. We can scoop it up. She won’t even know the difference.”

They collected the flour, along with gravel, pine nuts and dirt, and stuffed it into the sack. Pam pinned the frayed burlap seam with a safety pin that had held the hem of her dress.

Flora didn’t say a word, and they thought she hadn’t noticed—until dinner. She grilled flapjacks made from the ruined flour and served a stack to both Pam and Calvin. The rest of the family ate chicken and biscuits from a different flour. She stood over them, watching as they swallowed small stones that stuck in their throats and then landed in the pits of their stomachs. Neither of them spoke up or acted like they noticed anything different about their meal.

Later, as the stones passed through their intestines, cramps bent them over, and time after time that night, Calvin took Pam’s hand, and they trudged to the outhouse behind the porch. It was a two-seater, and they sat together until the sun peeped over the eastern horizon.

The next day he leaned against the silo thinking how he’d never even tried to like Flora. But he hadn’t realized he hated her until he sat on the porch steps and listened to the sound of her rocking chair behind him as it scraped like claws on the wooden porch boards. Calvin was tired of taking orders from her pale, thin lips and tired of the way she lashed out at him.

When it was cold outside, the kindling for the early morning fire was Cal’s responsibility, and he gathered it when no one else would even think of climbing out from beneath the mountains of blankets and quilts. The light through the parlor windows spilled onto his fragile wrists and lighted the freckles dotting his arms. Bony elbows jutted out from under the rolled-up sleeves of his flannel shirt. Calvin’s fingertips turned blue, but it was his job, and when he failed to do it, he paid the price.

The house seemed to grow tiny with winter and snowdrifts that reached the windowpanes. His father disappeared for days on end, and Flora roamed like a ghost through the dark, sleeping house. She appeared out of nowhere to administer her punishments to Calvin. Knowing he was unloved, the boy thought about running away, but where would he go? Would anyone notice he was gone? Would anyone care?

In time Flora accused him of being hateful, stubborn, and willful, just like his father. She claimed she wasn’t born to inherit so much cleaning, cooking, and sorrow, and she wasn’t going to do it, either. Her words, thin as a porcelain vase, frightened Calvin into silence.

“Ain’t you got nothing to say for yourself? Ain’t you even sorry?” Flora asked him after every beating, but Calvin remained silent.

Winter moved over for the spring and summer again, but their father remained blanketed in a thick fog of booze and fought constantly with his new wife. One warm evening, knowing his father and Flora would take a walk after dinner, Calvin climbed way up into the apple tree along the road leading to their house and listened to them.

His father, a tall, lean man with quick and jerky movements, approached Flora. As always, the sky above him seemed brighter and more alive to Calvin than it had before his pa appeared beneath it. His blue overalls had worn pale at the knees and backside, and one sleeve of his old grey coat had torn loose from the shoulders. A ragged hole gaped at both elbows.

“These young’uns is driving me plum crazy,” Flora said, moving away from his pa. “I’m running around like a dang chicken with its head cut off, and they don’t do nothing I tell them. You’re no help at all, out tomcatting around and drinking every night. And we ain’t even got enough to eat. I’m leaving first thing in the morning, and I won’t be back.” Her long fingers stretched over her hip bones.

His father walked on in silence, and Calvin sniffed the dust his feet kicked into the air. He knew the death of his mother, followed by the months of drinking and loneliness, marked his father with guilt and shame and left unbearable loneliness. He also knew, because his pa never hugged and kissed her the way he’d done with Calvin’s mother, his father didn’t love Flora.

Uncertain he’d actually heard the words his stepmother said about leaving, Calvin’s face set, and he looked down at her. Then her message repeated itself, this time deep inside his brain like an echo and he trembled. He hated her and should be happy, but her leaving meant trouble. The hot summer light lay on the land and crawled up to the doors and windows, bringing silence with it.

Flora didn’t leave the next morning. But one day after autumn came, the children returned from school to an empty house. Allie peeked into Flora’s closet and found her clothing gone. She’d moved out. The marriage had lasted less than two years.

Soon after Flora left, his father disappeared too. When Aunt Pearl discovered this, she loaded Calvin and the rest of the kids into the truck and drove directly to Grandpaw’s farm.

“We got to do something about these young’uns,” Aunt Pearl said. “They’re running plum wild with nobody to care for them and their father lying in a ditch somewhere. I mean it, Paw, something has gotta be done. It ain’t Christian the way them children is living.”

Grandpaw Miller called a family meeting; gathered Grandmaw, Aunt Pearl, and Uncle Joe and planned the future of Calvin and his sisters and brother.

“I’ll take Pam,” Aunt Pearl announced. “She can live with me and Joe. Looks like we ain’t gonna have any young’uns of our own.”

For all the eight years she’d been alive, Pam had been special to Aunt Pearl. Mama even let Aunt Pearl name Pam. Evie, Allie, and Nellie would go live with Mama’s family on the farm in Sugar Grove, Virginia. They had money and would send the girls to good schools. It would be a better life for them, Grandpaw said. Calvin, now nine years old, and the baby, who was almost five, would move in with Grandmaw and Grandpaw Miller. They were getting along in years and could use some strong boys to help with the farm work.

“I can take care of things. I’m no baby. And Evie’s a real good cook. Just give us a chance, Grandpaw. Please. Don’t send my sisters away,” Calvin pleaded.

“It ain’t gonna work, boy. Your pa’s in a heap a-trouble you don’t know nothing about.”

Grandpaw was wrong about what Calvin knew. He knew plenty, and he feared they’d lose the farm forever. He knew the Virginia Livestock Bank of Baltimore had mailed his pa a letter and that he wasn’t making the payments. He’d heard him talk to Grandpaw about it. But, tired of the drinking and shouldering the responsibilities for his son’s family, Grandpaw wouldn’t bail his son out again.

Calvin didn’t have a choice about any of it. He’d never been to Virginia, but he’d heard his pa tell stories about the old flour mill his other grandpaw had there and how he used to haul lumber from nearby counties on a big wagon, pulled by a team of mules. It was a story Calvin liked to hear, but he imagined Sugar Grove, Virginia must rest on the other side of the world—in some place he’d never be able to find.

He wondered if he’d see them again and who he’d talk to in the night if Evie, Allie, Pam, and Nellie disappeared from his life. Who would share his bed? Ron was a baby, and he didn’t know anything. He didn’t even remember their mama, but Calvin remembered everything. It was his life, and he didn’t know how to go on living without his sisters, didn’t know who he was or where he belonged.

When Grandpaw drove them back to the farmhouse to pack up their things, Calvin carefully removed the picture of his mama from beneath his mattress and tucked it into the back pocket of his overalls. He pushed the torn fairytales closer to the center, picked up the book of stars his mother had given him, then rushed out to the barn and woodshed. He stared into the empty stall where his friend, Star, had lived. Unable to afford his feed, Pa had gotten rid of Star and the other plow horse a few months before. Calvin kicked up some straw on the barn floor and turned over a broken mower tooth with his boot.

He visited the places he wanted to remember, and he wondered how to start over. Maybe Ron could because he was still a baby, but Calvin couldn’t. He drifted to the grape arbor in the woods and the willow tree near the pig pen, sat on one of the outhouse seats with the door wide open. He remembered all the times he’d escorted his sisters there during the night.

The sky blackened between the stars and the pale, light sliver of a moon hung small and unbalanced in the autumn sky. He knew his grandpaw was looking for him, heard him call.

“I’ll be with you in a minute, Grandpaw,” Calvin whispered. His grandpaw couldn’t hear him, but he wasn’t ready to leave—not just yet.

For almost three years, ever since his mother died, they’d been losing this home bit by bit, every time his father got drunk, and every time he sold one of their horses or a piece of farm equipment.

And Calvin believed he held some blame. Every time he’d disobeyed Flora and every hour he spent looking up at the stars instead of doing his chores, had brought them a little closer to this day.

Now, on a Saturday night in October, as the blackbirds rested on the maple tree branches growing alongside the barn, his family and his home were disappearing. Calvin didn’t want to live anywhere else. These were the walls that once housed his mama. And the place where he remembered her best.

His grandpaw was all right, he guessed, but he sure wasn’t too crazy about Grandmaw. He never forgot the way she humiliated him in front of the school. Calvin was accustomed to hard work and being responsible, but he didn’t know how he’d get along without his sisters.

When his grandpaw saw him sitting on the outhouse seat, he laughed. “You gotta pull your britches down first, boy. Didn’t you hear me calling you? We gotta get a move on. There’s chores to be done.” There was a coarse kindness in Grandpaw’s voice, and the boy felt as if the sun had just come out as the old man laid his hand on Calvin’s shoulder and nudged him outside and toward the house.

He didn’t have much to pack up, just a few pairs of faded overalls and two flannel shirts. His church shoes didn’t fit him and had holes in the bottoms, and he didn’t own socks without holes in them either, but he packed everything he found into the burlap sack and stood beside Grandpaw’s car.

The next day, they drove to the train station and loaded Evie, Allie and Nellie for their trip to Sugar Grove.

“Bye, Calvin,” Evie whispered. “Don’t be looking so down and out. We’re gonna be back together before you know it. Pa will come get us. You’ll see, Bugs. You’ll see.”

Nellie was only six years old, and her long, red hair trailed behind her in the sunlight like a stream of fire. As she climbed onto the train’s platform, Calvin knew he would always remember her that way—clutching the burlap bag with her clothes and the lunch Grandmaw had packed.

His sisters’ frightened faces grew small as they waved from the train’s window. Their father wasn’t there to see his children climb aboard that train. He didn’t see his son, Calvin, waving until the window holding his sisters’ faces disappeared from his sight. He didn’t know the boy struggled to understand his own need to go with them. His need not to be alone. It was a need that didn’t make any sense to the boy.

Since he already knew that’s what you are, from your very first breath.

Alone.