The walk home feels longer even though we didn’t stop in the Five and Dime like we usually do after a service. The girls take turns getting on my nerves.
“A farmer. That’s just like nominating your own self for the Moving On,” Rumor says.
“Everybody knows you can’t grow nothing,” Mariah joins in. “Roses, pumpkins, sunflower seeds—everything you turn your hand to just shrivels up and dies.”
“I’ve grown y’all, so you must be right. Everything I touch ends up rotten.”
“She’s just jealous because we’re getting forever husbands and hers was only ever gonna be temporary.”
“It serves her right. If she’d spent half as much time teaching those children of hers the laws of Curdle Creek, they’d still be here.”
Mariah likes to sound like a know-it-all but she doesn’t know nothing. My girls won just as many ribbons for reciting ordinances as anyone else around here. It was knowing all them rules that made them leave as it was.
“How are you going to feed the whole town and you can’t even keep a plant growing?”
Ain’t nothing wrong with tilling the ground. It’s honest work. Especially when the harvest is abundant after a bountiful Moving On. But a farmer has to feed the town whether it’s a year of plenty or not. Nobody ever says it’s all right if we don’t have enough grain, we didn’t Move On as many people as we ought to have. No, first they say there’s not enough wheat. Then they say there’s not enough meat. Before you know it, you’re nominated for the Moving On.
It’s not Mother Opal’s fault. I’m the one that plucked it. But, a farmer of all things. The girls are right, I’m as good as Moved On.
Rumor’s been begging to hold the refolded slip of paper ever since the usher pressed it into my hand before opening the door, pushing us out, and locking it behind us. Rumor’s hand starts to tremble in mine. “You really are going to be Moved On, aren’t you? Promise you won’t mess this up.”
“I’ll study farming. The library’s full of books on everything from sowing to growing. You’ll see.”
“Poor Osira,” the girls sing together in high-pitched voices. “Poor, poor Moving On Osira.”
“Last year,” says Mariah, “Bethany Anne’s father Moved On and she didn’t come in to read the forgivings for two days. Everyone fussed over her when she got back. Her eyes were all puffy, skin dry as a gourd. All that sniffling. One of the Sisters came in and told her to stop it right then and there. Said she was old enough to know how things worked around here and besides, she’d voted for her father just like everyone else did. It wasn’t anyone’s fault but her own that he had enough votes to be Moved On.”
“So don’t you go crying about how it’s not fair, Osira Turner,” Rumor says. “Don’t you dare do it.”
I really want to push her, with her matching dress and purse, smart shoes and white gloves, blessed life and luck-filled future, down in the middle of the street. But then Mother will launch into another rage about how I’ve disgraced the entire family and nothing good will come from this, and why, Lord, has she been burdened with such an albatross around her neck? It hasn’t been a minute since Daddy got her settled down from her last tirade. It took him whispering in her ear, kissing her full on the mouth in broad daylight right in front of anyone who’d care to see. Mother’s cheeks went brighter than Caught Me Red-Handed blush. Before long they were both giggling, swinging their arms, holding hands and walking slow, telling us to run up ahead so they could have some privacy.
“Last one to the house has to wash the dishes,” I call out. I’m already running.
Rumor can’t stand to lose anything so she takes off as fast as her legs will let her. Mariah’s calling after her about being a little hooligan but she’s just saying that because Mother’s there.
“Go on, join them,” Mother murmurs.
It’s as though she’s set a wild horse free. Mariah comes huffing, arms swinging, hair flying. I’d let her win if it didn’t mean her talking about it for the next three winters. I don’t let loose until she’s right behind me, then I do it. I take off. It’s like I’m flying. My arms and legs must be a blur because I see the street sign, the row of houses, everything all at once. It’s why I’m the first one to see the line of Deacons, Brother Jacobs among them, lined up against the gate. Why I stop, one hand on my knee, the other holding my chest, trying to catch my breath and not pass out. The Deacons always stop by to pick up Daddy before they go fishing, smoking, Moving On, Warding Off. They’re usually good for a laugh, a warm smile. Today’s different. There are no jokes. No smiles. No looking me in the eye.
I watch Mother and Daddy still loving up on each other even as they near the house. I know they’ve seen the men by the way it takes them half as long as it should to reach the walkway.
“My brothers,” Daddy says. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your esteemed company?” He smiles wide like this is just another day.
The men start Brother Osirising right away. It’s Brother this and Brother that. Everyone has a word of gratitude. They’re thankful for his sacrifice to the town. Thankful to have worked with him. There’s advice and goodwill flowing. If I had a glass, I’d be drunk off of Curdle Creek kindness. They are up to something. I know it. Did one of you nominate my daddy for the Moving On? I’d ask, but it’s against the ordinances to do that. My stomach is flipping like it did before they called my babies to be Moved On. For the right words at the right time, a Curdle Creeker would call their own mother’s name, no matter what names were nominated. And above all, the Callers are Curdle Creekers. The true believer kind.
I pinch myself to clear my head. These men are like uncles to me. When Romulus ran off, they were the loudest ones convincing the town that Mother and Daddy were as heartbroken as the rest of the town and hadn’t had a hand in it. They couldn’t vouch for Moses and me but that wasn’t personal. They were right there packing and stacking boxes for Moses’s sending-off so I wouldn’t have to do it. These men are family. Sure, one of them is plotting to be Mother’s next husband, but that doesn’t mean they’re up to no good.
The men are here to take Daddy fishing. They say they’re going to play a quick game of cards, then watch an edited version of Curdle Creek Then and Now, Daddy’s favorite film. Nothing’s wrong, they say. Can’t they do something nice without it being suspicious? Mr. Jacobs asks, like that’s not what makes it suspicious. After the film they will go to Spruce, Daddy’s favorite barbecue/bakery for Daddy’s favorites. There’s nothing wrong, they say, but the priest will say a few words. The Council will send a letter that some poor child will read out loud as Daddy eats. The letter of deeds is enough to take away your appetite so why it would be recited between the scraping of forks, the swallowing of tender meat, the cracking of rinds—depending on what everyone had ordered—is a mystery. I don’t want to know what mine says. I have no intention of listening to it being stumbled over, misremembered, mispronounced as a teary-eyed child stutters through my good and bad deeds. I’d like to live my whole life with my deeds unread, thank you very much.
Daddy’s about to leave with the Deacons. Everything’s fine, he says. Why does it feel like goodbye? Because I can’t keep my feelings off of my face, I head around to the back of the house. The grass is fresh cut, sweet. Clippings scatter as I walk. The least the Jones boy could do is clean up after he cuts the lawn. How hard is it to remember? Trim the bushes, mow the grass, burn everything you cut, scatter or bury it on barren land. Most people interpret that to mean behind the Grammercy Guesthouse since nothing good grows from there anymore. Only that boy interprets it to mean leaving it right here. I don’t mean to, but I pull a branch off one of Mother’s rosebushes. It feels mean and spiteful to do it but it’s in my hand and I’m bending, then snapping it off. Before long, the only thing I hear is the swish of my stick cutting through the air while I pretend-beat each and every one of the Deacons. I’m working on Uncle Dread when I feel someone behind me.
I didn’t even hear him walk up. That’s what folks say about Daddy during the Moving On too. One minute they’re all alone and the next, Daddy’s there. Even before he became a Deacon he had a reputation of being hard to get. Couldn’t no one sneak up on him then or now. It’s not so much that he’s faster than those being Moved On, it’s that he’s quieter and more patient. When he has a mind to chase someone down, he aims to catch them. He’s a blessing to the town. As long as you ain’t the one being Moved On. I smell him now too. His pipe’s always full of cherry wood, cherry leaves, cherry stems, cherry seeds. He said it’s sweet like Mother. I wish he hadn’t told me that.
He’s standing there grinning so I know just what he’s thinking before he even says it.
“Don’t you dare tell your mother I’m smoking. She always says it will be the death of me.” He puffs a round circle that would look like a misshapen ball any other time but now looks a bit like a broken wedding band. He chuckles. “You know how she hates to be wrong.”
He leans against the fence, standing far from Mother’s rosebush so she’ll know he wasn’t the one tampering with it. I lower my arm, my head too. There’s a whole family of ants just wanting to climb onto the branch. It hasn’t even hit the ground good. The soil’s dry. If the ground’s drying up, the crops will be too. A bit of water, some fresh manure, a bountiful Moving On, and the harvest and I could survive this year.
“Do you think Mother’s right about your name being called?”
“I don’t see how I’d know it, since we ain’t had the Calling yet.”
“The Deacons being here don’t feel off to you?” I can’t face him.
“Deacons have been Moved On since the beginning. None of them got a special send-off. I’m not special, Osira. The system works because there’s a system. No use in doubting it. The Deacons and me are just having ourselves a little gathering before the festivities get started.”
Daddy puffs slow. Like he has a lifetime of puffing left. A bubble of smoke seems to stream out of his mouth.
He’s right. Deacons have been Moved On from time to time. But none of them had been married to a Charter Mother. I poke holes in the ground to catch the rain when it comes.
“Have you ever been outside Curdle Creek?”
Daddy bends down, rests his hands on his thighs. “Why would I do that?”
I’ve always traced our bad luck back to Romulus leaving, choosing himself over the family. Then, it was my children. Like the family’s cursed. The whole town felt the same way. Isn’t that why we keep paying the same debt year after year since they’ve been gone? Daddy’s a believer; Mother is too. Both of them are as devout as twice-starched dress shirts. Still, he has to be a little suspicious.
“Maybe the Deacons know something they ought not to know.” I whisper it and step back in case lightning has good hearing and aim.
Instead of running to the phone, calling the Council to arrange a special meeting or turning me in, Daddy looks like he’s thinking it over. His head is tilted to the side. He’s rubbing his chin.
“I suppose that’s not entirely impossible,” he says. “Everyone gets to cast one nomination. If they asked folks who they were nominating and who they weren’t, they’d have a sort of tally of the most likely names to be dropped into the well. But they’d have no way to know which name the Caller would draw. There ain’t no way they could know that, is there?”
Unless someone got to the Caller first, I think. Slipped them a piece of paper with a name scribbled on it. Or, if they threw in extra slips with the name of the person they wanted Moved On, that would sure shift the odds, but not as much as if all the papers had the same name on them. Then, there’d be no way the Caller could pick anyone else.
“No, I don’t suppose there is,” I say.
“I don’t have to see what’s beyond Curdle Creek to know I don’t want no part of it. Everything I’ve ever wanted is right here.” Daddy points at the house, the garden, me. “My family’s here, and where my family’s at is home. That’s where I belong.”
“What if we’re the only place left with the Moving On?”
I’m not looking at him but I know Daddy’s shaking his head. I imagine his scar crinkling like it’s winking. It isn’t actually a scar, it’s a birthmark. Mother says it’s from the midwife rushing a baby set on coming in his own sweet time. But Daddy says he was anxious to see the world and pushed out so fast that he almost slipped out of the midwife’s hands, one of her slender nails catching him as he wiggled free. Dropping a baby. Right here in Curdle Creek. That midwife apologized for two days straight and her name was still called the next year just as sure as if she’d called it herself.
“The Moving On keeps us safe. What do other places have? Killings, that’s what. Danger at every turn. No outrunning it. Hiding from it. Ignoring it. Could happen at any time too. Maybe they don’t have a Moving On but there are whole towns living just a whistle away from being burned to the ground. No, thank you. I’ll take my chances right here in an all-Black town tucked in the middle of nowhere. When my name is called it will be because it’s my time.” He looks up at the sky like God has something to do with it. “Now doesn’t seem to be the time to be questioning if the system works or not. It may not work the way we want it to, but it works the way we need it to.”
Suddenly even Daddy’s quoting scripture. There’s a thousand ordinances I could quote back at him but they don’t sit right in my mouth. “Do you think one of them would nominate you?”
“Who?”
I nod toward the men. Sure, we’re family but not blood-related. Curdle Creek has a strict population policy. One in, one out. What difference does it make which one it is? “It could be any of them, really. Uncle Dread, Brother Oslo.” I turn to face Daddy. “Mr. Jacobs.”
“Osira Alexandra Turner!” Daddy’s hot-whispering too. He empties his pipe, scattering tobacco in the dirt. Then he wipes the pipe with a handkerchief and hands them both to me. I wrap the pipe, still warm, in the handkerchief and tuck them both in my pocket. I’m still staring at the grass, flat beneath his feet. “That man has been nothing but good to this family. You must see how he takes care of your mother. He’s a comfort to her. I’d like to think when it does come time for such goodbyes, he’d be right there taking care of my family. I’d do the same for him if it came to it.” Daddy shrugs his shoulders. “If it ain’t this year, it’ll be the next. Sooner or later it’ll be my year. I’d like a man like Mr. Jacobs to be there when it happens.”
I don’t need to remind him that a whole lot can happen in a year. People die all the time. With a bit of luck—a plague, fire, or some sort of accident—we won’t even need to call names. Just do the Warding Off to protect the town from the spirits. I can almost hear the hooting and hollering, the chants from the townsfolk with their pre–Warding Off shenanigans. Besides, in a year, Mr. Jacobs won’t even be here. Not if my nominating him has anything to do with it.
I picture Daddy running through the streets, hot torches sizzling and popping, shadows taunting and practically taking shape as the town closes in. “Will you be scared, when it’s your time?”
Daddy straightens up. Takes a step back. I didn’t mean to offend him. I drop to my knees to apologize.
“No, no,” he says. He grabs my arm tight, yanks me to my feet, still shaking his head. “You didn’t do anything wrong in asking.” The Town Hall bell rings. “You remember when you were a little girl, and we’d talk about Well Walkers down by the Creek?”
I would hate for him to Move On thinking he’d raised a non-believer. “Of course I do, but they ain’t real and if they were, what they’d be doing would be wrong. When it’s my time, I’ll go like I’m called to.”
A breeze blows, carrying the smell of fresh cow dung, exhaust, and sweet cut grass. Flies fat with all the time in the world buzz and settle one after the other near Daddy’s feet. He pats me on the back like I’m one of the girls.
“I thought you might say that. But if you change your mind, if you ever need to, see if you don’t find what you need when you need it. Don’t tell your mother. She has enough to think about right now.”
She sure does. Why else would she be sewing mourning clothes before the Calling? Running around flirting with Mr. Jacobs like she didn’t already have a husband and Mr. Jacobs hadn’t already had three wives.
A woodpecker knocks three times on a nearby tree. It pauses, then knocks and knocks and knocks as if somebody’s home and it’s found them. Imagine knocking on somebody’s door knowing all along, even when they invite you in, that you’re there for dinner and dinner is them. It’s unbearably hot. The sort of day you’d run down to the Creek Do Not Swim signs be damned and just jump right in. You’d have to do it eyes closed. Otherwise, you can’t help but think about the last time you were there, the time you chased someone in and held your breath waiting for them to come up for air.
Daddy hugs me quick before anyone can see it. No one in Curdle Creek hugs. People say it’s bad luck for the hugger, or for the one getting hugged, but usually for both. It’s awkward being so close to him; his arms, normally strong, feel soft. His skin is warm sunshine and hot cocoa with whipped cream. Delicious. Too quick, he lets go. His eyes cloud over. His jaw straightens. “When the time’s right, promise me you’ll leave this place.”
“Don’t talk like that. You know as soon as I set one foot across that line they’d call Mother’s name, the girls’ too. They’d be carrying my sin their whole lives and wouldn’t even get to carry it long.” Quick as it got hot, it gets cold. I’m shivering, teeth chattering, fingers getting numb. The sun’s still shining; the flies are still there lined up like a little band, ripe for the squashing. Daddy doesn’t seem to feel it, this sometimes hot, sometimes cold air. It could be the Time. My body turning against me, turning its back on the young me to make room for the older one, pushing her out of the way, settling into young skin and bringing old wounds and new feelings with it. Maybe that’s why what was good enough last year doesn’t seem to fit anymore. I take a deep breath. It’ll pass.
“Your mother will remarry as soon as I’m gone.”
I want to say that’s not true but the lie gets caught in my throat.
“That’s how it’s been, that’s how it’s supposed to be. She’s a Charter Mother. She’ll need someone to carry on if you don’t.”
I step away from him so the lightning doesn’t get me too but the sky’s still clear, not a cloud in sight. “There ain’t nothing wrong with being a farmer, Daddy. I can learn how to irrigate and fumigate, how to plant and when to do it. I’ll make you proud.”
My legs are so cold that my knees knock. I rub them together. The frssk frssk of stockings only makes me colder. My feet are two slabs of ice. I picture them chipping. Neatly trimmed toes everywhere. Through chattering teeth, I give Daddy words of wisdom to soothe his poor wayward soul. “Mercy is as mercy does; the past’s more true than mercy was.” It’s Book XIII but I suspect he doesn’t need me to remind him.
“Osiris,” Dread calls, “it’s time.”
I can’t stop shaking. I can’t think of a single ordinance to stop this or a good reason not to. It’s always been this way doesn’t seem to fit when it’s my daddy.
As if they didn’t say anything worthy of disagreement, Daddy nods.
The Brothers are thin smiles, downcast eyes and murmurs. As if they have their own way of talking, they shift for Daddy to make his way to the front of the group. He shakes hands with Mr. Jacobs. Pats his back like he’s happy to see him. Then he tips his head to Mother, the girls and me. We wave goodbye like we would any other time. The Deacons march into the distance, taking Daddy along with them.
Mother bundles the girls up, leads them into the house.
“Should I come over?”
“Go home, Osira. You’ve done enough for one day,” Mother says.
I really don’t want to be alone. Not tonight. I lower my head, raise my palms in atonement. “Can I please stay with you all? I just need my family. Y’all are all I have—”
There’s a click as Mother closes the front door behind her. Then the whistle, click, grind sound of the lock sliding into place. I walk across the street to my own home. I can feel the neighbors watching me from their luck-filled houses.
At home, I put on the kettle, set out two teacups. Daddy will want to visit when he’s finished with the men. I make a quick batch of butter biscuits. While I wait, I prepare the house. A clean house yields good luck. The night before the Calling, Curdle Creekers clean their houses from roof to cellar. There’s no better time than the Moving On to get rid of stuff you don’t use anymore. I place a lit candle in all the windows for good luck, sweep the house free of cobwebs and bad news, sprinkle salt across thresholds and polish all of the bells in the house. There’s so much to do to get ready. I wash the linen, pack away autumn clothes, air out the house, vacuum. I’m so busy cleaning and recleaning I almost miss the sound of the men shuffling back to Mother’s to drop Daddy off. His shoulders are slumped. He doesn’t stop over to talk like he usually does. Instead, he tips his hat in my general direction. He tries the doorknob. Before I can run out to tell him why it’s locked in the first place, the door opens. Daddy steps inside but before it’s closed, there’s a muffled scream. The door clicks shut. The lights in Mother’s house go out one at a time.
I’ll finish my chores in the morning. I blow out my candles and go to bed. In the morning, the Calling will come whether I’m ready for it or not.