Cottonwood, Georgia
1939
She’d waited as long as she dared.
“Mama.” She stood in the doorway of the kitchen. Mama’s back was to her; she was at the sink, washing the chicken she’d be serving for supper, Stella figured. “Where’s Papa?”
Mama looked over her shoulder briefly. “Shug, go get me some of my canned field peas from the pantry.”
Stella did as she was told, set the glass Mason jar on the counter next to her mother, then repeated her question. “Where’s Papa?”
“In the barn, I s’pose.”
Stella looked down a flicker of a moment, then breathed out a sigh she’d not realized was pent up. She turned, made it to the door, with one foot in the hallway. Her mother said her name, and she stopped, turned around. “Yes, ma’am?”
“Get your papa’s sweater over that chair there and take it to him.” Stella watched her mother dip her head and gaze through the window at the October sky. “It’s turning colder by the minute.”
Stella returned to the table, pulled her father’s sweater from the chair, and left the room without another word.
She would tell her papa first, she’d decided. Somehow she knew it was the right thing to do. The best way to handle the situation. Mama would become hysterical, might even fall on the floor in a faint, but Papa would know what to do. Papa was a secure shelter in any storm. And this was the worst storm of all.
Stella walked along the curving path toward the barn; her mother’s perennials—daisies standing tall and proud above the vivid pink Autumn Joy, whose blossoms and fleshy leaves were bunched together like rusty-red nosegays of broccoli, and pink dahlias—shifted slightly as she passed by, as though they anticipated the news she was about to share and how it would change the home they were planted in. How it would change the woman whose hands so lovingly tended them. Stella felt her shoulders tip forward and her stomach lurch in dreaded anticipation.
She stopped, contemplated going back into the house. Maybe even waiting one more day. One more week. One more month. She looked down at her stomach, ran her hands down her sides, felt the thickness of her waist that had already set in.
She had to get this over with. She had to do it now.
She found her father sitting at his desk in the barn. She’d opened one of the double doors just enough to slip her small frame through it, then closed it behind her. The intrusion of the light she’d let in wasn’t noticed by her father, who sat in the back where he kept a desk. Atop it was the Zenith tombstone radio he’d bought years ago, before the Depression hit and spending on such extravagances as out of the question. A gentle tune poured from the speaker.
Stella leaned against the door, breathed in the scent of the place—the hay, the sawdust and the molasses sweet feed, the lingering fragrance of animal flesh that never went away, even when the animals weren’t there. She listened long enough to recognize the music from the radio; “I’ve Got the World on a String” was playing.
“Lucky me,” Stella whispered the lyrics. “I’m in love.”
Her father was dressed in gray pants and a white long-sleeved shirt, the sleeves of which he’d loosely rolled up to his elbows. Against the unpainted boards and hanging barn implements he seemed out of place somehow. Her father, even working amid animal stalls, was a gentleman. The hat cocked on the right post of his ladder-back chair was testament to that.
She made her way toward him, heard him humming along with the music. As she neared, she saw that he was studying numbers on the page of a ledger. At his right hand was a piece of paper where he was doing his figuring. Math had never been her gift, but it was surely her papa’s. If it had been hers— if she’d been better at calculating—maybe she wouldn’t be standing behind him now with news sure to bring his world to a halt. Even if only temporarily. Or maybe forever.
Stella was so close to her father now, she could reach out and touch him. Realizing he was still unaware of her presence, she looked down at her feet and shuffled one against the floor scattered with sawdust. Her father turned then. He smiled. He called her “sugar foot” and reached around and turned the radio down then casually picked up a stack of papers and slid them into an envelope with the words Thursday Nights marking its center. He opened the bottom drawer of the desk and dropped the envelope inside. He shifted back to her, saw the sweater in her hands, and said, “Did your mama send that out to me?”
Stella nodded, or at least she thought she did. Perhaps she hadn’t. She extended the garment to her father. “In case you’re getting cold, Papa.” She kept her eyes on the bottom drawer.
Papa thought she didn’t know . . . But she did . . .
He stood then and took the sweater, wrapped it around his shoulders without putting his arms into the sleeves. He wasn’t a tall man, but he was still taller than his youngest daughter, and at that moment the bottom drawer was forgotten and she felt as though she were five years old again. She tipped her head, felt a tear slip down her cheek.
“Stella-child. What is it? What’s wrong?” He reached for her, gathered her in his arms, as tender as if she were a newborn.
Stella laid her head against his shoulder, felt the hardness of it against her temple, took in the scent of the man she loved more than any other, and that included Valentine Bach. “Papa,” she said at last. “Oh, Papa.” Her body racked with sobs then, and Papa tipped her chin to force her to look into his eyes.
“Tell Papa,” he said. “Papa’ll fix it.”
“Will you? Will you, Papa?”
“Haven’t I always?” he answered with a wink. “Now you tell Papa what’s wrong and watch Papa fix it.” He motioned her over to his chair. “Sit down right here and we’ll talk it out. That’s the first step to any problem, talking it out.”
Stella felt herself being lowered to the woven rush of the chair’s seat. She took a deep breath, raised her shoulders nearly to her ears, then blew out and let them relax. Her father sat on the corner edge of the desk, one leg thrown over it, the other supporting him from the floor. She watched his leg swing ever so slightly, mesmerized momentarily.
“Stella,” he said, coaxing her to speak.
Her eyes traveled up the buttons of his shirt, stopping on the bowtie between his collars. It seemed to her that it winked. “Papa . . . ,” she said at last. “You know the Bachs? They’re kind of new around here.”
“Yes.” He spoke the word as though it were multisyllabic. Gave a nod of his head.
“And you know Mr. Bach’s son, Valentine?”
“I do. I believe he got married a few months back, did he not?”
Stella felt it then, the first flight of butterflies being released in the pit of her belly. Her baby—hers and Valentine’s—stirring to life at the mention of Valentine’s wife. “Yes, sir,” she said. “Lilly Beth is her name . . .”