I sat on the steps and watched Ida spinning Ellie on the tire swing. She was giggling and Ellie was squealing. Two hound dogs howled off in the distance. Probably Jesse and Butch. They were Junior’s dogs.
Momma and Daddy were in the kitchen. I knew from the sound of things that Daddy was whittling. Momma was annoyed by the wood shavings that landed on the floor. “Leroy,” she said, “I swept this floor not ten minutes ago. Now look at the mess you’re making.”
Daddy grunted and kept on whittling.
Momma sighed a loud, drawn-out sigh. She’d been doing a lot of that lately—breathing out her frustration. Here it was October, and whenever she pushed him on the subject of work, Daddy offered some puny reasons not to go looking. “For one thing,” he’d say, “jobs are scarce. And for another, I thought you’d be glad for my help around here.”
I could hear Momma in the kitchen arguing with Daddy even though he wasn’t saying a word. “Leroy,” she said. “How do you think I made it around here when you were in Europe? Don’t you think the war showed us what a woman can do when her man isn’t around?”
Momma was right. We had both learned how strong we were when Daddy wasn’t there to do things for us. We could haul buckets and buckets of water out of the well. And fill the wringer washer and do a load of clothes and then empty the tubs and do it all again. We could plant the garden by ourselves. Well, actually Junior Bledsoe had tilled the soil, but only because he took over the tiller before I could start it up.
Strictly speaking, Momma and I could get by without a man in the house. But I didn’t for one minute think I could get along without my daddy. And I didn’t see how Momma could either.
Sitting on the steps and listening with every muscle to what was going on between them, I could almost feel the despair my momma’s words put on him. I knew he didn’t want to believe we could make do without him. He was the one that had always give us the courage to go forward. Ever since I was little I’d seen Daddy pull Momma into his arms when she started fretting over the washing machine that broke. Or worrying how they could afford to pay the light bill.
I remembered how he repeated his wedding vows to her on those days. For richer or poorer, he would say. For better or worse. I’m with you and you’re with me and together we’re gonna make it.
That rich-or-poor thing always confused me. One night when Daddy was helping me with my homework, I asked him about it. I was having trouble counting money, so he’d pulled some coins out of his pocket to practice with me.
“Daddy,” I asked him, “are we richer or poorer?”
I still remember how he laughed. “Well, now,” he said, “I reckon it just depends.” He scratched at his head, messing his hair in the process. “Seems to me we’re richer than some folks and poorer than others.”
Well, I already knew we were poorer than Peggy Sue’s family. Her daddy owns a hosiery mill and they live in a nice brick house right along the highway. But I didn’t think we were one bit rich. “Who are we richer than?” I asked.
“Hmm,” said Daddy. “If you ask me, we’re richer than just about anybody who don’t have what we got. Just look at us.” And he motioned to my family there in the kitchen.
Momma was polishing the cookstove, trying to get every smear of grease off it. Ida and Ellie, who were just a few years old then, were sitting in a big washtub on the kitchen floor, putting their faces in the water and blowing soap bubbles. My little brother Bobby wasn’t even born yet.
“When I look at my happy family,” said Daddy, “I feel downright rich.” He got up, went to where Momma was working, and pulled her against him. “As long as I got me a Myrtle, I’m the richest man in the world.” He gave my momma a long kiss. For a minute there I thought he forgot all about having an Ann Fay.
But then he come back to me and my homework. He sat at the table and said, “When me and your momma got married, we promised to stick together whether we have money or not. It don’t even matter if we like each other or not. We’re staying together. And that makes us rich.”
Well, it was obvious that my momma and daddy were in love. Even when they was annoyed with each other, I knew it would pass. But since he’d come home from the war, Daddy seemed to be annoying Momma a lot. And it didn’t pass as quick as it used to.
I heard the scraping of a chair inside and then Daddy’s footsteps coming toward the screen door behind me. It squeaked when he opened it and I turned to look at him. He was taking the broom off the nail just outside the kitchen door.
I watched him go inside and sweep up the wood shavings and push the chair real neat under the kitchen table and head back to the porch with the broom. Then he went past me to the johnny house without saying a word.
When he come back I thought he might sit with me on the steps and finish his whittling—outside, where it wouldn’t matter if he made a mess.
“Whatcha working on, Daddy?”
He just grunted, so I felt like a bother for even asking. He went to the shelf at the end of the porch where we keep a bucket of water for washing up. He poured water into a basin and washed his face and hands. When he was done, he threw the dirty water in the yard and went inside. Without saying a word to me.
I heard him shut himself in his and Momma’s bedroom. It was quiet then. Except for Momma sighing. Finally I got up and went in. Momma was rearranging her spices in the door of the green Hoosier cupboard.
It seemed to me like she ought to rest once in a while. “Want to play a game of checkers?”
“No. I don’t.” Momma sounded edgy. “I couldn’t sit still right now if you tied me to that chair.” That’s when I realized she wasn’t organizing spices because they needed it. She was just sorting out her agitation.
Then Daddy called out from the bedroom, and his voice had an edge to it. “Would you be quiet out there? I’m trying to sleep.”
Sleep? It was only seven thirty in the evening. Not even Ida and Ellie’s bedtime.
I propped my crutches against the table and reached for the Blue Willow book that I’d checked out of the school library. But one of my crutches didn’t stay where I put it, and next thing I knew, it was sliding to the floor and taking the other one with it.
Daddy hollered again. “What in tarnation is all that racket?”
I was fixing to be exasperated with my daddy. Why did he think the whole house should be quiet just because he took a notion to go to bed extra early? I sat real still and tried to read, but I couldn’t keep my mind on it.
At eight o’clock Momma said it was time to call Ida and Ellie in for bed. When I got outside, the girls had left the tire swing and were playing hopscotch in the dirt. “Bedtime!” I hollered.
I picked up the basin and put it on the porch floor. I used the tin dipper from the bucket to put water in the basin. Then I threw the soap in and called for the girls.
“Ida! Ellie! This is the last time I’m telling you. We’ve got school tomorrow so you better get in here.”
“Last one there’s a rotten egg!” yelled Ida and she took off running while Ellie was still balancing on one leg.
Well, Ellie tried to catch up but she couldn’t. So she accused Ida of cheating. That started them squabbling real loud, and all of a sudden we heard a banging from the other side of the porch wall.
“Would you be quiet?” I hissed. “Daddy is not in the mood for your nonsense. Now wash your face and hands and then your feet. And don’t forget to brush your teeth.”
When the girls was clean we went into our room to get their pajamas on. “Listen here,” I whispered. “You got to do this real quiet. Daddy is trying to sleep.”
“Why?” asked Ellie. “It’s not even his bedtime. Is he sick?”
I didn’t know the answer to that, but I figured Ellie had come up with as good a reason as any. “He must be,” I said.
But of course the girls forgot to be quiet. They was still wound up from playing. They started giggling and making faces and it didn’t do any good telling them to hush. They couldn’t seem to stop.
But then I heard Daddy loud and angry behind me. I turned and there he was in the doorway. The light from the living room was back of him and we only had a lamp on in our room. So he was mostly just a big dark shape with his belt folded in his hand. He raised it for us to see.
“Do you girls know the meaning of quiet or not?” he asked. “If this racket keeps up I’m gonna give you something to holler about.”
Well, the noise went from happy giggles to dead silence.
Daddy just stood there for a minute like he didn’t know what to do with all the quiet. “That’s better,” he growled. “Now keep it like that.” And he turned to go, nearly bumping into Momma, who had come up behind him. She stepped back to let him pass. I heard his footsteps going through the kitchen and into their bedroom.
Momma come into the room and put her hand on my shoulder. “I’ll put the girls to bed,” she said. “You go outside and get some fresh air.”
So I did. I went out on the porch and leaned against the post. I wrapped my hand around my little wooden Comfort hanging there on Daddy’s shoestring. “What’s happening to my daddy?” I whispered.
It wasn’t like he’d never spanked us before. But he never done it over a little noise. It was always because of outright disobeying that he would give us a couple of stinging swats with a switch off a bush.
My daddy had never once used his belt to punish us.
Other people at school talked about getting lickings with a belt—the buckle end, even. And Rob Walker said that when he got a licking, he always had to cut his own switch. If he didn’t get just the right size, his daddy would send him back for another one. “Get one that will sing while it makes you dance!” his daddy would say.
I couldn’t imagine my daddy being that mean. But now, I was scared. I could still see how the light from the living room shone through the square frame of his belt buckle.
While I stood on the back porch, being as quiet as I could, I heard the sound of singing. At least I thought I did. And for some reason the singing put me in mind of Imogene. Her face came to me, and so did a song. Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen. Nobody knows my sorrow…
Was I imagining it? Then I realized something—the singing wasn’t in my mind. It was real singing, and it was coming from the little colored church out near Junior’s house. I stopped breathing for a minute, trying to hear. And then, I don’t know why, except I just needed the comfort, I headed toward that song.
I sat on the edge of the porch and eased myself to the ground, picked up my crutches, and started toward the singing.
The moon wasn’t full, but there was enough light that I could find my way. I knew I couldn’t wade through the chopped-off cornstalks in the field. So I went around the edge. Every now and then I’d have to pass a short row of leftover sagging cornstalks. They put me in mind of crippled old soldiers trying their best to stay on guard.
The singing of Imogene’s people got louder as I walked. It pulled me away from home until I got to the other end of the field. I was wore out by the time I got there.
Across the dirt road was a graveyard with old headstones poking out of the earth, and beyond that was the tiny white church with a yellow glow coming through the windows. There couldn’t have been more than twenty people in that little building. But the way they sung you would not have guessed it. Their voices were big and their song was like a bulldozer fixing to knock me over.
By now they were singing another song. I had never heard it before. But every so often I could catch a word or two. Something about tribulation. And weeping.
But it wasn’t the words that got to me. It was the sound of that song—the way Imogene’s people sung it—that wrung me out like a dishrag. Their singing put me in mind of a clean bedsheet billowing on the wash line. It floated up real slow, and down again just as slow. And it seemed like it carried me with it.
I hadn’t wanted to sit down, on account of the problem of standing again with only a dried-up cornstalk to grab ahold of. But the song wouldn’t let me stay on my feet. So I unlocked my leg brace and let myself go—down onto the dampness at the edge of the field. I curled up like a baby and put my face into my hands. I felt the wetness of the grass against my elbows and the grit of the dirt on my knees.
I hung on to the words of the song they were singing. Something about tribulation and weeping.