THE BIBLE
When Saturday come around, Daddy was off somewheres, likely searching for something to ease his unquenchable thirst. I didn’t reckon anything I said kept Miz Henry from selling to him, and she was right about it not stopping him. He’d find it elsewhere.
Raynelle told me to strip his bed and dust his room whilst he wasn’t in it.
His sheets was filthy and smelt like God-only-knows-what-and-druther-forgit. I toted them to the wash pot Raynelle had boiling on the stove. “I think these had ought’a go straight in the fire,” I said.
Raynelle dropped them in the soapy water and pushed them under with a stick. “Git the dusting done in there, and when ya’s done, ya kin help me run these through the wringer. There’s enough sun to damp-dry ’em, and I kin iron the damp out of ’em afore Daddy comes traipsing home.”
I went back into Daddy’s room with the dust cloth. I threw open the window to air the stink out’a the room. Cold rushed in and made me shiver, so I hurried through the task of dusting.
There wasn’t much in Daddy’s room to dust, except a small chest of drawers. The family Bible set on top of the chest, and I opened the front cover and peeked inside. Handwrit names was scrawled on the first page. The Bible had been in Daddy’s family a long time. The first few names was fixing to fade, and their dates was from the 1840s.
I run my finger down to the newer ones and seen Daddy’s name. I seen his marriage date to Ada Pickens. Mama. No death date. But I knew that didn’t mean she was alive. Daddy jist didn’t know whether she was or not. None of us did.
I seen Raynelle’s name, Pick’s, and mine, with the years we was born. Then the baby Raynelle done told me about. Jefferson Pickens Cutler. The writing told the sad story in jist one line: Born dead, August 2, 1921. Blissie’s name come next.
Them was the names of family, folks who belonged together on account’a we was kin. But the baby was dead. Mama was gone. And so was Pick. There wasn’t a whole heap of family left. I turned my head lest a tear fall on one of them names.
I dried my eyes and looked back to the Bible. Mamaw Pickens’s name wasn’t there. But that didn’t mean she was alive. There was no name a’tall. No birth year. No death year. Not Papaw’s name nor dates neither. It took a minute to make sense of it. But, of course! This Bible was from Daddy’s family. Mamaw and Papaw was Mama’s kin.
I put the Bible in its place on the freshly dusted chest. Afore I headed to the kitchen to help Raynelle with the wringing, I turned back sudden. Daddy’s other book was gone! The blue-bound book like the one I seen on the shelf at Jane Louise’s. It’d always set here right smack on top of the Bible. What happened to Daddy’s book? Could the one at Jane Louise’s house be the same one? How could it’a got there?
After my recent encounter with Miz Henry, my mind jumped to her. Might Daddy have traded her the book for moonshine, and Myrtle give it to Jane Louise’s mama along with the groceries?
My mind was spinning again.