CHAPTER 17
Too numb to speak or move, TL stood frozen with disbelief. Where is my sister’s body? What has someone done? Banjo sniffed around the open grave, then returned to the darkness of the forest. Upon their return, Momma and Daddy would definitely know that TL had disturbed the grave, but that was the least of his concerns now. He was determined to find out what happened if it cost him everything.
Willie James wiped snot from his upper lip and resumed a seat on the earth. He couldn’t stop shaking his head. “I can’t believe this. It don’t make no sense.”
They sat together awhile, unable to comprehend the magnitude of their discovery. Each wanted to speak, but their convoluted thoughts wouldn’t congeal into sensible words.
Eventually, TL rose and, after extracting his personal things, began refilling the grave. Putting dirt back in the hole was far easier, he discovered, than taking it out. He tried to restore the mound to its original shape, but of course Momma and Daddy would see the difference. But, hell, so what? What had they done with Sister? Wouldn’t somebody have to know?
When the task was complete, they went inside and sat in the den. TL clicked on the small lamp on the end table, casting just enough light to make shadows of everything. Neither of them spoke at first, then Willie James sighed like a man taking his last breath.
“I don’t understand it, TL. I know what I saw! I ain’t crazy. Momma killed her wit’ that hoe!”
TL nodded. “I believe you, man. I just can’t figure out what she did after that.”
“She buried her! Right there in that grave. I saw her pulling the body, wrapped up in that sheet.”
“Did you actually see the body in it?”
He didn’t answer at first. “No, but what else could it be?”
“All my old stuff, looks like.”
“But she’s dead, TL. I know that. There was too much blood. Looked like somebody had done slaughtered a hog. It was all over the barn floor.”
“I know, Willie James, but what did they do with her body?”
“I don’t know,” he whined. “I just don’t know. It’s all so crazy.”
Reliving the details of things, he closed his eyes and traveled back in time, describing precisely what he’d seen. TL had heard it all before, but hearing it again reignited his emotions. What had been going through Momma’s head to make her do something like that? Willie James smiled slightly when he spoke of how valiantly Sister fought, and he noted that Momma had overcome her only because she’d caught her off guard. The first blow leveled her, he said, and she never quite recovered. Willie James’s right eye twitched as he talked. He was sure Momma hadn’t meant to kill her, but once the struggle ensued, she lost control. Even her face changed, he said, from its usual calm to something dark and monstrous. TL tried to connect the dots, to have a clearer, more reliable understanding of exactly what had happened, but there were holes in the story he hadn’t noticed before.
“So you saw Momma drag Sister’s body out of the barn?”
Willie James hesitated. “No, I didn’t actually see it. I saw her draggin’ somethin’, and when I saw all the blood, I assumed it had to be Sister’s body.” He shrugged. “But I guess it wasn’t.”
“Guess it wasn’t.”
“Whatchu think she did wit’ it?”
“I don’t know.”
Willie James rubbed his thighs. “She is dead, ain’t she, TL? I mean, ain’t no way…”
“She’s dead, Willie James. She’s definitely dead. It just didn’t happen the way we think.”
“I saw the blood! It was everywhere!”
“I know, man, but there’s something we don’t know.”
Willie James closed his eyes and exhaled. “There’s apparently a lot we don’t know.”
* * *
IT WAS after one in the morning when TL returned home. He didn’t remember the journey. Surely he’d walked his usual route, across the Williams place to the access road, through the woods, and into Ms. Swinton’s backyard, but it seemed as if he’d simply been transported. Nothing was real. The noises of the forest hadn’t frightened him as usual. He didn’t remember hearing anything at all. All he remembered was walking out the back door of the house, glancing at the newly shaped mound, then stumbling like a helpless drunkard until he reached home. He then went inside and stripped away dirty clothes and collapsed across the bed, confused and semiconscious.
In the midst of exhaustion, the vision came again. Streets of gold, stained-glass windows in steepled architecture, fields of flowers of every kind, and “Lily in the Valley” echoing from the church bells. The whole shebang all over again. TL just didn’t get it. What in the world is this? He saw it clearer now than before, so he wasn’t startled. He simply couldn’t figure out what it meant. And what about that hawk? Why is he always following me?
A gray and black sparrow awakened him the next morning. It tapped lightly on the window, as if trying to get his attention, then, when TL looked up, it flew away.
The doorbell rang. He knew who it was. When he flung the door open and saw Momma, distraught and disheveled, his defenses weakened. Her eyes were cranberry red as if she’d been awake all night, and, without makeup, she looked broken and fragile. He’d never seen her so unkempt. Intersecting streaks of tears covered her mahogany-brown cheeks, and, for the first time in TL’s life, he felt sorry for her. He thought to touch her face, but remembered that Momma hated public expressions of emotion, especially pity, so, instead, he looked away. Her condition embarrassed him. Something was horribly wrong. Something more than what he would’ve guessed.
She sniffled and blew into a white, floral-trimmed handkerchief. “Did you have to do it? You couldn’t let me have nothin’ for myself?” She folded the handkerchief neatly and returned it to her pocketbook. “I mean, I just never thought you’d do nothin’ like that.”
“I had to, Momma. How else was I supposed to learn the truth? You wouldn’t tell me.”
Slap!
The strike was quick and invisible, like a fleeting thought—he never saw her raise her hand!—but the sting lingered, leaving his left cheek burning. Was it my tone? TL massaged his face lightly.
“You didn’t have no right! She was my child!” Momma poked her chest. “Mine! MINE!”
“She was my sister, too!”
“And you left her!”
“I didn’t leave her. I left here.”
“Same thing.”
“No, it isn’t. I would’ve taken her if I could’ve.”
Momma looked surprised. “Then what would I have had?”
“The same things you’ve always had. Daddy, Willie James, the house. Everything.”
She blinked. “You got all that education and still don’t know a goddamn thing.”
The tail of her dress brushed his pant leg as she walked into the house like a social worker in search of an endangered child. TL followed, sure now that all his mental preparation was about to prove futile.
Momma sat on the edge of the red velvet sofa, her forehead buried in her right palm. TL took the ancient high-back rocker, with the glass-topped coffee table resting between them, and waited. Seconds later, she looked up.
“You must think I ain’t got no feelin’s at all.”
“Momma, this ain’t about your—”
“I know what it’s about. And, like I said, you must think”—her voice trembled—“I ain’t got no feelin’s at all. But I do.”
“I know that, Momma.”
“No you don’t!” She stomped the hardwood floor. “You think I killed my own daughter and threw her in the ground! What kinda mother would do somethin’ like that?”
TL chewed his thumbnail.
“You always thought you knowed more than you really knowed.”
“Willie James told me what happened. He saw you.”
“Willie James ain’t seen me! He ain’t seen shit! You know better’n believin’ anything that boy say. He ain’t never been smart enough to fully understand nothin’. Come on, TL! Stop actin’ like you dumb!”
“I ain’t dumb.”
“I didn’t say you was dumb. I said stop actin’ like you dumb. Try listenin’ to me sometimes instead of playin’ deef when I talk.”
Momma rested her pocketbook on the coffee table.
“I always knowed you didn’t think much of me, but for you to think I could murder my own child means you think I’m some kind of crazy woman or somethin’.”
“Momma.”
“Aw hell, boy, be honest for once in yo’ life! It ain’t gon’ kill you. Irregardless of what you say, I’ma still be yo’ momma—at least the only one you ever really had.”
Fine! “Yeah, I think you killed her. Who else coulda done it? Willie James said Daddy was out plowing the field.”
She nodded. “Good. Finally. ’Bout time.”
“And the way you treated me? I wouldn’t put anything past you.”
Her thunderous applause echoed throughout the living room. “Yeah! Now he tells the truth. The real, naked truth. For once in his life.”
“Don’t patronize me, Momma.”
“Don’t judge me, either!” she shouted. Their eyes locked. “I might not of been the sweetest or kindest woman you knew, but I gave you what I had.” Her voice cracked again. “And I ain’t never killed nobody—even the ones I shoulda.”
“So what happened?”
She paused, unsure of whether TL could handle what she was about to say. “We was in the barn, arguin’. ’Bout you.” Momma blew her nose again as the intensity between them subsided.
“She said she was leavin’ Swamp Creek once and for all. Said she was goin’ to find you, since you was the only person who ever really cared ’bout her. I was so hurt.” She fought not to cry. “I tried to convince her that if you cared so much you woulda come back for her, but she couldn’t see it. I told her to go ’head on then. That’s when she told me she was pregnant, but I already knowed it. I knowed whose it was, too. I ain’t never been no fool. Never. I see things. So I told her she couldn’t go ’til she had the baby. She was four or five months, I guess. I’d take care of the baby, I said, me and Willie James, ’til she found you and come back. Or didn’t find you and come back. Whichever way, the baby was gon’ be fine. But she didn’t wanna do that. She said she was takin’ the baby wit’ her, and if I didn’t never see neither one of ’em again, that was too bad. I told her she didn’t have no right to take that baby ’cause it wasn’t just hers, but she said she could do whatever she wanted to.” Momma chuckled. “Well, you know me. I slapped her and told her to watch her mouth. I asked her who she thought she was talkin’ to, and she said, ‘I’m talkin’ to you!’ and that’s when we started fightin’. It wunnit nothin’ at first, but then it got out of hand. She fell on the hoe blade and damn near cut herself in half. I hollered, but wunnit nobody ’round to help me. Blood gushed ’cross piles of hay like burgundy syrup over a snow cone. She was cryin’ and I was cryin’, but wunnit nothin’ I could do. I knew if I went to get help, she’d be dead by the time I got back. She was bleedin’ just that bad. So I got some old rags and tried to stop the bleedin’, but it didn’t work. She grabbed her stomach and started screamin’, ‘My baby! My baby!’ She was in labor.”
Tears poured faster than Momma could wipe them away, so she stopped trying. Snot ran from her nose.
“I managed to walk her in the house and lay her across the bed. I ain’t never seen that much blood in my life. She kept screamin’ ’bout the baby ’til it come. It was so tiny. The whole body fit right in the palm o’ my hands. I knowed it was dead, but for a minute I loved it. It was a boy. A beautiful, little precious boy. He’d just come too soon.”
TL offered Momma a tissue from his pocket, and she blew a mound of mucus into it.
“I knew she’d die. Can’t nobody lose that much blood and live.”
Pity colored her face red and wrinkled it where it had once been smooth. It was as if Momma was transforming before TL’s eyes into a worn, beaten-down, old woman.
“What did you do?”
“What could I do?” She shrugged helplessly. “I found a shoe box and wrapped the baby in a towel and laid him in it. Then I prayed like I ain’t never prayed before.” She lifted her right hand. “I’m tellin’ you, I begged God to make it right. To give me my daughter back and give her her son back. I begged God to forgive me for fightin’ her in the first place. I begged Him to forgive me for resentin’ you. I begged Him to take my life instead of my child’s!”
Her sobbing rushed TL like an unexpected breeze. It was a long, dry cry, full of sorrow and regret. He’d never seen her so disheveled, and now he wanted her to stop. Our family didn’t do vulnerability, and certainly not with each other.
“But He wouldn’t do it, so I had to live with what I’d done.”
TL went to the bathroom for more tissue, and Momma received it gracefully.
“How did you manage to carry her body outside and bury it?”
“I didn’t.” She paused. “Willie James did.”
“What!” TL leapt up. “Willie James?”
“You heard what I said.”
“But he told me—”
She pursed her lips.
“Oh, Momma, no.” TL crumbled into the chair.
“He lied. We agreed not to tell anybody. Ever. Even you.”
“Why!”
“Because you wouldn’t understand. Nobody does.”
“Then why tell me now?”
She smirked. “’Cause, from the looks of things, you gotta live here, too. At least now. You gotta carry the weight of bein’ in this family just like the rest of us—since it’s the only family you got. Plus, you givin’ this community somethin’ it needs, so it’s only right to give you somethin’ you need.”
They paused.
“… and we didn’t bury her.”
TL gasped. “What do you mean you didn’t bury her?”
Momma touched her hair in a meager attempt to recompose herself. She sighed and melted into the cushions of the sofa. “We had to do somethin’, TL. Something drastic. Somethin’ outside the norm. Nobody was gon’ believe the truth. Hell, I wouldn’t’ve believed it myself if I hadn’t been there. So we had to do somethin’ believable, somethin’ that would make sense to people in this world.”
“Momma, what are you talking about?”
“Can you listen for once? Huh? Can you just try to hear me out?”
TL huffed and waited.
“I called Willie James into the back room where Sister was layin,’ and he started hollin’ and cryin’ like he didn’t have no sense.”
“What else did you expect, Momma?”
“I expected him to calm down and listen like he eventually did. He understood. He knew I wouldn’t never hurt my own child. When I explained things, he understood.”
“Understood what?”
Momma shouted, “That I’ve been the best mother I knew how to be! To him, you, Sister, and every damn body else! He didn’t assume I was no murderer like you did!” Her spittle sprayed TL’s arm like a mist. “That’s the only reason the lie worked—’cause of what you and everybody else ’round here think about me.” Tears returned. “Just think about it, boy! Who in the world would believe that a mother killed her own child, then buried her in the backyard? Huh?”
TL didn’t answer.
“Nobody!”
She was right, but he refused to admit it.
“Unless folks already thought the woman was crazy. Then they’d believe anything they heard about her. That shit hurts, TL.”
Her mouth trembled as she licked her upper lip.
“The fact that my own son believed it is even worse! But I knew you would. I knew you would.” She hung her head sadly.
“What did y’all do, Momma?”
She smiled peevishly. “We created a truth people could believe. That’s what people like—things that make sense to them. They hate bein’ forced to consider things they ain’t never considered. That’s why you can’t never get rid of ignorance, son, because people like it. They know it. It feels natural to them. Even when they know it’s not right or don’t make no sense, it still feels right. You know what I mean?”
“Momma.”
“Listen to what I’m tellin’ you, boy! This is why we couldn’t tell you the truth—’cause you wasn’t lookin’ for the truth. You was lookin’ for confirmation of what you already believed. The truth was starin’ you in the face and you didn’t want it. How the hell could I get away wit’ killin’ somebody and authorities never come? Huh? I know we in the country, but we ain’t on Mars! That don’t make no sense! But you couldn’t swallow the truth that I had done changed, so you held on to the ignorance you always believed—that I was a mean, nasty, evil woman. That’s what’s wrong wit’ the world. We don’t let people change.” She paused, frowning. “Sometimes, when people change, we change ’em right back into what they was ’cause the change don’t fit how we know ’em. So people get tired of fightin’ to make other folks see ’em differently. Most stop tryin’.”
TL knew the feeling.
“I thought education was s’posed to make people open to things. I see that ain’t necessarily so.”
He refused to defend himself.
“Anyway, I stripped the sheets from the bed and burned them behind the barn. I had to burn the mattress, too. Yo’ daddy musta seen the clouds of black smoke ’cause he come runnin’ home on the tractor, frownin’ wit’ confusion. I told him what happened, and he run to the barn to find Willie James, but Willie James wunnit there. Sister’s body wunnit, either.”
“This is really hard to believe, Momma.”
“What other choice you got? If it’s one thing you know ’bout me, it’s that I don’t lie. No time, to nobody. I don’t need to. Anybody I ever needed to lie to been dead a long time.”
TL tried to recall when Momma had lied, but his memory was as vacant as a cloudless sky.
She closed her eyes: “He had done took the body off somewhere. Yo’ daddy went lookin’ for him, all ’round the woods, but couldn’t find him. We knowed he had done done somethin’, so we startin’ diggin’ the grave. That made sense. When people disappear, we think of death. She was dead already anyway. I knew that. We just had to make the story make sense to everybody else.”
“What doesn’t make sense is why you put the grave in the backyard.”
“That’s where the crazy woman part comes in.” She laughed at herself. “See, I’m really not like that anymore. That was the old me. But it worked ’cause people like you wanted the old me more than the new me. So I used it—the crazy black woman act—one last time.”
Anger flooded TL’s thoughts, but he kept them to himself.
“People come by and frowned, and a few asked what happened and I told them Sister died with a contagious disease, so we had to bury her right away. They wanted to ask more—I saw it on their faces!—but they didn’t. Some looked at the grave and scowled, others acted like they didn’t see it at all.”
“Oh come on, Momma!”
“I’m tellin’ you. They walked right past it. They didn’t wanna know, TL. The thought of what might’ve happened was probably more than they could bear, so they left it alone and come on in the house and laughed and talked like we always do.”
TL stood and paced before the coffee table. “Are you kidding?”
“Live long enough, and you gon’ learn to ignore some stuff, too. Some things you better off not knowin’.”
“But something like this? What’s wrong with people?”
She rose and hung her purse from the bend of her elbow. “Nothin’. They just got enough to carry without carryin’ other folks’ stuff. That’s all.” She wiped her eyes, sighed, then moved toward the door.
“What did Willie James do, Momma? With the body, I mean.”
She shook her head slowly, trying to see into her own imagination. “I don’t know. I really don’t know. He come home later that day, walking like a drunk man. Me and Cleatis stared at him ’til he told us he took care of everything. I asked him what he meant, but he wouldn’t say. Said it was best if we didn’t know, that way we wouldn’t have to lie if somebody asked us ’bout it. ‘What if somebody ask you?’ I said. He looked at me strange and said, ‘Ain’t nobody never asked me nothin’. I don’t ’xpect they gon’ start now.”
TL’s head swam. He felt faint.
“And you know what’s funny? Until you come back, ain’t nobody asked him a single, solitary thing. Ain’t that somethin’?”
Unable to discern, in his heart, between sympathy and fury, TL remained quiet. Maybe he was feeling both.
“So”—she clapped once loudly—“there you have it!” and reached for the doorknob.
“Did you ever ask him yourself?”
Momma turned. “I didn’t have to. A mother always knows, deep in her heart, ’bout her children.” She blinked. “It had somethin’ to do wit’ Aunt Easter. I know that much. They had a strange connection since the day he was born. Guess you didn’t know that.”
“No ma’am, I didn’t.”
“Well, it’s true. When he come out, he wasn’t breathin’. Aunt Easter happened to be outside ’cause she said she knowed he was comin’, and knowed he was gon’ have a hard time gettin’ here. I screamed when the midwife slapped his ass and he didn’t cry, and that’s when Aunt Easter come runnin’ and shoutin’, ‘He ain’t dead! He ain’t dead!’ She picked him up real gentle and put her mouth on his mouth and went to breathin’ real slow. I didn’t know what she was doin’, but I knowed she was tryin’ to help. At first, nothin’ happened, but then, after a while, the baby shivered and started breathin’. He looked at Aunt Easter like he knowed her. Like a grown man looks at a woman. Never did cry. I wanted him to cry but Aunt Easter said he wouldn’t. Said he didn’t have nothin’ to cry ’bout. He was happy. I asked her what she did, and she said, ‘I blew into him the breath of life.’”
“You have to be kidding!”
“No, I ain’t. That’s exactly what she said. She gave me the baby and said, ‘He lives and walked away. I ain’t never seen nothin’ like it. Ain’t seen her ’round here since, either. But I used to see the way her and Willie James looked at one another. They had some kinda bond. That’s all I know.”
Momma eased toward the door. With her hand on the knob, she said, “Whatever else you need to know you gon’ have to find out from someone else. I done told you everything I know, and I done gave you everything I got.”
She left without saying good-bye.