I’m sitting around the table with my grandparents and mother but I can’t say that so I’m stuffing my mouth with food. Shame too. Neither one of them has ever been any use in the kitchen. They watch me cram what I think is corn bread into my mouth. It’s so dry it’s liable to splinter my insides if I can get it down.
Grandfather points his fork at me. “Where’d you say you were from?” He raises it to his lips, waiting on my answer before he eats.
I’m doing him a favor and taking as long as I can to respond. I have to. The corn bread has turned to corn mush in my mouth. I haven’t said where I was from.
“She’s from round yonder, that way.” Constance doesn’t even look up. She scoops swamp-colored beans onto a spoon. Defiant, they slide right off, plop back on the plate.
“And your folks? Where are they?”
Grandmother shoots him a look like hot fire. It’s rude to ask people about their family. That’s usually because of the Moving On. Other places, I would imagine it’s because of plague.
“My folks didn’t make it here.” I cover my mouth with my hand the way ladies do when they’re overcome. I hope it looks like that now. As if the words are too heavy for my tongue to carry. The emotions too painful.
Hoping they can’t see my mouth through the cloth, I spit the mush into the long, puffed-out sleeve of Cheyenne’s meeting dress. Constance wasn’t always an only child. Stuffed with everything she ever wanted and everything she couldn’t have while they were alive, her room is more a museum of dead siblings than a shrine to her. Mother never mentioned a sister, two brothers. I guess that’s why we don’t talk about the twins either. Talking about the Moved On don’t bring them back. With my clothes still drying and since I can’t go around meeting folks looking like a wet hog, the dress of my dead aunt will have to do.
I wait on the mush to slide down my arm, rest in the nook of my elbow. It will probably settle there until I get up and then plop to the floor, a thick puddle of lies. Even worse, it’ll leave a trail following me around the house like a witness. Thank you for such a hearty dinner, I’ll say. I’ll rise from the table, each word punctuated by stiff fabric. I won’t scrape the chair across their wood floor—that would be rude. I’ll lift the chair slightly, push it back, dress crackling like the pops from the wood-burning stove, lie about how good the food was and how full I am, lift and push in the chair and rustle out of the room leaving a trail of supper behind me. They’ll call me a liar and toss me out in the dark with whatever is out there still waiting and not even my stick to fend it off. There’s a fire going in the woodstove. It cracks and pops, sizzling every so often. The sweet smell of burning wood masks the stench of supper. My back’s to the fire. I sit stiffly, feet planted on the floor, one arm by my side, the other on my lap until I pick up the fork. I’m quiet mostly.
“You’re married, surely. How many children do you have?” There’s a light in Grandmother’s eyes. She smacks her lips, shiny with pork fat, when she speaks. I’ve seen that look before. Desperation. The time of the Moving On is close and even kind people do desperate things. And Grandmother has never been kind.
I’m probably sixty steps from the front door. Thirty from the side one. The side door will lead to the yard. The yard’s cut off from the street, shut tight with an iron gate. If it’s locked, depending on how high the fence back there is, I can run and jump over it. Just leap. My shoe is drying out in the umbrella stand, a glass-blown orb stretched thin with cracks. I’d hate to leave them behind. My dress is still upstairs drying on Constance’s window ledge. I’m wearing a pair of her stockings. I won’t have time to take them off. The mush hasn’t even moved. It’s stuck to the inside of my wrist, a rock-in-waiting. One rock wouldn’t take them all out. They’re all grinning, hopeful. I’ll have to run in my stockinged feet.
“Yes, my husband has gone ahead, the children too,” I say. “I’m just passing through before I catch up. We’re heading north.”
Grandfather spits out his food. It crackles on the table. “Up north! With those heathens? I don’t suppose you heard what’s going on up there?”
I think back to the history books. If Mother’s about twenty, this is 1905, give or take. He could be talking about any number of wars, movements, violences.
“I trust my husband has found a suitable town with comfortable accommodation.”
“Suitable and comfortable are fine for some folks but I prefer safe and prosperous myself. Don’t you?”
I nod.
“You could write a letter to your folks. Send for them to join you here at Curdle Creek.”
“There won’t be room until after the Moving On,” Constance says.
“Constance, dear, do shut up while grown folks are talking.”
Constance’s shoulders slump. The grandfather clock in the sitting room tick, tick, ticks in between words, slurps and silences. I can see why Mother left it packed in a crate, stuffed it with newspapers, silenced its tongue. It gongs for no reason at all. I drop my fork on the plate. Scramble to pick it up to have something to occupy my hands.
Grandmother nods. “Sit up straight dear, we have company.” She purses her lips.
“There’s nothing much up north.” Grandfather points a biscuit at me while he talks. Chews with his mouth wide open. “You know they don’t even have the old rituals any-more. It’s like the Wild West there. Only wilder. No rules at all. It ain’t safe. It wouldn’t sit right with me to just send you out with no one looking after you. Wouldn’t sit right with me at all.”
“That’s all right,” Constance says. “You’ll draw with us until then.”
Oh, no, I won’t. I open my mouth to set her straight, her and her nodding parents. I’d no sooner draw with them than I would nominate my own self. Not just a quarter of an hour ago, she said how each house gets the same amount of votes as they’ve got people. Three people, three votes. That sounds fair enough to me, if outdated. By accident, I swallow the lump beneath my tongue. It scratches my throat, scrubs my insides grain by grain, then lodges there. Would a pinch of lard have killed her? Probably. Grandmother has always been a stingy cook. She always did have little use for seasoning, creams, gravies—on her food or yours. Anything that might help something go down and stay there is not just an assault but a curse on her. If you can’t eat her food the way she intended, you don’t deserve to eat. And if you won’t eat her food at all, well that’s like asking her to tell the Caller to call your name twice. If that were possible.
“This house was built by free people,” Grandfather says. “Every brick.”
“All the houses were built by free people, Father. Everyone here was free long before the Emancipation.”
“Built by escaped slaves, dear,” Grandmother says. “Fugitives from the law.”
“For good reason!”
“Of course, I’m just saying. They may not have things like that where she’s from. You know—laws, rules, customs.”
“We have customs, ma’am.”
“How do you know? I thought you said you haven’t been there yet.”
They are always trying to trick me into saying something I don’t mean. Even now, before I’m technically even born. I don’t know how Mother stands it.
“The place she comes from has their own customs,” says Constance. “They moving somewhere else, with more rules probably. Osiris says—”
“Not at my table! Don’t you mention that boy’s name at my table, not in my house! That Well Walking, moonshine-swigging—”
“He does not drink moonshine—”
“Then he is a Well Walker! I knew it! A good-for-nothing run-away-er. He’ll leave at the first drop of trouble. He is not a true believer and you know what else he isn’t?”
Constance is up from the table. Her chair scraping across the floor.
“Constance Greene, sit down until supper’s finished.”
It’s a standoff, with Constance staring down at her parents and them staring up at her. The clock gongs again. Constance drags her chair back up to the table. Slips in and scooches it underneath the table.
“He’s not marrying any daughter of mine. You can marry that boy you been sneaking down by the Creek with. Snow. He’s a strong ringer. Comes from a good family. Get him to take you to a dance, reciting ordinances, or roller-skating. That way Osiris’s name won’t be called and you and Snow will be happy. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
Mother nods her head yes.
I choke on something I had no business swallowing in the first place. Gristle. My eyes are watering. Grandmother’s sitting across from me, rubbing her not-yet-wrinkled hands together, watching me about to choke like all that time saved from not churning butter has gone to good use. None of them moves to pat my back so maybe I’m not dying dying, but my throat’s burning, my heart’s racing, and I’m sweating up something fierce. I rub my throat to coax the lump down.
Grandfather’s forehead wrinkles. His top lip twists in what I hope is an uncomfortable position. “Don’t have much use for manners where you’re from, do you?”
It’s impolite not to appreciate at least the effort if not the taste of someone else’s cooking. It’s also impolite to serve someone close-to-but-not-quite food, but I couldn’t tell him that even if I wanted to, what with this food playing hide-and-seek with the taste in my mouth. Maybe it was a blessing I didn’t get to know him much before he Moved On. He’s still sore about the water. There were four glasses of cloudy liquid on the table. I had meant to have a polite sip but the warmth of the glass, and the stubbornness of the drink, its slow, sluggish slide to the lip, turned my stomach. He offered to pump me a fresh glass for supper. I said, Yes, I’d be mighty obliged, thank you. Why of course, Queen Sheba, I’ll ring the butler to get that for you, he said. Grandmother and Constance had laughed.
I should have known to apologize. Jumped up to set it right. That would have meant five minutes of apology, back straight, eyes to the ground, hands outstretched. If it was accepted, I would still have to drink the sludge. Lord only knows what would have happened then. None of them had even touched theirs. It was just as likely to be the same stubborn drink filled to the top until one of them gave in. So, while an apology would have made my family proud, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. He could have gone out to the pump and, cursing me, got me a fresh glass of water. I would have drunk it too. Taken long sips. The kind that makes folk want what you’re having. Now, it’s me against the glass, the glass against me. Though most likely it’s that glass against him too.
Something skitters across the back of my neck. My skin prickles at the touch of eight little legs dancing across it. I look up. The house is clean otherwise, everything in its place as though they just moved in or are about to move out. Above my head, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of little spiders spinning, running, gliding, watching. There must be a million little eggs in the nest. It’s pulsating. I try not to stare. Mother’s always hated spiders, said they remind her of home. Constance sits across from me. I should have known, when she’d offered me her chair, that she would take the good one—or the better one. This would be where a little brother or sister sat meal after meal racing against spiders to finish before one glided down a strand for a visit. They can have my plate.
“I’m going to get us all some water.” I brush the spider off, careful not to kill it. The kitchen looks like I’d have expected it to if I had thought about it. Grandmother always was a just-so woman. I grab a pitcher in need of a rinse and head out back.
It’s there when I open the door. A spirit. Right here in the open, not bothered by me being alive. Maybe it’s because I don’t have my stick. If I did, I’d have to Ward it Off. I’d be doing it a favor. This town ain’t nowhere to be tied to forever.
The pump is just a few steps from the house. I take my time getting there. Even if the windows had been closed I would have heard them hot-whispering or felt them saying not-quite my name, Cheyenne, like a swear word. Grandmother had crossed herself when I first came down the stairs. She must have seen the dress first. When I asked, Constance had said there weren’t any pictures of her sister but that I shouldn’t think I looked like her because I didn’t; that Cheyenne was everything beautiful and I was everything left. She’d sounded just like Mother then. I almost told her so. But I knew from the way she kept staring at me and, if not then, from the way Grandmother’s breath caught in her throat, and Grandfather’s “Oh, Lord!” his hand splayed over his heart, his body doubled over, his rasping and heaving half-forgotten prayers, that there was more than a passing resemblance. It couldn’t have been five minutes. Him nearly kissing the floorboards beneath my feet, Grandmother watching him do it, Constance watching her watching him watching me.
“It ain’t her,” Grandmother had said finally. She clutched a Bible in one hand, just in case, and a diary in another. It was Cheyenne’s. Filled with drawings and sketches, scratches of thoughts. “When I die, there’s nothing on God’s green earth that will bring me back here,” she read. “See, she promised.” She’d thumped the cloth cover, letting loose a small puff of dust.
“You ain’t our Cheyenne,” Grandfather had said, like he was setting me straight.
Still, it’s the water that he can’t forgive. “Isn’t she high-and-mighty? Miss Your-water-ain’t-good-enough-to-touch-my-mouth?” He never liked me. I don’t know why he would start now.
“It would serve her right if her name gets called come Sunday.” Grandmother’s never cared too much for me either.
“Sunday can’t come soon enough.”
“It could just as easily be one of us,” Constance says.
The room is silent except for the scraping of forks. I picture the plopping of food back on streaked plates. The nibbling of bone.
“I promise I won’t put none of your names forward if our family’s turn comes up,” Grandfather says. This place sure is backward. If the family’s name is called, the head of the household can choose one name. Grandfather would choose either Constance or Grandmother. He could choose his own but he’s not the sort of man to do that. I know because he lived longer than he should have and even if our system is nothing like theirs, it’s also something like it too.
“Please,” Constance says, “don’t.”
“I said I won’t, didn’t I?”
“I mean promise. Please don’t promise again.”
“A man’s only as good as his word.” There’s a lilt to Grandmother’s voice that makes my heart drop.
“Did I promise last time? Give my word?”
I imagine Constance nodding. Grandmother’s silent yes.
“Well, this time I mean it.”
No one says a word.
“I can’t believe I’m being doubted in my own house!” He slams the table.
Plates and silverware clatter. A glass or something must tip over. It would be a slow slosh anyway, no need to bother with it. Instead, there’s the scrape of two chairs. Constance and Grandmother tripping over each other. Their words rush and tangle together. The apologies. Each one blames the other.
Grandfather doesn’t accept the apology on the first round. He’s probably leaning back, eyes closed, head shaking. Thumping his middle finger, the one with the nail thick and neatly curled under, on the table. Reminding her without needing to that the next Mrs. Greene will keep a better home with less effort than it takes Grandmother not to keep one at all. Grandmother must be wondering which one will replace her. There’s always someone newly widowed in waiting. Just for spite it will likely be someone he knows she doesn’t like. Surely it will be someone more fluent in spices. Someone better acquainted with kindness. Someone Constance will call Mother. Grandmother must know she would: not embracing her would lead to double graves, mother and daughter buried one Moving On after the other.
Constance knows what it’s like to lose somebody. It would have happened at least three times. Mother Opal would have called it bad luck. Whatever happened to make Mother Opal wise and kind sure hasn’t happened yet. If it had, she’d have told Mother to ring their bells off-key and out of rhythm for twenty minutes a day for thirty-two days to unsettle the bad luck and make room for good. They must have ganged up on my uncles and aunt, outnumbering, convincing, casting their names in the pot or box or some other backwater contraption. Stepping back to put someone else forward. Cowardly. It would take a whole lot of bell ringing to undo what they’ve done.
However things are done here, they launch in again.
“It’s the girl, turning us against one another,” Grandmother says.
I’ve brought something on them that hasn’t been there before, she continues. Constance joins in. They blame me for five full minutes. What a waste of an apology.
Outside, I take my time at the pump. The metal is cool in my hand. I press it harder than I need to. Hard like it’s Grandfather’s neck. No, not quite. It’s too thin. It’s more like Grandmother’s, curved, sturdy, just the right size to wrap my hands around. The spirit watches me. In the Curdle Creek I know, we all get our own chances. We don’t turn against one another like heathens at a wake. I wouldn’t be knocking on forty-six if we did. If these are the old ways Mother Opal kept talking about and Mother claimed not to remember, we are better off in Curdle Creek present than in Curdle Creek of the past.
I picture a ghost next to me at the pump, hands mimicking mine, pumping magicked-up water. “Shoo,” I say. “Go back from whence you came.” For all I know, though, she is right where she came from. I wait for a response. Nothing happens. The pump drips slow and stubborn.
I look back at the house. If somebody’s watching, they’ll see me talking to myself. They’ll wonder if I’ve escaped. If my folks had locked me up somewhere, not to keep me safe but to keep themselves safe from me. A tower or something like a medieval princess. Or an asylum like a spinster aunt twice removed. They’ll wonder if I can be trusted. I won’t give them the chance. When I go back inside with a half-empty pitcher, their dead daughter’s dress stained with wet grass, I’ll cough deep and long, the call of the last-chancers come to Curdle Creek trying to outrun the influenza or something else their folks caught hold of. I’ll cough and say it’s nothing, that my folks have it, that everyone back home does. I won’t say what it is. Won’t need to. No matter when this is or where, death wasn’t invented in Curdle Creek.
“Mercy Lumpkin, is that you?” I whisper. The leaves in the trees rustle and twist. There’s a cool breeze. It’s dark and damp. The perfect night for ghosts. “Mercy, if you hear me, look after my children, please. Just please do that for me.”
I listen out for a response. Other than the stubborn drip of the pump, there is none. “And if you can, please get far away from this place.”
If I take too long out here, they’ll only come out to find me. They’ll usher me in, pretend to help me with the water, apologize for anything I may have misheard or misunderstood while telling me it was all in my head anyway, that they are happy to have me. We’ll sit around the table, Grandmother and Grandfather making small talk, Constance twiddling with her fork, stuffing food in her mouth to keep down the words. After dinner, they’ll invite me to sit around the fireplace while they read from their family book, how so-and-so begat so-and-so and so-and-so begat so-and-so. There will probably be stories about long-dead great-relatives I’ve never heard anything good about. When they tire of telling me how good their family is or was, we’ll all claim to be tired. I’ll sleep in Constance’s room, folded up in her too-small bed. They’ll lock the door and even then I’ll have to sleep with my eyes open. If I live through the night, I’ll have to do the same thing for three days. Pretend to not want to leave while they pretend to want me to stay. Come Sunday, they’ll try to coax me out of the door, lie about some family outing since now, they’ll say, I’m just as good as family.
The house goes dark and I look up. Their shadows move across the window, the occasional flicker of candlelight turning them into characters in a silent picture show. Grandfather moves across the screen, a raised club in one hand. Grandmother follows with a cord of thick rope held high. Constance skips across next, carrying a large sack with two hands.
I make the sign of the bell, and run.