Jessie woke up while I was restockin’ the woodbox early the next mornin’. I hadn’t yet thrown the shutter open, and the cabin was lit only by the fire in the stove. Jessie wasn’t much more than a shadow over in the bed. I had kept her there since she showed up, makin’ a pallet on the floor by the stove for myself. I knew she had woken up because I felt her watchin’ me. She was a curious child, Jessie was. Old Mongrel sensed her, too, and he left my side and padded over to her, nose snufflin’, leanin’ forward for a scratch behind the ears. Jessie leaned over and obliged.
“Good mornin’” I said, placin’ the last of the wood. “We need to get some food in you, and get you a soak in the tub. How’d you sleep?”
Jessie struggled to sit up. “All right,” she answered. “The soaks are helpin’. I don’t hurt as much this mornin’.” Duckin’ her head down like she did sometimes, she looked up at me from under her hair. “I thank you for all you done. I’ll get out of your way soon’s I can walk,” she said.
I pulled off my gloves and tossed ’em on the table, goin’ over to sit on the edge of the bed. She was grippin’ the bedclothes tight, and I patted her hand. “Jessie, I cain’t make you stay if you want to go,” I said. “But you’re welcome here as long as you care to stay.”
Jessie’s head jerked up and she looked at me, grabbin’ onto my hands. “Do you mean it?” she asked. “Can I stay for good? I don’t want to go back there, ever. I hate Roy. I thought about goin’ to try to find my momma, but I don’t have no idea where she went, and I don’t reckon she’d want me, anyway, else she wouldn’t have never left me with him.” She was squeezin’ my hands hard.
I squeezed her hands back. “I mean it,” I said. “Now, I don’t know what kind of trouble Roy will cause, but I’m sure as certain there will be some. I don’t know how that’ll all work out, but I ain’t goin’ to make you leave here. I cain’t send you back to that, knowin’ what’s waitin’ on you there.”
She leaned back against the pillows. “Is this how that woman took care of you? Is that why you’re doin’ all this for me?”
She was partly right, but she wasn’t wholly right. I was doin’ it for her for a lot of different reasons, but mostly because it felt like what I was supposed to do. The universe put Polly there for me when I needed it, and now it had put me there for Jessie when she needed it. That is the way it works, all connected together.
“Polly did take me in, yes,” I said. “I lived with her in this very cabin until she died, when I was full grown. She was like a momma to me. But that’s not the only reason I’m helpin’ you honey. I’m helpin’ you because you’re a good girl and you need help.”
Jessie was quiet, mullin’ this information over. “But where was your own momma? Did she leave you, too?”
I shook my head. “No, honey, she died, just a little while before Polly found me. And my daddy was already dead, killed in the mine when I was just a little girl. Polly became my family then, and she was all the family I needed.”
“I don’t know my daddy.” Her voice was sad. “I ain’t never met him. He might have loved me, though, better than my momma did.” She looked down at the quilt.
I let go of her hands to reach over and smooth her hair. “Well, honey, it’s his loss that he never met you, and her loss that she left you behind. You seem lovable enough to me.”
Jessie smiled, and it was a sweet little smile. That girl was doin’ strange things to my heart. “Will you tell me about Polly?” she asked. “I wish I’d have known her. She sounds like a nice lady.”
Lord, this child with her questions. “You wasn’t even born yet when I met her,” I said. “And I was just a little bit older than you when she brought me here.”
“And you were hurt,” prompted Jessie, reachin’ for more.
“Yes, honey, I was hurt,” I said. “Just like you were.”
“Can you tell me about it?” asked Jessie. “It might help you to tell it, like it helped me. It ain’t good to be alone with that stuff. It gets in your head and won’t get back out.”
That was true, for sure; it did get in your head and try to stay put, but over all them years I had pushed mine so far back in there that I didn’t never think about it no more, until somethin’ happened to stir it up again. My trip to town and the run-in with Jimmy, findin’ Jessie...things sure was happenin’ to keep it stirred up. I didn’t know why, but I did believe there must be a purpose for it; otherwise, after all that time, why would so many things be happenin’ different?
I felt like things was churnin’ towards somethin’, and I felt like whatever it was was meant to be. I had not talked about myself in so many years, hadn’t never told anyone but Polly about what happened to me. There hadn’t been no one to tell, and it wasn’t somethin’ I wanted to dwell on.
“Honey, I will tell you some of it,” I said, “but not the ugliest parts. I know you done been through it yourself, but tellin’ you all of it wouldn’t be right; it ain’t somethin’ you need to hear. And then I don’t want it discussed no more. It was a long, long time ago and I don’t like draggin’ it back out. You’re young enough that maybe you can work it out of your soul by the tellin’, but I done spent a lot of years pushin’ it away. That is how I learned to survive with it, and tellin’ it now don’t serve no purpose for me.”
I did not know how long I had lain in that culvert behind the school that stormy night before Polly found me. One of my last clear memories is of runnin’, jumpin’ across ditches and over fences, with Willy and them boys hot behind me. I knew why they was mad and I knew that they was goin’ to punish me. That was what I had been afraid of all along. Brother Hudson had said them feelin’s was a sin, and sins have to be punished in one way or another. I didn’t have no business holdin’ onto Corinne that way, feelin’ them desires. I knew I had to pay for that mistake. As I was runnin’ from them, guilt and fear was at war in my heart. I was scared, that is for sure, but bein’ a young girl, I didn’t have no clear idea of what they was goin’ to do when they caught me.
When I found myself comin’ into the school yard I remembered the culvert. I was glad for rememberin’ it, because I was thinkin’ I could hide in it and wait for them to give up and leave me be. I knew they’d still get me sometime, but maybe their anger would die down before they seen me again. I was a fast child, one of the fastest in town, and I was feelin’ certain that I could get far enough ahead of them to hide without them seein’ me, but I hadn’t taken into account that I was runnin’ from full grown men. When I say that now I think it drives it home, the predicament I was in. I was a fourteen year old girl runnin’ from grown men. I don’t hurt no more for the person I am, but I hurt for that little girl I was.
And they wasn’t just men, either, they was soldiers, and they had been conditioned strong in the time they was gone. The other thing I hadn’t taken into account was that these was not just angry boys tryin’ to yank on my hair or trip me up. These was bad, bad men. They had outgrown callin’ names and trippin’ games durin’ the war. My idea of hurtin’ and their idea of hurtin’ was two wholly different things.
I nearly flew around the side of the school and headed for the culvert, splashin’ through that ditch that was already rushin’ with cold water from the storm. No sooner had I ducked inside than I felt myself yanked backwards by my long, soakin’ wet hair. I lost my footin’ and fell backwards into Willy Pruitt’s chest. He had me, but even then I did not fully understand what that meant.
“What’s the matter, Billy May? You so eager for love you think you got to get it from my baby sister? Don’t you know you need a man for that?”
His breath stank of beer, and he twisted my arm up behind my back until it popped, pullin’ me tight up against him. I was so surprised I could not make a sound. All the times I had wrastled with boys to see who was the strongest, it hadn’t been nothin’ like that.
He shoved me down, tearin’ what was left of my yellow dress off of my body. I was terrified, then. I hadn’t never had nobody handle me that way, and I was ashamed and embarrassed about my nakedness in front of him. I fought against him, kickin’ and screamin’, tryin’ to claw his face, and all the while he pinned me down, layin’ on top of me so I could not breathe. I was an active girl, and I was strong, but he was so much stronger than anyone I had ever come up against. He had his hand all twisted up in my hair, holdin’ my head under water, and then I felt the pain, like the deabhal, the devil, tryin’ to rip me in half with his barbed tail; that is what it felt like to me.
When he was finished he laid still on top of me, breathin’ hard before lettin’ go of my hair and movin’ off and away. I sucked in air, my head finally above the water, my lungs free of his weight and able to expand. I was hurtin’, and I seen blood in the water around my legs. I had no idea what had just happened to me, and that is the truth. I didn’t know nothin’ about them things; more than anythin’ at that moment I was just glad I was still alive. Then, just when I started thinkin’ it was over, I found myself lookin’ up into the face of Roy Campbell, his pants already down around his ankles in the rushin’ water. He stepped on one of my legs with his boot and held it down while he kicked the other one aside and pinned it there.
I tried to fight again, but I wasn’t no match for them men. I reckon I passed out for a while, and the next face I seen was that of Jimmy Williamson. I do not know how many times they had hurt me by the time it was over; I don’t even remember it endin’. The next clear memory I have is of Polly’s worried face, just in front of my own, tellin’ me to get up. She half-carried and half-dragged me to that tiny little house on the edge of town. I remember her wrappin’ me up in a blanket and talkin’ to me. I don’t remember what it was she was sayin’, only that her voice was kind. I remember the smell of her herbs and the taste of somethin’ bitter and sweet all at the same time. And then I slept.
That first night, Polly wanted to call Dr. Leary, but I begged her not to. I was too ashamed, and in my own heart I still believed I had deserved the punishment they gave me. I couldn’t stand the thought of Dr. Leary witnessin’ my sins, after all he had done for me and Momma. In the end, Polly gave in and doctored me herself. Things was different in them days; people knew how to take care of themselves.
My shoulder had been dislocated from bein’ twisted up behind me, and my backside was cut and bruised from bein’ slammed so much against the concrete of the culvert. My feet were tore up from runnin’ barefoot through the village, and my scalp was torn, with big patches of hair gone. In my dreams that night, I seen my long, black hair floatin’ away through the culvert, washin’ into the river and bein’ carried away to a ocean I hadn’t never seen. I don’t know why that is what I seen, but it is. After that, I cut off all my hair. I did not want it long again.
I don’t know what the rest of me looked like. Polly did not tell me; she just clamped her mouth shut and shook her head. She made up poultices and soaks and made me drink somethin’ bitter and rotten tastin’, sayin’ it would get rid of anythin’ they left in me. I did not know at that time what she meant, but I did as she told me to do. It was a few days before I could stand up and even longer before I could walk, and all the while Polly was there, nursin’ me. She asked me who she could fetch for me, and I told her there wasn’t no one; all my people was gone.
Polly didn’t never mention callin’ the law, not that first night and not later. Cedar Hollow hasn’t never had its own police station; it is under the jurisdiction of the county, and with a population of only 189 back then, it wasn’t never high on the list of priorities. No one in town ever called the law, and truthfully the law wasn’t really ever needed. The folks of Cedar Hollow handled their own problems just fine; nobody wanted an outsider mixed up in their business.
Once or twicet a week Officer Wimbley would drive into town and stop in at the diner for a cheeseburger and a piece of key lime pie. After shootin’ the breeze for an hour or two, he’d drive back out; so far as he knew, the law wasn’t never broken in Cedar Hollow. In the end, Polly didn’t tell nobody I was holed up in her house, and I thank her for that even unto this day.
It took a long time for me to tell Polly the whole story of what had happened, but when I did, Polly told me I didn’t have nothin’ to feel guilty about. “God made you the way you are, honey, and you ain’t got nothin’ to be ashamed of. If he made you to love that girl, that’s the way he meant you to be, and it ain’t up to us to question it even if we might not understand it. Them boys, though,” she said, “That’s a different matter. That wasn’t no work of God, what them boys done to you. That was the work of the devil.” She spat on the ground at her feet. The deabhal. Then I knew it to be true.
After a while, I quit worryin’ about God. Polly believed in him, but I didn’t think about him one way or another. I think that hurt her some, but it would have hurt her more for me to lie about it; she was a truthful woman.
“She became like my momma,” I told Jessie, brushin’ out her hair while I talked. That hair was a mess, I tell you. It was all matted up and tangled, but as I brushed it I could see it would be pretty again; she just hadn’t had no one to teach her to take care of it. Brushin’ out that hair made me remember how proud I used to be of mine, back when I was a young girl.
“Polly took care of me,” I told her, “and when I was strong enough, she sold her house in town and we came up here to live. I didn’t want to go back to town. All I needed was Polly and this here mountain.” I started to plait her hair when I got it all brushed. I figured we had enough to mend up on her without worryin’ about her hair gettin’ all ratted again.
“We lived quiet. We fished and we hunted. We had a little garden and a few animals, like I still do. We quilted and sewed. There was always somethin’ that needed doin’; there always is. But it was peaceful and healin’. It was what I wanted, and Polly hadn’t never been a social person. She was a woman of the earth; she didn’t understand social things, and didn’t care for them neither. We lived that way for the better part of eleven years. I didn’t go into town that whole time; I couldn’t make myself leave this mountain. Polly went when we needed somethin’. She knew I would go when I felt strong enough to go.”
All of a sudden I felt like I was drownin’ in them memories. Polly did more than save my life, she made me whole again, so that I didn’t blame myself or hate myself no more. She had a way of talkin’ that soothed them feelin’s right out of me. When she passed on, I finally had to make myself go into town. I found Brother Hudson, and he got some men in the church to come and get her body. I fixed her up fine for the funeral, in one of them Sunday dresses she’d saved back for just that purpose. She looked restful, and I was comforted by that. We buried her in town, by the grave meant for her husband’s body.
I was thirsty; I wasn’t used to talkin’ so much. Seemed like lately I was doin’ a lot of things I wasn’t used to doin’. I went to the stove and put water on for coffee before returnin’ to Jessie’s side and continuin’. “Polly didn’t have no younguns of her own. Her husband died before they’d ever had a chance. I reckon we did that for each other; I needed a momma, and she needed a child. She left her land to me, and here I am. Someday, I’ll be buried next to Polly. She arranged it before she died, and that’s the way I want it to be.”
Jessie had been listenin’ like I was tellin’ her the secrets of the world. She didn’t even scarcely blink durin’ the tellin’ of the story. Now, lookin’ into my face, she said in that straight manner she had, “And you ain’t had nobody since then to be your family.”
I was not expectin’ that question, and for a minute it left me without words. “No,” I said when I got my bearin’s. “I guess I ain’t, but Old Mongrel and me do just fine.”
That little girl just kept lookin’ at me, and I swear to you it was an old soul in that child’s body. “Well,” she said, and she patted my cheek. When was the last time another human bein’ had touched me the way that girl kept pattin’ on me? Years and years before. Then she told me, like it was a matter of law, “Now you got me, and I reckon I need a momma, and you need a child.”
I was caught off guard by them words, but even more so by the clutchin’ in my chest. I surprised my own self when I laughed out loud. “Yes,” I said, smilin’ at her. “I reckon I do.”
But I knew it would not be that easy. The devil was still out there.