Aunt Carrie said Ray and I could stay at the farm as long as need be. She’d said it might be best for Mama, not having to worry about taking care of us just then.
“I’d be happy to have them here,” she’d said.
Daddy drove us back home so we could pack up a few things. Just enough to last us until he came to get us again. A couple changes of clothes. That was all we’d need. And a book or two. Maybe my hairbrush and the nice clip Mama’d given me for special occasions.
It seemed impossible, thinking about what to take when I knew Mama was downstairs in her bed. Daddy’d said she was in a deep sleep, that Doctor Barnett had given her some powerful medicine so she wouldn’t have to feel any of the pain.
I wondered if he had anything in that doctor’s bag of his that might deal with all the hurt that was coming once she woke up and remembered why her stomach wasn’t round anymore.
“You need help?” Ray asked, standing in the doorway of my bedroom, his few things crumpled in his hand.
“I’ll manage,” I answered.
He came in anyway and sat on my bed. I thought how Mama would’ve gotten after me if I’d bunched my clothes like he had. She’d have grumbled at me for making a mess of my blankets if I’d sat on my bed the way he did. But she’d never scolded Ray, not really. Not in all the time he’d been with us.
“It’ll be like we’re on vacation,” he said.
“What?” I asked, turning toward him.
“It’s like we’re goin’ on a trip,” he said. “I ain’t never been on vacation before.”
“We’re just going to the farm.” I turned my back and took a couple dresses off their hangers. “It’s not that far.”
“Nah, you’re lookin’ at it wrong.” He cleared his throat. “Just think of it. We’re gettin’ away from life in town and goin’ out to the country for a spell.”
I shrugged, not wanting to see the sunny side of anything just then.
“We’ll be far away from all the cares of the world,” he went on.
“There’s no place somebody can go to get away from bad things,” I said. “They’ve got a way of following a body around.”
“Guess we just gotta be faster then.” He gave me a weak smile. “Ready?”
“I wanna see Mama first.”
He didn’t try to stop me. He knew better than that.
Daddy’d said it was okay to go to Mama if I promised not to wake her. I told him I’d be quiet as I could. I’d just wanted to look at her, to see with my own eyes that she was all right. To maybe feel with my own hands that her skin was still warm and hear with my own ears that she was still breathing.
I opened the door to her bedroom as slow as I could and stepped in on my tiptoes. She was on her side, facing away from me. She didn’t move but her snoring let me know she was breathing all right. Mama never had been one to snore, not that I knew of, at least. I thought whatever the doctor had given her must have been mighty powerful.
I stepped around the end of the bed, running the tips of my fingers along the quilt and feeling the patches of cotton and the stitching like scars holding it all together. I stopped, resting my pointer finger on one of the squares, tracing the red thread heart Meemaw had sewn at the bottom right-hand corner of the quilt.
I remembered so many years ago I’d gotten sent to bed without supper. For the life of me I couldn’t remember what I’d done, but it must’ve been bad for Mama to have me go without a meal. It had always bothered her something awful to think that Beanie or I was hungry.
That day, I’d crawled up under that quilt on my bed. It was in my room in Red River and I remembered rubbing the soles of my feet against the gritty dust on the bottom sheet. My stomach grumbled but I was too angry at Mama to admit that I was hungry, not even to myself.
Later on, before she’d sent Beanie up to bed, Mama’d come in my room. I pretended to be asleep that day, pinching my eyes hard so I would remember not to open them and give myself away.
She’d sat the end of the bed. I opened one of my lids just enough to see her there, her eyes on that square and her finger tracing the shape of the heart. Mama’d stayed there a long time, so long I nearly fell asleep for real.
But then I’d heard her sniffling. I opened that one lid again, wider that time, and saw her reach up and push a tear off her cheek.
“Mama?” I’d said.
She startled, but just a little. “I thought you were asleep,” she’d said.
“Why’re you crying?”
“I wasn’t crying,” she’d answered. “Do you know I love you, Pearl?”
“Yes, Mama,” I’d answered. It’d been the truth, I did know it.
“I really want you to know that I do.”
“I know.”
She’d reached to where my foot bumped up the covers and gave it a squeeze.
“Don’t ever doubt it, sweetheart,” she’d said.
That day in the house on Magnolia Street it was Mama’s foot forming a ridge under the quilt and my finger tracing the stitched heart.
“Do you know I love you, Mama?” I asked, keeping my voice as quiet as I could.
She didn’t answer. Still, I hoped she knew.