Betty Read online

  He had no chest hair, which surprised her. She was used to seeing the curly coarse hairs on her father’s barrel chest and the way they felt like tiny wires in her hands when she grabbed hold of them. She forced the image of her father out of her mind and continued to consider the man in front of her. His thick, black hair was cut short on the sides but left long on the top, where it flopped up as high as her hand, then down in waves.

  Pappy would not approve, she said to herself.

  She knew the man must have come from a household run by women. It was the way he had sat outside the quilt, rather than sitting on it. She could see both his mother and his grandmother. He held them there in his brown eyes. She trusted this about him. That he should hold women so close.

  Something she could not ignore was his skin color.

  Not negro dark, she thought in those 1930s, but not white either, and that is just as dangerous.

  She lowered her stare to his bare feet. They were the feet of a man who traveled the woods and washed in the river.

  “He’s probably in love with a tree,” she said under her breath.

  When she raised her eyes, she found him staring at her. She turned back to her apple, which had only a few bites left.

  “Excuse the dirt, miss,” he said, dusting it from his pants. “But when you’re the gravedigger, you can’t help but get a little dirty. It ain’t bad workin’ here. Though it’s bad for the folks I’m diggin’ the holes for.”

  He saw her begin to smile from behind her apple, but she caught herself. He wondered what she thought of him. He was twenty-nine. She was eighteen. Her shoulder-length hair hung bagged in a white crocheted snood. The color and texture of her hair reminded him of pale wisps of corn silk in the light of the sun. Her skin was peachy against her mint-green dress while her small waist was girded tightly by a dingy white belt, matching her soiled crocheted wrist gloves. She was a girl of little means up close, but from afar she could look like she was more.

  That’s what the gloves are for, he thought. To pretend she’s a lady and not another muted beauty expected to rust her way out of creation like some broken-down tractor in a field.

  The apple was nearly at its core, but a patch of red skin was still visible around its stem. When she took a bite, the juice escaped out of the corners of her mouth. As he watched the wind blow the loose strays of hair above her small ears, he felt a gentle rain falling on his bare shoulders. He was surprised he could still feel something so soft and light. Hardness had not yet gotten the better of him. He looked up at the darkening sky.

  “You don’t get clouds like that unless they aim to prove they got a storm in ’em,” he said. “We can either sit here and become part of the flood or seek to save ourselves best we can.”

  She stood and dropped what was left of the apple to the ground. He noticed her feet. She was barefoot. If she and he were the same in anything, it was the way they walked the earth. He was about to say something he thought would interest her, but the rain fell harder. It beat on the two of them while the sky brightened with lightning. The storm was laying claim to my parents in ways not even they could have understood.

  “We’ll get some cover under that shagbark hickory,” Dad said.

  Keeping a grip on his shirt of mushrooms, Dad grabbed the quilt up off the ground to hold over her head. She allowed him to lead her to the tree.

  “It won’t last long,” he said as they found relief beneath the dense canopy of the hickory’s branches.

  He shook the raindrops off the quilt before touching the shaggy bark of the tree.

  “The Cherokee would boil this,” he told her. “Sometimes for ailments, but sometimes for food. It’s sweet, this bark. If you bubble it in milk, you’ve got a drink that’ll—”

  Before he could finish, she laid her lips upon his in the softest kiss he had ever known. She reached up under her dress to pull down her fraying panties. He stared at her and wondered, but he was a man, after all, so he set the mushrooms off to the side. When he spread the quilt on the ground, he did so slowly in case she wanted to change her mind.

  Once she lay on the quilt, he lay down, too. In the fields around them, the ears of corn shot up like rocket ships while they smelled of each other and did not fall in love. But you don’t need love for something to grow. In a few months’ time, she could no longer hide what was developing inside her. Her father—the man I would come to call Grandpappy Lark—noticed her growing belly and struck her several times in the face until her nose bled and she saw small stars in front of her eyes. She cried out for her mother, who stood by but did nothing more than watch.

  “You’re a whore,” her father told her as he removed his heavy leather belt from his pants. “What grows in your belly is sin. I should let the devil eat you alive. This is for your own good. Remember that.”

  He hit her across her midsection with the belt’s metal buckle. She dropped to the floor, doing her best to cradle her stomach.

  “Don’t die, don’t die, don’t die,” she whispered to the child inside her as her father beat her until he was satisfied.

  “God’s work has been done here,” he said, slipping his belt back into the loops of his pants. “Now, what’s for dinner?”

  Later that night, she laid her hand upon her belly and felt certain that life continued. The next morning, she walked to find her mushroom man. It was the summer of 1938 and every expecting woman was expected to have a husband.

  When she got to the cemetery, she scanned the open expanse before finding a man digging a grave with his back to her.

  There he is, she thought to herself as she walked in between the rows of stones.

  “Excuse me, sir?”

  The man turned and was not him.

  “I’m sorry.” She looked away. “I thought you were someone I’m lookin’ for. He also works here diggin’ graves.”

  “What’s his name?” the man asked, not stopping his work.

  “I don’t know, but I can tell you he’s tall and thin. Black hair, dark brown eyes—”

  “Dark skin, too?” He stabbed the shovel into the dirt. “I know who you’re talkin’ ’bout. Last I heard he got hired at the clothespin factory out on the edge of town.”

  She walked to the clothespin factory, where she stood outside the gates. At noon, when the horn blew, the men emerged from the building with their lunches. She strained to find him in the crowd of blue shirts and even darker blue pants. For a moment, she thought he was not there. Then she saw him. Unlike the other men, he had no lunch tin. He rolled and lit a cigarette, feeding on its smoke as his eyes moved across the treetops.

  What is he looking at? she wondered as she, too, looked at the leaves blowing in the wind.

  When she lowered her eyes, he was staring at her.

  Is that the girl? he asked himself. He couldn’t be sure. It had been some time since. Besides that, there were now bruises disguising her features. Her swollen eyes certainly didn’t help. Then he saw the way her hair blew like corn silk over her ears and he knew she was the girl from the rain. The girl who had quickly put her panties on after.

  He noticed how she rested her hand ever so gently on her stomach, which was not as flat as he had remembered. He exhaled enough smoke to hide his face as he walked back into the factory. The smell of wood, the grating sound of the saw, the fine dust filling the air like constellations of stars all did nothing but take him back to that moment in the cemetery. He thought of the rain and how it had dropped in between the tree branches and splashed against her pupils, the water puddling at the sides of her eyes to run down her cheeks.

  When the factory’s final horn blew hours later, he walked outside ahead of the other men. He found she had not left. She was sitting on the ground outside the factory’s iron gates. She looked weary, as if she’d just marched a million funerals, the sole pallbearer at every one. She stood as
he approached her.

  “I have to speak with you.” Her voice shook as she dusted dirt off the back of her skirt.

  “Mine?” He motioned toward her stomach before starting to roll a fresh cigarette.

  “Yes.” She made sure to answer quickly.

  He chased a bird across the sky with his eyes, then turned back to her and said, “It ain’t the worst I’ve done in my life. You got a match by any chance?”

  “I don’t smoke.”

  He finished rolling the cigarette only to slide it behind his ear.

  “I got work until five every day,” he said. “But I get an hour for lunch. We’ll go over to the courthouse. It’s the best I can do. That okay?”

  “Yes.” She dug her bare toe into the ground between them.

  He began to silently count her bruises.

  “Who gave ’em to ya?” he asked.

  “My pappy.”

  “How long the devil been livin’ in your daddy’s heart?”

  “All my life,” she said.

  “Well, a man who beats a woman leaves me with little more than anger. The type of anger I can taste in the back of my throat. And boy is it a bad taste.” He spit on the ground. “Pardon my action, but I can’t keep that sort of thing to myself. My momma always said a man who strikes a woman has a crooked walk and a man with a crooked walk leaves behind a crooked footprint. You know what lives in a crooked footprint? Ain’t nothin’ but things that set fire to the eyes of God. Now I ain’t a man of many talents, but I know how to spend my anger. Seein’ how he is your daddy, I won’t kill him if you don’t want me to. I’ll yield to your wishes, sure enough. But you’re soon to be my wife and I wouldn’t be worth a damn as a husband if I didn’t raise my hand to the man who raised his to you.”

  “What would you do to him if you didn’t kill him?” she asked, her swollen eyes brightening.

  “You know your soul is right here?” He gently touched the bridge of her nose. It felt more intimate than anything they’d done before.

  “That really where my soul is?” she asked. “In my nose?”

  “Mmm-hmm. It’s where everyone’s soul is. When God told us to inhale our soul through our nostrils, it stayed right where it first entered.”

  “So what would you do?” she asked again, more impatient than before.

  “I’d cut his soul out,” he said. “That’s worse than death in my opinion. Without a soul, who are you?”

  She smiled. “What’s your name, sir?”

  “My name?” He dropped his hand from her face. “Landon Carpenter.”

  “I’m Alka Lark.”

  “Pleased to know you, Alka.”

  “Pleased to know you, Landon.”

  They each said the other’s name once more beneath their breath as they walked to his old truck.

  “I ain’t used to takin’ ladies on drives,” he said, moving the dandelion roots off the seat for her to have a place to sit. “That’s thyme you smell, by the way.”

  Tiny rocks embedded in the backs of her thighs when she sat. He closed the door after her. She carefully watched him walk around to get in on the driver’s side. When he started the engine, she felt certain there was no going back.

  “Whatcha thinkin’ about?” he asked, seeing her eyes fill with the moment.

  “It’s just that…” She looked at her belly. “I’m not sure what kind of momma I’ll be or what kind of baby I’ll be gettin’.”

  “What kind of baby?” He chuckled. “Well, I’m not a very smart man, but I do know it’ll be a boy or a girl. And they’ll call me daddy and you momma. That’s the kind of baby it’ll be.”

  He pulled the truck out onto the road.

  “There are poorer things to be called than momma, I reckon,” she said before raising up in her seat in order to see over the herbs drying on the dash and give him directions to what had been her home.

  When they arrived at the small white house, Grandpappy Lark was on the porch swing. Mamaw Lark was serving him a glass of milk. Mom walked so quickly past them both, she was nearly running, ignoring their questions of who the man with her was and why he thought he could just walk up on their porch.

  Mom could hear the anger in Grandpappy Lark’s voice growing as she raced into her bedroom. She started throwing what clothing she could grab on top of the quilt on her bed.

  “What am I forgettin’?” She looked around the room.

  She walked to the open window, but instead of focusing her eyes outside on her father—who was on his back in the yard, repeatedly being punched in the face by Dad—she looked at the short cotton curtains framing the window. The curtains were yellow and had little white flowers printed on them. She wondered if she needed such prettiness to dress up the place she was going, wherever that might be.

  “Yes,” she answered herself.

  She yanked the curtains until the rod broke. She listened to her father scream outside as she removed the curtains and tossed them to the pile of clothes.

  “That should do it,” she said, pulling the edges of the quilt together and slinging it like a bag over her shoulder. On her way out of her room, she made sure to grab her pair of cameo earrings from off the dresser.

  “I wouldn’t forget you,” she said to the girl etched into each earring just before she put them on.

  Feeling as if the earrings meant there was more than one of her, she stepped out into the yard, less afraid. She walked past Mamaw Lark, who was still screaming. By that time, Dad had Grandpappy Lark by the hair and was pressing and twisting his face into the ground. When he let Grandpappy Lark up to breathe, Mom saw that her father had three teeth less than he did when the day had started.

  “Only one thing left to do,” Dad said to Mom as he got his pocketknife out.

  He put the wiggling Grandpappy Lark in a chokehold, then laid the blade against his nose.

  “No.” Mom held up her hand.

  Dad looked at her, then back down at the knife.

  “Sorry, Alka,” he said. “But I told ya I was gonna cut his soul out, and that’s what I’m gonna do.”

  Dad didn’t hesitate pressing the blade into Grandpappy Lark’s skin, causing a stream of blood to emerge alongside the metal. Grandpappy Lark cried out in pain as Dad cut the blade in deeper. More blood gushed and ran down Grandpappy Lark’s cheek. Mamaw Lark disappeared up onto the porch, where she hid whimpering behind a post.

  “You’ve done enough,” Mom tried to tell Dad.

  “Still ain’t got the soul out of him just yet,” Dad said, slicing the blade against the bone deeper until a flap of Grandpappy Lark’s skin peeled up.

  Dad removed the knife so he could look into the cut he’d made.

  “Hot jumpin’ coal,” Dad told Grandpappy Lark, “you ain’t got no soul. There ain’t nothin’ of God in ya. You’re already hollowed out and damned, old man.”

  Having no fight left in him, Grandpappy Lark let his cheek rest on the dirt as Dad stood. He took the quilt bag off Mom’s shoulder as he told her, “We best leave before you start to feel sorry for the old bastard.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that.”

  Removing half of a chocolate bar from out of her dress pocket, she walked to her father. He rolled over onto his back and stared up at her. She laid the chocolate bar half on his chest.

  Only when she heard the squeak of Dad’s truck door opening behind her did she spit on her father and leave.

  Mom thought the ride would be silent, but Dad asked her if she minded the smell of gas. At the time, he was renting a small room off the back of a filling station. The room had one window, upon which Mom hung her curtains. They laid the quilt on the bed, uniting hers with his old one beneath.

  “I’ll try to be a good husband,” he told her. “A good man.”

  “That would be nice,” she
said, rubbing her stomach. “That would be awfully nice.”

  When I think of my family now, I think of a big ol’ sorghum field, like the one my father was born in. Dry brown dirt, wet green leaves. A mad sweetness there in the hard canes. That’s my family. Milk and honey and all that old-time bullshit.

  2

  A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.

  —MATTHEW 7:18

  When the first snow of each new winter came, my mother would go into the parlor. It had the furniture our father had built in it, but when I remember her there, I see the space nearly empty. There are only the boards of the wooden floor scratched from when we had dragged furniture across or ran too hard or played with knives. I see the cotton curtains on each of the windows and I see the old wooden rocking chair the color of molasses. My mother sits in this chair after opening all the windows. She’s wearing her prettiest housedress. A pale pink one with clusters of tiny cream and bright blue flowers. I’m certain the flowers count out to any odd number. She’s barefoot. Her toes curl as she rests her right foot on top of her left.

  Depending on which way the wind is blowing, the snow comes in. At first the flurries melt before they land. Then they pile lightly like dust, bringing their cold in. I can see my mother’s breath and the way her skin prickles. This is winter to me. My mother sitting in a spring dress in the middle of the parlor while the snow comes in. Dad running in and closing the windows in between wrapping a blanket around her. The snow left to melt into little puddles on the wooden floor of the house on Shady Lane in Breathed, Ohio. This is winter to me. This is marriage.

  Houses are built in the beginning by the father and the mother. Some houses have roofs that never leak. Some are built of brick, stone, or wood. Some have chimneys, porches, a cellar and an attic, all built by the hands of the parents. Hands of flesh, bone, and blood. But other things, too. My father’s hands were soil. My mother’s were rain. No wonder they could not hold one another without causing enough mud for two. And yet out of that mud, they built us a house that became a home.