Blood Kin (16 page)

Her favorite thing about Levitt’s Store was the light bulbs. It was one of the only places in town with the electricity, and it had a big beautiful glass bulb in each room hanging overhead, and when they were on they looked like little suns. Sometimes she spent too much time looking at them and they left her dizzy with spots popping in front of her eyes.

She filled her sack so heavy it made her stagger around like a drunkard, and still she had to get the corn meal, the flour, lard, salt, baking powder, coffee, salt pork, and sugar. How was Granny Grace going to get all this stuff back to her place by herself?

Sadie heard her in the back, still singing. The Carter's “Clinch Mountain” now. Most folks around there sang hymns to themselves, but she reckoned the chances of Granny Grace singing a hymn was kin to the chances of a hen laying duck eggs. Sadie almost never went back there. Mostly because that’s where they kept the things her momma and daddy had to buy in person and never sent her to the store for — the shoes and the clothes and the bolts of chambray cloth and denim and the hunting and fishing supplies and the hardware and the tools. But also because on the back wall on top the highest shelf they had these six identical baby coffins, all of them stained dark and polished until they were like the most beautiful pieces of furniture in anybody’s house.

There were always six of them, so for a long time she thought maybe they just never sold them, or maybe almost no babies ever died in the hollow. Then one day she saw Mr. Levitt bring one of them up to a sorrowful-looking couple sitting on chairs by the front window. She’d watched them a few minutes. They sat like they’d been nailed there and couldn’t move, not even their hands, not even their eyes. And then Mr. Levitt brought them a polished box that was wider at one end than the other, and it had a metal plaque on it that said
Our Darling
, because she guessed it had come from the factory that way, so you didn’t even have to put a name on it, which was a good thing, since she’d heard that some dead babies weren’t even given names.

The couple had stared at that coffin like they were looking at their dead baby itself, and the woman had laid her hand on it, then took it off so quick like it burned. And Sadie reckoned that’s the kind of baby she would have if her own daddy got her pregnant. It would be a dead baby and they all would burn.

After that poor couple left with their baby coffin she heard Mr. Levitt tell a customer he had to order another one right away, cause he always liked to have six on hand just in case. “Back during that Spanish Flu epidemic after the war I run out quick and couldn’t get no more,” he’d said. “Folks was having to make their own boxes for their babies. Round here we’re accustomed to that for the grownups, but you like to do something a little special for the little ones.”

Granny Grace seemed to be spending a lot of time at the back of the store and Sadie was getting antsy. More and more folks were coming in for supplies and trading. One farmer had carried in a passel of chickens with their feet tied together and their flapping and scratching and tortured cackles were playing all kinds of mischief on her nerves. She’d been out all night and looked it, her Momma and Daddy didn’t know where she was, and being seen with old black Granny Grace was going to make folks talk for sure.

When Granny finally came out of the back she’d filled the jug she’d brought with lamp oil and she had a sack full of all kinds of spices she’d picked out which Sadie reckoned she must use in her cures. But Granny had them all mixed up so Sadie couldn’t imagine how Mr. Levitt was going to figure out how much to charge. They went up to the front counter and Granny handed her pocket full of greasy bills and coins to Sadie and Sadie quickly gave them to Mr. Levitt, who made a face and laid them down in a wad on the counter by his cash register. He added up the items and subtracted the money he was paying for the eggs Granny brought in and announced the total. Granny argued with him about the total, especially what he was charging for the spices (“it aint but a little sack full!”) and Levitt knocked off a little which made Granny smile. They were about to start out the door when Sadie saw Aunt Lilly and her momma coming off the road. She ran into the back and Granny Grace followed her.

“Best tell them the truth, child. You done nothin wrong.”

“I was gone all night, and when I finally woke up I didn’t go home right away!”

“You was
hurt
, child! And Granny had to take keer of you. Then I had you come in the store with me fer my pay. I’ll tell them!”

“I’m sorry, Granny, but my daddy’d have a fit if he knew I was out in them woods all night with you! No telling what he might get in his head to do!”

Granny didn’t say nothing at first, her eyes unfocused, considering. “Well then,” she finally said, “I aint goin to argue with that, so I’ll just let her be. But iffen it gets too hard you tell them about Granny Grace, y’hear? I aint goin to have you on my conscious, no sir!” Sadie gave her a fierce hug, and Granny stiffened up, and then hugged her back. “Girl, you listen to me,” she whispered into Sadie’s ear. “The future aint here till it happens. True nuff we’re all headed in that di-recshun, but we go thar one step at a time, and lots ken happen between them steps!”

Sadie peered through a stack of buckets and farm equipment parts as Granny Grace headed toward the front door. As Lilly and her momma came in Granny Grace grinned her broken grin and bowed deeply before slipping out. The two women looked surprised. Sadie noticed that Momma was carrying a long list.

There was some used furniture for sale in the back room. Sadie found a floor length mirror and used it to straighten her dress up. She had a little piece of rag in her pocket she spit into and used to work at some smudges on her dress and to clean off some of the dried blood and whatever it was that Granny had smeared on the side of her face and her arms and legs. She still smelled some, but there wasn’t much she could do about that. Mr. Levitt had a small selection of toilet waters nearby, and she stared at them with a kind of hunger, but her days of stealing were over, no matter what the need be.

“I
know
we aint got no more credit! You can thank my shiftless husband for that!” Sadie peeked around the corner. Her momma was waving her arms and stamping her feet. It wasn’t like her — she must have been feeling especially aggravated today — usually she just frowned awful deep at folks and held her peace when they made her mad. Mr. Levitt was backing up like he might just decide to run out his own door. “But it’s the Grans’ birthday on Saturday and the whole family pitched in some cash. So dont you be whisperin in my ear about not bein able to extend us some credit! I weren’t askin for no credit! What I’m askin is that you clear out our way while we get the things on this here list and then you add them up real fast and take our money for them so we can get out of this sorry excuse for a mercantile!”

Sadie felt shaky all over. The way her momma was this morning she was liketa kill her before she even had a chance to come up with some sorry lie.

“Sadie!” It was a thunder of a whisper. She looked down to see her aunt’s wide eyes before Lilly pushed her deeper into the shadows. “Where you been? Your momma and daddy are fit to be tied!” Then she stopped and touched Sadie’s cheek. “I saw you run out the service. I shoulda kept you from goin in the first place. What happen to you after that?”

“I dont know.” Sadie started crying. “I ran and I ran, and I kept running into things — it felt like them snakes were biting me over and over again! I fell and I got up and run some more, and then I crashed through some trees off the trail and fell and I dont know,
hit
something. Granny Grace... she took me in and nursed me. I
shouldn’t
a gone into that church! And I aint never going to go into that church again!”

“Ah, Sweetie.” Aunt Lilly patted her on the arm. “It aint that simple. Why do you think
I
still go? Or your Uncle Jesse? It dont matter we’re family, the preacher does just what he wants. He dont let
nobody
quit
his
church. You go just once and you’re a member for life far as he’s concerned! You just got to make the best of it.”

“No! I cant! Aunt Lilly I
cant
go back in there!” She was crying so hard now she couldn’t see, and she couldn’t hear, and Momma was going to come around that corner any second now and slap the crying right out of her for what she done.

Then she knew red was leaking into her crying. It ran into her eyes. And when she tried to open them the thick, sticky blood stopped her, glued her eyelids and her lips shut, but she managed to see just a little, and what she saw was Aunt Lilly on the floor, drowning in red and staring up at her, and all leaked out of her own body.

Sadie screamed, and fell again.

Chapter Eight

T
HE TELLING HAD
exhausted his grandmother, and almost immediately afterwards her head fell forward and she could barely raise it again, or help herself in any way. Michael was severely drained himself, his nerves raw and electric. He was beginning to wonder who her memories were going to kill first. Still, she was a sick old woman and he had to do something. After a couple of struggling attempts he managed to pick her up gently enough and carried her to her bed.

The way he’d been with her the past year embarrassed him. She deserved better. He had no aptitude for care-taking; he could barely take care of himself. And although he believed in patience, that quality had always eluded him. But he’d come back here when he’d needed to and she’d welcomed him. He owed her everything. He always had.

He remembered the first time he saw her. He’d been sitting on that cheap little cardboard suitcase his parents bought him before the first so-called “vacation.” It was the first time they’d dumped him on Grandma. It wouldn’t be the last.

“Dont sit on the suitcase. It’s brand new and you’re going to ruin it already.” That was his dad, who he barely remembered, except as this nervous, fussy presence, always telling Michael he was doing something wrong, but immediately flitting off somewhere else, not following through. A few years later he would leave Michael’s mother and fly to Asia, never to return.

Michael could see that the suitcase was splitting underneath him, but he didn’t care. He was fat, always had been heavy, like everything in him weighed too much. But he didn’t care. The suitcase shouldn’t have split like that — it was a cheap piece of crap — but he didn’t care. Let it split. Let them see how crappy it was.

His grandma was standing right over there, but he wouldn’t look at her. He knew this was no vacation — he knew what was up. And he didn’t want to be here with that old lady.

“It’ll just be a few days, Ma,” his dad was saying. But it was a lie. He knew it was a lie, and for some reason he thought Grandma did too, but he still wasn’t going to look at her.

“I’ll do right by him,” Grandma said, and he knew she was looking at him, figuring him out, because they both knew she’d have him for a while. He remembered his mother crying in the background, and rubbing her hands and arms like she had bugs crawling on them. That was near the beginning. She got worse every year until they had to put her away.

It would be five years before he saw his mother, and oh, she’d been so much worse. He never saw his father again.

“Come in child. I got a place for you,” Grandma had said after they’d left, but still he hadn’t moved, hadn’t even looked at her. Later she brought out a plate with steak and biscuits, gravy and beans. He’d never said thank you, in fact rarely said thank you the whole time he’d lived here as a child, because he’d had no thank yous in him. Sometime after dark he’d gone in, and taken the bedroom she’d left open, a green towel on the bed for him. He’d always liked green; how did she know?

All those years she’d never told him about the Grans, or the preacher either, or anything more than the average, boring details of family and lineage. That dark fellow in the photo was his great grandfather and that sour looking lady his great grandmother. There was that one photograph of Lilly, who’d been gorgeous even by contemporary standards. Not that he had paid much attention to any of it at the time. He’d felt agitated most days, had bad and busy dreams, went through periods of lip biting and scratching his own arms, and his grandmother hadn’t been unkind, but she’d never helped him, never told him anything. What she did do was watch. She’d always been watching. And sometimes she’d ask questions; she’d asked him about his dreams, or if he had any “worries,” but he always lied, and understood that she knew he was lying, understood how she felt about a lot of things without her telling him with either word or expression, but didn’t at all understand how he could know.

Sometimes he came home from school crying, upset for no other reason than that he knew something about what was going on in another kid’s life, or that he felt something, something soul destroying about some other child.

They never talked about it, but now and again she would announce, out of nowhere and with no context, “some folks round here have bad lives — aint no other way to say it. It aint your fault and there’s nothing you can do about it.”