Cavedweller (16 page)

“Come on, girl, let’s do you up right. I’ve got an idea of something you might like.”

Every now and again Cissy wondered if that afternoon in the Bonnet giggling and dreaming might not turn out to be the best part of the relationship. The perfume-scented sheen of love’s onset would surpass the mundane reality of a couple of hours of sweaty wrestling in some old Ford sedan. The glowing devotion of the women in the Bonnet could make even heartbreak seem romantic.

The joke in the Bonnet was that if a woman changed her hairstyle she was almost surely changing her sheets. “Putting on pink satin instead of white cotton,” M.T. said. “Madrigal Whiteman wants a hairstyle to go with satin sheets.”

“Her?” Delia laughed. “She’s worn that too-long pageboy just about forever.”

“Well, as of this morning she’s wearing a feathery cap like the picture of that actress you had on the counter.”

“Uh-huh. Trying to look like a girl again.”

“She said she wanted something easy to care for.”

“Easy to wash up without a whole lot of conditioner or bottled stuff in a heavy bag. No bag, no notice. The motel cut. It hides a lot of sin. Wouldn’t think Madrigal would take up something like that at her age.”

“Heard she’s been talking a lot to that assistant manager at the new Wal-Mart. What’s his name?”

“You mean slick-and-pretty?”

“Lord, Delia, way you talk.”

But Delia never changed anything at all. She never altered her look or her sheets. She wore her red-blond hair just to her shoulders, pinned back or up during the day, letting it down only in the evening. She would let it hang down long and loose when she sat on her steps after dark.

“I like to shake my head and feel it,” Delia said when M.T. told her she should cut it.

“Easier to wear it short. Long hair is for girls.”

“I wore it short when I was a girl. Granddaddy Byrd said it was too much trouble to keep after me, and when I got sick in junior high, he had Mrs. Pearlman cut it right up tight to my neck. Wanted me to wear that bubble cut she had on a poster on the wall. He thought that would do fine, the son of a bitch. Wouldn’t listen when I said I wanted it long. Said long hair took your strength out of you.”

“Some of the old people say that. Say you got to cut a child’s hair when they run a fever more than two days. Say the hair pulls energy you need to fight a fever. Girls wore their hair long and braided till they got sick or took to being sassy. People said you cut a girl’s hair, you tamed her wildness. Silly superstition.”

“Granddaddy Byrd believed it, I bet. Surely wanted to tame me.” Delia smoothed a few stray hairs up off her neck and threaded them into her twist. “Wanted to leave his mark, I think, prove he had the power to say what was what. Had my hair cut off even though I cried and cursed him for it. Never felt like myself until it grew back.”

“There was a time when girls would cut their hair off to show they were grown. Or wild.”

“Well, I never needed to cut my hair to be wild.”

“No, you didn’t. Didn’t need to do a thing.”

 

 

R
everend Hillman was exasperated. Louise Windsor had agreed that Delia could visit the girls, but she kept saying she needed more time to prepare her heart. Would he come and read the Bible with her on Saturday afternoons so she could study up on forgiveness? At first he was delighted; it was more than he could have hoped for from that stiff-necked old woman. He called Delia at the Bonnet and asked her to be patient a little longer. After a few weeks of endeavoring to focus Louise’s attention on John 8:7, it became apparent that the woman was in no hurry. To everything he said, she had a ready reply. “Yes, but ...” or, “What about ...” She bombarded him with fire and brimstone, verses on the subjects of adultery and loose women, the whore of Babylon and the harlot who would walk before the Antichrist.

“I don’t think she is sincere about letting Delia see her girls,” Reverend Hillman told his wife.

“Just occurred to you, did it?” she said, and blushed when she saw his stricken expression. “Don’t let her wear you down. Mention the lawyer again. She hates lawyers.”

Reverend Hillman did as his wife suggested, but went her one better, searching out every biblical reference to lawyers he could find. There were a surprising number and most of them quite daunting. After ten minutes of that, Louise Windsor looked at him as if he were a snake.

“Fifteen minutes,” she said, getting to her feet and tucking her Bible back into its place on the top shelf. “Next Saturday, she gets fifteen minutes and not a second more.”

Gillian Wynchester was just coming to the raciest part of a long story about her husband’s last trip to New Orleans when Reverend Hillman walked into the Bonnet. Delia turned at the sound of his voice, and Gillian covered her mouth with one hand. “Reverend,” Gillian squeaked. “It’s so nice to see you. Excuse me,” she said to Delia, and ran for the bathroom, her ears as pink as the towel around her neck.

Delia stood with her scissors in midair while the minister spoke to her so softly no one could make out his words. But when he paused, she whooped and threw her arms around him, almost stabbing Stephanie, who had stepped over to try and hear what he was saying. “Thank you! Oh, thank you,” Delia kept saying while Reverend Hillman walked backward toward the door.

“Glad I could help,” he said, nodding once to M.T. and then to the unrecognizable woman in the chair in front of her. The flush on his neck was approaching the color of walls.

Delia spent the rest of the week in a daze, using all her free time to drive over to Beckman’s and shop for gifts that might please her girls: lace doilies for Amanda, hair barrettes for Dede, a blouse and a scented candle for each. “I don’t know what to get them,” she told M.T. “I figure Amanda might like this high collar and Dede might want the lace. And candles should be all right, but I don’t know. Everything seems so impersonal.” She ran a finger over a lace doily, her eyes shifting uncertainly.

M.T. put her hand on Delia’s. “It will be fine,” she said. “You know this isn’t what they are going to care about. You’re the only thing they are going to see.”

“Dede took sick,” Grandma Windsor said when Delia came to the door. “Been sick to her stomach since last night. Amanda’s not feeling so good either. I think Dede’s bug is coming on her too. Another day, perhaps.” She said it with a smile. There were years in those words, years of old heat and old grief, of bravely held tears and late-night sobs, years of sorrow past and pain yet to come. Small revenge it might have been, but Grandma Windsor took it in full measure.

Delia hugged the bag of presents in her arms.

Grandma Windsor said, wiping her hands on the skirt of her apron, “I know you must be disappointed. But after all this time, what’s a little more?”

Delia looked down into the bag. Sunlight glittered on the wrapped presents. “Sick?” she started, but Grandma Windsor gave her no time.

“Next week,” she said, her face a study in satisfaction. “Maybe.”

In the car, Delia’s mouth worked but no sound came. Her hands on the steering wheel convulsed. Grandma Windsor watched from the porch while Delia sat there, unmoving, and the sun rose higher in the cold blue sky. Finally Delia relaxed her grip on the wheel and started the engine.

“Another day,” she said, looking out the window at Grandma Windsor. She rubbed her neck, pulled air in, and drove back to the Bonnet.

“She didn’t let you see them!” M.T. could not believe it.

“Oh, she’s cold,” Steph said.

“Cold, yes.” Delia had left the package of presents in the car. She should have left them, she thought, but it was entirely possible the old woman wouldn’t give them to the girls.

“Well, I think we ought to drive right out there and have a talk with her.” M.T. wiped damp hands on her smock. “Go out there and show her what’s what.”

“Think we might want to wait before we do something like that.” Stephanie turned to Delia. “Clint has quit working. He is sick, seriously sick, and he isn’t even coming in to Dr. Campbell’s office anymore. His nurse, Marvella, was here and said you wouldn’t recognize him if you saw him. But nobody sees him now anyway.”

“She’s right. The Reverend Myles told Sally he’ll be dead by Christmas.” M.T.’s face was flushed and uncertain. “Said it’s cancer of the spine, or bone cancer anyway. Horrible. Said he can’t hardly walk and Grandma Windsor is carrying meals over to his house. She’s looking for some colored lady who’d be willing to go out there and help him, but it sounds like everyone’s been turning her down. She an’t got no money, you know, and always has been cheap besides. And God knows what he really looks like.”

Delia leaned back against one of the sinks. Her mouth opened and her eyes widened. “God,” she said.

“Yeah.” Steph nodded. “This proves it, huh? That there is a God.”

Delia shook her head. “Cancer? I thought somebody would kill him. I thought he might kill himself. But cancer? I never thought that.”

“Delia?” M.T. spoke carefully. “What’s done is done. Can’t do nothing about it now. But you need to think about this, honey. If Clint dies while that woman is keeping the girls, you’ll never get them away from her in this life.”

“I know,” Delia whispered. “I know.”

“Well, you got to do something, honey.”

“I know.”

 

 

“
A
nother day.”

Every time Delia went out to see her girls, she heard the same words. Grandma Windsor’s eyes glinted black and proud like shale in the sun. Every weekend when Delia appeared, those eyes turned on her. Coming on, suspected, a slight fever or a mysterious chill, the two of them were sick or, oh sorry, out of the house, every time Delia came in the yard. Some days she thought she saw the curtains move, a shadow pass on the other side of the screen door. Once, she was sure Amanda looked through the window at her. But Delia never got past the porch, and they never came out to her.

Every time there was another story, another bland apology, another cold smile, some reason one or the other could not go.

“Dede is in no shape to drag off in the heat of the day. We’ll have to think about doing this some other time.”

“If she’s lying down, I could just say hi.” Delia considered forcing her way in, but she didn’t want to frighten Amanda and Dede.

“That wouldn’t do.”

Blank eyes. Black heart. Amanda had a cold. Dede had her period, “and she gets it bad, you know.” Upset stomachs, runny noses, migraines, and sprained ankles. And no, one could not go without the other. They were so close. You have no way of knowing, the old woman’s eyes said.

“Oh, if you knew the girls, you’d understand.”

Every time Grandma Windsor spoke, Delia’s neck became more rigid, her head more perfectly straight. She was as stubborn as any old woman.

“I need the girls to help me with the garden. Another day.”

I need. They need. The girls need. Something. Anything. Not their mother.

On the fifth Saturday, Delia shuddered and went back to the car. She gripped the wheel with all her might, let go, and turned the key. “Old woman, you have gone too far,” she said.

The words were as flat as the stone-set pupils of Delia’s eyes.

Old woman.

The wheels spun. Dust rose and the car moved forward. Delia had talked about her girls to Granddaddy Byrd, M.T., Stephanie, and Reverend Hillman. Now she talked to her own soul and made her plans.

D
elia drove straight from Grandma Windsor’s to Terrill Road and the little yellow tract house she had shared with Clint all those years ago. She parked in the driveway and sat for a moment while memories flooded her. The place had been her home, but it was all run-down now, yellow paint flaking off the plank walls, the yard scraggly and bare in patches. There were two almost dead old peach trees out front, and a thoroughly dead hedge that had gone blackish brown. The porch was missing some boards, and the steps at the side were covered with plywood and hammered braces to make an awkwardly steep ramp. Everything was dirty and worn.

Delia thought of the river house, with its mildew and neglect. She had already scraped out a patch where she could put in a little garden once the weather turned. She planned tomatoes and squash and flowers chosen for their big, wide blossoms: sunflowers and dahlias and leafy zinnias. She had always loved to garden. What had happened to everything she had planted here? She lifted her head. Above the roofline she could just see the soft shadows of the pecan and walnut trees where she sheltered with her babies that last summer.

The door swung open. A tall gaunt man with ragged hair stood there gripping the jamb with both hands. He swayed a little, then steadied.

“My God.” Delia’s face was stern with shock. Dime-size spots of red showed on her suddenly ashy cheeks. Her head turned slowly from side to side, as if protesting what she was seeing, that body in the doorway, so familiar and so changed.

The two of them stood looking at each other, Delia motionless and Clint swaying slightly. His eyes were trained on her like searchlights on a moonless night. His mouth hung open, and his tongue, gray and thick, touched his lower lip.

“Delia,” he said. “I wondered if you would come.”

 

 

“A
re you sure this is a good idea?” M.T. asked as she wrapped dishes and glasses in newspaper. She was helping Delia pack for the move to the tract house.

“Don’t you remember what you told me? If Clint dies while Grandma Windsor has my girls, I’ll never get them.”

M.T. couldn’t argue with that, but she was worried still. “Maybe he’ll get better,” she said. “We don’t know how bad he is.”

“I know how bad he is. I saw him. He might have a little more time than you thought, but not much. He’s no threat to anyone anymore.”