Rails Under My Back (77 page)

The
Genealogy Record Family Register
was blank, untouched.

At the back of the Bible, at the very top of the page, written in blue ink in Lula Mae’s hand:

She turned two pages.

Read from page bottom to page top. Reversed the book’s direction. Read. Page bottom to page top. Read. None the wiser. Flipped on. Maps of the Holy Land, past and present. Faraway lands charted, penciled, reduced. Journey on, eye and hand. Journey to the final page. Find there written in blue ink:

She lifted the NAACP receipt attached to the page by a baby’s safety pin and revealed the name beneath: Cynthia. Cynthia? No name she recognized. No fact in her memory.

She worked her way backward through the Bible, hovering and hesitating, small strips and squares of paper positioned between pages, and small sheets of paper with handwritten verse headings, Lula Mae’s private index. She closed the Bible. Enough for now. She had years to read it. Years.

LOOK, GEORGE, Inez said. It’s Junior’s wife. She spoke through tight teeth, teeth clamped down on invisible hairpins. Watched Sheila with a face framed in smooth yellow.

No it ain’t, George said. That’s Sheila. You remember Sheila. That’s your other son’s wife. Lucifer.

I know. My daughter-in-law.

Sheila could see through Inez’s body, wax paper, see her cloudy insides. She was disappearing, disappearing into the same invisible space where John and Lucifer had gone.

My daughter-in-law. Gracie.

How are you, Inez?

Inez stared into Sheila’s eyes. I think I’m dead.

Here, Inez, George said. Why don’t you come on in here and lie down. He took her by one thin biceps, holding it like a broom handle, and guided her to the bedroom.

George, you want me to take her?

No, Sheila. You set down and relax.

Sheila pulled a chair out for herself and sat down at a small round glass table on the screened-in patio that overlooked the backyard and the garage with its own screened-in patio. She relaxed in the cool shade unbothered by summer insects. So long since she had been here. So long. Her eyes moved over the world map on the wood-paneled wall, red thumbtacks indicating all the places George and Inez had traveled.

How are you, Sheila? George stands in the raised doorway on a foot of concrete, waiting for her answer. He wears a pair of brown slacks that she recognizes from thirty years earlier. The years have taken away none of his sinewy muscle—he was always active, in motion—only weakened his eyes, dimmed them. He strains to watch her, as if she were far away, and his hair is grayed with a painter’s touch.

Fine.

That’s good. George steps down into the patio. Comes forward and seats himself on the opposite side of the table.

When did you all make it back?

Last night.

Everything go okay?

Yes. The way she wanted it.

That’s good.

Yes.

So everything went okay?

Yes.

That’s good. Everybody’s okay?

You know. Sheila gestured.

Yes. Give it time. Give it time.

What were yall doing today?

Oh not much. I made us some breakfast.

I guess I should have called first.

No, Sheila. You know you don’t have to call. We weren’t doing nothing. I was jus about to turn on the news. George lifted himself from his seat, his strong arms trembling with age.

I can do it.

No, Sheila. That’s alright. You set there and relax. He came forward and past her. Clicked on the television, an old black-and-white, the volume low. He had always preferred his hand-sized radio to the television. It lay quiet on the glass table. George passed her and retook his seat with the same trembling effort.

The television flickered light in the patio. Outside, the yard glowed with the brightness of the hot still hour.

George, the garden looks so nice.

Thanks. I try to keep it up.

What did you plant this year?

My usual stuff.

Well, it looks really nice.

You want me to get you some tomatoes to take home?

No, George. Don’t bother.

Oh, it’s no bother.

Maybe later then.

The television made small talk and small pictures about something or other.

You remember how Porsha liked to play in that bird pond when she was little?

Sheila chuckled. Yes.

Wasn’t she the cutest thing?

Yes. Sheila saw Porsha bright and happy, her charitable hand holding out bread crumbs (Inez’s leftover biscuits), waiting patiently, waiting, but birds flying in safe range on a steady sweep of wing, and Porsha crying out in anger and frustration, tears dripping into the marble pond.

Don’t cry, John said. Try a mouse. Birds like mice.

And Hatch liked to sit out there on the patio by himself and read.

Yes. Sheila’s fingers moved over her dress, followed the long black scar that ran up her belly. Rocking and reading, she said. Her vision was instantaneous. Hatch barely visible behind the garage’s screen, rocking and reading in a rage of curiosity, his private hours at the helm of some great imaginary ship, glancing up now and again at the screened-in patio.

And that Jesus.

Yes, Jesus. She pictured Jesus’s sharply cut features, then shoved the image out of her mind violently.

She had enjoyed coming out here as much as Hatch and Porsha. The moist air. Shadowed figures in the garden. The quiet and clean assurance of nature. The circular stones where—

You see that? George said. He directed her attention to the television news.

The anchor team reported the latest facts about the recent flood. A billion dollars in business losses. The threat of lawsuits. Another billion dollars in damage. The costs of repair and cleanup. Shifting blame.

Look at that mess, George said. Somebody screwed up.

Yes. They think they know everything. More than the man upstairs.

And no one wants to take the blame. No one wants to take the blame.

Organizers of the antiwar demonstration and Washington police claimed that the demonstration was the largest in history, at least 1,350,000 people. But the reporters estimated only 75,000. Camera angles made the demonstrators and counterdemonstrators look equal in size.

You heard from your brother?

Yes. He’s fine. I haven’t seen him in years. He wants me to visit him out there in California. But I can’t leave Inez.

Why don’t you hire a nurse.

You know how much they want? An arm and a leg.

You have the money.

And I’m not going to put her in a nursing home. At least right here with me I know she’ll be alright.

I could come out and stay with her.

You don’t have to do that.

I could.

Thanks, Sheila. You got your own concerns. Don’t worry about us.

An unidentified man had been gunned down in a drive-by. Many clues but no suspects. Gang-related. Drug-related.

Look at them dummies, George said. Killing up themselves.

It’s sad.

Dummies. Some of them young punks tried to steal our car.

Sheila’s mouth opened in shock. When?

The other day.

From the garage?

Yes.

Did they—

That wasn’t the first time either. So I sold it. I sold the car. Too much trouble to keep it. My eyes ain’t what they used to be. And Inez can’t drive anymore.

Well, I could come out and help you with Inez.

My niece stops by a few times a week.

Sheila said nothing.

This whole thing didn’t surprise me.

What?

Inez. George spoke at the television. I married someone who couldn’t help me. I was home from the war. Excited, I guess. And she didn’t know why she was marrying. Excited about the uniform, I guess. I guess she fell in love with a uniform.

Sheila turned her eyes away from George’s face. In all these years, she had never seen him lose his surface. She had come to expect of him words clean in remembrance.

I didn’t even have a job. The army paid me a dollar and fifty a day since I was a noncommissioned officer. (Privates got a dollar.) I borrowed money from my best buddy to report to the base the next morning.

Sheila felt anger at the angry words. What gave George the right? What had pushed him so far? Why was he expressing such rage against Inez now, now that she was down, now that she wasn’t
here,
wasn’t able either to respond or to retreat, fight or defend herself?

And look at that Junior.
She
ain’t his mamma. Ain’t never been. He never called her Mamma. Old lady Simmons was his mamma.

Sheila weighed this against all else.

Her parents never taught her anything. Never made her go to school. She grew up like a weed.

Sheila stiffened with a sudden vibration of loyalty, duty, and courage. She opened her mouth to speak, but there was nothing inside her to measure and meet him.

Junior never was worth a damn. I knew that from the moment I saw him. I always thought that Lucifer had some get-up-and-go about himself. I guess he ain’t worth a damn either.

THE TRAIN SHAKES HER to prove its force. Tracks whine down in stillness. The smells of the stockyards reach her now as they had long ago on her arrival in the city. Many years gone. Many. She remembers. Cows rode trains, passengers, rode them here to the country’s bumping swinging heart, rest stop, where they were slaughtered and butchered, a single cow cleaved into a multitude of choice parts and cheap cuts, then shrouded in cellophane and reloaded on trains that drove them to distant reaches and anxious stomachs. The city didn’t smell like promise.

OH, HI, MRS. STERN. How are you? Yes, I’m fine. I’m sorry, but I won’t be able to come to work today. Oh yes, I’m fine. Jus a lil tired from the trip. No. That’s okay. Please don’t. I’ll be in tomorrow. Give my regards to Mr. Stern. Thanks. Bye.

She returned the receiver to its cradle, then lay back on the tumbled pillows in the very center of the high white bed. The night had been hell and now the morning was no better. She would never get used to this. Never.

Gracie studied Lula Mae’s photograph on the front of the funeral program. That looks like me, she thought. Death blackened her. That could be me. Black in death. She looks like me. She is me.