Tender Graces (3 page)

“What about a scarf to match it up? And some high-heeled shoes?”

“Wear the scarf you have. And make do with the shoes you’re wearing.”

Momma pulled a face, but nodded.

The little bag of runaway money was almost emptied. Grandma worried about how long it would take to save that much again, but she sang mountain songs to my momma as they walked the long hard way back home, ignoring the stares from some who didn’t like the mystery of their deep dark eyes, and skin that told of kin that once laid with forbidden love. They thought Grandpa Luke chose wrong, but it was Grandma Faith who’d made the wrong choices. She knew the unfairness of the world, knew that no matter how smart her daughter was, or how pretty, just like it had been for Grandma Faith, it could be for her daughter. She’d not have it.

Before light on Sunday, Grandma wrung her best chicken’s neck. She told it, “I’m sorry, chicken.” It was the way of her life. She remembered suppers with her parents, how they bought their chickens already cleaned from the butcher. Then her daddy died when his big heart gave out too soon. Grandma Faith’s momma was lost to dark winds that blew her farther and farther away from Grandma Faith. Soon after, Luke had come round from the church to help fix the porch. He was big and strong. He sang songs and played the harmonica. He hid his meanness with skill. He was there with promises when Grandma Faith’s momma tore out of the old hurting world to search for what she’d lost.

She put the bird in boiling water to prepare for plucking. On the counter were fresh vegetables; a loaf of bread baked in the oven. While she cooked, she hoped Grandpa Luke would eat and drink just enough to be too sleepy to put his hands on her again. Those hands that fixed porches and stroked her face made stronger statements once Grandma Faith had no one to turn to.

Grandpa Luke had tried beating the babies from Grandma Faith at first. His fists made the first two children, a girl and a boy, come out strong jawed and ornery. He told her the third one was born dead, wrapped its twisted body in his oily flannel shirt, and buried it in the woods. But Grandma thought she heard a pitiful mewling as he left the room and that sound would haunt her to her last thought. While Grandpa scraped the burial dirt from his fingernails, Grandma had cried.

She mourned until Grandpa Luke was sick of seeing her tears. After that, his fists let her be for a spell, and her next three children, two boys and a girl, came out pointy-chinned and pretty, but still ornery—especially the girl babe Katie Ivene.

While Grandma fixed that Sunday supper, Momma scrubbed away the layer of fine West Virginia soil and then put on the new dress Grandma Faith had sewn. It hugged her body, straining against her high breasts. She said, “Will you brush out my hair?”

“You smell like roses.” Grandma pulled the silver-handled brush through Momma’s thick hair.

“He won’t care what I smell like.” Momma grinned. Oh, she knew things.

“Men care. Least ways most do.”

“He’ll be too busy noticing other things, I expect.” Momma knew her worth.

That afternoon, Daddy whistled up the path wearing a gray suit and hat, white shirt, dark tie, and shoes shined within an inch of their leather. He held roses in one hand, a box of fancy dark chocolates in the other, and a burning hunger deep in his belly. In his pocket was a small book of Shakespeare’s plays. He shouted to Bruiser, “Let slip the dogs of war!” Bruiser licked himself and yawned.

During supper, Grandma watched Momma toss her hair, watched her chew with her mouth closed as she’d been taught. The only sound was the clinking of their forks and knives against the plate, and Grandpa’s grunting as he chewed with his mouth gaping. The others watched Daddy with interested darkling eyes. Daddy barely touched his supper, his appetite for one thing only.

Grandma asked, “Frederick, tell me about Shakespeare.”

“You want to know, really?”

Grandma Faith considered how Daddy thought mountain people didn’t care about such things. She wanted to tell him how mountain people cared deep to their bones, and they read books, and loved, and were strong. They weren’t stupid or backwards—the mountains were just like everywhere else in the world, with good and bad and what lay in the middle of the two.

In between bites of crispy chicken, Daddy prattled away to Grandma about Shakespeare—it was as if they were all old friends, she and Daddy and William.

After the plates were cleaned, Momma said, “Frederick, take me for a walk.”

Grandma stilled Momma with a hand. “Katie, be mindful.”

“Oh, don’t get yourself all in a worry mood.” She led Daddy out the door.

Grandma cried out to Momma, but quiet inside herself,
Wait! You’re my little girl. Come back
. But she had to let them go. The mountain ghosts sighed with her.

While Momma walked with Daddy, Grandpa Luke snored under the hickory tree, and the other children ran wild, Grandma wrote,
I thought I would be a school teacher like my papa. I never thought I’d have to kill a chicken with my hands. Please let Frederick be a good man for my Katie
. She knew if Grandpa ever found her words, he’d fall into a bull-snorting-rage. He didn’t like it that his wife was smart. He didn’t like it when she read books and tried to teach her children better ways.

Before she could stop the shameful thoughts, Grandma Faith let herself imagine she was young again, pretended her life was just beginning with someone handsome and good. Her pen moved across the page with its guilty slanted lines of imagining, while Momma and Daddy slipped into the woods, out of Grandma’s view, but not out of her inner-sight.

And there, under a buckeye tree, Momma kissed Daddy until their hearts beat fast and eager.

He said to her, “You’re beautiful,” and she laughed. She knew she was.

And when they reached the secret clearing that never stayed a secret, Momma unbuttoned the dress and let it puddle to the ground. She wore nothing underneath but her want. She stood before Daddy with her shoulders thrown back, her body tall and proud, her painted toes without shoes. She reached up, untied the red scarf that almost matched the red dress and her hair fell heavy, swinging against the swell of her hips. Her tongue was coated with honey when she said, “Come here, Frederick.”

My momma showed him what she’d learned from the howling boys, from the last salesman to sneak by, from the woman in town, from her Uncle Jeeter. Momma had learned so well, that after that Sunday, Daddy came back almost every day, his eyes shining with the grand fortune of it all. He brought chocolates, flowers, fancy writing paper and fancy pens for Momma’s brothers and sister, and lots of pretty words—as if he owed offerings in return for Momma’s gifts. Unknown to all but Momma, she had already received a secret gift inside her body.

Daddy gave Grandma a Shakespeare book, with a note inside,
All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. Enjoy this book, Faith
. Grandma Faith loved the heaviness of the words, and after Grandpa went to bed, she read it by moonlight.

Another supper, Grandma stopped chopping onions for her special gravy and said from prideful memory, “‘To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time; and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death.’”

And Daddy finished, “‘Out, out, brief candle!’”

While they laughed, Grandpa Luke grunted and picked through a box of chocolates with his dirty fingers. He didn’t care about words or beauty. Momma’s sister Ruby stuffed her mouth full next, chocolate oozing from her teeth as she grinned. Brother Hank hurried and grabbed a few for himself. Brother Jonah, Momma, and little brother Ben had what was left. That’s how the order went according to who looked or who acted like which parent.

Momma thumbed through the book. “Who’s this Shakesfool think he is anyway?”

Daddy thought she was so cute, that very night he proposed, right in front of the Holms’ clan.

No more than a flea’s breath later, down the mountain Momma followed him, carrying a busted up brown suitcase with two dresses—a blue one and the red one—three pair of cotton underwear, her stockings and high-heeled shoes Daddy bought her, and a head full of big dreams.

In shades of dark and light caught by the camera, Momma and Daddy stood in front of the Statue of Liberty. Daddy’s hand slung over Momma’s shoulder, his fingers brushing her breast. His dark hair fell into his eyes as he looked into the lens. Momma stared off to the side as if she couldn’t wait to get back to the excitement of New York. Her hair was unbound and messy and it suited her best.

After the honeymoon, they stayed in West Virginia, moving into a little white house in a holler not too far from Grandma Faith, but not too close. Seven months later, out slipped Micah Dean. Afterwhile came me, Virginia Kate. Next, Andrew Charles. Daddy sent Grandma letters and photos. We all visited Grandma on Sundays, eating at the same scarred kitchen table where my parents met.

I loved the visiting.

Until Grandma died in a house fire.

Some folks in town said she soaked the outside of the house in kerosene, lit the brush, then laid inside to wait, her heart heavy from losing her children, one by one, by trick or trade they left. Others whispered their own gossip about mean Grandpa Luke throwing one final ugly stomping fit.

Her last words in the diary read,
Luke found my run-away money. Things are bad. I’ll send my secret words to Katie for her to keep
.

And many words were left in the dark. Until I set them free.

Chapter 3

Curtain’s closed, Mr. Shakeybaby

1963

From my window, I waved and blew sugar-sweet mountain a kiss. A fat wind blew in and I smelled a storm coming. I ran to the kitchen, sat at the table and grinned up at Momma. She wore her blue housedress and white slippers, and her hair looked like mine, all messy, long, and dark. Andy sat across from me eating a biscuit, jelly smeared around his silly mouth. Momma didn’t fuss at him like she usually did. She wiped his mouth and asked me, “Where’s our Micah?”

“Want me to go get him, Momma?” I gave her my I’m-ready-to-do-whatever-you-ask look.

She shook her head. “Oh, let him sleep, he’ll get up when he’s hungry.”

When she brought me a cup of milk, I sniffed, but I didn’t smell anything funny to bring on her happy mood. I thought the day was going to be smooth as creek pebbles. Until Daddy came in and riled up Momma.

Daddy was already dressed in tan britches and a white shirt, his hair combed back from his face with hair-grease. He poured himself a cup of black coffee and sat by me. Momma winked at him, and put two biscuits and a big glob of gravy in front of him. He cut into his biscuit and said, “Guess I better come out with it.”

“Come out with what?” Momma asked, while she finally gave me my breakfast.

Daddy bit, chewed, swallowed, cleared his throat, sipped coffee, swallowed.

“I said,
what
, Frederick.”

“Mother is arriving today.”

Momma turned to Daddy so fast I thought her head would fall off. “She’s coming here? Today? And you didn’t let me know?”

“Because you’d pester me about it.”

Momma fixed herself a plate, sat across from Daddy, and stared him down. She said, “She’ll pick over every speck of dust.”

“I bet she has presents for everyone.” He wiggled his eyebrows and bit into his biscuit.

“Oh goody.” Momma pushed her plate away.

Micah came in with his hair on end, rubbing his cranky eyes. He fixed his own breakfast and sat down. There was black on his fingers and a bit of yellow on his cheek. He’d stayed up making pictures again. His nostrils went in and out, his sign that things were stupid.

“You can say good morning, Mister Micah,” Momma said.

“’Morning, Momma.” Micah slapped five pounds of butter on his biscuit.

Daddy hitched up a sigh, said, “Mother adores you, Katie.”

“She loves her itty bitty mommy’s boy is what she loves.” She sucked her thumb, popped it out, said, “Waah Waah, I’m a mommy’s boy.”

Daddy put his finger in the air, about to say something smart, but Momma didn’t let him.

“You bake the cake, Frederick.” She got up, opened the cabinet and took something from it I couldn’t see, but knew what it was. She poured a bit in her coffee, and said, “That woman rides me to drink.”

Daddy gulped his breakfast and left to take his walk down the road to get away from Momma before she could whop him with her mean words.

After the dishes were done, Momma went to her bedroom to primp. I sneaked my feet quiet into her room until I was next to her at her vanity table. Her slip was extra white against her skin and I wanted to touch her, but I didn’t. The window was open and Momma’s flowered curtains danced, twisting around themselves, then coming apart. I heard my name whispered and cater-cocked my head to listen; no one was there so maybe it was only the wind knocking over Momma’s glass swans on the bedside table.

Momma went to shut the window and her slip blew against her body. “My lord it’s looking like a bad storm coming. I hope the creek don’t flood again.”