Tending to Virginia (41 page)

“Done lost it,” she says, never stopping, reaching and sifting. “I already sent Tom Parker to the river with it.”

“What was it?” Harv asks and steps closer, his big hands hanging clumsily like they don’t even belong to him.

“It was nothing yet,” she says and squeezes two of the nuts together between her palms. “I didn’t even look at it.” She picks some of the meat from the shell and puts it in her mouth. “It was nothing.”

“You been doing too much,” he says. “Next time you’re gonna stay in the bed like you’re supposed to if I have to get me a colored woman to come here and work.”

“There ain’t gonna be a next time,” she says. “It ain’t meant for me to have another.” She concentrates on picking the bits of meat from the shell.

“You wouldn’t get that way if it weren’t meant to be.” He takes that nut from her hand and sails it way up high over the woodpile where it hits and bounces into the leaves.

“I wouldn’t get that way if . . .” Tessy stops herself and goes back to sifting. “Just let me be.” She can hear him now, walking away, up the steps and when the door slams, she bundles up her pile of pecans in the bottom of her dress and goes to sit in the barn to crack and pick them.

She is still sitting there late afternoon when Emily eases open that heavy wooden door and lets the gray cold light come through. “It’s getting dark, Tessy,” Emily whispers. “And it’s getting cold. Me and James stopped by to visit a little.”

“I reckon Harv told you,” she says and looks up, those green eyes of Emily’s just as calm and steady as ever. “I’ll send you home some pecans. I got this whole pile right here.”

“I’m sorry, Tessy.”

“Most of them ain’t even broke. I like to put the whole ones on top of a cake to make a little picture.”

“Is there anything I can do?” Emily sits there in the straw at Tessy’s feet, that old skinny cow wanting to nuzzle Emily’s neck.

“I ain’t gonna do it again,” she says. “I ain’t. I’d rather die.”

“Don’t say things like that,” Emily whispers. “You don’t mean it.”

“Me and you are the same age,” Tessy says and toys with the pecans in her lap. “You are just now carrying your first and I have got five living and three that never was. Now that’s a plenty. My Tom Parker is nine years old and can chop wood like a man.”

“He’s a fine son,” Emily says. “Looks like he’s grown a foot.”

“They all have,” she says. “They eat and grow and outgrow clothes faster than I can make them.” Tessy leans forward and whispers like a child, her eyes clear and young though her hands are as rough as any old farm wife. “When I was fifteen, I was having a baby and your mama was making you a dress to wear to a picnic social, and when I was twenty I was having another baby while you were getting ready for James to come home from the war. Lena was out in the yard playing games and honest to God there was times that I wanted nothing better than to take off my shoes and run through some cornfield with some fool dog. Harv didn’t see me that way, though; nobody saw me the way that they saw you and Lena and there I had all those dreams that I’d marry Harv like my daddy said and that it would be like I was one of you, that I’d have sisters and a mama. Harv said he’d take me away from that life I was living with my daddy out in Slade Township and he brought me to a life that’s worse. I haven’t come to love him like my daddy said I would and I still don’t feel like I’ve got a mama.”

“Tessy.”

“No listen,” she whispers louder. “You are the only good thing to come from me marrying Harv, not Lena, not your mama, just you. There are only two people on this earth that I love; I love you and I love . . .”

“Tessy, don’t,” Emily says and grabs her hand. “They’re liable to come looking for us out here.”

“I don’t have to tell you,” she says. “I don’t even have to say his
name. You’re the only person I’ll ever tell and that’s enough. I know he loves me and I love him. All day long I hear his sad sweet music in my head like a promise.” She lies back in the hay and crosses her hands over her stomach. “I’d like to hold onto a green velvet dress, a dress the color of a deep dark forest and I’d fix my hair all up in a twist and then let it down real slow over one shoulder.”

“Oh Tessy,” Emily shakes her head. “You’d look pretty but where around here would you wear a green velvet dress?”

“I’d wear it right out in the field. I’d wear it into town when I went to the store. I’d wear it at a ball and I’d dance around and around.” Tessy stands and holds her dress out to the side, curtsies. “And I’ll wear it when . . .” she turns and drops back down in the hay, her cheeks flushed.

“When?” Emily asks, fearing what she knows to be the truth, that Tessy has never given up on her dream that that man will be back for her. Tessy is so pretty here in the dusky light, her thick hair curling and twisting, the color blending with the hay, her thin face filled with color.

“When? When?” Tessy laughs, lies back and laughs such a loud fit of laughter that Emily catches herself laughing even though she’s not certain why. “When I’m buried,” Tessy sighs. “I’ll wear it in the grave.” And she laughs until the tears start rolling down her cheeks and Emily leans over to hug her.

“That’s a long way off,” Emily whispers.

“And a long way down.”

“Tessy!” Emily hugs her closer. “You’re forgiven all of that. You’ve asked haven’t you?”

“Oh I’ve asked.” Tessy backs away. “But I ain’t so sure that’ll take care of it. I ain’t so sure I want to be forgiven; that’s asking forgiveness for the best part of my life.”

“You believe don’t you?”

“You gotta believe something, I reckon,” she says. “I believe I ain’t meant to have more babies. I believe I ain’t meant to spend my whole life like an old woman.” She pauses and stares hard at Emily. “But I believe that if God is good like you say that he wouldn’t give me such a bad life, that he’d give me a chance.”

“We can’t question how things are done,” Emily says, tears coming to her eyes.

“Oh, you can’t cry enough over it,” Tessy says. “It’s all so sad. The only thing that keeps me going and working and living this life is that feeling I had that I told you about,” Tessy lowers her voice and watches Emily’s back go stiff. “Just tell me if you’ve ever felt something, if you’ve ever felt like every drop of blood in your body could pump right out, felt your face go hot and felt so funny between the legs like you needed to cross them real tight.”

“Tessy,” Emily whispers, stares at her hands. “Just hush up.”

“No, tell me.” Tessy kneels and grips her hands. “Has James ever made you feel that way? Has anybody?”

“James is my husband.”

“And Harv is my husband,” she says. “But he has never made me feel that way.”

“Harv is good to you, a good husband. If a woman’s got a good husband who is kind to her then she’s got a lot.”

“But she doesn’t have everything.”

“Nobody has everything.”

“Oh, I think you do, Emily,” Tessy says and stands, brushes off her dress. “I never would have told you how I felt that night and all those afternoons when I’d see him downtown. I wouldn’t have told you how he made me feel that way if I hadn’t thought that you’d know what I was saying.”

“I have never discussed myself with you. It’s not to be discussed.”

“Why? Why can’t we discuss it?” Tessy pulls that barn door open wide and they can see Harv and James standing over by the woodpile, one of Tessy’s children chasing after a hound dog with a stick. “But you know what I’m talking about, though. I know you do and I reckon I feel lucky to have felt it once.” Tessy steps out into the yard and reaches for Emily’s hand. “I think you’re lucky ‘cause you’ve got your whole life to feel it.” Emily doesn’t look at her as they walk side by side, but Tessy feels stronger now; she feels the energy coming back to her, she hears that slow sweet tune with every step of her feet in those dead crackly leaves.

Tessy stands and watches James and Emily get in the buggy and
pull away, down the road, a fine slice of that strange gray light between their bodies. She takes a deep breath, that crisp autumn air, feeling like a part of her is in that buggy and gone in a cloud of yellow dust.

“I reckon you needed a woman to talk to,” Harv says, his hand clumsily finding hers as they walk up to the house. He has already built a fire and has the lantern on the front porch lit. “I’m sorry for what you went through.”

“I know you are,” she says. “I’m thinking I might go to town with you tomorrow, thinking I might buy me some cloth. I want to sew some cloth.”

By summertime, Emily has herself a baby girl that she calls Hannah Elizabeth, straight from the Bible and Tessy is all swoll up with what she hopes will be her last. If it’s a boy, she wants to call him Jacob; if it’s a girl she’ll just call her something like Madge or Peg and try to get on with her life.

* * *

The silence, the way that his eyes never leave Tessy’s face, is comfortable until a large acorn thumps the dusty dirt, reminding her that there are people passing on the street, the iced salted fish that she has just bought leaking through the newspaper onto her hands. She looks briefly away, past the tall oak where a straw-haired child pulls a wagon full of empty bottles, then down at her hands, the black sticky smudges.

“I best be going,” she says and takes one step back from him, his violin in the case beside his feet. “Mighty nice to have seen you again.”

“Yes,” once again he looks at her and there is that impulsive sense that he might suddenly reach and grab her hands, pull her close in spite of the people, the fish, the child who now is passing, the wagon wheels whining with every bump of the road, bottles clanging. He extends his hand to her and she pauses a minute, realizing her hands are covered in sticky smudges, as calloused as any man’s hand. He waits, palm toward her, long smooth fingers with tiny callouses at the tips where he pressed the strings of his violin. “It’s
always nice when you stop by, Tessy. I hope to see you again.”

She nods and turns quickly, hurries down the road, the colors so warm beyond the fields where the sun is setting. Just the sight of it all makes her feel as if she could be swallowed up by the sky; it makes her feel so good, so sad, free, strong, and then weak and tired. She can hear his music, calling her back, or maybe giving her the strength to go on. Just hearing the music, knowing he is there, is going to stay for awhile, is enough to make her keep walking, down the road, past the small row of houses, the large open fields that lead down to where she and Harv live.

She realizes that she is walking faster and faster, ready to run at any moment, the fish clutched so tightly that they are soiling the front of her dress. She must stop, breathe, because Harv will be at home, will see the flush in her cheeks and the slight shaking of her hands. She stops at the curve in the road and relaxes her grip on the fish, turns to look back where he is standing in front of the hardware store, a handful of people stopped there to listen to his music, to toss coins in that open case. She slows her pace to that of the music, steady, sweeping, the whole time that she imagines his smooth lineless face, his young strong body, and at night when there is someone there beside her, she imagines that it’s him.

She arranges her days in ways that she has to go to town; she takes her time getting ready, combs her hair down smooth around her shoulders, pinches her cheeks and lips. She does this for weeks, her stops in front of the hardware store sometimes lasting into late afternoon, their stares becoming longer and longer until one day she meets him there by the Saxapaw River, the bend that is always deserted, as he follows the road by the river to his home and his wife and children. The bend is a shaded area blanketed in moist green moss and hidden from the ridge of trees that blocks the sight of her own home, Spanish moss hangs from the trees, grapevines like large ropes all around. She meets him just that once and soon there is no reason to go to town, no reason to comb her hair down around her shoulders. His name repeats itself in her mind, over and over, like a song of her own until too many weeks and months and years pass and the tunes that he played only come to her in odd little bits and pieces.

* * *

Lena thinks she’s dying at thirteen. That’s all blood can mean, dying, and she flings herself on top of the bed, pulls a quilt up over her and rocks back and forth, her hands covering the wounded area while she prays as loud as she can. She thinks of all the lies she has told, how she told her mama that the reason she didn’t have recess at school was because the teacher needed a helper when all the time it was because she slapped a girl upside of her fat head for not letting Lena use the speller that had bad pictures drawn in it. She thinks of all the times she had called Curie, “Nigger, nigger black as tar,” and gotten switched for it. She thinks of her sister way up there in the churchyard “starved like a skeleton” or so they say. But Lena isn’t starving, she is bleeding to death and it makes her scream louder just to think of it.

“Lena Pearson, what on earth?” her mama asks, standing in the doorway so gray and washed out, always so gray and washed out like she might not have any blood and Lena’s blood is so red and dark, on her hand and between her legs. She can’t even tell where it’s coming from. When Harv sliced up the front of his leg with that axe, they were able to get it to stop because they could see where it was coming from. But when Curie was tied up to that tree, before her daddy took him down and threw his coat over him, she couldn’t tell where the blood was coming from. It seemed the blood was coming from everywhere like right now and Curie died.

“I’m hurt,” Lena says. “I’m dying,” and she is somehow relieved by the very sound of it, the pronouncement. “I’m dying.”

“What is wrong?” her mama sits down at the end of the bed.

“I’m bleeding, bleeding to death.”

“Where?” Her mama pulls back the quilt.

“Here, down here,” she says and holds up her hand for her mama to see. “I’m bleeding from where I pee.” Her mama turns away and shakes her head.

“All women bleed that way,” her mama whispers as if Lena should have known, as if she’s done something wrong in not knowing. “It’s how women have babies.”