The Elementals (16 page)

“How did you do it? Get rid of the accent I mean?”

“I just said to myself: ‘I’m not gone talk that way any more . . .’ And I didn’t.”

“I sort of like it,” said India.

“Um-hmm,” said Luker from the darkness.

“Tell me about Odessa,” said India.

“What do you mean? What do you want to know?”

“I don’t know. Just tell me about her. Tell me about her daughter that drowned.”

“I wasn’t here then, but Leigh was. That was ten, eleven years ago or something—I was married by then. Odessa and her common-law husband Johnny Red had one child, a little girl called Martha-Ann. Big Barbara was right, Johnny Red is no good. The Savages sort of take care of him, for Odessa’s sake. They live together off and on, mostly off. Anyway, Martha-Ann used to come out to Beldame with Odessa and she’d help out around the house, but mostly she came out here to play. Well, you’ve got to remember that ten, fifteen years ago, things weren’t as loose in the South as they are now—”

“Loose?”

“I’m talking about black people. The lines were still there then. It wasn’t considered right to have Martha-Ann on the Gulf side where all the white people were. Martha-Ann had to swim in St. Elmo’s Lagoon.”

“That’s just bullshit!” cried India, offended.

“I know,” said Luker, “and it wasn’t that anybody actually
said
anything to the girl. It was just one of those things that was understood. You still see it in Odessa. Odessa would never eat at the table with us, and when she does sit with us, she always sits as far away as possible. It’s not that we wouldn’t have her or anything like that—you know how much Dauphin loves her—it’s just that
she
’
s
not comfortable. So one afternoon Martha-Ann was out playing, right in front of the Savage house on the lagoon, where she always played, and she was chasing these birds up and down the beach, trying to feed them or something. And she chased them around to the other side of the third house. Odessa was upstairs working, and sort of watching Martha-Ann out the window, and she called out the window and told her not to go around that way.”

“Why not?” demanded India.

“Odessa was afraid she’d go out in the water. Out there beyond the spit, there are lots of funny cross currents. The undertow is terrible. Nobody goes out in that water. It looks shallow, but it’ll drag you right under. And that’s what happened to Martha-Ann. She evidently went out in the water, and she got dragged under. Odessa was going downstairs to bring her back, and she heard Martha-Ann screaming, but by the time she got round in front of the third house, the screams had stopped and Martha-Ann had already drowned. And her body never washed up on shore.”

“How did Odessa take it?”

“I don’t know,” said Luker. “I wasn’t here.”

“How do you know that Martha-Ann drowned?”

Luker paused before he replied, and India was sorry that in the darkness she could not see the expression on his face. “What do you mean?”

“How do you know that she
drowned
?” repeated India. “I mean, nobody saw her go in the water.”

“What else could have happened to her?”

“The third house. What if she went inside the third house?”

“She couldn’t have. The house is locked, it always has been. Besides, she was at the front of the house, and the doors and windows there were already starting to be covered up. And what if she
had
gone inside, India? She would have come out again. But we never found her body. There was nothing to bury.”

“What if she’s still inside? Her body, I mean. Nobody looked for her, did they? Nobody went inside the house to see if she was there, did they?”

“India, you’re being stupid. I’m gone go to bed. I’m freezing my ass off in here—”

“Why does Dauphin love Odessa so much?” asked India suddenly.

“Because she’s always been good to him,” said Luker, stopping to give reply to a question that was reasonable. “Odessa loves Dauphin the way Marian Savage should have loved him.”

“Has Odessa always worked for the Savages?”

“I don’t know. For at least thirty-five years. Odessa was coming here for years before we even bought this house—Odessa remembers the Hightowers. But when Dauphin was little he came down with something, some kind of fever or something, and they all thought he was gone die. That was in the summer, and we were all here at Beldame—Darnley and Mary-Scot and Leigh and me. But Dauphin stayed in Mobile, and Odessa stayed with him. Darnley and Mary-Scot kept talking about the funeral, because they were all sure he was gone die. Bothwell Savage, Dauphin’s daddy, used to go up to Mobile once a week to see if he was still alive—”

“What happened?”

“Odessa cured him. I don’t know how, and he doesn’t know how, but she cured him. Dauphin says she gave him things to eat and they cured him.”

“Maybe he just got well—maybe the doctors cured him.”

“India, it was the doctors who said he was gone die.”

“Yes, but—”

“But the point is that Dauphin thinks that Odessa saved his life, and Dauphin had a pretty good idea even then—I don’t think he could have been more than six or seven years old—that none of the Savages cared whether he lived or died.”

“Yes, I see,” said India, “but did anybody else believe that Odessa saved his life? Or is that just what Dauphin thought? What did Marian Savage think?”

“Well,” said Luker, “she said she didn’t believe it. She said that Dauphin was cured by penicillin, but of course Dauphin is allergic to penicillin. Now, Marian Savage never liked Odessa after that, she sort of blamed Odessa for keeping Dauphin alive. I think she wanted to fire Odessa except that Marian Savage wasn’t the kind of woman to drop your acquaintance just because she hated your fucking guts. Anyway, when she got so sick, Marian wouldn’t have anybody wait on her except Odessa. See, she wanted Odessa to cure her. She’d beg Odessa fifty times a day to give her something to eat that would make her well again.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Dauphin told me. Odessa told him.”

“She really thought Odessa could cure her?”

Luker nodded. “Marian Savage blamed Dauphin for her getting sick—she said if he hadn’t married Leigh, she wouldn’t have gotten cancer. That’s what she told Leigh too. Half the time she’d blame Leigh and Dauphin, and the other half the time she’d pretend that she wasn’t sick at all, that there wasn’t anything wrong with her.”

“A real bitch, hunh?”

“Cast-iron. And then she blamed Odessa because she wasn’t getting any better. She said Odessa wouldn’t give her the things that would make her well again, and then she started saying that Odessa was putting things in her food that actually made her sicker.”

“I don’t understand why Odessa stayed on then.”

Luker shrugged. “Because that’s the way it is down here. Odessa wouldn’t any more have thought of leaving Marian Savage than she would of leaving Dauphin and Leigh.”

“Martyr complex,” said India.

“No it’s not,” said Luker. “It’s just the way things are done.”

“If you had been like that, you’d have stayed with Mother.”

“I know,” he said, “but I’m not
entirely
like that. I got out in time—I think. Anyway,” Luker went on, “Marian Savage came down here at the end as a last-ditch effort to persuade Odessa to make her well. She said to Odessa, ‘Save me the way you saved Dauphin.
’
”

“And what did Odessa do?”

“Odessa told her that Dauphin was cured by a shot of penicillin.”

“So Odessa let her die?”

“India, you just said you didn’t believe that Odessa cured Dauphin . . .”

India thought this over, but in the end didn’t know what she thought about it all.

Chapter
15

The following afternoon India left Beldame for the first time in nearly three weeks. Leigh drove her and Odessa to Gulf Shores, dropped them off at the Laundromat, and went on herself to Fairhope to buy a few clothes. When he heard of his daughter’s intention of accompanying his sister and Odessa, Luker warned India: “Listen, I don’t want you cornering Odessa and asking her all kinds of questions about Martha-Ann or anything.”

“Martha-Ann died almost before I was born. Do you think Odessa is still upset about it?”

“I think it’s none of your fucking business, is what I think,” replied Luker with a grimace.

India promised to say nothing.

Once the clothes had been loaded into the washers, India and Odessa seated themselves at one end of a row of plastic chairs that was bolted into the cement in front of the Laundromat. It was unspeakably hot all over Alabama that day, but nowhere was the heat more intense than in Baldwin County; and in Baldwin County no worse than at Gulf Shores; and at Gulf Shores no more extreme than at the little green concrete building that housed the post office and the Laundromat. A thermometer on a shaded wall read
107
degrees.

“Odessa,” began India, “I want to talk to you about something, if it’s all right.”

“What, child?”

“The third house.” India watched closely for signs of perturbation, but Odessa was unmoved.

“What you want to know? You took pictures of it one day.”

“You showed me which pictures to take.”

Odessa nodded, and India was at a loss how to proceed.

“Luker’s afraid of the third house,” India said at last, “and so is Dauphin. I haven’t really talked to Leigh and Big Barbara about it, but—”

“They scairt too,” said Odessa.

“Do you know why?”

Odessa nodded.

“Why?”

“
’Cause of what’s inside.”

India’s shoulders contracted. “What do you mean, what’s inside?”

“They’s some houses that’s got something inside ’em, and some houses that don’t. Don’t you know that?”

“You mean like a ghost?”

“No! They’s no such thing. They’s just some houses that got something inside ’em—a spirit like. No ghosts, no such thing as dead people coming back. Dead people go to heaven, dead people go to hell. They don’t hang around. Nothing like that. They’s just
something
that’s maybe inside a house.”

“How do you know if it’s there?”

“Oh, you just feel it! How else would you know! You walk in a house, and you know right off. Don’t mean it’s dangerous or anything, it’s just got something in it.”

“You mean, like if somebody died inside, then the house gets some kind of spirit attached to it.”

“No,” said Odessa, “don’t work that way. That’s you talking and thinking about spirits. Spirits don’t work that way, spirits don’t work the way we want ’em to. They don’t go by rules you set up for ’em. Don’t matter if somebody died or got killed, or if the house is all brand-new. It’s got something in it or it don’t, and you can feel it and that’s all there is to it.”

India nodded her understanding.

“Now the third house,” Odessa went on, “you don’t have to go inside that one to know there’s something in it, you just
know
the minute you lay eyes on it. Don’t you, child?
You
know, don’t you? I’m not sitting here telling you something you don’t know anything about, am I?”

“No, you’re not,” said India. “I know there’s something inside the house.” She paused for a moment and she and Odessa stared out at the Gulf, visible across the way between the little square houses. The sun was blindingly reflected on the water. Heat rose in distorting waves from the blacktopped road. Someone passed with a large beach umbrella bouncing over her shoulder, and a golden retriever leaped and snapped at it.

“If there’s something inside the house,” asked India, “can you see it?”

Odessa glanced at India sharply, then returned her gaze to the Gulf. “Oh, I’ve seen things,” she said slowly.

“What things?” asked India eagerly.

“Lights,” she said, “lights in the house. Not lights though, just different kinds of dark. Sometimes I wake up at night and I think I’m just lying in my bed, and then I open up my eyes and I’m not in the bed any more. I’m standing at the window and I’m looking out at the third house and it’s like I see things going room to room. ’Course you cain’t really see anything ’cause it’s all dark, but I see things going room to room, and there’s different kinds of dark inside there and things get shifted around. They’s doors that get shut inside the house. Sometimes things get broke.”

India drew in her breath sharply, but Odessa chose to ignore this. “But it’s not ghosts,” she said, “they’s no such things. It’s just the spirit in the house, trying to make us believe in ghosts. The spirit wants you to think that the dead come back, and you can talk to ’em and they can tell you where money’s buried and like that—”

“Why?” demanded India. “Why would the spirit do something like that?”

“Spirits want to fool you.
Some
spirits. ’Cause they’s
bad
—they’s just
bad
, that’s all.”

“But is it a spirit that’s
inside
the house or is it the house itself? I mean, does the spirit have a body—no, not a body, I mean, does it have a shape? Can you look at it? If you saw it, would you know it? Or is just the whole house?”

“Child,” said Odessa, “you saw something.” She lifted her arms and pried the material away from her perspiration-soaked skin. “You saw something, didn’t you?”

“I saw more than just the dark,” said India. “I saw something else. I climbed to the top of the dune and I looked in the window. I did it twice, and both times I saw something.”

“Don’t you tell me!” cried Odessa. “I don’t want to know what you saw, child!”

The black woman clutched India’s arm, but India said feverishly: “Listen, Odessa, the first time I saw this room it was perfect, I mean it was like it hadn’t been touched in fifty years and then I was looking in and the door shut. Somebody was out in the hall and they pushed the door shut while I was standing outside looking in the window—”

“Child, don’t tell me!”

“—and then I went back the next day because I thought I had been dreaming and I looked in the window again and the sand had started to get inside the room because I had knocked out some glass in the window—”

“No,” said Odessa, reaching to clap her black hand over the child’s mouth.

India grabbed Odessa’s wrist and pushed it away. “And there was something in the sand,” she whispered. “There was something that was made out of sand. It was lying there under the window, it was part of the dune and it knew I was there. Odessa, it—”