The Ghosts of Varner Creek (10 page)

"I'm sick of that," he told her. And he clawed at her dress to undo the strings that held it tight.

She tried to politely deter him, "Abram, I don't think we should."

He pushed himself up a bit to look her in her face, "To hell with that. Every night y’all come by Colby's in there getting done right by your sister and here you are won't even let me see you without all these damned clothes on yah. I'm sick of hearing him tell how good it feels and then all I can say is you givin' me a hand job.” It was highly unlikely Colby ever talked about his intimacy with Emma, but Abram knew a good pressure tactic when he saw one. “I can do that myself. What do I need you to do that for me, for?" And he went back to kissing her neck and trying to find the right button to push to get her excited. He lunged up her dress and had invaded her petticoat to find the waist strings in her cotton long pants.

"Abram, stop!" she cried in surprise. He pulled so hard on the cotton underpants that the waist gave out and snapped. He felt them give and began pulling them down with a forceful zest. “Abram, quit it! What are you doing?”

Annie could suddenly feel his hands on her bare skin and the evening air drifting along her pubic hairs. He quickly pulled them down as far as they would go and slid himself between her legs. He was so heavy Annie couldn't move out from under him. She urgently tried to reason with him, "Abram, stop. I'm not rea . . ." but it was too late.

She closed her eyes with the pain. It hurt so bad that it was like a hot poker had just been pushed inside of her. She let out a pitiful moan but it seemed to only stir him on. He grunted and groaned centered solely around his own pleasure. Annie couldn’t believe this was happening. She didn’t want this to happen. She wasn’t ready for this. She could feel the tears welling up in her eyes as the pain coursed through her. She wanted to be some place else. In her mind she imagined being back at home cuddled up with Candace on some cold winter night. They'd giggle and cause a ruckus until Marcus would tell them to shut up so he could get some sleep. She wondered where he was at right now. Probably at home with Candace or maybe out walking with Mary Jo Greenley. Maybe they were doing the same thing she was doing, except that Mary Jo wasn't hurting and it was a pretty thing instead of this nightmare. She bet not, though. They were really in love and Marcus and Mary Jo were both proper and good people who would wait for marriage. Not like Annie, who was dirty and shameful.

She wanted Marcus to come and rescue her, to pull Abram off and punch his lights out again. But Marcus wasn't there and wouldn't be pulling him off of her this time. 'If you ain't got better sense . . .' she remembered him saying. Nobody came except Abram, who didn't even bother to pull himself out first. Instead he spent himself inside of her and then stayed laying on her breathing hard and blowing his whiskey breath in her face. She felt the tears roll down her cheek and didn't know if they were from the pain or the humiliation. The first time she ever made love she felt like a whore.

On their way back home Annie had to stop and take off her cotton underpants, which were soiled and discard them. When she stood up again she tried to explain to Emma what had happened with tears in her eyes.

Emma put her arm around her shoulder, "It hurts the first time but then it's not so bad," she told her.

Annie sniffed up her nose drips and wiped away the tears, "That's not what hurts so much, Emma. I didn't want to. I wasn't ready and I told him I wasn't and he didn't care. He just did what he wanted and didn‘t even care."

Emma tried to console her but she didn't understand just how things had happened. In her mind it was natural that Abram and Annie had done what they did. She had always had a rebellious nature herself and figured Annie was just having regrets, knowing what a religious violation it was, and all, and how their Mama would condemn them both if she knew. Emma also thought Annie was really upset because it hadn't been as sweet and nice as she had imagined. "Some men just aren't sensitive in that way," she told her little sister, "Colby's not. He doesn't have hardly any sense of romance but I know that inside he‘s real sweet and kind. I know he loves me and I’m going to marry that man, you just see." She seemed to be missing how traumatic the night’s events had been on Annie. She was blinded by the rose colored glass that was her and Colby’s blossoming relationship, and too lost in her dreams of the future to see exactly what was going on in the present.

They walked on as the remaining light slowly left them. They were supposed to be home before dark but Annie was happy to see the evening shadow swallow them up. Emma walked as though she were a flame in the night immune to the darkness spreading around her, but Annie felt it creeping inside of her. She wanted to disappear into the night, to crawl under a rock and hide. Abram's not sweet and kind, she thought to herself, not a bit.

She didn't go with Emma two days later when her sister went to visit Colby. Instead, Annie got her mother's Bible out thinking she could find some solace in the good Book. She was a bit taken aback to find her mother’s bible had hundreds of passages underlined and with little notes out to the side of almost every page. It seemed that since Mrs. Stotley couldn’t get her husband to agree with her on issues of morals, she had sought her confirmations from the highest of authorities. Annie read through looking at all the highlighted passages, searching for something to relieve her from her emotional distress. One of the passages her mother had underlined twice read, "In case a man happens to have a son who is stubborn and rebellious, not listening to the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and they have corrected him but he will not listen to them, his father and his mother must also take hold of him and bring him out to the older men of his city and to the gate of his place, and they must say to the older men of his city, 'This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious; he is not listening to our voice, being a glutton and a drunkard.' Then all the men of his city must pelt him with stones, and he must die. So you must clear away what is bad from your midst, and all Israel will hear and indeed become afraid.” It was Deuteronomy 21:18-21. She read this and, knowing her mother had highlighted it because she wholly believed in it, Annie put away the Bible having found no relief from God's words. On the contrary, she now felt much worse and much more scared. She crept into bed early and cried to herself. What would her parents think of her having sex with a man outside of wedlock like that. "Harlot!" her mother would call her. “Jezebel!” And rightly so, for that's just what she felt like. And when Candace crept in bed with her that night she held her tightly hoping some of her sister's purity would rub off on her. When she finally fell asleep she found herself standing in the church. It must have been Sunday sermon because everyone in town was there. She dreamed she was having sex with Abram right there before the pulpit in front of everyone, and that her mother suddenly stood up from her pew and pleaded with everyone to help her cleanse her sinful daughter. Then Abram disappeared with a sly smile, and everyone in the church suddenly began gathering up big rocks that had appeared at their feet and they started throwing them at her, pelting her with them over and over again. Everyone she cared about was there, her parents, Marcus, Candace, that cute boy Gerald, even Emma had a stone, and they were all hurling them at her. She looked to Marcus and said, “Please, make them stop!” But he was angry with her and only said, “If you ain’t got better sense . . .” and then he hit her with his rock. The only one who wasn’t throwing stones at her was her parents. Mr. Stotley was sitting stoic on his pew smoking his pipe and staring into nothingness. He seemed either not to notice or not to care that Annie was being stoned to death. And finally, when she felt her insides crushed from the blows, everyone stopped and looked to Mrs. Stotley, who had finally reached down and gathered up a stone. "It was to save your soul," she told Annie. And then she threw the last rock. Annie woke up, panicked and frightened, thinking she’d just died. She looked around expecting to see the town around her, rocks in hand. Instead, she found Emma sleeping soundly beside her and Candace in her own bed, undoubtedly dreaming of Colby and love, seemingly at peace without a care in the world. Annie had never been so jealous of her sister in all her life.

As the weeks went on Annie stayed away from worker’s row. Emma would come home with pleas from Abram, or wild flowers he had picked for her. He even had Emma give her a very nice carving of a horse he’d done, but Annie didn’t want it and gave it to Candace instead.

Emma couldn't understand why Annie was acting so distant, "He’s not so bad, Annie. I think maybe he really loves you." And as the guilt and shame ate at Annie another thought entered her mind, one of salvation and repentance. What if she were to marry Abram? Then, even though they had done wrong by having sex that would at least make things somewhat right. Maybe she could even bring herself to look at her mother again without hating herself. And so she went back with Emma to the shack Colby and Abram shared and she let Abram lay with her and have his way, all the while resigning herself that she would marry Abram eventually and things would work out for the best.

I realized after putting all the pieces together so many years later that Mama had trapped herself in her own mind, and that’s why she married Pap. Whether it was the threat of her own mother’s moral condemnations, Emma’s well-meaning prodding, or just because Mama was so young, I don’t think she felt there was anything else she could do. It seems so often the case that people who think they’re up against a wall don’t realize it’s only themselves doing the pushing.

One morning, before the early light had called even Mr. Stotley awake, Annie woke up tormented with nausea. She snuck out of the room and through the front room where Marcus slept, and out the back door. There she heaved her guts out everywhere. She was sick again that evening, and the next day. She told Emma about it and Aunt Emma seemed to know just what it meant, "Oh, shit, Annie. How have you and Abram been doing it? Does he pull out when his stuff comes out, or does he stay inside?"

"He normally just stays inside," she said.

"Oh, Lord, Annie, you can't do it that way. That's how you get pregnant."

Annie didn't say anything. The words seemed to float around her instead of being absorbed. Then slowly they crawled inside of her and ate at her heart. "You think I'm pregnant?" she asked Emma.

She seemed to think on it a bit, "The way you been throwing up and he been doing his business inside of you . . . yeah, Annie. I hate to say it but I think maybe you are." There was a long pause and Emma said, almost as an afterthought, “Mama’s going to have a fit.” Annie broke down into tears. Emma put her big man arms around Annie. “Oh, I’m sorry Annie. I shouldn’t have said that. Mama thinks the whole world is going to hell, anyway. Don’t you go frettin’ what she’s gonna think.”

“
Why didn’t you tell me?” cried Annie.

Emma was confused. “Tell you? Tell you what?”

“
That that’s how I’d get pregnant!” yelled Annie.

“
Well, hell, Annie, I thought you knew. I thought everybody knew that. And even if you didn’t, Abram knows it. It never crossed my mind that you two wouldn’t have the sense to not do it that way. There’s always the chance you can end up pregnant when you do it, anyway. I thought you knew that.”

And the truth was Annie did. She just didn’t think it was going to happen to her, at least not this soon. “God’s punishing me,” she cried. “He’s punishing me for what I did.”

“
Oh, now, don’t go getting all worked up. You’re sounding like Mama now. Nobody’s punishing you; this is just how things work.”

“
What am I going to do?” she asked Emma.

Emma held her close. “Well, you’d better tell Abram. You’re both just going to have to grow up a little faster than you planned, that’s all. He’s overdue for a little growing up, no how. And I don’t say it to make you feel worse, Annie, but you still got some childish ways about you. You’re going to be a mama, and that means you’ve got to learn to open your eyes a little more.”

Annie wasn’t exactly sure what Emma was making reference to, but she did know she suddenly felt older than her fourteen years. She felt a great weight about her, and somewhere inside she knew she’d never giggle and skip like Candace ever again. It was as though her own childhood had just abandoned her completely.

When Annie told Abram that she thought she might be pregnant he didn't seem to take much notice of it. He sat on their blanket after they had finished their intimacy staring off in the distance. She kept looking at him waiting for a response. "Well, what you want me to say?" he asked.

"I don't know," she said. "I don't know what to do, I guess."

He continued looking off. "Me, neither," he finally told her. “I need to take me a walk and think on this a bit.” And with that, he got up, buttoned up his clothes, and strolled away into the fields.

That night Abram told Colby he was thinking of leaving Varner Creek. He said he wanted to go East like the other fellas had and see what was there. He wanted Colby to come with him, but Colby wouldn’t hear of it.

"No," he told Abram bluntly. "I'm staying here. And as soon as I get me enough money I'm going to marry Emma and build us a house."

Abram tried to talk him into it. "Well, I don't want to go by myself. What do you want to stay here with that girl for, anyway? She ain’t much of a looker."

Colby’s face immediately reddened and it was clear Abram was dangerously close to crossing a line he didn’t want to cross. “I love Emma, and I’m staying.” Then he followed it up by saying something most unexpected, "And you ain't going nowhere, neither."