Unto These Hills (17 page)

I sighed and gazed into the star-studded June sky. “I guess I am.” Crickets chirruped somewhere and I heard myself ask, “How about you?”

He threw back his head and laughed uproariously. “I’m many things, Sunny. But religious ain’t one of ‘em.”

~~~~~

I spent increasingly more time with Walter and the more I did, the less I saw of Doretha. She disappeared with no more effort than a spooked Tinker Bell. It irked me because she’d been a mainstay during all my trials. So I naturally turned more and more to Walter for emotional support.

“What is it with Doretha?” I asked Walter one day when I’d dropped by and Doretha poofed into thin air. I sighed heavily. “Soon as I pop in she pops out. What gives? Has she decided I’m what Daniel says I am?” I was suddenly angry, oddly so. “I thought she was my friend.” I choked up. “J-just look at me,” I wailed. “I’m just a basket of hormones.”

Walter swiftly moved to settle himself on the sofa beside me, by now comfortable with the supporting role. His arm slid around my shoulders. “At least you know why you’re so near to cryin’ most o’ the time.” His fingers gave a gentle little squeeze to my upper arm. Then he chuckled. “Don’t you know by now what she’s up to?”

I snuffled and gazed blearily at him. “Who? Doretha?”

He nodded, his eyes taking on a twinkle. “She’s a’matchmakin’.”

My eyes widened. “Us? You mean you and
me?”
I squeaked.

He drew himself up into the most formidable Sir Cedric Hardwicke snit I’d ever seen. “I beg yo’ pah-don. Is that so
unthinkable,
might I ahsk?
”

I snickered at his use of language, a tad advanced in places, for him. “You need a bit of work on that dialect.”

“Made you laugh, didn’t it?” He sank back into the sofa, propping his feet on the coffee table, a’grinnin’ and looking exceedingly pleased with himself. “So I reckon it wudn’ too bad.”

“No,” I agreed and burst into fresh laughter, lending myself to his humor. He didn’t seem to possess an ounce of Daniel’s darkness, his melancholy and —

There I go again.
The laughter died and I pressed my fingers to my eyes.

“What is it, Sunny?” Walter’s feet dropped to the floor and his arm came around me again and I found myself taking comfort from it being there.

“It’s just — I keep thinking about Daniel.” I looked at Walter, feeling as inept and helpless as a newborn.
Newborn.
Now
there
was another issue to face. “How could he have left me like this, Walter?” Indignation flared my nostrils. “Alone to face all the shame?”

Walter hung his head for a moment, then looked up at me. “That’s just not so, Sunny.”

“What? I won’t face shame?” I gaped at him, gulping back more tears.

“You’re not alone,” he said quietly.

“Haaah!” I crossed my arms over my tender, swollen bosom — no longer resembling once-over-lightly eggs, more like two halves of a small hamburger bun — then grimaced and loosened them. “ I can’t talk to anybody — except you and Doretha — for fear somebody’ll find out about the rape and the baby and broadcast it all over the hill. And now Doretha avoids me like I’ve got some daggum black
plague
. My family stares at me like I’m gonna go jump in the river any day now, putting another dark blot on them.” I laid my arms across my thickening waist. “Like Mama didn’t leave them with enough
nasty goop
to scrape at. Yeh, Walter, I’d say I’m pretty much alone in this thing.”

He took me by the shoulders and turned me until I looked into his eyes. I’d never seen Walter angry before but, now, in comparison to his usual fun-loving self, he looked extremely irked. “You’ve got
me,
Sunny. Or hadn’ you noticed?”

The fight went out of me. “That goes without saying, Walter. I’m sorry. It’s just so — so
nerve-wracking.
Every day that passes, the baby inside me grows. Soon, I’ll be showing and won’t be able to pretend it’s not there. The world will know.”

Fresh tears puddled in my eyes. “Oh, Walter, how will I get
through
this? All I ever wanted was to be
good.
To marry Daniel and have a good life. A respectable life. To be a teacher and help others have good lives. And now…now, I’ve lost it all.” I collapsed into his arms, buried my face on his shoulder and bawled my heart out.

Poor Walter, he patted me and kissed the top of my head and crooned
‘It’s gonna be okay, Sunny’
until I wore myself slap out and began to hiccup and snuffle my way back to composure.

Later, we ate supper at Nana’s table. Everybody in the family liked Walter, not like Daniel, whom they’d adored, but I suspected they truly appreciated him looking after me following Daniel’s shocking departure.

Fact was, they didn’t know what to do with a fragile, weepy-mess Sunny. It made Nana overly jumpy and Francine do Road Runner escape pivots. Aunt Tina, still shell-shocked from Uncle Talley’s betrayal, mostly didn’t even seem to notice my mood swings from hound dog lackadaisical to Tasmanian Devil manic.

Emaline, well, I avoided Emaline. I wanted so much to pour my heart out to her but I was afraid her freshly dug-in spiritual stance — what with her being a future preacher’s wife — might tap into a judgmental vein or at best make her a mite uncomfortable. I didn’t think I could bear rejection from her. Too, seeing her and John together, planning their future, conjured up visions of Daniel and me just weeks earlier. It was too hurtful.

Only Sheila and Timmy remained constant in their tolerance and concern for my ever-changing ambiance. I promised myself they would forever remain my babies.

Tonight, Sheila watched Walter from beneath lowered eyelids, reminding me more of Mama every day. “Anybody ever tol’ you you look like James Dean?” she asked Walter, bringing her tea glass slowly up to lush, full lips, watching him over the rim.

I stifled a nervous titter. The little
flirt
. She’d learned well in her fourteen years. At her age, I’d been skinny as a stick and pure as freshly Cloroxed sheets.

Walter looked amused. “Yeh,” he muttered Dean-style, running his fingers through golden locks, disheveling and dislodging them. “Ever’ once in awhile.”

“’Cept for your blonde hair,” Sheila added, fluttering long lashes at him.

“Looks more like Tim Holt to me,” Timmy rumbled in his changing voice.

Sheila snorted. “That’s cause boys don’t really look at other guys past their hair color and muscles.” Then remembering herself, she lifted her bosom subtly and angled Walter another come-hither look.

“Still up to your ol’ tricks, I see.” Francine posed seductively in the kitchen doorway, with Tack peering over her shoulder, sniffing out the food. Always in the past, Tack’d turned up his nose and refused to eat our meager fare. I suspected that now, only weeks into marriage with Francine, whose aversion to domesticity rivaled Doretha’s, he wouldn’t be quite so choosy.

“Have a seat,” I said, “I’ll get you plates.”

“We done ate,” Francine fluffed her hair. Tack looked pure pained.

“Come on, Tack. A growing boy needs more food,” I coaxed as I made my way to the cabinet for plates, feeling a slight pang of pity for him. Only slight, mind you.

“Yeh, Tack,” Aunt Tina chimed, coming out of her own fog momentarily to notice her surroundings. Uncle Talley’s desertion had definitely altered her. She wasn’t the same
I’ve-got-the-world-on-a-string
Aunt Tina of days gone by. “Have some supper.”

Tack took the seat Timmy pulled out for him and filled his plate with generous portions of fried potatoes, chicken, and pinto beans as Aunt Tina cooed over him like a mother dove. Aunt Tina was from the old school that taught
fussin’ over
equated
love.
When her Alvin took sick, she felt it her motherly duty to sit up all night, fretting over him
.
Anything less would
not
do.

Worry
, the badge of love.

Sheila watched Francine with a predatory gleam in her slitted green eyes.

“Say Francine, how do you like that grand house o’yours?”

I wanted desperately to ward off warfare that would certainly result should my sisters be left to their own ploys. I poured Francine a glass of iced tea and placed it at one of the table’s empty spaces. “Come. Sit.” I tapped the chair incisively

Francine, not fooled for a second, locked rivalry gazes with Sheila for long tense moments before allowing me to divert her. “Since Tack made me some built-in cabinets and refinished the pine floors, I love it.” She settled into the chair and I returned to my own seat. “ ‘Course, I need another bathroom. And I wouldn’t mind havin’ another bedroom.” The village house was one of the larger, six-room versions.

“Don’t want much, do you, Cleo?” Sheila lips V’d malevolently.

Francine’s head snapped around. “Cleo?”

“Cle-o-pat-ra,” Sheila enunciated as though to a moron.

Francine’s gaze blazed and her nostrils flared.

“That’s enough, Sheila.” Nana’s edict rang sharply in the air. Though she had no idea who the heck Cleopatra was, Nana knew maliciousness when she saw it. “Francine’s a’visitin’ and you’ll treat her with respect.”

Sheila’s chair scooted back abruptly. “Then I’ll be excusin’ myself.” She flounced from the kitchen with a definite new oscillation of hip movement.

My hand flew to my mouth as I stifled a laugh. Lordy, my desperate little sister would
still
do anything for attention. I looked at Walter, who watched me, his full lips twitching at the corners and I knew he shared my amusement. Without thinking, I reached for his hand beneath the table and gave it a gentle squeeze.

“Thank you,” I mouthed silently.

His face sobered instantly. “You’re welcome,” he mouthed and I felt his strong fingers squeeze back.

Suddenly, I didn’t feel as alone.

~~~~~

I’m not sure when the down-and-dirty panic began to invade me. Not the niggling kind. The
jar-from
-
sleep
kind that graduates to
won’t-let-you-sleep-or-eat
and
walking-the-floor
kind. The kind that has the mind chasing its tail, playing the same horror-refrain over and over until it becomes a haunting litany, imbedded as in the groove of a record. The kind that takes appetite and rest and peace and reason from you, leaving you with only pain and torturous wide-awake, pacing nightmares.

Ones you can’t escape.

Daniel’s face was the last thing I saw at night and the first upon waking. Now I know how one can die from a broken heart.

I was careful to hide my distress from my family. Francine being gone helped. Her eagle eyes missed little. The Aunt Tina of old would have sniffed out pregnancy like a she-hound but now, with the finality of Talley’s exodus a bald reality, I was merely a shadowy figure on the periphery of her dark melancholy. Nana’s worried focus on Aunt Tina’s angst diverted her attention from my ordeal. I kept plodding in a slow motion, horrendous quagmire.

Somehow, miraculously, I held it all together until one day when I went to visit Doretha, and Berthie answered the door wearing nothing but a white apron, her pendulous boobs bulging from each side of its bib. It was then that I really began to lose it.

“Can I help you?” she asked as though I were a perfect stranger and she the dignified lady of the manor. I gaped at her, thinking how even in this ridiculous state, she still maintained a measure of dignity.

The sadness of it tore at me. The absurdity of it pushed me over the edge.

My mouth went dry and my heart began pounding like a runaway bass drum. I feared my sanity was slipping away. No, I
knew
I was going insane.

I opened my mouth to speak. Nothing came out. Terror blasted through me like an icy arctic explosion. The spinning inside my brain crescendoed.

“Well?” Berthie raised her eyebrows imperiously “What do you want?”

“Oh God,” I managed to moan, reaching out to steady myself. As my hand hit the screen, Berthie screamed, a loud, drum-splitting shriek that sent my adrenaline gushing like an unplugged fire hydrant.

“Git!” she hissed, swatting at me from behind the screen as though I were a horse fly determined to light on her roast.

Dear God, is the whole world going phobic or is it just me?

“Berthie,” Walter appeared from nowhere, gently took his stepmother by the arm and coaxed her from the door, shooting me a pained
sorry, kid,
look.

“Doretha!” he bellowed.

I heard the back screen slam and Doretha’s irritated little voice say, “What’s on fire, Walter? I was trying to get the laundry off the — Oh,
my Lord
, Mama.”

“I’m sorry, Sunny,” Doretha murmured, not quite able to meet my gaze, thoroughly shamed.

Presently, she had her mother in tow and shuttled toward the stairs. Walter took my cold hand and pulled me inside, gazing at me with deep concern that grooved his brow. Uncertain, he said softly, “would you rather go for a walk, Sunny?”

I snuffled and gratefully took a Kleenex from him. “Yeh. I would.” My teeth felt as though they would begin to clatter any moment. “No,” I said, quickly changing directions. I didn’t want to be seen like this, knowing how villagers gossip and embellish truth. I sighed raggedly. As I exhaled, my very life seemed to drain out on that breath. I sagged. Walter grabbed me before I slithered onto the floor.

Poor Walter dragged me to the sofa and stretched me out.

I closed my eyes and told myself to just relax and everything would be all right. But after a few moments, I felt silly just lying there, and tried to get up. I couldn’t push myself up. It was as though I’d turned to concrete. “Walter!” I cried, panicked.

“It’s okay, Sunny. Just relax and rest awhile.” Walter pulled a straight chair over to sit beside me, holding my frigid hand. “I think I should take you to see Dr. Worley.”

“No.” I tried to sit up again but could not pry myself loose from the darned sofa. It was a magnet pulling me down, down, down…. “Oh, please help me, Walter,” I whimpered, for once not shamed by my vulnerability.