Unto These Hills (20 page)

I was astounded to see Sheila quietly wipe tears from her eyes during the music, and wondered what transpired in that complex mind of hers.

I watched Ruth Bond Staggs accompany Emaline on the piano and my eyes misted. I recalled Pastor Wayne’s 1957 efforts — to reconcile the church to Ruth’s available talent — being rebuffed by stiff-necked, prejudicial deacons. Three years later, Joey Staggs, son of a mill executive, had flipped over Ruth after meeting her at the movies. Joey not only fell deeply for Ruth but also embraced little Sally as his own, eventually funding her way to Converse College and a teaching degree.

After Joey adopted her as his own, the
bastard
stigma flew away like cinders in a windstorm .

Like Walter had accepted Muffin.
Those words I never spoke aloud. Who would I tell? Everybody, save Doretha and Nana believed Muffin spawned from Walter’s loins.

Subsequently, Ruth Staggs became a pillar of village society and had, sometime later — because some are less swift to tolerance — unanimously been voted in as church pianist. Today, I smiled at poetic justice.

A fluke.
The thought flashed through my mind, unexpected, shocking. My smile vanished.
Ruth’s exoneration was, at that time and place in history, probably one in a million.
Uncertainty washed over me.

Would the villagers have shown me the same mercy
? I’ll never know, will I?

Times
had
changed, slowly, gradually. Emotions swirled in me, like dogs chasing their tails, regret leading the pack.

Why had I so quickly capitulated to fears? Only a few more days and Daniel and I could have —

Daniel.
My heart still leaped at his very name. Through the years, on his rare visits to see Doretha — her mom, Berthie, died in a nursing home in 1970 — he’d carefully avoided me. And Walter. Still, a distant glimpse of his proud features sent a shock wave through me that could have emptied death row.

Fate hadn’t finished with that. She tossed me another ten years later, when Walter left the house one day and never came back.

More poetic justice? Probably.
Oh well
, I drew myself up and squared my chin.
That was another story entirely
. After the benediction, my eyes misted as John asked Emaline, dear Emaline, to join him in the church vestibule to greet each parishioner.

Thank you, God,
I prayed,
for sending Emaline home.

~~~~~

After the service, Nana insisted the pastoral couple join us for the noon meal. With Nana’s frailty in mind, we’d all pitched in and contributed to food preparation. Nana’s opening her home to them as well, the gesture bowled me over for long moments. I fought back tears and thought
Lordy, what a day.
What little emotions surfaced drained me dryer’n a gourd.

Nana had mellowed as she aged, like sweet, sweet pineapple mixed with ripe bananas. And though too frail to attend church regularly (even if she’d been inclined to do so), she had grown to love the former pastor’s frequent visits in her home.

She’d tried, in her own way, to recompense for keeping Daniel and me apart all those years ago. I’d never enlightened her that Daniel was not Muffin’s father. I know I should have told her. Problem was, there just never seemed to be the right time. And, as the clock ticked on, her health began to decline, making the revelation even more perilous.

Today, this act was another of her peace-offerings. Thing was, I’d long ago forgiven Nana. How could I not? She was, in truth, my mama and daddy all in one. She’d stuck with us, raised us, when my parents would not.

Anyway, any guilt to be dealt with was not Nana’s; it was mine.

~~~~~

Emaline and I insisted on doing dishes, overriding protests and offers of help from the other females. We wanted the kitchen to ourselves to share and catch up. Pastor John — to his delight, we insisted upon calling him that — departed right after the meal to go home and study. “Actually,” Emaline whispered conspiratorially to all lounging satiated and content around the table, “he’s gonna take his Sunday nap.
Then
study.”

We shooed everybody from the kitchen, soundly shut the door, and at last got down to some major catching-up. We bounded back and forth from silly girls to seasoned women. After gushing over what wonderful children we had, we laughed and elbowed each other at the hilarious aspects of motherhood and grandmotherhood.

Then Emaline grew sober, even looked a bit uncomfortable. “ Sunny — what exactly happened to Walter in that construction accident? I mean,” she shrugged tightly, “we never got to talk about it.” I saw a flicker of hurt in her eyes.

Like all the other things we never talked about.
I’d not returned Emaline’s phone calls nor answered her letters
.
They’d eventually stopped
.
I exhaled the guilt on a deep sigh.

“Look, if you don’t want to talk about —”

“Nono. It’s okay. First, let me check on Walter.” I dashed to the front screen and satisfied myself that no one was close enough to eavesdrop through the kitchen door. I smiled to see Walter napping in a lounge chair on the shaded front porch. The July day was, for once, pleasantly warm, not the usual stifling hot temperatures. A soft breeze stirred. Next to him, in another webbed chaise, sprawled Tack, open-mouthed in slumber. After church, Francine had picked him up at their house to visit for a spell.

I strolled to Nana’s room, where in recent days she spent most of her time abed. Our clan-females lounged on the bed with her or in chairs dragged in from the kitchen, to gossip and cheer up the matriarch, whose health continued downhill with alarming swiftness. When I peeked in, Muffin held avid court, drawing laughter with a bawdy story, a side she never shared with me.

I quietly retreated and returned to the kitchen. Emaline gave me her big benediction smile, bringing some mystical balance to my spirit.

She handed me another dripping pot and said, “Only thing’s changed about this kitchen in all these years is modern appliances.” We smiled as nostalgia peppered the air and piqued our awareness and memories and tugged us along from one panoramic recollection to the next. Our comfortable camaraderie, that allowed long silences to lapse, had survived the years.

I sensed strongly that she wanted me to finish the divulgence I’d started earlier. And she needed it given freely, without entreaty.

I owed her.

“That day… Walter went to work with Timmy as usual. They’d formed their own construction company, you see, since both had been laid off. The mill was slowly shutting down….” I blinked and vigorously dried the pot to hide my feelings, “I still can’t believe so much changed so quickly.” I stacked the utensil atop a mountain of others and let my mind drift back to that day….

Sunlight already filtered through the bedroom blinds when I awoke that morning. I groped to my right. My fingers traced the cold indention where Walter had slept. “Oh, no,” I groaned and slung my legs over the side of the bed.

“I’m gonna cook your breakfast,” I called out, rather desperately. Walter had gone to bed angry with me and, for once, did not respond to my excuses for not having sex. His joke that Libby was “our little accident” was not amiss because, due to our mating-infrequency, that was exactly what she was. That morning, I felt like the lousiest wife on planet earth.

I’d wanted to see him off to his job at the construction site with a good hearty breakfast, to show him love and perk up his energy.
Liar, liar, pants on fire.
Okay, it was to assuage my stinging guilt, one that chewed me up and spit me out over hot coals to barbecue. Lately, he’d insisted toast with my homemade blueberry jam and hot coffee were all he needed in the early a.m.

That day, however, he puttered quietly in the kitchen, ignoring food, not responding to my cry.

“Lunch,” I murmured, tidying up the few coffee grounds Walter so seldom dropped. He was the ideal husband, according to both Sheila and Francine — one of the few things they agreed upon. “
And — God A’mighty,” swooned lustful Francine, “he’s
such a ma-a-an,”
ending on a guttural groan
.

I loved Walter but —
if only
I felt that passion for him. In that moment, the weight of his unhappiness crushed me. “I’ll fix you a wonderful lunch and bring it out to the site.”

He said not a word, just poured himself coffee in a styrofoam to-go cup, his handsome face closed. Other women drooled over him, yet — in his features, I saw not comeliness but a man who could be my brother, or cousin.

I gazed at him, eaten alive with remorse. “Walter, about last night —”

“No.” His hand shot up. “Don’t go there.” He closed his blue eyes for long moments, then opened and focused them on me. For the first time ever they glittered with anger. He pivoted and headed down the hall for the front door.

“Please, Walter,” I cried, dashing barefoot after him. Anger was so foreign to our connection that, in it, I sniffed some obscure portent. I grabbed hold of his arm as he wrenched open the door. He stopped and glared at me, then at my hand on his arm, further setting my emotions to tail spinning. I loosed my fingers to release him, forcing myself to lighten up. “We need to talk. Tonight?”

And I knew in that moment from whence sprang my fear. Though not embraced as my lover, Walter had become my best and dearest friend. Now, I saw that crumbling to dust. How would I fend without his alliance?

His blue eyes narrowed coldly. “Oh! The lady wants to talk, does she?
Talk.
That’s all you ever want to do!” His voice rose to a roar. “Well, I’m through talkin’, y’hear, Sunny? I don’t wanna talk. I want a daggum wife who don’t treat me like I’ve got the
mange
every time I try to touch her.”

“I’m sorry, Walter,” I whispered, appalled that I’d let it come to this, but knowing deep, deep inside, that I’d had no choice. “I can’t help it —”

Suddenly, he stepped so close I could see minute flecks of gold in his blue irises. “Well, I can’t help it either,
ma’am
. I’m through wiping your nose and hind end. Get somebody else to tend to you. I want a
wife.
” The door slammed loudly behind him. My hands flew to my mouth as I smothered emotions I was not able to even begin to decipher. The sarcastic
“ma’am’
pierced depths he’d honored in the past, the part of me who still hungered to be a teacher.
With that scathing word he’d stomped my dream into mud. I wept openly, forehead pressed to the cool doorjamb.

Today, I gazed at Emaline through tears. “I lost my scholarship.
My dream
. It hurt. Yet — I couldn’t fault Walter. He’d been good to me. And an exemplary father. He even insisted I enroll at Clemson and I did go for the next year, only to be interrupted by another pregnancy. “ I rolled my watery eyes. “To be truthful, it was an unwanted one.” I added quickly, “ but I wouldn’t trade Libby for all the degrees on the planet.” I snuffled loudly before continuing.

“I’ll always owe Walter, no matter what happens. But I couldn’t give him the one thing he wanted, Emaline. My heart.” I blew my nose into a fresh tissue she’d pressed into my hand. “ Outwardly, I was a model wife. Only Walter and I knew of the moments when, during sex, I would freeze up like
rigor mortis.”

“Aaww, honey,” Emaline took me into her arms and warmed me as she’d done years ago, when we were girls. Only then, Renie completed our snuggle circle. How I missed her. “You loved Daniel so much. It has to have been hard —”

“You just don’t know how hard,” I whispered in her ear, immeasurably relieved that Emaline understood and didn’t condemn me to Hell. Maybe I was salvageable after all. Our tears mingled as we silently remembered those sweetheart days when we’d been so certain Daniel and I would marry and live happily forever after.

We released each other, dried our faces and re-tackled the dirty dishes.

She picked up a pan, plunged it into the hot soapy water and sighed, observing her fingers slowly scour the metal. “I’ve always wondered why Daniel spooked and ran. He was so crazy about you.” The green gaze flicked up and met mine. “I’ve wondered, too, Sunny, why you married Walter so soon afterward. And why you feel you
owe
him. Looks to me like he’s benefited as much from the arrangement as you.” I gazed back at her, wanting to spew out the entire mess then and there and fall into her arms and squall like a starving newborn.

She stood waiting, soap pad clutched in hand, dripping, forgotten. I opened my mouth to speak but nothing came out. It was as though my brain opened a silo chute and dumped the whole grain load down my throat, closing and paralyzing everything in its path. Its import was too weighty to simply utter. Tears rushed to my eyes as I gazed helplessly at her.

We stood so for long moments until she blinked, looked away, and said, “It’s okay, Sunny.” She rinsed the pan and I grabbed it, thankful she’d let it go, knowing she sensed more beneath the surface. Emaline was no fool; had, in fact, one of the sharpest intellects I’ve ever known.

But…it was too, too much to go there.

Still, after all this time.

Tears spent, I recommenced drying and putting away the pans as Emaline scoured and rinsed. “Anyway, when I turned around from the door that day — after Walter left for work — Muffin stood there, glaring at me. She’d always known something was wrong but her daddy had just put it into words. And I’d as much as admitted it was true. Now she knew.”

“What about Libby?”

“She was in the shower and didn’t hear. Thank God. Initially, she was shocked at Muffin’s rendition and was quiet for a long time. Eventually, she got past it. Libby’s forgiving.”

I put the last pan away as Emaline drained the water from the sink and wiped it clean. We settled ourselves at the table again. I clasped my hands tightly before me, studying
them intently as I continued. I had to finish the story — for Emaline. It was long past due, this talk. I couldn’t tell her the entire truth but I could tell her enough to help her understand.