Gladys Hicks
“What’s your skinny ass doing here?”
“Wanna see if you was all right, that’s all.”
Sadie Blue stands at the edge of my yard and drags the toe of her sneaker in the dirt. A bright spot of sunshine holds her in its beam and shines through her skimpy dress. Her baby bump is the size of a honeydew.
“I don’t need you checking on me, girl. This ain’t your home no more.”
She takes a step back, and I feel a pang of regret. Or maybe it’s gas. I’m planted on my porch, hands on my hips and bun wound so tight my ears hurt. “I thought you was gone for good, now you legal and all.”
As usual, Sadie don’t say much.
“Well…you’re here…”
With weak permission, my grandgirl steps in the yard, and I turn and open the screen door. Like always, it slaps my heels when I enter, and I head back to the kitchen and the smell of last night’s collard greens.
Sadie comes in slow-footed, and I wanna hit her upside the head cause she’s meek when she’s under my roof. Instead, I slide the iron skillet onto the burner rough-like and slap in a mound of lard, then bark orders. “Peel potatoes and onions. Slice em thin. You slice em thick. I like em thin.”
“Yes, ma’am. Thin.”
I cut my eyes to see if she sasses me, but Sadie slices thin, then scoops up the pile of potatoes and drops em in the hot pan. She jumps back when the grease pops; her face stays empty. I plop down on the kitchen chair and my thighs settle over the edges. I sift through the thin stack of mail circulars with one hand and rub my knee with the other.
“Your joints ache, Granny?”
I don’t bother to say. She sees how swoll my knee is. I sip sweet tea and watch Sadie turn potatoes and onions, slice ham, and wash yesterday’s dishes. There’s grace bout the girl. Like her mama long gone from here, in this plain place Sadie won’t plain…and that galls me. I never got a speck of grace. I was born big-boned and grew tall in a family of runts, and I look down on folks ever since.
Sadie fills our plates from the stove and we eat without talk. Her eyes stay down, and mine stay righteous. When I’m done, I pull the chew outta my pocket and head to the porch glider like I always do to ponder troubles that stay too long. Sadie showing up jumped her to the head of the worry line. I sip on my jar of hooch I keep by the glider cause it softens my rememberings.
My grandgirl tied her hopes to a crappy man without a lick of promise. I could tell by the set of Roy Tupkin’s eyes and jut of his jaw that he was the sorry kind. Sadie was blind to danger. She sneaked out at night when she thought I was sleep but won’t. I looked out my bedroom window at her running cross the yard with her feet barely touching ground. For a stretch of time, she’d climbed into the front seat of Roy’s pickup with the taillights out. I coulda told her he was looking for easy and a woman’s life is hard, but she don’t ask.
“Got me three dead babies… Then Carly comes along, a runty girl too strong-willed for her own damn good—”
“Granny?” Sadie sticks her head out the screen door, wiping her hands on a rag. “You say something?”
I’m talking out loud and don’t know it. I look ahead and rock in the squeaky glider.
Sadie adds, “If you did, I didn’t hear you, that’s all.”
I keep on rocking, and she goes back to the kitchen.
I don’t like to look the fool. Truth is, sometimes I need to hear a voice even if it’s mine. I’m not use to somebody in earshot to pay attention so I stop ruminating and head inside.
“You gonna stay?”
“That okay?”
“No…but you’ll stay anyway.”
My ruminating is all off with Sadie here. I grip the banister and heave myself up the warped treads. Have to stop midway to catch my breath. At the top I rest again, then head to the bedroom that’s only changed for the worse in forty-one years.
This place belonged to my husband’s family three generations back. A unpainted house on the somber side of Bentwood Mountain. When I come as a bride it was enough, but time’s added a brittle coat of neglect. The feather bed sags deep when I climb into its valley.
While my body settles in, Sadie comes quiet up the stairs, steps over the loose board at the top, and closes her bedroom door with a soft click. Night sounds slide through the cracks in the walls. Sleep is gonna come. It always does, but so do rememberings. Sometimes they take me places I don’t wanna go. Sometimes they take me places I don’t wanna leave. I never know where I’m going when I climb in this featherbed.
? ? ?
“Push hard. You can do it,” Birdie orders. “PUSH.”
I push and push till I part the Red Sea, and out comes a tiny creature not meant for this world. Birdie’s face is fuzzy, looking young way back then, and I know the little one’s fate without her saying. She wraps it in a rag like leftovers, puts it on the floor, and starts to clean down there. A battle’s been fought and I lost again. Birdie leaves and takes the leftovers. I wonder if she’ll come back and don’t care one way or the other.
My body stinks. My hair is limp on a stained pillow. I lay in my mess and study watermarks on the ceiling. One looks like a railroad track to somewhere else. I follow a crack cross the ceiling to where it meets the wall, then runs down and out the open window to the redbuds. It’s bright outside. I squint against the glare.
Birdie comes back. She stands straight in midlife and gives me comfort words. “Gladys, let me clean you and finish up. Your work is done.”
She set on the stool next to my bed a pan of warm water with the sweet smell of herbs and a clean rag. Like I’m the baby, she works my nightgown over my head. Takes long strokes down my arms, under my ninnies, cross my empty belly, down my legs to the calloused soles of my wide feet that got cracks in the heels. Rolls my tired body one way, then the other way, strips the soiled towels and sheet from under me and puts on clean linens. The sheets are cool and dry against my washed back. The scent of mint that grows beside the clothesline clings to my cotton gown and sheets. Birdie’s face is smooth. Her hands are tender with sympathy and sadness. I appreciate the gift of her.
“You feel better now you cleaned up,” she says, and at her kind voice, I squeeze my eyes and out squirt skinny tears. They slide cross my temples and into my hair and ears. She wipes my eyes and brushes my hair with her stubby fingers. The last thing she does is put a cool pillow under my head, then leaves me with my loss.
Walter would have heard and taken to his corn likker. I’ll pay later for those nights he couldn’t have his way with me and don’t have a baby boy to show for it. For now, this clean space is mine to start to heal before he comes at me again. Tonight, this remembering don’t make me wander. It stays put on a bed that smells of springtime.
I don’t wanna leave.