Tending to Virginia (34 page)

“Raymond said Ginny Sue broke it,” Madge says and looks at Hannah. “We never told you and Ben because I didn’t want you to feel like you had to replace it.”

“Well, for God’s sake,” Hannah says and pulls some darning out of her purse. “We surely could have bought a mirror. I get so tired of everybody acting like we don’t have a pot to pee in or a window to throw it out of.” She bites off some thread and knots one end. “I’ll still buy a mirror if all this nonsense can stop.” She turns suddenly
to Virginia. “Why didn’t you tell me about it? Who have I been all these years that you can’t seem to tell me anything?” Virginia watches her mother’s mouth moving with the words and she’d like to be in one of Gram’s closets right now with a quilt pulled up around her while it thunders and lightnings; she’d like to be on the feather bed lying so still just the way that Gram had always made her do during a storm. “It’s the Lord speaking,” Gram had said. “It’s a disrespect to talk and be loud during it,” and Gram would tell the story of how her sister perished and how her mother, the other Virginia Suzanne, went to the grave every afternoon for four months to sit there and cry and to beg that child to forgive her because she hadn’t known what else to do. She’d put food on top of the grave, things that deer and birds could come and eat and she’d stay there for hours, until one day a storm came up and lightning struck right near her feet, and she told of how it was like the sky had opened up and was threatening to take her too if she didn’t get back home and tend to her business, tend to the living. “Virginia? Just tell me why you’ve kept things from me?” her mother asks now.

“She told me about it,” Gram says. “She told me that she didn’t break that mirror and she told me that she didn’t want to stay over at that house no more because it scared her and I didn’t blame her. A grown man creeping around to jump out and say boo at a child when he should’ve had better sense.”

“What happened?” Hannah asks, Ginny not looking at her.

“He scared her with his silliness,” Gram says. “And then he tried to blame that broken mirror on her when it was probably Cindy that done it.”

“He did it,” Virginia says before Cindy can speak.

“What happened?” Madge asks. “
How
did he break the mirror?”

“He didn’t,” Cindy says and flops back down in her chair. “God, I wish it would stop raining so I could get the hell out of here.”

“Ginny Sue cried so that night,” Gram says and Virginia turns and tries to catch Gram’s eye, tries to get her to stop. “I told her that he wasn’t worth the worry and for her just not to go over there anymore.”

“See? See?” Cindy screams. “A soap opera! Poor little Ginny
Sue, can’t even take a joke. My daddy tried to make your life a little bit fun and you couldn’t take it.”

“He said he’d kill me if I ever told.” Virginia sits up, her eyes still on Gram. “I couldn’t even tell Gram the whole story because he said he’d kill me.”

“What?” Hannah stands, her hands clasped together while she turns first to Madge and then to Virginia. “What did he do to you?” she asks and Virginia shakes her head, closes her eyes tightly and keeps them closed. She hears Madge breathe out “Oh my God” and she hears Cindy rummaging in the closet to find an umbrella and she hears the sound of those wingtip shoes coming up the steps. “Did he touch you?” Virginia hears her mother, shudders with the thought of what she’s really asking, shakes her head.

“That’s sick!” Cindy screams, still rummaging.

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me that Ginny got scared like that,” Hannah says and stares at Gram. “I know you didn’t know the whole story but you knew she was scared and you should have told me. I am her mother.”

“And I am your mother,” Emily says and stares at Hannah until she looks away. They might think that living in a wheelchair means you can’t take care of your business and tend to the living, but they are wrong. It is her house and she is in charge and if she wants to throw scalding water to stop that alley cat banjo picking then she will and if she wants nobody to keep her company but Tessy and Mag Sykes then that’s who she’ll invite the next time and they’ll split themselves a little glass of beer and they’ll make a quilt that God hisself would not dare to sit upon.

“I never knew what he might do,” Madge says. “From day to day, I never knew.”

“I want to hear exactly what happened,” Hannah says, lowering her voice, her needle frozen in midair. Cindy is standing at the front door staring out, her car keys clenched in her fist but Virginia knows she is listening. “Virginia, I am your mother!” Virginia, it has an odd sound coming from her mother.

“I was a mother,” Lena whispers. “That woman gave me the baby and I called him Cord after my daddy.”

“Hannah turns now and stares at Lena sitting there with a pillow clutched up to her chest. “You never had a child, Lena,” she says slowly.

“Yes she did,” Emily says. “I said, ‘don’t you cry now, Lena. My babies are like your babies.’ Lena had my babies like her own.”

“I had you for a baby, Hannah,” Lena says now, her eyes so tired and dull. “You are my baby and Ginny Sue is my grandbaby.”

“I guess you don’t want us,” Cindy says. “Come on, Mama. I don’t know how you can sit there and hear all this craziness. It’s the Twilight Zone.”

“Lena wasn’t big enough to have herself a baby,” Emily says. “Besides, she didn’t want one.”

“That’s a lie,” Cindy says and turns. She is ready to jump on anything or anybody. “Look at me, I’m smaller than she’s ever been.”

“The doctor said I was not to have children and he fixed me,” Lena says. “I was fixed like a give-out cat.”

“God, it scares me for Ginny Sue,” Emily says. “I know what it’s like to be a child and be scared. It can be a sheet in the wind but if it scares you, then you’re scared and nothing’s gonna change it. I knew just how she felt that night Raymond left her here. I know fear.”

“Raymond was not himself those last ten years,” Madge says, still staring down at the floor. “He was a very sick man.”

“I never wanted a child was all!” Lena yells and nobody questions her.

“He told me that I’d look nice in a tomb,” Virginia whispers. “He said he could just see me wrapped up in a pure white sheet, my body oiled and perfumed, and he made me tell him that he was the king, that he was beautiful and that I worshipped him, and he said that I better never tell that I said all of those things to him because everyone would hate me, that you and Cindy would hate me.” She looks at Cindy, her jaw clenched and face red, while she toys with her key chain. “And I loved you and Cindy, Aunt Madge.”

“It was just a game,” Cindy says slowly, her chin quivering. “I played it. It was like playing King on the Mountain. Sometimes he’d tell me to be real still and he’d wrap me in a sheet and I’d start laughing because it was like any other game where you scare yourself. I knew it was just a
game!”

“A game?” Hannah asks, her voice so clear that it seems to echo. “So do you play this
game
with Chuckie?”

Cindy freezes, glares at Hannah with all the hatred she can feel; her mama is on the edge of her chair waiting for the answer, and Cindy feels herself breaking, her throat closing. He had told her it was
their
game,
their
secret. She stays in the darkness by the front door, the sound of rain still running through the gutters. But it wasn’t just a game and she had believed him. She had believed him when he said that he loved her and she had believed him when he said that Charles would never be good enough for her, that Charles was a nothing. But Charles is not a nothing, and now she doesn’t have anybody. Cindy leans her back against the wall and slides down, pulls her knees up to her chest and rolls her head from side to side. She hears her father, over and over, telling her how she is his child; “Your mama prefers Catherine and I prefer you,” he had said. “You are just like me and I’d never let Catherine be Queen in the Tomb.” But, he let Ginny Sue; no, no, he
made
Ginny Sue.

Cindy looks up and shakes her head back and forth; they are in that gray light of the window, the lamp behind Emily’s chair and she can see pale white faces, silent faces except for Lena who is bent over the pillow she cradles. “Oh, baby, baby,” Lena whispers.

“I do not play the game with Chuckie,” Cindy says slowly, trying to meet eyes with Hannah. “My daddy never hurt me. He loved me. I know that he really did love me. He was the only person that loved me.”

“Oh God,” Madge breathes and rises from her chair, awkwardly makes her way over to Cindy. “What about me?” she whispers and she feels like she did when she walked through that hallway, leaving Raymond there behind her on the floor, and even though he was dead, there was the fear that he would suddenly spring up and grab her by the ankle, suddenly spring up and drag her down with him. She was relieved; she was glad he was dead. Now, she squats and nervously wraps her arms around Cindy, expecting her daughter to change suddenly as she usually does, to spit harsh words, blame her for everything that’s ever happened. “It’s okay Little Goldilocks,” she whispers and Cindy stares at her with dull surprise. “I’m the one that gave you that name, you know. That’s what I called you
when you were a tiny baby and nursing.”

Hannah goes now and squats beside Lena’s chair and Lena stares down at her, whispers, “I wanted you for my baby. I wanted you to be right here,” and she takes Hannah’s hand and presses it into her stomach, and Virginia presses her own as she watches, and waits, movement, a flutter of arms and legs like a swimmer trying to reach the surface. “That explains a whole lot,” her mother whispers, voice shaking as she stares over at Virginia. “All those times you were so scared, times you thought there was a man in the closet, the way it would frighten you so to break something.”

Madge comes back into the room now, Cindy behind her and they both sit back down at the table and turn their backs to the pouring rain. The lamp behind Emily’s chair flickers when there is a loud peal of thunder. “We ought to be on a bed and quiet,” Emily whispers. That’s what her mama always said. She had made Emily get on the bed that day after Curie left and the rain was pouring down. “Lie quiet, now, and say your prayers,” her mama said, and Emily tried to pray but her mind kept wandering to that day that she stood out there and danced and laughed herself tired and the harder the rain fell, the faster she turned in her mind, Curie off to the side while she spun around like she owned the whole sky.

“I think God has already spoken,” Hannah says, glancing around the room and trying to pull it all together, this simple simple life, suddenly grown so huge. How can you live all these years without knowing?

“Yeah,” Cindy says, her voice so low and serious. “But he
did
love me. He didn’t mean to scare Ginny Sue.” She looks at Virginia, but then has to look away, all the hatred and anger that she had felt, leaving her numb. Everyone gets quiet when the lights flicker off and the rain is like an endless drone. Cindy fumbles in her purse and clicks a lighter, goes to the mantle where there is a candle and lights it.

“I wasn’t even there for you, Madge,” Hannah says after awhile. “If I had only known how bad it was.”

“I didn’t even know myself,” Madge says. “It was all so slowlike.” And she feels her chest tighten as the words start coming, Crisco
cans and that anniversary night, her mama’s funeral. Her voice never breaks and she keeps expecting that one will interrupt, that one will suddenly stand and point her finger at her. It is the last game, win or lose, spin the barrel and shoot; and it really doesn’t matter anymore.

“Raymond made me kill him,” she whispers and rises to her feet as if she expects that they will lunge on her hair tooth and nail. “I didn’t want to kill him but I did it. I killed Raymond.” She is crying now, twisting her hands and they are all staring at her as if they’d seen a ghost. Hannah takes one step forward but stops when Cindy jumps from her chair and runs to the phone.

“Who are you calling?” Hannah asks and Cindy shrugs, sobbing now and shaking her head back and forth. “There’s nobody to call. We’re all here. It’s all over,” and with Hannah’s words, Madge sinks to the floor and curls up with her back to them, the candle flickering there in front of the window. Madge feels Hannah’s hand on her shoulder, feels Hannah lift her up and dab a Kleenex under her eyes.

“Mama said it was a sign from God not to sit before a grave,” Emily says. “He was letting her know that she had business of the living to tend to.”

“That’s what you told me,” Lena says and nods. “My business was with Roy, mine and Roy’s business; now y’all laugh over business if you please. Just laugh, just goddamn laugh,” She looks around the room but they ain’t laughing; no sir, they learned not to laugh over Roy Carter just like she learned not to cry over a baby, because she took good care of those cats, yeah Jesus she did and Roy said he could fire a gun and scare them cats but they were too smart for that, yeah boy, stay up there under the house where it’s cool and shady and come morning you can have some milk.

“I can’t believe I’ve told it,” Madge says and wipes her eyes. “I can’t believe after all these years.”

“Neither can I,” Cindy whispers and Madge feels a chill up her neck; she can’t believe what? that Madge killed him? that he was out of his mind? She has said the words and can’t take them back, words hanging, words that can be repeated and why should she
trust them? Why should she trust anybody? “You can’t sink your trust or faith into nothing,” her mama had said, that long gray hair hanging to her waist while she puffed that pipe.

“What’s going to happen to me?” Madge asks suddenly. “What are you going to do with me?”

“Keep you I reckon,” Emily says and laughs. That’s what she used to tell David when he was a child. She’d catch him using her good scissors to cut out pictures of all the places he was going, cars he’d drive, the big house where he’d live with a pretty young wife. She’d say, “David Roberts, what am I going to do with you?” and he’d look at her with those big brown eyes, shrug his shoulders and she’d hug him so tight. “I’ll keep you I reckon,” she’d say and laugh, feeling his childhood squeal vibrating there against her chest.