Such Good Children

"I wanted to tell you. I did. I wanted to. But I thought you would go away. I thought you would hate her."

"What did you hear? What did she say to the old man?"

"They were in the livingroom. She was trying to get him out of that chair. Trying to pull him into the bathroom. The flesh around his ankles was rotten, and the backs of his legs ... they were bloody chicken bones. She had stopped putting socks on him because they'd stick to his feet and she'd peel off half the skin when she pulled them off the next day."

"He should have been in the hospital."

"Why? He was eighty-seven. There was so much water around his lungs he was drowning in his own body fluids. The only reason he stayed alive that long was the Question, you know? That, and some stupid case of toilet paper."

"Toilet paper?"

"Oh, way back when he was the custodian at Christ Church he stole a case of toilet paper from the supply room. I guess he was afraid of going to hell for it or something."

"Damn. The old man really sucked up all that Mormon crap."

"Well, you know. He wanted to be white. And good. But he was always too poor. Too uneducated. Too short. Too brown..."

"OK, whatever. I just want to know what she said to him that day. What'd she tell him?"

"Calm down. You have to let me explain it my way."

"Fine."

"She had him under the arms and groaned and heaved and groaned some more. She wasn't strong enough to lift him because of the arthritis in her shoulder and how her hands were all broken open from ice and dish water. Her hair was whiter than his, you know, even though she was the daughter."

"He didn't have any hair."

"Whatever, that's not the point."

"So what did she say?"

"You have to understand how difficult all this was for her in the first place. I mean, she'd kept this secret from him for ... what? forty-five...fifty years. Thinking he'd never know. And here he was asking her. Pleading with her for the truth. How could she bear the weight of the Question when she could hardly lift him in the first place?"

"So she didn't tell?"

"She dropped him down in the Lazy Boy and let his left hand drag over the carpet. For a minute I thought she'd drop herself into his lap. But she caught his bathrobe sleeve and held on, staring into the shine of his bald head, as if her memory were a movie projector. That damned clock, the one from the time-share people, it started ticking suddenly (I swear it wasn't before), and outside there was water gushing down the gutters on the roof. I think I must have coughed, but they didn't hear me and didn't look up.

"After probably five minutes she leaned back into the other chair and closed her eyes. 'Daddy, Daddy,' she whispered, 'it's all been so long ago. Let it lie.'

"'I got ta know, Betty,' he rasped. His voice had dissolved into raw cotton by this point. I doubt he could even hear himself without his hearing aid in, which he mostly went without because of the stray sounds. Wind through the bookcases, jeering children, his father coming to meet him."

"So he was hallucinating."

"Sometimes. Not always. Not this day I don't think. His eyes were actually open and clear. I think he got some kind of reprieve right near the end, and he knew he better get straight on all this mess pretty quick before they came back and took him for good."

"So? What'd she tell him?"

"She asked him why. She said, 'What difference will it make if you know one thing or another?'

"Just then Mom Mom came in from cleaning out the birdbath. She likes to polish it, you know, and shoo the birds away. But this time she wasn't wearing shoes, and she tracked in snow with her bare feet. I didn't want her to disturb them. I didn't want them to stop. So I led her into the bedroom and shut the door. I found one slipper for her under the bed and another one under the sink in the bathroom, but when I came back in the bedroom, she was gone. So fast. Like somehow in all her fog she knew they were talking about her.

"I crept back into the livingroom as she was sitting down on the couch. Nothing was changed. Mommy was still in the chair with her face closed into itself and Pop Pop's lips were moving against his chest. 'If you know what she did you gotta tell me, Betty. You can't let me go outta this world blind.'

"'Now, Wilson,' Mom Mom scolded, 'stop worrying that child. She's a good girl. She ain't done nothing wrong, have you Betty?'

"'It's okay, Mom,' Betty whispered, 'he's not mad at me. Are you Daddy?'

"'You see?' he answered, not looking at Mom Mom, 'she don't know what's going on anymore. You're the only one who can help me, baby, please.'

"I scurried to the couch and spooned Mom Mom up into my arms. 'It's okay, sweetie,' I told her in her ear, hoping to distract her from them for awhile. 'Remember the night I was born?' Of course she didn't. But it was the first thing I thought of. 'Remember how you held me all night so Mommy could sleep?'

"'Oh, yes,' she whispered back. 'You were ... my niece's baby sister and you were such a good ... one ... when we went to ... Philadelphia to see the ... muskrats. Before the man shot them all of course.'

"'That's right,' I went along with her, trying to keep one ear open to the exchange still in progress across the room.

"'Daddy,' Mommy pleaded, 'whatever she did she doesn't remember, and it's not my place to say anything. It's too late. It's too late.' Her eyes were beginning to water like they do in church when the choir sings "Oh My Father." But quickly the water became an echo inside her throat, and I knew she was scared. Not scared like my mother. Scared like me when I was seven and Dad pretended to drive off and leave her at church. Remember how he laughed at us? Said she had been bad and was never coming home again. That kind of scared. Like if she gave in to the old man and gave him the truth he would go away finally and never come back.

"'Mommy,' I murmured, cradling my grandmother in my left arm, stroking her shoulder up and down, up and down, the way she would rub me on Sunday mornings when I climbed in her bed. 'Mommy, look at him. He needs to go real bad.'

"'I know,' she said, 'But I can't lift him.'

"'How 'bout if I help you? Can I help you? Will you let me?'

"She paused again. Just stared ... at me ... at her mother ... at her father propping himself up against air ... and said okay.

"'Okay,' I said back, and then as gently as I possibly could, 'but first you have to tell him.'"

"So did she finally?"

"She did ... in a way. She began to tell him a story. She said that once there was a girl who lived on a farm. Four days a week she went to a one-room schoolhouse. There was a wood heater at the front of the room, and each day the children who had attended the previous day got to move up a row closer to the heater. Each day she would move closer and closer to the front, until the fifth day when she had to miss school to work on the farm. When she returned the following week, she would have to go to the back of the room and start all over again. She never did get to sit next to the heat.

"This same girl, she told him, had never tasted ice cream, until one summer when she went to work in the house of a rich lady. The lady's son bought the girl an ice cream cone, and the girl, who was so afraid that she'd never get another, licked the ice cream so slowly that it melted clean away before she was even half through.

"'I know these stories,' I interrupted, guessing that this stuff was not what had gotten Pop Pop so upset. 'Mom Mom told me all this when I was little and used to crawl in bed with her.'

"Mommy didn't respond to my outburst directly. Just went on with her story:

"'The son of the rich lady was very charming and very white. And the girl was very pretty and light-skinned, compared to the rest of her people. He told her he would marry her. He promised her a taste of something far sweeter than ice cream. What he gave her must have been awfully sweet because even after he left her with no money and pregnant she kept the secret of him tight inside her in hopes that one day she'd get just one more taste.'

"She looked up at me, her face gone suddenly from water to stone. 'That is the kind of story my mother told me in bed.' And as suddenly, her face softened and she continued:

"'There was a boy in the town, a little brown boy, poor, from farm people like hers. He loved the girl. Made her promises she could believe. Said he'd be father to her baby. She lied. She told him the baby's father was another boy from the farm and that the affair was over. She told him she loved him, and they got married. The baby was all she had left of the rich lady's son.

"'The child grew into a little girl. And as she grew, the secrets inside her mother grew so big she couldn't hold them by herself anymore. She made the girl climb up in her bed to help her. Told her all about the white men who were soooo sweeeet and the tastes they would bring her the nights her husband was bowling. Told her about how beautiful their skin was and how soft their hair. And finally ...' She paused for a minute.

"'Mom,' I started, 'I ... I changed my ... you don't have to ...'

"'And finally she told me that she was pregnant and that she needed me to go with her to get an abortion. Not because she was afraid it was another man's baby, but because she was afraid it wasn't, and she didn't want to give birth to a colored man's child.'"

"Damn. Ah shit, damn. My grandmother's a goddamned whore."

"See, this is why I didn't want to tell you. The whore part is not the point anyway. So what if she had affairs. Big deal. He probably did too. But no children. Never any children of his own. And he could have. No wonder the man clung to his own life so hard."

"What happened then? How did he take it?"

"Actually, he didn't. He had sort of dozed off right before the last part of her story and by the time the lightening hit he was slumped over the side of his chair drooling down his arm. I helped her carry him to bed, and he stayed there until he died a few months later. He would come in and out of lucidity here and there, but he never asked her for the story again. She thinks he already knew."

"And did Mom Mom know what the story was about?"

"I don't think so. When it was over she just snuggled down into me and sang, 'I just love all you children so much. You are all just so good. Such good children.'"

ãElizabeth Terry
11/5/1996