A Parchment of Leaves (15 page)

I couldn't help it, though; a shiver run up my back as I remembered him, watching me from amongst the trees up there on the mountain. The way he had run off, like a boy caught in the act of something criminal.

The cake of lye was nothing more than a dull brown sliver now, not even big enough to pack back to the house. I dropped it into the creek. It bobbed on the surface for just a wavering second, then drifted down to the bottom, spinning round on its way down.

I was so tired that I had to force my legs to move. It had been a long day, and my work sat like a wooden block on the small of my back. All of us had worked like people fighting a fire all day long. We had slaughtered the hog, butchered it, and salted down its meat, and tomorrow I would have to render the fat to make lard. That was the worst part of all, and I would've rather died than to have done it. I wanted to lay down and sleep until noon the next day.

When I got back to the house, Birdie's screams met me at the door. She always was scared if she woke up and thought she was alone. She was sitting upright in the bed, her mouth wide with cries. She started to shudder and calm as soon as she seen me, but it still made me feel terrible to have left her. I gathered her up in one arm and run my hand down her face. “Hush,” I said. “It's all right. Mama's here.” I felt a strange sense of remembering that I could not explain. I had heard Serena call this déjà vu.

I knowed that I would have to go to Esme's to greet Aaron. If I
didn't, Esme would be down to my house puffed up with many questions. I found that all at once I wanted to go, even while I dreaded it at the same time. My curiosity was large. I had to see that girl. Had he married her? Where had he been all this time? And was he back to stay? I didn't know how to feel about any of it.

I always kept a quilt on the back of the chair nearest the fire. Saul frowned on this, saying it was dangerous about catching the sparks, but I never had had trouble with flames, and there was nothing better than a hot quilt for Birdie on evenings like this. I turned it inside out, wrapping her in the warmest side, then put Saul's topcoat on myself. It was big enough to button Birdie against my chest, even with the quilt. I set out walking to Esme's, the sky spitting snow again.

On Esme's porch, I stomped my boots—as much for announcement as cleanliness—and went in without knocking. Nobody in the family knocked. Esme had sometimes walked right into my house without even making herself known first.

From the front room, I could see Esme moving about the kitchen, cooking a breakfast supper. Aaron and his woman were setting next to each other at the kitchen table with their backs to me. Men and women never sat beside one another at the table. I could tell that none of them knowed I had entered, despite the racket I had made on the porch, so I stood between the two rooms and unwrapped Birdie without a word. Grease popped. I could smell biscuits and bacon and coffee that mixed together into one warm, dark scent. Syrup bubbled on the stove. Esme caught sight of me about the time she broke an egg with one click of her hand and dropped it into a cast-iron skillet.

“Here she is!” Esme said, smiling. “We thought that butchering had done give you out.”

“It has, but I had to come say hello,” I said. I was shocked at how normal my voice was. Aaron turned his body a little bit, one elbow on the table to support himself as he set twisted in his seat, and his whole face smiled as if nothing had ever happened between us. The
look on his face was so true that I wondered for a moment if I had only dreamed of harsh words being spoken between us. Maybe Aaron didn't even remember it.

The woman turned, too, and I heard myself suck in my breath. I couldn't help it. Later I would know why, but at that moment, I simply thought it was the girl's beauty that stunned me. She was not a woman at all, only a girl, not more than seventeen. I knowed right away that she was a Melungeon. She was as dark skinned as I was, but her features were that of a white girl, without a doubt. Her nose was long and narrow, her eyes a cloudy blue, her brows perfect in shape, like curved lines had been painted below her forehead. Her face was heart-shaped and her lips were very pink. Her hair hung in little corkscrew curls. She smiled, and in doing so she showed blue gums and white teeth that were crooked but charming in their own right, the way they lapped over one another like sisters that longed to be close.

“Hello, Aaron,” I said at last, but here my voice wavered. I could not remember speaking his name since he had left.

“Lord, my baby is grown,” he said, and stood, opening his arms. He hadn't changed a bit. Birdie dug her knees into my side so that she would be let down, and when I put her on the floor, she run right to Aaron and kissed him on the cheek. I had not even realized that Birdie had missed him.

Aaron felt down in his shirt pocket. “I brung you something,” he said, and pulled out a ball-shaped sucker. It had been wrapped in wax paper and fastened with a rubber band about the stick. Birdie tore the wrapper off without asking me if she could have it, but I didn't say anything. I clutched my hands together in front of me, waiting for Aaron to introduce me to the girl.

“This is Aaron's woman, Aidia,” Esme said. “They got married in Tennessee.” Esme held a pan of biscuits and wore a look on her face that I couldn't distinguish. Esme was so happy to see Aaron again that I couldn't tell if the old woman approved of Aidia or not.

“Aidia,” I said, feeling the way the word felt in my mouth. “That's the finest name ever was.”

“Thank ye.” Aidia pushed her chair back and in standing revealed she was heavy with child. It was not more than a slight paunch, but I could see she was about three months along. Aidia extended her hand and I shook it, smiling like a fool. A woman had never offered to shake my hand before—it was something that only men did. Aidia held my hand tight, though, the way I imagined a banker might do. “I feel like I know you. I feel like I know this whole big creek, and Esme and your man, Saul.” She put her hand atop Birdie's head. “And Little Bit, here, too.”

“Aaron spoke of us?” Esme said, her back to us. She was making gravy, and her elbow moved in and out at her side as she stirred it. “He was so dead to leave here, I figured he didn't miss us a-tall.”

Aidia put her hand out, directing me to a seat, as if this was her house and she was the hostess. She had the best manners I had ever seen, like somebody raised up with money. Still, it was plain to me that she had been raised poor as Job's turkey. I could see it in her weary eyes. And her hands were rough as cobs.

Aaron had Birdie on his knee and was tickling her ribs. She laughed and went on like a day hadn't passed with them apart. I reckon she had missed having a man around to roughhouse with her.

“Oh, it was all he talked about,” Aidia said. “He told me that when he lived here, all he wanted was out, and when he got out, all he wanted was to be back.”

“What did you do, Aaron?” I asked. It seemed like old times. I could speak so easy to him that I knowed I had done the right thing by telling him to leave. Maybe this absence had cured him. He might have even growed up. “Where did you go all this time?”

“I went to West Virginia for a while, but they wasn't nothing but coal mines and lumber camps to work in, about like here. You can't get a job on the railroad up there. The company didn't hire locals, brought in their own crew from the District of Columbia. I wound up in Bristol, working in a movie theater.”

“A picture show!” I had always wanted to go to a theater. Serena had been to the pictures over in Hazard and had been begging me to go, too. “Bristol, Virginia, or Bristol, Tennessee?”

“It's all the same,” Aidia said in a polite manner. “It straddles the state line.”

“Oh. I never knowed that,” I said. “I've always heard of them spoken of separate.”

“I traveled all over them mountains, Vine. You wouldn't believe the places.”

“And one night I went to Bristol to see a picture,” Aidia said. “It was my birthday, and this is what I had asked for. Everybody in my family went in together and raised the money so I could see a picture. And I met Aaron.”

“We got married last week, in Cumberland Gap,” Aaron said.

“You smell like Daddy,” Birdie told him, and laid her face against his neck.

“How in the world did you afford that Model T?” I asked. I hated to be outright nosy, but I was having trouble piecing all of this together. I tried to make it sound like I was just making supper talk. “Didn't that break you up?”

“My aunt sold us the car cheap. Her man died and she's afraid of automobiles,” Aidia said proudly. “It seemed like a sign that we ought to get married, so we did.”

Esme handed me a cup of coffee. “Let's eat now, children,” she said.

“Lord, Esme, I ain't even offered to help you,” I said. I started to get up, placing my hands on the edge of the table to scoot my chair out. Before I could, Esme put her hand on my shoulder so I would stay set down.

“I begged her to let me help, but she wouldn't,” Aidia said, and sipped her coffee.

She held the cup with both hands, as if drawing heat from it. Her nails were painted pink to match her lips. A thin silver wedding band was on her finger, which made me suddenly aware that Aaron had
truly gotten married. I couldn't figure how they had even afforded to pay a justice of the peace. Surely working projectors didn't pay too good.

“Come on, now, it'll get cold,” Esme said, and set down. Esme never would eat until everyone else was finished, an old habit that she could not break. She liked watching us all eat and tell her how good it was. I always went out of my way to brag on her food, even though I had eaten it a hundred times before. “Aaron, say the blessing.”

“Lord, we thank thee for this food and fellowship,” Aaron said, sounding much like Saul. “And for a warm place to come home to. We thank thee for keeping us all safe while we were apart. Amen.”

The supper seemed like a holiday feast. Esme said that she felt Aaron's return was a reason to defy the government. She used the last of her coffee and sugar, even though the prices of both climbed with each passing day of the war. Aaron told of his adventures: hopping onto a flatbed railcar and riding down through Virginia, renting a little room in Bristol that was actually just a bed in the projector room of the theater, seeing prostitutes at the train station in War, West Virginia. Aaron was pleased with himself; he had always wanted stories to tell. He had always longed to have tales instead of dreams.

Aidia was very good natured and smiled while she chewed her food. But she seemed fragile, which was a puzzlement to me. It was obvious that she had been raised rougher than any of us. I don't know how I came to such conclusions, but it was just plain to see. It is one of those things that you can't explain good, but you know it if you see it. Maybe she was putting on airs, trying to have manners and all that so as to disguise her true self.

Without thinking first, I come right out and asked Aidia if she was in fact a Melungeon.

Aidia finished chewing up her biscuit and syrup before answering. “Yes, but we don't use that word.” She did not seem miffed and gave a little smile when she said this.

“What do you call it, then?” Esme said.

“Just people, I guess,” Aidia said, and let out a little girl's giggle. Everything seemed to delight her. “Some people at home try to hide it. People will treat you bad, over being dark, you know. But I never put on to be something I ain't. Never used that word, though. My daddy hates that word,
Melungeon.
”

“I never meant to offend you,” I said. I could feel heat rushing up to my face.

“Oh no,” Aidia said, and reached her arm across the table to pat the top of my hand. “You never. I'd rather somebody come right out and ask me instead of set and stare. That's what most people do. They can't understand somebody so dark and curly headed having blue eyes.”

“What is that, a Melungeon?” Esme said. Either she was unaware or uncaring that Aidia had asked us not to use that word.

“Surely to God you know, Mama,” Aaron said, and laughed. “You was raised in East Tennessee, where most of them are from.” He, unlike Aidia, talked with his mouth full, and I thought of how he had talked to me that day in the creek. I had a flash of the blackberries spilling out into the water, twisting like a ribbon atop the water as the bucket bobbed behind.

Aidia took the dishrag from her lap and wiped her own mouth primly. “Nobody really knows, I don't reckon,” she said. “Like I said, the way I see it, we're just people. Just like anybody else in this world.”

“Lord,” Esme said quietly. “Are they like them blue people that are supposed to live over on Troublesome?”

“I never heard tell of no blue people,” Aidia said. “But if they dark, and not Indian, then I'm part of that clan.”

“I'm Cherokee,” I said, hoping to change the subject.

“I knowed it.” Aidia nodded. “I know a lot of Cherokee people back home.”

“We may be kin,” I said. “I feel just like you, though. I'm full-blood,
but my people never talked much about it. They don't believe in the past. They want to forget all of it.”

“So you wasn't raised up Cherokee?”

“I don't know.” Somehow I felt guilty saying all of this, like I was betraying my family in some way. But I never had anybody to talk to about this. The way Aidia nodded and went on, it was like she knowed what I meant. “The old ways sort of slipped in every once in a while—but my daddy wanted us to be Americans. He was raised to think this was best.”

“Well, it ain't,” Aidia said. She leaned over the table in a private way, as if we were the only two present and she was confiding in me, her new and trusted sister-in-law. “Of course, sometimes it pays to forget the past. But it ain't right, to take your heritage away from you like that.”