A Parchment of Leaves (32 page)

I felt myself start to tremble, not out of fear, but out of that old guilt that never really left. And because of my longing to see my people. I was surprised by the emotion rising up in my chest. I had not expected it. “Saul, I need to go see them. It's been too long.”

“We can't right now, and that's all there is to it, Vine.”

I let out a sigh. “Why do you speak to me so hateful anymore? Why is your voice always so hard?”

Saul looked at the mountain. He had plucked a piece of clover from the ground and now he twirled it by its stem between forefinger and thumb. I watched the spinning leaf for a long moment. He spun it first one way, then the other.

“Answer me,” I said. My voice was louder than I intended for it to be. It come from way down inside of me.

He turned to face me real quick, and his brows were gathered together
in such a way that I thought he might be about to cry. But it was only anger, a mark across his face. “Because there is a secret here that I'm not privy to. There is something you ain't told me, and I don't like it.”

“You mean about why Esme didn't want to be laid by Willem.”

“No,” he said. “Something bigger than that. I have been married to you seven year now, and I know you, Vine. They's something standing between us and I want to know what it is.”

I had been foolish enough to think he wouldn't sense it. I should have known. This realization sent a calmness over me, a peace that held a stillness as large as winter. I stood and hollered to the children, who were playing hide-and-seek among the sunflowers.

“Luke, I want you to take the girls to the house,” I said. “They's half a coconut cake on the sideboard. Take it out on the porch and eat all you want.” Luke took off, and Birdie hitched Matracia up onto her hip, walking fast.

I went back to Saul. I put my hand on his shoulder as I set down on the grass beside him. I set there for a minute, trying to choose my words. I considered the sky and knowed the gloaming was coming in fast. Soon the lightning bugs would come up out of the laurel, and the night would close in. And by that time, everything would be changed between us. Nothing would ever be the same again.

“Something happened between me and Aaron,” I said.

A
fter I had told him every bit of it, the world seemed completely silent. Not so much as a whippoorwill's call coming down out of the mountains. He just set there a long time. Dusk had overtook the holler, and his face was lost to me.

I put my hand out and touched his arm, but he didn't move. His head was bowed, like he was praying. I let my hand linger there just a moment, hoping for some kind of answer, but I pulled it slowly away and let it fall onto my lap. I felt exhausted. It seemed everything had come out in a great jumble. I had been dying to say all these words for so long. My mouth was dry as a hat, and my throat ached. But after I got it out, I felt my soul stepping back into my body there on the grass.

An owl screeched far up on the ridge. Its call slid out onto the night air like a ribbon being unwound. And then I was aware of the katydids in the weeds. The crickets called “Pharaoh! Pharaoh!” The children's little voices twinkled across the yard, and a slight breeze caused the corn blades to brush against one another like the whispers of men.

Saul stood as if with great effort. I got up, too, and stood there beside him, waiting for him to say something. Waiting for him to say anything.

Seemed like he was having trouble making his mouth work. “He was my baby brother,” he said, the words coming out like bits of glass. Then he walked off into the night.

I stood there a long time, not knowing what to do. Not knowing what he had meant. It didn't matter now what happened. I had told him, and it had been as freeing as a confession to God. It had been a testimony. My words had been my penance.

I walked to the house, still hugging my arms, and found the children on the porch. I couldn't believe they had occupied themselves so long. It was nigh their bedtime. Serena still hadn't returned from a delivery way over on Pushback Gap, so Luke would be staying the night. I hustled them into the house and made them wash. I went about getting ready for the night, just as I always had. I could not understand how collected I was.

I stood in the door awhile, watching for Saul, but there was no sign of him. I had not heard him leave on his horse, so he couldn't have gone far. He had left without so much as a lamp to light his way. Even after the children had gone to sleep, I went out onto the porch and listened for some sign of him. I thought maybe he was on the mountain facing our house, where I had buried Aaron. In winter I would have been able to hear him up there, his feet heavy on fallen limbs and crisp leaves. But tonight I could hear nothing over the cry of the night things. Crickets and tree frogs sang as if in great celebration.

I
N THE MORNING
, Saul still had not returned. Surely he hadn't slept all night on the mountain and arisen only to go off to work, without so much as changing clothes or washing his face. His horse was gone. It had not awakened me because I had fallen into a sleep like the dead. Telling him everything had wore me out so badly that my eyes had grown heavy before midnight.

I cooked breakfast, trying to figure what Saul would do. I had lived with him this long, and I didn't know if he would choose me or his family. After all, I had taken one of them. I had killed his baby brother. For all I knowed he was gone to get the law.

Serena come to the house about the time I put breakfast on the table. She had been up with the birthing all night long and her face was heavy with weariness as she trudged up the yard. She looked as if she had fought a great battle.

I looked up from my syrup, which was still bubbling in the cooker. “How was it?” I asked.

“Bad,” she said. “A real bad one. The baby never made it, and I tried everything in me.”

“I'm sorry,” I said.

“Cry when they are born, and celebrate when they die, the Bible says,” Serena said. “Still, it's hard to see that.”

I broke up a biscuit and spread gravy over it, then put two pieces of tenderloin on the plate and slid it across the table to her. She bit off a big hunk of the meat and chewed loud while she talked. “Luke good last night?”

“Why, yeah,” I said.

“What's the matter?” Serena said.

“What makes you think something's the matter?” I said, glancing past her to look out the open door. I don't know why. Even if Saul was coming back, it wouldn't be until his shift at the mill was over with.

Serena jabbed her fork into the biscuit and gravy, then talked around a mouthful. “Hellfire, Vine. I know you. I know when something's wrong.”

I didn't answer her. I went into the girls' room and awoke the children. Birdie and Matracia were all hugged up, as they always slept. Their arms were intertwined. Luke slept on his pallet on the floor. I wished for the ignorance of children. I wished that I was like them, and knew nothing of the real ways of the world. I shook them awake.

In the kitchen, Serena was sipping from her coffee with both hands holding the cup. She put it down quick and said, “Tell me, Vine.”

I set down at the table. “I told him,” I said.

Serena put her cup down hard. “Oh, Vine. Oh, honey, you oughtn't have.”

“I had to, Serena. I couldn't go on living like that.”

“What did he say?”

I shook my head. “He just walked off. He said, ‘He was my baby brother,' and then just walked away. I don't know where he stayed all night. Up on that mountain, I guess. He must have laid right down next to where Aaron was buried and slept there.”

“Maybe he meant he was sick to think his baby brother could do such a thing.”

I didn't think so. If that was true, why hadn't he put his arms around me?

The children padded into the kitchen. I poured them buttermilk and run my hand over their hair, trying to put on a good face. I had lived so long trying to look happy for Birdie and Matracia. Only now did I realize that it had give me out. Carrying around a lie is the worst kind of labor.

“If you want to go down to the mill and look for him, I'll stay here with the children,” Serena said.

“Go get in my bed and get you some rest,” I said. “You ain't able to make it back outside, much less back to your house.”

I got up to get more biscuits off the sideboard, and Serena come around the table to me and put her hands on my shoulders. She smelled of sweat and woodsmoke. “You all right?” she whispered.

I nodded. I couldn't speak for fear of crying. She patted my back and pulled away. She stood at the dishpan a long while, scrubbing her hands and arms, and then went to the bedroom. “If you need me, you get me up,” she called.

S
ERENA SLEPT ALL DAY
, far past noon. I set on the porch, looking through the soup beans for stray rocks. I glanced up every few minutes, watching the road. I let the beans slide through my hands as I took them from the sack and put them into the crock of water. I set them on the porch table to soak and went to the garden to pull up green onions for supper. With each one I pulled up, I started to feel spots of anger rise up in my body. All morning I had had feelings of relief and then despair. I didn't know if I had done the right thing or not. I put the onions in my apron and turned to take them back to the house, and there was my great-granny Lucinda. Just as pretty as she had always been. She looked at me a long moment without any sign of expression. I stood there, aware of my loud breathing, and did not move. She was so real that I was sure I could smell her. She smelled of cedar.

I put my hand out but felt only air. She was showing herself to tell me something, but I couldn't figure what exactly. Maybe she was there as a sign of comfort. I reckoned I might be conjuring her just to feel like I had some of my own people there with me. I wasn't scared of her, but I closed my eyes, willing her to leave. I didn't want to see the dead. And when I opened them again, she was gone.

I skinned the onion's heads and cut the tails off, then let them soak with the beans. I thought about Lucinda coming to me, and I knowed that she was giving me a sign as to what I should do. If Saul couldn't accept what I had done, I would give him more time to think about it. I would go to see my people.

I
didn't know what to pack. I just throwed some clothes into a bag and got a few things I couldn't do without: a cake of soap, a washrag, a tin cup for water. I wrapped up a pone of corn bread and some jerky, took a pint of honey and a box of matches. I checked two or three times to make sure I had the roll of money that Esme had left for me. This was what she had wanted me to do with it, after all. And I got the wad of Lucinda's hair that Mama had give me on my wedding day. I felt this would help guide me over the big mountains between here and there.

I stepped off the porch and walked to the little redbud in my front yard. I ran my thumb over one of its leaves, just as I had done many times before. It was cool and it smelled wild and green. I leaned close to the tree. “Forgive me,” I said, and in that moment I felt like I had finally forgiven myself. It happened that quick, that easy, after so many days of packing such a weight.

Serena come out of the house in a flurry, pushing her hair back into combs on either side of her head. “Vine, you've lost your mind,”
she said. She grabbed me by the arm. “You can't ride no horse all the way to North Carolina. It'll take you three or four days.”

“I'm going to, Serena.”

I walked on around the house and spread a blanket out on the horse's back. I took the saddle from the fence and dressed the horse as it stomped its feet, like it knowed of the long journey ahead. I run my hand down its long face. “It's all right,” I said.

Serena stood behind me with the children. “Don't run off like this,” she said. But I wasn't about to give in. My mind was made up. “Everything will be all right, Vine.”

I strapped my pack across the horse's flanks and turned very slowly. Birdie and Matracia looked up at me with expectation in their eyes. I knelt down in the dirt and pulled them both to me. “Don't worry,” I said. “I'll be back before long. Serena will see to you.”

“Aidia didn't come back before long,” Birdie said.

“But I will, baby. I promise you that. This time next week, we'll be together.”

I kissed each of them on the forehead, then on the lips. I held their faces in my hands for a long time, letting the feel of their skin sink into my own. I thought of the day on the mountain when I had looked at Birdie for so long. Something had told me to take that moment and dog-ear it for future reference. Now I knowed that this image would carry me over the mountains to North Carolina. And I felt like I was leaving for Birdie. For Matracia. Even for Saul. I knowed that I had to get away a little while or I would collapse right in front of their eyes.

“I wish I could take them with me,” I said, my words caught in the back of my throat.

“It'll be too hard a trip to do it alone, much less with children,” Serena said. She stood in the yard with her hands held together in front of her. “That's a big trip, Vine. You've lost your senses.”

“I need to see my people,” I said.

Serena grabbed my hand, run her thumb over the back of it. “I'm asking you not to do this.”

I slipped my hand away and put my foot into the stirrup. I pulled myself up onto the horse. “Just take care of the children for me. Do this and I'll never ask nothing else of you,” I said.

“Please, Vine,” Serena said, and took a step nearer the horse.

I looked down on them and felt as if I was far up in the sky. “Mind Serena, now, girls. I'll be back in a few days.”

“I don't want you to go,” Birdie said.

“I love you all,” I said, trying not to hear what Birdie said. I couldn't bear to hear her cry after me. I dug my heels into the horse's side and steered him down into the creek bed. I didn't want to take the road. I had first entered this holler through the creek, and I would leave this way. I didn't look behind me as I left the holler. I could hear Serena hollering to me—her voice now mad instead of humble—but my ears couldn't decipher the words.