I wrote this story after visiting Charleston, SC on a family vacation. Another influence was a class I recently took on languages and dialects. Enjoy!
I walked with my feelings toward the willow tree, it’s branches extended further due to the Spanish Moss that hung over it, draped like a shawl. The fingers of the branches reached down towards the ground, providing a little world inside where nobody could see me and my emotions. The Spanish Moss accentuated the point, making the cave darker and yet, more homely as less light glimpsed through the branches. I sat down next to the trunk of the tree, looking up at the partial moon. The air was warm and humid, like most summer nights in South Carolina. The crickets chirped along with the buzzing of other insects I could not identify.
I sat there letting my emotions take over my thoughts. I cried, the tears draping down my face like the moss that surrounded me. I cried over the situation I’d created and cried harder at what just occurred inside. I want to scream at the stars, but they won’t reply. They will continue to shine down at me, mocking my existence. I sat there, listening to the chirping of the crickets, trying to find meaning in their song.
“Miss Sara?” A voice called from behind me. I wiped my eyes quickly and quietly. “Yes?” I asked.
“The missus is looking for you. Shall I tell her that I couldn’t find you?”
I smiled at the thought. “You have always been kind to me, Abigail. I want you to know that.”
“And you to me, Miss Sara. I will never forget that.”
“If you could please tell the missus that I needed to collect my thoughts, but I will be there…what’s a good Southern saying that she would like?”
Abigail thought for a minute. “How about ‘In two shakes of a lamb’s tail?”
Sara smiled. “Yes. I reckon that will do nicely. I’ll be just a minute.”
“Yes’m,” Abigail nodded and disappeared back into the darkness.
“That girl could dance with the shadows and nobody would know,” I said aloud and laughed. I have not a clue what I had just said. But it sounded Southern. “Yes, it sounded Southern, and that is what we all must be,” I said to myself. I stood up underneath the tree, looking out between the mossy fingers. I was wrong. It felt more like a cage, which I guess is how I felt: an animal caught in a snare of my own making. Filled with Southern pride, I raised my head high and walked back to the house.
I opened the door and heard yelling. My mother, born and bred in Charleston, was at the height of her rage. “I don’t care a cotton-pickin’ minute about ‘two shakes of a lamb’s tail! I demand that she comes inside, RIGHT…NOW!” The last two words included a stomp of her boots, echoing throughout the parlor. She stopped and stared as the door swung open. I saw Abigail standing to the side with a split lip. There were tears in her eyes, but she could not, would not let them fall.
“You hit her?” I whispered. My rage was like a tsunami. All the power retreated until the final surge. “Why did you hit her?”
“She gave me an answer that I could not accept. That is the price of her lies.”
“Abigail didn’t lie. I told her that exact phrase, and I came in right behind her.
“You were a minute behind her. That is not…not…directly behind hahhh” Her drawl dropped the r from the last word and turned into a sigh. She was the opposite of me in anger. I was a tsunami; she was a volcano.
I held out my hands and said, “Well, I’m here now, so please leave her out of this. Abigail, you are dismissed to wash up.” Abigail’s face showed no emotion when she nodded, but her eyes said, “thank you.” She walked up the stairs like a shadow.
“Now,” Mama said, turning towards me, “let’s get to the root of the problem.”
“I am eighteen years old, Mother, I can make my own decisions.” I knew just how to push her buttons.
“Not…in…mah…house.” Her eyes blazed like lightning strikes in the summer sky.
I stepped up and met her face to face. I looked more like my Daddy, which did not help her demeanor. It never had; all these years he’d been gone.
“You can be mad at me all you want, but you do not hit Abigail. If you have anger, take it out on m—”
The slap was loud, sudden and painful. The wedding ring she still wore on her finger was turned over and the diamond Daddy saved up all his money to get her (I’d ask for the story every night at bedtime when I was younger), cut my cheek. I stood there, eyes wide with shock. My hand wanted to touch my face, but I refused to do it because that would show weakness. Daddy always taught me to be a strong woman. “Raised right and proper,” he boasted to his friends. He looked like a plumper Colonel Sanders, except his hair was black instead of white, and he wore suspenders.
Oh, Daddy, if you only knew…I thought. With those thoughts, the tsunami retreated.
“We-ell?” she asked, drawing the word out to exaggerated length, “You don’t got nothing to say to me, misseh?”
I looked down on purpose, and she knew she had won. I could hear it in her voice. “Now, don’t fret, this will all blow over. Nobody knows about it yet except you, me, and that Abigail. I’ll take care of everahthing.”
I looked up at her eyes. I wiped mine with my hand, streaking blood on my cheek. “What do you mean, Mama?”
“I mean, you’re young and proper. Much too young to be in your…delicate condition.” She walked down the hall, her boots echoing off the wood. Important sounding shoes, I thought when I was younger. Now they sounded like a warden walking down Death Row. She stopped and looked over her shoulder. “The doctah will be here in the marning.” My knees gave way, and I slunk to the floor, listening to the boots echoing around me.
I sat there for several minutes, listening to the ticking of the grandfather clock in the parlor. “Every propahr southern house on Color Row has a grandfathah clock in the pahlar,” my Daddy told me once a week. I smiled at the memory. “He said the clock—”
“The clock would tell time until pigs fly,” Abigail said as she walked down the stairs. Her bleeding had stopped but mine was still beading on my face. She held out the washcloth (pink, like the hydrangeas that bloom in the garden). I took it from her, cold and damp, and pressed it on my cheek. The burning was slight, but noticeable.
“What am I to do, Abigail?”
“I’m not sure, Miss Sara. Do you want to keep the baby?” It was the first time it was mentioned out loud, ever since Mama found the used pregnancy test in the trash. Two lines dangled down the results window like willow branches. I had not given it much thought. I put a hand to my stomach, feeling for anything, knowing logically it was way too small to even notice anything, and I imagined a baby, an actual life growing inside there.
“With all of my heart,” I whispered.
“Then you need to appease the motherly side of the Missus.”
I laughed out loud, ending in a slight snort. “Mama never had a motherly side, you know that. Not since Daddy went to meet Jesus.” Abigail nodded. “Still,” she said, “She does love you, even if it’s in her own way.”
I paused and thought. “I remember a time when she would fix my scrapes just like you did tonight. I have had skinned knees since I was knee-high to a grasshopper until I was finally able to wear a bustle.”
“Yes. Go talk to her, Miss Sara. If you don’t yell, she’ll listen to you.” I nodded and gave her a brief hug. Abigail smiled and took the washcloth back. She wiped my cheek one last time and I went up the stairs to Mama’s bedroom.
I knocked on the door and opened it an inch. “Mama?” I said quietly. I heard a sniffle and the dainty scratching of Mama blowing her nose. “Yes, come in.” I opened the door wide and saw Mama sitting at her vanity. I tried to avoid her eyes, so I looked down at the light blue carpet as I walked to her bed. I sat down and put my hands in my lap. “I was wondering if I could talk with you.”
“Alright,” she said, still looking in the mirror. I looked up and caught the reflection of her eyes. Mama still did not turn around. “What do you have to say?” she asked.
“I feel like I should apologize, but I’m not sure what for. I’ve thought about it and I’m happy to have this baby.”
“Who’s the father?” her voice could frost up the mirror.
“Edward Billings,” I said right away. There was no use lying now.
Mama had a ghost of a smile on her lips, but she stared at me through the mirror. “You’ve been running with him since you both were in diapers.”
“Yes, mama. You know we’ve been dating since we’re sixteen.”
Mama nodded.
“Well, we talked about it for a good Southern minute before…well…you know.”
“You were always whiskey in a teacup, even when you were young. You always had to do things your way.”
“That’s true, Mama. You raised me to be a strong, independent woman, and I can’t thank you enough for that.”
“Then why didn’t you…prepare yourselves?”
“He has an allergy to latex, Mama. You’ve known that since his fifth birthday when he rubbed the balloon on his hand and it swelled up like a bullfrog.” Mama chuckled, her eyes staring at me but faint with memories.
“I know you are an adult, but I guess I just wasn’t ready to be a Gram yet.” She turned around and looked at me. Her eyes glistened with new tears, like the stars in the sky.
“How old were you when your Mama became Meemaw?”
She looked down at her hands in her lap. “Oh, I was your age now. I guess that’s why I got upset, because that’s what your Meemaw did. She blew up at me just like I blew up at you. But she came around, in a talk just like this one. Except, I was sitting where you are now, and she was sitting at this very vanity.”
I held Mama’s hands and looked into her eyes. “Does that mean I get to keep the baby?”
She turned around and stared at me from the mirror. “Absolutely not. I never told a soul this until now, but you were my second child, four years after my first. My first went to Jesus before I could even meet him or her, just like yours will tomorrow.” My mouth dropped open. I stared at her through the vanity and her eyes were cold again. Colder than ice. The ice veins wrapped around my heart, like Spanish Moss. Spanish Moss doesn’t kill the plant, but this time it felt it was the only thing holding my heart together.
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