Mama Rocks the Empty Cradle Page 12

  “Yasmine, I guess what I’m saying is that I do know how the thought of being a parent can be overwhelming—”

  “I’m not scared of being a good mother,” Yasmine interrupted. “I know I can bring this kid up right. It’s just that—” She stopped and looked nervously between me and Mama. “Do you think I should tell Ernest that I’m pregnant?” she asked Mama again.

  Mama smiled reassuringly. “It’s your decision, honey. Yours alone.”

  Yasmine still looked doubtful. “If Ernest walks, I’m having an abortion.”

  “He won’t walk,” I told her. “I just know he’ll want you. And your baby.”

  “Whether you go with me to the clinic or not, Simone, I’m not bringing this kid into the world without a husband.”

  Mama smiled and nodded. “It’s not easy being a single parent, but it is possible to raise kids alone.”

  Yasmine’s eyes hardened. “I don’t want to raise my kid without a husband.”

  Mama looked as if Yasmine’s decision was satisfactory. “It’s your life,” she said, in a tone that made me conscious of the important lesson I’d just come to understand about myself. Facing my fear of not being as good a mother as my mama was something that would change my life and my relationship with Cliff.

  CHAPTER

  NINETEEN

  The next afternoon, we breathed the sweetness of magnolia blossoms from the enormous tree that stood on the opposite side of the gravel driveway as we waved good-bye to Yasmine. It was close to three o’clock.

  I was very drained and a little depressed. After Mama had left the room the night before, Yasmine and I talked for hours. We paced the room and spoke about the things that frightened us, the things that were important to us. We talked about my father and I shared glimpses of memories I had of him, times when I was glad he was there for me, times when I felt his presence in quiet and wise ways.

  Yasmine told me that her parents had never married, that she’d only heard bad things about her dad from her mother’s people. She recalled, with a deep chill in her voice, that she’d spent most of her life fantasizing about him. “Imagine having a relationship with an illusion,” she said. She shook her head. “I don’t want my child to feel that pain,” she whispered.

  Hours later, at dawn, it struck us that we had to do more than sit and talk about our feelings. Mama was right: we had to accept our fears; we had to move on.

  “It’s easier to say that I’ll give Ernest up than to actually do it,” Yasmine had said about her decision to give Ernest an ultimatum about her need for marriage, children, family.

  Her words reminded me of what Mama had said to me time and again over the years. I repeated them just the way she’d said them. “No matter how hard it may be, there are times when we’ve got to go beyond our emotions and do what’s right, for ourselves, for our children, for our families—”

  Neither of us spoke after that. We fell asleep, and five hours later we jumped up, ate something, and kept talking until Yasmine had to drive back to Atlanta.

  No sooner had Yasmine driven out of sight than a familiar blue sedan drove up into our driveway.

  I groaned. The very sight of Nightmare made me uneasy. But Mama watched him without expression as he jumped out of his battered old car.

  His face and powerful upper body glistened with sweat. His clothes were streaked with what I hoped was animal blood. The wind shifted; his odor was nauseating. I stiffened.

  Just for a moment, Nightmare’s eyes found mine and grabbed hold. I gave him a cold stare, determined not to show fear.

  Nightmare grinned. He mopped his sweaty face and asked, “Mr. James home?”

  Mama leaned back on the porch rail and flashed Nightmare an easy smile. “We expect James soon,” she answered. “You want to come in and wait for him?”

  I almost fainted. She couldn’t seriously expect this man to sit in our house waiting for my father!

  Nightmare’s smile widened. Yellow, crooked teeth showed through his straggly beard. He shook his head. “Tell Mr. James that Nightmare just dropped off cleaned venison, rabbit, and squirrel at Mr. Coal’s house—half be his and half be Mr. Coal’s.”

  As Mama’s mouth opened to thank him, Midnight came running from the backyard, barking wildly. The dog shot forward, leaping at Nightmare and then, standing on his hind legs, his body wriggling, he pawed and licked his face so hard that he pushed Nightmare back two unsteady steps. He nearly knocked the big man over.

  Mama’s brows went up. “Seems like Midnight knows you,” she said.

  As Midnight yapped, Nightmare grinned and rubbed the dog’s ears. “Good dog,” he told Midnight. To Mama, he said, “I was there the day this dog’s mama dragged him from underneath old man Ponds’s back porch. He used to follow me around as a puppy.”

  Mama’s eyes widened like something had suddenly worked across her mind. She cocked her head. “You mean the old man Buck Ponds that died about six months ago?” she asked.

  Nightmare kept stroking Midnight with his right hand. He wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his left arm. “Yessmm,” he answered.

  Mama’s brow wrinkled. “Didn’t he live about two miles from here?”

  “About that far,” Nightmare responded.

  Mama turned to me. Her eyes were bright. “Could it be that I was wrong,” she mouthed, then stopped as a red ten-year-old Buick swung into our driveway. Carrie Smalls parked beside Nightmare’s car. Still playing with Daddy’s dog Midnight, Nightmare paid her no mind.

  “More company,” I grumbled under my breath. Oddly, Mama looked pleased.

  But Nightmare’s face had clouded. He nudged Midnight away, then strode toward his car.

  Midnight glanced at the three women, then lumbered underneath the magnolia tree and flopped down on the grass, his muzzle tucked between his front paws. He kept his eyes expectantly on Nightmare.

  Nightmare wasn’t watching the big black dog. Instead, he watched these three women, an odd timidity now in his expression. I suspected that he, like Rose and maybe the rest of his family, harbored some deep emotion or fear of things they’d say about him. Anyway, he looked like he thought they got as much pleasure out of talking about everybody in the town as he enjoyed scaring women. “I reckon I’d better go,” he said curtly, and swung open his car door. Midnight raised his head, watching.

  “Wait a minute. Wait,” Mama said. She had to raise her voice because Nightmare had turned on his engine. “I want to ask you a question before you leave.”

  Nightmare squinted his eyes. Then he nodded bleakly and switched off his car.

  The three women struggled out of their car and approached us. Mama turned to face her new guests. She adjusted her glasses. “Ladies,” she said, “it’s real nice to see you.”

  “Candi,” Sarah Jenkins gasped, like she was out of breath, “we just had to come tell you—”

  A look of impatience flitted across Annie Mae Gregory’s face as she cut in. “Rick Martin told us that they’ve picked up Timber.”

  Carrie Smalls’s thin body was erect, her arms folded stoically across her breast. “Nabbed him in Rome right across the county line,” she contributed. “Darn fool was trying to rob Double B Feed & Seed store.”

  I glanced at Mama, who still looked like the whiff of something she’d remembered nagged at her. “Simone, show these ladies inside the family room, give them a cold drink, a piece of that red velvet cake.”

  “You stood at a stove and baked a cake with your feet ailing?” Sarah Jenkins asked, looking down at Mama’s bandaged feet. “When I had my feet worked on, I couldn’t get near a stove for at least three or four weeks.”

  Mama’s smile was more with her eyes than her mouth. “I baked it before I had the surgery, Sarah. It’s one of those recipes that gets better after it’s been stored in the freezer for a while.”

  Annie Mae’s eyes, buried in fat, shone greedily. “I could use a cold drink and a piece of that cake about now,” she admitted, with a laugh.
<
br />   But Sarah Jenkins stared at Mama. “I tell you it’s so hot today that a body could get a heatstroke. Really, Candi, I don’t think it’s good for you to be out. If I remember right, the doctor warned me not to be out in this. Course he knows about my various ailments, knows the many medications I have to take.”

  I shrugged. I wasn’t in the mood to hear Sarah Jenkins expound on her ailments or her many medications. I waved the women past me and Mama, up the steps, and into the house.

  But Mama didn’t move to come inside. Instead, she looked thoughtfully at Nightmare. Once the women had entered into the foyer in front of me, out of hearing range, Mama spoke softly to Nightmare. “Dan, when was the last time that you was on the Pondses’ place?”

  I glanced back at Nightmare. His jaw muscles flexed, he gave a kind of a groan, but he didn’t say anything.

  “Remember, Rose told us that he’s too stubborn to answer to any name except Nightmare,” I reminded Mama. I added, “It’s a good name for him ’cause he’s the closest thing to the boogeyman that I’ve ever seen.”

  Mama didn’t say anything to either of us for a second or two. “Okay,” she said, her voice low, exasperated. “Nightmare, when was the last time you were on the Pondses’ place?”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY

  “I declare, Candi.” Annie Mae Gregory’s words were indistinct because her mouth was full. She was chewing on a piece of red velvet cake. “You should be paid good money for your baking.” Her big jaws, her double chin, and her greedy mouth made me wonder how many times she’d made this comment to somebody else.

  Mama, who had settled on the couch, waved dismissively. “I do a fair job.”

  I yawned, then sat in my favorite chair. It would be another two hours before Daddy would be home. I felt I needed at least half that time to recoup from Yasmine’s visit, but I was pretty sure that wouldn’t happen.

  Carrie Smalls sat up straight, her neck like a crane, her narrow hands folded precisely in her lap. “I suppose they’ll bring Timber back to Otis County, don’t you think?” she asked Mama.

  Sarah Jenkins coughed and suddenly all our eyes were on her. She smirked, like she was pleased at our attention, then cleared her throat. “I get that tickle every now and again. I told the doctor about it, but he didn’t think to give me a prescription.”

  “What do you think, Candi?” Annie Mae Gregory asked, dabbing her mouth with a napkin. “You think, like Carrie, that Abe can get Sheriff Shaw of Rome to turn Warren and Timber over to him?”

  Mama nodded. “Abe will have to question Timber,” she answered absently. Mama shifted in her chair like she didn’t want to talk about Cricket, Timber, or Warren. “Carrie,” she asked, finally getting to what was really on her mind, “you know much about Buck Ponds?”

  Miss Carrie glanced at each of her companions before answering Mama’s question. “I know as much as to be known about the old coot,” she admitted.

  Mama took a deep breath, leaned back, then crossed her arms in front of her, as if she was preparing her mind to take a journey. “Good,” she said, clearly satisfied.

  A glint of surprise flashed in Carrie Smalls’s dark eyes; a deep scowl formed between her eyebrows. I would have sworn that she wanted to know why Mama had asked about Buck Ponds. This was not the way I expected her to look. After all, never before had these women needed understanding to recount details of their neighbors’ lives.

  “Tell me about Buck,” Mama said.

  Carrie Smalls replied, “His mind was bad, he did crazy things—”

  Sarah cut in. “Nobody had much to do with him after they found out what he did.”

  Carrie turned to Sarah. “That’s ’cause what he did wasn’t natural.”

  Annie Mae Gregory, whose eyes had large dark circles around them like a raccoon’s, added, “Especially to his own.”

  Sarah Jenkins leaned forward. “When Buck’s wife, Rebecca, died twenty years ago, this county saw the biggest funeral it’d ever seen.”

  Carrie nodded. “That’s a fact.”

  Sarah seemed pleased. “Folks came from all over—Course, I always thought Rebecca was a little on the silly side.”

  Annie Mae Gregory spoke. “I expect the news from the church board was what killed her.”

  Carrie’s thin neck stretched further. “I’d have killed him ’fore it killed me,” she said firmly.

  Mama listened quietly. I groaned to myself. It took forever to pull a coherent story out of these three. I blurted out, “Did Buck Ponds kill his wife?”

  Sarah Jenkins looked over at me, surprised by my question. “Buck might as well have taken a knife and plunged it into Rebecca’s heart.”

  “When she found out what he done, it killed her,” Carrie said.

  Annie Mae Gregory nodded. “Most folks agreed with you.”

  Mama frowned. “What did Buck Ponds do that was so bad that it caused his wife to die?”

  Sarah Jenkins’s thin body twitched like she’d felt a chill. “It’s too contemptible to tell.”

  I couldn’t help wondering what anybody could have done that was too contemptible for these women to gossip about. But for once I was too smart to make a sarcastic comment. I sat down and tried to be patient.

  Mama leaned forward. “I’d like to know,” she prompted.

  Carrie Smalls’s face hardened. “When Buck Ponds died, not more than five people showed up at the church. And I was told not one of them went with his body to the cemetery.”

  “Serves him right,” Sarah added. “ ’Cause of what he’d done, they wouldn’t let those poor little things be buried in the church’s graveyard.”

  I stood up, exasperated, but Mama’s eyes flashed toward me. I got her message: I sat back down.

  Mama smiled, a different smile from the one she’d had earlier. Her meaning was clear. She was going to sift through the tidbits of information these women were giving one crumb at a time until she got what she wanted. “I suppose I should remember Buck and Rebecca,” she mused, “but I can’t for the life of me place them.”

  Sarah Jenkins shook her head. “Rebecca died while you was all over the world running after the government and that husband of yours.”

  “Daddy was in the Air Force,” I had to say.

  Sarah ignored me. “Buck lived on his place like a hermit until he died a little over six months ago.”

  I’d had it. “Tell us what happened and stop beating around the bush,” I pleaded.

  Mama eyed me again, but this time she didn’t say anything.

  Sarah looked at me as if she didn’t care that this dialogue was getting on my nerves, then she turned to Mama. “Mind you, Candi,” she said, lowering her voice. “I ain’t saying Buck was the only one responsible for what he did.”

  I was amazed at Mama’s patience. But I sensed this story was so important for her to hear that she was willing to let these women tell it in their own way.

  I turned to look out into the garden, to watch the sunlight slant through the oak tree. There wasn’t anything for me to do but to wait. Mama seemed determined to get what she wanted without pushing.

  Annie Mae Gregory spoke. “That gal was ten, but she should have told Rebecca what her daddy was doing to her.”

  “So, the Pondses had a child, a daughter?” Mama asked.

  The three women nodded. Sarah Jenkins belched. “The Lord is good,” she declared. “ ’Cause that girl turned out better than anybody would have thought she would.”

  “Especially since things like that spread through the town and people have such long memories,” Annie Mae Gregory added.

  Mama’s eyes sparkled.

  Annie Mae Gregory sighed deeply. “About twenty-two years ago, Buck Ponds had unnatural relations with his only child, his daughter. I suspect ’cause she was so young and her body wasn’t fully formed, it was natural that she would give birth to sickly twin boys.”

  “What happened to the two babies?”

  “Those two twin babies died four
months after they were born,” Sarah said candidly, like she was proud of knowing the fact.

  “Who was the midwife who waited on the Ponds girl?” Mama asked.

  “Lucy Bell Childs,” Carrie Smalls said.

  Mama’s eyes shone brighter than the morning star. She breathed deeply as if now she understood all.

  Annie Mae Gregory spoke. “Somehow or another, Rebecca Ponds found out that Buck had got the girl pregnant. The poor woman got sick when her grand-babies came; she was doing even more poorly when they died. When the preacher and the other church members wouldn’t let those two poor babies be buried in the church cemetery ’cause of how they were conceived, it was too much for Rebecca to bear. She died three days later. Her sister, Cassie Tuten, who lives on the county line between Rome and Otis, came and took the girl to finish raising her.”

  “Where were the twins finally buried?” Mama asked.

  “I declare, Candi, I don’t rightly know. Nobody had anything else to do with Buck.”

  “It would be against the law to bury the children on his own property,” I said.

  “Simone,” Mama said, “in Otis, the burial laws aren’t as strict or as enforced as they are in a big city like Atlanta.” She addressed the women again. “Did this girl have any more children?”

  Annie Mae Gregory shook her head. “Naw, but she got married.”

  Carrie Smalls added, “She’s done pretty good for herself, don’t you think?” she asked her two companions.

  When they nodded, I could see that Mama was satisfied, she’d learned all she needed. “I suspect that girl, who is now a woman, lives here in Otis, doesn’t she?” Mama asked.

  “Lord, yeah,” Carrie Smalls exclaimed. “She’s been living here ever since the first day Isaiah Smiley married her!”

  MIDNIGHT …

  THREE

  Nightmare snapped his fingers and made a gesture. Instantly, Midnight understood his command. The dog scrambled to his feet, wriggled happily when the big man’s huge hand patted his sleek head, then they started to walk.

  This time there was no stopping to sniff a tree trunk, a clump of ivy, a fallen limb. This time the dog trotted obediently alongside his companion.