Alma picks up the razor, then clicks the heel of her shoe on the boards. The snake turns, beats back to the hole, tucks its head in and begins to slide. She grabs its body above the rattles, the skin softer than she expected, more alive. She pulls it out just a bit and slices it cleanly in half, a thick, swift cut. The front of its body falls away through the hole. She assumes the eggs, if there are any, will shrivel, or will die, born motherless without coiled protection. She folds the razor safely and sets it back on the porch rail.
She walks out to the small stand of trees, the tall grass to one edge of the yard, and tosses half of the snake into the grass. She won’t say anything about the snake. It would only upset everyone. By the time she trudges back to the pan, it already seems like a dream. She isn’t sure if it happened now at all. She wonders if she did in fact pull out its scaled thick body from the hole and cut it in two with the shaving razor. She squeezes her hand, the one that she’d grabbed hold of the rattler with. The feel of its cool, scaled skin, the flexing thickness, lingers in her grip. Her hand remembers, just as her body recalls the dead baby passing through even though now there is no proof of that child, and even the work to conceive it, her thighs recall the way Henry moved between them. The world is slick with snakes. She looks down on the dead chicken. She will have to pluck the rest of it. She stares at its upturned eye, a black, shining bead.
Roxy is afraid Delphine will smoke herself to death. In the past, she’s worried that a rot will start in her lungs and she’ll one day wear a hole, just a small one at first, a thin spot, like in the sole of a shoe, but enough for her to leak air. Or she has worried that over time her throat will go too raw to swallow food, and she barely eats now, but will stop all together and die, like Roxy’s mother did, being swallowed by a bed. A sliver of a woman in the end.
But this is the first time she’s worried about the poison itself. Opium is surely poison. Like liquor, it eats away at your innards. But unlike Roxy’s father, who got spitting, fighting mad because of drinking, the hop makes Delphine calm. Sometimes too calm. This Roxy knows.
Tonight the cicadas rise and fall so loudly she can’t make out Delphine’s ragged, shallow breaths, and so she has to keep her hand on Delphine’s ribs. She’s been counting breaths, quick panting and then the lull. If she keeps count, she’s doing something. She’s helping. If it gets worse and they get the doctor to make a visit, she can tell him how many breaths she’s had, and the rhythm of them. She could beat the rhythm out on her knee.
Delphine’s head is on the pillow, her mouth open. Roxy watches her lids flitting, like someone who’s just walked up from a root cellar into blazing sun, but they never catch and fill with sight. Just flit and flit.
Roxy sings, “There’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza. There’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, a hole.” But her voice is low, raspy. It warbles terribly, so she stops.
Roxy didn’t see her mother die, actually. She saw her being handed over to death, but not the final exchange. Her mother made her leave the house before, just days before, to make sure she wouldn’t be kept there. Her mother insisted on seeing, with her very own eyes, Roxy leave. She wanted to hear the rabble of her sons, her husband, the panic of them without her, without Roxy taking care of everything. Although it made her mother supremely happy to see her go, Roxy hadn’t wanted to. She wanted to stay by the bed with a washcloth, ice chips to cool her mouth, to change her messed sheets and fit the pillows around her just so. Roxy supposes her mother died in soiled sheets, yellowed with piss, in her dank room, listening to the tumult of her riotous boys below her.
Roxy wishes she’d been there not only to comfort her mother but also to know if this is what it is like: a lull between ragged breaths and the lull lasts and lasts until it isn’t a lull but a new truth. Roxy sits on the edge of the bed, wilts down, resting her head on her knees, squeezing her eyes shut. She wishes that Delphine’s daddy had never shown up. She wishes that they weren’t coming back to get Lettie, even though she knows it may be best for her. Hell, even Delphine said it might be the best thing for Lettie, but it didn’t stop her from smoking pill after pill, and drinking, too. It’s just the sight of family that threw all this on. It’s just knowing that you’ve come so far from where you started out that can do it. Roxy has imagined her own father and her brothers showing up here, wanting to take her back. She imagines what they would do if they knew how she loved Delphine and how the two of them have learned to move against each other, with each other, more loving than the way Roxy was made to be put on this earth, she’s sure of that. Roxy has wanted to take Delphine away from the house, the whoring old Mr. Holman, for example, half his body dead, but his dick still poised and trained on Delphine; the opium, its ugly ritual of smoke and talk and listlessness. She’s confided in Delphine her dream of pretending to be old-maid sisters in a quiet town without her bamboo bowl and pipe, without a Chinese laundry and its handwritten invitations in the up-down scroll that only the fiends understand as opium. She’s told Alma, too, that they may not stay forever, that one day they could have a garden with a birdhouse. A place of their own with new curtains and cut flowers in a vase. She has hoped for this ordinary life, has imagined a woman kneeling in a garden, wrenching weeds, a bland light, pouring equally, normally over a small house, a stoop, a bicycle leaning against a shed, a dull day, an ordinary moment within it. Roxy could be that woman, and Delphine could be calling from the front door, lined with stout, trimmed bushes, “Lunch is ready. Come in before it gets too cold.”
But right now, Roxy cares nothing for any of it. She promises herself that if Delphine comes to, she’ll never mention it again, because it does no good. It makes Delphine alternately sullen and nervous. And now all she wants is the life she has with Delphine in Alma’s house, even with Mr. Holman’s rigid dick and the whores and drunk men and the hop smoke. It is, in fact, the best life she’s known. She has devoted herself to it, and sometimes it grows so large under the lamp of her devotion that Delphine rises up from the house, enormous, in Roxy’s imagination. So large and ever present that Roxy feels small, tiny enough to curl in Delphine’s broad lap, and more than anything Roxy wants to be that little and taken care of.
Roxy lifts Delphine’s hand. It’s cool and damp. She pets it like the hand is a small rabbit, ears flat to its body. She strokes it sweetly. She feels like she is going to start to cry. She says, “Wake up. Wake up, Delphine.” She says, “Be my bride. Be my bride forever and ever.” She says, “I am devoted to you. Devoted.” She says all of this so many times she isn’t sure if hours have passed. It becomes a prayer even though she doesn’t know much of God. And then there’s a little give in the hand, a small tightening, and Delphine’s eyes catch. And Roxy feels like she has brought her back to life.
“You were almost dead,” she tells Delphine. “You nearly killed yourself.”
“And you are an angel from heaven.”
Roxy cannot speak. Her throat is tight. She kneels down beside the bed and lays her head on Delphine’s chest. She listens to the soft patter of her fragile heart.
5
Just days later, he’s back, Delphine’s skittish father, with his hat slowly spinning round and round in his hands. He takes it off too fast. It catches on some hairs, flipping them up, and so he smooths the strays and smooths the hat, many more times than necessary.
“Come in, Reverend. Come on in,” Alma says.
He ducks in as if too tall for the doorjamb, but he’s a small man, and the ducking is actually a polite nod. The car, parked in the dirt driveway, is bulky and old. It looks like a hand-me-down junker, treated now with a tenderness, a homely pride. Its clean and polished; even its tires look like they’ve been scrubbed not too long ago. His wife, Mrs. Line, sits in the passenger’s seat, a handkerchief raised to her mouth so from here she looks like she has a thin white beard; even so, there’s the obvious bulge of a goiter. His daughter, Eloise, plain-looking, stout, stands beside her, talking through the open window.
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Delphine is upstairs and won’t come down for Lettie’s departure. Roxy is here, in her place. She’s set out tea, but it doesn’t seem like they’ll be staying for long, in light of the fact that only Mr. Line has come to the door. And so she shifts by the tray, ready to offer, but too shy to bring it up. Roxy is a gem, sweet and awkward. She’s not what she appears to be, big and strapping; she’s actually the gentlest person Alma knows. Who else would put up with Delphine and her moods?
Reverend Line nods at Roxy, and Alma introduces them. Roxy sticks out her hand and shakes his like a man would. He’s obviously frightened by her.
“Is your daughter ready?” he asks.
“She’s just getting a few things.” Alma turns and calls for her. “Lettie! It’s time now, darling. Lettie!”
The reverend is looking back toward his wife, his daughter, his car, protectively. Suddenly, Alma hears a growl in the driveway, another car. Her stomach turns. She’s immediately wary. She wonders if it could be an angry husband, a love-struck john here off hours, or the captain, to take her for a ride, the sweaty chin, the speech on trouble on its way, the wide hand on the seat between them, filled with innuendo, but, no, it’s broad daylight. The reverend walks closer to the parlor window. His hat circles faster, a twitch, twitch, twitch, sliding through his fingers.
Pearly hops out and jogs up the porch steps. Her chuffy hips jostle and her full breasts sway loosely. She stumbles in, smiles and gives a giggly wave to the reverend who coughs. Alma is relieved, but why is Pearly here? Alma doesn’t want the reverend to see her at work. Alma stares at Pearly gravely, grabs her by the wrist, and pulls her away from the reverend, to a space under the stairs.
“What is it?” she asks in a hushed whisper.
“Well, I need my room. I have a date and he was a good old customer, but must’ve got himself a girlfriend, ’cause I haven’t seen hide nor hair of him in ages. Some said he’d adopted the pox, but he looks healthy. I’ll check him good first. I’d like to keep him. Can we come in and use a room? I need the money, Alma. You know my husband is out of a job.”
Alma doesn’t like even the rumor of syphilis. The gossip of a man with the pox coming around can kill business. But that’s beside the point, as is the fact that Pearly’s husband is unemployed. She’s never known him to have a job. It’s not a good time, and this is her house, after all. But before she has a chance to say no, the door creaks open and there stands Mr. Bass. He’s still wearing the same old getup, the white shirt with its stiff collar. There is the sharp knot of his Adam’s apple, the slick black flap of his hair, small fingers. She wonders if he’s got the pox or not. She looks at his hands to see if they’re mottled, perhaps his chest hides a rash, or, for now, perhaps there’s only a seared burning, a painful, unending itch. She despises him, recalling Mrs. Bass, his narrow-boned, ugly wife, her poor jabbing broom trying to conquer the swirling dust, how she spoke to Alma in her stifling office, told her that her husband had no children, only the idea of them. And Alma hasn’t thought of it for years, but Mrs. Bass was right after all. Henry has no children. He never really did.
Mr. Bass looks over at the reverend. “Your first time in a place like this? You look nervous as a cat!” Mr. Bass still talks too loudly, his ears scarred by the factory’s din.
Alma remembers some of Mrs. Bass’s speech. It comes back to her clearly. She walks up to Mr. Bass, she says, “You are full of ideas, Mr. Bass. Only that. And this is not a good one.”
He’s taken aback. “Where did you hear that talk?”
“Go home, Mr. Bass,” she says, now shuffling him out while Pearly huffs loudly behind her, an audible pout.
The two of them clamber down the steps. Pearly is talking in her sweet singsong, trying not to lose the date. Mr. Bass’s car engine revs, wheels churn on the gravel. Alma is sure that everything has gone wrong. She’s the madam of a whorehouse; what does she know of miracles? That’s the nun’s business, and what does she know of it, even? Wasn’t the nun once just a farm girl swimming a lake? Couldn’t she simply be a farmer’s wife striding through a coop, swooping up chickens and breaking their weak necks? Would she take advice on miracles from a girl in a lake, a farmer’s wife? Alma looks around the room, a little lost. She remembers leaving the kitchen that last time before sifting through the sugar can for her liver-pill bottles stuffed with money, Irving waving, just a long-armed boy, from the porch. She was hopeful then, too, wasn’t she?
Reverend Line turns to Roxy. “You have bees.” They’re standing together like two men in a barbershop waiting their turn.
“What do I have?” Roxy asks.
“Bees.”
Alma has overheard them, but she’s not sure if she’s understood. “What did you say?”
“You have carpenter bees boring into your shingles. I can hear them from here.”
There is always the constant zip of flies, but above it, thicker, deeper there’s a low hum outside above the window, more electric, a tapping buzz as bees bump up against the house. It’s a strange, lurching moment. The three of them stand quietly, breaths held. Alma looks at the reverend. She wonders if it’s a warning. Is he saying that if bees bore holes until her house is nothing but chewed wood, it’s best that it not fall on her daughter’s head?
“When they are asleep, you can seal the holes with tar,” he offers.
Alma thinks of her tooth, plastered over with creosote. She’ll add more tonight. “Are you a handyman? Or did you read it in a book?”
“No,” the reverend admits, shrugging. “I’ve heard others say it will work. I’m making conversation.” He blushes, and again he is a miracle in his suit, his placid tie. He is the perfect choice.
Lettie appears on the stairs. She is lugging a suitcase, one shoulder hunched up to carry the weight. Still it knocks against her knee and thigh. When she gets to the last step, the reverend is there to take it. He hoists it up with a bit of muscle and totes it out to the car.
Roxy says, “Sometimes life isn’t the way you want it. It’s not just like you expect, but it can still turn out good. Sometimes it’s better.”
Alma nods. “It’s the right thing. It’s the best thing. I know that to be the truth.”
Lettie says nothing. Her eyes are puffed, red-rimmed. She smooths the bodice of her dress, a small gesture of resignation, and walks out the door. Alma follows her across the porch.
Reverend Line is behind the wheel. Eloise waves her plump, pale hand, moves to the back door of the car, opens it for Lettie, who climbs in. It is at this moment—Roxy and Alma now side by side on the porch, the house calm except for the thrum of drilling bees overhead—that the passenger’s door opens and Mrs. Line nearly tumbles out. She still has the handkerchief in her hand, but now waves it wildly like a flag of surrender over her head. She calls out, “Delphine! My baby girl! Delphine! I know you hear me!”
Her voice is a screech, her dress so tight at the waist with a narrow belt, it seems to divide her in two. She teeters in her low heels along the uneven driveway. Eloise jumps out of the car, fierce with energy. She hugs her mother by pinning the woman’s frail arms to her sides. Mrs. Line caves in. Her chin falls to her chest. Her hair, a twist, bobbles on her head. The reverend is there now. Eloise hands her mother over to him. It looks to Alma like a well-rehearsed exchange. The reverend reaches around her back and guides his unsteady wife back to the car by cupping her elbows. Alma watches the scene play out. She wonders how good it must feel. Mrs. Line is allowed her outburst, and then is taken in by a calm and gentle hand. And although she doesn’t think she could allow it, it must be worth the loss of control to be this cared for.
As the car chugs out of the driveway, its husky rattle, sun glinting off it, Alma sees Eloise, just a quick glimpse through the window, her mouth open wide, eyebrows raised, and she hears, above the flies, the humming bees destroying her house, above the sick engine, the clear, beautiful note of a song.
Lettie sits next to Eloise Line, so close that Lettie can fee
l the vibration of the song in her body. If Lettie didn’t know Miss Eloise and Delphine were sisters, she’d never guess it. Delphine is all limbs, but her sister is squat, mostly trunk. There’s some similarity in the way their eyes turn up, but that’s all. She planned on telling them right off that she is going to marry Smitty, and that this is only for show, for her mother who doesn’t believe that she’s a grown woman. She thought about telling him that she isn’t a virgin, anything to shock them, to make them want to send her out. But there was no time. When the Reverend Line helped his wife into her seat, Mrs. Line turned her face to the windshield, looking at the upstairs windows, and collapsed, bending to her knees like a sagging accordion.
The reverend said, “You owe me more dignity than this.”
And she quickly regained herself. She sat up, stiff as a church pew, and said, “Eloise, sing something nice, darlin’. Sing something good to your mother. Sing for me, Eloise. Sing something. I need to be calmed.”
And Eloise opened her mouth, and a song rose up from her throat without so much as a moment’s thought—“That Old Rugged Cross.” It’s one of the hymns that the player piano knows, but she sings it slowly, without any jump, and it’s the saddest song Lettie has ever heard. She sings this one and then another all the way to the Lines’ house. There’s only one interruption.
Mrs. Line pipes up loudly, “It will be just fine, just fine. We’ve prayed about this Lettie. We have prayed.” Lettie is surprised that she knows her name. Mrs. Line has made no indication so far that Lettie is in the car, much less moving into their house. Aside from this, no one addresses Lettie. There is no conversation. An occasional sob from Mrs. Line will bubble up and then deflate. Lettie isn’t used to these displays. In her house, there is only her mothers sternness, and the girls, who are actresses. Sometimes they get upset and carry on, but Lettie has seen them flaunt and whoop and shimmy with this exhausted showmanship, a glib professionalism, that she has trouble knowing when they’re telling the truth. She doesn’t know what to do with Mrs. Line’s small outbursts. She wonders if they’re real or for show, and then if she is the audience.