“Did you get whipped?” James asked me, pausing and peeking at me through the leaves. Something about his eyebrows made him always look surprised.
“Nah,” I told him. “Slept on nettles.”
“Ugh,” James said. “I’d rather just get whipped.”
“I guess I deserved it,” I muttered. I could see his big hands plucking through tussled green leaves, his dark head passing like a target in the spaces between plants. “If they’d been punishing me for falling asleep during supper, I probably would have gotten the strap. But since it was for forgetting my prayers, it was a bigger sin. I deserved it.”
“No you didn’t,” he said. “But don’t say I said so.”
“I won’t,” I promised. And then I began singing, “I Am Bound For the Promised Land,” and James joined in. We stepped out the beat hard in the soil and sang and panted our way down the row.
God had mercy on our crops that year. Grandpa Herman said we must be doing a good job of confessing our sins because God wasn’t plaguing us with too much rain or a drought. Our tobacco didn’t even have blue mold. The leaves on each stalk were so wide and so firm that you could use them to fan your face. We decided to have a celebration in honor of God’s abundance.
On the day when we emptied our first barn, the men barbecued a hog and the women hauled dishes of potato salad and baked beans out to the pack house in the back of a pickup truck.
We finished separating the leaves from the sticks and bailing it in burlap sheets, and then the biggest boys threw each bundle out the back door into a ton truck until the whole truck bed was heaped with huge, soft boulders of tobacco.
We had to wait a little while for the women to set up the food, but Grandpa Herman kept lifting the lid of the cooker and allowing the children to reach between ribs and pull off little strings of meat as snacks. Then we’d suck our fingers, anticipating the feast.
I thought the dinner prayer would never end. All the adults had something to thank God for, and everybody said thank-you for the exceptional crop—even though it seemed to me that one thank-you should be enough. But then we filled our paper plates with more food than we usually ate in a week. It was a regular Christmas at Fire and Brimstone—even though it was only August.
We ate on the pack house porch. Some people sat on the steps, and others dangled their legs off the sides, and others stood behind a table we’d made by putting a sheet of plywood across two sawhorses. We ate until our bellies grew tight, and we washed it all down with iced tea, which was reserved for special occasions.
Afterwards, while the women scraped off the dishes and shared scraps with the dogs and chickens and pigs, the men stretched out on their backs in the sun and dozed. Resting on a work day was a real treat.
The pack house had a second floor where we stored stuff, and there was a door up there too, in the back, that opened up to nothing but warm air and white clouds. Mustard was the one who discovered that the ton truck was parked directly beneath the door, and he dared us to jump down onto the mounds of tobacco below.
When nobody would do it, Mustard said we were all chicken, and he backed up against the far wall, then sprinted across the room and right out the door, leaping through air and onto the cushiony bundles. Barley went next. Then Pammy and James. They giggled so hard they lost their wind and came wheezing back upstairs to do it again.
I was scared to jump and scared we might get in trouble, but I didn’t want to be left out.
“Come on, Ninah,” James hollered up from below, climbing out the back of the truck. “It’s fun.”
I didn’t want to be the only one afraid, so I ran through too, dashing out of the dark pack house and into the light. Even after there was no more floor beneath me, I could feel my feet kicking. And even though I knew if I could just keep my eyes open, I’d be able to see more than I’d ever seen before, I squinted them tight and kept them closed even after I’d landed on the itchy pillows of leaves.
It wasn’t as soft as it’d looked from above, but it didn’t hurt exactly.
I clambered over the truck’s ledge and went to find David. I wanted him to play with us like he used to, but he was asleep in the sun.
“Wake up,” I said as I shook him.
“I ain’t asleep,” he muttered. “I’m just checking my eyelids for holes.”
“David, come on,” I called. But I couldn’t get him to join us.
Then Grandpa Herman pushed himself from the opened tailgate of his pickup where he was sitting. “What are y’all doing?” he asked me, retucking his shirt as he spoke.
“Just jumping out the upstairs door into the truck,” I admitted.
“On that tobacco?” he roared, and I was scared and only nodded.
But Grandpa Herman took me by the hand and walked around back with me. He just shook his head as he watched Barley fly down.
“You’ve done that enough now,” Grandpa scolded. “You gonna mess it up. That might just look like ’baccer, but it’s the clothes on your back and the food in your belly. No more jumping.”
“Just one more time,” Mustard begged. “Please?”
I couldn’t believe Mustard had talked back to Grandpa. I knew he’d probably be beaten good. But Grandpa was in the mood for a circus, I reckon, with the crops faring so well, and he just laughed and said, “Come on down. This is the last time though.”
I stayed on the ground with Barley and Grandpa as each of the other children ran shrieking out the door and landed. Grandpa stood at the edge of the truck and helped everybody down, slapping the boys on their backs playfully and kissing the girls on their foreheads.
“Don’t you let me catch you doing that again,” he said. “The only reason you ain’t in trouble now is cause this is a holiday.” Then he grinned at us all real big.
Because The Church of Fire and Brimstone and God’s Almighty Baptizing Wind wasn’t recognized as a denomination by a bigger group, there was always the problem of revivals. Revivals happened twice a year, and visiting preachers would come talk to us every night for a week and hopefully bring souls closer to Christ. Grandpa Herman would look into congregations from a hundred miles away, trying to find somebody whose beliefs resembled ours. Then he’d bring in a Baptist or Holiness preacher from a faraway church who was willing to go over his sermons with Grandpa before shouting them at us. But afterwards Grandpa’d call special church meetings for the entire next week to correct the flaws in the beliefs that the preacher had instilled. We spent more time in church than most people spent sleeping, but Daddy said there was no better place to be.
The best times were when Grandpa Herman would be away preaching revivals at other churches. When that happened, somebody had to go spend the night with Nanna so she wouldn’t be afraid, and I always volunteered. Secretly, I knew that Nanna wasn’t scared at all, but if she claimed to be, I got to move out for a whole week and sleep right in the bed beside Nanna on Grandpa Herman’s pillow that smelled like dentures.
We made big jokes about Grandpa Herman’s dentures because according to church beliefs, he shouldn’t have them. If the Lord willed that he’d lose his teeth, he should live without them. But Grandpa Herman had some and nobody knew but Nanna and me. Or if they knew, they never mentioned it.
At Nanna’s house, I only said my prayers when I felt like it. It wasn’t like Nanna didn’t want me to talk to Jesus, and I knew that she talked to him sometimes too. It was just that Nanna thought you should talk to Jesus when you felt like it—not because it was an obligation.
“Your old mamma’s crazy as a nut,” she’d say.
“Nanna,” I’d protest. “How can you say that? She’s your girl.”
“Nah,” Nanna’d argue. “She’s Herman’s girl. Spitting image of him. Except she ain’t got the good sense that he’s got. Herman’s a smart man. That’s how come he’s got all this land with people working it for him all in the name of religion. Your poor old mamma can’t think for herself.”
“Yes she can,” I disagreed. ??
?She’s got just what she wants.”
“I reckon you’re right there,” Nanna’d say. Then she’d bring me hot chocolate, which I was never allowed to drink at home, and she’d sit it on an end table beneath a handkerchief with little embroidered flowers that she kept in a drawer except for nights when I slept over. She’d fix me a plate of the cookies that we’d baked together, and we’d dunk a cookie in our cups and see who could wait the longest to pull it out without breaking it off. But the truth was that it tasted better if you lost.
The bedroom walls were painted white, and I asked Nanna if she wouldn’t like some pictures to put up, but she said she liked to look at the shadow the tree outside made on the walls after she turned the lights out. In bed, I liked to snuggle up next to Nanna, who was skinny with so much extra skin that it dripped a little on the sheets beside her. And she’d let me touch the little blue place on her lip that she couldn’t remember getting—like a tiny bruise that never went away.
“Tell me the real story,” I’d beg her. “Tell me about the day that it happened.”
“Honey, that weren’t a happy day for me,” she’d explain. “Herman’s all but written it into the Bible and now I’ve got you nagging me for details ever chance you get. It don’t make me feel good to talk about it.”
I considered this for a while and decided I shouldn’t ask anymore. Then I felt guilty for bringing it up in the first place.
“I’m sorry, little Nanna,” I said, and rubbed her cheek. “I just know that Grandpa don’t tell it right.”
I heard her sigh, hard, and then she put her strong hand on my hair and stroked it away from my face.
“Nothing much happened on the day she killed him,” Nanna began. “I don’t even remember it, to tell you the truth. Don’t remember what I’d been doing or anything because it was just a regular day. I’d probably been to school and then come home and helped Mamma get supper ready while Pappa closed up the store. I reckon we ate together. I don’t know.
“By that time, though, Mamma’d started slipping off with the young man from the ironworks. His name was Weston Ward, and he was a nice-looking man. As a matter of fact, I used to stand outside the store with some of my girlfriends, and we’d talk about him and giggle and wonder what it would be like to be his wife. He had pretty arms, full arms with lots of hair on them like an ape.”
“Ugh,” I moaned.
“They were pretty arms. And Mamma thought so too, I guess, because while Pappa worked, she’d call him into the house to help her move a piece of furniture or get him to taste her soup. Sometimes he stayed in there for a while, and I believe that Pappa knew it but just didn’t know how to handle it.
“And Mamma started to take long walks in the graveyard. She’d come downstairs to the store and tell us she was going for a walk, and Pappa’d tell her to go ahead. A couple of times I followed her there, and saw her meeting Weston. And I know that’s a sin, Ninah. It’s a sin to love another man when you’re joined to one already. But I believe she loved him. And I believe that it must be a wonderful feeling to be loved so much by two men at the same time. I know that’s probably a sin for me to even think that way, but I imagine having two men willing to give you the moon would be a powerful temptation.”
“It’s not a sin for you to think that,” I assured her. “I think that’d be nice too.”
“But when a woman’s joined to a man, she has to stick with that man, through thick and thin, good and bad. And my mamma didn’t do that.
“On the day that Pappa died, all I know is that I was in the den, coloring a line of paper dolls I’d made myself. My pappa’d been giving me lessons for years, helping me make curls for girl dolls and showing me how to make their arms more narrow than their little hands. And I’d finally got the hang of it. So I was working in the den when I heard the gun go off.”
“What’d you do?” I asked her, moving closer so that my head was right between her breasts and my feet were touching hers too. Her bony feet were cold as February.
“I sat where I was and hollered out for Pappa, but he didn’t answer me. Then I listened for voices, but all I could hear was something moving around. So I hollered out for Mamma and she told me to stay where I was.
“So I colored and colored except I didn’t change crayons. I colored every doll just as red as you please. Faces and dresses and hands and all. And then somebody knocked at the door, and it was Weston Ward. He asked me if he could come in, and I told him that I thought maybe Mamma and Pappa were hurt, and I asked him if he’d go look.
“They stayed in the bedroom for a while longer, and when they came out, Mamma was bloody and crying and told me that Pappa had shot himself.”
“But he didn’t, did he?”
“No, darling, but that’s what Mamma told me. She told Weston he needed to go find the police for her, and while she led him to the door, I ran back into the room where Pappa was.”
“And he was dead,” I said.
“Yes.”
I could hear Nanna’s voice change, and I thought she might be crying, but when I reached for her face it was dry. She even let me touch the skin in the moat beneath her eye. I held my fingers there to make sure I hadn’t caused her tears.
“What’d it look like, Nanna,” I chanced.
“Child,” she said, reaching for my hand and pulling it down, “you don’t want to know.”
“Yes I do,” I promised. “Cause I don’t think you sinned at all,” and then I started crying.
“She’d shot him in the back. He’d fallen down face first. There wasn’t much to see because she’d put a blanket over him.”
“Did you touch him?”
“Oh yes,” she admitted.
“You pulled the sheet away?”
“Yes.”
“And what was it like?” I asked because I couldn’t stop.
“Like a fountain had sprung up out of his back,” she explained. “And then gone dry.”
“What’d you do?”
“Mamma pulled me away—or Weston pulled me away. I can’t remember. I think they sent somebody else for the police and it was Weston who pulled me away.
“Mamma tried to tell the police that he’d killed himself because his business was failing, but she wasn’t in her right mind by then. Anybody with any sense would know that a person can’t shoot themselves in the back. They left her alone that night and took Pappa away.”
“And you slept right in the bed with her?”
“Yes,” Nanna said. “She cried all night long. Wailed out, and I knew she was really in mourning. I didn’t understand all that was going on, but at the time, you see, I was too distraught to notice that he couldn’t have shot himself there. I don’t know if I would have figured it out if I’d been clearheaded.
“The next day, the police came to arrest her and took me to an orphans’ home. After that, I could only talk to her when a lawyer picked me up and carried me to the jail with him. The two of them made up this story and wrote it down for me to memorize—about how Pappa’d been beating me real bad and Mamma’d killed him because she thought he was going to kill me.”
“And you said it to the judge?” I asked her.
“I reckon I did. I don’t hardly remember it. The judge didn’t believe it though, and Mamma went to prison, and I got sent down here to live with your great-uncle and his family.”
“What was it like in the orphans’ home?”
“I can’t remember, honey. And you’ve worn me out for the night. I don’t have no story left in me.”
“Okay, Nanna,” I told her.
I didn’t say my prayers that night, but before I fell asleep, I made sure Nanna knew that I didn’t think she committed a sin by lying to the judge. She didn’t have any choice.
“Sin or no sin,” Nanna said, “I’ve had nettles in my bed every night.”
“Really?” I asked her, and slid my hand underneath her back.
“Not those kinds of nettles, honey,” she replied.
&nbs
p; That was the beginning of my understanding of metaphors. I thought about Nanna’s nettles a lot, wondering how it could be that she felt prickles and stings to her skin when nothing was in her bed at all. But after a time, I came to realize that the nettles were all around her, inside and out. I dreamed of Mamma cutting me down the back, filling me up with sandspurs, and sewing me back together. Nettles every night and even in the day, slightly stabbing with every movement, every turn.
Then I started thinking about Grandpa Herman and figured he was the biggest nettle of all. One great big irritation in the bed with Nanna. I remembered his whiskers, seventy years tough, and knew how badly he must make her itch, how she must just want to leap out of that bed and sleep somewhere else.
To The Church of Fire and Brimstone and God’s Almighty Baptizing Wind, metaphors were ways of saying the unpleasant. That’s how they taught us everything they didn’t want to say aloud.
In our after-supper classes, we’d recite, “He who carves a notch in another man’s tree shall pay a hundred dollars. Half to the man whose tree he marked and half to The Church of Fire and Brimstone.”
One night in the middle of this, my nephew Mustard, who was nine at the time and the youngest in our group, stopped Ben Harback, that night’s teacher, to ask, “A hundred dollars just for sticking your knife in a tree?”
“Mustard!” his sister Pammy scolded under her breath. Pammy was eleven, a year younger than me, and mostly invisible.
“It just don’t make sense,” Mustard said. “A hundred dollars! That’s a lot of money for one little notch in a tree.”
“But it is not a lot of money for thieving, now is it?” Ben Harback asked Mustard, then looked at us all.
“Maybe not for stealing a baby pig or something,” Mustard argued. “But for one little notch in a tree?”
I glimpsed at James, whose almond eyes were walnuts, and I couldn’t tell if he was about to laugh or about to yell, but he was about to do something. The Saturday night classes weren’t discussions. They were lectures and recitations. As far as I could remember, nobody’d ever asked a question before. We all knew Mustard was in terrible trouble and couldn’t imagine why he didn’t know. It would be more than nettles for disagreeing with the law book. Maybe even more than the strap. My ears felt hot. I put my hands onto the sides of the cold metal chair to cool them, wishing I could lay my ears there.