Counting Backwards

18

Carrie

December 1927

One month after they completed the sterilization procedure, I was released from the Colony. They said that since I wasn’t at risk of getting pregnant with any more children, the time had come when I could be rehabilitated to reenter society.

Mrs. Libby, the woman who’d agreed to take me in as a housemaid after my release, was younger than Mrs. Alice, and kinder. She lived in Timberlake, which wasn’t too far from the Colony back in Lynchburg. But the house was more than an hour’s drive from Charlottesville, where my baby, Vivian, was still living with the Dobbs family.

Mrs. Libby had a yellow bun atop her head and a brown apron she wore day in and day out. She gave me a room at the back of the house with its own door to the outside. There was a real bed on a wooden frame and even a small bureau that was just for me. When she saw how little I’d brought with me from the Colony, she went through a pile of her own castoffs and handed me sweaters and coats like I was from the charity bus coming to pick them up.

Mrs. Libby trusted me with a lot of tasks I’d never done at the Dobbses’ home. Not just the marketing, but also looking after her two small children, Flora and James. That was my favorite part of the job, but most days Mrs. Libby was with the children. Even so, it was better at Mrs. Libby’s than at the Colony, so I tried always to be on my best behavior with her. I saw no use in sassing her when nothing that’d happened to me was any of her fault anyway.

In the beginning, she did the cleaning and laundering alongside me so I could see just exactly the way she wanted me to keep house.

“Carrie, dear,”

she said one morning while we stood side by side in the sewing room, “after you finish starching the linens, take the list beside the cupboard and go on to the market. Money’s there on the counter.”

It was a cold day, and she reminded me to wrap myself up in the worn red coat she’d given me.

As I made my way toward Main Street, huddling in on myself to keep the wind from getting at me, I tried not to think too hard about my Vivian. Sometimes there weren’t room for anything else in my brain except for Vivi, Vivi, Vivi. And then I’d remember how I wouldn’t have any other children either, and sometimes it was all I could do to keep putting one foot in front of the other without falling right down to the ground. I stuck my chin higher in the air, telling myself I had to be strong, otherwise I’d surely never get my daughter back. Then I’d be alone for the rest of my days.

I’d barely gotten past the turnoff from Mrs. Libby’s street when I heard a familiar voice behind me.

“Well, as I stand and breathe, if I ain’t coming right up on Miss Carrie Buck.”

I turned around and saw my one true friend standing across the street. It was Billy, and for all the world it felt to me like he’d just appeared out of nowhere, brought up out of the dust on the street. He was smiling wide as he started toward me. I could tell he was happy as a squirrel to have stumbled upon me, like I was just what he’d been searching for. And my Billy, he was a sight for sore eyes. He looked just the same as he did when I’d left him, but so much more grown.

Turned out, he’d come over to Timberlake to visit a cousin. It was good luck that he was walking back toward town to catch the train when I passed by. He said he would come along with me to the market so we could catch up, that there was a later train he could take.

We dallied there in the grain aisle of Barton’s Grocery, still exchanging all sorts of pleasantries, mostly just soaking up each other’s presence. I should have been searching for tupelo honey, like Mrs. Libby asked, but I could hardly remember why I’d come to that store in the first place, as delighted as I was to see my old friend. Shoppers were coming and going, walking around where we stood crowding the path.

Finally, after he inquired after Ma and then told me all about his brothers, I asked what I wanted to know most of all.

“Now tell me the truth of it,”

I said, leaning closer and catching a whiff of Ivory Soap coming off him. “Have you seen Vivian over at the Dobbses’ at all? She must be so grown.”

His face fell, and I felt a panic bubble in my gut.

“You haven’t heard?”

He sounded kind of stunned, maybe even angry.

“Heard what?”

I asked, and that balloon of worry inside me grew bigger.

“Carrie,”

he said, putting his big hand on my arm, “she got measles.”

He looked to the side, and then his eyes dropped down to the ground.

“Okay.”

I nodded, urging him on. I’d had the measles back when I was seven years old. At the same time I had it, so many other children from our one elementary class had it too. Our little school had been forced to close up until enough of us were able to come back to make it worthwhile to hold class again.

“Well, she got better.”

He shifted from one foot to the other. “But then she got some sort of infection, a secondary thing.”

He breathed in real long. “Carrie.”

His voice broke, and I prayed I was wrong about what was coming next.

“Don’t say it, Billy.”

“Carrie.”

His voice was real gentle.

“No! No, no, no. Billy, don’t say it!”

I was shouting now, and I guess I was making a scene, but I didn’t care.

“She passed on back in June.”

He might have said more after that, but I didn’t hear any of it. I had sunk to the floor of that grocery store, where I lay keening like a wild animal. My Vivi was lost, and I’d never even known her at all. I’d never seen her smile nor felt her little hands wrap around me. And now she was gone from the earth. Lost. Like she’d never even existed at all. I howled in pain, nearly unable to breathe. She was my only one, and now she was gone. And there would never be another to remind me of her.

At some point, Billy carried me out of the store. He brought me back to Mrs. Libby and explained why I was in such a state. She helped me into bed and put a damp cloth to my forehead like Ma used to do when I was a toddler with a fever.

For the next four days, Mrs. Libby didn’t ask one thing from me, letting me lie there staring at the wall. She brought my meals to me and everything. But then on the fifth morning, she was back in the doorway at 6:00 a.m. I reckon she thought she was doing right by me to finish up her coddling.

“Rise and shine, Carrie!”

she said. “You’ve got chores a-waiting.”

She marched right into my little room, already wearing that brown apron of hers, coming to stare down at my bitter, sorrowful body. “No time to waste,”

she told me, but I wanted more time to grieve for my child—and all the children I might have had, who would never come to be.

“You can put me out,”

I told her. “Send me away and have done with me. I’ll not be doing work today.”

I grabbed at the comforter and pulled it higher over me.

“Now, you listen here, Carrie,”

she said, moving over to the window. She pushed aside the curtain to let in the first slivers of morning light. Then her voice turned gentler. “You’ve suffered a terrible loss,”

she said, coming back toward my cot and sitting herself down on the edge. “I remember just what it’s like from when Alfred passed last year. You think you can’t get through it, that you’ll never be all right again, that you won’t ever have good reason to greet the morning. But you will, and you must. And the best way to push through what you’re feeling is to put yourself back to work, to remind yourself that you are still alive. No matter what or how much has been taken from you, you are still here. Now what are you going to do with that?”

I stared back at her with what I imagine were vacant eyes. Even so, I somehow ended up rising to my feet and doing as she said. I dragged myself from the bed, pulled my work dress over my head, and got back to work. I didn’t feel much alive then, I can tell you that, but somehow I started the day like she wanted.

* * *

Four weeks later, when I was fixing supper for Flora and James, I was still ruminating over all I’d lost. As I spooned creamed collards onto the children’s plates, there came a knock at the front door.

“I’ll get it!”

James shouted, jumping out of his seat. He was always hoping the Bible man would be coming back around to tell the children more stories. Following behind him, I wiped my hands on my smock. Mine wasn’t brown like the one Mrs. Libby wore all the livelong day, but a light pink that had pleased me back when I’d first arrived at her house. I hurried to help James reach the latch before Mrs. Libby heard the knocking carrying on too long.

When the door swung open, there standing on the stoop was my old friend Billy again, and I’ll confess, my heart took a deep breath at the sight of him. He was holding a small arrangement of daisies, and he wore an expression on his face that I recognized from years past. To my surprise, this time I welcomed the question in his eyes. With all that had been took from me, I realized then, I must do like Mrs. Libby said and move forward in any way I could. I was not whole, nor would I ever be. I had been robbed in all the ways that mattered to me. I had but one thing left, and that was my own heart. I took Billy’s hand and invited him in.