Chapter Twenty-Five
In the spring of that year, Mama’s health took a turn.
It had been a while since I’d seen her. She had kept her distance, and eventually I stopped trying to close the gap. It was
understandable that she’d never come to visit, I told myself; it had been years since she’d left the house. But the divide
was more than physical. She arranged her life at a careful remove, and I had learned to keep just far enough away.
I suppose I could have tried harder. I could’ve visited more often, been more patient, more tolerant. But how do you soften
toward someone who has never softened toward you? She had been an indifferent, joyless mother. She did not embrace me. She
did not care for me. She barely seemed to like me. I suspected she saw in me her own weaknesses, her own awkward imperfections.
In the rare moments when I visited, she seemed to recede further, as if my presence reminded her of something she’d rather
forget.
Her vast unhappiness had seeped into the walls of that house: the hush of the parlor where her custom-made chair sat empty,
the dim, shuttered bedroom where she spent all her time. It seemed to me that she lived a life arranged to her satisfaction,
where others bent to her needs, where she was shielded from the demands of the world—and from the demands of her own family.
She built a fortress of solitude and clearly preferred it that way.
I carried a small, hard knot of resentment, building a case of her wrongs. Anger simmered alongside the ache of hurt. I shut her out, telling myself it was self-preservation.
Once, as a girl, I had written her a little poem about happiness. She read it, then sadly shook her head.
“There’s no such thing, Sallie,” she said, folding the paper and handing it back to me. “Life is a trial.”
To this day, I hear her voice in my head, repeating those words.
Perhaps that’s why I stayed away. I feared that her darkness might seep into me too, that it would color how I mothered my
own children. Every time I held my children close, laughed with them, kissed their scraped elbows, I was choosing a different
path than the one she had taken.
The message arrived by way of Dinah’s son, Jeremiah, Grace’s younger brother, a slim boy with serious eyes. Standing at the
screen door, straw hat in hand, he said only that my mother was doing poorly and was asking for me.
When I arrived at Mulberry Farm, the house had an unnatural hush—the kind that descends when death is close. Papa was in his
chair in the parlor, hands clasped loosely in his lap. When he met my eyes, he gave a single nod. Permission to go to Mama’s
room.
Her bedroom had always been a place of mystery, a dim, shuttered realm where we children entered by invitation only.
The hallway floorboards creaked beneath my feet, each step a familiar note from childhood. I paused outside her door, pressing
my hand flat against the wood, then knocked.
“Come in,” she said in a breathy voice.
The room smelled like old quilts and camphor and the rose water Mama dabbed on her wrists and behind her ears.
Damask curtains were drawn against the afternoon light.
She lay in the center of the vast bed that had been built to accommodate her, propped against a stack of flattened pillows, her breathing a wet wheeze.
A walnut clock ticked on the mantel of the hearth.
“Closer,” she said.
I hesitated. I wasn’t sure I wanted to get close.
“If you’re just going to hover, shut the door.”
I closed it.
“Come and sit where I can see you, Sallie.” She patted the bed.
Reluctantly I perched on the narrow stool by her bedside, careful not to knock over Mama’s favorite rose-patterned teacup
and saucer on the small table.
“How are you feeling, Mama?”
“Like an ox being butchered alive.”
I bridled at her familiar self-pity, then scolded myself. She was clearly unwell. “Is there anything . . . anything I can
do?”
“Just sit with me awhile.”
“All right.”
Her hair, damp with sweat, clung to her temples in silvery wisps. Her broad face was puffy, her skin papery and pale. The
mound of her barely moved beneath the sheets.
“I know what you think of me,” she murmured.
“I don’t think anything,” I said, but the words felt childish.
She turned her head toward me. Her gray eyes, so like my own, were surprisingly clear. “You and Adelaide think I’m lazy. And
weak.”
“Mama—”
“You do.”
She was right. I’d spent my life embarrassed by her: her size, her sour moods, the hours she spent in bed.
She felt like a burden we’d all been forced to carry.
“There’s something I need to tell you before I go, Sallie. Something I’ve never told anyone.”
“Don’t talk like that, Mama. You’re not—”
“Hush. Listen.” Her gaze fixed on mine. “I have to . . . explain. I want you to understand.”
I nodded uncertainly. What revelation could possibly reshape our relationship now, after so many years of distance?
“When I was sixteen years old, your Uncle Clive came to stay with us after his wife died.” Her voice was flat, as if she had
rehearsed the words. “Not really an uncle—your grandfather’s friend from the war. He was respected in the community. An elder
in the church.”
A cold weight settled in my stomach.
“It started with small things. His arm around my waist. Comments about how I was ‘becoming a woman.’ ” Her tone flattened,
as if she were reciting facts about a stranger. “Then, one afternoon, while my parents were visiting the neighbors . . .”
Her voice trailed off.
I reached for her hand, feeling the bones beneath the flesh. Her fingers twitched in mine. “You don’t need to say more, Mama.”
“No, Sallie. I’ve carried this too long.” She let out a long, wheezy breath. “He . . . took what wasn’t his to take. Said
it was my fault—that I’d tempted him. Said no one would believe me if I told. And he was right. Who would believe a girl over
a man of God?” Her lip trembled. “It happened again. And again. For months. And then I was with child.”
I sat back, piecing it together. Pregnant. And not with Papa’s child, as Aunt Joan believed.
“Did anyone know it was his?” I asked.
“My parents did. When my condition became clear, they blamed me, of course. They chose to believe I’d been willful.
Sinful.” Her fingers drifted to her chest, pressing lightly as if trying to smooth something out beneath her skin.
“I felt such shame. It seeps inside you. After a while, it’s just a part of you.
I started . . . I started eating, and I couldn’t stop.
Every inch I gained was a layer between me and the world that betrayed me.
As I got bigger, I thought—good. Maybe nobody will ever want to touch me again.
” With a bitter smile, she said, “Uncle Clive left when I started to show.”
“So when did Papa—how did—”
She exhaled. “An arrangement was made—one that suited everyone. His family had lost everything. The drought took their cotton,
then the bank took their land. They were looking for a way back to respectability. To property.” Her hands moved restlessly
across the quilt. “Your father was offered land and a wife—the daughter of one of the wealthiest men in the county. What did
it matter that she was already with child?”
“Did you ever tell him the truth?”
“I couldn’t. Do you think he would’ve accepted a child born of violence as his own? The truth was worse than the lie. He accepted
the story he was told. That I’d been young and foolish with a boy who’d run off.” She exhaled. “He married me to restore his
family’s position, and I was grateful for the protection of his name. But honestly . . . it was a convenience. For both of
us.” She shook her head. “To be fair to him, I could barely stand to be touched. And I kept getting bigger. By the time I
realized what I’d done to myself, I couldn’t undo it. I couldn’t . . .” Her breath caught. “Couldn’t move. Couldn’t leave
the house.”
I stared at her swollen fingers, the rings that had once fit now biting deep into her flesh.
She paused. “And then . . . when . . .”
The clock on the mantel ticked into the silence.
“Tom Fellows,” she said. “I know what he did.”
My hands began to tremble. Mama and I had never spoken of that night.
“I knew, and I did nothing.” Her voice broke.
“I sent you away to protect you from gossip, but I was really protecting myself. I saw myself in you—your weakness, your . . . credulity. And instead of standing beside you, I looked away. I couldn’t face it.
I think I . . . I despised you for it. Because I despised myself. ”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Why are you telling me this now?”
“I didn’t want to die knowing I’d never spoken the truth.” Wincing, she shifted beneath the quilt. “I failed you, Sallie.
I did. But you’re stronger than I am. You pulled yourself out. You found your way forward.” With a labored sigh, she settled
back against the pillows. “You must promise me something.”
“Yes?”
“You must never tell Alston what I told you. He has made a life for himself. A good one. He’s held in high regard. You can’t
take that from him. It would ruin him.”
I nodded.
“You can’t tell anyone, Sallie.”
“I won’t.”
I sat on that stool for a long time, waiting for her to say something more. But she didn’t, and her breathing slowed. When
I turned to look at her from the door, she was already asleep.
Mama died three days later. Her casket was a piano crate. They had to dismantle the doorframe to carry her out. It seemed
fitting—one last act of resistance from someone who’d spent a lifetime holding the world at bay.
I never told anyone what she’d said to me.