Chapter Twenty-Five #2
At the funeral, standing beside Adelaide, I watched eight men strain to lower the box into the ground.
I thought about bodies—how they define us, betray us.
How Mama’s had become a prison. I thought, too, of my own body, soft and ample in ways that felt perilous.
I’d carried five children and still wore the shape of them.
Dressing in the morning or catching my reflection in the glass, I sometimes feared I was becoming her.
That I might disappear inside myself the way she had.
Afterward, the small group of mourners gathered at Mulberry Farm, filling the parlor and spilling onto the porch, balancing
plates of cold ham and cornbread, speaking in low voices. At some point I slipped away and let myself into Mama’s room. Her
hairbrush was still on the nightstand, light brown strands caught in the bristles. I ran my fingers through the brush, gathered
the loose hair, twisted it into a coil, and slipped it into my pocket.
For a long time, I sat in the gloom on the edge of that big, empty bed, listening to the murmur of conversation in the parlor—the
scrape of a chair, the clink of a fork. The room still smelled of her: camphor and rose water, medicinal and faintly sweet.
Dust drifted in a shaft of light between the heavy curtains.
A memory surfaced. Once, when I was seven or eight, I passed her bedroom and heard something unexpected: a lilting, melodious
sound. I crept closer and pressed my palm to the wall. She was humming—no, singing—in a whispery falsetto. One of Dinah’s
lullabies, a slow, swaying tune.
Mama wasn’t a woman who sang, not that I knew. But there it was: a melody slipping through the cracks.
The sound was so strange, so unguarded, it felt like a secret. I leaned into the wall, afraid to move, afraid to break whatever
fragile spell had come over her. For a moment, I imagined she might open the door and draw me in—not just into the room, but
into the private world she kept sealed away.
Now, sitting on the edge of her bed, I tried to summon that sound: her voice, tender and unconstrained, when she thought no
one could hear.
Before I left, I wrenched the curtains open, flooding the room with light. Then I pried up a window. Clean, cold air. Closing my eyes, I breathed it in.
After Mama died, Papa became a recluse himself, rarely leaving the farm. He spent his days moving restlessly from the wingback
chair in the parlor to the wooden rocker on the porch, wandering the fields alone, avoiding company. Without her moods and
demands to orbit around, he seemed unmoored, as if he no longer knew what to do with himself.
I told myself I would visit, but I was consumed with my own life—five children under the age of eight, including Patrick,
still small and needing constant attention. I knew Papa had a chest cold and planned to see him once things settled at home.
But I waited too long. When I finally made the trip, he was close to the end.
At Papa’s funeral, Addie and I spoke the expected words and performed the rituals of mourning. I wasn’t sure what I felt.
Mostly I felt numb. But grief is complicated terrain. My numbness wasn’t the absence of feeling so much as the presence of
too many feelings at once. Our parents gave us what they could. We had a roof over our heads and enough food to eat; we were
never in danger. We felt safe enough. But Papa had been walled off by his narrow view of the world, Mama by her own shame
and misery. And now both were gone. Whatever festered, whatever remained unspoken, would never be resolved.
In that household, affection was rationed, measured, something to be earned. Love was not a given. As adults, Addie and I
groped our way forward, trying to unlearn what had been carved into us. Trying to live with the scars.
The farm was sold off in pieces, the house and land parceled out to the highest bidder. The animals went first, then the furniture
and tools. Last, those who’d worked the land and tended the house.
Dinah had been at Mulberry Farm my whole life.
She’d raised Grace alongside me, wiping our faces with the same damp rag, scolding us with the same sharp tongue.
Grace and I helped her roll biscuit dough at the table, her laugh deep and full in a house that often felt too silent.
I’d assumed, in the thoughtless way of a girl who’d never known hardship, that she would always be there.
Papa had talked vaguely about freeing Dinah after Mama died. But he never put it to paper, never filed the petition. When
he died and the debts were tallied, Dinah was counted among the assets. I wanted to bring her to our property to be with Grace,
but when I arrived at the farm on auction day, I was too late. A man with tobacco-stained teeth and a pocketful of cash had
bought Dinah outright. I never even learned his name.
I rode home alone in my buggy, the road blurring past in the July heat, distant hayfields shimmering like a mirage. Grace
had visited with Dinah most Sundays, riding the old mule to Mulberry Farm to sit with her on the cabin stoop or take a picnic
to the creek. I didn’t know how to tell her.
The kitchen house was hot when I stepped inside, the smell of salt pork and onions mingling in the air. Grace stood at the
hearth, shifting a pot of boiling water over the coals. A basket of beans sat on the table, half shelled.
I paused, choosing my words. “I tried to keep Dinah in the family, but I was outbid. I’m sorry, Grace.”
She picked up a handful of beans, snapping their spines one by one. Then, with a hard sigh, she asked, “Where will she be?”
“I don’t know.”
Her fingers paused, just briefly, before she continued. Snap, snap, snap.
“I’ll try to find out,” I said.
She let out a slow breath through her nose, then turned to look at me. “Please do.”