— I give you that. You going to have to go to work soon, though. Getting old enough.
She nodded.
— Thank you.
Thinking of what she might buy.
— You going out in the world, such as it is, Aunt Vish said.
Vish was looking at her.
— Don’t you ever let no man mistreat you, now. Long as I’m around, no man ever going to mistreat you. You just come to me.
— Yes’m.
Aunt Vish smiled her black-toothed smile at her. Creasie looked up at the awful teeth in wonder.
— Why your teeth so black, Aunt Vish? she had once said to her.
Aunt Vish had cocked her head at her like a sleepy-eyed owl.
— Cause my heart’s clean and white, Aunt Vish said. -Count your blessings it ain’t the other way around.
Birdicus Urquhartimus
SIN WAS EVERYWHERE and serious for Mrs. Urquhart. She was a scrawny and sallow woman, set upon by demanding spirits, a tight brown bun in her hair like an onion God drew forth from her mind, a punishment and reminder of evil’s beautiful, layered symmetry. Her heart though good was a shriveled potato, with sweet green shoots of kindness growing from it, a heart gone to seed.
— As long as Earl has to work that job in New York, she told Birdie, you’re welcome here, and I’ll love you like my own. But you have to pull your weight.
That meant most of the cooking and cleaning, as Mrs. U was always off to some camp meeting or another, rolling in the dirt and speaking in tongues, for all Birdie knew. Something far from the Methodist mumbling she grew up with, anyway, or even Pappy’s odd way of seeing the world.
The Urquharts had moved into town, to a two-story Victorian near the hospital, so that Earl’s younger sister and brother could go to the town schools. Earl had insisted Birdie stay with them while he had to work in New York with his new job. He didn’t say it, but Birdie figured he worried she’d get too fond of her own family again, if she stayed with them, and would leave him.
She could stand on the porch balcony in the evenings and watch cars and wagons go down the hill to the center of town, see the smoky outline of the buildings there, and the sun’s glow sink and fade behind the bluff to the southwest, inflaming the distant sandy ridge full of beeches, white and blackjack oak, mockernut hickory, hemlock, and pine. She tried to get a few minutes to herself every day, before suppertime in the winter, and after supper in the summer, after Earl’s family had settled into the living room to listen to the radio and talk. She didn’t separate herself rudely but when she could get a moment alone she did.
When she could get away to town with Ruthie in a stroller, she pushed her down the hill to the drugstore or maybe to see a picture show at the Strand, stop in at Loeb’s department store to look at clothes. Sometimes when Earl’d had a good month she bought a little outfit for Ruthie or herself, but not too often, as Mrs. Urquhart would frown on her vanity, say she ought to be sewing her own. Merry tagged along some days, usually when they were going to see a show, and when Birdie would stop afterwards to look at a dress Merry would make a face, standing there with a hip stuck out, not unlike a pretty version of her mother’s bitter Holiness wrath.
— You just don’t have the figure for that dress anymore, Birdie, she’d say. -It’d look a lot better on me.
She was just fifteen, just two years younger than Birdie, but already a tart. She almost had no choice about being bad, it seemed to Birdie, with her mother so obsessed with sin and wickedness.
Mrs. Urquhart was Holiness. Anything worldly was a sin, especially anything to do with the flesh. She was obsessed with the idea of a whore. The way Merry would stare at women in bright clothes and makeup, sauntering along the sidewalk below the porch, Birdie knew that’s what fired her imagination. She, Birdie, had never even heard that word until she married Earl. But after they moved in with the Urquharts she heard it all the time, came to know it was about to twist from Mrs. Urquhart’s mouth just from her expression, came to know just what a whore looked like, by Mrs. Urquhart’s lights.
So little Ruthie grew up hearing the word and of course delighted in it. One day long after Earl had moved them out, she and Ruthie went over to visit, and Mrs. Urquhart’s neighbor Mrs. Estes came up to see them. Mrs. Estes was a good woman, but she had a male friend who would visit her, and word was she’d once been pregnant out of wedlock, lost the child — a punishment, to Mrs. Urquhart’s mind. -She ain’t our kind, she’d say when Birdie protested Mrs. Estes was good. But she came up that day wearing rouge and eyeliner and lipstick and a bright dress imprinted with all kinds of fruit like bananas, peaches, and clusters of grapes, going downtown. Little Ruthie jumped up and blurted, — Oh, Mrs. Estes, you look so pretty, you look just like a whore! Tickled Mrs. Estes but Birdie like to died.
Earl’s little brother Levi was puny with a big round head and hound-dog eyes, dark circles underneath them, laying about the house and complaining of polio. Polio! Lazy-o is what you got, she’d say. I’ll tell Mama you whipped me, he’d say. He’d go to the toilet and cry, constipated, she’d have to go in, sit with him and then clean him up — he was far too old for that — and help him back to his bed. She’d see him smiling out the corner of her eye, and dump him there so he could wail she was mistreating him. Made him drink prune juice for the constipation and he threw it all up in the middle of the hallway out of pure spite.
Mr. Urquhart, old Junius, wasn’t home much, out wandering the town and county all day, selling insurance or pretending to. Everybody said he was such a whoremonger, he’d pull a woman in off the street. He came in evenings smelling of whiskey and cigars, sat down to supper and ate it without saying a word, just looking at everybody in turn with those pale gleaming squinty eyes, wicked eyes she came to believe, always some kind of mischief going on, laughing to himself every now and then. Just his sitting there had Mrs. Urquhart interrupting every meal two or three times to say an extra grace over it, his wickedness was such a presence, it seemed. Kind of comical, really, when it wasn’t scary, when he was in a good mood and seemed almost kindly. But one evening after supper, when everyone else was out on the porch resting and Birdie was alone in the kitchen with the dishes, he came in there. She heard something then felt him come up behind her, put his hands on her shoulders and give them a squeeze. And kept them there a good minute, her scrubbing away harder than ever.
Finally she said, — What are you doing, Papa, for he made her call him Papa (as if he could hold a candle to her sweet, gentle Papa) like his real children did.
— You got a fine shape, he said, I’d say my boy’s a lucky man, to have a good-looking young gal like you.
— Well, she said, shifting her shoulders trying to suggest he let her go. She could smell and even feel his whiskey and cigar breath on her neck he was so close.
— Let go, now, I’m trying to do these dishes.
He held on, but after a minute gave a little har har under his breath and let her go, not before patting her behind on his way out.
Merry said to her one day, — You don’t like my papa, do you?
— What makes you say a thing like that? She was sitting by herself in the swing on the porch and Merry had come out, the little harlot in the making with her sleepy eyes.
— I can tell by the way you act around him. And he likes you, she added.
— Merry, you say the awfulest things. I ought to wash your mouth out with soap.
— I’d like to see you try.
— Well I could. Or get your mama to do it.
— I wish I had a cigarette, Merry said.