I make Annie pick up her cup of tea, in pace with me now, and put two fingers into the loop of its cool thin handle. The heat inside her is rising on me like a coming rash. No, hotter. Like standing too close to a fire and not moving away. Skin tightening and fluid pooling to blisters. I feel heavy inside Annie. Weighty, from the swelling, the living of someone else’s life. But I won’t let pain be my excuse to give up. Josey didn’t.
I need answers and George needs what’s coming to him.
Annie pulls her blanket tight around her shoulders and brings her cup to her mouth. Mint vapors rush through her nose, washing it clean, clearing the way for the mint to come in, and the light scent of paprika or something like burnt chili powder. It’s the burning of metal and flesh and gunpowder. The war is tracing the wind, its cannons and drum lines not far off.
Tallassee’s already sent its able men. Who’s left are women, the old, the crippled, and the good excuses. Somebody had to stay behind. Protect our town and the mill they made an armory. Tallassee Falls Manufacturing Company first made cloth, now makes bullets. It’s the Confederacy’s now. So we get to wait for the war with carbine rifles. We’re all waiting for what’s next.
I make Annie swirl her finger in her warm tea water. Taste it. “What’s happened to us?” she say to herself. “Isn’t your marriage worth fighting for? Is it worth more than this land?”
Annie remembers the good years. The good things about Richard. The way he made her laugh. Her mind drifts to the day he asked her to marry him on a bended knee in the mud. See, Annie married Richard for love and not money. A fact that didn’t matter ’til years later when she saw how he mistreated both. And her plan was to keep her family property in her name but when Richard had his stroke and lost all esteem, he needed something to believe in. More than that, he needed something to ground him here to this place when she felt him drifting away. She needed to build him back into the man he was before the stroke.
She never doubted that Richard would always care for her and for Josey and for the children they never had. And now, her hurt about it is sudden. He’s been gone for fourteen years, and for the last four years of those, she had resolved in herself that an ending is what she wanted.
It’s over, are powerful words, she thought. She’s decided now that she won’t be the one to say it. Speaking it is the same as killing a thing; can’t pretend there ain’t a dead body in the room after it’s done. So Annie don’t want to hear Richard’s words out loud or on paper.
“If I can be a better wife this time,” she tells herself, “he’ll love me again. If I can show him that I’d sacrifice for him, be true to our vows, he will.” Annie decides that she’ll let Richard see her being good to that woman he brung home. Let him see his harsh words turn to loving kindness.
Annie needs time. Time to prove herself. Don’t want to give him a chance to sit her down and say ending words. So she’s gon’ keep her distance ’til she’s sure she’s convinced him to start again. She’ll volunteer at the mill. Stay out of the house all day or invite folks home. Busy is what she’ll be even if it means parties in wartime. Her neighbors would still be pleased to call her friend. “Yes,” she tells herself, “I am his wife.”
Her thoughts make me sorry for her. Sorry that somebody’s listening.
The porch door slams shut behind us. “You all right, Missus Graham?” Bessie say, leaving the warmth of inside. She pulls her sweater snug around her chest. “Can I get you somethin?”
“Thank you, Bessie. This tea is fine.”
“Cold by now,” Bessie say.
“It’s fine,” Annie say.
“I’ll be nearby if you need me.”
When I step out of Annie, searing pain makes my back bow. I fall to the ground limp. I cain’t move now. A cool mist like aloe settles over me, rewarding me for leaving Annie alone.
But I have to do it again.
Get stronger.
I follow Bessie through the screen door and inside the house. I stay close as she strolls through Richard’s study where last night he left a green-shaded lamp on his desk burning oil. It’s fizzled out now. Red and brown leather books are lined side by side on his shelves and some are too high for Richard to reach without a ladder. White pages are spread open on his desk and black words, like smashed ants, are scattered on the page.
Bessie straightens a stack of books on the side table and picks up an empty teacup with a dried brown drip of tea down its side.
I follow Bessie down the hall, watch her pick up a puff of lint from the floor. She kneels and dusts the spot with her sleeve, stops sudden and looks over her shoulder at me. My breath catches. I flush with heat and don’t know why. She’s gone to the kitchen, now. I go there, too.
She sets Richard’s cup into a sink full of already drawn water to let it soak, wipes her hands along the sides of her dress. A black kettle toots on the stovetop and smoke comes out of its hole. She lifts the kettle off the fire before humming a church song, returning to the sink. She swishes Richard’s cup in the water. I move toward her. She say, “What you here to do?”
I look around the room, then back at her.
“What you here to do?” she say again, louder, and this time looking me right in my eyes. “Why you here?”
“You talking to me?” I say.
“Ain’t nobody else here but us.”
It’s like the hairs on the back of my neck rise, my eyes widen, my nostrils round, my whole face gasps for the air it don’t need. Years of nobody listening and she the first to speak to me.
“What you intend to do?” she say to me. I can hardly move, trembling.
“Haunt this place?” she say. “Haunt me? ’Cause I ain’t gon’ let you do that.”
“H — how you see me?”
“You ain’t getting inside me,” she say, then lifts and slams Richard’s cup in the water. Splashing. The cup breaks.
“Nobody sees me,” I say.
“You ain’t getting inside me!” she say again. “You understand?”
“Yes — yes’m,” I say.
She gathers the three broken pieces of Richard’s cup from the water, cursing under her breath as she do.
I say, “How you see me?”
“Look what you made me do,” she say. “You a troublemaker!”
“I’m sorry.”
“How I’m s’posed to fix this?” She’s crying now.
“May — maybe Charles could fix it. He fix most things. .”
“I know Char’s,” she say, huffing over the water. “You don’t need to tell me about Char’s. Don’t tell me nothin about him. Don’t need to talk to me!”
She wipes her tears with the underside of her forearm. “I cain’t do nothin right.”
She lays the broken pieces on the counter and I’m sorry about it. Sorry what Richard might do to punish her. I’ll help her. Go to her to help her, but she pretend she don’t see me now. I reach out with the hope to touch her like Annie but a searing pain shoots through me.
“How you see me?” I say.
“Feel you more’n see you. Feel you angry.”
She takes a wet cloth and calmly rubs the drip of tea from the outside of the broken piece of cup.
“It’s not meant for you to be inside people. It’ll kill you more than dead you keep trying. You keep doing what you do, you won’t even be a mist. You people always trying.”
“There’s others here?” I say, and take a step toward her.
She takes a deep breath, “Why you botherin me?”