“We rested there some,” he repeated, trying to regain the thread of his thoughts. “Played around for a couple of hours, till the sun started goin’ down. Aaron got bored. Wanted to go home, and Aaron, you know, he don’t like bein’ bored. Gets riled up real easy that way. So he started teasin’ Susanna somethin’ fierce when she says she don’t wanna go home yet, callin’ her names, peggin’ sticks at her. He even threw a dead possum he’d found that had all its guts hangin’ out. That was all she wrote right there. Poor Suze had all its insides stuck in her hair, maggots on her dress, and she went crazy. Damn near chased Aaron all the way home and ten miles farther.” He smiled, just a little. Then it faded as Momma shifted a little in her bed, those dark eyes gleaming like beetles in the moonlight.
“He stayed home; I stayed at the creek, feet up on a rock, in no hurry to go nowhere, not on my birthday, which the way I saw it, was the best damn day of my life so far. The horses was with me, and they seemed pretty satisfied too, standin’ in the shade as the sun went down. I might even have dozed some.”
“And where was Susanna?”
Momma-in-Bed knew the answer to that already. She’d heard this story a thousand times, but her eagerness to hear it again never waned. She was prodding him, impatient to get to the important part, the part where everything went wrong.
“Somewhere in the woods,” Luke said somberly. “I thought she’d gone home after gettin’ bored of chasin’ Aaron.”
“But she weren’t home.”
“No.”
“Where was she?”
“She were there, with me, only I didn’t know it ’till she stepped out from the trees and called my name.”
“Your sister had such pretty dresses, didn’t she Luke?”
“Yes Momma.”
“Made most of them myself. What dress was she wearin’ that day, Luke? I forget.”
“A pink one.”
“Of course, you got a good head for mem’ries, boy. And what was she wearin’ when she stepped out and called your name?”
Luke answered, quietly. “Nothin’.”
“I can’t hear you.”
“Nothin’ Momma. She weren’t wearin’ nothin’.”
“That must’ve surprised you.”
“It did.”
“Say again?”
“It did, Momma. I didn’t know why she did that. Thought she might’ve been skinny-dippin’ in the creek like she done sometimes, maybe cleanin’ the possum guts off, and Aaron had stoled her clothes, or somethin’ because she were all wet.”
“Go on…” Momma urged.
“I asked her what were she doin’ without no clothes on, and she said it was too damn hot and her dress were ruined and she’d taken a dip to wash off. I told her if anyone came along’n seen her, there’d be trouble. She said no one was gonna bother us, and then she came over to where I was layin’ and started openin’ up my belt. I told her to stop, was she crazy or somethin’ and she wouldn’t. She just kept tearin’ at my clothes till she had my…” He swallowed again, the words lodged in his throat.
“Your what?”
“My pizzle, Momma. She had it in her mouth, and I couldn’t make her stop.”
“You couldn’t stop because you didn’t want to. Your Jezebel sister had her lips on your dirty thing and you liked it, didn’t you?”
Luke nodded. Truth was, and he’d never denied it because lying was something of which he seemed completely incapable, he had enjoyed it, and enjoyed it a great deal, despite knowing that he and his sister, who was older, but only by a year, were doing something that went against nature, and worse, against God himself. But he had been unable to stop the queer, frightening, but unstoppable current of sensation that her lips evoked as she sucked on him. It had felt as if she were drawing out all the bad things, all the fears, worries, and the pain he’d carried within him since he’d first come to understand the world into which he’d been deposited. And when his seed erupted, he felt as if dynamite had detonated in his balls and would blow him to little bloody pieces. He lay there panting as the incredible, terrifying sensation ebbed away and his member slackened. Then he stared, open-mouthed, as his sister stood and spat, then walked away toward the creek. He’d followed a moment later, intending to ask her what had just happened, and why. He was hurt, a little angry, but more confused, and it seemed to steal a little bit of the color from the world, darkening it with a mystery he needed solved. He found Susanna washing herself in the cool clear water, her back turned to him, her hair wet, but before he had the chance to put to her the burning question, she spoke first:
“I love you, Luke,” she said softly, sadly. “And I’m leavin’. I know you won’t come with me, that you can’t, but I gotta go, gotta get out. I’m not supposed to be here. There’s a big world out there for people like me. Yours is here, with Momma and Papa. I wanted to kiss you on the mouth back there, but I reckon that should be kept for my husband. What we did…Lorraine Chadwick at school told me she saw her mother do it to her boyfriend and he seemed to enjoy it all right. Said it was a secret kiss, and now we got a secret all our own.” She shrugged, cupped water in both hands and washed out her mouth as if she’d just eaten a bug. “I guess I were curious, and…maybe I didn’t know stuff like snot was gonna come out…but I ain’t sorry none…. It’s your birthday’n all, and I know I love you Luke. Maybe even enough to kiss you on the lips, but like I said, I reckon I gotta keep somethin’ for my husband.”
“The seed of incest is the devil’s milk,” his mother said. “And it poisons everythin’ it touches.” Her playful tone was now gone completely, replaced by bitterness and shame. “Your Papa stood a few feet away watchin’ the whole wicked thing. You were lucky he didn’t kill the both of you that day, right there and then. Maybe he should’ve.”
Luke had nothing to say. If Susanna hadn’t sinned with him that day, he would still have skin on his privates, and maybe his sister would still be here. Of course, for a long time, he’d borne his punishment well, consoled by the knowledge that she had made it out, was on her way to a new and better life somewhere, where no one would ever find her. He fantasized about growing up and finding her, or maybe not even waiting that long. Maybe someday he would end up possessed of the same wanderlust, the same certainty that life was better Out There, and he’d travel the same path, his beloved sister waiting for him at the end of it. He knew he wouldn’t care if she were married when that time came. He didn’t want her for a wife. He loved her as a sister, and as the best friend he’d ever known. And he had always envied how much different she was from the rest of the family. She was independent, headstrong, and defiant, all traits Luke admired greatly, but never dared try to learn.
“Tell me what became of her, Luke.”
For two years he had thought Susanna gone. It had cheered him and brightened his darkest hours, of which there had been many. He wondered what she looked like, whether she was rich or poor, still in the South or elsewhere. He dreamed of her voice, and waited for her to write him with details of her adventures.
It was another summer before he found her old blue suitcase half-buried in the barren field behind the acre of corn. It was the same one he’d seen tucked beneath her arm as her shoeless feet carried her up the dirt path and away from the house, bound for town, and the strange unfamiliar lands beyond. Inside that suitcase were her meager possessions: two dresses, a pair of socks with holes in the heels, two pairs of underwear, a cold roast beef sandwich wrapped in waxpaper, a small hunk of cheese, a notebook and a small stubby pencil, and a small pink purse with a brass clip in which she carried ten whole dollars to start her on her way.