“Enough,” Mama shouts. “Not another word about the Baines.”
And then Annie remembers.
“Stop that rocking, Grandma.”
Grandma looks at the hand doing the nudging. She looks at it like it’s someone else’s hand, and she doesn’t have the first idea what that hand is doing. Not sure why but certain she has to do something, anything, Annie drops down in the rocking chair, grabs the wooden armrests, one in each fist, and holds on tight.
“Oh, good Lord,” Grandma says. “I done it now.”
“Mother,” Mama says, “language.”
Annie keeps a good hold on the chair, digs her toes into the floor so there will be no more rocking, and looks back at Grandma. The expression on her face-mouth hanging open, pale-blue eyes stretched wide, chin drawn in much like a turtle might do-makes Annie wish she’d stopped that rocker sooner.
“Out,” Grandma says. “Out of that chair right this instant.”
Annie leaps to her feet. “Is it too late?” she says once she is outside of what she figures is striking distance.
She starts sidestepping, putting more and more distance between herself and that chair, and doesn’t stop until she bumps up against Daddy.
“Take it away,” Annie says, jumping behind Daddy.
“Yes,” Grandma says, her blue eyes darting from the chair to Daddy and back again. “Outside, quick as you can.”
“Mother,” Mama says, “stop your nonsense.”
“Take it away, John,” Grandma says, ignoring Mama. “Out on the porch’ll do. Maybe we caught it in time.”
Daddy scoops up Annie with one strong arm and drops her in the center of the living room. He believes in facing fears. When Caroline was afraid of swimming, Daddy rowed her into the middle of the lake and dropped her in the cold, dark water. Every time she got to crying hard enough that she coughed and choked, he yanked her up by the forearm, let her rest until she stopped spitting out water, and then let go. It was not a pleasing thing to watch, but Caroline is a strong swimmer now. It occurs to Annie as she lunges to the right in hopes of taking cover again that this is her deep, murky pond, and sure enough, Daddy wraps his two large hands around her shoulders and makes her face the rocking chair square on.
“Chair ain’t going nowhere,” he says. “I don’t know what’s got you two riled, but you stop all this damn foolishness.”
Mama exhales long and loud. There is nothing Mama hates more than language defiling her home. It’ll root itself, she always says. If one of us takes liberties, other forms of nastiness will follow and then what’ll we have?
“I’ll see to it,” Grandma says, grabbing the rocker by its wooden headrest and dragging it toward the door that leads onto the front porch. “It’s my doing, so I should set it right.”
“Enough,” Mama says. The tone of her voice stills everyone in the room.
Mama’s eyes have taken on a blurry look like she’s near to tears, and she doesn’t bother brushing away the strands of hair that hang in her face. Mama doesn’t think much of the know-how, but she must know enough, remember enough from all her years growing up with Aunt Juna, to know what that empty rocking chair means.
“That chair is just fine where it is,” she says. “Go on, all of you. I want every one of you out right now.”
“Sarah,” Daddy says. That’s Mama’s name. Grandma gave it to Mama before she was even born and it means princess. Daddy’s usually the only one in the house to use it. She’s mostly Mama to everyone else. Daddy says it again in his deep, scratchy voice. At the sound of her name, Mama, Sarah, takes a deep breath and blows it out long and slow.
“My apologies,” Mama says. “Mother, why don’t we see to some breakfast for everyone, and then let’s us mix up a cake for Annie’s day.”
The sizzle in the air was Annie’s first inkling something was lurking. First inklings aren’t so troublesome, and for a week, she’d labored to convince herself Grandma was right. The charge in the air was the lavender coming into bloom. But that empty rocking chair is a second inkling. Second inklings are more dependable still. That chair was rocking forward and backward. Forward and backward. Coming and going. Someone is coming. Someone is going. When an empty rocking chair rocks, someone is coming home again and someone is going to die.
Every Christmas, a card comes, a handwritten letter tucked inside. They arrive in mid-December. Mama keeps the letters to herself and hangs the cards from the refrigerator with a magnet. The signature inside each card is always penned in the same flattened-out, slanted letters. As a child, before she learned her cursive alphabet, Annie couldn’t read the name written inside the colorful cards, but always she knew they had come from Aunt Juna. Annie had hoped when they moved from the north side of town to Grandma’s house that the cards and letters wouldn’t follow. But they did.
While the cards from Aunt Juna hung on the refrigerator for several days, not until Christmas Eve did Mama read the letters. Over supper, after grace was said and before the first fork was raised, Mama would pull the most recent letter from her apron pocket and read it aloud to the rest of the family. These letters grew longer as the years passed. Aunt Juna wrote of her life. She wrote of living in California, where the sun always shone, and of oranges hanging from a tree where a person could pick them and eat them right where she stood. She wrote of pasturelands in the middle of the country that stretched to the horizon and farther still, so far they looked to roll right off the edge of the earth. She wrote of trains and cars and of streets in the northeast where buildings rose up as tall as those California mountains.
And always Aunt Juna wrote of how beautiful Caroline and Annie had grown. When they were children, she said they were precious. Last year, they were lovely young women. Each Christmas, she wrote how wonderful it would be when she could finally, after all these years, see them in the flesh, touch them, hug them, tell them she loved them. And then Mama would refold the letter, press out each seam, tuck it into that same apron pocket, and say what a shame she couldn’t write back. Annie always wondered, but never asked, was afraid to ask, how Aunt Juna knew Annie and Caroline were precious when they were young and lovely now as young ladies. Mama never wrote back, never sent pictures. How could Aunt Juna know the girls were precious and lovely if she lived so far away?
“Aunt Juna will come home now, won’t she?” Annie says. “Now that every Baine is dead, she’s coming home.”
7
DADDY CARRIES JUNA home, up the gravel drive and toward the house. I run ahead, and when I near the front porch, I slow to a walk because someone is sitting on the top step. I draw in a few deep breaths and think to holler at Dale to go inside before Daddy gets ahold of him. Daddy will whip Dale for causing all this fuss. Taking a few more steps and glancing back to see if Daddy has seen Dale yet, I hurry ahead so I can warn him without Daddy hearing, but as I walk another several feet toward the house, I see it isn’t Dale sitting there on the step. It’s Abigail Watson.
Still wearing her long-sleeved dress and the same white cap, Abigail stands. A white apron is tied at her waist, and her skirt is stained at the knees, most likely from working in her grandma’s garden. “Something’s wrong,” she says. “Ain’t it?”
“Did you find him?” I ask. “Did you ever see Dale today?”
Her face is small enough to hold in one hand, and she’s reached that stage where her arms and legs have grown too long and thin for the rest of her body.
“I didn’t never see him, Miss Crowley,” she says, taking a swipe at her small, teary eyes with the heel of one hand.
“You go on,” I say to Abigail as I run up the stone stairs. “Go on and bring Abraham. Tell him to come right away.”