As Mama’s belly grew and the leaves shifted from green to red to gold and the winds swung around to the north, the gathering moved into the church basement. The women would sip hot coffee, and always, every Sunday, they settled on my being a girl. You’ll name her Sarah, Mary Holleran said. Mary, same as Juna, has the gift, the know-how.
Mama liked the name Sarah, liked it even more when Mary Holleran said it meant I would be a princess. Mama clung to the idea of giving birth to a princess. The thought of me made my mama want to sweep the wooden floors in her small house, even the corners. The thought of me made her want to wash her clothes in hot soapy water, cut away dead branches, and weed the garden. The thought of me lit up the years ahead. As the women sipped their coffee and dropped napkins at Mama’s feet to foresee the date of my birth, Mama would smooth the strands of hair that poked out from under her white cap, stroke her full belly, and try to lose the sound of her own husband’s voice among all the other voices. A princess would bring some light, some joy, into her home.
Mary Holleran and the other women shied away when next Mama was pregnant. A few mornings, early on, before Mama’s belly began to swell, they laid their hands on her. A boy, they said, again in agreement. All of them except Mary Holleran. She said nothing. After that, the ladies didn’t cackle. They didn’t run their fingers through Mama’s hair or tap their kerchiefs to her cheeks. Mama asked what she should name her baby boy. Is there a name that means prince, she had asked. The women shook their heads and looked to Mary Holleran. Again, Mary said nothing. When Mama’s second was born a girl, the women would not speak to her. They didn’t look down into the face of my sister and coo about her sweet pink nose or the tenderness of each finger. Only Mary Holleran pulled aside the blanket and looked into my sister’s eyes. “I’ve no intent to be unkind,” Mary had said to Mama, “but be wary of this child. Take extra care.”
No one would tell Mama what to name her new baby, not even Mary Holleran, who had named me, and since Mama had been preparing for a boy, she struggled for days. She wondered how to hold this new baby, how to feed it and change it and swaddle it for the night. Daddy wanted no part of the child, wanted no part of giving it a name. He knew he was cursed by this baby who was meant to be a boy. He and his whole life… cursed. Because Mama had no one to help her or to tell her what to do, and because my sister was born in June, Mama named her second child Juna.
Mama’s thirdborn, Dale, killed her. After giving birth, Mama lived three days. She lived long enough to hold her boy, touch his slender nose, kiss the tips of each finger, and give him a name. For those three days, Daddy was happy. The whole house was happy. Dale was a boy, and that meant Daddy would live on. He’d live on forever. Dale being a boy made him most precious, but the relief of him being born ended when Mama died. Daddy had been right. Right all along. He had been cursed by the birth of a girl who was meant to be a boy, and then with Mama’s death and the nine, almost ten years that followed during which no woman would agree to take Mama’s place, and year after year of crops that faltered and failed. Daddy was right. Juna was a curse.
As I near the main road into town, I slow to a walk. I take a deep breath in through my nose, pucker my lips, and blow it out through my mouth. I do this several times over to calm myself. I tip my face toward the sun. I’ll have a new place to live one day, God willing. Someplace where the sun shines from sunup to sundown, and I’ll clean the windows every day because always there will be sun.
The road ahead is empty as far as I can see. I jog another few steps until I reach it, settle back into a walk, tuck my blouse into my skirt, straighten the cap on my head, and feel for the strands of hair I plucked loose before leaving the house. I wrap one around my finger like I’ve seen Juna do, hold it there as I keep walking-slow now so when they pick me up, my ride will be long-and then let that strand of hair go and hope it pops into a soft curl falling alongside my face.
There is a rattling. It’s a tailgate with a latch that doesn’t close up so tight and side rails grown loose from someone all the time leaning on them. The rattling grows louder. I don’t look back, but I know they’re coming. Hope they’re coming. The pitch of the engine’s hum drops, and brakes squeal.
“Hop on,” one of those brothers hollers at me.
I lift a hand to shield my eyes from the sun. “Sure will,” I say.
First thing this morning, the coffee had been boiling and the biscuits were nearly done, their spongy white centers firm to the touch, when Daddy first made mention of the horsemint and crabgrass taking root in the lower field. I had already sliced through one tomato, one of the first good ones we’d taken from our garden, and was cutting the rotten spot out of a second. Dale was sitting next to Daddy and chewing one of those tomato slices. As quick as a dribble of juice ran down his chin, Dale dabbed at it with a napkin he held wadded up in one fist. I didn’t have to ask if he’d washed because his hands, nails, face, are always clean. Dale being that clean has always troubled Daddy. Juna was standing at the window, waiting on the coffee and soaking up the only bit of sunlight we’d get in the house all day.
I always do the cooking. Juna is never allowed. Daddy fears her sinful nature might bleed into the pone if she were to mix it or taint the slivers of ham if she were to brown them. Instead, I do the cooking and Juna is, every day, sent out of the house first thing in the morning with chores enough to keep her busy until sunset. Busy and far from home. This makes Juna the harder of us two sisters, and me the softer. Dale too is soft because Daddy has always figured Dale is safer if he spends his days with me. Being soft was tolerable when Dale was young, but now that he is almost ten years old, being soft has started to be something that might carry on into manhood. It has started to be something shameful.
Daddy sat at the kitchen table, his plaid shirt hanging open. Wiry black hair dotted with gray formed a small triangle in the center of his sunken chest, and beneath it, his skin was white. His face had gone a week without seeing a razor, and the stubble and tufts that had managed to fill in were streaked with gray. As he did every morning, he was blinking and staring at the fingers on each hand and counting them as best he could, trying to decide if he could see them as clear today as he did yesterday. He was making sure the whiskey hadn’t worked on his eyes while he slept. Seeing Daddy doing his counting reminded me to put out the lamp we leave to burn through each night. Daddy never wants to wake to blackness. He worries that if the kerosene burns out, his eyes will burn out too.
“Take a hoe on over there, and Dale should take one too,” Daddy said, reaching for a second biscuit before swallowing the first. “Should take the better part of the day.”
He was talking to Juna. I didn’t know this because he was looking at her. He never did. Daddy is afraid of Juna. She has the know-how, but that isn’t what frightens Daddy. He has always been certain there is evil living inside Juna and that it makes its home in her eyes. Those eyes are dark, almost black. A person as fair as Juna should have pale-blue eyes or maybe soft hazel, but hers are black. Daddy never looks Juna square on.
“You’ll see to the fields today,” Daddy said, and using his fingers to tear off a piece of that biscuit because his teeth aren’t rooted solid enough to do it for him, he popped it in his mouth. “And I want Dale going too. About time the boy did some real work.”
Daddy had seen the same as me. He’d seen Dale swiping away those dribbles of our first good tomatoes before they could reach the tip of his chin and those clean nails of his and smooth knuckles. And Dale had been wearing a freshly washed shirt buttoned up under his chin and he’d been smiling. Smiling for no reason. Daddy couldn’t do much about poor land and little rain, but he could damn sure see to raising his boy to be a man.