It would be years before he hit her. But in Texarkana, five days from Liberty, he began a covert assault on her judgment. It was little things, like how not to hang linen on the traveling line, what not to wear during Holiness service while he was guest preaching. When they arrived at the Jesus Hearth Church in Dearing and he gave his “Out of the frying pan, into the hands of Jesus” sermon with a 102-degree fever and chills to a decidedly cool congregation, he shamed Otha in front of the congregation by speaking about Northern women with shorn hair who thought the rib was bigger than Adam. By the time they reached Liberty his face was sullen stone that only cracked at night between white sheets.
When her mama got sick a year later, Otha didn’t have the strength to tell her she had been right. She asked for money to visit Marilyn but the Reverend said train tickets didn’t grow on trees. He gave her money for a trip to the funeral four weeks later instead.
The first two children died before they had fully taken root in her womb. Otha had wanted proper graves but the Reverend said that that was blasphemy as they hadn’t come full term and hadn’t been baptized. The next child was Celia and she was the Reverend’s child from the beginning, willed to life by the boom of his voice, smiling at his coos and tickles, crying even as she suckled at Otha’s breast. Then five more lost children until her boy Ephram came in ’29.
By this time the Reverend was hitting her good and proper when, he said, she deserved it. He hated to see her reading and would slap her whenever he caught her at it without first asking if she had finished her chores. He never let her cut her hair, but bristled if she primped in front of the mirror.
When Ephram was five, Grueber’s mill went up in flames. It took three whole months before it was up and running, during which time the collection plates suffered greatly. So much so that Otha had to take a job in Newton making lace at Miss Barbara’s Bridal Necessities. The Reverend had taken her there himself early one Monday morning. He’d said that Paula Renfolk, Miss Barbara’s maid, had told him about the job, but when they got there, Paula seemed surprised to see them, and her husband and Miss Barbara were, oddly, on speaking terms. Even so much as for her to make a donation of fabric and notions to the children of his parish, and for him to follow her up the stairs of the shop to lift the heavy box, and then stay up there for a good twenty-five minutes.
Paula had leaned over and scolded Otha. She told her that she’d best keep her husband satisfied at home or deadly trouble would surely befall him. She’d told her that she’d seen Miss Barbara donate plenty to her husband when the shop first opened. Said no White fella would give her the time of day till she got those new teeth from Dallas. Even after they came in that blue medical box, she’d still made plenty of donations to the Reverend.
When Otha asked her husband about it that evening, he slapped her so hard that blood filled up her mouth. After that, Otha kept her eyes on her work.
Which, truth be told, was not a sacrifice, because, besides her son Ephram, the beauty of lace was her one true love. Her mother had taught her how to move her fingers, how to stretch the wedge of the lacing tat and loop the fine silk thread. Her work was impeccable and soon she developed a reputation. Women from as far away as Pickettville and Beaumont came to Miss Barbara’s because of Otha’s intricate and delicate work there in the small dim room at the back of the shop. Often Ephram sat with her for hour upon hours, watching her work. Although the Reverend expressly forbid it, she silently taught him, stitching slowly when his eyes rested on her work, tilting the pattern downward if he leaned towards her. In this way they shared many evenings before getting on the Red Bus to Liberty.
The Reverend had taken to slipping out most nights. Otha assumed it was to see another woman — perhaps even, if Paula had been right, Miss Barbara, for which he surely would be killed. He had been betraying Otha for years with sisters of his own flock. She could always tell who by the way their eyes leapt and danced when the Reverend placed a hand on their arms or shoulders, by the sly cut of their smiles when they greeted her each Sunday. Otha expected and often found telltale signs on his person: a soiled handkerchief, the pungent scent of a woman, a stray pressed hair curling about a button or in his undergarments.
But Otha started finding other, more disturbing articles. She found a tiny Black doll with a pin through its neck in his breast pocket one evening. One night she found a small red velvet pouch filled with a smell so foul she almost regurgitated, another time some type of fang wrapped in sinew. She would come across bits of garlic tied to doorposts and small covered holes in her vegetable patch. When she dug into the earth with frightened hands she would always find a strange assortment of bones and nail clippings. But the last item she had found sent her into the piney woods in secret pursuit of her husband. It was the evening before Easter 1937. Ephram was only eight.
That afternoon, Otha had been going through the laundry basket. She had been unable to locate her good bottom sheet. The second best had been on the bed two days now and the Reverend was a stickler when it came to cleanliness, especially on a Sunday. She had searched high and low. It was not in the washroom, not on the bedroom shelves. The thing became a matter of pride for her, she simply could not have lost her single good bottom sheet. So she began looking in unusual places. She searched through the storm cellar, behind fig and peach preserves. Rising uneasiness caused her to ransack the attic and the smokehouse. Finally, balled in a gap of earth under the rotting wall of the unused outhouse, she found it. It was stiff with mud and something gooey dried hard like glue. It was not until Otha brought the sheet to her nose and smelled the low musk salt did she know it was blood. A chill circled her throat and grabbed her diaphragm. She smelled it again and knew that something had been killed there. She lay on the ground until her heart filled her brain with reason. Her hands were moving like air as she lay on the earth and it took her a moment to notice them. When she did she calmed them against her breast. She had been lacing. The movements always brought comfort. She stuffed the sheet back under the outhouse and went to find her children.
Celia, fourteen, was baking for her father, chocolate layer cake, his favorite. Celia was not a particularly inspired cook but she had an iron-hard will and determination to learn. Celia was fine. Then she went in search of Ephram. Her husband hated the boy with a deep, unruly passion. Otha feared the reason, but pushed it out of her head as quickly as it had come. She hunted in all of Ephram’s favorite spots until she found him feeding fish at Marion Lake. She tried to quiet her heart at the sight of him, little legs curled under him, his breath so smooth and steady. But a bubble of fear stole up from her chest and she could not stop herself from crying when he turned to look at her. A small cloud of worry knitted across his face so she reached out and smoothed it down. She sat beside him and stared out at the water.
“You all right, Mama?” her son asked.
She ran her hand over his small square head. His father had kept his hair clipped so close to the scalp that it felt a bit like a new peach. “There’s not even enough here for a part.”
She watched her son smile. It was an old joke but he kept a fresh grin for whenever she told it. Dragonflies darted by, their wings catching rainbows. They sat so quietly that they heard the lean of the grass and the nuzzling pines. They were quiet people, always had been. He was her stock, had her daddy’s brow and her mother’s grace. There was nothing of the Reverend in him, which made it easy to pull him near. She wanted to tell him about wolves in the world and a gut-wrenching kind of danger. Otha could feel it rushing past the trees towards her. Her heart sped in her chest. Her son’s eyes were so large and dark, his lashes so thick. He peered up at her and she leaned down and kissed him where the part should have been.