In Momma’s house, a lemon tree grew outside the window of the baby’s room. The fruit hung there for color mostly. Sometimes Momma made a soup. The tree was quite lovely and it flourished. It had been planted over the grease trap of the sink. I am always honest when I can be. It was swill that made it grow.
Here there is nothing of interest outside the child’s room. Just the sand and the dunes. The dunes cast no shadow and offer no relief from the sun. A small piece of the Gulf is visible and it flickers like glass. It’s as though the water is signaling some message to my child in his crib.
We do not wait for Jace to come back. We do not wait for anything. We do not want anything. Jace, on the other hand, wants and wants. There is nothing he would not accept. He has many trades. Once he was a deep-sea diver. He dove for sponges out of Tarpon Springs. He dove every day, all of one spring and all of one summer. There was a red tide that year that drove people almost mad. Your eyes would swell, your throat would burn. Everything was choking. The water was like chewing gum. The birds went inland. All the fish and turtles died. I wouldn’t hear about it. I was always a sensitive woman. Jace would lie in bed, smoking, his brown arms on the white sheets, his pale hair on the pressed pillowcases. Yes, everything was spotless once, and in order.
He said, “The fastest fish can’t swim out of it. Not even the barracuda.”
I wouldn’t hear it. I did not like suffering.
“The bottom was covered with fish,” he said. “I couldn’t see the sponges for the acres of fish.”
I began to cry.
“Everything is all right,” he said. He held me. “No one cares,” he said. “Why are you crying?”
There were other jobs Jace had. He built and drove. He would be gone for a few weeks or a few months and then he would come back. There were some things he didn’t tell me.
The beach land here belongs to the Navy. It has belonged to them for many years. Their purpose has been forgotten. There are a few trees, near the road, but they have no bark or green branches. I point this out to the child, directing his gaze to the blasted scenery. “The land is unwholesome,” I say. He refuses to agree. I insist, although I am not one for words.
“Horsetail beefwood can’t be tolerated here,” I tell him, “although horsetail beefwood is all the land naturally bears. Now if they had a decorative bent,” I tell him, “they would plant palms, but there are no palms.”
The baby’s head is a white globe beneath my heart. He exhausts me, even though his weight is little more than that of water on my hands. He is a frail child. So many precautions are necessary. My hands grow white from holding him.
I am so relieved that Jace is gone. He has a perfect memory. His mouth was so clean, resting on me, and I was so quiet. But then he’d start talking about Momma’s house.
“Wasn’t life nice then?” he’d say. “And couldn’t we see everything there was to see? And didn’t life just make the finest sense?”
Even without Jace, I sometimes feel uneasy. There is something I feel I have not done.
It was the third month I could feel the child best. They move, you know, to face their stars.
There is a small town not far from here. I loathe the town and its people. They are watchful country people. The town’s economy is dependent upon the Prison. The Prison is a good neighbor, they say. It is unobtrusive, quiet. When an execution is necessary, the executioner arrives in a white Cadillac and he is unobtrusive too for the Cadillac is an old one and there are a great many white cars here. The cars are white because of the terrible heat. The man in the Cadillac is called the “engineer” and no one claims to know his name.
The townspeople are all very handy. They are all very willing to lend a helping hand. They hire Prison boys to work in their yards. You can always tell the Prison boys. They look so hungry and serene.
Martha is the only one of the townspeople who talks to me. The rest nod or smile. Martha is a comfy woman with a nice complexion, but her hair is the color of pork. She is always touching my arm, directing my attention to things she believes I might have overlooked, a sale on gin, for example, or frozen whipped puddings.
“You might could use a sweet or two,” she says. “Fill you out.”
Her face is big and friendly and her hands seem clean and dry. She is always talking to me. She talks about her daughter who has not lived with her for many years. The daughter lives in a special home in the next state. Martha says, “She had a bad fever and she stopped being good.”
Martha’s hand on my shoulder feels like a nurse’s hand, intimate and officious. She invites me to her home and I accept, over and over again. She is inviting me in for tea and conversation and I am always opening the door to her home. I am forever entering her rooms, walking endlessly across the shiny wooden floors of her home.
“I don’t want to be rich,” Martha says. “I want only enough to have a friend over for a piece of pie or a highball. And I would like a frost-free refrigerator. Even in the winter, I have to defrost ours once a week. I have to take everything out and then spread the newspapers and get the bowl and sponge and then I have to put everything back.”
“Yes,” I say.
Martha’s hands are moving among the cheap teacups. “It seems a little senseless,” she says.
There are small table fans in the house, stirring the air. The rooms smell of drain cleaner and mold and mildew preventives. When the fans part the curtains to the west, an empty horse stall and a riding ring are visible. Martha crowns my tea with rum, like a friend.
“This is a fine town,” Martha says. “Everyone looks out for his neighbor. Even the Prison boys are good boys, most of them up just for stealing copper wire or beating on their women’s fellows.”
I hold the child tight. You know a mother’s fears. He is fascinated by the chopping blades of the little fans, by the roach tablets behind the sofa cushions. Outside, as well, he puts his hands to everything — the thorns on the grapefruit tree, the poisonous oleander, the mottled dumb cane….
“I imagine the wicked arrive at that Prison only occasionally,” I say.
“Hardly ever,” Martha agrees.
I am trying to explain to you. I am always inside this woman’s house. I am always speaking reasonably with this Martha. I am so tired and so sad and I am lying on a bed drinking tea. It is not Martha’s bed. It is, I suppose, a bed for her guests. I am lying on a bedspread which is covered by a large embroidered peacock. Underneath the bed is a single medium-sized mixing bowl. In the light socket is a night-light in the shape of a rose. I feel wonderful in this room in many ways. I feel like a column of air. I would like to audition for something. I am so clean inside.
“My husband worries about you,” Martha says. She takes the cup away. “We are all good people here,” she says. “We all lead good lives.”
“What does your husband do, then?” I say. I smile because I do not want her to think I am confused. Actually, I’ve met the man. He placed his long hands on my stomach, on my thighs.
“We are not unsubtle here,” Martha says, tapping her chest.
I met the man and when I met him in this house he was putting in new pine boards over the cement floors. When I arrived, he stopped, but that was what he was doing. He had a gun which shot nails into the concrete. Each nail cost a quarter. The expense distressed Martha and she mentioned it in my hearing. Men resume things, you know. He went back to it. As I lay on the bed, I could hear the gun being fired and I awoke quickly, frightened the noise might awaken the child. You know a mother’s presumptions. There was the smell of sawdust and smoke from the nail gun.