When she thinks of Easter

When she thinks of Easter she remembers the mule and the long walk to town, the dirt road and her brothers — all gone now. She thinks of her mother and her father, and how at nearly 80 she is an orphan.

She thinks about how many places she has lived — how many houses — and how far she traveled to end up back here, not 15 miles from where she was born, a couple of interstate exits down from where the old place was, the tobacco farm (“plantation” is too fancy a word) her father worked and that slowly slipped away from the family in the decades since his death. It’s mostly lots with brick houses now, including the one she and her sisters built for their mother in the ’90s (20 years ago but it feels like 20 weeks) though when she drives there on the now-paved but still rough street she knows the ghost hollows and where the barns used to stand. Where there was a stand of corn and a sty for hogs. Where the chickens used to chase and peck at her. When she was a little girl.

It’s just her and her sisters, all of whom have made their way back here. She’s not even the oldest — that would be Edith — and she wonders why the women in her family all seem so strong and healthy while the men seem frail and weak and given to misadventure. Her mother lived to 93, more than 30 years past her father.

When she thinks of Easter she remembers how Mandy always told them he didn’t have to worry about getting into heaven, that he was predestined for salvation and so any good work he performed in this realm was just for extra credit, or maybe just evidence of his saintliness. She knows he said that jokingly but she believes that he believed it and she hopes from some place deep in her heart that it’s true. Because Mandy wasn’t bad, he just liked — like all her brothers — to drink a bit.

Probably the worst thing Mandy ever did was refuse to file his income tax. He told her he paid taxes every day, whenever he bought a pack of cigarettes or a bottle of beer, and that every time he got a paycheck the government took a cut from it so he didn’t see why he had to do their arithmetic for them. What Mandy didn’t say was that he hardly ever took a paycheck as such. He didn’t use banks and most of his work was for hire and done for cash. When they caught up with him they were not amused. Mandy was lucky he didn’t go to the penitentiary.

She thinks about him sitting on the sofa in the old house with Mike and Buddy, all of them drinking Budweiser and Jack Daniel’s, watching the wrestling show on TV. They’d sit there by the fire, cutting hunks of sugar cane with their big greasy knives, with something mad and purposeless, something like a disease, dancing in their eyes.

They were wild, all of them, and they didn’t get it from their daddy — the most reckless thing he ever did was noodling for flathead catfish. She remembers the 40-pound monsters he left thrashing in the zinc sink on the screen porch, she remembers the smooth opaqueness of their eyes and wondering how something so different as a catfish could be of this earth. She remembers the long boning knife he used to clean the fish, the ghastliness of its edge, how sharp and undiscriminating an instrument it was. She shudders at the memory.

When she thinks of Easter she thinks of the heavy meals and crystal glasses filled with cold milk. She thinks of her mother quickly wringing the neck of a chicken in the yard. She thinks of how it ran in circles, its head lolling like a sock, for what seemed like minutes. It was dead but something moved in it—a heart pumped, muscles spasmed, blood leapt hopefully.

She always felt bad about the chickens. (She didn’t think about the ham, which came from a store. They sold their pigs, they didn’t slaughter them.)

When she thinks about Easter, she thinks of the Bible story and all the churches she’s ever been in—the Catholics with their hats and the butterscotch light slanting through the cathedral’s stained glass. She remembers the whitewashed country church where her father was a deacon. The worn steps and the boys with cowlicks, buttoned into tight suits with two inches of shirt sleeve sticking out. She remembers supper on the grounds and egg hunts.

When she thinks of Jesus she doesn’t think of him scared and human or of the terrifying pain of crucifixion. She sees him calm and friendly, a nice young man with quiet eyes. She knows he likely didn’t look like her, or like the paintings that make him look like Brad Pitt, but she doesn’t fight the pictures that come into her head. She believes He has taken in her loved ones—two very different husbands, her brothers, dozens of friends — and that they exist in peace and watch her, keep her from becoming lonely.

When she thinks of Easter, she is grateful. Though she knows she will face trials, the worst is over. Finally the Social Security came through and recognized her oldest daughter’s disability; the little money will be welcome. The daughter will get a lump sum for the past couple of years which she can use to pay off the car she bought from her sister and maybe put a couple thousand back in a savings account. The older daughter has had a tough couple of years but things will be better now. Her sister has a daughter graduating from high school.

She thinks about how now that for the first time in her life she lives alone, she sometimes feels the house is too big for her and that maybe she should get a condo downtown, but then she has company almost every day. And she’s learning to use the Internet now that her son-in-law came over and finally reset the Wi-Fi password. Her neighbors watch out for her, and the partners at the law firm allow her to work as much or as little as she likes. And she likes it — her biggest vice these days is probably courthouse gossip.

When she thinks of Easter she thinks of how today her house will be filled with voices and laughter; with grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She thinks about the miracle of regeneration, and how much she loves these little people who weren’t around in the last century, for whom the mule and the long dirt road seem impossibly quaint, a fairy story told them by sweet old Meemaw, whom they will remember all their lives.

pmartin@arkansasonline.com

Read more at www.blooddirtangels.com

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