C Corwin - The Cross Kisses Back

Mingo Junction is a suburb of Steubenville, if that tells you anything. It’s a very long town, stretched out in the floody flats along the banks of the Ohio River. Small mountains hold the town in like the walls of a prison. The steel mills where people used to work have rusted away. The chemical plants that sour the air haven’t. It’s a poor and depressing place. You understand immediately why people like Sissy James move north to Hannawa.

Aubrey had done her homework. She had a street map of the town and the addresses of the James families living there. Her plan was to go from house to house and simply ask if Sissy was there and then interpret the terror she found in her relatives’ eyes.

The first house we went to was painted the most awful blue. The window casings were painted pink. The lawn hadn’t been mowed in weeks. Aubrey made Eric wait in the car. The narrow porch was lined with plastic Adirondack chairs. A man about my age came to the door. He was wearing a yellowed T-shirt. He had a floppy slice of Swiss cheese in one hand and the piece to a jigsaw puzzle in the other. He glowered at us impatiently.

Aubrey smiled at him like a Girl Scout selling cookies. “Hi-you Sissy’s father?”

“Uncle.”

“I’m sorry-we were looking for her parents.”

“All she ever had was a mama and her mama’s dead.”

“Her mother was your sister then?”

His impatience was replaced by anger. “Go see Jeanie if you got questions. She’s the one Sissy’s thick with.”

“Jeanie?”

He pointed with his Swiss cheese hand. “My daughter Jeanie. Lives two miles down Georges Run Road there. Brown house with a swing set in front.”

“Did you see Sissy at Thanksgiving?” Aubrey asked, as if it were a friendly afterthought.

“Like I told the police when they came-I ain’t seen her in ten years.” He shut the door in our face.

We found Jeanie’s house. It was a skinny two-story, covered with raggedy asphalt shingles and surrounded with overgrown shrubs. There were actually two swing sets in the front yard, an old rusty one and a brand new one with a spiral slide. The porch was covered with green indoor-outdoor carpeting. Eric stayed in the car without being told.

A frazzled woman in her thirties opened the screen door. Aubrey asked her if she were Jeanie.

The woman was suspicious immediately. “I am.”

“Has Sissy been here since last Thanksgiving?”

Jeanie’s eyes worked back and forth like a Kit Kat clock as she tried to figure out the answer. Inside the house a television was on and children were screaming at each other. Finally she said, “Who says she was here even then?”

“She always visits at Thanksgiving, doesn’t she?”

Three girls suddenly appeared around Jeanie’s legs. One was maybe seven. The other two in the three or four range. All had red circles around their mouths and big plastic glasses of Kool-aid in their hands. Jeanie slid onto the porch and closed the door behind her. “Who are you two?”

Aubrey introduced us. She told her we were from the newspaper in Hannawa. She also introduced Eric, who had escaped from the car and was now sitting on the lawn with a malnourished cat in his lap.

“We just met your father,” I said.

Jeanie looked at me with empty eyes. “Did you?”

Aubrey got back to business. “I guess you know Sissy is in prison for murder?”

“I do.”

“Had to be a shock, huh? Your cousin arrested for murder?”

“It was.”

“And how did you first hear about it? Read about it? See it on TV?”

The children were banging on the door, wanting out. Jeanie ignored them. “I saw it on TV. I don’t get the paper.”

From the wry curl on Aubrey’s lips I gathered she was not surprised that Jeanie did not subscribe to a newspaper. “But you must have known about it before you saw it on television,” Aubrey said. “News like that would spread through a family pretty fast.”

Jeanie’s face wrinkled with bewilderment, or guilt, or fear, or some other agonizing emotion. Apparently she did not want to tell the truth any more than she wanted to lie. “Sissy told me herself.”

Aubrey was delighted to hear that. “Before her arrest or after?”

“I think before.”

That delighted Aubrey even more. “And she said what?”

“That she’d just killed a man. That it was likely she’d have to spend the rest of her life in prison, if not be put to death. I didn’t know it was that famous preacher until I saw the TV.”

“And she told you to watch after her child?” Aubrey asked.

Jeanie’s once-empty eyes were now cloudy with tears. I gave her the pack of Kleenex from my purse.

“That’s right,” Aubrey continued, “we know about the daughter.”

“Ain’t nobody supposed to know.”

Aubrey pointed with her chin at the children playing inside. “Which one is hers?”

“The oldest girl. Rosy.”

“She doesn’t know Sissy is her mother, does she?”

Jeanie shook her head.

“And when Sissy called you that day-she told you not to say anything about Rosy to the police, right?”

“Ain’t nobody supposed to know,” Jeanie said again.

“So Rosy thinks you’re her mother. And thinks Sissy is Aunt Sissy.”

Jeanie nodded as if she had a hundred girls to raise.

“It’s really wonderful of you,” I said.

She seemed to appreciate that. “What’s one more?” When she tried to give the Kleenex back I told her to keep it.

Aubrey kept pressing. “So, did Sissy visit all Thanksgiving weekend?”

“Just Thanksgiving Day.”

“Is that what you told the police when they talked to you?”

“It is.”

“But that’s not true, is it?”

“Just Thanksgiving Day.”

Aubrey pulled out her notebook and slipped it under her arm. A threat to start recording Jeanie’s untruths for all the world to read. “Let me get a clear picture of this,” she said. “Sissy has a daughter one hundred and fifty miles away. A daughter she aches to see, even if it’s just as Aunt Sissy. And when the four-day Thanksgiving weekend comes, she drives down for one lousy afternoon? Eats some turkey and says bye-bye? Goes home and kills a man?” She pulled out her pen and tapped it on her nose. “She stayed the whole weekend, didn’t she?”

Jeanie watched the pen bounce. “I told the police it was just the one day.”

Aubrey pulled the cap off the pen with her teeth. She held it there like a tiny cigar. “And the police accepted your lie because they didn’t have any reason not to. Because they didn’t know about Rosy. Because they wanted to corroborate Sissy’s confession as fast as they could. Because they’re boneheads.”

Jeanie was crying into her hands now. “Why can’t you believe me?”

Aubrey slipped her pen back into the cap. “Because we’re not boneheads, Jeanie. Because we know Sissy had an alibi for that Friday night. Just like you know it. Because we fucking care.”

Aubrey’s crudeness made Jeanie cry all the more. Because she was not a crude woman. Because she was a good woman caught between the truth she wanted to tell and the lie she had promised to tell. “I care, too.”

Aubrey handed me her notebook and took Jeanie in her arms. She guided her down to the first step and sat next to her. “Who was at your house for Thanksgiving dinner then? Sissy? Your parents? Your kids and your husband?”

“Just me and Sissy and the girls. I don’t have a husband no more and I don’t see my parents any more than I have to.”

“And now you don’t have Sissy anymore,” Aubrey said.

My but Aubrey was good. I was beginning to feel my own eyes water up. I kneeled in front of Jeanie and patted her hands. “Why did you lie for her, dear?”