Robert Whitlow: Deeper Water

I walked up the creaky stairs to the second floor of the house. No sounds came from the bedroom, a hopeful sign of serious educational activity. I peeked in the door. The twins were sitting across from each other at the small table beneath the room's wide, single window. My bed was to the right of the window. The twins slept in homemade bunk beds on the opposite wall. Both dark-haired heads were bent over sheets of paper.

"How's it going?" I asked.

Ellie looked up with blue eyes that could have made me jealous. "We're almost finished."

"Yeah," Emma echoed. "We wrote about different things so Mama wouldn't think we copied."

"Do you want me to check your papers when you finish?"

"Yes," both girls responded.

My side of the room was immaculate. The same couldn't be said for the twins'. Emma was the neater child, but without Ellie's cooperation, they both received blame for messiness. I straightened up their side of the room while they continued writing.

"Done!" Emma announced.

"I'm on my last paragraph," Ellie said.

"Keep working. I'll read Emma's paper."

Across the top, the older of the twins had written: "Deism and the Founders of Our Country."

For a woman who never went to college, Mama was an amazing teacher. Not many twelve-year-olds could spell deism, much less give a credible definition of the belief and explain in clear, simple terms how several signers of the Declaration of Independence viewed God as a cosmic clock-winder passively watching events unfold on the earth below. The twins would be prepared for public high school. Except for calculus and AP physics, I never made less than an A in high school.

"Show me your research," I said to Emma.

She handed me a stack of index cards, each one labeled with the reference. I checked the quotes in the paper against the information on the cards and corrected a handful of grammatical errors. While I worked, Ellie finished her paper and looked over my shoulder at her sister's work.

"You should have put a comma before the conjunction separating two independent clauses," Ellie said, pointing to one of my corrections. "Everybody knows that."

Emma pushed her away. "Wait until she reads your paper. It's full of mistakes."

"Stop it!" I commanded.

Emma and I sat on the bed and went over her paper. It was a very good first draft.

"How long have you been working on this?"

"About two weeks. Mama wants it finished by Friday."

Ellie's essay was titled "Thomas Jefferson's Bible." She focused on the rationalist beliefs of the primary author of the Declaration of Independence. There was overlapping research with her sister's paper, but also information unique to Jefferson, including a discussion of the founder's personal New Testament with all the references to miracles carefully cut out. Ellie was a better writer than her sister, but I was careful to make an equal number of corrections and suggestions.

"That's all for today," I said when we finished. "I'll tell Mama how well you're doing. Supper will be ready in a few minutes."

"I'll pray," Emma volunteered.

Our homeschool experience was saturated with prayer. Deism had no place in Mama's theology. God was omnipresent; a truth that both scared and comforted me.

We held hands while Emma prayed. I smiled when she included a heartfelt request for God's blessing upon Ellie.

"And thank you that Tammy Lynn will be home with us in a few weeks for the whole summer. In Jesus' name, amen."

I squeezed both small hands. To spend a summer in Savannah would require convincing more than my parents.

THE TWINS AND I WENT DOWNSTAIRS TO HELP MAMA SET THE table. From the kitchen I could see the dirt basketball court where I'd spent many hours practicing my three-point shot. While putting the forks in place, I glanced out one of the windows in time to see my eighteen-year-old brother, Kyle, leading a Hereford steer by a rope halter toward the feedlot on the opposite side of the family garden. A senior in high school, Kyle worked part-time for a local livestock broker. He'd already made enough money buying and selling beef cattle to buy an old pickup truck and a secondhand hauler. Trailing behind Kyle and the steer were our two dogs, Flip and Ginger. The dogs spent their lives outside and never entered the house. I would have loved a little indoor dog, but Mama and Daddy said our home wasn't Noah's ark.

Daddy always took a shower before he left the chicken plant, but I knew he carried the smell of fifty thousand chickens in his nostrils. As a line boss, he supervised a score of women who processed the naked, headless birds that a few weeks before had been tiny yellow chicks. For five summers I'd worked on Daddy's crew as an eviscerator, a fancy word for the person who cuts open the chicken and scoops out its internal organs. No part of a chicken was foreign to me.

My sixteen-year-old brother, Bobby, had finished his work in the garden and was sitting on the back steps quietly strumming his guitar. Bobby had been singing in church since he was a little boy; the guitar was a recent addition.

"He's writing his own songs," Ellie said as she took out a pack of paper napkins. "Bobby," she called through the screen door. "Make up a song for Tammy Lynn."

Bobby increased the tempo and volume. "Tammy Lynn! Tammy Lynn!" he called out. "Where have you gone? Why did you leave me here alone? I waited till dawn, but you never came home. Now, all I can do is moan."

I looked at Mama and rolled my eyes. "Are you going to let him do that?"

Mama smiled. "As long as he sings about his older sister, I'm not going to worry too much about it."

The dogs started barking and ran around the corner of the house to the front yard.

"Daddy's coming," Ellie said. "I'll set Tammy Lynn's place. I want her next to me."

"No, she's next to me," Emma protested.

"Put her in the middle," Mama said.

I heard the front door open, and the familiar sound of my father's uneven footsteps as he walked across the wooden floor. When Daddy was in the army, a drunken soldier shot him in the right foot. Two surgeries later, Daddy was left with a misshapen foot and a VA disability check that made the monthly payments on our house. He claimed the injury was a blessing in disguise, which sounded reasonable except for the pain on his face during cold weather. Daddy wore insulated rubber boots and two pairs of socks at work, but I think the foot still hurt because of the cool temperatures in the plant. When he came into the kitchen and saw me, he smiled.

A smile from Daddy after I'd been away from home for a few weeks at school could make me cry, so I lowered my gaze. I crossed the floor and gave him a quick hug.

"It was cloudy today until I saw you," he said, kissing the top of my head. "Did the girl from Dalton give you a ride home?"

"Yes sir. She didn't mind coming through the mountains."

"Did you give her gas money?"

"Yes sir."

Kyle and Bobby came inside and began discussing the status of the garden with Daddy. It was early spring, but our family used the entire growing season. In north Georgia, that meant early harvests of cabbage, leaf lettuce, and broccoli.

Unless company came for supper, Mama served meals from the stove. As soon as she called out, "Supper's ready," there would be a few minutes of chaos until all seven people were seated at the table. No one dared nibble a piece of corn bread until Daddy bowed his head and prayed a blessing. Then, conversation broke out on every side. Our family might be quiet around outsiders, but with one another we didn't hesitate to talk. Tonight, Daddy's focus was on me.