Lesley Kagen: Tomorrow River

Woody, E. J., and I have dashed through the backyards of the colored neighborhood to avoid prying eyes. We are playing the same game we always do. Beezy told us if ever we could sneak up on her, she’d give us all quarters. We’ve tried for years. The three of us are creeping alongside her tall hedge, not more than ten feet from her porch, right next to her birdbath. I’m not that nuts about this game and neither is Woody because we know what it’s like to get snuck up on, but we do it for E. J. With the way he’s grinning I know he’s already thinking how he’s going to spend that quarter. Beezy sings out, “Are those chick-a-dees settin’ to shower themselves or is it those fine-looking Carmody twins and that hard-workin’ Tittle boy?”

We have never once gotten past that birdbath. The old girl is sort of uncanny.

E. J.’s muttering something in frustration because he could really use twenty-five cents, but I’m yelling, “Wait up.”

I can see Woody taking the porch steps two at a time and landing not so lightly in Beezy’s familiar lap. My sister is so jazzed up. Beezy is special to her and me because she helped Mama take care of us when we were itty-bitty. Woody’s the one that gave her the pet name-Beezy. Her real name is Elizabeth, but my sister had a hard time pronouncing that when she was a little kid, so she started calling her Beezy, and then so did everybody else.

There was also a time that Beezy got paid to clean my grandfather’s house at Heritage Farm, but she got fired from that job because my grampa is Simon Legree mean. After that, she married no-account Carl Bell, but then she killed him and had to go to the Big House. Being curious of nature the way I am, I asked her once what it feels like to murder somebody. “I don’t rightly know, hon. I don’t feel like a murderess,” she answered with a good-natured shrug. “More like a laundress ridding the world of a soul that was stained beyond repair.”

It was my own father that sent her to Red Onion State Prison. Even though most all the coloreds and some of the whites in town, including my mother, believed that Beezy should be set free. She testified in court, “Carl beat me about the head ’til I went blind and then he began choking me with chicken wire.” She opened her blouse collar so the jury could see the still-red welts around her neck. “I didn’t mean to kill him. I was only attemptin’ to defend myself.” (Beezy plunged that skinning knife into Carl’s neck and he bled to death right on the spot because, according to Mr. Cole who told me this story, “The skinner nicked his juggler’s vein.”)

After six days of deliberation, the jury didn’t let Beezy off scot-free, but they did take pity. She didn’t get convicted of first-degree murder, but manslaughter, which is exactly what it sounds like. This is one of the reasons I think Beezy is not so fond of Papa. I can understand her holding that against him, but I don’t think she’s seeing the big picture. Of course, he could’ve been more lenient when he sentenced her to five years with time off for good behavior, but like always-Judge Walter T. Carmody was right. Because when she wasn’t busy washing and wringing the prison’s sheets, Beezy got taught by one of the lady guards how to knit and purl and that’s how she makes her living now. Folks travel to Lexington from all over Rockbridge County and beyond to buy her sweaters and scarves and caps. Maybe they just come to have something that they can brag to their friends was made by a murderess. I don’t know.

I charge up the steps of the house in hot pursuit, shouting, “Get off her right this minute, Woody. Can’t you see that you’re crushin’ Miss Beezy?” She pops up looking alarmed so even though she pretends she can’t some times, my sister can hear me just fine all the time. “Come see what I brought.” I open up my lunch box. Besides leftover breakfast for E. J., I packed her drawing supplies. If I don’t keep her busy, she’ll end up creating more trouble and we don’t have time for that this morning. We’re on a deadline. “Why don’t you get comfy right over here?”

Following directions for a change, Woody spreads out her crayons and pencils, smooths out her sketching paper, and gets arty at Beezy’s feet. E. J. is edging towards the screen door. His tiny nose is busy picking up the scent of something yummy just like mine is.

White peonies are lining Beezy’s fence in all their glory and filling the backyard with their heady scent. And my mind with memories of Mama. They are her favorites. She had them in her wedding bouquet because they are a good omen for a happy marriage.

Shortly before she disappeared, she’d been acting mopey, so I cut her a bunch off one of these bushes and ran all the way home. I found her looking out the kitchen window. “Look what I brought you,” I said, bursting in on her.

She startled, and said sort of sad, “Thank you, Shen.”

When she reached up to the cupboard to get the crystal vase, her long-sleeved blouse fell back. I pointed at her arms and asked, “How’d you get those marks?”

Mama rushed to cover them up and said, “I… I got my arm caught in the linen chest.”

“You should be more careful,” I said, not surprised. My mother is a very accident-prone person. Always has got a black-and-blue mark either fading or blooming.

Once she got those flowers just the way she wanted them, she turned to me and told me thank you again, but her eyes didn’t look so grateful.

I asked with hurt feelings, “Don’t you like them?”

Mama hesitated for a moment, then cupped my warm face in her hands that were cool from the sink water and whispered, “‘I will be the gladdest thing under the sun! I will touch a hundred flowers and not pick one.’”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

Kissing the confusion off my face, she replied, “What Edna St. Vincent Millay means in this poem is… if you keep something all for yourself… while I love that you’re thinking of me, it’s important to let flowers grow. People, too. Do you understand?”

I told her, “I do,” but I really didn’t.

Beezy hears E. J. making his snorting noise and says, “Sure ’nuff, there’s fritters in the warmer, but my ankles tell me there’s also grass that needs shortenin’.” That’s the deal they’ve made. Apple fritters for mowing. “I expect you’ll wanna do something about that sooner rather than later.”

E. J. knows better than just about anybody that it’s not smart to bite the hand that feeds him, so he says, “Yes, ma’am. I’ll get over here first thing tomorra to give it a trim,” and makes a beeline into the house.

After I sit down next to her, Beezy says, “Good thing you showed up today. I was preparin’ to pay you a visit this evenin’.”

“We tried to get away yesterday, but Louise is working us to the bone. Gramma will be here soon for Founders Weekend. You know how she can get if everything isn’t white glove clean.”

Beezy runs a lace hankie across her neck scar and says, “Indeed I do.”

“That still doesn’t give Lou the right to be such a pain in the patootie. I swear, that girl could start an argument in an empty house,” I say, already knowing that Beezy won’t agree with me. She feels violin-playing sorry for Louise. Whenever I complain about how our housekeeper bosses us about and what an all-around drip she is, Beezy tells me to, “Go easy on her, Shenny. She reminds me of myself at that age.”

“Will Ruth Love be comin’ to the festivities?” Beezy asks. “I know she wasn’t feeling up to it last year.”

Woody, who has been coloring like a demon, jerks her head up at the sound of our grandmother’s name. “I think so,” I say, hoping my sister can’t hear me.