Elizabeth Massie: Abed

The door opens, and Mama Randolph comes in with a swish of old apron and a flourish of cloth napkin. The tray and its contents are visible behind her in the hall, but the meal is the last of Mama’s concerns. When business is tended, the meal will be remembered.

“Meggie,” says Mama. “What a pretty sight you are there in your dress. Makes me think of a little yellow kitten.” The cloth napkin is dropped onto the back of the stinking chair, and Mama straightens to take appraisal of her daughter-in-law. There is something in Mama’s apron pocket that clinks faintly.

“Well, you gonna stand there or do you have a ‘good morning’?”

Meggie looks toward the window. Two stories is not enough to die. And if she died, she would only become one of the walking dead. She looks back at Mama.

“Good morning,” she whispers.

“And to you,” Mama says cheerily. “Can you believe the heat? I pity the farmers this year. Corn is just cooking on the stalks. You look to the right out that window and just over the trees and you can see a bit of John Johnson’s crop. Pitiful thing, all burned and brown.” Mama tips her head and smiles. The apron clinks.

Neither says anything for a minute. Mama’s eyes sparkle in the heavy, hot air. The dead folks’ eyes sparkle when they walk about, but Meggie knows Mama is not dead. The older woman is very much alive, with all manner of plans for her family.

Then Mama says, “Sit down.”

Meggie sits on the clean spot on the mattress.

Mama touches her dry lips. She says, “You know a home ain’t a home without the singing of little children.”

Oh, dear Jesus , thinks Meggie.

“When Quint was born, I was complete. I was a woman then. I was whole; I’d done what I was made to do. A woman with no children can’t understand that till she’s been through it herself.”

Meggie feels a large drop of sweat fall and lodge above her navel. She looks at the floor and remembers what Quint’s shoes looked like there, beside hers in the night after they’d climbed beneath the covers. Precious shoes, farmer’s shoes, with the sides worn down and the dark coating of earth on the toes. Shoes that bore the weight of hard work and love. Shoes Quint swore he would throw away when he’d earned enough money to build the new house. Shoes that Meggie was going to keep in her cedar chest as a memory of the early days.

Quint doesn’t wear shoes anymore.

“You know in my concern for you and Quint, I would do I anything to make you happy.” Mama nods slowly. “And if I’ve got it figured right, you’re in your time again. I know it ain’t worked the last couple months, but it took me near’n to a year and a half before I was with Quint.”

Mama steps over to Meggie. She leans in close. Her breath smells of ginger and soured milk. “A baby is what’ll help make some of the bad things right again, Meggie. It’s a different world now. And we’s got to cope. But a baby will bring Joy back.”

“A baby,” echoes Meggie. “Mama, please, I can’t…”

“Hush, now,” barks Mama. The smile disappears as quickly as the picture from a turned-off television set. She is all business now. Family making is a serious matter. “Get abed.”

The word stings Meggie’s gut.

“Abed!” commands Mama Randolph, and slowly, obediently, Meggie slides along the mattress until her head is even with the pillow.

Mama purses her mouth in approval. “Now let’s check and see if our timing is right.” Meggie closes her eyes and one hand moves to the spotted hem of the yellow dress. In her chest, the bone of pain swells, hard and suffocating. She cannot swallow around it. Her breath hitches. She pulls the hem up. She is naked beneath. Mama Randolph has not allowed undergarments.

“Roll over.” Meggie rolls over. She hears the clinking as Mama reaches into her pocket. Meggie gropes for the edge of the pillow and holds to it like a drowning child to a life preserver. Her face presses into the stinking pillowcase.

The thermometer goes in deeply. Mama makes a tsking sound and moves it about until it is wedged to her satisfaction. Meggie’s bowels contract; her gut lurches with disgust. She does not move.

“Just a minute here and we’ll know what we need to know,” crows Mama. “Do you know that I thought Quint was going to be a girl and I bought all sorts of little pink things before he was born? Was cute, but I couldn’t rightly put such a little man into them pale, frilly clothes. I always thought a little girl would be a nice addition. Wouldn’t a little girl just be the icing on the cake?”

Jesus help me , prays Meggie.

“Here, now,” says Mama. The thermometer comes out and Meggie draws her legs up beneath the hem of the dress. She does to not want to hear the reading.

“Bless me, looks like we done hit it on the head!” Mama is almost laughing. “Up nearly a whole degree. Time is right. My little calendar book keeps me thinking straight, now don’t it? I’ll go get Quint.”

Mama goes out into the hall. Meggie watches her go. Then she falls from the bed and crawls on her knees to the Jesus picture. “Oh dear blessed Lord you are my shepherd, I shall not want I shall not want.” Jesus watches the lambs and does not see Meggie.

Meggie runs to the window and looks out at the flowers and the dead sandbox and the burned cornfield over the top of the joy woods. It was those woods that killed Quint. One second of carelessness that crushed Quint’s skull beneath John Johnson’s felled tree. Quint had gone to help the neighbor clear a little more land for crops. John and Quint had been best buddies since school, and they were always trading favors. But when Quint went down under the tree trunk, brains and blood spraying, and he died, and when he rose up again, he was through trading favors. He wanted a lot more of John than he’d ever wanted before. And he got it. There wasn’t enough of John left to rise with the other dead folks, just some chunks of spine and some chewed up feet.

Mama Randolph found Quint after this meal. He showed no immediate urge to eat her as well, so she brought him home and found he was just as happy eating raw goats and the squealing pigs he had tended as a live man.

Mama is in the doorway again. Behind her is Quint. He is dressed in only a pair of trousers that are gathered to his bony waist with a brown, tooth-marked leather belt.

“Abed!” says Mama. “Let’s have this done.”

Meggie goes back to the bed. She lies down. She knows what Mama will do next. It is the worst to come.

Quint is directed to stand in front of the old chair. Meggie cannot see Jesus anymore but that is a good thing. What is to happen is not for anyone’s eyes, especially the Savior’s. Meggie looks at her husband. His hair is gone as is the flesh of his mouth and the bulk of his nose. There is a tongue, but it is slimy and gray like an old rotted trout. The left side of his head is flattened, with the exposed brain now blackened and shimmering, reminding Meggie of a mushroom she tried to save once in a sandwich bag. The eye on the left is missing, but the right eye is wide and wet. The skin of Quint’s abdomen is swollen and it ripples like maggots have gotten inside. One hand has no fingers, but the other has three, and they grope awkwardly for the zipper of his trousers. Quint somehow knows why he has been brought upstairs.

Mama Randolph moves beside Meggie and motions for her to hoist up her dress. Meggie flinches, hesitating, and Mama slaps her. Meggie does not hesitate again.

Mama then rolls up her sleeves. She says, “Quint needs the extra stimulation to do what he has to do. Watching helps him. You know that. So be still and let me do my job.”

With the perfunctory movements of someone changing a fouled diaper. Mama coaxes the younger woman’s legs open, and parts the private folds so Quint can have a better view. Then she begins to rub Meggie’s clitoris slowly, while stroking the sensitive skin of Meggie’s inner thighs with the other hand. Meggie will not watch. She digs her fingernails into her sides until the pain sings with the rush of blood to her genitals.