Blackwater - The House Part 1

BLACKWATER.

THE HOUSE.

by Michael McDowell.

CHAPTER 28.

Miriam and Frances.

Frances and Miriam Caskey were sisters born scarcely a year apart. They lived next door to each other in houses that were no more than a few dozen yards distant. Yet, so little commerce was maintained between their respective households that when they did meet-on the rare occasions of Caskey state-the sisters were shy and mistrustful.

While Miriam was the elder by only about twelve months, in maturity she seemed to outdistance her sister by years. Reared in the house with her grandmother Mary-Love Caskey and her aunt Sister Has-kew, until Sister and her husband moved away, Miriam had been fondled and coddled and pampered for every waking moment of her seven years. This indulgence had become more marked since 1926, when Sister, at last disgusted beyond endurance by her mother's interferences and meddlesomeness, persuaded her husband to move to Mississippi. Mary-Love and Miriam had been left alone in their ram- 9.bling house, and were one another's company and solace. It was a common remark in Perdido that Miriam was just like Mary-Love, and not a bit like her own mother, who lived right next door and saw Miriam less often than she saw the hairdresser.

Miriam, like all the Caskeys, was slender and tall, and Mary-Love saw to it that she was always dressed in the best of childhood fashion. Miriam was a neat, fastidious child; she talked nearly constantly, but never loudly. Her conversation turned mostly on what things she had seen in the possession of others, what things she had recently acquired, what things she still coveted. Miriam had her own room, with furniture specially bought for it. She herself had picked out the miniature rolltop desk from the showroom of a furniture store in Mobile. She loved its mult.i.tude of tiny drawers. Now every one of those tiny drawers was filled with things: b.u.t.tons, lace, pieces of cheap jewelry, pencils, small porcelain figurines of dogs, spangles, ribbons, sc.r.a.ps of colored paper, and other such pretty detritus that could be gathered up in a household rich in worldly goods. Miriam occupied herself for hours on end quietly looking through these items, rearranging them, stacking them, counting them, making records of them in a neat ledger, and scheming to get more.

The possessions, however, that afforded Miriam Caskey greatest pleasure were those she was not allowed to keep in her room. These were the diamonds and emeralds and pearls that her grandmother presented to her on Christmas, on her birthday, and on a few otherwise run-of-the-mill days in between, and then hid away in a safety-deposit box in Mobile. "You are too young to keep this jewelry yourself," Mary-Love said to her beloved granddaughter, "but you should always remember that it's yours."

Miriam had a confused view of adulthood and wasn't sure that she would ever reach that exalted 10.state. While she couldn't be certain that the jewels would ever be given over to her direct possession, this didn't matter in the least to her. Thoughts of those jewels, in the distant, locked, silent safety-deposit box in Mobile always entered her mind before going to sleep every night and seemed almost to make up for the lullaby her real mother would never sing to her.

FrancesCaskey was very different. While Miriam was energetic and robust and strung together with a wiry nervous tension, Frances seemed to have a tenuous hold on her body and her health. Frances caught colds and fevers with dismaying ease; she developed allergies and brief undiagnosed illnesses with the frequency with which other children sc.r.a.ped their knees. She was timid in general, and would no more have thought it her prerogative to be jealous of her sister or her sister's possessions than she would have thought it her right to declare herself Queen of All the Americas.

Frances spent every day with Zaddie Sapp, shyly carrying and fetching in the kitchen, or following Zaddie about the house, sitting quietly in a corner with her feet carefully raised off the floor while Zaddie swept and dusted and polished. Frances was well behaved, never out of sorts, patient in sickness, willing-even eager-to perform any act or task delegated to her. Her self-effacement was so p.r.o.nounced that her grandmother-on those rare occasions when Mary-Love saw her-would shake her by the shoulders, and cry, "Perk up, child! Where's your gumption? You act like there's somebody waiting to jump out from behind the door and grab you!"

Every weekday morning, Frances would slip out onto the front porch on the second floor of the house and surrept.i.tiously watch for her sister to leave for school. Miriam, always in a freshly starched dress and nicely polished shoes, would come out with her books and seat herself carefully in the back of the 11.Packard. Miss Mary-Love would come out onto the porch, and call out, "Bray, come drive Miriam to school!" Bray would stand up from his gardening, brush off his hands, and drive away with Miriam, who always sat as still and composed and stately as if she were on her way to be presented to the Queen of England. In the afternoon, when Frances saw Bray driving off again, Frances would station herself to witness the return of her sister, as starched and polished and unruffled as when she had departed in the morning.

Frances wasn't jealous of her sister, but she was in awe of her, and she treasured memories of the few occasions when Miriam had spoken a kind word to her. Clasped around her neck, Frances wore the thin gold chain and locket that Miriam had given her the previous Christmas. It didn't matter one bit that afterward, Miriam had whispered to her, "Grand-mama picked it out. Ivey found a box. They put my name on it, but I never even saw it. I wouldn't have spent all that money on you."

In the autumn of 1928, Frances was eager to enter the first grade. She occupied herself relentlessly with the question of whether she would be allowed to ride with Miriam and Bray to school every morning. She dared not put the question to her parents directly for fear the answer would be no. The thought of being allowed to sit beside Miriam in the back seat of the Packard made Frances quiver in expectation. She daydreamed of intimacy with Miriam.

When the first day of school finally arrived, Zad-die put Frances into her best dress. Oscar kissed his daughter, and Elinor told her to be very good and very smart. Frances went expectantly out the front door alone-it seemed for the very first time in her whole life-only to see her grandmother's Packard roll off down the street with Bray behind the wheel.

12.Starched and polished Miriam sat all alone in the back.

Frances drooped onto the steps and wept.

Oscar marched across to his mother's house, entered without knocking, and angrily said to Mary-Love, "Mama, how in creation could you let Bray drive off and leave poor little Frances sitting on the front steps?"

"Oh?" said Mary-Love, with the appearance of surprise, "was Frances intending on riding with Miriam?"

"Well, you know she was, Mama. It's her first day at school. Miriam could have shown her where to go."

"Miriam couldn't have done that," returned Mary-Love hastily. "She might have been late. I cain't let Miriam be late on her first day at school."

Oscar sighed. "Miriam wouldn't have been late, Mama. Poor Frances is just sitting on the steps, weeping bitter tears."

"I cain't help that," replied Mary-Love, unperturbed.

"Well, tell me this, Mama," Oscar went on, "are you gone let my little girl ride with Bray and Miriam from now on?"

Mary-Love pondered this a moment, then replied at last, grudgingly: "If she insists on it, Oscar. But only if she's out there waiting in the car when Miriam comes out of this house. I'm not gone have black marks against Miriam because Frances cain't get herself dressed on time."

"Mama," said Oscar, "are you forgetting that I pay half of Bray's salary?"

"Are you forgetting it's my automobile?"

Oscar was furious. On this first day of his daughter's scholastic career, he drove Frances to school himself, showed her to the proper room, and introduced her to her teacher. At dinnertime, he told his wife what Mary-Love had said.

13."Oscar," said Elinor, "your mama treats Frances like the dirt under her feet. I hate to think how many diamonds she has bought for Miriam. I hate to think what that child is worth in rubies and pearls alone. That locket they sent over here at Christmas must have cost all of seventy-five cents. I'm not going to have Miss Mary-Love do us any favors. We are not going to allow Frances to ride in that car-not once. People in town will see how Miss Mary-Love treats her own granddaughter!"

Frances, who had enjoyed such high hopes for closeness with her sister, knew no intimacy at all. Every morning, Zaddie took Frances's hand and walked her all the way to school-in fact, all the way to the door of the schoolroom-and left her there. Sometimes Bray and Miriam would pa.s.s them in the road, but Miriam wouldn't even wave or nod to her sister. On the playground, Miriam would not play in any game in which her sister took part. "I'm in the second grade," said Miriam to her sister on a rare occasion that she suffered herself to speak to her, "and I know this much more than you!" As Miriam spread her arms to their widest extent, Frances was crushed by the sense of her own inferiority.

Mary-Love's neglect of her second grandchild was not lost on Miriam, who had grown actively to despise her sister. She was embarra.s.sed by Frances's shyness, her inferior wardrobe, her dependence on Zaddie Sapp for companionship and affection, her lack of knowledge concerning real jewels, real crystal, and good china.

Miriam's feelings about Frances were intensified during the first weeks of December, when the first and second grades of the Perdido Elementary School began their Christmas seal campaigns. Miriam thought that selling door-to-door like a man with vacuum cleaners was an activity beneath her. She decided only to repeat her previous year's performance and sell a few dollar's worth of the seals to 14.r Mary-Love and to Queenie, so as not simply to have a zero placed next to her name on the special chalkboards set up in the school hallway.

Frances, however, took the business very seriously-in her small way-and set out to sell as many of the seals as she could; her teacher had told her it was a worthy cause. With Oscar's permission, Frances paid a visit to the mill and went through the offices approaching all the workers. Frances was so diffident, so slight, and so charming in her own way that everyone bought a large quant.i.ty. Her great-uncle James Caskey and his daughter Grace then purchased more seals than all the millworkers combined. Before she knew it, Frances had sold more than anyone else on the first grade board.

Miriam was astonished and humiliated by Frances's success. Suddenly nothing in the world was more important than beating her sister at selling Christmas seals. Mary-Love, not understanding the importance of the matter to her granddaughter, resisted buying any more than she could use. So Miriam went next door to James and to Grace, who claimed that they would like to oblige her, but were all bought out. Miriam went to the mill, under James's aegis, but everyone there had already opened his purse to Frances. Miriam even swallowed enough pride to knock upon a few doors, but since it was late in the campaign, everyone who might have been persuaded to buy had already bought his seals.

In despair, she went to her grandmother and explained her dilemma. Contrary to Miriam's expectations, Mary-Love was by no means angry with her. "You mean to tell me, Miriam darling, that that little girl next door is gone beat you out-and you're in the second grade and she's in the first?"

"James and Grace bought so many, Grandmama. And they wouldn't buy a single seal from me!"

"They wouldn't? And they bought from Frances?"

Miriam nodded glumly. "I hate Frances!"

15."I am not gone let Elinor Caskey's child beat you out. How much has she sold so far? Do you kfnow?"

"Thirty-five dollars and thirty-five cents."

"And how much have you sold?"

"Three dollars and ten cents."

"And when is the contest over?"

"Day after tomorrow."

"All right, then," said Mary-Love, lowering her voice. "I tell you what, Miriam. After school tomorrow, you go find out if Frances has sold any more. Then you bring me her total, you understand?"

And on the final day of the sale of the Christmas seals, Miriam Caskey brought in forty-two dollars, an astounding sum considering that everybody in Perdido had drawersful of the things by now, and that up to that point Miriam had brought in no more than three dollars. When her teacher asked her who in the world had bought so many, Miriam replied, "I knocked on every door in town. I near 'bout walked my legs off."

The Caskey sisters came in first and second in the contest, but Miriam beat her sister by almost seven dollars. Miriam won a Bible with six ill.u.s.trations in color and all of Jesus's words printed in red. Frances got a box of Whitman's candy.

After the presentation of the awards, Frances opened her box of candy and offered it to her sister, telling her to take as much of it as she wanted. But as Miriam bit into the largest piece she could find, liquid cherry squirted out over the front of her starched dress. "Ugh!" she cried, "it's your fault, Frances! Look at me now!" And with a fling of her hand she knocked the box out of Frances's grasp, spilling all the chocolates into the dirt of the schoolyard.

The rivalry that appeared to exist between the estranged sisters was emblematic of the much greater rivalry that had risen between Elinor Caskey and 16.her mother-in-law, Mary-Love. Through those two little girls was played out, in distorting miniature, the pa.s.sion that characterized the relationship of their mother and grandmother. Mary-Love was the undisputed head of the Caskey family, having acceded to that position upon the death of her husband many years before. No one had challenged her authority before the arrival in Perdido of Elinor Dammert. With single-minded energy that had matched Mary-Love's own best weapons, Elinor had arranged to be courted by and married to Mary-Love's only son, Oscar.

The two women had quite different styles. Elinor didn't have Mary-Love's bl.u.s.ter; her ways were more insidious. Elinor bided her time; her strokes were quick, clean, and always unexpected. Mary-Love knew this, and in the last few years she had grown restive, as if waiting for the blow that would topple her. Mary-Love's antipathy toward her daughter-in-law had grown strident and unbecoming. Perdido talked, and the talk was always against Mary-Love. It was one thing to disapprove of a son's wife; it was another to make that dislike so widely known. Mary-Love eventually had come to see that it simply would not do to give Elinor battle directly. Elinor remained cool, always seeming to contemplate the skirmish beyond the one that hotly occupied Mary-Love. Elinor gave way strategically, and then flashed her sword just at the moment that Mary-Love was raising her arm to claim victory. Like a palsied general, Mary-Love decided to retire from the field, but did not give up the war.

In her granddaughter Miriam, Mary-Love had an eager, conscienceless, and bloodthirsty little soldier. And Frances, Elinor's representative, was a sickly enemy-timid and weaponless. A skirmish between the sisters would incontestably give the victory to Mary-Love's side. Daily, Mary-Love wrapped up her granddaughter in her prettiest dresses and shiniest 17.shoes, kissed her on the cheek, and whispered, "Give no quarter..."

There was no satisfaction, however, for either Miriam or her grandmother, in these easy victories, because Frances didn't fight at all. She looked around with puzzlement, not even realizing that she had wandered onto a field of battle. If she had seen fit, Elinor might have instructed her daughter in matters of combat and strategy, but Elinor had done nothing. Perdido talked about the two little girls, as before they had talked about Elinor and Mary-Love. Perdido's conclusion was that Miriam was disagreeable and much too big for her britches, and that Frances was as sweet as sweet could be. That said something about the two households in which the children were reared.

Thus, by sending out her emissary unarmed, unprepared, and even ignorant of the fact that war had been declared, Elinor had gained the day. How long would it be, Mary-Love wondered uncomfortably, before Elinor stormed the citadel itself, and claimed supremacy over the Caskey clan? Why had she not done it yet? If she waited for a sign or portent, what was it? How might Mary-Love prepare herself against that inevitable day? And when the two women came to do battle, what casualties would be borne b.l.o.o.d.y and broken from the field of conflict?

CHAPTER 29.

The Coins in Queenie's Pocket

Queenie Strickland, after a tumultuous appearance in Perdido six years earlier, had settled down. She and her children had taken on a greater ident.i.ty than mere penurious offshoots of the Caskeys. It was generally known in Perdido that Queenie's third child Daniel Joseph-universally called Danjo from the hour of his birth-was the result of a rape committed on Queenie by her estranged husband. It had also become generally known that Danjo's father was no good, that Queenie wanted no reconciliation, and that Danjo was much better off growing up without even having seen so much as a photograph of his father.

Queenie had gained a reputation in Perdido of being a sponger. The designation, though accurate, was repugnant to her. Shortly after the birth of her third child, she announced to James that she in- 19.tended to seek employment. James, not wishing anyone else in town shouldering a burden he considered his own, appointed her his personal secretary. His sense of responsibility toward his unfortunate and indigent sister-in-law was greater than his doubt as to the extent of her clerical abilities and his misgivings as to what their daily propinquity at the mill office would be like.

In the summer of 1925 James had sent Queenie to Pensacola to take a typing course at the mechanics college there and thereby gave her a much needed rest from the demands of Malcolm, Lucille, and little Danjo. James would not have these rambunctious children in his own home, filled as it was with much that was fragile and valuable, but instead sent Grace over to Queenie's to care for them there.

When Queenie returned, she was proficient at the typewriter, and in a short time she became indispensable to her brother-in-law, providing pencils, advice, coffee, a sympathetic ear, and freedom from obtrusive callers. She proved her worth, both in her official and private capacities, far beyond anything James Caskey could have imagined, and Queenie quickly came to know everything there was to know concerning the running of the Caskey mill. Since Queenie was close to Elinor, Elinor in turn learned what little her husband had not already told her. Queenie had long before been trained as Elinor's spy, and she retained that position now.

Queenie's intimacy with James Caskey and Elinor helped her to feel more secure and thus she became calmer. During her first year or so in Perdido she had not hesitated to employ a gushing hypocrisy to get what she wanted; she had mooned over James's crystal, echoed Elinor's decrying of the levee construction, and nodded vigorously at the list of the wrongs Mary-Love perceived had been made against her. She learned how quickly all this had been seen through by the Caskeys, and now she took great care 20.to examine her own feelings on any matter and always expressed those feelings cautiously. Honesty in this case proved by far the best policy, though Queenie employed truthfulness exactly as she had employed hypocrisy-as a means to an end, and not as a thing to be appreciated for itself.

Although her princ.i.p.al struggle had apparently been won-Carl Strickland remaining mercifully absent from the scene-Queenie experienced her share of trials. These usually involved her children, and centered mostly on Malcolm, her eldest. He was ten, in the fourth grade, and p.r.o.ne to many minor mischiefs. He broke windows in abandoned houses, pocketed small items at the Ben Franklin store, and went swimming in the upper Perdido, where he was in some danger of being sucked down to the junction and drowned. He threw sand through the screens of Miss Elinor's kitchen in order to annoy Zaddie Sapp. He knocked his teacher's plants off the windowsill for the pleasure of hearing the pots smash on the pavement below. He threw potatoes at little girls. He stole his friends' marbles. He was loud and raucous. He insulted every Negro child who crossed his path, and he continued to indulge every opportunity of punching his brother and his sister in the stomach. Every time the telephone rang in James's office Queenie feared it would be another call complaining of Malcolm's behavior.

Eight-year-old Lucille was easier on her mother's nerves, but still caused Queenie a fair amount of grief. Lucille was sneaky, although Queenie would never voice this appraisal of her daughter, even to Elinor. Lucille lied when it suited her purpose. Lucille couldn't be tucked into bed without her whispering in her mother's ear some wrong she had suffered at her brother's hand. If she decided she needed a new pair of shoes, she wasn't above climbing the levee-against all orders-and deliberately kicking one of her best patent leathers into the muddy 21.water of the Perdido and therewith validating her desire.

For the third child, four-year-old Danjo, Queenie held great hope. He was remarkably different from his siblings; he was everything they were not. He was calm, quiet, truthful, pleasant, and well behaved. It was as if his whole being had been sobered by an intuitive knowledge of the unhappy circ.u.mstances of his conception. He was the only one of Queenie's children James would allow into his house, the only one Mary-Love would stoop down and kiss, and the only one Elinor invited to sit beside her on the swing. Danjo acted as if he lived only by the generous sufferance of the whole world, and that if he performed any untoward act or spoke any unsuitable word he would be picked up by one hundred hands and mercilessly hurled into the river. It was generally considered a point in Banjo's favor that neither his sister nor his brother liked him. During his nightly bath, Queenie generally found some new bruise or pinch mark that had been surrept.i.tiously administered by either Malcolm or Lucille. The teachers in the school sighed in relief as Malcolm pa.s.sed on up a grade, bore with stony resignation the presence of untrustworthy Lucille, and all sighed the same thought: Lord, I can hardly wait till I get that precious child Danjo Strickland! After Malcolm and Lucille I will have earned him!

Of her husband's doings, whereabouts, and condition Queenie had heard absolutely nothing. She thought there was a strong possibility that since he had not showed up again he was being prevented from doing so by the interposition of iron bars and prison walls. Whatever the case, Queenie knew that she would be protected from Carl by James and Oscar, who had come to her aid before, but still she always feared being taken by surprise. At night her house was locked tighter than any other home in Perdido, and an intruder might have got into the 22.Perdido bank with greater ease at the same hour. When Queenie sat on her front porch she always had an escape route should she see Carl come walking down the street. Every strange automobile pulling up before the house caused her trepidation. She dreaded the postman because he might be delivering a message from Carl. She hated to pick up the telephone at home for fear Carl's voice would greet her on the other end.

But all her precautions were of no avail; when Carl did return, Queenie was wholly unprepared for the hour and the manner of his arrival.

He was simply sitting on her porch one afternoon when she came home from work. Danjo was held an unhappy captive on his father's lap. Lucille and Malcolm stood inside the safety of the house, wildly gesticulating to their mother through the screen door.

"Ma!" cried Malcolm in a stage whisper as she came up the steps, "we locked the door. We wouldn't let him inside."

"Hey, Queenie," said Carl softly, "how you?"

He was wearing a suit, and looked uncomfortable in it.

Queenie suddenly felt herself borne down with the weight of the world. She realized how happy she had been for the past five years, how she hadn't known a moment of real disquietude, had never gone without money or company or-she was astonished to think it for the first time-respect. With the reappearance of her husband in Perdido, all of that instantly vanished.

"What you doing back here, Carl?"

"Came to see you, Queenie. Where'd this here boy come from?"

Queenie didn't answer.

"Been lonesome, Queenie?" he asked with a leer.

"No," she returned. "Not one single little bit." She waved Malcolm and Lucille away from the door. They 23.retreated a few steps, but returned almost immediately as soon as their mother's back was turned. Queenie seated herself in the rocker across from Carl. "Give me my baby," she said.

"Whose baby is he?"-said Carl, not letting go of Danjo.

"He's yours."

"You sure, Queenie? Maybe you made a mistake."

"I didn't make any mistake. Danjo, come here."

Carl said, "Kiss your daddy."

Danjo wriggled out of Carl's grasp and fled to his mother's lap.

"Where you been?" asked Queenie. She didn't look at her husband, but stared out across the street.

"Here and there."

"What pen were you in?"

"Tallaha.s.see." He grinned.

"What for this time?"

"Never you mind."

Queenie was silent a moment, then she said, "Carl, I want you to go away. Me and Malcolm and Lucille and Danjo don't need you. We don't want you."

"I cain't desert my family, Queenie. What kind of man you take me for?"

"I don't intend to argue," said Queenie with weariness and despair pervading her voice. "I just want you to go away from this town and never come back again."

"Oh, Queenie, you cain't get rid of me. I'm your husband. I got legal rights. I got my children here that need me. That Malcolm's a fine one, I tell you. That Lucille's a little doll! And this boy Danjo, I'm gone help you bring him up right."

Queenie stood and headed toward the door. Carl rose quickly and followed her.

"Unhook the screen," Queenie said to Malcolm. She was carrying Danjo and shifted him in her arms.