Read Online Shiloh and Other Stories by Bobbie Ann Mason - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Bobbie Ann Mason
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the world go round
.
—
On the bus home a few days later, I slept with my head in my mother’s lap, and she dozed with her head propped against my seat back. She was no longer sick, but we were both tired and we swayed, unresisting, with the rhythms of the bus. When the bus stopped in Fort Wayne, Indiana, at midnight, I suddenly woke up, and at the sight of an unfamiliar place, I felt—with a new surge of clarity—the mystery of travel, the vastness of the world, the strangeness of life. My own life was a curiosity, an item for a scrapbook. I wondered what my mother would tell my father about the baby she had lost. She had been holding me tightly against her stomach as though she feared she might lose me too.
I had refused to let them take me into Detroit. At the bus station, Aunt Mozelle had hugged me and said, “Maybe next time you come we can go to Detroit.”
“If there
is
a next time,” Mama said. “This may be her only chance, but she had to be contrary.”
“I didn’t want to miss
Wax Wackies
and
Judy Splinters
,” I said, protesting.
“We’ll have a car next time you come,” said my uncle. “If they don’t fire everybody,” he added with a laugh.
“If that happens, y’all can always come back to Kentucky and help us get a crop out,” Mama told him.
The next afternoon, we got off the bus on the highway at the intersection with our road. Our house was half a mile away. Thebus driver got our suitcases out of the bus for us, and then drove on down the highway. My father was supposed to meet us, but he was not there.
“I better not carry this suitcase,” said Mama. “My insides might drop.”
We left our suitcases in a ditch and started walking, expecting to meet Daddy on the way.
My mother said, “You don’t remember this, but when you was two years old I went to Jackson, Tennessee, for two weeks to see Mozelle and Boone—back before Boone was called overseas?—and when I come back the bus driver let me off here and I come walking down the road to the house carrying my suitcase. You was playing in the yard and you saw me walk up and you didn’t recognize me. For the longest time, you didn’t know who I was. I never
will
forget how funny you looked.”
“They won’t recognize us,” I said solemnly. “Daddy and Johnny.”
As we got to the top of the hill, we could see that our little white house was still there. The tin roof of the barn was barely visible through the tall oak trees.
O FFERINGS
Sandra’s maternal grandmother died of childbed fever at the age of twenty-six. Mama was four. After Sandra was born, Mama developed an infection but was afraid to see the doctor. It would go away, she insisted. The infection disappeared, but a few years later inexplicable pains pierced her like needles. Blushing with shame, and regretting her choice of polka-dotted panties, she learned the worst. It was lucky they caught it in time, the doctor said. During the operation, Mama was semiconscious, with a spinal anesthetic, and she could hear the surgeons discussing a basketball game. Through blurred eyes, she could see a red expanse below her waist. It resembled the Red Sea parting, she said.
Sandra grows vegetables and counts her cats. It is late summer and her woodpile is low. She should find time to insulate the attic and to fix the leak in the basement. Her husband is gone. Jerry is in Louisville, working at a K Mart. Sandra has stayed behind, reluctant to spend her weekends with him watching go-go dancers in smoky bars. In the garden, Sandra loads a bucket with tomatoes and picks some dill, a cucumber, a handful of beans. The dead bird is on a stump, untouched since yesterday. When she rescued the bird from the cat, it seemed only stunned, andshe put it on a table out on the porch, to let it recover. The bird had a spotted breast, a pink throat, and black-and-gray wings—a flicker, she thought. Its curved beak reminded her of Heckle and Jeckle. A while later, it tried to flap its
.
—
On the bus home a few days later, I slept with my head in my mother’s lap, and she dozed with her head propped against my seat back. She was no longer sick, but we were both tired and we swayed, unresisting, with the rhythms of the bus. When the bus stopped in Fort Wayne, Indiana, at midnight, I suddenly woke up, and at the sight of an unfamiliar place, I felt—with a new surge of clarity—the mystery of travel, the vastness of the world, the strangeness of life. My own life was a curiosity, an item for a scrapbook. I wondered what my mother would tell my father about the baby she had lost. She had been holding me tightly against her stomach as though she feared she might lose me too.
I had refused to let them take me into Detroit. At the bus station, Aunt Mozelle had hugged me and said, “Maybe next time you come we can go to Detroit.”
“If there
is
a next time,” Mama said. “This may be her only chance, but she had to be contrary.”
“I didn’t want to miss
Wax Wackies
and
Judy Splinters
,” I said, protesting.
“We’ll have a car next time you come,” said my uncle. “If they don’t fire everybody,” he added with a laugh.
“If that happens, y’all can always come back to Kentucky and help us get a crop out,” Mama told him.
The next afternoon, we got off the bus on the highway at the intersection with our road. Our house was half a mile away. Thebus driver got our suitcases out of the bus for us, and then drove on down the highway. My father was supposed to meet us, but he was not there.
“I better not carry this suitcase,” said Mama. “My insides might drop.”
We left our suitcases in a ditch and started walking, expecting to meet Daddy on the way.
My mother said, “You don’t remember this, but when you was two years old I went to Jackson, Tennessee, for two weeks to see Mozelle and Boone—back before Boone was called overseas?—and when I come back the bus driver let me off here and I come walking down the road to the house carrying my suitcase. You was playing in the yard and you saw me walk up and you didn’t recognize me. For the longest time, you didn’t know who I was. I never
will
forget how funny you looked.”
“They won’t recognize us,” I said solemnly. “Daddy and Johnny.”
As we got to the top of the hill, we could see that our little white house was still there. The tin roof of the barn was barely visible through the tall oak trees.
O FFERINGS
Sandra’s maternal grandmother died of childbed fever at the age of twenty-six. Mama was four. After Sandra was born, Mama developed an infection but was afraid to see the doctor. It would go away, she insisted. The infection disappeared, but a few years later inexplicable pains pierced her like needles. Blushing with shame, and regretting her choice of polka-dotted panties, she learned the worst. It was lucky they caught it in time, the doctor said. During the operation, Mama was semiconscious, with a spinal anesthetic, and she could hear the surgeons discussing a basketball game. Through blurred eyes, she could see a red expanse below her waist. It resembled the Red Sea parting, she said.
Sandra grows vegetables and counts her cats. It is late summer and her woodpile is low. She should find time to insulate the attic and to fix the leak in the basement. Her husband is gone. Jerry is in Louisville, working at a K Mart. Sandra has stayed behind, reluctant to spend her weekends with him watching go-go dancers in smoky bars. In the garden, Sandra loads a bucket with tomatoes and picks some dill, a cucumber, a handful of beans. The dead bird is on a stump, untouched since yesterday. When she rescued the bird from the cat, it seemed only stunned, andshe put it on a table out on the porch, to let it recover. The bird had a spotted breast, a pink throat, and black-and-gray wings—a flicker, she thought. Its curved beak reminded her of Heckle and Jeckle. A while later, it tried to flap its
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