The Darkest Child Read online

  I shook my head in response to their questions, and I was suddenly struck with that feeling of loss that neither Mushy nor I had felt earlier.Down on the road, Angus Betts and one of his deputies stood staring up at the burning house.They had come without my knowledge, without a siren, as though they had known there was no help to be given.

  “Mushy tells me your sister is in there,” the sheriff said.

  I nodded, and kept walking until I reached the spot where Mushy was waiting with Mama. I climbed onto the back seat, but for the longest time Mushy did not start the car. She stared straight ahead through the windshield, as though she expected Tarabelle to leap from the fire and smoke unharmed.

  Behind us, on Fife Street, the Pakersfield Fire Department was hosing down the field on the city side of the line.

  sixty - two

  Mushy had not known a sober second since returning home from Penyon Road. Richard Mackey stayed with her, consoling her. The siblings came—stunned and silent in their grief. Reverend Nelson arrived to exonerate the soul of Tarabelle Quinn for every sin she had committed in her lifetime. He bowed his head, raised a hand, and asked that her spirit rest in peace. How? I wondered.Was he not the same man who had condemned her to Hell for all eternity because she failed to honor a mother who knew nothing of honor? I was bitter.

  Miss Pearl wept noisily, and Mattie stood in the living room silently shedding tears. Mr. Hewitt and Mr. Pace arrived to offer their condolences and to deliver my diploma to me. I would rather have had my sister.

  I took the diploma into my room, stared at it, thought of how quickly it could go up in smoke. Finally, I tucked it inside a shopping bag that contained a change of clothes for me and Laura, then I went to the back porch and waited for a train to come along and fill my head with a roar that would obliterate all anger and pain.

  Mushy stumbled out onto the porch and leaned on the banister beside me.There were puffy bags beneath her bloodshot eyes, her cheeks were flushed, and she could barely hold her head up.

  “Tan,” she said, slurring her words.“I’m just gon’ come right on out and say this ’cause I can’t keep it in no longer. Mama killed our sister. While you was all up there in that smoke and stuff, I was down in that car wit’ that devil bitch, asking her what the hell happened. Took me a long time to get it outta her, but I got it. I sho’ nuff got it.”

  Mushy dropped to the porch, held onto the rail, closed her eyes, bowed her head.“She say Tara told her to take a rest from her long walk. She was tired, so she done it even though the bed was all tore up to pieces.” Mushy cried, pounded her thigh with a fist.“She saw Tara pouring gasoline all through the house, could smell it, so she got up, got the matches, and went to the front door. Says she lit a match and threw it. Just walked on out the damn house and left my sister in there to burn.”

  While I stood there staring straight ahead, a train whistle screamed in proxy. No sound came from me, but the roar and rumble of the locomotive filling my head were exactly what I needed.

  Long after Mushy had crawled her way back inside, I remained on the porch, waiting for more trains to pass and shake up the world. Sam, where are you? There’s a place filled with sorrow in my heart, and you’re not there.Where are you? I prayed for Sam, then I prayed that Tarabelle was in Heaven with Judy, and knew nothing of the fires burning in Hell.

  I cried on the porch until darkness hid me.When I was able, I walked into a quiet house to see my mother, sitting on a kitchen chair, Mushy and Richard, both passed out from drink, and Laura, curled up on our bed asleep. I kissed my little sister, checked my shopping bag, then returned to the kitchen.

  I didn’t really know what to tell my mother, but I knew I needed to say something. So I said, “Mama, I know you’re sick, and I’m sorry, but I think you know exactly what you’re doing.You didn’t have to kill Tara.”

  “She was trying to kill me, Tangy Mae,” Mama said without emotion, without looking at me.

  “You need to understand that you’ve placed yourself in the hands of the same children you taught to honor you. I’m afraid they might honor you the same way you’ve honored them, and we both know that’s no good.Tara wanted you to love her, but I don’t think you ever did. Since she died, my thoughts have been selfish ones. I think of all the chances I had to tell her I loved her, and I never said it. Now that I want to say it, she can’t hear me.”

  I waited for my mother to respond, but she said nothing.

  “I’d like to say that I love you, Mama, but I can’t say it today. I’ll just say that I’m trying hard not to hate you. I’m trying to understand.”

  “Get away from me, Tangy Mae,” she whispered.

  “I’m going,” I said, and turned to leave the kitchen, but I stopped in the doorway, and turned to look at her.“Mama, do you remember how Junior Fess came through that window and frightened you?”

  She did not answer me, but I saw her back stiffen as though she knew what I was going to say.

  “What do you think it’s going to be like when Tara comes back for you?” I asked. It was the cruelest thing I had ever said.

  “Tangy Mae, if Tarabelle comes back, she’ll come as a fireball,” Mama said.“That’s what she was the last time I seen her.”

  I never slept that night. I watched the clock, and awakened Laura at four o’clock in the morning. She was sleepy and confused as I helped her to dress.We slipped past Mushy and Richard who were still asleep on the couch, then with a shopping bag between us, we walked up Echo Road, crossed the tracks, and made our way through town toward the bus depot.

  As we stood in the dark outside the depot, Laura asked, “What happened to Tara?”

  “I’m not sure,” I answered, which was the truth.

  We climbed onto the five-thirty bus out of Pakersfield, and Laura took the window seat. It was fine with me.Over her head, I could see familiar landmarks passing in the dawn. Goodbye, so long, farewell.

  “Where’re we going?” Laura finally thought to ask.

  “We’re crossing the Georgia state line,” I answered.

  She turned from the window, studied the high backs of the seats, and glanced down the narrow aisle. The bus yielded at the train tracks, and over Laura’s head, through the dirty window, I saw our mother. She was pacing the ground in front of the platform of the train depot. Her arms were folded across her chest as she marched back and forth, seemingly without purpose. She stopped, glanced at the bus, straight up at the window where we were seated. I was sure she could not see us, yet it seemed she could.

  I did not want Laura to see her and take that memory with her. I placed a hand on my sister’s knee, and quickly asked, “Laura, do you remember where I was born?”

  She nodded.“Yeah.You was born in a paradise beneath the sp-sp-sprawling branches of a live oak tree.”

  The bus rattled across the tracks.“What else?” I asked.

  “Your first remembered sight was . . .”