The Sisterhood of Blackberry Corner Read online

  “I come to my own peace, thank you,” Bonnie said, dismissing the subject.

  Thora stood with her hands on her hips, a look of doubt on her face. “Need to think on what I’m sayin’, Bonnie. It might help you as much as it help her.” She must’ve sensed that Bonnie would take the subject no further, for with a final click of her teeth she moved toward the kitchen door. “I ain’t studyin’ on you neither,” Thora said. “Fixin’ to take me a nap. Oh, I know it ain’t even noon and all that…but Horace’s visit threw my sleep thang off.” Thora paused at the kitchen door. “You hear me, Bonnie,” she called.

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t think so. Girl, I don’t think you hear a word I’m saying.”

  The kitchen door swung back and forth on its hinges behind Thora until it settled in place. Bonnie stood at the sink with the water running and stared through the short lace curtains and out toward the woods. She understood the need for this woman to find her mama. But there was a place in Bonnie’s mind—in her heart—that she had stopped visiting years ago. Occasionally, she let herself drift back to recall the smell of talcum and the taste of sweet Carnation Milk. Such a simple time, yet so complicated. The best and the worst time of her life.

  TWO

  Canaan Creek, 1957

  Naz Wilder reeled in his fishing line, then set down his pole in the mud. The chunk of chicken liver attached to his hook dangled atop the slate gray waters of Canaan Creek. He hoisted himself up from the sandy bank and squinted across the water. A bundle of yellow fluff lay tangled in the rising cattails and blades of swamp grass at least a hundred yards away.

  “Scooter,” he called, pointing toward the right bank. “You see that?”

  “What the hell is it?” Scooter asked.

  Naz pushed the brim of his baseball cap away from his forehead.

  “Look like a bird done got tangled up in them weeds,” Little Jr. offered.

  “What kinda yellow bird you ever see in South Ca’lina, boy,” said Little Sr. “’Sides a damn chicken, I mean.”

  Canaan Creek rose east of Pertwell County. After nine miles, it reached Manstone just past the county of Canaan, then flowed east and emptied into Lake Marion, a tributary to the raging Santee. These waters were the lifeblood for the Three Sisters, known for the flathead catfish and an occasional rush of striped bass.

  “Cast yo’ girl on out there, Naz,” Scooter said. “Maybe you can reel it in.”

  “Too far,” Naz said. “Ain’t got the line fo’ that.” He tilted his head. “Sun be full up soon. We’ll check it out when the sun’s up.” Moments later, the four men had again settled into the task at hand.

  “Say, Mr. Naz,” Little Jr. started, “my daddy say you had an 11–4 league record. That fo’ true?”

  The men’s eyes focused on Naz. Revisiting his baseball career was a highlight of their regular fishing trips. And this being Little Jr.’s first outting with the men, they could now speak of Naz’s career from the beginning.

  “Black Crackers went to the pennant that year,” Scooter said. “Played the Chicago American Giants.”

  “Shiiit.” Little Jr. smiled.

  “Need to watch you’ mouth, son,” said Little Sr.

  “Say you’s a triple threat,” the boy went on. “Pitcher, outfielder, first base.”

  “Pitcher mainly,” Naz said.

  “Hell yeah!” Scooter put in. “Ole Naz had a stinkin’ sinking fastball.”

  “Mow you down,” Little Sr. declared. “Ain’t that right, Naz?”

  “That’s what they say,” Naz said modestly.

  “How many pennants?” the boy asked.

  “One.”

  “How many seasons you play?”

  “Hurt my leg durin’ the third.”

  The awe in Little Jr.’s eyes melted. “Only three seasons?”

  Naz looked out on the water.

  “But they’s the best seasons any man ever seen,” Scooter added.

  “Sorry ’bout that, Mr. Naz,” Little Jr. said.

  “You and me both,” Naz mumbled. The conversation about his baseball career always began with triumph, but usually ended with talk of injury and pain. He set his line beside him and stood up on the bank again. The yellow fluff across the water remained hazy. Naz tugged his rubber boots up past his knees, and without another word, he started slowly into the water.

  “What you fin to do, man?” Scooter asked.

  Naz didn’t answer. He simply waded in. The thighs of his denim trousers ballooned with creek water and his flannel shirttails floated behind him.

  “You chasin’ away all the fish, boy,” Little Sr. yelled.

  “Might as well call it a day, fellas,” Scooter said as they watched the flatheads dart away from the banks.

  The men’s frustration reverberated through the still morning. In just moments, the cold creek began to warm to Naz’s body and the spongy bottom gave way with each step. As a child, Naz used to think the water was so deep. He recalled the feeling of velvet from the creek’s bottom against his bare foot before he spread his arms and let his body glide through the waters.

  “What you see there, boy?” Scooter called out.

  “Don’t see no fish,” Little Jr. yelled. “That’s fo’ damn sho’!”

  The creek water reached Naz’s waist. A slight mist floated toward him as he pushed through thick mesquite shrubs. Fuzzy cattails tickled him under the chin and bristled against the early-morning stubble on his face. The yellow bundle, stained by the creek’s brown sediment, now looked like a mass of wet fuzz.

  “What is it?” Scooter called.

  Naz stopped. A blanket lay tangled in the pickerel weed. He lowered his eyes and felt his lips move in spontaneous prayer. He took a step closer, then reached out and pulled the blanket close to his chest. A lifeless baby girl, so still that she appeared to be asleep, lay in the quilt. Her dark brown body was exposed but almost unseen in the water. He took the bundle in his arms. Naz felt his body begin to shiver from grief and rage growing inside of him. Who was this child? How could this have happened? He suddenly thought that he and the others might have gone possum hunting in the woods, but for the toss of a coin this morning. Did the Lord put him here to find this small girl? Wading back to the opposite bank, he held the baby above his waist like a dismal offering. When he reached the other side, he dropped to his knees, chest heaving, and set the body on the soft bank of the creek.

  The men were stricken with disbelief. No one said a word as they looked into the wet coverlet. They had all experienced death in some way. Little Sr. had lost his wife, Little Jr.’s mother, to rheumatic fever when Jr. was only five. Scooter’s brother had succumbed to cancer just two years ago and Naz himself had lost his mother on the day he was born. But this was different. This was a baby and the act itself was surely planned and calculated.

  Naz sat back on the bank, sucking air through his clenched teeth.

  “This is evil,” Scooter said. “Pure evil.”

  “Who in the world…?” Little Jr. whispered.

  “Cain’t be nobody in the Three Sisters,” his father returned. “Don’t know nobody wicked enough.” None of the men could look directly at the child. Their eyes skimmed her blanket, the grass, the edge of the water.

  “How long you think she been out there?” Naz asked.

  “Hard to say,” Scooter answered. “A day, maybe two.”

  Little Jr. blurted, “But who in the world coulda done this?”

  “That ole boy live down below,” his father said soberly, “he an awful busy fella.”

  After a time, the men clasped hands and said a prayer over the child. Scooter removed his shirt and they wrapped the infant in the warm flannel, then piled into Naz’s old pickup. Cold water sloshed in Naz’s boots. A fishy stench from the creek water permeated the truck. All were silent as they drove off, bound for the sheriff’s office, leaving idle four fishing lines swaying in the agitated waters of Canaan Creek.

  Bonnie Wilder had rush
ed from home to join her husband at the Brethren of Good Faith Hall on Butler Street. Usually when she attended a meeting at the men’s club, she was there only to bring a canteen of hot coffee, some sandwiches or a fruit cobbler. With the exception of social functions, like the annual picnic or dance, women weren’t allowed. But all the ladies in Canaan Creek would be in the lodge room today. They were outraged that a helpless baby could have come to such an end.

  Bonnie sat beside her husband and listened to the confusion swirl around her. She kept thinking how strange the lodge felt in this light of day. A peculiar shadow eclipsed the sunlight and hung over the rows of folding chairs and long maroon drapes covering the side walls. It tilted like a visor over the podium in the front of the room, where a dozen navy fezzes with hanging gold tassels sat like stiff dolls. Of course, the men had dispensed with putting them on since this was an emergency meeting. Even the pictures of each smiling lodge brother that hung above the podium seemed subdued, including a particular photo that the Brethren held dear. It was a shot of Naz in his Black Crackers baseball uniform, his arm around the shoulder of Satchel Paige.

  Extra folding chairs were taken from behind the drapes and squeezed between the aisles to accommodate the crowd. There were some new faces, but mostly these were the people that Bonnie had known all her life. Nine of Naz’s lodge brothers and their wives were here. Reverend and Mrs. Duncan sat beside Deputy Pine, who appeared even more somber than usual. Of course, most of Bonnie’s neighbors had come out, like Bailey Dial and Kitty Wooten. Cal and Tilde Monroe sat up front with two of their four kids. Jenna Dixon and her newborn baby girl arrived with Maggie Kane and the Bell sisters: Birdie Bell, Bessie Bell, and Essie Bell. Most of the folks from the Piney Grove Baptist Church had come. Even Ruby-Pearl Yancy was here, and she rarely ventured out of her house. It seemed the only ones not in attendance were Horace and Thora Dean. They were away in Huntsville tending to Horace’s sick mama. Bonnie missed her good friend, but if Thora were here now, she’d be weeping at even the thought of a baby being found like this.

  The meeting was finally called to order by Trent Majors, president of the Brethren of Good Faith. Barely five foot and four, he had to whistle to get everyone’s attention. Trent wore a white cap tilted backwards. He stood with his hands raised over his head until at last the room had settled down.

  “This ain’t no easy thing,” Trent began. “And I cain’t imagine what it was like fo’ you fellas,” he said, looking at Naz and the other fishermen, “finding that chile in the first place.”

  “Bad,” Scooter called out. “Bad as hell.”

  “I know that’s right,” Trent replied. “We understand Sheriff Tucker will do all he can to find out what happened, but y’all know as good as me that this is our problem.”

  Bonnie understood. The Three Sisters, a mostly colored section, just fifty miles from the city of Charleston, seemed completely separate from the surrounding counties of Hooley and Bostworth. The Three Sisters had its own police department, post office and town hall. With the exception of the sheriff, all of these government offices were run by colored citizens. Whatever problems arose were considered “colored problems.” So, though the child was at the moment anonymous, it was everyone’s child.

  “I guess what I’m tryin’ to say,” Trent went on, “is that we need to keep our eyes open in our own community, ’cause if it was one of us who did this…this evil thing, then they is sho’ly fin to lose they mind.”

  Deputy Jimmy-Earl Pine stood alongside Trent. He wore an official look that said that although he was of the community, because he donned the khaki uniform, in this instance he was also separate from it. His narrow, clean-shaven face gleamed under his uniform cap. He stood with both hands in front of him and his fingers laced together. Deputy Pine rested one foot on top of a folding chair. “Sheriff’s men are already out there,” he began, “but like Trent say, we need to keep an eye out fo’ each other. But y’all got to understand that it ain’t fo’ n’ere a soul in this room to take the law in they own hands…hear me good! If you find somethin’, you come to me or the sheriff. You understand?”

  A clamor started in the room. Some seemed to agree with Pine, while others looked a bit too disturbed to simply leave this to the authorities.

  Tilde Monroe stood up. The beige flesh under her thick arms dangled as she waved them to quiet the room. “I’m fin to talk now,” she yelled. The clatter continued. “I said I’m fin to talk!!” The room finally hushed. Tilde took a beat before she spoke, waiting until all eyes were looking her way. “This the saddest thing ever happened in the Three Sisters,” she started.

  Naz nodded in agreement.

  “And we oughta pray fo’ that chile.”

  “Yes,” Bonnie said under her breath.

  “Oughta pray fo’ the chile’s family,” Tilde added.

  “Amen,” someone called.

  “But you bein’ way too kind, Jimmy-Earl,” Tilde went on. “Ain’t no baby jes’ wind up floatin’ in the creek. Somebody put her there…plain and simple!”

  “You tell ’im, Tilde,” Olive Lockie called.

  “And whoever did this,” Tilde went on, “oughta be put under the jail!”

  The room roared their approval. Tilde basked in the attention. She was a large yellow woman and if she hadn’t been in the same grade school as Bonnie, it would be impossible to tell how old she was. Bonnie was thirty-one and so was Tilde. But the two women looked to be a generation apart. While Bonnie stood tall and whisper thin, Tilde was short and rotund. Naz once joked that when Bonnie and Tilde stood side by side, the two women looked like the number 10.

  “We talkin’ ’bout a dead baby,” Tilde yelled. “A helpless lil’ baby…”

  “Go ’head, girl,” Jenna Dixon called.

  She turned to Jimmy-Earl Pine. Her thick chest rose and fell. “I hear what you say ’bout not taking matters in our hands, but when an innocent chile die…we regular folk got to stand up and do somethin’.” The crowd hollered. Bonnie clapped in agreement. After twelve years of marriage, she and Naz had yet to be blessed with a child. The idea that someone would throw away this precious life…

  “What kinda woman would leave her baby to die?” Tilde went on.

  “How we know it’s a woman?” Delphine Peterson asked. “Ain’t nothin’ say it cain’t be a man.”

  “We all heard ’bout this kinda thing befo’,” Tilde snapped back. “Thank the Lord it ain’t never happened here in the Three Sisters—but we done read ’bout these things in the papers. And I’m sad to say that it’s always a woman! And I declare on my soul, this kinda woman gotta be the lowest of the low!” The crowd roared again.

  Bonnie clutched her hands in her lap. She agreed with Tilde but couldn’t help but wonder about the woman she described. Maybe the baby died at home from some unforeseen circumstance. Like Marva Sunday’s child, some years ago, who had just stopped breathing. And Marva was only seventeen. Maybe this child had a young mama who panicked and put her baby in the creek. Somehow, this kind of explanation made the reality bearable. Because otherwise, what would drive a woman to such a thing? Was she sick in the head? Could life be that bad? Bonnie’s eyes darted around the room, as if someone could read her thoughts. She suddenly felt guilty even considering the feelings of a person who might’ve killed their own child.

  “When we leave here today,” Trent said, “can we simply say we’ll keep an eye out fo’ each other?”

  “And come to me if anybody find something,” Deputy Pine put in.

  “Brethren gon’ stay behind this,” Trent said to the deputy.

  “So will the folks at Piney Grove,” Reverend Duncan called.

  “And you know the Ladies of the Blessed Harvest’ll be on it,” Tilde added.

  The crowd began to break into small clusters. The Sistren of Financial Affairs drifted toward the window seats, while the Ladies of the Lord’s Busy Hands moved to the back of the room. Bonnie looked around for Naz. He was surrounded by his lodge
brothers. She could tell that the men were recounting the story again to Jimmy-Earl Pine, for she could see the pain in her husband’s face as clear as it was on Scooter’s and Little Sr.’s. Across the room Bonnie could see the Ladies of the Blessed Harvest gathering, and she rose to join them.

  At Naz’s insistence, Bonnie had begun attending meetings with the Ladies of the Blessed Harvest about a year ago. Made up of the wives of the Brethren of Good Faith, the women mostly organized annual picnics, bake sales and church socials. Bonnie never subscribed to the notion that everyone in town had to be a part of some group or another. She was more than happy to spend her time puttering around the house or visiting with her good friend Thora, but Naz had pushed her to join. He thought she would benefit by getting involved in the community and also thought that she should get out of the house more.

  “Jimmy-Earl say we should let the sheriff’s office handle this,” Delphine said, pushing her cat’s-eye glasses on her nose.

  “He also said to stay alert,” Tilde insisted. “That mean we need to get involved! Need to look out fo’ things!”

  “But what in the world we lookin’ fo’?” Olive Lockie asked.

  In all of Tilde’s righteous indignation, it seemed she hadn’t even considered the question. “Well,” she started, “I s’pose we can look fo’ gals in the town that give birth and ain’t got they babies no mo’.”

  “And if we find one,” Olive inquired, “what we s’posed to do, Tilde? Beat her ’til she bleed?”

  An uneasy chuckle erupted. Tilde locked her arms across her chest. “That ain’t even funny, Olive.”

  “I say we leave this business to Pine,” Miss Idella said. “That’s what he say!”

  Still, Tilde wanted to push the case. She had even proposed that the women go door to door, checking on pregnant women in the Three Sisters. It wasn’t until the end of the meeting that the Ladies of the Blessed Harvest had convinced Tilde to leave this business to those in authority. And Bonnie was glad. She agreed that such grievous business should be left to Sheriff Tucker, Deputy Jimmy-Earl Pine and the good Lord above.