A Mess of Hurt ~ Chapter 2
“You can take her bribes and fancy toys if you want, Mitchell, but not me.” Even though he was standing within spitting distance I shouted. “As far as I’m concerned, she can take her highfaluting ways and her fancy car and make a path straight down to the devil.”
“Gracie Jean Malone! If Mama was here, she’d wash your mouth out with soap.”
“If Mama was here, she wouldn’t be.”
I crossed my arms and stomped so hard my foot tingled.
“Gracie, you can’t do this.” Mitchell spoke softly, the same way Daddy spoke to Mama when she worked herself into a dander. “You heard what the sheriff said. We have to have a guardian until we’re eighteen and as our next of kin, she’s it. I know you’re mad about Mama and Daddy being g—”
“Dead. Say it, Mitchell, Mama and Daddy died.”
“Yes, but—”
“You can’t even say it,” I interrupted. “It’s like you’re ignoring that it even happened. They’re dead, Mitchell, and they’re never coming back.” I screamed, suddenly realizing I was as close to pitching a bona fide two-year-old’s temper tantrum as I’d ever been.
“Listen to me, Gracie,” Mitchell said. “Right now, Gam’s probably thinking we’re a couple of helpless country bumpkins who don’t have the smarts to get in out of a hailstorm, but she doesn’t know us. She has no idea how smart we really are. All she sees is that we live back here in the boonies and that we’re harboring way more dirt on our overalls than she thinks is acceptable. Mama and Daddy are gone, Gracie, but if they could see us, you’d want them to be proud. And you’d want other folks knowing what a good job they’d done raising us, right?”
I hung my head and stared at the floor, wishing for once my brother wasn’t making such good sense.
“What do you say, little sister? You’re with me, right?”
I shrugged. “Well, I’m not calling her Nana, or Memaw, or even Gam. Not any of those mushy things that mean I love you. And you can’t make me.” I pooched out my lower lip and scowled.
Mitchell rolled his eyes and wagged his finger in my face. “Just don’t be disrespectful. Because Gracie … without her we’ll be in the foster system.”
Marie loudly cleared her throat. I’d almost forgotten she was there. “Is everything all right up there?” she asked.
“Yes Ma’am. We’ll be right down,” Mitchell hollered. “Now promise, Gracie,” he said. “Promise you’ll try to be good, and promise you’ll do your best to help her if she needs it.”
“On account of she’s older than dirt and can’t do anything on her own?”
“No, because she’s our grandmother and she’s taking us in when we have no one else.”
“Children?”
“Hold your ‘taters. We’re coming, Marie,” I shouted.
“Gracie? Respectful.”
“I mean, yes Ma’am, we’ll be right down.” The words came close to choking me half to death, but I said them.
I wrapped Daddy’s shirt around my waist, picked up my shoebox—the one that held my pet, Jasper—and shimmied down the makeshift ladder.
As soon as my feet hit the dirt my stomach churned. I looked Marie in the eyes and then quickly looked away. “I can’t go right now,” I said. “I haven’t packed.”
“Packed? You’ve got everything you need, Gracie,” Mitchell said. “Let’s just go. All this stuff will be here when we get back.”
Marie cleared her throat. “If clothes are what you’re concerned about, dear, don’t be. I realize you haven’t packed anything.” She gave both of us a look—from head to bare feet and back again. “I’ve already thought of that,” she said. “We’ll have a shopping extravaganza when we get to the city. Won’t that be fun? You and your brother will have closets full of new clothes and all the shoes you’d ever want. Now what do you say to that?” She bent to look me in the eyes.
“I say the bare feet the good Lord give me will do just fine thank you.” My brother demanded that I be respectful. I decided on my own to be as honest as possible. “Me and Mitchell could live here on our own you know. I don’t understand why we have to go with you,” I said, following her down the hill.
“Your parents named me your guardian in case anything should … well, in case of emergency, dear. The remainder of their will is to be read after the waiting period your parents insisted upon.”
“That’s still no cause for you to go dragging us away from our home. You could be in charge and just live here on the farm with us.”
She smiled. “I could never, ever in a million years live here, dear.n this holler you can’t even get Internet service. There’s no cell signal. Why, you don’t even have indoor plumbing. There’s just that … that … that hole in the ground.” She pointed up the hill to the outhouse.
“We could have all that stuff and more if we’d wanted,” I said. “Mama and Daddy were just smart enough not to want things that make city people soft.”
Marie rolled her eyes, held to the car door with one hand, and motioned toward the back seat with the other. “Please, Grace. Shall we go?”
With my shoebox tucked under my arm my feet were firmly planted. One last effort to exert my will and remain on Malone land.
She sighed. “Okay I’ve got an idea. How about we take this a little at a time? After say … three months, we’ll reevaluate how this is working.”
“You mean after three months at your house you’ll bring us back to the farm?”
“Well… um … perhaps for a visit maybe. Tell you what, let’s just agree to give it a try, okay?”
I rolled my eyes. “I know what that means. In three months, you’ll say your way is permanent. We’ll never see our home again.” I swallowed hard and gave an angry swipe to my eyes.
“Eli!” Mitchell shouted. “Look, Gracie! It’s Eli.”
Mitchell ran to Eli the way I’d seen him run to Daddy more times than I could remember. I followed so close I almost tripped over him.
“I knew you’d come,” Mitchell said.
“Couldn’t let y’all go without saying good-bye,” he said, patting my brother on the back. “You’re a good man, Mitchell, I’m mighty proud of you. But don’t you forget what old Eli told you. You don’t have to carry the weight of the whole world on your shoulders just because your daddy’s gone. Even the biggest and best of men cry sometimes. There’s a whole heap of folks who love you more than you know. I’ve no doubt your grandmother is one of them.”
He winked at Marie as he rubbed the top of Mitchell’s head and nudged him toward the car.
Marie mouthed, “thank you,” and offered Eli a smile.
He held open his arms for me. I stared at the ground and shoved my hands into the pockets of my overalls.
“Now, now, Missy, you know old Eli’s not gonna let you go off without at least a little hug.”
My feet tried to say no, to remain firmly attached to my roots, but my heart was a magnet, and Eli was a pull beyond my control. I ran to him, and he lifted me off the ground, his gigantic arms swallowing me in a hug.
“Oh, Eli, please, please say we don’t have to go. Please let us stay here with you. You know that’s what Mama and Daddy would have wanted.”
Each word tripped from my mouth clumsier than the last, like a puppy learning to navigate stairs. Who knew it would be almost impossible to talk and swallow down a mess of hurt at the same time?
Eli hugged me tighter, then returned me to my feet. “Now you listen to me, little Missy,” he said. “Old Eli’s gonna tell you something and I expect you to take in every word, you hear?”
I pushed the hair from my sweaty face and listened intently.
Before he spoke, he looked toward Mitchell, like he wanted to be sure my brother wasn’t listening to what he was about to say. Then he spoke as softly and as slowly as I’d ever heard him speak.
“Your brother needs you. He’s tryin’ his best to be a grown man, actin’ all brave and strong, but inside he’s just a scared little boy,” Eli said. “Your Daddy used to say a fella can only sweep so much under the rug before he trips and falls over it. That’s what your brother’s doin’—he’s sweeping his hurt under the rug. You mark my word, little Missy. Your brother’s gonna fall one day. When he does, you’ll be the one to pick him up and hold him just like your precious Mama and Daddy would do if they were here.”
I nodded, feeling that Eli had made me privy to the biggest secret in Tennessee.
He smiled. “You understand, don’t you?”
“Yes sir, I do. But I think if we could just stay—”
He shook his head and put a calloused finger to my lips as gently as a mama cow nudging a newborn calf. “No baby, it can’t happen. You’ve got to go. It’s the law, and besides, it’s what’s right. You’re strong, little Missy. The strongest little lady I know. You’re spunky and smart with more determination inside of you than old Eli’s ever seen in any young’un. You can do this.”
He leaned down, bringing us nose to nose. “You haven’t discovered it yet, little one,” he said, “but your grandmother loves you. She needs you too. Truth be told she’s lugging around her own basket, full of hurt over your Mama’s dyin’.”
His words startled me. I was so angry over that woman taking us from our home I hadn’t stopped to think she may be hurting to.
As Eli stood, I asked, “But you’ll come visit us in the city, won’t you? Please?”
“No Missy, I best stay here,” he said. “You and your brother need someone to care for this farm and that’s what I’m aiming to do. But old Eli will be with you, just like your Mama and Daddy will be with you—always—right there.” He pointed to my heart. “And remember, as long as your Mama and Daddy are inside of you, they’re never really far away.”
I drank his words slowly, like a glass of cold water on a hot day, realizing there was one lesson Mama and Daddy had forgotten to teach us: how to live without them. How many times in one lifetime could a person’s heart actually break? Was a heart like a cat—with nine lives of its own?
“Come on, Gracie,” Mitchell called. “We’ve kept Gam waiting long enough.”
Fighting against tears that threatened to spew like lava from an active volcano, I turned to go. When I got to the car Marie gave me a smile and reached to place an outstretched hand on my shoulder. I jerked away. It might have been my lot to go with her, but I didn’t have to like it. I took one long, last look at our home—a home bursting with warmth and comfort and security. No place on earth was better. No place ever could be.
Reluctantly I slid into the back seat of the car, waved goodbye to Eli, and pulled my shoebox close. Thinking of all we were leaving I swallowed tears. I’d never be happy—at least not Mama and Daddy happy—again. My shoebox, my pocketknife, and my overalls were all I had to remind me of the farm. Well, besides Mitchell, that is. In the years to come only my brother would remember Mama and Daddy the way I remembered them. I needed to stay close to Mitchell. He was all I had left.
I squirmed and wiggled in the back seat of her car vowing with everything inside of me to return to the land I loved—with or without that woman’s help. The farther her car carried us from our home, the harder I tried to remember every bend and bump in the road, every hill and valley, and every sign we passed just in case I needed to retrace my steps.