A Parchment of Leaves Read online

  “Aaron spoke of us?” Esme said, her back to us. She was making gravy, and her elbow moved in and out at her side as she stirred it. “He was so dead to leave here, I figured he didn’t miss us a-tall.”

  Aidia put her hand out, directing me to a seat, as if this was her house and she was the hostess. She had the best manners I had ever seen, like somebody raised up with money. Still, it was plain to me that she had been raised poor as Job’s turkey. I could see it in her weary eyes. And her hands were rough as cobs.

  Aaron had Birdie on his knee and was tickling her ribs. She laughed and went on like a day hadn’t passed with them apart. I reckon she had missed having a man around to roughhouse with her.

  “Oh, it was all he talked about,” Aidia said. “He told me that when he lived here, all he wanted was out, and when he got out, all he wanted was to be back.”

  “What did you do, Aaron?” I asked. It seemed like old times. I could speak so easy to him that I knowed I had done the right thing by telling him to leave. Maybe this absence had cured him. He might have even growed up. “Where did you go all this time?”

  “I went to West Virginia for a while, but they wasn’t nothing but coal mines and lumber camps to work in, about like here. You can’t get a job on the railroad up there. The company didn’t hire locals, brought in their own crew from the District of Columbia. I wound up in Bristol, working in a movie theater.”

  “A picture show!” I had always wanted to go to a theater. Serena had been to the pictures over in Hazard and had been begging me to go, too. “Bristol, Virginia, or Bristol, Tennessee?”

  “It’s all the same,” Aidia said in a polite manner. “It straddles the state line.”

  “Oh. I never knowed that,” I said. “I’ve always heard of them spoken of separate.”

  “I traveled all over them mountains, Vine. You wouldn’t believe the places.”

  “And one night I went to Bristol to see a picture,” Aidia said. “It was my birthday, and this is what I had asked for. Everybody in my family went in together and raised the money so I could see a picture. And I met Aaron.”

  “We got married last week, in Cumberland Gap,” Aaron said.

  “You smell like Daddy,” Birdie told him, and laid her face against his neck.

  “How in the world did you afford that Model T?” I asked. I hated to be outright nosy, but I was having trouble piecing all of this together. I tried to make it sound like I was just making supper talk. “Didn’t that break you up?”

  “My aunt sold us the car cheap. Her man died and she’s afraid of automobiles,” Aidia said proudly. “It seemed like a sign that we ought to get married, so we did.”

  Esme handed me a cup of coffee. “Let’s eat now, children,” she said.

  “Lord, Esme, I ain’t even offered to help you,” I said. I started to get up, placing my hands on the edge of the table to scoot my chair out. Before I could, Esme put her hand on my shoulder so I would stay set down.

  “I begged her to let me help, but she wouldn’t,” Aidia said, and sipped her coffee.

  She held the cup with both hands, as if drawing heat from it. Her nails were painted pink to match her lips. A thin silver wedding band was on her finger, which made me suddenly aware that Aaron had truly gotten married. I couldn’t figure how they had even afforded to pay a justice of the peace. Surely working projectors didn’t pay too good.

  “Come on, now, it’ll get cold,” Esme said, and set down. Esme never would eat until everyone else was finished, an old habit that she could not break. She liked watching us all eat and tell her how good it was. I always went out of my way to brag on her food, even though I had eaten it a hundred times before. “Aaron, say the blessing.”

  “Lord, we thank thee for this food and fellowship,” Aaron said, sounding much like Saul. “And for a warm place to come home to. We thank thee for keeping us all safe while we were apart. Amen.”

  The supper seemed like a holiday feast. Esme said that she felt Aaron’s return was a reason to defy the government. She used the last of her coffee and sugar, even though the prices of both climbed with each passing day of the war. Aaron told of his adventures: hopping onto a flatbed railcar and riding down through Virginia, renting a little room in Bristol that was actually just a bed in the projector room of the theater, seeing prostitutes at the train station in War, West Virginia. Aaron was pleased with himself; he had always wanted stories to tell. He had always longed to have tales instead of dreams.

  Aidia was very good natured and smiled while she chewed her food. But she seemed fragile, which was a puzzlement to me. It was obvious that she had been raised rougher than any of us. I don’t know how I came to such conclusions, but it was just plain to see. It is one of those things that you can’t explain good, but you know it if you see it. Maybe she was putting on airs, trying to have manners and all that so as to disguise her true self.

  Without thinking first, I come right out and asked Aidia if she was in fact a Melungeon.

  Aidia finished chewing up her biscuit and syrup before answering. “Yes, but we don’t use that word.” She did not seem miffed and gave a little smile when she said this.

  “What do you call it, then?” Esme said.

  “Just people, I guess,” Aidia said, and let out a little girl’s giggle. Everything seemed to delight her. “Some people at home try to hide it. People will treat you bad, over being dark, you know. But I never put on to be something I ain’t. Never used that word, though. My daddy hates that word, Melungeon.”

  “I never meant to offend you,” I said. I could feel heat rushing up to my face.

  “Oh no,” Aidia said, and reached her arm across the table to pat the top of my hand. “You never. I’d rather somebody come right out and ask me instead of set and stare. That’s what most people do. They can’t understand somebody so dark and curly headed having blue eyes.”

  “What is that, a Melungeon?” Esme said. Either she was unaware or uncaring that Aidia had asked us not to use that word.

  “Surely to God you know, Mama,” Aaron said, and laughed. “You was raised in East Tennessee, where most of them are from.” He, unlike Aidia, talked with his mouth full, and I thought of how he had talked to me that day in the creek. I had a flash of the blackberries spilling out into the water, twisting like a ribbon atop the water as the bucket bobbed behind.

  Aidia took the dishrag from her lap and wiped her own mouth primly. “Nobody really knows, I don’t reckon,” she said. “Like I said, the way I see it, we’re just people. Just like anybody else in this world.”

  “Lord,” Esme said quietly. “Are they like them blue people that are supposed to live over on Troublesome?”

  “I never heard tell of no blue people,” Aidia said. “But if they dark, and not Indian, then I’m part of that clan.”

  “I’m Cherokee,” I said, hoping to change the subject.

  “I knowed it.” Aidia nodded. “I know a lot of Cherokee people back home.”

  “We may be kin,” I said. “I feel just like you, though. I’m full-blood, but my people never talked much about it. They don’t believe in the past. They want to forget all of it.”

  “So you wasn’t raised up Cherokee?”

  “I don’t know.” Somehow I felt guilty saying all of this, like I was betraying my family in some way. But I never had anybody to talk to about this. The way Aidia nodded and went on, it was like she knowed what I meant. “The old ways sort of slipped in every once in a while—but my daddy wanted us to be Americans. He was raised to think this was best.”

  “Well, it ain’t,” Aidia said. She leaned over the table in a private way, as if we were the only two present and she was confiding in me, her new and trusted sister-in-law. “Of course, sometimes it pays to forget the past. But it ain’t right, to take your heritage away from you like that.”

  “His granddaddy hid out during the Removal. Seen a lot of his people forced out. I guess them tales kept getting handed down to Daddy and he didn’t
want his children to be in danger of that happening again. He wanted us to fit in.”

  “I had a friend down in Tennessee that would sometimes speak to me in Cherokee, just because I liked to hear it,” Aidia said in a dreamy way, like she was drifting off in thought. “She didn’t talk like that much, though. I couldn’t understand why. It’s so pretty to hear, like music.”

  “When Daddy was little, teachers would wash his mouth out with soap for speaking Cherokee,” I said.

  Aidia shook her head. “Things like that make me mad as fire,” she said. “Oh, it burns me up!”

  “Well, I could tell you all about my people,” Esme said. I realized that Aidia and I had been leaving everybody else out of the conversation. This was Esme’s way to join back in. “My papa used to tell me about Ireland.”

  Aidia acted as if she hadn’t even heard Esme. She put her hand into Aaron’s and intertwined their fingers. “My past is forgot now, though—because I have a new family, and I already feel a part of you all.”

  “It’s hard, moving off from your people,” I said. I stood up and started in on taking everybody’s plates.

  “Every girl’s got to do that sometime,” Esme said. She tore a biscuit in half and put two big pats of butter on it, then filled her mouth.

  “Cherokee women usually stay with their family. That’s one thing I was taught,” I said. “That’s why it was that much harder for me.”

  “Well, I didn’t care a bit to leave,” Aidia said. “My mama’s been dead nigh on eight year and my daddy wasn’t worth a dime. Laid drunk all the time. Only thing I’ll miss is my cousins.”

  I raked the food off the plates and didn’t let my eyes meet anyone else’s. Aidia had a lot to learn. Esme and her boys did not make such personal announcements, and their silence made this fact clear, enough so that Aidia hushed, even though she seemed to have more to say.

  “Hey, Little Bit,” Aaron said, poking Birdie in the ribs. “Let’s go look at the stars.”

  “No, Aaron, it’s too cold out,” Esme said. She looked tired as she set and sipped her coffee. Birdie begged and pulled on my dress tail.

  “Winter’s night is when the stars are the brightest,” Aaron said. “Come on, Mommy, get you a quilt and let’s go out and look.”

  Esme laughed at Aaron. I could see the joy in her face, and it made me glad. She had not been happy since Aaron left, and now she was whole again. He run into the bedroom and brought out a quilt to drape around her shoulders, then wrapped Birdie up until only her face showed. He was still like a little child at heart. “Let’s go, baby.”

  When they had gone, Aidia jumped up from the table and stood so close to me that her breath was hot on my ear. I moved back a little but tried not to make her aware of it. She looped her arm through mine, which was awkward, since I was bent over, wiping the table off with a soapy rag.

  “I know we’re going to be friends,” Aidia said. “Always had a mess of brothers, and I’ve wanted a sister for so long.”

  I could see then that Aidia was just like Aaron: she thought that she was on a great adventure now. Little did she know that this adventure would mean working from daylight to dark, popping out two or three children, and listening to Aaron’s constant dreams. I didn’t know what kind of life Aidia had left behind in East Tennessee, but it seemed to me that the girl had got married only to leave. For a moment I wanted to ask Aidia if she truly loved Aaron but, thinking better of it, did not.

  Thirteen

  Ahint of spring arrived no more than a week after Aaron did, as if he had brought it on his coattails from the east. One morning I went out onto the porch, and the sky was white and free of tarnish. Birdcall filled the mountainside like music had been let loose on the world. All up the ridge, the trees were tinted red by the buds that were beginning to get fat. It was only March, but spring would come early that year. I breathed in the scent of morning and felt like I was taking in the aroma of an old memory, like the smell of Saul’s skin or Mama’s coffee. Spring was a distant memory, for the year before had been the longest of my life.

  I was thinking of hitching up my horse and riding over to Redbud when I heard Serena’s car making its way up the rough holler road. The Model T strained to climb through the mudholes and gullies that the season’s snows had cut into the dirt. The motor whined and groaned, gears scratched against one another. I didn’t know of any other women who drove cars, but Serena set there with her arm propped on the door as if there was nothing to it. A cigarette hung from her lips the way a man might smoke. She turned off the car but didn’t get out. The car took a long time dying with a great block of smoke that belched out onto the air like gunshot.

  “Hidy!” Serena said, smiling. She was always happy, now that Whistle-Dick had gone. She hadn’t heard from him, and seemed glad of it. She kept her arm on the window and sucked on the cigarette. She talked without taking it from her mouth. “What are you waiting on, girl?”

  “What in the world are you talking about?” I said, and walked across the yard. A short breeze passed down the holler and kicked at the hem of my skirt.

  “I told you as soon as it got pretty weather, I’d drive you over to Redbud and look at your daddy for you,” she said. “Belle took Luke to town with her, and I’m lonesome.”

  “We’ll take the horse. It’ll get us there quick as this old thing.”

  “Don’t talk bad about her, now,” Serena said, and patted the side of the car. “Damn it, I don’t never get to drive this thing. I’m sick of horses. Go get Birdie and let’s go over there. It’s perfect for a car ride today.”

  By the time I had got Birdie fixed up and ready to go, I come out onto the porch to find Aidia leaned against the car, talking to Serena.

  “Look what a day, baby,” I told Birdie while I put a cap on her head. “It’s springtime out.”

  “I love the springtime,” Birdie said, sounding very old. She looked up at the sky, and her eyes widened, as if she was amazed at its lack of grayness. I wondered if little children had long memories at all. Could Birdie even remember springtime? She was only four. “What do I have to wear this old cap for?”

  “They’s still winter in the air,” I said. I took no chances on Birdie getting sick, as I knowed that such pretty days led many a child to take the croup.

  Down by the car, Aidia let out a high laugh. She leaned on the hood, watching Serena crank the engine. She was probably not as shocked by Serena’s rough language and straight talk as I had been on first meeting her. Aidia was from a much bigger town than Black Banks, and I could tell that she had seen more of the world than I ever would. It was obvious by the way she leaned on the car, by the confidence in her walk. There was a way she had in doing every little thing that made me feel like she had studied other people to learn how to look like a big shot—the way she shook her curls about her face and cast her eyes down in the right parts of conversations. She had never even met Serena before, and they were talking like old friends.

  “Well, I guess you all’ve introduced yourselves,” I said as I climbed into the car.

  Serena blew out twin streams of smoke from her nose and kissed Birdie on top of her head.

  “I’m so glad to meet somebody else. A friend of Vine’s is a friend of mine. I love her to death,” Aidia said to Serena, as if I wasn’t setting right there.

  “She’s a good one,” Serena said, and winked at me.

  “Hey, where you all going?” Aidia said. I could only see half of her face through the window, and it struck me that Aidia had on lipstick. I would never have even dreamed of wearing lipstick, much less getting up in the morning and putting it on for no reason whatsoever. I couldn’t get over the way she talked, either. I had never used the word hey before in my life, but Aidia said that all the time.

  “Over to see my daddy,” I said. “Serena’s a midwife, and I want her to look at him for me. She could be a doctor if she took the notion.”

  “Oh, Lord, could I go with you all?” Aidia asked. “I can
’t stand to set in that house with Esme on such a fine day.”

  “Why, yeah,” I said, but I didn’t really want her to go. I would have enough on my mind once we got to Redbud, and I didn’t take to having to entertain someone once we got there. Still, I knowed what it was like to set in that old house all day long, and I couldn’t blame her for wanting to get away for a while. “You ought to go tell Esme, though. And ask her if she wants to come.”

  Aidia run up the hill to Esme’s like a child who has to go on every trip to the candy store. Serena turned her head very slowly and looked me in the eye for a long moment before I finally asked her what was the matter.

  “Lord have mercy, Vine,” Serena said, smoothing her bangs back out of her eyes. “You never told me how much she favored you.”

  I looked up to where Aidia was running back down the hill. She had gotten her purse and held it tight in one hand as she watched the ground in front of her.

  “Do you think she does?”

  “Hell, yes,” Serena said. “It’s a sight how much you all look alike. Surely to God that ain’t why he’s got her.”

  “She’s just dark skinned is all. Her people are Melungeons. You one of them people that think all dark-skinned people favor.”

  Serena tapped the gas pedal twice. “If you say so.”

  SERENA DROVE AROUND the curves of Buffalo Mountain so fast that I sank my nails into the seat cushion. When we would meet the steepest, most winding part of the mountain, Serena mashed down the gas that much harder.

  “You better slow down,” I said. Used to be I would have enjoyed this, but I had a baby to be concerned about. “We’ll roll right off the side of this mountain. Looks like a big drop-off to me.”

  “I thought you said my old car wouldn’t run fast,” Serena said, and laughed.

  Aidia rode in the rear seat of the car but spent the whole trip with her arms folded on the back of the front seat, talking to me and Serena. Birdie had begged to climb into the back with Aidia, and I had let her because Aidia always managed to keep her entertained, but now Birdie sat staring out the window at the trees passing by. Aidia was deep in conversation with Serena—a conversation that seemed to fly right past my ears. I didn’t pay a lick of attention to what they were saying, but I knowed it was met with a lot of nodding on Serena’s part and a constant stream of high giggles from Aidia.