This house holds both light and dark. I always thought that a building must be shadowed by the people who came before, but we brought our own ghosts inside the brick walls and sealed them inside, creating more over time to keep them company. Sammy and I cleared the pines, poplars, and oak trees from this land ourselves, borrowed the manpower of both our daddies, my momma, his older brother, and my sister and brother-in-law to help complete our little brick house on the hill. Around here, women work, too; can’t afford not to. Some of the other people around here, like the owners of the lumber yard or the fancy doctor from over in Chapel Hill, they can pay some Mexicans to come saw their trees down and even cut their grass. Plain lazy if you ask me.
Built from our own blood, sweat, and tears, you’d think the house would be a fresh start for both of us. We’d been living over in Waynesville for a while, moved for Sammy’s job at Dayco, but, when that closed down, we moved back to Whittier where we both grew up. Daddy and Momma had three acres of land up Barkers Creek that they’d inherited from Papaw Jones, so they offered to let us have it to put a house on. I don’t know if they could tell, but we needed this move. I needed to be back on family land.
I trail my finger across the rim of my porcelain coffee cup, black coffee growing colder by the minute. I used to drink my coffee with a bit of half and half, but I’m too old for that now. Too old for a lot of things at 43.
“Della, do you have my coffee ready?” Sammy hollers from his back bedroom.
With a sigh, I grab his green travel mug, the white rim stained from years of coffee drinking, and I shuffle over to the pressboard countertop to pour him a cup full.
“Della, you hear me or not?”
“Yeah, Sam. I hear you loud and clear.”
Anymore, I can’t tell what tone he uses. If he meant it genuinely or rudely, I don’t really know, but I could about bet it was the latter.
Sam trudges through the paneled hallway, and the blue carpet is squashed under his work boots. I used to care that he walked in the house with shoes on, but it’s not like anyone will be crawling on the floor. His blue jeans are stained with all different colors of paint, but mostly a pale pink from a job he never got to finish. His white t-shirt has little holes in the armpits from so much wear and tear. I sewed them up a long time ago, like a surgeon closing a wound – tight, neat, carefully. But time tears those bonds apart so cruelly, sometimes under cover and without notice.
Sam takes the coffee from my hand, brushing my fingers slightly. I pull my hand back from the cup too soon, and it spirals towards the linoleum floor.
“Damn it, Della. Are you that scared of me? I’m your husband for God’s sake.”
“You’re not the husband I married, Sam,” I bite out, and I turn away from his eyes.
Those deep brown eyes. Used to I could stare right back at them, mesmerized by the flecks of gold swimming there, but now all I see are shadows. When I thought it was just my reflection, I could take it, but I think some of those shadows are his own, bags under his eyes to prove their existence.
“Did you hear me?” he whispers.
“I don’t know.”
“I want out of this marriage, Della. It ain’t no good for either of us anymore. Like we’re just walking past each other on pins and needles without a good word to say to the other.”
“Della?”
The tree in the front yard stands beautiful against the Blue Ridge Mountains. A pink dogwood, with tiny green leaves and blossoms adorning its branches, stretched out like the arms of a child to embrace its Mother Spring. Sammy planted a tree just like it in my home in Waynesville, but root rot ate it up, dying from the inside, rejecting the nutrients the earth provided. Or maybe the earth itself swallowed it up, too beautiful a tree to bloom.
I don’t hear or see Sam stamping out the front door, but I feel it. My whole body vibrates as the solid wood door slams shut, and my coffee cup teeters on the edge of the dining room table, until it shatters beside Sam’s beaten green cup. The coffee puddle grows and spreads over the kitchen floor and seeps under my block heels. I step over the remnants, grab my purse and coat from beside the door, and head to work. I slam the door, too.
“Mrs. Nations?” Megan whispers. “I need to talk to you after the bell.”
Megan, a blonde cheerleader too fond of partying, never bothers to show up to class consistently, much less talk one-on-one with her teacher. My hope is she has finally realized that failing high school is not wise, and that she would like some grace. Grace – Sammy always liked that name.
The last student exits the classroom, and I’m left alone with Megan, a note in hand with extra assignments that she can do to remedy the situation. The checkboxes should help her organize and –
“Mrs. Nations, I’m pregnant,” she blurts out, as if the speed of the words could lessen the impact.
“Oh.”
With a smile and some halfhearted reassurances, I direct Megan towards the counselor’s office. Today is Friday, game day, and her blue and white skirt sways as she walks away. Soon, it’d no longer fit, and I wonder if she will be happy. Her waist is small, and her thighs are thick – birthing hips, Momma calls them. I watch her form retreat from me, until she stops, opens one of the metal lockers, and procures a water bottle. Clear liquid slides down her throat, and she winces and grits her teeth against the burn. One more swig, another, and she continues towards the counselor’s office. I close my door.
God’s will, the preacher said. It’s God’s will which children are given and born. Distributed throughout the earth to the parents they are meant for, planted inside their mother and birthed into their family. The Lord gives children to girls like Megan, and I am supposed to believe that it is God’s will. The doctors say it’s circumstance – ovulation windows, sperm levels, age, build, hormones, stress. Which one stings more? The belief that God chose Megan to have a baby, or that Megan – partying, clueless, childish – is built to have a child, made for it, even if not made for motherhood. Regardless, God still made Megan, and God made women like me.
I don’t even remember the drive home from work. All I know is I make it home. The front door stands open, letting in the spring breeze, which still has a bit of a nip to it. He must’ve made it home before me.
Sam kneels on the kitchen floor and grips a shoe brush with both hands, scrubbing soapy water back and forth to wash away the coffee’s dark shadow that still clings to the floor, once clean and well taken care of. Maybe it’s my glasses, but I think I see a tear fall and mix with the soap suds, popping the bubbles with its weight. I shake my head slowly. How sad to witness the decline of a man, dented and stained like the coffee mug still lying on the floor. So much has changed in twenty years of marriage.
He has swept the glass shards of my cup into a pile but missed a sliver – white with a tiny rose petal painted on its surface. Throwing the brush into the bucket beside him, Sam pushes down with both hands to raise himself from the floor. The white foam turns pink and deepens into burgundy, and I realize I am watching him bleed. There’s a rag on the counter, and I run to get it, dropping my purse by the door.
“Sammy, let me see your hand now.”
“Don’t worry about it. Been worse things happen,” he grits out.
Glass protrudes from his right palm, and I grab hold and yank it out. He winces but doesn’t yell, and he bites down on his lower lip as I push the rag onto the cut. I feel his eyes on me, and I wince as he brings his hand up to my face.
“Della, I –”
I push his hand gently away and go back to tending the wound. Some wounds heal quickly, but some are deeper, scar tissue cut into over and over. I lead him to the front porch to rest, and we sit together on the top step, him at one end and I on the other. The sun meanders down the sky and paints the world in gold, as a slight rain begins to fall. Two faces towards the sun, three shadows cast into the house behind us.