Speak No Evil

by Natalie Abrams

 They say a child retains no memory before the age of five, except, perhaps, for events experienced which were traumatic to the young psyche. I tend to agree with that theory, considering the only thing I remember before that tender age was indeed traumatic. It is really two memories rolled into one; that is, there were two separate events but the second followed as a result of the first and I cannot separate them in my mind.

When I relive what happened it’s like looking through the wrong end of a telescope and the scenes are hazy, as though they’re filtered through gauze. I don’t know how much of the conversations I actually retained and how much I know verbatim from hearing the story repeated past the time I’d developed long term memory. My mother used to caution my aunts that little pitchers have big ears whenever I’d sidle in during one of their coffee klatches, but this little pitcher had a way of hearing what she wanted to hear. The first part happened in January of 1945, so I was between three and four years old.

Our old farmhouse was jam-packed, not just with family from both sides, but other people as well. They’d come wearing their Sunday best and their broadest smiles; the ladies carrying covered dishes that smelled so good they made my mouth water. The mood was festive; lots of backslapping, hugging and handshaking, but lacking the boisterous talk normally associated with happy gatherings. The overall ambience was one of great goodwill with a healthy dose of subdued awe mixed in. The celebration was in honor of my daddy’s younger brother, Cecil, rescued and returned safe and sound from Europe where he’d been wounded by the Germans and held as a prisoner of war.

I didn’t know the reason, of course; the facts were supplied to me later, all I knew was that Uncle Cecil was the center of attention and I was basking in the reflected warmth of his glory. He was sitting with me nestled in the crook of his arm and I was just about to bust with the pride of being there. I mean, he could very easily have picked Clare, my baby sister that all the other adults seemed to find so irresistible. Uncle Cecil had always liked me; somehow I knew that, although he couldn’t have known me very well, being away in the war and all.

There weren’t enough chairs to go around so some people were standing and others were sitting Indian style on the plank floor. Aunt Peggy was pulled up in her wheelchair as close as she could get to Baby Brother, as she called him. Her husband, who the family looked down on because he made moonshine whisky and also drank the profits, got a bright idea and brought my tricycle in from the front yard and plopped down on it next to her. I remember that because my daddy cussed him out for it, called him a durn fool and told him to get his fat ass up before he broke it. Uncle Lloyd’s face turned as red as the trike but he sheepishly arose and tried to laugh it off. Guess he didn’t want the mood spoilt on his account.

We were in the middle of the living room in an old cane bottomed rocker borrowed from the front porch. Everybody’s attention was focused on Uncle Cecil; mine too. I recall a handsome face with chiseled features, kind blue eyes, jet-black hair and straight white teeth in a mouth that couldn’t quit smiling. I remember the pleasant odor of my grandfather’s pipe smoke as it wafted gently and benignly across the room and mingled with the clean starchy scent of Uncle Cecil’s army shirt.

Uncle Cecil was different than other big people. Nicer. He said I was special. He didn’t believe children were just to be seen, and not heard, either. He talked to me. I’ll wish to my dying day that he hadn’t.

“So, Linda, how do you like sleeping in that big bed now that the baby has the crib?”

“It’s OK, I guess. And how do you like sleeping with Tom, Dick, and Harry?”

‘What was that again, sweetheart?” He chuckled with his question, but the arm that had been so warm and relaxed around me slightly tensed, and the smile slid right off his beautiful face. I innocently plunged ahead.

“Every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the county has been sleeping in your bed. I heard Mama and Aunt Shale say so. How do you like it?”

 I never got to hear his answer because at that moment my father sprang from his chair, and like a hawk swooping down on a chicken, snatched me up. I let out a yelp and my mother began yelling, “No, Delmas, don’t!” but he didn’t even slow down. Purple faced and furious, he hauled me into the kitchen and whaled the living daylights out of my behind. He couldn’t sit and turn me over his knee like he’d done the time I’d whacked Clare in the head with her bottle or when I’d twisted his nose because he wouldn’t let me change her diaper, because all the chairs were in the living room. He was reduced to holding me midair with one hand while he smacked my bottom over and over with the other.

The injustice of the licking might have been enough to set that day in my mind with indelible ink, but I doubt it. If I was anything then like I am now, it was the indignity I suffered and the mortification of knowing that all those people heard my uncontrollable squalling and pleas for mercy. I didn’t know what I’d done wrong and the only explanation Daddy gave when Mama came in wringing her hands and shouting, “You stop that this instant, Delmas! I mean it, Mister!” was, “She needs to learn to keep her mouth shut about things she has no business knowing.”

I never saw Uncle Cecil after that day. Oh, he came to our house again, just a couple of months later, but he was in a coffin with an American flag draped across the top. The house was filled with the same people as before but no one was laughing and joking; not that go around. I was creeped out by the long faces and teary eyes and escaped to the front porch with Annabelle, my rag doll.

Annabelle and I were way down at one end and Mama and Shale didn’t even glance in our direction when they came out for a smoke. They headed to the other end where they sat down with their backs to us, their legs dangling over the edge of the porch because the rockers were inside the house again. They began rolling cigarettes from a Prince Albert can, sisters-in-law and best friends. It was Shale’s tone that made me pay such rapt attention. I had lots of aunts but she was my favorite, and I’d never heard fury in her voice before.

“It’s ever bit that slut Maggie’s fault.” She said. “Why, she might as well of pulled the pin on that hand grenade herself. Her Jezebelin’ around what’s killed him, sure as shootin’”

“He went back because his heart was broken, I’ll agree with you there, Shale, but it ain’t all Maggie’s fault. There’s enough blame here for everybody.”

“Don’t go defendin’ her, Lily, nobody held a gun to her head and made her commit adultery. Nosiree, she was more’n willin’, the little trollop. It makes me sick to think of poor Cecil when he found out.”

She's just a lost child, Shale, barely eighteen. She musta been awflee lonesome living out in them woods all by herself, no family ner friends for a hundred miles, and the good Lord knows we didn’t pay her no attention. When she got word he was missing in action, she musta went plumb crazy. That’s probly why she took up with them men.”

I sat mesmerized, focused on the lazy smoke drifting up and over Shale’s black hair and Mama’s red, wondering what Aunt Maggie had done that killed Uncle Cecil and made Shale hate her so bad. What was “adultery,” anyway? I didn’t know her well, but Maggie was sweet. And she was almost as pretty as Shale, who looked just like Snow White.

“Say what you want, Lily; it ain’t your brother being buried tomorrow. Well, at least he had his insurance changed over to Peg, her being crippled and all. The little wench can’t get her hands on that.” Suddenly, Shale’s voice broke and she started crying, little mewling sounds that turned my heart to mush. Mama put an arm around her shoulder and let her sob. Then she rolled two more cigarettes, lit them both and handed one to Shale.

“She better not have the audacity to show up at that funeral tomorrow, that’s all I’ve got to say. I ain’t responsible for my actions if she does,” Shale sniffled.

“Maggie ain’t going nowhures. I hear she got took to Fayette and put in the hospital. Near ‘bout had a nervous breakdown when that telegram come saying he was dead and now she’s being kept all drugged up.” Mama shuddered like she’d had a chill and then she said, “We shoulda told him, Shale. There’s no way to keep something like that quiet in a place this small. Ever bit of this might coulda been prevented if he’d just been let down easy.”

“I was aiming to, I was just awaitin’ for the right opportunity. But there ain’t no easy way to tell a man, specially one ats been through hell already, that little wifey ain’t the saint he thinks she is, that she’s had every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the county asleepin’ in his bed. I mean, he was here happy as a lark, then some meddlesome fool spills the beans, and Poof! He’s gone. Wouldn’t listen to nobody; just re-enlisted and got hisself blowed away. Probly wanted to.”

“Well, best not to dwell on it, what’s done is done,” Mama said, weakly.

“Do you know who told him, Lily? Because if I ever find out, I’m gonna kill’em.”

“No, Shale, I sure don’t. It’s not important. Let it go.”

My heart turned into a lump and jumped into my throat. I couldn’t breathe and I was suddenly hot all over and freezing at the same time. I was the one who’d killed Uncle Cecil, not Maggie. I told him about Tom, Dick, and Harry and Mama was fibbing when she said she didn’t know. I wasn’t afraid Shale would kill me, but I didn’t want her mad at me either. I wanted my daddy. I dropped Annabelle and ran into the house. Just as I yanked the screen door open, I heard Mama say, “Well, where’d she come from? You don’t reckon she heard?”

Daddy was in the living room, sitting and talking to a semi-circle of men. He had a plate of chicken on his lap that I almost toppled when I climbed up. Normally, he would have told me to mind my manners but something stopped him. He didn’t say a word, just sat his food on the floor next to his glass of iced tea and hugged me close. I stuck my thumb in my mouth and started sucking and he didn’t fuss about that either.

There was a picture of Uncle Cecil on the coffin and I could feel his eyes on me, his murderer. He was smiling and didn’t seem to be overly mad at me, but I couldn’t stand the scrutiny. I would have liked to turn the picture face down but was afraid to go near him so I did the next best thing. I turned my face into Daddy’s chest and went to sleep. I don’t remember anything else till we were at the graveyard.

It was bitterly cold and the wind was whipping people’s overcoats and hair around and making the weeping and wailing get all mixed up with the preacher’s words as he stood next to the yawning grave and said how much people had loved Uncle Cecil. I got through all that. It was when the buglers started playing Taps that I buckled.

The haunting beauty of that music was too much. I dissolved into a heap and started pounding my fists against the frozen ground. I was screaming words that made no sense. I heard Mama say, “Delmas, get her out of here,” and somebody else say, “I swannee! That poor chile!” Daddy picked me up and started to walk off with me, but I didn’t want to go. I began to beat against his chest and to scratch his face and he did not smack me like he ordinarily would. The guilt was killing me and I wanted to tell everybody what I’d done, but the most I could manage was to shout over Daddy’s shoulder, “It was me! I did it! I killed Uncle Cecil!”

We sat in our old Model A with the windows rolled up, but that didn’t keep the Twenty-One Gun Salute from being heard. I recoiled with each round, feeling the bullets as though my heart was the target, and sobbing hysterically. Daddy was hugging me so tight it hurt and he kept repeating, “It’s not your fault, little girl, it’s not your fault." Daddy was crying, too. I had never seen my daddy cry before.

There was a concerted effort by all the grownups after that day to make me believe in my innocence. Daddy said he’d been terribly wrong to whip me for what I’d told Uncle Cecil, and he actually asked for my forgiveness. Not only had I never seen my daddy cry before, I’d never heard an apology from him either, and I guess that’s what finally did the trick. That, and Mama and Aunt Shale saying they were the ones he should’ve beaten. That made me laugh, just thinking of him dangling them in the air and whacking their bottoms.

Aunt Peggy gave Aunt Maggie some money from the insurance and she moved to Birmingham where her family lived. Once she was gone the talk gradually died down and I got over hating myself.

In a way, I guess it’s a good thing it happened. I don’t mean it’s good that Uncle Cecil died, but they say every cloud has a silver lining and this one did too. You see; I learned never to say mean things about anybody else and I have never been one to repeat gossip. Oh, I like to hear it as well as the next person, but I don’t pass it on. It’s hard not to sometimes when a story is particularly juicy, but I always remember, and the words die in my throat. I’m too afraid of what could happen.

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