yet.
Meggie turns away from the wedding portrait on the nightstand and tries to remember the songs she sang in church before the church closed down. But all she can remember are some psalms. She walks to the clean spot on the bed and sits. She looks at the window, at the footed wardrobe, at the stained chair near the locked door. Above the chair is a Jesus picture. If there was some way to know what Jesus thought of the change, Meggie thinks she could bear it. If Meggie truly believed that Jesus had a handle on the walking dead, and that it was just a matter of time before He put a stop to it all, then Meggie would live out her confinement with more faith. But the picture shows a happy, smiling Jesus, holding a little white lamb with other white lambs gathered at His feet. He does not look like He has any comprehension of the horror that walks the world today. If He did, shouldn’t He be crashing from the sky in a wailing river of fire to throw the dead back into their graves until the rapture?
Meggie slips from the bed and kneels before the picture, Jesus’ smiling face moves her and His detachment haunts her. Her hands fold into a sweaty attitude of prayer, and in a gritty voice, she repeats, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want …”
The crash in the hall just outside the door hurls Meggie to her feet. Her hands are still folded but she raises them like a club. The sound was that of a food tray being carelessly plopped onto the bare hall floor, and of dishes rattling with the impact. Mama Randolph brings Meggie her breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day, but today Mama is early.
Meggie looks at the screened window and wishes she could throw herself to the ground below without risking everlasting damnation from suicide. There is no clock in the room, but Meggie knows Mama is early. The sun on the floor is not yet straddling the stain on the carpet, and so it is still a ways from noon. But Meggie knows that Mama has something on her mind today besides food. Mama’s excitement has interrupted the schedule. Mama has been marking a calendar as well. Today, Mama is thinking about grandchildren.
Meggie holds the club of fingers before her. It will do no good, she knows. She could not strike Mama Randolph. Maybe Jesus will think it is a prayer and come to help her.
The door opens, and Mama Randolph comes in with a swish of old apron and a flourish of cloth napkin. The tray and its contents are visible behind her in the hall, but the meal is the last of Mama’s concerns. When business is tended, the meal will be remembered.
“Meggie,” says Mama. “What a pretty sight you are there in your dress. Makes me think of a little yellow kitten.” The cloth napkin is dropped onto the back of the stinking chair, and Mama straightens to take appraisal of her daughter-in-law. There is something in Mama’s apron pocket that clinks faintly.
“Well, you gonna stand there or do you have a ‘good morning’?”
Meggie looks toward the window. Two stories is not enough to die. And if she died, she would only become one of the walking dead. She looks back at Mama.
“Good morning,” she whispers.
“And to you,” Mama says cheerily. “Can you believe the heat? I pity the farmers this year. Corn is just cooking on the stalks. You look to the right out that window and just over the trees and you can see a bit of John Johnson’s crop. Pitiful thing, all burned and brown.” Mama tips her head and smiles. The apron clinks.
Neither says anything for a minute. Mama’s eyes sparkle in the heavy, hot air. The dead folks’ eyes sparkle when they walk about, but Meggie knows Mama is not dead. The older woman is very much alive, with all manner of plans for her family.
Then Mama says, “Sit down.”
Meggie sits on the clean spot on the mattress.
Mama touches her dry lips. She says, “You know a home ain’t a home without the singing of little children.”
“When Quint was born, I was complete. I was a woman then. I was whole; I’d done what I was made to do. A woman with no children can’t understand that till she’s been through it herself.”
Meggie feels a large drop of sweat fall and lodge above her navel. She looks at the floor and remembers what Quint’s shoes looked like there, beside hers in the night after they’d climbed beneath the covers. Precious shoes, farmer’s shoes, with the sides worn down and the dark coating of earth on the toes. Shoes that bore the weight of hard work and love. Shoes Quint swore he would throw away when he’d earned enough money to build the new house. Shoes that Meggie was going to keep in her cedar chest as a memory of the early days.
Quint doesn’t wear shoes anymore.
“You know in my concern for you and Quint, I would do anything to make you happy.” Mama nods slowly. “And if I’ve got it figured right, you’re in your time again. I know it ain’t worked the last couple months, but it took me near’n to a year and a half before I was with Quint.”
Mama steps over to Meggie. She leans in close. Her breath smells of ginger and soured milk. “A baby is what’ll help make some of the bad things right again, Meggie. It’s a different world now. And we’s got to cope. But a baby will bring Joy back.”
“A baby,” echoes Meggie. “Mama, please, I can’t …”
“Hush, now,” barks Mama. The smile disappears as quickly as the picture from a turned-off television set. She is all business now. Family making is a serious matter. “Get abed.”
The word stings Meggie’s gut.
“Abed!” commands Mama Randolph, and slowly, obediently, Meggie slides along the mattress until her head is even with the pillow.
Mama purses her mouth in approval. “Now let’s check and see if our timing is right.” Meggie closes her eyes and one hand moves to the spotted hem of the yellow dress. In her chest, the bone of pain swells, hard and suffocating. She cannot swallow around it. Her breath hitches. She pulls the hem up. She is naked beneath. Mama Randolph has not allowed undergarments.
“Roll over.” Meggie rolls over. She hears the clinking as Mama reaches into her pocket. Meggie gropes for the edge of the pillow and holds to it like a drowning child to a life preserver. Her face presses into the stinking pillowcase.
The thermometer goes in deeply. Mama makes a tsking sound and moves it about until it is wedged to her satisfaction. Meggie’s bowels contract; her gut lurches with disgust. She does not move.
“Just a minute here and we’ll know what we need to know,” crows Mama. “Do you know that I thought Quint was going to be a girl and I bought all sorts of little pink things before he was born? Was cute, but I couldn’t rightly put such a little man into them pale, frilly clothes. I always thought a little girl would be a nice addition. Wouldn’t a little girl just be the icing on the cake?”
“Here, now,” says Mama. The thermometer comes out and Meggie draws her legs up beneath the hem of the dress. She does not want to hear the reading.
“Bless me, looks like we done hit it on the head!” Mama is almost laughing. “Up nearly a whole degree. Time is right. My little calendar book keeps me thinking straight, now don’t it? I’ll go get Quint.”
Mama goes out into the hall. Meggie watches her go. Then she falls from the bed and crawls on her knees to the Jesus picture. “Oh dear blessed Lord you are my shepherd, I shall not want I shall not want.” Jesus watches the lambs and does not see Meggie.
Meggie runs to the window and looks out at the flowers and the dead sandbox and the burned cornfield over the top of the joy woods. It was those woods that killed Quint. One second of carelessness that crushed Quint’s skull beneath John Johnson’s felled tree. Quint had gone to help the neighbor clear a little more land for crops. John and Quint had been best buddies since school, and they were always trading favors. But when Quint went down under the tree trunk, brains and blood spraying, and he died, and when he rose up again, he was through trading favors. He wanted a lot more of John than he’d ever wanted before. And he got it. There wasn’t enough of John left to rise with the other dead folks, just some chunks of spine and some chewed up feet.
Mama Randolph found Quint after this meal. He showed no immediate urge to eat her as well, so she brought him home and found he was just as happy eating raw goats and the squealing pigs he had tended as a live man.
Mama is in the doorway again. Behind her is Quint. He is dressed in only a pair of trousers that are gathered to his bony waist with a brown, tooth-marked leather belt.
“Abed!” says Mama. “Let’s have this done.”
