Blood Memory

officially divorced, but she’s been alone since she was thirty, and as she often said, she might be old, but she wasn’t dead.

“You won’t say I told?” she asks.

“You know I won’t.”

“Dr. Kirkland gone to Washington.”

“Washington, Mississippi?” Washington is a small town about five miles east of Natchez, and at one time the territorial capital of Mississippi.

Pearlie snorts. “Dr. Kirkland wouldn’t waste five minutes out there, unless there was timber to buy out that way.”

“Then where?”

“Washington, D.C., girl. He go up there all the time now. I think he must know the president or something.”

“He does know the president. But that can’t be who he’s seeing. Who is it?”

“I can’t tell you what I don’t know. I don’t think anybody knows.”

“Not Mom?”

“She act like she don’t. You know your grandfather.”

I want to ask more questions, but Natriece doesn’t need to hear them. I cut my eyes toward the child, who is trying to reach one of the silk dragonflies hanging in the corner of the room. Pearlie gets the message.

“Run outside and play for a few minutes, Treecy.”

Natriece pooches out her lip again. “You told me I could have a sno-cone if I was good.”

I laugh despite my sense of urgency. “She promised me the same thing lots of times.”

“Did you get it?” Natriece asks with severity.

“If I was good, I did.”

“Which wasn’t too often,” Pearlie snaps, taking a step toward Natriece. “If you don’t go play right this minute, you ain’t getting no kind of cone. You’ll be eating brussels sprouts for supper.”

Natriece makes a face, then darts past Pearlie, just out of reach of the old woman’s spanking hand. I close the door. Pearlie is again studying the carpet where the bloodstains are hidden.

“How is Natriece related to you? Granddaughter?”

Pearlie laughs, a deep, rattling sound. “Great-granddaughter.”

I should have guessed.

“That’s what’s wrong with black peoples round here nowadays,” she says. “These little girls getting theirselves pregnant at twelve years old.”

I can’t believe my ears. “They don’t do that alone, do they? What about the men who get them pregnant?”

She waves her hand dismissively. “Oh, mens gonna be mens no matter how many shows Oprah runs about child mamas. It’s up to us old ones to teach these girls how to act. But they all too far from the church now, these young people. Mm-mm.”

The last two syllables carry such finality that I know it’s fruitless to argue. “Pearlie, I want to talk to you about the night Daddy died.”

She doesn’t turn away, but neither does she say anything. She doesn’t respond in any overt way, though I detect a deepening in her dark eyes. There are different levels of awareness in Pearlie’s eyes, the way there are in the eyes of most black people of her generation. In Natchez prior to 1965, a black person could witness a fatal shooting between two white people and see nothing at all. Such an event was “white folks’ business,” and that was that. I hate to think what sins lie concealed beneath that outdated rubric. Instead of prodding her further, I wait in silence.

“You done asked me about that a thousand times, baby,” she says, closing her eyes against my scrutiny.

“And you’ve put me off a thousand times.”

“I told you what I saw that night.”

“When I was a child. But I’m asking you again. I’m thirty-one years old, for God’s sake. Tell me about that night, Pearlie. Tell me everything you saw.”

At last the eyelids open, revealing dark brown irises that have probably seen more of life than I ever will. “All right,” she says wearily. “Maybe it’ll finally settle you down.”

Chapter 7

Pearlie sits on the edge of my old bed and looks at the wall, her eyes cloudy with remembrance. “The truth is, I didn’t see much. If I’d been sleeping in my house, I might have, but I was in the big house tending to your grandmother.”

She stops talking, and for a moment I fear she means not to continue. But she swallows and goes on.

“Mrs. Kirkland was having pains that turned out be her gallbladder. She had to have it cut out the next night. Your granddaddy wanted to do it, but she wouldn’t let him. Anyway, I heard a gunshot.”

“What time?”

“About ten-thirty, I guess. Rifle, I thought. That cracking sound, you know? It woke up your grandmother. I said Dr. Kirkland probably just shot a buck that wandered up out of the woods, but Mrs. Kirkland told me to call the police.”

“Did you?”

“Yes.”

“How long did it take them to get here?”

“Ten minutes. Maybe a little longer.”

“And you only went down to the garden after the police got here?”

She nods slowly. “But I phoned down here to make sure you and your mama was okay.”

“Who answered?”

“Dr. Kirkland. He told me everything wasn’t okay, but that I should stay with Mrs. Kirkland. I panicked and made him tell me you was all right. That’s when I figured out something had happened to Mr. Luke.”

Mr. Luke…Pearlie’s term of address for my father.

“He was supposed to have left for the island about nine, but I just had a feeling. I went out to the back gallery of the big house and looked down. When I saw Mr. Luke lying under that tree, it broke my heart. Lord, let’s don’t talk about that.”

“Did you speak to Mom when you phoned down?”

“No.”

I close my eyes. Blue police lights flash behind them, illuminating the great U created by the rear of Malmasion and the two slave quarters, painting the streaking rain with a sapphire glow. Tall men wearing uniforms and caps stand talking to my grandfather amid the roses, deferring to him like soldiers to a senior officer. I open my eyes before the memory can go any further.

“This is what I remember being told,” I murmur. “Daddy and Grandpapa both heard someone prowling the grounds. Daddy was in here, Grandpapa in the main house. They met outside, talked a few seconds, then started checking the grounds separately. Both had guns, but Daddy was surprised by the prowler. They fought in the dark, and Daddy was shot with his own rifle.”

Pearlie nods sadly. “That’s what Dr. Kirkland told me.”

“Is that what he told the police?”

“Course it is, child. That’s what happened. Why you ask me that?”

Without realizing it, I’ve already formulated an answer to her question. “Because I think that bare footprint on the carpet is mine. And I think I put it there on that night.”

Pearlie shakes her head. “That’s nonsense, child. You ain’t never got over losing your daddy, that’s all. You been trying to make sense of it for twenty years, but there ain’t no sense to things like