The Bean Trees Chapter IV

“You have a nice catnap, Granny?” she asked,
hurrying to pick up the baby and bounce him on her hip.

Lou Ann remembered the dress from about a hundred church potluck suppers.

For baptizing the baby.”

Just because he wasn’t baptized in some old dirty crick, Lou Ann added in
a voice way too low for Granny Logan to hear.

Law, I’m parched.

She gave the
baby a bounce on her pleated bosom.

For the last two weeks Granny
Logan had stomped around the house snapping the curtains shut just as fast as Lou Ann
could open them, until finally Lou Ann gave up the effort and they all moved around in
the gloom of a dimly lit house.

Granny Logan retrieved her black velvet purse, purpled with age and wear
around the clasp, and rummaged through it with slow, swollen knuckles.

“You’d think somebody had died, instead of just being
born,” Lou Ann complained, but the old woman declared that the heat was unnatural for
January and would cause the baby to grow up measly and unwholesome.

Just the sight of it made her feel stuffed with potato-chip casseroles and Coca-Cola cake.

The old-fashioned hairpins gave her a sad, spooky feeling.

Granny Logan retrieved her black velvet purse, purpled with age and wear
around the clasp, and rummaged through it with slow, swollen knuckles.

If Granny
Logan had known they were getting a divorce she would have had an apoplectic.

Heat waves rising from the pavement made the brown grass and the palm tree trunks
appear to wiggle above the sidewalk, making Lou Ann think of cartoons she had seen of
strange lands where palm trees did the hula.

Lou
Ann could never keep track.

“You have a nice catnap, Granny?” she asked,
hurrying to pick up the baby and bounce him on her hip.

“I told you, the heat’s done put that baby into a
colic.

At the top she turned and reached down
for her mother-in-law, her sturdy, creased hand closing around the old knuckles.

“Pew, don’t they make a stink,” Mother Logan said when the bus arrived.

He squinted at her.

She moved around the edges of the rooms as though her big mother and
demanding grandmother were still there taking up most of the space; the house felt both
empty and cramped at the same time, and Lou Ann felt a craving for something she
couldn’t put a finger on, maybe some kind of food she had eaten a long time ago.

A fine brown sediment stuck to the
glass bottom when she tipped it sideways.

When the reverend went to dunk you over, you hollered right
out.

When he came into the front room she could hear the jingle of his leg.

“Them old big cactus and every
kind of thing.

Granny Logan and
Ivy stepped back from the bench like startled children, and Lou Ann felt pleased that she

was able to tell them something they didn’t already know.

It would have come in handy now that her washing-machine
fund, which was meager enough to begin with, had been parceled out to all the neighborhood
kids.

“Don’t expect I’ll see him again a-tall,” Granny Logan grunted.

‘What you need to sell this garbage for?

“I just wish you wasn’t so far away,” Ivy said as the doors hissed together.

Once she had found a pair of her father’s work gloves in the tobacco barn, still molded to
the curved shape of his hands, long after he was dead.

Lou Ann put her hand gently on the old woman’s shoulder, feeling
the shoulder bones through the dark, slick cloth of her dress.

She moved around the edges of the rooms as though her big mother and
demanding grandmother were still there taking up most of the space; the house felt both
empty and cramped at the same time, and Lou Ann felt a craving for something she
couldn’t put a finger on, maybe some kind of food she had eaten a long time ago.

Of course, the original plan
had been to have Dwayne Ray sprinkled as a Catholic, but Granny would die if she knew
that.

She always thought he sounded
like he was choking.

Her old hand pawed the air for a few seconds before
Ivy silently caught it and corralled it in the heavy black sleeve.

“The worst thing for you,” she kept repeating under her breath until she annoyed
herself.

She crooked a finger under
the baby’s chin and looked into the foggy blue eyes.

She felt like such a sneak, letting on as though her marriage was just fine.

Her old hand pawed the air for a few seconds before
Ivy silently caught it and corralled it in the heavy black sleeve.

The bottle had leaked a wet ring on the wood, which Lou Ann tried to wipe up with

the hem of her jumper.

“Mama says tell you it’s time to get your grip packed.

The bottle had leaked a wet ring on the wood, which Lou Ann tried to wipe up with

the hem of her jumper.

Lou Ann shifted the baby onto her hip, pushed her hair behind her ear, and took the
bottle with her free hand.

Just the sight of it made her feel stuffed with potato-chip casseroles and Coca-Cola cake.

Granny Logan retrieved her black velvet purse, purpled with age and wear
around the clasp, and rummaged through it with slow, swollen knuckles.

Granny Logan retrieved her black velvet purse, purpled with age and wear
around the clasp, and rummaged through it with slow, swollen knuckles.

The bus
driver leaned on his elbows over the steering wheel and stared ahead.

She wrapped the baby in a thin blanket in
spite of the heat because she knew one or the other of the two women would fuss if she
didn’t.

Wouldn’t you know she’d bring something weird like that?”

She was concerned about it staining, since the furniture wasn’t
actually hers.

Lou Ann found a scrap of paper and wrote down the name of the stop and the number
of the bus they would have to take downtown.

Heat waves rising from the pavement made the brown grass and the palm tree trunks
appear to wiggle above the sidewalk, making Lou Ann think of cartoons she had seen of
strange lands where palm trees did the hula.

I always had plenty of
milk for you and your brother, but you’re not as stout as I was.

The bus
driver leaned on his elbows over the steering wheel and stared ahead.

She heard the chugging sound of the water as he poured it down the drain.

It would have come in handy now that her washing-machine
fund, which was meager enough to begin with, had been parceled out to all the neighborhood
kids.

Ivy peered into the brown bag and then rolled the top down tightly.

It’s a rope tied in a knot.”

For the last two weeks Granny
Logan had stomped around the house snapping the curtains shut just as fast as Lou Ann
could open them, until finally Lou Ann gave up the effort and they all moved around in
the gloom of a dimly lit house.

At the top she turned and reached down
for her mother-in-law, her sturdy, creased hand closing around the old knuckles.

For the last two weeks Granny
Logan had stomped around the house snapping the curtains shut just as fast as Lou Ann
could open them, until finally Lou Ann gave up the effort and they all moved around in
the gloom of a dimly lit house.

Under her breath she hummed one line of a hymn, “All our sins and griefs to
bear,” over and over until Lou Ann thought she would scream.

She flushed.

She
couldn’t believe, after deceiving her own mother and grandmother for two entire weeks,
that she was admitting to a complete stranger on the street that her marriage had failed.

The baby was waving his fist vaguely in the direction of the blue pen in Lou Ann’s
breast pocket, although he couldn’t have grabbed it or picked it up if his little life
depended on it.

The bus
driver leaned on his elbows over the steering wheel and stared ahead.

And he’s not a heathen.

They reached the little bus stop with its
concrete bench.

Granny Logan retrieved her black velvet purse, purpled with age and wear
around the clasp, and rummaged through it with slow, swollen knuckles.

Lou Ann pushed her damp blond hair back from her face and told her mother she
wished she would stay a few days more.

Granny Logan retrieved her black velvet purse, purpled with age and wear
around the clasp, and rummaged through it with slow, swollen knuckles.

She noticed the Coke bottle sitting on the low wooden bureau along with two of
Granny Logan’s hairpins.

Lou Ann recognized the belt as one she had been whipped with years ago,
when her father was alive.

No crops hardly at all, just factories and stuff, and
tourists that come down here for the winter.

The house had come furnished.

When we first moved out I had sore throats all the time.

For the last two weeks Granny
Logan had stomped around the house snapping the curtains shut just as fast as Lou Ann
could open them, until finally Lou Ann gave up the effort and they all moved around in
the gloom of a dimly lit house.

You’re going to get all confused if you try to take the bus.

She could see the child in a white dress, her
sunburned arms stiff at the elbows, and could hear her cry out as she went over backwards,
but she could not feel that child’s terror as the knees buckled and the green water
closed over the face.

“Doll baby, I reckon we’re all set,” Ivy said.

“Seventy-five,” he said, weighing them up and down in his hand before he put them on
the scales.

I expect you’ll be persuadin’ the
baby that his people’s just ignorant hill folks.”

She thought for a long time about what to
do with the bottle and finally set it on the glass shelf of the medicine cabinet in the
bathroom.

Under her breath she hummed one line of a hymn, “All our sins and griefs to
bear,” over and over until Lou Ann thought she would scream.

It’s a shame for you to come all this
way from home and not see what you can see.”

She could see the child in a white dress, her
sunburned arms stiff at the elbows, and could hear her cry out as she went over backwards,
but she could not feel that child’s terror as the knees buckled and the green water
closed over the face.

“Lordy mercy, he’ll be all growed up before we see
him again, I expect.”

“That don’t make it right, do it?