Letting Go

 Pungo Creek - 1957

It had been Clara’s idea to take the skiff out.

 

“I’ll make us some banana sandwiches and you dig up some worms.”

 

“Okay but we better clean up this mess first or Mama will have a conniption.”

 

Together they had dismantled their playhouse, careful to put everything back where it belonged. Rose watched them silently from the porch swing. Her eyes followed them but she didn’t say a word until Clara came out with the banana sandwiches and a jar of lemonade.

Ivy was crouching near the creek, digging worms in the soft earth. The worms wriggled in her small, chubby hands as she deposited them in an old Luzianne Coffee can.   She heard shouting from the back porch and she saw her sister stop dead in her tracks.

 

“So you think you're so smart? You're not! I’m your Mama, damn it. You're only a nine-year-old snot nose who doesn't know anything but how to be a tramp. You’re just like your aunt. Wagging your little a*s, acting all surprised when some boy jumps on it. You don’t fool me for a minute you little w***e” 

 

It looked like Clara was about to say something when Rose hauled off and just slapped her across the face. “You ain’t getting nothing you didn’t ask for.”

 

 The bag holding the sandwiches fell from her hand but Clara held onto the lemonade. Then Rose hit her again knocking the jar to the ground.  Clara picked up the bag of sandwiches and ran toward the skiff.  “Hurry up, Ivy, or I’m going without you.”

 

Ivy grabbed her can of worms and scurried to the boat.

 

Rose shouted after them “I am going to murder you both.  I swear and be dammed you little brats are going to regret the day you were born.”

 

Ivy scrambled into the skiff just as Clara was propelling the little boat away from the shore. She could still see Rose on the porch shaking her fist in the air but her words were lost.

“What set her off?” Ivy asked when they had put some distance between themselves and their Mama.

 

“It’s got nothing to do with you. It’s me she’s mad at. It’s always me she’s mad at.”  Clara rowed hard. She stared at a point just over Ivy’s left shoulder. Tears rolled down her cheeks. Her breath came in gulps and she just kept rowing. There was an angry splotch on her cheek. It matched the fading marks on her arms and legs.

 

After a long time she finally she stopped rowing. The skiff moved forward on its own momentum for a few moments and then everything was still and quiet. Ivy looked around. They were all the way down to Voliva’s Neck. She recognized the old Stokesberry House. She’d only seen it once from the dirt road the day that she and Clara borrowed Uncle Benjamin’s old burro Lucinda and taken her for a ride without asking permission. Mama had spanked them both hard with the Davy Crockett paddle. The old house looked even spookier from the water. It was supposed to be haunted.

 

“Want to go check it out?” Ivy said pointing to the ramshackle old house. She didn’t really want to. She was just uncomfortable and wanted to distract her big sister from whatever had happened back at the house.

 

Clara acted like she didn’t hear her. She just stood at the front of the skiff with her hands folded in front of her like she was praying. Then she was gone.

 

 Ivy watched until she lost sight of her older sister’s hair and there were no more bubbles.  She sat there for a long time just staring at the water.  

 

The sun sank lower and lower and finally disappeared. At last she moved. Slowly, as if in a trance, she made her way to the front of the skiff and pulled up the anchor that had been resting on Clara’s stomach. She set the oars in the oarlocks and headed for home.  She waited until the sun disappeared behind the pines and only when darkness descended did she pick up the oars and row – back down the creek – past Toppins Point, past the stakes where granddaddy tied up his crab pots. When she passed the old graveyard she lifted the oars from the water. She almost turned around. She almost went back to look for her sister, but it was too late for that and maybe her sister was better off anyway. She kept rowing.

 

 

Reviews

[justjenn_2u]

I love the banana sandwiches, digging up own worms, good ol' lemonade. Little girls trying to enjoy life and the horrible Mamma ruins a sweet moment. The closure of this chapter has intrigued me. I am not going to be able to stop until I read the next chapter. : )

[Vanilla]

This is so sad. But is it realistic? Maybe you should make the little girl older...like in her teens. Anyway. Really good writing.