Page 80 of The Lost Hours
Lillian stared at the radio, still hearing Josie singing.Time is a river. . . .She didn’t turn away this time, knowing there was no escape from the voices anymore.
“I need a drink.”
Without pausing, Piper moved to the armoire and poured Lillian a sherry and brought it to her before returning to her position by the window. “Tell me.”
Lillian drank the sherry in one gulp, and she felt the heat seeping into her veins, calming her. But the numbness evaded her, as if she were intended to feel every last word. She placed the empty glass on the nightstand and it fell over, but neither of them moved to right it.
“Samuel was born healthy. I’d known it was a boy. And not just because Josie told me she could tell because of the way I carried him in my belly. I felt him in my bones, the way a mother does.” She smiled at the memory of her roundness, the swell of her belly and tenderness in her breasts. She’d been proud of the changes to her body. They’d made her feel older, more like a woman. Beloved.
“It was his body they found in the river, wasn’t it?”
The warmth of the sherry made her limbs feel weightless, like she was floating in water, carried downstream. Her eyelids drifted closed and she was once again in the attic room in the house on Monterey Square, the window closed, locked in the stale, sweltering heat of the Savannah night. Her sweat had drenched the clean sheets Annabelle had put on the bed, the warmth of the baby tucked up next to her burning her skin. She spoke as if in the middle of a dream, feeling the heat and the damp sheets, the terror that gripped them when they’d heard the footsteps on the stairs.
“The baby was fussy. My milk hadn’t come in yet, and I couldn’t feed him. He kept crying because he was hungry, but he wouldn’t suckle. Annabelle thought to let him suck water from a soaked rag, and that worked for a spell, but he’d get tired of that and start crying again.”
“Did Freddie make it back that night?”
Her voice seemed to come from far away. “No. And not the next night, either. Things were bad right then. Two of Freddie’s friends and a white man had been found shot to death in a car in a field over in Summerville. They’d been called agitators, going around to small towns and speaking out about their liberal views on the voting system and segregation. Views that back then could get a man killed.”
The late-afternoon sun had begun to drift down the horizon, its orange light peering through the blinds that Piper had opened. It outlined her profile against the window, making her appear as if she’d been etched in glass, so fragile to look at, but how deceiving.
“Annabelle was beautiful, too. But her beauty was different than yours. She seemed so strong on the outside, that people never guessed how vulnerable she really was. How easily broken.” She watched the younger woman for a moment, the delicate nose and cheekbones, the stubborn jut of her chin and the fisted hands that hid fingers permanently callused by holding a horse’s reins. “They never said that about you, did they? I’m sure it was a surprise to everyone that you stopped competing.”
Piper’s eyes were cold and unyielding. “Please don’t change the subject. When did Freddie finally arrive?”
Lillian threw the blankets off of her, the heat overwhelming. “Why do you need to know this now? Can’t you just leave it alone? Your grandmother is dead, and knowing the rest of her story isn’t going to change that.” Her words were slurred, her body trying to give up a fight her mind wasn’t yet ready to.
“When did Freddie finally arrive?”
So persistent.Annabelle had been that way, too. Up until the very last letter Lillian had returned. Lillian lay back on the pillow, and went back to the small attic room, remembering the first flash of lightning that permeated the room with light before dipping them all into darkness again.
“I stayed in the attic room for two days, while Josie and Annabelle took turns watching over me, and making sure I ate. Sometimes they’d take the baby to stop his crying or to give him fresh water in a rag. Dr. O’Hare came up once to let us know that someone had come to the house looking for Freddie or for me, and he told them he hadn’t seen either one of us for over a month. But it scared him enough to come up to the attic to tell us none of us should come out. That we should close the window because of the baby’s cries. We’d already heard about the church fire, and the marriage records that were taken, so we figured if they were looking for me in Savannah, they’d probably already been to my daddy’s and told him what they knew. It was only a matter of time, and we knew we had to get word out to Freddie not to come, that they’d be waiting for him.”
“And then what?” Piper didn’t turn around.
Lillian tried to keep her eyes open, so she wouldn’t have to see it all again, but her lids fluttered closed, obliterating her comfortable bedroom at Asphodel and revealing the nightmare of a storm-ravaged night seventy years before.
“He came. We didn’t know it was him at first. Dr. O’Hare had gone to the store to get food. He somehow managed to put the armoire in front of the door in the attic just in case. We sat in the dark taking turns holding Samuel and trying to quiet him, daring to open the blinds only a little. A black shelf cloud lay over the city, and Josie said it was a bad omen, that we needed to prepare for the worst.”
“And did you?”
“What could we do? We had nowhere to go. We had to sit there and wait, and pray that Dr. O’Hare came back soon, and that Freddie knew not to come near.” She waved her hand over the upended sherry glass. “I need another drink.”
For a moment it looked like Piper would say no. Instead she pushed herself away from the window and retrieved the glass and refilled it, handing it to Lillian without a word. Then she returned to her post, watching the alley of oaks and the way the sun lay cupped in their branches as it began its lonely descent on a world that Lillian felt slipping away from her.
She upended the sherry like a shot glass, as she’d seen her father doing countless times without the tempering influence of a mother who would have ensured her daughter never had access to the vulgarities of men.
“And that’s when Freddie came?”
Lillian tasted the alcohol on her tongue, knowing that no amount of drinking could ever take away the bitterness that lingered in her mouth still. “Yes, he came. He must have had Justine’s key. He knew where we were—Josie probably told him—and he’d made it up to the attic before they caught up with him.”
Piper was facing her now, the light from the window behind her darkening her face so Lillian couldn’t see her eyes. “You . . . heard them?”
Lillian nodded. “We heard all of it. They beat him first, asking where his white whore was, and how they were going to teach her a lesson for defiling her race. He . . .” Her voice cracked, the memories like broken glass. “He never told them anything.”
“And Samuel stopped crying.”
Lillian slowly raised her eyes to Piper’s, glad the young woman’s face was blurred. Because every time she looked at Piper, she saw Annabelle the night of the storm, the night when they all left their girlhoods behind them.
