Blood Sisters_ Vampire Stories by Women - Paula Guran Page 0,189

morning … She couldn’t even tell me if she’d change for the phone box. I hunted for her purse and she kept crying the whole time; crying and pulling at my arms, telling me not to go. When I found it I had to lock her in the cellar—don’t look at me like that! It’s the only way I knew, to keep her from chasing me to the truck stop…

“She’s only just dozed off. She might not even remember telling me to call you.” I hesitate before admitting, “You and Jez.”

Banjo nods once. Doesn’t ask who I called first—he’s never been much of a talker. I think that’s why Ma got together with him in the first place, why she kept taking him back though she kept the door closed on his brother. After a while, my father’s opinions were just too vocal, too hard for her to handle. You call this living? Jez’d said, on more than one occasion. Scouring dirt for scraps what ain’t fit for eating, guzzling potato wine, pumping out babies what ain’t got no hope of leaving this heap? Even when she made an effort, took a job in town, it wasn’t enough for my dad. The costume shop embarrassed him—as did the parties Ma threw. Our closest neighbors happily traveled the five miles between their places and here, just to come dressed in Ma’s wares. The stitching on her pieces proved so fine, she started getting mail orders from all over the country—her boss even gave her a raise! All that only seemed to make things worse with Jez.

Ain’t no old-fashion time we’s living in, Wendy, he’d say, looking at her fine silks and brocades like they were sewn from pig-hide and dung. This here’s the future, fer fuck’s sakes—even them radio jockeys says so. Why don’t y’all give them a listen, since you clearly ain’t gots the sense to hear me?

Guilt trips didn’t work so well on Ma. Day after day, she frocked up in skirts with bustles, whalebone corsets and elaborate jackets. Jez hollered like a good thing when she stopped taking us to the church ladies’ bazaars to buy our clothes, and started making everything but the hard leather boots she selected from Roebuck catalogues. He split her lip when she cancelled the electricity, opting to use candles and a woodstove. An old icebox and the house’s root cellar kept our goats’ milk fresh and veggies from our garden cool. And when she sold the car for thirteen bales of cotton, Jez grabbed a bag from the linen cupboard. Shouldered it and said he needed to check out a breach in our property’s fence.

We loved Ma for all of it; more so after Jez left. Even Harley, who kicked up a stink fighting for costumes much plainer than us girls’—even he never said our way of living was odd. Chopping and carrying wood to heat the house, drawing water from a pump out back, shitting in a flea-bitten outhouse. Anyone who came ’round our place played their part in Ma’s old-style life, right up until it was time for them to go home.

Ain’t it just a lark, Ada? They’d ask, buttoning themselves back into overalls and faded work shirts, putting on their regular life suits. Ain’t it grand playing the regal lady like yer Ma?

And I’d smile, knowing how lucky we were to have her, how special. Knowing it wasn’t just play. Ain’t goin’ta deny it, I’d reply—that’s how I spoke then, all ain’ts and y’alls and none of yer never minds, uttered without the slightest shame—Bring them fiddles and guitars with y’all next time, and we’ll have ourselves a regular honky-tonk!

Their music burned like fireweed down the hall to our bedroom at night; in the morning, fast jigs and slow reels echoed through our daydreams. While Ma worked her shifts in town, Harley and I stayed home and explored our land’s twenty acres, learned the ins and outs of its crazed wheat fields and dry river gullies. Sometimes we spent hours, days, searching the flat land for Panagonquin treasure. Empty-handed we ran as far from the highway as our short legs could take us; took shelter in copses of birch and sycamore; made bracelets from wisps of white bark. Around us Chinook winds whistled through parched branches, told us our fortunes in the language of dried autumn leaves.

As the oldest, it was only right that I’d watch the kids, keep them from climbing too high or falling off edges. Feed