Flame in the Dark (Soulwood #3)(31)
At that point I was called down by Mama Grace, Daddy’s third and youngest wife, who said, “Nell Nicholson Ingram, I know you’un ain’t been gone so long as to have forgotten what conversation is and is not appropriate for the breakfast table. Hush you’un’s mouth.”
Mawmaw was coming in the front door and heard the final part of the conversation. “Let the girl talk,” she said. “That’s biology, and biology is schoolin’.”
“Thanks, Mawmaw,” I said.
“Though at this age,” she added, as she fell on the bench beside me, “I’m of a mind to say something more. Coffee, please, Cora,” she said, interrupting herself. Staring around the table at the females present, she continued, “While menfolk are handy to have around to do the heavy lifting, any smart woman can figure out how to do things on her own if necessary. And Nell has a point about the role of fathering children.”
I sat still and listened as the young teenagers at the table dove into an argument about women’s rights and women’s role in the family, politics, business, and the world in general. The boys started demonstrating muscles and their sisters told them to act like adults and then suddenly Mawmaw was quoting Archimedes about using a lever to move the world. Which digressed to Archimedes running around naked in public when he discovered new mathematic principles. And then the young’uns in the main room started singing the alphabet song, followed by a song about Moses in the Nile, followed by a song about numbers that I had never heard before. I didn’t even bother asking Mawmaw about her great nephew, Hamilton the FBI jerk.
I let it all wash through me, absorbing it and remembering the good things that came from growing up in God’s Cloud. As awful as some parts had been, growing up a Nicholson had not all been bad.
Mama plunked a plate in front of me stacked with French toast and a half dozen strips of maple-cured bacon. Melted butter ran down the yeasty, egg-soaked and drenched, French-style bread, mixing with blueberry honey. My mouth watered and my throat made some sound of amazement and Mama said, “Eat. We’ll bless it when your’n daddy gets here.” Then she upended a cup of her homemade whipped cream on top of the fried toast and I dug in. Oh yeah. Being a Nicholson was some kind of wonderful when it came to eating.
I was mostly done, groaning with the pain of a too-full stomach, yet still scraping my spoon across the plate to get the final dregs of deliciousness off it, when there was the slightest hint of change in the ambient noise. In a flash, the teens scattered, some outside to chores, others up the stairs. Mama Grace, soft and rounded, as if her body had been lined with down-fill, set a pot of stinky herbal tea at the head of the table and herded all the littlest young’uns up the stairs too. My own mama, Mama Cora, dished up a plate of waffles and set them beside the herbal tea. She removed my plate and poured me more China black tea. Her lips were tight. Her face was pinched. Something was up.
And then I heard the faint thunking. Without even turning around, I knew. I knew why I had been asked to breakfast. I knew why everyone had gone running. They had set me up. I glared over the rim of my cup at Mama and she ducked her head, not meeting my eyes.
I swiveled on the bench and watched Mama Carmel, daddy’s senior wife, help Daddy from their room behind the kitchen, to the table.
Daddy looked pale enough to win a contest with a corpse, and sorta yellowed too, what the church midwives called jaundice in babies. He had lost at least another ten pounds, leaving his face saggy and his work clothes hanging on his frame. His hands carried a faint tremor. Daddy still had not been to the surgeon who put him back together after he was shot, when the group of shape-shifting devil dog gwyllgi tried to take over the church. Whatever was wrong inside him was getting worse. “Morning, Nellie,” he said, easing into his chair with a pained sigh. “God’s grace and peace to you today.”
My eyes flicked back and forth between the mamas again in accusation and then I glared at my father. “I’d say the same thing back to you’un, but you’un don’t deserve it.”
My father reared back in his chair. “What did you say, young lady?”
“I said, you’un don’t deserve God’s grace and peace, since you’un clearly been throwing it back into the face of the Almighty for weeks and weeks.” Daddy opened his mouth and I stood up from the table so I could use height for intimidation. Tactics from Interrogation 101 at Spook School. Stuff I’d never expected to have to use on my own father. “You used to tell us to make use of all God’s gifts and not ignore them. Not ever. That ignoring gifts was a sin. And yet, God sent you to a surgeon after you got shot, and gave you the gift of life so’s you could continue to love and be loved and do God’s will. That was a gift. And yet you’un throwing that gift back in his face. I’m rightly ashamed of you, Daddy.”
Daddy opened his mouth, and then closed it. Things were happening deep in his yellowed eyes, too fast to follow. His mouth opened and then closed tight, opened again. He looked like a beached carp, not that I was gonna say that. I had pushed as much as I was likely to get away with. After way too long, Daddy tilted his head to me and looked me over. Me in my work pants and dark suit jacket, bulge of my weapon in the small space between shoulder, armpit, and breast. He looked over at his wives, not a one of them looking at him. He made a disgusted sound, deep in his throat. “So that’s the way of it now? My womenfolk ganging up on me?”