An unforgettable novel of love, scandal,
and family…
From its vivid evocation of mill hill life to its
pitch-perfect rendering of the complexities of relationships, Unto These Hills is at once epic and intensely intimate.
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Unto These Hills
by Emily Sue Harvey
4.0 stars – 32 Reviews
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Here’s the set-up:
Unto These Hills is an unforgettable novel of love, scandal, family, and roots by one of the most emotionally authentic authors of our time. Taking us into the deep South’s Tucapau Mill Hill, it introduces us to the unforgettable Sunny Acklin. Betrayed, abandoned, and violated, Sunny faces one seemingly insurmountable challenge after another. But she never loses her spirit or the memory of the love that once so richly illuminated her world. As years go by, Sunny does everything she can to make something of her life until at last an opportunity arises, one charged with promise…and undeniable risk.
Praise for Unto These Hills:
“…Emily Sue Harvey captures the humor and heartbreak of Southern Culture. The scenes are real and the emotions deep. A wonderfully readable novel.” – Kay Allenbaugh, bestselling author of Chocolate for a Woman’s Soul
“Emily Sue Harvey creates…vibrant characters, and a story that moves us from commonplace life to the brink of emotional destruction and back to salvation.” – Gwen Hunter, author of Ashes to Ashes
an excerpt from
Unto These Hills
by Emily Sue Harvey
Prologue
From my upstairs window, the distant view of familiar hills and river swims before me. Home. My safe place. But today the vision fails to bolster me. Sweat gathers over my forehead in great beads. Nausea churns my insides and my icy fingers drop the simple four-line poem I’ve been reading, one I wrote — how long ago?
A lifetime. Was life ever that simple?
Panic spasms through me.
I’ve got to decide. Time’s running out. Which will it be?
He wants an answer today. What about my dream?
What dream, Sunny? Face it. It’s gone.
But what if —
It won’t happen. Grab this lifeline, girl! Are you nuts?
Slowly, I pick up the paper from the floor and I wonder where were you, God, when I needed you?
But then, you haven’t been doing me any favors lately. Tears blur the words of my girlhood ode:
UNTO THESE HILLS
Red clay dirt heaped round and high dips low then rises again to the sky… Hills they’re called. To me they’re HOME From them, my shelter, I will never roam.
By Sunny Acklin, age 14
And I remember another day — before innocence died.
Part One
“Who can find a virtuous wife? For her price is far above rubies.”
Proverbs 31:10
The late forties to the seventies
Chapter One
Four Years Earlier
That dawn remains, all these years later, etched in golden solar rays in my memory as the happiest morning of my life. It was in my fifteenth year. I arose early, dressed for the May Pole dance, and quietly stole from our two-story Maple Street dwelling planted amongst hundreds of Tucapau — South Carolina’s mill hill houses — all predominantly identical except for varying roof line pitches and story levels.
I spied Daniel across the street, tall, whipcord thin and magnificent as he slung the swing blade, shearing grass as easily as scattering dandelion tufts. A white cotton T-shirt rode his broad shoulders like a second skin. As always, the sight of his midnight dark head, bent to task, so intense, almost heated, stirred my senses.
He hadn’t yet seen me and, for once, I didn’t call out to him but slipped around the house to the alley and rushed on, zig-zagging a detour, intent on seeking out my harbor, my stronghold, so to speak: a knoll overlooking my domain.
Water lapped against land as I cut through Ash Street and neared the dam. I took a deep breath and pushed back the fearful awesomeness of the Middle Tyger River. I watched the sun break the horizon and happiness burst and splintered through me as I clasped my hands to my bosom in exultation.
Nothing of the splendid sunrise whispered of portent.
Forgotten in those precise daylight moments were Ruthie Bonds’ screams, that carried, two years earlier, over these waters that, nightly, transformed into murky black depths. Now, those same depths that nearly claimed her life rippled and reflected sun rays like tossed sequins, seductive…bewitching.
Forgotten today was that Ruthie bore a child within six short months, one called bastard, a beautiful little girl who, wagging tongues had it, was sired by Harly Kale, her rescuer on that fateful night. Harly was my friend Gladys’ sorry, no-good husband.
Forgotten for the moment was that, after that, Ruth’s stigmata and self-imposed exile terrorized me as much as those nighttime black waters.
Today, none of this rippled my peace. I D-double-dog dared it to as I forded the river by way of an ancient steel bridge, spanned a narrow road, then climbed precipitous concrete steps to the site that offered a panoramic view of my homeland.
Reverently, I ascended a steep hill where once the old schoolhouse perched. No longer. At its summit, my lids lowered and I inhaled the fecund vegetation-mud aroma that rode the breeze.
The wind was soft and gentle, ruffling my shorn hominy-white hair, the sun warm on my olive-complected skin, and my near-translucent blue eyes drank in the beloved sight.
Hope oozed through me like an endorphin overdose, one akin (I would much later discover) to orgasm. Today was a new beginning. I believed that as only a fifteen- year-old heart could.
I gazed out over the hills that birthed and nurtured me, to the river that winds lazily to the dam where, harnessed, water becomes the captured power of over a hundred horses. A furious sight when unleashed upon the rocky shoals below, a beautiful portrait when integrated into the womb of these hilly shores.
Today the orchestrated enchantment of bliss and water rushing over stony, undulating riverbed made music in my ears, music that set my feet to dancing and my heart a’soaring with the white clouds above me. The melody called out to me, lifted me above the fears that struggled to trickle through my euphoria.
Even as I danced, they were there, hovering like a daggum sulking thundercloud. I split in two: One smiling and dancing. The other hidden and vigilant.
Thoughts simmered, bloated, and then blasted out to the four winds. Please God. Let Mama and Daddy love each other…keep us together.
I flung the dark thoughts aside
My white dress flowed in the wind as I twirled and spun and leaped, lifting my face to the sky, excited about the here and now, the May Pole dance and for the sense of family that grappled for a secure place inside me. Mama and Daddy will be there.
So will Daniel, who just moved in across the street, and who makes me feel more alive than I’ve ever felt before.
And then, he was there with me in spirit, head thrown back in laughter, dancing with me in his loose, boneless way and I felt happier than I’d ever felt in my life, knowing he heard what I heard and felt what I felt. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t see him.
I felt him.
My feet skipped and twirled me back down the stone steps, across the old bridge, where foaming river rode the rocks below, kicking up the wind to cool my warmed cheeks.
The happy notes detoured me up the alley behind the hotel, away from the men who sat on her rock wall corner, opposite the mill, waiting for the seven-thirty a.m. whistle to signal shift change. My celebration was not for them to see.
From maple and walnut trees birds harmonized with the music flooding my soul.
Main Street was just coming alive on this early May morning hour when I meandered from the alley, across the lush hotel lawn, and my feet connected with the big concrete sidewalk. From the old hotel where Mama served as a maid in her cute little black uniform with its frilly white apron and cap, Daisy the cook, taking a moment’s break from the hot kitchen, waved to me from the long front porch with its endless rocking chairs.
“Mornin’ Sunny!” she called, caramel-complected face a’beamin’. “You shore look purdy!”
I turned back and waved and, tamping down my crazy dancing feet, moved on past the village Doctor’s Office, which anybody and everybody on the hill frequented for anything from a hangnail to pneumonia. The visits had been more frequent hereabouts since Dr. Brock, the new, handsome young doctor had come to practice, taking up residence in the hotel. He looked a bit like Tim Holt or Alan Ladd.
“Hey, Sunny,” Mr. Mason called. He was proprietor of the Company Store, which insured that all villagers had food, even if on credit. I waved at Mr. Mason as he swept around the front doors.
And I exulted that all these entities were bonding forces, ones that declared each living, breathing resident thereabout as my family. On second thought, I will have to clarify here that almost all mill hill residents seemed like family. Almost. There were a rare few I didn’t claim. But I’ll get to them later.
The old movie house came into view, my favorite place of all, whose Saturday afternoon matinees turned the silver screen to magic with Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Tim Holt, Lash LaRue, Humphrey Bogart and hosts of other actors.
“Sunny!” called a deep male voice. I twirled toward the sound, heart a thumpin’ like a bass drum as I realized he’d been following me from the riverbank.
He’d been watching me from afar — had seen me dancing. I grinned even wider. I was glad he saw my joy! Oh it was so good to be alive and loved and to have both my biological and village family rally for this morning’s celebration.
“Daniel! Hey.” I felt myself flush, warm with pleasure as he joined me on my trek, slowing my feet down even more, At sixteen, he neared six-foot tall. And because he walked beside me I felt luminous and beautiful. His male splendor smote me like an invisible explosion that left every atom reeling
His family moved in across the street from us a few short months back. It’s kinda complicated, the Stone family. The family carries three different surnames: Stone, Hicks, and Daniel’s last name is Collins. Doretha’s stepfather, Ol’ Tom Stone, a former policeman from up North, married Doretha’s mama after moving South. Walter Stone, an older son, lived with them.
Daniel Collins was a foster-child, came to live with them when he was nine, right after the Stones married. The entire family loved Daniel. Except Ol’ Tom. To him, Daniel simply represented free labor and he took pure evil advantage of a good boy. But that’s another story entirely.
In short months, this family became central to my life.
“Wait up!” called Doretha as she rushed to catch up with Daniel and me. Slightly winded, she joined us on our walk to the celebration and as we locked arms I was reminded of the trio dancing their way to the Land of Oz.
I would, later that day, ironically reflect upon that moment’s sheer magic, wishing fervently to recall it.
“Sunny,” came Doretha’s whispery little voice, “you look sooo pur-dy.” And I smiled and leaned to give her a quick peck on her cheek.
Doretha Hicks, Daniel’s foster-sister, blew into our lives — mine and my buddy Emaline’s — like a fragrant spring breeze, bringing to us a new, perpetual state of delight. Doretha’s childlike charm and ancient insight fascinated Emaline and me. In her presence we were somehow more. She had the indefinable ability to augment us beyond what we thought we could ever be.
She was my sister Francine’s age, sixteen. There, likeness ceased. Doretha — pronounced Dor-EE’-tha — was as unsophisticated as Francine was worldly. She was as plain, upon initial encounter, as Francine was stunning. She was small and reed thin, with her desolate youth shining from her eyes.
I adored her.
Soon, the village park came into view. First family member I spotted was my animated older sister Francine, in saucy pimento shorts and white gypsy blouse tied at the waist. Late April sun had already deepened her naturally olive-toned skin to bronze. A new guy, Tack Turner, sniffed around her, keeping at bay the rest of the male pack.
I disliked him on sight.
Next, I saw my best friend, Emaline. Pecan brown hair slicked back from her heart-shaped face, nape-tied by a white ribbon, coordinating with her billowy white dress that matched my own, both home-sewn by Renie, her sweet mama who today was all a’glow with pride in both of ‘her girls’, as she referred to me and Emaline.
Shorter and rounder than me, Emaline was, then and now, beautiful from the inside out. Though shorter by two inches than me, and brunette, at a distance and in her full, fluid white dress she could almost be my twin and we laughed as we rushed to hug, grasping hands and stepping back to examine each other from head to toe. Eight other teen girls, identically attired as we meandered about the May Pole, gingerly testing the elaborate long blue ribbons for tethering strength as they slowly orchestrated the upcoming choreography.
Emaline’s mama stood nearby. Usually pleasingly fluffy, Renie, recently suffering from mysterious headaches, had melted down till she scarcely resembled herself. But when she lifted her heart-shaped face and looked at me, her generous smile was pure Renie.
“Hey, darlin’,’ she crooned. It was her way of loving me. Her affection splashed over and soaked into me. Her validation was profound. Tears stung my eyes and nose. She always affected me that way.
How I loved my village family.
Then I saw them: Mama and Daddy. World War II had interrupted Mama and Daddy’s limping, bloodied marriage. This sunny May week reunited them when Daddy, looking more like Mama’s movie idol, Tyrone Power, than ever, reappeared on our mill hill scene, shining like a new silver dollar in his army uniform.
The war was over and his Peacetime Occupation stint in Japan had finally, five years later, ended. The fifties era had already surfaced. Dark wavy hair and eyes the color of our mahogany shift robe, flirted from beneath Daddy’s snappy cap and had Mama clinging to him like a morning glory vine.
A true miracle it was, this devotion-interval, given my mama’s lusty appetite for anything wearing jockey shorts. Or any other style, even butt- naked, truth be known.
I was so happy that they appeared so in love, I didn’t even mind that they’d immediately thrust us four siblings into Nana’s stringent care, then disappeared to the nearby Cotton Club to dance and drink the homecoming night away. I hoped that now Daddy was back, Mama would stop embarrassing me with her brazen ways.
Today, they looked as cozy as Bogart and Bergman in Casablanca.
I smell lemon-drops! The realization stretched my lips from ear to ear. I always whiffed them when happy. And right at that instant I could have reached up and touched the sky.
I waved to my parents. Blew them kisses, which they returned a’beamin’ all over themselves.
Please God. Let it last.
~~~~~
The Duncan High School Band, festive in navy blue, gold braided uniforms, struck up Country Garden and for the next five minutes we mill hill girls brushed up as close to Camelot as we ever again would. The performance ended with perfectly concerted pirouettes and we preened as the gathering of village-family, a goodly count of about fifty, applauded.
“Sunny, you were sooo good!” little sister, Sheila squealed as she and younger brother Timmy tackled me with bear hugs.
Then I felt his touch on my arm before I gazed up into those bottomless turquoise eyes that hid myriad emotions. But for me, they glimmered of deep caring. “Sunny, you looked like an angel out there. I love to watch you dance.” His voice rumbled smoothly — like no other timber I’d ever heard. Rich yet soft. Reminded me of Clark Gable’s. “And I love your smile,” he added.
He bent quickly, squeezed my upper arm and kissed the top of my head. I felt it all the way out my toes. He whispered, “gotta run. Ol’ Tom’ll miss me.” His grin was rakish, lop-sided, and decidedly defiant. “But it was worth it.”
I watched him rush off, strong legs eating up the sidewalk as he loped with stallion agility down Main Street.
Then other arms wrapped me. As laughter and warmth engulfed me, I inhaled two distinctive fragrances that, for my entire life span, would plop me right back to that particular time and place: Old Spice After Shave and Blue Waltz perfume.
“C’mon, Sunshine,” Mama gurgled with laughter, calling me by the full name she’d given me at birth, insisting I was her ‘sunshine girl.’ “We Acklins are a’gonna celebrate today. School’s out and there’s fun to be had!”
My heart soared because nobody, but nobody did fun like my mama. ~~~~~
We went back by the house where we dressed for comfort, except for Mama, who remained dressed-up all the way to her spike heels and Francine, who couldn’t actually strip down any more and not get arrested.
I traded my white dress for a modest buttercup-yellow sundress, whose handkerchief type straps tied over each shoulder.
Nana, Mama’s mother, eyed us speculatively. She pulled Mama into the kitchen as Daddy whistled and sang and cut up with Sheila and Timmy on the porch. I could hear her whispering to Mama and edged close enough to hear.
“Ruby, behave yourself, now, y’hear?”
Laughter. “Now, Mama. Don’t be such a fussy-butt. What in heavens’ name do you think I’m a’gonna do? Strip naked and do the Huckle-Buck?” More bubbly laughter.
Nana reached up to touch Mama’s cheek and said gently, “Just mind what I say, honey. Ever’thing’sa’goin’ right for you now. You just count your blessin’s and —”
“Aww, Mama,” my mother grabbed Nana in a big ol’ bear hug and kissed her soundly on the wrinkled cheek, “You worry too much.”
Ageless, white-haired Nana, a grass-widow, lived near us in her brother Charlie’s single-level village dwelling, several doors from our two-story mill hill house. But she was always on baby-sitting and housekeeping call.
As usual, today the only colorful thing in her apparel was her home-sewn floral apron. Black lace-up shoes and cotton stockings emerged below her nondescript dress. Her snowy hair, now in a sedate bun on her nape, could transform into witchy disarray when loosed at night, especially when she yanked Sheila from sleep and castigated her for bed-wetting.
Still, all these years later, those long nights flash before me, with Nana in her flapping flannel gown, long white hair flying loose, leaning over Sheila’s bed in the wee dark hours, looking chillingly witchy.
“You done soaked this bed, you lazy heifer! Too durned no-account to get up and walk to the bathroom is what you are.” And I see Sheila’s eyes, sleep- dazed, confused, and humiliated. I now cringe that I said nothing in her defense, even when Nana’s anger strongly peppered her language.
But I cannot go back and relive one day.
To her credit, Nana laundered the urine-soaked sheets and kept a rubber cover over the mattress to protect it. The daily toil must have been backbreaking for a woman her age. Now, past the age she was at that time, in retrospect, I recognize the effort she spent keeping two households up and running; Uncle Charlie’s and ours’.
Nana, despite her horror of Mama’s ways, indulged her green-eyed, utterly outrageous ‘baby’, Ruby, whom God, for whatever His reasons, blessed with a beautiful face and perfect curves that could cause a traffic pile-up.
I understood. Nana couldn’t help but adore Mama — despite her visceral condemnation of Mama’s whoring. Neither could I resist her. Neither could my handsome daddy, whose driving force had been, as far back as I could remember, to placate Mama’s incessant quest for thrills and anything zany.
Yet, despite all his efforts, on that lovely May day, during our exuberant family outing, failure smacked him broadside.
~~~~~
We ate an early lunch at Abb’s Corner, the village café hangout located downstairs from the Movie House. Outside steps took us down to the lowest level of the Community Center. Divorce Me COD spilled from the jukebox as we piled into a large booth and Daddy splurged to buy hamburgers, fries and tall frosty milk shakes for the lot of us, including sixteen-year-old Francine, who usually by-passed family things.
I hated the divorce song. Soon Frank Sinatra soothed the airwaves with Night and Day and I relaxed and counted my blessings that we were together.
I caught glimpses of conjecture on my sister’s cynical face and I knew. She, too, hoped Mama would for once in her screwed-up life be good, and think of us rather than herself. I frowned at her, discouraging her dark skepticism.
Afterward, at Mama’s request, Daddy parked the car on the curb near the post office, as close to the Company Store as he could get. Mama hopped out, then stuck her head in the back window, where we huddled, her offspring, beguiling us with Blue Waltz fragrance and her incandescent smile.
Her white silk, clingy shoulder-padded blouse, tucked into fashionable pearl-gray, loose-legged slacks, cupped what Francine had informed me were lush breasts — much like her own, she smugly added, which had drawn my dismayed gaze downward to my own comparatively small assets, ones that resembled two once-over-lightly fried eggs.
“Can we go, Mama?” whined Sheila.
“Nonono.” Laughter, rich as hot fudge, gurgled from her as she reached over to tweak the little freckled nose. “Doncha know I’m gonna get ya’ll each a surprise? Even Daddy gets one,” she said in her throaty way, rolling her vibrant greens at Daddy. I was just beginning to realize what everybody meant by ‘Ruby’s bedroom eyes’, when her lids lowered like a silk curtain, exposing only a sliver of sea mist glimmer.
“Now ya’ll be good for Daddy, y’hear? I’ll be a little while.” Her voice oozed slow and thick as honey. She wrinkled her perfect nose. “Promise?”
“Promise,” chirruped everybody except Francine, who considered such compliance unbearably soppy.
Nobody, but nobody could stir my butterflies like Mama. Fact was, with her infectious, teasing laughter and melodious voice, she had the power to sweep us all from calamity to ecstasy in seconds flat. And despite her equally quicksilver explosive fights with Daddy, and her loose ways, in that lovely sun-filled moment I adored her.
After all, my brain desperately let fly, this is a new beginning.
At the Company Store entrance, Mama turned and blew us a big ol’ kiss, gazing at us for a long, long moment before disappearing through the double glass doors.
I’m gonna get y’all each a surprise! Even Daddy gets one. I recall, in that heartbeat of time, I thought how Mama, despite her faults, possessed, when she had anything, a generous, giving spirit, fairly shoveling it all out to others.
We kids and Daddy waited patiently in our old 1947 mud-brown Ford, lustily singing I’m Looking Over A Four-leaf Clover while Mama shopped. Honeysuckle breezes wafted in through lowered car windows. We tried harmony with Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree, but, what with Daddy’s tone- deafness, ended up sounding like a Chinese laundry quartet. Francine and I laughed till we cried while Daddy remained oblivious.
Then Francine, who utterly idolized Hank Williams, did her nasal rendition of Your Cheatin’ Heart, as earnest and reverent as I’d ever seen her.
I didn’t take undue notice of Mama’s lengthy absence till Francine cranked up Hey, Good Looking, and Daddy’s brow furrowed when he hiked up his wrist to peer at his watch. Sensing the change in him, Francine fell silent, a phenomenon within itself because Francine’s focus usually opaqued anything beyond her immediate whim. Daddy kept checking the time, his brow corrugating deeper by the moment.
My stomach butterflies ceased their flapping, pushed aside by the dread that oozed inside me and settled like cold concrete.
Francine shot me a “here we go again” look, rolled her tiger-tawny eyes, almost the exact shade of her hair, folded her slender arms, and shifted to stare stone-faced — yet appraisingly — out the back window at the men perched like sentry hawks on the rock wall curb facing Tucapau Cotton Mill. While disparaging Mama’s whimsical nature, Francine was blind to her own like-quirks, remaining blissfully unencumbered by any big-sister responsibility.
That was left entirely to me. Timmy, at eleven, a small, dark carbon of Daddy, already harbored cynicism in his whiskey golden gaze, one much too somber and vigilant. I had my work cut out just keeping our heads above dank, murky waters that threatened to obliterate our family unit.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” Daddy sprang from the car and dashed into the store, his movements jerky and desperate.
“Where’s Mama?” asked my little nine-year-old sister, Sheila. The picture of Mama, Sheila was perfection with big jade eyes and elegant oval features framed softly by russet and wheat streaked hair. She would someday, I suspected, be the family beauty.
“She’s inside the store,” I said, a bit more cheerfully than I felt. A vague premonition froze the smile that struggled to reach my lips. Instead, I patted her plump little fingers that laced loosely in her lap, their wiggly dance belying her calm demeanor.
Her resignation smote me. Then shot terror through me. I blinked and surreptitiously breathed deeply to allay anxiety, like Nana, in her stoical monotone, always instructed me. I groped for an inside button to turn off my roiling emotions. Finding none, I simply rode the bucking tumult.
Moments later, Daddy reappeared alone, pale as burnt out ashes. His hands trembled as he climbed into the front seat and gripped the steering wheel, anchoring himself as he stared off at some obscured horror, a stunned expression erasing all but ghostly laughter crinkles from his handsome features.
Long tense moments passed. Packed together like little sardines in the car’s back seat, neither of us four kids spoke. Were afraid to. Being accustomed to disappointment didn’t exactly inspire us to reach out and seize it.
I garnered courage. “Where’s Mama?” My voice rasped, quivered.
Daddy’s head swiveled and our gazes collided. The pain in his caused my breath to hitch. “Is she coming?” I ventured tremulously, weak from the inquiry’s effort.
Slowly, his head moved from side to side. “No, honey. She’s not coming.” Tears sprang to my eyes, of hurt, of anger. Of myriad, unnamable emotions. “Why?” I didn’t want to know.
“Because,” his knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. “She’s gone.”
“Where did she go?” Hysteria shimmied my voice up to shrill.
Francine huffed in disgust, tossed her thick tousled wheat mane back against the seat, and melted into its crease. Sheila didn’t move an eyelash. She sat frozen, her fingers dancing…dancing.
Timmy’s big Cocker Spaniel eyes, focused on me, drew my notice — his dark lashes were as thick as any girl’s — and as I gazed into them, I saw a plea glimmering in the golden depths. Make it all right, Sunny, they whimpered.
I gulped at the enormity of his need. Thought I’d drown in it.
Daddy took a deep, ragged breath then slowly blew it out and, as he did so, his lean torso slumped and his forehead connected with the steering wheel. “Only way out was the back exit.”
Hope seized me. “But maybe — maybe she was inside and you just didn’t see her. Maybe she was —”
Beside me, Francine’s snort of dismay failed to dash my burst of optimism.
But when Daddy’s dark mahogany head lifted, pity spilled from his eyes, snuffing hope as a fire hydrant’s flush would a candle-flicker. “Mr. Mason saw her duck out the back door, Sunny. She got into a car there.”
“Why am I not surprised?” muttered Francine and viciously crossed long bronze legs protruding saucily from flaming shorts.
Because, the thought flitted through my reeling brain, it takes one to know one and was instantly ashamed of the disdain I felt for my own flesh- and-blood sister.
“What’s wrong?” Sheila’s green eyes gazed up at me with a trust that hit me like a sledgehammer. It scared the daylights out of me. Then, amazingly, calmed me. It made me able to smile at her, to pretend everything was okay. To toss Timmy a feeble wink of encouragement.
And in some fuzzy corner of my psyche my role snapped into place. I would be the kids’ caretaker. On some level I knew.
When Daddy cranked the Ford — an act that declared Mama gone — the mundaneness of the revving engine struck me as surreal.
And I knew. Deep, deep inside, I knew. Don’t know how or why. But I knew.
Mama was not coming back.
~~~~~
Three things blasted a mill hill woman’s good name to smidgens; sexual immorality, neglecting one’s kids, and a filthy house, in that order. Though Nana’s vigilance spared Mama from the latter, her own folly cost her the entire substance of respectability.
The horror of it all traumatized me in ways I’d never before experienced.
Men began leering at me, a thing that sent me scurrying home to soak for hours in our old rust-stained bathtub, trying to wash away the shame Mama had foisted upon me.
“Ruby Acklin’s name is worse than mud; it’s slime,” I murmured days later to a sympathetic Doretha as I swirled my straw in watery Coke at Abb’s Corner, where she, Daniel, and Emaline commiserated with me on the turn of events. From the jukebox, Jimmy Wakely empathized with One Has my Name (the Other Has my Heart). “People don’t blame you for her mess, Sunny,” insisted Emaline, sweet optimistic Emaline, her green eyes sad as a Bassett’s.
I snorted. “Not only has she done across-the-board adultery, this time she’s run off with the village doctor, who is,” I rolled my eyes, “ten years younger’n her. And to think, I used to think he looked like Tim Holt.” I shook my head in disbelief, scowled and blinked back tears. “Now he’s got horns and fangs that drip blood.” I gazed at my buddy through tears. “Our blood.”
I sighed heavily. “I’ll bet Doctor Worley don’t appreciate her tomfoolery forcing ‘im from retirement.”
Across the café I spotted teenaged Buck Edmonds, paying for his order and as he turned to leave he blatantly caught my eye and winked. Sneaky- like. So as not to draw Daniel’s attention. Then he nearly collided with Fitzhugh Powers, our village policeman, and his face composed into angelic repose. In blue uniform, Fitzhugh was formidable, a force to be reckoned with by mischief-makers. Underneath, he was every villager’s daddy.
Uggh! I hated Buck Edmonds. His interest crawled over my skin like a passel of loosed snakes. I shivered.
“Hey, ya’ll.” Fizhugh waved to us, sending me an especially sympathetic look as he slid his tight, toned form onto a red/chrome swivel stool at the counter for his daily coffee and chat with Abb, his buddy and our other father figure who always had time to hear our problems.
We waved back and Daniel leaned impulsively and kissed my cheek, encouraging my angry venting.
“Then — then she ran out on ‘er kids,” I added. “Tallied up in mill hill math, Emaline, Mama’s worth is a big fat zero. And I see how the men’re looking at me.”
“Who?” Daniel was instantly alert, like a jungle beast sniffing danger.
Uh oh. Back pedal. “Nobody in particular. Just — oh, I don’t know. Maybe I’m just imagining it.”
But I knew I wasn’t. I just didn’t want Daniel going and getting in trouble over something I couldn’t even prove if I wanted to. Besides, I didn’t want to draw attention to myself. Fair or not, some folks would think I’d done something to attract the men. Everybody in the village didn’t consider me as family, either.
Daniel, sitting next to me on the inside, settled against the wall. He grew quiet and still as death. Yet, I felt this subterranean wildness churning through him, sizzling, one peculiar to him, one that stands out till this day in my memory. And I knew not to say something to send him tumbling over the edge.
“Poor Sunny,” Doretha murmured, oozing with sympathy and her own brand of otherworldliness that she wore like a rare deep South fragrance. Emaline looked at her in wonder, awed.
A waif-like creature, a mill hill, poor version of Audrey Hepburn, Doretha effortlessly exuded power. She gave me one of her long, assessing looks. Seemed she could read things nobody else could — see things. “You think her whorin’s gonna drag you down, too, don’t you? Like — ‘cause you’re her’s, folks’ll think you’re like’er.”
I nodded. “The stinking feeling just clings, y’know?” I lolled against the red leather booth backrest. “Look — I know it don’ make sense to feel somebody else’s shame. But a mama’s not just somebody else. She’s the person who spawned you, who knows the feel of your skin and your smell — I can’t wash it away.” Tears puddled along my lower lids and I sat up straight and swiped them away. I swallowed a couple of times before speaking again. “I’m not like her.”
Daniel grunted assent and shifted sharply, his anger palpable. I knew it took giant effort for him not to bellow with frustration and rage.
“‘Course you’re not.” Emaline grasped my hand across the table and squeezed, blinking back tears.
“Daggum right!” I nodded, gazing at her. “I — I thought when Daddy came home from the war, things would change. I once thought the divorce thing was like a square block of wood being hammered into a round hole. Divorce on the mill hill just — wasn’t done. And now,” I splayed my fingers at the ceiling, “My own Mama and Daddy are getting divorced.” Anger surged through me. “I hope Mama’s satisfied!”
“She can’t help it. That’s just who she is,” Doretha said, coming around to sit beside me as I scooted over against Daniel to make room. She wrapped an arm around my skinny shoulders. “But she stole your childhood away from you, Sunny,” she said quietly, in her gentle, assured way. “She oughtta be ashamed of that, if nothin’ else.”
I looked at her in amazement. How could she know? But she did. That was the magic that was Doretha. “Remember you once’t told me you smell lemon-drops when you’re real happy?” She looked at me with the saddest eyes.
I nodded, wiping a tear from my cheek, and heard Emaline snuffle.
“Well, you don’ smell ‘em now, do you?”
I felt Daniel’s strong fingers come up under my upper arm and squeeze and I gazed up into his solemn face. “No,” I said hoarsely, “I don’t smell ‘em anymore.”
His hand slid down my arm till his big, callused fingers clasped mine. “You will,” he murmured fiercely, nostrils a’flare. “I promise you, Sunny. Someday, you will.”
~~~~~
We Acklins each dealt with Mama’s unsavoriness in our own way. Daddy escaped up north to job-hunt, leaving us in Nana’s care.
Francine barricaded herself in our upstairs room, pulled hidden Camel cigarettes from beneath her mattress, threw open the window and inhaled like the smoke was water and her guts were on fire. Her nightly vanishing- out-the-window act increased.
I’d begun hearing asides about Francine, too, more lewd ones, but I’d pushed them away. They always made my insides squirm like a hooked- worm, even as I lifted my chin in defiance. I would not be like Mama. Or Francine.
Timmy and Sheila became my appendages, echoing my own erratic emotions during those first months. The Sunny they’d known before Mama’s abandonment had gone away inside herself. I’d always played with Sheila and Timmy, as into play-like as they were. Waif-like skinny, I’d have passed for a twelve-year-old any day of the week.
“It’s your eyes that give you away,” Doretha told me one night as we sat around on the Acklin couch next to the white plastic Philco table radio, listening to Our Miss Brooks. “They’re the eyes of an old woman,” she insisted in her insightful way.
“Yuck,” groaned Francine as she polished her fingernails.
Aunt Tina, Mama’s sister with whom she shared a mutual love-hate association, stuck her head in the front door, “Alvin wanted to stay here while I go to the company store for a few things,” she shrilled, announcing her son’s indolent entrance to join us. They lived down Maple Street, four doors away.
Alvin is the most un-animated person I’ve ever known. Compared to his Mama, he’s dead. Rigor mortis stage. This evening, he shrugged and exchanged a half-hearted, gauntlet-tossing gaze with Francine. Then he plopped, bored, down onto the sofa, whistling through his teeth as Francine dismissed him with a mere toss of thick, tawny mane.
I noticed, however, that one thing did hook his attention. Doretha.
Doretha never missed a beat extracting me from Francine’s talons.
“Never you mind, Francine,” Doretha gently scolded, “Sunny feels things deeper’n most folk.” Being her kind self, Doretha didn’t add ‘deeper’n you. “ I don’t mean she looks old. It’s just — her eyes show her hurts.”
“Mama used to sing and dance for us,” Sheila piped in, desperate to change the sad subject and, I suspected, to gain the spotlight. I was hoping that her flair for fabrication to get attention wouldn’t burgeon with the turn of events.
“Yeh.” Longing rode Timmy’s soft voice. “She was good, too.”
Emaline smiled and sighed. “She was sooo pretty in her white and black hotel maid’s uniform and apron. And that little triangle hat that tied like a nurse’s to her head. Shoot, she coulda been Betty Grable or Alice Faye singing and tap dancing across that big ol’ silver screen.”
“Shhh!” Francine snapped. “I can’t hear.” She pretended inordinate interest in Arnold Stang’s dialogue with Our Miss Brooks.
Alvin stared baldly at her, scrutinizing her audacity.
Ignoring her, Sheila gushed. “When she saw us watchin’ ‘er, she’d grab Grandpa Dexter’s old cane from the closet. He’d left it when he run off with that girl younger’n Mama.” Oh, how Sheila loved to repeat gossip and purse those little lips importantly. That always drew attention. “Mama’d sing Pennies From Heaven, making pennies fall through the air and land at our feet. Wouldn’t she, Sunny?”
I could still hear throaty belly-laughter erupt from Mama as she watched us scuttle about on our knees to scoop up the money and pocket it.
That was the blinding-fun side of her wildness.
“Yep,” I smiled at Sheila, “Mama was enchanting.”
“You sure use purdy words,” Doretha said thoughtfully, impressed. Because of her limited education, she thought I had the smartest brain wedged between two ears.
“Enchanting?” I laughed out loud and shrugged. “She was enchanting.”
Plain and simple, despite her careening excesses and self-absorption, we missed Mama’s magic.
“Huh,” Francine disparaged while examining her wet fire-red nails, blatantly refusing to reverence our nostalgia. “She wudn’t around long enough to make too much of a splash. Always gone somewhere or ‘nuther, ‘doin’ her own thing. Everything was about her. Always her.”
But then, Francine wasn’t inclined to enchantment. Except of her own making. And I thought how Francine had, to a tee, just described her own self.
~~~~~
More religion. That’s what I needed.
December sunlight warmed our faces and shoulders while an arctic breeze chilled our other parts as Daniel and I strolled, hand-in-hand, to the village outskirts. The hilly terrain was as much a part of me as the air I breathed. It undulated under and around me, securing me like a fortress. How I loved those gently sloping hills, whose paved avenues led to everything of joy and sustenance. To family and friends.
Today they led to church.
I’d finally talked Daniel into going with me to the little village Pentecostal Church, where I found respite from the hellish hopelessness that plagued me day and night. As I look back, I think it was my desperation, on that particular occasion, that overrode his aversion to anything remotely emotional.
Inside the church, Daniel and I sat with Gladys Kale, our friend and neighbor, at who’s nearby house we frequently hung out. That is, when her sorry, no-good husband, Harly wasn’t home. I learned that descriptive term from Gladys and, with reference to Harly, used it without fail: sorry, no-good husband.
Today, Daniel was a mite uncomfortable but I didn’t feel guilty a’tall that I’d finagled him into coming by telling him I needed him to go with me to church, that I needed something strong to keep me a’going, what with Mama’s shenanigans and all.
I knew what buttons to push in Daniel. He hated what both our mamas represented. So here he was, as uncomfortable as a long-tailed cat on the hotel porch with its endless creakin’ rocking chairs. I looked around. Emaline, my pal, was not there. She’d apparently decided to attend Tucapau Methodist Church with her mama, daddy, and grandparents.
My disappointment evaporated when the music cranked up and exploded, filling that little tabernacle till the walls seemed to expand and throb in time. Today’s service was especially lively, everything spiritual my daily, dark existence denied.
Daniel did okay until later, when an altar call issued forth.
“Come to Je-sus!” Pastor trumpeted like a bull elephant. “To-daaay!”
When folks started spilling down the aisle a’weeping and travailing and collapsing into heaps of agonized repentance at the rail, my heart tripped into a syncopated song of ecstasy. I clasped my hands to my flat bosom and just grinned and grinned. That Daniel stood beside me rigid as an oak, and that his hands clamped onto the back of the pew turned his knuckles whiter’n new snow did not disturb my bliss.
He grew more and more jittery as the pastor’s penetrating gaze swept the congregation for guilt-stricken countenances. Daniel’s poker face gained him a temporary reprieve.
Having weeks earlier done the long aisle walk, I now gaped at the spectacle around that altar, grinning, enraptured by all the hullabaloo, with its backslapping and admonitions to ‘hang on’ and ‘let go.’
When Daniel grabbed hold of my elbow and steered me outside quicker’n you could say ‘scat’ I didn’t worry. I just smiled and smiled as his brow furrowed and he propelled us down that village street faster’n two startled bobcats.
I knew.
Daniel would one day give in. And we’d have the best daggum marriage on the face of this earth!
~~~~~
One April night, we walked to our favorite retreat, the village park. The lush setting was deserted except for the two of us.
“Daniel,” I can’t believe it.” I was beside myself with joy. “You hit Ol’ Tom!”
I settled beside him on the bench. “Yeh. I let ‘im have it right between the eyes.” He didn’t look proud. That wasn’t Daniel. Just at peace that he’d finally, after all those years, settled it with the old man.
“What did Walter say about you hittin’ his daddy?”
“Said I shoulda done it a long time ago. ‘Course I’ve just now got enough size on me to give ‘im back as good as he gives.”
I laughed with delight. Walter, Daniel’s twenty-something foster brother, was okay.
“Huh. He won’t be bothering you anymore, I’ll bet.”
Daniel draped his arm around my shoulders as we snuggled together on the wooden bench, one of several that marked the expanse of grassy knoll punctuated by fir, maple, and oak trees.
I knew of the beatings Ol’ man Stone gave Daniel. Doretha had whispered of them to me. It broke my heart. Daniel never spoke of them, defiantly ignored them. Tonight, he broke that trend when he said, “I’d a’run away from that sorry trash before now, but I can’t leave you, Sunny.”
“So you just did what you had to do,” I said, grinning. Then I sobered. “Too bad you couldn’t trust him to treat you fairly. You deserve respect, Daniel.”
“I lost trust in adults long ago,” he said softly, almost to himself.
“I haven’t completely given up on ‘em,” I assured Daniel. Somehow it seemed important that one of us believe in humanity’s good. “I don’t exactly not trust. I just no longer live in a world where adults make everything all right. Y’know?”
Trust had begun to morph away from absolute.
Daniel gazed at me with pain-glazed eyes. Then he slowly shook his dark head. “You’ve got somethin’ in you I don’t have, Sunny. After what we saw your mama —” He stopped, squeezed his eyes shut and held out a hand in appeasement, then ran fingers through his thick hair. “I’m sorry, honey. I shouldn’t’ve said that.”
But my tears already shimmered, blinding me as I remembered that night….
“Mama — where you goin’?” I squinted up at her from my folding-seat in the dimness of the movie house. Beside me, Daniel squeezed my hand, sensing my apprehension.
“I’ll be back in a minute, Sweetie.” The drift of Blue Waltz did little to reassure me as Mama disappeared up the aisle. Fifteen minutes later, Daniel and I searched the lobby. Something deep, deep inside insisted I could save Mama from herself. Somehow, Daniel understood.
“She went outside. Said she wud’n feelin’ well,” said Lib, the ticket girl, cynicism and pity spilling from her big ol’ curious eyes. Outside, Mama’s rich, lusty laughter sliced through June’s thick, humid evening air. My younger siblings were at home after a long afternoon matinee. Daniel and I came with Mama tonight, at her request. I still wondered why the rare invitation.
“Wait,” Daniel touched my arm to stay me. Then he swiftly moved ahead to the parked car across the street, from whence spiraled Mama’s bawdy, animal noises. I followed him, knowing he wanted to protect me. But it was my mess, not his. Mama and Toy Narson didn’t even see us when we peered through the car’s half-open window.
“C’mon,” Daniel’s harsh whisper wasn’t soon enough. His fingers gripped my arm as he tugged me away and I knew his anger in part was because he’d failed to shield me. Worse still, I knew his rage was at my mama and her stud of the moment, a married man who this very moment rode her in that back seat like a rutting dog.
“My God,” he rasped, looking absolutely ill. “Don’t she realize how loud she is?” The shame of it was too much to bear and I tore off running down the street, tears streaming my face. When riled, I could, in my youth, run like a greyhound and Daniel didn’t catch up till I was nearly home, by now gasping and retching and sobbing intermittently.
“I’m sorry, Sunny,” he whispered as he steered then settled me on our back stoop. “I shouldn’t’a said that.” He turned me into his arms and comforted me with soothing, crooning words. “Don’t let ‘er get to you. She’s not you. Let it go.”
“Now I know why she a-asked me to go with her tonight,” I hiccuped, snuffling. “S-she just wanted to get around Nana. Nana’s been fussin’ at ‘er this week sayin’ ‘don’t see how you can roll over on your back for every Tom, Dick, and Harry’. She just used us, Daniel. And I thought she really wanted to s-spend time —” My sobs recommenced stronger than ever.
This time, Daniel turned me on the step and embraced me to his chest, his voice husky with feeling. “Don’t you dare give up, Sunny. These next four years’ll pass fast and then we’ll be married and nobody’ll hurt you again. Her shame ain’t your shame. Y’hear? It’s-not-yours.”
“It’s e-easy for you to say. Your mama don’t live right here, whoring right under everybody’s nose and —”
“She used to bring men in our house, Sunny. Think that don’t do things to you? So I understand how you feel.” His lips brushed my cheek and lips, soft as a butterfly a’lightin’. “We’ll get through this together, y’hear? Together.”
Daniel always calmed me with that magic word: together.
… Continued…
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Unto These Hills
by Emily Sue Harvey
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