storeroom then. Used to be the pantry.”
“Found her what? Lying there sick? Did she fall down and hurt herself?”
He stared steadily into Olivia’s eyes and said, “She been hangin’ by her neck.
She throwed a rope over the beam and stood on a footstool to put it ’round her
neck. Then she stepped aside. That stool been still standin’ there next to her.
Your daddy come home and found her like that. He stayed real still, just staring.
Seem like a long time ’fore he took her down.”
Olivia stared at the ground. She was sure no one had ever said these words to
her, but even so, they didn’t feel new. Had she heard whispers and folded them
away, forced herself to forget them?
“How do you know this?” she finally asked.
“I been with him. Been workin’ at the store and he aksed me to carry a sack a
flour home for him. I come in the back door behind him. I knowed something wrong. Don’t know how, cause he ain’t said no word, ain’t made no noise at all.
But I gone to see what wrong and seen him standin’ there starin’ at her.”
“I was almost six when she died,” Olivia said softly. “So you would have
been eight or nine?”
“Sound right.”
“So maybe you didn’t understand. You could have been confused, not really
understood what happened.”
“No.” He shook his head. “I ain’t been in no confusion. I know what I seen. I
seen him step up on that stool and hold her, so he could slip the noose off. He
aksed me to help him carry her to the parlor and lay her down. Then he been on
his knees on the floor, touchin’ her face and cryin’. Cryin’ and shoutin’. ‘Why?
Why? Why you wanna leave us so bad?’ Every few minutes he stop cryin’ and
start hollerin’. ‘How could you do this? How dare you? Coulda been Olivia what
found you. What kind a mother are you?’ Then he started cursin’ God. Never
gone to church no more after that day.” He paused.
Olivia said nothing and he continued.
“I remember thinkin’, the way that stool still standin’ there ... she done it real
calm like. Made up her mind about what she gonna do and then got up on that
stool and done it.”
He stopped again. After another long silence Olivia said, “You mean she
could have changed her mind. All she had to do was put her foot back on the stool. She hadn’t kicked it away.”
He nodded and looked away.
She spoke softly, more to herself than him. “You’d think anyone, being
choked, desperate for air ... even then she didn’t change her mind. So she hated
her life that much.”
Mourning spoke again. “I think that what hurt your daddy the most.”
Olivia spoke with an edge of bitterness. “It should have been me. I was usually the first one home.” She lowered her eyes, wondering why she wasn’t
crying. Why she didn’t feel anything. Nothing but empty. “Do my brothers
