Where the Crawdads Sing(38)

“I don’t know a thing about Murph, Mandy, or Missy. I wouldn’t know them if I passed them in the street. By now I ’spose they’ve scattered with the wind. But Ma, well, Kya, that’s another reason I wanted to find you. There is some news of her.”

“Some news? What? Tell me.” Chills flowed from Kya’s arms to her fingertips.

“Kya, it’s not good. I only found out last week. Ma died two years ago.”

She bent at the waist, holding her face in her hands. Soft groans came from her throat. Jodie tried to hold her, but she moved away from him.

Jodie continued. “Ma had a sister, Rosemary, who tried to track us down through the Red Cross when Ma died, but they couldn’t find us. Then a couple of months ago they found me through the army and put me in touch with Rosemary.”

In hoarse tones Kya mumbled, “Ma was alive until two years ago. I’ve been waiting all these years for her to walk down the lane.” She stood and held on to the sink. “Why didn’t she come back? Why didn’t somebody tell me where she was? And now it’s too late.”

Jodie went to her, and even though she tried to turn away, he put his arms around her. “I’m sorry, Kya. Come sit down. I’ll tell you what Rosemary said.”

He waited for her, then said, “Ma was ill from a major breakdown when she left us and went to New Orleans—that’s where she grew up. She was mentally and physically ill. I remember New Orleans a little bit. I guess I was five when we left. All I remember is a nice house, big windows overlooking a garden. But once we moved here, Pa wouldn’t let any of us talk about New Orleans, our grandparents, or any of it. So it was all wiped away.”

Kya nodded. “I never knew.”

Jodie continued. “Rosemary said their parents had been against Ma’s marriage to Pa from the start, but Ma went off to North Carolina with her husband, not a penny to their names. Eventually Ma began writing to Rosemary and told her of her circumstances—living in a swamp shack with a drunk man who beat her and her children. Then one day, years later, Ma showed up. She had on those fake alligator heels that she cherished. Hadn’t bathed or combed her hair in days.

“For months Ma was mute, didn’t speak one word. She stayed in her old room in her parents’ home, barely eating. Of course, they had doctors come out, but no one could help her. Ma’s father contacted the sheriff in Barkley Cove to ask if Ma’s children were all right, but his office said they didn’t even try to keep track of the marsh people.”

Kya sniffed now and then.

“Finally, almost a year later, Ma became hysterical and told Rosemary she remembered she had left her children. Rosemary helped her write a letter to Pa asking if she could come get us and bring us to live with her in New Orleans. He wrote back that if she returned or contacted any of us, he would beat us unrecognizable. She knew he was capable of such a thing.”

The letter in the blue envelope. Ma had asked for her, for all of them. Ma had wanted to see her. But the outcome of the letter had been vastly different. The words had enraged Pa and sent him back to drinking, and then Kya had lost him as well. She didn’t mention to Jodie that she still kept the letter’s ashes in a little jar.

“Rosemary said Ma never made friends, never dined with the family or interacted with anybody. She allowed herself no life, no pleasure. After a while, she started talking more, and all she talked about was her children. Rosemary said Ma loved us all her life but was frozen in some horrible place of believing that we’d be harmed if she returned and abandoned if she didn’t. She didn’t leave us to have a fling; she’d been driven to madness and barely knew she’d left.”

Kya asked, “How did she die?”

“She had leukemia. Rosemary said it was possibly treatable, but she refused all medication. She just became weaker and weaker, and slipped away two years ago. Rosemary said she died much as she had lived. In darkness, in silence.”

Jodie and Kya sat still. Kya thought of the poem by Galway Kinnell that Ma had underlined in her book:


I have to say I am relieved it is over:





At the end I could feel only pity





For that urge toward more life.





. . . Goodbye.





Jodie stood. “Come with me, Kya, I want to show you something.” He led her outside to his pickup and they climbed into the back. Carefully, he removed a tarp and opened a large cardboard box, and one by one, pulled out and unwrapped oil paintings. He stood them up around the bed of the truck. One was of three young girls—Kya and her sisters—squatting by the lagoon, watching dragonflies. Another of Jodie and their brother holding up a string of fish.

“I brought them in case you were still here. Rosemary sent these to me. She said that for years, day and night, Ma painted us.”

One painting showed all five children as if they were watching the artist. Kya stared into the eyes of her sisters and brothers, looking back at her.

In a whisper, she asked, “Who’s who?”

“What?”

“There were never any photographs. I don’t know them. Who’s who?”

“Oh.” He couldn’t breathe, then finally said, “Well, this is Missy, the oldest. Then Murph. Mandy. Of course, this little cutie is me. And that’s you.”

He gave her time, then said, “Look at this one.”

Before him was an astonishingly colorful oil of two children squatting in swirls of green grass and wild flowers. The girl was only a toddler, perhaps three years old, her straight black hair falling over her shoulders. The boy, a bit older, with golden curls, pointed to a monarch butterfly, its black-and-yellow wings spread across a daisy. His hand was on the girl’s arm.

“I think that’s Tate Walker,” Jodie said. “And you.”

“I think you’re right. It looks like him. Why would Ma paint Tate?”

“He used to come around quite a bit, fish with me. He was always showing you insects and stuff.”

“Why don’t I remember that?”

“You were very young. One afternoon Tate boated into our lagoon, where Pa was pulling on his poke, really drunk. You were wading and Pa was supposed to be watching you. Suddenly, for no reason at all, Pa grabbed you by your arms and shook you so hard your head was thrown back. Then he dropped you in the mud and started laughing. Tate jumped out of the boat and ran up to you. He was only seven or eight years old, but he shouted at Pa. Of course, Pa smacked him and screamed at him to get off his land, never come back or he’d shoot him. By this time we’d all run down to see what was happening. Even with Pa ranting and raving, Tate picked you up and handed you to Ma. He made sure you were all right before he left. We still went fishing some after that, but he never came back to our place again.”

Not until he led me home that first time I took the boat into the marsh, Kya thought. She looked at the painting—so pastel, so peaceful. Somehow Ma’s mind had pulled beauty from lunacy. Anyone looking at these portraits would think they portrayed the happiest of families, living on a seashore, playing in sunshine.

Jodie and Kya sat on the rim of the truck bed, still looking quietly at the paintings.

He continued. “Ma was isolated and alone. Under those circumstances people behave differently.”

Kya made a soft groan. “Please don’t talk to me about isolation. No one has to tell me how it changes a person. I have lived it. I am isolation,” Kya whispered with a slight edge. “I forgive Ma for leaving. But I don’t understand why she didn’t come back—why she abandoned me. You probably don’t remember, but after she walked away, you told me that a she-fox will sometimes leave her kits if she’s starving or under some other extreme stress. The kits die—as they probably would have anyway—but the vixen lives to breed again when conditions are better, when she can raise a new litter to maturity.

“I’ve read a lot about this since. In nature—out yonder where the crawdads sing—these ruthless-seeming behaviors actually increase the mother’s number of young over her lifetime, and thus her genes for abandoning offspring in times of stress are passed on to the next generation. And on and on. It happens in humans, too. Some behaviors that seem harsh to us now ensured the survival of early man in whatever swamp he was in at the time. Without them, we wouldn’t be here. We still store those instincts in our genes, and they express themselves when certain circumstances prevail. Some parts of us will always be what we were, what we had to be to survive—way back yonder.

“Maybe some primitive urge—some ancient genes, not appropriate anymore—drove Ma to leave us because of the stress, the horror and real danger of living with Pa. That doesn’t make it right; she should have chosen to stay. But knowing that these tendencies are in our biological blueprints might help one forgive even a failed mother. That may explain her leaving, but I still don’t see why she didn’t come back. Why she didn’t even write to me. She could’ve written letter after letter, year after year, until one finally got to me.”

“I guess some things can’t be explained, only forgiven or not. I don’t know the answer. Maybe there isn’t one. I’m sorry to bring you this bad news.”