For Sunday worship, Curtis took her to a small country church that was attended by forty or so adults and a handful of
children that were corralled out the door for Sunday School by a surly and corpulent
gentleman with a round red nose and stained shirt. Leta winced when he snapped
at a little girl who was not moving at the speed he required.
The service, she felt, was unremarkable and sadly devoid of
music—even a Capella singing—and the minister somewhat bitter for reasons she
could need grasp. He seemed to be encouraging his congregation to join him in
his animosity toward individuals who did not strictly agree with his ideology,
focusing his fifty-minute sermon on his own needs and dignity under the guise
of how God only blesses certain people and why.
Having attended one church or other her entire life, Leta was
at least comfortable in any house of God, and after the service, as Curtis
introduced her to several of the churchgoers, she found them polite and
pleasant, if unremarkable.
But she would focus the rest of her day on housework. Before
she did anything, she decided on the drive back to the house, she needed to
clean up the kitchen. She would clean the cabinets and then do all the dishes.
Having only been in her new husband’s house one day, she had just been cleaning
what she needed to use as she went along. However, as he had been living alone,
a widower for many months with a poor grasp of housekeeping, the kitchen and even
the living room were cluttered with a great number of dishes, utensils, pots
and pans that had been used and discarded over a long period of time. She would
scrub the walls, the floors, the counters—everything. A person, she believed,
was defined by where and how she ate.
Then she would tackle the bedroom, which, she realized during
the drive, she had yet to see in the daylight. All she could remember was that
it smelled like her husband. While she did not object to his scent on his
person, she did not want to have it linger in their shared living space or
carry his smell on her own person.
Monday, the following day, she would do the laundry.
Her own plans, however, remained only intentions, for Curtis
wanted potatoes for lunch, which meant that he would have to show her the root cellar
before they could even eat. They entered from near the back of the house through
a cracked door with a rusted hinge that stuck. Curtis had to use some force to
open it, and she wondered how she would be able to go in and out on her own.
While he was doing this, she held the lantern. He took a
couple of steps down and reached out his hand, which she didn’t notice. Then he
snapped his fingers and opened his palm. She looked quizzically. He turned and
grabbed the lantern roughly, trapping one of her fingers in his tight grip.
“My hand!” she gasped.
“You should have given me the lamp when I told you to,” he
snapped and continued down the stairs, the light guiding his way.
She shook out her own stinging hand and followed.
The stench of rotting produce nearly made her vomit.
“It smells pretty bad in here, don’t it?” he inquired.
“Yes,” she said, using as little breath as possible.
Leta could barely see, but from the light and shadows, she
deduced that the cellar, carved into the dirt and clay, was about eight feet
square. There were some bare shelving units, a few drying hooks hanging from
the low ceiling—also the floor of the kitchen and about a dozen of bushel and
peck baskets, as well as three large milk canisters.
“The ‘taters are closest to the door, ‘cause they’re my
favorites,” Curtis said. He reached toward the basket.
“Just bring up the entire basket,” she said.
“But we only need a few, Mrs. Curtis,” he protested.
“I know,” she answered, “but I need to see what’s here, and
the only way I can do that is by hauling everything out into the light.”
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