Blue Eyes
Patricia Lieb

Corrine stopped singing and looked up at Mary. Their eyes met and locked. Instantly, Corrine screamed, her voice cutting through the air like a siren.

Without warning, the white woman jumped on Mary, knocking her to the floor. Mary tried to crawl away, but the white woman was too strong. She pushed Mary over and sat on her belly. She began beating Mary, slapping her on the face furiously with the hairbrush. Corrine continued screaming hysterically. Mary, helpless against the older woman, screamed too.

“Jesus Christ!” Mary yelled as two sanitarium employees came rushing into the room and pulled the old woman off her. Then one employee hurried to Corrine.

Mary knew she had to get out of there before she got arrested for trespassing. She slipped out the door quickly and ran first down one sidewalk and then another. Reaching her car, her whole body shook so she could barely open the door. When she was finally inside, she started the engine and sped down the circular driveway, past the columns and onto the street leading to the freeway.

“I’m damn lucky to be alive,” she whispered to herself. But oh, the pain. The pure hell of it all.
Without touching it, she could feel a lump swelling on her head. Or was it swelling inside her head? Swelling in her brain? Her nose was surely broken and she tasted blood on her lip. She reached for a tissue and pressed it to her nostrils.

Corrine had screamed at her exactly as she had in her dreams, exactly as she had during her childhood. She rubbed her forehead.

What had the white woman said about Sadie and Corrine’s conversations? The two talked about dying and shacks. It didn’t make sense. What shacks? Shacks meant something. What else had the woman said? Mary squinted, trying to remember.

Cotton? Did she say they talked about cotton? Or had she long ago heard Sadie and Corrine talk about cotton?

If only she had talked more with the white woman instead of trying to converse with crazy Corrine. It was too late now. She could never go back.

Mary tried to raise her swollen brows. Damn, what a headache. She felt the blood gushing inside her head. Gushing like water. She was drowning. She would stop for coffee soon. But first, she would put some miles between herself and Longview.

She sped up the freeway ramp. She had to get away. She had to hurry. She had to flee far from that crazy woman.

Sadie was right. She should never have come to Longview. She pressed harder on the accelerator. The car wouldn’t go fast enough. And words the old white woman had said kept rushing to her mind.
What had she said about shacks? There was a shack in that picture in Sadie’s cedar box. There was a picture of a shack with a family in front of it. She could see the picture in her mind.

And the picture of the little white girl? Who was she? Bessa Ann? Yes. Bessa Ann was the name written on the back of the photograph.

Bessa Ann? The people in front of the shacks? The old crazy woman?

Corrine?

Corrine! Corrine! Corrine!

Corrine’s face—getting younger and younger—flashing over and over in her mind. The people in front of the shacks. The little brown boy in the picture. Slue. His named was Slue. The little girl in the picture. Bessa Ann!

“Corrine!” Mary screamed. The river was filling her chest.

“Do something Corrine! Corrine, you dummy!

“I’m coming baby, I’m coming!

“John! Help! John! John!”

Mary could hear her own screams as the car headed off the freeway, onto the shoulder, then tumbled down the grassy slope in perfect rotations, as if she had staged the incident for months.

But this was not really happening. It couldn’t really be happening.

“Corrine!” she screamed again.

Corrine crouched in the corner of her room, her hands over her face, her feet scratching furiously against the carpet. She tried to push herself further into the corner. No one could save her now. Not the nurses. Not her white roommate who had beat Kate’s ghost off with a hairbrush this time.

But it was more than just Kate now. Kate must ‘ta had the help of the devil hisself to sneak up on her in that black body. Missy Kate had come back to get her all right, just like she promised she’d do. She’d get hold of her now. Sure as sin, she’d get her.