On Sundays, She Picked Flowers

By Yah Yah Schofield

When Judith Rice killed her mother, she thought she put an end to the woman's hold on her. Seventeen years later, secluded deep in the woods of northern Georgia, Jude knows that the past isn't all that easy to discard.

Alone with her strange house and even stranger woods, Jude must grapple with ghosts, haints, beas

• Language: English
• Publisher: Yah Yah Scholfield
• Release date: Feb 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9781087920368

Book preview

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

It took Judith Rice thirty-four years of hard, broke-down, black-and-blue beatdown living for her to realize that if she ever wanted to be free of her mother, she’d have to do the freeing herself. As a child, she wished on shooting stars and fairy godmothers, blindly faithful in the way that only the very young and hopeless could afford to be. She turned to Moses when she was older, Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman, then God Himself. Jude didn’t know what she was praying for when she got on her knees each night. Patience? Thicker skin, a stronger back? Deliverance, maybe, if she believed in that sort of thing.

Her prayers were never bloody. Even her most expansive fantasies left room for reconciliation, room for apologies and forgiveness. All Jude ever wanted from her mother was a little time apart, time for them to think things over. Then, eventually, when they were ready for one another, ready to put the past behind them, they’d come back together, mother and daughter in perfect harmony.

Jude was thirty when she stopped praying. Her arms and legs were forever mottled with her mother’s rage, her face and soul permanently scarred by her wrath. If Jude wanted her freedom, she’d have to kill for it.

She wasn’t a bloody-minded person, Jude. Violence disturbed her, viciousness unnerved. Still, she was practical, pragmatic. If Jude thought she could reason with her mother, she would, but Ma’am was a gruesome lady, the kind of animal that understood fists better than words. Ma’am had a debt to settle. All those whippings, lashings, punches and slaps, all that screaming and crying and carrying on, cursing at, spitting on, beating down, cold words and colder feelings had to be paid for by somebody. Tally up the costs. Let Ma’am have a taste of her own bitter medicine; let her have it tenfold!

And if someone argued that it was unnatural for Jude to dream of matricide, she knew of several species of arachnids that ate their mothers directly after birth. Ingenious creatures, spiders; what other living creature burst from the sac and searched hungrily for the very thing which gave it life, and, finding her prone and weak from labor, devoured her? Nothing more natural to spiders, to Jude, to repay that initial kindness with a killing.

Besides, it wasn’t as if Jude were killing anything real. Ma’am had long ago destroyed the image of a mother. All that remained—the terrific physical form, the birthing body which resisted and resented—was the afterbirth. Like the placenta, it had to be removed lest it poison the body. Now it was up to Jude to decide what to do with it. Wrap it in the day’s newspaper and discard it, burn it, bury it in the garden or, perhaps, keep it as a keepsake. Eat it.

Her mother’s death—imminent, redder than sunset—might have been harder to swallow if there was more than blood binding she and Ma’am together. Supposedly, Ma’am had birthed her, nursed her, but with no pictures of her as a baby, no birth story fondly told, it was as if Jude simply came from nowhere. A mistake, a hiccup. Poof! And there was Jude in her too-small bassinet, in the arms of a relative, a large and unwieldy baby who despised touch and shied from noise. Poof! And there she was at her mother’s side, unsmiling, a bonnet strapped to her head and hard, white shoes on her feet. Poof! And here was Jude from some dark, quiet place, all flesh and blood but decidedly not-human.

Every so often, a perfumed aunt or good-humored uncle would reach into her bassinet to hold her, kiss her cheeks, or to press the flesh, still pliant from birth, into pleasing shapes. They’d always stop short, chuckle nervously and step away from baby Jude. They’d say, Have you checked her diaper? or I don’t think she’s quite ready to be held. Those that swallowed their discomfort soon regretted it. Funny little Jude! Strange little beast who never cooed, never laughed or smiled. She didn’t cry, not even when wet or hungry, and nothing amused her. Still as wood and just as silent, Jude watched, sloe-eyed and serious, seeing through, past and over whoever held her attention.

Still, Jude was her mother’s child. No one else hurt her the way Ma’am hurt her; nobody else could. It was a singular sort of hatred, focused and intent. Jude was curious as a child until Ma’am decided her curiosity was merely nosiness. Her silence was taken for surliness, her watchful eyes disrespectful. Jude never knew she was slow, stupid, listless and lazy, too big and too damn ugly until her mother told her so.

As a young woman, Jude learned to make use of herself, teaching herself how to sew after ruining a blouse and learning to cook her own meals after being accused of being a glutton. Friendless (partly from her own shyness and partly from Ma’am’s dislike of anyone too rowdy, too hincty, too ‘Black’, too nosy, too dirty, and on and on), Jude turned to books. She loved Eleanor Vance, Jane Eyre, and Janey. All alone with only paper as playmates, she flourished, mind and soul wild with imagination. Around her mother, Jude clipped her inquisitive nature, dulled the diamond-cut of her eyes. Another compromise, Jude supposed; the very marrow of her being for a roof over her head, clothes on her back.

Who even was this woman that birthed her? Jude knew nothing of Ma’am, she knew everything of Ma’am. She heard others call her mother Ernestine, but it was clear to Jude that Ernestine and Ma’am were too entirely different women. Ernestine was cheerful and beloved by her sisters, her church and community. Ma’am was nameless, feared. Any other woman could look Ernestine in the eye. Jude stared at her mother sometimes, wondered about her thoughts and her heart, what she dreamed and what she imagined, and Ma’am glared back until Jude bent her neck. Smacked Jude, still, for having the gall the defy her, the nerve to look a grown lady dead in the eye.

And yet, nasty as her mother could be, her moments of cruelty were balanced by small acts of kindness. Jude didn’t know what to make of them, didn’t know how to handle them any better than Ma’am’s vicious fits. They were just as sudden and inexplicable, random as lightning strikes and about as rare. Ma’am never apologized, never said outright that she was wrong for anything she did, but she did invite Jude along to run errands, hold the butcher’s ticket and pick out the fruit she liked. She thinks of her childhood in flashes of light, darkness; hands roughly shaking her awake, ice cold water splashing her back to consciousness. Blood was balanced by baby dolls, broken skin and bones mended by her favorite meals, and trips to the store, and whatever bright, new and shiny material thing she wanted.

What to do? What to do about her contradictory mother? The thought of spilling Ma’am’s blood both saddened and satisfied. She wasn’t unfeeling. She did love her mother. Loved her deeply and desperately, the way that a starving man loves the taste of gruel. What a sick thing love was! If Jude could cut the feeling from her chest and be rid of it, she would, for what good had love ever done her?

No more. If it had to be like this, red and terrible and violent, so be it. Thirty-four years was long enough.

For freedom, for her life, Jude’s mother would have to die.

W

It happened in the kitchen. Very germane—butchery in the cooking place, the butcher and carving knives and roasting forks crowding in. The tile was quite receptive to the killing; it expected bloodiness.

Jude loved the kitchen in her mother’s house. There were black-and-white checkerboard tiles, pea-green backsplash and yellowy-cream colored walls. The cabinets and counters were the same pale yellow, very pretty against the avocado fridge and matching stove. Yolk yellow curtains (sewn, craftily, by Jude) hung at a window over the deep farmhouse sink. Whenever Jude washed dishes or filled pots, she looked out at a neat, little lawn and a flower box planted with crocus, primrose.

All over the kitchen, on the counter tops and on the shelves, scattered on the small round table sat in the middle of the room, were little glass angels. Ma’am loved her angels. Loved buying them, cleaning them, caring for them. Every corner was occupied by ceramic cherubim, every nook and cranny christened with porcelain putti, all of them brown-faced and beatific, praying and singing, heads bowed, on their knees, coupled together with harps and halos, or set apart to smile their glazed smiles on their lonesome.

Ma’am rarely came into the kitchen. Cooking was Jude’s area, and unless her mother had her mouth set for something in particular, it was Jude’s job to cook their meals. She didn’t mind it, not really. When she had the kitchen to herself, she could work how she liked, listen to what she liked. Jude propped the window open with one of the sturdier angels and let the noise of the neighborhood pour in, the music from nearby radios and the children loose in the street ‘til they were called in for supper

It was hot in the kitchen. Sweat gathered on Jude’s upper lip as she chopped vegetables for beef stew. The biscuits were cooling on the table, and the meat was simmering in a big silver stew pot, the smell of fat and butter and herbs tickling her nose. Jude nudged the window open a little further. Outside, somebody was playing Nina Simone. Somebody else flipped through channels, sitcom hijinks just about drowning out Nina’s mournful piano. I’m just a soul whose intentions are good…Upstairs, Ma’am called for her.

Jude felt—Well, if she were being honest with herself, she’d say she felt a lot like the knife she held. It was a simple kitchen knife, one of a set, but it had a honed sharpness that Jude liked and a clean, steel blade. The wood handle fit perfectly into the curve of her palm, made her arm feel long and sharp. Whenever she honed it, she honed herself. Back and forth, back and forth, grinding down on the whetstone until they were both sharp enough to cut and cleave and slice.

Like the blade, Jude had been ground down the whole week long. All day, every day, Ma’am found new things to pick at; the way Jude talked, the way she walked, the way she ate and sat and looked. Only last night, her mother tore her up in front of her church friends, mocked her blemishes and joyless face, mocked her clothes and size. She was nothing, less than nothing, and, later in the evening, when they were alone and Jude was wound tight as steel wire, Ma’am chewed her out again. All Jude had done was dropped one of the angels, an honest mistake. Still, Jude was stupid, Jude was clumsy, thoughtless, worthless—Jude bit down on her tongue. Gnawed and chewed at the inside of her cheeks until all she tasted was red.

Ma’am called. Judith? Judith! Judy, Jude, on and on and on.

She licked her lips and said, Ma’am?

From upstairs, muffled by walls and carpet, You got dinner ready?

Not yet, thought Jude. Aloud, she said, Not just said, Ma’am. Soon.

Jude slid the veggies from the cutting board into the pot of meat. She took a deep breath of all the cooking parts, the married smells, and exhaled steam.

Girl! You hear me?

Yes’m! She pushed the meat and vegetables around the stew pot with a spoon, took another breath. I said it’s almost done!

Thumping from upstairs, her mother coming down. When Ma’am came into the kitchen, she was dressed for bed, quilted robe and a pair of house shoes, her hair brushed back from her face. Jude was the spitting image of her mother—Ma’am would deny it, of course, if anyone ever said it, but they shared a mouth, round cheeks and a dimpled chin. They were about the same height and size, stocky and big-boned women with a good amount of padding around the waist, tummy and thighs.

Jude didn’t know how old her Ma’am was. Fifty-something? Sixty? She mentioned working on her pappy’s farm when she was young, but there was hardly any of that strength left in her. Time and age and slow living softened her back, her belly. Sickness tired her, dulled her senses. Ma’am limped when she walked, and her hands, once as graceful and fine as Jude’s, were stiff and gnarled.

Ma’am hobbled around the table and came to stare over Jude’s shoulder at the food. She had a nasty smell to her, peppermint and camphor with shit underneath. She smelled old and sick, a dying thing washed in perfume. Jude held her breath as her mother stepped back and sat down heavily at the table. Watched. Whenever Ma’am was bored or aggravated, she liked to sit around waiting for Jude to make a mistake. Last week it was one of the guest bathrooms. A speck of dirt on the mirror, a little grime behind the faucet—Ma’am held her by the nape and shook her like a puppy, forced her head into the toilet while shouting incoherently about sloth, slovenliness.

You handled them errands I told you about? Ma’am asked.

Yes’m.

And the living room? You cleaned the living room?

They’d go on like this for hours, Ma’am listing chores and Jude checking them off. Yes’m, yes ma’am, of course not ma’am. Jude said, I got everything done, Ma’am.

Your room? Jude paused. Nina Simone begged not to be misunderstood, voice smooth and sorrowful. My room?

She pretended not to hear her mother’s question, and brought the heat down under the meat. When Ma’am asked again, Jude nodded her head and said she had.

Yeah, said Ma’am. You must’ve. Seemed awfully empty in there, bag packed up and everything. You going somewhere?

Jude couldn’t suppress the fear that tinted her voice. You went into my room?

Your room? Ma’am chuckled and rose from her seat with a grunt. You ain’t got a room in this house, girl. I own this place and everything in it, including your sneaky ass. Where was you planning on going with that bag? Huh?

There was the right thing to say and then the wrong thing. If Jude were sensible, she’d shut up and say nothing, maybe tell a little fib about going to visit one of her aunties. Getting caught in a lie was nothing; Jude, experienced from wriggling out from under Ma’am, knew how to get herself out of just about anything. The truth, however—that being in the house made her feel like a caged tiger, that she no longer had the strength to take the beatings and berating, that each and every second under her mother’s roof was grinding her spirit down to dust—Jude didn’t dare say it aloud.

I can’t stay here no more, Ma’am. The words fell out of her, loose as loose bowels. Taut silence fell over the room. Jude picked the knife back up to give her hands something to do, scraping the tip against her cutting board. "It ain’t no good, Ma’am. Not

Reviews for On Sundays, She Picked Flowers

[KJ · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of the most originally stunningly written stories I’ve read. I definitely will read more from this author.
A story of transformation, life and truth.