Pigs in Heaven - Barbara Kingsolver [24]
“Siyo,” she says, latching the screen door to keep kids in and dogs out. Her brother and sister-in-law are kneeling on the kitchen floor and return her greeting without looking up. They must be on speaking terms this week: they’re hammering the legs back onto the old pine dining table, and it’s not easy to take on a project like that without communicating.
Annawake watches the two of them, united for once as they both concentrate on keeping the table leg on straight while Dellon drives the nail. His thick braid swings like a bell rope as he hammers, and their heads almost touch. “Got her?” he asks, and Millie nods, her crinkled perm softly brushing Dellon’s shining black crown. They were married less than a year and have been divorced for five, but it hasn’t interfered with their rate of producing children. When the table leg is secure, Millie rolls sideways and takes hold of the lip of the sink. Annawake takes her other hand and pulls her up.
“Seems like you take one month longer with every baby,” Dellon says, and Annawake laughs because it’s true: the first was premature, the second right on time, the third one three weeks late, and this one seems to have staked Millie’s ample territory for its homestead.
“Don’t say that out loud, he’ll hear you.” Millie leans over her stomach and tells it, “You’re coming out of there this weekend, you hear? If you go any longer past due you’re walking home from the hospital yourself.”
Annawake gets a soda out of the refrigerator and sits in a chair, moccasins together, facing the upside-down table. “Is this thing going to live?”
“It’ll never walk again,” Dellon says, squatting on his heels. He shrugs his braid back over the great round loaf of his shoulder and gives the table leg a couple of trial knocks with the hammer. He grins up at his little sister. “You scalp the cowboys today?”
“I did my best.”
“Don’t make fun of Annawake’s job, Dell,” Millie says, turning her back on them, running water into a big aluminum kettle. The sun shining through her shocked hair reveals the perfect globe of her skull.
“I never make fun of Annawake. She’d beat me up.”
“Dad, let’s go.” Baby Dellon, who is almost six and hates to be called Baby Dellon, runs into the kitchen with a football helmet on.
Dellon stands up and puts a hammerlock on Annawake’s neck from behind. “When you getting married, beautiful?” he asks.
“When Gabe says he’ll come to my wedding.” She feels Dellon’s body slump against her back, and she realizes she said what she did just to feel that slack sadness in another person. She’s the only one who will still say their brother Gabriel’s name.
“Leave her alone,” Millie says, shifting her heavy kettle onto the stove. “Getting married’s not what it’s cranked up to be. What time you bringing Baby Dellon back?”
“Tomorrow noon, if we’re not too hungover.”
“I’m going to kill you one of these days.”
“I’m not Baby Dellon, I’m Batman,” says Baby Dellon, and they are out the door.
“I’m going to kill him one of these days.”
“He’s a good dad,” Annawake says, setting the table back on its feet, wondering if it might give itself a dignified shake and walk off, like a turtle. “He won’t be drinking at a stomp dance. He wouldn’t even get into the stomp grounds if he was.”
Millie laughs. “Did you ever hear what happened on our first date?”
“You went to a stomp dance.”
“That’s how Dellon tells it. If I told you the real story he’d shoot me.” Millie leans against the counter, smiling. Her bunched print skirt hangs down from her waist like a dust ruffle on a bed. She brushes crimped wires of hair from her eyes, and Annawake knows she’s going to tell the story.
“We were up in the mountains and it was hot, and Dellon wanted to have a beer. I knew there was the dance that night so I wasn’t going to drink, but he did anyway. We had a fight,