Ivory Box

The Ivory Box1


“Hello, the house.”2

Charlotte winced from her dark corner on the porch. Every time Irma Potter came to call she hollered out the same thing. Charlotte ran a fantasy through her mind where the house would holler back.
“Hey there, Irma, I’m back here.” A visit from Irma was not what she wanted on a day when the heat squeezed the breath out of the body, or any other time, she thought to herself. This was the south and some traditions never faded. So Charlotte put a smile on
her face and rose to meet her visitor.
Reaching out a hand Charlotte drew the woman onto the porch, though, with her Ichabod Crane thin, big boned body, it seemed comical. “C’mon, Irma, have a sit down and I’ll get us some iced tea.” Irma settled herself onto the cushion of the rocker, put a 3


small bag by her feet and began. “Sakes alive, I don’t know how we live through this heat. I was doin a favor for Ellie Hawkins
and took some flowers by to put on Ed Lee’s grave. I stopped by your daddy’s and mama’s graves and put a little bunch a lavender 4

to stay. She fought against closing her eyes, for if she did it would all be right there, blood-speckled and horrific. 5

“Now, Irma, what’s this I hear about you and Ed Cannel?”
Giggling and blushing didn’t suit Irma any better than a monkey sitting in an icebox. Her face became grotesque, a clown face, a homely woman believing she is beautiful. “Oh, that,” Irma said. “Ed Cannel is a fine man, owning that big ole butcher shop and all. He’s been after me to go out with him, and well, I finally said yes. Actually we went to his house and he cooked for me.”
“That’s romantic, Irma, bet you was all abust.”
“Let me tell you, that man sets a fine table. Had them smelly candles and some music. Then he brings out the plates and everythin was pretty. I take up my knife and fork and try the meat, nice as it was in a batter as light as a cloud. After I swallowed it down I asked Ed what it was, of course telling him how delicious it was and all. He looks me right in the eye and says, thank you, Irma.’ And he tells me; and I about bust a gut to get out on the lawn, where I promptly deposited those vile things.”6

“What did Ed think?” “He come runnin after me and brought a cold cloth for me. He tells me he’s sorry, that a lot of his customers bought them from his shop and no one had ever been sick from them. Can you imagine the ignorance of some folks?”
A giggle tickled at Charlotte’s throat, which she tried to wash down with a long drink of the tea. “So I said to him, ‘Ed Cannel, where is your mind. I was raised up fine, and I don’t eat the leavings from some animal. You might sell that vile glop to the tenant farmers and the coloreds, but I do not put that sort of thing in my mouth.” Such a pucker of distaste scrunched Irma’s homely face that Charlotte lost her battle with the giggles.
" Sorry, Irma, it’s just that’s it’s a picture all right.” Charlotte imagined there was a long list of things Irma Potter would never put in her mouth.7

After Irma headed off home on her pink Schwinn Charlotte breathed a sigh of relief at having her solitude back. She ponderec on the things Irma thought she knew. She was the only one who knew.
Ten years earlier, in October, a tragedy happened, or that was the way the folks put it. Alice Alcott, Charlotte’s mother, had always been fey and sweet. She wandered about as if lost and not a part of the world at all. Pale skinned, waif-like and thin as a broom handle, Alice dealt with life from her own world.8

Jimmy Alcott loved his bird-like wife. He knew she was fragile and he protected from everyone and everything. A hard working man, and a quiet one. Giving birth to Charlotte had made Alice a semi-invalid and Jimmy was glad when the doctor told them she should never have another child. Alice just gazed at the window, not crying or shouting. Jimmy was thankful for that too.9

After a few years Jimmy noticed that Alice had taken to doing strange things, just little ones that caused no harm. She took her mother’s Bible and put it in the chair where she usually sat by the fire and would tremble if anyone tried to take the Bible and sit in the chair. So Jimmy and Charlotte pretended they didn’t find that at all unusual.10

Sometimes Alice would bring a bunch of lilacs from the bush outside the back door, tie a ribbon around the stem and dance them around the room, waving them like a priest’s monstrance. Jimmy had tried asking her what she was doing, but such a sad face came with the question, he stopped asking. He figured something wasn’t right, but it wasn’t like she set fire to the curtains or drank chicken blood. Alice was a good mama to little Charlotte, protecting her and stroking her auburn, silky hair.11

Everything had been fine until Charlotte had turned twelve. That was the year the babies started disappearing. Jimmy thought the whole thing might have unhinged Alice more, loving babies as she did. Then too, a child of twelve was a far different critter than a young child. Charlotte caused them no trouble, and in fact she was the one tended to her mother.12

It wasn’t obvious, the new turns, Alice just seemed to become more gaunt, wringing her hands till they were raw, and rubbing at her stomach. Probably was just stress of worrying about raising a teenager, Jimmy decided. Nobody much came by anymore except Irma Potter, and she accepted Alice’s strangeness as if she didn’t even notice.13

Charlotte had turned fifteen the year Jimmy found the ceramic pot filled with babies bones. All the air had just whooshed out of him and he set sad down on the floor, hard. Charlotte and her mother came looking for him at supper time. He was still as stone as he looked questioningly at his wife and daughter.
Alice went to the pot, bent down and began sorting heads from arms and legs, as if cataloguing them for a museum. “Ah, God, Alice, not you. Lord give me strength and tell me it ain’t so.”14

For several years newborn babies had gone missing. Since they were the babies of the poorest and most ignorant residents, no big alarm was raised. Most of the babies were incest babies, and the authorities figured maybe they had died or been taken away. They were all white babies, white trash bundles of misbegotten, abnormal flesh. These weren’t tax paying citizens, there wasn’t any record for most of the families who hunkered down in the backwoods.15

Jimmy moved his heavy lips and managed, “Alice, did you do this? That’s a Roseville pot your Mama give us.” As if the fact the bones were in good pottery made a difference, but of course nothing made a difference any more. Charlotte looked at the two broken people who were her parents and took over. She led them up to their bedroom and got them to settle in bed, giving each a draught of laudanum the doctor had left.16

There was an abandoned house down the road about three miles. A shambles, and nearly choked by kudzu, it was just there, unclaimed. Charlotte put the pot in a pillow case and tied it into the wheel barrow. She hoped no one would pass or see her.17

From the looks of the house a person would figure there was no way in, but Charlotte found a chink where you could reach under the kudzu vines and reach a door handle. It opened onto a big kitchen filled with trash and sad memories. There was a pantry that ran far into the room and Charlotte put the pot at the back, covered with paper and debris. Nobody would ever find it now. 18

When Charlotte finally got home, scratched and dirty, she laid down to rest and fell asleep until morning. She got up and showered and put on fresh clothes, waiting to hear her parents rustling around so she could start breakfast.19

As morning inched along Charlotte grew concerned. Finally it seemed awfully late for them to be in bed. Even considering the fuss and bother of the day before. Charlotte went to the bedroom door and called to her father. Silence. She knocked on the door, softly at first, and then urgently. The latch had not been closed and the bedroom door drifted open, like curtains in a theater.20

She did not shriek when she saw her mother with her throat slashed, blood stiff and black all over. She did not cry out when she saw her father with a look of pain on his face and both wrists slashed. 21

Charlotte Alcott just looked. She might have been there a month, looking, but for the intrusion of nosy Irma Potter. No one ever knocked on a friend’s door, so Irma had made her way to the bedroom when she noticed the girl, standing mute. Irma Potter shrieked.22

There it was, all tidy like a Christmas package. Jimmy Alcott had killed his wife Alice and then committed suicide. No one was especially surprised since they knew how strange the household had always been. Irma rallied the ladies to their funeral duty and Sheriff Weyland declared the case closed. Charlotte demanded to stay in the house, and even though she was shy of sixteen, it was allowed. There was no place for her to go anyway. Life resumed its routines and everything went back to what passed for normal.23

Then the homosexuals came to town to open a bed and breakfast, hoping to draw tourists from Bogalusa as well as folks over in Mississippi, which was just a stone’s throw away at the toe of the boot of Louisiana. Trying not to panic Charlotte had immediately made her way over to the house, late, so nobody would be around. There was a Jeep Cherokee in the driveway and lights on in the living room. Charlotte crept home, deciding she would have to wait until the next day.24

Irma came at daybreak and over lemonade she told Charlotte about her new neighbors. Seem Mr. Jerry and Mr. Matt were ‘partners’ in the bed and breakfast venture. Irma curled her lip as she told the young woman what else the two were ‘partners’ in. Charlotte learned they were going to live in the living room while they refurbished the house. They would do most of the work themselves and contract out the heavier work. There would be someone there all the time. 25

Two days later Charlotte was on the porch shelling peas when it began. Lights and sirens came whipping down the road, followed by a posse of SUV’s, pickups and beaten up old cars. There wasn’t much for the unemployed men of Bogalusa to do, so they considered themselves volunteers and tagged along.26

There was nothing to connect her family to the pot of bones. Why she hadn’t crushed them to dust or thrown down and old well was simple respect. Babies like that had nobody to bury them, so Charlotte let them be. 27

It was after dinner time when Ken Weyland’s cruiser drew into the driveway. A tall lanky form folded itself out of the car and Charlotte raised her hand, beckoning the Sheriff onto the porch.
“How do, Charlotte. Knowed you musta seen all the commotion and since I needed to ask you a question or two I came on by. You ain’t the type to get underfoot and you ain’t no looky-loo, and I thank you for that.”28

Charlotte poured ice tea for the Sheriff, as if he had come to call. “Well, I did surely notice all the hullabaloo, but I can’t stand them vultures come around wantin to intrude on a family. Ken Weyland said nothing, knowing she was thinking about her parent’s suicide and how she had endured the same thing.
They drank in companionable silence for several minutes before Ken said, “It ain’t pretty, so if you don’t wanna hear, I can understand.”29

Blinking herself out of bad memories, Charlotte said, “Them fancy boys kill each other,” she asked. “The Sheriff wiped droplets off the outside of his glass and swiped them over his face. “Nope, ain’t any way like that. Seems them boys was cleaning out that kitchen over there and one of ‘em found something.”30

“Now what could them boys have found to cause all this to do?”
Ken took a breath before he went on. “They was diggin in the pantry there and come across a big pot.”31

“Ken, you can find a pot in any kitchen for miles around.”
“Not a ceramic pot filled with babies’ bones.” Silence drenched the porch until Charlotte managed to croak, “Babies’ bones?”32

“Sure enough. All ages and shapes. I figure it’s the bones from them babies keep goin missin.” Charlotte put a hand to her heart and whispered, “My god, Ken. Ain’t nobody lived in that place since Hector was a pup.” “That’s probably why . . . whoever put them there. Charlotte, you ever notice any people sneakin around there. I know it’s three miles away and you can’t see there from here, but maybe just somebody out of the ordinary and all?”33

Charlotte paused and thought then said, “Nope, Ken, can’t say as I have, but they could have come from the other direction, but even if they came this way I wouldn’t have noticed for sure. Not if they was sneakin like.”34

Charlotte waited for the sheriff to mention her mama, but then nobody had ever connected Alice with the babies. They figured she wasn’t together enough to do anything like that. She didn’t want anyone smearing her innocent mama with the tar brush. All it would take is one question to set off a wildfire of gossip.35

“Well, Charlotte, now I figure it probably was some stranger from round Bogalusa or over on the other way. Stranger might a happened on the house and knew it was a good place to hide his trophies. Reckon this is case closed. There won’t be nobody claimin them poor mites. You be careful and you call me if you see or hear anything, wouldn’t want some sick bas. . . sorry, Charlotte, some sick pervert causin you grief.”36

Charlotte promised the sheriff she would do as he asked and he took himself off back to the scene of the crimes, or at least the storage place of the little bones. Cicadas were humming and no-see-ums clouded Charlotte’s nose and hands. She sat thinking of her parents. Sweet Alice and quiet Jimmy, two people no one would give much of a thought to. Sighing, Charlotte tidied her porch and went inside, washed the dishes and went to her room. From a hidden place under the old floorboards she took something wrapped in sheeting. 37

Sitting on the edge of the bed Charlotte unwrapped an ivory jewelry box, an heirloom from her Great-grandmother Celia. Opening it tenderly Charlotte removed each item and placed it on the chenille bed cover. So many hands, tiny dried out little puckers that had once been the hands of the babies she had sent to their deaths. Daddy had been wrong when he thought Mama was the one. 38

Mama protected her little girl, Charlotte, almost as if she understood why. Charlotte knew that Macy Howell was due to give birth to her baby any time, so she prepared herself to go out. Unwanted babies, and Charlotte took care of each one.