Mulberry Avenue
by K. Mehta
—October 1995
Every first occurred on Mulberry Avenue.
Now, “Avenue” was a stretch to civilization. Only our house, with its four stories of pillared 1930s Colonial Revival, sat on the small slope outside of Rifford. We’d owned all seventy-six acres of Mulberry ever since Gran and Gramp bought it up in the midst of the Depression. Gramp had hoarded the money his father made roofing the homes of New York’s suburban beau monde and whisked it away to West Virginia with Gran.
“Nesting,” he called it. He always avoided the stock page in Daddy’s paper. Gramp was a farmer, and he liked the quiet hegemony it afforded him. He planted and picked when he pleased, lording over the little kingdom he’d sown on Mulberry Avenue, seed by seed.
I think of this all as Gramp’s coffin is heaved away by Daddy and his brothers. My older sister, Carrie, gently digs her teeth into her thumb beside me. It took Mama years to get her to stop. I nudge her gently. She drops her hand. She’s been biting her thumb more often recently. We all have, in our own ways.
—May 1996
Every first occurred on Mulberry Avenue.
We recognize the finality of death. We were never a hunting family, but Daddy been pulling out Gramp’s old rifle more and more, usually with a bottle of bourbon as his accomplice. My oldest brother, Jett sits us all down and tells us how Daddy took him to shoot grackles out by the Marshon’s field last week.
“You see ‘em flitting about by the barn?” he says. “Their wings beating a million miles a minute?” He slams his hands together. “Done, just done. Like that.”
Ben, our littlest brother, curls into Carrie. “Daddy just shot ‘em?” he whines.
Jett nods and whisks his thumb and middle finger past one another. “Like that.”
—June 1996
Every first occurred on Mulberry Avenue.
Carrie picks out a pink prom dress, but my jealousy subsides when she lets me help Mama and Gran get her dressed. Overalls aside, and converse flung by the door, Carrie looks like the models from the magazines at Mama’s salon. Jett drives her to the prom that night.
When Mama tells me to go to bed around one, I stomp my feet and whine. We’ve been waiting for hours. She quietly repeats her direction. I yell, and soon after, receive my first slap. Mama’s eyes brim with tears. I run out of the room before she says another word.
I don’t see Carrie again after that night. I piece together—from Mama’s sobs, Jett’s rage, and Daddy’s silence—that Carrie was gang raped by Mayor Caldwell’s sons and their friends. Daddy refused to take it to court, telling Carrie in the hospital we were better off sending her out of town than getting the family embroiled in a futile legal battle. The taxes on the farm were already gnawing away at our funds.
Mama starts writing long letters to Aunt Vivian on Saturdays. I sneak a few Band-Aids in when it’s my turn to take out the mail. I suspect my sister has been biting her thumb more frequently.
—July 2003
Every first occurred on Mulberry Avenue.
“FOR SALE” should be one word, I muse while twirling on the tire swing by the end of the road. Ben is running through the field across the street. For the last time, of course. He’s nearly ten now, but Mama still needs every eye on him. Since Jett left for college, she’s become deeply protective of her last baby bird.
A second moving truck rumbled past. The first floor of the house had turned into a chaotic exhibition of Mulberry antiquities, ready to be sold. After Gran was diagnosed with leukemia last year, she started putting sticky notes on everything she wanted us to keep. The photo albums and the family cradle were a given, but she was most particular about the little things—the candelabra she and Gramp had at their wedding, the hand mirror her mother gifted her. Each sticky note and their little stories were worthy of preservation themselves.
Gran insisted on being buried beneath the willows out back, right next to Gramp. “This is where I’ve lived and this is where I’ll die,” she said. “Unless you want to dig Norman up, I’m staying here.” Her death was so gradual, the hurt ebbed away on its own.
Gran begged Daddy to allow Carrie to come home for her burial. None of us had seen her in over two years, and Aunt Vivian only wrote Mama every couple of months. I searched for her letters whenever I brought in the mail, dancing my fingers across the lilac envelopes whenever I found them. Even though I never opened them myself, I could tell that they were short, sparse letters. Daddy gently patted Gran’s hand. “We’ll write Viv, Ma,” he’d murmur when he thought it was just him and Mama with her. “We’ll ask her.”
My back pressed to the wall outside, I’d bite my lip. I didn’t need to search the mail to know they never would.
Jett didn’t come back for the funeral either. After Carrie left, Jett took Daddy’s rifle and tried to shoot the Caldwell boys in a blind rage. He missed but was arrested that night. In custody, Jett recounted the entire incident to the police before Daddy bailed him out. When the rumor spread throughout Rifford, Daddy nearly beat the life out of Jett. Everyone in town believed it was simply the lies of a family crumbling at the edges. Mayor Caldwell had raised the taxes on Mulberry since Gramp died, and everyone knew we couldn’t afford to pay them. Nearly all of our employees had left, and with no one to tend the land, hardly anything was growing. It all fit. Our swift expulsion from Rifford society was the clincher. Mulberry Avenue, our once great empire, was waning.
I watch Mama direct the movers through the door, flapping her hands when they stumble with anything in bubble wrap. I curve my fingers over my eyes and peek past the sunset’s glare to the window of Daddy’s study. The blinds are pulled down. I feel my thumb move instinctively to my mouth, and silently thank Carrie for this simple yet effective vice.
—March 1999
Every first occurred on Mulberry Avenue.
When we bury Daddy, I felt angered by the redundancy of it all. A coffin, suffocated with mound after mound of dirt. A slab of stone meant to sum up one’s life with a simple phrase: Loving Husband and Father. I keep hearing that gunshot over and over. Remember how I sat up in bed, cold sweat shrieking down my back. I want to run inside, grab a bottle of whiskey from Daddy’s study, and pour it over his grave. Give him a final drink. Lubricate his journey to Hell.
Mama, Ben, and I stand alone in our black clothes. Mourning in the morning, I think. It’s too funny not to laugh at. Mama turns to look at me, cackling over her husband’s grave, salty tears pouring down into my mouth. She doesn’t have the strength to slap me.
—January 2000
Every first occurred on Mulberry Avenue.
I’ve begun chewing on everything since starting college. Rifford is not an easy place to study, but Mama refused to let me out of her sight. She keeps calling Jett, telling him he should study at home, too. He entertains the idea for her, but I knew he’d never really consider it. I can’t blame him. At night, I search my body for the markings that everyone else could so clearly discern.
—July 2003
Every first occurred on Mulberry Avenue.
The kingdom has finally fallen. I pick up the final box lingering in the doorway. Mama’s already in the car with Ben. Over the past four years, she portioned off the remaining farmland around Mulberry, bit by bit, until it was all swallowed up. And now, finally, the house too.
I stuff the box into the back of the car and slide into the front seat with Mama. As we roll down the road for the final time, I realize that every first occurred on Mulberry Avenue, as did every end.
About the Author
K. Mehta is a poet and playwright whose work has been published in Roanoke Review, Apprentice Writer, and The New York Times. Her writing has also been honored by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, the Poetry Society of New York, and The Blank Theatre.