Free My Drowning by Jim Grimsley

what to do, you one-leg shit-ass. I wished you was dead. I wished the sheriff would shoot you when he catches you.”
    Uncle Cope swung round on the crutches.
    â€œI hope they keep your cripple ass in jail till you rot.” She must have been leaning forward, I could see her shadow. “I wished the deputy would find you right now. I wished he would drive up right now.”
    Uncle Cope and the others slid into the car. Other men were climbing onto the back of the truck. A line of dust rose as they fled along the road.
    I CRAWLED OUT from under the house when things above were quiet. My belly was empty and groaning. Creeping up the steps, I entered through the door that led to the narrow hall.
    From the bedrooms I heard no sound. Daddy sprawled across the bed, big boots pointed toward the ceiling, mouth slack, and eyes closed. The other room was empty.
    In the kitchen Nora and Otis were sopping biscuit. Madson and Joe Robbie slept on a blanket by the stove. I rubbed my eyes and tiptoed to Nora. “You can have a biscuit too,” she whispered.
    Mama stood on the back porch. She had shoved her fists against the fabric of her skirt, the dress taut along her back. Soft hairs had come loose at the back of her neck, where the flesh was tender and smooth.
    â€œDid she hurt you?”
    I shook my head. I ate the biscuit to ease the pain in my belly.
    â€œI’m keeping an eye on Mama, I think she’s about to run off somewhere. Like the time she took us to the river.”
    I must have remembered. I guess I did, but I dreamed about the river too, her sliding down into it, and I could not always tell the difference between the dream and any memory there might have been. When Mama moved off the porch, Nora and I followed.
    Mama muttered as she descended from the porch and crossed the yard. She headed into the woods behind the house.
    She walked far enough to stand out of sight of the house, and we stopped short of her. She stood in a patch of sun falling down from on high, a dappling of her arms and of the dress she wore. Her hands rose up. It was as if they were separate things and they were rising away from her. She never made a sound.
    Mama rises out of the river gasping, throwing water from her hair. Her breath rises up in trails of steam. The surprise of seeing her move so freely still echoes in me now. Her large, flat breasts lift, the yellowed bodice of the slip clinging to the high flesh. She says something, I can’t remember what it is, something about the cold. But she addresses someone above my head, not me. Someone else is here, I can’t remember who
.
    I was seeing this again in my vision as Nora and I shivered in the cold shadow of a tree. Mama stood in light, but it was as if she were drowning again, throwing up her arms as she sank into the golden sun.
    She steps ashore. She is standing over me, shivering and dripping, and I can see the outline of her heavy belly, her rolling thighs. I am so in love with her, every part of me aches. She scoops me up, and her arms are strong but soft; I burrow into them. I weigh less than the wet slip
.
    But this time she does not set me onto the riverbank, gently, as before. She glares at me coldly, as if I am some fish she has dragged off the end of her line, and she takes me by the shoulder and flings me high, end over end, into the middle of the river, and I sink into the cold, and I am falling forever, and I never look down
.
    Mama made no sound in the sunny woods. Her hands sank slowly to cradle her belly. After a while she headed back to the house. When she passed Nora and me, hidden behind a tree trunk, she had no expression at all on her face.
    DEPUTY FLOYD TALKED to Daddy for a long time, on the front porch, and Mama waited in the kitchen. She had paled and hardly moved. We waited in the kitchen with her. Daddy closed the door when he went outside and now spoke in hushed tones; we could hear his voice but not his words.
    â€œHe’s going to