The Covered Bridge I Swept for Twelve Years

I knew the name because Bernadine told me at a church supper with her eyes down: Josie. I said it was a pretty name.

Then I stood in the church kitchen with my hands under the cold tap for ten minutes.

Garland never once asked me to forgive her. He knew me. Begging me would have been like pushing a locked door with a feather. He left the door of every room open and waited.

Four winters ago, in the second week of March, he died in his recliner in front of a Reds spring game with a cup of coffee going cold in his hand.

He was sixty-two. I found him at half past four when I came in from the yard.

He had told me one thing the week before. We were doing dishes, his hands in the suds, and he said without looking at me, “Ivalee. Cross the creek.”

I said, “What are you on about?” He said, “Cross the creek before you can’t.” And I said, “The creek runs both directions, Garland, and she knows where I live,” and he laughed one short, tired laugh and let the water out of the sink.

Corliss came to the funeral. I should say that plainly, since I did not do her the courtesy of saying it for four years. She stood at the back of the church by the guest book in a plain dark dress, with Denby beside her and a small girl in a navy coat holding her skirt. The pews were full, and every head turned.

I was in the family pew. I turned. I saw her. I saw the child.

I would like to say I held out my arms. I looked at her for as long as it takes to count three and turned back to the casket with my chin up like a woman in a photograph.

At the church door afterward she came through the line with Denby and Josie and put her hand out to me.

I took it the way you take a stranger’s. She said, “Mama, I am so sorry about Daddy.” Her voice cracked on the last word.

I said, “There is room at the back of the fellowship hall if you want some ham.”

I said that to my daughter at her father’s funeral. I said it with a small, correct smile, and I watched it land on her face like a slap.

She did not take the ham. Bernadine told me later that Corliss sat in the car in the church lot forty minutes with her forehead on the steering wheel.

I told myself that if my daughter had wanted to stay she would have stayed.

I know now I had it exactly backward. She stayed as long as she could stand it. I made sure it was not long.