When I saw my boy Sam come hurtling down the torn up gravel road to Sis Steven's cabin, I just got this feeling. Terror. Foreboding. Nervous anticipation.
I could see his face through the grubby glass window as he urgently banged on the locked screen door. Ever since Bob Ewell had been shot down in court, you could never be too careful around here. Sam's eyes, so much like his father's, were huge and frightened, his face shiny and his dark hair slick with sweat.
"Mama! Sis Stevens!" he cried distraughtly, his voice wrought with worry as he rattled it desperately.
I hurried to invite him in, dismayed at the raw urgency in his tone.
"Better put that boy of yers on a leash, Helen," Sis Stevens muttered to me, and ordered Sam to have a seat after he'd burst into the room, his boyish exuberance seeming to fill the whole room.
"Ain't no time, Mama. It's Atticus and Cal, they just drove int' our yard in one o' those big fancy automobiles! Somethin' ain't right, I jus' know it."
The steady beat of my heart intensified to a heady gallop at the lawyer's name. "That's Mr Finch to you, Sam," I corrected absentmindedly as I wondered about Atticus' purpose in visiting us. He'd never really had much to do with the rest of us; his sole case was Tom. "And I'm sure everythin's fine, don't go muddlin' that good head with silly worries, boy." I was speaking to my son, but I wasn't listening to myself. My mind was a melee of conflicting thoughts.
Atticus could only be here for two reasons.
Tom was innocent, and he was on his way home.
Or Tom was convicted, and he was never coming home.
I decided not to dwell on his intent, instead determined to treat the lawyer as a welcomed guest.
I murmured a vague goodbye to Sis Stevens, and felt her large paw of a hand land on my shoulder, a gesture of support and reassurance, about as much affection as a Negro could show around here without behind beaten to a pulp.
In a manner that might have been perceived as cold and detached, I exited the cabin and in a daze, wandered down the street until I reached my home.
I saw the house that Tom had built for us when I had been pregnant with our eldest. I saw our children playing their silly game of marbles in the front yard.
And I saw Atticus Finch.
Sam had been true to his word— there was a big, fancy automobile in all its shining glory sitting serenely like it belonged in our rundown, packed dirt yard littered with rusty toys and broken tools.
I knew I ought to say something before the inadvertent visitation became awkward, so I settled for an outer veneer of calm. "'evenin', Mr Finch," I greeted warmly. "Won't you have a seat?"
Atticus just looked at me, his eyes a pool of sadness and regret, and I knew. I just knew.
"Kids," I heard myself saying. "Go on inside and eat those honey buns ya'lll have been naggin' 'bout all day."
A collective whoop was sounded, and the children raced each other inside to get the largest one that I had been trying to discreetly save for Tom.
"I'm sorry, Helen," Atticus said once it was quiet. It was clear he meant business; there would be no beating around the bush. It was just not Atticus's way. "He tried to escape the detention centre. They shot him seventeen times."
I didn't have to ask who 'he' was.
"Oh, my—" Without my permission, my shaking hand rose to my mouth, and my knees gave out. Like a limp noodle, I collapsed to the dirt. It was like the Lord's own mighty foot had come down on my head and pushed me onto my knees. I felt as if the ground would swallow me, and I wasn't strong enough to fight it.
I didn't want to fight it. Let it swallow anything and everything. It didn't matter anymore. Tom was gone.
It took enormous willpower to choke down the agonised screams that threatened to erupt from my mouth. I lacked the strength to fight as Atticus and Calpurnia put their arms around me, and in tandem, assisted me in walking back to my house, and putting a brave face on for my kids.
It was morning. I knew because I could hear the children scuffling about, their immature banter over things that no longer mattered.
Today was the day; the day that I tore their tiny worlds apart, the day that I changed their lives forever. The day that I told them their father had been shot seventeen times in cold blood.
As I lay in my bed, thinking about how the childrens' sweet, naïve faces would crumple at the news, their innocent playfulness washed away by one poor, white girl's foul lies, an empty hole was expanding in my chest, eating away everything I had ever felt inside.
When my little girl Daisy came to my door, thumb in mouth and cute with her little beaded pigtails, I didn't know where to look or what to say. How could I look that little girl in the face, knowing that I was about to destroy the last semblance of childish virtue this house would ever know?
The most painful thing was that after three mere days, everyone but my closest friends had forgotten about Tom's wicked slaughter, his unwarranted death.
Mr Link Deas, out of the bottomless pool of pity he had for me, had offered me a job as a cook. I was in eternal debt to him; I needed all the help I could get.
The numbing antiseptic of shock that had taken me when I heard the heartrending news had faded. I was still capable of experiencing fear when Mr Bob Ewell stalked and threatened me. I was still capable of feeling relief when Mr Link Deas stood up for me. I was still capable of feeling love for my children, and grief for my husband's passing, and loneliness when I climbed into my crushingly empty bed on cold nights, and nobody was there to massage my aching feet and kiss the demons away.
My whole life it's been drummed into me that Negroes aren't human. Up until my husband's conviction, I'd actually believed it. Every day, I'd looked in the mirror and fought with private insecurities.
But now, now that I was a single mother with three starving kids and an empty heart, I knew that I must be human. No cold- blooded, stupid animal could feel so much pain.
I wasn't the monster, like I'd been taught to believe my whole life.
It was them. The white people. They were the monsters.