Dulcie’s Inheritance (You Already Got it, Child)

By Penny Milam

            Dulcie sat in her grandparents’ driveway, her head pressed against the steering wheel. Two days after the reading of the will, her aunts decreed that the cousins come and choose some mementos before it was all sold at auction. From her teens until just last year, Dulcie had lived in this house, a one-level brick rancher with a tidy stoop and one-car carport. When Mama died in that car accident, Mamaw and Papaw took her in—her daddy had never been in the picture.

Don’t worry about him none, dear heart. If he was worthwhile, he would’ve stayed

For the past ten years, it had been just her and Mamaw Whaley, and then one day Mamaw up and told her it was time to get her own place. Not out of meanness, but out of love. Dulcie would’ve stayed with her grandmother forever, but Mamaw insisted she stop hiding from the world.

You need to get out there and live your own life. Beat the devil at his own game. Don’t let him keep you in bondage, even the bondage of stayin’ safe in this old house

 Dulcie moved out, got a job as a bookkeeper for a local restaurant, and rented a closet-sized apartment that was all hers, with no walker by the door, no metal safety handle in the tub, no stack of yellowing newspapers on her kitchen table.

You never know when you might need ‘em

In her new place Dulcie found out she didn’t really know who she was yet, what likes were hers and not her grandmother’s. Learning the ins and outs of managing a small business in her new job, she cultivated surprising, secret ambitions to start her own. With a growing confidence, she imagined a small bookstore, decorated like a library maybe with a coffee bar and a cat in the window. She’d been excited to tell Mamaw her bashful new dream, but then Mamaw up and died from a heart attack.

We all gotta go sometime. It’s where we’re goin’ then that matters

            Dulcie went to the reading of the will anticipating nothing, so she wasn’t disappointed. Her cousins might’ve expected her to inherit the house and property, but she hadn’t looked for anything. The only will anyone could find was twenty years old and not notarized; it specified the house and land was to go to the daughters. Her aunts grabbed onto the fact that it made no allowances for a grandchild getting her mother’s share, and Dulcie didn’t fight them. She missed her grandmother painfully—money wouldn’t ease the pain. But she did wish she could have shared her little goal with Mamaw; the old woman would’ve been so proud of her for stepping out on her own.

Baby, I knew you had the strength in you

            But today instead of stepping out on her own, Dulcie sat inside her car, afraid to step into the house she’d been raised in, afraid she’d simply shatter when she saw the faded sofa

good enough for company, and for family it don’t matter

 the cookie jar,

These is what heaven tastes like if God don’t skimp on the butter

 Mamaw’s potted plants and Papaw’s tools.

He’s got his bad habits and I got mine

 Four of her cousins were already here, and that made it worse. Three daughters on Aunt Rachel’s side; one son from Bertha’s. There was another son, but he lived a state over and didn’t see the point in coming back, trusting his brother to claim anything he might like. Dulcie had pulled into the driveway between a flashy blue sports car (Dillon’s) and a minivan (her cousin Hayley’s, but holding Hannah and Heather, as well). She was outnumbered and too weak to fight them all. Her plan was to get in, choose one or two items to remember her grandparents by, and retreat, truly an orphan for the first time

You ain’t never really alone, child

            Heather, a battleship of a woman, greeted her at the stoop, standing directly in the doorway, the white screen door on its warped hinges propped against her broad back. “You’re finally here,” she scolded, tightly restrained. “We didn’t want to start without you. It wouldn’t be fair.” She handed a waxy piece of paper to Dulcie. “Here. We picked green for you. I got yellow, Hannah has blue, Hayley has red. Dillon picked orange.”

            Dulcie looked at the green circles on the piece of paper. “What is this?”

            Heather sighed. “Stickers. You just go around the house and put your sticker on the things you want. As long as no one else wants it, you can keep it. If someone does want it, too, we got to talk about it.” She seemed to expect an argument, but Dulcie merely nodded. “Fine.”

            Surprised, Heather opened the door wide to let Dulcie into the house, granting a mocking entrance to the house Dulcie had grown up in. She let the screen door slap against the frame.

Don’t let the door make such a racket!

            “She’s finally here,” Heather called into the living room, where the three other cousins sat waiting. “We can get started.” They all stood purposefully, eager to begin. No one spoke directly to Dulcie.

            “I’m starting in the kitchen,” Hayley, a large woman with a belligerent face, eyed her family coldly. Her stare dared anyone to come in behind her.

Love begins in the kitchen. Men’ll tell you it’s the bedroom, but don’t let ‘em mislead you. Passion fades, but good cookin’ lasts

            “Fine. I’ll do this room.” Heather looked around the space and immediately placed a yellow sticker on the sofa. Hannah left without revealing her destination, and Dillon told the room he’d be in the basement.

Your grandfather would live down there if he didn’t get hungry every couple’a hours

            Dulcie stood frozen on the rug. Her feet didn’t want to move, didn’t want to participate in this blasphemy of divvying up precious items from her grandparents, and then she had a horrible thought. Mamaw had talked to her often about leaving the house to Dulcie

You’re the only one who loves it, Dulcie. Sell it if you want but don’t go spending it all in one place

Well, she’d lost the house but she did have dreams. And if she’d asked months ago, Mamaw would have done anything to help her reach them. Maybe Dulcie could find something she could sell to bankroll her business. Mildly ashamed of herself, she thought of Papaw’s tools, sitting dusty and unused for a decade, but worth a pretty penny. And the guest bedroom set was an antique. The dresser alone would be worth a few hundred dollars

My granddaddy brought that with him from Virginia. Back then they made things to last

            Heather side-eyed her, antsy at Dulcie’s stillness. She’d hoped to enjoy this activity, and her cousin was ruining her good time. “There’s other rooms, you know.”

            Dulcie walked down the hall, heading toward the bedroom that had been hers until last fall. She planned to place her stickers on the bed she’d slept in for twenty years—surely no one would begrudge her that—but she faltered when she reached Mamaw’s bedroom door. Dulcie reverently entered the room, unable to look away from the quilt she’d helped her grandmother sew years ago, stretched across the bed, a double-wedding ring with pieces of Mamaw’s own wedding dress sewn into the pattern.

My own little mama saved her bread-and-butter money for these pearl buttons

Shuffling respectfully around the bed, she saw Mamaw’s housecoat hanging on the closet door, expectantly waiting to be donned the morning Mamaw had died.

The red one, Dulcie. You know I like a little color against my skin

Dulcie’s stomach twisted and she felt nauseous. What was she doing, looting Mamaw’s house for money? Hadn’t she just lost the only person left on earth who loved her? She collapsed on the edge of the bed and clutched a throw pillow that Mamaw had candle-wicked herself, yellow with age and smelling like Mamaw’s talcum powder.

Smellin’ good makes you feel good

Dulcie took a deep breath and was about to leave when Hayley popped into the room, hastily manipulated her greedy expression into one of concern when she saw she wasn’t alone. “I’m just going to look around in here, too,” she told Dulcie defensively. Dulcie shrugged.

            Hayley walked around the room, pretending to admire the framed print of Jesus on the cross,

His sufferin’ in this picture just makes you want to cry, don’t it?

all the while eyeballing the bed, searching for Dulcie’s green sticker. When Hayley reached the window and saw no marker, she triumphantly put a red sticker on the headboard. As Dulcie met her gaze, she said, “I didn’t figure you wanted this old thing. Surely, it’s too big for your little place. Besides, I figured you’d want your old bedroom stuff. Although, I did see Hannah in there. You might have to fight her for it.”

            Dulcie wasn’t up to fighting for anything. Hayley reached the dresser and put a matching red sticker on the mirror, thought for a moment, and put another on the base of the dresser. She wanted it understood that they were a set. She started opening drawers, rummaging through Mamaw’s personal items, and Dulcie watched in horror at the violation.

            As Hayley tossed unwanted things on the bed beside her, Dulcie pointed out, “Mamaw’s Bible.” She picked up the worn black book, its edged trimmed in faded red, and the name Cora Whaley stamped in gold foil on the cover. Dulcie thumbed through the book, smiling when she saw her grandmother’s perfect script in the margins and the multitude of underlined passages and highlighted portions throughout.

The Word of God don’t do you no good shoved in a drawer; you gotta write those words on your heart

She had a sudden memory. “Do you remember when Mamaw used to do that thing with her Bible?”

            Hayley barely looked up. “What thing?”

            “You know, where she’d ask God a question and then she’d open the Bible at random, close her eyes, and run her finger down the page until she came to the verse she thought the Holy Spirt led her to.” Hayley scoffed.

            “I do remember. What a bunch of superstition. That’s like witchcraft or something.”

            Dulcie frowned. “I wouldn’t say that. She was just looking for the Lord’s reply.”

            “She could of just prayed like the rest of us do.”

            “She did that, too,” Dulcie defended. Holding the book in her hands, she felt closer to Mamaw than she had for days. “I’m going to take this,” she decided out loud.

            Hayley finally looked up from hunting through Mamaw’s underwear, and took the book from Dulcie’s unsuspecting hands. She flicked through the pages as if looking for stashed treasure and then handed it back to her cousin carelessly. “Take it. Nobody else’ll want an old Bible.”

            Dulcie was embarrassed at the calculation of this cousin, and all her cousins, rooting through Mamaw and Papaw’s things like they were at a rummage sale. Dulcie was ashamed, too, of herself for her own momentary greed, but no more. She gently laid the green stickers, creased from her tensed hands, on Mamaw’s quilt and she left the room. Walking through the little house, she silently told it goodbye. There was no reason to say anything to her cousins; they were strangers to her now.

            When she was settled in her car, she laid the Bible in her lap and felt glad. With a furtive, guilty glance toward the house, she held the book between her palms and then let the pages fall open where they chose. Clamping her eyes tight closed, she ran a finger down the columns, and stopped midway down the page. Opening her eyes, she read from Matthew 6: “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” She thought of her cousins, scrounging through possessions for a treasure they had already lost—their mamaw.

She leafed through the pages of the Bible, enjoying the reminders of her grandmother, and her fingers touched the edge of an envelope stuck behind the leaf of the back cover. It wasn’t sealed, but on the outside was written in her grandmother’s neat handwriting, tractor payment. Dulcie knew Mamaw had finally sold Papaw’s old tractor to their neighbor, Levi Shaw, only a few weeks ago

What need’ve I got for that old machine just takin’ up space in the barn? Just a burden’a memories I don’t need to hold to

Mamaw hadn’t bothered taking his payment to the bank yet. Reaching into the envelope, Dulcie pulled out a check written by Mr. Shaw. It was for $12,000, made out to “cash.” Dulcie laughed out loud as she held in one hand the check that would get her business started, and her Mamaw’s Bible in the other

The Lord don’t provide what we need ‘til we need it, child, but rest assured, His timin’ is perfect

Penny Milam was born and raised in the shadow of the Smoky Mountains. Graduating from East Tennessee State University in 1998, she has taught high-school English for many years. She lives in Elizabethton, Tennessee with her husband and three teenagers.