And Do Remember Me by Marita Golden

the world or God, and I let the Lord down.” Olive’s voice bristled with a strange pride in the momentousness of her fall. When she discovered she was pregnant, Olive told her parents and Chester Foster married her as easily as he had taken up residence in their home.
    Within months of their marriage Olive began hearing rumors about Chester and other women. She had let the Lord down once. She decided she would not do that again. No matter what, she would remain his wife.
    In time, the children became a barrier between them. The love her husband had declared irrelevant she lavished on her children. Then a massive tumor, which she took as a sign from God, was found. Olive took increasingly to her bed and to the Bible. By the time Jessie was twelve, most evenings her mother entered the house, weary and drained from the demands of someone else’s home, and went straight to her room, leaving the younger children and the house to Jessie. She spent her extra money on medicines, visits to doctors, traveling to see root women. She bought herbs, and curious prescriptions came through the mail. In time, her children assumed the unkempt, suspicious demeanor of orphans.
    Her parents no longer slept together. Stacks of
Watchtower
and
Daily Word
were stationed on the bed stand in her mother’s room. And Jessie became the mistress of the house.
    “You ain’t my mama, so don’t be telling me what to do,” Junior scolded her brazenly when she attempted to enforce orders given by her parents.
    “You think you special cause she put you in charge, but I ain’t gonna eat no more of this slop,” Mae Ann, willful and cocksure at nine, shouted one night, pushing her bowl of greens and yams onto the floor.
    With Jessie in charge, the children bickered and raged, their anguish a brushfire consuming them. Jealousy, despair rained, like a storm of dry ashes, clinging to their skin.
    And her mother’s door remained closed to Jessie, who at the end of each day, her spirit mauled into a tiny quivering thing, stood before the door and wished it open. But the lock never turned. Soon she was gripped by headaches, bouts of fatigue, fainting spells.
    Beneath the thin covers at night she could feel anger slicing her insides into pieces, chewing her up, swallowing her whole. When she woke up in the mornings, she held her breath as her hands rediscovered her body, trying to see if she was still there. Her father stepped in, however, and offered her a facsimile of what she had lost. He pressed spare change into Jessie’s hand to show how he appreciated the work she did in the house. Sometimes when he got home late at night, he’d come in the room Jessie shared with Mae Ann and check on her, his hands fondling her beneath the covers. Alone in the house with Jessie, he’d sit her on his lap and rub her against his groin. Once he kissed her on the mouth, letting his tongue slide through her lips. Jessie thought she would vomit. The hard steel-like thing rising between her legs frightened her even more than the kiss. When she fought him he grabbed her by the shoulders and said, “You my baby, Jessie. I can kiss you if I wants to. There’s nothin’ wrong with that.” She believed him. He was her father. He loved her. Even the night he woke her up for thefirst time from sleep and hustled her into bed with him, he’d told her that. “I’m your daddy. I love you.” Jessie, confused and frightened, was grateful that in the dark, in her father’s bed, in his arms, he talked to her, touched her, held her. That part did feel like she thought love was supposed to.
    Inside his daughter in the dark, Chester Foster felt as small, invisible and minuscule as she, releasing into her every hurt. All the memories lapping at his brain obliterated forgetfulness. The awfulness of the act made him unreal, and in those moments the feel of his daughter’s small breasts against his skin, the terrified hushed song she sometimes sang to wisk herself from his grasp, froze