I started to lose weight rapidly. I couldn’t eat right; food turned to ash in my mouth. I couldn’t sleep; rest was a stranger to me. I lived in a state of constant exhaustion and nerves. The girls noticed.
Ruth, bless her heart, asked me one afternoon while we were shelling peas, “Mama, are you sick?”
I forced a smile. “No, baby, it’s just tiredness. Farm life is hard work.”
But she didn’t believe me. I saw it in her eyes that she knew something was wrong. Children are smarter than we give them credit for.
February passed in a blur of gray days and sleepless nights. Then March. April. May. June. July.
We were starting August. Seven months. Seven months of this torture.
Every single blessed day, at 2:47 in the morning, he would get up, walk to my side of the bed, stand there watching me, and then go back to sleep.
I started to think I was truly going crazy. I swear to the Lord above, I thought I was losing my mind. Because how does a grown man do something like that every day at the precise same minute and then act like nothing happened when the sun comes up?
I spent the whole day thinking about it while I scrubbed clothes on the washboard until my fingers were raw, while I stirred the pot, while I swept the dust out of the house. My mind wouldn’t stop spinning—thinking, thinking, trying to unravel the knot.
At first, I clung to the idea that he was sleepwalking. You know those folks who get up while they’re asleep and walk around the house like zombies? I had heard of that.
My Auntie Clara used to tell us stories about her husband; she said he would get up at night, sound asleep, walk to the kitchen, open the cupboard door, and just stand there staring at the flour jar. So, I thought maybe Otis was doing that.
But, child, sleepwalkers don’t have a schedule. They don’t stand in the exact same spot every single night, and they certainly don’t do it at 2:47 AM on the dot like clockwork. It couldn’t be sleepwalking.
Then I thought it might be a sickness, some sickness of the mind. I had heard of people who got “sick in the head” and started doing strange things.
Old Mr. Jenkins from the general store down in town had gotten like that a few years back. He started talking to himself, seeing demons that didn’t exist. They eventually had to put him in a home. Was it that? Was Otis losing his faculties?
I thought about talking to someone, but who? We lived in isolation. The nearest house was Miss Idella Banks’ place, which was about a mile away down a dirt track.
We didn’t have a telephone. We didn’t have anything but each other. To go to town, you had to hitch up the wagon, and it took over an hour of bumping along rutted roads.
And what was I going to say if I did go? “Sheriff, my husband stands and watches me sleep”? They were going to think I was the crazy one!
My mama lived in Macon, far away. We didn’t see each other much, usually only at Christmas or sometimes for Easter service. There was no way to go there and come back the same day.
And even if I went, what was she going to tell me? My mama was one of those old-fashioned, iron-jawed women. She believed a woman’s place was to endure.
“You got married, Hattie, you have to bear it,” she always said. “You made your bed, now lie in it.” It wasn’t going to do any good to tell her.
I tried to talk to the neighbors in a roundabout way. One Sunday after service, I was chatting with Miss Idella and Miss Sadie at the church door while the men were smoking nearby. We were talking about household things—canning, recipes, that sort of women’s talk.
I took a risk. “Have y’all ever had any trouble with your husband’s sleep?” I asked, trying to sound casual.
Miss Idella looked at me curiously, tilting her head. “How do you mean, Hattie?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I stammered. “Like… getting up at night? Doing strange things?”
Miss Sadie laughed, a loud, booming laugh that made me jump. “Mine snores so loud it’s scary! Wakes up the neighbors three farms over. But getting up? Only to go to the outhouse when he’s had too much water.”
I couldn’t go on. I didn’t have the courage to tell them the truth. They were going to think it was weird. They were going to start gossiping, and in a small town, gossip travels faster than a brushfire. Everybody finds out everything.
At home, the situation was spiraling. I was losing a dangerous amount of weight. My dresses were hanging off me like sacks on a scarecrow.
My face had gotten sharp and angular. I had deep, dark purple circles under my eyes that no amount of cold water could wash away. I looked in the mirror one morning and didn’t recognize the woman staring back. I looked like a ghost haunting my own house.
The girls were worried sick. Ruth, poor thing, at eleven years old, had already realized something was very wrong in our house. She asked me constantly, “Is Mama sick?”
“No, baby, it’s just tiredness,” I’d say.
“But I see you don’t eat right, Mama. You don’t sleep right. Is there something happening?”
“There’s nothing, Ruth. Don’t you worry your pretty head.”
But I saw in her eyes that she didn’t believe a word of it. And I felt terrible, absolutely wretched, for lying to my own daughter. But what was I going to tell her? That her daddy stood over me like a vulture every night? A child of eleven wouldn’t understand that kind of darkness.
Ruby was acting strange, too. She was always the most talkative of the three, the happiest, the one who gave the most trouble with her antics. But in those days, she was quiet. She didn’t play like before.
She stayed in her corner, silent as a mouse. I thought it was just kid stuff, a phase, but it worried me deep down.
And Pearl, little thing, six years old, also felt the tension in the air. Children absorb those things like sponges. She spent all her time hugging me, clinging to my skirt, as if she were afraid I would vanish if she let go.
Otis kept on the same. Working in the fields, coming back at night, eating in silence, sleeping, and every early morning at 2:47, getting up and coming to watch me.
I started to be afraid—truly, deeply afraid. Because you hear stories, don’t you? I heard talk of men who snapped and killed their wives while they slept, of men who lost their minds and did terrible, unspeakable things.
What if it was that? What if one of those nights he didn’t just come to watch? What if he came with something in his hand? A knife? A pillow to smother me?
I started sleeping with one eye open, terrified. Or rather, not sleeping at all. I lay awake all night waiting, watching the clock tick by—2:40, 2:45, 2:47—and there he came.
There was one night I decided to test him. I pretended to be in a deep, heavy sleep. I breathed deep and slow, letting a little whistle out with each breath, like folks do when they’re really gone to the world. I wanted to see what he would do if he thought I was completely out.
He stayed there longer than normal. He stayed about fifteen, maybe twenty minutes. I heard his breathing—heavy, agitated, like he was nervous or restless.
At some point, he leaned down.
