Things Too Huge to Fix by Saying Sorry

by Susan Vaught

  “I’m not scared of those people, CiCi.”

  “You should be,” I said.

  THE AFTERNOON BREEZE FELT WARM on my arms as Indri and I sat at our wooden picnic table in the Grove. The rest of the class had scattered to the other tables, and Indri had a case of pastels open in front of her. She busily shaded the devil-horse she had drawn on her sketchpad, using first black, then a dark, dark red for its eyes and the blood dripping from its mouth. I didn’t want to bother Indri while she drew, and I didn’t feel like writing, so I kept looking at the canopy of leaves over our head, watching how the shadows danced on the table when the branches moved, and thinking.

  The whole friendship ending thing—I hadn’t considered it much before Worm Dung pulled his trick at my locker. I knew from listening to my parents talk that people “drifted apart” sometimes when they get older, but I couldn’t see that happening to Indri and Mac and me. I thought we’d go to high school together, and college, and then—well, I didn’t know what next, but it never occurred to me that we wouldn’t still be friends.

  Only now, we wouldn’t be, because Worm Dung messed everything up.

  So, if I had to make a list of what could make best friends just stop talking to each other like Grandma and Avadelle did, the first thing on that list would be one friend being a butthead to the other one and messing everything up, just like Worm Dung. Only to me, one friend would have to do something so bad that saying “I’m sorry” wouldn’t be enough to fix things. And the other friend would have to stay so mad, they didn’t care if the butthead friend apologized.

  It still didn’t make sense though. How could two people who really cared about each other be that stubborn? How could anything be that bad?

  Could something make Indri stop talking to me and stay angry with me forever? Something like . . . keeping a big secret? The thought made me sick to my stomach.

  I needed to tell Indri about the envelope and key my grandmother left for me. She might be mad that I waited two weeks, but I’d apologize and everything would be fine.

  Right?

  I had to work to breathe for a minute. When I finally calmed myself down enough to talk, I said, “I looked up the definition of grove once. It means a little group of trees. So this Grove has to be misnamed, because it’s like, what, ten acres of magnolias and gum trees and really old oaks?”

  “Forty species,” Indri said, filling in a spatter of blood near her demon-horse’s front hooves. “That’s what the website said last time I looked. People take tree tours with that map they can print.”

  Stop it, I told myself. Just talk to her. I mean, really. How bad could it be? Words wouldn’t come to me, so I opened my pack and took out Grandma’s envelope. I pulled her papers out and laid them on the table in front of me. Indri kept right on drawing, and I didn’t interrupt her. I fiddled with the key and waited, getting more and more miserable each passing second.

  Finally, Indri sat back and studied her sketch. Then her eyes flicked to me, and to the stack of papers and key in front of me. “What are you doing with all that stuff, Dani? You writing a novel?”

  “Um, no.” I tapped the key on the papers and tried not to panic. “My grandmother started talking out of her head. At least I thought she was. About papers she wrote for me, and a key, and how I was supposed to get it out of her purse once she was gone. And I couldn’t decide if she was gone, or gone enough, you know? But I went to look a couple of weeks ago, and they were really there. The papers. And this key.”

  Indri’s eyebrows lifted, and her eyes slitted down to crazed robot proportions.

  I talked faster. “See, she said something about writing it down, and I can’t help wondering if it’s about what happened between her and Avadelle, but it’s hard to read what she wrote so far, so I haven’t read much of it, but Grandma’s staying upset and she’s crying too, and I need to help her, so I thought maybe I should finally read all the rest of this and figure out what this key unlocks, but I can’t make myself get past the first few pages because it’s so sad, and Grandma’s not actually gone, and I wanted to tell you, but I didn’t want to bother you when it might just be stupid and really nothing. Here’s the key.”

  I held it out.

  Indri’s mouth pinched together, but she reached her pastel-dusted hand out and took the key. She glared at me for a second, then studied it. “It’s small. And old. Maybe to a door or something? No. Too small for that. I don’t know.”

  She handed me the key, and I put it in my pocket as she looked down at the papers and read out loud. “Ghostology. What’s that all about?”

  “Grandma said Alzheimer’s would make her a ghost of herself, and she wanted me to know who she really was and what was important to her. I think she used the word to mean she was giving me a study of herself, before she, you know. Went away.”

  Indri frowned. “That is kinda sad.”

  She read the first page, like I had done. Then she read the second page. At the end of the third page, she stopped and waited for me to turn over the fourth. I fiddled with the corner of the paper. I wanted to turn it over, but I didn’t want to, all at the same time.

  “What do you think?” I asked Indri.

  “I think she loved you a lot, to have written you just to tell you you’re pretty and brilliant and stuff.” She looked up at me, frowning. “Why didn’t you tell me about this when you found it?”

  “I’m sorry. I really didn’t want to distract you, with your dad and stuff.”

  “And I can’t believe you haven’t read it all already.”

  “It’s sad. And she’s not gone, really, so I felt guilty, and—” I closed my eyes. “It didn’t feel right.”

  Indri went quiet for a few seconds, and then she said, “Okay.” Simple. Stuff could be like that with Indri, when I let it be like that.

  After a moment, I said, “I think when Grandma wrote this, she believed everything would go in a straight line. That she’d be herself, then she’d get sicker, and then she’d die. I think she didn’t figure on all of this in-between-ness. She thought she’d be a real ghost, not a living one.”

  “You’re probably right,” Indri said.

  So, Grandma sucked at predicting the future too, just like I did. Why did that make me feel better? “I don’t think anybody in my whole family understood how much in-between-ness there would be.”

  “Right. And now, something’s bothering your grandmother,” Indri sounded more sure. “I think the best thing we can do is figure out what to do to help her.”

  I turned over the third page, and Indri and I looked at the fourth page together. It was all about me in first and second grade, and more about everything Grandma thought about my brilliance, and how beautiful and perfect I was.

  “I know she’s your grandmother,” Indri said, “but I gotta say, all this stuff about your wonderful wonderfulness—it gets a little nauseating.”

  “I think it’s sweet,” I mumbled, trying not to get all sniffly and make her laugh at me more.

  “It is sweet.” Indri patted my hand. “But sickening.”

  We turned the page, and then both of us got very, very still.

  I have a lot to say to you, Oops, and not all of it is about how much I care about you and believe in you.

  I need to tell you about the falling out I had with Avadelle Richardson. I’m sure it’s what you want to know. It’s what everyone always wants to know—and that gets old, let me tell you. I’ve published eighteen academic books and forty-two scholarly articles, and still all anyone wants to hear about me and my history and all that I’ve learned is, what happened to a friendship I had with a woman I knew for a handful of summers, over fifty years ago, and how much of Night on Fire is really true?

  The sad thing is, Oops, it won’t make any sense to you unless you understand where I came from and what I was dealing with back then. It’s so far away in time now, kids your age, they don’t get the facts anymore. They don’t learn about what really happened, not all of it
. So I want you to read along here on this last manuscript I’ve been trying to finish, a time line of our state’s history and how it relates to the Civil Rights Movement. In the final analysis, this is my history, and it’s yours too. Read it carefully before you read about Avadelle and Night on Fire. Understand it before you judge me—and before you judge her.

  That’s all that was on page four. Somewhere in those sentences, my heart had started beating so hard I could feel it at the top of my throat. Indri’s mouth had come open, and when she gazed up at me, her eyes had gone all lemur.

  “So, she’s going to tell us?” she whispered.

  “Yeah.” My fingers played along the edges of the manuscript. Part of me wanted to snatch up the papers and read ahead fast until we got to that part, but page four seemed to be asking for a promise that we wouldn’t do that.

  “She wants us—me—to read it all in order so we understand the fight when we get to it. It’s her ghost story, right? She should be able to tell her story her own way, like Ms. Manchester would.”

  Indri groaned, but she nodded. “We should follow her rules and read everything in order—but I have two rules of my own.”

  The sudden edge in Indri’s tone made me grimace, but what could I say at this point, after not telling her about the secret for two whole weeks?

  Indri held up one finger. “First, no reading without me. If we don’t get it finished today and you read a little ahead, you tell me right away.”

  Well, that wasn’t too bad. “Agreed.”

  “Second, don’t keep any more secrets.” Two fingers now, and a glare, right into the back of my eyeballs.

  “Um, okay.” Was I smiling? That might not be a good idea, but I couldn’t help it. This felt like the most normal moment in my life since Locker Horror on the last day of school.

  I slid page four aside, and we looked at page five. It had a staple in the corner, and some attached documents. I left them alone and studied what was on the paper. Indri did, too, careful to keep her pastel-stained fingers away from the white paper. It was just a list of dates and events, like a section straight out of our Mississippi history class.

  1817

  Mississippi granted statehood.

  1848

  University of Mississippi founded (not called “Ole Miss” until the 1900s).

  1861

  JANUARY–Mississippi becomes the second state to declare secession from the Federal Union, and to join the Confederate States of America.

  MAY–Company A of the 11th Mississippi Infantry Regiment in the Confederate Army forms. Only four students stay at Ole Miss, so the college closes for the duration of the war.

  SEPTEMBER–American Civil War begins.

  1862

  JANUARY–Abraham Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation.

  APRIL–The first of 18 named Civil War battles in Mississippi is the Siege of Corinth (April 29 to May 30, 1862). Grant wins and uses his position in Corinth to take control of the Mississippi River Valley and Vicksburg.

  JULY–Last day of the battle of Gettysburg. Pickett’s Charge. The University Grays are all killed or wounded. Half of the 12,500 Confederate soldiers in the charge die. Possibly the turning point of the entire Civil War.

  1864

  The last named Civil War battle in Mississippi is the Siege of Vicksburg.

  1865

  APRIL–The Civil War officially ends. Lincoln assassinated days later.

  NOVEMBER–The Black Codes are enacted.

  “Some of this stuff is from camp today,” I said. “Interesting.”

  “What are those papers stapled to this page?” Indri asked.

  “Looks like a copy of Mississippi’s Declaration of Secession and a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation. She didn’t write anything on them. Maybe they’re just for reference.”

  Indri’s gaze moved over each entry on the time line, until she got to the bottom. “What are the Black Codes?”

  “No idea. And what do you think this means?” I showed her a bracket drawn near the Black Codes entry that extended onto the second page full of dates and events. Outside the bracket was a bunch of numbers, written in a straight line:

  “1882-1968 42+539=581”

  And under that, a name, underlined a bunch of times.

  “Fred???”

  “Why was she doing math in the margins?” Indri asked. “And who is Fred?”

  “These first numbers must be dates, 1882–1968. But the math?” I shrugged. “Fred might mean Fred Harper.”

  “The goofy old history professor who does the coathook gag?”

  “Yeah. Grandma and Dr. Harper worked on other books together. They were good friends, I think—um, without all the fighting and never speaking to each other again part.”

  Indri scratched her chin, leaving a blotch of red pastel dead center. “Do you think the numbers are important?”

  “I don’t know what’s important and what isn’t,” I admitted as I laid page five down on the stack and spread my fingers to hold it in place. My insides sank as I realized Grandma might have already been turning into a ghost when she did this. The numbers might be some big deal, or she might have been distracted by me talking about my math homework the night she was making her notes. Who knew?

  “She might not have gotten to the end of this,” I admitted. “And I know we just agreed to follow her rules, but . . .”

  “Nobody made any promises,” Indri said with something like confidence. “Well, just an implied promise, maybe.”

  I moved my hand, then carefully shifted the papers that we had read through to the bottom of the stack. More time line appeared, a lot of stuff about civil rights in Mississippi. We looked at the next page, and the next.

  “More time line,” Indri murmured.

  Another page. And another. Time line. Dates. Who got lynched and when and where and what was known about why. Who was shot and killed for their work for civil rights. When major events happened. Some years in the 1960s took ten or twelve pages to list everything important. But nowhere in there did we find one bit of information about what Grandma and Avadelle fought about.

  Around 1968, we ran into trouble.

  “What does, ‘Putting the garfle in the window’ mean?” Indri pointed at the strange sentence mixed into Grandma’s typing between “April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King, Jr. assassinated in Memphis,” and “Approximately 1,500 people marched in Hattiesburg four days after his death.”

  “I have no idea,” I said. The next line read, “April 11, 1968: President June signs Civil Rights Act of 1968.”

  Indri and I looked at each other. President June should have been President Johnson. Grandma never would have made such a mistake. Her writing got worse and worse after that. More and more words were wrong, or spelled incorrectly. She crossed through a lot of things and tried to add notes, but those trailed off too. Sometimes, she just wrote, “I love you, my little Oops.” Other times, sentences seemed like total gibberish.

  “This doesn’t make any sense now,” I said. “She must have gotten too sick too fast to finish.”

  “I can’t believe it.” Indri banged her hand on the picnic table.

  I flipped back and forth through the pages of Grandma’s writing, sadness expanding in my chest, heavy and bitter. I went all the way to the last pages, still just hoping—but there was nothing besides a star on September 1, 1969, which, according to the time line entry, was the day Avadelle Richardson’s Night on Fire was released. After that, nothing but a blank page with some pen marks.

  “There’s nothing else here,” I said.

  Indri stared at the oak leaves above us as I neatened the stack of papers and put them away.

  “So much for understanding the feud,” she said. “I’m sorry, Dani. I know you really thought she was going to tell us. So did I.”

  “I’m not giving up,” I told her, even though that’s exactly what I felt like doing. “There’s still the key. It has to unlock something important.”

/>   “Or something lost, or a safe full of confused writing—who knows?” Indri sighed. She didn’t have to tell me Grandma wasn’t right when she hid the key for me, that the key might be completely meaningless.

  I spread my fingers out on the stack of papers, and—

  A cane smacked down next to my hand, barely missing my thumb.

  I jumped so hard I let out a squeak. Indri jumped too, knocking her pastels every which direction.

  “What are you doing with those papers?” asked a gravelly, angry voice. “That’s your grandmother’s writing, isn’t it? It’s not yours.”

  I barely had time to process the hornet-colored shirt and fedora before Avadelle Richardson made a grab for Grandma’s writing.

  Panic helped me swipe the papers sideways out of her reach. Blood pumping so hard I could barely think, I yelled, “It’s not yours, either!”

  Then, everything seemed to slow down like in the movies. Each beat of my heart echoed in my ears as I became aware of Mac standing beside the table, looking totally unhappy. He shoved a shock of brown hair out of his eyes and tried to get hold of his grandmother’s elbow.

  “You got no business in Ruth’s private papers,” Avadelle barked at me. “She’s not dead yet, is she?”

  “No.” I held the papers to my chest and glared at the elderly writer.

  “Come on, GG,” Mac said. “We should go.” He made another grab for her elbow, but she jerked away from him.

  GG, his baby name for his grandmother. I remembered that from when Mac sat with me after he played the national anthem at a school football game, picking at the callouses his guitar strings made on the ends of his fingers and explaining why he couldn’t go with my parents and me for pizza afterward. It’s my turn to help look after GG. She doesn’t get around so well anymore.