The Perfect Place

by Teresa E. Harris

  The prayer comes to an end, and people raise their heads and slowly begin to stand. One of the women next to Jane clears her throat and with a toss of her head indicates the line of people waiting to file out of the pew. Jane heaves herself up, adjusts her hat and her bosom, and starts for the stairs.

  I stop her with my hand on her arm. “What about my father? Is he in my future?”

  “Happiness is. Take that for what it’s worth.”

  Jane removes my hand from her arm and goes on her way, leaving me with hope in one hand and happiness in the other.

  Seventeen

  FOR the rest of the afternoon, Jane’s words tumble around my head like they’re doing cartwheels, backflips. I feel like I could do the same. Like I could fling my inhaler aside and run three whole miles without stopping. Even cleaning shelves at Grace’s Goodies after church can’t bring me down.

  “Girl, what you grinnin’ about?” Moon asks when I go out to the front to find out where Great-Aunt Grace put the pine-scented cleaner. “You been at it since I picked y’all up.”

  Great-Aunt Grace looks over at me. “Must’ve been the service. The Lord does work in mysterious ways,” she says. “You’d know that if you came to church every once in a while.”

  Moon’s smile slides off his face.

  The door swings open and Terrance walks in. I turn on my heels and return to the stockroom and go to the shelf where Great-Aunt Grace told me I could find the cleaner. Soon Terrance appears in the stockroom too. He stops beside me and starts moving boxes around.

  “I thought you weren’t coming back while I’m here.”

  “I thought you were sleeping when I said that.” He eyes me. He’s wearing a T-shirt with a planet on it, or maybe an atom. “I left my sketchpad here. Have you seen it?”

  I shake my head and take the cap off the cleaner. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch Terrance check shelf after shelf until at last he says, “Don’t worry, I found it,” and pulls his sketchpad from behind a box of Skittles. At that moment Great-Aunt Grace shouts, “Terrance, Treasure, get out here!”

  As we hurry to the front, I trip over a huge cardboard box sitting right in the entrance to the stockroom. Terrance trips over me, and together the two of us are sprawled on the floor behind the register, a tangle of arms and legs. Tiffany bursts out laughing.

  “Shut up,” I snap, but she’s too busy laughing herself stupid. I glare at her as Terrance gets to his feet. He holds his hand out to help me, but I get up on my own, rubbing my throbbing knee.

  “Why is that box there, trying to kill someone?” I ask Great-Aunt Grace, who’s bent at the waist, peering at something on the shelf below the register. I peek over her shoulder. She’s working the dials on a safe. She pulls it open, takes out an envelope, and pushes the safe closed. Then she stands and turns to face me.

  “What, girl?”

  “That box you left right in front of the storage room”—I point down—“almost killed me.”

  “And me,” Terrance adds pointedly.

  I ignore him. “What’s in it?”

  “My security system.”

  The front of the box reads Ironclad Surveillance and has a picture of a complicated-looking camera on it. I look around for a camera, but I don’t see one anywhere. Then I realize that the box hasn’t even been opened.

  “Y’all gonna stand there and look at it, or y’all gonna move it?” Great-Aunt Grace says.

  We’re still standing over the box, eyeing it. Terrance uses the toe of his sneaker to nudge the box into a corner.

  “Good. Now, Moon and I are runnin’ to the bank so I can unload some cash in the depository box,” Great-Aunt Grace tells us.

  “Are we gonna watch the store?” Tiffany asks eagerly.

  “No,” Great-Aunt Grace says flatly. “I’m gonna lock the door while I’m gone and put a sign up sayin’ I’ll be back in twenty minutes. Don’t let anybody in, don’t eat any of my candy, and if you want to keep your fingers, you won’t touch my register.”

  Terrance pipes up, “But I’m not—”

  Great-Aunt Grace turns to go, but not before giving each of us a good hard look. I can hear the keys in the lock a second after the door closes behind her.

  “—supposed to be staying,” Terrance finishes weakly. He heaves a sigh. “Guess we may as well work on the shelves, since I’m trapped here.” Neither of us moves in the direction of the stockroom. I take Great-Aunt Grace’s seat in front of the register. Terrance leans against the counter and flips through his sketchbook.

  I watch people pass by. There isn’t a one of them who doesn’t stop and peek into the store. That includes Jaguar and Pamela, who make eye contact with me and take their sweet time moving on.

  “What’s the deal with those two?” I ask.

  Terrance looks up from his sketchpad, just missing them. “What two?”

  “Never mind.”

  Tiffany hops down from her stool and goes over to the shelves of candy. She holds her chin in her hand as she ponders. After careful consideration, she plucks a box of Mike and Ikes off the shelf and returns to her seat.

  “Jeanie, pay for these,” she says, and rips open the box of candy.

  “You can’t boss me around,” I tell Tiffany. Terrance is doing a pitiful job of trying to hide a smile.

  Tiffany pops two Mike and Ikes in her mouth and closes her eyes, to savor the taste or to completely ignore me. I take seventy-five cents from my pocket and place the coins next to the register. Just then there is a knock on the door.

  “We’re closed!” I shout.

  With the glare from the sun, I can see only the outlines of two people. They knock again. And again. I start for the door.

  “You’re not supposed to open it,” Tiffany says to my back.

  I unlock the door and open it just a crack. “We’re closed.”

  “Says who?” comes the voice of a girl.

  “Uh-oh,” Terrance says, but it’s too late.

  The door is shoved open. I have to jump back to avoid a blow to the face that would have knocked me out cold. Jaguar enters, followed by Pamela, both wearing tiny khaki shorts. Back in Jersey, girls called those shorts “poom-pooms.”

  “Hey, weirdo,” Jaguar says. Pamela says nothing. She stays by the door and keeps glancing into the street.

  Jaguar pushes past me and proceeds to size up the goods, stalking around like a lioness on the plain. “Oh, hey, Yuck Mouth,” she says to Terrance, as she inspects the rack of candy closest to the register. “Hmmm, what am I in the mood for today?”

  “I said, we’re closed.”

  Jaguar stops and looks at me. She turns her body first, places her hands on her hips. Her head whips around last. Mom calls this “attitude stance.”

  “What did you say?” Jaguar asks.

  I bring myself up to my full height, which makes me an inch taller than she is.

  “Pam, did you hear all that attitude?”

  Pamela drags her eyes from the street and comes to stand beside Jaguar. No matter how straight I stand, I’ll never be as tall as Pamela. Jaguar walks right up to me until she’s standing so close the toes of our sneakers touch. I stare into her flame-colored eyes and then into Pamela’s dark, murky ones.

  “We didn’t hear you. Right, Pam?” Jaguar says. “Would you mind hitting rewind?”

  I take a step back. Jaguar steps forward. So does Pamela.

  “I said we’re closed.” I’m stuttering so bad I sound like a CD skipping. “The woman who owns this store went out and said she’d be back in twenty minutes. There’s a sign on the door. Ms. Washington left it,” I add, in case they fear the wrath of Great-Aunt Grace like anyone with sense should.

  Pamela falls back, just a little. But not Jaguar. “Ms. Washington? You mean your kin? Everyone knows you’re related to her now, so quit fronting, and everyone thinks she’s a big old thief. So there.” Jaguar turns and gives her poom-poom-clad butt a smack. “Now, shut up while me and Pam do what we came to do.”


  I shut up and watch as Jaguar grabs up a huge handful of candy from one shelf and dumps it on another. She does that over and over again and mixes everything around with her hands, until almost nothing is where it should be. Then she takes a pack of Starburst for herself. At Jaguar’s urging, Pamela takes a Hershey bar.

  “You could get arrested for this,” Terrance says.

  “Go on and call the sheriff, Yuck Mouth,” Jaguar says. “I’ll tell him you three did it, and he’d believe me, too. Him and my daddy been tight for years.”

  Jaguar glances at Terrance, daring him to call the sheriff. Terrance doesn’t move.

  “That’s what I thought,” Jaguar says, and turns to Pamela and her Hershey bar. “That’s all you’re gonna take?”

  Pamela mutters something about having just eaten. Jaguar rolls her eyes. “Whatever,” she says. “Watch this.”

  With a swipe of her arm, Jaguar knocks the contents of one shelf to the floor, then another. Packs of Skittles and M&M’s plummet down, followed by Kit Kats and Twix bars.

  “You can’t do that!” Tiffany shouts, but Jaguar is on a roll. By the time she decides to stop, the floor around her is covered in Great-Aunt Grace’s merchandise. After kicking the mess around and stomping it a few times, Jaguar calmly plucks a pack of unscathed sour watermelons off the floor and brings them over to the counter along with her pack of gum.

  “I’ll take these,” she says. “You getting that, Pam?” She points at the Hershey bar Pamela’s been holding.

  Pamela hardly seems capable of speech. She shakes her head.

  “Whatever,” Jaguar says, shrugging. She takes out a crumpled dollar bill and tosses it on the counter.

  “You’re bugging, Jaguar,” Terrance says.

  “Shut up, Yuck Mouth,” Jaguar snaps. “Let’s go, Pam.”

  Before they leave, Pamela puts the chocolate bar back on the shelf where it belongs.

  “Be seeing y’all,” Jaguar calls sweetly over her shoulder. The door swings shut behind them.

  “They won’t be seeing me,” I say.

  “Or me,” Tiffany puts in.

  “They will if Ms. Washington sends you to Camp Jesus Saves tomorrow,” says Terrance.

  “Wait. Camp?” Tiffany says slowly.

  “Yes. Camp. With those two lunatics. I can’t believe Jaguar did this,” I say.

  I go around the counter to inspect the damage. There are packs of candy everywhere. “We’ll never get all this back on the shelves before Great-Aunt Grace gets back. She’s going to kill us.”

  “She is,” Terrance agrees.

  Tiffany says, “I love camp. Remember Camp Dream Lake, Jeanie?”

  I remember poison ivy and an asthma attack from a forced hike up the side of a mountain. I bet Jaguar and Pamela will leave me with even worse memories.

  “We’re not going to camp,” I tell Tiffany. “Now, help me clean this place up.”

  Terrance hurries around the counter to help. While Tiffany stays put on her stool, Terrance and I pick up candy by the handful and all but throw it on the shelves, trying to get it all fixed before Great-Aunt Grace and Moon come back.

  No such luck. They push through the door of Grace’s Goodies moments later, and the store still looks like someone shook it up and set it back down again.

  “What in the sweet name of Jesus happened here?” Moon cries.

  Great-Aunt Grace’s eyes sweep over the floor and her messed-up shelves. She doesn’t say a word.

  “Jaguar did this,” I say. “She and Pamela forced their way in.”

  Great-Aunt Grace makes a growling sound in the back of her throat. Moon reaches over and touches her gently on the arm.

  “You should call the cops and have Jaguar thrown in jail!” I say.

  Great-Aunt Grace’s nostrils flare.

  “Be easy, baby,” Moon says. “Jaguar’s just a kid.”

  Moon must be six and a half feet tall. Great-Aunt Grace looks at him like he’s four foot two.

  “Jaguar’s going to pay for this,” she says, and I can tell she means business.

  “When?” Tiffany asks eagerly.

  “In good time.”

  “In good time?” I shriek.

  Great-Aunt Grace raises her eyebrows at my raised voice.

  I clear my throat. “Okay, like you said: in good time. Speaking of time . . .” I figure now is as good as any, so I just blurt it out: “This is why you can’t send us to that camp with Jaguar. Bad influences all around. So we’re not going.”

  “Oh, yes, you are.”

  “We are not. If what Jaguar did here isn’t proof that Camp Jesus Saves is falling short of its name, I don’t know what is.”

  “You don’t worry yourself none about Jaguar. She’s gonna get what’s coming to her, best be sure of that,” Great-Aunt Grace says calmly. “But you goin’ to camp, girl, you and your sister. Now you and Terrance get back to them shelves.”

  “But I’m not—” Terrance says.

  “Git,” Great-Aunt Grace snaps.

  “—staying,” Terrance finishes weakly.

  We head back into the stockroom, Jane’s words tumbling through my mind again. Don’t give up hope. I won’t, only now I’m hoping for some new stuff. I hope Great-Aunt Grace comes down with amnesia between now and tomorrow morning and forgets all about sending us to Camp Jesus Saves.

  Eighteen

  WE’VE been in Black Lake for six days, and if I should’ve learned anything by now, it’s that all the hope in the world isn’t going to help when it comes to Great-Aunt Grace. I wake up to find her standing over my bed, a glass of orange juice in her hand.

  “I’m not going to camp,” I tell her.

  “Oh, yes, you are. Y’all ain’t gonna be nippin’ at my ankles all the Lord’s day long. Besides, a little Jesus ain’t never hurt a soul.”

  But I bet Jaguar and Pamela could cause someone some real damage.

  “I want y’all downstairs in thirty minutes or less. Understood?”

  “I guess.”

  I wait for Great-Aunt Grace to leave. She doesn’t. Instead she stops just by the door and points at the clean laundry sitting on top of the dresser. She made Tiffany and me finish it last night. “That’s what y’all call foldin’?”

  I nod. Great-Aunt Grace disappears into the hallway, muttering about how the Lord never made two more useless kids. I get up to shake Tiffany awake. She swats at me like a cat. I say just one word—“Camp”—and she flies out of bed. She doesn’t complain when I scrape her hair into a ponytail or when I get in her ears with a washcloth, or even when she has to feed grumpy old Mr. Shuffle, who goes after her ankles again when she takes too long opening his can of 9 Lives. When Great-Aunt Grace serves us up oatmeal with the consistency of cement, Tiffany doesn’t so much as make a face.

  Not me. I can barely choke down my breakfast, not even when Great-Aunt Grace comes and stands over me the way she does.

  “You gonna be hungry in no time, and you’ll have no one to blame but yourself,” she says.

  For Camp Jesus Saves, I have no one to blame but Great-Aunt Grace.

  I take my time washing the breakfast dishes, soaping and rinsing each dish more than once. When she catches me soaping up the sponge to rewash the cups for the fourth time, Great-Aunt Grace says, “You gonna wash the clean right off them dishes, girl. Now, come on and let’s go.”

  To camp. We lock up the house and start walking in the Black Lake heat, and even though I try to walk slower than a tortoise with a bum leg, we’re at camp in no time. It’s a scientific fact that the more you don’t want to go somewhere, the faster you’ll get there. We stop in front of Fannie Lou Hamer Middle School. A banner strung across the school’s brick front shouts in all caps: WELCOME TO CAMP JESUS SAVES, WHERE DELIVERANCE IS FREE.

  We follow Great-Aunt Grace up the walkway and through the front door. Fannie Lou Hamer Middle School smells like fried food and permanent markers. Our shoes squeak on the linoleum floor. Two girls come running down the h
allway, holding hands. When they see Great-Aunt Grace, they slow to a walk and move all the way to the right, hugging the wall. “Uh, hi, Ms. Washington,” one of them says. Great-Aunt Grace nods in response and keeps right on going. She leads us straight down a hallway still lined with posters and projects from the past school year, not stopping until we’re through another door and back outside, where there are picnic tables set up with kids around them.

  “Now, where’s that loudmouth Eunetta?” Great-Aunt Grace mutters, looking around.

  In the end, Eunetta finds us before we find her. She’s running toward us, holding down her wig with one hand. She’s got a clipboard in the other. She stops a few feet shy of the three of us, and it takes her more than a moment to get her breath back. Then she manages to choke out, “Camp is full.”

  “Thought the Lord always makes room for one more,” Great-Aunt Grace says.

  Eunetta’s eyes go wide as her own words fly back at her and hit her right in the face.

  “He does, of course, but we’re just more full up than we thought.” Eunetta taps her clipboard for emphasis. “So sorry.” She doesn’t sound sorry at all.

  Great-Aunt Grace points at a spot of shade beneath a tree. “You two, go over there. I need to have a word with Ms. Baxter in private.”

  For Great-Aunt Grace, private means right where the two of them are standing. Tiffany and I watch from our spot in the shade as Great-Aunt Grace and Eunetta go at it. Eunetta starts waving her clipboard around.

  “Why doesn’t that lady want us here?” Tiffany asks.

  “Because we’re related to Great-Aunt Grace.” I think of the smile Eunetta fixed me with the first time she met me, when she didn’t know that. Now her face is puckered up tight as a fist.

  Great-Aunt Grace takes a step closer to Eunetta.