Georgia Rules

by Nanci Turner Steveson

I pulled Lucy tighter to me with my free arm. “Five.”

  “Did she see it happen?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, here’s what I want you to say to her. Tell her, ‘Help is on the way, it’s going to be okay.’ Can you do that?”

  I jiggled Lucy. “Lu? The lady says help is on the way and it’s going to be okay. Can you hear me?”

  She nodded, her eyes still pressed into my neck. The back door crashed open and slammed against the wall. Sue grabbed the phone from me.

  “This is Sue. Is the ambulance on the way?”

  The 911 lady said something, then Sue said, “We’re in the far end of the field on the left side of the driveway. She’s not conscious.”

  Lucy wailed and gripped me tighter.

  “Yes, I’m going now.” She shoved the phone at me. “Put on the Closed sign and lock the door!” Then she disappeared out back.

  Still cradling the phone on my shoulder, I hefted Lucy to the door, pulled the sign, and locked the bolt. The 911 lady was still talking. “The ambulance will be there within one minute now. Sit tight and stay on the phone. Let me know when you hear the sirens.”

  “It’s me. Sue went out.”

  “I know, it’s okay. Sue is a trained EMT—she knows what to do.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “You must be new.”

  “Three months,” I said.

  “Got it. How old are you?”

  “Almost thirteen.”

  “Well, you are doing the job of an adult and you’re doing it very well. Be proud of yourself.”

  “Okay.”

  “Sometimes we don’t get to pick when we start acting like an adult, do we?”

  “No.”

  “I bet you can solve all kinds of adult problems already anyway, am I right?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You should be able to hear the sirens now. Can you?”

  I moved the phone away from my ear to listen. “Yes.”

  “Once you see them pull in, we’ll hang up and you can get a book or something to read to Lucy. Keep her mind occupied. Do you understand that?”

  “Yes.”

  The ambulance lights flashed red and yellow. The siren cut off when they stopped by the fence. “They’re here.”

  “Okay, hon, you did a great job. Superb. You call me back if you need anything, okay?”

  “Yes, ma’am, thank you.”

  “Good luck.”

  I hung up and wrapped both arms around Lucy. Through the window I watched the EMTs brace Biz’s neck and head and lift her onto the stretcher. Bile rose in my throat. The 911 operator had said I’d done the job of an adult. Right that second I think I’d rather have been able to bury my face in someone else’s neck and still be the kid.

  Lucy looked up when the ambulance sirens started again and yelped like a homesick puppy when she saw Sue’s Jeep pulling out of the driveway right behind it. I smoothed the hair on her head, patted her back, and repeated words over and over like Mama did when I was little and upset. Somehow, in adult mode, those words felt useless.

  Footsteps tapped on the stairs. Sonnet came from the back of the store, her face red and smushed like she’d napped through the entire event.

  “Sue called. She said we should get ahold of James.”

  “Did she tell you what happened?”

  She sounded like a robot. “Yes.”

  “It was horrible,” Lucy sobbed. “She might be dead.”

  “She’s not dead.” I said. “They wouldn’t have the sirens on if she was—”

  Sonnet pulled an index card out of a box under the counter and handed it to me. “Call James. I’ll go put the pony away.” Her calmness was unnerving.

  Miss Hilly answered on the second ring. “I have an emergency for James. May I speak to him please?”

  “Is this Magnolia Grace?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Haily already called. He’s on his way to the hospital.” She took in a deep breath on the other end of the phone. “I’m closing the library. I’ll come get you and take you home. Just stay there with the girls for now, okay?”

  “I can call my mother,” I said quickly. I really badly did not want to have to ride even one mile in a car with Miss Hilly. She was always wound up so tight, and we needed calm.

  “I’m already on my way,” she said.

  The phone went dead.

  Thirty minutes later, we pulled up in front of the house in Miss Hilly’s tiny Volkswagen. Mama rushed down the front steps, strands of hair pancaked between layers of tinfoil and artificial color. Her face was covered in red splotches and her eyes were wet.

  “Oh my sweetness, my sugar. Deacon told me—he’s gone to the hospital.” She turned to Miss Hilly. “I was just getting something on my head to pick them up.”

  I didn’t wait around to hear Miss Hilly give a breathless account of what happened. I’d seen the whole thing, live and in person.

  Sonnet followed me and Lucy to the kitchen and went right to the fridge. “Do you have Coke?”

  “Bottom shelf.”

  She pulled one out, found two glasses and filled them with ice, then poured soda into them.

  “It’s a Coke, Lu,” she said, putting a glass on the table in front of us.

  A few minutes later the front door banged shut. Mama rushed into the kitchen and unattached Lucy’s tiny arms from my neck, gathered her into her lap, and sat down, making cooing noises that sounded like the pigeons in Atlanta.

  “Sugar, get us some rice pudding, would you? Rice pudding fixes everything—right, Lucy?”

  Sonnet sketched birds in her notebook while I microwaved a bowl of pudding and tried to remember Mama ever holding me like that. One tiny spoonful at a time, she fed Lucy until her eyes got heavy, her head bobbed, and she finally fell asleep with her cheek pressed into a piece of tinfoil on Mama’s shoulder.

  “Can you pull this stuff off my head, please? My hair’s going to be green after all this time.”

  I unwound the foil pieces and tossed them in the trash.

  “Thank you. Now prop some pillows there on the couch. I’m going to try to lay her down for a bit,” Mama whispered.

  Even in her sleep, Lucy didn’t want to let go and started to cry. Mama sank onto the cushions with Lucy curled into a ball on her lap.

  “I’ll just sit here with her, then. See to the other one, okay? What’s her name again?”

  “Sonnet.”

  “That’s an interesting name. It must be Asian.”

  Sonnet scratched loudly in the notebook. I leaned really close to Mama and whispered, “It’s a type of a poem.”

  “An Asian poem?”

  “No, Mama. Just a poem.”

  James called about nine o’clock. Biz had been transported by helicopter to a hospital in Boston. He didn’t have anything else to report, except to ask if Sonnet and Lucy could stay with us overnight. Lucy was already bundled up in Mama’s bed eating ice cream with her. I gave Sonnet my room and curled up on the couch, since the guest room was still filled with moving boxes, but I couldn’t sleep. I stared into the dark all night and wondered if I’d done something wrong to make the accident happen. Did Kori know Biz’s helmet wasn’t buckled? Should I have asked if the girls were telling the truth about it being okay?

  I was still awake when the light outside turned from ebony to gray.

  None of us went to school that day. Mama barely let go of Lucy for nearly twenty-four hours, except to let her sit on the kitchen counter while she baked tray after tray of biscuits, then fed them, slathered with honey and butter and Georgia-peach jam, to the girls. White flour drifted everywhere, including on Mama’s eyelashes.

  Around four o’clock, Deacon came to take the girls to Boston.

  “Can I go with you?” I asked.

  “Probably not,” he said. “They’ll be staying with family close to the hospital. Sue and Kori won’t feel right until they’re all together.”

  “Just
on the drive there and back,” I pleaded, stung by his reference to their all being together when it didn’t include me. “Lucy will feel better if I’m with her.”

  “Sugar, stop, let the family have privacy,” Mama said.

  She handed Lucy to Deacon, then wrapped up biscuits with ham and honey, and threw apples and a small Tupperware container of rice pudding into a bag and gave it to Sonnet. Lucy leaned over, grabbed the back of Mama’s head, and kissed her on the cheek. Mama teared up, and put her palm over the place where Lucy kissed her, and smiled like she’d never been kissed by a child before. When everyone had left, I went into the bathroom and threw up.

  TWENTY-THREE

  There was no anniversary party on Saturday. No ukulele, no songs, no gathering of friends or pig on a spit. I was a nervous wreck all week, but Mama said I couldn’t call to check on Biz because they were all probably too busy to talk to me. She didn’t realize the Parkers were probably wondering why I hadn’t called.

  Deacon knocked on the door a little after eight on Saturday morning. Mama was still so hyper from the accident, she’d been up with the sun every day since. On this morning she was flying around the house in her nightgown, smearing peach-colored paint on one wall, sunshine yellow on another, and had targeted a third to test robin’s-egg blue before getting my opinion.

  “James called,” Deacon said. “They’re all staying with Kori’s brother in Boston. They’ll be there until, well, until Biz is better, or something. In the meantime, I’m going to try and run that store for them.”

  I leaped up from the couch. “I’ll come help!”

  Paint dripped from a brush in Mama’s hand. “How is the little girl?”

  “Brain injury. Still unconscious, but they’re giving her something to keep her that way until the swelling goes down. She has a tube draining—” He pointed to the back of his head and winced.

  “Will she, I mean is she—”

  “They don’t know yet,” he said quickly.

  “What about the pony that hurt that child? Will they get rid of it? It must be dangerous.”

  “What happened wasn’t the pony’s fault,” Deacon said quietly.

  I’d been scrambling around getting my shoes and other things I’d want for the day when I heard Mama say I couldn’t go with Deacon.

  “What?”

  She dumped the brush into the bucket of paint. Speckles of blue flew out and landed on the floor, but Mama didn’t even notice. “I want to help that family, sugar, God knows I do. But I can’t let you anywhere near that pony.”

  “That’s crazy! The pony isn’t in the store—she lives in the barn.”

  “Maggie won’t have to go near her,” Deacon said. “Truthfully, I could use the help. It’s peak tourist season. We need to keep the store open so the family can pay their bills.”

  She turned to me, narrowed her eyes, and wagged her finger in my face. “If I see you anywhere near that pony, I’ll . . . I’ll . . . I don’t know what, but believe me, it won’t be pretty!”

  This was Mama’s way of saying I love you and I don’t want you to get hurt, without having to actually say the words. We weren’t accustomed to doing that back in Georgia. But I wondered, if it had been Lucy, would she have been able to say it outright?

  The store was a mess. Like a near disaster, unrecoverable mess, and it had only been open half a day since the accident. Vegetables had fallen out of the bins and rolled onto the floor, trash spilled from the can, sweaters and flannel shirts without hangers lay on top of the toilet paper shelf. Outside, people were lined up waiting for us to open. Deacon took a pot of coffee and a stack of green cups out for them to help themselves while we did a superfast cleanup.

  From the second we let the customers in until the very end of the day, it was nonstop insanity. The tourists didn’t know what had happened to Biz, so they didn’t know how frazzled Deacon and I were just trying to keep up. They didn’t know he’d never had a job where he used a cash register in his whole life, and that even though I was five foot eight inches tall, I wasn’t a teenager yet and hadn’t had any job, ever. They were not shy about pointing out the half-empty shelves. I couldn’t run fast enough to keep them all happy.

  At seven o’clock, Deacon locked the door and switched the sign to Closed. I collapsed onto the stool behind the counter and buried my face in my hands.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” he mumbled every time I wailed. “We did our best. That’s all we can do.”

  In my head, I knew none of the craziness in the store that day was my fault. I also knew I wasn’t responsible for Biz’s accident, and I’d done the best job I could in both things. But in my heart, I felt like a big, fat failure.

  Deacon drove me home and came inside to tell Mama why I was so overwrought. “I don’t know how I would have made it today without her,” he said.

  A hot bubble bath never felt so good as the one I got that night. I scrubbed and scrubbed my whole body, as if I could wash away the voices of those customers complaining in my ear. I climbed into bed, still wrapped in my towel, and fell asleep. It was the first time I slept through the night since Tuesday.

  Mama didn’t want me to go back the next day. I knew Deacon wasn’t expecting me, but I couldn’t leave it all to him. I just couldn’t, especially after saying he wouldn’t have made it without me on Saturday. Besides, if I couldn’t be with the Parkers, it was one thing I could do to still feel like I was a part of them. One little thing they’d appreciate when they got home.

  You’re one of us.

  But I wasn’t, not really. If I had been one of them, I’d be in Boston, not at home with Mama, who apparently liked Lucy better than she did me anyway.

  Early in the morning, I grabbed my jacket, left Mama a note on the kitchen table, and walked to the store. As soon as she got up and realized where I was, she’d make me come home, but at least I could help Deacon get the day started until then.

  He was restocking the jam aisle when I came through the back door. “Does your mama know you’re here?”

  I hung my jacket on a hook. “She’ll find out as soon as she gets up. I left her a note. What needs to be done first?”

  He paused, two jars of blueberry preserves in his hands. “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Okay, the clothing section is a mess again. Why don’t you start there, I’ll finish this, then we’ll reevaluate.”

  “I’m on it.”

  The store didn’t open until eleven, seeing how it was Sunday. By the time Deacon unlocked and flipped the sign to Open, we had it in pretty decent shape. Not like if Sue and Kori were running it, but good enough. Tourists poured in so swiftly it didn’t take long to get behind again. Deacon punched keys on the cash register and checked people out as fast as he could. I did my best to answer the nonstop flow of questions, while running back and forth to keep the shelves full.

  “Young lady, young lady!”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  A woman pointed to an empty section. “Don’t you have the big tin cans of maple syrup?”

  “One second, I’ll get it for you.”

  When deliveries came, Sue made sure the boxes in the storage room were stacked so the labels faced out. (“That way if someone needs to find something quickly, it’s printed right on the front.”) I said a silent thank you and ran to get the large syrup. But the lady didn’t want a can quite that big.

  “Do you have one that’s a little smaller? In-between size. I can’t carry that on a plane.”

  I made the trip again and brought her the in-between size.

  “How much is it? There’s no price.”

  “I’m not sure. Deacon will know up front.”

  She looked at me like I was the biggest idiot in the world and said, “Don’t you work here?” then walked away without even a thank you. I wanted to throw something at her back and shout that I was only twelve, but three other people were waiting for me. Instead, I plastered a smi
le on my face and went to help them.

  “Do you have that white fudge without nuts? Last year you had it. I can’t eat nuts, but the white kind is my favorite.”

  “Is this butternut squash? Or acorn?”

  “Your apples are bruised. Do you have any fresh ones in the back?”

  “What’s the date on the cider?”

  “Do you have Ben and Jerry’s? You can’t come to Vermont without getting Ben and Jerry’s.”

  “I like this sweater, but I want one in blue, do you have blue? Sky blue, not dark.”

  Up front, Deacon had run out of bags. “Maggie, bags! Can you get them?”

  Bags. Bags. Bags. My mind went blank. A lady at the counter watched me, tapping her feet.

  “Where’s that girl? We need help over here.”

  “Don’t you have Sorel boots? We want the fuzzy kind, like what’s in the ad.”

  “Maggie! Bags, please!”

  Now he was shouting. The lady reached across the counter to get her money back. A bus pulled up out front and let loose a mass of new tourists. They swarmed and spread out through the store like a SWAT team. I looked at the clock. It wasn’t even noon yet.

  I ran to the back for extra bags. Bags, bags, bags. Looked in the closet, at the labels on the boxes, even in the laundry room. Where the heck were the bags? I ran to the counter. The lady had left, but there was a long line waiting to be checked out and Deacon was sweating.

  “Did you get the bags?”

  “I can’t find them.”

  “They’re in the back, in the closet.”

  “I looked, they aren’t there.”

  “Damn,” he said under his breath. He went to check for himself, and came back with a box of lilac-scented trash can bags. “This will have to do for now.”

  “Is there someone who can help me back here? I’ve been waiting.”

  The bell on the door binged. Just when I thought the top of my head might explode, and the tension in the store vibrated like an electric wire, Mama strode in, all dressed up like she was going to church.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The way she looked me up and down with her mouth set in a straight line made my stomach plunge to my toes. She spun around to face Deacon, gripping her fancy purse to her side. Her back was rigid. I shouldn’t have come. I should have woken her up or been extra nice in the note. I should have done something I didn’t and now we were all going to pay.