Lily's Song

by Susan Gabriel

  Meanwhile, discomfort is wedged in my stomach that is either indigestion or my fledgling secret sense. Great Aunt Sadie looks at me, as though picking up on the message I’m receiving. She sends a message to Mama with her eyes, like we’re all hooked up to the same telephone party-line. Until now, it never occurred to me that we could have an entire conversation using only our eyes.

  Nothing ever happens in Katy’s Ridge. Especially nothing big. Yet something is up. Something that has the smell of secrets all around it. Something that could change everything.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Wildflower

  After supper, our family congregates on the front porch. With the sun behind the ridge, it is chillier, but still warm enough to wear only a sweater. Lily sits on the porch swing between me and Aunt Sadie. She acted strange all through supper. It was Aunt Sadie who tapped my shoe under the table and drew my attention to it. Sometimes I’m so close to Lily, I don’t realize the subtle things. But Aunt Sadie does. She knows whenever something big is going on with Lily and when Lily’s thoughts are playing out like a thunderstorm behind her eyes.

  A long time ago I learned not to ignore my secret sense. I check the sky to see if a storm is moving in, but there are no clouds in sight. I want to believe this premonition is nothing. Yet something has been pestering me all afternoon.

  Behind us, Bolt, Danny and Lizzy toss a ball against the side of the house and take turns catching it while Janie looks on. Poor Janie. I want to pull her up onto my lap and make up for the first ten years of her life when she didn’t have a mama.

  On the other end of the porch, my nephew Nat sits reading a book. Does he suffer from similar losses? I think of his father, Nathan, all the time. About how he won over Mama early on, about how he helped us track down Johnny that day and how he made Amy much happier than she is now and more agreeable. Grief does surprising things to people. It breaks us down and makes us stronger, sometimes all at once. I’ve seen it in Mama, too.

  “Will you sing us something?” I ask Lily.

  If anything can be a healing salve it is Lily’s singing. Even Mama calls her a natural. I imagine her musical talent comes from Daddy, the only other musician in the McAllister family. Daniel claps to encourage her, and the others tell her how nice it would be to hear a tune. No family gathering takes place these days without Lily singing a song.

  “Sing Amazing Grace,” Jo says. “It was Daddy’s favorite. He’d love that.”

  Lily agrees and her mood appears to lighten. She stands and leans against the porch rail facing the house. It is a small stage. Too small. I can’t help thinking she is destined for bigger things. Not that I’ve ever said this out loud.

  Lily closes her eyes like she’s gathering the song in her memory. She hums the tune first to warm her voice, like Daddy used to do before he sang. I’ve always wondered how she knew to do that. I like to think it’s a part of him coming through her.

  Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, she begins. The words are soft at first, but then build.

  Every time Lily sings, a lump of thankfulness catches in my throat. How can the ugliest moment of my life result in something so beautiful and pure? People say Lily’s voice is as good as Kate Smith’s, who sings God Bless America on the radio. Preacher used to say that pride comes before a fall. But there’s nothing wrong with this kind of pride. The pride that comes from hearing something beautiful and being proud of humanity.

  My sisters, brothers-in-law, nieces and nephews, are spellbound, as are Mama and Aunt Sadie. Whenever Lily sings everyone goes quiet, like they’re walking around inside a church. She goes on to another verse and then another. The melody soars and my chest expands. For nine months she lived inside of me, and even though she’s her own person now, her songs will be stored forever in my heart.

  Earlier that day, Lily asked the one question I never know how to answer. Someday soon I will have to tell her the truth. It’s amazing she hasn’t found out already, given the loose lips in these parts. But at the same time, mountain people will keep a secret forever if their own shame is attached to it somehow. Everybody knew Johnny was trouble. Everybody. Yet nobody did anything. Guilt has kept that secret sealed, as surely as if it were in a bank vault.

  Oddly enough, as we were walking home, Lily asked if I’d ever felt like moving away. Earlier today, at the cemetery, I was thinking about that very thing. I wondered if a place existed where I could go and totally be myself without anyone judging me. If so, I’d be tempted to pack all our bags this evening. However, I doubt such a place exists.

  After Lily finishes her song, everyone stays quiet for several seconds like the song is somehow healing all the lonely places inside each of us. Finally, Daniel and the boys begin to whistle and all of us clap.

  “Daddy would have loved that,” I say, giving Lily a hug.

  “You should sing on the radio,” Jo says, and everyone agrees.

  Lily’s face colors and she lowers her head. Whenever she sings at church, all of us come to hear her—even me—even though it’s a guarantee that Preacher will sermonize about heathens turning their back on the Lord. But, as far as I’m concerned, it was the Lord and the Church who turned their backs on me.

  Moments after finishing her song, Lily sits on the porch steps while Aunt Sadie and I claim the porch swing again. The others talk. Yet I am not hearing most of it and rub the center of my chest.

  “What is it?” Aunt Sadie asks.

  “Do you remember those dreams I had after Lily was born?”

  “They were more like nightmares,” she says. “You were terrified for days afterward.”

  In the dreams, Lily fell down a ravine and died crashing against the rocks like Johnny did. Sometimes, I’d wake up screaming. But I haven’t had them for years. Not since she was an infant.

  We are all protective of Lily. Me. Aunt Sadie. Mama. Daniel. My sisters, too, but not as much, now that they have their own broods to watch out for.

  “Are you having a premonition?” Aunt Sadie asks.

  According to her, premonitions are just a fancy name for the secret sense. Along the same lines, June says I can foretell the future as good as she can if I take the time to pay attention.

  “It may be nothing,” I say.

  Mama comes out of the house, her apron finally off for the day. She looks impatient with me, even though I haven’t said a word to her.

  “What are you brooding about now?” she asks me.

  My irritation flares. The look we exchange has our history in it. A history neither of us has forgotten. Fourteen years ago, Mama and I made our amends in Daniel and Jo’s barn. It was the closest I ever felt to her. Even though I know she would walk into a burning house to rescue me, as I would her, that doesn’t mean we’re close. If she had to choose, I still think she would rather have Daddy sitting here on the porch than me. It probably doesn’t help that I’ve always looked like him, especially as I’ve aged. I sit before her, a constant reminder of what she’s lost.

  “Have a seat, Nell,” Aunt Sadie says. “You’re just ornery because you’re tired.”

  Mama sits in the rocker reserved for her. I wish I didn’t take her moods so personally. In the next second my secret sense twists my gut. I turn to Aunt Sadie, finally clear on what it’s telling me.

  “A stranger is coming,” I whisper.

  “A stranger?” Aunt Sadie turns to look down the path that leads to the house, as if someone might appear at any moment.

  I think of all the hours I’ve sat on this front porch, looking down this hill waiting on Daddy to come home, and he never did.

  “Whatever it is, we’ll get through it,” Aunt Sadie says to me.

  Daniel turns away from Cecil and looks at me as if he might be needed. I smile so he’ll think everything is fine. He sits in the rocker on the other side of the door, a toothpick stuck between his lips. His leg must be bothering him because he winces as he helps it bend. Bolt runs to the porch steps to ask if Daniel wants to shoot basketballs in
to the wooden hoop nailed into one of the oak trees by the house. Daniel declines. The valley on his forehead deepens, like he’s thinking a father should play ball with his sons.

  Lizzy yells for Bolt to return, but it sounds more like a whine. Amy has confided in me that she can’t wait until Lizzy outgrows her childishness, but I’m not so sure she will. Meanwhile, Jo looks through a McCall’s magazine, while Lily and Nat talk about books and Meg goes inside and brings out the transistor radio from the kitchen and sets it on the porch rail. She turns the knob to tune in the one station we can get here in the mountains that comes in from Nashville. Jim Reeves is singing his latest hit. From the look of things, it is a normal afternoon in the life of the McAllister family, but something doesn’t feel normal about it at all.

  A hint of winter blows in from the west, and I pull my sweater closer. Before long, we’ll gather around the wood stove in the living room instead of the front porch. If a stranger is coming, they’d best arrive soon. Winter is a difficult time here. It’s hard to imagine someone new coming to Katy’s Ridge at any time of year. It’s not the type of place that collects newcomers.

  My secret sense vibrates at the center of my chest and causes me to stand. I look down the hill with anticipation. A woman wearing a white dress approaches. A white purse hangs over one arm and she has a red ribbon in her hair. Something about her seems familiar. As she gets closer I can see that her hair needs a good washing and her dress is faded and worn. The pattern on it is almost completely washed off.

  When I finally recognize who she is, I gasp. I don’t want the woman to come any closer. She is pale like a ghost, an apparition from the graveyard of my past. My bottom lip quivers like it knows something the rest of me doesn’t. Lily looks at me, her expression alive with another of her unending questions.

  The woman stops a few feet away from the porch.

  “Can we help you?” I say. I search the past for the name of someone I haven’t thought about for over a decade.

  “Oh my heavens,” Aunt Sadie says softly, before covering her mouth.

  Mud is caked around the woman’s white shoes like she’s traipsed through every mud hole in Katy’s Ridge to get here. She presses the stub of her cigarette into the soil with her dirty shoe. I step to the end of the porch, telling Lily to stay where she is. The woman looks at me like she’s daring me to recognize her. The look in her eyes makes me shiver. A deep sadness has made a home there.

  “Wildflower, do you remember me?” the woman asks.

  It is odd to hear a stranger call me Wildflower. A name only used by close family when I was a girl. Most people call me Louisa May now, except for Daniel, and occasionally Mama, and my best friend, Bee Blackstone, who calls me Lou.

  The surprise has turned me into one of the icicles that clings to the rocks behind our house in winter. I am frozen. Lily stands next to me. Is she being protective or just curious? Nobody else moves, except for Amy who nibbles on her fingernails. Even Daniel appears at a loss as to what to do next.

  “Who is this, Mama?” Lily whispers. She takes my sweaty palm.

  I’m not sure how to answer.

  “I’m Melody Monroe,” the stranger says. “I used to live here in Katy’s Ridge. You may remember my brother, Johnny.”

  Melody Monroe trains her eyes on Lily, taking a long look. It reminds me of how her brother used to look at me when I walked down the road toward school or to the cemetery or to see Mary Jane. My heartbeat accelerates and a memory chases after me. I am running from the cemetery down the mountain path to get away from Johnny, my arms pumping wild. For years I’ve run away from these memories. Now a ghost of that long ago terror stands in our front yard.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Lily

  Great Aunt Sadie steps to the other side of Mama like we’re all about to sing the hymn A Mighty Fortress is Our God. We are all steeped in hymns, even though none of us attend church anymore unless I’m singing. The last time we attended, Mama swore if she heard Preacher Evans say Repent one more time, while looking straight at her, she’d throw up her morning oatmeal on his suit. Even Granny misses most Sundays and has taken to saying her prayers on the back porch while she peels potatoes into a bucket.

  “Can we help you with something?” Great Aunt Sadie asks the stranger.

  “What’s going on?” I ask. The look on Mama’s face is one I’ve never seen before.

  Uncle Daniel stands now, his bad leg collapsing until he rights himself again. My family has been turned into pillars of salt like Lot’s wife when she looked back on Sodom, a story I heard in a rare trip to Sunday School.

  I ask the question again, this time louder. Bolt, Danny and Lizzy have stopped playing ball and have turned into statues, too.

  “Are you going to tell her, or am I?” the stranger says to Mama.

  Mama snaps awake, as if a mountain lion has come down from the higher mountains and is threatening us.

  “You’re not welcome here. Go back where you came from.” She points down the hill toward the road.

  The woman doesn’t move. “I’m only here for a visit,” she says.

  Whoever this woman is, she isn’t welcome. My family is usually friendly to strangers. But not this one. Mama squeezes sweat into my palm again, and Great Aunt Sadie places a heavy hand on my shoulder as though I might get kidnapped.

  In the westerns I’ve seen at the Rocky Bluff Theater, there’s always a standoff between the good guys and the bad guys. If this were one of those movies, Mama would be in the role of Gene Autry, and the villain in this scene would be a woman who needs to clean her shoes.

  Granny is the first family statue to come alive. She gets up from her rocker and walks into the house letting the screen door slam behind her. A few seconds later she returns with the shotgun she keeps next to the back door to scare away the foxes and bobcats from her hen house. Evidently this stranger is someone she sees as a threat.

  “You’ve been asked to leave,” Granny says. She raises the shotgun and points it straight at the woman.

  I gasp. Mama taught me to never point a shotgun at a person or an animal unless I intend to kill them.

  The woman lowers her head and takes two steps back, holding up an arm to prevent Granny from coming any closer.

  All the McAllisters know how to load and shoot a shotgun, even me. Mama taught me around the same time I learned to drive the truck.

  “No need to get upset, Mrs. McAllister.”

  “Why are you here?” Great Aunt Sadie asks.

  “I’m only back for a visit,” the stranger says. “We’ve still got land here.”

  “What’s your real reason for being here?” Mama asks.

  The woman hesitates and glances at me.

  “I’ve been hearing things, and I wanted to check it out for myself,” the woman says. She doesn’t take her eyes from me.

  “Hearing things?” Mama asks. “Like what?”

  “Maybe now’s not the proper time,” the stranger says, glancing over at Granny who hasn’t moved.

  Uncle Daniel steps to the porch rail. “Whatever you’re peddling, we’re not interested,” he says.

  She offers Daniel a slight smile, as though recognizing him.

  “I don’t want any trouble, Mister Daniel,” she says. “The only thing I’m peddling is the truth.”

  I doubt Aunt Amy has a fingernail left, and I’ve never seen Aunt Meg’s eyes so big. Not even when she’s telling a big piece of juicy gossip. Aunt Jo is now in the yard with the kids making sure none of them get any closer.

  “Like I said,” Uncle Daniel begins again. “We’re not interested.”

  “Somebody, please tell me what’s going on?” I say. This time I practically shout. If there’s anything I hate, it’s being the last to know something.

  For the first time since the stranger arrived, Mama looks over at me. “It’s something that happened before you were born,” she says, as if this should be enough for me to drop it.

  “What is it? What ha
ppened?” I ask.

  My questions are met with silence.

  “Y’all are acting like a bunch of cowards,” I say, my frustration growing.

  Mama shoots me a look that isn’t the least bit cowardly.

  From behind me the shotgun cocks. I can’t believe the stranger is still within a mile of here. If Granny had a gun aimed at me, I’d be halfway to Rocky Bluff by now.

  “If you want to talk, I’m staying at my family’s place until Friday,” she says directly to me.

  “Why would I want to talk?” I ask, confused that she has spoken to me.

  “‘Cause it looks like you’re not getting any answers from your family.” Her lips form a straight line and nearly disappear.

  Granny cocks the other barrel, and the stranger announces she’s leaving. With a swift turn she walks down the hill, kicking up dirt and pebbles on the path. After she passes the Red Bud sisters, the stranger disappears out of sight. Everyone on the porch exhales at once and the statues come alive. Chatter begins.

  “Are you all right?” I ask Mama. Her face is pale and her hands are trembling.

  “I’ve been better.” She offers a faint smile.

  Mama is the bravest person I know and to see her scared makes me feel jittery inside. Great Aunt Sadie is taking care of her, though, and takes both Mama’s hands, like she’s giving her something solid to hold onto. Mama’s eyes have that look she gets when she disappears into the past. Aunt Sadie makes Mama sit on the porch swing.

  “You’re safe, sweetheart,” she says. “You’re safe.”

  Safe from what? I want to ask. What does Mama need to be safe from?

  My hands find their way to my hips. “Somebody needs to tell me what this is about,” I say. My entire family turns toward me, even my cousins.

  Mama looks straight at me, but doesn’t speak.

  My face grows hot. In that instant, I hate my entire family with their statue ways and how nobody talks. I fortify my hatred by telling myself this is one of the reasons I am perfectly fine leaving Katy’s Ridge forever.