by Lisa Wingate
The argument continued. I wanted to move close enough to make out the words, solve the mystery my father had created downstairs, but Landon trembled in my arms, whimpered softly, and suddenly I knew why he was up before the nanny call. His room was right next to the master suite.
Slipping a hand into his hair, I started down the stairs, my stomach clenching and tears prickling my throat. I knew what it was like to wake up with your parents eviscerating each other on the other side of the wall. “Hey, buddy, it’s all right,” I whispered, and kissed the downy hair over his ear. “Big people fight sometimes just like you guys do. It doesn’t mean anything.” The irony of that statement struck me as I reached the downstairs landing. Big people fight just like you guys do. . . .
No wonder the boys acted the way they did. Nothing here was like it was supposed to be. Nothing was right, or normal, or secure. Even the kids could feel the ground constantly shifting.
In the living room, I pried Landon off, set him on the sofa, then turned on a Disney movie. “I’ve gotta go, bud-pud. Just sit here and watch your movie until Esmeralda comes down, okay?”
Landon didn’t answer. He was already zoning out to the opening credits of Toy Story. Something thumped so hard upstairs, it rattled the chandelier overhead. Landon didn’t even notice. He wiped his cheeks and curled into a ball in the corner of the sofa, his blue eyes dull and unfocused. I tossed a fuzzy 101 Dalmatians blanket over him, and he snuggled it against his chin.
Via the baby monitor on the end table, Jewel let out a wail. Mark or Daniel hollered something from the top of the stairs. A mystery object hit the floor. Landon tugged the blanket up higher, pulling it off his legs. There was a bruise on his thigh from the slide collapse last night.
The back door opened, and Aunt Lute stepped in, her face serene, a faint smile on her lips, as if the commotion in the house were of no concern to her.
“Aunt Lute, can you watch Landon?” I asked, and then headed for my car without waiting for an answer. I was out of the garage before the long hand on my watch could slide past another minute. My cell rang while I was on the way to the club, and it was Emity, of course. “Hola, chica,” she said, and after the bizarre morning at home, the cheerfulness in her voice seemed out of place. “Buenos días.”
“No foreign languages today, all right?” For a while now, Emity and I had been working on conversational French, Spanish, and Italian, so we’d be ready for Europe.
“Whoa, what’s wrong with you?”
“Sorry. Weird day on Wisteria Lane. You know Barbie.”
“Word’s around about her taking out the Baby Bundle.” Emity hitched a breath, and I could tell she was ready to get the dish on last night.
Normally, I would have been totally into spending the drive dealing out the Barbie details, but I couldn’t get past the picture of my father crumpled in the chair, crying in the morning light. It made the Barbie blunder seem anything but funny. “I don’t know what’s going on. My dad was sitting in the living room crying this morning. Crying. Can you believe that? When I left, they were having a massive fight upstairs.”
“Whoa,” Em breathed. “What about?”
“No idea. Have you heard anything? Like, from your mom?” Emity’s mom was head of the Coffeetime Club at our church, Forest Lane Fellowship, so she more or less heard everything. Aside from that, my mother and Em’s mom had been friends since Em and I were in diapers together, so she’d scoop the dirt on my dad’s new wife any chance she got.
“Nothing, except she took out the Baby Bundle with the Escalade. I heard she got her heel hooked under the gas pedal and couldn’t get to the brake. Your dad’s probably ticked about that.”
“Yeah, I guess. The Escalade’s still drivable, so it could be worse.” But there was a queasy swirl in my stomach that wouldn’t go away—as if I’d eaten something bad, and it was coming back to haunt me. “It was just weird. He said I might hear stuff at the club, and I shouldn’t listen to it. What kind of stuff, you know?”
Emity thought for a minute. “I guess about the big wreck.”
“I guess,” I muttered. “Hey, Em, I’ve got to go. I’m at the club. Come meet me for lunch at the Club Grill, ’kay? See if your mom knows anything . . . about Barbie, or whatever, all right?”
Em answered in Spanish, and then we signed off. I went into the clubhouse feeling like there was a bomb hidden somewhere, and I was just waiting for it to explode. All morning long, I heard it ticking in my ear. My eighteen holes with Coach were uneventful. Not good, not bad. He thought I was a little off, but other than the blips in my swing, there was no indication that today was anything but normal.
In the clubhouse after lunch, the manager politely pointed out that our tab from last month hadn’t been paid yet. I told him I’d remind my dad. “I think everything just autodrafts from the checking account,” I said, and instantly the argument with Barbie started making sense. She’d probably run the household account dry again, and autodrafts were bouncing all over town. No wonder Dad was ticked.
Emity and I blew the afternoon at the mall, and then I headed back to the club to play another eighteen, while Emity went to her cousin’s birthday dinner.
The nanny called just as I was setting up on the second tee. She was yelling in Spanish so loud and so fast, I couldn’t understand anything she was saying. In the background, Barbie was screaming at someone, the sibs were running wild, and a man was trying to speak above the fray. The male voice was not my father’s.
“Esmeralda! Esmeralda!” I hollered into the phone, but the line went dead. When I redialed, no one answered. I gunned the golf cart back to the clubhouse, left my clubs and everything else with the attendant, and ran for my car.
Horrible possibilities raced through my mind, and the few miles from the club to the house seemed endless. When I pulled into the driveway, a sheriff’s department car was leaving our curb, the nanny was standing in the doorway trying to keep Mark and Daniel from escaping onto the front walk, and Barbie was kneeling on the front lawn, clutching a piece of paper in one hand and a cell phone in the other. As I stepped from my car, she pushed to her feet and staggered toward me, her eyes rimmed with mascara tears, her hands shaking. “It’s . . . it’s not true. It’s a mistake. . . . I can’t . . . I can’t find him, though. He. . . .”
She reached toward me, and I stepped away. “Barbie? What are you talking about? Who? Who’s missing?” Panic exploded like a scatter bomb inside me, and I looked toward the door, counted the faces pressed around the nanny. Where was Landon? “Who can’t you find? Barbie! Who?”
Barbie staggered backward, her heels sinking into the sod. “I tried to call. I tried to call so he could talk . . . the sheriff.”
“The sheriff . . . what? Barbie, who’s missing? Who?”
Shaking her head, she held out the paper, stumbled sideways. “It’s not true. It’s . . . It’s a mistake. I tried to call Paul. I tried to call.”
“Dad?” I reached for the paper. “You tried to call Dad?” I pinched the paper between my fingers, pulled on it, but Barbie held tight. “Let go!” I snapped, then yanked it away. The sheet fluttered in my hand. I straightened it out, scanned the boldface line of print at the top.
Twenty-four-hour Notice of Eviction . . .
Chapter 5
Sesay
The reverend father at the Crossings Church has talked longer than usual today. His voice is deep, and his face is a smooth, even brown, like a palm leaf when it dries. I know the word for his color of skin. It is far back in my memory. Mulatto, my father would have called him, and pushed air through his teeth and spit on the ground. But here, no one says the word, or spits on it. Here at Crossings Church, the people are so many shades of color that no one seems to notice, except me. I only see it because my father taught me to see when I was very young, and the lessons taught to the young grow deep roots.
I would never spit on the reverend father, of course. Michael, he calls himself. I am happy enough to sit here under
the highway crossing and listen while he tells stories from his book, the Bible. The book is small, and brown, and he can read from it for a long time one day, and then more the next. He reads and reads, while the people sit stacked on the cement slope, their heads nodding forward, their clothing and blankets whispering in the breeze as they pass the time. They gaze out into the dusty lot, where the Glory Wagon is preparing something that smells good. The scent paints the back of my throat with water, and I look at the Glory Wagon, too. The Glory Wagon comes with Michael, and after you have listened to him tell what Father God wants to say, then the people in the Glory Wagon will give you something good in a paper bowl. It is only on certain days. Sometimes I pass by the bridge and see no Michael, and no Glory Wagon, and no paper bowls. I am learning the way of it, as you must when you come to a new place. The street people will help you, if you know how to ask.
Today, the men under the bridge are restless. They want to move on to the meal. I like the stories, though. I put them in my mind, but some of them are difficult to remember. I do not believe Michael keeps them all in his little brown book. There is not enough room in there for the pictures to tell so many stories. I think Michael must have many brown books with many different Father God stories, but all the books look the same. I think it is a trick he plays.
When he finishes, Michael prays over all of us. I watch him stand in the light filtering through the concrete piers, and hold his hands toward the sky, and call down a blessing. For a moment, everything is far away. I remember a building with no walls. I am a little girl on a blanket, and the sun is pushing through the roof in tiny pinpoints of heat, sending down shafts of light that dance in the dust from the floor. I have caught a piece of light in my hand, and I want to show it to someone. Another child. A younger one. There are brothers and sisters and cousins all around me. They have their eyes closed, as Father speaks a prayer over us, but I am looking at the sunbeams. For a moment now, my mind can see my brothers and sisters and cousins, their feet bare and brown in the dust, the tiny straws of sunlight falling over the braids in their hair. But then they fade, as they always do. I do not know what became of them when the soldiers broke down the gates of my father’s house. When my mother found me hiding beneath Father’s desk, no one was with her. She held my hand, and we ran through the house alone, into the darkness. . . .
There is movement all around me, and I am under the bridge again. Michael has finished his prayer, and everyone is walking toward the Glory Wagon—men and women, and a family with children alongside. Some of the men limp, some weave and stagger, and some just walk, as do I. Michael smiles at me as I come close. “Hello, Sesay,” he says, and points to the pocket on the front of my pack. It is clear, and you can see through it to know what is inside. “I see you’ve got another book.”
“I see you have one, as well,” I tell him, and he laughs.
“It’s the same book,” he answers. “Same old Bible.”
I blow a sound through my teeth, so he knows I am not such a fool as some of these people. “I like the story in this one.”
“I figured you would.” He looks down at the book, lifts it, and shows it the way a mother would display a favorite child.
“I have heard that story before—about the giant,” I tell him, and for a moment, I see a man’s hand, whirling as if he’s holding a bit of leather, a slingshot that will throw the rock to kill a giant. It is a white man’s hand, so I know it is not my grandfather’s. “Somewhere . . . my ears caught that story. . . .” Like so many rememberings, this one is a tiny scrap, like a bit of paper with the hand drawn on it. Nothing else is attached. There is only the hand floating in my mind. I watch it for a moment. “Is there a picture of the giant? In your book?” Perhaps if I see the picture, the memory will come back with it.
“No pictures in this book,” he says. “Just the words.”
“Father God could send pictures,” I point out, and look at the book again. “And then you would not need so many words.”
Michael laughs. “I never thought of it that way.” Lowering the book to his side, he turns toward the Glory Wagon, and we begin to walk. “I’ll look for a picture of Goliath and bring it to you, if I can. You going to be at the Broadberry Mission tonight?” In the evenings, Michael speaks at the mission, eight streets west, where the roads tangle together like snakes in a dance.
“Perhaps,” I tell him. “I saw a new family on Red Bird, beside the park. The house once was pink, but now it is yellow.” I want to watch the family more, to listen for their story, but I also know that when new people unpack, they put out boxes, and often the boxes have things in them that I can use—a bit of string, a can of paint, a china plate that has broken in the move.
Michael curls his lip like a growling dog when I mention the yellow houses. His hand goes tense on the Bible, and tight muscles shoot up his arms like cords of rope twisting. I am reminded that he is a young man. He has the anger of the young, but he fights against it. Sighing, he looks down at the sidewalk and shakes his head. He weighs the Bible in his hand. “Householders,” he murmurs, but does not say anything more.
“The family may be putting out boxes by now,” I tell him. “Boxes with things left in them.”
Michael narrows an eye and it twinkles at me. “Sounds like you’ve got important business. Guess I should stop holding you up then, shouldn’t I?” We reach the end of the line at the Glory Wagon, and he moves to take a place behind the table. Most days, he gives the spoons and greets everyone as they pass. He knows the names of so many people, even the newer ones like me. Some answer to the names and some do not. Today, a young girl with red hair gives out the spoons and bowls. She smiles, but she is not certain she should look anyone in the eye. She sets the bowls and spoons on the table, so no one will touch her.
Michael takes my spoon from her and keeps it just out of my reach. “You have anything for me?” he asks.
I have been waiting for the question. “Of course.” I pretend to search the pockets of my pack, but that is only for show. I am wearing my green pants with the pockets, like the ones the army men have. The thing Michael is waiting for is there, and I know it. When I finally take it out, he gasps with anticipation.
“It’s wonderful,” he says, watching as the little red fish dangles from a loop of orange thread. The thread was tangled in the fence near the school, and the fish I carved from a bit of pecan wood that was floating in a puddle in the ditch where the children play beside the white apartments. I know how to find the story in a bit of wood. My grandfather taught me.
“It’s just a little thing,” I tell him, but the fish is good. I rubbed it against the paint on the curb to give it the red color. I saw fish like it in the ocean, after my grandfather put me on the boat. Auntie showed the fish to me, and she told me to watch them. When I looked up again, the shore was far away, and my grandfather was as tiny as the little wooden fish, now dangling from the orange string.
“It’s very nice,” Michael decides, and I am pleased.
“I can carve a good fish.” For just a moment, I feel taller, and then I realize that I am smiling, and my teeth are not pretty. “It is equal to a bowl and a spoon.”
Michael nods. “It certainly is.” He pockets the fish and hands a bowl and spoon to me. The red-haired girl chews her lip, and I can see what she is thinking. The bowls and spoons don’t cost. But she does not know me. She does not know that I pay my own way. When you pay your own way, no one can own you.
I feel inside my pocket again. There’s still a turtle and a bird in there. I will have need of both yet today.
I go through the line and have my bowl filled, and then I’m off. I can walk and eat at the same time. If I arrive at the Summer Kitchen to help clean the dishes, the woman there will pack a sandwich and chips for me to have for supper, and I’ll have no need of going to the mission tonight.
My bowl is soon empty, so I slip it into a trash bin and wipe my face and walk down the block toward the white church, wher
e the Summer Kitchen is in the squatty building beside the chapel. The line stretches out the door, so I know I have arrived too early to wash dishes. At the Book Basket, the sign is turned to the side that means the door will be locked, so I move to the tree and stand there to watch the Indian chief, instead. The big doors on his part of the building are open, and I can hear music. The soft, clear tune of a flute draws me closer as if I am a snake, charmed from a basket. I walk to the corner and look in, then come nearer. I do not see the Indian chief, but it would be no matter if I did. I am invisible to him.
The big room where he works is empty. He has been painting on the large canvas again—broad, angry strokes that make a picture of a warrior on horseback, galloping. The white spaces yesterday have become mountains today.
There are splatters of paint by the door. Blue and green, still glistening wet. I look around for the chief again, and then I slip inside just far enough. I reach into my pocket, take out the turtle and the bird, push my finger into the paint, and color the turtle green and the bird blue. These are the right colors for them, and now both are finished. This is good, because I will need one for my sandwich from the Summer Kitchen.
The other is for the family in the new yellow house.
Chapter 6
Shasta Reid-Williams
Something weird happens when you’re from a big family, and all your life, y’all have been bouncing off one another like mixed nuts in a can. Even when you finally break out, you can still hear all the relatives talking in your head. I never really counted on that when Cody and I moved to Dallas. I had it pictured that once we were in the city, and Cody was finally on with the police department, we’d get all settled in, and I’d finally feel like a grown-up adult, like I really was almost twenty-four years old. After being married five years and having two (and a quarter) kids, it seemed like it oughta be time.
