by C. C. Payne
“Lula Bell?” Mrs. West said softly.
“I don’t want to play any music,” I blurted out, “because I don’t want to hear any music.”
“Is there a reason…aside from the obvious?” Mrs. West asked.
I tried to think how to explain.
Mrs. West made huffy, impatient sounds.
I checked the stairs—just to make sure that Alan wasn’t sitting at the top, listening in, the way he usually did—and then confessed, “You know how sometimes when you hear an old song, it takes you back to a certain time and place, whether you want it to or not?”
“Yes,” Mrs. West said.
“Well, I never want to come back to this time, this place in my life again,” I said, and I meant it. I didn’t want to mark this time with the song “Under the Boardwalk”—or any song—because then, whenever I heard “Under the Boardwalk,” no matter where I was, it would always take me back to the worst, saddest time of my life.
Mrs. West put her arm around me and gave me a little squeeze. “Do you want to know why I think that happens, why music bypasses all our defenses and goes straight to the soul?”
“Why?”
Mrs. West smiled. “I think music is where heaven meets the earth.”
What was that supposed to mean? It probably meant that we were having a music lesson today, whether I wanted to or not.
“Now then,” Mrs. West said, nodding at the sheet music, “the show must go on.”
Yep, just as I’d thought. “I’m not singing,” I informed her.
“All right,” Mrs. West said easily. “Just play.”
I sighed heavily, checked the stairs again, and played. The whole song. It hurt me to do it. I could feel the vibration of each note inside me, creating tiny cracks in my heart, cracks that would break open some sunshiney day when I least expected it.
“Very good,” Mrs. West said when I finished. “Again, and this time, sing.”
I played up to the point where I was supposed to start singing, then stopped. “I can’t sing. I just can’t. Please,” I begged. “It isn’t in me.”
“It’s in you. It’s always in you,” Mrs. West said with certainty. “Find it.”
It was hard, maybe one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. But the next time around, I found my voice and came in singing on the second verse.
That night, I learned the one good thing about being forced to sing and play the piano at the same time: doing it takes every ounce of my concentration. There isn’t enough room left in my brain to hold another thought, not a single one. So, for a few minutes here and there, I forgot about Grandma Bernice; I forgot how sad and lonely I was; I forgot my own name. For a few minutes, there was only music.
By the end of the lesson, I didn’t want to stop, even though I had never wanted to start. I also didn’t want to go home, which was weird because I hadn’t wanted to leave home in the first place.
I checked the stairs again. There was still no sign of Alan. By now, I’d checked the stairs about fifty-two million times; usually, I was mad at Alan for spying on me, but for some weird reason, tonight, I was sort of mad at Alan for not spying on me. I figured all this meant that I was pretty messed up. For a second, I pictured my insides like a compass spinning round and round, out of control, instead of steadily pointing north.
Mrs. West rose from the piano bench, smoothed her skirt, and then hollered at the ceiling, “Alan! Alan, Lula Bell’s about to go! Come down and walk her out!”
Before she’d even finished, Alan appeared at the top of the stairs. The sight of him, or more specifically the sight of his hair, made me smile just a little.
I met Alan at the front door, where he shoved his hands deep in his pockets and studied his feet. An awkward silence passed between us.
“Thanks for the roses and the ribbon,” I offered.
“You’re welcome,” Alan said, meeting my eyes. “I’m sorry it wasn’t a blue ribbon—I had trouble with the humidifier.”
“Well, don’t tell my mama that,” I said. “When I explained our tornado box to her, she said we ought to take an extra fan and an extra humidifier to school as backups. Can you believe that?”
Alan smiled his crooked smile. “She was right.”
“Yeah, that’s why I said don’t tell her.”
Alan and I laughed nervous little laughs, and then came another silence—this one so long and uncomfortable that my toes began feeling their way around inside my shoes.
This time, Alan was the one to speak. “The funeral was nice.”
I nodded.
“I’m sorry about Grandma Bernice,” he said. “I really liked her.”
“Me, too,” I said, looking down.
“I know. She was your best friend.”
She was? I thought about it, and after a minute, I realized that Alan was right: Grandma Bernice had been my best friend. I wished I’d known it sooner so that I could’ve told Grandma. I felt my chin quiver.
“Igottago,” I barked just before I yanked the front door open and leapt out into the night.
I stood on the Wests’ front porch, gulping at the cool night air. It helped.
I still didn’t want to go home, but I started walking and as I did, the sky started sprinkling again—it had rained on and off all day. So I hurried along our quiet, tree-lined street.
I cut through our yard and around back, the soft ground sinking under my feet, the wet grass licking at my ankles. When I reached our back door, I stopped and tried to brace myself for what I’d find inside. Or rather what and who I wouldn’t find.
Mama had left a small lamp on in the kitchen, but it didn’t feel all that welcoming to me. The whole house felt dark and empty, sad and strange.
As I took my jacket off, I noticed a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts sitting on the kitchen table. That’s when I realized that Mama had known that asking me to leave the house, to play the piano, to sing, was asking a lot. And asking me to come back home and face Grandma Bernice’s absence in a new way was asking even more. Mama considered the fact that I’d actually done all of it, a real accomplishment. I was grateful then for the doughnuts I would never eat, because they let me know that I wasn’t quite as alone as I’d thought.
Next to the doughnuts on the table was the White House Watch, still in its plastic sleeve. My shoes squished as I walked over to the table and sat down, just like I would have if Grandma Bernice had been there. As I sat there remembering the last time I’d had doughnuts with my obituaries, I couldn’t help wishing that I’d known it would be my last Thursday night with Grandma Bernice. I would’ve said more important things. Things like “I’m sorry,” and “I love you, Grandma Bernice,” and “You’re my best friend.”
“Lula Bell?” Mama said, flicking on the overhead light. “Honey, what’re you doing? Why are you just sitting here in the dark?”
I blinked back my tears and shrugged.
“I was waiting for you in the living room.”
I wanted to tell her that she was supposed to wait for me in the kitchen, like Grandma Bernice always had, but I didn’t—after all, Mama was an orphan now.
I think Mama wanted to tell me that I should’ve taken off my squishy shoes at the door, because I saw her frown at the muddy brown water I’d tracked across the floor. But instead, she smiled and didn’t say a thing.
Hitting the Limit
The birds outside my window were singing when I apparently reached the limit to how long I’d be allowed to stay home, feeling sorry for myself.
“Time to get up,” Mama said cheerfully as she drew back my curtains. A pale pink sky was giving way to a beautiful, bright blue Monday morning.
“Whyyyy?” I moaned.
“You’ve gotta get ready for school, Lula Bell,” Mama said, as if I should’ve known. “C’mon now or you’ll be late.”
As if to prove her point, Grandma Bernice’s old grandfather clock rang out in song and then gonged six times, announcing that it was 6 o’clock.
I pulled the covers up over my head. How could Mama expect me to just go on back to school now, like I’d only been sick with the flu or something? The flu hadn’t come to our house; death had come to our house, and it had taken one of us away—forever.
“The talent show auditions are today,” Mama announced. She obviously expected this to make a huge difference.
It made a difference all right: it made me want to stay home from school even more. Why, oh why had I fantasized about the talent show, out loud, in front of Mama and Grandma Bernice? I’ll tell you why: because the day that little slip of yellow paper about the fifth grade talent show came home from school, the talent show was so far off, it seemed like it would never come. So, fantasizing about being in the talent show was like fantasizing about what I might want for Christmas. I know Christmas will come eventually, but it’s usually so far off when I start talking about what I want that I know I have plenty of time to change my mind, again and again, which I always do. But when I changed my mind about the talent show, Mama and Grandma Bernice acted like I’d changed my mind about college—and said I wasn’t going. They both said that I would be in the talent show, and that was all there was to it.
Mama sighed. “C’mon, Lula Bell, there’s work to be done.”
I didn’t move.
Mama sat down on the edge of my bed and placed a gentle hand on my back. “Lula Bell, if staying home feeling sorry would bring Grandma Bernice back, I would do it. I would do it no matter how long it took. But it won’t bring her back—it won’t do anything.”
I knew this speech. It was a slightly softer version of Mama’s “Feeling sorry for yourself never accomplishes anything, while hard work always brings accomplishment” speech.
“Okay, okay,” I whimpered from under the covers, even though it was definitely not okay with me.
I felt really mad at Mama, not tired-mad but mad-mad, but what could I do? It’s not like you can haul off and start yelling at your mama. Well, you can, I guess, but I wouldn’t. I figure there’s a reason that for all the times I’ve seen mamas yelling at their kids in the grocery store, I’ve never once seen a kid yelling at their mama. So, I stomped around the house, slamming things and huffing, but I didn’t yell. And I didn’t complain—because that would’ve resulted in extra chores.
I decided to wear my lucky orange T-shirt to school because of the auditions. Now, I admit that my lucky T-shirt had gotten a little smallish and tightish over the winter, but when I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror, I thought I could get away with it this once. Oh sure, I knew I could’ve gotten away with it a lot easier if my hair had been curly and blond…and maybe if my eyes had been pale blue, but you’ve got to work with what you have. In my case, that was plain, boring brown eyes and straight, boring brown hair. I tried putting my hair into a ponytail but ended up with more of a ponystub, so I took it down. I thought about asking Mama to curl my hair with the curling iron, but I figured I’d have to ask nicely, which might make Mama think I wasn’t mad at her anymore, which I was. The curls would just fall out in an hour or two anyway, so I left my hair the same as always.
When I came downstairs, Mama set her coffee cup down and said, “You’re not wearing that old shirt, are you?”
I froze. I needed to rethink the whole shirt thing. I had a hard enough time fitting in at school—I couldn’t afford to wear the wrong clothes, too.
“But I need it for the auditions,” I decided out loud. “It’s my lucky shirt.”
“Oh,” Mama said.
I made a huffy sound and dropped into a chair at the kitchen table.
“What makes that shirt lucky?” Mama asked as she pulled a gallon of milk from the refrigerator.
“I won it,” I said. Duh.
Mama smiled and shook her head. “You didn’t win that shirt. We paid for it by buying more than ten boxes of cereal, which no one ate.”
“It wasn’t good cereal, Mama,” I said, trying to defend myself and my lucky shirt.
“Well, I hope you’ll remember that the next time you see a commercial on TV promising prizes if you buy a bazillion boxes of cereal. When food’s good, eating it is the reward.”
“Hmph!” I said.
Mama slid my breakfast onto the table in front of me, just like Grandma Bernice used to do. It wasn’t the right person, and it wasn’t the right breakfast. It was cereal—cold cereal!
“Um, is this about my shirt?” I asked.
“What?” Mama stopped moving and turned to look at me.
I glanced down at my cereal.
“Oh. No, of course not. I just don’t have enough time to fix you a hot breakfast. I have to finish getting ready for work.”
That’s when I knew that nothing was ever going to be okay again. Not even breakfast.
“But don’t worry,” Mama said on her way out of the kitchen. “I’ll be here when you get home from school.”
It was all too much, too early in the morning. I wanted to go back to bed. I wanted to forget. But I was stuck remembering instead, remembering my last normal breakfast: how Grandma Bernice had cooked for me, how she smiled as soon as she saw me, how she sat down at the table with me, how she got so excited over the red cardinal that perched on our hummingbird feeder—and the white hummingbird argument that followed.
“Lula Bell, you haven’t even touched your cereal,” Mama said when she came back into the kitchen.
I burst into tears.
Mama sat down at the table beside me and waited. When I began to quiet, she said, “We have to go on living, Lula Bell.”
I nodded.
“We have to go on living for Grandma Bernice, in honor of Grandma Bernice, because she never wasted a day in her life.”
I wanted to say something like, Nuh-uh, remember the time that Grandma Bernice stayed in bed for a month? Only I couldn’t, because Mama was right: I only knew of one day that Grandma Bernice had failed to get out of bed, and it was the day she died. Since I was—slightly inconveniently—alive that day, I wiped my face with my napkin, took a deep breath, and pushed back from the table.
WARNING! DANGER ZONE!
When I got down to my bus stop, I was mighty relieved to see that Kali Keele wasn’t there yet. But Alan West was. He was crouched down on the bank of Honey Run Creek, skipping stones across the water.
As soon as he heard me, Alan stood and wiped his hands on his pants. “Good morning, Lula Bell,” he said brightly.
“Hey.” I slipped out of my heavy backpack and let it fall at my feet. “Thanks for dropping off my make-up work,” I said, not that I’d done any of it.
“I was glad to do it,” Alan said. “It was no trouble at all. None whatsoever.”
I barely heard him. I wasn’t really listening. “Have you ever heard of a white hummingbird?” I asked.
“There have been reported sightings of white, or albino, hummingbirds,” Alan said, “but if they exist, they’re very rare.”
“If they exist?” I repeated.
“Well, there’s no proof yet. No one’s ever photographed an albino hummingbird that I know of.”
I nodded.
Alan grinned at me.
“What?” I said.
“I’m still undefeated,” he said, puffing out his chest a little.
“At what?” I asked, because Alan isn’t exactly athletic, if you know what I mean.
“Your questions. You’ve never once stumped me, Lula Bell.”
He was right, but then I figure it’s pretty hard to stump somebody who reads every single thing he can get his hands on—from books to bubble gum wrappers, and everything in between. In addition to this, each morning Alan checks the local weather forecast and national defense readiness condition (DEFCON), which is reported on a scale of one to five, one meaning we’re at war and five meaning we’re at peace. In fact, the only thing I knew of that Alan wasn’t interested in was sports. For a second, I was tempted to ask Alan about last night’s sports scores, just to prove that I could stump him anytime I w
anted, but I forgot all that when I heard the bus.
Immediately, I began sending thoughts to our bus driver: Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! Hurry and get here before Kali comes!
As the bus squealed to a stop in front of Alan and me, I looked around. No Kali. I hefted my backpack onto my back, climbed on, and took a seat. Alan sat down beside me.
I ignored him and looked out the window. That’s when I saw Kali Keele running toward the bus, her blond ponytail and perfect pink ribbon whipping in the wind behind her. My heart started pounding. No! No! No! I thought, and then, Go! Go! Go!
The bus lurched forward as I continued to watch Kali chasing after us. She grew smaller and smaller in the window, as my sense of relief grew bigger and bigger. Phew!
As soon as I walked into my classroom, everybody stopped what they were doing and stared at me. There were a few whispers, but nobody said anything to me. Well, I was used to that, used to being mostly invisible, so it was the collective staring that was new—and bothersome.
I hurried to my desk, where I sat down and tried to make myself invisible again. Was Mama right? Had I made a mistake in wearing this shirt? Or maybe I had something stuck to me. A sock from the dryer? Or worse, a pair of panties? Omigosh! I thought, I’ll have to change schools if I’ve been walking around with panties stuck to me! We’ll have to move! I tried to search myself without being obvious but couldn’t find a thing.
As soon as the second bell rang, Mrs. Pritchett stood up. “Lula Bell, sweetie pie, we’re so glad you’re back,” she gushed, giving me the same sort of gooey look that everyone had given me at Grandma Bernice’s funeral—like, Awwww, poor little Lula Bell.
I looked around. Nobody in my class seemed surprised. They all knew about Grandma Bernice, I realized. That’s why they stared at me. As if I didn’t have enough problems.
“Now,” Mrs. Pritchett said, turning away from me, “I have exciting news, class! Very soon, we’ll be going on a field trip to visit the home of Confederate hero Sam Davis!”
