That night while she washed dishes Esther even sang. The words to “Happy Days Are Here Again” rained down to the cellar. Holding the faded picture of the long lost Ginny Mae, I stood directly under the vent and let her words about better times drench me.
The night of the birthday party Esther was in high excitement. As she barked orders, waiters moved in all different directions. Trays of crab cakes and salmon-draped biscuits drifted above the heads of the guests as hired help weaved in and out of the crowd. Following the tray with boiled shrimp, I passed Mrs. McMasters and the other ladies from the bridge club. Men in ties and ladies with sparkling pocketbooks flooded across the hall and into the library. Strains from the jazz band called me out to the patio. Aunty Gina was leaned against the piano playing with a long strand of pearls, while Judge Jackson and two other old men held court around her.
One man lit a pipe and blew the smoke straight up at the stars. “Now, Gina, I know you’re sick to death of this special session, but if Ways and Means would go ahead and get that budget out of committee, we could all go home.”
“We’re working on it,” the other man said. “I figure by the end of August we’ll be free.”
“The end of August,” Aunty Gina moaned. “Lord, that’s just about the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. I’ve got to be out before then. Brandon will be ready to start school. I’ll have missed the whole summer.”
“She’s right,” Judge Jackson said. “The end of August seems extreme. Besides, all the papers will hang you boys for spending taxpayer money on such a long session.”
The man with a pipe nudged Judge Jackson. “Oh, I know the solution. Just go ahead and fund that annex of yours and then we can all go home.”
Judge Jackson smiled and held up his glass just as Aunty Gina spotted me.
“Well hey, honey. Come over here and speak to these old friends of mine.” As she adjusted my tie, the men winked at each other. Nairobi entered the patio carrying a glass of champagne and wearing a turban that matched Aunty Gina’s hair.
“Look, Nairobi’s here.”
“Well, if it’s not Harriet Tubman herself.”
“Now, Conner,” Aunty Gina said.
“Excuse me,” the man said, “but there’s just so much social good I can stand in one night.”
Esther was directing everybody outside when Judge Jackson found Winston and me in the library counting out the drink umbrellas we had collected. “Young man, Gina’s asking for you.”
When I finally made it through the crowd, she was standing on the band stage. As she bent down to whisper in my ear, the dampness of her breath tickled. “Honey, there are going to be so many candles on this cake I need your help blowing them out. Are you up for the job?”
When the biggest three-tiered birthday cake I had ever seen came rolling out on a cart, the band took the cue. Soon the entire group fanned over the grass and down to the hedge was singing “Happy Birthday.” With her hands draped around my shoulders, all I could do was glance up and see her smile. Faces from Raleigh’s finest shone back at us, and in the crowd Nairobi’s yellow turban was the brightest of them all. Winston and his parents stood in the middle. He waved, and I lifted my hand, but then resisted doing anything that might cause embarrassment. The people who looked back at me on that stage seemed like those I’d find in National Geographic, foreigners from distant lands. And, like the photographer who took those magazine pictures, I was just a visitor passing through.
“Are you ready now? Make a wish and we’ll share it together,” Aunty Gina whispered. Leaning over the cake, she clutched her chest and the bottom part of the pearls swayed. Against the candles she looked younger and batted her eyes the same way I imagined Ginny Mae doing whenever her grandparents gave her a cake. At the same time we closed our eyes and strained to blow away the past.
After the last guest had left and the band was packing up, Aunty Gina and me sat on the patio steps. She had pulled off her shoes and rubbed the ball of one foot. Esther stripped away the cloths from the scattered tables. “Esther, come over here and rest before you work yourself into a stroke.”
“I’d rather keep going. Once I stop, then I’m afraid I won’t be able to get back up.” She was carrying an armload of white linens up the steps when Aunty Gina reached up to touch her hand.
“Thank you for a wonderful birthday. I declare, it was the best yet. Well, the best since Preston left us.”
“Oh, don’t butter me up. I’ll still plan the next one too.” Esther patted the armful of linens. Before walking inside, she reached down to touch Aunty Gina the way I thought she might do if she was in a fancy store and tempted by fragile china.
“Isn’t the sky just gorgeous tonight?” Aunty Gina sighed. The spray of her breath warmed my arm.
Stars dotted the sky like the diamonds she wore on her fingers.
“This is the type of sky that makes me think of western North Carolina, up in the mountains where I grew up. My grandfather used to say if you could grab a handful of stars on a clear night, your dreams would come true. I’d try for that cluster right over there to the right.”
“What did you wish tonight?”
She giggled but never looked away from the stars. “Now, honey, you’re not supposed to tell or it won’t come to pass. Look at that Big Dipper. Mercy, that is gorgeous.”
When the last piece of band equipment was packed, chirping crickets were the only music we had, and it settled on me like the wine Esther enjoyed.
“Why did you ask about my wish, honey?”
“After we blew out the candles, I thought maybe we should’ve wished for the same thing. You know, maybe it would make it come true if we both wished for it.”
“I know what you wished for, honey. I know.” Her eyes sparkled as easy as the stars. Before I could think, I reached over and held her hand. The rings were cool to the touch, but the skin was as delicate as her dress. There was nothing to gain or any games to be played that night. Aunty Gina was just one more person I could add to Nana’s list of people who loved me.
Twenty-three
Esther was the one who told me that company was coming for dinner. It happened on a hot Saturday morning while we pulled weeds from the garden. Tufts of hair tangled with sweat and were pasted against her forehead. “Mrs. Strickland’s planning for company tonight. Cut off some squash on your end. She told Judge Jackson my squash casserole is even better than the one in that Junior League cookbook.”
The comment was offered in her usual no-nonsense tone, but the very name caused me to stop digging.
That night I greeted Judge Jackson with a firm handshake and solid eye contact that would’ve made Miss Helda proud. While a Lawrence Welk album played on the library stereo, Esther served drinks. The dining-room table was set with roses and the big candleholders that Esther had polished special for his visit sparkled even brighter than usual. Nervous energy and Aunty Gina’s perfume tangled the air.
After I gulped down supper in the kitchen, I stopped by the library.
“Good night, Aunty Gina.” I kissed her the way I had the night of her birthday, but my eyes were on the judge.
“Good night, honey. Sleep tight.”
She didn’t even have to remind me to stop by his chair and stretch out my hand. “Good night, sir.”
As I walked up the stairs, I stomped extra loud. Halfway to the top I turned and ran down to the cellar. The swinging lightbulb cast shadows across the letters lined up on the table, and strains from Lawrence Welk’s orchestra hummed like a nest of wasps. Under the air-conditioning vent, their words sounded as if I was hearing them on an out-of-range AM radio station.
“May I freshen your drink before we go into the dining room?”
The judge coughed extra loud and then cleared his throat. “One more please.”
When they moved into the dining room, I drug the stepladder over to the opposite side of the room. A spider’s web and clumps of dust dangled from the corner of the ceiling. When Aunty Gina re
ported that Bobby and Sissy on The Lawrence Welk Show were really married, I almost gave up straining to hear. Besides, Esther was the one who had told her that anyway.
“I don’t get the opportunity to look at much television. With this session I don’t see how you make the time.”
“Oh, gracious, I don’t. I just have two TV bugs in my house. Brandon keeps it going round the clock.”
“You’re coaching him to be a charming young man.”
A fork dropped on the table, and the sound drowned the judge’s words.
“Well, speaking of Brandon, have you had a chance to look at his grandparents’ case?” Aunty Gina asked.
“You know we’ve talked…”
“Blah, blah, blah. That’s all we’ve done. Now, did you read those case notes?”
A silence followed that made me curl my toes and desire a bathroom.
“Gina, let’s skip shoptalk tonight.”
“Did you, Jackson?”
“Now, Gina. What you’re asking me to do breaches on unethical. I mean, reducing a sentence for people who crossed state lines with a child…”
“Honey, that child you’re talking about was their grandson. They saw fleeing as their only way to protect him.”
“I just don’t know…You know usually I’d help any way I can.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“But this is a murky situation. Murky at best. A custody battle between grandparents and a mother. At the time there was no just cause why she shouldn’t have had him.”
“Well let’s see…The girl is sitting over in jail for shoplifting. Not a soul in the world to even bail her out.”
“Gina, I’m sorry. It’s just not ethical for me to reduce sentences…Now for the sake of justice…”
“If you’d just look at the case instead of having your law clerk flip through it, then maybe you’d see what’s best for the sake of this child.”
“Now, Gina, you simply don’t understand all of the procedures involved, but I always…”
“I understand enough to know you’ve done it before, Jackson. How about Doug Sippling’s boy? The one caught embezzling…”
“Now that was a…who told you about…”
“And Jackson, you mentioned ethics. Well, it just seems to me that if an authority figure were to hear about this case and that authority figure didn’t step up to the plate…well, I’d question what sort of ethics he had to start with.”
“These are rather harsh statements, Gina.”
“I’ve made up my mind about this thing. If you don’t step up and do something, that precious little courthouse annex of yours won’t see the light of day.”
Judge Jackson laughed in a gurgled tone. “Gina, I’m impressed with how fond you’ve become of the boy. Really I am, but this little game of cat and mouse…”
“Honey, there’s no playing to it. I’ve got the votes and that colored woman you saw at my party is working it too.”
The music floated out again, and I pictured Aunty Gina dressed in a wrestling cape with the judge pinned beneath her.
“Now hold on, Gina…”
“Jackson, by the time we’re through slicing up your precious budget, the only thing anybody will be holding will be your testicles. The Senate president will hold them out for all North Carolina to see. Every day he’s adding up the dollars this special session is costing taxpayers. He’ll be more than glad to blame you for every bit of it. And do you really think that your buddy the governor will stand up for your little courthouse then?”
The sound of a fork tapping a plate cut the air like a radio weather advisory.
“I seem to have found an ice queen this evening.”
“No, Jackson. I just found my voice is all.”
Stillness settled over the house in those early days of August; anticipation brewed with the heat. Each evening I waited up for Aunty Gina, and each night she’d come in with her pocketbook and briefcase in tow. I kept expecting her to come in with a big smile and maybe a cake decorated with the words “Welcome Home, Nana and Poppy.” But each night her smile seemed weary and her eyes a little sadder. For the first time I recognized the eyes as those of the little girl in the yellowed photographs. As she hugged me and kissed my head, I realized that I knew more about her than she did about me. I wanted to hug her tighter or pat her back. Wondering if this was how people felt when they found out about my past, I fought the urge to squeeze back and instead carried her briefcase into the library.
At night she would continue to work at the desk with legs shaped like eagles. Her words of steel and sugar floated up to the staircase where I waited. Perfume-laced battle strategies that sounded like secret codes in a World War II movie.
While the news anchors talked about the long special session moving forward, I moved forward with a make-believe life. Esther enrolled me at the private school downtown where Winston had signed up. Two weeks before school was scheduled to start, we completed our tennis lessons and for once I was able to beat Winston. The accomplishment was hard to accept. The entire time we swam in his pool that afternoon, all I could think was that he let me win out of sympathy over my dead mother. I was just beginning to make a dive when Esther’s voice roared out from over the tall hedge. “Brandon. Brandon Willard.”
Winston’s webbed fingers brushed water from his eyes. He treaded water and stared as if my name had been called out from the intercom at school. Such a call could only mean trouble. I ran barefoot towards the hedge and nicked my leg jumping a fallen limb. Branches raked across my side the way that bad memories tried to yank me back to the past. I fought the image of Aunty Gina killed in some car wreck or worse yet, dead from a heartache caused by work on my behalf.
Esther was standing on the patio steps shielding her eyes from the sun. “You’re scratched to pieces.”
My breath was as tangled as the dishrag she held. “What’s the matter?”
“Mrs. Strickland just called. She had to go in for a vote. But anyway, they’re coming home. Your grandpop and grandma are coming home.” Esther smiled as best she could and reached for my shoulder. Her pat was swift but her words were as sweet as Aunty Gina’s.
“They’re coming home.”
I rose with the sun the day Nana and Poppy walked out of my memories and back into my life. The morning paper lay on the brick driveway. Clutching it, I wondered if delivering the paper would be the last thing I would ever do for Aunty Gina. When I saw her picture on the bottom of the paper, I took off running towards the kitchen table.
“What in the world…” she asked.
“You’re in the paper.” I waved the paper like a flag of victory.
When I flipped the paper open, her picture looked even bigger. She was shown with her head turned smiling at Judge Jackson. The headline read “Special Session Over: Budget Passes.” It was set right below the fat banner that declared the end of the Nixon administration.
After breakfast I changed into the shirt and pants I had hidden in the bottom part of the dresser. They were the clothes I had shown up wearing, and they would be the clothes I would leave with. Sitting on the bed, I studied the room and tried to sketch the objects in my memory, the same way someone might do in an art museum.
“Honey, you better start packing up your things.” Aunty Gina stood at the door fastening her watch.
“Uh…I already have.”
She searched the room with her eyes. “What about your tennis outfit and your church suit?”
I hated to tell her that Nana and Poppy couldn’t pay for any of those things, so I just sat there. Aunty Gina began pulling everything out in the drawers in a frenzy suitable for spring cleaning. She saw shirts and shoes that morning, but all I saw were mounting dollar signs. “We don’t have the money to pay for all this stuff, okay.”
She stood there holding my underwear and looking as if I had slapped her. “Honey, these are your things now. I gave them to you.” Sitting down on the bed, she outlined what else she was giving me. The tu
ition to school was paid in full for the year; so were next summer’s tennis lessons that she convinced me would offer companionship for Winston. Nana and Poppy didn’t take to charity, I could’ve told her that much. “Oh, it’s just a loan here and there,” Aunty Gina said with a toss of the hand. “An agreement between the three of us.”
Before I left, Esther handed me a bag full of vegetables. “Until your grandpop can set out a garden.” She used the back of her hand to iron a wrinkle out of her uniform. “Now you keep working on your tennis. You’re a real natural.”
Riding past the fountain, I looked over at the driver’s seat. It was the first time Aunty Gina had driven me anywhere. She smiled and nodded as if to acknowledge the milestone.
As I watched the mansion grow smaller in the side mirror, it began to look like something out of make-believe. A miniature castle made out of blocks. And a piece of me had been left in that castle. Down in the cellar tucked deep inside the crate of photographs of Ginny Mae were the letters Nana and Poppy had written me. Sacred memories tossed together in strips of faded tissue.
We drove through downtown Raleigh and then headed south. “The farm’s back the other way.”
Aunty Gina pulled tighter on the steering wheel. “You’ve got a new place now. It’s just as cute as it can be. You’ll have all sorts of neighbor children around.”
“Why aren’t we going back to the farm?”
“Honey, now I don’t know all the details. Your aunt has her mother or somebody living there now. I’m talking behind Nairobi, so I think it’s best you ask your grandparents about all that.” She turned and looked at me with all the seriousness that I pictured her giving Judge Jackson. “But just remember a home is wherever your people are. Boards rot and concrete cracks, but it’s the people inside that really matter.”
When I saw Nairobi and the pretty government lady standing on the concrete porch, a familiar feeling swept over me. It was not the farmhouse. The tiny brick house had just one tree in the yard, and the neighbor was so close I could see the glow of the TV. But the corner fern that dangled from the wrought-iron post was what I focused on.
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