Lena

by Jacqueline Woodson

  “Help yourself, child. If it’s in that refrigerator, you can have it.” Miz Lily finished bringing the bowls of beef stew and the plate of biscuits to the table and sat down.

  “Dion,” she said. “Since you’re the youngest, how about you thanking the Lord for us tonight?”

  Dion looked at me, then back at Miz Lily. Dion had her own set of beliefs about God. I shot her a look but she was already opening her mouth to talk.

  “God’s inside of us,” she said, looking a bit frightened.

  We had never prayed. Daddy thought it was a waste of time and Mama thought the Lord knew we were thankful, that He could look into our hearts and see it. Ever since she was a real little kid, Dion would talk about God being inside of us rather than up in some heaven somewhere. Once, this woman living next door to us heard Dion say it and told Mama Dion was blaspheming the Lord’s Holy Name. But Mama just smiled and told the woman it was what Dion believed in, so let it be.

  Miz Lily looked surprised for a moment. “Well, then I guess your grace will thank the God inside of us, won’t it?”

  Dion was thoughtful for a moment, then she nodded and we all bowed our heads.

  “Thank you, God,” she said, talking so low I had to strain to hear her. “For being inside of us and showing us our own way.” She stopped for a moment. I lifted my head but Dion and Miz Lily were still bowing theirs so I put mine back down. Steam from the beef stew was rising up, making my mouth water. “Thank you for birds and other peepers keeping us company at night and being inside Miz Lily and me and Lena . . . and all the other people . . . and thank you for food and poetry. Amen.”

  Miz Lily raised her head and smiled. “That was a fine blessing,” she said.

  Dion blushed, a tiny smile turning up the corners of her lips. I winked at her, too proud to say anything.

  Eight

  After dinner, me and Dion did the dishes while Miz Lily sat out on the porch. She kept a small radio propping the outside storm window open above the sink and had music playing—classical music, Dion said, humming along to one of the songs as she dried. The inside window was closed against the cold and I could barely hear the music, but through the window I could see Miz Lily’s white head moving slowly like maybe she was humming along too. It looked so nice and peaceful, I made myself a plan to draw it later—Miz Lily’s white head with the dim gold light of the kitchen melting over it.

  “What are you humming to?” I asked Dion. “You can’t even hear that song.”

  Dion smiled. “I can hear pieces of it and I know the rest. It’s Chopin. We studied him in music class this year.” She went back to humming.

  I washed the dishes slowly, my mind in a million places at once but mostly it was on Dion. She was too smart to be on the road, needed to be back in school. She could go to college if she wanted. Could be anything she wanted if she set her mind to it.

  “What do you want to be when you grow up, Dion?” She shrugged and continued humming and drying. “You never think about it?”

  She stopped humming. “I guess maybe a college professor like Marie’s daddy. Teach poetry. I’d want to teach all kinds of things about poetry.” Her eyes lit up suddenly. “Like that music playing. That’s poetry without no words in it. And if you was reading a poem, you could read it in the same way.”

  I frowned. Sometimes it felt bad not to understand Dion—like she was telling me something real obvious and I couldn’t get it.

  “You could read it like it was—like the words was notes floating on paper. Floating all around the paper.” She smiled and went back to humming.

  I turned off the water for a moment and strained to hear the music through the glass but I couldn’t see words in it. Just music. Music, and places where there wasn’t music, then more music. Dion’s brain worked different from mine. My brain just saw everything in a straight line but hers moved all around, looked at stuff from different angles.

  I turned the water back on so Miz Lily wouldn’t hear us. “How come you didn’t say nothing when Miz Lily was asking about Owensboro?” I whispered. The question had been riding me the whole night but I hadn’t had a chance to ask it.

  Dion looked at me. “Because I didn’t know the answers,” she whispered back.

  “You could have thought up something.”

  She shook her head, picked up a glass and started drying it. “I was too tired to lie some more.”

  I turned back to the sink and started scrubbing out a pot. I was tired too. Since we’d left Chauncey, we’d met a whole lot of different people and seen a whole lot of places. I knew what the sun looked like now—when it rose up in the morning and right before it set itself down at night. I knew the way the ending day faded the road to blue then black then made it disappear. And the way the cold could come in and turn the whole world winter-brown. I knew too what it felt like to wake up inside of that cold, your clothes damp, your body so frozen it felt like your bones was shivering. I closed my eyes a moment. And on warm days, after a breakfast like the one at Berta’s, our bellies full and the sun coming down on our faces as we walked, I knew what it felt like to be free.

  I squeezed out the sponge and wiped the counter down. “You could be a professor, you know. You smart enough.”

  Dion twisted her dish towel into a ball. “It’s all dreaming, though. You have to go to school for years and years to teach college.”

  “It’s not dreaming!” I whispered. “Other people—they ain’t hungry the way you are. I’ve seen you walk three miles to a library and set there all day reading. Seen you bent over a math sum until later in the night trying to figure out what me and our daddy couldn’t even begin explaining to you. So don’t tell me it’s dreaming.”

  “You gotta have money to be some college professor, though.”

  “You get a scholarship—” I stopped, suddenly, remembering something: When I was still living in Chauncey, Marie told me I could be an artist. She said all I needed was a scholarship—get good grades in school and have colleges begging to give me money. And now here I was saying the same thing to Dion. “We got to get you back in school.”

  Dion nodded and hung the towel on the refrigerator handle.

  I checked out the window again. Miz Lily was still sitting there, swinging back and forth.

  “When our daddy used to come for me,” I whispered, turning back to Dion, “I used to wish I was dead. I used to wish the world would just open up and swallow me whole.”

  Dion’s bottom lip started quivering.

  “This ain’t a sad story so you don’t have to cry. All I’m saying is we’re free now, Dion. Nobody’s holding us back or making us do things we don’t want to do. Nobody’s making us feel like we ain’t worth the water it takes to wash in the morning.”

  “If we so free, how come we still running and lying then?”

  “It won’t always be like this, girlie. I got us this far, didn’t I?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well then, I’m gonna get us the rest of the way.”

  Nine

  After we finished the dishes, me and Dion put on our heavy sweaters and went to sit outside with Miz Lily for a while. It was cold but the air felt good with Miz Lily’s stew still warming the inside of me. Dion sat down next to Miz Lily on the porch swing and I took a seat on the stairs, turning a bit to face them.

  “Night crawlers gone for the winter, I guess,” Miz Lily said. “All the rest of the year you can barely hear yourself thinking, the katydids get to talking so loud, the birds just a-singing and frogs croaking. Pretty sounds—all of them, but I like the winter. Can hear my music.”

  I watched her and Dion moving back and forth. The swing made a whining noise, like it needed oil. But after a while, the sound was soothing, and Dion’s eyes started looking heavy. We’d sleep in a bed tonight—with pillows and blankets to pull up over us. We didn’t have anything clean to sleep in but it would still feel good—the soft mattress underneath us and windows keeping the cold out. Curtains and doors kee
ping things private. Dion needed a restful night.

  I pulled my knees up to my chin and started thinking. We needed a plan. Something was hammering at the back of my head that I’d been trying not to think about. But the closer we got to Pine Mountain, the harder the thoughts hammered: When I set right down to think about it, Mama’s people probably weren’t gonna take us in. If they had any interest, they would have come running when Mama died—or at least showed up for the funeral. Chances were, we got to that Pine Mountain, we’d probably be in the same way we were now—except there probably wouldn’t be a Miz Lily there, giving us a good meal and such. That night we left Chauncey, getting on the road and just going seemed like the thing to do. But now, all this time passing made stuff more clear. We couldn’t go back to our daddy. We couldn’t stay on the road forever. Dion needed school—and me, I needed . . . I don’t know . . . a home, I guess.

  “What you thinking so hard on?” Miz Lily asked quietly.

  “Just figuring, ma’am.”

  Miz Lily frowned. “Child, no need for someone young as you to be looking worried like that. You got years of worry ahead of you. No need to start now. Everything will work out.”

  “Just hoping Mama and the baby both all right.” I bit my lip. Lying to Miz Lily made the stew sit funny in my stomach.

  “I don’t have to be to work until late morning tomorrow. We’ll get up, have ourselves some breakfast and I’ll take you right up to the door of that hospital. You’ll look rested and fresh when your mama first sets eyes on you.”

  Dion opened her eyes and yawned.

  “Y’all go on upstairs and get ready for bed. Leave your clothes outside the bathroom door. I’ll wash them for the morning.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “Better give me the clothes in your bag as well,” Miz Lily said, ignoring me. “Your mama probably didn’t have the strength to wash before she left.”

  I nodded and stood. “I really appreciate it, Miz Lily.”

  Dion got up slowly and stretched.

  “And I appreciate your company and y’all doing the dishes,” Miz Lily said, waving her hand. “So we’re even. Your bedroom is right beside the bathroom. Some of my daughters’ old nightgowns are in one of those drawers. They might be a little worn but they’re clean. Now go take your baths and put yourselves to bed. I’ll be up in a while.”

  Dion followed behind me sleepily.

  “Lena . . . ,” Miz Lily called, when we were almost to the stairs.

  I let Dion go on up ahead of me, opened the screen door and stuck my head back out. “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Sleep peaceful. Don’t go to sleep worrying.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, my eyes filling up. I closed the screen door quickly. I wanted to lay my head on her lap and bawl out everything. I wanted her to hold me—say, Everything’s going to be all right, Lena. Welcome home.

  Ten

  Dion had the tub half full by the time I finished getting our dirty clothes together for Miz Lily. The small bathroom was steamy and hot, smelling like lemons. She pointed to the tub filling with bubbles and grinned, then pulled her clothes off and tested the water with her toe. She was getting tall, tall and skinny. It’d been a long while since I’d seen her without clothes on. Her arms and legs had little muscles on them now. Those muscles must’ve come from all the walking we’d been doing with our knapsacks on our backs.

  “You find the shampoo?” I asked, sitting down on the side of the tub.

  Dion nodded and climbed in.

  She smiled, sinking deep into the water. “The bubble bath smells like real lemons, don’t it?”

  I nodded. “You wash good. Scrub behind your ears.”

  Dion turned the water off and sank down further. She sighed.

  Downstairs, I could hear Miz Lily padding around. I picked up Dion’s clothes and put them in the pile outside.

  “You better let her wash your clothes too,” Dion said.

  I took a towel, then started undressing, my back to Dion. I unrolled the Ace bandage slowly. There were red marks where it ended above and below my breasts. It didn’t hurt really, not any more than I figured a bra would.

  “Why do you wear that thing anyway?” Dion said.

  “You know why. For the truck drivers. Make me look more like a boy.”

  “You too pretty to be a boy.”

  I smiled and stepped out of my pants and underwear without answering her, then set the Ace bandage on the toilet-bowl tank, wrapped the towel around me and took my clothes out to the pile.

  When I came back in, Dion was sitting up in the tub, scrubbing at her neck with a washcloth.

  I kneeled down beside the tub and poured some shampoo into my hand.

  “You gonna wash it for me?” Dion asked.

  I nodded. “Lean your head back.” I took her washcloth, dunked it and squeezed it over her head. Then started lathering. I knew Dion loved it when I washed her hair. It made me feel good to see her, eyes closed and that big smile on her face. Mama used to wash my hair. Her hands always felt real strong.

  I heard Miz Lily come upstairs, could hear her sigh as she bent to pick up our pile of clothes, then slowly head down the stairs again.

  “Gonna be some kind of ring in this tub after the two of us get finished,” I said, squeezing out Dion’s hair and watching the gray suds slide down her back into the water.

  Dion just nodded and kept on smiling, her eyes shut tight. I dunked the washcloth in the water again, squeezed it out and wiped it over her face. “If you keep your head leant back,” I said, “you could open your eyes.”

  Dion shook her head. “I keep them closed ’cause I’m imagining we’re at Marie’s house. If I open them, I’ll know Marie’s house is miles away.”

  I looked around at Miz Lily’s blue walls. Where was the window above Marie’s bathtub? Where was the yellow light that came in through it? And Marie. Where was Marie?

  Eleven

  Mama used to say she wanted to stay at a house long enough to know the workings of it—which floorboards creaked when you stepped on them, what walls shook with a good wind, the sound that same wind made whistling through a crack, the way the spring air smelled coming in an open window. But we never did.

  I sat at the top of Miz Lily’s stairs thinking long after the house was dark and Dion had climbed into bed. I had had my own bath and the tingle and heat of scrubbing hard was fading from my skin but I wasn’t the least bit sleepy.

  It had come to me as I sat there scrubbing Dion’s head. Me and Dion was like those actors in The Wizard of Oz—the thing we’d needed and wanted most was right there inside of us all along. The lion in that movie wanted courage but he really wasn’t afraid of nothing. And the tin man, he wanted himself a heart but he had a great big one, right inside of himself. And that funny-looking scare-crow was hankering for a brain—but turned out he was smart as a whip from the start.

  Me and Dion—I guess we was kind of like Dorothy—trying to get home, to find ourselves a place. But what came to me as I finished up with Dion’s head and sat there watching her give herself one more good scrubbing was that we left the only place that’d ever felt like a home. Chauncey. Not our daddy’s house with his ugly ways but Marie and the people who’d been nice to us. Some nights, our next-door neighbor would come over with a whole meal cooked in a pot—stewed beef with rice and greens. At school, my teacher Ms. Cory always asked if things were all right at home and I’d always say “Yeah.” Even that man who’d given me and Marie a dollar when we were tap dancing on the street. People in Chauncey had tried to show us they cared in little ways but I was too busy trying to get away from our house to see it.

  I had had this dream of Mama’s people and Pine Mountain. But all along something else had been kicking in the back of my head. When Mama died, none of her people came to the funeral. Nobody sent us a card or a letter saying they was sorry. Later on, when the authorities came to take us away from our daddy, they tried to get in touch with Mama�
�s people but no one ever responded. Maybe Mama had people out there and maybe she didn’t. If she did, those people didn’t give two shakes about me and Dion.

  And Mama’s house. When we first set out, I figured if I could see it, it would give me some answers. But the truth was, I wouldn’t know Mama’s house if it landed on my head. Probably never really had one even as a little kid. That’s why she was always wishing for her own four walls, for a place she could stay awhile. Dion, maybe she still had a dream of Pine Mountain. But the closer I got to Pine Mountain, the more I knew we could go looking all over and probably wouldn’t find a single something we could hold close to us and feel good about.

  I leaned back against the banister feeling the tears coming on. Outside it was pitch black and the wind sounded soothing—like it would always be coming across the fields here in the wintertime. Miz Lily probably knew those fields better than anyone. She probably knew every creak and whine of this place. That’s why she was so peaceful.

  After a while, I tiptoed down the stairs into the kitchen. There was a glowing clock above the refrigerator that said ten-thirty. I picked up the phone and pressed the number, all the while saying a tiny prayer. Please Lord, give me the courage of that lion . . . And anything else I might need.

  Twelve

  Marie’s phone rang and rang. It was either Friday or Saturday night, I wasn’t sure. Maybe it was too late to be calling anybody. Then Marie’s sleepy voice was on the other end.

  “Hello, Sherry,” she said. “Only your crazy behind would be calling me at this hour.”