Weeping Willow

by Ruth White

  “Hey, Mr. Gillespie,” I said again, breathless. My face was hot as an iron.

  “Hi, Tiny,” he said, laughing. “My wife and I came by for a minute to congratulate you.”

  “Well, excuse this mess!” I said, as I swept everything off the couch to make room for them. “Sit down.”

  They sat down. Mrs. Gillespie was a doll come to life, tiny and cute.

  “Can I get y’all some pop or coffee?” Mama said nervously.

  “Oh, no thanks,” they said.

  I sat down by Mama on the other couch. The kids were unnaturally quiet. This was a big event to have a high school teacher visit, especially the band director, who was a celebrity.

  “As you know, Tiny,” Mr. Gillespie said, “my wife attended Mountain Retreat.”

  “Yeah, you told me.”

  Mrs. Gillespie smiled at me.

  “We enjoyed your singing last night, Tiny,” she said. “You will fit right in at M-R.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I was an orphan,” she went on.

  Well, she sure didn’t fit the picture of your average orphan. She looked real smart in her spring dress, and a little square hat, gloves, and high-heel shoes. Luther was gaping at her with a glazed look in his eyes.

  “When I went to M-R, I had absolutely nothing but the desire to go to college and study music. Somehow I scraped together my tuition. It was tight, but such fun!” Mrs. Gillespie said. “You have a lot to look forward to, Tiny.”

  “I know!” I bubbled over. “I’m so excited I can’t think straight!”

  We were all excited then, and full of good cheer. We relaxed and talked about M-R, and laid plans for corresponding and seeing each other at Christmas for a progress report, and Mrs. Gillespie told me all about the clubs and things to do, the hikes and swimming in the lake and trips to Asheville for movies and pizza. I wondered what pizza was, but I didn’t ask. And she talked for more than an hour, while the kids broke the world’s record for quietness and good manners. Then Mr. Gillespie had to pull her away.

  “The senior prom is tonight!” he told his wife. “And Tiny has to get ready, I’m sure. Who is your date, Tiny?”

  “Cecil Hess.” I found myself blushing when I said his name.

  “Oh, the valedictorian! Nice boy!”

  I was breathless with excitement.

  Then, as Mrs. Gillespie was saying goodbye to the kids, Mr. Gillespie suddenly put his hands on my shoulders, kissed me on the forehead, and said, “Congratulations, Ernestina.”

  And he gave me a secret smile.

  I caught my breath sharply.

  Then they left.

  “Things are clicking so good,” Mama said with excitement in her voice. “I can’t hardly believe it’s all for real.”

  “I know!” I cried. “It’s like Christmas, only better! All the good things are happening at once.”

  “Now we gotta fix your hair for tonight,” she said. “You’re going to be the belle of the ball.”

  The telephone rang as we started up the stairs. Phyllis, Beau, and Luther scrambled for it, and Luther won.

  “For you, Tiny. It’s Jesse.”

  He dropped that bomb on me and left the hall. Mama was looking at me. I was looking at my knees, which had suddenly gone weak.

  “Ain’t you gonna talk to him?” Phyllis said.

  Mama patted my shoulder.

  “Go on, Tiny. Talk to him.”

  It was like stage fright all over again. Mama herded the kids out of earshot as I picked up the phone with trembling fingers.

  “Hello.”

  “Hello, Tiny. It’s Jesse.”

  “Hi, Jesse. How’s everything?”

  “Not so good.”

  “How come?”

  “Well, I saw you last night and I heard you sing,” he said very softly.

  “Was it that bad?” I joked.

  “You were beautiful and you sounded beautiful and I fell in love with you all over again.”

  I felt my cheeks burning.

  “And I know, Tiny. I just know you were singing ‘I’ll See You in the Spring’ to me. That was the last thing I said to you before I went to the air force, remember? I know you remember. I could feel you singing to me.”

  I didn’t tell him I was singing to Willa on that one and not even thinking of him right then.

  “Did you hear me, Tiny?”

  “I heard you.”

  “We belong together, Tiny. I was a fool to let you go.”

  Somehow that just didn’t ring true. And I was remembering Aunt Evie and her Ward.

  “I want to take you to the prom tonight, Tiny.”

  “I’m going with Cecil.”

  “I heard. I know you and Cecil are like sister and brother, you always told me that. So I called him and asked him first if he minded bowing out for you and me. He knows how we feel about each other.”

  “And what did Cecil say?”

  “He said, ‘Whatever Tiny wants to do.’ He said y’all have an understanding where either one of you can change your mind if you want to.”

  “Did Cecil sound like he was mad?”

  “No! You know how good-natured Cecil is.”

  Yeah, I knew how good-natured Cecil was. A vision of me and Jesse at the prom came to mind. Him in his uniform and me in my blue formal whirling around the dance floor.

  “My baby’s so doggone fine,” I was remembering.

  Everybody would look at us.

  Then there was Cecil.

  “I want to go with Cecil,” somebody said, and it was me.

  “Hey, I told you, Pea Blossom, Cecil don’t mind. It’s you and me again, okay?”

  “No, Jesse. It’s me and Cecil now.”

  Did I say that?

  “What are you saying, Tiny?”

  “I wouldn’t go to the prom with anybody but Cecil.”

  “I see.”

  He didn’t have anything else to say.

  “Thanks for asking me, Jesse. That means a lot to me.”

  “I have to go back to Texas tomorrow,” he said.

  “Well …”

  “Yeah, right,” he said, and cleared his throat. “Goodbye, Tiny.”

  “Goodbye, Jesse.”

  And we hung up. There was a way you could call somebody else on your party line by dialing part of his number, then holding down the receiver. So I called Cecil like that. His ring sounded and was cut short. He must have been standing by the phone.

  “Hi, Cecil.”

  “Hi, Tiny.”

  “Did you buy my corsage yet?”

  “Yeah, do you want me to take it back?”

  “Heck no! Why would I want you to do that?”

  “Aren’t you going with Jesse?”

  “I told Jesse I wouldn’t go to the prom with anybody but you.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  I heard him let go of his breath. I smiled.

  “You’re free, you know, Tiny. We had a deal.”

  “I know. I want to go with you.”

  “You do? You’re not just saying that?”

  “Well, I am saying that, but not just saying that. I want to go with you.”

  “Well, the corsage is white with blue trimmings. I hope you’ll like it.”

  “It sounds cool.”

  “You’re cool, Tiny Lambert!”

  I laughed as happiness bubbled out of me again.

  “See you later, alligator!” he said.

  “After a while, crocodile!” I replied, laughing.

  And I ran up the stairs two at a time.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Cecil and I were beautiful together. Everybody said so. We danced all the slow dances together and didn’t want to dance with anybody else at all. We held hands and gazed into each other’s eyes like we were discovering each other for the first time.

  Everybody watched us and tried to talk to us. People congratulated me for winning the talent show and Cecil for being valedictorian, but we were al
l wrapped up in being in love. I wondered how I had lived next door to him for all these years and never before seen how wonderful he was.

  Later we went to the Miner’s Diner, where a special breakfast was prepared for us, but I don’t remember what we ate, or if we ate anything at all. Then we drove home in the warmth of April and starlight and each other.

  On my front-porch swing at 4:00 a.m. we talked as we had never talked before—about growing up together and all the funny things that happened, and sad things, too. I said I would tell him all the sad things someday when they didn’t hurt quite so much, and he laid his finger on my lips and said, “Hush. There will be plenty of time for everything.”

  And we talked about the coming months—how there was only a few weeks of school left and how we would spend all summer and vacations together, and I would visit him in Charlottesville, and he would visit me at M-R.

  Then he said he had always loved me, and I said I believed that somewhere in my heart I had always loved him, too. I only needed to grow up to realize it.

  “I sent you a valentine in the third grade,” he said. “But I was too embarrassed to sign it.”

  “That was from you! I still have it!”

  And I decided that I would take that old valentine and I would check YES where it said DO YOU LOVE ME? and I would send it to him at the university next Valentine’s Day.

  “One day,” he said, “Luther overheard me on the party line telling somebody I liked you, and he blackmailed me for years!”

  “I remember Luther telling me somebody liked me, but he wouldn’t say who.”

  “I actually beat him at checkers one time,” Cecil went on.

  “You beat Luther!”

  “Yeah, but he said if I ever told anybody, he’d tell you what I said.”

  “Well, now you can tell the whole world!”

  Then we kissed good night. And it was the sweetest kiss.

  Later, in my bed, I was thinking about this wonderful feeling and just about to fall asleep when it suddenly hit me I felt exactly this way about Jesse and almost the same about Mr. Gillespie.

  Aunt Evie had said you can fall in love more than once. It must be true. So how was I supposed to know when it was real?

  “Love is more than a feeling,” Bobby Lynn’s daddy had said.

  Well, I thought, with Cecil I won’t plan Forever. I’ll just take it one day at a time. Maybe everything will fall in place for us.

  When daylight streamed into my room, I woke up. A great emptiness was yawning in me where something used to be. What was wrong?

  “Willa?” I whispered, but she was not near.

  Nessie looked up at me and started wagging her tail.

  I leaped out of bed, donned my blue jeans, and headed downstairs with Nessie at my heels. I grabbed the Henry J key from its hook as I went out the door. Nessie jumped in the back seat, and we headed up the holler in the morning sunshine all the way to the top of the mountain.

  I was alone on Ruby Mountain for the first time in my life. But Willa would be there. She must be. I called her name, but she didn’t come to me. I couldn’t smell her honeysuckle, but I told myself it was not yet May. The fruit trees were all in bloom, and wildflowers were everywhere, but Willa’s colors and aroma were missing. I went running to the strawberry patch and the spring, into the cabin, and finally to the willow, calling her, but she was not there.

  And it came to me: “I’ll See You in the Spring”! It was her way of telling me I didn’t need her anymore, and she was saying goodbye.

  Aromas in the April night

  Will steal upon the air;

  Twining round about me

  Like ribbons from your hair.

  I’ll hear the whisper of the wind

  Like songs you used to sing.

  And though you won’t be there,

  I’ll see you in the spring.

  “Willa! Willa! Come back!”

  But I knew, even as I went running against the sky, that she would never, ever come again.

  1001

  When I was a baby and still close to the other side where we’re all from, Willa was there. I don’t remember not knowing her. While I was learning to walk and talk, she came and went freely, and I never thought to question who she might be. I remember her voice was like a bell, and when she laughed she covered her face with her hands and peeped out between her fingers. As I got older, Willa appeared only when I called her:

  Willa, Willa, on my pilla’,

  Come in your pretty lace

  And your pink face.

  Then she would come and play with me. She had curly red hair and her eyes changed color with the weather. On bright days they were green, on rainy days they were blue, and when it snowed they were gray like the sky. Oh, she smelled good! And she wore the frilliest feminine finery.

  What I didn’t know about Willa as we grew up together was that nobody could see her but me.

  “Who’re you talking to, Tiny?” Mama sometimes asked.

  “Willa.”

  “Who’s Willa?”

  I thought she was fooling. “Oh, Mama, you know Willa.”

  And Mama, being like she was, wasn’t interested enough to go on with it.

  It was when I started school that I ran into trouble with Willa. There was a cloakroom between the first and second grades where my teacher, Mrs. Skeens, made us go and sit alone when we misbehaved. 1 spent a lot of time in the cloakroom, but I didn’t mind because Willa came to keep me company. We played counting games on our fingers, and whispered secrets and nursery rhymes.

  Then one day Willa told me a funny story that made me laugh out loud, and Mrs. Skeens came into the cloakroom.

  “What’s so funny, Tiny?” she asked.

  “Willa told me a joke.”

  “Who is Willa?”

  There was that question again.

  “Oh, you know Willa,” I said, just like 1 had to Mama.

  But Mrs. Skeens didn’t give up. She put her hands on her hips and said, “No, I do not know Willa, and I want you to tell me about her right now.”

  So I told her, and that was a big mistake. Mrs. Skeens did not like Willa at all.

  “Tiny Lambert,” she said. “That is about the silliest piece of nonsense I ever heard, and if that good-for-nothing mama of yours never told you, let me be the one to inform you, there is no Willa! She is not real, understand? She is just a figment of your imagination.”

  1 was surprised at Mrs. Skeens. Why, anybody with eyes could see Willa a mile away with that red hair. She most certainly was not a figment.

  Then I remembered how Mama questioned me about Willa, and I thought of the times I talked to Willa on the playground, and the other children looked at me funny. For the first time I wondered … and when I turned to look at Willa, she was gone. Only a whiff of her good smell stayed behind.

  For days 1 tried to call her back.

  Willa, Willa, on my pilla’ …

  But she was gone, and 1 cried.

  1 guess Mrs. Skeens did what she did for my own good, but 1 couldn’t stand her after that.

  Still, I always felt Willa was near me somewhere—just around a corner, or in the shadows at twilight, and someday, if and when I really needed her, she would come to me again.

  Also by Ruth White

  SWEET CREEK HOLLER

  ♦ The author of the much-praised Sweet Creek Holler returns … Beautifully written, heartwarming, and—ultimately—joyous.

  —POINTER / Kirkus Reviews

  A rich, appealing book.

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  * Written in a crackling hill-country vernacular, by turns funny, tender, sweet and sad, this is a moving testament to the power and resiliency of the spirit.

  —STARRED/Publishers Weekly

  An exceptionally fine book … honestly written and difficult to put down.

  —Voice of Youth Advocates

  An ALA Best Book for Young Adults

  A Publishers Weekly Notable Children�
�s Book of the Year

  One of the New York Public Library’s 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing

  Copyright © 1992 by Ruth White

  All rights reserved

  eISBN 9781429953061

  First eBook Edition : July 2011

  Library of Congress catalog card number: 91-34343

  First edition, 1992

  Aerial edition, 1994

  Lyrics from “Supper Time” by Ira F. Stanphill copyright © 1950 Singspiration Music/ASCAP. All rights reserved. Used by permission of The Benson Co., Inc., Nashville, Tennessee.

  Lyrics from “The Rock And Roll Waltz” by Roy Alfred and Shorty Allen copyright © 1955, renewed 1984 by Jonroy Music Company.

  Lyrics from “Over the Rainbow” by Harold Arlen & E. Y. Harburg copyright © 1938, 1939 (renewed 1966, 1967), METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER INC. Assigned to LEO FEIST, INC. All rights of LEO FEIST, INC. assigned to EMI CATALOGUE PARTNERSHIP. All rights controlled and administered by EMI FEIST CATALOG, INC. International copyright secured. Made in U.S.A. All rights reserved.

  Lyrics from “So Fine” by Johnny Otis copyright © 1955 (renewed), Eldorado Music (BMI)/Administered by Bug. All rights reserved/used by permission.