Hazel nodded. She liked the story very much yet had no idea why Miss Pearl was telling it to her. “She must have been a fine woman,” Hazel offered.
Miss Pearl smiled. “I thought you would like her, Hazel.” As if she had read Hazel’s thoughts she went on to say, “Now, I know they say the women in my family are silly, maybe even crazy. Well, perhaps we are. But you see, we come by it honestly. We don’t make it a habit of leaning on men. Now Hertha, bless her heart, wanted Billy Dean, God knows why, yet through hell and high water, she got him and she’s kept him. And I know good and well, once he’s outlived his usefulness, she is not above pitching him out in the street. And poor Delia. . .”
“Delia,” Hazel repeated, wincing. For a moment Hazel had forgotten. But now she had to ask. “Is she really. . .I mean. . .”
“Dead? I doubt it. Even if she is, I don’t mourn her. I’m quite certain she died going after her heart’s desire. And in Delia’s case, that would probably be an insatiable taste for variety. She was true to it up until the very end.”
Hazel wondered about Floyd having been in love with a dead woman. Would he mourn Delia? Would he come back to Hazel now? Was the point of Miss Pearl’s story that she shouldn’t even care?
“And you, Hazel. . .” Miss Pearl said.
Hazel looked up into Miss Pearl’s penetrating gaze. “Me?”
“The first day I saw you, at the little gathering at your house, when you answered the door. . .do you remember that day?”
Hazel grimaced.
“Well, the minute I laid eyes on you, I said to myself, this woman has something special. She has a deep, unquenchable thirst.”
Hazel looked down at her glass, embarrassed.
“A thirst for life, Hazel,” Miss Pearl clarified. “I saw it in your eyes, the way you dressed. Oh, my! That elegant blue dress you wore. And the manner in which you wore it. The way you stood there. Regal. I was so impressed, Hazel. I never in my life saw anything like it.” Miss Pearl smiled fondly. “Except maybe once.”
The world had gone dead quiet around Hazel. All she wanted to hear was Miss Pearl’s voice. Nobody had strung together that many nice words about Hazel in years. Since she and Floyd first dated. It was as if somebody knew her. She was so rapt, she wasn’t even aware that Johnny had arrived with Miss Pearl’s tea.
“Now, correct me if I’m wrong, Hazel, but the way you were dressed that day, the way you held yourself. You weren’t born to that, were you?”
Hazel shook her head.
“No, I thought not. That’s what makes me so sure that at some time, you must have wanted that more than life itself. Didn’t you?”
Hazel nodded. It was true, she had.
“You grabbed ahold of something deep inside yourself. Some private hope or dream. And you started pulling. Regardless of what other people said.”
“You’re right,” Hazel said, amazed. “They all laughed at me ’cause I wanted to look nice.”
“Why, Hazel, what I saw that day was not about pretense or presentation. Or even a fine wardrobe. It was something else.”
“What was it?” Hazel asked breathlessly.
“It was a heartfelt yearning for something more. And I wager, if you are rigorously honest, it didn’t have to do with any man, did it?”
How did she know this? Hazel wondered. Her hoping had begun long before Floyd Graham ever showed up.
“That thing you grabbed hold of. You know what I believe it was?”
“What?” Hazel whispered, ready to be convinced of anything that came out of the woman’s mouth.
“Dignity,” Miss Pearl said. “That’s what I saw that day.” Miss Pearl extended her arm out before her, her handkerchief fluttering in the breeze. “A woman reaching out with all her might for her share of dignity.”
“Dignity,” Hazel said reverently, thinking she never heard such a beautiful word in her entire life.
“Diggity,” Johnny whispered, deciding that the word must be like abracadabra, and that somehow things would never be the same. The little breeze that ruffled the handkerchief in Miss Pearl’s still-outstretched hand seemed to confirm it.
They both watched Miss Pearl as she receded into the distance. For a very long time Hazel sat without moving, with Johnny just as motionless in her lap. Hazel needed time to think. Not only about the future, but about the past. It was like that decoder ring they’d offered on the radio when she was a girl. Miss Pearl had given her something that turned the whole alphabet on its head. A was really D, and E turned out to be Z. Hazel started paging through memories, decoding them, reordering all the letters. So many lies she had believed.
It was dignity! Not silliness. Not stupidity. Not worthless and ugly and helpless and hopeless and crazy and bad, bad, bad. Dignity. That was it all the time.
Chapter Thirty-Three
FIREFLIES
Wearing a slightly dazed expression, Hazel got up from her chair and returned to the house, softly repeating to herself the new word Miss Pearl had given her. She emptied her tumbler into the decanter and went to her room. She spent the rest of the day there, alternately sobbing, calling out Floyd’s name, and then becoming quiet once more, staring out the window. Johnny found her sitting before her makeup mirror, looking blankly into the glass. Miss Pearl’s visit had altered his mother in a way he didn’t understand.
The good thing was that Johnny had a whole day without Vida, and he certainly needed it. There was a lot to do. The rest of the morning he spent in his graveyard, digging up the mounds. His father was going to be furious, not only for his taking things from the house, but for stealing from Vida as well. When Vida came back, she was sure to tell on him.
Later he sat at the table practicing his name for school, which he understood would be starting Any Time Now, whatever that meant. “Almost Time for school,” people would say. “Are you getting excited?”
Sitting there in the empty kitchen, he studied Time—right where it lived—in the wall clock shaped like a chicken. There Time stretched its arms and pointed to the numbers that told everybody where to go and what to do and when to stop doing it. Always circling. Widening its reach only to bring its arms together again, squeezing out the space between, and slowly opening its embrace once more.
Johnny had yet to figure out the secret language of Time, but when he did, he believed Time would tell him important things. Like when it was going to heal his mother and send Davie back home. He copied down the numbers from its face. “Time is the great healer,” his father was always saying. Time, he thought, must be as powerful as Jesus.
His father arrived home later that afternoon looking tired and worried. He headed straight for the TV. As Johnny sat on the couch, Floyd aimed the rabbit ears toward Jackson and then leaned back in his lounger, letting the gray and white men who pointed fingers and shook hands and signed papers on the evening news cast light and shadows across his father’s face and send him directly to sleep.
He thought about crawling into his father’s lap, waking him. There were questions he needed answers to yet did not know how to ask—the questions of Time and the secrets it held. He had put these questions to his father before, and his father had only become frustrated, not understanding what he was asking. “Time is the currency of life,” was the best Johnny could get.
There was someone else who might know about Time and Death and Jesus. The sounds from his mower had drifted over from the Gooseberrys’ yard earlier.
It was already first dark when Johnny stepped outside, and the shadows had finished their lengthening and let go completely, flooding the entire yard in deep, cooling shade. Mourning doves welcomed the evening by cooing softly from somewhere nearby. As if in rebuttal, a brown thrasher protested with a harsh cry from a cherry laurel.
Amid the sounds of the evening creatures, Johnny heard a lone voice deep in the yard. It was exactly the person he was looking for, sitting down the hill on the cast-iron bench.
Johnny slowly approached the man until he was ri
ght up behind him. Vida’s father wasn’t exactly talking to himself. It seemed he was talking to someone who wasn’t answering back.
“Hey,” Johnny said.
Levi spun around on the bench, surprised. For a moment he searched the boy’s face with those dark, bottomless eyes, and Johnny could almost feel the earth come up to meet his feet. Levi said, “How long you been standing there spying on me?”
Johnny only shrugged, still watching the man’s eyes.
“What is it you want?”
The boy was still silent, not sure of that answer either.
“You go inside now,” Levi said. “It’s getting dark and time for supper. They going to come looking for you and put the blame on me.”
Johnny took one step back and stopped, still staring up at the man. “Ain’t nobody home,” he lied.
A few more moments passed while Levi considered this. Finally he said, “Well, you best come over here so I can see what you is up to. No good, be my guess.”
Doing as he was told, Johnny walked right up to the man.
The man asked simply, “You lose something?”
Johnny considered the question for a moment. It was a good question. The right question. And Johnny knew the answer. Death was not a hide-and-seek game you played with Jesus. You can pray. You can be good. You can try hard not to forget. You can do everything right, but some things will stay lost forever.
He decided to ask anyway. “Is Davie coming back?”
Levi’s gaze softened. “Your little brother?”
Johnny nodded.
Levi shook his head gravely. “No. I don’t think he’s coming back.”
Johnny considered this for a moment. “I don’t think so neither. I used to believe it when I was little. But I don’t believe it no more.”
“I can tell that,” Levi said. This time they both sighed.
Then, looking up at Levi, Johnny asked, “Why you always sitting in my backyard?”
Levi eyed the boy tentatively. “You got a problem with it?”
“No. I just wondered who you been talking to back here.”
Levi considered the question. “Ever man need him a place to talk to God.”
Johnny nodded to himself. “God,” he echoed softly, and climbed up on the bench next to Levi.
Minutes passed as they both looked down the hill into the darkening distance. Little breezes began to play high up in the trees. Levi had his arms stretched out over the back of the bench and he gave off smells of earth and sweat, and to Johnny they were substantial and comforting. He leaned into Levi and felt the dampness of his shirt. Levi shifted, as if trying to push the boy away with his movements. Johnny held fast. Levi looked around and then carefully lowered an arm around the boy.
“You seen him?” Johnny asked.
Levi quickly looked about. “Seen who?”
“God. You seen God?”
“Oh. Yes, I have.”
“How’d he look?”
“Well, it’s hard to say. The first time He showed hisself to me he was in a mighty whirlpool of churning water. ’Course I knowed it was Him, all right.”
He asked Levi, “You seen God around here lately?”
“No. Not for a while. He got His own timetable, I reckon. But you can be sure He always seeing us. His eyes don’t miss a thing. Not the littlest sparrow.”
“He looking at us right now?” Johnny asked, wondering if God’s eyes were as big as Levi’s.
“No doubt in my mind. Ain’t that a comfort?”
The boy shrugged. “I want to see His face.”
Levi laughed. “Me, too, I reckon.”
For a moment they scanned the yard together, as if trying to pick out the face that was said to be turned their way, invisible and unblinking. A firefly flickered in the twilight.
“Lightning bug winking at us,” Levi said.
“Uh-huh. I seen it. He’s gone now.”
“He’s out there,” Levi said. “Why you say it’s gone?”
“’Cause I can’t see it no more. He’s gone dark.”
The firefly blinked again. “There he is, over there!” Johnny whispered, not wanting the firefly to know they were onto him, figuring they might be as skittish as fish. He pointed in the direction of the porch.
“Now he’s gone dark again, ain’t he?” Levi asked, sounding as though the disappearance was a worrisome thing.
“We got to be quiet and wait till he blinks,” Johnny explained, not wanting Levi to give up too soon.
Levi laughed as if he had known it all the time. “That’s the way it is with God, don’t you reckon? He always around somewheres, if you can see His face or not. He’s out there watching through the dark. Sometimes that’s got to be enough, I suppose. Knowing He sees us even if we can’t see Him back.”
Johnny didn’t know what to say to that. He thought they had been talking about fireflies.
Levi surveyed the yard again. “You know, I’m starting to think it’s more God’s nature to move unseen through the darkness like them bugs out there. He ain’t going to stay put in no church or on no riverbank or even in no Bible. You see, I know. I done found Him and lost Him again in all them places.”
“Me and Davie used to catch lightning bugs in a mayonnaise jar,” Johnny said, thinking it much easier to talk about fireflies. “Daddy poked holes in the top with an ice pick. They died anyway.”
Levi nodded. “Can’t keep God in no jar neither, I reckon.”
Levi continued talking about God for a while, in a voice that seemed at home with the croaking and whirring and cooing and the rustling of leaves, all the night music that was rising up around them. Like those sounds, his words didn’t insist upon answers or require understanding. Johnny found himself wishing his mother could hear Levi talk. He asked him, “You know my momma?”
“No, I can’t say I do. Vida tells me some.”
“She don’t feel good no more. Stays in bed all the time.”
“That’s what I heared.” Levi removed his hat and set it on the bench. “You know, I reckon what we been talking about is the same with people. They can sure nuff go dark, too, can’t they?”
Johnny nodded, not really knowing, but he was willing to believe.
“Myself, I got so used to seeing the faces shining their love at me, I thought it would stay that way forever. My wife. Vida. Nate. My flock. They was so much love in them days. All them faces shining just for me.” Levi brushed his nose. “But pride goeth before the fall. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh. And God done took it all from me. Put out them shining lights.”
Then Levi squeezed Johnny’s arm gently. “I reckon that’s got to be the hardest thing about loving, ain’t it, child? Calling out in the dark. Pleading with love to show its face again.” He laughed sadly. “Maybe we all living from one blink of love to the next.”
The firefly winked over by the elephant ears. It seemed to be working a wide net around the yard. Levi lifted his finger in the direction of the bug, about to say something. Instead he formed a fist and brought it down hard on his leg. “Old fool!” he said with so much intensity Johnny jumped. “The dark was his sign! Right in front of my face!”
Levi’s gaze was firmly fixed on a spot somewhere beyond. Afraid, Johnny peered out into the deep dusk, wondering if somebody had come up on them. He saw no one. There was only the firefly.
Levi kept talking in a slightly raised voice, leaning into the gathering dark. “All this time I thought it was you abandoned me! Punishing me with your darkness!” Levi shook his head with strong feeling. “Old fool! I been cursing the night. Thinking it was hiding you away from me.”
Levi sprang to his feet. He held his arms extended and shouted, “I see it now. My own church, going up in flames. It was a burning bush. A sign. All things working together for the glory of God!”
Surely his voice was loud enough for his father to hear. Then Johnny noticed that the insects and frogs and evening birds had gone into riot, rising up like a night choir as if
to cloak his words. The wind picked up and the trees shuddered and swayed.
“I see it, Lord. With the eyes of a child. I see it clear. It wasn’t a sign to stop, but to step out.”
He fell back onto the bench, as if now under a heavy load. “I know what must be done. I hear your voice calling to me, ‘Step with me into the darkness. Step with me into the darkness.’”
As if in reverence for Levi’s now heavy heart, the wind died to a whisper and the creatures around them hushed to a deep, soft murmur, almost a lament. Levi dropped his head to his chest, which was heaving mightily. Just before he covered his face, Johnny thought he saw tears glistening in the man’s eyes.
No longer afraid, he reached out to touch Levi’s other hand, which lay open by his side. Now it was Levi who was hurting. So many people were hurting, he couldn’t keep track of them all.
Johnny stroked Levi’s hand, trying to soothe away his sorrow about the darkness. He thought of Davie in the dark. About his mother lying in the dark, fading a little every day. Everything seemed to be going to darkness.
Almost imperceptibly, his body began to tremble. His breathing became shallow because it hurt his chest to bring the air deeper. He moved his eyes around the yard. Now there was a second firefly, circling and flashing. It was impossible to tell which firefly was his. He had lost it.
The little breaths hurt, and the tightening continued upward to his throat. He squeezed Levi’s hand, trying to hold it back.
“What is it, child?”
Johnny looked up. Levi wasn’t crying at all! His eyes were burning bright, his face shining. Before Johnny himself knew what the words were going to be, he blurted, “My momma’s gonna die forever, ain’t she?”
Levi gripped Johnny’s shoulder and pulled him close. He held on to the boy tightly and let him sob open-mouthed into his shirt. His tears flowed fast and free, as if all the fear and dread in the world were thawing to sorrow, and not until the tears had slowed did Levi move. He took Johnny by the shoulders and looked him solidly in the face.
“Listen to me, child, and remember what I’m saying.” His voice was clear and strong now. It was the same voice that had once prayed over pine straw, the kind of voice that made Johnny quiver on the inside and caused his flesh to tingle. “Even though you can’t see Him, and even though you can’t feel Him, He’s loving you, right now, through the darkness. He’s loving your momma, too.”
Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League Page 25
