Chasing Lilacs

by Carla Stewart

  A sweaty, sick feeling came over me, and the faces of those gathered on our lawn blurred. My thoughts jumbled as I caught the words crying shame, poor Sammie, mercy sakes. I waited for someone to say that Mama was alive, that everything would be all right, but no one did. Then a horrible thought crept in. Doc told me to take care of Mama. Why, oh why, hadn’t I done what he said? I tried to swallow, but my throat had shut itself off, and I knew why.

  It was all my fault.

  [ TWO ]

  A TERRIBLE SHAKING STARTED SOMEWHERE deep inside, cold and trembly. Goldie’s arm around my shoulders steadied me but didn’t stop the clammy breakout on my scalp and neck. She sat beside me on the couch in her front room and held me.

  “Take it easy. I know you’re scared.” She held me close, her arms sturdy around me. She smelled of disinfectant and something woody or earthy. I leaned against her, gulping in buckets of air, letting her soft bosom cushion me.

  Gradually my breaths returned to normal, and I eased away from her. A zigzaggy scratch stung on my arm, smeared with crusty blood.

  Goldie noticed it too. “Gracious, you’ve got a nasty scrape. What happened?”

  I shrugged and had the faintest recollection of running by Goldie’s rosebush screaming for help. Now the jagged line brought back the reminder of Mama. I sucked in another big breath and shivered. Goldie went to her kitchen and brought back a wet rag and a small brown bottle with a skull and crossbones on the label. Gently, she washed my arm.

  “Just a bit more, Sammie.” She blew on my arm, then painted a red streak of “monkey blood” on the scratch. My shoulders hunched together. It burned like fire.

  We both blew on it, and before I could think, I blurted out, “Do you think Mama was breathing?”

  Goldie’s Buster Brown hair swayed across her round-as-the-moon face. She nodded in a way that could have meant anything. She patted me on the cheek, her green eyes drooping at the corners, and I could tell she really didn’t know.

  After that, she hovered around me, brushing the hair out of my eyes one minute, straightening up the Baptist Messenger magazines on the end table the next. A honky-tonk song crackled over the Philco radio, and Goldie walked over to fine-tune the static from Hank Williams’s “Cold, Cold Heart.”

  Just as she straightened up, the phone rang. Two short jangles. One long. My body stiffened as Goldie and I looked at each other.

  Daddy? So soon? My stomach knotted up.

  Goldie’s thick fingers fumbled with the receiver, her voice croaky as she answered. Her face didn’t show anything as she listened and then motioned for me to come over.

  Gripping the phone, I said hello.

  “She’s holding her own, Sis,” Daddy said on the other end.

  My breath whooshed out.

  He went on. “I’ll be staying the night, to be here when she wakes up. I think Goldie’ll be all right with you staying there. Don’t worry. I’ll see you in the morning.” Click.

  Alive. Mama’s alive. I stared into the receiver. It was good news, wasn’t it? But what did he mean “holding her own”? Holding her own what? I hung up, my feet planted to the floor. In my head, Mama’s arms and legs dangled like a marionette’s from Daddy’s arms. Daddy’s face had no expression, just his jaw clamped tight, like the wooden Indian we’d once seen at a filling station.

  “What did he say?” Goldie’s voice brought me back.

  “She’s holding her own. He’s staying at the hospital until she wakes up.” Well, that was something anyway—thinking she’d wake up. “He thought I could stay here until then.”

  “Praise be. Yes, of course you can stay here. Thank you, Jesus.” She squeezed me tightly, then held me out at arm’s length. “You must be starved. I’m fixing us some soup, and then you can help me with those critters out there.” She motioned toward the back of the house, to the aviary attached to her porch. I nodded, glad to have something to keep my mind off Mama hanging by a string in some strange hospital room.

  After stirring the chicken noodle soup Goldie made, I couldn’t take a single bite. Bits of the pale chicken popped to the top every time I moved the spoon, and the smell made me sick. I tried a saltine cracker, which felt like gravel in my throat. I pushed my bowl away, and Goldie didn’t mention it, just tossed her head toward the aviary.

  She held the door for me, and together we entered the porch work area. A pine-plank table sat along the wall with rows of feed sacks propped beside it. A screen door led into the aviary. There were box cages full of flapping, colorful parakeets whistling and chirping, louder than a flock of spooked blackbirds. The cages lined one whole wall, rows stacked upon one another with space between each one. I counted eight across and five high and multiplied them in my head. Forty cages. Each one had a tray that slid out so we could remove the soiled newspaper. A faint smell, like cat pee, filled the air.

  Goldie handed me a stack of newspapers. “New liners for the cages after I pull the dirty ones out.” She went to work.

  “It’s my fault, you know,” I said to the room in general. The parakeets twittered louder now that we’d riled them. “Do you think it’s my fault, Goldie?” I shouted above the aviary racket. “You know… Mama taking those pills?”

  “Lord, have mercy. Where’d you ever get a cockeyed notion like that?” She threw a used newspaper into an empty feed sack.

  “Daddy didn’t want to get the pills for her. He said she needed to try something else for those spells she gets. If I’d stayed home this morning—”

  “No one’s going to be putting blame.” Her green eyes peered into mine. “Things happen. If we were meant to understand it all, we wouldn’t be needing the Almighty, now would we?”

  “You mean God?”

  “Sammie Tucker, listen to me. God loves your mother the same as you and me. He created each and every one of us, and no two people on this green earth are exactly alike. We all got our own ways, and to go figuring out the mind of someone else is a plumb waste of time. Your mama’s gonna be just fine.” She went back to yanking the smelly papers from the trays.

  I wanted to believe her, really I did, but holding her own and just fine didn’t sound like the same thing to me. And that picture in my head of Mama dangling by a wire darted in and out no matter how much I tried to stop it. No, it was definitely my fault, and tomorrow, when Daddy brought Mama home, I knew what I had to do. Protect Mama. Make her well. Doc said to take care of her, and that’s exactly what I would do.

  But when Daddy picked me up at Goldie’s early the next morning, he didn’t bring Mama. He told us she woke up and could state her name and knew that it was June 1958. He thanked Goldie for putting up with me and took me home.

  My insides itched to know about Mama, but Daddy seemed off in some other world.

  “How is she?” I blurted out, louder than I intended.

  “Doing better. Fair to middlin’, I’d say.” He disappeared into the bathroom. While the water ran in the bath and he clanged around shaving and what all, a million questions played ping-pong in my head. My feet wouldn’t stay still. I tapped one foot, arms crossed, waiting for Daddy. Why hadn’t Mama come home with him? Why was he in such an all-fired hurry to get cleaned up?

  He came out, a piece of red-dotted toilet paper stuck on his chin, and disappeared into his bedroom. I watched from the doorway as Daddy threw some of Mama’s things into a suitcase and snapped it shut. Straightening, he motioned for us to go outside.

  We sat on the cement steps of the porch, the morning sun filtering through the trees and making kaleidoscope patterns at our feet.

  “Mama’s gonna need some help.” He took a pack of Camels from his shirt pocket and fished one out. He tapped one end on his silver lighter before cupping his hand around the cigarette and lighting up. A puff of smoke drifted by as he inhaled.

  “Help? What kind of help?”

  Bent over with his arms resting on his knees, he didn’t look at me, just took a long drag and stared off into the distance.


  “A hospital. Wichita Falls. She’ll spend three weeks talking to a doctor—a psychiatrist—going to group sessions and something called ECT. It’s where Zeb Thornton took his wife, Mabel, a while back. Even though it’s a couple hundred miles from here, it’s a good place, from what he said.”

  “Three weeks?” Tears gathered behind my eyelids. I gazed up at the sky, willing them to drain back into my head. “And so far away. What will they do to her? It won’t hurt, will it?”

  “No, just help her get better.” Daddy stubbed the cigarette in the Folgers can beside the porch. “I called your aunt Vadine.”

  “Why?” Something seemed off, like he hadn’t told me everything. Maybe Mama wasn’t going to be all right. What if something else was wrong? Must be something horrible or he wouldn’t have called Aunt Vadine.

  “As your mama’s only real kin, I thought she ought to know.” He dug in his pocket for another Camel. “I asked her to come and stay a few days.”

  My insides tumbled about. “It’s not like I need a babysitter, you know, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Please, not Aunt Vadine.

  “I’ve got evening shift next week and then graveyards. Don’t want you being alone so much.”

  “Don’t worry about that. Tuwana and I are working on our summer newspaper. We decided to call it the Dandelion Times. Oh, and Goldie said she could use my help just about any time with her parakeets. She’s been keen, teaching me all about them. Aunt Vadine will be the one sitting in the house by herself.”

  “Glad you got things to do. Besides, she can’t come. She got herself a new waitress job at one of them new twenty-four-hour truck stops.”

  “That’s a relief.” I puffed out my cheeks and let out a long breath.

  “Why’s that?” He flipped his smoke into the can.

  “She’s practically a stranger, that’s all.” And scary, I wanted to tell him, remembering the pinch she gave me for putting my elbows on the table the last time we saw her.

  “She’s family though.” He picked up Mama’s suitcase and walked to the Chevy. “Goldie said she’d be around if you need anything. See you tonight.” He gave me a wink and got in the front seat.

  “Tell Mama I love her.”

  “Will do.”

  The car eased down the street, a streak of sun bouncing from the back window. Half of me wanted to run after him and beg to go with him, but the other half stood frozen, unable to think or move.

  “Gotcha.” A poke in my ribs startled me.

  I whirled around and faced Tuwana, her blue eyes as round as marbles.

  “Don’t scare me like that!” I glared at her.

  “Sorry. I thought you’d like some company.”

  “It’s not that. Right now I’m just a little bumfuzzled.”

  “Your mom. She’s going to be all right, isn’t she?” Tuwana cocked her head the way our dog Patch used to when he wanted to play.

  The world went into slow motion, Tuwana standing there waiting for an answer and me wanting to say, Oh sure, any minute now she’ll be her old self.

  Instead of words coming out, tears trickled from my eyes. Blinking, I tried to hold them back, but they spilled out, running down my cheeks, tasting salty in my mouth and making my nose drip. Tuwana’s skinny arm wrapped around my shoulders, and together we walked to the porch. She pushed me into a sitting position.

  “So, tell me about your mother. When’s she coming back?”

  My eyebrows scrunched. “Three weeks. There’s a special doctor and something called ECT, whatever that is.”

  “Shock treatments. That’s what Mother says people get when they have a nervous breakdown.”

  “A nervous breakdown?” I looked hard at Tuwana. “Is that what you think? She didn’t go nuts and fly apart. Not even close. She took some pills.”

  “Maybe she did that before you found her. The flying apart thing.”

  “Are you crazy? Mama’s not like that.” Who did Tuwana think she was, scaring me like that?

  “I wonder how they do them.” Tuwana hugged her knees to her chest.

  “Do what?”

  “Shock treatments. Do you think they poke them with needles or something?”

  “Who knows?” My stomach got a sick feeling. Shock treatments? Needles? Whatever they were, they sounded awful.

  “Maybe they plunge them into tubs of ice water or hook them up to electricity.”

  “Stop it! Daddy said they don’t hurt.” My face felt hot. “Why would you even say such a thing?”

  “Don’t get your panties in a wad. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  Gritting my teeth, I turned to Tuwana. “Daddy would’ve said if Mama had a nervous breakdown. He didn’t. She needs help, that’s all. Daddy wouldn’t lie about something like that.” My eyelid twitched, but I wouldn’t back down from looking at Tuwana. “I’m upset, and you would be too if it was your mother.”

  “You’re right. Sorry.” She looked away and then patted me on the shoulder. “Hey, I’d better go. Catch you later.”

  Being right didn’t change the sinking feeling I had inside. What if they hurt Mama? Shutting my eyes, I tried to remember her smiling and laughing, but nothing came. Squinching my eyes tighter, her arms and legs dangled like a rag doll, flashing like a jerky movie behind my eyelids. The way her hair hung over Daddy’s arm and her skin had the color of chalk flickered in and out of my head.

  I wrapped my arms around my knees and rocked back and forth on the porch steps. I tried to picture her in a frilly apron like Alice Johnson wore or combing my hair the way I’d seen Mrs. Johnson do with Tuwana and her sisters. No matter how hard I tried, the same pictures came. Mama curled into a ball in a dark room. Mama with her eyes wild, her robe hanging open. Your fault. You should have…

  Tears built up again and dropped on my legs. Only this time something had shifted in my head. Why couldn’t I have a normal mother? One who loved me the way Mrs. Johnson loved her girls. One who didn’t swallow a bottle of pills and get sent off for shock treatments.

  [ THREE ]

  THAT NIGHT DADDY CAME in late and slipped quietly into my room. Half-asleep, I mumbled, “How’s Mama? Is she mad at me for not staying home?”

  Daddy leaned over and tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “Not that I’m aware. Sleep tight.” His lips brushed my forehead, then he padded away in his stocking feet into his own room.

  Every chance I got the next day, I asked Daddy questions about what the place in Wichita Falls was like. Did Mama have to wear a hospital gown? Would she get to come home and visit? Could we go see her? I hung on the kitchen counter, asking even more questions while Daddy smeared mustard on a piece of bread and slapped on a slice of bologna. “When does she start her treatment? Will she take pills or shots?”

  “They didn’t give me the treatment schedule. It’s not a regular hospital, so the patients wear their normal clothes.” He filled his thermos with coffee.

  “That’s good.” Since Mama’s regular clothes the last month had been a terry-cloth robe and nightgown, I couldn’t really picture her. Daddy had packed her a suitcase though.

  He screwed the lid onto the thermos. “There’s also a nice courtyard with benches, and some of the other patients were feeding the squirrels when I left.”

  “Did Mama like it? Did she want to feed the squirrels?”

  “Not while I was there. You sure are full of questions.” He snapped the lid on his lunch box and looked at me. “This ain’t no time to be brooding about your mama, so I want to get something straight. Mama’s in the right place, and you’ve got the whole summer, so I want you outdoors having fun.” He thumped me on the arm and left for his evening shift at the plant.

  I didn’t want Daddy to think I was brooding, and he was right about having the whole summer. So Tuwana and I started working on our newspaper like we planned.

  On the walk to her house, a curlicue of smoke lifted above the trees on my left. The top of a high chain-link fence surrounding the gaso
line plant came into view beyond the camp. Inside the fence, gray buildings with rows and rows of windows had smokestacks at the ends pointing up like Roman candles. Near the front, great white balls of steel, taller than three houses, huddled together. Containers of some kind. Engine noises and hissing sounds filled the air—refining natural gas, Daddy said. He told me underground pipes brought the gas in where it went through a series of boiling, compressing, and cooling like the biggest science experiment you ever saw. From there it went through an underground maze to another plant that made gasoline, the kind you get at the filling station. Daddy worked crazy shifts, a week of daylights, then a week of evenings, then graveyards, but he said it sure as heck beat working on the oil rigs.

  Tuwana dragged out her mother’s Royal typewriter, and we set it up outside on a scratchy green army blanket.

  She hunched over, pecking the keys, while I dictated what to write and spelled words for her. One m in Siamese for the article about the Zyskowskis’ new kittens for sale. Five dollars each.

  “I wish you’d let me type the stencil,” I said after spelling the sixth word for her. “I’m the one who wants to be a newspaper reporter.”

  “It’s my mother’s typewriter from when she went to steno school, so I do the typing, okay?”

  She plunked away, and every three or four pecks, she tilted her head, first one way and then the other. I ignored her and stretched out my legs. Leaning back on my elbows, I let the sun warm my face. Puffy white clouds drifted past. A dragon. An elephant. A ship with pointy ends like the Vikings sailed. My mind drifted too with the tap-tap-tap in the background. When it stopped, I glanced over at Tuwana.

  “Tuwana, what happened to your hair?”