“Okay, Lulu,” her mother said. “I’ll be in the kitchen. Call me when you open it.”
She stood up with a grunt and shuffled into the kitchen, her denim shorts swish, swish, swishing.
Loretta looked down at the package again.
Slowly, she pulled the twine off one side. Then the other.
Slowly, she untaped the paper from the ends of the box.
Slowly, she took the paper off.
She opened the box.
Crumpled white tissue paper lay on top.
Loretta closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and lifted the tissue paper out of the box.
She opened her eyes.
Right on top was a note.
On yellow lined paper. Written in the same blue ink and the same messy handwriting as the address on the outside of the box.
Dear Loretta:
Your mother passed on to the other side at 6:16 a.m. on June 6.
She asked me to send you all her earthly possessions, enclosed herewith.
She was a good person.
She was my friend.
And that was all.
No name.
No goodbye.
Nothing.
Loretta felt a swirl of confusion.
Your mother?
What did that mean? Her mother was in the kitchen making deviled eggs.
Passed on to the other side?
What did that mean? The other side of what?
Loretta stared at the note and let the confusion swirl around her until it settled, like dust on the road.
And then she began to understand.
The mother in this note must be the one her parents called her other mother. The one who had carried her for nine months and given birth to her and surely loved her more than anything but wanted her to have a good life, not a hard life.
The mother Loretta had never known.
The mother Loretta did know was the one humming in the kitchen, making deviled eggs. The one who smelled like lavender talcum powder. The one who made doll clothes out of dishcloths and cradles out of oatmeal boxes. The one who called her Lulu and said to Loretta’s father nearly every day, “Aren’t we lucky, Marvin?”
Loretta nodded.
Yep. That was what your mother meant in this note.
But what about passed on to the other side?
Loretta felt her heart squeeze up.
“Mama?” she called into the kitchen.
She could see her mother at the kitchen counter, mashing egg yolks in one of her heavy yellow bowls with cherries on the side.
“Um, Mama?” she called a little louder.
Her mother came into the living room, wiping her hands on her apron. “What’s the matter, Lulu?” she said.
Loretta showed her mother the note and waited.
The kitchen clock went tick, tick, tick.
Loretta’s mother sat on the couch beside her and put her arm around her. Then she put her warm, soft cheek next to Loretta’s and rocked.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
Just like she had done when Loretta was little.
“This is a sad, sad day, Lulu,” she said.
Now Loretta knew for sure what passed on to the other side meant.
Her other mother had died.
Loretta’s insides felt all jumbled up. Like a jigsaw puzzle with too many pieces and nowhere to put them.
“I wonder who sent this,” Loretta said.
Her mother stopped rocking and took Loretta’s face in both her hands. “I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head.
They sat quietly for a while, both of them staring down at the box in Loretta’s lap. Outside the open window behind them, the sprinkler sputtered in circles in the front yard. Across the street, some kids were playing. Laughing. Hollering. Someone called, “Not it!”
Loretta took the things out of the box and laid them out on the coffee table, one by one.
A tattered pincushion shaped like a lady’s high-heeled shoe.
A Japanese fan with white flowers and a tassel of silky red ribbon.
A tarnished silver pocket watch engraved with the initials WKL.
A picture of a hummingbird torn from a magazine.
A white leather Bible.
Tiny scissors shaped like a bird.
A sparkly poodle dog pin.
A pale blue handkerchief with the letter P embroidered in pink.
A heart-shaped box made of red velvet.
And a silver charm bracelet.
“Aren’t those some nice treasures,” Loretta’s mother said.
Loretta nodded. She couldn’t take her eyes off all those things. She picked them up one at a time, turning them over and over.
Feeling them.
Smelling them.
She fingered the lacy edges of the handkerchief. She leafed through the Bible pages. She opened and closed the Japanese fan. She took the lid off the heart-shaped box. Inside was a photograph. A creased and faded photograph of a young girl. A girl about ten or eleven. A girl about Loretta’s age. The girl stood on a rock in the middle of a creek, wearing a red-checkered bathing suit and holding a towel in one hand.
Her legs were bowed and skinny.
Like Loretta’s.
Her hair was straight and dark.
Like Loretta’s.
“This is her,” Loretta whispered.
She stared down at the photograph. She wished she could do magic. Abracadabra and poof ! The girl in the photograph would come to life, jumping off the rock and right into Loretta’s living room. She would sit on the floor across from them and tell them all about herself.
“How’d she know where I live?” Loretta asked.
Her mother shook her head. “I don’t know, Lulu,” she said.
Loretta studied the charm bracelet.
“Look at these,” she said, holding the bracelet up so the charms dangled in front of them.
She examined each tiny charm.
A cowboy boot.
A starfish.
A barrel with Niagara Falls engraved on the side.
Mickey Mouse.
A map of Vermont.
A bear holding a little sign that said Great Smoky Mountains.
A palm tree.
The Statue of Liberty.
A cactus.
“I wonder what she was like,” Loretta said, laying the bracelet out on the coffee table.
Her mother put her soft, plump hand on Loretta’s knee. “I bet she was just like you,” she said. “Sweet and smart and funny and—”
Her mother snapped her fingers. “Hey, wait a minute …”
Loretta studied her mother’s face. “What?” she said.
“I bet those charms are places!”
“Places?”
“Yeah, you know, special places. I bet those are places she visited.”
Loretta looked down at the bracelet. “Really?”
Her mother nodded. “Sure,” she said. “I bet you anything. You know how people get charms that mean something special to them. And look at all those.” She nodded toward the bracelet. “Every single one of them is something that comes from a place.”
“Oh, yeah,” Loretta said. “Like maybe that boot’s from Texas.”
“And that cactus might be from Arizona,” her mother said.
“What about the starfish?” Loretta said. “Florida maybe?”
“Maybe.”
“She sure went to a lot of places, didn’t she?”
“She sure did.”
Loretta put all her other mother’s earthly possessions back into the box. She covered them with the tissue paper and put the lid on. She smoothed out the wrinkled brown paper with the palm of her hand and folded it into a small square.
She put both hands on top of the box in her lap and listened to the sputter of the sprinkler in the yard.
The slow, steady breathing of her mother next to her.
The tinkly music of an ice cream truck way off in the
distance somewhere.
Then she opened the box, took out all her other mother’s earthly possessions, and studied them one by one all over again.
When Loretta’s father came home, she showed him the box. She read him the note. She took out each thing and put it on the coffee table in front of him. She showed him the photograph of the girl on the rock.
Her father pursed his lips and nodded.
Then he cupped his warm, rough hand around the back of her neck.
The kitchen clock went tick, tick, tick.
“Well, now,” he finally said.
“Mama and I think those charms are from places she visited,” Loretta said. “Do you think so?”
“I reckon that might be true,” he said, giving the back of Loretta’s neck a little squeeze.
Loretta put all the things back into the box. The smell of fried chicken drifted out of the kitchen.
“I wonder what she was like,” Loretta said.
Her father took his baseball cap off and scratched his head.
That night at the dinner table, they talked about the charm bracelet, trying to guess where each charm had come from. Wondering out loud which place Loretta’s other mother had liked best.
And then Loretta said it again.
“I wonder what she was like.”
The kitchen clock went tick, tick, tick.
Suddenly her father slapped his hand on the table. “I have an idea,” he said.
“What?” Loretta said.
“Why don’t we visit some of those places on that charm bracelet?” Loretta’s father grinned at them.
Loretta felt her heart leap with excitement.
“Really?”
Her father wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and nodded. “Sure,” he said.
Loretta cocked her head and raised her eyebrows. “Texas?” she said.
Her father scratched his chin. “Hmmm,” he said. “That’s a little far. Why don’t we start closer to home?”
“What about the Smoky Mountains?” Loretta’s mother said.
Loretta crossed her fingers under the table and waited, watching her father’s face.
He squinted up at the ceiling. Then he slapped his hand on the table again. “Sure!” he said. “Let’s do it.”
Loretta ran and got the charm bracelet. She held it over the dinner table so the tiny silver bear dangled in front of them.
The silver bear from the Great Smoky Mountains.
Then she hugged her father and kissed her mother and said, “Thank you.”
The kitchen clock went tick, tick, tick.
And Loretta’s mother said, “Aren’t we lucky, Marvin?”
Kirby
Kirby Tanner snatched a package of red licorice off the shelf beside the cash register and jammed it into his pocket. He glanced out the front window of the gas station to make sure the old man was still pumping gas, then he took a piece of bubble gum out of the jar on the counter. He unwrapped it, tossed the wrapper on the floor, and popped the gum into his mouth. Then he headed out to the car to wait for his mother.
“Where y’all from?” the old man asked, wiping his hands with an oily cloth.
Kirby didn’t answer. He climbed into the front seat of the car and stared straight ahead.
“I said, where y’all from?” The old man peered through the window at Kirby.
Kirby took his sneakers off and tossed them onto the floor with all the other junk down there. An empty soda can. A McDonald’s wrapper. Cigarette butts. The tattered shoebox that Burla Davis had given him, tied up with string.
“Just some little ole things I thought you might like,” Burla had said that day Kirby had gone over to say goodbye.
Had it been only yesterday?
Kirby could feel the licorice in the pocket of his shorts. It felt hot, like fire, burning through the thin cotton.
When he heard his mother’s sandals slapping on the concrete, he looked up. She had pinned her frizzy red hair on top of her head and was wiping her neck with a paper towel.
“Great day for the AC to go out on this piece of junk,” she said, giving the tire of their car a kick.
The old man chuckled. “I hear ya,” he said. “Want me to take a look at it?”
“You gonna fix it for free?” she said.
“Can’t do that,” the man said. “I could give you a good deal, though.”
Kirby’s mother yanked the car door open and flopped inside, tossing her purse into the backseat.
“Yeah, I bet,” she muttered, slamming the door shut and starting the engine with a roar.
The tires kicked up sand and gravel as Kirby and his mother sped out of the gas station and back onto the highway. Thick, hot air whipped through the open windows, blowing paper napkins and empty cigarette packs around the car.
Kirby leaned against the door and put his face out the window, letting the wind blow his hair back off his forehead. He stared at his reflection in the side mirror.
He looked mean.
No, maybe he didn’t.
Maybe he just felt mean.
Mean? No, not mean.
Mad? Yeah. Mad.
Kirby felt mad and he looked mad.
No wonder everybody hated him.
His mother lit a cigarette. “Get your feet off the dash,” she said, swatting his legs.
“How much farther?” Kirby kept watching his mad face in the mirror.
He felt his mother’s eyes on him. “I still don’t know why I had to be the one to drive you up here,” she said. “Seems like your sorry excuse for a father could make an effort to do something useful once in a while.”
Kirby took the licorice out of his pocket and tossed it out the window.
“You know, Kirby,” his mother said, “this is your last chance to straighten up and fly right.”
Kirby glared at his reflection in the mirror. He hated those freckles. He hated that red hair.
“If this school don’t whip you into shape, I’m through.” His mother blew a stream of cigarette smoke up to the roof of the car. “You mess up this time,” she said, “you ain’t coming back to my house.”
Kirby took the gum out of his mouth and stuck it on the mirror, right in the middle of his reflection.
“Virgil don’t need this drama every minute of the day, neither,” his mother said.
Kirby made a little snorting sound when she said that about his stepfather. He knew that would make her mad, but he didn’t care. He wanted her to be mad. It was her own fault she had to go and marry an old man like Virgil who was sick in bed all the time, so now she had to work two jobs and come home tired every night.
“And Ace,” his mother went on. “How do you think Ace feels about you? Every time you pull one of your stunts at school, you humiliate him.”
Yeah, right, Kirby thought. Perfect little brother Ace. Mama’s precious lamb.
“You know, Dr. Lawton said flat out that Ace’s bedwetting problem is ’cause of you.” His mother flicked her cigarette out the window.
The air blowing through the car was getting cooler as the road took them farther up the mountain. Every now and then, Kirby could see a creek through the trees below them. He wished they would stop and wade in it. Or maybe sit at a picnic table and eat bologna sandwiches and drink Kool-Aid.
Play checkers.
Be nice to each other.
But they didn’t stop. They kept right on going. Farther and farther from home. Closer and closer to Smoky Mountain Boys’ Academy.
A bad-boy school, Ace called it.
Last stop before prison, Virgil called it.
Total disciplinary environment, the brochure called it. Nestled in the heart of the beautiful Smoky Mountains. Strict but loving atmosphere.
When Kirby had gone next door to show the brochure to Burla Davis, she’d said, “Why, I think this place looks real nice, Kirby. I bet you’re gonna love it there.”
She had pointed to the pictures inside the brochure. Boys building birdhouses in a
woodwork shop. Boys playing football. Boys sitting all happy and smiling in a classroom.
“This’ll be a fresh start, Kirby,” Burla said.
Then she set out a plate of those tiny little doughnuts Kirby loved. When it started to get dark outside, Burla hadn’t told him to go home. She never did. She always let him sit at her cracked Formica table in her kitchen with the teapot wallpaper, and she never told him to go home. Not even when he stuck gum up under her kitchen chairs or made little mountains of salt on the counter. Not even when he said cuss words right out loud in front of her.
“I’ve lived a long time, Kirby,” she always said. “I’ve heard all them words before.”
Kirby’s thoughts were interrupted by a whirring, grinding, clanking noise as the car began to jerk and sputter.
His mother threw her hands up in the air.
“Oh, great,” she said. “Just what I need.”
Sputter. Rattle. Clank.
She pulled the car to the side of the road. Black smoke drifted out of the tailpipe and floated in the air beside them.
His mother banged the steering wheel with her fist.
“I told that no-account father of yours this piece of junk wouldn’t make it,” she hollered at Kirby.
“What’re we gonna do?” Kirby said.
His mother dropped her head back against the seat and closed her eyes.
“Kirby,” she said. “Do I look like the person who wrote The Answer Book of Life?”
“No, ma’am.” Kirby was surprised to hear his own voice sound so small and pitiful. He had been trying hard to act like he didn’t care that he was going to that school. Now his voice was about to go and give him away. But then, his mother probably wouldn’t notice anyway.
“How should I know what we’re gonna do?” His mother jerked the door open and got out.
The car rattled, then let out one big cough before the engine died.
Kirby got out of the car. The ground felt cool and sandy beneath his bare feet. From way down in the gulley below them came the faint sound of flowing water.
“Must be a creek down there,” he said.
His mother walked around the car, glaring at it.
“Maybe we should flag somebody down,” Kirby said, looking up one side of the road and down the other.
His mother yanked the car door open and fumbled through the glove box. She took out a tattered map and spread it out on the hood.
Greetings from Nowhere Page 2
