Smack Dab in the Middle of Maybe

by Jo Watson Hackl

  Carefully, I put the little ball of string next to the angel.

  “No.” Mama pressed it in my palm. “It’s for you. For good luck.”

  “Thanks, Mama.”

  But Mama wasn’t listening. She started back to pacing too fast. “First, I’m going to find me that Bird Room. Then I’m going to see that headstone put up proper, and then I’m going to…”

  A familiar fear gripped me hard.

  Mama’s voice sounded the way it did that last time before she went into the hospital. “Mama, slow down.”

  She didn’t even lift her eyes from the floorboards. She followed one straight line all the way to the window, whirled on her heels, and started over.

  “Mama, you’re scaring me.”

  She reached out a hand and brushed my cheek, but she didn’t stop. “I’ve got to find the Bird Room,” she said.

  “Look at the tree, Mama.” I pulled her down so we lay side by side under the branches. I pointed into the lit-up limbs. “See how pretty.”

  Mama’s ankle wrapped around mine in a hug, but her foot didn’t stop tapping. I stared up into the blinking lights for the longest time, soaking up that cedar smell and trying to soothe some of that cedar calm into Mama.

  She started singing “Ring of Fire,” off key and too fast.

  “No, Mama, sing something else.” I started up humming “Jingle Bells.”

  Mama just sang faster, the way she sang last time before she needed to go to the hospital and I had to stay at Aunt Belinda’s while Daddy was offshore. Me and my homeschool books, trying to make up for lost time and getting behind. I mailed a card every day to Mama but never got a single one back, and she wouldn’t even talk to me on the phone, and all Aunt Belinda did was say, “Be patient and your mama will be home soon,” and people looked at me funny and asked me questions I couldn’t answer. I hated it, every single bit of it, and here she was, acting that way again.

  She was worse than a mama bird about to fly off and leave its half-feathered baby behind.

  The words flew out of my mouth. “Stop it! Rooms aren’t alive. I wish you’d just be normal.”

  Mama’s foot stopped tapping. She turned toward me. Her eyes were dark mud puddles of hurt.

  Mama’s face crumpled with cry sounds that didn’t make it past her lips.

  “No, Mama, I didn’t mean it.”

  But she already had her back to me.

  When she finally spoke, her voice was a chalky whisper. “Me too.”

  From her perch in the bird’s nest, the angel ornament stared at me. She heard everything.

  Mama scrambled up, went to her bedroom, and clicked the lock shut.

  I couldn’t believe what I’d just said to my mama. The mama who built me waterfalls, who read me poetry, the mama who called me an artist, the mama who took me places no one else would ever think to go.

  I’d just told her I wished she was somebody else.

  My words were sour in my mouth as I stood outside Mama’s door. “Mama, I didn’t mean it,” I said again.

  But she wouldn’t open the door.

  When Daddy got home, I didn’t say one word to him. He’d make things better like he always did. He’d get Mama back on her medicine, and we’d forget about that night, just the way we forgot about everything else bad.

  Still, I couldn’t sleep. All I could see was the hurt in Mama’s eyes. I lay in bed and listened to the heat cycling on and off, on and off.

  When I woke up, the house felt hollow.

  Daddy slouched over the kitchen table, stirring his coffee with a worn-out spoon. But I knew good and well he always took his coffee black.

  “Where’s Mama?” I asked.

  He didn’t look up. He just shook his head.

  Mama’s cell phone lay on the table beside him. Her purse and keys were missing from their hook on the wall.

  I ran to their bedroom. Her underwear drawer was sticking out, half-empty. The suitcase, the one we used that time we went to Biloxi, it was missing, too.

  So were the rolled-up drawings.

  And her favorite nightgown, the silky one with blue roses.

  Gone.

  It was all my fault.

  I pulled open the rest of the dresser drawers.

  Mostly full.

  I ran back into the kitchen. “Look, Daddy,” I said. “She didn’t take much. She’ll be back soon.”

  “I’m sure she will, honey,” he said. “Here, let me fix you breakfast.” He scrambled some eggs and sat there while I pushed the food around my plate.

  “When your mama gets back, we’ll buy three more strings of lights for that tree.” He forced his lips into a smile.

  “That sounds good, Daddy.”

  I wanted to hug him, but Daddy wasn’t all huggy like Mama.

  He got up to clear the plate.

  I shot up out of my chair. “No, Daddy, let me.”

  Mama’s green aventurine ring lay in a gob of dried-out hand soap beside the sink.

  The ring Daddy gave her the day I was born.

  The ring that had been handed down in Daddy’s family from Great-Aunt Lillian, who swore it brought her good luck every day of her life. The ring my mama never took off.

  Left on the edge of the kitchen sink where anybody could have knocked it down the drain.

  I held it up so Daddy could see.

  He gathered me into a hug, leaning his stubbly chin into the top of my head.

  Neither one of us let go until the phone rang—somebody looking for Mama.

  After that, I woke up every morning to no sign of Mama and the floor beside the tree littered with more needles and ornaments the tree had shrugged off in the night.

  That tree was dying, and it didn’t matter how much water I poured in the base.

  The angel was the last of the ornaments to fall.

  I found her shattered on the floor, one eye staring up into the tree.

  I swept up the pieces and buried them, dustpan and all, in the deepest hole I could dig in the yellow clay behind the barn.

  Mama was gone, and there wasn’t one single thing I could do about it.

  Now I lay in a dark daybed in a stranger’s house. I tried to get that angel out of my head.

  I couldn’t do it.

  But my brain did bring up one word. It pierced through everything, sharp as sunlight through ice: Tanager.

  I could change things with Mama if I could just live through this first.

  Flannel. I was wearing somebody’s flannel nightgown.

  My ankle burned. I was so tired, I felt like a mashed bug, but I was more awake than I’d ever been.

  Plus, I was hearing voices.

  The living room was empty except for Charlene. She sat in a little cage that looked like it had last held a canary, with a thimble of water and a slice of sweet potato beside her.

  The sound was coming from outside.

  Okay, maybe it was just one voice.

  But it was schoolteacher loud.

  I parted the curtain. It was that lady talking. She held out three books to Percy. His tail was wagging for all get-out. He sat, lifted a clown-shoe-size paw, and scratched at the middle book.

  She commenced to reading. “ ‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers,” she announced. “By your favorite poet.

  “ ‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers—

  That perches in the soul—

  And sings the tune without the words—

  And never stops—at all.”

  She went on, but I wasn’t listening. I knew that poem. Mama used to recite the first line whenever she saw a cardinal. And why was that lady reading my mama’s favorite poem to a dog?

  Soon as the poem was over, Percy held out his paw for the lady to shake, jumped up, ran over t
o the edge of the garden, and dug five holes, one right beside the other.

  What kind of place am I in?

  The lady walked inside and slid the book back on the shelf. If her face and tied-back gray hair were any clues, she must have been at least seventy years old, but she didn’t have that old-person, overripe tomato smell. She smelled more like hickory smoke and black pepper. Her eyes were as bright and brown as a rabbit’s. Plus, she had the straightest posture I’d ever seen, even better than Grandma’s.

  She looked over my way and gave a little jump. She probably thought I’d still be asleep. And she must’ve seen my expression. “Guess you heard that.”

  “Emily Dickinson.”

  I swear, that lady looked like I’d just said a secret password. Her face lit up. Then her expression got serious. She pointed toward Percy, out in the yard. “Let’s just keep all the rest between ourselves, now, shall we?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Shoot. I’m a pro at keeping my mouth shut. I knew how to hold things so close, I didn’t even say them to myself. Mama’s pills, the schoolwork we were supposed to be doing, Mama flirting with any man wearing the right kind of cowboy hat.

  “So…Percy likes poetry. I never met a dog like that before.”

  “Oh, it helps calm him down. That Percy, he’s got quite the particular taste. He’s a big fan of our friend Emily. And Langston Hughes and Walt Whitman. But he near about bit the book out of my hand when I tried to read him some E. E. Cummings.” She stopped. “I’m forgetting my manners. My name’s Vidalia. You can call me Miss V. You’ve been sleeping a day and a half.”

  “I’m Cricket.” I pushed out the words.

  Soon as I did it, I knew I’d messed up. I should have told her a fake name in case she’d heard about me running off.

  Miss V. just nodded. That name didn’t seem to mean anything to her. “You know, you’re the first person I’ve talked to in years who recognized that poem. I’m going to call you Ace.”

  She glanced out the window. “We ought to call your parents and let them know you’re okay.” She reached for the phone.

  I rubbed at my ankle to buy myself some time.

  “Ma’am, I sure do wish we could reach them, but they’re on a cruise to Alaska. Won’t be back for a week.”

  “Mm-hmm.” By her face, I couldn’t tell if she believed me or not.

  I tried to look innocent.

  She watched me for a minute. “Well, let’s get you fed, then.” She propped me up on the pillows and disappeared into the kitchen.

  When she came back, I got a whiff of the pure deliciousness wafting off the plate on the tray she was carrying. The tray held enough bacon and fried eggs to choke a horse.

  The bacon half crumbled, half melted on my tongue. It was the best breakfast I’d had since Daddy died. And not just because I was starving. Skillet-fried bacon makes me feel like the day might turn out right.

  It felt like a miracle to eat food I hadn’t had to forage for and to be warm without having to hunt for branches for a fire.

  I looked up. Miss V. was still standing there, waiting on me to finish. “I’m much obliged,” I said, trying to take the same tone Grandma used when a stranger gave her directions. “I hope I can repay you for your trouble.”

  Miss V. studied me, careful-like. “How are you at riddles?”

  I hadn’t so much as heard a riddle since second grade. “The best.”

  “I have a riddle for you to solve. What’s only one color but not one size, stuck at the bottom, yet easily flies?”

  I shrugged up empty hands.

  She smoothed a wrinkle out of her shirt. “No matter. I just wondered if you knew it. You can think about it later.” She looked at her watch. “Why don’t you come outside and keep me company? The outdoor air will do you good.” She reached behind her and handed me a pile of my clean and folded clothes.

  I tested my ankle. The skin over it had turned the grainy brown color of a used-up tea bag. It still hurt some, but the swelling was down, and it could bear weight.

  I got dressed in her bathroom and followed her onto the porch. I sat in a rocking chair and propped up my hurt foot on the stool she’d dragged over.

  Percy stopped his hole digging and did a little side wiggle toward me, trying to walk, wag his tail, and nibble at it at the same time. He wore a bright bull’s-eye-red collar, and that was the only normal-dog thing about him. He had hang-down hound-dog ears, but they were cocked at the top like he was always listening, really hard. He stood as high as my waist, and his back legs looked like long, skinny rabbit legs. His eyes were the color of honeysuckle vines. Most of his body was black, but the inside of his legs was coon-dog tan, and he had a white skunk stripe from his chin to his chest.

  “You rest,” Miss V. said. She picked up a hatchet and chopped at some wood. “The roof’s got a leak. I’ve been working on making tar out of pinewood and patching it. I should get back to it. The moon had a ring around it last night. Rain’s coming. I need to keep that fire going and do more patching.” She pointed to a campfire raging around an upside-down big black pot.

  I tried to get my bearings.

  This house was the only thing left standing anywhere near the woods where I’d found all those clues. Maybe Mama remembered wrong about the Bird Room house being in a big, nice neighborhood. This house was right by Electric City, and it had a driveway that Granddaddy could have driven to from the old town. Maybe the yard had a clue. Or the house. Or maybe the Bird Room was inside this very house.

  I’d have to see if I could search it.

  If I got on Miss V.’s good side, maybe I could find a way to look around. “Is there anything I can do to help?” I used my “yes, ma’am” voice.

  “Tell you what. You watch the fire, make sure it doesn’t run out of wood.”

  Percy came over. He sat, leaning into me, so close he rocked me back in my chair every time he wagged his tail.

  That dog could put out some heat, and for the longest time, I just sat there, feeling his warm body next to mine and letting him rock me. I watched the fire and hollered to Miss V. when it got too low. I didn’t say one word about a lady her age going up and down that ladder. And while I was watching the fire, I was watching the woods, looking for anything that might be another tanager tree, waiting for my chance to look around inside.

  It took me an hour to get my opening for clue hunting. On the porch, I practiced six different ways to look pitiful, and Miss V. finally shooed me back inside to rest.

  But the living room didn’t look like any kind of clue-hunting place. It looked like a cross between a library and Grandma’s living room, the one she wouldn’t let nobody but the preacher go in.

  A flower-patterned couch was in talking distance to the daybed. Doilies were draped across everything, even the bookshelves. Books were everywhere, on tables and on a bookcase stretching across an entire wall. A black baby grand piano stood in one corner. The lid was down, and there was a doily on that, too. The staircase was in another corner. Some old, faded photos on the walls. Lots of plants.

  From the roof came the sound of Miss V. swishing tar.

  I tiptoed around, looking at every little thing. Not a single painting or carving.

  Nothing tanager.

  I thumbed through the shelf. There was book after book of poetry, just like Miss V.’d said, each of them with little paw scratch marks on the cover. There were books full of crossword puzzles, and other books, too—Treasure Island and North Toward Home. And dozens of dusty issues of Mississippi Gardener’s Almanac.

  I flipped through the books, but no tanager painting was hidden between the pages.

  I crossed the hallway and peeked into the kitchen, into the dining room, the bathroom again, even into the bedroom.

  No tanagers.

  I’d covered all the rooms down
stairs.

  Outside the windows, there was just an ordinary garden and straight-rowed trees.

  I started over, looking closer at the walls. The first thing hanging was a photo of Percy in a bow tie. The second was a photo of a man in paint-spattered clothes.

  Suddenly, my ankle didn’t hurt anymore, not even a tiny bit.

  That man in the picture might be Mr. Bob.

  I got Charlene out of her cage to help me look closer.

  Together, we combed the room. Soon as we got near the piano, though, Charlene went just as wild as she did that day in the bathroom of Thelma’s. She flitted from one doily to the next.

  She finally landed on the piano lid, her back leg jutted out, stuck in that crocheted doily.

  Gently, I eased the lid up to free her leg.

  Charlene jumped on my shoulder and the doily slipped to the side. We both stared at what was inside the piano.

  Stretched across the piano wires was something made out of metal and wood. I picked it up. Two straight metal rods swung from a thick, carved wood handle.

  Why would anybody put that inside a piano?

  Maybe it was some kind of tuning instrument.

  My finger caught on something sharp.

  A tiny tanager was carved into the wood base. It had a star in its mouth, smaller than a corn kernel.

  And just below the star, marked so faint that at first I thought it was scratches:

  WORTHY #2

  I’d found Worthy #2! A tanager clue was inside this very house!

  That thought didn’t have long to settle. Two seconds later, Miss V. strode in and slapped a rolled-up copy of the Pickens County Messenger on the coffee table. “It’s a good thing Percy didn’t chew up this one,” she said. “Cruise, huh?”

  A headline stretched across the entire front page.

  SEARCH CONTINUES FOR PICKENS COUNTY GIRL

  Working out of an operational headquarters at the Deerfield Fire Department, the search team continues their efforts to find Ariana “Cricket” Overland. No trace has been found of the missing girl.