That line from Mr. Bob’s letter echoed in my head. There’s some things you just can’t change.
Mr. Bob was right. I couldn’t change my mama. She didn’t want to change.
Before that thought even had a chance to seep all the way in, Brian hustled up and steered Mama toward the car. “We can talk about this later. Now we all need to hit the road.”
Mama’s hand reached out. She pulled me toward the car.
But my legs stood stock-still.
“Mama, I can’t go to Memphis with you.” My voice felt like it was coming from someplace outside of me, someplace I didn’t know.
“Sure you can, baby. Just get in the car. It’ll all be okay. We’ll buy you some new clothes at the mall.”
“No, Mama, I can’t.”
“It’ll be fun. Brian will take good care of us.” Mama brushed her hand against her stomach.
I took a hard, dry swallow and reached into my pocket. “This was under the tanager painting you gave me.” I held out the doogaloo.
Mama’s eyes lit on the lightbulb carved in that coin, and her cheeks rose up in a quivery smile. “My baby, she always could find the beauty in things. Didn’t I tell you, Brian?” She started to give it back.
I closed her hand around it. “You keep it. You can visit me anytime, Mama. Anytime you want to see me and that room.”
Mama took three deep breaths. Thick tears welled in her eyes. “You sure you’ll be okay?”
“I’ll be fine.” My ears were buzzing so loud it hurt.
“I’m sorry, Mama.” I choked out the words. “I’m sorry for what I said that night before you left. I didn’t mean it.”
For one sliver of a second, Mama’s eyes met mine. “I know you didn’t, baby. I’m sorry, too. I wish I could just…”
She studied that cricket I’d drawn in the dirt.
I felt like a soda can that’s been shook too hard. Everything swirled in different directions inside me—loving my mama and being mad at her for leaving me. I couldn’t choose what thought to hang on to. I was hating myself for not being able to change things and a tiny bit proud of myself for coming to know it, and scared of what it was that I was about to do. All that swirling had me dizzy, and I just wanted to get away from myself, but I couldn’t do it. I was stuck just as bad as that fish in the trap.
“It’ll be okay, hon.” Brian said it like he’d already used that line about a thousand times that day. “You can always visit. We’ll send her money, like you said.” Brian guided Mama toward the car. “She sure is pretty, same as you. You ought to be proud.”
Mama brought the doogaloo to her cheek and held it there. Then she smiled that smile that used to light up the room and me, both at the same time. “Yes, I am.”
They piled into a silver sports car that wasn’t built for dirt roads. Mama laid her fingers against the glass. She mouthed the word Bye and they drove off.
What have I done?
Dust from Brian’s car rained down on my skin in tiny flakes, making everything real.
I’d almost died to get to Mama.
And now I’d just let her go.
I kicked at Brian’s tire tracks so hard, I like to fell over.
Then I saw the shadow. It was in the no-doubt-about-it shape of a tanager. It was formed from those two interlocking parts of the headstone. That tanager shadow wavered in the slanty sunlight, looking ready to fly.
Charlene chirped. At least she was still with me. We studied that shadow.
Hope is the thing with feathers. That line from Emily Dickinson popped into my head.
Here was a tanager not afraid to take chances. A tanager not afraid to stand out.
A tanager that flew wherever its hope feathers took it.
Bit by bit, all the things spinning around in my head started to take a blurry shape.
I’d come out to these woods to find the Bird Room for Mama.
Maybe I’d gotten something for myself, too.
I’d made it through thieving raccoons, through the ice storm and the snakebite. I’d fed myself from these woods. I’d protected Charlene. I’d kept the both of us alive.
No matter what people said about Mama, she’d made me into the person who’d done all that. And that was something.
I thought about what Miss V. had said about Mama being more than what those neighbors thought. Miss V. was right. My mama did contain multitudes. What those neighbors said about Mama wasn’t who my mama was. And it wasn’t who I was, either. I was my own, whole person. And I could decide what it was I wanted to do.
Everything I’d thought about doing had Mama right at the center.
I’d taken a lot of chances to find my mama. Maybe it was time to start taking chances on me.
Charlene chirped on my shoulder, and my mind started to swirl again with maybes, one right after another. Then somehow, all of a sudden, all those maybes started to feel a little bit like possibilities.
When I finally made up my mind, it took the both of us by surprise.
“Pack your things,” I told Charlene. “We’re heading to the Stokes School.”
“Well, that settles it,” Miss V. said when I told her all that had happened. “You’ll just have to spend a lot of time here with Percy and me.” Percy bounced over and slobbered up my face like I was the best thing he’d ever tasted.
Miss V. handed me the key to the Bird Room. I closed my hand tight around it. Me and Charlene, we could visit that room whenever we wanted.
“I’ve already called the museum,” Miss V. said. “They’re over the moon about so many paintings. They need to work out the details, but they said they want to buy them all and create a special exhibit. We can go visit it together. And the Bird Room is getting a new roof.”
So we had a plan.
Aunt Belinda was another story. I needed to settle things between us.
When I showed up on Aunt Belinda’s doorstep the next day, the first words out of her mouth were, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself for scaring me that way. Running off without telling me goodbye.”
“You left me.” I was ready to fight.
But soon as I was inside, she pulled me into a hug. She squeezed me hard enough to make me think she might really mean it. “I’m just so glad you’re back.”
I couldn’t say anything. Her Wanda’s Classy Lady hair spray was near about choking me to death. For once, though, it smelled sort of good.
She grabbed hold of my arms. “Let me look at you.” She wrinkled her nose. “Where have you been? You’re thin as a rail, and you look like you’ve been sleeping with the dogs. Let’s get you cleaned up. You had me worried sick.”
Then her eyes went wide as she looked out the window behind me.
A white van was raising up a dust cloud on the driveway. It turned the curve, and we both sucked in our breath when we recognized the lettering on the side—DEERFIELD BAPTIST CHURCH. The van crunched to a stop on the gravel. Pastor Dudley, Ms. Mary Beth, and the whole youth group poured out. “We came to offer you some comfort, Sister Belinda,” Pastor Dudley said.
Aunt Belinda stepped in front of me, opened the door, and held up my hand. “It’s a miracle. Our Cricket has returned!”
Little Quinn, Jackson, and Clay scampered out of the bedroom. Them and the church youth group crowded around me. Aunt Belinda kept backing up until we were all shuffling around in the living room. Pastor Dudley, Ms. Mary Beth, and everybody else but Aunt Belinda eyeballed me the way folks gawked at that five-legged calf at the county fair. I stared right on back. I didn’t even try to explain what I was doing with a full-grown cricket on my shoulder.
“Where are my manners? Sit down, sit down, everyone. Make yourselves at home.” Aunt Belinda fluttered about, pulling in extra chairs from the dinette set and side-kicking action figures under the couch.
I just stood still and let her try to clean up her own mess.
She pointed to the recliner with a hand wearing Mama’s aventurine ring. “Look, Cricket, we saved a seat just for you. We knew you’d be back someday, the good Lord willing.”
The sight of that ring riled me back up. Little Quinn grabbed my hand. “Yeah, Cricket. We made your bedroom even better. We’ve been using it for the coolest rec room you ever—”
Aunt Belinda clamped down on his shoulder. “Give her a chance to catch her breath. After all she’s been through.”
Pastor Dudley smacked his hands on his knees and leaned forward. “Sister Cricket, you’ve got to tell us just exactly what you have been through. How’d you ever end up away from your family?”
Aunt Belinda got the panic-filled eyes of a fish flapping on a cutting board.
I took a step toward the recliner, but I didn’t sit down.
Aunt Belinda laid the back of her hand against my forehead. “The poor thing is exhausted. We should let her rest.”
The youth group wasn’t buying it. The youngest girl, Renata Terry Jane, raised her hand. “So, where’ve you been, and how’d you get back?”
That look again from Aunt Belinda.
The biggest part of me wanted to call Aunt Belinda out, to do it right in front of Pastor Dudley, Ms. Mary Beth, and the whole youth group, too. She’d tried to send me off to Great-Aunt Genevieve’s. She’d lied to the whole town.
She deserved what she had coming—getting locked up in jail for lying to the police, for not telling them how she’d left me in that grocery store.
So what if that left Little Quinn, Jackson, and Clay without a mama. I didn’t have a mama or a daddy around, either one.
The anger rose up so hot, it burned my skin hairs.
“Well, as a matter of fact…,” I began. I cut my eyes over at Aunt Belinda. She could see in my face what I was about to do.
I’d just let her squirm a minute before I did it.
But there was her fish-on-a-cutting-board look again. The look of a fish that’d stopped thumping. A fish who’d given up.
In my head, I pictured Mr. Bob walking a thousand miles to get back home to his family. I remembered all those miles I’d walked to try to get Mama back.
I thought about Aunt Belinda putting supper on the table every night, rain or shine.
I thought about her telling me I was family and taking me in.
I sucked in a deep breath—and got a big whiff of Aunt Belinda’s fake French vanilla potpourri. And as soon as that smell hit my nose, I knew this one sure thing—I wasn’t the same person I was back when I slumped around Aunt Belinda’s house.
Being in the woods had changed me. It taught me what I was made of. Something that could rise above all the mess Aunt Belinda had made.
Nothing I could do to Aunt Belinda would take what I’d learned away from me. And trying to send Aunt Belinda off to jail wouldn’t bring back Mama or Daddy, either one.
I got to thinking quick.
“Welllll…” I drew out the sound. “I know I shouldn’t have done it, but I went camping by myself, and I got lost and ran out of matches and I was near about to freeze to death. But then I remembered that Wanda’s Classy Lady vanilla lip balm that Aunt Belinda gave me. I spread it on some dead leaves and banged two rocks together and got a spark, and I got a fire and I kept that fire going until I could find enough food in the woods and find my way back here.”
Every eye was on me. I was on a roll, and I couldn’t resist the part that followed. “And here I am today, living proof of the power of Aunt Belinda’s beauty products. Aunt Belinda was so happy to see me, she told me she’d give me Mama’s lucky aventurine ring. Isn’t that right, Aunt Belinda?” I held out my firm and steady palm.
Aunt Belinda didn’t say one single word. She just twisted off that ring, gave it a tight-mouthed kiss, and dropped it in my hand.
Pastor Dudley sprang up and laid his hand on my shoulder. “And now Cricket’s back with us. All that praying, I knew it would pay off.” He held out a Thelma’s Cash ’n’ Carry grocery bag and untied the handles to show crumpled bills and quarters. The bills were mostly ones, but there were fives, tens, and even some twenties and fifties inside. “We were taking up a collection for a reward for Cricket’s safe return. Now that Cricket is back, you might as well have it. After all you’ve been through.” He handed the bag to Aunt Belinda.
“No, we couldn’t,” Aunt Belinda protested.
But the pastor and Ms. Mary Beth just smiled. The youth group started nodding. “Take it, take it.”
“It’s unanimous,” Pastor Dudley said. “We insist.”
Aunt Belinda took the bag gently, the way you’d handle eggs. “Thank you so much. I’m sure we can find a way to put it to good use for our dear Cricket.”
Dollywood, here she comes.
But Aunt Belinda looped the handles over my wrist. “For art supplies,” she said.
I sucked in a deep breath. Money was tight all over, and the whole church family had raised this money. For me. And now everybody wanted me to have it. I started to look up at the ceiling to keep myself from bawling like a baby.
Then I realized it—I knew these folks. And these folks knew me. They didn’t judge me or Mama, neither one. So I didn’t even try to turn my head as I swiped at my snotty nose.
Aunt Belinda reached out to hug me again, nearly squashing Charlene.
Charlene leaped out of the way.
She landed on Aunt Belinda’s shoulder.
Aunt Belinda got to jumping around, jerking her hands, trying to brush off Charlene.
I lunged forward. Charlene could get hurt.
But Charlene just bounced back on me first chance she got. She was tough. By that time, Aunt Belinda was carrying on so much, she’d worked loose a top button.
“Hot stuff!” Little Quinn was hopping from one foot to the other. “Hot stuff, hot stuff!” He pointed right below Aunt Belinda’s collarbone.
Aunt Belinda started pulling the shirt edges together and feeling for the buttonhole.
But it was too late.
“Why would Mama write Hot Stuff on her neck bone?” Clay asked.
The youth group started snickering.
Pastor Dudley’s mouth turned into a tight-lipped line. Everybody quieted down.
Ms. Mary Beth gathered herself up out of her chair and laid a lily-white hand on Aunt Belinda’s shoulder. “Sister Belinda will tell us when she’s good and ready.” There was the slightest hint of a wink at me. “And I, for one, can’t wait to hear it.”
They packed up and left.
Aunt Belinda sent the boys to play in the woods behind the house.
So it was just me and Charlene and Aunt Belinda. Charlene cowered inside my collar. Aunt Belinda started straightening up the living room.
I handed Aunt Belinda two empty glasses for the dishwasher. “You shouldn’t have been so hard on Charlene. She’s one of God’s creatures, too. All she wanted to do was say hello.”
“I don’t keep company with bugs.” Aunt Belinda swiped at the edge of the coffee table with the hem of her shirt.
She ran her eyes up and down me. “You must be exhausted. Let’s go fix up your room. And you’ve got an awful lot of schoolwork to catch up on.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Aunt Belinda turned the knob to the bedroom.
Game pieces covered the bed. Used gym socks and sour yogurt smells wafted through the air.
My duffel bag lay over in the corner. I swung it over my shoulder. Aunt Belinda tried to take hold of the handle. “Here, let me help you.”
I held the handle firm.
“I’m good.”
Aunt Belinda got a guilty look. Then she was the one who started crying. She confessed about Great-Aunt Genevieve. “It was
a mistake from the beginning. I never should have let her talk me into it. You’re always welcome here, Cricket.”
“I’m sorry for what I put you through,” I said. I told her about Miss V. I told her about the spring-break program at the Stokes School. I told her I wanted to go back and forth between her and Miss V.’s houses and that nobody would think bad of her, because Miss V. and Daddy were kin.
It took half the afternoon for Aunt Belinda to get used to the idea. But in the end, she called the folks at the Stokes School and told them I was coming. She even promised to go by Thelma’s Cash ’n’ Carry and drop off the $36.47 I gave her.
Aunt Belinda wanted to give me a ride all the way to Miss V.’s.
Somehow, that didn’t feel right. Aunt Belinda and Miss V. could get to know each other some other time. It just felt fitting for me to go back to Miss V.’s the way I had come—walking through the woods. I let Aunt Belinda drop me off at the dirt road.
Aunt Belinda pulled me into another tight hug. “You do me proud, now.”
I couldn’t tell whether she was telling me not to go off and embarrass the whole family, or talking about what had gone on between us. But she had a deep smile on her face when she said it, the kind that crinkled up her cheeks.
Charlene crawled to the top of my shoulder. “Tell her bye, Charlene.” The words were out of my mouth before I realized how they must have sounded to Aunt Belinda.
Charlene let out a half-hearted call.
Aunt Belinda gave me a hard look. “You know, only male crickets chirp like that. This one’s a boy.”
Well, that was something.
Turns out, Charlene had been keeping some secrets of her own.
I studied that cricket for a minute. Charlene yant-yanted so soft, it sounded like my own breath doing the talking.
Boy or girl, she’d always be Charlene to me.
Me and Charlene spent one last night at Miss V.’s house before it was time to head out to the Stokes School. Percy galloped up to meet us and ushered us to the porch. Miss V. laid out a feast. There was fried chicken and mashed potatoes with gravy and a whole mess of peas. And corn bread to sop up all the juices. That juice still carried the flavor of the dirt those peas had grown in, the dirt I had dug in, the dirt I was getting ready to shake off my shoes, soon as I left for the Stokes School.
Smack Dab in the Middle of Maybe Page 12
