Walking with Miss Millie

by Tamara Bundy

  We walked in silence the rest of the way back to Miss Millie’s. It seemed like we picked up a little bit of speed for the way home.

  A little.

  At one point, she quietly handed me the leash. But even though Clarence wasn’t looking, and can’t even see for that matter, he stopped the minute the leash was in my hands and refused to move again.

  Miss Millie took back the leash and said, “Maybe we could try tomorrow?”

  This pretty much surprised me. I was certain I hadn’t been the best of company. I mean, what with the yelling at her, and making her walk too fast and all. But maybe she really did want me to learn to walk Clarence by myself.

  And maybe if I agreed to another day of walking I wouldn’t feel guilty about yelling at her about my daddy. “Umm. Sure . . . Same time?”

  “Good by me. I ain’t exactly in demand around these parts. Unless, of course, President Johnson comes to town, then I might be busy. But he’s in Washington, DC, I guess. That’s also north of here.”

  And as she said that she winked at me and her whole wrinkly face smiled like it hadn’t smiled in a long time and it just remembered how. I couldn’t get mad at her even though I knew she was making a little fun of me.

  I smiled back and turned to go. “See you tomorrow, then.”

  “Wait, Alice-girl. Let me give you something.”

  By now we were in her backyard and she let Clarence off his leash and he wasn’t growling at me for once. Miss Millie went over to her picnic table and I saw her pick something up off the table for me.

  She extended her hand and took ahold of mine. Her hand was rough and worn with age and work. When she opened her hand, something shiny and little landed in my palm. I sensed the coolness of its smooth surface before I saw what it was.

  It was a blue marble.

  What on earth was I supposed to do with a marble? But I remembered my manners and managed to say, “Thanks. It’s real pretty. See you tomorrow.”

  When I got back to Grandma’s house, Mama was honest-to-goodness happy to hear about the walk and all. And when I showed her the blue marble, she looked at it and got all misty eyed, like it was the best treasure in the world.

  I asked, “Mama, why’d she give me a marble?”

  And Mama hugged me as she answered, “I don’t know—maybe we all just need somebody to share things with.”

  That sure didn’t help. “So . . . Miss Millie just wanted to share a marble with me?”

  Mama smiled and shook her head. “Something tells me she’s sharing more than that.”

  I still didn’t understand why Mama was so happy with that marble. “Do you want it?” I asked, not really wanting to give it away, but seeing how happy it made her.

  She hugged me again. “That marble’s yours, Alice Ann. And maybe you don’t realize it yet—but it’s like a ticket to heaven.”

  I took the marble back, still not sure what she was talking about.

  Guess mamas just say stuff like that sometimes.

  chapter 8

  The next day, I had my breakfast, but skipped the washing-dishes part—no need to try to butter up Mama when she was in the middle of teaching me a lesson.

  But this time, before I hopped that fence to Miss Millie’s, I made a pit stop at the shed. I picked up the box and sat behind the shed—out of view of the window just in case Mama was watching.

  Opening the box once again, I took out the top letter. Joanie was written on the front, and on the back was written SWAK—which I remembered Mama saying meant Sealed with a Kiss.

  For a few minutes I tossed around in my mind the idea that it wasn’t stealing somebody’s letters if they were already opened and left out in an old box for years. I mean, if these old things meant something to Mama, wouldn’t they be in a safe place today?

  And of course, if Daddy meant something to Mama, wouldn’t he be here today, too?

  Mad at that last thought, I took out the first letter.

  It was a poem.

  The sun’s golden rays

  danced in your hair.

  You looked in my eyes

  and asked if I care.

  How could I explain

  my feelings so true

  as I sat there that day

  by the wishing well with you?

  That was so sweet, but it made me shake my head. I didn’t even know Daddy liked poems or that he could write ’em. When Daddy called, maybe I could ask him about it.

  I stuffed the letter back in the box and the box back in the shed and I walked toward Miss Millie’s.

  I hopped over the fence and waited to hear if there was any sign of Clarence. I wasn’t afraid of him like the day before, but still, I didn’t want to set him off on a barking fit.

  I didn’t hear any barking, but I did hear something else coming from the house. And this sound sounded good.

  Music.

  I went to knock on the screen door, but I stopped for a moment to listen. It was a scratchy recording of “Over the Rainbow” from the movie The Wizard of Oz, where Dorothy is real sad she’s stuck in Kansas. I grinned thinking about this Thanksgiving, when I’d get to watch it again on TV, like we did every year. But what made me smile even more than that was the other sound I heard. Along with the scratchy record, I heard Miss Millie.

  “. . . if happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow, why, oh why can’t I?”

  When the song ended, Miss Millie held out the last word like she was singing on a stage. While her voice was a little shaky, it was still nice to listen to.

  Sometime from when I started listening to the music to now, I must have opened the door to hear better, so when Miss Millie saw me, I was just standing there with her door half open.

  “Land’s sake, girl,” Miss Millie scolded. “You born in a barn? Shut that door before I get more flies in here than a pigsty.”

  She was trying to sound mean again, but I didn’t believe her this time.

  Clarence, on the other hand, did sound mean. As soon as he realized I was standing in his house, he began his beastly barking and growling.

  And there was nothing pretty about it.

  “Hush now, Clarence! Hush!”

  This time Clarence actually obeyed and came over, sniffing me like he was sizing me up.

  “See there, he’s makin’ a friend.” Miss Millie kind of laughed. “’Course I’m surprised he recognized ya at all, what with ya not standin’ on my table.” She laughed and coughed a bit. “Maybe he’d let ya walk him today by yourself.”

  But again, Clarence had other ideas.

  After a few minutes of the same tug-of-war as the day before, Miss Millie offered to go along, too, one more time.

  It was still hot. Real hot. I didn’t think I’d ever get used to the Georgia heat and was glad I wasn’t gonna have to stay down here for long.

  We walked slower than molasses again, but Miss Millie wasn’t breathing quite as hard as the day before. As a matter of fact, she was whistling “Over the Rainbow.” Walking and whistling, just like she was perfectly capable of walking her own dog.

  She was holding the leash and I was just walking slow beside her, feeling pretty useless, and sort of mad that I even had to be there.

  All of a sudden, Miss Millie stopped and turned to me. I started worrying I had said that last part out loud and hurt her feelings. She just squinted her eyes so much they disappeared as she looked at me. “Alice-girl, I owe you an apology.”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I just stood there looking at her.

  “Yesterday I butted into your family business when it was no business of mine. I’m sorry for what I said about your daddy. I’m sure he’s a fine man.”

  Didn’t that beat all? I sure wasn’t used to adults apologizing for having opinions. So I stammered a bit: “That’s—that’s—okay. I’m sur
e if you knew Daddy—When he comes, maybe you can meet him . . .”

  Miss Millie looked sad as she answered, “Hmmm . . .” And again, I felt she knew more than she was saying.

  For some reason, I needed her to like my daddy. “He writes real nice poems, you know? Real nice—about wishing wells and things.”

  She smiled at that. Then she added, “That’s nice. And that’s a good idea. I’ll meet him when he comes to fetch ya.”

  We continued to walk to that corner by the church and this time the preacher wasn’t outside when we got there. I remembered his conversation with Miss Millie the day before and I was curious. “Why don’t you like church?” I asked her.

  Miss Millie snorted and it sounded a little like Clarence. “Now, who says I don’t like church?”

  “I thought you said that. Yesterday, you said you weren’t going to church.”

  “Never said I don’t like church—plenty of things to like about church. But what I don’t take a shining to are people who act one way all week, but come Sunday, they dress up, go to church and then go right back to doing mean, un-Christian-like stuff the rest of the week. I just got tired of people being phony.”

  She continued to walk real slow. I could see her looking up into the clouds like they were reminding her what to say. “We used to have a separate Negro church in the town next to Rainbow. It was a nice place. But when the last preacher left, no one was sent to take his place. The new preacher man at this church here on the corner keeps invitin’ me and I might go every now and then, but I just don’t make it often anymore.”

  “You had separate churches for black people and white people?”

  “Alice-girl, this here’s the South. Up till a few years ago there was nothin’ but separate things for us. There were separate places for sittin’ on a bus, drinkin’ from a fountain, or usin’”—she paused for a minute looking for her next word—“the facilities.”

  Now, I was getting ready to go into fifth grade this year, so I knew about how unfair things were for black folks—’specially in the South. And I knew that just a couple of months ago Reverend King was assassinated. But I guess I never really thought a whole lot about it because at my school in Ohio we only had one water fountain and a boys’ bathroom and girls’ bathroom for everybody. It didn’t make sense, Miss Millie being told where she could and could not go like that.

  “Things still like that today?”

  “Well, Alice-girl,” Miss Millie said, “I don’t go many places these days. I stay right here and mind my own business—usually keeping to myself till somebody hops my fence or listens in on my conversations . . .” Again she winked at me. “But child, there’s still lots of places in the South that make people like me feel like we don’t belong. Laws might change—but some people never do.”

  “That must make you mad,” I said.

  Miss Millie kind of laughed. “It used to make me mad. But I learned a long time ago things are what they are. My brother tried to change things though . . . and it didn’t do him one lick of good.”

  “You had a brother?” For some reason, picturing Miss Millie with a brother made me picture her as a young girl. But even thinking of her as a young girl, I found myself picturing her with wrinkles.

  “I did. I had me a baby brother. Few years younger than me. He was a good man.”

  I saw Miss Millie’s wrinkles crease even more like her face pinched up just thinking about it. I had to know. “What happened to your brother?”

  She stopped and looked at me from head to toe like she was trying to figure out something about me, and I guess she was. “How old are ya, Alice-girl?”

  I stood up straighter like that would make a difference. “Almost eleven,” I announced.

  Miss Millie turned to walk again as she nodded her head up and down real slow. “Reckon almost eleven is pretty near old enough.”

  She continued to walk and I continued to get more and more curious about what I was pretty near old enough for, until she finally started her story. “I was born and raised in Atlanta. Little west of here.” She smiled. “But I picked a tough time to come into the world.”

  Now I was remembering my history books. “Were you ever a slave?”

  Miss Millie looked shocked. “Land’s sake, Alice-girl—how old do ya think I am? I’m not over a hundred . . . yet!” She laughed and coughed a bit before continuing. “My mama was born a slave—but slavery was ended when she was a young woman. ’Course then she was free—but with no education, no job and by then no parents. Hard times for my sweet mama . . .”

  Miss Millie’s voice trailed off as we reached her house. She bent down to take off Clarence’s leash, but even with it off, he stood by her feet, like he wanted to hear this story, too.

  Miss Millie waved her hand in front of her face like a fan. “How’d I get off on this tangent about my life history? Woo-wee! Must be borin’ ya to tears. I’m gonna sit a spell over there by the picnic table. You can go ahead and go if ya want.” She walked to the table and took a long time to sit down, like she was lowering herself one bone at a time.

  I followed right behind Clarence, who was following right behind her, and seated myself across from her at the table. “So can you please tell me what happened to your mama . . . and your brother?”

  She took a deep breath like the oxygen she was breathing in might help trigger her memory to come out better. But something told me she could live to be a hundred and fifty and never would be able to forget what she was saying. “By the time Mama met Daddy, things were tough all over. They were stuck in the South but the South wasn’t too happy to have ’em stuck here. Daddy picked up jobs workin’ on plantations tryin’ to get the money to head North. Soon I joined the family and when I turned eight, my brother come along.”

  She looked at Clarence and then back at me. “My brother—name was James—well, James was smart. He even got himself into college. Yessiree, he was smart, but angry. He saw the differences for us folks in education, jobs—everything. Back then, if a white person didn’t like the way a black person looked at him, he could shoot him and no questions asked.”

  I gasped when those words hit me.

  Miss Millie looked back at me and nodded. “Hard to believe, isn’t it? James thought so, too. The year was 1906 when him and his friends decided to take a stand and fight for justice. The Atlanta Riot is what they called it. But I just call it sad.”

  She breathed deep. “Paper said over twenty-five black men were killed during that time. But those of us closer know it was more like a hundred. But however you count it, my one and only brother was killed.”

  As she stated this statistic, she bent down to pick up Clarence like she needed a hug or something.

  I felt like giving her a hug, too, but just as I started to scoot closer to Miss Millie, I saw Eddie hopping the fence.

  For once, he didn’t have his plate. From where he stood, he signed, “Mama want you come home and help with Grandma. Now.”

  Right then I didn’t want to go. I had just dug deep in Miss Millie’s memory and stirred up something painful. To up and leave while the pain I forced to leak out was still so raw seemed downright wrong.

  I signed back to Eddie as I said out loud, “Tell Mama I can help with Grandma in a few minutes” but he shook his head as his pointer fingers ran down his cheeks, telling me my mama was crying.

  I couldn’t be any more torn two ways if he’d grabbed me on one side and Miss Millie and Clarence grabbed the other and both started pulling as hard as they could. I looked back at Miss Millie, who smiled like she understood sign language all of a sudden.

  “Guess ya gotta go?” She reached into her shirt pocket and pulled out what I thought was another marble, but when she stretched her hand across the picnic table to put it in my hand, I saw it was a rock. “Here ya go, Alice-girl. Thanks for the walk.”

  The rock was bla
ck and shiny with something sparkling through the middle of it. Holding it in my hand, studying it like it just appeared out of nowhere, I probably looked like I was trying to figure where it came from, and Miss Millie must have guessed my question before it was asked. “That . . . and the marble from yesterday. They both belonged to James.”

  “It’s real pretty,” I said. “Looks like a diamond river runs through it.”

  She nodded. “James said that that there rock reminded him that no matter how dark the world seemed at times, there was still beauty to be found in it.” She smiled deeper. “Yessiree, he was a smart man, my brother.”

  I think I did a better job that day of thanking her than I did the day before.

  And I didn’t even have to ask about tomorrow’s walk.

  I just knew.

  chapter 9

  When I got close to Grandma’s house, I heard a man’s muffled voice coming from inside and for one minute, I thought it was Daddy. I swung open the back door with a thud and almost ran smack-dab into the doctor.

  He was an older man with white hair and whiskers and he chuckled at me coming to such a quick stop.

  Mama seemed to know him a lot better than she ever knew our doctor in Columbus.

  “Now, Joanie, ya know your mama’s gonna have good days and bad days. There’s no way of knowin’ how fast or slow her memory might decline.” The doctor spoke with a thick Southern accent. “And I am happy to oblige her with a house call, but there is really nothin’ to do at this point ’cept keep her safe. And of course, pray.”

  Mama wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, making her look almost like a little girl and not like a real mama. “Thanks, Doc. I can always count on you.”

  He smiled, giving her a hug. “Well, since I brought ya into this world, the least I can do is help ya get through it, don’t ya think?”

  Mama grinned at him and then looked at me. “Alice, you remember Dr. Reilly?”

  He bent down to be eye level with me. “Hello, Alice. You have definitely grown since the last time I saw ya. You certainly are a lovely young lady. Must take after your mama.”