by Tamara Bundy
So I showed him the picture and he just stared and stared at it, like his heart was trying to memorize it, too. Finally, he turned to me, making an invisible circle around his lips, which is the sign for Who?
“Miss Millie and her family,” I signed back. He looked as shocked as I was to find out she was once young and had a family. I started explaining to him about her husband being buried in the cemetery in town but how he had to be buried far in back since the black and the white people had to be separated.
Eddie looked as confused as if I wasn’t signing at all. He wrinkled his nose up, making his freckles move on his face. “Why?”
“I don’t know. That’s how it was back then.”
Eddie looked at his own tanned arm like it just grew there and he was seeing it for the first time. Then he signed, “What color?”
Like I said, Eddie usually sees things real clear, so I wasn’t sure why he was asking that. “Your skin is white.”
He shook his head and his curls bounced. Mama and Daddy used to argue about Eddie’s hair. Daddy didn’t like it long—said it was too girlie. I think Mama’s letting Eddie’s hair grow now just to give Daddy another reason to stay when he sees how long she lets it grow.
Eddie continued to shake his head, curls and all, and put his hand on his chest and pulled it away into a fist—the sign for white. Then he added, “That window is white. The porch is white. Those flowers are white. My skin is not white. Would some people not like me either? That is stupid.”
I rubbed his hair, messing up his curls even more than they were before and signed, “Everybody loves you, Eddie. But, you’re right—it is stupid.”
. . . . . .
Once Mama got Grandma’s house looking and smelling good, she started cleaning out parts of the house most people couldn’t see. She was working in the attic right above the room where we slept when I went to put Miss Millie’s picture on the dresser beside the rock and the marble.
“Who’s down there?” Mama called from the top of the ladder that stretched from the ceiling to the hallway next to our bedroom.
“It’s me, Mama!” I yelled back.
“Can you help me with these last few boxes? It is so hot up here, I think I’ll call it a day.” I climbed up half the ladder to reach the stack of boxes Mama handed to me. Just before I put my foot back on the floor, the boxes tipped, spilling everything out of them.
That’s when Grandma walked in.
“Land’s sake! Are we cleaning in here or making a mess?”
“Sorry, Grandma.” Old photos fell out of one box and a couple of hats fell out of others.
I knew Grandma loved her hats. A proper lady always wears a good hat, she’d say—especially when Mama didn’t have a hat on her head.
“That was my fault,” Mama explained as she came down the ladder, glistening with sweat. “Sorry, Alice. I was in such a hurry to get down from there, I handed you too many boxes at once. It’s so hot up there—I need a glass of water—I’ll be back to go through all this in a minute.”
As she left the room, I prepared to hear a lecture on being messy, but when I looked at Grandma, she was kneeling on the floor looking at the pictures that fell out.
The smile on her face reminded me of the smile Miss Millie had looking at her picture. I wondered if Grandma had all her family pictures in her heart, too, or might those be more things she was forgetting?
I picked up the hatboxes to put the hats back in them, but there were only two hats for three hatboxes. I looked at the empty box, which was the shape of a stop sign with eight sides. It was a pretty golden yellow. On the top of it were the words Knox New York and then below two eagles were some other words, MOVEO ET PROFICIO. I had no idea what that meant.
Grandma looked up from the picture she held. I could see it was of Grandpa holding Mama when she was a baby. Grandma’s voice cracked a bit when she said, “Why don’t you take that box to store the things you’ve been keeping on the dresser?”
Could this day get any more surprisin’? Grandma never gave away her things. Maybe her forgetful disease made her forget that?
“Thanks!” I said as I stacked the other two hatboxes on the floor, and headed to the dresser to get the marble, the rock and the picture.
I sat on the bed looking at those things in my new hatbox, thinking about Miss Millie and how nice she was. I knew she didn’t like to go to the church here and all, but I kept thinking about her watering Grandma’s garden and how Christian-like that was.
I must’ve been sitting there for a while when Mama came in. I didn’t know she was there till she spoke. “What on earth are you dreamin’ of with that faraway look on your face?”
I snapped out of my daydream. “Mama, do you think someone can get into heaven even without going to church?”
“I guess I’ve always believed people have different paths on earth, so why shouldn’t there be different paths to get to heaven, too?” She took a drink of her water before adding, “But maybe the most important thing is for people to just be kind.” She smiled. “But don’t think you’re getting out of going to church tomorrow!”
I shook my head. “I wasn’t asking for me—I was asking for . . . a friend.”
“Alice Ann, honey, it is not your job to have to worry about such things as other people’s souls.”
It might not be my job, but that didn’t mean I didn’t want to understand.
Still, Mama’s words made me feel a pinch better since I knew that in spite of the unkind things that happened to Miss Millie on the path of life she was walking, she somehow stayed as kind as can be.
chapter 12
“Well, hello again, Savannah.” Reverend Hill smiled at me after service on Sunday.
Poor Grandma looked confused like maybe she’d been mistaken about my name for a while, too. I just stood there, wanting to laugh but feeling guilty.
“I’m sorry,” Mama corrected him. “My daughter here is Alice.”
He looked surprised and shook his head. “I’m sorry, Alice. I’m usually good with names. Must have you confused with someone else.”
“Nice to meet you.” I shook his hand quickly and turned to Mama. “I’ll go get Eddie from Sunday school.” And then I practically ran down the basement steps.
Eddie was happy to see me. Of course, no one in Sunday school spoke sign language, but they seemed to communicate just fine with him. Five different people got Eddie’s attention before he left and waved goodbye in a dramatic way. Eddie was grinning from ear to ear. All the way home, he kept telling me about it like Rainbow was a good place to be, not some dried-up little town.
I knew I had to figure out a way to get Daddy to come and take us away before Eddie got too used to everything here.
I headed out back right after church to get the shoe box full of Daddy’s letters. Sitting myself down in the grass by the shed, I opened the box on my lap. The musty smell of the first letter I opened made me sneeze. When I blinked my eyes open from the sneeze, I was surprised to see the letter was another poem. Another poem written by Daddy about what he loved about Mama.
And Rainbow.
On the schoolhouse bleachers
during the football game
the chill wind warmed
when I’d say your name.
I pulled out another letter. It was another poem.
A cemetery’s bench
was never meant for this.
But under that old oak tree
we shared our first kiss.
Each and every letter I opened after that turned out to be one more poem written by my daddy.
I tried to think real hard to remember if Daddy ever seemed to like poems when he lived with us, but other than making up silly songs to get me to laugh, I couldn’t think of anything like poems from my daddy.
None of it made one lick of sense to me. Espe
cially because those letter-poems made it look like Daddy loved Rainbow. And all Daddy ever talked about as long as I remember him talking at all was that he hated Rainbow.
I wished I had a way to show him these letters. Maybe if he could read them again, he’d remember he loved Rainbow.
And Mama.
And Eddie and me.
But if I told him about the letters, I’d have to admit I was snooping and I knew Mama probably wouldn’t like that any more than eavesdropping, so I had to think of some other way to remind Daddy that he really did love Rainbow—and us—once.
That’s when it hit me!
What if I went to each of the places he wrote about in his letter-poems and found things—kind of souvenirs—to remind him about the things he used to like? Then, when Daddy came to visit, I’d give them all to him and he would have to remember he once loved Rainbow. And if he remembered he loved Rainbow, he would start to remember loving the rest of us, too.
The possibility of it all made me happier than I’d been in a while.
I read the letter about the wishing well again and at lunch asked Mama if she ever heard of a wishing well in Rainbow. She thought it was a peculiar thing to ask, but remembered there was a wishing well in the park on the street behind the church.
I was getting the bike from the shed to go check out the wishing well when Eddie saw me. “I go, too.”
He didn’t even know where I was going.
It never mattered to Eddie—he just always wanted to be there. I figured he might as well come, even though I wasn’t sure if I was going to tell him what I was doing with the letters and all.
’Course I couldn’t ride the bike too fast since Eddie didn’t have one and was walking beside me. I’d ride up the bumpy brick road one or two house-lengths and then double back to wait for him to catch up.
Even though waiting for Eddie to catch up took longer and the Georgia heat grew stronger, we finally made it to the park.
If you could call it a park.
There was a rusty slide and an old swing set with one broken swing and another swing that looked like it would break with the next hint of a breeze.
In the middle of the park there was a spinning thing that Eddie tried to ride on. But when he first touched it, something big and brown and fast ran out from under it and into the nearby bushes.
“What’s that?” Eddie signed as his huge eyes followed where that thing ran.
“Rat?” I signed back as I motioned for us to go. Suddenly I didn’t care if there was a wishing well there—I just wanted to get away from things that run out from under other things.
But Eddie froze where he stood and pointed to the bushes that lined the park. I followed where he was pointing.
That’s when I saw the bushes moving like they were being blown by a gigantic breeze. But the problem was—there was no wind whatsoever that day in Rainbow. And that meant whatever was moving those bushes was even bigger than what ran out from under the spinning thing.
Eddie and I stood staring at the bushes like our feet were glued to the hard, dry ground under us. My eyes were dang near as big as Eddie’s and my heart was pounding something fierce. Finally, the rustling stopped when out stepped a giant . . . girl.
Okay—she wasn’t really a giant girl. As a matter of fact it was that same short-haired girl I’d been seeing around town. The waver.
“Hey,” she shouted toward us, like she expected us to be there. And of course she waved. “Y’all seen my kitty?”
Eddie laughed so hard at the surprise of the giant rat really being a little girl that he couldn’t sign to me what he was trying to sign.
“I think your cat was under that spinning thing and just ran off that way,” I told the girl.
“Here Kitty, Kitty, Kitty!” the girl yelled with a trill in her voice.
“What’s your kitty’s name?” I asked.
She looked at me like I had three heads before she answered. “It’s Kitty, silly! And I’m Pam. I seen y’all around. Y’all livin’ here now?”
“No!” I yelled in answer. “We’re just visiting our grandma. We live in Columbus.”
“Oh . . . I thought—never mind.”
As I filled Eddie in on the conversation about the missing kitty, Pam ran over to us.
“Ooh—what’s that y’all’s doin’ there?”
“This is my brother, Eddie. He can’t hear, so I sign to him.”
Pam walked up to Eddie and yelled right into his left ear. “Are your ears really broken?”
Of course Eddie felt the breath of her words and flinched.
“See—he hears okay!” Pam announced like she had just healed him.
I assured her he really couldn’t hear a thing.
“Why?” she asked as she stood in front of Eddie waving her hand hello like she couldn’t stop even if she wanted to.
Eddie looked embarrassed but waved back.
“He was born that way.”
She smiled a sweet smile before yelling again at Eddie: “I AM EIGHT. HOW OLD ARE YOU?”
When she held up eight fingers and pointed to herself, Eddie of course figured it out and held up six.
Again, Pam clapped her hands. “Good! Ya understand! Good boy!”
I decided to let her have her thoughts of miracles as I wandered around looking for the wishing well.
I’d wandered a bit behind the bushes when I heard a meow. When I turned toward the sound, I saw what must be Kitty—sitting right on top of the well.
The well was in a corner of the park, with its stones falling out all around it like it was shedding its skin. I peeked inside it, and as far down as I could see, there was nothing. “Hello!” I shouted down the well, since that’s what I thought you did with wells.
My Hello didn’t really echo, though—it just sort of got swallowed up and disappeared.
I suspected if it really was a wishing well, its main wish might be to get out of that park.
Still, it seemed to be where Daddy was writing about. I pulled the letter from my pocket and read it again.
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?
All of a sudden, I could see Daddy and Mama sitting there as teenagers, so in love. But instead of that making me happy, it made me sad.
Still, I picked up a stone that had broken off from the well. I’d bring it home and save it for Daddy to remind him of happy times in Rainbow.
I called to Pam to get Kitty so Eddie and I could head back to Grandma’s house.
“There ya are, silly Kitty!” Pam practically purred to her pet.
I motioned for Eddie that it was time to leave. Pam stopped her purring and looked at me like I was leaving her birthday party right after I got there. “Where y’all going? Don’t y’all wanna stay? Or—I can go with y’all, if y’all want . . .”
It was a good thing Eddie couldn’t hear ’cause he would’ve certainly tattled on me for my manners when I just plain as day told Pam, “No.”
Just like that. I guess I could’ve told her I wasn’t needing any friends in Rainbow since I wasn’t staying long. But I didn’t. No explanation to soften it—just No.
Have to admit, I did get an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach when I looked back and saw her standing there looking so sad, holding her Kitty as I rode away.
chapter 13
Miss Millie had told me I didn’t have to walk Clarence on Sunday, but she’d be happy to see me come Monday morning, if it struck my fancy to do so.
Not sure if my fancy was struck or not, but I honest-to-goodness was looking forward to the idea of
walking when Monday rolled around.
Since I’d spent a lot of the weekend looking at that picture of her family, I had made up all sorts of stories about her boy and how he died.
Each one of those stories made me sadder than the one before. I needed to know what had happened.
Mama always says people will share their stories on their own time, in their own way, and asking too many questions is just being nosy. So when we started walking, I tried hard to be patient, going on and on about the weather. “I wish they didn’t shut down the pool,” I complained. “I remember swimming in that pool when I was real little, but Mama said it’s closed now.”
Miss Millie nodded. “Yep. Everybody lost that fight.”
“Whatcha mean?”
“’Member how those laws changed not allowing separate places for black and white folks?” I nodded, and she continued.
“Well, when the law said black folks as well as white folks had the right to swim wherever they wanted, some people got upset. They couldn’t agree. Got so ugly, the city just up and closed the pool. Like I said, everybody lost that fight. Dang shame.”
“Dang shame . . . ,” I agreed.
Thinking about the pool closing, her brother dying and her husband having to be buried in the way back of the cemetery made me so mad. I wanted to know what happened to her boy, but now I was afraid to find out.
But I really needed to know and so I blurted out, “Can I ask what happened to your boy?”
“Umm-hmmm,” Miss Millie answered as she continued to walk slow toward the church. Her breathing picked up and I wasn’t sure for a moment if I was supposed to ask again.
Before I could come to a decision on the matter, she cleared her throat and began. “Me and Clayton married before James died . . . the year was 1905. Still living in Atlanta. Found out I was with child in ’06. James was so excited about being an uncle. Used to talk to my belly and be so funny. Right before he was killed in the riots, he told me he had to go somewhere to make a better world for his niece or nephew. Then he made me promise not to let my baby into the world before he got back.”
