Whistling Past the Graveyard

by kindle@netgalley. com

  Just then baby James started to squawl. Eula snatched him up right quick, but one of the men beatin’ on the boy stopped and looked our way.

  James kept squallin’. The man started toward us. “Come out here.”

  Eula shot to her feet. “Stay put!” she whispered before she walked out to the street with James in her arms.

  I was getting up when I saw clear that the man was colored, not white. I stopped.

  “Well, now, look what we got here.” He had that thick-tongued sound of being in the juice.

  The other men stopped beatin’on the boy, but he didn’t get up to run off again. He rolled around on the ground making some awful noises.

  “What is it, Pudge?” one of them said.

  The first man come closer to Eula. “We got us a woman like to breed, is what we got.”

  “Do say?”

  Now all the men were facing Eula. Her voice was shaky, but loud, “We just waitin’ for Reverend Freeman. He be here any minute.”

  “Well then, we best get our business done.” The first man, Pudge, reached for her.

  Eula jerked away, but the man snatched her by the shoulders.

  I shot out, hollerin’ at the top of my lungs. I grabbed at the arm of the man holding Eula. It was so big and strong, I ended up swingin’ on it like a monkey bar.

  “Ho there.” Somebody grabbed me by the waist and wrapped his arms around me, my back pressed against him. I kicked and wiggled, but he just laughed. “Why this one’s white!”

  “Damn, too bad. We coulda got ourselves two for one.”

  “Let her be!” Eula shouted. “Let her be and I’ll do whatever you want. No fightin’. I take care of all of you.”

  “Well, we like some fight in our women, don’t we?” the third man said.

  “Let her be,” Eula said, her voice still strong. “Whatever you want. Just let her be.”

  “Ain’t like we could diddle her, now, is it?” the man holding me said. His breath was real bad.

  “No, sir, not if we want to go on breathin’.” The one holding Eula was laughin’ now. “Lucky we got us this one.”

  I jerked myself enough to get loose and flung myself at him.

  One of the other men snatched me back.

  “Starla, stop!” Eula held baby James out to me. “You need to take James around and sit on the front steps. Don’t come back around here. I come and get you in a bit. It’s all right, they ain’t gonna hurt me.”

  The man put me down, slow and careful, in case I got wild again.

  I wanted to hurt them as much as they’d hurt that boy. But there was four of them—and they was mean.

  “Yeah, you go on, girl. You give us any more trouble and we won’t be so nice to your woman here.”

  Eula looked at me. “Don’t provoke, Starla. It be all right now. Take James.”

  My mouth was dry and my heart was beating so hard it hurt. I looked up and down the street, but nobody was in sight.

  I took James. Eula had covered his face with the blanket. I don’t know why, but he’d stopped squallin’.

  “Sticks, you go round there and make sure she stay where she supposed to.”

  “I got as much—”

  “You get your turn. Get on.” It was clear, Pudge was the boss.

  Sticks wrapped his hand around the back of my neck and squeezed. Then he shoved me, not toward Jefferson Street, but toward the alley behind the church. I dug in, but he gave me a little shake and squeezed harder. “Don’t make me carry you.”

  I moved as slow as I could.

  My red rage wasn’t enough to save us. The boy on the road started moanin’ again. I couldn’t help him neither.

  The man tried to hurry me along, so I stopped dead at the start of the alley. I wasn’t going on my own. He would have to carry both me and James if he wanted me to leave Eula.

  The men was laughin’.

  I wanted to cover my ears, but couldn’t with James in my arms. I couldn’t do nothin’ but hold him close and start to cry.

  The blare of a car horn made me jump.

  “You there!” It was a man’s voice, deep and strong and sober. A car door opened. Sticks took off down the alley. I heard other feet running, too.

  The police?

  “The good Lord’ll have his day!” the deep voice shouted. “You run all you want.”

  I spun around.

  The car was sitting at the corner, driver’s door open, the dome light shining in the empty car. A man shorter than Eula stood by her side. I could see the white of his preacher’s collar under his chin.

  He looked up and saw me. “Come, child. Come now. We get you inside. Those miscreants won’t bother you anymore.”

  The reverend helped the boy up from the street. I could see his bloody face in the glare of the headlights. It hurt to look at it.

  The reverend picked up the boy’s glasses from the pavement and handed them to him. “You want to come on in, son? Or you want me to take you home?”

  The boy mumbled something that must have been home ’cause the pastor took the boy and set him in the passenger seat of his car. He rolled up the windows and locked the doors before he come back to take us inside.

  As he took us to the church basement, Reverend Freeman apologized for being so late. One of his flock was on her way to the gates of heaven and he had to see her home. He also apologized for those men, even though it sure wasn’t his fault. He said they was young and angry and took their anger out on the weak. He hoped to someday bring them to the Lord and help heal their souls.

  I didn’t think there was any fixin’ men that mean.

  The reverend got us cots set up and told Eula that the little kitchen was stocked and we was welcome to anything we wanted. He invited us to Sunday service, but didn’t act like he was making us go to pay for our beds.

  After he left, I asked Eula what them men was about to do.

  “Nothin’ but talk nasty; words not fit for a child’s ears. Reverend Freeman come afore they had a chance to even to that.” She petted my hair. “I don’t want you to think of them ever again. Reverend’s right, the good Lord will have his day.” She wiped her palms on her skirt. “You hungry?”

  I shook my head. All that nastiness outside had scared my hunger away. I wasn’t sure it’d ever come back.

  She made me lay down and took my shoes off. “You sleep now. Tomorrow we celebrate the Lord and all his goodness.”

  I wondered again how Eula could be so sure about the Lord. He seemed to let her fall into the path of plenty of bad folk. I was plenty mad at the Lord for letting it happen, too.

  Maybe it was ’cause He hadn’t let any of those bad folk do their worst. Maybe that’s the way Eula looked at the Lord . . . like he’d saved her from worse. I tried to think on it some more, but my brain was so tired it slid right down into sleep.

  I woke up to the smell of baking. Opening my eyes, I saw it was still dark. The light was on in the tiny kitchen over in the corner of the basement. I got up and walked to the door. Eula was pulling a cookie sheet out of the little oven.

  “Why aren’t you asleep?”

  She looked up, startled.“Makin’a thank-you for the reverend. I’ll replace the ingredients on Monday afore we leave to find your momma.”

  I looked at the countertop. “You must think he really likes cookies.”

  “Well, the whole church is bein’ hospitable, so I reckoned we could put some out at the service.”

  She started to put flour into the mixing bowl again. I’d seen how big this church was; she already had more’n enough cookies.

  “Ain’t you slept at all?”

  She shook her head and added a pinch of salt.

  “You gonna sleep?”

  “Can’t. But you get yourself some rest now.”

  I started back to my cot, then stopped. I looked over my shoulder. Eula was humming.

  I went back in the kitchen. “My daddy says that when you do somethin’ to distract you from your worstest f
ears, it’s like whistlin’ past the graveyard. You know, making a racket to keep the scaredness and the ghosts away. He says that’s how we get by sometimes. But it’s not weak, like hidin’ . . . it’s strong. It means you’re able to go on.”

  She looked up. “Your daddy sounds like a smart man.”

  “I think that’s what your bakin’ is, it’s your way of whistlin’. Ever’ time something really bad happens, you start bakin’ . . . like it takes your mind away from the scaredness.”

  She wiped her hands on a towel, then come over to me. She held my face in her hands and looked right into my eyes. “I ain’t strong, not like you, Starla. I live my whole life scared.”

  “That ain’t the point, the scaredness. The point is you find a way around it. You’re plenty strong. Look at all that happened to you, and here you are, still takin’ care of me and James. You could have stayed with Miss Cyrena forever. But you didn’t.” I touched her cheek. “You’re strong, too.”

  I turned around and left her then, a little embarrassed by blabberin’ on.

  I fell asleep listening to the sound of Eula working in the kitchen. It was almost as good as my best fallin’-asleep memory of Momma and Daddy at the piano teacher’s house.

  24

  w

  e had a real nice Sunday. Everybody at Reverend Freeman’s church acted like it didn’t matter that my skin was white. The reverend said a sermon that talked all about how Jesus forgives us no matter what wrong we done. Lots of folks said, “Yes, brother,” and “Amen.” I took Eula’s hand and squeezed it, hoping she got the message and didn’t worry no more about killin’ Wallace—that man was too mean for God to care. We sang hymns, which was mostly the same as my white-church hymns, but they sounded a whole lot prettier in this church for some reason. Maybe that’s why Eula felt about the good Lord like she did; music in a colored church was real upliftin’.

  Then we was asked to a potluck dinner in the basement to celebrate Mrs. Thomas’s ninetieth birthday. She even let me and all the children help her blow out the candles on her cake—there was so many it looked like the whole cake was on fire. Everybody loved baby James.There was so many hands wanting to hold him, I didn’t hardly get to touch him all day. But when it was time for him to get fed, I was the one to do it ’cause he knew me best. Eula worked with the ladies serving and cleaning up after. I liked seein’ her so happy, talkin’ and smilin’—she seemed a lot less shy than she had when we was getting used to living with Miss Cyrena. Maybe it was being away from Wallace for so long.

  That made me wonder how his body was holdin’ up down there in the springhouse. We’d been gone from Eula’s house over two weeks. I knowed she still felt bad about leaving him like that ’cause I heard her crying in the night over it, beggin’ God to take his soul.

  I decided to stop thinking about Wallace ’cause it started up the bees in my belly.

  After the dinner, everybody sat around talking and whatnot. Then a man got out a banjo and started to play. He was real good. Some of us kids got to clapping and dancing.

  After he’d played all his songs—I knowed that to be the case ’cause everybody asked for more, but he said he didn’t know no more—I got to thinking about music and my momma.

  As he was putting his banjo back in its case, I went up and asked him, “You know a lot about music?”

  He smiled. “Run though my veins like blood.”

  “Well, my momma is a famous singer. Maybe you heard of her, Lulu Langsdon, or maybe Lucinda Claudelle.” I had to make sure I gave all her names, just in case.

  “A singer, you say?”

  I nodded.

  He rubbed his chin. “Don’t recall that name.”

  “Well, me and Eula are lookin’ for her. I was hopin’ somebody could tell me where she lives.” I tried not to sound too disappointed, but I wasn’t sure what to try next. Our money was running out and Eula hadn’t bought the ingredients to replace the church’s yet.

  “Some of the music folk mix it up—only when they’s playin’ though. Most the white musicians hang out down on Broadway . . . near that Opry of theirs.” He puckered his lips like he was thinking hard. “Might try a place called Tootsies. Might be somebody know of her there. They don’t open till afternoons though. Music people are mostly night owls.”

  Tootsies? Now that name poked my memory. I dug deep trying to remember when I’d heard it.

  Nobody talked about Momma when I was around, so it had to be when I was sneak-listening to Daddy and Mamie. Think. Think. Think.

  Yeah, Tootsies! It was when Daddy and Mamie was talking in secret; after Daddy come home and said he’d heard from Momma and she was working again.

  I run and told Eula what I’d remembered.

  She grinned bigger’n I’d ever seen. “Well, now we know where we’re headed tomorrow. I told you the good Lord’d show us the way.”

  I just let her think that it had been the Lord and not the banjo man; it seemed to make her feel good.

  Turned out Tootsies on Broadway was easy to find. It was purple. The whole name was Tootsies Orchid Lounge, which must mean a bar, ’cause it had beer signs in the window and said nobody under twentyone. Neither me or Eula could go inside, which made a particular problem in talking to people and finding out about Momma.

  It was late afternoon when we got there. We’d had to wait for baby James’s washed diapers to dry before we could pack up and leave the church.

  I told Eula, “Go on down and wait at the corner.” After all the misery I’d caused her, I’d made up my mind I was gonna be extracareful she didn’t get caught with baby James. It’d been risk enough her and me walking here together draggin’ suitcases after we got off the bus from Jefferson Street. But it turned out in this town, lots of folks toted cases of some sort.

  “Ain’t leavin’ you standin’ here with all them men drinkin’ right inside,” she said, a real stubborn look on her face.

  “It’s daylight. And I ain’t goin’ in. You’ll be able to see me from down there just fine.”

  She hugged James close and took a quick look around. “What you gonna do?”

  “I’m workin’ on some ideas. But you standin’ with me just makes for more explainin’.”

  “I ain’t leavin’.”

  “We got to find Momma today. We don’t want folks askin’ about James. And we’re outta money.” After buying ingredients to stock the church and more milk for James, the bus back to Broadway picked us clean. Neither of us wanted to take more from the church unless we had to. I pointed toward the corner. “So get on down there and let me find Momma.”

  Just then a bus rumbled by with its brakes hissing. I’d never seen one like it. It didn’t say Greyhound or Trailways on the side. It was silver and green and white and had a lady’s name on it instead. Loretta Lynn. I’d heard of Loretta Lynn. She was a famous singer at the Grand Ole Opry—which was right around the corner. Patti Lynn’s momma listened to the Opry on the radio—Mamie didn’t allow any music ’cept Bible music on our radio. I figured it was ’cause she didn’t want Momma singin’ in her house.

  The bus turned out of sight and I wondered if Momma had her singin’ bus yet. I decided to go to the Opry again if we didn’t find out about Momma at Tootsies.

  “You’re wastin’ time,” I said to Eula.

  Eula puckered her mouth, picked up her grip, and walked down the sidewalk a ways, but stopped before she got to the corner. She turned around and looked at me, like to say, I ain’t goin’ no further.

  The door to Tootsies was standing open. I heard someone playing a harmonica somewhere inside. But it was so dim in there, I couldn’t see much from where I was. I kept getting closer until I was right at the doorway. I stood there for a minute, with my shoulder against the doorframe, waiting to get used to the light.

  The place was foggy blue from cigarettes and it smelled like sweat and smoke. The walls was all cluttery with pictures and whatnot. I wondered if there was a picture of Momma in there.


  The long bar was on the left side close to the door. A lady wearing glasses and a green print dress stood behind it. She looked more like a Sunday-school teacher than a bar lady.

  “Pssttt!” I leaned so far my head was inside the door. I figured you had to have your whole body inside for them to call the police if you wasn’t twenty-one. “Pssst.”

  The lady looked up and squinted. She waved her dishrag to shoo me away.

  “You Miss Tootsie?”

  Some of the people sitting at the bar looked up.The lady walked out from behind it and come to the door. She brought the rag with her. She put her hands on her hips and looked down at me. “You’re too young to be hangin’ round a bar, young lady.” She pointed to my Barbie suitcase. “What are you up to?”

  “I’m looking for my momma. She’s a famous singer, and I heard all famous music people come here.”

  The lady smiled. “That they do.” Then she cocked her head and got kinda frowny. “What’s your momma’s name?”

  “Lucinda Claudelle. But her famous name is Lulu Langsdon.”

  “Huh.” Her chin went up and she flipped the rag. “I reckon famous means different things to different people.”

  “You know her?” I asked, my mouth getting dry. It was hard to breathe. Did she still have a ponytail? Would she recognize me with my black hair?

  “I know Lulu Claudelle. She doesn’t have kids.”

  I stood up straight and looked her in the eye. “Well, here I am, so I reckon she does.”

  She raised her eyebrows, like she was surprised I’d sassed. “Where’d you come from?”

  “I been livin’ with my mamie.”

  “And where is that?”

  “Cayuga Springs.” I could tell the truth ’cause I was in disguise with my black hair. “If you’ll just tell me where Momma lives, I’ll be on my way, ma’am.”

  She looked at me for a long while, like she was making up her mind. “Wait right there for a minute.” She went back inside. There were lots of people; once she got deep enough in the bar, I couldn’t see her anymore.

  I glanced down the sidewalk. Eula was standing there, looking nervous as a toad in front of a lawn mower. I smiled and gave her the A-OK sign.