A Trail of Crumbs

by Finkbeiner, Susie;

  “So it isn’t true?” I asked.

  “No,” she answered. “A good story? Sure. But not even close to the truth.”

  “Then what really happened?”

  Aunt Carrie kept her eyes trained on the fingertips of the twisted tree. “While it’s true that runaway slaves hid in the woods, Ada was no slave,” she said. “She wasn’t born until right after the Civil War was won. And she was born free, here in Bliss.”

  Aunt Carrie said that Miss Ada and her family lived in the hiding cabin long after it wasn’t needed for the runaways anymore. She stayed even after she got married herself and had a couple kids. Both boys.

  “One of her sons works here on the farm,” she told me.

  I remembered the Negro man who’d taken his lunch on the back porch of the house on Magnolia Street. “What’s his name?” I asked.

  “Noah Jackson.” She smiled. “He’s a good man.”

  But Miss Ada’s other son hadn’t ended up so good. Where Noah was good, Ezra was mean. He’d been like that since a child, Aunt Carrie said.

  “And when he got old enough, he went away,” she said. “I’d let Miss Ada come and watch for him in this very room. It gave her some small comfort, the idea that she might see him come back.”

  “Did he?” I asked.

  Aunt Carrie shook her head. “He did not. We never heard from him, not in all these years.”

  I turned my back toward the window that pointed at the twisted tree, leaning against the glass.

  “Now, how her story turned into one about a ghost haunting the woods, I don’t know.” She gave me the kind of smile that looked more sad than happy. “But it is a sad story. A sad story for Miss Ada.”

  I nodded so she’d know that I felt the sting of sadness. “Some prodigals don’t come home,” Aunt Carrie said. “Why not?”

  “Because it’s just too hard.”

  We went down the spiral of stairs and out the door. The cooler air of the hall made me realize how warm the widow’s watch had been. Aunt Carrie asked if an icy glass of milk would taste good with my cookie.

  I did think it would.

  But all the time I took small bites of oatmeal cookie and sips of milk, I thought of Miss Ada, there in the window, hoping for a look at her returning son. I imagined she’d readied herself to see him, to race down the stairs and out the door to grab hold of him, welcoming him home.

  But he had never come down that path. Never returned to her. One for sorrow.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Mama had on a fine dress, one that Aunt Carrie had given her. It was of a dark purple cotton with a fancy bow flopping at the neckline. It was the kind of dress that hung on her just right, making her look like she belonged in a movie, dancing in the arms of Fred Astaire himself.

  When I told Mama that, she said I sure had myself a good imagination. “It’s just a church dress,” she said.

  Still, the way she admired herself in the mirror made me think she liked that dress just the same.

  She had worked all afternoon at getting her hair to wave just so. Her lips even had a touch of color to them that she’d splurged on at the drugstore.

  Mama and Daddy had been invited to dinner at the Wheelers’ house. Daddy’d told Mama it wasn’t anything special. Still, she’d insisted that he wear a clean shirt and tie. Daddy did all he could to try to get out of going.

  But, as it often went, Mama got her way and Daddy put on his funeral suit. He did look awful handsome even standing stiff like he did.

  I stayed beside Mama there in her bedroom, watching her touch up her lipstick in the mirror. She got up real close to her reflection and puckered her lips and rubbed them together.

  “You look pretty, Mama,” I said.

  She moved her eyes so she could look at my face in the mirror. “You’re too nice.”

  “You look like you belong in a magazine.”

  She raised her eyebrow at me and smiled. Then she looked back at the mirror and wiped at the corner of her lips to take care of a smudge.

  “You want me to put some on you?” She turned to face me and held up the tube of lipstick. “Open your lips, just a little. Relax them.”

  She dabbed the color on my lips, making them feel sticky.

  “Don’t lick them,” she said. “Now maybe a little rouge. Just a little.” The brush prickled against my cheeks and I had to fight the urge to scratch at my face. The powder tickled my nose and I was sure I’d sneeze.

  Mama stood back and looked at my face, pushing my hair behind my shoulders. Crossing her arms she put her weight on one high-heeled foot and breathed in deep, blinking slowly.

  “Oh,” she whispered. “You look so grown.”

  Turning, I looked into the mirror. What I saw there wasn’t my face but Winnie’s. Her eyes and cheekbones and nose and lips. And I saw bright blue eyes the color of cornflowers.

  “I look like her, don’t I?” I said, a tear bubbling up out of my eye. “Like who?” Mama asked, busying herself with clearing her brush and makeup off the top of her dresser.

  “I hate that I look like That Woman.” I lowered my chin so I wouldn’t have to meet Mama’s eyes. “I don’t wanna look like her.”

  “You don’t.” She said it so sharp it surprised me. “You aren’t like her, hear? Not even a little. I won’t have you talking about her.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She left me there in her room, staring into the mirror at the likeness of the mother who’d given me up.

  We were meant to be asleep, Ray and me. Opal had told us Mama said we were to go to bed and not make one peep. We told her we’d stay in our rooms and fall asleep fast.

  Neither of us had a mind to do that, though.

  Instead we sat on Ray’s bed, trying to scare the willies out of each other with every ghost story we could think of. For all the tales I came up with, Ray told spookier ones, bloodier and goose-pimple-raising.

  He’d get going on some yarn of a headless man stumbling about through town or a tormented soul floating over the beds of children, looking for her lost love, and I’d be shaking with fright. I’d hold both my hands to my mouth, making tight fists, and I would be too afraid to so much as blink for fear I’d see a picture of the story in my mind.

  I decided right then I’d do my very best to never ever sleep again. My mind got full up enough of nightmares to last a lifetime.

  The sound of a woman’s laugh caught my attention and I knew without even having to look out the window that it was Mama. I did look anyway and saw her walking down the street toward our house alongside a man.

  A tall and lanky man. I could see his face by light of a streetlamp they’d both stopped under.

  “Who’s that with her?” Ray asked.

  “Abe Campbell,” I answered.

  “What’s he doin’ walkin’ her home?”

  I just shrugged.

  Mr. Campbell said something that made her cover her mouth so her laugh wouldn’t wake the whole street. Then she swatted at his arm, letting her hand rest on him a second longer than I thought was proper. He looked at that hand and followed her arm with his eyes to shoulder to neck to face.

  That sick feeling I’d gotten when I saw him touch her hand came back. What I wanted to do was holler out the half-open window for him to go on home and leave her alone. She had a family already and Daddy wouldn’t like them walking and laughing together like that.

  But I didn’t yell. I didn’t say anything at all. What I did was get up off Ray’s bed and walk right to my room where I got in under the sheet and pulled it up to my chin. I knew Mama would check on me and I was going to make her think I was asleep.

  When I shut my eyes all I could see was the way she’d smiled up at Abe Campbell.

  It was the way she used to smile at Daddy.

  Mama still smelled of her perfume when she leaned over and kissed my cheek. I stayed still as I could and tried breathing in slow and deep.

  “I can tell you’re faking,” she whispere
d.

  I opened one of my eyes a sliver to see if she was watching me. She was. “How’d you know?” I asked, opening the other.

  Mama was busy taking pins out of her hair. It fell to her shoulders, the curls wild, making her look like Beanie.

  “A mama’s got her secrets,” she said. “Were you and Ray good for Opal?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “She give you supper?”

  I told her she had.

  “Did you have a good time?” I asked.

  “Sure I did.” She sat on the edge of my bed, crossing her legs and fingering through her mess of hair. “Half the town was there.”

  She went on to list all the folks that’d gotten all dolled up in the nicest clothes they had for the party at the Wheelers’. How they’d served deviled eggs and gelatin salad and little sausages. She said they even had a Negro fella there playing the piano and singing old songs.

  “He wanted people to dance,” she said with a wide smile. “Some did.”

  “Did you?”

  “Well, no.”

  I asked her why not.

  “Your daddy isn’t so light on his feet, Pearl.”

  I thought of the times the two of them had danced to some song that came on the radio. Back in Red River, they’d put their bodies up close to each other, Mama’s hand on Daddy’s shoulder and his hand on her waist. They’d sway, shuffling their feet against the grit and making a crunching sound under the soles of their shoes.

  Sometimes, if they didn’t have any music playing, Mama would sing a song unlike anything we ever sang at church. Daddy would pull his head back so he could look at her face and she’d have to stop singing she’d be smiling so big.

  “You’ve gone and made me forget the words,” she’d sometimes say.

  She’d finish, though, even if she had to hum.

  Before letting her go, Daddy would always kiss her on the cheek or the forehead. She’d close her eyes like she was about to open them to the biggest surprise of her life.

  If all that didn’t make Daddy light on his feet I didn’t know what did. “What’re you thinking about?” Mama asked, half turning to look down at me in my bed.

  “I was just wondering where Daddy was,” I told her.

  Any bit of smile she’d had on her face dropped and she blinked twice before turning her eyes from my face.

  “He got stuck talking to the mayor,” she said, her voice gone chilly. “I got tired, so I came home.”

  “You walked by yourself?”

  She nodded and hummed. “Yes.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Daddy didn’t come home for lunch the day after the dinner party at the Wheelers’. Mama didn’t say a word about his empty chair or the plate of food she’d placed at his spot that went untouched. All she did was push the cooked carrots around her own plate with a fork. Ray and I didn’t do much talking, either. When we did, Mama didn’t pay us any mind at all.

  After I finished eating, I asked if Mama wanted me to take Daddy’s lunch to him at his office. She nodded and went to the kitchen to put together a thermos of coffee. Even on a hot afternoon like that one Daddy would want his coffee.

  “Take this right to him. And don’t dawdle,” she told me, handing me the plate and thermos. “Don’t stay long if he’s busy, hear? Your father has a very important job.”

  She said it like she wasn’t all that convinced of her own words.

  “And bring my plate back when he’s done,” she called after me.

  July was turning out to be blazing hot. In Millard’s last letter to us he said he couldn’t hardly stand it and wondered if Red River had relocated to the surface of the sun when he wasn’t paying attention. On the radio we heard there was a heat wave striking down the whole country. That afternoon as I walked to the police station with Daddy’s plate of food I thought I was about to melt what with the heat beating down on me from the sky above, searing up from the pavement, and squeezing me in with the humid air.

  Summers in Red River had been hotter than hot. But it had been a dry heat. Summer in Michigan was a whole lot of boil and simmer.

  In church the Sunday before, the preacher had said, “In everything give thanks.” He’d told us to give thanks in good and in trial and even in the days with nothing special going on. So, that day, I gave thanks to the Lord for the trees somebody had seen fit to plant all up and down Main Street that offered even the tiniest of shade.

  I decided it felt good to give thanks and it passed the time just fine. A list of things I was thankful for grew in my head. Chirping birds and scampering squirrels. Ice cream from Miss Shirley’s and nickel movies with Ray. Aunt Carrie’s fried chicken and Uncle Gus’s big laughs.

  So many things grew in my mind like a garden of thanksgiving, blooming despite the gray clouds.

  But when I stepped on a spit-out wad of chewing gum, it sticking to the sole of my shoe, I ran out of things to give thanks for. I wasn’t sure a mess like that was on God’s mind when He had that part of the Bible spelled out.

  Daddy sat behind his desk in the police station. In one hand he held a lit cigarette and in the other a pen. His scribbling scratched across the paper. He’d set up a fan so it would point right at his face. Still, it didn’t keep the sweat from beading up on his forehead.

  When he saw me, Daddy put the pen down and stretched out his fingers like they were sore from writing all day.

  “Lord, but are you a sight for sore eyes this afternoon,” he said. “Did you bring me a little something to eat?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That’s a girl.”

  “And some coffee.” I put the plate in front of him on the desk. “I can pour it for you.”

  “That’s fine,” he said. “Thanks kindly, darlin’.”

  Daddy took a cup from one of his drawers and told me it was clean. I filled it with coffee, making sure not to spill so much as one drop.

  “What would I do without you?” he asked. “I reckon you’d be hungry,” I said.

  “I think you’re right about that.”

  Daddy got up and pulled over a chair for me so I could sit next to him with the fan doing its darnedest to cool the both of us. He handed me the newspaper to read while he ate.

  “Might be funnies in there,” he said.

  I turned from one page to the other but all I found was a bunch of news. Trying to hide my disappointment, I folded it back up. That was when I saw a list of names. I ran my finger down it, smudging the ink and turning my skin gray.

  It was real long, that list. And it had addresses printed right next to the names. Our name wasn’t there and neither were Uncle Gus and Aunt Carrie. But I did read a whole bunch of names that had become familiar to me since coming to Bliss.

  “Daddy, what is this?” I asked.

  Daddy took the paper, shaking it to make it straighten in his hands. He shook his head and bit at his bottom lip.

  “Why aren’t we on that list?” I asked, looking over his shoulder at the names.

  “This is all the folks in the county that are taking assistance,” he said. “We aren’t?”

  “No, darlin’, we are not. Not yet, at least.”

  “Why’d they put that in the paper?”

  “Don’t know.” He folded the paper and set it on the top of a stack of papers on the left-hand side of his desk. “Maybe out of meanness. Maybe because he wants to shame those folks. I know he’s not fond of the government giving out assistance. Couldn’t tell you why he’d do something so ugly, though.”

  I knew he was talking about Abe Campbell. After all, he was the one that wrote up and printed out the newspaper every morning.

  Daddy made a sound that was half grunt and half growl. “Whatever it is made him print that, it’s wrong if you ask me.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t know it’s wrong,” I said.

  “Maybe. I doubt that very much, though.”

  He pushed his empty plate to one side of his desk and set back to doing a little of his
work. I watched him, seeing the way his handwriting slanted, especially with him rushing the way he was.

  “There’s some scratch paper in my drawer there,” he said, not looking up from his paperwork. “And an ink pen you can use.”

  I sat beside him, my pen moving along the scraps of paper to make pictures of flowers and trees and a road that led to somewhere magical. Somewhere that had food aplenty and jobs for everybody. A place where lost little children found their homes and mamas weren’t ever tempted to stray away.

  When Daddy asked me what I was drawing, I didn’t know what to say. “It’s just a picture,” I said.

  “It’s a good one, darlin’,” he said. “A real good one.”

  I stayed there with Daddy until he said it was time for him to make his rounds through town. I put the ink pen away and put all my pictures into a stack, tapping them against the desk so they’d be neat.

  “You mind if I keep a couple of those here?” he asked. “I think I’d like to see something pretty every once in a while.”

  I told him he could have them all.

  “Thanks kindly.” Daddy put them on his desk right where he’d see them the next morning. “Now, you wanna go with me on my rounds?”

  “Yes, sir,” I answered.

  “That’s fine.”

  Daddy had let me go on rounds with him before, back in Red River. We’d go to the few stores still open, then out to the sharecropper cabins and the Hooverville to see the folks passing through. He’d get his hands dirty trying to help some fella dig out a tractor or he’d carry a heavy basket of laundry for a housewife.

  He was a good man, my daddy.

  There in Bliss, Daddy walked up and down the pavement in front of the post office and Wheeler’s store and all the way to the library before turning back to pass the places on the other side of the street. We went past the movie theater and the little hardware store before ending up at Miss Shirley’s diner where Daddy treated me to a dish of ice cream.