I could teach the Indian children English, maybe even how to read and write. And maybe they’d teach me how to speak in whatever tongue it was they had. We’d learn each other’s songs and stories and figure out that we were more the same than we’d ever realized before.
Turning the corner from Main to Magnolia I saw Daddy sitting on the front porch with Ray. They both leaned forward with elbows resting on knees, their faces serious. Daddy said a couple things to Ray and they both nodded.
Ray had his eyebrows pushed down over his eyes like he’d just heard bad news. He reached back and scratched at his neck. When he saw me coming he looked away fast.
I knew it wasn’t the kind of talk I wanted to hear, not on that day at least, so I went around back to go in the kitchen door.
I didn’t put my ear to the front door or sneak under an open window to eavesdrop on whatever it was they were talking about. I could already tell one thing. It was something I didn’t want to hear.
A girl didn’t want bad news on her birthday.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Ray asked if I wanted to go out in the woods with him. He stood in the doorway of my bedroom, grinding the toe of his worn-down shoe into the wood floor and keeping his hands shoved deep down in his overall pockets.
“I don’t mind,” I said, getting off my bed and marking my place in the Indian book.
We walked through the trees and over underbrush without saying so much as a word. His shoulders still slumped and when I looked at his face it seemed he was real bothered about something.
I knew we were going all the way to the twisted tree and the hiding cabin. And part of me guessed Ray would want to take off his shoes and climb up the tree like a monkey, his toes gripping at the bark and his fingers finding the grooves where the trunk curved up on itself like a spring.
But once we got there, he didn’t go to the tree. Instead, he went to the crumbling porch of the cabin, sitting on the edge. I went to sit with him on the green-with-moss wood, hoping there wasn’t a snake there waiting to give me a good fright.
A squirrel hopped along not too far away from us. For something so small, he sure did make a big noise of crunching leaves and rustling grass. Every now and again, he’d stop, that squirrel would, and get up on his hind legs, taking a good whiff of the air, his little head turning this way and that. Then he’d go back to his scampering about.
“My ma sent a letter,” Ray said after the squirrel ran off into the woods. “Got here today.”
“You want me to read it for you?” I asked.
“Your daddy already did.”
“All right.”
Much as I wanted to ask what his mother’s letter had said, I didn’t. I knew he’d tell me, but he’d want to do it in his own time. So I held my tongue.
He got to chipping away at the loose porch wood with his thumbnail. It didn’t take too much because it was all rotted out. After yanking at one piece of it he flinched and looked at his thumb. A little blood formed a line of red under his nail. He whispered a cuss.
Ray Jones never had been one for harsh words unless he was telling a joke or a story to shock me. He did know all the cusses, though. I knew on account he was the one who had taught them all to me. He just didn’t use them all that much. But that day he cursed in anger.
I hoped he didn’t see the way I started at the hard sound of his voice. He held up his hand. A thick sliver of wood had lodged itself under his nail. I took his wrist in my hand and used the thumb and finger of my other hand to pull the sliver out. He made a hissing sound when I did it and I felt sorry that it’d hurt him. But it needed to be done.
“You okay?” I asked him.
He nodded, putting out his hand so I’d drop the wood in his palm. Holding it this way and that, he got a good look at the sliver before flicking it to the ground.
“My ma left Arkansas. Said it wasn’t workin’ out so good for her there no more.” He put his thumb in his mouth and sucked on it a second. “She’s been staying in a Hooverville outside Boise City. Been cleanin’ at a hotel there or somethin’.”
He turned and spit off to the side of the porch.
“Guess she’s thinkin’ on headin’ out west.” His voice cracked. “Goin’ to California to find some better work.”
“How’s she gonna get there?”
“Don’t know,” he said. “She never put that in the letter.”
“You think you’ll go?” I asked, my stomach feeling sick.
“Nope.” He reached down, pulling at a tall weed beside the porch. “She told me I’d better stay put. For now, at least.”
“That okay with you?”
“Yup.”
Ray Jones wasn’t one for lying. Never had been. He’d tell the truth even if a lie would get him out of trouble. But that day he did lie.
I didn’t believe for one minute that he was okay with his mother going off to start a fresh new life without him. But I didn’t say anything to him about it. I didn’t think the lie had been for me anyhow.
I just wished he could’ve been happy.
Mama carried the cake from the kitchen, the eleven candles making a pretty orange glow on her face. Daddy had pulled the curtains to block out the still-sunny evening. Aunt Carrie and Uncle Gus had joined us for supper and they sang right along with everybody else.
I’d asked if Opal could stay, just for a piece of cake. Mama’d rolled her eyes and told me we’d wrap up a slice and save it for her to have the next time she came to work. I didn’t argue, much as I wanted to. It might have been my birthday, but Mama still wouldn’t suffer a defiant child.
Mama lowered the cake right in front of me to the table and I sucked in air, ready to make my wish for Millard to come to me. Ray sat in a chair across the table from me. He leaned forward, watching the candles flickering. There beside him was an empty chair. One Beanie could’ve sat in if she’d still been alive.
She’d have squinted at those eleven flickering flames, scowling even, as if they’d meant to do her some harm. She never had liked fire so much. And she wouldn’t have sung along to the birthday song. She might have even pushed her fingers in her ears to keep the noise out.
But she would have turned her chin down and smiled with all her teeth showing when I blew the candles out. She’d have smacked her hands together over her head and laughed for delight.
I wanted her back harder than I’d wanted anything in all my life.
I let the breath out my nose, my shoulders lowering, my eyes still on the candles, still aflame and ready for my wish.
“Make a wish, darlin’,” Daddy said.
I took in another big breath. Holding the air in my cheeks I watched the wax drip from the heat of the flickering fire, making puddles on the white frosting.
“You all right?” Daddy asked. “Pearlie?”
I told him I was and blew out my candles with what weak breath I could. Only a couple of them snuffed out, sending snakes of smoke slithering into the space in front of my eyes. It took me two more tries to get them all.
Worst thing was, I didn’t make a wish.
After we ate our cake, we went to the living room where Mama’d put just a couple things out for me to open. A nice new bow for my hair that wasn’t so big as my other one and a new dress she’d made for me to wear once school started. Ray had made me a carved-out dog to keep my Indian squaw company. Uncle Gus and Aunt Carrie got me a diary and a nice pen.
Then Daddy said he had one more gift for me.
“You do?” Mama asked.
“Sure I do. Now, it’s not new,” he told me, taking a box from his pants pocket. “It’s used. I hope you don’t mind.”
I didn’t mind and let him know as much.
“All right, then, close your eyes.”
I did as he said and felt his fingers brushing against the back of my neck as he worked at something. A necklace, I thought. Eyes still shut, I reached up and touched a circle of cool metal that rested on my chest. I felt of the two small ci
rcles of tiny diamonds set into the gold. Before I even looked I knew what it was.
“Meemaw’s locket?” I asked in a weak voice, feeling I’d cry right there in front of everybody. I missed Meemaw just as much as I missed Beanie.
“She’d have liked you to have it, I think,” Daddy said. “You’ll have to be real careful with it. You think you can do that?”
“Yes, Daddy.”
I held that locket in my hand, seeing it for the first time since Meemaw had gone to sleep and never woke back up again. I knew if I opened it I’d see a picture of Beanie on one side and me on the other. I remembered Meemaw opening it on many occasions so I could have a look at our tiny faces.
“My girls,” Meemaw would say. “My sweet blessin’s from God Hisself.” Just the memory alone was worth more than any kind of present I could have opened that day.
“Thank you,” I told Daddy.
“That’s all right, darlin’.” He cupped my cheek with his hand. “I’m glad you’re happy.”
And I was. Until I saw Mama’s face at least. She looked at the back of Daddy’s head like she would have found great pleasure in knocking him over.
It was then I realized. She’d wanted that locket for herself.
I slept with Meemaw’s necklace strung around my neck. The locket had dropped down from my chest and lay heavy on the pillow beside my ear. Grabbing it, circling my fingers around the cool metal of it, I pulled it back to my chest, not letting it go.
Meemaw had worn it. Her skin had warmed it once; her eyes had looked at it. Her fingers had pried open the locket so she could look at the pictures inside. I wasn’t one to believe in superstitions or lucky charms, but if I had been, I might have believed Meemaw’s locket would keep me from harm.
I was eleven years old, though. I was far too old to believe things like that. The sky wasn’t quite dark yet and I wasn’t even a little bit tired. Still, Mama’d sent Ray and me to bed before it got too late. Problem was, no matter how hard I held my eyes shut, I couldn’t seem to force myself to sleep. Too many thoughts spun in my head and too much light bled through my eyelids. Even after the night got all the way dark and the rest of the house went quiet, I couldn’t get myself to sleep.
I thought I might get sleepy after sipping at a cup of warm milk, so I got myself out of bed and opened my door and made my way step-by-step down the stairs.
A tiny puddle of orange light splattered against the wall at the end of the stairs. The light in the kitchen was on and I figured Daddy was getting himself a little something to eat. That was when I heard Mama’s voice.
“I knew she’d do this,” she said, an angry ribbon woven into her words. “She never meant to come and get him. You know that, don’t you?”
“I know, Mary,” Daddy said back to her. “If I’m honest, I hoped she wouldn’t.”
“So, do we just keep him with us then? What’s she expecting us to do? Raise him with our big stack of money? We can’t afford it, Tom. I bet it never crossed her mind to send us any money to help out.”
“We’ll keep him here. He’s one of us now.” Daddy’s voice sounded lower than usual, like he was real tired. “If I thought he’d let me, I’d adopt him outright.”
“Tom, don’t be ridiculous,” Mama said. “We can’t just adopt any stray we come upon.”
I sucked in breath and tried not to let her words cut me too deep. “Mary …”
“I wonder what it’s like.”
“What’s that?” Daddy asked.
“Just up and leaving like that,” Mama said. “Sometimes I wonder about going off and starting all over without any link to the past.”
“Mary, I don’t like it when you talk like that.” Daddy’s voice had a warning to it. “Don’t like it one bit.”
“She abandoned him, Tom. Left him.” Mama’s voice had grown savage and shrill. “Just like That Woman did with Pearl. And we gotta take care of what they threw away.”
“Enough, Mary,” Daddy said. “You’ll wake the kids and I won’t have them hearing you talk crazy.”
“What if I did that?” she asked. “What if I just up and left? What would you do?”
“I’d find you.”
I walked real quiet across the dining room and to the kitchen door, peeking through the space between it and the doorjamb. Mama stood straight and tall, her arms crossed over her stomach, holding on tight like she worried she might fall all to pieces. Daddy leaned back against the counter, his face turned from Mama.
“I must sound crazy,” Mama said, a strange lilting to her voice. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“Nothing’s wrong with you,” Daddy whispered. “I know you’d never leave us like that.”
“It’s just since Beanie …” she started. Her voice grew thick and garbled. “I just don’t know what I’m doing anymore. I feel like I’m losing my mind half the time.”
“But you aren’t, Mary. You’re doing just fine.”
“I miss my girl.”
Mama’s shoulders started the shaking first, then the rest of her body joined in. She covered her face with one of her hands. Still, she couldn’t hold in the sobs.
Daddy didn’t move. He didn’t go to her like he would have not even half a year before. I wanted to holler out to him that she needed him to put his arms around her and tell her that it was all going to be all right.
But he didn’t do that. It just seemed too much for him to handle. It was too much and he couldn’t do a thing for her.
All he did was stand there and listen to her.
But written on his face was every bit of grief she cried out. It didn’t seem such a good start to my eleventh year.
CHAPTER THIRTY
In my dream Mama sat rocking back and forth in Meemaw’s old chair, a bundled-up baby in a red blanket held tight in her arms. She hummed to it and patted its back the way mamas did when soothing little babies. Shushing and singing and whispering sweet words.
As for the baby, it cried out, screaming for all it was worth. Its little hands had broken free of the red blanket, reaching for Mama’s face. She pulled back from it, avoiding its touch.
My shoes click-clacked as I walked nearer to Mama. It wasn’t the noise my normal shoes made, so I looked down. I had on Mama’s shoes, the ones with heels and a fine ribbon that laced up through holes all the way up the top. Somehow they fit even though my feet were much smaller than Mama’s.
Click-clack, clack-click I went across the floor of yellow brick until I got close enough to touch Mama’s hand. She started like she hadn’t known I was there, like my touch burned.
“Can I hold the baby?” I asked. “I’ll be real careful.”
“It’s not mine,” she said. “This isn’t my baby.”
“I’ll be careful,” I said again. “I won’t drop it.”
“This baby isn’t mine.” She shook her head. “I’m not keeping her.” Taking another step forward, I looked down into the baby’s face. “What’s her name?”
“She doesn’t have one.”
“Where’re her folks?”
“She doesn’t have any.”
Sighing, she took one last look at the baby’s face before working her way to her feet. She moved so slow, like she worried she’d drop her or that the crying might get louder. The way she held the baby was as if it were made of glass.
I followed behind her as she walked out the front door. The yard wasn’t green and there were no flowers growing pretty in the beds. Everything had been buried in dust. Mounds and piles of it.
Mama stepped off the porch, up to her ankles in the soft dirt, getting deeper and deeper into it as she went.
In a way that only happens in dreams, we walked for a long time that didn’t last very long. We ended up at the hiding cabin in the woods, the one that was covered in vines and moss and rotting wood. It stood out, the emerald of it standing out against the tan and gray all around.
Without taking a second look at the baby, Mama stooped down, putting her, re
d blanket and all, on the dull gray porch. She walked away and I watched her until she turned into a mist that evaporated in the blazing hot day.
The baby kept on crying, wailing and bawling for her mama.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Aunt Carrie sat across the kitchen table from Mama. The percolator gasped and gurgled on the stove behind them. I stood at the sink, washing up the lunch dishes and rinsing them under the faucet. I kept working, careful not to pause too long in my sloshing and splashing so Mama wouldn’t know I was eavesdropping. And I didn’t peek over my shoulder more than a couple times in case they’d catch me spying.
Grown-ups didn’t always have a sense of when a child was listening in and I was glad to take advantage of that as much as I could.
“Why didn’t he ever get married?” Mama asked.
“Well, he was going to,” Aunt Carrie told her, leaning a round elbow on the table and resting her cheek in her hand. “But she died. Just a year ago. He took it so hard.”
I knew the “he” they were talking about was Abe Campbell. As for the “she,” I was still trying to figure that out.
“What did she die of?” Mama rubbed at her earlobe with her finger and thumb.
“It was cancer. It spread through her so fast.” Aunt Carrie shook her head. “It was awful.”
“I’m sure it was.” Mama shook her head. “That poor man.”
“It’s hard losing someone so young.”
Mama got up and turned off the burner under the coffee.
Mama rarely used the telephone. She said it was because she didn’t have anybody to call. Still, it sat in the living room on a table beside a couple framed pictures of our family and a music box she’d had since she was a young girl.
When Mama wasn’t home, I liked winding up that old music box and watching the gold-colored roller spin and the tiny silver fingers plunking out the melody. It was a song Mama told me her father’d sing in the mornings when he’d come to wake her. No matter how much I asked, she wouldn’t sing it to me.
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