Also Known As Harper

by Ann Haywood Leal

  As we went around to the front, I could see Mama’s car in front of our motel room. I should have been excited to see her, but the feeling I got was one I’d been having a lot lately. The feeling that something wasn’t quite right.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  OUR CAR LOOKED like Spear Teeth Alma’s, what with all of the boxes piled on the seats.

  Hem didn’t even bother going inside the motel room, he was so anxious to get started with his waiting. His shoulders didn’t relax until he was settled in solid on the chunk of concrete holding up the light pole at the edge of the parking lot.

  When I opened the door, Mama was on the floor, putting together a U-Haul box.

  “Mama?” I sat beside her, but she wouldn’t look at me dead-on.

  She tipped her forehead down and shook her head from side to side. The tops of her cheeks were wet. “I lost my job today, Harper.”

  The entire top half of my body felt like it was too big for me. Too heavy to hold up. I put my arm through hers like she did sometimes with me. “Oh, Mama. You’ll get yourself another one. You always do.”

  I wanted her to agree with me, but the way her face was pointing to the floor told me different.

  She shook her head slowly and finally looked up at me. “My three-day-a-week job went to live with her sister. It was where I made most of my money.” She pushed the box to the side. “Not even a day’s notice.”

  Mama finally looked me dead-on in the centers of my eyes. “We can’t stay here.”

  My backpack felt like it had chunks of concrete in it. The poetry contest was in two days. Mrs. Rodriguez would never see my poems. I liked to picture myself reading my poems or one of my short stories up on the stage at the microphone. But right then I was having a hard time even remembering Mrs. Rodriguez’s face or what the classroom looked like from my desk.

  I had tried my very best to keep it away, but it was as if Daddy’s poison had snuck itself on in anyway. And I felt like I was Lorraine. Like someone had gone and snatched away my words.

  She bit her lip and started loading another box. “We need to get packed up so we can get out of here.”

  “We getting a house?” I knew it was crazy, but I needed to stop her words from coming. Somehow, I thought if I could stop her words I could stop what was going to happen next. So I kept going without taking a breath. “Apartments can be real nice. I don’t mind if it’s small. We could even live on the top floor. ’Cause I don’t mind stairs. Neither does Hem. That would give him a good place to do his waiting.”

  None of what I was saying made sense even to me, but I was afraid to stop talking. Afraid to leave Mama room to speak.

  She stared out the window. “The night’s not so cold now. It’s warm enough for the car. And it won’t go on forever.”

  I tried to imagine how it would feel sleeping on the seat of our car. I’d be sniffing in the old lady smell of Daddy’s mama all night long. I was liable to start smelling like that.

  I’d seen someone doing that before. Sleeping in their car. A whole family of red-haired kids. They had been parked in the side lot at the gas station. I’d tried not to look at them straight-on, because I’d been embarrassed to see them like that. Especially the one that had looked exactly like the girl that used to sit at the cafeteria table next to mine at school.

  Mama spoke slowly, as if she was choosing each word, one at a time. “Houses and apartments cost money. You need first and last months’ rent and a damage deposit, right up front.” She counted each thing off on her fingers. “And you need deposits for the electric company and the phone company.”

  “But you got some money saved up, right?” My voice was getting louder, but I couldn’t help it. “And you’ve got those half-off coupons from Mrs. Early.” I closed my eyes and tried to push away the picture that was nudging itself into my mind. Hem curled up in the corner of the back seat, looking grubby and uncombed like the red-haired kids.

  Mama took a deep breath and let it out in quick, jagged bursts of air. “Mrs. Early is charging me half off the motel room here.” She pressed her lips together hard. “But she’s having me pay her the difference and then some.”

  “What?” That didn’t make sense. There was too much to wrap my mind around. I needed her to stop talking. Everything was moving too fast.

  She picked up her little figuring notepad and flipped through the pages. “I get half off the room, but I have to pay her a certain amount each week to go toward the rent we owe her from the house.”

  A sharp, hot kind of mean filled me. I was angry at a whole bunch of people at once. Daddy, Mrs. Early—even Winnie Rae. But then it trickled out through my shoulders, where my backpack was, and made me feel like I did when I was back at the hospital, wishing for Flannery to open her eyes. Like maybe if I closed my own eyes and didn’t think about it so hard, the bad things would change directions and go away.

  I looked out the window and I could see Hem’s rounded shoulders from the back. I knew he was feeling the same sort of thing.

  Mama tried to smile at me, and she slowly rocked herself onto the balls of her feet and stood up. “I’m going to wash my face. Some nice cool water always helps to clear my head.”

  She shut the bathroom door behind her, and I scooted back against the bed, trying to clear my own head.

  Mama’s figuring notepad lay on the floor beside me. I knew she wouldn’t take well to me flipping through her money lists and figures, but I couldn’t help myself. I had always been good at math. Maybe if I looked through it a bit I could offer up some ideas.

  When I flipped open the cover, my fingers felt rubbery, as if they couldn’t quite get ahold of the pages. I didn’t see numbers. I saw words. Mama’s old writing. The writing she was too tired to do anymore. My face felt hot, but not the angry kind. It was the embarrassed kind.

  I was ashamed at how I’d been feeling about Mama. All I’d been thinking about was the poetry contest, and here Mama wasn’t even able to write down a single word. I might not be able to stand up at that microphone, but I could still pick up a pen whenever I wanted. I could write down a poem whenever it traveled through my head, but Mama didn’t have the time or the energy even to put down a part of a sentence.

  I flipped through the notebook until I found the numbers. When Mama picked up a pen these days, all she had the time for was trying to make the numbers add up right. I thought about how she used to look, perched up on a cushion, with her notebook resting on the arm of the couch. I hadn’t seen that quiet, thinking look on her face in months.

  I wanted to see Mama’s face the way it used to be. The way her eyebrows squished together when she was searching for the right word to put down. And how her eyes got shiny and wide when she read Hem and me a good sentence or two. Those words of hers made me feel warm and comfortable.

  Mama came out of the bathroom. Her face was clear, but her eyes were red and droopy. She gave me the kind of hug where you don’t let go for a while. I breathed in her Mama smell. It was like clean cotton towels, fresh out of the dryer.

  I hugged her back and I didn’t let go for a while. So she’d know I wasn’t going to give her a hard time anymore.

  “I’ll be right back.” I ran out the door and over to Hem’s light pole.

  He looked up. “I heard a few trucks go by,” he said. “But none of them slowed down to turn in.” He pushed at a rock with his toe.

  My heart went down to my feet, but I made myself start talking. “You know, Hem.” I hated to say it, but I had to. Somebody had to. “He might not be ready to come back here. Not for a long while.”

  I wished so bad I could go and change Daddy for him.

  He looked at me, kind of sad like, but he didn’t seem to be getting ready to cry. “I know.”

  I was sad enough for both of us, but I was proud of him, too. He seemed a lot older than six right then.

  “And it’s Mama who needs our help right now, right?”

  He nodded.

  I held my hand
out to him. “So come on. We got some boxes to pack up.”

  I made Hem practice his face before we went back in. Mama didn’t need any more sad or angry in front of her.

  He hung back against the light pole.

  I put my hand out toward him. “Come on, Hem. Mama needs us.”

  He squeezed his eyebrows together. “You still mad about the rocks?”

  The rocks at the drive-in seemed like hours ago. “No,” I said. “It’s fine.”

  He pushed off the light pole and started to follow me. “I wished there was at least some old candy left,” he said.

  I stopped and stared at him, because I realized he was talking about the projection house. The empty projection house.

  I ran ahead into the motel room and picked up an empty box. “Listen, Mama,” I said. “You might already have a few ideas in your head for us, but I want you to see something. Let’s finish getting these boxes packed up, because I think you might like it.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  I WAS GLAD Lorraine had put the cardboard over the swears, because I didn’t want that to be the first thing Mama saw when we drove up.

  “What you got up your sleeve there, Harper Lee? This doesn’t even seem like a proper road.” She steered the sedan slowly over the cracks in the pavement. The road got so narrow in places that the sticker bushes were brushing against my side of the car.

  “It’s a real road, Mama, I promise. It’s just old.”

  She looked to be getting ready to stop, but I knew she must’ve been thinking there was nowhere to turn the car around, so she kept driving.

  We came up to the fork in the road for Dorothy’s house, and I pointed the other way. “To the right, Mama. We need to go down there a little ways.”

  Finally, we got to the old parking lot. “See there? That little house? Just pull right up to the front.”

  Mama steered the sedan around the rows of drive-in speakers and pulled up to the old projection house.

  She turned off the engine and sat back in her seat.

  “I know it doesn’t look like much,” I said, “but wait until you see the inside.”

  “It’s a drive-in movie theater!” Hem said it like he’d thought of it himself.

  We got out of the car, and I saw Mama take in a deep breath of air.

  It smelled wonderful out here, I had to admit. Lots of fresh, unused air. The sun was low, and it made the ground look like it was streaked with gold where the grass was trying to come up through the cracked asphalt.

  The door was still wide open, the way Alma’s mom had left it. I could tell from the way Mama was hanging back that she wasn’t expecting to go inside. That’s when I started to get nervous. Here I was showing Mama our new home, and I hadn’t even set one foot inside the door.

  “The person that was living here just moved out.” I hoped Alma’s mom was a decent housekeeper. If there was one thing that would turn Mama right around and send her back out the door for good, it was dirt and grime.

  “Don’t go in there!” Hem grabbed my arm as I was making my way through the door.

  I shook his hand off. “What’s wrong?”

  “That girl, Alma!” He made his top teeth stick out as far as he could. “She said to stay out of her house!”

  I didn’t bother reminding him that he and Randall had already been rooting around inside the snack bar. “It’s not hers, Hem. And she’s up and left, anyway.” I wasn’t sure exactly who the place did belong to, but I couldn’t let myself think about that right then.

  The inside was dim, and you had to wait for your eyes to adjust. But what I saw didn’t look half bad. It wasn’t as nice as the Knotty Pine Deluxe Motor Hotel, but Alma’s family had definitely fixed it up.

  “Look there, Mama.” I pointed to the two big mattresses pushed up against the side wall. “It looks plenty comfortable for sleeping.”

  I saw her eyes move up and down and around the entire inside. And I could see a bit of a smile in one corner of her mouth when she looked at the concrete floor. It was swept clean.

  But I still wasn’t sure we’d be staying until I saw her carry in the three-legged stool that her daddy had built. She put that carefully beside one of the mattresses and laid out Flannery’s peach sweater across the top of the stool.

  I headed toward the doorway to pick up a load from the car before she could change her mind.

  She stopped me on my way out and put her hands on my shoulders. “It’s just for now, Harper Lee. We need a roof over our heads, and I need a safe place for you and Hem while I look for another job.” She looked out the door at the car, and her voice got shaky. “I know you can’t be staying in the car all day, taking care of Hem, while I go to my job at the Laundromat and go out to look for more work.”

  I made myself smile. “It’ll be fine, Mama.” I pointed inside. “And it sure does seem clean.”

  Mama squeezed my shoulders and went out to the car for some boxes.

  We emptied the car out fast, and Mama made the mattresses up with our bedspreads from the old house, the white chenille ones that had belonged to her mama.

  She had never let us eat in our beds before, but Mama made us thick peanut-butter sandwiches, and we all sat down smack-dab in the middle of one of the bedspreads to eat them.

  I didn’t know why, but that peanut butter tasted extra good right then. It tasted so good, I even ate Hem’s crusts for him.

  Hem must’ve felt like it was special, too, because he didn’t crumb up the chenille bedspread at all.

  Then, without any hint of a warning, a memory of the old Daddy popped up in the front of my mind, and that safe, happy feeling disappeared into the concrete beneath me.

  Mama and Daddy and Hem and me had all gone to the state fair. Daddy’d let us use up the last of the money he’d brought, so we could ride the Scrambler two more times each. I could still feel how the front of my face tried to make its way over by my ear as the Scrambler whipped us around and around.

  Hem was remembering, too, because he took a bite of his sandwich and started whipping his head around. “Remember when Daddy took us to the fair and we used up all our supper money on rides?” He rubbed his belly. “It was way past dinner, and I forgot I was hungry until I got off the ride.”

  Mama smiled. But her eyes looked as if she’d lost something important and she couldn’t begin to think on where to look for it. “And your daddy pulled that big bag of peanuts out of nowhere. Heaven knows where he got them.”

  Hem chewed his sandwich slowly in a remembering way. “Those were some good peanuts.”

  Mama closed her eyes. “He was always saving the day back then.” She shook her head. “You’d think all was lost, and he’d come through with something or another.”

  I tried to remember how I’d felt that day on the Scrambler, but it kept getting drowned out in a Kentucky-whiskey puddle.

  Hem looked toward the door and nudged me with his elbow. “What if Alma comes back?” He licked a spot of peanut butter off the side of his wrist. “She looks like the kicking type.”

  I thought about her pointy elbows and looked around the room. Before we had brought in our stuff, it had been pretty near bare, except for the mattresses. No pillows or even a book or a box of crackers. “They’re not coming back,” I said. “When people pack up their car like that, it’s for good. They’re moving on.” That was something I knew for sure.

  Mama pointed toward the door. “From the looks of things outside, especially, whoever owned this place hasn’t been around for five or ten years. Maybe longer.”

  I wondered if we could still show ourselves a movie here, if we wanted to. I thought about how exciting it would be to set up the movie and sit out front in lawn chairs. We could still see bits and pieces on the bigger parts of the shredded-up screen. And we’d be able to hear it if we sat ourselves next to one of Lorraine’s speakers. We’d invite Lorraine and Randall and Dorothy. I was so enjoying myself, I wouldn’t even have minded a couple of old hot dogs f
rom the snack bar.

  Mama brushed off her lap and walked across the room to the counter that used to be the snack bar. What looked like a tiny garage door was cut into the wall above the counter. She reached for a rusted-up handle and tried to push the door up. “If I can get a good hold of this, I could push it up a bit and get some more light in.”

  I looked back behind the mattresses. The only two windows in the place were small and up high. Even though they let some light in, they were too high to see out of.

  Mama finally gave up on the snack-bar window and stepped back. She pointed above her head. “There are tracks that probably need to be oiled. It’s supposed to ride up and over my head when it’s all the way open.”

  I pictured people lined up outside at the counter. Ordering big boxes of popcorn and those long ropes of licorice.

  If Lorraine fixed this up to be a drive-in movie theater again, she’d have to put a new counter on the outside. The inside one was sturdy and whole, but there wasn’t much left of the part that had stuck through to the outside. There were whole chunks torn off, and a couple of swears scrawled across what was left.

  Mama ran her finger along the inside counter and smiled full-on, because her finger came up clean.

  She went to our boxes along the back wall and started opening the tops until she found the right one.

  Then she brought out her favorite picture. It was my favorite, too. Daddy had taken it about two years ago, when I was in the third grade. Hem and I were on either side of Mama, and she was reading to us from her special book. She had the front cover open, which meant she was on page one. I had this real excited look around my eyebrows, because I knew what was coming up. I was excited about Ms. Harper Lee’s words.

  Mama wiped at the front of the picture with the bottom of her shirt and set it carefully on the counter. Right in the middle, where we could all see it from our mattresses.

  I scooted backward on the chenille bedspread so my back was against the wall, and I took out my notebook. My pen was moving almost before I could get my paper ready.