Seeing Red

by Kathryn Erskine

  I walked up the steps and followed him inside. “What is it, Beau?”

  “Rosie was in here a little while ago. She…she bought a lighter.”

  I walked over to the display of Zippo lighters on the counter by the cash register and put the camera and box of photos down next to them.

  “She said it was a present for Darrell.”

  I shrugged. “Okay.”

  Beau shook his head. “Darrell’s in juvie. I asked the sheriff and he said those boys aren’t allowed so much as a matchstick, never mind lighters, so why would she buy one, Red?”

  I started to get kind of a creepy feeling. Who was it for? Why would she lie to Beau? That wasn’t like Rosie. I picked up a lighter and started flicking it.

  The way Beau looked at me all upset wasn’t helping. “I don’t know, Beau. I’m sure there’s some good reason.”

  He tugged at his hair. “Well, I think she’s spending too much time with Darrell’s old friends. I’m walking home by way of Kenny’s from now on. I want to be sure she’s okay.”

  I stopped flicking the lighter but kept staring at where the flame had been, thinking about Rosie, until J ran in the shop.

  “What’d you do wrong at school this time, Red?”

  I snorted. “Nothing.”

  He gave me a big grin. “Then how come your teacher keeps calling?”

  I froze. “What?”

  “Uh-huh, seems like she calls every day and Mama talks with her a real long time, too.”

  I tried to think of what Miss Miller could be complaining about. I was doing my work. I was paying attention. I ran to the house and Mama was just hanging the phone up on the kitchen wall, and frowning. “Red? That was Miss Miller.”

  “I didn’t do anything wrong!”

  Mama looked confused. “I-I’m sure you didn’t.”

  “Well, why’s she calling?”

  “Oh, we just chat. About a lot of things…life.”

  “Life? But she’s a teacher.”

  Mama broke into a smile. “Yes, Red. She’s a teacher. She’s also a person. A very interesting person.” Mama leaned against the kitchen wall and her face got serious again. She opened her mouth to speak a few times before any words actually came out. “She thinks women can do anything. She seems to think I can do more than I thought. I guess I still think of myself as a wife and mother. But maybe I should be branching out.” Mama looked at me. “What do you think of her? As a teacher, I mean?”

  “She’s good.”

  Mama twisted her lips. “I hope you’re being respectful to her.”

  “I am. She…she treats us sort of like we’re, I don’t know, grown-ups, I guess. Sort of like what we think actually matters. Not like we’re just dumb kids.”

  “Well, I’m glad. I like her ideas.”

  “You do?” I figured Mama to be more like the preacher’s wife because Mama was always trying to do the right thing. You had to dress up for church because that was respectful. You had to help the poor and sick and elderly because that was kind. I figured she’d think kids should just shut up and do what they’re supposed to, not think for themselves.

  “Why does that surprise you, Red?”

  “Well, because, you’re always trying to get us to do the right thing.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m always trying to do.” She smiled like I’d just made her point for her, but I wasn’t sure I really got it.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Emergency!

  I was still looking for the altar of Freedom Church on the part of the Dunlop property near Miss Georgia’s, only now I was being a lot more careful and constantly looking over my shoulder. I spent Saturday morning prowling around, crouched low now that most of the leaves had fallen and it was easier to be spotted. I sure wished Mr Dunlop were the churchgoing kind.

  It was a real sunny day, but it was cold and I finally realized what was missing. I should’ve been smelling the smoke coming from Miss Georgia’s chimney. That was her only heat. I decided to stop by and see how she was doing.

  “Hey, Miss Georgia!” I called as I got close because I was starting to worry. I ran up the steps to her porch. “Miss Georgia?” I didn’t hear anything, so I pushed her door open. She never locked it. “Miss Georgia?” When my eyes adjusted to the darkness from the bright sunshine outside, I looked over at the fireplace, still wondering why it wasn’t going, and saw the lump on the floor.

  Miss Georgia! I froze for a moment before scrambling over and kneeling down next to her. Her eyes popped open.

  “Miss Georgia! I thought you were—” I stopped myself because I didn’t want to say dead. “Dying.” I don’t know why I thought that sounded any better.

  She smiled a slow, painful smile. “Just dyin’ to see a friendly face.”

  “What happened?”

  “My leg just done cracked and fell down under me. Couldn’t drag these old bones over to that fool phone to call me an ambulance.”

  “I’ll do it!” I ran to the phone and called 911.

  When I hung up, her eyes were closed, but she was breathing. And she still clutched on to her cane with one hand.

  “The ambulance is on its way,” I told her.

  She didn’t answer, but I saw a slight smile on her face. I pulled the quilt off her bed and placed it on top of her, because it was so cold, and then I put the afghan throw from her sofa on top of that. Then I figured she still might be cold and I pulled another blanket off her bed and added that to the pile.

  “You tryin’ to bury me alive?” she said, her eyes closed and her voice thin, but there was still that hint of a smile.

  I paced next to her, wondering if that ambulance was coming by way of California until it finally got there.

  The two ambulance guys went to work on Miss Georgia right away, putting needles in her and an oxygen mask over her mouth. She’d gone limp and she looked worse than when I’d found her.

  “Is she all right?”

  “Out of the way, please, son,” one of them said as they hurried her stretcher into the ambulance.

  “We’re taking her to the county hospital,” the other guy said as he shut the door and drove off, siren going and light flashing.

  I felt goosebumps crawling up my legs all the way to my scalp. I stood by myself on the front porch. I’d never been standing on her porch like that, alone, with her house empty. It was a bad feeling. For the first time I looked around and saw how run-down the place was. Everywhere you looked – porch, screens, shutters – things needed fixing. And I decided to do something about it.

  I ran all the way back home and told Beau and Mama about Miss Georgia. Beau stood there tugging his hair with both hands while Mama called Miss Georgia’s son. She gave him the information about the hospital, asking him if she should go be there with Miss Georgia. He told her he was on his way and not to worry.

  When I told them my idea of fixing up Miss Georgia’s place while she was in the hospital, Beau clapped and Mama squeezed my shoulder, smiling. The three of us sat down at the kitchen table and made a list of jobs that needed to be done and who could do them.

  That night Mama called the hospital and found out that Miss Georgia had multiple fractures, so when she got out she’d have to be in a wheelchair, maybe for ever. Beau slowly added something to the job list, his tongue working as hard as his fingers. After he left I looked at the list. bild ramp fer frunt of howse – beau. Maybe he couldn’t spell, but he sure could think of everything. I picked up the pencil and after Beau I wrote and red.

  We spent all day Sunday at Miss Georgia’s. Mama cleaned inside and out, making J the runner to keep him busy until she took him to his buddy’s Halloween party. I was way too old for that kind of kid stuff any more but I couldn’t help grinning when I saw that Mama left a couple of Cokes and a pile of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups on Miss Georgia’s front porch for us. She knew that was my favourite candy.

  After me and Beau had us a Coke and chocolate break, we built the wheelchair ramp. An
d I painted the porch, but I didn’t sand out the IMF that Thomas and I had carved in the porch railing. I think Miss Georgia kind of liked it now. I made the entire porch light blue, so she could have sky all around her and feel like she was a cloud.

  We even worked after school on Monday and on Tuesday, Miss Miller and Rosie came to help. I found out that some of the time Rosie wasn’t home she was helping grade papers and stuff with Miss Miller. Beau was sure relieved to hear that Rosie hadn’t been hanging out with Darrell’s friends much.

  I was just happy to see her again. “Hey, Rosie, how are you do—” but she gave me a big hug – in front of everyone! – and I forgot what I was even saying. I felt my face get hot, especially when J started laughing and making smoochy sounds.

  Rosie stopped him, though, by giving him a hug.

  “Ew! Get off!” J said as he squirmed away from her and took off running.

  Except for the hug, Rosie gave all her time and attention to Miss Miller and Mama. They were chatting and giggling and pretty soon I didn’t mind being by myself, although I did keep looking over at Rosie because she looked different, and I was trying to figure out what it was. Her hair was longer. And straighter. And she was taller. Or maybe more…developed.

  When I realized that, I felt my face flush again, and I concentrated on pulling all the vines off the fence around Miss Georgia’s vegetable garden. I was painting the fence when Beau came over. “Can I have me some paint, too?”

  “Sure,” I said, and poured some white paint in an old Jiffy Pop foil pan.

  “I need a little black, too.”

  “That’s still in the back of the car, I think.”

  “Okie dokie,” he said, lumbering off to the Chevy.

  I figured he was going to do some touch-up on the house, but after a while, when I looked up from my work, he was sitting hunched in the middle of the grass behind Miss Georgia’s house.

  “Beau,” I called out, “what are you doing?”

  “I’m painting the grave markers.”

  “Grave markers?”

  “Yup. Miss Georgia’s daddy and grandaddy and—”

  I dropped my paintbrush and ran over to where he sat.

  “George Freeman’s grave? Let me see.”

  I’d forgotten about those graves, but now I was curious to see them. They were wooden markers, of course, because most black people couldn’t afford gravestones back then, but the wood was rounded and shaped like a regular headstone would be.

  Beau sat back on the grass and smiled at his work. “This here is her grandaddy’s.”

  I sat down next to him. It was sure different from Daddy’s big granite headstone with all our names on it.

  G. FREEMAN

  Aug. 1829–Jul. 7, 1867

  I looked at it for a moment and then tilted my head because something about it wasn’t quite right.

  Beau looked at me and nodded. “I know. It didn’t have no day, just Aug for August and the year, 1829. I guess they knew when he died, though, because that one had the whole date.”

  “July seventh?”

  “Uh-huh.” He picked up a little pad of paper in one hand and pencil in the other. “See here? I wrote it down so I could whitewash the whole thing and then paint the right date.”

  Maybe because it was the pad of paper Daddy always used for sketches I remembered Daddy’s drawing and the map and realized what was wrong.

  “Beau, it couldn’t have been July seventh.” I knew. Because the map said July fourth. I remembered thinking that it was signed on Independence Day.

  “Uh-huh, it was.”

  I shook my head. “It couldn’t have been.” I’d looked up what decedent meant, and it meant dead. So on July fourth, G. Freeman was already dead.

  Beau looked down at the pad of paper. “I wrote exactly what it said on the marker. I know it said Jul 7.” He said it so it sounded like Jool seven.

  “It wasn’t.”

  “I swear it said Jool seven, 1867, because I remember thinking that they both ended in seven: Jool seven and 1867.”

  “Maybe it was just hard to make out, Beau. Maybe it was a one that looked like a seven.”

  “Nope, it was Jool seven.”

  “Would you quit saying Jool seven? It’s July seventh!”

  He pointed at the marker. “I know it, that’s why I painted it right there.”

  “But it wasn’t July seventh!”

  “What’s all the fuss?”

  I whipped around and hadn’t noticed that Rosie had come up behind us.

  “Red thinks I put the wrong date on—”

  “You did put the wrong date!” I said, cutting him off.

  Beau tugged at his hair. “I don’t think so. I’m sure it was a seven.”

  Rosie crouched down and looked at the marker, patting Beau’s shoulder.

  “It wasn’t a seven,” I said, “I know that for sure!”

  “How can you know that for sure, Red?” Beau asked.

  He and Rosie both looked up at me. I blinked. I didn’t want to tell them about the map. I tried to think of something to say, but my mind seized up.

  “How come you the only one who knows that?” Beau asked.

  Rosie squinched her eyes at me, and I was sure I was busted.

  All of a sudden, she smiled. “You know how close Red and Miss Georgia are. That’s probably how he knows.”

  “But I should’ve—”

  “No you shouldn’t, Beau,” she said, patting his shoulder again. “Nobody knew. Except Red.”

  She smiled again, and I smiled back, but I didn’t feel good about it.

  Mama and Miss Miller had come over by then, and Rosie explained what was going on.

  “I can fix it,” Beau said, whiting out the seven. “Soon as it dries, I’ll paint a one.”

  Mama allowed as how the way they made ones and sevens back then could’ve been real similar. “And besides,” she added, “these markers haven’t been painted in for ever, so what with weathering and mould and goodness knows what else, I think you did a wonderful job, Beau.”

  Miss Miller agreed. “They were no longer slaves whose owners might’ve kept all that information precisely because they were considered, well – ” she rolled her eyes – “property, so who knows how accurate the date is.”

  Beau didn’t look a hundred per cent convinced, and neither was I. There was something that bothered me about the whole thing. Maybe the date was written wrong on the grave marker a hundred years ago, like Miss Miller said; maybe it had been hard to read, so Beau got it wrong, like Mama said; or maybe, I thought, there was another explanation. Maybe Old Man Porter and old Mr Dunlop got the date wrong on their map. But how could you make a mistake like that? Wouldn’t they know if it was really Independence Day or not? I tried to think of other possibilities. What if George Freeman was shot on July 4, and they thought he was dead, but he didn’t actually die for three more days?

  Later, at home, I checked the map when I was by myself and it definitely said “4 July”. I guess it was possible it was a seven, but it sure looked like a four to me. And I didn’t want to show it to anyone else, not yet. The bottom line was, the only person who was likely to know for sure was Miss Georgia.

  “No, Red,” Mama said, “I am not calling long-distance to the hospital and bothering Miss Georgia about a silly date.”

  “It’s not a silly date!”

  “Why are you so het up about this? Beau changed it already.”

  “I just want to be sure.”

  She sighed. “Did you notice that his birth date had only the month and the year? I don’t mean to be disrespectful to the deceased, but I don’t see how it matters that much whether the man died on the first or the seventh or the seventeenth.”

  I had a feeling it mattered a lot, but I’d have to wait until I could talk to Miss Georgia in person.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Beau

  A couple of mornings later Beau didn’t show up. Mama called his house, but she didn�
��t get any answer. Pretty soon we found out what happened. Beau’s mama was dead.

  Mama said it was expected because Beau’s mama had been sick for a real long time but that even though Beau knew that and was prepared, it’s always a shock. And she said that while she hadn’t made me go to church since Daddy died, I had to go to the funeral. She didn’t need to tell me. Of course I was going. Beau was our family.

  We sat with Beau in the family pew. Miss Miller and Rosie both gave him hugs and sat in the pew right behind us. When Mr Reynolds walked in and sat next to Miss Miller, I saw Reverend Benson’s face go all blotchy, and I thought his eyes were going to pop out of his head. There was no mistaking the icy glare he was giving Mr Reynolds. I turned around, but Mr Reynolds didn’t seem aware of the reverend at all. I think Miss Miller was. She had on that sick headache kind of smile and was looking everywhere but the pulpit.

  Mama sat between J and Beau, holding Beau’s hand like he was a little boy. I was sitting on the other side of Beau, who sat there stunned. I remembered feeling exactly the same way when I’d sat in this same pew four months earlier for Daddy’s funeral.

  I didn’t like being back here. I didn’t like the memories of that day. I didn’t want to think about Thomas and how he hadn’t been able to come to the service and, even though he went to the burial, I ignored him. And I didn’t like having to listen to Reverend Benson. I was tuning him out like I used to until I noticed Mama’s breathing turning into sharp exhales like when I was in trouble.

  “Our dear friend, and Beau’s mama, Ida Yates was solid as a rock, even in these turbulent times. She knew her place and she knew everyone else’s,” Reverend Benson said. “She knew how to be kind to black folk. She knew they’re happier with their own kind.” He narrowed his eyes at us and, I figured, the pew behind us with Mr Reynolds in it. “They prefer to go to their own neighbourhoods, their own schools, their own churches.”

  Yeah, their own churches that happened to be thirty-five miles away, so old people, like Miss Georgia, could hardly go any more. Mama’s hand was gripping Beau’s so tight now that he winced, and I had to reach over and, one by one, peel her fingers off Beau’s hand until she finally noticed and gripped her purse instead.