“Not here two days and you do something like this?” she asked.
“I want to go home,” I said.
“Believe me, that’s what I want, too. Get in and stay in your room until Buster calls. He’s trying to locate your daddy right now.”
“Good,” I said, marching past her.
I went into my room and shut the door. All the while I hadn’t noticed how gray the sky had become. The room grew darker and darker until I heard raindrops tapping on the window with a sound that made me think of tapping witch’s fingers, long and bony with sharp, hard fingernails. It was something I heard and saw in recurrent nightmares all my life, only now the witch’s face I imagined was Aunt Mae Louise’s face.
More often than not, when I was younger and I had a bad dream, there was no one there to comfort me. I would put on my lights and catch my breath, but I distrusted every shadow, no matter how small. Nightmares hid themselves in shadows. They waited and watched until they were confident I was asleep, and then they crossed through the light and came into my head through my ears or my nose or my open mouth. That was what I used to believe and, although I never told a soul, still believed. Even when I was little, I sensed that if I told Mama, she would either ignore me, yell at me for being stupid, or maybe even laugh and tell one of her friends what I had said and embarrass me. She had done something like that often enough.
Now I sat here, unable to stop the trembling inside myself, despite the angry brave front I had put on in front of the dean, the policeman, and Aunt Mae Louise. It was one thing to be alone in a world where there were other girls like myself who were as alone or almost as alone as I was, but to feel like I felt here was harder.
This is all Mama’s fault, I thought. If she hadn’t been so selfish, she would have considered me and what would happen to me after she had run off. I hated Aunt Mae Louise, but she wasn’t all wrong when it came to my mama, I admitted to myself. And she wasn’t wrong about Daddy either, about him ignoring all the warnings and about him being too weak.
But he was all I had and I was all he had now. Lucky people had lots of choices for themselves. I had none. Wherever I was in my life, I thought, there would always be bars on the windows. There would always be shadows waiting to pounce on me. Lie back and take it, Phoebe, I told myself. Stop trying to go against the wind.
I closed my eyes and listened to the rain and fell asleep. The sounds that woke me were the sounds of Barbara Ann and Jake returning home. I heard Aunt Mae Louise chastise them for making too much noise, and I heard her warn them to stay away from me. The tone in her voice made me sound like I could contaminate them.
The drizzle turned into a heavy downpour. It went on and off for what seemed like hours and hours. I left the room only to go to the bathroom, and when I walked through the hall, I was struck by how quiet it was in the house. Both Jake’s and Barbara Ann’s doors were shut tight, and Aunt Mae Louise wasn’t nearby. All I could do was wait. Finally, she came to my room.
“Your uncle Buster has not been able to locate your daddy yet. His company is trying to contact him for us, but he hasn’t gotten to his scheduled stops, I guess. Anyway, you might as well come out and help me get the dinner ready. Uncle Buster is on his way home.”
“Are you sure you want me touching things?” I asked sullenly.
She paused and furled her brow.
“No, I don’t want you touching things, but I don’t want you doing nothing either. Idle hands get into mischief.”
I followed her out and set the table. The truth was, I was getting cabin fever in that tiny room anyway. Even her grouchy face and bitter comments brought some variety. When Barbara Ann came out of her room, she looked at me with different eyes, eyes not so full of herself as they were fearful of me. What did Aunt Mae Louise tell her, I wondered, or what had she heard from the other students on the bus?
As if she could read my thoughts, Aunt Mae Louise decided to tell me immediately why Barbara Ann was looking at me askance.
“The other kids made fun of her on the bus, I’ll have you know. Seems the news about you and that boy spread like a bad rash through the school. All of our friends are going to hear about it now. Fine thing to do to us.”
I didn’t say anything. My tongue stayed glued to the roof of my mouth even though the words were scratching away at the base of my throat. I finished what I had to do and then, when Uncle Buster came in, I sat with my head down.
“Your daddy’s going to be very disappointed to hear about this when I contact him,” he said. Surprisingly, that was all he said. Aunt Mae Louise said grace, and then we ate in relative silence. Every once in a while, I looked up and saw Jake staring at me wide-eyed.
Finally, I couldn’t take it any longer and I slapped my fork down on the table and stood up.
“I didn’t kill anyone, you know,” I screamed, and marched out of the dining room.
“Phoebe Elder!” Aunt Mae Louise called after me. “You don’t get up from the table until you are excused. Do you hear what I said?”
“Let her go,” Uncle Buster said.
I slammed the door behind me. What little I had eaten seemed to be caught in my throat. My stomach churned, and I went into the bathroom and threw up. They heard me, but no one came to see how I was. Now I was thinking that I wouldn’t wait for them to contact Daddy. I would pack my things and just leave. I could hitchhike a ride back into Atlanta proper, and I knew where we kept our key outside the apartment. There was no sense in staying here a moment longer.
It was still raining very hard, however, so I thought I would at least wait for it to let up. In the meantime, I packed everything and then I sat on the bed with my arms folded, facing the door. To my surprise, it opened slowly and little Jake poked his head in.
“What do you want?” I asked him.
“Are you really going to hell?” he replied.
“Your mother tell you that?”
He nodded.
“No. I am not going to hell. I am in hell and so are you,” I snapped back at him.
“No, I’m not. Only bad people go to hell,” he said. Even at his young age, he had Aunt Mae Louise’s scowl.
“Not just bad people,” I said, “also unlucky people.”
My answer put some confusion in his eyes. He shook his head and said, “No, they don’t.”
“You better not come too close to me,” I warned, “or I’ll take you with me. I’ll wrap my arms around you so tightly you won’t be able to get loose and we’ll go down, down, down.”
He started to shake his head and then I went, “Boo!” He backed out quickly and closed the door. I started to laugh, but stopped and suddenly felt more like I should cry.
Maybe Aunt Mae Louise was right to tell her children that. Maybe I am going to hell, I thought. I’m my mother’s daughter, aren’t I? What chance do I have to avoid it? The only thing I’ve accomplished in my short life is get myself deeper and deeper into trouble. It was a dark, descending road I traveled, and perhaps hell was at the end after all. I had no idea how or what would stop my fall. It seemed hopeless and useless to think of a way. I guess Mama had the right idea after all, I thought. Have a good time and don’t worry about tomorrow.
The rain began to let up. I didn’t hear it on the win-dowpane any longer, and when I looked out toward the street light, I saw the downpour had thinned to a slight drizzle. I decided I would wait until they were all asleep and then I would quietly slip out of the house and be out of their hair forever. Aunt Mae Louise would not have to worry about me corrupting her children, and she and Uncle Buster could make up any story they wanted and tell it to their friends in the community. Everyone but Daddy would be happier, including me.
It grew quieter and quieter in the house. I could hear only the muffled sounds of the television set, some water running in the kitchen, and then Aunt Mae Louise getting Barbara Ann and Jake to bed. Not much longer to wait, I thought. I felt like a racehorse champing at the bit. What lay ahead was not exactly a hike in the country. I had to carry my suitcase and get myself onto the more traveled highway before I could get any sort of ride. I didn’t have enough money anymore to take a bus.
A little more than a half hour or so later, I heard the telephone ring. I was anticipating that they had finally contacted Daddy. I had made up my mind I wasn’t going to talk to him on the phone. I had nothing to say now. This was his fault, too. He shouldn’t have brought me here, and I shouldn’t have come.
Why did I come? Did I hope this would work? Did I believe Daddy when he told me my life would change and I could have a future? I’m too poor and too cursed to afford a fairy tale, I thought. I should have known that only the rich and lucky become Cinderellas. Now, I would do what I had to do, and that was that.
Suddenly, I heard Aunt Mae Louise scream, “Lord, have mercy.”
Uncle Buster called to her, and there was the sound of his heavy feet pounding the floor as he ran into the kitchen. I opened my door and listened. I heard him ask, “When?” and then, “How? Oh, Christ!”
Slowly, I made my way down the hall and stopped in the kitchen doorway. Uncle Buster had his back to me. He was still on the phone. Aunt Mae Louise was collapsed in a chair, both her hands over her face.
“Yes,” Uncle Buster said into the phone, “we understand. We’ll take care of it. Give me that address again.” He waved his hand toward Aunt Mae Louise, but she didn’t see. She still had her hands over her face.
“What is it?” I demanded, and she lowered her hands and saw Uncle Buster’s hand.
“Give me a pen and something to write on,” he ordered. She jumped up and opened a drawer, found what he wanted, and gave it to him before turning to me.
“Terrible, terrible news,” she said. Uncle Buster kept writing.
“What?”
“Your daddy, an accident. He’s gone,” she said.
I looked at her suspiciously, my head tilted.
“What do you mean, gone? Gone where?”
“To the lap of the Lord,” she replied.
Uncle Buster thanked whomever he was speaking to and hung up the phone. With a long face, a face weighed down by gloom, he turned and looked at me. He shook his head, his huge eyes staring woefully back at me.
“What is she saying?” I asked him.
“Horace ran off the road sometime this afternoon. Luckily, some man sticking catfish in a stream came upon the car. It had gone down an embankment, through some woods before smashing into a tree and turning over and landing top down in the water.”
“He always wears his seatbelt,” I said, shaking my head.
“That didn’t matter this time. Matter of fact, it may be why he didn’t get out.”
“Didn’t get out? You mean Daddy drowned?”
“It’s ugly,” he replied.
What little food had remained in my stomach had long ago turned into a small pool of acid. It came rushing back up my throat. I stuffed my fist into my mouth.
“He was trying to cover too much territory in one day, I’m sure,” Uncle Buster continued. “You get careless, go too fast around a turn, lose control.”
“The Lord meant for it to be,” Aunt Mae Louise muttered.
“What kind of Lord is that?” I shouted down at her.
“Don’t blaspheme now, child. Your daddy needs to be with the angels and you will want to join him someday.”
“No,” I said. “This is all a lie. You’re just trying to find another way to get rid of me.”
“Boy, I wish that were true,” Uncle Buster said.
“It is true. You’re lying!”
“I got to make arrangements. We got to try to find your mother, Phoebe. No matter what she’s done, she should know about this. You have any idea, any idea at all where she might have gone?”
I kept shaking my head.
“Well, I guess we’ll have to get the police to help us,” he told Aunt Mae Louise. She nodded.
“You’re lying,” I whispered.
“Now, you have to be a big girl, Phoebe. You have to be a good girl. This is a very hard time for all of us, and you don’t know how hard it is going to be yet,” Uncle Buster said. “I’ve got a lot to do here, and I can’t be distracted by any unnecessary trouble, hear?”
I stared at him. My heart wasn’t pounding. It felt more like it had stopped or melted. There was a deep, cold emptiness under my breast. I embraced myself.
“You see how hard life can be,” he continued. “You see how important it is to be good, to be responsible and not be wasteful. Whatever blessings we have, we’ve got to cherish and appreciate.”
He was going on and on like his father, the minister. I started to back away.
“It’s all a lie,” I muttered. “Another dirty lie. This is a house built on lies.”
“That’s it!” he screamed back at me. His voice bounced off the walls and I shuddered. “Stop that nasty talk now.”
I couldn’t stop trembling and I couldn’t swallow. All I could do was shake my head.
“All right now, Phoebe,” he said in a softer tone, “you go back to your room and get some sleep. We’ve got a lot to take care of tomorrow.” He relaxed his shoulders. “You sure you can’t help us find your mama?”
I shook my head harder.
“What’s that man’s name, the man she ran off with?” Aunt Mae Louise asked. “I didn’t pay any attention to what your daddy told me. You know?”
“Speak up, Phoebe. This is not the time for any silly tantrums. Your aunt asked you something.”
“Sammy Bitters,” I said. It didn’t sound like me talking. My voice was so deep.
“Name fits the situation,” she told Uncle Buster. “Bitter.”
He nodded.
“Go on, Phoebe. Get some rest,” he said. “We’ll take care of things. We’ll take care of you and what has to be done.”
Aunt Mae Louise looked up at him sharply. I could almost feel the new realization sinking into them both like a rock in soft mud: with my mother tramping about and not caring about me and my daddy dead and gone to the lap of God, they were all I had now. Like it or not, fate had more than just delivered me to their doorstep. It had put me smack into the middle of their lives. They couldn’t send me back.
Aunt Mae Louise nodded.
“The Lord tests us,” she said, more to herself than to Uncle Buster and me. “He gives us burdens to make us stronger and stronger.”