Molly O tried to hum the tune, but gave up after the first few notes.
“I kept all that stuff for years, but I don’t know why. I was forty-one when she was born. I knew there wouldn’t be any more babies.
But it was hard to let it all go. Her little gowns, her highchair, that precious crib.”
As Molly O increased her speed to fifty, the shimmy worsened, causing the baby bottles to rattle and the potty chair to clack against the back window.
“Finally, I gave it all away, all except the rocking chair. My mother rocked me in it when I was a baby and I rocked Brenda in it till she was almost big enough to rock me.”
Molly O was lost in thought then, silenced for the first time since they’d gotten in the car, prompting Vena to jump into the conversation.
“How’s she doing?”
“Why, she’s been dead for almost ten years.”
“No, I meant Brenda.”
“Oh, she’s great. Just great! A touch of morning sickness now and then, but that’s to be expected, isn’t it? She’s gained four pounds, but she says she’s not showing yet, so she’s still performing. Making good money, too. And she says she and that Travis are saving like you wouldn’t believe.”
When Vena saw they’d entered a forty-mile zone, she expected Molly O to slow down. Instead, with her foot heavy on the gas, she had them moving at sixty and gaining.
“She’s been real busy planning their wedding. They’re going to get married at the Love Eternal Chapel where the windows are all shaped like hearts, which I think is so sweet. She’s already picked out her dress, white with seed pearls stitched on the bodice, but she decided not to get a veil and I’m glad ’cause Brenda’s got such beautiful hair. It’d be a shame to cover it up on her wedding day.
She’s decided on a bouquet of pink carnations with sprigs of baby’s breath which will be just perfect since she’s—”
When the car started drifting to the right, Vena saw that the needle on the speedometer was nearing seventy.
“Maybe you ought to slow down a little,” she said, but the car continued to accelerate, still tending to the right.
“Molly O?”
“She picked out her ring last week . . .”
They were moving dangerously close now to the edge of the asphalt. Beyond that, a narrow graveled shoulder gave way to a steep drop to a bar ditch.
“. . . a cluster of diamonds set in a—”
“Watch it!” Vena yelled as the right front tire dropped onto the shoulder.
Molly O made a rasping sound which Vena took for fright, but when she glanced at Molly O’s face, she saw she was crying.
Vena grabbed the wheel. “Molly O, I want you to take your foot off the gas,” she said, trying to conceal her panic.
“. . . wants me to come for the wedding,” Molly O whimpered.
“Take your foot off the gas!”
Molly O lifted her foot and slumped in the seat, sobbing.
“Now, listen. Do what I say, exactly what I say. Gently . . . very gently, put your foot on the brake. Good. Now, press. Easy, easy.”
Vena was doing her best to hold the wheel steady, prepared in case Molly O stomped on the brake which was certain to send the car into a skid.
“. . . something borrowed and something blue . . .”
“Just keep pressing down on the brake. That’s it, good.”
“. . . loan her my locket . . .”
“A little more pressure, Molly O, but take it easy.”
As the car began to slow, Vena brushed a pile of baby blankets off the seat and scooted over, crowding Molly O against the door.
“I’ve got it now,” she said, placing both hands on the wheel.
“You can let go.”
Molly O’s hands fell limply to her lap as she eased the brake pedal to the floor and the car rolled to a stop.
For several moments, neither of them spoke.
Finally, Vena put the car in park. “I’ll drive,” she said.
When she stepped out, her legs buckled, and as she made her way around to the driver’s door, she staggered and nearly fell.
She gently nudged Molly O to the far side of the seat, then slipped beneath the wheel.
“She never called,” Molly O said, her voice breaking.
Vena’s heart was pounding like a sprinter’s at the end of a race.
“What? Who are you talking about?”
“I haven’t heard from Brenda since she was here. Christmas Day.” Molly O snuffled. “Not a word.”
Vena’s fingers were still trembling as she readjusted the rearview mirror.
“I waited nearly a month, thinking she’d get in touch with me, but when she didn’t, I called information in Las Vegas, you know, thinking she and that Travis might have a phone, but the operator said she didn’t have a listing.
“Well, I didn’t think much about that ’cause Brenda said they’d only be there a little while, so I thought maybe it wouldn’t make any sense, them getting a phone.”
Vena waited until a truck passed, then eased the car back onto the road.
“So then I called that club where they were booked, the Lucky Lady, but they said they didn’t know what I was talking about.
Said they’d never heard of Brenda O’Keefe or Travis Howard.”
Molly O wiped her nose with the back of her hand, then dug in her pocket for a tissue.
“That’s when I really started to worry. Edna, down at the library, let me take a Las Vegas phone book home and I started calling all the casinos there. Started with the A’s, the Aladdin, and worked my way down the list.”
Vena kept the car steady at thirty, five miles below the speed limit as they entered the outskirts of Sequoyah. When she finally relaxed her grip on the wheel, she realized her nails had been digging into the palms of her hands.
“So last night I got to the H’s, the Hacienda. The guy I talked to said Brenda’s band wasn’t booked there, but he knew Travis.
Told me he was playing some dump, that’s what he called it, ‘some dump,’ called the Seven-Come-Eleven.
“And sure enough, that Travis was there. I had to call back three times before I caught him on a break, but I got him.”
Molly O’s fingers had found the naked doll in her lap, and she began absently smoothing back its nonexistent hair.
“He was mad ’cause I called. Real mean. And when I told him I wanted to talk to Brenda, wanted to know where she was, he said, ‘How the hell should I know? She split three weeks ago and I don’t give a good goddamn where she is.’ That’s what he said.”
“Well, it sounds like they’ve had a fight,” Vena said. “But chances are they’ll be back together before you know it and—”
“That’s what I figured. She’s mad, staying in some motel, making him wonder where she is. That sounds just like something Brenda would do.
“But I just have to talk to her. See, when she was here, she was having a pain in her side. Promised me she’d get to a doctor, but—”
“Then she probably has. And if anything had been wrong, she’d have called you. Sounds to me like the best thing for you to do right now is wait for her to call. And try not to worry.”
“I can’t do that. No way I’m not going to worry about Brenda.
And as far as waiting, I’m not too good at that, either. I’ve already started calling all the motels in the book. I’m already up to the Boulder.”
“That’s going to get expensive.”
“Yes, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t care what it costs. I guess it sounds crazy, but I feel like she’s lost. The way I’d feel sometimes when she was little and I couldn’t see her playing in the backyard, or when we’d be at the store and I’d turn around and she was gone.
“I’m just crazy, I guess. But sometimes people do crazy things when someone they love is lost.”
*
Molly O, her eyes red and face puffy from crying, had insisted on waiting in the car.
“I’m not going in there looking like this,” she said. “ ’Cause you can’t go in Wal-Mart without running into someone you know.”
Vena would discover, too late, that she was right.
She picked up the skein of blue yarn Molly O had asked for, then, from a table of Christmas leftovers—a mishmash of ornaments and decorations—she found something to give her as a surprise.
After she got herself a box of tampons, she headed for the checkout stand, but before she got there, a hand reached out and caught her by the arm.
“Hey, pretty woman,” Sam Kellam said as he spun her around to face him. “Did I get lucky and catch you on your day off ?” He tapped the box and grinned. “Picking up some supplies for Caney?”
“Look, I’ve got to go.”
“Why? You think the Honk’ll shut down if you’re not there?”
“Molly O’s waiting in the car.”
“She knows how to drive. Let her go on.”
Vena tried to turn away, but Sam tightened his grip on her arm and held her in place.
“I’ll take you back,” he said.
“No, you won’t.”
“Why not? You afraid of me?”
“Judging from what happened the last time you were in the Honk, I don’t think I have much to be afraid of.”
Sam’s face flushed, but he managed a thin, tight-lipped smile.
“You mean because I didn’t beat the shit out of your boyfriend?
Now what kind of man would take advantage of a cripple?”
“You’re a slimy son of a bitch.”
“What’s wrong, Vena? You don’t like me calling your hump a cripple?”
Vena noticed that a woman pushing her shopping cart up the aisle gave her and Sam a wary look as she dashed past them.
“Or could I be wrong? You fucking the gook?”
When Vena wrenched herself free and spun away, the box of tampons slipped from her fingers and sailed across the floor. But she didn’t care about that now.
Sam made no move to follow, but yelled after her, “Or are you taking on both of them at the same time? What one can’t do for you, the other one can. That it?”
Everyone at the front of the store was staring as Vena rushed to the checkout and shoved her purchases onto the counter.
“Guess it’s hard for a woman like you to find one man who can do it all,” Sam shouted.
“Hurry, please,” Vena said to the checker, a middle-aged woman who looked like she wanted to run.
When her bill was totaled, she tossed down five dollars, grabbed her plastic sack and hurried away.
“Ma’am? You forgot your change,” but by then Vena was already out the door.
When she slid into the car, she was working hard not to let her anger show. She figured Molly O had enough on her mind just then without worrying about Sam Kellam.
“Here’s your yarn.”
Molly O opened the bag and looked inside as Vena fumbled the key into the ignition.
“Good, it’s exactly the color I wanted.” Then she reached to the bottom of the sack where she found a small ceramic figure—a tiny baby Jesus from Taiwan.
“Oh, Vena.”
“Well, since you have the rest of the manger . . .”
“Yes,” Molly O said softly. “Not much point to a manger without you have the baby.”
B
Y THE TIME the AME congregation learned that Bui was sleeping in the basement of their church, they didn’t care. By then they would have let him sleep on the altar if he’d wanted to.
At first, they hardly noticed evidence of his handiwork but focused instead on their service to the Lord.
When five women gathered in the church kitchen early Monday morning, their minds were on Sister Zibeon, friend and faithful member for over sixty years. They had come together to prepare a meal they would serve following her burial at the Rest Haven Cemetery that afternoon.
Not until one of them started rinsing vegetables at the sink did she notice the drain was once again running freely. And when another started outside to empty trash, she was surprised to find that the back door no longer caught on the door frame but could be closed and locked securely again.
On Monday afternoon, when three members of the Hope Missionary Society met in the Reverend’s study to plan their annual banquet, they concentrated on preparing their program—not on the ceiling fan. They didn’t notice it had been cleaned and oiled, blades tightened, brass trim polished, burned-out bulbs replaced and the globe, emptied of dead insects, scrubbed with soap and water. Even Sister Nadine, whose hearing was still good, failed to realize the fan no longer hummed and whined, a sound that had always set her nerves on edge.
Tuesday morning when the Ladies’ Auxiliary met in one of the small Sunday school classrooms, Sister Eunice, the first to arrive, was surprised to find the sliding wooden door, jammed for months, had been rehung, fitted snugly back into the metal track it rolled on. Sister Cordelia, the last to show up, commented on what a bright clear day it was, never realizing that the windows facing Sticker Creek had been scraped clean of pigeon droppings and scoured with a stiff-bristled brush.
At Wednesday evening service, no one in the sanctuary, fourteen including Reverend Thomas, noticed that the frayed carpet at the door had been concealed by a new strip of aluminum tacked neatly in place. Nor were they aware that the half-inch crack snaking up the west wall had been plastered and sanded smooth.
And because they were huddled together on the front row, they couldn’t see that the hymnal racks which had come loose from the backs of the pews had all been screwed back into place.
Thursday’s choir practice was sparsely attended because one of the altos was suffering from gout and their only soprano was at the bedside of her brother, who’d just had a stroke. But not one of the seven who did assemble noticed that the vestry had been mopped and waxed or that a three-foot strip of loose baseboard had been re-tacked to the wall.
The Friday Singles Club had not met in the recreation room for nearly three months, not since the only male, Brother Samuel, had remarried on the day he turned seventy-one. But if they had come together, they would surely have been pleased to see that the piano stool missing a leg was now standing firmly on all four and the door to the cabinet where they kept their checkers and dominoes was adorned with handles once again.
On Sunday, though, they finally started paying attention when twenty-two of them straggled into the sanctuary and found the pews waxed and gleaming, and the chandelier suspended from the arched ceiling, shimmering with light, each glass prism washed and polished by a careful hand.