When Did We Lose Harriet? (5 page)

“They called dream catchers. Me’n Harriet got ‘em just alike.”

She got up and went to look out the window. “Uh-oh. Here come Cowface and Deneika. I figured they’d be down early, since it’s Biscuit’s day.”

Before I could ask what on earth she meant, two girls came in. One was beautiful—skin like caramels and eyes like violets. She was tall and slender, and swung her shoulders when she walked to show off high little breasts in a skintight pink knit top. Her denim skirt barely grazed her backside, and her legs were superb. I wondered how long it took to braid her hair in that intricate design of corn rows with silver beads worked in.

Kateisha ignored her, and greeted the other—who was small, thin, and drab. “Hey, Cowface.” Her blouse was dingy and unironed, her running shoes full of holes, her hair thin and nappy, and her face golden, long, and thin. With those enormous soft brown eyes, she did, indeed, call to mind a worried Jersey cow.

The tall girl looked around the room, passing over me like I wasn’t there. “Anybody seen Biscuit?”

“Unh-huh—what’d I tell you?” Kateisha gave me a knowing look. “No, Deneika,” she said with elaborate patience, “we ain’t seen Biscuit since last week. But since
he always he’ps Mr. Henly on Tuesdays, he oughta be here soon.”

“Shut your mouth,” the girl said bluntly. She sauntered to the desk with a swing that suggested she knew more about human sexuality than most church delegates. “Who’re you?”

“That’s Mac,” Kateisha answered. “Mac, this here’s Deneika and Twaniba.”

Deneika wasn’t listening. She had wandered over to stare out the window with a hungry, waiting look. Kateisha joined her, again picking her hair. Twaniba (“Cowface”) slumped down on the sagging sofa nearest the desk and cast a shy look at the book. “You like readin’?” Her voice was little more than a murmur.

“I sure do. Do you?”

“No’m. That there’s Harriet’s book. She use t’read all the time, but we ain’t seen her since—I don’t mind when.”

The phone rang. A cultured alto asked me to tell Lewis Henly privately—she stressed the word—that Eleanor would be by to see him at noon. Because the woman was so insistent that the message was private, I decided to leave the girls alone and deliver it myself. They’d be all right by themselves for a minute—or so I thought. I returned to find Kateisha and Deneika glaring at one another.

“Get outta my face,” Kateisha barked, jaw clenched.

“I was here first,” Deneika snarled. “You
move
your face.” She shoved. Kateisha shoved back. The taller girl sprawled on the floor with a display of bright red underpants.

I hurried toward them. “Girls, Mr. Henly suggested that the first people here help me clean the room.”

That certainly stopped the fight and got everybody’s attention.

“Screwy Lewey said we should clean?” If I had suggested they learn to fly, Deneika couldn’t have sounded more astonished.

“I ain’t much on cleaning.” Kateisha lifted one nostril in disdain.

“It won’t be bad if we all work together,” I said cheerfully, not fooling a soul. “Kateisha, you go ask Mr. Henly for the supplies. You others start to pick up trash.”

“Okay.” Even Twaniba’s voice was colorless. I wondered if she got enough vitamins.

Deneika and Twaniba had each picked up about two slivers of paper by the time Kateisha got back carrying a stubby broom, a dustpan, a plastic trash bag, and three gray rags. I handed out supplies like a drill sergeant. “Twaniba, you dust windowsills and bookshelves. Deneika, sweep down cobwebs. Kateisha, go empty the wastebasket and come right back. We’ll have this place clean before we know it.”

“What you gonna do?” Deneika demanded.

“She can’t clean in them clothes.” Twaniba stroked my linen jacket sleeve with the touch of a butterfly.

“If she ain’t cleaning, I ain’t neither.” Kateisha plopped heavily into a chair.

“I’m going to clean,” I assured her, looking around for something I could do without getting filthy. “I’m going to pull out the sofas so we can sweep under them, then I’m going to clean out the drawers of that desk. They look like rats’ nests.”

The girls wouldn’t have earned enthusiasm awards, but at least they went to work. After Kateisha bustled out importantly with a bag of trash, I grabbed one sofa to shove it away from the wall. It was heavier than it looked. “I can’t move this alone. Can somebody help me?”

“I’m sweeping.” Deneika sullenly gave a cobweb a half-hearted swipe. Twaniba drifted over with her dust cloth and gave the sofa a gentle shove. It was like being helped by a wraith.

“Never mind,” I told her. “Go on and dust. Kateisha and I’ll get it later. Let me give the cushions a good shake first.”

I pulled out a seat cushion, and saw why the sofa was so heavy. Beneath the cushions was a hideabed mattress, littered with trash. Tossing off all the cushions, I cleared away several pieces of homework, a couple of wadded candy wrappers, and a filthy blue sweater. A book had fallen down behind, but in order to get my hand between the frame and the back to reach it, I’d have to open out the mattress. Seizing the handle, I tugged.

The bed unfolded with a screech to wake the dead. The mattress was spotted and stained, and as hard as it was to open, I suspected it had been donated that way. Joe Riddley has a theory that our heavenly mansions are furnished with duplicates of whatever we give to the poor. If so, the donors of that sofa might be in for a shock.

Hoping I wasn’t picking up a disease I couldn’t get rid of—and that Mr. Henly wouldn’t appear while I was backside up—I belly-flopped onto the mattress and groped until my fingers grasped the book.
Love Me Wildly, Love Me True.
It was a hardback sister of Harriet’s novel, except this one came from the public library. It also had a fat white envelope stuffed between its pages in a way guaranteed to raise any librarian’s blood pressure.

I rolled over and sat up, holding the book aloft. “Anybody recognize this?”

Kateisha, coming through the door wearing a plastic bag like a stole, snorted. “What’d we be wanting with a book when school’s out? It’s probably Harriet’s. Or LaToya’s. They both nuts about reading.”

Twaniba stopped her dusting and flapped her cloth, sending all the dust right back into the air. “When did we lose Harriet? Anybody remember?”

Deneika set down her broom and scratched her neck with an elegant green and gold striped fingernail nearly as long as my little finger. “She come the last week of school, but I ain’t seen her after that. Maybe her auntie won’t let her come no more.”

Kateisha stuck out her lower lip. “If she don’t want to come, it ain’t no skin off us.” She sounded oddly belligerent.

By then, I had looked at the envelope. It was not only fat. It was also blank and sealed. I shoved myself up from the sagging mattress. At the desk, I sat with the envelope hidden in my lap, and gently slit it open. No matter what Joe Riddley tells you, I wouldn’t have done that if there’d been a name on it. I figured maybe I’d find a name inside.

Instead, I found a colorful brochure for an acting school in Atlanta.

And thirty pictures of Benjamin Franklin—on one hundred dollar bills.

A kindhearted woman gains respect,
but ruthless men gain only wealth.
Proverbs 11:16

I shoved that money back into its envelope faster than it takes to tell it. My mind whirled with questions. Who’d go off and leave that much money just lying around? Where would a teen—especially one of
these
teens—get three thousand dollars? And why would anybody leave thousands of dollars lying around unless they had to? So whoever went off and left it,
had
they had to?

I looked up and saw my worker bees drifting my way like I was a spot of molasses. I was doing too much thinking and not enough cleaning. Thrusting the envelope into the long middle drawer, I held up the novel. “This is a library book. Who’ll volunteer to take it back?”

Deneika twisted her lips in disgust. “It’s filthy. Throw it
a-way.”

“I ain’t goin’ to no liberry when school’s out.” Kateisha tossed her head and turned her back before she could get drafted. “Leave it with Screwy Lewey.”

That, of course, was the only right thing to do—with both the book and the money.

I would have, too—in spite of what Joe Riddley might tell you—except that by the time we got the room halfway clean and I was ready to leave, Mr. Henly was in his office talking to a thin woman with lovely copper skin, legs like a model, and a beige silk suit that looked like it had come straight from Paris. Her perfume smelled like something they charge you by the minute to inhale, and believe me, Mr. Henly had no eyes for the short white grandmother at his door. He was having enough trouble concentrating on the papers she held. As she said, “According to our budget projections,” I seriously doubted that Lewis Henly was thinking about budget projections.

I checked my watch. There was still nearly an hour before Jake’s first afternoon visit, and the hospital wasn’t far. I’d seen a library on Rosa L. Parks Avenue just down from the center. If I took the book back, maybe they’d give me the address of the borrower. I could return the envelope to its owner later that afternoon. Everybody knows hospitals don’t let you stay with ICU patients more than a few minutes every hour or two. I ought to have a lot of free time on my hands, and sitting in waiting rooms is not my idea of a fine old time.

I pride myself on doing things the logical, simple, and efficient way.

I called the hospital before I left, and was told by a nurse that Jake was resting. Reassured, I stuck the envelope back in the book, tucked the book firmly under one arm, and left the center—heeding the advice my seven-year-old granddaughter gave me last year on Grandmothers’ Day at her school: “Act casual, Me-Mama.”

Nevertheless, I swear I walked five miles from the center to Jake’s Buick, and I never saw so many potential muggers on one sidewalk in my life. I fell into the driver’s seat, locked the door, and took three deep breaths of relief
before I was able to shove that envelope down into a woman’s best hiding place.

All the way to the library I felt twice as virtuous as the Good Samaritan. He only rescued somebody. I was returning enough unmarked bills to pay for that Alaskan cruise Joe Riddley keeps wanting to take.

Rosa L. Parks ought to be prouder of her library than of her street. The library was clean, spacious, cool, and cheerful—much nicer than Mr. Henly’s teen center. Yet most of the patrons were women or children. The only teenagers in the whole place were two boys sitting at a table in a far corner, engrossed in magazines. I felt a little awkward, being the only white person there, but one librarian bustled right up to ask how she could help, and directed me to the front desk. The desk librarian, busy helping somebody else, greeted me in a lovely contralto. “I’ll be with you in just a minute.”

I’ve raised sons. I know exactly what kind of magazine gets undivided attention from adolescent boys—but I didn’t think you could get one in a public library. Curious, I rambled over to where the teens were reading. To my astonishment, those boys weren’t oogling half-dressed women. They were studying old coins. No wonder they were at the library instead of at the teen center. The kids at the center would laugh them out the door.

Then one of the boys looked up, and I changed my mind in a hurry. Nobody would laugh at that young man and live to brag about it. His hair was shaved halfway up his head and twisted and tangled on top into a mess that looked like bare tree roots. Muscles rippled like vines and oranges on his biceps. And in a face so dark it was almost blue, his dark eyes smoldered like they had looked straight into the pit of hell and remembered.

His eyes held mine and I couldn’t look away, until the second boy at the table looked up and gave me a wide smile and a sassy little wave. “Hiya, ma’am. How ya doin’?”

“Fine, thank you.” I scarcely noticed what he looked like. I’d just seen that the desk librarian was free.

“Josheba Davidson” was the name on her tag. She was several shades darker than the woman who’d been talking with Lewis Henly, and her African print skirt and white knit top weren’t as stylish as that beige silk suit, but she was prettier. Her skin was flawless, her lips full, and her eyes shaped like almonds. Like Deneika at the teen center, she wore braids, but hers were pulled into a crown of loops that swung and danced whenever she moved.

I’ve said people in Montgomery are the most helpful in the world. Ms. Davidson started out that way, but when I asked for the borrower’s name and address, she shook her head. “I’m sorry. It’s against the law for us to give out that information about our patrons.”

“I don’t want to cause any trouble,” I pointed out as reasonably as I could. “I just want to return some money to its rightful owner. I can’t unless you help me.”

My voice carried in the stillness, and I looked anxiously over my shoulder. The other librarians and most of the other patrons still seemed busy about their own affairs. Only the boy with smoldering eyes was looking our way, and surely he was too far away to hear.

“Maybe you ought to take it to the police,” she suggested in a low voice.

“I could, but that wouldn’t ensure it got back to the right person. Police don’t always believe teens come by money honestly. I’d like to give this teen a chance to explain. I can’t imagine why anybody would have left money at the center, even overnight. Yet from what the girls said, the person who borrowed this book hasn’t been around for several weeks.”

The librarian picked up the book, read the title, and turned to her computer. “Let me check on something.”
When an answer came up on her screen, she gave a sharp little grunt. “I was afraid of that.” She stared at the screen and chewed her lower lip.

“Was the borrower Harriet Lawson?” I guessed.

“Do you know Harriet?” Her voice was almost eager.

“No, but some of the girls at the center thought it might have been her book.”

“Well, I’ll bend the rules just far enough to tell you it was—and that she owes a fine. If you pay it, maybe the teen center could give you her address so she can pay you back.”

I reached for my coin purse and accepted defeat. “I’ll be glad to pay her fine, but maybe what I’d better do is just take the money back to the teen center and let them return it. I’d have done that earlier, except the director was busy.”

“Be sure to get a receipt.” I was surprised at her tone. It sounded like a warning.

While she made change, the librarian asked curiously. “You’re just visiting, but you’re going to this much trouble? I wish everybody was as honest as you.” She bent over the counter to speak even more softly. “To tell you the truth, I’ve been worried about Harriet. I haven’t seen her since—I guess when she checked out this book, the week before school let out. If you see her, tell her to come by to see Josheba sometime.”

I was surprised. “Do you know all your patrons by name?”

“No, but we don’t get many whites, and Harriet’s in here two-three times some weeks. She reads voraciously, but mostly stuff without substance. Yet she’s bright—or could be, if anybody took the trouble to encourage her. I’ve been trying to steer her toward better literature, but she’s got her head up in some romantic cloud.”

As I left the library, my own head was in a cloud, too, trying to make sense of the fact that Harriet Lawson was
white. In my experience, a child who hangs around exclusively with people of another race may be isolated or trying to make a statement. Was Harriet trying to make a statement? To whom? Why?

Joe Riddley often says that once I start asking questions, I nearly die until I get answers to go with them. For once, he would be right.

My chest rustled as I hurried out, and one corner of the envelope was poking a hole in my left breast. I hoped Mr. Henly would be free by now.

If I’d waited and given him the money while I was there, I could already be on my way to the hospital. I was so busy fussing at myself, I wasn’t paying attention to anything else. I was flabbergasted when somebody shoved my shoulder and sent me sprawling.

As I fell, I felt somebody grab my pocketbook, then heard thudding feet. I looked up just in time to see someone pelt around the corner. I recognized the tree-roots hair.

By the time I’d hauled myself up and hobbled to the corner, he was out of sight. Nothing was hurt except one knee of my pants and a scraped wrist from where I’d fallen, but when you’ve been shoved and robbed, the invisible damage is a lot worse. I couldn’t seem to stop shaking, and was afraid I would throw up right there on the sidewalk.

I’d never been attacked before. In a town of thirteen thousand people and three magistrates, who’d be foolish enough to snatch the pocketbook of Judge Yarbrough’s wife—and risk getting hauled up before him for doing it? I wasn’t even sure what I was supposed to do next. I looked around for witnesses, but didn’t see a soul. With my heart pounding and my hands shaking, I limped back into the library.

“What happened to you?” The librarians looked as shocked as I felt.

I took several deep breaths before I could speak. “Those boys—” I pointed to the now-empty table. “The one with all the hair—” I wiggled my fingers above my head “—just grabbed my pocketbook!”

The head librarian came from her office to investigate. “I haven’t seen them here before,” Ms. Davidson told her, “but someone else may have recognized them.”

The head librarian raised her voice. “Excuse me, but does anybody know the boys who were reading at the far table?”

You could have heard a stomach growl in the silence. Nobody spoke.

“Let me call the police for you,” the head librarian offered.

Another fetched me a cup of hot coffee from their own pot. I needed it. I couldn’t remember feeling colder.

“We are so sorry,” the librarians said over and over while they waited for the police to arrive.

Ms. Davidson murmured, in a moment of privacy, “They must have heard us talking about Harriet’s money.” Her dark eyes were kind and concerned.

I tapped my chest. “At least they didn’t get that. I’ve got it right here.”

“Good for you!” She shook her head. “There you were, doing a good deed, and lost both your wallet and your keys.”

“Oh, Lord!” It was a prayer, not an oath. “I didn’t have my keys, I had my brother’s—with a Buick emblem on the chain. His was the only Buick in the lot when I came in!”

She and I hurried outside and toward the library parking lot as fast as I could totter.

The car was gone. If Jake’s heart attack hadn’t killed him, this certainly would.

Have you ever tried reporting a stolen car without letting the police officers know the owner would throttle you if he knew you’d been driving it?

I kept telling the two policemen who came that they didn’t need a lot of details—they could find that car in a minute if they’d just go out and look for it. Instead, they kept pestering me with silly questions I couldn’t answer. “Year of the car, ma’am? Model? Tag number? Insurance company?” They made me so nervous that after a while I could scarcely string words into a coherent sentence.

I tried calling Glenna to get some of the information, but she’d already left. Finally I admitted it was my brother’s car, and gave them Jake’s name, but warned them, “Get what you need to know from your computers. If you call him at the hospital, you could kill him.”

When they started giving me more guff about needing to talk with Jake, I lost my temper. “Look,” I told them, “it’s a new red Buick Park Avenue with red leather upholstery, and it can’t have gotten far. Just go out and start looking up and down the danged street!” If women ran this world, there’d be more reliance on common sense and gumption, and far less on procedure. I can tell you that for a fact.

Finally they tracked down the tag number and promised they’d do their best to find the car without bothering Jake. By then, though, they’d wasted so much time I figured the Buick was halfway to Birmingham. Before they left, one tried to make me feel better. “Your pocketbook may turn up, ma’am. If it was kids, sometimes they just take the cash and toss the wallet and credit cards in a dumpster.”

That’s when I realized I’d have to call Joe Riddley to cancel all our cards. I could tell you exactly what I knew Joe Riddley would say, but I don’t use that kind of language.