Whistling Past the Graveyard (2 page)

I decided to spend some time in my fort, just to stay out of Mamie’s sight so I wouldn’t fall into getting in trouble. Course my fort wasn’t really a fort, but a giant, waxy-leafed magnolia in our side yard. Mamie said it was almost a hundred years old. Back before I knew people weren’t as old as I thought they were, I asked if she remembered when it sprouted. She’d scrunched up her face like she was gonna be mad before she laughed and told me she was only forty-two years old, too young to even be a grandmother of a six-year-old.

Anyway, the tree. The branches go clean down to the ground and there’s just enough space for me to get inside. Nobody can see me. I keep Daddy’s old Howdy Doody lunch box in there with stuff I don’t want Mamie to stick her nosy nose into—mostly stuff that belonged to my momma and whatnot. I’d even found two pictures of her in a drawer in Daddy’s room. Mamie kept everything in there just the same as it had been when Daddy’d been growing up. I wasn’t even supposed to go inside, even though Daddy had told Mamie I could have his room ’cause it was bigger and he wasn’t hardly ever here. Mamie had told Daddy she’d think about it, but that was a lie. When I asked her when I’d be able to change rooms, she’d looked at me with those hateful eyes she gets and said, “Never.” Now I sneak in there and sleep at night sometimes, even though I never even wanted to before. What with Mamie’s bedroom being downstairs, she never even knew. I was always careful not to leave clues.

I opened the lunch box and pulled out the birthday cards from Lulu—one for every year except for when I turned six; that one must have got lost in the mail.

I laid on my back and read them, tracing my finger over the big, loopy
L
in
Love you
and the little
x
’s and
o
’s that were kisses and hugs sent through the mail. I spent some time thinking about Momma— Lulu recording her songs up in Nashville, getting famous. The memory of her was worn and fuzzy on the edges, since I hadn’t seen her since I was three. But I know I have the exact same color of red hair, so that’s the brightest spot in the picture I kept in my head.

Back when Momma and Daddy and me all lived together, I remember liking to twist her hair around my finger while she held me on her hip. I loved the way it felt soft and slippery, like the satin edge of my blanket. Momma didn’t like it though, ’cause she’d spent a long time getting it to look just right and I messed it up. I remember her and Daddy getting in a fight once when she smacked my hand away. It was all my fault, and I’d felt bad. When we all got to live together again, I’d be careful not to cause any fights. I put away the birthday cards and closed the lunch box. Then I just laid there for a spell, watching light dance with shadows and thinking about what I was gonna name my horse. By 10:32—I knew the time exactly ’cause Daddy had given me a really neat Timex with a black leather band for Christmas—it was already about a thousand degrees out. The brick street out front looked like it was wiggling from the heat. Dogs had already crawled under porches and into garages to get out of the hot sun. They would come out after sunset with cobwebs on their noses and dirt clinging to their coats like powdered sugar.

Wish I had a dog.
One like Lassie.
She’d follow me everywhere. I was thinking on how she coulda gone

to get help when I fell through the floor in the haunted house when I heard
clack-clack-chhhhhh, chhhhhhh, chhhhhhh, chhhhhh, clack-chhhhhh chhhhhh-clack.
I knew who was coming, wearing the metal, clamp-on skates she’d just got for her fifth birthday—Priscilla Panichelli. I called her Prissy Pants. She wore dresses with cancan slips and patent leather shoes every ding-dong day. She wasn’t even gonna have to work at changing into a lady when her time came.

I was kinda surprised she’d risk getting those shoes all scuffed; skating on our broken-up sidewalk was dangerous business—which accounted for the
clack
s. I bet her big brother, Frankie, who was in my grade and called her way worse things than Prissy Pants, had made it a dare.

I moved so I was behind the tree trunk and held real still, just in case. Besides dressing like a doll, Prissy Pants could be a real pain in the behind with her goody-two-shoes, tattletale ways.

Then I heard trouble. A bicycle was coming fast with a card clappin’ against the spokes. It meant only one thing: Jimmy Sellers, turd of the century. Jimmy was gonna be a hood, anybody could see that. But Mamie, and truth be told a lot of the other old people on our street, thought he was a “nice, polite Christian boy”’cause he was a real brownnoser, too.

Prissy Pants was like a lightning rod to Jimmy’s thunderbolt. She was just too shiny and clean to not try and mess up—even though it always seemed like an accident.

As I said, I had no warm place in my own heart for Prissy Pants, but Jimmy was twelve, almost a grown-up. Him picking on her was just . . . wrong.
I held my breath and hoped that bicycle would buzz right on by.
Chhhhhh-clack-clack.
Silence.
Prissy Pants must have seen Jimmy.
The card slapped the spokes just a little faster, and I thought trouble

would just keep rolling down the street. I moved around the trunk and peeked out just in time to see Jimmy’s bike jump the curb and head right for Priscilla.

She stood there in front of the LeCounts’ house like a possum staring at a Buick.
Jimmy pedaled faster.
I jumped out of my fort, too far away to do nothin’ but hold my breath.
At the very last second, he cut the handlebars and swerved around her. Priscilla jerked backward and fell flat on her flouncy heinie. One of her skates come loose from her shoe and hung from her ankle by the leather strap—she wouldn’t need that skate key hanging around her neck to get that one off.
She squealed, then started a real-tears cry, not her usual just-forthat-I’m-gonna-get-you-in-trouble cry.
Jimmy swooped in a circle and come back around. He stopped his bike and looked down at her. “Gosh, looks like you’d better practice some more with them skates.”
Prissy just cried louder and used her key to loosen her other skate.
I got what Daddy calls my “red rage.” I was hot and cold at the same time. My nose and ears and fingertips tingled and I couldn’t breathe.
I run down the block and grabbed his handlebars, jerking them to the side. Instead of making Jimmy fall down, he just let the bike go and stepped over it as it fell into the grass beside the walk.
“Go back to your tree, shitbird.” Jimmy shoved my shoulder.
“Shitbird!” I swung. His nose popped.
The blood hadn’t even touched his top lip when I heard Mamie yell, “Starla Jane Claudelle!”
Good-bye, fireworks.

2

i

’d had trouble sleeping because of the sticky heat and thinking on all I was gonna to miss: cherry snow cones and fried okra, winning the blue ribbon in the horseshoe throw (this woulda been my fourth year in a row as champion for the ten-and-under age group), penny candy falling like rain from the parade floats, fireworks and sparklers. It was enough to get my ears burnin’ all over again. Grounded on the Fourth of July, of all days. And Miss Prissy Pants hadn’t even stuck around to come in on my side of the story; did nothin’ but get up and bawl all the way home. And of course, Jimmy had been real convincing—I bet his nose didn’t even hurt that much.

Mamie had made me walk Jimmy’s bike home while he held one of our dish towels filled with ice on his nose and she fussed over him like he’d been crippled or something. She made me apologize to Mrs. Sellers (which she probably deserved ’cause she had such a horrible kid for a son) and to Jimmy (which had nearly made me barf ). The whole way back to our house I got the ladies-do-and-ladies-do-not lecture, which started and ended with how embarrassed she was by my “trashy, street-gutter” behavior and always had a bit about not saying
ain’t
. Hey, I didn’t even want to be a lady.

After stewin’ and sweatin’ all night, I was tired and extra grouchy Fourth of July morning. Guess it didn’t really matter; sass or not, I was still on restriction on the best day of the summer.

I walked into the kitchen, real quiet, hoping to avoid another lecture. Mamie sat at the table in her pink-and-white seersucker housecoat, her pink slippers, and a pink lace hairnet over her pink sponge curlers—I forgot to mention, Mamie liked pink best of all the colors and was real sad that my red hair kept her from buying me pink dresses. She was looking at the S&H Green Stamp catalog, drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette. Mamie loved that catalog enough to marry it. Our grocery even had double-stamp days; if we was out of bread and one of those days was in sight, we’d go breadless. Which is kinda funny, ’cause we got our toaster with Green Stamps.

Mamie looked up at me. I braced myself; if I got sassy now, who knew how long I’d be on restriction—probably till Labor Day. But she didn’t start yammering about me being a lady, or being an embarrassment to her and Daddy (even though Daddy wouldn’t even know to be embarrassed if Mamie didn’t keep telling him stuff ). She just nodded toward the fancy, new Norge refrigerator Daddy had bought for her. She’d been so proud of it that she’d made the whole bridge club come into the kitchen to look at it. A long list of chores was taped on the door. She must have been up all night thinking up stuff for me to do.

“That should keep you out of trouble today while I’m gone,” Mamie said in a way that said this wasn’t gonna be the end of my punishments.
I felt a hot prickle run over my skin—the red-rage prickle. I looked her right in the eye and said, “Maybe I’ll just run away from home. Then you won’t be embarrassed by me anymore—and you’ll have to do all this stuff yourself.” Like I said, I was grouchy.
I half-expected a slap, or at least another day stuck onto my grounding, but Mamie just blew out a stream of cigarette smoke and pushed herself up from the table and headed out of the kitchen. “I’ll go pack your bag.” Over her shoulder she said, “But remember, you can’t leave until next week, after your restriction is over.”
Gritting my teeth, I snatched the list off the refrigerator. It was worse than Cinderella’s.
I stomped back up to my room without breakfast. Milk would have soured right in my mouth.
While Mamie went to the Fourth Festival, I was Rapunzel in the tower. I crumpled the chore list and threw it into the corner of my bedroom. I sat on the floor in front of my window with my elbows on the sill and watched as the LeCounts loaded their station wagon with a picnic basket and lawn chairs and four of the five kids piled in. Ernestine, their colored maid, stood on the porch holding Teddy, the baby, raising his chubby arm for him to wave as the family pulled away. She was probably glad to see ’em go. I liked Ernestine fine, even if she was a grouch most of the time, nippin’ at me to not step on the flowers and to stay away from the cistern. I reckon she had cause to be grouchy. Them LeCount kids was the wildest and noisiest in town; and there just kept getting to be more of them all the time.
Our upstairs is hot as the hinges of Hades. Usually if I wanted to stay out of sight, I’d take to my fort. But today, I sat in my bedroom. I kinda hoped when Mamie got home late this afternoon, she’d find me passed out from heatstroke. Then she’d feel bad over ruining the one good day of the summer for me. Maybe I’d even have to be put in the hospital; that’d fix her.
I sat looking out the window and sweating for long enough that my hair started to stick to my forehead. Then I started to get ideas: What if I went to the parade? Mamie was at the park. I could go stand with the big crowd of kids on the corner near Adler’s Drug Store, where you had two chances at candy when the parade turned from Magnolia Street onto Beaumont Avenue. Mamie would never know. If I came back right after the parade, I could be home before her easy. I’d hurry through enough of the chores to keep her from being too mad. If I looked tired and pitiful enough, all sweaty and weak from hunger, maybe she’d let me go to see the fireworks. Bet she wanted to see them; and I ain’t allowed to stay home alone after dark.
This could work out fine. Course I’d miss getting my blue ribbon and the snow cones, but at least I’d have some of my Fourth of July.
But what if Prissy Pants or somebody from church saw me? Or worse, Mrs. Sellers, who knew I was grounded ’cause Mamie made a big deal of it in front of her.
Just then I heard Jimmy’s bike coming down the street, headed toward town. He had a big, white bandage across his nose. He looked up, saw me in the window, and gave me the finger. I didn’t know exactly what that meant, but I knew it was dirty.
Well, that was it. No way was I letting the turd of the century see the parade and ride back past here with his pockets full of candy while I melted into a big puddle of lady.
I slipped out the back door and down the alley, not that anyone was left in the neighborhood to tattle. Still, at each cross street, I looked careful before I stepped out in the open.
I waited behind the post office until a group of kids heading toward the parade passed by. I talked Drew Drover—he’d had a crush on me since second grade—out of his Ole Miss Rebels baseball cap and put it on over my red hair.
Ten minutes later I wiggled into the middle of the group of kids in front of Adler’s Drug. The color guard had just passed, and people were puttin’ their hats back on.The first float rolled by, the one with the Cotton Queen and her princesses, and a long line of floats and horses and marching bands was behind it. Candy flew like cottonwood seed.
I was a genius.

My luck held through the parade (thank you, baby Jesus). No tattletales saw me, and my pockets was bulging with candy. It’d be a whole lot easier to do my chores eating Pixy Stix and jawbreakers—after all, I hadn’t eaten breakfast.

All of the kids started to head toward the park. I hung back, wishing I could go, too. Even though it’d be several more hours before Mamie got home, the park was too dangerous. Not only was she there, but Drew had taken his cap back and there would be way too many church ladies around for Mamie not to get wind that I wasn’t home doing chores like I was supposed to be.

“Starla!”

I quick ducked behind the light post. I was tall and skinny, but not skinny enough to hide behind a light post. I was caught.
I peeked around the post and saw Patti Lynn Todd, my best friend in all the world, running toward me. Patti Lynn had a real family with a sister and three brothers and lived in a big house on Magnolia Street. She even had a dog.
“I been lookin’ all over for you,” Patti Lynn said, tugging my hand. “Come on, you’re gonna to be late signin’ up for the games.”
“Can’t. I’m grounded.”
“’Cause you broke Jimmy Sellers’s nose?” Patti Lynn knew me well enough not to ask why I was at the parade if I was grounded.
“How’d you know?”
“Everybody knows. Prissy Pants’ brother told. Jimmy’s still trying to get everyone to believe that it was Rodney Evans who done it.”
I laughed. Nobody’d believe that story. Rodney Evans was the biggest hood in town, wore a ducktail and rolled-up sleeves on his T-shirt. He walked the streets in his black boots with metal taps on the heels just looking for trouble. And he usually found it. If he’d lit into Jimmy, Jimmy would have had lots worse than a broken nose.
“I’m on restriction for a whole week.”
Patti Lynn smiled. “It was worth it. Maybe Jimmy’s nose’ll heal all crooked.” She linked her arm through mine. “Come on. I’ll hang out with you for a while.”
“You’ll miss all the games and whatnot.”
She shrugged. “Don’t care. It’s no fun without you.”
We headed to the school playground, inventing crazy stories that Jimmy would probably try to get people to believe to hide the truth that he’d been beaten by a girl.
Patti Lynn was the best best friend ever made.
Twenty minutes later, Patti Lynn and I was making daisy chains out of clover blossoms, so I didn’t notice the pink-and-white Packard pull up until I heard the car door slam. Mrs. Sellers, for who knows what reason, had showed up at the playground.
Wish Mamie could see her, out here for all the world to see in redcheckered shorts—Mamie could give her the ladies-do-and-ladies-donot lecture.
Mrs. Sellers come flying across the pea gravel fast enough that it was shootin’ out from beneath her Keds. I guess I forgot to mention that yesterday I’d discovered she was real prickly when it came to her “little boy.”
“Starla Claudelle! Your grandmomma know you’re here?” By then she was on me, diggin’ her fingers into my arm and gritting her nice white teeth at me. All the sudden, I was sorry I’d ever felt sorry for her; she looked like a witch hiding under perfume and powder. I shoulda known a person with a son like Jimmy couldn’t be too good herself.
I looked right up at her with my defiant face. “Yes, ma’am. She knows.”
“Well, we’ll just go and see about that.” She pulled me toward her car so fast I couldn’t do nothing but run along beside her.
“Bye, Starla,” Patti Lynn called. “See you later.”
Fat chance. I was never gonna get off restriction.
As Mrs. Sellers yanked open the passenger door, she said, “Your grandmomma is right, you’re no-good, cheap trash, just like your momma.”
My ears started ringing. My face got hot and prickly. “When did she say that?” Sometimes I think she hates being my mamie—once she told me it was a shame I’d even been born, so I guess she does.
Mrs. Sellers looked at me with a wrinkled forehead. “What? Well . . . every time I see her, poor woman. Now get in the car.” She tried to shove me in, but I dug in.
“My momma is gonna be famous. And your son is a mean son of a bitch!” It was the worst thing I’d ever overheard my daddy call anyone; so I figured it fit Jimmy Sellers just right. I yanked my arm free.
She made to grab me again, her face looking for all the world like Jimmy’s when he was gonna beat the living daylights out of someone. I gave her a shove. She fell backwards squealin’ like a stuck pig, landing in the dirt.
I ran like the devil hisself was on me.
“You come back here!”The screaming made words. “You’re going to reform school for sure!”
I’d done it now. I was a goner.
I ran until my lungs burned like they was filled with hot rocks. Then I walked. That’s when it was hardest not to cry—when I slowed down. Mamie said I was gonna end up in jail someday, said she’d be happy if they throwed away the key. So I knew she’d be happy to turn me in if I went back home. I wasn’t sure what I was gonna do, but going back wasn’t on my list. I was too worked up inside to think clear and make a plan, so I just kept going and hoped something came to me.
I’d already passed the lumber mill and the city dump. I’d turned at every crossroad I’d come to, figuring a straight line was easier for the police to follow. Still, I kept my ears peeled for the sound of the sheriff ’s siren. I wondered how long I’d have to go to prison if they caught me. I’d seen it on
Perry Mason
you could get fifteen years for assault with batteries . . . which was lawyer talk for beating someone up.
Feeling as low as skunk’s toes, I wondered if I should maybe head for Nashville. Lulu was probably my only hope; she’d hide me. Daddy would just haul me back to Cayuga Springs ’cause he was all about accepting your just desserts. Besides, it’d break his heart to see his little girl go to prison. Mamie would probably do a dance when she figured out I wasn’t never coming back to be an embarrassment to her ever again.
Trouble was, I didn’t know how to get to Nashville, or even what direction I was headed exactly. I always went by rights and lefts, gas stations and flagpoles, not easts and wests; which was another disappointment to Mamie. I just couldn’t get those directions to stick in my head unless I was standing on my own front porch, facing the street.
I tried to think about which way my house would be facing by taking my mind backwards to town, but I lost track of the turns and was no better off than before.
The sun wasn’t any help neither, sitting up there high in the sky.
Maybe I could hitchhike. Somebody old enough to drive would surely know east from west. I’d have to be careful and not to hitch a ride with anyone from Cayuga Springs though.
That’s when I realized I hadn’t seen a single car on the road since I’d passed the lumber mill. Everybody was picnicking, playing games and swimming, not driving from place to place.
I walked along, sun beatin’ down on my head between the shady spots, getting thirstier and thirstier. The sweat stung my eyes and my feet was swollen like melons inside my shoes. I closed my eyes and for a minute I could see my crumpled body beside the road with buzzards picking at my red hair and eyeballs.
That thought made me determined not to die, no matter how happy it might make Mamie and Mrs. Sellers. So I got my mind busy on something other than my misery.
I thought about the last time I saw my momma. Mamie said I was too young to remember, but she was wrong, wrong, wrong. I remember the way the sun sparked on her red hair—it was in a ponytail. I remember she picked me up and twirled me around before she put me in the car to go to Mamie’s. Momma had been wearing a round skirt that spun out like a top. I remember she sang with the radio all the way there. I remember the way she smelled when she hugged me good-bye, like oranges and maple syrup . . . she’d made us pancakes for breakfast.
I hadn’t eaten a pancake since.
I wondered if, when I saw her in Nashville, her hair would still be in a ponytail. Mamie kept my hair cut in a pageboy (she did the cutting herself, so my bangs were almost always whopper-jawed). She said nobody wanted to see that much red hair, especially if it’s a rat’s nest, which it most always was ’cause, when Mamie brushed it, she pulled so hard my scalp felt like it was being cut with a million little knives dipped in vinegar. When I got to be a teenager, I was gonna wear a ponytail and tie it with scarves that matched my clothes, just like Momma had.
Everybody in Cayuga Springs treated my momma like a secret. But it seemed like I was the only person they wanted to keep the secret from. Sometimes when Mamie had bridge club in the summer, I’d sit below the living-room window outside and listen. The ladies had plenty to say about Momma, all right. Hateful things. Lies. They squeezed them in between their bids and trumps, like it was part of the game. That was when I’d get a good red rage going and head into the house to tell them all to shut up—course I’d be punished, but it would be worth it. But so far, I’d never once got to say it. The second they heard the squeak of the screen door they got quiet all by themselves. It saved me being punished, but just one time I wished I’d been able to tell them how un-Christian-like they were.
Even Patti Lynn’s mother talked about Momma on the telephone when she thought I couldn’t hear: “Oh, you know, the little girl whose mother abandoned her. . . . Yes, the one who thinks she’s going to be a singer in Nashville. Can you imagine? I feel just terrible for that child.”
At school, my teachers and Principal Morris was extracareful never to mention my momma. It made me feel like I’d been hatched from an egg or something on Mamie’s front porch.
I used to ask Daddy about Momma, about things she liked, what was her favorite color, did she hate spaghetti sauce and chicken livers like I did? He used to answer me. Then he got so he just said, “Starla, I already told you a million times. I’m sure it’s in your head somewhere, look for it.” He didn’t get mad exactly. But it always made him leave the room, so I stopped asking.
Momma was even getting to be a secret with Daddy; course she’d always been a secret with Mamie.
Secrets. Secrets. Secrets. They made me feel ashamed of loving my own momma; made me do it in secret.
Well, once I got to Nashville, I’d be able to love her right out loud.
I marched on, holding that thought close. Just when I thought I couldn’t take another step in the heat, I heard a rattle and chug coming up behind me. I almost jumped into the ditch to hide until I was sure it wasn’t somebody who’d take me back to Cayuga Springs, but was quick to change my mind. Reform school seemed better than being buzzard food.
I turned around and waited. I didn’t recognize the truck. It was one of those real old ones with big fenders scooping over the front tires and a windshield in two separate pieces. It had shed most all of its paint, with a robin-egg-blue splotch the size of a dinner plate on a hood the color of an old scab.
The gears ground and the truck slowed as it passed me. A skinny colored woman peered out through the windshield. I didn’t recognize her, but even if she knew me, being colored she couldn’t make me go back if I didn’t want to. But I reckon she could tattle.
She coasted by, then stopped a few feet ahead of me.
Pretty sure I was in the clear ’cause she was colored and I didn’t know her, I went right up and stood on the running board of the passenger side. I held on to the wing vent and looked through the open window.
The colored woman smiled. I could tell she was nice.
“What you doin’ out here all alone, child?” she asked in a voice that sounded like a lullaby.
“Goin’ to Nashville.”
She shook her head and pressed her lips together. “Nashville. Now that’s a long, long way.” For a minute, she looked like she was making up her mind if I was telling the truth.
Maybe I’d made a mistake. Maybe I should just take out for the woods. Too bad I was more scared of being ate than I was of the law right now. I stuck.
Finally, she nodded. “You look like you’s about to fall to the heat.” She picked up a mason jar off the seat. “Here.” She handed it to me.
I was horrible thirsty, but I didn’t take it; Mamie had made it clear: no matter even if we’re about to expire from thirstiness, we don’t drink after negras. That’s why there was signs on the water fountains everywhere, so we’d know where we was supposed to drink.
The woman shook the jar a little and the water shot through with thirst-quenching sparkles. “It fine. Been washed and I ain’t opened it since the water went in.”
My tongue felt like a wadded-up sock in my mouth. I’d already broken enough rules I could never repent enough to save me. If I was going to h-e-double-hockey-sticks, I wasn’t gonna go thirsty.
I reached out and took the jar. It didn’t leave my lips until it was empty.
“Obliged.” I wiped a dribble from my chin with the back of my wrist and handed the jar back through the window.
“You momma know where you are?”
“That’s why I’m headed to Nashville. That’s where my momma is.” Hellfire or not, it was best to keep my lies as close to the truth as possible.
“Who ’posed to be takin’ care of you?” Her brows scrunched over her eyes, just like Mamie’s when she was unhappy about something but couldn’t say right out.
Panic licked at my belly. If I told anything near the truth, this woman would tattle for sure—coloreds feared the law lots more than they did a redheaded white girl.
So I loaded a lie.“Nobody but my momma. She’s expectin’me.”Then I realized the woman probably wouldn’t believe any momma would let her little girl hitchhike, so I dug deep for another. “I . . . I . . . gave my bus ticket to an old woman with a sick grandkid and no money. He was almost dead, so she needed it real bad. I can hitchhike there just fine.” I tilted my head and squinted, hurrying past the lies. “You headed that way?”
That’s when I heard something like a little hiccup and looked down at the floorboard of the passenger side. A baby . . . a red-faced, wrinkly white baby . . . wrapped tight in what looked like a pillowcase with crocheted lace on the edge and embroidered flowers, was inside an oval bulrush basket barely big enough to hold his tiny self.
I looked back up at the woman.
She smiled again. “That there’s baby James. And I’m Eula.”
“I’m Starla.”
“Never heard that name afore. Starla,” she said, slow and soft, then nodded. “Nice.”
“You don’t think it’s trashy?”
Her brow wrinkled like I’d said something crazy. “Sounds like a nighttime winter sky . . . you know, when the air is sharp and the stars so bright they look like little pinpricks to heaven.”
Nobody had ever made my name sound so beautiful. “That’s what my momma thinks, too.” My throat felt tight just thinking it might be so.
Baby James made more noises that sounded somewhere between a little squeak and a purr.
I cocked my head looking between him and Eula. “You the maid, then?” Plenty of babies were toted around by their colored maids, especially today with parents busy with older children at the Fourth of July Festival.
“Hmmm.” She reached over and flipped the latch on the passenger door. A tiny gold cross sparkled at her throat; she was a good Christian woman. “I can give you a ride, if ’n you want.”
“All the way to Nashville?” I asked, wondering how far I had yet to go.