Whistling Past the Graveyard (26 page)

29

t

he house was creepy quiet, the way it always was when Mamie was brewin’ a storm. Usually I just went up to my room and stayed out of her way, but I didn’t have to. Mamie had gone to her room—off the living room where it wasn’t so danged hot—and slammed the door. I don’t know what Daddy had said to her after I’d come inside, but when she’d come in, her face was red and her lips pinched tight. She didn’t even look at me or Eula when she’d walked into the kitchen to snatch up her cigarettes and matches.

By the time Daddy come in, it was getting dark enough outside that Eula that had turned on the kitchen light. He went straight to the cabinet and pulled out three bowls and a box of Frosted Flakes—they was Daddy’s favorite, too. “This’ll get us by.” He got the milk bottle out of the refrigerator. “I want you to eat and go to bed,” he said to me.

“I ain’t goin’ to bed. Eula needs me when the sheriff comes.” “I think we’ve all had enough today. Tomorrow’ll be soon enough for the sheriff.” He looked to Eula. “You need anything special for the baby?”
“Need to mix up more formula is all.”
“What do you need?” he asked.
I said, “Canned milk, water, and Karo syrup.” My tongue was numb from the ice and
syrup
was
thyrup
. “We used reg’lar milk at Eula’s house, but she says canned is better.”
Daddy looked at me kinda surprised.
“I learned a lot while I was gone.”
“I reckon you did.” He opened the cabinet and shuffled some things around. He pulled out a can of Pet evaporated milk and held it up. “This?”
I beat Eula to telling him it was. Before I met baby James, I just thought canned milk was used in Mamie’s coffee and fancy desserts— the ones only bridge club got.
“There’s only one can.” He looked a little worried. “Will that be enough for tonight?”
“He’s just born and only takes a little dab at a time, Daddy.” I laughed at his silliness. Eula had stopped even trying to beat me at an answer.
He looked at me like he did sometimes when he’d been gone for a long time and I’d grown a lot. Then he pulled out the Karo bottle from the cabinet and set it on the counter next to the milk.
I started to get up and mix it, but Daddy told me to sit down and eat, then I was supposed to take a bath and go to bed.
“I had a bath last night.”
He frowned at me.
“Okay. Okay.” Then I asked, “Where’s Eula sleepin’?”
“She and the baby can have my room. I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“Mamie won’t like it,” I said, my stomach getting tight.
When he looked at me, he had a funny expression on his face, like he didn’t really care what Mamie thought. I considered that for a minute. Daddy never did stuff to make Mamie mad. Truth be told, Mamie always thought whatever Daddy did was just fine and dandy, so maybe it was Mamie who was actin’ strange. Everything was upside down.

I knew there was no way to not take a bath and get away with it—I’d tried plenty of times. So I hurried as fast as I could, not even waiting for hot water, or doing more soapin’than rubbing my chest with the bar of Lux so I could pass the sniff test. After I put on my pj’s, I went to the vent that let the heat from the kitchen into the upstairs hall. It was closed in the summer, but the lever to open it was on my side. I moved it real slow and careful. I could see Daddy sitting at the table.

He was holding James while Eula was at the counter mixing formula. James looked really little in Daddy’s arms, hardly big enough to be a baby at all. Daddy was looking at him. “Wish I could start over with Starla. I did everything wrong. All of it.”

Eula stopped stirring and turned around. She didn’t say anything, just waited.
He looked at Eula. “How bad was it for her . . . with Lucinda?”
I saw Eula’s shoulders move, like she’d breathed a big breath. “Bad.” She waited for a second, then said, “She broke that child’s heart.”
I laid my cheek against the wood floor. I didn’t want to hear about Lulu or Nashville ever again. Some tears got loose. I let them roll off my cheeks and nose, making a wet place on the floor.
I was just thinking about getting up and going to my room before I had to sniffle when Daddy said, “How can I fix this?” I’d never heard him sound so small.
Eula stood there, quiet as a tree stump.
Daddy looked at her.
“It ain’t my place to speak out,” Eula said, and she turned to the counter again.
“Well, I sure as hell can’t ask my mother! I had no idea she was so . . . rough. She was never that way with me.” Daddy swiped his free hand across his face. “Starla respects you, your kindness. You must be doing something right. Help me. Please.”
For a long while Eula just stood there stirring.Then she sighed loud enough I could hear clear up where I was.
I held my breath, wondering what she’d say . . . if she say anything.
Finally she said, “A child only want one thing; her momma and daddy’s love. It don’t take more’n that.”
“I do love her!”
“Mebbe that so. But I ain’t sure she knows it, not down in her bones where it count. Her momma, and what I see of her granny—” Eula cut off sharp, like she was afraid she’d said too much. After spending so much time with her, learning about her life, I understood why. But Daddy wasn’t like most. He wouldn’t get mad at her for answering his question.
His head bowed and he shook it slow. “I know . . . I know. I shoulda known before now.”
Eula stood like she was getting some starch. “You know now. The question is, what you gonna do about it?”
I’d never seen my daddy cry, but I think maybe that’s what he was doing right then.

I woke up in the middle of the night. I was hot and thirsty and my insides was busier than usual. I went to the bathroom and got a drink of water. On the way back to my room, I flipped open the register in the floor to check and see if Eula was down there feeding James. The kitchen was dark. I stopped at the door to Daddy’s room. It was quiet. James was letting Eula sleep. I put my hand on the doorknob.

It wasn’t right to wake her up. I shouldn’t, I couldn’t.
I’d just peek in, make sure she was all right. I opened the door slow and quiet, just enough for me to get my head around the edge. The moon come silver and bright through the window. I saw one of the drawers from Daddy’s dresser was on the floor next to the bed. I reckoned James was inside. Eula was under the sheet, still and quiet. I was some disappointed. Temptation tickled me and I almost made a little noise to see if she roused up. I don’t know why I was feeling the need to hear her voice. It was shameful selfish of me. Tomorrow was gonna be an awful day with the sheriff coming, and she needed sleep.
I pulled the door closed.
“Starla?” she whispered. “That you, child?”
I pushed the door back open. “Yeah.”
“Can’t sleep?”
“Uh-uh.”
She patted the mattress. “Come on over here. Watch now, James on the floor.”
“I see him.” I tiptoed to the bed and laid down next to her. My insides felt less jittery right away.
Eula petted my hair. Each stroke of her hand smoothed out more jitters.
“What’s botherin’ you?” she asked.
“Everything.”
“Can’t be everything. You with your daddy. That good. You gonna see you friend Patti Lynn real soon. That good, too.”
“Yeah.”
“So it’s somethin’ else.”
I reckoned it was. I hadn’t been able to say exactly what had my insides so worked up, but all of the sudden it was clear as day. And Eula was the only person I wanted to talk to about it. “I been wonderin’ . . . what if . . . what if Mamie’s right?”
Eula made a sound like she didn’t think Mamie could be right about anything. But she said, real nice, “’Bout what?” I reckon she’d had a lot of practice saying nice things when they wasn’t what she was thinking at all.
“’Bout me turnin’ into Lulu.”There, it was out. My heart felt a little lighter, but still bounced around like a moth in my chest.
“You ain’t like her.” Eula sounded like she meant it—not shy or oversweet like she was just being nice.
“But her hair was colored. It’s really red, like mine. And she run off . . . so did I. And Mamie said Lulu always leaped before she looked, just like me.”
“You just a child and got some growin’ up to do is all. I see you learnin’ every day ’bout how to think things through. You ain’t like your momma on the inside, not one little bit. Never will be. People is born one way or t’other. Life change a body some, but their nature stay the same. They might can hide for a time, but they don’t change in their soul where it count. You kind and generous and protect the people you love. I bet your momma was never any of those.”
I thought for a minute. “But you said Wallace wasn’t always how I saw him. You said he changed.”
She breathed deep and I felt her shift a little. “I said it. I did. But I was wrong. It’s like Miss Cyrena say, I just didn’t see him clear. I thought the fights he got into before we was married was ’cause he was protectin’ me. I thought he wanted to know where I was ev’ry minute and who I was talkin’ to was ’cause of love. I’d never had nobody fight to keep me safe, so I believed it. Law, I was wrong about a lot of things. I see only what I wanted to in that man. Maybe I just wanted to get away from Pap and Charles so bad. Maybe that what clouded my eyes. But since you come, since my time with Miss Cyrena, I’m thinkin’more clear every day. I remember it all, even what I don’t want to.”
After being with Wallace just two days, I didn’t know how anybody couldn’t see him clear.
Eula went on, her voice soft and slow, smoothing the uneasy prickles on my insides more and more. “The memories you got of your momma prob’ly a lot the same. You was just a baby. You see other mommas and think that’s how yours was, too.”
I thought about Lulu, the real Lulu, not the one I thought I was gonna find. I thought about when we was standing in front of Tootsies, when that tightness in her mouth hit me as familiar, and not good familiar. Could Eula be right? Had I made up all of the good things in my head? Had Momma always been made of sharp spikes and bristles?
How had Daddy ever loved her?
We got quiet and I kept pokin’ around in my soul to make sure I knew what was in there.
Baby James started making those little noises he always made before he woke up. I knew me and Eula only had a minute.
“Who do you think his momma is?” I wondered if she was a spiky, bristly woman like Lulu. If she was, baby James was sure better off with us.
Eula sighed. “Reckon we might never know. Or we could know tomorrow.”
“What will happen to him if they can’t find out who she is?” I didn’t want him to be an orphan like the boy in the book Mrs. Jacobi read us last year, Huck Finn. After the past few weeks, I knew for sure a kid can’t just float down a river and have adventures that all turn out good.
“Then they find some new parents for him. Folks who really want a baby. A place where he’ll be treated special.”
“You sure?”
“It’s what we gotta believe, child. What we gotta believe.”
Before I fell asleep next to Eula, I spent some time praying to baby Jesus to please give James a nice family that would take real good care of him, especially if he had to go back to the woman who throwed him away.

30

d

addy made me and Eula stay upstairs while he talked to the sheriff. I’d been trying to listen at the hall register—even after Eula scolded me for eavesdropping. But the men was in the living room and I couldn’t make anything out. When I didn’t hear Mamie’s voice at all, I went and looked out the window. Her station wagon was gone. I hoped she’d never come back.

Me and Eula was too nervous to talk, so we’d just been sitting quiet, worry chewin’ our insides. When Daddy finally called us down, we looked at each other. She nodded at me and then picked up James. I took her hand and we left Daddy’s bedroom. We walked slow, acting like we was marchin’ to our death—which is what Mamie said when I was being poky about something I didn’t want to do. When we got to the bottom of the stairs, Daddy was there. He smiled at Eula. I couldn’t figure out if the smile said things was okay, or that he was sorry they wasn’t. The four of us went into the living room.

Sheriff Reese picked his hat off his knee, stood up, and hitched his gun belt.
I stopped cold.
Daddy put his hand on my shoulder and nudged me forward. “It’s okay.”
The sheriff nodded to Eula, then waved his hand to tell us to sit on the couch.
He started off by looking down at me with squinty eyes. “You do know how much trouble you caused by running off, don’t you? I had every deputy doing overtime. The state police got involved. Not to mention the hours and hours the townsfolk dedicated to lookin’ for you. Then there’s your grandma and daddy’s worry. Your actions affected a lot of people.”
Butterflies filled my stomach. My mouth and throat was so dry I couldn’t hardly make a sound. “I didn’t think—”
“I can’t hear you. Speak up, now.”
I cleared my throat. “I . . . I didn’t think anybody would care I was gone.”
Daddy sucked in air like he’d been hit in the stomach. “Starla . . .”
“Not you, Daddy. I was gonna get to Momma and then she’d call you and you could come to Nashville. We’d . . .” I stopped talking. I sounded like a stupid little kid.
Sheriff Reese crossed his arms. “Now you know. This is a small town. What happens here spreads wide ripples.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You were very, very lucky,” he said. “Things could have turned out much differently. Do you understand what I mean?”
When I closed my eyes, my breath disappeared and I felt Wallace holding me underwater. My eyes snapped open and I gasped a breath. “I do, sir. I most surely do.” Then I put in, “I was lucky to have Eula protectin’ me.”
He stared down at me for a long while, making me real uncomfortable. Then he said, “And do you think she’s lucky to have you?”
I started to say yes, me and Eula had a gift together. But all the sudden it didn’t seem like a fair trade for having to kill her husband with a skillet—no matter how bad a man he was—and travel to Nashville in a broke-down truck, and all the troubles along the way. I shook my head and stayed quiet.
“Mrs. Littleton,” he said, looking at Eula.
I sat there, not hearing anything for a second. I couldn’t believe that after all we’d been through, I didn’t know Eula’s last name. Littleton. Eula Littleton.
When my hearing turned back on, Sheriff Reese was explaining that he’d already sent a deputy, Daddy’s friend Don, and the coroner—from listening close I figured that was somebody who picks up the dead people—out to Eula’s place, and the sheriff should be hearing from him shortly. I didn’t know what the sheriff needed to hear from Deputy Don about; we all knowed Wallace was dead. Then I wondered how fresh the springhouse had kept him, but didn’t think I’d be asking.
Eula’s throat worked hard to swallow. Her eyes stayed on the floor in front of her feet.
“Mrs. Littleton, I know this is hard, but I need to you tell me exactly what happened.”
Eula’s nervousness buzzed against my skin. I said, “He was tryin’ to kill me! She had to hit him with a skillet to get him to stop.”
It was hard to tell what the sheriff was thinking; his eyes seemed a little sorry for me, but his mouth was perturbed. “I have to hear it from Mrs. Littleton. Maybe you’d like to go upstairs and wait.” It wasn’t a question.
I scooted toward Eula till our hips and legs was touching. “I’m fine here, sir.”
The sheriff looked at Daddy.
“It happened to
me,
” I said. “It ain’t like I don’t know about it already.” It felt good to be able to fight for something after feeling so low about being a bother.
Daddy said, “She can stay.” He sat down next to me. We was three birds on a wire now. I didn’t want the sheriff to shoot Eula off of it.
She tucked baby James next to her, snug between her leg and the arm of the couch.Then she wiped her hands on her skirt. I reached over and took one. I saw the sheriff look at our hands with a sour face. It made me want to take her other hand, too.
Eula let out a breath and told the whole story, right from the pie delivering that put her where she saw James dropped at that church.
I jumped up and stood in front of the sheriff, my hands in fists. “But Wallace took him!” I looked at the sheriff. “He did!”
Eula reached out and took one of my fists and pried it open until she could hold it. “We got to tell the truth—all of it. How a body to tell what comes out your mouth true or not if you don’t always speak true?”
“But—” My throat closed up.
She pulled me next to her on the couch and told the rest of the story, just like it happened. When she got done, my face was wet and so was hers.
The sheriff looked at me then. “You agree? This how it happened?”
“Yes, sir. If she hadn’t saved me—”
The sheriff said, “I understand.”
“She was only tryin’ to help both me and James.”
“All right. That’ll do.” He didn’t say it mean, but he meant business.
I pinched my lips together.
He asked Eula about the exact time she saw the baby—he never called him James—being left at the church and to describe the young Negro who’d left him. When she told that the girl had a little limp on the left side, my eyes near popped outta my head.
“That’s Gracie!” I said, leapin’ before I looked again.
“Gracie?” the sheriff asked.
I rolled my lips in. If Gracie left James at the church, she’d know who his momma was. I didn’t want to get her in trouble. And I wasn’t sure I wanted James to go back to his momma either.
“Starla,” Daddy said, “you need to tell us.”
I closed my eyes. My ears was ringin’ and I felt kinda dizzy.
“Starla.”
I opened my eyes. I could see Eula was scared, too—not for Gracie but for James. She said, “Secrets ain’t gonna help James.”
“She’s Bess’s girl. Bess works for Patti Lynn’s family. Sometimes Gracie comes to work with Bess. And sometimes she works sweepin’ porches for other folks.”
“What other folks?” the sheriff asked, getting a little notebook out of his shirt pocket.
I shrugged. “Dunno.”
The sheriff put away the notebook without writing in it and stood up.
I jumped up and put myself between him and Eula. “You can’t arrest her!”
“You’re a little spitfire, aren’t you?” Then he looked at Daddy. “You got yourself a handful here.”
“Starla,” Daddy said, “the sheriff ’s just doing his job.”
I kept staring Sheriff Reese right in the eye. My breath was coming fast, like I’d been running.
Daddy asked, “Can Eula stay here? I’ll take responsibility.”
Sheriff Reese put his hands on his hips and pursed his lips. “Well, she came back here on her own, told the truth—even though your girl didn’t want her to. I suppose I can trust her not to run off before we get things sorted out.”
I sat back down on the couch next to Eula, feeling like the muscles had gone out of my legs. Daddy walked with the sheriff to the front door. When he followed him outside, I got curious. Eula tried to stop me, but I sneaked up to the side of the front door and listened through the screen.
The sheriff was talking. “.  .  . talk to that girl. I’ll send someone around from Child Welfare to collect the baby.”
They can’t just take him!
“What good will it do to send him off to some institution for a few hours?” Daddy asked. “You’re likely to find his mother yet today.”
“Got rules. It’s outta my hands. Besides, if we do find the mother, I doubt the court will let the baby go back to her right away. Might not be fit.” He paused like he was thinking. “I won’t be to my office to call Welfare until after I’ve talked to this Gracie.That’ll give you some time to get the womenfolk prepared. It’s the best I can do.”
Daddy must have nodded. Then he asked about the possibility of murder charges being made against Eula. The words turned me inside out. I think my heart stopped beating while I waited for the sheriff ’s answer.
“Can’t say. Lots of factors to consider. Coroner’s report. Investigation of the scene. Defense of a white girl. If it was a colored man done the killin’, folks’d be scared of being murdered in their beds and I’d have trouble even getting an investigation done before people’d be pushing for maximum punishment of the law . . . or worse.”
This made my mood swing two ways at once. It made it sound like my being white was what made me worth saving. And what did he mean, or worse? What would people do that could be worse than getting Eula arrested? Before I knew it, the sheriff ’s feet was going down the steps. I hurried back and sat next to Eula.
Daddy came back and stood in front of us. He told us about Child Welfare and how James was gonna have to go stay with them until things with his mother got straightened out. He put a hand on Eula’s shoulder. “They’ll probably be here by late morning or early afternoon.”
Eula looked particular sad, but she nodded and picked James up. “Best make sure he’s clean and fed then.”
When she climbed up the stairs, she moved slow, like she was tired, like the fight of keeping me and James safe was all she’d had and now it was gone.
I felt more helpless than when Wallace was tryin’ to drown me.