Gone Crazy in Alabama (14 page)

Caleb was the first to bound up the steps and out into the light when Mr. Lucas undid the iron bar and together we heaved the root cellar doors open. The sky looked as if it hadn't blackened in the first place. Blue. Pretty. We hadn't even spent fifteen minutes down in the cellar. People say “unreal” as an expression, but this was truly unreal. For all the banging, crashing, and whomping we heard while we were down below, the sky had the nerve to be a beautiful shade of blue.

We stepped out from the dark into what was now an altogether different place. No one could speak. I turned around and around in disbelief. In less than fifteen minutes everything except the house had been turned upside down. Smashed eggs. Straw and feed everywhere. No
henhouse. Just planks and splinters. No chicken run. Just swept away. Caleb's house was knocked over on its side but it was still one whole house. One of the metal poles for the clothesline leaned while the other had been uprooted and thrown. The clothesline itself, with white sheets still pinned to it, was nowhere to be seen. The cradling branches of my pecan tree had been snapped clean off but the tree still stood. The telephone poles stood firm, but the pines, both narrow and thick, had fallen, like soldiers in ugly army green had been shot up in the road. Just unreal.

“Thank you, Jesus!” Big Ma shouted in spite of the horrific unreal every which way we looked. “House is still standing.”

“Only one window broken but not a shingle loose,” Ma Charles said. “Thank you, Jesus!”

“Good storm windows,” Mr. Lucas said. It was how he said it that I knew he was responsible for those storm windows.

And then we turned to Mr. Lucas's house. The pillar posts on both sides had snapped in two and the roof had caved in. A pine tree had fallen through the roof. Unreal.

“Son, oh son, oh son,” Ma Charles said, her voice wobbly with true sorrow.

“Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.” Big Ma took and squeezed Mr. Lucas's hand.

Mr. Lucas said, “Let's keep on praising Him. I've seen worse.” As if they were standing before a miracle, my
great-grandmother, my grandmother, and Mr. Lucas continued praising the Lord like they were in church. But we weren't in church. We were standing in the unreal. Topsy-turvy, broken, and scattered.

How could they praise Him? How could they thank Him? As sure as I stood and saw it all, the busted henhouse and smashed eggs, the split-up pecan tree, its parts blown away, Mr. Lucas's house half standing and half fallen, hundred-year-old pine trees snapped like twigs, I knew what that tornado could do to my little sister on a bicycle. I knew she had no chance out there.

Fern went running into the house and I went after her. She shouted, “VONETTA! VONETTA!” expecting Vonetta to appear from underneath the bed with her hands on her narrow hips. She called into each room, “Vonetta! Vonetta!” like she didn't want it to be true about Vonetta. That she was gone. Gone for good.

I caught her. Then I said it. “She's gone, Fern.”

“Where?”

“Out there. In the tornado.”

“I want Vonetta!” she screamed at me.

“We all want her.”

“You don't.”

“I do.”

“No, you don't. You're mean to Vonetta. You pick on her.”

“Because she picks on you.”

“Because you pick on her!” she shouted at me. “Stop being mean, Delphine. Stop being so mean and bossy.”

Fern didn't know what she was saying. I understood that. She was upset. That storm shook us all and we were missing Vonetta. I couldn't be mad at her for what she said. We were all in shock and sick about Vonetta.

I reached out to shoulder-hug her but she pushed against me and out of my arms and ran to Ma Charles.

Mr. Lucas had Big Ma turn the lights and water on and off. On and off. Then she picked up the phone for an outside line.

“Call over to Miss Trotter,” he said. “See if she's there.”

I said, “The bicycle tracks ran—”

“I know, Delphine,” he said. “But let's check first and see if they're all right.”

Big Ma held up the phone's receiver to me and I took it.

I dialed Miss Trotter's number, both hoping but also knowing not to hope. I had seen the tire tracks leading to the road before the wind came and scattered the last trace of Vonetta. I knew she was on her way to town for a bottle of milk.

“Is it ringing?” Ma Charles asked. “Lord, let there be ringing.” And they started praying and praising the Lord for a phone line. But the line rang funny. Different.

“I don't think their phone works,” I said.

“I'll go over there to check on them,” Mr. Lucas said.

“You'll go to town to see about Vonetta,” Ma Charles
said. “Darnell will go across the creek to see about the Trotters.”

“I can go,” I said.

“You'll go nowhere,” Big Ma said. “Dangerous as it is.”

“Your grandmother's right,” Mr. Lucas said. “Timber can fall any which way, and who knows if the wooden crossing's steady or standing.” He looked to Big Ma and said, “I'll go on toward town on foot.”

“Just bring her back,” Big Ma told him.

“I'm going to try,” he said.

“Bring her back,” she said again. “Bring her back, Elijah. I can't rest until she comes through that door. My heart, Elijah. My heart's beating so. I can't rest till she's home.”

“Darnell will be here soon,” Mr. Lucas said.

I couldn't stay there inside and followed after Mr. Lucas. “I'll go with you,” I said.

“No, Delphine. Stay here with your grandmothers and your sister. I need you to start piling that henhouse wood. Gather up what straw you can. Rake the yard for nails. Glass, too. Can't let the chickens up out of the cellar until the ground's safe. When you're done here, I'll need you to help me clear my yard.”

I didn't want to do any of those things but “Yes, sir,” fell out of my mouth nice and easy.

Big Ma shouted to Mr. Lucas to be careful. He waved to her and was on his way.

“Daughter, call your father.”

I was the only one in the kitchen with Ma Charles but I couldn't believe she meant me. That I had to be the one to make the phone call. Even though Big Ma said she couldn't rest, she was lying down in the other room. It was just as well. Her face was covered in sweat and she didn't look good.

I still asked, “Shouldn't Big Ma call Papa?”

“Don't question me, daughter. Pick up this phone and dial that number. Your father needs to know.”

What do I tell him? What do I say?

“Come on, daughter. That's your father. Your sister. Make the call.”

I didn't want to do it. I shouldn't have to. I shouldn't have to. But the phone was in my hand and my great-grandmother stared into me with no intention of repeating herself.

I knew Pa's number in the dark. My finger hooked into the first circle on the dial and my fingers pulled around, dialing for a long-distance line, the area code, followed by “AT7” and the last four digits. I thought I would be unsteady, shaky, and sobbing. Unable to speak. I thought all the tears and nausea pooling in me would come up and I'd choke when he picked up the receiver and I had to speak. But when the phone rang, and the line clicked when he picked up the phone, and his voice said, “Hello,” my mouth opened and I spoke calmly. “Papa. Papa.”

Pa's voice didn't leap toward mine, asking me how my sisters and I were making out and such. Instead, he waited. Waited for me to speak. He knew. He knew. My stomach knotted something awful. He knew I didn't call with good news. Then he said, “Yes, Delphine.” His voice was so calm. So steady. Full of stillness and waiting.

“Vonetta is lost. Vonetta got lost in the tornado.”

No sound. Then a terrible sound. A bear caught in a trap. His growl and moan went through me and made me queasy. In the background I heard Mrs. saying, “Honey, honey,” over and over.

Her voice came through the receiver. Warm. Steady. “Delphine.” She said it again, “Delphine,” because I didn't
answer. I couldn't. “Tell me, Delphine. Tell me what's going on.” Papa was crying in the background, loud, like I never heard before. He couldn't tell her.

I finally spoke into the phone. “Vonetta got lost in the tornado. Vonetta's gone.”

I didn't say the other thing although I thought it. I didn't say what I knew Papa heard although I didn't use that word. I couldn't use that word.

“Delphine . . .” She didn't say how horrible it was or start saying, “No! No!” so I'd have to say it again. Mrs. said, “Oh, Delphine, Delphine,” gently. I could hear my father, wounded in the background. “Delphine, Delphine,” she said. “Are you all right?”

I said, “Yes,” but that wasn't true.

“Okay. Let me speak to your grandmother.”

“I can't. I mean, she can't. She's . . . she's . . .”

“It's all right, Delphine. We'll be there tomorrow.”

And she said love words to me and I took them knowing I didn't deserve them. Then we said good-bye.

Ma Charles didn't ask me what Papa said. Instead she said, “Now call your mother.”

I couldn't tell her my mother was out of reach. That she didn't have a phone. I didn't know how to get my mother to a telephone. Or know if she would come to a telephone just because I called. I didn't know how to explain Cecile to my great-grandmother and that she wasn't the type to
stop her work or disturb her peace of mind and come because I asked her to.

“Well?” Ma Charles said. “That's her blood. Her child. She has to know. Go on, daughter. Call her.”

I made a plan in my head. I dialed “0.” I stretched my voice from twelve to twenty-one and said, “Operator, I need the number for Ming's in Oakland on Magnolia.” The operator still asked for my mama and I said, “I'm trying to reach my mama,” although that was the last thing I'd call Cecile to her face. “It's an emergency.”

The operator said, “Little girl, the telephone isn't a plaything,” and hung up.

The dial tone was loud. Ma Charles said, “Try it again, daughter.” My great-grandmother didn't want any of my excuses. Even if it was out of my hands. I dialed “0” and waited.

“It's an emergency, operator,” I said. “It's about the tornado and I have to reach my mother.”

“What city?” the voice said. A different operator.

“Oakland.” I tried to sound grown and sure. I didn't want her to call me a little girl. “My mother's at Ming's Chinese Takeout on Magnolia Street.” My mother wasn't really there, but Mean Lady Ming would remember me from last summer and she'd know how to get word to my mother. I spoke firmly and hoped my stretching the truth would get the call put through, but the operator was saying something about prank phone calls so loud that Ma
Charles could hear her questioning the call.

“Gimme that telephone,” Ma Charles said, and I handed the receiver to her. She cleared her throat. “Put the call through for my great-granddaughter” was all she said and handed the phone back to me as if that was enough.

It was. The operator read off the numbers for Ming's Chinese Takeout on Magnolia and said, “Please hold while I connect you.”

“Takeout. What you want?”

“Miss Ming?” I spoke timidly, as if I was standing at her counter for the first time.

“Hello?”

“Miss Ming,” I said.

She fussed at me to stop playing on the phone. She had a business to run.

“No, Miss Ming. It's Delphine. Cecile's daughter.”

“Delphine, Delphine.” It took repeating my name for her to remember me from last summer.

“My mother. It's an emergency. I need her to call me.”

She fussed that she couldn't leave the store, and I said, “Please, Miss Ming. It's bad. It's bad and I need her.” I begged and begged her to write down the number. Then I heard Big Ma say, “Who you calling?” But I said to Miss Ming, “Please, Miss Ming. Please. Emergency.” Then she said, “Okay, okay, Delphine,” and hung up.

“Who you calling?”

Ma Charles stood up. “I told her to call her mother.”

I was grateful to have my great-grandmother next to me, looking clear-eyed and ready for a fight.

“Far's I'm concerned, those girls don't have a mother.”

“Whether you think so or not, she and the other two have a mother, and their mother should know.” She drummed her finger against the tabletop hard with every point she made.

“Hmp.”

“We don't teach a child to dishonor her mother or father. Not in this house.” Then Ma Charles told me to go and get her shawl from her room. What next she had to tell Big Ma was not for my ears and I scooted out of there.

Over the next few hours, my tears hadn't dried, nor had my stomach settled. But I kept my ears open, waiting. Hoping the phone would ring soon. And also not wanting it to ring. Not wanting to tell Cecile.

Then one ring. One shrill ring was all it took to get me into the kitchen. I grabbed the receiver on the second ring.

“Cecile,” I said. I knew it was her.

“I don't like people knocking on my door,” she told me.

My mouth went dry.

“Cecile,” I said.

“You got the Woods boy knocking on my door, dragging me out of my house. Delphine, you know better.
There's nothing you have to tell me that calls for all of that.”

If I didn't say it fast, plain, and clear, she'd hang up on me and write me a letter-poem telling me about myself. So I said it. “Vonetta left the house this morning. She's lost in the tornado. We can't find her.”

I waited. And waited. And waited. Next came a click. Then the moan of the dial tone.

I felt breathing. Fast, heavy breathing. Big Ma.

“What she say?” Ma Charles asked.

I could barely look at them. “She didn't say anything. She . . .” I didn't want to tell them but there was no hiding it. “She hung up.”

Big Ma clapped her hands hard. One hard clap. “What did I say? What did I tell you?” She was angry with me and pleased with herself for having Cecile pegged right.

“Now—”

Big Ma cut her mother off. “Mama. You don't know what that woman did to them. Ripped herself out from under them and ran off to parts unknown. You don't know how she tore my son's heart clean out of his chest. She didn't mother them then, can't mother them now. Too busy writing words on the wall or whatever she calls herself doing.”

After my grandmother pointed her finger and hollered at her own mother, she turned to me. “I told you and told you about Cecile, but you wouldn't take the truth from my mouth. You wouldn't take the gospel truth from the
one who raised you. And now you've seen and heard it for yourself. As far as I'm concerned, you don't have a mother. And don't you speak her name or about her in this lifetime. Ever!”

I felt like I was being knocked down again and again and again, but when I turned, I fell into my uncle's arms. “Go 'head, cry, Delphine,” he whispered, rocking me like I was a little girl. “We're all crying.”