Send Me Down a Miracle (16 page)

I reckon I fell asleep soon after saying that, 'cause it's the last thing I remember thinking about, and the next thing I knew I was listening to some sound coming from far off. I couldn't tell if I was awake or asleep, but the sound was the same each time I heard it. It was a quiet crinkling sound, and I'd hear it for just a second and then it would stop, and then a few seconds later it would come again—
crinkle
—silence—
crinkle
—long silence—
crinkle.
At first I'd hear it, dream a little, then hear it again, but then as I started to become aware of the sound I began to wait for it, and the more I waited the more awake I became, and I realized the sound was coming from somewhere in the room.

I lay there awake with my eyes closed a good while just listening for the sound, and then the sound changed and I started to hear a once-in-a-while
clinking
noise. I opened my eyes and found I was on my left side, facing Sharalee's bed. I strained to see her but the bed was empty. I rolled onto my back and sat up, the quilt still covering my shoulders, and looked out beyond the end of my bed.

"Sharaleel" I called in a loud whisper. "Lord love a duck, what on earth—!"

I leaned over toward the nightstand and switched on the light.

"Charity, what are you doing?" Sharalee whispered back, her mouth full of ice cream. "Turn that thing off before Mama comes in here and fries both our heads in butterfat."

I switched it oft but not before I got a good look at all the goodies piled up around her. Stuff like Moon Pies and Twinkies and cupcakes with two-inch frosting. There seemed to be every kind of cookie set out, too—chocolate chips and coconut shavers and lemon twistees—and then there was the ice cream, which she must have stored in the cooler I saw by her leg.

I crawled to the end of the bed, got down on my stomach, and hung my head over the edge. Sharalee was still eating, and eating fast, even knowing I was looking at her.

"Sharalee?"

She didn't look up from her bowl. She just kept scooping the ice cream into her mouth. "I know this looks bad, but don't worry," she said, talking around her mouthful.

"Don't worry? I'm scared to death! Honest, I am. Sharalee, the miracles are over. Daddy must have destroyed the chair. I didn't tell you about seeing Vonnie and Velita yesterday morning, but they didn't look so cured to me, and they had only just heard about Daddy and the chair. And now you. Sharalee? Are you hearing me?"

Sharalee nodded and grabbed a chocolate chip cookie and crunched it into her ice cream.

I got out of bed and started scooping up some of the junk.

"You've got to stop this. I swanee. In just this one night you're going to put on twice the weight you've lost."

I reached for the box of Moon Pies, and Sharalee's hand came down on my wrist. "Leave it. Just put it all down. Okay?"

"No, this is not okay. Whichever way you look at it, this is not okay."

With her hand still wrapped around my wrist, she twisted at my arm and pulled me down to her so we were face-to-face and I could smell her chocolate breath.

"Leave me alone now. Charity, and go on back to bed." She let go of my arm.

"Sharalee, you're going to make yourself sick eating all this."

Sharalee tore the cellophane off a Moon Pie and stuck half of it in her mouth.

I looked at all the food and reached for one of the lemon twistees. Sharalee slapped my hand.

"I bought all this with my own money at the Food World. You get your own job and buy your own stuff," she mumbled, the crumbs spitting from her mouth and hitting my face.

"Sharalee, I've never seen you like this Never. Why, you're like a pig. A real pig."

"Shut up! What do you know about it? What do you know about going all day with your mama standing over you watching every bite you shouldn't be eating? What do you know about it?"

I reached for the strands of hair that had fallen in her face and ran them through my fingers. "Nothing. I know nothing about it, 'cepting that you're starving yourself all day and stuffing yourself all night and killing yourself all the time. Sharalee, what are you doing this for?"

"You know."

I hugged her and stood up. Then I climbed back in the bed and said good night.

She didn't answer. I listened to the soft crinkle of another Moon Pie being opened, and I thought about Vonnie and Velita being ready to die but hanging on for their papa's sake, and I wondered if a child ever gets to just please herself.

Tuesday morning I was sitting alone in the Marshalls' kitchen munching on a mouthful of cereal when Grace came to the door and called through the screen. "Can I come in?" she asked.

I looked around, wondering if it was okay to let someone into a house that wasn't mine. All the Marshalls had gone to work.

I hopped off my stool and set my bowl in the sink. "I'll come out there," I said.

I pushed through the door and Grace slipped her hand in mine easy as you please, like we'd been holding hands all our lives. We sat down on the porch swing hanging from the branch of a tree and started a lazy push, back and forth together, heel-toe, heel-toe.

"I miss you," she said.

"Me?" I was surprised. Grace never seemed to notice I was even around.

"I don't know what to say to the reverend. You were always there. I always talked to you."

"No, you didn't. Grace, you never talk to anybody, just like Mama, 'cepting maybe Boo."

"Well I miss you."

We sat in silence, listening to the creaking of the swing and closing our eyes to the damp heat settling on our skin.

Grace broke the silence. "I can't see Boo anymore. Can't hardly go out, 'cause Daddy's wanting me close by. He doesn't know I'm here."

"Is he still so angry at me?" I asked, not looking at her.

"He's angry at everybody. Lots of folks come by last night wanting the Jesus chair. Mad Joe come over drunk and saying Vonnie's dying. He tried to break into the church."

I set my feet flat on the ground and stopped the swing. "Do you know what Daddy did with the chair?"

"Yes."

I waited for her to say but she just sat there calm as calm, letting this daddy long-legger crawl up her arm.

"Well, tell me, then."

"It's over to the church. The reverend said Miss Adrienne gave it to him. Said she wanted it out of her nouse."

I stood up. "I know that, but is it all busted up, or—or what?"

She squinted up at me. "It's still whole. It's locked up. He's holding it till folks come to their senses."

"Poor Mad Joe," I said. I sat back down and we pushed at the ground again. The swing creaked back and forth. I closed my eyes.

"Why's he so mean?" Grace asked, and I knew she was meaning Daddy.

"He didn't used to be, Grace, remember? Remember how he used to take us out for ice cream after Sunday dinner?"

"No."

I opened my eyes. "Well, you were kind of young then, but remember one time in the drugstore in Dothan, when you saw that plastic shovel and pail and you just cried and cried 'cause you just had to have them even though we weren't going to the beach or anything, and Daddy bought them for you? And remember when, just last year, Mama decided to give all her birdcages away at the church picnic, and then when folks were saying they were going to make lamps out of them or use them for real live birds. Mama panicked, and Daddy rescued the birdcages back from everybody? Remember? Remember how Mama just hugged and hugged Daddy?"

"Maybe," Grace said, removing the spider and setting it on the ground. I closed my eyes again, enjoying the floaty way the swing made me feel, and then Grace said, "Boo's got a hair."

I peeked an eye open and looked at Grace. Her face was serious.

"I heard." I closed my eye.

"He's needing the chair back."

"So're a lot of people with worse problems than his."

Grace stopped the swing. "You could get it back."

I laughed and opened my eyes. We looked at each other.

"Of all the people on earth, I'm the least one could get that chair away from Daddy."

"You could, too. You can do anything."

I knew my eyebrows had raised clear up to my hairline. "Since when?"

She shrugged. "Since always, I reckon."

I laughed. "Since never," I said, but for the first time in my life I felt like an older sister. And it hit me,
I'm setting here with my sister. I have a younger sister and here she is and we're talking like real sisters.

"I can do some things, Grace," I said. "Some real good things, but not everything. Nobody can fix everything." I took her soggy hand in mine and we pushed the swing again, back and forth, together, heel-toe, heel-toe.

The next few days were quiet. Too quiet. And it wasn't just that Sharalee and her mama, like most everybody in town, went off to Dothan to work every morning, leaving just kids and farmers and old folks behind. It was the change in the weather, too. The days were dark. The clouds hung lower and lower over the town, still and threatening, like a held breath about to give way, needing to give way, yet holding on a little longer, and a little longer. The heat, thick and suffocating, seeped through the cracks and keyholes of the Marshall' house, and the central air-conditioning puffed and puffed but couldn't blow it back out.

I spent those dark mornings doing a lot of reading and peering out the window now and then like I was waiting for something: the rain, or Daddy, or Mama—something. And that darkness scared me, being in the daytime and all. It reminded me of the story in the Bible about Jesus and how just before he died—hanging from the cross, nails in his hands and feet, a wound in his side and his head bleeding from the crown of thorns—darkness fell o'er all the land. Every time I looked out the window there it was, the darkness of Calvary.

Friday morning, soon after Sharalee left to put in her three hours bagging groceries at the Food World, and her mama left to cook lunch at the retirement village, and her papa set off for Birmingham, I heard someone's horn honk-honking down the road. I looked out the kitchen window into the gloom, expecting to see a parade, or a wedding party or something.

Instead I saw Mad Joe's truck careen into the drive and flash past the house. He screeched to a stop just beyond the end of the drive and parked under the big shade tree. I saw him stumble out of the truck and figured he was drunk.

He
was
drunk, and one of his daughters was dead. I knew that 'cause he was carrying the stick. It was just like when Granny Slim died and her son, poor as dust, came over to the Marshalls' wanting a pine box to put her in. He brought along a stick, too, pulled out of the woods and broken off till it was just the size of Granny Slim.

I saw Mad Joe do a fast shuffle over to the barn, and I hurried to the door and called out to him.

"He's not here today. He's gone to Birmingham."

Mad Joe turned around, swaying a little as he did, and then when his eyes focused on who I was, he called out, "Help me! Come here an' help me."

I ran out to him and put his arm around my shoulder, thinking he was needing me to help him walk or something.

"No." He pulled away. "I got to leave the measuring stick for my Vonnie."

"Lean it against the barn, then," I said. "I'm sure he'll understand."

Mad Joe turned around again and staggered toward the barn with his hands held out as if he were blind and searching for the way. He set his stick down, but he didn't let go of it. He bowed his head and mumbled something, and then I saw him kiss the stick. When he turned back around he had tears running down his face.

"I'm real sorry, Mad Joe," I said.

He looked up at me and said, "Come on to the truck."

I followed him.

"See." He pointed into the truck bed. "My Velita's dying. We got to save her."

I looked into the truck and saw Velita lying on a mattress and covered up to her chin with a sweat-soaked sheet. Her eyes were closed and she was pale, with sweat beaded up all over her face and her breath coming out in short puffs.

"Lord have mercy," was all I could say.

"Hop in and be wiping her with that sponge." He pointed to a bucket. "We're going t'your daddy."

"Lord have mercy," I said again, climbing into the back and drawing the sponge up out of the water. I sat down and squeezed it out some and then began wiping her face. The truck jerked back and then forward and then back, and we were on our way.

Thirty seconds later we were pulling into my own driveway and Mad Joe hardly took the time to stop the truck before stumbling out, this time with his shotgun in his hands.

I dropped the sponge into the bucket and stood up. "Hey, what are you fixin' to do?"

He pointed the gun at me. "You stay on with my Velita, you hear?"

"But what—"

"You hear? You don't come to the house." He lifted the gun higher.

My legs started to shake so, the whole truck was rocking. I sat back down and nodded.

"You keep sponging. You don't stop sponging."

I nodded again and turned to the bucket. I picked up the sponge and started wiping at Velita's face.

She opened her eyes and stared into my face.

"He's going to kill Daddy," I said. "He's got the shotgun."

Velita licked her lips and mumbled, "He won't do it."

I turned my head to look for Mad Joe and saw him fighting with the shotgun to get through the door.

"He's drunk and he's mad and he's wanting to save you. He'll do it, 'less I stop him."

I made a move to go and Velita's hand came up around my wrist. "Don't let Papa blame himself."

"No, I won't. I got to go."

She pulled on my arm. "Not everyone's meant to live till they're old. That's the natural way of things—God's way."

"Okay." I pulled away from her. She was too weak to hold me. I was climbing out, and she kept talking.

"Tell Papa. Tell Papa it's not his fault."

I hopped down off the truck and ran to the house.

I could hear Daddy quoting Scripture, and talking in his sermon voice, and Mad Joe was shouting over it.