Lena (10 page)

“I bet I could eat this every day,” she said.

“Me too,” I said, really meaning it.

The phone rang and I nearly jumped right out of my seat. Miz Lily gave me a strange look as she got up to answer it.

 

“Lena don't care much for loud sounds,” Dion said quickly.

Miz Lily nodded, still looking at me. I tried to keep my eyes down on my plate.

“Rona,” Miz Lily said. “How you doing, sugar? And how's that grandbaby of mine?”

Fourteen

Miz Lily drove us right on up to the entranceway of Bowling Green General. The hospital seemed bigger than a lot of the other ones me and Dion had stopped at and even though it was early, there was lots of people going in and out.

 

Dion was sitting up front with Miz Lily. When the car stopped, Dion turned to me. She looked sadder than I'd seen her in a long time.

“Really appreciate everything,” I said, looking away from Dion.

 

“If I wasn't running late, I'd come in with y'all, make sure you get to your mama—”

“No, you don't have to,” I said real quick.

“Well, let me climb out and give you girls a hug.”

We all climbed out of the car. Me and Dion lifted our knapsacks on our backs. It was real pretty out, blue and warm. Miz Lily hugged us both real hard and told us to take care of ourselves.

 

“Let me write down my number in case anything goes wrong,” she said. She took a small pad and a pen out of her purse and wrote her number down real quick.

I looked around for a phone figuring I'd call Marie one more time after Miz Lily left, tell her we were gone. That we were on our way someplace else now.

Miz Lily finished writing her number and folded some money into it. Seemed people were always handing us money. Keep it up, reckon we'd be rich soon.

I took the money without objecting. We all three hugged again and then Miz Lily's car was pulling away. Me and Dion watched it a moment, then headed into the waiting room.

There were white chairs lined up in rows and a desk with a couple of people working behind it. We took a seat in the back of the waiting room and Dion took out her book of maps and opened it up to Kentucky.

“Figure we head east real early,” she said. “Get to Pine Mountain with lots of daylight left. We could start looking for some of Mama's people before it gets dark. Maybe get us a nice bed to sleep in again . . .”

I stared out the window, trying to concentrate on what Dion was saying. Her voice sounded far away, like it was some stranger talking to me from underwater.

“Hey, girlie . . . ,” I said slowly. “I talked to Marie last night.”

Dion looked up at me and stopped talking. “She say anything about our daddy?”

I nodded. “Say he left Chauncey.”

Dion closed the book of maps and folded her hands over them. She looked slowly around the waiting room. “Where'd he go?”

I shrugged. “She doesn't know. Say he left a while ago. The way I figure, he probably ain't coming back.”

Dion's chin trembled but she didn't say anything.

“Marie say she was gonna talk to her daddy see if we could come live with them but she ain't called back. I'm gonna try her again, though.”

“Her daddy ain't gonna want us,” Dion said. She wiped at her eyes and tried to sit up straighter. I looked around the waiting room and saw a black lady sitting at the guard desk watching us. When she saw me looking, she looked away.

“I been thinking since this morning about something. Maybe the social worker people ain't so bad,” I said. “Maybe we turn ourselves in we could get us a nice place to live, like with somebody like Miz Lily.”

“Ain't going to no social worker people,” Dion whispered, her voice fierce. When she looked at me, her eyes were narrow as slits and her cheeks were burning red.

“Where you going then, girlie?” I asked. I wasn't mad at her for getting mad. Just tired. Tired of everything.

“Mama's people!”

I put my hand over Dion's. On the cover of the map book there was a picture of the globe, looking all blue and green and promising.

“Mama's people ain't gonna take us in, Dion. I don't even know where to start searching when we get to Pine Mountain.”

 

“We start with the
phone
book,” Dion said. “Look under her maiden name—Charles.”

 

“And we find out everybody in that phone book's name is Charles. And then we find the Charles relatives that didn't even come to her funeral or come get us the
first
time the social work people took us away.”

Dion's chin trembled again. After a moment, a tear slipped out of her eye. She snatched one of her hands from underneath mine and wiped it away, real quick without taking her angry eyes off me.

I looked over at the lady but she wasn't watching us no more.

 

“I ain't going to no social worker people, Lena Bright. You go, then you go by your own damn self!”

I didn't say anything. It'd been a long time since I heard her curse and it sounded loud in the quiet waiting room. Loud and painful as a punch.

“I'm gonna go try Marie again.”

Dion nodded and opened the map book again. I walked up to the guard desk.

“Excuse me, ma'am. Can you tell me where's the phone?”

The woman smiled at me and got up. “I'll show you,” she said, and walked me two feet down the hall, then went back over to her desk and stood there, looking back and forth between me and Dion.

 

I got the operator and made a collect call to Marie's number. It was busy. I smiled. That was a good sign. Maybe she was talking to her daddy about us. Maybe things were happening. I hung up and walked back over to Dion.

 

“I'm gonna try again in a while,” I said. “It was busy.”

When I tried a few minutes later, the phone rang and rang. My hands was trembling when I walked back over to Dion.

We sat there just sort of looking at each other and looking away. I kept my hand on top of the hand Dion still had on the book. Announcements came over the loudspeaker, people came in and out. All around us the world seemed to be going on about its business.

Fifteen

I wish I could say I was surprised to see Miz Lily walking into that waiting room, walking fast toward us with that beautiful head of white curls. My mama used to always say you can't stop hoping. Even when everything else in the world seemed to be gone, she said that's the thing you got to hold on to. Hope.

Me and Dion watched Miz Lily coming fast toward us without moving save for Dion slipping that book of maps back into her bag.

“I declare,” Miz Lily said, shaking her head. “I
knew
something wasn't right about all this. I thought I raised enough kids like y'all to know the signs. But I must be losing my touch.”

“Our mama's resting—” Dion began.

Miz Lily held up her hand. “Y'all don't have to lie anymore. Nobody sitting in this immediate area is gonna hurt you. That there's my friend Betty I told you worked here. She's been keeping an eye on y'all.” Miz Lily waved and the woman sitting at the guard desk waved back and nodded. Miz Lily sat down beside us and put her hand on Dion's shoulder.

 

Dion looked down at her hands and didn't say anything.

“Y'all don't have a mama, do you?” she asked softly.

I shook my head, feeling myself getting teary again.

“I figured that when Dion didn't mention her in her prayers. And what about your daddy? Is he living?”

“Yeah,” I said hoarsely. “But we don't know where he is. Last he was in Ohio but he ain't no more.”

 

“And this Marie child I talked to—”

 

I jumped. “Marie called?”

Dion lifted her head, looking wildly from Miz Lily to me, then back again.

Miz Lily nodded. “Said her father wants y'all to stay with them.”

 

I pressed my hand against my leg and pinched, hard. I didn't want to be dreaming, didn't want to find myself awake somewhere without this happening. Dion looked down at her hands again but she was grinning, grinning wide.

“My precious Lord,” Miz Lily said under her breath. “To think you thought I believed your mama was here. I wasn't gonna let you out of my sight until I had some sure facts. I couldn't get them with you two hanging around so I asked Betty to keep an eye on you until I had my answers. I wasn't going to call the police until I checked everything else out. I
knew
something wasn't right. Then just as I was about to pick up the phone to call another social service agency, it rang.”

“We're sorry, Miz Lily,” Dion said. “We don't care much for lying, and you being so nice to us and all.”

Miz Lily looked down at Dion, her face melting. She took Dion's chin in her hand and stared at her a moment without saying anything. Then she looked over at me and shook her head. “But y'all are just
babies.
”

Me and Dion didn't say anything.

“Called the four Brights listed around here and none of them knew of y'all so I figured you didn't have people around here. Called a few agencies and nobody seems to have a record of you. It's like y'all are
spirits.
Just appeared.”

Dion shook her head. “No, ma'am. We real.”

Miz Lily smiled and ran her hand over Dion's head. “You sure are, child. . . . Well, come on. I want to go home and call Marie's father and get this thing straightened out.”

 

She went over to speak to Betty, then came back over to us.

 

Me and Dion got up and walked in a line behind her right out of that hospital. When we got to the door, Dion turned and looked at me, a big grin eating up her face.

Sixteen

Miz Lily and Marie's daddy talked for more than an hour while me and Dion sat in the living room, leaning forward so that we could hear as much as possible. Seemed Marie's dad was explaining about Chauncey, about me and Dion too but mostly about the town and such. Miz Lily kept going, “Oh, Lord” and “Oh my” and “A professor, huh? Well, ain't you something.”

There was a lot of talk about social work agencies and how Marie's dad was gonna handle the paperwork and all. Seemed he'd met a bunch of people working in foster care right there in Chauncey. I could hear Miz Lily explaining to him about red tape and them having to contact next of kin and such. “But looks like there's really no next of kin to worry about. Seems these girls really on their own, don't it?” she said, her voice dropping down to a whisper.

Marie's dad must have been going on and on because Miz Lily had gotten real quiet.

“I guess this is it, huh, girlie?”

Dion looked at me and smiled. “I guess so.”

Neither of us wanted to say it right out loud. Didn't want to jinx it.

“Well,” Miz Lily said. “If you wasn't taking them in, I sure would. They're good girls, sweet and polite as they could be. But you're right—get them back to what's familiar and back to their old school. No doubt they'll catch right up.”

Me and Dion looked at each other again and grinned.

I could hear them talking over a plane schedule. I bit my lip, trying to hold back my excitement, but Dion was grinning. We had never been on a plane before. Rich people took planes. I felt rich inside, like everything about the world was falling in place and there wasn't so much empty inside of me anymore. I grabbed Dion's hand and squeezed it.

“We going on a plane, Lena,” she whispered.

“Yeah, girlie. Me and you way up in the air.”

Dion bounced herself against the back of the sofa. “A plane,” she whispered again. “Me and you up in the air.”

“What's the first thing you gonna do when you get . . . get to Chauncey, Lena?”

I smiled. “I'm gonna hug Marie and then I'm gonna touch all the walls in her house. And then I'm gonna send Larry back his money and tell him we all right.”

“I'm gonna buy some bubble bath,” Dion said. “And tomorrow morning I'm gonna eat a ham and cheese sandwich for breakfast!”

 

It was a two-hour flight back to Columbus where Marie and her dad would pick us up and drive us the hour and a half back to Chauncey. There wasn't any airport in Bowling Green. Miz Lily would drive us to Nashville and put us on a plane there, she said, and we'd be back to Chauncey by dinnertime. I felt my heart lift up in my chest. The sun was shining through the living room window, making a bright patch on the hardwood floor. I felt like that patch of sun—all bright and warm.

Dinnertime,
I kept thinking.
Home by dinnertime.

Seventeen

It was near eleven o'clock when Miz Lily got to fixing us some sandwiches and packing up some store-bought cake for us to take. Me and Dion helped, putting food in bags and washing up the breakfast dishes we'd left in the sink that morning. After a few minutes, I had to go upstairs to the bathroom, sit down on the toilet and let myself cry. It was almost over. There wasn't nothing to be afraid of anymore. Marie's daddy wasn't going to let anything happen to me and Dion, and my own daddy was gone. When I tried to get a picture of his face, it was all blurry and far away. Dion would be the one to remember it, to remember the good things about him—the way I was the one to remember them about Mama.

 

When I came back downstairs, Miz Lily was still getting us ready for the trip and talking about Marie's dad.