Saving Cicadas (10 page)

“You dead, Mama?” asked Rainey, concerned. She'd learned what dead meant after Bitsy our dog went to heaven.

“No, not really, honey. Nothing to worry about.” Her voice went softer, almost talking under her breath. “I left home when I was almost your age, and my parents made it very clear that
I
was dead to
them
. They wanted nothing more to do with me.”

“That is not true! I am not going to sit here and take this kind of talk, young lady.” Grandma Mona turned her head to the window.

“Hush now, Mona,” said Poppy. “Just listen.”

“Your grandparents lived in Forest Pines for a very long time,” Mama said, spiting Grandma Mona by going on. “It was your great-grandparents' house, and when my folks were young and married they lived there with them. I did too. I'd like to go back, I think. For old times' sake. Anyway, at this point we have nothing left to lose, right? It's not like you can get even deader to somebody.”

“Grayson Macy, I want you to stop this right now. Make her stop this car this instant and let me out. You hear how she's poisoning these girls against me? Against us?”

“Nobody's doing that, Grandma Mona,” I said. “What's past is done and gone. That's what you always say, isn't it? I'd like to go see Forest Pines, Mama. But maybe you should be getting to a doctor now. For the baby? And we're almost out of gas. Why don't we just go home, Mama? It sounds so much easier. Let's just get back to life as normal.” I knew it as soon as I said it—we were anything but normal, what with the pregnancy and all. Even without that.

“Let's go home, Mama,” said Rainey. It broke my heart to hear how honest she was. All the time.

“Honey, even if we did go home, I . . . I got nothing to go home to. I don't have a job anymore.” Mama broke the news like it was no big deal, like we were out of eggs or milk or something. But I knew better. I knew this changed everything. Again.

Chapter Thirteen
HEADING SOUTH

I shook my head to clear my ears. Mama had said she had no job, but that was impossible. She'd always had her job at the pancake house. “What, Mama? I thought they were holding your job for you.” A station wagon full of teenagers slowed beside us with feet and hands dangling out the windows.

“I threw my apron down yesterday and told Bob to go blank himself. Or maybe in different words.” Oh. Wow. Mama was serious. The job she'd had for the last ten years, before I was born. Gone. “So, we might as well keep on driving, right?” she said.

“Mr. Mooneyham gonna let you do grocery. He real nice. You work with me.”

“That's sweet, honey. Thank you. Maybe I'll look into that.” Rainey couldn't see the worry on Mama's face, but I could hear it in her voice.

“And we got good bags, paper. And you walk the grocery to the car. Put 'em in the back. It real nice, Mama. You like it.”

“You really mean to tell me you quit your job, Priscilla?” Poppy was beside himself but seemed to be working as hard as he could to keep his cool. He wrung his wrinkled hands. “You think that was the wisest thing to do, what with your condition and all?”

“Now, Grayson. If Priscilla was aiming to do the smartest things in life, do you really think she'd be pregnant right now and driving halfway 'cross the south just to go back to a haunted old house? And with gas prices being so high? I mean, truly.”

Well, I guess that about summed it up. I was pretty much speechless, so I just settled in for a long day of driving. I pulled my feet up Indian-style and leaned my head on Poppy's shoulder and let myself wonder if we'd see us some real-live ghosts in that haunted house in Forest Pines. And I wondered what the ghosts would look like, if anything, or if they'd have names like Rainey Dae or Janie Doe or Casper the Friendly Ghost.

It was a long, dark trip back to South Carolina. The sky looked like gray blankets of wool covering the sun and all heavenly things. Only a couple times did the clouds pour on us, and when they did it was hard and fast. Then it was over. Mama didn't stop, just kept on going. The sun hadn't shone since Asheville, and I was beginning to wonder if it ever would again.

We were driving in the passing lane because Mama liked to drive faster than most folks. Not too much faster, but just enough to make her feel like she was getting somewhere first. I told her we'd all get there sometime, no need to hurry, but she did what she wanted. With us being in an old police car, people would look in their rearview mirrors and think we were the police. Maybe undercover. Mama had fun with that some. She'd pull up on somebody real close, and as soon as they saw it was a Crown Victoria, they scooted over real fast into the other lane and then slowed down to a crawl, worried we'd give them a ticket.

On Highway 26 we came up on a line of tractor trailers carrying military vehicles on the backs. Slowly, we passed them, one by one. I could see the letters and numbers on the tanks. I could see the big nuts and bolts holding the giant tires on.

“Wow, would you look at that,” said Poppy. “Look what they are now. In every war, Janie, these tanks have been painted a different color. Back in World War II they were olive drab. Same as in my father's day.”

“What war was that?” I asked.

“Korea. Your great-grandfather, my daddy Adolph Macy, was a hero. Saved a whole platoon when he jumped on a land mine.”

“Goodness,” I said, imagining it must have hurt pretty bad.

“We gonna see your daddy?” asked Rainey.

“Well, he's in heaven, sugar. The land mine killed him.”

“That sad!”

“I know it, but that's just the way it is. He sacrificed his life so the others could live. That's a true hero, honey.” Looking back at the tanks he said, “No, not until after Vietnam were these tanks painted in camouflage so they could mix in with the jungle and not be seen. Look at 'em all now. See the color? What does it look like?”

“Sand,” I said.

“You're right. So where do you think these are going?”

“The beach!” Rainey squealed, so pleased with her smart answer. Everybody knows there's sand at the beach.

“Almost,” said Poppy. “How about the desert? These new tanks, all painted fresh and such, they're going either to Afghanistan or Iraq, my guess.”

“Why?” asked Rainey.

“ 'Cause it's where the wars are being fought,” said Grandma Mona, turning her neck to look at Rainey. I was beginning to think Poppy was the smartest man in the world, what with the magic cicadas and the tanks, so I was surprised when it seemed Grandma Mona knew something too. I couldn't see her face since I was directly behind her, and the headrest was covering her up. I could see her thin white hair on the back of her head, though, and I thought on what she said a minute, about the wars and how the tanks were leaving this country to go fight them.

“So there aren't any wars here in America?” I asked.

Grandma Mona turned her head around the other way and peeked at me with one gray eye in the sliver of light between the seat and the window. “Oh, there are wars here, honey, just not any you can see.”

“But I don't like war. It scares me.”

“Me too,” said Rainey.

“Nobody likes war,” said Poppy. “But just the fact you don't like something, doesn't make it any less so, I'm afraid.”

“Amen,” Mama said.

We passed the seventh and final tank, and I secretly prayed for the people who'd be driving them soon—to be safe and for nobody to get killed. And for none of us at home to ever run into those invisible wars.

Mama'd been really quiet. Maybe it's because Grandma Mona was next to her. I sat there in the backseat, trying to put myself in Mama's shoes. What would it be like to be traveling back to the place you used to love, the place where you knew love and were loved and everything was good and happy and simple?

I wished my mama's life was easier.

I wondered how close we were to finding my daddy in the mountains.

Did Mama have that same empty feeling eating at her like I did sometimes? That what-if feeling? That poor-me-I-don't-have-a-daddy feeling? Sure, Poppy was with us now, but he'd been gone for most of Rainey's life. He'd just popped back into Mama's life and Grandma Mona's—and mine, for that matter—after all the hard needing part was over. I had to get away from him for just a second. To breathe. I leaned up on my elbows and studied the slight lines showing in my mother's face. I loved my mother. Loved every single one of those lines. Her hands looked fixed like wax forever on that wheel.

I wondered if I'd ever be able to forgive Poppy and Grandma Mona for what they did, letting Mama go off all alone like that when she was a girl. With a baby in her tummy to boot. I was fuming now, thinking of how Rainey might have been better off with more people who loved her, with better schooling . . .
if
.

Well, what's done was done. There was only the future now to tend to.

Chapter Fourteen
WELCOME TO FOREST PINES

When we passed the sign that said welcome to forest pines, Mama must have had the stomach jitters because lo and behold, we had to pull over so she could get sick in the grass.

“Mama? Mama sick!” Rainey was troubled and pressing her face up against the glass. With the windows and doors not opening from the back, she couldn't get out of the car to help her. It was all she could handle, hands over ears.

“She'll be okay,” said Grandma Mona. “You all right, Priscilla? Let me know when it passes. Oh, gracious, I hope your pregnancy isn't as bad as mine was.”

Mama reached into the glove box over Grandma Mona's lap and grabbed some napkins, wiped her mouth, got ahold of herself, then slid back in, leaving the door open. “It's okay, Rain. Mama feels better. Don't worry about me.”

“Wanna hold the baby?” Rainey tipped the doll's hard bare feet over the seat and touched Mama's ear.

“No, no. That'll just . . . no thank you, sugar. That's awfully sweet of you though.”

“Let's just wait a minute,” Poppy said. “Maybe you should get in the backseat, Priscilla, with the rubber floor and all.”

“No, she's fine,” said Grandma Mona. “When it's done, it's done. At least, that's how it was with me.”

“Are you sure?”

“I'm sure. Sit tight.” And off we went.

Driving through the town of Forest Pines, I took note of every grocery store we passed, marking them for later . . . Piggly Wiggly, Food Lion, Bi-Lo. The act of list making in my head soothed me, enough to say what I'd wanted to for a hundred miles or more.

“Why haven't you ever brought us back here, Mama?”

Mama was quiet, thinking. We were stopped at a light in front of a big white Baptist church. There were tons of Baptist churches in this town. I figured everybody must be Baptist here. Maybe it was a law.

“Strangest thing,” said Mama. “I ran into an old high school friend, Marsha, about six, seven years ago. She told me Daddy'd moved back here.”

“You mean you knew where he was? Poppy, you were here in Forest Pines all that time?” I just didn't understand. He was such a sweet man. I didn't want to be disrespectful of him, but it didn't make sense how he could be so close but neglect his family for so long.

“Oh, honey. There are some things you don't understand yet. But you will someday, I promise.”

“Tell me now, Poppy! Tell me, please. I'm not a little kid. Honest!”

“Oh, sweetie,” said Poppy, grabbing my arm and holding it tight. I let it lay limp in his hands. “You're my girl. Just hold tight, all right?”

We started rolling again and turned left down a tree-lined street. “This is where your roots are, Rainey.” Mama looked in the rearview mirror and smiled. Rainey was barefooted and cross-legged. She pressed her hand in the window as if there was something special she could see outside.

“There it is. There's the old house. Wow, that was a long time ago. I was just a child.”

“Mama and Daddy's house, God rest 'em,” said Poppy, putting his hand over his heart.

Before I knew what was happening, the car had slowed to a stop and we were parked out in front of a blue Victorian house that looked just like a great big dollhouse. It had white twisty spindles for the porch railing, and all these little details and doodads along the pointed roofline. There was a round gazebo on the right side of the porch like that one we'd seen at Lake Tomahawk, and with everything in me I wanted to go sit there under the shade of it, looking over the lawn. I was drawn to it as if the house and its lawn were not Mama's memory, but mine. But I knew I'd never been there before. Then it dawned on me. I did know this house.

The Christmas after my daddy left, we woke up to find Santa Claus had all but forgotten us. Rainey and I only got one toy, a plastic doll. The
same
doll. It had a green dress with yellow yarn hair. I didn't even like dolls much. Santa had to know that. And I'd been really good that year. Extra good, I thought.