Saving Cicadas (21 page)

“Priscilla,” said Fritz. He was standing there with the door open. “I'm glad you're here. How would you ladies like a tour of the place? I don't do this with everybody, you know. Only the most important people.”

He didn't look like a preacher to me. No long white robes. No little square thingy on his collar. No halo over his head. He just looked like a man, a nice man. He smiled a nice, big, tall smile, and Mama said, “Well . . .” She looked over at me and Rainey. “I guess we don't get to see the insides of a church that often. The behind-the-scenes, I mean.”

I'm pretty sure Fritz knew none of us went to church because each of us was staring and pointing at stained-glass windows and red-velvet-covered benches and blue books marked “Hymnal” stuck on the backs of chairs. Rainey and I scooted in and out of every single long pew. We sat in each seat, pretending church was in session while Mama stood up at the front with Fritz and got a feel for what it was like behind the podium.

“Say something, Mama,” I said.

“Say something,” Rainey copied me.

“Our Father who art in heaven . . .” Uncle Fritz put on a deep preacherly voice, then he stopped and laughed. “Come on, ya'll. There's more to see.”

I know it might not have been the nicest thing to think at that moment, what with me already having a daddy and such, even if he was long gone. But sitting there looking up at Uncle Fritz all tall and funny and kind like that, I wished,
I wished
he was my real daddy.

And suddenly, I was sad again. But not as sad as I'd be once we'd found our way to the Macy family graveyard.

What I'd see there would change my life forever.

Chapter Thirty-two
HOLD YOU RBREATH

There was a little graveyard back in Cypresswood within walking distance from our house. Not that we ever walked there. It was overgrown with weeds and such, but from the street we could see white tombstones jutting out of the ground like hands of the dead, reaching for us. Driving by that graveyard, Rainey and I would hold our breaths. Mama did it too. She'd taught us that if we breathed while driving by a graveyard, the spirits of the dead people might rise up out of the ground and take up house in our bodies. Coming in through the mouths, we guessed. For good measure, we always held our noses shut tight too. Just in case.

Mama had to drive past that graveyard every day, both going to and coming from work at the pancake house. I felt sorry for her. Rainey was lucky in that Jerry's Supermarket was the other way down the road. Rainey and I only had to pass it when we were going out of town or to the Y every other Tuesday for skating. 'Course when Rainey did that Special Olympics, we drove by there a lot, seeing as the events were all held at the Y. We got pretty good at knowing exactly when to start holding our breaths and when we could breathe again.

But what were we to do when we came upon a real live graveyard that you walked through? Rainey and I sucked in breaths and pinched our noses shut when Uncle Fritz walked us out back behind the Covenant Church. I'd never seen graves up close. I'd looked at them hard as I could driving by them, but they just looked like stones, wobbled this way and that, sometimes a cross, sometimes an angel. Never up close.

But this. Before us were a hundred or more graves. With dead people under the ground. The very ground we were standing on! Dead people. I stuck my shirt up over my mouth and nose. I was starting to feel dizzy. Rainey looked at me and her eyes bugged out. She was getting ready to lose her breath too. All of a sudden, we ran back inside and hid behind the door. We breathed in air so hard and long I thought my lungs might never fully inflate again. But they did. And Mama came running in after us. She wasn't out of breath at all. In fact, I wondered, had some spirit come and filled her up? She didn't look scared at all, just peaceful. Her golden eyebrows hung there over her blue eyes like halos.

“You all right?” Mama asked us. “What's wrong with you?”

“Cain't breathe,” said Rainey.

“You're supposed to hold your breath, Mama!”

“Oh my goodness. Honey, that's just a superstition. I just do it sometimes when we're driving by graveyards because, well, it's what I did as a little girl. Just an old habit. There's no reason to hold your breath here, honey. There's nothing at all scary here. Nothing at all is going to happen to you.”

“Ghost,” said Rainey.

“No ghosts,” said Mama. “I promise. Now come on out here. I have something to show you.”

There were two walkways in this graveyard, one led to the left and the other to the right. The graves had little fake flowers in little planters in front of the stones. I thought it wasn't very nice to not have real flowers to honor the dead people, but then again, they were dead and wouldn't know the difference. Then I thought it was real smart to put fake flowers out there so you never had to water them. Very smart indeed. The living people had certainly wised up. Probably why they were still alive.

Mama and Fritz walked along the left path, pointing to stones like they were old friends. “Oh look. Mrs. Abernathy. I remember her. She always invited us in for pie.”

“Died in a car accident,” said Fritz.

“Oh no. Really? Nicest lady.”

And so on and so forth.

Finally, we got to the Macy family ancestors. I wondered if maybe this graveyard was in alphabetical order like the books in the library. If so, it was a real smart way to do it because you'd never lose a loved one, like a Macy stuck between a Jones and a Brigham. Because after all, who really wanted to stay here in this graveyard longer than they needed, trying to find a grave? I suspected we'd been here long enough for whatever spirits who wanted new bodies to come on up in our nostrils and take root. I didn't feel any different, though, so I figured all was well.

“Rainey?” Mama called. Rainey was hunched over a little tiny grave with a name on it,
Baby Jenkins
. I knew it was for a child, and she was starting to understand that too.

“Me and Janie looking at the baby,” she said.

“Oh, goodness. How 'bout you girls come on over and look at this. All right?”

Fritz walked over to us and put his arm on Rainey's shoulder. “Remember, this is just a resting place. All the folks here in this yard? They believed in the Lord Jesus. They get to be up in heaven with him right now, singing, happy as all get-out.” He was smiling like he really believed it too.

“But the baby,” Rainey said, sadness filling her eyes.

“Don't you worry about that baby, Rainey. God loves babies and he takes extra-special care of them. Why, do you know, when a baby goes to heaven it gets wings and can fly and smiles all the time?”

“I want wings,” said Rainey, cheering a bit.

“I have no doubt that someday, Rainey Dae Macy, you will have wings. No doubt at all. But for now we have living to do. Right? How 'bout we go on over here with your mama?”

I liked what Uncle Fritz said about angels and baby wings and flying and being happy. It sounded like a good place, this heaven. Thinking on it hard made me not so sad or scared around these graves. We were sort of like at a bus stop with all the dead folks already hopped on board and traveled to their destination. I followed him and Rainey over to where Mama was standing. She was looking at us with little tears in her eyes but a smile in the corners of her mouth. Like she was happy and sad at the same time.

“Look right here, honey. Can you read what this says?” Mama pointed to the etched-out words on a tombstone.

“Ad-Ado—““Adolph Macy,” I said. “That was Poppy's father.”

“Adolph Macy was your great-grandfather. He was a war hero.” “His picture's up on the wall in the stairway, Rainey,” I said.

“And see this one?” Mama pointed to another stone. “Here's Madeline, his wife. Your great-grandmother. They lived in the very house we're in right now on Vinca Lane.”

I listened to her explaining everything and everybody to Rainey, but I was one step ahead. I was already looking for Great-Aunt

Gertrude's grave. I was half-expecting her to be sitting right on top of it, saying, “Ooooooh, what went wrong . . . what went wronnnng,” like a witch bellyaching over her faulty cauldron. But I didn't see Gertrude's grave. Instead, I saw something that made me stumble. I fell down on my knees in the soft soil.

I scrunched my eyes up, convinced they were seeing things. I closed them, then opened them again. Then I heard myself wailing as if I was far-off from my body.

I put my hand out and touched the letters in front of me. G-R-A. Rainey came over and stuck her hand over her right ear. She tried to close the other one by pressing it down to her left shoulder because her hand was in a cast and couldn't be used for closing up ears. She started wailing, too, and I'm not sure if it was because I was crying or because she'd read the name of the man on the headstone in front of us. There were no two ways about it.

Our grandfather, Poppy, was dead.

Chapter Thirty-three
DEAD AND BURIED

To onlookers, the scene in the Covenant Church graveyard that day must have seemed chaos—screaming, crying, carrying on. Rainey and I lay down over that tombstone and bawled. We were ripped up one way and down the other. I'd known in my heart I'd never see Poppy again.
I knew it!
The feeling made me sick inside. I replayed over and over how that very morning he'd said he loved me, how he'd made me promise not to forget how important I was. Well, if I was so important, how come nobody thought to tell me he was dying? How come he didn't tell me himself? I cried and cried until no more tears came, but my body lay shaking, all used up.

Rainey'd worked herself into hysterics, so they had to haul her inside the church and lay her down in a pew. “No wanna dead! No wanna dead!” she kept saying, and Mama and Fritz thought she was saying she didn't want to die, so they made on and on about how she wasn't going to. “You're not gonna die, honey.” But that, too, I knew was a lie, because she was going to die someday. We all were. Like Poppy.

“Why didn't you tell me?” I asked Mama. “Why didn't you just tell me he was dying? I could have said good-bye. I could have told him how much I love him!”

Mama stayed quiet, tears streaming down her face. She was stroking Rainey's hair. “I didn't want a big scene,” she said finally. “I guess this wasn't such a good idea. I'm so sorry, honey. I didn't want you upset.”

She didn't want a big scene? That's why they didn't tell me Poppy was dying? I was a person! A child, yes, but a person anyway! Didn't I have rights? Well, didn't I?

I was too exhausted to fight. I bent down on the church floor and put my head the safest place I could think of, on Mama's lap. I couldn't speak anymore. I'd never felt the loss of something so great. This was worse than when my daddy had left me. Because Poppy had really loved me. He knew me. He loved me
even though
he knew me, how imperfect I was. He showered me with affection. To be honest, he was the only one ever to do that. In thinking of Poppy's being gone, I didn't picture him in heaven, being happy, playing harps and such. I simply felt sorry for myself. I was the sorriest and saddest I'd ever been.

Dead and buried in a single day. I thought Uncle Fritz must be the fastest, tidiest preacher there ever was. We were in his office now. Rainey was lying on a little red sofa, and I was on the floor with my head back on Rainey's legs. Mama was sitting in a hardwood chair across from Fritz's hardwood desk. Mama looked over at us and said quietly, “Honey? I know this might not be the best time, but . . . you know these papers I'm about to sign?” Rainey and I sat up and looked her way. “These papers mean that . . . I mean, my father left me—us—the house on Vinca Lane. It's ours. Can you believe it? We can stay here if you like. Would you like that?”

How Mama could almost look happy, I did not know. If ever I'd had an up-and-down moment where the up part nearly matched the down part, this was it. Hearing that we could live on Vinca Lane forever, but without Poppy, was like getting a brand-new bike but losing your legs to pedal with. There was simply no joy in it. Only cruel mockery.

Two weeks ago if they'd told me I'd have a nice new house in a nice new town, I would have jumped for joy. But now it just didn't matter to me. Not one bit. Life, I was learning fast, did not play by any fair rules.

Before we left his office and Mama had signed whatever she needed to sign, she hugged Uncle Fritz. Leaned in and squeezed him tight. He was so tall, her face melted into his chest. He held her back stiff-like, as if hugging didn't quite come easy for him, what with being so tall or being a preacher, or being Grandma Mona's son, one. “I'm so glad you came back,” he said. “He knew you would, you know. He prayed you would.”

“I just wish it hadn't taken me so long,” said Mama. “If I'd just come back a year ago . . . Why didn't he just set out to find me . . . or send you for me if he knew—”