The Storycatcher (31 page)

So it was all my hard work that brought me to Miss Amelia Daniels. See, she be crazy. That’s what everybody said, especially the coloreds that worked there. I knew her when her and me was little things. She started teaching me to read then. Later she learned me to write halfway. Mama said she was touched, but Mama was always kinder than most. Amelia stayed upstairs in the house all the time, but I’d seen her sneak out late in the evening and dance without any shoes in the meadow while the sun went down. Mr. Daniels, her daddy, up and died from a heart attack, and that changed the whole place. Most of the coloreds started worrying that living on the Daniels place was going to end, but then that lawyer man read Mr. Daniels’s will—I even had to go stand in the yard and listen. He left each colored family their old house and a plot of land. Folks said he was still trying to make up for slave days.

When Mr. Daniels died, things changed. Miss Amelia began to come out of the house anytime she wanted. The day I started knowing her, really knowing her as a grown-up, she wore a pink dress covered in tiny rosebuds. On her feet was a pair of soft pink slippers like flowers in bloom. She moved around like
a fairy in one of Mama’s stories. Her dark-red curls fell down her back. I wanted so bad to touch that hair. Mama always said red hair be the sign of luck and favor. I’ve never been anything to look at, not like Mama. This gives me three wrongs: a girl, colored, and ugly. And everybody knows three be a bad number. Most folks say I looked like some old boy.

Miss Amelia carries herself like a butterfly that caught a good wind. What I would do for that kind of grace in my soul. Now, a soul be a funny thing, all tangled up in this worldly life, speaking in the most quiet words that can’t be heard by the human ear. Once in a while a soul takes up housekeeping in a person’s mind and steals all her practical sense. Miss Amelia has that kind of soul. You can tell by looking deep into her eyes.

My soul be old, old, old. Nothing fanciful. So it was a true wonder that I walked right up to Miss Amelia that day. Most of the time I kept off in the woods when others came visiting the graves.

“There you are.” It was that simple, like she’d been knowing all along I’d come to her.

I stood there like all my sense had drained out of my feet.

“What are your plans for Daddy’s grave? I think . . .” Her voice broke in half. I wished her silent. Her pain soaked into my bones and ached just like Jesus hurt when he saw Martha crying over her brother, Lazarus. “I think he needs something real pretty,” she finished.

Life could rip a girl up and leave her to defend herself. “Some wildflowers.” I dug the toe of my old work boot into the loose dirt.

“Please.” One long curl pushed down over her eye.

“I’ll work on it today.”

She looked at the pure blue sky. “Daddy called that a glass sky, Miss Armetta.”

My name sounded like musical notes coming out of her
mouth. Imagine a glass sky. Not a thought I would ever find on my own.

“I always remembered you. I taught you to read. Daddy would have killed me if he knew. He never believed in smart coloreds.”

I nodded.

After she left, I sowed a whole slew of seeds into Mr. Daniels’s mound, working my fingers into the cool dirt. I’d been catching plenty of seeds for a while. Only fitting to give them back to Mr. Daniels. The knees of my overalls had big dirty patches. The evening sun stretched out and touched my shoulders as I worked. My job was to make them seeds stay put until they took hold. That was the most important job.

April 14, 1869

And we set into a pattern for the next few days. Me working and her talking.

“I had me a beau once. He was pretty as he was tall.” Miss Amelia watched as I tended the seeds with water I hauled from the river.

“If we don’t get some rain, these flowers will never grow.” I kept my look on the ground.

“He had eyes as blue as robin eggs. Do you know that color, Armetta?”

I met her stare. She talked to be talking, and listening to her soothed the hurt I didn’t even know was there.

“He just up and left for Atlanta. I don’t blame him none. I was more your age and the dumbest girl around. Lord, Daddy kept me closed and didn’t even let me live. The boy just wanted me. You know what I mean?”

The river was calm from lack of rain. “I reckon.”

“Well, he used me right up. I never had another thing to give to a boy. You need to be careful, Armetta Lolly. You are alone in
the world. Men are snakes. Don’t trust them.” She dug her bare feet into the dirt. “Mama says I need to find me a man and just get married. She says there ain’t no use in loving someone. She says I’ll be twenty-five soon and nobody will want me.”

The words in my mouth tasted like gravel, and I forced them down.
I care about you.
That thought floated right through my mind. But her mama was right. Amelia needed to find a man and marry. What was love? I’d never known one thing about it. Mama loved me, but shoot, she was so busy taking care of us to show me much touching. Daddy was Daddy, all about himself, like I wasn’t even part of him.

“Love be right here.” I opened my arms to the graves.

She pulled her feet close to her and studied me. “Maybe. But that’s so sad, Armetta. Real sad. The dead give us love. Too sad.” She shook her head. We could disagree and still be together there, among the graves, the dead. Me growing things and her talking things out.

April 18, 1869

Miss Amelia came knocking at my door today, a good week after I planted the flowers on her daddy’s grave. She had found the seedlings peeking up even though we was still in a dry spell, not to mention the hot wind.

“Mama has taken sick. I think it’s this crazy weather. Not a cool day in sight.” She nodded at the ball of sun in the sky.

“Nothing I like about this weather,” I said.

“I made you some fresh bread and gathered some eggs.” She pushed a pretty brown basket at me. “I have this too. I want you to take it.” She pulled a package out from behind her back. It was wrapped in pink tissue paper and tied with a yellow ribbon.

My stomach got to fluttering. The tissue paper was the prettiest thing I’d seen in my whole life, prettier than the white
Bible Mama gave me one Christmas. It be in the memory box too.

“Go on, silly. It’s just plain old paper.” But she wore a big pleased smile on her face.

The paper be soft like a piece of fancy cloth, maybe softer. Pale-yellow material with tiny white dots was folded in the neatest of ways. The color against my dark skin makes it look beautiful. A dress. The skirt is flimsy and fluffy like a cloud settling on the cemetery after a rain. They say the valley pulls the clouds down and when the sun hits them it be the prettiest sight looking down from Black Mountain. My one dress is meant for scrubbing floors at some white woman’s house. And it is this very reason bile pushed in my chest and up my throat. The new dress is a heartbreak waiting to be thrown on me. That’s exactly what Mama would have said. It is so pretty, sin is written all over it. Miss Amelia thought she be doing good, trying to make me better, lift me up in the world. A white woman with good intentions is the worst thing to come up against in life.

Miss Amelia took the dress from me and gave it a good shake. “I think it will be a perfect fit. You’ll look so nice, Armetta.”

My name coming out of her mouth sounded like a soft wind rippling through the leaves. I held on to the pink tissue paper.

“I know you’re thinking you don’t need to look pretty, but that’s just not so. Every girl should look her best. Anyway, surprises happen every day. You never know when you might need a good dress.”

Now, that was the apple on the tree of knowledge tempting and taunting me. “I’ll wear it to the next party I’m invited to.” I cut her a grin so as not to show disrespect or hurt her feelings.

“You never know, Armetta. We can meet someone special in the oddest of ways.”

“I ain’t looking for nothing to make me pretty, Miss Amelia.”
There were some things this girl just will never understand. Like what it is to be colored on a mountain in North Carolina. Not only colored, but ugly and built like a boy.

When she left, I noticed a big greenish dragonfly dead on the step leading to the shack. Could be good. Mama said dragonflies brought change. I scooped it up and placed it in my memory box.

Tonight I spread the pink tissue over the one window in the shack. The evening sun turned the room a fancy red. It was a bad omen to add color to such a plain, peaceful place. It was like the offering in the church plate waiting to be used by those do-gooders, all showy and praiseworthy.

May 5, 1869

An angel showed up. The steady rain had been falling a week. Dragonfly River was lapping at the trees near my shack. The weather was cold. Mama called those kind of spring days “blackberry winter.”
“Days you just have to trudge through, Armetta. It’s the devil that sends us the frost after the flowers start to bloom. He’s trying to break our spirit. But remember, life always comes on anyway, even after a frost.”
Maybe I’ll find the guts to leave the cemetery for good, making me a life somewhere else—that’s just what that pink paper has done for me, made me restless.

A wagon stopped at the big double iron gates in the afternoon like it might pull straight through. It was plain as day that the wagon came from somewhere off the mountain, a city. Someone yelled, but I just held my ground. Maybe they’d leave. A man dressed in a town shirt and pants jumped down from the seat. His hair was the color of honey.

I stepped out of the shed ’cause he looked like the type to snoop.

“Excuse me!” he yelled through the gates. “I’m supposed to speak with Miss Armetta Lolly, the caretaker of Ella Creek Cemetery.”

Lord, I sounded so important. I lost my thoughts and stood in a puddle halfway up my boots. “That be me.”

“You’re the caretaker? Miss Lolly?” He smiled. A colored man held the reins on the horses.

“Yes, sir, I be Armetta Lolly.” The wind cut through my flannel shirt. “I’m hoping this rain don’t freeze and kill my plants.” Now, this was the most I had spoken to anyone outside of Miss Amelia.

The rain stood in his hair, little drops here and there. He took his time looking at the cemetery, like he wasn’t even getting wet, like it was the finest place in the world to be standing. “I don’t regularly care for graveyards, but this is nice, real nice.”

I studied the ground. “The river is high.”

He kind of laughed. “I can see why. Ever since I’ve arrived from New Orleans, it’s been raining.” He smiled at me in a soft way.

It was him who brought the rain and the cold.

“I’m escorting a gift here for Miss Amelia Daniels. She said you knew where their family plot is.”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

“I’m Paul Dobbins, Pastor Paul Dobbins. Why don’t you come out here, and I’ll show you what I have.” He circled the wagon.

I opened the iron gates and followed him.

She was as tall as me. Her wings were almost as long as her body. They arched back as if she might be showing them off or about to take to the sky. I could count the feathers overlapping. A belt was tied around her small waist. In her arms, she held a bunny. Mama always said white rabbits was special and shouldn’t be
bothered. They brought good luck. Without even thinking, I reached out and touched the pure-white dress.

“She’s a beauty. Don’t you think?” The pastor smiled.

Heat moved up my neck, and I thought of how that fancy dress Miss Amelia gave me might just fit. “Yes, sir.”

He touched the angel’s arm. “I wish I had carved her. She’s made of marble. How far have we got to move her?”

“A ways.”

The man who called himself Pastor Paul Dobbins smiled at the angel. “We’ll get her there.” He grabbed a hand truck off the wagon.

The rain wasn’t even bothering me anymore. “We could try using some wood planks I got behind the shed.”

“Now, that’s a girl who knows what she’s talking about.” Pastor Paul Dobbins nodded.

The big colored man worked with getting the angel off the wagon.

She looked like she might speak to me. I shook off the shiver. “I’ll go get them boards.”

The job was slow. I took the wide boards and placed them edge to edge as far as they would reach. When we got to the end, I’d bring the planks around and start again. This went on for a while, and somewhere along the way the rain stopped. Just as we got to the family plot, a gust of wind pushed a cloud to the side and one ray of sun spilled onto the ground. “We got to put her there so the sun hits her.” The sun went back behind the clouds.

“You know, Miss Lolly, you might just understand this angel.”

“You can call me Armetta.”

Pastor Paul Dobbins winked at me and pointed to the spot where the sun had been. “Let’s put her there.”

In no time the angel was standing proud and gentle. The sun
broke out again and washed over her like a holy light. A tingling started in my toes and spread up my body into my mind. Something changed in the air, and a chill squeezed through my heart.

When the angel was standing in place, we walked back to the wagon, Pastor Paul Dobbins and me.

“Is there a place where I can clean up before I go to the Danielses’ house? I don’t want to track up their floors.”