Whistling Past the Graveyard (21 page)

The lady next to me shook my shoulder. “We’re here.”
I straightened up and looked out the window. Well, crap on a cracker, the bus was pulling into the station. I’d slept past all of the street signs that might have started up my memory.

I yawned and rubbed my eyes. My neck hurt and was stiff.

The driver said, “End of the line for this bus. Check the board in the terminal for transfer departures.”
“Is Lulu Langsdon picking you up?” the lady asked, pointing to my note.
I forgave Miss Cyrena right then for making me wear it. Momma was famous.
“Yeah, she is.” Course I’d ruined my story, so I couldn’t tell the lady Lulu was my momma, and that made me a little sad. But the good thing was I didn’t need them street signs to shake my memory loose after all. “You know where she lives?”
“Oh, no. I don’t know her.”
“But you’ve heard of her, right?”
She tilted her head. “No. Should I have?”
“She’s a famous singer.”
She smiled. “This town is full of them.”
That wasn’t good news at all. And there was something funny about the way she said it, too.
She stood up and got my suitcase off the shelf over our seats and handed it to me. She bent over and looked outside the bus. “Do you see her? Is she here yet?”
I looked at the folks on the sidewalk like I was having a time with all the faces. When I thought I’d been looking long enough, I said, “Yep, she’s here.”
She leaned over closer to me. “Which one? Is she a relative?”
“She’s my aunt.” I scooted off my seat like I was in a hurry to get off and see her.
The lady looked like she was gonna ask another question, but the man standing in the aisle behind her cleared his throat real loud.
She said she was sorry and got herself off the bus. I waited until I saw her hug a man in a brown hat and walk away before I stepped into the aisle. I was slow enough in getting off that nobody but the colored were left and they were all standing waiting for me.
I hurried off the bus and into the station. I know I was supposed to find the front door, turn right, and walk two blocks before I met up with Eula, but I’d slept past all of the street signs that were supposed to make my memory work.
I looked around. Over on one side of the room I saw an old-fashioned, wooden phone booth. I went over and got inside. When I closed the door, a little light came on. The phone book was chained to the booth so you couldn’t steal it. And it was so thick!
I went to the
L
’s. There were several Langsdons. I ran my finger down the line, skipping to first names that started with
L
. My hands started to get sweaty and I felt a weird tingle at the bottom of my spine. LaRoux . . . Larry . . . Leonard . . . Luther . . . Martin.
I started to feel sick.
I flipped to the
C
’s. There was only one Claudelle: John.
Maybe the lady on the bus just didn’t like music. Momma was so famous she had an unlisted phone number—probably a private line, too, where you didn’t have to worry about somebody in another house listening to your conversation.
I got out of the phone booth. Not far from me was a guy with a guitar case talking to a man with cowboy boots and a funny tie that looked like it was made from a shoelace. A guy with a guitar had to know something about the music business.
I walked close and pretended to be reading the rules under the yellow-and-black fallout-shelter sign.
They were talking music all right.
Mr. Boots was saying, “. . . the Idle Hour? Oh, it’s on Sixteenth, right near Music Row.”
Music Row! Now that sounded like a place where I could find Momma.
Mr. Guitar said, “Got me a gig there tonight.”
Mr. Boots said, “Well, break a leg, kid.”
I didn’t think that was very nice.
Mr. Guitar headed to the front doors.
I waited for him to get gone, then went to the ticket lady and asked how to get to the Idle Hour by Music Row.
She looked down at me over some little half-glasses. “Ain’t you a little young to be hangin’ out in a bar?”
A bar? “Um, I ain’t lookin’for the bar. I’m lookin’for Music Row. My momma wants to know. She’s waitin’ in the car. Figured the bus-station people would know where everything that’s in Nashville.” There, that should take care of Mrs. Nibby Nose and her curiosity.
“Uh-huh.” She sighed. “Your momma gonna be a star?” She leaned over. “She gonna replace Patsy Cline?” The way she said the name it was like she was saying Momma was gonna replace Jackie Kennedy . . . ridiculous like.
I didn’t want to get into a big talk about my pretend momma, just in case Mrs. Nibby Nose would get it into her head to run outside and talk to her in person. “Music Row?”
“Your momma won’t find anybody there. It’s Saturday night. Recording businesses won’t be open till Monday morning.”
My stomach felt like a rock.
“If your momma’s interested in country music, she should already know ever’body’ll be at the Opry tonight. Since she don’t, you might encourage her to look into a different profession.” The last bit was real snippy.
I crossed my arms. “You know where it is, or not?”
She huffed and made her mouth pruney. “Sixteenth and Seventeenth Avenues, south of Division.”
“How far’s that from here?”
“’Bout fifteen, twenty blocks. Out Vanderbilt University way.” She lifted her chin toward a map on the wall. I noticed she had two black hairs sproutin’ out from a mole down under there and thought it fit her witchy self just right.
“Thank you, ma’am.” I stepped over and looked at the map. It had a pin with a red ball in it that said it was the bus station. Nashville spread out all around it, covering the big map. I followed the avenue numbers until I found Sixteenth. It was gonna be a long walk with baby James and two suitcases. A real long walk.
Another red pin was stuck not near as far away from the bus station. The label said
GRAND OLE OPRY
. Reckon everybody getting into Nashville wanted to know where it was.
I headed out the front door of the station and turned right. I could see Eula on the corner two blocks down, her grip sitting on the sidewalk and baby James bundled close. She was staring my way. When I got closer, I saw she was standing under a sign for a city bus stop with a few other colored folk.
A bus chugged up and opened its doors. All the other coloreds got on. I heard Eula saying”, “Thank you much, I’m waitin’ on someone. I be gettin’ the next one.”
I hung back until the doors closed and the bus pulled away.
“I was beginnin’ to worry you got yourself lost in there,” she said.
I shrugged. “Who you talkin’ to?”
“Some of the locals headin’ home from work. I needed to know where to find the colored part of town, in case we need that Baptist church.”
“Oh, we won’t be needin’ the church. We’ll find Momma at the Grand Ole Opry.” I explained to her all I’d found out in the bus station.
“But we don’t know where that place is,” she said, looking around her like directions might spring out from around a corner.
“I do,” I said, wishin’ I could show off to Mamie that I’d figured it out. “Fifth Avenue. Near Broadway. I saw it on a map.”
Eula looked up overhead at a street sign, picked up her grip, and said, “This way.”
“How do you know for sure?”
“Avenue numbers get bigger this direction.”
“How we gonna know which way to turn on Fifth?”
“We get it figured out.” She was already moving. “Hurry on up. Gettin’ late.”
My Barbie case bounced against my leg as I hurried to catch up. I couldn’t believe I was this close to finding Momma.

Lucky it was summer, otherwise it woulda been dark by the time we got to the Opry—which turned out not to be a building called the Opry, but in the Ryman Auditorium. It looked a lot like a big, fancy brick church with pointy-arched windows and everything. Out in front, and stretched way down the block, was a long, thick line of people waiting to get in. Eula was getting skittish as a cat in a dog pound, but I wasn’t giving up and going to the colored church yet. Just look at all these people lovin’ country music. If Momma wasn’t here, somebody had to know who she was and how to find her.

I asked the first kind-looking lady I come to if Lulu Langsdon was performing tonight. She frowned and said she didn’t think so, but there was a poster near the door with the names of who was. She didn’t act like she’d ever heard of Lulu.

Momma wasn’t listed on the poster, so I went back to the line. Eula had parked herself near the alley and was watching me like a nervous momma bear—Daddy said they was the most dangerous when they was looking after their cubs. There wasn’t any way that Eula could ever look dangerous, but she did look tight and jittery and didn’t take her eyes off me.

I worked my way down the line, went almost a whole block, but nobody knew Lulu. The line started moving and people got too interested about getting inside to talk to me. It was getting on toward dark and I’d promised Eula we’d get us a bus for Jefferson Street before the streetlights came on. Besides, James was fussing and we was down to our last bottle of milk.

I drug myself back to her and we walked out onto Broadway to catch a bus—her new colored friends from the bus stop had told her how to get to their neighborhood and where to find the Mt. Zion Baptist Church.

“Get your jaw up off the ground,” she said. “We find your momma.

Tomorrow another day.”
“But the only thing goin’ on tomorrow’ll be church . . . and I don’t
know where Momma goes for Sunday service.”
“Well then, that’ll give you somethin’ to pray for tomorrow morning . . . that we find your momma on Monday.”
That’s when it hit me. We’d had some pretty hard times since we
got to Miss Cyrena’s, but Eula hadn’t gone inside herself once since
that first day after Wallace got killed. And them Jenkins boys was way
worse than me just saying Wallace’s name.
Now she was the one trying to keep my spirits up. I wondered what
had changed, but didn’t get the chance to ask. The bus pulled up and
we climbed on. Eula had to sit in the back, and the closest white seat I
could find was three rows ahead of her and James.

23

t
he bus dropped us off on Jefferson Street. I knew to get off because Eula coughed three times behind me, but by then the only other white person on the bus was the driver, so it didn’t really matter.

Everybody I saw walking on the street had a brown face. I was a polar bear again. But this time nobody looked at me with hateful eyes. They didn’t look at me at all. People was dressed nice, laughing and talking, going into restaurants and movies, just like white people do on Saturday nights in Cayuga Springs.

Eula had given James his last bottle while we were on the bus, so he was quiet again. She looked up and down the street when she stepped off the bus beside me.

“There, now. There’s a store on the next corner.”

She was looking real tired from being up all night and lugging James and her grip around all day, so I reached over and took her grip from her. “I’ll carry this for a while.”

She smiled down at me, and some of the tired seemed to fade. “Why, thank you, child.” She said it like nobody’d ever offered to carry her load before.

We bought some canned milk and walked to the Mt. Zion Baptist Church. Eula’s new friends had said it was the best colored congregation in Nashville, involved in the community and always looking out for those in need. Well, I reckon that was us all right. They even had a special group called the Rescue Band. I liked the sound of that; it was a way better name than the Ladies Auxiliary. One of the women from the bus stop said she would tell Reverend Freeman to expect us.

It hit me then that the colored at the bus stop were a whole lot nicer than the colored in Miss Cyrena’s town . . . but maybe they were nicer ’cause none of them had seen me. I was keeping Eula from finding a place to fit in, a place that might make her forget all about turning herself into the law for killin’ Wallace.

I pondered while we walked. Maybe once we found Momma and Eula didn’t feel so responsible for me, I could convince her to go back to Miss Cyrena’s or come back here to Jefferson Street, where folks treated her nice. We hadn’t talked about Wallace for a long time. I hoped she was forgettin’ him.

It was getting serious dark by the time we saw the church. It sat on a corner. It was brick with long steps up to the doors. It looked pretty much like any of the white churches I’d ever seen. Cayuga Springs colored churches were all made of wood.

Eula walked right up to the front door of the church, like she wasn’t afraid of nothing.
The door was locked.
She knocked.
We waited, but nobody come. We went back down the front steps and followed the sidewalk to the corner, past the stone box with the glass door that held the announcement board. It had Reverend Maynard P. Freeman’s name and the time of Wednesday and Sunday services.There was also a line that said
All of His flock welcome here
. I hoped they meant it.
I looked up as we walked down the side of the church. It looked dark inside.
Eula went to the door that went to the reverend’s office and knocked, but nobody answered that one either.
She came down the steps slow and thoughtful. “We wait a spell.”
“What about baby James’s bottles?”
“I find a hose bib and get him all fixed up. Can you watch him while I do?”
I nodded and we got ourselves set up on a little strip of grass behind the announcement board. We figured it was better than sitting out in the open on the steps where somebody might come by and ask about my whiteness. Eula walked around the building looking for a water faucet while I changed James’s diaper. His cord—Eula had explained to me all about how a baby’s cord feeds it before it’s born—had finally falled off. I was glad; that dark, shrivelly thing was nasty nasty. Now he had a nice little belly button, just like a real person.
I’d thought it was dark when we’d settled in, but it got darker, specially behind the announcement board. Our eyes was plenty adjusted, still, I’d’a felt better with some light.
Eula said the reverend’d be here soon. But we waited and waited and he never come. We got James all settled down to sleep in Eula’s open grip. I was getting real hungry. We’d already ate all the food Miss Cyrena had packed. But if Eula wasn’t gonna complain, neither was I.
She musta been doing some mind reading ’cause just about then she pulled out an apple and handed it to me.
“Here you go. Tide you over till the reverend come.”
I’d finished my second apple on the bus. I thanked her and took it, but before I took a bite, I saw that she didn’t get another one out. “What about you?”
“I’m not hungry.”
I knowed that couldn’t be true. I handed it back. “Me neither.”
She pushed it back toward me. “Eat it. You growin’.”
I took a bite. Then I handed it to her. “We’ll share. You’re too skinny.”
She shook her head. “Your family won’t like it.”
She had that right. Mamie’d have a conniption. I shrugged.“Whose gonna tell ’em?”
She looked kinda sly, then took the apple and bit it. We grinned at each other like we was sharin’ a secret, or pullin’ a practical joke. I liked the feeling.
We was still passin’ it back and forth when a teenager come past. We’d agreed not to draw attention of anybody but the preacher when he come—just in case not everybody round here ignored polar bears. So we sat still.
He must have seen or heard us though ’cause he said, “Who that?” I could see him stand up taller. When he turned his face our way, his glasses flashed some moonlight.
I looked down at my lap, afraid my white face’d show up too much.
He took a step, but it wasn’t in our direction. He stepped into the street. “I don’t want no trouble. You hear? Leave me alone.” He took two more steps backward and then turned and run as fast as I’d run after shoving Mrs. Sellers.
I sat there with my breath coming fast.
I heard Eula let loose a long breath, but her body didn’t relax none; I could feel her tight muscles where our shoulders touched.
“You think he was scared of a bully?” I whispered.
“Mebbe. Or white folks. Sometimes men get nice and juiced on Saturday nights. Like to come to the colored streets and make trouble.”
I’d heard enough to know that if they did, there wouldn’t be any law stoppin’’em. I decided if whites did come, it was gonna be up to me to protect Eula.
“You settle down and sleep now, child. I wake you when the reverend get here.”
No way was I going to sleep now I knowed there was trouble out. But I didn’t want to make Eula more scared. So I leaned my head on her shoulder and pretended, but my eyes stayed wide-open.
Every time there was footsteps out on the street in front of the church, I felt Eula get stiff, like she was readyin’ herself to fight. But everybody just crossed the street and went on by. As time went on, there got to be less and less people. My eyes kept getting heavy, but I forced them back open.
I was kinda drifting off when I heard them, a whole lot of feet running our way. I started to jump up, but Eula grabbed my arm and held me still. “Shhh.”
A man shouted, “We gonna get you sooner or later. Might as well take it now.” He was out of breath and his voice shook as his feet hit the ground.
A figure turned the corner and started down the middle of street in front of us. Before he took three more strides, four men was on him, knockin’ him to the pavement. I thought I saw a glint of glasses as he hit the ground.
There was the sound of fists hitting skin. But the worst sound was the huffs as the blows landed and the low growls and whimpers of pain.
I wanted to do something to help that boy. If only I had me a big stick—
Just then baby James started to squawl. Eula snatched him up right quick, but one of the men beatin’ on the boy stopped and looked our way.
James kept squallin’. The man started toward us. “Come out here.”
Eula shot to her feet. “Stay put!” she whispered before she walked out to the street with James in her arms.
I was getting up when I saw clear that the man was colored, not white. I stopped.
“Well, now, look what we got here.” He had that thick-tongued sound of being in the juice.
The other men stopped beatin’on the boy, but he didn’t get up to run off again. He rolled around on the ground making some awful noises.
“What is it, Pudge?” one of them said.
The first man come closer to Eula. “We got us a woman like to breed, is what we got.”
“Do say?”
Now all the men were facing Eula. Her voice was shaky, but loud, “We just waitin’ for Reverend Freeman. He be here any minute.”
“Well then, we best get our business done.” The first man, Pudge, reached for her.
Eula jerked away, but the man snatched her by the shoulders.
I shot out, hollerin’ at the top of my lungs. I grabbed at the arm of the man holding Eula. It was so big and strong, I ended up swingin’ on it like a monkey bar.
“Ho there.” Somebody grabbed me by the waist and wrapped his arms around me, my back pressed against him. I kicked and wiggled, but he just laughed. “Why this one’s white!”
“Damn, too bad. We coulda got ourselves two for one.”
“Let her be!” Eula shouted. “Let her be and I’ll do whatever you want. No fightin’. I take care of all of you.”
“Well, we like some fight in our women, don’t we?” the third man said.
“Let her be,” Eula said, her voice still strong. “Whatever you want. Just let her be.”
“Ain’t like we could diddle her, now, is it?” the man holding me said. His breath was real bad.
“No, sir, not if we want to go on breathin’.” The one holding Eula was laughin’ now. “Lucky we got us this one.”
I jerked myself enough to get loose and flung myself at him.
One of the other men snatched me back.
“Starla, stop!” Eula held baby James out to me. “You need to take James around and sit on the front steps. Don’t come back around here. I come and get you in a bit. It’s all right, they ain’t gonna hurt me.”
The man put me down, slow and careful, in case I got wild again.
I wanted to hurt them as much as they’d hurt that boy. But there was four of them—and they was mean.
“Yeah, you go on, girl. You give us any more trouble and we won’t be so nice to your woman here.”
Eula looked at me. “Don’t provoke, Starla. It be all right now. Take James.”
My mouth was dry and my heart was beating so hard it hurt. I looked up and down the street, but nobody was in sight.
I took James. Eula had covered his face with the blanket. I don’t know why, but he’d stopped squallin’.
“Sticks, you go round there and make sure she stay where she supposed to.”
“I got as much—”
“You get your turn. Get on.” It was clear, Pudge was the boss.
Sticks wrapped his hand around the back of my neck and squeezed. Then he shoved me, not toward Jefferson Street, but toward the alley behind the church. I dug in, but he gave me a little shake and squeezed harder. “Don’t make me carry you.”
I moved as slow as I could.
My red rage wasn’t enough to save us. The boy on the road started moanin’ again. I couldn’t help him neither.
The man tried to hurry me along, so I stopped dead at the start of the alley. I wasn’t going on my own. He would have to carry both me and James if he wanted me to leave Eula.
The men was laughin’.
I wanted to cover my ears, but couldn’t with James in my arms. I couldn’t do nothin’ but hold him close and start to cry.
The blare of a car horn made me jump.
“You there!” It was a man’s voice, deep and strong and sober. A car door opened. Sticks took off down the alley. I heard other feet running, too.
The police?
“The good Lord’ll have his day!” the deep voice shouted. “You run all you want.”
I spun around.
The car was sitting at the corner, driver’s door open, the dome light shining in the empty car. A man shorter than Eula stood by her side. I could see the white of his preacher’s collar under his chin.
He looked up and saw me. “Come, child. Come now. We get you inside. Those miscreants won’t bother you anymore.”
The reverend helped the boy up from the street. I could see his bloody face in the glare of the headlights. It hurt to look at it.
The reverend picked up the boy’s glasses from the pavement and handed them to him. “You want to come on in, son? Or you want me to take you home?”
The boy mumbled something that must have been
home
’cause the pastor took the boy and set him in the passenger seat of his car. He rolled up the windows and locked the doors before he come back to take us inside.
As he took us to the church basement, Reverend Freeman apologized for being so late. One of his flock was on her way to the gates of heaven and he had to see her home. He also apologized for those men, even though it sure wasn’t his fault. He said they was young and angry and took their anger out on the weak. He hoped to someday bring them to the Lord and help heal their souls.
I didn’t think there was any fixin’ men that mean.
The reverend got us cots set up and told Eula that the little kitchen was stocked and we was welcome to anything we wanted. He invited us to Sunday service, but didn’t act like he was making us go to pay for our beds.
After he left, I asked Eula what them men was about to do.
“Nothin’ but talk nasty; words not fit for a child’s ears. Reverend Freeman come afore they had a chance to even to that.” She petted my hair. “I don’t want you to think of them ever again. Reverend’s right, the good Lord will have his day.” She wiped her palms on her skirt. “You hungry?”
I shook my head. All that nastiness outside had scared my hunger away. I wasn’t sure it’d ever come back.
She made me lay down and took my shoes off. “You sleep now. Tomorrow we celebrate the Lord and all his goodness.”
I wondered again how Eula could be so sure about the Lord. He seemed to let her fall into the path of plenty of bad folk. I was plenty mad at the Lord for letting it happen, too.
Maybe it was ’cause He hadn’t let any of those bad folk do their worst. Maybe that’s the way Eula looked at the Lord . . . like he’d saved her from worse. I tried to think on it some more, but my brain was so tired it slid right down into sleep.
I woke up to the smell of baking. Opening my eyes, I saw it was still dark. The light was on in the tiny kitchen over in the corner of the basement. I got up and walked to the door. Eula was pulling a cookie sheet out of the little oven.
“Why aren’t you asleep?”
She looked up, startled.“Makin’a thank-you for the reverend. I’ll replace the ingredients on Monday afore we leave to find your momma.”
I looked at the countertop. “You must think he really likes cookies.”
“Well, the whole church is bein’ hospitable, so I reckoned we could put some out at the service.”
She started to put flour into the mixing bowl again. I’d seen how big this church was; she already had more’n enough cookies.
“Ain’t you slept at all?”
She shook her head and added a pinch of salt.
“You gonna sleep?”
“Can’t. But you get yourself some rest now.”
I started back to my cot, then stopped. I looked over my shoulder. Eula was humming.
I went back in the kitchen. “My daddy says that when you do somethin’ to distract you from your worstest fears, it’s like whistlin’ past the graveyard. You know, making a racket to keep the scaredness and the ghosts away. He says that’s how we get by sometimes. But it’s not weak, like hidin’ . . . it’s strong. It means you’re able to go on.”
She looked up. “Your daddy sounds like a smart man.”
“I think that’s what your bakin’ is, it’s your way of whistlin’. Ever’ time something really bad happens, you start bakin’ . . . like it takes your mind away from the scaredness.”
She wiped her hands on a towel, then come over to me. She held my face in her hands and looked right into my eyes. “I ain’t strong, not like you, Starla. I live my whole life scared.”
“That ain’t the point, the scaredness. The point is you find a way around it. You’re plenty strong. Look at all that happened to you, and here you are, still takin’ care of me and James. You could have stayed with Miss Cyrena forever. But you didn’t.” I touched her cheek. “You’re strong, too.”
I turned around and left her then, a little embarrassed by blabberin’ on.
I fell asleep listening to the sound of Eula working in the kitchen. It was almost as good as my best fallin’-asleep memory of Momma and Daddy at the piano teacher’s house.