Whistling Past the Graveyard (27 page)

31

t

hey took James at one fifteen that afternoon. I felt even sadder than I thought I would, seeing the sheriff ’s deputy and the Welfare lady drive off with him. It had to be worse for Eula, her wanting a baby so bad and all. I wondered if watching him go made her think of her too-white baby and how Charles gave him to somebody else— I kept the dark ideas about what might have happened to him out of my head. He was a boy. A happy boy with a momma and daddy who loved him. Just like I hoped James would be. I’d asked the Welfare lady if me and Eula could come and visit him later, but she’d said she wasn’t sure where he’d be and it was a bad idea anyway. I’d been surprised that she wasn’t keeping him with her. I thought that was her job.

Me and Daddy and Eula stood on the front sidewalk and watched until the deputy turned the corner and we couldn’t see the car anymore. I saw Ernestine peeking out from the LeCounts’ living-room window, watching it all happen. Eula was the first one of us to go back inside. When Daddy and I followed her, she asked Daddy if she could use the kitchen, she felt like doing some baking. She’d noticed some bananas need usin’.

I was proud when Daddy told her she was a guest in our house and didn’t have to ask permission, she could do as she pleased. The kitchen was hers anytime she wanted. That made me feel better for about two seconds. Until I watched Eula creep through the living room and disappear into the kitchen, her shoulders folded in and her head down. And she didn’t invite me to come help like ususal. I reckon that said as much about how bad she was feeling as anything.

I hoped the law didn’t punish her; James going away was punishment enough.
I’d asked Daddy about a million times how long it was gonna be until Sheriff Reese called to tell us about finding James’s mother and what he was gonna do about Eula. Daddy finally got so prickly about saying he didn’t know that I’d finally stopped asking.
The house filled with wonderful smells. I wanted to go to the kitchen, but I think Eula just needed to be alone with her baking.
Daddy had to leave for a while, but wouldn’t tell me where he was going. When I kept asking worried questions, he told me it had nothing to do with Eula, so I could relax. I didn’t tell him that part of me wasn’t worried about Eula, part of me was worried he’d leave and never come back. Course that was silly. I knew Daddy wouldn’t just disappear like Momma had. Still, I couldn’t help my nervousness.
I heard his car start and pull away. I laid down on the living-room floor in front of the TV. The only thing on was stupid lady stories like
The Guiding Light
and
Search for Tomorrow,
so I turned it back off.Then I just laid there and looked at the ceiling, feeling too low to get up and do anything.
The only good thing was Mamie stayed gone.
In a bit, Eula come through the living room and said real quiet that the banana pie was cooling for dinner and she was gonna go up and rest a bit. She was careful not to look at me. Her shoulders didn’t seem any stronger . . . I worried that losing James might not be able to be fixed by making pies. There might be things so bad that all the whistling in the world couldn’t make them go away.
I wanted to take her hand, to help her like she’d always helped me. But I remembered how she’d left me alone in the bathroom in Nashville when I’d wanted to be by myself. So I just laid there.
After a while, there was a knock at the front door. When I saw it was Patti Lynn, I got up lickety-split to let her inside and pull her close for a hug. When we stopped huggin’, we just stood there, not sure what to do next. We wasn’t really neither of us huggers.
“What’d you do to your hair?”
“I had to make it black to hide from the law. It’s really a long story.”
“And you’re gonna tell me every bit of it!” Then she looked more serious. “I’m glad you’re back.” For a minute she looked like she didn’t know what else to say. Then she poked me in the arm. “Can’t believe you’d run off without me!”
“If I hadn’t been runnin’ from Mrs. Sellers, I’d have taken you and my bike, too. Maybe even a bologna sandwich.”
She laughed. “Oh, you shoulda seen her!” Patti Lynn made some crazy faces and jumped around like she had ants in her pants, shaking her finger and pulling her hair.
Things felt more right after that.
We sat on the couch, Indian-style, facing each other while I told her everything that had happened. Everything except about how horrible Lulu turned out to be. I’d spent so much time spinnin’ stories about her and how her and me and Daddy was gonna be happy again, I just couldn’t admit it . . . not even to Patti Lynn. I let her think that I come home because I wanted to, that I didn’t like Nashville after all.
“Oh, my gosh! You’re just like Huckleberry Finn!”
I got serious then. When I’d told her about Wallace, I’d played like I wasn’t scared, but that wasn’t right. I couldn’t let her think running off alone was something a girl should do—even though Patti Lynn had a perfect family and didn’t have any reason to. “Truth be told, it wasn’t nothin’ like that story. I wish I’d never left. I almost got killed and brung a lot of trouble to Eula, too.” It made my chest hurt to admit it, but the sheriff was right.
“You love her like we do Bess?”
I smiled. “More.”Then I got sober. “But I don’t know if we’ll be able to keep her with us. The sheriff is still considerin’.”
“She saved you.”Patti Lynn waved her hand like she was sure.“He’ll let her be.”
“I hope so.” After what I’d seen lately, I knew better than to pretend in happy endings like they had in stories.
Patti Lynn spent some time telling me about the search parties. Then she went out and got a stack of newspapers from her bike; her new, purple Sting-Ray had a white basket with flowers on the handlebars. That made me think of Troy and his Sting-Ray . . . which wasn’t purple but blue and didn’t have a basket at all ’cause he was a boy. I wondered if he’d forgot about me yet.
When Patti Lynn showed me the newspapers, I couldn’t believe almost all of them had my third-grade picture on the front. Every day there was an “Update on missing child, Starla Claudelle.” As I went through them, I couldn’t believe the things people thought might have happened to me: fell in a well, got ate by a gator, drowned in the river, climbed a tree and broke my neck, kidnapped by a crazy person who wanted to use me as a sacrifice in devil worship. After reading all that, I felt pretty lucky. Nobody even had a thought that I’d run off to my momma. In fact, the stories in the paper acted like I didn’t even have one.
The other thing that knocked my socks off was how many people had nice stories to tell about me and said they were praying like crazy for the good Lord to keep me safe and bring me back home. Even Mrs. Sellers. There was a picture of her, too; she looked like she meant it.
One paper had a huge picture of Daddy and Mamie standing on the porch. Daddy looked scared. Mamie looked like she was bawling like a baby. I folded it quick, so I didn’t have to look at it long, so I wouldn’t have to think about Daddy saying Mamie couldn’t even eat the whole time I’d been gone. She’d sure made herself scarce around here since I got back. So maybe it was just for show. I’d never been nothin’ but trouble for Mamie.
All the sudden, I wanted to go out to my fort. But that was a place I didn’t let nobody come, not even Patti Lynn.
“Wanna go for a bike ride?” Patti Lynn asked.
“Better not. Daddy and Mamie are gone. I’d get in trouble.”
Patti Lynn laughed so hard she got tears in her eyes.
“What’s so funny?”
“Since when are you worried ’bout gettin’ in trouble?”
I started laughing, too. It did seem most ridiculous. Still, we settled for watching Popeye cartoons and playing checkers instead. I wished I had a Mouse Trap game like Patti Lynn instead of just this dippy checker game. But she didn’t seem to care.
At the same time I heard Daddy come in the back door, the telephone rang. I hurried to answer it. Mamie never let me ’cause I wasn’t polite enough. The way she wanted me to do it seemed silly. In the time I said, “Hello, Claudelle residence, Starla speaking,” I coulda had a whole conversation done. I tried to remember to do it right, but every time I beat Mamie to the phone, I was so excited, I just got out “Hello.”
It was Mrs. Todd. I figured she was calling for Patti Lynn to come home, but she asked to talk to Daddy. She sounded funny.
Daddy took the phone and nodded, saying “Yes,”“Of course,”and “I understand” a bunch of times. When he hung up, he clapped his hands together like he had good news. “Patti Lynn gets to sleep over tonight for you girls to catch up.”
We was so happy we jumped up and down a little. We always had sleepovers at Patti Lynn’s. Mamie needed her sleep. Mrs. Todd said that after five kids she could sleep through a bomb exploding.
Then I thought about Mrs. Todd’s sounding so strange. “Is everything okay? None of the boys is in the emergency room?” Seemed like that happened about once a month.
“Everybody’s fine.”
Then I thought about the sheriff going to talk to Gracie. “Are Bess and Gracie in trouble?”
“Why would they be in trouble?” Patti Lynn asked. I hadn’t told her the part about Gracie being the one to drop James at the church. And I didn’t really know why I didn’t.
“Everything’s fine,” Daddy said. “Now go wash up and we’ll get some dinner going.”
I took off running for the stairs, just in case Patti Lynn wanted to ask more about Bess and Gracie. Lucky, she was so excited about staying over, she forgot on the way up to the bathroom.
By the time me and Patti Lynn got back downstairs, Eula was in the kitchen with Daddy. She looked real sad while she emptied the baby bottle that was left in the refrigerator. She rinsed it over and over again. Then she set it in the sink and turned around.
“I’ll just brown them pork chops, Mr. Claudelle, if ’n that all right?”
“I’d appreciate it. I’m not much of a cook.” Then Daddy set us girls to peeling potatoes. When Eula come over to inspect our work, she laughed, saying there wasn’t much potato left when we got done with ’em, so we’d best peel a few more. The sound of her laughing made me have hope that she just needed to cook some more to get back to herself.
The three of us making dinner was almost as good as baking in Miss Cyrena’s kitchen.
Then Mamie come home to ruin everything.

She stood in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen with her arms crossed and a lipstick-red frown on her face. Her pocketbook, white like her shoes, hung from one arm. “Who gave y’all permission to mess up my kitchen?”

Patti Lynn jumped—even though Mamie was always sweet as pie to Patti Lynn and her momma, Patti Lynn knew about the real Mamie. Eula spun around from the stove, meat fork in her hand.

“I did.” Daddy was sitting at the table tucked in the corner by the door, looking at the newspaper.
Mamie’s eyes stopped being all squinty and her frown went away. “Oh, Porter. I didn’t see you there.”
“I’d reckon not.”
She set her purse on the table with a big sigh. “I’m just too exhausted to even think about makin’ dinner.” Like she couldn’t see us standing right there doing it already. “I’ve been out calling all day, thankin’ people for their kindness during our distressin’ time.”
“We’re cookin’ dinner, Mamie,” I said, real cheerful. “You can go put your feet up.” Which I figured to be her dearest wish in the world judgin’ by her frequent mentioning she don’t have time to do it “even for a second.”
“I think I’ll do that.”Then she looked at Daddy. “Porter, we need to talk about findin’ a place for that colored woman. Can’t have the whole town knowin’ she’s sleepin’ in our sheets.”
Daddy turned the page in the newspaper. “She’ll be gone tomorrow.”
“Daddy!” I dropped my knife in the sink and stood in front of him with my wet hands clasped like I was praying. “No, Daddy. Pleeeease.”
He smiled at me. “We’ll all be gone tomorrow, Starla. I got us a place of our own today.”
I was jumpin’ up and down and squealin’, but I could still hear Mamie start sputterin’, “You’re not serious! What about your job?”
“I got a new one. Right here in Cayuga Springs.”
I heard Patti Lynn clap behind me. I was so excited I nearly peed my pants right there in Mamie’s kitchen.
“Porter, don’t be foolish!” Mamie put her hand on her hip, like she did when she was getting extra bossy. “You’re just upset by Starla’s running off.” She shot me the stink eye. “Don’t be hasty throwing away a good job like that. You can’t begin to make as much money here.”
“No. But we’ll make do.”
“Where are we gonna live, Daddy?” I hoped it was closer to Patti Lynn.
“I rented our old place, upstairs at Mrs. White’s. I’ll be working off some of the rent. The house needs a lot of repair—which is why the apartment is sitting empty; leaky roof.”
“I don’t mind a leaky roof,” I said, afraid Mamie would convince him it was too bad to move into. “We can put a bucket under it.”
But Mamie wasn’t worried about Mrs. White’s roof, she was worried about her own. “But I can’t keep this house on what I make doing the books for Adler’s Drug Store. I sacrificed a good job to stay home with—”
“That’s my other good news.” Daddy looked like the cat that got the cream, as Mamie said; which meant mighty pleased with hisself. “I ran into Mr. Brinker at the gas station today. He’s in a tight spot at the real estate office. His receptionist quit last week with no notice. He was happy to know you’ll be available right away. You can even keep the side job with Adler’s with no problem. See, everything’s working out great.” Daddy was smiling, but it wasn’t his Good Time Charlie smile; it was kind of an I-dare-you smile. I’d never seen him use it on Mamie.
“So she just runs off and end’s up getting what she wants? Letting her work you like this is wrong, Porter. It just encourages more bad behavior.”
I kinda gagged, ready to jump in and defend myself, but Daddy gave me the look and said, “I’m the one who’ll have to deal with it though, not you. I thought you’d be relieved.”
“I’m only thinking of what’s best for Starla. With you working all day, she’ll run wild.”
It took some teeth grittin’ after that one, but I stayed quiet. I didn’t want to sass and make Mamie right.
“Mrs. White said she’ll be happy to keep tabs on her after school until I get home.”
“Well, haven’t you been busy.” Mamie put on her squinty eyes. “A person would think you’d at least have discussed this with me first. If you want to get a job back here, fine, but there’s plenty of room in this house for all three of us.”
I shook my head, but it was more like a shiver, so Mamie didn’t notice, and made my eyes beg, Please no.
Daddy folded the paper and stood up. He put his hands on Mamie’s shoulders and kissed her on the forehead. “I’ve already asked too much of you, Mother. I’m giving you your life back.”
Daddy left the kitchen by the back door. Mamie looked like she didn’t want her life back all that much. She grabbed her purse, spun around, and went through the living-room door. When her bedroom door slammed, my smile popped out and I danced around just a little.
Eula was smiling, too. “There now, it as it should be.”
That’s when my happy flew out the kitchen window. If me and Daddy was gonna live at Mrs. White’s, where there was only two bedrooms, where was Eula gonna go? All alone out there in that house in the country where all she’d remember was killin’ Wallace with a skillet? She didn’t even have her truck to get to town no more.
I ran out the back door to catch up with Daddy.
But he didn’t have an answer for me. He reminded me we had to take things one step at a time. I was beginning to hate those words. He put his arm around me and give me a squeeze. “Things have worked out so far, right?”
I nodded.
“Well, then we have to believe it’ll continue just the same. Eula can come stay with us until the sheriff says she’s free to go.”
“Go? Where? What if she doesn’t want to go?”
He raised his eyebrows. “What if she does? We can’t keep her here just because we don’t want her to leave. Shouldn’t she be the one to make her own plans?”
I didn’t like hearing that, or the way he said it. Like I was being selfish. I thought about how happy Miss Cyrena was living with all her own people. How Eula got involved with the ladies at Mt. Zion. But I was Eula’s people—all her people now that James was gone. I went back inside, hoping it took the sheriff a long time to make up his mind to let Eula go. Maybe she’d get so used to living with us she wouldn’t want to leave.