Whistling Past the Graveyard (29 page)

33

F

our more days went by without hearing from the sheriff. I started to believe maybe he’d forgot about Eula; started to believe she would just keep on sleeping in our living room on the cot Mrs. White had sent Daddy to fetch from her garage after his first day at work.

Sunday morning we dropped Eula and her Sunday hat off at the colored church in town. She didn’t want him to drive her all the way out to the country church she used to attend. I hoped people at this church was as nice as the folks at Mt. Zion Baptist. If she liked the town church, maybe that’d be another good reason for her to stay.

Instead of my usual Sunday dress, I wore the dress Miss Cyrena got me from the charity box. Wearin’ it made me feel less far away from Eula. As me and Daddy climbed the wide steps up to the big, heavy double doors at our chruch, I held his hand, even though it was babyish. The choir was already singing when we went in. I was glad we was late. I figured Daddy would sit in the last pew so we wasn’t “such a spectacle,” as Mamie called it when we was late, by walking halfway down the aisle to our regular pew.

But he kept right on going toward Mamie and her pink hat. She looked some surprised when Daddy tapped her on the shoulder to slide over. Since I was in church and supposed to be figuring out the lessons God was teachin’ me, I reckoned it’d be bad to make a stink, so I just made sure I was sitting on the other side of Daddy.

I heard Mamie whisper, “What on earth is Starla wearing?” “She looks fine—”

The preacher got up and started talking, so that was the end of that. I decided I was gonna wear this dress every Sunday.
I looked across the aisle and down toward the front. Patti Lynn’s family pew was empty. Disappointment got on me pretty heavy. I hadn’t seen her since the day I rode my bike to her house. Whenever I called from Mrs. White’s telephone, nobody answered. Whenever I knocked on the door, nobody come to open it. I thought sure they’d be at church; they never missed. Mrs. Todd said her boys was always in so much mischief, they couldn’t afford to miss a Sunday—but she’d been smiling when she’d said it.
I wondered if Mrs. Todd had smiled all week, or if she was ruined forever.
My mind kept flitterin’ around, thinking about Patti Lynn and not concentrating on figuring out what God was teachin’ me.
Finally church was over. While the organ was still playing, I heard Mamie say to Daddy, “I’m surprised to see you here.”
Daddy said, just like nothing had happened, “It’s Sunday.”
I got up then. I wanted to get away as fast as I could, but folks was yakking in the aisle, blocking my way. I squeezed past Mrs. Frieberger, but I was still close enough to hear Mamie say, “Well”—she sounded like her regular snippy self; she didn’t usually when talking to anybody but me—“I don’t suppose you want to come home for dinner?”
I wanted to turn around and holler, Home is Mrs.White’s house now. But I didn’t dare sass across the church crowd.
I heard Daddy say, “Thanks, Mother, but Eula already put a chicken . . .” The crowd got inching too far away for me to hear.
I stood outside the church, nervousness kickin’in my belly. At home, we was still sitting on the floor to eat, so I hoped that’d keep Daddy from inviting Mamie to eat at our house. I picked holly berries—they wouldn’t be red for a while yet—off the bushes, threw them on the ground, and rolled them under my shoe until the skin rubbed off and left little, wedge-shaped seeds behind. Mamie hated it when I did that.
Daddy had been telling me things was gonna be different with Mamie now that she didn’t have the responsibility of making me a good person. But I wasn’t feeling in the mood to find out. My tongue was just now healin’ up.
When Daddy come out, he was alone. (Thank you, baby Jesus.)
At first I thought Daddy couldn’t find me. Then I saw he was looking at Sheriff Reese. He wasn’t wearing his uniform, but his brown Sunday suit.
You don’t go pokin’a hornets’nest. Daddy had said it plenty of times when he saw me headed for trouble. But it looked like that’s just what he meant to do hisself.
I tried to get to him before he got to the sheriff, but Mrs. Jacobi stopped me, telling me how happy she was that I’d got back home safe and reminding me that trouble can’t be outrun. Didn’t I know that now! By the time I got to Daddy, he was shaking hands with Sheriff Reese.
Daddy asked him where things stood with Eula and the law.
I almost kicked him in the shin.
The sheriff rubbed his jaw, like he was thinking. “Didn’t I get back to you on that?”
“No, sir. I hope that means things are going in Eula Littleton’s favor.”
Me, too. I forgot to breathe until I started to get dizzy.
“Well, we been pretty busy. But I can’t see pressin’ charges.” He said it like Eula wasn’t really worth even thinking much about, one way or the other. I took a step backward to keep myself from kickin’ my own hornets’ nest. I had to keep thinking, Eula’s free! Then my heart got icy. Maybe not. What about baby James? I shook my head to get the clutter out of it. The sheriff was still talking. “Coroner said the man’s skull was cracked all right, so her story stands. I did some checkin’ around; seems that woman did the county a favor.That husband of hers couldn’t keep a job ’cause he kept pickin’ a fight with his betters. As far as I’m concerned, one less Negro to worry about. As for that baby . . . I won’t drag a good family through the courts just to make a point to some colored woman.”
I took another step backward. Don’t say nothin’. Eula’s free. That’s all that matters.
“That’s good news, sir.” Daddy shook the sheriff ’s hand again. We walked away together.
Finally I couldn’t hold it no more. “He acted like Eula wasn’t worth nothin’. Why didn’t you say something!”
Daddy stopped and looked down at me. “What would you have me do, Starla, argue with the man to get him to arrest her?”
“Well, no . . . but . . .”
“You and I are going to thank our lucky stars that in the state of Mississippi the life of a black man weighs less than that of a white one, that’s what we’ll do. Because that means Eula is safe. That’s what counts right now.”
I got another thought and it made my stomach turn over. “What if she packs up her grip and leaves now?”
Daddy put his hands on my shoulders. “You were just mad at me because I didn’t make the sheriff see she was a person who meant something. And you’re right, Eula deserves more respect. I’m glad you’re learning something it took me years of working with men from all over the country to begin to understand. If Eula decides to leave, it’s something we have to accept.” He kissed the top of my head, then started walking again.
I followed along, feeling like the wind was blowin’ two different directions in my soul.

It took a while for me to figure out the good that come from my running away—and it come a little bit at a time, like learnin’ arithmetic. The first little bit of figuring out come when we told Eula she was free from the law, that she could leave Cayuga Springs and go wherever she wanted. Daddy didn’t let a heartbeat slide by before he said she was welcome to stay with us as long as she could stand sleeping on that cot.

“Or you can have my room if you want a real bed,” I said. “I don’t mind sleepin’ on the cot.” I’d already lost one momma twice. If I lost Eula, I wasn’t sure I could stand it. I wasn’t even sure how I’d made it my whole life without her.

Daddy looked at me in a way that made me feel selfish. “Starla, Eula needs to be able to make a choice without you pushing her. She’s already done so much for us.”

I thought about how I thought I could boss Wallace just ’cause he was colored. I’m not sure I’d think that now. Eula was a person. She should be able to do whatever she wanted . . . and I really didn’t feel like I had any right to be bossy about it. But I didn’t want her to go.

I held my breath and waited. It was hard to be still. Then Eula gave a smile as bright as the sun. “Where you think I’m gonna go?” She looked at me.“We family; they ain’t all about blood, you know. Families is people lookin’ out after each other, not hidin’ behind secrets.” She touched the top of my head. “I’d say that you and me right down to the bone.”

That had made me think of Cathy’s secret and how it had wrecked Patti Lynn’s family—and almost wrecked Eula’s life forever, too. And then I thought about how me and Eula finding out each other’s secrets had made us both better, and how we both had our own way of whistling past the graveyard. I wondered if Patti Lynn had one, too. I noticed that me and Eula didn’t need ours nearly as much anymore and hoped Patti Lynn wouldn’t either pretty soon.

Mrs. Todd had finally stopped hiding and was able to laugh again, but things in her house wasn’t the same. Nobody was allowed to even say Cathy’s name anymore; it was like she’d never been alive. And baby James, well, me and Eula talked about him a lot, made up stories of his new family and what he was doing, how much he was growing, the things he’d do as he growed up. We did that about her white baby, too, now that he wasn’t a secret anymore. Course he was a boy now, so his stories was different. It made us both feel a lot better about not being able to be with them. Eula had finally decided to believe that Charles had done just what he’d said, give that baby to a family moving North.

I thought maybe talking about James and Cathy with Patti Lynn would make her less sad, but it just made her mad . . . real mad.

It took a while for me to stop trying, even though Eula said I should let Patti Lynn be if she didn’t want to talk about it. Eula explained that sometimes it took time for the hurt to go away enough to be able to look at something so painful, and I needed to be there to help Patti Lynn when it did. Just like I’d helped Eula. That made me feel good, that I’d helped Eula with our talks. I think Eula was still too hurt to talk about Wallace, so we didn’t.

It took a while for Patti Lynn to get over being mad about it though. But once school started up and we saw each other every day, we started getting back to our regular selves and was biking to each other’s houses.

My hair started to turn red again. I looked like a sunburned zebra, so Daddy took me to a hairdresser. She got some of the black out and cut it short . . . almost boy-short. The lady called it a pixie cut and said it was gonna be real popular. Daddy said that was a good name for it. At first I didn’t like it. But when I figured out how fast I could wash it and that it didn’t get all knotted when I was riding my bike really fast, I got to thinking I might keep it that way.

Eula was having trouble finding steady work. Even though the sheriff had said she wasn’t going to jail, the idea she’d done killed somebody hung on her like skunk spray. None of the ladies of Cayuga Springs would hire her to work inside their homes. Lucky they wasn’t so worried that they thought she’d poison them—I think Mrs. White mighta had something to do with that. So Eula went back to making baked goods in our little oven, which, dinky as it was, was still way better’n that woodstove she used to use out at her place. I helped her sometimes, but we mostly bumped into each other in that tiny kitchen. Business was good enough that before long, she was looking to fold up her little cot and rent a room somewhere. Daddy had said she could use our kitchen for her baking as long as she wanted. I was glad, ’cause I’d still get to see her every day.

Then, even before Eula found an affordable room in the colored part of town, Mrs. White took a fall on her back steps and needed live-in help she couldn’t afford. Now Eula was baking in Mrs. White’s kitchen, helping her for room and board.

I wondered if that was part of God’s plan. And if it was, was it Eula or Mrs. White who was supposed to learn a lesson from it? The more I looked at things like that, the more confused I got, so I decided to just concentrate on my own lessons.

One rainy Tuesday evening in October, after Eula had moved downstairs to take care of Mrs. White, there come a knock at our apartment door. I figured it was one of Daddy’s friends since it was too dark and wet for Patti Lynn to be riding her bike over. I stayed on the floor where I was making a pot holder with the loom Mrs. White gave me. This one was red and white to match Mrs. White’s kitchen wallpaper with the cherries on it. Seemed most polite to make my first one for her—even though Eula’d be the one using it.

When Daddy opened the door, I looked up. Mamie was standing there under a pink umbrella. Before Daddy could say boo, she handed him a brown bag. “I thought Starla might want these.”Then she turned around to leave like she was in a big hurry.

Daddy called after her and asked her to come inside. I gritted my teeth. It’d been bad enough sitting at church in the same pew with her on Sundays; but since she didn’t want to talk to me any more than I wanted to talk to her, we’d been managin’ just fine. Still, I sure didn’t want her inside me and Daddy’s house.

Lucky she said she couldn’t stay and went right on.
Daddy closed the door and handed me the rain-dotted bag. Inside was my plastic cereal bowl with the cowboy on the bottom and the checkers game. I wondered what made Mamie bring them over after all this time. I didn’t think she’d been eating out of it or playing checkers all by herself. I put the bowl in the kitchen cabinet and asked Daddy if he wanted to play checkers. While we played, Daddy said now that Mamie had taken the first step in mendin’ our fences, I was gonna have to get over it and start talking to her again.
I was still thinking on it.
The next evening, Mrs. White was feelin’ poorly and Daddy had to work late. Me and Eula made bologna sandwiches and ate in front of the TV. I kinda liked it when it was just the two of us. Eula said Walter Cronkite doing the news made her feel like the world was more safe and in order, so that was what we were watching. I thought he needed to get rid of his mustache.
Walter Cronkite was talking about President Kennedy and the civil rights laws he was trying to get passed. Thanks to Miss Cyrena, I knew what he was talking about. It made me feel pretty grown-up.
The TV news started talking about a march in Wichita, Kansas, and others that was being planned. He reminded us of the big March on Washington that had happened in August, where 250,000 people marched peaceful-like and heard talks by Dr. Martin Luther King. Miss Cyrena had gone; she wrote us all about it. On the TV it had looked like there was nothin’ but buildings and people packed like peanuts in a bag, not a speck of ground to be seen.
Walter Cronkite said there was still a long battle ahead for civil rights laws in the Congress.There’d been another sit-in at a lunch counter; this time in Warner Robins, Georgia. Some college students had got arrested, but there wasn’t any fighting. They’d just come in, sit down where they wasn’t supposed to, refused to leave, then got drug off to jail like they was rag dolls. That made me think of Wallace hauling me around like I wasn’t a person at all. I bet them students felt a lot like that.
I looked at Eula, “You gonna go to a march? Fight for your civil rights?” Then I thought about how hard it’d been when we’d just tried to get to Nashville and felt sorry for asking.
Eula’s eyes was glued on the TV, watching like she wanted to climb right inside and be with them.
“No, child, I ain’t brave like them folks. ’Sides, I done all the fightin’ I want to do in this lifetime.”
“You are too brave!” I stopped for a second, not sure why I was all stirred up. “Maybe not in the marchin’-in-the-street way. But that’s okay.” It come clear to me then. Some of them college students had been white. “You don’t have to fight anymore. I’m gonna do the fightin’ for you.”
She reached over and took my hand. “I do believe you will. Just not yet, child. Not quite yet. You need to get grown-up first.”
“What if the fightin’ gets all done before I’m old enough?” I really didn’t want to miss my chance to fight for Eula.
Eula shook her head real slow. “Been fightin’ for a hundred years, can’t see it bein’ over, even once the Congress signs a piece of paper killin’ Jim Crow. There be plenty left to fight for.”
I sat there and watched as another news story come on, but my mind was still on those people fighting for civil rights. I hoped they got what they wanted, but saved just a little bit of the fight for me.