Whistling Past the Graveyard (4 page)

4

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he door rattled and I sat down real quick next to James—who’d been caterwaulin’ most the entire time, like he was doing his part to cover up the sounds of me trying to get us free. I tried to look like I’d just been sitting there the whole time.

Ever since Eula had closed that door, I’d been thinking about what she’d said about James; that she was keeping him. When I’d asked if she meant overnight, she’d kinda nodded, but that wasn’t the same as saying yes. Facts are facts. I’d heard it often enough when I’d tried to explain myself to Mamie. And fact was, she was keeping James—a baby Wallace said she had no claim to. The other fact was me and James was locked in tight. Was she planning on keeping me, too?

“Well, now,” Eula said, as she came in, going right over and reaching for James. She had a bruise growing on the inside of her wrist, purple and angry. It hadn’t been there when she’d left us. “Sounds like baby boy here is hungry.”James didn’t stop crying when she picked him up, but he sounded less like someone was trying to kill him. “There, now. I got some formula made up. You be fine, jus’ fine.”

I was just beginning to wonder if she’d forgot I was in the room when she looked at me. “You want to come out and hold him while I fill his bottle?” She acted like the whole ugliness with Wallace hadn’t even happened. But that bruise said everything she wasn’t.

“Um, I was just thinkin’. I don’t want to be any trouble for y’all. I think I’ll just keep on walkin’ toward Nashville. There’ll be cars out after the fireworks are over.” If I could get me out of here, I could tell Lulu when I got to Nashville that there’s a baby been kidnapped. Maybe she could make a nonymous call to the law like they do on TV. I sure couldn’t call; they was looking for a little girl who’d attacked Mrs. Sellers. They’d be sure to put two and two together, ’cause all adults can do that.

“It be dark then!” Eula said, her eyes more worried than sneaky. “And country dark ain’t like city dark, sugar. Out here there ain’t gonna be no cars comin’ from fireworks neither.”

“I . . . I really need to keep movin’, in case my momma starts to get worried.” Then I added, “She’s spectin’ me.” No colored person would risk keeping a white girl from her momma, no matter what two and two added up to.

“You ain’t goin’ nowhere.” The bear’s voice came from the doorway. How had that giant walked through the house and I hadn’t heard him?
Eula jerked her head in a way that made me think she hadn’t heard him neither. Right quick she turned back to me and smiled, but it wasn’t right.
“That right,” she said, holding that smile only a ninny would think was real, “not until tomorrow mornin’, when it be safe to travel.” She stood up with James, then brushed right past Wallace, who gave her the stink eye as she did. “Come on then, Starla. Let’s get baby boy fed.”
I was slow getting to my feet, trying to come up with another argument to get out of here. Then I realized Wallace was still standing there between me and the doorway. I jumped up and hurried past him, feeling his eyes on me the whole time.
Across from the room with the cradle was a bigger room with an iron bed and pressed curtains on the window. A picture of Jesus hung over the bed, not baby Jesus, but grown-up Jesus. I decided Eula had put it there, not Wallace.
As I walked into the kitchen, I looked through the door on my right into the living room. The dark green couch and chair were old and lumpy; lace doilies sat on the arms and the tops of the backs. There was a rug on the floor, but no TV or big radio like some old folks had. On the table next to the chair was a Bible and an old oil lamp like Patti Lynn’s momma, who collected old stuff that she called “antiques,” had. In the corner was a potbellied stove with a metal chimney that went up and out of the house near the ceiling.
No TV. No radio. No switch in the little room with the cradle. It was like Little House in the Big Woods. I’d never been in a house without electricity before.
The floor behind me dipped and I knew the bear was right behind me. I hurried myself right on to stand by Eula in front of an old cookstove with a pile of wood in a box next to it.
“Here now,” she said to me. “You pull out a chair and sit down. You can hold James while I get his bottle ready.”
Eula seemed to have a lot of baby stuff, bottles and whatnot, considering there wasn’t a baby anywhere around.
James was crying so much his face was red as a June cherry. His little fists were tight under his chin, and every once in a while he’d kick his legs enough he nearly popped out of the crook in Eula’s arm.
I put my hands behind my back and took a step away from her. “I can get his bottle ready.”
Wallace made his footsteps heavy and loud as he walked into the living room.
The three chairs at the kitchen table didn’t go together. Eula hooked a foot around the leg of one and pulled it out. Then she nodded for me to sit. “Don’t be scared of him.” I wasn’t sure if she meant Wallace or James until she added,“Remember, you special. You got a gif ’with little ones. Mustn’t waste one of the good Lord’s gif ’s.”
I sat and she plopped James in my arms. How did how legs so scrawny kick so hard? With the pillowcase wrapped around him he looked like he was trying to win a potato-sack race. I held tight so he wouldn’t kick himself right onto the floor.
Eula got a bottle ready, then turned it upside down and shook out a couple of drops onto the inside of her wrist.
“Why’d you do that?” I asked. For having a gift with babies, I sure didn’t know much.
“Make sure it ain’t too hot.”
I was afraid Eula’d want me to feed him too; my arm was getting tired and my ears hurt from his hollerin’. Lucky for me she picked him up and sat down in the chair on the other side of the table.
Once that nipple plugged up his mouth, James finally stopped crying. Wallace was muttering and stompin’ around in the living room on those big bear feet. Eula didn’t pay him no attention, so maybe he was just cranky in general.
Truth be told, she didn’t pay me no attention neither. She looked at baby James all dreamy, humming real low and rocking from side to side. The window was right there, open enough that I could slide right out. Wonder if she’d notice? Maybe I was making more of being locked in that room than was right. Eula had said I was leaving in the morning—and Wallace hadn’t gone all crazy mad like he had when we first showed up.
I thought of Jesus over her bed.
“Do you pray, Eula?”
Her eyes left James’s face for the first time since she’d picked him up. “Of course I pray, child.” She looked down at James and her face looked like one of the angels in the Bible-stories book I had, all glowy and soft. “I pray, and God give me little James here.”
“So you’re keepin’ him . . . forever?” My stomach felt sick. She had kidnapped him.
“Nobody want him but me. And the Lord, he work in mysterious ways.”
I couldn’t believe that a momma wouldn’t want her own baby. All mommas wanted their kids. “My momma and daddy want me,” I said, just to make sure she knew it wasn’t all right to keep me.
She just smiled and moved James up onto her shoulder and patted his back.
“Doesn’t God want you to have your own baby?” It would make more sense for God to give her a colored baby than a white one.
Now she looked really sad. “Oh, God give me babies, but God take them away. All away.” Her last two words were whispered, kinda like an amen at the end of a serious prayer.
“They died?” I said it too loud, but I’d never heard of a baby dyin’. The only people I’d ever known die—well, I reckon I didn’t really know them since they died before I was even born—was my daddy’s daddy in the War and my momma’s momma, Ida, who Mamie said was white trash and died when momma was in junior high. Mamie kept a picture of granddaddy wearing his army uniform in the living room on top of the TV. He was a hero.
“Most all afore they was ever born,” Eula said it so soft and sad that I didn’t want to ask any more questions about babies.

We ate dinner, but even though James was finally quiet and asleep, it wasn’t a pleasant time. Eula talked in a chattery voice, asking about school and my momma and whatnot. I kept my answers on the same street as the truth while Wallace sat there and eyed me like I was a big pile of stinky dog doo.

He wasn’t eating neither, not a single bite of ham hock or corn bread. He must have had a mighty thirst though; he filled his glass with water from a big mason jar twice.

Once I had my belly full, I could finally think half-straight. Even though I couldn’t understand how it was true—seeing how Jesus loved all his children—Mamie said all coloreds were less than us. I was still learning all of the rules, even though some of them didn’t make a lick of sense to me. But since that was the way of things, I decided I could get myself out of this jam by just ordering Wallace to take me to Nashville, or at least to the highway.

I sucked in a deep breath and said, “Mr. Wallace.” I looked at the top button on his shirt and not his eyes. It was easier to stay bossy that way. “Eula said you’ll be takin’ me partway to Nashville tomorrow. My momma is expectin’ me, so we should leave early.”

Those eyes got squinty and he grunted.
I went about my business, just like Mamie did when she’d told me something she knew I wouldn’t like. I almost asked to be excused, then caught myself. I needed to keep my bossy white self the only one Wallace saw. I got up from the table.
“Where you think you’re goin’?” His voice rumbled from deep in that big body. He was talking kinda peculiar, too, slow and like his tongue had gotten too fat.
I heard Eula suck in a breath. I thought of that bruise on her arm. I hoped me acting bossy didn’t make Wallace mad enough to start punching.
“Takin’ my plate to the sink, like I always do after supper.” I took the enameled tin plate and my fork and walked over to the drain board next to the sink with the hand pump.
I took it as a good sign when he just took another big drink and didn’t say anything else.
Things were gonna work out.Tomorrow I’d be on my way to Lulu. I felt bad that I was gonna have to have her call the law and report a kidnapped baby; James’s momma had to want him. Poor Eula was gonna be really sad. Maybe God would let her have another baby though, a colored one, once James was back with his real momma. I decided I’d say a special prayer for her at bedtime in case it would help.
As me and Eula finished clearing the table, I stopped dead when I realized there wasn’t a refrigerator to put the butter in. I about knocked myself in the head; course there wasn’t a refrigerator, there wasn’t any electricity.
Eula looked at me with a frown. “What you lookin’ for, child?”
I just raised my eyebrows and the butter crock.
“That there be butter.”
“I know!” When she busted out laughing, I knew she was workin’ me. “So where am I supposed to put it?”
“Well, now that depends. Sometimes we got ice and use that icebox over there.” She pointed to a wooden cabinet sitting on the floor. It had small door on top and a bigger door beneath it. “But we ain’t got ice, so we use the springhouse.”
I’d seen a springhouse when our class went to tour an old plantation near Natchez. I couldn’t believe anybody still used one.
“Come on,” Eula said.
We took the butter crock and a quart bottle of milk down the hill behind the house a little ways. Eula kept reminding me to watch my step, not to trip over roots and whatnot. I finally told her I wasn’t a baby and had been in plenty of woods all by myself—which wasn’t exactly true, ’cause Patti Lynn had always been with me. But Patti Lynn knew I could figure out how to walk by myself.
Sure enough there was the springhouse, but it was smaller and more rickety than the one on that plantation. This one was shoved into the creek bank. Eula opened the door. It was so dark in there I couldn’t see for a minute. But it was so cool, I wanted to walk right in anyway, even if I broke my ankle stumblin’ in the dark.
“Wait here.” She took the butter crock from my hands and stepped inside. “Now, we best get back, else Wallace’ll worry.”
I nearly laughed at that one. Wallace had been sitting in his chair with his eyes shut for the past ten minutes. But he wasn’t there when we got back.
As we did the dishes, Eula lit an oil lamp ’cause it was getting dark. I got a cold spot right in the middle of my stomach. Right about now everybody back home was set up to see the fireworks, their blankets and folding aluminum lawn chairs all over the golf course waiting for full dark. Right about now the sparklers would be coming out, too. I never had any, even though I asked every year, but Patti Lynn always shared hers.
Back when I was four, before I even knew Patti Lynn, some kid left a hot sparkler wire in the grass. I stepped on it and burned my foot. Mamie yelled at me ’cause I’d taken off my sandals, but then she’d gone to every blanket near ours looking for someone who had a cooler with ice. She’d pulled me onto her lap and held the ice on my foot until the last red-white-and-blue firework melted from the sky. It had almost been worth the pain and the angry blister, being able to sit like that.
As Eula scrubbed the iron skillet from the corn bread, I heard Wallace walking back and forth in the living room. Every once in a while I’d hear him say stuff like “Woman gone done it now” and “Can’t see no other way.”
I leaned close and whispered to Eula, “Wallace still seems pretty mad,”
She gave me one of her real smiles and winked, so I figured there was nothing to worry about. “He always mad when he in the juice. Best jus’ stay outta his way.”
“Juice?”
She nodded toward the mason jar still on the table. “Moonshine. Hard liquor.”
“What you whisperin’ about in there?” the bear called. There was a thud like he walked into something. “Gawwwwddammit!”
“Jus’’bout the baby, Wallace,” Eula said sweet as pie. “You okay?”
“Shut up!”
I looked at Eula. I couldn’t imagine anybody, man or not, telling Mamie to shut up. But Eula just kept scrubbing that pan.
“That baby gonna kill us.” He mumbled some, then said, “If ’n you wasn’t so gawwwddamn stupid, we wouldn’t be in this mess. I shoulda got rid of you long time ago.”
Eula leaned close and said in a voice even lower than a whisper, “He don’t mean it. It the juice.”
“He in the juice when he give you that bruise?”I pointed to her arm.
She sighed. “Sometimes things happen tween a husband and wife. You see when you grown—”
“I said shut up!”
Eula shrugged and we stopped talking.
Back in the room with the stuck window, she made me a pallet on the floor. She unfolded a patchwork quilt and shook it out, letting it fall onto the pallet.
“My momma made this quilt,” she said, running her hand over it like she was pettin’ a kitten. “From old dresses given to her by the woman she a maid for back in the day. Momma used tell stories ’bout the different scraps, describe the dress it come from, tell if it was for a special occasion or holiday.” Eula stopped talking for a minute and I wondered if there was something wrong. “I don’t remember none anymore,” she said, real quiet and sad, like she’d lost something special.
How could scraps of old dresses that hadn’t even belonged to you be special?
“In Cayuga Springs?” I asked. “You lived there with your momma?”
“No, indeed. She worked in Jackson for a right prosperous family, a judge the husband was.”
“You work in Cayuga Springs now? Is that where James come from?” I was getting real curious about her, not to mention curious about who might be looking for baby James. I wanted to get away from here, from the cranky bear, but I sure didn’t want anybody from Cayuga Springs to find me and haul me off to jail. I wondered if the law had already come looking for me at Mamie’s house, found out I’d run off, and was putting out PPBs to other police like they do on
Dragnet
. Just the facts, ma’am. I bet Mrs. Sellers told them a lot more than that.
Then I thought, What if they send Eula to jail for kidnappin’ James? I sure didn’t want that.
“Best you don’t know where James come from.”
“You said nobody wants him.”
“That right.”
“But . . . all mommas want their kids.”
“That so?” She lifted her chin and looked down her nose. “Then what your momma doin’ up in Nashville while you been in Cayuga Springs?”
Since I couldn’t tell the God’s honest truth and it was getting hard to keep all of my truth stretching straight, I used one of Mamie’s answers. “It’s complicated and you don’t need no details.”There was never any arguing after Mamie said those words. I crossed my arms to say,That’s that.
Eula squinted at me from the corners of her narrowed eyes. “Well, now, I bet it is. Your momma even waitin’ for you? Or you done run away?”
Now she was making me mad. And I was just trying to keep her out of jail. My red rage took hold of my tongue. “How you gonna keep a white baby till he’s growed up without anybody findin’ out?”
“This baby left on the church steps, his momma don’t want him. Nobody want him. So the good Lord give him to me.”
“How do you know the good Lord didn’t want the preacher to have him?”
“’Cause he put me there to see it happen—me and nobody else.”
Guess I couldn’t argue that, it wasn’t Sunday or anything. Then a question popped in my head that should have before now. “Why would anybody leave a white baby at a colored church?”
She got stiff and looked away. “Was a white church.”
“Oh, no!”
Wallace had called her stupid, but she couldn’t be dumb enough to take a white baby from a white church!
She drew away a little and looked toward where James was sleeping in his basket. “I thought he was colored,” she said, her voice more prickly than I’d ever heard. “It was a colored girl who I see put him there.”
“Why didn’t you just leave him when you saw he was white? Somebody woulda taken care of him.”
“I didn’t see he was white at first.”
Now she was just making stuff up. “He don’t look at all colored to me.”
“He wrapped up tight as a caterpillar in a cocoon, face and all. They was a car comin’, so I pick him up and drive off afore I seed he was white.”
“Oh, Eula, you gotta take him back.”
She shook her head. “Too late for that.”
I considered for a bit. “Just go back tonight and leave him on that church step where you found him. Nobody will see you.”
“No!”This time her head was jerky as she shook it. “No. Good Lord have a plan. Ain’t for nobody—even a white girl—to question.” She grabbed up a pillow and fluffed it, like that was all there was to say.
I was real mixed up about baby James. I just couldn’t believe his momma truly didn’t want him. Was Eula so crazy for a baby that she made that story up? But if it was true nobody wanted him, Eula would take real good care of him. How was a white baby gonna grow up in a colored house? In Sunday school they said we got to accept and be grateful for what God chooses for us. Did God want James with Eula? It was all too much to untangle in my head. Plus I had to make sure I was gonna get out of here tomorrow. So I decided to be agreeable— something Mamie said I didn’t even have in me.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, real sweet. “Like you said, the Lord works in mysterious ways.” Still, it seemed to me that God giving her a colored baby made more sense.
She laid the pillow on the pallet and smoothed the case. “Sorry it ain’t a proper bed.”
“It’s okay. It’s only for one night anyway,” I said, real definite to remind her I was leaving in the morning.
I took off my Red Ball Jets and tucked my socks inside them.
“G’night, then.” She went to the door.
Maybe I’d just take off out of here tonight and not chance it with Wallace in the morning. I didn’t like the idea of walking around out there in the dark woods—what if I got turned around? What if baby James was kidnapped and I couldn’t tell the police how to find this place? It might be better to take James with me, but babies were probably particular tasty to bears and whatnot.
I waited, my heart skipping fast, hoping not to hear the lock.
The door rattled a bit, then I heard the skeleton key and clunky
swick
as the lock slid home.
It wasn’t a minute later when I heard them, Wallace and Eula. Rough, strained whispers muffled through the wall between the bedroom and kitchen, like talking through two cans and a string. For a while I couldn’t make out anything, then Wallace’s voice got a whole lot louder . . . and clearer. “Don’ argue with me, woman! There ain’t no other way.” Eula said something quiet that sounded like it had some begging in it. “We ain’t gonna talk ’bout it no more.”
Eula’s voice got some louder. “But, Wallace, they’s jus—” Her voice cut off like it had been snatched from her mouth. I thought of that bruise on her arm and wondered if he’d just added another one. Wallace seemed like a shaker to me. I’d had plenty of arm bruises myself from Mamie jerking me so hard my mouth snapped closed.
It got quiet then. I wondered what Wallace meant. It couldn’t be good if Eula had been begging like that.
I couldn’t believe my biggest problem this morning had been missing the fireworks. As I looked out that stuck window at the black night, hearing tree frogs and crickets that sounded big as cats, I wished I was back in my hot, sweaty bedroom in Cayuga Springs.