Creola's Moonbeam (19 page)

“I feel terrible. Here you are, my magnificent encourager, and I’m letting you down.”

Beatrice actually poked out her lip! I laughed. “Aren’t
you
the spoiled girl?”

“On occasion.”

I thought quickly. I could print out the cemetery saga. Maybe the roof debacle, and, perhaps, a couple of magazine articles. Hmmmm. “Tell you what, my friend, you have a deal. I’ll gather up some of the stories for you. After all, you have become my muse. A writer as vain as myself never turns down a willing reader. Besides, you can always use the stories to start the charcoal for your barbecue.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Honey dear. Now, go!” She shooed me out the door. “Fetch those stories!”

I laughed and nodded. I wanted to get back to Creola right away. I could feel her spirit calling to me.

by Honey Newberry

It was the summer I was eleven-and-a-half. Mother had taken Mary Pearle to camp and I was left at home with Daddy and, of course, with Creola.

I sat on the steps of the front porch tying tight my tennis shoes. I could hear the ballgame playing on the black-and-white television as Daddy’s cigar smoke floated out through the screen window. Daddy was crazed with power. He was never, but never, allowed to smoke in the house. With Mother driving my sister to Tennessee, he thought he could get away with his solitary act of defiance. Little did Daddy realize that Creola had a nose like a bloodhound and would be ready to jerk a knot in his neck the next morning when she came to clean.

Fireflies lit the sky like Christmas Eve as I ran across the street for the nightly game of hide and seek with the neighborhood children. In a world full of kids playing, we thought, no, we
truly believed
that our games were more fun, more competitive, more thrilling than any other children’s games, anywhere.

Unlike current times, there was little or no traffic, neighbor’s yards were nestled next to one another, and there were no fences to hold us back. Even better, a forest of trees, not so perfect gardens, and numerous garages and dusty sheds made for limitless and welcoming hiding places. The girls, usually Mary Pearle, me, Margaret, Betty Ann, Dannie, Mary, Carol, Jackie, and Pamela Jane teamed up against the boys, Chad, Jerry, Dan, Mike, Eddie, Marvin, Fred, and David.

Over and over again, one of our number counted to ten while the rest of us hurried off to hide. Sticky with sweat, hair stuck to our faces, we screamed and shrieked as we jumped out from our hiding places running hard as we could for
home
... many of us secretly yearning to be tagged “it.”

“Five, four, three, two, one!” I counted. My eyes squeezed tight, my head pressed to the pecan tree in our across the street neighbor’s huge grassy front yard. “Ready or not, here I come!”

All too quickly the graying evening sky, streaked in pink, turned to blue-black darkness. Adult voices invaded our play.

“Harriette! About time you came inside,” shouted Daddy.

“Ten more minutes, Daddy, pleeeeaassse!”

“That’s what you said ten minutes ago.”

“This time I mean it.”

“
Ten
minutes.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ten minutes flew like ten seconds. Soon Pamela Jane’s mother was calling to her, then Jackie’s, then Chad’s and Eddie’s. Daddy’s whistle would come soon. Sure enough,
Twee* * * *ttt!
“Harriette Ophelia Butlar!” His voice reached through the heavy moist air like a prison searchlight in pursuit of an escapee.

“Coming.”

I plopped down on the kitchen chair and kicked off my tennis shoes. I’d lost the bandage covering my hide-and-seek mishap from a few nights before.

“Need a new Band-Aid?” asked Daddy.

“Nope, look, it’s pretty much healed.”

“How about some ice cream to cool you down before bedtime?”

“Chocolate?”

“Coming right up. Two scoops?”

“Three? It was real hot out there, Daddy. Three and I won’t tell Mother you were smoking cigars inside.”

“Three and you won’t tell
Creola
.”

“She’ll know.”

“Maybe I should offer
her
some ice cream?”

I laughed at him. “Won’t ever work, Daddy. Crellie will get you good!”

I dug my spoon into the cold chocolate. Suddenly I noticed my right hand. I hurled the spoon onto the table. “My ring! Daddy, my ring’s gone!”

“Did it fall off while you were playing? Why don’t you take a quick look in your room.”

“No, Daddy, I’m sure I had it on at supper.”

“Okay, then, we’ll go search.” He stood up, grabbed two flashlights from the kitchen drawer, and handed one to me.

Our ice creams could turn to mush, I didn’t care.

Daddy and I hunted for an hour. We shinned our lights around the pecan tree, on the ground and in the grass, all through Mother’s azalea bed, in the bushes, the Harrison’s tool shed, and every place I could remember playing that night. Nothing. The ring, my amethyst birthstone ring, the ring I got when I turned ten-years-old, was nowhere to be found.

“I’m so sorry, honey. Maybe it’ll turn up.”

“Oh, Daddy,” I wailed. “I hope so.”

I was in my bedroom
when Mother called to tell us that she and Mary Pearle were settled into the motel near the camp. I heard Daddy say he’d be glad to see her on Tuesday. They kept talking, and I thought surely he’d tell her about the ring. I felt even worse when it dawned on me that he would call me to the telephone and have me tell her myself. My heart was pounding.

I had been extremely jealous of Mary Pearle’s going to the fancy camp in the mountains, especially since I would have to wait until the next year when I was old enough to go with her. Sometimes, I hated being a younger sister. Seemed to me Mary Pearle was always ahead of me in one way or another. She’d held her camp over me all springtime bragging about “my new camp shorts, my new sleeping bag.” But, that night, her fancy camp and her new stuff didn’t matter. I wasn’t mad at my sister, I was just mad at myself.

“Hi, Mother. Okay, I guess. No, ma’am, I’m
not
okay. I didn’t come when Daddy called, so I lost my pretty ring.”

“I’m sorry, dear. Perhaps you shouldn’t have worn it outside.”

I didn’t want to hear that. I wanted Mother to say, “You’ll find your birthstone next to the garage door near the gardenia bush.” Mothers are supposed to say those things. That night my mother didn’t help me one bit.

Neither did Daddy. “Harriette, it’s getting late and I have to get up early in the morning. Please calm yourself and get into bed. Your ring may turn up yet.”

“Hope so.”

“After all, it is only a ring.”

“Daddy! You just don’t understand!” I ran into my room, closed the door, and cried myself to sleep. I dreamed that a nasty green bug carried my beautiful birthstone deep down into his muddy home. Thunder roared and lightening crashed. I sat straight up in my bed. My ring would surely be washed into the Gulf of Mexico.

Creola arrived the next morning. I could hear the coffee perking. She marched into my room. “Aren’t you the sleepyhead today, Miss Moonbeam.”

“Oh, Crellieeeee, my pretty purple ring is lost! We were playing hide and seek last night and it musta fallen off when I was chasing somebody. Daddy and I looked and looked. Do you think some bird might have gotten it?”

“Let’s us just see about this situation.” She pulled me into her soft, caring arms.

Forgetting breakfast dishes and everything else she’d listed for herself to accomplish, Creola took the yard broom and motioned me out the door. I still had on my pajamas, the summer kind, however, that looked like a shorts set. She and I searched the morning through, but like Daddy and me, we had no luck. The bright sun didn’t help any more than flashlights had the night before.

We sat on the porch. Creola seemed as despondent as I was while we sipped Kool-Aid over ice from our Dixie cups.

“Now we’re not giving up, little girl, just so you know. But you and I are going to have to do a temporary thing here. Bad events always call for positive actions. A type of a good luck charm is what we’ll try next.” Creola went inside and got a cigar out of Daddy’s secret box. She knew exactly where he kept his stash. Unwrapping one, she pitched the cigar in the garbage can and slipped a cigar band around the ring finger on my right hand.

She closed her eyes. “Blest be, Angel of Finding Lost Things, I call upon you to yield my Moonbeam’s precious gem. If not, please grace her with something even more special. In the meantime, Angel, bring comfort to this grieving child as you bless this very rare work of paper art. Praise be.”

I wondered if that was a voodoo prayer, since Creola came from New Orleans, the home of voodoo. But I didn’t say anything. With that, Creola got back to her chores and I went about my day feeling much, much better.

Sadly, the incantation provided peace for only a short time. That night it rained again, making me toss and turn, worry and wish for my real ring. So nervous was I that I picked and peeled at the cigar band until it got lost in my covers. I was too tired to look for it. I eventually dozed off and didn’t even hear Daddy leave for work or Creola arrive.

“Good morning, Moonbeam!”

“Now I’ve lost my
new
ring, Crellie,” I moaned sleepily.

“Don’t you worry yourself one second. I have another solution for us, my darling child.”

I sat up in my bed.

“A long, long time ago, when your Creola was a pretty young girl, I had a boyfriend.”

“You did?”

Creola had never before talked about such things. I was absolutely astonished. Part of me wished Mary Pearle was there, while most of me relished her missing the special revelation.

“Most folks called him ‘Fish,’ even his own people, ’cause he was always going fishing. But I called him Lukus, his given name.” Creola signed. “Seems everyone but me forgot his real name.”

“Was Lukus handsome?”

“Why, yes, he was tall and lanky; the brown of his eyes were as big as walnuts, and he had the biggest, best grin on his face.” She swooned. “Lukus’s teeth shinned white like school house chalk.”

Years fell from Creola as she talked about her young love. “Dance, how he could dance! Lord, how we could cut the rug!”

“You cut up a rug?”

“No, child! Lord, have mercy! ‘Cuttin’ the rug’ means dancing wild and crazy and real fast.”

“I know how you can dance!”

“That’s right, Miss Moonbeam. So now you understand that you are learning to ‘cut the rug’, too.”

I grinned. “Sure do!”

Creola seemed to go off for a moment into a world of her own dreams.

I peered at her. “What ever became of Lukus?”

Creola’s face drained of all light. Life vanished from her eyes. Her sweet and happy smile twisted into a wounded frown. “Dead. My Lukus is buried up by the church house.”

I took her hand. Couldn’t say a word. I didn’t have a glimmer about what to do to console her. My eyes filled with tears.

She clucked her tongue. “Miss Moonbeam, it’s all right. Fact is, many years washed clean my hurt. I’ll be myself directly. But, listen to me; we’ll speak of this no more. Mine is not the story you need to know. After this morning, you must promise that you will never again mention Lukus.”