Waiting for Sunrise (12 page)

“And God . . . if you can keep Harold out of trouble. I’d appreciate it.”

He took a step. Stopped. “One more thing,” he said, cocking his head to the right and upward. “A friend for me would be nice. A true friend. A forever friend. If you don’t mind.” He smiled. “Amen.”

13

With two weeks to go before the start of the school year, Harold kept his standing as the “make friends” champion of the Liddle household. The furniture had scarcely been shoved into place, the linens draped over the beds, and new dining table Daddy had surprised Mama with, before Harold was out the door, scouting the neighborhood, buddying up with the other boys along Clinton Street.

Daddy stayed home one day after they’d officially moved in and then he was on a route again, though with the new job, he returned more often on Fridays instead of Saturdays. At first, Mama seemed out of sorts in her new home, what with all the extra space she’d not had before. And Billy never left her side, preferring to help her unpack the boxes, determine where the pictures should be hung, how the knickknacks should be arranged. Mama encouraged him to do like Harold, to go out and make friends. But Billy’s first obligation was to his mother. To helping her.

After a week, Billy decided to try his hand at going door-to-door, looking for work cutting grass on Saturdays. He’d had his eye on a new bicycle—a Huffy Customliner he’d seen advertised in
Boys’ Life
. In one day, he landed three customers, all on Clinton, one of whom was Mr. Herbert Stone, administrator of the local hospital. The day he knocked on their door, Mrs. Stone told him her husband wasn’t home quite yet but that he would be shortly, if Billy cared to wait. Then she offered him cookies and milk at their kitchen table, which he readily accepted.

Billy immediately took a liking to Mrs. Stone. She reminded him of Katherine Hepburn, both in appearance and in character. She was a nurse, she told him, and she worked at the same hospital as her husband.

“Is that where he is now?” Billy asked. “At the hospital?”

Mrs. Stone slipped into a chair—chrome backed and thickly padded in red vinyl—at the end of the pink Formica table. Billy watched transfixed as she slowly crossed her legs, listening to the sound of her stockings sliding against each other. She rested against the chair, laid her hands in her lap. From where Billy sat, they seemed to disappear into the folds of her dress, which was nothing short of pretty, even to a twelve-year-old boy. “Oh no, no, no. He’s made a run to the Piggly Wiggly for me.”

Billy stopped munching on the bite of oatmeal raisin. “Your
husband
went to the Piggly Wiggly?” he asked around the cookie.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full, dear,” she answered.

Billy took a swig of cold milk.

“And, of course. Why not?”

“Boy, my daddy would never be caught dead in a grocery store, even if he was hungry, I bet.”

Billy watched as Mrs. Stone’s shoulders squared. “And why would that be?”

He took a final bite of cookie, chewed, swallowed, and drained his milk. “He’d say that’s a woman’s place,” he answered, then swiped the linen napkin Mrs. Stone had placed by his plate over his mouth.

It smelled like warm sunshine.

Mrs. Stone cleared her throat as she leaned forward, rested her arms against the edge of the table, and said, “And just what is a woman’s place?” She smiled. “According to your father, I mean.”

Billy shuffled his feet back and forth as though his feet wouldn’t quite reach the floor. “Well, um . . . let’s see . . . the kitchen, of course.”

“Of course.”

“And the grocery store.”

“We’ve established that.”

“The laundry room, if you have one, and the laundromat, if you don’t.”

Mrs. Stone gave thought to her ponderings before asking, “But, let’s say, what about before your father married your mother? Would he have just worn dirty clothes back then?”

Billy laughed at the thought. “Gee, Mrs. Stone. I never really thought of Daddy as not being married.”

“But surely he was, at some point, an unmarried adult male.” Mrs. Stone made a tap-tapping with the toe of her shoe, which Billy had earlier noticed to be high and pretty. And he’d noticed her big toes at the opening near the front of the shoe, her red nails through shimmery nylons.

Billy shrugged. “Not as long as I’ve known him,” he said, to which Mrs. Stone laughed.

Billy couldn’t wait for Mama to meet Mrs. Stone, and he said as much when he returned home a few minutes after Mr. Stone walked into the back kitchen door, carrying two sacks full of groceries.

“And Mama, she wears high heels. Even in the middle of the day.” Billy leaned an elbow against the kitchen counter and watched his mother slicing cucumbers and tomatoes on a cutting board. Cold fried chicken and biscuits from the night before were already on a platter at the kitchen table along with a pitcher of sweet iced tea.

Mama looked down at her feet and the no-nonsense flat house shoes she wore daily. At one time they’d been rich navy blue but were now faded to dark gray. “Well, Billy, maybe they’re going out tonight, don’t you think?” she asked, peering at her son.

“I don’t think so. Mr. Stone had gone out to the grocery store to get some things she needed.”

“The grocery?” Mama’s concentration went back to the cutting board, the tomatoes and the cucumbers. “Well, maybe they’re having friends over then.”

“She’s real elegant, Mama. And she smells pretty—”

“William Watson Liddle, what are you doing smelling Mrs. Stone?”

Billy felt his shoulders slump. “Gee, Mama. It’s not like my nose fell off when I walked in their door.” He shrugged. Stood straight. “She smells like you do when Daddy is coming home on the weekends.” He looked around. “Where’s Harold?”

“Who knows. Gainesville will be no different than Miami; I can see that now.”

“Is Daddy coming home on Saturday?”

“No. He’ll be home on Fridays now that we’re in Gainesville. This is where one of the home offices is. You know that. He told us when he first talked about this new company.”

Billy thought a minute longer before posing the next question. “Mama?”

Mama scooped up the peelings from the vegetables and threw them in the trash can in the corner of the kitchen. “What, son?”

“When Daddy comes home . . . you always . . .”

She was washing her hands now, standing at the kitchen sink with water spilling over her fingertips. “I always what?” Question asked, she turned her head to face him, her chin gracing her narrow shoulder and the colorful material of her handmade crisscross house apron.

Billy crossed his arms. “Well . . . you always seem so nervous. You scamper to make sure everything is just perfect for him. When he walks in the door, you run to get his luggage. You make sure he doesn’t have to wait for long before dinner is on the table.”

“That’s the way your father likes it.” She turned off the water, reached for a drying towel off the three-tiered chrome rack hanging at her left, and added, “Why? What does Mrs. Stone do?”

Billy blew out a breath. The last thing he wanted was to upset his mother; he loved her too much for that. But he’d always been able to tell her how he felt about things, and this was weighing heavy on his mind. “See, when Mr. Stone walked in, Mrs. Stone got up real easy like. She said, ‘There’s the man you need to speak with, Billy’ and then she just walked right over to him. Not in a fluster or anything. Just walked over to him. And he gave her the bags he was carrying and then . . . well . . . they sorta kissed a little, and then Mr. Stone asked me how he could help me.” Billy blinked a few times before moving on. “That’s when I told him about my lawn service and asked him if he needed any help with his yard work.”

Mama didn’t move for a moment. “I see,” she said. And then, “Well, did he?”

“Did he what?”

“Need any help?”

“Oh, yes ma’am. He said I can start on Saturday morning. Eight o’clock. He’ll be home then and we can talk over what he’d like me to do. But he’s making me do it once without pay. Just to see if I’m as good as I think I am.” Billy smiled at his mother. “Then he says that if I
am
as good as I think I am, he has friends around here who’d probably like the same kind of work done.”

Mama pressed her thin lips together. “Well, that’s just fine, Billy. Just fine. Your daddy’ll be proud too, no doubt.”

Billy didn’t know whether to be happy about that tidbit of news or not.

Mama pulled dishes out of the overhead cabinet, white plates with a golden stalk of wheat running along the left side. “Son, why don’t you wash up for supper.”

Billy took a step before saying, “Mama? Are you upset with me?”

She held the three plates close to her breast. “Now whatever would I be upset with you for, Billy? You’re my baby boy and I love you.”

“For telling you about Mrs. Stone. And Mr. Stone.”

“Of course not.”

Billy nodded. “Okay then.” He took another step. “You think Harold will be home in time for supper?” he asked, pointing to the plates.

Mama held the plates out, studied them, and returned them near her middle. “I figure he’ll get hungry and come on home sooner or later.” She smiled, but Billy could tell it was forced. “As soon as I get these cukes and tomatoes onto a plate, we’ll eat, so run along now.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He was at the door leading to the dining room when he turned around and said, “Mama?”

Mama sighed. “What, Billy?”

“I love you too.”

Trinity, South Carolina

Patsy Milstrap felt the spindles of the colonial rocker dig into the flesh of her back, separated only by the thin cotton of her baby blue nightgown that fell to her ankles. Its lacy hem tickled the tops of her feet. The sweet scent of baby and bottled formula swirled around her. In the summer heat, her long hair wrapped around her neck as tightly as the little fist around the index finger of her right hand.

She hummed a nontune, keeping rhythm with the sounds of the creaking rocker and the suckling of a sleeping infant. Her toes dug into the cold oak of the floor beneath her feet, pressing back and forth, back and forth.

Night clung to the world outside the window by which she sat. Two rooms away, her husband snored, oblivious to this early morning feeding, as he’d always been. One room away, two more children—a son, age three, and a daughter, age two—slumbered. They, no doubt, dreamed of tomorrow’s—today’s—playdate in Aunt Janice’s pool.

Patsy sighed. Looked down at the tender life cradled in her arms, tiny lips quivering just left of her heart. The rocking stopped.

In four years, three children. How in the world . . .

She knew how. Gilbert’s enthusiasm for her was second only to his hunger for his work . . . to make more money . . . to buy a bigger house . . . “To provide for my family and all these little ones we keep making,” he’d said as though they’d done something so awe inspiring.

Three babies in four years.

But, oh yes, Gilbert’s business had most certainly expanded, not only in Trinity but to the several small towns beyond. Now he was talking about Charleston. He’d be gone more, he’d told her. Especially in the beginning. Weeks at a time, he said. But don’t worry, he assured her; he’d be home on weekends.

Her breath caught in her throat. The bottle’s slick nipple fell out of the baby’s mouth.

He’d be home on weekends.

Just like Ira Liddle. Walking through the door on Saturday nights. Home in time for supper. A playful tussle with his sons. Leering glares at his stepdaughter. A night of sweaty passion—she could imagine it no other way, if she cared to imagine it at all—with his wife. Her mother.

Bernice.

No wonder she’d been sent away. One less child to deal with. No matter how hard she’d worked to help, it hadn’t been enough for Bernice.

Work. Work. Work. There was always work. No more peas to pick, but . . .

Tomorrow—today—she had stacks of laundry to do. Diapers. Lots and lots of diapers. Toddler clothes with worn knees and grass-stained tops. Gilbert’s uniforms, with shirts and pants that needed to be pressed just so.

The floors needed to be mopped. Swept first. Then mopped.

Sheets. When was the last time she’d stripped the beds? Maybe they could wait one more week.

And she’d promised Greg and Pam she’d take them back to Aunt Janice and Uncle Marvin’s. Maybe they’d forget. No, they wouldn’t forget.

Children never forget.

14

Gainesville, Florida

Mrs. Stone came to the house, carrot cake in hand, to meet Mama. The two women sat at the kitchen table, drank coffee, and nibbled on cake, chatting away like two old friends. Billy leaned against the dining room wall next to the kitchen, eavesdropping. He tried to keep his head down—somehow it made it easier to listen—but with nearly every word spoken, his chin shot up and his body flinched, as if the whole of him was stunned by what he was hearing. Witnessing.

Mama had never let anyone into her life the way she did Mrs. Stone in the hour they spent sitting at that table. Not even the women she’d known for years in Casselton. But then, he reckoned, she’d never met anyone like Nadine Stone. Somehow, Mrs. Stone drew things out of Mama, stories Billy had never heard before in his life.

She even talked briefly about Patsy and some boy named Lloyd, though he couldn’t quite make out who
he
was to Patsy, Harold, and him.

Mrs. Stone told Mama there’d be a neighborhood party on Labor Day and that they should be sure to come. “It’s a lovely addition to living here,” she said. “Oh, and just wait till you see what we do for Christmas and Easter and . . . oh, Fourth of July. You’ll love it here, Bernice, I just promise you will.”

Later, when Mama told Daddy about the neighborhood “shindig” as she called it, Daddy said that yes, they could be a part of it. “Should be” were his exact words.

“We’re part of this community, aren’t we?” he said to his small family as they sat around the same table where Mama and Mrs. Stone had talked.

From directly across the table, Harold gave Billy a look that read, “Who is this guy?” but then said, “Pops, we should go to the meat market and get some steaks, you and me. You can show me how to pick out the best ones.”

The meat market. Sure, Billy thought. The meat market Daddy would go to. He hadn’t thought of that before, when Mrs. Stone and he were talking over cookies and milk. Then again, knowing Mrs. Stone a little better, he figured the whole subject may have been best avoided. Women, Billy had once heard Daddy say, had no idea what a really good steak looked like before it was cooked.

No, Mrs. Stone would not have taken to that. But never mind that; the Labor Day picnic was coming and they’d all be there and Daddy could meet Mr. Stone and maybe they’d end up being friends too.

———

On the first Monday of September 1954, with lots of new neighbors dashing about or standing under shade trees talking, Billy helped Mama put out potato salad and deviled eggs and three-bean salad while Harold turned steaks on a nearby park grill and Daddy got to know the men of the neighborhood.

“Billy,” Mama said as she placed a gallon of sweet iced tea on top of the white cement picnic table their family had snagged for their own. “Why don’t you go mingle with some of the kids over there?” Her eyes darted to the collection of swing sets and monkey bars where about a dozen children who looked to be about his age and younger congregated.

That was when he saw her. Long dark hair glistening in the sunlight, sides pulled back to the top of her head and held there by a large red bow. She was smiling. Laughing. Pushing a boy in a wooden swing who giggled and threw his head back with each upstroke.

“Yes, ma’am,” Billy said to his mother. At least he thought he did.

He walked on legs made of rubber toward the children, toward the one in particular who’d caught his attention. “Hi, there,” he said when he came near enough to be heard. “My name’s Billy. William, actually. William Liddle. But everyone calls me Billy. Billy Liddle.” He swallowed past a new feeling in his throat. “I’m new here.”

She looked over her shoulder. Moss-green eyes met his. “Hi, Billy Liddle.” She smiled at him. Perfect white teeth behind rosebud lips.

Rosebud lips? Now where had
that
come from?

“I’m Veronica Sikes.” She nodded toward the child in the swing. “This is my little brother Travis. Travis, say hello to Billy.”

To which Travis only giggled harder.

Veronica’s shoulders slumped. “Oh, don’t mind this one,” she said. “He’s only five and thinks everything in life is funny. I also have a brother a year younger than me. Stanley.” She looked around. “He’s around here somewhere.”

Billy shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans; one of three new pair Mama had bought him to start school the following day. “Okay.” He kicked at the sand with his Keds
.
He looked down to them, back up to Veronica, and down again.

“I like your shoes,” she said. “They look new.”

“They are.” He nodded, squinting one eye and tilting his head as though it was all so matter-of-fact. “They’re like the ones Timmy wears on
Lassie
.” He cringed inside. What a lame thing to say.

Veronica pushed her brother as his bottom glided naturally into the cups of her hands. “I love that show.” Then she whistled the theme song.

Billy whistled with her until they both laughed.

“So, do you know whose classroom you’ll be in yet?”

Billy pulled his hands out of his pockets, folded his arms across his chest. “Yeah. Mrs. Stuart’s.”

“Me too. You’ll love her. She’s strict, but she’s really nice too.” She took a step back from her brother and the swing. “She and my mother are good friends. The best of friends, really. But Mama says I can’t go around acting like that when I’m in school.”

“Like what?”

“Like Mrs. Stuart is going to let me get away with anything.”

“Are you a good student?” Billy asked just as Travis squealed, “Don’t stop pushing me!”

Veronica pretended to be frustrated—Billy could tell it was all just for show—before stepping forward again to give another hefty shove. “Yes, I am. You?”

“I do okay.”

“You’ll have to do better than okay, Billy Liddle. Mrs. Stuart expects all her students to do their best.”

He smiled. “Then I will.”

“Are you walking to school or taking the bus?”

“Walking.”

“Where do you live?”

He gave the address.

“You’re practically behind my house. Maybe I’ll meet up with you sometime and we can walk together.”

Billy’s heart skipped. He held his breath for a moment in an effort to regain composure. “Yeah,” he breathed out. “Maybe so.”

———

It took Billy several weeks to get his timing right, but once he did, he spent every weekday morning walking the pretty Veronica Sikes to school and, every afternoon, walking her back home again. Once he asked her if he could carry her books, to which she replied, “I’m not really interested, Billy Liddle.” She held her books low and in front, and, it seemed to Billy, she clutched them all the tighter.

He had been kicking a rock up to that point, but with her words, he let it lay and walked right past it.

He turned to walk sideways so he could have a good look at her. She wore a blue and pink checked dress with wide front pockets and puffy short sleeves. Her shiny black shoes clicked along the sidewalk in rhythm to the shuffling of his Keds. “What does
that
mean?”

“It means that I’m not . . . you know . . . interested in being a . . . girlfriend.”

He felt himself growing warm and turned to walk forward again. “What makes you think I was thinking about you being my girlfriend, Veronica? I was just asking to carry your clunky ole books. Trying to be nice, is all.”

“Oh.”

“Is that all? Just ‘oh’?”

She swung her books up and held them tightly against her chest. “What else do you want me to say?”

“Well, don’t get mad or anything.”

“Oh, I’m not mad.” She looked at him and smiled. In spite of the current swirl of emotions inside him, he smiled back. “It’s just . . . my parents don’t even really want me to have boy
friends.
But Daddy said you’re different because you do a good job on our lawn and you’re new and . . . Billy?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure, I guess.”

“Do you and your family go to church?”

Billy slowed and she slowed with him. To their left, the well-tended lawns sloped toward them from large homes. To the right, the asphalt of a barely used two lane glistened in the early morning sunlight. Before and behind them, neighborhood children kept a steady pace as they walked toward school. Somewhere behind him, Billy knew, Harold lollygagged with his friends. “We used to.”

“But you don’t now?”

“Not since . . . well, golly. I don’t think we’ve gone to church since we moved to Miami. I kinda remember going when we were little, Harold and me. Daddy and Mama and . . . um . . . well, we’d get all dressed up on Sunday mornings and then we’d come home afterward and Mama would have a pot roast cooking already.”

Veronica stopped. “Are you against going to church?”

“Gosh, no, Veronica. Who would be against going to church?”

“Then why don’t you go?”

“I don’t know.” Billy glanced behind him and spotted Harold about fifty feet away. “Can we keep going now?”

They returned to their walking. “Would you like to come to church with me sometime?”

Billy didn’t answer right away. If he went to church with Veronica on Sunday, then Daddy would know. He had a feeling Daddy wouldn’t take to his going. And Harold was sure to poke fun. “You mean, as your friend?”

“Ha-ha, Billy Liddle.”

“I’d have to ask Daddy.”

Veronica brightened. “Maybe your whole family would like to come. It’s a really nice church and oh! You know what? Mr. and Mrs. Stone attend, and your mother and father like them, don’t they?”

“Yeah.”

“So, then.” Veronica sounded as if the Stones’ attendance at her church settled the whole issue. “Maybe the rest of your family would like to come too.”

The Stones’ attendance notwithstanding, somehow Billy doubted it. “Yeah,” he said. “Maybe.”

With that, Veronica let the subject fall. But just for the time being.

———

She asked him about church again the next day, just as their feet hit the cement steps of the school. They walked up, up, toward the three sets of double doors that opened into the wide front hallway of their school.

“So? Did you ask your parents about going to church?”

Billy cut his eyes left and right. All around them, kids from ages six to thirteen. Maybe some at fourteen. He wasn’t sure. The sound of shoes shuffling up the steps, the giggles, the conversations . . . these were all a part of his early morning routine. Being asked about church was not.

“Why are you asking me now? We’re two seconds from you going into the auditorium and me going into the gym and you pick
now
to ask me?”

“Well, what’s wrong with that, Billy Liddle?”

“Nothing, I guess,” Billy mumbled. “It’s just that you aren’t giving us a lot of time to talk about it.”

They stopped at the top of the steps. Veronica shot Billy a look he had come to recognize. He’d made her unhappy. And the last thing he wanted to do was to make Veronica Sikes unhappy. “May I have my books please?” she asked, hands reaching toward his hip.

Other students weaved around them. Through the doors held open by the brass doorstops, Billy heard chatter from within.

“Don’t be mad,” Billy said, handing her the books.

Her chin jutted forward and Billy noticed the lone freckle that rested there. How was it that, after nearly a month of knowing her, he’d never seen it before? “Oh, I’m not mad,” she said. She clutched her books against her stomach.

“You look mad.”

“I’m not.”

“It’s just . . . I have to talk about this with
both
of my parents, and Daddy doesn’t come home until Friday, remember?”

“Oh.” Her face softened. “I forgot about that.” She smiled. “I’m sorry, Billy.”

Billy shrugged one shoulder. “Don’t worry about it, Veronica.”

They started toward the doorway nearest them. “But you will ask, won’t you?”

“Sure. I said I would, didn’t I?”

They neared the place where Billy turned left toward the gymnasium and Veronica went straight toward the auditorium. “I’ll see you in homeroom, then?” she asked, so sweetly Billy thought pure cane sugar would have a hard time standing up next to her.

“Yeah,” he said, sounding sheepish, even to his own ears. “I’ll be right behind you.”

———

Billy decided that night to go ahead and talk to Mama about his going to church. They—the two of them—were at the kitchen sink. Mama washing, Billy drying. Harold had gone to his bedroom, supposedly to do his homework. Billy was never really sure what Harold was up to at any given time.

“Mama?” Billy took a clean plate, slick with water, from his mother’s hand.

“Mmm?”

“Veronica asked . . . she asked me if . . . if I could go to church with her sometime.”

“Church?”

“Yeah.” He turned the plate first one way and then the other. “Mr. and Mrs. Stone go to the same church as the Sikes.”

Mama laughed. “What do the Stones have to do with this?” She handed him another plate. Billy set the first plate on the countertop beside him and took the second.

“Nothing, really. I just wanted you to know.” He swallowed hard. “And, of course, you and Daddy and Harold are invited too. Veronica said to tell you so.”