Whistling Past the Graveyard (13 page)

The sun was coloring the sky orange and blue when we come to the edge of town. I heard a train somewhere on up ahead. The street was lined with houses that looked a lot like Eula’s, some a little better, some closer to the shacks we’d just been to. There wasn’t any sidewalks. Some of the yards had grass, some didn’t. Two or three houses had folks on the front porches. All of them colored. All of them stared at us.

Disappointment near choked me. What if all colored people hated me? I mean, before Eula and Wallace, I hadn’t really knowed any that wasn’t obliged to be nice on account of they was working for whites . . . and Wallace sure hated me. I was tuckered out and felt so rotten, I didn’t think I could walk any farther to get to the white part of town.

Eula was seeing inside my head again. “Not all colored are like that man; just like all white folk aren’t like the man who run us off the road.” She led me right up to a house covered in dark green shingles, the kind that usually go on a roof. An old man was sitting on the porch in a rocking chair smoking a cigarette.

“Excuse me, sir,” Eula said. “Could you spare us some aspirin? We travelin’ and our truck broke down. We’d ’preciate knowing a g’rage for a tow, too.”

The man blew smoke out through his nose and fixed his eyes on me. The whites was yellow and he looked like a dragon with that smoke shooting out of his nostrils. “Got no aspirin. The Lawd does my healin’.” He picked a bit of tobacco off his tongue, then he pointed down the road with his cigarette between two knotty fingers. “Three g’rages in town. I recommend Polsgrove’s. Least likely to steal you blind.”

I didn’t know why Eula was bothering asking about a garage. We didn’t have money to fix the dang truck anyhow.
“Thank ya kindly,” Eula said, and turned us back to the street.
The man called after us, “If y’all’re lookin’ to doctor, there’s a drugstore four block on. But I’d recommend prayer.”
Eula looked over her shoulder. “I think we could use both.”
There had been a woman with a baby on the porch of the house catty-corner across the street when we’d stopped to talk to the old man. She’d gone inside. Her front door was closed.
The lady at the next house said she was sorry she couldn’t help us— right after she gave me that same squinty look the man in the shanty had—and closed the door.
My knees was starting to get wobbly again. A couple of times things got a little gray around the edges. I didn’t tell Eula ’cause while she looked for help, I didn’t want to be left alone where folks all looked at me like I was one step above a worm. What if there was a colored like that white man who run us off the road? One that did more than just look at me hateful?
“Maybe we should just go on to the drugstore,” I said—or at least I thought I said it.
Eula stopped and looked at me funny.
“What?”
“Maybe we shouuuuuld . . . ?” she said; so I guess I only said half. “Go on to the drugstore.”
“Someone’ll help. We need a place for you to rest. It’s too far back to the truck. And we need milk for James.”
Just like he was listening, baby James started to make little fussing noises—the ones that come before he got to be a red-faced screamer.
No one came to the door of the next two houses. My feet got tangled up and all three of us nearly fell down the steps of the last. Baby James was crying serious now.
When we got back to the street, I sat down and held my head in my hands. “I can’t go no more.” I didn’t care anymore if colored folk went by and said all sorts of hateful things to me. I didn’t even care if they did worse.
“You there!” a lady’s voice called from across the street.
“Oh, no,” I said, not even looking up. It was bad enough when they ignored us, but now somebody was yelling for us to get on.
“Y’all need some help?” When I looked up, a white-haired colored woman was coming down off her porch and heading our way. She was little but moved like she meant business. Everybody we’d seen so far was either half-dressed or wearing a housecoat, but she was dressed and her hair was pulled up nice and neat. She wore wire-rimmed glasses that flashed in the morning sun.
When she got closer, she looked at me. “That child is ill.”
“She is,” Eula said. “Fever. We’d be obliged if you could spare some aspirin and maybe some water?”
The woman made a tut-tut noise as one of her hands came my way.
I ducked. Pain shot through my head and I squeezed my eyes closed.
“It’s all right,” she said real kindly. “I just want to help you up. We’ll get you inside and see what we can do to make you feel better.”
I gave her my hand and she hauled me to my feet. She looked at Eula. “Baby sick, too?”
“No. He hungry though.”
“I imagine you are, too,” the woman said. “I can’t imagine what brought y’all here in such a state, but it doesn’t matter. We’ll get all that sorted out later.”
Now we were walking toward the lady’s house. I wondered what Eula would tell her when they sorted it all out, ’cause it couldn’t be the truth. But right then all I wanted to do was to lay down and die.
Once I was on the lady’s couch with a cold cloth on my head, I began to think maybe I wanted to live after all. That was the last thing I remember thinking as the darkness pulled me under.

15

t

hunder woke me; the long, rolling kind that comes from far away, then goes over and rattles the windows. Angels bowling. When I opened my eyes, the window I saw wasn’t home. Things started to get untangled in my head, one kinky string at a time. I’d run away from home. The law was after me. Wallace the bear was dead. Me and Eula and baby James were going to Momma in Nashville.

I wondered if Mamie’d already got used to me not being “underfoot.” I wondered how long it’d be before Daddy come home and found out I was gone—they only radioed out to the oil rig was if there was an emergency, and I didn’t think Mamie considered my running off an emergency. She probably wouldn’t want Daddy to get started looking for me, neither. The longer I was gone, the harder I’d be to find. I didn’t want Daddy to be upset. By the time he got to come home again, I’d be with Lulu, and she could tell Daddy to come on up and live with us in Nashville. That way he wouldn’t have to worry at all.

I looked at that unfamiliar window again. It was tall and wide and had lace curtains that moved with the breeze.
Un-uh. Not breeze. A fan was sitting on the table near my head; it moved from side to side, the hot, sticky air dragging across my skin. Outside was the calm that sat in front of a July storm, the kind of cloudy stillness that said you’d better get you and your bicycle on home before a gully washer let loose.
Lucky I was safe inside, but inside where?
I tried to sit up, but was weaker than a baby bird. My mouth felt cottony and my lips were all cracked and sore.
I got myself up on my elbows, which was hard to do with spaghetti arms. The couch I was on had been covered with a sheet. I wasn’t wearing my clothes, but had on a white cotton nightgown that was too big for me. Oh, no! I looked at my wrist and found my Timex was still there. (Thank you, baby Jesus.)
I was in a strange living room with a turquoise-painted piano against one wall. When I tried to call Eula, my throat was too dry to make a noise.
My head got fuzzy, so I laid back down.
“Starla?” The voice came through the doorway before the lady did. She was almost as short as me. Her skin was smooth and dark, like the buckeye Momma had sent me from Nashville for good luck. The lady’s hair was pulled back tight from her face in a bun. She wore a bright yellow skirt and blouse and a yellow bracelet; she reminded me of a white-haired bumblebee. She even had a kind of buzzing energy bouncing off her, like she was used to being busy all the time and didn’t like being still.
She looked kinda familiar. But I didn’t know many colored folk up close—except Eula, Patti Lynn’s Bess, and Ernestine next door with the LeCounts.
“You’re awake!” she said, smiling like I’d done something special. “Thank the Lord.” She put her hands together like she was praying and looked up toward heaven. Then she walked a little closer and looked at me real close. “Your eyes have lost that glassiness, too.”
I opened my mouth to talk but only got out a choked whisper that didn’t sound like a word at all.
“Let me get you some water. You have to be parched.” She went back the way she’d come.
I listened for some sound from baby James or Eula, but the only thing I heard was the refrigerator door open and close, a glass clinking on the counter. And more thunder.
The woman came back, helped me sit up, and handed me a glass of cold water. It was the best water I’d ever swallowed, even better than from Eula’s mason jar out on that hot road. I gulped it until the lady reached out a dark hand and tipped it away from my mouth. I noticed her palm was as pink as mine.
“Best not to take too much at once.” She took the glass from me and set it on the table with the fan.
I swallowed down what was in my mouth and wanted more. When I tried to talk this time, something came out. “Where’s Eula and baby James?”
The lady sat down on the coffee table right next to Eula’s wore-out Bible. She put her hands on her knees and smoothed her skirt. “James is napping in the bedroom bureau drawer. We had to make do since this house has never had a baby.”
“You don’t have grandkids?”
She shook her head. “No children, so no grandchildren. My students are my children.”
I looked at the piano. It was so old the keys were yellow; one of them didn’t even have the white cover on it anymore. “You give piano lessons?”
“I teach elementary school; grades three, four, and five. Our school is so small, they’re combined.” She tilted her head. “You look to be about that age.”
“I’ll be ten in September.” Then I realized I couldn’t just blurt out things without thinking. My age wasn’t a secret, but plenty else about me was. I didn’t want to get to spilling my guts or spinnin’ tales until I knew what story Eula had told. “Where’s Eula?”
“Well now, she’s found some employment. She’ll be home in time for supper. She didn’t like leaving you, but I assured her you were in good hands with me. I understand your truck needs fixing before you can resume your trip.”
“How’d she find a job so fast?”
“Oh, child, it’s Saturday. You’ve been buried under a fever for nearly a week.”
A week? “I don’t remember anything, ’cept camping in the truck, then walking and walking . . . Oh! You’re the lady who come out of the house to help us!”
She nodded. “Cyrena Jones. You may call me Miss Cyrena instead of Miss Jones since you’re living right here under my roof. And your name is Starla. Lovely, just lovely.” She reached over and fluffed my pillow. “So tell me, how did you and your brother come to be traveling with Eula?”
I smelled a rat. This was just how Mamie got me to tell her things that she already knew the answer to, checking to see if I was telling the whole truth, nothing but the truth. I think she learned it from
Dragnet
. And if this lady thought James was my brother, then Eula must have told her some story. “I’m so tired.” Which was the truth. I yawned just to make sure she believed me and put my head back on the pillow. “Eula pro’bly told you ever’thing anyhow.”
She looked right square at me, using her teacher eyes. I think all teachers learned that look in teacher school and used it to draw kids out of a lie. “You’re very fortunate to have had Eula helping your family—and lucky she’s so devoted that she embarked on this trip alone with you children. Things are . . . unstable. And in this town . . . well, it’s very bad at the moment. I can think of all sorts of things that could go wrong—considering.”
She didn’t know the half of what had already gone wrong.
“Yes, Miss Cyrena.” I wanted to be agreeable and polite, her taking us in and all, but I’d never heard of white folk calling a colored woman
miss
. Bess was Bess, and Ernestine was Ernestine. “We’re real lucky havin’ Eula—me and James.”
“James and I,” she said in her teacher voice. Guess the coloredteacher school taught the same things as the white-teacher school.
“James and I are real lucky.”That just sounded wrong, like I was trying to be hoity-toity like Patti Lynn’s sister, Cathy.
Miss Cyrena sighed a little. “I’m so very sorry about your grandmother.”
“Thank you.” I put on a sad face. Whatever Eula had told her, I was surely supposed to be sorry, too. Had Eula told her Mamie was dead, like I’d said when we were in the truck? Or had she invented a story of her own to explain why she was travelin’ with two white children and no money.
I decided to pretend to sleep until Eula got here so we could get our stories straight. I closed my eyes and folded my hands on my chest. A nice sleepin’ pose—like Snow White after she ate the apple.
For all of her rules and politeness, Miss Cyrena didn’t have much respect for a sleeping sick girl, ’cause she kept right on talking. “Eula is quite a remarkable woman. She slept on the floor right here beside you every night. Did all of the doctoring herself—even though I offered to pay for a doctor visit when I learned your funds are limited. I’m afraid I was little help other than offering aspirin. You see, as many children as I’ve nurtured and seen grow up, I’ve never nursed a sick child. When children are sick, they don’t come to school. But Eula knows so much. She figured you’d gotten ill from your fall into the river while you were playing. And she knew just what you needed to bring you back to health.”
Now I knew part of the made-up story. But it wasn’t much help; I sure didn’t think Eula woulda told Miss Cyrena that Wallace tried to drown me in the swamp.
“She used vinegar and hot compresses on your ear, then she put in some garlic oil and plugged it with a cotton ball. I’d never even heard of such a thing, but it worked. Before long you’d stopped moaning with pain. She spooned slippery-elm tea into you like you were a baby bird. Kept you propped up when your breath got rattly. Made a tent over you and kept putting pots of hot water under it so you could breathe the steam. She’s smart, that one.”
I nodded. I wondered what Miss Cyrena would think if she knew the main reason Eula probably didn’t want a doctor was ’cause we was lawbreakers travelin’ invisible.
I kept my eyes closed.
“But there’s something about her. . . . I think she has a lot of fear bottled up inside. Big fear.” Miss Cyrena sighed. “Has something happened to her, do you know?”
I finally opened one eye. “She seems fine to me . . . just like always. I’m real tired.” I closed my eye. I sure wasn’t gonna tell her ’bout Wallace’s meanness ’cause I’d have to explain where Wallace was now. And I didn’t feel right telling stories about Eula’s momma and pap to a stranger.
“Oh, of course, dear. I just want to help Eula. I feel in my heart she needs it. But I can’t get to the crux of the matter. She’s very . . . quiet.”
“She’s always like that. It’s her way,” I said without opening my eyes.
“Hmmm,” Miss Cyrena said, like she was thinking—and not about being quiet. “When you arrived, she said she’d already called your mother and told her of the delay. If you were my child and ill, I’d figure out a way to get to you. Would you like to call your mother now—tell her you’re getting better?”
My eyes sprung open. “That’d . . . that’d be long distance.” Even if I had the money and wanted to, I couldn’t call Momma. I didn’t know her number. I didn’t know her address. I’d planned on hunting her down once I got there because of her being famous. I figured if I had trouble, I could find Sun Studio, where she’d made her record, and they could tell me where to find her. “’Sides, she’s . . . sick herself.That’s why she can’t come get us.”
“I see.” Miss Cyrena said it in that way teachers have, saying they see when they think they see more than you’re telling them. She started out of the room, then stopped and turned to me again. “Just one more thing. When I sent the neighbor boy to the garage to bring your things from the truck, Eula’s suitcase was the only one in it.” She stopped talking for a second, like she was waiting for me to explain why I was travelin’ to live with my momma with only the clothes on my back. But I was too smart to fall into her quiet trap and kept still. “Eula figures someone took your and James’s things before the tow truck got there.” Another of those sneaky quiet spots. “Once you’re better, I’ll take you to the church and we’ll see if we can get some clothes for you and the baby from the charity box. That’ll get you by until you can travel on to your mother.”
I mumbled something and closed my eyes like I couldn’t help falling asleep. Then I tried to breathe slow and deep. I’d only meant to pretend so she didn’t ask me more questions. But the real thing got ahold of me and the next thing I knew I woke up and the room was getting dark. Miss Cyrena was standing at the front door looking out, her yellow dress light against the shadows around her. I could smell that it had rained.
I rubbed my eyes, then looked around. “Where’s Eula?”
“Not home yet.”
“I thought she was supposed to be home by supper.”
Miss Cyrena stayed real still. “She was.”
“Why are we in the dark?” The fan was electric, so I knew she had lights.
“Better to watch outside this way.”
The way her voice sounded gave me a little rush of goose bumps. “Why you need to watch outside? When Eula gets home, she’ll walk right in, won’t she?”
She moved then and came to stand beside the couch. “I’ve asked Mrs. Washington from next door to come and sit with you and James for a bit.”
Right then I heard the back door open and close. “Cyrena?” the voice wasn’t much over a whisper, and it sounded nervous.
“I’ll be back shortly.”
“Where you going?”
“To look for Eula.”
“I’m comin’ with you.” I started to get up, but got so dizzy I had to stop as soon as my feet hit the floor beside the couch.
“No.” Miss Cyrena put a hand on my shoulder.
“But—”
“Shh!” She pushed me back onto the pillow. “You’re still too sick. Now just lie back down and Mrs. Washington will bring you some tea and toast.” Miss Cyrena started out of the room. Then she stopped. “Leave the lights off.”
“Why?”
“Do as I say.” She sounded almost mad. Then she added, “Please. It’s important.”
Then she was gone.
I tried to get up again. As soon as I stood up, my knees turned to jelly and I had to sit right back down. I couldn’t do nothing but sit in the dark and worry about Eula—and wonder why leaving the lights off made any sense at all.