Whistling Past the Graveyard (23 page)

We didn’t go far, just to an upstairs apartment in a building a few doors down from Tootsies. It was one big room with a little kitchen folded in one corner and not much more than a lumpy couch and the foot of a bed peeking from behind a yellow, flowered curtain. Through an open door, I could see a bathroom sink with a rusty streak under the faucet and a dull mirror that was spotted black.

I wished we was back at Mt. Zion Baptist with the banjo music and the smell of cookies in the basement.
“You live here?” I asked.
“No, this is my vacation home.”Momma spun around.“Jesus Christ, Starla, of course I live here.” The way her hands moved, jerky and fast, made me flinch, even though she wasn’t swingin’ at me.
I felt a little dizzy.
James still didn’t like the way things were going. The high ceilings and wood floors made him sound like he was crying in a barrel. The noise seemed to make Momma more jittery. Again, I got a feeling that I’d seen Momma like this before, and it didn’t turn out good.
Eula gave James his sassy and he quieted some.
Momma stayed jittery. “Sit down.” Momma pointed to the table with two chairs. She still didn’t look like Momma at all—except for the nervous hands. She grabbed a pack of Winston cigarettes off the table. She pulled a matchbook from where it was tucked in the cellophane wrapper and lit up. She sucked until the tip glowed bright orange, then blew out the flame with her smoky breath and tossed the match into the kitchen sink. It sizzled as it landed in a pile of dirty dishes. “I got to call your daddy.”
“Not yet! You can’t call Daddy till I tell you what happened. We need to make a plan.”
I reckoned since he’d come off the rig, he could move up here right away and get a new job. With all of us up here, it’d be easier to keep Eula from the police. I hoped he didn’t get all worked up about me taking my just desserts. I’d hate to have come all this way and end up in reform school anyway. At least he and Momma would be here waiting when I got out. And I’d still be able to save Eula. But I had to get the story out to Momma first, so she could make sure Daddy understood before he come . . . or spilled the beans to the law in Cayuga Springs.
“I need to get back to work,” Momma said. “It’s busy and Tootsie can’t take care of the crowd by herself. And I can’t afford to lose the tips.”
“You singin’ there?” I asked, knowing I was getting distracted, but I was real curious about Momma’s life. The singin’ was the only part of her I recognized.
“I’m workin’. How you think I get the money to send Mamie to take care of you.”
Now that rubbed me the wrong way. “Daddy sends Mamie the money to keep me.”
She rolled her eyes and gave a laugh that sounded like a dog’s bark. “Well, I’m not surprised the old bitch kept it to herself, much as she hates me.” Momma stopped herself. “For your information, I send money for you almost every month.”
If she did that, she must love me. Right?
She reached for the phone sitting on a table made of bricks and boards at the end of the couch.
I shot up off the chair and put my hand around her wrist to keep her from picking it up. “No!”
“The sooner I get your daddy called, the sooner he’ll get here to take you home and he can get back to work. We ain’t made of money, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“I ain’t goin’ home. I’m livin’ with you now.”
She looked like I’d said a swear word and let go of the phone.
I let go of her wrist. “I just need to explain—”
“You can’t live here, Starla.”
I blinked, feeling like she’d slapped me again. “Why not? You’re my momma.”
“For one thing, there’s nobody to take care of you.”
That was the silliest thing I’d ever heard. “I’m almost ten, I don’t need takin’ care of during the day. Even when Eula gets a job, she’ll be here at night when you’re singin’ someplace.”
Momma sighed real hard and touched my hair. “You belong in Cayuga Springs. Besides, there’s no room for you and a colored woman and her baby in this apartment. There’s barely room for me and Earl.”
“The baby ain’t stayin’—Wait a minute.” I looked around. “Who’s Earl?”
“My husband.”
“Daddy’s your husband. His name’s Porter, not Earl.”
Momma’s face got so soft I almost recognized her. “Dear Lord, they never told you.”
“Told me what?” I almost covered my ears.
“Your daddy and I are divorced—have been for almost six years. Earl’s my husband now.”
“No!” The whole room was spinning. Everything in Nashville was wrong, wrong, wrong.
She tried to put her arms around me, but I jerked away. “It ain’t true.”
“It is. I’m sorry nobody told you. Your daddy should have.”
A hiccup surprised me. I blinked to keep from crying. “Well, I still can’t go back to Cayuga Springs.”
“Of course you can. Mamie’ll be mad for a while for you runnin’ away, but she’ll get over it—”
“No!” Things was getting blurry. “No!” I stomped my foot. “If I go back, they’ll send me to reform school. And Eula and baby James . . .” I made myself tall, like I did when I was trying to stand my ground with Wallace. “We ain’t goin’ back!”
Momma grabbed my arm. Her fingers dug in worse than Mamie’s. “You listen here.” The words kinda hissed out. “You’ve caused everybody enough worry. I don’t know what trouble you got yourself into, but you can’t just run off and make life what you want it to be.”
“Why not? You run off and made life what you wanted it to be!”
The slap came fast and hard. My head jerked to the side and my cheek caught fire.
Eula had me then, wrapped up in her arms and spun away from Momma. James was caterwaulin’ across the room.
“I’m calling your—God! Somebody shut that kid up!”Momma gave a frustrated look toward James and stopped with her hand halfway to the phone. “That baby’s white.”
It finally got in my head that if Eula had me wrapped up in her arms, baby James was left alone over by the table. He’d kicked the blanket off and was more cherry red than white, but nobody would mistake him for colored.
I pulled away from Eula. “That’s what I need to tell you.” I swiped my nose with the back of my hand. “Eula’s husband kidnapped me and baby James both.” I heard Eula gasp, but kept talking. “She had to kill—”
Momma held up a hand and turned away. “Stop right there! I don’t want to hear any more. Not another word.” She leaned close. “Not another blessed word!” She picked up the phone. “You both go over there and sit back down. And do somethin’ about that baby!”
Eula hurried to comfort James.
“But, Momma—”
She swooped back in my face. “Enough!” She gritted her teeth and flung her hand toward the table and chairs. “Get. Over. There.”
I drug myself back to the table on feet too heavy to lift off the floor. This was worse than the nightmares I had when I was sick at Miss Cyrena’s. Oh, I wish we’d just stayed there and kept baking. I’d rather spend the whole rest of my life hid in the dark from the Jenkins boys and the law than go back to Cayuga Springs. Then my worst, most awful wish come, and my throat hurt like I was being strangled. I wish I’d never found Momma in Nashville.
Eula plugged a bottle into James’s mouth and he got quiet.
All I could hear was my pounding heart and the
snick-shhhhh, snickshhhh
of Momma dialing the phone.
“Porter, she’s here.” She listened for a minute. “Yes, she’s fine.” She listened again. “Oh, for God’s sake, I don’t know and I don’t want to know. You’re supposed to be taking care of her, so you get your ass up here and take this mess off my hands before Earl gets back tomorrow night.” Her face started to get red. “No, he still doesn’t know, and that’s none of your damn business. You get up here by noon or I’m puttin’ her on a bus.” She slammed down the phone.
The sharp bang shattered my heart like a bottle hitting the sidewalk.

26
i

didn’t look at Momma again. I shut off my memories, too. They was as unreal now as Lulu, the lady she’d turned into. I sat there in that chair with the sharp pieces of my heart falling down and cutting my gut, my ears ringing, and my body turning to stone. Beyond the ringing I heard Lulu bossing Eula. There’s food in the fridge . . . use the bologna not the bacon . . . I don’t want to see any mess when I get back . . . keep that baby quiet . . .
do not
answer the phone . . . make Starla take a bath . . . she can sleep with me . . . you know not to use the tub, but I don’t mind if you take a sponge bath . . . be sure and leave your towel separate . . . she’d better be asleep when I get home . . . make sure y’all are packed to leave first thing. Every order made me slide farther away, made the ringing get louder.

Then she left for Tootsies.
I hated her.
After I heard the door close behind her, I got up off the chair and

headed toward the bathroom. As I passed Eula, she tried to talk to me but I shook my head and kept going.

She respected me not wanting to talk, but her face looked sad and I heard her sigh.
Just before I closed the bathroom door, I turned around and said, “You can use the bathtub.”
I locked the door and turned on the water to fill the tub.
I made it so hot that I had to get in real slow. I wanted it to hurt; wanted my outside to feel as bad as my inside. I sat there for a long time watching my skin turn redder and redder. I thought about all of the nights I’d dreamed of the day I’d see Momma again. I thought about how stupid I’d been to think I could be happy and living with my family glued back together in a big house with laughin’ and horses and a dog and a good Christmas like the one on the
Andy Williams Show
.
Finally my insides was as fiery as my skin. I liked the burn and hoped it took everything I’d been wishing for and turned it to ashes.
Then it come to me. Maybe Momma was just surprised. Maybe she’d been so worried about me that she was wound up tight inside and was just letting off steam. It had to be a shock, me showing up safe and sound after over two weeks. Yeah. That had to be it. She’d come home from work after a while and we’d sit down and have a nice talk. She’d say she was sorry. She’d listen to my story about James and Eula and she’d fix everything so Eula was safe.
I remembered the way her nails dug into me . . . and I remembered how it sparked a memory I pushed away. Had I made her this mad before? Back when I was really little?
Something I’d heard Mamie say come back to me.“. . . shook her till Porter come and snatched that baby from her. What if he hadn’t been there? That girl isn’t fit to take care of a baby. . . .”
No. Mamie said all sorts of lies about Momma.
A flash came back to me. Momma’s face was right down in mine . . . and ugly-mean. She was yelling. There was a red splash of nail polish across the bathroom floor. I was a bad girl. She jerked me hard. Bad. Bad. Bad . . .
I slid all the way down and let the water come up over my head, but her voice went on. On and on and on.
I held my breath and it got farther away. I laid there on the bottom of the tub looking at the wavery bathroom on the other side of the water.
All the sudden I saw Wallace’s face. I jerked myself up; floppin’ so much that water sloshed all over the floor. I sucked in a breath. Footsteps ran across the apartment.“Starla!”Eula wiggled the doorknob. “You all right, child?”
“Fine,” I said in a croaky whisper. Then louder: “I’m fine.”
She didn’t say any more, but I didn’t hear her leave the door.
I closed my eyes and rubbed my face. All the sudden, a cryin’ fit got hold of me. I wadded the washcloth over my mouth to keep Eula from hearing. I cried on and on, more than I could ever remember. I got worried that maybe I couldn’t never stop.
But the sobs finally turned into hiccups, my tears into burning eyes. By the time I was back to my real self, the water had gone cold and my toes was all shriveled.
I felt some better.
When I come out of the bathroom, Eula was at the kitchen table. I don’t know when she’d left the bathroom door. She didn’t ask what had taken me so long. She just took me over to the couch and sat us down. Then she took my comb and worked the tangles out of my wet hair. She hummed nice and soft while she worked. Even though my hair was black, my scalp was tender like it was still red, but Eula didn’t make those tangles hurt as much as when Mamie worked on them.
I closed my eyes and concentrated on her humming, her long fingers moving through my hair, the brush of her breath on the back of my neck. Some of the anger got less tight inside me.
“Let’s leave,” I said, keeping my eyes closed. “Right now. Let’s go back to Miss Cyrena’s.”
For a minute, Eula stayed quiet. I hoped she was making plans on how to get back there.
Then she sighed. “You know that ain’t the right thing to do.”
“Why not?” I turned and looked at her. “Nobody cares. Nobody wants us except Miss Cyrena.” I hated that it was true, that Momma had meant what she’d said. If we left now, I wouldn’t have to know for sure. Once Momma was back, it’d be too late to run.
“What about your Daddy?”
I shrugged. I didn’t want to think about him right now. Truth be told, Daddy wasn’t never home and Mamie hated me. Patti Lynn . . . well, my insides was too raw to think about never seeing her again.
Eula looked at me for a long while; her eyes was sad as I’d ever seen them. “I know you disappointed in your momma—”
“She’s horrible! And she ain’t my momma no more.”
“She always be who borne you. Nothin’ change that. ’Member I told you, there more to bein’ a momma than birthin’ a baby. And some women just ain’t made for it. Your momma surely is one of those.” Eula shook her head, real sad. She held my face in her hands and got so close we were nose to nose. “That your momma’s shortcomin’; it got nothin’ to do with you and the good person you are.”
I felt my chin start to shake. I bit my lip, and when I blinked, I felt a tear roll down my cheek. “I’m not good. I never do nothin’ but make trouble.”
Eula sat back with her eyes wide. “I never heard anythin’ so foolish.”
“It’s true! I’m always gettin’ put on restriction and sent to the principal’s office. Mamie says I’m sassy and disobedient—and I reckon she’s right. I leap before I look and I got me a real bad temper.”
“Well, now, we can all do better. That’s why we get up every day, to try and do better with the good Lord’s help.”
“Mamie says I’m just like Momma! What if it’s true?”I could hardly breathe after those words got out.
Eula looked real serious. She was shaking her head slow, like she was considering. “We all a little like our mommas, but you ain’t your momma. I’m sorry for sayin’ this, but she a disappointed and selfish woman, ugly and hateful inside. Maybe she always that way, maybe life hammered her into it. I can’t say. But what I do know is you and me, we been through some things together. Hard things. And I ain’t never seen you act selfish. You fight for what’s right. There’s nothin’ to be ashamed in that. You take care of James and me when we need it, even when it’d be easier to just leave us. I see that you a beautiful person inside—most beautiful I ever met.”
I wanted to believe her. But I couldn’t. For one big reason. And that reason made me sure she was just trying to make me feel better. I pulled up all of my braveness. “I run away, just like Momma. And . . .” I swallowed but my mouth was dry. “And if it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t have killed Wallace.”
His name surprised her, I could tell. She sat there for a minute quiet and still. It didn’t look like she was going inside herself, but I couldn’t be sure.
Her whole body was shaking a little and her voice was low and strict when she said, “I never want you to say that or even let it into your head again. What happen with Wallace was ’cause of Wallace and ’cause of me. Our trouble been brewin’ a long while. After I took James, disaster comin’ like a freight train whether I picked you up on that road or not. What happen with Wallace is on me, not you. Not you!”
She grabbed me in a hug so ferocious, the love reached clean to my bones. She kissed the top of my head. “Truth is, you save me, child. You save me as sure as the sun rises. Sooner or later, he gonna kill me, or James, or both of us. I know that now. And I know that because you give me the strength to see it.”
We stayed quiet for a bit, hanging on to each other.Then she said, “I know I gotta pay for what I done. But I do it with an easy heart. Never you feel any sorrow over me.” She pulled me away from her and put her hand under my chin. “You hear me?”
“They can’t lock you up for savin’ me. They can’t.”
She smiled then, soft and kinda sad. “Maybe not. We just wait and see what justice bring. I’d kill that man again and again if he tried to hurt you. So maybe I am a sinner in the Lord’s eyes. I find out when I meet him, and that the only judgment that means anythin’.”
“Daddy will help you.” Right then it came to me that maybe I didn’t know Daddy; I sure didn’t know Lulu. And Mamie’d probably have the law waiting to take me off to reform school when I got back. She sure wouldn’t help Eula. Mamie would wish that Wallace had done got me out of the way for good.
“You should leave,” I said. “Without me. That way nobody’ll be lookin’ for you.”
Eula shook her head. “Ain’t you been listenin’? You and me come this far, we finish this together.”
I tried to swallow but my throat closed up.
“Together.” She nodded and kept her eyes on mine until I nodded, too.