Fireflies in December Read online

  Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

  Carol Stream, Illinois

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  Fireflies in December

  Copyright © 2008 by Jennifer Erin Valent. All rights reserved.

  Cover photo of people copyright © by Veer. All rights reserved.

  Cover photo of road copyright © by Creatas Images/Jupiter Images. All rights reserved.

  Author photo copyright © 2008 by Melody Smith. All rights reserved.

  Designed by Jennifer Ghionzoli

  Edited by Sarah Mason

  Published in association with the Books & Such Literary Agency, 52 Mission Circle, Suite 122, PMB 170, Santa Rosa, CA 95409-5370, www.booksandsuch.biz.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Valent, Jennifer Erin.

  Fireflies in December / Jennifer Erin Valent.

  p. cm.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4143-2432-6 (sc)

  ISBN-10: 1-4143-2432-4 (sc)

  1. Girls—Fiction. 2. Race relations—Fiction. 3. Virginia—Fiction. 4. Domestic fiction.

  I. Title.

  PS3622.A4257F57 2008

  813'.6—dc22 2008034383

  Printed in the United States of America

  14 13 12 11 10 09 08

  7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  TO MY PARENTS, JOE & BARBARA VALENT,

  for believing I could do this.

  AND TO MY SAVIOR

  for holding my hand every step of the way.

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  My sincerest appreciation goes out to Jerry Jenkins and all those with the Christian Writers Guild for their tireless dedication to those whom the Lord has called to write; to Nick Harrison, for believing in my work and keeping me in the game when I felt like giving up; to my agent, Wendy Lawton, for graciously showing a rookie the ropes; to everyone at Tyndale House for taking a leap of faith; to my editor, Sarah Mason, for her time and effort on behalf of myself and my characters; to Karen Watson and Stephanie Broene for putting their hearts into this project; to my entire family for their love and support; to my aunt, Jan Corrie, and to Rosemary Howren for being faithful prayer warriors on my behalf; to my First Readers Club—Mom, my sister Trish McGonigal, my cousin Cristi Kimmel, and Melissa Ridenhour—for being my unofficial editors; to Melanie Payton and Amy McCreight for making me laugh when I wanted to cry. And last but not least, to my nephews and niece—Josh, Ethan, Micah, and Cady—and to all the kids I’ve been blessed to work with over the years, for reminding me how to see life through a child’s eyes.

  Chapter 1

  The summer I turned thirteen, I thought I’d killed a man.

  That’s a heavy burden for a girl to hang on to, but it didn’t surprise me so much to have that trouble come in the summer time. Every bad thing that ever happened to me seemed to happen in those long months.

  The summer I turned five, Granny Rose died of a heart attack during the Independence Day fireworks. The summer I turned seven, my dog Skippy ran away with a tramp who jumped the train to Baltimore. And the summer I turned eleven, a drought took the corn crop and we couldn’t have any corn for my birthday, which is what I’d always done because my favorite food was corn from Daddy’s field, boiled in a big pot.

  To top it off, here in the South, summers are long and hot and sticky. They drag on and on, making slow things seem slower and bad things seem worse.

  The fear and guilt of the summer of 1932 still clings to my memory like the wet heat of southern Virginia. That year we had unbearable temperatures, and we had trouble, just that it was trouble of a different kind. It was the beginning of a time that taught me bad things can turn into good things, even though sometimes it takes a while for the good to come out.

  The day I turned thirteen was one of those summer days when the air is so thick, you can see wavy lines above the tar on the rooftops. The kind of day when the sound of cicadas vibrates in your ears and everything smells like grass.

  On that day, as Momma got ready for my birthday party, I told her that I wanted nothing to do with watermelon this year.

  “We have some fine ones,” she told me. “Just don’t eat any.”

  “But the boys will spit the seeds at us like they do all the time,” I said. “And they’ll hit me extra hard today since it’s my birthday.”

  “I’ll tell them not to,” she said absentmindedly as she checked her recipe again with that squinched-up look she always got when trying to concentrate.

  I knew I was only another argument or two from being scolded, but I tried again. “Those boys won’t listen to you.”

  “Those boys will listen to me if they want to eat,” she replied before muttering something about needing a cup of oleo.

  “They don’t even listen to Teacher at school, Momma.”

  That last reply had done it, and I stepped back a ways as Momma picked up her wooden spoon and peered at me angrily, her free hand on her apron-covered hip. “Jessilyn Lassiter, I won’t have you arguin’ with me. Now get on out of this house before your jabberin’ makes me mess up my biscuits.”

  I knew better than to take another chance with her, and I went outside to sit on my tree swing. If God wasn’t going to send us any breeze for my birthday, I was bound and determined to make my own, so I started pumping my legs to work up some speed. The breeze was slight but enough to give me a little relief.

  I saw Gemma come out of the house carrying a big watermelon and a long knife, and I knew she had been sent out by her momma to cut it up. Gemma’s momma helped mine with chores, and her daddy worked in the fields. Sometimes Gemma would help her momma with things, and it always made me feel guilty to see her doing chores that I should have been doing. So I dug my feet into the dry dirt below me to slow down and hopped off the swing with a long leap, puffing dust up all around me.

  I wandered to the picnic table where Gemma was rolling the green melon around to find just the right spot to cut into. “I guess this is for my party.”

  “That’s what your momma says.”

  “Are you comin’?”

  “My momma never lets me come to your parties.”

  “So? Ain’t never a time you can’t start somethin’ new. It’s my party, anyways.”

  “It ain’t proper for the help to socialize with the family’s friends, Momma says.”

  “Your momma and daddy have been workin’ here for as long as I can remember. You’re as close to family as we got around here, as I see it. I ain’t got no grandparents or nothin’.”

  Gemma scoffed at me with a sarcastic laugh. “When was the last time you saw one brown girl and one w
hite girl in the same family?”

  I shrugged and watched her slice through the watermelon, both of us backing away to avoid the squirting juices.

  “Looks like a good one,” Gemma said as the fragrant smell floated by on the first bit of a breeze we’d seen all day.

  “All I see are seeds for the boys to hit me with.”

  “Why do you let them boys pick on you?”

  “I don’t let ’em. I always push ’em or somethin’. But they’re all bigger than me. What do you want me to do? Pick a fight?”

  “Guess not.” A piece of the melon’s flesh flopped onto the table as Gemma cut it, and she popped it into her mouth thoughtfully. “I’ll never know why boys got to be so mean.”

  “It’s part of their recipe, I guess.” I helped by piling the slices on a big platter, and I strategically picked as many seeds as I could find off the pieces before I stacked them. Never mind my dirty hands. “You come by around two o’clock,” I told her adamantly. “I’ll get you some cake and lemonade. You’re my best friend. You should be at my party.”

  Gemma shushed me and shoved an elbow into my ribs as her momma went walking by us.

  “Gemma Teague,” her momma said, “you girls gettin’ your chores done?”

  “Ain’t got no chores of my own, Miss Opal,” I told her. “I figured on helpin’ Gemma instead.”

  “Then you two make certain you keep your minds on your work, ya hear?”

  “Yes’m,” we both mumbled.

  Gemma’s momma walked past, but she looked back at us a couple times with a funny look on her face like she figured we were planning something.

  In a way we were, but I didn’t see it as being a big caper or anything, so I continued by saying, “You know, I ain’t seein’ any sense in you not at least askin’ your momma if you can come by for cake. She’s usually understandin’ about things.”

  “Every year it’s the same thing from you, Jessie. She won’t let me come, and besides, I’ll bet your momma don’t want me here no more than my momma does. It just ain’t done.”

  “‘It just ain’t done’!” I huffed. “Who makes up these rules, anyhow?”

  Gemma kept her eyes on her work and said nothing, but I knew her well enough to see that she didn’t understand her words anymore than I did.

  Momma called me from the open kitchen window, but I ignored it and kept after Gemma. “Now listen. You just come on by after we’ve cut the cake and pretend to clean up somethin’, and I’ll be sure you get some.”

  “Ain’t no way I’m gettin’ in trouble for some cake and lemonade that I’ll get after the party anyhow,” she argued. “You’re just bein’ stubborn.”

  I sighed when Momma called me again. “She’s gonna tell me to take a bath, I bet. You’d think at thirteen I’d be old enough to stop havin’ my momma order me to take baths.”

  “You’d never take one otherwise,” Gemma said. “Ain’t nobody wants to smell you then.”

  “I hate takin’ baths on days this sticky. My hair never dries.”

  “Takin’ a bath on a hot day ain’t never bad.”

  “It is when the water’s hot as the air is.”

  Gemma shook her head at me like she always did when I was being hardheaded. “Water’s water. Cools you off any which way.”

  I didn’t believe her, but I headed off to the kitchen, where Momma had filled the big metal tub we’d had to take baths in ever since the bathroom faucets broke. The sheet she’d hung across the doorway into the next room flapped as the breeze I’d prayed for began to pick up.

  I hopped out of my dungarees in one quick leap and crawled into the tub. “It’s hot as boiled water,” I complained.

  “Well then, we’ll have you for supper,” Momma replied as she measured out flour, obviously undisturbed by my discomfort. “Your guests will start gettin’ here in a half hour, so don’t dawdle unless you want everyone findin’ you in the tub.”

  “Yes’m.”

  “And don’t forget to clean behind your ears.”

  “Yes’m.”

  Water splashed as I washed with my usual lack of grace, landing droplets about the kitchen floor. It didn’t really matter since Momma always made a mess when she cooked and the floor would need cleaning after she was done. No doubt the flour and water would mix into a fine paste, though, and she’d have a few words to mutter as she tried to scrub it up. As she measured sugar, I could hear her praying, “Oh, dear Jesus, let me have enough.” Momma prayed about anything anytime, anywhere.

  By the time I’d scrubbed and dried, the smell of biscuits was drifting through the house and Momma was putting the oil on for the chicken. She was a good cook, no matter the mess, and she always put on quite a show for these birthday parties.

  As I walked up to my room, wrapped in a ragged blue towel, I heard Momma call after me not to forget to put on my dress. Then she added, “Please, Lord, let the girl look presentable.” I think Momma often wondered why, if she was to be blessed with a girl, she had to get one that mostly acted like a boy.

  “No dungarees!” she added. “And put on your church shoes.”

  I rolled my eyes, knowing she was nowhere near me. I would never have dared to do it in front of her. I hated dressing up, but for every birthday, holiday, church day, and trip into town, I had to wear one of the three dresses that Momma had made me. She was as fine with a needle as she was with a frying pan, but I hated dresses nonetheless. Mostly because when I wore them, I had to sit all proper in my chair, and I couldn’t do cartwheels, at least not without getting yelled at. But I put on the dress because I had to and buckled up my church shoes.

  I could hear Daddy’s footsteps coming down the hall, and I turned to smile at him as he stopped at my doorway.

  “Lookin’ pretty, dumplin’,” Daddy said.

  “That’s too bad.”

  “Now, now. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with a girl lookin’ like a girl.”

  “Who says wearin’ dresses is the only way to look like a girl?”

  Coming into the room, his dirty boots leaving marks that Momma would complain about later, Daddy tossed his hat onto a chair and helped me finish tying the bow on the back of the dress. “We don’t make the rules; we just follow ’em.”

  “Well, someone had to make the rules in the first place. We should just make new ones.”

  “No doubt you will one day, Jessilyn,” he said with a sigh. “But for now, you’d best follow your momma’s instructions. She ain’t one to be disobeyed.”

  “Are you gonna be at the party?” I asked hopefully, knowing full well that he’d been in the fields all morning and looked in need of a nap.

  “Wouldn’t miss it, you know that. I got the corn on already.” Daddy rubbed his tired eyes, picked up his hat, and walked out, whacking the hat against his leg to loosen the dust.

  He worked hard, especially this time of year, and no matter how many men were willing to work the fields, he would always put in his fair share alongside them. I had suspected of late, however, that he was working harder more out of necessity than a sense of duty. We’d had fewer men to help than in years past, and it wasn’t due to lack of interest, I was sure. I’d seen my daddy turn three men away just the day before.

  Things were poor, especially in our parts, and for having a working farm and a good truck, we were fortunate. We even had some conveniences that other people envied, like a fancy icebox and a telephone, and Momma was pretty proud of that. We weren’t rich like Mayor Tuttle and his wife, with their big columned house and fancy motor car, but we were thought to be well-off just the same. Momma and Daddy never talked money in front of me, and I decided not to fuss with it. It caused too many problems for adults from what I could see. What did I want to do with it?

  I made my way downstairs and stepped out onto the porch, disappointed to see Buddy Pernell was the first to arrive. I didn’t like Buddy very much. But then, I didn’t like many kids very much. I thanked him for coming—mainly because Momma’s glare told me to�
��and received the plate of cookies his momma handed me. In those days, we didn’t give gifts at parties; it was too extravagant. But every momma felt it only proper to bring some sort of favor along.

  By the time we had a full crowd, one side of the food table was filled with jars of jelly, bowls of sugared strawberries, a couple pies, and even one tub of pickled pigs’ feet. I promptly removed those, but Momma stopped me cold.

  “We accept all gifts with thanks, Jessilyn,” she hissed in my ear as she replaced the tub on the table.

  “Even pigs’ feet?” I argued.

  “Yes ma’am! Even pigs’ feet.”

  It took only ten minutes before the first watermelon seed landed in my hair. All the other girls started screaming and ran for cover, but I fought back at the boys out of sheer pride. I did a little shoving, Momma did some yelling, but I got pummeled anyhow.

  After we finished eating lunch, I spotted Gemma hanging laundry on the line and ran over to get her help brushing all those sticky seeds out of my hair.

  “You ought to not let ’em do this to you,” she said.

  “I told you before,” I said with my eyes shut tight to stand the pain of Gemma’s brushing, “they’re all bigger than me.”

  “I think they’re too big for their britches. That’s the problem.”

  “Maybe so, but that don’t change nothin’. I still can’t whip ’em.”

  “Well, I did the best I could.” Gemma peered closely at my sun-streaked hair. “I can’t see no more.”

  “Just wait till we go swimmin’,” I told her. “I’ll find some critter to stick down Buddy Pernell’s knickers. He’s the one leadin’ the boys in the spittin’.”

  “You best be careful. Them boys might do somethin’ to hurt you back.”

  “I ain’t scared of them,” I lied. “Besides, they got it comin’.”

  Gemma shook her head and grabbed a pair of Daddy’s socks to hang on the line. “You’re stubborn as a mule, Jessie.”

  I figured she was right, but I wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction of hearing me say it. Instead, I rejoined the party, grabbed a piece of cake, and stood by watching the boys scuff about with each other, playing some kind of roughhouse tag. The other girls stood around watching the boys, giggling over how cute this one was and how strong that one was. I couldn’t figure them out.