Beginning with Cannonballs Read online

  “The season to be jolly,” the party invitations had proclaimed, but Gail zipped herself into the green velvet dress she’d worn the year before with a feeling more like despair. What was so jolly about watching your life go down the drain?

  “You didn’t have the party right after Granny died,” she’d complained to her mother, whose reply had been chilling. “For heaven’s sake, Hanna’s not dead. You’re getting to be as melodramatic as she is.”

  “Why couldn’t Jeremiah move in with us?” Gail shot back. Now that Del was in jail, Sophie didn’t want their son living alone.

  “No other maid in Knoxville brings her child with her. I should never have allowed Hanna to stay for so long. Sophie got all sullen whenever I tried to discuss it.”

  “You’re glad Hanna’s gone.”

  “Honey, I’m really sorry it had to happen this way, but please don’t take your disappointment out on me. Let’s go shopping together. We both need new dresses for the party.”

  “No, thanks.” Wasn’t bribery illegal? “I guess Daddy’s glad, too, that Hanna’s gone forever.”

  “It’s nice having the house to ourselves at night, don’t you think?”

  Nice? Nice would be if her parents moved out and Sophie and Hanna moved back in. Jeremiah could come, too.

  Although she was allowed to wear lipstick to the party, Gail didn’t bother. The only reason she combed her hair was to keep her mother from doing it for her. She waited to go downstairs until she could hear the first arrivals jabbering away in the front hall.

  It was her job to take the guests’ coats upstairs, a job at which she excelled. Hours later, she never failed to remember which coat belonged to whom.

  Finally, the doorbell stopped ringing. No more arriving guests, no more coats.

  Gail took a deep breath, worked up her courage. She walked through the dining room—where Jeremiah, in black slacks, a white shirt, and a maroon tie, was mixing drinks—and into the kitchen.

  Hey there, long time no see, she was planning to say, but Hanna, intent on pouring cashews into a cut-glass bowl, didn’t even look up. Her pink skirt was too short, her matching sweater too tight. As Gail’s mother liked to say, Hanna had shot up like a weed.

  “Miss Gail,” Sophie said, taking the bowl of cashews from her daughter, “can you put this on the table in the sunroom?”

  Miss Gail? Gail looked around for someone by that name. Hanna studied the empty cashew jar.

  In the sunroom, Carol Ann Moss fingered a sleeve of Gail’s dress and announced, “Real velvet, all right.”

  Gail pulled away in disgust.

  Carol Ann lowered her voice and leaned in, her breath reeking of bourbon. “Who’s the bartender? Is that Del’s son?”

  “Del who?” In her haste to escape, Gail nearly collided with Jimmy Marsh’s mother, who smiled sweetly, probably unaware that in fifth grade Gail and Jimmy had been sort of engaged, until Jimmy had asked for his sparkplug ring back.

  The noise grew louder and louder. A lot of the guests were people her parents didn’t even like. Just be polite, her mother had pleaded. The easiest way to do that, Gail decided, was to go up to her room and shut the door.

  It no longer felt like her house, her life.

  She was lying on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, when her mother burst in without knocking. “Here you are! Are you sick?”

  To prove she wasn’t, Gail sat up.

  “This one belongs to Judge Newcomb.” Her mother held out a coat. “I had no idea he was coming. Your father must’ve invited him.”

  Gail gave a tiny shrug.

  “You know the judge. Silly little mustache.” Bessie Madison sparkled in a silver sheath.

  “Are you drunk, too?” Gail asked.

  “Honey, what’s wrong?”

  “Why’d you make them come tonight? Hanna doesn’t want to be here any more than I do.”

  “Sophie was delighted. They need the money.”

  “Well, Hanna’s not. She won’t even look at me.”

  “She’s embarrassed, that’s all.” Her mother smiled without showing her teeth. “It’s up to you to make the first move.”

  Gail thought this over. As much as she hated to admit it, her mother could be right.

  “Can I put a tip jar on the hall table?” If Hanna and Jeremiah were being paid, then why should the coat-check girl work for free?

  “Don’t be silly. Black cashmere. Judge Newcomb. That’s my good girl.”

  The cashmere gave off a stench of cigars and something else. Some animal. Holding on to a lapel, Gail dragged the coat into the guest room and added it to the pile on the bed. She tried on a mink coat that came down to her ankles and stank of perfume. Why were adults so smelly?

  Minus the mink, the good girl descended the stairs. In the living room, she spotted a man with a thin mustache who was popping shrimp into his mouth from Sophie’s tray. Gail followed him into the dining room, where Jeremiah handed him a full glass. Straight bourbon, from the look of it.

  Her father, too, was holding a drink. He put his free hand on Gail’s shoulder and introduced her to Judge Newcomb.

  “Hello, Judge,” Gail said. “I hope you won’t report the bartender. I think he’s underage.”

  “Why, Gail.” Her father looked truly shocked. He turned to the judge. “An interesting question, would you agree, sir? Is there a legal age for tending bar in a dry jurisdiction?”

  Gail felt her cheeks flush. She’d forgotten that her father bought his booze from a bootlegger. Everyone did, maybe even the judge, who stood smiling down at her with yellow teeth.

  There was only one place to go, one person to tell about having made such a complete fool of herself. She pushed open the swinging door to the kitchen, startling Hanna, who was licking cream cheese off her fingers. Hanna’s guilty look made Gail’s own predicament seem trivial.

  I’m with you, not them, Gail wanted to say, but that would come too close to the jagged edge of the thing she and Hanna never talked about. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said instead. “I hate this stupid party.”

  Hanna frowned. “What’re these things I’m cutting up and putting in the cream cheese?”

  “Candied ginger, I think.”

  “Tastes like fancy soap.” Hanna launched one of her long, melodious burps.

  “I’ve missed you so much.” Gail sat down opposite Hanna at the kitchen table. “I wish there was some way we could see each other.”

  “I asked Mama if I could come with her on Saturdays. She was going to ask Miss Bessie, but I guess she forgot.” Hanna raised one shoulder.

  “Then I’ll ask Mother.”

  “Too late. I joined the choir at our church. Choir practice is on Saturdays.” Hanna stared into the bowl of cream cheese. “Last week, the choir director said the strangest thing to me.”

  “Tell me.”

  “She asked if Del knows I can sing.”

  “Does he?”

  Hanna picked up a cracker and crumbled it to bits. “He barely knows I can talk.”

  “But you always spent Sundays with him.” Sophie’s day off.

  “Mostly, he wasn’t there.” Hanna blew her nose on a red cocktail napkin, then wiped at her eyes.

  All those Sundays Hanna had spent at her other home, and not once had she so much as hinted that something was wrong. Maybe because Gail had never once asked her what she did on Sundays.

  Gail retrieved a box of Kleenex from the kitchen counter and set it down beside Hanna. But that only made Hanna cry even harder.

  The key to the padlocked gate to the swimming pool hung from a peg above the back door. The pool had been drained for the winter and was off-limits.

  “I’ll sneak out to the pool house and get one of Billie’s records,” Gail said. “We can listen in the den.”

  “I’m not allowed in the den tonight,” Hanna sniffled. “I’m working.”

  No longer a member of the household, Hanna meant. A paid servant like her mother, Hanna meant
. Gail was close to tears herself.

  “We’ll listen to one side of the record,” Gail said. “No one will know or even care.”

  “We could listen in the pool house.”

  “We could.” Gail wasn’t sure this was a good idea.

  With a fresh tissue, Hanna dried her eyes. She stood up, put on her coat, and handed Jeremiah’s jacket to Gail. It was Hanna who found the step stool and Gail who climbed up for the key.

  They pulled the gate in the fence shut behind them, so that no one would know where they were. A garage floodlight partially illuminated the shallow end, where three wide steps led down into the empty pool. The rest of the pool was in darkness.

  It was even darker in the pool house.

  “Jeremiah gets to visit him in jail,” Hanna said.

  Gail didn’t even know where the jail was. Were there two of them, one for coloreds and one for whites? Arms raised, she tried to locate the chain dangling from the ceiling light bulb.

  “Mama thinks Del might be my father.” Hanna was crying again. “But might wasn’t good enough for him, and after he saw me, he wanted her to give me away.”

  There was a click, followed by the soft whir of the turntable. When the needle touched down, the singer was Johnny Mathis.

  “Shit,” Hanna said. “Where’s Billie? I can’t do anything right. Don’t even know who I am.”

  “That’s easy. You’re my best friend.”

  “Remember that time outside the drugstore?”

  Gail would never forget it. They’d been sitting on the curb, drinking the lemon Cokes she’d gone inside to buy (because Hanna wasn’t allowed in the drugstore, or any of the other stores, or the restaurants, or the hospital, or anyplace else in this part of town). A man driving past in a pickup truck had shot the ugly words out his window. Nigger lover.

  “You said that creep was half right,” Hanna said.

  “Right about the love part, yes.”

  “Math problem,” Hanna said. “Half right times half a nigger equals what?”

  By moving closer to Hanna’s voice, Gail bumped into the table. “Chances are, chances are, chances are,” Johnny Mathis hiccupped.

  “C’mon,” Gail said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  From the table she gathered up an armload of record albums. Outside, in the light at the shallow end, augmented now by a rising half-moon, she quickly found a cover photo of a woman with a gardenia in her hair.

  But no record was necessary. From the dark end of the pool came a voice as haunting as Billie’s.

  “Amazing grace,” Hanna sang, the empty, echoing pool her sound system. Barely visible to Gail, Hanna let go of the railing at the back of the diving board and stepped forward.

  Does Del know you can sing? Gail hadn’t known how well, not until now.

  “Beautiful,” she called to Hanna. “But please turn around. That old diving board’s cracked, remember?” A new, aluminum board was in the garage, ready to be installed in May.

  The concert did not stop. Instead, the soloist strutted out to the end of the board. She sang about having a notion to jump into the ocean.

  Notion. Ocean.

  Gail flung the albums aside. Down the steps she went. The floor of the pool sloped toward two round drains in the deepest part. She slipped twice, her own shoes as slick-soled as Hanna’s must be.

  Billie continued to sing from her narrow stage.

  “Go back,” Gail yelled, her own words echoing.

  Hanna turned to face the side of the pool and sang about giving someone her last nickel. When Gail moved in that direction, her arms extended, ready to catch her falling friend, Hanna said, “Out of my way. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “Nothing could hurt worse than this,” Gail cried. “Please, will you just stop?”

  And Hanna did stop, suddenly frozen in place. A figure in crepe-soled white shoes and a starched white uniform was coming down the steps at the shallow end of the pool.

  “Go back this minute,” Sophie called to her daughter. “It’s me he’s mad at, not you. Go on back now.”

  Hanna turned around. She took a tentative step. Maybe the shift in her weight was what did it. There was an audible crack.

  At first the coconut matting seemed to prevent the wooden board from bending. Then came a horrible creaking sound. Facing the back of the board, Hanna got down on her knees and tried to hang on.

  Gail did her best to cushion Hanna’s fall. The force of it knocked them both to the concrete, which Hanna’s head hit with a sickening thud.

  “My babies!” Sophie screamed. “Sweet Jesus in heaven!” She untangled the two of them, then lifted Hanna’s limp body.

  Gail managed to sit up. Her left arm hurt.

  “Move!” Sophie said to her. “Hurry. That board’s about to dangle itself loose.”

  But standing up made Gail so dizzy she nearly lost her balance. Like a drunken guest at her parents’ party, she staggered up to the shallow end, where Sophie had placed Hanna on the top step.

  “She’s breathing, I think,” Sophie said.

  Gail thought so, too. Gently, she touched Hanna’s cheek. No response.

  “Go get Jeremiah,” Sophie said. “He’ll know what to do.”

  And he did. Jeremiah was on his high school’s football team. His first question was, how long has she been unconscious?

  “A little longer than it took Gail to bring you out here,” Sophie said.

  “More than a minute, then,” Jeremiah said. “She’ll need to go to the emergency room.” He pushed Hanna’s right eyelid open. “Hanna, it’s Jeremiah.”

  No response.

  He found her pulse. “You’re going to be okay. Try to open your eyes.”

  They waited. Jeremiah kept talking, and finally Hanna’s eyes blinked open.

  “Good for you,” Jeremiah said. “Now. How many fingers am I holding up?”

  “Fingers?” Hanna whispered.

  “Five.” Jeremiah spread the fingers on one hand. “And here’s ten.”

  “Ten,” Hanna said.

  “Ten. Good. Now how many?”

  “Three point one four,” Hanna said.

  “You mean pi?”

  “Á la mode.”

  “She’ll be fine, just fine.” Jeremiah seemed to think he was personally responsible for his sister’s recovery, and maybe he was. Gail, too, was giddy with relief. Who else but Hanna could’ve survived a backward cannonball into an empty pool?

  “We need to keep a close watch on her,” Jeremiah said.

  “What happened?” Hanna asked.

  “Don’t try to talk. Do try to stay awake, though.” Jeremiah touched her arm, her knee. “Anything else hurt, besides your head?”

  Hanna widened her eyes, bit her lips. He’d told her not to talk.

  Jeremiah looked up. “What was she doing on that diving board?”

  “Singing,” Gail replied.

  “Neither one of you got a lick of sense.” He lifted his sister as gently as if she were a bird fallen from its nest and carried her out to the driveway.

  Sophie climbed the back steps to the kitchen. “I’ll tend bar,” she said when she returned, handing the car keys to Jeremiah. “You know which hospital to take her to?”

  “Ain’t but one. You ever made a Tom Collins?”

  “Those folks so far gone, they won’t care what’s in their glass.” Sophie held out her arms for Hanna. “Now, go get the car. Gail, give Jeremiah his jacket.”

  Halfway down the driveway, Sophie stopped. “Lord, this girl’s heavy!”

  “I can walk,” Hanna croaked.

  “No, baby. You concussed.”

  “I want to go with her,” Gail said. “Those morons can find their own coats.”

  “No, ma’am,” Sophie snapped. “You already caused enough trouble for one night.”

  The Pontiac roared up, and Jeremiah and Sophie settled Hanna in the back, lying down, her knees bent. Sophie leaned in and said something before they drove away. />
  “The swimming pool?” Sophie strode off toward the house. “You gone completely crazy? We could be sending my baby off to the undertaker’s.”

  Gail hurried to keep up. “She was crying. I thought Billie Holiday might help.”

  “Shoulda just let her cry. Life’s full of tears.” Sophie pointed toward the pool. “Better lock that gate now.”

  “I will.” But not before putting the albums back in the pool house. Making sure the record player was turned off.

  “Come springtime, that board will look like it broke all by itself,” Sophie said. “What I’ll tell Miss Bessie is, Hanna wasn’t feeling good, so Jeremiah took her home. That sound right to you?”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “I need to get back to the party.”

  Gail blurted it out. “Is Del her father?”

  “That your business?”

  “She’s so mixed up.”

  “But I already told her.” Sophie’s voice was almost too soft to hear. “That bastard Barker? No music in him. Couldn’t so much as whistle.”

  Monday was Christmas Eve. When Sophie unlocked the kitchen door that morning, Gail was waiting. The news was good.

  “She still has a big bump.” Sophie touched the side of her own head. “You hurt? I never even asked.”

  Gail pushed back her left sleeve. Her parents had been too hungover to notice the discolored, puffy skin. “Nothing’s broken.” She wiggled her fingers to prove it. “So don’t go telling them.”

  After breakfast, her father left for a half day of work. Her mother went upstairs to wrap presents.

  Gail helped Sophie in the kitchen. Two turkeys stuffed with cornbread dressing, two sweet-potato casseroles, giblet gravy, cranberry sauce with pecans, two cherry pies. Christmas music on the radio, so all they talked about was what to chop and when to mash and stir.

  If only the six of them could all sit down to Christmas Eve dinner together! Instead, there would be identical meals for three in two different houses.

  When Sophie left at four, Gail’s mother was out delivering presents. Her father, a last-minute shopper, was still downtown.

  From the kitchen phone, Gail dialed Sophie’s number. Hanna answered.

  “How ya feeling? Sophie says you have a big bump on your head.”