Whistling Past the Graveyard Read online

  I tried to think about which way my house would be facing by taking my mind backwards to town, but I lost track of the turns and was no better off than before.

  The sun wasn’t any help neither, sitting up there high in the sky.

  Maybe I could hitchhike. Somebody old enough to drive would surely know east from west. I’d have to be careful and not to hitch a ride with anyone from Cayuga Springs though.

  That’s when I realized I hadn’t seen a single car on the road since I’d passed the lumber mill. Everybody was picnicking, playing games and swimming, not driving from place to place.

  I walked along, sun beatin’ down on my head between the shady spots, getting thirstier and thirstier. The sweat stung my eyes and my feet was swollen like melons inside my shoes. I closed my eyes and for a minute I could see my crumpled body beside the road with buzzards picking at my red hair and eyeballs.

  That thought made me determined not to die, no matter how happy it might make Mamie and Mrs. Sellers. So I got my mind busy on something other than my misery.

  I thought about the last time I saw my momma. Mamie said I was too young to remember, but she was wrong, wrong, wrong. I remember the way the sun sparked on her red hair—it was in a ponytail. I remember she picked me up and twirled me around before she put me in the car to go to Mamie’s. Momma had been wearing a round skirt that spun out like a top. I remember she sang with the radio all the way there. I remember the way she smelled when she hugged me good-bye, like oranges and maple syrup . . . she’d made us pancakes for breakfast.

  I hadn’t eaten a pancake since.

  I wondered if, when I saw her in Nashville, her hair would still be in a ponytail. Mamie kept my hair cut in a pageboy (she did the cutting herself, so my bangs were almost always whopper-jawed). She said nobody wanted to see that much red hair, especially if it’s a rat’s nest, which it most always was ’cause, when Mamie brushed it, she pulled so hard my scalp felt like it was being cut with a million little knives dipped in vinegar. When I got to be a teenager, I was gonna wear a ponytail and tie it with scarves that matched my clothes, just like Momma had.

  Everybody in Cayuga Springs treated my momma like a secret. But it seemed like I was the only person they wanted to keep the secret from. Sometimes when Mamie had bridge club in the summer, I’d sit below the living-room window outside and listen. The ladies had plenty to say about Momma, all right. Hateful things. Lies. They squeezed them in between their bids and trumps, like it was part of the game. That was when I’d get a good red rage going and head into the house to tell them all to shut up—course I’d be punished, but it would be worth it. But so far, I’d never once got to say it. The second they heard the squeak of the screen door they got quiet all by themselves. It saved me being punished, but just one time I wished I’d been able to tell them how un-Christian-like they were.

  Even Patti Lynn’s mother talked about Momma on the telephone when she thought I couldn’t hear: “Oh, you know, the little girl whose mother abandoned her. . . . Yes, the one who thinks she’s going to be a singer in Nashville. Can you imagine? I feel just terrible for that child.”

  At school, my teachers and Principal Morris was extracareful never to mention my momma. It made me feel like I’d been hatched from an egg or something on Mamie’s front porch.

  I used to ask Daddy about Momma, about things she liked, what was her favorite color, did she hate spaghetti sauce and chicken livers like I did? He used to answer me. Then he got so he just said, “Starla, I already told you a million times. I’m sure it’s in your head somewhere, look for it.” He didn’t get mad exactly. But it always made him leave the room, so I stopped asking.

  Momma was even getting to be a secret with Daddy; course she’d always been a secret with Mamie.

  Secrets. Secrets. Secrets. They made me feel ashamed of loving my own momma; made me do it in secret.

  Well, once I got to Nashville, I’d be able to love her right out loud.

  I marched on, holding that thought close. Just when I thought I couldn’t take another step in the heat, I heard a rattle and chug coming up behind me. I almost jumped into the ditch to hide until I was sure it wasn’t somebody who’d take me back to Cayuga Springs, but was quick to change my mind. Reform school seemed better than being buzzard food.

  I turned around and waited. I didn’t recognize the truck. It was one of those real old ones with big fenders scooping over the front tires and a windshield in two separate pieces. It had shed most all of its paint, with a robin-egg-blue splotch the size of a dinner plate on a hood the color of an old scab.

  The gears ground and the truck slowed as it passed me. A skinny colored woman peered out through the windshield. I didn’t recognize her, but even if she knew me, being colored she couldn’t make me go back if I didn’t want to. But I reckon she could tattle.

  She coasted by, then stopped a few feet ahead of me.

  Pretty sure I was in the clear ’cause she was colored and I didn’t know her, I went right up and stood on the running board of the passenger side. I held on to the wing vent and looked through the open window.

  The colored woman smiled. I could tell she was nice.

  “What you doin’ out here all alone, child?” she asked in a voice that sounded like a lullaby.

  “Goin’ to Nashville.”

  She shook her head and pressed her lips together. “Nashville. Now that’s a long, long way.” For a minute, she looked like she was making up her mind if I was telling the truth.

  Maybe I’d made a mistake. Maybe I should just take out for the woods. Too bad I was more scared of being ate than I was of the law right now. I stuck.

  Finally, she nodded. “You look like you’s about to fall to the heat.” She picked up a mason jar off the seat. “Here.” She handed it to me.

  I was horrible thirsty, but I didn’t take it; Mamie had made it clear: no matter even if we’re about to expire from thirstiness, we don’t drink after negras. That’s why there was signs on the water fountains everywhere, so we’d know where we was supposed to drink.

  The woman shook the jar a little and the water shot through with thirst-quenching sparkles. “It fine. Been washed and I ain’t opened it since the water went in.”

  My tongue felt like a wadded-up sock in my mouth. I’d already broken enough rules I could never repent enough to save me. If I was going to h-e-double-hockey-sticks, I wasn’t gonna go thirsty.

  I reached out and took the jar. It didn’t leave my lips until it was empty.

  “Obliged.” I wiped a dribble from my chin with the back of my wrist and handed the jar back through the window.

  “You momma know where you are?”

  “That’s why I’m headed to Nashville. That’s where my momma is.” Hellfire or not, it was best to keep my lies as close to the truth as possible.

  “Who ’posed to be takin’ care of you?” Her brows scrunched over her eyes, just like Mamie’s when she was unhappy about something but couldn’t say right out.

  Panic licked at my belly. If I told anything near the truth, this woman would tattle for sure—coloreds feared the law lots more than they did a redheaded white girl.

  So I loaded a lie.“Nobody but my momma. She’s expectin’me.”Then I realized the woman probably wouldn’t believe any momma would let her little girl hitchhike, so I dug deep for another. “I . . . I . . . gave my bus ticket to an old woman with a sick grandkid and no money. He was almost dead, so she needed it real bad. I can hitchhike there just fine.” I tilted my head and squinted, hurrying past the lies. “You headed that way?”

  That’s when I heard something like a little hiccup and looked down at the floorboard of the passenger side. A baby . . . a red-faced, wrinkly white baby . . . wrapped tight in what looked like a pillowcase with crocheted lace on the edge and embroidered flowers, was inside an oval bulrush basket barely big enough to hold his tiny self.

  I looked back up at the woman.

  She smiled again. “That there’s baby J
ames. And I’m Eula.”

  “I’m Starla.”

  “Never heard that name afore. Starla,” she said, slow and soft, then nodded. “Nice.”

  “You don’t think it’s trashy?”

  Her brow wrinkled like I’d said something crazy. “Sounds like a nighttime winter sky . . . you know, when the air is sharp and the stars so bright they look like little pinpricks to heaven.”

  Nobody had ever made my name sound so beautiful. “That’s what my momma thinks, too.” My throat felt tight just thinking it might be so.

  Baby James made more noises that sounded somewhere between a little squeak and a purr.

  I cocked my head looking between him and Eula. “You the maid, then?” Plenty of babies were toted around by their colored maids, especially today with parents busy with older children at the Fourth of July Festival.

  “Hmmm.” She reached over and flipped the latch on the passenger door. A tiny gold cross sparkled at her throat; she was a good Christian woman. “I can give you a ride, if ’n you want.”

  “All the way to Nashville?” I asked, wondering how far I had yet to go.

  “Partway only. But better’n walkin’ in this heat.”

  And ending up buzzard dinner.

  I pulled open the door; its old hinges squeaked loud enough to startle the baby into crying. I climbed up on the seat and put my feet on either side of the basket.

  “You mind holdin’ James while I drive? He needs comfortin’.”

  I looked down at that baby. He reminded me of the newborn kittens the LeCounts’ calico had in the holly shrubs on the side of their house last year, all pink and wrinkly. And he was oh so small. I figured I’d break him if I tried to pick him up.

  “He looks okay down there to me,” I said. “Maybe he’ll quiet when you start drivin’ again.”

  She looked at me with a sly smile that said I wasn’t foolin’her.“Here now.” She reached down and scooped him up and plunked him in my arms. I couldn’t do nothin’ but grab hold.

  He wasn’t much bigger than my pajama bag, but lots squirmier. And his squallin’ was getting louder.

  “Tha’s right. Now jus’ slide this sassy”—she picked up a pacifier from the basket—“into his mouth and give him a little jiggle.”

  I did, and James’s squalls slid down to whimpers. Then he started sucking on that sassy and got quiet and still.

  “There now,” Eula said. “Better.”

  He was better. And me, too, now that I knew I wasn’t gonna die in the ditch.

  She let out the clutch and the truck jerked into motion. She smiled over at me and James, and I felt like she and I already knew each other better than just meeting.

  She said, “Now ain’t it a lucky thing that I found you.”

  3

  e

  ula drove me lots farther than I’d hoped. I reckoned we were moving in a direction that more or less got me closer to Nashville, since Eula knew that was where I was headed. The hot air whirled around the inside of the truck, some relief from air sticky as cotton candy. James had fallen asleep and was getting real heavy for such a little thing.

  The trees grew closer and closer to the road, crowding in like they wanted to take over. There was places where their branches reached right out and shook hands over our heads. Still, most of the time the sun baked us like biscuits right through the windshield.

  My arm was turning numb when Eula glanced at me. “You got yo’self a real nice touch with a baby.” She smiled over at me. She had a little space between her two front teeth, which were extra white against her dark skin. She looked at me like I was special.

  I couldn’t help the lick of pride I felt, even though it was a sin. Mamie always said the only thing I was good at was making trouble. “Never held one before.”

  “Well, now, you’s got a gif ’ then.” She sighed, keeping her eyes on the bleached-out pavement. “I got that gif ’, too. It’s real special . . . ‘rare as hen’s teeth,’ my momma used to say.”

  A gift, huh? Too bad Mamie’d never know. “You been a maid long?” She nodded. “Since I was prob’ly not much older’n you.” “I’m only nine and a half!”

  “Um-hmm.” She sat up a little straighter and lifted her chin. “Got schoolin’ up till I was eleven—the colored school only go to eighth grade anyway. Read better’n my momma ever did.” She got quiet for a minute and I listened to the hum of the tires and the rough growl of the truck’s engine. “I started out takin’ care of the neighbor’s young’uns while she worked . . . six of ’em, they was.” She smiled. “Law, my hands was full, but I was happy as a fox in a henhouse.Then when my momma died, I had to get me some real work with cash pay, not just chickens and eggs. That’s when I started with my first family.”

  “What about your daddy?” My daddy worked all the way down in the Gulf so he could put clothes on my back and food in my belly. “Didn’t he take care of you?”

  Her face got hard and she made a sound like she was choking. “Pap couldn’t even take care of his own self. Can’t recall a job lasted him more’n a month. He just too mean.”

  Poor Eula. My daddy hated being away from me, but he sacrificed so I could have everything I needed. He didn’t get home much, but when he did, we did all kinds of fun stuff. One time he bought me my bicycle from the Western Auto and taught me how to ride—it’s a blue Western Flyer, bought big so I didn’t outgrow it. It was pretty dangerous at first ’cause I had to hop off the seat to put my feet on the ground when I stopped, but it fit me just right now. And me and Daddy almost always go to the drive-in movie when he’s home; we get popcorn and Orange Crush. And when I was seven, he took me all the way up to Calling Panther Lake to go fishin’.

  “You been workin’ for the same family all these years?” I asked. Patti Lynn’s maid had been with them since her parents got married; Patti Lynn and me both loved Bess to death—she made the best chocolate chip cookies in the whole of Mississippi. We liked her daughters, too; they come to help when there was lots to do, but went to school regular and didn’t work like Eula had. And I couldn’t even remember when Ernestine didn’t work for the LeCounts.

  Eula’s face went soft and kinda sad. “No’um. Been several.”

  “You always been a maid to a family with kids?” I really wanted to put James back in his basket before my arm fell right off, but I didn’t want Eula to think I didn’t really have a gift ’cause it was the first one I’d ever had.

  She seemed to know what I was thinking. “Go on, put him down. He stay asleep now.”

  That’s when I realized there was no way I could put him down, ’cause my numb arm wouldn’t work. “Um . . .”

  “Uh-huh. I see.” Eula nodded, slowed the truck, and pulled off onto the grass beside the road. I didn’t recall when we’d turned off the highway with the painted center line and onto this country road with the tar bubblin’ up from the sun.

  She got out and walked around the truck. She was really tall . . . and I’d never seen a woman so skinny. After opening the passenger door, she reached out and took James. As she lifted him from my arms (thank you, baby Jesus), my fingers went all tingly and it felt like ants was biting all over my arm.

  Eula tucked James into his basket with hands so sure and practiced I felt ashamed of my pride in my gift.

  As she climbed back in the truck, she said, “We be home soon, sugar.”

  “But I’m goin’ to Nashville.”

  “Well, course you are. But there ain’t nobody on the roads to give you a ride today. You can come home and have supper with me and Wallace, sleep, then be on your way to Nashville t’morrow. Maybe I get Wallace to drive you partway.” She nodded and smiled and I thought Wallace must be a real nice man.

  ’Sides, I was hungry. I’d eaten a jawbreaker already and wanted to make my candy last as long as I could. And I’d only seen one other car since I’d gotten in the truck, and it was headed the other way.

  “What about James, don’t you have to take him home?”<
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  She leaned back against the seat, wrapped her hands around the steering wheel, and stared out the windshield. “I keepin’ him.”

  “Overnight?”

  She dipped her chin as she put the truck in gear and it shuddered back onto the road.

  A while later, we run out of pavement and was travelin’ a dirt road, kickin’ up a plume of dust. We passed a long stretch of brown-watered swamp, edged with water weeds and green scum. It was full of old cypress and tree skeletons that dripped with gray moss. A bit after that, we turned off that dirt road onto a double-rutted lane that cut into the woods.

  As we drove through the tangle of trees and weeds, branches made screeching noises as they scraped the rusty truck. Goose bumps shot down the back of my neck and I tried to tell myself it was just ’cause of the sound, but it really was more than that. The trees swallowed up the sunlight. With my sun-blind eyes, everything was fuzzy and gray and I couldn’t see nothin’ at all in the shadowy places. We’d left the real world, the world of Cayuga Springs and Mamie and Patti Lynn far behind and was in a place that felt darker—and not just ’cause of the light.

  The truck made a curve in the lane. I looked over my shoulder and the square of bright that was the hole to the road was gone; there wasn’t nothing but woods and gloom. I wondered if I’d made a mistake. Mamie always said I never did look before I leaped.

  I told myself I should be glad to be someplace safe from the law and Mrs. Sellers—and that a woman as nice as Eula was gonna give me dinner and a place to sleep. Anyway, I didn’t have much choice. I couldn’t never go home again. And I couldn’t walk to Nashville when I didn’t know how to get there.

  Sure wish I coulda said good-bye to Patti Lynn.

  I’d thought about running away plenty of times. I’d even thought about asking Patti Lynn to come with me. But her momma and daddy lived together and she didn’t have a grandmother who hated every cotton-pickin’ thing about her. It really wouldn’t be fair to ask her to give up all her good stuff just ’cause I wasn’t keen on running away alone.