Whistling Past the Graveyard Read online

  I always figured it’d take about a week to get ready. I’d store food in my closet a little at a time so Mamie wouldn’t notice and pack up my favorite clothes and Daddy’s lunch box from my fort. I’d write a long note to Daddy and Patti Lynn, who were the only two people who would miss me.

  But as it turned out, leaving Cayuga Springs was an emergency, and all I had was some sticky penny candy in my shorts pockets.

  The truck hit a particular bad hole and about bounced me off my seat and onto James. Lucky I grabbed the door and kept where I was; I’d crush that baby for sure.

  Eula looked over at me. Instead of hollerin’at me to be careful of the baby, she laughed right out loud. “You should see your face, child . . . all eyes and eyebrows.” She made a face that looked like somebody done sneaked up on her and poked her in the backside, the whites of her eyes big and round.

  “I didn’t look like that!”

  “Yes’um, you did.” She made the face again.

  I laughed right along with her this time.

  We were still laughing when the lane ended in front of a house. It sat up off the ground on square, brick supports. The metal roof looked rusty and the porch sagged a little. The white paint was most peeled off, but the house somehow still had a tidy look about it, like somebody didn’t have money but still cared. Some chickens were scratching in the yard, and a rooster was flappin’ his wings on a stump at the edge of the woods. A big ax was next to the stump, and some chopped wood was layin’ on the ground around it.

  The door to the house swung open and a big bear of a man, wearing gray pants with suspenders and a white shirt with short sleeves, walked out. He was nearly as tall as the doorframe . . . nearly as wide, too.

  Eula stopped laughing. Her hands tightened on the steering wheel and she cleared her throat.

  The man come off the porch. “I was ’ginnin’ to wonder where you’d got to. Deliverin’ pies don’t take all day.” His voice was so deep it more rumbled than talked.

  The second he laid eyes on me, he stopped in his big-bear tracks. Now his eyes had that just-poked-in-the-backside look. “What you doin’ with that white girl, Eula?”

  Eula jumped out of the truck.“Now, Wallace, it gon’be all right. She on her way to—”

  James let out a cry like I was pulling his arms off or something.

  The man pushed past Eula and stuck his big head though the open passenger-side window.

  “Lord in heaven, woman!” He spun around so fast, Eula jumped backward. “What was you thinkin’, stealin’ a baby?”

  I didn’t like the way he yelled at her, or the way he leaned his big body over hers. She didn’t back away, but I could see the scared in her eyes. I jumped out. “She wasn’t stealin’! James’s family is busy with the Fourth Festival. She’s takin’ care of him.”

  He looked over his shoulder at me with dark eyes as narrow and hateful as Jimmy Sellers’s. The man had little, square teeth that looked way too small for his head. “Who is you?”

  “Starla Claudelle.” I stood up extra tall; Mamie said you had to stand your ground with the colored.

  “Wallace,” Eula said, and put her hand on his giant arm.

  He swung his eyes back to her.“You always was stupid, but you done lost your mind! You can’t take care of yo’self for even half a minute.”

  “It ain’t what you think—”

  “You get permission to take this baby, this white girl?”

  “No, but—”

  He raised a hand the size of a frying pan and swung. She flinched and ducked. He didn’t connect with skin and ended up only messing up her hair. The front stuck straight up now where it come loose.

  I wanted to break his nose. Truth be told, I was too scared—which made me madder ’n a hornet.

  He lifted his hand again, but didn’t swing. “Don’t you push me, woman!” His hand went from flat to a fist. He breathed real deep twice and then shouted, “Get in the house!” He looked at me. “And take them chil’ren with you!”

  Eula took my arm and shoved me toward the front porch. “Go. It’ll be all right, child.” Then she snatched James in his basket from the truck.

  I looked over my shoulder. The man had both hands on his head like he was trying to keep it from exploding. He walked in little circles, muttering, “Now you gone and done it. We dead. Dead. Dead. Dead.”

  Eula hurried me up the steps, across the wood porch, inside and through the house and into a tiny room in the back that was even smaller than my room at home. The floor was covered with cracked blue and gray linoleum, and the little window didn’t have a curtain. There was an empty baby cradle with a knit blanket folded inside it and a rocker. I wondered where Eula’s baby was, but didn’t get the chance to ask.

  After setting baby James’s basket on the floor, she bent down, took my face in her hands, and looked in my eyes. “Listen to me, child. You gotta be real quiet while I get things straightened out with Wallace. He in a foul mood, and when that happens . . .” She didn’t finish, but I could see she was most as scared as I was. “I get him to see, then we have some ham hock and green beans, maybe I make up some corn bread, too. You like corn bread?” She nodded as she spoke and I nodded right along with her. “Good then.”

  She turned and left the room, closing the door behind her. I heard a key turn in the old lock. I wasn’t sure if it was to keep me and James in, or Wallace out.

  It was all I could do to make myself breathe. I wanted to trust Eula. I really did. She was a Christian. She was kind. But that Wallace was another thing altogether. He looked like he could be worse than Mrs. Sellers, Mamie, and Jimmy Sellers all rolled into one big bundle of mean.

  And what did he mean, “steal” James?

  I moved real careful and put my ear to the door. Eula’s footsteps sounded like she was afraid the floor might splinter right under her. Boy, did I know what that was like, being afraid just the sound of your feet moving on the floor could make someone mad at you. Patti Lynn’s maid, Bess, called it “walkin’ on eggshells.” I reckon that’s as good a way to describe it as any.

  Holding my breath, I waited for the sound of the man’s deep, angry voice, but all I heard was the squeak of the screen-door hinges and the sharp clap as it closed.

  This wasn’t at all what I’d imagined when Eula asked me to come home for supper. Eula was so nice, I thought it was gonna be like dinner at Patti Lynn’s—everybody around a table, polite and nice, talking about their day, telling silly knock-knock jokes.

  I decided I’d better figure out a way out of here, and fast. The window was small, but big enough me and James could get through, if I could get the bottom sash all the way up.

  My stomach got all knotted when I saw the rusted-closed window latch. I worked up all the spit I could in my dry mouth, then spit on it. I waited until I counted to fifteen for the spit to do its work. Then I hit the little lever until the heel of my hand was fiery red and burned like the dickens.

  The latch wouldn’t budge even a hair.

  4

  t

  he door rattled and I sat down real quick next to James—who’d been caterwaulin’ most the entire time, like he was doing his part to cover up the sounds of me trying to get us free. I tried to look like I’d just been sitting there the whole time.

  Ever since Eula had closed that door, I’d been thinking about what she’d said about James; that she was keeping him. When I’d asked if she meant overnight, she’d kinda nodded, but that wasn’t the same as saying yes. Facts are facts. I’d heard it often enough when I’d tried to explain myself to Mamie. And fact was, she was keeping James—a baby Wallace said she had no claim to. The other fact was me and James was locked in tight. Was she planning on keeping me, too?

  “Well, now,” Eula said, as she came in, going right over and reaching for James. She had a bruise growing on the inside of her wrist, purple and angry. It hadn’t been there when she’d left us. “Sounds like baby boy here is hungry.”James didn’t stop crying w
hen she picked him up, but he sounded less like someone was trying to kill him. “There, now. I got some formula made up. You be fine, jus’ fine.”

  I was just beginning to wonder if she’d forgot I was in the room when she looked at me. “You want to come out and hold him while I fill his bottle?” She acted like the whole ugliness with Wallace hadn’t even happened. But that bruise said everything she wasn’t.

  “Um, I was just thinkin’. I don’t want to be any trouble for y’all. I think I’ll just keep on walkin’ toward Nashville. There’ll be cars out after the fireworks are over.” If I could get me out of here, I could tell Lulu when I got to Nashville that there’s a baby been kidnapped. Maybe she could make a nonymous call to the law like they do on TV. I sure couldn’t call; they was looking for a little girl who’d attacked Mrs. Sellers. They’d be sure to put two and two together, ’cause all adults can do that.

  “It be dark then!” Eula said, her eyes more worried than sneaky. “And country dark ain’t like city dark, sugar. Out here there ain’t gonna be no cars comin’ from fireworks neither.”

  “I . . . I really need to keep movin’, in case my momma starts to get worried.” Then I added, “She’s spectin’ me.” No colored person would risk keeping a white girl from her momma, no matter what two and two added up to.

  “You ain’t goin’ nowhere.” The bear’s voice came from the doorway. How had that giant walked through the house and I hadn’t heard him?

  Eula jerked her head in a way that made me think she hadn’t heard him neither. Right quick she turned back to me and smiled, but it wasn’t right.

  “That right,” she said, holding that smile only a ninny would think was real, “not until tomorrow mornin’, when it be safe to travel.” She stood up with James, then brushed right past Wallace, who gave her the stink eye as she did. “Come on then, Starla. Let’s get baby boy fed.”

  I was slow getting to my feet, trying to come up with another argument to get out of here. Then I realized Wallace was still standing there between me and the doorway. I jumped up and hurried past him, feeling his eyes on me the whole time.

  Across from the room with the cradle was a bigger room with an iron bed and pressed curtains on the window. A picture of Jesus hung over the bed, not baby Jesus, but grown-up Jesus. I decided Eula had put it there, not Wallace.

  As I walked into the kitchen, I looked through the door on my right into the living room. The dark green couch and chair were old and lumpy; lace doilies sat on the arms and the tops of the backs. There was a rug on the floor, but no TV or big radio like some old folks had. On the table next to the chair was a Bible and an old oil lamp like Patti Lynn’s momma, who collected old stuff that she called “antiques,” had. In the corner was a potbellied stove with a metal chimney that went up and out of the house near the ceiling.

  No TV. No radio. No switch in the little room with the cradle. It was like Little House in the Big Woods. I’d never been in a house without electricity before.

  The floor behind me dipped and I knew the bear was right behind me. I hurried myself right on to stand by Eula in front of an old cookstove with a pile of wood in a box next to it.

  “Here now,” she said to me. “You pull out a chair and sit down. You can hold James while I get his bottle ready.”

  Eula seemed to have a lot of baby stuff, bottles and whatnot, considering there wasn’t a baby anywhere around.

  James was crying so much his face was red as a June cherry. His little fists were tight under his chin, and every once in a while he’d kick his legs enough he nearly popped out of the crook in Eula’s arm.

  I put my hands behind my back and took a step away from her. “I can get his bottle ready.”

  Wallace made his footsteps heavy and loud as he walked into the living room.

  The three chairs at the kitchen table didn’t go together. Eula hooked a foot around the leg of one and pulled it out. Then she nodded for me to sit. “Don’t be scared of him.” I wasn’t sure if she meant Wallace or James until she added,“Remember, you special. You got a gif ’with little ones. Mustn’t waste one of the good Lord’s gif ’s.”

  I sat and she plopped James in my arms. How did how legs so scrawny kick so hard? With the pillowcase wrapped around him he looked like he was trying to win a potato-sack race. I held tight so he wouldn’t kick himself right onto the floor.

  Eula got a bottle ready, then turned it upside down and shook out a couple of drops onto the inside of her wrist.

  “Why’d you do that?” I asked. For having a gift with babies, I sure didn’t know much.

  “Make sure it ain’t too hot.”

  I was afraid Eula’d want me to feed him too; my arm was getting tired and my ears hurt from his hollerin’. Lucky for me she picked him up and sat down in the chair on the other side of the table.

  Once that nipple plugged up his mouth, James finally stopped crying. Wallace was muttering and stompin’ around in the living room on those big bear feet. Eula didn’t pay him no attention, so maybe he was just cranky in general.

  Truth be told, she didn’t pay me no attention neither. She looked at baby James all dreamy, humming real low and rocking from side to side. The window was right there, open enough that I could slide right out. Wonder if she’d notice? Maybe I was making more of being locked in that room than was right. Eula had said I was leaving in the morning—and Wallace hadn’t gone all crazy mad like he had when we first showed up.

  I thought of Jesus over her bed.

  “Do you pray, Eula?”

  Her eyes left James’s face for the first time since she’d picked him up. “Of course I pray, child.” She looked down at James and her face looked like one of the angels in the Bible-stories book I had, all glowy and soft. “I pray, and God give me little James here.”

  “So you’re keepin’ him . . . forever?” My stomach felt sick. She had kidnapped him.

  “Nobody want him but me. And the Lord, he work in mysterious ways.”

  I couldn’t believe that a momma wouldn’t want her own baby. All mommas wanted their kids. “My momma and daddy want me,” I said, just to make sure she knew it wasn’t all right to keep me.

  She just smiled and moved James up onto her shoulder and patted his back.

  “Doesn’t God want you to have your own baby?” It would make more sense for God to give her a colored baby than a white one.

  Now she looked really sad. “Oh, God give me babies, but God take them away. All away.” Her last two words were whispered, kinda like an amen at the end of a serious prayer.

  “They died?” I said it too loud, but I’d never heard of a baby dyin’. The only people I’d ever known die—well, I reckon I didn’t really know them since they died before I was even born—was my daddy’s daddy in the War and my momma’s momma, Ida, who Mamie said was white trash and died when momma was in junior high. Mamie kept a picture of granddaddy wearing his army uniform in the living room on top of the TV. He was a hero.

  “Most all afore they was ever born,” Eula said it so soft and sad that I didn’t want to ask any more questions about babies.

  We ate dinner, but even though James was finally quiet and asleep, it wasn’t a pleasant time. Eula talked in a chattery voice, asking about school and my momma and whatnot. I kept my answers on the same street as the truth while Wallace sat there and eyed me like I was a big pile of stinky dog doo.

  He wasn’t eating neither, not a single bite of ham hock or corn bread. He must have had a mighty thirst though; he filled his glass with water from a big mason jar twice.

  Once I had my belly full, I could finally think half-straight. Even though I couldn’t understand how it was true—seeing how Jesus loved all his children—Mamie said all coloreds were less than us. I was still learning all of the rules, even though some of them didn’t make a lick of sense to me. But since that was the way of things, I decided I could get myself out of this jam by just ordering Wallace to take me to Nashville, or at least to the highway.

/>   I sucked in a deep breath and said, “Mr. Wallace.” I looked at the top button on his shirt and not his eyes. It was easier to stay bossy that way. “Eula said you’ll be takin’ me partway to Nashville tomorrow. My momma is expectin’ me, so we should leave early.”

  Those eyes got squinty and he grunted.

  I went about my business, just like Mamie did when she’d told me something she knew I wouldn’t like. I almost asked to be excused, then caught myself. I needed to keep my bossy white self the only one Wallace saw. I got up from the table.

  “Where you think you’re goin’?” His voice rumbled from deep in that big body. He was talking kinda peculiar, too, slow and like his tongue had gotten too fat.

  I heard Eula suck in a breath. I thought of that bruise on her arm. I hoped me acting bossy didn’t make Wallace mad enough to start punching.

  “Takin’ my plate to the sink, like I always do after supper.” I took the enameled tin plate and my fork and walked over to the drain board next to the sink with the hand pump.

  I took it as a good sign when he just took another big drink and didn’t say anything else.

  Things were gonna work out.Tomorrow I’d be on my way to Lulu. I felt bad that I was gonna have to have her call the law and report a kidnapped baby; James’s momma had to want him. Poor Eula was gonna be really sad. Maybe God would let her have another baby though, a colored one, once James was back with his real momma. I decided I’d say a special prayer for her at bedtime in case it would help.

  As me and Eula finished clearing the table, I stopped dead when I realized there wasn’t a refrigerator to put the butter in. I about knocked myself in the head; course there wasn’t a refrigerator, there wasn’t any electricity.

  Eula looked at me with a frown. “What you lookin’ for, child?”

  I just raised my eyebrows and the butter crock.