Rising Above Shepherdsville

by Ann Schoenbohm

  “Ladies, may I introduce you to Miss Evangeline Tucker.”

  I realized right away, Mama, that this was the famous Evangeline Tucker that had the Ladies’ Auxiliary in such commotion. Miss Tucker was older than I’d first imagined, yet her face glowed with light, her dark eyes like liquid stars.

  “Miss Tucker is our new choir director at Redeemer. She’s just returned from visiting her sister down in Atlanta. Evangeline, these are the two girls I mentioned to you. This here is Faith, and this is Dulcie.”

  Miss Evangeline Tucker didn’t say a word. A smile danced on her face. Her manner was as straight as an arrow, determined to get under all the pleasantries, aiming straight at my heart. She took my hand and held it. I felt a warmth coming from her, as if someone had draped a blanket around my shoulders.

  Faith—who, I was quickly learning, said whatever popped into her head—sputtered, “Preach told me you could help me with my music, but he didn’t say nothing about you being colored.” She stared at Miss Tucker, inspecting her closely.

  Evangeline Tucker leaned into Faith and grasped her hand as well. “I am many things, honey. Colored is only one of them. Does it matter to you?”

  “No. Preach just didn’t mention it, is all.”

  “Well, now. Reverend didn’t mention that you were a pistol either, so we’ll have to make do as we are.”

  Faith shook Miss Tucker’s hand firmly. “Good by me. Glad to meet you.”

  Reverend Love filled us in. “Miss Tucker is a valuable member of our congregation, as she is our new choir director—our own musical muse. She’ll choose the hymns for services each week, lead the singing of them, and take care of a thousand other things that I can’t keep my finger on.”

  He put his hand on my shoulder. “Evangeline, sometime you’ll have to tell Dulcie the story of how you came to Shepherdsville—about the swan leading you to the church.”

  I got goose bumps again, Mama.

  The memory of the swan flying above the church rose in my mind again: the little clearing in the woods, as perfect as a picture, was waiting for me.

  Almost as if he read my thoughts, Reverend Love said, “We were swan-watching the other night, Dulcie and me. But we weren’t lucky enough to see one, were we, Dulcie?”

  I shook my head, keeping my secret. Evangeline gazed at me, like I was a crystal ball she was peering into. “Finding a swan’s nest, that’s a sure sign of blessedness. But to see a swan in flight, that’s nature’s way of showing you a path, a compass for your soul.”

  Some people radiate mysteries and deep secrets, Mama, and Evangeline Tucker was one of them. I was eager to hear what she had to tell.

  “Well, now. Come sit beside me for a bit.”

  Faith and I settled into the sofa on either side of her.

  Reverend Love took a seat, and the adults talked about this and that: the weather, the congregation at church, money needed to fix the furnace, and the coming baby.

  Occasionally Miss Tucker would rest her hand on my knee or pat my hand as if to say, You still with me? I swear, Mama, she could say things without really saying them.

  Mrs. Love, or Mary, as we were to call her, announced dinner, and we went in to the table. Miss Tucker didn’t move like an older lady at all. She was graceful, floating lightly on her feet. I was placed on one side of her, and Faith on the other. Mary brought out roast beef, potatoes, and green beans. Everyone passed and poured and drank and ate, and still no word about what Reverend Love had in mind or why we were to meet Miss Tucker.

  During dessert—Bisquick shortcakes with strawberries and cream—Reverend Love said, “Miss Tucker needs some assistance at the church tomorrow morning. She has some things she could use some help with, and I believe you two are just the ticket.”

  Miss Tucker spread a smile onto her face like butter, her eyes warm.

  “But you’ll call me Evangeline, won’t you?”

  After dinner we settled in the living room, and the adults had coffee. Evangeline leaned back in a soft armchair. “Faith, Reverend Love said you’re a singer and a guitar player too. Why don’t you play us a little something?”

  The Loves encouraged her to play for Evangeline. I was surprised that Faith agreed so easily, but she went and got her banged-up instrument. The strap lay tattered on her shoulder as she tuned and fiddled with the strings.

  It occurred to me then, Mama, that that old piece of wood might be the nearest thing to a relative she had.

  “Um, this song is my favorite. I remember my mother used to sing it to me, when I was little, before she run off.”

  Faith’s voice, pure and sweet, revealed an inside that didn’t at all match the outside she showed the world. The melody of her song transformed the room, making it sparkle somehow.

  Down in the valley,

  Valley so low;

  Hang your head over,

  Hear the wind blow.

  After Faith sang, Evangeline led Faith and me outside to “take in the night air,” she called it. The three of us stood in the Loves’ front yard as the darkness of the coming night layered the fields with deeper hues, swirling, impending stardust here and there. June beetles started up their music, and lightning bugs flickered all around us. An occasional mosquito buzzed past, but refrained from landing, giving us respite from having to slap them away.

  Evangeline took our hands and whispered, “Magic hour.”

  The first star appeared, a tiny pinprick of light above us. Faith and Evangeline and I stood underneath it, aligned in a constellation of our own making, while the great world spun and whispered secrets to us.

  12

  q-u-i-e-s-c-e-n-t

  quiescent (adj.)

  quiet; still; inactive

  The next morning, after breakfast, I hurried through my chores, fed slop to Aunt Bernie’s two hogs she was fattening up for fall, and headed for the barn. I dug my old bike, Maybelle, out from where Ray had left her. The smell of long-gone animals and musty hay bales caused me to pinch my nose when I opened the door. A long rope with a big knot on the end hung down from the rafters. I touched it—surely something you’d once enjoyed, Mama. I pictured you swinging, wild and free, happy to escape farm chores and endless Bible reading.

  Ray had left my bike leaning against a dilapidated feed trough. I wheeled Maybelle outside to see if she was in rideable condition. She definitely needed sprucing up for the trip to church. I’d promised Evangeline that I would meet her and Faith at Redeemer that morning.

  Time was wasting, and I wanted to head out right away. I wondered what big mystery Evangeline had in store. But mostly I wanted to see if the swans behind the church were still there. Maybe they had been a trick of the light or a figment of my imagination. I figured if I beat everyone to church, I could retrace my steps over the fence and see if the swans were truly as real as my memory of them.

  In the house, Aunt Bernie was baking up a feast for Sunday afternoon potluck the next day, glad to be rid of me and my ineptness in the kitchen. She made me a ham sandwich and shooed me out of her way.

  Aunt Bernie planned to spend that afternoon at WGOD, so I was off the hook from having to keep her company. She’d proudly told me once that WGOD broadcast as far as seventy-five miles away from its tiny tower in Shepherdsville. Her pencils and account books were lined up next to the back door, ready for her job managing the donations that came into the station.

  Her transistor radio on the counter blared out hymns, and Aunt Bernie sang along. She can’t carry a tune to save her soul, Mama. Aunt Bernie maintained that WGOD was using the radio to broadcast the Bible’s good word. To my mind, all that gospel music turned up so loudly could only lead to loss of hearing.

  I searched under the sink and came up with S.O.S pads and some paper towels. After some scrubbing and a spray of the garden hose, Maybelle was somewhat less of a sorry sight.

  Aunt Bernie had fashioned a bag for me out of old dress cloth so that I could carry my Bible when I went to church. I took the Bible out
and replaced it with my notebook and some pencils. I tucked the bag and the ham sandwich into the crooked basket on Maybelle, and took off.

  The morning sun beamed hot enough for tar bubbles on the road to puff up, ready to pop. They snapped and crackled under Maybelle’s wheels as I rode.

  Back at the house, I’d sneaked a pair of shorts on under my dress. Once I was out of sight of the kitchen windows, I pulled up my skirt and tied it around my waist in a knot, leaving my legs free to pump the pedals. If she’d seen me, Aunt Bernie would have had a load of kittens.

  When I’d gained enough speed, I coasted, my arms straight out like a bird aiming to take flight. I was breathless when I pulled into the church parking lot—exhilarated, like I’d just gotten off the Ferris wheel at the Paint Creek county fair. I was happy to be out from under Aunt Bernie’s thumb at last.

  The church lot was empty, the building deserted. I wheeled Maybelle to the side of the church and leaned her up against the wall.

  The long grass in the field snapped at my ankles as I ran toward the fence. I hopped over and quickly made my way into the thicket. Sunlight peeked through the trees, dappling the ground with spots of gold. Tiny wildflowers, white and purple, led the way. The woods and the narrow clearing shimmered in the daylight. When I reached the pond, not a creature was in sight.

  I waited, disappointment rising. Maybe I had imagined seeing those swans that night. Maybe I was as cracked as a walnut, like they said—seeing things. There were no swans now—only sedge grass and cinnamon-colored cattails waving at me. The nest was empty.

  I was certain the swans had vanished or were just a vision I’d conjured up out of the darkness, and my heart threatened to crack.

  They were gone—like you, Mama, like Lilac Court, like my voice.

  I sat on the gnarled tree limb near the weeping willow, grateful to have this place all to myself, where I could talk to you. I knew you could hear me, Mama, even if I couldn’t say the words out loud.

  I closed my eyes, and everything came back. The state spelling bee finals. The moment when everything changed.

  The word was “metamorphosis.” Webster’s definition: “a transformation; a change of condition, appearance, or function.”

  Standing at the microphone in the auditorium in Columbus, with my eyes closed, the word assembled in my head. The letters appeared like writing on the blank slate of my mind, and the taste of them formed in my mouth. I took a breath and exhaled, ready to speak.

  At that moment I saw Ray standing at the back of the auditorium. The stage lights were bright, and I couldn’t quite make out the expression on his face, but something in the way he held his body sent a thunderbolt through me as if we were connected by an electric current.

  Instantly I understood that you were gone. My mouth was still in the process of forming words, when the caller spoke. “Miss Dixon, I’ll repeat the word. The word is ‘metamorphosis.’ ”

  My lips met again and again, but the sound that came out of me was the sound of someone muzzled, mouth stuffed with cotton.

  “Mmmm . . . mmm.”

  Unaware of the trouble I was in, the caller gave the time warning. I continued trying to make sound, but nothing came out.

  I don’t remember how I got from the stage to the car. I don’t remember any of the words Ray spoke. I felt cold—I remember that—my limbs numb, my teeth hitting together. I recall not being able to stop shaking. Ray took off his coat and draped it over me. The vibration of Shirleen’s car made a sound, a murmur that hummed, Mama-mama-mama-mama, over and over, until it put me to sleep.

  I woke up in my own bed, and for a second it was just an ordinary morning. Until everything came back in one great wave.

  You were gone, Mama.

  The very fact carved out a piece of me, made me hollow.

  Empty. Nothing inside.

  I didn’t even have enough energy to cry, Mama. I lay in my bed and watched the shadows on the wall. Until the shadows became people—Ray, Shirleen, neighbors. Darkness came in and out, like the tide. I just wanted to go under that tide and stay under. Stop breathing and have it be done. But no matter my thoughts, the waves came, one after the other, my breath going in and out. The earth kept spinning, but I wasn’t part of it.

  That’s when Ray took me to the mental ward and left me—where they told him my voice would return with time—where they gave me the smiley-face notebook to write down my thoughts. That was when Ray decided he couldn’t be a daddy to me, and decided to dump me in Shepherdsville with Aunt Bernie—where the only person I could talk to was you. Everything led back to that day, Mama, like a heavy chain I wore, each link connected to the next, long and heavy enough to drag me back down to that dark place.

  Something out of the corner of my eye brought me back to the pond. I sat up, startled, nearly falling off the branch. I grabbed the tree bark, rough under my fingers. My heart lifted, Mama.

  Perhaps they had been on the other side, feeding or napping in the tall grass, but suddenly, without a sound, the swans appeared, their babies following behind them. They glided into the middle of the pond, a beautiful and silent parade, just for me.

  13

  v-e-s-t-m-e-n-t

  vestment (n.)

  a robe; gown; garment worn by officiants or choir members during certain services

  I found Evangeline in the long, narrow room off the sanctuary—the vestry, she called it. She’d decorated every nook and cranny of it with colorful trinkets. Bits of glass dangled on strings in the windows, casting prisms of shiny rainbows. Knitted bits of yarn, ripped quilts, and pieces of cloth were braided into rugs on the floor. The tottery old shelves were loaded with treasure, bits of nature tucked here and there: dried berries, blue bottles full of flowers, glittery rocks, and tree branches arranged in the corners.

  Tendrils of smoke twirled from a stick of incense that made the room smell like honey and wild things.

  Above a rusty sink an old advertisement signboard had been turned around to the wall. On the back were painted words in a child’s writing: “Every good and perfect thing is from above.”

  Evangeline stood in front of an ironing board, pressing a long ribbon of purple fabric. A cup of coffee, the smell earthy, sat steaming nearby. She hummed to herself, incense smoke curling above her head. When she heard me come in, her face crinkled, her eyes shiny. She took my arm and led me farther into the room. “Welcome, welcome, come on in. Look around. Make yourself at home.”

  She waved her arm, an invitation to survey her kingdom while she returned to her ironing. I set my bag down on a table, fascinated with the odds and ends scattered around the room.

  A chipped wardrobe stuffed with tattered gold choir robes took up most of one wall. A box was open beside it on the floor. Hanging on a hook, on the back of the door that led to the sanctuary, was Reverend Love’s church garb with the special scarf he wore around his neck on Sundays. A wringer washing machine stood in the corner, and several long banquet tables were opened across the room from side to side. Bright lengths of fabric ran the distance of the tables, rainbow colors spread out every which way.

  On top of the cloth, white paper simplicity patterns were laid out, the sleeves glinting with silver pins, like angels with sparkly wings.

  Evangeline sprinkled water onto the fabric she was pressing. “Out with the old, and in with the new.”

  I screwed up my face. I had no idea what she was talking about.

  She beamed and pointed to the shiny material. “Choir robes.”

  I touched one of the patterns. It crinkled under my fingers. I gathered that this was what Mrs. Swinson and the others were up in arms about.

  “We’re going to make us some new ones. I shopped all the colors I could find at the Bolt and Spool. Mr. Purcell let me have the discontinued cloth in exchange for sewing up some sample dresses for their display window.” She stopped. “Do you know how to sew, child?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, I aim to teach you. You’ll
be able to whipstitch come sundown.”

  She pointed to the wardrobe. “First thing we’re going to do is pack up these old robes. Been here since I don’t know when.” She propped up her iron and pulled its plug from the wall. “Take those off their hangers, fold ’em, and put ’em in that box. They’ll make good quilt squares for the sewing circle, come fall.”

  Evangeline spread out bolts of fabric while I did as she’d asked. I pulled choir robes down from their hangers and arranged them carefully in the box. They were frayed, the gold faded, the fabric shiny with wear in places. Each robe had a yellowed tag sewn inside the collar, names written and crossed out in faded laundry marker—choir members who’d worn them long Sundays ago.

  Evangeline looked at her watch. “Now, where do you suppose Faith got up to?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. Maybe she’d taken off to Nashville.

  Evangeline narrowed her eyes, looking into the distance as if she could see something I couldn’t. “Faith is a wandering spirit. That gal has yet to find her true home, so she can’t help but seek to find one.”

  We worked in silence for a bit. Me folding, her ironing, the morning dust motes floating around us.

  Then, I found your robe, Mama. The second to last one in the wardrobe—your name written on the collar, faint ink still there after so many years. Emma Dean Dixon.

  I sat down hard on the floor. Oh, Mama. Mama. Mama.

  I hugged that robe, wrapping myself in it, letting its softness caress me. I don’t know how long it was while I tried to smell you, feel your arms around me, imagine you there beside me.

  Evangeline stood behind me and helped me up, slowly unraveling me from the robe.

  She looked at the collar for a long time, as if it were telling her a story. “This robe was your mama’s?”