The Ballad of Ami Miles

by Kristy Dallas Alley

  “Well, thanks a lot,” I said. Jessie looked surprised. “Don’t worry, I won’t get any big ideas that you only like me.” I started to stand up so I could move away from her, but she grabbed on to my hand and made me look at her. She looked confused for a second, then started to laugh.

  “Woo, girl! You are somethin’ else, you know that? I was tryin’ to let you off the hook! I know you have all these ideas about how you have to have a baby, and as I’m sure you know, I can’t make that happen for you. And just for the record, while we’re on the subject, I think you are way too young to be worryin’ about babies and marriage like you are. What’s the big hurry?”

  When I didn’t answer, she went on. “I do only like you, Ami. And I’m glad you like me too. And who knows, maybe that will go on and on and turn into something big, something that lasts our whole lives. But maybe it won’t, and that’s okay too. People around here, they couple off and then break up pretty regular. And when you read some more books besides Little House on the dang Prairie, you’ll see that people have always fallen in and out of love. And I don’t know, maybe that’s a good thing and maybe it’s not, but it seems to just be the way things are for most people. Just … all I’m sayin’ is you don’t have to decide everything about the whole rest of your life right this very minute! Okay?” I wasn’t ready to answer her yet. I didn’t know if it was okay with me or not. I’d just never thought about things in that way before. And I was stuck on something else she’d said.

  “What about you?” I asked.

  “What about me what?” she replied.

  “You said everybody couples off and breaks up all the time. What about you?” Suddenly the thought that Jessie had kissed someone else, maybe Hanna or even Will or Ben, made me feel kind of sick. But she just gave a little laugh and shook her head.

  “Nah. It’s hard when you ran around in diapers with somebody. All these other kids feel more like brothers and sisters, or at least cousins, to me. They don’t seem to mind it, but I’ve always—I just feel different, I guess.” I felt an unreasonable amount of relief to hear her say that. It made me silly.

  “Oh, I see how it is,” I teased. “You just like me ’cause I’m fresh meat!”

  She made a surprised face, then stood up and put her hands on her hips in pretend outrage. “You take that back, Ami Miles.”

  I closed my lips tight and shook my head no. “Make me,” I said, and that was all it took. She tackled me and pinned my shoulders down to the bed with her hands, leaning all her weight against me.

  “Take it back, or else!”

  “Or else what?” I asked, then flipped us over so she was the one pinned to the bed. Her surprise looked real then.

  “Well, aren’t you the strong one?” she said. We laughed, and then we stopped laughing. This time, I wouldn’t be caught off guard or overwhelmed or confused. This time, I knew exactly what I was doing. I took my hands off her shoulders and lowered myself down so my elbows were propping me up. Our faces were so close together, and she was smiling at me, but I still felt like I should ask. “Is this okay?”

  She nodded. I brought my face even closer, so our lips were almost touching, and she brought her face up the rest of the way to mine. Her lips were exactly as soft and warm as I remembered. I felt her arms wrap around my waist and then her hands on my back. That went on for a little while, but then I thought of something.

  “Why’d you come here this morning?” I sat up next to her on the bed. It seemed to take her a minute to get herself together and switch directions, which I kind of liked. Finally, she sat up facing me with her legs crisscrossed underneath her.

  “I heard … Nina saw you. With your mama and them.”

  “Did you know?” I asked. “Did everybody know except me?”

  “Now, how would any of us know Lissie Hawkins was your mama, Ami?” I shrugged, wanting to pout. Lissie Hawkins, I thought. I didn’t even know my own mama’s name. I felt so touchy about the whole thing still. She sighed. “Okay, if I’m tellin’ the whole truth, I had a hunch that she might be. The timing made sense, and you kind of reminded me of Penny, even though I couldn’t quite put my finger on why. But I never said so to anybody, and I never heard any of them say anything that made me think they had the same idea.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I wasn’t upset, really, just wrong-footed. It seemed like every time I started to think I knew where I stood, something came along and shook the ground underneath me again.

  “I wasn’t sure, and besides, I didn’t think it was my place. If you had asked me if I knew who your mama was, I probably would have told you Lissie was my best guess. But since you didn’t, I figured it was best to stay out of family business.” When I just nodded, she put her hand on my knee and added in a quiet voice, “But now that you know, I’m here. I came to see how it went. How you’re doing.”

  “Well … it went,” I said, and she laughed. I wasn’t sure I was ready to go back over the whole thing again just yet. “Finally finding my mama, and then finding out about Marcus and Penny and why they left, it was all just … a lot. I feel like I need to break off pieces of all that new information a little bit at a time, you know?” She nodded, and I went on. “All these years, my whole life, I’ve been imagining what it would be like when I finally got to meet my mama. And I never imagined it would be like that. I was so mad! All that time I spent wondering what happened to her. I guess I never let myself think she just didn’t want me.”

  “Oh, Ami,” Jessie said, her eyes shiny. I must have looked surprised, because she said, “What, you think you’re the only one who can feel for other people? Now go on.”

  “It was … I felt so happy at first. I ran to her and she put her arms around me, and we just stood there hugging and crying. But then she introduced me to Marcus. And then Penny, and I … well, I almost fainted.” I laughed a little, feeling embarrassed at the memory. “Then once we got back to their cabin and she told me the whole story, I felt so … well, I felt a lot of different ways. She was about my age when she had me, and she met Marcus a year later. I tried to make myself think of her like that, like me, just scared and confused about what to do. But all this … anger and … hurt, it was like it was bubbling up from inside my chest. I think I wasn’t very nice to her. I’m ashamed of how I acted.”

  “Well, I think that’s only natural after everything you’ve been through. She owed you some answers.”

  “Yeah, and I asked for them too. But the answers weren’t what I expected to hear.” I told her the whole thing, everything about why they had to run away, how they tried to come back with Penny before winter came again so she would be safe and we could all be together but Papa Solomon wouldn’t let even my mama see me before he sent them away because Marcus and the baby weren’t white. And how she got sick and so sad after they left, and then Lake Point wasn’t steady enough to bring me here until they felt like it was too late to uproot me. Telling it all to her the way my mama had told it to me was strange—it made me see it through her eyes a little more, maybe.

  “I was just little then, so I don’t remember when they got here, but I have heard a lot of stories about those bad years of drought and big fights that split up the community,” Jessie said. “And then they seemed like everyone else to me, like they had always been here, and Penny was just one of the littler kids running around. Your mama did always seem kinda sad and real quiet all the time, but maybe less and less as time passed.” I nodded and tried to push down the anger I felt.

  “I should be glad about that, I know. But it still hurts.”

  “I think that’s understandable, Ami,” she replied.

  “You know what?” I said. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore right now, okay? I just want to think about something else for a while.” Jessie nodded and lay back against the pillows.

  “Okay,” she said, “what would you rather think about?” I looked at her hair fanned out so black and glossy against the white of the pillow. Her pretty gray
eyes looked back at me like she knew exactly what I wanted to think about. I stretched myself out beside her, and there wasn’t much more talking for the rest of the morning. Neither one of us knew too much about what we were doing, and we took it pretty slow. There were some bumped noses and foreheads, and a few times we broke out laughing, but no one panicked. And I didn’t feel the slightest urge to run away.

  After a while, when we realized we had missed lunch and our stomachs were growling, Jessie had the idea of making a little picnic by the lake. She grabbed some food from the kitchen for us, and we headed down to the same dock where we’d all gone swimming a few nights before. I remembered how that had ended, with me flustered and confused.

  “Jessie, can I ask you something?” I thought her shoulders stiffened a little, and she looked out at the lake instead of at me. “You know how there’s a lot of things I don’t know about because of how I was raised?”

  Her shoulders relaxed, and she turned her face to look at me. “You mean like kissing girls?” she teased, waggling her eyebrows up and down. I felt my face flush, but I laughed and shook my head.

  “Well, yeah, like that. But that was something that just never came up. At all. But there was other things that … that did come up. That my papa preached about and said was wrong. And I guess I never really—” She was looking at me and nodding like she understood where I was going, but she didn’t cut in. She waited for me to get it out.

  “I just never thought to question the things he preached about. But now I don’t know how to … I don’t know if that means I really believed all of it myself or if I just accepted it because I had no reason not to. Not while I was still there.”

  “But now you are questioning it?” I shrugged my shoulders and looked out at the water, finding it hard to meet her eyes.

  “The day that you got mad at Hanna and Will about Teenie and left, that night they brought me here to go swimming. And it was…” I tried to think of the words “… it was kind of shocking to me how, uh—” I heard her laugh softly beside me.

  “How everybody got kinda naked and then got wet and they looked even more naked?” I turned to look at her then, my eyes huge in my face.

  “Were you watching?” I asked, and she laughed again.

  “Nah, but I can imagine. Just ’cause we ran around together our whole lives, that don’t mean there’s nothing new that comes up. We grew up swimmin’ in this lake like that, together, but it feels different now. We all look different, and we all notice it.” I thought of Jessie noticing Hanna’s wet chest and felt a stab of jealousy. Then I remembered how I noticed it and decided it wasn’t worth mentioning.

  “Yeah,” I said, “there was that. And how they talked about it out loud and made jokes about it! That never would have happened back home. But also, that was the first time I heard about Penny, even though I didn’t know she was my sister yet. Nina was wondering when she’d get back, and when I asked who she was, she said something about her also being brown even though her mama was white. And she just said it like it was nothin’, but…”

  “But you thought it was somethin’?” Jessie asked.

  “I don’t even know, that’s the crazy thing. I was just always told that it was wrong for people to do that. But now, I don’t know if that’s what I think. Hearing my mama tell about how it happened and seeing her with Marcus, I mean, anybody can see they love each other. And I guess seeing that, it’s a lot different from hearing about it when there’s no real people to put with the idea. Does that make sense?” Jessie nodded and gave me a sad little smile. “And when she said her own daddy spit in her face and called Penny an ugly name, even though she was just a baby! How can a person who does a thing like that claim to be a man of God? How does he claim to be any kind of man at all?” I was getting upset again just thinking about it. I jumped up, needing to pace.

  “I mean, all that talk about babies being precious gifts from God, what about all that, huh? Was that little baby not precious just because her skin was darker than his? She’s his own flesh and blood! And Ruth … I can’t hardly believe she would do her own daughter and grandbaby that way.” I thought of something and then turned to look at Jessie. “How am I supposed to believe they ever really loved me or cared about me, knowing they wouldn’t have if I just looked a little different?” I sat down again, feeling the truth of what I’d said wash over me.

  “I don’t know, Ami,” she said. “If you’re askin’ me, I’d say what they did to your mama and Marcus and Penny was wrong. And what they did to you was wrong too. Seems to me like your grandpa didn’t practice what he preached, in more ways than one. My daddy used to say ‘talk is cheap.’ Not that he was a great one to talk, but that time he was right. It’s easy to spout a lot of big talk about knowin’ what God wants and followin’ his will, but I ain’t seen the man yet who don’t do just exactly as he pleases when it really comes down to it. It’s just that some of ’em admit it, and some of ’em don’t.”

  Part of me wanted to argue, to defend my grandparents even after everything that had happened, but I knew she was right. I tried to think of any Bible verse Papa might have quoted to back up his claim that the mixing of the races was wrong, but there was nothing. Once again, it was my faith that was built on the shifting sand of his teaching. I looked down at my hands and saw they were clenched fists in my lap, like I thought if I closed them tight enough, I could hang on to something, anything, that had tied me to my family and our life at Heavenly Shepherd. I looked at Jessie and then up at the sky, so clear and blue and open. Is God up there, looking down at me? I wondered. If I prayed for help, would I get it? Or was that all just a story like Will claimed? Or was Evi right, and maybe God was there, but He or She or whatever They might be was not anything like the God my papa claimed to know so well? I looked down at my hands again, and I opened them. Whatever I’d been trying to hold to, deep down I knew that it was already gone.

  Twenty-Two

  After that, I knew I needed to go back to my mama’s cabin and talk to her. I was still mad and hurting and confused, but I wanted her to know that I was trying to understand. And underneath everything else, I was still the same little girl who’d grown up missing her mama. Now that I’d found her, I wasn’t willing to give her up again without a fight. So I headed down the path to the cabins, trying to think what I would say when I got there, and then I met Penny and Nina coming the other way.

  “Hey, Ami,” Nina said, looking at me and then Penny in a nervous way.

  “Hey,” I said. I’d been so focused on myself and my mama, I hadn’t really thought much about Penny or how she felt about all this.

  “You comin’ back to yell at my mama and make her cry some more?” she asked. Nina looked like she had to bite her tongue to stay quiet, but she just shook her head and looked at the ground.

  “Penny, I—” I started, but what was I going to say? I almost hoped she would cut me off and fuss at me some more, but she just stood there, waiting.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Believe me, all the times I imagined what would happen if I ever saw my mama again, I never imagined what happened yesterday.”

  “Yeah, well, it wasn’t what any of us imagined either. I don’t know why I thought you’d be different from those people who raised you.”

  “What? Penny, that’s not—I’m not like that,” I said. “None of this, how mad I got and how upset I was, it wasn’t about that. It was wrong for them to turn y’all away; I know that!” She stood there looking at me, trying to decide if I was telling the truth. She was stubborn. “When Papa and Ruth turned you away, they took my mama from me. And I’ve spent my whole life missin’ her. I didn’t even know they took my sister from me too.”

  “So you don’t care if your sister looks like this?” she asked, moving her hands so they pointed from the top of her head down to her feet. Her voice was still angry, but her face looked hopeful. I didn’t know what I’d say until I said it.

  “Well, I mean, it’s bad enough you
got to have Mama to yourself all this time; you didn’t have to be so much prettier than me too,” I said, and grinned at her. Her eyes got big, then she threw back her head and laughed.

  “I told you you’d like her,” Nina said. Penny took a step closer to me and studied my face, looking serious.

  “Hmmm,” she said. “I’m not that much prettier.” She cracked a big smile, then reached behind me and pulled my braid over my shoulder. “And I could never grow my hair this long.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sad about that,” I said. “It mostly just gets in the way and drives me crazy.”

  “You should cut it, then,” she said, like it was nothing. I wondered if Mama had held on to any of the ways she’d been taught by Papa and Ruth.

  “Is she home?” I asked. “I was comin’ to apologize to her too. And just … to talk to her.”

  “Yeah, she’s wanting to make us both new dresses for the Fourth.” I must have looked surprised in maybe not a good way, because she pointed a finger at me. “This means a lot to her. And Mama is an amazing seamstress! So be nice.” I nodded, and she turned to look at Nina. “I think I’ll go back with Ami. Catch up with you later?”

  “Sure,” Nina said, looking relieved. “I’ll see you both later.” Penny and I started walking back to her cabin together, but before we got too close to the door, she stopped and turned toward me.

  “I get it, you know. Why you got so upset. I can’t imagine what it must feel like to miss your mother and think she might be dead, then find out that she’s been living this whole new life with her new family. And I know you never even knew about my dad or me. But I always knew about you, Ami.” I was surprised. I guessed I just figured I would be something they didn’t talk about.

  “I know she mentioned her depression and having to come back from that and take care of me, but I’m not sure you really understand what it was like for her. None of this has been easy, and she never forgot you. When I was little, I had an imaginary friend named Ami. Then when I got older, I thought of you as the ghost who haunted my mama.” I tried to read her face when she said this, but she gave me a sad little smile that hid whatever else might have been there.