The Lost Songs

by Caroline B. Cooney

  Racing around them were the little Waitlee boys, their mama sitting peaceful on her own porch next door, laughing into her cell phone.

  Towering above Miss Veola’s four rooms were huge oaks whose leaves just browned up and fell down, providing no autumn splendor, but could be counted on for shade through the long hot Carolina days. Beyond them was city housing—brick squares quartered into little apartments, each with its own porch. Nobody wanted the back-facing porches.

  “Lutie, honey,” cried Miss Elminah. “You look beautiful, darlin’. Give me some sugar.” They exchanged kisses and hugs.

  Lutie wondered how to introduce Doria. She could say, This is my friend.

  Being friends with Doria would be like adopting a stray dog. A dog with outstanding ability and training, to be sure, but Lutie didn’t want a pet, let alone one that needed as much feeding, walking and grooming as Doria. So Lutie said brightly, “This is Doria Bell, who plays the piano for concert choir and is in my AP chemistry class.” Lutie always liked to throw in that Advanced Placement stuff. It was an excuse for studying, that waste of time that required a defense.

  “Doria,” repeated Miss Veola, in the lingering way she had with names, as if she’d been hoping somebody named Doria would come by. “Doria, I’m so glad to meet you. Have some tea, honey. Sit right down and visit with us. This is my dear friend, Miss Elminah. Miss Elminah is ninety-one years old this week.”

  “How do you do?” said Doria.

  “And I am four!” called one of the Waitlee boys, raising fat little fingers.

  Doria knelt in the wet grass beside him. “I love the number four,” she confided, and the little boy understood, and they squatted there, enjoying the number four.

  Doria felt like a chorus member in an opera production. The curtain had closed on the stage, which had been set with fine brick mansions and prim little trees. Scene two featured grimy little houses hardly bigger than walk-in closets. Each tiny chain-linked yard had its plastic chairs and children’s toys scattered under shade trees. One house had chickens.

  People flowed down the street, up front steps, between houses and through open, banging doors. It was like school during passing periods: everybody on their way someplace else, and everybody talking, to each other or on their cell phones, or both.

  Sound splashed: conversation in every pitch, from bass men to piccolo-high babies. Music poured from car radios and boom boxes. TVs played inside houses, but who was watching? They were all outside. The choreography of their movements was the opera chorus about to gather and burst into song.

  Miss Veola’s house was a brown square, featuring an open front porch with two steps up and no railings. The edges were lined with potted plants, mostly orange and yellow marigolds, with a smattering of zinnias. Molded plastic chairs faced the red clay road. Each chair had a tiny table. Some of the tables were upended tins that had once held pretzels.

  The four-year-old went back to his toy truck and Doria stood up. She had not developed a taste for sweet tea, or any cold tea, for that matter, but she took the glass Miss Veola offered and sipped. “Thank you,” she said.

  “And have a lemon bar, honey,” said Miss Elminah. “I bake the best lemon bars in Court Hill.”

  “Probably in America,” said Lutie, popping the lid off a plastic container and offering it to Doria.

  Inside were little squares, very yellow, with powdered-sugar topping. Doria bit into one. It was way too sugary, but also way too tart, and the combination was delicious. It made her mouth shiver.

  The two old women and Lutie chatted. They seemed to know everything there was to know about each other. The warm voices, the hot sun and the sweet tea brought Doria down. She wanted to be in another state, another town and street, where she too knew everything about everyone.

  But now she couldn’t even enjoy homesickness. She did not know Nell and Steph anymore. She had only been gone three months, and already she was more of a chore to them than a friend. What if they shrugged her off as easily as they had shrugged off violin and horn?

  Doria held the glass of tea to her mouth to hide her trembling chin.

  Miss Elminah patted her knee. “We are so proud of our Lutie. She is just the finest student. Why, her MeeMaw, Miss Eunice, would be dancing with joy. Doria, honey, do you love school as much as Lutie does?”

  How could anybody love anything without friends?

  “School is fine, thank you,” said Doria.

  Miss Veola studied her. “Let us pray,” she said.

  Doria had forgotten that Miss Veola was a minister.

  Miss Veola prayed upward instead of down, looking God in the eye. Doria had the feeling that there was no hiding place for the Lord when Miss Veola called his name. “Lord, you brought me a new friend,” Miss Veola said.

  Doria cringed. People down the block would hear.

  “I love when that happens,” called Miss Veola. “But Lord, I feel as if school is not good to Doria. She needs your touch. You come down to Doria, Lord. Put your arms around her. Let her feel how much she’s loved.”

  In all the hundreds of prayers Doria had heard in church, not once had somebody named her and instructed God to be with her. Doria’s reserve was melting like butter in a microwave. She clenched her stomach muscles to isolate herself from the prayer. But the prayer climbed all over her anyway.

  “Amen,” said Miss Veola. “And amen.”

  Doria felt boneless. When Miss Veola released her hand, Doria kept holding it out.

  “More tea?” asked Miss Veola.

  “No. I—well—it sounds silly. I was touching God.”

  “Course you were. We asked and he came.” Miss Veola scootched her chair closer. Doria tried to put a mental barricade between them. “Doria, honey, I just feel your problems lying in your lap.”

  Doria thought of her problems as bats flying through her hair.

  “You look poorly,” said Miss Veola. “I feel as if you might lie awake worrying. At night, honey, you just let God take care of your problems.”

  “But in the morning, nothing changes!” Doria was horrified to hear herself speak. Worse, there was a witness. Lutie might tell on her.

  “Maybe you didn’t hand your problem over. Every evening, you just pick up that problem and give it to God. He’s up all night anyway. You let him do the worrying.”

  Doria had to smile. “That sounds like song lyrics. He’s up all night anyway.”

  “It is a song,” said Lutie.

  Lutie, Miss Elminah and Miss Veola exchanged soft looks.

  Lutie walked out from under the oaks and into the sunlight. She looked up at the blue sky, turned her hands over and lifted her palms as if holding a baby or presenting a gift. She breathed in so slowly that Doria had to breathe to help. Lutie threw back her head, a position from which Doria could not have sung a note.

  From Lutie’s throat came a low rich growl of a note, which she dragged up an octave and a half and then swirled back down, settling on a sweet warm E-flat.

  She does have perfect pitch, thought Doria.

  Mama, you sleep.

  All those worries—leave ’em on the porch.

  Set out a chair.

  God’ll come by.

  Mama, you sleep.

  It was a lullaby, but not for the baby. It was a lullaby for the mother.

  The song had no rhyme and no verses. It rocked on, going back and forth, turning itself into a chair on a porch: a chair set out for God.

  And God was there.

  Rocking.

  Lutie let go of the song. Lowered her hands. Sat.

  “I don’t know why I’m crying,” said Doria, accepting a tissue from Miss Elminah.

  “Because God came,” said Miss Veola. “He’s on the porch. You left him your worries and he took them.” She took Doria’s hand in hers, and Miss Elminah took Doria’s other hand. Lutie finished the circle and Miss Veola prayed once more. “Jesus, all your daughters need you. Your daughter Doria, she needs you. She’s got an a
che she’s keeping to herself. You heal that ache, Lord, because this child of yours doesn’t need it. You guide her steps. And Lord, Miss Elminah needs you. She doesn’t hear from her grandchildren and her heart is broken. She’s never even seen her two great-grandchildren, they’re so far away in miles and in love. You fix that, Lord. It needs fixing. And your lost daughter Saravette, guide her steps. Keep her from harm, and keep her from harming others. And your child Lutie, O Lord, guide her steps. Let Lutie remember all the strong women in her family, all they gave her and all she can give back. In the name of Jesus. Amen.”

  Doria sat inside the prayer, adding a few lines. Lord, what about Nell and Steph? I want them to miss me! I want to have left a hole in their lives! I want them to care what I’m doing.

  When she looked up, Lutie was glaring at Miss Veola. Miss Veola was glaring right back.

  Doria did not want them to argue. She did not want to know what the glares meant. “Miss Veola?” she said, rather proud of using this Southern form of address.

  “Ma’am?”

  A Southern-style answer. Doria was sixteen, and here was this woman of sixty—maybe even seventy or eighty; who could tell?—calling her ma’am. They did that in the South. The checker in the grocery store, the lawyer at the closing—yes, ma’am, they all said.

  Doria offered a new subject. “In your prayer, you kept saying ‘guide her steps.’ Isn’t that a church anthem?”

  “The one I know is ‘order my steps.’ I love that one!” said Miss Veola. “I love to give orders. In another life, I might have become an army officer, so I could have a platoon or a battalion to order around. Well, the trouble with giving orders is, people don’t even want suggestions. In Chalk, if you don’t get your education in the schools, you’ll get it in the streets. Only half our boys will finish high school. I cannot order them to stay in school. I cannot order them to be righteous. I can only remind them that God will be with them, holding their hands, if they ask him.”

  “Why do they have to ask? Why doesn’t God just do that anyway, if he loves them?”

  “Oh, Doria, that’s one of the big questions. Why doesn’t he? I do not know.”

  Train’s house sat high on the hill of Chalk.

  He tilted his head back, smoking and watching the world go by. He loved cigarettes. He wouldn’t mind a life where nothing ever happened except his long legs dangling and smoke filling his lungs.

  When he heard Lutie sing, he stood on the porch rail to get another three feet of height. Over roofs and branches he could see part of Miss Veola’s yard.

  He didn’t remember Lutie’s grandmother singing this slow sweet song. He mostly remembered when old Miz Painter shouted at God. That woman had been a truant officer, accusing God of absenteeism.

  Train considered parading past Miss Veola’s to prove that she lost more kids than she won. But Veola Mixton was the worst do-gooder he knew, and Train had been forced to deal with a lot of do-gooders. She’d barrel out and try to get him to visit. She’d offer sweet tea or macaroni and cheese (she did make the best mac and cheese in the world, with bacon all through it and crushed potato chips on top; and shove it under the broiler at the end, so that it came out crusty and perfect.) But quick, she’d head to prayer.

  Train had lived with praying people all his life.

  He knew the power of prayer. It could grab the most surprising people. What it did was, it lowered your resistance. It was a virus, hard to shake.

  His mama never missed church and had dragged DeRade until he got too big. Dragged Train until Train got too big. She gave up. In school, people had given up on Train too. They were waiting for him to drop out and go away so they’d be free.

  But it wasn’t really prayer that made Train wary of Miss Veola. It was remembering who he had been when he was little.

  Kelvin and Lutie, they were still like the little kids they had been.

  Course, Kelvin never lived in Chalk. His daddy went into the army, got college degrees, and now had a fine job, and Kelvin never lived anywhere but one of those show-offy neighborhoods. His family showed off every time they came to Miss Veola’s church. Just showing up was showing off. And what did Kelvin ever do but sit there getting fatter?

  And Lutie—the prettiest girl he would ever see, who sparkled like soda, all bubbles and clear ginger-ale excitement—Lutie had never really lived in Chalk either. Old Miz Painter’s house was on the other side of Peter Creek, which Train would cross during drought, when it was only a trickle, but not the rest of the year, when the underbrush shivered and spoke with the sound of little animals, and he could feel snakes watching.

  When her MeeMaw died, Lutie had gone to stay with an aunt, some woman who wouldn’t lower herself going to Miss Veola’s church. Probably went uptown, to some sleek rich place.

  Lutie and Kelvin weren’t afraid of him, but they didn’t think much of him. He needed people to be afraid of him. See the heat rising off him and be scared. If they weren’t actually afraid, like they were of DeRade, then Train was just noise.

  Was that Doria under the oak? He’d been asking about Doria all afternoon. Got plenty of texts but not much detail.

  Had Lutie really adopted her? People were saying that. Train didn’t believe it. Lutie liked people who were sharp as tacks, and Doria was dumber than dirt.

  He heard Miss Veola praying in her big braying voice, like God was deaf.

  Train went back to his stool and turned up the volume on the TV. Drown that out.

  Usually he watched sports, but today he had turned to a news channel because yet another married politician had got caught cheating with sexy girlfriends and he wanted to check them out. Instead they showed a kid who had refused to pay some friends the forty dollars he owed them. The friends doused him with alcohol and flicked a cigarette lighter at him.

  They didn’t show the burned kid, who was now in a special burn ward in a special burn hospital, without any skin left. They showed the kids who’d done it, young and skinny and white and crying and even slobbering, claiming they hadn’t realized the victim would actually catch fire and that his skin would burn off.

  Train lit another cigarette. He studied the flame at the end of his plastic lighter.

  The kid had probably been annoyed when his friends threw liquid at him. Probably wondered what it was. Let’s see. Not Pepsi … not water …

  And all of a sudden—flames. The kid probably didn’t remember elementary school safety class: stop, drop and roll. Probably not easy to remember if you were actually on fire.

  Train imagined the victim running, fire eating his face. And when the victim screamed, fire leaning down his throat.

  He imagined the friends chest-bumping.

  Miss Veola had asked God to keep Saravette from harming others. So Miss Veola knew, or guessed, that Saravette had harmed others in the past. Lutie could ask for details. But did she want the answer?

  Miss Elminah leaned forward, her dark wrinkled face full of nostalgia and pleasure. “Lutie, honey, I been remembering the ironing song. The one where you ain’t got no sword. Remember that one? Sing me that one.”

  Who alive today could imagine the life her great-great-grandmother Mabel Painter had led? Lutie knew sweat; everybody in the Carolinas knew sweat, and she had seen people scraping by on a few dollars. But at Aunt Tamika and Uncle Dean’s, there was no scraping. There was only splurging. Mabel Painter’s life had been without cell phones, electricity, even running water when she’d earned her living as a laundress. Mabel Painter would have been respected in Chalk, but beyond its invisible borders, she too would have been invisible.

  Lutie didn’t want to sing the ironing song. It was a song about failure. MeeMaw used to sing it in the dark, when her heart was sore and nothing helped. Lutie had to get out of here. “Maybe another time, Miss Elminah. But right now, Doria has to leave.”

  “No, no,” said Doria. “Don’t hurry on my account.”

  Lutie wanted to kick her.

  “Please?” said Miss
Elminah. “I don’t think I have heard that one since your MeeMaw stood on her porch and begged God.”

  My grandmother never begged for anything in her life, thought Lutie. She was praying. MeeMaw handed her heart to God and I don’t think he was as grateful as he should have been.

  Miss Veola lowered her head, like a rhinoceros about to charge. Lutie had no choice. If Miss Elminah’s own grandchildren couldn’t bother with her, Lutie had to.

  Fine. She would let the Lord have it. She would throw the anguish of the day in his face.

  Lutie sang the ironing song.

  “Ain’t got no sword.

  Got just a ironing board.

  Can’t fight for you, Lord.

  But show me where to stand, Lord.

  Want to make life here grand, Lord.

  “Got baskets of clothes to fold.

  Feeling old, Lord, feeling old.

  Lord, I done give all I got to give.

  Don’t have to iron up where you live.

  I’m too tired to stand, Lord.

  Don’t care if life’s grand, Lord.

  “Take me home, Lord.

  Take me home.”

  Kelvin’s daddy had grown up in Chalk, but Kelvin lived in an impressive subdivision a mile and a world away. Kelvin walked down Tenth Street, headed home after a nice afternoon of watching other people play sports.

  Kelvin too had received a text from Miss Veola. Stop.

  Miss Veola was concerned that Kelvin was throwing away the brains, ability and future that God had given him. She was bound to place a demand that Kelvin wouldn’t want to fulfill, but then, so did everybody. Kelvin was used to it. No, the hard part of a visit with Miss Veola was that his parents only went to her church some of the time. Miss Veola’s service lasted too long. She preached and preached. She could have fifty scripture references, and wait for the congregation to find each verse in their own Bibles. Kelvin’s father preferred a speedier service, with speedy hymns, speedy prayers and a nice short message. Kelvin’s mother mainly loved coffee hour so she could chat with her girlfriends, and she usually ducked out before the sermon, claiming she had to cut sandwiches into little triangles.