The Secret to Hummingbird Cake

by Celeste Fletcher McHale

  And somewhere in the midst of all of that, I had to stand up in church, in front of everybody I knew, and explain to them who Laine Elizabeth Landry was. I didn’t mind speaking in front of people, but I was horrified at summing up Laine’s life in twenty minutes or less. How could I ever make these people understand? I had lived who she was. Ella Rae had lived who she was. I couldn’t do her life justice by telling someone about it. For weeks I had attempted to put something on paper for this occasion. But nothing ever sounded right, and it still didn’t. So the day before I was to deliver her eulogy, I still had no idea what I was going to say.

  “Mrs. Jeannette and Michael are here,” Ella Rae whispered.

  I leaned over and kissed Laine’s cheek, told her I loved her, and squeezed her cold hand.

  “You’ll always be with us,” Ella Rae said to her. “Always.”

  We walked away and met Mrs. Jeannette and Michael at the entrance of the room.

  “Does my baby look pretty?” Mrs. Jeannette’s voice sounded broken and small.

  “She does.”

  She hugged Ella Rae and me tightly. “I will never be able to thank you girls enough for what you did,” she said. “And, Carrigan, Jack and the Whitfields . . . How can I ever repay . . .”

  “There’s no need for that,” I told her. “They wanted to do it, and Laine would have done it for any of us. You know that.”

  She shook her head. “They just went above and beyond, and I am eternally grateful.”

  “They loved her.” I glanced back at the coffin. “Everybody did.”

  “Yes, they did.”

  “Take your time here,” I told her. “We’ll see you at the church.”

  Ella Rae and I hugged Michael and left the room so they could be alone with Laine.

  Two hours later, Ella Rae and I sat outside our church in the back parking lot and waited for the wake to begin. They had brought Laine’s body from the funeral home and were setting the casket up inside the church. We had watched somberly as they’d wheeled it through the door in the misty rain. The weather report had been right on the money. Apparently the proverbial black cloud really did exist.

  People had already started to arrive even though the wake didn’t officially start until five p.m. But they streamed into the Fellowship Hall anyway, bringing food. That was a huge Southern tradition. I didn’t know how they did things in the rest of the country, but in the South when somebody died, you cooked for three days. I watched them trail in, one after the other, and knew somewhere in all those containers there lurked pecan pies, fried chicken, rice and gravy, cornbread, every fresh vegetable and dessert imaginable, and a whole lot of sweet tea.

  I also knew Mrs. Birdie Jordan would show up with chicken and dumplings. She had to be about a hundred and thirty years old by now, but she still brought chicken and dumplings to every wake in the area. Chickens she killed herself. Isn’t that awful? But as bad as I felt for the chicken being chased by an old lady with a hatchet, my stomach rumbled just the same. I couldn’t remember when I’d eaten a full meal. I had gone to my parents’ house this morning to nurse Elle and leave more bottles, and grabbed a piece of toast. At least, I thought it had been this morning. That could’ve been sometime last week. My days had started tumbling on top of each other.

  Mrs. Jeannette asked Ella Rae and me to stand in the receiving line with her and Michael at the wake. That was also known as stand beside the coffin and say “thank you for coming” all night. But I was grateful for that. I didn’t want to miss seeing a single person who came to tell Laine good-bye.

  Mitch drove up as we were walking in the back door of the church, and we waited for him under the porch. He’d been at the Farm since early this morning. Ella Rae and I had spoken with him earlier and he seemed to be doing pretty well, under the circumstances. Mrs. Jeannette had asked him to stand with us tonight, but he’d declined. I think he felt like it would somehow take the attention off Laine if everyone wondered who he was and why he was there. But we’d made him promise to come early. He walked through the back door of the church with us.

  “Mrs. Whitfield?” a voice said.

  I looked around for Jack’s mother. But the only person I saw was the funeral director.

  “He’s talking to you, stupid!” Ella Rae said.

  “Oh,” I said. “Yes, I’m Mrs. Whitfield.” If I lived to be a hundred, I’d never get used to that.

  “Mrs. Landry asked that you all join her in the front of the church.”

  “Thank you.” We walked toward the sanctuary.

  “He was creepy,” Ella Rae said.

  “No, he wasn’t,” I told her.

  “Yes, he was,” Ella Rae said.

  We had enlarged and framed Laine’s picture, and Jack was placing it on the table beside the casket. It was stunning. We’d chosen an antique gold frame that complimented the colors in the picture beautifully. She looked amazing in the photograph, happy, healthy, and full of life. It was just what I’d wanted. Everyone thought it was perfect. Ella Rae and I were going to give it to Mrs. Jeannette after the services tomorrow.

  “Mrs. Landry,” the funeral director said, “it’s five o’clock. Time to open the doors.”

  Ella Rae looked at me with wide eyes as the funeral director walked away. “See?” she whispered. “Creepy!”

  I shook my head and smiled. It would be a long night in more ways than one. “Come on,” I said. I took Ella Rae’s hand. “Let’s go get in our places.”

  We stood beside Mrs. Jeannette and Michael and waited for the doors to open so our town could pay their respects and say good-bye to Laine. I looked at the front pew and touched Ella Rae’s arm. “Look,” I said.

  Jack, Tommy, and Mitch were sitting together. We both smiled. All our handsome men were on the front pew of the First Baptist Church of Bon Dieu Falls. Laine would’ve been ecstatic.

  The doors opened at five, and from that moment until ten we greeted, spoke to, and thanked people. Everyone had a story they wanted to share or a memory they passed along to us. I was amazed at the number of people who had shown up, and even more so at the things they said.

  Mrs. Leta Gray, an elderly woman who lived in town, hugged me as if she’d never let go. “Laine used to pick up my medicine for me and my husband at the drugstore,” she said. “That sweet girl would drop it off at my house and share a cola with me. I sure do miss that.”

  Mrs. Jessie Rodgers told us how she had feared she’d have to give up her beloved rat terrier because her social security check had been cut and she couldn’t afford to keep him any more. Laine heard her granddaughter talking about it at school. “Do you know that lovely girl started bringing me a sack of dog food every Friday? When she got sick, she left instructions at the bank for one of those Thompson boys to pick up some money and bring it to me. She had such a big heart.”

  Kristie Williams cried as she told me about how hard her son had worked to make the basketball team, and when he did, she couldn’t afford the tennis shoes he needed. Laine had shown up at her house one afternoon a few days later and said, “These were delivered to the school today by mistake. We called the company, but they told us to go ahead and keep them. You think they’ll fit Derek? We hated to throw them away.”

  She couldn’t believe it. She prayed for days for a way to get those shoes for Derek, but she didn’t realize an angel would deliver them. She found out later that Laine had asked Derek’s coach for his shoe size and directions to the store in Shreveport that sold them.

  On and on they went, the stories of Laine’s compassion for children who had less than ideal lives at home. How she would stay after school to listen to them when no one else would. She was an e
ncouragement to her co-workers. She brought food to the janitors, and she held the hand of a sexually abused child while the child told her mother her husband was a monster.

  Ella Rae and I knew none of this.

  I could’ve listened for days and never gotten tired of it, never ceased to be amazed by it. But by ten p.m., I was almost too exhausted to stand. My breasts ached, my feet hurt, and my stomach was growling loud enough for everybody in the church to hear it. Jack had come around three different times to urge Ella Rae and me to go to the Fellowship Hall and eat, but we didn’t want to leave. Now the line had become smaller, and I was about to excuse myself to Mrs. Jeannette, when Ella Rae said, “Twelve o’clock.”

  I looked down the aisle and saw Lexi Carter moving toward us. For a moment, a tug of long-forgotten angst stirred inside me, but only fleetingly. She looked old and worn and tired. For some reason, I immediately felt sorry for her, although I had no idea where that had come from. She walked up to us and offered her hand.

  “When I heard about Laine, I had to come and pay my respects,” she said. “Laine was a really good person.” She looked at Ella Rae, then at me. “And I wanted to tell you . . . I was sorry . . . about many things. I didn’t mean to cause any . . . Well, I just need you to know I’m sorry.”

  I took her hand. “Thank you for coming, Lexi,” I said, and I meant it. “And thank you for your words.” I thought for a moment, then added, “You should say hello to Jack before you go.”

  She smiled. “I will, Carrigan,” she said. “And congratulations on the new baby. I know you’ll be great parents.” She spotted Jack and said, “I’ll just go say hello. And I really am so sorry about Laine.”

  Ella Rae had watched it all without opening her mouth. I was more shocked about that than Lexi Carter’s heartfelt apology.

  It couldn’t last forever, of course. “What the hell?”

  “Shut up, Rae,” I said. “You can’t curse in church.”

  “Like God can’t hear me when I’m outside?” she said. “Why did you just send Lexi to see Jack? And by the way, he is freaking out. Look at him.”

  Poor Jack. He looked very uncomfortable. He glanced up at me and I smiled at him. It’s okay, I mouthed.

  “You are a better woman than I am,” Ella Rae said.

  “She’s . . . pitiful,” I said. “I mean, look at her. And I’m not trying to be funny here. She looks broken. Life hasn’t been good to her.”

  “Maybe she hasn’t been good to life,” Ella Rae said.

  I looked at her to see if she was being callous. But I could tell by her face it was just an observation. An astute one, at that. Ella Rae may have seemed shallow sometimes, but she was more perceptive than people knew. I think she liked to keep it that way.

  I shrugged. “Whatever . . . it is it doesn’t matter. Not any more.”

  Jack appeared and looked intently into my eyes. “You okay?”

  “You mean . . . Lexi?” I asked. “Yeah, it’s fine.”

  He slid his arm around my waist and kissed the top of my head. “You need to eat.”

  Mrs. Jeannette thanked us profusely for helping her receive. Ella Rae and I held her in our arms for a long time without saying a word. There was really nothing left to say.

  Tommy joined us outside. I stopped at the door of the Fellowship Hall. “I can’t talk to another person tonight,” I told Jack. “I just can’t.”

  I was so tired, I felt strange. Everything and everyone seemed surreal. I felt “floaty.” That was Laine’s word for how she felt right before she went to sleep at night. It described this sensation perfectly. Then just for kicks, at some point during the evening, I had found my tear ducts again. My emotions were running rampant. I was crying, I was laughing, I was fine, then I was crying, then laughing, then fine again. I couldn’t take another emotionally charged conversation tonight, with anyone.

  “I don’t want to talk to anybody either,” Ella Rae said.

  Jack ushered us around to the side of the Fellowship Hall where there was a small garden with a beautiful fountain and white concrete benches. Brides about to get married inside the church took pictures here. I had an album full from this very spot.

  “Sit,” he said. “We’ll be right back.”

  He didn’t get an argument from either of us. We sat on the benches under the overhang and waited in silence. The rain had turned to a fine mist. I don’t know what was more depressing, the torrential downpours of the last few days or this thick, watery air that distorted the world.

  A few minutes later, Jack and Tommy showed up with plates piled high with food and a gallon of tea.

  “We didn’t know what you wanted, so we got a little bit of all of it.” Tommy handed us two plastic forks.

  I thought I wouldn’t be able to eat, but I was wrong. Ella Rae and I dug in like we’d been in the desert starving, sharing plates and drinking out of the gallon jug. The food was delicious, just as I had known it would be. And Birdie Jordan’s chicken and dumplings were superb. I just couldn’t think too much about the death of the chicken while I ate them.

  I hadn’t realized Jack and Tommy were watching us until Tommy said, “Y’all eat like men.”

  “What do you mean?” Ella Rae asked, then took a gulp out of the jug of tea.

  “That’s what I mean,” Tommy said.

  “Do you see a glass?” Ella Rae said.

  “I could get y’all some.”

  “No need.” I took a gulp.

  “No use, Tommy.” Jack shook his head. “They have their own way of doing things and their own language. They always have.”

  Twenty minutes later we were both so stuffed we could hardly move. The only thing missing from our buffet tonight was a Hummingbird Cake . . .

  It was getting close to midnight, and the crowd had thinned considerably. People would sit up in the Fellowship Hall all night because that’s what we do in the South. I’ve never thought to ask why. But the church doors would be locked at midnight and not opened again until eight in the morning.

  “Jack,” I said, “will you do something for us?”

  “You know I will.”

  “Will you go over to our house and get Ella Rae and me some blankets and pillows?” A new wave of tears came over me. “We can’t leave her by herself, Jack. We just can’t.”

  “We promised her we never would,” Ella Rae said.

  He didn’t answer at first, and I knew he was about to protest. He wanted me to go home and sleep all night.

  “Please,” I said, “we’ll never be able to do another thing for her.”

  “All right,” he agreed, “but if you stay, we stay in the Fellowship Hall tonight.”

  “Agreed,” Tommy said.

  “Okay,” I said. “Please call Mama and check on Elle.”

  “Already have and I will again,” he said. “We’ll be right back.”

  Just before midnight, we made our way back to the sanctuary. The funeral director was escorting the last of the guests out. Jack and Tommy arrived with our things and prepared a makeshift bed on either end of the center pew for us.

  Jack kissed me lightly. “Come get us if you need anything. Reverend Martin gave me a key, we’ll check on y’all through the night. I know you need to stay, Carri, but please try to sleep, baby. You’re so tired.”

  “I will.”

  Ella Rae and I lay on opposite ends of the pew and stared at the mahogany box and the smiling girl in the giant picture on the easel.

  “She was so pretty,” Ella Rae said.

  “She really was.”


  It was comforting to lie here. I couldn’t believe we’d ever considered going home tonight. This was where we were supposed to be. One last sleepover. When I closed my eyes, I fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “Wake up, Carri.” I could hear Ella Rae, but I couldn’t seem to open my eyes. “Wake up!”

  I opened my eyes and had no idea where I was.

  “Church,” Ella Rae said.

  “Yes.” I remembered and sat up.

  “We need to go,” Ella Rae said. “And if I look as bad as you do, we need to go now.”

  “Am I a train wreck?”

  “The poster child for the walk of shame.”

  I tried unsuccessfully to smooth the wrinkles out of my black dress. A strand of hair was wrapped around my pearls and keeping me from turning my head. I had apparently slept on top of one of my heels because it was folded in half. I laughed in spite of the situation. After all, it was the first time I had ever spent the night on a church pew guarding a coffin. Maybe this was the way you were supposed to look the next morning.

  Ella Rae rolled up the blanket and threw the pillow on top.

  “Laine wouldn’t like the way you folded that blanket.” I grinned.

  She smiled back at me. “You’re also the poster child for OCD. I wonder how I stayed so normal hanging out with you two all my life?”

  “You just wish you were normal,” I said. “What do you think was the weirdest thing she did? The pantry with the cans alphabetized?”

  “I was thinking more like that weird thing she did with her dishes,” Ella Rae answered. “You know, blue plate, green plate, yellow plate.”