The Perfect Place

by Teresa E. Harris

  “She’s in the back.”

  At the sound of Terrance’s footsteps, I lie down on the blanket and shut my eyes. He says my name softly, and I let out a loud snore in reply. He stands over me for a minute before I hear his feet beat a path back the way he came.

  “Say what you had to say?” Great-Aunt Grace asks him.

  “Nah.”

  “You can tell her the next time you see her, then.”

  “About that, um. I forgot to tell you, but I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to volunteer while Jeanie’s here. I start camp on Monday.”

  “What camp?”

  “Jesus Saves.”

  “The Mount Holy Baptist camp? Loudmouth Eunetta Baxter still runnin’ it?”

  Terrance hesitates. “Yes.”

  “See if she got room for two more. Wait. Never mind. I’ll check it out myself.”

  Terrance leaves as quietly as he came in.

  Just when I thought Black Lake couldn’t get any worse, Great-Aunt Grace is talking about sending me to church camp with Pamela and Jaguar. I squeeze my eyes shut until they ache. Even the air feels heavy. Tiffany squirms.

  “Mommy?” she calls out.

  My eyes snap open. I lie still, waiting to see if she will fall back asleep on her own. But she doesn’t. She wakes all the way up, rubs her eyes, and looks around.

  “Where’s Mommy?”

  “She’s not here, Tiff-Tiff. We’re in Virginia, with Great-Aunt Grace. And the cash register,” I add quickly, hoping Tiffany will lie back down.

  But it doesn’t work. First her lip starts to quiver. Then the tears come.

  I sit up, grab Mr. Teddy D., and run through his skit as fast as I can before she gets to howling. The skit doesn’t work either. Tiffany keeps crying, and now there’s noise. Gulping, hiccupping, calling out for Mom. I reach over to put my arm around her, and my pocket jingles.

  “I have something for you.”

  I pull out the change Great-Aunt Grace gave me.

  “You can put it in your Disney Fund when we get back to the house.”

  Tiffany sniffles and holds out cupped hands. I dump the change in them and she pours it out on the blanket in front of us. We count it together, and for now, it is enough.

  Thirteen

  OVER the next two days, rumors about a possible suspect have been making their way around Black Lake, and the local paper, Black Lake Daily, has a story about it.

  “Nonsense.” Great-Aunt Grace tosses the paper on the kitchen counter and slams a plate each of burnt waffles and bacon in front of Tiffany and me. She barks, “Tiffany, feed Mr. Shuffle,” and leaves the room.

  Tiffany groans and gets to her feet. When I hear Great-Aunt Grace’s footsteps on the stairs, I get up from my breakfast and pick up the newspaper. Dot’s on the front page, cheesing mighty hard for someone who has lost a treasure.

  “It says everyone wants to do whatever it takes to put an end to the robberies. The whole town is on edge.”

  I read the article aloud to Tiffany, who is too busy measuring out half a cup of dry food for Mr. Shuffle to listen to me. As soon as he hears the sound of the food hitting his dish, Mr. Shuffle darts in from the living room.

  “Crazy old Gag won’t even talk to the sheriff,” I say, putting the paper back down. “If he comes to interview her, she said she’s not going to let him in.”

  “Do you think Great-Aunt Grace stole those people’s stuff?” Tiffany asks, as she peels back the lid on a can of wet cat food.

  “She gets out of breath just going up the stairs.”

  “So? Ow!” Mr. Shuffle swats at Tiffany’s ankles. Scowling, she dumps the wet food into his dish and plops it down in front of him.

  “So how the heck could she break into someone’s house? Still . . .”

  “She does have all those figurines . . .”

  Our eyes lock. Without another word, the two of us go tearing into the living room. I switch on the overhead light and we take a good long look at Great-Aunt Grace’s figurines.

  “She doesn’t have any elephants,” Tiffany says.

  “But Moon said the sheriff is probably going to want to speak to her because she stole from Dot’s son back in the day.” The sheriff probably carries a pistol. No, a shotgun. I gulp. “We need a contingency plan.”

  “What?”

  “Evasive tactics.”

  “What?”

  “A plan of action in case something goes down. This could get ugly.”

  Tiffany and I come up with a plan that day, just in case, but the sheriff doesn’t make it to Great-Aunt Grace’s house until the next night. We are just finishing up a dinner of pork chops and lima beans swimming in too much butter and black pepper when there is a pounding on Great-Aunt Grace’s front door. I jump. So does Tiffany.

  “Is that them?” she whispers.

  Great-Aunt Grace ignores the question and spoons more lima beans onto our plates, even though we’ve barely touched our first helpings.

  “These butter beans are good for you,” she tells us. “You’ll thank me when you live to be older than me.”

  We stare up at her blankly. There’s more pounding on the front door.

  “Aren’t you going to get that?” I ask nervously.

  “Reckon I should,” Great-Aunt Grace replies. “Treasure, when y’all are finished eatin’, clear this table and get those dishes washed.”

  Not a chance. The minute Great-Aunt Grace disappears into the living room, I take Tiffany by the hand, and together we run upstairs to our room, leaving two heaping servings of lima beans and an uncleared table. We shut the door tight behind us. Then we take cover on the floor, just in case the sheriff is out there and he decides to start shooting. Minutes pass.

  “We have to stay here until the coast is clear,” I say.

  “Right,” Tiffany says. She raises her head and looks at me. I look at her. We are on our feet and at the window in an instant. I raise the sash as quietly as I can. Crouched on our knees, we peek down at the scene unfolding in front of Great-Aunt Grace’s house. There are at least five people standing on the edge of her lawn, one of them a man in uniform. For a while we don’t hear anything more than murmuring. Then shouting from the porch.

  “Sheriff, y’all got a lot of nerve comin’ round my house with this foolishness!”

  “It’s like I said, Ms. Washington, we just want to talk with you a little, have a look around.”

  “Go on and look, then.”

  “Come on, Percy,” the sheriff calls from the porch.

  The uniformed man at the edge of the lawn takes a step toward the house.

  “Y’all can look right from where y’all standin’,” Great-Aunt Grace adds, stopping the man in his tracks.

  The sheriff comes down off the porch, shouting. “Don’t you have any respect for the law?” He’s lion-like in size and appearance, a gun holstered at his hip. He’s the kind of man most people wouldn’t mess with. I’m learning that Great-Aunt Grace is not most people.

  “This is the behavior of someone who’s got something to hide,” Dot shouts. “Mark my words, she stole each and every missing item herself!”

  No one says anything. And in this silence Great-Aunt Grace suddenly bursts out laughing. I’ve never heard her laugh before.

  “You’re outnumbered, Grace,” Dot yells. “We’ve got your back, Sheriff Baxter. Why don’t we just storm the place?”

  “I wish you would try stormin’ my house, Dot, I really wish you would,” Great-Aunt Grace says. As she moves down the porch steps, a car stops down the road and a man and a woman jump out. They hurry toward the scene, stopping a good few yards away. The woman is carrying a notebook and the man a camera.

  Great-Aunt Grace walks to the edge of the lawn, stopping a few feet away from Dot and Sheriff Baxter. “Go on and come across my property line, Dot. I dare you. Y’all wanna search my house, you come back with a warrant, you hear?” With each word, she gets closer to them. “Until then, you cross this line and I’ll gi
ve you what for. Sheriff, you ain’t the only one who’s packin’. I got a Winchester myself, and Lord knows I never miss.”

  “She’s crazy,” I whisper. Tiffany, unable to take her eyes off of the scene playing out before us, just nods.

  “As long as we’re here, we can’t let anyone else know that we’re related to her,” I tell her. “Do you understand?”

  Tiffany’s mouth is hanging open; Mr. Teddy Daniels lies abandoned by her side. As if in a trance, she stands up slowly to get a better look.

  “Get down!” I jump up to grab her, just as there’s a flash and then another.

  “What was—”

  The woman with the notepad and the man with the camera take off running. I catch sight of the woman’s bright red dreadlocks.

  “Who was that?” Tiffany asks.

  “Editor-in-chief of the local paper and her photographer. They got pictures and everything.”

  With luck, they didn’t catch Tiffany and me in any of their shots. We were all the way upstairs in the window, after all.

  But Saturday morning dawns bright and sunny, and Great-Aunt Grace is standing at the kitchen counter, a newspaper spread out in front of her.

  “We made the front page,” she says.

  Bacon is sizzling on the stove, but I’m not even close to hungry anymore. “We?” I ask weakly.

  Great-Aunt Grace holds the paper out for me to take it. I do, and there we are, Great-Aunt Grace on her front lawn, arms waving, and me and Tiffany, clear as day, standing in the window for all the world to see.

  Fourteen

  I wait until the house is dark and Tiffany and Great-Aunt Grace are sleeping before I get up and tiptoe downstairs. Great-Aunt Grace has one telephone, and it’s in the living room. I turn on the overhead lights, and there it is, in the far corner beside a stack of old magazines. And there is Mr. Shuffle, curled up on the end of the couch. He looks at me. I look at him. He has paws the size of baby fists.

  “Shoo!” I pinwheel my arms around like a maniac, trying to scare him off, but Mr. Shuffle stays right where he is. “Fine.”

  I crouch on the floor and take the phone off the hook. Mr. Shuffle watches my every move, as I dial Mom’s cell phone number, sit back on my heels, and wait. It rings six times before she picks up.

  “Hello?” Her voice is thick with sleep.

  “Mom? It’s Jeanie.”

  “Jeanie? Treasure—” There’s the sound of shuffling, and I imagine Mom bolting upright to look at the clock. “It’s after midnight. Is something wrong?”

  “Everything.” And for the next few minutes, I tell Mom all about how Great-Aunt Grace is a nut job and that a good number of people believe she’s been breaking into houses and stealing valuables and that the sheriff came after her with a gun.

  Mom laughs. “Grace is too old to break into anywhere. You don’t believe that nonsense, do you?”

  “That’s not the point. She put our lives in imminent danger.”

  “You know how many summers I spent with Grace when I was a kid?” Mom says. “And I’m still here to talk about it.”

  “Well, I’m also feeling a bit wheezy. Her house is like the inside of a vacuum cleaner bag.”

  “You sound fine to me,” Mom says.

  “I’m breathing okay now, but just you wait. Great-Aunt Grace made us work since the day we got here. Hard. But none of that compares to the gun. When are you coming to get us?”

  “I don’t know, Treasure.”

  “Jeanie.”

  Mom sighs. “I’ve only just begun looking, Jeanie.”

  “Maybe Dad called our apartment or wrote to us there. Can’t you call Mr. Brown and ask?”

  “Mr. Brown isn’t going to do anything for us, especially since I didn’t send him all the money for the back rent. Look, finding Dad is going to take time.”

  “How much time?”

  “For God’s sake, Jeanie, it’s only been a few days! You have to be patient.”

  “How patient?”

  A long pause. I can almost hear her rubbing that spot between her eyebrows.

  “Like a few more days patient?” I go on. “Or a few more weeks? I don’t want to stay here anymore.”

  “I don’t know. Probably a week. Maybe two. I just don’t know, Jeanie.” Mom pauses. “Listen, kiddo, it’s late. What do you say the two of us get back to bed? Things won’t look so bleak when the sun comes up.”

  “But—”

  “Bed, Jeanie. Now.”

  “Fine.”

  I hang up without saying goodbye. Then I stare at Great-Aunt Grace’s table, wishing for firm answers instead of halting maybes and probablys. Your mother will find your father in exactly two days; you will leave Black Lake in exactly one week, and on this exact date, you will move into a home for good. I wish I had a crystal ball so I could see what my future holds.

  And that’s when I remember. The psychic at the diner who does readings on Wednesdays. If Jane can tell the future, maybe she can answer my questions.

  Where is Dad?

  When will Mom find him?

  When will the two of them come for us?

  Will we have a home?

  I count the days until Wednesday.

  Fifteen

  “RISE and shine! Time to spend a little quality time with the Lord!”

  I roll over to squint at the clock. It’s 7:30 in the morning. On Sunday, the day of rest. I don’t know what’s brighter, the light stabbing at my pupils or Great-Aunt Grace standing in the doorway dressed from head to toe in white. White dress, white shoes, white stockings.

  “Come on, up, up, up. Service starts at ten, but I like to be a solid forty-five minutes early.”

  Her church shoes squeak as she comes over to my bed and pulls the covers back. She does the same to Tiffany.

  “Got to find you two something decent to put on. You won’t shame me on the holy day with your shorts and T-shirts, looking like who thought it and why. Treasure, don’t you pull those covers back up!”

  I fling them to the side with a groan and slide out of bed like I’m melting as Great-Aunt Grace throws open the dresser drawers and gets to looking. I make my way down the hallway to the bathroom. Tiffany follows, Mr. Teddy Daniels tucked under her arm. I catch a glimpse of our reflections in the mirror. I’ve been doing the best I can with our hair, especially mine, which is long and tightly curled on the best day, a tangled explosion on the worst. Today is one of the worst. I work on both of us with a brush, some water, and hair bands. I’m wiping Tiffany’s face with a damp washcloth when she says, “Should I bring Mr. Teddy Daniels to church?”

  I yawn. “He doesn’t have any dress-up clothes.”

  Tiffany’s face falls.

  “Church is boring anyway,” I say quickly. “Let Mr. Teddy D. sit this one out.”

  When we get back to the room, Great-Aunt Grace has our outfits laid out on our beds.

  “Is that your picture-day dress from last year?” Tiffany wants to know. “With the ruffles at the neck?”

  It is. I’ve been pulling clothes out of the chest of drawers for days now and didn’t even notice it was in there. Mom must have had the sense to tuck it deep down under.

  “Isn’t there another dress?” I try to look around Great-Aunt Grace and into an open drawer.

  She crosses her arms over her chest and blocks my view. “You mean that dungaree jumper? Not a chance. The Lord’s office is not business casual.” She peers over my shoulder and into the open closet, where Tiffany and I have piled our dirty clothes from the last few days. “Looks like y’all gonna add a load of laundry to your chores today too.”

  We stare at her.

  “Don’t tell me y’all ain’t never done laundry, either.”

  “Mommy did it for us,” Tiffany says.

  Great-Aunt Grace throws up her hands. “Never met two more spoiled kids in my whole life. Bring them clothes down to the kitchen with you—I’ll show y’all how washin’ is done.”

  Just when I thought the
day couldn’t get any better.

  Great-Aunt Grace turns on the heels of her white church shoes and goes marching down the hall. I pull my picture-day dress on, and the first and last time I wore it comes flooding back to me. Picture day at a school in a small Delaware town with only one other black kid. We stayed for three months, and when the teacher announced I was leaving, one of the kids asked if I was going back to Africa.

  “I didn’t know God had an office,” Tiffany says to me as we head downstairs, arms loaded down with dirty clothes. “Do you think the world is his waiting room?”

  Sometimes I think Tiffany is the smartest person I know.

  Great-Aunt Grace is ready for us downstairs. She’s pulled open the big closet adjacent to her back door, exposing her ancient washer and dryer. She starts barking orders at us immediately about water temperature and how much detergent to add. “Half a cup won’t get the stink out, girl,” she snaps at Tiffany, who snaps back, “We don’t stink.”

  By the time we’ve got our colored load in and washing, I’ve worked up an appetite. Trouble is breakfast, like my picture-day dress, hasn’t gotten a stitch better with time. We sit down to more too-cooked and undercooked bacon, scrambled eggs with cheese, and home fries. The eggs aren’t so bad—just a little dry—but the home fries. Man. Great-Aunt Grace has somehow managed to burn these suckers so bad they look like chips of concrete.

  “Do you have any ketchup?”

  Great-Aunt Grace takes a bottle from the refrigerator. Nothing quite like cold ketchup on burnt-up, piping-hot food. I wash it all down with a glass and a half of orange juice. When Great-Aunt Grace goes to put the carton of OJ back, I notice that she’s got the newspaper article stuck on the front of her fridge with a magnet.

  “Y’all are local celebrities now,” Great-Aunt Grace says. “Just don’t expect anyone to ask you for your autograph.”

  What I’m expecting is hot stares and glares from people who probably read yesterday’s paper and know that we’re staying with crazy Great-Aunt Grace. They probably hate us by association.

  “We can’t go. I’m sick,” I blurt out.