by N. Godwin
“Cat got your tongue?” Hobie taunts me as he acknowledges Fat-Sandy, but not Eunice, with a silent nod.
“What time did you get up this morning?” I tease back, again, because he had been uncharacteristically early and had even beaten me to the café this morning, chocolate chip pancakes hot and ready for the girls, strong black coffee waiting for me and Ken.
“Well somebody had to make breakfast!” he fires back. “And lunch. Hey, it’s vegetarian day so I’m going to make collard greens, hoe cakes, and mashed potatoes and gravy for our dinner tonight. You want to eat a little early, too? Going to feed the girls early, they’ve got to be hungry by now.”
“Uh huh, you do know you fed them lunch only an hour and a half ago, right, and where’d you learn to make collard greens anyway, surely not from the girls?” I ask skeptically.
“Heck no, I’m surprised they even know what a kitchen is,” he says. “I got my recipe yesterday from Fat-Sandy here.”
“Yes, he did,” she chimes in, fanning herself with her cards. “That recipe’s been in my family for four generations, from straight out of CoonBottom, Florida. And, Jimmy-Sue is that your yummy chocolate cake I smell?” she asks me for the third time even though I’ve told her all the cakes need to cool for at least half an hour longer before I can frost them since the kitchen is so dang-hot in the afternoons. “How long they got now?” she asks checking her watch again.
I drum my nails over the wooden table top along to the chorus of You Can’t Always Get What You Want while Hobie and I both sigh. We look back to the girls coloring Care Bears and rainbows while Eunice deals a new hand of cards to Fat-Sandy and me, pausing to take loud slurps of her cheap watered-down wine.
As I linger over the girls smiles for a moment, it suddenly occurs to me that something seminal had shifted inside the DemiMonde. There was more scattered sunlight drifting in through the windows and down from the beams. Something odd was filtering inside the café right now, disguised among the free-floating particles of our air, as if a protective tree had been removed while we slept.
Cecile catches my eye and smiles as my heart expands in my chest, “She’s just so precious,” I say softly as I smile at Cecile and blow her back a kiss.
“Told you so!” Hobie laughs and slaps the back of my chair as he heads back to the kitchen. “Youuuuuuu touched her.”
I have frosted the cakes and picked up five tables within an hour, while Hobie worked the kitchen with the girls in tow. I ring up the chocolate cake on the register and thank the pretty, blonde woman again for her continuing generosity. Her name is Amy and she is a nurse and lives and works in town but drives out once a week to buy our chocolate cake. I have never told her a price. She pays me a different amount every time. Today she hands me a hundred dollar bill as if she can sense we need the money.
“Keep the change,” she offers then leans in to whisper to me. “I just love this cake. You know, my husband swears it makes me—ah, you know, a little aroused.”
“Ooh my,” I say and search for another response, hoping to Hades and back that Fat-Sandy, Bud, Otis, and Bubba did not concur. And then I try to get that image out of my mind before it’s seared in there for good! “I guess that’s how you stay so thin,” I flounder trying not to turn beet red.
“See you next week, honey.”
“I’m always here,” I say and gratefully accept her money because the prescriptions and vitamins for the girls are costing us a pretty penny, the walk-in freezer has to have its condenser replaced, and our insurance quarterlies and monthly sales tax are due. When I close the cash drawer my eyes alight on a crisp red, white and blue check in the donation jar sitting just beside the register.
“Yes, you are,” Nurse Amy says kindly, cradling her cake in her arms and disappearing out the front door just as Freckles walks in with his last keg to tap.
He stops in front of me momentarily with the heavy keg thrown over his broad shoulder and speaks softly down to me. “Sometimes situations just go and make it too dang hard to find the sunshine.” He walks around the bar and comes to stand a couple feet away from me as he bends and takes the last empty keg out from underneath the bar. “I tell you, Ms. Jimmy-Sue, sometimes there are things in life that can even make the angels cry.”
I nod sympathetically and reach for the check in the donation jar and take it out and study it. As I absorb the check I can feel my face starting to burn as my heart thumps the constant reminder of inadequacy in my chest. I feel tears stinging behind my eyelids as I stare at the thousand dollar check in my hand. I stare at the check with the name Harold Leroy Gainer signed on the bottom line, the check in Freckles handwriting.
“You are an angel, a guardian angel,” I whisper as he smiles and winks at me. “But this too much money, Freckles! I can’t take this! We’ll be fine. I can handle--”
“It’s not enough money. Della and I got no kids, none living anyhow. We can afford this. I suck at golf, anyway,” he chuckles. “Sides, Ms. Jimmy-Sue, everybody could use a little help now and then, even angels. So before you go arguing any more just take one good look at those precious babies,” he says nodding towards the girls.
“No, it’s my job to take care of--.”
“Ssh,” he says, his freckled brow crinkled in concern, “I know little ones are expensive. You use this money for those sweet baby girls and for the others who are coming, you see? The good Lord told me to help you out and give you my tithe. You’re my church now anyhow, you see?”
“Freckles—”
“By the way, little missy, He also told me you’re far too proud and you need to learn how to ask for help. Pride cometh before the fall,” he warns gravely, his voice lowering an octave.
“God talks to you?” I ask then hold my breath and wait for his answer.
He uncharacteristically leans in close to me and whispers in my ear, “BE STILL AND LISTEN.”
His voice bolts through me like liquid silver and comes in waves as the room grows silent around me. My ears and eyes suddenly explode with sights and sounds of every sort; babies crying, violins, elephants and laughter, corks popping, mountains exploding, people yelling, people killing, crying, dancing and laughing until my mind cannot possibly keep pace. I hold on to the brass railings of the bar for support as the room lunges forward and I struggle to catch my breath, because I know who’s voice it really is.
And I know to respond calmly, patiently, reverently. “Be still and listen!? For the love of God, are you kidding me here?! All I do is listen! And You know I can’t be still until You tell me exactly who You want!” Moments after the careless words escape my lips, I groan and cover my mouth in fear and look down, expecting a bolt of lightning to smack me flat.
Nope. I scan the ceiling. Still nope. I close my eyes and rub my ears to try to get the ringing in them to stop as I absorb the fact that I am still alive...
Interesting.
“Ms. Jimmy-Sue, are you alright?” I hear Freckles ask from what sounds like a block away, so I open my eyes and can see the concern in his.
“Did you just hear that voice? Did you just hear Him, too?” I ask so softly I’m not sure Freckles can hear.
“No, sweet friend, I did not.”
Because of his wife, Freckles is accustomed to the cockamamie minds of the insane, so he looks away quickly and changes the subject. He begins talking again and I can still barely hear him.
“Now, you’ll get a check once a month, sometimes it’ll be a little more, sometimes a little less in winter, for as long as you need it, you see? Unless, of course, I die-- I can figure something out about that, too.” He pauses as he tightens the valves on the keg and stares up at me in bewilderment. “Okay, now why are you laughing? Are you happy or--”
“Your name is Harold!?” I can barely squeak out because I’m laughing at this revelation.
“Guilty as charged.”
“I can’t believe it!” I laugh so hard I’m crying.
“Well, it is my Christian name but--�
�
You’re my Harold!? All my fears and anger combined and you turn out to be my Harold!?” I exclaim and stop banging on my still ringing ears because I’m getting a headache.
“Only my wife and mother are allowed to call me that. Please, don’t go telling the others. They’d only tease me mercilessly,” he chuckles as he closes the lower cabinets and picks up the used keg, hoisting it over his shoulder as he stands.
“Thank God for you, Harold,” I say and smile.
“And for you, too, Ms. Jimmy-Sue,” he says with a wink as he heads to the door.
As his tall frame disappears into the bolt of blinding sun light, I am struck by the revelation that I have learned a valuable lesson about prejudice—the Harold one, I mean. Perhaps he was another one who had landed on my list because of my own sin; my sin of anger and of prejudice, against Harolds and such?
Is this whole trial to also be about my own sins and imperfections? I get that lesson too, huh? Well, isn’t that just a bucket of sunshine? “Now, I’ve got to recognize mine as well?” I ask the ceiling just to make certain.
I might still be light-headed, my ears still buzzing and just a touch nauseous from my encounter, yet I believe that had just been my Harold Leroy Gainer tutorial and that I’m not meant to kill this Good Samaritan and orphan an entire neighborhood. Shoot, killing Freckles could orphan the entire county for all I know… There’s no telling how many lives Freckles touched.
Freckles is most certainly not the one. I feel it in my bones. I know it to be true in my soul. Surely this logic had to prevail, even in heaven. Okay, okay, I have more than learned another lesson about decoys! The finest man I know has a name I detest the most. I get it. Even I have failed my own litmus test.
I listen and watch for a sign but there is nothing but the static and my head is still spinning and to top that off the full moon is coming and it’s bringing my stupid period along with it, and both drain me even more in this heat.
“Show me a sign. Tell me I’m right,” I say rubbing my aching head.
Suddenly there are three loud bangs outside on the Strip. Everyone insides the café reacts to the loud noise.
“What the hell?!”
“Did someone just get shot?”
“Nah, just a car back-firing,” a tall teen informs us as he enters our front door, and there is an audible sigh of relief.
“That’ll do,” I say, closing my eyes and inhaling deeply, mentally removing my number 5 from the list.
Yep, goodbye good ol’ Freckles. Freckles, which fate would have it also turns out to be Harold… Two names.
Two?
Wait a minute? I’m confused. I know I eliminate the name Freckles from consideration, who is number 5, but wouldn’t I also eliminate Harold, who is number 13?
This is a conundrum even if my head wasn’t splitting and I wasn’t having an onrush of cramps from hell.
Do I remove both names or only one?
Why not both, the man is both, right?
The veins in my temples are throbbing and my mind is muddled as I agree with myself and eliminate both my numbers 5 and 13 from consideration. That was that, Harold was off, too. Unless I see otherwise to the contrary it appears the clearest sign to me.
Counting Eunice, three names are now safely off. I cross my heart quickly and sigh in anxious relief.
By the time Fat-Sandy and Eunice finish watching Oprah, I have mopped the kitchen and dining room floors, played Where’s Waldo and I Spy with the girls, and made two fresh urns of ice tea, and yet there is still an ocean of chores to be completed before the dinner rush. Despite all this, Ken and Horst still haven’t made it back from all their errands. I am beginning to dread the cocktail rush, which is scheduled to begin within the hour, because Eunice is insisting I play more rounds of gin rummy. I was hoping for a twenty minute break, so I can go somewhere alone in the sun and meditate, or pace, or just breathe the air in silence. Fat chance today, literally speaking.
“Really, Jimmy-Sue,” Eunice says again while Fat-Sandy discards a seven of hearts, “we can’t hide that baby forever! You know I should turn her over to HRS immediately. We could lose our license over this. Think of it, Jimmy-Sue,” Eunice says while Fat-Sandy nods her head along with any Eunice conviction, “they could close us down for good if they find out we’re hiding underage kids!”
“And babies are a tremendous responsibility,” Fat-Sandy says, patting Eunice’s hand, “that you can’t begin to image.”
“I’m telling you, Jimmy-Sue. We can’t hide that baby forever.”
“The state could find them a safe place to live,” Fat-Sandy tells me and shakes her finger at me. “Eunice should call the authorities. And I told her so. Didn’t I, Eunice? I says, Eunice, call the authorities--”
My head is still spinning slightly from before and I can’t shake the feeling I am being watched like a caged bird at the zoo, and that rattles me even more since no one seems to be staring at me, no one except for that darn cat who has snuck inside, again, and is hunkered down in the kitchen, again, between the refrigerators and won’t stop staring at me. One surprise visit from the health inspector and he could hang us out to dry, all because of one loud and determined cat.
Whenever we put Blue back outside under the carport he stands by the kitchen door howling at the top of his lungs until I come outside to plead for silence and feed him, again. I do my best cat-growl in Blue’s direction because I am now officially on my period, so it’s next to impossible to hide my annoyance at Fat-Sandy’s whining voice and its incessant inability to express an original idea!
I close my eyes as I roll my neck from shoulder to shoulder trying to release the knot at the nape of my neck, and force myself to be still and listen to Fat-Sandy while my feet tap out a nursery rhyme under the table. Hickory dickery dock.
I’ve never heard Fat-Sandy voice one disagreement over any topic Eunice embraces, no matter how off-center it might be and we’re talking about Eunice here so off-center is the norm.
Fat-Sandy is a Mynah bird, and I think that’s why she’s made number 4 on my list. Well, that and the fact that she keeps breaking our chairs. She must weight well over three hundred pounds. I realize gluttony and sloth are the most obvious contenders here. Combine that with all her annoying habits housed together under one mouth and that is enough to test a seasoned saint.
The tingle in the air tells me I am on the right track. My sigh is deep and profound because, for pity sake, haven’t I already accomplished enough for one day? What’s the rush? Besides, I’m not feeling like myself this afternoon. I’m still too discombobulated to deal with any new signs, so leave me alone right now, okay?
“Be still and listen,” Eunice says and takes a loud slurp of her wine, then another as I stare at her too dumbfounded for words. I sit perfectly still while Eunice shuffles the cards, and I strain with all my might to hear more, but nothing more comes.
“Six,” Eunice leans in and whispers as she deals me the six of spades and the static between my ears suddenly segues into a booming cacophony of notes and sounds and light. “Be still and listen for six.”
I am suddenly blinded and lay my face in my hands to try to stop my head from spinning, and to try and listen for more. More was all around me today. It was in the air, its musky scent forcing some indistinguishable memory from some crevasse long forgotten in my soul. More was in my throat and on my tongue and was slowly suffocating the breath in my chest. More was in the invisible eyes that devoured me. My head is pounding and my eyes are blurry.
“Listen for six what?! Are you talking about my number 6?!” I ask the voice as my sight returns.
Eunice is just staring at me as she blows a smoke ring over my head. “Darlin’, are you feeling alright today? You’re all flushed and you look like you’re about to cry. Not that any of us have ever seen you cry, but I reckon you’d look like this if you were about to. You okay, darlin’?”
“Fine,” I reassure her with a nod while I pick up my cards
with trembling hands and realize I have been holding my breath.
“And I most certainly didn’t say anything about six something or others. I told Fat-Sandy to lay off talking about things she knows nothing about.” Eunice says and discards the six of hearts.
“Well, I know little ones that age just eat and eat and eat,” Fat-Sandy says, in between ingesting a giant fried shrimp with at least three tablespoons of tartar sauce while discarding the king of hearts, “and they have to be watched every minute of every day,” she tells me as she dredges another fried shrimp through cocktail sauce. “I told Eunice that those little ones need a safer place to live. Didn’t I Eunice? I says, Eunice, those little ones need--”
“This is a safer place!” I say angrily. “Eunice, will you please tell Fat-Sandy what it’s like to be placed in foster care!” I slide Eunice’s cat-eyed glasses back on her nose then pick up Fat-Sandy’s king. “Gin,” I say as both Eunice and Fat-Sandy moan.
“Jimmy-Sue, if I didn’t know better, I’d swear you cheat!” Fat-Sandy huffs and throws down her cards. Her red cards are covered in cocktail sauce and her black in tartar sauce; it’s impossible to not know what’s in her hand. “And those kids have needs the Halflings can’t help!”
“They have needs only the Halflings can help!”
“Either way, we can’t hide that baby forever!” Eunice chimes in, wagging her finger at me, too.
“By the way, Jimmy-Sue, the tartar sauce could use just a touch more garlic salt, and, why, I’ll bet there are hundreds of wonderful foster homes right here in Bay County.”
Eunice blows a huge, fat, smoke ring in Fat Sandy’s face and just stares at her like she’s an idiot. “Girlfriend, you’ve got to start reading the newspapers,” Eunice finally says shaking her head and sighing. She looks back at me. “Okay, say for the moment HRS doesn’t notice Cecile, what do you think they’re going say about Kelly? Look at her. You know even she’s not technically old enough to be here.”