“I’ll call that lady first thing tomorrow,” Ivy said. “Won’t nobody be coming up here, okay?”
Moon looked like a little kid, all slumped down with his head hanging. He nodded real slow.
Ivy and John Dee both reached out at the same time and put a hand on Moon’s knee. Pearl felt a stab right through her heart that took her by surprise. She watched the three of them, sitting there connected in a way she didn’t understand.
She cleared her throat and squirmed on the milk crate, but nobody noticed. She looked at Moonpie, sitting there with his head hanging, and Ivy and John Dee with their hands on his knee and their faces all full of worry
Shoot, thought Pearl, at least that spooky boy has somebody. She didn’t have anybody except a crazy mama who tossed her out like a sack full of stray kittens. It seemed to Pearl like somebody ought to be sending some of their worry her way.
8
“What you wanna do?” Moon asked, running his hand down a cat’s back and all the way up its tail.
Pearl was stretched out on the couch with her feet up on the arm. “Ain’t nothing to do around here,” she said. Pearl had been at Ivy’s two weeks now, and she figured she’d done about everything there was to do in Darwood, Georgia, which was about two clicks past nothing.
“We could catch crawfish down at the creek.”
“Crawfish?” Pearl held her feet in front of the window fan. “Why would we want to do that?”
Moon shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “Something to do.”
Pearl swung her legs around and sat up, putting her face in front of the fan. Her bangs blew straight up in the air.
“It’s too hot to go outside,” she said.
“It’s cool down at the creek,” Moon said. “There’s woods there, and the water’s cold.”
Pearl slumped against the lumpy couch cushions. She inspected her legs. Too hairy, she thought. Maybe she’d shave them. Ruby had shaved them for her once. Painted her toenails red and bought her some pink plastic sandals. The next day they went to a barbecue in somebody’s backyard. There were no other kids there and Pearl had walked around and around the yard in her pink sandals. Ruby had gone off in a car with somebody and hadn’t come back until the hamburgers were all gone and everybody was eating ice cream. Pearl had taken off her pink sandals and tossed them under somebody’s pickup truck in the driveway.
Pearl jumped when Moon said, “Come on. Let’s go down to the creek.”
She pushed herself up off the couch and shuffled toward the door. “A creek,” she said. “Whoop-dee-doo.” She pushed the screen door open with her foot. The cat darted out ahead of them.
Outside, the air was still and thick with heat. Pearl followed Moon through the peach orchard. The back of his shirt was dirty and wet with sweat. He lifted his bony white knees up high as he made his way through the tall weeds.
Every now and then the thorns of a blackberry bush snagged Pearl’s T-shirt or scratched her legs. She wished she hadn’t worn flip-flops.
“How much farther?” she said, waving gnats away from her face.
“Just over there in them woods.” Moon pointed to the line of trees ahead of them.
When they entered the woods, the air was cooler. Ferns lined the path and tickled Pearl’s legs. Insects buzzed and lizards scurried through the dry leaves. Pearl liked it here. She wanted to lie down on the mossy ground and look up at the sky through the trees. She had always loved the woods. Loved the smell of the damp earth, the way the trees could fold you in and swallow you up.
They hadn’t gone far when Pearl heard the sound of water. She followed Moon through the trees to the edge of a creek. The water was clear and shallow, flowing lazily over moss-covered rocks. Tiny silver minnows darted just below the surface.
Moon picked up a rusty can from the edge of the creek and peered inside. He turned it over and dumped a clump of wet sand out onto the ground.
“We can use this to put the crawfish in,” he said.
He walked into the water with his sneakers on and started turning over rocks.
“I’m not going in that water,” Pearl said. “I’m going on up that path a ways.”
Moon didn’t answer as Pearl headed up the path away from the creek. The slap-slapping of her flip-flops echoed in the woods as she walked along. Not far from the creek, a narrow path branched off through a tangle of wild shrubs. Pearl could see sunlight filtering through the trees and wondered if the path led to a clearing. She ducked under low-hanging branches and followed the trail. Sure enough, she hadn’t gone far when she came out into an open area.
After the darkness of the woods, it took a minute for her eyes to adjust to the bright sunlight. She squinted. Was she seeing things? Scattered around the clearing were tombstones, nestled among the weeds and wild daisies. Some were cracked and leaning. A few were made of shiny black marble. One had an angel perched on top.
Pearl had never been in a graveyard before. She walked slowly between the graves, reading the names etched on the stones. Bertha May Hayes, Beloved Wife and Mother. Raymond Gerald Patterson, Gone But Not Forgotten.
Some of the graves had little fences around them. Morning glories twined in and out of the rusty gates. Pearl wandered from stone to stone, moving her lips silently as she read. When she reached the far side of the graveyard, she looked up.
“Whoa,” she said out loud.
In the middle of the graveyard was a circle of sunflowers. They were taller than Pearl. So yellow against the blue sky they didn’t look real. Some of them drooped, hanging their heads like pouting children. Pearl ran over to them and peered up into their flower faces. Then she noticed that in the middle of the sunflower circle were two tiny graves marked with two tiny stones. Pearl knelt and inspected them. Rose Marie Jennings, God’s Precious Little Angel, read one. Margaret Jane Jennings, Child of Heaven, read the other.
Pearl ran her hand over the grass in front of the stones. There were children buried here. Imagine that! Two little children way down under this grass and dirt. Pearl had a scary, excited feeling in her stomach.
She looked up at the sunflowers, standing guard over the little graves. Then she lay down and stretched out with her head against one of the stones and her feet crossed at the ankles. She placed her hands on her chest and closed her eyes. I am Rose Marie, God’s Precious Little Angel, she thought.
“Get up off of there!” Moon’s voice cut through the silence and echoed in the clearing.
Pearl jumped up. “What’s wrong with you?” She glared at him. “You tryin’ to scare me to death?”
Moon glared back at her. His hair flopped down over his eyes but he didn’t brush it away. Just glared right through it.
“You ain’t supposed to be on them graves,” he said in such a mean voice Pearl was fascinated. Here was sweet little Moonpie, all riled up for a change. She smiled.
“What’s the matter? You think Rose Marie is gonna jump up out of that ground and holler at me?” she said.
Moon lunged at her. He shoved with both hands, knocking her clean off her feet and taking the breath out of her.
She scrambled up off the ground. “What’s the matter with you?” she yelled, clenching her fists and stepping toward Moon. “Don’t you never touch me again or I’ll knock your block plumb off!”
Moon’s chest heaved and his chin quivered. Then, just as quickly as the mad had swept over him, he seemed to melt right before Pearl’s eyes. His shoulders slumped and his face drooped and he sat right down on the ground.
“I’m sorry,” he said so low Pearl could barely hear him.
“You better be sorry,” she said, standing over him with her fists on her waist.
She waited, but Moon didn’t say anything else. She sat beside him on the grass and waited some more. Still nothing.
“You mind telling me why you went and acted like a crazy person just ’cause I was laying there on a grave?” Pearl said.
Still nothing. She pushed Moon’s shoulder.
“I’m talking to you!” she yelled in his ear.
Moon turned his head slowly and looked at her. He blinked one of those slow-motion blinks. His gold eyelashes practically shimmered in the sunlight. Pearl could feel herself getting all churned up with irritation.
“Them graves are Ivy’s babies,” Moon finally said.
“Ivy’s!” Pearl looked over at the sunflower circle and the two little gravestones, then back at Moon.
“Ivy had babies?” she said.
Moon nodded.
“And they died?”
Moon nodded again.
“When?”
Moon pulled at a blade of grass and flicked it into the air. “A long time ago,” he said. “Before I was born.”
“What happened to ’em?”
“Born dead.”
Pearl shook her head and said, “Wow.”
They sat there in the graveyard in silence. Pearl watched a butterfly flutter around among the graves.
“But Ivy ain’t married,” she said so loud and sudden that Moon jumped.
“Used to be,” he said.
“Then where’s her husband?”
“They got divorced.”
“Well, what do you know,” Pearl said. “I sure never would’ve guessed that.”
“Didn’t your mama never tell you nothing about Ivy?” Moon said.
“She never told me nothing about nothing,” Pearl said. “Except big fat lies,” she added.
Moon put his chin on his knees and closed his eyes. “Ivy comes here a lot,” he said. “I seen her have a picnic here once, all by herself.”
“Really?”
“I was down at the creek and I could hear her talking but wasn’t nobody here.” Moon nodded toward the sunflower circle. “She waters them sunflowers, too. Hauls water up from the creek in a bucket.”
“How come there’s a graveyard way out here in the woods?” Pearl asked.
“Ivy says it’s a family graveyard’s been here a long time. Ain’t nobody buried here but her kin.” Moonpie got up and brushed off the seat of his shorts. “I’m going to go dump them crawfish back in the creek and get on home,” he said, then disappeared into the woods.
Pearl looked around her at the gravestones. Ivy’s kin? Then these dead people were her kin, too. That sure beat all. She was all the time wishing she had family and now here she had gone and found some and they were all dead.
That night Pearl arranged her postcards on the bed. She closed her eyes and circled her finger over them several times before bringing it down on top of one. She opened her eyes and looked at the postcard under her finger. Table Rock Mountain. She and Ruby and some woman named Eve had had a picnic there once. Ruby and Eve had sat on the hood of the car and drunk warm beer while Pearl played in a creek nearby They wanted Pearl to drink the warm beer, too, but Pearl had pretended like they were invisible and Ruby had gotten mad and called her a name. What name was it? Pearl couldn’t remember.
She turned the postcard over and wrote:
Dear Mama,
Did you know Ivy had babies that died?
They are buried with all our kin in a circle
of sunflowers. When I die, you can bury
me there and call me God’s Precious Little
Angel Child of Heaven. I bet you’ll be sorry
then.
Love,
Pearl
9
“I swear, Mama Nell’s looking worse every day,” Ivy said, snapping the ends off a green bean and tossing it into a bowl.
Pearl watched Ivy’s hands. Her fingers were long and thin and covered with freckles. There was dirt under her fingernails from weeding the tomato garden.
Ivy sighed and shook her head. “I don’t know how much longer I can keep them social workers away,” she said.
“Why do you need to keep them away?” Pearl asked. She reached for a bean and snapped the ends off the same way Ivy did.
Ivy stopped her snapping and gave Pearl a surprised stare. “’Cause of Moonpie, that’s why”
“Why ’cause of Moonpie?”
Ivy leaned closer to Pearl. “Well, what in the world would happen to him if them high-and-mighty people took a notion that Mama Nell can’t take care of him?”
“Seems to me like he’s the one taking care of her,” Pearl said.
Ivy snapped a bean and threw it in the bowl so hard it bounced right back out onto the table.
“She’s just having a bad spell, is all,” Ivy said. “That woman can run circles around them social workers any day of the week, and that’s a fact.”
Ivy’s freckled neck was getting those red splotches again. Pearl shrugged and said, “Whatever.”
Ivy set her lips together tight and breathed out hard through her nose.
“Why don’t his mama come get him?” Pearl said.
“That no-account piece of nothing?” Ivy snapped and tossed. Snapped and tossed. “She oughtta be horse-whipped for not taking care of that child.”
“Where’d she go?”
“Who knows. Last I heard, she was running wild over in Macon.” Ivy’s face got redder. “Makes my blood boil,” she said.
They sat in silence for a while, snapping and tossing beans. Pearl could tell Ivy was all worked up about something, the way her splotchy neck got redder and her fingers snapped those beans so fast.
“Don’t take care of her own child,” Ivy said. “God gives a woman the greatest gift on earth and she just throws it away like yesterday’s garbage.”
“Maybe some women don’t look at things the same as you,” Pearl said. “Maybe some women think their kids are yesterday’s garbage.”
Ivy put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, honey, I’m sorry. What in the world was I thinking talking to you like that?”
She came over and put her arms around Pearl. Her skin was warm and damp. Pearl breathed in the earthy smell of her.
Ivy took Pearl’s shoulders in both her hands and gave her a little shake.
“Don’t you listen to me, you hear? Sometimes I just spout off all kinds of nonsense. It’s a wonder somebody don’t haul me off to the noodle farm.” She smiled and pushed Pearl’s bangs off her forehead.
Pearl wanted to be little again. She wanted to curl up in Ivy’s lap and say, “Tell me I’m the greatest gift on earth.”
And then the phone rang and Pearl got that instant knot in her stomach. Now that must be Mama, she thought. Maybe she’d tell Ruby not to come back for a while. Maybe not for a week or two anyway. Give them both a little break from each other.
Pearl waited while Ivy said, “Hello?” She watched Ivy’s face and her heart beat so hard she thought surely Ivy could see it jumping around under her T-shirt.
“I don’t know, hon,” Ivy said into the phone. “I hate to leave Mama Nell alone that long.”
Pearl’s heart settled back down to normal again. She tossed a bean into the bowl and went back to the bedroom. She took out her shoebox and sat on the bed. She fished around through the postcards until she found the ballet shoe necklace. She held it up and watched the little shoes swing back and forth. Every now and then, she could hear Ivy’s voice drift down the hall from the kitchen. “Moonpie … Moonpie … Moonpie.” It seemed like all Ivy ever talked about was Moonpie. Seemed like all she cared about was Moonpie. What about Pearl? Wasn’t she the greatest gift, too? Maybe not. Maybe she really was yesterday’s garbage.
When she heard Ivy’s footsteps in the hall, Pearl dropped the necklace back in the shoebox. She slammed the lid on just as Ivy stopped outside the door.
“Me and John Dee were thinking about going up to Moon’s to play Yahtzee,” Ivy said. “You wanna go?”
“Nah.” Pearl stared out the window, setting her face into a don’t-bother-me-I’m-not-interested look.
“How come?” Ivy sat on the bed beside Pearl. Pearl put both arms over the shoebox.
“Just not interested,” she said.
Ivy glanced at the shoebox. Pearl stared ou
t the window.
“If you change your mind, come on up,” Ivy said.
Pearl pushed aside the faded curtains and watched Ivy and John Dee trudge through the weeds, jump over the ditch, and disappear up the dirt road toward Moon’s house. She flopped back on the bed and looked up at that crack in the ceiling. She could hear the chickens shuffling around out in the yard.
She slipped on her flip-flops and went out on the back porch. She looked in the direction of Moon’s house and wondered what they were doing up there. Wondered if they were all laughing, slapping each other on the back, maybe even hugging every now and then. She bet Ivy and John Dee were making a fuss over Moonpie. Telling him he was the world’s best Yahtzee player and all. That old woman, Mama Nell, was probably just laying there taking it all in. Maybe they’d take a break and have some of Ivy’s cookies with the kisses in the middle. They’d sit on the porch and eat their cookies. Just one big happy family.
Pearl crossed the yard to the tomato garden. She pulled a green tomato off one of the plants and threw it as far as she could out into the peach orchard. She heard it land with a thud somewhere in the weeds.
She shuffled around the dirt yard, kicking rocks and leaving a trail of red dust behind her. She ran her hand along the wet sheets hanging on the clothesline. A chicken clucked along in front of her, pecking at pebbles in the dirt. Pearl flapped her hands to shoo it away, then noticed something in the cement that held the clothesline pole in the ground. She knelt and examined it. A handprint. Above it, the name “Ruby” carved in big, wiggly letters. Pearl stared at it. She reached her hand out toward the handprint, then pulled it away “Nope,” she said out loud, “I ain’t touching that.”
But it seemed like her hand wouldn’t listen to her head, because the next thing she knew, her hand was resting there in that handprint, a perfect fit. With the other hand, Pearl traced the letters carved in the cement. R-U-B-Y. She tried to imagine herself as twelve-year-old Ruby, watching her daddy put up this clothesline. Maybe Ivy watched, too. The peach orchard was probably full of peaches back then. Maybe after twelve-year-old Ruby pushed her hand into that wet cement, she had gone out there and had herself a juicy peach.
Moonpie and Ivy Page 4