Pearl felt like somebody had up and punched her in the stomach. Oomph.
She hardly heard what anybody said after that. Just bits and pieces coming at her like in a dream.
“ … so happy …”
“ … always wanted …”
“ … like my own son …”
Pearl lay back on the ground and looked up at the sky. Maybe she really was invisible, just like Ruby had said.
During dinner, Ivy jabbered on and on about the wedding. How it was going to be a tiny little affair over at the town hall. How they were going to close the diner and have a party. How Pearl could be her maid of honor and wear a new dress and panty hose and lipstick. “And mascara,” Ivy said. “You can wear some of that mascara you got in that makeup bag of yours.”
John Dee kept ruffling Moonpie’s hair and winking and grinning. Pearl thought he was acting silly. Moonpie seemed just pleased as punch to be the center of attention, like he was a little prince or something.
Pearl pushed her fork around her plate, sending black-eyed peas spilling over the edge and onto the table.
“Ain’t you hungry, Pearl?” Ivy said.
“Not much.”
“I got lemon meringue pie.”
Pearl shrugged.
“How about another biscuit?” Ivy pushed the plate of biscuits across the table.
Pearl shook her head and pushed her peas around some more.
“I will,” Moonpie said, reaching in front of Pearl to grab a biscuit.
Pearl glared at his skinny white arm. She ought to jab him with a fork like that man Dwayne used to do to her when she reached across the dinner table.
“Ma-maaaa, Dwayne poked me,” she used to complain to Ruby. But Ruby would just say, “Hush up your whinin’.”
And then one day Pearl had jabbed Dwayne back and Ruby had smacked her—whack—right upside the head and made her leave the table and not show her ugly face for the rest of the day.
“Don’t show your ugly face for the rest of the day,” Ruby had hollered.
Pearl had grabbed those words “ugly face” in her mind and held on tight, letting them eat away at her stomach. She had lain on the cot in the back of the house, clutching her stomach. Then she had hollered, “You said I was a gem of the world,” and Ruby had hollered back, “Well, you ain’t no more.”
But Pearl didn’t jab Moonpie.
After dinner Ivy, John Dee, and Moonpie watched TV and ate lemon meringue pie. Pearl sat on the couch with her arms folded and stared out the front door. Then she stood up and said, “I think I’ll go for a walk.”
Pearl pushed the screen door open and went out on the porch. Except for a lawn mower somewhere in the distance, it was quiet. She walked around the house to the backyard. One of the cats was playing with a bug, jumping around in the tall weeds by the porch.
Pearl walked over to the shed and opened the squeaky door. She looked back at the house, then stepped inside the shed. She pushed aside the boxes and tools until she found the board in the dirt floor, then lifted it and looked down at the tackle box. The sound of her own heartbeat pounded in her ears. She wiped her sweaty palms on the seat of her shorts and opened the tackle box.
Don’t take that, Pearl, said a voice in her head. But she didn’t listen. She lifted the bag of coins out of the tackle box, closed the lid, put the board over the hole, pushed the boxes back, and left the shed. She ran through the orchard to the woods, not stopping until she got to the creek. She waded out into the middle. The water was cold and the rocks were slippery. She opened the bag and took out a silver dollar. She glanced behind her, then tossed the coin into the water. It landed with a splash, sending minnows scattering in all directions before settling on the sandy bottom.
Pearl reached into the bag and took another silver dollar. She tossed it into the water. Then another one and another one and another one, until the bag was empty.
She waded out of the creek and climbed the mossy slope that ran beside it. The air was cool and damp. The sound of the running water made Pearl feel sleepy. She looked down at the creek. The silver dollars shimmered in the clear water, like sparkly silver fish. Pearl tossed the canvas bag into the creek, then turned and headed home.
That night, Pearl sat on the floor of her closet, breathing in the mothball smell. She looked at the postcard in her hand—Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Then she wrote:
Dear Mama,
Remember that wrinkled-up
old lady in the bed I told you
about? Well, she died and now
I know I really am invisible like
you said I was.
Love,
Pearl
17
Moonpie was different now. He jumped off the couch in the morning like he was busting to start the day. Sometimes Pearl stayed in bed and listened to Moon and Ivy in the kitchen, talking a mile a minute about nothing in particular. The weather. The daily special at the diner. John Dee’s van in the repair shop.
Pearl wondered how they did that—talking so easy about nothing in particular. Sometimes she practiced, talking to herself in the mirror.
“It’s going to be a scorcher today, ain’t it?” she’d say to herself, tossing her hair out of her eyes with a casual shake of her head.
“Now who in the world do you think was settin’ off them firecrackers last night?” she’d ask her reflection.
“Looks like the rabbits ate the tops slap off of them onions!” she’d say, jamming her fists into her sides like she was disgusted.
But when it came time for talking in real life, Pearl couldn’t seem to get it right. She found herself searching in her head for something to talk about that would sound natural and easy instead of all eat up with bad feelings. She’d start out with something easygoing, but then the next thing she knew she’d be snapping at Ivy or clamming up with Moonpie and feeling like she wanted to kick herself for doing it.
And then the bad feelings would get worse when Moonpie and Ivy let her snapping and clamming up just slide right over them without batting an eye. Pearl had never known two people so hard to fight with.
So that was how Pearl’s days started. Moonpie and Ivy chattering away just as cheerful as can be and her coming in there trying to stir things up but not having much luck.
Then one morning something bad happened. Pearl was sitting at the kitchen table, eating pancakes. John Dee was fixing a leaky pipe, lying on the floor with his head up under the sink. Moon sat beside him, handing him wrenches and duct tape.
The radio was on. John Dee’s foot tapped on the floor to the tune of a country-western song about somebody in a bar at closing time, wondering where his baby was.
They all jumped when the screen door flew open so hard it banged against the side of the house. Ivy stormed into the kitchen and slammed a rusty metal box onto the kitchen table in front of Pearl. Crash!
Pearl stared at the box. The tackle box from the shed. Her stomach squeezed up and for a minute she thought she was going to throw up.
“Okay, Pearl, start talking,” Ivy said.
Pearl couldn’t look up. She put her fork down and clutched her hands together in her lap.
“Look at me!” Ivy yelled.
John Dee had come out from under the sink and was standing next to Ivy. He put his arm around her. “Hold on, now, Ivy,” he said. “What’s going on?”
Ivy stepped away from him and glared down at Pearl. “You got some explaining to do, Pearl,” she said.
Pearl looked up. When her eyes met Ivy’s, she saw Ruby’s face, red and angry and accusing.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, trying hard to keep her head up and her eyes on Ivy.
“Don’t play games with me, Pearl,” Ivy said. She pushed the tackle box toward Pearl so hard it nearly slid right off the table. “Where are them silver dollars?”
“How should I know?” Pearl could feel sweat running down her back. She wanted to run out the back door, across the yard, through the orchard,
and on and on as far away from there as she could get. Instead, she sat at the kitchen table and looked down at her pancakes.
Ivy pulled out a chair and sat across from Pearl. She closed her eyes and moved her mouth like she was telling herself to be calm. Then she leaned forward and said, “I want them silver dollars, Pearl. They were my daddy’s. I don’t know why on this earth you want to hurt me, but taking them silver dollars is the worst kind of hurt. I want them back and I want them back now.”
Pearl picked up her fork and threw it clear across the kitchen. It bounced off the toaster with a clang. Then she stood up and glared down at Ivy.
“What makes you so sure it was me that took your precious silver dollars? I ain’t the only one in the world, you know.” Pearl kicked the leg of the table. “Maybe it was Moonpie that took ’em. You ever think of that?”
They all looked at Moon. He sat on the floor with his mouth hanging open and a look of pure scared on his face.
“Well?” Pearl said. “Why not Moonpie? He knew where them silver dollars were hid. How come you didn’t come busting in here and holler at him?”
Ivy turned to Pearl. “Because I know Moon. Known him all his life.” Her face softened and she sat back in her chair. “I don’t know you, Pearl. Don’t know nothing about you, really.”
“He ain’t even your kin,” Pearl said, throwing her arm in Moon’s direction. “You put him before your own kin, thinking he’s so all-fired perfect?”
John Dee stepped forward and put his hand on Pearl’s shoulder. “Moonpie and Ivy—”
Pearl jerked away. “Moonpie and Ivy! Moonpie and Ivy! That’s all anybody cares about around here.” She stomped toward the door, then whirled back around. “Well, what about me?” she yelled, thumping herself in the chest. Then she turned and ran out of the house, down the steps, across the yard, and through the orchard. Thorns snagged her thin pajamas as she pushed through the weeds. She felt the soft moss under her bare feet on the path in the woods. When she passed the creek, she glanced at the shiny silver dollars, gleaming on the sandy creek bottom, but she kept going until she got to the cemetery. Inside the circle of drooping sunflowers, she dropped to the ground and laid her head on the grave of little Margaret Jane. She pulled her knees up to her chest and put her hands over her face and wished she could sink down into the ground and be a child of heaven like Margaret Jane.
Pearl didn’t know how long she had been there when she became aware of a voice. What was the voice saying? She took her hands off her face and listened.
“Pearl … sweetheart … Pearl …” the voice was saying.
Pearl sat up. Ivy was kneeling next to her, rubbing her back, smoothing her hair, touching her cheeks. She tried to pull Pearl toward her, but Pearl put her hands on Ivy’s chest and pushed away. “You think I’m bad, don’t you?” she said. “Just ’cause of Mama. ’Cause you hate my mama you hate me, too. Ain’t that right?”
“I don’t hate your mama,” Ivy said. “I been trying for thirty years to love her, but I don’t hate her.”
Ivy reached out and took Pearl’s hands in hers. Pearl didn’t pull away. “And you?” Ivy said. “Hate you?” She shook her head. “I don’t hate you, sweetheart.”
“Then how come you love Moonpie so much and not me?”
Ivy looked down at her hands, holding Pearl’s, then up at the sky. She let her breath out slowly through her lips, making a soft, whooshing sound. Then she looked at Pearl with such a soft, good-hearted look that Pearl wanted to lay her head down in Ivy’s lap.
“These here are my babies,” Ivy said, nodding toward the little gravestones beside them. Pearl sat still, not daring to look at Ivy, not wanting Ivy to know that she already knew about Margaret Jane and Rose Marie. Ivy squeezed Pearl’s hands a little tighter. “All I ever wanted in this world was a child of my own,” she said. “And when God give me these babies and then turned right around and took them away, I thought I’d die. Thought I couldn’t possibly take another breath.”
Ivy’s hands felt warm and soft. Pearl studied her face. The little lines at the corners of her eyes. The sunburned nose. The tiny creases in her eyelids. Pearl didn’t want her to stop talking, so she said, “Then what happened?”
“My husband up and left. I reckon my heartbreak was just too much for him. Scared him away, you know?”
Pearl nodded.
“And then Moonpie come along.” Ivy smiled and looked out at the cemetery as if she were seeing something that Pearl couldn’t see. “He was just a little bitty ole thing. Used to come down off of that hill to play in the orchard, wandering around talking to hisself like he was his own best friend.” Ivy looked at Pearl. “I reckon he come to me about the time I needed a best friend myself.” She let go of Pearl’s hands and ran her fingers over one of the gravestones. “Me and Moon been loving each other for a long time, Pearl.”
“What about me?” Pearl said so soft it came out almost a whisper.
Ivy cupped her hands around Pearl’s face. “You showed up here and found a place in my heart I didn’t even know I had. But you got a mama, Pearl. You belong with her, not me. That don’t mean I don’t love you. It just means that’s the way the world works and we got to live with it.”
“But she left me,” Pearl said. “If I belong with her, then she don’t know it.”
“Ruby’s a puzzle, that’s for sure.” Ivy winked at Pearl. “But I bet she says the same thing about me, don’t she?”
Pearl shook her head. “She don’t say nothing about you. Except how you’re a good cook and all.”
Ivy chuckled. “I know I shouldn’t say so many bad things about your mama, Pearl, but I can’t help it. The only thing predictable about Ruby is that she’s gonna mess things up for me. I never know when or how, but sure as shootin’ it’s gonna happen.”
Pearl nodded. She could sure understand that. But right now she had a bigger worry eating at her.
“If she don’t want me and you don’t want me, then what am I going to do?” Pearl said. She felt the tears running down her cheeks. Watched them drop onto her lap. She waited for Ivy to say, “But your mama does want you” or “But I do want you,” but she didn’t say either of those things. She pointed to the dried, brown sunflowers circling the graves and said, “See them sunflowers?”
Pearl nodded.
“I plant them wherever I need to find hope.”
“How come?”
“’Cause they’re like a sign. A sign of hope for something new and good. You know, it’s really a miracle when you think about it. How you have this tiny little seed and then before long you got this big, beautiful flower. And then right in the middle of that flower are more seeds waiting to start all over again.” She looked up at the sunflowers. “I see them flowers and I know that even though they’re gonna die, them seeds are there—like a sign. You know, a sign that more flowers will come along.” She put her arm around Pearl. “A sign of hope. See what I mean?”
“Why’d you plant them in this graveyard?” Pearl said. “Are you hoping for more babies?”
Ivy shook her head and rubbed the gravestone beside her. “I gave up hope of ever having babies a long time ago,” she said. “I guess I just need to come here and be with my babies and not get eat up with sad. I need to have hope—and I do. I lost my babies, but I still got hope for happiness.”
“Not me,” Pearl said.
“Maybe you’re just not looking in the right place,” Ivy said.
They sat close together, their hands on each other’s knees. Rain began to fall, soft and quiet. Pearl looked up at the sunflowers bowing over their heads. “Maybe,” she said.
18
Later that day, Moon helped Pearl collect the silver dollars from the creek. A fine, drizzly rain fell. Leaves hung wet and heavy from the trees, dripping rainwater on their heads as they searched the creek bottom. They worked in silence, pushing aside sand and leaves and rocks with their bare feet. When they came across a silver dollar, they dropped it into the pi
llowcase Ivy had given Pearl to hold the wet, dirty coins.
Every now and then Pearl glanced at Moon. His cantaloupe hair hung in wet clumps over his eyes. He moved slowly, peering through the clear water in total concentration. Pearl was still fascinated by the whiteness of his skin. The scattering of pale freckles. The tiny veins showing through the side of his neck. And those gold eyelashes blinking slowly over his pale, spooky eyes.
Pearl spotted a coin nestled in a bed of rotten leaves. She picked it up, wiped it on the seat of her shorts, and dropped it into the pillowcase.
“How come you’re being so nice to me?” she said.
Moon lifted his head and looked at Pearl. “What?”
“I said, how come you’re being so nice to me?”
“I ain’t being nice to you.” His nearly invisible eyebrows squeezed together. “I mean, not on purpose. I mean, I ain’t trying to be nice, I’m just …”
“I bet Ivy told you to be nice to me.”
Moon stared at Pearl. He scratched a mosquito bite on his leg, then waded out of the creek and sat on the mossy bank. “Why would she do that?” he said.
“So you wouldn’t be mean to me.”
“Why would I be mean to you?”
Pearl threw her hands up. The coins rattled in the pillowcase. “’Cause of what I done! With the silver dollars.” Her voice came out high and squeaky.
Pearl waded out of the creek, sloshing water onto Moonpie. She sat beside him and stared at him with her lips set tight.
“How come you don’t even care what anybody does to you?” she said.
“I care.”
“Must not.”
“Why do you think that?”
“’Cause you ain’t even acting mad about these silver dollars,” Pearl said, jiggling the pillowcase near Moon’s face. “Shoot, you don’t even get it … why I took ’em and all. Why I told Ivy it might’ve been you that took ’em.”
“Why did you?”
Pearl shook her head. Her hair was damp and frizzy. She wiped water out of her eyes and studied Moon’s face. “So nobody would like you anymore,” she said.
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