Lily's Song

by Susan Gabriel

  “Are you okay, Nell?” Aunt Sadie asks.

  Mama doesn’t answer and looks like she’s giving serious thought to how to react. Either that or she’s having a stroke and unable to tell us.

  Lily looks at me, one brow raised with an unasked question.

  I give a slight, one shoulder shrug. I expected yelling, maybe even weeping, not silence.

  “Mama, did you hear me?” I ask.

  Her gray eyes fill with tears. My shoulders drop with the knowledge I’ve broken my mother’s heart.

  I tell her how sorry I am, and lower my head.

  “It’s not the end of the world,” Aunt Sadie says to her. “Wildflower’s just being the person God meant her to be.”

  “That’s right, Granny,” Lily says. “We want Mama to be happy, don’t we?”

  Tears cling to my eyelids like the ice clinging to the trees outside.

  Mama wipes her tears and turns to me with the same fierce, loving look she wore in Daniel and Jo’s barn before Lily was born. A look I’ve wondered if I’d ever see again.

  “Louisa May, I knew you two were in love as soon as she came back from Nashville and started teaching in Katy’s Ridge again.”

  I exhale, wondering if I heard her right. Aunt Sadie and I exchange a look that reminds me of when I was in labor with Lily. I remember that last push Aunt Sadie encouraged me to make after the long, twenty-hour ordeal. At the end of all that pain, Lily came into the world with a sudden ease.

  “You knew all along?” I ask Mama.

  She nods. “Of course it worried me at first. Worried me a lot. I prayed about it every day here in this kitchen, petting that boney cat until I thought his hair might fall out. But I couldn’t throw you out, not after all you’d been through. I’m more loyal to my kin than that,” she continues. “Then over the years as I watched the two of you together, I didn’t see what harm happiness could do. Not to you or to anybody else.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask, thinking of all the grief this might have saved me.

  “Well, it wasn’t really any of my business until you decided to tell me about it,” she says. “That day Bee brought over the banana bread, I thought you two might finally tell me then. But off you go, sneaking around and kissing each other at the front door. I know I’m going a little deaf, but do you think I’m blind, too?”

  She laughs a short laugh before her expression turns serious again.

  “As for you losing all your business, and Bee getting fired from being a school teacher, that disappoints me. I wish you’d been more careful. But country people despise anybody or anything different. When we moved here, your daddy said we’d best be careful who we trusted, that they could turn on a dime. He was right about a lot of things, my Joseph.”

  “But what will I do to make a living?” I ask her. “What will Bee do?”

  “You are smart girls. You’ll do what you have to do,” Mama says. “Maybe you’ll leave Katy’s Ridge and find someplace new.”

  “But won’t it be the same everywhere?” Lily asks.

  Until now, I haven’t realized how quiet she’s been.

  “What you’re always looking for are the pockets of good people,” Aunt Sadie says. “There are good people everywhere. There are good people here, too, just not enough to keep the mill open.”

  Mama swipes a wayward tear and straightens her apron. “This isn’t something that can be solved in an evening,” she says to me. “Do you want me to heat up your supper again?”

  All of a sudden, I am ravenous and tell her so. Mama gets up to warm the food again. I am relieved and exhausted at the same time and unsure of what to do next. Rest is required.

  As Mama readies the food, I walk over to the stove where she stands. “I underestimated you,” I tell her. She laughs a short laugh.

  “About time you realized who you’re dealing with,” she says.

  We embrace for several seconds, longer that we’ve ever hugged each other before. Mama smells of wood smoke and supper cooking and Jergen’s lotion. She smells like herself. Like Mama. If forced to move away, I will miss this smell. I will miss living so close to my family—to my sisters and Daniel and my nieces and nephews. I will miss Aunt Sadie most of all, and the memories here that have Daddy in them. I will even miss visiting that old graveyard. What I won’t miss is how frightened people are with their small ways. I won’t miss that at all.

  It dawns on me, am I really considering leaving Katy’s Ridge?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Lily

  The ice storm keeps us at home for two days until it feels like I might go crazy with boredom. Pearl shows up at the house with a message from June to Mama that the roads are mostly clear. Granny makes us hot chocolate and we sit in the living room and talk in whispers. Pearl tells me about the latest boy she’s decided she has a crush on—which feels almost as boring as being stuck in the house for two days—and I tell her about Granny surprising us all by not throwing a fit about Mama and Bee.

  Mama has been quiet during our time at home, as though doing major thinking. No more has been said about what she might do after the sawmill closes for good.

  Right as Pearl leaves, Uncle Daniel comes up the hill to take Great Aunt Sadie back to her house now that the roads are clear. Mama and Uncle Daniel talk in hushed tones before he leaves.

  “I need to talk to Bee,” Mama says, a few minutes later. “You want to come?”

  Thrilled by the thought of getting out of the house, I agree.

  Patches of ice remain in the shade and on the north sides of hills, but the path and the road are clear. At the road, we see several cars over at Uncle Daniel’s.

  “Looks like somebody’s called a meeting I don’t know about,” Mama says.

  It is unusual for her sisters to get together without inviting Mama, but part of the reason may be that they all have telephones and Granny doesn’t.

  “We need to go over there,” Mama says to me. “I haven’t talked to them since all hell broke loose. You okay with that?”

  I tell her I am.

  When we go over to Aunt Jo’s, we find Aunt Meg and Aunt Amy there, too, along with all of my cousins. You’d think Aunt Jo was having Thanksgiving at her house this year. The room falls silent when we come through the back door. Within seconds, the cousins and me are shooed out of the house, but I refuse to go. Luckily, nobody forces me to.

  Nat is ushered out by Bolt and gives me a look that asks what’s going on. Meanwhile, Lizzy takes a second to make sure she smirks at me. It is only Janie who appears to know what’s going on and for once the dull sheen on her face has color to it.

  I realize how little I’ve seen my cousins in the last few weeks. The last time being at the anniversary of Granddaddy’s death. That was the day Melody Monroe showed up and my whole life changed. All of a sudden, I had an aunt I never knew existed, and a mama with a secret she hoped no one ever found out about. Like country folks, who Granny says can turn on a dime, my life turned on a dime. One day it was nothing new, the next it was full of unexpected trouble. The biggest surprise, however, is playing out in front of me as my aunts and uncles gang up on Mama.

  “You disgraced us,” Uncle Cecil says to Mama, his voice raised. “Now we’re all in danger of losing our jobs.”

  I can’t imagine how Mama could disgrace anybody.

  “Did you not think about how this might affect us?” he says.

  In Jo and Daniel’s living room, Mama stands in the middle of all of them, while I stand next to the wall that leads to the kitchen. She looks tiny compared to everyone else, like the runt of a litter. I wonder why I never noticed that before. Uncle Cecil, especially, towers over her. He’s never been one of my favorite people, and now he’s proving why.

  “I can understand why you might be upset,” Mama says. “But I didn’t plan for any of this.”

  “Well, you must have known it might get out,” Aunt Amy says, the first of her sisters to speak. The others chime in their agreement.<
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  Aunt Jo isn’t looking at Mama and has her arms folded across her chest like she’s trying to hold herself together and not say anything. Uncle Daniel isn’t back from taking Great Aunt Sadie home, or I imagine he would step up in defense of Mama. Perhaps that’s why they’ve started without him.

  Aunt Meg looks away, as though she’s feeling guilty. Uncle Cecil is leading the dissension and the angrier he gets, the redder his strawberry birth mark. Then everybody starts talking at once with Mama just standing there watching them like she’s having a bad dream. A minute or so later Uncle Daniel walks into the living room and asks what’s going on. He steps in next to Mama and tells everybody to quiet down.

  “Is this how you treat family?” Uncle Daniel asks the others, raising his voice, too.

  “What about how she’s treated us?” Aunt Jo says.

  Uncle Daniel shoots her a look I’ve never seen him give her, like she should be ashamed. “Wildflower is family,” he begins again. “And I, for one, don’t turn on my family. If our family turns on us, who do we have?”

  I think of what Granny said, along the same lines, when she found out about Mama and Miss Blackstone.

  Uncle Cecil scoffs. “This is ridiculous,” he says.

  “What if we all disagreed with something you did, Cecil?” Uncle Daniel says.

  “Well, I’d never do anything to put this family in danger,” he says.

  At that moment, I want to slap Russia right off his face.

  “Just so you know,” Daniel continues, “Nell has known all along and she sees nothing wrong with it.”

  The reaction is of stirring bees in a hive. It takes a few minutes for everybody to settle down again. Meanwhile, Mama stands in the middle of the living room like the wary queen, though I don’t think anybody recognizes her nobility besides me.

  “It’s just caught us all unawares,” Aunt Jo says to Mama. “It’s hard to stand by somebody when you’re the last to know something. Makes me feel like I’ve been shut out. I can’t believe you told Mama before you told us.”

  I wonder how Aunt Jo knows this and then realize Pearl must have gone straight across the road to tell everybody what I shared with her this morning.

  Everybody looks at Mama, including me, waiting on her to defend herself about telling Granny. Pearl’s going to need to defend herself, too, next time I see her. Her secret-telling is a part of this hornet’s nest.

  “If the Sectors knew all along, why not tell us, too?” Aunt Meg asks.

  The hive gets stirred again.

  “Settle down,” Uncle Daniel yells over the buzz.

  Everybody does.

  “Wildflower needs to think about what loyalty means,” Aunt Jo says. “She let us get blindsided by all this.”

  “Everybody in Katy’s Ridge knew before I did,” Aunt Amy says. “One of my customers in Rocky Bluff asked me if the rumors were true and I had to say ‘What rumors?’” She looks straight at Mama. They have never been the closest of siblings and at that moment the gap widens. “I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life,” Aunt Amy concludes.

  Meanwhile, Lizzy spies through the front window and gives me a look of total glee that Mama is in trouble. When I turn back to look, the color has left Mama’s face. She needs rescuing fast, and even Uncle Daniel has been unable to control how everyone is acting. Maybe if I sang one of Granddaddy’s favorite songs, like Down in the Valley, that would get everyone’s attention. Mama says my singing calms anyone who listens, and calmness is what is needed. But when I open my mouth there’s no song there. I momentarily panic. I’ve never had music abandon me like this, and somehow this feels more alarming than what’s happening between Mama and our family.

  “We can talk about this later, whenever you want,” Mama announces. “But right now I have somewhere I need to be.” Then she motions for me to follow her and we leave Uncle Daniel’s house. She has a speed to her step that she seldom has. I even have to run to catch up. I don’t have to ask where we’re going.

  Within minutes, Mama knocks on Miss Blackstone’s door. She opens it with a cautious smile. I imagine we are unexpected, in an expected kind of way, in that we were bound to show up eventually. We take off our coats and Miss Blackstone leads us into the living room where packing boxes are stacked.

  “You going somewhere?” Mama asks her.

  “Got to find work,” she says, in a matter-of-fact way.

  “Were you going to tell me?” Mama asks, her eyes wild and full of instant tears.

  They sit on a light green sofa together, and I sit in an armchair to the side with soft cushions that are the same light green. Though I’m sitting still, Mama’s tears make me want to squirm out the door. She tells Miss Blackstone what just happened at Uncle Daniel and Aunt Jo’s. When she hears the story, the tenderness on Miss Blackstone’s face makes me look away. But I am relieved that Mama has someone to rely on besides me.

  A clock ticks on the fireplace mantle. A table with a lamp sits nearby with a few neatly stacked books. For some reason, I imagined Miss Blackstone read textbooks, not poetry and novels. Sometimes, I wish Miss Blackstone was still my teacher. It’s because of her that I graduated elementary school a year early. My high school English teacher doesn’t take an interest in me the way she did. But now I wonder if Miss Blackstone’s interest was because of Mama and not me.

  The north facing road that stretches between Katy’s Ridge and Rocky Bluff stays icy longer than the main roads, so I won’t be expected to return to school for another day or two. I am a sophomore this year and wonder if the gossip will reach the high school by the time I return.

  “We’ll figure this out,” Miss Blackstone tells Mama, when her tears finally slow to a stop.

  “Lily, can you give us a minute?” Miss Blackstone asks.

  I stand and look around. I have no idea where to go or what to do to give them a minute.

  “Maybe you could put the kettle on the stove so we can have some hot tea,” she says. “You can close the kitchen door if you want.”

  When I call her Miss Blackstone, she says to call her Bee, but I don’t see that happening any time soon, if at all. I walk into the kitchen and find the empty tea kettle already sitting on the stove. I fill it with water and turn on the electric stove eye with a simple click. Granny’s old one uses gas and we have to light it with matches. I wish Granny could see this one. It looks brand new. Not that she sees any use in new things when the old ones still work.

  The voices from the living room are muffled, but Mama still sounds upset. I busy myself with looking through the cabinets for teacups and saucers and set out three sets. I remember Melody Monroe offering me tea in the tiny cabin. A civilized thing to do in such poor surroundings. I find a box of Lipton tea bags and drop a tea bag into each cup.

  After a while the tea kettle rattles and then sings and I turn it off, realizing the voices in the living room are now quiet. Moments later, the kitchen door opens and Mama and Miss Blackstone come inside.

  “We need to talk to you,” Mama says. Her tears have passed, but her eyes are still red.

  Miss Blackstone pours hot water in the teacups and covers each with a saucer. She tells me I did a good job putting the kettle on, and I am surprised by how much this means to me. It is strange to touch her things and see her and Mama together now that I know about them. But it is a strangeness that I am willing to get used to. Miss Blackstone brings a chair from her bedroom to put at the end of the table that only seats two people.

  “Join us,” she says.

  We doctor our tea with sugar and milk, me imitating Miss Blackstone’s motions. Then it is Mama who starts talking.

  “How would you feel about moving to Nashville?” she asks me.

  I stop stirring my tea. Have I misheard? I look at them and wonder if this is what it’s like to be thunderstruck. How is it that just when I decide to stay in Katy’s Ridge and possibly settle down with Crow, I am presented with the one thing I’ve dreamed about for years?

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bsp; When I don’t answer, Mama repeats her question, and I wonder if I’ve lost my speaking voice, as well as my singing. Nashville is an hour and a half away, almost in the center of the state. It’s the capital of Tennessee. Compared to the tiny hamlet of Katy’s Ridge, it’s the entire Roman Empire.

  “I lived in Nashville for a couple of years and already know some people there,” Miss Blackstone says.

  “That’s where the Grand Ole Opry is, too,” Mama says, in case I’ve lost my mind and don’t remember.

  Granny listens to the Opry every Saturday night. I listen, too, whenever there are female singers on like Kitty Wells or Mother Maybelle Carter and the Carter Sisters. Granny says I sing as well as they do, but grandmothers are supposed to say things like that.

  “Lily, are you okay?” Mama asks, her expression serious.

  “I don’t know what to say,” I answer, which is the truth.

  A look passes between Mama and Miss Blackstone. “I thought you’d be overjoyed,” Mama says. “I’ve known you wanted to leave Katy’s Ridge ever since you started keeping a road atlas under the mattress.”

  Miss Blackstone laughs and asks, “Is that true?”

  Mama says it is. But I don’t feel like joining in their laughter. How do I tell Mama that all my dreams have died and been buried along with the knowledge that I am the daughter of a snake? Someone who didn’t give her a choice. How do I tell her that if the world were a better place, I wouldn’t even be here? No wonder I haven’t felt like singing for weeks. For all I know I may have lost my voice forever. Someone like me doesn’t belong in front of an audience, singing all over the world. I deserve much smaller things. I deserve to stay here with all the ghosts.

  Mama tries to act excited about the possible move, but I can tell this is hard for her. She probably thought she’d be staying in Katy’s Ridge the rest of her life. I was the one who was going to fly the nest as soon as I figured out how to grow wings.

  “Can I think about it?” I say. It surprises me that I’ve not already packed my suitcase. It evidently surprises Mama, too.

  “Of course,” Mama says.