by Lisa Wingate
But none of this was good. Nothing so painful could possibly be good. I closed my eyes and let sleep take me for a while.
When I woke, everything passed in a fog. The talk with the doctor, the paperwork for the billing, waiting forever to finally be discharged, the nurse helping me into a wheelchair, Tam picking me up in her car, Dell saying she’d go get some food and bring it over to the house—it all felt like it wasn’t real. Even the drive home seemed to be happening to somebody else. We passed the church and the Summer Kitchen. I thought about the reading class, but it didn’t matter anymore.
I wondered where Sesay was now. I remembered chasing her away from my house.
Was she the one who went for help? Was it her, or was it Benjamin?
I let my head fall against the window, imagining how scared the boys must of been. What might of happened to them if I’d passed out sooner? What might of happened to me if I’d lain there until morning? You’re a lucky girl, the doctor’d said. An ectopic pregnancy can lead to a fatal hemorrhage.
Lucky.
I watched the church pass by. Teddy was outside with Pastor Al, trimming rosebushes in the memorial garden.
Memorial . . . I wanted a memorial for my baby girl. Nobody would understand that.
She wasn’t really a baby. She never was meant to be. She was only a dream I had.
“You okay?” Tam asked softly.
I shook my head, asked, “Who called the paramedics?”
“Sesay went to Elsie’s house for help. Benjamin let them in the door. You would have been proud of him. He kept his little brother calm and helped the paramedics find your information in your purse. He was a real little man.”
“Benji.” Pride and pain mixed inside me until I didn’t know how to feel. My son was taking care of me when I should of been taking care of him. “Who’s with the boys now?”
Tam glanced sideways with a half smile. “Elsie and Aunt Lute . . . oh, and Barbie. Now, there’s a combination. Barbie left the kids home with my dad. That’s a first, too.”
The night came back to me. I remembered what I’d discovered right before I heard Sesay outside the window. “I saw you and your father on the Internet. There was an article about Householders.” From the corner of my eye, I saw Tam stiffen. I didn’t even turn toward her. I didn’t want to.
“I know. The article was on your coffee table.” Her voice was flat, hard to read. “I should have told you sooner. I’m sorry.”
A laugh pushed past my lips. It tasted bitter. If she knew I’d found out the truth, then why was she here? Why were we still pretending? “I thought you were my friend.”
She pulled away like I’d slapped her. “I am your friend.”
“Yeah, right,” I spat. “What does it matter now, anyway? What’s done is done.” I wanted to hurt somebody. I wanted to hurt her. “Y’all can just move back to wherever you came from—go play tennis and do whatever you people do.”
She leaned forward over the steering wheel, tried to see my face. I felt her watching me as we turned onto Red Bird Lane. “It’s not like that, Shasta. I know that’s maybe what you think, but it’s not like that. Barbie and I talked to my father for a long time yesterday. I took him by the Broadberry Mission. I wanted him to see where some of the families from this neighborhood were ending up. I really don’t think he knew what kind of damage Householders was doing. But he understands now. He watched his own family bottom out when he was nine years old. He knows what that feels like. He wants to help make things right here in Blue Sky Hill, and he has some ideas. There are ways to work against Householders—a class-action suit about the predatory nature of the loans, for one thing. Dad knows some lawyers who lost money with Rosburten, and they might be interested in exacting a little revenge. But lawsuits require time, and even if you win, that only takes care of Householders. While you’re tied up in court, they can sell their assets off to another developer, and the same thing happens all over again. But you can—”
“What does it matter now?” I turned further away, curled into the space between the seat and the door. My stomach ached. My heart ached. I was hurting everywhere.
“Come on, Shasta. It matters, and you know it. My dad said that in the past, Rosburten had some development projects stopped cold by neighborhood associations. You get a big group of property owners and community members together, and organize and form a coalition. The coalition looks after the interests of the neighborhood. They oppose bad projects and support projects that are good for the neighborhood. If the coalition is vocal enough to the press and to city council members, they can make it almost impossible for developers to get the approvals they need at city hall. City council members are elected, for one thing. Public opinion counts. If it looks like they’re supporting development corporations at the expense of the people . . . well, like I said, they have elections to worry about.”
I didn’t answer, just watched the creek pass by as Tam’s car pulled up to the curb in front of my house.
“We can talk about it later.” She put the Escalade in park, then reached over and popped my seat belt. “When you’re feeling better.”
I’ll never be feeling better. This will never get better. . . .
I turned, and Mama’s car was in the driveway. She and Jace were on the porch before Tam and I could make our way there. Jace smiled, kissed me on the cheek, and whispered, “Hey, sis.”
Mama shook her head and spread her hands wide, and without even meaning to, I fell into her arms, just the way I had with a hundred skinned knees and hard knocks and broken hearts before. In spite of all the ways we drove each other crazy, I should of known that Mama would always be there to patch me up. “Shasta Marie,” she whispered against my ear. “Why didn’t you call me? What in the world am I gonna do with you?”
I shook my head, blubbering on her shoulder like a little kid. Mama just patted my back, and rocked me from side to side, and whispered, “Ssshhh, now, don’t cry, baby girl. Don’t cry. It’s gonna be all right. Mama’s here.”
By the time I finally got my head together, I’d soaked her shirt clean through, and Dell was back with a box of fried chicken from the grocery store. She handed it to my brother, and he kissed her, and they looked at each other like they’d forgotten there was anyone else within a mile.
Mama put her arm around me, and we walked through the door. Except for a LEGO tower on the coffee table, the living room was spotless as could be. Someone’d finished hanging the Choctaw baby quilt on the red wall, and laid a woven blanket over the torn spot in the back of the sofa, and put a vase of cut flowers on one of the end tables. Hollyhocks from the backyard. The room looked beautiful.
I stared at it with my mouth hanging open, wondering if I was still back in the hospital, dreaming. This wasn’t my house. My house was a disaster area.
Tam gave me a private little smile, and from the sofa, Barbie winked. Beside her, Elsie nodded and Aunt Lute put two thumbs up. For some reason, her thumbs were baby blue and spring green.
Mama took my purse and set it on the back of Cody’s favorite chair. “You want to lie down in your bed, or sit here awhile?” she asked, fussing over a wrinkle in the neck of my shirt and smoothing my hair behind my shoulder. “I could fix you a little cocoa, or some tea.”
“I don’t want anything.” I forced what I hoped looked like a smile. “Thanks for coming, Mama.”
“Where else would I be?” That sounded more like Mama. Inside that sentence, like the filling in a burrito, was, Why didn’t you tell me about this house, Shasta Marie?
I turned toward the sofa, toward Barbie, Aunt Lute, Elsie, and Tam, to keep from looking at Mama. “Thanks for helping me last night. Thanks for looking after the boys.”
Elsie batted a hand. “Why, a’course. You’re my neighbor, after all, and my teacher. Who’s gonna teach me if you’re laid up?”
“The little knights have gone to the land of Nod for a nap, I’m afraid,” Aunt Lute chimed in, with a flourish toward the hall. The b
oys’ door was closed. “They had a long night last night.”
I felt my chin tremble with leftover emotions. My boys. This house would only have two boys in it, at least for now, but I was so lucky they were here. Some people wanted babies and never got them at all. “I need to see the boys, okay?”
I started toward the hall, and Mama followed, catching up and holding me around the waist, like I shouldn’t make the trip on my own. “Cody called,” she said quietly. “He’s flying home.”
I bit my lip, stopping next to a grouping of family pictures that had magically found their way onto the wall. I glanced back toward the living room, and everyone was clustered around the sofa, watching me look at the photos. While Dell was at the hospital waiting with me and helping me slog through all the paperwork, Tam must of come home and gotten everybody busy on fixing up the place, so I wouldn’t be embarrassed when Mama got here. Only real friends would do that for you.
Mama didn’t have a clue about all that, of course. “Cody wants you to call him back,” she said. “As soon as you feel up to it.”
“Is Cody mad?” I scratched my forehead, wishing I could claw through to my brain and root out all the worries racing through it.
Mama sidestepped and held me by both shoulders. “Mad about what? He just wanted to know that you’re all right. That boy loves you, Shasta Marie.”
“I know.” Of course Cody loved me. Nobody’d ever loved me like Cody did. I didn’t deserve that love. I wasn’t honest with it. “But I did it on purpose, Mama. I meant to get pregnant. Cody said he didn’t want—”
Mama lifted a finger and pressed it to my lips. Her jaw went stiff, and she shook her head. “Don’t,” she said, and I felt a twinge in my heart. “That’s your private business. Yours and Cody’s. You need to talk about it with him. You’re a grown woman, Shasta Marie.”
You’re a grown woman. . . . I looked into my mama’s eyes, and I felt the two of us turning a corner. “I guess I am,” I whispered, and we started down the hall again, Mama wrapping her arm around me, and me resting my head on her shoulder. Grown or not, I felt good having her here. Sometimes you need your mama, no matter how old you are. “I didn’t think I’d ever hear you say it, though.”
Mama laid her head over on mine. “We’re all growing up a little, I guess. Just remember we’re here when you need us, all right? You and Cody don’t have to do everything on your own.”
“I know.”
“Guess you heard that you’re going to have a new sister-in-law,” she said. I nodded, and she ponytailed my hair between her fingers. “You and Cody and the boys are coming home for the wedding, no matter what. You hear me?”
“We will.” When Mama took that tone, I knew better than to argue.
She gave my shoulder a squeeze. “See? I can still boss you around when I need to.”
I nodded, swiping my eyes with my fingertips. I wanted to tell her how good it felt to have her with me, but I couldn’t. Sentimental words didn’t come easy between Mama and me. “I know you can. I probably need it.”
“Oh, shush.” Mama wouldn’t stand for anybody criticizing her baby girl, even me. I realized we’d made it to the end of the hall and were stalled out in front of the boys’ door. “I love what you’ve done with this house,” she said, and I felt myself swelling inside. “I can’t wait to see the boys’ room.” She reached for the door handle, and I cringed. The boys’ room was a plaster disaster.
“I hadn’t quite gotten to . . .” The door creaked open, and I stopped in the middle of the sentence. Where there had been cracks and chips of missing plaster, and water stains in the paint, now the walls were alive with vines, and flowers, and thumbprint butterflies in all colors and sizes. In their beds, the boys were sound asleep, their rainbow-colored fingers splayed against the covers.
Above Benjamin’s bed, in the corner where the headboard had been pulled away from the wall, a little brown rabbit crouched among cane stalks, his coat so freshly painted it glistened, his small blue sweater and mittens perfectly matched to the storybook sitting on Benjamin’s night table. In case there was any question, underneath the painted rabbit, the name was written. P-E-t-E-r, in the careful, round print of someone who was new to letters, but who had put them there very carefully. Dangling from the boys’ bedposts, Sesay had left tiny carved rabbits as companions for little Peter.
“Seems like you’ve got some real nice neighbors here too—the way they took care of you and the boys last night,” Mama said quietly, and Benji stirred in his bed, then drifted off again.
“We do,” I agreed. “We really do.”
“Don’t get neighbors who look after each other, just everywhere in the big city,” Mama pointed out. “You and Cody found a nice little spot here.”
“It found us.” The darkness inside me lifted as I took in the boys’ newly painted room—the front bedroom of our first real house. The house where my dreams had changed, and I had changed. Without this place, without all the baggage that came with it—the neighbors, and the Summer Kitchen, and the challenges that were behind us and those still ahead of us—I wasn’t sure who I’d be. I wouldn’t be the person I was now. I wouldn’t be Shasta Marie Reid-Williams, who could paint, and fix plaster, and repair tiles, and teach someone to read, and build a life for her boys, and face the giants, if she had a mind to.
In spite of all that had gone wrong, or maybe because of it, Red Bird Lane had grown me in ways I never knew I could grow—taken away the little girl who was waiting for her daddy to come home and replaced her with a woman who could build a home of her own and keep the people she loved safe inside it.
It happened because of a house, but not just any house.
A special house.
The little yellow house where my family lived.
Chapter 34
Tam Lambert
The formative meeting of the Blue Sky Hill Neighborhood Coalition was held one week after Shasta came home from the hospital. The crowd of interested residents, business owners, and community activists filled the Summer Kitchen and spilled onto the porch, where Teddy and Pastor Al were handing out questionnaires and proposed bylaws.
My father, Barbie, and I drove over from Highland Park. My father had managed to move us into a house belonging to a friend who could afford to keep houses he wasn’t living in at the moment. Now that Dad was becoming the force that turned the tide in the growing corruption case surrounding Ross Burten and several city councilmen, Paul “the Postman” Lambert was an odd sort of folk hero—someone willing to speak out against the rampant executive greed and reckless speculation that had led to widespread economic meltdown. Overnight, the image makers and the spin doctors had redrawn my father, morphing him from an example of abuse of power into a symbol of repentance and retribution—an honest man who was willing to come forward, admit his mistakes, take his lumps, and help in the government’s efforts to unearth Ross Burten’s hidden millions, so that the money could be redistributed to his victims.
As quickly as a media image can be destroyed, it can be rebuilt, and Dad was rising from the ashes. As for Ross Burten, he’d fled to Europe, where he and his wife were reportedly living the high life in a comfortable chalet in Switzerland. His Swiss bank accounts would keep him well supplied for the long term. The future of Ross Burten’s other corporations, including Householders, was uncertain, but as my father addressed the crowd, he warned them that this was only a temporary reprieve.
“Rest assured that the properties in Householders’ cache represent valuable assets intended to come together as part of a future development plan,” he told the crowd, his gaze sweeping sternly from one side of the room to the other, taking in money-strapped residents from streets like Red Bird Lane and wealthy homeowners of historic estate properties on Blue Sky Hill. “This is an issue that affects all of you, regardless of location, or property value, or financial resources. If you want the neighborhood to resist an overabundance of new multifamily housing complexes and retain its historic lo
ok and character, then existing residents must take action while there is still time. There are numerous avenues through which current residents can retain a voice in how the area changes, and exert power over new development. In general, these processes begin with the formation of a neighborhood coalition of homeowners, small business owners, and groups with vested interests in the preservation and quality of life in the area. The coalition should be organized with a clear mission statement, governing officers and/or a council, and bylaws. Property owner signatures must be gathered on letters of support. Typically, this sort of effort begins with door-to-door footwork, but the results can be powerful. The neighborhood coalition can accomplish many things individual homeowners cannot, including petitioning to have the area declared a historic district, fighting zoning changes, soliciting press coverage, making the city planning and zoning commissions aware of residents’ interests and quality-of-life issues, such as lot sizes, traffic congestion, and other questions of environmental impact. Currently, Householders’ stake in the neighborhood is approximately twenty-five percent, so gathering the majority of the remaining independent property owners into one force is essential.”
Elsie half stood in her chair. “I’ll sure as heck do whatever it takes. My husband and I built our house with GI money when he came home from the war. Put our blood, sweat, and tears into it. The whole street was built by GIs. We all worked together to put up them homes, back when folks had some morals and neighbors looked out for one another. Somebody like Householders is gonna tear the place down over my dead body.”
“Edward’s father built our home,” Teddy’s mother, Hannah Beth, added from the back of the room, where she was leaning on a walker. “Blue Sky Hill had row after row of lovely old homes, and now we have condominiums right around the corner from us on Vista Street. Our daughter, Rebecca, and her husband are lawyers. They’ll help us draw up the legal paperwork for this coalition. They’ll pitch in any way they can.”