by Joyce Meyer
“Maybe she doesn’t think it matters if anybody sees her,” Mrs. Patterson said.
“Well, of course it matters. Why else doesn’t she talk to anybody about it? Why else doesn’t she put a marker on that grave? I tell you, everyone says it’s the most unsettling thing, seeing her kneeling in the dirt there and not knowing who on earth she’s having a visit with.”
“Well,” Mrs. Patterson commented drily. “It isn’t anybody on earth, is it? It’s someone in the earth.”
“Yes, Lily.” An exasperated humph. “I stand corrected. In the earth. It’s obviously a grave, you know. It’s a mound like all the others.”
“Is it easy to find?” Mrs. Patterson asked. “After hearing all the gossip, I’d like to go take a look at it sometime.”
“It’s down at the cemetery beside Lafayette Park. Beside the church where she goes. It’s the plot just past the huge cedars there.”
“Have you been to see it, Mona?”
“Me? No. I’m just telling you what I’ve heard. Why would I go down there and be a busybody? I’m certainly not going to go prying into other people’s business. This much I know, though. She may be one fashionable woman, Lily—she may wear her white gloves to every important function and she may drive a car better than the one belonging to the mayor of St. Louis—but I tell you, there’s more to that woman than meets the eye. She keeps too much to herself. I don’t blame anybody who wants to avoid her.”
I flicked the button and hung up the receiver. Miss Mona’s words echoed in my ears. Maybe I butted heads with Miss Shaw in her jewelry shop and tried to give her reasons to fire me, but it infuriated me to hear these women going on when they didn’t have any idea what they were talking about.
I thought back to the time I’d given Miss Shaw the chance to set me straight. I’d taken her silence for denial: This graveyard gossip couldn’t be true. It made me plain mad, hearing these two whispering about nothing.
Daddy could punish me all he wanted for leaving. I knew just where I could go to disprove the gossipers.
The cemetery grounds stood groomed and quiet before me. Each tilting stone had its own shadow to cast, its own story to tell.
As I stood at the cemetery gate in the pretty neighborhood that bordered Lafayette Park, I thought about how certain I was that I wouldn’t find the grave Miss Mona described over the party line. I might constantly try Miss Shaw’s patience in the jewelry shop, but she never gave up on me. Miss Shaw’s steady, unswerving faith in what I could do left me with a growing, grudging respect for her.
I needed Miss Shaw to be the person she had shown herself to be, not the person I heard everyone else describing.
When I finally worked up my nerve, the gate swung open easily on well-oiled hinges. I stepped inside and made my way along a stone path. The remnants of a fish pond, where once a small hollow of water must have stood and fish must have risen to feed in the bubbles, had decayed into a chipped, hollow basin. A yellowed marble statue of a shepherd boy stood with his arms gesturing to the sky.
Oh, how I wanted to trust Miss Shaw. Oh, how I didn’t want her to be hiding anything from me.
The farther I walked without finding anything suspicious, the more confident I became. And the more confident I became, the higher my heart began to lift. Until I spotted the open stretch of earth beyond two tall cedars in the distance. Then my pulse started to hammer in my throat. With one more step, I saw a plot with no ornamentation, no marker. This might have been the corner of any park, where a family would picnic, a child would play, except for the way this one square of earth had been mounded up and cleared of any leaves fluttering down. I knew then that I’d discovered something Miss Shaw wouldn’t want me to see. I couldn’t have been more certain if she had been there herself, leaning over it.
A grave site with no stone.
Maybe I can’t trust anything Miss Shaw has ever said to me. Maybe she didn’t tell me the truth about myself, either.
I have no idea how long I stood with my eyes locked on that spot of ground, my hands pressed to my stomach. I stood there until I lost track of time, until I could finally force air into my lungs again. I pictured myself in a Grace Kelly movie—not one I knew, but one that hadn’t been written yet. One directed by Alfred Hitchcock in which some horrible fiend was chasing Grace and she staggered against the wall in fright. Any minute, Cary Grant or Gary Cooper would swing her into his arms and shake her and say he’d come to save her, but she would wrench away. She would stand as straight as a lightning rod and lift her chin at him the same stately way I lifted mine, and she would say something sophisticated in her practiced, melodic voice.
I began to wander mindlessly, uncertain where to go. I left the cemetery and wandered the width of Lafayette Square, past rows of three-story houses, one of which had to be Miss Shaw’s. I kept right on going. I didn’t change direction or figure out where I was headed until I crossed Chouteau Street.
That’s when I began to walk in the direction of the Ville. I felt as drawn to the Crocketts’ house as shavings are drawn to a magnet. But where I’d once felt at ease roaming the Ville with Aurelia, I now felt like an interloper. On a street that had once seemed to pour its life out on me, I felt like anything I touched would dissipate into dust. I had given up my right to be here.
Yet here I was.
Aurelia’s neighborhood seemed to crank to life the moment I stepped into it. Ahead of me a tabby cat with a cockeyed tail crossed the street at an angle. From an open window, I could hear a record player skipping over a song by Mamie Smith, one of those women who sang so strong, Eddie Crockett said the town musicians called them lung busters. A lone figure turned and swung a broom handle—a little boy not much bigger than Garland, who kept pitching a bottle cap caked with dirt into the air and aiming to slam it.
Still, the silence troubled me. Not silence, exactly, but the absence of the one sound that I loved above all others. The sound of Aurelia’s daddy wailing on his horn from the second-story windowsill like nobody’s business.
I rounded the front of the Crocketts’ flat, my heart feeling like it was going to rattle out of my chest from misery. I peered up at Eddie’s window, noticing how empty and sad it looked. And while I was staring upstairs, I missed seeing him sitting right there on the front stoop.
“You gone and missed Garland’s birthday party,” he said, like I’d stopped by not three hours before.
That moment—seeing him there on the stoop—was the first time I understood that something doesn’t disappear when you push it away. It waits for you, and eventually, when it beckons, you’ve got to go back to it.
Eddie Crockett wasn’t holding a horn, but the fingers on his left hand kept moving just the same, rippling over invisible keys.
“They all went over to the Y to go swimming.” When he spoke I felt like he shined on me, like the sun had suddenly moved out from behind a cloud.
“I’m too scared to see Aurelia,” I blurted out. I hadn’t known I was going to cry; I think Mr. Crockett saw it before I did.
“Baby girl,” he invited me in a voice as warm as coffee and as rich as alderwood, and I went to him. He held me the way I’d always dreamed a father would hold me, safe against the front of his shirt while I clung to his collar and cried on his buttons. He held me tight with one massive fist pinned against my shoulder, rapping me with his knuckles for comfort. His empty shirt sleeve dangled at his side, ending in a thick knot.
“I’m s-sorry,” I said with my teeth clenched, tears soaking his pocket, my nose starting to run. “I . . . I . . . can’t . . .” I shook my head at him through my tears. “My sister is gone, and there isn’t anybody . . .”
“Baby girl,” he said, while I cried for myself and for Eddie Crockett’s music and for Aurelia and because I didn’t know if my mama or daddy ever really loved me. “I don’t know what you been doing.”
And Eddie Crockett, with his wounded arm, said, “Have you forgotten that there’s just hurts you got to give over to t
he Lord, child? Because if you don’t figure out how to do that, a body bigger than the whole world still won’t be big enough to hold it all in.”
Chapter Seventeen
I thought the first day of school would never get here. Now that the morning had arrived, the rubbery smell of my new book satchel filled the air as I stood on the front steps, watching the buses pull up. I waited for Aurelia, terrified that she wouldn’t talk to me.
When I laid eyes on the low-slung building that morning, it seemed to have diminished in size. The grass in the schoolyard poked up in patches as iffy as fur on a mangy dog. Summer flowers that still bloomed in clumps beside the flagpole would be trampled by our horseplay within three days’ time.
One new portable building had been set beside the others, its aluminum glinting bright beside the more weathered ones. A teacher stood on a chair outside her portable classroom, washing windows.
I saw the roof of the Ville bus coming as it slid behind the fence that separated our sidewalk from the long row of multiple-family dwellings behind it. I heard the engine shuddering as the bright egg-yolk-colored bus swayed stiffly around the turn. The monstrous flat face of it aimed straight at me with its grinning chrome grill, the headlamps like two colorless, knowing eyes.
The fender was about to swing up over the curb when the bus driver honked at me to get out of the way. I jumped two steps back, stumbled up over a third. For a few breathless seconds, the bus idled without opening its doors.
I was still waiting for the Ville kids to unload from the bus when Rosalyn and Cindy came from the opposite direction and shoved their way past me.
“What’s the matter, Jenny?” Rosalyn said, low enough so only I could hear. “You waiting for the rest of your class to get here? Heard you’re wanting to go to school in the portables this year. Heard the only friends you have go to class in those buildings.”
It would have been the perfect chance to haul off and belt Rosalyn with my satchel. But the bus doors pleated open and the Ville students started hopping off. They didn’t jostle me the way Rosalyn had done. Their tight-knit groups parted respectfully around me, giving me a wide berth, although they didn’t make any sign of noticing I was there.
“Aurelia?” I looked everywhere for her, but she wasn’t there.
The driver leaned forward and tipped his hat to me. “You waiting for Aurelia Crockett to get off this bus, you going to be standing here all day. Darnell bought himself a car, and they be arriving to school in style.”
No sooner had he said that then a black rattletrap Ford pulled up behind the bus. Daddy’s favorite saying about Fords came to mind: F.O.R.D. Found on Road Dead. I could see Garland’s nose pressed against the glass. When the door opened and Aurelia climbed out, she looked first-rate.
She wore a pair of new Buster Brown saddle shoes and a skirt I recognized from last year, only her aunt must have sewn trim on it because it had a ribbon now that dressed it up. She wore her hair slicked down with gel and a white plastic bandeau. Aunt Maureen hadn’t let her wear gel in her hair before. She wore a necklace of white beads as big around as Superman marbles.
Aurelia made a fine fashion statement, which is what everybody tried to do on the first day of school.
“Well, woo woo,” I said, desperate to make her glance in my direction. “Don’t you look nice?”
“Come on, Garland,” she said. “We don’t got all day for you to be scared about school. You take ahold of my hand now.”
I remembered that Garland’s birthday had come and gone. He must be starting kindergarten in the portables with the rest of them.
When Garland saw me standing on the steps, he wrenched loose of Aurelia’s hand and ran over.
“Miss Jenny,” he said, lifting his palm up so I could see what was in it. “Look what I brought to the first day of school.” He unclenched small, sweaty fingers and showed me the penny in his hand.
“That the one I think it is?”
“The same one I picked up the day you went to church with us,” he said. “You saved yours. I saved mine, too. You remember?”
“Yep, I do. I remember lots of things.”
But Garland must have caught me looking at it like I had no faith in it anymore. He tightened his grip around his penny again and shoved it inside his pocket.
“I brought it because this is my first real day of school,” he insisted. “I wanted to have it with me after everything you said.”
My reply sounded empty even to me. “Well, good. You hold on to it now.” I raised my gaze to see Darnell behind the wheel, his arm extended across the front seat, watching us.
“You save up your box money for that car?” I asked, trying with everything I could to be friendly and erase the disapproval in his eyes.
I’d forgotten that Darnell wouldn’t be coming to our school this year. I’d have no chance to redeem myself with him. After he dropped these two off, he was moving up to high school.
“Hey.” He said the word sharp, meaning he wanted to talk to Aurelia and not me. “You going to be okay?”
“You get on out of here,” Aurelia hollered, waving him off. “You’re going to be late like the rest of us.” Then: “Garland, come on.” When Aurelia reached for Garland’s hand again, she made a point of not meeting my eyes. She gave me plenty of space, just the same as everybody else.
“I saw your daddy,” I said.
Long ago, when I’d tried to revive that redbird, I had held it in my grasp and rolled drops of water down its face, trying to make it move again. Instead it lay against my skin with its eyes clenched shut, its body dry and stiff. Aurelia’s voice held the same dryness, the same stiffness, when she spoke now.
“I know. He said you came over. Seems funny you feel like you can walk into my house any time you want to, but when I want to bring news over to your place, I got no right.”
“You should have called, maybe.”
“See, that’s what I mean. Come on, Garland. We got to go.”
All this time, I’d been picturing how I’d keep Aurelia arguing and eventually I’d wear her down. I’d bring her around to my way of thinking. But what I hadn’t imagined was the way it would wrench me inside, like I was falling down a well and there was nothing to stop me at the bottom, seeing Aurelia so hurt.
Once, I’d peered into a church window made to look like a dove’s wing. Once, I’d thought Jesus could be more than just a doe-eyed picture I’d seen hanging in that foyer at Antioch Baptist Church on my way in. I’d seen the image of wheat in the window, a shape that pointed me to the wheat on the copper penny I held tight beneath my thumb. When I’d listened to Aurelia’s preacher, I’d thought Jesus would come out swinging and throwing punches and wrestling the devil to the ground on my behalf.
But I’d given Jesus plenty of time to prove himself just the way that preacher said he’d do. As far as I could tell, Jesus had never even gotten started.
What difference did a penny make when I kept hurting everybody I loved this way?
“Go ahead.” She made me so frustrated, I wanted to shout, You ever think there might be a reason I did what I did? But it was easier to hide behind being irate. “I sure don’t care.”
I saw her lay her hand against Garland’s shoulder to hurry him along.
“That’s right,” I said louder. “You go on inside.”
I saw Garland’s head twist, saw his dark eyes search for my own. I narrowed my brows and glared fiercely at him. That was the last thing I needed, some little kid making me feel bad. Which doubled my aggravation, remembering how Garland had shown the penny to me in his sweaty palm. Now that I sneered at him, he scurried to his cousin’s skirt in fear.
Darnell still hadn’t driven away from the curb. Aurelia ignored me, but Darnell didn’t. I saw him reach for his car handle. Any second he would unfold himself from behind the steering wheel of his rattletrap and come after me.
“You bothering my cousin for kicks? You don’t talk to her, you hear me?”
“
Aren’t you supposed to be somewhere, Darnell?” I said with my fists half clenched at my sides. “You don’t scare me.”
“You mess with my cousin—” Darnell revved the engine on the Ford and from the way it clanked beneath the hood, it sounded like it was about to fall out. I saw him spit out the window and knew good and well what that meant. I’d seen him spit plenty when we’d arm wrestled in the Ville. He spat when he got mad. Darnell uttered the words just the same as when my elbow was planted on the porch table and he had my fingers in a vise and he thought he could slam my wrist down easy. “You’re declaring a war you can’t win.”
“Too bad.”
“You hurt her good.”
“Well, maybe it’s her own fault for letting herself get hurt by the breeze blowing the wrong way.”
When Aurelia finally piped up behind me, her voice sounded as thin as a reed on the Blue Notes’ oboe, ready to snap.
“Stop it, both of you! You’re scaring Garland. He don’t know what to think, the two of you talking that way.”
Darnell spat again.
“Darnell,” Aurelia said. “Go on.”
Class must have already started. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I thought I remembered hearing the bell ring. The doors to the portables had been firmly latched. Aurelia struggled with the unwieldy screen and managed to get somebody to unlock the door. She stuffed Garland inside, her backbone set straight as one of those broom handles they used to play games in the street.
“You said you were my friend,” I accused, “but I guess it’s plain you don’t care that much about me,” which made Aurelia wheel on me so fast that I got dizzy.
“You expecting me to say you’re right so you can feel good about yourself? Well, you’re expecting wrong.”