Undercurrents

by Mary Anna Evans

  “I met Armand today,” Faye said. “He seems nice. Charming, certainly.”

  “Well, he was fussing from the time I picked up the phone ’cause he had to clean his own restaurant his own self. It shut him up when I told him what happened. He took on pretty bad when he heard about Frida. He said not to worry about her paycheck, nor the next one. Said he’d clean the place personally all the rest of the month, just so’s he could afford to send me Frida’s whole check. One last time.”

  They all sat silent for a moment, then Sylvia put her hand on Laneer’s. “People can be kind, sometimes.”

  “Yeah, sometimes.” Laneer passed around the coffee cups, managing to control his jittering right hand long enough to pour Sylvia’s coffee.

  “This china is so pretty!” Faye said, holding her own cup and saucer up to the light. Garlands of pink roses encircled both pieces.

  “My mama painted it, long time ago.”

  He set out another china cup and filled it with a little coffee and a lot of milk. A lot of sugar, too.

  “Kali! I made you some coffee the way you like it, and it’s in your favorite cup. Come drink it with us.” The little girl’s cup was as pretty as Faye’s cup, only the roses were yellow. A single red rose bloomed on the side of the cup he’d handed to Sylvia.

  Laneer had pulled two dun-brown mugs out of a yellow-painted kitchen cabinet for Walt and for himself. Faye felt self-conscious drinking out of her beautiful cup when her host’s mug was dull and chipped, but she would have felt even more self-conscious if she’d insisted that he or Walt take it, calling attention to the fact that he didn’t have enough of his special china to go around.

  Faye’s grandmother had always said that nice china was meant to be used. Faye could hear her voice proclaiming, “Life is worth celebrating. Good china makes things taste better.” Taking a sip of her coffee, Faye decided that her grandmother was right. She raised it as if toasting Laneer and said, “This is delicious. Thank you.”

  Sylvia turned her eyes to Kali’s closed door. “She ain’t said a word since you left. Ain’t ate a thing, nor drunk anything.” Sneaking another spoon of sugar into the little girl’s coffee, she called out, “Kali, come on! We made your coffee the way you like it, and it’s getting cold.”

  “I miss my girl talking to me,” Laneer said. “We’ve been buddies since she was a little bitty thing. She talked to you, Faye. Why’d she want to talk to you but not to me? She don’t even know you.”

  “Don’t matter why,” Sylvia said crisply. “The only thing that matters is Kali and making sure she’s happy. If she likes Faye, you can make coffee for Faye every day of the week and you can be happy about it. I’ll bring the Milk Duds.”

  Pretending that she didn’t see the silent Kali as she slipped through a barely open door, Sylvia reached deep into her apron pocket and pulled out a yellow box. Laying a napkin on the table, she dumped out the contents of the box. Hard brown balls hit the napkin-cushioned table with a clatter. “Dig in!”

  “Lots of people are doing nice things for you, sweetheart,” Sylvia said, patting the seat of the chair next to her and setting Kali’s coffee cup in front of it. “Your Uncle Laneer gave you permission to go to The Peabody Hotel to have tea with Miss Faye, and he made you a nice cup of coffee. Take a good long drink. And Mr. Walker here brought you a backpack full of food like you usually have to walk a long way to get. These people are real nice to you, don’t you think?”

  Kali didn’t respond, but a little hand shot out and grabbed a handful of candy. Faye could see that Laneer had already told her about Faye and her invitation to afternoon tea, because she was wearing a dress. It was orange knit, printed with gray elephants, and the juvenile fabric was subtly wrong on her. Kali was still a little girl, but she was standing at the edge of the gulf between child and woman. Already, the childish elephants on this dress, which would have been adorable just a few months before, made her look awkward and unsure.

  “Would ya look at that?” Laneer said, squinting at the candy going into her mouth. “She ain’t opened her mouth for nothing, not for talking and not for food, since her mama….not since yesterday. But she’s eating now.”

  Kali chewed her Milk Duds, but she didn’t look up from Laneer’s bright red tablecloth, not even when Walt started to speak.

  “It’s me, Kali. Mr. Walker. Your teacher. You talked to me every day, all school year long. Won’t you even look at me?”

  “Neither one of you is asking the child what she wants. This ain’t about you,” said Sylvia. “Do you want to talk to us, honey?”

  There was no answer. To be fair, Faye noticed that the girl’s jaws were glued together by firm, sticky caramel.

  “You do what you’re gonna to do, Kali. You don’t have to do any talking,” Sylvia said, catching the other adults’ eyes in a signal that they should ignore the girl. Without looking at the Milk Duds or at Kali, she used her left hand to shove a few duds in the child’s direction. “Us grown-ups can talk to each other. Faye, why don’t you tell us about what kind of stuff you’re digging for?”

  So Faye did.

  Kali avoided Faye’s eyes as she spoke, focusing instead on unloading the backpack Walt had handed her. Faye was under no illusion that the man had gone to the playground on a Saturday and loaded up a backpack. Unless he had a key to the food storage closet and the refrigerator, it would have been impossible. He’d bought that backpack and packed it himself, no small gift for a man living on a teacher’s salary.

  Kali was unloading a lot of things from the stuffed backpack, and it didn’t all look like food people gave away for free to keep children healthy and alive. There was yogurt and granola in there, it was true, but there were little toys and cupcakes, too, even a set of colorful plastic barrettes.

  Everybody but Kali seemed interested in hearing about the archaeology Faye was doing in their very own neighborhood. Since she knew Kali was listening, she ramped up the drama in her monologue, doing her best to make the long-ago discovery of a mammoth’s skeleton in a Memphis creek the most exciting story she’d ever told. She got no response, other than the sounds of smacking lips and small teeth gnawing on hard caramel.

  As Faye came to the dramatic conclusion—“And now the skeleton is on display at the museum, where anybody can see it!”—Kali was ready to speak. She must not have been remotely interested in Faye’s exciting but nerdy stories, because she interrupted, speaking right on top of the fascinating mammoth skeleton story.

  “I’m going outside. Wanna come?”

  Kali walked out the back door and let it slam behind her. Faye took advantage of the absence of little ears to say, “I’ll be at the funeral tomorrow. I’m giving my crew time off, because I know Jeremiah and Richard will want to come.”

  Then she checked her watch. She and Kali had time to take a short walk before leaving for the Peabody. Her instincts told her to do whatever the girl wanted her to do, even if it meant missing tea. According to Sylvia and Laneer, the handful of words Kali had just used—“I’m going outside. Wanna come?” were the only words she’d spoken since she last saw Faye, and a full day had passed since then.

  Why did Kali respond so well to a stranger? Maybe it was simply because Sylvia was old enough to be her grandmother and Laneer could have been her great-grandfather. Kali had lost her mother, and Faye had experience in that area—having lost her own mother—but Faye suspected that her bond with Kali went beyond being bereaved daughters. Faye was a mother, and she supposed it showed.

  Kali led Faye out Laneer’s back door and to the back of his deep, narrow yard. The back gate opened onto the bank of the creek.

  Land on the opposite side of the creek belonged to the state park, as far as the eye could see, and Faye knew that a well-marked trail wound in and out of the wooded parkland. She and Kali had nothing to follow on their side of the creek but a faint path that wandered through scrub
by underbrush. It wasn’t much of a path, but it stuck to higher, drier spots, keeping Faye’s semi-nice sandals from most of the mud. Maybe the path had been worn by Kali’s small feet.

  Walking would have been easier on the other side of the creek, where the park’s trails ran along the edge of a bluff, but the creek was deeper here. Kali didn’t even seem tempted to wade across it and scale the bluff. Instead, she followed the faint path that she had walked so many times, picking her way downstream toward her own home.

  When Faye had begun to think that Kali would never speak, she spoke.

  “It’s hot, but it’s still nice out here by the water. Didn’t think I could stand sitting in that house one more minute. Uncle Laneer likes to listen to the gospel station. Plays it from getting up to going to bed. It’s like living in a church. Which I guess is better than living in a bar with music that’s just as loud, but still.”

  Faye laughed, but she wondered how Kali knew what a bar sounded like. She decided to take the risk of going straight to a tough subject. She thought the girl would respect her for not beating around the bush.

  “Your Uncle Laneer and Sylvia tell me you haven’t said a word to them since I left yesterday. How come you’re talking to me now?”

  Faye counted how many steps she took before Kali spoke. It was seventeen.

  “Want me to stop talking again? I know how to shut up, you know.”

  “I do know that, and no, I don’t want you to shut up.”

  “I’m talking to you ’cause I got stuff I want them to know, but I can’t stand it when Uncle Laneer cries. I’d rather stay in my room forever than say something that makes him cry. I need you to tell him something.”

  “Anything.”

  “I want to pick out the flowers for my mama’s funeral. And her dress. I want to pick the dress they bury her in.”

  This time Faye was the one who stayed silent for several steps. How was she supposed to talk to a child about her murdered mother’s funeral?

  Finally, she said, “Okay. I’ll do it. If you don’t want to talk to them about those things, I will.”

  More silent walking took them downhill as the bank got lower and lower. By the time they reached Kali’s back yard, they were so near to the creek’s level that the path was wet. Water stood in the ruts below the unused swingset.

  Faye picked her way around the path’s puddles, wondering how high the creek rose with heavy rain and whether water had ever seeped into the house. Mold was so bad for little children.

  When Faye was convinced that Kali had sunk back into her quiet grief and that she wouldn’t be hearing the child’s voice again that day, the girl spoke. “She liked carnations. Pink ones. And she looked really pretty in yellow. There’s a yellow dress she used to wear. I really liked it. She had silver shoes and a necklace and earrings and everything. I want her to wear that. You tell my uncle.”

  Faye promised to tell Laneer, hoping against all hope that Frida had owned more than one yellow dress. She would rather walk through fire than say, “We can’t bury your mama in her yellow dress, sweetie. You see, she was murdered in that dress, and it will never be whole again.”

  Kali had turned toward the creek crossing and strode in, shoes and all. Faye stuck with the handy rocks that kept her feet out of the water but she hurried across them to keep up with the girl. She could see where Kali was going and she didn’t want her to go alone.

  They made better progress along the park-maintained trail, reaching Kali’s hideout quickly. The trail took a hard turn there but Kali didn’t follow it. Instead, she stepped into the grass and rushed to her special place. She was in such a hurry to get there that she ran the last few steps. After tossing a few sweetgum balls aside, she dropped to the ground. Sitting with her arms clasped around her bent knees, Kali leaned against a tree. Faye found her own tree and assumed the same position. The spot was so small that their feet bumped together when they sat. Kali carefully rearranged herself so that she was touching nothing but the ground beneath her and the tree at her back.

  Not far outside this cozy spot was a terrible place. It was invisible from where Faye sat, hidden by trees and greenery, but she knew it too well. It was a rectangle of disturbed soil where Frida had been left to die. Nothing that Detective McDaniel and his crime scene technicians could do would ever make that spot right again.

  Kali had chosen to sit facing away from her mother’s first grave. Her body was stiff, taut, electric with tension, and she didn’t say a word. Had she already said all she wanted to say? Had she asked Faye to join her just so that she could tell her about a yellow dress? Did she invite her because she was afraid to be here alone? Or did she wish Faye would go away and leave her in peace?

  There was no way in hell that Faye was going to leave this child alone here. And there was no way in hell that either of them would be staying here much longer, because the reality was already sinking in for Faye that they shouldn’t be this far from help when there was a murderer at large.

  “First of all,” Kali announced, “you can tell the policeman that I know who Mama’s date was that night.”

  “Do you want me to call Detective McDaniel and put you on the phone?”

  “No, I want you to tell him. I think he likes you.”

  Faye wasn’t so sure.

  Kali continued with a series of announcements that she’d clearly been thinking about all day.

  “I don’t want wanna talk to the detective. I wouldn’t mind talking to Laneer and Sylvia, but I ain’t got anything to say that won’t make them cry. That’s why I don’t talk these days. It hurts too much. Hurts me. Hurts them. Just hurts.”

  Faye kept her eyes off Kali, and she kept her mouth shut. The girl needed to speak in her own time. To give her eyes a place to be and to keep her hands busy, she started building a mound of sweetgum balls. The trees over their heads had been shedding those round, pointy seed balls for a very long time, so Faye was in no danger of running out of them. She handled them with care, protecting her fingertips and remembering barefoot summers when hardly a day went by without sweetgum balls wounding the soles of her feet.

  Kali leaned her head back against her tree. Faye thought she was finished with her revelations, but she was wrong.

  “I heard him.”

  “Kali. Who did you hear? What are you saying?”

  “I didn’t know what I was hearing, but it was awful. Thumps. Bumps. Slaps, too, but I know what it sounds like when somebody gets slapped. It was the thumping I didn’t understand.”

  Faye wished she didn’t know how Kali knew the sound of a slap.

  “After a while, there was some screaming. That’s when I figured out that the thumping sound meant that somebody was getting beat bad. I told you about the meth heads. I thought maybe some of them were having a fight. Guess I was wrong.” Her eyes were still closed. “Maybe it was a meth head that did that to my mama. Naw. They woulda got caught by now. It’s hard to plan ahead when you’re messed up like that.”

  Faye tried to think calm thoughts, without a lot of success. She needed Kali to keep talking, because she could be the witness that would put her mother’s killer away. But she also needed to handle this moment well. If she didn’t, Kali could draw into herself again, forever damaged by what she’d heard but not willing to reach out for help.

  “Did you see the person hurting your mother?”

  Kali shook her head. “No. Well, I crawled through the bushes and found a place where I could tell I was looking at a big man, but I never saw his face. Coulda been anybody, long as it was a man and he was big.”

  “Did you hear him? Did you hear his voice?”

  Calm down. Ask her one question at a time. Don’t scare her.

  Kali gave another shake of the head.

  “Did you know you were hearing—”

  “My mama? No.” For the first time, Faye saw tears
on the stubby eyelashes. “No, it didn’t—it didn’t sound like her a bit. When I got home and she wasn’t there, I thought maybe. Maybe it was. But I didn’t know for sure that she was dead until the minister told me so.”

  Faye looked into Kali’s eyes and saw fear there and more. There was something else the girl wanted to say. “Tell me what’s bothering you.”

  “What if he saw me? What if he knows where I’m staying? I think he’s gonna come get me.”

  “Do you think he saw you? Did he look your way?”

  “No. No, he didn’t. I just—Faye, what if he comes to get me?”

  “I don’t think he will. He knows the police are after him, so why would he take any chances? And also, you have your Uncle Laneer to look after you.”

  “He’s old.”

  “That doesn’t mean he won’t take care of you. And you’ve got Sylvia.”

  Kali rolled her eyes. “She’s not very scary. I need somebody scary. You’re not scary, but you’re scarier than her.”

  Maybe Faye shouldn’t have laughed, but she did.

  “Uncle Laneer and Sylvia need me to take care of them.” Kali’s voice was insistent. “That’s why I don’t sleep any more. Somebody’s got to look out the window and see if he’s coming.”

  Somebody needed to know that this child wasn’t sleeping.

  “I’m scared about you, too.”

  Faye was confused. “Why are you scared of me?”

  “No. No, I’m not scared of you. I’m scared he wants to hurt you, too.”

  “You don’t need to worry about me, Kali. Why would he want to hurt me?”

  “I saw you. I saw you climb up out of the creek and start digging up my mama. If I saw you, maybe he did, too.”

  Kali was shaking her head. “Been thinking all day today. He didn’t have to see you for you to be in trouble. Everybody knows it was you that found Mama. Sylvia made sure. Text, phone, people on the street. She told ’em all. She doesn’t know I was out there, so she hasn’t told ’em that, but she sure did tell ’em about you.”