“I’m glad Miz Swan lets you use her car while she’s gone,” I said.
Buzzard laughed. “Tell you the truth, Miz Swan lets me do about whatever I please.” She laughed again. I didn’t know what was so funny about it, but I decided not to ask. After only a mile or so, Buzzard slowed the car and turned right onto a red clay road. Then she stepped down on the accelerator and the big car roared ahead.
“Gotta hurry,” she said. “We’re late.”
When we turned onto yet another unpaved road, even narrower than the one we had been on, I saw the church—a small, white church with a tin roof and a steeple almost bigger than the church itself. But Buzzard must have been right about us being late, because there wasn’t a soul outside of the church. We went up the steps and through the wide-open doors, and Buzzard patted the back pew.
“Right here,” she said.
“But what about Molly and Little Ellis?”
“What about them?”
“Don’t they go to Sunday School?”
“Sunday School during church services?” Buzzard sounded truly surprised.
“Yes. That’s the way at Aunt Bett’s church,” I explained.
“Not that way here,” Buzzard said, and before I could say another word, she hurried away. So we settled ourselves onto the hard bench, with me wondering how Molly and Little Ellis would act, sitting through a long service. But soon, I forgot to worry about that because I got to looking around at the people. The men all wore dark suits, and the women were all dressed up just as much as Buzzard, with hats and gloves.
But I also noticed that Buzzard was right again: We were the only white people in the church, and I noticed a few people glancing at us and then nudging other folks, who turned and glanced at us themselves. The glances were quick and polite, and one older man even nodded his head at us. From somewhere up front, piano music started playing something real sweet and sad sounding, and people let out a low moan and started swaying to the music. Some of them swayed front-to-back, and some swayed side-to-side. It was truly interesting, because where there were front-to-back and side-to-side folks sitting beside each other, it was almost like they were doing a dance that could make them bump smack into each other at any minute. A side door opened and the choir came into the room. The people clapped and the choir people smiled and nodded. Buzzard was the third to come in, and she sure looked nice. And I thought I saw one of the Sisters of the Circle of Jesus, but I couldn’t be sure. The choir was made up of more people than were in the pews, and I soon found out how silly I’d been to worry that Molly and Little Ellis might not be able to sit still—because in only a little while, nobody was sitting still! When the choir started out on another slow, sad-sounding song, some of the people stood up, put their heads back, and held their hands palms-up toward the underside of that high tin roof. The choir rocked oh-so-slowly back and forth, back and forth from side to side like they were all connected to each other, and the song went on and on, like a sad vine that grew and twined around, in and among all the people.
Finally, it wound itself down, and in front of where we were sitting, two women still stood with their eyes closed. They were both crying, though they made not a sound. The final notes on the piano lingered around a little and then started another song, this one faster and lots happier-sounding, and when the choir joined in, their voices were so strong, I almost thought they would break the glass in the open windows. All the people were swaying and clapping and the choir members swaying together again, only much faster, and clapping their hands. Some people got up and went into the aisle and hugged each other and sang and danced around. The music and the singing and the clapping went on and on, until I thought for sure that tin roof high above our heads would surely fly right off! And then it all stopped, but the people were still saying things like “Praise the Lord!” and “Hallelujah!” And one lady said “Sweet Jesus!” over and over again.
When the preacher came out, I thought things would get real quiet, like at Aunt Bett’s church, but they didn’t. That preacher just sort of jumped into the rhythm that song had left hanging in the air, like his big voice was making the sound of the piano and the choir. Because he got into kind of a singsong talking that was just like the way a poem goes clippity-clopping along, and oh, how the people loved it! They hollered things to him almost all the time, like “Amen!” and “Praise Jesus!” I guess I never saw so much happiness gathered under one roof in my whole life. I looked down at Molly and Little Ellis, and their mouths were hanging open. But their eyes were bright and happy, so I knew they were enjoying every single minute. I wasn’t all too sure what the sermon was about, but the way that preacher used all those strong words and the way the people echoed them back to him was just… wonderful! He marched back and forth, waved his arms, and even stomped his feet a few times. Maybe me and Molly and Little Ellis weren’t showing how much we liked it—at least not like all the other folks—but we enjoyed it almost to death! Finally, he yelled his last “Amen!” and sank into his chair, taking out a big white handkerchief and wiping his streaming face. I could hardly believe that we’d been sitting there for almost two whole hours.
“Potty!” Molly whispered to me, so while the choir started up again, I took Molly and Little Ellis outside, and we walked around the building, looking for a bathroom. We found one just inside the back door, and when we came out, church was over and people were standing around in little clumps under the shade of the trees, talking and laughing together.
“Well, how did you all like it?” Buzzard had come out right behind us.
“It was wonderful!” I said most truthfully.
“Good! Let’s introduce you all to some folks.” We sure met lots of people that day, and they were all so nice to us. I recognized some of the Sisters of the Circle of Jesus, but I couldn’t remember their right Circle names. The only one I didn’t forget was Sister Blood-of-the-Lamb.
“Is Sister Blood-of-the-Lamb here?”
“She’s around here somewhere,” Buzzard said, looking around. “Oh, there she is.” Buzzard waved her hand to where Sister Blood-of-the-Lamb was sitting in the shade in a folding chair. She was sound asleep, with her head drooped down onto her shoulder and her tiny hands curled in her lap. But while I was watching her, all of a sudden she opened her eyes, lifted her head, and looked right at me.
“Dove.” I couldn’t hear her voice, but I knew what she had said, and goose bumps popped up on my arms. We looked and looked at each other, and the strangest feeling came over me. Maybe like all the edges of what I call me—whatever makes me Dove and simply myself—disappeared for one bright second, and something like a light went right through me! Not a light you could see with your eyes but one you could only feel in your heart. Why, it lasted for only a second, but it almost took my breath away! And the whole time of that strange feeling, Sister Blood-of-the-Lamb’s eyes never left mine.
Afterwards, I wanted so bad to tell somebody—anybody—about what had happened to me, but I couldn’t. It didn’t make any sense at all, and besides, I knew I couldn’t say it right, no matter how hard I tried.
When we got home from church, Crystal was sitting out on the back porch shelling butterbeans. She was wearing white shorts and a pretty pink blouse, and she had her hair in a ponytail tied with a pink ribbon. Why, I’d almost forgotten how very pretty she was! She smiled at us, and I could tell that she was feeling much better. Still, her eyes were a little bit swollen, so I knew she’d been crying. Poor Crystal! I thought. And I wished and wished I could do something to make her feel better. But no matter how hard I thought, there just didn’t seem to be anything I could do. We were stuck, pure and simple! And if Buzzard couldn’t get Miz Swan’s lawyer to help us, all of our being stuck away from home would be for nothing!
Chapter Sixteen
I guess that first week we were with Buzzard kind of set things up for how it would be for us all. We had a routine and got to feeling pretty comfortable around each other. Of course, I knew that C
rystal was still fretting about finding us a place of our own to live, but every time she said anything about it, Buzzard just soothed her and said she shouldn’t be worried about that, right now.
We went to the grocery store in town again first thing on Monday morning, while it was still pretty cool, and Buzzard kept her word about getting me more notebooks. After we got our groceries, we went into a little dime store, and Buzzard got me two new notebooks and a whole box of new pencils. The lady who waited on us eyed us with interest. “These the late Mr. Swan’s kinfolk?” she asked Buzzard.
“Oh yes,” Buzzard answered. “They’re staying at the Swan Place for a little while.”
“Miz Swan coming home to see them?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Buzzard murmured. “She does about what she pleases, you know.”
“Seems to me she’d want to come home to spend some time with them,” the woman offered. “Them being Mr. Swan’s very own kinfolk.”
“Well, they’re kin all right, but real distant, you know. Besides, Miz Swan’s got some business going on in France that is keeping her there longer than usual, this time.”
When we were out of the store, Buzzard said to me, “Now every single time we have to tell that story, I want you to listen real good and hard. Because when school starts, you’ll have to have it down pat.”
“I will,” I promised.
So I had me some nice notebooks to write in again, but in my secret heart, I wished I could have kept using Miz Swan’s beautiful, fine paper. I wouldn’t have asked Buzzard for more of it for anything in this whole world, but that didn’t keep me from wanting it.
I went back to trying to recreate all the stories I had lost—stories about Mama and Aunt Bett and Savannah, and they all came back, but much clearer than the first time, even. The more I wrote, the more I realized that I shouldn’t be writing about people separately but maybe write a story where I let them all come together, just to see what would happen. Like wondering what it would have been like if Aunt Bett had known the elegant Miz Swan. And I’ll bet you anything, Aunt Bett would have found a way to talk her out of some good clothes! Or what if the two of them had been faithful friends since childhood and Aunt Bett had come to Mr. Swan’s funeral. I wondered what Aunt Bett would have said, to try and make Miz Swan feel better. So I started writing a make-believe story about that, and it was ever so much fun.
One day I asked Buzzard, “Where is Mr. Swan buried?” Because I was at the part of that story where Aunt Bett would have been at his funeral.
“How come you to ask such a thing?” Buzzard wanted to know.
“I don’t know. I just wondered.” I muttered. Then I added, “I thought I’d like to put some flowers on his grave, or something. I’ve pretended to be his great-niece long enough that I almost feel it’s true.”
“Well, you can’t put flowers on his grave,” she said. “Because he was cremated.”
“Cremated?” I’d never heard of such a thing.
“It’s when the . . . body . . . gets made into ashes, instead of being buried in the ground,” she explained. “And he wanted his ashes scattered in the Savannah River, so that’s where they went.”
“Oh.” That was so strange, thinking of the dapper Mr. Swan being nowhere on this earth where anyone could go and visit him. But I did like the idea of his ashes going into the Savannah River.
That last week of summer, Buzzard loaded us all into the car, but when I asked where we were going, she just shook her head and smiled. “You’ll see.” And that was all she would say. When we got to town, Buzzard parked the car in a shady spot, and we all got out. She took my elbow and guided me into a little department store, with Molly and Little Ellis trailing behind us.
“Those clothes you brought with you aren’t right for wearing to school,” she pronounced. “So let’s us find you some new things.”
“Buy clothes?” I couldn’t imagine such a thing. For as long as I could remember, I’d never had a dress bought right in a real store and with me being first-in-line for wearing it! But even though that thought was completely delicious, I couldn’t really comprehend it.
“Why, we can’t afford clothes that come from a store,” I sputtered, once again sounding like Aunt Bett. And suddenly, I wished Aunt Bett was there with me, to help me persuade Buzzard of the terrible expense . . . the sheer folly . . . of store-bought clothes.
“Well, you’re not going to school in outgrown clothes, Dove, and that’s all there is to it,” Buzzard fumed. “Do you want people to say bad things about the late Mr. Swan and about that sweet Miz Swan?”
“What?”
“We have to think of their reputations in this town,” Buzzard went on. “If you go around dressed like a ragamuffin, they’ll say Miz Swan isn’t doing right by Mr. Swan’s kin folk!”
“Oh.”
“When we’re out at the Swan Place, it doesn’t much matter how any of us dress, because we’re way out in the country,” Buzzard went on. “But haven’t you noticed that I make you all put on your Sunday clothes whenever we come to town?”
“Well, sure—but is that why?”
“It is, indeed,” Buzzard said. “Even before we went to the grocery store that very first time, I’d already thought about what I was going to tell folks, and that meant you all had to dress like children who had somebody fine—like Miz Swan—to care about them and take good care of them.”
“Oh.”
Well, Aunt Bett, I was thinking, I guess store-bought clothes is what it will have to be. For Miz Swan and what people think about her in this town.
And I’ll say one thing about Buzzard: She sure knew how to shop. It was just a little country town kind of department store, but she flew around, picking out this and that and the other—socks and skirts and blouses, underwear and sweaters, and just about everything you could think of. She kept saying things like “How about this blouse? You like it?” And “Do you like this sweater in blue or in green?” But I didn’t know what to say. All I knew was the skirts weren’t too short for me and nobody had ever before worn them! Oh, it did cost a lot of money! But Buzzard made out a check and she didn’t even bat an eyelid about it. And when we left that store, we were carrying three bags—my all-new clothes. Back home, she helped me hang all those beautiful new clothes in the closet, and she took my outgrown clothes off the hangers and folded them carefully.
“What are you going to do with the old things?” I asked her, suddenly aware that they should go back to Aunt Bett for passing down to her younger girls.
“I’ll just fold them up and put them in a box in the attic,” Buzzard said. “You all stay here long enough, maybe Molly can get some use out of them, one of these days.” So that felt fine to me. Aunt Bett would like it if Molly could use them too. But I sure wondered how Buzzard could think that we might have to stay long enough for Molly to grow that much!
Crystal was fretful as the first day of school approached.
“You sure you don’t mind taking care of Molly and Little Ellis while Dove is at school?” she questioned Buzzard.
“Oh, they’re no trouble,” Buzzard assured her. “They’re just as good as gold.”
“If we were still at home, they could go to Aunt Bett’s until Dove gets off.”
“Well, I’ll just be their new Aunt Bett,” Buzzard said. And so it was all settled.
On that last night before school started, I woke up a couple of times and went to look in the closet, trying to decide what to wear the first day. But I couldn’t make up my mind until the next morning. And instead of me getting Molly and Little Ellis up, Buzzard did it herself, and while Crystal was getting dressed to go to work, I finally made my choice of clothes: a blue-and-green plaid skirt with a white blouse and a green sweater, even though the weather was still far too warm for me to need a sweater. It was pretty, and so I wore it. I had on brand-new socks, too, and Buzzard had polished my shoes so they looked real nice.
When I came out of the bathroom, Crystal was s
tanding sideways at the dresser, looking into the mirror and running her hand over her stomach. She jumped when she saw me watching her.
“You look real pretty, Dove,” she said. “But I still hate Buzzard spending so much money on clothes. She probably doesn’t make much, being a maid.”
“I told you about Miz Swan’s reputation and how important it is to Buzzard,” I reminded Crystal. “So maybe there’s other money for doing something like that. An allowance or something.”
“Maybe.”
When Crystal and I got down to the kitchen, Molly and Little Ellis were already sitting at the table eating Buzzard’s good biscuits. They were wearing good clothes, and Buzzard herself was wearing a black dress and a hat.
She saw us staring at her.
“Well, what are you two looking at?” she asked.
“You’re so dressed up!” I said.
“We’re taking you to school this first morning,” Buzzard said. “Have to get you all registered properly. From then on, Crystal can drop you off in the mornings and you can ride the bus home, afternoons.”
“Oh.” And all of a sudden, I thought about my school records. I didn’t have them! They were still at my old school.
“What about my records?” I asked, glancing at Crystal.
But Buzzard answered for her. “I already thought about that, and I can get you into school without them. I figured you all wouldn’t have had time to get them or give them a school to forward them to. Besides, that would let somebody know for sure where you all ran off to.”
“How are you going to do it?” Crystal asked.
Buzzard smiled and sipped her coffee. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll get it done.”
To me, she gave the now-familiar order: “No matter what I say, don’t you dispute it!”
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