“Well, I’m right glad to see you’ve got a level head on your shoulders.” Buzzard beamed. “Folks who go around pretending to be more important than they really are, why they’re only trying to persuade themselves.” I thought for a moment about that and decided that Buzzard was absolutely right! How strange that I couldn’t have figured it out on my own!
The next day, Crystal started driving me to school, and as I came into the building, Rachel and Mandy came running up to me.
“That your sister driving you?” they asked.
“Uh—yes.”
“She’s so pretty!” they chorused. “Where does she work?”
“At the mall.”
“Is she married?”
“She was,” I chose my words carefully. “But now she’s a widow. Her husband was killed in a terrible automobile accident.”
Rachel and Mandy clucked their tongues at Crystal’s misfortune. But I could see in Rachel’s eyes the very same glitter I saw in Miz White’s the day Buzzard introduced us at the grocery store. She couldn’t wait to spread that juicy tidbit around. I thought right then and there that I was awful glad the Swan Place was way outside of town. I wouldn’t want to live so close to other people and have them talking about every single thing I said or did. Mandy wouldn’t do that, of course. But I knew good and well that Rachel would.
At lunch, Rachel and Mandy sat with me again, and Mandy started asking more questions about Crystal.
“What does she do at the mall?” they asked.
“She works in a beauty . . . a salon,” I remembered to say. Then, before they could ask any more questions, I asked one of my own.
“Does Sharon ever eat lunch in the lunchroom?”
“Who?”
“Sharon,” I repeated. “She’s in our class. Sits at the back.”
“Oh, her,” Rachel almost spat the word. “No, she can’t afford to pay for lunch. She brings lunch from home.”
“Please, Rachel,” Mandy protested in a whisper.
“And what a lunch!” Rachel went right ahead, and Mandy turned a deep pink. Rachel giggled and covered her mouth, while Mandy just got redder and redder.
“What?” I asked.
“Strange things—cold sweet potatoes and biscuits with syrup in them,” Rachel said. “And a jar with nothing but water in it.”
“Where does she eat?” I asked.
“Who cares?” Mandy almost snarled. “And why do you want to know anyway?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I just wondered.”
I was ever so glad when Rachel stopped talking about Sharon. Mandy glanced at me a couple of times, and I could tell by her eyes that she was apologizing for Rachel’s bad manners.
When I got on the bus that afternoon, I saw Sharon sitting all the way in the back, so I passed by the front seats and headed toward her. But when she saw me coming, she turned bright red and looked ready to cry. I stopped in my tracks, and she turned her face away from me. Well, I guess I could understand that. Back at home, I would have felt pretty much the same way if any of the rich girls had tried to make friends with me. So I turned and went back to the front seat, feeling pretty bad about embarrassing her like that, but wishing I could find a way to talk with her.
So I decided I would talk to Buzzard about it.
“Well, honey, I ‘spect she just wants to be left alone,” Buzzard concluded, after I’d explained it all to her.
“I just want to be friends with her,” I complained. “I wouldn’t laugh at her or be mean or stuck up, at all!”
“Well, let’s just see what happens,” Buzzard added. “But something you ought to know is this: Sometimes, the harder you push for something that isn’t meant to be, the unhappier you’ll make yourself. If Sharon’s meant to be your friend, then it will happen. But if she isn’t meant to be your friend, nothing you do will make it happen.”
I thought about Savannah right away and how we became friends almost from the very first moment we met. Savannah was surely someone who was meant to be my friend, and I didn’t have to do a thing to make her like me. And I wondered for a little moment about how Savannah would have felt about me if I’d lived in this big beautiful house when I met her. Would she have liked me, if she thought I was Mr. Swan’s great-niece?
I took Buzzard’s advice and didn’t try to force myself on Sharon, ever again.
Chapter Eighteen
And that’s the way things stayed all through the fall. I liked school, and I also liked getting my homework done fast, so I could write in my notebooks. The only thing I didn’t really like was eating lunch with Mandy and Rachel every day. Because they both stared at me too hard, and Rachel asked all kinds of personal questions, like what was my favorite food and how did I like having a big sister who was so pretty.
I asked Buzzard if I could just take a sandwich to school every day, so I could find me a place to be alone and peaceful, but she said a growing girl like me needed a good, hot lunch, especially since cold weather would be coming soon. So I just tried to keep on taking things one day at a time, like Aunt Bett always said to do.
But right in the middle of November things changed for us again, and not in a way I could possibly have imagined. Crystal was washing up supper dishes while I wiped off Molly and Little Ellis’s face and hands. Buzzard was taking clothes out of the dryer, shaking them out and folding them or putting them right onto hangers. She always said that made the ironing easier. But that day, Buzzard shook out one of Crystal’s work dresses—the ones she wore under her beauty parlor smock—and said in a low voice, “You done popped off buttons on all your work dresses. Same button on every one of them. At the waistline.”
As Buzzard spoke, Crystal washed the dishes slower and slower, and finally, she stopped. Just stood there watching water running into the sink.
“Dove?” Buzzard said. “Why don’t you go take Molly and Little Ellis upstairs for a little while?” So that’s how I knew Buzzard and Crystal needed to talk in private. But I’d sure gotten myself into the habit of listening in on conversations that were supposed to be private. I guess it was a dishonest thing to do, but it’s the only way I ever found out important things I should have been included in, right from the start. So I sent Molly and Little Ellis on upstairs, to pick out what books they wanted me to read to them. I hovered right at the kitchen door. Buzzard was saying, “You eating too much? Or maybe it’s something else.”
“It’s something else,” Crystal answered in a strong, clear voice. For a long moment, nobody said anything, but then Crystal added, “A baby is what it is.”
“I figured as much,” Buzzard said. But my mind was whirling away with all kinds of questions. A baby? How could Crystal get herself a baby? And all in that little moment, I remembered Molly and Little Ellis and how pink and warm and tiny they were and how their baby heads would kind of bob around when I held them on my shoulder. A baby! I wanted to hear more, so I leaned close to the door.
Silence.
Not a single sound of anything you expect to hear in a kitchen that has two women in it. No dishes rattling, no pot lids going on and off. And not a single word spoken. Molly and Little Ellis were standing at the top of the stairs, watching me, so I finally went up and read them three stories. But the whole time, my mind was just racing. What would become of us if Crystal had a baby? How would we ever get our very own apartment? What would happen if Miz Swan came back and made us all leave?
Once Molly and Little Ellis settled down, I tiptoed back downstairs and stood once again at the kitchen door. This time, there was plenty of talking going on.
“We sure got ourselves some kind of problem now,” Buzzard was saying in a low, huffy-sounding voice.
“I know,” Crystal admitted. “But I want you to know one thing: When we left home and came here, it wasn’t because of this. It was to protect Molly.”
“You had morning sickness the very first morning you all were here,” Buzzard reminded her.
“I know,” Crystal admit
ted.
“You knew you were with child!”
“I thought as much, but it isn’t why we came.”
“It was the first thing I suspected,” Buzzard said. “Healthy young woman like yourself, it would take something like that to make you get sick so fast and then get over it so fast. And sick only in the morning, first thing.”
“I don’t know much about this kind of thing,” Crystal moaned. “I’m so sorry, Buzzard. I’m so sorry.”
“No need to apologize to me,” Buzzard sounded surprised. “One you should apologize to is yourself.”
“Why? This is Roy-Ellis’s baby. I haven’t been with another man.” Crystal sounded close to tears when she added, “But what am I gonna do? I’m not even eighteen, and I’m gonna have four children to take care of!”
“Told me you was twenty!” Buzzard fumed. “And Dove isn’t a child anymore. She can be such a big help.”
“I know.”
“We’ll just have to find a way, is all,” Buzzard said. “That’s what women in my family have always done. Just find a way to handle it.”
“Handle what?” Crystal sniffed.
“Whatever comes.”
“But where will we live?” Crystal was crying openly.
“Why, here!” Buzzard sounded surprised. “You all can stay right here.”
“But what about Miz Swan? She won’t want to come home to a house full of children . . . and a baby, even.”
“I had a letter from her just the other day,” Buzzard said. “And maybe she’s decided to live in France all the time.”
Well, that was hard for me to believe! Because every single time we got the mail, I held it while we went up the driveway, and looked at it. And there had never been a letter from France!
“She would stay there and still keep this house?” Crystal asked. “And you taking care of it?”
“Miz Swan does whatever she pleases,” Buzzard said with finality. “She’s right fond of me, you know. And of this house. So we’re okay.”
“Well, if you say so,” Crystal admitted.
“I say so,” Buzzard added. Then she said, “Let’s get Dove in here on this. She’s big enough, you know.” Through the door, I could see Crystal nod.
“No need,” I said, walking into the kitchen bold as brass.
“You been listening at the door?” Buzzard growled at me.
“Yes, I have,” I said. “It’s the only way I ever get included in what’s going on.” That was a truthful statement, and I didn’t feel one bit ashamed of saying it.
“So you know about . . . everything,” Crystal asked.
“Yes. And I agree with Buzzard. We’ll find a way.”
Buzzard said, “Well, pretty soon, we’ll have to have a story about this baby that’s going to come. Same as the story we have about you all being Mr. Swan’s great-nieces and nephew.” I sat down at the table with Buzzard and Crystal and we all stared at the center of the table, as if maybe we could find an answer sitting right there.
“Dove, you like to make up stories,” Buzzard said. “Think of what kind of story could be made up about this little baby not having a daddy.”
“Why, the truth, of course,” I said immediately. “Roy-Ellis is this baby’s daddy, and he was killed in an accident.” Crystal and Buzzard looked at each other in surprise.
“That’s what we’ll do!” Buzzard said. “We’ll tell the truth for once! That’ll be something new.”
So things settled down a little, and we just moved forward, like we always did.
Buzzard moved the buttons on Crystal’s work dresses, and even later, when Crystal couldn’t button the dresses at all, her beauty parlor smock still covered the gaps. Nobody said anything else about finding an attorney to help us about Molly, and we just finished out the fall in our little routines.
Christmas was kind of hard, because all I could do was think about Aunt Bett.
Seemed to me that I could almost smell all our freshly-scrubbed cousins, and I could imagine Aunt Bett’s house with a Christmas tree in it and all those many stockings hung up and waiting for Christmas candy. Buzzard and I had gotten a few Santa Claus things for Molly and Little Ellis, and Crystal gave me more new notebooks and I gave her a poem I had written about babies. But I guess that was a mistake, because she cried when she read it.
On the first day of school after Christmas, I stopped to get the mail on my way up the driveway, and there was the usual stuff—an electricity bill, a postcard giving $2.00 off on an oil change at a garage in town. But underneath those, there was a large, thick manila envelope addressed to Buzzard. The return address was Aunt Mee!
It was a long, long driveway, but I ran the whole way. When I got inside, I called out, “Buzzard? Where are you?” Her answer came from far down the hall, and when I got to the little television room, Molly and Little Ellis were sitting on the floor, watching cartoons, and Buzzard was in the recliner, reading. I thrust the mail at her.
“The big one’s from Aunt Mee. Open it, please, and see if there’s a letter in there for me from Savannah.”
“Who’s this Savannah?” Buzzard asked as she started trying to tear the envelope open.
“You ought to know,” I said. “She’s one of your relatives.”
“One of mine?”
“Yes. Savannah is Aunt Mee’s granddaughter. I already told you that before, and how come you don’t know about her?”
Buzzard went on pulling at the tape on the envelope. “It’s complicated,” she said, and at first, I thought she meant the way the envelope was put together. But then she went on: “We got us such a spread-out family, don’t any of us really know all about each other.” At last, the envelope tore open, and three separate envelopes fell out. The first one was addressed to Crystal—in Aunt Bett’s handwriting. The second was addressed to Buzzard—in Aunt Mee’s handwriting. And the third was addressed to me, from Savannah! I tore it open, right away:
Dear Dove,
I’m so sorry you all had to move away. Has the bad man found you all and Molly? I am so worried about you, and I miss you very very much. Will I ever get to see you again? Will you write to me? Send your letter to Aunt Mee—but she says that you must not put a return address on the envelope—and she’ll send it on to me. Please?
—Love, Savannah
I looked up. Buzzard was reading her letter from Aunt Mee and frowning.
“Soon as Crystal gets home, we got to give her this letter from you all’s Aunt Bett,” Buzzard pronounced.
“What does Aunt Mee’s letter say?”
“She says your Aunt Bett’s letter will explain what’s been happening.”
“Happening?”
“That’s all she says. We’ll have to wait until Crystal gets home.” From Buzzard’s tone of voice, I knew there was no use in arguing with her. But Crystal was awfully late getting home that day, and when she came in the back door, she was limping.
“What’s the matter?” Buzzard asked, pulling out a chair from the kitchen table and guiding Crystal into it.
“Gotta put my feet up,” Crystal said. I pulled another chair out and Buzzard and I lifted Crystal’s legs, to put her feet in it. But when we saw Crystal’s ankles, we both flinched. They were all puffed out—probably about twice as big around as they were supposed to be.
“You’re holding fluid,” Buzzard pronounced.
“Yeah,” Crystal answered. “I went to a clinic near the mall when I got off work because I was worried about how swollen my ankles were. The nurse said I had to cut out all my salt and try to keep my feet up as much as possible.”
Buzzard touched a finger to Crystal’s ankle, pushing into the flesh a little “That’s not gonna be easy, in your profession.”
“I know.” Crystal reached for her purse and fumbled around in it, finally coming up with a big white plastic bottle. “And they gave me some vitamins to take and wanted to know which hospital I was going to, to have the baby.”
“Don’t need a hospital
,” Buzzard said. “Got the best midwife in the world living down the road just a couple of miles.”
“Midwife?”
“Yes. Best one in the world. Now you go to that clinic so they can keep an eye on you and check your blood pressure and give you more vitamins, but when this baby gets ready to come, we’ll get Miss Rebecca from down the road to bring it into this world.”
Crystal didn’t argue—just heaved a deep sigh and rubbed her hand over her swollen stomach. With just a few minutes of having her feet up, her ankles already looked better.
“The place for you, anytime you’re sitting, is in that reclining chair of mine,” Buzzard said. “And I’ll scramble up some eggs for you—without any salt in them, ‘cause Dove and I fixed some ham slices for tonight’s supper, and you sure can’t eat anything that salty.”
Then, Buzzard and I both remembered about Aunt Bett’s letter at the same time. Buzzard got it and handed it to Crystal.
“What’s this?” Crystal asked wearily.
“From your Aunt Bett.”
Crystal looked from one of us to the other. “Came in an envelope from Mee, this afternoon.”
Opening the letter with shaking fingers, Crystal started reading silently. “Please read it out loud,” I begged.
“Okay—it says:
Dear Crystal,
I will give this to Aunt Mee, and she will send it on to you all, wherever you are. You were so right! He came to your house again, and a sheriff with him! And when he couldn’t find anybody, they came to my house. I was so glad that I really didn’t know where you all had gone, because he challenged me right then and there to put my hand on my own Bible and swear it. And I did. So they didn’t even have to take me into court for that! The sheriff wanted to do more, but he said he knew if I would swear it on a Bible, I was telling the truth. He said he was bound and determined to find his girls, Dove and Molly, and have them with him. I asked him what his wife thought of that, and he hemmed and hawed around and finally said they weren’t together anymore. “Did you leave her too?” I asked him. Oh, I tried so hard not to say “too,” but I couldn’t help myself, I was so mad! He hemmed and hawed around some more and finally he said yes. Well, that made me mad as fire! So I said, “Well, I’ve got some news for you, you stinking…” Well, I had to stop there a little minute and ask God to put a big, strong angel in charge of my tongue! And I guess He did, because I changed it and said, “I’ve got some news for you too. Maybe you’re not the daddy you think you are.”
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