Miss Madison was so happy to see me back at school, and we went right back to spending our lunch times writing in her classroom. Eventually, I let her see some of the stories I wrote about Mama and Roy-Ellis and Savannah and Crystal and Mary Elizabeth, and she said that they were “promising,” whatever that meant. But it sounded good and made me happy.
When Easter Sunday morning came again, I woke up before anyone else in the house and went and sat on the front porch and waited for the daylight to come. But it was very different from the Easter before, when I had just lost my mama. I could think about her and not feel all lost and alone. I could remember all the good things about her, especially her singing her honky-tonk songs, and I could think of Buzzard, too, and how she helped us when we had no place to go. And Mary Elizabeth, that wonderful gift Crystal left with us.
In the sleeping house, I knew that Easter clothes for all of us were ready to wear. Buzzard had sent a beautiful “first Easter” dress for Mary Elizabeth, but Aunt Bett was never one to accept charity, so she packed up a box with five jars of her homemade pickles all packed in safely and sent it to Buzzard. The postage probably cost more than Buzzard had paid for the dress, but Aunt Bett wouldn’t have it any other way.
The Easter baskets for the little ones were well hidden, a big ham was ready to go into the oven, and it would fill the house with the aroma of ham and cloves while we were at church.
Somehow, we had come right back to where it all started, but I had not come back as the same person who fled into the night with Crystal. I knew for a fact that Aunt Bett had been right, that other Easter Sunday when she told me that I was going to grow up to be a good woman—a strong woman.
So that Easter Sunday morning, when I heard a young mockingbird, far off, starting to sing, even before good daylight, I remembered that his song would be wobbly and timid. Mama would have said that he hadn’t quite learned his song yet. But even while I sat there on the front porch of a quiet little house that held my big, big, sleeping family, he tried again and again.
And he finally got it right.
Epilogue
So every year, I watch for the first signs of spring and wait for the flood of memories they will bring.
I walked a road that eventually took me far away from that little town and that happy little house all crammed full of freshly scrubbed children and jars of pickles, because Miss Madison and I continued writing together for all the years of school I had left, and then she helped me get a scholarship, first to a community college and then to the university itself, where I majored in English.
Buzzard took Savannah in, just as I had known she would do, and when Savannah went off to school, it was to learn how to be a kindergarten teacher. I am surrounded by stories, and she is surrounded by children, and we are both happy.
Because this book grew out of all the stories that were written in my notebooks and on Miz Swan’s beautiful paper. And at last, I know exactly why Miss Madison said that we should speak in the present tense when talking about a story. Because when someone reads this book, they will be able to hear my mama singing her honky-tonk songs, Roy-Ellis will be enjoying his cold beer, Savannah and I will talk with each other in King-James language on Sunday afternoons, and the Swan Place will always be there. And there will be swans gliding across the pond.
These are my stories of losing and of gaining, stories of good people and some who couldn’t find a way to be good, but mostly stories about love—that incredible gift I fought so hard against. In the end, it was all that mattered.
(Continue reading for information about the author)
About Augusta Trobaugh
Augusta Trobaugh earned the Master of Arts degree in English from the University of Georgia, with a concentration in American and Southern literature. Her first novel, Praise Jerusalem!, was a semi-finalist in the 1993 Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Competition. Trobaugh’s work has been funded through the Georgia Council of the Arts, and she has been nominated for Georgia Author of the Year.
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