by Shana Burg
But Ralphie just says, “Doggie!” Then he laughs and laughs like he told the funniest joke that ever was.
Well, problem solved. Ralphie’s stopped crying, so now we can continue our important mission. I thank my doggie-cat and set him on the ground beside me.
And I reckon Ralphie likes being pushed fast through the hot air, because he starts to purr like a kitty. By the time we arrive, I’m out of breath.
Flapjack scampers under a bush while I push the carriage through the side door of the courthouse. There’s a sign on the wall that says Voter Registration. A few folks are inside, and wouldn’t you know it, Delilah’s granddaddy’s one of them. He holds his cane and leans against the wall.
“Hotter than an oven,” he tells me.
“Sure is,” I say.
I push the carriage over to Mrs. Tate, who sits on a red vinyl chair.
“Oh, goodness!” she says. “I was just gonna head back home to get these. Well, I’m glad your mother remembered.” She scoops the bingo supplies out of the carriage and sets them on the ground beside her.
Ralphie cries for his bottle, so I lift him up and hold him while he drinks it.
“Oh, have a seat,” Mrs. Tate tells me, and pats the empty chair beside her.
But the instant I sit down, a sandpaper voice calls out, “That seat’s reserved.”
“Oh,” says Mrs. Tate. “For who?”
“Whites,” the voice says.
That’s when I see that Mrs. Tate’s friend who works at the courthouse is none other than Mrs. Worth. I leap up out of that chair so hard I almost break both my kneecaps.
“Well,” Mrs. Tate mumbles, “why don’t you lean yourself against that wall over there.”
And I reckon I’ll have to wait till later to tell Mrs. Tate that her son just spoke his first word.
I lean against the wall like Mrs. Tate suggests, but being so close to Mrs. Worth makes me quake all over. And I’ll tell you one thing: I can’t wait till Ralphie finishes his bottle so we can get on out of here!
While Ralphie’s drinking, Mrs. Tate chats with Mrs. Worth. “Of course, I want to be surprised, but then I just couldn’t help peeking through the garden gate on my way over here this afternoon. Let me just say, everything looks splendid. And you know what else? The red and black ears of Indian corn are gonna be just perfect for our Thanksgiving decorations.”
“Wish I had time for such pleasantries,” Mrs. Worth says, “but I’m stuck here. Say, Penelope, did you hear ’bout the colored man in Laknahatchie County?”
“What colored man in Laknahatchie County?” Mrs. Tate asks.
“Happened just yesterday,” Mrs. Worth says. “Somehow this colored man managed to pass the voter-registration test only to get a .45-caliber bullet through his window.”
I reckon this voting business is dangerous stuff.
“Next…,” Mrs. Worth calls.
A Negro man wearing church clothes walks to her desk.
“In order to register, you must first pass a test. Now then, how many steps on the Thunder Creek County Courthouse?” Mrs. Worth asks.
And I wonder what kind of horse-brained question that is. Here I’ve been living in Kuckachoo all my life and I’ve never had reason to climb those courthouse steps. Even if I had, why would I bother to count them?
“Six?” he guesses.
“I’m sorry, the answer is seven. Under the state law of Mississippi, you are not eligible to vote at this time,” she says. “Check back when you have a better understanding of what it takes to be a citizen of our country. Good day!”
After the man leaves the office, Mrs. Worth comes out from behind her desk. Thank goodness, Ralphie finishes up his bottle right then. He lets out a big burp and I set him back in the carriage.
“Thank you for the bingo boards,” Mrs. Tate whispers to me. “And thank you too, pumpkin pie,” she says to Ralphie, and kisses his cheek.
Then Mrs. Worth turns out the office lights, even though Delilah’s granddaddy’s still waiting on her. “You’ll have to come back tomorrow,” she tells him.
One thing’s clear: Mrs. Worth’s used to breaking hearts. It’s her job.
CHAPTER 13
August 15, 1963
Last week Ralphie spoke his first word, but he still hasn’t said it for his mama who’s desperate to hear it. Lord knows working with Ralphie on his talking and walking’s the only thing that gets me up each morning, because if I had to sit home all day with nothing to do but think about my brother, I’d go cock-a-doodle mad.
Tonight I can’t stand how Mama talks at dinner, so I leave my plate full of rice and beans and run to my bedroom. I lie on my mattress and listen through the sheet as she continues to fear the worst.
“I can’t help it, Bump. If he was out there, he’d a sent word.”
“Now how he send word without risking somebody find out?” Uncle Bump asks.
“He’s smart. He’d a found a way.”
Dishes clang in the sink while Mama and Uncle Bump talk on.
Right about now I wish I could run away, but I feel too heavy and sad to lift my head off the pillow let alone get up and run. So instead I stay in bed and imagine I’m running, till Mama comes right in without even knocking on the door frame.
I pull the sheet up over my head.
“’Less there’s an extra-large potato hiding under this sheet, I’d say it’s my little girl under there.”
Mama thinks cracking a joke will make me come out from under this sheet, but she’s wrong.
Now she gets all demanding. “Come on out!” she snaps.
There’s a sound in her voice that says I’d darned well better. So I roll the sheet down, but not so far she can see my bottom lip shake. “Why you acting like he’s dead?” I whisper.
“I need the Lord,” Mama says.
She sits on the edge of my bed and bows her head while she stumbles through the words. “Dear Lord,” she says in a voice soft as fur. It’s the voice Mama uses when she’s praying with her whole soul. “I know you say you won’t give me more than I can handle, but this time you gone done it. I need you to tell me somethin’, Lord. Can you do that?”
She pauses, then nods, as if she hears the answer in her head. “I need you to tell me, where is my son?”
But I reckon the Lord doesn’t answer that one, because Mama wipes a tear with the corner of her apron. Then she gathers me up in her arms, pulls me to her bosom, and hugs me almost as tight as I hugged Flapjack at the Corner Store the night Buck Fowler snatched him.
Thirty-four days gone since Elias disappeared, and even though he hasn’t sent word, I have a creeping feeling inside my chest he’s still alive. Sometimes, I feel a flicker, and I’m certain. But Mama? She’s losing faith.
Later, when Mama leaves me alone in my room, I go just about crazy. I get into my brother’s bed and smell the baseball mixed up with sage from the farm. Then I close my eyes and wait. But I don’t see any yellow or orange glitter the way I did the night I talked to my brother. I don’t see any colors at all. “You really dead, Elias?” I hear myself whisper in the chilly dark. My breath’s shallow, and I reckon there’s no river in my chest, just my quickly beating heart. And there’s no answer from my brother, only the silence of a night stretched far too long.
I roll on my side, but no matter which way I turn, how I curl, or how many stars I count, my head keeps throbbing from too many questions. They’re sharp. They won’t go away: Why is Uncle Bump always telling me to hush? Why is Mama so quiet? And why am I sure Elias can hear me if he’s nowhere near, and some folks think he might even be dead and gone?
I can’t stand the questions and I don’t want to be alone, so I squat on the windowsill, push up the screen, and stretch my leg down to the overturned bucket. Then I tweet, click, click for Flapjack, and together we scuttle across the dirt, past the swing, to Delilah’s house.
It’s a good thing she’s the onliest child, because Delilah’s got her very own bedroom, and when I sneak out
and knock on her window, I can wake her up and Mr. and Mrs. Montgomery don’t hear a thing.
Delilah has a mischief inside. If I didn’t know her, I don’t think I’d ever fix my hair in all kinds of styles or sneak out to the bayou. I bet I’d look real funny and be real sad.
At night, Delilah thinks she owns Kuckachoo. Tonight, when at last she steals through the window, she grabs my wrist and, as usual, pulls me to the path.
A lot of times when we head to the bayou Delilah says, “After sixth grade, I’ma go to charm school. And after charm school, I’ma send my picture to Ebony magazine and they’ll ask me to New York City to be a fashion model. After I get tired of New York, I’ma walk the runways in Paris.”
One time Delilah was sitting in our kitchen talking about her future, when Mama said, “Honey, I hate to tell you this, but there just ain’t no Negro fashion models.” Delilah threw her head back and laughed. “Mrs. Pickett, please don’t tell me you’ve never heard of Helen Williams or Dorothea Towles!” One thing was clear: Delilah studies the old Ebony magazines she borrows from the church lending library just as hard as I study my vocabulary words. Of course, Mama had never heard of those model ladies in all her life, but I could tell she was impressed that Delilah was preparing for the future, because to Mama, preparing for the future is what life’s all about.
Whenever Delilah talks about being a model in New York City, I imagine how I’ll visit her there. We’ll walk with our arms linked through each other’s. We’ll go to fancy restaurants, eat butter beans, and tell everyone we’re sisters. But whenever I picture that part, I get stopped by reality. How’s anyone going to believe we’re sisters? After all, Delilah’s light brown skin’s always dewy like a petal, while mine’s muddy like the bottom of the bayou. And Delilah’s eyebrows? They arch real graceful, like dancers leaping, while there’s no doubt about it, mine scraggle like hawks crashing down for a landing. In fact, never since I can remember has a Sunday in church passed without someone telling Delilah she looks pretty as a speckled pup. And never has a Sunday passed with anyone telling me I look cute like a pup, speckled, striped, or just plain.
Whenever Delilah talks about New York City, I can taste jealousy in the back of my throat. To make it go away, I tell her more stories about Old Man Adams’s big house, even though I don’t work there anymore. “You wouldn’t believe them deep red carpets and frilly white curtains!” I say. “When the sun came in, dust speckles—blue, yellow, red—danced in the air till I wiped down the banisters.” But whenever I talk about the big house, Delilah scrunches her lips to one side like she still hasn’t decided if it’s true.
Tonight, though, as we head off Kuckachoo Lane onto the darkest path, we don’t say a word. There’s only moss and pebbles under our feet to guide us to the clearing and Flapjack winding round my ankles. And soon as we enter the bank of the bayou, there’s the bright white of the moon skipping on top of the water. As usual, I toss aside the pebbles and spread the corner of my nightgown so Delilah can sit on top of it. That way she doesn’t have to get dirty.
Then we stay real quiet till I say, “Night’s always telling me what to think.”
“Like what?” she asks.
“Like everyone says Elias isn’t coming back. That he really did get stuck under the bayou.” Flapjack curls into a ball on my lap. “But it’s in my head he’s alive,” I say.
“How so?”
“Last night…” I stop to check her face but she can read right into my mind.
“I won’t laugh,” she says. “Swear.”
Most always Delilah’s good on her word, so I rub my hand over Flapjack’s head, take a breath for courage, and close my eyes. Then I play my dream from last night all over again in my mind. While I watch the pictures, I tell her what I see. “Elias, he runs faster than any of them. When they chase him, he dives into the deepest part and slips between the tree trunks.”
Nothing in Kuckachoo’s as magic as the cypress trees wading in the bayou. They spring from the middle of the water. Each tree’s winding roots twist above the surface, forming a maze the size of our kitchen table.
“You know how dark he is?” I go on. “Well, he blends with the night, clings to the cypress trunk. Them fools, they can’t see him for nothing.” My breath is shallow. “And thank goodness, the moon isn’t too bright,” I say. “There’s no reflection of his face. Them murderers, they can’t find him anywhere. As soon as they leave, he swims across the bayou, escapes in the cotton.”
My eyes are still shut—I’m watching Elias cross the cotton—when Delilah wraps her arm around my shoulders. When I open my eyes, they’re all runny, so I wipe them with the back of my hand. Then I stare straight ahead. The silver sky collides with the water’s surface, creating a mirror. In it, I see Elias, his long limbs wrapped round the roots of that tree.
I reckon Delilah’s worried up my mind is haunted, because she says, “Look, Addie Ann, dead or alive, you’ll feel better once you know for sure.”
“I do know!” I tell her. “He’s alive and on the run. We’ve got a soul connection.” And now Flapjack wonders if I’m losing my mind too, because he stands in my lap, arches his back, and prances away.
“You can’t keep living like this, not knowing, always wondering,” Delilah says.
And I reckon she’s right. It’s the not knowing that’s driving me mad. “How we gonna find out?” I ask. My bottom lip trembles.
But Delilah doesn’t answer. Instead, she takes my hand and pulls me away from the bayou, along the muddy path. Soon enough, I catch sight of our destination: the graveyard. I peer through the gate. In the moonlight, cement crosses lean this way and that. And I can’t imagine what she’s got in store.
I’ve got the heebie-jeebies so bad my voice comes out like a shiver. “We can’t go in at night,” I whisper. “We’ll get in trouble.”
“Who’s gonna get us in trouble?”
I look round. There’s no one in sight and I’ve got to admit, Delilah’s right.
She pushes open the gate, leads me through.
My insides get tight. Most graves, long forgotten, are covered with nothing but dirt. I kneel down beside Daddy’s.
“Sittin’ on your daddy’s dirt is a right fine place to get our ceremony under way,” Delilah says. She sits across from me. Her back rests on Daddy’s stone. “We’re gonna contact Heaven. Ask if your brother’s ghost is there.”
I knew Delilah was mysterious but I didn’t know she had secret powers.
“How do you know how to contact Heaven?” I ask.
“Bessie,” she says. “That’s how I learned to call on Granny’s ghost in the first place.”
Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. Delilah learns just about everything she knows from Bessie. “Now you can’t start talking to ghosts with your eyes open,” she says, as if I should know.
And even though part of me doesn’t believe a word Delilah says about ghosts, my breath, it’s barely there.
Delilah closes her eyes, looks like she’s concentrating real hard. So I shut mine too. She presses her pointer fingers on my temples and rubs in tight little circles.
“Light as a feather, stiff as a board,” she murmurs. “Light as a feather, stiff as a board.”
I don’t know what I’ve got myself into. But I reckon Delilah’s right about one thing: if my brother’s dead and gone, it’s best to face up to the truth here and now.
“Say it with me,” Delilah says.
“Light as a feather, stiff as a board,” we chant a couple times.
Then Delilah claps.
My breath, it’s gone.
“Ghost of Elias Pickett, we summon you to this here graveyard. If you’re dead, come show your face,” she says.
What if it’s true? What if my brother drowned? And now he’ll show up a tall, swirly white light.
“Look!” she shouts.
My eyes fling open.
Delilah points at the sky.
A hawk crosses in front of the moon.<
br />
“He’s comin’!” she shouts.
At least I thought it was a hawk.
“Soon he’ll show his ghost face,” she says.
Then we wait and wait for my brother to come.
Something jostles the bush beside us. We both gulp.
“It’s him!” Delilah whispers.
But then Flapjack scampers out from under a bush and prances into the cemetery.
“Oh, no it ain’t,” Delilah says, and sighs.
We wait and wait. Before I know it, Delilah’s snoozing, sitting up, back against Daddy’s stone. Here I am, teeth chattering in the dark, hugging my knees to my chest, praying my brother’s ghost won’t show. The cemetary’s a grainy black-and-white photograph stuck between morning and night, when at long last the first rooster crows.
“He didn’t come!” I tell Deliliah. “He’s still alive.”
My groggy-faced friend rubs the sleep from her eyes.
“You know what?” she says, and yawns. “You’re right! He must be alive ’cause this ghost ceremony works every time.”
Well, all I can say is this was the best ghost ceremony that ever was! It filled me with new power, just what I need to race back home and climb through my window into bed, all before Mama finds me up and gone. I give Daddy’s stone a quick rub and I’m off running. Flapjack follows close behind.
CHAPTER 14
August 24, 1963
Ralphie has three words now: doggie, cat, and pickle. Every time Mrs. Tate hears him say something, she can’t help but run and hug her boy, she’s so proud. And since his talking’s coming along so good, Ralphie’s concentrating on walking. Today he wraps his little hands round the legs of the changing table, pulls himself up to stand.
“Let go, Ralphie! Walk!” I say.
Just then Mama pokes her head into the room, and Ralphie topples onto the floor in a heap. “Change the baby for the party,” she says.
“He’s not a baby,” I tell her.
“Well, just change that big boy and bring him down fast.”
I’m glad to see Mrs. Tate’s set out a respectable outfit for her son: a red cap, a white button-down shirt, and red knickerbockers. I dress him, pick him up, and shuffle down the stairs. The smell of roasting pork makes my stomach rumble. And I pray I’ll get a bite.