A Thousand Never Evers

by Shana Burg

  I feel his forehead with the back of my hand. He’s warm. Then Ralphie moans. I’m not sure what to do. What if he’s caught a bug? What if he’s got a fever? I couldn’t stand the sight of him sweating and groaning, so I run to find Mama to ask if she thinks Ralphie’s all right.

  I rush through the sitting room into the Tates’ bedroom, only to find Mrs. Tate at her desk, a pen in her hand, a stack of envelopes at her side. She wipes her fingers under her eyes.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” I say. “I thought it was Mama in here changing the linens.”

  “She’s out back hanging laundry,” Mrs. Tate says, her voice scratchy. A tear rolls down her cheek.

  “Ma’am?” I say. And I reckon it’s best just to find Mama and ask her about Ralphie, because Mrs. Tate doesn’t look like she needs trouble. I’m about to dash downstairs and out to the backyard, when I hear the sitting room door creak open.

  “Where are you, Penelope?” Mr. Tate shouts.

  And wouldn’t you know it, here I am, stuck in the bedroom, frozen solid, while Mrs. Tate gasps. At first I think it’s because she’s surprised as I am to find that man home in the early afternoon when he’s supposed to be on the road selling seeds. But that’s not the half of it, because the next thing I know, Mrs. Tate hurries over to the bookshelf and pulls out a book.

  But when she opens it up, I see it’s not a book at all. It doesn’t have any pages inside. It’s an empty box. Mrs. Tate shoves her envelopes into the box, and she’s sliding the box back onto the shelf when that good-for-nothing husband of hers stomps into the room. He slams his spitting glass down on the bedside table. Then he takes one look at me and shouts, “What’s this dishrag doing in our bedroom?”

  My heart pounds. I fix my eyes on the floor like I’m supposed to.

  And that’s when I see it: one of Mrs. Tate’s secret envelopes. It’s fallen smack in the middle of the carpet!

  When Mr. Tate bends over to spit his chewing tobacco in the glass, he spots the secret envelope too. He reaches down to pick it up.

  But I don’t know what gets into me. I scoop it up first. “Sorry, ma’am,” I say. “Must’ve dropped your letter. I’ll take it to the post office.”

  Then I hurry out the bedroom, through the sitting room, and down the hallway while my fingers, they dance all over that envelope, and my breath, it rattles around in my chest.

  Somehow I get to Ralphie’s room. I turn the envelope over in my hand and see it’s addressed to J. D. Foster in New Orleans, Louisiana. Who on earth that is, I’ve got no idea. I’d sure like to find out, but seeing as reading this letter would get me fired or worse, I decide to check on Ralphie instead.

  He’s quiet. His forehead, it’s dry and cool, and I reckon maybe he had a stomach upset is all. Well, I’ve sure got one too, because here I am holding this secret letter.

  And now I hear footsteps.

  Faster than a duck can dunk, I hide that letter under Ralphie’s crib mattress.

  “Sorry ’bout my husband,” Mrs. Tate says, stepping into Ralphie’s bedroom. “He doesn’t mean anything by it.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I say.

  “But I want you to know, Addie Ann, those letters…they’re nothing.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I say.

  Then that husband of hers yells from downstairs.

  “Tonight I want my dinner hot!”

  Mrs. Tate sighs. And no one has to tell me she’s sick and tired of that man. Why, he’s meaner than a junkyard dog! Still, she rushes out the room to the top of the stairs and calls down, “Yes, dear.”

  After the front door slams shut, Mrs. Tate hurries back to her son’s room. I can see by the squint in her eyes, she’s wondering if I read her secret letter or not, so I dip my hand back under the crib mattress and fish around till my thumb bangs into a pointed corner of the envelope. Then I pull the letter out and hand it over.

  Well, no use sticking around. I pick up the laundry basket. But just as I grab the doorknob, Mrs. Tate tells me to put the basket down.

  “Have a seat,” she says, “in the rocking chair.”

  She’s got her letter back, so I can’t imagine what else she wants. And it feels awful backward to have her standing in front of me while I’m sitting down like I’m on a throne.

  “The thing is, Addie Ann,” she whispers, her voice in a pinch, “those letters in the book…”

  “What book, Mrs. Tate?” I ask. My mama didn’t raise no stupid fool. I know when to keep my mouth shut.

  “Well, I’m just writing my childhood friend J. D. Foster,” she says.

  “Okay, ma’am,” I say.

  But I must be looking at her funny because then she says, “Oh, I just hide the letters in the box ’cause my husband don’t like J. D. Never did. So do me a favor, Addie Ann, and keep this our little secret. I wouldn’t want it getting back to Mr. Tate.”

  All of a sudden, I’ve got to go to the bathroom. Real bad.

  “I’ll tell you what,” she says.

  I press my legs together. Then I pray Ralphie will wake up and give out a good scream so I can get on out of here. But wouldn’t you know it, he must feel a whole lot better, because his little tummy goes up and down in gentle waves.

  “I been so lonely with my husband gone selling seeds dawn to dusk, and J. D. is the only one who would truly understand. The problem is J. D. moved to Louisiana last year and I ain’t got the address. So I’m just saving all my letters inside the book box till I find out where J. D. is.”

  Mrs. Tate’s crying, so I tell her, “Well, of course you keep your letters in the book box, ma’am. It’s the right thing to do.”

  She sniffles.

  “The right thing,” I say, and hand her a cloth diaper so she can wipe her eyes.

  At long last Mrs. Tate gets ahold of herself. “Now I know you’re a good girl, so don’t let me hear you’ve gone and told your mama or anyone else about this. I don’t want trouble,” she says.

  “I don’t want trouble neither, ma’am,” I say.

  By the time I get home and make it all the way through dinner, I can’t think of anything else but Mrs. Tate’s secret. I’m lying in bed and her secret’s blowing up like a balloon inside my chest. I can’t help but wonder what J. D. looks like. Does she wear a silly hat with plastic fruit on the brim or a pretty one with a white bow?

  I dance into the kitchen where Mama’s cleaning up.

  “Why ain’t you sleeping?” she asks me.

  “Something juicy,” I say.

  “What’s that?” Mama dries the lid of a pot.

  “Oh, you’ll want to sit down for this one,” I say.

  “All right.”

  I can tell Mama’s trying not to act overinterested, but I know she is, because she dries the pot lid handle over and over again.

  After I cross my fingers under the table, I say, “It’s like this.” Then I change the story just a drip-drop to fix the part about me busting into the Tates’ bedroom without rapping on the door. “I knocked and Mrs. Tate told me to come on in. She was sitting at her desk writing a letter,” I say.

  “Yes,” says Mama.

  “Well, Mrs. Tate’s envelope fell on the floor just as Mr. Tate stormed in. When he bent over to spit in his tobacco glass, Mrs. Tate pointed to the envelope on the floor like I should pick it up.” Far be it from me to tell Mama I volunteered myself into this whole mess. “Then Mrs. Tate shooed me out the door, so I went to check on Ralphie.”

  “Don’t sound unusual,” Mama says. “That Mr. Tate’s a mean skunk.”

  But then I tell Mama all about how Mrs. Tate let me sit in the rocking chair while she carried on about how lonely she is, and how J. D. is the only one in the whole world who truly understands her. No doubt she writes all about what she thinks of her husband in those letters to J. D.

  Mama sits at the kitchen table and listens cotton-eyed while I describe the secret book box. By the time I’m through, Mama’s got worried teardrops in her eyes, and I just know if those tears fall
down her cheeks into her mouth, they’ll taste bitter like horseradish. She cuts her eyes at me real mean. “Telling someone’s secret is just like telling a lie,” she says. “You told me. That’s bad enough.”

  The balloon blowing up in my chest, it sinks.

  “What?” I ask. I’m more than a little confused, because from all my experience, when someone keeps a secret, they’re keeping the truth from getting out. So telling a secret’s like spreading around the truth. What could be wrong with that?

  But I reckon Mama doesn’t see it my way because she says, “If you say one word of this to anyone—and that’s Delilah included—I’ma send that cat of yours to live with Aunt Adelaide up in Baton Rouge!” She leans forward, reaches across the table, and lifts my chin with her finger. “I’ll take that scoundrel there myself.”

  After I get in bed, I tweet, click, click, and Flapjack pounces through the open window. I snuggle up with him under the sheet, but I don’t bother to scare him with what Mama said. He’s got nothing to worry about. I’m not going to tell a soul.

  CHAPTER 18

  September 28, 1963

  I’ve gone three and a half days without telling Mrs. Tate’s secret to anyone else. I’m sitting on my swing, thinking about how much I’ve matured, when Uncle Bump moseys out of his shed and asks me to join him fishing down the bayou. It being Saturday, I tell Uncle Bump I can’t see why not. I’ve already calculated twenty-two fractions, including improper ones, and I’ve already learned my Latin roots, like vis, which means “to see.”

  As soon as I change out my dress into my T-shirt and jeans, Uncle Bump and me set off for the river. He carries two poles and a jar of worms. Of course, I haven’t been fishing in years, so I forget how disgusting the whole thing will be.

  When we get to the bank, I get a sick feeling because I’ve seen some catfish and they’re bigger than cats. I don’t want to kill no catfish.

  “We’re just gonna catch them baby ones,” Uncle Bump says.

  But I don’t want to kill no babies either.

  Still, I can tell Uncle Bump’s glad for the company. He’s all about showing me the night crawlers. They’re wiggling inside the glass jar. He pulls out one of the worms, stabs it with the metal hook, then ties the hook to the line, and casts the line into the water. Then he hands me the pole and fixes up his own.

  Once Uncle Bump and me are standing on the bank holding our poles, there are no worms to look at and I like it better. We stare out at the river without a pull on our lines, while the fall wind sends ripples across the water, making it look rough and wild. And I reckon I get to thinking about things besides fish, because soon, I let out a sigh loud enough for Uncle Bump to hear.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks.

  “Nothin’.”

  “That ain’t a nothin’ kind of sigh,” he says. “Between you and me, I think your brother will be back.”

  The dandelion sun peeks out from behind the cottony clouds. To know Uncle Bump hasn’t given up makes me weak all over.

  Uncle Bump tells me whenever he goes to work at the General Merchandise Store in Franklindale, he stops to talk to my brother’s friends who live nearby. He also sent another letter to Aunt Adelaide up in Baton Rouge and spent a pile of change at the pay telephone booth to see if any of the civil rights groups had word. “It’s tough,” Uncle Bump says. “But no one’s heard a thing.”

  I stare out at the water two more minutes before I’m ready to talk. Truth be told, I tell Uncle Bump things most twelve-year-old girls won’t tell their mamas. I can say anything, and I know he won’t get worried or mad. Sure I got some hope from Delilah’s ghost ceremony, but some days I can’t help it, my faith dwindles to a drop. “It’s hard to keep believing,” I say.

  Uncle Bump wraps an arm round my shoulders, pulls me close. And I’m more than grateful he’s by my side.

  Staring out at the water, I can’t help but picture the bayou, Buck Fowler, my brother’s sneaker. But I don’t want to think about it anymore, so I do like Mama and switch the subject.

  “When you were my age, did you ever like…you know?” I ask.

  “Well, sure, sure I did!” Uncle Bump tugs on his pole and lowers the line.

  “Who?” I ask.

  “Who what?”

  “Who’d you love?”

  “Oh!” Uncle Bump says. “Hmmm…Loved my mama. Loved my papa. Loved my sister. Even loved that old man across the tracks.”

  “Not that way,” I say.

  “Ouch!” Uncle Bump tries to pick a splinter out of his thumb.

  “Well, who’d you love?” I ask.

  But he’s silent like God cut off the supply of nouns, verbs, and adjectives in his throat.

  “It’s not a big deal,” I tell him, even though it’s a huge one. That’s because everyone has the kind of love I want. Sure I’m only in seventh grade, but that kind of love is all stopped up in my heart. Maybe I don’t know how to act with a boy. Maybe I don’t know how to dress or what to say, which is bad enough, but what makes it eighty-five bushels worse is that Delilah always wears the perfect dress and says, “Thrills, chills, and charges!” at the exact right time, so any boy I love loves her instead.

  “Seems something particular’s on your mind,” Uncle Bump says.

  I nod but I won’t look in his eyes. I don’t want him to see all the pain whirling in mine. I fix my gaze on the swirling water.

  “Cool Breeze?” he asks.

  I swallow. I was going to tell him, but it would’ve taken hours to get there.

  Uncle Bump nods. He knew it all along.

  “He’s everything,” I say.

  “Ain’t that something! I never met a person who was everything.”

  “Well, I have!” I say. It’s not just that Cool Breeze is the only other student from Kuckachoo going to seventh grade, but he can run a mile in four minutes fifty-nine seconds flat, not to mention he has the cutest dimples, and he can solve equations faster than Mrs. Jacks can write them on the board. “Thing is,” I say, “he’ll always like Delilah.” Then I think about my Latin root and say, “To him I’m just invisible.”

  “Why’s that?” Uncle Bump asks.

  Tears sting the back of my throat. I swipe under my nose, but it doesn’t work, because a couple of them fall right down my face. “Every boy likes Delilah. Nothing ever changes,” I say.

  “That’s right,” Uncle Bump says. “Nothing does change.”

  My breath is high in my chest, running. I can’t believe he agrees. The future’s stacking up in front of me, day after day, the same. Nothing changes. Me and Cool Breeze walking to school, back and forth from Kuckachoo to Weaver, three whole miles in each direction, the two of us together with nothing to say, Cool Breeze not even knowing I’m there.

  “’Cept for one thing,” Uncle Bump says.

  I wait for him to say what it is, the one thing. But wouldn’t you know it, his fishing pole bends. He yanks hard to pull in the line.

  Right now I don’t care anything about catfish. I want to know what’s the one thing that will change. “What is it?” I ask.

  Uncle Bump doesn’t hear me. He’s too busy breaking out a smile bigger than the Magnolia State. That’s because he’s got a catfish huge as a dog on the line. When he gets it onto the bank, I can see it’s got whiskers.

  “What’s the one thing?” I ask again. Then I turn away, my back to Uncle Bump and that fish, because I don’t want to see the part that comes next. The part where the poor fish thrashes on the bank and Uncle Bump helps it to its death.

  After he packs up the dead catfish and the live night crawlers, we walk back and Uncle Bump asks, “If you ain’t got the belly to fish, then why do you eat it?” And I can’t answer that question straight, because I like smoked Delta catfish with brown sugar much as anyone.

  It’s not till we get all the way home I ask him to tell me once and for all: What’s the one thing that will change? What’s the one thing that’ll break me out of this dreadful existence? />
  “You,” he says. Then he sets to work building a fire to smoke that catfish.

  Later, after I swallow the last bite and lick the brown sugar off my fingers, I’m still wondering just what he means.

  CHAPTER 19

  October 13, 1963

  Ever since Delilah gave up jumping double Dutch, she’s taken up beauty. I don’t mean just thinking about it and talking about it. I mean really working at it. Just this morning Delilah’s cousin Bessie gave her some of Dr. Fred Palmer’s Skin Whitener, so now Delilah has it in her mind I need a new look.

  Here we are sitting on her front steps. She opens the jar of cream and dips her pinkie in. “It’s gotta last me till I get to New York and make my own money,” she says, and rubs one tiny drop into each of my cheeks. “Even this little bit should help.”

  Bessie also let Delilah borrow a plastic case with a rainbow of eye shadows inside it. Now Delilah holds the case up to my face to figure out which color matches my brown eyes best.

  “You’ve got blue tones in your skin,” she tells me.

  “No, I’m brown,” I say.

  “You don’t understand,” she says, and laughs. “You’ve got cool blue tones and I’ve got warm red ones.” She’s still explaining the whole theory when out the corner of my cool eyeball, I catch sight of Reverend Walker harrumphing down the lane.

  “Look!” I say, and point.

  There’s a large parcel of folks gathered round him and one thing’s clear: something juicy’s going down.

  “You’ve gotta let me do it later,” Delilah says. “It’ll bring out your features.”

  “Only if you make me pretty as a speckled pup,” I tell her.

  “I’ll try,” she says.

  Truth be told, I doubt any makeup can turn me into a speckled pup, but I still want Delilah to fix my eyes. I hate the way they look so plain like the rest of me, but I must admit, they’re awful good for seeing.