DC kept Jackson at the site till three. Now we’ve got barely a couple hours together before he has to drive back home. Having had our fill of nature for the time being, we head to the mall instead. We’re walking around, holding hands, but it’s like we ain’t even on the same planet.
“You should go on that program. You know that, right?” he says.
I shrug, wondering for a moment how much I could save if I set aside every penny I make at the library the rest of the summer. “You hungry?” I ask him, seeing as he just about always is.
“I could eat,” he says, not really seeming to care one way or the other. “You want some Chick-fil-A?”
What I want is to get out of this crowded place with all this stuff and lights and people and be somewhere where we can be together for real. I shake my head. “Let’s go to Eddie’s.”
He’s quiet all the way in the truck. It’s driving me crazy. “Jackson, we ain’t got but a little more time together. Why you so quiet?” I hate to nag, but I can’t stand wasting our last itty bit of time like this.
“Sorry,” he says. “I ain’t too keen on leavin’ or good-byes neither.”
Which of course I’m glad to hear, but still. “Let’s just try and don’t think about it. Let’s pretend like we got all the time in the world.”
“I’m too old for pretendin’,” he says.
We sit at our usual table at Eddie’s. “What you gonn’ get?” I ask him.
“I’on’t know,” he says.
Now that’s unusual, him not knowing what to eat. I wasn’t going to tell him about that feeling I had yesterday, ’cause he didn’t react too good to the one about the yellow sign. But I’ve got to do something to cheer him up. “I got one of them special feelings,” I say.
“’Nother train headed my way?” he teases halfheartedly.
I shake my head. Now, suddenly, I’m afraid to say it, afraid to jinx it, afraid it won’t be real. “It’s a secret,” I tell him. “But, it’s a good one.”
“You just gonn’ leave me hangin’?” he asks, all shocked.
I smile all flirty-like. And a certain look comes over his face like he finally figured out what he’s hungry for.
We get up without ordering and head down to the beach—about the only place we can cuddle up and kiss. But it’s busy as hell down there. We sure ain’t going to get any privacy. We tuck ourselves down behind a dune and start kissing. But somehow it doesn’t feel right. Instead of the soft, gentle Jackson of last night, he’s more like an angry, frustrated Jackson. I try to slow him down. But he seems to be in his own little world.
“What is wrong?” I finally ask.
“Whatcha mean?” he replies.
“You seem different,” I say.
He hangs his head. “I prob’ly should go. Mama wants me off the highway ’fore dark.”
Forget about your mama! I want to yell. But I know he can’t do that. And I know deep down in my heart, I don’t want him to be the kind of guy that would. There ain’t nothing right to say, so I just take his hand in mine and squeeze it real tight.
He looks at me all full of angst and pulls me to him, kissing me real hard like he’s trying to take me into himself somehow, take some part of me along with him. I feel like I’m going to cry from wanting him not to go. But I know that won’t help anything none. We hug each other real tight, not caring who’s watching. Then we walk back out to the truck and he drives me home.
“Want to come in for a little while? Get something to drink ’fore you go?” I ask him.
He just shakes his head.
I can’t do it. I can’t get down out of the truck. ’Cause soon as I do, he’s going to drive off and I’m going to die right here on the spot.
“Go on,” he whispers.
I don’t move.
“I love you,” I say, as tears creep out my eyes, even though I’m trying my darndest to hold them back.
Looking like he might just cry himself if he opens his mouth to speak, he puts his hand behind my head and pulls me towards him and we kiss. And then I slip out of the truck without looking back at him, the only way I can. And he drives off without so much as a wave.
26
“Yannah! Get your butt off your shoulders and go breathe some fresh air!” Mama calls. She marches into my room, cuts on the lights and draws open the blinds. I hide my head under the covers.
“Looky here,” she starts in. “I know you’re all tore up about him leaving. I get it, I do. But you’ve got other concerns right now. You only have a handful of days left to send in that acceptance letter. Now get your butt up and get busy.”
“Mama,” I say. “I don’t think I want to go to the mountains after all. It’s too far. And I won’t know anybody and—”
“I know you don’t think I’m that dumb. Hon, you can’t just give up on something you’ve always wanted because you might miss a visit from Jackson. Now I spoke to Dr. Tamblin and he thought it would be a real good idea you goin’ up there.”
“We can’t even afford it,” I blurt out.
“You let me worry on that one. You got to take advantage of the freedom you have to choose this, shug.”
“I don’t got any freedom at all,” I say. “You get to have your boyfriend over any time you like, work whatever hours is convenient, even then get to hang out with him. I don’t got a single choice about spending time with Jackson. It’s up to everybody else when I get to see him. And Lord knows when that’s gonn’ be!” I don’t even know why I flip out like that, except I’m all confused about what to do about the program, and I don’t like Mama making it seem like it’s clear cut.
“Is that what you think? You got it so bad? I got all the freedom? Good God, Savannah! Who you think’s been paying the bills every day of your life? Who’s been through umpteen jobs? Who’s the one worrying about you and your breathing and your safety and your brother, too? Not having a lick of energy left at the end of the day to go out and have a life of my own? Freedom? I hadn’t had any of that since the day you were born. Now get your ass up out the bed and sign that letter!” And she storms right out of the room.
I feel like s-h-i-t. I ain’t even sure what all is going on inside of me. The devil’s tail is back, twisting up my guts. Am I mad? Hurt? Sad? I reckon some of all three. Mama ain’t never talked to me like that, never made me feel like a burden, like she regretted having me. Let me tell you, that is one bad feeling, hearing somebody wish you weren’t never born, specially when it’s your own mother wishing it.
Okay, maybe I was being overly dramatic, maybe I overstated things a bit. But what she said, that was just uncalled for. I wish I could talk it through with Jackson. But I know he’s at work, and he ain’t allowed to take personal calls there.
I get dressed real quick and run outside to avoid crossing paths with Mama. I hop on my bike and ride out, touring the places me and Jackson went while he was here. I start at Eddie’s and buy myself some hotcakes so I can sit at our table and recall every minute we spent there. Sadly, I ain’t a bit hungry, so I just poke at them flapjacks and try to keep from crying. I go by the building site and the mall and down to the beach. I’d like to ride up to where we waited out the tornado, but I don’t think my lungs are up for that sort of ride today. I ain’t been breathing too right since the minute he left.
I lay down in the sand behind the dune where we kissed on Sunday and close my eyes. After a while, a shadow crosses in front of me.
“I been out looking for you everywhere,” Mama says.
I don’t open my eyes or show any sign I’m listening. But I feel all closed up tight inside, afraid to hear what’s coming.
“I’m real sorry for what I said,” she starts. “You sure made me mad, but I didn’t mean none of that. You and Dog are the only things that matter to me in this whole world.” She sits down beside me. “I like Denny a whole lot—I may even be starting to love him. But he ain’t nothing compared to y’all. And I don’t give a rat’s ass about losing them jobs, d
on’t blame you for your asthma. I was just p.o.’d by your attitude is all.”
I sense her stretching out in the sand.
“Lord, I hadn’t been out to lay in the sun in eons. Sometimes I forget we live by the beach a-tall.”
“I thought you came to live down here ’cause you hated being away from the ocean,” I say, letting the rest of it all slide by.
“It’s true,” she says. “I couldn’t stand being landlocked. And even though I don’t spend much time out here, it’s like I got an umbilical cord stretching from me to the ocean and every time I get too far, it just don’t feel right.”
I reckon it’s the reference to the umbilical cord that puts me in the mind of wondering about my grandma, ’cause next thing I know I’m asking her, “How come you don’t talk to your mama? Why won’t you tell us about her?”
Mama heaves a real big sigh. “Things had been bad between me and Mama for years. I suppose I held our poverty against her. We were poor as dirt when I was coming up. And I just couldn’t rightly stand how she seemed to soak up all the pity the church folk gave us, bringing by used toys at the holidays and bags of groceries for Christmas dinner. I hated those donations, hated the uppity girls from school what delivered ’em. Guess I was ashamed.”
She sits quiet, thinking, I reckon. I wait her out, hoping she’ll say more. “She had a bum leg, my ma.” She squints up at the sun, looking like it hurts her just to think about it. “She had polio as a child, and one leg never quite recovered. She used it, though, that handicap, used it to milk the church folk for pity, to get ’em to help her out and all. I hated the way she did that.”
I can’t hardly believe she never told me one lick of this before now. I ain’t about to do anything that might cause her to stop talking.
“My mama hated your daddy something fierce,” she goes on. “I reckon she knew he’d run off on me someday. I couldn’t forgive her for that. I brought him home from Cary to meet her one summer, and she tried to stop me seeing him. She actually went and forbid me to go out with him a-tall. You can bet we cleared out of there pretty quick. When I was twenty, we ran off and eloped. I didn’t talk to her again till after your daddy left us.”
“What happened then?” I ask, too impatient to wait.
“She tore into me, telling me how she knew he was a no-count good-for-nothing piece of work, that she wadn’t the least little bit surprised that he cut out. Then she told me I ought rightly move back home and raise y’all by her in her stinky old run-down double-wide trailer. And then she said the worst thing she coulda said to me. She said, ‘Least we can count on the church to always be here for us.’” Mama shudders for real. “I got a piture in my mind of you and Dog getting them crappy hand-me-down gifts, me having to thank those same folks whose faces, full of pity, I’d been forced to thank for their broken games all those years and I said, ‘Hell no! He-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-ll no!’ I slammed that phone down and promised myself we wouldn’t never take a handout or let nobody drown us in their pity ever again, not so long as there’s air in my lungs. And I hope to God I’ve kept my word.”
Lordy. I ain’t never heard Mama go on like that. To think she never told us how she grew up, never shared one thing about what her mama was like. No wonder she didn’t want to have the church folk come out to help us build on a room for Dog. And that’s why she wouldn’t tell her bosses about my asthma, why she’d ruther go on and lose the jobs than risk their pity.
I give her my biggest hug. “I’m sorry for everything I said, for every time I made you worry.” I feel like I’m about to bust out in tears.
But she pulls me back and says, “Don’t be sorry. And don’t feel like you’re some kind of burden. You are the light of my life.”
And then she starts in to bawling! Can you imagine?
She wipes her eyes and says, “You did inherit one thing from my mama, though—thankfully just the one.”
“What’s that?” I ask, afraid to hear what she might say.
“Them special feelings you get sometimes, when you just seem to know what’s coming? Your grandma got ’em too.”
“She did?” I ask, all surprised. I can’t even believe she never told me this.
“Spells, she called ’em. ‘Havin’ one of my spells,’ she’d say. And then she’d go on about the feeling she had that this or that was fixing to happen. And sure enough, they were too true. Used to get her all worked up, like she was scared it was the devil’s work or some such nonsense. I never understood why she couldn’t just take them for the gift they were.
“When you were a little bitty thing and telling me what you sensed coming, I tried my best to make it seem like no big deal, hoping you’d learn to trust it as your very own guide, no fancy hocus-pocus, just a part of nature.”
I had no idea. I never even thought about my special feelings being a gift or what-have-you or about Mama putting any effort into making me see them one way or another.
She hugs me real tight. “I may not have the gift of sight like you and your grandma, but I can tell you this, shug, everything’s gonn’ be all right.”
I slump into her arms and just let myself believe it.
27
In the evening I sit on my bed, staring at the beautiful painting Jackson gave me that’s hanging on my wall (covering up a few of those marks I made throwing my hairbrush), and call him, anxious to tell him all about what Mama told me at the beach. He sounds kind of down.
“Something wrong?” I ask him.
“Naw,” he says. “You take care of that letter yet?”
“Not yet,” I say. Then I change the subject by telling him what all Mama said about my grandma. I go on and on. “Can you imagine?” I say to end my little monologue.
“Hm,” is all he says!
“Jackson, what is wrong with you, boy? I been waiting all day to tell you this and all you got to say is ‘hm’?”
“I got some stuff goin’ on I’m tryin’ to figure out, is all.”
“What stuff?” I beg. “Share it with me. That’s what I’m here for.”
He’s real quiet. Then he goes, “I ain’t exactly ready to talk about it yet.”
Now it’s all turning sour. “Do you not trust me to share your secrets with?” I say.
“Don’t be like ’at,” he says. “That ain’t what I mean.”
“Well, what do you mean, Jackson? Huh? Maybe you mean I’m too young to understand, or too naïve, or too dumb. Which is it?”
I hate when he goes all silent.
Finally he says, sounding put out, “I believe we best go on and hang up ’fore we say sump’n we gonn’ regret. Talk to you soon.” And then he clicks off! Damn!
I’ve got half a mind to call him right back, but I believe I’m going to let him stew in his own juices awhile. See how he likes that. Course none of this is helping my breathing none, which seems to have moved to a permanent state of raggediness. Mama’s got me a doctor’s appointment set up with my regular doctor, Dr. Tamblin, but it ain’t for a couple more weeks. By then the summer will be near about fixing to end. I sure don’t want to think about that.
I roam on out to the kitchen and pick at the tuna salad Mama’s fixing for supper.
“It is just too hot out for cooked food,” she says. “We gonn’ have to make do with tuna salad sandwiches, pickles, chips, and some ice-cool lemonade—just like when we used to go on picnics when y’all were little.”
I don’t say nothing. I ain’t feeling too chipper.
“That acceptance letter is near about due,” she says.
“I know.”
“What’s wrong now, sad sack?” she teases.
“I just don’t get why Jackson won’t share his feelings with me. I tell him everything!”
Mama starts laughing.
“I’m glad you find my pain so funny.”
“Now, now,” she consoles. “You got to realize that guys are different than us. Lord, can you imagine Dog telling his feelings to some girl?” She shakes her he
ad. “If they can’t work everything out on their own, they just don’t feel like men.”
“You mean DC don’t talk to you about things?”
“Some things,” she says, mixing up the creamy tuna salad and spreading it onto the white bread. “Mostly, though, it’s after he’s got it all figured out. You set your expectations too high. It’s not realistic, hon.” She laughs. “You’re hopeless.”
Hopeful, I think. What’s wrong with that? I wander back to my room, thoroughly dissatisfied by the conversation. Maybe I’ve been reading too many romance novels this summer. Or maybe I’m the crazy lady in the attic tying Jackson down, not his Jane Eyre at all.
I feel all raw and oozy like a rotten sore.
Pulling the damn acceptance letter off my dresser, I stare it down. I look at the curlicues of Mama’s signature and at the blank line just above that. Then I jab my pen on the page, signing my name, sniffling away my tears. But then I dump the whole thing on the floor and crawl under the covers.
At supper I just pick at my food and try to keep my raggedy breathing under wraps so Mama doesn’t go off the deep end. I sit and watch her and DC flirting. He eats with us nearly every night now.
“Y’all make me sick,” Dog snaps. “Savannah, how can you stand to be around them? I’ma go stay over at Dave’s. Between all this moping on one side and kissy kissy on the other, it’s enough to choke a horse.”
“Son,” DC says, “don’t be rude to your mama, now. I can’t have that.”
Dog looks at me and rolls his eyes.
“I suggest you apoleegize to her,” DC insists.
“Denny, come on now, just let it go,” Mama urges. “He didn’t mean no disrespect.” But she gives Dog that look that says, You best behave.
He’s squirming under the pressure, not wanting to lose face. He looks just at Mama and mumbles, “I didn’t mean nothing by it.” Then he gets up and clears his plate.
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