Chasing Lilacs

by Carla Stewart

  “It’s about time you noticed. You’ve been here thirty minutes and not one word.”

  “Well, what happened to it?”

  “This, you may be pleased to know, is a poodle cut. Mother gave me a Toni perm last night. It’s the latest thing. Don’t you love it?”

  “Well, it’s perky, like a poodle, I guess, if that’s what you were going for.”

  “You oughta have my mom cut your hair and give you a Toni. Then we’d be the most popular girls in seventh grade.”

  “I could cut my hair, frizz it up, and wear nothing but my birthday suit to school, and I still wouldn’t be popular.” The image of me streaking in the nude made me shudder. Gross.

  “You’re too serious, Miss Nose-in-a-book.”

  “I prefer to think of myself as creative and introspective.” I threw out the last word from our sixth-grade vocabulary list and liked the way it rolled off my tongue.

  “Boring, you mean. Just like this dumb paper. What we need around here is some excitement.”

  “As in…”

  Tuwana spent the next thirty minutes talking about boys and her mother’s idea that she should try out for cheerleader in junior high since all the cheerleaders were popular. And just for the record, I didn’t mind a bit. The sun soaked into my skin, and while Tuwana twittered, I thought about what Goldie said about no two people on this earth being alike.

  As far as me and Tuwana, she got that right. I was a plain vanilla wafer, and Tuwana was like a squirt of whipped cream.

  After Tuwana finished typing, I gathered up the stencil and my notebook and took the long way home—down the blacktop road that split Graham Camp in half. Once I’d counted every one of the houses. Seventy-two divided up into nine rows. All the exact same box shape with cement porches and a ribbon of sidewalk rolling out to the street. Belinda and Melinda Zyskowski skipped rope as I passed by. “Cinderella, dressed in yellow.” Poppy Brady, Fritz’s new wife, sprayed the garden hose on the hollyhocks in her front yard, and Doobie Thornton whizzed by on his Vespa. He waved and beeped the horn.

  Graham Camp. Not even a dot on the Texas map. Besides the houses, we had a playground on one end next to the community hall. Across the main entrance, we had Bailey’s store and the Hilltop Church. The only thing missing was a school, so we rode the bus twelve miles to Mandeville, which did get its own little dot on the map.

  At home I turned on the television, but the reception was off. Wavy lines swam across the screen, so I got up to adjust the rabbit ears, then sat back on the couch and picked at the scab on my arm from where I’d scratched it on the rosebush. At first I didn’t think about much of anything, but that jingle with the Toni twins came on. Why would Tuwana think I’d want her mother to give me a Toni perm? You didn’t just pick any old mom to give you the latest hairdo. Mama should be the one helping me decide about my hair and whether I wanted to be a cheerleader. No, definitely not cheerleading, but I would like it if Mama would cut my bangs or buy me a ribbon for my hair once in a while. That’s what mothers do. They don’t swallow pills and get shock treatments.

  With my fingernail, I scraped at another piece of the scab on my arm. A drop of blood popped up, so I spit on my finger and smeared it away. Another drop came, and I watched it ooze toward my hand. My eyes got that hot feeling before tears come. A tear splatted on my arm, mixing with the blood. What would it be like to have a mother like Alice Johnson? Not exactly like her, but one who cared about my hair and baked cookies for no reason? When my nose started dripping, I got up to get a Kleenex.

  The door to Mama and Daddy’s room stood half open. I thought of finding Mama that day, her body curled into a parenthesis under the quilt. Her red hair tangled around her pale face, dotty with freckles. The prickly feeling I got when I couldn’t wake her. Taking a deep breath, I pushed the door open.

  Emptiness filled the room. Mama’s quilt, folded at the end of the bed, drew me toward it. The blue and green and pastel patches sewn together were the Dresden Plate pattern, Mama once told me. I took the quilt in my hands and sat cross-legged on the bed, outlining the stitches with my fingertips. I slipped the quilt around my shoulders. It felt cold, like the underside of a pillow you turn over on a hot summer night. Mama’s lilac cologne drifted up, but mostly it reminded me of stale morning breath.

  What good had this quilt done Mama? None that I could tell. She’d swallowed the pills anyway.

  I threw it off and left it in a jumble. That’s when I saw the book lying on the nightstand on Mama’s side, laid out flat, like she’d half-read it. Gone with the Wind. Mama’s favorite book.

  I picked it up and carried it to my room, feeling like I’d snitched a piece of licorice from Willy Bailey’s store. Maybe Mama wouldn’t mind. I took down the High Plains Bank calendar thumbtacked above my desk and, beginning with the day Daddy took Mama to the hospital, made an X for each day she’d been gone. Two so far. According to Daddy, Mama would be home in nineteen days. I flipped to the back of Gone with the Wind. One thousand and twenty-four pages. Dividing in my head, it came to fifty-four pages a day. Wouldn’t Mama be surprised that I read her favorite book?

  On my bed, I doubled the pillow behind my head and opened the book.

  “Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were….”

  Scarlett had decided on a plan to win Ashley Wilkes away from Melanie when I looked to see how many pages I’d read. Seventy-six the first night!

  I thought about Scarlett and how she went after what she wanted. That’s what I should do: come up with a plan. Gathering Pedro, my lumpy, stuffed dog, in one arm and the book in the other, I lay on top of my chenille spread and thought about Mama. She used to make cookies like Alice Johnson, only Mama made the cutout sugar kind. Once she made me a dress, plaid with a ruffle on the bottom and long sashes for a bow in the back. Once. A long time ago. A lump came in my throat.

  When Mama came home, I would help her cook and tell her my dream of being on the school paper. She would laugh at the things Tuwana told me, and we would pick out my school clothes from the Montgomery Ward catalog. My new Mama, after being shocked back to her real self, would talk to me about those things you can’t talk about with a dad. You know, the things from the fifth-grade film when they sent the boys to the gym for an hour. It hadn’t happened to me yet, but Mamas know. They just know.

  Other things too, like makeup and what to get Daddy for Christmas.

  Most of all, she would love me just because.

  [ FOUR ]

  TUWANA AND I made arrangements to use the mimeograph machine at the plant office. Mrs. Ford ran the office and half the plant. Daddy always joked that when Mrs. Ford goes, there goes the plant. She was terribly nice, plump, and could talk on the phone and type at the same time. She told us to come on Tuesday, so that morning, I headed over to Tuwana’s. As I passed the row of tin garages in the middle of her block, her dad, Benny Ray Johnson, lay under their rusty Studebaker with his boots sticking out. He was whistling “The Tennessee Waltz” and making an awful racket under the car. Tuwana waved and tossed a bag of garbage into the incinerator next to the garages.

  Whoosh. The burning gas of the incinerator caught the paper sack on fire followed by an S curl of smoke. Day and night, the jets burned, waiting to crisp our garbage the minute we pitched it in. It reminded me of the lake of fire and eternal torment Brother Henry preached about.

  Two years before, I gave my life to Jesus after one of Brother Henry’s hellfire and damnation sermons, which was practically every week, but one particular Sunday, it got my attention. Jesus didn’t call my name like Brother Henry said he would, but I got a choked up feeling in my throat that I took to be Jesus. Later, when Irene Flanagan started playing “I Surrender All,” I went forward. Funny, but all this time later, I still remember the polka-dotted shirtwaist Mrs. Flanagan wore that day and the sun fanning through the window like melted butter and me right in it.

  Tuwana pranced o
ver to me, and I could tell something was up. “You’ll never guess what happened! Our prayers have been answered.” Her voice had an electric sound to it, and for a minute I thought it might have something to do with Brother Henry or the prayer chain.

  “What prayers?”

  “Our prayers for some excitement. You’ll never guess, so I’ll just tell you. Two words. Cly MacLemore.”

  “Huh?” Sometimes Tuwana made no sense at all.

  “MacLemore. Norm MacLemore’s nephew. He’s visiting from California. Can you believe it? Excitement with a capital X.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” We started toward her house.

  “Fourteen years old. And from California, did I tell you that?”

  Tuwana opened the back door and hollered to her mother that we were going to the plant office now. All the way over, Tuwana chattered about this being the best thing since bobby socks and that we simply had to figure out how to meet him.

  Mrs. Ford waved us into the office and showed us how to put the stencil on the machine, then flipped a switch and went back to her typewriter. Clackety-clack. Warm, inky-smelling papers rolled off the drum. Fifty sheets. We gave Mrs. Ford the first copy, free of charge, since she let us use the mimeograph.

  “The Dandelion Times. Catchy title. Y’all musta gotten your inspiration from my yard. Wall-to-wall dandelions!” Her eyes crinkled up when she laughed, and dots of sweat beaded up along her upper lip. She pulled a hanky from the front of her blouse and patted her face.

  We thanked her and left, going door-to-door selling the papers for ten cents apiece. Every other word out of Tuwana’s mouth was something about coming up with a spectacular plan to meet Cly MacLemore. “Come on, Sammie—since you’re so creative, you think of something.”

  “I’m not very interested in boys. I told you that. If you’re meant to meet him, you will. Que sera, sera.”

  Tuwana made a face and huffed off to the next house.

  We’d each made eighty cents by the time we got to the MacLemores’ street. Slim Wallace’s truck sat in front of his house across from Norm and Eva’s, so I started up his sidewalk.

  “Not Mr. Wallace.” Tuwana’s fingernails dug into my arm. “Mother says he’s disgusting.”

  “We’re just selling papers. It’s not like we’re going in or anything. And besides, what’s wrong with Mr. Wallace?”

  “He’s a murderer, that’s what.”

  Sometimes Tuwana came up with the weirdest things, but this was one I hadn’t heard before. Mr. Wallace lived by himself, I knew that. He always came to church and sat alone on the back row, slipping out before the last amen. He was quiet and a little rough looking, but a killer? Not likely. I marched up his sidewalk and knocked.

  “Yes, what may I do for you, young lady?” Mr. Wallace had a kind face and cloudy gray eyes.

  “I’m Sammie Tucker. My friend Tuwana and I are selling our camp newspaper, the Dandelion Times. We thought you might like one. Ten cents.”

  “Certainly. I’ll take two.” He pulled a quarter from his gray work pants.

  “You don’t have to buy two ’cuz there’s two of us.” I held the quarter out to him.

  “I’ll send one to my daughter. She’ll get a kick out of it.”

  “Thanks.” I handed him two copies. “Thanks a lot, Mr. Wallace.”

  When I turned around, feeling pretty smug, Tuwana stood in the middle of the street like she’d been caught in a game of freeze tag.

  “Look, a quarter. Your mean old Mr. Wallace bought two papers.” I waved it in front of her, but she was staring across the street. A faded green Rambler with a California license plate was parked half on the grass beside the MacLemores’.

  She grabbed my arm and talked through her teeth. “There he is. Sitting on the porch. Oh my gosh, how do I look?” Unfrozen now, she fluffed her poodle hair.

  A guy who looked older than us sat hunched over on the steps. He had greasy black hair combed back at the sides with a V dipping down his forehead. His black leather jacket looked melting hot.

  “Oh, he is so cool. Did you see him blowing smoke rings? Don’t look now, but he’s staring right at us.” Her voice quivered with excitement.

  “Here’s your big chance. See if he wants to buy a paper.” I stepped toward the MacLemores’ and saw that an extension cord hooked to a tan plastic radio snaked out the screen door. “Jailhouse Rock” blared from the slatted speaker.

  “Excuse me.” Tuwana squeaked out a giggle.

  The guy moved his shoulders in time to the music. “Who are you?”

  “Tuwana Johnson. And this is Sammie Tucker.”

  “Crazy. A girl named Sam.” He had on rolled-up Levi’s. Loafers. No socks. A wrinkled white undershirt under the leather jacket. Sunlight bounced from the silver do-dads on the collar.

  I stuck out my hand. “Pleased to meet you.”

  “No need for the formality, cat.”

  “My name’s Sammie, not cat.”

  “Just an expression. Didn’t mean to rattle your cage.” He tossed the stub of his cigarette into the grass.

  Tuwana stood, her eyes as round as saucers. “ ‘Rattle your cage’? You are soooo funny.”

  Elvis still crooned through the radio. “Elvis…” Tuwana’s eyelids fluttered like a mosquito had flown into her pupil. “Don’t you just love him?”

  “He’s all right. Bossin’ cat the way he strums his guitar.”

  “You must be the MacLemores’ nephew.” I got right to the point. All that worry about meeting him, and here he was, in the flesh. A hood. That’s what Daddy would call him.

  Tuwana prattled on about writing a summer newspaper and how we’d be glad to show him around Graham Camp. In the middle of our telling him about our Fourth of July picnic, the screen door burst open and a man stepped out. His bald head sat right on his shoulders, which sloped down to arms as big as tree trunks. Squinty eyes set close together glared at us.

  “Junior, I’m leaving.” He pitched a canvas duffel toward the Rambler and turned to Cly, or was it Junior? Maybe we’d met the wrong relative. For Tuwana’s sake, I hoped so.

  Then Norm MacLemore came out on the porch, nearly tripping on the extension cord. He swore under his breath. “Don’t take any wooden nickels.” Norm shook hands with the man I didn’t know. “I’ll straighten the boy out for you.”

  “See ya, Pop.” Cly stepped toward the thick-bodied man and held out his hand.

  Instead of shaking hands, the man narrowed his eyes at Cly. Stone-cold blue eyes. His lip curled up on one side. “Keep your sorry self outta trouble.”

  A painful look crossed Cly’s face, and for a minute I thought he might be going to cry. It lasted for only a flash, and then he looked down at the grass.

  His dad stalked to the Rambler, got in, and clanked down the street without looking back.

  “Grass needs mowing,” Norm said to Cly. To us he said, “Don’t think he’ll be needing your help.” He kicked the radio and stormed into the house. Static hissed from the speaker.

  Swooping up the radio, Cly started up the steps.

  “Wait a minute.” I held out a paper. “We’d like you to have this—Junior, wasn’t it? No charge.”

  “Thanks. Junior’s what my family calls me. Friends call me Cly, short for Clyburn. After him.” He cocked his head in the direction the Rambler had taken.

  “Fine. We’ll call you Cly.” I gave him a wobbly smile, anxious to get away. “Maybe we’ll see you around. How long you staying?”

  “According to my old man, until I show some gratitude and change my attitude.” He glanced at the Dandelion Times.

  “What’s wrong with your attitude?” Tuwana asked.

  “That’s what I say. What’s wrong with my attitude?” He snorted and looked over his shoulder at the screen door.

  Tuwana flashed him a big smile. “Mother says attitude is everything. Clothes, hair, the way you talk… That’s why she thinks I’d be a great cheerleader. You know, the way I
’ve never met a stranger. Like you, Cly. I knew right away we’d hit it off.”

  “I… I’d better go… see what Norm wants me to do.” He disappeared into the house, leaving us stranded on the front lawn.

  Tuwana lifted her shoulders. “Now what?”

  One thing I knew: I didn’t want to sell any more papers, so I suggested we go over to Willy’s store for a Coke. I jiggled the change in my pocket and took off.

  Overhead, the sun beat down, hot as blue blazes. Wavy air drifted up from the gooey tar on the highway as we trudged in silence. Not even the anticipation of an icy Grapette from the soda cooler in the back of Willy’s store could erase the memory of the look Cly’s father had given him.

  I’d seen that look before—in Mama’s eyes the night my baby sister died.

  [ FIVE ]

  GOPHER’S POND SAT IN the middle of a cow pasture a few miles from Graham Camp. The Chevy bumped along the ruts to take Daddy and me to his favorite fishing hole, his treat for both of us surviving the first week without Mama. Secretly, I suspected he didn’t want to spend time in our empty house, and that was fine with me. I spent all the time I could over at Tuwana’s or helping Goldie with the aviary.

  When we got to the pond, the sun glowed red in the west with streaks of purple splitting the sky. Long shadows fell on the mossy pond as Daddy tied the red and white float on my fishing line. He smiled while I threaded a squirmy night crawler onto my hook, then set the can of worms between us.

  I got the first bite but no fish, and he handed over the coffee can for me to dig out another worm. After I threw my line back out, I sat cross-legged on a clump of grass and looked at Daddy.

  “What do you think Mama’s doing right now?”

  “Don’t rightly know. Maybe playing a game of checkers in the game room.”

  “Who would she play checkers with?”

  “Other patients, I guess. Maybe one of the attendants. She’s probably thinking about you right now…. ‘I wonder what Sammie’s doing.’ I bet that’s crossed her mind.”