Chapter 19
“Thursgood is going to be on the side of a milk carton,” I announced proudly as I walked into the kitchen.
Randall looked up from a bowl of gravy. “What for?”
I slid into a chair across from him, leaning over a pile of biscuits and butter. “Because I just heard Marmalade on the phone filing a missing person’s report.”
Randall looked confused. “Why would anyone want to find him?”
“I dunno.” I shrugged my shoulders. “I just hope he doesn’t come back.”
I sneaked back into the hall for an update. When I returned, Randall was staring up at the ceiling. “She’s calling a private detective.”
Later, Marmalade sent us off to the zoo alone. I played on the rides all day. We spent an hour sitting on a bench in the monkey house.
Randall watched the monkeys swinging around in front of us. “I wonder why monkeys don’t cover their butts.”
“Good observation, given the fact that everyone in our family has a long history of showing their asses.”
Randall chuckled.
At five o’clock we climbed into Randall’s rusted old car. As we pulled away from the curb I saw zoo workers locking the huge gates behind us. I waved goodbye to the bears and the sea lions and the big cats.
At home Marmalade was sitting on the gossip bench exactly where we’d left her. Randall helped her off to bed, dragging the rotary phone as far as the cord would stretch so she could sleep with it at the end of her bed.
Randall stayed up all night, so I stayed up with him, sitting in the middle of his bed, watching him rock and sway to Elvis. He asked where Nash was.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“You think he’ll come back?”
I shook my head.
He tipped his head low and said, “He was right nice to you, Tupelo Honey.”
I burst into tears.
Randall put his arm around my shoulder. “You think he went back to Mexico? ”
I shook my head and thought about Nash. I wanted to believe everything would work itself out.
It was a cool, usually still morning when the phone rang at 4 AM. It was so loud it scared the bejesus out of me. Randall and I were in the kitchen about to snarf down sweet-potato pies and tumblers full of hot chocolate.
The first ring sent chills up my spine. Randall’s gaze shifted to the hall.
Another ring.
“Should we answer it?” I whispered.
“We ain’t even supposed to be awake,” Randall said.
Our question was answered soon enough, when I heard boards creaking beneath Marmalade’s feet.
“Hello?” She spoke urgently into the phone receiver as if she’d always been waiting for this very call.
Randall and I huddled together in the corner, eavesdropping.
“Yes . . . Yes,” she said. Then, a second later, she gasped, “Thursgood, is that you? Thursgood?”
Randall and I exchanged a look.
Damn. Why was he calling?
There was silence, then Marmalade pleaded, “Please, Officer, put him back on.”
She listened, lowering her butt to the gossip bench.
“I don’t understand . . . why won’t he . . . ?”
I noticed Randall was holding his breath, so I nudged him with my elbow. He exhaled a deep sigh.
Marmalade shifted her gaze over to us, covering the receiver with her hand. “What are you two doing out of bed?”
Busted.
I shrugged my shoulders.
She turned her attention back to the phone. “Yes . . . yes . . . what was that?”
There was a pause. I heard the garbled sounds of a voice on the other end of the line.
Her hand landed limply on the seat of the bench. “I don’t understand.”
Neither did I.
Why was that maniac calling?
After a few seconds, she picked up a pen, wrote down a number, hung up and immediately dialed the number. “Yes, yes, my son just called me from there.” She listened, a deep frown forming at the end of her mouth. “What . . . but you picked him up and . . . What?” Her eyes opened to the size of lemons and she looked very, very old.
The phone fell away from her face, landing on the floor with a thud. Randall and I were close enough to hear a man’s voice say, “I’m sorry, madam. There’s nothing else we can do.”
Then the voice thanked her politely and hung up.
“What’s going on?” I walked closer, picking the phone up off the floor.
Tears streamed down her cheeks. She looked at the phone as if it had answers.
“He’s not coming back, right?” I demanded, mad that he had even called in the first place. “You’re not sending him money, are you?”
Randall stepped up behind me and laid his hand on my shoulder.
Finally, she looked up at us, big tears caught in her eyelashes. “He can’t stay out there, Tupelo Honey. He doesn’t have his medicine.”
“So? He left. He doesn’t just get to come back whenever he wants and terrorize everyone. No one wants him to come back anyway.”
“It doesn’t matter if anyone wants him to come back. He has to have his medicine.”
“But his medicine doesn’t work.”
Her eyes fixed on mine and she said, “His medicine is what keeps him from getting worse.”
It took me a minute but then a light bulb clicked on in my head. The words keeps him from getting worse echoed in my head. I understood. Finally. The medicine was what kept him from hurting us all these years.
With a deep, resounding sigh she laid her palms flat against her thighs.
“Are you going to get him?” I demanded, still unwilling to give up my position.
“I have to. I can’t be responsible for what he might do out there.”
I looked back at Randall to get him to tell her how much he didn’t want Thursgood to come back but he was gone. Dammit. No one was going to take a vote. Everyone was just going to let him come back home. How crappy.
Marmalade reached for the phone book. This conversation was over. I walked into the kitchen. Randall had hunkered down at the table, drinking heavy cream from the carton.
Marmalade was on the phone again I leaned back in my chair to eavesdrop. After my curiosity had been satisfied I whispered to Randall, “She’s calling the bus station.”
Randall talked with his mouth full, “I remember him before his medicine, Tupelo Honey. He ain’t right without that medicine. He needs it.”
“He ain’t right with it. Besides . . . big deal. I’ll send him his medicine every day if I have to.”
“He won’t take it,” Marmalade said from the doorway.
“I don’t want him to live here,” I persisted.
“Don’t no one else want him either,” Randall said.
“Ain’t that the damn truth.”
“Tupelo Honey, stop saying ‘damn’ and go call your mother. You’re going to have to go back home for a few days.”
That night Randall drove me back to the house my mother had rented. Marmalade’s suitcase was in the trunk. I turned around so I could see her sitting in the dark backseat.
I didn’t want Marmalade to go anywhere.
I didn’t want Thursgood to come back.
I didn’t want to have to stay with my mother.
I got out of the car without saying a word.
Randall pulled away from the curb. My mother was in the living room, flopped on the couch, stoned. She was wearing a short dress with no underwear. It was gross.
“I have a date later,” she slurred.
I nodded and kept walking toward my room.
“Don’t tell anyone I left you here,” she yelled after me.
“Whatever you say.”
A week later Marmalade returned empty-handed from Texas. She had a full bottle of pills and no Thursgood. I went and sat on the end of Marmalade’s bed. She stared at the ceiling, her eyes adjusting to the light.
&n
bsp; Finally, she took a deep breath and asked, “What really happened when Thursgood came to stay at your house?”
I told her the entire story. She lay on her back, listening.
When I finished she said, “I just don’t know what’s wrong with him.”
“I don’t know what was ever right about him.”
“He was a good boy. Sometimes.” Then she leaned forward, patting my hand. “But, I guess he was never sweet like you.”
“What happened when you were in Texas?”
She thought about my question for a minute. Then she shook her head and said, “Not much. I sat in a motel and talked to a private investigator. I tried to talk to anyone who’d seen Thursgood. I read the newspapers.”
“For what?”
“To make sure no one had been hurt.”
Oh.
Randall shuffled around in his room. Marmalade drifted off to sleep.
Yup. It was true. The Bogeyman wasn’t here anymore. He’d gone to live underneath someone else’s bed.
Chapter 20
The day my mother disappeared I didn’t notice because I’d made such a habit of hiding in my room. The house was really quiet and empty when I got up for school. Moochi was drinking water from the faucet.
“Is anyone here?” I asked.
He shrugged his furry shoulders.
Moochi walked with me in the dark to the bus stop.
That afternoon, I returned from school and knocked on the front door. No one answered. I fished around behind a stack of old cinderblocks for the key. A big puff of silence greeted me as I walked through the door. I knew something was wrong. Nothing in the kitchen had been moved. Nothing in the bathroom had been moved, including the roll of toilet paper on the floor next to the sink. My heart started to beat a little faster. I ran out into the hall, looking in both directions.
“Hello?” I yelled loudly.
No answer. I ran to my mother’s bedroom.
That’s when I found the needles in the trashcan. Well . . . next to the trashcan. I stood there staring at wads of tissue paper stained with blood, the syringes lying like bodies, dried-up vomit crusted to the floor. It was like an oracle divining the future. Suddenly, I remembered the hotel in New York. I remembered how I couldn’t come in her room. I remembered the way Nash took out his gun in New York when he saw the man walking out of our hotel room. Finally I stood up and wiped my face because I didn’t want to cry. I was just afraid of being alone.
I decided to call Marmalade, but I wasn’t going to tell her about my mother yet. With Thursgood leaving, I knew for sure that this would give her a heart attack.
The phone had no dial tone. I banged the receiver, shook it hard, slammed it down, and then picked it up again. Nothing. Great. Someone forgot to pay the phone bill.
A big sigh sputtered in my throat. I went to the kitchen to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for dinner. The silence was spooky. While I did my homework, I wondered where Moochi had gone and if he would come back by the time I fell asleep. Then I launched myself out of my chair and made sure every window and door was locked. I dragged my blankets and pillow to the closet thinking that if someone broke in then they wouldn’t find me. I’d been left alone a lot, but somehow this felt different. The dark confines of my new sleeping arrangement were nice, but I woke all night long to the sound of every squeaking, creaking, thumping, shuffling noise. I burrowed deeper into my blankets.
When I woke to the sound of my alarm on the bedside table, Moochi was sleeping next to me. After making my rounds to see if my mother had shown up in the middle of the night, I tried to pretend nothing was wrong.
That day my guidance counselor, Mrs. Grant, found me in the school hallway and asked if I was okay.
“Yeah, sure,” I chirped. “Why?”
She led me down the hall into her office. “Because you’ve missed school five times this month. We tried to call your mother, but her phone’s been disconnected.”
Crap. My palms started sweating.
Desperate for a good answer, I blurted out, “I had to go out of town to be in beauty pageants and she forgot to pay the bill.”
It was not a good lie. The look on her face told me so. She leaned closer, laying her arms on her knees. “Tupelo Honey, I need you to tell me if everything is okay.”
The sound of her voice was so sweet and sincere that I completely fell apart. Through my big, blubbering sobs, I croaked, “No . . . no, it’s not okay.” Then I told her about my mother.
“Is there someplace you can stay?”
“With Marmalade. I stay there a lot. She even picks me up at school on Fridays.”
Mrs. Grant held her pen poised over the yellow paper. “Where does she live?”
I gave her all of my information, and then she asked me to go sit in the waiting room. I was glad no one else was there. I didn’t want anyone to know what was happening. After a few minutes, Mrs. Grant came out wearing her coat.
“Come on.” She knelt down in front of me and took my hands in hers. “I’ll drive you. Your grandmother is waiting for you. She loves you very much.”
Out in the parking lot a gray sky stretched low over the city. I could smell rain. Mrs. Grant opened the passenger door for me. Inside, the car was loaded with gadgets and smelled brand new. When she turned the key in the ignition classical music began playing. She listened to the same radio station Randall did.
I started crying.
Mrs. Grant shut the radio off and turned to me with soft eyes. “Tupelo Honey, I’m so sorry.”
It took me a minute. The tears choked in my throat. Finally, I said, “I was scared.”
“I know you were, Tupelo Honey. I know. It’s my job to know.”
Thunder rumbled over our heads.
Marmalade walked down from the front porch as Mrs. Grant pulled her car to the curb. She put the car in park and got out. “Are you Sara Royale?” she asked.
I opened my door and got out. Marmalade took my hand and said, “Yes, I’m her grandmother.”
I huddled close, squeezing her hand. Her body was warm and she smelled like doughnuts and coffee. I wanted her to be a kangaroo so I could climb into her pocket and hop away.
Mrs. Grant leaned against her car. “I’m going to have to report this. You understand what that means, don’t you?”
I looked up at Marmalade and saw her nodding her head. I could hear Randall breathing behind us.
Mrs. Grant knelt down in front of me. “Will you be okay here?”
I nodded.
“All right,” she touched my head and smiled. “I’ll see you in school.”
After Mrs. Grant drove away Marmalade turned to me. “Tupelo Honey, why didn’t you call and tell us you were alone?”
“I tried, but the phone wasn’t working. And I thought she would come back.”
She sighed. “Oh, child . . . I am so sorry she left you there.”
I threw myself against her, clutching her waist.
“Let’s go eat dinner,” she steered me toward the front door.
Randall stared at us. “What’s happened?”
“Lucy never came back to get Tupelo Honey.”
I stared at both of them through red-rimmed eyes.
Finally Randall reached for my hand, “That’s okay. Lucy ain’t never really been nice to anyone.”
That night Marmalade let us bring the television down to Randall’s room. Everything was so much nicer with Thursgood gone. I could lie back and watch a movie without having to brace for the worst. We watched Cary Grant and ate fried Spam sandwiches with mustard and a two-liter bottle of orange soda. Randall burped like a girl until he fell asleep.
The next morning I woke to the sound of someone breathing. When I opened my eyes I saw Marmalade standing over me.
She smiled and said, “Good. You’re up. Let’s go.”
I rolled over, yawning. “Yeah. Where are we going?”
“We’re going to have to take a taxi and go get your stuff.”
/> I pushed myself up on my elbows, looking around. Randall was a big lump sleeping next to me. I rubbed my eyes. Marmalade extended her hand and I took it. The floor was cold but it felt good to be standing. It felt good to be holding someone’s hand.
The landlord smelled like cigarette smoke. His skin was yellow, and his teeth looked like they had never been brushed. He argued with Marmalade for a solid fifteen minutes before finally saying, “Alright. You can have the kid’s stuff but the rest is mine. That bitch is two months behind on the rent.”
“That bitch” was my mother.
Marmalade walked with me to the porch.
The landlord extended his arm in front of us. “Just the kid,” he said.
Marmalade sighed in a way that told me she was annoyed. She squeezed my hand, then knelt down slowly so we were face to face. “Okay. This man is going to let you go inside. I want you to go get all of your stuff and bring it out here. Okay?”
I nodded. The smelly landlord walked onto the front porch and unlocked the door. The inside of the house was quiet and still. Everything was just as I’d left it. My new Nancy Drew book was on the sofa. My tinfoil sword was on the floor. Moochi was standing in the hall. I glanced back over my shoulder to make sure no one was watching. I whispered to Moochi, “Come on. Help me get all of my stuff.”
Since my blanket was still in the closet I pulled it out, spread it open and laid all of my clothes on top. Then I went to the hall closet to get a suitcase. I gave the door a good jerk because it always scraped the floor. I stood there staring into the dark hollow. It took me a minute to piece it together. Then I knew. The closet was empty. The suitcases were gone. I was so mad I ran to her room. I flung open the closet door. The empty shelves and hanging rod left no room for doubt. All of her clothes were gone. Dammit. Quickly I turned and scanned the room for inventory. The jewelry box that normally sat on the dresser was gone. She’d come back when I was at school and had taken everything she wanted. My mother had never intended to come back for me.
Tupelo Honey Page 13