Francie

by Karen English

  I’d been walking for some time and still had a long way to go when a horn made me jump. I was afraid to turn around until I heard a friendly voice. “Where you going so fast, Francie?” It was Mr. Grandy. I hurried to the cab of the truck, gripping the windowsill.

  “Something’s come up and I need a ride back home, Mr. Grandy.”

  “Well, hop in.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Mr. Grandy began to speak the moment I settled in the seat. “You over your fright by now? Shame how those boys put you through all that—”

  “Yes, Mr. Grandy,” I said, cutting him off. “But that’s done now.”

  We rode along in silence for a bit. Then I thought of something. “Mr. Grandy—that hobo camp—is it still down there by the viaduct?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I ain’t been down that way.”

  I thought about Alberta and her cap pulled down to her eyebrows. Mr. Grandy was wearing the same kind of cap. I felt a small desire to dress up in men’s clothes and be gone myself. I wouldn’t need to take much, neither. Just some of my books. I was so tired of working and having no friends to be with and nothing ahead of me each day but drudgery … But it wasn’t myself I was thinking of when I asked about the hoboes. That Alberta girl—she seemed to know all about hopping freights. She could help Jesse get to California.

  Mr. Grandy pulled in front of my house and I jumped out. “Thank you, Mr. Grandy. I appreciate it.” I waited until he drove away before I headed for the shed.

  The door was ajar. That in itself signaled that something was amiss. I eased the door open and peered in. Mama’s quilt, the pillow, the book, the jars of food—all of it was gone. There was no sign of hurry or struggle.

  I looked around in the shed and the house for something that would give me a clue as to where Jesse’d gone. There was nothing, no footprints on the shed’s dirt floor, none of the things I’d given him left behind. He’d just up and left. Went back to the woods, I guessed. I felt a mixture of relief and disappointment. What was I supposed to do now?

  I’d have to make that long trek back to Miss Rivers’ and face Mama’s wrath. I had a good mind to go to my hill with a book. If I was going to get in trouble, I might as well really deserve it.

  But I didn’t. I turned up the road toward Ambrose Park. I’d barely gotten past Miss Mabel’s when I heard her screen door slam and my name called.

  “You missed all the excitement,” she yelled.

  I stopped in my tracks and went to stand in front of her porch steps.

  “Pardon me, Miss Mabel?”

  “Sheriff Barnes was out here.” She smacked her lips a bit, taking her time. “Searching for that boy.” She took a bite of biscuit. I waited while she gummed it. “Went over to your place and looked in your shed.”

  “They go in?” I asked, remembering the smooth floor.

  “I know he looked in. Looked under the corncrib, too. Then he came on down here. Course he know better than to think I’d be hidin’ anybody. I got some sense.”

  I wondered briefly if she knew that Jesse Pruitt had slept in our shed.

  “Then he went on down to the Grandys’,” Miss Mabel was saying.

  I looked in that direction in search of the sheriff’s car. It wasn’t there.

  “Oh, he ain’t down there now. He was heading down to the Tallys’ last I saw. Probably go on down to the Darnells’ next. Where you off to?” she asked quickly before I could get away.

  “Mama’s cooking over at Miss Rivers’ in Ambrose Park. I gotta go,” I said. “She’s waiting on me.” That wasn’t a lie. She was probably waiting on me, all right—with her belt.

  I got back just as Mama was coming out to empty a bucket of sudsy water in the bushes. Mama glanced in my direction, then did a double take.

  “Francie Weaver!” She caught me by the shoulder and dug her nails into my flesh through my shirtsleeve. “Just where have you been! You had me worried sick—just leavin’ the broom leanin’ against the rail without even a by-your-leave.” She pushed me along. “I ain’t got time to beat your butt now, but know this—your behind is mine!”

  Which meant I had to spend the rest of the afternoon working in the awful knowledge that I had a whipping ahead of me. No matter how fast and efficiently I did my job for the rest of the day, I was going to get what I was owed, so everything seemed pretty useless. Burnette gave me a whole tray of glasses back, saying I’d left lint in them and they weren’t fit to return to the china cabinet.

  I used my hip to open the door to the kitchen and eased into the room with the heavy tray. Bea Mosely, standing at the sink, looked over her shoulder and said, “What you bring those back for?”

  “Burnette said I left lint on them.”

  Bea Mosely rolled her eyes at that. “Leave ‘em. I’ll take care of it. Your mama’s waitin’ on the porch for you anyhow.”

  I set the tray on the table and slowly slipped off my apron and kerchief.

  “Bye, Miss Bea,” I said before going out the door.

  Mama was sitting on the back steps, staring off toward Miss Rivers’ rose garden. “I always wanted me a rose garden,” she said as she got up heavily. She seemed to have lost all her anger.

  We started up Parker Street, then turned down Mrs. Montgomery’s street. Clarissa was playing cards with some girls on her porch. One lifted her clinking glass of iced tea to her lips and took a long sip. The heat and stagnant air felt burdensome. Mama and I had a long, long walk ahead of us home to Three Notch. I would have waved to Clarissa—she’d been so nice to me, then Prez and Perry, too—but her back was to me.

  Mama’s voice dispelled the silence between us, surprising me. “I believe you must’ve had some good reason to run off that way. I‘ma listen to what you have to say before I decide whether or not to give you your whippin’.” She looked over at me, waiting.

  “I had to go back home, Mama.”

  “I know you gonna tell me why …”

  “I heard Sheriff Barnes telling Miss Rivers he was going out our way to search barns and corncribs and such.”

  “What’s goin’ on, Francie …”

  “I hid Jesse in the shed.”

  Mama stopped in her tracks.

  “I had to, Mama. He was so pitiful when he came out of the woods, and I was so glad to see that he wasn’t hurt bad or dead.”

  Mama began walking again. “Where’s he now?”

  “I don’t know, Mama. I think he left before the sheriff ever got there. I got a ride home with Mr. Grandy and there wasn’t not one sign of Jesse in that shed. I think he’s gone.”

  We walked on in silence.

  “What if Daddy don’t ever send for us, Mama?” I knew I was breaking an unspoken rule, saying that, but I had to ask.

  Mama was silent.

  “He didn’t come when he said he was,” I persisted. “How we know he’s gonna send for us just cause he said he would? We don’t even have a date. People probably think we ain’t going nowhere.”

  “Those are the jealous folks. They’re like crawdads in a barrel. They don’t want no one gettin’ out if they can’t.”

  “But, Mama—”

  “You got to be patient,” Mama said. “God willing, we’re moving …”

  “Mama, I think only you believe that.”

  “Just have faith.”

  I didn’t get the promised whipping. When we reached home, she told me to go on in and start supper, she was just going to sit on the porch swing and rest a bit.

  Prez hadn’t gotten home yet from down to Auntie’s. He was supposed to be helping Perry fix the chicken coop, but I knew they’d probably done just as much play as work, and they’d be in a rush to get something finished before the sun set.

  I got the dinner going and came out to sit by Mama. She was staring at the mailbox. “I’m so sick of workin’ on Sundays. Wish I had me one Sunday where I could go to church and pray to God. The white ladies make sure they go, before they have their teas and luncheons and book club
s …”

  I studied Mama’s wistful face. I almost never saw her looking like this. And talking about what she wished for. Mama just worked—all the time. Her harsh words probably came out of her weariness, mostly. Mama loved us, I knew. “Tonight, before we go to bed—we’ll say a special prayer to God for Jesse.”

  “Mama.”

  “Yes, baby.”

  “God will hear us, no matter where we pray.”

  “That sure is true.”

  It was then that we noticed the flag up on the mailbox. How could we miss it? We both looked at it for a bit. “We got mail,” Mama said. “Go see what we got.”

  Word from Daddy

  I already knew it was from Daddy. I didn’t feel good about it, for some reason. I carried it back to Mama and held it out. She must have felt it, too, because she was slow to take it out of my hand. I followed her to the house. We settled at the table. “Go on—read it,” she said, sighing.

  I opened it and a ten-dollar bill fell out. My throat grew tight over the first few sentences.

  Dear Family:

  I pray this letter finds you all in good health and doing well. I’m sorry I couldn’t get word to you that I wasn’t able to come like I planned. I sure hope this letter gets to you directly and you didn’t go to too much trouble. I know it must have been a disappointment. Family, this letter brings bad news. We’re going to have to put off your move up here for a little while longer. I think I’ll have the money to get you up here by spring …

  I stopped reading then. Spring was past. The spring he was talking about was next year! Next year!

  I threw the letter down on the table. Tears collected in my eyes, then rolled down my cheeks. It wasn’t fair …

  “Finish reading, Francie,” Mama said.

  I finished all the pointless stuff about how hot and humid Chicago was, how hard Daddy’s last run was. How tired he was. And I thought, maybe he did have another family. Mama held out her hand. I put the letter in it and watched her fold it in half. She got up and put it on the pantry shelf in the little box with all the others.

  It had been so long since we’d seen him. I closed my eyes, trying to picture his face. I couldn’t see it.

  Prez cried when he heard the news later. His wails did the job for me and Mama both, I was certain. It wasn’t until I was in bed that I cried so hard I thought I’d make myself sick. I could hear Mama out on the porch. The slow creaking of the swing sounded sad and hopeless.

  Mama let me sleep. When I woke, my face felt swollen from a night of determined crying. I sat up and tried to remember when and how I’d finally fallen asleep. I had no memory of Mama coming to bed. I had no memory of Mama getting up to fix breakfast. Yet the table was laid out with all our favorites when I dragged myself into the kitchen.

  Mama sat at the table. “Are you hungry?”

  I shrugged. I was hungry, having refused dinner the night before—but I didn’t want to admit it. Prez came in then, his eyes red and watery.

  “We ain’t never movin’ to be with Daddy,” he said.

  Mama just got up and dished grits onto our plates and scrambled eggs and biscuits with butter and peach preserves. I began to eat hungrily. I wasn’t going to care. What was the point? I was too angry to worry about Jesse, who was probably long gone anyway, who knew where. Jesse hadn’t cared enough to say thank you or even goodbye—so why should I care?

  “Francie, what’s taking you so long?” Mama stood at the bottom of Miss Beach’s back stairs, calling up to me. I ignored her first call and hovered over Miss Lafayette’s dresser some more. She’d gone into town, so I didn’t even have her to talk to.

  She had a new photograph up there and I was studying it. Her beau, I decided. Her fiancé. He was going to marry her and take her away from Noble. Judging from his clothes, I decided he was a man of means and intelligence and education. Just the kind of man I hoped to meet and marry one day, God willing. He wouldn’t be no railroad man.

  “’Bout time,” Miss Beach said to me nastily, her face full of suspicion as she watched me drop the load of clothes and sheets onto the floor with the other loads. “What were you doing up there, anyway?”

  “Nothing. Just getting the linens.”

  “Took you long enough. You better not have been up there messing in people’s things.”

  Mama looked over. “Francie knows better not to mess with nothing that don’t belong to her,” she said, sending a tiny jolt of guilt through me.

  Treasure trotted by and rubbed his back on Miss Beach’s leg, signaling to be picked up. She brought his tiny face close to hers and began cooing at him almost nose to nose until her teakettle went off. Then she let him slip back to the floor. He leaped right into the middle of Mama’s pile of whites, nestled down, and settled his head on his paws. He blinked up at me. Mama frowned at him.

  “Scoot,” she said and motioned with her hand.

  He squinted at me again and yawned. “Go on, cat,” Mama said and waved at him again. Miss Beach stood at the stove, slowly dunking her tea bag in her cup.

  “Come on, now …” Mama said and pulled a little at the corner of the top sheet. It only budged him momentarily from his roosting post. He wiggled back to it stubbornly. I hated him more than ever. Miss Beach continued stirring her tea, with her back to us. Around and around went her spoon.

  Real fast, I yanked the corner of the sheet, sending the cat sailing across the kitchen, then landing with a wonderful thud. Miss Beach whirled her fat self around then, her eyes popping out at Treasure heaped in the corner of the kitchen. He unfurled, stood up, and gave himself a little shake.

  “What did you do to my cat?” she gasped.

  “Just moved him off the sheet,” I said, pleased with myself.

  “You did more than that.” She watched him wobble to the table and scamper underneath it. “I see why he doesn’t like you. You’re mean and evil to him.”

  “He scratches me for no good reason.”

  “I don’t believe that for a second. If you’ll steal, you’ll lie.”

  “When did I steal?”

  “One half can of smoked salmon.”

  “I never stole no salmon.”

  “Last week I left a half can on the sideboard for my lunch. I left the room and when I came back it was finished off.”

  “It was probably that crazy cat of yours.” I shook with anger. I looked over at Mama, but she was just sorting the clothes, keeping her eyes on her task.

  “You think cause you’re moving North that you can do whatever you please … Well, let me tell you, Miss Ann.”

  “That ain’t true,” I said back. “Cause we ain’t even going.” I said it quickly before thinking, then immediately wished I could pull those words out of the air and put them back in my mouth.

  Miss Beach latched onto that, lifted an eyebrow—looked from me to Mama and back to me, her lips a quivering little smile. “Oh?”

  Mama threw me a scathing look.

  “What’s this? No move to Chicago? I knew it! Course I didn’t want to say anything, with you all being so sure and all.” She sat down to get comfortable. Mama just continued to sort. “Well, what happened, Lil? What happened to the big move?”

  Without looking up, Mama said, “It’s been delayed.”

  “Delayed.” Miss Beach brought her cup to her lips and blew. “I see. Well, I’m sure it’s just as well. Things can be hard up there—for country folk. It ain’t the paradise people say it is and …” She stopped then. Mama had gathered the first load and was heading out the door.

  “Why’d you tell that woman we weren’t going?” Mama growled at me as we were wringing the sheets.

  “It just came out.”

  “Yea? Well, now it’s going to be out all over town.”

  We got the laundry hung on the lines and settled on the porch steps to eat our lunch. Miss Beach opened the door behind us. “Since you aren’t movin’ anywhere, I’m gonna need you in a few weeks to get at my attic. It’ll be a major job
. Maybe take a week or two.” When Mama didn’t say anything, Miss Beach said, “You’ll be able to do it, won’t you?”

  “I can’t be sure, Miss Beach.” I looked over at Mama, surprised. Mama didn’t refuse work unless she was sick or someone in the family needed her. “I can tell you next week—about September.”

  About September. What did Mama mean by that.

  I could tell Miss Beach was puzzled, too. She just sputtered. “Well, I must know by next week at the latest—I have to make my plans, you know.”

  “God willing, you’ll know by next week.”

  Crawdads

  A bleak week followed. I could hardly go through the motions: Tuesday, helping serve at Mrs. Montgomery’s book club; Wednesday, serving at a tea at some friend of Mrs. Grace’s; Thursday, cooking and doing laundry at Auntie’s. She continued to feel better, but still needed help. Every once in a while, I’d look up from stirring the diapers over the open fire outside and check the woods and think: Where are you, Jesse—where are you? Not knowing was nearly unbearable. The thought of staying in Noble for almost another year was nearly as unbearable. God, please help me get through all of this, I prayed.

  Mama must have seen the sad look on my face. Friday, she gave me a day off. I had to go to my hill. It had been days and days since I’d been there.

  The hoboes were cooking one of their stews. Its strong aroma drifted up the hillside where I sat with my Scooter Pie in my lap still in its cellophane wrapper. I didn’t want to eat it yet. Sometimes the moment just didn’t seem right and I liked to wait.

  I was watching Alberta, anyway, wondering if she’d ever had a chance to get away. She was squatting by the river, washing a shirt with a slow, tired rhythm. She wrung it, stood up, and with her dripping garment in one hand and her other hand shading her eyes, she looked right up at me and smiled brightly. There was a small shadow in her mouth like she’d lost a tooth. She began the climb up to me.