“Go to sleep,” Grandmother and God said almost at the same time. Maybe they were both right. Sleeping might be the best thing for Cissy’s nerves, as long as she didn’t have bad dreams.
* * *
“Don’t outlaws move at night and hide out during the day?” Cissy had asked when they pulled into the Whiting Brothers Motor Court.
Grandmother told her in the sternest way she’d be sorry if she used the word outlaw again, so Cissy made a mental note to add it to her List of Banned Words once she got her notebooks out of the suitcase. Cissy wasn’t as upset as she could have been, considering her grandmother’s tone. She was much too excited to be staying at a motel. The best part of family vacations had been exploring the strange new surroundings—the matching bedspreads and drapes, the towels that smelled of chlorine, the in-room coffeepot, the ice machine, the motel stationery Cissy used to make lists of all the exciting things she’d experienced on vacation.
There were just two motels in Okolona where they could stop for the night. Grandmother chose the one that looked freshly painted, or maybe she chose it because it was the one on the right side of the highway. Cissy decided not to ask.
The units were stand-alone miniature houses, each with a little front porch and two metal lawn chairs painted bright red. The air conditioners jutting out from the tiny windows seemed huge in comparison, threatening to tip the little structures to their sides.
“They’re the color of the pistachio marshmallow salad that Ruth makes for special occasions,” Cissy said when they pulled up to the office.
She hoped Grandmother’s smile meant she’d forgiven the outlaw comment. She told Cissy to stay in the car, but that request was downright silly. Where was she to go? She didn’t even know where Okolona was except that they were still in Mississippi.
Cissy could see through the large paned window of the office. Grandmother stood at the counter, laughing and chatting with the manager. She withdrew cash from her pocketbook and laid the bills neatly on the counter. The manager looked older than she, maybe in his eighties. Perhaps he was flirting with her. Cissy laughed out loud, not because she didn’t believe it could be true, but because it made her happy to think someone thought Grandmother was as pretty as Cissy thought she was.
“She loves you.” God crossed her arms and leaned forward on the seat back, speaking into Cissy’s ear.
“Sometimes you scare me half to death.” Cissy placed a hand over her heart, faking a fainting spell. “Couldn’t you ring a bell or warn me somehow before you appear?”
God chuckled and shook Her head as if to tell Cissy she was being nonsensical, which was one of her favorite interesting words to use recently.
“Your grandmother has risked everything to get you away from the hospital,” God said. “You should be mindful of that.”
She didn’t need God to tell her to appreciate her grandmother, but it worried Cissy to hear how much she’d risked. If they were caught, would Grandmother be the one to pay? Or would they both go to jail? Cissy contemplated whether she’d rather just go back to the hospital and the boring routine to which she’d pretty much grown accustomed. But the thought of Grandmother in jail alone caused a rising panic. Cissy doubted her mother would ask for leniency for either of them.
When Grandmother exited the office, her face held none of her previous gaiety, as if she’d taken off a mask she wore for the manager only.
“We’re in unit seven,” she said, starting the car. “Last one on the left.”
“Seven is a lucky number.”
“That’s good, child. We need all the luck we can get.”
Grandmother looked tired so Cissy offered to unload the suitcases. She’d packed two for herself and one for Cissy, plus two toiletry cases—one for each of them. Cissy carried them in, one at a time, to prolong the experience. Since God had left and there was no one to talk to, Cissy pretended to be a traveling salesperson, stopping for the night and unloading her wares. She couldn’t risk keeping them in the car. If they were stolen, she’d lose her livelihood and wouldn’t be able to provide for her family, whom she daydreamed she’d left in some faraway town. The cramping in her gut made it uncomfortable to drag the largest of the suitcases, but Cissy’s daydream overshadowed the pain.
Grandmother didn’t comment on how long it took Cissy because she’d drifted off, still in her peach linen suit and hose, shoes kicked off by the bedside. She slept soundly, arms crossed on her chest, like the deceased at a viewing. Cissy kept from looking at her because the sight alarmed her so.
The tiny room could hold little more than the bed and two nightstands. To open the suitcases, Cissy would have to line them up between the bed and the wall and lie on the bed to reach their contents. Grandmother probably didn’t want her rooting around her things anyway, so Cissy just laid her own suitcase on the bed gently so as to not wake her. She opened it up and gasped at the willy-nilly way that her things had been thrown together. It felt good to have a task. She took everything out to refold her clothes. At the bottom of the suitcase were her notebooks and art pad. Beneath those were portraits she’d drawn—Grandmother on her porch; she, Jessie, and Lily with her mama, but not her daddy; and from the hospital, Dr. Guttman, Nurse Edna, Martha, and, of course, Lucien.
She’d used up almost the entire black pastel coloring Lucien’s longish hair and woolly eyebrows, but she thought his portrait was the best of the lot, or at least the closest likeness. Yet, when Cissy picked up the sketch, she had the feeling she’d forgotten something important, something frightening. She let go of the sheet as if it were a hot coal, and it floated down to the carpet. She picked it up by the edges and placed it behind the others in a hidden pocket in the suitcase, its strange power hidden for the time being.
She remembered she was supposed to add outlaw to her List of Banned Words, so she looked for the one red spiral notebook among the bunch. Cissy thought choosing a red notebook was particularly clever. Glaring at her, the cover was a stop sign, warning that the contents of those blue-lined pages could be dangerous. Whenever she added a word, she squinted so the pages became just blurry enough to conceal the words already jotted down.
Cissy’s tummy growled. The alarm clock on the nightstand said 7 p.m. already. She wanted to wake Grandmother, but worried she needed the rest more than Cissy needed supper. It couldn’t hurt to check with the manager. There might be a vending machine with soda or snacks. Or he might be able to recommend a restaurant. Cissy would tell Grandmother when she woke up.
She closed the door but didn’t lock it in case Grandmother was still sleeping when she returned. The gravel in the parking lot radiated heat up Cissy’s legs. Funny how the sun could feel so hot late in the evening. Before long, though, it’d set earlier and earlier and they’d all say how much they missed those long, hot evenings of summer and early fall. Folks always seemed to miss what they didn’t have at the moment.
The door to the office triggered a tinkling bell and she smiled. That’s the exact sort of warning she’d love to have before a visit from God.
“Well, good evening. You’re the young miss traveling with Mrs. Johnson?”
“No, sir, I’m with my grandmother. We’re in unit seven.”
“Why yes, that’s Mrs. Johnson.”
Seeing his puzzled face, it dawned on her that Grandmother wouldn’t have used their real names. They were outlaws even though she wasn’t allowed to say the word.
“Oh! Yes, I’m with Mrs. Johnson. She’s resting right now. I’m just looking for a vending machine, maybe a soda and some crackers.”
“You’re in luck, young miss. You’ll find both on the far side of this building round back.”
She smiled in triumph, knowing she could silence her growling insides. The smile faded just as quickly. Cissy patted her pants pockets. She didn’t have any money of her own.
“What’s the matter, dear?” The old man reminded her a little of her grandfather, only much shorter and a little softer around the middle. His
white eyebrows jutted out shading his eyes, and she imagined his wrinkles were born from a lifetime of smiling, not frowning.
“Um . . . I don’t have any money. I’ll just wait for supper with Grandmother.” Cissy looked back toward their unit, wondering if she could risk looking in Grandmother’s purse for spare change.
“I’m happy to lend you a few quarters,” the man said, and dug around his front pants pocket. “Here you go.”
All the warnings from her mama about accepting things from strangers shouted to her from long ago, but her stomach’s pleas grew louder to drown them out.
“Thank you, mister,” she said, holding out her palm.
“Please call me Arlen. What’s your name?”
“I’m Cissy,” she said, shaking his hand. “Thanks so much for the change. I’ll be sure to pay you back later.”
“No worries, Cissy. Go on now and get yourself some snacks.”
She burst through the door with the loot and bounded round back. The Coke machine stood against the back wall, as cherry red as the porch chairs in front of their room. She could already taste the sweetness on her tongue and the acid in her throat.
“Cissy! Cissy!” Grandmother moved across the gravel in her unsteady heels, her hands in fists at her side. Her slow pace seemed to frustrate her all the more. “What the hell do you think you’re doing leaving the room?”
“I . . . I was hungry, Grandmother,” Cissy shouted to her. “I just wanted a snack.”
Waiting for her grandmother to reach her was one of the most uncomfortable minutes of Cissy’s life. Grandmother was spitfire mad, and Cissy lost a few inches of height just bracing for the confrontation.
“Where’d you get the money, girl? Did you go through my purse?” Grandmother’s face bloomed as red as Cissy’s notebook, giving her just as ominous a warning.
“No, ma’am, I promise. The nice man in the office, Mr. Arlen, he gave me the change. But I told him I’d pay him back.”
The blush drained from Grandmother’s face and was replaced by a colorless pall.
“Did you tell him your name?”
“Well, yes, I introduced myself to be polite.”
She grabbed Cissy by the wrist and marched her across the gravel, back toward their little pistachio house.
“Come on, girl. We’re leaving this instant. Let’s get the suitcases.”
Grandmother’s rough grip hurt. Cissy looked back to the office to see the manager, his smile now gone, wondering as she did what had gone so terribly wrong.
* * *
Cissy almost couldn’t bear to see her grandmother crying. She’d only seen her cry a handful of times, and each time Cissy had been the one to cause the heartache. Even worse, she’d hurt others. What would her sisters and mama be thinking? Would they blame Cissy for taking Grandmother from them, too?
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what I did wrong.”
“Hush, girl.” Grandmother shifted in the seat, sitting closer to the steering wheel. Cissy could tell dusk made it hard for her to see the road clearly. She wished she knew how to drive so she could spell Grandmother for a bit.
Since God seemed to appear at times like this, Cissy kept turning her head to the backseat so she wouldn’t be startled.
“What in God’s name are you looking at?” Grandmother broke the silence. “No one is following us. I’ve kept an eye out.”
“Who’d be following us?”
“The law, of course. How many girls named Cissy with your height and bright red hair are out there? You told the motel manager your name. You’re not a girl one would forget.”
Cissy suddenly felt a terrible guilt for her physical features and birth name as they marked her as a criminal. She sunk down farther into the seat, legs straining to fit beneath the dashboard. No matter how she tried, she couldn’t make herself smaller.
“If you’re Mrs. Johnson, what’s my name?”
She could’ve sworn the tenseness in Grandmother’s shoulders eased a bit after hearing the question, but the declining light made it harder and harder to see her features.
“Not very original, was it?” Grandmother’s voice seemed lighter and Cissy scooted over closer, her head on her grandmother’s bony shoulder.
“Well, you can’t exactly call yourself Mrs. Butterworth,” Cissy said.
Grandmother chuckled just enough to make Cissy’s stomach hurt a little less.
She asked what name Cissy would like to use. They tried out different names for the next half hour until they hit Tupelo. Near the city limits stood a little barbecue shack with rusty tin sides and a sign that read BUBBA’S. Strands of Christmas lights hung from the edges of the building to several nearby pecan trees, creating a canopy of red, green, and blue over the three picnic tables in front.
Cissy begged Grandmother to pull over. She said if someone looked up the word starving in the dictionary, her picture would be right there proving the point. Grandmother said to stop being so melodramatic, and Cissy wrote the word in her notebook of interesting words because she’d never been called that before. No matter the meaning, Grandmother pulled the Caddy over onto a patch of gravel near the shack and Cissy almost jumped from the car before the engine even stopped.
A black woman, maybe in her early twenties, sat at one table with two little ones, eating brisket off white butcher paper. A loaf of bread in its wrapper sat on each table, probably the only side dish to the meat Bubba barbecued in the smoker fashioned from an oil drum. Well, Cissy assumed it was Bubba because of the wooden plank nailed to the side of the shack, although the paint had flaked off almost completely.
Cissy couldn’t stop staring at the young black woman, who wasn’t having any of it.
“What you looking at, Carrot Top?” she said with fearsome eyes that made Cissy wilt. If Cissy wasn’t showered in the green, blue, and red hues of the Christmas lights, the woman would have seen her beet-red embarrassment.
“I . . . I . . . didn’t mean to stare, miss. You’re just so pretty and I like your braids,” Cissy stammered.
“Well, it ain’t good manners to stare so, but thank you for your compliment just the same,” she said. “You and your grammy are welcome to sit with me and the kids if you like.”
Cissy looked to Grandmother for approval and she nodded, but gave a look that said, “Be careful what you say, girl.”
When Bubba, or whoever he was, brought the food to the table, Cissy wrapped up two slices of brisket in a white bread blanket and stuffed the roll into her mouth with the biggest bite she could manage. Her hunger by that time had taken control of her senses and she was forced to appease it. She didn’t even stop to wipe the sauce on her face until Grandmother shoved the roll of paper towels on the table toward her.
Grandmother must have been in a better mood because she allowed her to drink two Big Red sodas. Cissy swore Big Red was invented specifically to go along with barbecue. No two tastes together ever seemed so right.
“How do you drink that stuff?” Grandmother’s lips pursed as if she were drinking turpentine.
“Because nothing else tastes like it. It’s not strawberry. It’s not cherry. It’s just red.”
“Amen, sister!” said the young black woman. “You can keep your Coke or RC Cola. Nothin’ is like Red.”
They all took big swigs at the same time while Grandmother pinched her nose shut to show her mock disgust, which made them all laugh.
No one else stopped at the shack while they were there, so the owner joined them at the long picnic table. Turned out his name was Leroy. His father, Bubba, had opened the roadside eatery twenty years earlier, which explained the sad shape of the sign. Local folks knew the place, so a freshly painted sign wasn’t necessary, Leroy said, but he might get around to repainting it one day.
Before Grandmother got around to choosing their aliases, Cissy introduced her as Mrs. Mae Johnson and herself as Matilda, and felt quite proud of her ability to improvise. She thought it good practice to take the lead if they were goin
g to be on the lam for some time. Grandmother patted her knee, so Cissy assumed she’d done a good job.
Letitia, the young black woman, was Leroy’s youngest daughter. When Cissy asked if she was babysitting someone’s kids, Letitia let out a hoot so forceful Big Red shot out of her nose. She yelped at the burn of the soda pop in her nostrils.
“No, child, they’re my young’uns.” She wiped her chin with a paper towel. Her two boys, Damon, five, and Dorian, four, giggled into their hands at Cissy’s mistake. Leroy shook his head and smiled.
“You’re sure young to have kids of your own,” Cissy said.
“Mind your manners.” Grandmother pinched her until she yowled.
Letitia assured them she wasn’t offended. She’d had Damon when she was just seventeen and Darion the year after. The boys had different daddies who didn’t want anything to do with them now, so they mostly just helped Leroy at the barbecue stand while she worked as a nurse at a local hospital.
“How old are you, Matilda?” she asked Cissy.
“Sixteen.”
“Well, don’t go making the same foolish mistakes I did,” she warned. “You’re pretty enough to attract the attention of older boys. You finish school and get married before you start laying with boys. It was rough going to community college while caring for babies.”
Cissy thought of Martha and her boyfriend, punished for their love, and couldn’t imagine a boy caring about her. Especially after what her daddy had done. The one time a boy showed interest in her—sometime in the ninth grade—she ignored him until he called her a snooty rich bitch. She gladly took the insult rather than have him find out she was damaged in mind and body. Now that the secret was out, Cissy would forever be known as the girl who murdered her daddy for touching her. If she moved away from Mississippi, she still couldn’t imagine wanting someone’s physical attention.
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