A Song of Home

by Susie Finkbeinger

  “Hmm?”

  “Aren’t you ever going to teach me how to dance?”

  “Well, I thought you’d forgotten about that,” she said. “You haven’t asked for days.”

  “Will you?”

  “Get the cutting board out.”

  “You’re the best dancer I’ve ever seen,” I said. “I’ll bet you’d be a real good teacher, too.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” she told me, shaking her head. “Besides after the meeting tonight, I’ll probably be forbidden to dance in this town again.”

  “Nah, they wouldn’t do that,” I said.

  “You don’t think so? You know they’re meeting because of the dances,” she said. “Hand me that washrag, would you?”

  I did as she asked.

  “I was the only Negro at that dance.” She took care to fold the damp rag into a square. “I know they don’t want me dancing with their white kids.”

  “But you’re not all the way Negro,” I said. “Just half.”

  “That’s more than enough for most people.” She shook her head and rubbed at a spot on the kitchen counter. “If I’d known it was going to cause such a stir I would’ve just stayed home that night.”

  She handed me a couple carrots and the chopping knife. “Make them thin,” she said. “They’re for soup.”

  I couldn’t cut up anything near as fast as she could without fear I’d take off the end of my finger. Still, she didn’t sigh at me for being slow the way Mama would have. Opal just went back to mixing up the cornbread she’d started.

  “Opal?” I said, stopping my knife before setting to work on my second carrot. “You think they’ll split up the dances?”

  “Who’s they?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Some folks and Jim Crow.”

  “Well, first off, Jim Crow isn’t a person. They’re laws about what colored folks can and cannot do in the south,” she said. “Keep your eyes on your knife. You’ll slice your thumb off.”

  I looked back at my carrot.

  “We don’t have Jim Crow laws here, thank goodness.” She cleared her throat and poured the cornbread batter into a pan. “And some folks are just busybodies. That’s all.”

  She looked at me over her shoulder.

  “You don’t have to tell anybody I said that,” she said.

  “I won’t.”

  “People who hate Negroes so much should move to Mississippi, if you ask me.”

  I didn’t know what she meant by that, but didn’t ask. She’d started humming and I kept right on working until all the carrots were chopped. She told me to go ahead and put them in her stew pot. I did, liking the way they clunked on the bottom.

  The cornbread in the oven and the soup on to simmer, Opal did up what few things were dirty in the sink and I dried them. She thanked me for helping her.

  “Opal, can I ask you something?” I asked.

  “I guess so.”

  “If they do split up the dances, which would you choose?”

  “I don’t know.” She pushed a curl back into her loose bun. “Maybe I’d just have to start my own.”

  “I’d come,” I said.

  “That would be nice.”

  Daddy told Ray and me we’d best stay home from the town meeting. He’d said it would just be a bunch of grown folks bellyaching about not getting their own way and it would only serve to bore us right out of our minds.

  “Opal’s gonna stay with you until I get home,” he said. “You’ll mind her, won’t you?”

  We said we would.

  “Now, I won’t be too late,” he said, putting on his coat. “Y’all can stay up until I get back and I promise I’ll tell you about some of the meeting.”

  After Daddy left, Opal turned on the radio, finding something nice and calm and slow. She said it was so Ray could concentrate on the letter he was writing to his mother and so I could read my book. Really, I thought it was so I wouldn’t bother her to teach me how to dance.

  Even if she’d offered to give me a dance lesson that night, I would have told her no thanks. At least that was what I told myself.

  I peeked at her every now and again out of the corner of my eye to see if she was giving any sign of wanting to dance. A toe tapping or a head bobbing. The way I figured, if she got into a dancing mood, she might just teach me a step or two after all.

  But nothing. I knew it was a lost cause when she took up Mama’s mending basket and got to work on one of Ray’s socks. Somehow that boy could find a way to work a hole in his socks with every single one of his toes.

  I just turned my eyes back to my book.

  Ray beat me at four out of five games of checkers. And I was pretty sure he’d set me up to jump his last few pieces in the fifth game.

  “You let me win,” I said, shaking my head.

  “I never did,” he answered back. “I was just listenin’ to the radio.”

  “You don’t have to let me win,” I said.

  “I didn’t.”

  “Don’t bicker,” Opal said, putting the mending down beside her chair and getting up. She checked the clock on the wall. “It’s getting late.”

  “Can’t we stay up until Daddy gets home?” I asked. “Please?”

  “He said you could.” She shook her head and went to the kitchen, letting the door swing closed behind her.

  Ray went to the radio and bent at the waist, eyes level with the dial as he turned it up and down, trying to find something worth listening to. As fast as he moved it, I didn’t know how he could figure out what was playing. I didn’t care, though. I wouldn’t have admitted it to Opal, but I was tired.

  Dropping onto the davenport, I leaned my head on the back and stared at the ceiling. There was a crack that went all the way from one wall to where a light hung right in the middle of the room.

  “Ray, if you could pick anywhere in the whole world, where would you live?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, Pearl,” he said, still monkeying with the radio.

  “I’d live in the library,” I told him.

  “Seems as good a place as any.”

  “You’d go out to California, wouldn’t you?” I asked. “Or Florida?”

  He shook his head then settled on a radio program. He plunked down cross-legged, facing me.

  “Would you go back to Red River?” I asked.

  “Would you?”

  I nodded.

  “Then I’d go with you.” He bit at his bottom lip and shrugged. “Guess I’d just go wherever you went.”

  We were all he had, Daddy and me. And, when I thought about it, he was all we had, too.

  I slid off the couch and took the half step toward him. I settled into the spot on the floor right next to him.

  We sat there, the two of us, listening to some program that I knew I’d never remember. What I would remember the rest of my days was how important Ray Jones was, and how having him around made me feel brave enough to face anything.

  I could make it through just about anything so long as Ray was there with me.

  Back in Red River the telephone had never rung. At least not that I remembered. The dusters had knocked over all the poles that held the lines. The wires had snapped at one point or another. Besides, most folks in town couldn’t have afforded to keep a telephone in their home even if the lines had been up.

  So, there in the house on Magnolia Street, I still jumped whenever the telephone rang. My heart would beat fast and I’d feel like the very best thing to do was run and hide under the bed.

  That night, the ringing surprised me even more because Daddy wasn’t home to let me know it was all right.

  “Who’s calling?” I asked Ray.

  He shrugged. “You gonna answer it?”

  “Should I?”

  “Might be your dad,” he said.

  “What if it isn’t?” I turned toward the telephone where it sat on a table against the wall. “You answer it.”

  “No thanks.”

  “Well, if you’re s
cared …” I started, thinking he might take my bluff and pick up the receiver.

  He didn’t. He just reached out and turned down the radio. “There, now you’ll hear the ringing better.”

  I rolled my eyes and pushed myself up off the floor.

  I picked up the receiver and held it to my ear, feeling the weight of it in my hand.

  “Hello? Spence residence,” I said, just the way Opal always did.

  “Pearl?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I answered, trying not to drop the receiver for how my hand had started shaking.

  It was Mama.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Mama had played the piano for the church services in Red River as long as I could remember. She’d pound out the hymns while Pastor stomped across the stage, his arms waving to and fro, singing the words at the top of his lungs.

  Every week she’d practice and once in a while I’d sneak over and sit on the church steps listening to her play. I’d close my eyes and imagine those fingers of hers were dancers, leaping from one piano key to the other.

  I always wished she’d teach me to play. I never asked her to, hoping she’d offer. She never did. I wondered if it was something she’d wanted to keep just to herself, playing songs the way she did.

  In my Peter Pan book it said that Wendy’s mother had a kiss in the corner of her lips that she didn’t give to anybody. Not to her children or her husband even. I’d tried picturing what that might look like. Seemed to me Mama not offering to teach me piano was something akin to that held-back kiss of Mrs. Darling’s.

  One day while Mama practiced at the church, I’d sat on the steps as usual expecting to hear her playing loud and fast the way Pastor liked all the hymns to be. But instead, she played light and slow, like she felt the sounding of each note all the way down to her toes. I’d imagined the music fell from high up in the sky like stars, twinkling and sparkling as they came.

  Then Mama’s voice had filled the sanctuary, rich and smooth, singing of stardust and love and lonely nights. She didn’t belt it out, that wasn’t Mama’s way. And she didn’t hold out the notes like some folks did when they wanted to show off. She just opened her mouth and the sound sailed out, drifting along on the air all the way to where I sat.

  I couldn’t help myself from stepping inside so I could watch her. Her eyes were closed as she played, her fingers not straying to a sour chord, not hitting a wrong note. Every once in awhile she’d move her head from one side to the other or rock forward as she moved her hands along, tapping her foot on the pedal to make the piano sound hold out as long as she could.

  She finished, not taking her hands off the keys but letting them rest there until the piano fell silent. I’d thought how pretty she was. The prettiest mama in all the world, as far as I knew. Turning her head, she noticed me.

  “Hi there, Pearl,” she’d said, her voice gentle and her face full of sunshine.

  I remembered that while I stood in the living room in the house on Magnolia Street, holding the telephone receiver to my ear. I wished Mama’d had a little sunshine to her voice that night, too. But she didn’t.

  “Hi, Mama,” I said.

  “Is your daddy home?” she asked, her voice cool and short.

  I swallowed, trying not to be too disappointed that she hadn’t asked how I was or said how she missed me. Even if it wasn’t true, her missing me, she still could’ve said it. I’d have made myself believe it.

  “No,” I answered. “He’s at a town meeting.”

  “Are you home alone? At this hour?”

  “Ray’s here,” I said. “And Opal, too.”

  “All right.” She made a sound like she was sniffling and I wondered if she was crying.

  “Are you okay, Mama?” I asked.

  “Fine,” she said. “I’m fine. How about you?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I tried thinking of something to say to her that might make her want to come home. Something exciting or new. Nothing came to mind, though.

  “You know when you’re expecting your daddy home?”

  “I don’t, ma’am.”

  “Well, you have him call me when he does,” she said. “You’ll remember?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “He has the number.”

  “All right.” I held the cord of the telephone with my free hand, feeling how smooth the wire was. “Mama?”

  “Yes?”

  “Are you coming home?” I asked.

  “Pearl …”

  “Are you?”

  She sighed and I imagined she had closed her eyes. “It’s not that easy.”

  What I wanted to ask was if it was easy for her to leave us. But when I thought about it, I didn’t think I needed to know the answer to that. It would’ve hurt too much.

  “I’ll tell him you called,” I said.

  “Thank you, Pearl,” she said.

  “I love you.”

  But I’d told her too late. She’d already hung up.

  Daddy waited until Ray and I had gone up to bed before he called Mama back. I didn’t try to listen in and I didn’t let myself imagine what it was they had to talk about. What I did was work at convincing myself that I just did not care.

  But when I heard Daddy walk up the steps and come in to check on me, it took all my self-control to pretend to be asleep and not ask him what Mama had wanted.

  From the way he didn’t stay at my bedside longer than it took to pull the covers up over my shoulders, I thought he wouldn’t have wanted to talk about it anyway.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Daddy told Ray and me that he was going over to Adrian to pay a visit to Mama. That she’d asked him to come when they’d talked the night before.

  His eyes were bright like he’d gotten a good night’s sleep for once, and he sat up straighter in his chair at the table. Seeing Daddy almost back to himself was good for my heart. I tried holding out hope that we might just be okay after all, but it wasn’t too easy after how Mama talked to me on the telephone the night before.

  His smile was quicker to pull up the corners of his mouth. I wondered if that was the way Wilhelm from Aunt Carrie’s story had looked after finding the pearl that would heal up Marta’s heart.

  “Opal’s going to stay the night with you,” Daddy said to Ray and me over his morning cup of coffee. “I expect you both to help her out, hear?”

  “Won’t you come home?” I asked.

  “Well, of course I will.” He took a gulp of coffee. “But in case it’s real late by the time I get back, I’ll just have Opal here.”

  “Can we go?” I asked. “Ray and me? We’d be good, wouldn’t we, Ray?”

  Ray looked from me to Daddy and nodded his head.

  “We don’t got school tomorrow,” Ray said.

  “I promise, we’d stay out of the way,” I added. “Please, Daddy.”

  Daddy had a way of sighing when he was thinking of how to say no in a gentle or kind way. He would push the breath out of his nose and make a deep humming sound and sometimes rub at his chin, making a scratching noise of calloused hand against stubble. When he did that, I knew I wasn’t about to get my way.

  Still, I had to give it a try.

  “I want to see Mama too,” I said.

  “Not this time, darlin’,” Daddy said.

  “May I be excused?” Ray asked.

  “Sure,” Daddy said.

  After Ray took off, Daddy finished his coffee and looked at me from across the table.

  “What’s on your mind, Pearlie?” he asked.

  “Mama said she wasn’t coming back,” I told him. “When I talked to her last night. She said it wasn’t that easy.”

  He breathed in deep through his nose and blew it out his mouth. He rolled his head from one side to the other like his neck was stiff.

  The hope had faded right off his face and all because of me.

  “Well, that may be,” he said. “It’s not what I’d like, but she might just stay away, I guess.”

  “Is she going to
ask you for a divorce?”

  I’d never said that word before, and it sounded like a curse coming out from between my lips. I’d heard it plenty of times from Pastor down in Red River, saying that God hated divorce. The Lord Himself had said as much to Moses when they were carving the Commandments into those two tablets of stone.

  God hated divorce, that was Bible truth and I knew it. I wondered if He hated the folks that got them, too. If God ever decided He didn’t love my daddy anymore, it would’ve broken my heart.

  “Pearlie, I don’t want you worrying about that,” Daddy said. “We can’t be worrying about something that might not even happen.”

  “What if she wants to?” I asked. “Do you have to do it?”

  He ran both hands through his hair, pushing all of it back off his forehead.

  “How about we don’t borrow worry?” he said, his voice smooth. “We don’t have to even think on that just yet. All right, darlin’?”

  I nodded.

  “When’re you going?” I asked.

  “Just as soon as I can.”

  “Promise you’ll come back?”

  “Course I will, darlin’. Wouldn’t stay away for all the world.”

  Bert had asked Ray to stay the night at his house. I knew it never would’ve been right, me sleeping over at the Barnetts’ with the two of them on account I was a girl. Still, it stung, not getting invited even to come visit with the pigeon or tell scary stories like I knew they’d do.

  Opal had promised she’d play cards with me. I’d never seen her play so much as a hand of poker before and I thought it was because she wasn’t much for games. Seemed to me she’d agreed to play with me out of pity. That was all right by me, though. I didn’t mind pity just so long as she didn’t beat me too many times.

  We’d had our supper in the kitchen because it was just the two of us. All she fixed was fried eggs and a couple slices of bread. It was the kind of supper Mama would’ve snubbed her nose at. She’d have said breakfast was only to be had in the morning. But Opal said she’d not wanted to fuss.

  I didn’t mind. Besides, she’d left my yokes runny so I could swab it up with my bread.