“I’ll do the dishes,” Opal said. “You go on in and find something good on the radio. I’ll be right in.”
I did as she said, turning the dial slower than Ray would ever have patience for until I found a song I knew right away. I pulled my hand back so I wouldn’t turn it by accident and lose the song. Sitting flat on my behind, I even tried breathing without making a sound. I wanted to hear every word and every note.
Back when I was real young, Mama’d sing that song to Beanie and me sometimes before bed. She’d tuck us in and kiss us on our foreheads before starting in on the melody.
“Stars twinkling up above you,” she’d sing. Then she’d whisper, “Make a wish.”
I’d close my eyes, thinking of what I wished for more than anything in the world.
“They flicker and I whisper—” She’d stop, waiting for me to finish the line.
“I love you,” I’d say in a whisper.
“I love you, too,” she would answer, touching Beanie and me both on the tips of our noses with her fingers. “Bird sing a song so pretty and new.”
She’d raise her eyebrows and wait for me to make a chirping sound.
“All I ever dream of is you,” she’d sing. “I get a thrill when you kiss me.”
Lowering her face, she would wait for Beanie and me to kiss her on either check.
“Say once again how if I left you’d miss me,” she’d sing. “I’ll never go as I love you so, all I ever dream of is you.”
I didn’t realize I’d started crying, sitting there in front of the radio, until I felt the warm drops streaking down my cheeks.
For as much as I only let myself remember the bad times with Mama, there were plenty of memories that reminded me of who she’d really been. She’d been a good mother. She had loved me.
“Oh, what’s wrong, baby? Why are you crying?” Opal asked, coming in the room.
I felt her hands, dried but still warm from the dishwater, wrapping around my arms. Opening my eyes I saw she was stooped down beside me. She pulled me to her and held me close.
“What happened?” she asked. “Did you hurt yourself?”
I lifted my hands to cover over my face, feeling the wet tears and my hot breath on my palms. “Nothing,” I managed to say. “Nothing happened.”
“Then why are you crying?” she asked, pulling back from me and pushing my hair away from my face.
“I miss her.”
She didn’t say anything and I thought that was because she understood.
Holding my wrists, she moved my hands away from my face and I felt the worn-soft cotton of her apron dabbing under my eyes and wiping at my cheeks. She was so gentle with me and that helped me to get a good breath in and stop my hiccup-coughing.
“You miss your mama?” she asked.
I opened my eyes and nodded.
“I know how that feels,” she told me. “Sometimes I miss my mother, too. And my dad. It’s hard, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I answered. “Where’s your mama?”
“Up in Detroit.”
It never had occurred to me that Opal had a family somewhere and that she might miss them. All I thought of about Opal was how she took good care of us and knew how to make me smile most days.
“Your daddy, too?” I asked.
“Uh-huh,” she answered. “And my brothers and sister. Three brothers and a sister.”
“They’re younger than you?”
She nodded. “Yup. I’m the oldest.”
“Why don’t you live with them anymore?” I asked.
“Come on and get up off that cold floor, huh?” She took my hand and led me to the davenport.
The song ended and another started, one with a singer of warbled voice so I couldn’t have understood the words even if I was paying close attention.
“I left home when I was fifteen,” Opal said. “My parents, they couldn’t feed all of us and I was the only one old enough to find work. So I packed my bags and left.”
She told me how she had hitched rides, hoping to get all the way to Toledo. But after a while she couldn’t find anybody else to pick her up. That landed her in Bliss.
“I didn’t realize until later on that I was close enough to walk to Toledo if I’d wanted to,” she said. “But by then I had this job.”
“I’m glad you stayed,” I said.
“Oh, and before you get an idea in your head, don’t you ever let me hear about you hitchhiking, do you understand me?” she said, giving me her dead-serious face.
“Yes, ma’am,” I answered.
“It’s dangerous.” She shook her head. “I never should have taken the risk. But I had to go.”
“Why?” I asked. “Why did you leave if your family was nice to you?”
“My mother was already giving up her portion of meals for us,” she said. “That wouldn’t have changed if I’d stayed. And I knew they’d never take money from me if they could help it. It’s easier for them, with me gone. It’s hard enough for them as it is.”
“Why?”
“Because my mother’s colored and my dad’s white,” she said. “Not everybody likes that.”
I understood what she meant. Mama would’ve said we should stick to our own, that God had meant for it to be that way. Otherwise He would have said in the Bible that the races should mix. I didn’t know if she was right about that or not. But then again, I wasn’t sure Mama was the best to speak on matters of who should marry who.
“Anyway, it’s easier with one less person to care for,” Opal said.
“Do you ever write them letters?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I never have.”
“Why not?”
“If they knew where I was, they’d come for me.” She leaned against the back of the davenport and crossed her arms. “They’d make me come home, and I know that I’d just be a burden.”
“I don’t believe you would,” I said. “I bet they’d be glad to have you back.”
“That’s nice of you to say.” She reached up and wiped under her eyes. “Do you think that’s why my mama left?” I asked. “Because she thought she was a burden?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know why she’d ever leave somebody like you. Leaving your parents is one thing. That’s the way it goes. But it’s another thing to leave your kids.”
I thought Opal would make a good mama someday. She’d never be mean to her children and she wouldn’t leave them.
She used her warm hands to smooth my hair and looked me right in the eyes and smiled at me. She asked if I was all right and I nodded.
“Opal?” I asked. “Do you ever wish your problems would go away?”
“Sure I do,” she said. “I think most people do. Wouldn’t it be something to be able to forget about everything awful?”
“I wish I knew how to forget.” I shrugged. “No matter how I try, I just keep remembering the bad.”
“When I dance, I don’t think of anything but the music,” she said. “I don’t even think of what my feet are doing. Not really. All I do is keep my mind on the beat and my body goes along. For just a few minutes, I put everything else out of my mind.”
“That sounds nice,” I told her.
“You still want to learn how to dance?” she asked.
I nodded, hoping she might see the eagerness on my face.
“All right,” she said, smiling. “We can start Monday after school. But you’ve gotta promise to help me get supper on.”
I promised and we shook on it, sealing the deal tight as could be.
We spent the rest of the evening before bedtime listening to the radio and playing hands of poker for matchsticks. Opal popped some corn and even drizzled a little melted butter on top. It was a treat Aunt Carrie’d sent over and I knew Ray wouldn’t get something like that over at the Barnett house.
I’d stayed up later than Daddy might’ve let me. Opal had said it was all right with her just so long as I wasn’t sour to everybody the next day. I promised I wouldn’t be.
When I did get to bed, I could hardly keep my eyes open long enough to change into my nightie.
I slept fast and without dreaming at all.
CHAPTER EIGHT
What woke me in the middle of the night was the sound of Daddy’s truck, the low rumbling of its engine, pulling up to the house. As much as I wanted to hear how Mama was, it was still dark out and I was tired enough to shut my eyes and doze off again.
Next thing I knew, I woke in the morning. When I opened my eyes I looked right out the window. The sun rose on the other side of the house, but I could see the pink and orange glow on the bare naked trees and the otherwise stark white snow in the back of our yard. It must’ve been a real pretty sunrise. I had half a mind to run over to Ray’s room and watch it out his window.
But when I rolled to my other side and saw Daddy sitting on my bedroom floor, his back against my bed, I forgot all about the sun and Ray’s window.
Daddy was breathing in and out through his mouth like he couldn’t get enough air or push it out fast enough. He had his knees bent up and an elbow rested on one of them, his hand holding up his head. If I hadn’t known any better, I might have thought he was crying.
Daddy’d told me more than once that if he could, he’d have taken all the hurt in the world so I wouldn’t ever have to feel it. I did believe he spoke true. It hadn’t been a year before that he’d given himself over, almost getting killed so I could live.
There in my bed, I blinked away the picture of Eddie DuPre, his gun pointed right at Daddy. And I wished I could plug my ears so I wouldn’t hear Daddy telling Eddie, “I don’t want her to see this.”
My daddy would’ve done anything for me, I knew that was true.
Just then, though, I wished I could take whatever sadness he held and push it right into my own heart.
I put my hand on his back. “Daddy?”
He breathed in through his nose and wiped at his eyes with the heel of his hand before turning toward me.
“Hey there, Pearlie,” he said, his voice sounding pinched like he wanted to steady it. “You can go back to sleep. I just didn’t think I should be downstairs. Opal’s sleeping on the davenport.”
“You can stay in Ray’s bed,” I told him. “He’s at Bert’s house.”
“Might just do that, darlin’.” He tried at a smile, but it didn’t stay on his face but a second.
“Did you see Mama?” I asked.
He nodded and bit at his lower lip. “I did.”
“She doing all right?”
He nodded again. Then his face scrunched like he was about to break into a crying fit. But he didn’t. He held strong.
What I wanted to tell him right then was that it would’ve been okay with me if he’d wanted to cry, that it wouldn’t bother me one bit. And I wanted him to know that I’d never tell a living soul if he did.
But men didn’t like crying, especially in front of their little girls. I knew it might’ve ruined his pride for me to say such a thing.
“I tried getting her to come home,” he said. “Thought she was going to. But she just couldn’t.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“I’m sorry, darlin’.”
“Why wouldn’t she come back?”
“You’ve just lost so much. I never wanted that for you.”
“Is she mad at me? Is that why she won’t come home?”
“No, darlin’,” he said. “It’s me she’s mad at.”
He turned toward me and used one of his trembling hands to move a wisp of hair off my forehead. Even in the low light of the room I could see his knuckles were swollen and an angry shade of purple.
Then I moved so I could see his face closer. His lip was fat and his eye was blackened.
“Daddy?” I said, my voice a whimper.
“I’m all right, darlin’.”
“Did you get in a fight?” I pushed myself up so I was sitting, looking down at him. “Who’d you fight?”
“It wasn’t right,” he said. “I shouldn’t have.”
“Did you fight Abe Campbell?”
I knew I was right on account he didn’t answer me, but instead looked away.
“I hope you whupped him, Daddy,” I said, my voice hard and icy. “I hope you clobbered him something awful.”
“Pearlie …”
“He stole Mama.”
“Nobody stole her, darlin’.” He licked at his sore lip and winced. “She went on her own.”
Still, I hoped he’d broke Abe Campbell’s nose. It would’ve served him right.
The next day I tried no less than a half dozen times to write a letter to Mama. In them I either asked her to come home or told her I never wanted to see her again. I begged her to call or used every cuss word I knew how to spell to let her know I no longer cared what she did.
I tore every single one of them into shreds and tossed them into a fire Ray kept going in the living room. The paper curled before turning to flame to ash to dust. Mama would’ve said it was a waste of perfectly good paper, burning it like that.
She’d have been right. It was a waste.
There was no making somebody come home when they’d just rather stay gone.
CHAPTER NINE
Daddy didn’t make us go to church that Sunday. He said it was because I’d been sniffling all weekend. I wondered, though, if it was because he wasn’t up to seeing folks and shaking hands. As it was, the few people who’d seen him with his shiner and busted lip had got to talking already. I was sure he didn’t want to invite more gape-mouthed stares than he had to.
“Besides,” he’d said, “all anybody wants to do is bend my ear one way or the other about the meeting the other day. It’s hard for a man to sit and listen to a sermon when he’s got half the town staring at the back of his head.”
It didn’t bother me one bit, not going to church that morning. Daddy’d let us stay in our pajamas and I didn’t even bother putting a comb through my snarled-up hair. How we moved around that morning was lazy and slow and it felt awful good to me.
Daddy put together a hot breakfast of chunked potatoes, bits of sausage, onion, and scrambled-up eggs. He made sure we said a prayer together before we ate.
I couldn’t take more than a couple bites before my stomach felt full to busting. Ray didn’t seem to mind. He ate the last of my breakfast like he’d never seen such good food before in his life.
“Daddy,” I said. “Can you please tell us a story?”
Daddy nodded and took a sip of coffee. “Yup,” he said. “I reckon I can.”
He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms, pushing his lips upward so they almost disappeared under his mustache.
“Now, a man named Isaac married a woman named Rebekah. After a while they found out they were going to have a baby,” Daddy started. “But instead of just one, they had themselves two.”
“This is from the Bible,” I said.
“Yes, ma’am. Telling stories is the only kind of preaching I know how to do and it’s Sunday. So this is our sermon,” Daddy said. “Now, those twin babies wrestled around inside the womb, fighting over who was going to be born first.”
Ray put an elbow on the table, resting his head against his fist, still shoveling food into his mouth but not taking his eyes off Daddy. His folks never had been ones to drag him to church or to read out of the Bible after supper. Lots of the stories that were old to me were brand-new to him.
“When it came time for those babies to be born, it was Esau that won the race.” Daddy lowered his arms, resting his hands on his lap. “But Jacob, he had a hold of Esau’s ankle, like he meant to pull him right back inside so they could keep on fighting.”
“Babies can do that?” I asked.
“Course they can,” he said. “I mean I guess I wouldn’t know from experience exactly.”
I tried picturing it, but wasn’t all the way sure how any of it worked, birthing babies, that is. As curious as I was, there was no way in heaven or on earth I was about to
ask Daddy. Especially not with Ray sitting right there. Just the thought of it made my cheeks burn.
“Now, Esau was hairy as a bear even then on his first day,” Daddy went on. “But Jacob was bald as a badger. Esau ended up being a hunter and Jacob stayed at home with his mother most days.”
“Jacob was her favorite,” I said.
“That’s right.”
“Mothers shouldn’t have favorites.”
“No, darlin’, they shouldn’t,” Daddy said. “One day, when the boys were grown, Esau went off hunting like he always did. Jacob, of course, stayed home making soup.”
I imagined Jacob standing at the cookstove, bone broth bubbling in a big old pot over the fire. He stirred it every now and again, adding a pinch of salt or a shake of black pepper. Maybe he chopped onion and carrot to add in the mix, letting them get soft in the simmering liquid. I decided he hadn’t bothered putting on an apron. Daddy never wore one when he was cooking.
“Esau came home, starving near to death,” Daddy said.
Esau would’ve come staggering into the kitchen, not from being drunk but from being fall-down tired. His shirt sleeves were rolled up above his hairy arms and his beard was grown out down to the middle of his chest.
Loud as Esau was, panting and heaving and with his stomach growling like a mad dog, Jacob wouldn’t turn to him. He just pretended not to know his brother had entered the room.
“Esau begged Jacob for a bowl of that soup,” Daddy said. “Jacob, though, he didn’t believe anything was free. Not even a sip of broth for a starving man.”
I pictured Jacob to have a nasty curl of the lip and a wicked narrowing of the eyes.
“‘I’ll trade ya,’ Jacob told his brother.” Daddy leaned forward. “Esau, he was so desperate he would’ve agreed to anything.”
That sneak Jacob ladled up some soup, letting the steam carry the smell of it to his twin. He’d give him that bowl, and maybe even another, for the promise of Esau’s birthright.
“What’s a birthright?” Ray asked.
“Esau was oldest,” Daddy explained. “That meant he’d get everything—all the land and sheep and such—after their father died.”
“Did they have a lot?”
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