A Song of Home

by Susie Finkbeinger

  Even after we got to our street, Bert kept going. And he didn’t stop talking just because Ray’d turned toward our house and he’d gone toward his own.

  “You think he knows you’re not there anymore?” I asked Ray.

  “Don’t think it matters to him much,” Ray answered, shaking his head. “Let’s go in. I’m half starved to death.”

  Ray let me go inside first. Soon as I opened the door I saw Mama and Daddy standing in the living room facing each other, both red in the cheeks and tense in the shoulders. They quit talking soon as we walked in. Mama turned and rushed out of the room, the kitchen door swinging open and closed behind her.

  Daddy crossed his arms and bit at his lower lip before looking at Ray and me.

  “Go on and get washed up,” he said.

  Ray did as he was told right away. As for me, I stayed where I was, watching Daddy put his coat on and take his hat from the rack on the wall.

  “You aren’t staying?” I asked.

  His hand on the doorknob, he looked at me over his shoulder and shook his head.

  “I need to get back to work,” he answered.

  “You’ll be hungry,” I said. “Won’t you?”

  “I’ll manage fine.”

  He pulled the front door open and put his hat on before stepping out. I followed him to the porch.

  “Daddy,” I said. “You can’t leave us with her.”

  Stopping, he shut his eyes for a tick of the clock before turning his head toward me.

  “Darlin’, you’re going to be all right,” he said. “I’ll be back for supper.”

  “Do you promise?”

  “Of course I do.”

  What I wanted to say was how scared I was right then in that very moment that he was fixing to climb into his truck and drive away. That he wouldn’t stop or even think of turning back until he got all the way to Oklahoma. By then it would be too late for him to change his mind. The fear of him leaving us made it so hard to breathe that I wouldn’t have been able to say anything if I’d tried.

  “I’m just going to the station,” he said like he’d read my mind. “If you need me, that’s where I’ll be. Hear?”

  “Yes, sir,” I whispered.

  He gave me a wink before going down the porch steps and on his way to the station. I stood on the porch, arms wrapped around myself, and watched Daddy until he turned a corner and I couldn’t see him anymore.

  The table was already set and the food dished out on the plates by the time my hands were scrubbed clean and I stepped into the dining room. I didn’t tell Mama that we usually took our noon meal at the table in the kitchen unless we thought we might have company. I didn’t think she’d want me giving her suggestions like that by the way her lips were puckered like she was fixing to work up a good spit.

  But ladies didn’t spit and they didn’t bother their mothers with silly ideas. At least that was what I imagined Mama would have said if I’d dared tell her that.

  “Is Opal gonna eat with us?” I asked, holding my skirt tight against my backside and pushing it under me as I took my seat at the table.

  “Does she usually?” Mama asked.

  Ray lifted his eyes to mine from across the table. I knew what his look meant, the way he made his eyes just the tiniest bit wider and the slight back and forth movement of his head.

  “No, ma’am,” I answered, hoping God wouldn’t hold that lie against me on the day of judgment.

  Mama took her seat and spread her napkin across her lap. She didn’t even say a blessing before eating.

  After a silent meal, Mama asked me to help clear the dishes from the table. I did as she said and stacked our three plates, laying the silverware across the top.

  “I can help,” Ray said, picking up his glass and mine.

  “No,” Mama said. “Leave those. Pearl and I can do this. You go on outside until it’s time to go back to school.”

  Ray met my eyes like he wanted to see if I’d be all right with him going. Just as soon as I nodded he moved toward the front door and his hung-up coat.

  I backed my way into the kitchen, pushing open the door with my behind. When I turned toward the counter I expected to see Opal there, elbow deep in sudsy water or sitting at the kitchen table, eating her lunch.

  “Hi, Opal,” I said.

  But nobody was there to say hi back to me. The only trace of Opal was the apron she’d always worn hanging on the hook by the icebox. Not paying attention to the dishes I was carrying, I laid them on the counter-top and reached for that apron. It caught a bit of the sunshine coming in through the window and the light showed how faded it had gotten after all the times it’d been scrubbed and hung to dry in the sun.

  We’d brought it from Oklahoma. I remembered Mama folding it and laying it gently in one of the boxes Daddy’d packed in the back of the truck. Our old life moved to where our new life would get started.

  Mama’d let Opal wear that apron when she’d started working for us not long after we’d gotten to Bliss. There it hung on the hook, not around Opal’s waist like it should’ve been.

  “Where’s Opal?” I asked when Mama came into the kitchen with the cloth napkins bunched in her hands.

  Mama went right to the table, lowering the napkins and wiping her hands on the apron she wore tied up so it was above her round belly.

  “I sent her home,” she said. “We don’t need her help anymore.”

  “Why’d you do that?” I didn’t care if I sounded disrespectful or if questioning Mama would earn me a smack in the mouth. “She helps us.”

  “I’m here now.”

  Mama moved across the room to the sink and let the water run until it was hot. She plugged the drain and put a dot of soap in the stream to make suds.

  “We need her,” I said.

  If I’d been brave I would’ve told Mama that she had no business doing such a thing as sending Opal away. If I’d had even half an ounce of courage, I’d have said that it was Opal who had taken care of us when Mama’d run off. And I’d have let her know that I’d rather have Opal than her.

  But I was nothing but a coward so I just stood there, holding the soft cotton fabric of the apron hanging on the wall in the beam of sunshine.

  “She came in the front door,” Mama said. “Like she lived here.”

  “Daddy told her she should,” I answered.

  “She should have come in the back, Pearl. That’s just how it works.”

  “Opal belongs here.” I crossed my arms. “She’s been good to us.”

  “You should go back to school,” Mama said, then tensed her jaw like she was fixing to lose her temper. “Go on now.”

  I did obey. Not because I knew it was right, doing what I was told, but because if I stayed in that room any longer I knew I’d say something nasty to Mama.

  I walked away from her, fast as I could.

  It wasn’t until I was halfway to school that I realized I’d forgotten my jacket.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The minute school was over I stomped my way down the street and stormed into the police station and right up to Daddy’s desk. When he saw me, he folded up his paper and smiled.

  “How was school?” he asked.

  “All right, I guess,” I answered.

  “Learn anything?”

  “A couple things.”

  “That’s fine.” He tipped back in his chair and crossed his arms. “You doing okay?”

  “Mama sent Opal home,” I told him.

  He nodded and looked down at the paper on his desk. “I know she did.”

  “What’d she wanna do that for?” I tried keeping my voice steady.

  “She says she can do for us now she’s home.” Daddy closed his eyes. “I’m sure there’re other folks Opal can work for.”

  “She isn’t going to come by anymore?”

  Daddy shook his head. “Your mama didn’t think we needed the help.”

  “But we do.”

  He leaned forward, his chair creak
ing from the move. Elbows on the desk, he rubbed at his eyes with the meaty part of his hands.

  “Your mama said she’ll make do,” he said. “She told Opal as much after breakfast.”

  “Is that why y’all were fighting?” I asked. “When we came for lunch?”

  He turned his eyes up to me. “You don’t need to worry about that, Pearlie. That’s between your mama and me.”

  “Did you tell her no?” I asked, afraid of how bold I was just then, but unable to keep from asking. “You should’ve told Mama no.”

  “Pearl Louise,” Daddy said with warning in his voice. “I don’t like it either. But I’m trying my hardest to keep the peace.”

  “I want Mama to go away.” I felt how my lips shook and the way the anger throbbed in my temples. “I don’t want her coming back again.”

  Daddy put his hands together right in front of his mouth like he was about to start praying. He let out a long stream of air from his nose and then looked me straight in the eye.

  “Pearl, your mama is my wife,” he said, his words quiet and even. “And I’ll have you remember that, darlin’.”

  If I could’ve melted right there into the floorboards, never to be seen again, I would’ve. Nothingness seemed a better end than being put in my place by Daddy.

  I tried thinking of something to say, but there wasn’t a single word that came to mind.

  “And she’s your mother,” he went on. “You will respect her, hear?”

  “Yes, Daddy,” I whispered.

  “Like I said, I don’t like it any more than you do,” he said. “It’s hard on me, too.”

  “Then why are you letting her stay?”

  “Because it’s right.”

  I thought of Daddy finding me, a little hours-old baby on the steps of the church in Red River. How he had loved me just as soon as he’d picked me up. How, even then, he’d known I’d be his, blood or no blood. He and Mama, they’d given me a home and a family and a name because it was the right thing to do.

  I just wished in that one case, where it concerned Mama, Daddy wouldn’t be so sure to do what was right.

  “What if Mama leaves again?” I asked.

  “We’ll have to make do.” His eyes softened. “It’s scary, isn’t it? Not knowing what’s going to happen.”

  I nodded and felt how my face pulled down into a cry. Daddy came around the desk and put his arms around me. He’d taken lunch at Shirley’s, I could tell by how he smelled of too-strong coffee and greasy food. It seemed a strange thing, smelling that on him when I was in the middle of boo-hooing.

  “I don’t love her anymore,” I sobbed. “I don’t.”

  Daddy shushed me and reached his hand up to cradle the back of my head.

  “Do you still love her?” I asked, between stabs of crying.

  “Yes, darlin’,” he said. “Couldn’t stop even if I tried.”

  For some reason I didn’t know, hearing him say something like that made my heart break even more.

  Opal Moon lived in an apartment above what had been the Bliss newspaper. Nobody used those offices anymore, not since Abe Campbell had closed up the press and run off with Mama. It was just as well, that paper going unprinted all that time. He’d been the kind to put out a list of all the folks taking assistance from the government and shame anybody who’d lost their home to the bank just because he could.

  If I lived to be a hundred years old I’d never understand what Mama ever wanted to do with that nasty man, even if he did look at her like she was a movie star and said things that made her laugh.

  In my mind he was every bit as much a monster and villain as Captain Hook or the Pied Piper.

  I made no bones about kicking at the locked door of that old newspaper office. It felt good to me even if nobody else saw me do it and I ended up with a sore toe for my efforts.

  I knocked at Opal’s door and waited for her to ask who it was.

  “It’s Pearl,” I said.

  Opal answered the door and I saw that her eyes were red and the skin below them seemed swollen. I wondered if she’d spent the whole day crying.

  Still, she did her best to let her face raise up into a smile. “You came,” she said as if she was surprised.

  “Course I did.” I stepped in when she moved to the side. “You all right?”

  “I will be.”

  By the way she stood with her shoulders held back and her chin up, I had no doubt she’d be better than okay in time.

  “Mama had no right—”

  “She did,” Opal interrupted. “She had every right, Pearl. It’s her house.”

  “But she left.”

  “And came back.”

  On the table Opal had a burner coil that plugged into the wall. A pot of water sat on it and she switched it on.

  “I don’t have any cocoa or coffee,” she said. “Don’t even think I have tea. But I can give you a cup of hot water, if you’d like.”

  “Yes, please,” I said.

  “I’m sorry I don’t have more.”

  “Don’t be sorry.”

  “You can go ahead and sit on the bed.” She nodded toward the corner where there was a mattress right on the floor. “I don’t have any chairs.”

  It was a small room. Aunt Carrie might have said it was quaint or dainty. Really, it was just one square room where Opal had done her best to make a home for herself.

  She handed me a chipped cup with steam ribboning up off the surface of the water. I wrapped my fingers around it. I could have sworn her apartment was colder than it was outside.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “You’re welcome.”

  “What’re you going to do?” I asked. “Are you going to get a job somewhere?”

  “I’m trying to figure that out.” She sat beside me on the bed.

  She didn’t pour a cup of hot water for herself and I wondered if it was because she only had just the one cup. I made sure to drink the water while it was still hot so she’d know how kind it was of her to give it to me.

  “Who’s that?” I asked, pointing to a gold-colored picture frame hanging on the wall.

  Opal smiled and looked up at the photograph.

  “Those are my parents,” she said.

  Reaching for the frame, she took it from the nail on the wall and held it on her lap. A Negro woman in a white dress and white shoes stood beside a white man wearing a black suit and tie. He had his hand on her back and her hand was on his chest right over where his heart would be. They both looked off at something, their mouths held open like they were laughing.

  “This was on their wedding day,” Opal told me. “They couldn’t have a church wedding, of course.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “Neither of their pastors approved.” She shrugged. “His pastor said it was outside of God’s will to marry someone from a different race. Her pastor said it would cause trouble, the two of them bringing mulatto children into the world.”

  She felt of the glass over the photo, tracing the lines of her mother’s hair. It was full of tight curls, like Opal’s. In fact, Opal looked so like her mother, if I hadn’t known any better, I’d have thought it was her in the picture, just with darker skin.

  “It’s been hard for them,” Opal said. “When the market crashed, the factory fired the colored workers first. They said my father was just as good as a Negro because of his wife and children. They told him to leave.”

  “That’s not right,” I whispered. “He isn’t a Negro.”

  “No, he isn’t. But wasn’t it wrong of them to fire the colored men first? Even if they worked harder than the white workers?” Opal licked her lips. “A good worker’s a good worker no matter what color his skin is.”

  I nodded, not knowing what to say.

  “There wasn’t anyone who would be willing to take their part. Nobody wanted to stand up for a bunch of Negroes. They were all too scared of losing their jobs, too.” She shook her head. “Dad hated having to move us out of our house. It
was a beautiful place.”

  “Did you have a yard?” I asked.

  “We did. A big one. And we didn’t want for anything then, not until he lost his job.” She took in a long breath. “Then we had to move into an apartment. The good thing about it was that across the street was a jazz club. Never had to pay a penny to sit and listen to them play. We’d just open the window if it was warm enough outside. Sometimes, if we were lucky, some of the dancers would come outside where it wasn’t so stuffy. We could watch them dancing right there on the sidewalk.”

  “Was that how you learned to dance?”

  “I suppose it is.”

  She leaned forward, resting her elbow on her lap and holding her head in her hands.

  “My dad used to take my mother to listen to the music sometimes,” she said. “Just the two of them, when he could scrape together a few dimes. They wouldn’t get anything to drink, that would have been more than he could afford. But they’d dance.”

  “Are they good dancers?”

  “Yes. Beautiful.” Opal sighed. “I miss watching them.”

  I nodded but didn’t say a word about how I’d always loved to see Mama and Daddy dance. I tried not to even think about it.

  “My father said once it was the only place they could be, aside from home, where nobody said a thing to them about their different skin. They can’t even step in church together and feel so at home.”

  I stayed at Opal’s apartment just a minute or two more. Just long enough to be sure she wasn’t fixing to pack her things and leave. She said she didn’t have anywhere else to go and no money to get there if she did. Not just then, at least.

  I didn’t even mention that she could’ve gone home to her mother and dad. That Daddy would have been more than happy to drive her so she wouldn’t have to pay for a bus ticket or hitchhike. She could have been back with her folks before the sun set on the day if she’d wanted.

  Something in me knew she would just say it wasn’t possible.

  One thing I’d learned was that sometimes home was the hardest place to go back to.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Opal had told me I should get going, that Mama would be worried about me. I tried telling her I didn’t think Mama cared much where I was just so long as I was home for supper. But Opal had just given me a look that said I needed to believe her.