A Song of Home

by Susie Finkbeinger

  I took my time getting home, though. If I’d gone the straight way it wouldn’t have taken me five minutes from Opal’s door to the front porch of the house on Magnolia Street. But I’d gone any way but straight that day, circling around the block and looking in the windows of the shops I passed more than once.

  I’d even walked past the abandoned house some of the kids believed to be haunted. I didn’t hold my breath and I didn’t go by fast as I could. In fact, I thought of marching right up to the window and taking a good look inside to see if it was as spooky as everybody said it was. But I wasn’t near as brave as I could’ve been and I just kept on walking, trying not to give it a second thought.

  When I finally did make it home, I turned the handle on the front door as slow and quiet as I could, hoping to sneak in and get to my room before Mama could stop me.

  I didn’t know how to talk to her. I didn’t have anything to say. It was like a stranger had come into our house, making herself at home in our kitchen or living room. If I could have my way, I’d only see her at meal times when Daddy and Ray were around, too. Maybe not even then.

  I wondered if I could keep that up for the years I had left until I moved away. It seemed an awful way to live.

  Soon as I opened the front door, though, I saw there was no use sneaking.

  Aunt Carrie sat on the davenport, a cup of coffee on her knees, and Mama in the rocking chair looking paler than I thought I’d ever seen her.

  “Hello, dear,” Aunt Carrie said, her voice as regular and kind as if nothing was even a little bit out of the ordinary.

  “Hi, ma’am,” I said. “Mama.”

  Mama’s eyes flicked up to my face like she’d just realized I’d walked into the room.

  “Where have you been?” Mama asked, sounding sore as all get out.

  “I was just talking with a friend,” I answered.

  I wasn’t sure if it was a lie or not, saying that. Opal was my friend. But I knew Mama’d have pitched a snit fit if she’d known I was in Opal’s apartment without asking her first.

  “That’s fine. I’m glad you’ve made a friend,” Mama said. “Go on up to your room while I visit with Mrs. Seegert.”

  “Can’t I sit and visit?” I asked. “You wouldn’t mind, would you, Aunt Carrie?”

  “I said go on up,” Mama said before Aunt Carrie could answer.

  I looked at Aunt Carrie who nodded and gave me a smile that made me think she wasn’t happy about it either.

  “I’ll call you down for supper later on,” Mama said.

  I knew better than to put her to the test again. I went up to my room, but I didn’t shut my door. I hoped there would be at least a few things I might overhear of what she and Aunt Carrie talked about.

  All I could hear for more than a couple minutes was the clinking of Aunt Carrie’s coffee cup on its saucer and the creaking of the chair as Mama rocked it.

  I stood in the doorway of my bedroom, working the buttons of my coat through their holes, wishing I’d thought to take a roll or a slice of bread on my way up the stairs. Supper wouldn’t be for hours and there was no convincing my stomach to wait that long.

  “She’s grown,” Mama said after a while. “Pearl has.”

  Aunt Carrie mm-hmmed at her. “She’s becoming quite the lady.”

  All Mama had ever wanted was for me to be a lady. Not to spit, to keep my knees together, to never cuss or lie or scream, to walk slowly in the house, and say all my best-manners words whenever I was speaking with a grown-up.

  She’d railed at me more than a dozen times over how I’d never make a nice young lady. But Aunt Carrie believed I was already, and she’d been the one to teach me how to tuck my skirt up so nobody’d see up my dress when I climbed a tree. And in our bare feet, even.

  Aunt Carrie saw what was best in me. I knew it was wrong, maybe even a sin, but I wished Mama’d just go away and let Aunt Carrie be the one to raise me until I was grown.

  “She missed you,” Aunt Carrie said.

  “Can I get you a little more coffee before you go?” Mama asked.

  “No, thank you,” Aunt Carrie answered. “I wouldn’t sleep a wink if I had a sip more.”

  “Let me get your coat for you,” Mama said.

  “No need. I can find it myself, thank you.” Aunt Carrie’s voice was clipped and cool in a way I wasn’t used to hearing it. “I appreciate the coffee, thank you.”

  With the creaking of the rocking chair followed by the clonking of shoes on the hard floor, I imagined Mama taking Aunt Carrie’s cup. Aunt Carrie would slide her arms into her coat and button it up before reaching in the pockets for her dress gloves.

  Mama’d just stand there watching, waiting, hoping she’d be gone soon. That was the way I pictured it, at least.

  “You’re invited for dinner after church on Sunday,” Aunt Carrie said. “Tom and the kids usually come. I would like it if you’d join us too.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Well, thank you for the visit.”

  The front door rubbed against the frame, letting me know it’d been opened. I wanted to run down the stairs and beg Aunt Carrie to stay just a little longer. Or I’d ask if I could go home with her to the farm where it seemed nothing bad ever happened.

  But I stayed right there in my bedroom for fear that Aunt Carrie would tell me no. And worried that Mama would be angry as a bee if I did something like that.

  “This isn’t easy for me, you know,” Mama said. “Being here is harder than I’d expected it to be.”

  “I know, Mary,” Aunt Carrie said. “Give it a little more time. It’s hardly been a full day.”

  “How am I supposed to fix it?”

  “I don’t know that you can.”

  “Then what do I do?” Mama asked.

  “Love them,” Aunt Carrie answered. “It can’t make it back to the way it was, but I know it can’t hurt, either. Just love them.”

  The door stuck in the frame when Mama shut it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Mama knocked on my bedroom door not long after Aunt Carrie left. She asked if she could come in and I got up off my bed to open the door for her.

  She had one hand resting on the slight slope of her stomach, fingers rubbing at one certain spot.

  I remembered how jealous I’d been of Ray after his mother’d had Baby Rosie. Seemed all the other mothers were having babies. All the other mothers but mine. I’d begged Mama to have another, promised to be a good big sister. I’d even said I’d scrub out the diapers for her.

  It had to have been a hundred times I’d asked. But every time she’d said the same thing.

  “I’m happy with you and Beanie,” she’d say.

  I would pretend to see shooting stars in the sky so I could make a wish for a little sister. I’d even have settled for a brother if I’d had to.

  But that day, Mama standing in the doorway of my bedroom, hand on her stomach, I regretted all the times I’d begged, all the wishes I’d cast. I didn’t want any baby that had no part of Daddy.

  “Pearl,” Mama started and then worked up a swallow. “Would you like to go to the store with me?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, not thinking I had the choice to say no.

  “I only need a few things.”

  “I can go for you.”

  “The fresh air might do me some good,” she said. “I don’t mind going. Just don’t want to go alone.”

  “Are you scared to go by yourself?” I asked.

  She licked her lips and nodded. “Yes. But I can’t stay cooped up in here until summer.”

  “Is that when it’s coming?” I asked, looking down at her stomach.

  “I think so.”

  “Will you wear your coat?” I asked. “To the store?”

  She nodded. “I’m not sure I’m ready for everybody to know yet.”

  Wrapping both arms around her middle it looked like she was trying to protect the baby from anything in the world that might want to harm it.

&
nbsp; It was wrong and I knew it, but I felt more than a little jealous of that baby just then.

  Mama had picked quite a time to walk down the main street of Bliss for the first time since she’d been back.

  The way gossip sparked and spread through that town, I was sure most folks knew she’d returned already. But hearing a thing was nothing compared to seeing it for yourself, and boy did the people on the street that day get themselves an eyeful.

  Nobody stopped to tip a hat or give her a smile. Not one person told her “how do.” They all just glared out of the corner of their eyes and whispered behind their hands to whoever might be standing close enough.

  But Mama didn’t turn back to the house and she didn’t cry. She just kept on walking toward Wheeler’s general store, her hand on my shoulder like she meant to guide me in the way I should go.

  There was no line at the store, no other customers waiting to get their bag of flour or can of beans. Meemaw had often told me that most days were so full of God’s mercies we passed them by without knowing. That empty store, though, I saw as God being kind to us and I made sure to tell Him thanks for it. And to ask that nobody else would come in just so long as we were there that day.

  Mr. Wheeler turned toward us when the bell over the door tinkled its announcement that we’d come. His arms were full of tins of baking soda and he finished stacking them on a shelf before coming to the counter to attend to us.

  His sharp eyebrow jerked upward, forming wrinkles in his skin that ran all the way up his forehead.

  “May I help you?” he asked, his voice dry and flat.

  “Yes, please,” Mama started.

  She spoke her list to him—salt and dry beans and some noodles. Before he turned to collect the items, he reached below the counter for his ledger.

  “I assume you want this on credit,” he said.

  “Yes, sir,” she answered. “If that’s no trouble.”

  “Oh, no trouble at all. I’ll just need to know, is this under Tom Spence’s account or Abe Campbell’s?” He touched the end of his pencil to his tongue and I caught a glimpse of the meanest smirk tugging up at his lip. “Because Abe Campbell’s account is past due. Any idea of where I could find him?”

  I thought of every dirty word I knew that I could’ve said to Mr. Wheeler. But I held those ugly words in my throat. Mama’d done at least one thing right and that was to teach me to hold my tongue when it came to grown folks. I would have gotten myself in a world of trouble if I’d let loose on that man the way I’d wanted to just then. Instead, I held my teeth together so tight I thought I was like to crack a molar.

  “This is, of course, under Tom Spence’s name,” she said, holding her own voice tight so she’d at least sound calm. “And as for Mr. Campbell, I have no idea where he might be, so if you’d kindly collect my groceries I would be ever so grateful.”

  At her side, her hand trembled.

  I took hold of it. She squeezed my hand.

  Mama didn’t say a word about what had happened at the store. She didn’t cry and didn’t slam the cupboards the way I might have. When Daddy’d asked how her day had been she’d said it was fine.

  I imagined she was embarrassed about it and wished she could just forget that it had ever happened. I didn’t blame her for that one bit.

  She served up supper and washed the dishes and sat to listen to the radio with the mending basket in her lap.

  If I hadn’t known better, I might have thought life was back to normal. That she’d never gone in the first place. Except that when she went to bed she didn’t ask Daddy to come with her, and he didn’t give her a second look when she left the room.

  I laid in my bed later that night, the house so quiet I couldn’t sleep.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  I stopped just at the edge of the woods before stepping in. It seemed that beyond those two pines where the trail began was a world far away from Bliss and Mama and the sharp eyebrows and nasty smirk of Mr. Wheeler.

  If ever I was tempted to play make-believe still, it was when I was there under the cover of the trees’ branches where only God had His eyes on me.

  “Not a sparrow falls without God seeing it,” I whispered when I took a first step into the woods.

  I didn’t know if that was Scripture, but I remembered the way the hymn always made me smile when we sang it in church. Just then, with the quiet of the woods around me, it seemed a comfort, God watching me, knowing every time I’d ever stubbed my toes and skinned my knees. What I wondered was why He didn’t stop me from getting hurt in the first place.

  Meemaw might have said that was something I wouldn’t know until I got to meet Jesus face-to-face.

  Along the path through the forest were muddy spots where the snow had melted and the earth was still working on drinking up all the water. I jumped over the puddles that were small enough and stepped around the ones that were too wide for me.

  I reached the twisted tree that stood tall right in the middle of the woods and felt of its bark that wound up to the tip-top branch. If I’d been a bird I’d have lit way up high at the top of that tree. I’d look out over all of Bliss and beyond. The folks below would look so small, like ants, and I’d watch as they went about their day.

  I wondered if that was the way God saw us, like so many critters scampering around. Seemed to me He looked down from His heaven into every moment of our struggling and striving and just shook His head at the many ways we were getting it wrong.

  I shut my eyes, my fingers still feeling of that winding bark, and thought of what Meemaw might’ve said to that. I pictured her face in my mind—the way her eyes were a faded color of blue and how every inch of her skin was full up of wrinkles. I imagined her smile and the spots in her mouth where her teeth were missing. And I saw the way she’d always worn her long hair in a braid or a tight knot at the back of her head.

  “Darlin’,” she would say to me. “God ain’t far off. Don’t matter how you feel ’bout it. He ain’t far at all.”

  She’d put her crooked-fingered, blue-veined hand over mine.

  “He don’t watch us from heaven. No, miss.” She’d smile and maybe rock back and forth on her heels the way she’d always done when she was in the Spirit. “He’s here. Right here.”

  She would touch my chest with her fingertips, just over where my heart beat, and tap it three times.

  “Always there with you, darlin’,” she’d say. “It’s where He sets up home. No matter where you’re at, you got home with God right there.”

  I opened my eyes, missing Meemaw so hard I could’ve cried.

  Uncle Gus was out among the apple trees with his shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He stood under the branches of one of the trees, looking close at it and feeling of it with his fingers. In his other hand he had a big pair of clippers.

  When he saw me coming he stepped away from the tree and tipped his hat back on his head.

  “Now, I was hopin’ you’d come by today,” he said. “How’re ya doin’, Pearlie Lou?”

  “I’m all right,” I told him. “Whatcha doing?”

  “Prunin’ the apple trees.” He lifted his hand and grabbed hold of the branch above him. “I put it off longer than I ought’ve. Should be okay, though.”

  He squinted as he looked up into the tree.

  “Soon enough they’ll start flowerin’,” he said. “Smells so good when they do. Some days I just like sittin’ here, breathin’ in how fresh spring can smell.”

  “I can’t wait to eat an apple,” I said.

  “Not till fall, sweet girl,” he said. “But that’ll be here quick too. Might not seem so to you, bein’ young as you are, but time goes by faster than I can keep track of.”

  I thought of how before I knew it we’d have a brand-new baby in our house, one Mama could truly call her own. If I could have made a wish, it would be that time slow down a little bit.

  “How’s that pigeon doin’?” he asked. “Still flyin’ back home?”

 
“Only when Bert leaves the door open,” I told him.

  Uncle Gus smiled and laughed out his nose. “Tell you what. Have Ray carve a couple eggs”—he used his fingers to show the size—“yea big by yea big. Then have Bert put them in the girl’s nest. That’ll keep her to home.”

  I tilted my head so he’d understand I didn’t know what in the world he was talking about. “Won’t she know they aren’t real?”

  He reached into the pocket of his work pants, pulled out a hanky, and wiped at his nose with it.

  “Well, seems I heard once if a homing pigeon like her got sent out thinkin’ she’s got an egg to sit on, she’d make it double-time back to her coop.” He nodded. “Bet if Bert’s girl had an egg or two, she’d think twice about goin’ off.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “It’s part of a mother’s nature. She’ll hurry on home as long as she knows she’s got a young one to tend to.”

  I walked away from Uncle Gus, leaving him to his trees. And I thought of Sassy and how she’d come back, even if that egg wasn’t really hers. She’d come on back.

  Somehow, she’d remember the way home.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Aunt Carrie was in the kitchen where I’d hoped to find her. Standing at the counter, she rolled out dough for a crust. She didn’t mind me standing close at her elbow to see the way she wrapped it up on the rolling pin and put it real gentle-like into the tin.

  “It took me years to learn how to do that,” she told me. “My poor mother would get so frustrated with me. I tore so many crusts.”

  She smiled at the memory.

  “Good thing mother was long-suffering and crusts can be fixed easily,” she said. “Hand me that jar if you would, please.”

  I did, the apple slices in cinnamon syrup looking so good they about made my mouth water.

  “This will be for tomorrow,” Aunt Carrie said. “Do you think your mama will come for dinner after church?”

  “She might.” I watched her pour the fruit into the crust and breathed in the sweet and spicy smell of them. “We went to the store yesterday.”