A Song of Home

by Susie Finkbeinger

  “You think it hurt the baby?” I asked. “Us dancing?”

  “Don’t you worry about that, darlin’. I’m sure it’s just fine.”

  The band started up another song, the last one before they took a break. It was a slow one and Lenny folded Opal into his arms, holding her almost too close. She rested her head on his chest and they swayed back and forth, round and round.

  “Can I have this dance?” Daddy asked, standing and offering his hand to me.

  I knew that giggling was for little girls, but I just couldn’t help it.

  As Daddy led our smooth kind of dancing I remembered when he’d have me step up on the toes of his boots. We’d shuffle around the floor of the living room in the house in Red River, the grit of the last duster grinding under the soles of his boots.

  But I was too big for that anymore and I wondered if that made Daddy sad in a way.

  If it did, he didn’t let me know.

  He pulled up my hand over my head and I knew he wanted me to twirl. I did, and when I stopped I saw Lenny and Opal dancing behind Daddy. They were giving each other a kiss and I knew it wasn’t meant for me to see. So I let Daddy twirl me one more time. That time I kept my eyes closed.

  I knew that song had to end but I wished so hard it would just keep on going. I’d have danced with Daddy for the rest of that evening. Being so near him felt like being home.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Nothing all that exciting happened after the Spring dance. There were no troubles in town and the ladies found little to gossip about after church come Sunday mornings. Most of all, folks talked about the coming planting season or the way March was going out like a lamb, even if it was a bit chilly still.

  When I wrote my letter to Millard, I didn’t have anything out of the ordinary to tell him. So I put down what happened most every day in our one-day-to-the-next life. I figured he’d just be glad to hear from us, boring letter and all.

  I wrote how Mama got us up in the mornings for breakfast before sending Daddy off to work and Ray and me off to school and how Bert met us along the way to tell us the incredible things his pigeon had done since the afternoon before.

  “Mostly it’s just that Sassy started sitting on her wood eggs or that she let him hold her without pecking him too much,” I wrote. “Bert’s proud of that bird even if he still can’t let her out.”

  What I didn’t write was how every once in a while Bert had a hard candy to give me or a stick of gum. It would’ve embarrassed me no end for Millard to know a boy’d taken a liking to me the way Bert had. It was bad enough, Ray knowing. He didn’t tease me too hard about it, and for that I was grateful.

  The rest of our days didn’t hardly seem worth writing about. At school we sat in our seats doing our work until lunch when we’d go back home to eat. Then back to school, let out a couple hours later, and walk back home.

  Library or Opal’s apartment or wandering round the woods. Supper. Baths. Reading or listening to a radio show. Bed.

  Sleep and dreams and quiet.

  The next morning Mama was there still. Always there. Not leaving.

  I’d gotten to like my normal, ordinary, boring life quite well, thank you very much.

  Mama’d let me go with her to Wheeler’s store to pick out which flour sack I wanted my Easter dress made out of. He’d put a whole stack of those bags in the window, Mr. Wheeler had, a handful of different patterns printed on them. I stood on the outside of that glass, trying to figure out which one I liked most.

  “Go on in,” Mama said. “Find the one you like. I need to stop by the post office. I’ll be right back.”

  “Can I go with you?” I asked, hoping maybe there’d be a letter from Millard waiting there for me.

  “Not today, Pearl,” she answered. “Now, do as I say.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  “And don’t go anywhere until I get back, hear?”

  I told her I’d stay put and watched her walk away from the store. I walked into Wheeler’s, holding my hands behind my back so I wouldn’t be tempted to touch anything.

  “Can I help you?” Mr. Wheeler asked from behind his counter where he held a pencil over his ledger.

  “Just come to look at the sacks, sir,” I answered.

  “Go ahead.” He scribble-scratched his pencil across the page.

  They sure were pretty, those flour sacks. Whoever made them never did have to print flowers in all different colors on them or patterns for a little doll to be cut out and stuffed with cotton. They did it to be kind. It sure seemed God would have a special blessing for whoever it was that had the idea to do such a thing for folks.

  It didn’t take me long to figure out the one I liked best. It was the color of the lavender flowers that grew by Aunt Carrie’s back door in the summer. Dotted all over it were tiny white daisies. I put my finger on it so anybody coming in before Mama got back would know that was the one I’d be taking home.

  I looked up when the bell over the door jingled just in time to see Delores walk in. Behind her was Mr. Fitzpatrick. He was a tall man. So tall he had to stoop to keep from knocking his head on the door when he came in. It was a wonder he could stand up straight at all for the way he must have had to walk, back bent, through that chicken coop of a house they lived in.

  Delores looked at me out of the corner of her eye and gave me a smile.

  “Hi,” she whispered, so quiet I almost didn’t hear her.

  “Hey,” I answered back. “You come to get a new flour sack?”

  Soon as I said it I wished I hadn’t. Delores wasn’t the kind of girl to get a new dress for Easter and I knew it. She slouched soon as I’d asked and shook her head.

  “That’s all right,” I said. “It isn’t something to feel bad about.”

  She eyed all the bright-colored flour sacks and I wondered which one she liked the most. If I could figure it out I thought maybe I could ask Mama if she’d make a dress for Delores, too. Mama before, back in Red River, wouldn’t have had to think twice about such a thing as sewing together a dress for a little girl who didn’t have one. Seemed to me that kindness wasn’t all the way gone from her heart.

  Just as I was about to ask Delores which color was her favorite, she turned at the sound of her father’s voice.

  “I ain’t come for charity,” Mr. Fitzpatrick said, his voice softer and quieter than I would’ve imagined it. He reached into his back pants pocket and pulled out his billfold. “I got cash money. I worked a job down in Toledo.”

  Mr. Wheeler made no small effort at holding his finger in the page he’d been writing on and putting down his pencil. He looked right at Mr. Fitzpatrick’s face and pushed his lips together so hard I was sure they’d get stuck like that for all of eternity.

  “You’ve got some nerve,” Mr. Wheeler said, his one eyebrow pointier than I’d ever seen it.

  “We just gotta have a few things to get us by.” Mr. Fitzpatrick turned his head, looking at me and then lowering his voice. “I got money to pay.”

  Mr. Wheeler turned his back on Mr. Fitzpatrick and straightened a line of canned goods on the shelf behind him. “Nothing has changed. You are not welcome here.”

  Delores turned her eyes to the floor in a way that told me how embarrassed she was.

  “Then I’ll pay up. How much do I owe?” Mr. Fitzpatrick asked. “I know my wife’s got credit here.”

  Mr. Wheeler looked at the man from across the counter with more bitterness than I’d ever seen him look at anybody. And he had plenty of nasty looks to give folks. The way he looked at Mr. Fitzpatrick made me think he’d like to reach over the counter and squeeze the life right out of him.

  But instead of strangling him, Mr. Wheeler snapped the pages of the ledger and pointed his finger at a line.

  “You’re paid in full,” he said. “Someone took pity on you.”

  “Was it the preacher?” Mr. Fitzpatrick asked. “I told him to stop taking up a collection—”

  “No,” Mr. Wheeler in
terrupted him.

  “Who was it, then?”

  “I was asked not to tell you that,” Mr. Wheeler said.

  “Well, you can just give the money back.” Mr. Fitzpatrick pointed at the ledger. “I won’t take it.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

  “I don’t take charity.”

  I knew that wasn’t true. The Fitzpatrick family was on the list of folks that took relief from the government. They’d accepted plenty of food from Aunt Carrie, and Uncle Gus always made sure to take milk to them every now and again.

  But I didn’t pipe up and say so on account I didn’t want to embarrass Delores like that. I just stood there with my hand on the lavender colored flour sack I’d picked to be my Easter dress, waiting for Mama to come back and hoping with all I was worth that she’d hurry it up.

  Mr. Wheeler rested his fists on the counter and leaned forward. He lowered his voice, but I could still hear him just fine.

  “I tried telling her it was a bad idea, paying it off,” he said. “I told her that it would only serve to allow you to stay in your lazy ways. But she insisted. My wife is a stubborn woman.”

  Mr. Fitzpatrick stood there, hands on his hips and the muscles in his jaw tensing. His large Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.

  “I don’t know why she paid it up for you.” Mr. Wheeler’s words were sharp-edged and pulled tight. “You don’t deserve it. I suppose it’s because of your children. But you, you don’t deserve to walk the same earth as her after what you did.”

  The two men didn’t look away from each other, they hardly moved even for a good half a minute. Mr. Wheeler with his sharp edges and Mr. Fitzpatrick with his tensed jaw.

  “It was a long time ago,” Mr. Fitzpatrick whispered. “A real long time ago.”

  Delores took his hand like she wanted to run out of the store with him. I couldn’t have said I blamed her.

  “You’re the same man,” Mr. Wheeler said. “People don’t change. Not after doing a thing like that.”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “So you say.” Mr. Wheeler turned his back and crossed his arms.

  “Papa,” Delores said, pulling on her father’s hand. “Let’s go home.”

  He looked down at her, his jaw clenched. I saw there was a wide scar that went all the way down his face and I wondered how it’d happened. Whatever had caused it, I would’ve bet it hurt like the dickens for a real long time.

  When he turned to walk out of the store, I noticed he had a bit of a limp. Not so much that he had to jerk his whole body along like some folks I’d seen. It was just a small one, like his knee got caught and didn’t bend just right.

  Delores gave me one last look before they stepped out the door. If I could have found my voice, I’d have told her I’d keep all I’d seen a secret. That I wouldn’t gossip about it at school or in the church after services. But I couldn’t seem to say a thing.

  The two of them left, leaving me standing there with my pointer finger on the lavender colored sack with tiny white daisy flowers all over it, feeling like the most helpless person in all the world.

  Mama came in just a minute or two after Delores and her father had left. She’d been caught up chatting with somebody on the street and couldn’t get away, that was what she said. But the way her cheeks were flushed, I wondered if she hadn’t rushed from further down the road than just the post office.

  “You all right?” I asked her.

  “Just feeling a little sick,” she told me, touching her stomach. “It’ll pass. Now, which one did you like most?”

  I showed her the sack and she said it would be just fine. I carried it, my arms wrapped all the way around it, when we left for home. Mama had her arms full of everything else we’d gotten.

  Mama said she had dainty buttons in her coffee can that looked just like little posies that might be perfect with that fabric.

  But even with the promise of a pretty new dress and Easter coming along with warmer days, I couldn’t hardly help thinking of Delores and her father. I kept seeing them in my mind, the two of them holding hands and walking away from the store. Seemed to me their hearts were heavy for the things Mr. Wheeler had said.

  I thought of the time the oldest Smalley boy back in Red River had told everybody at school that Beanie was stupid as a box of rocks. I’d punched him in the gut so hard he’d doubled over and sucked for air like a fish out of water for a full five minutes. I had remained of the opinion that he was bad through and through for what he’d said. As far as I’d been concerned, he’d never amount to anything on account of his saying a bad thing about my sister.

  “Don’t forget the apostle Paul,” Meemaw’d said when I’d told her what I thought of that boy. “Ain’t nobody outside God’s reach. Ain’t nobody.”

  I’d not understood what she meant.

  “Come on, Pearl,” Mama said, her coffee can of spare buttons in her hands. “Let’s look through these on the table.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  We dumped the buttons on the table, sorting through them. Mama told me where she got a few of them. This one or that one had come off a dress she’d had as a little girl. A couple big brown ones were from a coat her mother’d worn while she was still alive. A few had even been strung together so they could be matched more easily.

  All the while I sat with Mama, marveling at how she could take an old bag and turn it into a pretty dress for me to wear come Sunday.

  If that wasn’t magic, I didn’t know what was.

  It wasn’t until after we’d put the buttons back into their coffee can that I noticed an envelope peeking out the top of Mama’s sweater pocket. It hadn’t been opened, and my curiosity got the wheels in my head turning. When she noticed I’d seen it she pushed it deeper into her pocket.

  “Who’s that from, Mama?” I asked.

  “Nobody,” she answered and got up from the table. “Would you like a drink of water?”

  “No thank you,” I answered, following her into the kitchen.

  She ran the faucet, filling her glass. She sipped it slowly. I tried getting another look at the envelope in her pocket.

  “It’s not for you,” she said.

  It was the voice I’d remembered from Mama’s worst days, the days not all that long after we’d moved to Bliss. The days when it was best for me to tip-toe around her and not do a thing out of order.

  She’d not meant anything by it, I convinced myself. She was fixing to sew a pretty dress just for me with the best buttons out of her old coffee can. Mama was sweet, Mama was kind. Mama would never leave me behind.

  I left her to sip her water in peace.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  I had never been one to brag. But had I been, I’d have made it known that of all the dresses the girls wore to church that Easter morning, mine was the finest. Sure, Ethel from school had the same lavender with tiny white flower print on her dress as mine did. And maybe Hazel’s had been store-bought from someplace in Toledo.

  But mine had the pretty posy buttons and a ribbon of white that Mama had taken off one of her old dresses to sew all the way around the waist.

  I looked all about the church that morning before the first hymn got started. There were more folks in the pews than usual. Aunt Carrie’d told me that would be the case. People always made sure to be in church on Easter Sunday. They might not come any other week of the year, but they’d hold down a pew to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus.

  It was better than nothing, at least that was what I thought.

  We sang more hymns that morning than usual, which was fine by me. The organ player had done something to make his music louder and I kept checking the ceiling to see if the roof was like to blow away for how loud he boomed on those keys.

  The way all the folks standing in that congregation sang, it felt as if all the bad in the world had gotten itself made right and all the hurt healed up. Uncle Gus stood on the other side of Aunt Carrie from me but I could still see how he ro
cked on the balls of his feet when he sang “Up from the grave He arose,” and Mama’s voice to the right of me rang out so clear and loud I’d have believed nothing awful could ever happen again.

  The preacher stepped out from behind the pulpit after the song ended and put his hands up, palms out. I waited for him to lower them so we’d all know to sit down, but he kept them up, a big old grin on his face and a warm sparkle in his eyes.

  For being one of calm and soft voice, that day he didn’t hold back. He spoke louder than I’d have thought possible for him.

  “Christ is risen,” he hollered.

  “He is risen, indeed,” the rest of the folks around me called, almost making me jump in surprise.

  “Christ is risen,” the preacher called out again.

  “He is risen, indeed!”

  “Christ is risen!”

  “He is risen, indeed!”

  For some reason I couldn’t have explained just then if I’d tried, my heart felt full and I worried that I was about to cry for how happy I was. I’d never felt love for anything or anybody like I felt it for Jesus just then. I swallowed, trying to hold the crying in the middle of my throat.

  He was risen. He truly was.

  The very best ending to any story ever committed to paper.

  But, lowering down to the pew, smoothing my skirt under me so it wouldn’t bunch up and wrinkle, I knew Easter wasn’t the end of the story.

  It was just the middle. And I’d read enough stories in my day to learn that the middle can trick the person reading it into thinking everything’s going to be a-okay. That nothing bad is lurking around the corner just waiting to attack.

  Jesus was risen. He was risen, indeed. And He’d spend time with His disciples and teach them a couple last things before getting Himself pulled up to heaven to get a place prepared for all His friends just beyond the pearly gates and a piece down the street of gold.

  But for his disciples there were beatings to come and shipwrecks. His friends would get whupped and stoned and kicked out of town. They had more than their share of heartaches coming and they just did not know it. Because they were Easter-Sunday-happy they couldn’t think anything would go wrong ever again.