Then he was gone.
Somehow I managed to fall asleep after Eddie left. It was a fast and shallow sleep. One that didn’t give dreams or even rest.
I woke more exhausted than the night before.
Bubbling coffee sounds and the warm aroma of oatmeal floated out of the kitchen, along with Mama’s humming of Christmas carols.
“Mama?” I called out, weak and quiet. I didn’t reckon she would hear me, so I took in a good breath and called out again.
“You up?” she asked from the kitchen. “Was I making too much noise? I didn’t mean to wake you.”
I shook my head no.
Mama set the table with bowls and water glasses. Smiling at me, she stood up straight.
“Your hair needs a good brushing,” she said. “I can braid it for you if you like. Later, though. Maybe after breakfast.”
She turned back to the kitchen and took a stack of cotton napkins from the drawer.
“Mama.” That time my voice came through loud enough that she turned.
“Yes, darlin’?” Her forehead wrinkled, and one of her eyebrows raised.
“I’ve got to tell you something,” I said. “And I don’t want you to be mad at me.”
“Why would I be mad?” She put a fist on her hip. “Did you do something?”
“No.” I swallowed hard, but nothing went down but dry. “Eddie was here last night.”
“What was that?” She tilted her head.
I told her what I’d said.
“He never was here yesterday.” She turned to the table and put the napkins beside the bowls.
“Everybody was asleep. I woke up and he was sitting right in Daddy’s chair.” I cleared my throat. “He was smoking.”
“You were just dreaming, Pearl.”
“I wasn’t. It was real.”
“Don’t you think Daddy and I would have known he was here?” She walked to the drawer for some spoons. “We would have heard him.”
I wondered why they hadn’t heard him. A flicker of doubt lit in my mind. Maybe it had just been a dream. I touched the place where he’d pressed his lips, wishing it hadn’t been real.
“Eddie scares me, Mama.” My eyelids fluttered, tears coming quicker than I could blink them away. “I don’t think he’s good.”
“Pearl, darlin’, he’s not bad. He saved Beanie, remember?” She turned back to the kitchen, and I heard her moving a pot around on top of the stove. “If he wasn’t good, he wouldn’t have helped her.”
“Mama, he knew my name.”
“Because we told it to him,” she said.
“No, Mama. He knew it right when he got off the train.” I wiped my nose.
“When he got off the train? He said he walked here.”
“He lied.”
“Pearl Louise,” she scolded. “It’s not nice to make accusations.”
“Remember the rabbit drive? The one I went to? When I went to find Beanie?”
She nodded. “I remember.”
“He smashed a rabbit right in my face.” My voice shook and I couldn’t help it. “Remember the blood on me?”
“Pearl.”
“He’s everywhere, Mama.”
“You must have dreamed it all. He hasn’t been around for months. He even said so.” She carried the pot of oatmeal to the table, balancing it on the edge as she ladled runny spoonfuls into the bowls. “You have got to stop reading so much. It’s spoiling your mind.”
“Mama, he’s bad.”
“He is not,” she said, her voice raised and hard. “He saved your sister.”
“He told me she was crying like a pig.”
“Why in the world would you say something like that?” She frowned at me. “What a terrible thing to say about your sister.”
“Winnie told me that Eddie was a bad man!” I yelled the words. Yelled them as loud as I could.
Mama jolted, losing her hold on the pot. It toppled and she jumped back just in time for the slop of hot oats to miss her feet and splatter on the floor.
She looked at the mess and then at me. She sobbed.
“How many times have I told you to stay away from That Woman?” Her body jerked with the crying. “Don’t you understand? I want to protect you. How can I protect you if you won’t do as I say?”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, still under the blanket. “I should have listened to you.”
She turned her eyes back to the oatmeal.
“You’re right,” I said. “It was all a dream. I imagined all of it. Everything was make-believe.”
Pulling on the edge of her apron, she brought it to her eyes and wiped under them.
“I never wanted you to get hurt,” she whimpered.
“I’m not hurt, Mama.” I pushed the blanket off my lap. “Dreams don’t hurt me. It was all just a dream.”
I stood up. The shears fell to the floor with a clatter.
Mama and I never did talk about Eddie or Winnie or jackrabbits again.
We cleaned up the oatmeal without a sound between us. She did keep an eye on me the whole time. From then on, she watched me. Her lips weren’t as ready to smile at my wonderings anymore. Her gaze seemed heavy on me, like she was trying to hold me down.
I knew she meant to protect me, but from what I didn’t know.
She made me sleep in bed with Beanie again, even if I did get kicked all night long.
I stopped telling Daddy about my nightmares, even though I’d never had so many. And never before had they been so dark.
It was truly a very lonely time.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Pastor stood still at the front of the sanctuary. He held a Bible at his side with one finger holding his place. With his free hand, he hiked up his trousers.
I noticed that both the knees of his slacks had been patched. His shirt was worn and faded. Even the tie around his neck looked tired.
More people had come to church that day than normal. Daddy and Millard had both put a tie on and warmed pews as a Christmas gift to Meemaw. Mama had told me that folks felt like hearing about God around holidays.
Even Pastor’s wife, Mad Mabel, sat in the congregation. I wondered if she planned on behaving herself.
It seemed the only two people in town that weren’t in church that day were Winnie and Eddie. That was just fine by me.
“Jesus didn’t come to earth as a babe raised in a castle,” Pastor said. “He come to a humble family.”
When he used the word humble, I knew what he meant was poor. Poor like Ray and Mrs. Jones and the folks living a couple days at a time in the Hooverville. Poor like the people moving along with no place to go.
“Jesus understands hungry. And He knows being without a roof overhead, and He knows what it’s like to wander.” Pastor pulled a hanky from his worn-out slacks and wiped at his eyes. Eyes that were a little less wild than usual. “Church, we’ve got a lot wrong. We’ve been getting it wrong for a long while, I expect. How long did we bow down before the idol of wheat? Cattle? A good many years.”
Somebody cleared their throat. It sounded like they about choked.
“I know, it ain’t a popular thing to say. But I’m gonna say it. You don’t like it, go on over to the whorehouse and get your fill of something else. I’m preaching here.”
Daddy sighed, and Mama cleared her throat.
“Go on,” a woman called from the back.
“I remember the mountains of wheat we’d have come harvest. I know you remember it, too.” Pastor shifted his weight. “That wheat gold bought y’all cars and new suits and good shoes for the kids. Y’all remember?”
A few people “uh-huhed” him.
“We’d grown that wheat. It was of our doing. Our sweat and tears and blood and guts.” He thumped himself on the chest. “It was of us. And we was proud of it.”
Daddy moved in his seat. Beanie yawned so the whole church could hear.
“I’m boring y’all, ain’t I?” Pastor said with a smile. When he smiled, he looked nearly ha
ndsome. I could see the circus ringmaster in his eyes. I sure wished he would smile more. “I ain’t got the Spirit moving me this morning. It’s just I’m plum wore out.”
“You ain’t boring no one,” Meemaw hollered. “Go on.”
“Thank you, sister.” Pastor smiled again. Then he turned to the rest of the congregation. “Anybody here still got any of that wheat money? Even a penny of it?”
No one said a word or made a sound or so much as moved a finger.
“It’s all gone, ain’t it?” He sighed. “It’s all spent. Gone. Ain’t it?”
“That’s right,” Millard said.
“And to that,” Pastor said, “I say, amen. Praise God. And hallelujah.”
He got that old wild look in his eye. But that morning it wasn’t angry. It was something altogether different. It was more akin to mischief than anything. It was the look I imagined him wearing under his circus tent back in the old days.
“Jesus comes to the poor,” he said. “He comes when we got nothing left to bow down to. Far as I know, none of us is fixing to worship our fields of dust.”
“You got that right,” someone said.
Pastor laughed and looked down.
“Thank you, brother.” He kept the smile on his face. “Church, Jesus Himself said it, ‘Blessed be ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of God.’”
Mama crossed her ankles and smoothed her skirt.
Pastor went on about the promises God made to the poor, but I was only halfway listening. My eyes were on Mama’s mending-scarred hose. And I was thinking that if I had all the money in the world, I would get Mama a whole dresser drawer full of fresh hose. So many that, if one got a tear, she could throw it out and go get herself another pair. If I had the money, Mama would never have to mend another thing for the rest of her life.
I worried, though that if Mama had all those hose, she’d miss out on being blessed for being poor like Jesus’s mother was. I still hadn’t worked out how having nothing made a body blessed, but the Mary in the Bible was blessed, and so was Mama.
I imagined that Jesus chose to come to the poor because He knew they’d be the ones to take the best care of Him. Poor little Virgin Mary would hold Him close to herself. She wouldn’t have the money to hire a nanny to raise Him. And Joseph, not even being His real daddy, would love Him like his own. Mama held me and Beanie tight to her, and Daddy sure loved us. If that was the blessing of being poor, it seemed worth the bother to me.
The way I figured it, Jesus had the poor close to His heart because they were the ones who had nothing else to hold onto.
Right when we got home from church, Meemaw went to her bed.
“I’m feeling a bit off,” she said. “I think all I need is a little rest.”
She slept until supper but didn’t feel like eating. Mama sent me up to Meemaw’s room with a mug of bouillon and a slice of bread.
“Thank you, darlin’,” Meemaw said. “Just put them on the bedside table, would you?”
I did as she asked.
“Will you read to me a little bit?” she asked. “My Bible’s on my dresser.”
I sat on the edge of her bed, reading out loud from her heavy Bible. I could barely hold it, even when it rested on my lap. A few of the words stumbled out of my mouth, but Meemaw didn’t mind. She watched my face as I read, nodding her head when I tried a word that was bigger than any I had learned at school.
“Keep on,” she encouraged me. “You’re doing just fine, darlin’.”
After I got to the end of a chapter in Deuteronomy she told me it was okay to stop reading. I closed the Bible and made to get up, but she ringed my wrist with her fingers.
“Pearlie, I want to talk to you.” She swallowed. “I got something I need to tell you. Then I’ll want to rest awhile.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
“I don’t like that hobo that’s been coming around.” She shook her head, rubbing it against her pillow. “Not at all.”
“Eddie?” I whispered.
“That’s the one.” She let go of my arm and patted my leg. “I know he found Beanie and all, but I don’t trust him. There’s something wicked in his eyes.”
Relief swelled through me. I wasn’t alone.
“I told your mama and daddy. I just don’t think they can see it,” she said. “I want you to steer clear of him. Hear?”
“Yes, ma’am.” I pushed a loose piece of hair behind my ear. “He confuses me.”
“How’s that?”
“He says things that I don’t understand. About me not being who I think I am and that I don’t belong here,” I answered. “He makes me feel upside-down.”
“All I can tell you is this,” she said, blinking real slow. “Someday you might learn that life isn’t what you always thought it was. You’ll learn how hard truth can hurt.”
She paused and breathed deeply.
“But,” she said. “But you’ve got to promise me you’ll remember how this family loves you. Everything we’ve done is because we love you deep down.”
I forced a smile. “I know it, Meemaw.”
“There might come a day when it’ll be hard to know it, darlin’.” She squeezed my hand. “Life has a way of taking what we know and tangling it all in knots. It ain’t gonna be easy on you to know. The truth never is. But you’re a brave girl. And you’re strong in the Lord.”
She closed her eyes and opened her mouth in a big yawn.
“I better get some more rest,” she said. “Can you please pull this blanket up?”
I covered her shoulders with the sheet and quilt.
“Now give me a kiss, honey, before you go.” She smiled.
I leaned down and kissed her cheek.
“Every storm has a beginning and every storm’s got an end. They never last forever,” she whispered. “God is the one who saves. Don’t forget it.”
Her door creaked closed behind me, and her snores started as soon as I reached the steps.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Mama and Daddy stood in the kitchen, talking about his paycheck. I sat at the table, drawing on a tablet of paper with a dull, graphite pencil. It didn’t feel right to me, hearing them go on about money. In my memory, I didn’t think they discussed so much as the spending of a penny within my hearing.
“It won’t be as much as usual,” Daddy said. “State’s cutting back on everybody’s checks now.”
“I can’t make a grocery list until I know how much you’ll get.” Mama crossed her arms and leaned back into the counter. “I don’t feel right taking credit at Smalley’s with him tightening his belt the way he has.”
“Might be half of what I usually get.”
“About sixty then?”
Daddy nodded. “We’ve gotta make it last. I’m worried about what January will bring.”
“That’s okay,” she’d said. “We’ll make do.”
Mama put me to work, writing a list of all she said we needed. Flour. Coffee. Molasses. Yeast. I wrote with a careful hand, practicing my penmanship and hoping Miss Camp would be pleased once school started back up in January.
“I think that’s about it,” Mama said when she’d told me the last ingredient she needed, which happened to be sugar. “You want to come with me?”
I nodded, happy that Mama wanted me with her.
“Button all the way up,” she said, handing me my thick sweater. “It’s real cold out.”
“Do you want me to drive you?” Daddy asked.
“It’s not a long walk.” Mama smiled and pushed her hands into the sleeves of her sweater. “Besides, I don’t have that much to buy.”
Mama and I walked out in the chilly, almost-Christmas air. I tried to remember the last time I held her hand and why I’d stopped. I wondered if she missed it like I did sometimes.
The little grocery store was quiet. Only Mr. Smalley sat behind the counter. He stood as soon as we walked in.
“Ladies,” he said, a big smile across his face. “Merry Christmas.”
“Come to get a few things?” He stepped out from behind the counter, leaning a hip into a shelf that used to hold jars full of candies. The jars were all empty.
I tried my very hardest not to be disappointed.
Mama handed him her list and the two of them talked in between finding all her groceries. Soon the stack of items grew on the counter.
“Looks like we might have to make a couple trips,” Mama said, smiling.
“I can help you carry.” Mr. Smalley pushed up his glasses.
“Don’t worry. Johnny can help us, can’t he?”
“Well, Bea took the kids.” Mr. Smalley turned toward a shelf, reaching for something on a high-up ledge. “They went to New York. She’s got family there.”
“For Christmas?” Mama picked up a small can of milk and inspected the label. “You should have gone with them.”
“Thing is, they ain’t coming back. She didn’t want to fight the dust no more.” He faced us. “She told me not to come there.”
“Oh.” Mama nodded slowly, lowering the can of milk to the counter. “I’m so sorry.”
“She said once she’s got enough money, she wants a divorce.”
“Pearl, darlin’,” Mama said, not turning toward me. “Go on out and sit on the bench a spell. I’ll get you when I’m ready to leave.”
I obeyed, even though I wanted to hear more from Mr. Smalley. I’d never met somebody who was divorced before, but I’d heard Pastor rail about it many times. I wondered what it felt like to have your family split in half like that. It seemed it would hurt like crazy.
Outside on the bench, I pulled the collar of my sweater over my mouth and nose to keep from getting cold. Leaning close to the door, I tried my best to hear Mama and Mr. Smalley talking through. All I could make out, though, were mumbling voices.
As much as I hated being in class with Johnny, I felt bad that he wasn’t going to be around his father anymore. Mr. Smalley was a good man, and Johnny would grow up not knowing it.
I stared across the street at the courthouse. The big doors were closed, but a few of the windows on the second floor were cracked open. I figured Millard was in his bedroom, snoozing the way he liked to on a cool afternoon. I only knew that because Daddy would tease him about it every once in a while. Turning my ear in that direction, I tried to catch the sound of him snoring but couldn’t hear much of anything at all.
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