A Penny Urned

by Tamar Myers

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Do what your mama say,” Diamond growled softly and headed off with Mama.

  By then I was irritated with both women, but nonetheless I trotted obediently after them. As we plopped ourselves down on a single bench, with yours truly in the middle, Mama let out a long but satisfied sigh.

  “I wanted to sit where Tom Hanks sat,” she said almost shyly. “I wanted to put my buns where he put his.”

  That sent Diamond into a spasm of giggles.

  “Mama!” I was genuinely shocked. “I thought you wanted Forrest for your son.”

  “Don’t be silly, dear, I already have a son. Your brother, Toy, remember?”

  “How could I forget? Toy the Perfect, now that he’s decided to become an Episcopal priest.”

  Mama smiled. “Just think, Abby, three years from now hundreds of people will be calling your little brother Father Wiggins.”

  “Maybe hundreds of bamboozled people,” I muttered.

  “Abby, you’re jealous!”

  “I am not.”

  “Of course you are, dear, but there’s no reason to be. You could become a priest too.”

  “If I do, will you call me Mother Timberlake?”

  “Well, I—I don’t know what folks call a woman priest. We’ve never had one at the Church of Our Savior.”

  “But if they call her Mother, could you handle that?”

  “Well—”

  “Maybe I should become a nun,” I said wickedly. “Surely you could handle Sister Abigail Louise.”

  Mama flushed. It was only last year that she ran off to the Episcopal convent in Dayton, Ohio, to become a nun. Fortunately for everyone involved, Mozella Wiggins was not an asset to the abbey. Not only did Mama whistle on the stairs and wear curlers under her wimple, but she organized a slumber party at which she served S’mores. According to Mother Superior, she even started a pillow fight.

  “Abby, there’s no need to bring up the past in front of perfect strangers.”

  “I ain’t no stranger,” Diamond said. “We met last night, remember?”

  “How could we forget,” I growled. “I didn’t have a single gray hair until then.”

  “You still don’t,” Mama said. She leaned over me to speak to Diamond. “I’m the one with all the gray, and you can imagine why. Do you have any children, dear?”

  Diamond blinked. “I got me a granddaughter.”

  Mama leaned back. “Well, then you know about kids. So, what is it you had to say, Miss Diamond?”

  “That just Diamond. Don’ go by no other name.”

  “Right. Like Cher.”

  “Yeah, like Cher.” Diamond spread her legs so the white eyelet skirt formed a shallow bowl. She removed the chicken foot from her neck and placed it gently—almost reverently—in the center of her lap. Then she slipped the black felt bag over her head and carefully removed its contents. Around the shriveled bird’s claw she arranged three brittle leaves of different sizes, a cluster of tiny dried leaves, a clump of bleached grass, an unfamiliar nut, and a desiccated mushroom.

  Mama nodded. “Ah! Witchcraft!”

  “Watch yo’ mouth!” Diamond said with sudden vehemence. “I ain’t no witch!”

  I could tell Mama was taken aback. “Perhaps you could explain them to us,” I said gently.

  Diamond glared at Mama and then cleared her throat. “They herbs. I ain’t got nothing to do with that witchy stuff, nor voodoo neither.”

  I patted Mama’s knee to calm her. “We understand,” I said to Diamond. “Please continue.”

  “All right then. This here”—she pointed to the small-leafed cluster—“is mistletoe.”

  “The kind you kiss under at Christmas?”

  Diamond rolled her eyes, and I clamped a cluster of tiny fingers over a much too active mouth.

  “Go on, please,” Mama said, happy to be out of the hot seat.

  “You wear mistletoe around your neck, ain’t no voodoo lady going to curse you.”

  “Hmm, maybe I should try that. And what’s this one for?”

  “That be tansy. Make a tea and it clean out your system good. Sometimes too good. It clean out the worms, clean out everything. Girl get in the family way—well, I don’t approve of using it for that. Folks can die, they drink too much.”

  “Then why do you carry it around on your neck?”

  “Because it keep the bug away.”

  “What kind of bug?”

  “Flu bug, that kind of thing.”

  “I see. But what I don’t understand is why you are showing us these things.”

  “’Cause I wanted to show you I ain’t got no black magic in here. Just herbs and things. My ju-ju, they only the good kind.”

  “Ju-ju?” I asked. That was a new word for me.

  “What you white folks call spells.”

  “Aha!” Mama cried, switching sides again. “So you do cast spells!”

  Diamond spread her wrinkled hands over the contents of her lap as if to protect the items displayed from Mama’s assertion. She growled before finding a speaking voice

  “I casts only good spells!”

  This fascinated me. Good spells or bad, I have sometimes fantasized having power over others to make them do my bidding or somehow affect them merely by chanting a few phrases or burning a few pinches of something or the other in my fireplace. Okay, to be perfectly honest, I used to wish I could do something really nasty to Buford, my evil ex, and get away with it. Maybe make his cheating pecker fall off or at the least cause it to shrivel up like one of Diamond’s leaves. But I am a Christian of the Episcopal persuasion. I find it hard enough to believe in miracles, much less magic. Still, there were enough stories out there to make a body wonder.

  I flashed Diamond a brilliant smile. “Could you share with us an example of a good spell?”

  She cocked her head to think, and the straw hat hid her face. “Miss Emily—she my neighbor—get hit by a car crossing Abercorn Street. Miss Emily fall and break her hip. This happen, oh, three years ago. Miss Emily don’t have no kind of insurance, and the doctors say she ain’t never going walk again, on account of she up in her nineties. So, I make Miss Emily a potion of—well, just never you mind what I put in it. Anyway, I gets Miss Emily’s niece to give her the potion, and before you know it, she up on her feet and walking.”

  “Well, I’ll be!” Mama clapped her hands.

  Diamond turned her head and smiled. “Oh, that ain’t all. When Miss Emily come home from the hospital, there a man waiting for her in front of her house in a stretch limousine.”

  “Ed McMahon?” I asked, tuning into one of my own fantasies.

  Diamond cackled. “Ain’t no Ed McMahon! This some rich black man related to Miss Emily. Stutter Evans his name. Went up to Motown in the sixties to be a singer but couldn’t sing worth a damn. Didn’t matter, though. Stutter, he a record producer. A rich as sin record producer. He pay all Miss Emily’s bills and give her money to spare. Folks said it was a miracle, but I knew different. I knew it was because of the ju-ju.”

  Mama couldn’t help glancing at Diamond’s outfit again. Wisely, she bit her tongue.

  “Oh, I know what you be thinking,” Diamond said, “but it don’t work that way. My good spells only work for other people. And that’s why I come to see you.”

  “Why us?” I croaked.

  “’Cause someone want to kill you,” Diamond said just as calmly as could be.

  10

  “Oh, Abby,” Mama wailed, “what have you done this time?”

  “Me?” I turned to Diamond. “Us?”

  The straw hat bobbed. “Miss Amy say you should leave town right away. Go back to where you came from.”

  “Hey, wait a minute! I thought you said her name was Miss Emily, not Miss Amy.”

  Diamond sighed. “I done told you that last night, but I guess you didn’ listen. Miss Amy the white girl up in Bonaventure Cemetery.”

  “Ah, the dead white girl. So, you’r
e a medium as well.”

  “Dead folks talk just as much as live folks, ma’am. It just that most folks can’t hear them.”

  “But you do.” I didn’t mean to be rude, although it came out as a sneer.

  “Yes, ma’am. Always have. Ever since I a little girl. The gift my mama called it.”

  “Nuts,” I mouthed to Mama.

  Diamond had ears like an elephant. “Don’ bother me what you think. I’m supposed to help you anyway. That what Miss Amy say, and that what I fixin’ to do.”

  Mama fingered her pearls as if they were worry beads. “What exactly did Miss Amy say? Did she mention us by name?”

  “Miss Amy don’ never mention anybody by name. But she say, ‘Diamond, you warn them two itty-bitty white women to go back where they come from. She have me waiting at the gate last evening when you come. And believe me, you don’ wanna be anywhere near that place after dark.”

  “Itty-bitty!” I cried indignantly.

  Diamond nodded. “That what Miss Amy say. She say you no bigger than she when it happen.”

  “What happened?” Mama asked in an itty-bitty voice.

  A line of sweat beads had appeared above Diamond’s upper lip, and she wiped it off with the back of her hand. “Miss Amy, she drown in the Atlantic Ocean off Tybee Island. It happen on her birthday. She walking along the beach, and this big wave wash her right out to sea. They not find her body for three days. By then the fishes had had themselves a snack. Her eyes, her lips, they gone.”

  I shuddered. “Gross.”

  “But now Miss Amy see everything. She tell me everything too. Only she don’ use no names.”

  “How old was she when this happened?” Mama asked.

  “She be nine.”

  I jumped to my feet. “That does it! I will not be compared to a nine-year-old girl.”

  “Sit down,” Mama said in a tone that only God would dare disobey.

  I perched on the bench, but swung my legs angrily. “Isthay omanway isay azycray.”

  Diamond’s cackle made an overhead starling take flight. “I ain’t crazy. I just be telling what is. Y’all go back home now like Miss Amy say.”

  “We will,” Mama said, “just as soon as Abby here gets a few loose ends tied up.”

  Diamond scooped the bits of detritus off her lap and stuffed them back into the felt bag. “Don’ you be tying up no strings, hear? Ain’t no time for that.”

  “Don’t worry,” Mama said, “we’ll be careful. And don’t let this old body fool you. I’m pretty fast for my age. I can take care of myself. In fact, I’m teaching myself karate.”

  Diamond’s talons all but met in my humerus. “I ain’t talking about you, ma’am,” she said to Mama. “It this child who in danger.”

  “Me?” I wailed.

  Mama’s eyes were wide as magnolia blossoms. “Lord have mercy!”

  I turned from Mama to look in Diamond’s direction, and it was my eyes’ turn to widen. Diamond was gone. My arm stung as if she was still pinching me, but the woman was nowhere in sight. I mean nowhere in sight. She had simply disappeared.

  We left Chippewa Square in a daze, telling ourselves that Diamond had somehow managed to slip into a car or maybe a passing bus. I even went so far as to ask Mama if Diamond could possibly be a product of our imagination. Mama allowed as how I didn’t have that much imagination, and if Diamond was a production of her imagination, she wouldn’t have been wearing white sandals. I couldn’t argue with that.

  We drove to Gaston Street and found parking a block away from Aunt Lula Mae’s row house. This was as charming a street as I’d ever seen. And as colorful.

  “Have you ever seen so many azaleas?” I burbled. “Look, the curb is covered with them for as far as you can see. Isn’t it just gorgeous?”

  “Too many colors, dear. Pink, red, purple, and—”

  “White? Mama, azaleas are allowed to bloom before Easter. Dogwood too.”

  “Yes, but they shouldn’t mix them like that. It disturbs the senses.”

  I thought for a moment. “This wouldn’t be sour grapes speaking, would it?”

  “Whatever do you mean, dear?”

  “Well—and forgive me for saying this if I’m wrong—but doesn’t it bother you that Aunt Lula Mae left her house to me and me alone?”

  Mama walked faster. “Nonsense.”

  “Well, it would me, if I were you.”

  “Don’t be silly. You were her niece.”

  “Yes, but Toy was her nephew.” I prudently refrained from adding that Toy seems to be Mama’s favorite child. At least, he is the child who in her eyes can do no wrong.

  “Your aunt was free to leave her possessions to whomever she wanted. It doesn’t bother me in the least if she ignored half her brother’s descendants, not to mention the woman who loved and cared for her only brother for most of his adult life. I cooked his meals, ironed his shirts, bore his children….”

  “Ah, so that’s it! You wanted her to leave the house to you!”

  Mama stopped so suddenly I couldn’t help but rear-end her. Fortunately all those crinolines functioned like an air bag, and I came to a rather comfortable stop. I have heard reports that real air bags can be dangerous to children and small adults. Petticoats, I assure you, are no problem.

  I extricated myself from the starched slips. “That’s it, Mama, isn’t it?”

  Mama turned, her face every bit as pink as the azalea next to her. “I never inherited anything, Abby. My parents didn’t have anything. And I’ve never won anything either. The lottery, video poker, bingo—I never win at any of those things. No, I take that back. Once I won a free Pepsi by scratching stuff on a card. But just once before I die, I’d like to get something for nothing.”

  I squirmed in my size fours. I don’t claim to have had an easy life—au contraire—but I’ve been pretty lucky in the freebie department. Two years ago a relative died and left me her antique shop, even though I already had one of my own. Shortly after that an elderly acquaintance bequeathed me a fabulous Kashmir sapphire worth a fortune. And now, of course, there was this Savannah town house. But I’ve had bad luck, too. My shop has been burgled, the sapphire is now at the bottom of the New River Gorge in West Virginia, and a house I had yet to see had somehow come between me and my mother.

  I crossed the fingers of both hands behind my back. “You’re mentioned in my will.”

  “Really?”

  “Absolutely.” Well, why not, after all? Who was to say I wouldn’t go before Mama, and why should my children get everything? Surely the woman who endured thirty-six hours of excruciating labor deserved some amount of financial reward.

  Mama’s face brightened. “Oh, Abby, you were always my favorite child, you know that?”

  “You mean it?”

  “Of course.”

  “But all I ever hear is Toy this, Toy that. Tell me one thing you like about me that you can’t say the same for Toy.”

  Mama sighed. “Don’t spoil our little fantasy with facts, dear.”

  “But I really do have a will,” I wailed.

  Mama smiled. “Of course you do. But I’m not in it, am I?”

  “Well—”

  “Don’t lie to your mama.”

  “Okay, so you’re not. But you could be. Is there anything in particular of mine that you want? You seem to especially like my end tables. They’re yours for the asking. Heck, take the sofa, too.”

  “That’s all right, dear. I just wanted to know if…” Mama mumbled something that was swallowed by the normal sounds of a street. A not very busy one at that.

  “What did you say?”

  “You heard me.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “I just wanted to know if you loved me.”

  “Of course I love you!”

  Mama sniffed. “Well, the same thing goes for me. Now let’s quit being so maudlin and go see your new house.”

  We could hear the music loud and clear from where we stood at the foot of the s
teps. In fact, so could a small crowd of tourists who had gathered there.

  “Savannah is home to many famous musicians,” the tour guide with the flower-basket hat chirped.

  “How did she get here?” I whispered to Mama.

  “Shh!” a tourist said, and actually shook a fat finger in my face.

  The guide blessed the disciplining tourist with a smile. “As I was saying, Savannah has a rich musical heritage. There was Johnny Mercer—he was a world-famous lyricist, and there’s Emma Kelly—you can sometimes still catch her over at Hannah’s East, a nightclub located just above the Pirate’s House Restaurant. Then of course there is the renowned Savannah Symphony Orchestra. Why, I bet that’s one of their musicians you’re hearing right now. “Moonlight Sonata” has always been one of my favorite pieces.”

  “Lovely, just lovely.” A middle-aged woman in white spandex shorts and a purple tank top was wagging her head like the needle of a metronome.

  That’s the opening of Tchaikovsky’s B-Flat Minor piano concerto,” Mama said in a loud voice. “And if you ask me, the bass could be a little stronger.”

  The guide with the blooming head turned and gave Mama the evil eye.

  Mama shrugged. “Well, I happen to know this piece.”

  The guide tossed her head angrily, almost losing her hat. Amidst a chorus of sympathetic mutters, she led her flock down the block and around the corner.

  I turned to Mama. “You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?”

  “Whatever do you mean?”

  “I had no idea you knew so much about music.”

  Mama patted her pearls. “Well, I am in the choir.”

  I bit my tongue. “But this is classical music. All you listen to on the radio is Mix 106.1. I thought Frank Sinatra hung the moon for you.”

  Mama sniffed. “This Tchaikovsky concerto was your daddy’s favorite piece of music. We listened to it on the hi-fi all the time.”

  That bit of knowledge alone was worth the trip to Savannah. Surely my daddy had played it on the hi-fi when I was still living at home, but I must have forgotten. The music was familiar, however, and beautiful. Mama was just plain wrong about the dragging bass. Then again, I must have been wrong about the address. After all, dead women seldom play piano with such gusto.