She turned the bottles to see the labels and put her hand to the side of her face. Curling a dark brown piece of hair around her finger, she smiled at me. It was the kind that started out slow and stayed on her face for a while.
After they left, I couldn’t get Hem to focus on his letters. His attention kept moving to the window. “Let’s go see if they can play,” he said. “They should be done washing up by now.”
Finally, I gave up and followed Hem out the door and down the walkway. He stopped at the very end, in front of Room 12. “This is where they live. I saw them go in here.”
I could hear water running inside. “I’m not sure they’re finished washing up.”
Right as Hem was raising his arm up to knock, the door swung open. A tall, skinny woman with a towel on her head and a baby on her hip held the door open with her foot and smiled at us. “Go on in,” she said. “We’re almost finished.”
I figured her to be Lorraine and Randall’s mother. But before I could think on it much more, I got pushed to the side by a pointy elbow, and Hem was knocked to the ground beside me.
The pointy elbows belonged to a girl with tangled black hair that hung down practically to her behind. When she stood in front of me, we were level, eye to eye, and her two front teeth tilted up and out as if they were reaching toward me, getting ready to spear me. Those elbows of hers reminded me straightaway of Winnie Rae Early’s. They looked as if they could poke themselves right through into someone’s business.
She had a dirty green towel draped around her neck that had a gas-station bathroom smell to it. She must have noticed me sniffing, because she reared up her skinny chest and arched her back to try to stick it out farther, acting all big and smart, like Winnie Rae enjoyed doing. “Unh-uh,” she said. “You think you’re going to cut in front of me, you two got another think coming!”
Hem’s eyes were round and shiny, as if he hadn’t quite decided if he was going to cry or not.
I put my hand out and pulled him to his feet.
Pointy Elbows jabbed her finger in the air over Hem’s head. “You make an appointment, like everyone else.”
I dusted off Hem’s backside. “That better not be Randall and Lorraine’s sister.”
She ignored me and stepped inside the motel room, slamming the door.
I looked over Hem’s head to where she’d pointed, and there stood the woman with the wheelchair. Her stocking cap was gone, and her wiry gray hair spun away from her head in tight swirls. The suit jacket she’d been wearing before was hanging from one of the handles of the wheelchair, and she rested her hand against the other handle, as if she was afraid of someone taking off with it.
She looked at me dead in the eye, like she knew me, and motioned for me to come over.
Chapter Ten
I HAD HALFWAY decided I wasn’t going anywhere near that woman, but Hem was across the parking lot before I could even try to stop him. He chatted with the wheelchair lady like she was the supermarket checkout girl that used to give him sugar cookies.
“What you got in that wheelchair?” Hem pointed at the big side wheel with his toe.
The lady shrugged. “A little of this. And a little of that.”
“Anyone ever hurt their leg and have to ride in it?” Hem leaned all his weight to one side as if he might be getting ready to have one of his injuries.
She shook her head and straightened her stocking cap. “Not lately.”
There was a chilly bite to the air, but my forehead was sweating. I bounced a little in my sneakers, in case I might have to spring into action and grab Hem out of the wheelchair lady’s clutches. But the honest truth was, she didn’t seem to be going anywhere very fast in her brown step-in bedroom slippers. I moved up behind Hemingway and touched his shoulder, and I tried not to look the lady in the face.
Randall came around the corner from the back of the motel and galloped over. “Hey, Dorothy.” He picked up a clipboard that hung from a string at the back of the lady’s wheelchair and handed it to Lorraine. She scribbled something on it and gave it back to the lady.
Randall didn’t look to be anywhere near afraid of that wheelchair lady. He was standing right up next to her, as if he talked to her all the time.
I could see that Lorraine wasn’t afraid of Dorothy, either. In fact, she had her eyes fixed on Dorothy like I think I might’ve looked at my grandma, if I’d ever had the chance to meet her.
“Mama says we should ask you if you have more openings toward the end of the week, on account of we might be using the pool this week,” Randall said to Dorothy.
I really wanted to see what was on that clipboard. I couldn’t think what Lorraine might be signing them up for. But Dorothy let the clipboard dangle from the handle of the wheelchair. It got to twirling, and I couldn’t get my eyes around it.
Lorraine was trying to finger-comb her wet hair, and Dorothy rooted around in a green knapsack and pulled out a bright-yellow comb. She motioned for Lorraine to turn around and slowly worked at a tangled spot of hair at the back of Lorraine’s neck. She patted Lorraine’s head softly as she smoothed the snarl out. “Tell your mother I might have to switch some people around, but I’ll see what I can do.”
Lorraine smiled up into Dorothy’s face, and when I finally peeked at her face myself, I could see what Lorraine was smiling about.
Dorothy’s cheeks didn’t have any makeup on them, but they were the color of Flannery’s sweater. The skin around her eyes had lines traveling every which way. Her eyes themselves didn’t have one inch of mean, but they looked like they knew things. Things about people. Maybe things that people didn’t know about their own selves.
When I stepped in closer, I could smell my sunflower toilet water. Lorraine must’ve heard me sniffing, because she reached into a motel laundry bag and handed me my special conditioner and toilet water.
I smiled at her. “Your hair looks pretty,” I said. “And the smell floats around you real nicely.”
“Mama said you can come by and go swimming, if you want.” Randall had a fresh name tag stuck across his shirt.
I looked around close by and off in the distance, but I didn’t see a hint of a swimming pool or even a bit of lake or river.
I hadn’t seen one when we’d driven in, either. And Winnie Rae had never mentioned a pool when she bragged about her mama working here, which was plain out of character for her. She was always bragging on having one thing or another, and the way she talked about it, you would’ve thought they owned the motel or something. Just because you clean it doesn’t mean you own it.
“It’s not hot yet,” Hem said. “Usually, we wait until it’s time to go barefoot before we go through the sprinkler or anything.”
“If you’re going to go, you got to go now.” Randall smoothed at a corner of his name tag. “You got to go after the first rains. You wait too long, it’ll be too dirty.”
Dorothy looked at me and nodded. She set her clipboard on top of the pile in her wheelchair and shuffled off in her bedroom slippers. When her eyes had looked down into mine, I could have sworn she was reading one of my poems I’d been working on in my head. And she’d stared at my right hand. My writing hand.
Then it was almost as if Dorothy had shifted some words around in my head, changing my poem for me. I wanted to get back to my notebook, right away, but Hem had his feet firmly planted in the ground by Randall, and from the sounds of it, he was dead set on going swimming in April.
“I don’t even know where to look for your bathing suit,” I told him. “It’s probably back in Winnie Rae Early’s camping trailer.”
“He doesn’t need a suit,” Randall said. “He can wear what he’s got on. That’s what I’m doing.” He tugged at the bottom of his blue-striped T-shirt and wiped his palms on the front of his jeans.
I looked at Lorraine, but she shrugged. Seemed Randall was like Hem. Once he got an idea in his head, there was no talking him out of it.
I breathed out a loud puff of air. “Wait here, t
hen,” I said. I ran back to the room for my notebook and a towel. I wasn’t so sure Mama would be happy about Hem going for a swim, but I wasn’t going to worry about that right then. I had enough on my mind.
I wrapped two towels around my neck, and Hem and me followed Lorraine and Randall around the corner of the end unit.
When we got out back, I didn’t even see a kiddie pool. It was as if the area was long ago forgotten.
Whoever swept and picked up out front, had completely left out the area right behind the motel. We had to step carefully back there, because most of what I saw was batches of crumbled-up concrete with bits and pieces of tall grass poking through.
I kicked aside the torn scraps of a potato-chip bag and I caught a heavy smell in the air, like a stuffy closet.
“Let’s swing!” Hem galloped ahead to an old red swing set.
Even before we got there, I could see that the swing parts of it were pretty much gone. Part of one hung by a long single chain. There was a good space for the other swing, but all that was left were two short chains hanging down from the bar.
Hem grabbed on tight to the long chain and tried to hoist himself up.
I wrapped my arms around his belly and pulled him back. “You can let go of that right now,” I said. “The whole rusty thing is liable to topple back onto you.”
Hem looked to be tightening his grip, but Randall shook his head. “I’m not allowed on it, either.”
Behind the swing set the chipped-up concrete crumbled into dark, wet dirt, and a wide cluster of fir trees rose up in the short clumps of weeds.
“Watch out for the sticker bushes.” Randall rubbed at a long scratch on his arm as we followed Lorraine down a narrow dirt path between the trees.
“So where’s the pool?” I asked. The trees were getting thicker the farther we went, and I couldn’t figure out why the pool was so far from the motel.
“We’re ’bout there,” Randall said.
If you didn’t know it was there, you could easily have missed the tunneled-out passageway off to the left in the blackberry bushes.
“Duck your head and tuck in your arms,” Randall called back to us. “Dorothy’s got to get in here with her hedge clippers now that winter’s over.”
I brought my arms in close to my sides and ducked through the short, stickery passageway. And there it was. A perfect square of a pool that still had a cracked concrete border around it. Three green lawn chairs that looked to be almost new were scooted up to the edge at the far end.
I could see right off we were the first ones there, and the water in the pool was as still as could be, without one single ripple.
“No diving,” Randall said. “It’s not deep enough yet. We got to wait for a few more rains.”
The pool was about halfway full with what I figured to be rainwater and maybe some melted snow from the past winter. Clumps of dirt made polka dots throughout the water. The inside edges of the pool were blue-green concrete that had worn itself off in white blotches, so that it looked like it had been sponge-painted.
I pulled my sweatshirt tighter around me. I was shivering, and I hadn’t even stuck a toe in the water.
Lorraine smiled at me, as if she knew what I was thinking, and kicked off her blue sneakers.
“It’s fine, once you get in.” Randall peeled off his socks.
The pool was surrounded by a fence of tall, thick sticker bushes. And when I looked off above them real hard, I could see what I thought were white flags fluttering in the distance.
I pointed toward the flags. “Is that a carnival over there?” I thought about how nice it would be to have a Ferris wheel or even a merry-go-round nearby.
Randall followed my finger with his eyes and shook his head. “That’s the old drive-in.”
I wanted to head right over there, but I knew those things didn’t usually start up until after dark. You couldn’t see the movie screen until the daylight was completely gone.
I turned back toward the pool and thought about taking off my shoes.
Lorraine was the first one in. She didn’t jump off the edge like I usually did, but she stepped backward down a broken ladder into the side of the pool. Randall and Hemingway followed right after her.
Randall treaded water, his hands moving the water like the inside of a washing machine. “Do like this,” he said. “It makes the dirt settle down to the bottom.” He pushed aside the top of a yellow plastic truck.
“Doesn’t someone come around and clean it, like they do at the Y?” Hem asked. “They come round every Saturday in the summer and chase us out of the pool early, so they can clean it.”
Lorraine shook her head.
“No one comes round here but us,” Randall said. “We try to scoop out the big stuff.” He cupped his hands together and lifted some dead leaves from the corner of the pool.
I couldn’t believe Hemingway remembered about going to the Y. Daddy was the one who used to take us, but that was a good two years ago. Before the whiskey took over his breathing and talking. Before Flannery.
I could still remember my eyes and nose watering from all the chlorine they put in the pool. And I could almost feel Daddy’s hands, gently wiping over my eyelids. Blink, Harper. It’ll flush it out. Saturdays are free, and they have to put all the chemicals in because of kids like Hem, who use it for a second toilet. And he’d laughed and scooped Hem up above the water, like Hem couldn’t do anything wrong if he’d tried. I had always wanted Daddy to laugh that way with me.
I knelt down and ran my hand along the bumpy edge of the concrete. Daddy used to go in the pool with us. And if we got too close to the deep water, he’d be right behind us. You’re past the line there, Harper Lee. His voice was slow and easy, and he’d grab me around the middle and tugboat me back to the other side. Just like he’d done with Mama when he came around and rescued her from her old life. He’d scooped her up from that Louisiana bayou. I used to like to imagine him carrying her suitcase for her and carting her away. Come on with me where I can take care of you, Georgia, he might have said. We got nothing but time to hear all those nice stories you have in your head. If I knew I could have that Daddy back, I’d wait right next to Hem every day.
I stood up and walked to the old blue slide at the end of the pool. The end that was supposed to dip into the pool had snapped off, making it look like you were sliding off a cliff or a big drop-off. I had my foot on the bottom rung of the ladder, and I was thinking on how I might like to try that drop-off, when I saw the sneaky coyote eyes peeking through the opening in the blackberry bushes.
Chapter Eleven
“NO ONE INVITED YOU, Winnie Rae Early.” I saw her poke her nosy old self through the opening in the blackberry bushes. “Go right on back through those stickers and find someone who wants your company.”
I watched her scrape her arm on one of the blackberry thorns as she moved the rest of the way through the bushes.
“What are you doing with the retarded girl?” Winnie Rae rubbed at her arm and pointed her elbow in Lorraine’s direction.
I thought about the special-education room at the end of the long hallway at school where they had the big tricycles and Sebbie Weaver, the girl who still brought her baby doll to school in the fifth grade. “That word is full of meanness, Winnie Rae,” I said. I remembered what my teacher had told me back in the third grade. “You don’t say ‘retarded,’ you say ‘developmentally delayed,’ and Lorraine’s not that at all.”
I looked at Lorraine, who was willing Winnie Rae back against the sticker bushes with her eyes.
But as usual, nothing stopped Winnie Rae once she got her mouth in motion. “How come you weren’t at school today, Harper Lee? Mrs. Rodriguez finished up my poems today. She said they were the best she’d seen.”
I’d heard Winnie Rae’s story writing before, so I doubted that. She would never take my place. There was no way I was going to let that happen.
“You better get yourself to school tomorrow, Harper Lee.” Winnie Rae’s
coyote eyes zeroed in on my blue notebook on the ground by the pool. “Mrs. Rodriguez is almost to your row.”
I felt my heart beating in the pit of my stomach when I thought about Mrs. Rodriguez missing my poems.
“I’ll get there when I get there.” I tried to remember Mama’s exact words as she was telling me she needed me to stay home. It had been just this morning, but it already seemed like so long ago. She had to let me go to school tomorrow.
I stared right through the middle of Winnie Rae’s face, which usually made her back off. “What are you doing hanging around here, anyway?”
But I could see Winnie Rae wasn’t in a backing-off mood. She took a few steps forward and grabbed hold of the rail on the ladder. “Mama works here. I can be here any time I want.”
“Just because your mama owns our house doesn’t mean she owns the whole county.” My foot was itching to give her a good kick.
“That’s not your house anymore, Harper Lee Morgan.” I could tell Winnie Rae enjoyed reminding me about that. “Your daddy owes us so much money, Mama says he could’ve bought and sold the place a few times over.”
I thought about Daddy and how our house must’ve looked to him if he’d happened to turn in his seat as he drove away. I imagined our house getting smaller and smaller in the rear window of his pickup, and all of a sudden it was him I was mad at, and not Winnie Rae Early. Plenty of mad was swirling around my face right about then; maybe even enough to make Winnie Rae go on back the way she’d come in.
But Winnie Rae had a long stubborn streak to her, and her feet stayed planted where they were.
I looked over at the other end of the pool. Everyone was climbing out. Winnie Rae sure knew how to spoil a good time.
Lorraine snatched her towel from the ground and wrapped it around her shoulders. Her eyes said what her words didn’t need to.
Also Known As Harper Page 5