Hope was born in September. It was warm and clear the day Mama and Daddy returned from the hospital with her. She had been an easy birth, coming quickly in the middle of the day, and Mama seemed rested and happier than she’d been in a long time.
“This is it,” Mama said, sitting down heavily. “She’s beautiful and sweet and the last Canan baby I’m giving birth to.”
Daddy smiled and hugged her, then looked over his shoulder to wink at Staggerlee.
They were sitting in the living room, Battle jumping up and down at Staggerlee’s side to get a better look at the baby. Late-afternoon sun poured in from the windows, and Mama looked beautiful in it—flushed and golden.
“You make beautiful babies, Mama,” Dotti said. “Might as well fill the world with them.”
Mama laughed and shook her head.
Hope stared up at Staggerlee, her eyes barely opened. She was pale and bald the way Battle had been. She would darken the way the rest of them had. Maybe her nose would grow straight like Mama’s. And her lips fill out like Daddy’s.
“Hey, little sister,” Staggerlee whispered. “Welcome to Sweet Gum.”
That evening, while Mama and Hope slept and Daddy sat in his study reading, Staggerlee called Trout. She had not spoken to her in a week, and her fingers trembled with the excitement of telling her about Hope.
The phone rang twice before Trout picked it up.
“Hey, girl,” she said softly. “Goodness, I was just thinking about you.”
Staggerlee smiled. They had spoken often since Trout had left, and each time she called, Trout always swore she had just been thinking about her.
“The baby came,” Staggerlee said. “We’re calling her Hope.”
“Hope,” Trout said across the distance. “That’s pretty. Hope Canan. Cousin Hope Canan.”
And they talked long into the night.
Chapter Seventeen
WINTER CAME EARLY. BY THE END OF OCTOBER there was a sprinkling of snow on the ground. Staggerlee walked through it slowly, heading home. In music class, she had sung “I Wonder As I Wander,” and her music teacher, Ms. Gibson, had asked if she would join the choir. Staggerlee smiled, remembering the teacher’s breathless excitement. “I remember your grandmother,” Ms. Gibson had said. “You have her gift of song.” Staggerlee had never thought she had anybody’s gift of anything. They’re all inside of us, Staggerlee thought as she climbed the porch stairs, past people and present people. And probably even the people we’ll become.
She had not heard from Trout in a while. Each time she called, the answering machine picked up. Trout hadn’t returned any of her calls. Staggerlee climbed the porch stairs slowly, wondering if she’d done something wrong, and tried to think back to their last conversation. Trout had seemed distant but still Trout, and they had talked about school mostly and a little bit about last summer.
Mama was sitting in the living room nursing Hope. She smiled when Staggerlee came in and blew her a kiss.
“Any calls or letters, Mama?”
“Your friend Lilly called—said meet her downtown by the movie theater if you still want to go see the film.”
“Thanks—I’ll probably pass.”
“Between you and Dotti, it’ll soon be time to get another phone line.”
“I doubt it,” Staggerlee said. But maybe it was true. She had made some friends this year, and choir would probably mean even more people calling to make plans.
Maybe Trout was busy with school too. Maybe she’d call tonight or tomorrow. Maybe there’d be a letter in the mail soon.
Chapter Eighteen
Dear Staggerlee,
It’s been a long time, and I hope this letter finds you and yours well. I let the months slip past me without writing or returning your calls, and this morning I climbed out of bed and saw the snow coming down hard and it dawned on me slowly that it was almost February and that four months have passed without us speaking. And I knew then I needed to sit down and write this. I think about Sweet Gum all the time, and when I close my eyes now, I start remembering that line of trees along the water and imagining them heavy with snow.
The letter arrived on a cold day in January, after months and months of silence. Staggerlee read it quickly the first time, sitting cross-legged on her bed, her heart beating hard against her chest.
In my botany class I learned that sweet gum trees are modern-day balm in Gilead. Remember the song Grandma and Grandpa used to sing about the balm in Gilead soothing the wounded soul? When I learned that about sweet gum, I started thinking that’s why your daddy went back there—maybe because to him the place had some kind of healing feel about it. I don’t know. I have study hall fifth period, and sometimes I just sit there thinking. My mind starts wrapping itself around all these crazy ideas.
Staggerlee read, remembering Ida Mae’s letter—how it had arrived the same way, a surprise in April. She stared at the words, seeing Ida Mae in Trout.
It’s hard to sit in that study hall and not think about you. And I’ve tried. I sit there with my book propped in front of me and the words start blurring and becoming you standing at the river smiling or you and Creek running fast ahead of me yelling,
“C’mon, Trout.”
With the snow on the ground, Sweet Gum and last summer seem ancient somehow, dreamy—like it all happened to someone who wasn’t me. In two months it’ll be a year since Hallique died, but it still seems like last week or yesterday. And some mornings it feels like it happened an hour ago. Me and Ida Mae—I guess we’re something like friends now, and maybe it’s because of Matthew. I guess that’s the hardest part of this letter—the part I haven’t been able to write or call you to say. I don’t know what I thought you’d do or say or think. Me and Matthew started dating back in September. Every time me and you talked back then, a part of me wanted to tell you that I had met a boy I liked. I wanted to tell you about the parties we go to and how it feels to walk down the street and hold his hand. I wanted to tell you about his smile—how when he looks at me, it seems the world just stops moving. But I didn’t know how. Every time we talked, we talked about last summer and we talked about that early morning in your bedroom when you told me about Hazel. I couldn’t tell you then, Staggerlee. I didn’t know how to. And if I couldn’t tell you that, then what could I tell you? It was like you had become Rachel and Rachel had become you. Suddenly I could tell Rachel all about my feelings and I had to keep them hidden from you. Some days I wonder if I’m always going to be hiding something from somebody . . . I hope not. And I figure it’s best to start by not hiding from you anymore.
Ida Mae likes Matthew—he eats dinner at our house just about every night and Ida Mae says he has the best table manners of any boy she’s ever met. His mama likes me too, I think. She smiles and speaks real sweet to me. Rachel thinks we make a nice couple and sometimes we go out with a few other couples and it’s nice when the girls get off alone and we can talk about our boyfriends. It’s still strange to write “boyfriend.” One day I was sitting in the park alone and I wrote Matthew Loves Tyler in the dirt and it stared back up at me, the words did. They looked bigger than anything, coming up out of the earth like that. And it made me remember that day by the river when I wrote that thing in the dirt. I guess it’s strange for you to see me writing “Tyler.” Matthew likes it—he thinks it’s a pretty name. And the more I write it and look at it, I’m liking it too. I think somewhere inside of me, I’ll always be Trout. But I’m Tyler too. The way you used to say about being both black and white—I’m both and all of it.
I’m not writing to say everything’s changed. I don’t know what I’ll wake up feeling tomorrow. But I just needed to write and let you know what I’m feeling today. I just needed to write so I wouldn’t have to hide. I want to talk to you—to really talk to you—hear about your life and tell you about mine. I want us to be like we were last summer, close like that, even if we don’t have the girl thing in common anymore. And maybe you’ll call me tonight and I’ll answer a
nd we’ll talk for a long, long time.
Love,
Tyler
That afternoon, Staggerlee folded the letter slowly and returned it to its envelope. She sat staring out at the snow, wanting to make sense of it all. She’d have to go back, she knew, if she wanted to remember. “Pull on your boots,” she whispered. “Take yourself down to the river.”
Chapter Nineteen
SNOW FELL SOFTLY OUTSIDE HER WINDOW NOW. Staggerlee watched it, watched how quietly the flakes moved toward the ground. She swallowed. It had been a month since the letter arrived and still, each time she read it, the words on the page stung.
It seemed like such a short while ago it was summer and she was laying her head against Trout’s shoulder. She remembered Trout’s voice—the way her mouth moved when she sang. Where was that part of Trout now? Did she still sing? When she was sitting alone with her boyfriend, did she stop to remember that rainy afternoon in the barn?
Staggerlee held the letter in both hands and stared down at it. Downstairs, she could hear her mother moving around the kitchen. She had not told anyone about the letter. And staring at it, she wondered if she ever would. Telling someone would mean starting at the beginning and telling everything. And there was no one she wanted to tell everything to. Maybe one day there would be. Someone she could whisper her life to. Someone she could take to a party, walk off the edge of the world with. She folded the letter slowly and placed it back inside its envelope. How many times had she read it? Three, four—a hundred?
And each time, the news about Matthew sliced through her. She closed her eyes and tried to wipe out the image of Trout with some boy. Rachel had won, hadn’t she? She had found Trout a boyfriend. Staggerlee pressed her head against the pane and stared out at the river. She had thought Trout was stronger than that. She had seemed so sure of herself last summer. But Trout was right—last summer did seem like a long, long time ago.
Staggerlee sighed. Tomorrow was Monday. There was geometry and social science and choir practice to get ready for. There was Lilly in her French class, who giggled, and Abraham in home ec, who swore he made the best pies in all Sweet Gum. She had friends now, people she walked to classes with, people who searched her out in the cafeteria. And some afternoons, if the weather was nice, she biked into town and sat on a milk crate in a circle of Daddy’s friends, talking about nothing and laughing about everything.
And Trout? What would she be doing tomorrow? The next day? Next week?
Waiting, Staggerlee thought. They were both waiting. Waiting for this moment, this season, these years to pass. Who would they become? she wondered. Who would they become?
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