Chasing Lilacs (2 page)

“I don’t need to see Doc. I need my pills.”

“Seems to me they ain’t doing much good. Maybe Doc could give you a different brand or something….”

She shoved the bottle into Daddy’s calloused hand. “And what am I supposed to do until tomorrow?” Her eyes darted around,
jerky little movements. “Please. Take Sammie with you. Just get them.”

She backed up the few paces to her room, then turned and shut the door.

Daddy thumped me on the arm. “You up for a root-beer float?”

In other words, we were going into town to get Mama’s pills and could stop at the Dairy Cream on the way home.

He didn’t say anything the whole twelve miles, just tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, his eyes aimed straight ahead.
I counted rusty brown cows with white faces and wished Mama had some physical thing wrong, like a broken leg or appendicitis,
so we could say, “Just two more weeks and she’ll be good as new.” But deep down I knew it was something else. I just didn’t
know what.

In the waiting room, I thumbed through a dog-eared
Highlights
magazine while Daddy went into Doc’s office. When they came out, Daddy put the refilled bottle in his shirt pocket, and Doc
handed me a peppermint stick. “Take good care of your mother, Sammie.”

I should have taken Doc’s advice.

But the next morning, Daddy told me Mama needed to rest. “Go on and have some fun.”

Sunshine peeked through the window above the kitchen sink. It didn’t really take any convincing on Daddy’s part. I slipped
on my Keds and took off. Sweet, dewy grass and a drift of rose scent gave me a heady feeling as I walked the two streets over
to Tuwana’s. When she opened the door, the smell of peanut butter cookies floated out. Delicate, sugary sensations tickled
my nose. Tuwana flounced into the kitchen and snitched us each a cookie. I took tiny bites and let each morsel melt in my
mouth.

I thanked Mrs. Johnson and licked my lips around a stray crumb. She smiled through pink lipstick and told me it was nothing,
that she was glad to see me. Wiping her hands on a starched, dotted-Swiss apron, she turned back to the cookies.

Tara and Tommie Sue, Tuwana’s little sisters, giggled above the blare of the television. Through the organdy curtains that
billowed out from the window breeze, the sun scattered dust motes. I just stood there, soaking up the clatter, until Tuwana
dragged me out onto the front porch. We painted our fingernails, then our toenails, and between it all, talked about a lot
of nothing.

When the noon whistle shrilled through every inch of Graham Camp, it surprised me that the whole morning had flown by. Not
once had I thought about Mama.

Running into the wind, my hair streamed behind me as I cut through the Barneses’ backyard, darted past a row of tin garages,
and zipped into the house. I took a second to catch my breath and listen for Mama, but the hum of the Frigidaire was all I
heard. I went to the bathroom, flushed, and reached for the faucet to wash
my hands. That’s when I noticed the brown pill bottle on the back of the toilet.

The lid lay off to the side. I picked it up to screw it back on, thinking Mama had been careless when she took her last dose.
The bottle was empty. I scanned the bathroom. No other bottles. No other pills laying around.

A tingle zipped up my spine. I raced into Mama’s room, shadowy and stale, and squinted to make out her body curled under her
quilt—asleep, it looked like. I touched her lightly on the shoulder.

“Mama, wake up. It’s time for lunch.”

She didn’t move.

I gave her a little shake, not wanting her to yell at me if she had another headache.

Nothing.

A knot formed in my throat. Her mouth sagged toward the pillow, her face ghostly white. I moved the quilt and lifted her hand,
but it flopped back against the sheet.
Check her pulse.

I looked around, wondering if someone had said the words or if I had just thought them.
Check her pulse.
How? What did Miss Good from health class teach us? Which side of the wrist? Thumb on the inside of the wrist. No, maybe
it was the index finger.
Think. Think. Think.

Forget the pulse. Check her breathing.
I leaned down close, hoping to hear some air coming from Mama’s mouth. My own heart banged against my chest, filling my ears
with its thump, thump, and I knew it was useless. Even if Mama were breathing, I would never hear it.

I flew out the back door, ducked under the clothesline, and tore through Goldie Kuykendall’s yard. Not even bothering to knock,
I ran in and yelled, “Goldie! Help!”

Goldie listened to my blubbering and picked up the telephone. “We’ve got an emergency over at the Tuckers’. Get Joe straightaway….
Tell him his wife swallowed a bottle of pills.”

She hung up and made another phone call. Then another. A ticking clock in my head screamed “Hurry!” but the next thing I knew,
Goldie grabbed my hand and rushed us across our backyards to my house.

Already, like some strange magic, neighbors appeared, whispering, asking what had happened. I broke loose from Goldie’s grip,
and as I raced up the steps to the front door, I heard Daddy’s Chevy screech to a halt. Red-faced from working in the boiler
room at the plant, he stormed past me. Goldie took my hand and whispered, “Wait.” In no time, the screen door swung open,
nearly knocking me down. Daddy stepped out carrying Mama. He put her in the car and ducked into the backseat beside her. Brother
Henry from the Hilltop Church got behind the wheel and roared off.

A sweaty, sick feeling came over me, and the faces of those gathered on our lawn blurred. My thoughts jumbled as I caught
the words
crying shame, poor Sammie, mercy sakes.
I waited for someone to say that Mama was alive, that everything would be all right, but no one did. Then a horrible thought
crept in. Doc told me to take care of Mama. Why, oh why, hadn’t I done what he said? I tried to swallow, but my throat had
shut itself off, and I knew why.

It was all my fault.

A
TERRIBLE SHAKING STARTED SOMEWHERE
deep inside, cold and trembly. Goldie’s arm around my shoulders steadied me but didn’t stop the clammy breakout on my scalp
and neck. She sat beside me on the couch in her front room and held me.

“Take it easy. I know you’re scared.” She held me close, her arms sturdy around me. She smelled of disinfectant and something
woody or earthy. I leaned against her, gulping in buckets of air, letting her soft bosom cushion me.

Gradually my breaths returned to normal, and I eased away from her. A zigzaggy scratch stung on my arm, smeared with crusty
blood.

Goldie noticed it too. “Gracious, you’ve got a nasty scrape. What happened?”

I shrugged and had the faintest recollection of running by Goldie’s rosebush screaming for help. Now the jagged line brought
back the reminder of Mama. I sucked in another big breath and shivered. Goldie went to her kitchen and brought back a wet
rag and a small brown bottle with a skull and crossbones on the label. Gently, she washed my arm.

“Just a bit more, Sammie.” She blew on my arm, then painted a red streak of “monkey blood” on the scratch. My shoulders hunched
together. It burned like fire.

We both blew on it, and before I could think, I blurted out, “Do you think Mama was breathing?”

Goldie’s Buster Brown hair swayed across her round-as-the-moon face. She nodded in a way that could have meant anything. She
patted me on the cheek, her green eyes drooping at the corners, and I could tell she really didn’t know.

After that, she hovered around me, brushing the hair out of my eyes one minute, straightening up the
Baptist Messenger
magazines on the end table the next. A honky-tonk song crackled over the Philco radio, and Goldie walked over to fine-tune
the static from Hank Williams’s “Cold, Cold Heart.”

Just as she straightened up, the phone rang. Two short jangles. One long. My body stiffened as Goldie and I looked at each
other.

Daddy? So soon?
My stomach knotted up.

Goldie’s thick fingers fumbled with the receiver, her voice croaky as she answered. Her face didn’t show anything as she listened
and then motioned for me to come over.

Gripping the phone, I said hello.

“She’s holding her own, Sis,” Daddy said on the other end.

My breath whooshed out.

He went on. “I’ll be staying the night, to be here when she wakes up. I think Goldie’ll be all right with you staying there.
Don’t worry. I’ll see you in the morning.” Click.

Alive. Mama’s alive.
I stared into the receiver. It was good news, wasn’t it? But what did he mean “holding her own”? Holding her own what? I
hung up, my feet planted to the floor. In my head, Mama’s arms and legs dangled like a marionette’s from Daddy’s arms. Daddy’s
face had no expression, just his jaw clamped tight, like the wooden Indian we’d once seen at a filling station.

“What did he say?” Goldie’s voice brought me back.

“She’s holding her own. He’s staying at the hospital until she wakes up.” Well, that was something anyway—thinking she’d wake
up. “He thought I could stay here until then.”

“Praise be. Yes, of course you can stay here. Thank you, Jesus.” She squeezed me tightly, then held me out at arm’s length.
“You must be starved. I’m fixing us some soup, and then you can help me with those critters out there.” She motioned toward
the back of the house, to the aviary attached to her porch. I nodded, glad to have something to keep my mind off Mama hanging
by a string in some strange hospital room.

After stirring the chicken noodle soup Goldie made, I couldn’t take a single bite. Bits of the pale chicken popped to the
top every time I moved the spoon, and the smell made me sick. I tried a saltine cracker, which felt like gravel in my throat.
I pushed my bowl away, and Goldie didn’t mention it, just tossed her head toward the aviary.

She held the door for me, and together we entered the porch work area. A pine-plank table sat along the wall with rows of
feed sacks propped beside it. A screen door led into the aviary. There were box cages full of flapping, colorful parakeets
whistling and chirping, louder than a flock of spooked blackbirds. The cages lined one whole wall, rows stacked upon one another
with space between each one. I counted eight across and five high and multiplied them in my head. Forty cages. Each one had
a tray that slid out so we could remove the soiled newspaper. A faint smell, like cat pee, filled the air.

Goldie handed me a stack of newspapers. “New liners for the cages after I pull the dirty ones out.” She went to work.

“It’s my fault, you know,” I said to the room in general. The parakeets twittered louder now that we’d riled them. “Do you
think it’s my fault, Goldie?” I shouted above the aviary racket. “You know… Mama taking those pills?”

“Lord, have mercy. Where’d you ever get a cockeyed notion like that?” She threw a used newspaper into an empty feed sack.

“Daddy didn’t want to get the pills for her. He said she needed to try something else for those spells she gets. If I’d stayed
home this morning—”

“No one’s going to be putting blame.” Her green eyes peered into mine. “Things happen. If we were meant to understand it all,
we wouldn’t be needing the Almighty, now would we?”

“You mean God?”

“Sammie Tucker, listen to me. God loves your mother the same as you and me. He created each and every one of us, and no two
people on this green earth are exactly alike. We all got our own ways, and to go figuring out the mind of someone else is
a plumb waste of time. Your mama’s gonna be just fine.” She went back to yanking the smelly papers from the trays.

I wanted to believe her, really I did, but
holding her own
and
just fine
didn’t sound like the same thing to me. And that picture in my head of Mama dangling by a wire darted in and out no matter
how much I tried to stop it. No, it was definitely my fault, and tomorrow, when Daddy brought Mama home, I knew what I had
to do. Protect Mama. Make her well. Doc said to take care of her, and that’s exactly what I would do.

But when Daddy picked me up at Goldie’s early the next morning, he didn’t bring Mama. He told us she woke up and could state
her name and knew that it was June 1958. He thanked Goldie for putting up with me and took me home.

My insides itched to know about Mama, but Daddy seemed off in some other world.

“How is she?” I blurted out, louder than I intended.

“Doing better. Fair to middlin’, I’d say.” He disappeared into the bathroom. While the water ran in the bath and he clanged
around shaving and what all, a million questions played ping-pong in my head. My feet wouldn’t stay still. I tapped one foot,
arms crossed, waiting for Daddy. Why hadn’t Mama come home with him? Why was he in such an all-fired hurry to get cleaned
up?

He came out, a piece of red-dotted toilet paper stuck on his chin, and disappeared into his bedroom. I watched from the doorway
as Daddy threw some of Mama’s things into a suitcase and snapped it shut. Straightening, he motioned for us to go outside.

We sat on the cement steps of the porch, the morning sun filtering through the trees and making kaleidoscope patterns at our
feet.

“Mama’s gonna need some help.” He took a pack of Camels from his shirt pocket and fished one out. He tapped one end on his
silver lighter before cupping his hand around the cigarette and lighting up. A puff of smoke drifted by as he inhaled.

“Help? What kind of help?”

Bent over with his arms resting on his knees, he didn’t look at me, just took a long drag and stared off into the distance.

“A hospital. Wichita Falls. She’ll spend three weeks talking to a doctor—a psychiatrist—going to group sessions and something
called ECT. It’s where Zeb Thornton took his wife, Mabel, a while back. Even though it’s a couple hundred miles from here,
it’s a good place, from what he said.”

“Three weeks?” Tears gathered behind my eyelids. I gazed up at the sky, willing them to drain back into my head. “And so far
away. What will they do to her? It won’t hurt, will it?”