Chasing Lilacs (6 page)

“And another thing. I hurt my knee.” A purple lump the size of an egg swelled below my kneecap. My chest got a tight feeling.
“It hurts so bad.”

The ache didn’t come from my knee, but someplace deep inside. Daddy put his arms around me and held me close. Tears built
up again, and I couldn’t stop crying.

A
FTER ALL THAT CRYING
, I decided to quit feeling sorry for myself and just enjoy the summer. I would worry about Mama when she came home. Daddy
took me to Piggly Wiggly in Mandeville to get some more Tide, and I threw in a tin of cocoa for the brownies I wanted to make
for the Fourth of July picnic. I made a batch every two days, having little conversations in my head with Mama, pretending
we lived on a plantation in Georgia, just like in
Gone with the Wind.

“Tell me, Mama, do you like pecans in your brownies?”

“I love anything you make, as long as you serve it with sweet tea.”

Mama would nibble the edge from the brownie and laugh like Scarlett, and I would think about us wearing swishy dresses and
sitting on the veranda, fanning away the mosquitoes.

I made a new circle on the calendar for July 7, when Mama would now be coming home. Every night I read more of Mama’s favorite
book and wrote her long letters so she wouldn’t have so much to catch up on when she did come home.

Dear Mama,

What a weird day. This morning Daddy said we ought to give Brother Henry a whirl. Irene Flanagan gave an update on her husband’s
gout, and Brother Henry asked for prayer for the safe delivery of their baby. “The sooner the better,” Sister
Doris said, as she sat there shushing Matthew, Mark, and Luke in the row ahead of us. During the singing of “Showers of Blessing,”
Sister Doris grabbed her back and let out a squawk. Then she waddled down the aisle to the back of the church. Lola Greenwood
said her water broke. Luke ran after her, stomping in the puddles.

That was the end of church. Mrs. Greenwood grabbed the little boys, and Brother Henry took off with Sister Doris.

Tuwana called this afternoon to say Sister Doris had a girl. No John-John in keeping with the Gospels like everyone figured.
They named the baby Penelope. Tuwana said Penelope was a prophetess in the Old Testament, but I think Tuwana’s a little off,
don’t you?

Tomorrow Tuwana and PJ leave for their cheerleading clinic. They’re going to make great cheerleaders.

Love and kisses,

Sammie

Daddy had daylights the week Tuwana and PJ were gone, so I helped Goldie every morning with the parakeets. Above the racket
of Lady Aster and the others, she gave me advice about the three new pimples that had popped up on my forehead overnight.
“Just a part of growing up, child. Your body’s changing. Before you know it you’ll be needing a brassiere and will start getting
your monthly visits.”

Eew! I looked at my chest. Flat. Like a boy’s. And I didn’t even want to think about what would happen when I got my period.
Who would I tell?

Goldie dabbed witch hazel on my face and gave me the bottle to take home. That and a fifty-cent-piece-sized pot of pasty goo.
“To hide the damage,” she said, and sent me on my way.

At home I read another eighty pages of
Gone with the Wind
.
Things weren’t going well for Scarlett. Married to Frank Kennedy and the Civil War going on all over the place. When I took
a bathroom break, I decided to use the cover-up cream from Goldie. I leaned in close to the mirror, and when I did, something
caught my eye near the baseboard between the toilet and the sink. I got down on my hands and knees and picked up a small white
pill. One of Mama’s. I held it between my finger and thumb and examined it. One tiny pill lost from the whole bottle. What
if Mama had taken this one too? Would one more have been enough to kill her? How had it ended up on the floor? Did Mama have
a screaming fit and fly apart? So much that her hands shook and she lost this one pill?

My chest got that squeezed-out-of-air feeling.

The glare of the light over the mirror made me imagine they’d strapped Mama in a chair to interrogate her, like the communists
I’d seen on television. Question after question, zapping her with an electric rod if she didn’t get the answer right. Was
that what shock treatments were?

I couldn’t breathe. Air. I needed fresh air. I slung the pill into the toilet and flushed it, watching the water swirl around
and
glug-glug-glug
to the bottom, taking the pill with it.

I ran out the door and grabbed my bike, just to get away. My knee still hurt from the day I banged it on the door frame, so
I rode slow, just taking it easy. Besides the street running through the middle of camp, a blacktop circled all the houses,
passing the playground and community hall. One mile exactly. I made one loop, the wind flying through my hair, then reversed
and started the other way. By the time I turned west, the sun angled down overhead, leaving a glare on everything. Two figures
stood in Slim Wallace’s garden, but I couldn’t make out who they were.

One of them, the short one, had a hoe that he kept chopping toward the ground. I heard Mr. Wallace’s voice when I inched closer.
“You can do it, son. Give it another go.” More whacking. Was it Cly with the hoe?

I stopped pedaling and coasted forward slowly. Sure enough. Cly turned around and saw me.

“Hey, Sam.” He waved the hoe. “Come see what I did.” He and Slim gazed at something in the dirt.

Mr. Wallace bent down with a stick and moved the earth around. When he stood up, he held a small object in his hand and shoved
it toward Cly. “Your bragging rights, son.”

Cly held up the tail end of a rattlesnake.

Mr. Wallace chuckled. “Bet you ain’t ever killed one of these in California, have you?”

“No, sir. ’Bout scared me into next week.” He held up the rattle for me to see. To Mr. Wallace he said, “Thanks, that was
wicked. And forget what I said earlier… about you being an old coot and gone off your rocker.”

“No problem.” Mr. Wallace took the hoe. “Reckon I do give that image, talking to Dottie the way I do.”

“Who’s Dottie?” I asked.

“My wife. Leastwise, she was once upon a time. Sure gets lonely without her. Me and her have some good talks out here in my
garden.” His neck colored a splotchy red. “Guess I’d better mosey on home. See you young’ens later.”

Cly told me the whole story—how Mr. Wallace made him kill the rattlesnake. He pointed to a spot on the ground where a pulpy,
bloody mess remained. A few bits of shiny flesh shone through. Gross, like fish guts.

“Musta been four or five feet long. Coiled up like a spring when I started toward him. I coulda been killed, you know.” He
held up the rattle and shook it. The papery chatter made us both laugh.

“Like crazy, man, that was pure wicked. Wait till I show Doobie. You know for an old guy, Slim’s pretty cool.”

*   *   *

That night I wrote Mama a letter telling her about Cly coming from California to visit his aunt and uncle, about shooting
baskets with Cly, and wasn’t it stupendous that he killed a rattlesnake. After I took my bath, I stood in front of the mirror
and gazed at myself. Skinny. Straight as a yardstick. I squinted and tried to imagine what I’d look like when I grew up, or
at least when I turned thirteen. My eyes played a trick on me. Right there on the front of my chest, a pair of tan lumps about
the size of two mosquito bites had raised up. I turned sideways to get a different angle, and sure enough, I had the beginning
of breasts. Jeepers. I hoped I wouldn’t need a training bra before Mama got home.

W
HILE WAITING FOR MAMA
to come home, I laughed and clapped for Tuwana and PJ as they showed off the splits and jumps they learned at cheerleading
school. Poise and technique weren’t all they picked up. Words like
indubitably
,
precisely
, and
consequently
rolled off their tongues as easy as the “Two bits, four bits, six bits, a dollar” that echoed through the streets of Graham
Camp.

On Father’s Day, I wrote a poem for Daddy about fishing at Gopher’s Pond and worms and lantern lights. Brother Henry gave
me the idea in his sermon that day. “We honor God by honoring our parents.” Daddy’s lips quivered when he read it out loud.
He Scotch-taped it to the Frigidaire and made us frog-in-the-hole eggs for supper.

The days flew by, hot and windy, blowing on toward July 7. When I wasn’t helping Goldie or reading
Gone with the Wind,
I practiced making brownies for the Fourth of July picnic and wrote my daily letter to Mama. The one thing I tried not to
do was spend too much time thinking about her shock treatments. Or what she would be like when she got home. Every night I
prayed for a miracle—that the Mama I knew before Sylvia died would somehow be the one who came home.

Two days before the Fourth, all the older kids went to the
community hall to clean up for the celebration. You know, sweeping, mowing the grass, setting up the tables.

By the time we finished and stepped outside, the air felt like it was five hundred degrees. All the boys had gone, so Tuwana
asked PJ and me to come over.

“I simply can’t wait until the picnic,” Tuwana said. “An entire day for fun. I’m hoping Cly will sit next to me.”

PJ gnawed on a fingernail. “You ask me, you need to get your mind off Cly. Mom says he’s nothing but T-R-O-U-B-L-E, same as
his uncle.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Tuwana stopped in the middle of the street.

“Norm’s got a temper. Mom says he’s always mouthing off down at the plant.”

I came to Tuwana’s defense. “Just because Norm’s that way doesn’t mean Cly is.”

“Yeah, well, think about this. Cly’s dad got arrested one time for assault and got out of going to jail on a technicality.
I think it’s bad blood, if you know what I mean, Jelly Bean.”

Tuwana’s eyes lit up, and I thought she might sock PJ and knock off her glasses. Instead she said, “You’re just jealous because
the only one who will look at you is Doobie.”

“Doobie’s not as bad as you think. Besides, I just speak the truth as I see it.” Her splotched face glistened with perspiration.
“I’m going home. This heat’s giving me a headache.” She squinched her eyes and wiggled her fingers at us. “Toodles.”

Tuwana and I trudged on toward her house in silence. To tell the truth, it was too hot to talk or even do much thinking.

Tuwana’s mother sat in the green glider, a tall iced drink in her hand when we walked up. She had on a crisp yellow dress
with cap sleeves and cheery pink lipstick.

“Hello, girls. Looks like you could use some lemonade.”

“Absolutely.” Tuwana frowned at her mother. “Why are you so dressed up?”

“Oh, you know. This heat’s had me in the most dreadful state lately. Cross and grumpy with your daddy.”

I knew that to be true as I’d heard them arguing a couple of evenings before when Tuwana and I sat in the very glider Mrs.
Johnson now occupied. Something about a blowout on their Studebaker and if Benny Ray had an ounce of ambition, he would go
into his father’s insurance business and not make his family suffer living in such a dreadful place as Graham Camp.

When I asked Tuwana what was wrong with Graham Camp, she told me her mother thought it was dull and boring and didn’t give
us any cultural opportunities. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’re fifty miles from anywhere decent to go shopping or even
to the picture show.”

Now Mrs. Johnson let out a tinkling little laugh. “I thought I’d show him I’m still the sweet thing he married. You know the
old saying: Timing is everything in dealing with a man.”

“Timing for what?” Tuwana wanted to know.

“A little birdie told me your daddy was getting a promotion, which certainly will include a raise. Just the thing I’ve been
waiting for, the chance to bring up the subject of new living room furniture. I’ve heard Danish provincial is the latest rage.”
She had a faraway look in her eyes.

“A little birdie or Mrs. Ford?”

Mrs. Johnson smiled and sipped her drink, leaving a pink smudge on the rim of the glass.

“Where is Daddy, anyway?”

“Gone to get new tires for the Studebaker. I’m making his favorite supper—grilled cheese on slabs of Texas toast—to show him
I’m not mad anymore.”

Tara and Tommie Sue sat in the elm shade on the sidewalk playing jacks, arguing over what came next.

“Eggs in the basket come next, not pigs in the pen,” Tommie Sue whined.

“It’s up to the one who’s ahead, which is me….” Tara’s eyes grew round. Then she screamed at the top of her lungs.

“Oh my gracious.” Mrs. Johnson’s face turned as pasty as a bottle of Elmer’s glue. “How dare he?”

I looked around to see what had caused Tara to scream.

Then I saw it. A car glided to a stop right in front of us. A shade lighter than the summer sky, with scooped-out sides from
the middle of the back door clear to the taillights in a dazzling darker blue. Shimmering. Metallic looking. The roof matched
the side slashes. Silver trim sparkled in the sun. But the most amazing thing was the driver—Benny Ray Johnson.

My heart pounded. Tuwana’s dad hadn’t gotten new tires for the Studebaker. He’d bought a whole new car. I couldn’t take my
eyes off it.

“Daddy!” the girls shrilled, and swarmed the driver’s side window. “Is it ours? Is it a Thunderbird? A Cadillac? Can we keep
it?”

Mr. Johnson smiled, big beaver teeth shining. He rested his arm on the door where the window had been rolled down, and his
muscular, hairy arm had a red heart tattoo with an arrow shooting through it.

“Yes, it’s ours.” His voice boomed. “Climb in. We’re going for a spin.” He waved in the direction of the house. “Sammie, Alice,
come on. There’s room for everyone. Bet I could fit half the block in here.”

I raced toward the car, waiting to see where Mrs. Johnson would sit. When I looked back, she stood planted on the lawn, arms
crossed. Her nostrils flared on a face that was now the color of strawberry jam.