Every Day After (8 page)

He did good at the funeral, standing straight and tall, shaking everybody’s hand and thanking them for coming. I was standing there with him, both of us watching Mama comfort Mrs. Butler, when I spotted a thin, shadowy figure standing alone at the very back of the dark room. I pointed the figure out to Ben. Ben didn’t blink an eye. He walked right up to the man and put out his hand. “Thank you for coming, Mr. Reed.” Mr. Reed reached out and took Ben’s hand. He nodded once. Then he was gone
.

I about fainted clean away. I’d hardly ever seen Mr. Reed in town, much less at anybody’s funeral. But there he was. And there he’d gone
.

Ben stayed home for a few days after the funeral, and I went straight to his house each day after school. I’d stay with him till long after suppertime. Mama didn’t seem to mind, but Daddy did
.

“Lizzie Hawkins,” he said. “Don’t you have a spelling bee coming up the first week of March?”

“Yes, sir. The first Friday.”

“Well, then, you’d best get to studying. I’m telling you, you’re gonna be something one day—something better than all of us. You understand? God don’t waste miracles, and you’re a miracle. He meant you for something great, otherwise why were you born at all? And let me tell you, young lady, that path to greatness starts at school. I want top grades, and I don’t expect anything less. Neither does He.”

“Yes, sir. I can do it.”

And I could’ve, but I didn’t. I couldn’t stand the thought of Ben being without me. When the spelling bee rolled around, I placed fourth out of twelve kids. Mama clapped and smiled but Daddy looked at me like I’d just crushed his heart to smithereens. I struggled to hold back the tears. Tears would only make him madder
.

“I thought you were listening when I told you I expected first place. You’ve got God-given brains, Elizabeth, and you’re gonna use ’em.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I know what happened. You were too busy playing around with Ben Butler to study, and I’m not having that again. You’re forbidden to go over to Ben’s or to have him over here for two weeks, and I don’t want to hear any lip about it either.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now you go to your room and consider what you’ve done. Mama will call you when it’s time for supper.”

When Mama came in a little over an hour later, she tried her best to smooth things over. “Don’t fret about it, honey. Daddy’s just got a lot on his mind right now, that’s all. He wants you to do your best so maybe someday you won’t have to struggle through things the way we are now. Understand? He’s only hard on you because he loves you.”

I leaned into Mama. She wrapped her arms around me and my tears flowed freely
.

“You’ve been good to Ben, Lizzie, and I know Daddy might not agree, but I think that’s more important than any spelling bee. There’ll be other bees, and I’m sure you’ll do better next time. Remember, failure is not falling down, but refusing to get up. You’ll get back up. You were born to. That’s something your father and I do agree on.”

I squeezed Mama tight before I let her go. A tear spot marred the front of her dress. She took her handkerchief and dabbed it. “I know you wouldn’t want Daddy to see. Now, get washed up and come to supper. You’ll feel better after you eat.”

After Mama left, I made a secret promise to myself. I
would
get back up, just like she said, but never ever again would I let myself fall
.

So what am I supposed to do now? Do I fall on purpose to make Ben and Erin happy? Or do I keep fighting to be the best I can be, no matter who it hurts?

 
Eight
 

If Not for Hope, the Heart Would Break

I realized real quick that Saturdays weren’t gonna be worth a drop in the bucket without Ben around. Watching Mama rocking back and forth was taking its toll. I wanted to help her, but I didn’t know how. I had to get out of the house, but I refused to leave till late afternoon. Everybody in Bittersweet, me included, knew Dr. Heimler’s rounds ran like clockwork on Saturdays. He started at nine in the morning and was done by four. But if Mrs. Sawyer had believed Erin, and she probably had, he’d be stopping by sooner rather than later. I didn’t want to chance him showing up with me gone.

The best thing to do in the meantime was to get to the massive pile of dirty clothes. As long as I could remember, Monday had been wash day, but now that I was in charge of the washing, it had to be Saturday or Sunday because of school. And today was just as good as tomorrow.

First thing was to set the water in the big iron pot
behind the house to boiling. It had filled with rainwater, so I started a fire under it and shaved in most of my last cake of lye soap. By the time I’d hauled out the rubboard, three tin tubs (one for the soapy water, the other two for rinsing), and stripped the sheets from our beds, steam was beginning to curl from the pot.

I got busy separating the clothes and linens into not-so-dirty and way-too-dirty piles—the dirtiest would be the last to get scrubbed. They always turned the water murky. I was lucky. The way-too-dirty pile had just one article in it: the dress I’d been wearing when Erin pushed me into the mud. Even after all the fishing I’d done, my overalls went into the not-so-dirty pile. And, of course, anything Mama had worn didn’t have a speck of dirt on it.

With the rest of my lye in hand, I soaped and scrubbed each article, rubbing the stained parts hard over the rubboard. The tops of my arms shook like jelly with each pass up and down the board, but I liked it. When you’re concentrating on scrubbing the stain out of a dress, you don’t have room to be thinking about anything else. You just keep saying to yourself:
Rub. Scrub. Stain going. Rub. Scrub. Stain gone
.

Once the stains were gone (or mostly gone, in the case of my school dress), I tossed all the whites, like sheets and underthings, into the boil pot. While the whites were boiling, I rinsed out the colored things in the tubs holding clean water and wrung them out. Then, with a big wooden scooper, I fished out the whites from their boiling
bath. The rinse water wasn’t so clear by the time I got through with it. It got dumped.

I hung all the wash out on the clothesline to dry and doused the fire under the big iron pot. Once the water had cooled to warm, I made good use of it by hauling buckets of it to the front porch and scrubbing down the wood.

I stood back and admired my handiwork. Clean sheets billowed in the breeze and the porch was free of unsightly mud marks. I figured I’d pretty well earned my late-afternoon break. And I knew just where I’d take it: Hinkle’s General Store. One thing I could be sure of when it came to Hinkle’s is that they would never, ever be out of Goo Goo Clusters. Eating one would cost me something, but smelling them was free. Besides, now that I’d used my last cake of lye, I needed to head down there and make a trade anyway.

I moved Mama inside to her chair in case Dr. Heimler decided to drop by this late. I fixed her a piece of dry toast and a cup of coffee, then went into the garden to gather some fresh broccoli, onions, and peas to bring to Hinkle’s. I’d been raised to keep my hands off the emergency savings jar Mama and Daddy had always kept behind the plates in the kitchen cabinet, except in a true emergency. I didn’t think I had a true emergency yet. I’d been feeding me and Mama just fine by fixing vegetables from our garden and catching fish from the pond. I traded any extras for other things I needed from Hinkle’s.

I could hear Ziggy in a barking ruckus all the way from the town welcome sign. The sign read: WELCOME TO
BITTERSWEET, A GREAT PLACE TO GROW. FOUNDED 1843. Bittersweet residents prided themselves on keeping the sign in like-new condition. The red, green, and yellow paint looked freshly painted. Though why our town was called Bittersweet, I’d never understood. Wasn’t any around.

I rubbed the sign as I passed. It looked smooth as silk from afar, but it was rough as a corncob to the touch. A splinter stuck into my finger. By the time I worked it out, I was rounding the bend onto Main Street. Ziggy was still in an uproar. I squinted up at Mr. Reed’s, trying to catch a glimpse of Ben hard at work.

Not even going without Goo Goo Clusters could top the horridness of working for Mr. Reed. Three and a half dollars a week was good wages, but that didn’t seem a fair amount when Mr. Reed was involved. He would’ve had to come up with seven or eight dollars before I’d go rambling around all the sun-baked squirrel tails and coon furs hanging off his house. Heck, just making it to the front door was worth at least a dollar. The only clean spot on the place was Ziggy’s pen.

Mr. Reed took better care of that dog than most people take of their own children. I’d only been inside Mr. Reed’s a few times, each time being with Daddy in the fall when he delivered a load of sorghum cane to Mr. Reed for milling. Walking into Mr. Reed’s house was like walking into a cave. Dark and cold and dreary. Mr. Reed’s meetings with Daddy were always short, but it was enough time for me to notice Ziggy’s shiny silver bowl on the dirty kitchen
floor and Mr. Reed’s chipped ceramic one on the crumb-covered table. Mr. Reed had always been a few loops shy of a knot, but to me, this slapped a “crazy” stamp right between his eyes.

Though I knew Ben was somewhere among the mess, I couldn’t spot him. And I wasn’t about to go up there and track him down. Besides, he was probably still mad at me, and I’d promised myself I’d never again be around Ben when he was mad. It made me have a funny feeling, like I was suffocating on air. I headed on into Hinkle’s.

The bell above the door clanged as I entered. Brightly colored cans and boxes filled every spare space in the store, and tempting scents filled the air: freshly ground coffee beans, sweet peppermint, and vanilla. Mrs. Hinkle peered out from the back. “Lizzie Hawkins!” her shrill voice greeted me. “Wipe your feet before you come across this floor. I just swept it clean.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I wiped my feet, careful to remove every last speck of dirt. If I didn’t, Mrs. Hinkle would have me sweep over the whole thing again, and I was sick of cleaning today.

She continued to eye me as I made my way over to the counter, her body not much taller, but far wider, than the broom handle she was grasping. Mrs. Hinkle has always been stern and scary; her black hair was slicked back into as tight a bun as possible, pulling the skin on her face too tight. I’d mentioned once to Daddy that I didn’t like her. Daddy only nodded. He didn’t like her either.

“Don’t let her get to you, Miss Lizzie. The missus is just flustered because I’m making her take a trip with me into Birmingham. We’re heading to the mission to help serve.” Mr. Hinkle leaned forward on the counter, ducking out of his wife’s view. His eyes twinkled. “She didn’t take too kindly to that.”

I giggled. Now, Mr. Hinkle I’d always liked. He was the closest I’d ever come to meeting Santa Claus—well, a skinny Santa. His cheeks were overly red and his eyes crinkled up at the corners like he was planning some way to break the rules—one of Mrs. Hinkle’s rules.

I handed the vegetables to Mr. Hinkle. He looked through the sack and nodded. “Why, those are some of the prettiest heads of broccoli I ever did see. I do believe your mama is the best gardener in Bittersweet. Sure wish I was.” He placed his hand over his heart and sighed. “Sadly, it wasn’t meant to be.”

“Mr. Hinkle, you’re silly.” Mr. Hinkle would never guess, but it wasn’t Mama’s skill that’d kept the garden going over the past month. It was mine.

“Don’t I know it?” he said. “Now, back to business. I believe these are worth about seventy-five cents. Fair enough?”

“Yes, sir. I’ll just take a trade this time.” I handed him a list of the things I needed: more lye soap, some cornmeal, one pound of coffee for Mama, and one cake of Lifebuoy soap for bathing.