Singing Hands (15 page)

Dear Miss Grace:

Enclosed you will find a letter that belongs to you. The story of how this letter came into my possession is a bit too complicated to explain. Please accept my formal apology for not
returning your property sooner. You may be assured that such an incident will never happen again.

Your friend,
Gussie Davis

Dear Miss Grace,

With deep regret, I am returning an item that I came across in your closet several weeks ago. My intention was only to borrow a pair of shoes for a silly prank. Somehow I ended up with this letter instead. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me for this rude invasion of your privacy.

With kindest regards,
Augusta Davis

There were at least a dozen more versions, most of which I immediately tore into tiny pieces. Certainly, a written confession was not what Mrs. Fernley had in mind when she assigned me the word "integrity." But as hard as I tried, I couldn't envision myself marching across the hall and telling Miss Grace face-to-face what a vile and devious thing I had done. She would never understand. She would never think of me the same way again. So, for lack of a better plan, I kept typing and ripping until my father's trash can was overflowing with rejected confessions.

I was almost to the bottom of his stack of typing paper on Tuesday morning when Margaret poked her head into the office. "Gussie?" she called over the clacking of the typewriter keys. "Aren't you going to come see us off? We're getting ready to leave."

"I'll wave from here," I told her, barely glancing up from my latest draft. "Tell Nell to look up at the tower before you go."

Margaret rolled her eyes. "You're impossible," she muttered, turning away in exasperation.

"Have a good time without me," I shouted after her. She was already tromping down the steps.

I went back to typing, hoping the clacking of the keys would drown out the miserable little voice in my head that kept crying, "It's not fair! It's not fair!"

But it was no use. I knew I owed Nell a proper goodbye. While Margaret had happily set about her trip preparations as if nothing was out of the ordinary, I could tell that Nell was genuinely sorry I wasn't going with them.

"Who am I gonna ride bikes to the creek with?" she had asked when we were in bed at night. "And what about our breath-holding contests at the swimming pool? Margaret won't do it. She says it'll make her blood vessels burst."

I pushed myself out of the swivel chair and hurried over to the row of rounded windows. Far below, Mr. Hendrickson from church was heaving my sisters' suitcases into the back of his car. He had offered to give them a ride to the train station, since Daddy wouldn't be home till later. Mother was coming down the steps of the front porch with Margaret and Nell, still giving instructions. Even from two stories up, I could read most of her urgent signs. "Wear your gloves. Don't talk to strangers on the train. Don't forget to tell Aunt Glo..."

Then, suddenly, Nell was turning and squinting up at the windows where I stood. She shielded her eyes from the bright sun with one hand. It was obvious she couldn't see me through the glare against the glass. Rapunzel—that was who I was. Rapunzel trapped in the tower.

The windows were open only three or four inches. I yanked on the bottom of the closest one, trying to raise the heavy sash through years of chipped paint and grime. But it wouldn't budge, and Mr. Hendrickson had started his engine. Nell was turning away.

My heart was thumping as I banged on the windowpane to get her attention and bent down awkwardly to press my face against the narrow strip of open screen. I yelled as loud as I could. "Bye, Nell!" I cried. "Goodbye!"

She heard me then, and her face brightened as she whipped around to squint up at the windows again. She waved frantically. "Bye, Gus!" she cried back. "I'll miss you!" She couldn't see me waving just as hard, but it didn't matter. At least I had told her goodbye.

That evening Mother and I ate together at the kitchen table. Canned tomato soup with saltine crackers. We were both quiet through dinner, so quiet that the chiming of the clock in the hall, and even the clinking of our spoons against the bowls seemed to echo through the lonely house. I stole glances at Mother's face, searching to see whether she was still angry about what I had done at the Advent. She had barely mentioned it to me, content to let Daddy handle the matter entirely. More than anything else, she seemed perplexed by my behavior lately, almost afraid to meet my eye, as if she knew she might discover that the old happy-go-lucky Gussie was gone for good.

After dinner, I washed our bowls and spoons, then wandered into the dining room to see what Mother was doing. She was putting together church bulletins at the long table. Even assembling bulletins was better than going upstairs to face the typewriter again, so I sat down to help her fold and staple. I was glad to see a trace of a smile flicker across her face.

For a while we worked in silence. Then Mother sat back in her chair and reached up to rub a sore muscle in her neck. "Have you packed for Talladega?" she asked out loud. "Daddy wants to leave right after lunch tomorrow."

I sighed and shook my head. "Not yet. I will."

I stopped folding and signed, "Have you ever had to do something that you knew was for your own good ... but more than anything, you didn't want to do it?"

"Sure," Mother said, her hands and face coming alive. "But sometimes those things that you dread turn out better than you ever expected. Sometimes they turn out to be just fine." For emphasis, she made the sign for "fine" again, touching the tip of her thumb to the center of her chest with her fingers outstretched.

"Huh," I grunted. I could tell Mother thought I was asking her advice about my trip to ASD with Daddy. Still, I tried to apply her wisdom to the sense of doom I felt whenever I imagined making my confession to Miss Grace.

"Huh," I said again. There was no possible way that owning up to stealing somebody's love letter could turn out to be "just fine."

"But what if," I started again, "what if deep in your heart you just have a bad feeling about that thing you don't want to do? What if you
know
there's no way it can turn out for the best, even though grownups are telling you different?"

"Well, sometimes you don't have a choice. Sometimes you just have to go through with it and wait to be surprised." She thought for a second, and then her mouth stretched into an odd little smile. "Did I ever tell you what my mother and father did to try to make me hear again?"

"No," I said with an incredulous laugh. Mother hardly ever told me stories about her childhood.

She raised her chin as she signed, her eyes focusing on some far-off place. "I was about your age, maybe twelve or thirteen. Father had read a story in a newspaper about a little deaf boy who went up in an airplane. There was a storm and the plane dropped in the sky—a long way—before the pilot was able to bring it up again."

Mother made an airplane shape with her hand and with a whoosh of breath, quickly dropped it down toward her lap. "Altitude," she spelled out with her fingers.

I nodded, and she went on.

"My father couldn't get over it. The newspaper said that when the plane landed, the little boy could hear. The next thing I knew, my father had hired his own pilot."

I let out a gasp. "He wanted
you
to go up in a plane?"

"That's right. The pilot was based in New Orleans, so we took a train there. My mother and father and me. Then we took a taxicab to the airfield." Her face grew serious.

"You didn't want to go?"

"Oh," she sighed with the corners of her mouth tugging down. "I was terrified. I had never been in an airplane. Few people had in those days. All I could think of was that newspaper story of the storm and the plane dropping out of the sky. All the way to New Orleans, I cried and begged not to go."

"And they still made you?"

She nodded. "My father was determined."

"What happened?"

"We went up. The pilot dropped altitude." Mother clapped her hands to the sides of her head. "My ears!
Oh,
how they hurt! Then the plane came down."

"And?" I asked breathlessly.

She gave a little shrug. "And ... I was still deaf."

I opened my eyes wide and snorted. "I thought this was supposed to be a story about something that turned out just fine."

"It did turn out fine," Mother said, her voice rising. "Wonderful."

"But how? You were still deaf."

Mother shook her head as if she pitied me for not understanding. "You know Miss Grace's parents?"

I nodded, squirming a little at the mention of her name.

"My father was like them in a way. Until that plane ride, he couldn't believe that his daughter would never hear. He just wanted to cure me. To make me better."

"And after the plane ride?" I asked.

"After," Mother said, "my father accepted me for what I was." She tapped her fingertips to her ears triumphantly. "Deaf!"

Miss Grace was exactly where I expected to find her at noon the next day—in the park outside the library. She was eating her lunch and reading a newspaper on the bench under the poplar. When I sat down beside her, she looked so happy to see me, I wanted to cry.

"What a nice surprise!" she signed, then pointed to the sandwich wrapped in cellophane in her lap. "I just walked over to the Tutwiler to get this. Would you like half? Or I could get you another tamale...."

"No, thanks," I signed back. "I'm afraid I don't have much time."

That was an understatement. At that very minute, Mother was probably packing Daddy's bag for Talladega, and my father was attending to last-minute details in his office. He still wanted to leave for ASD right after lunch.

Miss Grace touched my knee. "Is anything wrong?" she asked.

I closed my eyes, trying to summon up a sudden burst of nerve.
Go on,
I told myself.
It's just like Mother's story. Like Mother going up in that airplane.

"I have to tell you something," I signed.

Her blue eyes clouded over with concern as she watched my hands hang in the air for a few seconds too long. My fingers felt fluttery, like leaves quivering in the wind.

"I took something of yours." I reached into my pocketbook and pulled out the letter. "I took this."

At the sight of the blue paper, Miss Grace jerked as if she had been jabbed by a pin. She took the letter and unfolded it. Her eyes darted across the page, then up at me. "Where did you get this?" she whispered.

"From your closet. Mother has a copy of your key, and I used it to let myself into your room a few weeks ago."

I swallowed hard, blinking back a hot wave of tears. "It was so stupid of me," I rushed on. "I was just looking for a pair of shoes to play a silly trick on Margaret. Then I came across the letters. I only read that one...."

The rest was a jumble. As I rambled on about how wrong I had been and how sorry I was, I kept Mother in my mind, losing altitude, falling through the sky, waiting for the worst.

Once she landed, Mother had said, everything was fine. But already I could tell my landing wouldn't be nearly so Smooth. When I finally finished explaining and let my hands fall to my lap, Miss Grace didn't pat me on the arm or say it was okay. She wouldn't even look at me.

"I need to get back to work," she signed stiffly. Then, with her pale skin flushing and her lips pressed into a pinched line, she refolded the letter and stood up to go. She was already hurrying away by the time I noticed she had left her sandwich and the
Birmingham News
on the bench beside me.

A boldfaced headline on the front page of the newspaper snagged my attention, "
KIDNAPPER COLLARED IN CAROLINA.
" They had finally caught him. Hiding in a tenement house in Charleston. Gloomily I studied the grainy photo of Birthmark Baines looking out the back window of a police car.

"This never would have happened in the first place if it wasn't for you," I whispered back at his sullen stare. "I'm glad you're going to jail." Then I crumpled the front page into a messy wad.

I knew I should be heading straight home to meet Daddy, but I stayed in the park for a while longer, throwing bits of Miss Grace's sandwich to the pigeons at my feet. That morning I had gone into Margaret's room to look up the definition of "integrity" in her Webster's—just to make sure I wasn't going to all this trouble for Mrs. Fernley for nothing.

"Uprightness of character and soundness of moral principle," the dictionary said. "An undivided, unbroken state; completeness."

The dictionary was right about the completeness part. So far, integrity felt completely awful.

I was surprised when Daddy didn't turn the Packard toward Highway 78 as we started out for Talladega. Instead, he was heading down to the south side of town.

"Where are we going?" I signed as we pulled up to a stoplight.

"To get Abe," Daddy said.

"What?" I cried. "What do you mean?"

But we were moving again, and I had to wait until the next red light for Daddy to answer. "It's good news," he finally explained. "Mrs. Johnson has decided to let Abe enroll in ASD. We're giving him a ride there, and we'll help him get settled."

"But—" I bit my lip and turned away to glower at the shabby row houses lining the corner. Could things get any worse? Miss Grace hated me, and now
this.
But I knew better than to argue. Daddy needed to watch the road. And how typical of my father that this one and only trip with me was actually a mission to help somebody else.

They were in the parking lot at the back of Saint Simon's when we arrived—Abe's mother with her same red handkerchief knotted in her hand, and Abe with a wide grin on his face, waving furiously. Although it was another hot day, Mrs. Johnson had dressed her son in stiff new trousers and a long-sleeved plaid shirt buttoned to his neck. His wiry hair was slicked down, glistening with hair tonic, and a worn canvas duffel bag sat at his feet.