Swan Place (24 page)

“Twenty?” Buzzard echoed. “Don’t look like no twenty to me.”

Crystal didn’t say anything else, so finally Buzzard added, “But twenty it is, if that’s what you say.”

“Thank you,” Crystal murmured.

“Well,” Buzzard added, “you all are welcome here. Don’t be in any hurry.”

“Thank you,” Crystal said again.

Buzzard got up from the table.

“Why don’t you pull you all’s car around in the back of the house,” Buzzard said. “I’ll get the rest of this soup put into the refrigerator, and then me and Dove here will help you get your stuff inside.” Crystal went out to do as Buzzard had said, and I finished washing and drying the dishes from our late-night supper. Buzzard put the leftover soup into the refrigerator and the remaining bread in the breadbox. While she put the dishes away, I wiped down the table, scooping bread crumbs into my hand so they wouldn’t wind up on the floor.

“Where’d you learn how to do things right?” Buzzard asked.

“From my mama,” I said. “And my Aunt Bett.”

“Well, they sure did a good job of teaching you,” Buzzard said. And that gladdened my heart more than I could say. “And you did a good job of learning,” she added.

When Buzzard and I
got to the back porch, Crystal had already unloaded much of our clothes and stuff. Buzzard and I got great armloads and took them upstairs, where for the first time I saw the room Buzzard had fixed up for me and Crystal. And what a beautiful room it was! Right on the other side of the room where Molly and Little Ellis were sleeping, and it all decorated in pink. Pink roses wallpaper and pink bedspreads on the twin beds. And a real dresser with an eyelet doily on it and a little stool for sitting on, and a tall bureau with deep drawers. And even a pink lamp on the mahogany table between the beds casting a pink glow over everything.

Buzzard led me to a big closet—so big that we could really walk right into it. Almost as big as Aunt Bett’s famous closet. We hung up the clothes Aunt Bett had worked so hard to get for us. The sight of those clothes hanging in such a big, beautiful closet made my eyes sting. Why, I’d bet anything in this world that the rich girls in my school had closets that looked like this one—and beautiful bedrooms, as well—but the sight of all those clothes Aunt Bett worked so hard to get still made my heart feel like it was broken right in two!

“You okay?” Buzzard asked, and I made a mental note right then and there:
Nothing gets by this one!

“I’m fine,” I said.

“Well, here’s the bathroom,” Buzzard said, not sounding very convinced that I was fine at all. “It opens into this room and to the room where the little ones are sleeping.” She reached inside the door and turned on the light. And then I knew why Crystal said something about the bathroom being so pretty when she came out with Molly and Little Ellis. Because it was the most beautiful bathroom I’d ever seen, with everything in pink and blue. Wallpaper with pink swans that had little blue bows around their necks and swimming along in little pale blue circles of water. And a big ivory-colored tub with a shower curtain just like the wallpaper. A big pink counter with two pink sinks in it, and maybe as many as ten or fifteen pale blue, fluffy towels all folded and perfectly stacked along the side. On the floor was a small fluffy pink rug.

“You like it?” Buzzard asked, smiling, and once again, I thought,
She never misses a thing!

“I sure do,” I answered.

“Well then, let’s go help Crystal. You all need to get some rest. I imagine she has to get up and go to work tomorrow.” And that’s what we did—Crystal, Buzzard, and I carried the last of our things upstairs.

“I’ll go down and lock up and let you all get some sleep now. But do call me if you need anything.”

“We will,” Crystal said, but I was thinking that if we needed anything, I bet Buzzard would figure that out all by herself. Crystal took a long, hot shower in that pretty bathroom, and I put my bottle of hand lotion onto that real dressing table. When we were ready for bed, we opened both bathroom doors so that we could hear if Molly or Little Ellis needed us during the night, got into our beds, and turned off the lamp. We fell asleep smelling the soft, sweet aroma of soap from the warm bathroom and the tiny glow of a night-light in there that stayed on all night long. So we were safe and sound.
God bless Aunt Mee
was the last thing I remembered of that day.

But right in what felt like
the middle of the night, I woke up with a start.

“My notebooks!” I whispered into the little glow of light coming from the bathroom. And I sat right up in bed. For one little minute, I didn’t even know where I was. Where was my bedside table behind the sheets? Oh—far away. And all my notebooks stacked in the closet and left behind. Gone. I leaned back into my pillow, but I felt as if my heart had been ripped right out! How could I have forgotten them? What would happen to them? And worst of all, would somebody maybe read them? I never even thought about our little house—did we rent it? Or did we own it? Because every month Roy-Ellis would make out a check and mail it. But was it for rent—or for a mortgage? If he was paying rent, who did he pay it to? Probably somebody rich enough to buy a house and not live in it. A man from one of those big white houses on the other side of town. Somebody like Michelle’s father. All that pain in my chest just flared and roared like a forest fire.

Somebody may read my stories! Maybe laugh at my mama’s liking to go honky-tonk dancing with Roy-Ellis!
Oh, there had never been such a hurt in my heart before. More even than when my mama died. I stayed awake for a long time, lying in that pretty bed in such a pretty room in a big, beautiful house and yet feeling as if something in me had died and would never be the same again in all eternity. Finally, I got up and went through the bathroom and into the room where Molly and Little Ellis were asleep in the same bed, and I slipped in beside them. They were warm and sweet, like sleeping puppies. Just breathing their perfume made me feel a little bit better. So finally, I fell asleep, but only after I figured out that keeping Molly with us and keeping our little family together was a lot more important than any story I could ever write.

“Yes,” came Crystal’s squeaky reply. Then, “Yes,” with a stronger sound.

Buzzard stood there for a few minutes, frowning and staring at the door.

“Well, you get dressed and come on downstairs. I’ll fix you some weak tea. Do you just fine.” It was a final-sounding command, and Buzzard had already gone back downstairs when I heard Crystal moan, “Oh, Lord have mercy!” But I didn’t know what she meant by that. I heard the toilet flush and then water running in the sink. And Crystal came out, pressing a blue washcloth to her paper-white face.

“Dove!” I heard Molly call, and I rushed into the other room to get them both into the bathroom, my face burning as I wondered if Little Ellis had wet the bed and how on earth would I be able to tell Buzzard about that! But—thank goodness!—they were both still dry, but in a big hurry to get into the bathroom. Afterward, I took them back to their bed.

“Sit right there,” I commanded, and they did, of course.

“You okay, Crystal?” I called.

“I’ll make it, Dove,” she called back. “Just don’t know what on earth made me so sick.” Then she added, “Listen, you do all you can to make things easy for Buzzard today, and I’m leaving some money here on the table, in case you all go to a grocery store. I don’t mean for Buzzard to bear the burden of feeding us. You hear?”

“Yeah, Crystal. I hear.” I got Molly and Little Ellis dressed. Their clothes were clean, of course, but pretty wrinkled. Still, it was the best I could do, for now. So we went down that curving staircase—right into a new morning and to Buzzard.

When we got to the kitchen,
Crystal was ready to leave for work, but she still looked pretty pale. Buzzard held out a paper bag to Crystal. “This is some lunch I fixed you. But I didn’t know you were feeling poorly, so maybe you won’t want to eat that apple today. Save it for tomorrow.” At the mention of food, Crystal looked a little paler, but she took the bag anyway.

“Thanks, Buzzard.” Crystal glanced over at me and Molly and Little Ellis. “Now Dove here knows how to do almost anything needs doing, so you put her to work. And she’ll keep Molly and Little Ellis out from under your feet.”

“Won’t be any trouble, Crystal,” Buzzard assured her. “Matter of fact, I’m kind of glad to have me a little company, to tell you the truth. Gets awful lonely out here in the middle of nowhere. Well, you go on now and get yourself to work.” Crystal hesitated for a moment, still looking at me, and I could hear the words she didn’t say:
Don’t let the children cause any trouble. Don’t do anything to make Buzzard change her mind about letting us stay a little while.

I nodded.

After we watched Crystal drive away, Buzzard herded Molly and Little Ellis toward the table.

“I didn’t know what you all like for breakfast, so I made some biscuits and sausage. That sound okay?”

“It sounds wonderful,” I said. So we all had breakfast together, with me and Molly and Little Ellis eating those wonderful, light biscuits with country sausage in them and drinking milk. Buzzard sat watching us and sipping from a thick, white mug of coffee.

“Well, you all sure do have good appetites,” she observed.

“Oh—I meant to tell you,” I said. “Crystal left me some money so I can help out with the groceries. We don’t mean for you to have to feed us.”

“Now where on earth did
that
come from?” Buzzard asked, frowning at me. I felt my face go all hot. Why, Crystal had been gone only a few minutes, and already maybe I’d said something to make Buzzard not want us anymore!

“I just meant that we don’t want to make things hard on you,” I sputtered.

“Oh, honey,” Buzzard almost crooned. “I know what you mean. But it’s more you all’s own pride than not wanting things to be hard on me.” With that pronouncement, she got up from the table, leaving me thinking about what she said. And maybe she was right. We certainly were a prideful bunch, dirt-poor though we were. I thought of Aunt Bett and all her pickles she traded for clothes. Yes, that was pride.

“Well, would you all like a tour of the house and the garden?” Buzzard asked. “Just leave the dishes for now. We’ll take care of them later.”

“Can I ask you a question?” I ventured.

“Well, sure you can,” Buzzard said.

“The lady who owns this house. Where has she gone off to?”

“Well,” Buzzard sat back down at the table. “Miz Swan goes to France a lot. She grew up there, and she has another house just outside of Paris.”