The Language of Sycamores (19 page)

All week long, we followed that same routine. Dell arrived at daybreak, we ate huckleberries, we talked about the day, tried on makeup, had breakfast with Kate and Ben, then headed off to Jumpkids camp.

By the following Monday, we had our routine down pat. There was a lot to talk about that day. It was to be the first partial onstage rehearsal of the Jumpkids production. The set, complete with movable clouds, ten-foot trees, and gigantic boulders, was almost finished. The dancers had learned the steps, the singers knew the songs, the actors knew their lines, and the percussion orchestra didn’t sound too bad when they played along with the sound track.

All in all, it was an impressive feat, and the kids were excited about the idea of practicing onstage. Dell was set to play Nala, the female lead. The part included one solo and one duet with Edwardo, the Lion King cub. Dell would also play several songs on the piano before the first act, while the audience was being seated.

She and I had been at the church off and on all weekend practicing the piano numbers, but on Monday morning the pressure was getting to her. She came in the door with no huckleberries, complaining that she was probably getting sick.

I didn’t hear her at first. My mind was on the fact that I was supposed to go by Dr. Schmidt’s office that afternoon for my biopsy—just
a minor in-office procedure in which he would take a few small tissue samples to send to the lab in Springfield. Painless. Quick. Terrifying. Secret from everyone. I didn’t want to think about that. I wanted to focus instead on the Jumpkids production and Dell.

“You are not getting sick.” I patted the bed beside me, and Dell flopped down with drama worthy of an actress. “You’re just nervous. Don’t worry. You’ll be fine. You know all of it by heart.”

She huffed, falling back against the pillows, her dark hair tumbling around her. “I stink at it.”

“You do not stink at it.” Lying next to her, I tried not to smile.

“Sherita says I stink at it.”

“What does Sherita know? And besides, last I heard, she wasn’t supposed to be talking.” Sherita had been sulking around all week, still determined to do nothing. Now that James wasn’t there to pitch during baseball, she didn’t even want to participate in that.

Dell rubbed her eyes, red and swollen. She looked like she’d been crying or hadn’t slept much. “She said I stunk at it, and Tina made Sherita get up and do my part. She knew it all perfect, even the dance at the waterfall, and she was better at it than me. Tina said she could be my understudy, and Sherita said she didn’t want to. I hate her. She’s so mean all the time, and she makes fun of me, and then I forget what I’m supposed to do.”

“Just ignore her.” I turned onto my side and smoothed the hair from her face with one finger. “Try to cut Sherita some slack, O.K.? She and her brother and sister are going through a really hard time right now.” It seemed strange to be telling Dell that someone else had it even worse than she did. “She’s not mad at you. She’s mad at the world.”

“That’s what Keiler said.” Her eyes drifted closed and she yawned.

“Well, Keiler’s pretty smart.”

“Grandma Rose said it, too.” She burrowed deeper into the pillow. “She talked to me last night.”

“You mean you dreamed about her?” Goose bumps prickled over my skin.

“She was telling me about Sadie Walker.” Her words stretched out lazily, with spaces between, as she drifted into sleep. It was still early, so
I didn’t try to wake her up. It was nice talking to her when she was unguarded like this.

“Who’s Sadie Walker?”

“You know—Sadie.”

“Oh, Sadie.” I wondered how she knew the last name. That was the only piece of information Jenilee had been able to come up with when she talked to my grandmother’s cousin. The last anyone had heard, Sadie had married and changed her last name to Walker, but that was fifty years ago. “What did she say about Sadie?”

Sighing, Dell smacked her lips, tasting the edges of a dream. “That Sadie liked to sing and dance, like me.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling a connection with my grandmother’s long-lost sister. The music that was in her was also in me, a shared inheritance of sorts.

“Do you think Sadie Walker was—” Dell sighed, a long, slow, exhausted sound. I wondered again why she was so tired this morning. The dim light showed deep, hollow circles under her eyes. “Somebody famous?” She blinked her heavy lashes to look at me, and quickly they pulled closed again.

“I don’t know.” My mind wasn’t on Sadie Walker. My mind was on the little girl lying on top of my covers, exhausted on what should have been a very exciting day for her. “Dell, is everything all right at home?”

“Um-hmm.” She let an arm fall across her eyes, as if to block out my questions.

“You seem really tired.”

“Granny had a bad night. I had to . . . help her with her medicine and her . . . oxygen tank.”

I sat up, frustrated, wanting to wake her up and demand answers, but I knew I should let her sleep for an hour or so until it was time to go. “Where was your uncle Bobby?” As if I even needed to ask. Probably drunk and passed out on the sofa.

“He’s gone.” That, at least, was good news. Rolling away from me, she hugged the pillow, trying to end the conversation.

“Where did he go?”

“Ohhh-kla-homa,” she sighed, her words garbled and little more
than a whisper, like the speech of a sleepwalker. “He wanted to take me . . . Graaah-ny said no, ’cuz she needs me . . . heee-er. They had . . . a big . . . fight.”

A note of panic went through me at the idea of her going anywhere with Uncle Bobby. “You wouldn’t go anywhere without telling me or Kate first, right?” I pictured them forcing her into a truck like kidnappers, not giving her a choice. The uneasy feeling I had been trying to put to rest all week came speeding back like a freight train.

“Huh . . . uh.”

“Is your granny all right? Do you need help at home?”

“Huh . . . uh.” She smacked her lips, unaware of the roller coaster of emotions I was riding. “She’s sleepin’.”

“All right,” I said, pulling up the quilt to cover her. “You get some sleep, now. I’ll wake you up when it’s time to go.” I laid a hand on the quilt where it rested over her slim shoulder. “Dell, if you ever need anything, you know you can tell me or Kate.”

She didn’t answer, and I sat there hugging my knees while she slept. I tried to imagine what the night had been like in that tumbledown house on Mulberry Creek, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t imagine what the real truth was, and she wasn’t going to tell me.

Outside, the farmhouse door slapped. Probably Ben leaving for a big meeting in St. Louis—something about bidding on a contract for the structural steel design on a big, new industrial complex. The project would keep him away for the rest of the week, so it would be just Kate and me and the kids at the farm for a few days. Suddenly, I wished he wasn’t going. I felt uneasy and insecure. I wished James were back, just in case Uncle Bobby decided to come around looking for Dell.

Disturbed by the images in my head, I got up and went to the bathroom, showered, slipped on jeans and a T-shirt, then stood staring into the foggy mirror, thinking that I looked like my mother—dark eyes, dark hair, same slightly narrow lips that made my face look serious, responsible. My mother would never have sneaked off for a biopsy without telling anyone. . . .

Combing my hair back impatiently, I fished through my makeup bag for a clip, fastening it at the nape of my neck. Staring at myself in
the mirror, I yanked the clip out and let my hair fall damp around my shoulders. Nothing seemed quite right. The clear spot in the mirror grew smaller, and I reached for the door handle, pulling it open to let cool air into the room. Dell was waiting on the other side, sitting on the edge of the bed with her hands folded between her knees. She came into the bathroom and took her spot on the edge of the tub, but this time she wasn’t interested in trying on makeup. “When’s James coming back?”

I wondered if she had read my thoughts, if she knew that I was feeling worried and lonesome and guilty. “The end of the week. Friday, it looks like.” That seemed too far away. I wanted him to be here, strong and steadfast. I wanted him to analyze the queasy whirlpool of fear in my stomach and tell me there was no reason for it. If I told him about the biopsy, would he be that rational?

Beside me, Dell picked at her fingernails, looking worried. “He said he was gonna be back tomorrow.”

I was surprised she remembered that. It was the reason I’d originally told Dr. Schmidt I’d come in on Monday—to get the procedure over with before James came back. Then it would only be a matter of waiting a few days for the lab results. “I know, but he had to take some trips from another pilot who was sick, so that changed his schedule this week. So far, he hasn’t even been able to get back to Boston to check on the loft. He said to tell you that no matter what, he’ll be here Friday for dress rehearsal night, and if he isn’t able to bring the guitar for you, he’ll mail it as soon as he gets back home.”

“ ’K.” She seemed disappointed. I couldn’t tell if it was about the guitar or about James not coming yet.

“Let’s go in and have some breakfast with Kate,” I suggested, trying to lighten the mood. “It’s just us girls this morning.”

“And Joshua,” she reminded me as we left the bathroom.

“And Joshua.” I chuckled. We walked out, and Dell trotted ahead to the farmhouse. I took my time, strolling the long way through Grandma’s flower beds, enjoying the menagerie of blooming iris and early roses. Grandma would have been pleased with Kate’s upkeep of the flower beds.

I thought about Dell’s claim that Grandma Rose had mentioned Sadie Walker in a dream.
Do you think Sadie Walker was somebody famous?
Why would Dell ask that? What in the world would give her that idea?

What if Sadie
was
famous?

An idea lit in my mind, and I hurried to the house, calling out to Kate as I rushed in the door. “Kate, do you have Internet service out here yet?”

Kate frowned apologetically as she set cereal and milk on the table. “Well . . . yes and no. It’s a really slow, sort of . . . Stone Age Internet service, but Ben keeps his old computer up in the pink bedroom. If he has anything serious to do, though, he logs on at the church office or at his office in Springfield.”

“That’s all right.” Grabbing an English muffin, I headed for the stairs. “This won’t take a high-powered computer.”

Chapter 19

I
sat down at Ben’s computer and clicked the icon to log on, drumming my fingers impatiently on Joshua’s Barney stickers beside the keyboard. When the computer finally made a connection, I punched up a search engine, typed in
Sadie Walker singer,
then waited, holding my breath for what seemed like forever.

The page timed out and then the computer promptly logged off the Internet with a cheerful “Good-bye.”

“Darn,” I grumbled, glancing at my watch. Time to go. Logging on again, I reentered Sadie’s name into the search page, then sat there while the computer was hung up, a tiny electric hourglass flowing endlessly in the center of the screen. Finally, I gave up and hurried down the stairs.

“I left the computer searching for something,” I said, as I whizzed through the kitchen, gathering Dell and a cup of coffee. “It probably won’t find a match. I think it’s hung up. Remind me later—I might be able to adjust the software to help that problem.”

“That would be great.” Kate stopped to hand Rose her sippy cup. “Sometimes it sits like that for five minutes, then either logs off or goes on just fine. Ben said it could be software, but hasn’t had time to tinker. I’ll check later and see if anything came up.”

Rose waved her arms and said, “Mmm-mmm-mmm,” then smiled
at me with oatmeal running down her chin. “Ba-ba, ba-ba, ba-ba!” She waved enthusiastically. Over the past week, she had come to know who I was, and every time I came into a room, she made me feel like a queen.

“Bye-bye, pretty girl,” I said, and she smiled wider, cereal oozing between her baby teeth as she raised her hands and covered her eyes.

“Oh, where’s Rose?” I lamented. “She disappeared. Where did she go?”

Rose giggled, squealing hysterically, but didn’t come out of hiding.

“I can hear her, but I can’t see her.” I stomped closer, my feet echoing on the wooden floor, so that it sounded like the Jolly Green Giant was coming. “Where is she?” Leaning close to her, I smelled baby powder and oatmeal. Sweet, soft smells.

Letting out a gleeful, ear-piercing screech, Rose threw out her arms and slapped cereal-covered hands on my cheeks.

Kate and Dell burst out laughing.

Joshua squealed and pointed. “She got you! Wose got Aunt Ka-wen.”

“A-a-a-ahhhh!” I screamed like a crazy lady, touching my face. “I’m melll-ting!” Grabbing a napkin, I kissed Joshua, Rose, and then Kate on the top of the head. Kate reached up and held my hand, and I stayed there for a moment with my chin resting on her hair. I had the strangest urge to confide in her about the biopsy, but I knew it would be incredibly wrong to tell her without telling James.

“It’s so good to have you here.” Kate’s voice trembled with emotion.

“It’s good to be here.” Standing up, I wiped off Rose’s oatmeal deposits, feeling gushy and warm like the stuff on my cheeks. “I guess we’d better get going.”

Kate seemed a little embarrassed, too. It was the first time we’d shared a hug that wasn’t the kiss-kiss, tap-tap kind used by foreign dignitaries and Hollywood stars, the kind that didn’t mean anything.

“See you this afternoon,” she said. “Maybe today we can finally make it out to see the mermaid pool and the sister sycamores.” All week long we’d been trying to find time to go, but I’d been tied up with extra Jumpkids practices, or one of Kate’s kids was napping, or supper needed to be cooked. We hadn’t yet made it round the mountain.

“That sounds good. I definitely want to take you there before I leave.” Time was running short. This was Monday. Next Monday, Jumpkids would be over, and I would be heading home. The biopsy would be behind me, and the cancer question answered.

Kate glanced away, like she didn’t want to acknowledge my eventual departure. “All right. Have a good day, you two.”

“See you this afternoon.”

By afternoon, it was clear that I probably wouldn’t make it to the mermaid pool tonight. Our first full rehearsal was looking more like an exercise in firefighting than a musical theater production. Keiler and the other counselors were showing Herculean patience as they tried to herd noisy, excited little bodies to the correct places. I had been elected director because nobody else wanted to be. Shirley usually did the job. She called from the hospital to wish us good luck, and to give me a few pointers.

“Keiler says you’re really good,” she said. I had a feeling Keiler hadn’t really said that, and Shirley was just trying to butter me up.

“I don’t know about that, but I’m doing the best I can. Right now it looks like mass chaos.”

Shirley laughed. “It always does the first time you put them all together in one room. By the end of the week, you’ll be surprised.” She didn’t say whether it would be a good surprise or a bad surprise.

“I hope so. I’m way out of my league here.”

She chuckled again. “I don’t know. Keiler thinks you ought to take the job full-time.” For just an instant, I thought she was serious.

“Oh, no.” I said it so as to make sure she knew we were only joking.

“The counselors say you’re really good. . . .” She trailed off on an up note, her voice teasing. She was obviously a woman with a good sense of humor.

“Oh,
no-o-o,
” I said, playfully but more emphatically. “I’m a networking consultant, not a pint-sized production manager.”

“Hey, I was a thirty-two-year-old lawyer when I started with Jumpkids.” She laughed. “Now I’m forty-five years old and pregnant with twins, so anything’s possible.”

I gave her a sympathetic groan. There was probably a good story behind her transformation from lawyer to Jumpkids director to pregnant with twins at forty-five, but I didn’t have time to ask. Onstage, the zebras were running amuck. “I’d better go-o-o-oh-no. The zebras just stampeded and knocked down three wildebeests.”

Shirley burst into giggles. “Sounds like things are right on schedule. Hang in there, Karen.”

“I am.”

“Have fun.”

“I am. Take care, Shirley.” Setting down Brother Baker’s cordless phone, I rushed to the stage to assess the damage to the wildebeest herd.

The counselors had it fairly well under control by the time I got there. Keiler was doing a good job of straightening out the rowdy zebras.

“Somebody needs to whup John Ray’s butt,” Sherita said from where she was skulking on the stage stairs. “He don’t listen, and he keeps takin’ his tail and swingin’ it at people.”

Onstage, Tina was holding the tail in one hand and John Ray in the other, giving him a solid talking-to. “Looks like Tina has it figured out.”

“Needs his butt whupped,” Sherita grumbled, giving John Ray a murderous look. It was more interest than she’d shown in anything all week, so I decided to go with it.

“Well, we aren’t going to whip anybody’s butt here, Sherita, but if you’d like to offer a suggestion as to how to control the zebras, please feel free.”

“They need their . . .”

“Without whipping any butts,” I finished, and she curled her lip at me. I figured the conversation was finished.

“Take their tails off,” she said after glaring at the zebras for a minute.

“They have to learn to work with the tails on.” Although at the moment, collecting the tails was a tempting thought.

Sherita huffed. “Take John Ray’s tail off. Nobody’s gonna notice
that. If he ain’t gonna behave with it, take it off, and he’ll just be a zebra without a tail.”

Turning slowly, I pointed a finger at her, trying not to seem too pleased lest she realize she’d accidentally said something constructive, and pull back into her shell. “That’s not a bad idea.” Stepping onto the stage, I waved at Tina. “Tina, take John Ray’s tail off for now.” The kids stopped what they were doing and looked at me. A zebra with no tail? What was Miss K thinking? I gave them my best poker face. “A few tails seem to be misbehaving this morning. If any of you are having a problem with your tails swinging around in circles or swatting other people, please raise your hand.” There was suddenly a mass dropping of tails, all hands went still, and the room became silent. I felt . . . pleased with myself. “All right, then let’s try the opening number again. Any tails caught swinging around will be confiscated and returned to you tomorrow.” I stepped off the stage as the kids moved to their places. I’d never seen a group of little bottoms so still.

“Good job, Sherita,” I muttered as we waited for the music to cue up.

Sherita crossed her arms and stood up, trying not to look pleased or involved or interested. Leaning against the wall next to me, she tapped her toe as the first notes of music came on and
“Nants ingonyama!”
blared through the auditorium while the monkey medicine man lifted our fake baby Lion King high into the air.

“The baby lion looks stupid,” Sherita groused, loud enough for the nearby giraffes to hear. “It’s supposed to be a real baby. I read the script.”

“We don’t have a real baby.” Lord, all we needed now was a baby to manage on top of everything else. Although Sherita did have a point. The stuffed one didn’t lend much drama to the opening scene.

“Myrone could do it. I could bring him with me tomorrow. I’ll watch him real good so he don’t mess with anything. We could dress him up and put whiskers and a nose on him.” It was more than Sherita had said all week. Suddenly, she looked enthusiastic. She had sparkle.

Unfortunately, there was no way we could keep up with a toddler for the next five days. I shook my head and she crossed her arms again, shoving herself against the wall.

“I’ll tell you what,” I heard myself say. What was I doing? “Why
don’t you and Meleka practice with him at home this week, and then bring him on Thursday and we’ll try it with the whole group.” She straightened, standing away from the wall, her bright hazel-gray eyes searching my face. She wasn’t sure if I meant it. She was waiting for the catch, the letdown. The usual rejection. “You don’t think he’ll be afraid to be out there with all the people and the costumes?”

She gave a confident chin bob. “He ain’t afraid of anything.”

“Good.”
I hope it’s good. I might be having a moment of
Lion King
insanity.
“Why don’t you take the mother lion’s part so you’ll be all set when Myrone comes? Kimmy’s mom called this morning, and she has the stomach flu. She might be back by the Friday dress rehearsal, and she might not.”

“O.K.,” she said, and marched onto the stage to show them all how it was done. Despite the fact that she hadn’t practiced all week, she was the best one in the group. Dell was right—Sherita knew the production backward and forward.

The church’s cordless phone rang at my seat just as the first number was finishing. No one picked up in the church office, so I answered.

Kate was on the other end. “Well, hi there,” she said. “I didn’t expect you to answer this number. I tried your cell phone, but it just gave me your voice mail, and, by the way, your voice mail is full.”

“Huh,” I replied. I hadn’t had any voice mail all week, and it hadn’t even occurred to me to wonder why. That in itself was an anomaly for me. Normally, I couldn’t live a day without voice mail. “I haven’t been keeping the cell phone on. I guess the voice mail has piled up, but for some reason it’s not showing up on the screen. So what’s up? Did you need something?”

“Your Internet search turned up a clue.” Her voice rose and she stretched the last word with unmistakable excitement. “The search engine found a link to an article from a little St. Louis arts newspaper. It’s called ‘Eighty Years of Jazz,’ and it’s about a woman named Sadie Broshier, who was a dancer and a jazz singer back in the twenties and thirties, and up through World War II. The article is about her marrying an old gent named Broshier in some retirement home in St. Louis, but it also talks quite a bit about her life and the things she did—
entertaining in the USO and whatnot. I can’t find anyplace where it says Sadie Walker, and the article doesn’t mention where she was originally from, but it came up on your search. Do you think it could be our Sadie? The article was written seven years ago, and it says she was eighty-two at the time. That wouldn’t really be old enough to be our Sadie, but it could be a misprint.”

I thought about that for a minute, trying to decide whether to get my hopes up. I was surprisingly emotionally invested, and obviously Kate was, too. “I don’t know. She wouldn’t be the first woman to lie about her age.” A memory trickled through my mind, and I chuckled. “Grandma Rose used to do that sometimes, remember? Of course, she was usually bumping it up so people would make a big deal about what good shape she was in for her age. Remember the time the church contacted us about having a big eightieth birthday party for her, and she was only seventy-seven?”