The Song My Soul Remembers

Prologue

December, 1998

The muted hum of the hospital settled around Eve Webster as unconsciousness lured her back into its thick silence. In that shimmering twilight she stood again in the great room of the lake house, the only sounds the rush of bathwater in the adjoining room and the ragged cadence of her own breath. . . .

The door of the curio cabinet gaped open, shelves empty, the thick Aubusson rug strewn with shattered pieces of the glittering trinkets it had held. Over the fireplace, her portrait hung askew, the stoic face and copper hair shredded by a carpet razor. Soil from smashed potted plants clung to the walls and sprayed like dark blood across the white loveseat.

Every icon that defined Eve Webster, every symbol of success she’d striven to acquire, lay in ruins by her own hands. She had a fleeting thought that she should clean up the mess, but the ravage, she realized, would express the urgency of her decision more clearly than her letter.

Stripped bare before her Maker, she had issued a final challenge. And God had countered.

~ ~ ~

Part One

~ ~ ~

Chapter One

1 June 1956

Somewhere a bear was pooping in the woods. And Mama had caught wind of it.

The engine whined and gravel spat as she gunned the Chevy out of the driveway, the open car door flapping like a goose wing. As she reached to pull it closed, she peeled off down West Third Street.

The weight of Jesse’s capsized body crushed Mayeve against the car door. She shoved her brother upright and craned her neck to see out the open window, but things flew past in such a blur it scared her, and she busied herself instead with braiding and unbraiding a coil of her auburn hair.

Minutes later, the car shuddered across the railroad tracks and lurched to a stop. Mayeve smelled the pickle plant, so she knew they must be down near the edge of colored town, where Mama said the poor white trash lived.

"Damn you, J. G.

Taylor!" Mama hissed. Mayeve had seen her talk that way before--teeth clenched, her lips pulled down at the corners, nearly immobile, like a ventriloquist’s.

The next thing Mayeve heard was a loud, metallic pop, the naked wires of Daddy’s makeshift police siren connecting with the metal dashboard. Whuarrrr! the siren wailed into the still, muggy morning.

Pop! Whuarrr! It howled again. Mayeve raised her head and peeked out. She could see faces stuck like wet apple blossom petals against the dark windows and doors. The Ford pickup truck from the blacksmith shop where Daddy worked days sat in the driveway of a tiny, green clapboard house.

On the third pop- whuarrr! Daddy came out onto the porch of the house. He lifted his barrel chest, sucked in his stomach, and fastened the fly of his work pants. His eyes locked onto Mama’s. One long breath later, they tore back down South Lee Street.

Mayeve and Jesse braced their bare feet against the backseat for the ride home. Jesse smelled like wet chicken feathers and the ever-present Marlboro smoke that clung to all their clothes. Mayeve looked down at his arms and legs, grayed with a film of black Carolina dirt, and wriggled just far enough away from him so as not to soil her new, pink floral print shorts.

The left rear tire of the Chevy jolted over a curbing, and Mayeve’s back teeth cut into her tongue. She tasted blood, felt her stomach lurch, as the car fishtailed and swerved back onto Third Street.

About six heartbeats later, Mama barreled into their driveway. She herded Mayeve and Jesse back into the den, sat them down in front of the TV, and switched the Saturday morning kiddy shows on. As Mama hurtled into the kitchen, the invisible audience of The Little Rascals roared with laughter, but no one in the knotty-pine den laughed back.

Mayeve shuddered and drew in a breath. The house smelled, as Jesse liked to say, like the scene of a fart contest. Granpa was cooking collards. Mayeve looked down at her hands, clutched in her lap, the knuckles white knobs on brown stems. Watching Spanky strut up and down quoting Shakespeare when all she wanted to do was cry was a downright upside-downism, like the way they called their grandmother Granpa.

She reached for her book on the couch and drew in the pleasing paper and glue smell. She’d just won the copy of Little Women in the fifth grade spelling bee, taking first place by spelling the word unkempt. Mayeve had seen the word on Jesse’s report card and looked it up. It was a shameful word, a word she was certain had never been written on the little women’s report cards. Nor would it ever be written on hers.

Unkempt. Mayeve looked over the edge of her book at Jesse. Even the holes in his tee shirt looked shameful, gaping like fish lips from the worrying of his busy, dirty fingers. Jesse slid the silver bullet Elijah Champion had given him back and forth on its chain around his neck. Elijah had told them that particular silver bullet had been shot point blank at the chest of a preacher man and bounced right off. According to Elijah, a silver bullet would not penetrate a man of God, but it would stop a hellion or a haint (which Elijah called ghosts) dead in his tracks.

Mayeve noticed Jesse found special comfort in his bullet when all hell broke loose, as it had this morning. She was trying to imagine what Jesse would look like scrubbed thoroughly clean, a sight she could not ever recall seeing, when she heard the familiar, soft thud of Peebo, their rat terrier puppy, scooting through the hole at the bottom of the screen door. The delicate pressure of his feet and the soft weight of his body as he fell against her thigh with a contented groan soothed her ache like thick salve on a burn. She reached down to stroke his black and white fur, dirt-matted from tunneling out of his pen, and for a magical instant, entered Peebo’s world, where there was only love.

In the silence between the The End music and the commercial, Mayeve heard bottles clanking in the kitchen. She cut her eyes at Jesse. They both recognized the sound that followed--the metallic rasp of the cap unscrewing on the Four Roses bottle their parents kept hidden for Saturday nights.

She put Peebo down and peeked into the kitchen. Granpa was lifting a forkful of collards from the speckled blue pot on the stove, eyes closed, mouth open in anticipation. Mama was pouring Four Roses into a jelly glass. Granpa chewed, swallowed, smiled to herself, and turned--just in time to see Mama down the golden liquid in one long swig.

Granpa’s mouth popped open with a wet smack.

Don’t ask! Mama snapped at Granpa, then stomped into the bathroom and slammed the door so hard the trinkets jumped on the whatnot in the other room.

Granpa crept back into the den and lowered herself into her recliner. Jesse climbed in on one side of her, and Mayeve squeezed in on the other, grateful it was their turn for Granpa’s quarterly visit. She was a widow with four children, so she stayed three months at one house and then packed her King James Bible and black print frocks in a metal trunk and moved on to the next, which was never very far since all Granpa’s children lived in the three-stoplight township of Ayden.

Huddled together now, they listened to Mama’s muffled howls. The cries squeezed around Mayeve’s heart like Peebo’s cries did when she put him in his pen at night. Finally, unable to bear the sadness, she slipped down from the recliner and went to press her eye against the keyhole in the bathroom door. Mama sat perched up on top of the bathroom counter, blowing cigarette smoke out the window. In one fist she clutched the empty jelly glass; in the other, Daddy’s pistol.

As Mayeve stood considering what to do, she heard the screen door bang. Relief that Daddy was home and terror that Mama would shoot him swirled through her in a shuddery mix. She backed away from the bathroom door, then bolted into the den to warn him. Wrapping her arms around one of Daddy’s tree-stump legs, she tilted back her head to yell Run! but only managed to squeeze out a squeak.

Where’s Lila Ruth? Daddy asked.

Back yonder, Granpa said, rolling her eyes toward the bathroom.

Daddy! Mayeve tugged at the big, callused hand to pull him close enough to whisper into his ear. Daddy, she’s got your gun.

He looked down at her. The corner of his mouth twitched. His top lip pulled up, shaping the lopsided grin that Mayeve thought made him look like Elvis Presley. His deep-set hazel eyes were ringed with the raccoon mask of soot his quick wash ups from the blacksmith shop often left behind.

Granpa shrunk deeper into the recliner as Daddy headed to the bathroom. Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord! she whimpered. Jesse’s chin dimpled with the effort not to cry. The silence rang in their ears like a national defense test alert.

When Daddy walked back into the den, he had his pistol stuck in the back of his trousers like Billy B. Damn.Don’t ever marry a preacher’s daughter, Jesse Glen. Daddy sat down on the floor in front of the TV and lit a cigar.

That night, through the thin wall that separated her bedroom from her parents’, Mayeve listened as the unhappy sounds her mother made turned angry--dull thuds of things thrown, not placed; a drawer slammed; words shot quick and killing as machine gun fire. Through it all, Daddy’s voice stayed low.

It was the silence that followed that was most frightening. Quiet, but no Peace. Was Mama waiting for Daddy to go to sleep, so she could get his gun back and shoot him? If she did, would the neighbors hear the shot and call Daddy’s buddies at the police station? Would they get there before Daddy bled to death? For the forty-eleven dozenth time, Mayeve wondered why people were mean to each other when they could just as easily be nice instead. She added a note to her mental list of Things to Remember When I Grow Up: Always be nice to your husband.

Mama just couldn’t seem to get through the day without getting onto Daddy about something. Every time she paid bills, she sang a song about having to rob Peter to pay Paul, so Daddy signed on as a part- time cop with the Ayden Township Police. Then she commenced to sing a song about him cattin’ around all over creation at night. One thing she didn’t complain about though was the extra money.

Six months after Daddy started his second job, he’d saved enough money to make a down payment on a second- hand ’54 Chevrolet Bel Air. It served as their family car during the day and Daddy’s police cruiser at night. Mama said Daddy was as proud of that Chevy as an old maid with a gentleman caller. And he told everyone who’d stand still long enough about how he’d rigged up the siren for it. All Daddy had to do was touch the naked wire ends to the dashboard and Whuarrh! It scared the dickens out of saints and sinners alike. Every time Daddy told anybody about it, he grinned so big it pushed his eyes shut like Wimpy in the cartoon show, reveling in a hamburger he would happily pay for next Tuesday. That grin, she reckoned, was how he got his curious nickname, Wimp.

Six nights a week now, Daddy came home from the blacksmith shop, washed up, made short work of eating supper and changed into his blue uniform. When he put on his police hat and gun belt, Mayeve felt a great, secret pride in him. Mama said he and his buddy, Sergeant Bear Buck, were like a couple of young’uns playing cops and robbers, but Mayeve could tell her mother appreciated the effect of the uniform, too. The best part, though, was the way Daddy would beam like a porch light whenever Bear came around. The Lone Ranger and Tonto. The Cisco Kid and Poncho. Bear and Wimp.

And Police Chief Tihlman. Who came to their house now more often than blood kin did. But that was another worry for another day, she figured, as she closed her eyes to say her prayers.

The next morning Mama fried bacon and eggs like she always did on Sundays. After breakfast the Taylor family loaded into the Chevrolet and drove the three blocks to Friendly Baptist Church. Daddy took his place in a red velvet chair at the front of the sanctuary with the rest of the deacons. Mama sang in the choir. Granpa wept as the preacher warned that Noah was closing the door to the ark. Beside her, Jesse Glen drew doodles on the bulletin with an eraser-less yellow pencil stub.

Sometimes it seemed to Mayeve like Mr. Lewis Carroll had spied on her family and wrote it up in a book: "Have some wine, the March Hare said to Alice. I don’t see any wine, Alice remarked. There isn’t any," said the Hare.

Would Mama make Daddy leave on Monday, or would she just shoot him one day when she caught him off guard? The worry and fear made Mayeve want to cry a pool of tears, like Alice, except crying wasn’t allowed. Give you something to cry about, Daddy would say and take off his belt to show he meant business.

Mayeve stole sidelong glances around the congregation, people she’d known all her life. Did any of the rest of them have secrets they’d shelved until Monday? Her attention focused on Deacon Tyndall, who’d fallen asleep, as was his habit, as soon as he sat down from making the weekly announcements. Had he gotten drunk the night before or beaten his wife and children? Did he diddle himself under the covers at night? As she considered the possibilities, she watched the progress of a fly working its way toward the deacon’s open mouth. When the fly took off and landed on the bridge of the preacher’s glasses was when she noticed the curious silence that had fallen over the sanctuary.

Reverend Holloway had stopped talking and was leaning across the pulpit, his mouth pulled down in his scariest frown. Mayeve glanced first at Mama, who was staring, brows hunkered to attack level, into the balcony; then she looked at Daddy, who’d zeroed in on whatever was causing the disturbance and was plowing down the side aisle to handle it.

Suddenly, the whispers and muttering exploded into an unholy ruckus, peppering the sanctuary like buckshot.

For heaven’s sake!

I will be goddamned . . .

It’s a nigra boy!" Without turning in her seat, Mayeve peeked over her shoulder at the source of agitation. Electrified, her heart stood still and all the world stopped with it. Over the ledge of the balcony, the round black face of Elijah Champion beamed down at her.

~ ~ ~

Chapter Two

Monday came, and Daddy was still alive and still at home. No mention had been made of his transgression, but the silence told Mayeve he’d not been forgiven.

Bum’s Bar-B-Q, where Mama worked as a waitress, closed on Mondays, and in the summer, Mayeve went to the blacksmith shop with Mama while she did her part-time job adding numbers and drawing neat lines in red and black ink in Mr. Levi’s business ledgers. Except for Mama’s deafening silence, the family went about its routines like nothing had happened, and it was making her crazy. What made her crazier still was that every time she got near enough to Elijah to ask him about Sunday morning, Daddy sent him off on a chore somewhere else. Now, he’d sent Elijah and Jesse to work in the supply loft where, of course, Mayeve was forbidden to go.

So she bided her time, watching the blue-white fireworks fall around Daddy’s feet as he drew his torch across the frame of the tobacco trailer he was repairing for Mr. Avery Cannon. Mama said Mr. Avery hiked up his nose like a mullet had gone bad on his upper lip and that he had more money than he knew what to do with. Mayeve tried to imagine how much money that might be. She thought of all the treasures in the five-and-dime store she never had enough nickels and dimes for, and wondered why God had given someone such as Mr. Cannon so many more rewards than other folks had.

The smell of burning metal, sharp, like pennies tasted, permeated the air. Hot and bored with the routine of the welding shed, Mayeve plucked a fistful of clover blossoms and headed around to the front of the shop. If there was a breath of breeze anywhere, it’d be there.

Just as she sat down on the front stoop and set her fingers to work making a clover necklace, Elijah ran, bare feet flying, across the dusty parking lot. Excitement skittered through her heart. Making as if to clear away a spider web on the window, Mayeve raised up on her toes to peek into the office. Behind the smeared glass, Mama’s Igot-you eyes saw only numbers.

Daddy whip you? Mayeve asked, sitting down beside Elijah on the grassy slope.

Naw. Elijah skipped a pebble across the shallow stream then sat back on his heels. But Carrie tore my black ass up.

Mayeve had known where to find Elijah, stretching out whatever errand Daddy had sent him on--dawdling, as Mama would say--in the cool shadows of the train trestle across the road from Mr. Levi’s blacksmith shop. The trestle was their special hideout--hers and Champ’s and Jesse’s.

That bubble gum? Mayeve asked.

What? Elijah’s eyes followed the path of her curious stare to the pouch in his lower lip. Sweet Lorillard, he said. You know, snuff.

Oh, she said, noticing the way the s hissed in his words. Elijah’s mother Carrie called it Sweet La La. Run down to the store and buy me a can of Sweet La La, she’d say, closing Mayeve’s hand around a warm Indian head nickel.

Comfortable in the lengthening silence, Elijah laced his hands behind his head and stretched out on his back in a thick bed of clover.

Mayeve stole glances at him as he studied the shifting cloud patterns in the brilliant June sky. Elijah Champion fascinated her, drew her in like the shifting patterns of the toy kaleidoscopes she could never pass untouched in the dime store. It wasn’t just the magical blue halos around the dark centers of his eyes or the way the soft parts of him faded to pink.

Even though she guessed he was only a couple of years older than she was, he seemed more like a man than a boy. Not just because he dipped snuff and taught her and Jesse how to play poker, or even because he was bold enough to call his mother by her first name. Elijah knew things. Grownup stuff.

She could talk with him about most anything, except Chief Tihlman’s drop-bys. Just last week, when she’d asked him what was a hussy, Elijah had answered her question straight and true.

A hussy, he said, is a ho. You know. A lady that charges men folk to ride her sizz wheel.

And although Mayeve hadn’t a clue what a sizz wheel was, she treasured his matter- of-fact answer. All she’d been able to get out of Mama was that it was a word that’d get her mouth washed out.

When she grew up, she was going to answer her children’s questions straight and true. She added that to her Things to Remember List and underlined it.

Elijah’s mother, Carrie, came to Mayeve’s house every Saturday to help Mama with the cooking and cleaning. In one breath Mama declared Carrie was her salvation. In another she complained Carrie scorched everything she ironed, scarred the furniture with the Electrolux like somebody drunk, and fried every piece of meat she cooked so hard you could drive ten-penny nails with it.

Carrie did stagger when she walked. But Daddy said it was because of how she was put together. She had little spindly, stiff legs like a bird and the biggest ta-tas anybody ever saw. Daddy liked to joke that she probably made her brassieres by sewing two pillowcases together. Mayeve had buried her head into those warm, comforting pillows more times than she could remember.

Like when she was very little and would step on a yellow jacket in the backyard. Carrie would make a poultice of wet snuff to soothe her throbbing foot, then cradle her against her bosom and sing Shortenin’ Bread, or some such happy song, until the sobbing stopped. Then, once the tears dried, she’d tickle Mayeve with her crooked, bony fingers until she fled, giggling and squealing, back into the yard to play.

And like when Chief Tihlman would drop by. The first time, Carrie had popped in to bring them some collards from her garden and caught him skooched up beside Mayeve at the kitchen table. Though he’d made out like he was trying to help Mayeve with her arithmetic, Carrie could see plain as day the only book on the table in front of them was The History of North Carolina.

I know what that man be up to, Carrie said, squeezing Mayeve’s head tight against her bosoms when the chief waddled out the backdoor to the tool shed to get the jigsaw he’d dropped by for. Carrie’s old eyes ain’t blind. You see that car drive up, baby, you run out the house and hide.

Mayeve had nodded to seal their silent pact. But Chief Tihlman had a knack for materializing out of thin air the second Jesse left the house, which most days was just as soon as he could get changed out of his school clothes.

Tell your mama, baby, Carrie told her, when she’d stopped by again the next day and caught the chief pulling out of the driveway. You know Carrie can’t speak against no white man. Most specially the chief of po-lice. You tell Miss Lila now, you hear me?

Mayeve nodded. Only Mama would never give Mayeve her eyes, and Mayeve couldn’t tell Mama’s backside. Of course, she probably couldn’t tell her front side either, truth be known.

She added a mental note, in big, red letters, to her List: Pay attention to your children, in case there’s something you need to know.

Mayeve loved how Carrie always looked her square in the eyes and answered her when she spoke. Which wasn’t often, because Mama and Daddy liked Peace and Quiet when they watched TV. And that was mostly all the time since Daddy’s latest stroke of genius. When he’d closed in the back porch to make the den, he’d made an open cabinet out of the kitchen window, so he could watch the 6:00 news from the kitchen table.

Elijah and his parents didn’t own a TV, and Mayeve sometimes wondered what they did for entertainment--if they read books or talked about funny things their white folks said or did. She’d seen inside their house last winter when her daddy let her ride over with him to take coal for their stove, and she’d felt guilty ever since that her family let them live that way. But Ernest Lee and Carrie didn’t seem to mind.

Even though their home was a drafty, one-room shack with the graveyard in spitting distance of the front door, they laughed and smiled like they had more money than Avery Cannon.

Elijah’s father, Ernest Lee, worked with Daddy at the blacksmith shop and did odd jobs around the Taylor house after the shop closed to pay off the loans her dad made to him during the week. Daddy said Ernest Lee was shiftless because he spent every red cent he got paid on Saturday before nightfall. But Mayeve could tell he really liked the hard muscled man whose laughter filled the space around him with the forbidden scent of whiskey.

When J. G. Taylor and Ernest Lee Champion put their heads together, they could invent almost anything: the knotty pine den for Mama, the playhouse for her and Jesse, the stroller for her dolls. And most unbelievable of all, a bullet- shaped travel trailer with bunk beds at the rear and a fold-down table that made into a bed for her parents at night. Next to stolen time with Elijah, the three trips their family made to the beach at Morehead City in that trailer, before Mama made Daddy sell it, had been the most fascinating adventures of Mayeve’s whole life.

What you studying me so hard about? Elijah asked, the s words whistling across his tongue.

Mayeve’s cheeks stung. She’d gone into that secret place in her mind where time disappeared. She wondered how long she had been staring at him.

Elijah grunted. What? he said. Face near about as red as your hair. He shook his head. Act like you ain’t got a full set of marbles sometimes, girl. Don’t be careful, they’ll be sent you off to camp like the Bean.

Mayeve swiveled at the waist to face him and dug her hands into her sides. Take that back, Elijah Champion! Yes, siree-bob! Be put them things on your head like the bride of Frankenstein. Shoot the juice to you, fry that hair up right nappy. He peered at her, serious, and stroked his chin, as if considering the possibilities. Mmm-hmm! Might even, might even turn your face black, he said, repeating words as he was apt to do. Have to move out to South Ayden.

Mayeve lunged at him, slapping at the air as he ducked this way and that, belting out a laugh so contagious she nearly laughed herself.

All right! he hollered. All right! Uncle. I was just poking fun. He sat up straight and made the sign of a vampire-repelling cross with his fingers. Finished with the game, Elijah leaned back on his elbows and lowered the lids over his curious, blue-ringed irises to half-mast. He ejected a stream of brown spit between his front teeth and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

Didn’t mean no harm, he said, looking sheepish. Tell the God’s honest truth, Bean’s ’bout one of the onliest white chirrens makes a lick of sense to me anyhow.

Though it rubbed Mayeve’s fur backwards that he’d used the unkind nickname the kids at school had for her sister, Jenny, she acknowledged Elijah’s peace offering with a nod.

Your mama doesn’t mind you call her Carrie?

Elijah drew a deck of cards from the pocket of his tee shirt and began to shuffle them. The cards were so worn they no longer made sharp, snapping sounds but rather the soft, flapping sounds of bird wings. Carrie ain’t my mama. Carrie my aunt.

The information made Mayeve draw in such a quick burst of air, she choked on it and had a coughing fit, which embarrassed her to no end, because Elijah just sat there grinning like a treed possum while she turned red. I didn’t know that, she squeaked when she could speak again."

Never axed. Your mama dead?

Mayeve asked, trying to adjust to the revelation.

Nope. My mama and daddy in New York.

You mean they went off and left you?

Not exactly like that, no. He shuffled the cards. Ain’t no big deal. Ernest Lee and Carrie treat me right. Folk got to do what folk got to do. His face bunched up, eyes narrow. You ax too many questions. Pick a card, he said. Any card.

Elijah fanned the deck, faces down, and held them out to her. His movement carried a faint fragrance across the still, warm air to her. Ivory soap. She drew a card and looked at it.

Ten of spades! he shouted.

How’d you do that? Elijah tapped his head and smiled. Use what the good Lord give me. The cards ratcheted softly as he reshuffled them.

Mayeve was quiet for a moment. Why’d you do it, Elijah?

What?

You know. Come inside our church like that?

He slipped the deck back into his shirt pocket. Want to see what y’all be doing so quiet in there on Sunday mornings. Down AME Zion we praise the Lord so He know He been praised. Elijah lifted his brows and then his chin. And because the Holy Spirit told me to. That said, he cut his eyes at Mayeve as if daring her to dispute him.

She felt the hair on her arms stand at attention.

Really? she said, more as praise than a question.

Champ was always telling the most amazing stories, like the one about the bullet bouncing off the preacher’s chest--stories that, if anyone else had told them, she’d figure they were lying. She never would forget the story about what all the slaves used to put in their white folks victuals to get back at them for being so mean to them--everything from boogers to do-do, and the white folks lapped it up, Elijah said, like it was sugar and cream.

Elijah, why do you think people get mean when they grow up?

Ain’t all like that.

Well, when I grow up, I’m going to remember how sad it makes people when you’re not nice to them.

Girl, you wouldn’t know ‘mean’ if it bit your hind end. You talking, you talking about your mama and daddy? Your mama and daddy ain’t mean. Just wore out, like everybody else got to work for a living. Want to talk about mean, I can tell you stories make your eyeballs--

Mayeve! Her mother’s voice slammed into her like Wile E. Coyote into a canyon wall.

Mayeve, where are you? Elijah scrunched and rolled down the grassy slope into the blackness of the culvert.

Coming, Mama, she called up from beneath the trestle.

She brushed the soil from her shorts and smoothed the damp wrinkles from her tee shirt, her heart beginning to thunder. Her body shrank into itself when she saw the dark V between her mother’s brows. Tears stung the rims of her eyes. She clasped her hands at her waist and hung her head, a familiar dread coiling in her belly. She knew she was guilty as sin. But of what, exactly, she wasn’t quite sure.

Mama squatted in front of her so their eyes were level.

She pulled a crumpled Kleenex from the pocket of her skirt and dabbed at the corners of Mayeve’s eyes. The tissue smelled like the Wrigley’s Spearmint gum her mother kept squirreled away in her clothes.

Mayeve, Mama said, I’m going to say this to you just one more time. So you listen to me carefully, okay?

Mayeve nodded.

The last thing our family aims to be is prejudiced. God loves all His creatures. The Bible says so. So we’ve taught you to be polite to everybody, like Daddy and I are polite to Ernest Lee and Carrie. But do not forget that the Lord made us separate and different for a reason. Birds of a feather flock together, Mama said. I don’t want to have to tell you again now: little white girls are not to be playing with Negro boys.

But how come Jesse-- "Jesse’s a boy, Mayeve.

That’s a horse of a different color. She widened her eyes to underscore her point. If I catch you playing with Elijah again, Daddy’s going to take his belt to you. Understand me? Yes, ma’am," Mayeve said, although she didn’t. Down the rabbit-hole she slid, and it didn’t feel like Wonderland.

Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight. When Mayeve had asked Mama why God made her sister different, she’d said it was because He liked variety, like in a garden. Some people, she said, were roses, some were snapdragons, and some were fire pokers. If God liked variety, Mayeve didn’t see why He’d care if she liked variety, too. Mama wanted folks to be nice to Jenny, even though she was different. What about Jenny?

What about Jenny? Mama echoed.

Jiminy Crickets! Had she said it out loud?

Mama grunted. Have you been listening to a thing I said, Mayeve? What in the Hello Pete has one thing got to do with the other? Answer me.

Helpless to voice the muddle of thoughts in her mind, Mayeve’s eyes searched the heavens for an answer. When she noticed the thick cloud of smoke, discomfort gave way to alarm.

Mama, look!

Jesus! she shouted. The shop's on fire!

~ ~ ~

Chapter Three

Mayeve gazed up at the towering stone and metal building, the biggest she’d ever seen. Rows stacked on rows of lighted windows shot straight up into the night sky. She’d never been to the hospital before. She held tight to Mama’s hand on one side and Jesse’s on the other.

The heels of Mama’s shoes echoed as they walked across the brown, speckled tiles of the huge lobby. A thin woman with a face as pale as her hair peered at them over the visitors’ pass catalog at the reception desk. She handed over a card to Mama like it was the ignition key to her personal Cadillac.

As they rounded the desk headed for the elevator, they passed a Negro man in green pajamas rolling an old woman in a wheelchair. His soft shoes made no sound at all on the tiles. Mayeve looked at the sick lady. The colored part of her eyes rolled up under the lids then bounced down and rolled up again.

Mayeve pulled her hands free and hurried into the elevator ahead of Mama and Jesse. Two women, already inside, whispered back and forth in church whispers. One of them was crying. A black attendant in a gray uniform asked, What floor? and Mama and the two ladies all said, Third.

They stepped off the elevator into a dim corridor that smelled like alcohol and dried pee-pee. Mayeve could hear metal clanging somewhere and voices talking low. A man cried out. Jesse whirled around to look behind him.

No! No! the man’s voice pleaded, then moaned.

Jesse looked at her, his lips gone white.

Daddy’s room was at the end of the corridor. The first thing Mayeve saw when she walked into the room was the clear plastic tent. Daddy’s upper body was enclosed within it, his head propped at an odd angle on the pillow.

A nurse with broad hips and a huge bosom placed a plastic bag on a hanger beside his bed and adjusted the tubing that snaked beneath the tent.

Daddy’s bear-like hands, wrapped in gauze, reminded Mayeve of the boxers he cheered for when he sat still long enough on a Saturday to watch TV. She’d never seen her daddy so still or so clean.

Jesse went to the head of the bed.