Slow Way Home (15 page)

The sound of bristles stripping away grime provided a rhythm for Sister Delores’s song. “Excuse me,” Bonita said louder.

“Oh, hey baby. I didn’t see you standing there. Excuse me for not getting up. This knee is giving me fits. Doctor said I need to loose weight, but when your husband is a cook, there ain’t no way to put down that fork. You hear me now?”

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Bonita massaged her eyes. “I’m sorry. Who are . . .”

“Baby, you know me. Sister Delores. Harvey’s wife. I picked up that smoked turkey down at the restaurant right before Christmas . . .

Well, anyway, I been planning to come by for some time, but with this old knee acting up and everything.” She turned back to the tub and scrubbed faster. “You just get yourself back in that prison. We’re managing just fine.”

Bonita sighed in protest, but by then Sister Delores was back singing.

“Mama, you ought to see the kitchen,” Beau said. “So clean we could eat supper off the floor if we wanted to.”

“She brought groceries too,” Josh added.

Bonita’s eyes glassed over even more with the details. She took three steps and then rested her head against the wall, tilting a picture of two men standing on a boat. Leaning against the flowered wallpaper, she continued towards the kitchen and rubbed the place on the shirt where Johnny’s name was stitched across the pocket. She looked down at the kitchen floor. Black-and-white tile glistened back at her.

The gold-colored refrigerator tucked in the corner now seemed as good as new. She reached out like she might touch it, but stopped halfway there. We gathered around like a seawall ready to catch a crashing wave. I held my breath until my ears filled with a ringing noise. But then just as slow as she had walked out, Bonita turned and drifted back behind the bedroom door.

“Yes,” Beau said, with his fist clinched in victory. “In the kitchen today. Out in the living room tomorrow.”

Outside, we had finished filling the bag of sand by the time Sister Delores was leaving. She clutched a shiny black purse and watched as we struggled to lift the bag up to the rope that dangled from the tree.

“You boys stop that before you tear up your insides.” She reached down and ran her stumpy fingers across the sack. “So you’re fixing a bag swing, huh? I remember when my daddy fixed me a bag swing for my birthday one year. All us kids had the best time on that thing. My brother had a pit bull and that dog would clamp her teeth a hold of that swing and wouldn’t let go for nothing. Yes sir, we had fun on that 104

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swing.” She got into the car and leaned out the opened window.

“Harvey and a man from my church will be out tomorrow to fix that swing for y’all. I’ll see to it. A boy just needs to be a boy.”

“What kinda church you go to?” Beau asked.

“God’s Hospital. Right over yonder on Magnolia Street. And little man, I don’t go to it. I’m the pastor.”

“Pastor? You’re a woman.”

Sister Delores coiled back and opened her mouth. “And I didn’t hear God checking in with you, little man, before he called me to preach. I sure did not. If I ain’t the pastor, then why am I called Sister Delores?”

Fearing that she might really be mad, I searched my mind for a different topic. “What about that dog? The one that swung on the bag with its teeth?”

Cranking the car, Sister Delores looked straight ahead at the windshield dusted in sea salt. Organ music swelled while the singer’s voice moaned in a way that dug up feelings in a hollowed-out place inside of me.

“Oh, her. Some man shot her one day. Shot her swinging right on that bag.”

“Why’d he do that for?” Josh asked.

“Don’t you never mind about why. Y’all don’t be studying about that old dog. You hear me? Harvey’s gonna fix that swing for you.

Y’all just laugh and cut up and be sweet boys. That goes for you too, little man.” With a point at Beau she drove away, leaving exhaust smoke and a distant crackle of music that stayed in my ears long after the car had disappeared.

Poppy worked longer and longer hours until it got to where the crickets had already started chirping by the time he opened the door.

His shoulders would hunch over, and he’d remove the cap with the marina logo to reveal matted hair. Whenever Nana would complain about him overdoing it, he’d say “Time and a half beats tired bones
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any day.” A restaurant-sized pickle jar served as their official bank.

Locking the door, Nana would count the money every Friday right before we called Uncle Cecil.

One day while Poppy was working overtime, Nana and me called Uncle Cecil on our own. It was the first time I got to speak to him.

The February wind was brisk, and the man who owned the station stayed inside most of the time. The burnt orange sign that advertised an oil change swung back and forth to the beat of the wind.

“Hey, boy,” Uncle Cecil said.

I gripped the phone receiver tighter against my ear. The whining sound of trapped wind from the nearby bathroom tried to distract me.

Words to all the questions I had planned to ask stayed locked in my throat. My mind would not let me speak anything other than small chatter saved for bored old ladies. “No, sir, it’s not real sunny today.

The wind is all over the place.”

Questions about my mama edged closer to my lips. I wanted to blurt it all out. Did you let her eat Christmas dinner with you? Was she still in town? But I just stood there with one hand buried in my pants pocket and the other growing numb holding a line to the past.

While Nana talked about the amount of money she was going to send him for the mortgage payment, I slid farther away towards the gas station door. Inside, the old man leaned against the counter and acknowledged me with a motion of his chin. Pressed against the concrete wall, I was free from the cutting wind but felt the burn of being Sophie Willard’s son all over again. The ghost of yesterday slapped me around harder than the wind flapped the metal sign by the pumps.

The clanging sound of a cowbell tied to the gas-station door made me flinch. “Lord have mercy, it’s cold out here,” Harvey said as he zipped the jacket higher towards his chin. A black poncho draped Sister Delores, and a zebra-print hat was pulled down low over her ears. “Don’t be crying to me. I tol’ you to wear a heavy coat. Your blood pressure liable to fall slap out from this cold, and you without a decent coat.”

I eased by the trash can and watched as Harvey raced to his truck.

Sister Delores moved slower and kept flailing her arms under the black 106

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material. When her pocketbook dropped to the ground, she leaned down and saw me. “Hey, here. What you doing hanging out with trash?” She pointed to the orange trash barrel and laughed.

Her hand was light when she touched the top of my head. The musty smell of cornmeal clung to the poncho. “What you doing out here freezing?”

I pointed to the corner of the building. “Nana’s talking to Uncle Cecil. He’s all the way up in North Carolina.” By the way the wrinkle above her nose deepened, I was afraid I’d said too much.

“North Carolina? Oh no, so far from home. I hope he can get down here close to family. A man needs his people.”

I smiled and got onto myself for saying too much.

She pulled the hat down farther. “Listen, baby. Your friend’s been coming to my church. Did he tell you?”

“You mean Beau?”

“That’s the one. But I call him little man on account of how he tries to act so grown. Anyway, I was just standing here wondering if you’d like to come. We’re having homecoming this Sunday, and I promise you you’ll go home fed.”

“Uhh . . . well, I need to ask Nana.” The vision of Nana walking down the beach by herself every Sunday morning came to mind. The part of her that still hadn’t found its way down to Florida.

“Where she at, round here on this side?” Sister Delores pointed towards the bathrooms.

Sliding along the cold block wall, I eased my head around the corner. The wind whipped until my eyes watered, but I still made out the shock on Nana’s face.

“Hey, here. Sister Delores. Harvey’s my husband. You remember me. Anyway, I just seen your grandson and he wants to come go to church with me. God’s Hospital right down there off Magnolia. We got a carpool and everything. You won’t have to fool with carrying him. I been picking up some of his friends, and I said to myself that boy of yours need to be in there with them. They fill up my whole car. One more sure won’t matter.”

“And uh . . . and uh . . .” Nana kept repeating into the phone. She
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nodded her head faster and faster until Sister Delores drifted with the wind back to Harvey’s truck.

Poppy stared at me when I walked out with my hair all combed down. Our show
Navigating the Nation
was just coming on. While the host, Hoyt Franklin, talked about a house built like the U.S. Capitol, I sat down on the camper sofa.

“It’s Sunday. Why you wearing your school clothes?”

“I’m going to church with Beau and Josh.” Looking at the man on TV who claimed to be the richest man in Texas, I could feel the glare of Poppy’s eyes.

“What’s the name of this church?”

“God’s Hospital.”

“God’s what? What kinda name for a church is that?”

Nana shook the plastic head bonnet out and tied it around her head. “It’s that church that Harvey and his wife run. Over on Magnolia Street.”

“That’s the colored church.”

“There’s a few whites that go there too,” Nana said and zipped on her jacket.

“Well I’d like to know what class of whites go there. How come you didn’t say nothing about all this before now?”

“I did. Nana knew about it.”

Nana paused at the front door. Her sigh could be heard over the TV. “Harvey’s wife caught me talking on the phone to Cecil. She was talking so fast I hardly had time to make out a word she was saying.”

Poppy rubbed his chin. “I don’t like the sounds of this one bit.”

Crisp air drifted inside when Nana opened the door. “Oh hush, A.B. They’re good people. He’ll go this one time and probably won’t fool with it anymore. Besides, you think the Lord keeps it all separated up in heaven?”

After Nana left for her Sunday morning walk down the beach, we sat there letting Hoyt Franklin do the talking for us. The car horn was honking before Sister Delores made it to our camper. Poppy stood at 108

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the door behind me. Rows of children younger than me lined the front seat. A pink crocheted cross swung from the rearview mirror and, with each dip in the driveway, the black and white heads bobbed up and down. “I don’t like this a’tall,” Poppy whispered.

“Hey, baby,” Sister Delores said with one foot out of the car and the other inside. “We’re running late. I still gotta go by the McFarland place. Hey, sir. How you?”

Poppy halfway waved and closed the door. I found Beau and Josh sitting in the backseat. The same music that had greeted us in the front yard of their home was now blasting louder from the car speaker behind my ear.

“Y’all feel like singing back there?” Sister Delores cranked up the volume and started singing until Beau laughed out loud. “Ain’t nothing funny about singing to the Lord, little man.”

Biting my tongue, I sunk down in the seat and tried to hold it back. Just when I thought I might bust wide open, I looked out the window and saw the plastic rain bonnet. Nana was walking down the beach with her arms folded, never looking up from the sand that guided her. Two pelicans flew overhead while the choppy water seemed to be mad at the world. With Beau nudging me, tempting me to laugh, I kept watch and prayed with my eyes wide open.

Even more shocking than seeing blacks and whites in the same church was the smell of the building and how easy people laughed out loud. The white building with a gold cross painted on the wall over the doors was at one time a crab plant that Harvey and Sister Delores bought when the owners went broke. She told us all the details and praised the Lord from a pulpit covered in green indoor-outdoor carpeting. Marking the church’s fifth birthday, she cried a little bit and laughed a whole lot more. I couldn’t picture Brother Bailey showing out like that. Especially at one point when the whole entire church started laughing about how her stuck-up teacher told her she would never amount to anything. Maybe that’s what I should have done whenever Mama’s boyfriends told me the same thing. Just laugh right in their ugly old faces.

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After the service we ended up outside underneath the magnolia trees. Sawhorses and plywood boards were transformed into a full-fledged buffet. While the paper tablecloth fluttered with the wind, we served our plates and ran back inside for warmer climate. A band with an electric guitar and drums was just getting started. The men all were dressed in green jackets and wore string ties. They were the first black cowboys I had ever seen.

When the lead singer pressed his lips on the mike like he might make it his lunch, Beau leaned over and poked me. “You know I’m just coming here so that she’ll keep coming by to help my mama.” His brown eyes were wide, and a piece of chicken clung to the side of his lip.

Shrugging, I turned back to face the music.

“’Cause I don’t want nobody at school to think that I need this or nothing. You know with them being colored and everything. Some people might get the wrong idea.”

After Mama Rose found out that Beau and Josh had been going to God’s Hospital, I understood why Beau worried about people knowing that he shared a church pew with a black family. Mama Rose called two weeks later after the cold snap had moved through. The warmer weather was a signal for a markdown on the leftover goods from the fall line. This time she agreed to pay us a dollar each to help move merchandise.

A wig the color of strawberries draped down her neck. “I want all the shell lamps on that table right there marked forty percent off. Josh, precious, you take the orange-shaped pencil sharpeners and put them out on that full-price table. The one right over next to the T-shirt display. They’ll go plumb nuts over the pencil sharpeners.”