Swan Place (40 page)
Authors: Augusta Trobaugh
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Sagas, #African American
“Where do you think Crystal’s gone?” I asked Buzzard, all the time still trying to figure out what we must do and asking in a real polite voice, so Buzzard would know that I had gotten myself under control again.
“I don’t know. Maybe back to her mama and papa—or maybe just to drive until she doesn’t have any more money for gas. Then find a job.”
Oh, that sure sounded bleak!
“You know what I think?” Buzzard floated the question into the air. “I think you really need to talk with your Aunt Bett. Let her know what’s happened and see what she has to say about it.”
Well, it seemed to me that I still needed to do some hard thinking before I made that call. We could stay at the Swan Place, have nice clothes and everything and have people being real nice to me because they thought I was Mr. Swan’s great-niece. Or maybe we could go home, if Aunt Bett wanted us. Go back to a school where the other girls were mean to me because I was poor. Go back to wearing hand-me-down dresses.
But then I thought about Miss Madison.
She
liked me, and I could go back to writing with her in her classroom every day at lunch. And what I thought about next was everything I could write about the Swan Place. About Mr. and Miz Swan and their little baby. But I wouldn’t let him be born too soon. I would write it so that he lived. And the baby swans, too. No mean foxes to carry them away.
“Dove?” Buzzard’s voice intruded. “Just make that phone call and let’s see what your Aunt Bett has to say.”
Suddenly, it all seemed pretty simple. Either Aunt Bett would ask us to come home, or she wouldn’t.
“Should I tell her about Mary Elizabeth?” I asked.
“Might as well,” Buzzard sighed. “Might as well.”
“I don’t know what to say, Buzzard,” I confessed. “Should we all stay here with you? I’d like that, except I wouldn’t want to keep on pretending to be Mr. Swan’s great-niece.”
“Well, pretending is what goes with living here. I’ve already explained that to you.” Buzzard reminded me. “Go on now and make that call, Dove. It’s late enough that she’ll be up and around. You’ll figure out what’s right for you all to do, just as soon as you hear your Aunt Bett’s voice.”
I hoped Buzzard was right about that. I went down the hall, dialed Aunt Bett’s number, and while the phone was ringing, I could imagine her house and almost see her face.
And who on earth would be calling this early in the morning?
“Hello?” Her familiar voice, with just a touch of anxiety in it, made my throat tighten.
“Aunt Bett? It’s Dove,” I mumbled.
“Dove, honey!” She sounded so happy to be hearing from us. But then her voice lowered. “You all okay?”
“Well
. . .
”
“What is it?”
“Aunt Bett, we’ve had some hard things happen to us,” I started out, trying to ease into a conversation and not get Aunt Bett all upset.
“What kind of hard things, Dove? Tell me!”
“Crystal ran off, and we don’t know where she is,” I blurted out.
“What?”
“I said, Crystal ran off, and we don’t know where she is.”
“Ran off and left you all?” Her voice had such an incredulous tone.
“Yes’m,” I said. “And that isn’t all.”
“Lord help us!” Aunt Bett breathed into the phone. And then she was silent and I could feel her anxious waiting coming right through the telephone.
“Yes’m. Well, it’s like this
. . .
”
“Spit it out, child!” Aunt Bett whispered.
“Crystal had a baby.”
“A baby?” Aunt Bett sounded as if she had never heard of such a thing. Then she added, “You mean Crystal had a baby and she ran off and left the baby too?”
“Yes’m. She hadn’t been feeling good. She was sad all the time,” I explained. “Some folks call it ‘baby blues.’”
“Take more than just baby blues to make a mama leave her own child! Oh good Heavens! That poor child!”
“Oh, we’re taking good care of her,” I hastened to add.
There was a moment of hesitation on the other end, and then Aunt Bett said, “Oh, honey, I didn’t mean the baby. I meant Crystal!”
It felt strange to hear Aunt Bett talking of Crystal as a
child
, but maybe that was right. Crystal was a child who tried to do a woman’s job. Aunt Bett sighed. “She just took more on herself than she could handle.” And then she added, “Well, when are you all coming back home?” So there was the question, right on top of me. “Dove?”
“Please listen, Aunt Bett,” I begged. “Buzzard says we can stay here. She’s got a big house and plenty of money, and we really like it here.” From the other end, a long, long silence. “Aunt Bett?”
“Not come home?” Aunt Bett’s voice sounded small and tight. “Not come home to your family?” Now there was a catch in her throat.
“We can’t crowd in on you,” I tried to explain. “Why, where on earth would you put us?”
“Well, I don’t know,” Aunt Bett sounded exasperated. “But I’ll find a way to make room.” Her voice was rising. “You’re
family!”
she almost shouted.
“And what about Mary Elizabeth?” I asked.
“Mary who?”
“Crystal’s baby. Mary Elizabeth. She’s not blood kin to you. Me and Molly and Little Ellis are your nieces and nephew, but Mary Elizabeth isn’t.”
“Well, what does that matter?” Aunt Bett sounded confused. “If she’s with you all, she’s part of
your
family and you’re part of
mine
, so what does it matter?” And standing there, listening to Aunt Bett, I could almost see the old washing machine on her back porch and all the jars of pickles on the shelves in her kitchen, and the big dining table we all crowded around, and what that kitchen looked like the night she thought Roy-Ellis had put a strange woman in her sister’s bed. I felt my eyes fill up.
“Dove?” Her voice was plaintive, almost mewing.
Just then, Buzzard passed by me and motioned for me to cover the phone. “Hold on just a minute, please, Aunt Bett,” I said. “Buzzard wants to tell me something.” I clamped my hand over the receiver.
Buzzard had her hands on her hips and a scowl on her face. “Did she come right out and ask you all to come home and live with her?”
“Yes,” I admitted, feeling my face starting to burn.
“And you would say
no
to your very own kin?”
“But you said we could stay here,” I protested.
“Yes, but when your own flesh-and-blood kin wants you, you got to go. She’s
family
!” Then Buzzard stomped off down the hall.
“Are you sure, Aunt Bett?” I asked, after Buzzard had gone.
“What on earth do you mean?
Of course,
I’m sure!”
“Yes ma’am,” I said, instinctively. “Well, let me get some things straightened out here, and then I’ll call you back and let you know when we’re coming. I think we ought to wait a few days, just to see if Crystal comes back,” I added hopefully.
“Well, whatever God wills,” Aunt Bett said. “In the meantime, I’ll start getting things ready here.” There was a warm, satisfied sound in her voice. “Oh, and Dove, I meant to tell you that when I cleaned out you all’s house—it was rented, you know, and the man who owns it asked me to get your stuff out of it—I found a whole stack of notebooks in your handwriting, and I packed them up with the other stuff that’s in my toolshed. I couldn’t save much, but I saved those and some of your dishes and pots and pans.”
“My notebooks! You found them!” Instantly, Miss Madison’s face appeared before me, her eyes serious and pleading.
“I’ve got them here for you,” Aunt Bett said again. “Now you go on and do whatever needs doing, and be sure to thank Buzzard for being so good to you all.”
“You’re sure it’s safe for us to being Molly back?” A sudden, icy current of fear ran through me.
“Yes, I’m sure,” Aunt Bett assured me. “If he’d been going to do anything else, he would already have done it. I expect he was really just snooping around about insurance money, but of course, there wasn’t any.”
“Oh.”
“Well, give Molly and Little Ellis a kiss from me,” she said. And then she added, “And to Mary
. . .
what is her name?”
“Mary Elizabeth,” I reminded her.
“Yes. Give Mary Elizabeth a kiss from her Aunt Bett, as well.”
When I got off the phone with Aunt Bett, I just stood in the hallway for a long time, wondering how things could change so fast—again! I’d felt in my heart that something was going to go wrong, but I never expected it to be that Crystal would run off and leave us all—leave Mary Elizabeth for
me
to take care of! And now, in only the last few minutes, I’d learned that Buzzard herself owned the Swan Place and that we were welcome to stay with her. Except that now, we were going back to Aunt Bett’s.
When I finally went into the kitchen, Buzzard was sitting at the table, giving Mary Elizabeth her bottle. I looked at Mary Elizabeth’s wispy blond hair against Buzzard’s dark arm, and my heart pained me deep inside my chest.
“Aunt Bett said I was to thank you for helping us.” The words felt empty and sad. And what on earth was I thinking? I should be happy to be going home. But it all felt so bittersweet! I didn’t know what else to say, but my mouth opened and the words that fell out were: “I don’t know how I’m going to get us home.”
“I’ll take you all home,” Buzzard said, and I could tell she was trying to speak lightly, just as I had done when Savannah left. Like if she sounded lighthearted, she would
feel
that way. “Been meaning to go see Mee anyways. It’s been too long.”
“I told Aunt Bett I thought we should wait a little bit. See if Crystal comes back. If that’s okay with you.”
“Fine with me,” Buzzard said in kind of a gruff voice. “Told you all you could stay long as you want.” She didn’t even look at me. Just kept her eyes locked onto Mary Elizabeth. We stayed quiet and kind of strained for long moments, and then Buzzard seemed to shake off whatever kind of gruffness she was feeling.
“We’ll wait awhile, like you said,” Buzzard sighed. “And that will give us some time to get you all’s things together.” At that, she looked down into Mary Elizabeth’s round little face, nodded, and said in a singsong kind of voice: “Yes, we’ll do just that. Pack up all your things and take you home.” Mary Elizabeth had finished her bottle, and Buzzard heaved her up onto her shoulder and patted her back. We finally heard a resounding burp, and Buzzard gave Mary Elizabeth to me. Molly and Little Ellis had come into the kitchen and they stood, one on either side of me. Buzzard looked at us all for a long time.
“Seems like I’ve gotten used to having children around,” she said. “Gonna be an awful lonesome old place when you all are gone.”
“If you want children
. . .
a child
. . .
around, I know one who’d be awful grateful to have a place where she could live. One place where she could live all the time,” I offered. “The way it is now, she gets shuffled around to different relatives all the time.” Buzzard was listening closely, with a little scowl on her face, so I continued. “Her mama died and nobody wants to keep her all the time, so she has to keep changing schools and trying to make new friends and everything.”
“Who is that?” Buzzard sounded suspicious.
“My friend Savannah. Aunt Mee’s granddaughter.”
“Humph,” Buzzard snorted. But still she gazed at us. “Well, we’ll see,” she added, finally. “Didn’t want to get used to having children around anyway.” But by the tone of her voice, I could tell that she was arguing with herself, and I believed with all my heart that it was an argument she was sure to lose. So right then and there, I could imagine Savannah living in that big, beautiful house, with Buzzard and the Sisters of the Circle of Jesus all loving her and taking care of her. It was a wonderful thought!
Well, we found out pretty fast
that we really didn’t need to wait very long to see if Crystal was going to come back. Because only two days later, there came a postcard
. . .
from Crystal. The picture on the front of the card was a big magnolia flower, and underneath it was printed,
ALABAMA
. On the back, Crystal had written:
Dear Dove,
I’m on my way to far-off Las Vegas, where I’m going to get work as a dancer. It’s the only thing I know how to do right. You’re better than me about children, and that’s why I left Mary Elizabeth with you.
—Love, Crystal