Saving Cicadas Read online

  Then one day, Mama and Daddy were sitting at the breakfast table, looking at each other in a serious way. Rainey was still in the bathroom, and I sat down beside Daddy and placed my hand on his arm, hoping for love. He was so consumed with what he was thinking, he didn’t notice me at all. I pulled my hand away and sat there feeling scolded. Out of place.

  “Of course I still want to marry you,” he said, “but I just don’t think . . .” He breathed out hard and said, “What if something’s wrong with the baby? What if I pass along—”

  “I don’t want to hear another word about that,” said Mama. She had put her head in her hands. She looked up and right at me, and I took that as my cue to walk away. Still, I stood quietly in the living room and listened in. “Do you see why I didn’t tell you?” she whispered. “Do you see?”

  “Yes, yes, I completely understand. You’re right . . . as usual. I’m sorry. We’re having this baby, and everything will be fine.”

  “Everything will be fine,” said Mama with finality, though there was an edge to her voice.

  The wedding was set for July the third. It had been so many years, it seemed no time for wasting. It was to be here at the house with Fritz officiating, and only a few friends in attendance. Rainey and I were going to be flower girls. We’d always wanted to be flower girls, and we practiced by pulling up strays in Mrs. Shoemaker’s front yard whenever Mrs. Shoemaker was not around to see us. We’d amassed a small treasure of petals and kept them in a little basket. We’d take turns walking up and down the garden, dropping them one at a time to the left, to the right. Then we’d pick them up, one by one, and do it all over again.

  One morning, after we were done practicing and were sure we knew our parts, we sat on the front steps and watched Daddy give Mama a kiss on the cheek. Then he got on his motorcycle and told her he would be back in two days. He was going to take care of his house in the mountains. He was going to get all his stuff and move it to Forest Pines. Then he and Mama were going to do the same with our house in Cypresswood, and we would all be together again under one roof. They were so excited, we all were. It was a very happy time.

  But Daddy never came back from the mountains, and Mama cried, and Grandma Mona said she knew it all along. There seemed nothing much to be happy about after that.

  Chapter Forty-two

  ON THIEVES AND STEALING

  When July the third came and went, Mama stayed quiet. Her soft face grew hard along her cheekbones. Her glow from pregnancy had disappeared. To me, she seemed only halfway living, and try as I might to cheer her up or suggest reasons why Daddy had left us, she seemed closed to anything but the fact she’d fallen for it. Again.

  There were no fireworks or sparklers for Independence Day, at least not at our house, and two nights went by uneventful and sad. Then one night, I was coming to Mama’s bedroom to say good night, but mostly just to check on her. She’d already put us into bed with barely a word. No promptings to say our prayers as if she’d forgotten our routine. I heard her voice, and I stopped just outside her door.

  “If it was only about me,” I heard her telling somebody, “I would be all right, but it’s not. It’s not just about me. I brought him here, into my home, into my family again. All I did was create false hopes. I’m embarrassed. I’m angry . . . No, I’m not mad at you, of course not. I don’t . . . Fritz, no. I don’t want to talk about that right now. I just . . . you wouldn’t understand. You cannot possibly. I’ll just say this: this is no way to bring a child into the world. It’s not supposed to be this way, to feel this way. I’m sure this is not what God intended. This whole thing has been one mistake after another. Now I don’t want to hear another word about it.”

  Without saying good-bye, Mama hung up the phone and closed Fritz out of her life, along with me and Rainey. I tiptoed back to bed and lay there all night thinking, suddenly afraid again of what Mama was going to do about the baby.

  Early the next morning, as I was wiping the fog from my eyes, I heard Rainey snoring. I had woken up with something important on my mind, and I needed to talk to somebody about it. If he was still alive, I would have searched the house for Poppy, but he wasn’t there for me anymore. I didn’t want to talk to Grandma Mona because I was still mad at her, and I couldn’t talk to Mama about it. That left Rainey. It was a gamble because I didn’t like getting her upset, and I was pretty sure what I had to say wouldn’t sit well with her.

  I looked up at her sleeping. By her head was an upside-down teddy bear, the one Mrs. Arielle had given her, and against the wall sat the baby doll she’d brought with her from home. Beneath the covers was a lump with a hand sticking out. Every night since she’d taken it, Rainey had slipped the baby Jesus out of his hiding place in the closet and slept with him, remembering to hide him again by morning light.

  “Rainey?” I whispered. She didn’t answer. I poked her in the back. “Rainey?”

  “Mmm,” she grumbled.

  “I gotta talk about something. Wake up.”

  Rainey stirred and then struggled to turn over. She stretched with her good arm, yawned, then lay on her side, looking at me with one sleepy eye. Birds were beginning to sing, and by the light coming in atop the curtains, I could tell it was going to be a hot, sunny day.

  “Rainey, listen. You know that baby Jesus you stole?”

  “I took it,” she said, correcting me.

  “No, you stole it, Rainey. It belonged to the church and you stole it. You’re a thief. You could go to jail.”

  At this, Rainey’s brow furrowed, and she sat up, grabbing the baby Jesus. She hugged him hard, then realized he was the contraband, so she jumped out of bed and stuffed him in the closet, laying a blanket on top of him for safer keeping.

  She looked at me and said, “I not go jail.”

  “You’re not, you’re not,” I said. “Come back over here and sit down.” She sat, pajamas twisted, hair mussed, eyes puffy.

  “You tell Mama?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m just saying that you stole the baby Jesus, and I was thinking how that’s a crime. Stealing, it’s a crime, you know, and they send people to jail for stealing things, even a plastic doll. Even something small like that or a piece of chewing gum.”

  Rainey’s chest was starting to heave up and down like she might start crying.

  “All I’m saying is . . . you ’member how Poppy and Grandma Mona taught us that new word? You member those baby pictures we saw in the library? On Google?”

  Rainey’s bottom lip curled and started shaking. She nodded her head.

  “How come you could go to jail for stealing that baby Jesus—which you won’t, ’cause I’m not gonna tell on you, I promise—but anyway, how come you could go to jail for that, but Mama might could do abortion on her baby and that wouldn’t be against the law?”

  Rainey shook her head.

  “It doesn’t seem right to me,” I said. “Seems like doing that to a real baby’d be worse than stealing a dumb plastic one.”

  “Uh-huh.” A tear escaped Rainey’s left eye and plopped to her chest. “I not go jail.”

  “And then I started thinking, you know what?”

  “What.”

  “What if Jesus really was in Mama’s tummy?”

  “Baby Jesus in Mama’s tummy,” said Rainey.

  “I know, but what if he really was. I mean, what if Jesus hadn’t come two thousand years ago, but he waited to come now. And what if Mary, like Mama, had thought she didn’t want to have a baby. She could have un-borned him, and Jesus never would have come into the world. Can you imagine? If Jesus were to come today, he might not have been born at all. There’d be no Christmas, no Easter, no church, nothing like that.”

  I could see I’d lost Rainey somewhere along the way. She was rubbing her fingers and fretting, looking toward our closed bedroom door. She got up and dug around for her baby Jesus and ran to the dresser, quick like a ninja. She opened the bottom drawer, moved aside so
me clothes, and stuffed Baby Jesus in a new, better hiding place. She was a criminal now. She knew it. She’d have to be more careful for nobody to find the evidence.

  Mama seemed to shut down completely. She’d stay in bed until it was time for her to drive Rainey to work. She wouldn’t talk. She’d look out the window for long, long periods of time and tear up at nearly everything . . . the grass growing, a bird chirping, the wind blowing.

  Uncle Fritz would call the house and leave her messages saying, “Thought I’d stop by later on, see how you’re doing.” “Please call me back.” “There’s nothing we can’t handle together. I’m your brother.” “Please promise you’ll call me before doing anything drastic.”

  At one point he came to the front door and knocked. “Don’t answer that,” Mama said in a hushed voice.

  “But it Fritz,” said Rainey.

  “Rainey, please. Just do as your mother says.”

  After trying the doorknob and finding it locked, Fritz walked back down to his car and looked at the house real sad-like before getting back in and driving off.

  Later that day, Mama picked up the telephone. Rainey and I were at the kitchen table eating some grits that Mama forgot to salt and butter. Rainey’s face looked funny as she tried to gum her way through her bowl. “Yuck,” she said, and got up to get the butter herself. Mama walked out of the kitchen, the phone cord trailing behind her, and started talking real low. But I could hear her.

  “Hi, this is Priscilla Macy. I need to make an appointment. Yes, I realize I canceled the other one, but I’ve changed my mind now.”

  Rainey cut two big chunks of butter from the stick and licked her lips as she plopped them in her steaming grits.

  “Yes. I’m sure,” said Mama. “Between eight and nine weeks. Thank you. Friday? That’s . . . two days. Fine, I’ll see you then.”

  Chapter Forty-three

  A PURPOSE IN LIFE

  {Mona}

  If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this: our purpose in life has very little, if anything, to do with ourselves. Sadly, this is a fact most discover much too late. We spend our days making decisions that will better ourselves, our goals, our quality of life, only to find later that those same decisions are the ones we regret the most. This is not an easy lesson. I, in fact, learned it the hard way.

  With no one else around to explain things to Janie, it had fallen upon me to teach her what I knew. I wasn’t sure how Janie would accept the news about her role in the Macy family and the fact that she did, indeed, have a part to play in it. A very important part.

  Now that Harlan had disappeared as I knew he would, and Priscilla had pushed Fritz away and had come up with the cockamamie idea that she had—that she could not bear her baby any longer—well, sure as the stars, I knew it was time again for me to get involved.

  I found Priscilla whimpering and babbling one night in the dark. “Oh, dear Lord, there is nothing left for me to do. I’ll have to get a job. I’ll get a job so I can stick the baby in day care so that I can go to work to pay for the day care! I’ll spend the rest of my days slopping pancakes while he’s off riding Marilyn.” I moved in and sat next to her. She stilled when I put my hand on hers. “Wouldn’t it be more humane to . . . why would I want to bring a child into a world with no father, where people don’t keep their promises . . . and the world is overcrowded anyway . . . and the terrorists, I mean, it’s just a matter of time . . . war and sickness . . . not to mention . . .”

  I rubbed her forehead and ran my hand along her crown. “Oh Priscilla, dear child. You are making the biggest mistake of your life if you do this. Or maybe second biggest. Third, counting Harlan—no, fourth, counting cutting your hair when you were younger.”

  I smiled in the darkness, but she rolled over and shunned me like she was doing everyone who loved her. I took the hint and exited quietly. For a moment, it felt like it did when she was a little girl, except back then she was in the green room. That feeling a mother, a parent, has, of leaving the room with a sleeping child safe behind its doors is like nothing else in the whole world. It’s as if in those moments everything makes sense, seems manageable, is worth waking up for the next day. No matter what struggles the daylight will bring, it’s that moment of exiting your child’s room that refreshes a parent. Fortifies a mother.

  But on this evening, middle of July, knowing the trouble my grown-up child had gotten herself into and knowing how hard it would be to dig her out, I walked heavy-footed out the door, the weight of the family on my shoulders. There was no happy feeling to be had.

  I walked to the green room where the girls were supposed to be asleep, but when I peeked in, I saw Janie sitting straight up in the dark. Her back was to me and she was facing the faint light from the window. She was holding something in her hands and rocking.

  Soon as the door creaked, Janie shuffled and stuck it—whatever it was—under the covers. Rainey was breathing heavy and slow. Janie turned my way.

  “Just came to say good night. Wanted to check on you is all.”

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  “Janie.”

  “Huh?”

  This was one of the toughest moments I could remember. I just needed to say the first words, to get started and build some momentum.

  “Get on up and come with me, child. I’ve got . . . something to show you.”

  Chapter Forty-four

  MIDNIGHT STROLL

  {Janie}

  It was nighttime. I barely ever went outside in the nighttime, and certainly never left home when I did it, but on this night, Grandma Mona was with me. I’m not sure why this made me feel better. She wasn’t my favorite person, although I knew she loved me if only in her strange way. Family members have to love each other. It’s a rule. Maybe having a grown-up say it was okay, no matter who it was, made it all right to be outside in the dark where damp air could make me catch cold and who-knew-what was waiting to grab me. But still. Something inside me knew a young girl never leaves the house in the middle of the night in a strange new town, even if it is to see something “of the utmost importance,” like Grandma Mona had said it was.

  We had no flashlight, so my eyes searched for any light they could find. The world was surprisingly blue after my eyes adjusted to the darkness. Everything looked different—our gingerbread house was just a dark structure no different from Mrs. Shoemaker’s yellow one across the street or the other houses along Vinca Lane. We walked along the sidewalk with the quiet click-brush, click-brush of Grandma Mona’s old lady shoes. I couldn’t see the flowers in the sidewalk cracks. They’d become invisible along with everything I remembered this way. We were headed in the direction of the library and of Uncle Fritz’s church.

  “Where are we going?” I asked again.

  I felt the long, hard fingers of Grandma Mona brush against me, then she took my hand and held it gently. I didn’t pull away. The feel of her hand in mine brought back memories of Poppy’s small, padded hand, how his heat would calm my soul. Somehow, maybe the simple act of connecting with another human being, even if it was Grandma Mona, was just what I needed now. I held her back, and we walked hand in hand.

  “Oh Janie, I know this last month must have been difficult for you—your mother’s big news, leaving home, coming here to Forest Pines, and to top it all off, your father. Not to mention Grayson. Oh, I know how close you were to your granddaddy. I’m real sorry for how sad it makes you, missing him the way you do. I miss him too, you know.”

  “But he’s in heaven, and we’ll see him again one day. Right?” I said this more to comfort my grandmother, but I found the saying of it to be a comfort for me as well.

  “Yes. Absolutely,” she said. “We will be with Poppy again one day. He’s in heaven, and it’s the finest place you ever want to go. Once you get there, you’ll never wish to leave again.”

  “So where are we going now?” I asked one more time.

  “Janie, you and I are taking a little walk to go visit with Poppy.”


  “Visit with Poppy? In heaven?”

  “Well, what I mean is . . . some people find comfort in visiting the graves of their loved ones . . . after they’re gone.”

  I stopped in my tracks, and Grandma Mona turned to face me. In the moonlight, I could see a glimmer in her eyes.

  “Don’t be afraid, child.”

  “But I don’t like cemeteries. There’s ghosts and stuff, and it’s dark, and anyway, Poppy’s not even there. He’s in heaven. There’s no reason to go, and especially no reason to go at night.”

  “Janie, I heard every word you said, and I know how you feel.” She took my other hand and bent down lower to my face. “I’m going to ask you to trust me right now, and it’s not the last time I’m going to ask you this. I know I haven’t always seemed like the nicest person, but I love you. I always have. I love your Mama and Rainey, Fritz, and I still love Poppy, even though he’s gone. But I need you to trust me right now. I am older than you. There are some things I know that you need to know. So we’re going to the church right now. Not another word, please.”

  And with that we continued walking, and my mind filled with Poppy and headstones and Grandma Mona’s eyes glittering in the moonlight. And how I shouldn’t speak another word of protest. But my senses grew sharp in the darkness. I could hear the squeaking and flapping of bats, and my eyes searched out lights on front porches and streetlamps. Before I knew it, one foot had led after the other and I could see the well-lit words on the sign for Covenant Church.

  A deep chill blew through me. We were here. In the dark. At a cemetery. There was no turning back.

  I had never been to a church at night. It was strange how something so glorious-seeming in the day could seem scary and foreboding when the shadows swallowed all the bright-white places. I gripped Grandma Mona’s hand tighter and we moved slowly around the church to the left. We walked right past the manger with the Mary, Joseph, and empty hay cradle. I was glad it was dark for just a second so Grandma Mona couldn’t see what was missing.