Saving Cicadas Read online

  To be honest, I still didn’t know who the father was. It’s not like Mama ever brought anyone to the house. Not in a very long time anyway. She tried to keep men away from us, I think, so we didn’t get attached to one and have him leave and break our hearts. It had appened with Daddy. Mama was tapping her foot and pulling her hair on the side of her head while she talked. It was a bad habit. One of these days, I figured it would fall right out.

  “No, he doesn’t know,” she told Alisha. My stomach churned, thinking of her secret. I wondered when Mama was going to tell the father. She had to. Or did she? It was strange, knowing women had so much power over men.

  Mama sighed and said, “I just don’t think I can do this again. I will. Listen, we’re, um, we’re going to take off for a while. No. I don’t know. I have to go. I’ve got to think about all this.”

  “Mama?” I whispered, seeing how upset this was making her. Rainey was next to me now, watching Mama and looking confused. “Five weeks or so,” she said, turning away from us and trying to talk softer. “I’ve got—what?—a month, two tops, to figure this out. I just can’t believe it. Not again. Listen, I need to go. I’ll call you when I get back, all right? I really . . . have a good . . . Bye.”

  Mama strangled the phone and made sure it was dead before she pressed it to her forehead and turned away from me. She took two slow steps into the house, then said, quiet but firm, “Go pack your bags.”

  “Why?” Rainey said, alarmed.

  “Yeah, why?” I asked.

  “We’re leaving.”

  “Where we goin’?”

  Mama sighed again. “Rainey, I don’t know. Just do what I said, all right? Pack some bags. We leave first thing in the morning.”

  “We go on ba-cation, Mama?” asked Rainey.

  My mother faced me, and her pretty blue eyes were extra-double-bagged and droopy. “Yeah, something like that. I don’t know. We’re just . . . going anywhere. Far away. Just . . . not here.”

  Rainey, not one to spring things on, looked panicked. She put her hands over her ears like she always did when she was really upset. So Mama took her hands and brought them to her lips. She smiled and kissed them. “It’s summertime, baby. Let’s go see the world, okay? Life is out there, waiting. We just have to find it.”

  Rainey lit up. An adventure didn’t sound so scary.

  “Like Dora! We get the treasure. We go over the bridge, cross the forest . . .”

  And just like that, our world changed. Mama was the heart of our family, the center of our world. Rainey and me, we loved Mama, and we’d follow her anywhere—to heaven and back or further if needed. As long as it made her happy. It was all Rainey and I ever wanted—for Mama to be happy. Right now, she was anything but.

  Chapter Seven

  TRAVELING IN STYLE

  There was something special about our transportation. After my daddy left, my mother visited this used-car salesman named Carl down at the car place. Carl was about as exciting as a rock, but the pickins were slim in Cypresswood. Mama might have seen him only once or twice, but before she broke it off with him, Carl sold her a white 1996 Crown Victoria Police Interceptor. She said it was a steal but paid real money for it, so it wasn’t really stealing. Police cars have to have all the police stuff stripped off of them before being sold. Carl made sure the car was stripped, and then he added a few things back in for my mother after the sale, hoping to get on her good side again.

  Mama got rid of Carl right quick, but our car turned out to be a keeper. It had a siren and front lights that flashed and everything, stuff that came in handy every now and again.

  Rainey was sitting in the middle of the wide backseat, her feet bouncing up and down on the rubber floor.

  “Put your seat belt back on, honey.” Mama was looking in the rearview mirror.

  Rainey moved to the seat directly behind Mama and worked on stretching the belt around her puffy hips. She’d always been a little on the heavy side, never giving second helpings a second thought.

  “Do you need help?” I asked her. But I knew what she’d say.

  “I can do it myself.” So I watched as she stretched and fumbled. Finally, I heard a click and relaxed.

  “Nice day for car ride,” I heard her say.

  “Sure is.”

  “I’m having fun.” I turned and watched her pull her feet up cross-legged, cradling her left foot. The look in her eyes showed she was worried, so I smiled at her to let her know everything was going to be okay. Then I heard the distinct sounds of my grandparents shuffling over.

  “. . . from a perfectly good nap, Grayson. Why do I have to go anyway? This is about her. It’s her life.” It was Grandma Mona and my grandfather, Poppy. Poppy was the only man in my world. Usually, he was the voice of reason and the total opposite of Grandma Mona. I wasn’t sure how he put up with her to begin with, but they’d been apart for a good long while. I wasn’t clear on the particulars, but they’d only gotten back together a year or so ago.

  “Because we’re a family, Mona. And families stick together.”

  “Coming from somebody else, I might believe that,” she said.

  “Just get in the car.”

  “Mama,” I whispered, “you really want them to come? Grandma Mona, I mean?”

  “I heard that,” said Grandma Mona. “Don’t think I didn’t hear it.” My grandmother slipped in to the middle seat beside Rainey, and Poppy sat behind me, next to her. He was a little man, shorter than Grandma Mona, but he had a big heart. And he loved me, this I knew. He still had dark hair, not so much on the top but more on the sides. His hands were small and aged. I reached back over the seat and patted the headrest. Poppy touched my hand and squeezed it, letting me know he was right there behind me. Always there for me. I felt the warmth of his hand, and it calmed me.

  “Okay then,” said Mama, buckling herself in and turning around one last time to smile at Rainey. “All aboard. Who’s ready for a little adventure?”

  “Me!” said Rainey, grinning full throttle.

  The rest of us—me, Grandma Mona, and Poppy—sat quietly, eyes closed or staring out the window. God only knew what we were really in for.

  The sky was bright blue-jay blue with clouds dotting around here and there. The sun was shining on the back of us, so no need yet for sunglasses. I was quiet, studying my mother, who was concentrating on her driving so intently that at times her eyebrows touched. She looked tired as usual, but had attempted to put some makeup on—mascara, pink lipstick. I wasn’t sure why.

  “We know where we’re going yet?” asked Poppy.

  “Who goes on vacation with no destination?” said Grandma Mona. “And with gas prices so high . . .”

  I turned around and glared at them both to be quiet and not to push. Mama sat back and positioned her hands on the wheel. I was afraid she’d cry again, and I didn’t think I could stand that.

  “What did you tell Bob?” asked Poppy. Then, turning to Grandma Mona, he whispered, “What’d she tell Bob? Did he let her off work?” “She told him where he could shove his little two-bit job.”

  “No she didn’t. Really?”

  “I don’t know, Grayson,” she said. “Priscilla doesn’t confide in me with these sorts of things. Knowing her, he’s holding the job for her until she gets back.”

  “That’s good,” he said. “Girl’s got to have a job. Having another baby and all.”

  I squeezed my eyes closed. I was praying my mother didn’t lose it, listening to those two. They could go at it for hours, talking about you behind your back like you weren’t even there. It was maddening.

  We pulled into the parking lot of Hardee’s and waited in the drive-thru behind about seven cars. The line moved slower than a funeral procession. I never did understand why fast-food lines seemed to move so slowly. When we got up to the window, I imagined myself on the other side, scooping up hash browns, dishing out change. I’d probably be slow at it, too, someday. A bagful of sausage-and- egg biscuits later, we were back o
n the road.

  “Who’s hungry?” Mama sang.

  “Me!” said Rainey.

  “Not me,” I said. I was too jittery to eat. Mama reached a biscuit over her head to Rainey, while Grandma Mona and Poppy stayed quiet. Eating wasn’t on their minds either.

  Traffic was picking up, and my mother turned on the radio. A country music crying song was on.

  “I can’t stand this music,” said Poppy. “Don’t you have anything with a horn in it? How ’bout some jazz. Dizzie or Chet.”

  “Sorry, Poppy,” I said. “Nothing like that in this town. We do have a couple cassettes though. How about John Mayer?”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “Mama, play John Mayer,” said Rainey.

  “Okay, honey. Just a minute.”

  Mama ripped open a packet of mustard with her teeth and squeezed it on her sausage biscuit while driving. She took a mouthful, and I smelled her coffee, breathing it in. The smell had wafted to the backseat too.

  “You really shouldn’t drink that coffee, Priscilla.”

  Mama’s cheeks looked like a chipmunk’s.

  “But she has to have her coffee, Grandma Mona,” I said, sticking up for her. “One cup of coffee won’t matter much.”

  “What do you mean it won’t matter? Are you pregnant or not, Priscilla?”

  Poppy said, “Leave her alone, Mona. You know she is.”

  “Then it matters,” said Grandma Mona. “I’ll have you know I didn’t drink alcohol or smoke when I had Priscilla. I did, however, drink a pot of coffee a day. Draw your own conclusions.”

  Mama picked up the coffee and inhaled. She wrinkled her nose. Thinking, thinking . . . We were all watching to see if she’d drink it when she rolled down the window and poured it out. Just like that. Brown spray flew up against Rainey’s window.

  “Oh, that’s nice. Look at that,” said Grandma Mona.

  “A perfectly good cup. Gone,” said Poppy. “She acts like money grows on trees.”

  “I hope you’re happy,” Grandma Mona said to my mother.

  “I hope you’re all happy,” I said. “You’re upsetting Mama. Why don’t we just play the quiet game? Whoever’s quietest wins.”

  “I gonna win,” said Rainey. “I always win, right, Mama?

  “Yes, honey. You are a winner.”

  This was going to be a very long trip. It’d been years since we went anywhere with Grandma Mona. The last time was Disney. Mama and Daddy saved up for two years to take us there. This time, well, I had no idea how much she’d saved up. ’Course, how much money did we really need, going on a trip to nowhere?

  We eased out onto North view, which led to the interstate. I knew how stressed my mother was, so I was trying to leave her alone about the whole where-are-we-going thing. I waited to see if she was heading east toward the ocean or west toward the mountains.

  “Mama?” said Rainey. “Roll up the window.”

  What she meant was “down,” and this being a former cop car, the doors and the windows wouldn’t work from the backseat. Better to keep the prisoners in, I guessed. Mama flicked the switch and Rainey’s window went down with a slow whoosh. She stuck her head out as far as she could with the seat belt holding her back. I craned my neck, watching her face light up in the wind, her shoulder-length hair blowing furiously around her. Rainey’s eyes were tightly closed as if she was thinking hard, as if she was listening to God out there in the wind. I watched her and wondered, what in the world is he saying to her now?

  “Close your lips, Rain. You’re gonna get bugs in your teeth.”

  She closed her mouth and slipped back inside, her hair crazed. Her eyes were smiling, and she moved her tongue around, checking for bugs, just in case.

  Mama was still nibbling on her biscuit, and Grandma Mona said, “Let me know if you start feeling sick or anything, Priscilla. We’ll have to put you in the backseat with the rubber floor.” I looked at my mother and suddenly wished I was in the backseat and out of her range.

  She signaled right, and we pulled onto the ramp for I-26 West. We were going to the mountains. The last time we went to the mountains, it was right after my daddy left. Mama said he was headed for the hills, so off we went, chasing after him. Never did find him. I wondered what we’re doing now, how long we were going to stay up in the mountains. Were we going to find Daddy? No. I pushed the thought out of my head. Maybe Mama’d get tired and miss our house. Maybe we’d run out of money and she’d head back to the egg salad nesting in the freezer. We’d probably be home in our own beds tonight.

  “I know you’re not going where I think you’re going,” said Grandma Mona.

  I heard the wheels humming below us and watched the trees getting taller.

  “We don’t have to go anywhere, you know,” I told Mama.

  “Yes we do,” said Grandma Mona. “Priscilla does. Don’t you, Priscilla? Like when she was pregnant with Rainey, she just took off. Isn’t that what you do, Priscilla? Tell your daughters. They’re old enough to know.”

  Mama hadn’t mentioned this before. She’d never really talked about her giving birth to Rainey. But something about the movement of the car allowed her to start talking. Maybe it was that she didn’t have to look us in the eye.

  “I was almost your age when I found out I was having you, Rainey. My mother was not nearly as understanding as yours. She told me what she expected me to do. She would have forced me if I’d stayed.” “To do what?” asked Rainey.

  “Yeah, what did she want you to do?” I asked.

  “That is quite enough, Priscilla,” said Grandma Mona. “Why don’t you tell her the truth? How you wouldn’t stop running around with that Johnson boy. Now there’s a good story.”

  “We were living in Yuma, Arizona, at the time,” Mama said, ignoring my question and Grandma Mona’s meanness. “Daddy’s job had moved us there. ‘We’ve only been here a year, Priscilla! Now what will everybody think?!’ ” Mama did an impression of Grandma Mona that I thought sounded a lot like her. Grandma Mona didn’t think it was so funny though.

  “Well truly. Everybody did think it. They did. You know I was right, Priscilla. We were living in different times.”

  Mama sniffed and wiped her face with the back of her right hand, and I wished I could open the door, jump, and roll right out of this pressure cooker. But I couldn’t. Mama needed me.

  “So you left home,” I said. “You drove to Cypresswood, South Carolina, by yourself?”

  “I hitched a ride to California, thinking I’d like it out there. But it was too close to home. So I waited tables for a week and took a bus all the way across country. I’d get off at each stop and look around, but I never felt like staying anywhere. The ground was too dry and dusty—hard like my home had been.”

  “It wasn’t so hard,” said Grandma Mona. “Your mother’s exaggerating, girls. Isn’t she, Grayson?”

  “I was sixteen and pregnant and not an ounce of sense in me. I decided to stay wherever it was raining, and three days later, I’m in Cypresswood in a big thunder-boomer. I was a little disappointed I didn’t make it all the way to the ocean.”

  “If you want the ocean, why you got off the bus?” asked Rainey. It was a very smart question.

  “I told you. I loved the rain. I’d made a deal with myself.”

  “The clouds should have held out at least till Forest Pines,” said Grandma Mona. “If it hadn’t rained in Cypresswood, you might never have had Harlan in your lives.”

  Hmm. Well, that shut Mama up. Harlan was my daddy. He rode a Harley-Davidson named Marilyn after Marilyn Monroe, a dead movie star. I hardly remembered Daddy, seeing as he left when I was four. I did remember his brown hair was long in the back. And it was going gray down the sides too, so when the wind had caught it just right, it looked like he had two white wings coming out the back of him. I also had this memory of him and me riding to the Dairy Queen in Fervor, me holding on for dear life. Sometime after he left, my memory of my father started to fade. It’s a terri
ble thing to forget your father’s face, but it happens. At times, all I remembered of my father was an angel on a motorcycle.

  Mama really loved him, and she cried a whole long while when he left. Some for her, but mostly for Rainey and me. We cried too. Rainey practically lived in the hollow tree for a month. I remember she’d even take her meals out there.

  Driving down the road, every time a motorcycle would zoom past us, I’d check to see if it was him. Just an old habit. Mama said my daddy had a wild hair up his rear, and he finally ran off with Marilyn. I hoped they were happy, wherever they were.

  Mama looked up at the clouds and said, “I loved the rain so much, I named you Rainey, honey.”

  “I like my name.”

  “Yeah, me too,” said Mama. “Fits you better than Thunder or Boomer, don’t you think?”

  Mama smiled for the first time in days and set her head back on the rest, and Rainey pressed hers on the window. Poppy was already snoring in the backseat, and Grandma Mona had pickled herself quiet.

  For the rest of the morning, we drove in near silence through the state of South Carolina, Rainey having finally fallen asleep, and none of us wanting to disturb her. I felt like a little window had opened between my mother and the rest of us, and I didn’t want to close it. I looked up at the clear blue sky when we crossed the state line into North Carolina. Secretly, I was praying for rain and that Mama could finally stop running.

  Chapter Eight

  THANK GOD FOR GROCERY STORES

  Mama had this thing about not wanting to press her opinions on Rainey and me. She wanted us to express our “own self.” I guess it all went back to her mother, Grandma Mona. Mama was just the opposite of her. I wondered what kind of mother I’d be when I grew up, the overbearing kind or the have-it-your-own-way kind? If we always do the opposite of how we were raised, I feared I might be cruel. I guessed it all depended on what you believed in. I wondered what Mama believed when it came to her having this new baby. All I really knew about Mama’s beliefs were, you always tip a waitress no matter what, and you always pack an umbrella. Just in case. I patted my list of options folded in my pocket, to make sure it was still there. I’d work on it some more when nobody was watching.