Saving Cicadas Read online

  Poppy scratched the top of his head. “That’s a tough one, Janie. I’m not sure I’m . . . uh, Rainey, how ’bout you go on in and grab your grandmother for me. Tell her, her lovely presence is needed in the parking lot.”

  “No!” I said.

  “Please, Janie. I’m not so good at this sort of thing. Your Grandma Mona can tell it better than I can, being a woman and all.”

  Woman things. I didn’t think of that. I supposed Grandma Mona was a woman. “But she’s so—”

  “What?”

  “Mean.”

  “Yeah . . . sometimes she is.” Poppy touched my shoulder and turned me to him. He bent down on one knee, and I was thinking to myself, My mama was the luckiest girl ever, having Poppy as her daddy. In that second I wondered what in the world she could ever complain about. At least she had her daddy with her now. “See, some folks have a hard time telling you how they really feel,” he said. “Sometimes they put up a firm face, a sharp tongue, even, when really, they don’t mean it.”

  “So they’re pretending . . . like the mockingbird?”

  “Sort of. It’s just their way of coping with things that hurt them.” “So everything hurts Grandma Mona?”

  Poppy laughed, not at me, but in a nice way, and said, “Just about. But really, she’s had a world of hurt in her lifetime.”

  “Like what? Like you leaving for so long?” My face burned hot when I realized what’d come out of my mouth.

  “Yes, like what?” said Grandma Mona, arms on hips, ears flaming and eyes angled crossways at Poppy. I’m betting he didn’t know she was out here already. I sure as all get-out did not.

  “Janie and I were just talking . . . about Priscilla.”

  “Mm-hmm. That so?” she said.

  “And Janie had a question for you. It stumped me.”

  “This should be good.” Grandma Mona stood there a minute, but I was too afraid to speak. It wasn’t at all like talking with Poppy. Grandma Mona reminded me of a snake up in the air, ready to strike. “Well what is it, child? Spit it out.”

  “I don’t know what the third choice is.” I blurted.

  “The what?”

  “She means . . . Janie overheard Priscilla talking on the telephone about three choices having to do with the new baby. She already knows two choices—keep the baby or give it up for adoption—but she doesn’t know what a third choice might be.”

  Grandma Mona’s eyebrows rose like hot-air balloons, then they deflated and fell to her nose. “That so?” she said. “Well, I’m not sure this is appropriate talk for a young girl.”

  “She’s asking a question, Mona.”

  “I know it, but she’s an innocent child.”

  “Innocence never protected anyone.” Poppy and Grandma Mona exchanged a look that spoke of things I knew nothing about.

  “Oh, good heavens. I guess you’ll learn this sooner or later.” She shook her head as if the thought was unpleasant and she was trying to squeeze it out. “The third choice is not to have the baby.”

  “You mean give the baby away?”

  “No, I mean not to have the baby.”

  “But I don’t understand,” I stammered. “The baby’s in Mama’s tummy. Right?”

  “Technically, yes,” said Grandma Mona, “but your mother can choose to not let it be born if she wants to.”

  I tried to let that sit a minute, but my mind was scrambling, imagining angels reaching into tummies and mamas making deals with God to take their babies back. “It doesn’t make sense. Poppy?”

  “Don’t look at me honey, I don’t make the rules.”

  “Who does?” I asked.

  “Well, the Supreme Court,” said Grandma Mona, “and everyday people like you and your sister, your mother, me. Just good people, trying to do what they think is right. Trying to survive.”

  “I thought God made the rules.” I was so confused I could spit. I sat down next to Rainey and put my hand in the water, reaching for a coin. Then I remembered hearing something about God not liking lukewarm water. I didn’t like it either, so I pulled it out and dried my hand off on my shirt.

  “So how?” I asked. “How do you not be born?”

  “There’s a procedure,” said Grandma Mona. “With a doctor and all. Sort of like . . . being born, but the opposite of that.”

  “What happens to the baby?” I asked.

  “It just . . . doesn’t exist, honey,” said Poppy. “It just—”

  “Tell her what the procedure is called,” said Grandma Mona, grave, staring at the asphalt.

  “I really don’t want to,” he said.

  “Remember why we’re here. Why we needed to come along.”

  “I can’t,” he said.

  “Fine. Abortion.” Grandma Mona’s lips were shut tight and wrinkled like she ate a lemon, like the word tasted bitter on her tongue.

  “Jesus the baby,” said Rainey, piping up. “He in Mama tummy . . . with that ’bortion. How you spell it?” Her eyes were working hard to picture the letters. She loved learning new words.

  “Oh honey, don’t you mind. Now run along. We’ll be there in a minute.”

  “A-b-o—““Mona! She might look it up!”

  “I am aware of that. A-b-o-r—”

  “Mona, please.”

  “Grayson Macy,” said Grandma Mona, and I knew it wasn’t good because she used his full name. “This is America. Rainey is a young woman in America. You are not. She may need to know this term someday, especially if her mother is considering it as an option.”

  Grandma Mona’s eyes meant business, so Poppy said, “Oh gracious, I suppose there’s no way around it.” Then he spelled that word for us, the one that meant un-borning a baby, and we all headed inside to the damp, musty motel room, deadly quiet. No more words between us. I guess it was because that one new word we learned was quite enough to speak of for the night.

  Chapter Seventeen

  THE LITTLE THIEF

  The next morning, I woke up in the motel room before anybody else did. I saw the darkness first, then a sliver of light coming in at the bottom of the curtains. I listened to the saws and snorts from Poppy and Grandma Mona, while Rainey kicked her feet.

  I tried not to make a sound, but there was no way to go outdoors. Somebody would hear me. I was a captive of the room. I looked over at Mama sleeping. I couldn’t see her face, just a long lump under the covers. Her hand was dangling off the bed onto the nightstand. It rested beside a digital clock.

  I took a deep breath and closed my eyes again, pulling my knees up under my chin. I thought about Forest Pines and that pretty blue house. I thought about our house at home, and all I could remember was Mama wailing and making egg salad. I began to pray. Lord, please give Mama some peace. Please help that baby in her tummy. Please help me know what to do to help.

  I opened my eyes and the first thing I saw was that big brown purse of Mama’s. I got a naughty idea, and I knew it was naughty, but at the same time, I knew it was what I had to do.

  After Mama woke up, Rainey got up, then Poppy and Grandma Mona. I let them all do their morning things, getting ready, taking showers, the whole bit. I stayed quiet, invisible on the couch. I was excited because I knew we were headed for the blue house that morning. I felt like my mother’s life had become a big mystery, and the key to her had something to do with that house.

  When it was time to go, Mama reached in her pocketbook to find her lipstick. She screamed when she couldn’t find her change purse. She looked and hollered and poured her purse out on the bed. Poppy was trying to reason with her, saying practical things like “Just think about where you had it last,” or “Try and retrace your steps.” Finally, Mama called the Piggly Wiggly and cried over the telephone. The manager said he’d keep an eye out for it. Mama said she didn’t believe she’d ever see it again.

  “I can’t believe this,” she said. “I cannot believe.” She balled her fists and looked up at the cracked gray ceiling. “Why?” she said. “Truly. Why? We have nothi
ng. Absolutely nothing.”

  But really, I knew where her money was; it was safe. And I knew I was making her unhappy for a while, but deep down I felt I was supposed to do it. I don’t know why. It’s the first time I’d ever felt that way. It was strong and forceful. A knowing beyond knowing. I always figured if God asked me to do something it wouldn’t involve stealing. But I was only eight and a half years old. Who was I to question the maker of the universe?

  We went back to the grocery store and Mama talked to everyone there, asking had they seen her change purse. She even said there was a reward if somebody did find it. Not sure what the reward was, but nobody claimed it. After Mama gave up looking and finally stopped crying, we found ourselves standing on the porch of the blue gingerbread house on Vinca Lane, where the Macy family went back a hundred and forty-three years. Poppy was running his fingers over the railing and woodwork, admiring it, remembering it. Grandma Mona stood taut, clutching her red purse in her skinny fingers and clearing her throat every second or two. Rainey was looking at me with nervous eyes, petting the wings of her dying bug for good luck, and Mama was standing limp shouldered, hand over doorbell, waiting—for nerve or for somebody else to relieve her from her task.

  “Just open it, for heaven’s sake,” said Grandma Mona. “Ring it already. You’re not getting any younger.”

  Mama took a deep breath and punched the white button surrounded by fancy etched flowers in brass, then she pulled away quick like she was embarrassed to have made a sound. An old lady across the street in a yellow Victorian not as nice as this one was watching us from her front porch. She was pushing a broom back and forth, sweeping slow like a person who wants to seem like she’s cleaning but mostly’s trying to hide the fact that she’s nosing around in the neighbors’ beeswax.

  The door started to open, and Mama gasped. So I held my breath. I was nervous as all get-out and didn’t rightly know why, like maybe a ghost would be standing there. But it was no ghost. There was a tall, skinny man, older than Mama but younger than Poppy, and he looked a whole heck of a lot like Grandma Mona. Except for not so mean.

  “Fritz,” Mama said.

  “Oh my—Priscilla? Is it really you?”

  Mister Fritz seemed to be taking us all in and could hardly believe we were standing there before his very eyes.

  “Fritz,” said Grandma Mona, “it’s been a long time.”

  “Well, my goodness, come in,” he said. “I’m . . . I was hoping I’d see you. After all these years.” Mister Fritz spoke with faraway stars in his eyes.

  “Yes,” said Mama, still tight-lipped. “It’s been a long time.”

  Mama looked at Fritz, and he looked back at her, and then all of us said our hellos and shuffled into the house like nothing at all was strange about us being here after all these years. Nothing at all was strange about meeting a man you didn’t know existed, who just happened to look a lot like your Grandma Mona. Nothing at all was strange about stepping into your great-grandparents’ house that was said to be haunted with ghosts and family secrets, with gladiola wallpaper going up the stairs to the rooms where your mama once played when she was young and happy and life was simple.

  Before she left home, dead to the family, alone in the world. And now she was back, her fatherless children in tow.

  No, nothing at all was strange about that.

  Part Two

  EATING THE

  GINGERBREAD HOUSE

  Chapter Eighteen

  WHICHEVER WAY THE POT FALLS

  Mister Fritz looked like he was young and old at the same time—no wrinkles or anything—but there was gray around his face. He towered over Poppy, who, at this moment, seemed he’d died and gone to heaven, staring over all the faded brown portraits of people on the walls.

  Grandma Mona was not much for saying howdy-do and got that out of the way real quick. Now she was in the sewing room that sat off to the right of the front door. She was pressed up to the little sewing table, turning spools of colored thread and thimbles in her fingers. I hadn’t realized she liked to sew. Watching my grandparents here in this house was sort of like seeing them when they were younger. Like their heads had filled with olden days. I looked back at the front door and wondered if we’d walked through a time machine.

  Mama and Rainey were sitting with Mister Fritz in the fancy living room on the other side of the hall. He’d gotten them cups of iced tea, but I declined. I was standing there in the middle of the hallway, torn between rooms, trying to take it all in.

  I had never walked into a place and felt that I had history, or roots, in my life. It was as if all my life I’d been just waiting to come to this very house. Everybody—Poppy, Grandma Mona, Mama—seemed to have found pieces of themselves here, like they weren’t really themselves until they got here and the house popped in that last piece of the puzzle.

  Rainey was strangely quiet and well behaved. I could tell she liked this Mister Fritz. She was usually a good judge of character, except for mangy dogs, so I supposed I’d like him too. Rainey was sipping her tea and had her knees pulled together on the sofa, like Mama did. Rainey was copying everything Mama was doing. Every time she took a sip, Rainey took a sip. If she turned her body or crossed her legs, Rainey did it too. It was how Rainey learned what to do in situations she wasn’t used to. She was real smart that way.

  “It’s good to see you, Priscilla,” I heard Fritz said, “and so wonderful to meet you, Rainey. I see you’re every bit as beautiful as your mama.”

  Rainey grinned bigger than I’d ever seen. She forgot being graceful and pulled her shoulders up to her ears like a little girl. Don’t you know, she spilled her tea on that pretty rug?

  “Not to worry. I’ll get that,” said Fritz, standing up, sort of taking his time, and heading to the kitchen. I wondered if he was walking so slow because he couldn’t move fast or because he didn’t want Rainey to think it was a big deal, spilling tea on a rug that was probably a hundred or more years old. I was guessing it was a bigger deal than he was letting on, and it made me like him even more. Soon as he was out of the room, Mama said in a hush, “Rainey, can you please be more careful? My goodness, when I was little I wasn’t even allowed to take a drink in here. My grandma would have had my hide!”

  “Sorry, Mama.” Rainey turned all galumph-y again. She’d quit trying to be Mama and was just Rainey now, her head sagging low. She eyed her calm cicada on the doily beneath the window.

  “Why don’t you go on and look around the place? But please, honey, don’t touch anything, okay? Everything in here is a precious antique that used to belong to somebody important in the family.” Then she said real low, more to herself, “I can’t imagine what all this stuff is worth now.”

  “Let’s go upstairs,” I said. “Poppy’s looking at pictures.”

  So Rainey and I started to climb the stairway. It was in the middle of the hall directly in front of the door, and rose-colored carpet rolled up the middle with dark wood sticking out the sides. The rail was fancy, with a curly-q and wood pickets carved with swoops and swirls. Must have taken somebody a long time to make those pickets.

  “Look here, girls,” said Poppy. “You see this? This is your great-grandfather, Adolph Macy. Remember I was telling you about him?”

  “He dead,” said Rainey.

  I flitted down the steps for just a glimpse of my mama. I wanted to make sure she was all right now that she and Fritz were by themselves. He was sitting an arm’s length away from her on the sofa, looking down at her feet. Mama had her elbows on her knees and her hands covering her face. It was perfectly quiet, but I could tell she was upset. About what, I didn’t know. I knew they were waiting for me, so I climbed back up to join Rainey and Poppy.

  “Everybody in these pictures is dead, Rainey,” I said. “It’s no big deal. This one died in the war. On a land mine. We were talking ’bout him in the car.”

  The picture of Adolph Macy was brown and faded all around the edges, so it made him look like he was just floati
ng there with no body or anything. His eyes were colored in blacker than normal and real serious. Maybe somebody had come along with a marker. Made it look like he was staring right at you, or like you could see right into his head. He was real young to be Poppy’s father. Didn’t look much older than Rainey. She had his chin, though, square and fat, so I knew he was family.

  “And this one right here? This is my mother, Madeline Macy. She had some Indian in her, though we never did figure out what. Wasn’t really anything folks used to talk about. But see her cheekbones? Janie, you favor her a lot.” That was the first time I’d heard a grown-up say I looked like anybody at all, and it made me feel like I belonged. Maybe I did have a place in this family.

  “She was a good woman, my mother,” said Poppy. “Hardworking. She took care of me and my brother all by herself after Daddy went off to Korea. And when he didn’t come back, she just kept on as if nothing had ever happened. In my book, my mother was a hero, just like my father.”

  “You can be a hero just for acting like nothing ever happened?” “Absolutely. My mother never let us see her cry, even though I knew it was hard on her. It had to be. Because of Mama being so strong, my brother Jimmy and I just went on like nothing had ever happened either. It made it easier that way.”

  “Who’s this?” asked Rainey, putting her leg over the railing like she was going to slide down. She was pointing to the portrait to the left of Great-Grandma Madeline.

  “Get off the rail, honey. That won’t hold,” Poppy said. Rainey minded him and sat on the stairs. She never liked to be scolded. It wounded her for a few minutes before she could go on. Always had been that way. She was pouting, but I showed Poppy I was all ears for him. He got real animated then and said in a spooky voice, “This . . . is your Great-Aunt Gertrude. Her ghost is said to still be in this very house.”