Also Known As Harper (18 page)

She wiped at her nose with the back of her hand.

“It was too early.” Her voice made my stomach feel hollow. It made me remember what my whole family tried not to think about.

“What?” I narrowed my eyes at her.

“She wasn't supposed to come yet.” She looked down at her fancy pink sandals. “It wasn't time. She needed to wait for three more months.”

Finally, I knew exactly what she was saying.

Birdie was her mama's baby, and she'd forgotten to open her eyes.

Like Flannery.

Somehow, I must've forgotten it was Winnie Rae, because, the next thing I knew, I had my arm around her.

“She didn't open her eyes?” That baby-wipe smell was coming back to me like I was in Mama's hospital room again.

Winnie Rae looked at me. “She opened them.” She rubbed at a corner of her own eye. “They were gray. Birdie's eyes were gray.”

I nodded. “Just like yours.”

“Mama put a little pink hat on her.” She held her hands up to show me how small it was. “It was the one that I bought. It had a tiny white bow in the front.”

I thought about Flannery's peach sweater, and I knew Winnie Rae and her mama were never going to forget about that little hat with the tiny bow.

“Mama said Birdie didn't know how to breathe yet. Her lungs weren't all the way finished.” She took in a long breath of air, as if she was trying to do Birdie's breathing for her.

I scooted closer, so our toes were almost touching. “Listen here, Winnie Rae. I know about babies who never quite are.”

She looked me dead-on in the middles of my eyes.

“Because of Flannery.” And before I knew what was happening, some of the Flannery sadness crept up into the corners of my eyes.

“A baby?” She looked at me real confused, and
that was a Winnie Rae I wasn't in the least bit used to. The one I knew always acted as if she knew it all.

It was hard to look at her when everything that was coming out of her eyes was running down her face and mixing up with the mess that was coming out of her nose.

“I guess I didn't know you that good back then.” I reached over and pulled off a strip of toilet paper for her. “She never actually came home from the hospital with Mama.”

Winnie Rae took a swipe at her face with the end of the toilet paper.

“She died.” I don't think I'd ever said those words out loud, and it didn't even sound like my own voice when I was saying them.

I wiped at my eye with the back of my wrist. “What you're feeling like right now isn't going to go away for a while, that's for sure. So if you're wanting to talk some about Birdie . . .” I thought about Flannery's tiny fingernails, and my heart hurt in the deep-down corners. “If you're wanting to talk about Birdie, maybe we could do that once in a while.”

She moved her head ever so slightly, but I was dead certain it was a nod.

I peeked my head out of the bathroom door, and I
could see the corner of the maid cart through the front window. “Your auntie's liable to come looking for you.” I pulled at her arm. “And my mama and Lorraine and everybody are going to be wondering where I've gotten to.”

The funny thing was, a poem was trying to write itself in my head right then. When a poem was trying to come out, there was never a whole lot I could do to stop it. The best thing to do was just write it down.

 

Words seem more important

When they come through a microphone.

It fancies them up somehow

As if they're not even

Yours anymore.

But I know what

Is really important

Is not where you're standing

When you say them.

It's the one special person

That's listening hard

To hear

What you have to say.

 

 

 

 

 

“
I DON
'
T THINK
the roots go much deeper than this.” I pulled at the little peach tree in my old front yard.

Lorraine took hold of the trunk beside me, and we yanked it right out. “Dorothy loved fruit of any kind.”

She glanced back over her shoulder for the millionth time.

“I'll tell you what, Lorraine,” I said. “I don't much care if any Earlys do happen by. I planted this peach tree, and now it's going to be Dorothy's.”

She set the tree in Dorothy's green wheelbarrow and started to push it toward the road.

“Hold on there.” I scooped the loose dirt back into the hole and smoothed it out with the back of my shovel. Then I took the forget-me-not seeds out of my pocket and sprinkled them evenly over the patch of dirt.

Lorraine looked at me and nodded, and we made our way back to Dorothy's.

Mama didn't say one word when we got back with that peach tree. And I was pretty sure I saw the corners of her mouth smiling. Hem and Randall already had the hole dug pretty deep over to the side of Dorothy's porch, and all we had to do was set the tree down in.

Mrs. Kelley, Randall and Lorraine's mama, stood next to Mama and smiled at the little tree. “You might just get some peaches from that tree next year.” She sounded quite a bit like Lorraine, without the raspy voice. She sat on the bottom step of Dorothy's porch and smoothed her skirt over her legs. The skirt was blue and swirly, like the cloth that had covered my dresser in their tent.

Mama glanced back at Dorothy's house and smiled sadly at Mrs. Kelley. “I wish I'd had the time to get to know her.”

Mrs. Kelley nodded. “She meant the world to us. Especially to Lorraine.”

Lorraine looked over at Dorothy's wheelchair, parked in the corner of the porch. The string that used to hold the clipboard dangled from the handle and blew to the side in the breeze. She picked the
clipboard up from the porch and held a pen out to me. “I know she'd like it if you and Hem took care of the sign-ups.”

I took the pen and nodded. I could see Dorothy's face clear as day in my head, and those thinking lines she got about the eyes when she was concentrating on one of my poems. I was real happy to take care of something that was so important to her.

“She didn't like it when the schedule got messed up.” Lorraine shook her head and smiled, as if she was remembering.

I clipped the pen to the paper on the clipboard and turned toward Dorothy's screen door. I half expected Dorothy herself to come walking out with her hot chocolate. I could see the tall piles of batik cloth, folded and stacked on her kitchen counter. It seemed strange to see Randall and Lorraine's tent taken apart and separated into individual pieces like that.

Mrs. Kelley patted Lorraine's hand. “She had no one after her husband and daughter died.” She looked at Mama. “The lawyer said when she sold the property that the motel sits on she never spent a dime of it, except what she absolutely needed to get by.”

Hem tilted his nose up toward the sky. “She's got somebody else to take care of now.”

I knew right away what Hem was talking about, because I'd been thinking the same thing. I just hoped she'd had enough time to get ready for a baby up there.

“What's Hem talking about?” Mama looked up in the sky, as if she was trying to see what he was seeing.

“He means Baby Early,” I said.

Lorraine nodded. “Dorothy loved babies. She was always fawning all over the babies at the motel. She's definitely taking care of Birdie Early up there.”

I scooted Dorothy's kitchen chair closer to Lorraine. “It was kind of hard to get used to the drive-in movie theater being Dorothy's. But you knew it all along, didn't you?”

Lorraine smiled a tiny smile, but her eyes got shiny.

Maybe that was why she'd wanted to fix it up so badly. She'd wanted to make things nice again. For Dorothy.

I knew Dorothy had needed Lorraine, just as much as Lorraine had needed her. And that's why Dorothy's lawyer said everything now belonged to the Kelleys—the house, the drive-in, even the swimming pool.

Dorothy had filled in all those wide spaces that were left when Lorraine lost her words.

Lorraine stood up and wandered over toward the dirt pile.

Mrs. Kelley took a deep breath. “We're going to take our time at the clinic up north. The doctors there know all about helping people like Lorraine who have been through terrible events. We'll be away for at least six months. Probably longer.”

I finally had someone who was better than just a school friend, and here she was, up and leaving. Six months seemed so long. I had to keep reminding myself that it wasn't forever. She'd be coming back.

I looked at Mrs. Kelley. “They want to make sure she keeps her words?”

She nodded.

Mama ran her hand along the side of Dorothy's kitchen chair. “We'll take good care of the house for you. I promise. Your letting us stay here will help us get a leg up.”

Mrs. Kelley smiled. “You're the ones doing us a favor, believe me. It'll be worth the peace of mind I'll get, knowing someone is taking care of things.” She looked toward the screen door.

I thought about that foot pedal that opened the
refrigerator door, and how we would think about Dorothy and Lorraine every time we cooked up some hot chocolate on the old stove.

And just as if Mama was reading my mind, she took my hand and said, “Maybe we'll have a new refrigerator of our own by next year.”

“How about an old one with a foot pedal?” I knew that sometimes old things could be a lot more interesting than new ones.

Mrs. Kelley fished her car keys out of her pocketbook and stood up. “We'd better get a move on before the afternoon traffic starts up.” She waved at Randall. He was digging a long trench in the dirt pile with Hem. “Come on, now, and say your good-byes!”

Even though we were living in the house that was now theirs, I needed to know for sure that they'd be back.

It was as if Lorraine had listened in on my thoughts, because she stood very still and looked at me straight-on. “I'm going to be thinking about you every day,” she said.

I smiled my best smile, the one that leaks over into my eyes. “Me, too.”

She put her hand out like she was stopping traffic. “Wait here.”

She ran into the house and came out with a purple batik cloth. She shook it out and put it around my shoulders. “It's the first one I ever made.”

I reached down into my backpack and brought out a little notebook. It was like Lorraine's sketchbook, only smaller. And I'd decorated the front and back with blue forget-me-nots.

I handed it to her. “They're all in there. I copied them in my best handwriting.”

“Your poems?” She hugged the book close, and then she hugged me.

I pulled the cloth snug around my shoulders and felt the purple soak into me. “You know,” I said, “your words were inside of you the whole time. Nothing was lost.”

She ran her fingers over the blue forget-me-nots and flipped the cover open to the first page. She took her time walking to the car, reading the whole way.

Randall leaned over the back seat and waved out the rear window of the car, and Hem waved until he couldn't possibly see the car anymore.

And then he went and all-out surprised me. He turned back toward the dirt pile and took up his shovel.

I didn't mean to say it out loud, but the words
came out before I could catch them. “Isn't it time to do your waiting?”

“Maybe tomorrow.” He looked over his shoulder at me real quick like and went back to his digging.

I let out a long breath of relief. Knowing Hem, by tomorrow he could be right back to doing his waiting, but I sure was happy that he was learning to take a day off.

“Okay, then.” I dragged one of Dorothy's kitchen chairs off the porch and set it up next to the bottom step. Then I arranged the purple batik cloth over the top of the chair. In case Hem changed his mind, he would have a comfortable place to do his waiting.

I watched Hem play with Karen Lynn's bulldozer and thought how Dorothy was back with her family. Somehow thinking about all those Pines being together again made me feel all calm and quiet inside.

I sat down in the chair I'd fixed for Hem and thought I might feel the beginnings of a poem coming on.

But then those first words were stifled with a hint of something Early over my left shoulder. And as usual, I guess I smelled her before I saw her out of the corner of my eye. Winnie Rae Early stood at the edge
of the lawn and looked to be searching for something to say.

“That lady died, Harper Lee Morgan.” She put her hand on her hip like she was delivering up some fresh news. “My mama said she dropped dead not far from where you're standing.”

“That so?” I was inclined to use some of the words from the side of the projection house on Winnie Rae, but they stuck there on the way-back part of my tongue, not making their way outside of my mouth. I kept thinking about little Birdie Early, and I decided to let Winnie Rae run on at the mouth as much as she wanted for now.

“That ain't your property, Harper Lee Morgan, and you know it.” She pointed her nasty old voice in Hem's direction. “He oughtn't be digging holes in someone else's dirt pile. I might be forced to call the authorities.”

I kind of liked it when Winnie Rae had the wrong information. It got downright funny when she spouted off like she was the only one who knew what was going on.

She looked over my left shoulder, in the direction of the little peach tree, and her mouth dropped partway open, like she might be getting it ready to say
something. But I set my eyes on her in a quiet way, and she closed it right back up again.

“Take your nasty self off this property, Winnie Rae Early, and don't you bother coming back.” But I didn't say it like I meant it.

Winnie Rae made like she was going to move off, but she folded her legs under her and sat down in a corner of the yard. She took some decks of cards out of a shopping bag and started arranging them on the grass beside her. She didn't look to be going anywhere for a good long while. We had some things to talk about now, and I think we both knew it.