Also Known As Harper (3 page)

I smiled at her; I did feel like that when I was breathing in those school smells. It was a good thing I took a deep whiff that morning, because it turned out I was going to need some extra to tide me over for a while.

 

 

 

 

 

I DIDN
'
T KNOW
how Winnie Rae had done it with all her sniffing and wheezing, but she managed to get a good block ahead of me on the way home from school. Which meant she'd had a good block's worth of time to see everything before I did.

She spun herself around like a runway model and wasted no time in coming back to report it all to me. She stopped in front of me with her hip cocked to one side and one hand resting on the beginnings of a fat roll. “You're lucky it didn't rain today, Harper Lee Morgan,” she said, “because your entire house is out on your front lawn.” She had her braggy look about her, where her top lip turns up on one side.

It was easy for the mind to play tricks on a person when they were down on their luck, especially if that person was you. And my mind was thinking how
maybe all that stuff piled around on the lawn belonged to somebody else—the Earlys, maybe. But my eyes were telling me different, due to the fact that Hemingway was sitting in the middle of one of the smaller piles, holding the tiny peach sweater up by one of its fluffy baby arms.

“I found it at the bottom, Harper Lee,” he said. His eyes were all shiny and he looked as if he was getting ready to let loose with a good cry. “But I brushed it off real clean and I didn't let any of it touch the ground again.”

“Good job, Hem.” I felt my stomach get hollow and dry.

I knew that sweater belonged to Flannery, the baby that almost was. She didn't quite make it. Mama says she never even opened her eyes. I knew for a fact, if she would have opened just one of her eyes and seen Mama's beautiful smile, she might have opened the other one and hung around for a while.

“Give it here, please,” I said, “before Mama sees it.”

I found the red apple crate with my poems and stories in it and tucked Flannery's little sweater deep down into the side. It made my stomach feel better for a second, thinking that Flannery and my stories could take care of each other.

“You better get started, Harper Lee.” Winnie Rae swept her hand in a wide arc in front of her. “You got a whole lot of mess to clean up and no house to put it in.”

My eyes must have scared her, because she ran right over to her mama's lawn chair and sat herself down without another word.

Mama came around front from the back yard. She put her hand up to her mouth when she saw me, as if I was unexpected company.

“Oh, Harper,” she said, “I'd hoped to have this whole thing straightened out and have everything back inside before you got home from school.” She looked over her shoulder at the front door. “But everything's locked up tight as a drum.”

Her eyes fell on her favorite chair, the white rocker, tilted sideways in the garden dirt, and I wished I could have gotten home first and fixed it all back for her.

Hemingway cupped his hands wide in front of him. “They got them big old padlocks on, and the windows are shut up tight.”

Mama turned in a slow circle, her eyes making their way around to each and every pile. “We found it like this about an hour ago,” she said. Her face was
red and blotchy, with the tear tracks like she used to get in the days after Daddy first left.

Hemingway bent down and pulled a plastic dinosaur out of the top of a box. “We were coming back from cleaning Miss Oakley's kitchen, and Mama thought we took a wrong turn onto someone else's street.”

“It's got to be a mistake, Mama,” I said. “Look there.” I pointed to a dark blue car coming up toward the house. “Mrs. Early's probably gotten someone to come take the locks off.”

I wanted her to feel better, even if it was only for a second. I couldn't stand seeing her looking like all the hope had been washed out of her.

I grabbed Hem by the hand and hung back by the porch steps with Mama. I already had a plan going in my mind. The second they unhooked one of those padlocks, I was going to get me a good head start and push right past them. Then I'd refuse to come out until they put it all back right.

The lady was taking her time getting out of her car. Mainly because the driver's side looked to be so smashed up, you couldn't open the door.

Mama's eyes got dark and narrow, like when the
supermarket checker tried to give her the wrong change.

The lady scooted herself over to the other side and came out through the passenger door, but she still didn't act to be in any hurry. She leaned back in and reached over the front seat, coming out with one of those zippered pouches, which she hooked around her waist.

Hemingway nodded toward her. “Maybe that's where she keeps her lock-breaking tools.”

But she didn't even walk in our general direction. She circled all the piles of cardboard boxes and scattered furniture, slowly, holding on to the zipper tab on her pouch.

Mama took a couple of steps forward and shaded her eyes with her hand. “May I help you?” she asked.

The lady stopped when she got to the pile of couch cushions by the front porch. She leaned over and pulled a toilet brush out of a box next to the bottom step and held it up, looking at Mama through the hole in the center of the brush. “Doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to your collection here,” she said.

“What?” Mama tilted her head to the side like she was searching for the right words.

But that lady had said out loud just exactly what was going on in my own mind. The whole yard was like the clearance bin down at the Piggly Wiggly after people had been weeding through it for a few days. Whoever Mrs. Early had gotten to take all our stuff out of the house had done it as quickly as possible, by just tossing and dragging.

Hemingway's mattress and box spring were leaning up against the side of the front porch, and his dresser was over on its side, with the television from the living room sitting on top of it. There was a wide muddy grass stain on the very spot where Hem liked to curl up at night with his arms tucked under him. I couldn't stop looking at that stain, and I suddenly knew a bit about how Sarah Lynn Newhart's grandma had felt when her house burned to the ground.

Whatever could fit in boxes had been plopped into them, without any careful wrapping, or even fastening up the lids. I could see that the toilet-brush box also held Mama's best Christmas towels and the picture of my dead great-grandma.

Mama must have seen me looking, because she touched my arm real lightly and said, “Grandma spent a lot of time primping up in the bathroom in her day, so I'm sure she wouldn't mind.”

I liked how Mama managed to joke a little or sound hopeful, even in a bad situation. Just like how Mr. Atticus Finch always did in
To Kill a Mockingbird.
Except for when it came to Flannery. No one was allowed to mention the baby who almost was.

Which was why I practically flew off the porch when I saw the lady bending down toward my apple crate. I knew what she was reaching for, and it wasn't my stories. But I had to make my way around a pile of kitchen chairs, and I couldn't get to her in time.

 

 

 

 

 

THE LADY HELD UP
the peach sweater and unzipped her pouch with the other hand. “How much you want for this?”

I grabbed Flannery's sweater out of her hand so quickly, I caught my fingernail across her arm. “It's not for sale!”

I held tight to the smallest hope that Mama hadn't seen what she was holding up, but as soon as I turned back around, I knew for sure that the peach color had soaked right into Mama's eyes. A tiny kitten sound came out of her mouth as she sank down on the top step of the porch.

Mama pointed across the yard to the lady's car. “You're trespassing, and you'd better get yourself off this property before I call the police.” The words
were strong, but Mama's voice sounded as if it was going to break at any moment.

The lady made her way to her car a lot faster than when she'd come in. She shook her head and turned toward us as she opened up the door. She pointed her chin down to her chest and looked up at us from under her eyebrows with crazy eyes, like she was delivering up a curse. “You people ain't going to sell one thing at this yard sale! No one will even set foot at this ridiculous dump!”

I wanted to go kick in the other side of that lady's car, but I saw the wobbly steps Mama was taking and I kicked away a perfectly sharp rock instead.

I went over and put my hand on Mama's shoulder and did my slow, quiet voice, like I used on Hemingway when I was reading him to sleep. “Let's rest up here on the porch, Mama, while we figure on what to do.”

I smoothed out the sweater across my lap so the edge of the sleeve was touching Mama's arm. She put her arm around me and leaned down on my shoulder. Just a brush stroke of that peach fuzziness made her breathing steady right up.

It worked the same with me. Only a hint of anything Flannery made my whole body relax.

I closed my eyes and I could almost smell the baby wipes I'd brought along to the hospital to help give Flannery her first bath. I had packed those in my black patent-leather pocketbook while Daddy was helping Mama into the car in the driveway. Before we'd known Flannery wasn't going to open those eyes of hers.

You can go on in and have a look at her.
Daddy had said it quietly, so Hem couldn't hear.
Just you, now, Harper Lee. Hem's too little.

Hem wouldn't have understood about her not waking up and all.

Then Daddy had squeezed my hand and I'd gone into Mama's hospital room. Flannery was up close to Mama, in Mama's bent arm, wrapped in a peach blanket Daddy had bought for her.

It's okay to touch her.
Daddy's eyes had been shiny, as if some tears were working their way out.

I had reached next to Mama and fixed the blanket so it wasn't so loose. It was chilly in that hospital room.

Mama had touched my hand, softly, but her eyes never left Flannery.

But then the nurse had given Mama a shot, and I
couldn't get myself to breathe in enough air. Then I'd started to cry, and Daddy had had to pull me away from Mama's bed.

I remembered the words that kept going through my head and inching their way out of my mouth.
What if she doesn't wake up? What if she stays asleep forever, like Flannery?

Daddy had picked me up and held me close for what seemed like forever. And he'd helped to cool down the mad I'd suddenly felt at Hemingway. Because all Hem did was sit at the nurses' station, building a Lego garage for his Hot Wheels. Just like Flannery had never happened at all.

 

I LOOKED DOWN
the porch steps at Hem. He was busy finding all his plastic dinosaurs and lining them up on the edge of the coffee table. “We having a yard sale, Mama?” He picked up his biggest dinosaur and squinted at the underbelly of it. “How much you think I could get for this one?”

I gave him my hush-up look and set to work searching out Mama's special book. As soon as I pulled it out of the laundry hamper, she seemed to perk right up.

I turned to her favorite chapter, which wasn't too hard. The book was creased open so good at that particular spot that when you set the book down, it automatically flopped open to that page.

It was the part where Scout finally gets to see their hermit neighbor, Boo Radley. It's where she realizes what her daddy's been trying to tell her all along. That people aren't always what they seem from the outside. You got to give them a chance and figure them out for your own self.

Hem piled the cushions back on the couch and we all sat down together in our living room in the yard.

But Mama wasn't reading like she usually did, leaned back with her eyes closed. She bent over the book in her lap, her finger tracking under the words, slowly, so Hem and me could let the story sink into our bones.

Hemingway hummed quietly to himself and held his dinosaurs so they made long shadows on the grass.

I nudged Mama softly with my shoulder. “That word is ‘embarrassment,' Mama. Scout was embarrassed, not excited.”

She nodded and hugged my arm. “I must've just looked wrong.” The tops of her cheeks got all pink
and blotchy, and she handed the book to me. “You read, Harper,” she said. “I can't think right.”

I took the book from her. Lately, she'd been having me read more. I'd noticed she read better with the lights out when we were going to bed at night. She tended to mix up the words here and there when she did it the other way.

I smoothed my hand over the page and took up where she left off. But after a couple of pages, I could tell Mama wasn't paying much attention. Her eyes kept traveling over the piles on our lawn.

Finally, she tapped her pointer finger on the cover of the book and pushed herself up off the couch. “We need to be good thinkers and problem solvers like Mr. Atticus Finch, and get this mess cleaned up before it gets dark on us. We'll find what we need for tonight and put it in the car.”

Mr. Atticus Finch pretty much always knew what was what.

Mama looked at the light brown sedan parked up next to the house, and I thought how all my clothes would smell like old lady. We had gotten that car all the way from Mississippi when my grandma died.
That old lady never gave me the time of day,
Mama had told Daddy when we were driving him to the bus
station.
She never even laid eyes on my children, and now we're paying more than the cost of that decrepit car for you to go on out and get it.

Hem and I had poked around in Daddy's mama's car for a couple of days when Daddy got back, hoping we could sniff out some gold or diamonds or something she might have hidden in there, but all we smelled was stale old lady. Kind of a mixture of fried onions and a closet that hadn't been aired out in a while. And that smell held on, too. Every time I took even a little ride in that car, I could smell it on me for a good two hours after.