Cousins (2 page)

Gram Tut peered at Lilac Rose. They looked deeply of one another. Tut said not a word. Lilac Rose worked silently.

“Hi, Lilac, I love you,” Cammy said, sweetly.

Lilac smiled. “Hi, baby. I love you, too,” she answered.

“Don’t tell on me, please?” Cammy pleaded.

“Huh. Haven’t seen nobody,” Lilac said, breezily. “Haven’t heard nothing.”

Anybody. Goodness. Haven’t heard anything. Lordy, Tut thought.

“Thank you, Lilac,” Cammy whispered. She placed her cheek on the brown coolness of Lilac’s arm as Lilac took care of Gram. Lilac Rose never minded her and never told on her to a soul.

“I’m goin’ tell,” Otha said, peering around Cammy’s back. “Kid!”

“Oh, Otha, get out of here! Don’t always be so rotten,” Lilac said. “Miz Tut likes having her grandbaby come visit.”

“Well, I will, too, tell,” Otha said. “There’s nobody come to see me!”

“So whose fault is that?” asked Lilac Rose.

Otha wouldn’t say. Perhaps he hadn’t heard. For he backed his chair carefully to the door. All at once, he shot through the opening and across the hall. He held his feet high off the floor as the wheels spun in reverse. He hit the railing with full force. And gave out a hog call that Cammy could admire. It wasn’t ear-splitting, though, like the kind the young hog callers could do at the county fair.

There was a thud as, quite by accident, the chair with Otha fell over on its side from the impact. The noise in the cool, dim hallway caused a stir, and cries of, “Help! Nurse! Somebody help me!”—up and down the wing.

“Oh, oh,” Lilac said, under her breath. She went on about her business with Gram. She changed Tut’s bed gown and turned her on her side facing the door. Then she gave a glance toward the hallway. “Better beat it, Cammy,” she said. “In a few minutes, I’ve got to get your Gram up for supper, too.”

Miss Mimi across the hall came wheeling out of her home. She peeked out to see if Otha was all right. Her hair was rolled in a fresh pompadour. Lipstick and rouge prettied her face. She gave Otha the once-over, as if he were some alien, iron bug wiggling on its side. Then, she wheeled on by him down the hall. “I’m coming girls, don’t fret,” she called.

Tut sighed, said to the air, “We take care of … our own, don’t we?”

The nurse’s station wasn’t far up at the center of long corridors to the three wings. In a minute, ladies in white would be all over the place, Cammy thought. She said so to Lilac. “But shouldn’t you go pick Mister Vance up?”

Go pick
up
Mister Vance, honey. Maylene hasn’t taught you a thing, Tut was thinking.

“Honey, it’ll take two at least to get him and that chair up off the floor,” Lilac said, dryly. “If I try to move him, they’ll say I oughtn’t’ve. Shoulda waited for a nurse. Next thing, they’ll turn around and yell at me for not helping him.”

Still, Cammy thought Lilac should have gone to help him. She couldn’t be seen out there to go, herself. He could have been hurt bad.

Lilac had started combing Gram’s hair as best she could. Cammy watched. “One day, I comb it while she’s lying like this,” said Lilac. “Next time, I comb it after she’s in the chair.”

Now they heard feet scurrying.

“That way, in a couple of times, I get most of it done,” Lilac went on.

Otha began shouting, “Somebody! Somebody!”

“All right, Otha, we’re coming,” somebody called.

“Better had fade away, honey,” said Lilac.

“Can’t I stay? I could hide under the bed,” Cammy whispered, her eyes darting. “I could say my mama just went to the restroom, if anybody sees me.

“It could be a pool nurse,” Cammy added. The pool nurses came in a rotation from the nearby hospitals. “They wouldn’t know who I was.”

“It’s not the weekend,” Lilac said. “Best you scoot.”

Cammy waited by the sink. Ida, the nurse, and Dave, the assistant, were bent over Otha, examining him and asking him questions. Soon they had him upright in his chair and in his room. Otha shouted one second and moaned the next, as they closed the door.

Cammy went back to Gram, climbed up on the railing and said a hurried goodbye. “See you tomorrow,” she said. She snuggled Gram’s face.

Don’t go! Tut thought. Need you to climb back up with my curtains.

“Gram? I love you best!” Cammy whispered into Gram’s ear. More than Mama? she thought. Well, just as much.

“Don’t go!” Gram Tut wailed.

“Now, now,” Lilac soothed. “Shhh. Shhh, darlin’.”

“Don’t go.” The whole night is coming. Tut could feel it creeping up on her. Big tears slid down her face.

“Oh, now, Miz Tut, everything’s going to be fine,” said Lilac. “I’m here and you’ll soon be up in your chair, ready for your good supper.”

Cammy was out of the room. She shut down her insides against Gram Tut’s crying. And slipped away toward the big glass door at the end of the hall.

Glad it’s Lilac with Gram, she thought. Shameful that my sorry cousins don’t come to visit her some. Patty Ann. Richie. Glad the Care’s not a bad place, though, like some they say are.

Cammy sighed. Don’t see how anyone can taste food that’s all ground into soupy-runny, she thought. Gram’s got her false teeth. They just don’t want to take time for her chewing slow. Some dumb supper.

2

BEYOND THE GLASS DOOR
was bright sunshine and summer. Shade trees and woods surrounded the Care on three sides. Outside, Cammy wondered why all of the folks didn’t just walk on away and live under the trees in the woods. Now and then, one of them would go off looking for the house they once owned. But after a couple of times, they didn’t wander anymore. She knew why.

“They just get lost. They don’t have a place to go,” she whispered. Some of them like Gram Tut can’t get up and out under their own power, she decided. I know something. I bet if I could drive a bus, I could take a lot of ’em on out of there.

Where would I take them, where would they all go? She couldn’t think of a place to take them. But then, she did.

“I’ll lead them off into the thickest trees. I’ll be the Pied Piper! Or Moses!” Cammy grinned.

She thought of a big tent amongst tall maples where they could all stay and have birthday parties. With that many old folks, there’d probably be a birthday party every day. She loved parties. But any party she’d ever had, had been just awful. She was working on having a good one, though. Maybe someday, she thought.

Cammy took a deep breath. No sunlight now. Hot today, maybe over ninety, she thought. You couldn’t tell in the Care, in the rooms, which were air conditioned. There was a long rumble of thunder not far off.

Ooh! I hate thunder! She began to run. She had to cross the grassy space inside the oval drive of the Care. Then she hit the street in front of the Health Center. On down the road there and across the avenue. She looked both ways. It was then she sensed the dark clouds and forced herself not to look at them. There was no way she could not see the gray light. Before she knew it, there were a few drops of rain.

Darn!

She watched, half scared, as low, slithery rain clouds sped overhead faster than the fluffy white clouds they blotted out above them.

Fascinating, she thought, getting up her courage, and stuck her nose in the air.

The clouds whipped from the west, the direction she was going.

Then, she felt the wind on her face. And the rain came down with a wallop, falling into her eyes.

Ooh! Mama? Oh, it’s going to get lightning on me!

The lightning lit the way. Thunder made her knees buckle. She was scared and felt alone in the world.

Cammy knew better than to take shelter under one of the shade trees along the road. But it looked dry under there.

It looks so safe! she thought.

She was feeling a little sick to her stomach. She would have cried in the next minute, ready to race for a large pine tree along the road. But then she realized where she was.

Oh, my goodness! Well, thank my lucky stars.

The drenching rain was running down her socks and into her sneakers. She was soaked. In one leap up a set of wood steps, she was on a familiar porch of a house painted sky blue with white trim. She stood there, hunched against the screen when a hand unlocked it and hauled her inside.

“Thanks, Aunt Effie,” Cammy said.

“Anybody out in a storm like this on foot hasn’t got good sense,” Aunt Effie said, by way of greeting. She didn’t smile.

Cammy would have explained that she’d been inside at the Care when she caught herself in time. Aunt Effie never gave her the chance, anyway.

“Don’t stand there dripping on my rug. Here.” Effie, her mama’s oldest sister, flung a bath mat at her.

Cammy felt so ashamed. Orphan. She dropped the mat and quickly stepped on it, wishing she could just disappear. If she just could, she would escape out the door. Eyes downcast, she caught a glimpse of the massive couch and twin club chairs under sleek plastic covers. Cost a fortune, her mama said.

“Give me your wet clothes,” Effie demanded. She shut the front door. She made Cammy undress right there on the mat clear down to her undershirt and pink panties, and took her socks and sneakers.

“I’m putting this whole mess in the dryer,” Effie said, “even though they’re none too clean. See that you tell my sister that your Aunt Effie took care of her child. I’d never work so much that I’d have to leave my own child with just a sixteen-year-old
boy
!”

Meaning my brother, Andrew, Cammy thought. Bet you hate him even more than you hate me. Aunt Effie wouldn’t know how to do a day’s work, Mama says.

Chin on her chest, Cammy felt close to tears again. Why couldn’t everybody be nice? She sighed in a deep breath.

Her undershirt was white with a tiny hole in front. Didn’t match her panties at all. Cammy folded her arms over herself and tried not to shiver. She wasn’t cold. Just clammy.

She heard her sneakers clomping in the dryer, from the kitchen. Hope they don’t tear up my blouse, she thought.

“Don’t sit down in just your underwears.” Effie was back, acting like a dump truck, Cammy thought.

“I wasn’t going to …”

Effie pushed a towel at her. “You can dry off with that and sit on it, too. You may sit in there but don’t bother her.”

The door was closed to “in there.” Cammy had to leave this front room and go through a short, dark hall to another door, then open it to get to the sacred “in there.”

Funny, she hadn’t noticed the sound until Aunt Effie said that she wasn’t to bother
her
. Now Cammy heard it.

Wouldn’t it be nice if her cousin would vaporize the way people did on
Star Trek
? Beam me up, Scotty! Cammy thought. Coo-el if little
her
beamed up to a big blue star or to the moon or somewhere.

“Well, go on,” Effie said. And as Cammy got up and went, Effie added, “Your legs is ashy. Tell your mama to buy you some hand cream.”

I’ve got some, you fat pig! I hate hogs! Cammy thought.

She went in there and the sound floated around the room. It bounced off the walls and, softly, down from the ceiling.

Cammy took a seat behind the piano player, who was her cousin, Patricia Ann. She held the towel tightly around her shoulders. It fitted over her head like a hood. Cammy sighed into the music, which was nice. But it made her feel just so tired. She looked at Patricia Ann’s long, crinkly hair, so pretty, way down her back. It was the color of maple syrup left in the sun. It was let out from her usual long French braid. Patty Ann’s hair always was out on the day of her piano lesson. She must’ve had her lesson and was now practicing.

Can you wonder? Cammy thought. A kid comes home from her lesson and
practices
? When she took lessons once, Cammy never thought of practicing until a day or two before the next lesson.

“Oh, Patty Ann does everything just right,” Cammy’s mama said. “Effie sees to that. I never saw a child more afraid of somebody than that baby is of my own sister. Cammy, you should feel sorry for your cousin.”

“I hate her,” Cammy had said.

“Well …” Maylene said no more. Cammy was used to her mama not finishing what she would start to say.

Patricia Ann didn’t turn around from the piano until she finished another song after the one she’d been playing when Cammy came in. She had to have heard Cammy come in. But Patty Ann wouldn’t be disturbed until she had practiced her entire lesson.

The whole time, Cammy sat there, clutching the towel around her and trying to get the ash off her legs by rubbing her feet down them. All she managed to do was spread dirt to her calves and ankles. She kept it up anyway. She couldn’t sit still. Being there with her cousin made her as angry as she could be.

Good at everything, Cammy thought to Patty Ann’s back. In school, at home, at her piano. Miss Goody-goody. Well, I am also good in lots of things, Andrew says.

The music stopped abruptly. Patty Ann turned the page of a small notebook next to her music. The page was blank. She’d come to the end of her lessons. She closed the book. Closed her music books, too. She closed the piano top over the piano keys. To Cammy, everything she did was like chalk scraping on a blackboard. The way Patty Ann looked, even her expression, made Cammy fit to be tied.

Patty Ann slid around on the piano seat. Facing Cammy, she turned her head to one side. After the first glance, she wouldn’t look directly at Cammy.

“What in the world happened to you?” Patty Ann asked. Her voice was surprising, a low, husky alto. Naturally, she was a good singer, too. Patty Ann touched her new plaid dress. It was shades of wine, yellow and soft green with blue. It had a pleated skirt.

To look at it made a lump grow in Cammy’s throat. She decided just to shrug her shoulders. A few seconds later she couldn’t keep her mouth shut. “I got wet,” Cammy said.

“I figured that!” Patty Ann said. She touched the gold locket around her throat and the gold bracelet on her right wrist. She had a watch with a black leather band on her left wrist. “I knew it was going to rain even before my lesson was over. I could smell the rain in the air. I always can,” Patty Ann said.

She swung her legs from one side of the piano bench to the other. This way, Cammy was sure to catch her full effect. Patty Ann’s face was made even prettier by the wine shade of her dress. Carefully, she crossed her ankles so as not to touch her wine-colored socks with her patent-leather shoes.