Authors: Diane Munier
Darnay Road (16 page)
Darnay
Road 29
I
lift up enough on Aunt May’s seat to glance out the back window just in time to
see a terrible sight--Easy standing on his pedals coming on so strong, then his
foot slips and he falls over, he actually rolls a little.
“Easy,”
I scream, then to Aunt May, “Pull over, pull over.”
Aunt
May slows down but before she can pull over Easy gets up and gets back on his
bike and he’s riding again, just not as fast.
I
can see the blood running down his leg. Good thing we’re just a few houses from
home.
Aunt
May and Granma are saying what in the world and May is telling her what’s going
on and I’m kneeling on the seat watching him so worried I could burst into
pieces.
Aunt
May stops in front of our house and Granma gets her door open and I am already
getting out and she is saying, “Young lady,” something, and here comes Easy and
he stops and I’m asking him if he is all right cause he has some more scrapes
than I knew, on his arm and hand. He’s looking at Granma, not me, but her.
Granma
says, “Are you trying to kill yourself?” to him, and Aunt May is out too, just
staring at him, and I have my hands on his handle bars and he is breathing so
hard and the skin is scraped off his leg and it’s bloody with a small rock
sticking to it.
But
Easy can’t seem to find words, he’s just breathing and staring at us.
I think he’s just trying to catch his breath.
“Don’t,”
he finally says straight to Granma, “don’t be mean to Georgia.”
And
that’s all.
The
four of us end up sitting on our porch.
“I
was this close to calling the police on you,” Granma is saying to him. He is
sitting on the top stair drinking water and holding a wet rag Aunt May got him
on his leg. They tried to dab at all his wounds but he said he could do it
himself.
I
wonder if he ever had someone do a thing for him.
“I
wish you could live with us, Easy,” I say. I can’t help it. I wish like
anything he could.
Darnay
Road 30
While
Aunt May oversees the care of Easy’s wounds, Granma says, “Georgia Christine I
will see you in the kitchen.”
Easy
looks from where he is cleaning his leg to me and I wave a little and he
doesn’t even blink. I hope he will not tell Granma not to be mean to me again
because she might not take it so well this time. So she holds the door and
sweeps her hand and I go in and I walk back to the kitchen. I get in there and
go around the table and hold to the back of one of the chairs.
Granma
gets her glass and gets out a silver tray of ice cubes and runs that under the
faucet so the cubes come lose. She pulls up the handle and cracks the tray and
plunks some cubes in her glass and they tinkle.
She
puts the rest of the cubes in the freezer and gets a Coca-Cola and takes it to
the opener on the wall.
I
have already gotten a glass of cold water for Easy so I just stand there
rubbing my palms against the hobnails on that chair and waiting for the speech.
“Easy
is not a puppy Georgia Christine. You do not just take in a human being.”
Granma
goes to the high cabinet and gets that little silver flask that was Grampa’s.
She tips some of the whiskey in the Coca-Cola. We don’t talk about it being
whiskey cause she says it’s her business, but I have climbed up there and
smelled it and it smells like one of the bottles in the dining room buffet.
“You
took me in,” I say.
She
makes a sound she hardly ever makes. It’s that sound like when her pearls came
unstrung right before church and I had to get under her bed and find them.
“He
has his own family. Here I’ve told you never to ask if Abigail May can spend
the night in front of her and you go ahead and ask if someone can live with us?
Knock me down with a feather and pick me up with a shovel,” she says holding
the green glass against her forehead.
“Granma
we have to help Easy,” I say.
“Easy
has a family,” Granma says lowering the glass and taking a big drink. Soon as
she can breathe she says, “His mother might have something to say about us
taking her son. You embarrassed him.”
I
don’t think I did. Easy understands I want to help. He just doesn’t know how to
take it.
One
good thing, I am not in so much trouble. Granma explained to Easy that a twelve
year old young man has no business carting off a ten year old girl. Good thing
she don’t know about the other time Easy rode me to the trestle, or when we
went into the school without permission. And the confessional, ooo-eee.
“We
were cutting grass for Miss Little and it got so hot,” I say.
Well
that was another thing. I am not allowed to disturb Miss Little.
“You
know she is not in her right mind and she could hurt you and not even know it,”
Granma says. “What were you thinking to go there and not even tell me? Did Miss
Little have any say in this? She did not.”
“I
knew you would say no, and Miss Little has my kittens and Easy wanted to help
her.”
“You
knew I would say no so you snuck around like little Miss Free American. You are
not free to break rules. And if she has those kittens like you say then thank
the saints and let it be. Maybe they can do her some good. Poor thing must be
lonely as an old maid on a mountain.”
“I
thought it was a good idea…to help others,” I say feeling somewhat confused
because I know what I mean but Granma is getting me jiggered.
“If
Easy wants to help her that’s up to him and his mother. You are not his
right-hand man. You are a ten year old young lady who is only going into the
fifth grade and has been raised to know she must let her granma know where she
is and what she is up to at all times. And that doesn’t mean going in the
river…the river for pity sakes—with an older boy.”
“I’m
sorry Granma. I know I did wrong. I’m sorry.” I am giving her the eyes, holding
my eyelids up high as I can.
“What’s
the matter with you? Why are you looking at me like that?”
I
relax my eyebrows and scrunch my face and blink a few times.
“Please,
please don’t be mean to Easy,” I say using Easy’s perfect sentence about me.
“Mean
to Easy? When have I ever been mean to anyone?”
Well
the man in the alley, showing his thing. But that was okay cause I sure didn’t
want to see it.
Darnay
Road 31
Once
Granma is done with the discussion she pulls out a chair and sits down. I can
see the pot on the stove behind her and the cranberry red pot-holder on the
lid. Granma just loves cranberry red and luminous green. Luminous is almost my
favorite word. But it looks like Christmas all the time around here and that
used to make me happy.
But
now, I don’t know why she’s sitting down when I have to say good-bye to Easy.
So I leave the kitchen and she calls, “Where do you think you’re going?”
“To
talk to Easy,” I say.
“Aunt
May is taking Easy home.”
“Well
he has his bike,” I say, this worry hitting me. How did they get that going? I
was listening to every word and no one said anything about Aunt May driving
Easy home.
“You
stay put right here and eat your dinner,” Granma says following me as far as
the hall.
I
march back to the kitchen. “Why’d you make him go?”
“Do
not take that tone with me,” she says opening the oven and taking out the
meatloaf and criss-cross baked potatoes I love. Normally. Tonight I can’t eat a
thing with Easy practically starving to death and being taken away without
supper.
“I
ain’t,” I say, but I kind of am taking a tone, but gee-willickers this is so
unfair. I didn’t even get to tell Easy good-bye and he had to ride his bike
with that terrible scrape and he’s hungry from the river and there’s no supper
I know. I just know.
“Ask
not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country!” I
tell Granma.
“Lower
your voice young lady.”
“President
Kennedy says we are supposed to do what we can to help America. And Darnay Road
and Scutter are in America! And Easy says his mother is sick! So what can we
do, Granma! What can we do!”
She
is looking at me like I’m speaking Swahili.
“You
can sit your bottom on that chair and eat before I send you upstairs without
your supper.”
“I
can’t eat. Don’t you know Granma, I can’t eat when Easy is hungry!” I just
start crying then because it’s so wrong and terrible.
She
comes for me and gathers me up and I really cry then. I am sadder than I knew
and all the awful fear I felt when Easy fell off his bike so hard, it’s all
right there.
That
evening after my bath I come downstairs quiet with Little Bit on my arm that
used to be broken and now is fixed and almost good as new except for a tiny
bend in it. I hear Granma on the phone. I think of running upstairs and lifting
the other phone in her bedroom off the cradle and listening just for a minute,
but I don’t.
See,
I know that is my dad because she has that special tone. It’s her, ‘this is my
son,’ tone. And so I just sit on the top steps and she is sitting at the little
desk for the phone in the hall.
“Did
you think she would never discover boys Charles?” she says. “It’s happening
very early.”
What
in the world is my Granma saying that for? Are boys some kind of discovery? I
would have to be blind not to notice there are girls and there are boys.
Remember Abigail May and Ricky?
“Hysterical,”
she says next.
Hysterical
like the Red Skelton Variety Hour? Or hysterical like me when I think of
Kruschev and probably Castro coming to Florida in a submarine and getting out
at the beach and coming straight for Abigail May down in Tampa?
Then,
“Maybe if she knew her father loved her….”
And,
“She’s growing up, Charles. I’m sure this new woman is very exciting but…no I
do not. I have never said I don’t want you to…that is just not true. But you
have a daughter.”
I
sneak back up the stairs then and into my room. A new woman? She’s exciting? Is
she a tight-rope walker?
I
think of Abigail May and I don’t know how she’s standing it—being kidnapped by
Mr. Figley. I don’t know how I let it happen. I should have done something. But
what can I do? I’m just a kid.
I
get in bed and snap off my light. After Granma talks to Dad she needs to come
around and stare at me and tuck my covers and sigh. So I get ready for that. I
let Little Bit sleep with me. Granma will allow it because she knows I’m upset.
So
once that happens and I keep my eyes closed the whole time, she goes out and
it’s not long before I know she’s settled in for the night.
Well
I can’t sleep. I have to look out the window. The road is quiet, and a train is
rumbling through. I think of Easy and wonder if he’s at home and what it’s like
for him right now? Is his mom so sick she can’t get out of bed?
Big
gray is quiet. It stabs me like I’m just now knowing Abigail May isn’t there.
Such a powerful longing rises up in me I don’t think I can bear it. “Abigail
May,” I say.
I
go to my desk and get paper and my sharpest pencil. Using my silver flashlight
I get in bed and get the light set on my paper and I start in.
“Hey
Abigail May,” I write. Then I tell her everything.
