Leaving Eden (20 page)

When Raylene went to answer the phone, Lenora took her place at the sink. “I’ll finish up with Tallie,” she said, and smiled like she’d been waiting all year for the opportunity to get her hands on me.

The last thing on earth I wanted was to have Lenora anywhere near me, but short of jumping off the chair and running out with a head full of soap, there was no way to avoid it. No telling what she’d see. I had a lot to hide. The money I stole from Martha Lee. My plans for L.A. The night I’d taken Spy into my bed. Take your pick. I was praying I’d get off without her seeing anything. She started scrubbing away, working up a head of suds. Her fingers were stronger than you’d expect, given her arthritis and all. I said a little prayer that she wouldn’t see anything, and crossed my fingers under the shampoo cape. Not that it did one bit of good.

“Well, I’ll be goddammed,” Lenora said. “Will you look at that?” Heat rose up from my chest, flooding my cheeks.

“Clear as can be,” she said. Everyone in the whole place looked over. Whatever the hell she was seeing, I didn’t want to know and I most certainly didn’t want every busybody in town to hear.

“Is it a boyfriend?” Easter Davis said, practically cackling. “Has Tallie got herself a boyfriend?”

Lenora was chuckling to herself. Honestly, I wanted to throttle her.

Hattie got up and came over to the sink, dripping wave solution the whole way.

“See,” Lenora said. She pointed into the sink with a crooked finger.

Hattie squinted into the sink. “What?”

“Right there. See?”

“Don’t see nothing but a bunch of soap,” Hattie said.

“There,” Lenora said again. “And there. And there. Couldn’t be any clearer if you took a picture.”

Raylene was off the phone and she came over, too. “What is it?”

“A baby,” Lenora said.

“A baby?” I nearly shouted.

“Not just one,” Lenora said. “Lots of them. Oh, yes, I see lots of babies ahead for you.”

Hattie was oohing, like isn’t that the cutest thing, and Raylene was saying, yes she thought that she could see them, too, and that got old Easter Davis out from under the dryer to come take a look.

“Yes, sir,” Lenora said. “Looks like there’s babies in your future.”

I sat there frozen, thinking it couldn’t be true and trying to remember what I’d heard the girls say in the locker room about whether or not you could get pregnant the first time. All the while I heard Goody’s voice saying I was stupid, stupid, stupid, no better than white trash.

Tallie’s Book

If you trust your instincts, they’ll never
let you down.

You can never tell what’s going on in
another person’s mind.

People hide their secret selves.

twenty

While Raylene was blow-drying my hair, I tried to calm down. I kept telling myself there was no sense freaking over g.d. soap bubbles and that it was not possible that Lenora could actually be seeing a person’s destiny in a sink full of suds. Soap was only soap, I told myself. Besides, my future was already decided, and I had the packed bag and ticket to prove it. Still, it wasn’t as easy as you might think to forget the absolute certainty in Lenora’s voice. Babies, she’d said. Lots of babies.

For about the eighty millionth time, I was missing my mama and wishing she was there. She’d know what to do. She’d know for sure if it was possible for a person to get pregnant even if she’d only done it once. Course if my mama were still living, I’d never have gone to bed with Spy in the first place. If Mama were alive we would be heading out west together, preparing to be movie stars, and I wouldn’t be left alone trying to figure everything out by myself.

Say it
was
possible to get pregnant that easy. How long before a person’d be getting some sign? Wouldn’t a person feel
something
if there was a baby growing in her belly? I’d seen kits you could buy at the drugstore, but I hadn’t the least idea how far along you had to be for them to work. More than a few days, for sure. Besides, before I’d even walked out the door, Mrs. Albert at the drugstore would be on the phone spreading the word all over Eden and the next thing Miss Gibbons would probably have it written up in the
Times
.

Raylene was combing my hair under her round brush, setting the curl with the dryer, and our eyes locked in the mirror. She smiled, real sweet, probably thinking my future with babies was waiting a ways down the road. For a minute, I thought about seeking her advice—later, in private—that’s how desperate I was, but I wasn’t sure I could count on her to keep quiet about something that important. She’d probably feel obligated to tell my daddy. Fact was, I didn’t think there was anyone I could trust. Not even Rula. I knew Rula. Even if she promised on a blood oath, she wouldn’t be able to keep my secret. Like the time she’d told everyone that Rita Jean Purvis had gone all the way with Dusty Newman, even though she’d sworn on her dead mama’s grave not to. All I’d need was to be having Elizabeth Talmadge and the rest of the Sparkettes hearing about Spy and me.

Calling Spy was out of the question, even if he wasn’t under house arrest or something for killing his daddy. It didn’t seem to me a girl could be with a boy twice—neither time on a real date—and then call him up and tell him she might be carrying his child. I knew Martha Lee would have information about this kind of thing, being a nurse and all, but I couldn’t ask her. Not after I’d stolen her money. For a fact, I didn’t think I’d ever be able to look her in the face for the rest of my natural life. I’d got myself in a pickle and it didn’t look like there was any way out. Just then I wished I could be more like Scarlett O’Hara and put the entire mess off to another day, but if I knew one thing for sure it was that trouble didn’t evaporate like smoke just because you decided not to let it occupy your mind.

Raylene held up the hand mirror so I could look at the back, but not even the soft way she styled my hair could cheer me up. If Lenora really had seen my future, my life was pretty much over. I’d probably be packed up and sent to live with Goody, who’d spend every waking moment reminding me of what trash I’d become. She’d say I only got what I deserved for sinning with Spy. If she knew about the money I’d stolen from Martha Lee, she’d probably say I was paying for that, too. Goody wouldn’t give one hot damn that every dream I ever had would be over, ended before I even turned seventeen. The burden of not being able to tell one living soul weighed on me all afternoon, festering inside, but when we closed up at five I said good-bye to Raylene same as normal, just like I’d be seeing her in the morning, not giving her one clue that in the morning I’d be sitting on a plane heading for L.A.

When I got home, I poured myself some tea, then settled on the glider and tried to be practical. Mama always said losing your head only caused bad problems to get worse, and the thing you had to do was stay calm and reason things out. Just recalling her advice helped quiet my heart. I closed my eyes and tried to figure out when I’d had my last moon. I wasn’t always regular and generally didn’t pay much attention. Then I must have fallen asleep, ’cause that’s when my mama came to me.

Right after she passed, I used to pray that Mama’d give me some sign that she was still with me, like Preacher Tillett at Elijah Baptist said. I’d sit by the creek and listen, trying to hear her in the liquid song of birds. Or I’d wake in the night and watch the fireflies, studying their fitful light as if it held a code she’d sent. Oh, I looked and listened everywhere for Mama, but in four years I hadn’t had as much as a whisper. Now here she was appearing plain as day. If I’d been capable of tears, I would have wept from the joy of it.

“Hi, baby,” she said.

I’d heard that when people were dreaming, they couldn’t smell or taste things or see beyond black and white, but it wasn’t true. I could smell her perfume—My Sin—coming through clear as my daddy’s coffee perking in the morning, or the wave solution at the Kurl. And she appeared in full and living color, dressed in the green dress we’d buried her in, with three pink roses Mr. Wesler put in her hair. For the first time since she passed, Mama was truly with me. “Hi, baby,” she said again. Not aloud, because we didn’t exactly converse. It was more like we had ESP or something, like the silent communication of butterflies, like there wasn’t any need for speech. Right off, she knew about everything—even about me being with Spy and what Lenora had said about seeing babies all around me. I thought for sure that would make her real mad, but it didn’t. You might not believe this, but she wasn’t even disappointed I’d gone to bed with Spy. Or that I’d taken all that money from Martha Lee. All the time I’d spent worrying about her looking down watching me behaving like a bad girl and now it seemed like there was nothing on God’s green earth I could have done to gain her displeasure or disappointment. She had the sweetest smile, like she had a secret, the good kind, and there wasn’t one thing worth the effort of worrying about. She was so full of love and forgiveness, I could feel it around me, enfolding me like the softest fabric you could imagine, softer even than her red cashmere sweater. With all she seemed capable of, I expected she would have the power to tell me if I was truly carrying Spy’s child, so I asked her that, but it turned out she couldn’t tell about things like that. When I asked her what I should do, she told me straight out, surprising me with her advice. Then Old Straw must have barked or something, because I woke up.

Imagine every beautiful and precious thing you’ve ever known. Imagine the wet miracle of a newborn calf, or late spring in the Blue Ridge; imagine the rainbow lines of sunlight shining through a prism, or the evening sky streaked with rose in that precise moment before the sun disappears behind the mountain. Imagine the smell of a lilac bush, or a spice cake your mama’s just taken from the oven. Imagine the touch of a loving man. Now imagine holding all this in the palm of your hand. Then imagine having it disappear, cut off, your hand gone with it. That was how it hurt to wake and have Mama gone. The hard dark place in my chest burned so I might as well have been swallowing knives as dreaming.

When I was capable of moving, I got up and did exactly what Mama’d directed me in the vision. I wasn’t even afraid. It was like there was a tiny bit of her left behind. I left a note on the table for my daddy and headed straight out for Allie Rucker’s. In the dream, Mama’d told me Allie would know if I was carrying and—if that’s what I wanted—she’d help me get rid of it. Well, that was definitely what I wanted. There was no way I could be having a baby. Mama’d understood that. She’d known a baby meant no movies. No Hollywood. No dreams coming true. I’d be just another Eden girl who got knocked up. End of story.

This time I didn’t even hesitate when I got to Allie’s. With Mama giving me courage, I marched straight through the overgrown yard, up the steps, and rapped on the door, startling a jay with the sound. I waited a minute, then knocked again. It hadn’t occurred to me that Allie wouldn’t be home. Maybe she wasn’t even alive. Maybe she was lying inside, dead as roadkill, and I’d be the one to find her decaying body. I was fretting on what I was going to do if she wasn’t around to help me and wondering how I’d explain to people how I happened to find Allie’s body if she was dead, when she appeared from the stand of trees that led to deep woods, where it was rumored she kept her copper still. I hadn’t seen her since before Mama’d passed, but she hadn’t changed one bit in four years. She wasn’t in the least surprised to see me, just crossed to the house without a word. A couple of dusty hens pecked at her feet, which were about the ugliest feet I’d ever seen. They were worn and misshapen with bunions so big, they looked like extra toes.

“I’m Tallie Brock,” I said.

“I know who you be.” She narrowed her eyes and spat, the brown stream of tobacco juice barely missing the hens and her own ugly toes.

I was trying to figure out how to tell her why I was there, but as if she had the same ESP as Mama, as if girls showed up on her porch regular with troubles like mine, she got right to it, asking straight out when I’d had my last moon. That’s what she called it. My moon. Same as Mama always did.

Next thing she was heading into the cabin and motioning me to follow. It held the same sour, mildew smell I remembered from before. Inside, a live crow—I swear—was sitting on a windowsill. It ruffled its wing feathers and turned a black eye on me. One thing always made me nervous was a bird loose in a house, but I consoled myself with the thought that at least it wasn’t a bat. I couldn’t have stood that. Except for the crow, not one thing had changed since the last time I was there. Without further conversation, Allie went to the cupboard and pulled out some jars, taking a pinch of this and some of that.

“This here’s what you be needing,” she said, chuckling like she’d thought of something funny. “Same as I gave your mama.”

I remembered the vile smell of the herbs she’d made for mama. I didn’t think I was capable of swallowing something that awful without puking it up. “The Queen of Cures,” I said. “That’s what you gave my mama when she was sick.” I was wondering if she knew I’d buried the Cure out in our backyard or that a butterfly bush had grown up in that spot.

She laughed, a big laugh, not a weak old lady one. “T’other time,” she said. “The one I made your mama t’other time.”

“Mama came here?” I said.

“Girl, half the womenfolk in Eden been coming through my door. You and your mama be no different.”

“When?”

“Long time. She be about your age. Same as you. Messing with some fool man who be carrying his brain ’tween his legs.”

Mama? Mama came to Allie looking for help, same as me? I couldn’t believe it. But then lately it seemed I was learning about whole new parts of my mama’s personal history, things that could fill another book and that might just be the beginning of uncovering all the mystery in my mama’s past. I recalled the picture I’d found of Mama in the red convertible with the boy named Gordie, a boy who was strong and smart, according to his yearbook, but apparently not smart enough to keep Mama from getting pregnant. The date Mama’d written on the back of the pictures was 1965. I did some quick figuring. Mama’d been fifteen. For sure, Goody’d have about killed her if she was pregnant. No wonder Mama’d turned to Allie for help. Still, it made me sad to think of Mama getting rid of a baby, a baby who’d have been a brother or a sister for me. I used to dream about having a sister. I never told Mama, but I always wanted more family. With Uncle Grayson the way he was, I didn’t even have a cousin.

Allie handed me the bag and told me how to mix it up, same as before. She warned me not to wait too long before I drank it and said not to worry if it made me sick. She said there’d be some cramping, but no worse than with my moon.

Well, surprise, surprise, surprise. When I got home, who was sitting on the glider but Spy. You might think with him being a murderer, I’d be a little nervous or something, but as peculiar as it sounds, I hopped off the Raleigh and went right up to where he was sitting. He studied me like he didn’t know what to say, and I surprised us both by walking straight over and giving him a hug, like it was the only natural thing to do.

“Oh, God, Tallie,” he said, breathing the words into my hair.

I didn’t say a word, just stood there drinking in the scent of him, a smell I already knew by heart. We held on a little while longer, then we both sat down.

“I don’t have a lot of time,” he said.

“I was afraid you might be in jail,” I said. I said it flat-out, and it was like we could say anything to each other, like there was no time for anything but truth.

“They released me in the Dreck Girl’s care,” he said.

I took his hand and ran my finger over his palm, tracing the web of lines they say hold the directions and true facts of a person’s life. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but nothing I saw in Spy’s hand indicated he was a boy equal to killing his daddy.

He curled his fingers over mine. “I need to talk to you,” he said. “To explain.”

I pictured Mama then, how she’d come to me in the vision and the way she’d understood every bad thing I’d ever done, understood with no need for explanation, and how she’d loved me in spite of my sins. “No need,” I said.

“I have to, Tallie,” he said. He lifted a hand to my chin and made me look directly at him. “I don’t give a goddamn what anyone else thinks, but I want you to know.”

Then Spy told me everything. He told me how he’d gone to his daddy’s office, only meaning to scare him with the gun. “I wanted him to confess,” he said. “I wanted him to admit what he’d done to Sarah. To own up to at least one person that he was responsible for her dying. I swear I didn’t mean to hurt him.” But Spy said his daddy hadn’t confessed. He’d called Spy a stupid son of a bitch and said he’d show him what happened to people who threatened him. Then Mr. Reynolds had punched Spy in the face and tried to take the gun. That’s when it went off. He said he’d thought a lot since Sarah died about making his daddy confess, but the thing that caused him to finally confront him was that he saw his daddy hugging his youngest cousin. He said he had let Sarah down, but at least he could protect one girl.