Playing by the Rules: A Novel (24 page)

“Since she pretends Jeremiah and Louise don’t bother her during the day, maybe that stress is sneaking in there, taking its toll at night,” offered Theola. “If my granddaughter were with an Outsider, I’d have a big knot coming out my stomach too.”

“Just ignore Theola,” Vernelle advised Nana. “Tell us. What happened in the dream this time?”

“She had the baby,” Nana confirmed, adjusting the new patch of fabric to fit into her hoop. “But when it popped out between her legs, it turned into a man.”

“Ain’t nothing wrong with a man between your legs,” snickered Theola. “Are you sure you weren’t awake and it wasn’t your husband?”

“Theola!” reprimanded Vernelle, moving her hoop. “You startin’ to remind me of Ole Miss Johnson back when we used to call her by her first name, Lurleen, and she was always talkin’ trash and actin’ like a floozy.”

“Well, I don’t want no parts of that.” Theola became more interested
in the facts. “All right, Ernestine. What happened in your pregnant dream?”

“It was the strangest thing.” Nana looked at Theola’s hair and thought of a white strip of frosting on top a chocolate cake. She pulled the thread through the square and then continued her story. “They had to cross this river and then the baby turned into a man and then this big ole tidal wave comes and swallows them both. The other odd thing is, the dream picked up where it left off two months ago. And to think it all began with Cicely Tyson winning that TV award…um…um…um.” Nana shook her head and looked down at her hand as if she were talking to her needle and thread.

“Don’t blame Cicely for this. She ain’t got nothing to do with your obsession,” said Theola.

“Well, ain’t none of us pregnant, that’s for sure. As long as that’s the case, I wouldn’t worry about it,” said Vernelle. She took a pack of Chiclet gum from her purse and offered it to everyone at the table.

After a few minutes of concentrating on their quilting, the conversation resumed.

“How are things going with you and lover boy, Clement?” Sadie gave Theola a playful nudge.

“Very funny. I ain’t seen him,” Theola said curtly.

“Why don’t you bake him a cake or some cookies, make up an excuse to pay him a visit,” suggested Sadie, looking at Nana for a sign of approval.

Theola shrugged her shoulders. “I’ll see him soon enough at the Annual County Fair.”

“That’s months away,” teased Nana, looking at Theola’s hair, thinking what her black shirt would look like if she poured a streak of bleach down the middle.

“I can wait,” Theola said with a straight face, lowering her eyes to the quilt, pretending she was having a hard time getting the needle through the fabric.

Nana, Sadie, and Vernelle all looked at their friend, knowing that patience to Theola was far worse than enduring torture and pain.

“How’s Ruby Rose doing with her piano lessons?” Nana asked Sadie, happy to change the subject to get an update on the little girl.

“Oh, she’s catching on fast,” Sadie beamed with pride. “She already plays pretty well and I’m happy to announce that she recently graduated to the
John Thompson’s Modern Course for the Piano Sixth Grade Book
.” Sadie’s smile showed she was happy about Ruby Rose’s progress. “She comes to the church to practice just about every day now. She’ll be in the recital this fall. She’s a natural, that one is.” Sadie was starting to sweat, and pulled her blouse away from her skin to generate whatever breeze there might be in the air.

“Her brother seems like a ‘natural’ too,” said Theola, choosing to examine the fabric to make sure her stitches were consistent rather than make eye contact with her friends.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Nana asked, looking over her glasses at her friend.

“All I’m saying is he’s quite the charmer,” Theola said, using a defensive tone.

“Hush, Theola,” said Sadie. “She’s gotta be careful how she gets herself involved with young folks’ mess.”

“I’m hoping Jeremiah’ll step aside so Medford can open the door and step back in,” said Nana, trying to be optimistic. “I’m praying on it.”

“Ernestine knows better than to go bustin’ in on their dating,”
Vernelle said to Theola. “She don’t want Louise to think she’s meddling. If she does, she may take the steering wheel and drive off in the opposite direction.”

“You got that right,” said Sadie in agreement.

“Besides,” said Nana. “I ain’t about to break Rule Number Nine either: ‘Mind Your Own Business Personally and Professionally.’ So all I’m gonna say is, this whole thing is just terrible, and I wish she’d go back to Medford full time.”

“That boy find his mama yet?” asked Theola, smoothing down her hair.

It looked to Nana as if Theola had just rubbed a line of white flour down the middle, from the crown to the nape of her head.

“Nope,” said Sadie, pulling the backing of the fabric to make sure it was straight. “Not as far as I know, and I doubt he ever will.”

The day turned out to be uneventful with Chester Goody at the Child Welfare Bureau, and Medford was starting to lose hope. Chester didn’t provide any new information and there wasn’t anything worthwhile in the files. It was as if the years had produced layers of dust that covered the tracks of his birth and time had wiped all memories clean. Even the hope he’d held out for Earth-alee Tisdale came to nothing.

Earthalee had left town that one year to care for her poor dying aunt in Lynchburg. As it turned out, the aunt was really poor, having less money than she cared to admit, and Earthalee, who had a mind for construction but lacked the skills to put together a meal, almost starved to death. The aunt’s weight nearly dropped to under a hundred pounds until the neighbors finally stepped in and took over and sent Earthalee back home. When they first laid eyes on their daughter, Earthalee’s parents were delighted that
she’d used the visit as an opportunity to lose unwanted weight. They never knew that the diet was unintended.

Happy to return to Lemon City, Earthalee married Horace and took over as manager at the Do Drop In Stay As Long As You Like full-time. All that information was reported in the Marriage Announcement section of the
Lemon City Chronicle
. The year was 1929, the same year Medford was born. It was easy to see how Chester could have made that connection, but he could have discovered the truth about Earthalee himself if he’d cared to look at the details.

Since Medford had eliminated Earthalee as a prospect and Horace was dead, he asked Chester about Profitt, only to learn that the man just had heart surgery and was at home convalescing and wouldn’t be available to have visitors for weeks.

Feeling down on his luck, Medford stopped to pick up some groceries from the Piggly Wiggly. As he was driving back from the supermarket, he was starting to think he might have to look outside Lemon City for his mother. Although he didn’t want to, the notion of his mother being an Outsider was a possibility he had to consider.

Making all this effort without much progress frustrated Medford and he pounded the steering wheel with his fist. He was angry about being abandoned, angry about not getting any answers and coming up empty-handed. Despite all the love he had in his life, he couldn’t help but feel alone. He wished he could psyche himself into thinking that finding his mother wasn’t important to him, but it was. It would be worse if he pretended she didn’t matter, because she did. Living a lie wasn’t an option. He turned his attention to the birthmark on his shoulder and touched it through the neck of his T-shirt. The older he got, the more the kidney-bean-shaped mark began to feel raised against his skin and
take on the characteristics of a large mole. He rubbed the spot until it became irritated and started to hurt. The irony was that his birthmark was throbbing, just like the ache in his heart.

As Medford parked his pickup truck in the driveway and turned off the ignition, he sat and watched Clement sawing plywood in the yard, making the most of what little sun was left in the day. Sitting in the truck, Medford gazed at the mountains, mesmerized by one of the most amazing sunsets he had ever seen. Layers of yellows, oranges, lavenders, and reds draped the earth like a ruffled curtain falling over a window. The backdrop of streaming light over the rolling hills and valleys sunk into dark shadows, which was where Medford felt he was heading—to a dark place, like an underground limestone cavern. There were hundreds of those caves tucked away in the Blue Ridge. Looking for his mother was beginning to feel like being stuck in one of the chambers surrounded by rows of giant stalagmites and stalactites hanging from the floors and ceilings, like enormous white columns forming a confusing maze that refused to reveal what he was looking for.

Medford’s focus returned to Clement, who was still sawing plywood, wearing plastic goggles to protect his eyes from the wood shavings. With the eyewear and the loud noise the electric saw made, Medford knew his father probably wouldn’t see or hear him approach. He didn’t want to tap him on the shoulder and startle him with the jagged-tooth weapon in his hand, so he picked up a rock and threw it in his father’s direction, hoping it would get his attention. Clement looked up at his son and turned off his saw.

“How’s it going, Pops?” Medford asked, carrying a bag of groceries, looking at all the plywood panels and two-by-fours his father had cut.

“See for yourself,” said Clement, raising his goggles over his
head. “I did all this work with no help from you,” he teased his son. “On the other hand, I ain’t complaining. I didn’t need your assistance nohow,” Clement added. “Just because I’m old, don’t think I’m not as strong as you. And don’t let these skinny arms fool you.” He put down his saw and threw a couple of punches in the air, pretending to spar with his son to prove his point. “And I can do for myself. Don’t you forget it. That’s how life is. You got to do for yourself.”

“I know, Pops,” said Medford, pretending to block. “Maybe
you
don’t need my help, but I need something from you. There’s something I can’t do for myself because I was too young to remember.”

“What’s going on now?” Clement asked. “You need my advice on how to win that gal back? Let me tell you something about women, son…”

Medford interrupted his father. “No, I don’t need your advice. I just need you to think if there’s anything else you can tell me about the first night I appeared at your doorstep.”

“Gracious, man! Ain’t you over that yet? Why you wanna go upsettin’ yourself about something that happened a long time ago? Besides, I done told you everything I know.”

“Maybe there’s one more thing. One little thing you forgot. One piece of detail. Something you haven’t thought about in years. Something that may seem so insignificant that it’s easy to overlook.”

Clement took a deep breath and squeezed his eyes shut, as if the inside of his eyelids would give him a better glimpse of the past. He remembered back to the night when he was drunk and couldn’t go to sleep and the cries of a baby made him get up. He retraced his footsteps from his bedroom to the front door. Barefoot, he walked toward the direction of the sounds. His head was lowered, making sure to put one foot in front of the next to reach
the source of the tiny wails. When he opened the door, he was already looking down. There was a baby, inside a basket, inside a wooden crate. “Oh, yeah,” he said.

“Oh yeah, what?” repeated Medford, anxiously.

“I did tell you about the wooden crate, didn’t I?”

“Yes.”

“Did I tell you that I kept that old thing?”

“Where is it?” asked Clement, already in motion.

“In the basement. Somewhere in the basement, in a corner. On my old worktable, in the back near my old tools. That was ages ago, son.” Clement scratched his head underneath his hounds-tooth newsboy cap. “I can’t remember everything.”

Medford didn’t hear the last part of what Clement said. He was already running, on his way inside the house, with his bag of groceries trailing behind.

Medford couldn’t remember the last time he was in the basement. It was used mostly for storage, and had been packed with so many memories over the years that it became almost impossible to squeeze through the debris and decipher the valuables from the clutter. It was dark and damp and moldy-smelling, and Medford was forced to remind himself of how much bigger he was than the water bugs that might be lurking in the shadows. He turned on the light at the top of the stairs and listened for any critters, thankful he didn’t hear any scampering. As he descended the creaky steps, he felt he was walking on eggshells and prayed the wood was strong enough to hold his weight. The bulb at the bottom of the steps had a chain and when he pulled it, he scanned the concrete room and got a good look at the cobwebs and dust, old appliances, cardboard boxes stuffed with forgotten treasures, discarded furniture, and who-knew-what-else left from the remains of time. Shoving things aside, Medford made his way to one side of the room, looking for his father’s worktable, but he didn’t see any
table at all. Boxes were stacked from the floor to the ceiling along with dressers, odds and ends, broken tables and chairs. Then Medford moved across the room, pushing things aside as if he were wading through an ocean of rubble, and finally found what looked to be the only worktable in the basement. Judging by the layers of dust, everything that was underground had been untouched for years. He had wondered where his Schwinn bicycle had gone with its banged-up fender, twisted handlebar, and crushed rim after he had left it in the driveway and Clement accidentally ran over it with his truck. His dad had told him he took the bike to the junk-yard, but there it was right in front of him, leaning against the table with the rear end angled on the wall. Medford remembered crying nonstop for seven days when Clement told him his bike couldn’t be fixed and that he had to be careful where he left things and that it wouldn’t be replaced for a long, long while because money didn’t grow on trees. But the following week, Medford had a brand-new shiny bike and from that day on, he never left it anywhere but beside the house standing upright on its kickstand.

Cardboard boxes were stacked on top of the worktable, and Medford took them off one by one in search of the wooden crate. Setting them down on what little space he could create on the floor, he noticed a box filled with old dusty photo albums. Blowing off the dust made him sneeze and he opened the first one carefully, peeling apart the pages that were stuck together from age. Inside the plastic sleeves were newspaper clippings highlighting his father’s track-and-field achievements in high school. Medford never knew his dad was a gold medalist in several major events over the three-year period. Based on the number of articles, his father must have been the fastest man in Lemon City back in the late 1920s. Medford felt something on the back side of the photo album and turned it over to find two more photos stuck together. He carefully separated the black-and-white pictures and looked at
them one at a time. Squinting to identify the happy faces that had yellowed with age, a smile slowly grew across his own face when he saw familiarity. It was a group shot of Willie, Clement, Bootsie, Easely Johnson, and a man whose face he didn’t recognize at all, then Ernestine, Lurleen, Sadie, Vernelle, and Theola. The men were standing in the back row and the women were squatting down in the front. The men were dressed in square-shouldered, double-breasted suits wearing stylish felt derby or porkpie hats, and the women were in their finest with fur-collared jackets, flaunting fox heads and feet, or mink stoles draped around their shoulders and short white gloves. Only Nana and Vernelle were wearing hats with high crowns and short brims, tilted to the side. The other ladies were hatless, showing off their fashionable Roaring Twenties finger-wave hairdos. They all looked happy, like they were just going to a dance and life was carefree and perfect. The sight of Miss Theola tickled him now that he knew his father was a track star, thinking Clement might have been lightning-quick back then, but that he was no match for getting away from fast Miss Theola now. Exploring their individual faces over again, tracing them with his finger, comparing them to the way they looked today, it suddenly became obvious to Medford the longevity they had between them. They had been close for many more years than he had realized, with the exception of the one man whose face he didn’t know. Besides the stranger, the other thing that bothered him was the person behind the camera. Who had organized the subjects and snapped the picture? Maybe it was Rufus, Vernelle’s soon-to-be husband, or Dugga Junior Dowdy, Sadie’s former husband, or Theola’s former husband whose name he could never recall—or even Chester, for that matter, or Horace, for all he knew.