Saving CeeCee Honeycutt (24 page)

I rested my head against the back of the chair and listened to a chorus of crickets while the hot breeze stroked the leaves on the trees. A long, thin white cloud moved across the sky, looking like the windblown veil of a runaway bride.

Since moving to Savannah, I’d become more awake to nature—to the sounds, smells, and sights of the world around me. I was constantly surprised by the things that waited to be discovered beyond the pages of the books I’d always kept in front of my nose. Even the moon looked rounder and fatter than I’d ever remembered, and as it pushed higher into the sky, it lit the surface of Miz Hobbs’s swimming pool into a shimmering skin of silver.

I glanced over at Oletta. Her head was relaxed against the back of the chair and her eyes were closed. She looked so peaceful I thought she’d fallen asleep, but then she waved away a mosquito from her face.

“Oletta. When we were at the ocean, you told me it was impossible to learn to swim in the waves.”

“That’s right. You need calm water to learn.”

“Well, Miz Hobbs is still in the hospital, so how about we sneak into her backyard and use her pool?”

Oletta opened her eyes and looked at me. “Child, colored folks don’t swim in white folks’ pools. If Miz Hobbs ever got wind of it, she’d pitch a fit from here to Sunday.”

“But she’d never know. Nobody would even see us. There’s an opening in the hedge by Miz Goodpepper’s roses. We can get in that way.”

Oletta shook her head. “Even if we did go over there, it takes a whole lot more than one time to learn to swim.”

I couldn’t stop gazing at the shimmering pool. Seeing it sit there without being used seemed like a big waste of water. I began to rock in my chair and said, “Miz Goodpepper told me about Miz Hobbs murdering the magnolia tree. She said Miz Hobbs was a witch.”

“It’d be fine with me if I never laid eyes on Miz Hobbs again. She’s always been real uppity, and she sure don’t like colored folks—looks at us like we’re stains on this earth. Her last cook, Betty, was real easygoin’. But after a while even she couldn’t take Miz Hobbs’s big mouth. Betty got so fed up that she walked out in the middle of cookin’ supper.” Oletta laughed. “Left the pots burning on the stove.”

“Ha! Good for her.”

“When Miz Tootie ain’t around, Miz Hobbs talks to me like I ain’t nothin’ more’n dirt on them fancy shoes she wears.” Oletta’s eyes narrowed when she turned to me. “You know what I heard her call me?”

“What?”

“Miz Tootie’s nigger.”

My jaw dropped. “She called you that word?”

Oletta nodded. “More’n once. Heard her with my own ears.”

I sat stock-still, feeling the caustic burn of hatred in my throat. “That’s terrible, Oletta. One of the boys in my class said that word, and the teacher dragged him from his desk and made him stand in the corner with a bar of soap in his mouth till the bell rang.”

Oletta let out a
hmpf
. “It’d take a whole lot more than a bar of soap to clean up that woman’s mouth. She’s sure got herself some highfalutin’ attitude. She claims she was raised in some mansion up in Charleston, but that ain’t true,” Oletta said, shaking her head.

“Truth is, she grew up in a poor town in Mississippi, but now she pretends she’s the belle of the South.”

“All the more reason to swim in her pool.”

Oletta’s words were edged with longing when she said, “I’ve never been in a swimming pool. Always wondered what it’d be like to swim in clean, clear water. The swimmin’ hole we had when I was a child was muddy, and sometimes the fish would come up and nip our toes. Lord, how we’d squeal. But we sure had fun in them days. On nights when we couldn’t sleep, me and my sister, Geneva, would light an oil lantern and hang it from a tree. Then we’d take off our nightgowns and go skinny-dippin’. Too bad your folks never taught you to swim. It’s one of the joys of bein’ young.”

“They never taught me anything.”

She gave me a sad look and pushed herself up from the chair. “I’m goin’ in to get more iced tea. You want anything?”

“No, thank you.” I closed my eyes and began to rock, enjoying the way the chair creaked in a soothing rhythm across the floorboards of the porch.

A few minutes later the screen door opened. I looked up to see Oletta standing in a slant of pale-blue moonlight. In her arms was a stack of towels and a flashlight. “Well, don’t just sit there bein’ a lazybones. C’mon, let’s go swimmin’.”

I sat up so fast that the chair nearly bucked me out of my seat. “Oh, my gosh. Are you serious?”

“I am right now. So hurry up ’fore I change my mind.”

“But what should I wear? I don’t have a bathing suit.”

“Neither do I. We’re goin’ skinny-dippin’. So quit flappin’ your jaws, and let’s go.”

I jumped to my feet and took the towels from Oletta’s arms. She turned on the flashlight and led the way down the steps and across the garden, keeping the beam low as we moved into the cool, velvety shadows of Miz Goodpepper’s backyard.

“So where’s that hole in the hedge you talked about?” she whispered, picking her way around a flower bed.

I put my hand on the flashlight and aimed it toward the far side of the garden. “Right there. See it?”

Oletta grumbled, “I can’t fit through that.”

I urged her forward. “Yes, you can. It’ll be okay.”

Well, poor Oletta got her bare arms scratched up in the process, but she finally squeezed through the hedge. We moved across Miz Hobbs’s lawn and onto the brick patio that surrounded the pool. Oletta kicked off her shoes and whispered, “Turn around while I pull off my dress and get in the pool. I want to see how deep it is.”

“Can I take off my pajamas?” I asked.

“Wouldn’t be skinny-dippin’ if you didn’t.”

While pulling off my pajamas, I heard a splash.

“Ahhh, this water is just right. Okay, now c’mon in. Take hold of that handrail and walk down the steps real slow. I’m right here.”

I scampered across the warm bricks and stepped into the water.

“Here, child, take my hand.”

The water slapped against my bare chest and sent shivers up my spine. I let out a giggle as we walked from one side of the pool to the other, bobbing like two happy corks. Oletta kept hold of my hand, but I wasn’t scared at all. I dunked my face into the water, and before long I began to dog-paddle all on my own.

When I grew tired, we leaned against the side of the pool and gazed into the sky. The stars looked so close I longed to reach up, pluck the brightest one, and give it to Oletta. I wanted to tell her how much I loved her. I wanted to taste the words on my tongue and sing them into the night air. And I wanted, more than anything, to hear her say she loved me too.

Over and over I practiced saying the words in my mind:
I love you, Oletta. I love you.
But when I gathered the courage to say them out loud, the words that popped out were, “Oletta, if you and I had met when we were both kids, would you have liked me?”

That question seemed to surprise her as much as it did me. Even in the darkness I could see her eyes crinkle up when she smiled. “Oh, yes, I’da liked you just fine, but I’d probably been a little scared of you too.”

“Scared? Why?”

“Because you’re so smart and pretty. Sometimes them two things in one person can mean a whole lot of trouble.”

My voice squeaked when I said, “Pretty?”

“Ain’t nobody ever tell you that? You got the prettiest skin and eyes I ever seen.”

I smoothed my fingertips over my cheek.

“Oletta, what were you like when you were my age?”

She leaned her head back and said, “When I was your age, I was full of dreams. My momma used to say if she had a drop of water for every dream I had, we’d be livin’ on a houseboat in the middle of a clear blue lake. I loved to sew and got it in my head that I wanted to make wedding dresses. By the time I was thirteen, I could sew just about anything. I’ll never forget the Christmas of 1924. My sweet momma went out and bought me a used sewing machine, the kind with the foot treadle. I cleaned it up and oiled it real good. Lord, I’d have that machine goin’ so fast it’d send out a breeze. Then I got it in my mind that I wanted to be a gospel singer. I’d stand on the porch and sing my heart out when I ironed clothes.”

“Did you sing in the school choir?”

“I did when I was real young, but my momma had to get a job when my pappy died. So I quit school and stayed home to take care of my sisters.” Oletta fluttered her feet in the water and looked into the sky. “But there’s a blessing in everything if we open our eyes. That’s the reason why I’m a good cook. I been workin’ in the kitchen my whole life. I wish I could have finished school, but there’s no sense in feelin’ sorry for myself. Life is what it is. When I was seventeen, I got a job cookin’ in a restaurant. I worked there for years.

“Then one day I heard about a lady over on Gaston Street who was lookin’ for a cook. I did some checkin’ and found out which house she lived in. I made up my mind I was gonna have that job. When I got off work that afternoon, I went home and cooked up my fried chicken. I put on my best Sunday dress and took the bus to Miz Tootie’s house with a plate of hot fried chicken in my hands.

“I’ll never forget it. I rang the doorbell, and it was Mr. Taylor who answered. I said, ‘My name is Oletta Jones, and I’m the best cook in all of Savannah—brought my secret recipe fried chicken to prove it.’ ”

Oletta let out a hearty laugh. “I sure was bold in them days. Mr. Taylor looked at me kinda funny and said, ‘Is that right? So what’s the secret?’ I looked him in the eye and said, ‘If I told you, then it wouldn’t be a secret no more.’ Oh, how that man laughed. He took a piece of my chicken and ate it, standing right there at the front door. He asked me to come inside and then he called down the hall, ‘Tootie, your new cook is here.’ They hired me on the spot, and Mr. Taylor offered to drive me home if I’d leave him the plate of chicken.”

I threw back my head and laughed. “He did?”

“Um-hm. That was the luckiest day of my life. Sometimes I feel bad about not finishing school, but I have it a whole lot better than my momma did. I wish I could read better, but I sure like it when you read to me. My daughter, Jewel, used to read to me while I was makin’ supper. I remember she loved some story about an old frog that was always gettin’ himself into all kinds of trouble. Lord, she musta read it a hundred times.”

Oletta fell quiet, and though the moonlight was slim, I could see the sadness in her face. I knew she was lost in her memories of Jewel. And just as she’d done for me earlier in the evening, I reached over and took hold of her hand.

We floated and gazed into the sky until Oletta said, “Your toes is probably shriveled up like raisins. You better get out and dry off. This might be my first and last time in a pool, so I’m gonna swim for a few minutes. Then we’ll go home.”

I climbed out of the pool and dried off. After pulling on my pajamas, I sat in a lounge chair and watched Oletta swim from one end to the other. Gone was the lumbering, swollen-kneed woman, and in her place was a graceful creature. Leaving only a silent ripple behind, Oletta plunged deep into the water, her wavy reflection moving like a shadowy dream along the bottom of the pool. She rose to the surface at the far end and floated weightlessly in the moonlit water. From a distance she looked like a blissfully content manatee.

While rubbing a towel over my hair, I noticed something lying in the bushes on the side of Miz Hobbs’s back porch. I grabbed the flashlight, crept through the shadows, and aimed the beam. When I realized what it was, I pushed my hand through a thorny bush and pulled out Miz Hobbs’s brassiere. I laughed to myself as I recalled how Earl Jenkins had spun it in the air and let it sail off into the night.

For some demented reason, I took the brassiere and wrapped it in a towel so Oletta wouldn’t see it. What I thought I’d do with it I couldn’t have said, but I wanted it just the same. Later that night I hid it on the shelf in my closet, feeling smug and not knowing why.

A
unt Tootie breezed in through the door from her trip to Raleigh, full of chatter and bearing gifts—a green scarf for Oletta, and a yellow jumper for me. “Oh, sugar, I missed you so much,” she said, wrapping me in her arms. “Come upstairs and talk to me. I want to hear all about your day at Tybee Island.”

Oletta’s eyes met mine, then I turned and followed my aunt upstairs.

I sat on the bed and we talked while she unpacked her suitcase. “So how was your picnic with Oletta and her friends? Did you have fun?”

“Yes, ma’am.” My cheeks heated up from the secret that stirred inside of me. I looked down and picked at the toe of my shoe, searching for a way to change the subject.

“Tell me about it, sugar,” my aunt said, dropping an armful of clothes into a laundry basket. “I see you got some sun.”

I grinned up at her, but my tongue turned thick.
For Pete’s sake, say something, CeeCee. Act normal.
Words tumbled from my lips so fast they bumped into one another. “Well, I liked the ocean a lot. Nadine made me a bracelet, and we ate a ton of food. That’s about it.”

“Taylor and I used to go to Tybee now and then. He liked to crumble up bread and throw handfuls to the gulls. We always had so much fun . . .”

She finished emptying her suitcase and clicked it shut. “All right, now that I’ve got that out of the way, how about going for a little drive with me to the market? I’m just about out of shampoo and aspirin. I think Oletta might want me to pick up a few things too. Why don’t you run downstairs and ask her?”

“Sure,” I said, practically springing off the bed with relief that the subject of Tybee Island had come to an end.

When we arrived at the market, Aunt Tootie pushed the cart down an aisle as I read from the shopping list, checking off each item as she put it into the cart. While heading for the checkout, we bumped into Miz Goodpepper. In her cart were eight large bottles of carrot juice, a tin of sea salt, and a tube of Preparation H.