Saving Cicadas (13 page)

Mama took a deep breath and punched the white button surrounded by fancy etched flowers in brass, then she pulled away quick like she was embarrassed to have made a sound. An old lady across the street in a yellow Victorian not as nice as this one was watching us from her front porch. She was pushing a broom back and forth, sweeping slow like a person who wants to seem like she's cleaning but mostly's trying to hide the fact that she's nosing around in the neighbors' beeswax.

The door started to open, and Mama gasped. So I held my breath. I was nervous as all get-out and didn't rightly know why, like maybe a ghost would be standing there. But it was no ghost. There was a tall, skinny man, older than Mama but younger than Poppy, and he looked a whole heck of a lot like Grandma Mona. Except for not so mean.

“Fritz,” Mama said.

“Oh my—Priscilla? Is it really you?”

Mister Fritz seemed to be taking us all in and could hardly believe we were standing there before his very eyes.

“Fritz,” said Grandma Mona, “it's been a long time.”

“Well, my goodness, come in,” he said. “I'm . . . I was hoping I'd see you. After all these years.” Mister Fritz spoke with faraway stars in his eyes.

“Yes,” said Mama, still tight-lipped. “It's been a long time.”

Mama looked at Fritz, and he looked back at her, and then all of us said our hellos and shuffled into the house like nothing at all was strange about us being here after all these years. Nothing at all was strange about meeting a man you didn't know existed, who just happened to look a lot like your Grandma Mona. Nothing at all was strange about stepping into your great-grandparents' house that was said to be haunted with ghosts and family secrets, with gladiola wallpaper going up the stairs to the rooms where your mama once played when she was young and happy and life was simple.

Before she left home, dead to the family, alone in the world. And now she was back, her fatherless children in tow.

No, nothing at all was strange about that.

Part Two

EATING THE
GINGERBREAD HOUSE

Chapter Eighteen
WHICHEVER WAY THE POT FALLS

Mister Fritz looked like he was young and old at the same time—no wrinkles or anything—but there was gray around his face. He towered over Poppy, who, at this moment, seemed he'd died and gone to heaven, staring over all the faded brown portraits of people on the walls.

Grandma Mona was not much for saying howdy-do and got that out of the way real quick. Now she was in the sewing room that sat off to the right of the front door. She was pressed up to the little sewing table, turning spools of colored thread and thimbles in her fingers. I hadn't realized she liked to sew. Watching my grandparents here in this house was sort of like seeing them when they were younger. Like their heads had filled with olden days. I looked back at the front door and wondered if we'd walked through a time machine.

Mama and Rainey were sitting with Mister Fritz in the fancy living room on the other side of the hall. He'd gotten them cups of iced tea, but I declined. I was standing there in the middle of the hallway, torn between rooms, trying to take it all in.

I had never walked into a place and felt that I had history, or roots, in my life. It was as if all my life I'd been just waiting to come to this very house. Everybody—Poppy, Grandma Mona, Mama—seemed to have found pieces of themselves here, like they weren't really themselves until they got here and the house popped in that last piece of the puzzle.

Rainey was strangely quiet and well behaved. I could tell she liked this Mister Fritz. She was usually a good judge of character, except for mangy dogs, so I supposed I'd like him too. Rainey was sipping her tea and had her knees pulled together on the sofa, like Mama did. Rainey was copying everything Mama was doing. Every time she took a sip, Rainey took a sip. If she turned her body or crossed her legs, Rainey did it too. It was how Rainey learned what to do in situations she wasn't used to. She was real smart that way.

“It's good to see you, Priscilla,” I heard Fritz said, “and so wonderful to meet you, Rainey. I see you're every bit as beautiful as your mama.”

Rainey grinned bigger than I'd ever seen. She forgot being graceful and pulled her shoulders up to her ears like a little girl. Don't you know, she spilled her tea on that pretty rug?

“Not to worry. I'll get that,” said Fritz, standing up, sort of taking his time, and heading to the kitchen. I wondered if he was walking so slow because he couldn't move fast or because he didn't want Rainey to think it was a big deal, spilling tea on a rug that was probably a hundred or more years old. I was guessing it was a bigger deal than he was letting on, and it made me like him even more. Soon as he was out of the room, Mama said in a hush, “Rainey, can you please be more careful? My goodness, when I was little I wasn't even allowed to take a drink in here. My grandma would have had my hide!”

“Sorry, Mama.” Rainey turned all galumph-y again. She'd quit trying to be Mama and was just Rainey now, her head sagging low. She eyed her calm cicada on the doily beneath the window.

“Why don't you go on and look around the place? But please, honey, don't touch anything, okay? Everything in here is a precious antique that used to belong to somebody important in the family.” Then she said real low, more to herself, “I can't imagine what all this stuff is worth now.”

“Let's go upstairs,” I said. “Poppy's looking at pictures.”

So Rainey and I started to climb the stairway. It was in the middle of the hall directly in front of the door, and rose-colored carpet rolled up the middle with dark wood sticking out the sides. The rail was fancy, with a curly-q and wood pickets carved with swoops and swirls. Must have taken somebody a long time to make those pickets.

“Look here, girls,” said Poppy. “You see this? This is your great-grandfather, Adolph Macy. Remember I was telling you about him?”

“He dead,” said Rainey.

I flitted down the steps for just a glimpse of my mama. I wanted to make sure she was all right now that she and Fritz were by themselves. He was sitting an arm's length away from her on the sofa, looking down at her feet. Mama had her elbows on her knees and her hands covering her face. It was perfectly quiet, but I could tell she was upset. About what, I didn't know. I knew they were waiting for me, so I climbed back up to join Rainey and Poppy.

“Everybody in these pictures is dead, Rainey,” I said. “It's no big deal. This one died in the war. On a land mine. We were talking 'bout him in the car.”

The picture of Adolph Macy was brown and faded all around the edges, so it made him look like he was just floating there with no body or anything. His eyes were colored in blacker than normal and real serious. Maybe somebody had come along with a marker. Made it look like he was staring right at you, or like you could see right into his head. He was real young to be Poppy's father. Didn't look much older than Rainey. She had his chin, though, square and fat, so I knew he was family.

“And this one right here? This is my mother, Madeline Macy. She had some Indian in her, though we never did figure out what. Wasn't really anything folks used to talk about. But see her cheekbones? Janie, you favor her a lot.” That was the first time I'd heard a grown-up say I looked like anybody at all, and it made me feel like I belonged. Maybe I did have a place in this family.

“She was a good woman, my mother,” said Poppy. “Hardworking. She took care of me and my brother all by herself after Daddy went off to Korea. And when he didn't come back, she just kept on as if nothing had ever happened. In my book, my mother was a hero, just like my father.”

“You can be a hero just for acting like nothing ever happened?” “Absolutely. My mother never let us see her cry, even though I knew it was hard on her. It had to be. Because of Mama being so strong, my brother Jimmy and I just went on like nothing had ever happened either. It made it easier that way.”

“Who's this?” asked Rainey, putting her leg over the railing like she was going to slide down. She was pointing to the portrait to the left of Great-Grandma Madeline.

“Get off the rail, honey. That won't hold,” Poppy said. Rainey minded him and sat on the stairs. She never liked to be scolded. It wounded her for a few minutes before she could go on. Always had been that way. She was pouting, but I showed Poppy I was all ears for him. He got real animated then and said in a spooky voice, “This . . . is your Great-Aunt Gertrude. Her ghost is said to still be in this very house.”

The
s
in
house
lingered on his tongue like the hissing of a snake, and my mouth dropped open. Rainey got over her pouty self, and her bottom lip reared back like a smiling dog's. Her eyes went wide. “Where is she?”

“They say she's in the attic,” said Poppy.

“She
is
in the attic,” said Grandma Mona from the sewing room. She'd been listening in on us this whole time.

“Why?” I ask. “Why's she in the attic?”

“ 'Cause that's where she died.”

“Somebody died
here
?” I was thinking this wasn't such a great idea. I had known about ghosts, but I didn't like the idea of somebody having to die to become one. “Let's go,” I said. “Can we go now? Go back to the motel?”

“Oh, honey, she's harmless,” said Poppy, pulling me into his lap. He was resting on a step three up from Rainey.

“I thought people go to heaven when they die,” I said.

“Yeah, hebben,” Rainey echoed.

“Well, sometimes they do,” said Poppy. “And sometimes, they don't. Like if they've been real bad or if they have business to tend to.”

“Was Gertrude bad?” I asked.

“Well, it's not for me to judge, but the story is, she tried to kill her husband, your great-uncle Remorse. For some reason, Gertrude thought he was two-timing her, and . . . well that's just not something we know for sure. But what we do know is one afternoon, she put a pot of boiling oil up on a rafter in the attic. Then she called him to come up there for something, luring him into a trap, you see. Next thing you know, Aunt Gertrude's the one lying on the floor, covered in grease, not Uncle Remorse. Burned three-quarters of her body, it did, and she died not long after that. Died a painful, terrible death from all those burns.”

I covered my mouth and spoke through my fingers, horrified. “She was really trying to kill him?”

“Legend has it,” said Poppy. “Funny how life works, isn't it? Had the pot fallen the other way, Uncle Remorse would've been killed instead of Gertrude. Word has it that Gertrude is still so mad about the whole thing, her ghost stays up in the attic, trying to figure out what went wrong.”

“What do you think went wrong?”

“Truthfully? I think God works that way. All things work for good for those who love the Lord. I'm guessing Uncle Remorse loved the Lord a little more than Aunt Gertrude. Otherwise, she wouldn't have been working so hard to kill him, now would she?”

“You believe she's still up there?” I asked.

“I don't know, honey. Your Grandma Mona seems to think so. Some folks need a good reason to up and leave the earth, I guess. If she's not in heaven, I suspect that old attic looks better than the alternative . . . down there.” He pointed to the ground and said, “And I'm not talking about the basement.”

“I don't want to go in the attic or the basement,” I said.

“Me too,” said Rainey.

Poppy closed his eyes and laughed. “Now girls, this is all good and fun, all right? There's nothing scary about this house. There is nothing at all going to hurt you here. I can promise you that.”

Rainey and I looked at each other and made a silent secret pact not to go anywhere near the attic or the basement.

“Come on down, honey,” Mama called us from the back of the house. “Uncle Fritz is gonna show us the garden in the back. You won't believe it. It's all grown up and even prettier than I remember it.”

Couple things I'd just noticed. One, Mama actually sounded happy for the first time in a week. I wondered what all had happened while Rainey and me had been sitting here having our wits scared out of us. Last time I saw Mama she was looking upset. Or was she? Second, Mama'd just called him
Uncle
Fritz which, in my book, if he looks like Grandma Mona, would make him Mama's
brother,
and I had no idea she even had one. I looked up at Poppy all alarmed with my suspicion, and he whispered to me, “We'll talk about this later, all right?”

“But she said—”

“I know it, honey. In a little while. We've got some things to explain to you, and we will.”

And here I'd thought Mama was an only child. My whole life I was thinking this. She'd never once talked about an Uncle Fritz before—even in her childhood stories—and neither had my Grandma Mona. Neither had Poppy. It made me nervous and wondering, heaven knows, what else had they been keeping quiet?