Saving Cicadas (25 page)

But Grandma Mona remained the naysayer and sucked all the fun out of everything.

“Don't get too hung up on that boy,” she'd tell Mama. “Don't pin your hopes on him. He hasn't changed, Priscilla. People don't change.”

But Mama must have thought they could. Mama had changed herself, after all. She was changing every second these days, humming at times, cleaning, crying at others. Pretty soon she started getting ill. She'd try to eat some dry toast but wound up running to the bathroom instead.

Daddy moved onto the couch in the living room and just let Mama do her thing. He watched in horror when she got sick. He'd try to help around the house. He'd read to us. I don't know how many times he read
Corduroy
, and I was tired of the book, but I listened in anyway. It was my daddy's voice. My father. The newness of everything was like icing on our gingerbread house. Pinpricks up my spine. Cool chills in the warm air. Stomach jitters. Overwhelming happiness.

Then one day, Mama and Daddy were sitting at the breakfast table, looking at each other in a serious way. Rainey was still in the bathroom, and I sat down beside Daddy and placed my hand on his arm, hoping for love. He was so consumed with what he was thinking, he didn't notice me at all. I pulled my hand away and sat there feeling scolded. Out of place.

“Of course I still want to marry you,” he said, “but I just don't think . . .” He breathed out hard and said, “What if something's wrong with the baby? What if I pass along—”

“I don't want to hear another word about that,” said Mama. She had put her head in her hands. She looked up and right at me, and I took that as my cue to walk away. Still, I stood quietly in the living room and listened in. “Do you see why I didn't tell you?” she whispered. “Do you see?”

“Yes, yes, I completely understand. You're right . . . as usual. I'm sorry. We're having this baby, and everything will be fine.”

“Everything will be fine,” said Mama with finality, though there was an edge to her voice.

The wedding was set for July the third. It had been so many years, it seemed no time for wasting. It was to be here at the house with Fritz officiating, and only a few friends in attendance. Rainey and I were going to be flower girls. We'd always wanted to be flower girls, and we practiced by pulling up strays in Mrs. Shoemaker's front yard whenever Mrs. Shoemaker was not around to see us. We'd amassed a small treasure of petals and kept them in a little basket. We'd take turns walking up and down the garden, dropping them one at a time to the left, to the right. Then we'd pick them up, one by one, and do it all over again.

One morning, after we were done practicing and were sure we knew our parts, we sat on the front steps and watched Daddy give Mama a kiss on the cheek. Then he got on his motorcycle and told her he would be back in two days. He was going to take care of his house in the mountains. He was going to get all his stuff and move it to Forest Pines. Then he and Mama were going to do the same with our house in Cypresswood, and we would all be together again under one roof. They were so excited, we all were. It was a very happy time.

But Daddy never came back from the mountains, and Mama cried, and Grandma Mona said she knew it all along. There seemed nothing much to be happy about after that.

Chapter Forty-two
ON THIEVES AND STEALING

When July the third came and went, Mama stayed quiet. Her soft face grew hard along her cheekbones. Her glow from pregnancy had disappeared. To me, she seemed only halfway living, and try as I might to cheer her up or suggest reasons why Daddy had left us, she seemed closed to anything but the fact she'd fallen for it. Again.

There were no fireworks or sparklers for Independence Day, at least not at our house, and two nights went by uneventful and sad. Then one night, I was coming to Mama's bedroom to say good night, but mostly just to check on her. She'd already put us into bed with barely a word. No promptings to say our prayers as if she'd forgotten our routine. I heard her voice, and I stopped just outside her door.

“If it was only about me,” I heard her telling somebody, “I would be all right, but it's not. It's not just about me. I brought him here, into my home, into my family again. All I did was create false hopes. I'm embarrassed. I'm angry . . . No, I'm not mad at you, of course not. I don't . . . Fritz, no. I don't want to talk about that right now. I just . . . you wouldn't understand. You cannot possibly. I'll just say this: this is no way to bring a child into the world. It's not supposed to be this way, to feel this way. I'm sure this is not what God intended. This whole thing has been one mistake after another. Now I don't want to hear another word about it.”

Without saying good-bye, Mama hung up the phone and closed Fritz out of her life, along with me and Rainey. I tiptoed back to bed and lay there all night thinking, suddenly afraid again of what Mama was going to do about the baby.

Early the next morning, as I was wiping the fog from my eyes, I heard Rainey snoring. I had woken up with something important on my mind, and I needed to talk to somebody about it. If he was still alive, I would have searched the house for Poppy, but he wasn't there for me anymore. I didn't want to talk to Grandma Mona because I was still mad at her, and I couldn't talk to Mama about it. That left Rainey. It was a gamble because I didn't like getting her upset, and I was pretty sure what I had to say wouldn't sit well with her.

I looked up at her sleeping. By her head was an upside-down teddy bear, the one Mrs. Arielle had given her, and against the wall sat the baby doll she'd brought with her from home. Beneath the covers was a lump with a hand sticking out. Every night since she'd taken it, Rainey had slipped the baby Jesus out of his hiding place in the closet and slept with him, remembering to hide him again by morning light.

“Rainey?” I whispered. She didn't answer. I poked her in the back. “Rainey?”

“Mmm,” she grumbled.

“I gotta talk about something. Wake up.”

Rainey stirred and then struggled to turn over. She stretched with her good arm, yawned, then lay on her side, looking at me with one sleepy eye. Birds were beginning to sing, and by the light coming in atop the curtains, I could tell it was going to be a hot, sunny day.

“Rainey, listen. You know that baby Jesus you stole?”

“I took it,” she said, correcting me.

“No, you stole it, Rainey. It belonged to the church and you stole it. You're a thief. You could go to jail.”

At this, Rainey's brow furrowed, and she sat up, grabbing the baby Jesus. She hugged him hard, then realized he was the contraband, so she jumped out of bed and stuffed him in the closet, laying a blanket on top of him for safer keeping.

She looked at me and said, “I not go jail.”

“You're not, you're not,” I said. “Come back over here and sit down.” She sat, pajamas twisted, hair mussed, eyes puffy.

“You tell Mama?” she asked.

“No.”

“Okay.”

“I'm just saying that you stole the baby Jesus, and I was thinking how that's a crime. Stealing, it's a crime, you know, and they send people to jail for stealing things, even a plastic doll. Even something small like that or a piece of chewing gum.”

Rainey's chest was starting to heave up and down like she might start crying.

“All I'm saying is . . . you 'member how Poppy and Grandma Mona taught us that new word? You member those baby pictures we saw in the library? On Google?”

Rainey's bottom lip curled and started shaking. She nodded her head.

“How come
you
could go to jail for stealing that baby Jesus—which you won't, 'cause I'm not gonna tell on you, I promise—but anyway, how come you could go to jail for that, but Mama might could do abortion on her baby and that wouldn't be against the law?”

Rainey shook her head.

“It doesn't seem right to me,” I said. “Seems like doing that to a real baby'd be worse than stealing a dumb plastic one.”

“Uh-huh.” A tear escaped Rainey's left eye and plopped to her chest. “I not go jail.”

“And then I started thinking, you know what?”

“What.”

“What if Jesus really was in Mama's tummy?”

“Baby Jesus in Mama's tummy,” said Rainey.

“I know, but what if he
really
was. I mean, what if Jesus hadn't come two thousand years ago, but he waited to come now. And what if Mary, like Mama, had thought she didn't want to have a baby. She could have un-borned him, and Jesus never would have come into the world. Can you imagine? If Jesus were to come today, he might not have been born at all. There'd be no Christmas, no Easter, no church, nothing like that.”

I could see I'd lost Rainey somewhere along the way. She was rubbing her fingers and fretting, looking toward our closed bedroom door. She got up and dug around for her baby Jesus and ran to the dresser, quick like a ninja. She opened the bottom drawer, moved aside some clothes, and stuffed Baby Jesus in a new, better hiding place. She was a criminal now. She knew it. She'd have to be more careful for nobody to find the evidence.

Mama seemed to shut down completely. She'd stay in bed until it was time for her to drive Rainey to work. She wouldn't talk. She'd look out the window for long, long periods of time and tear up at nearly everything . . . the grass growing, a bird chirping, the wind blowing.

Uncle Fritz would call the house and leave her messages saying, “Thought I'd stop by later on, see how you're doing.” “Please call me back.” “There's nothing we can't handle together. I'm your brother.” “Please promise you'll call me before doing anything drastic.”

At one point he came to the front door and knocked. “Don't answer that,” Mama said in a hushed voice.

“But it Fritz,” said Rainey.

“Rainey, please. Just do as your mother says.”

After trying the doorknob and finding it locked, Fritz walked back down to his car and looked at the house real sad-like before getting back in and driving off.