Saving Cicadas (6 page)

“I gonna win,” said Rainey. “I always win, right, Mama?

“Yes, honey. You are a winner.”

This was going to be a very long trip. It'd been years since we went anywhere with Grandma Mona. The last time was Disney. Mama and Daddy saved up for two years to take us there. This time, well, I had no idea how much she'd saved up. 'Course, how much money did we really need, going on a trip to nowhere?

We eased out onto North view, which led to the interstate. I knew how stressed my mother was, so I was trying to leave her alone about the whole where-are-we-going thing. I waited to see if she was heading east toward the ocean or west toward the mountains.

“Mama?” said Rainey. “Roll up the window.”

What she meant was “down,” and this being a former cop car, the doors and the windows wouldn't work from the backseat. Better to keep the prisoners in, I guessed. Mama flicked the switch and Rainey's window went down with a slow
whoosh
. She stuck her head out as far as she could with the seat belt holding her back. I craned my neck, watching her face light up in the wind, her shoulder-length hair blowing furiously around her. Rainey's eyes were tightly closed as if she was thinking hard, as if she was listening to God out there in the wind. I watched her and wondered,
what in the world is he saying to her now?

“Close your lips, Rain. You're gonna get bugs in your teeth.”

She closed her mouth and slipped back inside, her hair crazed. Her eyes were smiling, and she moved her tongue around, checking for bugs, just in case.

Mama was still nibbling on her biscuit, and Grandma Mona said, “Let me know if you start feeling sick or anything, Priscilla. We'll have to put you in the backseat with the rubber floor.” I looked at my mother and suddenly wished I was in the backseat and out of her range.

She signaled right, and we pulled onto the ramp for I-26 West. We were going to the mountains. The last time we went to the mountains, it was right after my daddy left. Mama said he was headed for the hills, so off we went, chasing after him. Never did find him. I wondered what we're doing now, how long we were going to stay up in the mountains. Were we going to find Daddy? No. I pushed the thought out of my head. Maybe Mama'd get tired and miss our house. Maybe we'd run out of money and she'd head back to the egg salad nesting in the freezer. We'd probably be home in our own beds tonight.

“I know you're not going where I think you're going,” said Grandma Mona.

I heard the wheels humming below us and watched the trees getting taller.

“We don't have to go anywhere, you know,” I told Mama.

“Yes we do,” said Grandma Mona. “Priscilla does. Don't you, Priscilla? Like when she was pregnant with Rainey, she just took off. Isn't that what you do, Priscilla? Tell your daughters. They're old enough to know.”

Mama hadn't mentioned this before. She'd never really talked about her giving birth to Rainey. But something about the movement of the car allowed her to start talking. Maybe it was that she didn't have to look us in the eye.

“I was almost your age when I found out I was having you, Rainey. My mother was not nearly as understanding as yours. She told me what she expected me to do. She would have forced me if I'd stayed.” “To do what?” asked Rainey.

“Yeah, what did she want you to do?” I asked.

“That is quite enough, Priscilla,” said Grandma Mona. “Why don't you tell her the truth? How you wouldn't stop running around with that Johnson boy. Now there's a good story.”

“We were living in Yuma, Arizona, at the time,” Mama said, ignoring my question and Grandma Mona's meanness. “Daddy's job had moved us there. ‘We've only been here a year, Priscilla! Now what will everybody think?!' ” Mama did an impression of Grandma Mona that I thought sounded a lot like her. Grandma Mona didn't think it was so funny though.

“Well truly. Everybody did think it. They did. You know I was right, Priscilla. We were living in different times.”

Mama sniffed and wiped her face with the back of her right hand, and I wished I could open the door, jump, and roll right out of this pressure cooker. But I couldn't. Mama needed me.

“So you left home,” I said. “You drove to Cypresswood, South Carolina, by yourself?”

“I hitched a ride to California, thinking I'd like it out there. But it was too close to home. So I waited tables for a week and took a bus all the way across country. I'd get off at each stop and look around, but I never felt like staying anywhere. The ground was too dry and dusty—hard like my home had been.”

“It wasn't so hard,” said Grandma Mona. “Your mother's exaggerating, girls. Isn't she, Grayson?”

“I was sixteen and pregnant and not an ounce of sense in me. I decided to stay wherever it was raining, and three days later, I'm in Cypresswood in a big thunder-boomer. I was a little disappointed I didn't make it all the way to the ocean.”

“If you want the ocean, why you got off the bus?” asked Rainey. It was a very smart question.

“I told you. I loved the rain. I'd made a deal with myself.”

“The clouds should have held out at least till Forest Pines,” said Grandma Mona. “If it hadn't rained in Cypresswood, you might never have had Harlan in your lives.”

Hmm. Well, that shut Mama up. Harlan was my daddy. He rode a Harley-Davidson named Marilyn after Marilyn Monroe, a dead movie star. I hardly remembered Daddy, seeing as he left when I was four. I did remember his brown hair was long in the back. And it was going gray down the sides too, so when the wind had caught it just right, it looked like he had two white wings coming out the back of him. I also had this memory of him and me riding to the Dairy Queen in Fervor, me holding on for dear life. Sometime after he left, my memory of my father started to fade. It's a terrible thing to forget your father's face, but it happens. At times, all I remembered of my father was an angel on a motorcycle.

Mama really loved him, and she cried a whole long while when he left. Some for her, but mostly for Rainey and me. We cried too. Rainey practically lived in the hollow tree for a month. I remember she'd even take her meals out there.

Driving down the road, every time a motorcycle would zoom past us, I'd check to see if it was him. Just an old habit. Mama said my daddy had a wild hair up his rear, and he finally ran off with Marilyn. I hoped they were happy, wherever they were.

Mama looked up at the clouds and said, “I loved the rain so much, I named you Rainey, honey.”

“I like my name.”

“Yeah, me too,” said Mama. “Fits you better than Thunder or Boomer, don't you think?”

Mama smiled for the first time in days and set her head back on the rest, and Rainey pressed hers on the window. Poppy was already snoring in the backseat, and Grandma Mona had pickled herself quiet.

For the rest of the morning, we drove in near silence through the state of South Carolina, Rainey having finally fallen asleep, and none of us wanting to disturb her. I felt like a little window had opened between my mother and the rest of us, and I didn't want to close it. I looked up at the clear blue sky when we crossed the state line into North Carolina. Secretly, I was praying for rain and that Mama could finally stop running.

Chapter Eight
THANK GOD FOR GROCERY STORES

Mama had this thing about not wanting to press her opinions on Rainey and me. She wanted us to express our “own self.” I guess it all went back to her mother, Grandma Mona. Mama was just the opposite of her. I wondered what kind of mother I'd be when I grew up, the overbearing kind or the have-it-your-own-way kind? If we always do the opposite of how we were raised, I feared I might be cruel. I guessed it all depended on what you believed in. I wondered what Mama believed when it came to her having this new baby. All I really knew about Mama's beliefs were, you always tip a waitress no matter what, and you always pack an umbrella. Just in case. I patted my list of options folded in my pocket, to make sure it was still there. I'd work on it some more when nobody was watching.

Rainey and Poppy were awake now, but Grandma Mona was still unconscious. It was how I liked her the most. “Let me know when you're hungry,” my mother said. “I'll find an Arby's or something.”

“I could eat,” I said, sitting up straighter in my seat and blinking to adjust to the noonday light.

“After lunch, I go work,” said Rainey. “I need put my apron on.”

“Oh. Right,” said Mama. “Well, guess what? You're not going in to work today, honey.”

I bit my lip, hoping Rainey would handle this well.

“But I got work,” said Rainey. “Got take groceries to the car. Pack 'em up real good.”

Mama squeezed the wheel and flipped her face all the way around to look at Rainey. We were speeding seventy miles an hour down I-26.

“Mama!” I screamed. “Look out!”

“Oh, sweet Mary, hold on!” Poppy was hollering, and Rainey was frozen up.

I mean it, we almost ran a guy off the road! He was honking and we were swerving. I grabbed the wheel while Mama was screaming, and finally we got it straightened out. I nearly had a heart attack. I was grabbing at my chest, and my mother looked discombobulated like she'd just woken up and happened to be driving a car.

Mama eased onto an off-ramp and then into the dirt on the side of the road.

“What in tarnation are you doing?” Grandma Mona shrieked.

“It's all right, she got it,” said Poppy in his soothing kind of way. “Everybody just calm it down, now. Nice and calm.”

We came to a stop, the hazards blinking, and Mama leaned her head on the steering wheel and banged it a couple times. Then she said calmly, “Rainey, I told Mr. Mooneyham we were going on a little trip, honey. He said it's perfectly fine and to have fun. Fun, he said. Isn't this fun? You can go back to work when we get home, all right?”

This change in routine was not sitting well with Rainey. She was trying to process it all and deal with it. I could tell by how she kept tilting her head to the side and mumbling to herself. She was holding her baby doll and fiddling with its fingertips, counting each finger, trying to stay calm. Trying. She couldn't hold it in any longer and threw her hands up to her ears, letting the doll roll to the floor. “I want go work! I want help people with the grocery. Let's go home, Mama. Time go home.”

I watched as my mother's pretty face stretched back into a painful grimace and she started crying. And not just a little cry, but a deep, rip-your-heart-out kind. For a woman who was mostly quiet except for occasional bouts of self-talking, these outbursts were becoming right regular.

“Goodness, it's okay,” said Poppy. “Oh, now. She'll be fine. Won't you, Rainey? You'll be fine, right? We're going to have fun! The Macy family on the open road!”

“I got go work.” Rainey pleaded. She was really beginning to fret, with the bottom lip shaking and all.

Mama cried harder. The sound completely filled the car and bounced off my eardrums, pinging from window to window. We weren't even in our own state anymore. We were hours away from Rainey's happy place in the hollow of the backyard tree. I looked up at a flashing sign for cigarettes at a Zippy Mart, and that's when I had one of my smartest ideas ever. “Mama, go find a grocery store,” I told her. “They're bound to be in every town, right?”

Mama must have thought it was a good idea, too, because we drove around, and when we found one, Mama went in and explained our situation. She asked if my sister could bag a few groceries. Maybe take them out to a few cars. There just happened to be another developmentally challenged person who worked at this particular store, but he was sick today. Bad for him. Good for us.

Chapter Nine
MOUNTAINS TO MOVE

{Mona}

The grocery store manager was more than happy to have some free help. My granddaughter Rainey was smiling and just bagging away. She was doing a very nice job putting the frozen foods together and the produce together. Very smart girl. Better than I could do. But the plastic bags were causing her fits. She was used to paper, so she mumbled about how hard and slippery these “bad bags” were. “Need the paper bags,” she said. “Not these bad bags.” Adorable child.

Grayson and Janie roamed the grocery aisles, hand in hand, marveling at how much things cost these days. Every now and again, they'd come back to tell us that a gallon of milk was over four dollars. “Might as well put that in the gas tank!” said Grayson. “Can you believe it? Four-dollar milk and four-dollar gas. What's the world coming to?”

“I know it, honey, I know it,” I said.

“Come on, Poppy,” said Janie, grabbing his arm. “Let's go see how much cakes and cookies cost!” And off they'd go.

Priscilla and I sat in the little café, sipping water, watching Rainey, waiting. I counted five sips of water before I held my breath and then let it out. “I know what you're doing, Priscilla,” I told her. She froze up and grabbed her glass with two hands. “I understand you miss the man. I do. But honey, this is no way to act. You can't just come traipsing through the mountainside looking for a ghost.” A man walked by Priscilla and tipped his cap to her. Priscilla halfway smiled, then crossed her legs and turned her head toward me. “He's gone, Priscilla,” I whispered. “I know you don't want to believe it, but honey, it's true. He's gone and he's not coming back. The sooner you can accept this, the better it'll be for everyone. I just don't want to see you hurt—”