Swan Place (28 page)
Authors: Augusta Trobaugh
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Sagas, #African American
“You okay?” I asked.
“Oh sure,” Crystal said lightly. “Must have eaten something that didn’t agree with me, is all.” I took the pillow off of my head and looked at her. She was smiling to beat the band and starting to get dressed. But her face had that same pasty look she’d had the morning before.
“Are you sure?” I questioned her.
“Of course I’m sure,” she smiled at me again. “I gotta get ready for work.”
“Okay,” I said. “If you’re sure. I better go get Little Ellis up before he wets the bed.”
“Dove,” Crystal’s voice stopped me. “You did real good yesterday. I hope it will all go that smooth today.”
“Oh, it will,” I promised. “You just have a good day at work and don’t worry yourself. Maybe that’s what making you sick—you’re worrying so much.”
“Yeah. Maybe,” Crystal said.
When Molly and Little Ellis
and I started down the stairs, I could smell that good, warm-flour smell of fresh biscuits coming from the kitchen. Buzzard was at the sink, and I guess Crystal had already left for work. In the middle of the table was a whole platter of hot biscuits, with butter and jelly to go on them. And glasses of milk.
“Oh, you made your good biscuits again!” I said to Buzzard.
“Sure doesn’t take much to please you all,” she grumbled, but I saw her smile.
Molly and Little Ellis and I ate three whole biscuits apiece, while Buzzard sat near us, sipping her coffee and watching us with a relish she tried to hide. When it was time to do up the dishes, I noticed Crystal’s teacup sitting at the side of the sink.
“Crystal was sick again this morning,” I told Buzzard. “You think we better wash her cup separately?”
“Don’t think so,” Buzzard said. “Think what’s she’s got, we can’t catch from her.”
“We can’t?”
“We can’t,” she repeated. And then she wouldn’t say anything else.
I made up my mind right then and there that I was going to tell Crystal she should see a doctor, but it was Saturday, and so she had to leave extra early, what with it being the busiest day at the salon. But I would say something to her when she came home. Maybe a doctor could give her some medicine so that she wouldn’t have to be sick every single morning.
Later, while I was washing up our breakfast dishes, Buzzard got a big broom out of the pantry and leaned it up against the sink. She started untying her apron. “I have to go into town for a few things,” she said. “Would you sweep off the back porch real good for me while I’m gone?”
“Sure.”
“And maybe wipe out the rocking chairs too—make sure they’re nice and clean?”
“Sure. What’s going on?” Because Buzzard’s voice had such a serious sound in it.
“Circle of Jesus,” she answered easily, as if I should know what that meant.
“Circle of Jesus?”
Buzzard had picked up her purse and was starting for the back door.
“What’s a Circle of Jesus?” I raised my voice so she would be sure to hear me. Because I couldn’t stand for her to leave before I knew what it was.
“Circle of Jesus is kind of like a club—women who are in my Sunday School class.” She smiled. “We’ve been meeting like this for so many years, I don’t even know how long it’s been. On this back porch when the weather’s nice. We study up for Sunday’s lesson. Read the Bible together. Gossip a little bit, maybe.”
“Oh.”
“And pray,” she added.
I finished drying the dishes, rubbing the dish cloth in a circular motion in the middle of each plate and thinking:
Circle of Jesus. Circle of Jesus.
When I’d put the last dish away, I took the broom, swept off the big back porch just as Buzzard had asked me to do, and then wiped out each of the wooden rocking chairs. Eight of them altogether. And the whole time, I kept thinking,
Circle of Jesus!
What a lovely sounding thing!
Then I got to thinking about Miz Swan and wondering where she went to church—whenever she was home, of course. I’d need to ask Buzzard about that, because I meant to keep Aunt Bett’s good example to me and Molly and Little Ellis going strong. But Crystal—Sunday was her one and only day off, so I wouldn’t try to make her get up early. That just didn’t seem right. I heard the big car pulling into the garage, so I went out and helped Buzzard carry in the brown bags from the grocery store. The bag I carried had a big bunch of green grapes right up in the top, and they smelled so sweet and good and cold on that hot summer morning. Down in the bottom of the bag there must have been a cantaloupe, because I could smell that sweet perfumy aroma as well. And Buzzard was carrying a basket of ripe peaches whose aroma made my mouth water. When we got to the porch, Buzzard looked around it carefully. “Looks real nice,” she said.
“Thanks.” I didn’t add that I wasn’t used to having anybody to thank me for just doing the things I should be doing anyway. In the kitchen, we unloaded the sacks. Six cans of tuna—the expensive kind. The grapes and cantaloupe, a head of lettuce, and another big bag of apples.
“I got extra apples,” Buzzard said. “In case you and Molly and Little Ellis wanted some.”
“What are you going to make?”
“Some special tuna salad, with chopped apples and pecans in it, this fruit, all clean and chilled, some of my famous homemade white rolls, and for dessert, pecan pie.”
“For the Circle of Jesus?” I asked.
“Oh yes—those ladies sure do enjoy their food! Me too,” she added, patting her stomach. “But I need you to get out from under my feet a little while, so why don’t you take Molly and Little Ellis outside? Isn’t good for them to stay cooped up in the house all the time.” While I was helping Molly and Little Ellis get their shoes on, I could hear Buzzard working in the kitchen, and I never heard such flurry going on before—except for that time when Aunt Bett got so mad at Roy-Ellis. But these weren’t mad sounds at all. Just busy kitchen sounds. Chopping and stirring and the oven door opening and closing.
Later, Buzzard came out onto the porch, carrying a platter of sandwiches and with a cloth folded over her arm.
“You all sit down here on the steps and eat your lunch,” she said. “Way too hot in that kitchen for you.” Well, it may have been hot as the dickens in that kitchen, but the smells that were coming out of it made my stomach rumble.
“What’s that smells so good?” I asked Buzzard.
“My good, homemade yeast rolls,” she waggled her head a little, to let me know that she was proud of those rolls. “I always make ‘em for Circle of Jesus. Why, if I ever
didn’t,
I expect those good sisters would cause a riot or something! Now you all eat your sandwiches, and I’ll save out a few rolls for you to have, but not until after the meeting is over.”
“Can I come to the meeting?” I asked. “After I get Molly and Little Ellis down for their naps?”
Buzzard frowned. “I don’t think so. We don’t usually have guests at our meetings. But when it’s over, I’ll let you come out and meet all the sisters.”
Later, I had just finished reading a third story to Molly and Little Ellis and settled them down for their naps upstairs when I heard a truck driving around to the back of the house. From the window, I watched as it slowly rolled to a stop just outside the door to the back porch. The back of the truck had three big, wooden rocking chairs in it and three of the biggest women I’ve ever seen in my life were sitting in them. When the truck stopped, they got up and, moaning a little, they got down out of the back and went to the passenger side of the cab. Two of them hovered around for a minute or two, while the other one stepped back into the shade of a pecan tree and fanned herself with a cardboard fan like they have in church. When the other two backed away in perfect formation from the truck, I saw that there was a little bitty, very old, very bent woman riding on their strong black arms, just like she was sitting in a swing. Then the driver’s door opened, and yet another woman emerged. She was every bit as big as the other three, and as I watched them moving toward the back porch, I was thinking that in all my life, I’d never seen such finely dressed folks.
Two of the women were wearing identical dresses: pink with white lace collars and white stocking and shoes. Of the other two, one was wearing a pale-green-and-white checked dress and the other a pale lavender. And the little bitty old lady they were carrying on their arms had on a buttercup-yellow dress that was so small, it could almost have fit Molly. They all wore snowy white gloves and hats with little nose-veils on them.
I watched them moving toward the back porch until I couldn’t see them from the window any longer.
I’ll say one thing: I did try very hard and for a long time not to go spy on the Circle of Jesus folks, but in the end, I did it anyway. Maybe it happened because the bedroom was so hot. I’m not sure. All I know is that I turned on the fan, aimed it at where Molly and Little Ellis were sleeping, and tiptoed down the stairs. In the hallway, I could hear the voices from the back porch, but I couldn’t make out the words. I peeked into the kitchen, where the dishes and glasses from the lunch were stacked by the sink.
Good!
I thought.
I’ll wash the dishes, and that will keep me from spying!
So I put the dishes into a sink full of warm, soapy water, and I was careful not to let anything clatter loud enough for Buzzard to hear it and maybe make me go back upstairs until the meeting was over. After all the dishes were washed, dried, and put away, I washed and dried all the glasses and polished them until they gleamed. When Buzzard suddenly came into the kitchen, I jumped—like she’d caught me doing something wrong.
“What a nice thing for you to do!” she said in surprise.
“The Circle of Jesus meeting over?” I asked, realizing that I was truly disappointed that I had resisted the urge to spy.
“Time for dessert,” Buzzard answered, getting out some pretty cake plates and putting a big piece of pecan pie on each one. Then she put a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top of each slice.
“Want me to help you take it out?” I offered, just bursting with curiosity about the women.
“No, thank you,” Buzzard said. “I’ll call to you when we get done, so you can come meet my sisters.”
“Sisters?”
“In the Circle of Jesus, we’re all sisters,” she explained. And that’s the very minute I decided that I
would
spy! Because once again, it was the only way I’d find anything out. So when Buzzard had taken the last dessert plate out to the porch, I tiptoed down the hallway and slipped into Buzzard’s room, which was right up against the back porch. Her window was already open, so I sat down on the floor and listened. At first, all I heard were forks clattering against the dessert plates, but then somebody moaned a happy “M-m-m-m! You sure enough outdid yourself with this fine dessert, Sister Feed-My-Sheep!”
Sister Feed-My-Sheep?
“Why, thank you, Sister.” It was Buzzard’s voice, sure enough, but what on earth was somebody doing calling her by that strange name?
“I expect we better try to wake Sister Blood-of-the-Lamb,” said another voice. “Else her ice cream will get all melted.”
Sister Blood-of-the-Lamb?
A rumble of murmurs, and I lifted myself up a little and peered through the very bottom of the window. I couldn’t see very much because two of the rocking chairs had their backs to the window, and both of those chairs—like all of the others, except for the chair of the very old, very small lady—were filled by massive bodies. But then, one of the chairs tilted forward a little, and across the circle I could see the little old lady, all crumpled up and folded in on herself. Just like Molly and Little Ellis if they fell asleep before I could get them into bed. And her pretty little hat had slid forward so far over her face that the hat was all I could see.
“Sister Blood-of-the-Lamb?” Another woman leaned forward and tried to wake up the old lady. And the women sitting on either side of her were patting her tiny hands.
“Oh, Jesus! Take me home!” came the shrill squeak, and the old lady lifted up, looked up, her eyes cloudy and confused. “Did Jesus come?” she asked no one in particular.
“He
always
comes where two or three are gathered together in His name,” said Buzzard in a gentle voice. “But did the Second Coming happen while you were taking a nap? No. Not yet.”
One of the other women said, “We just wanted you to eat your dessert before all the ice cream melts.”
“Ice cream?” The same shrill, not-quite-awake sound. “Where’s ice cream?” Oh-so-willing hands fetched the slice of pecan pie and passed it to her.
“We through praying?” she asked, before she would take a single bite. And satisfied with the nodding heads, she cut right into the slice of pie and stuffed a big bite into her tiny mouth.
“Praise the Lord!” somebody said.
“Amen!” somebody else said.
