The House You Pass on the Way (3 page)

“My sisters didn’t like the idea of me and Adeen being together,” Daddy was saying. “Ida Mae was a big revolutionary back then, and Hallique bonded to Ida Mae after our folks died.”

“That was the last we saw of them,” Mama added.

Daddy nodded. “I wrote and invited them to the wedding, but they never showed. Didn’t even reply to the invite. Wrote again to let them know me and Adeen had moved back here to Sweet Gum and that Adeen was pregnant.” He pointed his chin at Charlie Horse. “Called them a couple of times back then, but they’d stopped answering their phone. Heard from some folks that Ida’d married, and I didn’t even know her last name anymore.”

“What about Hallique?” Dotti asked.

“Couple of years back,” Daddy said, “she wrote saying she wanted things to be better between us. Wanted to get to know you all . . . said she was sorry for all those years she didn’t speak or write or send a birthday card ...”

Mama was knitting faster now, her fingers blurring across the yarn.

“You never wrote her back, did you?” Staggerlee bit her bottom lip.

Daddy shook his head, pulled his hand across his eyes.

“What about us?” Staggerlee said, her heart pounding hard against her chest. “What about us, Daddy?”

“Staggerlee.” He slammed his hand against the table. “I didn’t think she’d die.” He started crying again, hard, loud sobs. “I thought there’d be time.”

Her mother reached across the table and stroked her head.

“I want to hear the rest of Ida’s letter.” Staggerlee pulled away from her. “Before someone gets the keen idea to throw it away.”

Her mother started reading again, looking at the letter over her knitting.

“My age?” Staggerlee said. “She’s my age?”

Her mother reached inside the envelope. She studied the picture a moment before handing it around the table.

Staggerlee stared at the photo. It wasn’t a regular school picture—the head-shot kind with a bookshelf or an American flag waving behind the person. In the photo, Tyler was standing in a field. In the distance, a cheerleading squad was practicing, and even farther out, a football team was running in a straight line. But right up front, in the middle of the frame, Tyler stood dressed in black, her hands on her hips, looking sidelong at the camera as if she were daring the photographer to say smile.

“Looks like she has an edge to her,” Mama said.

Staggerlee looked at the picture again. Tyler reminded her of Hazel, this friend she had once. She didn’t look anything like Hazel, not really, except for the way she was looking at the camera—looking at
Staggerlee
—skeptical, like she’d heard every story in the world a million times.

“I want her to come,” Staggerlee said, staring at the picture.

“We’ll see how the rest of the spring goes—”

“No ‘we’ll see,’ Mama. I want her to come!”

Mama looked at her sharply, but Staggerlee glared back.

“It’s always ‘we’ll see.’ You’d think after twenty years, we’d be jumping at the chance to
see
some family.”

“She’s adopted, anyway,” Dotti said.

“Still family,” Staggerlee said. “If Daddy’s sister raised her.”

Dotti ignored her.

“It’s a lot of thinking to do, Stag,” Daddy said softly. “We barely know them—never even met Jonathan and Tyler. And with all this stuff going on—”

“I know.”

A month before, Mama’s doctor had told her she’d have to take time off from her job as a paralegal, and stay off her feet as much as possible if she wanted the baby born healthy. Charlie Horse had pretty much taken over for her, cooking all the family’s meals and staying on Staggerlee and Dotti to keep Battle and the house clean.

Mama got up and set the kettle on the stove for tea. She moved slowly, one hand beneath her small stomach.

“It’s not about Ida Mae and Hallique,” Staggerlee said. “Not anymore anyway. It’s about Tyler. That’s who I’m asking you to say yes to.”

Dotti frowned. “Well, if she comes, don’t expect me to be taking care of her, showing her around—”

“Nobody expects anything from you, Dotti. And, boy, do you deliver.” Staggerlee glared at her sister, running her tongue over the place where one of her front teeth overlapped the other. Dotti was only two years older, but she was a stranger more than a sister. At sixteen, she was filled with what Mama called “a restless spirit.” She had their mother’s thick black hair coiling down past her back and straight white teeth like Daddy. And unlike Staggerlee, Dotti was always surrounded by friends. Twice she’d gotten voted most popular, and once, prettiest. The last time Staggerlee had invited her to walk along the river, Dotti had frowned like it was a ridiculous idea.
She doesn’t understand the river the way I do,
Staggerlee remembered thinking.
The way you can come across somebody fly-fishing if you get up early enough or close to evening. The sound of the reel is pretty.
Some days, watching the fishermen, she started thinking she really didn’t need anybody else. But there were nights when she stood outside Dotti’s bedroom door, listening to her and her friends.

Dotti started clearing away the breakfast dishes.

“Are you going to say yes?” Staggerlee turned back to Mama. “You don’t have to do anything, Mama. I’ll do it. And maybe Tyler could help out too.”

Her mother’s face softened. She looked at Staggerlee a long time. And Staggerlee felt embarrassed. Was it that obvious, she wondered, how lonely she was? She thought about turning away, hiding her face from Mama. But she didn’t. Maybe a year ago she would’ve ducked her head or blinked. But she was a woman now. Mama had said so.

“If it’s that important to you then, honey ...” She turned to Daddy.

“Then yes—yes, Tyler can come,” he said.

Staggerlee smiled, picking up Tyler’s picture again. “Yeah,” she said. “It’s that important.”

SHE HAD KISSED A GIRL ONCE. IN SIXTH GRADE. Hazel. She didn’t remember how she and Hazel started being friends. Hazel showed up to school late in the year and somehow they had just started hanging together. Hazel’s mother made all her clothes and didn’t allow her to wear anything but dresses that stopped right below her knees. All her dresses were pastel—even in the winter, she would show up to school in pale green and blue dresses with huge sashes tied in the back. The dresses made her look young and old at the same time. Her hair was thick and coiling, but her mother made her wear it pulled back into a tight braid. At school, Hazel undid her braid and let her hair go wild. She had a way of laughing that made Staggerlee feel warm and safe. They had kissed after school one day, behind a patch of blue cornflowers.

Soon after, Staggerlee came down with the chicken pox and ended up staying home from school for a week. She didn’t mind that Hazel didn’t come visit—their house was far away from everyone and hard to get to. When she returned to school, Hazel was huddled in the school yard with a group of girls. Staggerlee walked toward them slowly, knowing something terrible was about to happen. They were whispering, but as she got closer they stopped, and Hazel turned slowly, her lavender old-lady dress spinning out from under her.

Staggerlee touched her fingers to her lips, wanting Hazel to remember the way the cornflowers had swayed, the way the sun set down all gold and pretty that afternoon. Wanting her to remember how she had said, “I could stay here forever—just me and you right here in all of this blue.” But when Hazel turned to her, her eyes were blank, unfamiliar. A stranger’s eyes.

“Your grandparents was killed by a bomb?” she asked, her eyes slitted. “Those Canans they got the statues of up in town—those were your people?”

“Were,” Staggerlee said. “Before I was born. They were my grandparents, but I didn’t know them.” Behind Hazel, the other girls looked on, their lips hard across their faces.

“You never told me that, Stag,” she said, her voice all full of hurt. “All these things I’m hearing now that you never told me.”

“It’s nothing, Hazel. Doesn’t have anything to do with me. This is me—the person you see standing here. I didn’t even know them.”

Someone giggled.

“That’s ’cause they died,” one of the girls—a girl named Chloe—said. “And they must have left y’all lots of money and everything. That’s why you think you better than everybody else, ’cause of your grandpeople. That’s why y’all live way out like you do and you think you too cute to talk to anybody.”

“I don’t think I’m better or cute. Hazel, you know that.”

“You didn’t tell me. You made believe you were just regular, like all of us. But you ain’t.”

They stared at each other for a long time. That afternoon, nestled down in the cornflowers, Hazel had put her hand on Staggerlee’s cheek and said, “You’re beautiful, Staggerlee. Inside and out. I wish I was beautiful inside and out like you.” Staggerlee swallowed. She should have told Hazel then that she thought she was beautiful too. All the things she should have said to Hazel came rushing to her at once.

“Plus, she got a white mama, Hazel. I bet she didn’t tell you that either,” another girl said—a light-skinned girl everyone called Bug because of her small head and big dark eyes.

Staggerlee glared at her. Her father had said African Americans were all mixed up—not just the out-and-out mixed-race kids, but that all black people weren’t a hundred percent African unless they never left Africa. He said most likely even the darkest black had some white blood somewhere in their veins, and the lighter ones, well, unless they were albino Africans, then they had some too.

“And her mama thinks she’s better than everyone too—just ’cause she’s white,” Bug continued.

“You don’t even know my mother,” Staggerlee whispered, feeling herself turning to stone. She wanted to disappear, to melt into the ground and be gone.

“Everyone knows your mama. It’s only three, four white women in all of Sweet Gum and only one of them married to your daddy. My ma see her in town, say she don’t hardly speak to people, all these years she been in Sweet Gum. Nobody needs y’all.”

“She doesn’t speak to people ’cause that’s her way,” Staggerlee said, hating her mother, how quiet and inside herself she was in public. She had never been like Daddy, who seemed to know everyone in town. He was full of “Good mornings” and “What you know goods,” grinning and slapping men on the back, winking and tipping his hat to the women.

“Well, nobody needs ‘her way.’”

“Just rude and stuck-up,” Chloe said. “Your whole family think they so cute. Bug’s right—nobody needs y’all.”

Staggerlee swallowed. “How about you, Hazel?”

Hazel glanced away from her. When she looked back, her eyes were cold.

“No,” she said, turning back to the group. “I don’t need you.”

Staggerlee blinked, her eyes burning. But she wasn’t going to cry. Not in front of them.

IT RAINED HARD ALL WEEKEND. EARLY SUNDAY morning, Daddy sat down to write Ida Mae a long letter saying they were looking forward to having Tyler at the house and that he hoped this was the beginning of the family coming back together. Staggerlee sat across from him at the kitchen table, playing her harmonica softly, every now and then listening to him read paragraphs out loud to see if they sounded okay.

“Why don’t you just call her?”

Her father pressed the pen against his lips. “I can’t,” he said quietly, looking over at her. “After all these years. I called so much early on.” He leaned back over the letter. “And there’re other reasons too. They probably still don’t answer their phone.”

Staggerlee nodded. They had stopped answering their own phone a long time ago, letting the answering machine pick up and screen the calls. Mama had finally gotten tired of the press calling all the time, asking them questions about Daddy’s parents. Biographers and film producers were also calling for a while—wondering if they could get the rights to write the book or make the movie of their lives.

“You think Tyler’ll come, Daddy?” She looked at him, trying not to seem too hopeful.

“Yeah, she’ll come,” he said. But he was concentrating on his letter. Staggerlee stared at the top of his head. His hair was thick and nappy. When she was little, she would run her hands through it, laughing, loving how warm and springy it was.