The Lost Songs (15 page)

Aunt Grace fixed dinner, which was unusual. She was an okay cook, but rarely in the mood for a stove. She knew every takeout in Ireland County. Tonight, she made corn bread with buttermilk. Spoon bread, rich and comforting, with plenty of butter.

The lost song plucked at Lutie.
Be you still alive?
it kept asking. She had a sense of MeeMaw crying out in the night.
Be you still alive?

“You cut school?” said Aunt Grace mildly.

“Aunt Grace, did you make corn bread to soften me up?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t have an excuse.”

Aunt Grace avoided Lutie’s gaze, which was also unusual. Aunt Grace liked to nail people with her eyes. “How about an explanation, then?”

Aunt Tamika and Aunt Grace were terrified that Lutie would follow in Saravette’s footsteps. Every time they looked at Lutie, they saw their failed, collapsed, sinful sister. The one with the most promise and the best looks. The one who’d found drugs instead, and then the gutter. Lutie couldn’t stand their lectures. “I know better!” she’d snap.

“Saravette knew better too, and look what happened,” they’d yell back.

Nobody knew who Lutie’s daddy was, least of all Saravette. Saravette always wanted to try everything and everyone. Now she was just another homeless crackhead. Aunt Grace was always relieved when her sister was in jail. Jail is fine for some, she would say. Three squares and a cot.

It was Aunt Tamika who checked on their little sister every few weeks. She and Uncle Dean would cruise the neighborhoods where Saravette usually hung out. Drive by, tap the
horn in a little pattern Saravette would recognize if she were conscious and felt like bothering. Aunt Tamika would provide Saravette with yet another prepaid cell phone. For a while, the sisters would chat away like girls in high school. Then Saravette would sell her phone or lose it and there would be a dark space when they heard nothing.

Lutie spooned up corn bread, trying to decide what to tell her aunt.

Even in Chalk, not that many people knew about Saravette. It was long ago and far away. People moved out and other people moved in. Babies were born and businesses were launched. Jail sentences were served and marriages began. Children went to college and into the army and moved to the city.

Even in Chalk, history was hard to see. The present was so noisy and demanding.

Sixteen years ago, MeeMaw had just suddenly been raising a baby. But so many grandmothers were, a person hardly noticed. The years went by and nobody cared who the mama was. Lutie had convinced herself that in her case, nobody even
knew
who the mama was.

But today a researcher had known. Lutie’s birth to Saravette was on paper. Martin Durham had dug it up and it had led him to the music room at Court Hill High.

And there lay her skip-school excuse.

“Miss Veola wants to use the Laundry List to kick off her new church,” said Lutie. “She wants publicity. She wants me to give a concert. I don’t want to. I needed some time to think. So I went to MeeMaw’s and sat on the steps.” The truth, thought Lutie, but not the whole truth.

Aunt Grace, the most skeptical woman in the Carolinas, fell for it. “Lutie, what’s wrong with giving a concert? I think
it’d be great. I don’t have a musical note in me. But I love to hear you sing. Everybody would love to hear you.”

“Everybody says the Laundry List is a national treasure and I should turn it over. But it isn’t a national treasure, Aunt Grace. It’s my treasure.”

“I don’t own any?” asked Aunt Grace. “I’m a generation closer to Mabel Painter. Don’t I get a vote?”

Lutie did not care for this. Aunt Grace and Aunt Tamika never sang the songs. No, they did not get a vote. “Mr. Gregg thinks it’s time to record the songs,” she said, moving right along. “To give Mabel Painter the place in American music history she deserves.”

Aunt Grace was beaming. “Your MeeMaw would burst with pride! You could become a star.”

Lutie wasn’t so sure.

Mabel Painter’s hymns were different. They weren’t like the famous Negro spirituals so beloved by all races and countries—songs that spoke of black people immersed in the love of God. No questions, no rebellion. Just sweet heavenly acceptance. Songs like “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” that said, It’s okay, God. I can wait for death to have the good stuff.

Mabel wanted that sweet chariot too, and she knew that it would come and take her home. But hers were the songs of a woman starved for a decent life.

“Think of you being a star,” said Aunt Grace. “I used to love the star song.” In a scratchy metallic voice, halfway between pitches, Aunt Grace produced a strangled version.

And to Lutie’s dismay, Aunt Grace wept.

I bet Saravette gave Aunt Grace those scars, thought Lutie. Aunt Grace knows when Saravette finished breaking all Ten Commandments. She knows who Saravette killed.

Is that why the Lord is too far away for Aunt Grace to go to church anymore?

Is Aunt Grace’s sky just a lot of small cold stars?

T
his time, when Doria obeyed Mr. Gregg’s summons, he was standing with the short slim man who had been observing chorus the other day.

“This,” said Mr. Gregg, “is my friend Professor Martin Durham.”

The professor beamed at Doria and held out his hand.

Doria hated shaking hands, another of the many ways in which she did not feel normal. She nodded down at her book bag, her yellow plastic music carrier and her dangling purse, proving that she didn’t have a free hand.

The professor kept smiling. “Your sight-reading at that chorus rehearsal was outstanding, Doria. And you accompany brilliantly. You always know exactly where your conductor is going and you’re so well prepared. I’m envious of Mr. Gregg.”

“Thank you,” she said, trying to remember who had just warned her to be careful of charm.

“I’m told you are the organist at St. Bartholomew’s,” he went on. “That’s an impressive position. I hope to hear you at the organ one day, Doria.”

That was a fib. Nobody attended organ recitals, and even on Sunday mornings, nobody listened to the organist. During the prelude, the congregation talked or read the Sunday bulletin, hoping it would be a good hymn day and they would not be forced to sing junk. During the offertory, they hunted for their donor envelopes. During the postlude, they galloped out of the church.

“So, Doria,” said Mr. Gregg, who detested pointless chatter, “did you ask Lutie about those songs in her family? That ancestral stuff?”

The truth is, thought Doria, Lutie must see to it that those songs survive, just as Mabel Painter saw to it that her family survived. It would be a privilege to help bring those songs to the world, but I have no business insisting on it. I’m white as a piece of paper. I’m supposed to tell Lutie what her black ancestor had in mind? “No,” she said.

Mr. Gregg heaved a huge sigh. “We don’t even really know what the songs are,” he lamented. “Spirituals, I guess.”

“Spirituals?” Doria frowned. “You mean, like ‘Ah got a robe, you got a robe’ or ‘Soon Ah will be done with the troubles of the world’?”

“Mr. Gregg doesn’t mean ancestors in the sense of all black slaves in the South,” explained the professor. “He means specifically Lutie’s great-great-grandmother, a woman named Mabel Painter. I’m trying to convince Lutie to record Mabel Painter’s work for the music history museum I’m in charge of.”

“You run a music history museum?” exclaimed Doria. “What a great job!”

“It is a great job. And it would be a great coup for me to get hold of those songs.”

“Get hold.” It was a very physical image: fingers gripping pages. There were no pages right now, but there could be.
And there could be recordings, too, because Doria herself could sing two of the Laundry List songs and hum a third.

She imagined singing to these men right now.

Her voice was slender and silver, like a child with a flute. Those songs needed Lutie, who could smite the notes like an Old Testament prophet.

But if Doria did sing for them? What then?

The professor would take the songs away.

Away to what?

Printing and publication. Recordings. Perhaps, but not necessarily, prestige. Perhaps, but not necessarily, money.

“It would honor Mabel Painter and her heritage,” said the professor. “And we assume the works are religious, so it would also honor God.”

No matter what the music teacher and the professor claimed, and no matter how much Doria liked these men, they didn’t want the Laundry List for God, Mabel Painter, Lutie or America’s musical heritage.

You want the songs for yourselves, she thought. So do I. What a trio we’d make: Mabel and Lutie and I.

In fact, why let Professor Durham or Mr. Gregg steal the songs, when Doria could steal them? If she wanted early admission to a fine music school, she could present those lost songs to the audition committee.

The idea jumped around in her head like an animated film, waving at her.

“Come on, Dore,” said Mr. Gregg. “Lutie’s your friend. Apply a little pressure.”

Doria frowned. “What did Lutie say when you asked her for the songs?”

“She claims to know nothing.”

The class bell rang.

Doria tried a Southernism. “Nice to meet you, sir,” she said to the professor. “Y’all have a good day.”

Professor Durham laughed. “It needs work, Doria. But I accept the thought.”

Mr. Gregg followed Doria out of the music room. “Doria,” he whispered, “Dr. Durham says that if I get him the folk songs, he’ll introduce me to Broadway producers. My high school musical—the one I’m producing in the spring—
real producers will come hear it!
”

It’s all about getting attention, thought Doria. That’s what makes the world revolve.

I’m actually considering skipping my senior year in high school because I’m not getting enough attention. I even imagined stealing Lutie’s songs in order to catch the attention of an audition judge.

She was so fond of Mr. Gregg. She did not want to contribute to this flaw in him, this need and greed. She wanted to pretend she did not share it. “Good luck,” she said, not meeting his eyes. She scanned her phone, pretending she had exciting new messages, when in fact she was rereading old ones. Good thing, because she had entirely forgotten last night’s message from the guidance office, reminding her that they wanted to see her today.

Doria normally avoided counselors the way she’d avoid a police chase. Keep a low profile and speed only on back roads.

She walked a few steps down the hall. Then she faded, and leaned against the wall for strength.

“Now what?” said Train.

She wasn’t even surprised to see him. Mr. Gregg had called her out of class to meet the professor. It was a habit of his, since he did not believe that other teachers’ subjects mattered. And here was somebody else who often cut class, being too busy frightening children, according to Pierce and Azure Lee.

Doria laughed. If only she could laugh like Lutie, gathering everybody up like a good meal. But she was stuck with the silent shaking of her shoulders. “I have to see the guidance counselor,” she told Train.

He waved that away. “I already seen ’em today. They tired. They won’t be any good to anybody now. Skip it.”

This time Doria laughed out loud. She was not only attracted to Kelvin, who was in the grip of Lutie, but also to Train, who was in the grip of his slasher brother. She imagined sending
that
on to Nell and Stephanie. “Oh, Train, thanks for letting me laugh. You know, I’d rather use your real name. I’m told it’s Cliff. I’ve never known a Cliff. Was it sort of a problem name? Is that why you dropped it?”