The Lost Songs (2 page)

And then she saw Saravette leaning against a telephone pole.

Lutie realized that she had not actually expected Saravette to be here. Saravette, who forgot everything or lied about it to start with, was not usually where she was supposed to be.

Lutie’s lungs filled in little spurts, as if she were breathing in code. She signaled for a stop. The brakes on the bus squealed. Lutie tottered down the long empty aisle. The driver raised his eyebrows and nodded toward the neighborhood. “You know what you’re doing?”

Lutie had no idea what she was doing.

“This is not a good place,” said the driver, which was certainly true.

Lutie pointed at Saravette. “She’s waiting for me.”

The driver took in the sight of Saravette. Thirty years old, looked eighty. Sunken cheeks from lost teeth. Tattoos and piercings no longer brave and sassy, but pitiful. Wearing two sweaters on an already hot morning. Both dirty.

My mother, thought Lutie.

Impossible. The wreck on the sidewalk could not be related to her.

“You got a cell phone?” said the driver.

“Yes, sir.”

“You worried, you call nine-one-one. But remember, around here, they’re slow.”

Lutie would have expected that around here, the police would be fast. Maybe on this block, the police had surrendered.

Carefully, as if the steps were made of glass, Lutie got off the bus. Every other time, the instant his passenger’s foot hit the pavement, the driver’s foot hit the accelerator. This time he waited and kept the door open. Lutie loved him for that. She forced herself to walk over to Saravette, who gave her a light smelly hug. Lutie cringed.

Saravette led the way to a side street, and then the bus did leave, spewing a puff of diesel thick enough for breakfast. Saravette was talking, but Lutie could not follow the sense of it. The mumbled words did not connect.

They went into a scary coffee shop, where they sat among scary people. Lutie could not touch her mug. Somebody else’s fingerprints were greasily pasted on the china. The air-conditioning in the sad little room barely swirled the air. The grease from a million fried meals settled on her skin.

In a metal chair with a torn vinyl back, Saravette rocked herself. She never stopped talking, but it was just stuff, as if she
were reading miscellaneous lines from pieces of paper blowing in the street.

Lutie tried to think of something to say, some little story to tell about what she was doing these days, but she did not know where to start. Once upon a time, Saravette had led Lutie’s life. How did you get here from there? Lutie wanted to scream at her. Why didn’t you just go home again? What keeps you in this horrible place?

Saravette lit a cigarette. The smoke in her lungs seemed to calm her. The next sentence was rational. “You still going to Miss Veola’s church?”

Miss Veola was their pastor. She all but stalked the teenagers in her congregation, checking on their homework, their morals and their grammar. “Yes,” said Lutie, relieved to be making a contribution to the conversation.

“She still comes to find me sometimes,” said Saravette.

“I know.”

“I’m one of her lost ones,” said Saravette proudly. “I surely am. Miss Veola’s still preaching at me. There’s a lot to preach about too. By now,” said Saravette, laughing, “I’ve broken all the commandments.”

Lutie’s head hummed like the struggling window unit while Saravette rocked and smiled. “You’ve broken
all
the commandments?” whispered Lutie. One in the middle of the list, say? Thou shalt not kill?

Saravette laughed and nodded and rocked.

She’s using the Ten Commandments as a metaphor, Lutie told herself, as if the diner were honors English class and the teacher were discussing literature. Saravette has not broken
all
the commandments. She did not kill anybody. This is just another fib. Saravette’s probably forgotten what the Ten Commandments even are.

Saravette put out her cigarette and immediately lit it again. For the first time, her eyes met Lutie’s and stayed focused. “You have to know something,” she said quietly. It was not the voice of a crazy person to a stranger. It was the voice of a mother to her daughter.

Panic filled Lutie Painter. It was bad enough to know that this sad smelly sack of failed person was her mother. But whatever had made Saravette telephone Lutie instead of the aunts and the pastor who continually and grimly came to Saravette’s rescue was probably something Lutie
didn’t
want to know.

Saravette had a coughing fit. Her skin took on a gray tinge as the cough choked its way out of her throat. The other customers glared, as if they’d be perfectly willing to choke Saravette themselves for making such a racket. Lutie gripped her purse hard, trying to calm her trembling fingers. This was not a place where people should see you break down.

When the cough ended, Saravette looked like a ghost of herself. The two of them sat in silence. Saravette lit another cigarette and continued to rock and smile.

Lutie imagined Saravette rocking and smoking and smiling as she broke each commandment. Swear? Check.

Steal? Check.

Kill? Check.

“I skipped school,” Lutie said loudly. “What did you need to tell me? Why did you beg me to come?”

Saravette turned away. She still had a beautiful profile. She stopped breathing, whether to suppress a coughing fit or to steel herself to talk, Lutie did not know.

“Give me a minute,” whispered Saravette. “Then I’ll be ready.” She signaled one of the scary guys at the counter. The man—who looked hardly older than Lutie—hooked his thumbs in his sweatpants and sauntered over, smirking.

She’s going to buy drugs, thought Lutie. Right now. With me sitting here.

Saravette’s breathing become shallow and quick. Her eyes lit up. The man-boy sat down at the table with them. One hundred percent of Saravette’s attention was on him.

She’s already forgotten what she said, thought Lutie. What’s murder, after all? Just one in a list of ten. Whatever.

Lutie was afraid to get up from the table, afraid to walk out of the coffee shop, let alone walk back to the bus stop. She picked up the little piece of paper on which their tab was scribbled and went over to the woman at the register. The woman was big and heavy, with breasts the size of watermelons. Lutie couldn’t imagine balancing all that. She opened her wallet. Her fingers felt stiff.

The woman took the money with a sort of fury and glared at Lutie. “How you getting home, girl?”

“Bus,” whispered Lutie.

“I’m going with you.” The woman shifted her glare to the prep cook, who shrugged, which maybe meant that he would take over the register and maybe meant that he couldn’t care less whether anybody ran the register at all.

The woman marched Lutie out of the coffee shop. Saravette did not call to her and Lutie did not say good-bye. They walked past people Lutie did not want to know better, crossed the main street in the middle of the block and stood under the little sign for the bus stop.

The bus appeared almost immediately, which was a good thing. Lutie’s knees were shaking and her heart was falling out. Her mother might be a murderer.

“Thank you,” whispered Lutie.

“Don’t cry, honey,” said the woman. “And don’t come back.”

T
he bus ride home seemed quicker. Lutie got off at her grandmother’s old stop, although she could have ridden farther. The bus would finish its route across from Lutie’s high school and then circle behind the post office and head back uptown.

Lutie stood by the road for a while, as if waiting for a transfer, or else brain cells. Then she crossed the street.

It had been a hot summer and it was a hot autumn. The air was thick and damp. Lutie did not enter Chalk, but crossed a little bridge over Peter Creek, turned up a gravel driveway and approached a little wood house with a little wood porch. When MeeMaw was alive, she used to line the porch with geraniums in coffee cans, a symphony of bright blue containers and fire-engine-red flowers. MeeMaw had died when Lutie was twelve and Lutie missed her every day.

Lutie owned the house now, but it was rented out. Sometimes Lutie dreamed of living in the tiny home where she had grown up. She would put in central air and granite countertops. She would sit on the porch, like MeeMaw, and soak up the sun.

But more often, Lutie wanted her ticket out. She wanted to go to Atlanta or Austin or Nashville. Maybe become a scientist and show the world she deserved her placement in honors chemistry. Or maybe teach kindergarten, because she adored little kids, who were all so beautiful. Sometimes she wanted to be a nomad and travel forever, just her and a change of clothing, her passport and a cell phone.

Houses without a garage could not deceive you. No car in the driveway meant nobody was home. Lutie could trespass.

She sat on the bottom step, knees close to her chin, and felt MeeMaw standing behind her in the doorway, wiping her hands on her apron and saying that dinner was ready. Lutie smothered a sob. MeeMaw, what if somebody isn’t alive anymore because of Saravette? Do I just go on to school? Take a quiz and laugh with my friends? Brush my teeth tonight and go to bed? Say to myself, Oh well, stuff happens?

MeeMaw had gotten all her answers from the Lord. She would have walked out on the grass—a meadow, actually, mowed occasionally, full of flowers and bees and butterflies. MeeMaw could get seriously annoyed with God. She used to stand in the middle of the field where he could see her better, peer into the sky and let him know his shortcomings.

“What am I supposed to do?” MeeMaw would holler.

Lutie wasn’t counting on the Lord. If he planned to guide somebody’s steps, he should have guided Saravette’s.

She remembered how MeeMaw would stride into the sun. Throw her head back. Take that extraordinary deep breath to fill those amazing lungs. Turn both hands up, as if holding the song on her two palms, offering it to heaven.

Lutie even knew what MeeMaw would have sung. So Lutie too walked into the view of the Lord, took her own deep breath and looked up to see if she could spot him. There were a hawk floating and a cloud drifting.

It was different singing outdoors than it was in the high school music room or the church choir loft. Her voice was a living thing, like any living thing; like the mockingbirds and the chattering flow of Peter Creek. She knew that her voice floated over all of Chalk. The whole neighborhood would know that Lutie Painter had skipped school and was over at her MeeMaw’s, singing her heart out.

Nobody would tell. Chalk was a neighborhood where you never ratted on anybody for anything.

Lutie sang.

The melody shouted through the clouds, phrases tumbling over each other, repeating and doubling back. The Lord could not miss the message.

After MeeMaw would sing this one, she used to add a disclaimer. “Of course he never leaves our side, honey,” she’d say to Lutie, “and we are always his through the grace of Jesus Christ. Now do your homework, study hard and make me proud.”

There was but one way to make her grandmother proud. Go to school.

Lutie did not want to sit in class with kids whose mothers were not murderers. Which presumably was everybody. What if people found out? The news of having a murderer for a mother would ooze like an oil spill. Saravette would seep into Lutie’s life and taint everything.

Lutie prayed that Saravette—who had chosen all these years to stay away—would keep on staying away.

Well, that was a sick little prayer, she thought. God, keep my mother out of sight.

Now she needed an excuse for being so late to school. “I didn’t feel good,” she practiced, “but now I do.”

Who could argue with that?

She didn’t usually admit it when she felt bad, because Aunt Tamika and Aunt Grace had grim responses to claims of being sick. They would insist that she eat chicken noodle soup. Lutie hated soup. Especially canned soup. Especially canned chicken soup. And if she ended up with Miss Veola instead of an aunt because both her aunts were at work, the pastor would sit by Lutie’s bed and pray.

Lutie decided not to go into the high school by the front door, where the office kept an eye on things and where she would have to produce her excuse. She would enter by the stage door, which was always propped open. She’d be early for chorus, but Mr. Gregg would not wonder why. It never occurred to him that anybody might have a life other than music. He’d assign her to rearrange chairs or something, and ask her to come this early every day.

The music room was enormous. Bands, orchestra, choruses, theory and composition classes—all had to share. A forest of black music stands, tympani under their tents and boxes of infrequently used percussion instruments crowded up against the grand piano. Mr. Gregg was a demanding choral
conductor. When rehearsal began, Lutie would be able to lose herself in the music and forget Saravette.
I’ve broken all the commandments
. (Laughter. Pride.)