Honeysuckle Sippin'

Fifty

CHAPTER ONE

When the sunbeam shown through the kitchen door…my mama died.

I wished that glaring East Texas sun would strike me blind. I did not want to see the funeral home men carry my mama out Granny’s front door. They crossed the creaky wooden porch, right in front of Daddy. His arms hung limp. He stared at the smooth, white sheet spread over Mama.

My daddy wasn’t much taller than me. He looked like a lost little boy who didn’t know what to do. I thought to go pull him off that porch. But my own feet would not move.

When Daddy moved Mama and me back to Jacksonville, Texas, nobody said she was dying. But it hadn’t taken me long to figure that out. Only I thought I’d have her longer than two months. So far, 1953 had not been a good year for my family.

Those men carried Mama past me like I wasn’t even there. A group of my uncles parted in the middle to let them through. I watched them cross the front yard, and almost threw up when they slid my mama into the back of their long black car.

I would not watch them take Mama away. I turned my back and locked my eyes onto the giant oak tree across the road. Mama said it had been there for at least two hundred years, and watched over us. It must have blinked that day.

Watching its leaves glitter like ripples of water dancing in the sunlight, I felt light as a feather. I could close my eyes and breathe in real deep and float right up into those branches. I took a slow, deep breath – and another.

Daddy’s hand settled on my shoulder. When I opened my eyes the long black car and the people were gone. Sis, Daddy said. He was the only one who called me that. It was short for sister. I wasn’t a sister anymore, since my brother, Joe, had died two years ago. But I was still Sis to Daddy.

Get your stuff together. He wiped his eyes with his handkerchief. We’ll be leaving pretty quick for Turney. Be staying with Pap. Pappy was his daddy. I didn’t care where we stayed, as long as we stayed together.

We passed the red rose bush blooming by Mama’s bedroom window. The breeze pushed a sweet scent across our path. I breathed in deep, to remember. But I couldn’t look.

I followed the drag marks Daddy’s feet made across Granny’s clean swept front yard. He never used to walk that way. I couldn’t remember the last time he’d smiled. Now, his head drooped like a wilted flower. I wanted to tell him it would be okay. But that would have been a lie.

While my hands put my clothes in a brown paper sack, my eyes wandered. There was the yellow kitchen table where I’d been when Mama died, and my plate of cold, dried-out pinto beans and biscuit. Any other time I would have been in trouble for wasting food that way. But today, nobody seemed to care.

Granny stood at the stove, her long black braid hanging over one shoulder. She always wore it wrapped around and pinned up at the back of her head. Not today. She’d been stirring and staring into that pot all morning. I wondered what she saw in there.

I could see the overstuffed red chair in the corner of the living room – the one Daddy crumpled into when he came out of Mama’s room crying. He was there again now, waiting for me.

I pulled my gown from under the pillow and stuffed it into my sack. Then I slipped into the bathroom and got one of Mama’s gowns that still smelled like her. I rolled it up real tight and slid it down inside my sack.

Granny laid her spoon aside when she saw me coming. She didn’t speak. She was half Cherokee, and never said things like, I love you, or, I’ll miss you. But she let you know. She looked deep into my eyes, and squeezed me against her so tight I heard her heart, thumping like a slow drum. I closed my eyes and listened. I didn’t want her to let go.

CHAPTER TWO

The sun had slipped behind the big oak tree when Daddy put my sack into the pickup. It would be almost dark when we reached Turney. The Blackwell boys stared from their front steps as we drove past their house. I’d miss them. But from now on I’d be sticking close to Daddy – closer than I had to Mama and Joe. Cancer was picking my family off one by one.

I stared at Daddy’s rough, brown hand, flopped over the steering wheel. But what I saw was Joe and me playing at our farm in Tecula – the farm Daddy had to sell when Joe got sick. I could feel the gentle tugs as Mama braided my hair, and hummed.

There’s a way of staring at something so you see right through it. You see lots of other things, but not the thing you’re staring at. I did that a lot. Daddy called it daydreaming. Watching him stare straight ahead, I wondered if it was the road he saw. Maybe he was doing some daydreaming of his own.

I counted trees floating by the truck window, one…two. We’ll be okay in Turney. Three. At least we’ll be together. Four…five. Granny’s never been real crazy about Daddy anyway. But she doesn’t know him like I do.

I nodded at a house as it zipped by. Daddy can work at Morton’s dairy again, and drop me at school every morning on his way to work, and…

Here it is! I said. I nearly bit the dashboard when Daddy stomped the brake, but caught myself with both hands. The truck crawled into the yard and squeaked when he let off the brake. Grandma and Pappy didn’t have a telephone. But I could tell when they stepped out onto the back porch, they knew.

Daddy stared at his feet – crunching across the crispy, brown pine needles that covered the ground. I watched Grandma. She wasn’t big as a minute. She looked like a little girl standing by Pappy, except her short, straight, hair was gray. She nervously slid her fingers back and forth along the hem of her green and white apron.

We stopped at the edge of the porch. Daddy took a deep breath. His chin quivered, but he didn’t look up. The sound of him clearing his throat cracked through the still, October air like a scream.

Merrle’s gone, he said. My mama’s name was Murriel but, when people said it, it always came out Merrle.

Pappy flinched like he’d been punched in the stomach, then stood frozen like a big, brown statue, staring at Daddy.

If I hadn’t known that was his natural, everyday expression, I would’ve thought he was about to cry. It was hard to tell with Pappy. He always looked like he was about halfway between aching and crying.

Pappy finally hobbled over and opened the back door. We all filed into the kitchen. What remained of supper was on the table. We sat around the small, green table like four tree stumps and stared at the floor.

Y’all hungry? Grandma glanced at Daddy and me. We both shook our head. She cleaned the table.

In that huge quietness, I could hear my heart beat. But my brain couldn’t think of one single thing to say. All of a sudden, a little yellow bird popped out of the clock hanging over the mantel and chirped, Coo-Coo! I nodded.

Daddy had been up all night, working at Comet Rice Mill in Houston. With all that rice dust covering his curly black hair and khaki work clothes, he looked like he’d been caught in a dust storm. He was half asleep and fixing to slide out of his chair.

We all knew better than to touch him. That was just asking to get slugged. He always punched into the air when somebody woke him up. Grandma and Pappy gave me a look that said I’d been elected. We all leaned way back and I said, Daddy!

The bounce on the floor jarred him awake. He stood up and rubbed his eyes, then disappeared into the icy cold front room. Pappy said it cost too much to heat all three rooms so they didn’t use that one in winter. But that’s where daddy slept, all alone, without Mama.

You’re sleepin’ in here with us, Brenda, Grandma said. We ducked behind the blanket hanging across the bedroom door and unfolded Daddy’s old army cot by the window. While Grandma padded the cot with quilts I snatched my gown out of my sack and wiggled it over my head.

After Grandma went back into the kitchen, I pushed my face into Mama’s gown, and the silky scent that was all I had left of her. I slid it under my pillow, wishing I’d thought to get one for Daddy to put under his pillow. Then I melted into the middle of that cot like butter melting into a biscuit.

I stared out the window, wondering how long it would be before something happened to Daddy. That never worried me before, until I figured out Mama was dying. Life’s always changing, Daddy said. So far, he’d been right.

My fingers slowly walked along the trail of blanket stitches on the Dutch Girl quilt that covered me. I could see the silvery stars sparkling in the black sky. Could Mama see me through that deep darkness? Had she once slept under that same quilt and felt her way along that same trail of stitches?

Next morning Mrs. Bounds flashed into Grandma’s kitchen like a sunbeam shining through a hole in the clouds. She lived down the hill in a neat, square, white house I could see from the kitchen window. It sparkled like she did. I had never, in my whole life, seen a smile like hers. Just looking at her made the corners of my own mouth turn up.

She wore her plain brown hair pulled up into a fluffy bun. She handed Grandma a bowl of creamed corn. Folks did that as a kindness when somebody died. Then she wiped her hand on her crispy white apron and lifted my chin.

What beautiful eyes, she said. And with that long, dark hair, why you’re the spittin’ image of your sweet mother.

I smiled. But my hair wasn’t nearly as long as Mama’s anymore. She’d cut it up to my shoulders four months ago. And, I knew for a fact I was nowhere near as sweet as Mama. But there was no harm in letting her think I was.

Billy Neal Bounds stood next to his mama, both hands in his pockets, staring at his shoes. His hair was a perfect cap of sandy colored curls. He had freckles across his nose, like me. He didn’t speak, just cut his eyes at me now and then. I stared at him. Could he be what folks had in mind when they said country bumpkin?

You and Neal are the same age. Mrs. Bounds seemed tickled pink to let us all in on that. But, with that smile, she was probably tickled pink over just about everything. What amazed me was that smile didn’t even go away when she talked. He just turned twelve last month. I’d been twelve for three whole months. Only I didn’t want to hurt her feelings by pointing that out.

When you get settled, she went on, I’ll introduce you to two girls who live up the road. One is white and one colored. The white girl’s name is Corine. She lives with her aunt. She’s probably about the same age as you and Neal. But the colored girl is younger.

I stood at the kitchen window and watched Billy Neal and his mama walk back down the trail to their house, while I thought about those two girls. I had never met a colored girl before, or even seen one up close. Billy Neal seemed nice enough. But he was a boy.

CHAPTER THREE

Monday morning, I straightened the skirt on my Sunday dress while Pappy tried to settle himself in the pickup next to Grandma. I’d grown a good bit over the summer. The blue dress Mama had made was too tight across the back. But I figured I’d be okay until after the funeral.

I had no idea sitting down in a truck could take so long. But it was a bigger job for Pappy than for most people. He held onto the top of the door with one hand and the back of the seat with the other, and tried with all his might to heave his heavy bottom up far enough onto the seat so it would catch and hold. Then both hands lifted his legs in, one at a time, while he worked to keep his bottom from sliding back out. I sat down on a stump while the show was going on. If I had tried to help, I doubt I could have budged him, and I would have split my dress for sure.

Pappy was purely winded by the time he’d squirmed his whole self into place. When all the grunting was over, I climbed onto his lap. The smell of Daddy’s Old Spice drifted over. I was glad, because Pappy smelled of whisky and snuff.

Daddy drove