The Sweetest Hallelujah. Elaine Hussey

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СКАЧАТЬ her mama squatted down, Billie hid inside herself where she buried the knowledge that was still screaming through her like a tornado. Outside she became a smooth, clear lake, not a ripple on the surface.

      “I’m sorry, Mama. Can I go outside now?” The dark circles under her mama’s eyes scared her. Up close Billie could see her trembling hands and her hair falling out in patches. Her mama looked like something awful had grabbed a hold and was eating her piece by piece while Billie had been off paying no attention. “Please?”

      “Billie, were you listening at the keyhole?”

      There was no use denying it. Queen might be the one with the switch, but Mama was the one with the bulldog attitude. She never let anything go.

      “You’re not dying!”

      “Oh, baby.” Her mama folded her close, and Billie held on. Maybe if she held on long enough, she could transfer her strength to her mama. “I’ve been meaning to tell you. I just didn’t know how.”

      “The doctors can give you medicine.” Her voice was muffled against her mama’s shoulder. “They can make you well.”

      “They’ve tried, Billie. There’s nothing else the doctors can do.”

      “No! It’s not true!” Billie tore herself away and raced past them to the rusty bus parked in a roofless shed under a black jack oak in her backyard. She climbed the ladder attached to the side, then sat in the green plastic lawn chair on top of the bus. She was in her own place now, high up in the sky. The fading rays of sun felt comforting, like God’s eyes peering down through the oak leaves. Alice wouldn’t dare show up in a tree already occupied by God.

      Billie gazed upward where she imagined the Holy Face would be. “You gotta make my mama well.” Did God listen to little girls who eavesdropped at keyholes and told lies? “If you make my mama well, I promise to be good.” She made a sign over her chest. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

      Quick as she said it, Billie wished she hadn’t. What if God reached down and snatched her off the bus? She’d never get to see Queen and her mama again.

      Billie didn’t want to be an orphan. Orphans didn’t have mamas to plait their hair in cornrows and make sure they wore clean socks and remind them to say their prayers at night. Maybe God was punishing Billie for not minding her mama.

      “I promise I won’t go to Lucy’s again when Queen tells me not to. And I won’t tear my shorts and tell lies about hating my mama.”

      Tasting the salt from her own tears, Billie swiped at her face with the sleeve of her T-shirt. “I know I’m not a good little girl, God. But please, don’t take my mama.”

      If God heard her, He’d send a sign. That’s what He did in the Bible. Maybe it would be a rainbow. Billie looked up through the limbs of the oak tree, waiting.

      Two

      LOVING SOMEBODY WAS THE most dangerous thing Cassie knew. When you lose them, they take so much, it’s a wonder you don’t become invisible. She’d always prided herself on being in control, and yet here she was in a psychologist’s office trying to keep herself from coming unraveled.

      “Cassie, when the jackass is in the ditch,” he said, “don’t ask how he got there—just get him out.”

      It took her a while to digest this piece of advice. For one thing, she had a hard time thinking of herself as a jackass. For another, she was in a ditch that had no way out. She couldn’t change being a widow because Coach Joe Malone was dead. No amount of wishing would bring him back.

      “Get out of the ditch, Cassie.”

      The no-nonsense advice was typical of Sean O’Hanlon. That’s one of the reasons Cassie had chosen him, that plus the fact that he was a hometown man with a Purple Heart displayed on his bookshelves. Sean had served at Guadalcanal. You could trust a man who had risked his life to save others.

      “I can’t see that I’m in a ditch, Sean. I’m just feeling a little blue. And even that makes me feel guilty.”

      “Why?”

      “I’ll never have to worry about my future the way poor old Eleanor Cleveland did when her husband went off the bridge.”

      Cassie was the only heir to the fortune her daddy had made farming a thousand acres of cotton. Still, Joe’s death had consigned her to spend the rest of her life alone in a house that rattled with regret.

      “That’s no reason to feel guilty,” Sean said. “What else is bothering you?”

      “I could never have the one thing I wanted most. Joe’s child.”

      She pictured the Empty Room, meant to hold a crib and bookshelves stuffed with teddy bears and dolls and books about Winnie the Pooh.

      Sean waited, a kind man whose mere presence opened up a floodgate.

      “After Joe’s death, people kept telling me, You’re lucky to have such a full social life. If I have to plan one more charity event or sit through another book club discussion on As I Lay Dying, I’m going to run down the street naked, screaming.”

      “What do you want to do, Cassie?

      “I want to discuss Lady Chatterly’s Lover. I want to write something besides wedding and obituaries at The Bugle. I want to march down the streets knocking on doors and telling anybody who will listen that women can do more than put Faultless Starch in their husband’s shirts.”

      Maybe she was born out of her time, and that, as much as loss, was the reason her sister-in-law, Fay Dean, had caught her standing in her closet last week with Joe’s sweatshirt stuffed in her mouth, crying.

      Waiting for Sean to speak, Cassie smoothed a wrinkle from her slacks. Her pants were barely socially acceptable, a small defiance that suited her right down to the bone.

      Sean reached for a doughnut from the edge of his desk then passed the box to her.

      “What’s wrong with me, Sean?”

      “Nothing. It’s perfectly normal for widows to feel pain and loss acutely around the first anniversary of a husband’s death.”

      “Joe was too young to die. It was his birthday. I was planning a party for him.”

      She’d been in her flower garden gathering roses for the centerpiece when all of a sudden she’d heard a harmonica, haunting as the mixture of poverty and violence and hope in Shakerag. Her heart had separated from the rest of her body and landed at her feet among the scattered rose petals, bleeding.

      Common sense told her that on a still summer day it was possible for the music in Tiny Jim’s Blues and Barbecue to reach her prestigious Highland Circle neighborhood, separated from Shakerag only by Glenwood Cemetery and a block of modest houses that belonged to middle-income whites. But Cassie not only knew the legend of Alice Watkins, she’d been there eleven years ago when it was born. She’d been filling in for the crime reporter at The Bugle that day and had used her press pass to gain access to the parents, Tiny Jim and Merry Lynn Watkins.

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