The Sweetest Hallelujah. Elaine Hussey

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      “The way you’re gritting your teeth, do I even want to know the women’s issues Myrtle discussed?”

      “Mamie Eisenhower’s bangs.”

      “That’s not surprising. Not many women in this town know much about politics, or even care.”

      “I know. I guess I ought to be ashamed of myself.”

      “Why? What did you do?”

      “I told them that I don’t care if Mamie wears bangs or shaves her head—I want to know what this country can to do to support last year’s Supreme Court ruling that struck down racial segregation.”

      “They’ll keep fighting it,” Fay Dean said. “Fools!”

      “I’d write an article if I could find a way to sneak it past Ben.”

      Not only was he Cassie’s next-door neighbor and Joe’s best friend, but he was her editor.

      “You know Ben only indulges your opinions because of your friendship.”

      “Hush up. Maybe it’s because of my brain.”

      The man on Cassie’s right got up and left a rumpled copy of The Bugle behind. Cassie thumped the photographs on the front page, candidates running for state senator. “Just look at that. All men. You ought to run, Fay Dean. You’d be a better senator than the lot of them.”

      “I’d be laughed out of town. It’s bad enough that I had the audacity to hang out my shingle and practice law.”

      “That makes me so mad I could spit nails.” Cassie shook the paper as if it were the whole town and she was trying to shake some sense into it.

      “I believe you occasionally do. In The Bugle.” Heads always turned when Fay Dean laughed. The sound was as full as the brass section of an orchestra.

      “Ben tries to keep a leash on me. Do you know what he wants me to do now? The classifieds.”

      “Is Goober Johnson retiring?”

      “Thank the Lord, yes.” Intent on showing Fay Dean exactly how insignificant her new job at The Bugle would be, Cassie snapped the paper open to the classifieds. An ad buried between Refrigerator for Sale and Free Puppies ripped into her like shrapnel.

      “They’re renaming the baseball field after Joe tomorrow. If we’re not there, Daddy will have a stroke. Do you want me to pick you up?”

      Staring at the ad, Cassie was thinking about love, how it can be the arms that catch you when you fall or the hands that open wide to set you free.

      “Cassie? What’s wrong?”

      Cassie couldn’t speak, could hardly breathe. The little ad had settled into her heart like tea leaves, and she knew she’d never be able to remove the stain.

       Desperate. Nowhere to turn. Dying woman seeks mother for her child. Loving heart required. Call Vinewood 2-8640.

      One look at the newspaper, and Fay Dean read Cassie as if she were a story she planned to use as counsel for the defense.

      “Come on.” She grabbed Cassie’s hand.

      “Where are we going?”

      “To do something I should have made you do years ago.”

      Three

      BILLIE LOOKED UP THROUGH the oak leaves to see if God was hurrying up with some answers. But it wasn’t God’s voice she heard: it was Queen’s.

      “Billie? Where you at, chile? I got supper.”

      She leaned over the edge of the roof to see Queen standing by the bus with a plate covered by a blue-striped dish towel.

      “I’m not hungry.”

      “I’m gone leave it here, just in case.”

      Queen set the plate on an old tool bench leaning against the side of the backyard shed, then lumbered back to the house. The screen door popped behind her, and the smell of fried food drew Billie down the ladder. She gnawed off a hunk of chicken leg, then balanced the plate and climbed back to the top of her daddy’s old touring bus.

      She’d bet if her daddy was here, he’d find a way to make Mama well. She’d bet he knew famous doctors. Her daddy was famous himself. Or used to be. Saint Hughes was a blues great. Ranked right up there with King Oliver and Louis Armstrong. They said the Saint with his silver horn could sway an audience like a preacher at a Baptist tent revival.

      Queen and Mama didn’t tell Billie hardly anything about her daddy. What didn’t come from the kids taunting her in the neighborhood came from Lucy. She’d got the information by hiding under her front porch and eavesdropping on Lucy’s mama, Sudie Jenkins, and dead Alice’s mama, Merry Lynn Watkins. Both of them were Mama’s friends, and you could bet they knew the truth.

      When Billie was little she never thought about not having a daddy. She thought normal was a household of nothing but women. It was after she got to noticing that other little girls had daddies to lift them up so they could see things like parades and stars and birds’ eggs in a high-up nest in a magnolia tree that she started asking about her own daddy.

      Mama would never talk about him, and Queen followed suit. She thought Mama’s every word got handed down on Mt. Sinai from the Lord God Himself. If Queen knew Billie was even thinking such mean thoughts about religion, she’d make her memorize the Ten Commandments word for word. And she’d know if Billie got it wrong, too. Queen knew the Good Book from cover to cover. Mostly, she knew about spare the rod and spoil the child. She kept a willow switch behind the kitchen door.

      What Queen didn’t know was how a girl of six needed to understand why her daddy didn’t tuck her in at night and how a girl of ten needed to know her roots.

      The first time Billie had ever asked about her daddy, Queen said, “Don’t go worrying yo mama ‘bout such stuff,” and Mama just said, “He’s gone.”

      “Dead?”

      “No, just not here.”

      “How come?”

      “Just let it alone, Billie.”

      But she hadn’t. When she got old enough—eight and a half—she and Lucy started spying, sneaking around at Sunday dinners and church potluck suppers listening at keyholes.

      What Billie didn’t overhear, she made up. She pictured him as a darker version of Roy Rogers, only without the white hat and Trigger. She figured she got her height from her daddy. Her mama was only five five, and that’s if she stretched her neck. Another thing was Billie’s skin. She freckled in summer, so Saint Hughes had to be light-skinned. Mama was dark, considering her French daddy, and Queen was blacker than the ace of spades.

      Billie also liked to think it was her daddy who picked out her name. She imagined him thinking about all the stars he’d performed with, then choosing the most beautiful, most talented of all, the СКАЧАТЬ