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“I know what an audition is,” May snapped, but her gaze caught hold of Jilo, still toddling around, chasing after a fat bumblebee. To her disbelief, the bee hovered over the child’s outstretched hand for a moment and then landed on it. Rather than startling or trying to run away, Jilo pulled her hand closer and stared intently at the insect. May got the oddest feeling that the two were somehow communicating, and the thought made her feel real uneasy. “Opal, honey,” she said, “you go fetch Jilo before she gets herself stung, and take your sisters inside.”
She scanned Opal’s thin face. “You hungry?” she asked. When her grandbaby didn’t answer, she called out to Betty, “You feed these girls their lunch yet?”
Betty began to speak, but May answered her own question. “No, ’course you haven’t.” The scrawny things probably hadn’t even had their breakfast. Forcing her anger down, she placed her hand on Opal’s back and gave her a gentle nudge. “Go on, get Jilo inside, and Nana will come in and fix you girls something real good. All right?”
Opal nodded and scrambled down the steps. “Jilo,” she called out to the littlest one. Jilo spun around, arms held high overhead. “Come on, Nana says it’s time to eat.” May was relieved to see the bee rise up and take to the air.
Opal bent to try and lift the girl, but Jilo was having none of it. She pulled back from her sister, intent on making the trip under her own steam, but then stopped and took Opal’s steadying hand after a half-dozen steps. Nearing the porch, Jilo let go of Opal and crawled up the steps. May looked down at the smiling face creeping up to greet her. May didn’t give a pea-picker’s damn that the child’s face didn’t look a thing like her boy’s. This was her grandbaby every bit as much as Jilo’s older sisters were.
“Go on and take your sisters inside. Nana will get the bags.” Opal herded her younger sisters past the screech of the screen door and into the darkening house.
May reached through the still-open screen door and pulled the main door shut. The spring on the screen door groaned and snapped as it closed with a thwack. “Let’s just say you do get this ‘singing’ job,” May made sure her disapproval rang through. It wasn’t that Betty couldn’t sing, for the woman certainly could, but May knew there was a hell of a lot more going on in those Atlanta clubs than singing. “Who’s going to look after the girls while you’re out all night?”
Betty rolled her eyes, but only a little. “You saw Opal. She’s practically a mother to the other girls already. She always looking after them, bathing ’em, feeding them.”
Betty’s words confirmed May’s worst fears. “She don’t have much of a choice about that, now does she?”
Betty’s face froze at the older woman’s words. There was no doubt in May’s mind that Betty had finished with being a mother. May and Reuben had hoped for a household full of children, but Jesse was the only one her womb had allowed her to carry. And now the selfish woman who’d robbed her of her only child was shirking the responsibility of her own babies’ care, all so she could be this buffoon’s fancy woman.
May felt like screaming, but instead bent down and grasped the handles of the suitcases. “Not much more trouble cooking for you two, if you want to come in.” It would take all her strength to allow this woman back under her roof, but never let it be said May refused anyone hospitality, even the likes of these two. As expected, Porkpie’s eyes lit up.
“Thank you, no,” Betty rushed through her response. “We should be getting on. It’s best if we get out of these parts and make it into Atlanta before sunset. Ain’t that right, Walter?”
As silly as Betty could be, this time May knew she was right. It wouldn’t be wise for a black man to be driving his shiny new automobile around these roads after sunset.
“We could stay a few . . .” Porkpie began, but then he caught something on Betty’s face, something the glare hid from May’s view. “Yes, I reckon it would be best to be getting on. But thank you for your kind offer, ma’am.”
“You at least gonna come in and get the girls settled?” May asked.
“No, no,” Betty said. “I think they’ll do better if we just slip away now.” She turned quickly on her heels and strode toward the car.
Porkpie doffed his hat once more. “Mrs. Wills.” He scurried to open Betty’s door.
“You just remember”—he stopped at the sound of May’s voice—“that that woman with you was once Mrs. Wills, too, and she got three girls here who need their mama.”
“Go on,” Betty commanded Porkpie. He nodded several times in quick succession, whether in response to her or May, May would never know. As soon as Porkpie opened the passenger door, Betty slid into her seat, backside first, and swung her legs up through the opening. Once she was settled, he jogged with a heavy gait around the front of the car to the driver’s side and opened his door. “Ma’am,” he called out once more, then hopped into the driver’s seat and closed the door with loving care behind him.
May hurried down the porch steps, managing to grab ahold of the opening in the passenger side’s window just as Porkpie fired up the engine. Betty’s eyes flashed, and her lips pursed as she looked out at May.
“When you coming back?” May asked.
“Soon,” was all Betty offered. She rolled the window up and patted Porkpie’s arm. He shifted the car into drive, leaving May to watch as it jostled away across the roots and ruts of her yard.
SEVEN
It took an hour or so, but May’s three granddaughters finally allowed themselves to be calmed, then washed and readied for bed in their daddy’s old room. Chatterbox Opal kept parroting her mother, talking about how good life would be once Mama was singing in front of those big bands. Tearful Poppy, accustomed now to electric light, was afraid of the shadows cast by the flame of the kerosene lamp. Angry, squalling Jilo seemed somehow more deeply aware of her mother’s betrayal than her older sisters. Finally, though, May had them settled for the night.
May worried she was too old to raise these three, but she couldn’t let the fear linger. If she didn’t see to their well-being, who the hell else could she count on to do so? She had only just gotten used to being alone in the house, but the thought of trying to carry these girls into womanhood left her feeling something the loss of her loved ones had not.
She felt lonely.
For the first time in her life she understood those folk who would pay good money to sit at rocking tables and listen for voices from beyond the grave. The good Lord knew what she’d pay to feel Reuben’s reassuring touch again or see her Jesse’s face. She’d gladly hand over her last dime even if all she got from the other side was an echo of her mama’s voice telling her to quit her nattering.
Outside, the chat of mockingbirds, sleepless beneath the bright moonlight, tugged her back into a childhood memory, another full moon night such as this one, when she had complained to her mother about the filching habit that had earned the birds their name. “Why they gotta steal the other birds’ songs anyway? Why don’t they sing their own song instead?”
Her mama had pinched her cheek, forcing her to smile. “They ain’t stealing nothing, baby,” she had said, winking at May. “They just trying to imagine what it’s like to be one of those other birds. Of course they may get the melody wrong in places, but it’s love that make them try in the first place. They just trying to see things through others’ eyes. Be a lot better world if people did that, too. Now you leave those poor mockingbirds be.”
May extinguished the kerosene flame in the living area, its glow giving way to the silver moonlight that reached in through the window to keep her company. Morning would come soon enough, and May would have to be up and out before the moon had left the sky so she could walk the three miles into town where she worked as maid for the Pinnacle Hotel. She daren’t be late.
