“Y’all head to Kate’s place?” she calls out, snooping. “She know you coming?”
None of us answers. Don’t hardly look at her. The biddy’s never darkened the church door that I know of. If she did, I won’t sit beside her. She’s gotta stink something foul under a pile of dresses dragging the ground. Today, she walks right outta her trailer and tags along beside me. She grins and shows rotten nubs. Her pipe smoke smells funny. The wind must blow right cause I don’t smell her too much. I keep up with the group; Birdie does too.
The lot of us is sweating and breathing heavy by the time Miss Shaw’s cabin comes into view. Fleeta holds up her hand for us to wait so she can lean over and put her hands on her knees to catch her breath. She’s wheezing pretty bad. Birdie just puffs on that pipe.
Fleeta straightens up, and when she gets to the door, she pounds on it with the flat of her hand. I don’t know why she bothers, cause when we stand on tiptoes, we see in the window nobody’s home. Piles of books are on the table, her man clothes hang on pegs, trash sits on her windowsill, and a funny bush stands in the corner. My shoulders sag from disappointment. I’ve been wound up tight with nerves that want to spring cause I want this done and over.
We look at each other, stumped, and don’t know what to do now the steam’s out of the day. I think we’re gonna leave when Fleeta turns the door handle and finds the door unlocked. I thought Brother fixed the lock but maybe not. Fleeta says, “This place don’t belong to her. It belongs to the school and to Baines Creek.”
The other women follow her in as natural as you please.
I wait outside cause I can see what they do through that big window, crowding in that little space, sorting through stuff, pulling books off the shelf, fingering her things.
I hear a bark and look up the hill to see Miss Shaw and her stray mongrel coming down. She sees me and raises her hand in greeting, but the dog growls and flattens his ears. I step behind Birdie so it’s not just me Miss Shaw sees. Birdie smells ripe up this close, but I stay put.
Right then I hear Fleeta shout, “Found em!” She comes out the door with a look of pride on her face. The other women are right on her heels. She holds up a small stack of cream-colored envelopes tied with a ribbon. I bet they got tiny hearts on the back flaps.
“Ladies.” Miss Shaw arrives, cautious, and puts her hand on the dog’s head to make him stay. He could turn wild if she let go. She glances at her open front door.
“What can I do for you?” Her voice is tight, and her face loses its smile cause the Crusaders for Moral Fortitude have been inside her place. She don’t know her skin’s bout to be ripped off and all her evil drain out.
Fleeta holds out the stack of little cream envelopes like the one I give her two days ago, and she shakes em. “We know what these are, Miss Shaw.”
“Do you, now?”
“And we won’t put up with your moral ineptitude poisoning our children’s minds or squatting on our property.”
“Moral ineptitude, you say. Big words.”
“Don’t you sass me.” Fleeta’s eyes flash dark, and she puts a pudgy hand on her wide hip.
“What do you think you have in your hand, Fleeta? That’s your name, isn’t it? Fleeta?”
“You’d know if you come to church more.”
Miss Shaw looks down her nose at us. “Ladies, you’ve come to my home, found me not here, entered without permission, gone through my possessions, and found a stack of letters from my sister. So what is this sin I’ve committed?”
“From your sister!” Fleeta declares with a humph and then says even louder, “From your sister! You think we was born in a cabbage patch yesterday and still wet behind the ears?” She steps closer and shakes the letters in Miss Shaw’s face. “This here don’t sound like sister letters.”
We all nod in strong agreement. Some of them got sisters, and I bet nobody never got a letter like the one I found.
Miss Shaw looks at us one at a time, then talks in a calm voice that spooks me.
“My sister, Rachel, wrote those you have in your hand—although I don’t know what she has to do with your invasion of my privacy or my moral ineptitude.”
I don’t expect her to come back at us calm-like. I thought she’d squirm at Fleeta’s declaration. Instead, it’s us who squirm at her bold-faced lie. What can we do to crack it open?
“I’m not in the mood to offer you tea today, ladies. This visit is over, and you’d best be on your way, for my dog grows weary of his patience. And please…leave my sister’s letters with me.”
My world tilts sideways. With one little word—sister—Miss Shaw might have righted a terrible wrong, but does she tell the truth? I study her face and don’t see her flinch. I don’t see guilt round her eyes. Don’t see her afeard of Judgment Day. She stands there.
Then Fleeta spouts out, “What about them little heart thingies on the back?”
A quiver of hope rises. Why would her sister draw little heart thingies? What’s she gonna say bout that? For a moment, I think Miss Shaw won’t answer, but then she does.
“Though you have no right to information I would have given freely if asked, I’ll tell you this. Long ago, Rachel was in a car accident that left her simpleminded. She is all-loving. She puts hearts on everything. I love her little hearts.”
Laura June whispers, “I love little hearts, too,” and we glare at her for the traitor she is.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to put my home back in order after your invasion. You may visit again, but only by invitation.”
Miss Shaw looks down at us like we’re a bunch a children who’ve been caught doing something wrong. She steps toward us, and we step back, not wanting to be touched. Some of the ladies act humbled. I know that weak look.
Miss Shaw turns and holds out her hand to Fleeta for the letters. Fleeta don’t have a choice. She gives em to her before we even have a chance to read em. On top is the letter I took.
When she closes the door with the wild dog, the letters, and her inside, we take our leave, a bunch of wet hens to tramp down the mountain with the fluff gone out of our feathers. Birdie don’t help the mood when she throws her head back and cackles like the witchy woman she is. Nobody talks on the walk down cause we got nothing to say to change things.
I think bout them seventy words and how good they was for Mama, and how bad for Miss Shaw. I never heard a sister write that way. Course, I don’t have a sister.
It could have been a simpleminded sister, all flowery.
Maybe.
Today don’t turn out the way I planned.
Brother don’t need to know what we done.
Kate Shaw