“You must worry about them,” I said.
“Indeed.” He nodded.
“I’m glad you have a family,” I said. I didn’t want to think of him alone.
He smiled. “You’re a sweet girl,” he said. Then he sighed. “I’ve had a … shall we say, a difficult life, in some ways because of my gift. I’ve been sued. Once I was even put in a colored hospital for the insane and I would still be there if my father hadn’t fought to get me out.” He leaned back in his chair. “It’s wonderful to be old now,” he said. “I’m enjoying it. Everyone simply thinks of me as the crazy but harmless old man in Ridgeview. I suppose every neighborhood needs one of those.”
I laughed, and he looked at me intently. “But returning to you, Tess. How do you feel?”
I thought about the question, taking inventory of my emotions. “Good,” I said simply. “I feel good. And I feel grateful.” I looked at him warmly. I’d nearly forgotten that outside this house I had a life that worried and distressed me. A life that challenged me at every turn. I didn’t want to leave, but Reverend Sam got to his feet and I did the same, still clutching the library book in my hands. I felt slightly disoriented. When we walked into the anteroom, though, I was jarred back to reality by the skeleton. It seemed like hours since I’d first seen it and I moved past it quickly.
We walked quietly through the hallway and the living room. I put on my coat and hat, then turned to face him. “Can I come back again sometime?”
“Of course, child,” he said. “I’ll be waiting for you.”
24
The day after my visit to Reverend Sam, Ruth hosted one of her Ladies of the Homefront meetings at the house and Henry suggested I attend to please his mother. I would have liked to spend the entire day reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, feeling close to my own mother and holding tight to the feeling of comfort I’d taken away with me from Reverend Sam’s, but I knew I needed to participate in this household and it would be a chance to get to know some of the women in Hickory. I needed to make some friends.
Hattie baked oatmeal cookies for the meeting, using molasses in place of our rationed sugar, and the delicious aroma wafted up the stairs to the bedroom as I was getting dressed for the meeting. I went down to the kitchen, glad to find her alone as she pulled a tray of the cookies from the oven.
“Thank you for telling me about Reverend Sam,” I said quietly.
She glanced quickly behind me as she set the tray on a couple of trivets and I knew “Reverend Sam” was a topic we had to keep between us.
“You seed him?” she asked, straightening up from the counter, her voice as soft as mine.
I nodded. “He talked to my mother.”
A broad smile creased her thin face. “How ’bout that,” she said, hands on her hips. Again, she glanced toward the doorway.
“It was amazing,” I said.
She opened the oven door again to pull out a second tray of cookies. “You best git on now,” she said, reaching into the oven. “Best git ready for them Homefront ladies.”
*
In the living room, I saw that a few rows of chairs had been set up for the meeting and Ruth was fidgeting with them, trying to make them arrow straight. I began to help, wanting something to do.
“I’m sure you’ll fit right in today,” Ruth said, and I thought she was expressing a hope rather than a belief.
“I’m looking forward to meeting everyone,” I said, nudging a chair into place.
“There.” She stood up straight and admired our handiwork. “Perfection,” she said with a smile. “Now”—she patted the lapels of the blue jacket she was wearing and looked across the chairs at me—“would you tell Hattie I want to serve tea this morning?” she asked. “I’m sure we’re very low on coffee from the rationing.”
“Of course,” I said, and headed down the hall toward the kitchen again. This time, though, I found the kitchen empty, the fragrant cookies now arranged on a platter. The window over the sink was open a few inches and I spotted Hattie standing at the clothesline near the back door, hanging laundry, Lucy and a young colored woman by her side. The three of them were laughing. I wasn’t sure I’d heard Lucy laugh in my nearly two weeks in Hickory, and I leaned close to the window to try to hear what they were talking about.
“It wasn’t funny!” Lucy was saying, though her smile suggested otherwise. “You and the boys were so mean.”
“You were just so much younger than us,” the young woman said as she handed a clothespin to Hattie from the fabric sack in her hands. She was tall and slender and wore a red wool jacket. Her skin was very dark, her teeth very white, and even from where I stood, I could see that her wide smile was dazzling. “You were just a good target,” she said.
Was this Zeke’s sister? I wondered. The one who’d grown up in the cottage where Hattie now lived? I tried unsuccessfully to remember her name. Henry had said she worked part-time at the factory. That was about all I remembered.
“But you were a girl, too.” Lucy bent over to lift a pillowcase from the wicker laundry basket and handed it to Hattie. “You should have stuck up for me.”
“Sorry, Luce.” The woman tapped Lucy on the nose with a clothespin. “I wanted to be one of the boys.”
“Them boys made you tough, Miss Lucy,” Hattie said as she pinned the pillowcase to the clothesline. “You ought to thank ’em.”
“You weren’t there, Hattie.” Lucy grinned with a good nature I hadn’t known she possessed. “You have no idea how I suffered.”
“Remember the day we put the mattresses at the top of the stairs and slid down to the pile of blankets?” the woman asked.
Lucy gave her arm a fake slap. “Y’all wouldn’t let me do it!” she said.
“You would’ve broken your scrawny little neck.”
“Nobody worried about my scrawny little neck the day y’all threw water balloons at me.”
“We didn’t throw them,” the woman said.
“Oh, you was so evil,” Hattie said to her as she lifted another pillowcase from the basket.
I heard Ruth moving around in the dining room and thought I’d better give Hattie her message. I reached for the doorknob.
“Miss Ruth was so mad,” the younger woman said, “and Mama gave Zeke a whippin’ but—”
She stopped talking when I opened the door, and all three of them turned their heads in my direction.
“Hello.” I smiled, walking onto the back steps. I crossed my arms against the chill air. “I have a message for Hattie from Miss Ruth,” I said. “She’d like tea for her group today.”
“Sure, Miss Tess,” Hattie said. She motioned toward the other woman. “This is my cousin Honor,” she said. “She took the bus out here to help me set up them chairs for the meetin’.”
“That was nice of you,” I said to Honor. “You and your brother and mother used to live in Hattie’s little cottage, right?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Honor said, sounding very formal, the joviality I’d heard in her voice moments ago completely gone. I felt guilty for putting an end to the lighthearted mood.