CHAPTER 27
BIRDIE
She’d heard Althea was back but didn’t see her until the umpteenth time she walked down to the Danes’ to return Althea’s plate. Birdie couldn’t ever think of those dishes as Lila’s, though Lila was the one bringing them over, piled high with dumplings. The first time Birdie returned the plate, she felt almost ashamed. One, that she had been so unneighborly in the first place, and two, that she’d eaten the dumplings so fast. She told herself she was being ridiculous. There was no need for Lila to know she’d eaten them all. For all the girl knew, Birdie was just in a hurry to return the plate. It took Lila a while, that first time, to notice her hollering from the road. She had a queer look, running toward Birdie like something was wrong. It took a minute for Lila to figure out what was going on, that Birdie wasn’t having a heart attack or losing her marbles, she was simply calling hello before setting foot on the property. It was polite, Birdie explained, to warn a person of your arrival, instead of showing up on the doorstep unannounced, like young folks now tended to do. She looked pointedly at Lila when she said that, but the girl didn’t seem aware of her own bad manners; she just looked relieved that everything was okay. Birdie hadn’t planned on saying how much she enjoyed the dumplings, but when Lila asked, she saw no reason to lie. After that, Lila brought dumplings around every week.
She didn’t know how many times they’d been through the routine, Lila bringing the food, Birdie returning the plate. They always did it that way, never thinking to put the dumplings in one of Birdie’s Tupperware bowls and send the plate back home with Lila. To be honest, she was starting to enjoy the girl’s company. Usually, when Lila came by, she’d be full of questions, and Birdie felt good about having all the answers. Lila would ask her things like What do you do with those berries?, the ones growing yonder in the yard, and Birdie would say, That’s pokeweed, it’s poison, but you can eat the young shoots in spring if you boil them three times and change the water in between. Lila scribbled it down in a notebook and drew a little picture of the plant to remember. One day Lila led Birdie over to the tree line to show her some nightshade, and Birdie explained the medicinal uses and the deadly ones, then got to rambling about other names for nightshade—belladonna and devil’s cherry and henbane and so on. She left out how belladonna was said to take the form of a beautiful, deadly woman, because certain folks in town had drawn that comparison to Lila.
This particular day she’d brought some morning glory seeds along with the plate, because Lila was always admiring hers, and now was a good time to scatter seeds for next year. She’d be sure and tell Lila those seeds were poisonous, too, and she started thinking how funny it was that so many beautiful things were poison, and then she wondered if maybe she ought to keep her mouth shut about all the poison plants. What was to stop Lila from cooking up a batch of tainted dumplings and doing away with her? She almost laughed at herself, at such a thought. She’d been listening too much to witch talk from folks who didn’t know Lila.
She stood out at the road calling hello, but Lila didn’t come out. Birdie figured she was home, because the girl hardly went anywhere unless Carl or Gabby took her into town. And Lila should have been expecting her. Birdie actually felt a little hurt that Lila didn’t come to the door when she called. She knew she shouldn’t do it, but she talked herself into walking through the yard to see if the girl might be digging in the dirt somewhere and hadn’t heard her. When she got up close to the kitchen garden, she saw some lettuce and peas growing, which meant Lila had taken her advice on fall planting. The weeds were getting out of hand, though, and Birdie couldn’t help herself, she set the plate and the bag of seeds in the grass and squatted down and started pulling. That was when she heard the shouting, and she recognized the voice and knew Althea was home.
Something smashed inside the house, and Birdie pressed her face up against the kitchen door. “Hullo!” she called. “It’s Birdie. Returning your plate.” More smashing and a scream. She banged on the door a few times and then thought to hell with manners, she was already at the door hollering and might as well go on in. Somebody might need help. And she had a tiny fleeting thought that maybe what people said about Lila was true and she was in there putting some sort of spell on Althea. Birdie hurried toward the racket and found Lila in the front room, shielding herself behind the wingback chair while Althea ripped picture frames from the wall and hurled them to the floor. There was blood on the rug where Althea had walked barefoot through the broken glass.
“Althea,” she hollered. Althea turned around, and Birdie could tell that her old neighbor recognized her. A faint smile crossed Althea’s lips. The wildness didn’t leave her eyes, though, and it hurt to see her that way.
“Hello, Birdie. Was I expecting you?”
“Oh, yes,” Birdie said. “I thought we’d do some singing today. I’ve been meaning to get out the dulcimer.” Lila stared at the two of them, her eyes wide.
Althea clasped her hands. “Of course. That sounds lovely. I just need to get this witch out of my house—”
Birdie gently grabbed hold of her arms. “Let’s go to my place,” she said. “I made tea and cookies just for your visit.”
“Hmm.” She looked confused. “Well, yes, how good of you to fetch me. I lost track of time.”
Birdie led her out to the front porch and sat her on the swing, telling her to wait. Back inside, she gathered bandages and antiseptic and a pair of slippers for Althea to wear. Lila was waiting at the bottom of the stairs when Birdie came down.
“She won’t take her medicine,” Lila said, wringing her hands. “This is just one of her bad days; it’s not always like this. She’ll calm down. She’s fine when Carl’s home.”
“She can’t stay here,” Birdie said. “I’ll take her to my place to wait for Carl.”
“No! Please don’t tell him. I’ll try harder, I’ll find a way to get through to her.”
Birdie shook her head. “Oh, child. She ain’t getting better. How do you expect to deal with this when there’s a baby in the house?”
Lila grabbed her sleeve. “I want my little girl to have her grandma.”
Birdie didn’t know what Lila expected from a grandmother, but she wouldn’t get it from Althea. “It’ll be all right,” she said, patting Lila’s hand. She left the girl alone to clean up the blood and glass.
Althea was fine once Birdie got her away from Lila. The two neighbors sang hymns most of the afternoon, as they had often done on Sundays when their husbands were alive. Birdie set the dulcimer on her lap and plucked the strings, and Althea had no trouble remembering the words to their favorite songs. Afterward, they drank tea, and Althea told her how the witch had roosted in her home and cursed it. Lila had trapped her son and she carried an evil seed, her belly bloated with sin. It all sounded crazy, but she said it with conviction.
Birdie had been among those folks who thought Lila was something dark, something other. But she had seen the lost look in the girl’s eyes when she took Althea away. Lila was just a scared kid finding her way in a strange place, and Birdie felt ashamed for not helping her more. Carl came to get his mother that night after work, and once Birdie told him all she’d seen and heard, he decided to drive her straight back to Riverview.
Birdie went to see Lila the next day, to help pack Althea’s things. Lila looked tired and didn’t say much. As they carried boxes down the upstairs hall, Birdie noticed that one of the bedrooms had been cleared out and painted lavender. “Is this the baby’s room?” she asked. Lila nodded, and they peered into the cozy space. “I can do grandma things,” Birdie said. She’d been thinking about it all night, how this was one little way she could help. She had four grandsons of her own, two by her preacher son who lived over in the Bootheel, and two by her son in Oklahoma, but she didn’t get to see them near enough. “For the baby. I can make cookies. Read books. Tell long boring stories.”
Lila dropped the box of Althea’s clothes and hugged her, her thin arms stronger than Birdie expected, her full belly pressed to Birdie’s empty one.