“Where are you going?”
Momma still cried, but she didn’t answer. She stumbled into Baby Lucy’s room and pulled out an unopened package of Huggies and a few sleepers, onesies, and other clothes for my sister.
My stomach fell to the balls of my feet.
“What are you doing?” My voice took a swipe at the light dangling all pretty and sweet with pink crystal baubles.
Momma swung around, fast. Her eyes were huge. Her face matched the color of the chandelier, like she’d been turned into a porcelain doll.
“What does it look like?” she said between the crying hiccups. Her hair trembled.
“Umm,” I said, and took a step back.
“Go get packed.”
“What?”
“Now.” Then she pushed past and into the hall and headed toward the master bedroom. That would slow her down for sure. I mean if Momma was gonna look through all her things, jeezo peezo, she had a week’s worth of work, at least.
I followed on tiptoe, panting from nerves. Why, I might be the first girl who sees ghosts to die of a heart attack—or deoxygenation—at the age of fifteen.
That didn’t seem right either. Nothing did.
“Momma? Momma? Momma?” I whispered after her the whole way. My hands flapped like I hoped to take off in flight and land in front of her. I was getting ready to say, You got your work cut out for you, and that’s good, Momma, ’cause then you’ll have some time to think over what you are about to do, when she threw open her closet door, walked in, and stepped out with a roll-y suitcase. Bulging. Packed.
There was a huge commotion going on at the front of the house. I could hear Buddy, Aunt Odie, and Tommie arguing. I gaped at my mother.
“What’s that?” I pointed at the suitcase.
“For someone who can see ghosts and talk to dead people and who has a sixth sense, you aren’t catching on to things all that quick.”
Momma had stopped crying. In fact, she now appeared angry.
I drew my head back like a turtle trying to hide in its shell.
“That was not nice,” I said, my feelings hurt. “I can see what it is. I’m not dumb.” Though I felt that way. “And you know what I mean, anyway.”
“I’m always on your side.” I looked at her. And the suitcase. And the things she threw on her bed while I flitted around in the room.
“Why are you doing this?” I had a hard time getting the words out. They didn’t want to, ’cause anyone or anything with a sixth sense or not could see where this disaster was headed.
“I’m leaving.” She opened the suitcase, the zipper singing.
“But why?”
Momma crammed Baby Lucy’s things on top of her own stuff. Including, I saw, the picture Momma and JimDaddy had made when they got engaged.
“You love each other.”
“I know that. I love him more than my own life.” Momma’s hands trembled. “But love isn’t everything.”
What? Really? Wasn’t there a million famous songs saying love was all you needed? Didn’t JimDaddy sing a lot of them? To my mother? With his guitar?
Standing there in that fancy bedroom, I realized JimDaddy hadn’t sung once in the few days since my party. Not once. Not to Momma. Or Baby Lucy. And he used to all the time.
JimDaddy had asked her to marry him with a song.
Was this why Momma was done?
The suitcase looked like it was ready to bust wide open when Momma closed it. Well, she sorta closed it. The diapers were never going in there. And a onesie had stopped the zipper. Plus a sleeper foot hung out the opening, too.
“I thought—”
“Don’t you say a word.” Momma swiped at her tears. “I have lived with this since long before me and Jim got married.” She stopped, and I wondered if Momma was thinking about the county courthouse and how afterward Aunt Odie had served Better than Sex Cake and said to all the guests, “Good marriages are death do you part, but the lucky ones stay together longer than that. The good ones,” Aunt Odie had said, “stay together forever. Long past death.”
What would Aunt Odie think of this?
“We’re off to Aunt Odie’s,” Momma said. “The three of us. You included.”
Wait. Wait!
“I don’t think—”
“She knows we’re coming.”
“That’s obvious.” I said the words under my breath but where I knew Momma could hear me. Then I stopped her from leaving her room, hands gripping her elbows, leaning in to keep her from moving.
I said, “Momma. This doesn’t feel right,” just as there was another knock at the front door.