Chapter Nineteen

AFTER GRANNY B’S LETTERS SCATTERED to the seven Agnew-scented winds, calls poured in like the rain that pelted the windowpane on summer afternoons. Lis tried to reassure her brothers and sisters that everything that could be done was being done, but they blew into town anyway, huffing and puffing against the brick fortress that was Granny B.

“She wouldn’t even let me pray for her. I couldn’t believe it. She wouldn’t even let me step in the door and pray for her. And then I hear Little Ed is staying there!” Ruthena stood on the bottom step.

Evelyn watched her mama’s shoulders lift in a sigh that seemed to start in her toes. Then she glanced at her uncle sitting beside her on a kitchen stool and smiled when he winked. Since her uncle had been released from prison and found a new lease on life, he’d become Edmond—to all but Ruthena, who clung to the past like it was her shelter from the cold.

Lis led the way. “Come on in, Matthew. Ruthena, why don’t you take it up with Edmond yourself?”

“What! Little Ed’s here?” Ruthena pushed past Lis.

Lis patted Matthew’s back as he followed his wife. He planted a kiss on his niece’s cheek and then enveloped his brother-in-law in a bear hug. “Hey there, brother. When did you get out?”

“A few weeks ago. Big Sis over here sent me money for a bus ticket so I could see Mama.”

Evelyn knew that even though Ruthena made the most noise, her aunts and uncles all looked up to their oldest sister. She’d always been their emotional go-between with Granny B, the family’s second-in-command even when Henton was around.

Matthew left a hand on Edmond’s shoulder. “How’ve you be—?”

“Why do you get to stay with Mama when the rest of us can’t even see her?” Ruthena skipped all the social niceties.

“I see her, Ruthena,” Lis responded smoothly as she opened the freezer and retrieved the decaffeinated coffee. “And so does Evelyn.”

Ruthena pursed her lips and rolled her eyes heavenward, but Evelyn didn’t get the feeling her next words were heaven inspired. “But the rest of us don’t! Mama needs prayer, a laying on of hands . . .”

“I touch her every chance I get, Aunt Ruthena.” Evelyn sipped her orange juice. She rubbed her stomach, feeling the baby kick.

Ruthena grimaced.

“And I pray with her, even when she’s not looking.” Edmond grinned.

Ruthena’s mouth dropped open, and she aimed an index finger at her brother. “You? I’m sorry, Little Ed, but what do you know about petitioning the Lord, interceding on someone’s behalf? You probably can’t remember the last time you put a foot in church.”

“What—the prison chapel don’t count?” He laughed, but then he seemed to realize Ruthena wasn’t in the mood for his old playfulness. Edmond snapped his fingers and pointed at his sister. “Okay, what about the apostle Paul? He carried the Church with him—in and out of prison. And I’m talking about the capital C church and not the little c you sit in every Sunday, Ruthena. He wrote Ephesians, Philippians, Philemon, Colossians . . . all from prison,” he said, counting the books off on his fingers, “and I’m sure we can agree that my fellow former inmate was filled with the Holy Spirit and prayed . . . his . . . butt . . . off.” Edmond slowly rotated back and forth on his stool, never breaking eye contact with Ruthena.

It was she who looked away first. To Lis. She aimed a thumb back at her brother and huffed, “Is he sitting here comparing himself to Paul?” When Ruthena faced him again, the incredulity in her eyes battled with the twinkling in his. “No offense, Little Ed, but you went to jail because you are a thief, not an apostle.”

“Aunt Ruthena!” Evelyn couldn’t help herself. Her stomach jostled her cup when she nearly hopped from her stool.

“Slow your roll, mamacita,” Edmond said to Evelyn as he pressed her back into her seat. He grabbed a dishcloth and swabbed up the mess. Throughout the exchange, he’d kept his cool. If anything, his voice dropped a degree as he focused on Ruthena. “No, Sister, I was a thief. And Paul was a murderer of the very people Jesus came to save. That don’t change the fact that Mama don’t want to see you.”

Matthew took his wife’s hand as she stood there spluttering in the middle of the kitchen. “I don’t believe it’s where you are when the Lord calls you. It’s knowing whose you are once He does.”

Crackle, crackle, crackle . . . Lis lifted the top of the grinder. “Coffee?”

The kitchen was silent for a moment except for the clink of cups and saucers hitting the granite.

Ruthena finally spoke. “So, Evelyn, what’s your part in all this?”

Evelyn took a deep breath. “I don’t have a part, Aunt Ruthena.”

“You most certainly do!”

“Ruthe—”

“Matthew, she does. She’s the one who wrote those letters and then had the nerve to hand deliver mine!”

“Aunt Ruthena, I didn’t write them. Well, I did, but not really. Just think of me as the typewriter, the instrument—and I guess, your messenger. Those letters came from Granny B. I really had nothing to do with it.” Evelyn avoided her aunt’s disbelieving look by stepping down from the stool to pour another cup of juice.

Aunt Ruthena’s tsk filled the kitchen. “Lis? What do you think about Mama’s death wish?”

Mama added eight heaping tablespoons of grounds to a filter and then poured cold water into the machine before replacing the glass pot. She seemed to use the same spoon from the coffee grounds to carefully measure her words. “Is that what you call it, a death wish?”

“Well, what do you call it?”

“Her own business. That’s what I call it.”

“Her own business! She’s committing suicide! Slowly but surely, she’s committing suicide. And you and this girl here are just going to sit by and let her do it.” Aunt Ruthena stared at Mama incredulously.

“Well, what do you expect them to do, Ruthena? Drag her to the doctor? Hold her down while they pump her with a bunch of useless drugs and chemicals?” It sounded like Edmond had already gotten an earful from Granny B.

Aunt Ruthena perched on the barstool Evelyn had vacated and turned her back on her brother. “Well, doing something might not help her physical body, but what about her spiritual body, Lis?”

“What are you talking about now, Ruth?”

“I worry about her faith, or the lack of it, and how it’s affecting her health. Does she just not believe in the healing power of Jesus? In heaven? She’ll never get well that way.”

Mama shook her head in disbelief. “Now I see why she didn’t let you in the house. If I’d had any sense, I wouldn’t have let you in either. Matthew, help me out here.”

Uncle Matthew filled each cup. “Well—”

“Well, it’s not any of your business, Matthew. She’s my mama—”

“She’s our mama, too, and I didn’t spend twenty hours on a Greyhound to hear all this foolishness for the next two days. First of all, her faith ain’t the issue. And secondly, she’s not going to hell for not choosing chemotherapy. Hell is for the unbeliever, not the stubborn.”

“Y’all are just running from the truth. But not me. We’re calling Thomas, and we’re going to ask him to draw up some kind of papers to control—”

“Don’t say ‘we,’ Ruthena. I told you before we left the house I don’t support this.”

“But, Matthew, God won’t—”

“This doesn’t have anything to do with God but with you and your inability to accept the fact that your mama is dying. He’s in control, not you. Now Granny B has always done things her way, so leave her be. You keep talking crazy like this, and Lis and Edmond will declare you incompetent.”

Evelyn slurped down such a huge mouthful of hot coffee she scalded her tongue, but she held it, leaving her aunt to stew in impotent silence.

——————

“Did she say she was gon’ brang down the hand of God on me right then and there?”

“Oh, Granny B, you need to stop. I hope it’s God’s will to heal you, too—it’s certainly within His power.”

Beatrice heard the wistfulness, the heavenly appeal in her tone, but she didn’t have time for sadness today. “No, it’s Ruthena that need to stop, and you need to shake that rug one mo’ time.”

Snap! “Granny B, she—”

“And if you tell me she loves me, I’m gon’ take that rug and pop you upside the head with it.”

Evelyn vigorously shook the rug.

Beatrice took a long draw from her cup. “That girl always threat’nin’ to pray fo’ me. Been doin’ so since she was ’bout this high.” She indicated the general area around her hips. “Holdin’ them prayers over folks’ head like a thundercloud. But I don’t thank she know God too well if she thank He just gon’ jump to do her biddin’. He God all by Hisself and don’t need no Ruthena to let Him know what He doin’ wrong or right.” She flicked her fingers. “Brang that here. Let me show you how to beat a rug.”

“Uh-uh. You sit. Just keep on swigging that noxious stuff—”

“Not a what?” Beatrice’s brows furrowed.

She nodded toward the mug. “That. What is that?”

Granny B grimaced. “Oh, this onion syrup. Mam used to make us drank it when we was little. It fixed whatever ailed you.”

“You mean scared it away, don’t you?”

“You chillun today, with your fancy doctors and medicines. Runnin’ here and there lookin’ for miracles, when all they got to do is use what God gave ’em in they own backyards.” Granny B pointed to a weed growing near the street. “That catnip there can make you a good tea.” She held her cup aloft. “And this onion syrup? Just boil you some onion good and slow and add some honey and sugar. Better than anythang you can buy.”

“According to you.”

“Well, if this don’t suit your taste, I can fix you up some castor oil and brandy. Thata knock them germs right out. You shoulda seent my brother Henry when Mam made him drank a spoonful—and that’s all it took, a spoonful. She’d warn him, ‘Open yo’ mouth and hold yo’ nose!’ He’d take one lick off that spoon . . . !” She laughed.

Evelyn waved her hand in front of her face. “No thanks. I’m laying off the hard stuff for the next nineteen weeks or so.” She draped the rug over her arm and mounted the front porch steps.

“You stayin’ away from your husband for the next nineteen weeks, too?”

Evelyn froze.

“Well? You told him ’bout that baby yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Speak up, chile. Any reason why you waitin’?”

Evelyn melted a bit, allowing her lips and feet to move. “It’s not really something you tell over the phone.”

Beatrice raised her cup and an eyebrow. “So you plannin’ to hand him the baby and say, ‘Well, here she is’?”

Evelyn stopped beside her grandmother’s chair. “She?”

Granny B rolled her eyes. “He, she, whatever. They gon’ cause you the same heap-a trouble, don’t make no never mind.”

“Is that why you didn’t let Aunt Ruthena in last week, because you thought she was causing trouble?”

“I didn’t let Ruthena in ’cause I didn’t wont to, and Edmond in ’cause I did. And I know you changed the subject ’cause you wonted to.” She relieved Evelyn of the worn-out welcome mat. It slapped the ground. “But that’s okay ’cause I’m gon’ lay down. Take the broom over the sidewalk.”

Before she could escape, Evelyn’s words snagged her.

“How have you been lately, Granny B?”

“The same.”

“And how is that?” Evelyn seemed to drop the pretense as she dropped the broom.

“Not different.” Beatrice resented the invasion and the help she’d had to seek lately.

“Granny B—”

“How you been?”

“What?”

Beatrice watched Evelyn squirm in the corner she’d tried to back her grandmother into. “I said, how you been? I see you roundin’ out plenty. I guess you ain’t got to hide nuthin’ now.”

“I-I wasn’t trying to hide anything. And this isn’t about me. Why—?”

“Well then, get back to sweepin’. You can use the exercise . . . and I sho’ coulda used just a peek at yo’ auntie’s face when Edmond said he was like the ’postle Paul.” Beatrice stepped into the house, still chuckling to herself. The screen door bounced against the frame before coming to rest.

——————

Evelyn quietly plucked a cerulean pencil and lightly tinted the sky behind Dominick. She tried to keep the paper from crinkling so she wouldn’t draw attention to herself.

“It’s not right, Lis,” Aunt Mary complained over her cup of Russian tea. “I came all the way across the country—”

“But she told you not to come, Mary. Evelyn, did you want some tea?” Lis blew over her cup and sank into the sofa cushion. She peered at her daughter through tendrils of steam.

Mary’s narrowed eyes met her niece’s before she focused again on her sister. “But I didn’t think she wouldn’t see me once I came all this way. And she saw Little Ed!”

Lis raised an eyebrow. “Well, when you come back home after being in prison over a decade . . . Besides, you know how Mama feels about Edmond.”

Mary’s cup clinked into the saucer. “But I spent more than five hundred dollars on a ticket to see that woman!”

“But, but, but. You’ll have to settle for seeing me, okay? And what’s five hundred dollars to you? A pair of shoes?” Lis handed Mary a slice of Ruby Tagle’s carrot cake.

Evelyn hid a smile and raised her hand. “I’ll take a slice too, Mama.”

——————

“I thought Aunt Mary was going to fall out of her seat. I really did, Granny B.”

“That girl always been one for actin’. Her head barely reached the latch on the back do’ but could she put on a show, cryin’ before my switch ever touched her leg.”

Evelyn laughed.

“I’m serious.” Beatrice clipped the end of the clothesline and discarded the extra twine. She reached back to hand Evelyn the wire cutters. “Here, chile.”

“But Aunt Mary was serious, too, Granny B.”

Beatrice shook her head and wrapped the line around the nail.

“Why don’t you let me do that?”

For the fourth time, she ignored Evelyn’s offer to help. “What did I tell Mary in that letter?”

“Gran—”

Beatrice tried to swat away the hand on her elbow but had to lean into it as she stepped down. Once she’d planted both feet on the ground, she snatched away her shaking arm and retrieved the stool. Beatrice forced her stiff legs to move toward the screen door. “She was probably comin’ to take stock of the furniture.” She felt Evelyn close behind her as she took the one step up into the house.

“I don’t think Spring Hope chic is quite her style.”

Beatrice didn’t answer, so focused as she was on trying to heft the basket of wet sheets.

Without a word, Evelyn took one of the handles. Together they ambled to the line.