Chapter Three

“GAL, WHATCHYOU DOIN’ HERE? This ain’t yo’ time to visit,” Beatrice called out to her granddaughter from her front porch. “And whatchyou got there?”

Evelyn unloaded the last of the plants she had stowed in her backseat and turned to the woman who’d shared more than the name Evelyn Beatrice with her. Her grandmother had also passed down a fair share of her strong will. Evelyn drew on that strength now and squared her shoulders as she faced her namesake.

“Hydrangeas. Mama and I thought we’d add some color to this yard.” Evelyn moved to hoist the second rectangular planter to her hip and chose instead to work on first one, then the other.

“’Lis’beth know I don’t like no flowers round here.” Beatrice glared at Evelyn from the bottom step. “Stuff like that just create mo’ work for me to do. And they just gon’ die anyhow.”

“But, Granny B, they’ll come back every year, and they’ll look pretty right here framing the front porch. It’s not that much work because Mama can clip them for you once they grow some. And I can help out more often now I’m not teaching. You can enjoy the beauty without being put out.”

Granny B angled her eyes toward the roses struggling for life beside the road. “No muss, no fuss, huh? I done heard all that before. This my yard, and I don’t need nobody takin’ care of it for me. Hmmmf, plantin’ hy-dran-gees to try and pretty up this yard.” She spread her wiry arms to encompass her postage stamp–size plot. “All this here dirt, with barely a bit a grass to cut. That ain’t even in the neighborhood of good sense.”

Back when Beatrice Agnew was raising both herself and her children, the woods crept up practically to the back door. But not today. Those small hands and feet had snatched and trampled the life right out of each tiny weed or blade of grass that had dared to grow. Evelyn now swept the yard, using the rake to leave plenty of lines in the dirt so that Granny B would know she’d done as she’d been told, like her own mama, Elisabeth, had when she was a girl. Sweeping the yard was a part of “settin’ things right,” what Granny B called cleaning up.

Evelyn had left her grandmother sputtering in the front yard while she’d trudged around back to the small storage shed to retrieve a shovel, rake, and garden hose. “Speaking of fuss.” Evelyn leaned the tools against the porch rail while Granny B, still grumbling, stamped off to pick up stray leaves blown over from a neighbor’s tree. “Have you reconsidered coming to Mama’s birthday party?”

“When I ever change my mind ’bout somethin’? Go with yo’ first mind is what I say and what I do.”

“If that’s your way of saying you’re not coming . . .”

“I ain’t got no way of sayin’ nuthin’, gal. I done told you and yo’ husband I ain’t goin’ to no party. And I done told ’Lis’beth already, so there ain’t no need to brang it up again. I was there for her birth. Cain’t get mo’ excitin’ than that. And you need to sweep the yard first befo’ you get to messin’ thangs up.” Granny B pointed to the part of the yard near the mailbox at the curb. “Anyway, where’s yo’ husband? Surprised he ain’t helpin’ you with this. Y’all don’t move without the other one movin’, too.”

“Uh . . . Kevin?” Evelyn grabbed the rake and walked toward the front curb.

“Unless you got some other husband I don’t know ’bout.” Beatrice used the ever-present cloth draped through the belt of her chambray dress to flick away beads of sweat from her forehead. She lifted her braid draped across her neck and over her shoulder and soaked up the perspiration. The gold cross hanging at the base of her throat glinted in the sunshine.

Evelyn managed to chuckle weakly. She’d come to Spring Hope today to escape Kevin, but he’d chased her there nonetheless. “He’s . . . home. Working. But he’s going away.” Immediately Evelyn wished she could pluck the words from the air between them and tuck them into her pocket.

“Away?” Granny B walked slowly toward her granddaughter, pointing. “You missed that place by the drive, gal. Away where?”

“Europe.” Evelyn bit off the word but regretted it since her grandma was likely to sniff out her Who cares? attitude. She forced herself to face Granny B. “And South Africa. He’ll be gone about three months. So he’s going to miss the party.” She turned to her task—and another subject. “And since I’m not done, I haven’t missed anything yet.”

“Europe? Africa? Is that why you here, actin’ all stiff? You mad ’cause he gon’ miss all this birthday goin’s-on?”

“I’m not mad!” But realizing that she sounded quite the opposite, Evelyn seized the opportunity Granny B had unwittingly thrown into her lap. “Actually, yes, I guess I am. We’ve worked hard on all these plans and now he’s going to be off for three months, missing everything.”

“Well, so am I. Missin’ thangs, I mean. So I guess you gon’ be mad at me, too.” Granny B retreated to the porch. Her hand trembled as she grasped the rail to pull herself up the short flight.

“But we’re inviting everybody!” Evelyn rested the rake on her shoulder so she was free to tick off names, starting with her older siblings. “Yolanda and Lionel and their families.”

Her mama’s birthday celebration at summer’s end would mark the first time the family would come together since they’d buried Graham, Evelyn’s daddy. Evelyn and Kevin had planned to throw the party at her mama’s house in Mount Laurel, where she lived with Jackson, Evelyn’s younger brother, about two towns over from Granny B. Yolanda and Lionel were flying in from Boston and Phoenix.

Evelyn moved on to include Granny B’s grown children. “Then there’s Aunt Ruthena and Uncle Matthew. Little Ed—”

“Edmond gon’ be there?” Granny B straightened up. “He’s out already?”

“Uh . . . uh, I mean, it’s possible. We’re inviting him . . . or at least his children—”

“Now don’t start to lyin’, gal.” According to Granny B, the back of Little Ed’s head was the last she’d seen of her oldest son, nearly twenty years ago. At the time, he was ducking into the bed of his friend’s pickup truck, heading out of town right after a load of rib eye steaks had gone missing from the Piggly Wiggly. She crooked an eyebrow at Evelyn. “I didn’t know Rikers Island gave out passes for birthday parties.”

“I didn’t mean that Little Ed was definitely coming, just that he wanted to. Well, Aunt Sarah told him about it when she saw him on visitors’ day . . .” Her words died an unnatural death.

Granny B gave Evelyn plenty of rope to hang herself—and the time to do it. “You been namin’ ever’body gon’ be at your mama’s party; now you stammerin’ and stutterin’, sayin’ maybe this or possibly that. The truth usually can slip through right easily, but the lie got to be greased up and twisted round to get through yo’ lips.”

Evelyn ran her fingers through the damp tendrils at the nape of her neck and laughed wryly, thinking about all the oil Kevin had applied to his own lips the past six months. “I’m not lying, Granny B. I’m sure Little Ed wants to come—and who knows what can happen between now and then? Right now, I’m just focused on getting you to the dinner, not your children. When is the next time you can see almost everybody in one place?”

“Well, according to yo’ aunt Ruthena, the world gon’ be endin’ soon enough, and we all gon’ be together in the sky somewhere. Ain’t no need to go rushin’ thangs down here.” Granny B opened the front door. “Since you determined to do all that work, I’m gon’ head back in to the kitchen.”

The door creaked shut behind her. Evelyn returned to raking. She knew Granny B had never been one to count her children’s fingers and toes. She had just focused on each tiny, hungry mouth—because somehow, someway, she had to feed it. She had screamed, sweat, and pushed her first child into the world when she was fifteen, right in her own bedroom. After Elisabeth came Little Ed, and then she’d miscarried twins. Meant to be third born, they were the first to die.

“That was a real bad day,” Granny B had pronounced, shaking her head, when she’d told her granddaughter the story many years ago. Her hands had never paused as they’d cut up tender greens.

“Girl, those are called mustard greens,” Mama had explained later when Evelyn had asked.

After the twins came Ruthena, Thomas, Mary, Sarah, and then the last, Milton, born in a blinding rainstorm two months past Granny B’s thirtieth birthday. According to her, soon after, Granddaddy Henton flew the coop. One day, all her grandmother had found were his muddy boots by the back door and his crumpled gray hat in her front room. But he did come back more than thirty years later when he visited each month in the form of a Social Security check, paid to Beatrice T. Agnew, widow of H. A. Agnew.

“’Course, that won’t never pay his debt. That price only I can pay. Me and Milton,” Granny B was heard to say.

As the sun climbed higher in the late-morning sky, Evelyn paid for ever laying eyes on those hydrangeas. But she finally completed the work. She then cleaned off Granny B’s tools, replaced them in the shed, and headed to the house. After doffing her shoes on the front porch, she entered Granny B’s front room. Furniture polish gave her nose a warm, lemon-scented hello.

“Granny B?”

“Gal, ain’t no need to be yellin’ fo’ me. I cain’t be but in so many places in this house.” Granny B had moved through the front room, down the short hall, and on to the sunlit kitchen in the back of the house. A breeze from the open window rattled the shade a bit, but Granny B, unflappable, was putting away the broom in the corner to the right of the back door. She removed the cloth from her waist, folded it twice, and placed it atop the small pile of soiled laundry sitting in the basket on the washing machine. She turned her lean, five-foot-one-inch frame in Evelyn’s direction. “You done?”

Evelyn nodded, then picked up the thread of conversation she’d begun unraveling an hour ago. “You know you’re going to miss out on all the fun.”

“Fun? Listenin’ to Mary go on ’bout livin’ the high life? Puttin’ up with Ruthena prayin’ for ever’body and layin’ on hands? I can see her now: ‘Lord, bless this, and Lord, bless that.’” With her eyes rolled back, looking skyward, and her hands waving in the air, Granny B did a fair imitation of her daughter. “With all that blessin’ and such, nobody gon’ be able to eat, let alone have some fun. I ain’t got time for all that.”

Evelyn chuckled. “You’d render her speechless seeing you there.”

“Speechless? Ruthena? She hadn’t never been speechless. Even when she came slidin’ out from tween my legs, she was screamin’ and hollerin’ ’fo’ anybody slapped her on the behind. I was the one who shoulda been carryin’ on.

“That birthday party sound ’bout like that grave party you and yo’ mama throw every year, only not as much fun. What’s gone is gone. If you was me, you’d know there ain’t no bringin’ him back.”

“Him who?”

“I meant it. The past.” Granny B reached for the broom again and handed it to Evelyn.

“We don’t plant flowers at the family plot to have fun, Granny B. We honor those things that never die. Like commitment. Love. Tradition.” Evelyn grappled for a hold on Granny B’s eyes. “Like Mama’s birthday, as a matter of fact.” Evelyn didn’t add, but not like my marriage.

“Well, Jesus taught me just ’cause it’s a tradition don’t make it right. Goin’ to that grave ain’t ’bout committin’ to yo’ daddy. That’s ’bout you and ’Lis’beth, just like this here party. Now, case closed. I ain’t goin’. If you plan to stick round here, then get to work. You can start by sweepin’ up in my room.”

“While you do what?” Evelyn knew her Granny B just wanted her out of her hair, but she refused to disentangle herself so easily.

Without missing a beat, Granny B reached into the corner to retrieve a wide-brimmed hat hanging on a hook over the washing machine. “Whilst I sweep the backyard. You didn’t do too good a job at it this mornin’.” That said, she pushed through the screen door into the backyard, letting the door slap shut decisively behind her.

“All this family talk probably got her thinking about Milton.” Evelyn moved the wooden ladder-back chair Granny B kept beside her bedroom door, swept the area, and replaced the chair. “Will it ever get better?”

Granny B had had it hard, and there was no way her granddaughter could ever separate her from an ounce of her pain and suffering, not that anyone could. Evelyn believed that every morning, before Granny B got dressed, she put on this suit of armor—not her full armor of God because that never came off. Her past. And she buttoned it up tight. It protected her from all kinds of nasty things, such as healing, redemption, or a cool balm for those festering sores of resentment and sadness. And it also prevented her from taking much pleasure from the faith that she set such store by.

Besides Henton’s check, Lis and Evelyn were the only parts of the family who regularly stopped by. Even Kevin kept his distance, despite Beatrice’s view that Evelyn was glued to her husband’s hip. Under the guise of “settin’ things right,” she stopped by just to spend time with the crusty piece of bread that was her grandmother. Sometimes during her visits Granny B related some memory of the past, providing small details about this event or that. Evelyn often pictured all those people from her grandmother’s past, banging their tiny fists on the inside of her lips, begging for air, but not even Little Ed could pry them open with his strong fingers. Her Granny B wouldn’t set them free until she wanted to, and then only for a short spell.

Knowing that what Granny B wanted was a clean bedroom, she checked inside the closet for dust balls. Spying none, Evelyn started to slide the door closed when she noticed a box on the shelf, partially hidden under some of Granny B’s sweaters. Now what could that be? After spending a moment or two staring at it, Evelyn shrugged away her curiosity and moved on, sweeping by the steamer trunk that had belonged to Granny B’s own grandmother and around the heavy cherry dressing table.

In less than five minutes, about three minutes longer than it should have taken her to clean Granny B’s pristine floors, she finished. Looking around the room, Evelyn’s gaze settled on the closet. Even though she couldn’t see it, the partially covered box niggled at her. She’d cleaned Granny B’s room so often she knew what belonged in that closet: her dresses hung on the far right and next to them her skirts. Then the shirts and the blouses. At the far left end her one pair of bleach-stained denim overalls. On the shelf at the top of the closet, her sweaters. At the bottom huddled her shoes, placed according to style and season. That was it. Or at least that should have been it. No shoe boxes and no boxes on the top shelf. Except for this odd box pushed under a stack of sweaters, a box that hadn’t been there last month or the month before. Granny B’s life maintained a certain order. Everything and everyone had a place. Hence Evelyn’s curiosity and her sense of . . . something.

Evelyn didn’t consider whether she should peek inside the box. She wondered only if she could, if she had the mettle. Never before had she considered invading Granny B’s closely guarded privacy, but for some reason that tucked-away box whispered, “Evelyn Beatrice Lester,” using her whole name like her mama did when she wanted her immediate attention, no questions asked. Or maybe it was simply fallout from the truth-seeking missile that had wreaked havoc in her own home the night she happened upon Kevin’s phone.

Holding the broom, Evelyn tiptoed on sneakered feet to peek out the back door. Granny B was still sweeping the farthest portion of the yard. After scooting back to the closet, Evelyn used every bit of her five feet three inches to reach up to the shelf and push aside the sweaters. She placed them in the same order on another part of the shelf, and she picked up the box.

It was solid, a little bigger than a standard shoe box, but not by much. It might have held a pair of boots at some point, not that Evelyn had ever seen Granny B in boots. It was unmarked, a plain, brown rectangle with a slightly nubby texture. She knelt on the floor and shook it a tiny bit, testing its weight and feel. Something inside, several somethings, shifted and moved. Paper, some kind of paper, she concluded. Aloud, she hissed, “Why don’t I just open it, or am I going to stand here sniffing and shaking?”

Again, the or did the job.

Evelyn sucked up some courage along with a deep breath and slowly lifted a corner, half-expecting something to snap off a finger or shower her face with blue paint. When neither happened, she cast a final furtive glance over her shoulder before she removed the lid and set it on the floor. Sitting on her haunches, Evelyn stared at the contents: a leather-bound book with a rubber band encircling it . . . and envelopes. More specifically, letters. Moving aside the book, she picked up one, then another, and saw that they were all addressed in the same neat scrawl, with all the letters straight and skinny and leaning to the left side. She did not recognize the handwriting, and none of the letters had a return address. Quickly leafing through them, Evelyn determined that they were addressed to her aunts and uncles and some to Granny B herself.

Some of the oldest dated back almost fifty years. One was opened, and very carefully, for the seal was neatly broken, with barely a ripple in the surface of the envelope. Read it? In answer, Evelyn pulled out the delicate sheets of paper and scanned the last page. Henton.

Granddaddy Henton? Evelyn didn’t know he could write his name, let alone a letter! Hastily, her fingers shaking, she turned back to the first page and began reading the letter postmarked June 15 . . .

“What in hades do you thank you doin’?”

She froze. Granny B glared down at Evelyn from the door of her room.

“Did you hear what I . . . ? I cain’t believe . . . Who told you . . . ?” Granny B strode to where her granddaughter was planted on the floor. She snatched the letter, ripping it. As brittle in her fury as its delicate pages, she didn’t seem to notice.

Somehow, Evelyn dislodged her voice from where it had curled itself around her toes. “Granny—”

“You get yo’ fill?” Granny B muttered between clenched teeth. A tear, unchecked, dripped from her cheek onto her right breast pocket. “I hope so, ’cause I figure yo’ bus’ness is done here.”

Evelyn tried to formulate a reason for her presence in her grandmother’s room, for reading her private things, but all she managed was, “Granny B, I just—”

“You just what?”

She did not, could not, reply.

“Yeah, I just bet ‘you just.’” She turned from her. “Get up and get out.”

Still, Evelyn crouched there.

“What I say? Do you thank I don’t mean it?” Granny B quivered from the ends of her gray hair to her dirt-smudged walking shoes. Suddenly and forcibly moving into action, practically knocking Evelyn down, she snatched up the rest of the letters scattered about her granddaughter’s feet. As she gathered them, Granny B murmured, her voice icy taut with emotion, “Cain’t I just have somethin’ to myself? A little part that’s mine? I shoulda burned ’em. That’s what I shoulda done. Burned ’em with the rest of the trash all them years ago.” Granny B dumped the letters back into the box on top of the leather-bound book. She crushed the lid, stepping on it as she moved to reclaim her possessions. She tucked the box under her arm to keep the lid closed.

“But you didn’t burn them. You kept them—and you read them.”

Turning in the direction of the voice, Granny B looked surprised to see Evelyn still there and as shocked as Evelyn that she had the nerve to speak. “Who say I read them?”

Evelyn reached out tentatively, but Granny B twisted away, much as Evelyn had fled Kevin’s touch a few days before. She was sure, though, that her grandmother had enough composure to keep from throwing up on her feet.

“Granny B, I only—”

“I bet you only . . .”

Even though she had Granny B by at least ten pounds and “towered” over her by two inches, Evelyn recognized and acknowledged the implied threat. Her clasped hands covered her mouth as if to hold in the faltering words explaining the attack on Granny B’s privacy, the assault upon Granny B herself. How could Evelyn say that she’d known what she was doing, but she’d thought it was important to do it anyway? It was that same inexplicable compulsion that had led her to Kevin’s phone, but what unknown truth had this latest reconnaissance mission revealed?

Before Evelyn could formulate any further response, Granny B stalked from the room, still holding her box of letters. Evelyn moved to follow her, but then she spied the corner of something white peeking out from under the bed. Evelyn gave maybe one second’s thought to returning the letter addressed to Beatrice Agnew before slipping the envelope in the waistline of her jeans, in the small of her back. She ignored the clamor of her conscience as she ran to catch up with her grandmother.

“Granny B?”

Again, Evelyn didn’t look hard or long in the four-room, one-bath house. She found her holding open the front door, facing away from Evelyn, staring outside.

“I just want to say . . . I mean, I know I shouldn’t . . . What I mean is, I’m sorry.” As Evelyn moved toward the open doorway, a corner of the letter she’d tucked away stabbed her—and Granny B—in the back. “Really, Granny B, I am sorry—”

“Just what is you sorry for, gal? That you got caught? ’Cause I know that you ain’t sorry ’bout what you done.” Granny B cut her eyes at Evelyn, her voice rising barely above a whisper. “No, you might be sorry, but you ain’t really repentant. I can see it all over you. But that’s all right. I ain’t got to worry ’bout seein’ nuthin’ else where you concerned. Get out, Ev’lyn.”

“But—”

“I. Said. Get. Out.” A small piece of her icy facade melted. “I thought you was a bit different, Ev’lyn. I thought you understood what it meant for me to have somethin’ of my own. But fo’ you to come here . . .” Granny B swallowed and tightly wrapped her composure around herself. “Well, if you gon’ treat me with no respect, then I ain’t got no time for you. Get out. And don’t come back here. Them’s some words you don’t have to slip somewhere to hide and read ’cause I’m sayin’ ’em plain to yo’ face.”

When Evelyn remained there, Granny B spat, “Is you glued to that spot? Ev’lyn. Get out this room. Leave my home. Don’t never come back here again.”