8

I JUST kept my eyes closed when I woke up, kept on breathing heavy, and kept still like the thick air around us. I wasn’t ready to give up this goodness. Ida Bell was still, too, and I thought maybe she’d dozed off with me until her familiar humming of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” let me know different. We always sang jubilee songs in the berry patch. “Swing Low” was my favorite because we sang it together as a proper call and response chant. She sang the leading lines and I followed with “Coming for to carry me home.” When the time was right, I came in with my part, which got us both up and moving about again.

Ida Bell reached for our coffee cans. “Now, Gracie, leave them berries be if they green or red. You just worry about them plump, shiny black ones that want to fall off the vine nice and easy-like.”

I liked the feel of those night-colored berries in my hands, all squishy, soft and firm at the same time. They smelled as fresh as the farmers market before the crowds arrived.

“Ain’t they shiny, honey-child?” Ida Bell said, her face framed in golden light. What shined was her, and I wondered if she had any idea at all how much I loved her.

That got me to remembering. “Ida Bell, when you got here this morning, Momma and Daddy were talking about packing up and moving someplace new.”

“Was they, now?”

“After the fire, Momma slumped down into one of her sinking spells, and started in on how she needs a different place to work, different place to live. Said she’s good and tired of Monroe County.”

“Well, now, we all gets tired of Monroe County every now and then. You move someplace new, you gone get tired of it too, every now and then.”

“She’s more than tired, though. She wants to leave, and she’s serious about it.”

“Now, how’s this different from the last time she up and wanted to move?”

I sat my can down so I could look at Ida Bell. “For Momma, there’s just not enough right, and too much wrong about staying. Work weighs her down, the neighborhood next to ours took a turn downhill, and our Daisy Street neighbors—well, on one side you got a kid who’s got horns like the devil—and on the other you got a leftover fire and the memory of somebody dying. Put it all together and it means Momma wanting to get the heck outta here and never looking back.”

“Mmm-hmm, I see what you saying.”

“But, Ida Bell, what about you and me?”

“Now, I knowed you was thinking that.” She put her can down, too. “Gracie-girl, you-and-me always gone be you-and-me. Ain’t no new place can take that.”

I buried my face in her side, and all our arms wrapped around each other. I wanted to cry, but when Ida Bell said, “Let’s us not worry about all this till they’s something concrete to go on,” I choked on my tears for her sake. Ida Bell took my crying more serious than anybody. Most times when I cried, she did, too. She handed me my coffee can. With our backs bent beneath the watery sunshine, I hummed along to Ida Bell’s jubilee songs. When we had enough blackberries for both our families to bake cobblers, plus some left over for the two of us to eat with cream, we headed out toward home.

Ida Bell and me held our hands out into the light to see who’s were stained the purplest. On the backsides, mine were way more purple. Either that, or the purple just showed up more. What was funny, though, was that our skin was darn near the same color on our palms, with or without berry stains. Hers were darker in the creases.

Now, I don’t know the slightest bit about palm reading on account of my Daddy serving as a part-time preacher and all, but the lines on Ida Bell’s hands were long and dark and deep. I figured that meant she had an awful lot of love and life in her. While we held our hands to the light, all her palm lines pointed straight at me, and all mine straight at her. I knew deep down that Ida Bell and me were blood related somehow, someway. Plus, she and Momma both had the last name of “Lee” before Momma married Daddy, so I knew for sure and certain that if I could look way, way, way, way back in the family tree records, I’d find just exactly how she was my kin.

Through our fingers, I caught sight of folks coming down Daisy Street. “Look a-there, Ida Bell. It’s Rebel Wadsworth and Blake Cooley, headed straight for us like arrows to a target. Looks like they’ve got something important to tell us.”

“Well, it’d be the first time I ever heard something important come from Mr. Wadsworth’s mouth,” she said, giving us both a giggle. Ida Bell rarely talked about a soul, so when she did, it stood out and folks tended to listen. I liked it that she refused to call him “Rebel.” She said making folks call you something that ain’t your name is a way of bullying other people, and she was having none of it.

Now, Blake Cooley constituted a whole different story. The only person I knew besides Ida Bell not scared of Rebel? Blake Cooley. Lord knows I tried to be friends with Blake. We sure were different, though. I swear the boy looked like he was raised on red JELL-O. There’s just no color to him but shades of red dirt in front of his sunken eyes. Plus, he’s missing his two front teeth on the top. Daddy said when he sees Blake give a grin, he don’t know whether to smile back or kick a field goal. Blake Cooley always asked me if I wanted to ride over to his house for some pickle toast, whatever God-forsaken concoction that was. At least it wasn’t JELL-O, though. Maybe if Blake wasn’t always squishing one of his earlobes up into his ear, I might have considered trying pickle toast.

Blake rode over here, always barefoot, from the “other” neighborhood through the path in the woods. Momma didn’t allow me over in Meadowbrook. She said shame happened over there, and that a child could easily get snatched up and never heard from again. I snuck over there through the sewer tunnel one time, and didn’t see any shame. The houses sat closer together than they did in my neighborhood, and most of the swimming pools were the plastic, above ground kind. The chained up dogs knotted up my stomach, though; looked like they’d just as soon have a chunk of my leg than a store-bought bone. For some reason, Blake always rode up and down Daisy Street instead of Macon Drive where his house was.

“A fine day to you boys,” Ida Bell called as Rebel and Blake quickened their pace to a run toward us.

“Y’all better get on inside! Didn’t you hear?” They were both screaming their heads off like the rapture had happened and we were left over. Ida Bell and me traded glances, and waited to see what Rebel and Blake were carrying on about.