There’d been no fat calf slaughtered to cook after Mama came home, and no ring put back on her finger. Daddy hadn’t draped a new robe over her shoulders. We hadn’t gathered all the town to come and celebrate the return of Mama.
We just turned out the lights and went to bed.
The next morning, before I’d come down for breakfast, I heard Daddy make Mama promise not to try and find Abe Campbell. She wasn’t to write a letter or make a telephone call. He didn’t want her going looking for him or inviting him to come find her.
“He’s gone, Tom,” she said. “I wouldn’t even know where to look if I wanted to. Which I don’t.”
“Still,” Daddy said. “I don’t want you even trying.”
“If it’ll make you happy I won’t even think of him,” Mama said.
“I wish I could make you promise a thing like that.”
Once Ray and I came down they stopped talking. They didn’t even look at each other. I thought I’d choke on how thick the air in that room felt.
Opal stayed in the kitchen while we sat at the dining room table. She’d hardly looked at me when she brought out the pot of oatmeal Mama had asked her to fix.
“Do you want to eat with us?” I asked her.
She lifted her eyes to mine and shook her head. The way she didn’t smile at me made me think she was upset with me. I couldn’t think of what I might’ve done that would get her mad at me.
Not even Ray ate much of his breakfast that morning.
It wasn’t until Ray and I had stepped out on the porch to go to school that I said another word.
“Why do you think Opal was upset?” I asked. “Did I do something wrong?”
“Nah, you didn’t do nothin’,” he answered.
“Then why was she so quiet?”
He shrugged. “Probably ’cause your ma came back.” He inhaled deep and looked across the street. “What’s Bert doin’?”
Bert was standing in that new-built pigeon coop, the door of it wide open behind him. Even from where I stood I could hearing him talking to that bird like it was a baby.
“He don’t have that bird outta its cage, does he?” Ray asked.
“Why’s he got to keep her in the cage?” I crossed my arms.
“So it gets used to the coop.” Ray jumped off the porch, landing flat on his feet like he always did, and rushed over to Bert. “Put it back in the cage.”
Bert turned soon as he heard Ray and held up his cupped hands with a big old smile spread across his face.
“She likes it in here,” he said, loud enough for me to hear him even.
Just then, as if she’d been planning it, that pigeon lifted herself up out of his hands and through the wide-open door.
“Sassy,” Bert hollered after her, making his way out of the coop. “Come back here.”
I stepped down off the porch, watching that bird light on the top of the coop and listening to her trilling away as if she meant to scold Bert for yelling at her. She bobbed her head, the morning sunlight catching the purple of her neck feathers.
I watched the boys for a minute or two, my arms crossed and shaking my head at their foolishness. Bert was trying his darnedest to get up to the roof of that coop and Ray was trying to give him a boost. All the while, the both of them hollered out for her to come back. With how red their faces were, I thought they were both plenty sore with that bird.
After a minute I made my way across the road. Looking back at the house to be sure Mama wasn’t spying out the window at me, I tucked my skirt up the way Aunt Carrie’d taught me so I could climb without the whole world seeing my underthings. All it took was pulling myself up on one branch and reaching over for another before I was within reach of the bird. She only pecked me once or twice, smacking my hand with one of her wings a little, and then I had her, the feathers of her wings and under-belly soft against my palm.
“Why are you flying away from those silly boys, huh?” I asked, keeping my voice smooth as I could to soothe her. She pecked at my thumb, but it didn’t hurt so much that I was going to let her go. “You cut that out, all right? Now simmer down, would ya? That’s a girl. Good. Calm. Good.”
Ray and Bert stood at the base of the tree looking up at me. I shook my head when Bert put out a hand for me to give him Sassy.
“Y’all need to learn a thing or two about how to talk to ladies,” I said. “They don’t take so kind to being hollered at, you know.”
“We’d’ve caught her,” Bert said, trying his hardest to sound like Ray. I thought he was hoping to impress me. “She was just playing with me.”
“Yeah, I’m sure,” I said, my fingers curled around Sassy’s body. “You better be careful. This girl’s liable to fly on back to the Litchfield’s again if you don’t treat her nice.”
“I’m nice to her,” Bert said.
“You shoulda kept her in the cage like you were told,” Ray said. “She ain’t used to the coop yet.”
Bert looked up at Ray with a hurt look like he was fixing to boo-hoo. “Why doesn’t she like me?”
“She’s just gotta get used to you is all.” Ray put out his hands for the bird. She didn’t fight him one bit when he took her from me. “You just gotta be gentle with her.”
Bert’s forehead wrinkled and his fists clenched as he watched Ray take the pigeon into the coop and put her back inside the cage.
“She likes you better’n she likes me,” Bert said, a whine to his voice so heavy it almost made me laugh.
“Nah,” Ray said, shaking his head and closing the coop door. “She don’t neither.”
“Does too.” Bert turned and stomped away from us, up the porch steps, and into his house. He didn’t slam the door, and I thought that was on account his mother would’ve let him have it for such a thing.
Ray and I just watched him go.
“You think he’ll be sore at us for long?” I asked, climbing back down from the tree.
“Maybe half an hour or so,” Ray told me. “Maybe a couple minutes more.”
“He’s a funny kid.” I untucked my skirt and smoothed what wrinkles I could out of the fabric.
“Yeah. He sure is.” Ray wiped his nose on his sleeve. “We best get goin’.”
“We gonna wait for Bert?”
“Nah,” Ray answered. “He’ll find his way all right.”
Before we left the Barnett’s yard to take Magnolia Street to the main road, I turned and looked back at our house. Mama stood in the big front window, her arms crossed and eyes on me.
My chest tightened and I had to force myself to take a good breath. She’d seen me up in that tree with my skirts all bunched up. As much as I wished I didn’t care what she thought of me, my thud-thud-thudding heart told me different.
Miss De Weese had got it in her mind to teach us a song in the French language. Back in Red River we’d never sung anything at school, let alone something in a different tongue. She’d told us it was about plucking a bird and she’d drawn a hen on the board. All the body parts were labeled and didn’t sound anything like I would’ve guessed.
We sang about plucking feathers off the head, neck, and back and I tried not to think of Bert’s pigeon all the while. The part of the song I didn’t understand was how a person was going to pluck feathers off a bird’s beak or eyes. That didn’t make any sense to me, and I wondered if French birds just grew their feathers different than American birds.
After we finished the song, I about put my hand up to ask but thought better of it. It didn’t matter, not really. What did matter was how that song had served to take my mind off Mama, if only for a little bit.
Besides, Miss De Weese said it was about time for us to get going for lunch. I had to look at the clock twice to be sure she was right. All that singing in French had made the last bit of the morning speed away from me.
Bert seemed to have forgotten about Sassy getting loose that morning and her liking Ray and me more than she liked him. Either that or he was mighty quick to forgive. Either way, he just about hopped all the way back to our neighborhood alongside Ray, telling him this or that about something or another.
Whatever it was, it seemed Bert could think of nothing on earth quite so important right that moment. When I turned and looked at Ray’s face, it was all smiles and I thought he was near to laughing at Bert. Not out of meanness, but because of how Bert’s voice grew louder and louder the more he went on.
Even after we got to our street, Bert kept going. And he didn’t stop talking just because Ray’d turned toward our house and he’d gone toward his own.
“You think he knows you’re not there anymore?” I asked Ray.
“Don’t think it matters to him much,” Ray answered, shaking his head. “Let’s go in. I’m half starved to death.”
Ray let me go inside first. Soon as I opened the door I saw Mama and Daddy standing in the living room facing each other, both red in the cheeks and tense in the shoulders. They quit talking soon as we walked in. Mama turned and rushed out of the room, the kitchen door swinging open and closed behind her.
Daddy crossed his arms and bit at his lower lip before looking at Ray and me.
“Go on and get washed up,” he said.
Ray did as he was told right away. As for me, I stayed where I was, watching Daddy put his coat on and take his hat from the rack on the wall.
“You aren’t staying?” I asked.
His hand on the doorknob, he looked at me over his shoulder and shook his head.
“I need to get back to work,” he answered.
“You’ll be hungry,” I said. “Won’t you?”
“I’ll manage fine.”
He pulled the front door open and put his hat on before stepping out. I followed him to the porch.
“Daddy,” I said. “You can’t leave us with her.”
Stopping, he shut his eyes for a tick of the clock before turning his head toward me.
“Darlin’, you’re going to be all right,” he said. “I’ll be back for supper.”
“Do you promise?”
“Of course I do.”
What I wanted to say was how scared I was right then in that very moment that he was fixing to climb into his truck and drive away. That he wouldn’t stop or even think of turning back until he got all the way to Oklahoma. By then it would be too late for him to change his mind. The fear of him leaving us made it so hard to breathe that I wouldn’t have been able to say anything if I’d tried.
“I’m just going to the station,” he said like he’d read my mind. “If you need me, that’s where I’ll be. Hear?”
“Yes, sir,” I whispered.
He gave me a wink before going down the porch steps and on his way to the station. I stood on the porch, arms wrapped around myself, and watched Daddy until he turned a corner and I couldn’t see him anymore.
The table was already set and the food dished out on the plates by the time my hands were scrubbed clean and I stepped into the dining room. I didn’t tell Mama that we usually took our noon meal at the table in the kitchen unless we thought we might have company. I didn’t think she’d want me giving her suggestions like that by the way her lips were puckered like she was fixing to work up a good spit.
But ladies didn’t spit and they didn’t bother their mothers with silly ideas. At least that was what I imagined Mama would have said if I’d dared tell her that.
“Is Opal gonna eat with us?” I asked, holding my skirt tight against my backside and pushing it under me as I took my seat at the table.
“Does she usually?” Mama asked.
Ray lifted his eyes to mine from across the table. I knew what his look meant, the way he made his eyes just the tiniest bit wider and the slight back and forth movement of his head.
“No, ma’am,” I answered, hoping God wouldn’t hold that lie against me on the day of judgment.
Mama took her seat and spread her napkin across her lap. She didn’t even say a blessing before eating.
After a silent meal, Mama asked me to help clear the dishes from the table. I did as she said and stacked our three plates, laying the silverware across the top.
“I can help,” Ray said, picking up his glass and mine.
“No,” Mama said. “Leave those. Pearl and I can do this. You go on outside until it’s time to go back to school.”
Ray met my eyes like he wanted to see if I’d be all right with him going. Just as soon as I nodded he moved toward the front door and his hung-up coat.
I backed my way into the kitchen, pushing open the door with my behind. When I turned toward the counter I expected to see Opal there, elbow deep in sudsy water or sitting at the kitchen table, eating her lunch.
“Hi, Opal,” I said.
But nobody was there to say hi back to me. The only trace of Opal was the apron she’d always worn hanging on the hook by the icebox. Not paying attention to the dishes I was carrying, I laid them on the counter-top and reached for that apron. It caught a bit of the sunshine coming in through the window and the light showed how faded it had gotten after all the times it’d been scrubbed and hung to dry in the sun.
We’d brought it from Oklahoma. I remembered Mama folding it and laying it gently in one of the boxes Daddy’d packed in the back of the truck. Our old life moved to where our new life would get started.
Mama’d let Opal wear that apron when she’d started working for us not long after we’d gotten to Bliss. There it hung on the hook, not around Opal’s waist like it should’ve been.
“Where’s Opal?” I asked when Mama came into the kitchen with the cloth napkins bunched in her hands.
Mama went right to the table, lowering the napkins and wiping her hands on the apron she wore tied up so it was above her round belly.
“I sent her home,” she said. “We don’t need her help anymore.”
“Why’d you do that?” I didn’t care if I sounded disrespectful or if questioning Mama would earn me a smack in the mouth. “She helps us.”
“I’m here now.”
Mama moved across the room to the sink and let the water run until it was hot. She plugged the drain and put a dot of soap in the stream to make suds.
“We need her,” I said.
If I’d been brave I would’ve told Mama that she had no business doing such a thing as sending Opal away. If I’d had even half an ounce of courage, I’d have said that it was Opal who had taken care of us when Mama’d run off. And I’d have let her know that I’d rather have Opal than her.
But I was nothing but a coward so I just stood there, holding the soft cotton fabric of the apron hanging on the wall in the beam of sunshine.
“She came in the front door,” Mama said. “Like she lived here.”
“Daddy told her she should,” I answered.
“She should have come in the back, Pearl. That’s just how it works.”
“Opal belongs here.” I crossed my arms. “She’s been good to us.”
“You should go back to school,” Mama said, then tensed her jaw like she was fixing to lose her temper. “Go on now.”
I did obey. Not because I knew it was right, doing what I was told, but because if I stayed in that room any longer I knew I’d say something nasty to Mama.
I walked away from her, fast as I could.
It wasn’t until I was halfway to school that I realized I’d forgotten my jacket.