I couldn’t fall asleep after that dream. Whenever I thought I might drift off again, some noise would jostle me back awake. I decided I might as well get out of bed and see if Daddy was still up. I hoped he was. Nothing could calm my spirit better after a bad dream than being with Daddy.
“Did I wake you?” Daddy asked when I came into the living room.
I shook my head.
“I had a bad dream,” I said.
“I’m sorry, darlin’.” He closed the book he had on his lap. One of his history books that he’d brought with us from Red River. “Come on over here, Pearlie.”
I did and sat beside him on the davenport and rested my head on his shoulder.
“Wanna tell me about it?” he asked.
I commenced telling Daddy about my lighthouse dream. He listened, not interrupting me even once. He did rub my arm and kiss my temple as I told it and that helped me feel not so much alone.
“I couldn’t do anything,” I said. “All I could do was watch her trying to get in and hear her screaming.”
“Does it have you feeling upside down and inside out?” Daddy asked.
That was just how it felt. I nodded, glad to have a daddy who understood.
“Do you ever have bad dreams?” I asked him.
“Sure I do,” he answered. “I think everybody—”
But he didn’t finish. Somebody’d knocked on the back door. Knocked hard enough to wake the dead, let alone alarm folks that were already wide awake.
“Now, who could that be?” he said, more to himself than to me. He got up from the davenport. “Stay right there, hear?”
“Yes, sir.”
He went to the door, opening it just far enough so he could see who was out there knocking. After just a couple words, he stepped to the side. Opal came inside, holding a piece of paper in her hand. That white sheet of paper shook so hard I thought sure Opal must’ve seen a ghost.
“Mr. Spence,” she said, her voice trembling. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know where to go.”
“Are you all right?” Daddy asked, looking down at Opal like he didn’t know what to make of her. “What happened?”
“It’s just …” she said, looking down at the paper. “I was gone, with Lenny. When I got home, this was stuck to the door.”
She handed the paper to Daddy. He read it over and shook his head and clenched his teeth in a way I knew meant he wasn’t all too happy about something.
“Any idea who would have done this?” he asked, folding the paper in half. “Anybody around town been bothering you?”
“I—”
“Tell me, Opal,” Daddy said, making his voice soft. “This isn’t your fault. You aren’t in trouble. You have done nothing wrong.”
“It could have been anybody,” she said, shutting her eyes and making a tear dash down her cheek.
“You stay here tonight,” he said. “Pearl, help Opal find some kind of night clothes of your mama’s, all right?”
“Can she stay in my room?” I asked.
“That’s fine, darlin’,” Daddy answered. “Opal, I’m going to see this doesn’t happen again, all right?”
I let Opal be in my room by herself to get out of her dress and into one of Mama’s old nighties. Even though the door was closed, I could hear her crying. I thought of how sometimes when I had cried real hard, Mama would bring me a washrag soaked in cool water to soothe my face. I got one for Opal, hoping it might help her feel at least a little better.
“You can sleep in my bed,” I told her. “I don’t mind the floor.”
“I don’t know that I could sleep if I tried,” she said.
She sat on the edge of my bed, dabbing under her eyes with the wash cloth, cleaning a bit of makeup off her face in the process.
“Are you okay?” I asked, sitting next to her.
She shook her head and told me she wasn’t.
“Did somebody hurt you?” I asked.
“No,” she answered then sniffled. “They just wrote a nasty note.”
“What did it say?”
She squinted her eyes like she was about to start crying again and looked at me.
“It called me some bad names. Names I won’t repeat to you. And said that I need to stay away from Lenny,” she said. “Or else.”
I thought of what the Ku Klux Klan men had done to Nehemiah Carson just because he’d married a white woman. It took a couple real hard blinks to get the picture out of my mind of men smashing their fists into Opal. Just the thought of it about made the hair on the back of my neck stand up on end.
I turned and reached for the curtains, pulling them together in case whoever’d written that letter was poking around looking for Opal.
“Are you scared?” I asked.
“I am,” she said. “I should have known better. I knew nothing good could come from being around Lenny.”
“Does he love you?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I think he might. But I don’t love him.”
She turned toward me. All the crying she’d been doing had made her eyes the prettiest color of gray-green I’d ever seen.
“There aren’t many in this town that treat me like I’m just as much a person as they are,” she said. “Lenny always has. You and Ray and Mr. Spence, too.”
She didn’t say anything about Mama, and I knew that was on account Mama wasn’t so good at hiding how she felt about folks with a little more color to their skin.
“Who do you think wrote the note?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“I hope Daddy puts him in jail,” I said. “Whoever it was.”
“What am I going to do, Pearl?” Opal asked, shaking her head.
“We’ll take care of you,” I told her. “Daddy won’t let anything bad happen to you.”
“I don’t know. He doesn’t need me making life more difficult for him.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Well, maybe not me. But there are some who’d like to see me gone.” She licked her lips. “Knowing how some people around here are, they’d run me right out of town first thing in the morning if they could.”
I thought about what Meemaw’d say whenever somebody got to worrying. She’d tell them they shouldn’t be all bothered about what was about to happen the next day. “Today’s got plenty trouble all its own,” she’d said. “Tomorrow’ll be another batch of trouble you don’t got no idea about yet. Can’t worry yourself silly over somethin’ you don’t know about yet, can you?”
“Can I just worry about today, then?” I’d asked.
“No, sweetheart,” she had said. “Today you gotta cast your cares upon Him. You know what I mean when I say ‘cast’?”
I’d started to nod, then caught myself in the lie and quickly shook my head from side to side.
“Means you gotta throw those cares and worries right at Him,” she’d said. “He’ll catch ’em and take ‘em. Every one. He takes them cares on account of His great and perfect love, darlin’. Love casts out fear, don’t it?”
I tried to think of a way to say as much to Opal. But I couldn’t think of the kind of words that’d make her feel better the way Meemaw always had with me. So, instead, I thought I’d do unto her what I’d like somebody to do for me.
“Do you want a glass of water?” I asked, getting to my feet. “Maybe it’ll make you feel better.”
“That would be nice,” Opal said. “Thank you.”
I let the water run out of the kitchen faucet until it was good and cold. And I cut a biscuit in half, spreading a thick layer of butter on each side just the way I knew Opal liked it, bringing it upstairs on a plate even.
Because I cared for her.