We were not sure what was going to happen with Mama, I told Laura when she came home from school.The news of Chadlow’s murder was all over town by now, and if Mushy or the others wanted to know more, they would have to come to me. I had not been out of the house since helping to carry Mama out to the sheriff ’s car. I had spent the day thinking of how I would prepare Laura for the changes I knew we had to make.
For the second day in a row, we took peanut butter and crackers to the front steps. More traffic than usual moved back and forth on the road, and Laura watched the road with interest while I watched her. She was nearly nine. I wondered if I was mature enough to repair some of the damage Mama had done to her. I knew I had to try.
“Laura, do you know it’s wrong . . .” I began, but stopped when she turned to face me. Her proudest moments were when she lifted items from the stores in town to please our mother. Admonishing her for stealing was not the way to start. I was guilty of the same thing and of so much more. Perhaps I wasn’t the right person to address my sister’s morals, but I could think of no one else. Laura liked fairytales. Maybe I could start with a fairytale, tell it with sincerity, tell it enough times that she would believe it to be true.
“What?” she asked.
Forcing a smile to my lips, I said, “Do you know where I was born?”
“Right here,” she answered, “in this house.”
“Nope,” I responded lightly.“I was born in a paradise—a beautiful paradise—beneath the sprawling branches of a live oak tree. You were born there, too.My first remembered sight was of morning glories climbing the boards of a white picket fence. My first remembered sound was the melody of our mother’s voice singing a lullaby.”
Laura propped her elbows on her knees and listened with curiosity.
“Mama’s hands were soft and had the fragrance of Jergens lotion,” I said.“Do you remember that fragrance, Laura?”
She shook her head.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said.“One day it’ll come back to you—it’ll all come back, Laura—the way we rolled down grassy slopes over sweet grass and four-leaf clovers, and how we ran barefoot over earth as soft as sand, and chased butterflies under a golden sun and fireflies under a silver moon.”
In the fading daylight, my sister smiled at me. “Was Miss Pearl there?” she asked.
“Yeah. She would come in the evenings, especially during the winter. She would stand in front of the coal stove, and sing to you. She didn’t bring white socks back then. She brought little frilly dresses and pink bonnets.”
“We had a coal stove in Paradise?” Laura asked skeptically.
I laughed.“We didn’t stay in Paradise all the time. Sometimes we would come to this house.”
“I don’t wanna know about this house.Tell me about the Paradise.”
“Well, there was a pond with crystal clear water.The water was so clear that we could see all the way to the bottom. On the bottom there were violet, emerald, and ruby rocks that sparkled in the sun. The earth would stop revolving just so the sun could shine down on that pond. Sometimes we would leap into that cool water and feel it tingle all over our bodies.You let the water flow between your fingers and toes, then you would laugh, and your laughter was contagious.”
“What’s contagious?” Laura asked. “I don’t think I ever knew how to swim, Tangy.”
“You didn’t swim.We kept you afloat just so we could hear your laughter.”
Laura rested her head on my lap.“What else?” she asked sleepily.
“Sometimes Harvey, Sam, and Wallace would go all the way to the far side of the pond, and they would come back with fish. While they were gone, the rest of us would stroll the grove of trees and fill our baskets with walnuts and pecans, apples, peaches, and pears.”
“I think I know where that Paradise was,” Laura said. “It was behind our house, and the gully was the pond. Is um right, Tangy?”
“Am I right,” I corrected.“Maybe that’s where it was.The where isn’t important.The important thing is how much fun we all had.”
Laura yawned.“Can we go back there one day?” she asked.
“I hope so, Laura,” I answered. “I’ll tell you more about it tomorrow. Right now you need to go in and get ready for bed.”
She didn’t want to move, but I kept nudging her head away from my lap, until she finally got up and went inside. I stayed on the step staring up at a moon that was not the silver moon of my fairytale. I was thirsty from the peanut butter and crackers, and a little chilly from the cool March night, but unlike Laura, I could not move. I had to wait and hear what the voice out of the night would say to me. For the last few minutes of my fairytale, I had known he was there.
He said nothing, so I whispered, “Please, don’t say you did it for me.”
“I did it for you.” Crow stepped out of the darkness at the side of the house. “I did it for you and because it needed to be done. Don’t make me lie to you, sugar.”
“Mama thinks it was a ghost, and now she can’t even speak.You nearly scared her to death.”
Crow said without a trace of sympathy in his voice, “She’s lucky to be alive.” He sat on the bottom step and looked out toward the road.“You know I gotta leave here, don’t you?”
“No one knows it was you,” I said.
“Rozelle looked me straight in my eyes just as I cut that man’s throat. Seems like she wanted me to do it. Held her screams ’til I was out the window and halfway cross the yard. But it’s just a matter of time before she talks.”
“I wish you hadn’t done it, Crow.”
“Nah, sugar, you glad I done it.You knew I was gon’ do it.You’ll forgive me for putting you through this, but you wouldn’t never forgive me if I’da left here without doing something.”
“You’re wrong, Crow. I thought you were already gone. I never expected you to come back and kill anybody. I guess I don’t want to believe that my father is a murderer and my mother has been frightened out of her mind, because where does that leave me?”
“I don’t know where it leaves you,” he answered. “I hope it leaves you safe.You shouldn’t be so quick to judge others, but I guess I am a murderer.A murderer is a murderer whether he kills one or one hundred, and I’d kill a thousand for you. So where does that leave you, sugar?”
I stared down the steps at the moonlit face of my father.Tears sprang to my eyes. “Loved?” I asked. “You don’t even know me, Crow.”
“I know my blood runs through yo’ veins. I know the hurt I felt when I saw yo’ back. I didn’t know I could hurt like that for anybody, except my mama.Whether you believe it or not, Tangy, I do love you.And if you gon’ sit there and cry for somebody, don’t cry for that dead man. Cry for me—or Rozelle.”
“I’m not crying,” I lied, “but I don’t think I could love anybody enough to kill for them.”
Crow sighed deeply. “Yeah, you could,” he said. “That’s one of the reasons I came back.You give yo’ heart like it’s water.You need to keep enough of it to love yo’self.Now, tell me you wouldn’t kill for that Velman.”
My mouth opened and closed. I thought about it, then said, “Maybe I’d die for him, but I don’t know that I would kill for him.”
“Humph,” Crow grunted. “That’s the easy way out, sugar. But let’s just say I had died for you, who woulda stopped that man the next time around?”
No one had ever stopped Chadlow before, so I had no answer for Crow.
He stood. “I left my car parked in some bushes over on Canyon,” he said. “I better get on outta this ol’ messed up town before somebody catches me. Rozelle could be telling them white folks about me right now.You take care of yo’self, sugar.And don’t lose my mama’s number. She always knows where I am.”
He started across the yard, and as I watched him go, I felt cheated and betrayed—as if he had given me something special, then had quickly snatched it back.
“Crow,” I called.
He stopped, turned, looked up at me.
“I think I could kill for you,” I said.
“I hope not,” he said, as he started to walk again.
“Crow.”
He stopped once more.
“If you ever come through this messed up town again, don’t look for me,” I said.“I won’t be here, but your mother will always know where I am.”