Whistling Past the Graveyard

by Susan Crandall

Truth be told, Mamie didn’t smack me as often as her face said she thought I needed it; so I reckon she should get credit for tolerance.

I’d been there plenty of times, but I’d never seen a ghost—and I wanted to see a ghost almost as much as I wanted a record player.

Worryin’ ’bout how I looked was one part of being a lady I wasn’t looking forward to. Thank goodness I was only nine and a half and still had some time left.

Mamie had a real thing against trailer parks.

Fireworks. Fireworks. Remember the fireworks.

I enjoy this girl.

By 10:32—I knew the time exactly ’cause Daddy had given me a really neat Timex with a black leather band for Christmas—it was already about a thousand degrees out. The brick street out front looked like it was wiggling from the heat. Dogs had already crawled under porches and into garages to get out of the hot sun. They would come out after sunset with cobwebs on their noses and dirt clinging to their coats like powdered sugar.

Then I heard trouble. A bicycle was coming fast with a card clappin’ against the spokes. It meant only one thing: Jimmy Sellers, turd of the century.

Ok I'll stop just highlighting her amusing, childish sentences now. But gosh dangit if I don't get a major kick outta this narrator.

I felt a hot prickle run over my skin—the red-rage prickle. I looked her right in the eye and said, “Maybe I’ll just run away from home. Then you won’t be embarrassed by me anymore—and you’ll have to do all this stuff yourself.” Like I said, I was grouchy.

It's amazing how empassioned I feel in defense of a silly, misbehaving child. Great writing puts me absolutely in her corner.

I was horrible thirsty, but I didn’t take it; Mamie had made it clear: no matter even if we’re about to expire from thirstiness, we don’t drink after negras. That’s why there was signs on the water fountains everywhere, so we’d know where we was supposed to drink. The woman shook the jar a little and the water shot through with thirst-quenching sparkles. “It fine. Been washed and I ain’t opened it since the water went in.”

Ugh oh god what a kind woman.

The white paint was most peeled off, but the house somehow still had a tidy look about it, like somebody didn’t have money but still cared.

Nothing good could come of a colored woman and a white baby. Wallace knew it, sure as day. He’d called her stupid, but she wasn’t stupid. She was just empty. Empty and needing a baby to fill her up.

I went back to working on the window, but the dang thing was gonna be stuck till the devil served popsicles.

Truth be told, Mamie’s house probably wasn’t all that different from reform school, all chores and punishment and wadded-up disappointment—just without the locked doors.

It didn’t look to me like Wallace was gonna be all right ever again. And I was glad.

And so am I! Tired of this story!

“What was wrong with that man?” I asked. “Why’d he do this to us? We weren’t hurtin’ him.” Eula just lifted a shoulder and wiped the blood off her eyebrow with the back of a wrist. “Don’t need no reason.” She sounded more sad than angry. I sat there for a minute, gatherin’ up my thoughts and discovering I’d bit my tongue when we crashed. Jimmy Sellers didn’t seem to have any reason for his meanness either. But Jimmy was a kid.

It was plain Eula had more faith in the Lord than I did. Which was a wonder; from what I’d seen, she had plenty of reason not to.

Mamie had explained that some coloreds were stepping out of their place, stirrin’ up trouble; that everybody—colored and white—was happy with keeping things separate, and it wasn’t the president’s business to tell Mississippi what to do. It had all made sense then. But after hearin’ about Shorty and that man puttin’ us in the ditch, I wondered. Eula hadn’t been doing anything but driving down the road. “Things are mighty touchy right now.” Once the man who helped us was gone, I waved Eula back toward the road. I decided not to tell her what he had said. His warning was for me. It was my job to keep Eula safe.

Ok interesting

A sob come from somewhere down around her toes.

Grown-ups was real complicated. And Eula was the most tangled-up one I’d ever tried to figure out.

We stood together looking at the truck like it was a dead animal. I kinda felt like we should say a prayer over it or something.

Outside was the calm that sat in front of a July storm, the kind of cloudy stillness that said you’d better get you and your bicycle on home before a gully washer let loose.

“Here’s the thing ’bout gif’s.” Eula stopped buttering her toast and looked straight at me. “A body don’t know how many the good Lord tucked inside them until the time is right. I reckon a person could go a whole life and not know. That why you gotta try lots of things, many as you can . . . experiment.”

Lovely bit of advice if you ask me. :)

wanted to say something to make her feel better, but I didn’t know what words could have that much magic.

We were north of Mississippi, but still there was a colored and a white waiting room. I wondered how far north a person had to go for it to change.

fell asleep listening to the sound of Eula working in the kitchen. It was almost as good as my best fallin’-asleep memory of Momma and Daddy at the piano teacher’s house.

Eula was standing there, looking nervous as a toad in front of a lawn mower.

I sat there in that chair with the sharp pieces of my heart falling down and cutting my gut, my ears ringing, and my body turning to stone.

I kept worrying about those things so I didn’t have to think about that horrible person who used to be my momma. It didn’t come to me until we’d gone six blocks that I didn’t even say good-bye to Lulu. After seven blocks, I decided I didn’t care.

“I been wonderin’ . . . what if . . . what if Mamie’s right?” Eula made a sound like she didn’t think Mamie could be right about anything. But she said, real nice, “ ’Bout what?” I reckon she’d had a lot of practice saying nice things when they wasn’t what she was thinking at all.

People is born one way or t’other. Life change a body some, but their nature stay the same. They might can hide for a time, but they don’t change in their soul where it count.

As I sat there, looking from one face to another, I thought, This is my family. These are the people who look out for me. The people I look after.

I wasn’t never gonna run off again, no matter how bad things got. But I wasn’t gonna be too scared to love the folks that took the time to love me back, and I sure wasn’t gonna chase them that don’t. And I was gonna spend the rest of my life asking questions and looking behind everything that happened, so I could find the gifts I got tucked inside me.