Will let go of my wrist, coughing and sputtering, trying to recover from the water that had gushed up his nose. Then he looked up at Fish, who was still standing dry as dry next to the pool, his arms still folded across his chest and a smug and swaggering smirk inscribed across his face.
‘There’ll be none of that business with my sister,’ said Fish.
At first I thought Will was going to get angry, and I readied myself for another brawl. Instead Will flashed me an outlaw’s smile, then made a sudden move towards Fish, pushing hard at the water in front of him with the palms of his hands, and splashing a sheet of water up at my brother.
‘Just tell me,’ Will demanded. ‘How do you do that?’
Fish, taking a deep, deep breath like he was setting aside an entire year’s worth of dread, jumped into the water with a big, splashy cannonball and the boys launched into a friendly yet frighteningly powerful water fight; though Fish definitely had the upper hand. Still feeling dazed by Will’s quick, salty-sweet kiss, I hovered in the water, holding on to the cement lip of the pool, watching the water around me surge and swell as waves splashed over the two boys and sprayed up over the side. The artificial plants lining the room rustled their dusty leaves in the draughts, and fake ficus trees and parlour palms tipped over in their wicker baskets on to the wet floor. But Fish kept things fairly well under control and caused no permanent damage.
I imagined how proud Momma and Poppa and Grandpa Bomba would all be when they found out that Fish had wrestled his savvy and finally come out on top, and I wondered if Fish would be able to go back to school in Hebron now if he wanted to – wouldn’t Rocket be wound up and wicked jealous? We’d probably lose power to the house for a week while Rocket sulked.
As the water fight intensified, Bobbi pulled me into the calmer water at the shallow end of the pool and she and I sat on the steps, half in and half out of the water, keeping an eye on the door and watching our brothers nearly drown each other over and over. The sound of Bobbi’s angel in my head had grown steadily more muffled and choppy, becoming quieter and quieter in the noisy, echoing pool room. Every now and then, Will Junior would send another smile my way, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to smile back or sink down under the water.
‘Will likes you a lot,’ Bobbi said, still watching the boys. ‘I think he’s liked you since the very first day you started coming to our church.’ Despite the fact that I was already wise to this tittle-tattle titbit of news, my face went pink and hot; having Bobbi say it out loud made me feel awkward, made me feel too young and too old at the same time.
I remembered Poppa giving me my special-occasion dress, just days ago.
‘I just thought my little girl deserved something pretty and new to wear for her special birthday,’ he’d said. Poppa always, always called me his little girl. But I wasn’t such a little girl any more. I knew that now, sure as sure.
‘So, do you like Will back?’ Bobbi wanted to know.
My insides went wishy-washy and I felt my blush turn from pink to red. ‘I don’t know,’ I said with a shrug that left my shoulders sitting a few centimetres higher than they were before, my head tucked in like Samson’s not-dead turtle. ‘Maybe.’
Bobbi looked at me and, to my surprise, she smiled. It was not the snarky smile she normally wore or the quick flash of a secret smile she’d let slip back up in the motel room. No, this particular smile was the glad, lingering kind that one friend gives another when they need it most.
‘That’s okay,’ Bobbi said. ‘Don’t sweat it. Believe me, take your time.’ That sounded funny coming from Bobbi, who, for all of her sixteen years, seemed more than ready to speed right along. As if to highlight this even more, Bobbi let out a short, wistful sigh, flicking at the surface of the water with one finger. ‘It’s too bad Rocket’s not here. Every time he comes to church, the room feels all tingly. I bet he’d be fun to kiss.’
I looked at Bobbi’s pierced eyebrow and her cherry red bikini, and I tried to imagine her kissing my brother, sparks and all.
‘Why are you in such a hurry?’ I asked her.
Bobbi snorted. ‘You can read minds. You tell me.’
I concentrated on Bobbi and tried to listen. I tried to hear what she was thinking, tried to hear the voice of her angel tattoo inside my head, but it was silent… gone. All I could hear was the raucous splish-splash of the water and the echoes of the boys’ laughter bouncing off the walls.
‘I can’t,’ I said after a moment. ‘IT don’t know why.’ Then I remembered the very first thing that musical voice had ever said to me. It had been only hours ago, back in the church kitchen in Hebron, though it felt like a lifetime had passed since then.
She’s really very lonely, you know…
‘Is it hard to be the preacher’s daughter?’ I asked after some considering.
Bobbi looked at me sharply. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I just imagine that people probably expect you to be perfect as perfect all the time, even though you probably just want to be able to mess up like everyone else,’ I said, thinking of Momma and her savvy. ‘I expect it could get awfully lonely sometimes.’ Bobbi didn’t say anything, so I continued on with a little more backbone, lowering my shoulders a bit and sticking my head out of my shell. ‘Maybe that’s what makes you want to move on fast and push other people off. Maybe you don’t want to have to set the preacher-perfect example.’
‘I thought you just said you couldn’t read my mind right now,’ said Bobbi, pulling her knees up to her chest on the step of the pool and wrapping her arms around them tightly.
‘Well, I’m just guessing. Your little angel’s not talking much at the moment. Maybe it’s the water.’
‘Angel?’ Bobbi looked at me enquiringly.
‘Your tattoo,’ I said. ‘The tattoo of the angel with the devil’s tail. The one you’ve got on your back. That’s how I hear things – there has to be ink.’
‘You mean you can read my mind because I stuck on a temporary tattoo this morning?’
‘Temporary?’ I repeated.
‘Well… yeah. Did you think it was real?’ Bobbi stood up and twisted around, trying unsuccessfully to see the tattoo. When I looked, I was surprised to find only a few specks of colour freckling her skin where the angel had been, the rest of the image now completely washed off by the water and chemicals in the pool. For a moment I was almost sad as I realized that the angel’s short-lived voice was gone for good. But mostly I was relieved. Relieved that now I could learn about Bobbi the normal way, or not at all, if that’s what we chose.
Sitting back down next to me on the steps in the water, Bobbi sighed. ‘Mibs, do you ever feel like your life is just some weird dream and someday you’ll wake up and find that you’re someone else entirely?’ Bobbi slipped down one step until the water of the pool came up over her mouth, nearly to her nose. She blew soft bubbles of air out in front of her and closed her eyes. We both bobbed and swayed in the water, churned up as it was by the boys’ aquatic battle.
I thought about her question for a long time. I could feel my hair starting to dry and the tips of my fingers and toes begin to pucker and wrinkle. If someone had said those same words to me yesterday I might have shrugged them off. But a lot can change in a day.
A lot.
26
When we got back upstairs, we found Samson curled up snug as a bug under the table in the boys’ room, sound asleep and clutching the Slinky from the Mega Mega Mart to his face in a way that was sure to leave a funny mark in the morning. He’d pulled off one of the flowery motel bedspreads and draped it over the table like a tent, leaving the beds for Will and Fish, but he’d taken all the pillows with him. In the girls’ room, Bobbi took one bed for her whole self and I shared the other with Lill and her big angel feet and her lumberjack snore.
Just before she fell asleep, Lill sighed. ‘You never can tell when a bad thing might make a good thing happen,’ she said quietly, and at first I wasn’t sure if she was talking to herself or to
me.
It wasn’t easy for me to fall asleep that night. The mattress was hard and the bed sheets were rough against my cheek. Lill’s words haunted me, keeping my mind running like a mouse on a wheel. I thought about the boys across the hall and about Will kissing me in the pool. I thought about Lester on his cot outside in the bus, and Lill dreaming of him next to me. I thought about Bobbi and how she was beginning to feel like something awfully close to a friend. And then I thought about the homeless man behind the diner and about Poppa tucked in his bed at Salina Hope – and I wondered if either of them would ever be able to find any good in all the bad they were caught in.
Before Poppa’s accident the biggest bad in my life had been Grandma Dollop dying. I remembered standing next to Poppa at Grandma’s funeral when I was ten years old. He’d held my hand the entire time. There in the cemetery, Grandma had been laid to rest surrounded by flowers and family. Jars and jars of Grandma Dollop’s radio favourites were stacked on and around and even inside the casket like she was one of the pharaohs of Egypt taking all of her treasures with her.
Aunt Dinah and Uncle Autry were there with their families, as well as a few of the remaining great-aunts and uncles and second cousins who were able to make the journey south. Even Grandma’s light-fingered sister, Jubilee, was there, though Momma had been sure to hide all of her jewellery and kept a close watch on the silverware when Jubilee came over to the house for the wake.
Grandma’s was a funeral like no other. Momma and Aunt Dinah had sat like sturdy bookends on either side of Grandpa Bomba, with their arms linked tightly through his, supporting him as the preacher said his words and prayers.
But when that preacher reached his last Amen, sorrow and grief unleashed the savvy of young and old alike. Lightning struck a nearby tree. A swarm of dragonflies and bumblebees filled the air above the casket, dancing and darting like an array of living fireworks. The grass beneath our feet grew thick and tall and the flowers in bud opened up to bloom, filling the air with a heady fragrance. The underground sprinklers came on like fountains, surrounding us all in a grand display of seemingly choreographed plumes and jets of waltzing water, yet not a single drop fell down upon the mourners.
And finally, as the tears rolled down Grandpa Bomba’s cheeks, the ground began to rumble. Headstones rocked and the folding chairs shuddered and rattled to and fro with all the folks still sitting in them holding tight. The earth shook violently and Grandma’s glass jars began to topple and break, filling the air with a riot of sound. Organ music and gospel choirs, country and western ballads and oom-pah-pah polka music flew into the air like boisterous confetti. Great voices lit upon the breeze with words that were both sweet and sharp, speeches that were moving and powerful. There were words like dream and words like freedom that lingered in the air in the voices of women, men and children.
And Poppa had wrapped his arms around me then and we’d closed our eyes, listening together to the spectacle of sounds, to the procession of melodies, to the vanishing radio waves of Grandma Dollop’s savvy.
These memories, and more, flooded my mind as I tossed and turned in that motel bed outside Lincoln. All my running away and all of this fuss and trouble was for Poppa, I reminded myself. It was all for Poppa.
But something about that idea nagged at me – something flummoxed me deep, deep, deep in the pit of my stomach with a kink and a snarl.
I had run away for Poppa… hadn’t I?
I’d fled the church in Hebron, convinced that I had to – convinced that I could wake up my poppa and make things right. But now, lying in the too-dark room of the Lincoln Sleepy 10 in a Mega Mega Mart T-shirt with the tag still attached and scritch-scratching my neck, it occurred to me that maybe Poppa hadn’t been the only reason I’d run away. Running away meant running from something. When I walked out of that church in Hebron, I was running towards Poppa, but maybe – maybe – I was running away from something else. Running away from my unexpected, unwished for savvy. Running away from the fact that I was growing up and life was changing as quick and sure and electrifying and terrifying as Rocket’s sparks or Fish’s hurricane or even a very first kiss. These thoughts kept me wide-awake late into the night.
The boys moseyed into our room just after nine o’clock the next morning, balancing polystyrene plates of thick, crisp waffles and plastic cups of orange juice from the breakfast bar downstairs. Will Junior wore a long, black Mega Mega Mart T-shirt and his hair was tousled and tangled. Since running away from Hebron, Will had almost completely lost the serious, serious look that I was so used to seeing him wear.
‘It’s getting late,’ said Lill, opening the curtains and nearly blinding me with morning sunlight. ‘I let you sleep too long.’
‘Wake up, Sleeping Beauty,’ Will said, shoving a plate of sticky, syrupy waffles my way.
‘You went downstairs?’ I said in a whisper, making sure Lill couldn’t hear. ‘Did anyone see you?’
Will leaned in close to my ear. ‘No one saw us, Mibs,’ he whispered back before sitting down on the edge of the other bed next to Fish, who had already dug into his breakfast.
Bobbi was in the bathroom, taking forever to get herself ready, and Lill fussed and mussed over Samson, trying to run a comb through his mane of dark hair before he could escape into the recesses of the empty motel closet. Across from me, Fish let go a belch to be proud of and Will Junior matched it in length and volume as though trying to beat a world record.
I wrinkled up my nose at them as I cut my waffles. ‘I thought you wanted to grow up to be just like your daddy, Will Junior,’ I scolded, trying not to let on that I was still feeling unsettled by his kiss in the pool. But the boy just smiled at me and winked.
‘I do.’
Fish snorted and jabbed Will in the ribs with his elbow, dripping syrup on the floor with his fork. ‘Don’t tell me Pastor Meeks can belch like that,’ he said through a mouthful of waffle.
‘Pastor Meeks can’t,’ Will replied with another shameless grin.
Lill chose that moment to try to turn on the television, wanting to check the weather. We all turned to her with a sudden shout of ‘DON’T!’ that nearly made that poor woman sprout wings and fly. Fish stood up so fast he knocked his plate of waffles face down on to the floor. He bumped Will, who elbowed the plastic cup of orange juice on the nightstand next to him and sent it spilling and dripping into the drawer with the Bible and the phone book and the pizza delivery coupons. Bobbi unlocked the bathroom door and stepped out in time for the rest of us to make a dash for towels and water.
Lester knocked just as things were returning to order. He was wearing the green and blue striped tie Lill had bought him, along with a clean shirt and a fresh pair of overalls.
‘Time to go,’ he said with a broad smile just for Lill. Lill straightened the knot in Lester’s tie, returning his smile and letting one hand linger lightly on the man’s chest.
‘You look real fine, Lester,’ said Lill, beaming.
Since everyone else was ready to go, I dressed as quickly as I could in the bathroom. I brushed my teeth and combed my hair. I put on a little shiny red lip gloss that Bobbi had left on the counter, then thought better of it and dabbed it back off again with a tissue. Before leaving the bathroom, I cheerfully added a paper-wrapped soap to the pocket of my dress that still held Will’s birthday present pen. Then I joined the others and we all flop-flapped down the hall in our new Mega Mega Mart flip-flops, following Lill and Lester downstairs towards the Heartland Bible Supply bus like a gaggle of flat-footed goslings, keeping a lookout for any unwanted attention.
Ahead of me, Lill laced her large hand through Lester’s arm and I tried not to listen to Carlene and Rhonda as they carried on at length about his new crush; though, today their voices didn’t seem as loud and nasty as usual.
‘I didn’t think my boy would ever find himself a decent woman,’ said Rhonda. ‘I suppose he’ll mess it up.’
‘ “Decent woman?” What was I – chopped liver? sniped Carl
ene. ‘It wasn’t my fault Lester couldn’t see a good thing when it was right in front of his face.’
‘Lester always liked liver,’ Rhonda snapped back. ‘You, Carlene, are just a scrawny old chicken gizzard.’
I thought about those two gals and their constant griping and bellyaching, and my head swam with questions. If I could tell what Lester was thinking or feeling by listening to those voices in my head, why did they always talk about him like he wasn’t even there? They were always cutting him down to the quick. It seemed like those two ladies had had such an effect on him that now it was only their voices he heard loud, loud, loud. Was it their nasty chit-chat that told Lester who he was? No wonder the man had a stutter and a twitch.
Maybe it’s like that for everyone, I thought. Maybe we all have other people’s voices running higgledy-piggledy through our heads all the time. I thought how often my poppa and momma were there inside my head with me, telling me right from wrong. Or how the voices of Ashley Bing and Emma Flint sometimes got stuck under my skin, taunting me and making me feel low, even when they weren’t around. I began to realize how hard it was to separate out all the voices to hear the single, strong one that came just from me.
Climbing back up into the big pink Heartland Bible Supply bus, the morning warm and bright, I tried to listen past Carlene and Rhonda; I tried to hear if there were any of Lester’s own voice left in Lester. The more I watched and listened, the more it became clear as clear that whenever Lill smiled Lester’s way, or whenever she spoke to him as we travelled down the highway, Carlene and Rhonda seemed to lose their sway. Lill shone on Lester like the sun. And on his arms, his sleeves rolled up, the women’s scowling, animated faces dissolved back into the thin black lines of lifeless tattoos.