“Go in there and look!” Ma said, pointing at Mrs. White’s room. “Her cheeks are all rosy. She’s giggling and wanting to go for a walk!”
“I’m not going in there!” I told her, and made a beeline for my table.
Mrs. White didn’t actually get up and go for a walk that afternoon. She just lay in her special bed while they finished cleaning out Mary’s half of the room.
About two weeks had passed since Mary died, so I figured the ambulance idling in front of Brookside had something to do with Mrs. White killing off her new roommate—a big, boxy woman named Pat.
The truth is, I was more worried about Ma being freaked out than I was about Pat being dead, but when the East Wing door opened, I quit worrying about either. It was Debbie Rucker who was being wheeled out, and she was as alive as ever.
Geri was still on the phone, so I hurried over to catch the door.
“What is your name?” Debbie demanded when she saw me.
“Lincoln,” I told her.
“Well, Lincoln, guess what?” she said, rolling by. “I fell and I have to go to the hospital!”
“Hope you’re okay,” I said.
“I’ll be fine!” she told me. Then in a big burst she called, “Lincoln was the sixteenth president! My favorite!”
I caught the East Wing door before it latched.
“Don’t let them throw out my snack,” Debbie hollered over her shoulder. “Did you hear me, Lincoln? Don’t let them throw out my snack!”
I pushed the door open. All of a sudden I was ready for a snack. Maybe two!
I lost my appetite quick, though, ’cause that was the same day Ruby Hobbs begged Gloria to let her dance.
It hit me hard. I’d been spendin’ my afters at Brookside for over two months and sure hadn’t seen it coming, but somewhere along the line the oldies had become people to me. People with feelings. So as tough as it was for my eyes to take, seein’ Ruby the way she was didn’t seem so funny anymore.
It took a lot of there, theres and now, nows from Gloria to get Ruby to stop crying and back in her room. When Ruby came out for supper a bit later, she was dressed and quiet, but in some ways her being quiet was even sadder than her crying, ’cause she just sat at the table looking down. It was like she was too tired to eat. Too tired to care.
“Why does she do that?” I asked Ma on the way home.
“Do what?” Ma whispered, looking around the bus. “And who are we talking about?”
“Ruby,” I said. “Why does she come out all buck naked, singing?”
“Oh,” Ma said, heaving a sigh. “I’m sorry you had to see that.”
“It’s the third time I’ve seen it!”
“I’m up to about ten.”
“But why does she do it?”
Ma shook her head. “I don’t know.” Then she gave a little shrug and said, “Why do any of them do what they do? Like Peggy Riggs. Why does she talk to the air?”
Peggy Riggs did talk to the air. And she did it like the air was listening. Like she was sharing secrets with someone she could see. Only the secrets didn’t make any sense.
“Maybe she’s seeing ghosts?” I said. “There’s got to be lots of ghosts in that place. Especially with Mrs. White on the loose at night.”
“Lincoln, hush. I am just too tired to have you piling ghosts on top of vampires.” She sank down in her seat a little, hugging her bag. “It was a mighty long day.”
Ma turned to look out the window, so my mind wandered off. And it probably would’ve got totally lost if Ma hadn’t snapped me back a short while later. “Huh?” I asked, ’cause she was staring at me and I knew she’d said something.
“Where do you go when your eyes get like that?” she asked.
“Get like what? What are you talking about?”
“They move around like you’re watching something.”
“They do?”
“Mm-hmm. So what were you thinking just now?”
I did some blinking as I remembered, then finally told her, “You don’t want to know.”
She gave me the same look she does when I’m about to get it for sassin’. “Yes, Lincoln. Yes, I do.”
I was pretty tired, too, and sure didn’t need trouble piled on top of tired. “I was just thinkin’…,” I said, but something told me to stop.
“Don’t make me drag it out of you, boy. Just say it!”
“All right, all right!” I took a breath and started, “You know how Crazy Paula does that tapping thing?”
“Paula Barnett? At Brookside? You’re thinking about her?” Then real quick she added, “And don’t call her crazy.”
I stared at her. “Ma, if there’s such a thing as crazy, she’s it.”
She frowned. “You could call her Tapping Paula.”
“That’s worse! No one hates her for being crazy. They hate her for tapping.”
Which was a fact so solid, Ma couldn’t argue. Paula sits day after day, with eyes drooped to half-mast, doing nothing, then one hand starts tapping on the table, over and over and over and over, until you want to scream, Stop it!
“That tapping really gets to me,” Ma said, twisting around to look at me. “Why does she do it? Why won’t she stop?”
“That’s what I was thinkin’ about,” I told her. And once that busted out, the rest started flowing. “Maybe she can’t speak, but what if she can see things we can’t?”
Ma sat back again and heaved another sigh. “What are you talking about?”
I knew she was tired. Tired and testy. I knew I should probably make up something else and not tell her what I was really thinking. But I’d had this idea. I could see the whole thing! “What if she can see ghosts?” I asked, lettin’ more seep out. “What if they can tell her things?” Ma’s eyes rolled, but I kept talking. “Paula’s on the border, right? Of here and there? Of earth and after? She’s got to be, right?”
Ma’s whole head turned now, and she just stared at me. And I knew I should just hush up, but it was too late. I had that feeling I get when everything comes together in one picture that’s big and clear and bright and…amazing.
So it gushed out. “What if all that tapping Paula does is a way of communicating? Like Morse code? Everyone thinks she’s crazy, but maybe she’s not! Maybe she’s tryin’ to tell the ghosts something! Or maybe she’s tryin’ to tell us something! Like that Mrs. White is about to strike again!”
The words hung there, hovering in the dim light inside the bus. And I had to admit—the idea had seemed way better bouncing around inside my head than it did running out my mouth.
Ma closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Lincoln Jones, you have an imagination as wide as it is deep.”
And then that just hung there, actin’ like a compliment, when I’m pretty sure it wasn’t.
At our stop, Ma gave me a little scowl as she gathered her stuff. “One thing’s for sure,” she said. “I’m not taking your advice about dealing with the residents. I’m done with vampires and ghosts and Morse-coding mutes.”
Couldn’t blame her there.
The wind blasted cold and sharp when we got off the bus, and we hunkered in against it as we walked home, me half a pace behind her. Neither of us said a word until we were almost to our corner, where Ma suddenly stopped short. “I forgot the Man’s dinner,” she said, then shook her head and started walking again. “It’s sittin’ right in the fridge.”
Ever since I’d told Gloria what Ma was up to with her taking home zombie chicken, word had gotten around Brookside, and now the others helped Ma pack a dinner for “the Man.”
“Sweet of you, Maribelle,” they all said, but I suspect most of them thought I was “the Man.”
As we walked along, Ma kept kicking herself for forgetting. I tried telling her to go easy on herself, but when the Man saw us coming, it was like a light went on in his eyes.
“Oh, Lord,” Ma said under her breath.
And then, to make things worse, he did something he’d never done before.
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He stood up.
“Lord, oh, Lord,” Ma whimpered.
“It’s okay,” I told her, but it was just words, and I knew it.
“I’m sorry,” she said, going up to him. “I don’t have anything today.”
But he wasn’t looking for food. “Is your name Maribelle?” he asked.
Ma’s face went a little loose.
I guess the Man knew how to read loose faces, ’cause he pointed to the pay phone and said, “You had a call. Your sister. She wants you to call her back.”
“Oh, Lord,” Ma said, then recovered with a polite nod. “Well, thank you very much.”
“It kept ringing and ringing,” the Man said, shaking his head. “At first I didn’t know what it was. It never rings.”
“I appreciate the message,” Ma said with another nod. “Sorry if it disturbed you.”
“Disturbed me?” He gave her a strange little smile. “It was no trouble.”
“Well, thank you,” Ma said.
When she started to leave, he said, “I’m Levi, by the way.”
Then he sat back down and looked away.
Ma handed me her key and said, “I’ve got to call Ellie. Go warm the stew. I’ll be right up.”
“But—”
“Git!”
She zapped me hard with the steely-eye, and since there’s no arguing with Ma’s steely-eye or her git, I got. But I was burning with questions! Why had Ma given Aunt Ellie the pay phone number? We didn’t have a phone, but why not give Aunt Ellie the number at Brookside, like she’d done for the school when she’d filled out my forms? And why was Aunt Ellie calling, relaying messages through street folk? What was so important? It couldn’t have anything to do with Ma not repaying her. Everything we did—or, more like, didn’t do—seemed to come back to us still owing Aunt Ellie. Every time Ma got paid, she sent Aunt Ellie money, and every time I asked for something, I got told, “Not until I’ve got Ellie paid back.” Even Snickers bars got nixed.
All this went sparking through my brain at light speed. And since Ma’s steely-eye wasn’t glaring at me right then, I had a full recharge of curiosity, which got me doin’ an about-face back to the gate.
I opened the gate as quiet as I could, and spy-eyed the corner. I could see Ma hunkered against the phone with her back to me, so I went through the gate and edged in closer.
What I heard set my heart scampering like a rabbit. “He won’t, Ellie,” Ma was saying. “He can’t even get himself to work. How’s he ever going to get it together to track me down?” She listened for a bit, then said, “I’m sure he was! That’s how he gets when he’s drinking.” She added the g at the last minute. Like she was remembering how to speak a foreign language. Then she heaved a sigh and said, “Look, if it happens again, just keep denying you’ve seen us….Yes…Yes…I know….Yes’m. And you know I appreciate it….I will. And I’ll put some extra in the last one. You should have it before Christmas….Mm-hmm…I’m sorry about the trouble. Really, I am.”
I should’ve backed away the second I knew Aunt Ellie had called about Cliff, but I got greedy, wanting to know more, and gettin’ greedy always bites me in the backside.
“Lincoln!” Ma snapped when she saw me trying to steal away. She came steaming at me like a locomotive. “Since when do you flat out disobey me?”
“Since the stairs are dark and I got scared?” I gave her my best pleading look. “You never let me go up or down by myself after dark!”
It was enough to not get me cuffed, though I’m pretty sure she knew I was playing hide ’n’ seek with the truth.
She snatched the key back from me and said, “What did you hear?”
“That Cliff’s after us.”
“He ain’t after us!” she said, spitting the words out hard and fast.
When Ma’s not clownin’ around, “ain’t” means she’s simmerin’ in stress. And since this time the word popped out like a bubble breaking through heatin’ stew, I knew it was bad.
“Sorry,” she said, calming herself as she went through the gate and closed it behind us. “I don’t want you to worry. He will never in a million years come out here.”
As we headed up the steps, I told her, “We need to get a phone, Ma. We need to get a phone so we can call 911 if he does show up.”
“It’s a mighty big world, Lincoln. And he’s about as enterprisin’ as a barstool. Look how long it’s taken him to lift his dialin’ finger—we’ve been gone since July! Besides, no one but Ellie knows we’re out here, and she doesn’t know where we’re livin’ or where I’m workin’.”
“Is that why you didn’t tell her? Because you were afraid Cliff would track us down?”
“He’s never gonna track us down. Not with us this far away. I’m guessin’ he’s finally been evicted, which is why he’s callin’ around now. He’s at a dead end with me, so his next move’ll be to sweet-talk his way into some other woman’s home, Heaven help her.” She locked me down with double-barreled eyeballs. “We’ve got nothin’ to worry about, you hear?”
“Then why didn’t you tell Aunt Ellie our address or where you work?”
“Maybe I didn’t want her weighin’ in on where we live or what I do.” She shook her head. “Lord, she would have so much to say!”
It still didn’t make sense. “But why give her the pay phone number? We can’t hear it ring.”
She frowned. “I didn’t give her the number. She got nosy and wrote it down from caller ID when I called once before about sending her payments.” She frowned even harder. “And now she’s all wantin’ to know who ‘my man’ is.”
“You mean Levi?”
She flashed a look at me. “I am tryin’ to forget his name.”
“But why, Ma?”
“Because now he’s not just a man.” She pulled out her key and slid it in the lock. “Now he’s somebody. Somebody’s son. Or brother. Or father. Maybe all three!”
I hurried to follow her inside. “But…wasn’t he always?”
She clicked on a lamp, then turned to face me. “Somebody named him, Lincoln. The same way I named you.”
I didn’t like the way that felt.
Not one bit.
So I switched back to Aunt Ellie. “Well? What did you tell her?”
“Who? Ellie? I told her the truth.”
“That he’s a homeless guy?”
“No! That it’s a pay phone.”
When she set her bag down on the kitchen table, it seemed to pull her heart down with it. “It’s gonna be okay, Ma,” I said, touching her arm.
The words floated around us, feeling strange.
Like I was still playing hide ’n’ seek with the truth.
After the business with Aunt Ellie and the pay phone, Ma seemed to be carrying the world on her shoulders, so I got to heating what was left of the stew like she’d asked me to do before she’d caught me spying.
Ma’s stew’s a wonder. It starts on Sunday and usually lasts to Friday, and along the way it shrinks and grows and changes flavor. She messes with it some nights, adding spices and chopping in more stuff. I like when she goes heavy on the carrots. Something about carrots stewing in beef juices and onions makes me happy to be hungry.
It didn’t take long to heat, and when I had two steaming bowls with buttered bread on the table, Ma gave me a grateful smile and we both dug in.
Most days, Ma gets me talking about school over dinner, but not this time. Two bites in, her whole face seemed to crumple and sag as she scooped up stew. Every time she slid the spoon back in, it was slow and careful, like she was looking for answers between the onions and carrots.
It wasn’t until her spoon was clinking the bottom that she finally said something.
“What?” I asked, because it was more mutter than words.
She looked up like she’d forgotten I was there, then ditched the brooding and went straight to huffy. “You’d think she could have invited us to Thanksgiving.”
“Aunt Ellie?” I asked, running to
jump onto her train of thought.
“Of course Ellie,” she snapped.
My eyebrows couldn’t help creepin’ up. “You told me you were working a long shift on Thanksgiving. You said there was no gettin’ out of it.”
“Ellie doesn’t know that!”
“But…if she’d asked us to dinner, you’d have had to tell her no, right?”
“She didn’t even bother to ask!”
I wrestled with that, trying to figure out how a person could be mad over not being asked to do something they knew they couldn’t do in the first place. And after flipping it back and forth in my mind for a while, I said, “What if she was waitin’ for you to ask?”
“We can’t have Thanksgiving here! We don’t even have an oven!”
“But…she doesn’t know that, right?”
“Lincoln! Whose side are you on?”
I went back to my stew. Maybe it was a better place to find answers. “Didn’t know there was sides,” I grumbled.
She held her forehead like it was all of a sudden too heavy to hold itself up. Then she sighed and said, “I never should have asked her for help.”
“But…if you hadn’t asked her for help, we’d still be—”
“Stop, Lincoln! Just stop!” She kicked back from the table and snatched up her bowl. “I will never hear the end of Cliff ‘striking terror’ in her heart.” She zoomed in on me and snatched up my bowl. “I can’t pay that off, you understand?”
My stomach was set on having seconds, so I was about to grab for my bowl, but suddenly Ma went all pie-eyed.
“What?” I asked, ’cause she looked like some freeze-frame out of a horror movie.
And then I heard them, too.
Footsteps.
In the whole time we’d lived there, no one had gone in or out of the apartment down the hallway. There was no noise through the wall, either. I wasn’t even sure it was an apartment next door, seeing how there was no window along the walkway like ours had. “I think it’s just a storage room,” I told Ma after we’d been living there a couple of weeks.
“So why’s there a B on the door and a B on the mailbox next to ours?” she asked.