Gone Crazy in Alabama

  “Vonetta is lost. Vonetta got lost in the tornado.”

  No sound. Then a terrible sound. A bear caught in a trap. His growl and moan went through me and made me queasy. In the background I heard Mrs. saying, “Honey, honey,” over and over.

  Her voice came through the receiver. Warm. Steady. “Delphine.” She said it again, “Delphine,” because I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. “Tell me, Delphine. Tell me what’s going on.” Papa was crying in the background, loud, like I never heard before. He couldn’t tell her.

  I finally spoke into the phone. “Vonetta got lost in the tornado. Vonetta’s gone.”

  I didn’t say the other thing although I thought it. I didn’t say what I knew Papa heard although I didn’t use that word. I couldn’t use that word.

  “Delphine . . .” She didn’t say how horrible it was or start saying, “No! No!” so I’d have to say it again. Mrs. said, “Oh, Delphine, Delphine,” gently. I could hear my father, wounded in the background. “Delphine, Delphine,” she said. “Are you all right?”

  I said, “Yes,” but that wasn’t true.

  “Okay. Let me speak to your grandmother.”

  “I can’t. I mean, she can’t. She’s . . . she’s . . .”

  “It’s all right, Delphine. We’ll be there tomorrow.”

  And she said love words to me and I took them knowing I didn’t deserve them. Then we said good-bye.

  Ma Charles didn’t ask me what Papa said. Instead she said, “Now call your mother.”

  I couldn’t tell her my mother was out of reach. That she didn’t have a phone. I didn’t know how to get my mother to a telephone. Or know if she would come to a telephone just because I called. I didn’t know how to explain Cecile to my great-grandmother and that she wasn’t the type to stop her work or disturb her peace of mind and come because I asked her to.

  “Well?” Ma Charles said. “That’s her blood. Her child. She has to know. Go on, daughter. Call her.”

  I made a plan in my head. I dialed “0.” I stretched my voice from twelve to twenty-one and said, “Operator, I need the number for Ming’s in Oakland on Magnolia.” The operator still asked for my mama and I said, “I’m trying to reach my mama,” although that was the last thing I’d call Cecile to her face. “It’s an emergency.”

  The operator said, “Little girl, the telephone isn’t a plaything,” and hung up.

  The dial tone was loud. Ma Charles said, “Try it again, daughter.” My great-grandmother didn’t want any of my excuses. Even if it was out of my hands. I dialed “0” and waited.

  “It’s an emergency, operator,” I said. “It’s about the tornado and I have to reach my mother.”

  “What city?” the voice said. A different operator.

  “Oakland.” I tried to sound grown and sure. I didn’t want her to call me a little girl. “My mother’s at Ming’s Chinese Takeout on Magnolia Street.” My mother wasn’t really there, but Mean Lady Ming would remember me from last summer and she’d know how to get word to my mother. I spoke firmly and hoped my stretching the truth would get the call put through, but the operator was saying something about prank phone calls so loud that Ma Charles could hear her questioning the call.

  “Gimme that telephone,” Ma Charles said, and I handed the receiver to her. She cleared her throat. “Put the call through for my great-granddaughter” was all she said and handed the phone back to me as if that was enough.

  It was. The operator read off the numbers for Ming’s Chinese Takeout on Magnolia and said, “Please hold while I connect you.”

  “Takeout. What you want?”

  “Miss Ming?” I spoke timidly, as if I was standing at her counter for the first time.

  “Hello?”

  “Miss Ming,” I said.

  She fussed at me to stop playing on the phone. She had a business to run.

  “No, Miss Ming. It’s Delphine. Cecile’s daughter.”

  “Delphine, Delphine.” It took repeating my name for her to remember me from last summer.

  “My mother. It’s an emergency. I need her to call me.”

  She fussed that she couldn’t leave the store, and I said, “Please, Miss Ming. It’s bad. It’s bad and I need her.” I begged and begged her to write down the number. Then I heard Big Ma say, “Who you calling?” But I said to Miss Ming, “Please, Miss Ming. Please. Emergency.” Then she said, “Okay, okay, Delphine,” and hung up.

  “Who you calling?”

  Ma Charles stood up. “I told her to call her mother.”

  I was grateful to have my great-grandmother next to me, looking clear-eyed and ready for a fight.

  “Far’s I’m concerned, those girls don’t have a mother.”

  “Whether you think so or not, she and the other two have a mother, and their mother should know.” She drummed her finger against the tabletop hard with every point she made.

  “Hmp.”

  “We don’t teach a child to dishonor her mother or father. Not in this house.” Then Ma Charles told me to go and get her shawl from her room. What next she had to tell Big Ma was not for my ears and I scooted out of there.

  Over the next few hours, my tears hadn’t dried, nor had my stomach settled. But I kept my ears open, waiting. Hoping the phone would ring soon. And also not wanting it to ring. Not wanting to tell Cecile.

  Then one ring. One shrill ring was all it took to get me into the kitchen. I grabbed the receiver on the second ring.

  “Cecile,” I said. I knew it was her.

  “I don’t like people knocking on my door,” she told me.

  My mouth went dry.

  “Cecile,” I said.

  “You got the Woods boy knocking on my door, dragging me out of my house. Delphine, you know better. There’s nothing you have to tell me that calls for all of that.”

  If I didn’t say it fast, plain, and clear, she’d hang up on me and write me a letter-poem telling me about myself. So I said it. “Vonetta left the house this morning. She’s lost in the tornado. We can’t find her.”

  I waited. And waited. And waited. Next came a click. Then the moan of the dial tone.

  I felt breathing. Fast, heavy breathing. Big Ma.

  “What she say?” Ma Charles asked.

  I could barely look at them. “She didn’t say anything. She . . .” I didn’t want to tell them but there was no hiding it. “She hung up.”

  Big Ma clapped her hands hard. One hard clap. “What did I say? What did I tell you?” She was angry with me and pleased with herself for having Cecile pegged right.

  “Now—”

  Big Ma cut her mother off. “Mama. You don’t know what that woman did to them. Ripped herself out from under them and ran off to parts unknown. You don’t know how she tore my son’s heart clean out of his chest. She didn’t mother them then, can’t mother them now. Too busy writing words on the wall or whatever she calls herself doing.”

  After my grandmother pointed her finger and hollered at her own mother, she turned to me. “I told you and told you about Cecile, but you wouldn’t take the truth from my mouth. You wouldn’t take the gospel truth from the one who raised you. And now you’ve seen and heard it for yourself. As far as I’m concerned, you don’t have a mother. And don’t you speak her name or about her in this lifetime. Ever!”

  I felt like I was being knocked down again and again and again, but when I turned, I fell into my uncle’s arms. “Go ’head, cry, Delphine,” he whispered, rocking me like I was a little girl. “We’re all crying.”

  Taranada

  A full day hadn’t passed by, but Vonetta’s absence lingered in every corner of the house. Everywhere I turned was a space Vonetta had been in that was now left empty. I was glad Mr. Lucas had given me something to do, although it didn’t take long to gather the planks of broken wood from the henhouse and the baby dresser drawers that were once the hens’ nesting boxes. They made a small, splintery pile of wood that couldn’t be used for anything else. It was in raking the yard, searching for na
ils and glass pieces blown over from Mr. Lucas’s house, that gave my eyes a downward place to look. For that I was glad. I searched and searched for broken bits while I missed Vonetta and missed Fern and hated my mother and thought of what Fern had yelled at me and dreaded seeing my father’s face but wanted him here with me at the same time.

  Uncle Darnell would soon go over the creek to see about the Trotters. When I asked to go with him he said, “We’ll see,” which I hoped was a strong maybe. I wanted to see how JimmyTrotter and Miss Trotter were, but at the same time, I was afraid of what I might see. Mr. Lucas’s house was sturdy and Miss Trotter’s house was old. Its floorboards spoke with every step we took whenever we were inside the house. She kept everything as it was when her father had lived with her and Ella Pearl. According to my cousin, Mr. Lucas had made offers to “gird up the house’s foundation” over the years, but Miss Trotter had always told JimmyTrotter the house was fine as it was. She didn’t want anyone to touch what her father had made.

  I decided I’d rather be anywhere but here, even if I had to see what I didn’t want to see.

  I scratched and clawed at the ground, waiting for Uncle Darnell to take me with him. On television they never say the person’s name when there is a missing person and that person is found. Instead, they say, “The body has been found,” because the body is all that is left. But if she was found, still inside her body, still alive, they’d say, “We found the little girl. We found Vonetta Gaither.”

  I didn’t want to believe it. Any of it. Not that it was my fault, like Fern said. Not that my sister was gone. Not that Vonetta was gone for good. I didn’t want anyone to say, “We found the body.”

  I kept my head down. I raked and clawed.

  Caleb started up his noise, louder than his usual dog song. I stopped tearing up the ground with the rake and instead combed it softly, waiting for our visitor to come into view. Caleb could cry and carry on long before a stranger or a hungry fox could be seen. My heart quickened, wanting to hope. He didn’t only sing out for strangers. He sang when the visitor was someone he knew. Like Vonetta. I kept the rake going but I stopped breathing.

  Finally, the moving car showed itself—the sheriff’s black-and-white car. It turned off the tree-blocked road and jostled through the field of dandelions and wildflowers. I searched the car, hoping to see my sister. I saw something besides the sheriff, but it wasn’t my sister. The car was now up on the grass but it didn’t come any closer. The sheriff got out, then opened the passenger door and a bloodhound jumped out. Caleb pulled at his chain and pitched a fuss, so I let him off of his chain and he was on Sheriff Charles in no time, jumping, licking, and baying like a pup. The two dogs scampered about excitedly, glad to see each other. Still excited, Caleb nipped at the sheriff’s pants leg but the sheriff didn’t look down at Caleb or pet him. He just flung Caleb off of him, kicking out his leg once, and the two dogs went back to playing with each other while the sheriff trudged up to the house.

  As he approached I realized that he was more Big Ma and Mr. Lucas’s age. Maybe a little younger. He was broad from shoulder to belly and then narrow from the hip—where his holster sat—down to his boots. I felt no need to give the greeting Big Ma had taught my sisters and me to give all grown folk, especially to white folk. I knew who he was. I knew he wore a white sheet when he wasn’t wearing his badge.

  It made him no difference whether I spoke to him or not. He tapped on the screen door with the back of his hand and called out, “’Phelia! You there? Mama? It’s Davey Lee.”

  Uncle Darnell met him at the door and opened it wide. I thought he did that to be the man of the house and stand up to the Klan—but my uncle opened the door wide and shook the sheriff’s hand. Shook his hand. And brought him inside my great-grandmother’s house.

  I got up to the porch to see and hear through the screen door. Why was he here if he didn’t have my sister—and who did he think he was, calling Ma Charles “Mama”? I was mad enough to scream just when I thought I’d been wrung out numb. The Klan was in my great-grandmother’s house. My uncle shook his hand. Unreal. Crazy unreal. Yet I couldn’t take myself away.

  Fern was glued to Ma Charles the way she should have been glued to me. The sheriff looked down at Fern and then said to Ma Charles, “Should have figured those were yours.”

  Ma Charles nodded. “They’re mine. All three.”

  “When was the last you seen her?” he asked.

  Big Ma said, “Supper last night. Just before the thundering and lightning started. The kids went to their beds early. Stayed in their room.”

  “No chance she went out in the electrical storm last night?”

  “No,” Fern said. And everyone turned to her in a kind of shock because Fern said very little. “She stayed on her side of the room and me and Delphine stayed on our side. But we all went to bed.” Then she added, “Vonetta snores. Loud. She kept me awake with her snoring. I thought she was snoring loud to get back at Delphine and me because we didn’t let her play Old Maid with us.”

  He nodded to that and asked Big Ma for a recent photograph, and she told Fern to go in her room and get her church purse. Fern hurried off and returned with the black bag. Big Ma took out her wallet and from there she carefully pulled out a small picture. A school picture.

  The sheriff looked at the picture once, shook his head, probably at Vonetta’s proud-of-herself grin. He probably thought no black girl had the right to be that proud, but there she was, being Vonetta in a photo.

  “You know not to hope, ’Phelia,” the sheriff said. “Taranada”—that was exactly how he said it, with four syllables, all A’s—“wasn’t the worst, but I tell you one thing. It was bad enough to toss that Negro rag doll clear ’cross the county, out of this lifetime.”

  Mr. Lucas had to catch Big Ma and Uncle Darnell said, “Hey, man. You didn’t have to say that.”

  The sheriff said, “Better the truth than a fairy tale.”

  “We’re not asking you for no fairy tale,” Ma Charles said. “We’re asking you to do what the sheriff’s supposed to do. We’re asking you to find our lost child.”

  “Yes, Mama,” the sheriff said.

  I hated that he called her that, but she said, “Just go find her, son. Go find her.” Son. My great-grandmother called the Klan son.

  “All right then, Mama,” he said. He turned to Uncle Darnell and said, “I need a piece of her clothing. Something she wore yesterday. Pj’s, maybe.”

  Fern then ran off again and returned with Vonetta’s nightie. But she didn’t hand it over to the sheriff. She gave it to Ma Charles, and Ma Charles lifted her hand for the sheriff to lean over and take it.

  I got away from the door.

  He called his dog and the dog trotted up to his boots. Caleb followed. He knelt and gave the nighties to his dog to sniff. “Scent, boy. Scent.” Both dogs went at it. Caleb, sniffing and baying loud and crazy. “Where she, boy? Where that li’l Negro child?”

  Something about the way he said it. Negro. Like he was used to saying the other word. The bad word.

  “Darnell! Darnell!” he shouted, sounding more like an army sergeant giving orders than a sheriff. When Uncle Darnell came out, the sheriff said, “We got a scent.”

  “I’m coming,” my uncle told the sheriff.

  “Well, come on, then.”

  “Can I go?” I asked. I don’t know what made me ask. I didn’t want to be near that Ku Klux Klansman.

  I was asking my uncle but the sheriff said, “Naw. This is a manhunt. Sheriff business.”

  Then Uncle Darnell said, “Stay here.”

  They leashed up both dogs and set off down the road and into the pines, the dogs baying and pulling. I put the rake down and sat on the porch. I looked to the pines, hoping.

  I heard both dogs before I saw them. “They’re coming!” I yelled to Big Ma, Ma Charles, and Fern. “They’re coming!”

  I wanted to see Uncle Darnell carrying Vonetta but when we finally saw them, it was Uncle D, the sher
iff, and the two bloodhounds.

  “We found the bicycle,” the sheriff said. “Up a tree in ten pieces.”

  “A mercy, Lord. A mercy, a mercy.”

  “But we didn’t find the body.”

  “She’s not the body!” I screamed at him. “She’s Vonetta.”

  Big Ma grabbed me by the arm. “Girl, you shut your mouth. You hear me? You just shut your mouth.”

  Uncle D pulled me in to him.

  The sheriff went on. “Scent got cold. Taranada might have blown her anywhere. The body could be up in one them trees.”

  I was glad when Sheriff Charles had finally left. I hoped he would find Vonetta, and I hoped he wouldn’t.

  Caleb could not be calmed. Once he sniffed that old sheriff and his brother and Vonetta’s scent from the nightie, there was no quieting him down. I put his chain back on him and tied him up good, but Caleb kept sniffing and pulling. Pulling after the sheriff’s car.

  I knew they used dogs. The sheriffs down here. I knew this from our summer at the People’s Center. I had seen old photographs of cops siccing dogs on people. Black people. And college students. Now the sheriff would use the dog to find where the tornado had blown Vonetta.

  Caleb wouldn’t stop singing his dog song. Missing his hound-dog brother and maybe even the sheriff. “Hush, Caleb,” I said. “Hush that noise.” But he wouldn’t hear me. He bayed louder and louder and then kept it to a loud, one-note song.

  When I looked up I saw what he was barking at. I saw it but I could barely believe it. I didn’t know who to call first so I yelled, “Everyone! Come see! Come see!”

  Sister

  My hand flew to my mouth. My eyes saw it but my mind spun in disbelieving circles. The closer they came out of the pines and into the field and toward the grass, the more real it became. Fern, Uncle Darnell, Mr. Lucas, Big Ma, and Ma Charles came out to the porch to see the commotion. I took off running to the pines. I ran to Miss Trotter, JimmyTrotter, Sophie, and Butter. The sight of them sent me racing on the inside! Miss Trotter on foot, holding on to the cane Ma Charles had given her. JimmyTrotter leading the cows. Miss Trotter’s wooden chair strapped to Sophie’s back. What a sight! What a sight! I jumped up as I ran. I was the first to get there, winded, hugging, and crying. So glad to see them. So glad. It was the only good thing that had happened this day.