Solemn Read online

  A bolt of lightning put Desiree Longwood down on the spot.

  There was no one in the field but her and Desiree, now. All were gone, spinning in a fast wave of pictures around Solemn’s head. Like the DVD player put on fast forward. Solemn fell with Desiree’s hand around hers, to a sprained ankle in her left foot. It would turn into a permanent ache, but no real pain behind it until it was all over. A local bishop’s truck passed. The bishop looked just in time to see balloons come at his windshield and girls under it on the ground. Then, startled passengers inside saw the folks running up behind to tend to the girl. The sprinkles stopped. Unsure of whether to run past or run near, a few men who did not comprehend recalled lightning never struck the same place twice. One of those retrieved the girl in his arms. A cripple threw himself to the dirt and offered his chair to wheel the girl. But the holder was strong. With the attention on the girl, the cripple and his chair remained there until he started to holler about it. Solemn thumped behind to pat her friend back awake. She led the crowd in back of the man who carried her friend to a patch where the parade was supposed to pass. There, two parents thought the girl could be revived with their expensive medical cards. They were calm. It was Solemn’s family who were frenzied. The Festival parade became Missy and Nelly music on the tail of the Longwoods’ Imperial as it raced to Montfort Jones.

  Landon and Akila went on their own, with his friends, and the baby. Justin Bolden took license to speed past all others in the Buick, unsure of what had gone on and ready to investigate whatever it was. Solemn scrambled into the Malibu’s backseat, turning from side to side to glance at all the cars piled near on top of one another, honking horns, flashing lights. It was better than the parade. The folks who didn’t even know what was going on acted like they did. After six miles, the EMTs ran to meet the trail of black people at the emergency room entrance: “What happened?” The bishop answered, “Lightning.” A few minutes after the match-scented child flew back through winged doors on a rolling bed, the only black nurse working Easter at Montfort Jones came out to tell the crowd they had started to work. She identified the mama herself, as the woman fallen to the floor just as suddenly as her child had met the ground moments before.

  That Monday, a nice photo of a few luckily chosen revelers graced the front of the news. They hid the beer bottles and cigarettes behind their backs. They clutched fingertips of their children and grabbed their lovers’ shoulders. One couple even kissed for the camera. There was something said about a woman missing from a motel room, any leads welcome and appreciated. However, most discussed was the story of a little girl who was swooped from the obituaries by good doctors very few of them could afford.

  * * *

  Stephanie and Theodis Longwood always thought they should have more than one child. Most thought it was unnatural she didn’t have a few more to show for it. They had been considering it, though doing so would most certainly mean they had to upgrade. But Stephanie was too vain. It took nine more months of near starvation to get her figure back. And since Desiree was such a greedy nurser, Stephanie’s firm bosom fell into a flat canvas only custom-ordered underwires could raise. She was young enough to change her mind but old enough to know it was a risk. They could have a bigger family. Move from Singer’s. Pay a mortgage or, God forbid, rent. Sometimes, Stephanie longed for a bayou view, maybe the jingle of a brook at night, the comfort of a grove in her backyard, a ceiling of Christmas senna to draw the butterflies, the strut of horses and cows across the meadows. Rather than a view from her window, which could look like the path through a dump on the wrong night with the right light.

  There was comfort in the density of people around them at Singer’s. Mothers stayed at home. There were rarely fights, which made the story Gilroy was in there beating Pearletta so harsh on most of their ears. Families paid for kids to go to religious school, and even the public schools would have been okay. But these kids did graduate, came back, and said “Hi” even, in starched military get-up or boxy suits with pumps. Some even stayed around and grabbed certificates from the community colleges. Once in a while, a heretic hobbled through with a song about Jesus. The quarters were crowded, but still felt distanced. No one felt it was too much of a bother when a muffler went out or a junk car sounded like a motorcyle. Nobody complained. If anything, somebody would recommend a shade tree mechanic who could use the work.

  Then, kids dropped into wells. Change. A ho here and there staggered from a trailer in the morning. Change. Idiots got careless with the reefer, let it float on out the screens and entice the oblivious. Change. Squished-up generic beer cans peeked between patches of once-tended but now-tacky lawns. Change. Then, her own daughter talked of black boogiemen and left her black dolls gathering dust under the bed. Change …

  She and her husband had decided to wait.

  FOURTEEN

  Bledsoe had changed. Just changed. They were bewitched. People half-expected furies to walk around and look for them, emboldened and enabled now. Between the sad demise of the Hassle baby, then Pearletta Hassle with her confusing departures, and now Desiree Longwood with her unexpected and inexplicable accident, the community was no longer so sequestered in a blank stare toward God.

  At first, there was nothing on the news about the chaos. It was only chatter among them. If you have any information leading to our finding of our Pearletta Hassle … glared back from the windows and doors of the gas station, dollar store, diner, and hop bars. Where there had been none or few were now “stories”—things for the kids to grow up and retell, and memories for the adults who survived and escaped them. A cabin fever, a stirred crazy. The stories wore like days-old hospital robes, to humble and unite them all. And of course, there was heightened viciousness no one wanted to admit to. Menace came in between them, with an ensemble of altered lives to make it complete. Any child who acted up now had a capable threat: “You gon’ get yo’ little bad ass throwed in the well…” Any woman who didn’t behave had an incentive: “You know what, bitch, you gonna wind up missing just like that bitch in that motel down the road.” Any man who insisted on wandering got a second thought: “Motherfucka I hope the lightning strike you just like it did that little girl!” They made themselves part of the tragedies after the facts, just to feel pathologically unsettled with the rest.

  One would think, over time, these things would go away and no one would remember them. But they would be wrong. Their version of activism—sharing the story and praying for its characters—compounded the apathy extended to the victims. Worse, the changes reeked of hillbilly status, though they’d come so far.

  Once Landon said good-bye in those days after Easter, Solemn limped to the well and fell asleep against its cool stone side. Normally, she would have had her friend. Her ankle was sprained, but she never cried. No one noticed her new gait but the cat, who followed her and licked the spot she pressed often. She dreamed of scarred hands who plopped dollhouse babies in a cauldron along with chicken wings in crackling lard. She tried to form where drowned babies and burned little girls went, all on her watch—as if she was cursed. She wondered. She needed to know what she felt and imagined before others knew. She talked to the cat about it. The cat didn’t answer. Her parents often mumbled in her direction for seconds. Then they were silent for minutes. They gave her Lipton’s and chicken broth and cod-liver oil and oranges. She wasn’t sick.

  By middle of the week, Pearletta Hassle’s mother shot onto their televisions.

  Bev, glued to the thing, saw it first. Solemn next. Redvine didn’t notice.

  Soon they all came to recognize Viola Weathers by her rounded-up dreadlocks and the gigantic stone on her left ring finger—a dame who wore anger, off-red nail polish, houndstooth jackets, pearl earrings, starched collars, and a crucifix atop her broken heart. As soon as the trumpets blared to signal the newscasts, Viola Weathers stormed into view, whether folks liked it or not. She spoke in flaming tongue to rival the newscasters’ belabored diction. She shut down reporters who offered cond
olences. If there was mention of her daughter’s history as a runaway and druggie and negligent mother, she glared at the speaker, pushed him into a lingering stutter other would-be controversialists learned from. She dared the bastard who stole her child to come speak to her directly at the cemetery, should she have to bury her own child. She bookended many newscasts with a demand: “Where the hell is my child?”

  For once, the Redvines had no wonder of where Solemn was because she was at home, pattering about from room to room and opening the cabinet doors to look but eventually select nothing. She hadn’t taken off her new outfit yet, only changed her panties and shoes once. Akila came by soon after with the baby and rebraided her hair—pulled out dry grass and tiny twigs caught in the loops. She got to sleep late and avoid school. She had no ride, she somehow knew. She didn’t have to say, Hello, how you do? or anything to her parents’ friends. So many kept stopping for coffee and conversation. Prayer. Once, she went to make coffee when she saw two of her mama’s friends from church step onto the front mat.

  Inside the bottom of a pot missing its lid and boasting an age older than Solemn’s, Solemn dropped four heaping tablespoons of instant coffee the way she had seen her mama do. She grabbed one of the four mismatched mugs they had room for, filled it with water, and trickled drops into the pot of coffee grounds until they were moist. The playful grounds softened, nervously and hesitant to dreg. Their soft, round forms relaxed, slipped down one by one into a muddy bottom until there was no separation. Just one thing, from many, like a graveyard with no headstones or bouquets to smooth it over. Solemn left it until Bev entered the kitchen for the same project. Solemn knew the adults were talking about her but not talking to her. She was used to this. After the people walked off from the yard, Solemn approached her parents with some things in mind.

  “There something wrong?” She looked to her daddy, who seemed to have a secret ready in his pocket. Bev glanced at Redvine. He bent forward to switch off the television.

  “You know how we always tell you to come in when thunder and lightning start, less it come down and get you?” Redvine asked.

  “That’s what happened to Desi?” Solemn asked.

  “Yeah,” Bev told her. “You really did a good thing letting everybody know.”

  Before they planned to carry Desiree back into Singer’s with cold compresses and topical antibiotics and tiny tan tranquilizers, Stephanie told her husband to go to the Redvines’ door and sugarcoat it under “tired” and “busy” and “time” and “soon.” Were it not for Solemn, they knew, their daughter would have been with one of them that day. This would have never happened. Plus it got them getting talked about for neglect …

  “It’s nothing to worry about anymore,” Redvine said. “Lightning is the Devil winking. Sometimes it’s okay; the person just gets a little sick or faints or don’t remember. Desiree was lucky.”

  “Can I go visit her?”

  “Soon,” Redvine said.

  Solemn sat down on the table atop the pile of Ebony magazines her mama set there. An energy drained from inside of her, energy that had commanded her to move move move like the ladies on the television and fight to harness her tone deafness.

  “Is it ’cause we skipped church on Easter?”

  “Honey, that’s ridiculous,” Redvine said. Bev had thought about it.

  “But,” Bev said, “I’m gonna be here from now on with you. We gonna save us some money. I ain’t takin’ my classes no time soon. I’ll be around.”

  Solemn trusted this.

  * * *

  Me and her was supposed to dance in the parade, twirl batons, and wave to our mamas. We was gonna peel boiled eggs and crunch salt after we left the Festival. We was gonna suck jellybeans to gum. Desi would have followed along, eventually. She was just fussy. And her monthly was totally brand-new. I just needed to think I took another nap. I later heard all these voices behind the thin accordion door to my room. A chorus almost, and somebody say somethin bout “Solemn’s lil’ friend.” I never known that many people noticed or paid attention to details associated with me.

  I stretched and got out my sleep. I drunk the orange juice somebody set on my windowsill. Then I came out. Daddy was gone. My mama’s back was turned to the stove. The front room and kitchen looked like a carnival: Easter-color hats all over. Many ladies from Singer’s, or church, or around—Alice Taylor, Akila, Mrs. Longwood, the aunts and cousins who smiled around on the holidays. It was a feast laid out on the kitchen counters, table, and stove, from Easter and the Festival’s leftovers. I tried to count this number of people twistin around in my home. I had never seen a crowd like it. It was like a payday party. The women turned back their paper plates, to fan themselves and one another while they talked and laughed. Even some of the ones they called “stankhoe” was there, the ones who hobbled in miniskirts that the married women squinched eyes on till they dropped off the horizon. One was pregnant, no weddin ring. The partyers inside peeked out our curtains a lot, fussin and lookin. But I was standin right there. Seem like it was a party, help me feel better. Then, somebody peeled back the screen door. They was all clappin. I felt pushed. I froze up. Cause I had never, ever seen a person from television. And it was the Viola Weathers, one started askin for Pearletta on the news.

  “Clap!” they told me. And so I did. Even if it wasn’t my party, after all.

  Viola Weathers shook her head and smiled, put both her hands up to fan everybody back to they plates and seats. But they kept on clappin, even Mama and Mrs. Longwood tremblin on they tippy toes at sight of her.

  “You’re too kind, too kind, to let me stop by here on my tour,” Mrs. Weathers told them all. This silver broach on her lapel struck back a ray of light cast by the sunshine in the back window of the trailer. “Oh please, sit, sit.”

  She fanned her hands at us. Finally, we all sat. Then Mama got up to give her a sampler plate from everything there. Mrs. Longwood brought her the hummingbird cake, perfect triangle on a circle dish. The ladies stuck their pinky fingers out while they nibbled on their crackers and desserts. Outside the television and right in front of us, the woman looked so much smaller and weaker and softer. She spoke in between chewin, whiskeyed sweet tea to wash it down. President Bush came on the television to address the nation. Mrs. Longwood turned the television off. Then, we all started to listen to Mrs. Weathers. We liked her face right here with us now.

  “We must be grateful for everything we have,” Mrs. Weathers told the intent women. “And, no matter how useless it might seem to challenge our challengers, stand up—always. Never, ever lie down. Always, no matter how tired or weak or sick you get, how pushed aside you are, stand up. You’ll be happier that way. From any one situation you can look at it from too many sides and angles to ever be mad about one. Some folks good at spreading the frosting. Others need to lick the bowl clean. We all have a place.”

  She put her eyes on me without even movin em, seem like: “Come here, girl.”

  I moved through the big bottoms and flared skirts to stand before the woman. Mrs. Weathers grabbed my arms tight at the wrists. I kept contact with the lady’s eyes, pink-rimmed and speckled with bronze spots at the corners like pennies in a well.

  “Do you understand, and know who you are? What makes you special?” the Mrs. Weathers from the television asked me. Everybody else paused and waited for me. And I really tried to answer, but nothin came. Mrs. Weathers shook and shook on our weak kitchen chair. Then she pushed back to laugh at me and I just stood there. Mrs. Longwood just put her hands on her hips and tilted her head, to shake and shuffle her auburn hair more let loose than it was anyway. Mama looked happy next to her friend.

  “You think it’s some oasis somewhere waiting on you out there?”

  I had heard of a oasis, but couldn’t recall what it was. I was too shamed to ask.

  “No ma’am,” sounded safe.

  “You don’t know?” Mrs. Weathers teased. “Haven’t figured it out? Y’all ain’t tell the girl yet?”
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  “Tell me what?” I wanted to know. “What?”