Solemn Read online

  And then Mama woke me up for supper.

  FIFTEEN

  “What the hell we need to make statements about?” Redvine asked his wife.

  “How should I know?” Bev told him. “Stephanie ain’t talking yet. It was Theo came by … said there was mess said ’bout Desiree being underage and unattended to, that’s all. Mississippi Children’s Home Services gotta investigate, I guess.”

  “We under investigation too, then?”

  “No, Red. Solemn ain’t get hurt.”

  “What the State gonna do, take the rest of they kids? The poor folks ain’t got none other. Shit happens.”

  “Well that’s what we gotta let ’em know, Redvine…”

  “I ain’t cool with taking Solemn to deal with no police,” Redvine said. “I’m all for respecting the law. But I gotta side with Landon on this one.”

  “We don’t have a choice.”

  “Lemme least get a beer or two in me ’fore we talk about it any further. Shit…”

  Two six-packs and one dawn and a quick car wash at a two-dollar do-it-yourself station later, the gas in the Malibu stretched to the police station. Back remained to be seen. Solemn still hadn’t changed her clothes. To make matters worse, she started her period. Except for a few times Redvine fussed with the wannabe wrong crowd and jumped too bad with a white person for it, none of them had ever been in the station. Once the trio broke past the gristle of a half-dozen homeless staked out at side of the building in silent protest, the station was at least air-conditioned inside. Bev sat down in a chair alongside a wall. Solemn sat beside her. Redvine went to the front counter, spoke with a blond female officer. There was a vending machine. Vents rattled out cool air. Office doors opened to clean rooms. White tile floors shone. Redvine put one elbow against the counter and a hand in the pocket of a sports jacket he threw on over blue jeans. He chilled like he did when he made bets at the greyhound track he took the family to, on motel trips to Arkansas back in better days, serious and more distinguished with each wage.

  “Where are the cells?” Solemn asked her mama.

  “The what?”

  “The cells … for all the people got to get put in jail?”

  “Oh, they got ’em all right.”

  “This look way too nice to be a jail.”

  “This ain’t the main one. This just the first stop. Nothing nice ’bout that last one at all…”

  Redvine came over to his family.

  “We gotta wait to talk to that cop, you know, the black fella. Make statements.”

  “How long we gotta sit in jail?” Solemn asked her daddy.

  “Long enough.”

  “Can I get something from the vending machine?”

  Redvine went into his pocket to pull out four dull quarters. Solemn stepped away from them, closer to the area of the station where a few interrogation rooms and the cubicles were. Her mouth watered: Doritos, Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, Pepsi, Coke, Sprite. She had trouble figuring out what to do with her coins. Around the bend, near where the restrooms were, she sensed something to look at. She glanced back at Bev and Redvine, talking among themselves, the automatic habit of grown-ups. The bathrooms were within eyeshot. She could say she had gone there. Her mama knew she had her time now. The officers who had rumbled with laughter in the corner vanished to work now. The blond officer sat on the phone at the front counter. Solemn slipped away.

  Down a hall, stock gray square desks with heavy telephones and many papers—so many papers in their belligerent and grumpy piles—were vacant of busy cops sitting at them. This was nothing like the police stations Solemn imagined and saw and fantasized about from scarce episodes of Law & Order or 21 Jump Street she caught. The clocks seemed to be off, dusty and cross-eyed. A radio played honky-tonk, bluesy and throaty and raw. The facilities smelled clinical and clear, not nearly as beguiling as the hospital halls. Its blandness was inviting but disappointing. Solemn wavered a bit, but then she continued on. She was unnoticed, in her same clothes from Easter still—a new outfit nonetheless, so as better to discount any grime collected over the days. How no one could see a thick-haired black gal in days-old clothes wander through the main police precinct with her parents nowhere in sight confirmed the forced anonymity Solemn resented. She went on anyway. She happened upon a room where four persons sat slumped over in deep conversation behind a window.

  And who and what she saw stirred the innermost arousal inside of her, pleasure so strong it grew into a light head and dizziness not even her recent event in question had overcome her with: inside the room, with an older man and two officers in a uniform, was the woman from the television … Viola Weathers. The “poor woman’s” mother, no mirage. Solemn stopped dead.

  She was much smaller and softer than she always appeared on the television. It was the woman from the television, alive and real. A celebrity—like Oprah or J. Lo. Had Solemn not been frozen into place she could have touched her with her own two hands and felt what it was like to have a real famous person at her fingertips, in all the imagined glory it was. Only now, the woman appeared just like her—decipherable and pat. She wore no makeup on her face.

  “There must be something, something to do,” she cried, naked of her chunky earrings and pearls. The white officer stood up, stepped back, lost his place.

  And the brown officer Solemn recognized listened. The older man from the television as well sat stiff and somber. The brown officer met eyes with Solemn—stiffened at sight and sudden remembrance of her.

  “I won’t rest … I can’t!” Viola Weathers shouted to them all.

  The brown cop came to the woman from the television, told her to calm down.

  “Now, Mrs. Weathers, we doing our best, but your daughter done this before and we gotta…” the white man tried to say.

  Viola stopped him. “You will not slander my little girl. If she was a white gal with even more you could say, then the more’d be an unmentionable. Pearly’s a good girl.”

  She was nowhere near calm but not close to hysterical. She had no cameras, and still she had a mission: a voice heard. Viola Weathers looked up at the side window in the room. She locked eyes with Solemn—

  * * *

  “Not too much different than my girl was at your age,” she say to me … “Go back to your mama, child. Or wait! Help me.”

  I stood still right there and let the woman from the television look at me.

  “How?” I asked her.

  “Help me.” The woman was smiling at me, grin drawn back to her ears.

  “What should I do?” I really wanted to know.

  “Whatever you can,” she told me. “It’ll come to you.”

  “Solemn!”

  Mama was behind me.

  * * *

  Bev was gentle due to the situation, just trying to get in and out with no drama.

  “Who you talking to down here all by yourself?” she asked. Solemn pointed to the window, wanted to say more to the woman from the television. But Viola Weathers snapped back away from her, into the men again. Bev glanced into the room, saw the private meeting. She grabbed Solemn’s arm.

  “But, but…” Solemn said.

  “No buts … Now ain’t the time for you to be actin’ strange.”

  “But … it’s the woman from television.”

  Beverly looked in. Shole was. Up until that point, Pearletta Hassle was only a thing to feel guilty about. Guilt was always mystery enough. But now the situation of her missing morphed into true fact. Bev didn’t want to be nosy, but she couldn’t help it.

  “She’s my child … you get to work!” the woman from the television howled.

  And the white man nodded back to her, in order and in check. Respecting even. Viola Weathers was not the least bit daunted to stand strong in the face of a white while in the throes of some pain. He was intimidated by her. Solemn could tell. And Solemn had never seen a thing like it in her life. Now, she would do everything in her power, for the famous black lady from television and that poor wo
man down the way.

  In a matter of minutes of more waiting, jail enough, Solemn saw the brown officer come out from behind the back and wave to them. She wanted to see the woman from the television again. Solemn was so giddy to think of it she tapped her hands at the chair’s hard arms. But Viola Weathers did not appear behind him. The station had a back door.

  Redvine arose to shake Bolden’s hand: “Sir,” her daddy called the brown officer.

  When Bev arose and Solemn got ready to do so too, the men motioned them to sit down. Solemn had imagined she was here to solve something. How could she solve anything if she sat down? Her daddy and the cop went to the counter to chat, as perfunctory as bartender to alcoholic they seemed. They were the same complexion, same color, and nearly the same height except for the officer threw his shoulders back while Redvine’s hung a bit. They met eye to eye, nose to nose, chuckle to chuckle.

  Back in the car, the letdowns droned on when Earl turned off Nelly’s song for the station of all his old songs Solemn was sick of. She hadn’t even bought a thing to eat.

  “Well, what we have to come all the way here for?” Bev asked Redvine.

  “I handled it,” Redvine said.

  “I thought we was gonna get to talk?” Solemn asked. No one heard her.

  “Well, bring Solemn all the way down here, in light of what’s going on … we coulda stayed home.” Bev was disappointed. Bad enough she had to leave her classes.

  “I just explained the Longwoods were good peoples,” Bolden said, and he turned up an old song he knew Bev liked a lot. “The man knew what I meant.”

  * * *

  As quickly as it blossomed, the friendship with the Longwoods unraveled like knitting with its lead string tugged. Solemn’s sheer fortune to have wobbled with the Longwood girl marked a mixed blessing; this type of fortune crossed the boundaries of decency to celebrate. In absence of congratulations for her luck and help, Solemn had the pall of a Barabbas. Nobody ever knew the Longwoods’ daughter to run off before …

  The Longwoods’ fig and peach trees commenced blooming, shielding the family until Desiree came out—in a red sundress—straight to the Imperial. Solemn watched them all drive out the gate. The future she imagined—of growing up with a girl to be measured with, each new bit of breast or grown-out hairstyle, if their prom dresses would have matched, if they would have gone to the same schools, if they would have married brothers—sank. Desiree was supposed to stay part of Solemn’s story, with no escape. Now one was phantom of accusation for the other. Solemn’s association with the plagues of sorrow set down on Bledsoe clung to her name and back. She sensed them all talking about her. Like that poor woman, that poor baby. Now she was that “strange” gal.

  Other than “Tell your mama I said ‘Hi,’” the last time Solemn talked to Stephanie Longwood was almost the last day Stephanie Longwood talked to her daughter Desiree. And Bev, too. They switched from friends to second thoughts. Grudges are unbecoming. If the mothers had ever ventured to talk in depth again, both would agree they both agreed to the extra bingo game. To exonerate the survivor. To keep it civil. To be fair.

  She wouldn’t force her daughter. No. Solemn was getting to be that age—when the funny ways and moods and pimples showed up. Boys. For a girl who should have been smelling herself long time ago (by the new standards), Solemn was doing good. Bev also had to keep in mind Landon was gone. Akila around, but not Solemn’s age.

  So, when Desi Longwood got front page of The Star-Herald (in a pink blouse and with her hair straightened), Bev didn’t mind Solemn slumping over burnt toast. And now, their friends (no one ever officially broke it) were on Channel 48 with Mississippi News Now: to talk of “The Miracle,” to praise God for good luck, to become local celebrities.

  Alice Taylor had told Red it was coming on. Red told Bev. Bev told Solemn. None of them had ever known anybody who made it onto television, the joke of living under blue sky of the place most folks only heard of because of its Oprah Winfrey. The interview was live, so the Imperial was gone. It would drive in soon. Bev sat with chilled morning coffee, in her robe, Red out looking for work, Solemn slumped in bed.

  “You have no memory of it?” the bouncy-bounce yellow-haired Barbie lady chirped.

  “No,” Solemn heard her friend’s voice say. “I was just walking, all by myself, back to my family. Then, I woke up in the hospital. My mother was there with me.”

  Solemn knew Mrs. Longwood’s voice: “We’re so blessed somebody helped her.”

  Somebody? Somebody? Her part cut out, her role erased, her stardom stolen.

  Somebody was mad.

  * * *

  Solemn moved her mind elsewhere. She invented enough alarms to skip out on school—“sick,” “the cat’s lost,” “my time of the month,” “cicadas kept me up all night”—to consult herself at the well on the matter the woman from the television expressed. The mission of a gone daughter kept her seated under the big top of soapboxes risen up that spring as vocally as the cicadas unbridled for the first time in thirteen years. Corkboard notices and barbershop speeches and flyers of Landon’s vocabulary, all by people who still carpooled and hitchhiked to town and Main and Catherine and Washington streets in hopes of government job postings after all: The Klan is the Taliban, Bush the Devil, I am hungry and I am homeless … can somebody please buy me some chicken?, Buy Black, Acupuncture and Reiki Specialist Got the Key, Black Boy Beat in Bledsoe.

  The cicadas, indicted for every flat hairdo or stubbed toe or sudden layoff or sparse milking or stumbling hen, were Solemn’s cover to whisk away and reflect on the fading “Have You Seen Pearletta?” movement … going, going, gone. She wanted to see Pearletta again, tried to, in every black woman coming her way or going her own. She felt empowered to make her materialize. Yet Viola Weathers slipped off of the television the way her daughter seemed to slip off the face of the earth, with only a few flyers spotted around. The world had yet to invent a way to find a Pearletta Hassle, even if it wanted to.

  Solemn had a mind to make an offering, to the well. She was a teenager now, too old for the Barbies. She wished everybody would stop wrapping them up for her. Didn’t they know she knew the size of the box by now? Three months to the day after the Festival, Solemn marched past the steep and the Longwoods’ with a whole satchel of them—naked they were. She even decided to sacrifice all the change she had; the grown folks always declined her offer to trade the matching bills for it. She trained herself not to look in the direction of the Longwoods. She could smell the peaches already. The well was replenished, somehow. She looked into the pit of it, but it was too far down inside and too gray outside for her to see her face. Solemn plopped the dolls down one by one. Seven in total. Then, she tossed the coins in with one dump. She breathed her wish on top of the melody the coins made, for her to solve a crime and help the woman on TV and to sit on television herself now to talk about how she did it. A savior, on top of a singer. Mighty fine. If the doll’s miniature noses and toes pointed up to the top in time, then her wishes had been heard. She would think about it, all of it, from now, so the clues would arise. In time, somebody else caught up to her. Or she to them. No matter.

  SIXTEEN

  Akila flicked the Herald-Star newspaper cutout back and forth in her left hand, newly decorated with a tiny discount stone Landon produced two hundred fifty dollars for at Walmart. Akila mailed off three bills—now to Fort Campbell in Kentucky—sealed in an envelope with the ultimatum scribbled inside. Too mouthy and inexperienced to be deployed, Landon would be home again for a few days in summer. Her window of opportunity was tight. Akila tapped her feet at the cement driveway under her and Solemn at the small picnic stand, with a few covered park benches for Mississippi visitors and travelers. They were at the logged Holly Hill rest stop, milepost 154 down Natchez Trace Parkway, at least an hour from where she was supposed to be. This late morning, Akila was supposed to run around in her mother’s borrowed car only to shop for a wedding dress—white lace, though the family
preacher who agreed to officiate faintly warned cream silk was least offensive for her circumstance. Solemn negotiated a price for her assistance: a nifty five dollars for half a day or ten dollars for an entire. This would bring her moving fund to three hundred dollars, Solemn confided to Akila. “To where?” Akila asked, and then said, “Never mind.”

  Viola and Edward Weathers took out ads in the major local newspapers, to plead to the public for information concerning Pearletta’s disappearance. A more thorough portrait of her to leave behind than a crazed husband, baby in a well, and cheap motels. As it came clearer Pearletta Hassle really was a good girl set up a little better than the rest, there was rejuvenated interest in answers. This repositioning struck Akila as funny: no acceptance of fate or bad luck. These people expected a better image than that. They were discontent to sit down.

  Akila thought, perhaps she could have something to offer to the mystery and debate. She did not quite understand Landon’s enemies. They were so vague and bland. Nothing new about whites. She was unsure how the drying or dried oil fields scattered up the Mississippi related to a war she was told her country was in, or even where Afghanistan and any of the other sand-dusty places were on a map of the world. But here she could understand the need for answers to a daughter’s disappearance. Perhaps murder. She would not remain silent. She would open her mouth. She would declare total anonymity for any information she provided, though a reward would be nice. It could start them on their own house. Maybe even sweepstake a real honeymoon. She wanted all that but could not afford it; maybe her help could be a way closer to it all.

  A few weeks after the Festival on Easter Sunday, a patient night librarian at Warsaw Community Public Library let Akila into the microfilm space on a Monday it stayed open until eight. Akila wasn’t keen on computers and the Web. She would do it how she had done things in school. There, she searched for the last name “Singer” with “trailer park” in the local papers, public records, county phone books, and genealogy maps. A speck of hope skid across Vicksburg. There, a Richard Singer oversaw a real estate operation of local apartments and storefronts. His main office was in the town’s square, according to the address and the maps. A sweating glass bottle of pop was paperweight for a map Akila had only learned to read the week before. Then, she picked up the newspaper to read aloud: “‘Pearletta Hassle is the daughter of Viola and Edward Weathers of Jackson, Mississippi. She attended Oakwood Academy in Huntsville, Alabama, for her business degree. She is twenty-eight years old. She has an older brother, Edward, and his wife, Shelia. And her nephew, Edward the Third. And a younger sister, Patricia, a freshman at Oakwood. Here is a family picture of them all together. If you have any information, you may call—”