Synopsis | Reviews | Excerpt
Dove, Molly, Little Ellis and Crystal are
runaways with nowhere to turn and no one they can trust until they arrive at a
secret sanctuary called Swan Place, where they are taken under wing by a
remarkable group of women.
Augusta Trobaugh is the author of acclaimed southern novels
including Music From Beyond the Moon
,The Tea-Olive Bird Watching Society
, Sophie and the Rising Sun
, Resting
in the Bosom of the Lamb
, and Praise Jerusalem!
"[Augusta Trobaugh] streamlines her rich
Southern style and creates a narrative as delicate as a line drawing" -- USA
Today
"Both inspirational and down-to-earth.” --Publishers Weekly
"The powers of religion, family, and love work
together to combat racism while offering hope.” -- Library Journal
"A touching story of people finding sanctuary
and kindness in unlikely places when they need it most.” -- Booklist
Prologue
Every
spring, I watch for the first tender assurances of the earth being born all
over again—a particular, fragrant sweetness in the air, the green mist of newly
sprouting leaves, a veil of dew on the grass early in the mornings, and the
savage, melodious songs of young mockingbirds staking out their territories.
And I am always drawn back to one particular spring, starting on an Easter
Sunday morning when I was only fourteen years old, when I finally started
becoming the woman I was destined to become—when I arrived, after a long
year of losing and gaining all the strong women who became grafted into my
being forever. A year of learning what it meant to get on with living,
as Aunt Bett always said. But also of discovering that I had a secret place
deep inside that was filled with the strength and love that came from that
terrible and wonderful year. A year when I lost almost everything I had to
lose—but when I finally came to realize that no howling storm of life buffeting
me would ever be as ferocious as the throbbing breath of resolve deep inside,
leading me, at last, to the song I was created to sing.
Chapter One
I
was dreaming about Mama as that year started, and in my dream she was dancing
all around the living room with her favorite honky-tonk music turned up just as
loud as it would go. She was wearing her spangle dress and high heels, laughing
and jiggling her head, so that her all-over little golden curls went to
dancing, too, and the sequins on her dress sparkling and the rhinestones in her
dangle earrings just shining! In my dream, I was clapping my hands to the music
and laughing with her, while she danced and danced and danced. Then, a little
something or other seemed to happen in the music—a sound that was high, like
somebody whistling. And another sound—a fluttering sound, so soft.
Mama
must have heard it too, in my dream, because she stopped dancing for a little
moment, and then she looked right at me with her eyes all blue and shining.
"Listen,
sugar! He’s singing for you!”
The
honky-tonk music started fading away, and so did Mama, until all that was left
of the dream was that high sound and the soft fluttering, them no longer in the
dream but outside of it. Outside of my window. Then I knew the coolness of the
pillowcase against my cheek.
Somewhere,
a mockingbird was singing the most wobbly little song I ever heard. Why, it
wasn’t even dawn yet, maybe not even close to it, that’s how dark it was
outside. But still the mockingbird sang. He must have been in the big
chinaberry tree in the yard, singing his heart out into the darkness. And the
soft fluttering sound was a big moth on my window screen, trying so hard to get
inside to where the night-light was glowing.
I
turned over onto my back and watched the dark ceiling and listened to the soft
puppy-squeak breathing coming from Molly and Little Ellis—my little sister and
brother—where they slept together in the bed across the room, and to the
crooked notes from the mockingbird. I guess he must have gotten awake too
early, just like me. Maybe that’s why his song was all wobbly and
timid-sounding, like he wasn’t sure if it was time to sing. Not so early. Not
before daylight.
I
knew what Mama would have said if she could have heard that mockingbird singing
away in the dark. She would have said he was real young and hadn’t quite
learned his song yet. And in the center of the dark ceiling, I could see my
mama’s pretty face, smiling down at me.
The
moth fluttered against the screen again, Molly murmured in her sleep, the bird
kept on singing, and Mama smiled at me from the ceiling, so that it all came
together and made a music of its very own. I tried so hard to hold on to it,
because I wanted to stay that way forever and ever, with Mama so pretty and
happy. But no matter how hard I tried to keep it all, I felt it just drain
away, so slow-like—and what was real took its place: Mama couldn’t dance
anymore, couldn’t even remember how to smile. Her just a little, wasted person
not much bigger than me, sitting so still and quiet in the corner of the couch,
all drawn up and inside of herself, not seeing or hearing us, looking at
nothing, and wearing a blue scarf on her head. Under the scarf, no blond curls
anymore.
When
Mama first started getting sick, Roy-Ellis—my stepdaddy—told me she was going
to be all right. But she just got sicker and sicker—until finally she was so
bad off that Roy-Ellis had to take her to the hospital, down in Louisville. He
stayed there with her as much as he could, had stayed almost all day long the
day before—Saturday—but then he came home late in the afternoon, just
after I’d fixed Molly and Little Ellis their supper of grilled cheese
sandwiches and saltine crackers and applesauce. When I heard Roy-Ellis coming
up the steps to the front porch, I thought at first that Mama must be getting
better, because he was singing "In Your Easter Bonnet,” and he came into the
kitchen carrying a big paper sack and smiling. I started to ask him about Mama,
but when I looked at him, there was something in his eyes that stopped me. So
instead, I said to Little Ellis and Molly, "You all eat your sandwiches before
they get cold. Roy-Ellis, you want me to fix you a grilled cheese?”
"No
honey. Thanks. I just wanta show you all what I’ve brought you, though.” He
started taking things out of the sack: three cartons of eggs from the A & P
down at Louisville and a little box with Easter egg coloring tablets in it and
some cardboard punch‑out bunnies and chickens, for the eggs to sit in and look
pretty and some paper decals to stick on the eggs. After Little Ellis and Molly
finished their supper, Roy-Ellis set about helping us to make colored eggs. He
burned his fingers pretty bad on the pot of boiling water but made himself say
"Shoot!” instead of what he usually said. And he didn’t fuss one little bit
when Little Ellis almost spilled the whole cup full of purple dye, just trying
to see it real good. But he gritted his teeth when all the little paper decals
stuck to our fingers instead of on the eggs.
I
knew how hard all that was on Roy-Ellis, because he really didn’t like fooling
around with us kids very much, not even Little Ellis, who was his very own
child, and so I figured either Mama was lots better, and he was happy about
that, or else he was trying to do something nice for us because Mama was so
sick. So I just went along with what Roy-Ellis wanted to do, because maybe I
really didn’t want to know why he was trying so hard.
Roy-Ellis
let me and Little Ellis help him color some pretty eggs that evening, but
Molly, who was only a year and a half older than Little Ellis, wouldn’t color
herself a single egg. She just got up from the table and stood back against the
sink and watched us with eyes that looked like they were on fire, sucking her
thumb the way she always did, with the thumb deep inside her mouth, her index
finger curled around her nose, and her soft, baby-mouth in a pout.
"Come
on, sugar,” Roy-Ellis coaxed her. "Come on over here and color you some pretty
eggs.” But she just stood there and watched us the whole time, with those
storm-cloud eyes of hers. Oh, I’d seen that look plenty of times before,
especially when Mama would finally get out of the bed Sunday afternoon and walk
barefooted into the kitchen, still wearing her spangle dress and with mascara
shadows under her eyes.
Back
then—before Mama got sick—she and Roy-Ellis almost always had their Saturday
night fun at a big roadhouse called Across the Line, because it was just across
the Beamer County line. The county we lived in was what they called a dry
county, on account of nobody being able to buy beer in it, so they went to
Across the Line almost every single Saturday night. After Mama got all dressed
up in one of her spangle dresses—just like the dress she had been wearing in my
dream—she and Roy-Ellis would go honky‑tonking; that’s what they called it. And
she always looked just like a movie star, with her hair silver‑blond and in all‑over
curls and dangle earrings that sparkled when she moved her head and with her
makeup done so nice—even down to a little dot of eyebrow pencil right beside
her bright-red lips. A beauty mark—that’s what she said it was.
Roy-Ellis
could look right nice himself on Saturday nights, especially after he’d had a
good bath and combed his wet hair and then settled his cowboy hat on his head
just right. Mama always had a pair of freshly ironed jeans for him to wear and
a clean shirt. But it was the cowboy hat and the boots that sure made him look
so special.
I
didn’t mind being left alone to take care of Molly and Little Ellis one little
bit, because if honky-tonking made Mama and Roy-Ellis that happy, then I wanted
them to have it. Even when they came home real late, they would still be happy
as could be and having the best time. Mama always laughed when Roy-Ellis
tripped on that broken front step and almost fell down and said bad words and
then shouted, "Gotta fix that bugger, one of these days!” And Mama would shush
him and laugh some more and then go back to singing a jukebox song real soft‑like
under her breath.
"Come
on, baby,” she’d say. "Mama’s gonna help you.”
But
on Sundays—usually in the early afternoon, when us children had gotten back
from going to church with Aunt Bett—when Mama would finally get out of bed and
come into the kitchen, Molly would stare at her like maybe she’d caught Mama
doing something really bad.
"Don’t
you go giving me that Sunday School‑teacher look, missy,” Mama would say while
she lit a cigarette with shaky hands. "I got a right to have me a little fun
once in a while. And Roy-Ellis, too.”
I
thought so too—what with her working all day long every day in that little air‑conditioned
room Roy-Ellis fixed up for her on part of our back porch, cutting ladies’ hair
and giving them permanents and sometimes putting lots of little shiny strips of
aluminum foil in their hair. But I didn’t know what that was for. And Roy-Ellis
needed some fun too—after a long week of driving that truck loaded with crates
of live chickens back and forth, back and forth to the poultry processing plant
and him coming home haggard‑looking and smelling of chicken feathers and fear
and saying to Mama, "Don’t you never put a piece of chicken on this table when
I’m sitting down to it. You hear me?”
And
Mama saying, "Yeah, I hear you, honey.”
The
only person besides Molly who thought Mama and Roy-Ellis’s honky-tonking was
bad was Aunt Bett. She and Mama fussed about that lots of times, with Mama
telling Aunt Bett she had a right to live her own life any way she wanted to,
and with Aunt Bett crying and saying Mama and Roy-Ellis were gonna burn in
everlasting hellfire if they didn’t mend their ways.
Because
it wasn’t just the beer-drinking that bothered Aunt Bett. What she really hated
was that neither one of them would... or
could... wake up on Sunday mornings early enough to take us
to church. I asked Aunt Bett about that one time. Asked her why Roy-Ellis and
Mama didn’t like to go to church. She clamped her teeth together and mumbled
something about Mama and Roy-Ellis simply not being churchgoing folks. But it
was hard for her to say something that easy-sounding, so she added, "I’ll just
keep praying for them.”
But
she did lots more than just praying for Mama and Roy-Ellis—she took it on
herself to raise us right. She said that maybe she couldn’t do a
solitary thing to stop all that honky-tonking Mama and Roy-Ellis did, but she
could certainly take us to church with her every single Sunday, so we would
grow up knowing the difference between right and wrong. So every Sunday
morning, she drove up in front of our house and honked her horn, and we
children would go running out and crowd ourselves into the backseat, in and
among all our damp, clean, soapy-smelling cousins for the ride to church.
But
Easter Sunday was always the best of all, with everything feeling all
squeaky-clean, or something like that, and us children being so proud in the
pretty clothes Aunt Bett always brought over for us the day before, and the
church with all that sunlight streaming in through the windows and the voices
singing, "Up from the grave He arose!” And then, "Hallelujah! Christ arose!”
Made
me think that any minute, Christ Jesus Himself, raised up from the dead,was going to come bursting in through the swinging doors at the back of the
church, making them go bang! And He’d have strong, brown arms and
beautiful eyes and white teeth, and He would grin and wave at us all with those
big carpenter’s hands and stride mightily right down the aisle to the altar,
and we all would jump up and down in the pews, whooping and hollering and
clapping and cheering for Him. Why, it gave me goose bumps, just to think of
it!
So
on that early Easter Sunday morning when Mama was sick in the hospital, I
thought that maybe things would be okay, after all. Because even though I
couldn’t see much in the dark room, I knew that our Easter clothes were hanging
on the back of the door. Carefully mended, washed and ironed dresses for me and
Molly—dresses that were of sizes in-between Aunt Bett’s own girls—and short
pants and a white shirt for Little Ellis, from in-between the sizes of Aunt
Bett’s boys.
I’d
been careful to say thank you to Aunt Bett when she brought over this Easter’s
clothes for us—mostly to show her that Mama had raised me right, even if
she didn’t take us to church. But Aunt Bett just waved the back side of her
hand at me like she always did, and then she got in her car and drove away,
still shaking her head. That’s the way Aunt Bett always did, every single time
she stopped by our house, especially after Mama had to go to the hospital.
She’d come by with a big bowl of potato salad or some extra cornbread she’d made
for us—or else with in-between clothes and shoes she thought we could use, and
she always ended up looking around the kitchen and the living room, rolling her
eyes and clucking her tongue at the way me and Roy-Ellis were doing things.
Then she’d heave a big old sigh and roll up her sleeves and wash up the sink
full of dirty dishes and pick up the empty SpaghettiOs can and look at me like
I’d done something wrong because I’d heated that up and fed it to Molly and
Little Ellis for their lunch, and in general do a lot of things to help us
out—but she always ended up shaking her head and clucking her tongue and
rolling her eyes again, before she said, "Well, I got family of my own to tend
to, so I better be getting on back home.” That’s what she always said. But her
heart was in the right place. I know that for sure. And whenever Roy-Ellis was
home when Aunt Bett came, they would go into the kitchen and shut the door and
talk real low for a long time. Sometimes, if Molly and Little Ellis were
watching cartoons in the living room or already in bed, I stood real quiet
outside the kitchen door, trying to hear whatever they were saying. But I never
could make out any of it. Except that they sounded worried. That much I could
tell.
So
maybe that’s why I wasn’t really much surprised when, on that Easter Sunday
morning, the loud ringing of the telephone broke the silence of the dark living
room just beyond my door. Because a phone ringing so early always means that
something is wrong, somewhere. And for our house, it could only mean that
something had happened to Mama.
My
heart started thudding in my chest like a squirrel trying to get out of a cage.
Then
the phone rang again, and it sounded even louder.
No!I was thinking. No!
I
heard Roy-Ellis groan and roll out of bed.
No!
Don’t answer it!
But
I could hear him stumbling across his and Mama’s room and bumping his shoulder
hard on the door frame as he came out. It rang again, and I felt as if all the
breath had gone out of my body. No! Please don’t answer it! If you don’t answer
it, Mama will be fine, like in my dream!
But
then the light in the living room went on, and I could see a little sliver of
the light coming under my door.
"Hello,”
Roy-Ellis said in a rough‑sounding voice. Maybe because of his shoulder hurting
him. I held my breath.
"Yeah,
this is him.”
Then
silence. A very long silence.
I
could hear Roy-Ellis breathing, because my cot was right up against the wall
between the bedroom and the living room. Finally, he said, "She did?” And he
sounded almost like Little Ellis, the way his voice tilted up in such a sad
way. I felt my heart split in two, right inside my chest!
"When?”
Mama!
Another
long silence.
Then,
"Yes. I’ll take care of it.”
The
sound of the receiver clicking back into its place and after that, no sound at
all. So I could hear what the silence said: Mama was gone! I
heard Roy-Ellis pick the receiver up again and dial. Then his voice was husky
when he said, "Bett? I’m afraid it’s bad news.” A long pause, then, "Yeah.” I
shut my eyes tight and stayed just as still as could be, believing with all my
heart that if I moved so much as my little finger, my cot would tilt, the whole
world would tilt, and I’d fall out of bed and down into some deep, dark far‑away
place—wherever my mama was, all cold and dead.
Mama!
Then
it almost seemed that my cot dropped away from under me, and I was floating up
in the air, high above our little gray house and the other ones just like it,
all lined up along the silent street, like little shaggy gray ponies waiting
for a race to start and falling asleep while they were waiting. And I could
look down on the big chinaberry tree in our yard, where the mockingbird curled
his toes around a twig and sang his baby‑song into the darkness. Slowly I
floated back down onto my cot, inside the blue‑papered walls of the room in the
little gray house, where nothing was ever going to be the same again.
I
heard Roy-Ellis hang up the phone and go along the hallway, into the kitchen,
where the table was still covered with old, rainbow-colored newspapers and the
thick white cups holding all those Easter egg colors—purple and blue, yellow
and red, green and orange. And in the refrigerator were the three egg cartons
holding all those pretty eggs we were supposed to hunt for in the tall grass in
the backyard that afternoon. Only now, Mama was gone. And right then and
there—in a way I’ll never understand—I knew that my path had just split in two again,
that it had split with that very first ring of the telephone. Just like it
split for the first time when my daddy—my real daddy, that is—ran off and left
me and Mama when some blond-headed lady in the office of the construction
company where he worked asked him if he would drive her to California, and he
did. And he never came back.
Maybe
I could understand how he could leave me, because I was skinny and
covered in freckles. I had wild-looking red hair, and my teeth were way too big
for my face. But how could he leave Mama, and her so pretty and sweet—and her
expecting a little baby any day, a baby that would be Molly, my little sister?
That was the first time my path split, and Mama cried on Aunt Bett’s shoulder
and said she didn’t know how we would be able to get along without him—without
a paycheck coming in. So I decided I would stop loving him, right then and
there. It really wasn’t hard, and it made me feel better right away. Now, Mama
had gone off and left me and Molly and Little Ellis, and if I could only stop
loving her too, maybe I wouldn’t hurt so bad.
But
then I thought about Mama not going off and leaving me because she wanted to,
like my daddy did. So, lying there in the darkness, I figured that I would
always love my mama, but that from then on—from that very minute—I wasn’t going
to love anybody else in the whole world, not ever again. Because if I didn’t
love anybody, I wouldn’t have to hurt so bad.
I
heard Roy-Ellis come back into the living room, and his footsteps stopped right
outside the door to our room. The knob turned, the door opened, and his voice
came over me like a wave, like how I feel when I’m going to be sick at my
stomach.
"Dove,
honey? You awake?”
"I’m
awake.”
"Well,
come on out here and let me talk to you a little bit,” he said.
I
threw back the covers and sat up, expecting my cot to tilt. But it didn’t, and
I went out into the living room where Roy-Ellis was sitting on the couch with
his head in his hands.
"You
don’t have to tell me, Roy-Ellis,” I whispered. "I already know.” My voice
tried to catch, but I wouldn’t let it.
"Let’s
not say anything around the little ones just yet,” Roy-Ellis said, and he
didn’t look at me. Just cleared his throat, got up, and flicked the switch to
turn on the porch light. So I figured Aunt Bett was on her way. We sat there
without speaking, both of us looking mostly at the floor. Almost like we didn’t
know each other. I glanced at him once, and he looked so bad, I almost felt
like I should say something to try and comfort him. But I didn’t.
I
don’t care how bad you look, I thought. I won’t love you. I won’t
love anybody.
Aunt
Bett finally came, and she looked all pale and shaky. She and Roy-Ellis locked
eyes, and then they both looked at me.
"Dove
knows,” Roy-Ellis whispered to Aunt Bett, and then he motioned his head toward
the kitchen. Aunt Bett hesitated.
"Why
don’t you go on back to bed for a little while, Dove,” Aunt Bett said.
"Roy-Ellis and me got some things we got to talk about.” So they went into the
kitchen and shut the door. But I didn’t want to go back into the bedroom,
because I was afraid I’d see my mama’s face smiling down at me from the
ceiling, so I turned off the porch light and went out and sat in the swing on
the dark porch and listened to that little mockingbird singing his crooked
song.
