Playing by the Rules: A Novel (23 page)

Now that Ruby Rose had talked Miss Sadie into letting her play her original song, “Killing Me Softly With His Song” by
Roberta Flack, she was reminded there were only a few months left before the Annual County Fair. While she had plenty of time to practice her solo, and was looking forward to her first public performance, she also knew the Fair benchmarked when she and Jeremiah would be leaving Lemon City for good. There was a bittersweet taste in her mouth as if her saliva had turned to acid, forming the knot that resulted in her stomach. She loved her new Lemon City family. It was the best family she’d ever had, and she thought Jeremiah couldn’t have picked a better place to make their home.

A blue haze hovered over the mountains like a halo. The craggy ridges, giant boulders, and high peaks appeared to form a steep staircase that reached from the ground to the sky. The flowers in late May created a colorful mix. It was the only time of year when it seemed the rainbows left the sky and spread themselves across the earth.

Nana looked up from her wide-brimmed straw hat, happy that the thin layer of clouds protected her from the sun. The weather conditions made working in her garden all afternoon more bearable, and she listened to the news on the National Black Network radio station to keep her company. Pruning her plants, inspecting them for bugs, adding fertilizer, and watering her prized possessions took hours. As a result of her labor, her back began to hurt. She stood up for a while to work out the pain that made her feel like an old accordion being stretched beyond its reach. The men were playing chess on the porch and every now and then, Nana would hear them raising their voices, bragging about who made the best move and teasing the one who made the worse. Grand
daddy, Clement, and Bootsie were listening to the National Black Network radio station too, which made the front and backyards at the Dunlap house sound like stereo.

In contrast, Ole Miss Johnson was listening to the blues. And the two different radios playing in such close proximity blended like plaids combined with bold prints in the same outfit. The noise was hard on the ears, and Nana wished her neighbor would turn down the music. Big Mama Thornton was belting out “Hound Dog,” a tune that she originated long before Elvis knew what a hound dog was, which was competing with the National Black Network trying to tell people about Hank Aaron tying Babe Ruth’s record. As much as Nana loved Big Mama, it was Hank who deserved to take center stage now. Nana increased the sound on her radio to hear the details of how Aaron, on his first swing in the first inning of the first game of his twenty-first big-league season, had just made baseball history by beating Babe Ruth’s thirty-eight-year-old home-run record. Granddaddy, Clement, and Bootsie, in the middle of their chess game, started hootin’ and hollerin’ and carryin’ on at the much anticipated sports history– making news. Ole Miss Johnson turned up her blues station even more to drown out their joyous outbursts, which prevented Nana from hearing any further elaboration on Hank Aaron’s tie-breaking game and what it meant for the Atlanta Braves.

Angered by her neighbor’s meanness, Nana put down her watering hose and started heading toward the fence. Just as she was about to give the woman a piece of what was on her mind, another special news bulletin came across the airwaves and removed all her hostility. Because she was hearing the emergency report coming from both backyards, it seemed as if it were being broadcast over a public address system and she and Ole Miss Johnson were forced to listen to the same information at the same time. As the ladies had their radio programs interrupted for a local news
flash, they stopped what they were doing to pay close attention. The announcer delivered the heartbreaking news that the great Duke Ellington, leader of the big-band swing era, had died. Both ladies stood frozen in place, staring at their radio as if it had told them a lie. They were truly numbed by the news, in a state of shock. In an instant, the one thing they had in common—the memory of their youth—flashed across their minds simultaneously as they went back in time to formal dances with their husbands, wild house and rent parties, loud juke joints, jumping jamborees, and swing. Dancing all night with finger-popping, showboating daddies until the crack of dawn and sleeping half the day on Saturday and still getting up fresh and going to church Sunday morning. Having shared all those images as if they were adjoined to the same memory, for that brief moment, the unimaginable and unthinkable occurred and the ladies temporarily put their differences aside and wrapped their arms around each other to console one another over the death of the good times. After weeping considerably over their mutual loss, Nana was the first to stop sobbing and speak.

“Sophisticated Lady,” she said, with tears in her eyes, arms still wrapped around her neighbor.

“‘A’ Train,” said Ole Miss Johnson, sobbing into Nana’s shoulder.

“Satin Doll,” said Nana, wiping away a tear.

“Mood Indigo,” said Ole Miss Johnson, raising her eyebrow, peeking up from Nana’s shoulder with suspicion, wondering if her neighbor was trying to compete in a version of “Name That Tune” with the titles of the Duke Ellington’s songs.

“Black, Brown and Beige,” said Nana.

“Solitude!” shouted Ole Miss Johnson, and the temporary friendship spell was broken.

Nana quickly withdrew from the clutches of her neighbor
when something red and round the size of a softball caught her eye. Suddenly, clusters of the large red objects appeared in her neighbor’s garden in full focus and clear view. Nana was absolutely appalled at the sight.

“Lurleen, how’d you get those tomatoes to grow that big so fast?” she asked. “You started plantin’ the same time as me.”

“Never you mind.”

“There’s something wrong here.”

“I didn’t break any guidelines or any rules,” said Ole Miss Johnson in her defense.

“That’s alright,” said Nana. “The bigger they get, the faster they’ll fall off and die and won’t none of them giant behemoths be able to roll their way to the fair.”

“This is just a test.” Ole Miss Johnson had a sheepish grin. “Besides, that’s my business. I know what I’m doing is all. I got the talent. I got the touch.”

“Touch, schmuch. You cheated. That ain’t right. You’re up to something and it ain’t anything good.” Nana stared at her neighbor’s gigantic tomatoes. Then she put it all together and came up with a theory. “You used that root doctor, didn’t ya?” she asked, not expecting to get back the truth.

“You better back out of my yard the same way you came in.” Ole Miss Johnson threatened Nana with her fist.

Nana went to her side of the fence and mumbled words underneath her breath because it was against her religion to say them out loud. She’d have to talk to someone at the Town Council about this freakish incident to get that dishonest wench disqualified from the competition. But at the moment, Nana couldn’t think of how she could prove her neighbor’s wrongdoing. Then her anger turned toward the Outsider. How could Jeremiah have given Ole Miss Johnson such an unfair advantage with those gargantuan tomatoes? After all she had done for him and his sister,
how could he return her gratitude with a stab in the back? If she had any sense, she’d make the Outsider leave before the Annual County Fair. The only thing that stopped her was plain and simple, like a base stitch on a Butterick dress pattern—the fact that she really liked Ruby Rose.

Nana was so furious over what had happened that day that at night when she tried to sleep, she couldn’t. She was so upset about her neighbor’s humongous tomatoes that she felt like a valve with a cap that needed to open to release the steam and take off the pressure. After tossing and turning for about an hour, waiting for the discomfort to go away, she finally began to drift into slumber. The next thing she knew she was hearing the barking sounds of bloodhounds in the distance. As the paisley-print wallpaper in her bedroom faded and was replaced with an open, cold steel-gray sky, she saw the pregnant slave woman return to her dream.

The woman’s stomach had grown with child, and she was giving birth in the underbrush alongside a river. She pushed and pushed and screamed a silent scream, and the baby slid out onto the soft mud. She held it up and saw that it was a boy and wrapped him in her old tattered jacket. Then, holding him close, she waded across the river. The water was cold and the currents were rough. She lifted him over her head so he wouldn’t get wet. As she pushed her legs through the density, her son suddenly became heavy. When she looked up, she found that he had grown. She was carrying a boy-child in her hands and it startled her, and she let go of him and dropped him in the river. Realizing what she had done, she frantically pushed back the currents until she found his hand. He didn’t choke or gag; no water appeared to have gotten into his lungs. She was surprised by how untouched he was by the rushing water, and it frightened her. As soon as they reached the other side of the river and collapsed on the riverbank, she looked at her son to make sure he was okay and she saw that he
had grown again. This time, he had turned into a teen, and she stared at him, terrified and confused. The howls of the bloodhounds were getting louder as they closed in, and she reached for her son’s hand to run. As she turned her head to look down the river, she saw it coming, but it was too late. It was something more frightening than any hound. A giant tidal wave was heading their way, about to sweep over them. Stretching out her arm to her son, she desperately tried to save him, but by now he had changed into a grown man and didn’t want her help; he could save himself, and he waved good-bye. The slave woman who had crossed the river and was now free and her born-free son were separated. They both vanished into the engulfing waters.

Nana sat up in bed gagging and choking and Granddaddy woke up, turned on the light, and patted her hard on the back. She grabbed the glass that she usually kept on her night table, but when she recognized the water, she put the glass back down and began to cry.

“Woman, what’s wrong with you?” Granddaddy sat up in bed, annoyed that his sleep had been disturbed. “I thought you told me you were done with all your life changes.”

“I had a dream. It was awful. It seemed so real. There was this slave woman and her baby.” Nana pulled a tissue from the box on her night table and dabbed the beads of sweat from her forehead.

“Please don’t tell me about it now. It’s three o’clock in the morning.”

“And the hounds were chasing her.” Nana moved the tissue to her neck to pat it dry.

“I don’t need the details right this minute,” Granddaddy reassured her. “You can wait until daylight to tell me the story.”

“And then the baby turned into a man.” Nana seemed more upset by this part than anything else.

“Calm down, now.”

“Oh, it was terrible,” Nana added.

“Go back to sleep.” Granddaddy turned off the light.

“I can’t,” Nana said in the dark. “I’m going downstairs to get something to eat.” She turned the light back on.

“Don’t eat at this hour. You’ll get heartburn and indigestion. Your stomach will back up on you, and you’ll wind up having nightmares all over again.” Granddaddy turned the light off. “Come on, now. Lay down here with me.” He saw that his wife didn’t know what to do, so he made the decision for her. He gently pulled her to him and she leaned back into his arms, rolling slowly like a giant tree falling to the ground. He tucked her head into the fold of his shoulder and massaged her temples and stroked the top of her head until her breathing became heavy and deep and she made little snoring sounds and he knew she was asleep.

The next day, Nana was still disturbed by her dream. While she was happy to be with friends and have the distraction of working on her quilt to help her to forget, her head became heavy and her eyes began to close.

“Ernestine. Wake up,” said Vernelle, sitting next to her white purse. “Didn’t you get a good night’s sleep last night?”

“I had that pregnant dream again,” said Nana, catching herself dozing. She tugged on the backing to make sure it was straight. “It woke me up in the middle of the night and I had a hard time getting my rest.”

“Why you keep dreaming about pregnant women?” asked Sadie, pushing her glasses to the top of her nose.

“It was the same one as before,” said Nana.

Sadie looked down at the fabric. “Are you sure Elvira’s not pregnant? ‘As you do not know the path of the wind or how the
body is formed in a mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the work of God the maker of all things.’ Ecclesiastes,” she added.

“If Elvira were pregnant, I’d be the second person to know,” replied Nana.

“‘Blessed are you among women and blessed is the child you will bear.’ That’s Luke,” added Vernelle.

“I assure you, I’m not the one pregnant. I don’t care how old Sarah was when she was carrying Isaac.”

“Maybe there’s something wrong with Ernestine’s stomach, like an ulcer,” Sadie said to Theola about Nana.

“Could be her appendix,” chimed in Vernelle. “Are you having any abdominal pains?”

“Maybe it’s nothing more than indigestion and gas,” added Sadie.