The Secret of Magic (11 page)

The squeak made her jump back, set her guilty heart racing.

Oh, God, they’ve seen me! Somebody’s letting out the dogs!

She’d heard all about Southerners and their dogs. It seemed every lawyer in the Fund came back north with a story.

But then there came another squeak. Followed quickly by another. A chattering, really, and something in their spiky repetition made her calm down, let her catch sight of the mailbox.

At least Regina thought the noise was coming from the mailbox, but there was a lot of it for such a small space. Close now, right up on it, she bent down. And looked squarely into the eyes of a bluebird. At least she
thought
it was a bluebird—she was from the city, she couldn’t be sure—surrounded by his family of bluebirds, staring at her as she was staring at them, and showing absolutely no signs of fright or intimidation. Instead, they chattered on, angry and insistent, acting like she was the intruder and they were the
owners
of the mailbox they found themselves in.

Must be white bluebirds,
she thought. But at least they weren’t dogs.

She wondered how long they’d been there and how the Calhoun household got its mail, since the birds seemed so irritably territorial. Her answer was tied to a string that ran down and ended at a red-painted aluminum lunch bucket that had one word,
MAIL
, scripted out in bright yellow crayon on its side. Regina recognized the flourish of M. P. Calhoun’s perfect Palmer penmanship hand.

What must she be like—a woman who would put together something like this, go to this much trouble for a bird? Regina had heard almost as many horror stories about Southern women—how sugary-sweet they could be, and how ornery—as she had heard about mean Southern dogs.

Willie Willie came from around the back of the house, and he was grinning. Regina wasn’t as reassured by this as she once might have been. She’d already found out Willie Willie could smile for strange reasons. Regina straightened up. And as she did, she caught a movement, and maybe a soft snuffle in the street shadows beyond the blue Buick. Something she’d missed. A donkey? Latched onto a wagon? Here in
town
?

She squinted closer but didn’t have time to tell because Willie Willie was saying, “Miss Mary Pickett is as ready to meet you as she’s ever gonna be. She said, ‘Good God! Fetch her on up to the back porch. I imagine I’ll have to figure out something.’” Again, the high lilt of his imitation. “She didn’t look happy.”

But Willie Willie
did
look happy, and suddenly his smile exploded into laughter. “You not been here no time, but already you managed to stir up some stuff.”

S
he’d always pictured M. P. Calhoun as an old man, round and kindly. Someone with a lap made for holding children. Someone who would fill them up with story after story.

The brittle reality: dressed in dark silk and what looked to be heirloom pearls, holding on to a cocktail glass with one hand and a lighted cigarette with the other, her hair turned rosy at its edges from the backlight of her door, and younger than what Regina had visualized. Forty years old. Tops.

“You are not at all what I expected,” said Mary Pickett Calhoun, “I imagine you already know that.”

“Yes,” began Regina, “but . . .”

“A deception. Is this how you all run things at that Negro Fund up there in New York?”

With the way Mary Pickett spoke, the precisely drawled clip of her words, Regina thought it best to shut up. If she opened her mouth, she could easily make things worse.

“Tomorrow,” snapped out the great author. “I’ll be sending you right back where you came from. First thing.”

They were standing at the back door, Mary Pickett squarely between Regina and whatever lay within.

All this was, quite frankly, a shock. But Regina knew it was a shock she’d best quickly get over. Standing on the back veranda steps, she was too far away to make out the color of Mary Pickett’s eyes, but she couldn’t miss the flash in them. If looks could kill, Regina knew she’d be a goner for certain.

“
And
I don’t see any sign of Thurgood Marshall.” Mary Pickett looked all around with wide-eyed exaggeration, even though Regina was fairly certain Willie Willie had already informed her that Thurgood was still in New York.

“He’s not with me. I am here by myself,” answered Regina.

“So it would appear.”

Regina had forgotten Willie Willie, but he spoke up from behind her now. “Miss Mary Pickett, I don’t think you been properly introduced. This here’s Miss Regina Mary Robichard. She was the R. M. Robichard in that telegram, just like you was the M. P. Calhoun in your book.”

They both turned to look at him, Regina with her mouth open, not knowing what to expect. This was Mississippi, after all, where Negroes were supposed to keep their mouths shut if they knew what was good for them. Anything could happen if they didn’t, most of it bad.

But if Mary Pickett was shocked, she didn’t show it. She swiveled back to Regina again, all business. “Willie Willie has said you may stay in his place. In the cottage. For the night.” She made a vague gesture toward something in the dark behind Regina’s left shoulder. “He pretty much lives out in Magnolia Forest now anyhow, don’t you, Willie Willie? He’s a nimrod, you know, way the best in Jefferson-Lee County. Hunting’s pretty much all he does nowadays.”

Mary Pickett looked out for a moment, and even though Regina could not see her eyes, she knew that they had sought out Willie Willie’s. She wondered what they were saying to him. She wondered what his eyes were answering back.

“The cottage will do for the night,” continued Miss Mary Pickett briskly. “He’ll take you over, get you settled. I imagine you’ve missed your supper. I’ll send out a sandwich and some milk. Tomorrow morning . . . Well, Dinetta brings out breakfast at eight. I’ll expect you to be prompt.”

“I will be,” said Regina, almost giddy with relief that she hadn’t been summarily carted off to the Queen City Hotel. She was still right here, right near Mary Pickett, and she had a whole night ahead of her to figure out how to stay put.

Without another word, Mary Pickett turned back to her house, banged the screen door shut behind her. There had been no sign of Jackson Blodgett, no mention of his name—and Regina had been looking and listening hard for him. But there was a movement now at the kitchen window. A strange flash of color, of bright red and of gold, that couldn’t
possibly
be him.

Regina said, “Smells like Miss Calhoun might be baking some kind of pie.”

“She don’t cook. You coming?” said Willie Willie. He’d pulled up a kerosene lamp from the side of the porch, lit it, held it high.

Regina turned, hurried down the stairs. She looked back at the window one last time, but the shade had been pulled down tight as a drum and the brilliant incandescence that had been at it and the smell of pie were both gone.

• • •

WILLIE WILLIE’S “COTTAGE”
turned out to be about twenty feet from the main house, partially hidden from it by trees and flowers that, in the darkness, were only vague, dark forms and rich scents. Regina doubted that, even in broad daylight, she could have named them anyway. Ahead of her, Willie Willie opened a door. He switched on a light.

Regina had immediately translated Mary Pickett’s “cottage” into “cabin,” some hardscrabble shelter left over from slavery days. And Willie Willie’s place was certainly simple. It just wasn’t as crude as she’d thought it would be. A couch, two chairs, an end table, a desk in a tidy cream-painted room. Maybe not much, but enough. A small bump led down to an attached kitchen; railed steps beside her lifted to something above.

A much nicer place than what she’d expected him to have. Indoor plumbing, even. She remembered the outhouses she’d seen on her way in.

“There’s sheets and towels in that shelf off the bathroom. Got my own refrigerator here, but it’s empty. Like Miss Mary Pickett said, she’ll be sending somebody over any minute with your supper. I’ll get your bags and carry them up.”

He had stood just inside the door and was out again before Regina could thank him. Strange, she thought, since this was his home. She’d imagine he’d want to look around, make sure everything was like he’d left it. But then again, she decided, maybe he already had, before he’d come to get her. Not that she spent much time thinking about Willie Willie. She had other things on her mind. Her feet were killing her and her girdle was itching; even the peacock feather on her hat was starting to droop. She blew at it, found a switch, turned on a light.

Once upstairs, she saw the bathroom door right away, a sly, wide-open gape leading to a Promised Land that just might include a tub. She kicked off her shoes, peeled off her gloves and her hat, all the time making straight for it. Thank God for indoor plumbing!

There was a tub. She went right to it, pulled back the plastic curtain . . . and screamed. At the biggest roach she’d ever seen in her life. Big as a mouse. In fact, heaven help her, it might actually
be
a mouse.

“Honey, ain’t nothing but a little ol’ palmetto bug. How can it hurt you?” From downstairs floated up a woman’s voice—deep rich, mellow as molasses—that was not Mary Pickett’s voice, and certainly not Willie Willie’s voice. “He’s more scared of you than you be of him. All you got to do is pick him up, put him out the window. That’s where he come from. That’s where he wants to go back.”

Pick him up? Put him out the window? By myself?

“Ma’am . . .” What was it Mary Pickett had called her? Dinetta? “Miss Dinetta . . .”

“Just go right on over to him. He’s not gonna bite. Pick him up! Let him go!” That woman again, and then the unmistakable click of a closing front door.

No help for it now; either that bug had to go or she did. Regina started looking around for anything, a roll of toilet paper, maybe—something to pick the bug up with and not touch it. The window was already open. She was grateful for that.

• • •

REGINA WOKE TO
a wild chirping of birds. At least she thought they were birds at first. It took a closed-eyed second for her to realize that what she heard was meowing, not chirping. Kittens. This noisy, this early? But at least they’d roused her.

She opened her eyes to bright sunlight in a strange room in a strange house in a strange place. Still, she recognized where she was right away, and what lay before her. Eyes wide open now, she jumped out of bed, found the luggage Willie Willie had left outside the door, and fished through it for her robe. Then she went looking around.

Willie Willie’s place consisted of two rooms, stacked one on top of the other, with a kitchen added on to the back of the downstairs and a tiny bathroom tacked up on top of that. Except for a few odd, threadbare pieces that had presumably been handed down from the big house—a dull gold damask couch, the curlicue iron bed, two red brocaded easy chairs—the rest of the furniture looked handmade. The rooms smelled cedarwood and Ivory soap and pitch pine, and neglect. All in order but covered in dust, as though Willie Willie had been gone from his house a lot longer than Mary Pickett had said.

Regina dressed, came downstairs, went over to the lace-curtained window. It was still bright and early, but across the way Calhoun Place was already a hive of activity. As she watched, Mary Pickett carried out toast holders and a big silver tray. Behind her, close as a shadow, marched a little black girl dressed up in a white uniform, red socks and scuffed shoes, holding tight on to a tray with two porcelain teapots, two cups, and two saucers.

“Could that be
Dinetta
?” wondered Regina, remembering the rich voice that had called up to her from this very same room last night. She couldn’t imagine that much power being forced out of such a little-girl body. Why, this child looked like she should still be in grammar school. Regina made up her mind to point this fact out to Mary Pickett as soon as she decently could.

Regina watched Mary Pickett poke out her lips, study the china, shake her head, take it back into the kitchen and bring back some more. She and Dinetta dragged out Chippendale chairs, put them across from each other at a large white wicker table. Slowly it started to dawn on Regina that all this preparation might be for her. If so, then Willie Willie had been right and her presence was going to be one continuous social quagmire for M. P. Calhoun, an unknown place where she’d have to carefully seek out traction and mind every new step.

Mary Pickett strode purposely in and out, got so sweaty from her exertions that the bun at the nape of her neck started to unravel. Curls of hair had broken loose and surrounded her face like little russet question marks. A few of them drooped down onto her shoulders—calling Regina’s attention to Mary Pickett’s cardigan sweater. It was a camel-colored cashmere with a row of exquisite pearl buttons. Probably bought, if recollection served Regina correctly, last season at Best. She knew this because she had one just like it. And she’d brought it with her.

Abandoning the window, she ran up the steep steps to the small room she had slept in, pulled out the sweater, put it on, checked herself in the mirror over the bathroom sink, walked back down the stairs, and on out the door. Her step, as she crossed the brick drive leading from the cottage to its big house, was springy.

She thought she looked a little better in the sweater than Mary Pickett did. What with her sensible shoes, her hair coming loose, a white lace blouse and her constant veranda-arranging, Miss Calhoun had started to come a little undone.

“Good morning,” Regina called out, waving.

“Good morning.” Mary Pickett’s eyes narrowed as she took in Regina—one long glance that stopped for a slow beat at the sweater—but all she said was, “Won’t you have a seat?”

Cool as a cucumber,
thought Regina, and she wondered if there was ever anything that might get through to this woman, anything that might shake her up. There didn’t seem to be, because after the seat, the novelist offered toast, tea, and a pregnant silence.

Regina didn’t mind. She hadn’t figured out what to say anyway, and she was content for the moment to just look around, get some bearings, and the first thing her eyes really lighted on was Mary Pickett herself. Why, behind all that sharp brittleness, she’s actually quite pretty. Huge doe eyes, thick, rich hair, skin as white and translucent as a good Minton china cup. The two of them were out on Miss Mary Pickett’s back veranda, the same one Regina had been led to the night before, and it was lovely. It had a green planked floor and a blue-painted ceiling that had been spotted over with bright, white cumulous clouds. Regina remembered, from reading Mary Pickett’s novel, that the green and the blue were supposed to confuse mosquitoes in summer and keep them away. Daddy Lemon had said this. Regina, in New York, had thought this only an illustration of the magic in the book, but, looking around her now, she decided this must be something in which M. P. Calhoun truly believed.

Finally, Mary Pickett said, “I trust you slept well.”

“Very nicely,” said Regina.

“I heard you had a little . . . visitor.” She looked down, but Regina didn’t miss a lip twitch that could only be glee.

“You mean that little ol’ palmetto bug? Why, he was nothing.”

Mary Pickett raised her eyes. They were a rich earth brown. “Really?” A long, slow drawl. “I imagine that’s what you made of him. Nothing. What’d you do . . . flush him down the drain?”

“Actually, I picked him up with a piece of cardboard and put him out the window. I thought that would be best. Not to kill him, I mean.”

“You can’t kill a palmetto bug, putting him down a drain,” Mary Pickett said with a smirk. “A flushing drain’s his natural habitation. How’d you like the cottage?”