Lena (11 page)

“He's a good man. I can tell by talking to him. All he's been through trying to find y'all. But if you girls don't like it, you know you can always come back to my house,” she said, her eyes getting all soft.

I tried to remember what I could about Marie's dad. He had never said much to me but he always let us come over on Saturdays to take baths and drink hot chocolate. When he saw Marie and me was getting to be friends, he left us alone. He loved Marie more than anything.

“Marie told me he was looking all over for us,” I said.

Miz Lily nodded. “He said he was worried sick—the idea of you two somewhere on the road. Said he wasn't going to stop looking until he found you, made sure you were safe. Made sure you had a home.”

I smiled and looked away from her—my throat getting tight. He had been worrying about
us.
Worried sick. That meant something.
Made sure you had a home.
He had said that. Once, Marie told me she caught her daddy sitting in the dark crying. He was staring at a picture of her mother. When she turned on the lights, he wiped his eyes real quick and looked away. Another time she said she had asked him about not liking white people and he said it was 'cause white people didn't like blacks. He'd said none of it's right, though. I bit my lip remembering something else—that one time Marie had said me and her daddy were alike 'cause we wanted people to just be able to be people. To just be able to live. And now here he was, making sure me and Dion had a home. A safe place
to live.

“I'm going to keep in touch,” Miz Lily was saying. “And you write and tell me how you are. I stuck a card with my address in each of your knapsacks. If you lose it, I'm listed. Lily Price.”

Dion went over to where she was standing by the counter and hugged her, her hands still dripping with dishwater.

 

“You're good,” Dion whispered.

Miz Lily smiled. “We all got our skeletons, honey. Next person walking down the street might not think I'm as good as you do. My daughter could probably tell you a hundred stories about why I wasn't a good mother. I've done my share of right and wrong.”

“You're good to us,” I said.

“Then that's what matters, isn't it?”

Me and Dion nodded.

 

“Oh my stars,” she said when they pulled away from each other. “Let me go get my camera.”

She climbed upstairs slowly, then came back down a little while later with a Polaroid and made me and Dion stand out on the porch. We stood with our arms around each other's shoulders smiling into the bright sunlight.

“I'm gonna buy a nice frame when I leave work tomorrow and put it right up there on the mantelpiece with my other pictures.”

 

 

We didn't talk much on the drive to the airport. Dion could barely sit still and I had to bite my lip to stop imagining that plane going up into the air.

But I was thinking about Chauncey too. Seemed my mind was racing my body to get there. I'd never spent the night at Marie's house but I still knew every nook and cranny of that place. Some Saturdays we'd just go from room to room, Marie telling me everything she could remember happening there. I'd touch photos and bedspreads and paintings and try to imagine living in a place where I knew the history of it the way Marie did. Now I would be living there with Marie. I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to imagine it. I was already seeing Marie's grinning face at the airport, her and her daddy standing there. I smiled. It seemed impossible that come Monday, I'd be sitting in Ms. Cory's history class again. I was gonna work real hard this time. Maybe Marie was right. Maybe I could go to college if I wanted.

Dion took my hand. When I looked over at her, she was smiling. I squeezed her hand real hard, then leaned back against the seat and stared out at Kentucky.

Eighteen

When we climbed out of the car, Miz Lily looked kind of teary-eyed and so did Dion. We walked to the airport all hugged up, Miz Lily's arm soft and warm against my shoulder.

Dion would probably be writing her every other day or so. Dion get attached to a person, she holds on.

“Y'all know to call me the minute you step off that plane, right?”

“Planes scary, Miz Lily?” Dion asked. We were getting close to the ticket place and she started walking slower.

“Shoot, no.” Miz Lily smiled. “About the most exciting ride there is.”

 

I wrapped my arm tighter around Miz Lily's waist. Maybe she'd never been in a car going ninety down a dark highway or sitting high up in a truck trying to take a narrow turn. Me and Dion had. We'd seen the inside of more vehicles than we'd ever want to again. Maybe a plane
was
exciting but I was ready for all my riding to end.

Miz Lily had made special arrangements with the stewardess ladies on the plane. We were to sit right up front where they could keep a watch on us and Marie's dad was going to have to show identification before we could leave with him.

 

There weren't many people waiting for the plane. I tried to give Miz Lily the money she'd given us that morning but she shook her head. “You hold on to that. Buy you and Dion something nice when y'all get back to Chauncey.” She hugged me and Dion again, handed us our tickets and walked with us into the plane. Dion walked carefully, touching the backs of the seats and looking all around her. The stewardess lady was standing right up front. She smiled at us, then talked to Miz Lily while me and Dion put our knapsacks under the seats in front of us and sat down.

 

“You-all call me when you get to the airport, you hear?” Miz Lily said. “Make sure you call me the minute you get there.”

Me and Dion nodded. Miz Lily gave us another kiss.

“Miz Lily,” I said. “I really appreciate everything—”

“Hush, child.” She waved her hand at me and smiled. “I should be thanking y'all for giving me some time away from that job of mine. Put your seat belts on.”

We buckled our seat belts while she stood watching us. Dion threw her a kiss. Miz Lily made as if to catch it and put it in her purse, then headed slowly down the aisle. I watched her make her way out of the plane, my eyes filling up.

“You think we'll ever see Miz Lily again, Lena?” Dion asked. She reached up over her head and turned the light off and on a couple of times, then put her hands on her lap and looked at me.

Seemed like someone was always leaving someone, like that's the way the world worked—people were born and people died, people left and people came. It was like the world was saying you can't have everything you want at the same time.

 

“I reckon we'll see her again,” I said. “And you know something, girlie? Even if we don't, we had a chance to make a good friend.”

“And to eat some grits!” Dion said.

I laughed.

Dion frowned, thinking. “It's okay to miss her, huh? And to talk about her from time to time?”

When I nodded, Dion smiled, then took out her book of poetry and started reading. She'd be all right, that Dion would. And me? Maybe I'd be all right too.

Outside, the sun was hanging pretty over some mountains in the distance. I watched the pink and gold light spread itself over the green for a while, making a promise to myself to write about it one day. All of it. The stuff I'd written down in the book Marie gave me and the stuff I'd left out too. I wanted to remember it. And I wanted Dion to remember too. Mama told me once that if you remember all the places you been in your life, you'll have a better sense of where you're going. I pressed my shoulder against Dion's and smiled. I had a real good sense of where we were going.

After a while, I took the sandwiches out of one of the brown paper sacks, folded the wrinkles out of the bag and started sketching. I wanted to catch the glow of the sun, catch the way the mountains moved their faces up toward it.

 

When the plane started to take off, Dion put her book down and took my hand. We looked at each other and started laughing, surprised at how fast the plane was moving. The noise it made was louder than anything I'd ever heard.

“Look out the window,” I said. Dion pressed her face against it and smiled as the plane lifted up into the air.

A woman sitting across from us leaned over and asked where we were going. I looked at Dion then back at the woman again. “Me and my sister,” I said, feeling a grin spread wide across my face, “we heading home.”

Then Dion grinned, pressed her face against the window again and started humming.

And me, I sketched that mountain kissing that sky.