Raleigh poked his head in between the pale curtains that served as Miss Bunny’s bedroom door. “Jimmy?”
I could see how they must have been as children. Raleigh looking to James, not Miss Bunny, for direction. James looked into his mother’s face.
“W-w-what d-d-do you need to talk to her about? Why c-c-can’t we just visit together?” He went to the window and swiveled the wand to open the blinds.
“James, I want to talk to her about woman things. Now shoo, boy.”
James backed toward the curtained doorway, as if he didn’t want to turn his back on us. He bumped into Raleigh, and Miss Bunny laughed again. It wasn’t a robust sort of laugh; she was too weak for al of that. But stil , I knew that she found the situation amusing. She continued with the breathy laugh until James and Raleigh had left in the Lincoln.
When they were gone, the house was empty-feeling and more quiet than I was used to. Miss Bunny let her head fal back onto the eyelet pil ow slip. She just lay there breathing for a while, and I didn’t bother her.
“My left leg is gone,” she said to me.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
“They said taking the leg would save me. It wasn’t a beautiful leg, but it was mine, and I had never figured on not lying whole in my casket. Life is ful of things you never figured on.”
I didn’t say anything back. I knew I was a surprise to Miss Bunny, but nothing was a surprise to me.
“If I could get out of bed, I would hug your neck,” she said.
“I never turned anybody away from my door. Your daddy knows that. I took in Raleigh, and later Laverne. I have never turned anybody away. Never sent nobody back.” She shut up and worked on her breathing some more. “I love you,” she said to me, just as she had said to Raleigh so many years ago. I know that it was supposed to make me feel warm and welcome, but instead I wondered if she saw me the way she saw Raleigh — as an unfortunate bastard, unloved and pissy.
“Don’t look at me like I am an orphan. My mother’s not dead,” I blurted. “She’s a nurse and she takes good care of me. I was taking the AP exam in biology when Raleigh pul ed me out of school to come up here. That test cost fifty dol ars, and my mother paid for it.”
“She takes good care of my James, too, I imagine.” Miss Bunny sighed.
“She does,” I said. “Her name is Gwendolyn Yarboro.”
“And your name is?”
“Dana,” I said.
“I know that. But what’s your ful name?”
“Dana Lynn Yarboro.”
Miss Bunny touched her hand to her forehead. “Did James sign your birth certificate?”
“No, ma’am,” I said. “But Raleigh did.”
She shook her head. “Those boys. Brothers; I don’t care what nobody says. If they are in it, they are in it together. Are you an only child, baby?”
I said careful y to Miss Bunny, “How could I be an only child?”
Her face shifted, and she touched the space on the bed where her leg would have been. “I didn’t mean anything by that. Lord. This is a mess. You ever seen Chaurisse?”
I shrugged. “Not real y.”
“She’s a nice girl,” Miss Bunny said. “I’m real proud of her. This is going to kil her. Her mama, too. But Laverne, she’s from this town. She grew up hard; she’l bounce back. But Chaurisse was born and raised in Atlanta. She don’t know nothing about suffering. This is going to tear her apart.”
“That’s not my fault,” I said.
Miss Bunny patted the space on the bed again. “Sit down.”
I moved to the place on the bed, crackling the plastic mattress cover. I didn’t face my grandmother, keeping my eyes on the gauzy curtains of the doorway. She laid a hand on my back.
“You remind me of Laverne. When I first met her, she was about your age. Mad at the whole world, and with pretty good reason. Her quarrel was with her mother. Yours is with James, and you have a right to it. I’m not trying to take nothing away from you. You have a tough shel on you.
Chaurisse, she doesn’t have none of that.”
“I don’t feel sorry for her.”
Miss Bunny said, “Dana, I wish James had seen fit to tel me about you earlier. I wish he had brought your mama up here today.”
“She always wanted to meet you,” I said.
Miss Bunny reclined in the hospital bed. “I real y can’t see a good way out of this.”
We sat there a while longer, not saying anything to each other. I worked on my breathing, although the room smel ed of camphor and just slightly of urine. Beside the bed was a bouquet of red roses that didn’t give any scent at al .
“Take something of mine,” Miss Bunny said. “Take anything you want out of this room.”
I walked myself around the smal bedroom. There wasn’t much to choose from. On the dresser, where perfume bottles and figurines should have been, rested amber prescription bottles, a stack of rubber gloves, and a box of syringes. The only ornament was a porcelain ring holder in the shape of two fingers, displaying what looked like a man’s wedding band. On the night table was a wooden jewelry box. Music tinkled out as I opened it. The only thing inside was a star-shaped brooch of faceted aquamarines.
“This?” I asked.
“Why did you pick that?”
I shrugged. “I just like it. It’s pretty.” I didn’t know enough family history to know what mattered and what didn’t. I chose the brooch the way I would choose something in a store.
“Good enough,” she said. “I told Raleigh I wanted to wear that pin to my funeral.”
I dropped it back into the music box. She had spoken the word funeral with a burst of air, like she had to force the word out. I twisted toward her, but she had turned her face toward the wal . “I can pick something else. Did somebody special give it to you?”
“No. I bought it with my own money. Years ago, when I was stil interested in looking pretty. A couple of the stones have fel out, but it’s stil a nice piece.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’l tel Raleigh to take it off my col ar before they close the casket and put me in the ground.”
“Ma’am,” I said, “please don’t say things like that.”
My grandmother took my living hand in her dying one. “I never had no quarrel with the truth. I hope somebody says something like that at my wake.”
10
UNCLE RALEIGH
IN THE SUMMER 1978, my mother had come to a crossroads. I am neither religious nor superstitious, but there is something otherworldly about the space where two roads come together. The devil is said to set up shop there if you want to swap your soul for something more useful. If you believe that God can be bribed, it’s also the hal owed ground to make sacrifices. In the literal sense, it’s also a place to change direction, but once you’ve changed it, you’re stuck until you come to another crossroads, and who knows how long that wil be.
Although I was only nine, I was away from home two weeks that summer. My godmother, Wil ie Mae, took me to Alabama to spend some time with her family out in the country. She thought I was too much of a city girl, that I needed to spend some time barefoot. Drawing my bath each night in the footed tub, Wil ie Mae looked more capable than she did in our living room drinking gin-and-tonics with my mother. Out in the country, she drew her hair back in two plaits and tucked the ends under; she stuck her feet in her shoes bare-legged.
I was accustomed to hot, muggy summers, but the heat in Opelika was more comprehensive. August was canning season, so the women were busy washing tomatoes, peaches, and beets. Wil ie Mae was saving her money to buy two window air conditioners; in the meantime we kept cool with window-box and funeral-home fans. The front door flapped behind what seemed an endless parade of Wil ie Mae’s nieces, nephews, and cousins, who stole eggs from the icebox to see if they could actual y fry them on the blacktop road. Across the street, a lady sold Styrofoam cups of frozen Kool-Aid for a dime, but my mother had told me not to eat from strange people’s houses. I spent most of the time in the kitchen, up under Wil ie Mae, who would stumble over me from time to time. The atmosphere was thick with the sugary smel of boiling fruit. I would lick my forearm and taste salt.