How the Soul Sings

Chapter Six

Chapter Six

            There was an awkward quietness that took over the house, a lot like when everybody thought that my brother and Caesar were dead. Momma and Aunt Loraine tried to act like there was nothing cross going on between them, but I knew their ‘secret’ and in a way, I think I was walking on eggshells right beside my momma, as she seemed to be doing with my aunt. Their daily pleasantries had come to an end and silence settled in. I watched them avoid making eye contact or sit too long at the table with the other one there. Mostly, if anything was said, it was strictly about the business, like what goat was not producing as much milk, making sure the vet was scheduled for a check-up and remembering to bring home some chicken feed from the Co-op in Morrison.

And naturally, you couldn’t hide much from Evee. She tried to stick to her two-cents strictly about canning, but she was too old and wise not to see that whatever was going on between my momma and Aunt Loraine made things a pressure cooker under the roof of this house and if someone didn’t take them off the fire, soon, the damned thing was gonna blow.

I was growing anxious and uncomfortable day by day, wondering how much longer I could keep what I knew, behind my closed lips. I could always confide in Evee, but with something like this, I knew that doing that would probably just make it worse because then maybe there’d be three or four women not talking to each other and then everything would probably just end up falling apart. Everyone would be mad at Evee for sticking her nose in where it wasn’t wanted, even though she would be right to do so. Then Willa Jane would be mad at Aunt Loraine for even thinking such a thing and then Momma would be mad at me for listening in on adult conversations and everyone would be too sore at the other to want to be around each other anymore. I thought about talking to Daniel, seeing as I kinda felt that somehow, a little bit of this was his fault and thought that maybe he should have a hand in trying to fix it.

But Evee and Willa Jane kept me too busy during the day to have any time to talk to my cousin while Momma and Aunt Loraine weren’t around. And as I got older, they didn’t want me to spend so much time alone with my cousin and give anyone the wrong impression. We were not back roads Okies, hillbilly, cousin-marrying hicks, my Aunt Loraine would say. But don’t mention the Roosevelt’s that way; Aunt Loraine seemed to turn a blind eye to their situation and pretended that somehow they were just cousins by marriage, ninety-seven times removed. No, we had prestigious New England roots, starting from the Mayflower itself, which settled down here in the southern mid-west during the big land grab in 1893 of the Oklahoma territory.

        At church that first Sunday after word had spread that my brother and Caesar were apparently alive and well, it was proclaimed a miracle of God, that the tornado must have picked them two boys up and placed them down in New Mexico with the good Lord’s blessing that that’s where they needed to be. While there was a whole bunch of choir-singing-celebrating going on, what Momma and Aunt Loraine were fighting about stood tall in the back of my mind; worried if it was such a good idea that these many people should know. I’d heard whispered stories about US Marshalls coming for Draft Dodgers and how they’d get tried for treason and that if those boys did cross into Mexico, then they were better off staying there for that whole reason. Then I also heard rumors that some of the negro young folk had friends amongst the Black Panthers or were ones themselves, and that they fully supported spitting into the face of the law by openly admitting that they supported their own not showing up for war. I’d heard all of this from Willa Jane’s daughter, Daisy, as she talked amongst her friends at church. You can learn more than the FBI about what’s going on in a community and who’s doing what, by just showing up to church once in a while.

When I got home from church, I couldn’t wait to run upstairs and strip my clothes off to jump into my bathing suit and an old pair of cutoff jeans so I could hop on my bike to go find someplace with water. Later, I was expected to have Sunday supper at the Hutchins’ house since Momma was busy taking care of some other things and Aunt Loraine as it turned out, was spending extra time after mass praying for guidance. I was told by Willa Jane to bring a plate to Daniel afterward, which I did. I couldn’t stand to be in the house once Momma and Aunt Loraine got home, so I sat outside on the old tire swing that dangled from the thickest branch on the Weeping Willow tree in our front yard, and waited for it to get dark so I could watch for lightnin’ bugs. From out there, I could hear one of them open a window in the parlor and turn on the radio; I would know in a heartbeat by what was playing who it had been since my momma and my aunt had very different tastes. Instead, it was set to NPR, so it could have been either one of them.

This thing going on between my aunt and my mother made me afraid that they’d somehow make me choose sides, even though I knew that they didn’t know what I did. The only side I was on was whatever would settle this and make them stop being this way toward each other. This secret was heavy and it was more weight than any twelve year old should carry. It brought about too much responsibility because of everything involved. You have to show and keep a certain amount of respect and loyalty to your family and the ones you love, but at the same time, I felt like I was doing one hell of a disservice to the Hutchins’ by not letting them in on what my Aunt Loraine had been mulling over. I kept hoping that that guidance she’d been praying for would guide her back to her senses so she’d realize that tearing our families apart wasn’t worth her idea of being patriotic. I was taught that God and family come first, then everything else and I was counting on my aunt to remember that.

“Are you comin’ in any time soon?” Daniel called out from the front porch.

“I’m thinking about it, don’t know yet.” But really, I was still thinking about this whole damn, stupid thing and started wondering how Evee would handle it. Then like lightning had zapped me in the rear, I hopped off that tire, leaving it a violently swinging rubber pendulum in the tree, and marched passed Daniel, through the screen door and stood at the bottom of the stairs, between it and the doorway to the parlor where I knew both my mother and my aunt would hear me, and I shouted with all the breath in my lungs, a mighty bullhorn of a girl, “ENOUGH! YOU ARE FAMILY! GET DONE BEING MAD AT EACH OTHER, ALREADY!” and I stomped up those stairs so loudly, like I was leading a Clydesdale with me, slammed my bedroom door and laid on my bed and waited. I was expecting to hear my mother come storming up the stairs after me and my aunt rush out of her room and listen to them both pounding on the other side of my locked door, demanding that I march my ass out of there and explain myself. But it didn’t happen. Silence. It was excruciating; resisting the urge to open my door and peak around the hall or even to crack it a little so I could listen for something, anything from them. But my disappointment and irritability with the both of them cemented me firmly in my decision that I wasn’t coming out of my room until all of this non-sense was over. I even ignored our dog when he scratched at my door. The only thing I could overhear without opening my door was the sound of my cousin laughing, still sitting out on the front porch, through my open windows.

In the morning, my prayers had been answered.

I could hear momma and my aunt laughing and carrying on at barely the crack of dawn. The early morning light had still yet to ripen as I tip-toed down the dim hall toward their rooms on a full bladder that had to wait. I stopped when I saw a tiny stripe of lamplight on the hall floor coming from my aunt’s room. I spied inside and saw them both sitting in their nightgowns in her bed through a sliver of open door. I barely moved out of sight in time, to keep the door from being closed in my face, when my Aunt Loraine suddenly got up and pushed it shut.