“Baby?” She turned from the window to see Queen standing in the doorway, her face shrunken as a dried-up apple. Betty Jewel’s cancer had sucked the regal and the jovial right out of her.
“Did she eat, Mama?”
“She done got that plate I took out. But she settin’ up there like she don’ never inten’ to come down.”
“Don’t worry. Billie’s got a head full of sense.”
Queen stood in the door way till she couldn’t bear the view any longer. And who could blame her? The disease had eaten away so much of Betty Jewel she looked like a one-dimensional cardboard copy of her former self.
Her old house slippers dragging on the linoleum, Queen shuffled off singing, her way of trying to make bad things good. Always she picked a spiritual or one of the gospels. She’d belt them out, too, though it had been twenty years since she’d had the voice for the soaring solos she used to perform in church. Tonight she was singing, “Somebody’s Knockin’ at Yo Door.”
Death, that’s who was knocking. Still, Queen’s expectations were softer and easier to bear than Billie’s. Lord, chile, I ain’t seein’ no way I can carry on without you. You gone have to hang on a mite longer.
Queen was eighty, the age where death could come without warning. She was at least twenty years older than you’d expect Betty Jewel’s mama to be. But she’d been the last of Queen’s twelve children and the only one to survive. Since they’d found out the cancer was too far gone, Queen had told Betty Jewel the only reason she was still living was so she could help take care of Billie awhile longer.
Till you finds somebody, honey. You gotta find somebody to raise that chile. Saint ain’t fittin’.
Betty Jewel shivered so hard her teeth knocked together. Ain’t fittin’ wouldn’t begin to describe the reasons she’d sell her soul to the devil before she’d let Saint Hughes get his hands on Billie.
Saint and his devil ways got into her head as bad as they had the day she’d flown off the handle and taken out that pitiful newspaper ad. Lord, what had she been thinking?
Desperate. Nowhere to turn.
She was desperate, all right, but she’d chop off both her legs before she’d put her child in the hands of strangers. What she needed was some of Queen’s divine intervention. But miracles were hard to come by in Shakerag.
“Please, God …”
Her head was pounding, so heavy with despair and secrets she didn’t know if she could ever lift it again. Or was the pounding at the door?
Before Betty Jewel could get out of her chair, Merry Lynn and Sudie barged in, Merry Lynn leading the way, waving The Bugle like it was a red flag and she was searching for the bull.
“Betty Jewel, what is this?” Sudie cried.
“My, God. You’re trying to give Billie away like a stray cat!” Merry Lynn flung the newspaper onto the couch and sank down beside it. The aroma of barbecue that always clung to her almost overpowered her Evening in Paris perfume. “Are you out of your mind?”
Betty Jewel had asked herself the same thing a million times. In the light of Merry Lynn’s rage and Sudie’s look that said We’re going to have a come-to-Jesus talk, Betty Jewel’s reasons for the ad drained of all plausibility—Queen losing her health, Sudie’s husband, Wayne, losing his job and Sudie sitting on Betty Jewel’s front porch, crying a river of fear, and Saint … Lord Jesus, the idea of Saint’s sorry ass in charge of Billie was enough to drive anybody crazy.
“Not yet, Merry Lynn. I think the cancer likes to get beauty before brains.”
“That’s not funny, missy!”
“Both of you just hush up. There’s no need for any of this.” Sudie’s quiet voice reminded Betty Jewel of the hymn, “There is a Balm in Gilead.” In her white blouse that always smelled of starch and sunshine, she might be one of God’s earth angels, a placid, plain woman put down in Shakerag to keep volatile, broken-to-pieces Merry Lynn from self-destructing and to ease the storm-tossed mind of a dying woman who didn’t know where to turn. “God forbid Betty Jewel’s name is called, but if it is, I’ll help Queen raise Billie like she was one of my own.”
“What makes you think you’d be better than me? Good God, Sudie, you’ve got seven kids already.”
Betty Jewel wrapped her hand around the harmonica in her pocket and held on. Two years ago this kind of sparring would have had all three of them laughing so hard they’d have to hold on to each other for support. Today she couldn’t unearth normal if she got a spade and dug all the way to China.
“I can count, Merry Lynn,” Sudie said. “And if Queen hears you taking the Lord’s name in vain, she’ll whip your sassy butt with a willow switch.”
“Queen knows I don’t have any truck with the Almighty. If He’s watching over His children, why was my Alice murdered? How come somebody took her off to the woods and did those unspeakable things, those …” Merry Lynn covered her face with her hands, a mother whose sorrow was so deep she’d mired in it years ago and never found her way out.
“If you start bawling in front of Betty Jewel in her condition, I’m gonna be the one whipping your tail.”
“What condition?” In one of those mercurial changes she was famous for, Merry Lynn wiped her tears and turned her fierce attention to Sudie.
Betty Jewel held on to the harmonica. It was time for a come-to-Jesus meeting of her own.
“I’m dying, Merry Lynn.” Betty Jewel lifted her chin a notch and dared her to deny it. “And it’s high time you face it.” She didn’t miss the way Sudie put on her mask of denial. “You, too, Sudie.”
“There’s going to be a miracle.” When it came to faith, Sudie was just one notch below Queen.
“Lord knows, Queen’s prayed hard enough. But if my mama can’t call down a miracle, nobody can.”
“Shut up! Both of you just shut up!” Merry Lynn sprang off the couch, lean and wild and fierce, a black alley cat with claws bared. “You’re not going to die. I can’t stand any more dying!”
Making soothing noises the way you would to a baby screaming with nightmares, Sudie put her arms around Merry Lynn. “Of course, she’s not going to die. She’s going to get better, that’s all. We’ll find a doctor up in Memphis.”
If they’d just let Betty Jewel talk about it. If they’d just quit denying the truth that had been staring them in the face since Christmas. She was so weak she’d had to quit her cleaning job at the Holiday Inn, and her blue dress didn’t touch her anywhere now except the shoulders. She looked like a willow twig wearing a pillowcase.
And cold. Lord, she was cold all the time. While Sudie waged a battle to save Merry Lynn’s sanity, Betty Jewel sank into a rocking chair, pulled Queen’s hand-knit afghan over her knees and listened to her mama in the kitchen taking refuge in the old hymns—“Rock of Ages” and “I’ll Fly Away.”
Betty Jewel wished she could fly away. She’d fly backward to a time when she had it all—her health, her future. Love.
Thinking about what might have been hurt so bad she turned her focus elsewhere. The clock. She could hear the too-loud ticking of the big mahogany clock Queen kept on top of the TV.
And the sound of Merry Lynn’s sobs. She was crying quietly now, saying, “I can’t stand it,” over and over.
“It’s all right. I’m taking you home.” Sudie herded Merry Lynn toward