But it was not costume jewelry that urged her on tonight. Rummaging in her chest of drawers, she brought out a pair of brown socks. At first glance, they looked like every other pair of socks in the drawer, folded double and placed at the bottom of the stack.
Betty Jewel wadded them into her fist, then sat at her skirted dressing table and pulled them apart. A path of moonlight gleamed off the mirror and illuminated the piece of jewelry that tumbled out of the sock.
She’d found it last week. Merry Lynn had picked up Queen to deliver her pies to Tiny Jim’s, and Billie had been on top of the bus playing house with her doll.
In her cleaning frenzy, Betty Jewel had been going through Saint’s stuff, too. He might never get out of prison, was what she’d been thinking. The law didn’t take a kindly view to possession of drugs. And even if he got out, she’d never see him again. Not if she could help it. Any chances that he’d reformed were remote, and even if he had, she’d never been able to trust him, so why start now? One minute he was Prince Charming and the next, the devil himself.
She could sell his good white suit and his silver trumpet and get some much-needed cash to pay her doctor’s bills. She’d laid his suit on the bed. It was out of style, but the dry-cleaning bag had kept the shoulders from turning yellow. Tiny Jim could probably help her find somebody to buy it. Nobody in Shakerag was picky about hand-me-downs, especially musicians. If they tried to live by their music, scraping by was all they knew.
She put Saint’s good shirt and tie with the suit, then emptied his socks and underwear drawers into a paper sack. The church would get those.
His trumpet would bring her the most money. She might even get enough for the sale to pay off her doctors and have some left over for her funeral. She got his trumpet case out of the closet, then went into the kitchen for a rag to wipe off eleven years of accumulated dust.
Saint had taken better care of his trumpet than he had his wife. A good polishing was probably all it needed.
Betty Jewel snapped open the case, picked up Saint’s silver horn. And out tumbled the necklace.
Heart-shaped.
Rose gold.
And inside, the frames meant to hold photographs were empty.
Betty Jewel had cried then, and she was pressing her hand over her mouth, hard, to keep from crying now.
“From my heart to yours,” Saint had said when he’d given it to her. “From the one who loves you best.”
The locket was the only real piece of jewelry he’d ever given her. But more than that, it had been a symbol of hope. They’d just finished their first big gig together in Chicago. The fans loved them, the money was good and the future was a shining road they’d travel. Together.
“As soon as we get a chance, we’ll have our pictures made for the locket. You and me, baby. Forever.”
Drugs sucker punched that chance and then dealt their future a knockout blow. The locket had vanished along with Betty Jewel’s dreams. He’d probably meant to pawn it, him with his drug-addled brain, then had stuffed it down in his trumpet case and forgotten about it.
She had been first to come back home. By the time he’d followed, pleading with Queen to take him in, begging Betty Jewel to give him a second chance, she already had a cleaning job and was supplementing it by teaching voice and piano. The extra income was precious little. Few people in Shakerag could afford formal music lessons. In her neighborhood, if you wanted to learn music you picked up a blues harp and tried to find the songs in your soul.
The necklace in her hand tore her in half. She ought to sell it. They could use the money. But parting with it was like letting go of every dream she’d ever had. It was a shining little symbol of hope, one whose loss she’d mourned through the years. And now it was back, a locket that would be a nice keepsake for Billie. She idolized the Saint and would be thrilled to know he’d bought it. Betty Jewel wanted Billie to have something wonderful to hold on to after she was gone. On the other hand, she hated the idea that Billie would treasure the necklace because it came from Saint.
Betty Jewel leaned her head on her dressing table, too sick and tired to know what to do.
Facing your own end didn’t make you a bit wiser than if you thought you had all the time in the world. Betty Jewel dropped the necklace into the bottom of the sock, folded it over twice, then put it at the bottom of the dresser drawer.
Beyond the curtains, the sky was taking on a pink glow. Betty Jewel climbed into her bed, clothes and all. She felt like a woman entangled in a giant ball of yarn. Pull the wrong thread and everything around you unraveled. If she could sleep for a few hours, she might wake up clearheaded enough to know what do.
When Billie woke up, God hadn’t given her any answers. She was still in her yellow shorts, which meant time saved if she could sneak out of the house without her mama or Queen seeing. They’d have a holy conniption fit about her wearing yesterday’s clothes. Queen always said, If you ain’t got pride, you ain’t got nothin’ …
Billie didn’t want wise sayings. What she wanted was breathing room. She followed breakfast smells to the kitchen, then reached under the covered platter on the table and grabbed a buttermilk biscuit.
Roy Rogers and Dale Evans sang “Happy Trails to You” from the Philco radio, which Billie took as a good sign. A glance out the window proved her right. Queen was out in the backyard hanging clothes on the line strung between the oak tree and a scraggly apple tree that was too sorry to bear fruit, so Billie didn’t have to waste time saying grace. If Queen caught her in the kitchen, she’d make her say grace, even though the biscuit was in her pocket.
The hall was empty, too. Billie made a beeline for the front door. As she passed the den, she heard her mama on the phone speaking real low like people did when they were telling secrets. She might as well speak up. Billie knew she had cancer.
But you could bet your britches she wasn’t planning on sitting around the house waiting for her mama to die. Being ten didn’t mean being stupid. When you needed help, you asked for it.
Careful not to let the screen door slam, Billie skipped down the steps and raced off. Just her luck, old Miz Quana Belle was out in the yard weeding her Canadians. She perked up, suspicious, her voice following like a cloud of buzzing bees.
“Chile, where you goin’ in them tore-up shorts? Does yo mama know?”
When Billie got to be a grown-up, she was going to let little kids have secrets of their own. She was going to mind her own business. And she was going to find a way to be the boss without having a single willow switch in her house.
As Billie outran the buzzing cloud of questions, she glanced over her shoulder every now and then to see if Alice was out and about. But there were no signs. She guessed even the dead had to rest sometimes. All that tree climbing and floating on top of church steeples and materializing under windowsills had to be hard. Billie felt sorry for her.
She hoped her mama didn’t end up haunting the blue house on Maple Street when she died. She hoped Betty Jewel went straight to Heaven. Billie didn’t know if it had streets of gold like Queen said, but she’d bet its park had a better swing set than the one in Shakerag. And she’d double-dog dare anybody to tell her the library in Heaven would be run by somebody mean as old Miz Rupert. Billie pictured somebody in a flowing white robe with a crown of stars on her head showing Mama to a roomful of books that still had all the pages inside.
Of course, if her mission succeeded, her mama wouldn’t die.
When Billie came in sight of Tiny Jim’s Blues and Barbecue, her steps slowed. The juke joint was shut tight, the front door locked, the shades down. Night was when it came alive, neon flashing, patrons jiving, music and laughter and smoke swirling as thick as molasses.
This was a place for grown-ups. Billie wasn’t supposed to be here unless she was with Queen or Mama.