The Sweetest Hallelujah

As soon as she was back in her car—a red Ford Coupe convertible she’d helped Joe pick out last year only two weeks before he died—she felt unplugged, as if somebody had jerked her life’s cord out of its socket and left it lying on the floor for anybody who took a notion to come along and step on. She was glad she’d agreed to meet Fay Dean at TKE Drugstore’s soda fountain for ice cream.

As Cassie drove through the dusk toward the heart of downtown Tupelo, the soulful music followed her, the blues notes whispering of love lost and lives wasted, of yearning and hatred, of a gathering storm roaring toward a town unsuspecting and unprepared.

She parked near the courthouse one block north of TKE Drugstore on the corner of Main and Green, then breathed in the beauty of a place she loved. Magnolia trees with trunks as impressive as river barges surrounded the domed building, and a towering monument honoring the Civil War dead stood in the southwest corner of the lawn. On the east side, the town’s shoe-shine boy, known only as Tater, sat on one of the park benches, waiting to earn a few nickels from the lawyers who argued best in shiny shoes.

Cassie got out of her car to wait. The courthouse was a convenient place to meet Fay Dean, who had become a lawyer in spite of Mike’s protests that a woman’s rightful place was in the home and the town’s gender bias that a woman was too tender and not intelligent enough.

Fay Dean proved them all wrong. She had carved out a niche for herself when she successfully defended Cassie’s gardener, Bobo “Chit’lin” Hankins, pro bono, for helping himself to a corn patch that didn’t belong to him.

In Shakerag, they called Fay Dean Superman in a skirt. In the courthouse, her male colleagues called her names even Cassie wouldn’t want to repeat.

Vivid as a lightbulb, Fay Dean descended the courthouse steps, carrying herself with the supreme confidence of a woman who knew everything worth knowing. At the sight of her, Cassie’s unease faded into something manageable, angels whispering in her ear.

“I need chocolate.” Fay Dean was the kind of woman who skirted greetings and got right down to the nitty-gritty. “A triple dip.”

“Why?”

“Substitute for sex.”

“I don’t think it’s a substitute, Fay Dean. Just supposed to make you feel good or something.”

“How’d it go with Sean?”

“I sat there blabbering, and he essentially told me to find a project.”

“Same thing I’ve been saying. What do you think?”

“He could be right. I need to get my mind on something besides the inane chatter at the Altar Guild.”

“I told you Sean would help you.” Fay Dean linked arms with Cassie. “He’s asked me out.”

“He’d be a great match for you. Did you say yes?”

“You know me. I’m a disaster with relationships.”

“Fay Dean, what am I going to do with you?”

“Feed me.”

Heads turned as they walked under the streetlights, and Cassie knew they weren’t looking at her. She was an ordinary-looking woman who blended in except for her hair. But Fay Dean had that certain something her brother Joe had. When you first saw her, you’d think she was just another dark-haired woman wearing a tad too much lipstick. But she had a way of smiling that lit her whole face. And then you’d think she was the most beautiful creature you’ve ever laid eyes on.

Cassie had known her since second grade when Fay Dean was the new girl in school. She had the ugliest haircut anybody ever saw. Mike Malone was the new postmaster in Tupelo and had cut it because his wife had died in a hit-and-run accident, and he was experimenting with ways to save money as well as struggling with raising a headstrong daughter and a too-handsome son.

Cassie had been the only second grader who hadn’t laughed at Fay Dean’s chopped-off hair. When you’re seven, that’s how easy it is to become best friends.

When you’re thirty-eight, it’s as easy as taking one look at somebody and knowing what they need without ever saying a word.

A cool blast of air hit them when they walked into the drugstore. Cassie breathed in the familiar smells of French vanilla and rich dark chocolate. She loved this place, the embossed tin ceiling, sixteen feet high, antique ceiling fans hanging down on sturdy brass poles. It was one of the oldest buildings in town. Thankfully, the owner had an eye for keeping the best parts of the past intact. The brass foot railing around the serving counter in the drugstore was original. So were the floors, uneven oak boards that always smelled of the oil rubbed in to keep them from turning brittle.

She and Fay Dean found two empty stools at the soda fountain and placed their orders, cherry Coke for Cassie, chocolate soda for Fay Dean.

“How did Glen Tubb’s fundraiser go last night, Cassie?”

“The men talked politics while his wife herded the women into her rose garden to talk about women’s issues.”

“The way you’re gritting your teeth, do I even want to know the women’s issues Myrtle discussed?”

“Mamie Eisenhower’s bangs.”

“That’s not surprising. Not many women in this town know much about politics, or even care.”

“I know. I guess I ought to be ashamed of myself.”

“Why? What did you do?”

“I told them that I don’t care if Mamie wears bangs or shaves her head—I want to know what this country can to do to support last year’s Supreme Court ruling that struck down racial segregation.”

“They’ll keep fighting it,” Fay Dean said. “Fools!”

“I’d write an article if I could find a way to sneak it past Ben.”

Not only was he Cassie’s next-door neighbor and Joe’s best friend, but he was her editor.

“You know Ben only indulges your opinions because of your friendship.”

“Hush up. Maybe it’s because of my brain.”

The man on Cassie’s right got up and left a rumpled copy of The Bugle behind. Cassie thumped the photographs on the front page, candidates running for state senator. “Just look at that. All men. You ought to run, Fay Dean. You’d be a better senator than the lot of them.”

“I’d be laughed out of town. It’s bad enough that I had the audacity to hang out my shingle and practice law.”

“That makes me so mad I could spit nails.” Cassie shook the paper as if it were the whole town and she was trying to shake some sense into it.

“I believe you occasionally do. In The Bugle.” Heads always turned when Fay Dean laughed. The sound was as full as the brass section of an orchestra.

“Ben tries to keep a leash on me. Do you know what he wants me to do now? The classifieds.”

“Is Goober Johnson retiring?”

“Thank the Lord, yes.” Intent on showing Fay Dean exactly how insignificant her new job at The Bugle would be, Cassie snapped the paper open to the classifieds. An ad buried between Refrigerator for Sale and Free Puppies ripped into her like shrapnel.

“They’re renaming the baseball field after Joe tomorrow. If we’re not there, Daddy will have a stroke. Do you want me to pick you up?”

Staring at the ad, Cassie was thinking about love, how it can be the arms that catch you when you fall or the hands that open wide to set you free.

“Cassie? What’s wrong?”

Cassie couldn’t speak, could hardly breathe. The little ad had settled into her heart like tea leaves, and she knew she’d never be able to remove the stain.

Desperate. Nowhere to turn. Dying woman seeks mother for her child. Loving heart required. Call Vinewood 2-8640.

One look at the newspaper, and Fay Dean read Cassie as if she were a story she planned to use as counsel for the defense.

“Come on.” She grabbed Cassie’s hand.

“Where are we going?”

“To do something I should have made you do years ago.”

Three

BILLIE LOOKED UP THROUGH the oak leaves to see if God was hurrying up with some answers. But it wasn’t God’s voice she heard: it was Queen’s.

“Billie? Where you at, chile? I got supper.”

She leaned over the edge of the roof to see Queen standing by the bus with a plate covered by a blue-striped dish towel.

“I’m not hungry.”

“I’m gone leave it here, just in case.”

Queen set the plate on an old tool bench leaning against the side of the backyard shed, then lumbered back to the house. The screen door popped behind her, and the smell of fried food drew Billie down the ladder. She gnawed off a hunk of chicken leg, then balanced the plate and climbed back to the top of her daddy’s old touring bus.

She’d bet if her daddy was here, he’d find a way to make Mama well. She’d bet he knew famous doctors. Her daddy was famous himself. Or used to be. Saint Hughes was a blues great. Ranked right up there with King Oliver and Louis Armstrong. They said the Saint with his silver horn could sway an audience like a preacher at a Baptist tent revival.

Queen and Mama didn’t tell Billie hardly anything about her daddy. What didn’t come from the kids taunting her in the neighborhood came from Lucy. She’d got the information by hiding under her front porch and eavesdropping on Lucy’s mama, Sudie Jenkins, and dead Alice’s mama, Merry Lynn Watkins. Both of them were Mama’s friends, and you could bet they knew the truth.

When Billie was little she never thought about not having a daddy. She thought normal was a household of nothing but women. It was after she got to noticing that other little girls had daddies to lift them up so they could see things like parades and stars and birds’ eggs in a high-up nest in a magnolia tree that she started asking about her own daddy.

Mama would never talk about him, and Queen followed suit. She thought Mama’s every word got handed down on Mt. Sinai from the Lord God Himself. If Queen knew Billie was even thinking such mean thoughts about religion, she’d make her memorize the Ten Commandments word for word. And she’d know if Billie got it wrong, too. Queen knew the Good Book from cover to cover. Mostly, she knew about spare the rod and spoil the child. She kept a willow switch behind the kitchen door.

What Queen didn’t know was how a girl of six needed to understand why her daddy didn’t tuck her in at night and how a girl of ten needed to know her roots.

The first time Billie had ever asked about her daddy, Queen said, “Don’t go worrying yo mama ‘bout such stuff,” and Mama just said, “He’s gone.”

“Dead?”

“No, just not here.”

“How come?”

“Just let it alone, Billie.”

But she hadn’t. When she got old enough—eight and a half—she and Lucy started spying, sneaking around at Sunday dinners and church potluck suppers listening at keyholes.

What Billie didn’t overhear, she made up. She pictured him as a darker version of Roy Rogers, only without the white hat and Trigger. She figured she got her height from her daddy. Her mama was only five five, and that’s if she stretched her neck. Another thing was Billie’s skin. She freckled in summer, so Saint Hughes had to be light-skinned. Mama was dark, considering her French daddy, and Queen was blacker than the ace of spades.

Billie also liked to think it was her daddy who picked out her name. She imagined him thinking about all the stars he’d performed with, then choosing the most beautiful, most talented of all, the great jazz singer, Billie Holiday.

Once when Billie had asked Lucy’s mama about the Saint, she’d said, “He dropped from the American jazz scene,” then went back to feeding her husband’s Sunday shirt through the washing machine wringer. Billie liked to think of her daddy traveling around Europe playing his silver trumpet.

Celebrities don’t have time for ordinary lives. Why, some of them hardly know their kids. Billie didn’t know any of them personally, but she kept up by reading Modern Screen magazine in Curl Up ‘n Dye, the beauty shop where Lucy’s mama did the shampoos and swept up the fallen hair.

Billie used to hope her daddy would send a birthday card, but she got over it last year. You can’t just spend your time crying over spilled milk. Queen said that all the time.

The only thing her mama ever shared about her daddy was this bus. It had been on Billie’s fifth birthday.

“Back when I was singing with the Saint and his band, we used to travel in this bus,” her mama said. Then they all piled in, Mama at the wheel, Billie riding shotgun and Queen with a big basket of fried chicken. They drove to the Tombigbee River where they swam till their arms got too tired to lift. Afterward, they spread the picnic on Queen’s quilt called Around the World, and ate till Queen said they would all grow feathers and start clucking if they didn’t pack up and go home.

When the bus wore out, her mama was going to get rid of it, but Billie had a conniption fit, and Betty Jewel built a shed out behind the house so the bus wouldn’t be an eyesore. She called it her potting shed and Queen called it her henhouse. Billie made her leave the roof off the front end on account of the clever rooftop patio her daddy had devised on the bus. He had built the ladder with his own hands and added a shiny brass railing around the top.

Though the railing would never shine again, Billie kept it polished. It was the least she could do.

Billie ate till every last piece of Queen’s fried chicken was gone, then she set in to eating fried pies. A curtain of darkness dropped around her, but Billie wasn’t scared. She wasn’t scared of anything except her mama dying.

She was probably in the house right this very minute asking the Good Lord to make her well again. Billie would like to know what was good about Somebody who’d let her mama die. If He was in charge of things, how come nice people got cancer while folks like Miz Quana Belle’s daddy lived to do their meanness till they got so old they didn’t have teeth? He drank hard liquor and robbed gas stations. How come God didn’t strike him down?

Billie couldn’t ask Queen about such stuff or she’d get the business end of her willow switch.

There was nobody she could ask. Except maybe her daddy. If she ever found him.

Billie just knew the Saint would come back and live with them and pay a fancy doctor to make her mama well and they would all be a family, especially when she proved that she wouldn’t be a bit of trouble. She could cook, and she’d learn to do his laundry.

She could even polish his silver trumpet. And maybe, if she was really a good girl and didn’t tell lies, he’d let her play it. Maybe he’d buy her a silver trumpet, then they’d sit under a sky hole-punched with a billion stars and send a blues duet up to a moon so awesome it felt like God watching. It felt like being on top of the world.

Betty Jewel would never have let her daughter find out the truth from listening at keyholes, but now that it had happened she didn’t have to pretend anymore that she was going to live. Somehow that was a relief to her. She was so tired. She was tired of pretending everything was going to be all right, tired of getting out of bed in the morning, tired of trying to live up to everybody’s expectations.

You’re not dying!

That was Billie’s expectation, and it was so fierce Betty Jewel worried that when she actually did die her daughter was going to do something crazy, such as run away from home. Nobody knew whether Saint was still in prison or God knows where, but Billie might find out about his family up in Chicago, everyone of them crazy as Betsy bugs and that sister of his—that Jezzie—mean as a yard dog.

Drawing her crocheted shawl about her, Betty Jewel walked to the window. The old bus looked like a hulking animal, something extinct, a dinosaur. When her eyes adjusted, she could make out the slight figure of her daughter perched on top, a little brown sparrow getting ready to fly.

“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 the door. “Betty Jewel, you rest up, then you call in a retraction to that stupid ad. And if you don’t, I will. If anybody has to take Billie, it’s gonna be me. You hear me now?”

“Loud and clear, Boss.”

In spite of the fact that plain, petite Sudie looked as if she wouldn’t say boo to a cat, she’d always been the leader in their circle. The three B’s, they’d called themselves—brains, Betty Jewel; beauty, Merry Lynn and boss, Sudie. They let themselves out, and Betty Jewel thought she ought to get up and check on Billie, but she didn’t have the strength to walk to the window. Snatches of her mama’s song floated down the hall. Queen was singing “Dwelling in Beulah Land” now, an old hymn that promised the downtrodden some blessed relief.

What relief was there when your meager savings were running out and the only income you had was from the three people in Shakerag who could afford piano lessons and the pies your ancient mama sold at Tiny Jim’s?