Night Bird Calling Read online

  “Thank you, Miss Lill. You know Mama. She won’t take no for an answer, never could as far as I know. Wants you to eat every bite. Says you’ve got to keep your strength up. You’re the Belvidere woman now.”

  That felt like a punch to my stomach.

  “You might not like hearing that—” Celia looked me straight in the eye—“but we need you. We need a Belvidere at Garden’s Gate.”

  The cold truth of Celia’s words poked my spine and straightened it just a little. To be needed . . . to be wanted . . . And I was a Belvidere—not the Belvidere my aunt had been, but a Belvidere just the same. The last of the Belvidere women. What does that mean?

  “So you gonna eat now?” Celia set the tray on my dressing table.

  “I can’t, Celia. I’m not hungry.”

  “I can’t go downstairs till—”

  “Then you eat it.”

  Celia’s eyes widened.

  It was the perfect solution. I pulled the pot lid off the plate and felt my own eyes go wide. Smoked ham, pot roast beef, stewed carrots and onions and scalloped tomatoes in a dish, two kinds of pie, and a cup of steaming coffee beside. “I’ll never eat all this! Where did it come from?” Where did these poor people get all this food? Nearly every family in No Creek lives on small or no wages and hard times.

  “Folks thought a lot of Miz Hyacinth. She taught most everybody in No Creek over the years. And now—with you—she opened the library. They want to honor her . . . so they do for you. Folks here do that with food . . . and sometimes ’shine.”

  Food and moonshine. Their best gifts, their only gifts. Gravel rose in my throat and lodged there. I’d felt so invisible, so lost and lonely and alone.

  But the truth was, I wasn’t alone, not here. Here was community that included me—even now that they knew I was a runaway married woman. They weren’t afraid to show their curiosity or their disapproval, but they didn’t lie about it. Despite Rhoan Wishon’s drunken feud and the hatefulness of Mrs. Richards, here were people to stand with and people to stand up to—in the open, not behind closed doors with secrets.

  Celia, Chester, and Gladys were my family now, Garden’s Gate my home . . . my home.

  “Maybe we can eat it together,” Celia ventured, her eyes a little hopeful.

  How could I not smile at that face? “Maybe we can.”

  I picked up the silverware beside the plate, not sure what to do. There was one fork and a knife. But that didn’t deter Celia. She grinned, pulling a spoon from her dungarees pocket.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  IT TOOK ME THREE DAYS before I could walk into Aunt Hyacinth’s room. By then, Gladys had washed the sheets and lovingly packed away the wedding quilt. The room looked made up as usual, ready for Aunt Hyacinth to walk in any moment.

  I sat in the morning sun that she loved, in her rocker by the window. I tried to imagine Aunt Hyacinth before her stroke, teaching school, living in this big house all alone . . . and before that, nursing her sick father, and before that, learning that her beloved was lost at sea, her only hope of leaving No Creek and forging a life of her own gone in a moment. Living forever with broken dreams—empty, alone.

  Was that any worse—or better—than living married, every day in fear? I’m going to find out. For what else can my life be? Even if Gerald leaves me alone—and that’s not likely unless he gets what he wants—I’ll still be tied, still married to him. I’ll never be free. The sentencing of that weighed heavier than before, now that Aunt Hyacinth was gone.

  My eyes took in every inch of the room, trying to see it as Aunt Hyacinth had seen it. Sanctuary? Prison? Both?

  The trunk at the foot of her bed beckoned. Her hope chest. Her wedding dress—she’d said it was there, tucked away in tissue paper. The urge to understand more of Aunt Hyacinth’s last words, to see her as a woman my age, give or take a few years, came strong, so I knelt before the trunk and turned the key set in its lock.

  Lifting the lid was like pulling back a tapestry. Pasted inside the lid were carefully scissored flowers from greeting cards and a large envelope containing notices of births and deaths—my mother’s birth announcement, a write-up of Grandmother Camellia and Grandfather’s car crash and obituary, and the write-up of the Chicamacomico rescue gone tragic, including pictures of the rescuers who’d drowned. I traced the lines of Henry’s handsome face, wishing again that Aunt Hyacinth could have known the love she’d so desperately wanted, the marriage she’d so nearly achieved. I was glad I’d left the ruby ring on her finger. Ida Mae had chided me for leaving it there—such a waste, she’d claimed. But I had promised Aunt Hyacinth, and it would never fit another soul. It was where it belonged.

  I found a framed sepia-toned photograph in the trunk that must be Grandaunt Hyacinth and Grandmother Camellia when they were girls in pigtails, standing beside their father, Great-Grandfather Belvidere. He looked a bit worn but severe, while the children looked as if they held back impishness.

  I’d never seen those pictures, but I recognized the girls’ likeness in my mother, in me, and my breath caught to think I came from a family past, though I bore no family future. I closed my eyes a moment, remembering Dr. Vishnevsky’s words. “It is shame to live life and to have no one remember it . . . dor l’dor—from generation to generation. We want to tell our stories, to be remembered by our children’s children, to be known and to tell how Adonai has led us and leads us still.”

  I could be that memory for Aunt Hyacinth, who’d borne no children. I could carry her memories, her story within me—at least those she’d shared—but I could not pass on her story or mine in our family line. Both would die with me.

  I’d birthed no live children . . . My heart cringed at that memory and I slammed closed the trunk. My only child had died inside my womb, flushing itself from my body in a nightmare of pain and blood following one of Gerald’s tirades. He hadn’t wanted children, certain they would interfere with his profession and his call to public ministry, his life. He’d pronounced my pregnancy God’s punishment on him for fondling me before marriage. He’d pronounced the loss of our baby God’s punishment on me for allowing him to fondle me—such looseness and shame in a woman!

  That terrible loss, that condemnation that could never be undone was my personal hell from a just and holy God. I must live with it and with the knowledge that I would never be allowed to bear a child. I’d long feared Gerald’s touch, no longer dared to bring a child into our tumultuous marriage.

  But now those memories must be forced aside. I needed to better understand Aunt Hyacinth, to know her heart and the life she’d lived before I came to her.

  So pushing back my past, again I lifted the lid and carefully unwrapped the tissue paper. Her wedding quilt, never used before the week of her death. Now there was an envelope pinned to it. Gladys must have done that. But pins rust, could stain the fabric, and I didn’t like the idea that Gladys had taken such liberty. When I unpinned the envelope and turned it over, I saw it was addressed to me—in Grandaunt Hyacinth’s shaking script. Inside was a note in Gladys’s handwriting. I recognized it from the grocery lists she kept tacked to the kitchen wall.

  My darling Lilliana,

  This wedding quilt is for you, my beloved. I hope someday you will find a good man to share your love and my wedding quilt will become your wedding quilt.

  But please do not save it until then—enjoy it now. Enjoy the beauty of each new day and the life God has given you.

  All my love,

  Aunt Hyacinth

  I sat back on my heels as the tears ran freely. Oh, Aunt Hyacinth, there is no way for me to have that future. Why couldn’t you understand that? But thank you for loving me. I love that you loved me.

  Aunt Hyacinth must have dictated the note to Gladys on her last day. How much had she told Gladys of my story, of my mother’s story? What did it matter? Squeezing my eyes shut against the ache, I opened them again to lift out her wedding dress. Ivory satin . . . seed pearls intricately sewn into an embroidered
bodice . . . the train so lovely and long. Belgian lace hemmed the veil. Even the shoes, heels dyed to match, lay wrapped in tissue paper in the trunk. Beneath that, a bundle of letters tied in pink ribbon. The postmark from Rodanthe. Aunt Hyacinth’s and Henry’s love letters. My chest tightened. A treasure! I wanted so to know that I came from good people who’d loved each other, who were gentle with each other and kind. Dear God, what would that be like? I’d save the letters. Perhaps when time had passed, it wouldn’t feel such an invasion of my aunt’s privacy to read them.

  Beneath the letters were childhood books, surely favorites saved to pass on to her own someday children—books I could imagine Celia and Chester loving now. I removed each one and sat there reading stories I’d never read until the morning light had passed. The trunk lay empty. I knew Aunt Hyacinth better than I had that morning. At last I was beginning to set the books back in when I realized there was a finger-size hole in the back corner of the bottom and a little white peeking from the hole. Puzzled, I stuck my finger in and lifted.

  A flat panel, exactly the length and width of the trunk, came out in my hands. Beneath the false bottom lay white cloth. Lifting the two pieces of heavy fabric, I shook out their folds and gasped. I’d never seen this up close but did not doubt exactly what it was. Full regalia—robe and hood—of the Ku Klux Klan.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  JESSE COULD NOT UNDERSTAND why Lilliana Swope avoided him, why she refused to come downstairs when he brought the mail on Wednesdays—the day he’d been given to visiting Miz Hyacinth. He didn’t think he’d offended her and hoped she wasn’t embarrassed over the situation with her husband. That had been weeks ago. It had been awkward and, above all, disappointing on a personal level to his hopes and expectations, but it would be worse to lose her friendship.

  He missed his regular visits to Garden’s Gate. He missed his dear friend, Miz Hyacinth, and the Oswald Chambers devotions they’d shared . . . the letters from Biddy and the letters she’d dictated to him in response to her friend. He missed their tea and rousing discussions and the late-afternoon shadows that fell across his path as he made his way home content and satisfied—replenished and filled with a love of life and beauty, an hour of culture and music he didn’t find elsewhere.

  When he visited now, Gladys invited him into the kitchen for a cup of tea or coffee and a square of gingerbread glazed in pears or freshly baked oatmeal raisin cookies or the best biscuits smothered in preserves the world ever birthed, but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t the same at all.

  “I saw the front gate’s come loose off the hinge,” he observed during one such visit. “Can I fix that for you?”

  “We’d be much obliged, Reverend. That was Rhoan’s doing, the night he came here.” Gladys poured him a second cup of tea. “Olney’d normally take care of that, but as you can guess, he and Marshall are layin’ low, keepin’ off to themselves for a while.”

  “Because of Rhoan?”

  “Rhoan and the rest. I think he’d come by and be glad for the work, but Lilliana’s not sent for him. If I had to guess, Olney may wonder does she blame Marshall for the trouble Rhoan caused.”

  “She wouldn’t do that.”

  “No, but Marshall doesn’t know that and Olney’s scared. You know Marshall’s daddy came to a bad end from a white man’s wrath—the reason his mama sent him to live with her brother and Mercy. I saw Mercy picking blackberries the other day. She said Olney wants to send Marshall west. Since President Roosevelt signed that Order 8802, there’s jobs for coloreds in defense factories. Now they can’t be turned away for color.”

  Jesse shook his head. It cut his heart that men like Olney or Marshall feared the only way to live was to leave. “Lilliana needs to reach out to them, let them know she doesn’t blame them. You ladies need their help and they need the work. Miz Hyacinth said she provided for that.”

  “She did. But Lilliana just stays up in her room. She takes no joy in us or the library anymore or even in the garden, rich as it is this time of year. She always loved that.”

  “I haven’t seen her in church since Miz Hyacinth passed,” he lamented.

  “She won’t come. I ask her every Wednesday and every Saturday night as we polish the shoes together, but she says no, that she won’t set foot in another church, not ever again. I don’t know why. She came with Miz Hyacinth.”

  “Because she insisted, I suppose.”

  Gladys smiled sadly. “Miz Hyacinth loved to go, loved to sing the hymns and hear you preach. She loved it when Lilliana lifted the window of an afternoon and they’d hear you preachin’ to the tombstones.” She blushed. “How they laughed at that idea.”

  “And how I loved to hear them laugh when they told me,” he said. “Remember the sound of bells?”

  “I do. Nobody laughed like our Miz Hyacinth. But Lilliana doesn’t laugh anymore, not since our dear lady passed. I miss her so. I miss them both.”

  “As do I.”

  Gladys stood to refill the teapot. “I know you do. I can only imagine how much.” As she passed him, she squeezed his shoulder. “You know, Jesse, she thought of you as the son she never had. She dearly loved you.”

  Jesse nearly choked, holding back the pressure against his eyes. Confirmation of Miz Hyacinth’s mothering love, her special favor, overwhelmed him. Even to hear his given name spoken aloud was a wonder. Of course he was “Jesse” to those he’d grown up with. Certainly he was to Miz Hyacinth, though she never referred to him as anything but Reverend Willard from the moment he returned from seminary, and she insisted others do the same. She’d accorded him all the respect she’d have given an older, more experienced pastor, and never failed to let him know how his sermons blessed her. If only she knew how she had blessed him! He hoped she knew.

  He’d hoped he could forge a relationship with Lilliana—perhaps one that included the reading of My Utmost for His Highest and the deep discussions that devotional had wrought and even a continued correspondence with Biddy, along with the music of an afternoon, the abiding peace he’d come to love at Garden’s Gate. He missed those things, but more, he wanted to know Lilliana for the woman she was. At one time he’d imagined their relationship growing into something more. She was married, so that was not to be. But a friendship? Perhaps it was wrong of him to have imagined such a thing—to have presumed the character or even the platonic affections of another. Perhaps it wasn’t possible under the circumstances. Perhaps it wasn’t wise. Still, he couldn’t help but wish it could be so.

  On his way toward the door, he stopped to peruse the mystery section of the library. A good mystery these late-summer evenings might stand him in good stead, take his mind from some of the troubles he sorted amid the community by day. He’d just pulled the card to sign out an Agatha Christie when Lilliana came down the stairs, her hair disheveled and her skirt askew, a basket over her arm.

  “Lilliana! I’m glad to see you.”

  “Reverend Willard—I thought you’d gone.” She flushed, nearly tripping on the last step.

  “Apparently not soon enough.” He hadn’t meant to sound sarcastic, but her clear wish not to see him cut.

  She straightened. “I didn’t mean that unkindly.”

  “Then why have you avoided me?” He sounded like a petulant child but couldn’t seem to stop himself.

  “I—I’ve not . . . I mean I—” She paled. Her face crumpled as she reached for the banister behind her but missed.

  He crossed the space in three long strides and caught her as she appeared to stumble, but she steadied herself against him and pulled back, pushing him away at the same time.

  “Don’t touch me!”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—I thought you were going to fall.”

  Gladys came running from the kitchen. “Lilliana, are you all right?”

  Lilliana nodded, her face now flaming, her hands pressed against her cheeks. “Yes, I’m fine. I just . . . need to be left alone. I’m sorry, Reverend Willard. I didn’t mean to accu
se you.”

  “Lilliana—Grace—may we talk?”

  She raised her hand before her face, refusing to look at him, and walked quickly down the hallway, through the kitchen and out the back door, letting the screen door slam behind her.

  He spread his hands, appealing to Gladys, but she shook her head. “That’s just how she’s been—more than three weeks now. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to reach her.”

  Jesse didn’t know either, but he believed it his duty to help those in need, even if Lilliana Swope wasn’t actually a member of Shady Grove. Was she a believer in Jesus Christ as her Savior? Did she know she could turn to Him in her need even if she couldn’t turn to another human being? Jesse didn’t know. He’d assumed she believed, being Miz Hyacinth’s niece, having grown up in a church—and above all because of her kind and loving heart. It went without saying, didn’t it?

  He wrestled with that question all the way home and finally came to the conclusion that he should have, would have reached out to Lilliana right after Miz Hyacinth’s funeral if he’d not been so foolish, so blind, so smitten and nursing his hurt that she was married.

  Lilliana was certainly a woman of purpose and conviction—willing to help Marshall and the children of Saints Delight Church learn to better read, regardless of the cost to her safety or reputation. And yet, faith and lofty purpose were not interchangeable. One could exist without the other.

  He’d seen her come to life with the opening of Garden’s Gate’s library. That purpose had been challenged by the visit from her controlling husband, by the late-night tirade of Rhoan Wishon and the cruel gossip of Velma Richards and Ida Mae, then apparently derailed by Miz Hyacinth’s passing.

  He couldn’t bring Miz Hyacinth back, couldn’t undo Gerald Swope’s actions or the ugly words from Velma or Rhoan, but he could encourage Marshall and the children of Saints Delight to appeal to Lilliana. The needs of others had spoken to her tender heart before. Surely those needs could facilitate the opening of that heart again.