I never imagined I could hate any place more than that old shotgun house we lived in on Periwinkle Lane until we moved into Willie Jay’s house on Red Creek Road. According to Martha, his house was supposed to be so much better, but it wasn’t. It was just a bland depressing side of the same coin as the old Periwinkle house. There were only a couple more white people in this neighborhood, and they were just as poor and hardscrabble as the rest of the Black folks who lived there. Inside, the house wasn’t much better. Willie Jay didn’t like anything hanging on the walls. He wouldn’t allow us to hang pictures or posters. He said he didn’t like to look at his walls and have them look back at him. Vera used to say that the devil didn’t like mirrors or prying eyes either. But the lack of pictures and knickknacks in his house was nothing compared with the stench. The raw fungal odor of sweating feet usually competed with the heavy burnt smell of Dutch Masters cigars. Life in his house was a living hell that no one openly talked about. And the couple times I complained to Martha about him, her only response was a lecture about how she was moved from one relative to another and we were lucky to have a house to live in.
Sam and I shared a bedroom at the back of the house. Our twin beds, rock-hard mattresses and frames only—no headboard—were separated by a narrow table and cheap wood lamp in the shape of a ship’s wheel. I lay in my bed facing Sam. He always fell asleep before me, winded from a day of running and chasing other little boys throughout the day. Tonight, moonlight poured into the small bedroom and drenched his sleeping face in an autumn glow. His skin radiated under the cool starry night. Weird as it was, the soft wheezing snore of a ten-year-old boy could be really calming. Watching Sam sleep like this was a peaceful sight. He seemed shuttered from everything ugly in the world, the choices and consequences life would force on him when he got to be Mario Jackson’s age.
I remembered the day Martha brought him home from the hospital and laid him in my little arms. Even though I was only four years old, Martha showed me how to change his diaper and make a bottle for him. It was like Martha had given me a real live baby doll. In the quiet of that back bedroom, I could watch my little baby doll sleep. But now I worried about who would watch out for Sam. As I waited to hear back on my scholarship application to Coventry, I worried about what would happen to him if I moved away to boarding school.
I lay in bed, trying to force myself to sleep in between worrying about Sam and listening for the sound that haunted me at night.
Footsteps.
Willie Jay’s footsteps. The ones that used to come in our room on nights when Martha was out of the house. Then, encouraged by her ignorance, his footsteps came after she fell asleep at night. One time, he came into the room when he had mistakenly thought she was asleep. She wasn’t and she showed up in the doorway asking why he was in the kids’ room.
And every time was like the time before. First came the close of their bedroom door, then the hard, flat smack of his bare feet against the pine boards on the floor. Five steps before a floorboard creaked, eight steps more and another board creaked. And finally, the turn of the rusty metal doorknob to our bedroom. A few seconds later, he’d softly whisper my name, nudge me even if I pretended to be asleep.
The walk outside to the shed took less than two minutes. But it was enough time for me to slip away in my mind to another place. Two minutes was more than enough time to mentally slip from his grip and imagine all the places that I’d read about in books or to dream about the life I would live one day, the places I would travel to. Being in that shed forced me to think about all the things I could do—good and bad.
I finally drifted off to the sound of Sam quietly snoring beside me. I didn’t hear a thing until Willie Jay’s silhouette appeared above me.
“Ellie, wake up,” he whispered. “Let’s go out to the shed.”
Chapter 23
Shit! Who the hell had been inside my car? How did they find this article?
Fifteen minutes after I sped out of the Houghton garage, I pulled up to Sam’s bungalow. The light in the living room window was on. I rang the doorbell and waited. A few seconds later, Sam peeped through the blinds before he opened the door.
“Hey, Ellie.” Sam stood in front of me, barefoot, dressed in sweatpants and an Atlanta Falcons sweatshirt. I didn’t respond but my face must have said it all. “Oh God, what’s the matter? Come on in out of the cold.” He closed the door behind me. “Are you okay?”
It was only after I stepped inside his house that I realized I’d been crying. I couldn’t speak. I handed Sam the news article.