Midnight Without a Moon(27)
During the night I realized that I had drunk way too much of Miss Doll’s sweet tea. This time Queen wouldn’t be the only one peeing up the pot through the night.
The pot was kept in a tiny room off the side of Fred Lee’s room. For some reason it was called the back room, even though it was actually on the side of the house. The room served as our indoor toilet, without the proper plumbing, of course. Besides keeping the pot in there for nighttime use, the back room was also where we took our daily wash-ups and twice-a-week baths in a number-three tin tub.
I made my way into the dark room and gently waved my hand before me until I hit the string that hung from the light bulb in the ceiling. Strangely, this pretend-it’s-a-bathroom was the only room in the house with electricity. Mr. Robinson, promising Papa that he would convert the room so that it had an actual toilet, with indoor plumbing, had wired the room for lights first but never got around to getting the plumbing put in. But at least we could see without having to light a kerosene lamp when we needed to use the pot at night. Too bad the only privacy was the double sheets hanging in the doorway.
After giving my bladder some relief, I crept back through Fred Lee’s room using the moonlight as my guide. I felt my way along the wall until I reached the sheet that hung in the doorway of the room I shared with Queen. When I pulled it back to enter, my heart nearly stopped. I thought I was seeing a ghost. Instead it was Queen, fully dressed and climbing out the window.
My gasp startled her. She stopped, one leg on the floor of our bedroom, the other hanging out the window.
“Queen!” I said, my voice between a shout and a whisper. “What you doing?”
Queen just stood there with her eyes bucked and her mouth gaping. She was wearing one of the new outfits Aunt Belle had brought her—?a light pink pantsuit that fit her curvy body like a second skin. Ma Pearl would kill her if she found out she’d sneaked clothes out of the chifforobe. Well, maybe not, since it was Queen.
Letting the sheet drop to shield our room from Fred Lee’s, I tiptoed in. “Where you going?” I whispered as I got closer to Queen.
She placed a finger to her mouth and shushed me. She brought her whole body inside the room, then peeped out the window.
“You running away?” I asked, assuming that any bags she had packed must have been tossed outside, seeing that her hands were empty.
With a wave of her hand, Queen shushed me again. “Naw, fool. I ain’t running away.”
“Then why you sneaking out the window?”
She sucked her teeth and said, “None a yo’ ol’ ugly business.”
The shock of her angry reply made me jump. Then I heard a horn. It sounded as if the tooter just barely touched it, so as to alert only someone who knew to be listening for it.
Queen glanced out the window. “Go back to bed,” she hissed at me like an angry snake.
I stalked toward the window. “Who’s out there?”
Queen blocked me with her arm. Her nostrils flared. “Like I said, that ain’t none a yo’ business, ol’ ugly spook,” she said, her teeth clenched.
When I tried to push past her, she shoved me to the floor. Before I could get back up, she was out the window faster than a gush of wind. I stumbled to the window just in time to see her race to the edge of the field, where a rusted-out white pickup waited.
My stomach twisted. The pickup belonged to Ricky Turner.
Chapter Fourteen
SATURDAY, AUGUST 27
HALLELUJAH STARTED DRIVING WHEN HE WAS ONLY eight years old. After the second Mrs. Clyde B. Jenkins the Second died, Reverend Jenkins was so torn up that he couldn’t even remember how to start his own car. So eight-year-old Hallelujah jumped right on into the front seat, started it for him, and drove straight down the road without missing a beat. And at fourteen he was a master behind the wheel.
When he pulled up in front of the house that morning, I beamed. And if I had been the squealing type, I would have done that, too. Hallelujah might have been his daddy’s chauffeur at eight years old, but Reverend Jenkins rarely allowed him access to the keys once he was actually almost old enough to drive.
I hopped into the passenger seat of the brown Buick, my grin stretching from my right ear to my left, and commanded, “?To Miss Addie’s, my good man.” I held on tight to my crate of eggs, as I knew what would happen next.
Gravel flew behind the car as Hallelujah sped off. Good thing Ma Pearl had gone fishing that morning, else she would’ve barged out of the house like a giant mama bear, yelling, Gal, git outta that car with that foolish boy!
Gravel beat on the sides of Reverend Jenkins’s Buick like popcorn popping in a skillet of hot grease. Hallelujah and I both hooted, as if we were a couple of city gangsters who had just pulled off the heist of the century. I knew to cherish the moment, as there was no telling when I’d see another one like it.
After catching Queen sneaking off into the night with Ricky Turner, I finally told Ma Pearl and Papa about him chasing me off the road nearly a month before. I told them right in front of Queen, hoping she’d take a hint. She didn’t do a thing but roll her eyes at me.
Ma Pearl threw a fiery fit when she realized that Miss Addie never got her eggs and had to make do a whole month without them. “Eggs is needed for everything,” Ma Pearl had yelled at me. “You should’ve told somebody. I oughta slap the black off you right now.”