The Book of Lost Friends(49)

I picture the players in my mind, imagine the long-ago afternoon when everyday life went horribly wrong.

“Nobody wants this house, anyhow,” LaJuna goes on. “Judge’s son died out there in the field. Judge died three years ago in his own bed. Miss Robin died two years ago, just walkin’ up the stairs one night. Her heart quit. Aunt Dicey says that in every generation of Gossetts there’s blue babies, and they had to do surgery on Miss Robin’s heart when she was born. But my mama says Miss Robin saw a ghost and it’s what killed her. Mama told me there’s a curse on this place, and that’s how come nobody wants it. So you might best get what you need of the books and get out.” She shrugs toward the door in a way that lets me know she’d like to limit my tenancy on her turf.

“I’m not the least bit superstitious. Especially when books are at stake.” I lean farther into her point-of-entry cabinet, try to discern how she managed that.

“You oughta be. Can’t read if you’re dead.”

“Who says?”

She snorts. “You go to church?”

Elbowing in beside me, she grumbles, “Move your head.” I’m barely out of the way before she flips a lever behind the cabinet frame, causing the shelves to fold upward and reveal a hatch underneath. “I told you…this house has secrets.”

An ancient-looking ladder descends into the raised basement below.

A huge gray rat scurries across a bit of discarded wrought iron garden furniture, and I jerk my head out of the hole. “You came in through there?” I catch myself nervously brushing off my hands and arms as I stand up and LaJuna lets the cabinet fall back into place.

She rolls a glance my way. “Those rats’re more scared of you than you are of them.”

“I doubt that.”

“Rats are always scared. Unless maybe you’re sleeping, then you gotta watch out.”

I don’t even ask how she has come by that knowledge.

“The judge told me, in the old-old days, they’d bring food in through the basement and pass the trays up this hatch. That way, the kitchen slaves didn’t get seen by the guests in the dining room. In the war, the Gossetts could use it to sneak away to the canebrakes if the Yankee soldiers came to arrest people for helping the Confederates. The judge loved to tell tales to little kids. He was a nice man. Helped Aunt Dicey get me out of foster care when my mama had to go away to prison.”

She says it so naturally, I’m dumbfounded. To cover that up, I change the subject. “Listen, LaJuna, I’ll make a deal with you. If you promise me you won’t sneak in here anymore, you can come and help me in the afternoons…with sorting the library books, I mean. I know you like books. I saw you with a copy of Animal Farm in your back pocket.”

“It ain’t the worst book.” She scratches a sneaker along the floor. “Not the best book, either.”

“But…only if you’re in school when you’re supposed to be. I don’t want this to interfere.” She’s noticeably unimpressed, and so I try to sweeten the deal. “I need to get a good gauge on what’s in that library as quickly as I can before…” I swallow the rest of before there’s trouble with the rest of the Gossetts.

A sly look comes my way. She knows. “Now, I might help you. Because of the judge. He would probably like it. But I got some conditions, too.”

“Fire away. We’ll see what we can settle on.”

“I can’t always come here. I’ll try. And I’ll try better about school, but lots of times, I need to keep the little kids for Mama. They sure can’t go stay with their daddies. Losers. It was Donnie that got Mama in trouble for the drugs. All she did wrong was be in the car. Next thing, there’s police dragging us off to the emergency children’s shelter, and Mama’s got three years in the pen. I’m just lucky I had a great-auntie on my daddy’s side who could keep me. The little kids don’t got that. Can’t let them go back in foster care again. So, if you’re out to get in our business, make trouble about my school and all, then I ain’t part of this book project.”

Or you, her expression adds. “I need to know up front, though. Yes, or no.”

How can I make that promise?

How can I not?

“Okay…all right. Deal. But you have to keep up your end.” I offer a handshake, which she avoids by staying out of reach.

Instead, she adds a late-coming codicil to our agreement, “And you can’t tell nobody at school that I’m helping you.” She grimaces at the thought. “In the school, we ain’t friends.”

I take heart in the fact that this could mean that outside of school we are friends. “Deal,” I say, and reluctantly she steps closer, and we shake on it. “You’d probably be bad for my reputation anyway.”

“Pppfff. Miss Silva, I hate to break it to you, but your reputation can’t go anyplace but up from where it is.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Miss Silva, you stand there and read to us from that book and then ask us what we think about it and then give us a quiz. Every. Single. Day. It’s boring.”

“What do you think we should be doing?”

Lifting her palms, she turns and starts toward the library. “I dunno. You’re the teacher.”