Four and Twenty Blackbirds

Lulu, keeper of the hearth, was waiting at the door.

II

They made me go to court.

Lulu was wearing a fitted blue dress that stopped at her knees, and a pair of high heels that made her calves discreetly convex. Dave wore a black T-shirt and jeans. I was trussed up in a green skirt and blouse with cuffs that clenched at my wrists. Since we weren't regular churchgoing folks, it wasn't every day I was forced to present myself in such a manner. The clothes made me uncomfortable even more than the dozens of appraising eyes, all of which were pointed at me.

"And then he what?" the lawyer pressed.

My eyes lurched around the room and caught Dave, who flashed me a wink and a lopsided grin of sympathy. I sat up straighter. "Then he lifted up the gun and he started shooting at me."

"What did you do?"

"Well, mister—I ran like the devil knew my name."

The defense attorney also asked me a round of questions about my early "episodes" in school, trying to convince the jury that I might have provoked the assault, or even imagined it. But myfamily's lawyer had bullets dug out of trees and rocks waiting in a sealed plastic bag, and the other guy couldn't much argue with those.

I indignantly related the rest of my testimony while the defendant, Malachi Dufresne, sat dourly silent with his hands twisted into a pair of knobby fists. He never looked at me once. He never raised his eyes, not even when his great-aunt took the stand to tell the courtroom what a nice boy he was.

She said it in a mellow accent that sounded like his.

"He's such a good boy. Always has been. Ever since he was a small thing and his parents used to leave him at my home for the summers. He was always so kind to the horses. He's nothing but gentle. I'm sure there's some good reason he came after that child, or at least he thought he had a good reason. My poor nephew needs a doctor, not a prison. If y'all would just let me have him I could get him the best money can buy."

Dave leaned over and whispered in Lulu's ear, mimicking the old woman's scratchy southern voice. "I'm filthy rich. Don't you dare send him to jail."

Lulu nudged him in the ribs and whispered angrily, or maybe fearfully, back. "You stop that. She's got money enough to see it done." And she was right. When the end finally came a few weeks later, the man in charge of jurors' row announced that Malachi should go to a hospital to be evaluated.

Dave shot to his feet, nearly jerking my arm off as he rose. "That's not enough!"

The judge clapped his gavel down and pointed it at Dave's head. "Contain yourself, sir. It is my ruling that Malachi Dufresne be remanded to the Moccasin Bend mental health facility for psychological evaluation, and then he will be returned to court for sentencing in sixty days' time." He dropped the gavel again and stood.

The rest of us rose too, and people began to mill about the courtroom, draining gradually through the exits like a congregation slipping out of church after services. A bailiff came to escort my assailant back into state custody. Lulu put an arm around my shoulder and guided me towards the aisle. "They'll keep him," she told me, squeezing me quickly. "They won't let him go for a long time. Don't worry."

Just then the white-topped aunt came thrusting her elbows forward through the crowd. She knocked aside a middle-aged man talking to a boy about my age and did not even turn to acknowledge them. Instead she turned sideways to pass us by, glowering over her shoulder with chilly blue eyes. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but Lulu cut her off.

"Keep on walking, Tatie."

"I was just going to say—"

"I said, keep on walking, Tatie Eliza. You will leave this child alone."

The crone could not disregard the giantess Lulu, but she was not afraid of her. "Blood will tell," she said, her voice reeking with contempt. "That's all I was going to say."

"And now you've said it, so you keep on moving."

But the little old lady blocked our escape. She dropped her gaze from Lulu to me. Lulu tried to push me back behind her, but I wouldn't go. I wanted to look at this ancient matriarch who refused to stand aside.

She wanted to look at me too. "They haven't told you, have they girl? Not half the truth, I bet they haven't."

I shifted to dislodge myself from Lulu's sheltering grasp, but she wouldn't have it, so I stayed put whether I liked it or not. I craned my neck around her waist and inquired across the aisle. "What . . . what are you—stop it, Lulu, I want to—"

A small head was in the way. It was the boy she'd pushed apart from the man I supposed was his father. The boy stared at me, or through me, as if he could see something inside that I wanted to keep hidden. I tried to lean around him, but his sharp nose demanded my attention. I reached for him to push him away, but his father grabbed him first—like he didn't want me to touch his kid. He drew the child away from me as if I was contaminated.

I glared at them both and he continued to stare blankly over his shoulder, his eyes not leaving mine and his expression not changing. They left through the main doors and I was glad to see them gone.

"Hey, old lady," I said once they were out of the way. I think I was almost loud enough to embarrass Lulu.

"Go on, now, Tatie," she said over my head. "You and I can talk later if you want, but you leave her be." I couldn't believe it. Lulu was actually pleading with the dwarfish, crooked woman in expensive makeup.

Tatie fired her question at me again. "Do you know who I am, girl?"

"You're the crazy guy's aunt."

"And you know who else?" she prompted, shimmying closer.

"Some screwy old lady?"

All the wrinkles in her face sank down to the brim of her nose. She looked positively wicked. She was Snow White's stepmother in a designer dress. "You come here, you mixed-breed brat."

"You leave her alone!" Lulu almost shouted it, forcing me towards Dave.

One of the bailiffs raised an eyebrow and exchanged a glance with the judge, who hesitated at his bench but made no move to intervene. Lulu rotated me a full one hundred and eighty degrees, trying to force me out the other way. But I turned my head and shook it, answering Eliza well enough.

"I," she raised a gnarled finger and repeated the pronoun, "Iam your aunt! Hers too—that hussy who'd close your ears if she could. How you like that, girl? An' how do you like that, hussy?"

Lulu was behind me then, pushing me with her knees along the pewlike bench and shoving me towards the door. "Devil take you, Eliza. You and your maniac boy both."

"Maybe he will," she called back. "But I said it already—blood will tell. And that girl will follow him soon enough. You hear me, girl? You'll join him soon, like your mother before you. They'll take you off to Pine Breeze too!"

And we were clear.

Lulu dragged me down the steps and out into the parking lot before I could hear more. My dress shoes clacked and scraped on the asphalt as I hurried to match her long strides towards the car.

"Is that right?" I demanded, squirming my arm free and nearly sprinting by her side. "Is she our aunt?"

When we got to the car, Dave unlocked the door and hustled us into the front seat. "Yeah, is she?" he asked. Together we ganged up to stare down a sullen Lulu. I was surprised by the alliance, and by the fact that there was something about me and Lulu that he didn't know.

My aunt drew her shoulders back, pretending that the seat belt chafed. Without looking over at either of us, she grumbled her unhappy response. "Yes. She's distant kin. Don't make more of it than needs to be said."

"Wow," Dave said.

"Wow," I echoed. Out the back window I saw two policemen guiding my cousin, Malachi Dufresne, into a van with iron mesh bars on the windows. He paused and scanned the crowd, one foot poised midair.

One of the cops pushed him forward, and he disappeared into the vehicle.

Later that night I cornered Lulu in the kitchen. You corner Lulu and you're taking your chances, but I was feeling brave after what I saw as my victory in the courtroom. I sidled up alongside her at the sink and broached the subject I knew she least wanted to see brought up. "So what is that place, what Aunt Eliza said?"

"Don't call her that."

"What was it you called her? Tatie? What's that mean? It's not like 'Katie,' is it? It's not like a name or something?"

"Just call her Eliza. She never needs to hear more than that from you."

I hopped up on the counter and picked at a foil bag of potato chips. "All right." I stuffed a crispy potato shingle into my mouth and talked around my chewing, so I could pretend that Lulu had misheard something in case I needed an excuse to backtrack.

"So it's Pine Breeze, huh—not the Pine Trees like I used to think. And it's for real; I didn't make it up. I really heard it someplace. Are you going to tell me what it is, or not?"

"No, I'm not going to tell you, not yet. And don't ask again. I'll bring it up when I think you're old enough to hear about it."

That wasn't what I wanted to hear, but it wasn't as harsh a reaction as I'd nearly expected.

I grunted, still gnawing on that salty chip. "Maybe I'll ask again, and maybe I won't."

"Well," she said, taking the bag away from me, "you'd better not."

III

I missed two weeks of school during the trial, and when I returned I was something of a celebrity. Chattanooga isn't a big city, and anyone's business is everyone's business, especially if that business makes the news. Lu mostly kept me clear of the television during those weeks, though I don't think she did me any favors. Not surprisingly, the media had gotten wind that my case was related to an older, equally perplexing one. Soon everyone in town knew more about Leslie than I did.

Leslie. She was my mother. ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">