A Month of Sundays Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

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  ALSO BY RUTH WHITE

  Copyright Page

  For Margaret

  1

  Before I was born fourteen years ago, my dad, August Rose, left my mom, Betty Rose, for a carnival singer. With no close kin, and nobody to help her in a pinch, Mom had to take some pretty lousy jobs over the years. Of course, living in Elkhorn City, Kentucky, where nobody lives a posh life, her expectations were not that high to start with.

  For the last few years Mom has been working in a grocery store. Above the market is a three-room dump where we live with a woman named Lily, who also works in the store. Yes, it gets pretty crowded, and I do resent it.

  I have asked Mom maybe a hundred times why she doesn’t chase my dad down and wring some money out of him, but she has been too stubborn and proud to do that. So while I’ve been wearing last year’s shoes and dreaming over dresses in the Sears catalog that I’ll never have, Mom has clung to her precious pride, like it’s worth more than me.

  Recently, Mom’s childhood friend, Grace Colley, came back to Elkhorn City after a long absence, but immediately began to wish she hadn’t. So do I. She and Mom are thick as thieves.

  It’s the last week of school, and I come home one day to find them at the kitchen table with their heads together, doing some figuring on a piece of paper. And I can tell by their expressions that something is going on.

  When Mom looks up and sees me, she says with excitement in her voice, “Garnet, I have finally got enough money saved to get out of here. We’re going to Florida!”

  “Florida? You mean to live?”

  “If I can find work there, yes. They’ve been talking on the radio about Daytona Beach. It’s the hot place for jobs right now.”

  I sit down at the table. Florida!

  “When are we leaving?”

  Mom does not answer right away, and her eyes meet Grace’s.

  “Garnet, honey,” Mom says at last. “I was thinking that maybe Grace and I would go first, and find work. When I’ve saved enough, I’ll send bus fare money, and you can join us down there. It shouldn’t take long once I have a job.”

  All my blood rushes to my face. “So that’s what you were thinking, huh? You’re going to leave me here with Lily?”

  “No, of course not. I’ve written a letter to your dad’s sister, June, asking her if you can stay with her.”

  “But we don’t even know each other!”

  “It’s time to remedy that situation,” Mom says.

  “Why can’t I go with you?”

  “Chiefly because of the expense,” Mom says. “Three people on the road costs more than two. We’re going on a shoestring as it is.”

  I can only glare at her because there are certain things you can’t say to your mom, no matter how mad you are.

  “Besides,” Mom goes on, “you would have to stay by yourself a lot while we’re looking for work, and I would worry about you in a strange place.”

  And it’s settled. Do I have any say in the matter? Do I ever?

  Aunt June answers Mom’s letter right away, saying she had absolutely no idea her brother had a child.

  “Why on earth would August keep something like that from me?” she says in her letter. “Of course Otis and I would be thrilled to meet April Garnet, and look after her while you are finding work in Florida.”

  She says she’s sorry August will not be there to see me, but she has no idea where that rascal is. He has not been around in more than a year.

  The following Sunday we are in Grace’s Packard on our way to Black River, Virginia, about two hours from Elkhorn City, where I will live among strangers for an indefinite period of time. I don’t speak to Mom all the way there.

  “I’m sure this is her house,” Mom says when we arrive and find nobody home. “I remember how it hangs out into the road, because it’s built on a curve. And how could I ever forget this funny green color?”

  I finally have to break my silence. “Didn’t you tell her we were coming today?”

  “Not exactly,” Mom says. “I just told her sometime this weekend.”

  I do an exaggerated eye roll, then turn my back to her.

  “Don’t be so grumpy!” Mom says.

  We take my suitcase from Grace’s car, and the three of us sit down in some chairs on the porch. Grace looks at her watch. It’s clear she wants to hightail it out of here as soon as she can. It’s a pretty busy road here, and some of the cars slow down to look at us as they pass. Not only that, but there are houses lining both sides of the road, and people are craning their necks to see out the windows. Some of them even come outside. I guess they can’t stand not knowing who we are. Directly across the road is a small brick store that says Richards’ Grocery on the window. A man and woman are sitting in rocking chairs out front.

  The sun is hiding behind a rising storm cloud. A wind begins to stir the trees on the hills that rise up all around this valley.

  “Hey, y’all! Yoo-hoo!”

  It’s a woman waving at us from the house beside the store.

  “Wonder what she wants?” Mom says, and raises her hand to wave back.

  “Are you waiting on Otis and June Bill?” the woman calls.

  “Yes we are!” Mom replies.

  “Well, they went to the cemetery to lay flowers on the graves of their kin.”

  Right. It’s Decoration Day.

  “But they should be back here drek’ly,” the woman goes on. “Who are y’all anyhow?”

  Mom sighs. “I’ll go talk to her.”

  And she leaves the porch to cross the road and speak with the nosy woman. In a few moments Mom comes back.

  “That’s Mrs. Mays,” she says. “And those two in the rocking chairs are Mr. and Mrs. Richards, who own the store. They are just tickled to death to meet August’s wife.” Mom smirks as she emphasizes the word “wife.”

  Technically, Mom is still Dad’s wife since they never got a divorce.

  “They will be even more tickled to meet August’s little girl whenever she feels like coming over to see them.”

  “August’s little girl?” I say sourly. “I wonder how many times I’ll have to hear that?”

  Mom and Grace laugh at me. They are in a jolly mood. Well, good for them!

  “And I learned June and Otis have two boys,” Mom says. “Their names are Emory and Avery.”

  The rain starts coming down in big sparkling drops, and still we wait for more than an hour. Finally a brand-new ’57 Plymouth Fury, nearly the same color as the house, comes rolling up beside the porch. Inside there’s a man driving, and a woman on the seat beside him. In the back are two good-sized boys, maybe ten and twelve. Must be the Bills, my long-lost kin.

  2

  Aunt June is a little bitty woman, no more than five feet tall and about a hundred pounds. Uncle Otis is big and burly with a bushy beard on his face. He looks like a gorilla. The boys are ordinary-looking. Everybody has blue eyes.

  “I’ll declare! I’ll declare!” Aunt June says as she pulls Mom into a hug. “Good to see you again, Betty.”

  Uncle Otis silently shakes Mom’s hand, the boys mumble something, Mom introduces Grace, then they all turn to me.

>   “And this is your niece, April Garnet Rose,” Mom says to Aunt June.

  I try to smile at my dad’s sister. After all, none of this is her fault.

  “August’s little girl!” she says, and hugs me. There it is again. Then she stands back and studies me. “I think you have your daddy’s eyes, but you look more like your mom.”

  Mom and Grace keep edging toward the porch steps. They can’t wait to get away.

  “Y’all come in and have something to eat and drink,” Aunt June says to them. “You don’t want to leave in this rain.”

  “We really need to hit the road,” Mom says. “We’ve got a long drive ahead of us.”

  Grace nods in agreement and glances at her watch again.

  “Well, don’t worry about April Garnet. We’ll take good care of her.”

  Mom looks at me, then comes over and puts an arm around me.

  “I promise to write, sweetie, as soon as I have an address where you can reach me,” she says. “Then we can make arrangements for you to join us.” And she kisses me on the cheek. “Now, don’t you cry, hear me?”

  “I’m not crying,” I mumble.

  “You look like you’re about to.”

  “Well, I’m not! Go on, get out of here!”

  And just like that, Mom and Grace are gone.

  “I’ll declare, I’ll declare,” Aunt June mumbles.

  I’m guessing it’s something she says when she can’t think of anything else to say.

  “Why did your mama bring you here?” the older boy says rudely.

  “Hush, now, Emory,” Aunt June says to him. “She’s your first cousin.”

  “I thought Madge was our first cousin,” says the small boy—Avery, I guess.

  “Madge is your first cousin and so is April,” Aunt June says.

  “That don’t make sense,” says Avery. “Somebody has to be second.”

  “I’ve always been called Garnet,” I inform Aunt June, though I’ve never known why Mom insists on using my middle name.

  “Oh, okay, Garnet. We’re glad to have you here, aren’t we, Otis?”

  She turns to her husband, who hasn’t yet spoken a word.

  “Oh, yeah, sure,” he manages to say. “It’s a nice surprise.”

  Surprise? So he didn’t know I was coming? It sounds like the boys didn’t know either.

  “Let’s get in out of the rain,” Aunt June says. “Emory, take her suitcase.”

  “Take her suitcase?” he sputters. “Where to?”

  “Go on now,” Aunt June coaxes him. “Take her suitcase in the house for her. It won’t hurt you to do that.”

  “I’ll carry it myself,” I say as I grab the suitcase by the handle. “I don’t need help.”

  We go in the house. It’s a very strange place. There are rooms shooting off in all directions. It’s a maze—that’s what it is. Right in the middle of the maze are wooden stairs. I can’t tell what’s at the top.

  “Avery, show Garnet up to the sunporch,” Aunt June says.

  I wonder what a sunporch is, but I’ll not ask.

  “Come on, Garnet,” Avery says, and I am glad to see he’s a friendly, smiling little thing, not a bit like Emory.

  Upstairs there are short hallways running in four directions. We turn down one of them to the left and wind up in a room that looks like it was just glued onto the end of the house. The first thing that hits you is all the yellow—a yellow bedspread on a double bed, a yellow skirt on a vanity table, and one yellow wall. The other three sides of the room are big windows with yellow and white café curtains. Rain is slashing against the glass.

  “This is our sunporch,” Avery says proudly. “Daddy just made it for Mama the other day.”

  “The other day?”

  “I mean he finished it the other day. He’s been building on it for a long time.”

  “It’s nice,” I say. I mean it. I love it. I don’t think I ever saw a brighter room in my life. And I’ll bet when the sun shines in here you could get a tan just lying on the bed.

  I put my suitcase down and turn to see myself in a mirror over the vanity table beside the door. My face is pale, my shoulder-length blond hair is messy, and my blue eyes have faint shadows under them.

  “You sure are pretty,” Avery says to me suddenly, and I am so surprised I am speechless. Now, I really feel like I’m going to cry, but I don’t.

  3

  I follow Avery back the way we came.

  “How many rooms in this house?” I ask him.

  “I don’t know.”

  I count six closed doors on this floor.

  “That’s the bathroom,” he says, and points to a door at the end of one of the hallways. “Just in case you ever need to go.”

  I follow him down the stairs, then through the front hall into a dining room. I hear a telephone ringing somewhere, and a muffled voice answers. We enter the biggest kitchen in the world, where Aunt June has put on an apron and is starting to cook. Emory is at a monster-sized wooden table reading the funny papers, and Uncle Otis is nowhere. It must have been him answering the phone.

  This kitchen is so roomy, there’s a large stone fireplace along the right wall and a massive red leather couch, a coffee table, and two arm chairs in front of it. I get a brief vision of a winter evening with a roaring fire going. Bet it’s cozy in here then.

  Avery sits down at the big table, so I sit there too.

  Aunt June smiles at me. “After a while, if it stops raining, we’ll go out in the backyard, you and me, and have us a talk, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “It’ll be nice to have a girl to talk to instead of all these men,” she says, and smiles again. “Do you like the sunporch?”

  “Yeah, it’s pretty.”

  I hear the phone ringing again.

  “Have you ever had shrimp?” Aunt June says.

  “No.”

  “Well, that’s what we’re having for supper.”

  “What does it taste like?”

  “I don’t know. I never had it either. We got this new freezer a few weeks ago, and it came stocked full of food. Some of it we never heard of. But we like to try different things.”

  “Bet you don’t even know what a freezer is,” Emory says. It seems he’s just itching for a fight, but he won’t get one from me.

  “My mom worked in a grocery store,” I say calmly. “They had freezers.”

  “Well, come out here and see our freezer,” Aunt June says. “I’m proud of it.”

  I follow Aunt June to a screened porch, which I am calculating is smack underneath the sunporch. Here you can see and hear the traffic splashing through the rain. The freezer is standing tall and white against the wall, and when Aunt June opens it I see it is full of packages of foods froze to rocks.

  “That’s how it was delivered to us,” Aunt June says, “stocked full. They do that to make them sell better. Some of it’s ordinary stuff like green beans and corn, but some of it’s uncommon, like the shrimp. We have oysters too, and asparagus. You ever had asparagus?”

  I shake my head.

  Aunt June lifts out several packages and shows them to me. They have writing on them, and some of them have pictures to match the words. Broccoli, cauliflower, creamed spinach, crab cakes, filet mignon. Filet mignon ?

  I follow her back into the kitchen.

  “Do you like Pogo?” Emory asks me, looking up from the comics.

  “Not much,” I say back.

  “Who do you like?” he wants to know.

  “Li’l Abner.”

  “I can’t stand Li’l Abner. He’s stupid.”

  Aunt June cooks the shrimp with butter and boils some potatoes. She adds to that a mess of sugar peas and some crispy new radishes, both fresh out of her garden, she says. Everything looks good and I realize I have not had a bite since about ten o’clock this morning, and now it’s around five in the evening.

  “Hungry?” Aunt June asks, like she’s reading my mind.

  “I could eat the
legs off this table.”

  That was not a bit original, just something I’ve heard other people say, so I’m surprised when Aunt June and Avery bust out laughing.

  Then Aunt June says to Avery, “Go tell your daddy supper’s ready.”

  Avery does what she says, and in a minute he comes back in with his daddy behind him. Uncle Otis scratches his beard, sits down at the table, and folds his hands before him.

  “Earth that gave us all this food,” Aunt June begins, and all heads go down. “Sun that made it ripe and good. Dearest Earth, dearest sun, we’ll not forget what you have done.”

  She passes the shrimp around, then asks Uncle Otis, “Who was on the phone?”

  “Neighbors,” Uncle Otis responds. “Wanting to know about the girl.”

  Except for the clattering of our forks against the plates, silence follows. The shrimp is a new taste, but I like it. It seems everybody likes it, except for Emory, and he pretends to be gagging on it.

  Aunt June tries to make conversation. “We are celebrating our centennial this year,” she tells me. “That’s why your uncle Otis has grown a beard. A lot of men in the county are growing them, and on the Fourth of July there will be a big celebration. That’s when they will give a prize for the best beard.”

  “Bet you don’t know what a centennial is!” Emory says to me, and he laughs with his mouth open. I can see peas and potatoes in there. It’s disgusting.

  The phone is ringing again, and everybody ignores it.

  “A centennial is a birthday of one hundred years,” Aunt June explains. “That’s how old our county is this year.”

  It’s about all the conversation we get. I eat like I never had food before, and they watch me like they never saw a girl eat before. Then Uncle Otis finishes his supper and leaves the kitchen. He still has not spoken directly to me, and I can’t help but wonder what he’s thinking.

  4

  I help Aunt June do dishes and clean up the kitchen. I don’t know where anything goes, but I guess I’ll learn. The rain has stopped, and we go out to the backyard like Aunt June said we would. Avery wants to come, but she tells him sweetly that she wants a private talk with her niece.

  Avery is disappointed, but he says, “Oh, all right.”