Solemn Read Free Page A

She saw its contents as the one thing other parts of the world kept in common with her, but maybe also over her. She counted it all that night: $91.67.
    â€œFixin’ to go out! Call out if they gonna play ‘Waiting for Tonight’ again…”
    â€œGirl, we bought you the CD … I’m so sick of that song,” Bev snapped, in the part of their trailer that home tripled as the study room, den, and kitchen. She put some wooden clothespins in her mouth and stepped to the laundry rack. Then, she spit the pins out and stepped away. No wash now, thank God. Actually, Bev was pinched to ask Solemn, “Can I go?” And she should have. She and Solemn could have talked. They could have hummed choir songs. They could have cracked jokes about “dem boys.” Instead, Bev fished for the dishrag. Another night of scraping dinginess to sparkle, cajoling old to look new, fending off wishes, paying no mind to the girl child who sees the discrepancies …
    The latch door of the trailer clicked and then snapped. Solemn had a wish to see the crop dusters, come by more and more over the sweet potato and cotton and tobacco fields. They were the only planes she ever saw, so she loved them.
    Why would you even stay here? I won’t. I’ll fly away. Stay here if you want …
    Solemn’s place with a name of “Singer’s” told her who she was and what she was supposed to do. She planned to save little by little, dollar by dollar, for her trip away from Bledsoe, with just a few diners and a gas station and slumpy houses and mechanic places, to return in a big car and fancy hat and high heels. On television there was a superstar named Oprah with her own show, and even a road and a billboard called after her in the big town. And, she was black just like them. So it was foreseeable. Solemn heard the bigger folks say “the Trace” rode all way to Nashville. She figured out singers lived in Nashville. She learned in school that Nashville was in Tennessee. She wanted to know if she could be allowed out of Bledsoe, near Kosciusko, Mississippi, and on to Nashville.
    On this night, cotton wisps flew from the dandelions. A whole silver, lavender, and gray universe out there accompanied Solemn in her dance of freedom: a carefree half step one second, a brisk skip the next, a flip-flop high and wild to find something worth mentioning in the darkness, and, at last, a split—out a blue from nowhere, like a gymnast in her win or a prima donna in her audition. If she cartwheeled at the bottom of the steep, around the ones who stayed in, no one would see when her dress fell down. Solemn ran alongside the trees without a look in their direction. Like the rest of them, she took her trees for granted, with their grave stories locked in raspy trunks and long-winded roots. There was so much freedom, playfulness, happiness, beauty, and security around her, but Solemn was aloof. Even the well’s head—stuck up like a bunion on sweltering plains—was a point to make, a goalpost in her eyes.
    Her family never visited the well much. Daddy just always had the water. The well was something to look at from afar, and then up close … for Solemn to see that frantic stalk of a man marching toward it. And for him to see her in turn. Maybe he could show her how to pump it, or maybe he would ask for her help with something and pay her a little bit for it. Or maybe she could dive in the well and get rescued out of nothing but a wet, ruined outfit for her parents to complain of. Solemn was pissed and vinegared, bored, curious, restless, wishful, and looking for even more to be on top of it all.
    She found it.

 
    TWO
    â€œWell, sir, I don’t know how or why my husband would kidnap my child. I wasn’t there. I was probably sleeping. My husband beat me up pretty bad.”
    Pearletta shivered under the thin shawl she snatched from a slim pine cabinet on her way out the