Swan Place Read Free Page B

cry.”
    “Well, honey, he’s a man. And maybe you don’t know much about men yet, but they don’t like to let other folks see them like that.”
    “Did you cry?” I asked, once again surprised by my own words.
    Aunt Bett waited awhile before she murmured, “No. I didn’t cry.”
    “Why not?” I really wanted to know, even if I hadn’t known I was going to ask.
    “I loved her, Dove. Even if we didn’t agree on  . . . some things. And even though we sometimes fussed with each other.” She heaved a deep sigh. “But she was so sick. You know that. She’d suffered through so much, and now there’s no more suffering for her. No more pain.”
    “Is she in Heaven?”
    “That’s not for me to say. Not at all. That’s for Jesus to decide.” And with that, Aunt Bett stood up. “If you think you can do it, help Molly and Little Ellis get ready and you all come on and go to church with me this morning, just like always. We need to keep things as normal as possible for the little ones. I can take you all’s colored eggs home with me now—I could tell by the mess on the kitchen table that you all did color some last night. After church, we’ll have a nice dinner and a little Easter egg hunt at my house.”
    The thought of trying to make things “normal” was something I couldn’t even imagine, but I didn’t say anything. Aunt Bett added, “Let’s just try to get through today, and tomorrow we’ll figure how to get through tomorrow.” But her voice was a little bit too cheerful-sounding, like she was trying to convince herself that everything was going to be just fine.
    “Then,” she added in a more solemn tone, “at some point, I’ll tell Molly. Little Ellis isn’t old enough to understand.”
    I was remembering about what Aunt Bett said to Mama about hellfire and honky-tonking, so I said, “I’ll be the one to tell Molly. I think she’ll take it better from me.”
    Aunt Bett nodded, obviously relieved. “Well, go on then and get me you all’s colored eggs so I can put them in my refrigerator. Did Roy-Ellis fix up Easter baskets?”
    “I figured he had too much on his mind what with  . . . Mama being sick, so I fixed baskets—little ones—for Molly and Little Ellis.”
    “Well, get those too, and the children can find them at my house after church. I’ll come back for you around ten-forty-five. Usual time.”
    “Yes’m.”
    “We just have to carry on, Dove,” she added. “We just have to get on with living.” Her words repeated themselves over and over while I went into the kitchen to get the eggs out of the refrigerator and the Easter baskets from behind Roy-Ellis’s chair, where I had hidden them for Molly and Little Ellis to find. Roy-Ellis wasn’t in the kitchen, but I could hear water running in the bathroom. We loaded the eggs and the Easter baskets into Aunt Bett’s car, and she looked me full in the face for a moment before she drove off. “We just have to do the best we can. Remember that.”
    When I went back toward the kitchen, Roy-Ellis was sitting at the table with his elbows resting on the rainbow-colored newspapers. His hair was wet and combed, and he was wearing a clean shirt. I waited in the doorway until he looked up at me.
    “You and the children going to church with Bett?” he asked, and that pleased me mightily, the way he separated me from “the children.”
    “Yessir,” I answered. Then we didn’t say anything else. I made him a cup of instant coffee and sat at the table with him while he drank it. Every time he took the cup away from his mouth, he stared down at the remaining coffee. Finally, the cup was empty.
    “That was good, Dove,” he said.
    “You want me to fix you some  . . . cereal?” I’d started to ask if he wanted some eggs, but then I remembered that I didn’t know how to cook eggs. Roy-Ellis shook his head, stood up.
    “I have to go  . . . take care of some things,” he mumbled.
    After Roy-Ellis left, I pulled all the