“When I was a little girl and we moved here, Gram and Gramps had this old set of bunk beds. My mom and aunt slept in them when they were girls, but they were secondhand when they bought them, so when I say they were old, they were that old. Mom was…she was…you know, we lived with them. We lived with Gram and Gramps, but Mom took care of her kids.”
Preacher didn’t say anything, just kept playing with my hair and fingers.
“I don’t know what got into her. Maybe it was that me and Sonia were sleeping in the bed she slept in when she was a kid and she didn’t like that. Maybe she never really liked it that she had to sleep in a secondhand bed, so she liked it less her girls were sleeping in it thirdhand. Maybe it was just a wild hair. But one day, she went out and bought that wallpaper that’s on the walls and one weekend she painted the ceiling and put up that wallpaper, all by herself. Then she took us shopping for new furniture.”
I drew in a deep breath that went in rough and came out as words.
“I don’t think she knew, when we went to the store, how much furniture cost there. When we found a bunkbed that we liked, though, I remember how she looked at the price tag and her back got all straight and she got that look on her face she sometimes would get, and I knew she couldn’t afford it.”
I pressed my forehead closer to his neck and he fisted his hand gently in my hair and held my fingers in his without playing.
“The salesman saw it too and got all smarmy and told her, in the back they had some stuff that was nicked or scratched that they sold at a discount, and he didn’t know, but maybe there was a bunkbed back there.”
I pulled his hand to my chest, pressed it in and kept talking.
“She was proud, and he was being a jerk, the way he said it. Not nice. Dismissive. Patronizing. And so, she said, ‘We’ll take it.’”
“Lyla,” he whispered, and I knew why.
My voice was getting hoarse.
I swallowed and went on with the story.
“She then says, ‘And my daughters need a desk.’” I swallowed again. “That’s the desk, right there.”
I moved my head on his shoulder to indicate the desk sitting on the wall down from the bed.
“It still had the full price on it but I found the chunk out of the back and Sonia pulled the flip top down and saw it didn’t sit level, and even though it went with the bunkbeds, I said, ‘It’s all dinged up.’ And the guy said, ‘That desk is meant to sit against the wall. You can’t see that irregularity in the back when it’s against a wall.’ And Sonia said, ‘Well, it can sit against the wall, but if you try to use it for what it’s made for, the papers will slide off. We’ll get another desk somewhere else, Momma. And maybe bunkbeds to match too.’”
I took a ragged breath and the story continued to come out of me.
“He offered a deal on the desk, but Mom started to walk away so he offered us a deal on the bunkbeds too, if we took them both, with a dresser. In the end, we got all three for just over the price on that tag of the bunkbeds.”
“No fool, your momma,” he murmured.
“Nope,” I said proudly, but huskily.
“Full a’ sass,” he said.
“Yep,” I whispered.
“Gave that to her girl.”
“Yep,” I repeated, proud again. “Gramps couldn’t fix the hinges on that desk. They were bent. And they were built into the wood so he couldn’t replace them. So, we pulled out the drawer under it to prop up the desk part when we needed to use it and I used it all the time when I was studying.”
My voice dropped.
“All the time.”
That was when I started crying.
Preacher turned into me and pulled me into his arms.
“I-I’m sorry,” I hiccoughed.
“I had a momma like yours, I’d cry she was lost too, cher. I’d cry when she was gone and I’d cry after, thinkin’ about all she gave when I had her. So, give her that. Yeah? And don’t be sorry for givin’ it.”
I nodded, knowing he had not had that, really had not had that, wishing he did, and missing my mom all the more because I’d had it, I loved it, and I wanted it back.
He held me until I quit crying and then he fell again to his back, dragging me up on his chest, and he held me some more.
I was so drained, it felt like I could sleep for a week.
But now that I’d started it, I couldn’t stop.
My voice was a lot quieter when I said, “You know, it’s like a desperation, looking for good things. Anything you can hold on to. And I looked, Preacher. I did. I tried to tell myself it was good she wasn’t sick for very long. Or it was good that she wasn’t in pain for very long. But neither of those are good because she was sick and in pain at all. So, there isn’t anything.”
“’Course not,” he muttered.
“I wish she’d met you,” I mumbled.
“Me too, cher.”
I stared across his chest at that desk and whispered, “Her last words to me were, ‘be sure to follow your star, honey.’”
“Follow your star,” he whispered back.
And when he did, it hit me.
I was.
I was following my star.
That’s what took me to Chicago.
I was following my star.
So, I started bawling again.
Preacher tucked me closer and kept holding me.
When I quit that time, he pulled me out of bed, took me to the bathroom and helped me wash my face.
And we were in front of the TV, cuddled together in the loveseat, watching It’s A Wonderful Life when my grandparents got home.
[Interviewer’s Note]
No tour of the cabin was offered by Lyla upon arrival.
We sat where she’d indicated, in the room the back door led to, a den with a daybed, where she sat cross-legged, a rolling desk chair patterned in zebra print, where she indicated I sit, a wood burning stove, tables and lamps scattered about.
And against the wall beside the brick fireplace, a pulldown desk.
Lyla:
Tommy was ex-military and no-nonsense, so Gramps liked him from the start.
Preacher had talked him around.
So, once Tom got back from Chicago, those three spent a lot of time sitting around the kitchen table, smoking cigarettes, and shooting man shit.
[Smiles].
I have pictures of them with their glasses of bourbon and ashtrays they never dumped out, spinning their yarns.
[Shakes head, still smiling, takes big breath and lets it go]
I didn’t know it, but Preacher hadn’t won him.
Not until the night we played euchre.
[Off tape]
Euchre?
It’s a card game. People in the Midwest take it pretty seriously.
It wasn’t that.
It wasn’t the euchre or that Preacher knew how to play.
It was that it was the day after Christmas.
Julia hadn’t called on Christmas Day or Christmas Eve and we were all upset about it. Sonia and I called and both left messages, but even though we were Dad’s children too, he didn’t call us.
Sonia was older than me, graduating from Purdue that coming summer.
When he made his play to kick us when we were down after Mom died, the only one he could get his hands on was Julia.