Singing Hands Read online

  But naturally she couldn't follow me without complaining. "Come on, Gus," she said as we reached the edge of the woods. "Why don't we go home and change our clothes first? Our dresses will get ruined in there."

  "Good," I snapped, ducking under a low-hanging branch. "I'm never gonna put this dress on again as long as I live."

  Nell stopped a few paces behind me. "Why not? I think it's pretty."

  "Then you can have it," I grumbled, yanking a fold of taffeta away from a blackberry bush that hung over our old dirt path. Every summer the little patch of woods seemed to spring to life with honeysuckle, kudzu vine, and pine saplings for a couple of wild green weeks before falling back to its usual scraggly, dusty-looking state.

  Nell was still wailing. "But Mother and Margaret will be home soon and wonder where we are...."

  "No, they won't," I yelled back over my shoulder. "They've got the fellowship lunch, remember?"

  There was no answer. I had come to the little clearing where Barbara and I always stopped to rest and talk when we weren't cussing or switching. Obviously, we weren't the only ones who used the vacant lot. Next to the logs where we used to sit were old liquor bottles and food wrappers and a scorched circle of ground where someone had built a fire. Barbara and I had never worried about the fact that hobos might be using our woods, too. Somehow that had only made the lot seem more inviting, more full of danger and mystery.

  Barbara would hold her hand over the pile of ashes in the little clearing and in a low, ominous voice, announce, "Still warm. They must have just left."

  I dropped my pocketbook on the ground, then broke off a long sweet-gum branch and began to strip the leaves, feeling the shame of that morning come sweeping over me again. The church service with the spilled pennies and my dirty gloves had been bad enough. But Sunday school had been even worse. The teacher, Mrs. Walton, turned out to be a nosy busybody with darting hawk eyes who immediately asked me, the new girl, to please stand up and introduce myself to the class.

  Since I had chosen a seat at the very back of the room, the other kids had to turn around in their folding chairs to see me. "Gussie Davis," I said quickly, pushing myself only halfway out of my seat, then plopping back down again.

  Mrs. Walton forced out a smile. "I'm sorry, dear. You'll have to stand a little bit longer than that."

  I slowly rose, locking my hands in front of my dress to contain some of its puffiness.

  The teacher took a few steps toward me, peering closer. "Gussie ... That must be a nickname. Can you tell us what it's short for?"

  "Augusta," I said softly. I heard someone in the front row trying to smother a laugh.

  "And are you new to Birmingham, dear?"

  "No, ma'am."

  "No? But your family is new to the Advent?"

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "I don't believe I've had the chance to meet your parents yet. What church did your family attend before coming here?"

  I didn't answer right away. Missy and probably plenty of the others had seen Nell and me file into church without any parents. But I knew if I said we had always attended Saint Jude's Church for the Deaf until now, I'd have some complicated explaining to do—something I didn't feel up to at that particular moment, especially when I was wearing that particular dress. So I just stood there.

  Mrs. Walton cocked her head, waiting.

  My mind scrambled, trying to remember the names of other churches in town. But with everyone gawking at me, it was hopeless. The only thing I could think of was the name of a fancy steakhouse we had passed that morning on the way to church.

  "Dear?"

  "Delmonico's," I blurted out. "Saint Delmonico's."

  Mrs. Walton's eyebrows drew together, making her look more like a hawk than ever. "I see," she finally said after a long pause. She turned on her heel and walked back to the blackboard. "You may sit down now, Miss Davis."

  Amazingly, no one in the class had laughed. But I saw the look Missy had traded with the girl sitting next to her. Now, just thinking of it, I couldn't help switching at a nearby clump of brambles and letting loose an evil stream of words—all the ones I had seen scrawled in the bathroom stalls at South Glen, the ones Barbara had taught me, the ones I had overheard when the garbage man had accidentally rammed his truck into a parked car on our street. Over and over I said them.

  "Gussie!"

  I froze with my switch in midair. Nell was standing on the edge of the clearing with her hands on her hips, the straps of her purse looped over one elbow. Her face was pink and sweaty. "You were practically shouting," she cried.

  I let out an exhausted sigh and sat down hard on the nearest log. Nell stepped closer until she was standing over me. "Sunday school couldn't have been that bad," she said. "My class wasn't so awful."

  I didn't answer.

  Nell put on her cheerful voice. "Maybe next week will be better."

  "I'm not going next week."

  "Of course you are," she said quickly. "You have to ... especially after all that cussing." Nell snickered at her own joke. "But, gosh, next time you feel the urge to cuss like that, can't you whisper, or at least do it a little bit quieter? Or—or what about signing? You could sign the cuss words instead of saying them!"

  "Sign them," I repeated flatly.

  Nell nodded, her face shining with the exciting possibilities of her new idea.

  "You think there are really signs for those words? And how am I supposed to learn them? Ask Daddy?"

  For a brief second, her smile faded; then it reappeared. "You can fingerspell!"

  I held my hand over my head and spelled out the D word. "Nope," I said, dropping my fist limply into my lap. "Not nearly as good."

  Nell let out a big puff of air. "I give up," she said. She leaned over the spot on the log next to me and tried to brush away the dirt and crumbling bark with the bottom of her purse. Finally, she carefully lowered herself to the edge of the log and perched there, looking around at the scattered trash with disgust.

  "This place gives me the creeps, Gussie. There must be people sleeping in these woods at night. And look," she said, reaching down to pluck up the folded front page of a newspaper lying near her feet. She dangled it between two fingertips. "This paper is only from a couple of days ago. See! It's the story about that kidnapper who escaped from Atmore Prison Farm."

  She glanced anxiously over one shoulder, then the other. "This would be just the kind of place where he would hide," she said, and cringed. "This is probably the paper he was reading to find out how close the police are getting." She dropped the paper as if it had burned her fingers.

  I rolled my eyes. "Not Birthmark Baines again," I groaned. Practically everyone in Birmingham was beside themselves with fear that the escaped convict, Horace Baines, who happened to have a large red birthmark splashed across one cheek, would strike again and steal their sleeping children from their beds. Three years earlier Baines had kidnapped the five-year-old son of a bank president in Montgomery and held him for ransom. Fortunately, the police had caught up with him when he was barely a mile down the road with his briefcase full of money.

  But two weeks ago Baines had sneaked out of the prison on a delivery truck, and was supposedly armed with a homemade knife and dangerous. He had last been spotted on the outskirts of town, hiding in an old woman's shed. She had called the police, but by the time they arrived, Birthmark Baines was gone.

  My parents didn't seem too concerned—a fact that appalled Margaret, especially since Daddy wasn't there to protect us most of the time. Obviously, no right-minded kidnapper would ever target a family like ours if he had hopes of getting a decent ransom. Still, every morning Margaret rushed to fetch the newspaper from the front walk to read the latest reports on Baines, and every night she double-checked the doors and windows to make sure they were locked tight. One evening she even woke Mother up, saying she had heard strange noises. But Mother, who sometimes surprised us with her odd sense of humor, simply said, "I don't hear anything." Then she rolled ove
r and went back to sleep.

  "Let me see that," I said, snatching the paper off the ground. I spread out the wrinkled page on my lap and hunched over the article, scanning for details. I read the description in the last paragraph out loud. "Five foot nine, one hundred seventy-five pounds. Last seen wearing a torn green jacket and dark baggy pants...." I let out a high war whoop.

  Nell jumped. "What'd you do that for?" she asked.

  I sprang to my feet, flapping the newspaper at my side. "I know just what we can do to pay Margaret back for getting us sent to the Advent!" I swiped my switch off the ground and gave the high branch over Nell's head a good whack.

  "What we can do to pay Margaret back?" she said, ducking away from the bits of leaves that were raining down.

  "You don't even have to help me if you're chicken," I crowed. "This is so simple, I can make it work all by myself."

  Chapter 7

  There was only one way to break into Miss Grace's room up on the third floor: we had to steal the extra key from Mother while she was taking her afternoon nap. But Nell didn't seem to understand the logic of my plan or why I might need her help after all.

  "I need you to be a lookout." I whispered even though the door to our bedroom was shut tight, just in case Margaret decided to eavesdrop. Her friends weren't due to pick her up for another few minutes.

  Nell zipped up the back of her shorts. "Why can't we just use some of Daddy's old clothes to make the Birthmark Baines dummy?"

  "Because Margaret has lots of faults, Nell, but being dumb isn't one of them. And Daddy has worn the same kind of black lace-ups and the same black trousers forever. If we used his shoes or pants, Margaret would recognize them in a second."

  "Where are we gonna get a torn green jacket like they described in the newspaper?"

  "Uhhh!" I grunted with exasperation and lolled my head back against the wall behind my bed. "Don't you see, Nell? We don't need a jacket. That's why this is so simple. Just the shoes and a little bit of the legs are going to be sticking out from under Margaret's bed. It's supposed to look like Birthmark Baines is hiding in her room. Get it?"

  "I guess so. But I still don't think it's right to use the clothes of a dead person—especially a war veteran—just to play a trick on Margaret."

  "I know," I said, gnawing on my bottom lip. "I'm not so thrilled about that part, either.... But where else will we get men's clothes? And I know right where Miss Grace keeps the box of her husband's old things. I carried it up myself when she moved in."

  "What if she comes home early?" Nell persisted.

  "She won't," I snapped. "She's never here on Sundays. She spends the day with her parents, remember?"

  Nell didn't answer. She was hunched over the front of her plaid shirt, trying to tie the ends into a knot at her waist like the girl in the Tarzan picture we had seen at the movies last week.

  "So will you be my lookout?" I asked again.

  "I don't know," she said slowly, plucking at the long, droopy pieces of shirttail hanging from her knot. She didn't look anything at all like the girl in the Tarzan picture.

  "What else have you got to do today, Nell?"

  I knew that one would stump her. What to do this summer was a question that had been weighing on our minds a lot lately. In Texas, Aunt Glo had made a point of introducing us to all the wonders of vacation that Daddy was afraid of. "What ever do you mean, your daddy won't let you ride a bicycle?" she cried one day. "Henry, get the Buick! We're going down to the hardware store to buy these girls some bikes!"

  Another day it would be "I've signed you up for swimming lessons, sweet girls. You can't spend the summer in Texas and not know how to while away the hours at the country club!"

  Aunt Glo still wrote us each a letter every week. "As much as I hate to say this," she had written in my last one, "your mother—my baby sister, Olivia—is not only hard of hearing. SHE IS HARD OF HEAD!!!!!! One pitiful week in the dead of August with my precious girls can hardly be called a proper vacation. But she will not relent!!"

  I couldn't help dripping tears on the letter. At least Margaret had friends who could drive and take her places. Nell and I were stuck wandering around our stifling old house, waiting for instructions from Mother or inspiration for how to fill the long hours between chores. That was why making the Birthmark Baines dummy was such a clever idea. How else would we occupy our time all afternoon?

  I looked up at the faint sound of a car horn beeping. "Come on," I said, pulling off my shoes and bouncing up from the bed. "That's Margaret's ride. And Mother's sure to be asleep by now. Let's get started." I opened the door and stuck my head out, listening.

  "Bye!" Margaret shouted up the stairs. "Tell Mother I'll be back in time for supper!"

  "All right! See you then!" I called down, and waited for her to pull the front door shut. I tiptoed into the hall, glad when I felt Nell come padding up behind me. We crossed in front of the stairway and stopped outside Mother and Daddy's bedroom door. Luckily, Mother had left it open a crack. I could hear the sound of her snoring—soft and rhythmic—beyond the door.

  I reached out one finger and pushed the door until it swayed open with a loud creak. Nell crouched lower, wincing. "Careful," she whispered.

  I glared at her over my shoulder. Who was she telling to be careful? No one knew better than I did how hard it was to sneak past Mother—even when she was snoring. Supposedly, when we were newborn babies, Mother had always insisted that we sleep with her at night, pinned to her side with a cloth diaper that would tug her awake in case we cried or flailed about. But I never understood why Mother thought she needed the diaper. Most of the time, she dozed like a cat, with her eyes ready to flicker open at the slightest vibration.

  So I had no choice. In order to make the journey across the bedroom to the dressing table where Mother kept the key, I would have to slither on my stomach, snake style. I checked Mother one more time. She was still breathing deeply, with her Ladies' Home Journal laid open across her chest.

  Poor thing. She hadn't even taken the time to change out of her church dress or her hot stockings. Like most Sundays when Daddy was traveling, she had come home from Saint Jude's exhausted after a week of getting out the church bulletin, organizing the choir and the service, and planning the fellowship lunch. And as if that wasn't enough, she told us before she swallowed her headache medicine and went off to bed, that persnickety Mrs. Thorp had had the gall to complain that the baked ham was too dry.

  I dropped onto all fours, then slowly lowered myself to the hardwood floor. The dressing table was over near the window seat, only a stone's throw away, but before me lay a minefield of obstacles—a stack of old Ladies' Home Journals, two hooked throw rugs, a laundry basket full of folded clothes, and Mother's high heels. I started at a creep, stopping every couple of feet to peer in Mother's direction, or when I heard Nell suck in her breath as my foot moved dangerously close to the leaning stack of magazines. But once I had passed the bed and the hooked rugs, I picked up speed, sliding the worn knees of my dungarees along the smooth floorboards.

  When I reached the dressing table, I carefully pushed myself up on the pink satin stool and gave a little wave to Nell's cloudy reflection in the old mirror. She swiped her hand at me, telling me to hurry up. But I couldn't rush this last part. Bit by bit I inched the narrow drawer of the vanity open. I let out a sigh of relief when I saw the keys on the ring labeled "3rd floor" resting in their usual place next to Mother's cameo brooch and pairs of clip-on earrings. Graceful as a ballerina, I fished up the key ring with one finger and smoothly slid the drawer shut again. Then, for a final flourish, I turned and jingled the keys at Nell.

  "Stop it!" she mouthed, squeezing her small hands into fists and hitting the air.

  "Why?" I asked out loud.

  Nell froze. Her eyes filled with panic.

  "She can't hear us, remember?" I said. I stood perfectly still, calmly dangling the key ring from my finger. "See? She's snoozing away. We just can't make—any—vibrations—"
Nell looked as if she might wet her pants. I clapped my free hand over my mouth to hold back a burst of laughter.

  "I'm leaving!" she said in a strangled whisper. But just as she started to turn, the doorbell rang.

  On its own, the doorbell wouldn't have been much of a problem. But in our house, whenever the bell rang, specially wired light bulbs scattered throughout the first and second floors flashed on and off to let our parents know when someone had come to call. In Mother's room the light bulb happened to be fixed to the wall directly over her bedside table.

  Now it was my turn to freeze. I stared at Mother, waiting for her eyes to pop open when the light bulb blinked.

  "Get the door!" I whispered frantically to Nell, and dropped to my knees as she turned and tiptoed toward the staircase. With the keys clenched in one hand I shimmied toward the hallway, praying for Mother to stay asleep. I could hear Nell downstairs greeting someone, her voice sounding strangely high and full of cheer.

  Just as I reached the side of her bed, Mother stirred. I felt her above me rolling over on her side, and the next thing I knew, her magazine had slid onto my head. I let out a little yelp. And now Nell was coming up the steps with whoever had rung the bell. Mother's door was wide open, and there I was sprawled on the floor in clear view. What else could I do?

  I wriggled under the bed.

  "What a featherhead," a woman's breathless voice was saying. "I went to work this afternoon to catch up on some accounts, and I must have left my keys sitting right on my desk at the office." It was Mrs. Fernley. It sounded as if she and Nell had stopped on the landing.

  "But I'm perplexed," she went on. "In the entire time I've been living here, I never remember your parents keeping the front door locked."

  "Oh, that must have been Margaret who locked up," Nell told her. "She's terrified about that escaped convict sneaking in here to kidnap us. You know, the one from Atmore? Birthmark Baines?"

  I could feel a drop of sweat trickling down my hairline. Slowly I laid my cheek on the gritty floor and blew at a dust ball that had settled near my nose. Thank goodness the box springs above me had stopped creaking. Mother must have dozed off again. But Nell was still stalling on the stairs, probably trying to keep Mrs. Fernley on the landing while I ran for cover.