Raleigh knows now that Miss Bunny could not have possibly loved him. He was a smal stranger, piss-soaked and desperate. What Miss Bunny needed was a companion for James, whom she did love. She needed someone to sleep in the house with him while she cared for the white children at her job.
Miss Bunny was a kind woman, and generous. When she told Raleigh she loved him, it was like the music of laughter. He knew from the battered books at school what to say in return. “I love you, too.”
RALEIGH TOLD ME this story as we were riding in the limousine so I could, at last, meet Miss Bunny. He talked throughout the three-hour drive, but the rest of the story I’d already heard — how James and Raleigh lived alone in Miss Bunny’s house six days a week. They ate cold sandwiches but also hot plates brought over by neighbors. He stopped the story when he and James were juniors in high school. Raleigh said he’d end the story there since I probably knew the rest. I didn’t argue with him, because I knew that the real reason he ended the story where he did was because that was when Laverne entered their lives.
“Raleigh, what ever happened to Lula?” I wanted to know. “Do you ever want to find her?”
“I know where she is,” he said. “I paid someone once to track her down. She lives in Mississippi. She got married, has a son named Lincoln.” He gave a smal smile that I didn’t like. “I don’t know if she named him for Abraham Lincoln, or maybe he was born in Nebraska. Could be she’s got a thing for Town Cars.”
“Did you go see her?”
“I started to,” he said. “I drove the Cadil ac down to Hattiesburg, burned up al that gas, but I wanted to take the best car. I parked in front of her house and sat there until she came out.”
“Did you say anything to her?”
“No. I just stood there and she thought I was a white man. I could tel the way she looked nervous to see me there and the way she cal ed me sir. I touched my hat at her and she turned around and went back in the house.”
“Raleigh,” I said. “Raleigh, I’l tel you a secret, okay?”
“Al right,” he said.
“Me and my mama do stuff like that. We do it al the time. We cal it ‘surveil ing.’”
Raleigh patted my knee again. “Dana, baby. That’s not a secret.”
“What do you mean?” I could hear the fear in my voice.
“It’s al right,” he said. “I’ve seen you and Gwen a couple-three times in places you’re not supposed to be.”
“Did you tel James?”
Raleigh shook his head. “Why would I do something like that to Gwen? I would never do anything to hurt your mother.”
“Does she know that you know?”
Raleigh shook his head. “It would just upset her. So let’s just keep this whole conversation between us.”
Then he smiled at me with something that I recognized as longing. I felt the rush of it. I breathed in panting breaths.
“Miss Bunny loves you,” Raleigh says. “She doesn’t know it yet, but she does.”
MISS BUNNY HAD been in the hospital for almost two weeks, but she wanted to come home to die. Home was the crooked-frame house in which she had raised her two boys and Laverne, too. The house was gray with a concrete porch. A vine grew up from a trel is on the north end. Raleigh pointed at it. “If it was later in the year, you wouldn’t believe the roses. That’s one thing that I remember from when Miss Bunny brought me home.
Red roses with yel ow insides.”
“Is James already here?” I asked.
“He’s been here two days. We’ve both been sitting with her, but James wanted me to go and get you and bring you here. We wanted you to see her while she is stil herself.”
I sat in the car and waited for Raleigh to open my door, then exited like my father had taught me, right foot flat on the ground and left hand extended to al ow the driver to help me. I hoped that he was watching from the window.
“Careful,” Raleigh said. “Watch out for the ditch.”
The ditch, running where I would have expected curb, was half-ful of brown water. I made a face.
“You are not a country girl, that’s for sure,” Raleigh said.
I didn’t realize my father had come onto the porch until he spoke. “It’s not the country. It’s a smal town.” He held his arms out to me.
I ran into my father’s hug with a little too much speed maybe, because he staggered back two steps. Since we were now the same height, he spoke directly into my ear.
“Oh, Dana,” he said. “I am so gl-glad you made it.”
I have since read in self-help books that people who are not accustomed to affection don’t know how to receive it. I know for a fact that this is a myth. My father held me in his arms on my grandmother’s front porch in ful view of the world, and I enjoyed it. You don’t need a dress rehearsal to know how to lay your head on your father’s shoulder, to inhale his tobacco scent. It takes no practice to know how to be someone’s daughter.
Raleigh said, “How is she?”
“No change,” James said. “We’ve been talking most of the morning.”
“Did you tel her?” Raleigh said, quietly. James nodded.
