On Emma's Bluff by Sara Elizabeth Rice, edited by davebccanada (audio ebook reader txt) 📕

"Emma, stand up. We just made a touch down," were Cindy's first words to her. "Come on you got to stand up and cheer like the dickens."

"I feel conspicuous."

"Who is he?" Cindy retorted.

"What?"

"Who is this conspicuous character you said you feel?"

"Me. I will feel conspicuous."

"Oh, who's on first? Don't you have any sense of humor? If you need to feel someone try ole Johnny boy here." Cindy slapped the back of the neck of a ninth grader that stood yelling in front of them.

Johnny turned to stare and Emma felt like sliding down between the bleachers and slinking home. “Sure go right ahead," was Johnny's uninformed comeback, "What ever your said." Because of course they were 'older' girls, he was intrigued.

"Emma wants to feel your..."

"Shut up!!"

"Look just be glad your aunt said it was cool for me to give you a ride home." Cindy pushed in the dash lighter and took a small twisted cigarette from her pocket. " You needed a chance to chill out before you ran home and cried yourself to sleep again." The last part of this statement seemed strained as Cindy puffed on her rolled cigarette, like she was trying to hold her breath. "Here, you want a hit?" she offered Emma.

" No thanks, I don't smoke."

" Is that a 'no I don't smoke' as of you never had the opportunity before, or is that a 'no I don't smoke' as if you disapprove?"

"It's not that I disapprove..."

"You've never gotten high before, is that it? Cindy interrupted. That's why you are so weird!"

"I am not weird."

"Oh just spare me will you. Take this. Puff on it and be still and don't worry if you cough some.”

Emma did as she was told, but the first puff nearly choked her to death. She started to protest but Cindy cut her off.

"Don't even try to stop, or I swear I will tell every one at school that you have the hots for Bill Simmons." This made Emma gag even more.

"Oh, you think it's not obvious," Cindy continued, "You may not talk much, but your eyes just shout what you are thinking."

"Cindy please, I'm begging you."

"Now you just listen here Emma Lewis, I don't give a fat rat's ass who you've got a crush on, but I would love to see you give that snotty Joy Hutchinson a run for her money. She thinks she's got Bill sewed up tight." Cindy took the joint back and toked strongly. "Besides, how you going to act smooth when you are so wrapped tight." Cindy giggled.

Emma felt a bit dizzy, but it wasn't a bad dizzy. "Yeah smooth, I like that. Think smooth like catfish skin." There was something she immediately wanted to tell Cindy but they were already at her house.   She couldn't remember when she had taken back the little cigarette, but it seemed almost finished. She wondered what it was that she so urgently needed to tell Cindy.

"Okay are you going to be all right?" Cindy asked, peering into her eyes.

"Quit reading my mind," Emma replied suddenly laughing.

"Oh yeah, you are going to be just fine." Cindy joined in her laugh.

Emma wasn't sure how long she stood and watched the taillights of Cindy's Jeep blink away. She just marveled that she had never noticed how beautiful taillight could be before. She was still thinking of those red taillights when she turned to make her way into the house.   She wasn't even particularly startled when she noticed the old colored woman sitting on the rocker on the front porch. Emma could just make out her outline from the light left on in the living room window, behind her.

"Oh, mercy me" the old woman yawned stretching out her jaw. She sat bolt upright slapping her knees. "Why I must have drifted off," she said into the dark, never really looking at Emma. "Don't be looking at me so funny, girl, I ain’t a gonna bite ya." Emma remained stock still as the thin wiry black woman stood and shook out her joints. "I was just walking home from preaching and decided to take that short cut across the trestle." She stopped and snickered a bit, bringing her frail hand up to cover her mouth. "Silly old woman, I am, I forgot I don't travel as fast as I used to. It got so dark, and I was so tuckered out, I saw this light and decided I had better rest for a bit, and get my bearing. Must have dozed right off." She chuckled some more at this.

Emma was at a loss. She couldn't very well just waltz into the house ignoring the old lady, yet if she invited the old woman in to rest and spend the night Aunt Liz and Uncle Roy would be mortified. Emma looked up at the porch ceiling and thought, "'Haint blue that's the color of this ceiling." Her grandma had once told her that all folks painted their porch ceilings 'haint blue' like the sky. That was so if a spirit was to try and enter your house when they got on the porch and saw that color of paint they would mistake it for the sky and believe there was no ceiling in the house to hold them; then they would leave.

Emma looked back down at the feeble woman. Her heart ached. If her parents had still been alive they would have been proud of her if she had offered a place of lodging for the night, but not so Liz and Roy. Emma remembered her shock when Roy had said so matter-of-factly that sure, he had colored friends but that didn't mean he'd sit down to a meal with them.

But still Emma found herself saying, "Well ma’am I think you might freeze out tonight. Why don't you come inside and let me fix you a bed on the back porch. It's enclosed. I could get you some blankets and a pillow."

The old face lit up. " Child, you'd do that for me?"   Her words tugged at Emma. "And don't you be calling me ma’am. The name's Viola, Viola Grace, and you is a real angel."

Emma led Viola through the living room, dining room, kitchen, and out into the glassed in back porch. She left Viola to stand there admiring the glider while she, Emma, ran to fetch a feather pillow and two quilts from the hall closet. Once the make shift bed was fixed Emma turned to leave only to feel a thin jointed hand reach out to her. Suddenly Emma felt so personally tired that her eyes were like cardboard.

"Girl, you is a fine girl. What is your name?"

"Emma Lewis"

“Emma, humm, well from now on that is going to be my most favorite name. I'll never forget it."

The hand drew Emma closer.

"Can I tell you something, Emma?"

"Sure."

"I got me a girl, too. Oh she's a much bigger girl than you by now. She's got a youngin closer to your age. But this child of mine, she don't know her old mama loves her. It seems that whenever we are around each other before too long the words, well they'd just be a flying. I wish that girl knew that she was her mama's life."

Emma was silent while the woman shook her head slowly.

"Will you do something for me just sometimes, maybe?" Then she stopped and drew so still that Emma feared she had drifted off to sleep, but finally her words continued. "In the house where I stay I got this closet. There's a big old cedar chest in it. Most of the smell done gone, but it's still a good chest. I keep a stack of letters in it. One of them letters is from my girl. It's been two years since she mailt it to me." Viola stopped again here.

Her eyes glistening though her mouth was curved into a smile, "She don't know it, but her old mama just couldn't see well enough, no more, to ever read it. Ain’t been able to read it since I got it. Never read it. Never wrote her back. Maybe one of these days... you could come to my house and read it for me. And then maybe, if you wouldn't mind, you could sit down and help me write her back."

Emma could not help it; she was softly crying at this. "You know what, Viola, we'll do just that. Yes, we will." Emma bent over to press a kiss on the brown forehead. "You sleep tight," Emma whispered as she slipped into the house and up to her own room.

The sun that filtered through the screened window was what woke Emma the next morning. She could hear her Uncle Roy out that same window. He had unrolled fifty to sixty feet of heavy chord and was working with Pugh and Eddy knotting in wide gage hooks. Emma sickly realized it was probably to replace the ruined trotline from the previous day.

In the kitchen the scraping of dishes told her that she had missed breakfast. Dressing quickly in the neon green sweat suit that Aunt Liz had originally bought in Memphis for Barbara Lee, who swore that she would not be caught dead in the radioactive lizard suit, Emma bounded down the stairs.

At the refrigerator Emma stopped to pour herself a glass of milk. From behind her shoulder she heard her Aunt Liz speak. "I laugh every time I think of what a fool I must have looked yesterday. You must have thought me an idiot, standing here chunking good catfish into the trash?"

Emma was still trying to follow her aunt's explanation when she remembered the old colored woman she had left sleeping on the back porch. Setting her milk on the counter, Emma hurried to the back door. The glider was empty and the pillow and quilts lay neatly stacked on the floor beside it. "Poor old dear must have left before sunrise   I would have taken her home and even have read that letter to her." Emma mused.

"Emma where is your head?" her Aunt Liz broke into her thoughts.

"Nothing, I mean nowhere, Aunt Liz. What were you saying?"

"I said if they had not told me I never would have recognized her."

"Who?"

"Why the woman on the trotline."

"Really, who was it?"

"Why, Viola Grace. Did maid work around these parts..." Emma missed the rest of her aunt's monologue. She stood still for almost fifteen loud seconds before turning on her heel and looking at her aunt again.

"I think I'll take a walk." When her aunt looked at her quizzically, she added, " for exercise." Straight out the back door she headed.

"Morning, peanut," her Uncle Roy greeted her.

"Morning, Uncle Roy, Pugh, Eddy." The two hired men nodded and smiled.

Pugh was the older of the two. He had worked for Papaw Wilson, Roy's father. His stumpy, gnarled form had not seemed to change in ages. His family had come from the bayous of Louisiana, and though he had been no further from The Bluff than Jackson, Mississippi in twenty years he still spoke with a heavy Cajun accent.

Eddy was a reasonably young, fairly handsome, colored man, Emma guessed, still in his twenties. To hear him tell he had fathered a large bulk of the local