The Sweetest Hallelujah. Elaine Hussey

knows if you tell a lie that way it won’t count. “No, ma’am.”

      House shoes scuffed on worn linoleum, and then Queen herself appeared in the kitchen doorway carrying with her the scent of sugar and grease. She was tall, voluminous and black as a stovepipe. Her eyebrows looked like two gray woolly worms above her dark eyes, and her grizzled hair stuck out every which way. You’d be scared to death of her if you didn’t know how she’d read the Bible to you every night, then sing you to sleep.

      Billie tried not to squirm while her grandmother looked her up and down. “How you done tore them shorts?”

      “In the park.”

      “Mmm-hmm,” Queen mumbled. “That Peanut’s got spinal meningitis. If I catches you over there I’ll whup you good. You hear?”

      “Yes, ma’am. I hear.”

      “All right, then.” Queen wiped her hands on a big bibbed apron. “Be quiet, now. Yo mama’s sleepin’.”

      When Queen went back into the kitchen, she left behind the scent of supper—fried chicken, boiled okra and fried apple pies, Billie’s favorites except for the okra, which tasted like slime. She grabbed the paper off the hall table, then tiptoed to her room. Now was her chance to read the comic strips before Mama and Queen separated the paper into a gazillion sections. Beetle Bailey was her favorite, but she liked Dennis the Menace, too. He wasn’t scared to try any adventure.

      She plopped onto the homemade quilt on top of her bed. Queen had let Billie pick her own design, and she’d picked Wedding Ring. Someday she planned on marrying and having four kids. And you could bet your bottom dollar they’d have a daddy in the house, not some long-distance daddy you’d never seen and only heard about when the other kids in the neighborhood yelled things like prison brat and yo daddy ain’t nothin but a jailbird. That was the main reason Billie had earned her quick-fisted reputation. She didn’t know if her daddy was in prison or not, and Queen and Mama wouldn’t tell her. Either way, she wasn’t about to let anybody say dirty rotten things about him.

      Billie perched on the bed among her treasures—a shoe box with a blue rhinestone earring she’d found on the ground near Glenwood Cemetery at the south end of Shakerag, half a robin’s egg shell fallen from a tree where Alice had been seen, a red bird’s feather Billie might glue on her summer straw hat, and two smooth white rocks she’d found along Gum Pond—another place her mama had told her not to go.

      She thought the rocks had been dropped by angels. They were close to the place where Alice had been murdered. Everybody said angels kept watch over children who wandered up that way. Billie knew it was true. She’d caught glimpses of their golden crowns and heard the flutter of their great white wings.

      She put the angel rocks in her lap, and then she opened the paper to the comic section. When she did, the scent of barbecue seeped under the windowsill, drifted along the floor and swirled up her legs. Billie’s stomach lurched. It was one thing to have barbecue and blues in your house when there was a pile of ribs on the table and somebody in the corner with a blues harp in his mouth. But it was something else when Queen was making fried chicken, and there wasn’t a rib or a harmonica in sight.

      Lucy had said her mama was cooking chit’lins the night Peanut smelled dead Alice’s barbecue. And look what happened to him.

      Billie’s hand shook as she tore a page off the newspaper. She was cramming it under the windowsill when she spotted the date: July 23, 1955. Last week’s paper.

      Queen probably had this week’s edition in the kitchen with the recipes whacked out. As Billie hurried in that direction, trying to outrun the bad thing that wanted in, she heard voices from behind her mama’s closed bedroom door.

      “Betty Jewel, you can’t keep that newspaper hid forever.” Queen sounded like she was on her high horse.

      Billie’s mama said something in reply, but she couldn’t hear what it was.

      “When you gone tell Billie?”

      Tell her what? she wanted to know. Billie tiptoed to the door and put her ear to the keyhole.

      “I can’t, Mama. Not yet. I want to get it all settled first.”

      “I been prayin’ for a miracle, baby.”

      “Oh, Mama. There are no miracles for this kind of cancer. You might as well accept the truth. I’m dying.”

      The words ripped into Billie like bullets. If she had been Lucy she’d have screamed. But what good would it do? Her lips trembling, she kept her ear pressed against the keyhole, but Mama and Queen had quit talking. There was the sound of shuffling and the bedsprings groaning. Queen was probably helping her mama up. Billie slid away from the door, but she wasn’t fast enough.

      “Billie?” Her mama was suddenly there, her color drained so low she looked like a white woman. Queen towered behind her. “Honey, what’s wrong?”

      Her mama stood there like she expected some kind of answer, but Billie couldn’t get past the news of death long enough to think up an excuse for being outside her door. That didn’t stop the woman who could spot bad intentions a mile away and see a lie even before you told it.

      “Oh, Lord. Billie, what are you doing out here in the hall?”

      Billie couldn’t see a thing the Lord had to do with it. He didn’t take folks with little kids who wanted to grow up with a mama. He took people who were too old to get in their flower beds in the spring and plant their Canadians. Like Queen.

      “I’m on the way to the kitchen to get something to eat.”

      “Supper will be ready in a minute. There’s no use ruining your appetite.”

      “You’re mean and I hate you!”

      Her mama looked at her like Billie had split her heart in two, but she didn’t care. Why would her mama die and leave her? She wanted to smash everything in sight.

      “Young lady, if you speaks to yo mama like that again, I’m gone get my switch and wear you out.”

      Queen was older than God. She had a peacemaker for her heart and rheumatiz in both hips, but you could bet she’d fight tigers before she’d allow any sass from the likes of little kids like Billie. If she didn’t mind her p’s and q’s, Queen was going to catch on that she’d been listening at keyholes again.

      “I’m sorry, Queen.”

      “I ain’t the one needs no apologizin’ to. You better tell yo mama you sorry fore I skins you alive.”

      “Wait a minute, Mama. Something else is going on here.”

      When her mama squatted down, Billie hid inside herself where she buried the knowledge that was still screaming through her like a tornado. Outside she became a smooth, clear lake, not a ripple on the surface.

      “I’m sorry, Mama. Can I go outside now?” The dark circles under her mama’s eyes scared her. Up close Billie could see her trembling hands and her hair falling out in patches. Her mama looked like something awful had grabbed a hold and was eating her piece by piece while Billie had been off paying no attention. “Please?”

      “Billie, were you listening at the keyhole?”

      There was no use denying it. Queen might be the one with the switch, but Mama was the one with the bulldog attitude. She never let anything go.

      “You’re not dying!”

      “Oh, baby.” Her mama folded her close, and Billie held on. Maybe if she held on long enough, she could transfer her strength to her mama. “I’ve been meaning to tell you. I just didn’t know how.”

      “The doctors can give you medicine.” Her voice was muffled against her mama’s shoulder. “They can make you well.”

      “They’ve tried, Billie. There’s nothing else the doctors can do.”

      “No!