Part Two: She Never Sang in Front of Him Again

“Becka, now you are just being unreasonable and you are starting to be unpleasant. I don’t know what’s got into you but I don’t appreciate it one little bit.”

Becka closed her eyes and took in a long slow breath. “King, could you please just try and understand? That car means so much to me, she feels like my whole childhood is right there in the blue seats. I’m sad about my Grandmother. All the memories are in that car. Don’t you think she’s kind of something? I mean look at her, I know she’s kind of beat up but she’s also so kind of amazing. I’m gonna take her for a drive today. Do you want to come? We could make a picnic and drive out in the country.”

But King was busy with someone inside his phone now. Finally he stood up and shrugged, suit yourself he said, but by the end of the week I’m calling the scrap people and towing that thing out of my driveway. King slipped his phone into his pocket. “I have things to do. I’ll have dinner in town. You go on and drive your car.”

Becka stared at King. This was new. He’d never once in all these years offered to have dinner in town by himself. Her mouth twitched. Her heart stuttered. And then instead of knowing she pushed it away and stared down at Bertha.

“This right here is an audacious car,” Granny said the day they’d found her in the used car lot. A car like this had to have a name and so they’d named her Bertha and started the great driving summer. Becka, Granny, and Inez, driving every backroad from Bennettsville to Charleston. Laughing, singing, and free.

“I’m not selling Bertha,” she muttered but he didn’t hear her, he was already out the door.

He’s having dinner in town by himself? That is weird, just plain weird.

“Shoots. I am tired.” She opened the window letting the cool air-conditioned air push against the hot summer air. She pressed her face against the screen. Her body sagged. I am tired this morning. I am tired from these crows. I am tired from Bertha waiting in the driveway, taunting me, like some kind of ghost and I sure am tired from these darn dreams. I’m tired of my mother and I’m tired of King. I’m tired of the whole darn thing.

She and King had been married for thirty years. Against Granny’s wishes. He wasn’t good enough for her or something. But at nineteen you know everything. King was so handsome it kind of made her giggle. And when he turned his gaze on her she remembered how she lifted her chin defiantly and full of sass.

I will not be shy, she told herself sternly, and she said yes to the dance and yes to the whole thing.

She had loved being the wife of King. Ronald King. She loved walking into the honky tonk with his arm hard and hot around her waist. She loved being the star of the show. Well, King was really the star and he loved that, and she loved that for him. She gave up her dream of being a country music star. And she never, once they were married, sang in front of King, again.

Sure, he knew she could sing, that’s how they’d met. She was singing in a bar with a pick-up band when he walked in. But once he swept her into his gaze and two-stepped across the floor with her he asked her about the band and the singing. She told him her dream and he chuckled, “Well honey you’re good but you’re not that good. But you sure can dance.” She discarded the insult and instead held onto the compliment. She could dance.

And she liked dancing with King. It was perfect all pressed into the solid warmth of him. So she chose to swallow up her song and never sang in front of him again. She chose to be like the moon, silently reflecting his light as if she didn’t have her own.

Becka stared out the window at Bertha.

“Enough is enough,” she thought. “Granny, I accept your gift. I’m going for a drive right now.”

She picked up her bag and the keys to Bertha and stepped out into the hot morning, ignoring the feelings of doubt about the old car’s viability on the road.

~

As soon as she closed the kitchen door, her handbag began to chime. She snatched her phone. Her mother again.

“Mother. What?” she barked into the phone.

“I’ve been calling all morning. Why didn’t you answer?”

“My phone was off.”

“Well, you shouldn’t turn your phone off, Becka. What if there was an emergency? Anyway, as expected the funeral was just awful. I can’t believe I had to do all that. I’m not even related to the woman. This was your job. I can’t believe you decided not to come.”

“I didn’t decide, Mother. I couldn’t get on the plane. The planes were all stranded on the runways like great hulking birds in all that rain.”

“You’re telling me. I thought we were gonna be washed away like Noah’s flood.”

“Well I should have tried harder.”

“That’s just like you, Becka, thinking about yourself when we were all down there… I’m sure your grandmother was heartbroken, even on her death bed you turned your back.”

Becka stopped in the middle of the driveway and closed her eyes. Her mother was not wrong. She could have tried harder. She should have insisted, she should have had the nerve to push past King and driven herself or she should have climbed onto a Greyhound bus and ridden all the way to Charleston. She might have sat next to a man wearing a brown polyester suit that held the smell of his sweat and turned it bitter. He might have smiled kindly at her, offering her a piece of fried chicken from a crinkled bit of tin foil. She might even have taken it. Yes, she would have taken it because she would have been feeling light in her heart, knowing she was doing the right thing for once.

And when she arrived she would have slipped silently into the hospital room, ignoring her cotton blouse sticking to her, soaked through from all the rain. She would have pushed past her mother and any other people clustered around the hospital bed. She would have leaned over and kissed her Grandmother one last time and whispered goodbye. Her Granny would have woken from her cancer coma, seen her standing there dripping wet, and clutched feebly onto her sleeve, pulling her down close to her face.

“Honey, I’m real sorry. Please don’t stay mad with me when I’m gone. I was worried about you,” she’d have rasped.

“I’m not mad now, Granny. You were right. I should have taken that opportunity to go to college. I see it now. I gave all that to King. I love you,” she would have said. And she would have leaned down and kissed her grandmother’s sunken cheek.

“Becka May, are you listening to me?”

“Hmm?”

“I said the sun came out for the funeral.”

Becka slipped her foot out of her sandal and rubbed it up and down her shin and surveyed the old car. “Well that’s good.”

She pictured how the sun had finally burst defiantly through the clouds causing little puffs of steam to waft from the mud. How the huddle of people melting in the heat, swatting flies, had watched the ground swallow her grandmother. And above them, sharp against the new blue sky, she imagined a group of larks swooping, their clear tsee-titi sounds falling to earth. All the way back on the bus from Charleston to Greensboro she would have wept quietly to herself. The tears slipping down behind her sunglasses. Maybe the man in the brown suit would still be there. Just riding up and down the highway trying to find his way.

“Becka, you are not listening to a word I say.”

“I have to go.”

“Did you get the car?”

“Yes, she’s sitting in the driveway.”

“Did you know that old junk heap is worth some money?”

“Well, that makes sense, a 1957 Chevy Nomad that still works, got to be worth something to somebody.”

“Mac says it’s worth a lot. I don’t know why she left it to you. It’s not like it meant anything to you or anything.”

Becka rubbed her molars together, hard, so they squeaked making her jaw ache. “Mother I have to go, I have an appointment and I’m going to be late.”

She flung her phone into her purse and marched over to Bertha filled with resolve. I’m going for a drive and I won’t be back for dinner either. So there.

She yanked the door open and hurled her purse across the bench seat onto the passenger side and just as she was about to fold herself into the car a black form swooped down, brushing past her face and landed next to her purse.

“Oh my God, what the hell. Shoo. Shoo.” Becka shrieked.

The crow turned its face towards her and stared without blinking.

Becka shuddered. What. Is. Going. ON?

Inez started laughing in the back seat and Granny giggled in spite of herself.

Get in the car Rebecka, Granny said finally.

She can’t hear you, Inez said. And she clucked to the bird and the crow hopped onto the seat back and settled in the back seat between the two ghosts.

Becka leapt into the car and wildly gestured over the seat at the crow. What are you doing?

Becka Honey, just calm yourself, and let’s get on the road, Inez said.

A strange feeling of calm washed over Becka like she’d reached into warm sand at the beach.

She scrutinized the crow. The crow lifted its head and stared back at her.

This is weird. Just plain weird.

What kind of day was this? King having dinner in town by himself. King suddenly wearing high top Converse sneakers like he’d returned himself to high school.

And now a crow had flown out of her dream and was sitting in her car.

She shook her head. Maybe I’m in some kind of alternate universe and I’m just dreaming all of this.

Granny put her wraith hand on Becka’s shoulder. Sugar. Stop fussing and let’s blow this joint.

Inez busted out laughing again.

Becka sagged against the seat. I don’t know what’s going on. But crow or no, I’m going for a drive.

She put the key in the ignition, pulled the gear stick into reverse and roared out of the driveway headed south.