Elaine Hussey - The Oleander Sisters

The bleached bones came suddenly into view, and Sis felt her breath leave her body. She bent closer to inspect her find. The bones didn’t look like much at first, maybe the carcass of a dead squirrel. Or something larger. A dog, perhaps. A family pet.

That was the answer, of course. On a day when the sky looked as if angels had polished it with lemon wax, what could possibly be awry in Sweet Mama’s garden?

Sis continued to dig, but as the mound of dirt collected at her feet and her discovery under the rosebushes revealed its true nature, she sank back on her heels, her heart hammering so loud it was a wonder they didn’t hear it clear in the kitchen. That was no family pet under the roses. It was a skeletal foot, pointing straight toward disaster. She felt as if everything tethering her to earth had been cut away and she was tumbling headlong into that dark hole with the bleached bones. Questions spun through her mind with the dizzying speed of a comet. Who? Why? And how?

But the one that burned a hole through her was What do these bones have to do with my family?

The sun had already climbed into a hot blue sky and beat unmercifully on her and her eerie find, the toe bones attached to the foot, the foot attached to the ankle. And what else? If she kept digging would she find the entire body?

She poked gingerly with her spade, each thrust meeting a sickening resistance that told its own story. The weight of sudden fear dropped her to her knees, but no matter how hard she stared at the awful thing in the hole, no matter how hard she wished she’d never taken her shovel to the roses, the bones wouldn’t go away. Bleached whiter than the wings of angels, they grew so big in Sis’s mind they took up all her oxygen, deprived her of breath and speech and hope. They grew so big she felt as if they were splitting the earth beneath her feet. Any minute now it would open up and swallow her whole, and along with her, everything she loved.

Slowly, Sis pushed herself upright. The woman who had come blithely into the garden expecting to tidy up for her sister’s wedding had suddenly become a woman whose awful discovery could destroy her family. Nothing would ever be the same. From this day on she would divide her life into two parts: before she found the bones and after.

The proper thing would be to tell the authorities, but then they’d have yellow crime scene tape all over the backyard during the wedding, reporters hounding their steps, gossips leaning on every fence post in Biloxi, speculating on the gruesome discovery in the Blake’s backyard. The scandal would be worse than when Emily got pregnant in high school and then was ditched by a boy who’d rather risk getting shot than marry her.

Frantic, Sis spaded the dirt back into the hole, telling herself after the wedding was soon enough to report this. Besides, she’d more than likely uncovered a relic, one of those Civil War casualties whose body had never been found.

She tamped the dirt carefully back into place, and then with one last glance to make sure the bones didn’t show, she stowed her spade, pulled off her gloves and went into the house.

“Lord God,” Beulah said. “You’re pale as a bar of Ivory soap. If you ain’t careful you’re gonna work you’self into a heatstroke.”

Beulah handed her a glass of water, but the lump of despair in her throat was so big Sis couldn’t swallow a single drop.

“Beaulah, do you know what’s buried under the roses?”

Setting her mouth in a straight line, Beulah turned her back on Sis and began washing dishes.

“More than likely a stray cat. I hope you covered it back up. Ain’t no sense ruining Emily’s wedding.”

“It’s not a cat. It’s a body.”

Beulah headed toward the table, a freight train gaining steam.

“You hear me good now, chile. Let it alone.”

Sis nodded or maybe she said yes through a throat so parched words got caught and couldn’t find their way out. A whole set of possibilities swirled through her mind, all of them tragic. If she could ever break free of Biloxi, she was going somewhere so frozen it wouldn’t grow a single rosebush. She’d find a place with snow so deep she’d need an Alaskan husky to find buried bones.

“I want you to go on down to the café and forget about them rosesbushes. You hear me now, Sis?”

“Loud and clear.”

“No use upsetting Emily and Jim, either. Just tell her to hold off on them German chocolate cakes. I aim to stay home and show Jim what he’s got instead of what he’s lost.”

Sis understood the things Beulah left unsaid, her comprehension so perfect she wondered if she’d ever had a normal life in the little pink Victorian house by the sea or if she’d only imagined it.

Beulah leaned down and folded her into a voluminous hug.

“Don’t you worry none. Everything’s gonna be all right, sugar pie.”

For a moment the thought of bones vanished, and Sis allowed herself to sink so deep into Beulah’s endearment she became a little girl again with her whole life in front of her, a shining path she could follow to the stars.

Three

WHEN SIS LEFT THE KITCHEN she could hear Sweet Mama down the hall, singing some rollicking old song from the Jazz Age. Did she know about the bones in the garden? The last thing Sis wanted to do was ask her and completely undo a mind already coming unraveled. Instead, she hurried up the stairs and tapped on Jim’s door.

“Come in.” He was standing on his crutch at the window with his back to the door, his shoulders hunched in a too-big pajama top and his sleep-ruffled hair sticking up like Andy’s.

The brother she’d sent to Vietnam was one she’d have confided in about the skeleton in the garden. This brother she wanted to fold into her arms and croon to the way she had when he was a child crying over a skinned knee.

“Jim, I’ll be heading to the café soon. Would you like to come with me?”

“Not today, Sis.”

He didn’t even turn around, just kept staring out the window as if he couldn’t believe the blue Gulf spread out before him, the white sand dotted with umbrellas and tourists, the seagulls wheeling through a sky the color of a robin’s egg. Sis didn’t even want to think what hell he’d seen over there, a vague euphemism she’d hated until she discovered there’s only so much horror a person can stand in one day.

“That’s okay, Jim. Take your time. Beulah’s going to be here today, cooking up all your favorites.” That turned her brother from the window, brought the ghost of a smile. “And I imagine Em’s make you something special at the café.”

“Tell Em not to worry about me.”

“I will.” Not that it would change a thing. Emily had always shared everything with Jim, the heartache, the joy, even the measles. Sis watched her brother standing there, sagging, a posture so foreign to him she wanted to cry. “It’s a beautiful day, Jim. Why don’t you get out your convertible and take Beulah for a spin?”

“Some other time, maybe.”

What would he do all day? Hole up in the room staring out the window? Sis stood in the doorway torn between the urge to stay and take care of her brother and the need to go to the café to help Emily and Sweet Mama take care of business. In the end, her practical side won. If the café failed, they’d all go under.

She hurried to her room to dress, and then got into her Valiant and followed along behind Sweet Mama in her ancient, oversize Buick. Thank God her grandmother wrecked nothing but a hydrangea bush backing out of the driveway. And miracle of miracles, she stayed on her side of the road all the way to the café.

Still, by the time Sis got there, she was a nervous wreck. She made herself stand still in the center of the room, just breathing, grounding herself in the familiar smells of bacon and coffee and sugar and sweet, ripe peaches. Emily had already baked six Amen cobblers that were cooling on the countertop, and Sweet Mama was standing safe and sound at the coffee urns making a special pot for her customers who always asked for chicory—Burt Larson, the mailman, Tom and James Wilson, the brothers who had a barbershop next door and Miss Opal Clemson, the music teacher who claimed she’d once played the piano for a concert by Leontyne Price, Mississippi’s famed opera singer.