Yellow

Vera arrived on the hottest night in July, when neon purple clouds split the evening sky like rips in a pillow. Cicadas, thousands of them, sang their shrieking elegy in the black trees surrounding the porch. My legs and arms were sticky with sweat. Our air conditioning was still out since Henry Landry had heard what Papa was doing and decided he didn’t want any part of what was happening in ‘that house.’ And everyone knew Henry Landry had a mouth on him like a bass fish and so soon the news spread through the town like a virus.

A pair of headlights lit up the driveway and Aurelie straightened her posture and then elbowed me to stop fanning myself with the church bulletin as they pulled in. 

Papa opened the car door for Vera, which he’d never done for Mama. Aurelie and I craned our necks to get a look at her, even though Papa had shown us pictures on his iPad the night he told us about her. 

Vera’s long legs were first out of the car. I nearly bowled over. Her green dress, which barely fell to her knees, revealed a pair of completely hairless legs. I’d never seen Papa smile so wide. I could see the black filling on the side of his molar. 

“Vera, this is my eldest, Aurelie,” Papa spoke softly, the way he coaxed the cows during labor. Aurelie bowed her head slightly, like a curtsy. 

“And this is Junie,” Papa turned towards me. “She’s been real excited to meet you.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Vera.”

✦✦✦

Papa led us inside the house, where Aurelie and I served plates of the lasagna she’d been working on all day. Vera commented on all the right things, the house was beautiful, the food was wonderful, and the calico cat was a delight. 

Vera did speak English. More fluently than I’d expected. I’d had Mrs. Martin show me where Cambodia was on a globe after third period on Thursday. She knew why I was asking and she didn’t bother pretending otherwise. 

“Will she even be Christian?” I’d asked her. “Is she going to understand anything we say?”

“Maybe,” Mrs. Martin shrugged. “Maybe not. It didn’t say anything in that catalog?”

Vera ate every drop on her plate and asked for more. I guess she hadn’t eaten much on the plane. Papa smiled at her the whole time. When supper was finished he finally spilled the beans.

“Listen, since Vera and I aren’t married just yet, at least in the eyes of the church, she’s going to be staying in the room with you girls until the wedding.”

Indefinitely then, since Brother Randall had sermonized fire and brimstone the Sunday after Papa sent the money to Cambodia. We hadn’t been back to church for three weeks, which meant we were good as damned to the rest of the congregation. 

Aurelie nodded agreeably but I was having none of it. 

“Is nobody going to say it?” I demanded. Vera recoiled from the anger in my words, even though she might not have understood them. Aurelie barely breathed. A muscle jumped in Papa’s jaw but he said nothing. “We’re not going to talk about it? Look at her legs, Papa.”

Again, it was as if I hadn’t spoken. “I think we’re finished here, right?”

Aurelie, ever-so-polite, nodded and went back to start washing up the kitchen. Vera looked nervous, for the first time since she’d arrived. She looked young. Too young for Papa and too young to be our step-mother. I was gratified to see that her cheeks were less perfect in the fluorescent light of the kitchen. More splotchy and red than youthful and pink. Aurelie’s chest always got a rash like that the night before an exam at school. 

“Come then, Vera,” I stood. “You must be tired from your flight. I’ll show you to our room.”

Vera stood cautiously, like a fawn on trembling legs. Papa squeezed her slender hand in his and bid her goodnight. I knew Aurelie would give up her side of the bed if I let her, so I made a pallet on the floor for myself and told Vera to put her things on my side. Her dingy suitcase was only half-full, each neatly-folded item as colorful as the last. 

She began stacking the folded clothes into the empty drawer Aurelie and I had cleared out for her. It wasn’t much trouble given that our 

“Is Vera your real name?”

She shrugged her narrow shoulders. “No. Vera is not the name my mother gave me.”

“What name did she give you?”

Vera smiled sadly. “Every name. Honey or sweetheart or darling. Mostly she would call me ‘bumblebee’ because I was clumsy and I always like yellow.”

She stopped folding clothes for a minute and her eyes lit up at the memory of her mother’s pet names. She cleared her throat. “I pick Vera for myself because it means faith, and my mother has faith in me.”

Without warning, Vera yanked off her dress and slid into a pair of purple patterned pajama pants. She sat down on the bed and straightened the items in her suitcase. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her legs. 

Mama’s legs had been like mine and Aurelie’s. Warm and fuzzy under our denim skirts. Even at school, when the girls who weren’t Pentecostal had started shaving and looking down on everyone who didn’t, I hadn’t minded. Sunday mornings, we’d burrow under the covers with Mama and our legs would slip and slide against each other. The hair was soft and ticklish and I never wanted to shave like the other girls because my leg hair was just like Mama’s. 

Now I wondered if Papa hadn’t hated it all this time. If he hadn’t been just like those girls at school, looking down his nose at us. 

✦✦✦

The next morning, I found Papa on the porch. He was in his rocker, thumbing through his Bible. I knew he’d been reading the same chapter every morning since Mama died. The verses about grief and hope and a better future. 

“June bug!” He said when he saw me. “How’d you girls sleep?”

The cicadas screeched from the nearby black trees. The sunlight on the porch warmed my feet. The wood creaked loudly under my weight.

“She shouldn’t be here, Papa.” I told him without looking up from my toes. “She doesn’t dress like us or talk like us. She has a family in Cambodia and she doesn’t have anybody here.”

“Junie, she’s here. Whether you like it or not, she is here now.” He closed his Bible. “Don’t you think I know how crazy everyone thinks this is? How crazy I am?” 

“She’s nothing like my Mama.”

“Nobody is anything like your mother. There is never going to be another person like her again.” He wiped at his eyes with his sleeve. “But I’m lonely, Junie. I can’t have you and Aurelie taking care of me and I’ve done a sorry job of taking care of you two. That’s my own fault, not anyone else’s. I know Vera isn’t perfect. The catalog said she was ten years younger than me and I’d bet it’s a great deal more than that. She only halfway speaks English. But she’s nice and she’ll take care of us and if you gave her a chance I think you’d like her.”

I turned to go back inside. I didn’t want to sit with Papa in his sadness like that. All heavy and weary and loud.

✦✦✦

Aurelie and Vera were in the kitchen when I came back in. Vera pushed eggs around a pan and Aurelie was writing something on a notepad we usually kept on the refrigerator. 

“Twine?” Aurelie was asking.

“Twine, tape, anything.” Vera shrugged. “The oven is the important part, not the wrapping.”

Vera saw me first. She waved and started serving a plate of eggs for me too. 

“Vera’s teaching me how to sew accordion pleats,” Aurelie explained. “I thought we could use some of Mama’s old fabric and make Easter skirts for church this spring.”

She looked happier than I’d seen her in months. Being doted on and listened to and having someone to learn from. I don’t suppose she’d had anyone to learn from since Mama died. Certainly not me. 

“Maybe we could all wear one,” I suggested. “There’s a lot of that yellow polyester.”

“Yellow is good for spring,” Vera agreed. “Like flowers and sunshine.”

“Definitely,” I nodded. “Or like a bumblebee.”

Her face lit up. Aurelie scribbled something on her notepad. Vera set a plate of steaming eggs in front of me, sprinkled with cinnamon the way Mama used to make them. It may have been a trick of the light, but I thought they looked sunnier, more yellow, than usual.