The Lost Songs Read online

  But more often, Lutie wanted her ticket out. She wanted to go to Atlanta or Austin or Nashville. Maybe become a scientist and show the world she deserved her placement in honors chemistry. Or maybe teach kindergarten, because she adored little kids, who were all so beautiful. Sometimes she wanted to be a nomad and travel forever, just her and a change of clothing, her passport and a cell phone.

  Houses without a garage could not deceive you. No car in the driveway meant nobody was home. Lutie could trespass.

  She sat on the bottom step, knees close to her chin, and felt MeeMaw standing behind her in the doorway, wiping her hands on her apron and saying that dinner was ready. Lutie smothered a sob. MeeMaw, what if somebody isn’t alive anymore because of Saravette? Do I just go on to school? Take a quiz and laugh with my friends? Brush my teeth tonight and go to bed? Say to myself, Oh well, stuff happens?

  MeeMaw had gotten all her answers from the Lord. She would have walked out on the grass—a meadow, actually, mowed occasionally, full of flowers and bees and butterflies. MeeMaw could get seriously annoyed with God. She used to stand in the middle of the field where he could see her better, peer into the sky and let him know his shortcomings.

  “What am I supposed to do?” MeeMaw would holler.

  Lutie wasn’t counting on the Lord. If he planned to guide somebody’s steps, he should have guided Saravette’s.

  She remembered how MeeMaw would stride into the sun. Throw her head back. Take that extraordinary deep breath to fill those amazing lungs. Turn both hands up, as if holding the song on her two palms, offering it to heaven.

  Lutie even knew what MeeMaw would have sung. So Lutie too walked into the view of the Lord, took her own deep breath and looked up to see if she could spot him. There were a hawk floating and a cloud drifting.

  It was different singing outdoors than it was in the high school music room or the church choir loft. Her voice was a living thing, like any living thing; like the mockingbirds and the chattering flow of Peter Creek. She knew that her voice floated over all of Chalk. The whole neighborhood would know that Lutie Painter had skipped school and was over at her MeeMaw’s, singing her heart out.

  Nobody would tell. Chalk was a neighborhood where you never ratted on anybody for anything.

  Lutie sang.

  “Don’t see no sign of you.

  This ain’t so fine of you,

  Leaving me here all alone.

  “Don’t see no sign of you.

  This ain’t so fine of you,

  Sitting high on your throne.

  “We your children or not, God?

  You’re all we’ve got, God.

  And you’re leaving us here all alone.”

  The melody shouted through the clouds, phrases tumbling over each other, repeating and doubling back. The Lord could not miss the message.

  After MeeMaw would sing this one, she used to add a disclaimer. “Of course he never leaves our side, honey,” she’d say to Lutie, “and we are always his through the grace of Jesus Christ. Now do your homework, study hard and make me proud.”

  There was but one way to make her grandmother proud. Go to school.

  Lutie did not want to sit in class with kids whose mothers were not murderers. Which presumably was everybody. What if people found out? The news of having a murderer for a mother would ooze like an oil spill. Saravette would seep into Lutie’s life and taint everything.

  Lutie prayed that Saravette—who had chosen all these years to stay away—would keep on staying away.

  Well, that was a sick little prayer, she thought. God, keep my mother out of sight.

  Now she needed an excuse for being so late to school. “I didn’t feel good,” she practiced, “but now I do.”

  Who could argue with that?

  She didn’t usually admit it when she felt bad, because Aunt Tamika and Aunt Grace had grim responses to claims of being sick. They would insist that she eat chicken noodle soup. Lutie hated soup. Especially canned soup. Especially canned chicken soup. And if she ended up with Miss Veola instead of an aunt because both her aunts were at work, the pastor would sit by Lutie’s bed and pray.

  Lutie decided not to go into the high school by the front door, where the office kept an eye on things and where she would have to produce her excuse. She would enter by the stage door, which was always propped open. She’d be early for chorus, but Mr. Gregg would not wonder why. It never occurred to him that anybody might have a life other than music. He’d assign her to rearrange chairs or something, and ask her to come this early every day.

  The music room was enormous. Bands, orchestra, choruses, theory and composition classes—all had to share. A forest of black music stands, tympani under their tents and boxes of infrequently used percussion instruments crowded up against the grand piano. Mr. Gregg was a demanding choral conductor. When rehearsal began, Lutie would be able to lose herself in the music and forget Saravette. I’ve broken all the commandments. (Laughter. Pride.)

  Mr. Gregg was a big overweight guy, shirt untucked, tie askew, and had a big overweight office to match. Sheet music and CDs and programs and books spilled out of cabinets and drawers, teetered in piles on the floor and were stacked so high on the visitor’s chair that it looked as if a tall square person were sitting there. The office’s two interior walls were used as a bulletin board. Mr. Gregg put stuff up but never took stuff down, so the bulletin board had become a dusty art project. The glass outer walls were so smeared with fingerprints they were barely see-through.

  “Lutie!” yelled Mr. Gregg, beaming.

  “Good morning, Mr. Gregg.”

  Mr. Gregg had no capacity for small talk. He would never dream of asking how you were, because you might tell him, which would waste valuable music time.

  “This is great, Lutie!” he cried. “I asked the office to find you, but could they pull it off? No. Buncha losers up there. Well, we have only ten minutes, but that could be enough! Let’s get to work.”

  Mr. Gregg had asked the office to find her?

  Imperfect. Highly imperfect.

  They would have telephoned one or all of her homes. She would be in trouble in three locations. But maybe it was for the best. Maybe she ought to tell Aunt Grace and Aunt Tamika and Miss Veola what Saravette had said. But what if they didn’t brush off the possibility that Saravette was a murderer? What if they confirmed it?

  Lutie thought of the cigarette in Saravette’s fingers. What else had those fingers held? Murder was a do-it-yourself activity. There had to be a technique and a tool. The murderer lifted the knife or the gun and then used it. On another person.

  “Lutie,” shouted Mr. Gregg, for whom life was a full-volume event, “I want you to meet Professor Martin Durham!”

  She had not noticed that there was another adult present. Mr. Gregg hated visitors. They got in his way, had different standards, took up good teaching time and were bound to demand paperwork.

  The professor was smaller than Mr. Gregg, and very dark. He had narrow features and an egg-bald head. He wore a gray suit with a gleaming vest, and a tie striped in blue, orange and red, like a beachfront awning. He was adorable in a middle-aged way. Almost bouncing, he extended his hand. “I am so delighted to meet you! This is such a privilege.” He took Lutie’s hand and pumped it, beaming.

  Lutie took refuge in Southern courtesy, so helpful when stalling. “Sir,” she said, trying to get her bearings.

  “Professor Durham,” explained Mr. Gregg, “used to be the director of the Center for African American Music at the University of South Carolina. He now has his own gospel recording company in Nashville and manages the American Music History department of the museum.”

  “And I’m here, of course,” said Professor Durham, “because of your wonderful heritage.”

  Lutie thought of her heritage sitting in a filthy diner buying drugs.

  “He means your grandmother’s singing,” said Mr. Gregg. “Whenever I’m at a music teachers’ convention or leading a choral directors’ w
orkshop, somebody is bound to ask, ‘Don’t you teach in Court Hill? Isn’t that where the lost songs are?’ Well, I mean, of course I had heard of the lost songs, but I didn’t make the connection! Lutie! It’s you! Sitting in my own soprano section all this time!”

  Lutie stilled her face. It was an old skill, drawn from generations of faces that chose not to participate. She knew how to look dumb as a stump. It frightened her, how easily that ability surfaced and how well it stuck.

  “Lutie has a beautiful, beautiful voice,” Mr. Gregg told the professor. “Amazing range and depth. Lutie, sing one of those folk songs for us, okay?”

  They were not folk songs. Folk music was public. Folk songs belonged to “folk,” whoever they were. The lost songs, however, were Lutie’s and Lutie’s alone. “Sir?” she said vaguely.

  Mr. Gregg could not believe that Lutie was not bursting into song. “Lutie, those songs have never been written down! They’ve never been recorded!” He shook his head in disbelief. “Imagine that! Songs composed by descendants of slaves—I mean, that’s heavy. The crazy nickname put me off, you know? The Laundry List? Why would you refer to your compositions like that? That’s why I didn’t pay much attention to the story. But Lutie, Professor Durham has proved that this collection resides with a family named Painter. Lutie! You are a Painter.”

  The professor was smiling and nodding, the way Saravette had. “I’ve tracked you down, Miz Painter,” he said, “and I’m a happy man.”

  Tracked her down? It sounded like the kind of thing you bought insurance against, to prevent strangers from stealing your identity. “Lots of Painters,” said Lutie, staying neutral.

  “And you probably know them all. You can get the lost songs for us,” said Mr. Gregg.

  The songs were not lost. They were privately held.

  Lutie employed three types of speech. For school, she used what she thought of as weather-forecaster English: unaccented speech with carefully arranged sentences. Out of school, she slid into the local warm-honey drawl. “Isn’t it?” became “idn’t it” and “can” became “kin.” She could also speak Chalk, the dialect of the neighborhood where MeeMaw had brought up her family. When Lutie spoke Chalk, she might omit the verb and the plural, stretch the vowels, drop a consonant here, add one there. “That costs five dollars” became “Tha’ fi’ dollah.” And of course Miss Veola, her pastor, used a fourth language that came from decades of reading the King James Version of the Bible out loud: verses so rhythmic and lyrical, they were music on their own. Her speech was full of verses from Psalms and Isaiah and the punch lines of parables.

  Lutie distanced herself with her Chalk voice. “Mr. Gregg,” she said. Mis-tah Grayg. “I’m taking five classes this year?” Fi’ class this yeah? “Honors chemistry is one of them?” Wun a thim? “I do not have time to chase rumors.”

  “It’s no rumor,” said the professor. “But Mr. Gregg is a little off track. The composer was not your grandmother, of course, but your great-great-grandmother, Mabel Painter. I’ve dreamed for years that I would finally find the Laundry List. And Miss Lutie, here you are!”

  Both men were right. MeeMaw’s grandmother had written the songs. Well, not written them, exactly, since they had never been put on paper. But songed them up herself. MeeMaw, Mabel’s granddaughter, changed the songs here and there, adding verses and softening edges, because she felt they were rough on God. (Miss Veola snorted. “God can take it,” said the pastor.)

  MeeMaw had dealt with researchers over the years. University people, preachers, agents, history buffs, local musicians. Give me the songs, they said. As if MeeMaw ran a little corner grocery and would be happy to trot down the aisle, pluck one of her songs off a shelf and hand it over for a quarter.

  MeeMaw always sent them away empty.

  “Some people inherit land,” she used to tell Lutie. “Or silver spoons or oil wells. You and me, we inherited songs. They’re my grandma’s shouts to God. Her prayers got answered too late for her. Instead, her prayers were answered for you, Lutie. You’ll have the world she wanted. It’s her prayers gave you this life. God was slow, I don’t know why he was slow, but here you are, in the world my grandma told God to give you. You hold Mabel Painter’s songs tight, baby girl. You put them in your heart and you keep them there.”

  For Lutie, it was the eleventh commandment. You hold Mabel Painter’s songs tight, baby girl. You put them in your heart and you keep them there.

  “Miss Lutie, did your grandmother Eunice ever talk about the songs?” asked the professor.

  Who would talk about music when she could sing it? “Y’all have the right Painter?” asked Lutie, her drawl so thick even a Southerner could get lost in it. “Painters all over Ireland County.”

  “I did the genealogy,” explained the professor. “Mabel Painter had a son, Isaac. Isaac Painter married Louene Moore. Their daughter Eunice was your grandmother. Now, Miss Eunice, she married a distant cousin, also named Painter, so she became Eunice Painter Painter, and her third baby was Saravette Painter, and y’all are Miss Saravette’s little girl, Lutie.”

  If only, thought Lutie. If only there were some lovely young woman named Miss Saravette and her little girl, Lutie.

  “Lutie, sing one for me?” begged the professor.

  So far he had tried “Miz Painter,” and “Miss Lutie,” and now just “Lutie” in his attempt to make friends. “You see,” he told her, “South Carolina was a portal for African and Caribbean slaves, and they brought extraordinary music traditions. Much has been lost forever, and the idea that something still exists is exciting! But of course, nobody’s heard the songs, so I can’t make any identification.”

  Nobody had heard the songs? What a riot. If the professor were to drive into Chalk right now, he’d find plenty of people who had just heard Lutie sing one, her voice filtering through the trees and over Peter Creek.

  Lutie was attracted to enthusiasm. She liked the professor. But she said, “I think the Laundry List is just a story.”

  “A really good story,” he said softly, “corroborated by many a source. A woman who spent her life taking in laundry for white folks, and whose spirituals were legendary. I think of the Laundry List as a treasure belonging to the world, Lutie. Music composed by a woman whose parents were probably slaves. Her songs alive by a thread. And the thread is you. Together we can return those songs to the world. Mabel Painter’s songs,” he added, as if reciting the name of a saint.

  Mabel Painter might have been a saint, but if so, she’d been a very irritable one. Mabel Painter had ironed. She had ironed without air-conditioning in the hot Carolina weather. Without an electric fan. Without electricity, for that matter. And all day long, she sang.

  There was even an ironing song, full of toil and desperation. Whenever Lutie sang the ironing song, it caught her by the soul and dragged her back to grim times and grimmer futures. She wondered what Mabel Painter would have thought of Saravette, who went and chose grim times when she could have had a good life.

  “Miss Lutie, I’m hoping today after school will work for you. Can we talk a little more and maybe record a few of the songs?” asked the professor.

  Steal them is what you actually mean, Lutie thought.

  She considered changing her expression to sullen, which always infuriated adults. But she wanted the professor to forget about her. So she stayed polite and confused.

  “If you haven’t come across the songs, Lutie,” said Mr. Gregg, “maybe another member of the family or somebody from an older generation knows them. Give me the email addresses of your grandparents. Or great-aunts. Elderly cousins.”

  “That old? Using a computer? I don’t think so.”

  “Cell phones, then. Everybody uses a cell. Give everybody a call.”

  Lutie shook her head. “I don’t think I can help,” she said, as if it grieved her. She joined the crush of kids coming in for chorus and made her way up the risers to the top row of sopranos. She looked carefully at the chair before she sat, as if otherwi
se she would fall through it, going down, down, down to where Saravette was.

  That professor had crawled around in her family history. If Lutie was no help, he’d easily find Aunt Grace and Aunt Tamika. They were not musical, had never cared about the songs and had largely discarded church and God anyway. They probably couldn’t supply the songs themselves.

  But Saravette had once known them all. Saravette, who would do anything for a dollar.

  Few people knew about Saravette. Chalk looked much as it had for decades, but there was transience. Saravette had been gone a long time. Probably nobody there could tell Professor Durham how to locate her. He certainly wouldn’t find Saravette using online sources: she was part of the population whose computer use was limited to stealing one, then selling it.

  If Professor Durham did find Saravette, what might she say? “I broke all the commandments.” (Laughter. Pride.)

  Maybe he had already reached her. Maybe that was what Saravette had telephoned about.

  No. If the professor had met Saravette, he would not have spoken lightly about her.

  A terrible thought chiseled Lutie’s heart, cutting a permanent place for itself. I broke all the commandments. What if that had just happened? What if that was what Saravette had wanted Lutie to know? “I did it, Lutie! I had only broken nine commandments, but I finally finished the list. Broke the last one last night. Killed a person.”

  Who?

  Who had Saravette Painter killed?

  3

  “All rise!” shouted Mr. Gregg, and the singers reluctantly rose from the seats they had just taken. Mr. Gregg made them stand for warm-ups. Nobody liked standing. Nobody liked warm-up exercises either. Five long tedious minutes passed until Mr. Gregg bellowed, “Sit!” and the students dropped heavily into their chairs.

  Kelvin dropped the most heavily.

  The chorus chairs were arranged in a semicircle on three tiers. Kelvin was the outside baritone in the second row, facing the sopranos. Kelvin adored girls. There were ten in chorus alone whom he especially admired. Actually, he admired all girls for one reason or another—their being girls was enough—but in this room, maybe in any room, Lutie came first.