The Swan House Read Online Free Page A

that Pastor James was awfully late getting to his place. When he finally did step into the sanctuary and up to the pulpit, the singing stopped abruptly with one look at his stricken face.
    â€œMy brotha’s and sista’s in Je-, in Jesus,” he said, stumbling over his words, something Ella Mae said he had never done before. His eyes were glistening as though he was trying to blink back tears. “Our hope is in the Lawd.” The usual amens were suppressed. Every member of the congregation waited, hearts beating hard.
    â€œI have jus’ received the tragic news of a plane crash in Paris. A charter plane carryin’ some of Atlanta’s citizens crashed early this mornin’ in Paris.” There was a gasp throughout the congregation. “That plane carried on it many of Atlanta’s most prominent citizens. The pain I feel for these people . . .”
    But Ella Mae never heard the rest of Pastor James’s eulogy or his sermon. She let out a loud wail of “Lawd Jesus!” and abruptly got to her feet. “I gotta git to Mary Swan and Jimmy,” she cried out loud, but really talking to herself, and she left the church in a blur, barely noticing the others who reached out to her or asked, “Ella Mae. . . ?”
    They figured it out later, and it made perfect sense that Ella Mae would be thinking about us, her chil’un, as she liked to say. Thinking about me asleep in that big house, oblivious to the fact that my whole life had just come to a screeching halt.
    When I came downstairs that morning, the house was uncommonly quiet. My little brother, Jimmy, was still asleep, and I was still dreaming about the great Raven adventure and nursing my tender ankle. It was Sunday, and Grandmom and Granddad Middleton, Daddy’s parents who were staying with us while Mama and Daddy were away, had already left for church. If Mama and Daddy had been home, we would’ve been at church too. But Grandmom had told us the night before that we could “slee-eep eyan,” as she pronounced it in her dignified Southern way, and we had not argued. Later in the afternoon, Grandmom and Granddad would take Jimmy and me to the airport to pick up our parents. I could hardly wait. They’d been gone for three long weeks, and I was anxious to hear about their travels.
    Ella Mae, the maid who had worked for us for as long as I’d been alive, was always there on weekdays. I could imagine the sound of her vacuum in one of the bedrooms and the smell of her fried chicken permeating the air and whetting my appetite. Sometimes, when I got home from school, I’d sneak into the kitchen and steal a chicken leg, devour it, and toss the bone into the trash can before Ella Mae could discover it. She knew, of course, and fried several extra pieces for my brother and me to enjoy after school.
    But today there was no smell of chicken or soft, distant zooming of the vacuum. Today was Sunday, the third of June, and Mama and Daddy were already on the plane en route to Atlanta from Paris. I glanced at the grandfather clock in the entranceway as I came down the long, winding marble staircase. Nine thirty-two. Only six more hours.
    My mother was a well-known painter in Atlanta and the South, often absent traveling to what I considered exotic places for art exhibitions. I’d grown up in the ample lap of Ella Mae, loving the smell of her soft black skin against mine as she read to me from Uncle Remus or sang songs about Jesus loving me, this I know. She was like a second mother to me.
    Ella Mae’s black hair was short at the time, but I remember when I was little I used to run my fingers through it and love the coarse feel and the way she let me twist it around my fingers and braid it. She never put on makeup that I could tell. Her eyes weren’t that big, but she would lift her eyebrows and somehow show the whites of the eyes when she was mad. Her nose was straight and wide, which I thought was