Music From Beyond the Moon by Augusta Trobaugh

Author:Augusta Trobaugh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BelleBooks Inc.
Published: 2014-11-29T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Weeks passed, and slowly but surely, the changes everyone in the community were expecting to see in Rebecca’s life started happening. All of a sudden, Rebecca seemed to realize that she was free for the first time in her life—free from an unhealthily intense and smothering love that in a few more years, surely would have stunted her personality. At first, she had been like a bird that had been kept in a cage for so long that, when the door was propped open, the bird didn’t seem to know that it could fly away. And almost like the poet Lord Byron wrote in The Prisoner of Chillon, “My very chains and I grew friends/So much a long communion tends/To make us what we are—even I/Regain’d my freedom with a sigh.”

Perhaps Rebecca didn’t even know enough about freedom to sigh about it, but she slowly caught on to her new circumstances and began celebrating her newly found liberation by quietly ignoring anything her aunt Irma asked of her.

“You just wouldn’t believe it,” Jubilee told Glory one afternoon. “Rebecca isn’t rude, exactly, but she just pretends she doesn’t hear a thing her aunt Irma says to her.”

“Like what?” Glory asked, trying not to seem too curious for details, but definitely feeling curious to the extreme.

“Well, like yesterday—Miss Irma told Rebecca to put a barrette in her hair, to keep it out of her face.”

“And?” Glory persisted.

“Rebecca didn’t pay a bit of attention. Just pulled her hair over her face even more, and then...” Jubilee paused for dramatic effect, and Glory heaved an impatient sigh. “And then,” Jubilee repeated, relishing Glory’s silent curiosity. “And then she looked at me, and her eyes was just dancing with some kind of mischief in ’em. And... she stuck out her tongue!”

“She did what?” Glory was shocked.

“Stuck out her tongue,” Jubilee repeated.

“At her aunt Irma?”

“Yess’m, that’s what she did!”

“And what happened then?” Glory stammered.

“Miss Irma didn’t see it, ’cause of all that hair in Rebecca’s face.”

“Lord have mercy!” Glory breathed, frowning and trying to match such a childish gesture with the serene, well-mannered young lady at Myra’s funeral. “Lord have mercy!” Glory repeated. “She sure must have a whole big bunch of anger all bottled up inside her, to do something like that.”

Jubilee’s voice crept into Glory’s muddled thoughts.

“There’s more.” Jubilee’s voice was low and devoid of its typical surliness.

“More?”

“Victor comes around.” Jubilee spoke so softly that Glory heard only Victor’s name.

“What?” Glory pressed. “What’s that about Victor?” Glory studied Jubilee’s face, trying to determine the look in her niece’s eyes.

“Victor comes around,” Jubilee repeated, louder.

“Comes around where?”

“Doc’s house. He rides his bicycle right up to the screen porch, and Rebecca sits on the porch and they talk through the screen, so Miss Irma doesn’t catch on, because I don’t think she’d like Rebecca talking to a boy.”

In her typical manner, Glory used a feigned anger to cover her surprise. “You can get that look off your face, missy!” she snarled at Jubilee.

“What look?” Jubilee was sincerely perplexed.

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