Saving Elijah

in," Richard Andrew said.
    "Why in the world would anyone who had a pool in their backyard fill it in and plant stupid flowers there?" Dan asked.
    "Because of Charlie," Ashlin said. She too was whispering.
    "Who's Charlie?" I asked.
    "He was our cousin," said Richard Andrew. "He drowned."
    "Right in there." Cook pointed to the strange and amazing garden. "And he wasn't our cousin, he was our uncle."
    "You mean uncle like Uncle Bernard?" I said. "So that means Charlie was our mother's brother too, right?" She'd never mentioned another brother.
    They all nodded.
    "He drowned years ago, like when he was four," Mebane Ruth said. "But my mama says Grandma never got over it, so we gotta have sympathy."
    "You better not say anything about it," said Ross, "because my mama says we're not allowed to talk about Charlie in front of Grandma. It makes her even more bonkers."
    "What about Grandpa Eli? Can you talk about Charlie in front of him?"
    They all shook their heads. "No, him neither," said Cook.
    Soon we went back inside the house, into the huge, elaborate living room. My mother's Hanukkah presents were going to stand out like blue and silver thumbs amidst the piles of presents wrapped in red and gold and green Christmas paper, arranged under a tall evergreen decorated with beautiful glass ornaments and twinkling lights.
    "We're not allowed to have a Christmas tree," I said, trying to exude conviction. "Our mother says you can't be Christian and Jewish at the same time."
    "That's stupid," Ross said. "We're Jewish and we have a tree."
    "Well, we only light the Hanukkah candles, and my mother gives us presents every night of Hanukkah. I like it that way."
    My cousins exchanged glances but didn't say anything, just moved us over to the collection of old photographs hanging on a far wall. I was particularly interested in a group shot in a gold leaf frame showing a thinner Grandpa Eli, a woman holding a baby, and two toddlers at her feet. The woman's face was quite pretty but pale and peculiar, really— blank somehow, almost as if the photograph had failed to register her. Standing on the other side of Grandpa Eli was a pudgy, pretty little girl of about eleven in a white, ruffled dress, her mountain of curls done up with a big white ribbon on top, white-gloved hands folded in her lap. My mother fat?
    I looked again. "Is one of these Uncle Lee? And Charlie?"
    "Shhhh," Mebane said. "We told you not to talk about it. That's Uncle Lee, he talks like a girl. Charlie was already drowned. And that one's our daddy." She pointed to one of the toddlers.
    "And ours," said Reynolds, pointing to the baby.
    We moved on to another photograph in which a slim and unsmiling, now teenaged Charlotte stared out at me, wearing a white strapless tulle gown, with a cinched waist and full skirt. She had been truly, breathtakingly beautiful.
    "Looks like a wedding dress." I knew it wasn't. In the picture at home of my mother and father on their wedding day, my mother was wearing a white suit and a tiny veiled hat that dipped down smartly over one eye.
    "Oh, don't you know?" Mebane Ruth said, then explained debutantes, and the country club, and the Ballyhoo ball—none of which seemed interesting to me, and I said so.

    *    *    *

    "We found a bullfrog in the pool last month," Reynolds said when we were back under the Willow Tree That Got Rot Last Year, sipping lemonades.
    "The day my best friend Julie met me she brought over a frog," I said.
    "You have frogs in New York?" Richard Andrew said.
    "Yeah, except our frogs have purple polka dots and yellow feet." I smiled.
    "She's full of it," Dan said. "She's always that way."
    "You are so full of it," Richard Andrew said.
    "No I'm not. We put the frog in my mother's car, too. It hopped right onto her head."
    "She's always getting into trouble," Dan said.
    "Does it snow a lot in New York?" Ross pronounced the state like "New Yawk."
    I nodded. "Sometimes it gets so high you can't get out the doors. And it's not New Yawk. That's not how we talk."
    "Is too," Ross said.
    "Is not," I said.
    Maybe never getting to see my cousins wasn't such a bad thing after all.
    "Well, my mother says your mother is the black sheep of this whole family," Mebane Ruth said. "I heard her talking on the phone to Aunt Lucinda, and my mama said there was bad blood between Grandpa Eli and Grandma Elizabeth and your mama."
    "What's bad blood?"
    She shrugged. "Don't know, maybe like blood that turns black."
    "Blood can't turn