The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder

by Rebecca Wells

  Then I started crying, crying a flood that wouldn’t stop. I lifted my champagne glass one last time and quietly said, “To Sweet.” I looked around at all the gold trim and lights and the waiters in their starched uniforms. And at the people who lunched there every day. And I just thought about my Sweet. His thick black hair, olive skin, sturdy body. Always wearing his pants with one leg tucked into his boot, and the other one halfway out. My husband.

  Steve looked directly in my eyes for a long moment and then said, “To Sweet.”

  After all the champagne I drank, I realized that I couldn’t go back to work, so I ordered a third dessert for Ricky as a consolation prize. When it arrived, Steve said, “Well, we might as well leave. Your carriage awaits.”

  Then I walked out the door, and what I saw made me squeal. Right outside the restaurant, there was a carriage pulled by two strong mules, with a liveried driver. I’d never before ridden in one of those carriages, though they are all over the Quarter.

  “My carriage does await,” I told Steve.

  We laughed, and I thanked him from the bottom of my heart for the lunch, for the settlement, and for being such a dear friend.

  Then I hopped into my carriage and rode it all the way home.

  When Sukey got off work, I had her meet me in Audubon Park. The trees there are so beautiful and so ancient. Their roots go so deep into the ground that nothing could rip them up. A hurricane could tear through this place, and those trees would still be standing here.

  We set out walking, and it wasn’t long before Sukey complained, “Come on, Calla, will you slow down? Your legs are about eight inches longer than mine. I can’t keep up with you.”

  So we stopped and sat down on a park bench. I told Sukey about the settlement, and she said, “Calla! You never have to work again for the rest of your life!”

  “It’s not that much,” I said. “Plus, there are some people I want to share this with. So many who have helped pull me through, including you.”

  I reached into the deep pockets of my sundress and pulled out an envelope.

  “Okay, close your eyes.” Then I put the envelope into Sukey’s hands. “All right! You can open them now,” I said.

  “Ahh,” Sukey squealed, “Calla, are you nuts!”

  “Thanks for sharing so many of your jewels,” I said.

  And we sat on the bench, and hugged. Friends for life. Then I thought of how much fun it would be to share this money with those I loved, and still have more than I had ever thought about.

  “Yeah!” Sukey said. “And I could do it with you! Neither one of us would have to work. We could just lie up in the bed and watch movies and eat macaroni and cheese. And then afterwards, we could have big bowls of M&Ms. What do you think?”

  “I think you’re still fourteen years old.”

  “I think you’re right,” Sukey said. “I’m just kidding, of course. I don’t ever want to stop working. I love being a counselor, and I’m just getting my practice up and running. Lord knows we’ve got enough alcoholics in Louisiana to keep me busy until the day I die!”

  That night I had a dream so vivid that it woke me up. The moon was so full and bright that I could see my whole bedroom lit up. And I could see La Luna’s strength, so powerful that it was driving all sadness out of the room, pushing it out to the Gulf of Mexico, where the vast body of water could handle it.

  And as the sadness moved out, a whole new world of light came into me.

  Suddenly, I knew what I would do: transform the old Swing ’N Sway into my salon. I could see it down to each little detail. It would be more than just a beauty shop.

  In my dream, I opened the door of the Swing ’N Sway, a space that had once been a plantation grocery store, then a dance studio, and soon to be a beauty parlor. I saw the doors with their fine handiwork, the floors that were always kept immaculately clean and waxed every year. I saw the floor-to-ceiling mirrors, and the door that opened to the breezeway.

  I saw it all, and then I saw an overlay of my shop, the new Crowning Glory, snap into place.

  This would be the place where I would practice what M’Dear—and Ricky—helped teach me. I had been reading about reincarnation since Sweet’s death, as suggested by my yoga teacher, and suddenly I realized that was true of places as well. The Swing ’N Sway would become the Crowning Glory, and dancing would still take place. Oh, yeah, I won’t just do someone’s hair; I’ll invite them to dance! Mothers and daughters will dance together. And mother-daughter clients will always have discounts.

  La Luna—I knew I could only do this in La Luna. I’d been planning to return soon, eventually, but when I woke up, I knew now it was time to finally go home.

  When I told Ricky the next day, he was excited about my dream but still sad that I would be leaving soon. “Calla, you’re so gifted that I’ll never manage to replace you. But more than that, you’re such a close friend—Steve and I will miss you badly.”

  “Ricky, I’m leaving what I can’t absorb anymore—the noise, the smell, the roaches, the urine, the beer and mildew. I love this city, but I have to leave it. I need my small town.”

  He was glad that I’d finally gotten a vision of what I wanted to do, and he understood my mission to heal, because he is a healer himself. And it pleased him to see me with my determination back again.

  “Calla, you can do anything,” he said. “Declare victory now. You have gotten through the worst. You’re smart, you’re talented, and heck, you sure have learned to manage your money better than anybody I know. But most importantly, you have the gift of beauty and healing. Now, relaxez-vous!”

  Chapter 36

  SPRING 1982

  The day I was supposed to move, I was slow to get out of bed. Finally, I took a long, deep breath and swung my legs out from under the covers and sat up. It amazed me that not so long ago, I was just lying there, never wanting to get up again.

  I knew where I had to go.

  When I got to the Butterfly, the spot that Sweet first showed me, the spot where we took the boat out and where he asked me to marry him, I sat for a while to contemplate all that had happened. I watched as the boats went by on the river. You hear those words, “the mighty Mississippi,” and they seem like just a cliché. But they’re not. This is such a wide and powerful river, and my Sweet loved it so much. I needed him, sitting right there by me, watching the ships go by. There was no amount of money that could make up for him being gone.

  But I wasn’t going to think about that. I was going to think about this moment, about this day of leaving, about the part of me that was moving forward. I was going to think about starting my shop and transforming the Swing ’N Sway. I was on my way.

  Ricky and Steve came over mid-morning to help me pack.

  “Guess whoo?!” Ricky called. “We’re here with a bag of beignets and coffee. Where are you? We’re here! Your moving men!”

  I took a bite and a sip, and I have to admit, life always looks better after a beignet and coffee.

  “All right, let’s get going,” I said.

  Ricky was already pulling my clothes out of my drawers and packing them in boxes.

  “Calla,” he said, “we’re going to set you up with a little ‘three-day emergency pack’ of clothes that you can wear till we get up to La Luna with the U-Haul. You’ll be so busy you probably won’t even notice.”

  “That’s a good idea,” I said. “And I’m going to take all the most special wedding gifts in the car with me. Every single thing that people gave us has a meaning—every fork, every spoon.”

  So very carefully, we packed all my wedding gifts in newspaper. With each object we touched, I got a little flash of memory. Especially the big, round Coca-Cola zippered thermos container.

  “Why, Calla,” Sweet had said to me, “that looks a whole lot more like a wig-carrying case than a thermos! Let’s keep it in case you get some really hot wigs you need to cool off.” We laughed so much about that. The two of us had actually ended up rolling around on the fl
oor. I thought about how absolutely silly the two of us could be.

  Ricky saw me looking sad and said, “Let’s go get some nourishment. I could go for a po-boy right now.”

  “I’ll stay here and keep packing,” Steve offered. “But pick one up for me, too.”

  So Ricky and I headed out to Delucia’s. Edna was behind the counter as usual.

  “I think I’ll have an oyster po-boy,” I told her, “with as much sauce as you want to put on it.”

  “You got it.”

  “I’m sure going to miss you, Edna.”

  “Calla, I can’t believe that you’re really moving back home,” she said. “Not a lot of people can leave New Orleans. You know, once you get down here, the gravity of this place can hold you tight.”

  “Oh, I know! The pull is strong,” I said. “But going home has been a longtime dream for me.”

  Edna wrapped up our po-boys and put them in a bag.

  “Could you give us three soda fountain Cokes, too?” I asked. “Not bottled or canned but real soda fountain Cokes with a lot of ice, please. And a big bag of Doritos.”

  We brought the food home and sat out on the glassed-in porch to eat. Ricky and I sat on the swing where Sweet and I had spent so much time.

  “I’m gonna miss these tomatoes on the po-boys, and how the bread gets soft from the sauce,” I said.

  “Yum,” Ricky agreed. “But don’t you worry. You’re going to have plenty of good food in La Luna, too.”

  Steve came out and joined us. “Are you going to miss Ginger Rogers, too?” he asked, unwrapping his po-boy.

  “Yes, I am,” I said, thinking of that crazy little dancing dog they had.

  We finished our po-boys and the entire bag of Doritos. Then Ricky said, “Y’all can lounge around here as long as you want, but I am getting back to work. Lazy butts, lazy butts! How do you ever expect to get packed?”

  “Just let me finish my Coke,” I said.

  Ricky and Steve went into the house, and I took a few minutes to enjoy my Coke and think about my move. The idea of it both thrilled and scared me to death. Then I opened the porch door and heard a tippy-tap sound, like Sukey in high heels. “Hey, Suke?” I called out.

  But it wasn’t Sukey. Instead a little creature with wonderful blond and white hair, big eyes, and long floppy ears came tip-tapping out from the kitchen. I must be dreaming, I thought.

  Then Ricky and Steve appeared in the kitchen doorway, both of them grinning. Ricky said, “Now you know why Steve wanted to stay here while we went for po-boys. Calla, honey, this little guy is a stand-in for the two of us. He’ll be with you to keep us on your mind.”

  “Oh, how adorable,” I said as I picked up the little dog, who was just the right size to hold and pet in your lap.

  “He’s a cockapoo, just like Miss Ginger,” Ricky told me.

  I set the little dog down, and wouldn’t you know it? He just started tip-tapping in this little backward dance on the wooden floor.

  “What are you going to call him?” Steve asked.

  “There’s only one name I could give him,” I said. “Why, he’s Fred Astaire!”

  Finally, there was nothing left to pack but Sweet’s clothes. Ricky and Steve had offered to box them up and take them to the thrift store. But that just didn’t feel right to me. I wasn’t ready to have every trace of my husband scattered to the winds as his body was. I didn’t want strangers—who didn’t even know that he always wore the sleeves of his shirts rolled up—to have more of Sweet than I did.

  “Let me look these clothes over and think,” I told them.

  So they left me alone as I opened Sweet’s dresser drawers and flung open the door to the closet. I wanted to feel the fullness of his presence.

  “Sweet,” I said, “I believe in the kingdom of heaven, and I know that while you were here on earth, you earned a just reward by bringing people joy. Your joy, your spirit, is still in these clothes. Help me figure out where they belong.”

  And then it came to me, just what I needed to do. I called Ricky and Steve back into the bedroom.

  “Let’s box them up,” I said. “I’m going to take them all with me.”

  So we did. When we were all through, I walked through the empty house. I looked at the floors, remembering how we’d stripped off coats and coats of paint and then sanded and oiled them—Sweet was so good at that.

  “I hope the people moving in will treat these floors as nice as we have,” I told Ricky and Steve.

  “They’d better,” Ricky said, “or they’ll have us to contend with.”

  As we walked down the front steps I said, “Y’all, wait a minute. Hold Fred Astaire for me. There’s just one last little thing I need to do inside.”

  And I went back in. I kissed the door handle of our bedroom, and I looked around the room and thought of all the times we’d made sweet love in there. Then I went in the kitchen and I kissed the stove, thanking it for all the pots of red beans and rice we’d cooked on top of it, and all the gumbos. I looked around the kitchen and then stood on the back porch, and finally, the front porch. As I walked down the steps for the last time, I turned around and gathered it all in my hands, pulling it into my heart. And then—whoooshhhh! With a whoosh, I let it go.

  Chapter 37

  1982

  After kissing our house good-bye, I climbed into my Mustang, and drove away from New Orleans, my home for over ten years—the place where I’d found the love of my life, the city where I’d made a home. I felt kind of relieved that it would be a few days before Ricky and Steve arrived with the U-Haul. I needed to feel myself at home again in La Luna.

  So it was just me and Fred Astaire, heading out on the highway. He was a good little traveler, curling up on the front seat and sleeping the whole way. I had Stevie Wonder on the tape deck. I love Stevie Wonder. His music has often comforted me. It’s made me laugh and cry and dance and sing.

  Pretty soon, trees and fields, sky and water, took the place of buildings. I saw a wide flat horizon with billowy white thunderheads coming up from the south. I knew I’d better get on home before those thunderstorms hit.

  Living in New Orleans, it had been easy to forget how beautiful the home soil of rural Louisiana was. Fertile fields and farms and bayous whizzed by as I made my way along the red-earthed low flatlands. Gradually the road drifted away from the river delta into prairielike land that wasn’t farmed as much as the rich soil next to the river. The road climbed just a bit, and the two-lane highway began to split patches of piney woods and stands of hardwood trees. There was just the occasional white clapboard farmhouse now and then, and white egrets standing motionless in the fields that opened up between forests.

  I began to breathe a little easier and deeper, and I turned my thoughts to La Luna.

  Papa still taught a class or two, and the first Saturday of the month still found everybody dancing and playing music, starting at nine in the morning. The Swing ’N Sway had been constantly in my thoughts, with its floor-to-ceiling mirrors and its rich history, in my vision for the Crowning Glory.

  I could not wait to get into that studio and make it even more beautiful than it was. Soon I came upon the last rural stretch of the parish before Claiborne, where the curved edges of the fields and the unexpected stands of trees made me think of the old European landscape paintings I’d seen in the museum in New Orleans. As I got off the main road and took a detour to avoid going through Claiborne, I came to the bridge that crossed over the slow moving, red-brown water of the La Luna River.

  And then I was home! La Luna was about a mile square, bounded by the river on one side and farm fields and woods on the other three. I got off the bridge and drove toward the town center about a block in. There was a small black AME Baptist church at the edge of town, then Our Lady of the River church, then the high-steepled white Southern Baptist church. I smiled as I drove by Nelle’s Shop, Snack ’N Skate. Nelle, I’ll see you soon!

  Our home was downriver from the bridge, a few sleepy blocks
away. And indeed, all was quiet as I pulled into our gravel driveway. I turned off the ignition and leaned back in my seat for a while. My window was open, and I listened to the silence and the soft sounds of the river. I let the shadows of the live oaks and magnolias settle down upon me.

  I’d already talked to Papa about converting the dance studio into my salon. On my last visit to La Luna, I’d brought him and my brothers some of my settlement money. Papa said, “Calla, honey, this money will let me do what I’ve wanted to do for a long time—move out of the house, start out fresh, and make new memories. I’ve been wanting to scale back on my teaching and play more with my combo. So if you want the house, it’s yours. I’d love to move up to my fishing camp full time.”

  “Oh, Papa, I don’t want to kick you out of the home where you’ve lived forever.”

  “I’ve been holding on to this place for you,” he said, “like your M’Dear told me to. I knew you’d be back someday.” Then Papa grinned. “And I got catfish with my name on them!” He laughed, and I joined in.

  “Oh, Papa!” I said, then I hugged him tight. It felt wonderful to laugh together.

  The next morning I stood at the front entrance to the Swing ’N Sway. There I was looking at an old dance studio to renovate into a salon—plus a house to make my own for me and Fred Astaire. I prayed, Oh, Moon Lady and M’Dear, I need your help to step over this threshold and claim this place as my Crowning Glory. Then I felt a slight nudge, and the next thing I knew, I was standing in the studio with brand-new eyes.

  I had a vision of just where I wanted the shampoo sink and the special, comfortable leaning-back chair—just one, because I’m going to be one-on-one with all my customers, hoping that healing will come with my touch for all of them. I’ll find someone to handle manicures and pedicures.

  I’ll use M’Dear’s antique vanity for my rollers and perm rods and scissors. And I’ll get some kind of rolling unit made out of lightweight wood. I don’t want anything cold and plastic in my salon.