by Maria Padian
“Folks are complicated,” she finally says. “And never perfect. That goes for mothers, too.”
She hands me a brush, and the two of us begin coating the window boxes. The soft wood drinks in the white primer, which we apply in long, smooth strokes. Betts glances at her watch and announces we’ll only do one pass for now; the boxes have to dry. She’ll give them another coat tomorrow, and when I return we can paint them.
“You’ve earned your first two hours today,” she says. “Congratulations.”
As we clean up I can’t help calculating in my mind: 298 to go. This felt fast, but . . . still. Earning these hours is going to be like climbing a mountain. On your hands and knees.Meanwhile, down the road in North Carolina there’s an army of Crawfords who know how to run a farm. Know how to mend fences and swing hammers and drive trucks. Who, as family members, could “contribute” sweat equity hours no problem. Some of them know we live in Clayton. But probably no one knows we’re building a house.
It occurs to me Mami’s not the only one I’m mad at.
14
The afternoon with Betts gets me thinking about Devil Spawn. Every once in a while, usually when I have nothing better to do, I check to see if he’s resurfaced on Facebook.
I guess Roz isn’t the only stalker.
She wanders over after school on Monday, knocking as she enters. I’m tucked into a corner of the living room with my Chromebook, the best spot for piggybacking on a neighbor’s unsecured wireless account. I don’t know who RubyFish_guest is, but thanks to him/her I can access the internet. Intermittently. This afternoon, the connection is good.
“Hey,” Roz says.
“Hey,” I reply, not looking up, but relieved she’s here. We can’t stay mad at each other for too long. “You back?”
“I’m back,” she sighs.
Paco eyes her from the pleather recliner without attempting a greeting. Dogs just know.
“Mami made a bunch of empanadas last night,” I tell her.
“Oh, yes,” she says, making a beeline for the kitchen.
“Heat me up one, too,” I say. I hear Roz remove tinfoil and punch in heat codes on the microwave. As she fixes us a snack, I refocus on the task at hand: hunting Crawfords.
Here’s what I remember about those reunions: the amazing fried chicken. And the awful boy cousins. Not the girls: they were okay. But the boys? Grrr . . .
Every spring the Crawfords gather. Back when Daddy was alive, we would always go. Unless he was deployed. If my father was overseas, Mami skipped the reunion.
It was always the same: everybody would attend Sunday service at Queen’s Mountain United Methodist Church, then file into the fellowship hall for a potluck lunch. We’d eat until we were stuffed; the adults would visit and the kids would run around; and when the sun started to slant, we’d all clean up, pack up, hug each other, and go.
Me, Mami, and Daddy always stayed with Aunt Carrie and Uncle DeWitt. And Mark. I liked him least. Not just of the cousins. Or the boys. Of everyone.
He was the worst Crawford.
Speaking of the worst, here’s another thing I remember about those reunions: dressing up. Catholics are notoriously casual Sunday dressers, with the exception of Mami, who insists Jack wear khakis instead of his usual sweats, and Easter, when we go full-on spring fashion show with the rest of the Christian world. But the Crawfords? They Dressed to Pray. Like Sunday service was a direct audience with the Lord.
“Just be glad we’re not Episcopalians,” I remember Daddy telling me one spring as he and Mami yanked a scratchy, ruffly, girly monstrosity over my head. It was the year Reunion fell on Grandma Crawford’s sixtieth birthday, and I was expected to look extra good. I was putting up quite a fuss, to which Mami had responded with one of her Spanish sayings.
“Él que quiere presumir, tiene que sufrir,” she informed me.
“What’s that?” I wailed.
“If you want to show off, you have to suffer.”
“I don’t want to suffer!” I screamed. So she passed me off to Daddy.
“What’s a pisco pail?” I asked him. My face was red and swollen from crying.
“That’s the fancy church,” he said. “If we were Episcopalians, you’d have to curl your hair and wear high heels and carry a purse. Maybe even put on some lipstick.”
The horror of that possibility stilled my writhing and resisting long enough for him to zip my eight-year-old body into the “church dress.” I was allowed to wear clean white sneakers, the one concession I’d won because they knew I’d be running amok with the kids after lunch and needed sensible footwear.
“But we’re Catholics!” I couldn’t help whining when Daddy stepped back to survey his handiwork. I saw him glance over my head and wink at Mami, who was watching us from the doorway.
“Yes, you are,” he assured me. “But let’s try not to bring that up too much. Okay? We’re at my mother’s church, so just for today? Let’s be Methodists.”
“How do we be Methodists?” I remember asking grumpily.
“Sing,” he told me.
During the service, I’d size up the other kids. It was the one time of year I saw my cousins, and I was fascinated by how they’d changed from the previous reunion. Generally, the girls were blonder and girlier; the boys bigger and more annoying. Especially Mark. You could count on him to be swinging a leg and kicking the back of a pew, or picking his nose, or pushing another kid . . . something that required parental intervention and whispered threats of dire punishments. His shenanigans were an irresistible distraction: I couldn’t keep my eyes off him. And whenever he’d catch me looking, he’d stick his tongue out. Which got him in more trouble.
Roz emerges from the kitchen with two plates stacked with steaming empanadas. I shift the Chromebook aside as she hands me one.
“What’re you working on?” she asks, settling into the Scrouch with her plate. Across the room, Paco’s nose quivers. He loves empanadas.
“Trying to track down my disreputable cousin from North Carolina.”
“Devil Spawn?” she asks as she takes a huge bite. Roz has heard about Mark. “Why? He’s obviously off the grid.”
“I don’t know. He’s like a car wreck on the highway. Awful and fascinating at the same time.”
Roz kicks me, grinning.
“I’ve just been thinking about him. Them. The Crawfords,” I tell her. “You know, relatives can help us earn hours toward this house we’re building?”
“That’s cool,” Roz says.
“Not if we don’t ask them,” I say. “The last time I saw these people was my father’s funeral.”
Roz picks at the crusty bits on her plate. She seems to be weighing something. “Speaking of this house thing. I think it’s great. I’m happy for you guys.”
“Thanks.”
“I don’t want you to think I’m jealous or something. I’m not. That’s not why I got mad at you the other day.”
“Listen, about that,” I begin. I take a deep breath. Time to deliver my explanation.
“At the game the other night? I think I was surprised to see you there. I’m kind of surprised I was there myself. It just sort of happened.”
Roz moves her plate to a side table and tucks her legs beneath her. “I didn’t know you gave a damn about boys’ basketball.”
“I don’t,” I say. “One of the VC girls wanted to go and didn’t really have anyone to sit with, so we all went to support her.”
I’m amazed at how convincing I sound. Maybe it’s because I practiced that line. Like an actor, rehearsing in front of the bathroom mirror.
Because I can’t tell her the truth. I love badass Roz, but it’s like she’s from one world and my school friends live in another and them coming together is like planets colliding. An epic disaster. Where yours truly loses everyone and everything.
Including my not-a-thing with Sam. Which I know is pathetic. I mean, he has a girlfriend! But if I tell Roz I’ve met the Shackeltons, it’ll become . . . ours. Jointly owned, requiring constant updates. And I’d be back in the mud behind the stone wall with her . . . instead of in the big living room eating dessert and petting Frank.
I don’t want to share this, even if it is fake.
“Yeahhhh,” Roz says. Only half buying it. “I’m kind of surprised I was there, too. You’re right, I hate that rah-rah stuff. But that doesn’t explain why you seemed allergic to me.”
I manage a laugh. “I’m sorry, aren’t you the one who’s ‘allergic’? To all the assholes at County? Team spirit, a cappella, private schools, Catholics in general . . . Should I keep going? Or am I wrong, and you’re dying to become besties with all the VC girls?” This coaxes a half smile out of her.
“Fine, I get it,” she concedes. “I’ll try not to crap on your school friends anymore. But I’m not wrong about the rah-rah stuff. Or about you being weird that night.”
“I’ll try not to be weird from now on,” I tell her. “But that’ll be hard.”
“I know,” she agrees. She brushes off her hands. She’s wolfed down the empanada. “Mind if I use your bathroom?” As she zips off down the hall, I return to my Chromebook.
I haven’t had a lot of success finding Mark on Facebook. Other Crawfords: yes, especially the old ones. They post a lot of Bible quotes, cute animal memes, and updates on who’s sick. But Mark has disappeared. Frankly, I don’t know why I care. He was responsible for our worst—and last—reunion.
That was the birthday year. I remember the service had just ended, and everyone was filing in for lunch. The long buffet tables were heavy with the sort of food Daddy loved: platters of fried chicken, deviled eggs, heaps of biscuits, potato salad. Coleslaw. Macaroni salad. Sweet tea. Pecan pie. Mami was helping me fill a paper plate when a little gaggle of girl cousins, each just a bit older than me—Amy, Mary, and Ginny—sidled up to us. They were all wearing sweet dresses and hair bows.
“Aunt Rita? Please ma’am, can Izzy eat with us?” they asked Mami, pointing to the children’s table near the back.
I remember Mami hesitated. She usually stuck close to me at these gatherings—“like white on rice, those two,” I once overheard a couple of the aunties comment, gazing curiously at us—while the other children roamed free in a kid pack, the Bigs looking out for the Littles. I looked at Mami with pleading eyes.
That’s when Daddy stepped in.
“G’on,” he said, taking my plate from Mami and handing it to me. “She’ll be fine,” he told her, although it sounded more like “fahn.” Whenever he was home, Charlie Crawford’s Southern came out.
I was excited to join them but also scared. Even though I ranked as a true first cousin, I was an outsider. They were so intertwined, so in and out of each other’s lives and houses. I had trouble keeping track of who belonged to which parents. And as an only child in a family with a father who was often away for months at a time, I was always with my mother. The aunties were right about us.
I remember Daddy giving me a gentle push, and off I marched with my plate of chicken. As Amy, Mary, and Ginny found a seat for me, there was a noticeable quieting from the others.
“Y’all remember Cousin Izzy, right?” Ginny said, to a chorus of “Hey, Izzy” and hesitant smiles.
I smiled back and ducked my head. I prayed that they would let me stay, but also leave me alone.
And they did. For a little while. Then the questions started.
“You still from Virginia, Izzy?” I heard. One of the boys.
“Yes,” I said.
“You live on an army base, isn’t that right?” Mary said. “Your daddy’s a Marine.”
I nodded.
“Fool!” someone yelled, laughing. “Marines aren’t army! You are so stupid!”
Every head turned in the direction of the voice. Which, of course, turned out to be Mark’s. He was sitting about five cousins down from me.
I could feel my face grow hot. “He is,” I insisted. “My daddy is a Marine.”
Mark rose from his chair and approached. There was fried chicken grease on his shirt. “Then you live on a navy base,” he corrected. He poked Mary in the shoulder and she swatted him away. “You’re the fool,” he told her. There was a plate of biscuits on the table in front of me, and he reached over my head to grab one. He took a big bite and grinned at her, a horrible combination. I remember wanting to gag as he chewed with his mouth open.
“Are you a lonely child?” I heard. One of the Littles. A cousin named Grace.
“No,” I told her.
“Ha!” Mark whooped, spraying those nearest him with chewed biscuit. “You mean ‘only,’ not ‘lonely’!”
Grace’s eyes filled.
“Mark, go away or I’m gonna tell your daddy you’re being horrible to the Littles,” Ginny warned.
He stuck his biscuit-flecked tongue out at her, prompting appreciative howls of laughter from a few of the bigger boys. I saw Amy gag.
“She wants to know if you have brothers or sisters,” Mary explained to me.
“Oh. No. I don’t,” I told Grace.
“Is your momma black?” I heard.
The silence that followed was instant. Like someone flipped a switch. The question came from a Little. My cousin Jonnie.
It threw me. My mother was across the room. Couldn’t he see for himself?
Here’s the thing: as a kid growing up in base housing with other military families? We were all some shade of different. And more than a few of my school friends who called themselves black were lighter skinned than Mami. You had to rely on other things to understand who somebody was.
“Mami’s Puerto Rican,” I said. Like that helped.
Jonnie looked confused. “But is she black?” he repeated, louder.
“Jonnie, hush!” Amy warned.
Jonnie screwed his face up in annoyance. “But—” he attempted.
“I said hush!” The clear threat implied in her tone set his lower lip quivering. Between him and Grace, the Littles verged on full-on meltdown.
Then: Mark.
“Oh, shut up! Aunt Rita speaks Spanish. Y’all are stupid!”
I was about to tell Mark plenty of black people speak Spanish, but all hell broke loose at the kids’ table. Grace dissolved in tears, the Big boys objected to being lumped in with the “stupid” cousins, and Jonnie started bawling “But Ma’am says she might as well be black!” Or something like that. I couldn’t quite tell, what with all the noise.
Finally, Mary stood and pointed a finger at Mark.
“I’m tellin’ your daddy you made the Littles cry,” she declared. A shadow of panic obscured the sneer on Mark’s face. He looked like he might run. But then something else occurred to him. His eyes rested on me, and narrowed. I could see a plan hatching in his mind.
“D’you want to see somethin’?” he asked. It was a choice between bad and worse—stay at the table full of crying children and strange questions, or wander off with Terrible Mark—and I truly didn’t know which to choose. For some reason, I never considered a third option: look for my parents. So the next thing I knew, I was hustling to keep up as we sped across the room and through a side door.
He’d found a sort of pantry. It was the size of a large closet and had floor-to-ceiling metal shelves. They were stacked with industrial-sized cans of vegetables and lined with fat rolls of paper towels, bales of napkins, and yardstick-long columns of paper cups. As Mark flicked on the overhead fluorescent lights and closed the door behind us, my eyes were immediately drawn to a rolling metal cart at the far end of the pantry.
It held the most enormous, ornately frosted three-layer cake I’d ever seen.
“Ooh,” I said, walking toward it as if I was a marionette pulled by fate
ful strings. The base of each layer was rimmed with yellow-frosting flowers, while swirls of pink gel decorated the sides. At the tippy top was a bouquet of actual flowers: yellow and pink roses and white daisies. Fake spun sugar hummingbirds stuck on the end of thin wires hovered around the flowers. At the slightest touch, they quivered.
“Is this for Grandma Crawford’s birthday?” I asked him. I remember thinking it was too beautiful to eat.
“Yup,” he said, satisfaction in his voice. As if he’d made it himself. “It’s lemon on the inside. That’s her favorite flavor.” He didn’t mean anything by that, but even my eight-year-old self knew to be a little hurt by that revelation. I didn’t know my grandmother’s favorite flavor. I hardly knew anything about her.
“When do we eat it?” I asked.
“Soon’s lunch is over, I guess,” he said, frowning. He was looking at the hummingbirds. Something displeased him. He walked to one side of the cart.
“Why d’you call her Grandma Crawford?” he asked. He placed a foot on one of the lower shelves. The hummingbirds trembled.
“’Cause that’s her name,” I told him. “What do you call her?”
Mark grabbed one edge of the cart to steady himself, then placed his other foot on the lower shelf. The cart rocked slightly; the hummingbirds shook even more. “Meemaw,” he said.
A bad feeling was building in my stomach. “What are you doing?”
“That bird’s not right,” he replied, reaching for the top of the cake with his free hand.
For a second I thought he’d said “That bird’s not rat.” I wanted to correct him, assure him that those birds were most certainly not rats, but I was struck dumb by the horror of what he was attempting. Mark was trying to grab one of the sugar birds: problem was, he wasn’t much bigger than me, and couldn’t reach them without planting his chest in the cake.
“I’m gon’ move it,” he explained.
“I don’t think . . .” I managed.
But then there was no need for words. Because the cart didn’t simply roll: it tipped clean over, upset by Mark’s full weight on one side. As the whole thing came crashing down, he managed to jump off and away, avoiding the giant cake, which slid and landed on the floor in a massive buttercream explosion. It splatted spectacularly, coating my ruffly dress, the wall of cans, and my perfect white sneakers. I looked at Mark: his eyes were wide and his mouth formed a horrified O.
