His window faces the gravel driveway in the front of the plantation house and this we shuffle to, me moving the heavy brocade curtains aside to give us a view of “Auto” as Mama calls it, me thinking she meant “Otto” when I was younger.
“Now that’s a Duesy,” he breathes. His mouth remains open, his jowls jiggling at this close range, his eyes alight.
I can’t help but laugh, regardless of Mama’s teachings. “My goodness, Uncle, you’d think you were looking at an angel.”
“It’s like looking at your daddy himself, it is,” he nods. “He loved that vehicle as much as I do; looks like he should be getting out of it, just doesn’t seem right that he’s not. I kept her here as long as I could, until your mama got up enough nerve to take the train back down here to get it. Brought her brother with her for a bodyguard I reckon. Anyway, I kept her clean and hardly ever took her out of the pasture here where I kept my other vehicles I bought and sold. Could’ve sold her a hundred times over but didn’t want my brother to haunt me. He wanted you and your mama to have it.”
“He didn’t know about me,” I breathe out, sounding as nostalgic as Uncle, me, too, wishing Papa could step out of the car. “And I only know he died of a heart attack.”
He shakes his head. “Get me back to bed.” We shuffle back across the wide room and he crawls into the ornate four-poster bed’s lace and satin coverlet, looking at odds, like a dog dressed in a dress. “Damn your mama,” he mutters. A few thin wisps of white hair, about all that remains on top, fall onto his forehead and my hand automatically raises to move it back but when he says those last words, I change my mind. I swallow down my homesickness.
“I’ll come back later. My bags, see.” I thumb to them sitting by the door. “I’ll take them on to my bedroom if you don’t mind. And freshen up, rest up … or something.” Anything but stay in here a minute longer. I have an urge to sleep in the car, like I did the night before, something familiar.
He closes his eyes, his coloring gone again. “I’ve got a lazy darkie in the kitchen that comes with the place. Go find her and tell her to show you which bedroom is yours. There’s five of them; this is no small place you’ll be inheriting, just remember that. Come back before supper. There’ll be someone here I want you to meet.”
I step out into the hallway like stepping out into fresh air and sunshine.
Her name is Clary and I find her in the kitchen. Her back to me, her focus on stirring vigorously in a big ceramic bowl, her broad back-end moving in a dance, she jumps when I call a hello. A warm smile but cautious nature as if on guard all the time, her small brown eyes take everything in quickly, her chocolate skin glistening in this kitchen heat. Out of habit, I look at her arms and neck and sure enough there are tell-tale signs; old bruises, new bruises, scarring, one wrist bone raised as if a broken bone hadn’t mended properly. Of course some marks are to be expected from popping hot grease and heavy-duty housework, but I know there’s another story here. I’ve seen battered women come into Mama’s Lighthouse all my life, even if this one is colored.
“Honey-chile, you’s here already!” she says loudly, drying her hands on her apron. “Did you ring the bell?”
“Oh yes, about an hour ago, and when no one came, I stepped into your entrance way, and when I saw I had to turn left or right, I turned left, went through the living room and found Uncle Joe’s room. I guess if I’d turned right and gone through the dining room, I’d have found you.”
“I swan, I never heard a thing. I’s so sorry, honey. My hearing’s almost gone, don’t you see, along with my peepers, so you’s got to be loud!” She looks around for other ears and then lowers her voice a tad. “Don’t seem to be a problem for your uncle.”
We laugh and I like her right away, her deep-throated chuckles loosening the knot in my throat.
Three bedrooms beyond the kitchen are pointed out, the last one requiring a small staircase to reach it. Rooms were restored or added on after the Civil War burned part of it down, she tells me. It looks like they’d started with the entrance way and just kept building to the left and the right of it, angles and rooflines giving the house a train-on-uneven-tracks look but somehow I like the spontaneity it gives, as if up for anything that comes its way and can bend with the wind but not break. I can relate to that.
I was tickled to see that the last room, the biggest one, is mine, with two large windows facing south, showing off the lawn’s one magnificent weeping willow tree, and a smaller one not far from it. Where I’m standing is a high bed with its own stepping stool, and a thick feather mattress and four of the fluffiest feather pillows I’ve ever seen. I can’t resist the invitation and so I flop down in its lap and lay my head on its pillow chest, the white cotton swelling around me protectively. I straighten up to Clary’s laugh.
“Miz Harriet – that’s Mr. Joe’s deceased wife – she made feather pillows and ticking for a living. You won’t find any better anywhere, I wager,” she said as she carried my suitcase over to an ancient wardrobe, not liking where I sat it by the door I’m guessing. I make a mental note to keep things tidier than my habit, as I observe the wardrobe, the sink, and large soaking tub that line other walls. But most importantly is the small desk and bookcase, which sits like magnets and I’m the paperclip. I vaguely hear Clary say she’ll let me know when supper is ready, me giving a faint nod as I pull out Tale of Two Cities. How I love Charles Dickens’ first line, It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness … it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair …
How fitting for the way I feel in my small world, in my potentially new home, and how fitting in the big world, with the horrible war going on over in Europe. I put it away with a promise and reach for more, Mark Twain now, an autographed copy of Following the Equator, pages dog-eared, funny sentences underlined in ink, like Be good and you will be lonesome. I have weak eyes for reading and I can’t read for long but I love what time they give me before tearing. I kick my shoes off and settle back against the bed pillows. I feel my shoulders relax and I sigh, wishing to stay here until tomorrow.
This is not to be so. “Mr. Joe summoned the girl” – these are Clary’s words with a wink, not mine. And then just as Charles Dickens predicted, it is the “spring of hope” when Uncle Joe tells me that I won’t be eating supper with him in his dreary bedroom but in the dining room. Which quickly becomes the “winter of despair” as I am introduced to a man who came earlier than expected and would be joining me there.
He stands tall and confident at the foot of the bed, his hand around the bed’s post like he’s holding a king’s scepter. His smile is infectious, truly a weak point with me, full of white teeth, straight except for the eye teeth that are a bit pronounced but this only gives him an earthy rugged look that I read as sincere and sincerely good-looking. Eye color doesn’t matter at this point and difficult to determine at any rate because of the low lighting. Even so, his blond hair glows as if catching every meager ray the lamp throws out. Outside my mother’s watch, on my own now, a grown woman of twenty-two, I boldly approach him, hand outstretched and shake hard with a back-at-you sincere nice-to-meet-you and flash my own smile, one I know the boys like.
“She’s such a pretty puppy,” Uncle Joe says to him, “I decided you’d want to meet her sooner, rather than later. Now here’s what I want you to do,” he declares, looking pleased at our coming together as we stand at the foot of his bed facing him. “I want you to go with Clary and she’ll serve you up her mouth-watering sweet-potato casserole and whatever else she fixed. You young folk will enjoy yourselves more without a sick ol’ man around.” He waves his hand weakly. “Now go on, like I told you.”
I open my mouth to protest; I’m still rumpled and dirty from the long drive and this dapper fellow in his light green linen suit will see my messy dress in the bright chandelier lighting of the dining room. Besides, I’m not in the mood for the flirting game but only to go back to my room and r
ead some more, soak in that tempting tub, and sleep away many hours of driving. This man, this Will Tom something-or-other is cute but he isn’t as tempting as a bath. Others look better when I look better, plain and simple.
But my elbow is grasped before I can say Joe’s-my-uncle and he pulls me away and down the hall and through the living room and through the entrance way, me stepping foolishly in tiny stiff geisha steps to keep up behind his long determined strides like he is heading into battle, me wondering if he is going to stop in the dining room long enough to eat. We finally come to rest at the table and I call out, “At ease, soldier!”
He grins but says nothing, only pulls my chair out like a gentleman would, sits in his own and proceeds to eat with the gusto of a hound dog. I think of that because Uncle Joe has three such beasts outside whose constant barking reminds me.
“Ever body calls me TJ,” he finally says as he sops up the melted butter with his biscuit. “Just remember that.”
I’m eating fast too, I suddenly realize, both of us seeming to want to get this part over with. My stuffed belly is making me sleepier. “Why?” I finally care enough to ask.
“I knew you’d ask that.”
How does he know that?
“Because my full name is William Thomas Jackson the Third. That’s a mouthful.” He wipes his mouth, full and red now.
I sip my iced tea, wishing I can be more alert but my eyes feel heavy-lidded after such a big supper. “Then I shall call you William,” I drawl slowly.
“Why?”
“I knew you’d ask me that.”
He snorts softly, giving me his best part, a leisurely lopsided grin. His eyes come alive, blue, green, it’s hard to tell, with tiny speckles of gray. I smile dimly, trying to soak in his rays but I need darkness and sleep to restore me before I can appreciate the sun.
I stifle a yawn during his story of who’s who in Pickerville and Savannah, not able to concentrate or comprehend or care, and he pauses and leans back in his chair, looking at me quizzically.
“Sorry,” I say, knowing I’ve taken this trip as far as it can go today, “but I’ve had little sleep in the last two days, took me that long to drive from Annan New York, so if you’d excuse me …” I stand clumsily, my napkin dropping to the floor. I don’t bother picking it up. I only want to pick up my bed sheet and crawl under. I look at him for mercy.
His lips thin in disapproval - poor Southern hospitality on my part I suppose - but he manages to smile again. He bends, his head disappearing under the tablecloth and I flinch as fingers squeeze my ankle. He comes up waving the napkin as a surrender flag and I smile in spite of his advance.
“Get your rest because tomorrow night we’ll be dancing our shoe leather off. We’ve got a local band that is hot to trot to play for soldiers, sailors, and sots like me who haven’t signed up yet.” He grins a lop-sided one with a wink on the same side.
As he chucks my chin and walks away, I can easily imagine him as a poster boy for Uncle Sam. He has that I-want-you look. What he wants though I’m not quite sure.
As I run bath water for a long soak the next morning, Clary comes knocking.
“I thought I heard you up,” she says, walking past me. With her customary one arm extended with a limp wrist, as if on the ready to grab something, she hurries over to the bookshelf. On the second shelf she moves books to the left and right and behind there I see a small door. “You were too pooped yesterday so I waited til you was rested to show you this.” She opens the door and I see it’s a safe with a book inside. She pulls this out and hands it to me. “I found this in my cleaning frenzy before you arrived. It’s your daddy’s.”
The book is actually a brown leather-bound journal. Inside, in small, neat handwriting better than mine, in vivid blue ink with little scrolls at the end of some words, is Papa’s talking. His own words! For the first time I believe he really existed. I run my fingers over the surface of the page, feeling each indentation from his ink pen, goose bumps rising on my arms in feeling his proof of presence in his marks on these pages. I look down at the wood plank flooring, see dents there in the dark stain and wonder if he’d made those, too.
He was here. Ate here, slept here – could I have been conceived here? I’ll never know.
Never have I felt so close to him, yet suddenly do I recognize how very little I know of him. Mama rarely spoke of him and only if I questioned her. When I did, her expression would visibly fall, like a curtain coming down, her eyelids at half-mast. Small, cryptic answers and then she would raise the curtain with a smile and bring on more work for the both of us. That taught me to stop asking questions and told me enough to understand why she never remarried.
I touch his pages again. Papa must have been something. I strip, not even knowing when Clary left, and sink slowly into the hot water and open the journal to page one.
July 10th, 1921. I’m writing this from my childhood home, in my childhood bedroom, so many memories, yet all are boxed in here and summed up in my pondering by the window, for there is where I spend so much of my time. No difference today. I sit here now watching with sympathy the lawn’s great weeping willow tree droop wearily to the ground in the summer heat, no strength to so much as move in the breeze. I feel as one with this life form, our roots digging ever deeper in the rich Georgian soil, searching for something to quench our insatiable thirst, yet this search is contradictory in only taking me down deeper, where I can never again move on from here as the wind and a good news story would take me.
The only difference is my room is nowadays shared with my new wife, my dear Bess, restless, ready to move on, her roots are not here, I’m not sure they are anywhere, even in her hometown of Annan, New York. Still a suffragist at heart, wanting to right the world of women. Cady, ah Cady, my first wife, my first love, a true love, is smiling from heaven at my wise choice. Sickly with consumption, yet she marched right on up to God.
I am supposed to be happy. Bess has told me so. She tells me she is supposed to be happy too but cannot be unless I am. I have an idea: I’ll plant another weeping willow tree out here with her name on it and perhaps then she’ll grow roots here and we’ll both be happy where we are.
My poor Bess; she knows so little but knows enough to know she knows little. I’ve kept much from her; don’t know why really. She’s not a weak woman, but tall, erect, chin up as if expecting the worst, yet those lovely ink-blue eyes hopeful for the best, like the sea looking for the sun on a cloudy day. I’m afraid I’m her sun, storm on the horizon.
Her firm footsteps can be heard now, one stair at a time, sure and steady and rising to me. It is my wish that I’ll always be here at her summit, but it doesn’t look good.
More to come.
I close the journal and close my weak eyes and listen to the many bubbles around me, whispering secrets I wish I knew. For some strange reason I feel myself on the cusp of something and I envision that I’m standing in the wings and I’ll soon step out and do my part, but I’m frightened and don’t know my lines. I breathe in deeply and out slowly and, yes, I hear it, over and over in the little pops of bubbles, Papa, Papa. Yes, that’s it, Papa will tell me what to say. I decide to read one entry a day, wanting to savor and absorb Papa’s words and imagine his presence as he’s writing that day’s events, when he and Mama lived here twenty-two years ago.
I read his entry again until my eyes begin to water, and then I rise to a new place.
After breakfast in the kitchen with Clary, I’m summoned to Uncle Joe’s bedroom. He’s a crackerjack, is all I’m saying right here.
“Alright, girl, here’s what you’re going to do.” He partially lifts himself on his pillows and clears his throat in an important-announcement way.
“It’s Katy.”
“What?” He looks at me like I’ve interrupted him.
“My name is Katy, not ‘girl’.”
“Well, I beg your pardon, missy,” he says, but without sincerity. As a matter of fact, I detect some sarcasm. “Look. If yo
u and I are going to get along, I suggest you not start with those high-and-mighty airs of your mama’s. Do you understand me?”
“Uncle Joe, I assure you I’m quite different from my mama, but she is my mama, and would you want your mama talked about in a bad way? I don’t think so. And all I’m asking for is that you call me by my given name, Katy. It’s a pretty name and Mama named me Katydid because katydids was all she heard every night while she lived down here with Papa. Now what’s so high and mighty about that?” I run out of breath, my cheeks burning from being so outspoken but really, I’m not accustomed to taking orders from a man and I’m having trouble liking this one, kin or not.
He narrows his eyes at me. “Well, now, did she really?” But it isn’t really a question, so I keep my mouth shut. I am smart enough, though, to give him a tight smile.
“Alright. Now we know what your Mama did, let’s see what you katydid, diddle-do, Miss Cat and her fiddle.” He cackles at himself, more like a cough, and weakly slaps his leg.
I sigh and simply nod, wishing now I hadn’t told him about the ‘did’ part. I’d heard enough jokes in school and now just went by the name, Katy. (“Katy did, didn’t you Katydid?” “Katy did that mess …” and so forth. Really not so funny, is it?)
“I want you to dress up pretty tonight for TJ and behave yourself like a proper lady should.”
“How’d you know he asked—”
“That boy’s got money in his family, a cotton plantation that makes mine look like a hobby farm, so you be real good to him and show him what the Pickering’s are made of. I don’t know how people act up North but down here we don’t take to poor white trash so I hope you’ve had a good upbringing.”
What better opportunity than to call Mama right after this meeting, my hand cupped over the mouthpiece in the living room, believing by this point that Uncle Joe had listening devices in all the lamps.
“Mama, what in the world have you gotten me into?” I murmur into the phone. I laugh lightly to let her know it’s nothing serious but to let her know it’s something.
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