A Moment on the Edge:100 Years of Crime Stories by women

by Elizabeth George

Deucy plays guitar and sings and thinks he’s Conway Twitty. Says he’s gonna go to Nashville and come back driving a leopardskin Cadillac. I’d surely like to see that, though I don’t guess I ever will. That Deucy’s too lazy to get up off the porch swing to fetch himself a drink of water. It’s always, “Sweet Baby Jenny, get me this and get me that.” Only thing he’s not too lazy for is to boost himself up to the supper table.

  That don’t keep the girls from flocking round, bringing him presents and smirking like the pig that et the baby’s diaper. They all hope and pray that they’re gonna be the one to go to Nashville with him and ride back in that Cadillac. And he don’t trouble to relieve their minds on the subject. You ought to hear that porch swing creak in the dark of night. They are just so dumb.

  Now, Earl and Wesley, they try. They ain’t too good-looking, though they do have the Taggert black hair and the Taggert nose. I remember Pop saying he was part Cherokee and all his sons showed it. But while Ace and Deucy came out looking like Indian chiefs, Earl is crosseyed and Wesley broke his nose falling out of a buckeye tree and lost most of his hair to the scarlet fever. So they try. They are always going into business together.

  Once they went into the egg business and we had the whole place full of chickens running around. They said they would sell their eggs cheaper than anyone around and make a fortune and we’d all go off to California and live in a big hotel with a swimming pool and waiters bringing hamburgers every time we snapped our fingers. Well, people bought the eggs all right, but

  what Earl and Wesley kind of forgot about was that 200 chickens eat up a lot of chicken feed and they never could figure out how to get ahead of the bill at the feed store. I could have told them how to do it was raise the price of the eggs and make them out to be something special so everyone would feel they had to have Taggert’s Country-Fresh eggs no matter what they cost. But Earl and Wesley just shoved me aside and said, “Sweet Baby Jenny, you are just a girl and don’t understand bidness. Now go on out and feed them chickens and gather up them eggs and let’s have some of your good old peach cobbler for supper. Being in bidness sure does make a man hungry.”

  Well, pretty soon the feed store cut off their credit and there wasn’t nothing left to feed the chickens, so we had to eat as many of them as we could before they all starved to death and that was the end of the egg business. Earl and Wesley, being both tenderhearted and brought down by gloom, couldn’t bring themselves to kill a single chicken. I like to wrung my arm off wringing those chicken necks. I used to like fried chicken, but I don’t any more.

  Pembrook, he’s the smart one. He don’t steal, sing, or go into business. He’s off at the state college studying how to be a lawyer. He’s the only one used to talk to me and I miss him. I was always planning to ask him what happened to our mother, how she died, and why Pop ran off like he did. But I just never got up the nerve.

  Pembrook writes me letters a couple times a month, telling what it’s like up there at the college. It sure sounds fine. He’s always going on at me how I should go back to school and finish up and come to the college and learn how to be somebody. Well, I’d kind of like that, but who’d look after the boys? Reason why I didn’t do so good in school was I never had no time for studying, what with looking after the boys like I was their mother instead of Sweet Baby Jenny like they call me. Only Pembrook never called me that.

  Another thing I always meant to ask Pembrook and never did is how come I come out looking like a canary in a cuckoo-bird’s nest. Pembrook looks more or less just like the other boys, though

  he keeps his black hair real clean and he wears big eyeglasses on top of his sharp Taggert nose. His eyes are dark brown like theirs, and he weathers up nice and tan in the summer sun. But in summer my freckles just get more so while the part in between the freckles gets red. And my hair, which is mud-yellow most of the time, gets brighter and brighter and kinks up in tight little curls unless I keep it braided up. And never mind my eyes. They’re not a bit like the boys’. Greeny-blue or bluey-green depending on the weather. As for my nose, it couldn’t be less Taggert if it was a pump handle. Small and turned-up and ugly.

  Could be I taken after my mother, though I don’t know that for a fact ’cause I never set eyes on her nor saw any picture of her.

  Pembrook says I’m pretty but that’s just because he likes me. Pembrook says I look a lot like Miss Claudia Carpenter who is regarded as the prettiest girl in two counties, but I never saw her to make the comparison. She’s the daughter of the town’s one and only bank president. She’s a year or so older than me, and she don’t stick around much. Got sent away to school and always taking trips here and there. Can’t be much fun, never being home in your own home place. Pembrook told me our mother used to help out at the Carpenter household, at parties and such or when their regular maid got sick. Maybe I could get such a job and put aside a little money, just in case I ever decide to do what Pembrook says.

  One thing I do remember about Pop before he went away. He used to tell me stories. He used to sit himself down in his big maroon armchair and he would sit me down on his lap and he would say, “Now, listen. This here’s a story about a bad little girl.” The stories were always different but they were all about a girl named Bad Penny. She was ugly and mean and spiteful and nobody liked her. She was always making trouble and in the end she always got punished. Sometimes she got et up by the pigs and sometimes she got drowned in the creek. Once she got cut up in little bits by the disc harrow. And another time she fell into

  the granary and suffocated in the wheat. But she always came back, as mean and nasty as ever, and that’s why she was called Bad Penny. After the story Pop would take me up to my room and put me to bed.

  I liked the stories, even though they scared me some. I knew pigs didn’t eat little girls, but I was always pretty careful around the pigpen. We don’t keep pigs any more, but we had a few then and I used to carry the slops out to them.

  Well, things got so bad after Ace robbed the gas station down at the crossroads and got recognized by Junior Mulligan who just happened to be having his pickup truck filled up with gas at the time and never did like Ace since the time they two went hunting together and Ace claimed it was his deer and knocked Junior into Dead Man’s Gully and broken his leg. So off Junior went to the police and they come and drug Ace out of the Red Rooster Cafe where he was treating everyone to beer and hard-boiled eggs.

  It was sad and lonesome around the place without Ace to stir things up, and quiet with Deucy’s guitar in hock and him not able to sing a blessed note through mourning for it. Earl and Wesley tried selling insurance round about, but nobody we knew could buy any and the folks we didn’t know wouldn’t. So it was up to me.

  I harked back to my idea of going as a maid like Pembrook had told me our mother had done. I didn’t mind working in someone else’s house, though Deucy said it was undignified and not befitting a Taggert. Far as I could see, Deucy thought any kind of work was undignified except maybe wearing out the porch swing. So one morning I washed my whole body including my hair, and cut my toenails so I could put shoes on, and got out one of our mother’s dresses from the wardrobe in the attic, and made ready to go see Mrs. Carpenter. The dress fit me right well, though it was a little long and looked a bit peculiar with my high-top lace-up sneakers but that was all I had, so it would have to do.

  I walked into town, fanning the skirt of the dress around me and blowing down the front of it from time to time so the sweat would not make stains on the green-and-white polkadots. I got to the Carpenter house before the sun got halfway up the sky, about the time Deucy would be rolling out of bed and yelling his head off for coffee. This was one morning he’d just have to find his own breakfast. I stood for a while with my hand on the iron gate looking up at the house. It was a big one, shining white like a wedding cake, and there must have been about two dozen windows on the front of it alone. It set back from the street on what looked like an acre of the greenest grass I ever saw sloping u
p to a row of prickly bushes that trimmed the porch.

  I’d seen it before, times Ace used to take me riding in the beer truck and tell me how all he needed was to rob the bank and then we’d be living in this part of town alongside the rich folks. But I never really took a good close look, ’cause I thought he was joking. Now I looked until I got to shaking and wondering if I ought to march right up to the front door or sneak around to the back. I stood there so long I felt like my feet had taken root to the pavement, and if I could only get loose I’d run home and stay there forever.

  But then I thought about how there was less than a half a pound of coffee left and just enough flour for one more batch of biscuits, and I pulled open that iron gate and set my face toward the big front door. It felt like an hour that I was walking up that path with my feet feeling like big old river rafts and my hair jumping out of the braids that I’d combed and plaited so neat. But I got up on the porch and put my finger on the door-bell and heard it ding-donging away inside. I waited. But the door stayed closed.

  It was a pretty door, painted white like the rest of the house, and I studied every panel of it and the big brass doorknob and the letter box beside it while I waited. I wondered if I should ring the bell again. Maybe no one was home. Maybe I’d come all this way for nothing. They probably wouldn’t want me to be their maid even if they were home. The green-and-white dress was

  sagging down around my shinbones and my sneakers were covered with road dust. Maybe I’d just go home and wait until I got a better idea.

  I turned away and started down the porch steps, and then I heard the door open behind me and a sharp voice like a blue-jay’s said, “Yes?”

  I looked back and saw a tall skinny woman staring at me with a frown betwixt her eyes that made me shiver in spite of the heat. “Miz Carpenter?” I said.

  “Yes, I’m Mrs. Carpenter,” she said. “Who are you? What do you want? I’m very busy.”

  My throat got choked and I couldn’t swallow, so when I said, “I come to be your maid,” I thought maybe she couldn’t hear me, ’cause I couldn’t hear me myself.

  “What?” she said. “Speak up. What’s this about a maid?”

  “I come to be it,” I said. “If you’ll have me.”

  “Well, sakes alive!” she said, showing all her yellow teeth. “If you aren’t the answer to a prayer! Where did you spring from, and who told you to come here? Well, never mind all that. Come in the house and let’s get started. You look strong. I just hope you’re willing.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, and quick as a wink she drug me through the house and into the kitchen and right up to the sink where there was more dishes than I’d ever seen in my life and all of them dirty.

  “Just start right in,” she said. “The dishwasher’s right there. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  Now I’d seen dishwashing machines in the Sears Roebuck wish book, but I’d never been right up close to one. I knew what it was supposed to do. I just wasn’t too sure what I was supposed to do. And I didn’t trust anything very much except my own two hands. So I started getting those dishes as clean as I could before I put them in the machine, just in case we had a misunderstanding. They were the prettiest dishes I ever did see, even when they was all crusted with dried-up gravy.

  Mrs. Carpenter came back in a few minutes carrying a pair of black shoes and a white dress. She plopped herself down on a kitchen chair and smiled at me. “What’s your name, child?”

  “Jennet Maybelle.”

  She didn’t let me get the Taggert part in, but went right on talking.

  “Well, I’ll call you Jenny. That Marcelline quit on me last night right in the middle of a dinner party, and I was just about to start calling around when you walked in the door. I’ll pay you five dollars a day plus meals and uniform, but you have to pay for anything you break, so be careful with those dishes. Each plate cost twenty dollars.”

  I put down the plate I was holding and tried to think what it could be made of. It didn’t look to be solid gold. Our plates at home were old and cracked and been around as long as I could remember. I didn’t know what they cost. When one got broke we just threw it down in the creek bed behind the house along with all the other trash.

  Mrs. Carpenter was still talking. “Now you can’t be wearing those sneakers around the house, so I brought you an old pair of Claudia’s shoes. Maybe they’ll fit. And this uniform might be a little big for you, you’re a skinny little thing, but we can cinch it in with a belt.”

  I didn’t think much of her calling me skinny when she so closely resembled a beanpole herself. But I didn’t say anything. The shoes looked nice with just a little bit of a high heel and shiny black, and the uniform dress was starched and clean.

  She stopped talking for a minute and started looking me over real close. Then, “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before? I could swear your face is familiar. Where do you come from?”

  I pointed in the direction of home and said, “Out Clinch Valley Road.” I was going to tell her how my mother had once worked as a maid for her, but she didn’t give me a chance. She jumped up, left the shoes on the floor and the dress on the chair, and shook her head.

  “I don’t know anyone out that way. You can change your clothes in the maid’s room back there.” She waved her hand at a door on the other side of the kitchen. “And when you finish the dishes you’ll find me upstairs. I’ll show you how to do the bedrooms.”

  The day wore on. I didn’t break any dishes and figured out on my own which button to push to start the machine. It sure gave me a start when it began churning and spattering behind its closed door, and I prayed it wouldn’t go breaking any of those twenty-dollar plates and blaming it on me. Mrs. Carpenter showed me all over that house and told me what I was to do. At noon, she showed me what to make for lunch. We both ate the same thing, cold roast beef left over from the night before and some potato salad, but she ate hers in the dining room and I ate mine in the kitchen.

  I drank two glasses of ice-cold milk and could have drunk some more, but I didn’t want to seem greedy. In the afternoon she set me to washing windows. It wasn’t hard work, I worked harder at home, and it was a treat to be looking out at the roses in the back and all that green grass in the front while I polished those windows till they looked like they weren’t there at all.

  Along about four o’clock she hauled me back to the kitchen and told me what Mr. Carpenter wanted for his dinner. “He’s very partial to fried chicken, but nobody seems able to make it to his satisfaction. I know I can’t. And he has the most outrageous sweet tooth. I don’t eat dessert myself, but he won’t leave the table without it.”

  Well. I set to work cooking up my specialties. I’d had lots of experience with chicken, and my peach cobbler was just about perfect, if I say so myself. Mrs. Carpenter left the kitchen to take a nap after telling me that Mr. Carpenter expected to sit down to his meal at

  6:30 sharp.

  At 6:30 sharp I brought in a platter of fried chicken and Mr. Carpenter whipped his napkin into his lap and dug in. He didn’t even look at me, but I looked at him. He was a freckly sandy man with gold-rimmed glasses and a tight collar. He still had all

  his hair, but it was fading out to a kind of pinkish yellowish fuzz. His eyes were blue, or maybe green, it was hard to tell behind his glasses, and his nose turned up at the end like a hoe blade.

  I’d fixed up a mess of greens to go with the chicken and he dug into those, too, dribbling the pot liquor down his chin and swabbing it away with his fine napkin. Mrs. Carpenter pecked at her food and watched to see how he was liking his.

  When I brought in the peach cobbler he leaned back in his chair and sighed. “That’s the best meal I’ve had in years, Marcelline.”

  “This isn’t Marcelline,” said Mrs. Carpenter. “Marcelline quit last night. This is Jenny.”

  He looked at me then. First through his glasses and then without his glasses. And then he polished his glasses on his napkin and put them ba
ck on and tried again. “Ah, ha!” he said. “Jenny. Well. Very nice.” And he got up from the table and left the room without even tasting my peach cobbler.

  Mrs. Carpenter was after him like a shot. “Paul! Paul!” she hollered. “What about your dessert?”

  It didn’t matter to me. Peach cobbler is best while it’s hot, but it’s just as good the next day. I carried it back out to the kitchen, finished cleaning up, and got back into my going-home clothes. I did hope that Mrs. Carpenter would pay me my five dollars so I would have something to show, to Deucy and Earl and Wesley, so I hung around for a bit.

  But it wasn’t Mrs. Carpenter who came into the kitchen. It was him. He stood in the doorway, pulling at his ear and looking at me as if he wished me off the face of the earth. Then he sloped into the kitchen and came right up to me where I was standing with my back against the refrigerator and took my chin in his hand. He held my face up so I had to look at him unless I closed my eyes, which I did for half a minute, but I opened them again because I was beginning to get scared. Then he put his hand on my shoulder and took the collar of my dress between his fingers and felt of it softly. At last he spoke.

  “You’re a Taggert, aren’t you, girl?”

  “Yes, I am. I’m Jennet Maybelle Taggert.” I spoke up proudly because I’d learned in the little bit of time I’d spent in school that lots of folks thought Taggerts was trash and the only way to deal with that was not to be ashamed.

  Then he said something I didn’t understand. “Am I never to be rid of Taggerts? Will Taggerts hound me to my grave?”

  “You look pretty healthy to me,” I said, adding “sir” so he wouldn’t think I was being pert.

  He didn’t say anything to that, but took his wallet out of his pocket and opened it up. I thought he was going to pay me my five dollars, so I got ready to say thank you and good night, but he pulled out a photograph and handed it to me.

  “Who do you think that is?” he asked me.

  Well, I looked but I didn’t know who it was. The photograph was in colour and it showed a girl about my age with yellow curling hair and a big smile. She was wearing a real pretty dress, all blue and ruffly, like she was going to a party or a dance. I handed the picture back to him.