At Home in Mossy Creek

by Deborah Smith

  “Mother, what on earth are you doing?”

  With the noise from the drill, I hadn’t heard my daughter, Marilee Bigelow, and my granddaughter, Josie, walk around the house. I must have started like a guilty thing disturbed. As I recall, Hamlet said that about his father’s ghost. I suspect parents have been starting guiltily at the sudden appearance of their grown children since Neanderthal days.

  “Grammie, Grammie, it’s my swing!” My blonde, leggy grandchild flew at me and yanked the wooden seat I’d been holding out of my hands. “You’re fixin’ it.”

  “Indeed we are, Miss Priss,” said I.

  “Way up there?” Marilee said. “Mother, that’s too high. Are you insane? It’s February! And who is that up in your tree, anyway?”

  Marcel leaned down and saluted. “Marcel Desjardins, Madame, and Mademoiselle. A votre service.”

  “Oh.” I have seldom seen my daughter struck dumb, but the sight of Marcel with his hair tumbling and his smile flashing would have struck the Delphic Oracle dumb. Then, I swear to God, she simpered.

  “It’s set very high off the ground,” she said, but without much emphasis.

  “But one doesn’t have to swing very high on a high swing, does one, Mademoiselle?” He winked at my granddaughter.

  Josie clapped her hands. “I wouldn’t swing too high, Mommy. I promise I wouldn’t. And not without you or Daddy or Grammie here to push me. Oh, please, Mommy, please! I’ve wanted my swing forever. You promised.”

  “You see?” Marcel said. “You have a most obedient petite fille.” Since Marcel hadn’t used one bit of French before Sarah’s appearance, I knew he was trying to charm my daughter, but do you think I interfered and told him to knock it off? Hardly.

  And if he thought the petite fille was obedient, he didn’t know my grandchild. She’s a sweetheart, but she is both opinionated and obstinate. I wonder where she gets that?

  I could tell Josie was ready and willing to launch into whine-and-wheedle mode, but with Marilee so mesmerized by Marcel, it wasn’t necessary.

  What was necessary, however, was for me to practically shoe horn her and Josie out of the yard, and only with a promise that Josie could come back after church on Sunday to swing, but only under adult supervision. She didn’t want to go, but she did.

  “What did you want, Marilee?” I asked as I leaned against her open car window.

  “What? Uh—I swear I can’t remember.”

  She drove away, with Josie waving goodbye merrily.

  Eula Mae

  THE BICKERING IN the backseat between the circus people was like riding through a field of onions. They look pretty from the side of the road, but once you’re among them they stink so bad you just wish you were dead.

  The woman, Roxie, seemed especially upset. She kept screeching at the man, her partner, named Cowboy, in some language that sounded like a duck honkin’. I couldn’t turn around anymore on account of Estelle had me strapped into the front seat with the seat belt that doubles as a strait jacket for super senior citizens—that’s us seniors over a hundred.

  Wind from the long-legged woman’s hand kept creating a breeze on the back of my head and I was getting quite upset. I have some pretty dandy wigs I’d inherited from Harriet Mobley when she’d passed on two weeks earlier, but I’d forgotten to put one on in all the excitement. When I die I sure do hope God recognizes me with the thirty-six strands of hair I have left, because sometimes I’d look in the mirror and don’t know myself.

  I turned just enough to see Cowboy scrunched up in the corner with an expression on his face that said he’d rather be shoveling manure than in the car with Roxie. I had to shout over Roxie, who had now started to count some kind of list on her fingers—his shortcomings, I suspected—when I realized what was going on between them.

  Although Cowboy looked like he got stuck in the bottom with a pitchfork, his eyes said he loved her. But he was holding back and it was obvious she didn’t feel too happy about that.

  “She wants to get married and he doesn’t,” I said to Estelle.

  “Great Nan, how do you know? They’ve been in the car all of ten minutes.”

  “I’ve been in love five or six times, Estelle. Might not have no degree in it, but I don’t have to speak their language to know what they’re talking about. Besides, she keeps pointing to her third finger, and she ain’t got no ring.”

  “I think it’d be better if we just stayed quiet,” Estelle said, unconvinced. “Would you mind terribly if I sped up just another five miles per hour? If we stay at a steady twenty-five like we’re going, by the time we get home we’ll have missed the Bereavement Report on WMOS and Oprah.”

  “Oprah!” they shouted from the back, and I was able to see them nodding, because their heads were right beside mine in the rearview mirror.

  Estelle and I turned our heads slowly, staring, as if a dead person had come back to life.

  “Oprah,” they repeated together.

  “Well, how do you like that?” I said to Estelle. “I’m changing my name to Oprah.”

  “Oprah,” they screamed again as we turn into the driveway.

  I couldn’t help being just a little miffed. Here I was, doing the Lord’s work and taking circus people into my home and how do they show their thanks but by yelling another woman’s name?

  Now I know Oprah is a big who-ha lady with all her giving, but I bet she ain’t never had circus people stay in her house and fed them buttermilk biscuits made with her own hands.

  To be honest I know I got her beat there. I heard down at the Press-N-Go she don’t even know the way to the kitchen in her own house. Yessiree, that’s what I heard.

  My house, all five rooms, including the bathroom, is built right around the kitchen. You can’t miss it! I know I’m luckier than her.

  I decided to try an experiment. “Eula Mae!” I yelled at the top of my voice.

  Roxie and Cowboy didn’t make a peep.

  “Eula Mae,” I belted.

  Again, nothing.

  “What kind of people are they, Estelle?”

  “I don’t know. Some kind of Asian and African, possibly. Since they don’t speak English, it’s not like we can ask.”

  An African circus performer named Cowboy and an Asian girl named Roxie. I shook my head in wonder. I’m an old black lady who’s seen it all. The world sure is gettin’ smaller.

  The arguing escalated again.

  I’d had enough. “You two are the darndest people I’ve ever met. What language do you speak, boy?”

  “Great Nan, you don’t have to shout at him. He can hear, he just can’t understand you.”

  “How do you know he can’t understand me, Estelle? He might speak that clicking language like that man in that movie, and I understood him pretty well.”

  Estelle looked at me skeptically and wisely kept her opinion to herself.

  “I knew when he was going to run or jump,” I went on.

  “He ran and jumped through the whole movie, Great Nan. He was a bushman.”

  Cowboy and Roxie’s voices escalated again and I turned around in my seat. “Stop it right now. You might want to marry him and he might not want to marry you, but you don’t have to wake the dead to get your point across. Now, shhh!”

  They understood enough to stop, but the second Estelle parked the car in my driveway they were out and the woman went up the tree in the front yard.

  It always took me a few minutes to get myself out of the car, but watching Roxie, I had to say I was right jealous. I didn’t bother to stare long because I had two things on my mind and one was sitting on my porch with some pretty red roses.

  “How you, old girl?”

  “Right fine, Mr. Wiley. It’ll be just a minute before I can receive company.”

  Estelle knew my
first pit stop after a trip is the ladies room, and we got me there in record time. When I came back, I had on one of Harriet’s wigs and some lipstick that I got in my Christmas stocking last year.

  Unfortunately, my circus guests were really showing off. They were both up my tree by then, arguing like banshees, but as they argued they swung from limbs, making what seem to be impossible leaps possible, and landed like butterflies on branches.

  “Shhh,” I said loudly. They got quiet but they didn’t stop flinging themselves around, Roxie moving effortlessly, Cowboy following her higher.

  “He loves her,” Mr. Wiley told me, but I already knew that. “He keeps reaching for her, but she moves away.”

  “She’s tired of waiting. Women get like that, Mr. Wiley.”

  “You trying to tell me something, Ms. Eula Mae?”

  “Ain’t no trying to, Mr. Wiley. If I want you to know something, I will sho’ spit it out. I’m a hundred and one. I can’t save things for tomorrow. Right now, I’ve got to get these people out of my tree and patched up.”

  Estelle came out on the porch with glasses of sweet tea. It was cold, getting dark, but she brought out the iced tea.

  “Why do you have to do it, Great Nan?” Estelle handed Mr. Wiley a plate with a buttermilk biscuit on it. We both looked at his hands and they were steady. Sometimes they move so quickly with the Parkinson’s, I’m reminded of a hummingbird’s wings, but that evening they were steady, just like Mr. Wiley’s temperament, no matter his condition.

  I decided to let them in on my plan. “I got to get them together because we gon’ have a wedding Sunday at four, and then I’m leaving town with the circus.”

  Mr. Wiley gave me the biggest grin, and I thought the Lord done made the sun rise twice in one day. But then I looked at Estelle and she was all drawn up and pinched just like her grandmother. “Great Nan, this is your worst idea ever.”

  Then there was a piercing scream and branches started to hit the ground.

  Being that I’m a hundred and one, I can’t take too many surprises, so seeing Roxie hanging from Cowboy’s hand from high-up in my tree is like being thirty all over again and seeing the man I shot with Big Ida’s gun telling me to give him my pocketbook. I gave it to him and a hole in his kneecap for his trouble.

  But when you add my sixty-six year-old granddaughter, Clara, screaming at the top of her lungs at my guests, well, every creature great and small should take cover.

  I got up and used my walker to go down the handicap ramp. “Clara, quit that caterwauling’. You done scared the rain back into the clouds.”

  “Call the cops!” She said it so loud, you could see her tonsils flappin’.

  “Come on down, Cowboy, Roxie,” I said. “She’s harmless.”

  “You know these people?” Clara asked me, her face saying I better not. That’s the thing about Clara. I enjoy annoying the heck out of her.

  I poked my chest out. “I got one better. I’ve invited them to stay with us for a couple days.”

  “We don’t have room for company, Nana. The extra bedroom has a leak and the house isn’t ready for guests.”

  “That’s all right. They gon’ stay in your room, so we don’t need the guest room.”

  “What!” she screeched.

  Cowboy and Roxie dismounted the tree with barely a sound.

  Roxie stormed off around the side of the house with Estelle running after her, leaving Cowboy with the rest of us. He walked along as if he was invited into our family disagreement.

  Clara kept looking at him strangely, but Cowboy didn’t get the fact that he was unwanted. He nodded along, his hands caught behind his back, his face very sympathetic. Clara couldn’t speak; she was so stunned. I just loved this guy.

  “Mr. Wiley done fell asleep, so there’s no time like the present for me and Cowboy to have a good long talk. Clara, make yourself scarce. I got business to tend to and not a lot of time.”

  Suddenly I went blind for a second, then realized Harriet’s wig shifted. Her head was bigger than mine. I used my fingers to put the wig back in place and was grateful the incident wasn’t a test run on death. It’s just rude to go mid-sentence.

  “Cowboy, why won’t you marry Roxie?”

  The man started speaking in a language I don’t understand. It sounded foreign not something where I could pick up a few words, but he did do some of the clicking and I sho’ do get that. I listened to his tone and heard the melody of his words, and I began to understand his heart. “You can’t marry her but it’s not ’cause you don’t love her.”

  He nodded and sighed and hugged me. Finally, someone understands.

  “Son, life doesn’t always give you fifth and sixth chances.”

  Cowboy walked under my apple tree and found some dried-up winter apples. He pried the seeds out. He buried them and began to gesture and show me how love grew the seeds and now it’s a blooming tree.

  This was his love for Roxie. He loves her with his heart, but for whatever reason things with them have to remain the same.

  “The tree grows, Cowboy. It bears fruit, but when it’s not nurtured, eventually it will die. You can’t expect it to stay the same. Nothing does, unless it’s not real. Is your love for her real?”

  He didn’t answer. I got tired and gestured toward the house. Cowboy helped me inside and when he didn’t see Roxie, he went in search of her. By then it was getting dark.

  I found Estelle at the kitchen table writing on her computer. “Where’s Roxie?”

  “She mumbled something about ‘being a good wife’ and went to get her bag out of the car.”

  “So she speaks English?”

  “Great Nan, that’s a major overstatement. She says a few words here and there. I think she understands more than she speaks. I was thinking we’d get dinner started and then maybe they’d get tired and want to settle down for the night. This whole thing will probably blow over by morning.”

  I really do love Estelle. She’s reasonable, just like me.

  “Where’s your grandmother?”

  Estelle looked down at her computer. “She said she’s not wanted here so she went to Ms. Mary Kathleen’s house down the road.”

  “Good,” I said. “No room for her negativity anyway. We have a lot to accomplish and a wedding to plan. Do you notice Oprah never has anybody on her show that tells her no? Maybe I should write to her and get a few tips.”

  “Or call,” Estelle encouraged, smiling.

  “I think I’ll do just that. I’m sure she can use some tips from me on how to live to be a hundred and one. All those fancy pants doctors and none of them can tell her that.”

  “You’ve got them beat there, Great Nan.”

  “You bet your socks I do.”

  “What are you going to say to her about chewing snuff?”

  “That was just a phase. Those ladies in the home were doin’ it and it was peer pressure, pure and simple.”

  “So you won’t do it again?”

  “Naw. Those girls died. Ain’t no fun doin’ it alone.”

  “I guess I’d better go wake Mr. Wiley before he gets frost on his head.” Mr. Wiley was dozing on the porch, still holding my roses.

  “Definitely.” I looked for my lipstick. “I still ain’t got my Valentine’s Day sugar yet.”

  At this moment, Estelle is like her grandma ’cause she covers her ears and goes outside.

  I don’t care. I got a boyfriend and none of the other women in my household do.

  That makes me the prettiest peach in the bowl and I like that just fine.

  Mr. Wiley comes inside and hurries to the bathroom. When he comes out, I can tell he’s been in my Efferdent. He’s smelling minty fresh. I give him a squinty eyed grin and shake my head cause I know what’s comin’. Course Harriet’s wig shifts an
d I have to readjust again. The wig’s red. Harriet was the tackiest red-headed old white woman in Mossy Creek. This wig’s a mood killer as far as I’m concerned and probably the reason poor Harriet died a Miss instead of a Mrs.

  The curtain flaps against the kitchen window and we see Cowboy and Roxie by my apple tree.

  “He’s holding her, but she’s so stiff, she reminds me of my daddy’s Sunday shirt,” Mr. Wiley says.

  “I think he’s explaining his side, but she don’t want to hear him.”

  “How you gon’ get them married in two days, Ms. Eula Mae?”

  “Mr. Wiley, that question’s got a complicated answer. You see, the love is already there. I just got to get to the bottom of the why he won’t. Lawd, this don’t look so good. She’s mad now.”

  Just as I think Roxie’s going to walk away, they start doing mid-air flips and spins, running and jumping. This is where the real talking begins. They are doing something like an acrobatic ballet and it’s quite pretty.

  I don’t think there’s any rhyme or reason to it when suddenly Roxie slips, Cowboy catches her and they begin again. Every once in a while she falls or he slips, and I catch my breath. They push off each other, angry like, and I know this is how it has to be between them. They don’t realize they won’t get their rhythm until they agree on the course of their relationship.

  They stay out in the yard still full dark settles and a cold moon rises. I call for Cowboy and Roxie, but they don’t come.

  “What are they doing?” Estelle asks, eating the bell pepper as fast as I can cut them up.

  “Trying to come to an understanding,” I tell her. “Now look, you got to stop eatin’. Groceries don’t fall out the sky.”

  The moon comes out from behind a cloud and I can see them again.

  I make sweet potatoes, cabbage, cornbread, neckbones, and we pull out a pie we’d made yesterday. The aroma of food brings the two inside, and they sniff the air like children.

  Estelle hurries Roxie to the guest room and Cowboy heads to the toilet. That leaves me and Mr. Wiley alone to celebrate Valentine’s Day. Even if it’s not for two more days, we like to start early.

  Finally I get my sugar, and boy is it sweet.