Georgia Bottoms

by Mark Childress

  “I can’t believe you letting some nigger sit at my table,” Little Mama said. “You must have forgot whose table that is.”

  “Hush your mouth with that word,” Georgia shot. “If you can’t keep a civil tongue in your head, just stay in your room till he’s gone.”

  That’s exactly what Mama used to say if Georgia said “damn” or “shit.” If you can’t keep a civil tongue in your head… Saying it back to her mother now made Georgia feel sad. And tired. Somehow, without noticing, or wanting to, she had turned into her mother.

  No. Worse. Into her mother’s mother.

  “Hmp!” Little Mama folded her arms. “You can’t wait till I’m dead so you can let niggers run wild all over the house. You’ll probably throw parties for ’em and let ’em sleep in my bed.”

  “That’s true,” Georgia said. “That is actually my secret master plan. I’m surprised it took you this long to catch on.”

  Little Mama said, “Did you know Rosa Parks is running for mayor now? They got her damn picture up all over town.”

  Georgia had to smile. “That’s not Rosa Parks, Mama. That’s Madeline Roudy. The pediatrician at the clinic. She’s running against Krystal.”

  “I know Rosa Parks when I see her,” said Mama.

  Georgia went downstairs to find that Nathan had consumed a whole jar of Skippy with a loaf of Holsum bread, half a roasted chicken, a bag of Doritos, and a quart of milk. Georgia cleaned out the fridge and moved on to the pantry. Good thing she always kept tons of canned and frozen food in case of tornado, power failure, or famine. From the freezer she brought out Colonial “heat-n-serve” rolls, a spaghetti Stroganoff casserole, and a spiral-sliced honey-baked ham.

  Nathan ate silently and fast, as if he’d never been allowed to eat before and this might be his only chance. Georgia was tentatively impressed with his manners. He didn’t gobble. He used the correct implements correctly. Only once did he rest his elbows on the table, and he moved them the moment she pointed it out.

  She stood by the stove, watching him eat. “You like peach pie?”

  He nodded. She put the pie plate in front of him. He assumed the whole thing was for him, and ate it all.

  Georgia was beginning to like this boy.

  Liking him was the last thing she needed to do. The situation was absurd. First thing in the morning she would drive him to the Texaco station and put him on the bus.

  She still felt a trace of shame from her very first thought upon seeing him, which was what a pretty face he had, and how much she might like to… It was wrong even to remember thinking that. Of course she hadn’t known who he was, but still.

  Until today, Nathan had been an abstraction, a kind of make-believe boy. At some level Georgia hadn’t quite believed in him. Now here he was, so real she could smell him—the pungent smell of a man, not a boy, who badly needs a bath and a change of socks.

  Nathan ran his finger around the pie plate to get the last crumbs.

  “You still hungry?”

  He hesitated, then shook his head.

  “Well, hallelujah.” She intended it as a joke but Nathan didn’t smile. “What I mean is, I’m glad we finally got you enough to eat. You were so hungry when you got here.”

  That was so inane Nathan didn’t bother answering. He trained those big, brown, unblinking eyes on Georgia. She didn’t need a birth certificate to know whose eyes those were—Skiff’s, just as luminous and bottomless.

  She was surprised how dark-skinned Nathan had turned out. From that glimpse in the delivery room she thought he would be lighter. It didn’t matter to her, but she had heard that lighter-skinned blacks were treated better by their peers.

  She saw a reflection of herself in the shape of his face, the curve of his mouth. But she doubted anyone would ever guess their relationship just by looking.

  “So, Nathan. What brings you to Six Points?”

  “The bus,” he said.

  Oh no. Was he stupid, too? “I mean, what made you decide to get on the bus?”

  “Mamaw,” he said.

  “Mamaw. That’s Eugenia?”

  He nodded.

  “Something wrong with her? Is she ill or something?”

  He shook his head.

  “Come on, Nathan, you can tell me. Whatever it is. Surely you know this comes as a pretty big surprise for me.”

  “I try to call you,” he said.

  “You did? When?”

  “Last night.”

  “I didn’t get any—wait… Did you start to leave a message then hang up?”

  He nodded.

  “I wondered who that was.” If only she’d gotten to the phone in time, she might have headed this off. “Why did you hang up?”

  He shrugged.

  “Well, what were you planning to say?”

  The boy stared for a long time. Evaluating her trustworthiness, she thought. He glanced at his plate. She could almost hear him thinking: At least the food is good.

  “Mamaw say you rich and she ain’t got nothin’, if I ain’t do zackly what she say every got-damn minute of my life, I just as well carry my sorry ass on up here and let you look after me,” he said in a rush. “That’s all she been say since Aunt Ree gone to jail.” He pronounced it “awnt” in that old-fashioned colored-folks way.

  “What did you do to make your Mamaw mad?” Georgia said.

  He cut his eyes at her—she was sharper than he had suspected. “Nothin’.”

  “Nothin’? Aw now, come on, Nathan, she didn’t throw you out for nothin’. What did you do?”

  Nathan studied her. His brow wrinkled up in a frown. “I smoke some a her weed.”

  Georgia sighed. “Sorry I asked.” She had no idea what might be an appropriate punishment… Go get Mamaw some more weed?

  “Well she done smoke up all of mine,” Nathan said. “I just took some back, no need for her to get all riled up like ’at.”

  “You and Mamaw smoke each other’s weed all the time?” Georgia said with a tone she thought sounded lighthearted.

  Nathan glared at her. “Sheeeit.”

  “What?”

  “What you mean with that bullshit, ‘You and Mamaw smoke each other’—yeah we smoke each other weed, what the hell you got to say about it?”

  “Nathan, all I was saying was—”

  “Look, you ax me what I done,” he said. “I told you the truth. You want me to lie?”

  “Don’t say ‘ax,’ ” Georgia said. “The word is ‘ask.’ ”

  “Aw fuck off, lady, damn,” Nathan said.

  Twice! In one day! Georgia had now been told to fuck off by her best friend and her half-black offspring.

  “I beg your pardon?” she said stiffly.

  “Why the fuck you want to say some like that for,” he said. “Ain’t nothin’ wrong the way I talk! Just cause e’body in the world don’t talk like you.”

  “Oh I get it, you can talk just fine when you want to,” she said. “When you want to be understood you have no problem. Now Nathan, listen to me. This is my home, mine and Mama’s. And you are welcome here. But not that gutter language. I won’t have it. Understand? I don’t care if you’re twenty years old or two thousand, I do not allow that word in my house. You got that?”

  He gaped at her.

  “I said, do you got that?”

  He tried to hold his mouth still, but a little grin leaked out.

  “What are you grinning at?”

  “Do you have that,” he said. “If you gonna bitch me out, at least get it right your own damn self.”

  My God, the balls on this kid! He got those directly from Georgia. She struggled to hide how much his cockiness pleased her.

  “Well okay, smarty-pants. And don’t say ‘bitch.’ ”

  He rolled his eyes. “Ah-ight, bitch.”

  She was on him in a flash—towering over him, her hand raised to slap his face—and it was going to hurt, too. “Call me that again,” she urged. “Go on. I dare you. I’ll slap you from here to the m
iddle of next week. Go ahead. I’m waiting.”

  This was not the reaction Nathan had expected. His eyes loomed large. “Jokin’,” he said.

  “No. A joke is funny and that was not funny.” She lowered her hand. “You watch that mouth, young man.”

  He squinted his eyes. “You really gonna hit me?”

  She raised the hand again. “Try it and see.”

  “Dayum,” he said.

  “You probably thought I was some little shrinking violet,” she said, “some little Southern belle you could come up here and push around. Well, I am not afraid of you.”

  “Ain’t you rich?” he said.

  “Hell no I’m not rich! I work hard for every penny I make.”

  “What kinda job you do?”

  That’s for me to know, Mr. Smelly Socks. “I make quilts. Collectible quilts. I make them, and I sell them in a gift shop in town.”

  From the expression on his face she might have said she was a part-time whale hunter.

  “This look like rich people’s house,” Nathan said.

  “My great-grandfather had money,” said Georgia. “By the time it got down to me, there was nothing left but the bills. Sorry, maybe you were thinking you’d come up here and inherit the family fortune, but there ain’t one.”

  “Don’t say ‘ain’t,’ ” Nathan said.

  She laughed at his display of brass. “Isn’t,” she said.

  Nathan said, “I didn’t come up here for money.”

  “Well, then? Why did you?”

  He shrugged again.

  “I mean, I’m sure you had some reason in mind when you got on the bus.”

  He shook his head. “See what you look like.”

  “Okay well, you’ve seen me. What do you think?”

  His eyes flashed. “Nothin’.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I thought maybe you’d like me or something,” he said. “But you don’t. I’m just like a stranger to you.”

  “You think I don’t like you? It’s too soon to say that. We’re just getting to know each other.”

  “I guess,” he said.

  “Well? Better late than never,” she replied. “You’re still hungry, aren’t you?”

  He nodded.

  She couldn’t help it: she did like this kid. He reminded her of herself at that age—headstrong, fearless, immortal. Hungry all the time. Although in her case that meant hungry for boys.

  She went to the oven for the Stroganoff casserole. Nathan went back to being a bottomless eating machine. The more he ate, the more relaxed and happy he became, until he was slouched over in his chair humming a soft little tune, forking in his third plateful.

  Georgia tried not to hover. She came and went, performing her regular late-afternoon chores while he ate. She’d gotten an early start on the day, so the apartment was ready for Jimmy Lee Newton.

  Whenever Georgia had let herself think about Nathan, she had always pictured a kid like the young Michael Jackson—a snub-nosed charmer, winning smile, ingratiating talents. She wasn’t prepared for this raw-boned young black man. Obviously there was nothing special about him, nothing prodigious except his appetite.

  And so? Whose fault was that? Who abandoned whom? Who gave up her baby to a woman with a taste for Riunite and convicted felons? It was ridiculous of Georgia to blame anyone for how he turned out. If she’d wanted something better for him, she could have raised him herself.

  “You can stay here tonight,” she said. “But then I’m gonna have to put you on the bus back to Mamaw.”

  He regarded her with a plain expression, almost blank. But there was something in his eyes, a little touch of disappointment that pricked Georgia to keep talking.

  “No offense,” she said. “You seem like a nice enough guy. I’m sure we would like each other if we got to know each other. But as you may have noticed, I’ve got a lot on my plate here. Mama’s not all there, mentally, and I have a—my brother’s in jail.”

  “Really?” Nathan sat up, his first show of real interest. “For what?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “Conspiracy to commit a terroristic act. And an explosives charge.”

  He did an exaggerated double take and said, “Dayum.”

  “It’s all a misunderstanding. But like I said, my hands are full right now.”

  “Mamaw didn’t say nothin’ about all that,” said Nathan. “She said you was a straight-up white lady.”

  “I am,” Georgia said. “At least, I think I am.”

  16

  Little Mama spent a restful night, thanks to the Ambien that Georgia added to her evening pills. With Nathan camping out in the guest room, Georgia didn’t want any incidents.

  Jimmy Lee Newton got stomach flu and canceled at the last minute, so Georgia’s night was peaceful too.

  The next morning she fed Nathan a big breakfast, put him in the car, and drove him to the Texaco. Bennie Fisher said there was only one bus going south these days. It didn’t run Fridays or Saturdays. The next one was Sunday, at one fifteen in the afternoon.

  Georgia tried to think of someplace she could stash Nathan until then. Too bad the LaSalle Hotel on the courthouse square disappeared years ago, with the last of the traveling salesmen.

  In normal times Georgia would phone Krystal and explain without having to explain, and Krystal would say, “Hell, bring him over here,” and that’s what she would do. But too much time had elapsed since the disaster at the League of Women Voters. By now Georgia should have called Krystal and apologized at length. Instead she had let the rift stretch out, unmended, over a whole day. Normally she and Krystal would have exchanged five or six phone calls in that time. The phone hadn’t rung once. That meant Krystal was still mad. Nothing to do but leave her alone until she got over it. Georgia didn’t dare ask a favor.

  She took a swing by Hull’s Market to refill the fridge. She made Nathan wait in the car while she went in. She drove him the long way home, around the bypass and in from the north, to show him more of Six Points. On the way by the No-Tell Motel she took particular note of whose beat-up Chrysler was parked next to whose red pickup in the middle of the day.

  She took Nathan home and installed him in Mama’s TV den. All afternoon she left him in there eating chips, watching in silence, flipping between the channels.

  “Listen, Nathan, I’ve got a prior engagement this evening,” she said. “I have to go out for a couple of hours. Just stay out of Little Mama’s way, all right?” If he got hungry again, she told him, he was welcome to anything in the fridge. If he wanted to take a shower, hint hint, she’d put soap and shampoo and fresh towels in the downstairs back bathroom. She would also be very happy to wash any clothes that were dirty. Anything else would have to wait until she returned.

  He agreed about washing clothes. Together they started a load, and she showed him how to work the dryer.

  She hurried to her room to freshen up. She put on a yellow polka-dot sundress and tied her hair back in a ponytail for Sheriff Bill. She stopped by Little Mama’s room to issue a stern warning, which she hoped would penetrate the fog of cranky forgetfulness that had been hanging over her all day. Mama scowled the whole time Georgia was talking, waved her away like a gnat.

  Georgia went downstairs. “Okay, Nathan, I’m going now,” she chimed from the hall.

  He didn’t answer. She poked her head into the den. All that comfort food had finally kicked in. He lay sprawled across Little Mama’s recliner, asleep, head tucked into the crook of his arm. Behind him, a car chase roared softly on TV.

  He looked almost sweet in that pose. She picked up his baseball cap from the floor and placed it on his knee.

  Whizzy snoozed on the rug beside him. That was a sign. Whizzy always had been a good judge of character.

  Georgia forced herself to stop standing there, staring at him.

  Half an hour later she was stretched out beside Sheriff Bill, breathing his whiskey breath, as the recording of the old-timey Grand Ole Opry broa
dcast played on the CD player concealed within the antique radio. The Opry at very low volume helped set the right mood for the sheriff. He was a man of famously few words; it took years of careful prodding for Georgia to tease out such basic information as what kind of music he liked. Gradually she realized that their Friday nights were a re-creation of a specific scene from the sheriff’s adolescence. It wasn’t clear if it was something that had actually happened to him or a fantasy he had carried with him all this time. Really it didn’t matter. Georgia was the stand-in for a specific young woman in a yellow dress. The first time she wore yellow, Bill complimented her so lavishly she’d worn yellow for him ever since.

  The low whine of the Opry fiddlers was another part of the scene, and the lights off, the sheriff in his white V-neck undershirt wiggling his skinny butt on the bed, shucking off his Fruit of the Looms… They had done this exact thing the same way dozens of times. To Georgia it felt furtive and stale and a bit deadly, but Sheriff Bill found endless reward in replaying the scene. Sometimes he got to breathing so hard he was positively wheezing with pleasure.

  Tonight he was in a lazy mood. He wanted to cuddle, to cradle her head on his chest and stroke the hair of that girl from long ago. On a normal Friday, Georgia would be glad to take time for this kind of thing, but she could not quite relax knowing Nathan was in the house, snoozing in front of Little Mama’s TV. At least she hoped he was snoozing.

  Bill murmured some little endearment. Ten to one they were re-creating the night he lost his virginity. Men are so fascinated by their own navels, and nearby organs. They spend the first part of their lives trying to lose their virginity, the rest of their lives trying to get it back.

  Georgia felt like a girl in an Opry song—caught between the sheets with Sheriff Bill and his old friend Jack Daniel’s. What is it about sex that makes a man want to drink? And what about drinking makes a man so horny? Why does he have to forget himself, lose all thought of who he is, in order to become the wild thing the occasion demands? Are we all so stuck in the rut of our little ant lives, our notion of ourselves as upright purposeful creatures engaging in useful endeavor—gathering crumbs for the anthill—that we can’t enjoy ourselves unless we get drunk?