Maude

by Donna Mabry

The dogs followed me back to the house, and when I opened the door, they started to go inside. I shooed them back. “No dogs!” They lay down on the porch, one with his head across the other’s back, and settled in for the night.

  I went back upstairs to the bedroom, dreading what was coming. I thought about what Helen said to me the morning I married James, “You’re his wife, and whatever he wants to do to you, you have to let him do it.” I hoped that my relations with George would work out as well as it had with James, but I’d known James all my life before we married. I’d only known George for five days.

  George was already in bed, his clothes lying in a heap on the floor. “Everything all right?” he asked.

  “Fine,” I said. I opened the cedar trunk and took out a nightgown, slipped it over my head, and undressed under it. George watched me without saying anything. I walked around the bed and slid in next to him. He leaned over and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. I couldn’t help it. I went stiff as a tree from head to foot.

  He said, “Maude, it’s been a long day. Let’s get some rest,” and he turned his back to me. Within a minute, his breathing told me he was fast asleep. I lay next to him for a while before I relaxed and drifted off to sleep, wondering what manner of man I’d married.

  Chapter 14

  When I woke the next morning, George had already gone downstairs. I dressed and went to check on Lulu. Her bed was empty, too. I heard the sound of Lulu laughing and followed it to the kitchen. Lulu was sitting at the table eating a breakfast of hotcakes. George’s mother was at the stove. She turned around with a smile on her face that disappeared as soon as she saw me standing in the doorway.

  I smiled at her. “Good morning, Mrs. Foley.”

  The old woman turned back to her cooking. I sat at the table and took a deep breath. To Mrs. Foley’s back, I said, “I must have been really tired. I don’t know when I ever slept so late. I was wondering what you’d like us to call you.”

  Lulu piped up, “I’m going to call her Grandmother. She said I could.”

  I waited for an answer, but none came. “Should I call you Mom Foley, or Mom, or Mrs. Foley? What would be best?”

  George’s mother put some hotcakes out of the pan and onto a plate, then sat and began eating them without giving me an answer. I saw that Lulu could sense the situation. She tilted her head. “Grandmother, I think my Mommy should call you Mom Foley, don’t you?”

  Mrs. Foley smiled at the child. “That’ll do as well as anything else,” she said, still not looking at me.

  I hadn’t eaten since the picnic supper the night before, and I could see there wouldn’t be any hotcakes made for me by my new mother-in-law. I stood and went to stove.

  “This is my kitchen,” Mrs. Foley said.

  I don’t know where I got the backbone. It was like with the dogs the night before. I turned and looked her in the eye. “It was your kitchen. Now it’s either yours, or mine, or we can share it. I’m a pretty good cook, so they tell me. Maybe you’d like having someone to help around here. Taking care of a big house like this must wear out an old woman like you.”

  I could see her teeth like one of the dogs. “I been taking care of it just fine for forty years, ever since my husband brought me here.”

  I bit back a sharp answer and decided to make an effort to be friendly. “Where are you from?”

  Mrs. Foley sat up straight in her chair and jutted out her chin. “I am from Oklahoma, born of the Big Hill Osage tribe, the Wazhazhe. There was a time when my people owned what is now three states. We had many more horses than any of the other people.”

  I was surprised. George had said nothing about being Indian. I nodded, “I have some Indian blood myself. My great-grandmother was Cherokee, from eastern Tennessee, but she died before I was born. I never got to know her. Tell me about George’s father.”

  Mrs. Foley scowled. “He was a fool, a white man, from a line of fools. He promised me many things, but he lied. I should have married one of my own people.”

  She bent her head and went on eating. It was clear she didn’t want to talk about it anymore. In the daylight, she didn’t look any less scary than she had the night before. Her skin was like dried-out leather with deep lines, especially her forehead, as if a frown was her permanent look, and there were lines like trenches running from the sides of her nose down to the corners of her mouth. Her hair was thin, and she had pinned it in a bun at the back of her head. It was a mixture of gray and white. I tried to picture her as a young woman. I could see right off that George and Bessie had to resemble their father, who must have been quite handsome. Mrs. Foley was probably attractive at one time, or she would never have caught his attention.

  What struck me as odd about her was that she had beautiful hands. Even though they were rough and calloused from work, they had long, tapered fingers that reminded me of the woman who played piano at our church.

  My stomach wanted to be fed and poked at me. I looked through the pantry until I found some corn meal and a small pan. There was a bucket of water sitting on the sideboard. The stove was still burning high, so I dipped enough water in the pan and mixed in the meal. When my mush started cooking, I poured a cup of coffee out of the pot on the stove and took a sip. It was so strong I winced. I spooned a little water into my cup, and then I asked, “Where is George?”

  “He went to his job. He said to tell you that if you need him, ask anyone you see in town and they will take you to him.”

  I looked at Lulu. “I think I’ll go see where George works. He said it was only two miles into town. Do you want to go with me?”

  Lulu had finished eating and jumped up. “Yes, it’ll be fun to see the inside of a real jail.”

  Neither of us had ever seen one. “All right, but first, let’s unpack our things and put them away.” I turned to my mother-in-law. “Do you take a lunch to George?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I think I’ll ask him if he would like that.”

  Mrs. Foley almost jumped to her feet. “I have to feed the chickens,” she said, and went out the back door, letting it slam.

  I told Lulu, “Let’s see what this house looks like in the daylight.” We started by looking around the downstairs. There was a staircase built in the center, right in front of the door, with a parlor on one side and a dining room on the other. The parlor was furnished with a settee and two chairs, tables, oil lamps, and a few pictures hanging on the walls. I looked closely at the pictures. One of them was a yellowing print of what must have been George’s mother when she was a young woman. I’d been right. She looked nothing like Bessie, but was moderately attractive. The others were of George and Bessie, but there was no trace of his father.

  Across the hall was another room that would have been the dining room, but it had no furniture in it. In the back of the house was the large kitchen, and a small room lined with shelves that served as a pantry. There was also a wash room with a small cabinet that had shelves underneath for the towels, which were neatly folded and stacked, but well-worn and threadbare, and an ewer and pitcher on top. I wondered where the well was.

  None of the walls had been papered, but were covered half-way up with planking and painted so long ago that I couldn’t tell for sure what the color had been. I thought it would be nice to put up paper and re-paint the woodwork.

  The house was clean, but everything in it was shabby and worn. It didn’t look as if any effort had been made to re-cover any of the upholstered pieces or refinish any of the wooden furniture in years.

  “Let’s look around upstairs,” I said to Lulu, and we trooped up. There were four bedrooms, the one I’d shared with George, the one where Lulu slept, another one with no furniture at all and nothing on the walls, and one with the door closed that I thought must be his mother’s. I didn’t open the door and look inside.

  Lulu’s room, the one that had been Bessie’s, had a large bureau for her clothes, and there was plenty of room for all of Lulu’s things. Clean white curtains with a lacy
edging hung on the window and there were pretty pictures hanging over flowered paper. The spread on the bed was also white, quilted beautifully, and large enough to touch the floor on both sides. There were several fluffy pillows on the bed, and hand-tied rugs on the floor. It was by far the nicest room in the house.

  “You’ve got the prettiest room,” I said, hugging my daughter to me. “Mom Foley told me last night that it was your Aunt Bessie’s room.”

  “Let’s go see your room,” she said.

  The room that I was going to share with George wasn’t at all attractive. The bedclothes were clean, but like the towels, well-worn, even shabby. There were no pictures on the wall.

  Lulu looked a little sad. “It isn’t very nice, Mom.”

  I smiled at her. “Men don’t care about things like that the way we do. It’ll be fun fixing it up, won’t it? I’ll see if it’s all right with George for me to buy some fabric for a new spread and to make some curtains. Let’s leave the unpacking for later and go on in to town and see how the stores are. Maybe we can pick out some pretty paper, too.”

  When Lulu and I left the house, we walked across the road to get a look back at it. It was badly in need of painting, and the steps were sagging in the front. I would have to talk to George about that also.

  I measured the distance to the next house, only a short way down the road, counting the steps from my front door to theirs. George told me his homestead was about five acres and ran back to a stream on the rear property line, but the houses were so close together, I figured that they were both built on one corner of the lots.

  “Which way is it?” Lulu asked.

  “I don’t know.” I started to go ask Mrs. Foley, but thought better of it. “You run ask George’s mother.”

  When Lulu came back, she pointed to the right. “That way.”

  As we walked toward the main part of town, I thought about George’s father. My new husband had never let on, and neither had Bessie, that their mother was full-blooded Indian. I knew that many people would have been ashamed to be half Indian, but the truth was that nearly everyone I’d ever known had some degree of Cherokee blood. I knew the tribe had been friendly to the white man. Their daughters married freely with frontiersmen of the time. Women were in scarce supply, and the Cherokee people were a handsome group.

  George’s house was about a quarter mile from the taller buildings that signaled the heart of town. Kennett was much larger than my home town. Lulu and I talked about our plans for decorating as we walked. School was out until after the crops were gathered, and I hoped I could keep Lulu’s mind off having lost her friends. We passed a livery stable, several homes on lots much smaller than George’s, and a Baptist church. I could see several spires in the distance that told me where the other churches were. I was comforted by their presence. I hoped one of them would be Holiness. Maybe Lulu would find new friends there.

  When we reached the center of town, we were amazed by the number of city buildings and businesses. There was a bank and a regular city hall, a barber shop that also served as a dentist, a fire station, a hotel, a restaurant and at least six stores.

  I looked up and down the street but didn’t see any sign that said, ‘jail,’ or, ‘sheriff.’ A young woman coming out of a general store stopped and smiled at us. She looked friendly, so I asked her, “Excuse me, but could you tell me where I can find the sheriff?”

  With a big, pretty smile, the woman said, “You must be Maude, and this must be Lulu. Aren’t you a pretty little thing? I’m Sarah Graham. My husband is George’s deputy. The whole town wants to welcome you. Everyone likes George. We couldn’t believe he finally found himself a wife. There’s going to be some mighty disappointed young women in Kennett. I’ll walk with you to the sheriff’s office. It’s right down the street.”

  She fell into step beside us and linked her arm in mine. It gave me a really warm feeling to be welcomed like that. She was pretty, and neat, and dressed in clothes that didn’t look homemade. I told her about wanting to fix up the house, and as we walked, Sarah pointed out the best place to buy groceries, the store that carried the most fabric, the doctor’s office and other important locations. She put a little local color in her information. The banker’s wife had consumption. The mayor was thirty years older than his wife. The town had hired a new schoolteacher for the coming year because the last one got married.

  When we got to the jail we found George’s horse hitched up out front and George inside with his feet up on the desk and his deputy pouring a cup of coffee out of a big pot. George was wearing a vest that I hadn’t seen before. It had his badge pinned to the front of it. The badge was a circle with a star inside. The word, “Sheriff,” circled the top arc and, “Kennett, Mo.” circled the bottom. It made me feel a little proud when I saw it.

  “Look who’s here, George,” Sarah said. George jumped up and introduced Lulu and me to his deputy, Doug Graham.

  Sarah and Doug said goodbye and went home to have some dinner. George pointed me to a chair beside the desk. “How did you get along with Mom this morning?” he asked. He sounded half-afraid of the answer.

  “We’ll work things out,” I said. “It’s hard to have two women under the same roof. We just need to find out our own property lines is all. I looked around inside the house. Would it be all right if I got what I need to fix up our bedroom?”

  “The bedroom? What’s wrong with it? What did you want to do?”

  “I’d like to put up some pretty paper and get enough fabric to do up some curtains for the windows and a new spread.”

  “How much does all that cost?”

  “I’ll go over to the store and find out.”

  George looked doubtful and rubbed his chin. “Let me know before you order anything. We aren’t rich you know.”

  I couldn’t help it, this rankled me. First, I had to face down those growling dogs, and then I had to face down Mrs. Foley, and now George was treating me like a child. I’d spent the first twenty-six years of my life doing as I was told. I wanted that to be in the past. “I’m just finding out things as I go along, George. You have a good-sized house and a lot of property. You own your own horse when a lot of men don’t. I’m not one to waste money at all. I spent my life so far stretching every penny, and I’m not going to change that now. I’m just trying to find out what I can do.”

  He leaned over with his hands on the desk. “I’m sorry, Maude. I didn’t mean that you couldn’t fix up the place, just that we ought to plan it ahead of time. Ma never cared much how things looked as long as they were clean. Bessie’s the only one who liked to make things pretty. Go ahead and find out how much you need to spend. I get paid every month. If I can’t afford it all at one time, you can do some things this month and more things next month. Would that be all right?”

  I put my hand over one of his and he looked up at me as if my touch surprised him. “That will be just fine, George. I’ll check with some of the stores and see what they have.”

  I stopped in the doorway and turned back to face him. “Mom Foley said that you don’t bring a noon meal with you. Do you want to come home at noon or do you like to eat at the restaurant?”

  “I don’t usually eat until suppertime. I just have my big breakfast and coffee in the morning and go on through the day ‘til I get home.”

  “That’s not good for you. Would you like me to bring you something? I don’t mind a bit, and it would give me and Lulu something to break up our day.”

  “That would be nice, but don’t feel like you have to. I’m used to doing without.”

  I smiled at him. “I’ll see you later.” As we went out the door, I heard him start whistling a soft, tuneless song.

  Lulu and I visited several stores. We priced the fabrics and looked through samples of wallpaper. It seemed everyone already knew who I was, and everyone we met told me how much they liked George. I noticed that not one of them told me they liked his mother. In fact, they never even mentioned her.

  I wrote d
own the number of the wallpaper I liked best, and the shopkeeper told me how much I would need for the size of the room. It had a pattern of big cabbage roses on it, and I found some light green fabric that picked up one of the colors in the leaves that would make a nice bedspread. There was a store that sold ready-made bedding, but I just looked around for ideas about what I wanted to do. I’d never even had a ready-made dress and wasn’t about to waste money on what I considered rich people’s things.

  We stopped back by the sheriff’s office to report on how much money we wanted to spend. George had his feet propped up on the desk again and was sound asleep when I opened the door. He stood and smiled sheepish at me. “Not much crime in Kennett,” he said.

  I laughed a little. “Good, I wouldn’t want to live where there was.” I told him what the figures were going to be for the paper and the fabric. I could see that he was pleased I could sew my own things.

  “Go ahead and order it, Maude. I guess we can afford it all right. It’s about time we did something to fix up the place.”

  Lulu and I went back to the store and ordered the wallpaper and fabric and headed home, happy with the day. More people stopped to greet us on our way out of the downtown area. There were a few ladies with girls Lulu’s age, and they made friends right off. School wouldn’t start for a few more weeks, and they promised to see one another then. It seemed like the friendliest place on earth. In my home town, strangers were sometimes looked at suspiciously until we got to know them. Both Lulu and I were feeling better about things.

  As we neared the house, we could see George’s mother in the backyard. The clothesline was hung with laundry, and she was standing next to the back porch, twirling a chicken around her head. It was an ordinary sight to anyone in a country area, but the look on the old woman’s face gave me a start. She enjoyed what she did. I put my arm around Lulu’s shoulder and hurried her to the front door. “I guess we’re having chicken for supper,” I said.

  We took turns visiting the outhouse. When I came out, I found Lulu and Mom Foley sitting together on the back porch. There was a tub of steaming water in front of them, and they were plucking the feathers out of the chicken, the old woman pausing every now and then to dip the carcass in the hot water. She had the sleeves of her shirt rolled up past her elbows, and I was surprised to see tattoos on her forearms. I tried not to stare. Lulu was laughing at something her new grandmother was telling her. The old woman fell silent as I came near. “Can I peel some potatoes or do anything to help with supper?” I asked.