“Look in the teapot, Lavinia,” Daddy had said.
Mother had looked first at Trip and then to me, as if to say, What wondrous thing could be in the teapot? She removed a pale blue velvet sack, which when opened, revealed the biggest, whitest pearls I could have imagined.
“South Sea,” he said.
Mother burst into tears from his generosity. Daddy fastened them around her neck and she wore them at dinner every day to this day.
Thinking about that, I poured for Mother and sat down again. Unconsciously, she fingered her pearls. Trip helped himself to a cup of coffee, lacing it generously with cognac. He fell back into an armchair with a hassock and looked like he might zonk out at any time.
My three nieces waited in the hallway until Frances Mae cued them. When Frances Mae gave her signal, the three little destructocons came into view on their tiptoes with their arms over their heads like ballerinas. Amelia was first, followed by Isabelle and, finally, Caroline, who wore such a serious expression of concentration that it made us smile and elbow each other.
“Pretty hands, girls!” Frances Mae said. “Pretty hands! Middle finger to the thumb!”
The girls immediately checked their hands, adjusted their fingers, and began to twirl into the living room. They paused for a moment, lined up in a row. First,Amelia began to move, doing quick spot turns to the far opposite corner of the room. Next Isabelle followed her, determined to outdo her sister by spinning even faster. Then came Hell in a Dress, at warp speed heading full throttle to disaster. Crash! Crash! Crash! The floor was covered in splintered Waterford crystal. Frances Mae stood horrified. Trip winced and I waited.
“Turn off the goddamn music, Frances Mae,” Trip said, quietly, finding his tongue again.
Frances Mae blanched and the stereo became silent.
“Now, Trip, don’t curse at your wife, son,” Mother said, “she’s expecting a blessed event and besides, that was from your share of my estate. Merely one less thing to remind you of me someday. One less burden.”
I knew that Mother was kidding but Frances Mae did not.
“What are you saying? Are you saying that you have already divided your property between Caroline and Trip?” Frances Mae said, at a volume seldom used to speak to someone you respected.
Well, Mother had her on the hook now and as Millie appeared again and began to sweep up the pieces into her dustpan, Mother tortured Frances Mae.
“Lord, yes, child,” Mother said, “my worldly possessions have been legally designated on paper for years!”
“You girls go wait in the car. Move it!” My nieces ran like all hell for the front door and slammed it behind them. Frances Mae turned back to Mother. “So, even though I drive you all over the place and visit you once a week and my children make cards and gifts for you, you would penalize us? What has your daughter done for you lately?” Frances Mae blurted this all out, waving her hands and gesticulating like a crazy person. The entire room, including Millie, stopped breathing. Mother just looked at her. She was completely aghast that Frances Mae had taken her seriously. Miss Lavinia possessed Mother again, and Miss Lavinia was pissed off in purple.
“Time to go home, Frances Mae,” Trip said, suddenly sober and up on his feet. “Sorry, Mother. We all have our crosses to bear. You have klutzy grandchildren and my dear wife has a wild mustang for a tongue.” He kissed Mother on the cheek and said, “Thank you for dinner and I’m sorry about the bowl. I’ll replace it tomorrow.”
“You can’t. It was my great-grandmother’s—Elizabeth Kent’s—given to her by General Robert E. Lee himself on the occasion of her wedding to my great-grandfather Henry Wright Heyward IV.” Mother was completely straight-faced.
I knew she was lying through her teeth. She had won it in a raffle at the garden club when I was a girl. I had a clear memory of the day.
“Great,” said Trip. “I’ll be in the car, Frances Mae.”
“Oh, no, you don’t!” Frances Mae said in a shrill voice. “We ain’t moving till this yanh is settled. Mother Wimbley, I have been insulted enough by this family to last me for a million years. I know you thaink I ain’t good enough for this family. I don’t care what about you anyway. If you want to give everythang to Missy, go on! Do it! Just don’t be expecting thaings to be the same between us.”
Mother, “Miss Lavinia,” was ashen. No one had ever spoken to her that way in all of her life. The air was so thick you couldn’t hack your way through it with a machete.
Mother fingered her pearls again, took a long look at Frances Mae, and said, “Good night, Frances Mae. Drive carefully.”
With that Mother left the room, followed by Millie. Trip had disappeared to the car, no doubt, and there I stood with the queen of Beelzebub’s Bubbettes.
“She was kidding you, Frances Mae,” I said, in an attempt to calm her down, but she was off and running so fast there was no telling what she would say or do next.
“Yew thaink yew’re so smart, don’t chew? Don’ chew? I have given three and soon four chillrun to this yanh family and all yew been able to pro-duce is one pitiful child who’s a moron!”
“What are you saying?”
“What everybody already knows, Caroline. That your boy is, that he’s, well, as thick as a post!”
“You know what, Frances Mae? If you weren’t expecting a child, I would beat the liver out of you. But your pregnancy, added to the fact that I know you are a stupid hillbilly from nowhere, will spare you your yellow teeth tonight.”
“Oooooooh! Scarrrry!” she said, laughing at me, like she believed what she said was right. But for all her defiance, I could see she was shaking. Her lip quivered, she had difficulty swallowing, and I thought she might faint, she was so white. “You cain’t be putting bad mouth on my chillrun and my kin when yer own chile is dee-formed in the brain!”
“Frances Mae, God help your unborn child and God help my brother. You must be the most mean-spirited, uneducated, greedy, jealous, no-class piece of trash I have ever had the unhappy luck to come across. If you want to know what a moron is, look in the mirror, Frances Mae, look in the mirror. There’s an ugly one there with fat lips like a flounder waiting to see you. And, you can say whatever you want, but you don’t have the wherewithal to hold your own for five minutes in polite company without disgracing my father’s name.”
“Yew go to hell, and yer mommer too!”
“Frances Mae? As long as I am in a room with you, I’m there and so is Mother. Why don’t you just go home, Frances Mae, before I take you apart?”
“Go ahead. You ain’t nothing but a snobby bitch anyway! You ain’t got the guts to cut grass much less my ass!”
“Get out of my house,” I said.
My house. Major rattle to the enemy. Big time. She sputtered, shook all over, and her breathing took on new dimensions. She didn’t know what to say.
“Yer mommer ain’t dead yet, is she? Is she? Is she? Answer me, goddamnit!”
“Frances Mae, my son is not a moron, and until you take it back and apologize, I’m not speaking to you.” I was so furious with her that I knew I had to get away from her immediately or I was going to do something I’d no doubt regret.
Then, I heard something trickling, like water. When I looked at the floor, there was a pool of urine between her feet!
“Yew kin clean it up too, Miss Hot Shit! It’s yer fault fer getting me so upset.”
“Good night, Frances Mae.” My God! I didn’t wait to see what she would do. I turned and left the room. Lord! She had actually wet the floor! Mother’s pastel Aubusson! If she went into labor tonight, and there was anything wrong with the baby, I’d take the blame.
Walking slowly across the hall to the dining room, stopping to turn off the hall lights, and then the dining room lights, I heard the front door slam almost off its hinges. When I pushed in the kitchen door, I almost knocked Mother and Millie off their feet.
“My girl!” Millie said, slapping me on the back.
“Victory!” sai
d Mother. “Now shall we have a little something to help us sleep?”
“Mother?” I said, thinking about Mother’s fragile Aubusson rug, the stench of Frances Mae, and the fact that I, who rarely drank, had already consumed, with enthusiasm, two large glasses of wine. “Make mine a double.”
MISS LAVINIA’S JOURNAL
Nevil had some nerve to die first and leave me with all of this to contend with. I surely hope there’s justice in the next world, because heaven knows, there’s none in this one! And, Caroline? She’s too good for her own good.We almost got to talking after dinner and then . . . oh, my stars . . . well, I think she sees what I see.This nearly depresses me.Truly.
Sixteen
Millie’s Magic
MILLIE and Mother looked like two naughty girls. They had been waiting silently, in the low light of the cleaned kitchen. The hum of the Sub-Zero refrigerator and the dishwasher was the late evening background music.
“Well?” Mother said.
“I can’t discuss it,” I said. “The Dalai Lama says we should love our enemies. They are our best teachers. Besides, it’s too upsetting.”
Mother turned up the side of one mouth and gave me a suspicious look. “Good grief.” She was drinking bourbon on the rocks and handed me her glass for a sip. “Want one?”
“God, that’s good! I haven’t had a bourbon in years!”
“Bourbon and branch,” Mother said, “it’s the only thing I wouldn’t want to live without.” She poured a drink for me.
Millie, who was leaning against the sink with her arms folded across her chest, stared at me like I had lost my mind. “That and your cigarettes. I’m going to get the coffee service,” Millie said. “Love your enemies? Humph. What kind of fool is that?”
“I’m going to bed,” Mother said.
“I’ll help you, Millie,” I said, and kissed Mother on the cheek. “I’ll be up shortly.”
Mother nodded her head, stubbed out the remains of her cigarette, and said, “Good night, all! Millie, thank you for a wonderful dinner! I don’t know what’s wrong with a daughter and a mother confiding in each other! I truly don’t!”
“Oh, alright. Did you hear everything?” I asked them.
“If I had, why would I ask you?” Mother said.
Millie was quiet.
“Well?” I said, looking at her.
“I think she’s got a bad accent that ain’t worthy of the worst redneck in the state of South Carolina,” Millie said.
“She peed on the rug,” I said.
“Great God!” Mother’s face was stunned. “On my Aubusson?”
“Don’t worry. It’ll come out. Club soda,” I said and looked from Mother to Millie for further comments, but my sister-in-law whizzing on the family heirlooms pretty much locked their jaws into rigor mortis. At least for the moment. At last, Mother spoke and said what she always said when she was exasperated.
“Well, I’m glad your father didn’t live to see this. It would’ve killed him.”
“No doubt,” I said.
“Nothing else? Did you cuss her out?”
“Do you think I’d give her the satisfaction of hearing me use a cussword? That would imply a relationship and God knows, we ain’t got no kinda relationship!”
“That’s my girl! Never curse in front of the enemy. What else happened?” Once Mother’s interest was piqued, it was piqued.
“Mother, I am exhausted. We can talk tomorrow.”
“Well, all right,” she said, “you’ve had a long day.” She reached out and patted my arm. “Good night, Millie, thank you for everything.”
I was too upset to do an autopsy on the evening. My heart was still pounding and sleep was the furthest thing from my mind. The whole scene with Frances Mae was like something from Kafka. If someone picks on your child, it’s impossible not to take it personally. All those tidy maxims like “consider the source . . .” don’t apply and don’t help. My blood pressure went off the Richter scale whenever anyone took a shot at Eric.
I turned to Millie. “Come on, Millie. Where’s the club soda?” I took the roll of paper towels from the chrome dowel stand and then searched under the counter in the butler’s pantry where Mother had sodas stored. Millie stood waiting for me. I found a small bottle and followed Millie to the spot where Frances Mae had wet the floor.
“You know what she did, don’t you?” Millie said.
“I was a witness, Millie. She was so upset that she lost control of herself.”
“Maybe, maybe not. I’d say she was marking her territory.”
“Whoa! Like a hound dog? I don’t think she’s that smart.”
“I think her hate and her anger are so natural to her that she did let it go without even thinking about it. She wants you to know you’re taking her place and she don’t like it.”
“Good Lord, Millie,” I said. “If that’s true, we’d all better guard against her other natural urges.”
“You said it, honey. And that’s just what we gone do.”
I poured the contents of the bottle on Mother’s rug and watched it bubble. I knew Millie was conjuring up a root cure to protect us from Frances Mae’s anger. Then I laid six paper towels over it, caught them up by the edges, and put down another layer. I looked up and there was Millie by my side with a plastic garbage bag and another small bottle of club soda.
“Better do it one more time,” she said, “then we go out to the garden and fix Frances Mae good. We don’t need no negative fool coming ’round yanh and messing with us.”
“Yeah, we’d better do something. For all I know, she could show up with one of Trip’s hunting rifles.”
Millie’s eyebrows shot up at the thought of it. So did mine.
“Don’t even think it!” she said.
“No kidding. Come on, let’s get out of here.”
I knew we were heading for Millie’s house and her magic garden. When I was a young girl, I had always loved it when she let me in on her herbal and spiritual practices. Okay, it was a form of voodoo. I admitted that to myself. But, when we did a little ceremony together to solve a problem, that was when I adored living at Tall Pines the best. I had nearly forgotten the excitement I felt when Millie and I would make gris-gris bags and bottles of remedies for various ailments. Oh, yeah, Frances Mae was about to get hers.
“First, let’s go get us some goofer dust,” Millie said. “We can take my golf cart.”
Goofer dust! Out the kitchen door we went. It was eleven-fifteen. The night had turned a little cool, but the millions of stars and a nearly full moon shed plenty of warmth. Millie turned the key and the golf cart kicked forward. We rolled our way across the lawn, passing the boat landing, her cottage, the barn, the windmill, the ice house, the kennels, and the greenhouse. At the tiny road, paved with gravel and oyster shells, we turned and crunched along slowly until we reached the family chapel and graveyard.
The family’s chapel had been built by William Oliver Kent in 1860 and was used by several plantations, for worship, weddings, and baptisms. It was eventually abandoned when the Baptists built a large church in Jacksonboro.
I played in it as a girl—knowing it was haunted like anything. It was a sign of juvenile bravery, a condition for club membership to spend fifteen minutes inside alone. Sometimes the old organ would groan or the wind would whip through a cracked window, scaring my friends out of their skin. Not me. The dark stained glass fascinated me and the old musty smells led to imaginings that would have given most adults nightmares. But I was a sucker for the other world and invited my dead ancestors to talk to me anytime. I believed in everything.
After Daddy died, Mother, being much more practical in nature, cleaned it up and used it for dinner parties and small concerts. Basically, she ruined my clubhouse.
My whole family was buried in the small graveyard outside. My great-great-grandmother Elizabeth Bootle Kent Heyward had buried my first American ancestors—her parents—in an elevated crypt, high on the bluffs of the Edisto River. When
and if their spirits took the time to rise and look, they had the most incredible views of sunsets over water. There were many graves, some so tiny—babies lost to yellow fever and smallpox; others, handsome carved headstones describing the heroics of the deceased—patriots lost in the wars. A low brick wall of coping surrounded each plot and then another surrounded the entire area, with pillared corners and wrought-iron pickets.
Millie and I climbed the three brick steps and opened the wrought-iron gate which, honoring all the historic pain of every family loss, screamed something horrible.
“God, Millie, think this place is haunted? We should’ve brought three-in-one oil.”
“Humph. Them haints are what I’m counting on. Come on, we gots to pay Mr. Nevil a visit. You gots to ask him what he thinks.”
I rubbed my arms and kept walking past the many graves until we reached the site of my father’s plot.
JAMES NEVIL WIMBLEY II
1927-1974
BELOVED HUSBAND AND FATHER
“Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea.”
—TENNYSON
Sobered, I sat at the end of Daddy’s grave on the low wall and read the tombstone several times. In the blue light of night, to sit at the edge of my father’s resting place, the raw smells and sounds of the river just over the bluff—these things made me think and feel deeply.
Millie left my side then returned to me with a conch shell from the golf cart. She walked away again, to the edge of the bluff in the moonlight, where she stood in silhouette against the night sky. She was protection and powerful magic, all at once.
I knew in my mind that my father would hear whatever I needed to say to him. And, that he would answer my heart. I had not done this in years, but I fell back into the ritual as though it was just yesterday that I had called upon his spirit. I got on my knees and began to pray in my own way.
“Please, God of all, Mother of all, bless my father’s soul, his family, and all who knew and loved him. Please let my father speak to my heart. I need his counsel.”
Plantation Page 16
