Mama finishes smearing the creamy white frosting around on the cake, then pours the tangy lemon cheese on the top, whirling it around, that and saying nothing. When she finishes, she swipes her hands across her apron, picks the cake up and hands it to me.
“Welcome home, Elizabeth,” she says. “I hope you enjoy it.” And the way she says it, I wish she’d never made the cake. She says it like, “Here I’ve spent all this time making your favorite cake and you come in and talk this way to me.” That’s how she says it. But then I have to remember that what she says and what I am hearing aren’t one and the same.
What would Angela have done about now? Angela would have run to her room and gotten all mad and thrown herself on the bed and probably cried her eyes out. But Elizabeth would say, “Thank you, Mama. It was very nice of you to make the cake. I’m sure I’ll enjoy it.” So that’s what I say. And it feels so very delicious sounding like Elizabeth, I am overcome with joy. Dr. Adams practiced with me for several days the kind of things Mama might say and how I might react to them, just like I was an actress or something, and I see I was learning to be the real me and not pretend anymore, nor be nobody’s actress.
Turn this way, a little bit, hon. Now, look up real sweet. That’s right. Snap. Now, put your arms around your daddy, now, yeah, like that. Snap. And put your hand on your hip, see like this? Snap.
I stand frozen just staring at the cake. Mama’s pretty cold, too. “Just to think you missed Caldwell’s funeral,” she says, like she doesn’t know how to act to the real Elizabeth. Poor Mama. She’s having to act, too, or rather having to learn how to act. I want so to reach over and put my arms around her, to hold on to her for dear life. But I just can’t bring myself to it.
Instead I just say, “I felt so bad, Mama, I did, when I got your letter, and you must know I wanted to be here. I hope they had a nice service for him. If anyone ever deserved it, he did.”
“They buried him in his overalls, what about that,” Mama says, rather indignant. (That’s one of the new words I learned at Nathan—“indignant.” If I remember, it means she was a bit miffed at something she thought was not right or fair, something like that. Anyway, in the library at Nathan, where I stay what spare time I have, I’m learning lots of stuff, and it makes me want to go on learning forever, more and more, whatever there is to learn about people and how they behave and different kinds of religion and how society is formed and about different people around the world and different ways of doing, what makes people act the way they do. I want to know it all.)
“But what was wrong with his overalls, Mama? I mean, were they dirty, or something?” Dr. Adams says some of my comments are “slightly tinged with sarcasm, but just enough to put an interesting twist on them” that’s what he says. But sarcasm? Does Elizabeth want to be sarcastic? Not really, nor fully, but sometimes maybe just a touch. And, you know, that may not win me any friends, nor influence people, but I gotta be how I gotta be, and I’m sure not going to go around looking to win any popularity contests anymore. Not even for Mama. Anyway, isn’t Mama how she’s gotta be? She certainly hasn’t held anything back anytime that I can remember. And all the other people—Preacher Edwards and Mrs. Akley sure didn’t hold back either; and Hemp, he’s what he is, and Dr. Adams, and Dr. Johnstone. Good or bad, most people that I can see now, are what they are, no apologies made.
So, I ask Mama again, “What’s so wrong about being buried in overalls? That’s what Caldwell always wore. He wouldn’t look right in a suit and tie.”
“Nobody buries anybody in overalls, that’s what’s wrong,” she says. “It was a disgrace, a pure and simple disgrace. But everything else was nice, just like normal, the flowers and all, lots of flowers.”
“Did you carry some, Mama?”
“The Ox-eye daisies out on the roadbank were blooming, so I made a spray of them and I got some of the baby ferns growing out by the garage, and I put a yellow ribbon on it. It looked a sight, it did.”
“I bet it did,” I say. “Ox-eye daisies probably looked just right with overalls.”
Mama just rolls her eyes at me, before she goes on. “And your daddy, he fixed up ajar of chrysanthemums, all colors, yellow and white and red and orange. A mason jar, mind you. It hacked me nearly to death myself, him carrying that mason jar into the funeral home.”
“I bet Caldwell would have loved it,” I say. “Who was the preacher, I mean, besides Preacher Edwards?”
Mama gets out the cornmeal to make some cornbread sticks for eating with the greens she has on the stove. “Ah, it was that old Doc Manley, you know the one who don’t know how nor when to stop hollering once he gets started. They ought nobody never to ask him to do another funeral, he just gets worse and worse, talking about the flames of hell coming up to devour those of us living if we don’t get right with God.”
“Well, that’s what Preacher Edwards says all the time.”
“On Sundays, yeah, but at a funeral? That’s not the time to be talking about such.”
Something about that sets Elizabeth in rocking motion, and so she starts. “If the fiery flames of hell is worth talking about on Sundays, why is it not worth talking about at funerals? Seems like they’re one and the same to me, and what’s true at one should be true at the other. But no, on Sundays people just love hearing about eternal hell and damnation, then when it comes to dying, they want something sweet and nice to think about.”
Mama walls her eyes at me quick as a flash. “What they doing to you down there?” she says. “You ain’t never talked that way to your mother before. Poison your mind, that’s what they’re doing. Well, you can just stay here, Elizabeth, and don’t you make no plans about going back to Nathan, you hear?”
I can’t believe Mama is talking that way. Not after all I’ve learned about me and her. But, wait. Mama isn’t learning all of that, so why should she be acting any different? Like Dr. Adams said, don’t expect any miracles. But what will happen to Mama and me, now that I am growing into a separate person, into Elizabeth, leaving Angela way behind, and here Mama is still the same old Mama, prim and old-fogey as ever. And sad. Mama is truly sad. And so I, Elizabeth, have to remember that, and not be too tinged with sarcasm, else I won’t have something pretty for Elizabeth to put into her container.
In the library at Nathan, there is a book explaining how the months of the year got their names, and the one I’m thinking about now is January, which comes from Janus, the Roman god who had two heads, one looking one way and one the other, and that to me seems to about sum up Mama and me. We are of the same mold, yet she is going in one direction and me in the other, even though we are still stuck together.
All I have to do is get myself unstuck, so I can go on off into the new years ahead and let Mama keep on looking back in the past if that’s what she wants to do. But I will go back to Nathan for sure, no matter what Mama says. Maybe Nathan is like the knife that will slice us in two and separate us for good. At least I have to keep on believing that, or else I never will get a firm hold on Elizabeth. Just like that song about once you really deep down in your heart decide to follow Jesus, there’s no turning back. Well, I’ve made my choice to follow Elizabeth. No turning back.
14
. . . . . .
Since it’s Friday evening late, Mama is ready to go out to Eunice’s and get her hair fixed for the week. I offer to drive her out so I can go on out to the cemetery for a while and see Caldwell’s grave.
Mama doesn’t say anything all the way to Eunice’s, and I don’t either. The clutch keeps sticking on the old Ford, which is rattling like it’s going to shake to pieces. It’s enough to drive you to frazzles.
“When are we going to get a new car, Mama?” I say, although she’s not into talking, and I’m not really either. I’m afraid if I say anything, it might lead to me having to act like Elizabeth again, and I don’t know if I can manage that again so soon. But some things need talking about, and right now the blamed old car is one of them.
“Ah, we don’t need a new car,” Mama says, “this ’un gets us where we want, don’t it?”
I want to say, “Doesn’t it, the word is ‘doesn’t,’ Mama,” but that sure isn’t going to win me any favors with Mama right now. We’ve got plenty in the bank—enough to buy two cars, since Mama and Daddy both are forever hoarding and holding what little money they get from the government. And I put my share in the savings account too, for whatever reasons I don’t know, though I’m beginning to wonder. Anyway, I don’t know what we’re waiting for. For this old gray muley thing to fall apart and stop, I reckon. After ten years, you’d think anybody would want to get a new car, just for the sake of getting a new car, like everybody else in Littleton.
“How’s Eunice doing?” I say, as we drive up into the yard of her Beauty Hut, and it isn’t much more than a little hut, a little white hut, although where the beauty is I couldn’t say.
“Oh, she’s as struttin’ as ever,” Mama says, “talking about everbody up one side and down the other, her own customers, too.”
Does Mama not realize that she, too, talks about everybody up one side and down the other? That’s why I don’t usually go to Eunice’s with Mama, except when I’m having the curls frizzed into my hair. When they light in to talking about folks, especially poor old Noma Lee Roach, it’s awful.
“And did you know Noma Lee had the nerve to come over here asking me if I had any worn-out dresses she could have? After all the permanents I put in for her at half price?”
“Oh, yeah,” says Mama, “and then she comes over asking me to fix them up for her, you know, and I ain’t never seen a dime yet of what she owes me for them.”
“Well, she’s got money to spend on that old spitting snuff she chews all the time.”
“Yeah, and what about it,” says Mama. And on and on.
I never did like to hear people talking about somebody else when they’re not around, because it’s not fair. And it took me a while at Nathan to feel like I wasn’t talking about Mama to her back, like I wasn’t gossiping about her, but in the name of therapy I guess it’s okay. Although now that I think about it, when people gossip about somebody, is that a kind of therapy, too? Are they just talking out what’s inside them, and if they didn’t would they be more mixed up and confused than they already are, if they didn’t talk it out?
“See you in a little while,” I say when Mama gets out of the car at Eunice’s. “I’m going out to the cemetery.” But Mama doesn’t say nothing. Anything. She didn’t say anything. It’s funny how I didn’t have any trouble at all in school getting grammar right on the tests. But talking it and writing it are two different things altogether. It comes so much more natural talking it the wrong way. Maybe because that’s the way I’ve heard it all my life at home and all around Littleton. Aunt Lona is all the time correcting me, and I appreciate it, more than she knows.
Any other time, I would be going to see Aunt Lona first thing. But right now I just can’t. If I go over to Aunt Lona’s while I’m here, Mama will get fighting mad, both at me and Aunt Lona. Then Aunt Lona will have to stand her ground, like always, especially when it comes to what’s best for me. Then I’ll feel all torn between both of them, and I sure can’t take on two women at once. Not right now. I’ll just plan to call Aunt Lona tonight and go see her while Mama’s at church tomorrow. Anyway, I just have to see Caldwell’s grave.
I’m glad to be at the cemetery, because that’s one place that’s really real. It’s all black and white, cut and dried, no two ways about it: either you’re dead, or you’re not. It’s clear as day where Caldwell’s grave is, because it’s still new enough to have three or four sprays of flowers around it. Plastic of course. Little pink and blue and yellow and purple clumps of bought beauty from the five-and-dime. I always thought cemeteries were supposed to look natural. Leave them to the dandelions and the swaying goldenrod and the little purple asters, that’s what I think. Every kind of flower and weed will grow up there in its own way in its own time.
Doesn’t the Bible say so, that to everything there is a time and season of its own? Anyway, natural beats artificial any day, that’s what I’ve always thought and always will. And that is even more reason to get into the real Elizabeth, so I can get all the ways of my thinking going in one direction and not be thinking one thing and doing another. As far as I can tell now, that’s what tears people up more than anything, going in two ways at once.
But Caldwell, dear Caldwell. What will I do on Saturday afternoons without Caldwell to talk to? I could talk with Caldwell any way I wanted to, and he didn’t mind at all. Well, he did think some of the things I thought were kind of awful, but he didn’t like me any the less for what I thought or said or did. Like, for instance, we got to talking once about the Lord’s will. That was the night he wanted me to take him over to the traveling evangelist’s show. That’s what it turned out to be, too, just a traveling show in a tent, where the evangelist was lining everybody up at the front of the tent, all the crippled and the downtrodden and the drunks and the infirm, and he walked across in front of them punching them on the forehead, nearly knocking them over and pronouncing them “HEALED” by the grace of God. (It’s funny, though, how although I knew healing evangelists couldn’t really do a thing for you, I wondered for just one fleeting moment if he could heal folks like me, you know, when their mamas had done things to them as a child that wasn’t natural. I guess that made me understand, if only for a little bit, how a person could get so desperate, they’d believe anything.)
I didn’t want to go to the traveling show. I told Caldwell I didn’t. I told him what it would be like. But Caldwell had faith, he said, and that was all it took. If he had faith even as tiny as a mustard seed, the traveling healing evangelist could take away his polio-crippled limbs forevermore.
“But it’s not natural, Caldwell,” I said. “It’s just not going to happen. That man can’t undo what you’ve been stuck with for all your life. If he could, Caldwell, there’s something I sure would like for him to undo on me.”
“There is?” he said, somehow surprised. “Why, Elizabeth, you don’t seem like you need any undoing. What do you mean?”
“Oh, nothing,” I said, sorry that I had let slip even mention of such a thing. “Nothing at all.”
I was cutting Caldwell’s hair that day. That’s one of the things I could do for Caldwell was cut his hair. Since he couldn’t go anywhere much, except to church, and since he had straight hair with bangs in front like a kid, even though he was forty-eight, and it was straight all around just like you put a bowl over his head and cut around the edges, I could do that kind of cutting. So he had to have his hair cut to go to see the traveling healing evangelist, and that’s when we got into this great debate about the Lord’s will.
“If I don’t get healed, then maybe that’s the Lord’s will, too,” Caldwell said, sitting so still in his wheelchair and blinking his eyes at the little wisps of dark brown pieces of bangs fluttering down across his eyes and nose and dropping like winged creatures on the towel I had draped around him. Just to think that God has every hair of every person’s head numbered was something too big for me to imagine, so I decided that sometime I was going to have to figure out just what that really meant, and not what it seemed to mean.
“Caldwell,” I said, “you sound just like everybody else in Littleton, blaming everything on the Lord.”
“No, no, no, not blaming,” he said in his drawled out way which is what the polio did for him, drew up his vocal cords so mat everything comes out very slow and with much effort, but it also comes out sounding very convincing since it’s so determined. “Not blaming, you know, it’s just a part of his plan, that’s what the Lord’s will means.”
Since I didn’t want to go over to the traveling evangelist and see him fooling around with everybody and their feelings, I said maybe it wasn’t the Lord’s will that we go. But that didn’t take with Caldwell. Dear Caldwell. Maybe if I had been sitting in a wheelchair for more than
forty years, maybe I’d be grasping at any and every little thing, too, that I thought might even come close to getting me out of it. So, what the heck, I decided. Lord’s will or not, sure I’d carry Caldwell over to see the healing evangelist, no matter how depressed he’d be the next week when he found himself still sitting in the wheelchair.
That was the week he got back into his scrapbooks in a big way. I could always tell when Caldwell was feeling low, because he brought out his scrapbooks and started working on them. He had scrapbooks of stamps and scrapbooks of get-well cards that people had sent him over the years, as if he could get well. And then the saddest of all, I thought, were the scrapbooks of the horses.
He loved horses so much, so he subscribed to these horse magazines and cut the pictures out and pasted them into the books, as if that were the only kind of mounting of horses he’d ever get to do. Then he had scrapbooks of movie stars and some of flowers and some of people. Not relative people, but just interesting kinds of faces from magazines, sad and happy and puzzled and angry and loving and kind, all kinds. These he had labeled in alphabetical order from A to Z, according to the emotion he thought was on their faces.
Caldwell, dear Caldwell, I wonder what happened to your scrapbooks. I wonder what happened to you, where you are now, besides a little part of you hanging on inside of me forever, what will happen to you besides that? Maybe I shouldn’t be talking about this, but I sometimes wondered how it would be to be married to Caldwell. We got along well enough to be married, I sometimes thought. He wasn’t much to look at and neither am I. But maybe we could have taken care of each other.
No sooner had I thought about being married to him than up pops sex. Would we have that, and him all crippled? How could we, if he had to get all strung up in this contraption in bed at night. And the thought of having sex with him was a bit scary. Actually, the thought of having sex with anyone was a bit scary. (With anyone but maybe Dr. Adams, that is. Now him, I wouldn’t mind.) I couldn’t ever see me marrying anyway. (Unless he were someone like Dr. Adams, that is.)
Quiet-Crazy Page 12
