Soon after Daddy sold our little house on Bowden Street, we prepared to move to his hotel in Grove Hill, Alabama. Daddy tried to make living on the top floor of a hotel and running a small café on the first floor sound exciting, but my mind painted a more realistic picture. I knew as soon as he told me that he sold the house, my life was about to change again, and probably in ways I would not like. Aunt Matt wouldn’t be in Grove Hill to help me with Albert and Billy, the laundry, or cleaning our new home. The rearing of my two young brothers was now entirely up to me. I feared that my days would be filled with washing linens, dusting windowsills and baseboards, mopping floors, and cleaning up after customers in the café. And we would be miles and miles away from Momma. Without even starting my new life and tedious daily chores, I yearned for one of Momma’s road trips.
I worried about Aunt Matt and Henry. Wouldn’t they be lonely back in their little two-room shack without the four of us around? I couldn’t stand the thought of spending Saturday mornings without Aunt Matt humming in our kitchen as she fixed biscuits and gravy for us.
On my final day as her student, I tried to focus on her lesson. “Should I add more lard or is the sausage grease enough?” “How much flour?” “How brown should the roux be?” I hoped that if I asked enough questions, we would stay in that kitchen forever, Aunt Matt and me.
“Baby,” Aunt Matt said, “them hungry men at that hotel is gonna pay a pretty penny for this gravy. You just teach that cook Aunt Matt’s secrets.” She chuckled with delight as she tasted my first successful batch before we left our home and the kitchen that I loved.
On our last morning in Frisco City, Meg and I brought fresh flowers to Momma’s grave. We had gone into the woods behind our house, just the two of us, and picked a big bouquet of wildflowers. Momma always told me that wildflowers were the best flowers because no one could tell them where to grow or how to bloom. The wildflowers followed their own plan. We placed the big bouquet on the ground next to the small marker with only an etching of her name. My heart sank knowing that we were leaving Frisco City, leaving her there without a proper stone on her grave that declared how special she was and how desperately we loved her. Aunt Matt promised me that she would tend Momma’s grave and make sure that she placed fresh wildflowers near the marker as long as they bloomed.
As we pulled away from our white house with three bedrooms, a big parlor, an indoor bathroom, and the little kitchen that I loved, I tried to memorize every detail, from the big oak tree in front, to the painted cedar trunks that Daddy had used as columns on the front porch. Daddy had leaned against those columns when he told me he didn’t hurt Momma. Those columns meant that he loved everyone inside the house.
Those columns also showed our corner of the world how unique my mother was. Momma said that when Daddy built this house, she made him leave the knots on the trunks rather than smoothing out the odd shapes and bumps so that the whole town would know that inside the house were very special, unique people, free from the boring expectations and limitations of our town.
I stared at our home until we turned left turn off Bowden Street, onto County Road 38, and our little house disappeared from view. I turned back around in my seat, closed my eyes, and sucked down the cry that was welling up in my throat.
Somewhere along County Road 38, between Frisco City and Grove Hill, Daddy laid out my new life. He quickly confirmed my fears. He needed and required my full attention in the café, which meant going to school was a thing of my past. I had dreamt of going to teacher’s college, but that dream was quickly replaced with an apron and kitchen utensils. He wanted Meg and the boys to finish grammar school, but I was in the ninth grade. I had all the education Daddy required. Paying customers ranked over a high school diploma.
“Hattie, I don’t need you in school. I need you at the res’trint,” Daddy told me in a tone that left no room for compromise or argument. “Now, you’ll help me out in the café, and next year, when Meg’s done with eighth grade, she’ll start work, too, and then the boys when they’re done. That’s just how it’s gonna be.” Meg and my brothers slept right through Daddy’s plan for the family.
By September of that year, we were all settled into our new routines and new home in Grove Hill. I celebrated my fourteenth birthday in the hotel cafe with a cake that I made from strawberries bought at the corner market on Main Street in Grove Hill. Before that cake, I don’t know if I’d ever had store bought strawberries. The hotel was right on Main Street, in the heart of Grove Hill, and seemed to be constantly surrounded by the typical, exciting hustle and bustle of a county seat, but we had no place for a garden. The week of my birthday, Daddy gave me a few extra pennies for strawberries for my cake. He also gave me a new dress made of blue cotton gabardine with tiny pink and yellow flowers on it, from the dress shop two blocks over. It was my first store bought dress.
Meg, Billy, and Albert left for school every morning at eight o’clock. The school was only a few blocks away from the hotel, but Meg complained daily about getting the boys to school as if she had to wrangle cattle on a drive through the open plains of Texas.
Meg met her new responsibilities with a frequently expressed sense of martyrdom, “Hattie, you will never understand how challenging the boys can be! Running ahead or lingering behind. By the time I sit down, my nerves are so frazzled; I can hardly concentrate on what teacher has to say. At least Miss Springer understands the extraordinary challenges of my life!” Meg had perfected a flair for the dramatic.
I didn’t share my intense jealousy of my sister getting to go to school. I was fairly certain that Meg would revel in the idea that she had something I wanted, and there was no way I would give her that satisfaction. I loved going to school back in Frisco City. I found nearly every subject fascinating, except arithmetic. Reciting multiplication tables and practicing long division didn’t appeal to me or challenge me in any way. I raced through our arithmetic lessons, checking my work once before turning in my paper long before my classmates. Those of us who quickly finished those monotonous lessons were given the privilege of selecting a book from Miss Hendrix’s personal collection. She had fairy tales and adventure stories, science fiction and mysteries. She would even let me borrow books to take home. Miss Hendrix trusted that I would return the books in pristine condition and quickly, and I kept her trust by doing just that. Momma called me a “voracious reader”, and I liked the idea that I was voracious at something.
I missed Miss Hendrix terribly. She was a lovely, petite woman in her early twenties. Every day, she would pin her blonde hair back just above her ears. Her cotton dresses were always immaculately presented, as if freshly pressed each morning, and she would greet each of us at the door, with her gleaming white teeth and soft, pink cheeks. Once, I asked Miss Hendrix why she had not married. She grew up in Frisco City, the daughter of the general store owners. She returned to Frisco City and her parents’ home on Oak Street right after attending teacher’s college in Birmingham. I couldn’t understand why a woman as delightful as Miss Hendrix was unmarried.
“We all must choose our own paths, Hattie,” was her simple yet cryptic reply. Before Miss Hendrix, I had never heard of a woman choosing not to marry.
My current path at the hotel and café in Grove Hill was certainly not of my choosing. School had been replaced by seemingly endless days of mindless tasks. I woke well before dawn, dressed in the dark so I wouldn’t disturb Meg, and headed down to the café on the street level of our hotel. I started the coffee first. When the hotel was full, we went through several pots each morning, so I had to make sure we had several in reserve when the guests arrived for breakfast and quickly drank their first, second, and sometimes third cups. Next, I helped Henrietta with the biscuits, making them exactly according to Aunt Matt’s recipe. Miss Henrietta had no problem using Aunt Matt’s recipe, especially because it was the same as hers. Country ham was heated on the stovetop in a large cast iron skillet that was so heavy I had to use both hands to lift it. Luckily, Miss Henrie
tta, a colored woman who only needed one hand to lift the cast iron skillet, was a very good cook and a tireless employee. No matter how early I headed down to the kitchen, Miss Henrietta was already fast at work.
Daddy and the children would come down the stairs around seven. I served the kids breakfast at a little table tucked in a corner of the kitchen, and then turned my attention to the customers in the dining room. Daddy, Meg, and I served the guests as they arrived downstairs from their rented rooms or stopped in for a bite on their way to work.
Most of our hotel guests were migrant workers in search of a new start at a mill or factory, but only earned enough money for a couple of nights before moving on to the next stop on the L&N rail. Many of our café customers, however, were long-time residents of Grove Hill. The Clarke County Courthouse was three blocks down Main Street from our café, so several of the attorneys, bailiffs, sheriff deputies, and clerks stopped in for breakfast or lunch. Sometimes, I would linger as I cleared away dishes and wiped down tables just to hear the men debate their latest cases over bowls of stew, sausage gravy, or fried pork chops.
The café was small, but lovely. Each table was preset every night with coffee cups, silverware, napkins, a small vase with a fresh flower, and a small jar of jelly, usually blackberry or strawberry. Often, guests would comment on how good the homemade jelly was, sweet and bursting with fruit. I found it hard not to swell with pride when I heard their compliments or saw how quickly our hungry companions devoured breakfast. I liked talking with the guests and listening to their stories, especially the odd court cases and stories from the railroad, but I wondered if that was all my life was going to be: serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner to guests crowded around twelve café tables, and listening to the stories of strangers rather than having my own to tell. As each guest finished, Daddy worked the register, making sure that every penny was accounted for, and I returned to the kitchen to help Miss Henrietta wash, dry, and put away stacks of dirty dishes.
After Meg and the boys left for school and the guests were off to work, Daddy and I would sit down to breakfast. Every morning, without fail, Daddy laid out the day’s chores for me. A woman named Ruthie came by every other day to change the linens on the twelve guest beds in the little hotel, but most of the other tasks were my responsibility. Daddy dictated the lunch and supper menu as I made a list of any items needed from the corner market. He also reminded me of the rotating cleaning schedule, which I knew by heart: Tuesdays and Saturdays, we mopped the floors; Wednesdays, we dusted all surfaces; and Thursdays, we wiped all windows and sills. The floors were swept and the indoor bathrooms, one on each floor, were cleaned daily. Meg, Billy, and Albert would all pitch in with the list after school because most of my day would be spent in the café, prepping lunch and dinner, washing dishes, waiting on customers, and wiping down tables after each service.
My reprieve came on Fridays when the Tuscaloosa Bookmobile came to town. The bookmobile was a large, older model black wagon. Behind the cab, the rear sides folded down to reveal hundreds of books. The first time I saw the bookmobile’s sides fold down, I couldn’t believe how many books were waiting on the shelves for me. A bookmobile didn’t stop in Frisco City, so I had never seen one before. Miss Hendrix’s collection paled in comparison to the treasures before me. Each week, I returned my picks from the week before and checked out at least three new novels, mainly romances and mysteries. Both librarians knew me by name and marveled at how quickly I tore through the pages.
At night, after I put Billy and Albert to bed, made sure the dining room downstairs was set for breakfast service, and the kitchen was spotless, I liked to lie in my little bed and read. I was always tired to the bone, but my mind raced with my new responsibilities as café waitress, hotel maid, and mother to two young boys and a girl who believed wholeheartedly that she was all grown up at twelve years old.
I craved the distraction I found between the musty pages of my books. Each contained the possibilities of new friends and formidable enemies, desperate circumstances and paradise settings, all in sharp contrast to my humble and mundane existence in the hotel. The fourth and top floor of the small hotel I called home was a far cry from the luxurious suites I read about in my novels.
I liked to lie in bed and read, but Meg demanded, night after night, that I turn off the little lamp that barely lit our room.
“Hattie, turn off that dreadful light right now! I am plum exhausted and can’t sleep with it shining in my eyes!”
Meg’s whining made finishing a novel in the comfort of my bed impossible. In order to keep the peace, I turned off my lamp and tried to force myself asleep. Some nights, I was successful, reciting prayers from our church in Frisco City in my head until I drifted off, but other nights, most nights, no amount of tricks would work. As soon as I closed my eyes, Momma’s face would appear. Her blue eyes and bright smile sparkled in my mind. I could hear her laughter, full and contagious. Some nights, I could almost feel her lying next to me, the warmth of her body pressed against my side as we squeezed together in my tiny bed.
On the nights when I missed her too much to lie there in silence; when I felt the pain of her absence welling up in my throat; when the loneliness that her death created seemed to take my breath away; I snuck downstairs. Quietly in the dark, I would go to the kitchen first. My favorite late night snack was corn bread crumbled in a glass of milk, but crackers in milk would also do if the corn bread had all been eaten. I would take my glass and book and sit at the far corner table in the dining room. By candlelight, I read.
After a couple of hours alone with my book, my candle would have nearly burnt away and my mind would finally, albeit momentarily, be quiet. I made sure to leave the table as I found it, removing any evidence of my midnight retreat. I would sneak back upstairs my feet snugly encased in socks, creep inside our bedroom making sure not to disturb Meg, close my eyes, and sleep. I didn’t choose to leave school to work in a hotel with my father, Miss Henrietta, and Ruthie; to raise three children at the age of fourteen; or to lose Momma; but each week, I would eagerly go on countless written adventures with my newfound heroes and heroines, pirates and detectives, damsels in distress, and quick-witted villains. In those pages, I found a new education and a lifetime escape route.
Chapter 8
September 1934
Grove Hill, Alabama
My Saturdays were so much different than they used to be in Frisco City. Before the last time Momma went hunting with Daddy at Barlow Bend, I waited all week for Saturday, eager to find out what she had in store for us. Would we spend the morning in the garden and the afternoon listening to her stories on the front porch? Would we spend the day in the kitchen with Aunt Matt canning vegetables and making jellies? Would we be hurried to Momma’s car and carried off to theater houses or dance halls, open pastures or moss-covered woods?
In Grove Hill, Saturdays were utterly predictable. My day would be spent in the café. The businessmen of the workweek, with the exception of a few from the courthouse held over for long trials, would transform into family men. Our little café became crowded with mothers in fine crepe and silk dresses; seated between fathers in polished welts; and children in their best cotton frocks. The fascinating conversations centered on crime details and trial strategies were replaced with shopping lists and pleasantries about the weather. If Saturdays in the café weren’t so busy with every family from the surrounding countryside coming to town for the day, I would have been bored to tears.
*****
On September 15, 1934, I went about my regular duties as café hostess and waitress. The breakfast service was typically slow for a Saturday morning, but the lunch service was one of our busiest yet. Miss Henrietta fried every piece of chicken we had, and nearly all of the catfish and pork chops as well. Daddy seemed extremely pleased with the booming sales, and after the last table from lunch paid their bill, he carried the drawer to the back room to count the register with a big smile on his face.
Just as I was wipin
g down the last table and about to set the tables for the dinner service, the strange man from that day way back in April in Frisco City walked into the café. I recognized him immediately. He wore a white buttoned-down shirt, black vest, and navy pants, and was just as big as he seemed before. He was sweating from the warm temperature even without the large, dark jacket he wore in April. Who could blame him in this heat and with his thick hair? His thick, unruly mane must feel like a wool hat pulled tight down to his ears and collar.
“Good afternoon, Sir. Sit wherever you like,” I smiled at him as I motioned to the empty dining room, “We are out of chicken, but still have a few pork chops and catfish. Can I get you an iced tea?”
“No, Miss. I’m looking for Hubbard Andrews. Is he here?” He stood directly in front of the door and scanned the café with his dark eyes.
I told the man to wait there and went to the back to get Daddy. When we returned to the dining room, Daddy first and me directly behind him, two deputies wearing Clarke County badges had joined the strange man. Daddy stopped suddenly when he saw the three men standing between him and the door.
“Hubbard Andrews,” the strange man said and revealed the handcuffs he was holding in his giant hand, “You are hereby under arrest for the murder of Mrs. Addie Andrews.”
Part 2: Motive & Opportunity
Chapter 9
September 1934
Grove Hill, Alabama
“Stop it!” I leapt toward the strange man and struck his chest with both of my hands bound tightly into fists. All of the anger I felt toward the gossips of Frisco City came out of me in sharp blows. One after the other, I struck the man with every bit of strength I had. “Leave us alone! Leave us alone!” I cried as I continued to strike him.
The Woods at Barlow Bend Page 5
