Maggie of the Green Bottles
MAGGIE HAD NOT INTENDED to get sucked in on this thing, sleeping straight through the christening, steering clear of the punch bowl, and refusing to dress for company. But when she glanced over my grandfather’s shoulder and saw “Aspire, Enspire, Perspire” scrawled across the first page in that hard-core Protestant hand, and a grease stain from the fried chicken too, something snapped in her head. She snatched up the book and retired rapidly to her room, locked my mother out, and explained through the door that my mother was a fool to encourage a lot of misspelled nonsense from Mr. Tyler’s kin, and an even bigger fool for having married the monster in the first place.
I imagine that Maggie sat at her great oak desk, rolled the lace cuffs gently back, and dipped her quill into the lavender ink pot with all the ceremony due the Emancipation Proclamation, which was, after all, exactly what she was drafting. Writing to me, she explained, was serious business, for she felt called upon to liberate me from all historical and genealogical connections except the most divine. In short, the family was a disgrace, degrading Maggie’s and my capacity for wings, as they say. I can only say that Maggie was truly inspired. And she probably ruined my life from the get-go.
There is a photo of the two of us on the second page. There’s Maggie in Minnie Mouse shoes and a long polka-dot affair with her stockings rolled up at the shins, looking like muffins. There’s me with nothing much at all on, in her arms, and looking almost like a normal, mortal, everyday-type baby—raw, wrinkled, ugly. Except that it must be clearly understood straightaway that I sprang into the world full wise and invulnerable and gorgeous like a goddess. Behind us is the player piano with the spooky keys. And behind that, the window outlining Maggie’s crosshatched face and looking out over the yard, overgrown even then, where later I lay lost in the high grass, never hoping to be found till Maggie picked me up into her hair and told me all about the earth’s moons.
Once just a raggedy thing holding telegrams from well-wishers, the book was pleasant reading on those rainy days when I didn’t risk rusting my skates, or maybe just wasn’t up to trailing up and down the city streets with the kids, preferring to study Maggie’s drawings and try to grab hold of the fearsome machinery which turned the planets and coursed the stars and told me in no uncertain terms that as an Aries babe I was obligated to carry on the work of other Aries greats from Alexander right on down to anyone you care to mention. I could go on to relate all the wise-alecky responses I gave to Maggie’s document as an older child rummaging in the trunks among the canceled checks and old sheet music, looking for some suspicioned love letters or some small proof that my mother had once had romance in her life, and finding instead the raggedy little book I thought was just a raggedy little book. But it is much too easy to smile at one’s ignorant youth just to flatter one’s present wisdom, but I digress.
Because, on my birthday, Saturn was sitting on its ass and Mars was taken unawares, getting bumped by Jupiter’s flunkies, I would not be into my own till well past twenty. But according to the cards, and my palm line bore it out, the hangman would spare me till well into my hundredth year. So all in all, the tea leaves having had their say and the coffee-ground patterns being what they were, I was destined for greatness. She assured me. And I was certain of my success, as I was certain that my parents were not my parents, that I was descended, anointed and ready to gobble up the world from urgent, noble Olympiads.
I am told by those who knew her, whose memories consist of something more substantial than a frantic gray lady who poured coffee into her saucer, that Margaret Cooper Williams wanted something she could not have. And it was the sorrow of her life that all her children and theirs and theirs were uncooperative—worse, squeamish. Too busy taking in laundry, buckling at the knees, putting their faith in Jesus, mute and sullen in their sorrow, too squeamish to band together and take the world by storm, make history, or even to appreciate the calling of Maggie the Ram, or the Aries that came after. Other things they told me too, things I put aside to learn later though I always knew, perhaps, but never quite wanted to, the way you hold your breath and steady yourself to the knowledge secretly, but never let yourself understand. They called her crazy.
It is to Maggie’s guts that I bow forehead to the floor and kiss her hand, because she’d tackle the lot of them right there in the yard, blood kin or by marriage, and neighbors or no. And anybody who’d stand up to my father, gross Neanderthal that he was, simply had to be some kind of weird combination of David, Aries, and lunatic. It began with the cooking usually, especially the pots of things Maggie concocted. Witchcraft, he called it. Home cooking, she’d counter. Then he’d come over to the stove, lift a lid with an incredible face, and comment about cesspools and fertilizers. But she’d remind him of his favorite dish, chitlins, addressing the bread box, though. He’d turn up the radio and make some remark about good church music and her crazy voodoo records. Then she’d tell the curtains that some men, who put magic down with nothing to replace it and nothing much to recommend them in the first place but their magic wand, lived a runabout life, practicing black magic on other men’s wives. Then he’d say something about freeloading relatives and dancing to the piper’s tune. And she’d whisper to the kettles that there wasn’t no sense in begging from a beggar. Depending on how large an audience they drew, this could go on for hours until my father would cock his head to the side, listening, and then try to make his getaway.
“Ain’t nobody calling you, Mr. Tyler, cause don’t nobody want you.” And I’d feel kind of bad about my father like I do about the wolf man and the phantom of the opera. Monsters, you know, more than anybody else, need your pity cause they need beauty and love so bad.
One day, right about the time Maggie would say something painful that made him bring up freeloaders and piper’s tunes, he began to sputter so bad it made me want to cry. But Maggie put the big wooden spoon down and whistled for Mister T—at least that’s what Maggie and my grandmother, before she died, insisted on calling him. The dog, always hungry, came bounding through the screen door, stopped on a dime by the sink, and slinked over to Maggie’s legs the way beat-up dogs can do, their tails all confused as to just what to do, their eyes unblinkingly watchful. Maggie offered him something from the pot. And when Mister T had finished, he licked Maggie’s hand. She began to cackle. And then, before I could even put my milk down, up went Maggie’s palm, and bam, Mister T went skidding across the linoleum and banged all the seltzer bottles down.
“Damn-fool mutt,” said Maggie to her wooden spoon, “too dumb to even know you’re supposed to bite the hand that feeds you.”
My father threw his hand back and yelled for my mother to drop whatever she was doing, which was standing in the doorway shaking her head, and pack up the old lady’s things posthaste. Maggie went right on laughing and talking to the spoon. And Mister T slinked over to the table so Baby Jason could pet him. And then it was name-calling time. And again I must genuflect and kiss her ring, because my father was no slouch when it came to names. He could malign your mother and work your father’s lineage over in one short breath, describing in absolute detail all the incredible alliances made between your ancestors and all sorts of weird creatures. But Maggie had him beat there too, old lady in lace talking to spoons or no.
My mother came in weary and worn and gave me a nod. I slid my peanut-butter sandwich off the icebox, grabbed Baby Jason by his harness, and dragged him into our room, where I was supposed to read to him real loud. But I listened, I always listened to my mother’s footfalls on the porch to the gravel path and down the hard mud road to the woodshed. Then I could give my attention to the kitchen, for “Goldilocks,” keep in mind, never was enough to keep the brain alive. Then, right in the middle of some fierce curse or other, my father did this unbelievable thing. He stomped right into Maggie’s room—that sanctuary of heaven charts and incense pots and dream books and magic stuffs. Only Jason, hiding from an August storm, had ever been allowed in there, an
d that was on his knees crawling. But in he stomped all big and bad like some terrible giant, this man whom Grandma Williams used to say was just the sort of size man put on this earth for the “ ‘spress purpose of clubbing us all to death.” And he came out with these green bottles, one in each hand, snorting and laughing at the same time. And I figured, peeping into the kitchen, that these bottles were enchanted, for they had a strange effect on Maggie, she shut right up. They had a strange effect on me too, gleaming there up in the air, nearly touching the ceiling, glinting off the shots of sunshine, grasped in the giant’s fist. I was awed.
Whenever I saw them piled in the garbage out back I was tempted to touch them and make a wish, knowing all the while that the charm was all used up and that that was why they were in the garbage in the first place. But there was no doubt that they were special. And whenever Baby Jason managed to drag one out from under the bed, there was much whispering and shuffling on my mother’s part. And when Sweet Basil, the grocer’s boy, delivered these green bottles to Maggie, it was all hush-hush and backdoor and in the corner dealings, slipping it in and out of innumerable paper bags, holding it up to the light, then off she’d run to her room and be gone for hours, days sometimes, and when she did appear, looking mysterious and in a trance, her face all full of shadows. And she’d sit at the sideboard with that famous cup from the World’s Fair, pouring coffee into the saucer and blowing on it very carefully, nodding and humming and swirling the grinds. She called me over once to look at the grinds.
“What does this look like, Peaches?”
“Looks like a star with a piece out of it.”
“Hmm,” she mumbled, and swirled again. “And now?”
Me peering into the cup and lost for words. “Looks like a face that lost its eyes.”
“Hmm,” again, as she thrust the cup right under my nose, and me wishing it was a box of falling glass I could look at where I knew what was what instead of looking into the bottom of a fat yellow cup at what looked like nothing but coffee grinds.
“Looks like a mouth losing its breath, Great Granny.”
“Let’s not get too outrageous, Peaches. This is serious business.”
“Yes ma’am.” Peering again and trying to be worthy of Alexander and the Ram and all my other forebears. “What it really seems to be”—stalling for time and praying for inspiration—“is an upside-down bird, dead on its back with his heart chopped out and the hole bleeding.”
She flicked my hand away when I tried to point the picture out which by now I was beginning to believe. “Go play somewhere, girl,” she said. She was mad. “And quit calling me Granny.”
“What happened here today?” my mother kept asking all evening, thumping out the fragrant dough and wringing the dishtowel, which was supposed to help the dough rise, wringing it to pieces. I couldn’t remember anything particular, following her gaze to Maggie’s door. “Was Sweet Basil here this afternoon?” Couldn’t remember that either, but tried to show I was her daughter by staring hard at the closed door too. “Was Great Granny up and around at all today?” My memory failed me there too. “You ain’t got much memory to speak of at all, do you?” said my father. I hung onto my mother’s apron and helped her wring the dishtowel to pieces.
They told me she was very sick, so I had to drag Baby Jason out to the high grass and play with him. It was a hot day and the smell of the kerosene soaking the weeds that were stubborn about dying made my eyes tear. I was face down in the grass just listening, waiting for the afternoon siren which last year I thought was Judgment Day because it blew so long to say that the war was over and that we didn’t have to eat Spam any more and that there was a circus coming and a parade and Uncle Bubba too, but with only one leg to show for it all. Maggie came into the yard with her basket of vegetables. She sat down at the edge of the gravel path and began stringing the peppers, red and green, red and green. And, like always, she was humming one of those weird songs of hers which always made her seem holier and blacker than she could’ve been. I tied Baby Jason to a tree so he wouldn’t crawl into her lap, which always annoyed her. Maggie didn’t like baby boys, or any kind of boys I’m thinking, but especially baby boys born in Cancer and Pisces or anything but in Aries.
“Look here, Peaches,” she called, working the twine through the peppers and dropping her voice real low. “I want you to do this thing for your Great Granny.”
“What must I do?” I waited a long time till I almost thought she’d fallen asleep, her head rolling around on her chest and her hands fumbling with the slippery peppers, ripping them.
“I want you to go to my room and pull out the big pink box from under the bed.” She looked around and woke up a bit. “This is a secret you-and-me thing now, Peaches.” I nodded and waited some more. “Open the box and you’ll see a green bottle. Wrap this apron around it and tuck it under your arm like so. Then grab up the mushrooms I left on the sideboard like that’s what you came for in the first place. But get yourself back here right quick.” I repeated the instructions, flopped a necklace of peppers around me, and dashed into the hot and dusty house. When I got back she dumped the mushrooms into her lap, tucked the bottle under her skirt, and smiled at the poor little peppers her nervous hands had strung. They hung wet and ruined off the twine like broken-necked little animals.
I was down in the bottoms playing with the state-farm kids when Uncle Bubba came sliding down the sand pile on his one good leg. Jason was already in the station wagon hanging onto my old doll. We stayed at Aunt Min’s till my father came to get us in the pickup. Everybody was in the kitchen dividing up Maggie’s things. The linen chest went to Aunt Thelma. And the souvenirs from Maggie’s honeymoons went to the freckle-faced cousins from town. The clothes were packed for the church. And Reverend Elson was directing the pianist’s carrying from the kitchen window. The scattered sopranos, who never ever seemed to get together on their high notes or on their visits like this, were making my mother drink tea and kept nodding at me, saying she was sitting in the mourner’s seat, which was just like all the other chairs in the set; same as the amen corner was no better or any less dusty than the rest of the church and not even a corner. Then Reverend Elson turned to say that no matter how crazy she’d been, no matter how hateful she’d acted toward the church in general and him in particular, no matter how spiteful she’d behaved towards her neighbors and even her blood kin, and even though everyone was better off without her, seeing how she died as proof of her heathen character, and right there in the front yard too, with a bottle under her skirts, the sopranos joined in scattered as ever, despite all that, the Reverend Elson continued, God rest her soul, if He saw fit, that is.
The china darning egg went into Jason’s overalls. And the desk went into my room. Bubba said he wanted the books for his children. And they all gave him such a look. My mother just sat in the kitchen chair called the mourner’s seat and said nothing at all except that they were selling the house and moving to the city.
“Well, Peaches,” my father said. “You were her special, what you want?”
“I’ll take the bottles,” I said.
“Let us pray,” said the Reverend.
That night I sat at the desk and read the baby book for the first time. It sounded like Maggie for the world, holding me in her lap and spreading the charts on the kitchen table. I looked my new bottle collection over. There were purple bottles with glass stoppers and labels. There were squat blue bottles with squeeze tops but nothing in them. There were flat red bottles that could hold only one flower at a time. I had meant the green bottles. I was going to tell them and then I didn’t. I was too small for so much enchantment anyway. I went to bed feeling much too small. And it seemed a shame that the hope of the Aries line should have to sleep with a light on still, and blame it on Jason and cry with balled fists in the eyes just like an ordinary, mortal, everyday-type baby.
The Johnson Girls
“DON’T BE THUMPIN THAT BALL on my shadow, boy,” Great Ma Drew warn Thumb, s
ifting through the lentils. “Your sister tole you once to get to that paintin on the third floor, and her nerves worn thin. Mine too.”
Thumb dribble past the old woman again, squeezing by me and damn near upsetting the ironing board. Great Ma Drew tip her chair back gainst the wall so her shadow scurry under her, leaving Thumb on a blank court. He stand right in my face, swirling the ball on one finger and smiling that smile. I am not impressed. Far as I am concerned Thumb a clown. Which is why when he come into my room last night talking about he looking for Inez about some turpentine and all the while bouncing around my room, touching the jars on my dresser and the books on my bed, till finally he leaning over me drawing zigzags on my leg through the cover—I say to him, “Look here, Thumb, you a very fine dude and all that, but I do not take clowns to bed so get on outta here.” And quite naturally he say for the hundredth time that I’m getting more like Inez every day. And I cut him off and send him on his way. Cause Thumb the type to keep up a steady stream of chatter and never really get down to business, or if his body do then his mouth don’t, rapping away about some movie he seen or some speech he heard or some book he read or some other elsewhere goings on as if he weren’t in my bed trying to get his jones off without quite letting himself know it, just in case Inez ask if he been messin around with me, he can say no and be in the clear. Or in case he a total flop at love-making and I pitch him out the bed on his head, why then he a poor-mistreated man and I’m some crazy bitch.
“Stead of burning roots, you could send Roy a telegram sayin you comin,” say Thumb when Inez rustle past in that taffeta slip she’s had on all day, sticking the incense into the fireplace bricks.
“Was me,” say Great Ma Drew, “I’d set up some counter juju and get that man turned right around again.” Inez not payin neither one of them any mind, jugglin the fifty-leven lists of things in her head she’s got to do fore she can fly to Knoxville and bring Roy home, or hit him in the head one.
Gorilla, My Love Page 12
