Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All

by Allan Gurganus

  “Here,” her voice, a grown boy’s, “I’m going … to clean … you.” And when she whipped it forward, mumbling, “You’re so nice, Luce. I think about you all the time, you’re just the best, best friend,” when, without no warning, she clutched that rough old naughty thing and touched it hard to me, Shirl Shirl Shirl sure triggered a secret that, till now, had stayed mostly secret to that secret’s keeper. Whoa. When the scratchy old sponge hit, first try, fresh down up beneath me, Lord—but I rocked back with what-all news she’d let loose … “Best friend a girl ever … had … whole world wide, wide world, Luce.”

  “Whoa,” I tried saying, but what slid out instead was “Ahh-mm, err …” I pitched forward, took hold of Shirl’s either slick shoulder, me—moving to some state of both jump-up and collapse. I was a real bad spastic, I was a excellent firecracker, I felt crippled but the sturdiest person on earth. I deserved, I deserved.

  All below my waist went part sneeze—like just before you do, sneeze, when you know you can’t help it, not for a zillion dollars, not to save your entire nation, family, and South, you cannot … quit … now. (Strange when one timid unnoticed portion of you all of a sudden starts having its own dreams, dreams important and colorful as ones your nighttime head burns with.)

  I couldn’t stand it. I reached down, snagged Shirl’s squirmish wrist hard, stopped her, yelled, “Don’t, please. I’m nearbout clean, Shirley. I’m really nearbout all spanky whistle clean down there now, promise.”

  Then this: She cursed the vilest string of things I’d ever heard out of a man, woman, or toad, she stuffed that sloppy sponge into my hand, mashed my fingers overtop it so rough, three knuckles popped. She got hold of both my braids, she yanked my small face up in front of hers—big, pink, with straw jamming angles through her curls—and, really hurting me, Shirl said her English wrong for the first time, ever—hissing wet across my eyes, says she, “Well, listen up, Lucy fuss-priss. There’s two of us in here. And I ain’t clean yet, selfish. I sure as hell am far from clean just yet … So,” Shirl rerouted my whole handful of sponge, straddling it, and next—into my mouth, her entire mouth arrived. It someway fit. A exchange student. I felt the long serious visit start. Hands across the water: only, tongues. When Shirl relaxed some pressure on my braids—when my eyes got unsquinted sufficient to blink again—I commenced to catch the drift of this.

  I had heard how pregnant women ate for two, but seemed like Shirl and me now breathed for one, one big one. Her hand, friendly again, gave mine a hint of how to scrub just far enough up, then turn back with serious purpose, redoing the whole round-robin swoop. Her face, so close to mine, looked as pained as pleasure gets. Next, quick, up out of liquid like a rainbow trout rising at right angle—Shirl leapt inches. And, Lord, child, I was just getting the hang of this, just getting actually pretty good at it, when a whip handle hit our door.

  Her dad yelps, “My two petunias sweet-smelling yet?” Well, we jumped three feet to the tub’s either ends. Mid-spin, we turned, faces hid from one another. One full red gallon sloshed the wall and harnesses, dropped a gory fringe. Through the open transom, her poppa tossed fresh clothes. He’d gone and fetched my finest Sunday frock from Momma’s very hands. (Momma!)

  Shaming to see my good blue dress belly-flop onto straw, one sleeve sickled over empty cans. Gaping across my red-splashed shoulder, I managed to give Shirl one sick whippet of a smile. Big-eyed, we both stared—each wondering which child was guiltiest—and guiltiest of what?

  Her poppa chucked in towels and two clean horse blankets, then left, hollering, “Take your time, cherry tomatoes.” Slow and rickety, we hunched clear of tub, we dared not view a single inch of one another, red or white. Bashful inside blanket tents, we dried, said nothing. Air in here got to feeling tense and awful. A horse nearby made water (lots of water slapped dirt comically loud). We quit breathing till this rushing stopped. I felt chilled, my teeth chittered.

  I saw how the bath’s acid had shriveled my legs and hips—I appeared wizened as pouch leather, crimped as somebody old, old old. At last, in tones most quavery, I went, “Some morning, huh? First a blamed skunk. Then to be sheep-dipped in doggone tomato juice!”

  That eased things. It let us laugh a bit. We giggled, pained-sounding. Soon we overdid. Dressed, we jabbered, readying our stories for others—we left in the skunk and cold juice—we skipped the mystery: what made us do all that just now? Do what?

  Our pitch of cackling grew shrill, even for us. Shirl’s pop opened the door, clamped hands over his ears, “Pipe down.” A terrible fact: The first horse was being led into our room to drink juice from our tub. When I asked why, her dad shrugged. “Be healthy for them. You think I’d waste all that? Cost me good money, gal.”

  “But,” Shirl’s eyes lowered, “we sat in it.”

  The boy groom who’d guarded us made his eyebrows go. “Be all the tastier. Heck, we might could bottle it.” He winked our way. Shirl’s dad give the boy a sharp look then laughed anyhow.

  Shirl and me pretended we’d not heard this. We parted, claiming we just dearly hated to. I did not set eyes on her for three whole days. Then four.

  • • •

  ONLY AT night, my second one at home, could I let myself remember. Something strange and huge had happened. I felt we now knew more than any other folks—grown or not—in all of Nash County. I believed we had someway invented it—it that’d happened. I still knew no name for it. Just had Shirley’s name. Shirley Goodness and Mercy. Before I fell to sleep, as a reminder of it all, I did sometimes allow myself to reach under quilts. Yeah. I found it all still there. Complete and perfect as a hidden garden. Even alone, I could recollect a lot. I only did this to recall Shirl sitting there—pale as wedding cake from her waist up, the rest coated in nice slippery red-wet. Only with my eyes squeezed tight did certain pictures come over me, but random:

  I pictured Shirl wiggling free of the perfect wedding dress. In my head she moved to a jump-rope song we liked: You marry in brown, you’ll live with a frown / Marry in gray, you’ll go far away / Marry in yellow, you’re ‘shamed of your fellow / Marry in green, you’re ‘shamed to be seen / If you marry in blue, you’ll always be true.—But I figured, Shirl, she’d marry in gold and pink—her hair, her skin. What’d that mean?

  I pictured how, summers up the tree house, we just wore our slips. The family tree we called ours, we talked of it as “she”—our nurse, pet guard and dinosaur. The elm didn’t exactly love having us and our boards up in her but, like some girl forced to wear teeth braces for a season or two, she got accustomed. She even forgave me the ten-penny spikes I’d drove so deep into her. I apologized at every hammer blow. Next day, I found sap, cut-glass doorknobs, coating each spike head. Touching these clear amber knots—suffering and jewelry mixed—I worried like for some human I had hurt. Surrounded by these gems, Shirl and me sat happily bare, packed by leaves on every side—greenery, our excelsior, us feeling like two pale valuable vases in shipment on the high seas.

  I now only touched myself as a shortcut to imagining my friend just one bed away. Tonight, the bud vase stood empty. She should stay here every single night from now on. We could spend winters here and summers up our tree house. Seemed like Shirl and me just belonged together. How strange: that we were, through some mistake, locked into different houses blocks apart, one mansion too big and one cheesebox too small, prisoners of that peculiar luck-of-the-draw adults called family. Odd that, though we liked each other so, Shirl and me hadn’t talked in four full days. What had happened? And yet, even confused, even apart, I could yet communicate with my friend. There rested, under quilts, this beginner’s key—tiny yet powerful as one at the Telegraph Office downtown—even in bed, far from one another, we could send and receive our dots-and-dashes heartfelt messages, at night, in code, by hand.

  TWO DAYS later, Poppa (seeing me look so grave) offered me my birthday present early: forty feet of good hemp rope, it’d be our tree house’s new entry ladder. “Yellow as a certain person�
�s hair,” he smirked his widest. I nodded, grateful for permission. I lugged new line, looped over one shoulder, to that certain person’s side-street house downhill. Near the peanut mill, air smelled about to fry. Seemed you could gain weight just through your nose.

  I knocked on the unvarnished door. Then I stood straight, posing holding our new rope to show. Shirl’s mom appeared, that wide kind lady red-cheeked from excess cooking. She lumbered onto porch, closed the door quick, smiled, wrestled off her apron, settled on a splintery bench, then eased me down beside her. She held my hand, hard, whilst explaining. Sad to say, Shirley’s language had gone to Hades in a hand basket lately. Barnyard language. Bad talk was like a fever, the Mrs. said—was catching, won’t it? Four days ago, Shirley’d come down with a right bad case.

  “I know my own English it’s not up to much, but we want only the best for Shirley. I know you do, too, Lucy. Our Shirley’s pretty and plenty sweet enough so’s she can go most anywheres, be most anybody’s friend. After the skunk, I’ll tell you straight, we got extra worried, girl. Shirley acted feverish, even crazy, kept to her bed, talked out of her skull, couldn’t say nothing but Ain’t. I pointed to the window, did she want more air? ‘Ain’t, ain’t.’ Shouldn’t we get her downstairs to the privy? ‘Ain’t, got to ain’t.’ She missed choir practice, she threw up, calling, ‘Must’ve been something I ain’t.’ She had her a kind of fit. Don’t tell. I know you won’t snitch. I always know who sees our Shirley’s best parts. Me, I’ve always trusted you, Lucy.”

  Mrs. Williams stared forward, held my hand tighter. I heard fifteen, twenty kittens mewing in the house. I commenced to feeling sick. She spoke of Shirley like a dead girl, one who’d left us. She explained that Shirley’s state had got way worse. Doc Collier came. Her health only made a turn for the better when our First Baptist preacher’s wife and proper young daughter paid a sick call. They asked the ailing Shirley: Would it cheer her to attend this here private-type party? They even let Shirl borrow a nice white dress that’d look decent for so formal a birthday tea.

  “And our girl, why she’s over on Summit right this minute. At little Emily Saiterwaite’s. I’m surprised you ain’t there, Lucy.” Shirl’s momma gazed off nowhere special. Her grin looked deformed it lasted so long. “You ought to have seen our girl leave here. That frock was something to respect. Way too plain for my eye but of a high quality anyhow. Didn’t weigh not one ounce. You could’ve ate it like cake frosting, pulled it through my wedding ring. Too, we plaited her hair in this tight circle on top. A crown, like. Was preacher’s idea. Here all along, everybody in town has been thinking up how to dress my child, hoping and fix her up even better than I could. It flat touched my heart to see them others working on her half the morning. Like decorating the Maypole. And I don’t need to tell you, Lucy, she didn’t mind one little bit. When she danced into our kitchen all done up like that, why her daddy took one look, put his head down on the table, and Silas cried like a baby. I’m still shook from it. When she left here, child, she looked … well … to pass her on the street, you wouldn’t even know her, Lucy.”

  “No, ma’am,” I said, trying and sound a sport.

  So, Shirl’s momma finished with me. No hard feelings. There’d probably have to be new friends now, ones with finer mouths and smoother manners, a notch up. There’d be other dresses maybe even fancier than the one today—important dances—we’d both be finding our very own Shirl listed in the Herald Travelers “Society Comings and Goings” section, understood? Less tree climbing. No telling where Shirley might end up society-wise. Did I see? I nodded, said I did. The Mrs. claimed there won’t nothing personal in all this. She patted my hand, she even kissed one grubby palm. She thanked me for having had Shirley as a friend. I thanked her for having had Shirley at all. Then I knew to stand, I knew to hitch up my yellow rope, I knew to leave.

  SLOWED, I passed our tree house. I needed to get off ground. The earth was my only problem. Gravity had a grudge against me. Once up, I made my rope circle be our table—inside that I placed our tin tea set. I tried arranging everything just so, like she’d forever laid out stuff for me. I had been spoilt: me, Poppa just home from work, grousing up into the family tree, extra bossy from the world’s street-level chores. She (Momma) always seemed pleased to spy her breadwinner climb up. Breadwinner: And how are the wee ones, wife?

  Wife: Half dead from mumps again, they are, I fear, high-strung peevish little things. All twelve have sties all over them and won’t quit squabbling—same as always. And how was the Governor’s office, sir?

  Breadwinner: Today we mopped up, we are set for life, my pretty one. What’s for supper?

  Wife: Any dessert you want that I can make, sir.

  And on and on. How stupid it now sounded! Like kids, just playing! Had this poppa been bullying this momma—or the mom this pop?

  Shirl blamed Ain’t for everything. But what we’d done in secret (like a man and wife must), that had forced her through the spasm of bad grammar. Now she’d come out on the other side, cleaned up word-perfect. I climbed higher, scaring off two nesting jays. Good riddance, I didn’t want another thing on earth, especially a living couple, to have a home again, especially in this tree.

  Around me broken stools and chipped trivets toted up here from Shirl’s folks’ place and mine. On blond boards below, rusty stains left by our ceremony: blood, that old sorority. I’d told my handpicked sister that my red would double up her strength. But it seemed that, by mistake, she’d got the toughness. I had took on all my friend’s diseases, plus my own. She was yet working—a terrible white sugar—in my veins.

  Across right wrists, the pink lightning-shaped slash mark still puckered like a zipper. With jays swooping at me, I commenced to slam that arm’s veiny part against rough bark. Then, when it hurt sufficient, I figured this was mighty silly. Everything unasked for had already punished me enough. I didn’t need to add on pain. So I climbed down, rope around my shoulder, wondering who would help me. Help me do what? First I took a long mopey tour of Baby Africa. I knew nobody there. If Momma hired a maid, I’d visit that beloved maid’s house. My rope got a few uneasy looks. This all happened just four years after the Raferty lynching. Soon I shambled towards my aunts’, hemp dragging.

  Lake and Sea sat on a shady side porch, eyes closed. Through a open window, Ruler played some anthem with real power. Favorite pupils were scattered here and there on hassocks and old wicker. Children’s eyes were clamped shut too—girls wore white dresses so starched that, if you put a stamp in the upper right of their bib waists, they’d be honored by the postman, they’d go places. Each child seemed half blind under a steep paper cap showing one composer’s features copied from some somber old engraving. “My Personal Composer” was written overtop in letters arching like those on a gravestone. Under stiff foreign black-and-white genius helmets, rosy local faces blinked.

  Seeing my aunts, all busy, I felt sadder still. I started crying. Each eye opened. Ladies rushed me to the farther side porch. Music stopped. Ruler appeared, squatted before me. Other young people (she barked Kaiser-like) should remain seated, with eyes closed, should allow the music to resonate continuously within, beginning now. Aunts—having lost their own loved one—seemed to know right off what’d happened. They huddled nearer me.

  “Now,” Ruler began. “Lucy dear, whom? Whom have you lost. It’s your little Shirley, is it not? Why is it always the one that goes? We’d let Falls tiptoe off to its deserved doom if only it would leave us just our one to love.”

  The three sisters had been giving my friend free lessons. I’d brought Shirl to call, aunts figured her folks had but little money, they saw how Shirl stood (none too subtle) plunking dreamy at one Steinway’s keyboard. Aunts kept their donation a secret. All as a favor to me. At Shirl’s name, I blubbered, feeling so ashamed to spoil their concert. I wanted to move right in with these exceptional women, ones unlucky enough to’ve been cheated at love early, but smart enough to have never given up on it.

&nbs
p; “What precisely did young Shirley do to you?” I shook my head no, eyes streaming like broken blisters. I tried to keep things hushed so’s other children wouldn’t hear and gossip at school come Monday.

  “Well,” Ruler sounded logical, “what did you do to her?” Again I couldn’t tell. The love subject, a difficult farm language that I could not speak.

  Ruler, full of pity, straightened now. She laid one hand across my scalp, she took a stance. On me, she used a line she’d once paid me twenty-five cents to memorize by phonics (I still have it by heart). Ruler ofttimes quoted it about Maestro Wagner, at whose altar she admitted worshipping right regular. “‘Er wurde entweder verfolget oder angebetet—zwischen diesen zwei Extremem pendelte sin Leben. ‘”

  And again the Sea, who hated Ruler’s overuse of distant tongue on native soil, chimed in: “‘He was either persecuted or adored. Between those two extremes his life dangled to and fro.’”

  “The women of this family!” Lake added, placid, cheated. “The destinies of the women of this family.”

  I’d never heard Tragedy expanded to apply to sixty-eight pounds of me. This omen spooked me some. So I kissed my good aunts’ hands. I dragged my rope down off their cultured porch.

  They later told me that—in my mood—it was the rope that worried them the most.

  8

  YESTERDAY we sat in the lounge watching My Children, Right or Wrong. It comes on at one and is the show I’ve mentioned where everybody’s good-looking but it don’t ever seem to help them a bit. Honey, whatever can go wrong in their lives, does—but every single day. Tiring.

  I keep up with it but not like some of them in here. I do have other subjects. I hate being what you call dependent on anything. Good as I love to eat—if I could, I’d quit food for three days at a stretch just prove it ain’t that big a deal.—Maybe my not wanting to lean on anything come partly from finding that everything I onct tilted towards is missing now. My Children—child, some days just the name of the show sets my four teeth on edge. I out-aged all of mine. But I told you that. You have kids partly so they’ll be company for when you’re as brown-green with time as I’ve got now. They’re supposed to keep a eye on you, put banisters on your back porch to prevent the Broken Hip. They’re to bring over pear preserves and your straight-? grandkids, right? They’re to keep you out of a State Charity Home like this.