“I don’t know. Why you asking me?”
“Well, you his momma, ain’t you? Who else I got to ask? That bedpost?”
Hazel tried to answer, but again she wasn’t quick enough.
“And he frets worse than an old woman. Talks like a undertaker. I swear! I ain’t seen the boy in him yet.” Vida gave Hazel a scalding look. “That child is in a plumb mess, and I ain’t the one who’s going to clean it up. You his momma.”
“I know it!” Hazel shot back and then glowered out the window.
“Well, don’t that mean nothing to you?”
When Hazel wouldn’t look at her, Vida said, “Miss Hazel, a momma is the one that tells a child where he belongs. Every child need to know that. He got to know where home is. That’s the biggest thing what a mother does.”
For a moment, Hazel thought the woman sounded half human. “I done told you,” Hazel said. “It’s them pills you got in your pocket. They keeping me down. That’s all’s wrong with me.”
Vida reached into her apron pocket and pulled out Hazel’s daily dose of medicine. Rolling the pills around in her palm, she studied them seriously. Finally she said, “These here pills is supposed to keep you from dranking, ain’t they?”
The way Hazel’s face colored up told Vida she was right.
“Now, I ain’t dumb. I know about you getting all looped up and galvanating across the countryside in your car. I seen it!” Vida said, remembering when she first encountered Hazel out in the Delta, dodging her whiskey bottles. “Running folks off the road, slinging your gravel in our faces. Trying to act like you somebody.”
That right there was enough to set Hazel off. “That ain’t it!” she shouted. “That ain’t it at all. And why should I tell you about it?” Without waiting for Vida to answer, Hazel let loose on the maid. It was her turn now. “I drive because then I’m free. All my whole life it’s felt like I got a fence around me, bull high and hog tight. No way out. Being moved from one pasture to the next. But when I’m in my car it’s me who’s deciding which road to take. Or not to take. Or even if I want to take any road at all. Sometimes I just head off through a field. I can go as fast as I want to. I can laugh, I can cry. I can stick my fool head out the window like a gold-plated idiot and hoot to high heaven. I can cuss God and my momma and my daddy and Floyd and Jesus, too. Then step on the pedal and make them all disappear in a cloud of dust. If you close by I can make you disappear, too. And yeah, I can get as drunk as I damn well please.”
Vida stood there openmouthed, gazing at a red-faced woman. It was as if she had come uncorked.
“So maybe you right,” Hazel said after finally taking a breath. “Maybe you hit it on the head. When I drive, I do feel like I’m somebody. Not somebody’s somebody. Not somebody’s pitiful wife. Not somebody’s sorry excuse for a mother. Just plain somebody. Me. Hazelene Brenda Ishee. A woman in a car with a full tank of ethyl, reaching for a little dignity. Is that selfish?”
Vida almost answered, but Hazel beat her to the punch. “OK. It is selfish, I’ll give you that one. Still, if I can have that two or three days a week, maybe four, the rest of the time is tolerable. Who’s it hurting, I’m asking? You don’t know what I been put through.” Hazel clenched her teeth. “And you know as good as me, Floyd’s been cheating with another woman. And then he pays you to get those pills down my throat. How would you feel? Well, I’ll tell you exactly how I feel.” She looked at Vida fiercely and then crossed her arms over her chest, her whole body shaking. “I’m sick and tired of feeling beat down. Can you understand that? I’m sick and tired of plowing other people’s fields. When am I going to get some acreage of my own? My own little piece of dignity?”
As Hazel lay there, breathing heavily after her outburst, Vida looked back and forth between the white woman and the pills in her hand. Then she asked carefully, “This here dope you taking. It supposed to make you forget about all that?”
Hazel sighed. “That’s the big end of it, I reckon.”
Looking back at the pills, Vida said, “I reckon forgetting can be a blessing.”
Hazel shut her eyes and sank back into her pillows. There was no way she could ever win with this woman.
After a long pause, Vida continued. “I heard tell of this colored woman called herself Rosie.”
“Yeah, seems I heard tell of her, too,” Hazel said, her eyes still shut, not saying she had heard about Rosie the same time Vida did, from downstairs in her own kitchen. Hazel seemed to remember her husband’s affair had also been on the program that day.
“Well, anyways,” Vida continued, “Rosie’s stirring up a lot of trouble for the white folks. They say she forgot who she was. Forgot her place.” Vida shook her head. “I figger it was the other way ’round. I figger she remembered who she was. Remembered she was as good as anybody else. That’s what folks didn’t like.”
One of Hazel’s eyes flipped open. “What’s a colored girl got to do with me?”
“Well, I ’spect if Rosie was taking these here pills, she might of give up her seat and dragged herself on to the back of the bus. Same as ever other day. Forgot all about how tired she was.”
The other eyelid went up. “I ain’t asking to ride in no bus. It’s the Lincoln I want.”
“Don’t matter,” Vida said, still looking into her palm. “All I’m getting to is this. I ain’t no doctor, but I say you done forgot too much already. I ’spect it’s time you start remembering, like that Rosie Parks done.”
“Remembering what?”
“Remembering you a momma, for one,” Vida said. “I don’t know about all that other craziness. About the dranking and the driving and the yelling out the window and such. Don’t sound like no dignity to me.” Vida shrugged. “Maybe that go along with the remembering.”
Hazel thought about that for a moment. “You know,” she said softly, “I never was a very good momma, no way.”
“I don’t doubt that for a minute,” Vida said, as if she figured they were both telling the truth now. “But that boy don’t know it. Good, bad, you the one he want. That there is a blessing. More than you know, Miss Hazel. What could be better in this whole world than having a little boy who don’t want nobody ’cept you for his momma?” Vida smiled sadly. “A little boy who would kill to keep you safe.”
“That ain’t all,” Hazel said, touching a freckle on the back of her hand. “I lost my Davie. You don’t know what it’s like to lose a child.”
“Well,” Vida said, “I reckon—”
“Vida,” Hazel whispered, tears filling her eyes. “I could see it coming. I knew. I might could have stopped it, and I didn’t. There’s no making up for that.”
Vida dropped her eyes. “No ma’am, there ain’t no making up for that,” she said, rolling the pills around in her hand. After a few moments she looked back at Hazel and said, “And Lord knows, they sure ain’t no forgetting it.” There was a tremble in her voice.
Vida dropped the medicine into her pocket. “Now, you listen,” she said, tough once more. “I ain’t going to be no mammy. How be ever, if it means getting that boy out from under my feet, maybe I can figger something out.”
“Why should you?” Hazel asked.
Vida shrugged and exhaled heavily. “Beats me.” When she spied what could have been a misty look of gratitude welling up in Hazel’s eyes, she said sharply, “Just remember one thing. I ain’t doing it for you.”
“Then why?” Hazel asked again.
“Maybe there ain’t no reason,” Vida said, poking both fists into her apron pockets. She looked past Hazel and out the window, as if searching. “And then again, maybe if I did have a little boy walking ’round lost, I’d sure want somebody to get him back to his momma.” Nodding to herself, still staring out into the distance, she said, “Maybe it’s as simple as that there.”
Hazel wasn’t fooled. “No, it ain’t that simple, is it, Vida?”
“Ma’am?”
Hazel smiled in recognition. “You been a momma, ain’t y
ou?”
Vida caught her breath and stared incredulously at Hazel. “What you meaning?”
For a long time the two women looked at each other, searching the other’s face, wondering who this person had become before their very eyes.
At last Hazel patted the side of her bed. “Sit down here next to me, Vida,” she said. “Tell me about your boy. I want to know.”
On Johnny’s first day of school, Vida broke an egg into the skillet and then hollered at the top of her lungs, “Scrambled or fried?”
“Scrambled!” came the answer from upstairs.
Stabbing at the yolks with the spatula, she yelled again, “Well, get on down here. Breakfast almost ready.”
A moment later Johnny came tearing down the stairs. “Vida! Vida! Momma ain’t in her room! Where’s my momma at?” He was on the verge of tears by the time he burst into the kitchen. Then he stopped dead in his tracks.
Hazel was already at the breakfast table, sitting plumb-line straight in her red sateen dress. Her hair was brushed and her makeup was on neat. The scent of Gardenia Paradise mixed gloriously with the smell of frying bacon. “Momma!” he gasped.
“I been wanting me some sugar from a real live schoolboy this morning. You know any?”
Johnny reached his arms around her neck. She kissed him and then rubbed the lipstick off his cheek with her thumb. “Momma,” he said, “you look beautiful.”
“Why, thank you!” she said, as if she really believed it. “And don’t you look nice and growed up! Your hair all smoothed down. I swan! You even dressed yourself!” She reached over and finished tucking in a shirttail. “When did you learn how to do that?”
“Vida showed me.”
“Well, she did real good, didn’t she?” Hazel smiled at the maid, who continued setting the table.
“Now, sit down and eat,” Vida said. “You going to be late your first day.”
Johnny couldn’t stop staring at his mother. “You ain’t tired no more?”
“I feel just fine. Ready to dance a jig.”
Vida set the biscuits on the table and then leaned against the sink, her arms crossed. “All right now,” she said, her tone businesslike. “What all this young man need to know about his first day at school, Miss Hazel?”
Hazel looked up at Vida blankly.
“You know. Remember what you was telling me?” She gave Hazel a piercing look. “Like when he need to go peepee. The part you was saying about holding up his hand.”
There was a flicker of recognition in Hazel’s face. “Oh, yeah! If you have to go to the bathroom, raise your hand.”
“That’s right!” Vida said, reaching behind her for the coffeepot. As she filled Hazel’s cup, she prompted again, “And how about not sassing the teacher?”
“Yep. Don’t break your manners,” Hazel said. “Be real sweet and say ‘Yes ma’am’ and ‘No ma’am.’”
“Anything else?” Vida asked. “Like, maybe, don’t cut up in your seat and don’t leave the schoolyard and be sure to get on the bus right after school lets out?”
Hazel nodded. “Yep, all them things is important, too, Johnny.”
Taking her spot against the sink again, Vida asked, “You want to give him the stuff you bought him?”
“Oh, yeah!” Hazel reached under the table and pulled out a little plastic satchel with a picture of a cowboy painted on the front.
“This is for you.”
“It’s the Cisco Kid!” Johnny yelled. “It’s so pretty!”
“It really is!” Hazel said, looking up at Vida.
“Ain’t y’all going to look inside?”
“Good idea!” Hazel said excitedly. “Let’s open it up and see what’s in it.”
Inside they found a blue plastic ruler, a box of crayons, a pencil nearly as big around as Johnny’s wrist, and a lined tablet with the ABCs on the cover—big and little letters—and a banana moon pie. “My,” Hazel said thoughtfully, her eyes on the moon pie. “They think of everything, don’t they?”
Vida shook her head at Hazel.
Johnny climbed up into his mother’s lap and held her close, not caring in the least that he was smearing her makeup and mussing her hair and that he would spend the day smelling of Gardenia Paradise.
“We’re going to be fine now, baby,” Hazel whispered to him. She kissed her son again on his cheek. “I’m your mother and I don’t know a lot of things, but I know exactly where you belong, honey. You never have to worry about that. We ain’t going to be lost no more.”
Vida slapped her hands together. “Time for the bus! We need to get moving.”
“My boy ain’t gonna take no bus his first day!” Hazel proclaimed. “Nosiree! I’m gonna drive him.” She turned sheepishly to Vida. “You know where Floyd hid them?”
Vida hesitated for a moment. Still reluctant, she opened the icebox and reached into the freezer. She handed Hazel the keys to the Lincoln.
As she held them there in her hand, Hazel gazed at the keys with a look resembling real affection. She grinned big and clenched her fist tightly, warming the cold metal. “Vida,” she announced, “don’t expect me home no time soon. I’ll be out driving some.” She winked at her maid. This time it was Vida who needed prompting. “You know what we talked about. What you promised?”
“Oh yeah,” Vida grumbled. “So much for that dignity.” She walked across the kitchen and reached into her tote bag. Pulling out a cobalt-blue bottle, she muttered, “If you ask me, which you ain’t, you just swapping the devil for the witch.”
Not really understanding her little saying, Hazel only grinned at Vida, and then, as if the maid might have a change of heart, Hazel snatched the bottle from her outstretched hand. Clutching the moonshine in one hand and the ignition key warmed and ready in the other, Hazel made a dash for the Lincoln with Johnny scrambling close behind.
Chapter Thirty-Six
HAZEL GETS A FRIEND
Hazel Graham swung the Lincoln up to her house and pulled to an easy stop, the front passenger-side door lined up flush with the sidewalk steps. It was a crisp fall afternoon, the air golden with sunlight and thick with the smell of burning leaves. She honked the horn twice, bringing Johnny tearing out the front door and down the walk, with Vida following a moment later, her bag swinging from her shoulder.
Clambering up into the front next to his mother, Johnny breathed deep and hollered, “We got a new car!”
“Ain’t it nice?”
Hazel waited for him to close his door and then eased the car up a few feet for Vida. The back door now in position, Hazel leaned down to receive her peck on the cheek. “How was school today? You do good?”
“I got to tell another story,” he said.
“In front of the whole class?”
“Yes ma’am. And the teacher told them to clap.”
“I swan.”
Vida opened the door and ducked inside. She gave the backseat a couple of bounces, checking out the springs in her regular spot.
“How you like my new car, Vida? It’s a ’57!”
Vida rolled her eyes. “Same as the old one, ain’t it?” Like Johnny, she took a sniff. “Except it don’t got that medicine smell. And it ain’t got no caved-in hood.”
“Make it squeal, Momma!”
“Hold on to your taters!” Hazel yelled, and then, leaving the smell of rubber in her wake and neighbors scurrying to their windows, the trio headed off to Tarbottom, with Vida in the back gripping the door handle.
Hazel was turning down the hill toward the river while simultaneously touching up her lipstick when Johnny shot up in his seat. “Stop, Momma!” he screamed. “You gonna hit him! Stop!”
Hazel stomped on the brake pedal, throwing gravel and fishtailing the car within inches of the ditch. Vida went hard up against the front seat. The car skidded to a stop and Johnny hopped out, scampering back up the road through the dust. Watching him from the rearview, Hazel saw him pick up a very lucky box turtle she had straddled with her tires. Johnny took the
turtle back to the side of the road, turned him around, and patted him on the shell. When he got back in the car, Hazel asked him, “Why’d you point him thataway?”
“So he could get on home before he hurts hisself.”
Vida gathered herself up in the backseat, growling. “Just going to turn hisself around again.” She pulled the apron out of her sack and mopped the nervous sweat from her brow. “He going to cross that road no matter what you do. You see if he don’t.” Vida cut her eyes at Hazel in the mirror. “You see, Johnny, some of God’s creatures you can’t tell nothing to. Hardheaded as that turtle’s hull. They ain’t going to change their ways even if it kills them and a load of other folks.”
Nodding thoughtfully, Hazel said, “Johnny, Vida’s right. You go put that turtle on the other side of the road. If you want to help a thing, you got to help it in the direction it’s headed.” Hazel beamed, delighted with herself. Floyd wasn’t the only one who could come up with snappy little sayings, and she told Vida so. Vida rolled her eyes.
In Tarbottom, Hazel pulled the car close alongside Vida’s front porch. Johnny and Vida got out. Hazel made herself comfortable where she was. Sucking on a peppermint, her legs dangling out the car door, she was feeling especially good. She always did on her driving days.
“I had me some kind of fun today!” she announced. “Even better than when I come up on that town run by nothing but colored people. Remember me telling that? Started by the slaves of Jefferson Davis hisself!”
“Seem to,” Vida replied from where she sat up on the porch. Her eyes were on Johnny, who was playing pretend with a family of cornshuck dolls she’d made for him.
“Today I saw me some real live Gypsies!”
“Gypsies?” hollered Johnny, jumping to his feet.
Hazel worked the peppermint to the opposite cheek and then continued. “Yep. I was coming down off some old ridge road and there they were, camped out by a branch. A whole herd of Gypsies.”
Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League Page 27
