“Daddy, if you keep on planting these things, nobody’s going to be able to get up the drive.”
He wasn’t worried. His Buick could plough a hole through the wall of China. He chuckled as he walked toward me like Humpty Dumpty in slacks and loafers, a southern gentleman. The freckled dome of his head was pink in the evening light.
“When you get to be an old, retired man you’ll do crazy things, too,” he said. He led me over to the swing in the side yard. We looked across the rolling hills, down to my grandparents’ house and over the blue, hazy ridge. Daddy pushed the swing with a steady rhythm I adapted to easily. “Your sister called.”
“I’m on family probation, I know. I can never do the right thing by her.”
Daddy laughed. “Ah, I wouldn’t worry too much about it. She gets past things fast.” He was a genius at choosing his battles, the mark of a great politician. He slipped me a peppermint from his shirt pocket and folded his arms across his belly.
“I put those first bushes in when your mama was sick,” he said. “I did pretty good with them. They don’t ask for much, just what they need, and then you’ve got to leave them alone. Like a woman.” He squinted at me in the sun. “I couldn’t keep up with gardens such as your Mama’s, going every which way.”
“She can’t either, now.”
“Well, you know she’s always liked to be in the yard. Now I think she does it more to get you out here.”
“Here I am,” I said. “Where’s she?”
“Where she’s always been. Up in somebody’s face, telling them to wipe their nose and get on with it. Wouldn’t change her for the world.” Daddy put his arm around me and squeezed my shoulder.
“Everything’s changing. I wish I knew why sometimes this family seems like the twilight zone.”
“This house is built on an old Indian burial ground,” he teased, another of Granny’s famous claims, being half Cherokee, and therefore a survivor of great suffering. “We can’t be held responsible for a single thing that goes on here, or didn’t anybody ever tell you?”
“Be careful what you wish for. Mama says Granny’s complaining about you.”
“Still her favorite son-in-law, even from the happy hunting grounds. Meanest old squaw I ever knew,” Daddy exclaimed. No love lost there. “Cooper getting home soon?”
“A few days.”
Daddy stood and snapped a bloom from one of his bushes and handed it to me, another little token of affection. He lived in a house of women, and we puzzled him. He kissed the top of my head and told me he loved me. “You ought to stay and eat. Your mama’s got a roast,” he said, and left me to my work.
When Mama got back, we sat down to dinner. The roast tasted as much like hers as if she’d made it. Daddy complimented her, and she accepted. It didn’t matter who’d put the water in the pot all afternoon. Some things would always be hers, I realized.
It was dusky dark and time to go when I wandered out back to survey my work. I’d done what I’d come for, and now I stood back to assess my mark on the world. It didn’t amount to much.
Mama came out to stand beside me. “You did a good job of it,” she said. “I never told anybody, but it depresses me, watching everything fade off. That’s why your daddy put in those roses.”
“You knew why he was planting them?”
“Because, honey.” Mama reached for my hand, then twined her fingers with mine. “That’s what I told him to do. Because he was about to drive me crazy, hovering and looking worried, bringing me every little Confederate button or arrowhead he found, trying to come up with something to say to me when there was so much we couldn’t talk about. Sometimes you’ve got to give the people you love a little help when they need to take care of you.”
I’d been looking at those roses for years, and all I’d seen was Daddy’s growing fear of losing Mama. Now I saw through Mama’s eyes and realized that all along I’d been looking at love, the kind he just couldn’t stop.
We stood there a moment, looking at the quiet earth. “Mama,” I said, drawing a shaky breath, “it feels late.”
She let go of me and bent down, heavy and cumbersome, but she reached her fingers to gently touch the soil like she might touch a dreaming child. “Well, right now we’ve got time,” she said. “Sit down here with me.” Instead of pushing herself back up, she sat on the ground in the dying light. I sat next to her. The crickets and cicadas burred softly on the warm air. The sweltering heat had hardly cooled down at all.
“I’m not pregnant,” I said. Every month I’d been saying those words for two years, but they didn’t get any easier. But tonight there were harder things that needed saying. “I’ll tell you everything, but first can you tell me something?”
“Like what?”
“Do you believe what you say about the garden? I know what you mean, I think. That hard times make you stronger. But do you believe it?”
“No,” Mama said simply. I looked at the outline of her face, confused.
“Then why do you say it?”
Mama just watched me with those Granny eyebrows. I wondered if she was hearing her mama now. “I heard what you said before about Granny and about being honest,” Mama said. “So here it is. I’m giving you the secret to life. Will that make you feel better?”
I nodded, my head aching from a long awful day of holding back.
“Beth,” Mama said. “We’re all afraid we’re full of shit. And the only lucky folks are the ones who realize that’s a good thing.”
“Mama.”
“Now listen, that’s the truth. We have inside us everything we need to grow, to survive, to be what we were intended. I had this same talk with Granny when your daddy and I moved into this place. Who do you think put these perennial beds in with me? She told me if I was going to amount to any kind of woman, or be a good wife or a mama, I’d have to love the manure as much as the blooms. And if I was smart, I’d put on my hip boots and start shoveling.”
“And you’ve been digging ever since.”
“Leslie’s the one you want in a fight. But baby, you’re the one that gets in with me and digs my beds.”
Tears filled my eyes. I’d had it wrong in every way. Granny had been saying it just the way I thought. We were the manure. But we were the garden, too. Mama’s love could embrace both. Her sacrifices protected and nurtured us, but she had faith that something of ourselves was completely innate and stronger than what she’d given us. She believed it of herself, or she’d never have survived to see this fall. And I realized that’s what she was asking of me and Leslie now that we were grown. To find faith in ourselves.
I shook my head, exhausted and heartsick, annoyed I’d spent so much energy avoiding this moment, terrified to believe I could have half the strength she’d shown me.
Mama leaned back and closed her eyes, swatting at a mosquito. She bumped her shoulder against mine.
“I don’t know how to tell Cooper what I need,” I admitted.
“Well, God in heaven, don’t tell him roses.”
We both laughed until I began to cry, and the tension in the evening air broke into a thousand little pieces, flitting around us like fireflies.
I dug my hands into the soft, cool dirt and held on. “Yesterday morning,” I admitted, “I found a lump.”
Cooper couldn’t plant rose bushes for me, but Mama was right. Given the opportunity, he knew the words I needed, even over the phone. “You are your mama’s daughter. Whatever it is, it doesn’t stand a chance.”
I loved him for reminding me I was meaner than the average woman.
The doctor’s office was beautifully decorated in tranquil colors with a pitcher of cool, cucumber water like we were waiting on a spa treatment. Mama and I settled on one of the sofas. To my surprise, Leslie was already there with a pinched look about her mouth. She’d filled o
ut most of my paperwork. Now we sat together in the quiet moments waiting for the nurse to take me back.
“I cleared the beds,” I said to Leslie. “But Mama made me leave the manure for you.”
She sniffed, but didn’t put up a fight. It meant the world to me that she was there.
I looked around the room at the others, their faces blank and eyes worried. But I saw rose bushes. I saw the perennial beds, resting for a new season, preparing for spring. Whatever had grown in us, it could not compare with what would grow from us. I wished I could say that to each of them. I hoped their mothers came to whisper faith in their ears.
When the nurse called my name, Leslie picked up my purse. “Before we go back there, I want something clear,” she announced. I thought she might slap the nurse, and I stepped between them. “I hate the damn Pampered Chef.”
We stared at one another for a brief moment before the rest of the women began to snicker. We were in it together, me and so many mothers and daughters, armed with patchwork quilts, Sunday hymns and strings of pearls.
I took her hand. It was that simple. “I love you, too,” I said. We stepped through the door together.
Whatever waited for us beyond this point, I knew now what I’d really been looking for in that dirt: the secret to life, what survives. I would let the people who loved me care for me, and I would measure my life by the love I felt for Cooper and Mama, Leslie and Daddy, the children I taught and the flowers I planted. I understood the legacy of my mother was finally my own. We were the stories about babies that lived through the night, crops that came through droughts, mason jars full of moonshine and the secret to sawmill gravy. We were the garden that came back every spring. Women who knew the value of a good pair of hip boots.
Bedeviled Eggs
Jane Forest
Lately, when I go to a covered dish supper or the church potlucks, I bring the same thing. Potato salad. It’s easy. Even someone like me, who can’t cook, can do an unexciting, basic potato salad. Mine has lots of hard boiled egg and real bacon crumbles, a spoon or two of pickle relish and mustard, along with finely diced potatoes. It usually disappears, all but a few yellow smears in my bowl, which, as you’ll all agree, is much better than bringing home a dish that’s hardly been touched.
If they only knew how ashamed I feel inside when I bring out yet another bowl of potato salad. It means I’ve miserably failed again. But that was my secret. Nobody knew but me. And now, because of one little lie I told, I’m in an awful fix.
It all started with my grandmother, and her sterling silver deviled egg tray. It’s a thing of pure beauty, that egg platter. Twenty-four precisely etched hollow scoop-shapes, arranged in a petal pattern, radiating out from a filigreed circle that’s meant to be the center of a sunflower. Swooping handles on either side, made to look like silvery sunflower leaves. Best of all, the gleaming silver cover, with attached little hooks that cunningly rotate around two silver ladybugs poking up from the bottom of the tray to hold the lid down.
Even as a little girl, I remembered loving the sound the family would make when it was ceremonially presented at holidays. Grandma made a yearly production of it. She’d wait till the table was loaded with every dish imaginable, from every other woman there, then as we were about to join hands and say the blessing, she’d gasp, as if she’d forgotten.
“Oh! The deviled eggs are still in the refrigerator. Wait. Don’t start without me.”
Then she’d fluster and flap the front of her apron, and scurry to the kitchen while the rest of the family smiled knowingly, as pleased as she was to take part in this little family ritual. The toddlers would be stuffed into their highchairs and bibs attached, the middlin’ ones went back to arguing about who had to sit next to who at the kiddie card tables, then suddenly Grandma’d be back, standing in the door frame between the kitchen and dining room, with the gleaming sunflower egg tray.
For a second, we’d all get quiet. Then that sound . . . not a gasp, quite, but a thick ooooooh, as we all inhaled in unison, so we’d have enough breath to awww, and compliment Grandma on how stunning and lovely it was.
Next, the hustle and bustle as dishes got shifted to the right and left to make room on the table for the egg tray. We had every side dish you could think of at these family gatherings: baked beans, green bean casserole, and three bean salads. Carrots swimming in brown-sugar glaze. Corn on the cob. Corn off the cob. Sweet potatoes with mini-marshmallow topping. Pasta salads. Jelled salads. Potato salads with and without mustard or celery or onion, depending on which Aunt had brought them. Cornbread. Biscuits.
Uncle Rick would always grab for his wife’s rolls, and claim that they could just sit on HIS plate, since he was planning on eating them all anyway. Uncle Mike would snatch a roll from the basket, determined to get one before Rick ate them all. Aunt Betty would rescue her rolls from her husband, and Aunt Carol would bop her husband Mike on the head for his lack of manners, and everyone would laugh.
When order was restored and space was cleared, the covered platter would be ensconced in a position of honor. Grandma would select two of us middle-sized girls to untwist the hooks from around the ladybugs, then the oldest boy would be asked to lift the lid. More ooohs and ahhhs as we all peered at the twenty-four perfect deviled eggs, to see how Grandma had decorated them this year. Finally, after more ooohs and ahhhs, we’d all join hands to pray, then us kids would bring our plates to the ‘big’ table for our folks to serve us, and the meal could begin.
Growing up, I watched carefully. Grandma’d told me that someday, the egg tray would belong to my mother, and eventually, it’d be mine, to pass on to my oldest daughter. So at the Fourth of July picnic, when the eggs were uncovered to reveal red paprika and tiny red pimento stars on top of the fluffy egg-filling, I studied and remembered. Christmas, when each egg had a round of green olive, and the sunflower center sported a wreath of holly and a red bow, I memorized the layout. Then Easter Sunday each half-egg was decorated with a miniature cross made of slivers of green onion, I watched and absorbed it all. And as I helped Grandma polish her silver before each holiday, I took extra effort with a Q-tip to get into the veins and crevices on the handle-leaves and the intricate filigree. It was beautiful, and it was going to be mine someday.
I didn’t understand at the time, of course, that for Mom to get the egg platter, it meant Grandma would be gone. That took some of the joy out of it. And I certainly wasn’t expecting the breast cancer that would steal Mom away from me early, and put the egg plate in my hands well before I turned thirty. For several years, I couldn’t even bear to look at it. Maybe if I hadn’t craved that silly platter so much, Grandma and Mom would still be here.
Even after I finished college, married my husband, Tom, and grew a couple of rugrats of my own, the egg tray stayed hidden in my attic. None of the family mentioned it at our gatherings, and nobody brought deviled eggs, either. I think they knew how I felt.
Then, one late spring day, as I wondered and fussed over what to bring to my son Jimmy’s kindergarten picnic, my daughter Amy, who’d just turned eight, suggested we take deviled eggs.
“Brownies again?” I pretended I hadn’t heard her as I looked in the cabinet. “Brownies are simple.” I don’t cook much, but I can mix up some brownies, like I usually do.
“C’mon, Mom,” she wheedled. “Everybody likes eggs, even little kids. And they’re easy. I helped Kim and her mom make them last time I spent the night there.”
“I’ll think about it,” I replied.
She knew what that meant. There was room for her to keep arguing. There was hope. She ran to the refrigerator, skidding the last yard in her sock feet on the slick tile.
“One of these days, you’re going to fall down and . . .” I started, but she finished the sentence with me, “. . . bust my head open, sliding on the tile.”
She rolled her eyes at me and opened the fridge
. “Look, we already have eggs, a whole dozen, plus three in this old carton. And a jar of pickle relish too. We put pickles in, when we mashed up the yellow stuff at Kim’s house.”
I joined her at the refrigerator, resisting the urge to do a little sock-foot skidding of my own. I really WOULD fall and bust my head open. Hmm. We always had a jar of mayonnaise. And for an audience of picky-eater five-year-olds, it’d probably be better not to worry with fancy toppings. What else went in deviled eggs? I realized then it’d always been Grandma and Mom who had made the eggs, never me. The only thing I ever did with eggs was add them to brownies, or scramble them for breakfast. I really didn’t cook much. But how difficult could it be? Simply boil ’em, peel ’em, cut them in half, mash up the yolks with other stuff . . . spoon it back in.
I raised my eyebrows at Amy, who was hopping up and down in excitement beside me. “If we make deviled eggs, you’re going to help? Even if I give you a really tough job to do?”
“Yes, yes, yes, YES!” she squealed, as she spun and slithered in a sock-enhanced dance move and pumped her fist.
Then her eight-year-old brain started getting suspicious, despite being ecstatic to get her way. The dance slowed, as she tilted her head to look at me. I grinned. It was fun to watch her grow mentally—even a year ago, she wouldn’t have caught on to the “really tough” part of my sentence so quickly.
“Wait. Wait a minute, Mom. What’s the tough part? What do I have to do? Is it something gross?”
“Nope, not gross. First, you’ll have to do a little treasure hunting in the attic. I need a blue box, about this big.” I showed her with my hands. “Can you find it and carry it down here to me?”
She nodded and skipped off down the hall toward the narrow attic staircase. I pulled open the fridge again and got out the eggs, then a big saucepan from under the stove. I’d better start hard-boiling the eggs. I twisted the left tap on the faucet full force. If I started with the water hot, I’d learned when making tea, it’d boil faster. Pretty soon, all twelve eggs were in the water, the burner on high, and little bubbles forming on the bottom of the pan.
Sweeter Than Tea Page 11
