“Filth,” my mama said, driving down the mountain, a 70-mile path to her home, my old hometown, Spartanburg, South Carolina—70 miles that made a world of difference as far as heat and topography—even type of people.
“You smell like something rotting, and those poor kids’ nails are dirty, noses crusty, they look . . . well . . . all of you seem neglected,” she said as she drove down the mountain. “All I can smell are dirty scalps probably festering with lice and scabies. I don’t know why in this world you didn’t tell me you weren’t a functioning woman, Prudy. For a while you seemed to have it all together, though I wasn’t fond of all that traveling y’all were doing. It certainly ate up all y’all’s finances.”
I pretended to be asleep.
“What she means,” Aunt Weepie said, craning her head back at us, “is that you look like you were pulled from a Dumpster at a homeless shelter.”
“Don’t go trying to make her feel any better,” Aunt Iris, who lives in Florida, said, her voice edged in sarcasm. “Think about what she’s been through. Who among us could endure this type of hell?”
“Both of you hush,” Mama said, suddenly going from critical to defensive. “The child at least finished all her important business, got herself well enough to show the children six month’s worth of good times before she shut down and took to her bed. If that Jenny friend from church hadn’t called, who knows what would have happened to them. Look, look back there at those three, would you?”
Iris turned to view us. I saw her from the corner of an eye I opened a tiny crack out of curiosity. “You’re right, Lucinda,” Iris said. “They sure need some TLC, and you know, I was thinking not long ago how very few women could have taken it as long as poor Prudy did.”
“I wouldn’t have lasted a night,” Aunt Weepie said.
“That’s for sure,” Iris said.
“Okay, that’s enough,” Mama said. “We’re going to take care of these three pitiful orphans for as long as we need to. Iris, search her purse for those pain pills. They’ll be the first to go. Throw out all but about six so I can detox her gently. Oh, Lord, have mercy, I should have trucked up here for them months ago. I should have known it was coming. Prudy sure put up an Oscar-winning performance as the ‘Recovered Woman,’ there for a while, now didn’t she? She wouldn’t stand for it, kept on saying, ‘I’m fine, Mama. Couldn’t be better.’ Bunch of sorry lies . . .”
Mama pounded the steering wheel, hands open and flat, her diamond wedding ring catching the sunlight. “Y’all listen up,” she said to my aunts. “I can’t do this alone and Parker’s not going to be a whole lot of help. He gets to drinking that bourbon and it can go either way. He can get all warm and feel-goody or he can get on a revenge trail I don’t want to see him ever ride again. You all remember what he did in the courtroom, trying to jump Bryce? We can’t count on him. So it’s the three of us. Deal?”
“Deal!” they all shouted, as if we were a project and this was a long, uncertain road trip. I curled into my seat and fell asleep, my head against Miranda’s velvet-soft thigh. I never wanted to wake up again.
***
A year later and I’m here, in this old apartment, forcing myself to see the charm in the very things my mother deems flaws. Chuck Roland won’t hire me for anything decent, but that’s not the end of my journey. This is the beginning. No more pink gown. No more letters because I plan to call the prison and report them. Of course, that didn’t stop him the last time.
Maybe Mama and Aunt Weepie were right. I should get out, mingle, meet friends, maybe even a man, God forbid.
Chapter Six
Good Morning, Pru-Dee: Don’t tell your secrets unless you want them broadcast to the world. God puts out the light of the man who curses his father or mother. Proverbs 20:19-20
Mama’s Moral: I know you’re probably applying for unemployment today or government cheese or 40 acres and a mule, but remember it’s not necessary to hang all your pitiful business on the line. Please, Prudy, remember I have my bridge biddies to face. Use some discretion. I want your light to shine a long time, sweetheart. We aren’t the types to go on the dole. Try, honey, try, to get a real job.
An eager and bleached Monday-morning sun flaunted its Cloroxed summer light directly into my window. It was the mother’s hand that rouses a child from sleep, the bold announcer that another day has come and I’ve lived through it. Like it or not. Many times since moving to the apartment a couple of weeks ago, I’ve thought about rigging enormous black sheets to the bay window, blocking the inevitable, the day I’d have to face, whether at 7 a.m. or at 10 or noon or even 2. No matter how much darkness the old self craved, I knew the dangers of giving in.
Get up, get up; Prudy, get up, I chanted in my head. If you get up, you can always go back to bed. Give it three hours. Feed the children. Don’t make them eat Pop-tarts and watch videos while you hide in the shell of a bed, underneath twisted covers that smell of depression and dead dreams. The letters from Bryce. Forget about the letters. Too much to do today. A life to get back on track. Brave fronts to put up for the children.
I pushed the pastel sheets off my bare legs and stood on the cool boards of the hardwood floors. I liked the firm feel of wood beneath my skin. Bryce and I had wall-to-wall carpeting, and these floors, while scarred and worn, had a surface that hid nothing. What you saw, was all that was there, nothing lurking in fibers or padding, nothing but skin against wood.
Across a small hallway, in the other large bedroom, Jay and Miranda slept in single beds, hers a white canopy with a butterfly spread, his a trundle, the sheets and comforter swimming with a sea-life pattern. Their beds and my antique vanity were the only furniture I had taken from our old house in Asheville. A few things remained that I’d left behind. But not their beds. They had to have some semblance of the old life, vestiges from the flawed but familiar to hold on to, some childhood continuity offered by the pink butterflies and the blue angel fish.
Seeing them asleep, at complete peace with themselves and their lives, I could imagine anything. I could pretend they hadn’t lost a father to a mad and murderous mind. I could pretend they had a daddy who had moments earlier kissed their sleeping faces then rushed out to operate on the poor and lame in an inner city clinic, a gentle Labrador of a man who would be home later that evening to share fascinating stories of ruptured appendices and who would tell me how delicious the lasagna tasted and how blessed he was to have this family, these two precious children. He would tell me how thin and pretty I was, seeing in his forgiving eyes a size-8 woman and not the 12 who’d join him later in bed.
I could look at the innocent flushed curves of my children’s cheeks and imagine that such a life might be possible. Might still be possible. They were young. Miranda did not even remember her father. They would have other chances. But only if their mother got out of bed, made them oatmeal and combed their hair and took them to school, opening doors of both opportunity and laughter. And only if she didn’t date losers or marry potential killers. I put on a pot of coffee, staring at the new magnets Mama had put on my refrigerator the week before. The coffee maker gurgled and spat, finally trickling hot dark fluid into the decanter. Mama and her magnets. She’d found a couple at Spencer Gifts, that naughty store in the mall where she claims “trash gathers,” but couldn’t resist. I read them every day, every time I get hungry or thirsty.
pick a man the way you would a melon: sniff for freshness, thump for ripeness, and slice to make sure both halves are fully seeded.
Next to it were other magnetic enlightenments she’d purchased and slapped on the fridge:
a nerd is as good as his word –
and his platinum visa!
And then this:
you’ll get a date to match your bait –
dress like a tramp and bring home crotch crickets!
I believe she lied whe
n she said that last one came from Spencer’s. It looked more like she made it herself during one of her ceramics classes she can’t seem to get enough of. Usually it’s frogs and owls. Now this.
I grabbed a cup of coffee—poured in one pack of Equal and stirred with a fork—taking it into the living room for my morning stretches on the woven rug Aunt Weepie had given us. Moving my body this early in the day sent daggers of pain through my right leg, the one Bryce mangled with the church van, but I had to do this, the routine of stretches and strengthening exercises. I refused to use crutches or a brace, even when doctors advised it. My children had enough inner scars. They didn’t need a daily reminder in the form of a mother who limped and scritch-scratched along on crutches or a walker. They certainly didn’t need Miss Percocet for a mom.
I leaned forward as a yoga tape played, a gentle voice telling me I was a survivor, “a warrior,” as I stretched, feeling the pain. For the next 20 minutes my body tested its limits and responded to the will behind it.
A light band of perspiration dampened my neck as I walked through the apartment my mother hated and I adored. The ceiling fans chopped the early morning air enough to send chills along my hairline. I drank a second cup of coffee while staring at the kitchen, a white rectangle with white appliances, the paint chipped in spots, and a gas stove that still frightens me every time I light a match and hear the whoosh, see the sudden dance of blue flames.
The owners of the house, a couple who had years ago upgraded to a newer neighborhood but couldn’t bear selling the place, had left it partially furnished. In my case, this was a good thing. Since the beds and my antique vanity were all I could bear from the old life, the rest of what few objects I owned, chests of drawers, a sofa and chairs, I’d picked up at Goodwill in downtown Spartanburg, and after cleaning and buffing the chests and lining the drawers with contact paper and sachets of lavender, they were almost as good as if I’d bought them new. No smells lingered from former owners.
This morning, as with at least half our mornings, Jay woke up grouchy and didn’t want his Honey Bunches of Oats and said he didn’t care to eat a hoagie at his summer camp because the meat smelled funny and had gristles and could I please pack him a Lunchable.
Miranda decided she’d wear nothing but her monkey-print pajamas and wool poncho in 90-degree weather, topped with a straw hat, and completed with a pair of pink snow boots for her half-day at the private summer preschool. All the Junior League sorority snoots I’d gone to high school with and who’d heard about my tragedy back in Asheville will think she’s neglected and pitiful and that I’m too mired in my own mess to care for her, all their Gymboreed mini-me’s in bows and Mary Janes, my Miranda in chipped glitter nail polish and a giant pocketbook that once belonged to my grandmother, to whom she owes her strong-willed personality and the jet-black hair she had at birth, hair so black Bryce swore up and down she was Mexican and I had cheated.
***
No matter how much dignity you try to squeeze into your life, some things keep resurfacing, like coffins in swollen, flood-ravaged cemeteries. The way to live fully is to hold the floodwaters back and keep buried all things of no benefit. So the letters from Charlotte have returned, my personal coffins, resurfacing from the swollen, flood-ravaged cemetery of my past. That doesn’t mean it’s time to go six-feet under and let Bryce get the best of us.
Today was huge for the future of my career, my chances beyond housekeeping, and all my hopes hung on this interview I’d scored at the nursing home, the same place where I once volunteered as a young woman and would now seek a paid position. A step closer to being a real nurse. A step closer to new dreams.
I spent a lot of my young adult years at Top of the Hill Manor, which isn’t on much of a hill at all. It sits on a hump of land, surrounded by dogwood trees and white pines, but for Spartanburg, a hump is considered a hill because most of our city is on the flat side. I first became affiliated with Top of the Hill 17 years ago when I walked through the doors, tears in my eyes, begging for a bit of volunteer work to ease my troubled and guilty conscience.
Nursing home duty is what a Baptist-bred girl does when she slips up and sins, especially if the busted commandment lined up for balancing has something to do with a man and one’s desires for some gratification in the Sealy/Serta department.
Lots of sinning going on in college, which is when I first discovered the joys and conscience-easing salve of servitude via Top of the Hill. Plenty of girls could up their sex-partner totals way into the double digits and not even bat an eye, but not me. The one thing I promised myself in the sweeping age of the Sexual Revolution was this:
Have some fun if you must.
But never, ever dip into the double digits.
And always balance fornication with service work.
I managed to graduate college with only seven lovers, and reach age 30 with only 12 or 14 (two may not count due to impotency on their part). But, of course, if anyone asked, I always said four. However, my totals could have been as high as my friends’ had I not invented a method of partnership management called “Recycling.”
A smart girl knew the value of recycling, and I rarely nailed new boyfriends, just dusted off the old ones. Not only could a woman remain relatively satisfied between serious relationships by recycling, but she could keep those totals down in the single digits for as long as possible.
Mama said a girl’s reputation was all she had and virginity was a must. Twelve to 14 wasn’t bad for a girl with a body like mine. It may be on the large side now, due to genetic rear-end expansion and passage through the Big Mac and Breeding Era, but from 1980 through 1995, I had myself a fine figure.
Aunt Weepie always said if you slip up, and crack open a pot of major sins, one better bake someone a pie (this from a woman who hates to cook) or sew doll clothes for the foster kids in the county system, which she has done for years regardless of sin tallies, or better still, darken the doors of a nursing home and get your hands dirty and soul clean.
Thus began my long association with nursing homes, Top of the Hill, in particular. Every time I’d fall off the virtue wagon, I’d rush down the corridors, ducking into patients’ rooms and changing Depends or polishing the horn-like nails of some poor old lady’s yellowed toes. I’d let the old men cuss me out one minute and try to feel my boobs the next, tongues hanging out and coated in Ensure and old age.
Today I wore a gray and blue dotted dress that fell at my ankles and had capped sleeves and a high neck, even though it was hotter than August outside and unbearable for early June. I didn’t want the scars on my neck and chest to show. Sometimes I didn’t care, but today I wasn’t up to answering questions about them.
My appointment was at eleven o’clock and I arrived with two minutes to spare, enough time to reapply lip gloss and brush out my long hair. At 11:05, I was waved in by a stocky woman with brassy blonde hair and a face straight out of a Mary Kay makeover session. She shook my hand, hers sticky with lotion that smelled like grapefruit, and said her name was Theresa Jolly, director of Top of the Hill, and to please call her Theresa or Tee.
“What do you want to do, Prudy?” this woman asked after she’d gone through the small talk.
“Please, just call me Dee. I decided Prudy sounded kind of cold and stiff.”
“Well, now, you’ve helped us so much over the years, or so I’ve been told, so why don’t you just tell us how we can help you.”
“Anything, really,” I said. “Mama used to be a beautician and taught me how to give perms and wash and set hair. I can do basic trims, manicures, pedicures. I can bathe patients and feed them. I got my nurse’s assistant certification one summer back in college and was taking classes for my RN before I got married. The assistant certification’s been expired for years, but I still remember most of it.”
“We can train you, Dee. But I must say, it’s not a lot of mon
ey, even though I see here you have kids, so I could offer you flexible hours at the very least.”
She stood from her desk and shut the door of her office. I heard her hose rubbing as she walked, and I wanted to reach out and hug her. She was offering me a job and her inner thighs met just like mine did. This sweet, stocky, barrel-chested woman was giving me a chance to work in a field I needed and one I truly believe needed me.
“I may be out of line, but we are all aware of what happened to you and are terribly, terribly sorry.” She waited for me to elaborate, everyone wanting more than they’d read in the papers or heard third-hand. I never could deliver much more because of the fuzzy memories.
“I could start with three days a week,” I said, “and see how my leg does. It’s usually fine, held together with metal, I’m afraid, but other than that, I mean my other injuries, they’ve all healed.”
“Bless your heart.” She shook her head and scanned me for other scars. “Don’t you qualify for disability?”
“Technically, yes. But the truth is I’d rather not label myself disabled. I couldn’t get up in the morning if I had to admit my husband made me incapacitated. I may not have a complete leg bone, but I still have a backbone.” I laughed nervously at my stab at humor. “I’m ready to work, just tell me how I can help.”
“This resume says you have a degree in psychology.”
“Yes, but not a master’s. It’s kind of like having dentures without the adhesive.” I let off another laugh. “Little good it’ll do you.”
Chimes from a Cracked Southern Belle Page 9
