On Grandma's Porch

by Deborah Smith

  Not the elaborate “Y’all come now, y’here,” that The Beverly Hillbillies put into popular culture. Just a simple, sincere, “Y’all come.”

  And come they did. Over the years. my mother must’ve cooked thousands of chickens. Baked chickens, chicken pot pie, chicken and dumplings. Any way you can cook chicken . . . except fried. Now my mother was a marvelous cook. It was, after all, what she majored in while earning her M-R-S degree. But she refused to fry chicken, and that was my favorite way of eating it. Consequently, I anticipated church dinner-on-the-grounds with great relish, where there was invariably a bounty of chicken fried up by the best cooks in the church. But fried chicken is a story entire unto itself. Suffice it to say, my mother would not drop a single leg into Crisco.

  Mother never gave me a satisfactory answer about why the menu invariably featured chicken. When I was old enough to notice the plethora of poultry farms across the South, I concluded chicken must’ve been cheaper to come by. An important consideration when the Lord is on hand merely to bless the chicken, not to divide the white meat and the dark as he did the loaves and fishes.

  The only exceptions I can remember to chicken dishes were the times when the menfolk had gone fishing. Then mountains of crappie and bass replaced the poultry. I understand that many a chicken dish across the South was replaced by venison or quail or duck, but the men in my family were not huntsmen, so game wasn’t in the realm of my experience.

  The longest stretch of residence we ever spent was in a small town northeast of Atlanta that has since been swallowed up by that massive city. When I was two, my father had been hired by a small group of brethren to build a church from practically nothing. We started meeting in the chapel of an old WWII military hospital. Those were the days when the only way to get to the top of Stone Mountain was shoe leather, decades before they completed the carving on the side. Under my father’s ministry, the church grew to almost four hundred people, one of the largest in the area in those days. The congregation was as dynamic as Atlanta, with people moving in and out all the time. So when I was eleven, they began to plan a ten year reunion.

  I’m not certain if my father came up with idea or exactly who, but most members of the church were enthusiastically behind it. They set up committees and spent six months planning the event for the next Fourth of July, figuring most people could take vacation days to drive in if they had to. Since I was still mostly kid, six months seemed a lifetime away. So I shoved it into my peripheral attention and went on with my life.

  The trouble didn’t start until a few months later. Along about April, I remember Mother telling Dad, “J.C., Myra James called today. They’re coming for the reunion. I invited them to stay here.”

  The Jameses had been friends of my parents’ since high school. This was both good and bad news for me. They were an interesting family that we’d seen several times over the years. Not only was the father a rocket scientist, literally, both his and his oldest son’s names were Jesse James, which I always got a kick out of hearing. However, the middle son was my age, and a nastier boy you’d never meet in your life. Jerry James was a skinny, buck-toothed, tow-headed boy with a cow lick growing right out of his forehead. He reminded me of Dennis the Menace in every way, and every time we were forced into close proximity I told him that he should’ve been named Jesse instead of his big brother, because he was the outlaw in the family. I stopped telling him this when I figured out that he actually liked being called an outlaw. The degenerate.

  Dad merely nodded to Mother at her announcement and said, “It’ll be good to see them.”

  Nobody asked my permission, of course, even though I would be forced to move in with my sister for the duration of the visit. My sole comfort was that it would be worse for her than for me. Being thirteen made Nona a teenager, and she had all the arrogance that went along with that distinction. Her disdain irritated the stew out of me and I loved to cause her misery every chance I could get. So having the Jameses stay with us during the reunion wouldn’t be all bad.

  A few weeks into June, I overheard my mother calling my father at the church office. “The Hollingsworths are coming to the reunion, too. They asked if they could stay with us.”

  I couldn’t hear my father’s reply, but in the following conversation, I definitely heard Mother say, “the kids can sleep on the floor.”

  I hated sleeping on the floor. They were called hardwood for a reason.

  So when mother hung up the phone, I asked indignantly, “Who are the Hollingsworths?”

  She raised her eyebrow, but answered me patiently. “They used to live on the other side of the Dixie Highway. A big yellow house with black shutters. Lots of hydrangeas. You remember.”

  I didn’t remember, which must’ve been evident on my face because mother continued, “You remember Mark Grady, don’t you?”

  “How could I forget him? He’s the slimy toad who tried to kiss me in first grade.” I was not a fan of boys until I hit puberty a couple of years later. “He’s coming? And Jerry James, too?” I pictured all kinds of horrible scenarios in their company.

  “We haven’t heard from Mark’s parents yet. The Hollingsworths are Mark’s grandparents.”

  So they were old, which meant I couldn’t throw a fit about them making me sleep on the floor. “Why are they staying with us?”

  “They might not. I’m going to try and see if the Sherwoods can put them up, but right now they’re out of town visiting their daughter in Macon. So I can’t check with them until next week.”

  Which meant she’d forget. Mother could remember every recipe she’d ever come across, the steps required for earning half of the Girl Scout badges, and the words to nearly every book in the hymnal, but the details of ordinary life often slipped from her mind. I can’t tell you how many times I had to walk home from school after dark because she’d forgotten to pick me up after whatever club meeting I happened to be attending. And if mother didn’t place the Hollingsworths with the Sherwoods or somebody, it increased the odds of Mark Grady staying at our house. Jerry James was bad enough. Having both of them would be the end of life as I knew it.

  “I’ll remind you,” I promised her.

  She chuckled. “All right.”

  Mother recognized her forgetful tendencies, but my father was so completely in love with her he thought it was cute, so she had no incentive to improve. If something was very important, she wrote it on the calendar. But that only helped when she actually remembered to look at the calendar. By the time I’d reached the advanced age of eleven, I knew that if I wanted Mother to do something, I had to remind her. Often more than once. To this day, I credit my mother’s forgetfulness for both my excellent memory and my tendency to nag.

  One week to the day, I reminded Mother she needed to call the Sherwoods.

  “I called them yesterday,” she said to my surprise.

  “And . . . ?”

  “They’re keeping the Hollingsworths and the Gradys.”

  “I knew that snarly varmint was com . . . I mean . . . the Sherwoods are really good people.” Ebullient with relief at having dodged two bullets—Mark Grady and sleeping on the floor. I started to skip away when my mother’s question stopped me short.

  “Have you ever slept on cots at any of your friend’s sleepovers?”

  “Cots?” The only reason she would ask about cots was if we needed them, and needing cots was ominous. “At Amelia’s. Why?”

  Mother shrugged. “Looks like we’ll be needing a few. Remind me to ask Helen at prayer meeting tonight. I’ll ask the Mayfields, too.”

  Nona walked in the back door at that point.

  Mother’s head turned toward my sister, but mother probably didn’t even see her. “Who else goes camping?”

  “Huh?” Nona stopped, then recovered quickly. She had two years more than me to be familiar with Mother’s ways. “Oh. T
he Stricklands and the Gutterys went to Red Top Mountain with us last time. Why?”

  “Because we need a bazillion cots,” I told her in that you’re-too-stupid-to-live voice that sisters save for each other.

  “Cots?” Nona turned to mother and said in her best drama-queen voice, “Mother! You haven’t invited even more people to stay with us for that stupid reunion, have you? Aren’t the Jameses enough?”

  Mother’s attention came back from the land of cots, and she focused her eyes on Nona. “The reunion isn’t stupid, Nona. But, no, we didn’t invite them, exactly. They’re calling for a place to stay and we can’t turn them away.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  Mother looked at me as if I’d just asked to live in Detroit. “It isn’t done.”

  The classic answer from mothers all over the South. No reason attached to it, but it was backed by many generations and hundreds of years of living inside the Southern box.

  “Why can’t the Bakers put them up?” Nona asked, thinking along the same lines that I was. “They have three extra bedrooms.”

  “The Bakers’ house is full,” Mother explained. “And the Thompsons’ and the Abernathys’ and the Collins’ and everyone else’s. When the elders planned the reunion, they never dreamed that so many people would come. But they are coming, and they have to sleep somewhere. The church is paying for the house we live in and it’s right next door, so it’s only natural that the overspill comes here. We may have to pitch tents in the back yard before it’s said and done, but that’s what we’ll do if we have to. We’re happy all these people are returning to celebrate the ten years our church has been serving the Lord. It’s a wonderful and important event. Understand?”

  Mother strong-eyed Nona into submission. “Nona?”

  Nona didn’t look happy, but said, “Yes, ma’am.”

  Mother turned her attention on me. “Martha?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” What else could I say? Mother was an expert at making my childish concerns seem petty in the grand scheme of things. Besides, with so many people we’d be forced to have potluck dinners, so fried chicken was a sure thing. And since it was summer, homemade ice cream was a definite possibility.

  “I’m counting on you girls to help. With so many people, I’ll be doing good just to keep up with the cooking. I can’t have you girls running off to be with your boyfriends . . . “ that was for Nona, “ . . . or to run around in the woods.” That was for me.

  Not escape into the woods? For three whole days?!? Just kill me now!

  “But I—”

  “Martha . . . “

  I may be stubborn, but even I knew when to stop talking. Mother might seem like a mild-mannered preacher’s wife, but she’d been known to wield a mean hairbrush to Nona’s and my backsides. Besides, I always had back-up plans. I might have to invite company on my treks into the wilderness, but I could stand that for a day or so. While it was true that I valued my alone time in the woods, I wasn’t completely anti-social.

  “Yes, ma’am. I want to help.”

  The look she gave me said she suspected I wasn’t being entirely truthful, but she didn’t say anything. Since I wasn’t, I didn’t say anything, either.

  These were the times when it was best to hide the fact that you weren’t quite the good little Christian soldier your parents thought that you were.

  The Jameses were the first guests to arrive that Friday afternoon. As far as we knew at that point, we were planning on housing three more families, a total of eighteen guests in all. The four of us added made twenty-one humans and one sub-human (Jerry) sharing a twelve hundred square foot, three bedroom, two bathroom house.

  Today I cringe when I think about the logistics of that many people in such a small space. Back then, I didn’t have a clue. I was too focused on my personal inconvenience. I had no inkling of the headaches my mother must’ve suffered.

  Mother, luckily, wasn’t prone to headaches and never seemed ruffled or put out. She’d grabbed Nona and me before we could slip out of the house that Friday morning, and we spent the day doing slave labor. Which meant we cleaned. We even had to sweep and mop the cement floor of the basement. That’s where all of the children would be sleeping—except for the Taylor’s baby—plus the two hardiest adults. Mr. and Mrs. Martin weren’t the youngest of our adult guests, but they camped and hiked and generally loved roughing it. So they’d volunteered to keep the children in line.

  I didn’t mind that one bit. Mr. Martin could do magic tricks and Mrs. Martin told the best stories. They had one daughter who was a year older than Nona and therefore of no interest to me. Back then, I categorized adults by whether or not they had children, and then by the relative interest to me of those children. Mr. and Mrs. Martin were infinitely more interesting than Cindy, who talked way too much about boys.

  Our full basement was considered semi-finished. It had windows along the back side of the house and a smooth cement floor, but was not finished enough for living space. Nona and I played down there in the cold winter months and during the hottest part of the summer. It wasn’t heated or air conditioned, but since it was surrounded by earth on three sides, it stayed comfortable year-round. Mother had secured enough cots and air mattresses to keep everyone off the concrete, so the weekend seemed doable.

  I had just walked inside the front door, having swept the front porch, when a blue station wagon pulled up our the driveway. I recognized the driver and groaned. I’d planned to slip out to the quarry lake hidden in the woods behind the church and hole up until supper.

  I eyed the path to the back door. Could I make it?

  “Who’s here?” Mother called from the kitchen.

  I considered lying, but the dangers of hell-fire had been drummed into me since birth. Brimstone had always been a strong deterrent for me. Not that I had any notion of what it was, but it sounded scarier than vampires or kisses from boys.

  I was stuck. So I reluctantly answered, “The Jameses.”

  “Nona?” Mother called. “Run find your father at—”

  “I’ll go!” A reprieve! Dad was across the street at the church, directing traffic there. I dropped the broom and bolted out the back door before Nona could even look up from her teen magazine.

  I took as long as I dared to find my father who, luckily, wasn’t in the church office. When he and I walked into our house, the Jameses had already unloaded their car and were ensconced in the family room with glasses of sweet tea.

  Dad, being Dad, exchanged handshakes and hugs all around, and I was passed along the James’ line until I got to Jerry. It was the first time I’d seen him in a couple of years. He stared at me with a look I wasn’t familiar with—as if he didn’t know who I was.

  It scared me, and without thinking about where I was, I blurted out, “What’s your problem, Doofus?”

  “Martha!”

  I cringed from Mother’s rebuke, adding this public humiliation to Jerry’s long list of crimes.

  Luckily, my remark had hit its mark. Jerry’s scary look was gone, and he covertly stuck out his tongue at me.

  Finally something I could deal with. I stuck my nose in the air with a pointed sniff and turned to hug his little sister.

  Just as everyone was settling down to their tea again, the Taylors arrived with their four young children in tow. A kind of friendly chaos settled over the house at that point which was not going to let up until everyone left on Monday. I’d been involved in enough “Y’all Come” situations by then that I recognized the good in them. For a brief span of time, my parents were too focused on other people to pay me much mind. I could pretty much do as I pleased, within reason.

  At any rate, it wasn’t remarkable.

  Yet.

  The Martins arrived just as Mother was putting the men to work grilling hamburgers for supper. As I’d hoped, Mother had e
nough helping hands in the kitchen with the other ladies. They shooed the children outside so they could speculate about the people who were coming for the weekend. They’d talk about such important things as what color hair Myra Hardy would have this year and how much weight Red Thornapple would have gained.

  Nona took the two teenagers into her room to listen to records, and I organized the younger children into a game of dodge ball. I tried not to notice that every time Jerry caught the ball, he aimed dead-straight at me. I missed most of his throws, of course. I had dodge ball down pretty good by that advanced age. One time, however, he caught and threw the ball so fast that he got me smack in the side of the head. Even though the ball was soft, it stung.

  I swung on him. “That hurt! You don’t have to throw it so hard, Doofus!”

  I fully expected him to retort snidely with something like, “You’re supposed to dodge it, twerp-face. That’s why it’s called dodge ball.”

  Instead, he rushed forward with a horrified look and tenderly touched the side of my face, brushing back my hair. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hit you. You turned right into it.”

  Didn’t mean to hit me?! What kind of nonsense was that? The whole point of the game was hitting people. That’s how you got them out.

  I didn’t know what was going on here, but I didn’t like it.

  I shoved his hand away. “Doof—”

  “Brother Townsend!”

  We all turned to see the church secretary running across the street. Her teased hair was bouncing dangerously, as was every other part of her.

  Dad rose from his lawn chair. “Sister Bishop, I thought you’d have gone home by now. What’s wrong?”

  “I was just heading out,” she said breathlessly, “when a VW bus pulled into the parking lot. It’s the Rutherfords.”

  “The Rutherfords?” Dad repeated. “Did we know they were coming?”

  Mrs. Bishop shook her head vehemently. “No, and we have no place to put them. I don’t know what on earth we’re going to do!”