I was in our cabin, searching for my Wonder Woman comic to read by the pool, when a car door thumped shut. Puddin yelled, “It’s Daddy!”
I peeked through a gap in the Venetian blinds where a slat had broken. Daddy had Davie, swinging him high, talking to him. Mrs. Bishop from the motel office was in her driveway, looking toward Daddy and smiling. His hair was sun-streaked and he had a good tan, like he’d been playing golf regularly and fishing at Lake Wylie. He propped Davie on his shoulders, which were so broad Davie looked like a doll. Stell stood several feet away from him. I was sure she was thinking about Aunt Lily. Daddy turned to her, and the sun glinted off his glasses. She shrugged at something he said and pointed toward Mama’s cabin.
I backed away from the window. With the blinds closed, the cabin was hot and dim; the only light came through the screen door. I didn’t want to say hello to Daddy, because I would have to act tickled to see him. I wanted it to be as if he had been with us all along, so we wouldn’t have to make over each other. I was sitting on the bed when Mary came in with Davie, bringing the sunlight with her. The screen door clattered shut.
“Why’s this place closed up, hot as it is?”
“I shut the blinds so I could put on my bathing suit.”
“Why didn’t you put it on?”
“Daddy’s here.”
“Your daddy never seen you in a bathing suit?” She sat beside me, rocking Davie. He had his thumb in his mouth and his eyelids drooped. Perspiration dotted the curve of his nose, and I touched it with the back of my finger. He put his head on Mary’s shoulder and closed his eyes. She rocked, humming, rubbing his back. I smelled Davie’s baby powder and her soap. My eyes got heavy. Maybe we’d all fall asleep and Daddy wouldn’t want to wake us.
Mary stopped rocking. “He gone to sleep?”
“Uh-huh.”
She lowered Davie to the bed, putting him down on his back, smoothing out the cotton bedspread under him. She unglued his hair from his damp forehead and picked up a magazine from the floor. “You didn’t come say hey to your daddy.”
“I will, after he sees Mama. Did he ask about me?”
She fanned Davie.“I said you was swimming. Thought you was.”
The screen door opened. Daddy stood in the doorway, blocking the light.
I got up. “Hey, Daddy.”
He hugged me.“Hey, Junebug.” He held me at arm’s length and looked at me. “You’ve grown another foot.”
“Nope, I’ve still only got two.”
He laughed. “Mary told me you were swimming.”
“I will be, soon’s I get my suit on.”
He touched me on the shoulder. “You doing okay?”
“Yes, sir.”
Daddy rubbed Davie’s tummy.“I wish I could sleep like that.”
“Bill?” Mama called from the yard.
“Hey, Pauly!” Daddy’s face lit up. He went outside. Mama stood by his car, her arms folded across her bosom. Daddy reached in his pants pocket and offered her a gift-wrapped box. “Wanted to bring some joy back in your life.”
Mama took the gift, not looking at Daddy. She tore it open. “Joy!” Mama’s favorite perfume. She shook her head.
“We’ve got to get past this, Paula.” Did he mean Aunt Lily?
“I need time.”
“It’s almost a year.” He put his arm around her shoulders and she didn’t pull away. As they turned to walk toward Mama’s cabin, he asked, “The Packard, is it a mess?”
“It’s a mess.”
I went into the bathroom to change so I wouldn’t be naked in front of Mary. When I took off my blouse, I thought about what Mama would say if she noticed the hair in my armpits. There wasn’t much, and it was so light sometimes I thought it was my imagination, but I knew Mama would make me shave, just as she’d made me wear Stell Ann’s old training bras as soon as I started getting bosoms. I put on my suit and draped a towel around my shoulders, the way lifeguards do in the movies, and left the bathroom.
Mary looked up. “That a new swimsuit?”
“What do you think?” I twirled, trailing the towel.
“I think you growed up while I wasn’t looking.”
A pencil of sunlight coming through the broken blind played across my thighs and I looked down at the same time Mary did. She put out her hand and smoothed my upper legs as if to wipe away the faint blue and yellow marks.
I’d seen Davie with my comic, so I went to see if it was in Mama and Daddy’s cabin. I opened the door and smelled Daddy’s aftershave. The bed was made, with the tufted spread hanging just to the dust ruffle. I knew if I looked under the pillow on Mama’s side, I’d find her pink nightgown. I tripped over Daddy’s white ducks. His seersucker jacket was on the chair back, his khaki slacks folded over the arm. My comic wasn’t with Davie’s things. Not on the bedside table or on the dresser with Daddy’s pocketknife and change. I looked under the dresser and saw Daddy’s Zippo gleaming in the dusty shadows. I pushed it behind a leg of the dresser and left it there.
In the bathroom, his Dopp kit was by the sink, and Mama’s slippers were on the floor, but no Wonder Woman. I stood in the middle of the cabin, ready to give up and go to the pool, when I saw a Tinkertoy beside the night table. I lifted the dust ruffle and there was my comic book, pushed against the wall behind Daddy’s brown leather suitcase. I crawled under the bed, grabbed it, and heard Mama and Daddy on the path outside.
“Oh, Pauly, she just wanted to look at the new paint job on the breezeway.”
“Linda Gibson has her eyes on you, and you don’t discourage her.”
“I’m only being neighborly.”
The cabin door opened. I pulled my feet up so that I was lying on my side, wrapped around Daddy’s suitcase.
“You stare at her breasts.”
“The day I don’t notice a nice figure, you can put me under.”
“I wish that’s all you did.You don’t even bother to be discreet. Ye gods, my brother’s wife . . .”
“Let it go, Paula, my love. I’ve missed you.”
Mama sighed. “Me, too, Bill.”
The grit on the floor was sandpaper on my shoulder.
“C’mon, sweetheart.” Daddy’s voice was soft.
“What if the kids come looking for us?”
I made myself lie so still I felt my breathing stop.
“Let’s lock them out.” A click. “Come here, Paula.” Daddy sat down and the bed sank to within inches of my face. My right arm was folded under me, the comic in my hand. The floor felt like a hot iron on my elbow. I held my hand over my nose to keep the dust out. “I’ll never get enough of you,” Daddy said.
They were quiet, then something fell beside the bed. Daddy’s shirt. Mama’s sandals landed near my face, her sundress slid to the floor. Daddy said, “Sit up, let me do it.” His shoes dropped off the end of the bed, followed by Mama’s bra and panties.
I decided I would kill myself if they found me. It got so quiet I was afraid to breathe. The mattress sank over me, almost touching my face. Mama started making sounds, not words. Daddy growled. The metal bed springs moved up and down, up and down, touching my cheek, then rising again. I pushed one ear against the floor, put my finger in the other one to shut out the sounds. Some of Mama’s noises got through. The dust made me want to sneeze and I pinched my nose until tears filled my eyes. One of the hooks holding the bed springs stretched away from the frame. I stared at it, certain it would give way and the mattress would fall on me. I watched it hard, making it not slip any more. Just when I was sure it was going to fail, Daddy shouted something so loud I jumped, certain he’d seen me.
Mama moaned. “Bill, oh, God, Bill.”
The mattress moved, grew still. They panted like they’d been running. Mama sighed and they got quiet. I waited and waited, listening until their breathing slowed. My right leg cramped.Were they asleep? They had to be—then Mama’s feet touched the floor beside my head. She walked into the bathroom and closed the door. In the stillness that
followed, Daddy’s regular breaths turned into snores. Sounds came from the bathroom, water running, the toilet flushing, the echoing gargling noise of Mama brushing her teeth. I pictured her holding the bridge with her false tooth in it. The bathroom door opened and Mama padded barefoot to pick up her bra and panties. She slid into her sandals. Her clothes rustled. I heard the snapping of her hair as she brushed it, the soft pop of her lipstick tube, the click of the bolt lock. She opened the front door. Daddy mumbled, “Zat?”
“Sleep well, honey.” Mama’s Zippo clinked.
Daddy began to snore again. I wriggled out from under the bed and onto my back. Daddy’s foot hung over my face, his big toe almost touching my nose. I slid away and got to my feet, tiptoed away from the bed. Daddy turned onto his back. His thing lay across the bushy hair at the bottom of his belly.
I opened the screen door slowly, but the rusty springs creaked. I had one foot on the front stoop, my back to the room, when his snoring stopped. A fly buzzed near my ear. Daddy coughed. “Jubie?”
“Sir?” My voice cracked.
I heard him moving in the bed. “What are you doing?”
“I just wanted—”
“What?”
“My Wonder Woman. Davie had it and I wanted to take it to the pool, so I came—”
“Look at me.”
I couldn’t turn around to his nakedness. I held out the comic book.
“June!” His voice was stern. I turned. He had covered himself. The fly landed on my shoulder and I let it sit there, tickling me.
“Tell your mother I’m going to nap for a while.”
“Yes, sir.” The screen door clattered behind me. I ran into the yard and down toward the pool.
I slowed to a walk on the path through the pines, sick with relief. I had a stitch in my side and I rubbed it with my balled-up fist, choking to keep from crying.
At the pool I peeled the comic book off my sweaty hand, hurled it to the pavement, and dove into the deep end, barely missing Stell, who was hanging on the side. I went all the way to the bottom and hooked my fingers through the drain to hold me down in the cold, clear water.
CHAPTER 20
Daddy said he’d heard that Georgia barbecue, like fruitcakes, shouldn’t be missed. I added it to my list of favorite foods, along with onion rings and pecan pie.
Mama took a bite, closed her eyes, breathed deeply. “Delicious.” She’d said, “Bill, oh, God, Bill,” in that same tone of voice. I had to look away.
“Have you talked with Carter?” Mama asked Stell.
“Yes. He and his family are going on to Pawleys today.”
“And the people we rented from, will he tell them about our delay?”
Stell nodded. “He’ll get the key and directions to our place. I told him I’d call when we leave Claxton, maybe Monday. He’ll wait for us at the pier, no matter how late.”
“That is just so nice of him,” said Mama.
Stell said, “He’s a nice boy.” She ate a hush puppy. “There’s a tent meeting tonight.”
Daddy said, “So?”
Stell said, “As you know, I have a great interest in religion.”
Oh, brother, I thought.
Daddy rolled his eyes.
Stell wiped her mouth with a napkin. “I’ve always wanted to go to a revival.You remember when we went to see Daddy Grace and I—”
“Where’s this meeting?” Daddy asked.
“Just outside town.We can walk. I’m sure Mary would like to go.”
Mama looked at Daddy. “Or they could use the Chrysler.”
“Not on your life,” Daddy said. “She already wrecked the Packard.”
“That wasn’t my fault!” Stell shrieked.
Daddy looked sorry. “What time’s this thing?”
Stell smirked at me. “Not until eight, and it’s only five thirty.”
I watched my feet while we walked, trying to keep my tennis shoes from getting too dirty before we got to the meeting. Stell had polished her white patent leather flats with Vase- line; they were glopped with a paste of grease and red dust.
I remembered something I saw in a newspaper in Claxton. I wanted to ask Mary about it but wasn’t sure how. School would be starting soon, and there was all sorts of speculation about how we’d be affected by something called Brown versus Board of Education. The Supreme Court. Colored and white kids going to school together. I’d seen a picture in the paper of a Negro girl in Washington who was going to a white school because the Court said she could.The girl stood in front of her house with her mama and daddy. The words under the picture said it was little Alysha Alderman, but she didn’t look little to me. Her skinny arms dangled from the sleeves of her dress, and she was almost as tall as her father.
“Mary, did you go to school when you were a girl?”
“How else you think I came to read and write?”
“Your mama could have taught you.”
“Mama never read nor wrote, not in her life.”
“Where’d you go to school?”
“In what used to be a house, till the land around it got farmed out. The people moved on, leaving a rotten barn and a decent farmhouse.”
“Who was your teacher?”
“We had first one, then another.Wore them out because all of us was in the same room, even ones too young to be in school, but they had to be someplace while they mamas would go clean houses, do mill work. Then they was us older ones. I kept going till I was fifteen and had to go do houses my own self.”
“You know those signs we keep seeing, ‘No Browns in Our Schools’?”
“I know about that.”
“That’s because of Brown versus Board of Education,” Stell said. I’d never thought to ask her.
“That’s it,” said Mary. “But I s’pect your mama’s right. Won’t see Negro children going to school with white children here. Not for a while. But it’ll happen. Just people needs to register, vote. Take time, but we do it.”
She meant her people, not us.
The rest of the way to the tent meeting, my mind was filled with thoughts of what it would be like to go to school with coloreds. Would they sit beside me? Were they smart enough to learn? Mary was. Leesum was. The way Mama and Daddy talked, mixing blacks and whites in school would be horrible, but maybe they were wrong.
We saw a lake in a field, a rowboat tied to a pier. A platform with a stub of a diving board floated out in the middle, and two colored boys sprawled on the float. A girl stood at the end of the board, holding her arms over her head, hands together, pointing toward the sky. She leaned over the end of the board until she fell in, then climbed up and did the same thing again. I could have showed her a thing or two about diving.At the far end of the pond, a woman was fishing, the float on her line making rings on the water.
Long before we got to the tent we could see it, a huge khaki box growing out of the grass. A man and three children trotted down the road.
“We gone be late, Daddy,” said one of the children.
“Naw we ain’t,” said the man, “if you runs fast.” He touched his hand to his hat as he passed us.
At the path that led to the tent, Stell brushed the dust from her legs. Mary smoothed down the skirt of her dress, straightening till she seemed a foot taller.
In the dusk, the tent glowed, with yellow light pouring from every opening. As we approached, I heard a jumble of voices, a girl giggling. A man shouted something I didn’t understand. Whatever he said made the girl laugh so hard she choked.
Mary spoke to a man standing by the entrance, smoking. “Evenin’.”
“Yes’m, yes’m.” He nodded to us.
“We comin’ to de meetin’,” Mary said.
“Yes’m, you and the young misses?”
“That right. That right.” Her head bobbed up and down. “Have it started?” She sounded like our yard man.
“No’m, and still plenty room.”
“Mary, why are you talking—” She grabbed my hand and looked at
me in a way that hushed me.
She asked, “It okay we takes a seat?”
His head bobbed back and forth. “Fine, just fine.”
Inside the tent the air was warm and damp. Too many bodies too close together. We stood in the aisle. People turned in their seats, looked at us. Silence moved across the tent. An old woman stood and held her hand out to Mary.
“Evening, Sister.You visiting the meeting?”
“Yes’m, me and de girls. I works for dey mama.”
“We welcome you.” She motioned to some empty chairs three rows from the back. “Help yourself.”
We took seats on the wide aisle. A center pole raised the canvas high off the floor. Support poles formed a vast square room, with flaps tied back at each corner to let in air. People sat on folding wooden chairs, ladder-backs and stools, metal porch chairs, wooden rockers. Children sat on fruit crates in the aisle. In less than a week I’d been in two tents—the first one at the carnival where I met Leesum.
The wooden altar had a cross painted on it, with twelve flaming candles set in brass candlesticks around the front and along both sides. A choir in purple robes filled chairs behind the pulpit, sitting silent and still, their faces lit by the flickering light. All I could think about was how hot they must be in their robes.
Stell’s shoulder touched mine. She fingered her cross, pulling the chain tight against her neck. Mary opened her purse and took out a fan—cardboard with a wooden handle and a picture of Jesus suffering the little children. “We can share.”
A family sat in front of us, a man in overalls and a white shirt, a woman in a flowered dress and hat. Three children, two girls and a boy. The older girl looked at me. She wore pearls and there was a coarse hair caught in the clasp.
Two boys in white robes entered through one of the corners of the tent, carrying flowers they put in front of the choir, which stood humming in unison, then falling into harmony until the hum became a strong chord that faded and grew, soft, loud, soft again. Eyes closed, they swayed side to side.
A fat man in a dark suit walked up the aisle, holding a Bible against his chest. His head was bowed and his eyes were closed, but he never missed a step. When he turned and looked at the congregation, the candles lit his face. His white hair bushed out from his head, and his eyes glittered as he set the Bible on the pulpit, then lifted his hands and said, “Brothers and Sisters, welcome to the house of God.”
The Dry Grass of August Page 15
