The Dry Grass of August

by Anna Jean Mayhew

  I sat up and studied the map. “Take Alternate 17 at Limehouse. From there it’s a hundred and seventy miles to Georgetown, fourteen miles to Pawleys.”

  “Ha!” shouted Stell Ann. “We’ll show the old poop.”

  I searched the map for the highways leading to Charlotte. “Stell? Don’t you want to go to Mary’s funeral?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why aren’t we going?”

  “Mama and Daddy want things back to normal. For us to get over it.” Stell moved her hands on the steering wheel. “Besides, I’m not sure her family wants us there.”

  “Why not?”

  “She was working for us when she died.”

  “But she was our friend.”

  “We paid her to be.”

  When we got to Pawleys Island, we saw the Chrysler parked in the glare of a pole lamp at the pier, Daddy in the driver’s seat, a cigarette in one hand, his flask in the other. Mama stood outside the car, talking to Carter beside his blue Ford coupe.

  “Ooh-h-h,” Stell squealed under her breath, looking at herself in the rearview mirror. She ran her fingers through her hair and pinched her cheeks to make them pink, as if Carter would notice in the dark. “How do I look?”

  Her hair needed combing, her shorts were wrinkled, and she looked like a kid. “Fine.”

  We got out and Carter walked up. He took Stell’s hand. “Your letters are great.”

  “Yours, too.”

  “Hey, Jubie,” he said. “You all right?”

  “I’m okay.” I got a whiff of Aqua Velva.

  “That’s great.” The last time I saw him was in the tree house.Was he thinking about that? “Where’d your dad go?”

  Mama stood beside the Chrysler, holding Davie, Puddin leaning against her. “He’ll be right back.” She touched my cheek. “Such a long face.”

  “I’ve had a headache all day.”

  “I’ll look for aspirin when we unpack.”

  Daddy came from under the pier, zipping his fly. “Let’s go.” His eyes shone in the streetlamp. He was already tipsy.

  Carter held out a key to Daddy. “Y’all’s house is real nice, right on the beach.”

  “Hop in your car,” Daddy said. “Lead the way.”

  We parked behind a weathered two-story house set off by itself at the end of the island. A wraparound porch was filled with rockers. The hinges on the screen doors needed oiling and the floorboards creaked under our feet.

  Carter said, “I’ll help Mr. Watts with the luggage. Maybe y’all could open some windows.”

  “And, Carter?” Mama said. “The flowered bag in the trunk of the Packard?”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Don’t bring it in.” She walked around inside the house while Stell and I opened windows.

  Daddy came through the front door with suitcases. “Pauly?”

  Mama stood in the kitchen doorway, Davie on her hip.

  Daddy asked, “Where’s this stuff go?”

  “You, me, and Davie down. Jubie, Stell, Puddin up.” Mama held Davie as if she didn’t know what to do with him. The light from the bare bulb over her head turned her hair into a halo. Davie whimpered when she shifted him in her arms. Mary would have put him to bed.

  I dragged Puddin’s bag and my suitcase up to our room. I was lucky to be sleeping with her. Davie kicked, but Puddin never moved after she got to sleep. The café curtains in our bedroom, white cotton with yellow and green apples, looked like they’d come out of somebody’s kitchen. Our mattress drooped in the middle and the throw rugs felt sandy. When I went to hang my toothbrush, I saw that the toilet and sink had rust stains. Mama would have gotten Mary to scrub them with Dutch cleanser.

  After Carter helped empty the cars, he and Stell Ann unpacked the kitchen things and Mama said, “We’ve got to get ice first thing in the morning.”

  While I was making our bed, Mama came in with a black fan and set it on the dresser. She handed me a bottle of mosquito repellent that smelled like turpentine. “When you’re ready for bed, rub this on you and Puddin.”

  I was in the kitchen taking aspirin when Daddy crossed the front room, a bottle of bourbon in his hand. He let the screen door bang behind him.

  “I’m going with Daddy,” I called over my shoulder, racing down the porch steps before Mama could stop me.

  The dunes were pale hills in the moonlight, the salty wind cool. Daddy was nowhere in sight. A path led to a cut in the dunes and as I came to the rise, I saw him sprawled in the sand, lifting the bottle. He took a long drink.

  I called out, “Hey, Daddy.”

  “Hey. C’mon down.”

  I sat beside him.

  He pointed at the moon with his index finger, his thumb up, like he was holding a pistol.

  “What’re you doing?”

  He took another gulp, propped his bottle in the sand. “Gonna shoot the moon, Jubie girl.”

  I looked up. “Mary said when it’s not quite full, it’s a ‘give-us’ moon. Like in the Lord’s prayer.”

  Daddy snorted. “Gibbous.”

  Was he making fun of Mary? “You can’t shoot it anyway, it’s too far away.”

  “Browning said, ‘A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?’ ”

  “What about a woman’s reach?”

  “The only thing a woman has to reach for is a man.” He took aim with his make-believe gun, his ring glittering in the moonlight.

  I put my hand on his arm. “Leave the moon alone, Daddy. Let’s go back to the house.”

  He staggered when he got up, and I put out my hand to help him. We walked back over the dunes, arm in arm.

  Mama stood in the living room, Davie asleep on her shoulder. “Jubie, it’s time for bed.”

  Daddy brushed past her to the kitchen. The icebox door opened and closed, followed by the sound of a church key cutting the top of a beer can.

  Mama went to the kitchen. “Bill, please . . .”

  His voice became low and husky. “Aw, honey, just put the boy down and come on to bed.”

  Mama said something I couldn’t hear and Daddy said, “I’m tired of everybody making such a racket about it. We can get another maid.” How could he talk about another maid? I ran upstairs and into the bathroom, slamming the door behind me. No one could take Mary’s place. I sat on the toilet, crying until there were no more tears, then shuffled down the hall to our room.

  Puddin sat on the bed by the window, the breeze ruffling her pink pj’s. “Read to me, Jubie?”

  “First let me put some mosquito oil on you.”

  Before I finished, Puddin was curled up asleep, her face soft as a baby’s. I stretched out next to her, trying to get comfortable, but the oil burned my skin and the sheets felt stiff. I could hear Stell and Carter in the wooden rockers on the porch, their muffled voices drifting up through the window. The fan whirred back and forth, rippling the sheets, the hum of the motor blending with the pounding surf. My head still ached and my eyes stung, but I couldn’t keep them open. I moved my leg so it just touched Puddin’s, and thought about Mary in a pine box in a freight train, jolting along the tracks northwest to Charlotte.

  I woke, sure Mary was near. I groped the darkness. “Where are you?” I heard her say, “Charlotte,” clearly, as if she were standing by my bed. “Mary?” I felt blood whooshing in my ears, heard her singing, “Amazing grace, how sweet I see, that lost a soul of sound. ” The mixed-up words made me shiver. I swung my feet off the bed, whispered, “Mary?” No answer, just the crash of waves on the beach. I stumbled toward the bathroom. Maybe she was there. I stared at myself in the mirror. My hair stood out from my head, my face was creased, my eyes puffy. I knew what I had to do. Mary had told me.

  Stell’s brush and comb were lined up on the back of the toilet with her deodorant and toothbrush. I used her stuff and my toothbrush, put on jeans and a T-shirt, socks and my Keds. I couldn’t find a bra, but I was afraid to turn on the light and wake Puddin.

  Every time
one of the stairs creaked, I stopped, listening, straining to see in just the night-light in the downstairs hall.

  Mama’s pocketbook was on the kitchen table. I took twenty dollars from her wallet and the keys to the Packard. I grabbed the keys to Daddy’s Chrysler, too, off a hook by the back door, and dropped them in my pocket.

  The door stuck. I had to jerk it open, making a scraping sound. I ran down the steps out to where the Packard was parked and drove slowly down the beach road at two in the morning, my eyes darting from the pavement to the speedometer, concentrating on steering as straight as I could. At the fishing pier I pulled over and got out to adjust the seat. My knees almost buckled under me and I had to hold the side of the car. I stood and breathed in the wind off the ocean, looking down the pier to where one light burned at the end. Several fishermen stood beneath it. I opened the trunk, lifted Mary’s flowered bag with all her things and the three fruitcakes, and put it in front with me.

  CHAPTER 25

  The beach highway follows the shoreline, so you have to go east to go west—Daddy said that every time we went home from Pawleys. As I drove up the coast, the road a black ribbon in the moonlight, I thought about how mad Daddy would be when he realized I’d taken the Packard. At least I wouldn’t be there when he woke up, sour and brittle until he could mend himself with a toddy. He’d take a sip, sigh with pleasure, and say, “The sun’s over the yardarm somewhere in the world.” But this time he wouldn’t have that morning drink. My foot went down harder on the gas pedal. He’d figure out some way to get the Chrysler started, keys or no keys, and take off after me.

  Just south of the state line, I took Highway 9 West, Mama’s favorite route, easy because it tracks the border between North and South Carolina almost all the way to Charlotte. I concentrated on the things Daddy had taught me about driving, like braking before a curve and accelerating in it. “A good car loves a curve,” he’d told me. “Good drivers do, too.” Every time a car came toward me with its high beams on, I remembered to focus on the Packard’s hood ornament, lining the swan up with the right side of the road. “If you flash your brights,” Daddy said, “you blind two drivers.” But I’d seen him do just that and mutter “son of a bitch” while he kept his high beams on.

  One time when the two of us were in our old stick-shift Chevy, he said he’d show me something if I promised not to tell Mama. He got the car going fast, pulled up the hand brake, turned the steering wheel, and in nothing flat we were headed back the way we’d come.

  “Goose it, Daddy!” I shouted. He was yee-hawing so loud he didn’t hear me.

  “The bootlegger’s one-eighty,” he yelled, and did it again.

  Daddy always got the man to check the oil and water when he bought gas, no matter what the gauges said, so I did that when I got to Dillon, ninety miles from Pawleys, almost halfway home. The man who came to the car window peered at me through thick glasses as if he were questioning whether I was old enough to drive. But all he said was, “Fill ’er up?”

  “Please, and check the oil, the radiator, the tires . . .”

  “I know how to service a car.”

  After I paid him, I pulled Mary’s bag close. I wanted to touch her things. The buckles on the leather straps of her bag were hard to open. I’d seen her struggle with them, tugging against the clasps, forcing the metal picks through the holes, saying, “Got ’er!” when the buckles finally gave.

  I spread the edges of the opening apart and was overcome by the smell of Cashmere Bouquet.

  Her white Bible wasn’t in the bag. Mama must have sent it back with her.Young Mary and Link might want it for the funeral, and Mama would have thought of that. I sat for a long while under the yellow light at the filling station, holding Mary’s Fuller Brush wide-toothed comb that Mama had given her. It still had a few hairs in it, long and rough, dark and curly. I pulled them out and wrapped them around and around my finger.

  Just after seven, in broad daylight, I pushed up the door on Mama’s side of our garage. It screeched on the springs. I inched the car forward, afraid I would scrape the side, but I couldn’t leave it in the driveway for anybody to see. I closed the garage door and sat down on the cold floor, arched my back, pulled off my Keds and rubbed my feet. It felt so good not to be in the car with my hands glued to the steering wheel.

  The grass in the backyard, still wet with dew, soothed my feet. The cowbell clanked as I opened the kitchen door, startling me, no matter that it had been hanging there since the day we moved in.The house was too quiet. I stepped on something hard and cold—a Coke bottle cap.The house stank of beer and cigarettes. There were dishes piled on the kitchen counter, empty bottles, overflowing ashtrays. I felt like a stranger coming through the back door for the first time, seeing our mess. Daddy’s mess. Mama would have a fit if she saw it this way, and I wondered what had happened to the arrangement she’d made for Young Mary to clean for Daddy.

  I wedged the doorstop in place to hold the back door open, went to the hallway, and switched on the attic fan. The fresh air brought in the early morning smell of grass and gardenias. I got the trash can from under the kitchen sink and began to fill it with empties—Coca-Cola, Seven-Up, Kentucky Gentleman, Jim Beam, Budweiser.

  I dumped ashtrays, swept the kitchen floor, wiped the counters, filled the dishwasher with crusted plates, rinsed clotted milk from bowls, opened the refrigerator. Daddy’s water bottle sat on the first shelf, full, and I stood in front of the open icebox, worn out, and drank. I turned to look at the kitchen and thought how proud Mary would have been that I’d cleaned it without being asked. I walked through Davie’s room and into Mama and Daddy’s bedroom, feeling strange being there all by myself and able to walk around and look without explaining what I was doing. Their bedroom was worse than the kitchen. I kicked at a pair of Daddy’s undershorts lying on the floor.

  I left their room as torn up as I’d found it and went upstairs where everything was the same as when Stell, Puddin, and I had carried our suitcases to the car. Our beds were made, our stuff put away, even the rug looked as if it had been vacuumed and nobody had walked on it since.

  Downstairs the mantel clock in the living room chimed ten. I looked up McDowell Street Baptist Church in the phone book, dialed the number and waited, my fingers crossed, hoping someone would be there, hoping I hadn’t missed the funeral, hoping—a woman answered.

  “Hello. I’m calling to find out when the funeral is for Mrs. Mary Luther.”

  “Hold on.”

  The woman hollered away from the phone, “Sister Luther that got murdered in Georgia, she at two, that right?” I heard a man’s deep voice in the background. The woman spoke to me again. “The visiting’s at eleven today at Alexander’s, service and burying here at two.You know where the church be?”

  “Oh, I—no, I don’t.”

  “On McDowell, couple blocks north of Trade. You won’t miss it; all the cars and people gone be here.”

  I got off the phone and looked in my closet for something to wear. As soon as I saw my navy Easter dress, I knew it was the one. Mary had told me I looked so fine in it. I’d wear Stell’s straw hat Mary admired. My short white gloves, my navy flats, and one of Mama’s pocketbooks.

  I scrubbed myself in the bathtub and lathered my hair twice, using Stell’s Breck shampoo she’d tried to hide in the linen closet. I loved how it made my hair silky. When I was as clean as I’ve ever been in my life, I sank back in the tub, running more hot water, letting the warmth sink into my bones.

  All my underwear was at the beach, so I raided Mama’s dresser, knowing her things would fit me better than Stell’s. I stood at Mama’s full-length mirror and looked at myself in her bra, garter belt, and stockings, before stepping into her panties. The curly blonde hair at the bottom of my belly had filled in, just in the last month or so. I looked like a woman. Mama’s bra was pink, lacy, and feminine compared with the white cotton ones Stell and I wore. My bosoms filled it completely.

  I padded into the kitchen in my stoc
king feet and fixed myself a peanut butter sandwich, wishing I had milk. When I opened the pantry door to get a can of apple juice, I tried not to look at the mouse droppings. I turned on the radio, just for the noise, and sat on a bar stool, drinking apple juice and tapping my foot to a song with a hard beat.

  While I was looking up the taxi company, the phone rang. I didn’t answer. It might be Mama or Daddy trying to find out if I was home. A dozen rings, then it stopped. I grabbed it and dialed the cab number fast, before somebody called again and got a busy signal.

  At one thirty, I sat on the living room sofa and waited for the taxi, my gloved hands folded on Mama’s navy clutch, Mary’s flowered bag by my feet. I’d see Leesum at the funeral and the thought comforted me.

  If the taxi driver thought it was strange to be picking up a teenager on Queens Road West on a Tuesday afternoon, he didn’t show it. “Where to?”

  “McDowell Street Baptist Church, two blocks north of Trade.”

  “Right you are. Real scorcher this afternoon.” He flipped down a flag on his dashboard and pulled away from the curb. I’d heard that cabbies would take you out of the way to get a bigger fare, but he went straight from Queens Road West to Kings Drive, up Morehead to McDowell, just as I would have. He pulled up beside a parked car and asked, “You going to need a ride home, miss?”

  “Yes, sir, but I don’t know what time. I’ll have to call you.” I wasn’t sure there’d be a phone I could use, but I’d cross that bridge when I got to it. Like Mary always said.

  There was a crowd in front of the church, and cars lined the street for blocks in both directions. The cab driver and I were the only white people in sight.

  “You sure this is where you want to be?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Your parents know you’re here?”

  I nodded. “I’m representing our family.”

  “Okey-dokey,” he said, and drove away.

  My first thought was to find Leesum. I walked around, carrying Mary’s bag. People looked at me as if they couldn’t imagine why I was there. A short woman held out her hand. “I believe we’ve met. It’s Miss Watts, isn’t it? I’m Harriett Coley.”