Far brighter than Francine, Algeria has displayed upon many occasions an uncanny ability to perceive attitudes behind spoken words or facial expressions. She can quickly dissect a situation, lay it open, and label causes and effects. She foretold the termination of our principal’s marriage six months before it took place and cited as a contributing factor a romantic involvement between Mr. Solomon and the special education aide at the high school. No one else, including Mr. Solomon’s longtime secretary, had any inkling of the relationship.
Unstintingly outspoken when she chooses to unleash her opinions, Algeria displays relentless argumentative talents, though she lacks the grace of speech and breadth of vocabulary to promote her views winsomely and therefore convincingly. She and Vonnie Lee often debated warmly, generally concerning the issues of civil rights and the welfare system, and many times the two of them left the cafeteria in the afternoons hurling last words at each other.
Their wrangling aside, I saw numerous evidences that Vonnie Lee and Algeria regarded each other with a degree of affection. Once when I intervened and demanded that they stop their arguing and concentrate on their work, Vonnie Lee said, “Arguing? What’s that you’re calling arguing, Margaret? We call it discussing.” To which Algeria added, “And looks like to me we gettin’ our work done just fine.” At this point Francine contributed the following: “Did I tell y’all our dog’s gone into heat? You ought to see the crowd of boy dogs hanging around our trailer!” I suppose Vonnie Lee and Algeria were more like men than women in their ability to disagree one minute and stand together as a team the next.
These brief portraits of my co-workers represent only a small fraction of what I know about them. One can discover many things by listening. If I were to be quizzed on such minutiae as Francine’s average monthly electric bill, the name of Algeria’s junior high track coach, or the color and model of the first car Vonnie Lee ever drove, I could answer them all. Of their personal lives, I never inquired, nor did they share with me their family concerns. When they broke off in the middle of sentences upon my approach, I was grateful, for I shunned the airing of private troubles.
All three women had proved over the ten years to be dependable workers with only occasional minor lapses in efficiency—lapses that, I admit, I greatly exaggerated so as to make a lasting impression. I believe I can fairly assert that they all respected me as their superior, though our relationship never evolved into anything resembling friendship. Whereas the three of them talked freely among themselves throughout the day, I maintained a wall around myself that none of them ever attempted to scale. They never included me in their conversation, and I never offered to join.
This, then, is the background of the group to which Birdie Freeman found herself a newcomer nine months ago. Having lost Vonnie Lee from our crew, I was somewhat anxious about Birdie’s capabilities and performance.
A substitute had been foisted upon us a few years earlier when Francine had taken a leave to assist her mother following surgery, and it had been a most horrendous month for the other three of us. The woman, named Larkin Depp, had possessed not the smallest spark of initiative and could not remember the simplest procedure once she had performed it. For example, Vonnie Lee had demonstrated the preparation of rice five times before Larkin could do it alone, and one morning the dull-witted woman had dropped and broken an eight-pound jar of mayonnaise on the floor of the pantry, then stepped in it and left greasy white tracks all over the kitchen as she slowly plodded after me to report the accident. I was in the rest room off the kitchen at the time, but rather than wait until I emerged, she pounded on the door and called to me, “We got us a mess to clean up!” Algeria had made Larkin remove her sneakers and run them through the dishwasher.
Happily, I discovered early that I had no cause to worry, for Birdie stepped into her new position with ease and competence. When I emerged from my cubicle two hours after our brief meeting that first morning, I saw Birdie at one of the large sinks with a bottle of Clorox, scrubbing between the white tiles of the backsplash with a toothbrush. She had tied a vivid purple scarf over her hair and had donned a white plastic apron. She smiled at me brightly as I walked past her into the pantry.
“Now, doesn’t that look just a whole lot better?” she asked, waving the toothbrush toward the area that she had finished scrubbing.
I stopped and studied the backsplash, noting the stark contrast between the scrubbed and unscrubbed tiles. “Whose toothbrush are you dipping into bleach?” I asked.
“Oh, it was under the sink in the bathroom,” Birdie replied. “Francine said it was Vonnie Lee’s.”
Algeria appeared at Birdie’s side and scowled at me. “No way Vonnie Lee gonna be comin’ back askin’ after her toothbrush,” she said.
I turned sharply and continued on my way into the pantry. I heard Algeria say, and I am certain that she intended for me to hear, “You be findin’ out real soon that don’t none of us here sit around waitin’ for Margaret to brag on us. If she don’t say nothin’, then it’s prob’ly good. If it’s just medium, she make you feel like it’s bad, and if it’s bad, she jump on you hard.”
And I heard Birdie laugh lightly and say, “Oh well, we’re all old enough not to need a lot of praise the way little children do.” I had to stand in the center of the pantry a moment in order to recall my mission. During this moment I admit to feeling peeved over two matters: first, Algeria’s frank and uncomplimentary summary of my supervisory manner, and second, the fact that the condition of the tile grout had escaped my notice, for I was certain that the discoloration had not occurred just over the past summer.
Remembering why I had come to the pantry, I opened the large sealed tin of flour from the previous school year and began checking carefully for meal bugs. As I did so, I heard Birdie humming. I stopped and listened, and within a few moments she began singing softly, her voice light and high, with a trembling vibrato. I could barely discern the words, but I knew them from many years ago. “So precious is Jesus, my Savior, my King,” the song began.
Had it been Vonnie Lee singing “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’”—one of her favorites, always performed while holding as her microphone a large beater from the Sunbeam mixer—I would have put a speedy end to it. Looking back on Birdie’s first song, I have often wondered whether I could have prevented many of the subsequent changes in our kitchen milieu had I responded decisively at that single moment. Had I charged forth and pronounced a ban on all singing, or at least on all singing of religious songs, maybe I could have held Birdie at bay indefinitely. But perhaps I am only deluding myself. Birdie’s singing was, in truth, only a small accessory of her person. Upon reflection, however, I am quite convinced of the incomprehensible fact that something within me that day perversely craved a reminder of some aspect of my earlier life. It was as if a small seed planted long ago had begun to stir.
At lunchtime that first day, Francine, Algeria, and Birdie sat down together at the large stainless steel worktable around which we had met that morning. I could see them from my cubicle, but because of the combined din of the two large window fans and the dishwasher, which Algeria had loaded with all the pots, pans, and utensils that hung from large hooks above the worktable, I could not hear them.
My own lunch that day, which I ate at my desk, consisted of a pimento cheese sandwich, a pear (which unfortunately was too hard and green to be satisfying), a small bag of pretzels, and a thermos of iced tea. As I ate, I pretended to read a sheaf of papers in a large envelope labeled Current Regulations for School Cafeteria Employees that had been in the stack of mail on my desk. I found it difficult to concentrate, however.
Birdie had removed her apron for her lunch break, but she still wore the purple scarf. It was tied with a small bow on top after the fashion of housewives in the forties—very much, in fact, as Rosie the Riveter had worn her bandanna. As I studied a page from my packet titled Percentage of Fat in New Dietary Standards, I looked over the top of the sheet to see Birdie remove a
few wrapped items from a small brown paper sack, lay them in a neat row before her, and then bow her head.
Francine and Algeria glanced at each other, but when Birdie finished and raised her eyes, they were staring at their sandwiches, eating mutely. The dietary notification I was reading was a duplicate of one that I had received in the spring, stating that over the course of the next three years our menus would be reexamined and revised to eliminate approximately twelve percent of the fat. I skimmed through the page, assured that the changes would not affect our operation this year, and set it aside to be filed.
Birdie was laughing gaily when I looked back at her. She had unwrapped something from her lunch and was pointing to it. Francine was laughing also, and Algeria was shaking her head, her eyelids half-closed, her expression inscrutable. As I watched, Birdie turned to my cubicle, still laughing. I quickly averted my eyes and, bending to open the bottom file drawer of my desk, pretended to be searching for something.
A moment later I looked up to see Birdie standing in the doorway of my office. “Look at this, Margaret.” She was smiling broadly, her large front teeth overlapping her lower lip, and she held before her what appeared to be a sandwich. I said nothing. I saw no cause to smile and certainly not to laugh. Slowly Birdie separated the two pieces of bread to reveal—nothing. I sensed that Francine and Algeria were watching us, waiting for my reaction.
“Yes?” I said, looking up at Birdie with what I considered a sensible, steady gaze.
In her other hand Birdie held up a slip of white paper and stepped closer to me. In small, neat letters, a combination of printing and cursive, someone had written these words: you said just make it something plain and simple did’nt you?
“What do you think I ought to do to a husband who’d pull something like this on me?” Birdie asked, her brown eyes twinkling.
I said what immediately came to my mind. “Tell him that he failed to capitalize the first word of his sentence, that he omitted a comma after the word simple, and that he misplaced the apostrophe in the contraction didn’t.”
Birdie looked again at the note and burst out laughing. “Oh, now that’s a good idea, Margaret! I think I’ll do just that. Not say a word about the sandwich but just talk about the note instead.” She turned and left, and I heard her call eagerly to Francine and Algeria, “Margaret’s got a good idea! She says I should …” Then her words were lost to me. I turned my chair to face the opposite direction, and as I drank the last of my tea, I faintly heard the sounds of her laughter still wafting through my doorway.
A minute later Birdie was back. “Just so you won’t worry, Mickey had a slice of ham and some lettuce wrapped up for me in another little package. So I’ve got me a real sandwich after all.”
I nodded at her and said, “Very well.”
“But I’m still going to tell him that thing you said about his note.” She bobbed her head happily, and one end of the bow on top of her scarf flopped over her brow. She turned to go, then immediately swung back around. “Oh, Margaret, do you like oatmeal cookies?” she asked.
“Not particularly,” I replied.
“Oh, that’s all right,” she said, waving a hand. “I just thought you might like to have a couple of mine. I don’t know what Mickey was thinking of—he put eight in my lunch sack!”
She returned to Algeria and Francine, leaving me to ponder the strangeness of a woman Birdie’s age having a husband who packed her lunch and played practical jokes on her. I suddenly felt an ardent conviction that I wanted nothing to do with this woman who wore a scarf and jumper, who plaited and pinned her hair, whose small hands were so ready to touch, whose feet moved so quickly and softly. I told myself I wanted no part of someone who sang hymns and prayed before eating her lunch and who offered to share her oatmeal cookies. These idiosyncrasies, if allowed to go unchecked, could conceivably bring about a dangerous permutation of the working environment that we had all grown accustomed to. They could chafe and choke.
Though she had been at Emma Weldy only four brief hours, something deep within me could not imagine our kitchen now without the presence of Birdie Freeman.
On that first day, had I been granted the use of a single word to describe Birdie Freeman, I would most likely have chosen the word innocent. I realized, of course, that at her age, which I judged to be close to that of Algeria and myself—that is, around fifty—she had undoubtedly seen enough of life to have shattered any rosy ideals about human nature, hope, or the ultimate fulfillment of dreams. Nevertheless, her shining brown eyes were innocent.
My earliest assumption was that from childhood Birdie Freeman had been shielded from all worldly corruption by protective, religious parents. Further, I could not imagine that she had borne children, for she was so childlike herself. If the relationship between Thomas and me excluded the usual conjugal practices, I reasoned, no doubt there were other couples who, for various reasons, lived under similar terms of cohabitation. Perhaps Birdie and her husband were such a couple.
At the end of the day, a small, high-spirited man appeared at the kitchen doorway, produced a piercing series of whistles and trills such as one might hear in an aviary, and called to Birdie from the doorway, “Birdie, treasure, you about done?” He was wearing brown pants and a green plaid shirt, and though he was not a tall man, he held his shoulders erect. (I detest a drooping posture.) His ears, somewhat too large for his head, seemed to be angled forward as if to enhance his hearing. The effect was that of an adolescent boy.
At the time of his arrival, I was posting sheets of safety regulations on the bulletin board beside the rear door. Algeria and Francine were finished for the day and were removing their aprons. Francine was telling Algeria of a serial killer featured on Unsolved Mysteries. Birdie, still scouring the knobs on our large grill with a Brillo pad, was the last to note her husband’s arrival, and by the time she saw him standing in the doorway, the other three of us were staring at him as though viewing a Martian. Perhaps we were all attempting to reconcile this small, nondescript man before us with the mischievous one who had packed two plain pieces of bread and eight cookies in Birdie’s lunch. For the benefit of those familiar with politics in the nineties, Mickey Freeman could be said to resemble Ross Perot.
Mickey smiled at us, bowed comically as if ending a vaudeville act, then raised his voice and repeated his question. “Birdie, treasure, you about done?” His words brought to mind a book I had read soon after its publication in 1991. I had seen an interview of the author, Kaye Gibbons, on a television program featuring southern writers. Her voice had enchanted me, and I had immediately secured copies of her three novels: Ellen Foster, A Virtuous Woman, and A Cure for Dreams. She has since written others. In A Cure for Dreams, the young narrator and her mother discuss men and their manner of addressing their wives in public. The mother informs her daughter that the most polite mode of address includes the woman’s name, spoken in a respectful tone, and she warns the girl to reject a man who uses honeyed, insincere pet names such as dear or, even more detestable, one who merely commands “Come on!” without any accompanying noun of address.
I believe that there is a great deal of truth in this mother’s observation. If such were possible, a woman would do well to listen to her prospective husband—without his knowing it, of course—for many years before marrying him in order to project his voice to a time when the newly spun threads of courtship have been anchored into the loom of marriage. During the television interview with Kaye Gibbons, she was asked why most of the positive characters in her books were women and why the men usually vanished from the plot through a variety of unheroic means. She smiled briefly, I recall, and then said that she had “never been overly impressed with southern men in general.” For my part, I would not have limited the generalization to southern men.
Mickey Freeman’s address of Birdie passed the test set forth in Kaye Gibbons’ novel. He spoke his wife’s name, followed by a rather quaint term of endearment, then asked a brief question. His tone of voic
e was patient and respectful. When Birdie looked up to see her husband in the doorway, she smiled and beckoned him to come into the kitchen.
“I’m just finishing this one last thing,” she said, sponging the knobs with clean water. She began polishing them quickly with a rag, then spun around and said, “Oh, wait a minute. I’m forgetting my manners!” She laid her rag aside and steered Mickey in my direction. Motioning to Algeria and Francine, she called, “Can you come over here just a minute and meet my husband?” Birdie made the introductions in perfect accordance with the rules of etiquette. We all seemed to be transfixed, as if Emily Post were in our presence. Even Algeria extended her hand to Mickey and muttered, “Nice meetin’ you.” Mickey shook our hands in turn and had a polite word for each of us. Mine was “Margaret—I’ve always been partial to that name. My favorite cousin growing up was named Margaret.”
Then, lowering his eyebrows, he looked at all of us and said, “I sure hope Birdie can keep this job. I guess she told you it’s her first one since she’s been out on parole.”
Before he had finished, Birdie was reaching out to try to cover his mouth with both of her hands, laughing as she did so and saying, “Stop it, Mickey! Stop it! They’re going to believe you!”
Though Francine let out a great yap of laughter, Algeria looked as if she wanted to pick Mickey Freeman up and wrench his neck. She could easily have done so.
After she ceased laughing, Birdie looked around at us and said, “He’s hopeless. I can’t do a thing with him!” Then she looked at her husband and shook her head in mock reproof. “Now, you be good, Mickey. These ladies have been so nice to me today.” She beamed at each of us within the small circle before I turned and retreated into my cubicle. Behind me, I heard her say good-bye to Algeria and Francine. Then she called to me, “Thank you, Margaret! I’ll see you in the morning,” and Mickey said, “Adios, adieu, and catch you later, as they say in Nepal!” They laughed as they left, and I heard Birdie say, “Oh yes, it was a delicious sandwich once I got it all put together.”
Some Wildflower In My Heart Page 5
