AFTER MARY SUE MOVED OUT, GRANDPA HARVE MOVED BACK IN. HAVING RELATIVES LIVE WITH US PROVIDED Mama with a sense that someone, no matter how feeble or ill-equipped, was keeping watch-care over us. From where he sat every afternoon, chain-smoking, Grandpa Harve could see that Mama was doing the best she could, considering, but the former lawman could also see that Frank needed more supervision than an Alabama chain gang.
Frank was angry. And he lacked the verbal skills to articulate his frustrations or the emotional fortitude to wrestle the growing madness within him. Frank wasn’t crazy. He was just plumb upset. Like me, he was struggling to figure out how to get through life without Daddy. The two of them had been the best of buds. Mama had only had to look at Daddy’s shadow to find Frank. He was always tagging alongside Daddy.
Nobody was offering to teach him how to cope with death. So Frank settled for the next best thing—a means to dull the ache. He discovered a fifth of Crown Royal that somebody, maybe Mama, had left in the backseat of the red Falcon and began using it as a pretty effective pain reliever. (Frank had stripped the gears on Mama’s Chevy Malibu during an illegal hot-rod excursion down the freeway late one night, and Mama bought the Falcon to replace the trashed Malibu.) Frank grabbed that bottle and his buddy Joe C. and headed for the lake. The two of them downed the entire bottle in an afternoon. It was Frank’s first drink. He was fourteen, almost fifteen.
He got sicker than a yard dog with scours. He spent the evening puking and finally passed out on the living room floor. Mama didn’t have any idea that he’d been drinking. She figured a day at the lake in Georgia heat was enough to tire anybody out. She left him lying there.
But she roused him early the next morning. It was vacation time. He had to help her drive to Tennessee. Mama didn’t usually like to go to Tennessee on her vacations. She’d much rather go to Panama City, Florida, and bask in the sun. But Uncle Hugh Lee was getting ready to leave for another tour of military duty, and Mama wanted the chance to say good-bye.
In 1966, while Daddy was in Vietnam, Hugh Lee wrote him a letter asking whether he should stay in the Navy or do something else when his tour was up. Daddy wrote back and told his younger brother to do something else. Hugh Lee kept Daddy’s letter packed away in a storage shed for many years, with his other military gear, at the edge of the sweeping acre that serves as his backyard. If he wanted, Hugh Lee could pitch a rock from his backyard and hit the roof of the Elm Street home where Granny Leona and Pap had once lived. The envelope had a map of Vietnam on it. On that map, Daddy had marked the spot where he was.
In the letter, Daddy told Hugh not to reenlist. “Sooner or later,” he said, “you get tired of being shot at.”
“He told me because I had an education I could do anything I wanted to do,” Hugh Lee recalled. “I’m sure Dave’s letter was one of the reasons I didn’t reenlist. It wasn’t the only reason, but it was one of the reasons.”
So, when his tour was up in 1967, Hugh Lee returned to Tennessee and worked an assortment of jobs. But in 1969, for a variety of reasons, he joined the Navy again.
Mama had another reason for taking the trip to Tennessee. She was dropping me at Granny’s for month.
If I’d been thirteen, Mama could’ve blamed my sour attitude on puberty, but I was only twelve. Mama’s a quiet woman, not prone to outbursts of any sort. She typically doesn’t yell. She doesn’t cheer. She doesn’t say ugly things. And she didn’t used to say too many nice things, either. Mostly, she just kept to herself—if I would let her. My temperament is the opposite. My temper fuse is shorter than the used wick of a birthday candle, and the motor on my mouth has more combustion than a gas-fired turbine. I always say the first and last thing on my mind. Mama had run out of energy to put up with me. Granny Leona always enjoyed my company.
In the mornings, Granny and I would visit over bowls of oatmeal soaked with Pet milk. In the afternoons, Pap and I would walk down to Hurd’s store for a cold pop and a bag of peanuts. Sometimes I’d pour the peanuts into the neck of the cola bottle, the way Aunt Mary Sue had taught me. In between visits with Granny and Pap, I took walks up the hill to chat with Mrs. Blizzard, a widow who lived near Lyons Park Baptist Church.
A tall, lanky woman, Mrs. Blizzard looked to me like she could reach the kitchen table from her living room couch just by stretching out her arms. I don’t know why she tolerated my afternoon visits, but she seemed genuinely delighted whenever I dropped in on her. Sometimes she pulled out the family photo albums and told me about her dead husband and her grown kids.
Her stories were never about them being grown, of course. They were always about when she was a mother of young children.
“I would never let anyone kiss my babies,” Mrs. Blizzard would say. “And I never kissed or hugged anybody else’s babies. Too many germs are spread that way.”
I didn’t worry too much about germs then. In fact, one of the reasons I liked visiting Mrs. Blizzard was because I had to walk past Rodney’s home. Pretty boy Rodney was sixteen. He lived smack-dab halfway between Granny’s house and Mrs. Blizzard’s. And despite Mrs. Blizzard’s warning about the hazards of kissing, I spent many an afternoon and evening thinking about swapping slobbers with Rodney. But the most we ever swapped were a couple of “Heys.”
While I lingered around Granny’s that summer, snapping peas and reading and rereading Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, trouble was brewing back in Georgia.
Frank and Joe K. slipped into the projects across the tracks one afternoon, armed with a slingshot and rocks. In their own version of Army, they tossed their grenades at the enemy until the enemy came running toward them with real guns a’popping. Nobody got hurt, but it caused quite a stir on both sides of the tracks for a week or two when the police paid Mama a casual visit.
The next time the police came calling it was on more official business. Mama had sent Frank to the store to get her a pack of cigarettes. Frank had turned fifteen in mid-June. He wasn’t old enough to drive, but Mama gave him the keys to her Falcon anyway. Frank was eager to do any of Mama’s errands as long as he had the keys to her car. Besides, Mama reasoned, she might as well give Frank the keys, since he was always stealing them anyway.
Frank and Joe K. hopped in the car and headed up Morris Road to the corner market. They picked up her cigarettes and were on their way back home when they sped past a motorcycle cop parked next to Tillinghurst Elementary School.
The officer pulled out after Frank. Knowing full well he was too young to be driving, Frank figured he was in big trouble. So, he reasoned he only had one option—outrun the cop. Frank knew the 1965 Falcon was equipped with a 289 high-performance engine. Surely a cop on a bike was no match for such a demon. Frank pushed the pedal to the floor while Joe played scout.
“Take a right! Take a right!” Joe K. shouted, as Frank came up the Lake Forest entrance.
Glancing at his speedometer—forty-five miles per hour—Frank kept the pressure on the gas. He turned the car on two wheels.
“That pig’s right behind us!” Joe shouted. Frank didn’t slow down for the potholes. “Holy Shit!” Joe yelled. “Wipe out!”
Looking into his rearview mirror, Frank watched as the cop’s bike spun out from underneath him. Both bike and driver bit the dust.
“I bet he’s gonna be pissed now,” Frank said. He didn’t stop to offer the fellow a helping hand. He parked the car behind the trailer. Figuring out of sight, out of mind, maybe the cop would forget about him.
He and Joe walked casually into the trailer, handed Mama the paper sack holding her cigarettes, and then headed for Frank’s bedroom. They were sitting on his bed, whispering excitedly about their adventure, when the cop rapped loudly on the trailer door.
It was a good thing for Frank that our unsuspecting Mama already had her cigarette lit when she opened that door. She needed something to calm her down. The cop cited Frank for driving without a license and reckless driving. When word got around to the trailer park manager, there was another angry rap at the door. He
gave Mama forty-eight hours to put the wheels back on the trailer and get her ass out of his park.
I DIDN’T KNOW a thing about the ruckus Frank was creating in Georgia until it was time for me to leave Granny’s. Mama called and said she wasn’t going to be able to pick me up. Could somebody please make sure I got on the right dog—Greyhound bus—for the ride home?
Granny scribbled down the new address Mama gave her. Then Uncle Doug took me to town to catch the bus. The bus driver assured my uncle that he would deliver me to the right spot.
It was morning when I left Tennessee and morning when we crossed the Georgia state line the next day. The bus took the milk route, meaning that whenever somebody yanked the cord overhead, we stopped. Sometimes we stopped when they weren’t yanking the rope. There was a bellyaching drunk on the bus, and about halfway into the trip, before we’d gotten out of Tennessee, the bus driver pulled over on a grassy spot and chucked him out the doors. There wasn’t anything around except a road that seemed to go nowhere in both directions. Then the driver took his seat, looked into the mirror above his head, and said: “The next one of y’all that gives me any trouble is going to get the same treatment.”
I hunkered down farther into my seat. “Oh, Lord,” I prayed. “Get me home safely.”
A crackle of thunder ripped through the heavens. In the distance a finger of lightning flashed, and hard rain pelted the windows. I leaned my head against the pane and exhaled. My breath coated the glass. I watched as the drunken man jerked at the neck of his shirt and yanked it up over his head. I hoped somebody would come along and give him a ride soon.
Some people on the bus had brought a sack lunch with them. I hadn’t thought to do that, so I slept through dinner. Fearful and angry, I waited until it got dark enough so I could weep with nobody seeing me. I hated Mama for making me take the bus home. Wasn’t she worried about me?
I was relieved when the bus finally rolled into the station in downtown Columbus. It was morning but it still looked like midnight. Dawn was a couple hours off yet. I clamored off the bus with about half a dozen other folks and waited quietly as the driver pulled my suitcase from the undercarriage. Then, lugging it behind me, I made my way into the brightly lit station. I quickly scanned the room for Mama, but she wasn’t there.
My chest burned, and I blinked back stinging tears. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. How could Mama leave me down here all alone? For gosh sakes, I was only twelve years old. I wasn’t even a mother, and I knew better than to leave a girl like me all alone. It was my first bus trip. It was the middle of dark. And Mama had up and moved to someplace I didn’t even know.
I walked over to the pay phone and dialed home. Mama answered, her voice thick with sleep, and told me to take a cab home. She gave me the address of our new trailer lot. I told her I didn’t have any money for a taxi. She said she would pay the driver when he dropped me off.
Now I was seething mad. Daddy would’ve never put me on a bus, much less tell me to catch a cab in downtown Columbus in the dark of morning. I couldn’t figure out who was dumber—God or Mama. Why in heaven’s name did he trust Mama with us kids? He must’ve been mental to think she could care for us by herself. Shoot, she hadn’t seen me for a month of Sundays, and she wouldn’t crawl out of bed to come pick me up. I was ready to get back on the bus and go right back to Granny Leona’s.
Instead, I walked to the curb to look for a taxi. I didn’t have to wait long before one pulled up. A black cabbie jumped out, tipped his hat, and opened the back door for me. He put my bag in the trunk. When he crawled back in behind the steering wheel, he turned and asked me, “Where to, ma’am?” I passed him the address I’d jotted down on a paper scrap.
“Crystal Valley?” he asked. “Whoo-wee! That’s way out Macon Road.”
Since I didn’t drive, I didn’t pay much attention to where things were or how far the road was between them. “I don’t know where it’s at, sir,” I replied. “Mama moved while I was away.”
“It’s okay, sugar,” he said. “I can get you there. Don’t worry.”
His radio beeped. Somebody else needed a ride, he explained as we pulled up in front of a downtown bar. A man wearing a white dress shirt and dark trousers was waiting. The cabbie rushed around to open the front passenger door for him. I took a deep breath and exhaled a silent “Thank you, God.”
A white man. Somebody who could be trusted. I’d been taught from a very early age to avoid black men. I don’t actually recall Mama warning me to stay away from blacks. I just always knew that dark-skinned men posed a threat, especially to blond-headed, blue-eyed girls like me. I knew that the same way I knew swimming in the pool with boys or heavy petting could make a girl pregnant.
The rules of social interaction between blacks and whites were part of our daily instructions, like the Ten Commandments. Don’t look a black fella in the eyes, lest he think you’re easy. Don’t lend black girls a comb; they have head lice. Always keep the doors locked when driving through the projects or black neighborhoods. Blacks travel in gangs, and they are violent. Never, ever, be alone with a black man; he’ll rape you.
I’d never before had an occasion to be alone with a black man, and I didn’t want to now, in the dark before dawn and in the middle of nowhere. It didn’t matter to me if the white man was sweating and swearing. The social mores of that time had taught me that I was safer with a drunken white man than a sober black man, any time of the day or night. I didn’t have any reason to question that, so I didn’t.
As the cabbie drove out past Shoney’s Big Boy Restaurant, a couple of churches, and Parkhill Cemetery, I began to wonder if I’d scribbled down the right address. When we passed Macon Road Barbecue, the place Mama took us out to eat occasionally, I really began to fret. There weren’t many housing developments past Reese Road. We dropped the drunk off in front of a red-brick colonial in an obscure cul-de-sac.
The cabbie must’ve sensed my nervousness. “It ain’t much farther now, ma’am,” he said. Looking into his rearview mirror, I could see the whites of his eyes flashing.
“Okay, sir,” I whispered.
My palms were sweating, a nervous habit that plagues me to this day. I watched out the window, but I couldn’t see much. There were no streetlights. No moon. No houses with porch lights on. Nothing but the dark shadows cast by pines, oaks, and mimosa trees. And the dark driver in the seat in front of me. He might rape me, cut me with a knife, and leave me bleeding in a dirt ditch out here. Nobody would ever see him. He’s as black as midnight.
My next thought was of Mama. I hated her.
“I think the turnoff’s right up here,” the cabbie said, startling me. I craned my neck to get a look at the corner. There wasn’t a convenience store, gas station, or school nearby. A sole streetlight marked our path. A sign, painted blue and white, sat back off the corner, to the right: CRYSTAL VALLEY ESTATES.
Going by name only, a person might think the blacktop at Crystal Valley was sprinkled with rhinestones and the homes were all Georgian manor houses, replete with ornate pillars, stone porches, and sweet-faced women wearing antebellum skirts. Instead it was a sprawling neighborhood with chain-link fences and row after row of trailers with rippled-aluminum skirting.
The cabbie made a right-hand turn. He looked again at the scribbled address and called out the space number of my new home. He drove over several speed bumps, past a lake and lots of single-wide trailers, some with cinder block steps. Finally, at the very back corner of the park, there was our trailer. “That’s it!” I said, pointing toward our porch light. The driver pulled the taxi over and jumped out to open my door. Mama must’ve been waiting up for me, because she was out the door and by my side before the cabbie had time to retrieve my bag from the trunk. Mama thanked him and gave him a fistful of money.
“Long trip?” she asked, turning to look at me. Mama wasn’t the embracing sort. Picking up my suitcase, she led me to the trailer’s back door. There weren’t any steps to the front door yet, and i
t sat about four feet off the ground because of the slope of the lot.
Inside, the trailer was the same. Same three bedrooms. Same hallway. Same awful couch. But it all felt so strange to me. Like returning to elementary school as a high school senior. You recognize the water fountain you used to struggle to reach on tippy-toes, but now you tower over it. Everything feels familiar, but you don’t fit into the spaces anymore. The house smelled of Mama’s Salem cigarettes and Chanel No. 5 perfume. I could hear Frank’s heavy breathing through the stapled plywood walls. But I felt as if I didn’t belong in my own family anymore. It was the most lonesome feeling I’d ever had.
“G’night,” Mama said. “Good to have you home.”
“Thanks,” I mumbled as I slid open my bedroom door. It was attached to a roller that hung from the ceiling, and it often fell right off if I pushed it too hard. Since Linda and Frank were sleeping, I gave it only a light push. It glided open.
I crawled into bed without slipping out of anything but my shoes and fell asleep saying the only prayer I knew: “Our Father, which art in Heaven. Hallowed be Thy name. Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done…”
I hadn’t yet learned that it’s okay to cry out in prayer, or I might have gone to bed that night hollering: “What’s the matter with you, God? If you’re so all-powerful, how come you let Daddy die in some foreign country? And if you’re so all-loving, how come you don’t do better by us kids and Mama?”
What I didn’t know then was that Mama was pondering the very same questions. Only she wasn’t waiting around for God to get it all figured out. She had a plan.
CHAPTER 16
role reversal
IN THE FALL OF 1969, MAMA ENROLLED IN A NURSING PROGRAM AT COLUMBUS COLLEGE. SHE’D DECIDED THE best way to make a better life for us was to make more money. The only way she could do that was to become a registered nurse.
It was an admirable plan, one that left us kids marveling at our mama once again. Despite all her obvious shortcomings, Mama was the hardest-working person I knew. She never accepted things as status quo. She was forever trying to figure out how to give us kids a better life. Problem was, Mama defined a better life in material terms. This was the result of her impoverished childhood, I reckon. Plus, I guess Mama thought that if she could give us everything our father would have, then we might not miss him so much.
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