Making Waves

by Cassandra King

  I turned left on Hiram Street, toward the residential section of town. It has always gotten me that the streets are named like they are. None of them are official, far as I can tell, no street signs or house numbers; folks get their mail at the post office. But everyone in town calls the streets whatever name has caught on over the years, based on something notable about that street.

  There’s Main Street of course, the only one that makes sense. But the others—Doctor Street, for example, right off of Main Street. Old Dr. Davis’s office used to be located there, actually in his house, but that was years and years ago, in Aunt Della’s time. Now there’s a new clinic outside of town, toward Tuscaloosa, but still, Doctor Street it remains. Preacher Street, running parallel to Main, is the one with the three parsonages on it, and Magnolia Street is lined with huge magnolia trees. Hiram Street, with all the big houses on it, was named after Aunt Della’s daddy, Hiram Clark, who built the house where she lives now. He’s been dead for decades, but it’s still not hers, according to the locals, for it’s known as Hiram Clark’s house. My favorite one of all is Cemetery Street, so-called because it ends up at the cemetery. Now who’d want to live on Cemetery Street? You spend all eternity at that address. But it doesn’t seem to bother the folks who live there one bit. What a bunch of zany characters this town breeds!

  As soon as I pulled up into Aunt Della’s side yard, I knew I was home—the only home I’ve ever known. I’d always loved this house passionately, from my first sight of it.

  They say you don’t remember your infancy, but I swear I do. Sometimes it rolls over me in slow motion, like one of those old home movies, blurred and hazy with weird colors, but also clear in other ways. I remember the first time I saw Aunt Della’s house, though I was only a baby. Of course it seemed overwhelming then, huge with endless cool, dark rooms. I especially loved the front porch that wraps all around the house, and the startling shine of the tin roof in the sunlight.

  The yard, though, sealed my fate—I fell madly in love with it immediately. It was fantastic to me, a child’s fairyland of azalea bushes and dogwood trees, everything overgrown and voluptuous. Exotic trees there fascinated me as I grew older—granny gray-beard with fragrant white beards drooping; purple Japanese tulips; strong-scented sweet shrub with its tightly curled red buds; the inevitable giant magnolias I built tree houses in. Of course as an adolescent I came to appreciate the edibles: apple, pear, peach, and pecan trees, plum thickets, blueberry bushes and grapevines. An unbelievable smorgasbord.

  When Daddy Clark took me from his cold, loveless house and brought me here to live, I felt I’d died and gone to heaven, early on confusing my Aunt Della with one of the heavenly host. At that time, I wondered if this bustling gray-haired woman was actually my mother instead of the mysterious Charlotte, whom I couldn’t remember. No doubt I blocked out my earliest memories for a reason, for I hid behind Aunt Della when Charlotte finally reappeared in my life. Old Charlotte the harlot, my sainted mom, coming in with too little too late, not realizing she’d been replaced in my affections by an aunt she’d always scorned.

  I sat in the car a minute, taking it all in, unable to believe I was home again. It seemed like forever, like I’d been around the world or on a long ocean voyage. But here it was, my home. Suddenly tears stung my eyes and a huge lump came in my throat. Damn. I’d missed the old place more than I realized.

  I lugged out my suitcase but didn’t bother with the other junk I’d thrown in the backseat in my haste to get away. As I slammed the car door and started up the dark walkway to the porch, I saw the front door open slightly, and Aunt Della peeked out. Unable to contain myself, I shouted, “Aunt Della—it’s me!” and practically knocked her down bounding up the steps and grabbing her in my arms.

  “Oh, Taylor, oh, my baby!”

  She was crying and laughing at the same time, and so was I. It had been months since I’d seen her and I couldn’t get enough of her—I hugged and hugged and laughed and laughed. The prodigal returns.

  Aunt Della had killed the fatted calf for me, too. She refused to talk to me, to even answer my questions about how she was doing, until I’d eaten supper, late though it was. I put my suitcase down and she got back into her walker, a new apparatus I hadn’t seen before.

  “Be patient with me, honey,” she said as we began the walk down the long dark hall to the kitchen in the back of the house. “I can’t get around like I used to.”

  That proved to be an understatement. As I walked beside her, both hands out ready to catch her if she fell, she limped along, bent over the walker, moving painfully and slowly.

  “God, Aunt Della—I expected to find you really bad off, but you look great!” I lied to her as we walked along together. Again the lump in my throat. God, how could she have gone down so much since I saw her last?

  Aunt Della was a big-boned woman, though not fat, who’d always looked robust as hell to me. She had short-cropped gray hair that she had no patience with, never going to the beauty parlor like her cronies. But I saw now it was almost entirely white, and much sparser. Her print summer dress was wrinkled instead of meticulously ironed and spotless. I noticed for the first time that even in this unbelievably hot house, she had a shawl around her rounded shoulders. She’d completely changed, turned ancient now, her gnarled liver-spotted hands clutching the aluminum walker desperately.

  “I made all your favorites,” she said as we went into the kitchen, and I felt even worse. How could she have managed? Why hadn’t I been considerate enough to bring in some hamburgers for supper—damn it to hell. I didn’t know if I would be able to stand this.

  Aunt Della led me into her big old kitchen to what she called the breakfast table, as opposed to the dining room table in the musty dark dining room in the front of the house. She was of the old school; if you ate in her dining room, you had the antique lace tablecloth and linen napkins and gold-rimmed china. We used to eat like that every Sunday and every time company came. But at the little round breakfast table in the back corner of the kitchen, under the bay window, you could eat out of old plates and not have to worry about such niceties. The breakfast table was for serious hunger, which I sure had a case of now, despite my guilt.

  “You sit there at the breakfast table, sugar.” Aunt Della directed me with a nod of her head. “You serve your plate while I fix you a glass of tea.”

  And with that, she hobbled over to the fridge, getting out the pitcher of iced tea she always kept there.

  I did as she said, sitting down at the table and removing the soft old tablecloth that covered the supper. It was weird to me how she always had leftovers on the table covered with a cloth, sitting out all day, yet no one ever got sick from them. That covered table was another childhood delight of mine—I used to love to peek under it and marvel at the display of goodies, sticking my fingers here and there, tasting like a bear after honey.

  I grabbed a plate and dug into the unbelievable bounty spread out before me, food Aunt Della must have labored over all day. There was a platter of fried ham in clear red gravy and a bowl of red-skinned potatoes beside it. Then the vegetables—field peas and creamed corn from her garden, crispy pods of fried okra, fat slices of red tomatoes. The iron skillet was full of cornbread except for the one wedge she’d taken earlier. I ate half of it, sopping up gravy and pea-juices as I did. I ate like a starved man, not even raising my head from the table while Aunt Della stood over me with a satisfied smile.

  The finest French cuisine in New Orleans couldn’t satisfy my lust for the food of Zion. It was disgustingly greasy and full of cholesterol and calories, but I craved it and always had. I stuffed until I was about to puke, and then Aunt Della proudly brought me out a huge bowl of her peach cobbler, which she’d kept warming in the oven.

  “Oh, God, Aunt Della—not your cobbler, too,” I said to her, astonished. I knew what an undertaking that was, having seen her pick, peel, and stew the peaches, then roll the crust out, and carefully weave the whole concoction into a dishpa
n-sized delicacy that she was known throughout Zion for. How on earth had she managed? Greedy hedonist that I was, I grabbed a spoon and dug in as she stood leaning on her walker and smiling at my gluttony.

  I’ve always been a peach freak, especially craving the small tart peaches from her trees out by the chicken coop. Every summer me and Cat would make ourselves sick on them, sitting cross-legged under the shady trees and stuffing ourselves. We both had ravenous appetites—I guess that figures. Even as teenagers we pigged out, but with a different twist then. Cat was the most sensual eater I’d ever known. I’d get aroused just watching her eat a peach, juices running down her chin and through fingers she’d suck on slowly, laughing salaciously at my misery.

  I finished off the bowl of cobbler and looked up at Aunt Della with gratitude, since all her wondrous comfort food had finally appeased both my hunger and my guilt. It quickly came back, for she looked terrible, still standing servile, hanging on to that damned walker. I jumped up and put my arm around her.

  “That was unbelievable, Aunt Della. But you’re going to bed and I’m gonna do the dishes. Tomorrow we can catch up on everything.”

  “Leave the dishes.” She protested feebly, but her voice shook, and she willingly let me lead her to her bedroom down the hall. This walk was even slower and more painful for her than the one when I first arrived; she was evidently totally exhausted after all the cooking today.

  “You go straight on to bed, you hear? We’ll catch up on all our talking tomorrow.” I gave Aunt Della a long hug outside her bedroom door. Her age-spotted hand shook as she wiped tears from her eyes.

  “Oh, Taylor. My baby boy. I’m so glad you’ve come home to me,” she said as she squeezed me tight with her last bit of energy. “God is too good to me.”

  With that, she went on into her bedroom and closed the door after her. I knew she’d go right to bed and to sleep, as soon as she said her prayers. She always prayed for about an hour every night, then she slept like a baby. No booze or sleeping pills for her.

  After cleaning the kitchen and unpacking my car, I finally made it to my old room, the front bedroom with the bay window on the side, across from the First Baptist Church. I pushed the door open and stood there for a minute before going in, as though I were a toddler and expected monsters to be lurking in the shadows.

  Like the town of Clarksville, my room had stayed the same. It was huge, of course the best room in the house; Aunt Della insisted that I have it as soon as I was old enough. An elegant room with tall ceilings, massive oak furniture and heavy dark drapes. Like a cave or a tomb, it had always been dark and cool, even with no air-conditioning in the house.

  I don’t think any of the old folks in Clarksville had central air; some of them had window units and closed off different rooms, as Daddy Clark did, but most of the houses were built long before air-conditioning. They were big open houses with breezy, wide porches, dark rooms, and high ceilings with ancient, slow-turning fans. So everybody stayed fairly cool except in the dead of summer when no breeze stirred the searing heat. The dog days of August.

  I piled all my stuff on the extra bed—Aunt Della had twin beds added just for me when I was a kid, evidently expecting lots of stay-over buddies, which I never had. Then I collapsed in the big leather recliner, tired as hell, fishing around in my jeans pocket for a cigarette. However, I was suddenly so exhausted that I decided to do as I’d ordered Aunt Della and go straight to bed instead of delaying as I smoked. Stripping down to my briefs, I turned off the lamp then yanked back the heavy quilt on my bed and did a nosedive into it, sinking into the feathery softness, sighing deeply. I was so exhausted I should be asleep in no time.

  Shit. I’d never sleep in here without the overhead fan on to stir the stifling air, and without opening up the windows. Reluctantly I dragged myself out of bed and switched on the wheezy fan. Then, I went around the dark room, lugging on the creaky old windows. When I pulled open the last window, I was overpowered by the scent that was Clarksville to me. The smell of honeysuckle. It grew like a jungle on the side fence, mixed in with Aunt Della’s wild red roses like some mad florist’s bouquet.

  I sank into the bay window seat and breathed deeply of the heavy sweetness of honeysuckle, and I wanted to cry. My throat closed up as I looked out of that dark room into the greater darkness of the night, smelling honeysuckle and listening to the cicadas and crickets in symphony. I knelt by the open window and laid my head down in my arms, feeling an overwhelming loneliness that I hadn’t felt in years. Oh, God. Why had I come back here?

  I stumbled back to bed and climbed in again, knowing that sleep would not come easily. I wished to God that I had a beer, but I’d left them in the car, and I wasn’t about to go back out there. If I did, I might just drive off into the night, wearing nothing but my undershorts. I settled for a cigarette, fumbling around where I’d tossed them when I flung my clothes off. Propping myself up on my pillows, I looked out into the dark, starlit night as I inhaled.

  God, how I’d missed this crazy old town. No one would have believed that, no one. Not a soul understood how I felt about this place—old Charlotte the harlot snorted when I tried to tell her once. None of the family or friends who lived here understood it either; they just assumed I hated it as bad as Cat did. They mistook my interest for ridicule, my amusement for mockery. Nobody but Aunt Della saw that the town and the people in it had always fascinated the hell out of me.

  Not that I wasn’t miserable all the years I lived here, though, in the way kids can be. I poked a lot of fun at the locals and mocked them, flaunting my imagined superiority and intellect. I was always embarrassed to tell anyone where I lived; on the rare occasions when I visited Charlotte in Baton Rouge, I’d mutter something about west of Tuscaloosa, and she’d smirk knowingly.

  Charlotte may have suspected my true feelings. All mothers, whether they’re worth a crap or not, seem to have some kind of ESP when it comes to their offspring. Right now, though, she was so pissed with me I hadn’t heard from her all summer. Of course, she was traveling in Europe with a new lover and that gave her an excuse. This past Mother’s Day I sent her a Mother of the Year plaque, thinking it’d be a hoot. Evidently the new lover raised eyebrows at that and she practically quit speaking to me. I sent Aunt Della a dozen silk roses of her favorite color, mauve. I’d rather have sent the real thing, but the way she kept things, they would stay in her house forever, dead as hell. Aunt Della never threw anything away. Especially not me, the prodigal. When everyone else was through with me, she hung on for dear life. Probably saved me, I was in such bad shape then. I refused to let them cart her off to some smelly old nursing home, no matter what I had to do.

  I put out my cigarette and settled back on the pillows, feeling my eyelids get heavy as the night air from the open windows got softer and sweeter. I could feel sleep coming on now, thank God. The last thing I thought of before I slept was Tim, and the thought was a sudden stab of pain, like the piercing earaches I had as a kid. I couldn’t help it; until now I’d been successful at putting him out of my mind. But I’d have to face him again, now that I was back in Clarksville. I’d have to do it eventually.

  The next day, as promised, Aunt Della and I caught up on two years, yakking on and on way into the morning.

  She had risen early and baked biscuits to go with the fig preserves she’d just put up. No matter that she could barely stand without the walker; she and her cousin Carrie, almost ninety, and old black Eula Mae, who’d helped her do these things for years, tended a garden and canned and pickled and preserved its harvest. I figured anyone who could do all that wasn’t ready to be put out to pasture.

  But in the morning sunlight as we sat at the breakfast table, Aunt Della looked frailer than last night, even. Her age-spotted hands shook as she poured my coffee, and her voice was much weaker than on the phone. Even so, she was more like the Aunt Della I remembered, and I hid a smile as she rattled on and on, like she had as long as I’ve known her, talking to herself when no one el
se was around. I just drank coffee and stuffed myself with hot biscuits and preserves, letting her talk to her heart’s content.

  “It’s Harris, hon,” she told me. “He’s the one insisting I can’t stay by myself anymore. Oh, give him credit, he did offer for me to live with him and Frances Martha in that three-ring circus he calls a home. Ha! Papa would turn over in his grave—he knows me and Harris never got along.”

  Aunt Della always referred to her papa as though he were still alive. It used to tickle the hell out of me, but now it seemed unbearably sad, and I blinked rapidly when tears stung my eyes.

  Every time she started to bite her biscuit, she’d think of something else to tell me and began blabbering again. She hadn’t eaten a whole biscuit yet.

  “I been here eighty-two years, right here in this house. Papa wouldn’t want me to go anywhere else,” she said. “And he sure wouldn’t want Sonny living here.”

  That got my attention.

  “Sonny? What’s he got to do with it?”

  “Why, I thought I’d told you, sugar.” Aunt Della’s cloudy blue eyes narrowed as she continued. “Oh, it’s not just Harris—it’s Sonny and Opal, too. They’ve decided that they want my house for Sonny and that prissy fool he married.”

  I laughed and buttered another biscuit.

  “That really slays me, Aunt Della. I can’t for the life of me picture Sonny married to that mousy little Glenda Rountree. Ever since you told me—”

  “Lord, I thought I called you back about that!”

  Aunt Della was also getting more forgetful, I’d noticed.

  “I had it all mixed up, Taylor. That’s what I could have sworn Opal said when she called me—that Sonny married that Glenda Rountree you finished school with.”