Making Waves

by Cassandra King

  Oh, the blessing that child brought into my lonely life! At first it was a lot of heartache. How that poor little child suffered, no one but me and Jesus knows. Poor little thing was so lost and scared at first, he cried himself to sleep every night. Crying for his mama, cries that would tear your heart out to hear. He was half grown before he saw his mama again, and by then all his tears for her had dried up. And he never saw his daddy again—nobody even knows where he is now. Charlotte met him when Harris sent her off to Louisiana to some fancy girls’ school—I tried to tell him no good would come of it. He wasn’t no college boy, either. Nothing but a bartender, dark as a colored and couldn’t half speak English. Charlotte up and married him just like someone common, instead of a Clark from Zion County.

  Jesus, You alone know about that early heartbreak in Taylor’s life, being deserted by his mama and daddy like that. But only me and You know how hard he tried to cling to all of us once he knew we was the only family he had. For the first time since Papa died, I was glad he wasn’t here, for it would have killed him to witness Harris’s coldheartedness. It broke my heart the way the boy Taylor tried to take up with his granddaddy, toddling around after him, begging him to take him riding in his car, or fishing, or anything. But Harris was so hurt with Charlotte, and so unforgiving, that he couldn’t stand the sight of the boy. I can’t help it—I hope that You’ll forgive me for this, but I’ve had no use for Harris since then, though he’s my only brother. No matter how big of a Christian and a Methodist he is, I’ve got no use for him at all.

  I’ve done everything I can to make it up to Taylor for his parents being so sorry and his granddaddy so hardhearted. I’d do anything on earth for him. I believe sure as anything that You will forgive me for the lies I’ve told these past two years. I know me lying means that I’m no longer pure of heart and will not see You face to face. But I did it for my baby, and I’d do it again.

  After I count my blessings and lift up my kin, ending up with my sweet boy Taylor, I then tell Jesus about my day. Somehow just going over every little detail with Jesus makes it more bearable. Shared blessings and shared sorrows.

  This morning I woke up with a heavy heart, and I had a lot of trouble getting up to face the day. Poor Maudie. I can’t believe that this afternoon I’ll have to go to her funeral! It don’t seem right that she’s gone. Why, it hasn’t been two weeks since Mary Frances drove me and Frances Martha and cousin Carrie over to Tuscaloosa to see her.

  It broke my heart right slap in two to see her in that awful nursing home. We found her in her room, sitting in her wheelchair, just looking out the window. She hardly noticed when we came in. I couldn’t believe it was my dear Maudie, sitting and staring like that, like a shell of the person she used to be! That’s all she did once she went in that home, just sat and stared out that window. I wanted to run to her and grab her and cry, “Oh, Maudie—what are you looking for?”

  I guess there was nothing else to do there in that nursing home, but sit and wait for Jesus. And He finally came and took her home with Him, after all her waiting and watching. So I know in my heart that she’s in a better place now. But I’ll miss her so much. She’ll never sit with me on the front porch again and watch the sunset, or help me pick peas, or set out the azalea plants. Maudie Ferguson was just like a sister to me, since I’m so much older than the twins and never felt close to them. No, Maudie was my soul-sister, although I never told her so. Wish I had now.

  I guess I aggravated Maudie a bit these last few years, and I regret it now. She never married and I used to worry about her being alone. In our younger days I was always saying to her, “Maudie, you ought to go on and marry Corbett Pate and quit teaching. Raise a family of your own, instead of all them schoolchildren of yours.”

  I reckon that might have hurt her feelings, like she didn’t have anybody. She didn’t much; her mama and daddy both gone for years, her only brother down in Florida.

  “I think of my schoolchildren as my own,” she’d always say quietly to me. Bless her heart, she sure did. She loved her teaching and her children more than anything. I guess that’s what finally broke her spirit and turned her into an old woman, when you think about it. The school board had to call a special meeting and ask her to retire after she turned seventy-five. Bad thing was, there wasn’t a thing wrong with her; she was just old. People nowadays act like being old is some kind of a disease instead of a natural part of life. All the young parents, students that she’d taught when they were little, having a fit because she was still in the classroom, wanting someone just out of college with all the new methods of teaching with computers and things. It broke Maudie’s heart. She never was the same after her retirement. I reckon the school board had a right to do that, but it never seemed right to me, after all those years she gave them.

  But it’s wrong of me to grieve too much for Maudie when she’s in heaven with Jesus now, walking them streets of gold. I sure hope that Maudie finds heaven to her liking. Funny thing is, one of the last conversations me and Maudie had before she fell and ended up in the nursing home was about heaven. A while back now, but I recall every detail like it was yesterday.

  Me and Maudie were sitting on her front porch. It was right after she’d retired and I’d gone over to sit a spell with her, to take her some of my peach preserves and some butterbeans I’d gotten up and picked early that morning. That was back when I was able to get around pretty good.

  We sat there on her porch in the late afternoon, shelling them butterbeans, rocking and talking. It was a hot summer afternoon … I can see it plain as day.

  Thing is, we started out talking about the library. Maudie was fussing, telling me the librarian Ima Holliman told her how they were going to start opening half days since the town council had voted to cut back on their funds. Maudie was more upset about this than I was. She always did a lot of reading, all kinds of books imaginable, while I only read the Bible and the Guidepost magazine. She’d said the only good thing about retirement was that she’d planned on doing all the reading she wanted, and now the town council had cut back the funds. I never heard Maudie talk ugly like she did that afternoon.

  “Damn bunch of rednecks!” She ranted and raved. “Country bumpkins—only thing they ever read is The Tuscaloosa News. The sports section and the funny papers, at that.”

  “Why, Maudie!” I’d said. Maudie was such a lady I couldn’t recall ever hearing her use profanity before.

  She went on and on about the library for a while before finally quieting down. Then me and her just sat rocking and shelling them beans, watching the sunset. Maudie’s porch faces west, and the sun was setting in a blaze of pink. That hushed us because both of us had always loved to see the sun setting over Clarksville. We have one of the best sunsets in western Alabama, right here in Zion County. Maudie said it sometimes looked like her schoolchildren had colored it with their crayons, all red and purple and pink mixed together.

  Then out of the blue, with us sitting there shelling butterbeans and looking at the sunset, Maudie turned to me and said, “Della, are you ready to go?”

  Well, at first it like to have shocked me to death because Maudie was so well-mannered I’d never known her to be rude. First profanity and now rudeness. But when I looked up from my butterbeans at her, I saw she wasn’t looking at me at all but was staring at that red sunset. Her lovely face and snow-white hair reflected the reddish-pink glow. Then I knew plain as day what it was she was talking about.

  “No, Maudie. I ain’t quite ready yet. I want to see Taylor finish school, maybe go off to college. ’Course I’d love to stay on and see him settle down eventually, too. How about you?”

  She had stopped shelling beans and her hands were perfectly still in her lap. A smile came to her lips and she shook her head, the beautiful white waves stirring ever so slightly.

  “I don’t believe I’ll ever be ready to give it all up. I’d really rather stay right here, in Zion County.”

  Maudie’s like me; she’d lived in
the same house all her life, her daddy’s house. But then she glanced over at me and continued. “But you know what, Della? It won’t be long for either one of us, will it? After all these years together, it won’t be long now.”

  Neither of us said anything for a while; we just rocked and shelled quietly as the sun sank lower. Maudie finally raised her head to me again, and this time she really did surprise me.

  “Della, do you think there’s a heaven?”

  At first I couldn’t even answer her, I was so shocked. Why, Maudie was as good a Christian as they come. She had taught Sunday school and the women’s missionary society long as I could remember. I just couldn’t imagine her asking a question like that.

  “Why, Maudie Ferguson! You read the Bible same as me. You know that Jesus tells us that if it weren’t true, he wouldn’t have told us.”

  “He says there are many mansions, Della. What do you think that means?”

  “Well, I believe it means big, nice palaces. And pearly gates, and streets of gold. Just like the good book says.”

  “But, Della,” Maudie continued, frowning. “Neither you nor I would want to live in a palace, now would we? I don’t care how fine it is, if it isn’t home.”

  I couldn’t think of a thing to say to that. Then, bless Pete if Maudie didn’t turn to me with a funny expression on her face and say, “If there is a heaven, I just don’t believe it’s going to be like that at all.”

  “Why, Maudie Ferguson!”

  “I don’t want a mansion or a palace, Della. I want a schoolroom, filled with little children, with readers and crayons and paints and chalk. Little children, all big-eyed and eager to learn. And I’d want a big library. The biggest library you’ve ever seen. One that’s opened all the time, not just half days. That’s what I hope heaven’s like.”

  Oh, I hope so too, Maudie, dear, dear friend. I hope and pray that’s where you are right now, in some big heavenly library, reading to your heart’s content.

  It was hard to get myself going this morning. I’ve got to get my mind off Maudie and her funeral today and go on with what needs to be done. It’s so hard for me to do anything anymore. It takes me so long to drag around in this cumbersome old walker—I pure hate it. But I can’t walk without it. That really scares me sometimes. I always think about what Papa said to me not too long before he went to be with Jesus.

  “Della,” Papa said, “you return to the earth the way you came into it, a helpless little baby again. No teeth, no hair, and somebody else having to take care of everything for you, even your bodily functions. When you get to where you can’t walk, your time is coming. You are about ready to go back to where you came from.”

  I sure hope Taylor is feeling better today, bless his little heart. He was about sick yesterday, moping around, not talking. I told him that I believe it’s the heat that’s got to him. I know that this is one of the hottest summers that I can remember.

  Cousin Carrie, however, declares that the summers have been hotter for the past twenty years. She says ever since we put a man on the moon it’s been happening, that the summers and winters both are getting hotter. She thinks the Lord will take men up into the heavens when He’s good and ready for them, and not before. Just think about the Tower of Babel, she says. Some things the Lord don’t intend for us to mess with. She may be right.

  If it’s the heat that’s got Taylor feeling so bad, I guess I ought to get a window unit put in his room, though I don’t really believe in them myself. But I could call old Pleese Davis and get him to come out here and put one of those units in—it ain’t the money. It’s that every single Sunday since we air-conditioned the church, I’ve come home with a headache. It didn’t use to be that way. When Papa was still with me, we about died, it was so hot at church, and everybody fanned and sweated the whole time. But everybody was there regardless, never missing a single service. Now the air-conditioning is going full blast and you about freeze to death in the sanctuary. Then you walk out the doors and the heat hits you. Nowadays you have to beg folks to go to church, like the church needed them instead of the other way around. So I know part of the problem with people today—it’s air-conditioning.

  I can’t help but worry about poor little Taylor. I kind of hope it is the heat instead of him being upset to be back here. Yesterday morning I got up early and fixed pancake batter. Rufus always declared that my pancakes were so light they could float across the room. But Taylor slept until dinner time, so I had to dump the batter down the sink. It’s just not any good when it sits out like that; that’s what makes pancakes heavy.

  I figured rightly that he hadn’t eaten a thing over at Harris’s the night before because Frances Martha can’t cook worth a hoot. It used to worry Mama to death. Main reason Frances Martha never half learned to cook ain’t because she’s not right. Everybody knows Maylene Hendricks is slower than Frances Martha, yet she wins prizes at the Fair every year with her cakes. No, Frances Martha just would not listen to Mama. Instead, she got it in her head to use a cookbook instead, because she loves to look at the pretty pictures of the food in them.

  Frances Martha only finished the eighth grade, but she took Home Ec that year and got her a Betty Crocker cookbook that she’s been using ever since. For some reason, her doing that like to have tickled Papa to death, but me and Mama didn’t think it was so funny. What does a Yankee like Betty Crocker know about cooking purple-hulls, I asked Frances Martha. But she didn’t care; all she liked was the pretty pictures in there, and sending Papa to the A & P all the time for Bisquick.

  Guess Frances Martha is happy now that she’s got someone else like her at Harris’s house. Annie Lou told Eula now that Sonny’s new bride Miss Ellis is there, she makes them try all kinds of fancy recipes from them Southern Living magazines. Annie Lou’s like me, she’s got no respect for a woman who has to read a book in order to put a meal on the table. Besides, Annie Lou can’t even read! She’s about ready to up and quit and I don’t blame her, even though she’s been with Harris for years. She don’t like Miss Priss Ellis one bit, not any better than I do. I know them Rountrees and how good-for-nothing they are and so does Annie Lou. The coloreds know these things. Taylor told me about the supper they fixed him and how it wasn’t fit to eat. Must have really made him sick because he wouldn’t even talk about his visit. I’ll bet you anything that Harris was ugly to him. And Sonny—he’s always tormented Taylor, calling him a sissy and making fun of him. Sonny can’t understand anybody being as tenderhearted and sensitive as Taylor is.

  Sonny’s as mean as a snake, just like his mama. That Opal Hamilton made her bed well when she married Harris Jr., that’s for sure. Harris Jr. was a good boy, God rest his soul. He was like his mama, too. Seems boys tend to be like their mamas, and girls more like their papas. Harris Jr.’s mama, Mary Nell Pate, was as good a woman as ever drew a breath. I never could see what she saw in my brother Harris. At least Harris Jr. took after her. I believe if he’d not gotten himself killed like he did, Sonny would have turned out better, too. Opal spoiled him rotten after that.

  I reckon I’ll wait till Taylor gets up this morning before I mix up any more pancake batter. Guess I’ll put on some vegetables for dinner since we’ll have to go to the funeral right afterwards. Lord, I haven’t even seen Maudie yet! Taylor felt so bad last night that I couldn’t bring myself to remind him that he’d promised to take me to the funeral home. Mary Frances called me to see why I hadn’t gone, and I told her I wasn’t able to. Didn’t figure anything else was any of her business. She means well, I know, but me and her have never been close. There’s just too much difference in our ages, for one thing. Anyhow, she had to tell me about how Essie Kennedy’s niece Donnette fixed Maudie up so nice, and how natural Maudie looked all laid out.

  Lord have mercy! I clean forgot what else she called about. Mary Frances made the arrangements, and Frances Martha is going to pick me up at nine o’clock this morning. We’re going over to Essie’s to get our hair done for the funeral. I usually don�
�t set no store in going to the beauty parlor, but I can’t go to Maudie’s funeral looking like this. Oh, goodness! Well, I’ll just have to fry some bacon and eggs for breakfast and forget about the pancake batter. I don’t have the time to fool with it now.

  Taylor came into the kitchen just about the time I got through fixing breakfast. The smell of bacon frying must have woke him up, like it used to on school mornings. He was rubbing his eyes all sleepy-like, looking the world like a little boy. I see that he looks a little better this morning, too.

  “Good morning, Aunt Della.” He smiled sleepily at me, giving me a hug and a kiss on the cheek. He’s the sweetest thing in the whole world; I can’t understand why some folks never have liked him. Lord, he sure does need a haircut, though. Maybe he’ll go with us this morning and get it cut. No, guess he couldn’t do that, not with Donnette there. She’s never got over what happened, blaming and talking awful about Taylor, though everyone else knows he didn’t go to hurt Tim. Looks like she’d have sense enough to realize that if it hadn’t happened like it did, Tim wouldn’t be with her now. Probably wouldn’t have married her either, once he got away from here and had lots more choices. Well. All that’s in the past now.

  “I’m so glad you’re up early, honey,” I said to Taylor instead of bringing up the subject of the haircut. “We got a busy day today.” I put the bacon and eggs on the table and sat down.

  “What time’s Miss Maudie’s funeral?” Taylor yawned and stretched. I’d have to get him to put something on besides his undershorts before Frances Martha got here. It would embarrass her to death, him being half-naked.

  “It’s at two.” I started in on my eggs since I had to hurry. “Honey, you remember Maudie’s great-niece Sarah Jean?”

  Taylor thought for a minute as he chewed on a piece of bacon. I always get the thick-sliced kind when he’s home.

  “Yes, ma’am, I believe I do now. She teaches at Florida State, doesn’t she? Good-looking for an old lady—great legs.”