“Guess what, Aunt Della,” I muttered as we made our entrance. “We ain’t in Kansas anymore.”
Daddy Clark was standing up, of course, lording over us, leaning against the mantel over the marble fireplace. I walked over to him, shook his hand, then turned back to help Aunt Della fold her walker away. She settled herself in a big satin wing chair, which made her look small and defenseless. I pulled up a needlepoint stool and sat right next to her, taking her hand firmly in mine. No way I was going to let him bully her like he usually did. This time, I was going to be here for her, so help me God. I looked around at each of my lovely family members, nodding curtly to them instead of speaking. I wasn’t up to the Clark family scenes today.
Aunt Opal then prissed her fat ass into the parlor, surprisingly. She spent most of her time boozing it up at the country club, playing bridge with all the other bored housewives out there. I thought I was going to puke at the performance she put on, though I couldn’t figure out who it was for. She came over when I got Aunt Della settled, ohhed and ahhed over her like so many idiots do around old people, shouting at her as though she was deaf, talking babyish to her, and generally acting like Aunt Della had become a retard in her old age. I swear, when I get old I’m going to keep a cane handy and brain the hell out of whoever pulls that on me.
The true retard of the bunch, Aunt Frances Martha, dear old soul that she is, excused herself right off because she was making a Bisquick pie or some such shit for supper and had to roll out the dough, or so she told us. She’d already enthralled us by describing it step by step on the ride over. Aunt Della ignored her, but I pretended to give a crap and she explained the whole process in detail, getting off on mixing Bisquick with buttermilk and poppy seeds. I guess Daddy Clark allowed her to miss the powwow because he figured she didn’t have sense enough to know what was going on anyway. Such Christian compassion.
The happy newlyweds Sonny and Ellis sat side by side on the sofa, holding hands and looking mad enough to shit a brick. Neither one even spoke to Aunt Della or myself, just nodding a greeting instead. I didn’t know what on earth their problem was, but I figured I’d find out soon enough. I was sure right about that. I was determined to keep my cool, not blow it, not let any of them know that I was nervous and shaky as usual, just being in this house, especially in my usual subservient position with my grandfather.
I looked up at Daddy Clark standing there, elbow on the mantel, stern and unapproachable, dressed in a starched blue shirt and sharply creased gray trousers held up on his rotund belly with suspenders. Gone was his deadly weapon, the thin belt with the gold buckle engraved with HJC, a belt I’d felt the sting of more often than I could remember.
No matter how hard I tried not to be affected, there was something about this scene that was unnerving the hell out of me, more than his summons or even the memory of the infamous belt could possibly warrant. Suddenly I knew what it was. No wonder I was so nervous—I discovered at an early age that Daddy Clark had a weapon more potent than the belt.
I was five years old, the year before I started school, the year Charlotte reappeared briefly in my life, first time since I was left crying for her in my playpen in a squalid apartment above a lush courtyard in New Orleans. It was years later before I learned she’d paid some old hag to watch me, supposedly planning on coming back for me after a little jaunt to Europe with a new lover, one of her professors, twenty years her senior. The old sot got too plastered to see about me; if the landlord hadn’t heard my wails I might have kicked off before my first birthday. Too bad. Saved lots of folks, including myself, plenty of heartache.
Aunt Della, of the old school, use to take me to visit my granddaddy all the time those first five years, damned determined to establish family, especially male, bonding. She gave up only when she realized the old fart really didn’t care to have me around, couldn’t stand to be reminded of the shame his daughter had brought to the almighty Clark name.
But it was one of those visits; Aunt Della had left me for the afternoon and gone to some church meeting or something. I’d been baking Bisquick cookies with Aunt Frances Martha in the kitchen. She’d then gone down for her nap, and I believed Daddy Clark to be napping too. Like the dumb little bastard I was then, I took advantage of my supposed freedom to snoop around in the forbidden regions of the front parlor, just asking to get in trouble. Something my Aunt Della had told me that very morning prompted my curious snooping. Some of the things about that day are still shadowy and half-forgotten, but others are vivid as hell. Too vivid.
I’d sneaked into the big dark parlor, crawling on the floor like I was a cowboy having to hide out from the Indians who might be chasing me. I can even remember the faggy little cowboy suit I wore, one Aunt Della’d given me for my fifth birthday.
On my hands and knees, I’d scurried behind the sofa, then over to a big old antique sideboard that I’d seen Daddy Clark use, on the few occasions I’d been allowed in the parlor. I’d found what I was looking for, too, in the first drawer I lugged on. It fell open, spilling its contents out onto the polished wooden floor. I cried out, thrilled, when I spotted the photo I’d sneaked in there searching for.
At that very moment, I’d known I was not alone in that room. “What do you think you’re doing, boy?” came thundering at me, and I cringed. I’d looked up to see Daddy Clark standing there by the mantel. Evidently he’d been there, fiddling around with something or other, the whole time, and I hadn’t seen him in the fantasy of my cowboy games.
To a child, Daddy Clark had seemed the essence of the wrath of God, scaring the daylights out of me by his sudden appearances, his scornful glare, looking down at me from his massive height. Also like God, he seemed omnipresent, always around, seeing what I was getting into. Not that he really gave a shit, as long as it wasn’t anything to shame him. That day, he towered over me and grabbed me by my arm, pulling me to my feet. At that time, though, I was too excited to be scared speechless like I usually was around him. Unfortunately.
“Look, Daddy Clark!” I’d babbled like a fool. I held up the picture I clutched in my chubby little hand, the photo of the beautiful lady I knew immediately was Charlotte Clark Dupree.
“I know this is my mama! Aunt Della told me my mama was coming to see me next week. I know this is her.”
“You don’t have a mama, son,” Daddy Clark said coldly.
That’s all he said, but I had to argue, dumb little hick that I was. “Uh, huh, I do, too! Aunt Della told me that my mama—Charlotte, my mama, was coming across a big ocean to see me next week.”
Daddy Clark looked down at the picture. He took it out of my hand and put it back in the drawer.
“My daughter Charlotte is coming here next week, boy. That much is true. But she’s not your mama. A mama doesn’t desert her child, leaving it to be raised by anybody who’ll take it in. She’s nobody’s mama, not her.”
And he closed the drawer with a bang.
Of course the old bastard had a point, but I didn’t know it at the time. I’d been too petrified to tell Aunt Della. Because if the mysterious Charlotte wasn’t my mother, then who was? Maybe Daddy Clark was right; maybe I didn’t belong anywhere, to anyone. I’d been so quiet afterwards that Aunt Della, old-fashioned as she was, had dosed me good with castor oil, thinking I was surely sick. That part I do remember vividly.
I shook aside my happy recollections of childhood days gone by and forced myself to go back to where I was right then. I wasn’t going to let myself be distracted by any more ghosts—I owed it to Aunt Della to be here for her now. Banquo—be gone!
Daddy Clark continued to stand there staring at us, looking disgusted with the whole clan. He peered down at us like Browning’s last Duchess, his looks for each of us the same. Aunt Opal, wasting her days playing cards and drinking; Sonny, too sorry to hold down a regular job; Ellis, straight out of the backwoods; and of course me and Aunt Della, his cross to bear, each in our own way. Guess he felt none of us were worthy of the prestigious Clark
name. Finally he spoke, turning his attention first to Aunt Della, as I’d expected.
“Della, I promised Papa that I’d look after you when you got to this point in your life. Since you had no offspring, Papa left the house to me, with the stipulation that it was yours long as you lived. However, I’ve talked with your doctor. He agrees with me that you can no longer stay home by yourself,” he said.
Aunt Della opened her mouth to protest, but Daddy Clark held his hand up to silence her.
“Please. Let me finish. I have given this matter much attention in my prayer life. I am not the heartless, coldhearted person you’ve always made me out to be, Della.” He stood more erect and waited for his sister to look ashamed. She only looked frail and forlorn. I squeezed her hand tighter.
“Christ requires that we have compassion one for another,” Daddy Clark continued. I sighed. Shit. Now we had to listen to him pontificate as well.
“It has come to me from my prayer life that I honor my papa’s dying request by doing what I can to make your final years happy, Della. The Lord has seen fit to answer my prayers. He has sent us someone to stay with you. With her help, you can stay in Papa’s home as long as you are able to make it.”
Daddy Clark stuck out his chest and waited for the worshippers to fall on their knees in front of him. Something told me he’d already practiced this speech for the town’s benefit, probably telling the preacher and his cronies at the church, extolling in how he was going beyond his Christian duty by his poor old sister. But I smelled a rat.
Aunt Della, for once, seemed to not know what to say, since she was expecting he’d already gotten her a room ready in the nursing home.
“Well, Harris,” she said finally, faintly. “I do appreciate that.”
“Whoa! Wait just a minute,” I looked over at Ellis, and sure enough, she was preening and looking at me as if she’d just conceived by the Holy Spirit.
“Daddy Clark? Is this person—this angel of mercy sent by God—is she by any chance Ellis’s sister, Glenda?” I asked.
Neither Sonny nor Ellis waited for him to answer; both began protesting at the same time. Even Aunt Opal, who up until now had been thumbing through a magazine, put it down long enough to glare at me.
“She comes as a gift from the Lord’s grace, a good Christian girl like her, wanting to live in town, nearer her place of employment,” Daddy Clark said.
“Wanting to live nearer Dink Odom,” I muttered, but only Ellis heard me. The look she gave me could have chilled the most fainthearted.
“Ellis’s sister?” Aunt Della looked confused, and looked around the room at each of them, coming to rest finally on Ellis. And Ellis was smirking at her like she’d pulled off a good one.
“Oh, come on, Daddy Clark!” I sighed. “Aunt Della doesn’t want Ellis’s sister staying there with her, snooping around for Ellis, waiting for her to kick the bucket so the Rountree clan can move in. Forget it.”
Sonny jumped up from the sofa. “You are so ridiculous, Taylor! Such a screwball—now you’ve added paranoia to your list. Your shrink will be glad to have some more Clark dough to handle that one, I guarantee you!”
“Sit down, Sonny,” Daddy Clark said. Then he turned those steely blue eyes on me. “Don’t you tell me to forget this, young man. In the first place, it’s none of your business, and in the second, I told you that the Lord arranged this—sent this girl our way right at this time, in answer to my prayers.”
As usual, I couldn’t keep my temper, hold my tongue and try to reason with him. I ended up blowing it big.
“The Lord, my ass! Ellis is behind this, and you can’t tell me she’s not. It’s her idea, and we won’t have anything to do with it,” I retorted.
Daddy Clark looked as if he were about to have a stroke at my outburst. His face got as red as Sonny’s Crimson Tide shirt.
“Don’t you dare use that kind of language around me, young man! And there’s no ‘we’ to it—this has nothing at all to do with you.”
It was Aunt Della’s turn to come to my defense. I jumped when I heard her voice come so clearly from her seat next to me, stronger than I’ve heard it in ages.
“Harris, you know better than to say anything like that! Taylor is my boy, same as Harris Jr. was yours. I’ve raised him and he has every right to say what he thinks. Me and him only have each other.”
But at that, Aunt Della pulled on my hand and turned me around to look at her. “Taylor, honey. Don’t get so upset. I know of Glenda—I’ve heard that she is a fine Christian girl. I’d do anything to stay home, as you know. Me and you’ll talk all about this later.”
But I knew, just knew, that Ellis, Sonny, and probably Aunt Opal had hatched up this latest scheme. And I knew the way Aunt Della felt about Ellis, she had to be saying that just to appease me, get me to shut my mouth before I blew it with Daddy Clark. Even knowing that, I couldn’t let it go. I pulled away from Aunt Della and stood up.
“No. No—this won’t do,” I said. “I haven’t asked around yet—I’ll find someone to stay with Aunt Della before I go back to school next week.”
Sonny laughed out loud. “That ought to be no problem. You’re in such good standing in this community—”
Daddy Clark interrupted him. “I have tried my best to find someone. Della knows that. Folks are too sorry to work for a living anymore. Why should they when they can stay home and collect welfare? I admire this young woman for wanting to stand on her own two feet, make something of herself.”
It was my turn to laugh. “Yeah, she’s real ambitious, all right. Dink Odom is a step up from the footwashers, I guess. All things are relative.”
It was at this exact point in all our encounters that Daddy Clark always had enough of me and my smart mouth—I could tell when that moment had come. His eyes bored into mine, and everybody in the room got quiet.
“The matter is settled, young man. Della should thank the Lord that I have everything all taken care of.”
I couldn’t stand it. From the corner of my eye, I saw Aunt Della rise up in the chair, try to grab my hand again.
“No, sir. It is not. Your plan is unacceptable.” I turned then to Aunt Della and reached for her hand. “Come on, Aunt Della. Let’s go back home.”
“I have never been so insulted in all my life,” Ellis began to whine from her spot on the sofa. “Hamilton, are you going to sit there and let your wife’s people be insulted like this?”
Aunt Opal threw down her magazine and got up to leave. “This whole business is giving me a headache. Y’all are going to have to excuse me.”
From previous visits to the house, I knew exactly where Aunt Opal was headed. “Bring me a snort from your secret stash while you’re at it, Aunt Opal,” I said to her retreating back. “I’m getting a headache, too.”
She threw me a dirty look and slammed the parlor door, making everyone jump.
Sonny, of course, had to defend the honor of his wife and mother, Southern chivalry running like blood through his veins. He jumped up again and took a step toward me.
“Daddy Clark, I’m going to have to speak my mind. I cannot stand this longhaired excuse for a human being another minute. I think the Clarks have put up with more from him than anyone would expect us to tolerate.”
“I don’t think anyone would argue with that,” Daddy Clark said stiffly, as I unfolded Aunt Della’s walker and helped her get into it. Aunt Della was shaking like everything. I decided to shut my fool mouth and just get her the hell out of there.
But Sonny wouldn’t let it go. “Ellis told me what you did, Taylor. She told me about the morning three years ago when she went looking for Aunt Della and found you there alone, how you tried to get her in bed with you. I intend to settle with you about that, but not in front of Daddy Clark and Aunt Della.”
I sighed. “I’m shaking in my boots.” I looked at Ellis, and she looked away quickly, her face flushed. So old Ellis had my number, knew I wouldn’t tell them the truth, that she had been the one to come afte
r me.
“What if I did make a pass at Ellis, Sonny? I was overcome by her charms, her beauty, the passion beneath that plain facade.” I grinned at both of them. “Now, let’s get the hell out of here, Aunt Della.” We began the slow walk to the door.
Daddy Clark sighed loudly. “Stubborn as a mule—you always have been, Della. Well, that’s gratitude for you. About what I expected.”
I bit my lip to keep from smarting off at him again. All I wanted now was just to get Aunt Della home.
Sonny had gone beyond that point, though. His face furiously red, he turned to Daddy Clark.
“I said Taylor had embarrassed the Clarks all he could, Daddy Clark, but I was wrong. His latest escapade has gotten me where I’m ashamed to show my face in town. Judge Barfield and everybody else at the courthouse was talking about him the other day.”
“Gossip.” Daddy Clark shook his head. “I’ve no use for idle gossip. That’s all that bunch at the courthouse do all day, anyway—gossip and collect taxpayers’ money for doing it.”
I grinned at Sonny, unable to resist one last dig. “Guess he told you, old boy.”
Sonny turned back to Daddy Clark. “Oh, I can assure you that what they’re saying about him is not gossip, Daddy Clark. Just ask Ellis.”
I winked at Ellis. “A reliable source there,” I said, opening the heavy parlor door.
“Daddy Clark—Taylor has everyone in town talking about him again. He’s running around with Maudie Ferguson’s niece, Sarah Williams. You know her—Aunt Charlotte’s old friend.” Sonny’s voice was loud and harsh.
Surprising me again, Aunt Della turned in her walker as she was poised to go out the door. She looked right at Sonny, then at Daddy Clark.
“Harris, I hope you can finally see how Sonny has always done all he can to hurt Taylor. Trying to make something out of that! Sarah is a real good friend to Taylor, taking a special interest in him since she knew Charlotte so well. You know better than to listen to such trash.”
Making Waves Page 21
