Aunt Sookie & Me

by Michael Scott Garvin

  Both women were playing a losing game with the deck stacked against them. Both desperate, both lonely. Donita grieved at night for the love she had lost, while Loretta grieved for the love she’d never found.

  I reckoned sometimes it was too easy for womenfolk to judge one another by the shade of red lining their lips or the length of a skirt’s hem instead of investigating any closer.

  Aunt Sook said Miss Loretta and Donita Pendergast weren’t so very different. “Until they understand they’re enough, those two women won’t never sleep a restful night,” Sookie told me. “Since time began, womenfolk go about sniffin’ around for some man to tell them they are treasured. No fella can make them believe somethin’ they don’t already know.” Sookie peered over the top of her bifocals. “Poppy, promise your old aunt Sook that you won’t wallow in such foolishness.” She held her quaking finger to her chest. “Always know you’re worthy. Always know you’re deserving of more.”

  “I will, Sook,” I said. “I promise.”

  “Until Donita and Miss Loretta fix the broken pieces, they’re just damaged goods waitin’ for the next scoundrel to break them again and again.”

  I had my suspicions that Momma was pea green with envy when it came to Mrs. Pendergast. One afternoon at the Piggly Wiggly, as Loretta pushed our buggy up the aisle, I spotted Donita coming toward us in the produce section.

  Mrs. Pendergast wheeled her grocery cart up to ours, greeting us with a pleasant smile. “Afternoon, ladies.”

  Miss Loretta offered an uninspired howdy.

  Spotting the bag of Tootsie Pops in our cart, Donita remarked, “Poppy, I can see that you and Miss Loretta are stocking up on Halloween treats.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I believe this will be the first time I can recall Sook’s front porch light will be burnin’ bright on Halloween. Usually your aunt darkens her doorway and runs any trick-or-treaters clear off her porch. I’m here to pick up some Granny Smiths. I’m making caramel apples for the children at the church.”

  I commented, “Loretta, Mrs. Pendergast is a fine cook. I suspect she can bake up anything. I swear her kitchen cupboards are stocked with every spice and seasoning. It’s somethin’ to behold!”

  “Oh now, Poppy. You’re sweet, but I think you’re bragging on me.”

  “No, it’s true,” I said. “It’s a marvel what you can cook up.”

  “Stop it.” She blushed.

  Admiring a bag of plump, ripe peaches in Donita’s buggy, I commented, “Oh my, those peaches look lovely.”

  “Yessum. It appears it’s a fine season for Georgia peaches.”

  “I hate peaches,” Loretta announced with a scowl. “They’re soft and mushy. Too sickly sweet for my taste.”

  With a puzzled expression, I turned to Loretta. She expounded, “I love cantaloupes, and I’m fond of watermelons. I love me some pears and pineapple and persimmons.”

  Perplexed, Donita attempted an awkward smile.

  Miss Loretta showed no sign of stopping. “I’m partial to blackberries and boysenberries. On occasion, I enjoy kiwis and kumquats. But I detest prissy, pious peaches!”

  Donita and I stood silent, uncertain of an appropriate response. “Well, Miss Loretta, I have a scrumptious recipe for kumquat jam. I’ll send a jar home with Poppy come next Sunday after church.”

  Miss Loretta declared, “I hate jam.”

  Donita gave me a baffled expression.

  The two ladies stood facing each other until Donita graciously nodded to Loretta. “Have a lovely afternoon, ladies.”

  She sped her grocery buggy clean out of sight.

  CHAPTER 22

  Savannah belonged to her ghosts.

  In the clear light of day, tourists would take to the streets, snapping cameras and strolling along the cobblestone sidewalks, buying up T-shirts, coffee mugs, and postcards. All the locals would go about their business on Bull Street, and the shops and boutiques would bustle with the fashionably fine ladies of the South. During the daily hours, folks carried on as though the sun had risen just to hear them crow, but during the bewitching hours of night, Savannah belonged to its ghosts.

  Stalking the alleys and haunting the cemeteries, the spirits lurked about like black cats. In the gloomy shadows of moonlight, they danced about on the granite gravestones. The whispers of the dead called from the darkened doorways of the family tombs and mausoleums. The vacant town squares became their midnight playgrounds.

  The locals knew it was wise to bolt up their doors and keep garlic cloves near their beds before drifting to sleep. The superstitious ancient ladies poured a thin trail of table salt every night along their doors’ thresholds to keep a haunting spirit at bay, or they hid an image of our Lord Jesus under a box spring to stop an angry apparition dead in his tracks.

  Buried deep under the old Colonial Park Cemetery lay the unmarked graves of tens of thousands of forgotten lost souls, yet no more than a thousand grave markers stood within the iron gates. Over the decades, Savannah’s graveyards had been covered, and more corpses were stacked atop them. It was said that Savannah slept on these forgotten mass graves.

  Aunt Sookie told me that at the stroke of midnight, if you put your ear near to the ground, you could hear the anguished cries of the fallen souls stirring just below the muddy earth.

  Folks round here believed the willful desecration of all of Savannah’s burial grounds kept the ghosts from their rightful, eternal sleep.

  Halloween arrived in Savannah with sidewalks bustling with ghouls, ghosts, and goblins. Under the golden glow of street lamps, the children of Digby rang doorbells and snatched up candy from Tupperware bowls. Dixie McAllister poured a spooky witch’s brew punch in Styrofoam cups from her porch, while Carl, dressed as Frankenstein, hid low in their hydrangea bushes, scaring the tar out of the young trick-or-treaters.

  From as early as the cradle, Savannah’s youngest citizens were told the story of the orphan Rene Asche Rondolier, a young adolescent whose face was so disfigured, he was feared by many in town. It was said that the lonely, destitute boy called Colonial Park Cemetery his home in the early 1800s, the graveyard where young Rene slept among the cold, hard gravestones.

  Rene’s tale was retold through the ages. One evening he was caught in Colonial Park Cemetery, accused of murdering two young innocent school girls. Throughout the night, a vengeful mob searched the city for Rene, believing he had committed the heinous and brutal killings. With torches and lanterns in hand, the citizens scoured every nook and cranny of Savannah. After young Rene was cornered in the cemetery, the angry crowd strung the boy up and hung him by his neck.

  Soon after that night, locals reported, a shadowy figure haunted the grounds of Colonial Park, Rene’s only home.

  In the days following his lynching, more murdered bodies of innocent little girls turned up in Colonial Park, and the townspeople blamed the ghost of young Rene.

  Jackson told me he’d spotted Rene’s spirit walking aimlessly through the cemetery on one cold, blistery evening. Tommy McAllister reported he had seen Rene’s corpse hanging from the Hanging Tree in the back of Colonial Park. All us kids referred to Colonial Park as “Rene’s Playground.” Not a single one of us would be caught dead anywhere near the hanging tree after nightfall.

  Sookie’s take on the old Savannah ghost story was direct and unsympathetic: “I suspect those snotty little girls had it comin’.”

  “Sook,” I said, “you can’t mean what you’re sayin’?”

  “I sure as hell do! If I ever met this Rene out stalking Digby Street at night, I’d congratulate him and point him directly to those McAllister boys’ open window.”

  I laughed, “Sook, you’re just messin’ with me.”

  “The hell I am! I’d let him borrow my ladder in the back of the shed, so he could reach the McAllister’s second-story window.”

  On Halloween night, all of Digby Street was abuzz. Children, costumed in their most ghoulish, ran shrieking from house to house. Glowing pump
kin jack-o-lanterns burned with fiery eyes and angry mouths. Plastic witches rode broomsticks, and bedsheet ghosts were strung from the magnolias.

  Miss Loretta came tripping down the stairs. “Poppy, I’ve gotta run! I’ve got me a date. I’m off to a fancy costume party at the Johnny Harris’s Dining Room.” She strutted in the middle of the foyer and slowly spun about, showcasing the same skin-tight red satin dress I’d seen a dozen or more times. Her mangy fur stole was wrapped about her bare shoulders. “So, what do you think?” she asked and then slowly and seductively spun about.

  I shrugged my shoulders. “Who are ya supposed to be, Miss Loretta?”

  “You silly. Can’t you see? I am a lady of the night!”

  “But Loretta, that’s your same old Saturday-night frock.”

  “No, it ain’t.” She smiled wickedly and struck a suggestive pose. Ever so seductively, she began hiking up her dress high above her thigh, exposing two lace garter belts with silk black stockings.

  I giggled. “I swear, Loretta, you ain’t got no sense at all. Are you goin’ to this party with Sheriff Delany? Juan Gabriel?”

  “Goodness, no!” She scowled. “I’ve got me a new beau. He’s got real potential. A real gentleman.” She adjusted my tipsy tiara. “Poppy, you look just precious.”

  I announced, “I’m a princess.”

  “Baby girl, you’ve blossomed into the most beautiful princess I’ve ever set my eyes on.”

  “I hope Jackson will approve.”

  “Oh, he will. He’d have to be blind as a bat to not see how lovely you are.” Loretta winked and went about fiddling with my hair with her fingers. “There ya go.” She smiled like a proud momma. “You’re pretty as a picture.”

  “Are you gonna be careful tonight, Miss Loretta?”

  “Yessum. Your momma is gonna behave herself. I promise.” She held her hand over her heart.

  I called up the balcony, “Sookie! Hurry on down.”

  Loretta and I stood at the bottom of the staircase, waiting for the sound of Sook’s shuffling.

  “Sookie, are you awake?” I called again. “It’s not like her to go to bed this early. I’m worried about old Sook,” I confessed. “Have you noticed how she’s been dozing off in the middle of the day during her soap opera?”

  “Child, that’s just what happens with old folks. It’s the nature of things.” Miss Loretta sounded absolutely convinced of her theory. “Old folks start sleeping more and more, and then one morning they’re dead.”

  “That ain’t true,” I said.

  “Is too,” she insisted. “Old folks start winding down like a tired clock. It begins when they start gettin’ lazy. The next thing ya know, the geezers start goin’ to bed before sunset and sleep well past breakfast. And then, lo and behold, one day you find them cold and stiff in their beds, deader than old man Barney.”

  “Loretta, have you already been stealing sips of Sook’s hooch this evening?”

  “Nope. I’m just truth telling. Aunt Sook could be up there right now as stiff as your grandma Lainey.”

  “I ain’t dead!” Sookie hollered, making her appearance up on the catwalk. “Lucifer will have to wait another day to collect my soul, and Poppy will have to wait a spell to collect my fortune!”

  Sookie was a spectacle to behold. Balanced atop her head was one of the outrageous feathered hats from up in the dusty attic. She’d adorned the hat with several additional peacock feathers to appear even more ridiculous. The lavish purple and violet plumes nearly reached the dusty chandelier as she descended. Wrapped about her shoulders was a full-length white fur coat that I recognized from the stacks of boxes in the dark, dank basement. Sookie wobbled her way down the staircase, carefully maneuvering each step.

  As she approached, it was clear Miss Loretta was the culprit who had lined Sook’s lips in a scandalous red, applied false eyelashes to her upper and lower lids, and blushed Sookie’s cheeks with pink powder.

  I laughed from my belly and hollered up, “Who are ya supposed to be?”

  “You gotta guess,” she smiled coyly.

  I asked, “Maybe some high-society lady?”

  “You’re gettin’ close,” she hinted.

  “I ain’t sure, Sook.” I covered my mouth with both hands, giggling. “You’re painted up like some circus clown with a silly hat! You look absolutely preposterous!”

  “That’s it! You’ve guessed right!” She exclaimed, “I’m Dixie McAllister!”

  “Oh, Sook. You’re just mean to the bone.”

  Outside one could hear the racket of all the approaching gang rushing up the path to the house. I greeted them at the front door.

  Pearl had corralled her mass of red frizz into a cowgirl hat. “I’m Annie Oakley!” she declared and then drew a plastic pistol from her holster. She pulled the toy gun’s trigger and then blew the imaginary smoke from the end of its barrel.

  Constance and Tallulah were dressed as cheerleaders for Savannah High, complete with pleated skirts, monogrammed sweaters, and pompoms. Timmy and Tommy’s faces were covered by plastic masks held in place by elastic strings that stretched behind their ears and all around their fat heads.

  Timmy held the flat palm of his hand up in the air and spoke in a low octave, “Me, Tonto.” His voice escaped through the small breathing hole in the lips of the plastic Indian mask. “Me want to smoke a peace pipe.”

  Tommy hollered, “I’m the Lone Ranger!” He spun a long rope high above his head and lassoed poor little Tallulah, whose panicked expression led me to believe she actually was fretting about the possibility of being scalped right there on Sook’s front porch.

  Jackson’s blond hair was combed wet with a sharp, clean part. He wore a suit jacket over a crisp, white button-up. His recent growth spurt had stretched his long arms well past the cuffs of his shirt sleeves. His black slacks were pressed, but I guess the pants must’ve belonged to his pops because the slacks were cinched like a ruffle at his waist with a black belt. He wore a pair of black reading spectacles with both glass lenses missing and a pencil slid above his right ear. Scrubbed clean and polished up, Jackson shined like a new dime, but he moved about in the suit like some stiff storefront window mannequin.

  “Jackson, who are you supposed to be?” I asked.

  He fidgeted with his buttoned collar. “I’m Clark Kent, of course!” He flexed and flashed me a grin, then leaned in close and gave me a slight peek of the superhero T-shirt beneath his white button-up shirt.

  I giggled, “Of course you are!”

  Jackson blushed tomato red. He was lanky and awkward and perfectly dreamy.

  Aunt Sookie came out strutting onto the front porch like a crippled cockatoo with her ivory fur wrap and plumes of feathers nesting high on her head. She took a seat in her rocker and gripped to the bowl of Tootsie Pops treats in her lap.

  Nervous that old Sook was sitting at only an arm’s length distance, the McAllister twins retreated a few steps back further into the grass lawn.

  From her rocker, Sookie slightly raised her right hip, releasing a sour, off-pitched note. Like some squealing fiddle strung well out of tune, her fart cut through the chilly Savannah night.

  Constance grimaced, and little Tallulah squeezed the tip of her nose.

  Jackson asked, “Did your Aunt Sookie just rip one?”

  “Yessum. My sincere apologies,” I said. “Pay her no never mind. She’s like a jukebox that keeps playing a stinky song, whether you’ve fed her a nickel or not. Her smelly tunes just keep comin’.”

  “All y’all clear out! How many times do I have to flush to get rid of y’all?” Sookie waved us away. “I hate children in packs.” Pointing her quivering walking stick directly over to the masked McAllisters, Sookie threatened, “And don’t think I don’t know who you two little fat bastards are.”

  The Lone Ranger and his trusty sidekick straightened their spines at attention.

  Sookie offer up the Tupperware bowl to the trembling twins. “In this bowl of treats, I gots me two
special chocolate bars with hidden razor blades with your names on ’em!”

  The boys withdrew even farther back into the lawn.

  “Now, all you brats, skedaddle!” she shooed us away.

  We joined the other casts of characters on the sidewalks, running wild through the streets of Savannah. We bumped shoulders in the dark, laughing as we walked past the gates of the National Cemetery.

  “I dare you to go in,” Tonto challenged the Lone Ranger.

  “No way!” Tommy declined from behind his plastic disguise.

  “I double dare ya!” Timmy egged him on. “You chicken shit?”

  “Shut up! I ain’t no chicken.” Tommy slugged his brother’s shoulder.

  Tonto grabbed the Lone Ranger by his holster. The two brothers started scuffling on the pavement.

  Jackson stepped up. “I’ll go in. I ain’t no scaredy-cat!” He took a deep breath and walked up to the bolted iron gates of the cemetery. Maneuvering through an opening between two twisted iron posts, he made his way to the other side.

  The rest of us, still stalling on the sidewalk, eyeballed one another and then filed in behind him, one after the next, except for little Tallulah, who adamantly refused, clutching to her pompoms.

  “I’m staying put,” she declared. “There ain’t nothin’ behind those gates that the good Lord wants me to see at this ungodly hour.” She stood in place near the tall iron fence.

  The graveyard was dead quiet except for wild cats, who stalked about in autumn’s leaves and crops of gravestones.

  “Did y’all hear that?” Jackson questioned.

  The McAllister boys both snickered.

  Pearl replied, “I didn’t hear nothin’.”

  Constance death gripped my arm. “I wanna go home,” she whined. “Let’s get outta here.”