Aunt Sookie & Me

by Michael Scott Garvin

  Soaking in the warm water, I thought about Jackson—the way the spark in his eyes made me smile. I recalled our first kiss in the spook house.

  I rinsed myself off and was reaching for a towel when Pearl entered through the unlocked door.

  Giggling, she announced, “Miss Pearl Tucker, at your service, Madam.” She walked in carrying one of Sookie’s tarnished silver serving trays, with Donita’s oatmeal cookies, all neatly arranged, and two full glasses of cold milk. Searching through the tub’s steam, she glimpsed me standing nude before her.

  Stopping dead in her tracks, Pearl’s mouth went agape. She stood stunned in the open doorway while I scrambled frantically, reaching for a towel.

  CHAPTER 29

  “Pearl?”

  She stood slack-jawed.

  “Are you OK?”

  “Poppy Wainwright, you got yourself a tallywacker.” Her face was drained of all its color. She backed from the bathroom, still balancing her tray of treats.

  “Pearl! Wait! I can explain!”

  I rushed, slipping into my pajamas, and found Pearl sitting on the end of the bed, the tray of cookies still resting on her lap.

  “Poppy, you’re a dadgum boy!”

  I held my finger in front of her mouth. “Shh!”

  Aunt Sook shouted from downstairs, “You two deviants shut those damned lights off and get to bed!”

  With my index finger still on Pearl’s pursed lips, I called to Sookie a goodnight.

  The television in the sitting room went silent, and we listened on as Sook moved about the house, pulling closed draperies and turning off lights. She began the slow climb up the stairs and finally reached the top. We followed the sound of Sook’s shuffling and the tapping of her walking stick jabbing at the floor boards. She switched off the crystal sconces in the hallway, and then we heard her bedroom door shut.

  Scratching her mass of ruby ringlets, Pearl whispered again, “You’re a dadgum boy.”

  I asked, “You ain’t mad at me, are ya, Pearl?”

  “You’re a boy, Poppy Wainwright,” she repeated again, this time only to herself, like she was trying to untangle the thoughts in her head.

  “Pearl, I’d just die if you was mad at me.”

  She pondered on it. “Nope. I ain’t mad. But I reckon, some folks are gonna feel like they’ve been hoodwinked. But I don’t have no bone to pick with you.”

  I sat by her side on the edge of the bed.

  “I’m so sorry, Pearl,” I said. “Back in Mountain Home, the other kids knew me as the troubled boy. When I arrived to Savannah, all y’all were so kind to me because you just saw a girl.”

  “Geeze, you’re awfully pretty for a fella.”

  “Thank you, kindly,” I said.

  “Dang! I ain’t that purdy on my best day,” she complained. “Don’t seem fair.”

  “That ain’t true, Pearl. You’re pretty as a picture.”

  “Poppy, how long have you been a fella? I mean, were you borned a boy, but decided to become a girl?”

  “Yessum,” I answered. “I know it don’t make a lick of sense.”

  “So it’s your intention to be a full-fledged, bonafide girl?”

  “Dunno, Pearl. I suppose so. I haven’t traveled far ’nuff down that road to know what’s comin’ around the bend. I just want to be who I feel I am in my innards.”

  Pearl’s silence answered back.

  “It’s beyond my reckoning, Pearl. It’s just sumpthin’ I feel in my gut, like knowin’ when somethin’ is right or wrong. Or the notion that you’re meant to be a person, but the mirror tells you somethin’ different.”

  “Poppy, I wanna be an astronaut, but I ain’t makin’ no plans to walk on the moon anytime soon.”

  I fell back onto the bed. “I dunno, Pearl. If you believed the moon was the single, solitary place where ya could breathe, maybe you might start lookin’ for yourself a rocket ship.”

  “I suppose so.”

  I could see she was contemplating her next question. “What in tarnation possessed you to put on a dress for the first time?”

  “I ain’t got no idea,” I replied. “I’m just as vexed as anyone.”

  Giggling, Pearl fell back onto the bed next to me. A full belly laugh erupted between us. “Poppy Wainwright, I do believe this is biggest thing that’s ever happened in Savannah since the old spinster Mabel Atkinson grew herself a moustache.”

  “Huh?”

  “Yessum. Miss Mabel had herself a full beard and a fine handlebar ’stache. She’d wax it, groom it, and stroke it while she rocked on her front porch. She’d twist her long whiskers between her two fingers, like she was rolling herself a ciggy.”

  We laughed out loud.

  Sookie called, “Hush up, you youngins, and turn off the lights!”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I reached and switched off the lamp.

  Pearl lowered her voice to a whisper in the dark, “Old Mabel Atkinson would arrive to the church in her Sunday’s finest lace and satin dress with pearls strung around her neck and diamond bobbles hangin’ from her ears with a full dadgum black moustache and beard growing wild from beneath her powdered nose.”

  “Pearl, that can’t be true.”

  “Is too,” she replied. “I swear on a stack of Bibles. Poppy, your tallywacker has got Mable Atkinson’s beard beat by a country mile.” Pearl went quiet for a moment and then asked, “What’s it like to have a pecker?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t pay it no never mind,” I answered. “Miss Loretta says it was Mother Nature’s little mistake, but she told me Mother Nature made up for it by blessing me with fine bone structure and a keen sense of panache.”

  “Are ya gonna tell folks?”

  “I reckon it’s just a matter of time. Everyone will know.”

  Pearl pondered the dire possibilities. “Poppy, some folks aren’t gonna be none too pleased.”

  “Yessum.”

  “Jackson?” Pearl’s mouth went slack-jawed. “Jackson Taylor? Holy moly, Poppy! What in tarnation are you gonna do about Jackson?”

  “Shut your mouths, you juvenile delinquents!” Sook bellowed.

  “I dunno, Pearl. I dunno,” I whispered. “I’m worried sick. I never meant for none of this hubbub to happen. It was never my intention to ever hurt him.”

  She rested her head deeper in the pillow. “Oh, Lordy. That’s a heap of trouble.”

  “Pearl, it’s an aching lonesome,” I said. “Believing those affections offered to all the other girls won’t never be offered up to me. It’s a mean kind of knowing.”

  “Poppy, I ain’t got no long line of beaus at my door neither.”

  I smiled. “Your turn is comin’. I just know it. Until I met Jackson I was scared I wouldn’t never get mine.”

  We laid side by side in the dark.

  “Poppy?”

  “Yessum.”

  “Do you whizz standing upright like a fella or sittin’ on the commode like one of us girls?”

  “Mostly, I take me a seat.”

  She confessed, “I’d give my left arm to be able to pee standin’ upright.”

  In the light of a sleepy Georgia moon, Pearl turned to me. “Poppy, your secret is safe with me.” Turning an imaginary key to lock her pink lips, Pearl slid the invisible key in the front pocket of her flannel pajamas. I’ll take it to my grave.”

  “Thank you, Pearl,” I replied. “Maybe Sook and my grandma Lainey were right. Maybe I should steer clear of folks and stay well inside Sook’s gate.”

  “That ain’t no way to live.”

  “I reckon not. But I could save myself and everyone else a big heap of a mess if they ever find out.”

  “There ain’t nothin’ fun about being tidy—no joy in being clean.” Pearl grinned. “And it’s a heck of a lot more fun outside of old Sook’s front gate. Let’s go get messy together!”

  We chuckled.

  “You children stop your gawd-damned yappin’,” Sookie yelled. “If I have to g
et out of this bed, I’m gonna fetch me a leather strap and beat the tar out of both you.”

  Pearl smothered her giggles with a pillow.

  “Good night, Sookie,” I called out in the dark.

  CHAPTER 30

  Port Wentworth, Georgia

  It was the first time Donita Pendergast had taken notice of the front door.

  She’d woken earlier that morning after falling asleep on the couch, waiting on Rodney’s return home from the night before. The television was still on, and Rodney was nowhere to be found. Donita sat upright, wiped sleep from her eyes and surveyed the small sitting room. Rodney’s polished trophies lined the mantel, and framed photographs of the attractive couple were nailed about the plastered walls. A pretty vase with some paper flowers sat on the side console table, the same glass vase Donita had pieced back together with glue after Rodney had busted on the floor in the midst of one of his enraged assaults.

  In the mirror over the credenza, she viewed her reflection. She sighed at her weary appearance. She needed a brush to tame her tangled mess of hair. An extra five pounds would do her diminished frame some good. Donita was comforted to see that the bruise just above her left cheek bone had healed sufficiently and could be camouflaged with some foundation.

  Two antique brass candle sticks, a gift from her mother, sat on the coffee table. One evening, when Rodney was on a bender, he’d taken one of the lovely holders and beat Donita’s skull until she bled out on the carpet, finally losing consciousness on the kitchen linoleum. Later she cleaned her dried blood from the brass, unwrapping strands of her auburn hair caught in the tiny brass screws.

  Donita considered the hand-stitched curtains hanging over the small windows. She recalled the exact Wednesday afternoon at the Piggly Wiggly when she admired the bolt of blue fabric—it reminded her of the color of the sky. Living with Rodney Pendergast, Donita had learned to keep her windows shut and drapes drawn closed. Curtains were a necessity to stop any passing folks from witnessing the goings-on of the godless marriage playing out inside the tiny rooms.

  Donita surveyed the meager room and noticed for the first time the house’s front door.

  He had purchased the modest home while she was visiting her folks in Richmond. Upon her return to Savannah, an excited Rodney covered his palms over her eyes, eager to surprise his blushing bride. Donita stumbled blindly through the door’s threshold and walked directly into the front room. When he uncovered her eyes, she gasped, admiring the new wall-to-wall carpet and the lovely red brick fireplace.

  Hugging his neck, she kissed him over and over again. “It’s more than I could’ve ever dreamed of, baby.”

  Rodney walked her through the tiny kitchen with shiny appliances and new avocado Formica counters. From the window over the kitchen sink, Donita’s view was a lovely meadow of golden grasses. She walked all about the house holding Rodney’s arm, but Donita never took notice of the paneled front door on its hinges.

  Sitting on the couch on this particular morning, Donita thought to herself how just outside that simple door, a rusty train passed by the house three times a day—once in the morning, around half past nine, and twice in the late afternoons. The row of passenger cars linked behind the chugging engine carried folks who were heading somewhere far from Savannah. Were all those folks leaving Georgia searching for someplace better than the life they were living here?

  She walked to the front door and twisted its knob. With a slight bump of her hip, the wooden door swung open wide onto the front porch. Sitting back on the upholstered couch, Donita took a moment to enjoy the view of the rolling green pastures across the gravel dirt road. In the distance, she could see groves of live oaks and a blue sky stretching from here all the way to there.

  Donita Pendergast had woken on that Friday morning with an aching forehead, stiff bones, a troubled heart, and a head full of regrets. Like too many mornings before, Rodney was out somewhere creating a ruckus or in the arms of a willing Southern blonde. There were bills to be paid, clothes to be laundered, and dishes to be washed, but unlike those other mornings, on this particular day, Donita Pendergast saw an open door.

  CHAPTER 31

  I suspected it all started with a single smoldering ember.

  Like a piece of kindling buried at the bottom of a doused fire, our sworn secret started sparking deep inside Pearl’s belly. The news of my willy was combustible. I reckoned there wasn’t no way she could contain the fire.

  “I swear, I’ll never tell another livin’ soul,” Pearl had promised. We locked pinkies, and she skipped out the front gate.

  Nedra Sue picked up Pearl on the sidewalk out front of Sook’s place, and off they drove with the fire sparking inside her gut. Pearl waved widely from the little bug as they sped up Digby. A summer wind blew in through her open window, stoking the spark, igniting the flicker into a red-hot glow.

  It was later that Pearl conveyed how the fervor of my pecker burned to a blaze.

  It seemed by the time the tiny Volkswagen had turned onto West Jones Street, the combustible secret burned free from Pearl Tucker’s tummy.

  “Poppy, ain’t no real girl,” Pearl confided to her older sister in the car. “She was birthed Samuel Wainwright.”

  “What?” Nedra looked over once and then again, nearly veering her speeding bug directly into a horse-drawn carriage trotting up ballast stone street. “No way!”

  “Yessum. It’s true,” Pearl confirmed. “But zip it, keep quiet!”

  “Far out!” Nedra celebrated with an extended honk on her car’s horn. “That’s so dang cool! The instant I met that little radical rebel I knew she was part of the revolution!”

  Needing gas, Nedra pulled her Volkswagen into the service station on the corner of Market Street. While filling her tank, she happened across Brody Banks, a teen from her second-period geometry class, who stood pumping fuel into his Dodge pickup.

  “Hi, Brody!”

  “Howdy, Nedra Sue.”

  “Did you pass Miss Haynes’s quiz?”

  “Hell no!” The Banks boy swiped his stringy hair from his eyes. “She’s a ball buster.”

  Nedra called over to him, “You ain’t never gonna believe what I just heard! It’s the craziest damned thing ever! You know Poppy Wainwright, the kid who moved into old Sook’s on Digby?”

  “Yessum. The little girl from Arkansas?” he answered back. “She’s a friend of my little sis, Tallulah.”

  Nedra lowered her voice to almost a whisper. “Well, that little runt is actually a boy!”

  “Huh?” Brody’s eyes grew as wide as two shiny silver dollars. “You’re fuckin’ kiddin’ me.” He scratched his forehead. “Can’t be true. No fuckin’ way!”

  Old Jack Paul, who owned the station, called from an adjacent pump, “Mr. Banks, cursing is a sure sign of a lack of intelligence. And cussing in the presence of a young lady displays a serious lack of character.”

  “My apologies, Mr. Paul.” Brody whispered back to Nedra, “No fuckin’ way!”

  “Yessum. It’s true!” She giggled. “Isn’t that so cool?”

  “That’s fuckin’ crazy!” The Banks boy stood dumbfounded. Petroleum overflowed from his car, spilling onto the pavement.

  “Catch ya later, Brody.” Nedra waved, hopped in her bug, and took off toward home.

  It seemed the hearsay of my hidden, hooded hotdog continued to spread like a wild fire.

  Later that evening, after heads were bowed and grace was said over the Banks’s family supper table, Brody Banks unceremoniously announced, “Old Sook’s kin from Arkansas, the little whippersnapper? She’s actually a fella.”

  Mr. Banks nearly choked on a piece of fried chicken. Gathering his composure, he asked, “Excuse me, son? Could you repeat that?”

  The entire Banks family went silent, patiently watching on as young Brody finished devouring his buttered corn on the cob.

  The Banks’s matriarch cleared her throat and dabbed the corners of her mouth. “Son, would you please explain yourse
lf?”

  The boy took a swig of his orange soda pop and repeated, “Yessum, the little gal who moved into Sook’s place on Digby. Well, come to find out, she ain’t no she at all. She’s a fella. Aren’t you friendly with her, sis?”

  Little Tallulah went pale. Her mouth went cotton dry and her lips turned blue.

  Hyperventilating at the table, Tallulah suffered a full-fledged asthmatic episode. The Banks’s fine supper was cut short when it was necessary to rush little Tallulah to the Mercy Medical Emergency Room. She sucked the mouth piece of her inhaler while her panicked parents loaded her into the family station wagon.

  The hot chatter of my popular pecker burned to a bonfire, spreading through Savannah like a raging forest fire in the sweltering days of August. Come the following morning, the youngest Banks boy, who also happened to deliver the Savannah Morning Press, felt obliged to distribute a burning ember to every doorstep on Digby.

  Pedaling by each home, Brody greeted the early risers with a paper. “Good morning, Mrs. Calvert. Here’s the morning edition!” He smiled. “Did you happen to know that young Poppy Wainwright, Sook’s niece, is really a boy? Have a fine day!”

  “Mornin’, Mrs. Atkinson. I hope you’re having a pleasant morning.” Brody waved as he tossed the newspaper on her front lawn. “I ain’t sure you’ve heard, but come to find out the young, orphaned Wainwright gal ain’t no gal at all!”

  As Carl McAllister sauntered out to the sidewalk to fetch his paper, the youngest Banks hollered, “Good mornin’, sir.”

  “And a fine mornin’ to you, Mr. Banks!”

  “Here’s your newspaper, sir!”

  “Thank you, son.”

  The boy tossed the rolled paper, sending it sailing in the air. It landed at Carl’s socked feet.

  “That’s a mighty nice throw, Brody. I’m sure that strong arm of yours will be a fine addition to the Savannah High baseball squad next season.”