I wasn’t hungry for anything but vengeance. I had two plans of attack. And they were vicious, but well deserved. One: Get a housekeeper. Two: Get a housekeeper that cooks. To sort through strategies, I had always walked. So I walked straight up West Jones Street instead of going near the courthouse . That was nowhere on my agenda today. Con me with food or not, I wasn’t biting.
Mr. Fisher was outside his house, trimming the ivy that had overtaken the iron-gate entrance to his spectacular garden. Mr. Fisher’s house, a beautiful aged, burnt brick with rich tones and streaks of black, had a side-porch entrance more common to Charleston, South Carolina, architecture. The black shutters and ebony-stained wood door that led to the porch, complemented by a brass lion’s-head door-knocker, had all been maintained with extreme care.
Charleston homes were originally taxed based on how many windows they had in the front of their house. So the Southerners got frugal as well as savvy and built all of their homes with side-porches, which served as the main entrance. By building the houses sideways, the “fronts” had as few windows as any other part of the house.
But Vicky’s issues are deeply rooted in her competitive spirit with the other “Sister of the South.” Stepsister, if you ask her . The fact that any house in Savannah resembled a Charleston residence is a fact Vicky fought tooth and nail, and well, I do mean literally tooth and nail.
It happened one beautiful fall day a couple of years after our arrival here from Atlanta, and only months after I decided to picket in front of our house because there was no McDonald’s near our home. About the time Mr. Fisher and his wife were having their furniture unloaded, Mother pranced herself up the street and threw herself on top of their baby grand piano as the movers were trying to carry it into the house.
“What in the tar hill are you doing, young lady?” Mr. Fisher screamed. The young lady part almost caused mother to completely forget why she was there. But the jolt of the piano brought her back to reality.
“I’m saving you!” she replied with great animation.
“You’re violating my piano! Now get yourself down!”
The mover provided extra incentive. “You might want to do what he says, lady, because we’re about to have to turn this baby on her side, and then you won’t be on the top any longer.”
“Well, wait just a minute!” she said, still atop her perch.“You don’t want to buy this house.”
“I already bought it, lady!”
“Well, you don’t want to move in.”
“And why wouldn’t I want to do that? Are you going to tell me it’s haunted or something?”
“Lord have mercy, no. I don’t like ghosts, and I pray them out of town any chance I get. Even walked a street or two getting them out of here.”
“Lady, you’re crazy. Now get off of my piano!”
About that time, the dainty Mrs. Fisher walked out with her pretty bobbed gray hair, and pants that looked like jeans but weren’t.
“Oh my Lord, what is she doing on our piano?”
“She’s preparing to get off!” her husband assured her.
“Lady, I’m warning you,” the mover said, straining beneath the added one hundred and ten pounds of peculiar. “We are tipping this puppy on three. One, two, three.” And with that, three grown men turned the top of the antique baby grand piano on its side, and one Victoria Phillips on her bum . They didn’t stop to check on her or survey the damage; they just continued straight in the house.
Mr. Fisher just stared at my mother, but Mrs. Fisher ran over to help her up.“Young lady, what is all this about?”
Mother tried to salvage as much grace as she possibly could after being dumped off a piano.“You live in Savannah . Why in the world would you want to buy a home that looks like Charleston?”
Mrs. Fisher let out a chuckle. “Is that what this nonsense is about? What is your name anyway?”
For one minute, or so the story goes, Mother hesitated. After all, to say that she was the head of the chamber of commerce might make for rather embarrassing dinner conversation. But then again, that revelation wasn’t enough to forgo her great pride in her position. “I am Mrs . Victoria Phillips, head of the Savannah Chamber of Commerce.”
Mr. Fisher let out a humph.“You have got to be kidding me. Is this how you welcome everyone to the city? If it is, tourism will be destroyed in six months.”With that he and Mrs. Fisher left her there with a bruised ego and a bruised bum.
Vicky walked back to our house. Rumor has it there were a couple more similar episodes involving dressers and a dining room table, but the episodes ceased after the washing-machine incident made it on the front page.
Mr. Fisher’s voice threw my recollection. “Savannah Phillips, how do you like my garden? Not bad for a Charleston house, huh?” A pretty good memory for his seventy-five years.
I peeked inside the gate and admired how beautifully landscaped and sculpted it was. “Oh, it’s beautiful . You’ve been working hard, haven’t you?”
“Oh yeah . Takes up most of my time. But with me still working, it gets away from me and I have to attack it whenever I have free time . Where you off to? Trying to get away from the picture in the paper?” He smiled knowingly.
I picked invisible lint off my khaki capris and made my way up to my white T-shirt. “Just taking a walk before I eat lunch.”
“Lunch?” he asked, putting down his trimmers.“Why on earth are you not eating at—oh, that’s right, your mother’s down at the courthouse. Is she lying on the monument or just sitting beside it?”
That made us both roar with laughter. “She’s actually gone to sitting these days,” I finally managed.
He took out his hanky and wiped the sweat from his gray bushy eyebrows. His blue eyes were crystal clear and shimmered of a stolen youth, but also of a life still flourishing inside.“Why don’t you come eat with me and the Mrs.? She has enough food for us to eat off all week . We’re having fish.”
“No, that’s okay really. I appreciate it. But I’ve got to do some work this afternoon for my next column, so I’m just going to grab a quick bite at home.”
“You sure?” He picked up his clippers.
I patted him on his damp white T-shirt. “Yes, sir, I’m sure.
Thanks anyway.”
“Will do.”
“Uh, Mr. Fisher?”
“Yes?”
“Does Mrs. Fisher ever rent out her cooking services?”
He laughed.“You’re asking for trouble,Miss Savannah.”
“You think?”
“I’ve gone a round with your mama. I know.”
“Well, tell Mrs. Fisher I said hello.”
“You tell your family the same.” Fortunately for Victoria, Mr. Fisher was able to let go . Too bad the letter to the editor he wrote about her welcoming party took them four years for the letting go to begin.
I would eat on the stoop. If I sat in the garden, sequestered by ivy, I couldn’t really see what was happening on the streets.So, I went out to the stoop and sat on the steps . This is virtually the only way I am like my mother. I do like to see what is going on around me.
Come to think of it, Dad does too. He likes to plant himself at the table by the window in the hopes that some weary straggler will need to bare his soul. He’ll act all casual, sitting there petting Duke. Someone will walk in for a quick hello or cup of coffee, but before you know it Jake’s helping with marital problems (which he denies having), adolescent terrors (of which he declares he’s had many), or financial difficulties (which he overcame). By the time they leave smiling, Dad’s sitting back at the window, smiling too.
About two bites into my first piece of catfish, my park-bench friend arrived. I heard her before I saw her. She was humming that same melody she had departed with yesterday. She wore the same dress as yesterday too, carried the same bag, and didn’t look much different than she had twenty-four (or forty-eight!) hours earlier. This week anyway, she and Vicky had a thing or two in common. “Well, well, young lady . Where’s your book?”
I laughed, finding it hard to believe she remembered me. “Inside.” I motioned to my house.“I didn’t bring it for this journey.”
But she didn’t really care about my book. She didn’t care about the house either. Didn’t care about Victoria’s lovely iron balconies, or stately wooden, black-painted doors. Couldn’t have given a rat’s rear end for the pristine ivy growing over our own brick wall that surrounded our fortress. No, her eyes were on my plate. She was like Duke eying a tenderloin. I wanted her to pull out her apple and get to eating her own food. She walked up a few steps and planted herself next to me, still fixated on my food.“Ooh, you got a nice Sunday dinner there, don’t ya?”
“Yeah, you can get some at Lady & Son’s. It’s just up the street.” I was even gracious enough to point her in the direction.
She wasn’t paying a lick of attention to my lead. “Yeah, well maybe I’ll try to get over there.” But she didn’t move. How could she when she never even looked away from my plate?
Well, it was Sunday.“Would you like some?”
She turned away, embarrassed. “Oh no, baby. I don’t want to eat your food . You need your food . You can tell I get all the food I need.” She patted her stomach. I wasn’t going to argue with her. Then she turned quickly back around.“Well, if you really want me to have some, I don’t want to hurt your feelings.”
I laughed at her sweet expression.“Here . Take two . Who wants to eat Sunday dinner alone anyway?” I laid a napkin out for her. Gave her some catfish and a homemade biscuit. By the time she was through, Garfield couldn’t have accomplished cleaner bones.“What’s your name?”
“Oh, my name is . . .” She looked off into the distance as if trying to find something to jog her memory or offer her a name. “My name is Joy . Yes, it’s Joy.” She finally answered as more of a declaration.
“Oh, that’s a beautiful name. Here, take a drink.” I handed her the tea I had yet to enjoy and offered her the opportunity to wash down what she had virtually inhaled.
“What’s your name, precious girl?”
“Savannah,” I said, scratching my nose.
“Nose itch?”
“Like crazy. My mother says that means somebody’s coming to see you.” I raised a right eyebrow at my dinner guest. “Guess she got that one right, huh?”
She looked at me inquisitively. “Well, I think Savannah is a beautiful name for a beautiful girl.”
“You don’t want to crack a joke about it? Everyone else does.”
“Now, who would crack a joke about a beautiful name?”
I wiped my mouth and gave her the rest of my plate. It seemed she needed it more than me.“You’d be surprised.”
“I’m surprised by a lot of things, Savannah. I’m surprised by how people rush to and fro. Hardly stop to breathe. Or give thanks for the ability to breathe. So busy working and doing and never simply resting or enjoying. I see the lights on in their windows until late in the night. They type on computers and rummage through papers. All the time doing and never living. And then the one moment, the one day the world is told to rest, it just keeps on moving . We all need rest, Savannah.”
“You’re telling me.”
She looked back at me, not seeming to remember.“You look kind of that way. Like you need some rest.”
“You said the same thing yesterday. I didn’t realize how bad I was looking until you informed me.”
She chuckled, causing her belly to move with her.“Ooh, I’m sorry, baby. I didn’t mean that you look bad like you were ugly or something. It’s a furrowed brow. It’s a heaviness of the eyes. It’s seeing the weight someone carries by the mere look in their eyes. But it doesn’t have to be that way.”
“You aren’t going to try to sell me some Anthony Robbins tape series are you?”
“Who’s Anthony Robbins?”
“Good.”
“No, I don’t have anything to sell. Life isn’t about selling and buying. It’s about knowing and doing. And I’m not talking about the twenty-four-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week doing. I’m talking about the heart knowing and the life doing.”
I leaned my elbows on the step behind me. My mind was so tired. And all of this was just making me more tired. “I’m tired of doing.”
“I see you’ve had all you can take, my sweet Savannah.” She rose from her side of the stoop and laid my empty plate neatly beside me . Then she rose and picked up the half glass of tea to take it with her. I couldn’t help but smile at her mature innocence.
She seemed so wise, yet her eyes looked so young and vulnerable. “I’m sure I’ll see you soon,” I assured us both.
She turned and headed to the corner of the house. She stopped and turned back around. “Being, Savannah! That’s the word. Not doing, but just being, baby.”
I watched her as her skirt shifted tightly across her backside with the movement of her round legs. And I wondered who this stranger was and where she had come from. The thought of a strange elderly woman walking up some street, drinking my tea and singing, caused me to laugh at the absurdity of the last couple days. I would have asked her if she would like a job, but the way she was always hungry, it was evident cooking wasn’t her forte. And the blur that passed by me forced my attention elsewhere.
You don’t see a lot of lawn mowers in downtown Savannah. Few people actually have yards to be mowed. Most people’s yards aren’t lawns; they’re gardens. And gardens need maintaining, mulching, even manicuring, but nowhere do they need mowing. And if they do, the areas are so small that they pretty much only require a weed eater.
But the city does mow the town. Savannah takes great pride in the preservation of the squares for the enjoyment of the tourists, and the homeowners that claim them as front yards.
The young man driving the mower that zoomed by my house didn’t look too happy about his afternoon assignment. I followed him in sheer wonder of this most ordinary activity. He was probably a young college kid desperate for summer money. On a beautiful day like today, a kid his age had a thousand other things he should have been enjoying.
But this one kid now arriving at Lafayette Square, he was commissioned to mow. I sat down on a bench to observe. I don’t know why . Wasn’t much else to observe, well, nothing that I wanted to get in the middle of now. The grass flew up on the pavement in front of me, making a scattered green hedge along the edge of the sidewalk . The new design would have to be removed by the young worker after completing the first stage of his duty.
I bore easily. As I got up to work my way down the street, the edge of my flip-flop scraped some of the freshly laid hedge back onto the lawn. At least, on the edge of one square of one of the four sidewalks, this small section would not require his attention. It might not save much time, but it may save him a moment.
The two women in front of me didn’t quit talking, nor move from my path the entire way to the courthouse . Their hands were loaded down with shopping bags, and they rambled on incessantly for three blocks.
“What are you doing the rest of the day?” the stately, elderly woman said to the medium-built, stout younger one.
“Working. I’ve got final exams to finish grading before tomorrow. What about you?”
“The same. And next year will only be worse . We are going to have to submit weekly lesson plans.”
“Every week? I’m doing good to get mine submitted once a month.”
“It’s just gotten absurd.”
And on and on they went for three straight blocks. They waxed eloquent on everything from how the last week of school would run to who had lunch duty. By the time they were through, I needed a nap. Their incessant rambling made me decide not to think about work until tomorrow. After all, my story wasn’t going anywhere. It rested right down the street on that square alive with activity. And all I had to do was sit and observe. By Tuesday, Mr. Hicks would have an article on his desk.
I had no idea yet what I was going to tell people about the upheaval of our city, but I knew that story would consist of a thousand strangers, a large piece of granite, and a woman who claimed to be responsible for my physical birth. She would probably be the one responsible for my occupational death.