After graduation, I hit the road for home in Old Betsy,my eight-year-old black Saab. She’s a little tired. The fabric on the ceiling is beginning to detach in a couple of places, but that will be an easy fix. When I actually have time to fix it.
Vicky wanted my dad to buy me a Lincoln Town Car for graduation. She felt it would be safer.“Safe” being the operative word. Safe from anything and everybody. No one would want to be seen with an eighteen-year-old girl in a Lincoln Town Car. My dad graciously salvaged my reputation and refused.
Something happens to me just north of downtown. Savannah begins to fill my senses. No matter what the time of year, I’m forced to roll down my windows and tug open my sunroof, allowing myself to both feel and smell home. I’ve memorized the story that the streets tell in progression, culminating in the enchantment of the place I call home, the Historic District.
I know this city. I know it the way a couple who have been married fifty years know where the lines came from around each other’s eyes. I know its stately oak trees covered in moss, its Bradford pear trees blooming in clouds of white. Savannah holds all my secrets shared with best friends,my first kiss,my once-upon-a-time dreams of foreign lands and great adventures, and my discovery of faith. It is 2.2 square miles of history and life’s simple pleasures. It was built of twenty-four squares, many of which held a church, cathedral, or synagogue, and a neighbor who knew not only your name, but your dreams.
During my high-school years, these were the streets we drove in unforgettable joy, riding with heads stuck out the window. These streets were also home to our own Barney Fife, Sergeant Millings. He always hid on the corner of Oglethorpe and East Jones Streets, waiting for any opportunity to pull one of us kids over and fortify his claim that no one under the age of forty-five should be driving.
We Phillipses lived in Atlanta until my eleventh birthday, when my father, Jake, sold his multimillion-dollar accounting firm at the ripe old age of forty. My mother had longed to return to the place she called home since I could remember. So Dad said good-bye to insane hours, the pressure of a hundred employees, and an hour-and-a-half commute. He bought a small coffee shop on East State Street in Savannah, packed up the Phillips clan, and settled in to spend the rest of his life enjoying his family and his job.
Jake’s Coffee Shop is located on Wright Square, between the Chatham County Legislative Building and the courthouse. His shop is the place where people start their days with some good old-fashioned brew, as he likes to call it.“If you can’t spell it or pronounce it, you surely shouldn’t drink it,” he is fond of saying.
I proved to be his most difficult customer. I hate coffee. I’ve tried. I’ve tried it every way but in milkshake form, and I may have had it that way as well. But I hate it. I am a confessed Coca-Cola addict. It is one of life’s greatest joys, especially McDonald’s Cokes. They are magical. Their magic lies in that powerful, burning sensation that brings alive every sensory organ known to man. My first taste of a McDonald’s Coke sent me soaring. I had more energy than a carpool of five-year-olds and never forgot the taste. Sure, I had had Coke before—but this, this wasn’t Coke; this was an experience.
When we moved to Savannah, I commenced my search for the Golden Arches immediately. A quick survey of the area revealed not one within the Historical District. Appalled and persistent, I did what any committed McDonald’s Coke connoisseur would do: I picketed. For one week, I picketed in front of our house before and after school, even sacrificing my after-school recreational reading hour. “Do you people not think I deserve a break today?” I asked the passersby.“Don’t you know I need to start my day with a Coke and a smile? Well, do you see me? I’m not smiling.”
Mother was mortified. “My stars, Savannah Phillips, I’ll build you one in the backyard with its own play land if you will just get yourself inside.” I refused to be swayed, because we don’t have a backyard.We have a courtyard, overtaken by a lap pool and flowers with names that no one on the face of the earth beside Victoria and Martha Stewart can pronounce.
By the end of the week, I was worn down. I had been honked at, laughed at, and exploited on the evening news. To top it off, I was dying of thirst. That Friday, Dad picked me up from school and took me straight to his shop. He blindfolded me and led me to the back room. The removal of my blindfold revealed my very own McDonald’s Coke fountain, courtesy of a good friend who owned a franchise. Dad knew an eleven-year-old prepubescent girl didn’t need any extra drama, especially when she had no trouble creating her own already.
On this beautiful May afternoon, when the front of my house on Abercorn Street came into view, the world was in perfect order. And I was certain I was home. Why so certain? Easy. There were two six-foot signs spanning both of our front balconies. The sign on the balcony to the left of the front door read “Welcome Home,” and the sign to the right read “Savannah.” I truly wished Vicky could have found a more discreet way to express her excitement.
The house was built with brick made by slave laborers. The people of Savannah in that time believed that if the brick was so inexpensive, it couldn’t be good enough. So they covered the brick with stucco and scored it to make it look like stone. By the 1970s, the same brick that years before had been deemed worthless and in need of covering began to be valued for its actual worth at ten dollars a brick. Its value had homeowners all over Savannah removing their stucco. The brick on our home is undeniably stunning.
There is more ironwork in the city of Savannah than in any other city in America, the majority of it unquestionably on my house. Two balconies in front of the second-floor windows flank ornate black-painted wooden doors. They are rather simple, but beautiful nonetheless—well, before they were mercilessly draped with vinyl communiqué. Ivy climbs the brick wall and reaches around the front of the house from East Jones to Abercorn. There is also a beautiful iron fence that follows the curves of the house in front of the lower windows.
When I pulled into the driveway, my little brother, Thomas, who is all of six-foot-one, came flying out of the side door. He had my door opened before I could even reach for the handle.
“I’m sure you hate the sign,” he burst, “but you would have hated Mom’s first one even more. She had it evenly distributed with ‘Home’ cut in half.”Thomas turned to face our front stoop, pointing first to the left side. “Welcome Ho”—he stopped long enough to point to the right—“me Savannah. We’d’ve had tourists making you the next Savannah attraction.”
“The eighth wonder of the world, I’m sure.”
He planted a kiss on my head.“Don’t think so highly of yourself. Fortunately for you, she declared you would rather she cook for you anyway. By now she thinks the whole thing was her idea, and she’s totally satisfied.”
“Thank you for preserving my reputation.” Duke, Dad’s golden retriever, came pounding out the side door and stood stately at Thomas’s side.
“Duke, you haven’t changed a bit. Except maybe gained about fifty extra pounds!” I grunted as he put both paws on my shoulders and licked me, obviously expecting me to reciprocate. “Someone has got to get this dog on a meal plan.”
“He’s on Mom’s-leftovers meal plan. She refuses to spend money on actual dog food for him.”
“Who does that surprise?”
“Well, she might not have a choice. The vet told Dad Duke needs to lose fifty pounds. So Dad started walking him.”He stopped and patted Duke on the head. “I think Dad’s lost more than Duke has, though.”
“Yeah, there’s not much pleasure in a fifty-pound bag of Alpo when compared to pork tenderloin.” Duke’s ears perked up at the mere mention of pork.
“What are you doing here anyway?” I asked, finally stopping long enough to give him a hug.“I thought you had another week of school.”As he walked around to open the trunk, I smiled at his neatly cropped hair.
Thomas was in his third year at The Citadel Military Academy in Charleston, South Carolina. Vicky was sure he had enrolled to embarrass her, but he had dreamed of going to The Citadel ever since Judge Hoddicks’s son Roger filled his head with stories of life as a cadet. When Thomas came home after his first month with his head shaved, Vicky called the general who was the head of The Citadel and threatened abuse charges.
“Have you seen my child?”
“Yes, ma’am. In fact, I have another five hundred that look just like him.”
“Well, it is criminal, I tell you. Criminal.” She then headed to her room. Dad followed her and, legend has it, made it clear she would call and apologize. Now, Dad lets Vicky think what she will, but trust me, he is the one who has this ship under control. She made that call to the general, albeit brief and very private, then gathered herself, returned downstairs, declared Thomas too thin, and began to cook a feast.
“I finished up exams early,”Thomas said, bringing me back to the present.
“Lucky you.”
“I’d say lucky you by the way Mom has tried to make your graduation the talk of the town. You might need me here to keep you out of the limelight. Especially if you plan to tell Mom about your new career move. All I have to do is bring up women in the Corps, and she will resurrect her letter-writing campaign to the South Carolina Legislature.”
I had called Thomas to warn him of what I was doing, knowing he could help me with the excruciating task of adjustment. We walked around the sidewalk to the front of the house and up the stairs to the double front doors. In old Georgian homes, the entrances were built on the second floor in an effort to limit the dust and dirt that entered the houses from the horse-drawn carriages traveling the dirt streets. The servants lived on the lower level. Today, most homeowners rent out the lower levels as apartments, but Vicky never has. She, instead, made it a haven where Thomas foolishly relocated his room. Vicky walks around in sheer delight, believing her baby will never want to leave.
As we reached the top of the front steps, I stopped and turned around to take a moment to breathe in the essence of my life.
“Been a while, huh,Vanni?”
Wrapping my arm around the young man who alone could call me by such a name, I closed my eyes and allowed a smile to cross my face.“Mmm hmm . . . it’s been too long.”We walked inside.
I hadn’t been home at all my last semester, trying to finish my story and finals. It seemed like forever. Yet, the looming foyer bombarded me with familiarity, right down to the smell in the air, which proclaimed that fried chicken was on the menu.
The oriental rug still encompassed the majority of the black-marble floor. Two black Armthwaite chairs flanked the opening to the left of the foyer, which held the dining room. One massive arrangement of flowers that Mother replenished on a weekly basis brought it all together, creating an abode that could compete with the pages of Veranda.
The magnificent staircase with a wrought-iron banister and an oriental stair runner in complimentary tones of rich black, peach, and pink curved around the back of the foyer. I peeked into the “parlor,” as Vicky called it. A living room to any normal person, but not to any person living in Savannah. In front of the window sat the early 1900s burlwood petite grand piano, one of my mother’s most treasured keepsakes. My father had it shipped from London as a wedding gift.
Above the fireplace in the parlor hangs a picture of Vicky in a white organza gown with hand-beaded flowers all over it, adorned by a bow on each sleeve. All I can say about her hair is that it is big. I have no idea what it is with pageant people and big hair. Maybe they are just trying to make themselves look taller, but most of the time it spreads as wide as it does high. Draped across her is a sash declaring her “Miss Georgia United States of America.” She stands stately in this twenty-seven-year-old photograph, her hand draped ever so deliberately, yet casually, across the back of a French colonial chair. Below the portrait in an acrylic box rests her Miss Georgia United States of America crown. Thomas and I call it the “Ode to Vicky.”This parlor is her own private sanctuary, where she comes often just to stare at her picture, remembering who knows what.
Thomas came back through the front door, setting down the rest of my bags.“Happy thoughts, I hope.”
I couldn’t help but laugh as I picked up my bags.“Humorous thoughts. I’m going to get cleaned up for dinner. What about you? Because I have something I want you to do.”
“What? I’m not telling Mom anything for you.”
“I need you to go take down those banners. Please, they are humiliating. And as long as we keep her inside, she won’t even know they’re gone.”
“Would you like me to hang them up in your room?”
“I will refrain from telling you what to do with them, because I am a southern lady.” I turned my back to him and headed up the stairs to a landing that connected four bedrooms. Mine was in the far left corner.
Mother has revamped this house completely three different times and rearranges furniture and accessories on a bimonthly basis. But she is not allowed to touch my room. It is where I can come and know that things will be like I left them. The color of my room is yellow. It reminds me of sunshine. My bedroom suite consists of a wrought-iron bed and a pine dresser that sits to the left of my bed in front of the windows. A pine armoire stands directly across from the bed, housing those things that make young adulthood tolerable: a TV, a stereo, a VCR,and a recently added DVD player. My mother, an only child, had wanted to put my grandmother’s antique bedroom suite in my room after my grandparents died, he from a heart attack, she from heartbreak. But I don’t do dead people’s furniture. I’m more than glad to love ’em while they’re living, but once they’re gone, well, I don’t want to be sleeping on their furniture.
My bed is flanked by floor-to-ceiling bookcases. On these shelves lie my greatest treasures. Pictures of some of my best memories with my closest friends are stuck between the books that have shaped me. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, and Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Brontë’s Wuthering Heights is still wuthering as far as I’m concerned, but some things were just required reading. I also have numerous biographies, some that were authorized and others that weren’t. There is the one about the Onassis women that is rather enlightening; a book of Ronnie’s love letters to Nancy Reagan, which leaves little room for most men to stand a chance; one of Hillary Clinton that my mother told me I couldn’t leave in her house; and the one of George W. Bush she bought to replace it.
When he won the election over Al Gore, she acted like a giddy school girl. She even calls him by the pet name his wife gave him, “Bushie.” I told her she needed to get a grip. She told me I needed to appreciate her respect for world leaders. I asked her to name one other world leader she actually knew.
“Oh, you know, the lady with all the shoes. I hear she’s pretty good.”
“Imelda Marcos?”
“Yes, that’s her,” she said, acting as if she had said it herself.
“Did anyone ever tell you she went to prison?”
She told me I was getting a little snippy and needed to watch my tone, that she was still my mother. But I saw through the protest.
My mother has a crush on the president. I know it, she knows it, and anyone who catches her watching Fox News knows it.
Some books inside this bookcase have changed me. Roots by Alex Haley first came to television when I was in elementary school. Mom wouldn’t let me watch it, thinking it would be too troubling for my tender years. But she was so glued to the TV set downstairs that I sneaked in the first four nights of viewing without her knowing. My father eventually caught me and held me in his arms while we watched together. He did his best to explain, at least as much as he was able to understand himself. For the next week’s show and tell, I brought no show, just tell, and all I told was the story of Roots. My teacher finally assured me I had covered all that could possibly be covered. I assured her there was more, but one week was all I got. For my thirteenth birthday, Dad gave me the book.
Gone with the Wind rests there too. That one was Vicky’s gift for my thirteenth birthday.“Everyone needs to know her heritage.”
“It’s fiction, Mother,” I told her.
“Fiction to some; reality to truly southern women.” I will never tell her that I have actually read the book, or that Scarlett is my secret heroine. In fact, no living soul will ever know, because my mother would see it as cause for public celebration.
Scanning to the bottom of my bookcase, my eyes caught the biography of John Wesley. It is one of my two most precious books, and the sight of it caused me to laugh. I was forced to read it by the pastor of Wesley Monumental United Methodist Church. My longtime friend and eventual boyfriend, Grant Lewis, conned me into sneaking inside the church one Saturday night during our eleventh-grade year, all because he wanted to see who could stay inside the longest without getting freaked out by the shadow figures coming through the fifteen stained-glass windows. We both lost it at the same time when we heard footsteps on the hardwood floor.
“What was that?” Grant whispered.
“God coming to tell us we shouldn’t be messing in His stuff.”
“No, He only comes on Sunday. It has to be John Wesley’s ghost.”
“Well, rest assured, he’ll know for certain whose inane idea this was by the time he heads home.”
About that time, Pastor Mason walked up the stairs and laid his Sunday sermon on the pulpit, eliciting from me a scream loud enough to make Grant scream too. All this lively noise culminated in a scream from Pastor Mason louder than the aforementioned. Not to mention he also went airborne, jumping so high that his knee hit the edge of the pulpit. By the time he hobbled over to turn on the lights, Grant and I were frozen. I couldn’t have run had I tried. I knew then that, just like in dreams, fear prevents retreat.
Pastor Mason hobbled calmly toward us, removed us from the red-carpeted runner, and sat us firmly on the front row of the stiff wooden pew. I was too scared to speak, and Grant never opened his eyes.
Then Pastor Mason decided that if we felt it necessary to come to church so early for the Sunday service, we must be in need of a powerful sermon. So he climbed to his pulpit—well, limped actually— and proceeded to preach.
You would think, due to my state of mind, that I’d have trouble remembering his sermon, but I think it is precisely because of my state of mind that I do remember. Surely part of my punishment in heaven for pulling such a stunt would be to recite the sermon verbatim. And I still pretty much can. His message was titled “The Door.”
He began by describing the front doors to people’s homes and likened them to Jesus being the door to life . Then he compared Jesus to shepherds and spoke of how shepherds are the door to the sheep pen. No one gets to the sheep unless they go through the shepherd. Then he finished with this word: “Each of us should be a bridge builder to that door, the door of Jesus Himself.” I wasn’t sure I got it, what with all those mixed metaphors, but I’d certainly remember it.
For the benediction, Pastor Mason made us sing four stanzas of “Christ Is Risen” and assigned a twenty-five-page report on the life of John Wesley. Somewhere between the message and the singing, Grant passed out from holding his breath. When Pastor Mason finally left us alone, I was at the altar praying that God would somehow forgive me, and Grant came to long enough to roll around underneath the pew in hysterics. I didn’t speak to Grant again until I had written my report, and I have kept the book on John Wesley’s life safely tucked away ever since.
John Wesley is known for starting Sunday school in Savannah. It is told that as a little boy he escaped his room in the attic one night when his house caught on fire. He said that night he realized there was a destiny for his life. Wesley loved people, all people. He preached to the Spanish, the Italian, the French, and the English. “The world is my parish,” he said. So I guess you could say he was a door to the world. His only desire was to leave something life-changing in his wake. I didn’t know if I’d ever leave a wake, but I hoped I could leave something, be a door to someone, somehow.
The other book that has changed my life is my grandmother’s Bible. Though I wasn’t willing to take her bed, I was pleased to take her Bible. So, it rests here as well, with all her hopes and markings, and new hopes and markings of my own. My greatest treasures are in this room. The past six years, however, have led me to believe they are in this home, in this city.
I only hope I’m still Vicky’s treasure by the time dinner is over.