Let me tell you something Mama did after Annie died. She brought this man home for supper.
“This here’s Larry. His uncle owns the new filling station,” she said and handed Pa the mashed potatoes. We ate our dinner like usual, stealing glances at Pa to see if we could get a read on what he was thinking.
“Good money in the filling station, iz there?” Pa said.
“Think I’ll have me a bit more of them taters,” Larry answered and nodded. It was the weirdest thing. We girls kept waiting for something to happen.
“You got anymore of them taters?” Larry said, and Mama nodded and got up to get them.
“Charlie, you want some more? Git Charlie here another helping while yer at it, Ruby,” Larry said.
And Mama did. But her face looked like it come out of the deep freeze—except for the vein on the side of her head. It was dancing with itself. She told us girls to gather up the dishes and get cracking. If she was trying to make some kind of statement by bringing this fellow Larry home, we never did figure out what it was.
Pa and Larry sat down and played checkers. Then they went on over to the tavern. Mama didn’t say hey, yoo-hoo, hee-haw, or toodle-do. She wiped her hands on her apron, stood by the front door, and shot them a look that could drop a turkey if it’d been a gun. Then she turned on Art Linkletter.
“Don’t be bothering me, girls,” she said. “I got a headache could kill a herd of elephants.”
I don’t recall anything else happening that night. I do know Mama never brought any more men home for dinner. I figured there was some kind of powerful statement she was trying to make but never did figure out what it was or if the message got across. I told myself someday when I grew up I’d ask her. Now here we were, headed back to Hog Gap. It’d be a good time, but it no longer seemed important to me.
“You’re awful quiet,” Mama said.
We were about halfway there. It was taking us a while since Mama always drove the minimum speed posted, and this time wasn’t any different. It felt like ninety degrees in the car and climbing. I was sticky as a hot cross bun and warm as one just pulled from the oven. Mama had the radio on to WYME, the country station. Patsy Cline was singing “Sweet Dreams,” one of her favorites. She waited till it finished playing, then turned the radio down while I leaned my head out the window to catch the breeze. The air slapped my skin, thick as syrup and heavy as a quilt.
“I said, you’re—”
“Did you ever forgive Aunt Louise?” I said and pulled my head back in. I fanned myself with a church bulletin from Calvary Baptist I spotted on the floor mat. Mama pinched her lips together, took in a deep breath, then let the air slide slowly out her mouth.
“I did,” she said. “Course, I never got a chance to tell her.” She dabbed at the sweat slipping down from her forehead with the back of her arm. I offered her the makeshift fan. She shook her head and kept driving.
“Took me a long time. Ya know?” she said and looked over at me. I nodded.
“Yah,” I said.
“Yah,” Mama bobbed her head in time with mine. “Long time I worked on trying to forgive her,” she said. A small smile crossed her lips. “Know what I found out?”
“What?” I asked.
“Forgiving your enemies ain’t nothing. The hard part’s forgiving your friends.” I thought on that a minute.
“Forgiving husbands ain’t so easy, neither,” I said. Her eyebrows shot up.
“What are—”
“You forgave Pa. How’d you manage that?”
“Seeing as he was punishing himself—”
“I’m having a real hard time with Buck—” I said. “He…he…he’s seeing this girl Imelda Jane.”
“Don’t he know forbidden fruit creates a terrible jam?” Mama said.
“Speaking of jams,” I said, “there’s a good chance he’s gotten himself into one.”
“How so?”
“This girl’s folks own the store where he works.” I traced the scar on my leg with my finger. It was still bright pink, and I could make out the pin holes where the stitches had been. A raggedy line, it ran from the side of my knee clear up to my groin. “Looks like Frankenstein’s daughter,” I said.
“What’s he see in her?”
“Not her,” I said. “My leg…it’s a mess.” Mama glanced over at me.
“Oh honey, it’ll fade.”
“She’s real pretty, beautiful even,” I said.
“You know, I wanted to come see you at the hospital when you wrote what happened, but your Daddy got real sick right about then and—”
“It’s okay, Mama,” I said. “But what am I gonna do about Buck? He says he can’t help himself. Says he didn’t have a good example growing up—”
“A man good at making excuses ain’t much good for nothing else,” Mama said. “He got that girl in trouble?”
“He might of—” I said. “Oh, Mama! Everything is so messed up. Grace Annie is with Verna. Buck’s off making a new family. I never gotta chance to tell Pa—” I started blubbering. “And what’s worse, I think I’m pregnant!”
“Good Lord!” Mama said. “Well, don’t cry—”
“I can’t help it!” I said, and my chest heaved “I knew about Buck…I mean, I think I knew, but I didn’t do anything. I thought maybe it would just go away.”
“Like every lovesick woman that lived—”
“Mama—”
“Adie. Stop beating on yourself. Don’t you know love makes fools of everyone?” I shook my head.
“Now, you listen to me, hear? We might not call the shots, but let me tell you something, we set the rules.” Mama fumbled with her handbag but kept one hand on the wheel. She handed me her hankie.
“Stop sniffling and wipe your nose,” she said. “And make up your mind what them rules is gonna be.”
“Rules?”
“That’s right,” Mama said, “house rules. A body can’t walk on you, Adie, unless you let ’em. You draw the line. And when you do, you tell Buck his toes cross that mark, he’s out. Then you concentrate on getting Grace Annie back where she belongs. You march in that courtroom and tell them if they got a problem with your skills as a mama, you’d be happy to take some learning classes and when can you start. They know that baby belongs with her mama. You just got to stand up for yourself, Adie,” she said. “Now you listen to me like you never listened before. Comes a time in every life when you know things is never gonna be the same. Something happens that might be out of your control, even. But when it happens, what you do defines who you are, what you stand for. From that, you get your direction, your focus. Without it, you’re just a rowboat without a paddle. Only place you can go is where the current takes you.” Mama pulled the car over to the side of the road. She leaned over and cupped her hand under my chin.
“Hear me good,” she said. “That current never took me to any of the places I shoulda been,” she said. “Adie girl, you gotta do what I didn’t. Decide where you’re going and how you plan to get there. You sit back and others are gonna make them choices for you.”
What she said gave me the shivers. I’d stayed up half the night lost in Willa Mae’s journal, and Tempe had said near the same thing. Maybe she was reaching out, trying to tell me something. And maybe she was using her words and mama’s words to do it.
• • •
• • •
“Adie, you listenin’ to me?” Mama said.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. Finally, we were almost there. The sign ahead said Hog Gap, Population: 833.
“Sometimes you gotta fight hard for what you want,” Mama said. “That way, even if you don’t get it, at least you know you tried. And if what you tried don’t work, then you gotta try something else. You get the picture I’m painting?”
“Uh-huh,” I said.
“Well, pick up a brush and paint over any clouds got the silver lining. When you’re going to war, you don’t need any fairy tales or rose-colored glasses coloring your judgment. You need to see things exactly the way they are. You got to know where you’re coming from to know where you’re going to—”
“I get it, Mama,” I said. “I get it.”
“And you got to plan ahead. You think it was raining when Noah built that ark?”
On and on Mama went, just like she did when we were little. Only now it made sense. She’d gotten so smart since then.