Chapter Fifteen

MARY, AGE 16

Even in the shade of the pine trees flanking the backyard, Mary’s cheeks felt flushed. Her eyes were squeezed closed, but two tears still managed to eke out their corners and run down each side of the perfect O of her mouth. “Eeeewwww!”

“Hush up, girl.” Beatrice expertly jabbed the needle through Mary’s right earlobe.

The teen pinched her lips together, but a high-pitched “Mmmmmm!” squeaked out.

Unmoved, Beatrice raised her daughter’s chin and pushed the broom straw through the new hole.

Sarah tugged on her older sister’s shirtsleeve. “You can open your eyes now.”

Mary ignored Sarah’s muffled giggles and opened first one eye, then the other. “You done, Mama? How’s it look?”

“Like some nonsense.” Beatrice doused the needle with alcohol as she prepared to do the second ear.

“Then why are you piercing her ears?” Sarah took the bottle from her mama and screwed on the cap.

“Because it don’t make sense for her to pay somebody else to do what I can do myself.” Beatrice held a lit match under the needle. “’Sides, my mam did it fo’ me.”

She took your two dollars, too? Mary thought, knowing better than to let the words see the light of day.

“But you never wear earrings!” Sarah cried.

“Child, whatchyou know about never? You barely seen today. You thank my life started when I had ’Lis’beth? I took mo’ breaths than I could count befo’ that. Good, deep breaths.”

Mary tried to picture her mama in something besides housedresses and a long silver braid. Her brain started to hurt with the effort.

Sarah harrumphed as if she was trying to sound wiser than her thirteen years. She leaned closer to their mama. “Mary thinks her life is starting right this moment, with this ear piercing. But I told her those straws got more use in the broom than they have in her ears.”

Mary sniffed. Sarah always was a little kiss up. “Well, one day, I’m gonna have diamond earrings where these straws are now. You’ll see.” She didn’t appreciate being laughed at, especially in front of Mama, who believed dreaming was what lazy people did for work.

Yet Beatrice seemed to be doing some dreaming of her own. “My mam called ’em earbobs, and I didn’t know nobody else with a pair.”

“Earbobs?” Sarah scooted over and leaned an arm on Mary’s knee. Mary jiggled her leg and pushed Sarah’s elbow, forcing her sister to catch herself with both hands on the ground.

“Pinch right here. Hard.” Beatrice placed Mary’s fingers on a spot on her left lobe. “One day when Pap was gone to town, my mam took me and my sistahs out in the woods ’hind the house—

“Like you did us,” Sarah breathed.

This girl acts like she’s listening to some fairy tale. Mary pursed her lips. Her foot tapped out an impatient beat on the soft earth as she squeezed her ear as tightly as she could bear.

“—and she pierced our ears. That way she wouldn’t have to clean up any mess we made on her flo’s.” Beatrice stood there with the needle between the tips of her fingers, her faint voice sounding like she was back in the woods with the mother the girls had never laid eyes on.

“She said we was different from the rest of the world, and she wanted to do somethin’ to show it. Pap had a sho’ nuff fit when he came home and saw what she’d done. He didn’t wont us looking like harlots, he said. But then, after our ears healed up, he gave us pearls to wear. Said we was like the treasure the man found in the Bible and wanted to keep close. He never could say no to Mam.”

Beatrice bent over and grasped Mary’s ear. She brushed away her daughter’s fingers and jabbed her lobe with the needle so fast Mary didn’t have the time—or the courage—to cry out. In a wink, Beatrice slid in the straw to secure the hole.

Mary let out the breath she was holding with a quiet whoosh as she watched her mama pack up her implements.

But Sarah couldn’t keep her curiosity zipped up. “Do you still have them? Your pearls?”

Like she needs fancy earrings while she’s on her hands and knees, scrubbing the floors. Mary shook her head at her silly sister. Always buttin’ in.

“When my pap threw me out the house, I threw away them pearls,” Beatrice responded simply. “Them earrings didn’t save me, and they ain’t gon’ save this girl here. But at least she can look pretty in the meantime.” She took the alcohol from Sarah. “Now, Mary, make sho’ you and them broom straws make it back to the house to get dinner on the table.”

Beatrice crunched over the needles as she left their covering.

“Well, that story sure wan’t worth my two dollars, but these holes better be. Sarah, are they even? How do they look?” Mary tapped her sister on the shoulder. “Sarah?”

But her little sister didn’t turn back until the screen door had shut behind Beatrice. And even then, she didn’t give Mary as much attention as Mary felt she was due.

“Fine, I guess. As good as a broom straw’s gonna look.”

“Well . . . I’m getting ready, and you’d best be, too, little Miss So-and-So.”

“Getting ready? For what?” Sarah finger-combed the flyaway strands that had dislodged themselves from the two puffs of hair on either side of her head. “There’s nothing wrong with the way I look. Just ’cause I don’t prance around here shaking my high-yella tail like somebody else I know . . .”

Mary, simpering, extracted the deeply buried compliment. “You’re right. There’s nothing wrong with you—long as you plan to live here with Mama all your life in this backwoods hole.”

“Oh, hush, Mary. Ear piercings won’t save you. Didn’t you hear Mama—?”

Mary flicked aside Sarah’s words as she would a pesky fly. “Think what you want. But I’m telling you Ruthena’s got the right idea.”

“With what?”

“With that song she sings. ‘Mmmm-mmm . . . One of these old mornings . . . Mmmm-mmmm . . . You gon’ look for me, and I’ll be gone . . .’” Mary hummed the words she didn’t know.

Sarah laughed as she plucked the pieces of a pinecone. “But that song is talking about going to heaven. And you ain’t getting nowhere close, Mary.”

But Mary kept waving her head side to side to the beat of the music in her head, her thick, wavy hair swinging.

Sarah brushed off her striped hip-huggers. “You think you’re something else.” Her words sounded like half-compliment, half-insult.

Again, Mary sucked up the affirmative and discarded the rest. “I sure do. And you better start thinking the same if you know what’s good for you.” The shadows were starting to grow longer, and Mary didn’t plan to get caught out there in those woods when it was dark. She sauntered from the woods, her hips swaying.

But two seconds later, Mary was running, not strutting, back to her sister, feeling very much like a scared little girl and not the worldly young maven who had sashayed her way toward home a moment before. She dropped to her knees behind one of the pine trees and peeked out.

Sarah ducked down beside her sister. “What’s wrong?” she whispered.

“It’s Mama, and she’s hot! I forgot to pick up the fish.” Mary peeked through the protective cover of the trees before daring to cut her eyes Sarah’s way.

Sarah covered her smile with her hands.

Mary’s lips twitched, too. “Guess I’m gonna have to put them dreams on hold just a bit. What do you think?”

Sarah’s eyes laughed over her fingers.

Sober, Mary stared at the house and delicately fingered her sore ears. “She really is gon’ wear me out, isn’t she?”

Sarah nodded slowly.

——————

“No, that’s not the right color. Hmmm. No, this is too much for a volunteer. Where’s the blue—?”

Mary moved aside several outfits in search of her blue pantsuit. She just hoped it hadn’t fallen into the “sell it” pile currently housed outside in the garage. Determined to find the ensemble, she pushed around clothes, shoes, pocketbooks, hatboxes, and belts. There was no room to move anything around; if she did find the pantsuit, she’d have to iron it.

An hour later, Mary emerged from her bedroom—draped in orange from her ginger-flavored lips to her carrot-colored toenails. Her sandals staccatoed up the linoleum tile hallway toward the front door. She couldn’t find her purse on the table in the front hall where she was sure she’d left it. Snorting like an angry bull, she tramped back to the family room. She picked up piles of magazines and books.

“What are you looking for, Ma?”

Mary barely spared her son a glance. Simeon’s six-ten, three-hundred-pound frame enveloped the love seat squatting under the small window. She grunted as she edged over a stack of unpacked boxes.

“Ma. Ma? What are you—?”

“My purse.”

“It’s over here.” Simeon waved her leather Michael Kors bag.

“What are you doing with my purse?” She tripped over his size sixteens as she pranced to the sofa. “And move these shoes to your closet, please, before I break a leg!” She snatched her bag and rummaged through it.

“My room doesn’t have a closet, remember? And I didn’t take anything from your bag, if that’s why you’re counting your money.”

Mary tucked her five one-dollar bills back into her calfskin wallet. “Well, whose fault is it that you don’t have a closet?”

Simeon watched her check her lipstick in her compact. “Where are you going? To a job interview?”

She snapped shut the case. “You’re sitting there on my couch, watching my cable—” she spied an empty bag of chips on the floor by the couch—“eating my food in my house. And you ask me if I’m going to look for a job?” Mary’s voice increased a decibel with each my. “No, I am not going on an interview. I’m going to the center. To try to help people who are trying to help themselves.” Mary headed toward the front door.

“I didn’t ask to be cut from the team!” Simeon shouted from the sofa. “So I couldn’t come back from my injury. At least I hope this surgery will get me back in the shape and some team will pick me up.”

Simeon’s words froze Mary just as she placed one hand on the knob. She clip-clopped back to face Simeon and pointed to the stack of paperwork on the coffee table. “And we have the bills to show for it. All your hoping . . .”

He pushed his considerable frame to a standing position. He picked up the crutches that rested on the wall by the sofa and hobbled closer to Mary. “You know, I’m the one who watched his football career go down the tubes. Not you. All you had to do was give up a way of life you couldn’t afford anyway.”

“I couldn’t afford—”

“That’s right. You couldn’t afford. That was my money you spent every month for that view of the river. That was my money you blew every night on those expensive dinners. You don’t even know how to spell chateaubriand, let alone eat it. It was my money that bought all your clothes, including that orange number. And the rest of my money will pay those bills.”

Mary nodded slowly. “You know, you’re right. But do you know what? I put in hard time getting you where you are. Or rather where you were. I cleaned up the nasty mess of other people to make sure you had food on your table. I’m the one who worked nights to get you clothes for school. I scrimped and saved every penny to make sure you got to college. I asked you—no, begged you—to stay in school, to get your diploma, but no, you had to leave early and make the big time. Well, you made it, didn’t you? You made it all the way back to where we started. With no degree, no money, and no knee apparently. What do you plan to do now? Are you just going to sit around here and eat potato chips and watch TV all day?”

“I don’t have to apologize to you or make anything up to you. You did what any good mother is supposed to. I didn’t see you complaining a year ago when you took all day getting your hair done and your nails polished.”

“I earned it!”

“You didn’t earn anything! I was the one sweating in the sun, getting beat up every day. You reaped the benefits of my hard work.”

Mary took in their humble surroundings. “Well, I’m not reaping much now, am I? I think Mama’s house is bigger than this.”

“Does it matter, Ma? We have a roof over our heads, food on the table—”

Mary laughed. “If you knew what I knew, you wouldn’t ask me that question, Simeon. I’m fifty-six years old. This is not where I dreamed I’d be living out my golden years. I can’t even afford a midlife crisis!” She slammed the door.

She walked to her gray BMW parked in the drive and climbed behind the wheel. She started the ignition but didn’t move. Instead, she stared at the back of the sign taped to the inside of the windshield, trying to see how many words she could make out of Ǝ⅃AƧ ЯOꟻ. Seal, afro . . .

Tap-tap-tap!

She spun, ready to face Simeon ordering her from his car.

“Didn’t mean to scare you,” the postal carrier apologized once the automatic window had whirred to rest inside the door. “Looking good today. Here’s your mail.”

Mary nodded curtly. After he was gone, she riffled through the small stack of letters. “Bill. Bill. Bill. Mama—?” Mary tossed the other mail to the passenger seat. She slid one manicured nail under the lip of the thick envelope. Two separately folded letters. She opened the one with the older postmark.

Mary

You probly wondrin ware yo letter ben. Som of the chillun got thers a wile bak. Sorry it took me so long, but I had to get miself together. Not that you ever had much time for me. But I just dont wont you to thank you not speshal like the others. You is. I culd always see you dint feel like you fit in, but you all the same, you and the chillun and B . . .

Mary looked at the house she and Sim had just moved into. I’m nothing like the rest of them. She closed her eyes. I am nothing like them or you. Slowly she opened her right eye, half-expecting to find herself in the parking garage of her former high-rise condominium. But there she sat, all four wheels firmly gripping the cracked concrete. Blinking away tears, she continued reading:

I member the day I lef. You was sittin on the front steps lookin off to somwer. I sed goodby to you and you waved but dint say nuthin. You dint know that was the last time you was gon’ see me. But I dont thank you seen me that day nether. I never culd see wat you was lookin at but I can tell you saw it good and cleer. I lef lookin for somthin miself but I aint foun it yet. I got a way of livin a little better than I was but I aint got no happyer. Its just a diffrent way to be sad. I hope you thank bout that for you run off.

If you ever git that ich to spred yo wings com over this way. Its too bad you cant bring yo babe brother. Its hard to thank I aint go never see him again. Im at 23 Reedy Creek in Jasper. I aint got much and you may jus keep on movin, but I be glad to shar wat I got for however long you need it.

“Henton,” she read. “Well, I’ll be. My old man. From nowhere he came and to nowhere he returned. But I know Henton didn’t think I’d really go stay with him. Well, at least he offered, but talk about jumping from the frying pan into the fire.” Mary dug around in her purse for her iPhone.

“Hello?”

“Lis?”

“No, this is Evelyn. Aunt Mary?”

No one but Evelyn ever called her that. Even her other nieces and nephews called her by her given name, just as she’d insisted. No use looking old before her time. “Hey, sweetie. Where’s your mama?”

“She’s at the salon. How are you? How’s Sim?”

Mary cleared her throat. “Fine, honey. Listen—”

“Still enjoying that beautiful view you’re always talking about? You know, Mama tried to call you a few days ago, but she said the number—”

“We got rid of the landline. You can reach me on my cell.” Mary cleared her throat again. “Listen, Ev, I wanted to ask Lis about a letter from your granddaddy.”

This time Evelyn cleared her own throat. “Letter from Granddaddy?”

“Yes, I just read this old letter from Henton—he wrote it after he skipped out on us. He invited me to stay with him, of all things. I wanted to ask Lis about it. She always knows a little about everything going on at home.” Mary listened to the silence in North Carolina. “Do you know something about it?”

“Is that the only letter you’ve read?”

Mary looked down at the second letter. “Actually, yes, it is. Then I take it you do know about this?”

“I think you need to read the other letter, Aunt Mary.”

She wanted to reach through the phone and wring her niece’s neck. “Evelyn. What’s going on? Why am I getting Henton’s letter a hundred years after the fact?”

“Aunt Mary. Read it and then call Mama. But I need to go. Kevin’s calling.”

“Ev—”

“I’m sorry, but it’s been nearly a week since I’ve heard my husband’s voice. I promise I’ll have Mama call you back. Love you, Auntie. Bye!”

“Well, I’ll be—” Mary stared at her phone in disbelief before she picked up the second letter. “Let’s see what else that man had to say.”

I hope this letter finds you alive and well. I haven’t heard from you in some time, so I don’t know what’s going on in your life. Well, a lot’s been going on in mine.

I know how busy you are, so I’ll just jump right into it. To put it simply: I’m dying—acute myeloid leukemia. And I’m going to be pretty quick about it if these doctors got it right. What does this mean to you? Not much. I haven’t hidden piles of cash under my mattress all these years, and you won’t be getting any of that expensive jewelry you love to wear. God knows why, but you do. And you know I can’t leave behind property and a big house. But I will leave you some experience. It’ll mean something to you in the coming years, even if it ain’t worth nothing to you now.

I know we didn’t have much when you children were running around here. You used to ask me, “Why don’t we have this?” and “Why can’t we do that?” I bet you’ve had your fill of doing this and that, but I wonder if it’s enough, if you found what was missing. I know one thing you have is a fine son. He’ll probably never step a foot into this old house, with all that fine living he’s used to, but you must be proud. It don’t happen too often that a boy will move his mama all the way across the country and set her up the way Simeon did you.

Most of the time children up and leave and never look back to their beginnings. I don’t mean to say nothing about all y’all, but it’s just a fact of life. I left my own peoples, and they had a fine life in South Carolina—a big house, money.

Mary almost dropped the page she was reading and asked the empty passenger seat, “They had what?”

But money don’t matter. You can have all the money and things in the world, but they won’t bring you no peace of mind. I know, I know, being poor don’t bring much peace of mind either, but it helps you get to the quick of things, if you know what I mean.

My memories and my thoughts are about all I’m going to leave you, so you won’t have to bother about the dirt around this place here. But there’s value in knowing that your mama loved you enough to scrape and scratch this old dirt to make you a home, to feed you and clothe you. It’s a small house that gets dusty and dirty, but it’s mine and I don’t owe nobody for it. I clean up my own mess.

God trusted me to be a steward over my living children and grandchildren, and I’m grateful. No, I don’t see them much, but I know they wouldn’t be in this world except by me. And that settles my spirit, a feeling I didn’t have when all you kids was scrambling around here.

I know you like stuff around you, but you need something that somebody can’t take away when the bill come late or the money get short. Maybe you is the way you is ’cause of how you was raised, but then I put the same ingredients in you that I put in the rest of the batch and you all taste different. Well, I guess that’s a good thing.

Mary, don’t worry. My being sick shouldn’t touch your life much at all. I know you can afford to take the next plane out and be here today, but I hope you don’t. I don’t have to see you to tell you I love you, and you don’t need to see me neither to hear it. Take care of yourself and that fine son of yours. Give him my best, which is pretty good, if I say so myself.

Mary sat in the idling car for thirty minutes while the raindrops spattered on the glass and the birds took cover in the trees. A sudden rap on the window snapped her out of her reverie.

Simeon leaned on his crutches. Rain beaded in his hair. “Mama!”

She glared at Simeon for a second or two.

He knocked again. “Mama!”

She pushed the button and let down the window—barely. “What is it, Simeon?”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m reading the mail.”

“Can’t you read inside?” Wobbling, Simeon tried to hide his bulk under his hand as the rain picked up.

“No, I can’t.” She reached over to the passenger seat for the stack of unread mail and stuffed it through the crack. “Oh, and here.” Mary snatched down the Ǝ⅃AƧ ЯOꟻ sign. She pushed it through. It landed with a smack! on the wet ground. “I may not have a home to call my own, but this is my car.” Then she put the BMW in reverse and backed out of the drive, nearly crushing the toes on Simeon’s good right foot.