Girl!
“Girl, you a mess! You walk up that hill on your face?” Mavis laughed and laughed. So did the little children playing underneath the porch. Three large yellow dogs ambled over, not aggressively, since they knew me, but they sniffed curiously around me and where I had disturbed the mud.
“You look like somebody threw a mud pie in your face.”
Only Mavis would think it funny that I fell in the mud walking up her hill. I dabbed futilely at my face with the few tissues in my pocket. “It’s slippery, so I fell,” I told her defensively.
“You sure did! You wait here. I’ll get you some rags to clean up with. I’ll be just a minute,” she said more sympathetically. Then, unable to resist a last jab, she added, “Think you can stand here a minute without falling?”
The children made a circle around me, still laughing. They were all Mavis’s brothers and sisters, but hers was such a large family I couldn’t remember their names.
One little girl said, “Nobody never fell down out here before.”
A small boy said, “Uncle Ray did one time he was drunk.”
Another girl asked politely, “Miss, are you a drunk lady?”
Mavis returned with the rags, some wet, some dry. “Here you go. This’ll take care of you, but you sure messed up those pants.”
I managed to clean my arms and face, but my white slacks were hopeless. “We need to go now, Mavis,” I said, giving up on further reclamation. “It’s a twenty-mile drive and we’re alrea—”
“You’re goin’ to the doctor lookin’ like that?”
“I don’t have extra clothes with me. Besides, he’ll be looking at you, not me.”
Mavis reached in the passenger window and touched the car seat. “I can’t sit on that,” she said. “It’s too hot.”
I grabbed a newspaper from the back seat and placed it on the hot vinyl. She reluctantly got in. I blew my horn to scare the dogs out of the road.
“You sure do drive slow,” she said as we took a bad curve on the way out to the main road. “My brother’d take it twice this fast.” I had seen Mavis’s cool-dressing brother in his souped-up black Camaro. “Laura, how come you don’t have a nice car when you got a good job?”
“I don’t care to discuss how I spend my money, Mavis.” I jerked the wheel more than I needed to avoid a pothole. I hated to admit how much she got to me and how prissy my words sounded even to my own ears.
“You don’t have to get so touchy. I just asked a question.”
“I’m sorry. I have a headache.”
“You want a cigarette? Always makes me feel better.” She lit one for herself and held out her pack of Kools.
“Mavis, you know shouldn’t smoke. And you’re sure not going to do it around me.”
“I don’t believe you,” she protested, but nevertheless tossed her cigarette out the window. “You don’t smoke. You always fuss after me to eat right and never drink anything but milk. Don’t you ever have no fun?”
I laughed, imagining the poor opinion Mavis would have of my kind of fun. Foreign films with subtitles, opera in the park with Rob, and a fancy picnic. Hiking in the North Georgia mountains. An afternoon at an art museum.
“You ever go to a bar with a fella?”
I hesitated, thinking what Mrs. Cremins would have to say about discussing personal drinking habits with our clients.
“Come on, Laura,” Mavis persisted. “Since you know so much about everything, What do you do when you’re with a fella and he gets in a fight and pulls a knife on somebody?”
I gripped the wheel tighter. She obviously spoke from experience, which she imagined corresponded to my own, yet it was preposterous to think of quiet, laid-back Rob threatening someone with a knife. Even my father, who had marched into Buchenwald to liberate the survivors of that horrible place, opposed weapons in the hands of civilians. He did not keep handguns at his store or in our home and had never even owned a knife larger than the small sterling penknives next to the pocket watches in his display case. “During the war, I did what I had to do,” he had admitted. “I was a soldier defending our country and the Jewish people. But in peacetime, Jews and guns don’t go together. We’re the People of the Book.”
“Come on. You know what I mean,” Mavis said, pulling me from my thoughts. “You’re with one fella and somebody makes eyes at you. You smile back and then the one you’re with wants to get up and cut him.”
“Did that really happen, Mavis?” I couldn’t conceal my shock.
“A bunch of times. Willie’s the jealous type. He won’t even let me say ‘hello’ to another fella.”
“But Willie doesn’t carry a knife, does he?”
“Girl, you never believe nothin’ I say.” She shook her head at my ignorance. “I asked him not to carry a gun so he carries a knife.”
“He better stop carrying anything or he’ll end up in jail.”
“They won’t never catch Willie. He can spot the police a mile off. He don’t really need a knife anyway, he’s so big. And he don’t go lookin’ for fights.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
“But don’t think Willie won’t fix ’em if they push him. Hell, I’d fix anybody messes with me. Sometimes I take my own knives. I got real little ones. I put one behind me and one right here.” She pointed to her cleavage. “Some of those cafés got some real rough people waiting to start something. Even the girls got scars. You gotta be ready to cut them before they get a chance to cut you.”
I pictured Mavis and Willie together in a roadhouse with neon signs and murky darkness. Men swigging beer, leering at any woman accompanied or alone. Mavis tall and powerful, her hair in a short Afro. Her sleeveless dress cut low, deep red against her truly black skin. Her smoldering eyes. And Willie still taller. A high school tackle. His T-shirt bulging over his biceps and his blue jeans so tight they seem painted on. I pictured them standing in a haze of smoke, Mavis smoking a Kool and grooving to the blaring rock and funk and falsetto soul. Jacked-up cars with mag wheels ripping through the parking lot.
“So for fun you just read all the time?” Mavis asked, taking in the back seat of my car covered with library books.
“No. But I do read a lot,” I admitted, glad we were getting away from drinking and knives and bar fights.
“That makes no sense. If you’re out of school and you got a job, why you want to waste your time reading?” she asked, her tone more curious than accusing. She reached back to retrieve a large volume. “What you reading anyway? ‘ The Death of My Family,’” she read aloud. “‘A loving memoir by the sole Jewish survivor of a small Polish village after the Nazi occupation destroyed every member of his family. His struggle, his search for what happened to his family, his neighbors … his entire world.’” She studied me suspiciously. “Are you Jewish?”
“Because I’m reading that book?” I challenged her. “There’s another book back there about slavery in America. If I’m reading that, does it mean I’m black?”
“I just asked, that’s all. Not only because of this book,” she insisted. “I thought about it before. ’Cause you don’t really look like people around here. You’re not black, but you’re a lot darker than the white folks around here.” She laughed out loud at her own awkwardness. “I didn’t mean you don’t look nice. But now it makes sense.” She smiled at me, satisfied with her analysis. “I knew you were something. You got such dark, curly hair and your eyes are almost black.”
“Mavis, it’s a religion not a race. I have cousins with blonde hair, and my father has the bluest eyes you’ve ever seen.” I tried to keep driving carefully, but I felt the conversation going somewhere I didn’t want to go.
“My daddy says the Jews killed Christ. And he should know. He’s a preacher,” Mavis said. “But he’s not the only one. A lot of folks say it’s true.”
So there it was. What I had feared.
“He’s entitled to his opinion, Mavis.” I chose each word carefully, not wanting a confrontation with her father, who might make her leave the Project, yet unwilling to take responsibility for killing Christ. “But he wasn’t around then. I believe it was a mob, Mavis. A bunch of hateful people who turned violent—”
“Like lynch mobs.”
“Exactly like that.” I didn’t want to talk about Pontius Pilate or the Roman soldiers. I wished we could get out of the car and end the conversation.
We drove on in silence. I avoided further discussion by looking straight ahead, pretending that the traffic required my complete attention. Yet I kept imagining Mavis’s father fomenting hatred against the Jews, when I doubted he’d ever met one. I wondered what stereotypes they would be sharing around their dinner table that evening once Mavis told them I was one.
I turned off the busy road lined with fast food restaurants onto the access road leading to the doctor’s office. I pulled into a parking space. Mavis got out and stood by the car, waiting for me to join her.
“You go ahead, Mavis,” I called to her. “I’ll wait out here.” I still felt hurt, and I needed a few minutes away from her. It wasn’t her fault what her father believed, but her explanations didn’t satisfy me at that moment.
“You’re not coming in with me? You always do.” Her voice sounded plaintive, genuinely disappointed. “What if there’s something wrong with me? You know they’ll want to take my blood and make me pee in a cup so they can tell you every last thing about me.”
She sounded again like her usual fearless self, but Mavis’s panic showed in her face, so I couldn’t maintain my resolve to put a little distance between us. I got out of the car and walked around to her side.
“I’m glad you’re coming with me.” She didn’t swagger, and she looked right at me. “Laura, I’m sorry about before. What my daddy said about Jews—your people.” She hesitated, almost afraid to say the word. “Well … a lot he says is pretty hard on all kinds of people. Besides, way back in those old Bible days, nobody was too nice to anybody with them sacrificing people to God and wanting to stone that lady taken in adultery. Or stealing their birthrights—whatever that is—for a bowl of some kind of soup.”
When the receptionist called her name, Mavis changed her mind, telling me I didn’t need to come inside. Unless I got some kind of special kick out of seeing her in one of those little paper gowns.
I didn’t. And it actually felt restful to sit quietly for a little while, going through the stacks of old magazines in the waiting room and reading recipes I would never have to prepare for lavish Christmas desserts and congealed summer salads. I didn’t see Mavis come over to get me, but out of nowhere I heard her impatiently address me.
“Can we please get out of this place!”
“Sure. But what’d the doctor say, Mavis?”
“Everything’s fine. They’re sending you a report,” she said sharply. “Can’t we just go now?”
I was glad to get going, but almost as soon as we were back in the car, I knew something was wrong since Mavis was quiet. She didn’t complain about my driving or try to change the radio station or smoke in my car or complain the air conditioning wasn’t working.
“Is everything OK, Mavis? Did he say something you want to talk about?”
“Just the same old stuff about the iron pills,” she answered wearily. “I told him they melt. He said to put them in the refrigerator. I told him the kids take ’em out to play with ’em. He said put the bottle on a high shelf.”
“Was that it?” I didn’t see why that should bother her so much.
“He says it’s gonna be a big baby and there ain’t nothin’ wrong with me he can tell.” She seemed annoyed at having to tell me about it. “Say how ’bout instead of lunch you take me somewhere to get a beer. That would make me feel a whole lot better.”
“I’d like to keep my job, Mavis,” I said as calmly as I could. “I can’t buy you beer. And I got to thinking while you were in there. What are you doing going to a bar with Willie anyway? You’re not eighteen.”
“Girl, nobody waits ’til they’re eighteen to go out drinkin’!” She laughed at my astounding foolishness. “Besides, I’m eighteen anyhow,” she acknowledged sheepishly, tensely watching my face.
“That’s not what you said when you applied.” I tried to sound stern, though more than being lied to I worried that Mrs. Cremins would make Mavis leave the Project when she caught the error in her next audit. I hadn’t remembered any hesitation when Mavis had given her age as seventeen when she applied, but she hadn’t had a driver’s license to show proof of age. She had claimed she couldn’t find her birth certificate the day Willie brought her to our office, and though she promised to bring it later, she never produced it. It was my own fault I’d forgotten to follow up. But deep down I knew I hadn’t wanted to face the truth; I could see how badly she needed our services.
“I’d just turned eighteen the month before. So I didn’t fudge much, Laura,” Mavis implored me, speaking in a tone she’d never used before. “I was so scared you wouldn’t let me in.” The tears ran down her face as if to attest to how truly frightened she was.
“Now … don’t cry, Mavis. We’ll figure this out,” I said in my gentlest voice, hoping Mrs. Cremins wouldn’t turn Mavis out if she discovered her age. “But tell the truth about everything from now on, OK?”
“I don’t lie, Laura,” she said with quiet dignity. “That was the only time.” She wiped her eyes. “But there is one other little thing I ought to tell you.”
I was afraid what would seem “little” to Mavis after what she had already disclosed. I waited anxiously for the rest of her confession.
“I just got my dates wrong, that’s all,” she said, more quietly than I’d ever heard her speak. “Maybe I was just a little bit past three months when I joined the Project.”
“How much past?” I could not make myself look at her, and I worried what the doctor had said about her baby’s size and what his report might reveal.
“I don’t know. I never kept track of the curse that close. Maybe I was two or three more weeks gone than I told you. But I promise I been doing everything else right.”
I heard the panic rising in her voice as she nervously twisted her seatbelt strap. “Please don’t make me have this baby at home. I know this girl almost died having her baby on the kitchen table. She started bleeding and the midwife couldn’t do nothin’ to stop it, and the baby wouldn’t come out no mat—”
“Hey … nobody said you’re having your baby at home,” I comforted her, not wanting her to return home so upset she would make herself ill. Yet Mrs. Cremins’s lecture about enforcing the Project regulations went through my head as clearly as if she’d been sitting between us in my car.
“I’m sorry, Laura. I know you’re mad.”
“Well … no more drinking until after that baby comes,” I said, using my advantage. “And no more excuses about not taking your vitamins and drinking a quart of mi—”
“Okay, I’ll take those old horse pills. And I’ll wash ’em down with milk. But I’m still goin’ to the café with Willie. I can’t give everything up. I won’t really drink. I’ll just take a swallow to get the bad taste out of my mouth. Or maybe a sip of sweet wine. My Aunt ’Rene says if you drink that while you’re expectin’, the labor will go easy on you.”
A construction detour made us creep along the rest of the way to Mavis’s house. Despite the annoying stops and starts in the heavy traffic, Mavis seemed to grow more companionable.
“Laura, what you think I should do?” she asked deferentially.
“About what?”
She looked away. “With the baby coming, you think I ought to marry Willie?”
I was flattered that she would ask my opinion about something so important.
“Mama and Daddy say I got to. ’Specially with Daddy being a preacher. He says the preacher’s daughter can’t go having babies if she don’t have a husband. Mama just keeps crying and saying how I ruined myself so nothin’ good will ever come of me. Daddy was gonna whip me but I told him, ‘You lay a hand on me, you’ll never see me again.’”
“What does Willie say?”
“Willie’s real quiet ’less you rile him. When I told him about the baby, he said he’d marry me. Said if he had to marry somebody, he’d like to marry me as much as anybody else he could think of.”
I thought how crushed I would feel if that was all someone felt for me. Rob and I were enjoying the present and hadn’t yet discussed our future. But I knew how fast I would walk away if he acted like marrying me was the best choice he could make in some second-rate cafeteria line. I tried to keep my expression noncommittal and didn’t trust myself to speak.
“Girl, I wasn’t lookin’ to get married neither. So I can’t blame Willie.” She sighed deeply. “Didn’t know what I’d do after high school.” She winked. “Thought maybe I’d go to Atlan’a. Get me a job and try out that big city life. Or maybe see the world in the army.” She shook her head in disbelief, smacking her chewing gum. “I sure didn’t plan on getting trapped like this. Or ending up at no welfare office neither. I went last week to see could I get me some money ’cause I can’t get no mill job five months gone.” Mavis pointed to her distended belly. “That welfare lady just shamed me. Asked why I didn’t think about that before I got pregnant. I told her the damned rubber broke. Did she want to check it out? That shut her up good.”
Her voice sounded bitter, but I could also hear her fear of being stuck at home where she was miserable, or marrying Willie and giving up her hope of a life away from that isolated road. They would live on what he made from odd jobs, and soon she would have more babies to care for in their own broken-down trailer.
“You know how hot it is at Daddy’s place?” she asked, seeming to read my thoughts. “He’s so cheap. Nothin’ but concrete block walls just like the jail house and that rusty tin roof with the sun beating down on it all day. He takes money from the collection plate to buy clothes for everybody but his own kids.” Mavis tried to sound hardboiled. “I swear I’ll leave the baby with Mama. She likes them so much, they can give it to her straight from the hospital. I didn’t ask for it no more than measles.”
“Mavis, if you feel that way, maybe you should put the baby up for adoption. So it can have parents who really want a baby. I’ll go with you to talk to—”
“Girl, don’t you go trying to give my baby away. I told you before. This is my flesh and blood. You want to help me, you find me a job. That’s what I need. Not all this counseling crap.”
We edged up the hill to her house, my wheels spinning in the soft mud. The dogs came running. The children were burying a dead cat wrapped in a cellophane bag. They lowered it into a hole. One little girl threw dandelions into the grave. Then, looking as solemn as church deacons, they prayed over it.
“Can’t you find me a decent job?” Mavis asked longingly. “Something pays enough not to get married?”
“If you can’t take it at home anymore, you could stay in a church home until the baby comes. We could put you up in one of our field offices for a few days until we find one with space.”
“Girl, you think I wanna go to one of those places with people praying over me all the time or with you watching everything I do? I sure ain’t gonna have a baby and give it to those welfare bitches neither.”
The children finished the burial and marked the grave with a Coke bottle. Then they came running to Mavis’s side of the car, laughing and jumping up to greet her.
Mavis scooped up a tiny little girl in a diaper and muddy T-shirt. “I guess one more won’t make much difference,” she said. “Mama’ll help me, and Willie won’t be so bad. He is good looking. And he don’t preach all the time.”
“Do you think he’ll be a good father?”
“It don’t take much to be a father, Laura. Or a mother neither. It just comes natural. Didn’t you know that?”