CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

 

Life is not always what we want it to be, but it is always what we make it to be.

 

Antarctica

 

THERE’S NOTHIN’ I rather do than sit on the porch and drink ice tea. People go by and they speak or they don’t speak. Either way, you get to know who they are, what they think, and how they feel ’bout you. Miss Ada and Miss Holly sits with me most days, but today, it just two of us. Miss Ada say she feeling too poorly to get out of bed.

Miss Taylor walks by ever’ day on her way to town. I don’t think she do anything other than that and tend her plants. Most the time, she just say hello and keep on going. But this morning, she stop, then shift her weight on the wooden cane she always carry. She wearing a pink-and-white checked cotton dress with a stiff, white collar and long sleeves. Her white summer gloves cover her thin, bony hands. Why on earth she dress like that in all this heat.

“Antarctica!” she screech like a barn owl when she look out from under that straw hat of hers. “These are the saddest looking hydrangea bushes I’ve ever seen. It’s a good thing Miss Ada isn’t out here or she’d have a fit. I tell you, she’d have a fit. Can’t you do anything about them?”

“I tries, Miss Taylor, but they just don’t wanna grow any for me. Growing things just ain’t my calling.”

“Well, it will just break Miss Ada’s heart if these hydrangea bushes die.”

Miss Taylor then turn her attention to Holly. “Holly Hendricks! You come out here on the sidewalk where I can see you.”

Holly look at me and rolls her eyes. She then got up and went out to where Miss Taylor stood staring Miss Holly up and down like a fox sizin’ up a chicken.

“You’re going to be nothing but a beanpole if you grow any taller.” Miss Taylor look up at Holly. “You’re just like all the other Hendricks, with that blond hair and blue eyes of yours. Now tell me, dear, about your mother. Some folks around here say you’re staying with Miss Ada because your mother can’t handle you anymore, that she hasn’t been right since your little brother passed away.”

“Mother’s just fine.” Holly lowered her head.

That ol’ lady ought to be ashamed for saying what she did.

“Well, I’m glad to hear it,” Miss Taylor say. “I didn’t believe that nonsense anyway. Your mother’s a strong woman. Always has been. I wish I could say the same about your daddy. He is Judge Hendricks’s son, though, and that should account for something. I always said that Judge Hendricks was a fine man. I can remember when old man Simpson got upset about a ruling your granddaddy made, but after he went home and thought about it, he had to admit the Judge was right. I never knew one time when your granddaddy wasn’t fair. He never lost his temper around anyone or ever complained about being awakened in the middle of the night to marry folks who had let their courting go too far. The only time Judge Hendricks would refuse to marry anyone was if he smelled whiskey on their breath. Then he would tell them to go home and sleep it off and if they still felt the same way the next morning, they knew where to find him.”

“I wish I knew more about Papa Hendricks. I was only three when he died.”

“It’s a shame he wasn’t around any longer than he was. I never knew a finer man. He only feared God and maybe the wrath of Miss Ada. I’velived so long, I’m not afraid of anything. Not anything, I tell you. Not even the devil himself.”

“Miss Taylor, would you like some ice tea?” I called out, hoping she would quit talking about the dead.

“No, thank you. I best be on my way.”

She then turn back to Holly rather than getting on her way.

“Now, if I were you, I’d ask Miss Ada what to do about these hydrangeas. That’s the kind of thing folks ought to pass on, what they know, rather than what they have. One of these days, no one is going to know anything at all. You ask Miss Ada about her flowers. It would tickle her pink to talk about them.”

“Yes, ma’am. I’ll do that,” Miss Holly say as she walk back to the porch.

I didn’t like Miss Taylor stickin’ her nose in my bizness, telling me that Miss Ada’s hydrangeas gonna die if I don’t tend them. Humph!

“Miss Taylor knew my grandfather,” Holly say as she sat down with me. “She thought the world of him, but I don’t think she cared too much for Daddy.”

“Why you say that?” I ask.

“She made a point of saying Mother was strong, but then she said she couldn’t say the same about Daddy. What do you think she meant by that?”

“That’s something that goes way back, child, when your daddy came home from the war. He was a mess and somewhere along the way, he started up drinking. Everyone know’d it, too, but no one would tell Miss Ada or Mr. Wylie. The church deacons was on his tail just about the time you all ups and moves away. Mr. Wylie be turning in his grave for sure if he know’d that. Miss Taylor, I reckon, don’t respect no one who has to have whiskey to get on with their lives.”

“Daddy drinks a lot. I’m not supposed to say anything, but that’s why I came here. I didn’t want to be around him anymore.”

“I suspect’d as much.”

“Mother blames me when he gets mad. She says I ought to keep my mouth shut when he’s had too much to drink.”

The poor child was letting loose now.

“You’re not to blame, child. The devil done got a hold of your daddy a long time ago and there ain’t nothing you can do ’bout it. He drinks ’cause he think it’s gonna drown his sorrow. But all it do is fill him full of poison. The poison takes over the mind, then it slowly kills the soul. The body just hangs on forever. That’s why he like the way he is. He is plum full of poison.”

“It’s not just him. Mother never talks about Jake, but I know he’s on her mind all the time. She acts like she can’t stand the sight of me, just because I’m alive and he isn’t. When I try to come near her, she turns away. She won’t have anything to do with me.”

“All that come from losing a child, Miss Holly. I seen my own mama lose two children of her own. Each time she do, she just close her eyes and prays to Jesus and befo’ you know it, she done got another baby in her arms. That always cure her sadness. Your mama, she done think she too old to have another baby and her only child at home is just ’bout to fly the coop. That what’s wrong with her.”

“I don’t think Mother’s as strong as Miss Taylor claims. If she were, she wouldn’t keep pushing me away. All I want to do is love her, but she won’t let me.”

“Miss Holly, if your mama didn’t love you, she wouldn’t be so kind ’bout letting you come here just so’s you be happy.”

“It doesn’t feel like love to me. She feels guilty because all her love went to Jake and she doesn’t have any left for me. Sometimes I think it would be better if no one loved anyone. We could just forget about them if they left us and go on with our lives.”

“Don’t tell me, child, that life’d be better with no lovin’ in it. Would you really like to think that you didn’t love your brother? That he meant nothin’ to you? I think he meant the world to you, and your folks, and that’s why you all is in this mess. Why do you think funerals brings folks together better’an any other thing? ’Cause ever’body loved the dead person, that’s why. Only they don’t know it till the person’s all laid out with no air in his lungs. That’s the shameful part. That’s what oughta be changed. You look at those trees out there. Ever’ one of them is gonna lose their leaves as soon as the cold spell comes aroun’. But the leaves come back ever’ spring ’cause they ’member how sweet the songbirds sing in the branches in the summer. Life has its seasons, child. That’s why you gotta let people know you love ’em while they’re still walkin’ ’round this earth, so they only carry sweet memories with ’em to the grave.”

I don’t think I ever knowed a family as messed up as this one. Miss Holly think no one love her, Mr. Ross drowns his sorrow with the devil’s drink, and Miss Jewell locks her heart up tight and don’t let no one enter in. They all like a dog chasing its tail, going in circles till they too tired to care or too crazy to stop. I don’t know which. What gonna happen if none of them quit chasing their tails?