Ten
Maureen read the last two paragraphs of Mrs. Stafford’s letter again when she awakened the next morning. She then told me, “I fell asleep praying you weren’t going to read a postscript that said, ‘My husband eventually found me and dragged me home. All this joy for nothing.’ As long as you don’t say that, please tell me how it turns out at the very end. I’ll go and do when I know.”
“So far,” I said, “she’s still fine, still over there.”
“And she’s safe?”
“The last time she wrote to my mother, she told her she still felt safer than she had at home, even with the war. There’s a great deal to be said for that.”
Maureen spoke softly. “Yes, it was that way in Mississippi.”
Mamie had brought her some bird’s-eye that needed to be hemmed for diapers. Neither saw this as a violation of the prohibition. As Maureen pinned and stitched, I asked whether she had thought about making her own clothes again.
“Yes,” she said, “all the time. They were always good, very good. He wouldn’t have known they were homemade if he hadn’t seen me at the machine. It took a woman with a good eye to detect the difference. I’ve sewn all my life. My father attached a block to the treadle so I could reach it.”
“When my mother met you, you were in an extraordinary dress. She thought you’d made it, but that’s not an insult. She has a good eye.”
“I did make it, and I was so frightened of having the pattern drawn and then cutting in one inch too far at the end, wasting everything. ”
“And you were wearing stockings with a vine around the ankles.”
“Yes, I was,” she said. “Let me ask you something. I want to know if your mother told Troop I looked cheap in them. I threw them away because he said she had.”
“Maureen, she would never have said anything like that. The woman who sent those letters for you to read wouldn’t have done it.”
“Damn,” she sighed, “they were the kind of hosiery that you mourn when they rip.”
Maureen’s aunt Stella ran the post office in Yazoo City. Part of that day’s going and doing involved contacting the operator to put the call through, which required a balance of luck and skill that we were not too hopeful would work. But the effort gave Maureen some sense of control. I urged her to walk downtown and send a telegram, but she was reluctant for either of us to expose ourselves to whatever flu type of illness was circulating widely enough to be receiving coverage in the newspaper. Three people in Elm City had actually died with it one recent week. Maureen’s doctor had missed his regular appointment with her the day before, and when I telephoned his office and said I could bring her there instead, the nurse told me that unless Maureen was sick herself, she should stay at home.
After we had called the operator, Mamie came into the room, her face strained with worry. Zollie’s sister had sent word that one of the children was ill. “But,” Mamie said, “Mr. Ross is at home for lunch today, and he said we were not bringing germs back in here, and if we leave, we leave for good.”
Maureen hauled herself up and said, “No, you go. He can’t say that.”
“Well,” Mamie said, “he has.”
“You and Zollie both go home. Send somebody back to let me know what you need. Come back when you can. Mary, could you please go with her downstairs and help her get organized?”
Troop was there. In his presence, I told Mamie to have Zollie bring the car around so they would lose no time getting home. She would not look at Troop. She looked at her feet and left.
He said, “Are we giving away automobiles now?”
“Yes,” I answered, “not to be overly dramatic, but there’s something dangerous going around, and they have a child sick. The woman looking after the children isn’t very competent, so they need to leave.”
“They need to finish work,” he said. He did not seem to notice that he might be drawing an indelible circle around himself. His wife and her mother were standing with Mamie and her children on the other side of the line.
“I can wash your dishes,” I told him. “I can drive you to work in the other car. I can go back and pick you up and brush your clothes a thousand and one times tonight and then do it all again in the morning.”
“I truly do not care,” he said. “What you need to comprehend is that Mamie and Zollie will not come back to my home.”
“Fine,” I said, “I can handle everything.” Knowing that the only thing more horrifying to him than having another person witness the goings-on of his household would be the vision of me sweeping leaves from the driveway, cleaning the front door, toting a basket to and from the market, I told him that I had done these chores all my life and was more than capable. “You have a perfectly strong and able-bodied poor relation ready to help,” I said, “and I’m sure the neighbors have been wondering what I’ve been doing to earn my keep around here, besides feeding nerve pills to Maureen. You could hire someone else, but finding someone who won’t take advantage, talk family business, or shed germs could take some investigating. So in the meantime, I can do everything.”
“You think you’re clever, don’t you?”
“Yes, but not a miracle worker. Maureen and I have an operator trying to place a call to Mississippi, but I thought we might have better luck if you did it from your office. Would you be willing to do that?”
“Why do you need to call Mississippi?”
“Because Maureen needs to find out if her mother’s alive.”
He was becoming extremely edgy. He looked out the window. “Has something happened to her?”
“It’s hard to say. You’ve been mailing Maureen’s letters, and I assume that her mother has been writing to her in care of your office. But it’s as though she died and nobody thought to tell Maureen.”
“Yes,” he said, “that’s how those people are, uncouth and unreliable. The other postman we had here was just as unreliable. But who is it she needs to call down there? Her mother doesn’t have a telephone.”
“No, she doesn’t. It doesn’t sound like she has much of anything.”
“Yes, it’s a very unfortunate situation. And it’s impossible to reach her by phone. It can’t be done.”
“Well, actually, it can. Maureen’s aunt runs the post office in Yazoo City. The call gets made to her, and she takes things from there. So, you can place it?”
“I fail to see the sudden urgency, this frenzy.”
“No frenzy,” I told him. “Do I sound frenetic?”
“Something’s behind this.”
“Just imagine if you didn’t know whether your mother was dead or alive, if you’d been mailing her letters with no response for a long time, if you’d told her about the baby and heard nothing.”
“Yes, but this isn’t anything that would ever be a concern. My mother was responsible and kept up with her correspondence.”
“You certainly could say that.”
“That wasn’t an invitation to attack my mother’s memory. The people who deserve the criticism are Maureen’s. Those people she worships are so common that they do not comprehend standard behavior that people like you and me take for granted.”
“So,” I said, “you haven’t seen any letters from Maureen’s mother come to your office at all.”
“No.” He distracted himself with the business of getting back out of the house. “Not one. They should treat my wife better.”
“I know. Fifty-seven dollars goes to them, and they shamelessly eliminate her from their lives.”
“Yes,” he said. “I need to go back to the office. We can talk about this another time.”
“Do you want me to drive you?”
“No. It’s a nice day out. I’ll walk.”
“Be careful of who you talk to on the way,” I said. “You may want to put your handkerchief over your mouth. This flu, or whatever they’re calling it now, is spreading everywhere, and it sounds terrible.”
He told me he would be fine, and then left, still marvelously in control, but shaken and, I hoped, soon to fall.
Maureen and I waited an hour before she called his office and asked for his secretary, who told her that she had heard nothing about a call to Mississippi. Maureen put her hand over the speaker and whispered to me, “What now? The letters?” I nodded.
“One more thing,” she said to the secretary. “I’m working up a sort of surprise for my husband, and I would very much appreciate it if you would collect the letters that’ve come from Mississippi, addressed to me in care of him, all of them, and hold on to them until a young lady, Miss Oliver, comes over to pick them up later today.” She listened and answered, “Yes, the telegrams as well. Thank you, and remember that this is part of a surprise.”
She asked me how she sounded, and when I told her that the acting was much better than anything I’d seen involving the roses, she said, “That would be because this is real.”
I asked if there was anything I could do before I went to Troop’s office. “Yes,” she told me. “Take every rose out of this house, and call the florist and tell him that any more deliveries will be turned away. I’m also going to give you a check to take to the bank to get a postal order and send it to my mother right away. And on that line for a note, write, ‘Alive and flourishing. You were right.’ ”
After I did the things she needed, after getting in and out of my uncle’s office without being seen by him, I took the box of letters to Maureen, all neatly arranged by date, all previously opened. “Well,” she said, “I have something to pass the time between now and when the baby comes. This should keep the nervousness down, or at least replace one agitation with another. What was going through his mind when he was reading them and then keeping them away like this?”
I told her that I had no idea but I was sorry. She asked to be left alone to read, and assured me that she would call me if she needed me. Within minutes, she was at the top of the steps, calling me back. She was holding one of the letters, astounded. “You have to hear this, Mary. I started reading them backward.”
September 30, 1918
Dear Maureen,
Just a note first of all to say I hope that you are well and although part of me wonders if you are dead or simply have DECIDED TO HATE ME, I LOVE YOU all the same. And if what I think is going on is actually going on, I am even more worried than I thought I was. But before I say what I need to about your husband, I intend to write EVERYTHING that is on my mind.
I try not to say anything to interfere with people. Maureen, you’re grown and can do what you want. But we were talking and talking through the mail and then NOTHING. I thought that telegrams had to get there by law, and I’ve sent them and I’m getting concerned that you are so silent.
If I said something that stung, I can make it up to you. But I don’t think it’s that. When you lived at home, if we had a hard word, we straightened things out. I remember you used to tell me that it made you afraid to go to bed with worry in you. There isn’t anything you could do to make me stop loving you, so NEVER BE WORRIED about that.
If you have a problem with some way you were raised, you can say it. I wasn’t able to get you things out of the picture magazines, but you had everything you needed. You always acted happy when I got some nice fabric and we sat down and copied the dresses from the pictures, but if you get mad about that when you wear your things from the store now, I understand how it’d make you feel. I just did not think that I had raised a child who would act like she was happy and loved her family when she was simply HIDING SPITE. I am here to tell you that that is the WRONG way to live.
Call me lazy and say you wish I’d worked harder if you need to. I know there were days I could’ve gotten to work before 6, but you and a sister or two would have those long legs thrown over me, sleeping with your mouths open, drooling, laughing in your sleep, and I’d ask myself if leaving you was worth the extra dollar. The way you felt was always worth more. If I made the wrong decision, I just have to say I’M SORRY.
But I know in my heart that you are not that kind of young lady. That has just been on my mind lately. What I really think is YOUR HUSBAND DOES NOT TREAT YOU RIGHT. Sometimes I wonder if he has stopped treating you like a HUMAN BEING. He isn’t the kind of man that ties you up and sits over in the corner, watching you starve to death. He lacks the nerve and patience. He’s the kind that ties you up and then goes and eats a tenderloin steak and then comes in and forgets to check on you before he goes to sleep for the night.
I read about a man in Jackson who did that to his mother. She had turned into a bag-o-bones by the time they found her, and the son was off on a Cuban vacation. They said he gave out cigars to the police. You and I both know that your husband is cut from that same bolt of cloth. You know it, but you try to forget on account of the sheer embarrassment that you got duped. You may not want to admit that you married somebody WHO DOES NOT WISH YOU WELL. But I am your mother. I do not want to blame you and will not. I want you safe and free from worry, which is the true meaning of heaven on earth.
I wish I’d stopped the marriage from happening to begin with. BUT I DIDN’T. Everybody in Mississippi had a funny feeling long before the wedding. Then, after you did not come home when Ella and Eloise died, all I heard was how this isn’t Maureen making this decision and she is not a girl who would ignore her family and act like her sisters burning to death in a fire was none of her concern. Everybody in Mississippi said they bet that Maureen was up in N.C. being ground completely down to where she no longer knows her own mind, or is afraid to speak it. We all knew he was made entirely of lies, Maureen. We should’ve gone up there and GOTTEN YOU OUT. Because GETTING OUT is what you will have to do if what I believe is true.
YOU CANNOT REPAIR OR CHANGE A PERSON LIKE HIM on account of he will tell you there isn’t anything wrong with him and call you the crazy one for thinking it. The only way to live with people like him in this world is to stay as far away from them as possible. Those who were at the wedding said how Troop was so full of flattery and how he wouldn’t go to all that trouble to behave like somebody he wasn’t unless he was straining to keep the nobody he actually was out of sight. You can’t fool Mississippi.
Remember when he visited our house and WOULD NOT DRINK THE WATER you had pumped from the well? He wouldn’t wash his hands in it either. Then he poured out his glass and tried to show you there was something crawling on the bottom of it, I guess hookworms or something of that nature. I remember the way you looked at me and then him and then agreed with him. I tricked you into coming out to the yard with me, where I said you could expect that kind of belittlement the rest of your life. HE WAS A SNOB. Then he had the gall to pay Ella a dime to walk a mile to the store and buy him a root beer in a bottle although we had that here HOMEMADE as well. I hate to think of how many times since then he has held a clean glass at your face and made you say you see something that is not there. That is in a manner of speaking, but you understand.
I bet you that when your lives got out of the fairy tale stage, when you had to come out of the honeymoon cottage and carry out the real order of your days, that Troop started not to get his way all the time. NOBODY DOES IN THIS LIFE. After a while, a woman looks around and sees that there is more pressing business than flattering a man and dolling up for him all the time. And that is when you had better genuinely like and appreciate the other person the way you do a brother or sister or your oldest friend, or everything they do will grate on you so badly you will want to cut your own throat and wash the blood down with poison to escape another hour with them.
And there is yourself to care for, Maureen. You always liked who you were inside. Your husband seems to be a person who is sick in love with himself. He is the kind that has affairs so he can be constantly fed the news of what a champ he is. Troop did not like you, Maureen, not a bit. Not who you are, funny and good and wise and honest. And he hated us and our country ways and had a hard time appreciating the fact that a home that smells like smoke and supper all the time is not suffocating. IT IS LIFE. I raised you to be kind and do your best, and you are with a man who was raised to crave attention and get something for nothing. And he got you.
He liked the idea that somebody with a good heart like you cared about him, and I guarantee the first time you showed some dissatisfaction, it wasn’t any turning back after that. If I didn’t know all this, I’d be UNFIT to be your mother. I cannot imagine what all he has put in your head. But it needs to come out, if I need to send your uncles up there with an auger. Maybe what will happen is that he will push and push and you will take it and take it and then he will eventually do something that takes your breath away. You cannot imagine how it HURTS me to say these things, but knowing that you’re locked in that life with him hurts more. You will heal from your wounds. He won’t. BUT I DO NOT CARE.
Maureen, I want you to listen when I say that although you may choose not to talk to your mother or sisters that you must talk to somebody. You have to find somebody to talk to immediately who is not fooled by him. But be careful of what you tell those society doctors on account of if you say you are UNHAPPY they will want to RIP YOUR FEMALES out. They are not what give you light and life, but if they are taken out against your will the way they did my friend down here, then you will have a hole in yourself and also be off the monthly custom. It is one thing for nature to leave you naturally but another to have your body CUT OPEN AND ROBBED because a man wants you to shut up at supper.
If it was me, I would set the bastard up and be out of there so fast that the wind at my back knocked him down. If you would write, I could help you. But I cannot think that you have gone over to his ways and that I now have a ZOMBIE DAUGHTER. And I hate to say this, but be careful about having a baby, unless you already have. Think if you want to be tied to that man the rest of your life.
The minute I was told to send things in care of Troop, I knew the story. But even the way he treated you at the dinner table here was ENOUGH. The thought of any of my girls living in a house where they are made to be afraid is intolerable. There is no way for me to ask you to let me know if you are not getting mail from me. Is there,Troop?
Troop, are you listening? What kind of pleasure are you taking from watching my girl suffer? You have caused Mississippi a great deal of turmoil and frustration but the mills of the Gods are going to eventually grind you up and spit you out. And there won’t be a soul left to watch. So you’ll be lacking in that little bit of personal attention as well.
I’m out of this tablet of paper. But that was about all anyway, except I still love my girl,
Mama
The love and honor of her mother’s words must’ve shaken him to the core. And there were other letters like this. I can’t imagine him thinking that if he kept her mother’s evaluation of his character away from her perhaps she would never know what she was involved in. All I could say when I finished reading was, “Aunt Maureen, I don’t know what to say. But it certainly sounds like your mother doesn’t want or need fifty-seven dollars, or any amount of salvation from the swamps. She wants her daughter.”
“I know,” Maureen replied. “When we were sitting at the table, staring into the glass, I looked straight at my mother and said, ‘Yes, he’s right. The glass may have some kind of worms at the bottom. Something’s definitely in there.’ ”
“Did you love him that much? I know you thought you could use his money to improve your family’s situation, but that’s hardly grounds for marriage.”
“You see, Mary, I could not believe that somebody with that much polish and sophistication would have anything to do with me. The boy I took company with in Yazoo City became the most successful hog farmer in the state, but he was lacking in class. He didn’t know how to act in public. He didn’t know how to hold himself. Troop smiled and was so at ease in situations I wasn’t comfortable in that I felt guided along. I was gliding in a world I thought I’d never enter. But now I see that he was only comfortable with people he thought were his social equal or better, and if we were at a party and I spoke to someone from the kitchen, he’d hold it against me for weeks, months. He’s always thought everybody was looking at him and making judgments, and then I started bringing down their opinion of him. His mother was so critical of him, although you’d never hear him say it. But I knew. I had this sense of him growing up choking and desperate for her to show him some true, motherly affection.
“Maureen, it seems to me that he was afraid of making her angry and jealous, but as far as I know, and it isn’t that much, men don’t draw their love for their wives and their love for their mothers from the same well.”
“I’ve always heard that, and even common sense tells you it’s a different kind of love. But when I told him that, he glared at me until I thought his face was going to explode, and he said I was perverted, a bitch.”
I asked Maureen what she was going to do now.
“I’m going to put this letter on his pillow and let him sleep on it tonight,” she replied, “and then we’ll see what happens in the morning. Maybe he’ll call me a bitch again. And I’m going to think what to do about Mamie and Zollie. That’s enough for today. It’s more than I generally do in a year.”
“Have you ever thought of leaving, going back home?”
“All the time, yes, but then I think of what it would be like to be alone, and I stop.”
“Maureen, you’re already alone. Don’t you see that?”
“Mamie and Zollie are here.”
“He may not let them come back.”
“I’m going to have a baby,” she said. “There’ll be love here soon. Everything will be fine on the other side of Thanksgiving.”