Odd, how all these years you’s called me Castalia. Yet I couldn’t call you nothing but ma’am or Lady. That changing. All along I been knowing the secret middle name you hates so bad, Enid, Enid, E-nid!—Names count.
Someday—when Marse Sherman’s cure-house smoke finally clears—you gone to recollect a certain flown-away Castalia spending her last unfree minutes telling you the story of her coming-out, her people’s debut to the world of sinful work. I done gifted you with the whole thing one last time. Right now, the Favorite Owner I Ever Had (besides my own self, of course), my story’s all I gots to offer. But, from out these Reba-wizened hands, it yours. For free. Up North, I gone again be a type of princess. But this time, my title will just run “Miss.” One “Miss” all mine. I tired of sharing. I plenty Reba-vain to take “Miss” for my birthright.
What I hopes: On a fresh-painted Northern trolley car (maybe red), some fellow (a gent) will see me come on board by streetcar’s foot-ladder gangplank, my young arms just heap full of hatboxes, nice fur coat, store packages, all new stuff (not nothing secondhand), and he gone rise, gone touch the front he hat, gone say deep and nice and civil, “Might could I offer you my seat, Miss?”—Miss! Music!
YEAH.
I has earnt a mite of glory, Lady. And you—how bout you? Uh-oh, them’s the hoofbeats. Finally. Let’s get you down them rosewood stairs, get little old you hid safe for watching Blues make this Bleach house go red then black. Quick, down these spiral stairs, gal, let’s us scramble our young asses off.
I ain’t helping you out of no tribal kindness. Enid, I won’t be thanked. That just real bad form. I only being selfish. You got to stay alive long enough to finally start. Know what? You just being born. That why it hurt so bad. You done hit you own true coming-out at last.
It commencing glorious. New York City of Heaven, here I comes. Our mansion’s whole first floor gone soon be lit so spiffy. Pretty house make pretty fire. Here go.
Auntie? I running. Auntie? I think I free. Us answerers been answered, Reba.—Free!
In Which Our Heroine Pretty Much Catches the Works
Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception. In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children, and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.
—GENESIS 3:16
Darling? We all got to represent each other, try.
Jerome danced in here yesterday wearing a blue ribbon behind either ear. Won them at the State Fair for his quilts and boy was he ever proud! Hand-stitches every one. His designs outdo most of them primmer granny ones.
I told him, said, “I don’t know what deserve more high-type praise, Jerome, your workmanship or your flash, probably your flash.” He accepted that with a bow. He’s done one quilt to mark the twentieth anniversary of these girl singers, the Superbs, or Supremes, and it was silver and all three of them were holding mikes and then the mikes’ cords formed a kind of lasso spelling out the group dates and their names, then each singer had a trademark wildflower over her head like a halo. No surprise that won, hunh? Creative, Jerome.
He’s offered to do a quilt for Professor Taw’s bleak old room. It’ll feature Taw’s Theory of Combustion spelled out in fine cloths many ways. Jerome has done commissions for some Lanes’ Enders (they pay dear, I’m told). They offer him favorite clothes from their most choice old outfits, baby blankets, you name it. Fabrics then get mashed to a original design. Yesterday he told me all those’ve just been practice. For the one he’s planning making your old Lucy here. For free. The price is right!
He said he’d stop back by in six weeks’ time. I should set aside my favorite all-time garments, silks, whatever. (This shamed me, since they only brought four dresses in here with me when I got committed. They said the rest needed dry cleaning, just left them in five closets.) Jerome announced that all his quilts tell stories. “This one shall reflect your … Lifestyle, Lucy.”
“Okay,” says I, a fool for tributes. “Glad to know I’ve got one. I’ll file through my stowed heirlooms, choose the colors for my famous counterpane.” He discoed over here, he hugged me. I thanked Jerome via a hard grip. When he left my cubicle, I beamed for whole minutes. I feel lucky. Why are folks so good to me?
You know, honey, nothing in the world beats a hundred percent cotton. And you can quote me on that.
2
BY NOW my husband was the Old South’s Uncle Sam. Newspaper reporters tried and monopolize Captain’s office hours. He welcomed one and all. Cap was good copy with a face like that, a mouth so apt to wave the flag then send forth “The Man Who Loved His Wife Too Good.” “If the Shoe Fits.” All over the New Dixie, you could read versions of his old holy tales on Sunday feature pages.
Invitations soon clogged our porch’s wicker mail basket. Most for him—“and family” some kindly added. To be blunt, I felt semi-envious recently fired by Christ’s own church myself. Soon I was down at Lucas’, child, I was pricing luggage. I wanted to clear out before worse happened. I could feel something coming, even then I could. Some nights it’d wake me from the soundest sleep. A noise right in the room with me, a shout, like a boy soldier’s cry from right beside our bed.
I’d sit there, one hand pressing my sternum, the other patting over to feel his great sleeping bulk. “Imagining things,” I scolded myself. I’d lay back down, then throw aside the quilt and go to check on all our kids. The sound of that much breathing made a palm-frond thatching over me, soothing and half-tropical it seemed. I pictured the palm trees haremed on a side porch of McCloud’s Mansion in its indigo Steinway heyday. I imagined baby Castalia climbing Africa palm trees loaded with lettucy orchids. I touched child counter-pains and blankets. Then, calmed, returned to a bed straddling guns.
(In my day, husbands worked at stores and offices. Us wives minded the houses. Now wives get to work in stores and offices and mind the house. Progress, who’s she? “Lib” for women? You know what that still mainly is, sug? “Lib” is just another nickname for Elizabeth.)
SINCE Billy Preston slept at our place last Saturday, Ned asked permission to stay with Billy the Friday following. I said then what the world has so often told me, “We’ll see.” Captain said, “Of course”—which is what he’s heard most from the bank and others.
Ned packed a clean shirt and rolled two pairs of socks. He took a little windbreaker and, seeming overpleased, said bye to me. He stood around the kitchen then, like wanting something else. “Need a dime, sug? Tide you over?” But he shook his head, looked at me with those eyes, took off.
My kids usually dragged home from sleepovers by one the next p.m., acting all bushed and sore, grumbling they’d never do that again. Then our kids’d sleep ten straight hours and wake recalling the best time ever humanly had. Captain was to be off hunting on the coast that weekend and I planned taking my whole brood to see a new (to us) picture at the Cameo. When Ned won’t home by four on Saturday, I asked would Louisa take a note to Billy’s momma. Mrs. Preston had a phone—but we didn’t. Cap hated the idea and I won’t none too keen. I could’ve stepped next door and borrowed Ruth’s but hated being beholden for small stuff.
Lou was pleased to go talk with Billy’s mom. The lady published cute verses in our paper under the name Neva. Her poems were meant to draw a nod of recognition on subjects like how kids always slam the screen door. Well, I wanted to say, some children slam some doors. Most of Neva’s ditties involved a child’s galoshes and his messy room. I felt for Billy, her one kid. Maybe this give him his sense of outraged justice that led him to the federal bench later? Anyhow, Lou got back right quick with pretty blue notepaper, sealed. “She is so intelligent, Momma. It’s fun speaking to a real … writer. I keep a diary and all but I’m no real writer.” I grumbled something. I never much liked hearing my kids praise other minds in ways they’ve failed to mention my own. I’m sorry but I’m like that. Besides, being terminated by First Baptist, I felt touchy right then, a fallen star.
Dear Lucille Marsden,
r /> We thought you understood. He said he had your blessing in taking Ned away to the seaside. They left last evening at six. Your husband kindly offered my Billy the chance to join their hunting party. Billy and myself were somewhat in awe of the motorcycle police and state vehicles. I think Billy would have considered going had he not chanced past a truck full of bird dogs. They scared Billy and myself and perhaps Ned too, though he seemed to know to hide it.
Captain M. kindly introduced me to our young Lt. Governor (fine-looking and no doubt about that). Unless I’m very much mistaken, the Lt. Gov. had been celebrating something since he’d left the state capitol four hours previous. This was, I admit, a factor in my keeping Billy back from them. Captain introduced me to the Lt. Gov. as a “poetess,” not knowing I avoid the term. I feel it is, by nature, a lesser and therefore dismissive sub-category. I know he meant well. I hope I did right in allowing young Ned to leave here without your express permission but as the Captain is Ned’s father that seemed reason enough to pass the child on to him, or so ran my thoughts at the time. Your note, delivered by your most charming and respectful daughter (I’ve given her a few of my modest latest quatrains by way of thanks), disturbed me and I trust I’ve not made a mistake. I know how careful we both are about our sons.
“Neva”
Ann Preston
We did go to that movie. Was a silent about this fraternity boys’ prank and one boy gets tied to the wrong train track and he loses the leg. They show it when his mother first spies him hobbling up her porch steps using a cane—you see her trying to be brave and not let him catch her crying. I got mighty upset. I embarrassed my children with a few stray sounds I made. To me, such noises seemed in keeping, but afterward, near-strangers came up and told me it’d got them too. I felt foolish then. I hate that: Everybody says they cry in movies but when you do, they blame you. Something about living with the scar on Captain’s leg for all these years—a nasty scar. Surgeons never thought a man’s leg’d be out of pants (long before Bermuda shorts) and so who cared about suturing’s crude looks? Too, it was something about my Ned loose with unshaved poker players down at Duck.
I made the other kids stop by and see my lonely parents on our way home from the pictures. As a bribe, we first patronized the new soda fountain in Lucas’ and kids got ice cream. Lou always ordered vanilla and became furious in defending her doing so. Baby tried pistachio, this week’s novelty, and vowed she’d be faithful to it for life and was. My folks now asked after Ned’s whereabouts and Lou said, “Sleeping over another night at Billy Preston’s,” and I looked at her and felt grateful that Neva had not told and worried Louisa too. It relieved me, thinking only I understood Ned’s absence. That gave me more control over my own organized wishing. I would do a lot of that tonight.
I grew lively then with jokes beyond my rude usual. Bargaining with the fates: If you laugh enough, bad things skulk away from you. I pretended I could play Momma’s grand piano—kept faking arty entrances like some grand concert artist and then really messing up. Poppa, of course, had to try it too, right after. But I agitated my own children to where the laughing twins knocked over a bamboo end table and chipped the inherited deer-hoof inkwell Momma’d always loved. She was good about the accident, at least better than expected. But I got my crowd out of there—worried that my own emotions were out of whack. Here I was pulling sideshow pranks in my folks’ dry parlor, plus turning our Cameo Theater into the Wailing Wall.
Once I got my brood abed, avoiding looking at Ned’s tucked-in bunk (made with care when he knew where he was bound, the brat), I wondered would I sleep. I heard out the kids’ singsong prayers—pointless chants and yet, tonight, less so. “Add Ned,” I asked. They said he was just at Billy’s but, used to the whims I ofttimes forced on the poor things, kids stuck in “And bless Ned if he needs it. Amen.” That was that.
I felt better. With people like me, it don’t take much.
Downstairs, looking out my kitchen window in the dark, I seen the glow of poor Ruth’s latest Lucky. She’d been on her side porch listening to me wedge seven kids between the sheets. I got a crawly feeling that she knew how Cap had tricked Ned out of town and clear of me. Seeing her over there waiting for her Willard to finally wise up and phone home, I turned out all the lights and went to bed, recalling Momma’s lecture on everybody’s awful need to blame. I dozed off quick, trying to ignore the Fort Knox of weaponry stowed in glass-fronted cases just downstairs. (Did I tell you he had taken over my sewing and puppet room, put up a museum to the gun? He waited, polite, till after I got sacked from church.) “I blame no one. Because nothing’s happening,” so said I. Sleep saved me.
We can be saved.
Sleep will, if nothing else does, save us, honey. Death will come and fetch us all to peace at last. I ain’t afraid of that. Times, this long life seems the insomnia that’s keeping me from what I most dearly deserve.
3
NOW it all lines up in memory—how, deciding to keep busy that next morning, a Sunday, I chose to make potato salad in volume. I figured I’d give portions to everybody, Cassie, my folks, poor Ruth, everybody. More superstition. Act nice enough to others, maybe the dark stuff’ll avoid you, it’ll think you gave at the office and will go next door for dues. Though this was October, a heat wave held on—flies yet everywhere. In Lucas’ yesterday I’d heard a lady remark, “I think the flies are worse this year.” She waited for credit like she’d discovered a new moon slung near Jupiter. Sometimes, even for small-town dwellers, small towns sure seem small. The idea of escape got funneled into my famous potato salad. Very local travel. (My secret? Lots of celery seed and fresh-ground pepper, don’t spare the dried mustard.)
I boiled every spud in the house, had two pots gurgling that lovely sound of water changing, resentful if resigned, into dense air. I stood chopping onions with a knife too big. One bluebottle fly (they were worse) lighted on diced pickles and—moving to snatch it—I someway crossed the waiting knife, and really cut myself. I studied the sliced thumb, knowing it’d have to bleed a lot before stopping, one of those.
I judged: If I was a single woman living alone or even a Neva, I’d be rushing to Doc Collier’s for five stitches. But being here and me, I just wrapped the whole left hand in a old white apron soon bloodied, went right ahead with fixing. I wanted to look generous and productive and in charge—mostly out of self-defense. My kids were loud swinging on the vacant lot. Church bells started their competition clanging earlier described. I’d told kids they need not go to church today, since the Baptists’ follow-up letter had informed me my hickory-nut figments were “graven images” to boot! Can you imagine? I heard Lou pushed by the complaining twins, Lou calling one verse on each shove,
“How do I love to go up in a swing,
Up in the sky so blue?
Oh, I do think it’s the pleasantest thing
Ever a child (higher, you dummies) can do.”
Ruth’s phone rang. I hate it when the person telling a story breaks in too often, like wanting credit for inventing the whole idea of all stories and not just this one she’s guiding her hearer through. But when I say from this semi-toothed mouth, “Ruth’s phone rang,” I get such a push of kind sad rage, I want to bust in. I long to edit life and hack this out. “Which part was your favorite part of the trip, Momma?” my kids’d ask me after even a visit to Castalia’s. “This part” I would skip in any ideal world but this world sure ain’t that. So, it’s in to stay. Come ahead. We have to.
Ruth’s phone rang. At the sound, the Wilguses’ simpleminded collie, Gladys, barked to hear herself. Loss of blood from my sliced thumb made me feel chilly suddenly and—both hands covered with egg yolks, celery seed, standing before a counter of peeled cooling potatoes—I’d just pulled on my bagged-out maroon cardigan when I see poor Ruth posed at our screen door, sniffling.
“It’s for you, Lucille. I better tell you, something has gone wrong.”
“What else is new?” I spoke this all surly and flip, trying an
d make it not be so. “They say what? I’m busy here, Ruth. You want some potato salad later? ’Cause I’m making plenty.”
“Lucy, you have to come to my telephone. They won’t tell me all of it, they need you.” She was weeping out there.
I cannot explain to you, darling, how much I hated Ruth then. She had to own a modern telephone that siphoned others’ bad news to them faster.
“Step in, Ruth honey.” I wiped hands on my apron. “Sorry—coming.”
Poor Ruth slipped into my kitchen like wishing she was air-colored, less trouble. A cigarette dangled from her mouth and it looked like her cause for crying. Ruth’s small eyes were wet, the weed burned very dry. That seemed to matter.
I peeled the apron from my cut, egg yolk all powdery across my red thumb. I followed Ruth’s gaze and understood I’d also bled onto my gingham wash dress and over a few of the white potatoes gleaming on the counter. My eyes still streamed from inhaling onions.
“Cut myself,” I apologized. “It’s not bad. Where they phoning from?” and I reached gently back, I held on to my counter.
“Out past Duck. It’s some stranger. There was … hurt. Somebody’s apparently been hurt apparently, Lucille.”
I said, “Oh.—Ruth, I ain’t had a cigarette since I was ten. Give me some breaths off yours? Steadying, are they?”
She stepped nearer, unnailing the thing from her lip while both eyes played over me. Then I viewed myself like she must. The bun had come undone behind, a pouchy sweater, the bloody palm and apron, onion eyes, egg crumbled on everything. I got a tea towel, I bound up my left hand like a boxer’s. I inhaled onct.
Then Ruth backed off, Ruth sobbed, she said, “You poor old thing.”
I was twenty-nine. She was thirty-one.
I GOT led out my own door, down the steps, and through a latching gate that joined our back yards. Louisa made the twins quit swinging her the second she saw me. She always seemed to know, right at the instant, but maybe I misremember, needing another noticer to have lived in my own house.