I examined the plant closely and whispered, “Oh, Miz Obee, I think I like this one best of all.”
She pressed the pot into my hands and smiled.
“She’s wants you to have it—as a gift,” someone said in a gravelly voice.
I turned to see a face embroidered with a web of deep lines peek out from behind the sunflowers. A threadbare ankle-length slip hung loosely from her thin frame, and tossed over her shoulders was a blue plaid lumberjack shirt, at least four sizes too big. I wondered what it was she had on her head, and when she took a few steps forward, I realized it was a pink plastic shower cap. Why she was wearing a shower cap on a hot summer’s day I couldn’t imagine, but, in all truthfulness, I have to say it suited her. In her hand was a crooked walking stick, and crouched by her feet was a gray tabby cat with a wide scar across his nose.
“Miz Obee can’t talk—had her voice box removed ’cause of cancer. But she wants you to have those flowers.”
Miz Obee nodded and patted my hand, and when she did, a marble fell from her dress and rolled to a stop by the toe of my shoe.
I looked at her kindly and pretended not to notice.
The woman wearing the shower cap grinned. “My name’s Faustina—Faustina Woodlow. But everyone calls me Flossy. And this here is Mistah Moe. Did you know he’s the best mouser in all of Georgia?”
“No, I didn’t know that,” I said, bending down to scratch the cat behind his ears. “I’m CeeCee Honeycutt. I’m here with Oletta. Do you know her?”
“Oh, good heavens, yes. I’ve known Oletta for years. Is she up at the house with Sapphire?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well, let’s go on up,” Flossy said, shaking her cane in the direction of the house. “I’d like to say hello.”
Miz Obee closed the car door, and we headed back to the house—me with my orchid held carefully in my hands, Flossy with her tattered slip flapping in the wind, and Miz Obee with the occasional marble falling out of her dress. Mistah Moe lagged behind, chasing a runaway marble across a patch of dirt.
Just when we stepped onto the porch, a low rumble sounded and a flurry of starlings burst from the field, lifting high in the air, as thick as a storm cloud. Everyone stopped what they were doing and listened. The rumble grew louder, and a moment later a man driving an orange tractor with a flatbed wagon in tow came into view. The tractor chugged along a bumpy path, belching up clouds of gray smoke. The driver waved and pulled to a stop just beyond the sunflower patch.
“Lawd, will you look at that,” Sapphire said, rising from her chair more spryly than a ninety-one-year-old had a right to. “It’s Jeb Cummins, and he’s got strawberries. I bet it’s the last pick of the season.”
Miz Obee clapped her hands, and Flossy waved her cane in the air and did a stiff little dance. “We’ll have to bribe Tilly-Jo into makin’ us some shortcake tonight.”
Next thing I knew the three of them took off toward the wagon as fast as their old legs would go. It was only then that I noticed Sapphire had her dress on backward.
They tottered away, kicking up small clouds of dust in their wake. My bet was that Sapphire would be the one to break free from the pack and reach the strawberry wagon first.
Eighteen
When Oletta and I stepped off the bus from our day at Green Hills Home, a mirage of heat waves shimmered across the pavement. I noticed an adventure-some earthworm that had made a wrong turn and wandered onto the sidewalk—it lay there sizzled up like a forgotten sausage on a grill. And poor Oletta—the heat had caused her feet to swell like muffins over the tops of her shoes.
We hadn’t been inside the house for two minutes when the phone rang. Oletta answered while I dropped ice cubes into two glasses and opened a bottle of Coke. I listened to the fizzing sound, slurping off the foam and not paying much attention to Oletta’s conversation.
When she hung up, she took a slow drink of her Coke. “Oh, that sure tastes good.”
“Who called?”
“Miz Goodpepper. She’s goin’ to a wedding reception and needs me to stitch a tear in her dress. She said she’d be right over.”
I licked the foam from the side of my glass, then took a sip. “I had so much fun today. I like your aunt Sapphire.”
Oletta pulled out a chair and lowered herself down with a tired groan. “She sure is somethin’. Lord, you should have seen her in her day. Her momma shoulda named her Spitfi re instead of Sapphire.”
Footsteps sounded on the porch steps, and in a flutter of green chiffon, Miz Goodpepper walked into the kitchen. “Oletta, I can’t thank you enough,” she said, pointing to the plunging neckline of her dress. “See, it’s just a small rip, right here in the center. But you know I can’t even thread a needle.”
Oletta rose from the table for a closer look. “That’ll only take a minute,” she said, heading into the pantry. “Hope I got the right color thread is all.”
Miz Goodpepper’s dress skimmed the floor and was cut so low in back that it made me blush. She was wearing a pin with a big blue stone. It looked like a piece of summer sky had fallen onto her shoulder.
“You look beautiful,” I said.
“Thank you, darling.” She smoothed her hands over her hips. “Do you like this color on me?”
I nodded. “You look like a lime Popsicle.” After saying those words, I realized how strange they sounded. But Miz Goodpepper smiled, seeming to understand exactly what I meant.
“We’re in luck,” Oletta said, returning from the pantry. “Got the thread I need right here.” She flicked the switch of the overhead light. “Now, come over here by the table so I can see what I’m doin’.”
Miz Goodpepper stood motionless while Oletta began stitching the tear. When Oletta slid her fingers beneath between the fabric and Miz Goodpepper’s skin, her eyebrows shot up. “What in the world you got under here?”
“Duct tape,” Miz Goodpepper said with a chuckle. “There’s no way to wear a bra under this dress,” she said, cupping her hands beneath her breasts. “But I wanted my girls to look . . . well, perkier than they actually are. So I scrounged around in the basement and found a roll of duct tape. And let me tell you, it works like a charm.”
I didn’t know what to say, but Oletta laughed so hard her eyes watered. “Well, that’s it. I might as well go pick out my coffin, ’cause now I’ve heard it all. But what you gonna do when you try and pull that tape off ? You know half your skin is gonna come right off with it.”
Miz Goodpepper shrugged her shoulders. “You’re probably right. But it’ll be worth it. I haven’t looked this good in a backless dress in fi fteen years.”
Oletta shook her head and went back to her sewing. “So who you goin’ to the reception with? He must be mighty special for you to go through all this trouble.”
“Well, Travis Davidson asked me, and I said yes. But then, when Clayton Brewster called and asked me too, I just had to accept.”
“Oh, my holy Christmas. Clayton Brewster? I thought you was done with him.”
Miz Goodpepper blushed. “Oh, now, don’t be mad at me. I know he’s a scoundrel, but he’s deliciously entertaining and the best dancer I’ve ever known.”
“What you gonna do when Mr. Travis sees you with Mr. Brewster?”
“I have no idea,” Miz Goodpepper said with a throaty laugh. “It was a terrible thing for me to do. I deserve to be electrocuted.”
In just a few minutes, Miz Goodpepper’s dress was repaired. Oletta snipped the end of the thread and stepped back to look at her work. “Perfect,” she said proudly. “Nobody’d ever know.”
“Oletta, I can’t thank you enough.”
“Glad I could help.”
“All right, I’m off to dance the night away with Clayton,” Miz Goodpepper said, heading for the door.
“Don’t be callin’ me when you can’t get that tape off.”
Miz Goodpepper laughed and disappeared.
The long bus ride and the heat had left Oletta and me feeling g
rimy, so we headed upstairs to take showers. With my hair still wet, I returned to the kitchen wearing white eyelet shorty pajamas that I loved too much for words. Oletta was standing at the counter in a brightly patterned floral housedress. While she piled two plates high with cottage cheese and slices of cool, sweet strawberries, I stood at the window and watched a pair of speckled moths splay themselves across the screen like tiny lost kites hoping for wind. It was so hot even the June bugs looked forlorn.
We took our supper to the back porch and ate with our plates in our laps, not saying too much, just enjoying the quiet and thinking our private thoughts. After we’d finished, Oletta relaxed and rocked in the chair, while I cleaned up and did the dishes.
“Listen. Can you hear that rumbling?” she said when I returned to the porch. “Must be the high school band practicin’ for the Labor Day parade. It’s a big deal around these parts. Do you like parades?”
I shook my head.
Oletta took a sip of iced tea. “No? I thought all young’uns liked parades.”
“Well, not me. Not anymore.”
“Why is that?”
The memory rose up in my mind, as bright as Technicolor on a silver screen. I plunked down in the chair and told Oletta the story.
Every summer our town had a Fourth of July parade. It was a much-anticipated event, and preparations began a week in advance. The fire department showed off their gleaming hook-and-ladder truck as they strung miles of crepe paper streamers from one light pole to the next, all the way up Euclid Avenue. American flags were hung in shop windows, and huge bouquets of red, white, and blue helium balloons bobbed from long strings tied to the columns of the town’s gazebo.
Early in the day, the residents began hauling folding chairs down to the sidewalks, each one staking their claim for the best view. Even some frail old folks were wheeled out to the porch of the nursing home, wrapped in blankets like cocoons as they waited to see the parade go by.
I found a spot where I could stand, camouflaged by the foliage of a tall lilac bush. I was eleven years old at the time and enduring the height of all the teasing about my mother, so I wanted to be as inconspicuous as possible.
The parade began with a drumroll and the crash of brass cymbals as the marching band rounded the corner. The drum major led them through the center of town, strutting to a deafening rendition of “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” Behind him, a row of pink-cheeked majorettes grinned at the crowd, their silver batons twirling so fast they looked like lit sparklers. They turned their heads from left to right in perfectly choreographed unison. It was the same old parade year after year, and the only reason I kept going was to see Mr. Kronsky.
After the American Legion marched past, a roar of cheers and whistles lifted high into the air. And sure enough, rounding the corner came good old Mr. Kronsky wearing his famous Uncle Sam costume: an oversize red-and-white-striped top hat splashed with glittery stars, a blue coat with tails, and red-white-and-blue-striped pants. Glued to his chin and slightly askew was a white goatee that was so old it looked like matted wool.
It wasn’t his outfit that made the crowd go wild; it was the fact that he was more than seventy years old and was riding a unicycle—a very tall unicycle—so tall that his feet were at least six feet off the ground.
Everyone watched the old circus performer pedal his unicycle through the center of town, with his arms spread as he groped for balance and a look of astonishment on his face. I think he was more amazed that he could still do such a thing than the crowd of onlookers was.
Bringing up the end of the parade was a shiny red pickup truck pulling a small flatbed wagon that was smothered in white tissue paper flowers. Cardboard signs that read LITTLE MISS WILLOUGHBY were taped to both its sides. Sitting in the wagon was a blond-haired girl dressed in a flouncy blue dress. Even from a distance I recognized her. She was Francine Fillmore, one of the girls from my class who derived immeasurable pleasure from poking fun at me about my mother. I hated her guts.
While Francine waved and threw paper-wrapped taffy to the outstretched hands of the onlookers, I slunk into the shadows. After her stupid float had finally passed, I stepped onto the sidewalk and was heading home when an explosion of pink burst from the crowd. I stood, horrified, as Momma barreled down the street in a satin party dress.
“Wait for me!” she cried, chasing behind Little Miss Willoughby’s flower-studded float. Flapping across her chest was her prized green-silk sash with the words 1951 VIDALIA ONION QUEEN shimmering in the sunlight.
The crowd erupted into gales of laughter, but Momma kept right on running. When she reached the float, she took a flying leap in an attempt to join the wide-eyed Francine, but Momma’s hands slipped from the back of the wagon and she landed facedown on the pavement. The back of her dress flipped up, and, to my eye-popping horror, she didn’t have any underpants on.
Time slowed and there was a dreadful silence as, one by one, the crowd turned and looked at me. I thought I’d die. I wanted to die. Momma crawled to her knees, and I was thankful that her dress fell over her bare rear end. A hailstorm of laughter pummeled me as I walked into the street and helped her up. I couldn’t have hurt more had someone hauled off and walloped me with a sledgehammer.
“So, anyway,” I said, looking at Oletta, “I hope I never see a parade again.”
She reached over and took hold of my hand. She didn’t say a word; all she did was gently squeeze my fingers. We sat like that until the sound of the marching band faded and the night sky turned from violet to a deep indigo blue.
I rested my head against the back of the chair and listened to a chorus of crickets while the hot breeze stroked the leaves on the trees. A long, thin white cloud moved across the sky, looking like the windblown veil of a runaway bride.
Since moving to Savannah, I’d become more awake to nature—to the sounds, smells, and sights of the world around me. I was constantly surprised by the things that waited to be discovered beyond the pages of the books I’d always kept in front of my nose. Even the moon looked rounder and fatter than I’d ever remembered, and as it pushed higher into the sky, it lit the surface of Miz Hobbs’s swimming pool into a shimmering skin of silver.
I glanced over at Oletta. Her head was relaxed against the back of the chair and her eyes were closed. She looked so peaceful I thought she’d fallen asleep, but then she waved away a mosquito from her face.
“Oletta. When we were at the ocean, you told me it was impossible to learn to swim in the waves.”
“That’s right. You need calm water to learn.”
“Well, Miz Hobbs is still in the hospital, so how about we sneak into her backyard and use her pool?”
Oletta opened her eyes and looked at me. “Child, colored folks don’t swim in white folks’ pools. If Miz Hobbs ever got wind of it, she’d pitch a fit from here to Sunday.”
“But she’d never know. Nobody would even see us. There’s an opening in the hedge by Miz Goodpepper’s roses. We can get in that way.”
Oletta shook her head. “Even if we did go over there, it takes a whole lot more than one time to learn to swim.”
I couldn’t stop gazing at the shimmering pool. Seeing it sit there without being used seemed like a big waste of water. I began to rock in my chair and said, “Miz Goodpepper told me about Miz Hobbs murdering the magnolia tree. She said Miz Hobbs was a witch.”
“It’d be fine with me if I never laid eyes on Miz Hobbs again. She’s always been real uppity, and she sure don’t like colored folks—looks at us like we’re stains on this earth. Her last cook, Betty, was real easygoin’. But after a while even she couldn’t take Miz Hobbs’s big mouth. Betty got so fed up that she walked out in the middle of cookin’ supper.” Oletta laughed. “Left the pots burning on the stove.”
“Ha! Good for her.”
“When Miz Tootie ain’t around, Miz Hobbs talks to me like I ain’t nothin’ more’n dirt on them fancy shoes she wears.” Oletta’s eyes narrowed when she turned to me. “You
know what I heard her call me?”
“What?”
“Miz Tootie’s nigger.”
My jaw dropped. “She called you that word?”
Oletta nodded. “More’n once. Heard her with my own ears.”
I sat stock-still, feeling the caustic burn of hatred in my throat. “That’s terrible, Oletta. One of the boys in my class said that word, and the teacher dragged him from his desk and made him stand in the corner with a bar of soap in his mouth till the bell rang.”
Oletta let out a hmpf. “It’d take a whole lot more than a bar of soap to clean up that woman’s mouth. She’s sure got herself some highfalutin’ attitude. She claims she was raised in some mansion up in Charleston, but that ain’t true,” Oletta said, shaking her head.
“Truth is, she grew up in a poor town in Mississippi, but now she pretends she’s the belle of the South.”
“All the more reason to swim in her pool.”
Oletta’s words were edged with longing when she said, “I’ve never been in a swimming pool. Always wondered what it’d be like to swim in clean, clear water. The swimmin’ hole we had when I was a child was muddy, and sometimes the fish would come up and nip our toes. Lord, how we’d squeal. But we sure had fun in them days. On nights when we couldn’t sleep, me and my sister, Geneva, would light an oil lantern and hang it from a tree. Then we’d take off our nightgowns and go skinny-dippin’. Too bad your folks never taught you to swim. It’s one of the joys of bein’ young.”
“They never taught me anything.”
She gave me a sad look and pushed herself up from the chair. “I’m goin’ in to get more iced tea. You want anything?”
“No, thank you.” I closed my eyes and began to rock, enjoying the way the chair creaked in a soothing rhythm across the floorboards of the porch.
A few minutes later the screen door opened. I looked up to see Oletta standing in a slant of pale-blue moonlight. In her arms was a stack of towels and a flashlight. “Well, don’t just sit there bein’ a lazybones. C’mon, let’s go swimmin’.”