Blackwater: The Complete Caskey Family Saga

  Thereafter, Elinor and Oscar wouldn’t hear of Sister’s eating supper by herself in that dark old house. In the afternoon, Elinor frequently called across the yard, “Sister, come on over here and keep me company.” Sometimes, Sister and Elinor went shopping together. “Elinor,” Sister once said, “you married Oscar seventeen years ago. We’ve all grown old since then, but this is the first time you and I have spent any time together. I get mad at Mama and Miriam when I think of all the things they kept me from doing.”

  “Blame Mary-Love,” returned Elinor. “Don’t blame Miriam. Miriam wasn’t grown up. You could have told Miriam what to do, and Miriam would have had to do it. You were weak, Sister. But after being brought up by that mama of yours, I don’t see how you could have been any other way.”

  . . .

  There were other alterations in the relationships within the Caskey family that autumn. When Malcolm ran away to join the army, Queenie was distraught, and begged James to send somebody to fetch him back. But James argued that Malcolm was twenty-one and could do what he pleased. “Besides,” James pointed out while they were choosing an automobile to replace the one Malcolm had stolen, “you have always said that what Malcolm needed was a good dose of army discipline.” So Queenie allowed herself to be lightened of the burden that had been her son. She no longer worried about him, but indulged herself to a greater extent than ever before in James’s company. Lucille complained that her mother was never at home, and that she always knew where to find her, which was over at Uncle James’s. James and Queenie gossiped, James and Queenie went shopping in Pensacola and Mobile, James and Queenie had no secrets from one another. Then they began making visits in Perdido as a couple. Some lady in town would say to her friend, “I’m bored to death. Let’s call up James and Queenie and see if they won’t come over and talk a spell.” Or another lady would say, “Let’s ride by James’s house and see if Queenie and him are out on the porch.”

  Together, Queenie and James paid visits to Elinor. Often they found Sister with her. These visits soon lost the formal aspect that they had had at first; they became as easy and natural as Perdido had always thought they should be, with all the Caskeys living in adjacent houses. Soon the households began taking meals together. It seemed foolish to have Zaddie, Roxie, and Ivey cooking three complete different meals when everyone might meet at Elinor’s for the big meal of the day and enjoy themselves more. The three black women got together early in the morning, planned the meal, then retired to their separate kitchens to prepare their individual parts. In mid-morning, Roxie and Ivey could be seen bearing steaming pots and casseroles across the sandy yards beneath the water oaks. Everyone gathered at noon. James or Oscar said grace, and for an hour the Caskeys were as happy as any family had the right to be.

  One day Oscar, from his usual spot at the head of the table, said, “Y’all, I just thought of something. None of this would have been possible when Mama was alive. She would never have let us do this.”

  Everyone at the table grew quiet. Everyone knew that Oscar spoke the truth, and the indictment against Mary-Love was telling.

  Ivey, bringing in a plate of hot rolls, said, “Miss Mary-Love didn’t like to see nobody rich, ’less she was the one put the fi’ dollar in their hand.”

  Roxie, who was serving iced tea, said, “Miss Mary-Love didn’t like to see nobody happy ’less she was the one put happiness in their head.”

  Zaddie, holding open the kitchen door, said, “Miss Mary-Love wouldn’t speak to me, just ’cause I belonged to Miss El’nor and not to her. If Miss Mary-Love was to see all of you here together, she’d fall down to the floor in a fit!”

  There was another moment of silence, as Mary-Love Caskey was remembered by her family.

  “Mama’s dead, though,” said Sister, lifting her glass with a slight smile.

  . . .

  After this noontime meal, when Oscar had returned to the mill, Lucille to the Ben Franklin store, and Danjo and Frances to the high school, the others usually went upstairs and sat on the screened porch with more glasses of iced tea. One afternoon a few days before Thanksgiving, Queenie, Sister, Elinor, and James were on the porch making plans for the holiday meal, when Luvadia Sapp made an appearance in the doorway and said, “Mr. James, they’s a car out in front of your house, and somebody getting out.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Don’t know.”

  Everybody rose and peered out. They could see only a corner of the automobile parked in front of James’s house.

  “I better go down and see,” said James.

  Everybody went down to see, and what everybody saw was James’s daughter Grace, striding up the sidewalk with two enormous suitcases.

  After graduation from Vanderbilt, Grace had taught physical education at a girls’ school in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and had lived with another young woman whom the Caskeys always referred to as “Grace’s particular friend.” At first this particular friend’s name was Georgia, but then it altered itself to Louise, and later to Catherine. So far as Grace’s father and the rest of the family knew, Grace was perfectly happy, and that, despite the unorthodox manner of her achieving such contentment, was all that really mattered.

  “Grace!” called James.

  “Daddy!”

  Grace, twenty-six now, appeared stronger and sturdier than ever. The suitcases appeared to weigh nothing as she swung them onto the porch. Everyone gathered around her, and James cried, “Darling, I didn’t know you were coming back for Thanksgiving.”

  “I am home for good and all,” said Grace defiantly.

  “No!” cried everyone. And: “Grace, what happened?!”

  “Grace,” said her father, “is something wrong? What about your friend Catherine?”

  “Oh, Catherine left that school year before last, Daddy! I told you that.” She sighed. “It was Mildred this time.”

  “Did you two girls have an argument?” asked Queenie solicitously.

  “I hate her!” cried Grace. “And I don’t want to talk about Mildred, ’cause I’m never gone see her again. If she calls and wants to speak to me, tell her I’ve moved to Baton Rouge or somewhere. Have y’all eaten? I am famished. I have driven straight through from Atlanta.”

  “What did Mildred do to make you so unhappy?” asked her father. “I thought you liked that school.”

  Grace pursed her lips. “She’s gone get married. And, Daddy, I don’t want to hear another word about Mildred, ’cause it just drives me crazy even to think about her. Y’all,” she said to her family in general, “I loved that girl to the bottom of my soul, and now she up and tells me she is gone go off and marry some old man that sells property in Miami! So nobody ever mention her name to me again!”

  “You’ve quit your job?” asked Elinor.

  “I have. Daddy, you’re gone have to support me. I am weary unto death of giving away my heart to people that don’t deserve it.”

  “Good for you, Grace,” said Queenie. “We are so glad to have you back—you cain’t imagine how we have missed you. I never laid eyes on Mildred in my life, but one thing I know for sure is, she didn’t deserve you.”

  No more was learned about why Grace gave up her employment at the Spartanburg girls’ school, but somehow the rumor in Perdido arose that Grace had not abandoned her position voluntarily, that she had been ousted from it in some obscure but serious disgrace. Grace Caskey, though, never acted as if she had returned to Perdido in dishonor. She tackled this new stage of her life with energy and resolve. The day after her unexpected reappearance she went to the principal of the high school, showed him her certificates, and said, “Let me coach the girls’ basketball team.”

  “We don’t have one,” the principal replied.

  “Then I’ll form one,” said Grace. “And in the spring we’ll talk about softball.”

  She formed a girls’ basketball team, drilled her girls relentlessly, and then drove them all over five counties of Alabama and Florida to play other teams. She ta
ught dancing classes at Lake Pinchona that winter, and itched for warm weather so that she could start lessons in diving and water-rescue. She put on her high boots to go rattlesnake hunting with the boys in the high school. She put on a straw hat and stood with Roxie on the Baptist Bottom bridge, fishing for bream in the lower Perdido.

  “I remember,” said James to Queenie, “when Grace was little, I couldn’t hardly get her to sit on the back steps on a sunshiny day. She was so shy she’d run and hide anytime somebody knocked on the front door. Now I cain’t even begin to keep up with her, and if I want her to stay in the house for five minutes, I have to rope her to the breakfront.”

  Grace’s phenomenal energy was exceeded only by her appetite. She was in the kitchen half an hour before dinner every afternoon, fishing out pieces of chicken and getting her hand slapped by Roxie, who still thought of her as a little girl. At table, she always called for more chopped steak, more little green peas, more creamed corn, more rolls, more butter, and greedily snatched whatever was left on the serving plates when everybody else was filled to bursting. She was the first to sit down and the last to get up. She never appeared to gain weight.

  At table one afternoon in mid-December of 1938, Grace at last pushed her plate away, signaled for one final glass of tea, and said, “Well, somebody tell me how Miriam’s doing down at Sacred Heart.”

  All the Caskeys looked at one another.

  “Nobody knows,” answered Elinor at last.

  “What do you mean?” demanded Grace. “Hasn’t anybody written to her?”

  “She doesn’t answer,” said Sister, appearing suddenly troubled.

  Grace looked around astounded. “You mean that poor child went away in September, and nobody’s spoken to her since?”

  “How?” asked Oscar with a shrug of helplessness. “Miriam does what she wants. If Miriam wanted to speak to us, we figure she’d write or call. She didn’t tell anybody where she was going until the very morning she left. Nobody wanted to interfere, Grace. But I guess,” he said, looking around the table, “that maybe we’ve let it go a little too long...”

  The fact was that Miriam reminded them all too much of Mary-Love. While none of them ever actually had said it aloud, the Caskeys, reunited after so many years of division and animosity, had not felt any great desire to have Miriam return to provoke old hostilities. Even Sister, who loved her most, had been glad that she had stayed away. However, not one of them, even for a single moment of the three months of her absence, ever worried that Miriam might not be well, or content with the lot she had chosen for herself.

  “Well,” said Grace, with her hands on her hips, “I have never seen or heard of the like. I want y’all to look at me.” Everybody did as they were told. “When I get up from this table, I am going to drive directly down to Mobile and the Sacred Heart College and see Miriam, and I am going to ask her to her own face how she is getting along. Has anybody even thought to ask her if she’s coming home for Christmas?”

  No one had.

  “Maybe...I should go with you,” said Sister tentatively.

  “Maybe you should,” said Grace firmly. She rose from the table.

  In five minutes, Grace and Sister were on their way to Mobile to see Miriam.

  . . .

  Sacred Heart College was a school run by Jesuits, located on the far western side of Mobile on about fifty acres of lawn, oak, azaleas, and cypress. Its buildings were of stodgy, scrubbed brick. The students themselves were stodgy and scrubbed—girls intensively devoted to the Roman Catholic religion, to their Jesuit teachers, and to one another. They lived three to a room in grim brick dormitories, whose chaste gray interiors were in dispiriting contrast to the intense and manicured vegetation that covered the college’s campus.

  Grace easily found the Administration Building and, from a nun in the registrar’s office, got the location of Miriam’s room. Grace and Sister were gently chided for the unannounced midweek visit, which wasn’t at all customary, and which would doubtless have a disruptive effect.

  “We couldn’t help it,” said Grace, uncowed. “You see, Miriam’s daddy’s sister died last night, and we have come to tell Miriam the bad news.”

  Alarmed and moved, the nun summoned a gardener to show Grace and Sister across the campus to Miriam’s dormitory.

  At the dormitory, the doleful news had already been received by the house mistress, and Grace and Sister were shown up to Miriam’s room directly.

  “I cain’t believe,” whispered Sister fretfully, “that we have just gone and lied to a bunch of nuns. Telling them that I am dead!”

  “Hush,” hissed Grace.

  The house mistress knocked on Miriam’s door, and then respectfully retreated.

  Grace didn’t wait for the knock to be answered. She opened the door, without being bidden.

  In the small gray room were three narrow beds, each covered with a gray blanket; three tiny desks were topped with small green blotters; three chests-of-drawers were stacked one atop the other; and there was a standing wardrobe with double doors. On one of the beds, beneath a window, lay Miriam, weeping convulsively against her pillow. The nun, Grace thought, must already have told her the bad news.

  She looked up incredulously and gaped at Sister and Grace in the doorway.

  “You poor darling!” cried Grace, holding open her arms wide.

  Miriam sat tentatively up on the bed, and then after only a moment’s hesitation, rushed across the room and took refuge in Grace’s embrace.

  “Honey,” cried Sister, “I’m not dead! Grace, you shouldn’t have told the nun that lie!”

  “What?” stammered Miriam.

  “Come hug me!” cried Sister, and took Miriam away from Grace. “They came and told you I was dead, didn’t they? That’s why you were crying, wasn’t it?”

  “No,” said Miriam, mystified and still sniffling.

  “Then why were you crying?” said Sister.

  Miriam drew back, and looked at Grace. “Because I’m always crying,” returned Miriam.

  “What!” said Sister. “You never cried before in your life, Miriam! Not even when you were little and Ivey Sapp dropped you on the crown of your head!”

  Miriam pulled away and retreated once more to her bed. She dried her eyes on her handkerchief. “Why are you here?” she asked.

  “We came to see if you were all right,” said Grace, hopping up onto one of the desks and crossing her legs beneath her. “But I can see that you’re not, are you?”

  “I hate it here!”

  “Why!” cried Sister. “Miriam, we didn’t have any idea! Why didn’t you just call me and tell me you were unhappy?”

  “’Cause you were so glad to get rid of me, that’s why!”

  “No, I wasn’t! I didn’t want you to leave me! I wanted to keep you with me forever and ever.”

  “Nobody else wanted me there in Perdido,” said Miriam.

  “Everybody misses you a lot,” said Sister reassuringly. “Frances talks about you all the time. She is pining away.”

  “You were homesick, weren’t you?” said Grace.

  Miriam glanced at Grace sharply, then nodded her head. “Yes, very homesick.”

  “Then why in the world,” said Sister, “didn’t you come home?”

  “Nobody asked me.”

  “Nobody had to ask you,” cried Sister in exasperation. “Darling, that house is yours, and we’re all your family. You could have come home every weekend, and we would always have been glad to see you. Ivey’s dying to cook for you again. Your room is always kept ready. In fact, nobody knows what to do without you.”

  “I hate this old place,” repeated Miriam, glancing distastefully about her room.

  “You don’t like your roommates?” said Grace.

  “I hate them, and they hate me.”

  “I bet they’re real sweet,” said Sister vaguely. “Hey, Miriam, why didn’t you come home for Thanksgiving? We had an empty chair.”

  “Nobody asked me.”
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  “Lord God!” cried Sister. “What were we supposed to do, send a herald and an engraved invitation? Miriam, we are your family. Don’t you know it?”

  At last Miriam’s eyes were dry. Now she was sullen.

  After a few moments of glancing first at Miriam and then at Sister, Grace said energetically, “Miriam, when does your Christmas vacation begin?”

  “Friday.”

  “All right then, Sister and I will be back then to get you. You are coming back to Perdido for the holidays—and not another word on the subject. If you have made other plans, then you break ’em, ’cause you’re not getting out of this.”

  “A girl in my history class had asked me to go home with her to New Orleans,” said Miriam hesitantly.

  “Don’t you do it,” said Grace sternly. “You’re coming home with us. Sister and I will be here on Friday.”

  “I don’t need you,” said Miriam. “I’ve got my car. I’ll be in Perdido by suppertime.”

  “Sister and I will come down anyway,” said Grace. “We’ve got some Christmas shopping to do down here, and we’ll drop by here to help you pack up.”

  To be thus taken in hand and ordered to come to Perdido seemed exactly what Miriam wanted. She ventured a smile, and said she was glad that Grace and Sister had come to see her. She offered to show them around the campus, and after that brief tour she introduced her relatives to her roommates. There was some awkwardness in maintaining the deception of a dead relative in the light of Miriam’s obviously improved temper. When questioned about this by one of the nuns, Grace explained boldly, “False alarm. It was just a stroke, and we hear that she’s much better now.”

  That evening, Grace and Miriam and Sister went out to dinner together at the Government House in downtown Mobile, and there Miriam shamefacedly admitted the harrowing extent of her homesickness. “I cried every night before I went to bed, and I cried every morning when I got up. I never thought I could miss old Perdido so much, and everybody there. I used to daydream about walking along the levee, and buying bobby pins down at the Ben Franklin.”

  “Honey, I wish you’d called or written and told us how miserable you were,” said Sister plaintively.