Losing Battles

  From under the skirts of the tablecloth Lady May came crawling out on hands and knees. Somewhere down there she had found a bone. She gave her mother a shout, as though she’d beat her to it. The bone had a live jacket of tiny ants.

  “Like mother, like daughter! Isn’t that the old-timey rule? See there?” Aunt Birdie sang in a charmed voice.

  Gloria opened her mouth but stood speechless.

  “Go back, Red Roses,” Aunt Beck warned Lady May.

  “Come here, Britches!” cried Aunt Nanny, and with a red arm she swept the child up. “Yes, you was a pretty good little secret yourself, wasn’t you?” she asked her.

  “And don’t you wish she was yours?” The other aunts stood up around Lady May, opening their arms. “Come be mine!” “Come be mine!” They took her bone.

  “Gloria, we didn’t come here to cry,” Aunt Beck said. “If we’d wanted to do that, we could’ve just stayed home, couldn’t we, everybody?”

  “There’s two now,” said Aunt Nanny, as Lady May, from there in her lap, joined her mother in tears.

  “There, let her go. I’ll tell you who it is she likes, it’s the men,” said Aunt Birdie. “She’ll grow up to be a heartbreaker too, just watch.”

  Lady May, down on her feet, ran past the uncles too, all sweeping their arms out to catch her, and saddled herself on Judge Moody’s foot in its city shoe. At once it stopped swinging, though she belabored his silk-clad ankle with her little hand.

  Miss Beulah had been raising her voice at the aunts. “Birdie Beecham, and every one of you, now I want you to know something: I taught my boys to do the right thing, do you hear me? Jack Ren-fro never gave Banner community the first cause for complaint! He’d treat a girl strictly the way he’s been everlastingly told! And if something’s wrong, she’s to blame.”

  “I always told myself the same thing you do, Beulah,” said Aunt Beck soothingly. “About my nine boys.”

  “Hey! You mean to tell me Gloria here jumped the gun?” exclaimed Aunt Cleo.

  Gloria stood straight and defied them, the same as when she had had to tell them her birthday was April Fool’s Day.

  Aunt Nanny made a reach at Gloria and gave her a spank. “Stand up there, Gloria! In your skirt there, where the sash is trying to hide it—you got a rip. Been in the briar patch with it?”

  “Gloria, peep behind you. Did you know you look like you just met up with a biting dog?” asked Aunt Birdie.

  “Is that the only Sunday dress you got?” Aunt Cleo asked.

  “My wedding dress!” said Gloria.

  “Homemade?” asked Aunt Cleo.

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “Bet you made it on yourself, with nobody to tell you how,” Aunt Cleo said.

  “Thank you. I did.”

  “But I’ll tell you one thing about it: it don’t fit you very perfect,” said Aunt Cleo. “You work with a pattern?”

  “I remember seeing you wear it on your wedding day,” said Aunt Beck. “And you simply looked like all the brides that ever were.”

  “I believe it’s that sash that makes it so old-timey-looking,” Mrs. Moody now joined in.

  “Yes’m, brought-in like that with a sash a mile high, she looks suffocated,” said Auntie Fay.

  “But so many brides have the tendency,” said Aunt Beck.

  “She’s wearing it as tight as Dick’s hatband now,” said Aunt Nanny, as she tested the sash.

  “Pull it,” said those around her.

  Aunt Nanny drove her finger through the knot and the sash slipped, fell with the heaviness of an arm down the skirt to Gloria’s feet.

  “Lands! Will you look at the wealth of material she allowed herself in that skirt!” exclaimed Aunt Birdie. “Had to rope yourself in to be sure you was there, Gloria.”

  “Now wait a minute. I never noticed anything wrong with the dress” said Miss Beulah. “It just looks like a good many widths of material went into it. Takes an hour to iron it, but suppose you just call it a little roomy—that’s better than one that’ll pinch you after a while.”

  “I believe that sash by itself must’ve weighed a ton,” said Aunt Nanny.

  “It did,” said Gloria, looking down where it made a gleam like water around her. “It’s slipper satin.” She gathered it up carefully and Aunt Nanny took it away from her.

  “Holy Moses! Where’d a schoolteacher get hold of slipper satin!”

  “She sacrificed,” Aunt Beck said, as if that should be enough.

  Aunt Birdie went on. “Yes, and look at that little vein of pink running along the edge of it there. That sash has been light-struck.”

  “It might be an old piece of goods,” said Aunt Nanny.

  “It is not!” Gloria cried. “No ma’am, I bought it new and paid for it. Nothing I have on is second-hand!” All the while, more of the aunts were coming to pat the dress at Gloria’s shoulders and waist and here and there, as if trying to find her in it.

  “It’s swallowed her whole,” said Aunt Nanny. “It’s waiting on her to grow some.”

  “I don’t see how she could have tracked around all day in a dress that’s ten miles too big for her, and expected only compliments,” said Aunt Cleo. She picked up the edge of the hem. “It don’t even look very snowy to me.”

  “It was brand-new material! I’d spent my whole life wearing second-hand!” said Gloria. “And wishing for new! And I made me this.”

  “Gloria just considers she’s made to look the bride regardless,” teased Aunt Nanny. “Getting a head-start with those curls.”

  “Let her have it her way. But it’s still a mighty good country saying—like mother, like daughter. She’s Rachel’s child, and yonder rides somebody to prove it,” Aunt Birdie said, starting to giggle at Judge Moody with the baby on his foot.

  “Who said it needs proving! I know she’s Rachel’s child!” insisted Miss Beulah. “All I needed to do was stop and look straight at her. But if Rachel’s your mother, it’s picking out your father that’s going to be the uphill work,” she told Gloria.

  Gloria opened her mouth as if on the verge of shrieking.

  “Rachel took to going Sunday-riding with call-him-a-Methodist,” said Aunt Nanny, eyes glinting.

  “Are you putting the blame for the father on the Methodist?” asked Aunt Cleo.

  “Well, you know how Baptists stick together,” said Aunt Beck. “They like to look far afield to find any sort of transgressor.”

  “Let’s not go any further with it,” said Miss Beulah urgently. “Let’s stop before we get started. Let’s perish the whole idea.”

  Gloria put one hand and then the other hand too on her mouth.

  Granny’s voice spoke. “Sam Dale Beecham. Sam Dale Beecham was going to marry fox-headed Rachel.”

  There was uproar at the table. Gloria’s shriek came out and ran through the middle of it.

  “Granny, you’ve got Sam Dale on the brain! Do you know what you’re saying?” Miss Beulah cried out, running back to the old lady’s chair.

  Granny glared at the company. The rheumy blue eyes looked lit up as with fever.

  “No, Granny dear. Sam Dale wouldn’t have got a girl in trouble, and then gone off and left her,” said Uncle Noah Webster. He put the banjo down, out of sight.

  “Oh, if only he might have!” cried Miss Beulah in great agitation.

  “No, Sam Dale was too good. Too plain good,” Uncle Curtis stated. “Granny, all we boys know that.”

  “I don’t think he had a single mean trick in him,” said Uncle Noah Webster, shaking his head soberly. “Or even a mean thought about a one of us. Or about a soul in Banner, or the wide world if you want to carry it that far.”

  “Oh, I won’t be a Beecham!” cried Gloria.

  Granny was looking at the still silent Uncle Nathan. “Go get the Vaughn Bible, from under my lamp,” she told him, her lifted forefinger pointing straight up.

  But Elvie, too quick for Uncle Nathan, ran and came staggering back with it, carrying it between her legs
, barely able to keep it off the ground. She just made it to Granny’s lap. She knelt in front of Granny’s knees, facing out, and bent her little back forward to help hold up the weight.

  Granny fished in her pocket and brought up a pair of spectacles, fished again and brought up a blackened and silky dollar bill which she polished them with. With the spectacles on her nose, she raised the Bible’s cover and turned to the first page.

  She dwelt for a moment over the angel-decorated roster of births and deaths set down in various hands, then lifted and wet her finger and began turning systematically through her Bible—not as though she needed to hunt for what she wanted but as though she were coming to it in her own way. Those nearest her saw the lock, of Ellen’s hair when it went by in Chronicles, pale as silk. Deep in the crease of First Thessalonians lay Grandpa’s spectacles. Granny poked them free and put them on top of hers. Here came the ribbon that had held Ellen’s ring, like a pressed flower stem without its flower. Then she turned one more page and drew out what looked like a brownish postcard. It had lain in its place so long that it had printed the page brown too, with a pattern like moiré.

  “Let ’em hear that and see how they like it,” she told Uncle Nathan.

  But Miss Beulah flew between them and seized it herself and brought it to her eyes, picture side up. “It’s Sam Dale! It’s Sam Dale Beecham in his soldier suit!” she cried. “I never saw him dressed in it except when we buried him.”

  “The message is spelled out on the other side,” Uncle Curtis told her, but she could not take her eyes from the picture. They waited until at last she turned the card over and cried out again. “ ‘Dear Rachel’!” Her voice suddenly lost all its authority as she began to read aloud from the written words. In monotone, halting herself every few words, she read, “ ‘Dear Rachel. Here I am in—front of the—mess tent. Excuse me for—just wearing my’—something—‘blouse but it is so hot in’—something—‘in Georgia. Here is a—present for our—baby save it for when he gets here. Bought it with today’s—pay and’—something—‘trust it keeps good time. I miss one and all and wish I was in Banner.’ Something—‘Sincerely your husband Sam Dale Beecham.’ ”

  Gloria cried out but didn’t move. Miss Beulah bent and peered into her grandmother’s face. “Sam Dale put the words on that but he never sent it. Did he?”

  “It was bundled with his things. This and the watch. I got ’em when I got back Sam Dale,” said Granny. “It’s a likeness. I can peep at it, before I get my prayers said.”

  “Well, now, ain’t that pitiful,” Miss Beulah was murmuring. Then she cried in a loud voice of release and joy, “Ain’t that pitiful! Oh, all these years!” She turned the card first to the faded handwriting, then to the picture, turned it back and forth faster and faster, as if trying through her tears to make the two sides one, bind them. “You held it in, kept it hid. Granny, what have you been saving this for?”

  “Till I was a hundred years old and had my grandchildren and great-grandchildren all around me, all with ears pretty well cocked to hear it,” Granny replied. She frisked the postcard out of Miss Beulah’s fingers, returned it to her Bible, and shut up the Bible. Elvie sprang up and went hauling off with it.

  “Fan me, Granny,” Miss Beulah said, kneeling at the old lady’s chair. “Oh, cool my forehead a little.” She hugged Granny’s knees and laid her cheek down on the ancient, unstirring lap. “Sam Dale got to be a father after all.”

  “He was not my father!” Gloria cried out.

  “But he wasn’t too good to be, he tells you right on the card he wasn’t,” said Aunt Birdie. “He must have had a reason mighty like you to want to marry little-old Rachel Sojourner.”

  “Oh, I believe he had, I believe he knew what he was saying!” Miss Beulah cried, as Granny laid on the crown of her head a dispassionate look.

  “I hope Beulah ain’t happy too soon,” said Aunt Birdie.

  “Beulah’s got more fortitude than some,” said Aunt Beck gently. “Yet, if the right story comes along at the right time, she’ll be like the rest of us and believe what she wants to believe.”

  “I wish I’d known, I wish I’d been allowed to know,” Miss Beulah said. “Then, when I could see the handwriting on the wall, I could have smiled to myself over this child and my boy Jack. Well, I’d have thought, even this may turn out all right in the end, with Beecham blood on both sides.” She suddenly climbed to her feet and threw open her arms to Gloria, who burst into tears.

  “Rachel’s the one you take after,” Miss Beulah said, lifting the girl’s convulsed, streaming face in her hand. “There’s very little Beecham in your gaze. I don’t see the first glimmer of Sam Dale. Yes, your face is Rachel’s entirely, and with all the wild notions in it. Makes me remember how she used to vow she was going clear to Ludlow some day, and live in style.’

  “And the mane,” said Granny.

  “But never mind, Granny—she’s here. Gloria’s here, and she’s proof, living proof! I didn’t do hurt to my own, after all. I can die happy! Can’t I?” Miss Beulah’s voice rose exultant. Gloria wept. And Judge Moody, whose head with its long forehead, long nose, long upper lip and chin, and long, close-set ears had been tilted back as if out of reluctance to listen, made a melancholy sound in his throat. The cheers were coming from everybody else, drowning out all three.

  “Well, Gloria! We told you, didn’t we? We told you who you are. Ain’t you going to say thank you?” asked Aunt Birdie with excitement, staggering up from her chair.

  “I never heard Gloria say thank you for anything yet,” said Miss Beulah. “But that won’t stop me from hugging her now.”

  “You didn’t need to find out for yourself, Gloria. You didn’t need Miss Julia’s helping hand. You had us,” said Aunt Birdie. “I don’t consider we had to go to too much trouble, to figure you out. Here’s a kiss for you.”

  “Pull me up!” said Aunt Nanny, then came toward Gloria, walling up like a catalpa tree in full bloom. “Welcome into the family!”

  The uncles were all rising too, laughing and pressing in, all but Uncle Nathan.

  “I don’t want to be a Beecham!” Gloria cried. “Now it’s ten times worse! I won’t be a Beecham—go back! Please don’t squeeze me!”

  Over their heads, the chimney swifts circled as if a crooking finger below held them on tight strings. As though in some evening accord with the birds, the aunts came circling in to Gloria, crowding Miss Beulah to one side—all the aunts and some of the girl cousins. They had Gloria out in the clear space in the middle of the yard, moving her along with them.

  “London Bridge is falling down” some voice sang, and a trap of arms came down over Gloria’s head and brought her to the ground. Behind her came a crack like a firecracker—they had split open a melon.

  She struggled wildly at first as she tried to push away the red hulk shoved down into her face, as big as a man’s clayed shoe, swarming with seeds, warm with rain-thin juice.

  They were all laughing. “Say Beecham!” they ordered her, close to her ear. They rolled her by the shoulders, pinned her flat, then buried her face under the flesh of the melon with its blood heat, its smell of evening flowers. Ribbons of juice crawled on her neck and circled it, as hands robbed of sex spread her jaws open.

  “Can’t you say Beecham? What’s wrong with being Beecham?”

  Lady May, as if catapulted into their midst, arrived and stood rooted, her mouth wide open and soundless, the way she’d watched Brother Bethune go bang with the gun. The next minute Miss Beulah snatched her up and carried her off.

  “Jack!” called out Gloria. But they were ramming the sweet, breaking chunks inside her mouth. “Jack! Jack!”

  “He went to take Aycock some bread and water.” That was Aunt Beck’s voice—one voice the same as ever, trying to bring comfort.

  “Say Beecham!” screamed Aunt Nanny.

  “Don’t you like watermelon?” screamed Aunt Cleo. “Swallow, then! Swallow!”

  “I declare,” murmur
ed the voice of Mrs. Moody to the side, “I haven’t seen something like this in years and years.”

  “Say Beecham and we’ll stop. Let’s hear you say who’s a Beecham!”

  “Fox in the morning!” called some little girls playing in the distance. “Geese in the evening!” Up in the tree, Elvie passed to and fro in her swing and gave the scene below the deadly eye of a trapeze artist whose turn would come next. The chimney swifts ticked in the deepening sky overhead, going round and round, tilting, like taut little bows drawn with arrows ready. In her chair, Granny sat with the face of a cornshuck doll, a face so old and accomplished that it might allow her to sleep with her eyes open.

  “Come on, sisters, help feed her! Let’s cram it down her little red lane! Let’s make her say Beecham! We did!” came the women’s voices.

  “What you so proud about?” Aunt Nanny held high a hunk of melon as generous as a helping at the table. They were crying with laughter now. “Say who’s a Beecham! Then swallow it!”

  Gloria tried to call Jack once more.

  Somebody shouted, “Wash it down her crook!”

  Elvie in her swing said, “If she swallows them seeds, she’ll only grow another Tom Watson melon inside her stomach.”

  A melony hand forced warm, seed-filled hunks into Gloria’s sagging mouth. “Why, you’re just in the bosom of your own family,” somebody’s voice cried softly as if in condolence. Melon and fingers together went into her mouth. “Just swallow,” said the voice. “Everybody’s got something they could cry about.”

  “I think she’s lost her breath now. She’s just letting us sit on her,” said a voice that sighed.

  “Sometimes women is too deep for me. But I reckon it’s only for the good reason that I never had any sisters,” pronounced Miss Beulah from the porch, in the voice of lofty argument she used with Lady May.

  The aunts were helping each other to their feet. Gloria lay flat, an arm across her face now, its unfreckled side exposed and as pale as the underpelt of a rabbit. The swifts were gone out of the sky, perhaps all down their chimney.