But, even in my heathen state, I had to say that Livvie had a point. Somebody should be thanked. Most importantly, I liked the idea of a female god.
“Yemalla, huh?” I said.
“That’s right. Yemalla,” she said with dignity.
Timmy got up again and went to her side. “All right, Mr. Crab, Livvie says I gotta do this. Sorry. I’m glad it’s your butt getting blistered instead of mine!”
Well, we couldn’t help snickering, even Livvie joined in. But I could see her thinking about what he had said about getting whipped. Harriet had probably told her about Daddy’s temper.
Timmy, pleased with his wit, saluted to Livvie, bowed to us and tossed another crab into the pot. “Sorry, buddy,” he said with great drama, waving farewell to him.
Livvie just shook her head. “You children go on do something quiet now! I’ll finish this up.”
I turned to Livvie and held her gaze for a long while. “I’m glad you’re here, Livvie,” I finally said. “Thanks for the sandwiches and everything.”
“Y’all are entirely welcome.” She smiled at me as she dried the last plate. “And thanks for all y’all’s help.”
“I call the hammock!” Timmy yelled as he ran for the porch. “Thanks, Livvie!”
“Come back ’eah!” Livvie ordered him.
Timmy turned around and ran back to the kitchen, where Maggie and I still stood with Livvie.
“What now?” Timmy whined.
“Listen to me good, all you children. Now, I know you been used to one thing and another before Livvie come ’eah. But now I’s ’eah and y’all needs to understand a few things.” She looked at the three of us, our belligerence shining, as we waited for her to continue. She held out her hand and began to count on her fingers.
“Number one, ain’t gone be no more slamming doors. You got old people around this house and they nearly jump outta they skin from all the noise. I ain’t gone have nobody dropping dead on my time. Number two, ain’t gonna be no more hollering and carrying on at the top of y’all’s lungs. Iffin y’all want to holler y’all’s heads off, go outside. Got a baby coming soon, and we don’t need no nonsense either. Now, I gots to ask y’all a question.”
“Sure, Livvie,” Maggie said.
“What?” I asked.
Timmy remained silent.
“Is there some reason I ain’t understanding why your momma has to make up y’all’s beds? Ain’t you children well enough to do this to help her?”
Timmy looked at me, who turned to Maggie for an answer.
“It’s just that Momma has always done it, Livvie. It’s not like we’re trying to take advantage of her,” Maggie explained in complete stupidity, as guilt dawned.
“I see. Well, I gone tell y’all something. When I get off that bus this morning I see a woman come to greet me. She about to drop a baby any second, with circles under her eyes and swollen ankles that could make me cry. She’s plumb wore out, I say to myself. That woman was your momma. I want you children make your beds in the morning from now on. And pick up y’all’s mess too. Can you do that for her?”
“Sure. No big deal,” Timmy replied, with some embarrassment.
“God, Livvie, where is Momma? We didn’t even see her since we’ve been home,” I asked.
“I reckon she’s still resting, and don’t use the Lawd’ s name like that. Who wants to help me fold towels and sheets? I got crabs to watch and chickens to fry. Your granddaddy ask me to fry him some chicken and I said I glad to do it.”
“Glad to help,” Maggie said quietly, her eyes glancing to me and then to Timmy.
We looked at each other and sighed. In the span of time it took the sun to travel from one side of the Island to the other, our Geechee singsong world had been transformed to one of order and expectation.
Without ceremony, Livvie presented Maggie and me with a dust cloth, a can of spray wax and a psychic message that to put clean laundry on a filthy table made no sense whatsoever. She never uttered a sound. She merely looked at us.
In a short time, the towers of towels covered the fresh glossy patina of the dining room table like a growing business district of skyscrapers. Maggie and I folded, folded and folded.
“God, this Livvie is gonna wear us out!” I whispered to my sister. “Got us working like dogs.”
“No kidding, but I never realized how dirty this house was until Livvie cleaned it, did you? Here, bring me the corners.” Maggie gathered up the contoured sheet, folded it three times and added it to the stack. “Who used all these towels?”
“Well, it ain’t Henry. He’s a little pig. Momma has to yank him into the shower by the hair once a week whether he needs it or not.”
“Too true. And we know for certain Grandmomma doesn’t use many towels,” Maggie whispered, sucking her teeth in disgust.
“Please.” I made my renowned gagging sound. “She smells like a locker room.”
“Susan! Shush!” Maggie gave a Hollywood sigh and me one of her famous exasperated looks.
“Sorry, your majesty,” I hissed, “but I’m entitled to an opinion, you know, and she does smell just like eau de Dumpster. Hey, do you think it’s possible Livvie is gonna get old Sophie straightened out?”
“If she does, that will be the miracle of the century.”
“If she gets Sophie’s ducks in a row this joint will become a religious shrine and we’ll be flooded with pilgrims coming to take the waters. I want the candle concession.” Quickly, I calculated how many candles I needed to sell at fifty cents apiece. “If I sell fifty candles a day for four hundred days, that’ll give me ten thousand. If I invest it at five percent for three years, I can take a Corvette to college, pay my tuition and take us all to Florida for a vacation!”
Maggie stopped and stared at me like I came from Mars. “How does your mind work? I mean, how do you come up with these wild images and ideas?”
“I dunno. Sometimes I think I’ve got a brain virus or something. A genetic victim of my ancestors.” I widened my eyes at Maggie and snickered.
“What?” Her face was as flat as a board.
“Oh, for God’s sake, Maggie, I just try to keep myself entertained. Otherwise life is too dreary to deal with.” I felt my neck getting hot. Nobody around here ever understood my sense of humor.
“Oh.” Maggie returned to the laundry. “Anyway, somebody around here is using way too many towels!”
“Yeah. We’ve already folded twenty-two bath towels, fourteen hand towels, eighteen facecloths and a ton of kitchen towels! It’s probably Daddy.”
“Yeah, and who’s gonna tell him what to do?”
We looked at each other at the thought of our father being put in his place. Arms filled, I followed Maggie to the linen closet.
“I like Livvie,” Maggie said as she shoved the laundry into the crowded shelf.
“Me too, a lot, but Timmy says we’re in boot camp with her. Hey, where did that little bum Timmy run off to? He should’ve been helping us!”
“Livvie made him take out all the garbage and return the bottles at the Red and White for deposit money. The last I saw of him, he was loading the wagon.”
“Timmy did all that? Jesus! What next?”
“Who knows? I’m going to paint my toenails in the seclusion of my room before she finds something else for us to do.”
Just then Livvie passed us with the basin, a bar of soap and towels.
“Gone give y’all’s grandmomma a sponge bath,” she said. “Y’all got any talcum powder in this house? Took me two hours to scrub her room today, but now it smells so good!”
“Under the sink in Momma’s bathroom,” I said.
Maggie and I looked at each other in complete amazement for at least the third time in a few hours. Then, Maggie climbed the steps to her room. I raced up the fourteen steps behind her to the second floor. I started thinking and grew no moss getting to Maggie’s room at the end of the hall. I kicked open the door and found Maggie lying across her bed flipping th
rough the latest edition of Hollywood Truth.
Maggie looked up in annoyance. “Didn’t you ever hear of knocking?”
“Oh, eat it, Maggie, there we were saying how wonderful Livvie is and the truth is, this is a potential disaster! This woman’s gonna turn us into her personal slaves! And, dearie, if you get caught with that piece of crap newspaper, Big Hank’s gonna cut your ass.”
“Daddy’s never touched me.”
“Lucky you.” My face became serious.
“So, what do you want, garbage mouth?”
“It’s her. Shoot, you’d think we’d never folded towels before. Did you hear the way she told me to fold them in thirds and then thirds again? I get enough algebra in school. I’m telling you, I’ve been thinking about it. Timmy was right. This is Parris Island.”
“Get over it, maybe she’s right. Every time you open the linen closet everything falls on the floor. That fold fits the shelf. And we are a bunch of slobs. As long as I don’t have to clean the toilet, I don’t mind pitching in a little.”
“Momma needs a maid and we get the Albert Einstein of towel folding. I’m going to hide in my room. I liked the crab funeral better. Felt like calling FTD.”
“You’re twisted, you know that? At least she can cook.”
“Yeah, well, maybe, but I still say we’re in big trouble.”
“She’s giving old Sophie a bath. I think it’s wonderful.”
“We’ll see. Though I don’t hear any screaming.”
I closed Maggie’s door and slipped into my own room across the hall, breathing a sigh of surrender to the upper hand of Livvie. I had to admit that what she had accomplished in a few hours was rather miraculous. It was funny to me that even Grandpa Tipa had been nice to her. All he’d done over the past three weeks was grunt while we built the bathroom. He was usually the one that caused these women to quit by calling them one of his stupid names he had for colored people. But she’d won him over too by agreeing to fry some chicken for him.
My eyes scanned my room, as I leaned back against my door. There wasn’t much about my room that was remarkable, except the privacy I had when I closed the door. Next to my bed stood an old end table of forgotten origin, its white paint chipped. There was a goosenecked lamp that I would bend to shed light on my lap as I did my homework, read books or wrote in my journals. My mahogany single bed nearly filled the room. It had four posters, each with carved shafts of wheat tied in bundles, and had provided rest to some long dead relative. Tattered stuffed animals, my old best friends, sat on the only treasure I had ever had, a handmade quilt that had belonged to my father’s mother.
I kept a diary, not just one diary, but a whole collection of black-and-white speckled composition notebooks. Writing took me away. When I wrote I could say what I thought. If I said what I thought out loud, Daddy would’ve killed me a thousand times.
Lying on my stomach across the quilt, I reached under the bed for the wicker hamper that held them all together. I examined the security knots in the bows to make sure the prying eyes of my siblings hadn’t invaded my privacy. They had not and I sighed, thinking that if they ever did read them, they’d be candidates for dentures, if I let them live at all.
The ribbons that held them together had been a gift and I had saved them all these years. They reminded me of a time when I was truly a little girl, just barely seven. MC’s baby girl. The only memory I had of feeling like anyone’s baby. My favorite memory of motherly attention and love.
I had been playing paper dolls on the front porch when Momma opened the screen door and found me there. I guess she thought I was looking lonely. She didn’t look too happy either.
“Susan? Do you want to walk down the street with me?”
“Sure! Where’re you going?”
“Miss Fanny’s. Maybe we’ll go get us a Coke. Put your shoes on.”
Miss Fanny, one of the Island’s spinsters, kept a small variety store for the convenience of her friends. Her tiny inventory included milk, bread, cold drinks, penny candy, comic books, thread, ribbon and some inexpensive bolted fabrics sold by the yard.
Fanny McGuire was the nine-to-five source of the latest news. She had the biggest ears and the longest tongue on the Island. But to her credit, she was truly as good as gold. When anyone got sick, she brought them canned chicken soup and saltines. She loved children, and their progress never missed her recognition. I loved to go there, as did most of the Island children, when our pockets allowed us a sugar splurge.
Momma and I held hands as we meandered down Middle Street toward our destination. I wanted to seem grown up and decided to ask her a few questions.
“So, Momma, how are you doing?”
“Oh, all right, I suppose. Why?”
“Well, I heard you and Daddy fighting last night. Did he hit you?”
“What are you talking about, Susan? Daddy and I don’t fight! And he’d never hit me!”
“Oh. Maybe I was dreaming.”
“Yes, you must’ve been.”
I knew she was lying to me and so did she. We walked quietly for a few minutes and then we stopped.
“It’s okay if you don’t want to talk to me about it, Momma. I understand.”
Momma knelt down and put my face in her hands.
“My word, honey, I never realized you knew anything about this. Don’t you worry yourself about it. Everything’s all right. Sometimes grown-ups argue, but that doesn’t mean they don’t love each other. How did you get so grown up?”
She kissed me on both cheeks and pulled me into a motherly embrace that I’ve never forgotten.
I was always thinking about everything. My parents’ relationship was rocky. I knew that in spite of her reassurances. The day after they’d fight, Momma would spend the morning crying. I tried to stay with my brothers and Maggie. I wasn’t afraid of my mother, only my mother’s sorrow.
We entered the tiny portal and Miss Fanny looked up from her ledger to greet us.
“Marie Catherine Hamilton! How’re you doing? And Miss Susan? You’re growing so big and pretty!”
Miss Fanny slid open the cooler and reached down for two Coca-Colas, popping off their caps on the opener permanently fixed to the cooler’s side. They clinked to the bottom of the receptacle and Fanny smiled as she handed us our drinks. I could see all her fillings.
The very fact that Miss Fanny thought I was pretty was a thrill. After all, I was Maggie’s sister, and Maggie was homecoming beautiful. Maggie and Henry had blond hair, thick and shining; Timmy and I had brown hair with the revolting curse of natural kinks and curls in all the wrong places.
“So, Mrs. Hamilton! Tell me everything!” said Miss Fanny. “What’s happening at your house?”
Miss Fanny and Momma launched into a fevered hen session, leaving me to wander the shelves and racks. My fingers found their way to the spools of ribbons that hung on nails behind the counter. I knew I was unworthy of the embroidered flowers of the yellow and gold ribbon.
“So, here comes Marilyn Ames right into Stella Maris Church with her hair dyed, God knows, some kind of horrible color pink and old Mrs. Dorsey is in the back pew with her ancient sister, Ida, both of them without their hearing aids on.”
“Oh, no! Don’t tell me!”
“Oh, yes! Old Mrs. Dorsey leans over to Ida and says at the top of her lungs, ‘Do, Jesus! I didn’t know hair came in that color!’ Well, the whole church started to snicker and Miss Fancy Pants Ames got her comeuppance!”
“Oh! I wish I’d been there!”
“I laughed so hard I thought they were going to have to take me to St. Francis.”
I drained my Coke and crawled further behind the tall counter that housed the row upon row of boxes of Mary Janes, Squirrel Nuts, Sugar Daddies and so on, happily smelling all the sugar. Smelling it was almost satisfaction enough, as my family seldom had money to spend on nonnecessities. My mouth watered.
Unknown to me, all the while Miss Fanny’d had me in the corner of her hawklike shopkeeper ey
e.
“You like the ribbons, don’t ya, honey?”
“Yes’m,” I replied, embarrassed.
“Well, now, let’s just cut you some.”
Miss Fanny reached for her long, black-handled shears and removed four spools, placing them on the counter next to the nailed-in-place yardstick. I held my breath as she measured out a length of the red and navy plaid ribbon shot with gold.
“You can wear this one to school,” she said to me, then turned her attention back to Momma. “Hey, are you and Hank coming to the oyster roast?”
“Gosh, it’s next weekend, isn’t it? I have to ask Hank.”
“You gotta ask him if you can walk ten blocks and eat oysters with all your friends?”
“You know how he is, Fanny.”
“Y’all come on down and bring the children. Do y’all some good!”
I watched Miss Fanny cut the green and yellow flowered ribbon, the blue watermarked satin and finally the white velvet. Miss Fanny rolled them around her rough hands, shaking her head and sucking her teeth over my daddy and his horrible ways. She dropped the ribbons in a small brown paper sack, adding a Hershey’s bar and a Sugar Daddy at the last moment. She leaned over the counter and handed it to me with a wink and a warning.
“Here, this is for you from your Aunt Fanny. Now, don’t you be running around telling all your little friends what I gave you. I don’t need all them Geechee brats coming round ’eah looking for something for nothing, you ’eah me, girl?”
“Yes’m.” I took the bag in disbelief.
Momma, who had been immersed in the social possibilities of the oyster roast, realized what had just transpired and high-dived into action.
“My word, Fanny! That’s so nice of you! What do you say, Susan?”
“Thanks, Aunt Fanny, really!”
I UNROLLED THE frayed blue ribbon and flattened it out with my hands against the journal. That had been a sweet day, my mother’s arm around my shoulder, Miss Fanny’s generosity.
I didn’t know what was the matter with me, why I couldn’t be like Maggie, Timmy and the other people on the Island. Except that they all craved sameness, and I craved adventure. That was the big difference. Maggie wanted to go to Palmer College and become a secretary. She’d get married to some good old boy and drink beer every Saturday night for the rest of her life. My brothers would probably go to the Citadel and wind up teaching school or working at the Navy Yard, married to some nice girls with frosted hair.