“This is just…you are amazing,” I said, with a definite gasp.
“Fuh true!” She winked at me. “We ain’t got one minute to waste. Remember how long this used to take us? Lawsa! We woulda been chopping nuts for two months!”
She pointed to a third bowl and it was quickly filled with all the ingredients for rum balls. She covered them all with dish towels, tied the towels around the rim of the bowls with string, and placed them in the refrigerator.
This time I put my hand to my chest to be sure my heart was still functioning. Surprisingly, it was. Why had I expected anything less? I was actually becoming accustomed to Pearl’s paranormal display and, I’d admit, I was thoroughly amused. Although still extremely curious. It was just like watching a magician pull rabbits from a hat or make people disappear—it didn’t seem possible! Face it, Theodora, I told myself, everything normal had been left at the door when Pearl walked in!
“May I ask how, just how, you did that?”
Pearl looked up to the ceiling, folded her hands, and smiled in total innocence. “With a little help from my angelic friends.”
“Hmm. It’s reassuring to know there are angelic friends to be had.” Pearl squinted at me like she was using X-ray vision to see if I had pagan blood flowing in my veins to even question such a thing. I cleared my throat and continued: “No, no! I believe! I believe!”
“Hmmph! You had better!”
“Hmmph, yourself! By the way, nowadays we have a plastic wrap that can seal bowls tightly. It’s in the drawer over there.”
Pearl opened the drawer and saw boxes of plastic bags in three sizes, a box of plastic wrap, and another of aluminum foil.
“Well, would you looky ’eah?” She pulled a long sheet of plastic wrap, tried to sever it on the serrated edge of the box, and of course it stuck to itself and became entangled into a plastic wad. “Hmmph. Waste of good money iffin you ask me!”
“Oh! My dear friend, there are so many things that are a waste of time and money in today’s world, it would make your head spin.”
“I reckon that’s fuh true, too!”
“You can’t believe how people live! Start with that blasted huge television back there in the family room! It’s high-def, whatever that is! The drone of it is absolutely stupefying. When the adults aren’t staring at some violence beyond description on the thing, the young people are playing video games, which are like a narcotic designed to make you into an idiot, if you ask me…”
I went on and on with my personal diatribe against the modern world and how it all but shunned board games, jigsaw puzzles, and other old-fashioned pastimes. These things brought families together in favor of all the solitary pursuits that didn’t enrich anyone’s life by one iota, and worse, these mindless, worthless activities kept families apart. Pearl agreed with me about it all.
Except she said, “I guess you have to wonder who allows all this foolishness to go on?”
“You’re right,” I said. “Barbara and Cleland should’ve put their foot down.”
“Iffin they ain’t gwine do it, who then?”
“Me?”
“Hmmph. It ain’t fuh me to be the judge.”
We talked for a long time as we drank cup after cup of tea, each of Pearl’s of course laced with a tiny shot of blackberry brandy. Although we were in the kitchen, we seemed to have been barricaded in our own space and time so that we could talk uninterrupted about all the heavy stones I carried.
“They don’t even like to read!”
“What? Lawsamercy! Now, whose fault is that? That is a sin fuh sure!”
“You’re right.” I sighed hard. “I see it now. You’re absolutely right. I should have read to Barbara more when she was little.”
She stared at me with a crooked knowing smile. She had me nailed to the wall again. But Barbara had become apathetic and simply shirked her responsibilities. No! That wasn’t right. Barbara floundered because of my failure to give her a clear and concise direction. I had never adjusted to life without Fred, and in some ways was just sitting around waiting to die. I felt terrible that I had been so self-absorbed.
She patted the back of my hand and sniffed the air. “Don’t fret so. That’s why I’m ’eah, and guess what? That ham’s done!”
I felt my spirits rise a little, but oh, my soul was still deeply troubled.
Pearl lifted the fruited and glazed ham from the oven and placed it on the counter. I cannot tell you how divine it looked. There was nothing else in the world that mattered except that ham! It could have been on the cover of a magazine! I could barely muster the discipline to restrain myself from slicing a little piece off its bone right that second.
The red rice was steaming away, and the combined fragrance of bacon, onions, and tomatoes was fueling the flames of an appetite I had not known in decades. What was happening? The collards smelled—well, they smelled like collards smell. Rank. Pearl knew what to do. She threw a long dash of vinegar in the water to squelch the stench. I would be tortured by famine until lunch was on the table.
She raised the oven temperature, dusted the marble slab with flour, and I knew she was going to make biscuits. The halfhearted but very necessary renovation of the kitchen three years ago had included recycling my mother’s pastry slab into the countertop, and from the moment the new kitchen was unveiled, it had remained unused. Good as Eliza was, her biscuits came from a tube in the dairy section of the grocery store. My family seldom ate carbohydrates. The slab would be ceremoniously rechristened by the hands of Pearl.
“There are some things I think I’d like to do myself,” she said. “Feels good to have my hands in the dough.”
Using her fingers, she crumbled the cold butter into the flour with a dash of salt, and when it looked like gravel, she made a well and poured in cream. As though she was preparing clay for a sculpture, she worked it all together, flopping it over and kneading it several times.
“Why don’t I set the table,” I said. I’ll admit I was thinking more about the rumble in my stomach than the desire to be helpful. “You make the manna.”
Pearl giggled, arched one eyebrow, snapped her fingers over her head (a little bit of dough flew in space and disappeared), and she said, “Done! Table’s set! You sit and talk to me! Carrying dishes ain’t the best use of your time. So, tell your Pearl everything else what’s on your mind, Ms. Theodora.”
I sighed, loving her more than ever. How long had it been since anyone really cared what I thought about, worried about, or desired? On occasion, Eliza and Barbara did.
“Well, you have seen for yourself, haven’t you? I am heartsick about my family. First, there’s Barbara and Cleland. I don’t know what really goes on between them, but they surely don’t seem happy. Barbara is as sweet as pie, but maybe the problem is that she doesn’t take command. A stronger stance. With all of them. The mother has to be the mother to the whole family, not stand by while they all ride roughshod over each other. Don’t you think?”
“Yes, I do. Haven’t you told her that?”
“Well, not exactly, but I have surely indicated it! Gosh, Barbara seems so afraid that, I don’t know…who knows? Maybe she thinks Cleland might run off and leave her or something…”
“No man evah done leave a good woman when he gots a reason to stay. She gots to give him reasons to stay, ’eah?”
“You’re right, of course. You know me. I always think he married her for her money.”
“Hmmph. Maybe true, maybe not. He’s still here, though, and that don’t mean she cain’t be spinning a spell to show him why he should love her, does it?”
“His career at the bank never amounted to much…”
“Well, you know men. They judge they own success by they family, they money, and how they friends see them as manly. Iffin he ain’t earning what he thinks he should and his wife be a little dormouse, then how’s he supposed to look in the mirror and think much of what he see?”
“No. That’s right. He can’t.” I took another s
ip of my tea and watched Pearl’s hands as she shaped the biscuits into perfect mounds. She was a marvel! “He’s just so sarcastic with her. It’s so disrespectful, especially when it’s in front of me.”
“He’s only like that because she lets him get away with it. You know, you could tell him to hush his mouth, too.”
“I’m not getting in the middle of my daughter’s marriage. She’s so depressed I don’t even think she knows she’s depressed.”
“So are you!”
“By golly, Pearl, you’re right! I’m depressed and so is she! And you’re right again! She allows him to behave the way he does! I’m going to speak to her before this day is out.”
“So that’s one thing. Now, what else we got to do?”
“There’s George and Lynette and that—heaven help me…”
“That’s why I’m ’eah!”
“Right! I mean, forgive me for the thoughts I have about that child of theirs. Now, George is a handsome devil…”
“Yes’m, he looks like Cary Grant!”
“He does but he’s terrible. He’s competitive with everyone, and he’s judgmental…”
“His Lynette needs to be growing some backbone…”
“Absolutely! Then there’s Camille and Grayson and their precious Andrew…”
I told Pearl all about how they treated one another, but of course she already knew every detail of the whole saga anyway. I guessed she just wanted to hear it from me. Still, she sighed and shook her head.
“Ain’t right. But don’t you worry.”
She ladled the rice and collards into two covered dishes, sliced the ham, placed it on a meat platter, put the fruitcake in a bain-marie and into the oven on low heat. The biscuits were almost too hot to handle. Still, she wrapped them in a linen cloth and put them in a beautiful sweetgrass basket.
The crushing urge to taste one overwhelmed me and I said, “May I?”
“Of course! ’Eah!”
“Thank you!” I couldn’t get it into my mouth fast enough! Where did my appetite come from? I was as hungry as a teenage boy! “Oh, Pearl!”
“Light as a feather from a cherub’s wing, huh?” She looked up to the ceiling with her hands folded in prayer; a little feather fell from the thin air and I giggled like a schoolgirl.
“Hmmph,” she said, “this situation ain’t funny!” Despite the truth of her observation, she giggled, too. “Now, that cake gwine take two to three hours,” she said, and changed into a fresh apron.
“Do you want me to call them to the table?”
“No’m.”
“Pearl? You don’t have to say no’m or yes’m or ma’am to me. No one does that anymore, either.”
“Ms. Theodora? You can keep your plastic wrap, your television, and your microwave oven and I’ll just keep my manners, ’eah? Besides, in the ’eah and now, I’m fabulous and forty-seven and you be my elder. By a lot! ’Eah?”
We laughed so hard at that! I couldn’t remember the last time I had laughed such a robust laugh!
She slapped her warm hand on top of my cold one and said, “I’m going to call Ms. Barbara to tell the others to get their fannies to the table but quick!”
Oh, my word! Pearl was so mind-boggling, and even though it was logically and physically impossible that she was there with me, with us, she was. I wondered again how she would bring about the transformation we all needed and then I remembered what she had said about getting here in the first place…Maybe dinner would help things along.
I reminded myself to have faith.
There was a lot to be said about Pearl’s cooking. First of all, it had greatly improved since she died. This became evident once we were all seated in our accustomed places and an off-the-cuff, disingenuous, slap-hazard, perfunctory, record-breaking blessing for our food had been offered by Cleland. Usually as rambunctious as a bunch of pirates, the dining-room table was as silent as could be as everyone devoured—I mean devoured like a pack of wild starving wolves—what Pearl had prepared.
Unfortunately, as soon as lunch was over, the spell was broken. Pearl came into the dining room to clear the plates.
“What’s that smell, Jewel?” George said, leaning back in his chair.
“Pearl,” Pearl said sweetly. “Fruitcake.”
“You’re going to break the legs of that chair, son,” Barbara said, and as you might expect, she was ignored.
“Fruitcake! Oh no! I hate fruitcake!” Cleland said with a juvenile scowl, opening the door for further dissent to fly right in on the wind.
“I thought Eliza said your name was Jewel,” Barbara said.
“I reckon Eliza got her gems confused,” Pearl said.
“Fruitcake’s nasty,” George said.
“You don’t have to eat it, then, George,” I said. “But we’ll see what we see when it’s all done.” My money, the smart money, was on Pearl.
“By and by, you gwine come to love my fruitcake,” Pearl said, smiling at George and Cleland. “Then you gwine miss it when it’s gone, ’eah?”
Little Teddie exchanged looks of horror and disgust with her father, George, and threw in more than a few escalating gagging sounds for emphasis.
Lynette held her fingers up to her lips and said in nearly a whisper, “Shush now. That’s not nice.”
“Oh, sorry! Like you come from a family of aristocrats? Leave her alone,” George said, and snarled, looking to Camille for support. “Hicks.” Even Camille, with that acid-dripping viper’s tongue of hers, knew better, and she looked away.
What was the matter with him? Insulting Lynette in front of everyone? On Christmas Eve? George had gone too far.
It seemed that no one was terribly bothered by George’s rudeness except me and you know who. Pearl, still moving about in the room but disbelieving her ears, stopped dead in her tracks. I looked at Barbara and waited for her to say something. She cleared her throat.
“That wasn’t very nice, George,” Barbara said.
Her words held all the power of someone trying to kill a grizzly bear with a broom straw. She didn’t even ruffle one of George’s feathers.
I stood up. “It was inexcusably rude. Apologize at once.”
George gave me an icy dismissive glare and then he cocked his head to one side, stared at Lynette, and said nothing. Lynette burst into tears and ran from the table.
“You children come with me,” I said.
Obediently, Teddie and Andrew followed Pearl and me to the kitchen without a word.
“Wash your hands,” Pearl said, marching them to the smaller sink.
They did as she asked without one objection and I thought just that was a small miracle in and of itself. I mean, when you had him alone, Andrew almost always did as he was told, but sometimes when he and Teddie were in cahoots, he could try to wiggle out of a chore. He was a regulation boy. Teddie’s face was flushed and I realized for the first time that she was embarrassed by her father. She was growing up.
“Now, sit up there on them stools and get ready to help roll sands,” Pearl said to them, placing the bowl of mixture and a cookie sheet in front of them.
“I’ll show you how to make them,” I said. “They’re like fingers. We used to call them moldy mice!”
“Ew! Gross!” Teddie said, wiggling down from the stool. “Yuck! I’m going to go watch TV.”
Andrew, who had pinched off a piece of dough and was munching away on it, said to Teddie, “It’s good. Try it!”
“You stay put, missy,” Pearl said, and seeing that she meant business, Teddie slowly climbed back to her place. Teddie had some terrible problems with authority figures, but that wasn’t the issue then. I thought that perhaps she wanted to escape in order to suffer the indignities of her father’s behavior in private or by losing herself in a television program.
“Thank you, sir!” Pearl said to Andrew, and smiled.
Teddie ate a crumb, then a larger bit, shrugged her shoulders, and said, “It’s not great but it’s not terrible. Sorta reminds me
of cookie-dough ice cream. Just how long is this going to take?”
“Till we’re done,” Pearl said.
Teddie sucked her teeth and made a noise that sounded like snick. “Now, how do I do this?”
“Like this,” I said, smiling. We had a small win at last. I took a tablespoonful of dough, rolled it between my palms, tidied up the ends, and laid it on the cookie sheet. I handed them each a tablespoon and said, “Now, let’s get busy!”
“Andrew picked his nose,” Teddie said, and giggled.
“Did not!”
“Did. I saw you.”
“Stop your nonsense, Teddie, this is Christmas!” I said. “Andrew? You are only allowed to engage in those activities outside of the house!”
Andrew and Teddie laughed at that and I smiled at them.
Looking up to the ceiling for patience, Pearl scraped the dishes, put them in the sink, and turned on the spigot to cover them with hot sudsy water. Moments later, Camille came in with the remains of the dirty flatware and opened the dishwasher.
“Just throw the plates in here,” she said to Pearl.
“No good for the gold trim,” Pearl said.
“Oh, who cares?” Camille said. “Buy new.”
Barbara came through the swinging door with an armload of goblets and heard what Camille said.
“Pearl’s right,” I heard myself say. “Anyway, you can’t buy new. That china belonged to my mother. Isn’t that so, Barbara?”
Oh, please stand up for this one small cause of preservation, I thought.
“Well, actually, Camille, they did belong to my grandmother. Aren’t they pretty?”
“Yes, they really are,” she said, and looked at the apple green border, pin-striped and edged in gold leaf, as though she were seeing it for the first time. “Just FYI, George’s upstairs hollering his head off at Lynette.”
“FYI?” Pearl said.
“It’s an abbreviation meaning ‘for your information’…do you want me to go have a word with George and Lynette?” I said. “See if I can help them cool off?”
“No,” Barbara said, to my surprise. “I imagine that’s my job.” Then her self-doubt and hand-wringing returned. She said, “Actually, Cleland can make him behave better than I…”