The Dry Grass of August(5)

“That’s you.”

“It is. Got a birthday coming. Be forty-eight.”

I’d never thought about her age. Her caramel skin was smooth. “I didn’t know you were so old.”

She threw back her head and laughed, showing her front tooth that was framed in gold. “I like you more and more, June Bentley Watts, more and more.”

I looked back down at the Bible. “Your husband died in a wreck, right?”

“Yes, one night coming home from work. Doctor say it was his heart.”

“A heart attack while he was driving?”

“Might be. Never know for sure.”

“Is that your wedding ring?” I pointed to her left hand.

She nodded. “Pharr got it engraved, our initials and date.”

I touched the next page of the Bible. “Do you have two brothers and a sister?”

“Only got my one brother left now that I know of. Sister died having her fourth child. And my baby brother, we hasn’t heard from him in twenty years; I s’pect he’s gone.” I couldn’t imagine not knowing what had happened to Stell or Puddin or Davie.

“You were the second oldest, too, the same as me.”

“That’s right. My mama had two born dead before Sister, but I don’t reckon they count.”

I handed her the Bible. “I’d better be going so everybody can get to bed.” I touched her shoulder. “Night, Mary. Lock up behind me.” I sounded like Mama.

“No lock on that door. If it had one, I’d use it.” She had the Bible open and was looking down at it when I left.

In our room, everybody was asleep but Mama. She was brushing her teeth, standing in the bathroom with the door open. Her hair was pulled back to keep it out of the cold cream she used to cleanse her face, her skin glistening in the light over the sink. She looked at me in the mirror. Her mouth was all foamy, and she held her dental bridge in her left hand while she brushed with her right. She rinsed and spat. “Get to bed now, Jubie, and don’t make any noise.” The words lisped out through the hole where her front tooth was gone. Stell told me Daddy knocked it out. Mama never talked about it. “You need to tinkle before you climb in?”

“No, ma’am.” I draped her bathrobe across the footboard of her bed and lingered there. I tried not to look at her, but I didn’t often get to see her without her tooth.

“What is it?” Mama asked, her bridge back in place.

“Mary has an outhouse instead of a bathroom, and a pitcher and bowl like Aunt Rita has in her living room, only the ones in Mary’s room are for using.”

“I paid more for that cabin than I did for this room, and it’s just fine. Get on to bed now.” Mama reached to turn off the light as I climbed in next to Stell.

I lay there in the dark, listening to my family breathe. Somebody made a throat noise, Puddin, or maybe Mama. Way off, a dog barked over and over. I wondered if Mary heard it.





CHAPTER 2

Five days before we left for Pensacola I was sitting on my bed, listening to the sound of our neighbor’s mower. I peeked out the window. Carter Milton was naked from the waist up, his muscled shoulders red, his back broad. He looked like a man working in his yard, not the boy next door. Why was he so crazy about Stell? That morning she’d told Mama I was hiding in the tree house when Mama wanted me to go grocery shopping. That was a lie, but no matter what Stell says, Mama always believes her.

I opened the window. Carter stood in his driveway, drinking a Coke. I called out, “Meet me by the hedge.”

The house felt empty. Mama still shopping, Puddin out back with Davie, and Stell at a planning meeting for the cheerleading squad. I could hear Mary in the kitchen. I tiptoed downstairs, hoping to slip out the front door. I was in the foyer with my hand on the doorknob when she said, “Hey, Jubie.” She stood in the hallway, holding a dish towel. “You gone go out?”

“Just for a minute.”

“Your mama want you here to put away groceries when she gets home.”

“I need to tell Carter something.”

“Stell Ann’s boyfriend?”

I shrugged and ran out to meet Carter by the boxwoods that separated our front yards. His eyes were topaz in the sunlight. I snapped a twig, stripping the leaves into my hand to make a bracelet. “You want to hear stuff from Stell’s diary?” I popped the tip from one of the leaves.

He wiped his forehead. “You think there’s something in it about me?”

“You can find out for a dollar.”

“Okay, sure, Jubes. When?”

I liked him calling me Jubes. “Half an hour, the tree house.”





While I was looking for Stell’s diary, I found her piggy bank hidden in a cardboard box on the floor of her closet, behind her summer shoes—white ankle straps, black patent pumps, bone flats. I turned her piggy bank slowly. I could hear paper money rustling, the clink of heavy coins. My bank never had anything but pennies in it.

I used a bobby pin to pull a dollar bill through the slot in the bank. After my next babysitting job, I’d put a dollar and a quarter back. Stell would never know. With the loan from her bank and the dollar from Carter, I could go to the Manor Theatre with Maggie, my best friend, to see Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, which Mama said was racy. She hadn’t seen it, but she didn’t trust anything with Marilyn Monroe in it, not to mention Jane Russell. I’d buy the latest Space Cadet comic, get popcorn and a grape Charms at the movies, and ride the bus home.