The Dry Grass of August(80)
“It’s your fault, too,” I screamed.
“Oh, Jubie, calm down.” She took a drag from her cigarette.
“What did Daddy do to Young Mary?”
“I don’t really know. I was bluffing.”
“You’re right, what you did for Mary wasn’t enough.” I grabbed the glass from her hand and threw it on the slate floor, where it shattered. The smell of Scotch filled the breezeway.
I yanked open the screen door. The wind caught it and slammed it back against the wall.
I ran through the grass and climbed over the redwood fence into Mrs. Gibson’s backyard, inching past the thorny pyracantha to sit in her garden with the marble angel, beside the burning bush, everything drab and gray in the diluted light of the approaching storm.
I gazed into a cave created by the branches of a giant magnolia, where shadow shapes formed as the wind picked up, bringing on rain. All around me, tree limbs and flowers swayed, the red and orange berries of holly and pyracantha, dying mums and marigolds. Pansies that bobbed like drunken clowns. I read the tattered tag hanging from a gardenia bush that still had a few drooping flowers: CARE AND FEEDING OF GARDENIAS: FULL SUN WITH SHADE IN SUMMER. MOIST SOIL, NEVER SOGGY. HEAVY FEEDING. Why didn’t people come with instructions?
I was so mad at Mama, at Daddy, even at Uncle Stamos, who knew or should have known—those words stuck in my mind. I sat there getting soaked as the rain and wind battered me. The edge of Hurricane Hazel. Bedraggled daisies lashed my legs and I snatched one from the ground. Even half dead, it was stronger than anything that grew wild by the road. You could do loves-me-loves-me-not on the petals of Mrs. Gibson’s daisies and get at the truth. I cupped my hands around it and sniffed the sour citrusy scent that smelled like Mary when she’d been working all day, an odor I sometimes had, too, and never minded. When Mama caught Mary smelling that way, she went to her bedroom to put a touch of perfume on her upper lip. The more I thought about the small meanness of that, the sadder I got, until I was crying all over the limp daisy. Daddy was gone. He’d wind up in jail or an outcast—that was the word that came to me. No matter what, he would never be back with Mama, with us.
The rain pounded me, needles stinging my face, a downpour driven by the wind until it was horizontal. Through the boards of the fence I saw the lights in our house go out. If Hazel stood still, we’d be without power for days. Why did hurricanes only have female names? I’d have to find out about that. Before I left the garden, I picked the last of the gardenias to give Mama.
What I had was Mama and Stell and Puddin and Davie. Maybe they didn’t know that as clearly as I did, but I could tell them.
CHAPTER 33
In January of 1955, I woke in my pink bedroom for the last time, in a sleeping bag on the floor, the sun streaming through the open Venetian blinds. The harsh morning light made me feel ready to move out of this bedroom I’d been sleeping in for two and a half years, now strange and empty. I unzipped the bag. I couldn’t imagine Mama spending the night on the floor, but when I’d asked her if she minded, she said, “Oh, pooh, it’s just this once.” I looked behind the door, where a piece of carpet had come loose months ago. Last night I’d tucked a handwritten note under it, then pushed it back in place. Someday when the carpeting was pulled up, someone would find a small paper, folded many times: To Whom It May Concern. My name is June Bentley Watts and I lived here from September 1952 to January 1955. I dedicate this room to the memory of Mary Constance Culpepper Luther, 1906–1954.
I got dressed and stuffed my pajamas into my sleeping bag, along with Mary’s slippers, which I’d taken to wearing around the house. Mama had looked at them when I came down for breakfast one morning, but she hadn’t said anything.
Stell was sitting on the floor in her bedroom, her sleeping bag rolled up and ready to go. The honey-colored carpet was indented where the furniture had been. Would the marks disappear when Stanley Steemer cleaned the rugs and drapes?
I sat beside her and took the ragged stuffed animal she was holding. “Where’d you find him?”
“The top shelf in my closet, where I hid him from Puddin.”
“She cried for days, I remember.” Our voices bounced off the walls.
Stell flipped one of the filthy ears. “Can you believe Mama ever let her suck on those?”
“I’d forgotten.”The ears felt stiff and papery.
“Sweet Bunny, they called it, the ears coated with sugar.”
“Yuk!” I tossed the crusty rabbit. It landed in a square of light under the front window.
“Are we still going to be members of the club?” I asked.
“Grow up. We’ll be lucky to have groceries.”
“Mama’s going to get a job.”
Stell picked up the rabbit. “Who’d hire her? She’s never worked.”
“Girls?” Mama’s voice echoed up the stairwell.
“Coming!” Stell called down. She walked into her closet and tossed the bunny onto the top shelf. “Back where he’s lived these many years. A Cuthbert will find him and commit him to eternal rest.” She closed the closet door.
“Have you met them?”
“Only Lucy, at school.”
“Maybe she’ll have this room.”
“Who cares.” Stell headed downstairs.