The Dry Grass of August(9)
We passed a sign: WICKENS TOWN LIMITS. Y’ALL COME BACK NOW! Mama said, “Not likely.” I looked through the back window to see if there was a curfew sign on this side of town. There was.
Mama smoothed her hair, which she’d put up with a tortoiseshell barrette. “We’ll have breakfast as soon as I see somewhere to pull over. Watch for picnic tables.” She kept glancing into the backseat and smiling at Davie, trying to make up with him after smacking his hand for wetting the bed. He sat on Puddin’s lap, holding Mary’s arm and sucking his thumb.
We’d only been in the car a few minutes when Mama wrinkled her nose. “What’s that stink?” Mary had washed Davie’s soiled pj’s in the motel sink, and I’d spread them in the shelf over the backseat to dry. They gave off a sour smell in the morning sun. I pretended I was dozing.
I peeped at Mary through my half-closed eyelids. What did she think of Mama? I’d heard Mary talking with her daughter when Young Mary came to our house before we left Charlotte, telling her how to take care of Daddy while we were gone. “He wants a light starch in his shirts, and you got to iron them while they still damp.” Mary’s voice was soft and low. “And white vinegar on the table for his greens.” She put her arm around her daughter’s shoulders as they stood in the pantry. “This Boston brown bread is good with baked beans and pork chops.”
“Bread in a can?” Young Mary’s voice was high-pitched and timid. She’d jump if Daddy asked her the time of day. What was she doing as we traveled across Georgia?
I said, “I wonder how Young Mary’s going to get along with Daddy.”
Puddin looked at Mary. “Your daughter?”
Mary nodded. “She doing the cooking and cleaning a couple days a week.”
“Your father’ll be just fine,” Mama said. “He always could get someone to take care of him.”
Mama wasn’t calling Daddy anything but “your father.” She had always called him Bill or William or, when she was teasing, Willie. She hadn’t called him Willie in so long I could hardly remember. Maybe not since we’d lived in the house off Selwyn Avenue.
In Alabama we passed towns named Opelika, Loachapoka, Notsaluga. I said the odd names to myself. I couldn’t remember seeing signs back home like the ones we saw in Tuskegee: SOME THINGS DON’T MIX! OIL AND WATER. COLOREDS AND WHITES! and, in front of a school, FOR WHITES, NOT BROWNS!
In Andalusia Mama pulled up to a café for us to have lunch. We’d just passed a grill with colored people standing in the doorway and on the sidewalk. Mary said she’d walk back there to eat. Mama was fixing her face in the rearview mirror when Mary asked for the keys to the trunk. “You mind if I freshen up before lunch?”
Mama rolled her eyes but handed Mary the keys.
“Jubie, get the keys when Mary’s done.” Mama took Puddin’s hand and Stell carried Davie into the café.
Mary got her flowered bag from the trunk and took out a rose knit hat I’d never seen. She unfolded it, fluffed it, and pulled the brim over one eyebrow, checking her reflection in the car window. In quick strokes she put on glossy lipstick, then reached in her bag for red earrings and a matching necklace. She changed her navy Keds for red patent leather heels, making her snazzy, even in her ordinary blue cotton dress. With her handbag dangling from her fingertips, she started down the street, click-clacking on her heels. I watched her go, my mouth hanging open.
She looked over her shoulder and winked. “Feels like Sunday.”
Before Mama pushed her plate away and reached for her cigarettes, I worried that Mary wouldn’t be back on time, that Mama would be mad at her for dillydallying. For once in my life I didn’t ask for dessert, but Mama didn’t notice. I excused myself and went to the car. Mary was coming down the sidewalk, humming, her pocketbook swinging at her side. “Hey, Jubie girl, you glad to see me?”
“I am, Mary.”
She had already taken off her hat and earrings and was removing her necklace. She scrubbed her mouth with a Kleenex the way I did when I came home from school after wearing Tangee all day. I unlocked the trunk, and Mary scuffed off her heels. In a minute she had on her Keds. Mary again, as if she’d never left the car. Mama came out of the café carrying Davie, with Puddin and Stell behind her.
“How was your lunch, Mary?”
“Just fine, Miz Watts, just fine.”
“Not too expensive?”
“Not too bad.” Mary squeezed my hand as we got in the car.
Mary came to work for us when I was five, the first colored person I’d ever known. I studied the tall woman who occupied our kitchen, busy at the sink or the washing machine or the ironing board. Her thick-fingered hands, brown on top and light underneath, wove lattice crusts on apple pies, diapered my new baby sister, and hefted baskets of wet wash. When she caught me peeking at her from behind the kitchen door, she waved.
I observed her from the queen chair when she vacuumed, or through the window as she pinned my pajamas to the clothesline. One morning while she mopped the kitchen, she hummed “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” adding words to the tune as she rinsed the mop: “Little mousy, are you there? Watching from a fine old chair?” She turned and caught me staring.