Wrapped in Rain(2)

After three or four minutes of reading, he said, "Wait here." He shut the door in her face and returned with me a minute later. Inviting her into the house, he extended me at arm's length like a lion cub and said, "Here. Clean this house and don't let him out of your sight."

"Yes sir, Mr. Rex."

Miss Ella cradled me, stepped inside the foyer, and looked around the house. That act alone explains the fact that I have no memory of ever not knowing Miss Ella Rain. Not the mother who bore me, but the mother God gave me.

I'll never understand why she took the job.

Miss Ella had finished high school at the top of her class, but rather than attend college, she opted out, put on an apron, and made enough money to send her younger brother, Moses, through college. When I got old enough to understand just exactly what she had done, she said flatly, "One day, he'd have to provide for a family. Not me." Before the end of her first month, she had moved her things into the servant's cottage, but soon spent most nights sleeping in a chair in the hall outside my secondstory bedroom.



Having provided for my needs-food, clothing, and a retaining wall-Rex returned to Atlanta and resumed his vicious and nonstop attack on the dollar. A pattern soon developed. By the age of three, I saw Rex from Thursday to Sunday. He flew in just long enough to make sure the staff was still afraid of him, to see that I had color in my cheeks, to saddle one of his thoroughbreds, and then to disappear upstairs with an assistant after his ride. About once a month, he would court his latest business partner, and then they too would disappear into the bar until he had satisfied himself. Rex believed people and partners were like train cars-"Ride it until you get tired and then hop off. Another will be along in five minutes."

If Rex was home, and he was talking, two words were certain to fill his mouth. The first was "God" and the second was something I promised Miss Ella I would never repeat. At the age of five, I didn't know what it meant, but the way he said it, the flush in his face, and the amount of spit that bubbled in the corner of his mouth whenever he said it, told me it wasn't good.

"Miss Ella," I said scratching my head, "what does that mean?" She wiped her hands on her apron, scooped me off the stool, and sat me on the countertop. Pressing her forehead against mine, she placed her index finger sideways across my lips and said, "Shhhhh."

"But, Miss Ella, what does it mean?"

She tilted her head and whispered, "Tuck, that's the third commandment word. It's a bad, bad word. The worst word. Your father shouldn't say it."

"But why does he say it?"

"Sometimes grown-ups say it when they're angry about something."



"How come I've never heard you say it?"

"Tuck," she said, lifting the cornmeal bowl into my lap and helping me stir the thickening batter, "promise me you won't ever say that word. You promise?"

"But what if you get angry and you say it?"

"I won't. Now"-her eyes locked onto mine-"you promise?"

"Yes ma'am."

"Say it."

"I promise, Mama Ella."

"And don't let him hear you say that either."

"What?"

"`Mama Ella.' He'll fire me for sure."

I looked in Rex's general direction. "Yes ma'am."

"Good. Now keep stirring." She pointed in the direction of the shouting. 'We better hurry. He sounds hungry." Like a dog that had been beaten too much, we learned early the meaning of Rex's voice.

I'm pretty sure Miss Ella never knew a day in her life that did not include hard work. Many nights, I watched her put her hand on her hip, push her shoulders forward, arch her back, and look to Moses. "Little brother, I need to soak my teeth, doctor my hemorrhoids, get some Cornhuskers, and lay my head on the pillow." But that was just the beginning. She'd get her cap on, get greased up, and then kneel down. That's when her day really started, because once she got going, she might be there all night.

The thought of Rex drew my eyes back to the house. If Rex was home and simply had not made it upstairs to his room, chances were good that he could see Miss Ella's front door from any window on the rear of the house, so I ran around the back of the cottage, in the shadows under the eave. I turned the mop bucket upside down, pulled up on the window, and hung my chin on the ledge while my socked feet made a kicking and scratching sound on the cold brick wall.



Inside, Miss Ella was kneeling beside her bed. She was like that a lot. Head bowed and draped in a yellow plastic shower cap, hands folded and resting on top of her Bible, which spread across the bed in front of her. Come what may, she maintained a steady diet of Scripture. She quoted it often and with authority. Miss Ella seldom spoke words or phrases that weren't first written in the Old or New Testament. The more Rex drank and the more Rex cussed, the more Miss Ella read and prayed. I saw her Bible once, and much of the current page was underlined. I couldn't read too well, but looking back on it, it was probably the Psalms. Miss Ella found comfort there. Especially the twenty-fifth.

Miss Ella's lips were moving, her head was nodding just slightly, and her eyes were narrowed, closed, and surrounded in deep wrinkles. Then and now, that's the way I remember her. A lady on her knees.