A Place Called Wiregrass (10 page)

“I
have stared at four walls until I’m about half crazy,” Miss Claudia said, standing in the doorway of her side porch. She was on a mission, dressed all pink: hot pink skirt, light pink blouse, and a white scarf with little pink roses on it. A khaki wicker basket draped her arm, and at first glance I thought she had packed for a picnic. When I helped her down the porch steps, I realized the basket served as her pocketbook.

“Bum hip or not, we’re going to town,” she declared and handed me her car keys.

Fabric World was our first stop that afternoon. She lingered with the sales clerk, asking all about the young woman’s origins and telling about her years as a seamstress. I noticed by the way Miss Claudia looked down and nodded her head that she was disappointed the young woman did not know of the Emporium. “This is my companion, Erma Lee Jacobs. She’s not from Wiregrass either,” she said, allowing the auburn-haired girl with a fair complexion to join my outsider sorority. “Tell me, what are the young girls, oh, say high-school age, wearing now days?”

The young woman escorted us to a big counter with jumbo-sized books filled with patterns. “Oh, Lord have mercy. I wouldn’t let my dog wear that thing in public,” Miss Claudia said when the young woman pointed to the first se
lection. Her comments were met with laughter from the sales clerk.

Charmed another one,
I thought.

“I’m going to need Cher’s measurements.”

“Now, Miss Claudia,” I said with one hand on my hip. “I can’t have you doing this.”

She continued to flip through the pages of the plastic binder and pretended to ignore my presence. “And just who will stop me from making an outfit on my own sewing machine in my own house?”

I leaned over the catalog filled with patterns. “Your hip. You can’t be sitting up sewing. What about the pedal?”

Over the top of her wire-rimmed glasses she looked up at me. “I already thought of that. I’ll use the good leg to pedal and prop the bum one on a chair.”

“I just can’t have you…”

She raised one eyebrow and dropped her chin even lower. The same soft hazel eyes could slice through concrete when she found something blocking her way. “This is my business. Not another word out of you.”

I could only mumble and roll my eyes.

“What? If you have something to say, Erma Lee…”

“I said you didn’t take us to raise, you know.”

She resumed looking at the catalog. “You hush. Here, how about this periwinkle one for you?” When she tried to shove the bulky book in my direction, two pages flipped over the spot her thumb marked.

I glanced at the soft sleeveless top with big blue buttons and the short skirt cut somewhere at the model’s knee. On the rare occasion Bozo practiced romance, and on the more frequent occasion of kissing up after a drunken rage, he would tell me how crazy he was about my legs. “Oh no. You’re not going to…”

“All right. You win. You can set a pillow under my leg and run in and out fetching me tea while I sew. Happy now?”

The pace of my heart slowed a little. I actually pictured a wave of my nerves settling to a lake ripple. She was spoiling me rotten, and I never let myself forget it.

Miss Claudia made the bad times seem distant and strangely unimportant. I felt safe with the tall woman who used a cane. The truth was, I did not see her much older than myself. All I saw was a confident, determined woman who could overcome any obstacle set in her path.

Days leading up to the big to-do at the Moose Lodge, Miss Claudia worked steady on her sewing machine. Her bedroom was set up like a makeshift tailor shop, with a step for me to stand on while she pinned the skirt hem and held a tomato-shaped cloth ball full of pins. The concentration of her wrinkled brow and the couple of pins sticking out of her mouth showed me a hint of the top-rate seamstress she once was. During the creation, I stuck my head in the room every so often to make sure her left leg was inclined on the wooden desk chair and that the pillow cushioning her leg had not flattened.

The final product was as good as anything from the mall. I stood in the mirror of her bedroom and fidgeted with the skirt, wondering if I was too old to wear such a short length.

“You just look so pretty,” she said, cupping her hands up to her chest. The way she looked at me made me think how she might have reviewed Patricia in her coming-out dress. The painted picture of her in that very dress hung in the formal living room. When I asked Miss Claudia what exactly the event was, she dismissed the Cotillion as “a bunch of high rollers thinking their you-know-what don’t stink.”

“I mean to tell ya, you’re good now,” I said, turning my
head to get the full-mirrored view in every possible direction. “No wonder Mr. Wade went and married you.”

“Oh, my word,” she said, playing like she was embarrassed.

“I’m serious. This is the best sewing I ever saw. And that’s coming from a trained seamstress herself.” Another moment I longed for a built-in eraser in my mouth. I was afraid that last part sounded big-headed. To counterbalance, I quickly added, “You just don’t know how much I appreciate this.”

“I’m just tickled to do it. You know, Wade did fancy my skills. I remember the day after his daddy hired me. I fixed up a suit with a New York City label, not knowing who on earth it was for. When I placed the thread in the needle, I pure shook, racking my brain to remember all the lessons Nettie taught me.

“The next day, Wade walked in the back to where we girls were and had on that very suit I worked on. He wanted to know who did the job. Thinking something might be the matter with the suit, everybody turned and pointed at me. That woman who runs your mobile-home park was the worst—Trellis stood up and pointed.” Miss Claudia leaned over the machine and stuck her tongue out. “Might as well had put a spotlight on me. Anyway, he just came right over and shook my hand. I was such a timid thing back then. I just looked down at the scraps of material on the floor. And even though he wasn’t a loud talker, he made sure everybody in the room heard him say it was the best-fitting suit he owned.

“Later he told me he liked my looks and told them to give the suit to me just so he’d have a reason to get better acquainted with me.” She shook her head the same way I did whenever Cher acted silly.

“Did he ask you out on a date then?” I asked, knowing full well Miss Trellis had already told me the man was married at the time. I don’t know why I asked it. I guess part of me still had some doubts and wondered if I could catch Miss Claudia in a lie.

“No, not then. Wade was married, don’t you know.” She tapped the sewing machine with her polished nails and rolled her big hazel eyes up towards me.

I shrugged my shoulders and felt ashamed that I had doubted this woman.

“Oh, yeah. He was married to poor Colleen. Her problem was beyond nerves. She had certifiable craziness.” Miss Claudia licked her lips and sighed. “One day she’d hear voices and come running in the store screaming somebody was trying to kill her. The next day she’d walk the streets not knowing where in the world she was. I don’t care what anyone says, Wade was good to her.”

I nodded my head in agreement, recalling the adulterous scandal Miss Trellis had alluded to.

“Wade would come in the back and talk to me about all the problems he was having with her. That’s how it started out with us, strictly friends. After all I’d been through, don’t you know. But Wade was different in his ways. He had the softest voice. Nothing sissy, mind you, just caring and honest.” Miss Claudia chuckled and gently patted her hair.

“Then the next thing I knew he missed an entire month of work. The girls in the store said he had Colleen put away in the crazy house. They talked about how cruel he was to lock her away like that. I just never let on that I knew one way or the other.

“He didn’t court me for a few months after all that. And even then, it was only a meal or two in the room I rented over the bakery. But one evening when he was leaving, Trellis and that husband of hers were driving by real slow like, snooping for a robbery. They got the scoop all right, just in time to see Wade walk down the side stairs of my room. The next day at work, you’d think I was at a home for the mute. When I sat at my sewing machine and said good morning, they just all looked at me. Only later, I learned those girls were going
around telling the whole town what a home wrecker I was and how I had taken advantage of the boss.

“Those women at the store thought they knew it all. Before Wade locked Colleen up, she ran around the house with his pistol shooting holes in the wall big enough to put your arm through. A few weeks later he came home and found her in the bathtub with her wrists slit. She was half dead when he rang for the doctor. Old Dr. Miller never breathed a word. He just shipped her away by ambulance the next morning. Wade protected that woman as long as she lived. After his divorce and during all our married life he paid for her hospitalization. I kept the payments up until three years ago, when they sent me a letter saying Colleen died of a stroke.”

Miss Claudia patted the tomato pincushion. “That’s the real story those biddies don’t know. And never will as far as I’m alive.” She shooed away the past with a quick bat of the eye and a shake of the head. “Well, there’s a Trellis in every crowd. I expect you’ve known a few.”

I sure had. The only problem was I had to deal with the real one.

It was not her fault she caught me on the same day that the story of the good and decent Wade Tyler had been recounted. But when I got out of the car that day, the last person I wanted to see was Miss Trellis. Before I closed the car door, she appeared behind the big pine tree next to my trailer.

“Oh, me,” she moaned.

At first I thought a cat was in distress. Then I turned to see the swagger of her knit black shoes.

“Doctor told me to take exercise and lose some of this lard. I expect I’ll be walking up and down this street morning and evening,” Miss Trellis said, holding her back and pouching her stomach out like she was expecting any day.

“Good luck,” I said, pulling a bag of groceries out of my backseat.

“You working all the time, I don’t see how you have time for grocery shopping.”

“I manage.” I was still fuming with her for being so hateful to Miss Claudia. Thirty years ago or thirty minutes, I was always bad to hold a grudge.

“Claudia still having all them health problems?”

I juggled the paper bag and slammed the car door with the side of my leg.
Don’t start,
I wanted to scream.
Don’t act as if you care about Miss Claudia when you really like the fact she’s suffering, even in the slightest.
“She’s getting along fine.”

“I heard she wasn’t taking that chemotherapy. I got an idear it’s because she don’t want to lose none of that pretty black hair.”

“Uh, no. I think you’re confused. Her hip is acting up, but other than that…” I leaned forward and shrugged my shoulders.

She flattened her matted gray hair and used her flabby forearm to wipe sweat off her brow. “They tell me she’s eat up with cancer.”

She squared off with me, both hands on her hips.

“Well,
they
must’ve misunderstood, because…”

“Don’t tell me.” Miss Trellis stuck her pointy chin out and bugged her eyes to the point of retina damage. “I reckon my daughter-in-law knows. She works for Claudia’s doctor. Does filing three days a week. They said she won’t take no therapy neither.”

I wanted to run and slam into her with my grocery bag, hoping the bottle of spaghetti sauce would knock the wind out of her so she couldn’t speak such nonsense. After two steps, the threat of eviction talked me out of it. “Well, how come she don’t have any symptoms?” I carelessly asked. Then the big ugly bruise on her hip flashed through my mind.

“Look, I ain’t arguing about it. Ask her if you don’t believe me. Or maybe she don’t want you to know. I reckon, best leave some things alone.” Then, as if I had been pestering her, “Let me get on with my exercise, hear?”

The bags became heavier while I watched her swagger along the cracked asphalt. I did not believe her. I refused to consider it. Who did this old gossip think she was—a doctor? I remembered the telephone game where information whispered to the first person was all messed up by the time the information reached the last person in the group. Obviously, Miss Trellis was the last person in the circle concerning the health of Miss Claudia. I was the lead in this game.

T
he day of the fish fry with Gerald, Cher was actually happy for a change. She was busy running around helping me get dressed. After I scrubbed the pine door down with a towel to remove any dirt that could gather on my new outfit, we hung the blue top and skirt on top of the closet door. I wondered if Cher thought I was silly to treat the new skirt and top like it was laced with gold, but since it had been over a year since I had a new shirt, it might as well been laced with rubies too.

The new outfit was one of those experiences you read about in a magazine, one of those binding moments for Cher and me. She held her hand up to her heart and stumbled backwards when I agreed to let her fix my face a little. “Nothing heavy,” I said while pulling her up off the floor by her arm. “Quit acting silly,” I said in a whisper. I didn’t know whether to laugh like her friend or to act stern like her guardian.

She used her curling iron to design the back of my hair. Since I counted my first date with Gerald as a special occasion, I had her finish me off with the black cloth bow. She loosely gathered hair and centered it at the crown of my head. Long flowing curls fell below.

Once completely dressed, I felt Cher was finally pleased with me. “Go on with it,” Cher yelled. She had never seen me show my legs before. I sensed a new chapter for us. Her fast becoming a young woman who could show me the
trends, and me being able to caution her against life’s heartache. We both were cautious not to mention LaRue, and since he hadn’t called, I was satisfied in knowing my words had sunk in Cher’s brain.

I was scared to death the wind would mess up my hair and ran out of the trailer with my hands held up on both sides of my head. Like in an eight-millimeter home movie, Mama’s skeptical face flashed through my mind. But I forced myself to empty my mind of fertilizer for one night. I sat in the car watching Cher awkwardly juggle the three videos that she had previously censored for Miss Claudia’s viewing.

Miss Claudia greeted us at her door and patted her hands like a little child expecting candy. Her rosy cheeks, wide smile, and bright hazel eyes solidified my wrath on Miss Trellis for spreading lies about ill health.

“You’re quite the Cinderella tonight, sugar,” she drawled. I didn’t try to shoo her comments away.

Richard stood in the hallway, smoking a cigarette. “Erma Lee, you look absolutely breathtaking,” he said and bowed. Even though he was silly, Richard could make words dance to the tune of his baritone voice.

“Now stand over by the piano and let me make a picture,” Miss Claudia said, holding the instant Polaroid camera.

Standing behind Miss Claudia, Richard leaned against the hall entranceway and declared he might see me at the fish fry. “I always have been a good dancer. You remember my senior ball at Vanderbilt, Mother—how I had those two dates to juggle.”

Miss Claudia gave me an animated wink, like someone might offer when a child said a naughty word without knowing the full meaning. “Oh, yeah, I remember.”

As the flash fired and the square white prints discharged from the camera, I wondered if this was how a prom feels, all giddy and braggy. Picture after picture—she produced at least
a dozen—I posed by every piece of strapped-down furniture in the living room. My favorite was the picture made of Cher and me by the mahogany staircase. I felt nervous, self-conscious, and hesitant that night. But above all, I felt like a woman who learned to, as Miss Claudia said, “accent the positives.”

She’d sat at her sewing machine that day and announced that she was altering the pattern by dropping the neckline. “Nothing trashy,” I came running into her bedroom yelling.

“Use it before you soon lose it,” she said above the hammer of the machine.

I felt like I was going to throw up on the way to the fish fry and almost had Gerald pull over.
You’re out of your league,
I told myself. The boot-shaking music on the radio didn’t help my nerves any, and I finally asked if we could turn it to another station.

Gerald looked better than ever, capless, with his wavy blonde and gray hair combed back. The back of his hair was still wet, and I liked the tight curls it created. I was intoxicated by his evergreen aftershave and hoped that it was not the cause of my nausea. His black pullover shirt and khaki pants made his tanned arms and neck seem even darker. I especially liked his brown cowboy boots. As with my pair of low-heeled shoes, the boots were probably the only dress pair he owned. Whether it was true or not, I kept telling myself so, trying to convince myself that we were alike in some way.

My only other big fear of the night was that I would have to dance. I don’t know what I was thinking. Maybe that the band would be only a small portion of the evening, and I could plead a headache and go on back to the house. The minute I walked into the dark banquet room with black lights on the ceiling and a crystal ball, I knew I was in trouble.
White circles bounced off the crystal ball and onto the paneled walls. A mammoth stage was decorated with a steel guitar and drums. The place looked how I imagined a fine dance club in Nashville would look.

Miss Claudia was right. This fish fry was the social event of the year. People jammed into the concrete building and spewed across the front lawn, where two large boilers were set up under the direction of four serious men armored in white aprons. After surveying the crowd, I breathed satisfaction knowing my new outfit looked as good as any other lady’s wardrobe. And, thanks to Miss Claudia, my clothes looked better than what many wore.

At first I thought the squealing was due to a pig running loose, but then I saw the bright blonde hair as she landed squarely in Gerald’s arms. The first thing I noticed about her was her teeth. They were big and shiny, and her hair stood straight up on the top of her head. Between Patricia, Miss Claudia, and now her, I decided big hair must be the thing in Wiregrass. The blonde bangs fell low to her blue eyes, and when she turned I noticed her hair was as long as mine, only a kinky texture.

“This here’s who I been telling you about. This is Marcie,” Gerald yelled over the roar of the crowd.

Before I could smile or even speak, she was in my arms too. She loosely grabbed me, and I felt a rib when I clasped my arms around her. “So good to meet you,” she said in a high-pitched voice. “I’m just so glad you could come with my daddy,” she reached over and placed her head on Gerald’s chest. He put his arm on her shoulder and grinned wider and longer than I knew he could.

Whenever I answered Marcie’s questions, she would lean back and swing that blonde mane over her shoulders. Marcie’s moves reminded me of when Suzette was little and how she
would put a towel on her head to imitate Cher’s hair swings from the
Sonny and Cher
show.

Marcie was just as excited when I met her husband, Chase. He was short and stumpy with a crew cut. I remember thinking that the cut must be back in style, because I could not imagine Marcie paired with someone out of trend’s favor.

She wore a gold choker necklace and a ring on every finger, even her thumb. I thought that was a little trashy. As we lined up for fried catfish, I held a paper plate and heard all the details of her attempts to have a baby. Marcie was brutally honest, to the point of embarrassment.

“I just feel like I’ve known you my whole life,” she said, smiling and massaging her thick necklace. When I spoke of Cher and Miss Claudia, her eyes would scan over my shoulders. While I talked, I saw her mouth “Hey” to the people passing behind me.

After the food, the lights dimmed, and the whine of the steel guitar filled the building. Every time I saw Gerald approach the table, I would start moving my hands to whoever I was talking to, to making Gerald think I was deep in conversation. But really, there was only one deep conversation that night.

Kasi joined us at our table. After my third beer, I explained everything to Kasi concerning Cher lying about her daddy visiting. Even though my head was feeling lighter, I didn’t tell too much, but just skimmed the surface to prove Cher had some denial about the situation.

“Poor little thing,” Kasi said and took a drag of her cigarette.

“No, it’s nothing like that.” I refused to have her feel sorry for Cher. “She’s just confused.” I leaned closer to Kasi, wanting to make sure she understood how stable and happy Cher was.

She looked across the table, her eyes sparkling with amuse
ment. “Well, hey,” she said, flicking the long ash into the ashtray.

Richard’s squinty eyes and wisps of white hair seemed magnified in the black light of the banquet room. “Erma Lee, are you surprised?” he asked and laughed. I worked hard not to let my face be a billboard for the shock I felt. I could only wonder how on earth he slipped away without Miss Claudia realizing it.

“Hey there,” I managed.

After a brief introduction, Kasi offered him a cigarette, and within the length of two songs they were dancing. I couldn’t help but wonder how this loud music might play on Richard’s protected nerves. But his twirls and side steps indicated he knew more than me. Kasi screamed and threw her head backwards when he spun her around by the tips of his fingers.

After watching Richard glide across the dance floor with woman after woman, I decided how convenient his nerve disability was. Between him and Marcie, I think the bartender could have liquored up the entire town. I was really impressed when I saw Richard slow dance with the big-butted woman wearing a denim miniskirt and sip from his plastic cup all at the same time.

When the band played “Boot Scootin’ Boogie,” Marcie let out another squeal that reminded me of a hog-calling contest I had heard about on the news. She rounded up her followers, and soon the entire dance floor was filled with women and a few men scooting across the concrete floor, shaking their behinds to the faithful drum beat.

“She’s flat sure crazy about that dance,” I heard Gerald yell across the table. I watched while Gerald shook his head and grinned at her. His intense stare made me wonder if she had some invisible string pulling his eyes towards her.

As the crowd twisted and turned through the maze of shuffles that Marcie directed, I worried that she would take an eye out with that blonde hair. The ends of her hair flew like a
bullwhip as she flipped it over one shoulder and then the other. My concern soon turned to laughter when I saw Richard in the back of the group turning in every opposite direction. Waves of cocktail spewed over the edge of his glass and onto the boots of a lady dancing next to him. The big-haired woman with embroidered roses on her denim shirt shouted something at him. By the way she curled her upper lip, I decided it must have been something harsh. He took it in stride, waving at her and twisting his butt in a half-cocked manner. If only Patricia were here to see this. But I knew the band’s guitar amplifier would not yet cool before one of these fish-eaters would call her with an update on his foolishness.

The music died, and the boot-scooters scattered in various directions. I heard Gerald behind me. “This here is the old boy I was telling you about.” I turned and saw Gerald standing next to a fat man with the speckled face of a twelve-year-old boy. “He’s the one worked up at that plant in Cross City.”

I heard the steel guitar whine, and my lungs went on suspension. “Oh, yeah.” I gagged a little and tried not to act scared.

“Jarvis Pettry,” he said. His wide smile revealed a missing tooth in the corner of his mouth. When he pulled a metal chair next to me, I thought for sure my luck had run out. I casually looked across the table at Gerald, hoping at least he would not be able to hear anything said by this connector to my past.

“I don’t know no Jacobs. Worked with some Petroes, though. They Cajuns.”

I smiled, and before he could ask me what part of town I once lived, I did it. “Gerald, you ’bout ready to dance?”

I barely knew how to walk in high heels, let alone get out
there in front of everybody and show my ignorance. What if they started up with that boot-scootin’ song again? I pictured my tight skirt splitting right down the middle.
“If you’d kept your tail at the house, none of this mess would be happening,”
Mama echoed in my brain, louder than any amplifier the band could ever hope to own.

My heartbeat climbed up to my throat, and the twenty paces it took to reach the dance floor from our paper-clothed table might as well have been twenty miles.

“I’m not real good at all this,” I mumbled. Gerald ignored my revelation and put my hand in the base of his callused palm. I felt the thickness of his fingers on the small of my back.

“You’re doing just fine,” he whispered. I felt the directions within his hand. Left and right to the music, all with that magical hand. The horses in his field couldn’t have been guided any better than I was that evening. I swallowed hard, hoping not to ruin it by stomping on his cowboy boots.

This big man, with his roughness and power, seemed so smooth and gentle under the black light. I thought I heard Gerald hum against my ear, but knew enough not to get too close. I would not allow myself to rub any inch of my material against his black shirt or his big silver belt buckle and its gold-crested scene of a cow roping.

The few minutes in Gerald’s arms made me lift my head a little higher. I was in the middle of that paneled room with a man. A man who drank Coke instead of Jim Beam. A man who could beat the fire out of anybody in the room, but would never be brutal to me. His hands felt smooth against my back, and had I not known better, I would’ve thought he might be wearing velvet gloves. I wanted to place my head on his shoulder like I had seen on the late-night movies when worry kept me hostage and sleep was far away. I realized I was
experiencing that too often used word,
romance
. But I didn’t care. I just gave in and let the music flow me into comfortable dreams.

“Now, I ain’t telling you again. You want some of me?” The yell spun me back to the black lights and paper-covered tables. Gerald craned his neck a few inches, and I leaned sideways.

When I edged to the side of the crowd, I saw a man in a cream-colored western shirt shove Richard. Two ladies with matching yellow sundresses jumped from their seats just before Richard landed like a decoration on the top of the table. The screeching of metal chairs vibrated like fingernails inching down a chalkboard. Richard managed to hold his empty glass and catch the side of the table with his free hand, ripping the paper tablecloth in the process.