A Virtuous Woman (Oprah's Book Club) (7 page)

And I can’t even say I did my part inside, the woman’s work, and let the men manage the outside. But I wasn’t helpless, just useless. See, I had it in the back of my mind that one day I’d have somebody like Sudie Bee to help me, and I’d be able to pass for a grown woman, or the lady of the house. Somebody like Sudie Bee covers for people. Having her in my kitchen would’ve been no different from those commercials you see where the husband says, “Mmm, Mmm, this sure is good cake. Tastes like you made it from scratch,” and the wife just winks at the camera and
wiggles the mix box behind her back. It’s not any different from that at all.

Mama’d baste a turkey that Sudie Bee had chased, caught, killed, scalded, everything. She’d tap more salt into the pan dressing Sudie Bee had made, and I’d come in when everything was basted, salted, and garnish the turkey, put the napkins in rings. I put finishing touches on mama’s finishing touches. I was twice-removed from the real work, far away from mama stooped over a roasting pan brushing butter on the turkey, and even farther away from Sudie Bee running around the chicken yard with an ax in her hand. But I had it in the back of my mind that mama was capable of doing all Sudie Bee’s jobs, and she just didn’t do them because she needed to be free to do other things, like sitting down at the kitchen table every morning with her cup of tea and a notepad, making a list for the day, then going upstairs to bathe, read, rest, embroider, then coming back downstairs to check on how things were moving along, do some of her finishing touches and split a RC Cola with Sudie Bee.

Try as I might, I’ll never forget the first night I spent with John Woodrow in one of those little migrant places, and I opened up two kinds of canned something and stirred everything together in one pot. I stood at that grimey old hot plate and wished Sudie Bee would come through the back door, take her hat off, come over to me, take the
spoon out of my hand and say, “Lord have mercy! You got to stir it quicker than that to keep it from ruining all on the bottom. Let me do it. You go set the table and put the ice in the glasses.” But she didn’t show up to keep me from ruining the food, and I doubt we had any ice for the glasses.

I spent many a frustrating hour learning how to cook, trying to remember how Sudie Bee had done things, but mostly making things up as I went along. Poor Jack had to choke down a few dry mouthfuls before I could even make a recipe come out. Cooking’s not like cleaning. You don’t just know what good is and then cook it. You need a touch that comes with time and patience, especially if you grew up playing the piano while meals were being prepared and then coming into the kitchen just in time to put parsley on the plates. But you ought to see the way I’ve kept this house and cooked for Jack. I’m sorry to say that I might not have much in my life to be proud of, but I’m surely pleased with myself every time I see bread rise, and it rises every time.

I don’t hear any more shots. He’s finished. I have to be, too, for now. Some times it’s easier to stop thinking about things than others, but then how many people do you know who’re able to get off a loop as easily as they got on it? Daydreaming, loving the wrong man, smoking, all habits hard to break.

T
he night before Burr and Tiny Fran got married I didn’t sleep not one wink, worrying, worrying, worrying. I worried about it all. I ought to’ve slept though, as hard as Frances’d run me all week. “Do this. Do that.” Kept me busy as a one-arm paper hanger, pruning the hedgebushes, arranging pine straw, cleaning out the chicken house. By the time Saturday rolled around I was so tired I thought I might liable not to be able to stand up for Burr, but I did. Pissed Frances off too, me standing up front at the wedding. I know it did. But I didn’t give a whit. That was I and Burr’s business. He’s like a son to me.

About all I had to look forward to at that wedding, besides being Burr’s best man, was seeing Ruby. We’d been hanging right tight since John Woodrow died. It wasn’t
anybody else there I gave a happy hurrah about, like all Frances’s out-of-town family. They didn’t have the slightest notion what was going on that day. Burr told me they had the impression him and Tiny Fran had been courting a fair amount of time. Now I wonder where they got that? I wanted to say to Frances, I wanted to ask her, “You really think you’re slick, don’t you? Here you are trying to pull the wool over somebody’s eyes.” I guess she thought shaking Tiny Fran’s pooched-out self into that shift-looking dress, and it white, would fool her folks. But I thought, Frances, you just wait till nigh about five months from now and here’s Tiny Fran and a teeny baby and see if they don’t start counting on their fingers.

And you can damn well bet old preacher what’s-his-face from down at Ephesus wouldn’t have anything to do with it. He’d gotten wind of the mess from somebody at Porter’s store and he wasn’t touching it. They had to bring in a civil somebody. And I could’ve put another dollar down on Burr’s mama and daddy not showing up. I know they both stayed shut up in the house all day, his daddy probably worrying the tar out of Burr the whole time he was trying to get his clothes on.

Burr’s daddy, Leon, was a mealy-mouth sonofabitch if there ever was one, same age as me, always treated me like I didn’t have enough sense to pour piss out of a boot with the instructions on the heel. He’d go around out here with
his big old cigar in his mouth, smiling like Franklin D. Roosevelt, acting he was happy as he could be to be a poor dumb old working man, but you knew it was the opposite true. Then he’d go home at night and beat his wife, beat Burr too. And then poor Pansy died like she did, up sewing in the middle of the night.

Used to he used to go sit at the store, rear back, rub that great big belly of his and say, “Well, I’ll tell you, I might be just a poor old working man, but I’ve got the sense to see Lonnie Hoover might ought to sell that hay for a dime more a bale if he expects to turn a profit on it,” or “Nobody’s going to ask me what I think about it, me being just a poor working man, but if they did I’d tell them Lonnie might ought not to plant that back field with fescue again this year.” You wanted to say to him, “That’s right. Nobody gives a damn what you think, so shut up,” but it wasn’t worth the air. You just rolled your eyes. And then his only boy marries a Hoover and gets that back field and now he’s one of the ones that’s not going to ask Leon his opinion.

After Burr got married I remember how Leon had his heart attack and they laid him out. I went with Burr and stood there with him looking in the casket and he told me, he said, “All my daddy ever wanted was a nice suit of clothes, a fine automobile, and some respect.” Burr’d bought a hundred-and-fifty-dollar suit to bury him in. Leon
would’ve set fire to it if Burr’d offered it to him while he was living, bad as his mouth would’ve been watering for it. And then I and Burr went to the Buick place and he got a little model automobile and went back to the funeral home, slipped it in beside Leon where nobody’d spot it and have a time with it. Then I said to Burr, “Burr, he’s got the fine suit of clothes and a brand new Buick, I guess a nice service’ll have to do for the respect.” Then he told me his daddy got respect, he knew he’d gotten it because it was something he’d beat him into telling him all the whole time he was growing up. No wonder he didn’t go to the boy’s wedding. He must’ve been pure eat up with jealousy.

But on back, I got to the house and Ruby was running a dustrag in the living room, and I asked her how about if we went to my house and cooked supper after all the commotion was over. She was just learning how to cook then and she liked to try out things on me. But while we were standing there we heard Frances in the next room telling Lonnie how that little girl in there, meaning Ruby, wanted to act like she was better than somebody, said she’d snubbed her when she’d tried to show her how to arrange some little pick-up sandwiches on a tray. Then Lonnie said, all he said to her was, “I told you you should’ve hired a nigger.”

I said right out loud, “Lord God Almighty.” I knew what Ruby’d come from by then, how her daddy was a Ruritan, and I just wanted to grab her and tell her something, but I didn’t feel like I could touch her. She just looked down
at her feet and she didn’t say anything for a minute, then she started giggling, had to pure hold the dustrag up to her mouth to stop up the sound. I said, “What’s so funny?” I sure didn’t see anything funny. And she said, “Whew! I just thought of Frances tasting one of those little lady-fingers her sister brought and commenting on how she put in way, way too much salt. Then I say maybe she ought to have something to wash it down, how it’s the rat poison I sprinkled on top that brings out the salty flavor. And then Frances grabs at her throat and falls out.”

I thought Ruby’d lost her mind! I’d never heard of such from a woman, but that was before I knew how to take her. Sometimes she’d fool you, funny when she meant to be serious and the other way around. I got in hot water many a time not taking Ruby the way she wanted me to. Yes, I sure thought she was thinking about doing something to old Frances. That was also before she told me what she’d had lined up for John Woodrow. After then I always said, You better think twice before you step on Ruby’s toes. I remember one time we were joking around having a good time and I asked her, “What kind of punishment you got in mind for me if I step out of line?” And do you know what she said? She said, “Oh, I’m going to love you to pieces, love you to death.” How about that? Hear such as that for twenty-five years and see don’t you miss it when it’s gone. It’s a cold, cold heart that wouldn’t.

J
ack came in the house, kissed me like I knew he would. Now he’s gone again, gone down to the store to meet his pinball game. I should’ve gone with him. I usually do. I just didn’t think I’d be much fun today, and even a short walk seems to ruin me lately.

I wonder what mama would have to say about me sitting here alone as I am, waiting for Jack’s pinball game to break up, no friends to speak of, except Burr and June, my brothers and their families. I bet she’d want to know if I could say I’m happy in spite of everything, living so far out here, being sick. She’d say, “Tell me, has there been a single ounce of good to come of all you’ve been through?”

I’d look around the house, far as I can see from this kitchen table, while mama waits for an answer, and I’d show her Jack’s old brogans in the corner by the broom,
the picture of a snowman June made for me that Jack had framed, photographs I brought back when I went home for daddy’s funeral, especially the one of me holding my little prize Schubert bust at my ten-year piano recital, and then I’d say, “Well, mama, I do believe I am. In spite of everything, I do believe I’ve been happy. That John Woodrow time was something I went through to get where I am, and I can appreciate good now because of it.” Surely that would satisfy her.

June’s been about as much reason for the good I’ve felt as any other, all those times she’d run to Jack and me. I couldn’t count how many mornings we got up and found her sitting on our front porch, swinging, waiting for us to start stirring, Saturdays, summer days, school holidays. She still comes to see us about every other weekend. I’ve been making some clothes for her to take on a cruise this winter.

Since I’ve been sick June’s brought me a present every time she’s visited. I’ve told her not to bring me anything, but I feel like I have to accept the things, and when she leaves I take the robes and gowns and slippers, they’re all so pretty and I know expensive, and I put them in the cedar chest with all the presents she made me when she was small. Sometimes I can’t help but think how mama would’ve liked June.

Jack and I’d been married about three years with no
babies when we figured something might really be wrong. It took us another year to decide to see a doctor and then another year to get enough nerve to go. When we finally went and found out I wasn’t likely to ever have a child, I think Jack and I both more or less assumed possession of June. Burr knew what we were doing. It didn’t bother him. I think he was glad for the help with her. A man must have a hard time looking after a girl.

I’ll never forget her coming here once when she was twelve, crying, scared to death, absolutely no idea what had happened to her. I talked to her, explained things the best I could, and let her spend the rest of the afternoon here with me. Later on, I walked her back home and I got Tiny Fran out on the porch and asked her why, why for goodness sakes she hadn’t talked to the girl about her body, why she at least hadn’t gotten her some books to read. Tiny Fran told me it was none of my business, got pretty belligerent about it. We went around and around on the subject of her irresponsibility until I just gave up. By then I should’ve known better than expect her to apologize for the past or change so the future’d be different, better. But I went right back in the house and helped June pack an overnight bag, marched right past Tiny Fran with her, and brought her back here. Burr came over later that day and after I told him what had happened, he gave June some money to buy a dress she’d had her eye on. I promised
her we’d go into town and get it when Jack got home. Burr thanked me for looking after her, bringing her back with me. We were both surprised Tiny Fran let me take her without another fight, but you never really could predict her. Nobody predicted she’d leave him. We all thought she’d stay out here chipping away at everybody’s peace of mind as long as she lived.

If Tiny Fran felt pushed hard enough she’d even say Jack and I brainwashed June. When June was small and Tiny Fran would say something like that with Burr present, he’d wear himself out trying to explain how ridiculous she was being. He’d bring up all those times she’d jumped all over June for no reason, humiliated her, and he’d come in from the fields to find June crying on the steps or shut up in her room. Then Burr got tired of listening to her and tired of running down his list, and when she’d get on one of her screaming jags he’d just bring June to me and ask me to keep her until he could get Tiny Fran in order. And more nights than a few, Burr himself spent the night on our couch. Poor Burr was certainly caught between a rock and a hard place with his wife and the land her daddy gave him. And when the two children got caught in the middle, Roland was pushed to lie, steal, and hurt anything he touched, and June, thank goodness, was pushed to me, straight across her daddy’s field to me.