Folly (19 page)

So many of the important things people didn't talk about, and that was one of the reasons Lenore didn't know if others had the same kind of fears. She wondered if Sabrina had been able to feel how afraid she was, to feel how she had one foot stepping in and the other foot ready to start running the other way. Even as she'd loosened up talking with her, she'd had this nervous feeling that the way she had been taught to think about Black people was cruising along just underneath the surface of her friendliness, cruising back and forth, waiting for an opening, waiting with a desire to sabotage her. She tried to get a hold of what she had learned that was cruising there, and where she had learned it, but her mind kept wanting to slip off the point. Her mother had been a Southerner through and through, but she hadn't carried any hard line on race. In fact, she'd been the first waitress to serve Blacks at the counter, after integration.

Lenore remembered her telling the story of how four Blacks had come in, two men and two women, and sat at the far end, which was Adele's section. Evelyn, down at her end, was smoking, and Adele came down and lit up, turned her large rear end toward where they were sitting, and said, “It'll be a cold day in Hell before I serve a nigger.” Evelyn had sat on it a minute. The Blacks had sat, too, elbows resting on the counter. It was midafternoon and the rest of the place was empty. Finally, Evelyn moseyed on down and signaled them toward her end. “I think you'll find the service a little faster down here,” she said. Later what she couldn't stop talking about was being shocked at what a good tip they'd given her. That and the fact that Adele hadn't spoken to her for a week.

Lenore wished she could have a long, slow breakfast with Betsy, who would tell her how she felt inside. Then, giving up what wasn't possible, she got up and dressed and fixed coffee for herself, and sat down to write her.

Dear Betsy,

I've gotten behind, put off writing all week because of one thing or another, and now it seems like there's too much to tell at once. Considering the usual lack of action in Victory, you must be wondering what I mean. So, I'll try to give you a summary of what's been happening here.

I found, not one, but two people so far to give that book to. (Ha, ha.) The first one was Martha Hurley. I don't know if you know her. She works out at the mill, lives down at the trailer park next door to Mary Lou, who's a kid (works at store) I've been hanging out with some. Her mother's name is Folly and she works out at the mill, too. In fact she's one of the ones who's worked hard on the organizing out there, both she and Martha started the walk out. Remember I told you they had a union election and last week they finally got them a contract settlement. I guess it's good. It's something, anyway. They never had anything like it before. I'm getting off the point but these people all count somehow, you'll see. When they were out on strike I volunteered to do something to help, and Martha called me a couple of times to do things. Like I babysat a couple of times and I drove some women to meetings and down to the mill for voting. I got wondering about Martha and one day she told me about some old girlfriend. I finally got up the nerve to give her the book. Nervous? Me? God, I was praying. She's older. Not that old, but closer to my mother's age than to ours. I went around thinking—Jesus, girl, what got into you, you're crazy, passing this book around to someone your mother's age. Well, it turns out to be okay. She come to see me, and she is one. She didn't talk a whole lot about it, but we're going to talk more. She brought the book back, and I just couldn't tell her to pass it on. So, along come Mary Lou—she's only 16-comes right out and asks me the other night if I am one. Says she might be one herself. That's enough, right. But that ain't all. The main thing she's worried about is whether her mother is one. Folly, that's her mother, is Martha's best friend. Now when Martha talked to me, she didn't say nothing about Folly. I don't think she would, though, even if they were together. She told me about her girlfriend who went up north to New York City and never came back. Do you ever picture yourself becoming an Alaskan? I want to know about it if you do, even though I hope it's not so.

My ma has knocked off the booze entirely. I can hardly believe it. We're still fighting, in fact more than ever. She's bitchy when she's not drinking, but then I guess she's bitchy when she's drunk, too. I hope she'll be better after a while. She goes to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. I'm not supposed to tell that, but I don't get what's the big secret anyway. Everybody can see when you're drunk so what's the shame of them knowing when you're sober. Oh, well, I guess we're all hypocrites. I wouldn't want someone going around telling everyone I'm a lesbian. I tried to let Mary Lou know to keep her mouth shut without coming right out and saying it. I hope she will. She's too young to understand
that we're all willing to lie sometimes to keep ourselves protected. Don't I sound like the jaded old lady?

I've been hanging out some with Sabrina. Went over to her house last night and met her father, who's a preacher. He looks real nice. Remember when we used to go back in there and try to listen in on that church? I'm not sure if that's where he preaches. Anyway, I felt so funny being there in Sabrina's house and thinking about when we did that. Like, whose idea was it anyway? This was the first time in my whole life I'd ever been inside the house of a Black person. How about you? I guess that's really not so hard to believe, considering. It's not that there was anything strange about the house. Same kind of furniture as our houses. On the wall, though, they had a picture. It was made out of something like velvet, the background was a dark maroon, like the color of drapes in a church, and then the face of a Black woman stood out on the velvet. Hard to figure out why I keep thinking of it, but if you were sleepwalking and you happened to walk into this house and open your eyes, you'd see that picture and you'd know it wasn't a white house. It's funny how I can see that picture in my mind better than I could describe what Sabrina looks like or her father, or I think I told you before, she has a two-year old son, Eli, real cute.

I've been thinking about how there's this whole bunch of people out there, the entire Black race, that I don't know hardly a dang thing about. I mean I know what we learned—a bunch of lines, but shit, sometimes I'm not even sure about that—what was in the lines and why, and who made them up? That Negroes were inferior and that's why they were poor—remember that line? So how come my mother's poor, then, and you're family ain't rich, either? Sometimes I feel real sad, thinking about how can this ever be made right. I don't know. It goes real deep. I get mad, too, at like who made up these rules. It wasn't me. I don't want to go around feeling superior. I can't stand people who act that way, but don't you think other white people assume I am 'cause I got the same skin as them? And that keeps those lines running in me, even if I don't believe in them. And it's scary to have them in me, and trying to talk to Sabrina without all this other stuff in the way. I'd like to talk to her like we were two ordinary people, alike in some ways, different in others.

Write me back about this if you can make sense of what I'm trying to say. I wish you were here so we could talk it out together. If you're thinking I might have Sabrina lined up next for “Sappho,” don't worry. I don't think so, but you never know. I don't really know her that well, yet.

I miss you all the time. Oh, I almost forgot. Do you receive my ESP messages? And have you been sending some here? Describe what you send. No codes, please.

When are your bones going to be cold enough to draw you back home? I guess Victory will be ready for you. Question is, will you be ready for it?

Send me some more good books.

All my love,

Lenore

P.S. You say you're learning a lot by being so far from home, but here I am learning there are other worlds right down the street in Victory.

21.

Martha looked down over Daisy, sleeping the last of her life out in a coma. God, how you've been a fixture in my life, she thought. She skipped to a time in childhood, a spanking. She couldn't remember the lie but remembered being caught in it. Daisy had held her by the arm and spanked her rear with the thin, stringy fingers of her other hand, stinging, meaning business. She looked at the knobs Daisy's knuckles were now. Even as she watched them, she thought she saw them go a little looser, as if they were letting go. She thought she felt Daisy slip deeper in the coma. Was it Daisy letting go or was it her letting go of Daisy? Her heart swelled up as if to fill the space she forecast missing her would mean. She felt full with her memories of them together and hoped Daisy could feel that, too. Martha had, all along, been angry that her mother's old age had come too early, that she had worked too hard and worn too thin, had eaten the wrong foods for keeping her arteries clean because they were the cheapest diet. But now that Daisy seemed so close to leaving, Martha felt almost peaceful. She had the sense that death would be more of a prize than punishment.

At supper break Cora came and sat down across the table from Folly, unusual because they rarely saw each other except from a distance. She looked a little less disconnected, Folly thought. “Where's Martha tonight?” she asked.

Folly lowered her voice. “Took one of her sick days. Her mother's failing. You know she was in the hospital, anyway, not very alert, but now she's gone into a deep coma.”

“Oh. I'm sorry.” Cora bit at her fingernails, nervously.

“Funny you should ask about Daisy, now. She used to ask about you, right after, you know, when we had the walk out.” Folly couldn't bring herself to say after your baby died. She wished she knew the name of that baby. They had always just said—Cora's baby.

“She did?” Cora's surprise sounded in her voice. She wound and unwound a strand of her hair around her finger, getting used to the idea. “That was mighty nice of her, I guess.”

“She was a good woman,” Folly said, vaguely realizing she was speaking of Daisy as if she'd already died. She took her sandwich out of the wax paper and started eating. Cora did, too. Folly saw how Cora's hand wasn't steady when she poured the coffee from her thermos. Neither of them said anything while they ate, though Folly was thinking that she wanted to, and as Cora closed up her thermos, she got out, “Listen, I wanted you to know, Mabel and me, we really tried to keep the clause about sick children in the contract. I never felt right that it got put out at the end. I mean, I don't know if it means anything to you or not, but I just thought I'd tell you.”

Cora's eyes filled up with tears and she nodded her head up and down as she went about preparing to leave, picked up her stuff, speechless, went on nodding, then moved out for the bathroom.

When the shift was over, Folly went around to the pay phones to call home and tell Mary Lou to fix the boys some breakfast because she'd be stopping by the hospital to see how Daisy was doing. Really to see how Martha was doing because the idea that Daisy had died that night had taken strong hold in her. She wasn't going to tell that to Mary Lou, but when she told her Daisy had gone fully into a coma, Mary Lou said she had known it. “I felt it,” she said. “I wouldn't be surprised if she's died already, Ma. I swear to you, I knew something was wrong. I was working away last night, stacking cans . . . a big delivery that came in late and we needed it bad. Anyway there I was, three boxes of applesauce jars to go, no reason in the world to be thinking about Daisy, and then all of a sudden she comes into my mind so clear. I could see her. You know, not the way she is now in the hospital bed, but up standing and pointing at me.”

“What for?”

“Scolding me, never mind what for. Anyway, she's stayed with me ever since. For a little shriveled lady that Gramma Daisy sure can take up some space in your mind.”

“I know,” Folly said. “Look, I can't talk. Someone's waiting for the line. Tell the boys I'll see them later. I don't know what time I'll be home. When do you have to go in?”

“Noon. Ma, you'll call me, won't you, when you get to the hospital and find out what's going on? Maybe I can get me a ride and come over there.”

“No. You stay with the boys. I'll call you, soon as I can.”

Mary Lou hung up the phone and tried to convince herself what other possibilities existed besides Daisy being dead, but she kept bumping into blank spaces. She tried to talk to Daisy the way she'd taken to doing often since the last stroke, but her speaking wasn't being received. It was like trying to hit a wall through a thick, felt mat. Your punch would have neither sound nor resilience.

Martha had been right there with Daisy as she breathed a great sigh and was gone. She held both of Daisy's hands and waited for her chest to rise, knew it wouldn't but waited anyway, holding her own breath. Then leaned close up to Daisy's face, feeling for air on her cheek. Everything still but Martha's own alarm inside her about shouldn't she be doing something? She didn't want to call the nurse. She wanted to be alone with her mother. And what could possibly be done, anyway? Something to bring her back to her coma? To be done was to let go. Great, huge sobs jerked spasmodically from Martha's chest, nearly tipping her off balance and over onto Daisy. They were empty of tears. The other bed in the room was empty, a relief. Her stomach felt empty and flattened by the sobs which repeated, Mama, Mama, Mama. Martha thought of herself as always calm and steady and had not known these sobs were in her. She barely recognized herself as the woman who held on to her mother, knowing she couldn't do so much longer. She realized Daisy was turning cold. She pulled the sheet and blanket up over her hands, up to her chin. Touched Daisy's face. Skin no longer alive. If you slapped it, there would be no echo, no sting. She stepped back, swallowed the last sob, which felt hard in her throat, and became calm. She tried to think was there something she wanted to say to Daisy before she let her body be taken away? She thought of times when she wished she'd come out and told Daisy how much she was bugging her so she'd have understood why she was hiding away in her room or going over to Folly's all the time. Probably Daisy had known without the telling. The figure in the bed began to seem less and less real to her, so she went down the hall for the nurse. She was already beginning to picture her mother at different stages of her life. Daisy out of bed, on her feet, saucy and strong.

The reason Folly hadn't left work early to go to Martha was because she knew that would blow Martha's cover for her lie that she was sick.
When she got to the hospital and found the room empty, she was sorry right away. Daisy's bed was gone, even. What did they do, wash down the whole bed when someone died in it? The nurses told her the funeral parlor hadn't come for the body until six, though Daisy had died a few hours before. Folly rushed there and found Martha, collected, seated with Mr. Cowley, a pot of tea between them. Mr. Cowley had already gotten into his black suit. His crew cut stood up in front, waxed stiff. In the front of the building he sold insurance in a golf shirt. In the back, he ran the funeral parlor in a black suit. He got up and shook Folly's hand and then backed through a door that fit so inconspicuously into a wall panel, Folly hadn't even realized it was there.

“He's really the original disappearing act, ain't he?” Folly said.

Martha nodded, then stood and went into her arms. “God,” Folly said into her ear, “that damn mill. I wish I'd come sooner. I'm sorry. I love you. I'm sorry.”

Martha hung on to her, trying to say it was okay, but this time the tears came with the sobs, came in a flood which spilled onto Folly's neck and shoulder, and Martha's chest was held from shattering by Folly's full arms.

Later, Folly's arms went around Mary Lou and tried to comfort her but failed. Mary Lou's back was slender, lithe. She slipped away easily, and stayed inside herself. She was angry at Folly for not having called. But there had been no reason to call. Folly had simply held Martha until she had come back into control, then brought her home, left her in her trailer, and come over here. Folly sat in her rocker and rocked vigorously, looking for some comforting herself. Mary Lou sat at the table, licked her index finger, poured a little salt from the salt shaker on it, then picked it off grain by grain with her tongue. After repeating this a few times, she puckered up her lips as if her feelings were right there behind them, not to be let out. Uninvited, Folly began talking. She told everything she knew about Daisy's dying, which was whatever Martha had told her on the way home. Then she reiterated her own course of events for the day, the fact that Cora had sat across from her that night, her regrets that she hadn't followed her instincts and left work. By the end of this, Mary Lou had let the pucker out. “I sure will miss her,” Folly said, finally.

Mary Lou tried to keep on looking at her mother though her vision was blurry. “Me, too.” She wanted to tell her mother about the rest of what it was like for her, of how she couldn't talk to Daisy anymore, there was no receiver, like picking up the phone and getting a dead line,
how lonely that was, almost like thinking it was too late to be a child. She didn't pucker, but she didn't talk, either. She sat there looking like someone surely had to be accused, and then she got up saying she had to get ready for work.

“I'm going back over to be with Martha,” Folly said. “I hope you understand.”

“Course.”

“If you want to stop over there before you go, do.”

“What for?”

“I don't know. To talk I guess. I know losing Daisy's going to be hard on us all.”

“Yeah, Ma, sure,” were the last words that could get around the lump in Mary Lou's throat as she walked down the hall, her back to Folly.

Mary Lou went through her closet about five times, looking for something to wear, her frustration growing to desperation as the time went on. She was supposed to be dressing for the funeral. She wanted to put on something comfortable but everything comfortable she had was dead wrong for a funeral—she knew that without ever having been to one before. She kept trying to picture what it was going to be like. Was she going to see Daisy? She was afraid to ask.

Folly called her. “Aren't you ready?”

“No, Ma, can you come here a minute?”

Her mother appeared in the door. “What?”

Mary Lou stood in her underwear, hands on her hips, pelvis tilted in a posture of insolence. She gestured to the closet. “Nothing. I ain't got nothing to wear.” Maybe I'll stay home, she thought but did not say.

Folly faced the closet, pushed the hangers all back, then started flipping them forwards one by one. When she got to the end, she went back, pulled out a white blouse, a green pleated skirt, handed them to Mary Lou, who, like a robot, put out her arms to receive them. Mary Lou had a vague memory of being a child, standing between her mother's knees while she dressed her. Her mother was gone. She put on the clothes, stood in front of her bureau mirror, turned—still with the sense of a robot—a full circle, then leaned closer to the mirror. She examined herself for change. She felt the age of someone who had sustained many losses. Folly was calling them to come for scrambled eggs. She didn't understand why they were eating before the funeral. It did not seem an appropriate thing to her. Her stomach was jumping all over with her
fear of the funeral, of taking her grief into public. She wished she could stay home, alone, while the rest of them went. She could cry and cry and no one would know, and then she could go say goodbye to Daisy later. But the burial was to take place right after the funeral and there was no choice but for them all to do this together.

Martha had gone early to the funeral parlor, and they were to ride over with Effie, who called while they were still in the middle of scrambled eggs and said, “Holler when y'all are ready.” Mary Lou's eggs tasted chalky, and she was only able to swallow them by washing them down with orange juice. She dashed back in her room, changed to her dark blue wrap around. The waist of the green plaid had felt like a tourniquet. A relief, for at least now she could breathe.

They reached the door of the room and Folly and Effie went on in, leaving the kids standing in the hall. “What do we do?” Skeeter whispered to Mary Lou.

“We go on in and see,” she whispered back, not that she really knew. Tiny had taken her hand. She could see Martha standing with people around her. The coffin was off behind her, flowers at both ends. Irises and she didn't know what. Martha looked puffy and tired but otherwise not much different. She and Skeeter and Tiny had gone through the door in their own little cluster and Mr. Cowley had spoken to them in a very low, quiet voice, so low Mary Lou hadn't caught a word he'd said. She worried that he might have made some instruction about how they should act, where they should go next.

Then Folly saved them, came and gathered them and brought them over to some of the women from the mill, and said, “These are my children—Mary Lou, Skeeter, Tiny.” Everybody nodded. Were you supposed to talk? Make chit chat at these things? Mary Lou tried to hear what they were saying but her ears didn't seem to be working, her eyes kept sneaking over and lighting on the coffin. Next thing she knew she was facing Martha. Wordless, she put out her hand and tried to make a look of sympathy appear on her face for Martha, who ignored the hand and gave her a big hug. “I'm glad y'all are here,” she said, as if they were cronies. Mary Lou could feel Martha's breath shudder in her chest though she remained board stiff herself. How could she possibly find comfort for somebody else even though she knew that's what she was supposed to do?

Finally Martha released her and hugged the boys, though not the same way. She asked would they like to see Daisy. “I guess,” Skeeter answered, and she walked them to the coffin. Skeeter went first. He walked very slowly by it, pausing at the head for a few seconds. He had
his baseball cap tucked up in his armpit. He looked as if when he got to the vase of irises, he would take off in a sprint. Mary Lou waited until he was off the platform that the coffin was on before she stepped up herself. She heard her own foot land and wondered what the step was made of. It felt like a box turned over. It seemed narrow so that she felt as if she were tightrope walking. She moved along, unaware of movement, amazed that this was actually Daisy she was seeing. This dead body. Looked like Daisy. Looked peaceful. Looked more peaceful than maybe she'd ever seen Daisy. Who are you, Daisy? Who are you now? So still. She stopped at Daisy's head. She couldn't hear anything over her own thoughts.
I'm so surprised that you almost look real, Daisy.
Like you're coming back in my memory. What you looked like before the last stroke, even before that.
I'm sorry you're not gonna get to see me grown up, Daisy; I don't know what it's gonna be like.