Folly (20 page)

She tried to memorize Daisy but her vision was blurred, and she realized again there were others in the room. She didn't know how long she had been there, so she stepped down and waited for Tiny. She held her purse in the crook of her left elbow and rocked her weight back and forth from one foot to the other. Tiny stood right up by Daisy's head, up on his tip toes, up so close his chin was sitting on the coffin. He stood and stood and stood. Mary Lou realized she hadn't touched at all, either Daisy or the coffin. She had kept a careful space between them. The longer she waited for Tiny, the heavier her purse felt, as if the strap was cutting through her arm. There wasn't much in it: her wallet, a comb, some Kleenex. It pulled on her shoulder so, she felt as if she was carrying rocks. It was embarrassing. Tiny was looking at Daisy as if she were a toy and he was home where nobody else mattered. Mary Lou tried to send him a signal that it was time to move on, but when Tiny was into his own world, that didn't work with him. There were other people lined up waiting to pay their respects, waiting for Tiny. She could just move on out herself, pretend she didn't know him. But that would be stupid. Everyone knew who they were anyway; they were the only kids at the funeral. She chewed on the inside of her lip. She wished she had stayed up there longer. Now that she was down, she thought she had probably only stayed with Daisy a few minutes, maybe it was only seconds.

She wouldn't have gone and pulled Tiny down on her own. Even though she was embarrassed to a point of wanting to disappear, she felt he was entitled, but when one of the ladies from the mill went up and joined Tiny, she did reach forward and took his hand and gently tugged him in her direction.

As she and Tiny turned away, she saw her mother and realized Folly had been there all along, watching them. She indicated another door from the one they had come in, and told them to go out in the yard until time for the service. Mary Lou was furious. Why had she worked herself up over whether Tiny would ever come down? She could have left him for her ma to attend to. Her ma could have come forward and done what she had done.

She was glad to go out in the yard. It was one of the few places in town where the grass was still green in spite of the end of summer heat. Mary Lou had always connected the green grass with dead bodies, but now she realized, of course, they weren't buried here but at the cemetery. She nearly tripped on a sprinkler that was stuck in the ground like a golf tee.

Tiny was still holding her hand, swinging it as they walked over to a tree. “That the first dead person you ever saw?” he asked.

“Yup.”

“It sure did look like Daisy.”

“It
was
Daisy.”

“Yeah, but it looked like Daisy playing dead. I thought she was going to open her eyes to scare me.”

Mary Lou laughed. She couldn't laugh very hard because she could tell the laughing would turn to crying. Tiny let go. He balled up his hand and punched Skeeter in the stomach and took off running, knowing he'd be chased and caught and punched back. Mary Lou thought about sitting under the tree, but she didn't want to mess up her skirt. She considered going back in to be with the adults, maybe taking another turn by the coffin, but the sun felt good on her back, and the idea of balancing on that box again made her feel as if her equilibrium was off. She didn't really want to see Daisy, she wanted to talk to her. And then, with a light feeling she thought she'd lost forever, she realized she had talked to Daisy, had told her about growing up, and she hadn't had the dead phone feeling at all. Her mind buzzed with all the talk she needed to have with Daisy.
This must be about the spirit, Daisy. You always said, “There's more than meets the eye, girl.”
She had almost forgotten they still had to go through the service and then putting Daisy in the ground, when her mother opened the back door and signaled them to come back in.

22.

The burial was over before Mary Lou had time to digest the idea of it. The closed coffin bounced with the steps of the men who carried it. A mound of red clay beside the hole in the ground showed the stratification of the layers that had been dug. Daisy entered the earth. Too fast. The minister saying a prayer, some of them muttering Amen, the box going down. Daisy gone when they had closed the lid. Mary Lou had the feeling again of not being able to swallow her eggs. The lump grew in her throat. She fought her tears, watched the red dirt, tried not to visualize the insects, a whole culture moving underground. Folly's arm came around Mary Lou's shoulders and Mary Lou felt the sharp distinction between that arm and her own back, this back that she was trying to keep out of the ground. Why didn't they wait a minute before they threw the first spade of dirt?

Then everyone was backing away, piling into cars, holding doors, closing doors. She and Skeeter and Tiny were funnelled into the back seat of Martha's car. Home, they were going home. Martha was driving. It seemed to Mary Lou she would hear the sound of car doors closing for the rest of her life.

She went in her room and locked the door, took off her funeral clothes and put on her jeans. Sat on the bed, her back pressed against the tacky thin wall, listening to the noise in the other room. Almost like a celebration. And Daisy hadn't been buried an hour yet. She
wouldn't want them doing that if she had just died. Eating. She had seen the women putting out food, had pictured them with covered dishes on their laps in their cars, on the way to and from the cemetery. She'd felt like barfing when they'd removed the covers from the food. Who could eat? Who could talk? She could hear them chattering. She didn't want anything to do with adults. She wanted a quiet place to think, but she had no place to go, so she stayed there, her hot head resting on the wall.

In the living room, Martha and Folly and other women who had known Daisy well were telling stories of times with her. Skeeter and Tiny sat on the floor, eating and listening for a while, then went outside. Folly felt Mary Lou's absence acutely. She wanted her to hear these stories and to tell her own, but she knew not to call her out. She could feel her disapproval coming through the wall. She thought again of getting a house with thick walls, a place where one could wait Mary Lou out through these moods. She thought of taking a plate of food in to her, but decided better of it. Wait until everyone was gone.

Martha laughed, a deep belly laugh at a memory of Daisy, and Folly followed the broad, pendulous swing of her emotion. She had never been so close to anyone before, except perhaps her children when they were babies. She felt as if Martha's feelings were reaching right inside her. She didn't join the laughter but waited, as if readying to catch Martha should she fall off at the end. She was grateful that it was Saturday and one when they had not been called to work. Otherwise they would soon be packing up this gathering so those on second shift could prepare to go in.

Mabel and Emily stopped by to pay their respects to Martha, and a hush fell on the room. Folly was glad to see them. She especially missed Mabel, who had gotten back on first shift after the contract was signed. She missed their talk. She missed watching Mabel's sharpness taking in all that was happening.

“Have some coffee, have some food. Let me get you a plate,” Folly said, ushering them toward the table.

“No, no,” Emily said. “We had dinner. And we can't stay. We gotta get on. We just wanted to stop in.”

Mabel had gone to Martha, taken her hand, said, “I know this is a hard one. I lost my mama a few years back and I ain't never had no bigger loss. You take care of yourself good, hear?”

Martha nodded her head up and down, slowly released Mabel's hand, then took Emily's.

In a few minutes they were gone, and the hum of people talking filled up the room again, but what stayed with Folly was the hush that had come with their presence—the way the white women had gone into a different gear, as if they were guarding their own mouths, and the way they so easily slipped back now into busy talk and comfort. Folly wished they'd stayed longer, but she could understand why they had not. She wanted to know them more fully. She knew Mabel had children and a husband who was gone a lot of the time, a seaman, but she didn't even know how old the children were. She wondered if Mabel had one like her own daughter, sweet and sour.

“I sure was surprised to see Cora show up,” Shirley said. “I wouldn't a thought she'd even know Daisy died. Must read the obituaries.”

Cora's name brought Folly back. “I talked to her the other night, the night Daisy had gotten worse. So she knew.”

“Oh, I see. She didn't really know my mother, so I guess she came for my sake,” Martha said.

“Maybe for her own sake,” Shirley said. “I reckon it might help her to grieve for someone older.”

“Daisy did actually worry a lot about Cora,” Folly reminded them. “That first night after the walk-out, we brought her over here for a picnic, remember Martha? We asked her what she thought about the union. She sat there and thought a minute, and then she said something like: ‘Well, you can count on the fact they'll all be men, and they won't worry so much about the same things that worry the women. They won't concern themselves with Cora. But as long as you understand that, they might be worth something to you.' She was one wise woman, far as I can see.”

“I'd almost forgotten about that talk,” Martha said.

They were in a lull with their memories at the moment Lenore appeared. She knocked on the metal frame of the screen out of manners, though they could all see her. “Come on in,” Folly said. “Hello. Won't you have something to eat with us?”

Lenore's eyes scanned the room and didn't find Mary Lou. “No, thanks,” she said quickly. “I just ate.” She felt conspicuous, out of place. There was no room for anyone else to sit down, except on the floor. The kitchen table had been pushed up to the wall to make room. Lenore waved and nodded at Martha. She didn't have anything she could say in front of all these women. “I thought I'd stop and see if Mary Lou was home.” She wanted Martha to know she was thinking
about her, too, but she couldn't think how to get that feeling to her across the room.

“She's in her room,” Folly said. “Right there.” She indicated the door. “Just knock.”

Lenore was sorry she had come. Mary Lou kept her waiting outside the door for another awkward, long minute. She had hoped to find Mary Lou outside. Expecting all these people to have gathered at Martha's, she'd imagined she'd stop over for a second, ask to speak to Martha, say “sorry, it must be hard to lose your mother.” It hadn't gone at all as planned. Did anything, ever?

When Mary Lou opened the door, she practically fell in. “Hi.”

“Hi.”

Mary Lou sat at one end of the bed and Lenore had no choice but to sit at the other. The room was small. The walls were covered with posters which drew Lenore's eyes. They were basically what she would consider children's posters, mostly animals. A couple were pictures of rock bands. Mary Lou followed Lenore's glance and felt foolish, looking at the room through her eyes. “Don't pay no attention to this,” she said. “I'm about to take all this junk down.”

“Oh,” Lenore said. “I like the polar bear. Just looking at him could cool you right off on a hot day in Victory.” Actually, she was thinking of Betsy, of Alaska, but at least Mary Lou grinned and the frozen rigidity of her face let go for a minute, for which Lenore was grateful.

“Summer's just about gone,” Mary Lou said.

“Sure is. You gonna work right up 'til school starts or you takin' off next week?”

“Might work right on through.” Mary Lou dropped her head as she said this.

“Through what?”

“Through school starting.”

“Not go back?”

“That's what I'm thinking.”

“Wait a minute,” Lenore said. “Let me out of here.”

“How come?”

“Hey, I can just hear it now. How Lenore talked you into quitting school, same as she did, just before eleventh grade. No way, kid. Listen, I'm in favor of education. I'm thinking I might go back myself and get one of those equivalencies. You got brains and you better learn to use them.” Lenore recognized something close to her mother's words coming out of her mouth, so she shut it.

“I learned more working at the store this summer than all last year in school.”

“I know. I know how you feel. And it's true that when you first start working, you do learn a lot. But you know the store, now. You got a job you can do blindfolded. You got nothing to look forward to but more of same. More of same, more of same, more of same.” Lenore mimed the gestures of bagging groceries.

“I guess.” Mary Lou looked disgruntled as she watched Lenore's act.

“I think you should be thinking about getting prepared to go on to college.”

That stopped Mary Lou in her mourning. “Sure,” she said, “sure. Me. Mary Lou College. I think I'd rather bag groceries.”

“Well, it's
your
life,” Lenore said. “I gotta be going. I really came by just to tell you I was sorry about Daisy. Stop by, when you want to talk.”

“Sure, thanks.”

Lenore lowered her voice. “You can come back with me now, if you want to get away from here.”

“No, not now. I'm weirded out. I'm sorry. Thanks. Later.”

Mary Lou was filling with tears, holding them while she locked the door again behind Lenore. She dropped on her bed, face down, and let her empty chest heave, mouth in the pillow, ears dumb with the feeling of a fist in the eustacian tubes. The women on the other side of the wall, as Lenore tried to float by, unnoticed, asked, “How's Mary Lou?”

“Okay.” Lenore bobbed a hand up and down, didn't stop moving. “Bye.”

Folly had that image of Lenore taking exit in her mind as she floated in her own fatigue. Everyone had left but Martha, who was napping on the couch. She wondered if Mary Lou had ever told Lenore she wasn't supposed to hang out with her. Not that she cared anymore. She was glad Mary Lou had made a friend, in spite of her. And she would like to know Lenore, once things got back to something resembling ordinary life. Right now she needed to get her feet back on her own ground. She couldn't stand so much of this everything going to fill up the losses. She thought she would miss Daisy almost as much as Martha would, but at the moment, what bothered her more was missing Mary Lou. She heard Mary Lou's door open, and held her breath, waiting for Mary Lou to come out, but she didn't. She only went to the bathroom and returned to her room. Folly felt rebuffed, fooled by her own hopefulness. She rested her head back against the chair and watched Martha sleep. Next
thing she knew she was fantasizing Martha on the bed, her own body pressed up warm against Martha's back, fitting her curves. A rush of feeling went through her, arousing her. It gave her a sense of being unexpectedly overtaken by joy, of dreaming a warm, sexy dream, which was something she'd never done until they had gotten together. These sensations were part of her new life, in which her sexuality was awake to whatever provoked it, and lots of times that was an inside circuit. A thought, a memory, a sense of her own vigor would bring this rush to her and through her, leaving her tingling and feeling the flutter in her heart.

She remembered Daisy looking up in one of her moments of reentry, looking at them standing together beside the bed and seeming to see the currents that traveled between them, seeming to let their sensuality evoke a smile in her. Daisy had talked after her first stroke about how she'd been able to see charges around and between people, how she'd felt like a voyeur sometimes from having this invisible information.

Folly feared she hadn't made enough room for Mary Lou to be sexual. But was her real fear that Mary Lou wouldn't be able to make enough room for her?

She fixed supper, and the boys came in. Mary Lou was called but refused. “Not eating,” she said through the door. “Go ahead without me.” She pictured them—cannibals chewing on drumsticks and wings. She put her radio on so she would not hear them chewing, swallowing. Folly was heartened by the sound of music coming from Mary Lou's room. She put a plate on the stove for her, covered it with a pot lid.

Martha went home, and Folly asked the boys what they thought of the funeral. ‘I guess it was okay,” Skeeter said. ‘I guess it don't make much difference to you if you're already dead.”

“I might leave our light on tonight,” Tiny said. “Tell Skeeter he better let me.”

“Why?” Folly asked.

“Daisy's ghost. I have a feeling Daisy's ghost might come.”

“Sure, you can leave the light on, but who is this Daisy's ghost? Think she's your memory of Daisy?”

“Don't know,” Tiny shrugged, “but I bet she's scary in the night.” He came around and got up on Folly, hugged her, burying his face in the dark between her breasts.

“Maybe she's coming to comfort you,” Folly whispered. He was comforted by the idea as well as the cocoon she made of her arms about him.

“What's wrong with Mary Lou?” Skeeter asked.

“Nothing that I know of,” she said. “Sometimes a body just wants to be alone.”

But after she put the boys to bed and Mary Lou still hadn't come out, she couldn't go on believing that. She hesitated a hundred times, then finally tapped lightly on the door.

“Who is it?”

“Your ma.”

“Oh.”

“You hungry?”

“Not much.”

Silence. Folly hadn't tried the door, didn't know if it was locked.

“What you want?”

“Can I come in?”

“I guess so.”

Folly went for the knob. It was locked, she found out as Mary Lou reached to spring it open. She closed the door behind her and went to sit at the end of the bed. She looked around at the walls, which were empty. “You getting ready to move out?”