Her Own Place (11 page)

Amberlee looked at Nellie Grace. “Promise me if I ever have children and start from day one trying to put them on the phone to talk, and start showing their pictures to every stranger I meet, promise you will cart me off to see a shrink as fast as you can.”

Nellie Grace grinned, “On my Girl Scout's honor I promise, even if I've never been one.” The childless sisters shared a private giggle.

During the early 1980s, the exodus of the blacks from the rural farming area to the North after World War II ended was reversed by their return. Mae Lee Barnes watched and listened to much-changed speaking voices shifting in and out of varied accents when they told questionable stories about their very successful northern jobs and businesses.

Within a few years a small black section near the edge of town was dotted with the new construction of modest, two-bedroom brick homes with wall-to-wall carpet and carports or two-car garages—houses that for the new owners defied any description short of a mansion, although to Mae Lee's way of thinking they were awfully tiny and crowded together. Still, Mae Lee had to confess to herself that she was a little jealous, especially after Ellabelle made the decision to buy a house in the subdivision.

When Annie Ruth and Dallace visited in 1985 along with their husbands and children, they sensed how lonely Mae Lee
was out there in the country by herself, especially since Warren and Lou Esther had started staying on and off in town with Lou Esther's aged sick aunt, while Hooker Jones's wife Maycie was in and out of the hospital most of the time.

When her daughters were ready to leave Mae Lee seemed so uneasy and lonely that they stayed on for another day. Earlier that year, Taylor had mentioned to his sisters how lonely it was for their mama living all alone in the rural countryside, and suggested that they encourage her to move to town. But she'd always seemed so cheerful when her daughters called or visited, they believed Taylor had misread her feelings. Still, when one of her sons-in-law spoke about a move to town, Mae Lee surprised everyone by agreeing that it might be worthwhile to buy a small house in town, closer to where Ella-belle lived.

Mae Lee's Realtor son-in-law Bradford shook his head. “Mrs. Barnes, you don't want to buy a house in the section of town I believe you're thinking of.” He turned to his wife Annie Ruth for verification. She nodded her head, yes. Bradford continued, “I can see you building a house at the end of that section, Mrs. Barnes, but not buying and living in one of those little boxes in it. They're too cramped, and they won't hold their value for very long.”

Taylor had said the same thing when she hinted she might buy like Ellabelle did. In Ellabelle's whole neighborhood there was in fact no house, new or old, nice enough for her to leave the country to live in. But just at the edge of the section, where the street widened and became a road, there were several large lots where a house could be built that wasn't so small and
boxy and jammed up next to its neighbors. It was inside the city limits, yet there was land, and trees, and room to plant a garden, and maybe even a few fruit trees. It could be a nice house, with several spare bedrooms for when the girls and their families visited.

To all the people she grew up with who had moved away, Mae Lee wanted to prove that it hadn't been a bad idea to stay in Rising Ridge. Maybe continuing to live down in what some called the boondocks hadn't been the fashionable thing to do back in the 1950s and 1960s, but now, when her old friends and classmates would come back to Rising Ridge with all their city airs, looking upon her as down-at-the-heels country, she'd have something for them to see. She'd show them.

Mae Lee was surprised that her children moved so quickly in getting the land and the new house under construction. A bank loan was easily granted, but she hesitated signing off on her land until Warren and Taylor assured her she wouldn't be liable for too much, because her children had put down a sizable down payment. She had not known at the time that a big chunk of it came from Nellie Grace's divorce settlement. That, coupled with the children chipping in on the monthly bank payments and a son-in-law who was a builder, made it possible.

Mae Lee asked Bradford, her son-in-law, to please put a lightning rod on the roof of her new house, and while they were up there to kindly put up the rooster weather vane she'd saved for years.

On moving day, in the summer of 1986, Mae Lee's children and grandchildren were on hand to help her make her move from the farm to the new house in town.

Mae Lee's daughter Dallace had forewarned her not to be overly concerned when she saw her grandson Tread. “Tread has had an earring put in his ear,” she said. “But the earring doesn't imply what you think. It's in the left ear,” she'd explained.

Mae Lee had been so angry. “What am I thinking?” she questioned. “What am I supposed to think? So, it's in the left ear. Left ear, right ear. It doesn't amount to a hill of beans what ear it's in, Dallace. He's wearing an earring, isn't he? What difference does it make where he wears it? I'm like the Ninevites in Jonah's day. I don't know my right hand from my left. What am I supposed to think, is he or isn't he?”

“Don't be silly, Mama,” Dallace had said. “You don't know anything about kids nowadays.”

The first time Mae Lee saw the earring in her grandson's ear she had pretended not to notice. Anyhow, Tread worked pretty hard to keep the earring out of his grandmother's sight. One evening at the dinner table, he leaned near her. “Grandmama,” he'd said softly so everyone wouldn't hear, “I don't think I'll care for a helping of summer squash, thank you.” And, as always, she'd put a spoonful or two on his plate, and like always he'd made a teasing face and had eaten them. He was the same old Tread, earring or not.

The next day, after they had all gone home, she felt at loose ends. From dawn until time for bed the house was quiet. Mae
Lee was lonely. There were too many empty beds. Too much, too late, she thought. Reminders of her children were scattered throughout the rooms, Amberlee's doll, Taylor's baseball cap, the things her grandchildren left behind. She wished her children were still there, still little and underfoot.

She gazed half-interestedly at the television, half-listened sometimes to medical advice that nearly always left her with what she thought was a new ailment in her body. I'll have to talk with my doctor Dallace about that, Mae Lee thought to herself. It didn't matter to her that, as Dallace more than once had reminded her, she was not a medical doctor.

Mae Lee never came out and said it, but she didn't really care too much for the overrated silver years of retirement. Yes, she was proud of her children, pleased that they had been well educated and held down good jobs. But there was an emptiness in her life. She wondered sometimes what it might have been like if Jeff Barnes hadn't left her, what kind of life they might have had together. She had no doubt whatsoever that he would have loved his children and would have been pleased over how well they had turned out.

Still, the decision to move to town had been a good one. So many of her old friends lived nearby now. The chairs on her front porch never remained empty for long. As soon as it was shaded from the summer's hot sun, Mae Lee would leave the air-conditioned comfort of her living room and sit out there, her very presence an open invitation to the neighbors, her porch a welcome mat. Through idle conversation spiced with gossip they reviewed the events of the day, and the years that brushed their lives, exposing and hiding faults as if they
were removing layers of paint from old furniture or doing a touch-up job on the town.

“Poor Clairene's troubled again, Mae Lee,” Ellabelle announced sadly one day even before she climbed the steps.

“How come you say that Clairene's troubled?” Mae Lee asked. She didn't look up, just kept on shelling peas.

“Can't you hear her? She's singing ‘Amazing Grace' again.” Ellabelle climbed the steps. “Get me a bowl, and I'll help you shell peas.” She pulled a handful from a big brown paper bag. “You must be having the preacher for supper tonight.”

“No, just me.”

“It's enough for three families.”

“I'll put what's left over in the freezer.”

Ellabelle lifted her skirt to wedge a pot between her fat thighs.

“For goodness' sake, woman,” Mae Lee fussed, “pull your dress down! You might excite somebody. As if it were possible,” she added.

Ellabelle grunted, “Huh, it's possible all right, and that's exactly what I want to do, or run ‘em crazy, one. Just might snare me an old nighthawk. He'll be good for the night and can fly off in the morning. This old tired body could stand a little tune-up. My engine parts have been neglected too long.”

“Hush up,” Mae Lee laughed. “You are going to mess around and start talking dirty. With the state of mind you're in, it wouldn't be safe for old man Sheets Cannon to walk by.”

Ellabelle grunted. “I know you don't mean Sheets. My body engine parts are not that much in need of repair. Poor Cannon was born troubled. His mama had to be also, to have a last
name like Mills and then turn around and name her son Cannon. How could he escape being called Sheets? Especially the way he keeps his head tore up. Poor thing, he's always three sheets in the wind.”

Mae Lee laughed. “I guess it's better than being called Pillow Case or Towels. They say he was fired last week from the textile mill where he was working.”

“I thought he retired when he was sixty-five.”

“He did, Ellabelle. He was just doing odd jobs part-time. They say when he got his walking papers he asked to speak to the head man to thank him for being able to work there for so many years. Well sir, they said, Sheets took off his cap and sort of bowed, ‘I want to thank you, sir, want to thank your kinfolk, but most of all I want to thank your mother for doing something nobody else has
ever
done, and that's birth a SOB like you!' Then the tipsy fool started singing, ‘What you gonna do, when the river go dry . . . sit on the bank and watch the catfish die . . .' and then he truck-danced out of the office.”

Ellabelle laughed until she cried, then she took off her glasses and lifted the edge of her wide skirt to wipe the tears from her eyes.

“There you go again,” said Mae Lee. They laughed some more. She grew serious. “At least while he lives with his sister he won't go hungry for something good to eat. Sheets's sister is a good cook. Cooked for years for some of the richest people in Rising Ridge.”

“Was
a good cook,” Ellabelle corrected. “She's getting old now. Last year she forgot to remove the plastic bag from the inside of her Thanksgiving turkey. Poor thing. She just wasn't
at herself that day. She's a good woman.” She glanced at the early summer's sky. “Before you-know it we will be hearing the honking Canadian geese streaking across the skies. My daddy said it was going to be a cold, cold winter if they formed letters when flying. For me they spell ‘almost turkey time.'”

Mae Lee reached for more peas. “How can you think that far ahead? It's after mid-October when they fly through.”

“These peas are making me hungry, that's how.”

After they'd cooked and eaten a Sunday dinner on a weekday they returned to the front porch.

Mae Lee took a long sip of iced tea. “I swear this is my last glass.” She swallowed hard. “We got to stop eating so much. We're pushing our bodies way out of shape. Did you see Janet Dalton's fancy picture in the paper today? She sure looked good.”

“I would too,” Ellabelle pined, “if I had her money. She probably uses what my daughter said most of Them use nowadays, something I think she said called Night Repair. She works at the cosmetic counter in Dillard's department store, you know. According to my daughter, a little bottle no bigger than my thumb is very expensive!”

“If it's the size of your thumb, honey, it's a pretty good-sized bottle,” Mae Lee chuckled.

“Look who's talking, child, you must still be looking at your body in your high school mirror.”

Mae Lee laughed. “It's pitiful the way we've let ourselves go. Maybe we need some of that night cream.”

“A lot of us widows need it, especially poor old Miss Austin who runs the jewelry store on Main Street. For all I know she
might be using it. If the stuff does work, its repair job sure doesn't last, because by daybreak it's broken down and needs to be fixed all over again.” Ellabelle shook her head.

“I almost hate to go in her store anymore,” Mae Lee said. “She is so anxious to find a friend, before she even waits on her customers she'll ask, ‘Do you know of any good unmarried men around?' I guess she's teasing, though.”

Ellabelle poured iced tea from a pitcher. “Like hell she is. I was in there to get a battery for my watch and with my own ears I heard her tell a customer that she'd heard that old Clay Lewis had started taking some high-powered pep pills, so she said, ‘I called up Mr. Clay Lewis one evening, and I said to him on the telephone, come on over. I'm a-sitting here all alone with nothing on but my TV.'”

“Poor thing, she's still searching for love. The likelihood of finding it, though, is about as good as a dry dandelion flower staying on its stem during a windstorm,” Mae Lee said sadly.

Clairene's singing was slicing through the still night air again, her voice clear and mournful: “. . . I once was lost, but now I'm found . . .”

They listened, and from a distance quietly shared her sadness.

Ellabelle wiped away tears. “Lord, Lord, Clairene can sing.”

She'd hardly finished speaking when Clairene's husband, Joshua, slowly drove by, his arm in the open car window. From a radio turned up too loud for a man his age, a mellow voice offered the blues. She watched him snapping his fingers to the beat.