Leaving Cold Sassy (9780547527291) (14 page)

“You think your mother will come for Thanksgiving dinner?” As soon as I asked, I knew I should have kept my mouth shut.

“She never comes to Mitchellville,” Sanna said bitterly. Then, brightening, she added, “Will, you don't know what it means to me that you'll finally get to meet my people—I mean the ones who've made all the difference in my life. I wouldn't be anything if it weren't for Sister Maggie and Brother Henry.

“From my first day in school I wanted to be a teacher. Mount Sinai only had seven grades and wasn't much of a school, but Mitchellville had a high school. So Sister Maggie asked Papa if he'd let me spend the school year with them and go home for holidays and summer vacations, and he said yes.

“I'd been promoted to sixth grade, but I had to take tests in Mitchellville, and as soon as I saw the math test I knew I couldn't pass it and asked to stay back. I had a wonderful girlhood in Mitchellville. Sister Maggie taught me to sew and paid for piano lessons and had parties for me and saw that I had nice friends.

“And then Brother Henry sent me to college. Paid all my expenses, and me just his sister-in-law. I wasn't even theirs, the way Annie Laurie and Lonzo are.”

At that moment the engineer blew the whistle, and with much screeching and grinding of wheels, the train stopped and the woman who had been sitting across the aisle from us hurried to the door.

It took Mrs. Herndon less than a minute to seize the opportunity. She landed in the vacated seat with a lapful of boxes, sacks, and bundles. Leaning across the aisle, she tapped Sanna on the shoulder. “How's Maggie? She feelin' all right?”

Sanna's answer was brief. “Yes'm, except she's been sneezing ever since August.”

“Her and yore mama both. Once they git a-goin', they can sneeze their heads off. I seen Miss Flora just fore I left to go visit Helen'n'em in Commerce. Hit were on a Tuesday. No, Wednesday. No, hit was a, Tuesday, cause that was the day Mr. Paul Pur-due tuck a wagonload of corn to the gristmill. You remember Mr. Pur-due. When I went in, Miss Flora was sneezin' like hit was pepper up her nose. Eyes a-runnin', nose a-runnin', her face broke out red all over and hit a-itchin'. Said she'd been sweepin'. Sweepin' always gits her goin'.” The train slowed to plod up a steep grade. “I shore do hope hit don't stall,” said Mrs. Herndon. “When I rid this thang to Commerce, hit hit a artermobile at a crossin'. Didn't nobody git hurt, but we waited the longest kind a-time. Well, I cain't git over you bein' so fancy, Sanna Maria. You still little-bitty, though. Ain't tall like Maggie and Blossom.”

“No, ma'am, I'm not.”

The train picked up speed again. A baby started crying. A child's voice wailed, “Papa, I'm cold.” There was loud laughter from a group of soldiers at the front of the car. Sanna took a book out of her handbag, but Mrs. Herndon wasn't about to be cut off. Placing her feet in the aisle, she leaned forward the better to see me, and said, “Mr. Tweedy, ain't Sanna Maria just the prettiest thang you ever seen? You ought've seed her when she was a baby. Law, I remember one day, I reckon she warn't no more'n eight month old, and her sisters brought in a big dishpan full of blackberries, fresh-picked and shiny, with lots of red'ns to make the jelly firm up right.” The book was still open but I knew Sanna was listening. “Honey, you got so excited. Kicked yore li'l ole legs and bounced in Miss Flora's lap a-pointin' to them red berries and just a-crowin'! You was tryin' to say, ‘See? See?' What come out was ‘Tee? Tee?' Hit 'as the first time you'd tried to talk. Miss Flora, she was real proud.”

Sanna, delighted, said she'd never heard that story before.

Mrs. Herndon knew how to keep an audience once she got hold of it. “I recollect another time,” she said. “It was a Sunday afternoon, and Miss Flora was still dressed up cause the preacher was there, him and his wife both. Miss Flora was a beautiful lady then, Sanna Maria, not all wore out like now. She had on the prettiest dressin' sack, lots of lace on it. I can see her now, a-holdin' on to yore li'l dress to hep you balance. You was just larnin' to walk.”

Sanna had planted her feet in the aisle too, almost touching Mrs. Herndon's, but their conversation was interrupted by a shiny-faced young soldier standing in the aisle. “Excuse me, ladies, I got to get by.” The doughboy looked pressed and proud in his new uniform. You'd have thought he was a general, they made way for him so quick. In my Sunday suit, I felt like a fool.

After he passed, I leaned around Sanna and asked Mrs. Herndon if she was going home for Thanksgiving.

“I reckon. Though I ain't shore where home's at no more.”

Sanna looked surprised. “Didn't you stay on at the farm after, uh...”

“You mean after Big George walked out on me? Yes'm. But I couldn't keep thangs goin' by myself. So when Bertie Ruth and her husband offered to move in and take over, I said, ‘Hep yoreself, and welcome.' Sanna Maria, you remember Bertie Ruth. She married a man old as her daddy. Dance O'Neill, that's his name. I knowed Mr. O'Neill was in the loggin' business, but hit shore did surprise me when he went to loggin' my woods stead of farmin' my land. Pretty soon their oldest boy, he moved in with his bride. Said he 'as go'n grow him some cotton. Said hit'd be all the same to me whether he farmed hit or I let the fields lie fallow, and I couldn't argue with that. And then Katie, she come with her husband—he works for the railroad—and pretty soon t'warn't my house.

“They wouldn't let me do nothin' cept rock babies. I couldn't wring a chicken or pick a chicken, neither one. Hit makes me proud, the way they treated me so nice, but like I told Bertie Ruth, I can rest in the grave. Hit 'as like I was just comp'ny. So three or more weeks ago I went to see Helen over in Commerce. Sanna Maria, you remember Helen.”

“Oh, yes, we used to study together. She was really smart, Mrs. Herndon.”

“She still is. Works her head off. Her and her husband, Richard, they both do twelve-hour shifts in the mill, and they was mighty proud to see me, I tell you. They let me do all the cookin' and the washin' and the cleanin', and by me bein' thar, the oldest chi'ren could go to school reg'lar cause I could hep to see after the li'l uns. Helen's got eight chi'ren already, Sanna Maria, and another'n on the way that looks like twins. Well, that li'l ole sorry mill house felt a lot more like home than my farm, but I did get right tarred a-not restin'. So when Bertie Ruth wrote and begged me to come spend Thanksgivin', I was right ready to.”

“So you go'n stay on at Mount Sinai?” I asked.

“I don't know. I been a-livin' in that house nigh on fifty year, but, well, we'll see.”

The train jerked and a box on Mrs. Herndon's lap toppled into the aisle. Reaching for it, she said, “I got some shuttles in here. Broke ones. They tho'm out at the mill, and so Helen, she brings'm home for the babies to play with. I'm takin' these here to Bertie Ruth's crowd, and I'll give some to the colored chi'ren.”

“How many does Bertie Ruth have?” Sanna asked.

“Fifteen. Ain't none of her girls had to get marrit, but they's a few boys I call speckled. I mean they ain't bad but they ain't good either. Out of that many, they cain't all turn out good.” She laughed. “Want to hear sump'm awful, Sanna Maria? Bertie Ruth, she wrote me last week a colored hand on old Baldwin's place up and ran off in the night. His wife, she said he'd deserted her and the chi'ren, but one a-her boys, the uppity one—he's go'n git hisself shot if he don' be careful—he said his daddy had gone to Cincinnati. Said his daddy could make a decent livin' up North and was a-go'n send for the whole fam'ly later. Mr. Baldwin got so mad he might-near turned'm all out right then and thar, but he thought twice. Knowed he'd be in a pickle if they left fore hog killin'. The way them colored ack here lately, I'm bout ready to move up North myself, just to git away from'm.”

Sanna bristled. “You can't blame them. Jesus said—”

“Jesus didn't say nothin' bout farm hands leavin' their white folks in the lurch. Jesus said do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Staring straight ahead, Mrs. Herndon was quiet for a while. Then she said again, “I still think you ought to be goin' home for Thanksgiving Sanna Maria. You go see Maggie'n'em all the time.”

Sanna didn't answer. She just opened her book again. Ten minutes later the train steamed into the depot at Greensboro. It looked like the whole town had come to meet somebody. Families waved and hollered when they spotted the passenger they were waiting for, especially if it was a college student or a man in uniform. It wasn't hard to locate Mr. Henry Jolley. A huge man, much taller than I was, and built like a hog. Big head, fat face and lips, and small eyes squinting through folds of fat. No neck you could see, ham-sized arms, big fat hands, massive chest, and a stomach that led the rest of him.

“Sanna! Here, girl!” he called, waving a big cigar.

Her face brightened, and, forgetting me, she ran towards him, arms outstretched.

Even as he hugged her to him, I could tell he was drunk.

B
ESIDE
M
AYOR
Jolley's bigness, Sanna's smallness struck me. Her head barely came to his chest as he folded her into a tight hug. That's when her glowing smile faded to dismay and embarrassment, then anger. He smelled of whiskey, and he staggered against her as she tried to guide him away from the depot's crush of people. When she introduced, us, his fat lips stretched into a silly grin. He was holding his cigar in the hand he extended, and that just made him giggle. He leaned on Sanna as we hurried on towards his new seven-passenger touring car in the cold mist of late afternoon.

It was easy to picture us freezing to death in a ditch or stuck in the mud or worse, so I said I'd sure like to get the feel of thé steering wheel if he didn't mind my driving. “By all means, Mr. Tweedy,” he said, and was asleep in the back seat before we reached the road to Mitchellville. Supper was a mix of good hot food and imitation gaiety, a lame attempt by everybody to cover up the fact that the big man at the head of the table was besotted. He belched loudly, flirted with Sarah, his daughter Annie Laurie's friend from Shorter College, fussed at Lonzo about his grades in front of the two boys he had brought home from Mercer, and asked Mrs. Jolley where in hell did she get that sausage. “You know I like hot sausage,” he said, “and this lye hominy, I don't see one piece of red pepper in it.”

“Well, the girls are here,” said Mrs. Jolley, a tall, plump, matronly woman with dark eyes like Sanna's. Her brown hair was plaited and wound around her head. “You know, Mr. Jolly, they don't like hot sausage, and—”

“You could have cooked some of both.” He glared at her. Nobody spoke while the lye hominy was being passed, and the stewed tomatoes and butter beans.

Sanna asked Annie Laurie and Sarah if teachers she'd had were still at Shorter. And she told about the time it was announced that senior girls could have the privilege of not going to supper on Sunday night. “A friend and I thought you should take advantage of any special privilege, so we didn't go to supper and then about nine o'clock we were starving. We went around to every room hoping that somebody had something to eat and finally a girl gave us a five-cent package of crackers. We didn't ever skip Sunday night supper again.”

Mr. Jolley couldn't reach his food if he sat straight in front of the table. He had to sit sideways to keep that big stomach out in front and his right hand close to the nearest plate. Everybody was pointedly ignoring him, so I said, “When I was at the University of Georgia, we had pressing clubs. You had to join and it cost a dollar a month. I joined one month and my friend Frank would join the next and somebody else the next. We'd all send our clothes in on one membership.”

Mr. Jolley got on Lonzo about his grades again, and I looked at the mayor and said, “When I was leavin' for college, old Loomis Toy, who worked for us, brought my trunk up there to the depot in a wheelbarrow and my daddy came to see me off. That day Papa told me he didn't know anything bout college and never heard of one until he was grown, but he said, ‘I understand there is a lot more to college than what you get out of books and I want you to get it all.' Maybe Lonzo's just tryin' to get it all, sir.”

Tall like her mother, Annie Laurie was a plump girl with mischievous eyes. Sanna asked her if she'd been invited yet to the president's house as she had. “Dr. Van Hoose was a sweet man,” she said. “He and his wife had a pretty house down the hill from the college and they'd invite a few girls to their home for Sunday dinner sometimes.”

I noticed that every time Mr. Jolley tried to say something, Mrs. Jolley said something else. She seemed furious at him for getting drunk. When supper was over and the girls had cleared the table, Mrs. Jolley brought in a coconut pie. Mr. Jolley stared at Annie Laurie and said, “Sugar, you've put on weight.”

Sanna said, “All girls do that their freshman year, Brother Hen.”

“Maybe you'd better let me eat your piece of pie, honey,” he said.

“If you want to talk about weight, Papa, I think you've put on some too. How bout letting me eat
your
pie?”

His face turned red, and suddenly he got up and left the room. There was an embarrassed silence. Finally Mrs. Jolley said, “I hope y'all will excuse him. He hasn't been himself lately.”

At that moment he came back in. Flailing a hacksaw in the air, Mayor Jolley pushed his chair aside with his foot and said, “I'm sick and tired of sittin' sideways to eat.” With everybody watching, eyes wide and mouths open, he proceeded to cut out a half-moon at his place at the mahogany table. When he was almost through, his wife covered her face with her hands and started to cry. He ignored her.