Authors: Sean Stewart
But in the end it was poor Penny standing beside the grave, while Momma lay at the bottom of it.
“Well,” Bill Sr. went on, “Elena Beauchamp was right about my wife, and over the years she was right about a lot of other things. She had a rare talent, a God-given gift. I learned to listen carefully to what she had to say. My family has always been the better for it.” This was certainly true. It was Momma's advice that made the Friesens rich. Unfortunately, Momma was even better at spending money than she was at making it, and we never did prosper so well as Bill Sr. had. There's probably a parable in there somewhere. Momma could have found it. She had a story for everything.
At the front of Momma's plot, beyond the newly turned earth, stood her headstone, black marble with steel letters inset:
ELENA BEAUCHAMP
1933â1995
There are some gifts
Which cannot be refused.
Two weeks earlier the hospital had sent her home to die with a day nurse and a supply of morphine. The weather had been beautiful beyond hope. We moved a chaise lounge from the first floor into the garden and Momma lay on it all day amid the monkey grass and hibiscus, watching the lizards scoot across the stone paths and listening to the mockingbirds.
After an hour or so she asked me to bring her a glass of iced tea with a wedge of lime in it and a shot of vodka. She also asked for a notebook and a pen, but she was too weak to use them. I held her glass and let her take the tea in little sips, lips working, head shaking, bald from the radiation therapy. Then she made me write down that epitaph and read it back to her, twice, and promise to call the stonecutter so the headstone would be ready for her funeral. The epitaph was a message meant for me, I knew that, but Momma wouldn't come out and say so, and I wouldn't ask.
She died the afternoon they called to say the stone was ready. Houston is a refinery town, covered in a hazy blanket of industrial hydrocarbons of the sort that make a sky beautiful, and that day the sunset was magnificent; long halls and galleries of cloud turning peach in the tall sky, then bright breathing gold, then smoldering down and going out in a sky darkly blue and luminous, like the sea.
My mother could see the future. My mother said “give me some sugar” when she wanted our kisses, which she required like a Roman empress, and like tribute we surrendered them. My mother made Bloody Marys and drank them in the afternoons, walking around our tile floors in her stocking feet with her hips sashaying. There was a hole in my mother's life that she never talked about, stretching from the time she quit high school to the day she met Bill Friesen. My mother knew a hundred ways to cry. My mother once broke every mirror in our house, smashing them with the heel of one white pump. She must have slapped me a hundred times and twice she cut my cheek with the diamond wedding ring my father bought her in New Orleans. I still remember every color of her nail polish: pearl, pink, carmine, true red, scarlet, and gold too and silver, like the black girls wear. My mother took an hour to put her makeup on and I will remember the smell of her hair spray always. My mother wanted to go to Paris, she had boxes of oil pastels and watercolors and she painted me the most beautiful birthday cards in the world, great blooming hydrangeas or sand-colored starfish or fine watercolor horses, bay, chestnut, dapple, and palomino. My mother lied and lied and lied, to me and everybody.
There are some gifts which cannot be refused.
I refuse.
After the burial Daddy and Candy and I went back to the house to wait for our condolence visits. I meant to mop the tile floors and order in some food, at least muffins and coffee, but instead I wandered through the kitchen, where pots of thyme and sage and sweet basil rested along the window ledge, along with two bushy mints Momma kept to flavor her iced tea. Overhead, wire baskets full of onions and garlic hung next to ropes of dried peppers: red and yellow chilis, green Anaheim peppers, and the darker, rounder, hotter poblano peppers that make the best chili rellenos; and also jalapeños and firecracker peppers and explosive habaneros that looked like cherry bombs and blew up in your mouth.
Leaving the kitchen, I wandered by the long farmhouse table and the French doors that open into the garden. Finally I turned to face the tall cabinet where Momma kept her Riders.
All her life, my mother was afflicted by possessions. Days might go by, or weeks, or even months in which she was only herself; but sooner or later she would pull out that cursed magic Gold Card and ring up a purchase against her talent. She would ask the Riders for help, which they would giveâat a price. In exchange for their services, they would come into her head, banishing her God knows where, and for an hour or two these small gods could walk the earth.
After a Rider left and Momma came back, she would be confused, shocky and shaking with exhaustion. She never had any memory of what the Rider had done or said while in her head. It was terrible, as a child, to see my mother torn up and thrown away by these little gods who mounted her, and then to watch her struggle to put herself back together like Humpty-Dumpty from the fragments left behind. When you saw her go through that hideous ordeal time after time, you could never doubt her strength. “Takes more than birdshot to bring me down,” she used to say, and she was right.
There were six Riders, plus the Little Lost Girl. Each of them wanted different things. Daddy had built the cabinet, which Momma called a chifforobe, at Momma's request. Behind its polished cherry-wood doors were three tiers of two cubbyholes each. In each cubby Momma had put a doll representing one Rider, along with a few gifts or knickknacks. Offerings, you might call them.
The top cubby on the left belonged to the Mockingbird, represented by a hand puppet, a long leather glove with the skins of two mockingbirds sewn to it. Momma's index finger made the beak; when she opened and closed her hand, the wings flapped.
A mockingbird isn't much to look at. She's bigger than a wren and smaller than a crow, with flashing, white-barred wings. Of all God's creatures she has the loveliest songs. She will sing the calls of other birds more beautifully than they can do it themselves. When she tires of that, she can make a song out of a creaking gate or a door slamming or wash flapping in the wind.
When the Mockingbird was riding Momma, she became many people, changing her song every few minutes. She might be Daddy first, telling road stories he had collected on his last swing through Louisiana or Oklahoma as a traveling rep for American Express. The next minute she might be old Mr. Friesen, talking to one of his brokers over the intercom. Then Momma would be back, laughing and making herself a Bloody Mary and lighting a cigarette. Then it would be her friend Mary Jo, or Greg, the boy who lived across the street, or Mr. MacReady, our neighbor next door who had opened a convenience store in his garage. There were dozens of other voices too, many we girls didn't recognize.
The Mockingbird was a terrible copycat, and Candy used to strike up conversations with her just for the fun of seeing herself reflected, as if in a living mirror. Even I had done it a few times. The Mockingbird was never dangerous, and it was rather delicious to hear my opinions coming out of Momma's mouth. Daddy thought this was disrespectful, though, so we never did it if he was around.
The right-hand cubby on the top shelf was for the Preacher. His doll was a cross made from two lengths of sawn broom handle lashed together, a white dog's skull on top, a child's black Sunday coat hanging from the cross-brace like a scarecrow's jacket. On top of the skull sat an old collection plate like they pass around at the Baptist church, turned upside down and worn like a hat. The Preacher was a fearsome Rider, very hard. He smelled like old books. He was a scourge on the vanities of this world, a grim man who spoke only bitter truths. Candy learned to hide her makeups after the day the Preacher came into our bedroom when she was twelve and without a word snapped all her eyebrow pencils, washed her nail polish down the sink, crushed her lipsticks under his foot and then threw the crumpled tubes away.
Momma never put anything in the bottom of the Preacher's cubby but a black leather Bible.
(By the time I was five I understood that Momma and the Riders were quite different beings, with no overlap between them. When a Rider was in Momma's head, she was completely gone. Even though the Preacher was in a woman's body, he was still the Preacher, and a man, cold and hard.)
Beneath the Mockingbird, on the middle shelf, sat Sugar. Sugar loved to be flattered, and would always flirt with the loveliest person in the room (man or woman; she wasn't fussy). She was my favorite, even though she ignored me whenever pretty Candy was around. She didn't look scary, and also, when Momma told the Rider stories, Sugar was the kindest to the Little Lost Girl. Sugar's fetish was like a regular doll, only she had pointed cat's ears and eyes made from green marbles. She wore a short dress made of black lace and red patent leather shoes, and she smelled of peaches.
Each time after Sugar mounted her, Momma went out and bought one new piece of clothing for the goddess to try on next time she came. I used to think this was just Momma's way of spending money on filmy underwear, but she was very scrupulous about never messing with the stuff in any of the cubbies herself, nor were we allowed to. Sugar's cubby was a clutter of lipticks and perfumes, which even the Preacher wouldn't touch, though the sight of them always made him sour. Candy tried to stash some of her makeups there once to keep them safe from the Preacher. Momma saw that directly and blacked her eye for it. Neither of us touched anything in the chifforobe after that.
Beneath the Preacher sat Pierrot. He was the only store-bought doll; Momma had found him in the French Quarter in New Orleans. He had white clown cheeks with red circles on them, a sharp pointed nose and sharp pointed chin, and a long pointed cap that leaned down in front of his eyes. He was very funny and very alone. Some days he would leave you breathless with laughter, but he could be cruel, too, like the time Candy's period left a stain on her pants and he made jokes about it to the boys in the mall we were in. He could juggle and breathe fire and he smelled of lighter fluid.
On the bottom row, beneath Sugar, was the Widow, whose body was a long stoppered test tube filled with dried-up spiders. Her head was a red pincushion, her eyes were glossy black buttons, and her hair was made of needles and pins. The Widow smelled of scorched cloth and silver polish; a dry, burnt, dizzy smell. Of all the Riders, we saw her the least, maybe only three or four times that I could remember, but I hated her the most. She took a particular and immediate interest in our family. She gave orders and we followed them, but I never once felt she loved us. If our family was a farm, she was the farmer, and would mow, seed, or slaughter us as she saw fit. She did not care about me as a person, or Candy, or even Momma. She was the one that twisted money out of Daddy like water from a rag to send me to Rice for my degree, when I could have gone to UT in Austin for far less, and gotten away from home in the bargain.
Last, beside the Widow, came Mr. Copper. Momma had carved him from hickory wood and polished him until he gleamed. His body was narrow and tremendously thin, like a primitive African statue. Around his shoulders hung a cloak made from squares of snakeskin she had sewn together. In his hand he held a long bone spear, its head made from a rattlesnake's rattle. Mr. Copper came with a smell of dust and gasoline and he was very good with money. He loved calculation, and would demand to play bridge or dominos with anyone good enough to give him a game, although he never lost. Mr. Copper was a user, a creature of pure power. As the old saying goes, he knew the price of everything and the value of nothing. In his cubby Momma always kept a pack of cards, a pair of bone dice, and a set of ivory dominos in a snakeskin case.
There never was a doll for the Little Lost Girl, nor did she have a cubbyhole of her own, though Momma said that if you listened very closely you could hear her walking through our house in the middle of the night.
The day they buried Momma I stood in front of the staring Riders for a long time. Then, fearfully, I reached out for the tall chifforobe doors, and swung them shut. The moment Momma's gods could no longer see me, a wonderful lightness came into my heart and head, making me giddy. Like a schoolgirl cutting class, I abandoned my chores and snuck out to the garden instead.
As I came through the patio doors the sound of birds assaulted me. Every November I could remember, Houston's skies had filled with birds, more of them every year. Many settled in for the winter; many more were just passing through, all on the wing from where
you
live, the dark countries, the cold places where winter comes. The day we buried Momma, the live oaks that lined our street were boiling with birds: bluejays, cardinals, redbirds and mockingbirds, and grackles and grackles and yet more grackles; the females olive-chested and poised, the men raucous, each the shiny blue-black of polished coal: eight of them perched along the neck of each street lamp, leering down like drunken magistrates in their black coats.
Most houses have yards, but Candy and I grew up in a garden, with a cranky white stucco house thrown in as an afterthought. The house had once belonged to Clark Gable's rich first wife back in the 1920s. It was laid out in the old Spanish style, one room per floor. Candy and I were stuck on the top, to broil in the summer heat. Momma and Daddy slept underneath us. Both upper floors had long balconies with rust-spotted wrought-iron railings that squeaked and swayed when me and Candy swung on them.
The garden had crowded the house into the very corner of the lot, and was constantly attempting the spill into the ground floor. Momma loved to keep all the French doors open, so inside melted into outside, tile floor giving way to the stone-flagged patio and paths set in the foliage. This put the whole family on an intimate footing with ants, tree roaches, green anoles and mosquitoes, but Momma believed it was worth it.
The afternoon we buried Momma it was 76 degrees out, according to the thermometer hanging from the patio roof. My sister, Candy, was waiting for me at the wrought-iron table under the banana tree. “How's Daddy?” she asked.