Orphea Proud (18 page)

Mrs. Graves
kept her word and paid a visit. She brought her daughter with her, a much younger version of herself wearing great big rhinestone earrings and a long flowered skirt. She seemed cool, so I invited her over to Ray’s museum. She couldn’t stop snapping pictures. Me and Ray standing side by side; Ray, Lola, and me; Ray with the paintings he’d done of Saint on the other walls. The last one she took was of Ray and me standing on either side of Lissa’s portrait.

“Tell me about the young lady in the painting,” said the journalist.

“She was my best friend,” I explained. “After that, she became my girlfriend,” I added shyly.

That was the photo that appeared in the
Handsome Crossing Gazette
. The caption read:

Lola bought ten copies of the paper and gave three to me and the aunts. Aunt Cleo cut the article out and Aunt Minnie hung it over the counter.

“First time anybody in my family has ever made it in the paper. Fame! Nothing like it,” Lola crowed.

We have the thickest, sweetest purple lilacs on either side of the store. They bloomed and bloomed that spring. Even Aunt Cleo had to admit they went well with the new yellow paint job. The straw man came
from the paper factory to make the delivery so that we had straws to hand out with sodas, and toilet paper and paper towels to put on the shelves, and paper napkins to go with the sandwiches my aunts made to sell. The night before the delivery, Lola took off from work and permed her hair. It seems that once he’d made the delivery, the straw man was going over to Ray and Lola’s house for dinner.

“Not as if she doesn’t see him every chance she gets in town,” Ray told me confidentially.

After the straw man made his delivery, a big order of canned goods arrived and some other stuff that Aunt Minnie had ordered from a catalog. Lola went to a neighbor’s farm and brought us back some live chickens. Right on cue, the customers started coming. Until then, I hadn’t known other people lived on the mountain.

“There are hollers around here,” Ray explained. “Folks stay put in the bad weather. But then they stretch out of their homes. Kind of like bears.”

“What do they do for a living?”

“Fix roofs, pick fruit, paint houses …”

I helped Aunt Minnie behind the counter, waiting on the customers. We averaged about eight per day. They came in all shapes, colors, and sizes. Each and every one of them noticed the newspaper clipping. Aunt Cleo thought it was good for business. But one day a man with a big bushy mustache started asking questions. “I hear that girl in the painting is queer. That true?”

I looked up in surprise. There was nothing like that in the newspaper caption.

“What if it is true?” growled Aunt Minnie. “Would that change the taste of this sandwich you ordered?”

“Expect not. But I don’t believe in gays.”

“And I don’t believe in mustaches,” she said, slamming his sandwich down.

He left the sandwich on the counter and walked out, muttering a cussword.

“Where did that come from?” Aunt Cleo asked with a sigh. “Somebody’s been gossiping.”

“Some folks don’t have enough to occupy their minds,” said Aunt Minnie. “Got to put their noses in other people’s private lives.” She patted me on the shoulder. “Don’t let it worry you, honey child.”

“I won’t.” But it did. What if because of me, Proud Store lost its few customers? For a few days, I was on edge. Thankfully, there wasn’t another incident like that one.

Out of the blue one day, a couple came in and asked for a portrait! I didn’t know what else to do so I took them over to see Ray. Right away they headed for Lissa. They’d seen her picture in the paper.

“She looks like she could walk right off the wall,” said the woman.

“Very nice,” said the man. He turned to Ray. “Think you could do something like that for us?”

“I ain’t never done a portrait of people.”

“But you did this girl on the wall.”

“That was from a snapshot. I never painted from a live person.”

“You can do it, Ray,” I said.

“Nope, I can’t.”

“Come on, Ray. I dare you.”

“We’ll pay you five dollars,” promised the man.

Ray’s eyes popped. “In that case, I’ll give it a shot.”

He brought his paints and colored pencils and some paper over to the store. Do you know that boy did an awesome sketch of that couple in twenty minutes? They liked it a lot; maybe because the sketch made them look about ten years younger than they actually were. Ray was pleased, too, especially when they gave him the money. But when the couple was on their way out with the picture, he stopped them.

“Wait! She can write a poem for you.”

“No, I can’t. I don’t write poems for people.”

“You write them all the time about Lissa,” said Ray.

“The lady and gentleman do not want to have a poem about themselves!”

“Sure we do,” said the man, settling back. He and his wife ordered two ham sandwiches and some sodas from Aunt Minerva and paid Aunt Cleo at the register. I sat down with a pad and pencil. I hardly knew where
to begin. I didn’t know a thing about them. I finally hit upon a short format:

They gave me a dollar for it.

Suddenly Ray and I were in business. People were coming up the mountain for a portrait and a poem. We settled on a price of $5.50 for the set. Ray was very good at the portraits. This particular poetry that I was writing then—I wouldn’t want you to judge me on it. After all, these were quickies. But here are a few of my better ones:

I wrote that for Mrs. Graves when she came back a second time. I heard her tell Aunt Minerva that she wanted to go on vacation—that’s where the part about China came from. I wanted her to go someplace really different.

Once a young couple brought their baby with them. They wanted Ray to paint the baby’s picture, but she wouldn’t keep still. So the whole family had to be in the portrait. Ray painted them eating tuna fish because that’s what they’d ordered from Aunt Minerva.

Somewhat obscure, I know …

One day the mail carrier wanted his portrait and poem just like all the other folks. This particular guy wore two pairs of glasses at the same time, one pair on his nose and the other pair on top of his head. Aunt Minerva explained that one was probably for reading the names on the letters and the other pair was for distance while he was driving. I thought he looked like a Cyclops.

I gave it to him for free, since he didn’t seem to like it. He didn’t get the part about the barking dogs; how he didn’t have to worry about them like mail carriers always do, because even a dog would be scared of those glasses. In any case, he was crazy about Ray’s portrait.

Around that time I got a note from Marilyn telling me that Club Nirvana was open. She and Icky invited me to come up. They wanted me to perform my poetry and anything else I wanted to.

I explained about Marilyn and Icky to my aunts and told them about the poems I owed them. By this
time, I had written a lot of stuff. The idea had been taking shape inside me that I could turn the material into a show, a show with poems in it. I would dedicate the show to Lissa. But now that it seemed like the show could become a reality, I got cold feet.

“I’m calling Marilyn and Icky and telling them I can’t come.”

“Are you sure?” asked Aunt Minnie. “Maybe it’s time you had some fun, child. You told us about that open mike you used to go to.”

“I haven’t done that in so long. Besides, everything I’ve written lately is about Lissa and me and how we fell in love. I can’t share that with anybody.”

“Why on earth not?” said Aunt Cleo. “I’m sure your poetry is good.”

“Lissa might not want me to talk about what happened between us in public.”

“Well then, make your show about something else. You owe it to yourself to carry on. Or do you want to spend your whole life with Ray as the only company your age? We want you to do things with your life, Orphea. Don’t you want to go back to school?”

“Yes, but I’d like to go down here. I’m not sure about doing the show in Queens.”

I asked Ray to help me decide. We locked ourselves up in the root cellar and I read him what I’d written.

“What do you think?” I asked when I was done. “Is it stupid or what?”

Ray tossed his hair out of his eyes. “It’s art.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s
art
. Don’t act like I’m simple.”

“I’m not acting like you’re simple. I just want you to explain.”

“It’s art like my paintings of Saint, like my portrait of Lissa. You didn’t judge me and I’m not judging you.”

“That means you don’t like what I wrote.”

He stamped his foot. “I didn’t say that. I like it a lot.”

“What do you like about it?”

“I like it because it sounds true.”

But I decided not to do the show. I just couldn’t.

My seventeenth birthday came and went. There was no word from Rupert and Ruby, which I took as a good sign. Aunt Minnie made me a birthday cake. It had eighteen candles on top. One for good luck. Ray, Lola, and the straw man came over. Lissa and I had always been the same age. Now I would always be older.