Before we left, Mickey and Thomas unfolded the Ping-Pong table. Birdie and I sat on the sofa and watched the two of them play three games. I recalled Thomas's skill at the game, as displayed at his cousin Spade Littleton's house in North Carolina at family reunions, but Mickey was a far better player than Thomas's relatives. Small and quick, he was an indefatigable opponent. Thomas, on the other hand, though taller and at least a decade older, was shrewd in his placement of shots and returned each ball with a deceptive spin, thus winning two of the three games. Mickey demanded a rematch at a later date and informed Birdie and me that “next time we'll make you ladies play, too.”
Later we all returned upstairs. I mounted the twelve steps quite rapidly and immediately began to breathe more easily with the knowledge that I was again above ground level. As we ate our slices of custard pie in the living room, I discovered two facts about Birdie Freeman. These are the regrets of which I previously made mention.
One came as the result of a question posed by Thomas to Mickey. “You folks have any children?”
“No, we don't,” Mickey said. You may recall that I had suspected such to be the case from my first meeting with Birdie. Furthermore, I had never heard her speak of children or grandchildren. Mickey pointed to a collection of photographs on a small table; the picture of Birdie and him on their wedding day was the largest and most centrally positioned. “The two little boys over there are my nephews,” he said. “Two of the finest children you ever met. Smart, handsome, talentedâall of it inherited from their uncle, of course.” He crossed his eyes and let his tongue loll.
To write that “a shadow passed across Birdie's face” at the mention of children would sound banal and sentimental. I will therefore say simply that the expression upon her face altered from contentment to studied cheerfulness. And when she asked suddenly, “Does anybody want anything else to drink?” her voice sounded like glass, bright and fragile.
As she left the living room with Mickey's and Thomas's cups, Mickey said, “Of course, I've tried my best to fill in for children by acting like one, haven't I, precious?” and she laughed gaily but without conviction. I could not help wondering if she had spoken openly with Algeria and Francine of her childlessness. I must admit that though I overheard much of their talk, there were times when they fell silent at my approach. From my kitchen cubicle I could see the three of them conversing as they worked, and I often wondered what they were saying.
“And what about you?” Mickey asked. “Any kids?”
“Nope,” Thomas replied. “We don't have any, either.” I kept my eyes on the doorway through which Birdie had disappeared, watching for her return.
As Thomas and I stood beside the front door around nine o'clock that evening, Birdie candidly acknowledged another regret of her life. We were in the midst of exchanging polite farewells. Birdie and Mickey had begun the ceremony by pressing themselves upon us in a great rush of feelings. “We are just
so
glad you could come over!” “We'll have to do this again!” “Thank you for the delicious Jell-O!” “And the corn bread!” “We'll break out the Ping-Pong paddles again next time and have another go at it!” “Y'all just drop by and visit us
anytime
!” and so forth.
For guidance through the mechanics of taking one's leave, I found myself reviewing scenes from novels that I had read, and after Thomas had offered his thanks in some detail, I briefly declared my own. “Your gracious hospitality has exceeded mere courtesy.” Though of my own invention, I do not deny that I composed the statement by imagining what one of Jane Austen's characters might have said after having dined at a neighboring country estate.
Turning to Mickey, Birdie raised both hands and placed her fingers lightly upon her temples. “Did you hear that?” she said to Mickey. “Isn't it just like listening to music to hear Margaret talk?” Then to me she said, “Oh, Margaret, I wish I'd been as smart in school as I know you must have been. I count it a real privilege to work at Emma Weldy with somebody like you! If I'd ever gone back to school, maybe I could have ended up a tenth as smart as you. I sure wish I had. I sure do.” Had it not occurred to her, I wondered, to question why someone as highly educated as she assumed me to be was working in a public school lunchroom?
No one spoke for a moment, but Mickey put an arm around Birdie and pulled her close to his side. “If you were any smarter, treasure, you wouldn't be able to stand living with a slowpoke like me!”
The two of them laughed, and Thomas and I stepped across the threshold into the chill of the November night. Looking toward the cemetery, I could see the faint outlines of white headstones luminous under the moon. Birdie and Mickey followed us onto the porch, and Mickey called out to us as we made our way to the car.
“Watch out for the loose gravel! Take her arm, Thomas!” Thomas did so, and I did not pull away. “Go slow down the drivewayâyou turn too soon and it'll be a
grave
mistake! You'll run into a
dead
end! Y'all come back! Next time maybe we can play some Rook!”
They continued to stand on the porch, waving at us while Thomas turned the Ford around to head down the driveway. Then as we slowly drove away, Mickey stepped to the door, reached inside, and began flipping the switch to the porch light. It was not until later that I thought of the evening as what it was in a metaphorical sense: a table in the wilderness. Even today I can still see the blinking of the porch light and the small figures of Mickey and Birdie side by side upon the top step spreading for us the bounty of their kindness even as we departed.
As the days passed and Christmas neared, I braced myself. I clearly saw the danger of Birdie's daily favors and tokens, knowing that such gifts, though of little extrinsic value individually, would collect into a great debt, and that debt would surely exact a personal commitment. I feared such a commitment, yet I knew that Birdie was winning my heart, and even as I prepared to deny her entrance, I knew furthermore that she was already well within the portals.
I dreamed one night of a large bud, the size of a man's fist, tightly sealed against springtime yet powerless to withstand its quiet force, yielding at last to open with time-lapse acceleration into a startling, symmetrical bloom of unearthly beauty, an enormous Georgia O'Keeffe flower. When I awoke, it was, of course, still winter; nature's spring would not come for months. Another spring was astir, however, and its harbinger was about her business.
Birdie's gifts were many and unceasing, and not only to me but also to Algeria and Francineâno, truly, to everyone at Emma Weldy. Her liberality of spirit was a steady, gentle rain. For many weeks my response to her offerings had been one of outward annoyance. Often I discarded the trifles, thus offending my highly refined sense of thrift, not because I could find no use for them but because it was my way of rebelling against the incursion of the giver into my life.
Throughout September and October I had disposed of a considerable assortment of small gifts: a bookmark; a plastic shower cap; a pencil; a packet of herbal seasoning; a pocket calendar; a small note pad; a card of buttons; a spool of turquoise ribbon; a miniature book bearing the ostentatious title
Meditations of Tranquillity for the Contemporary Life
; and a photograph of Algeria, Francine, and meâa candid snapshot that Birdie herself had taken one morning in October as the children were filing through for breakfast. Algeria, wearing her usual morning scowl, was dispensing a dipperful of cream of wheat into a bowl. Francine, her head ducked, appeared to be stifling a sneeze. From my post at the cash register, I was studying Francine over the heads of several children, an expression of rebuke upon my face.
Other gifts I had kept for one reason or another: a Level One piano book of hymn duets, an embroidered dish towel, and a small tin of lemon drops. The bonsai, of course, was still thriving. I watered it daily. It was a living thing. There was no question of my discarding it. Even these latter gifts, however, I held to some degree in contempt, aggrieved by their encroachment, their flagrant disregard for boundaries, their implication of restorative powers.
How could a scrap of fabric or a miniature potted tree balance the weight of my past pain? What right had Birdie Freeman to ply me with frivolous odds and ends, to burden me with her generosity, to clutter my life with
things
? Had she been moody, quickly offended, or tiresomely pedantic, I could have dealt with her more easily; indeed, any number of personality defects would have sufficed. She was, however, inexhaustibly cheerful and good-hearted, and it was, of course, her kindness of soul more than the gifts themselves that opened up the way before her into my life.
I had always despised the character of Melanie Wilkes in the novel
Gone With the Wind
, for I felt that she was a goody-goody without the affectation that makes such a character comical. She was a woman devoid of faults, and herein lay her flaw as a fictional character. Her portrayal on screen by the actress Olivia de Havilland, however, displeased me less, for it brought a measure of realism to the flat depiction upon the printed page, and I found myself wishing that such a woman could exist, though I knew it to be impossible. Even in my mother, whose seraphic smile and nobility of heart set her above common mortals, were certain manifestations of humanness. For example, to outsidersâwhich included the great majority of living personsâshe could speak with a sharpness bordering on rudeness, though at other times she could be a charming conversationalist.
When Birdie Freeman had first appeared in the lunchroom of Emma Weldy Elementary School in August, I had begun to observe her closely, guardedly, for I knew that, given enough time, whatever appeared to be pure would prove itself an alloy. By December, however, the imperfections that I had uncovered were few: a childlike gullibility and naïveté resulting in broad misconceptions about the fundamental nature of life itself; the tendency at times to misinterpret even the plainest and most direct language; an irritating habit of referring to Mickey at every turn; a nature marked by such extreme deference to others that she ingloriously offered herself, to use a slang term, as a “doormat”; and, of course, her physical abnormalities. Besides her projecting front teeth, she was as flat-chested as an eight-year-old. I had to concede, however, that she wore her defects bravely. One had to admire her lack of subterfuge in smiling, for instance. Never did she attempt concealment of her teeth by closed lips or an artful placement of the hand. Neither did she resort to padding her bosom.
It was on the seventeenth day of December, a Saturday, that I ceased looking for Birdie's faults, knowing that even if, or rather
when
, they appeared, they would be of no consequence. In short, this is the day that I realized she was truly my friendânot only that she wanted to be my friend but that I likewise wanted to be hers. At the age of fifty, I at last acquired a friend.
She called me that Saturday afternoon in December, all aflutter, and asked if she and Mickey could stop by our house later that day to deliver something. “It'll probably be another hour or so,” she said, “sometime around four I'm guessing.” When I paused, she said, “We won't stay long.” I heard Mickey say something in the background, and she laughed and said, “Oh, stop that!” quickly adding, “I wasn't talking to you, Margaret. Mickey is acting up again.” Still, I did not reply at once, and she continued. “I know I ought to wait for this, but I just can't. There are just some days when an idea hits you, Margaret, and nothing will do but to carry through and do it right then! You know how impulsive you get at Christmastime.” I knew no such thing.
But she sounded so youthfully exuberant, so eager and hopeful that to gainsay her assertion was unthinkable. “Do you know where we live?” I asked her.
“Not really,” she said. “I think Thomas gave Mickey a general idea of where it was that night you came to our house for supper, but he's not sure if you turn before or after Pate's Barber Shop once you get off the highway.”
I proceeded to give her directions, which she repeated aloud to Mickey, who must have been standing by with paper and pencil. I had realized by this time that she was not calling from her home, for there were other noises in the background. At one point an electronic beep sounded, and I heard a woman's voice cry, “What am I doing wrong? Why won't it ring up?” I concluded, of course, that she was telephoning from a store. When I hung up the receiver, I said to Thomas, who was sitting in his recliner watching a fishing program on SC-ETV, “The Freemans will be coming by in an hour.”
“That so?” he said. I could tell that he was trying to mute his interest. “How come?”
I said simply, “Birdie said that they have something to deliver.”
In the kitchen I checked the bread I had set to rise, pressing two fingers into the doughy dome. Finding it ready, I punched it down with great force, deposited the lump upon my cutting board, and proceeded to wield my rolling pin as if it were an instrument of torture. My thoughts were a jumble. I did not want Birdie Freeman to come to my house. I had not invited her. I did not want to see her shining eyes and ready smile, her tightly braided hair, her small hands extending to me yet another bagatelle, for surely gift-giving was her purpose in coming.
Then the thought came to meâfrom where I cannot say:
I will parry her thrust with a gift of my own
. I would not stand by. I would meet her head on. I would not be obliged forever. But what was my gift to be? To cancel my debt, it must be of substance and quality.
As I opened a cupboard to remove the bread pan, my eyes lighted upon the ceramic casserole dish that Birdie had admired. I lifted it out and examined it. Neither chipped nor discolored, it looked new. Its bowl was rather shallow yet round and wide. I had learned that it was able to accommodate a larger quantity than one would estimate upon first glance. The lid, also of ceramic, was fitted with a knob for grasping, this knob being molded and painted to look like a purple flower bud. On opposite sides of the bowl were two handles designed to simulate twisted vines. I had used the dish only rarely, for its size was larger than I generally needed, and it seemed impractically showy for our table. Most often I use my one-quart Corningware dishes.