At last Algeria had said, “Shut up, you makin' me sick!” and Francine had concluded her remarks with “Well, anyway, she's gonna have a scar that's something else.” Within minutes she had begun telling of a woman she had met in the hospital waiting room whose husband had lost a foot to gangrene and stopped only when Birdie patted her shoulder and said, “Well, Francine, I'm going to be praying for both your sister and that poor man on a regular basis. Now, honey, will you help me get these pinto beans heated up?”
It was from Birdie that I learned of Francine's failure to collect child support from her former husband, who had left for work one morning two weeks after Watts was born and had never returned home. I had known none of this. “She sure is plucky to be raising those four children all by herself without a bit of help!” Birdie had said.
As for Thomas and me, Mickey and Birdie continued indefatigably to seek our company. As the new year began, scarcely a week went by without our taking a meal together. We frequently played Rook, table tennis, and the Dictionary Game, and on an unseasonably warm Saturday in February we even played croquet on the expansive lawn in front of Birdie and Mickey's house. After our croquet game, Mickey grilled hamburgers on their patio in the backyard, and with her hand mixer Birdie made chocolate milk shakes, which we drank out of root beer mugs. In the months that followed, Birdie taught me the joy of laughter. “You've changed so much since I first met you, Margaret!” she often said. Whenever we talked of our first two months together as co-workers, she always exclaimed, “I was just convinced that you couldn't stand the sight of me!”
Thomas took to dropping by the Freemans' house whenever he drove to Greenville on Saturdays, and he and Mickey often played checkers on these occasions and watched an
Andy Griffith
rerun. One day Mickey took Thomas to the Lackeys' house through the stand of pine trees and introduced him to Mervin Lackey, who owned a fishing boat, and one Saturday the three men drove to Lake Jocassee to fish for trout.
My piano lessons continued on Tuesdays and Fridays, with the issuance in February of an unexpected proposal from Birdie.
“Margaret,” she said to me one Friday afternoon as we drove to her home, “how would you like to play the organ?” It was a chilly day, and she wore a tartan muffler about her neck.
“Have you given up on my learning to play the piano?” I asked.
“Given up?” she cried, throwing her hands in the air and laughing. “Why, I've taught you practically everything I know. In another year you'll be way ahead of me, and I'm not just saying that.” She grew somber. “I was thinking,” she continued, fingering the fringe of her muffler, “you're going to need somebody one of these days who really has some training to take you further in piano. I'm sure you could find somebody qualified over in Greenville. But here's my idea for nowâI was thinking it might be fun for you to try your hand at the organ.”
She pointed suddenly to a car coming toward us on the other side of the road. “I think that's Dottie Puckett! She and Sid live up on the highway a little past us. Sid runs the Texaco, and Dottie has a beauty shopâyou've probably seen the sign for it.” She leaned forward and waved with vigor, though, of course, the other woman could not have recognized her. Settling back, she continued laying out her plan. “I don't mean give up the piano but just branch out and take on another challenge. The organ's got a different touch from the piano, but I think you'd like it real well. How would you like to try it?”
The proposition provoked my interest, although I wondered whether professional keyboard pedagogues would have endorsed the plan. It does not strike me as an ideal instructional tactic to introduce two different instruments in so short a time to a novice musician. Even as I considered the idea with piquant regard, however, I saw an immediate obstacle. “Neither of us has an organ,” I said.
Birdie had foreseen both the impediment and a solution. “Oh, but we do!” she said. “You see, I checked with our pastor, and he said we could use the church organ. I usually drive over sometime on Saturday anyway to practice my songs for Sunday, so we could set up a time and you could meet me thereâif you could spare the extra time, of course. I know Saturday's a busy day for catching up at home.”
Like Pharaoh of old, I felt my heart harden. “Have you not invited me without ceasing to your church functions, and have I not repeatedly declined?” I said stiffly. “Do you think that you can now resort to inveiglement to lure me inside your church?”
She appeared to be both puzzled and mildly insulted. “We would be the only ones in the church, Margaret,” she said, “except maybe Brother Hawthorne, but he would be in his office if he was there at all. We'd just be using the organ, and it would only be one time a week for an hour or less. I don't know what that word
inveiglement
means, but I'm sure not going to try to force you to do anything. I just thought you might like to try something new is all.”
We were on Highway 11 now, passing the feed store and a defunct gas station with a faded sign: Buster's Food & Gas. A wondrously gnarled tree stood beside the sign, and for a moment I marveled at the sinister energy suggested by its upraised tangle of black boughs. One could almost imagine that it had been frozen by still photography in the midst of a frenzied dance.
Neither of us spoke for a brief interval, and then Birdie said, “Nothing would please me moreâand I mean thisâthan for you and Thomas to visit our church some Sunday. And while I'm on the subject, I'll go ahead and tell you that I pray for it every day, and I mean to keep on. I'd give anything, Margaret, for you to turn your heart to God, and I'm not ever going to give up hoping you will. From the little bit you've told me about your background, I know you've got some things festering in your heart, and I pray about that, too. But I want you to know somethingâI'm going to love you till I die, no matter what, even if you never step foot inside my church.” She turned to her right and directed her gaze out the passenger window. In her lap her small hands were clasped tightly, her knuckles peaked like tiny whitecaps.
The next week I told Birdie that I would like to start the organ lessons as soon as it could be arranged, and on February 25 I found myself seated for the first time at the organ console in the sanctuary of the Church of the Open Door in Derby. I had not been inside a church for over thirty-three years. By a stroke of ill fate, the elementary organ books that Birdie had ordered had not yet arrived, so the only printed music available at my first lesson was the hymnbook, from which Birdie selected four hymns for our use.
It struck me as grossly ironic that my first hearing of these hymns in over three decades was by my own hands, fumbling at the keys of an unfamiliar instrument in the very place that I had vowed never to enter. The experience of my first organ lesson was bittersweet. I was powerfully drawn to the instrument itself, though sorely vexed by the environment and the music. As would be expected, Birdie heaped upon me enthusiastic acclamation for my first halting performance, declaring me once again “a natural,” and in subsequent lessons I began to exercise with greater artistic sensitivity the touch essential for proficiency on the organ. Following our lessons I would generally remain at the church for an hour, sometimes longer, to practice.
The following Tuesday, February 28, was Birdie's birthday. Merle Cameron, the secretary at Emma Weldy, had circulated the news to the classrooms, and all day the children showered Birdie with cards and handmade trifles. Many of the teachers also favored her with small giftsâcandles, decorative tins, note paper, and the like. Algeria gave her a shiny billfold of candy apple red, and Francine gave her a box of Russell Stover chocolates.
It is my belief that a gift, while it may please the recipient mightily, nevertheless reveals the preferences of the giver as much as, or perhaps more than, those of the receiver. I have no doubt that Algeria imagined herself the proud possessor of a red billfold and that Francine coveted the chocolates for her own enjoyment.
I gave much thought to a gift for Birdie's birthday, and in so doing was guided in my selection by my aforementioned theory of gift giving. Remembering the Christmas gift that she had given to me, it came to me that her motive for buying the set of dishes, though unquestionably reflective of her good heart, perhaps also testified of a desire on her part. For this reason, my gift to Birdie on February 28 was a set of Morning Glory dinnerware, which she opened that afternoon when I accompanied her to her home for my Tuesday piano lesson. Mickey had left a house key under the mat at the back door, and Thomas had taken the gift over during the day and set it on the kitchen table. From her response upon seeing the dishes, one might have thought that I had deeded to her a diamond mine.
When her gasping and exclaiming had begun to subside, I said to her, “You bought them yourself, you know,” at which she chortled briefly, almost mindlessly, before breaking off to look at me questioningly. She tilted her head to the side and contorted her face as if having ingested a bitter herb.
“Why do I get the feeling you're throwing my words back in my face?” she said, shaking a finger at me. “Now, Margaret, if you mean what I think you mean, I'm going to justâ”
Pitching my voice higher, I said, “Oh, yes, you did. I just put aside the money I would have left on your piano after every lesson and saved it all up until I found something that I thought you would like. You do like them, do you not?” Together we laughed as she threw her arms about me. Since Christmas I had left off payment for my piano lessons, an act which Birdie took, I believe, as a sign that our friendship had been sealed.
As she walked me to my car after my lesson that afternoon, thanking me repeatedly for the set of dishes, a thought came to me, and when she paused during her redundant expressions of gratitude, I said to her, “I have not heard you say how old you are today. Are you sensitive about your age?”
“Oh, my lands, no!” she replied, laughing. “I'm fifty-two. Although now that I think about it, I don't remember you ever telling your age, either.” This was an example of something that I had noted with great frequency; that is, Birdie's penchant for turning the topic of a conversation from herself to another.
“I am fifty,” I said.
“Oh, your year of jubilee!” she cried.
“Yes, well, when it is past,” I said, “I shall try to recover from the immense thrill of it all.”
Birdie laughed and shook her head. “There you go making fun of me again.” We were standing beside my Ford by now.
I knew of the ancient Levitical law of the land regarding the fiftieth year to which she was referring, of course: the proclaiming of liberty to bondmen, the restoring of property, the ceasing from planting and harvesting. My grandfather had been curiously fond of the book of Leviticus and had drilled me at length concerning the burnt offering, the meal offering, the peace offering, and so forth. Even today I can recite the instructions for the cleansing of a leprous house, the baking of shewbread, and the stoning of a blasphemer.
“Now that I think about it, however,” I said, “if I understand the law correctly, the year of jubilee actually commenced at the close of the forty-ninth year and extended through the end of the fiftieth year. Because we number our birthdays following each year of life, therefore, my fiftieth year concluded on the day before my fiftieth birthday. My year of jubilee, you see, is past, and my next will not begin until the day after my ninety-ninth birthday. I shall have to be more watchful when that one arrives so that I may celebrate appropriately.”
Birdie lifted her face and laughed gaily as if sharing a joke with the gray February sky. “I can't keep up with you!” she said when her laughter died. “You can be a real tease sometimes, you know it?” Her smile fading, she grew reflective. “I don't care what you say, Margaret. You're a different person from when I first met you back in August, and I think you know it even if you won't admit it.” I did not reply but opened my car door. “Don't you think it's interesting,” Birdie continued, “that God
wanted
his people to be happy and even wrote laws requiring them to take rests and have special feasts?”
I could not stop the words which sprang from my mouth. “It appears to me that God put a great deal more thought into providing for the suffering of his creatures than he did for their rejoicing.”
Seated behind the steering wheel, I inserted my key into the ignition and turned it. The door was still open, however, and Birdie, no trace of playfulness upon her face now, put her hands on her knees and leaned toward me, raising the volume of her words above the engine and speaking distinctly. “We can't do anything about suffering, Margaret,” she said. “It's been around forever, and we're all going to have our share. Just because somebody's had a hard life doesn't mean they've got a right to take it out on other peopleâor on God, either. Especially on God. He knows all about it. It's part of his big plan somehowâand don't ask me how.”
Her words seemed to be pouring forth with increased velocity, and I was aware that I was staring at her in unveiled surprise. “We're all responsible for how we act, Margaret,” she went on, “and there are a million ways to be mean. We can be mean in big ways by killing people or stealing or cheating, or we can be mean in little ways by being rude and snapping at everybody. A murderer is guilty in a big way, but all of us are guilty when we wrap ourselves up in our own little world and don't think about how we treat others.”
No immediate reply came to my mind in response to this amazing and disjointed retort, and I suddenly felt mentally enfeebled. I could not begin to construct an argument to attack her logic. I suppose her boldness struck me with greater force than did her actual words. I had never before experienced difficulty in tearing apart mere words and divesting them of their sting, of separating the veneer of style from the underlying content, of exposing fallacious reasoning. Yet for the moment I was speechless. I, the great upholder of judgment for all miscreants, could find no words for my own defense. For all of my adult life I had granted myself clemency, but here stood Birdie Freeman pointing the finger of blame at me. For there could be no mistake that she was referring to me, that she judged me “mean in little ways.”