Birdie was laughing gaily when I looked back at her. She had unwrapped something from her lunch and was pointing to it. Francine was laughing also, and Algeria was shaking her head, her eyelids half-closed, her expression inscrutable. As I watched, Birdie turned to my cubicle, still laughing. I quickly averted my eyes and, bending to open the bottom file drawer of my desk, pretended to be searching for something.
A moment later I looked up to see Birdie standing in the doorway of my office. “Look at this, Margaret.” She was smiling broadly, her large front teeth overlapping her lower lip, and she held before her what appeared to be a sandwich. I said nothing. I saw no cause to smile and certainly not to laugh. Slowly Birdie separated the two pieces of bread to revealânothing. I sensed that Francine and Algeria were watching us, waiting for my reaction.
“Yes?” I said, looking up at Birdie with what I considered a sensible, steady gaze.
In her other hand Birdie held up a slip of white paper and stepped closer to me. In small, neat letters, a combination of printing and cursive, someone had written these words:
you said just make it something plain and simple did'nt you?
“What do you think I ought to do to a husband who'd pull something like this on me?” Birdie asked, her brown eyes twinkling.
I said what immediately came to my mind. “Tell him that he failed to capitalize the first word of his sentence, that he omitted a comma after the word
simple
, and that he misplaced the apostrophe in the contraction
didn't
.”
Birdie looked again at the note and burst out laughing. “Oh, now that's a good idea, Margaret! I think I'll do just that. Not say a word about the sandwich but just talk about the note instead.” She turned and left, and I heard her call eagerly to Francine and Algeria, “Margaret's got a good idea! She says I should ⦔ Then her words were lost to me. I turned my chair to face the opposite direction, and as I drank the last of my tea, I faintly heard the sounds of her laughter still wafting through my doorway.
A minute later Birdie was back. “Just so you won't worry, Mickey had a slice of ham and some lettuce wrapped up for me in
another
little package. So I've got me a real sandwich after all.”
I nodded at her and said, “Very well.”
“But I'm still going to tell him that thing you said about his note.” She bobbed her head happily, and one end of the bow on top of her scarf flopped over her brow. She turned to go, then immediately swung back around. “Oh, Margaret, do you like oatmeal cookies?” she asked.
“Not particularly,” I replied.
“Oh, that's all right,” she said, waving a hand. “I just thought you might like to have a couple of mine. I don't know what Mickey was thinking ofâhe put
eight
in my lunch sack!”
She returned to Algeria and Francine, leaving me to ponder the strangeness of a woman Birdie's age having a husband who packed her lunch and played practical jokes on her. I suddenly felt an ardent conviction that I wanted nothing to do with this woman who wore a scarf and jumper, who plaited and pinned her hair, whose small hands were so ready to touch, whose feet moved so quickly and softly. I told myself I wanted no part of someone who sang hymns and prayed before eating her lunch and who offered to share her oatmeal cookies. These idiosyncrasies, if allowed to go unchecked, could conceivably bring about a dangerous permutation of the working environment that we had all grown accustomed to. They could chafe and choke.
Though she had been at Emma Weldy only four brief hours, something deep within me could not imagine our kitchen now without the presence of Birdie Freeman.
On that first day, had I been granted the use of a single word to describe Birdie Freeman, I would most likely have chosen the word
innocent
. I realized, of course, that at her age, which I judged to be close to that of Algeria and myselfâthat is, around fiftyâshe had undoubtedly seen enough of life to have shattered any rosy ideals about human nature, hope, or the ultimate fulfillment of dreams. Nevertheless, her shining brown eyes were innocent.
My earliest assumption was that from childhood Birdie Freeman had been shielded from all worldly corruption by protective, religious parents. Further, I could not imagine that she had borne children, for she was so childlike herself. If the relationship between Thomas and me excluded the usual conjugal practices, I reasoned, no doubt there were other couples who, for various reasons, lived under similar terms of cohabitation. Perhaps Birdie and her husband were such a couple.
At the end of the day, a small, high-spirited man appeared at the kitchen doorway, produced a piercing series of whistles and trills such as one might hear in an aviary, and called to Birdie from the doorway, “Birdie, treasure, you about done?” He was wearing brown pants and a green plaid shirt, and though he was not a tall man, he held his shoulders erect. (I detest a drooping posture.) His ears, somewhat too large for his head, seemed to be angled forward as if to enhance his hearing. The effect was that of an adolescent boy.
At the time of his arrival, I was posting sheets of safety regulations on the bulletin board beside the rear door. Algeria and Francine were finished for the day and were removing their aprons. Francine was telling Algeria of a serial killer featured on
Unsolved Mysteries
. Birdie, still scouring the knobs on our large grill with a Brillo pad, was the last to note her husband's arrival, and by the time she saw him standing in the doorway, the other three of us were staring at him as though viewing a Martian. Perhaps we were all attempting to reconcile this small, nondescript man before us with the mischievous one who had packed two plain pieces of bread and eight cookies in Birdie's lunch. For the benefit of those familiar with politics in the nineties, Mickey Freeman could be said to resemble Ross Perot.
Mickey smiled at us, bowed comically as if ending a vaudeville act, then raised his voice and repeated his question. “Birdie, treasure, you about done?” His words brought to mind a book I had read soon after its publication in 1991. I had seen an interview of the author, Kaye Gibbons, on a television program featuring southern writers. Her voice had enchanted me, and I had immediately secured copies of her three novels:
Ellen Foster, A Virtuous Woman
, and
A Cure for Dreams
. She has since written others. In
A Cure for Dreams
, the young narrator and her mother discuss men and their manner of addressing their wives in public. The mother informs her daughter that the most polite mode of address includes the woman's name, spoken in a respectful tone, and she warns the girl to reject a man who uses honeyed, insincere pet names such as
dear
or, even more detestable, one who merely commands “Come on!” without any accompanying noun of address.
I believe that there is a great deal of truth in this mother's observation. If such were possible, a woman would do well to listen to her prospective husbandâwithout his knowing it, of courseâfor many years before marrying him in order to project his voice to a time when the newly spun threads of courtship have been anchored into the loom of marriage. During the television interview with Kaye Gibbons, she was asked why most of the positive characters in her books were women and why the men usually vanished from the plot through a variety of unheroic means. She smiled briefly, I recall, and then said that she had “never been overly impressed with southern men in general.” For my part, I would not have limited the generalization to southern men.
Mickey Freeman's address of Birdie passed the test set forth in Kaye Gibbons' novel. He spoke his wife's name, followed by a rather quaint term of endearment, then asked a brief question. His tone of voice was patient and respectful. When Birdie looked up to see her husband in the doorway, she smiled and beckoned him to come into the kitchen.
“I'm just finishing this one last thing,” she said, sponging the knobs with clean water. She began polishing them quickly with a rag, then spun around and said, “Oh, wait a minute. I'm forgetting my manners!” She laid her rag aside and steered Mickey in my direction. Motioning to Algeria and Francine, she called, “Can you come over here just a minute and meet my husband?” Birdie made the introductions in perfect accordance with the rules of etiquette. We all seemed to be transfixed, as if Emily Post were in our presence. Even Algeria extended her hand to Mickey and muttered, “Nice meetin' you.” Mickey shook our hands in turn and had a polite word for each of us. Mine was “MargaretâI've always been partial to that name. My favorite cousin growing up was named Margaret.”
Then, lowering his eyebrows, he looked at all of us and said, “I sure hope Birdie can keep this job. I guess she told you it's her first one since she's been out on parole.”
Before he had finished, Birdie was reaching out to try to cover his mouth with both of her hands, laughing as she did so and saying, “Stop it, Mickey! Stop it! They're going to believe you!”
Though Francine let out a great yap of laughter, Algeria looked as if she wanted to pick Mickey Freeman up and wrench his neck. She could easily have done so.
After she ceased laughing, Birdie looked around at us and said, “He's hopeless. I can't do a thing with him!” Then she looked at her husband and shook her head in mock reproof. “Now, you be good, Mickey. These ladies have been so nice to me today.” She beamed at each of us within the small circle before I turned and retreated into my cubicle. Behind me, I heard her say good-bye to Algeria and Francine. Then she called to me, “Thank you, Margaret! I'll see you in the morning,” and Mickey said, “Adios, adieu, and catch you later, as they say in Nepal!” They laughed as they left, and I heard Birdie say, “Oh yes, it was a delicious sandwich once I got it all put together.”
I tidied my desk and turned out the lights before exiting. It had been an uneventful day, free of accidents or mistakes, yet strangely troubling also. In past years, Vonnie Lee had filled up time and space with constant motion and with a swift, endless flow of words. Today had seemed quiet in comparison, almost leisurely, although I felt sure that the women had accomplished a great deal of cleaning. It was as though I had lifted the phonograph needle from the “1812 Overture” and set it down on “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun.”
Driving home that day, I saw Birdie's homely face before me, and I knew for a certainty that her many gentle words of the day were but a shadow of things to come.
My fingers now ache from the labors of my pen. My spirit is heavy, and my mind divested. I shall pause for the renewal that only sleep can bring. In looking over the novel referred to earlier,
A Cure for Dreams
, I am struck with the fluidity of the narrator's voice. The colloquial style, the comic insights, and the stunning appeal of finely created charactersâso delightful to me when I first read the bookâare somewhat discouraging upon closer inspection, for now that I have embarked upon a written narrative of my own, my confidence is shaken.
I fear that my story, so rich and solid in its reality, is but a pale, trembling phantom of itself. By the time my tale is told, I fear that I will have wrung my soul dry, dispossessing myself of the energy to repair the stylistic slackness of these early chapters. Some books are published with the notation
Unabridged
beneath the title. Perhaps mine shall bear the label
Unrevised
.
When I disembarked from a Greyhound bus in Filbert, South Carolina, more than twenty years ago, I was twenty-nine years old. Though well acquainted with sorrow and exceedingly disillusioned by the people, places, and things in my life, I sought sympathy from no one. Even now I despise the person who publicizes his misfortunes and promotes himself as a victim. It is my unshakable belief that martyrs should be burned at the stake and thus permanently eliminated.
Vowing to conceal my past grief, to fold it away like stained linen and set it upon a high shelf, I prepared myself to start afresh in this small town where no one knew me. I had chosen Filbert a week earlier from a United States atlas at the public library in Marshland, New York, the day after I had overseen my grandfather's burial, an occasion that I shall treat more fully in a later chapter.
It was an early fall day in 1973 when I emerged from the bus station, suitcase in hand, and turned right to follow wherever the sidewalk might lead. The trees in Filbert, South Carolina, had just begun to change their colors, though they would not reach their peak for several more weeks. As I passed the local fire stationâa small wooden edifice that itself appeared to be a fire hazardâI avoided the eyes of the man (a fireman, I assumed) who was seated upon an unstable bench beside the gaping maw of the fire station, inside which was parked a single glossy red fire engine, and who was engaged in what appeared to be whittling. I also passed a residence bearing the shingle
Notary Public
and a drugstore with a sign above its door that read
Health-2-U
.
Beyond the drugstore, the sidewalk led me past a small grocery named The Convenient and then along streets lined with houses, all of them modest in size and varying in degrees of upkeep from immaculate to slipshod. I passed a bakery, The Rolling Pin, its window case displaying only five rather deflated doughnuts (and one fly), and a neighborhood park, deserted in the afternoon heat. Though my description of Filbert may create images in the reader's mind of turn-of-the-century quaintness, such was not the impression in reality. Many of the buildings were indeed old, but the townspeople's dress, the automobiles, and the common public equipage such as parking meters, stoplights, and overflowing trash receptacles modernized the overall visual effect. Moreover, there was a certain indefinable smell of fried foods and accumulated grime congruous with more recent decades.