Then his voice got soft, and he told me about what had gone on in his family—the drunken fights, the beatings, and what finally made him run away to La Luna. I just listened to him as he talked until Papa started calling me to come inside.
M’Dear was alone in the kitchen, kneading dough for our breakfast biscuits. I sat down and told her everything Tuck said.
“Tuck never told anyone—not even Uncle Tucker and Miz Lizbeth—because he was afraid that it would cause trouble and his father would hurt his mother.”
M’Dear was quiet. She kept on working the biscuit dough.
“Calla,” she said, and put down the dough like it was all of a sudden too heavy. “Let’s you and me go sit out on the porch.” So we went out and sat together on the glider.
M’Dear stroked my hair. She said, “Calla, baby, some people are just born with more evil locked up inside them. And then there are some people who get bent that way. I suspect that Tuck’s father is a little bit of both.”
“Well, M’Dear, what about his mother?”
“Oh. I don’t know, Calla. I don’t pretend to know all what happened to Charlotte LeBlanc. But alcohol, I do think that’s something that runs in the blood. Still, it’s hard for me to understand how she could let her precious son get hurt by it.
“But you don’t have to understand somebody, Calla, in order to stop from judging them.”
That night, for the first time since I was a little girl, M’Dear slept with me in the big old four-poster bed that had been in our family for decades.
“Let’s dream of the Moon Lady, Calla,” M’Dear said. She held my hand across the bed, and I could smell her light lavender scent. I looked over to see her long, thick hair as it fell over the clean cotton sheets.
“All right, M’Dear,” I said.
“Picture this bed as a boat, Calla, that can carry us anywhere, that can carry us through time, through sadness, and through joy.
“What do you see?” she asked.
I closed my eyes and felt my head heavy against the pillow, my body clean.
“I see us with you at the helm, M’Dear.”
“And are you paddling?” she asked.
“No.”
“You must paddle. I cannot move this boat without your help, Calla Lily.”
“All right,” I said. “I’m paddling, M’Dear.”
“Good,” she said, and squeezed my hand. “The Moon Lady will shine, and I will do as much as I can, but you must paddle. Because we are in a small boat, sweet one,” she said, and threaded her fingers through my hair.
“Now, we’re safe. We’re clean, we’re sleepy,” she said, and squeezed my hand. We fell asleep that way.
And I dreamed of screaming and blood on blue floors, and my mother’s nightgown cleaning it all up. She was naked as she leaned over the river, washing her gown. Her arms had grown heavy. Her arms were so heavy.
Chapter 9
1968
They told us it was stage-four cancer. It was why she’d been so tired lately. The doctors operated on M’Dear right away. She went across the river to Claiborne Parish Hospital, and they cut my mother’s breasts off. After that, I felt dizzy, I couldn’t get my balance. But M’Dear is the one who helped me understand that this was what she chose—this was what she decided to do to try to stop the cancer. If M’Dear decided something, then it was right by me. The surgery, though, was so much more serious than we thought it would be, and M’Dear was in the hospital for three weeks.
She had to go back for radiation every two months, and after that, her skin looked more and more like it had been burned in a bad fire. Thank goodness the radiation burns didn’t affect her whole body. Her face still looked beautiful, but the burns began on the right side of her neck, where the skin had little bubbles of red on it. Sonny Boy got sick the first time he saw it. Will just sat and held her right hand. I had to fight to keep my eyes open to the full reality of my mother, body and soul.
When she got home, she was in and out of a wheelchair. When she could stand, it was only for short periods, and with great care from the person who was helping her. But she was so happy and excited about everything—the new birdfeeder Papa made and hung outside her window, the smell of the cheese biscuits I’d cook for Papa in the morning—except for the days when the radiation treatments made her so sick. She was grateful when she could walk around the yard again and out to the pier. When friends visited, she contentedly chatted with them, catching up on the news of our little town.
Aunt Helen took over the running of the Crowning Glory. I helped one day a week after school, but mostly M’Dear had me keep up with my school activities so that things could stay as normal as possible.
Miz Lizbeth changed Olivia’s schedule so that Olivia could be at our house almost all the time. M’Dear would tell her, “Olivia, go home. Take a rest.”
But Olivia would say, “Miz Ponder, I’m gone stay and take care of you. And don’t you be going telling me what to do. I’ll leave when I want to leave. So don’t you go be bossing me around.”
When I’d get home from school, with Tuck with me most of the time, as soon as I opened the door, I’d check to see if M’Dear was in the living room. If she was, that meant she was having a strong day. If she wasn’t, Olivia would be in the kitchen, asking, “What you two want? I know you hungry.”
“I’m not hungry, Olivia, I just need to go check on—”
Then she’d stop me. “Your mama don’t want you starving. You done already lost enough weight off that tall long-legged body of yours.” Then she’d give me a hug.
“And Tuck,” she’d say, with a smile, “I know you eat both Miz Lizbeth and Papa Bernard outta they house and home, so we need to pick up the slack.”
Then Olivia would fix us some good after-school snack like leftover biscuits, toasted, with butter and honey dripping off them.
After that, we’d go to M’Dear’s room. I was so used to her saying, “Hey, y’all!” when I got home, but when she didn’t have the strength anymore, I became the one to say, “Hey, y’all!” I would go to the edge of the door and peek in and said, “M’Dear?” If she didn’t raise her head right away, Tuck and I would just hang around the house or go outside on the porch. He never pushed me about going somewhere and doing something else. He knew I needed to be around M’Dear.
“I love her too,” he told me. “Your mother has been kind to me. In fact, she has always been dear to me.”
The day I fully realized that I would never be able to hug my mother again, it felt like the breath had been knocked out of me. I sat in my room and put my fist in my mouth. I didn’t want her to hear me cry. I stared at the Peace poster on my wall, with the flowers on it. And I began to sob. What will it be like, the world without M’Dear? Will I remember her scent? The touch of her hand? How she cradled and washed me? Will I remember how she moved?
I took my fist out of my mouth. What if I forget? And then I held myself.
I always tried to make sure that M’Dear felt clean and pretty. Olivia usually took care of her sheets, but I’d do special things. For instance, Olivia would iron the pillowcases really pretty, but I’d sometimes go ahead and iron the sheets, too, so they’d be all nice and crisp for M’Dear. Soft old cotton sheets like she likes. Pretty, not wrinkled. And sometimes I would tuck lavender from Miz Lizbeth’s garden inside M’Dear’s pillowcase.
I made sure that M’Dear’s hair got washed. When she was too weak to shower, I’d wash her hair in bed. I’d get a little shampoo on a wash-cloth, wet it, and then drape a plastic beauty cape from the Crowning Glory over M’Dear. I’d just take the cloth and, real gently, rub it over her head and around her scalp. Then I’d rinse out the cloth and do it again.
“M’Dear,” I’d say, “do you want any cream rinse or anything?”
“No, Calla, this is just fine. Thank you.”
I could tell how tired she was, so I’d say, “Let me put a towel underneath your head so you don’t get those pillows wet, okay?”
Then I’d give her a kiss on the forehead and take the pail outside to empty it in the garden. Any part of my mother that went into the ground was like a blessing.
I looked down at M’Dear one day and thought, Oh, no. I haven’t done anything about M’Dear’s fingernails! They’d grown long and had ridges in them. When I was little, M’Dear told me, “Watch out if you get ridges; it’s a sign from your body that something’s wrong.”
Now the ridges were so thick, and her cuticles needed cutting. I said, “M’Dear? I want to give you a manicure.”
“Oh, Calla, I’m too weak for a manicure. Plus, who’s going to look at it?”
“Well, Papa’s going to look at it, and you’re going to look at it.”
“Let’s do it another day when I’m stronger,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am. You just let me know, and I’ll put on my manicurist jacket.”
She smiled and closed her eyes. Her hand reached out for me, and I held on to it for a moment.
“Thank you, Calla Lily. I can feel love in the touch of your hands. I can feel the healing in them, bébé. There’s room in your heart for so many kinds of love. Everyone has a unique path, and you’re already walking yours.
“Calla, without a doubt, you have the gift of touching someone and them touching you. But you have so much to learn, Calla, so much to learn in the world outside of the Crowning Glory and La Luna. You have people to meet, experiences outside of your life here, things you can’t imagine, and I want you to have them. Come back if you want to, but go out into the world, and bring back the best and leave the rest. Do the same with La Luna as you leave it. Take the best and leave the rest.”
Then she took a deep breath and rolled her head from side to side.
Some days, when she was feeling up to it, M’Dear would call out for Will to come in and play the mandolin for her. And M’Dear would sing the old songs, the words that few people knew anymore.
“It’s a shame,” I told Tuck, “a shame that the words to the old songs will go out with M’Dear’s generation unless someone cares to learn them.”
“Why not us?”
I looked at him, thinking about it.
“You and your brothers could sing with your mother, and I could do my best to transcribe.”
Sonny Boy, Tuck, and I set out to join Will in Mama’s room at every opportunity, singing our hearts out till she grew weak for the day.
Finally an afternoon came when M’Dear called me to her. She was propped up in the bed with the fluffy linen-covered pillows that Aunt Helen had made. “I want you to see something,” she said, and reached up to her head. As she touched the crown of her head, her hair began to fall out. She brought her hand down beside her, the hair still in her palm.
I began to cry.
“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “Don’t be afraid, bébé. Take a deep breath. Let it blow out the top of your head. Now look. It’s even easier for me to breathe out, now that I am going bald! You just remember the bald-headed man from when you were little. Everything will be fine.
“Come on. Let’s do my hands. You know that tin I use to wash butter beans in? Go ahead and get that. Fill it with some warm water, then put some Palmolive in there. And go get my manicure kit.”
I said, “M’Dear, you don’t have to tell me how to do it.”
She answered, “I know. But I’m still your mother.”
It made me feel so good to hear M’Dear say that.
I ran upstairs to get the manicure kit Papa gave M’Dear for Christmas one year. It’s white leather, real leather, and inside it had beautiful cream-colored velvet, with all of the instruments laid in there perfectly. Two types of fingernail files, some nail clippers, a cuticle pusher, some orange sticks. I took the kit and just held it to my breast, like it was a part of my mother. Then I came back downstairs.
I started by clipping and filing M’Dear’s nails, round at the edges, just the way she liked them. Then I filled the butter bean tin with warm water and Palmolive, so M’Dear could soak her hands.
I very gently pushed back each of her cuticles, one by one. I started out using the little cuticle pusher, but then realized that M’Dear’s skin was so fragile that I should just use my thumb.
“You want me to rub some of your lotion on?” I asked.
“Oh, that would be lovely,” she said. “Get my Jergens.”
I took some Jergens lotion and massaged it into each hand. M’Dear closed her eyes and smiled. I could tell that I was soothing her. Just as I was finishing her second hand, she stopped and turned my hands up in her palms and looked at my hands, at my fingers. “Oh, Calla Lily,” she said. “Your fingers used to be so tiny.”
“Let me finish up your manicure,” I told her. I had some very pale pink polish, so pale it was like a pink gloss. After I painted each nail, I blew on it to dry the polish.
Then M’Dear held out her hands to admire my work. She smiled at me and said, “Go on out there and see if your papa’s home yet. And if he is, ask him won’t he come in here to visit for a minute and see how pretty you’ve made me.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. And I thought of all the different kinds of love M’Dear had in her heart.
Of course, I wasn’t the only one taking care of M’Dear. Along with Olivia, Aunt Helen was always around. One day she came in with a big paper sack, and inside was a beautiful quilt she’d made for M’Dear. It had a huge tree on it—limbs going out with leaves on them, reaching to the top of the quilt, and then roots stretching down to the bottom. It looked like a Louisiana live oak, but you couldn’t tell for sure. On the limbs were little baby birds, and there were little bitty squirrels on the trunk, and a little wasps’ nest—all the things that live in a tree.
When Aunt Helen gave it to M’Dear, she unfolded it very slowly across the bed. “It’s the tree of life!” she said. “Look, this tree has got so much life in it. It’s like you, Lenora. You’ve got so much life, so many roots that hold you, and that wonderful strong trunk. Now look real close. Tell me what you spy with your little eye.”
M’Dear looked and looked until she finally spotted a tiny little pink ribbon holding a tiny little pouch. She said, “Sister, what is that little pouch thing?”
Aunt Helen smiled, and said, “That pouch holds all the secrets you and I ever kept from each other. See how tiny it is?”
M’Dear’s eyes began to glisten. “Thank you,” she said. Their eyes met, and they held their gaze for a long time.
“Do you think that pouch is tiny enough?” Aunt Helen asked.
“Sister of mine, I am trying to let go of the things that bind me to this earth, but oh, I will miss our laughter together.”
Aunt Helen lightly put her hand against the side of M’Dear’s head. M’Dear looked up at her, and they smiled at each other for a long time.
I thought about the two of them, really thought for the first time—about sisters and what they gave—about how they came up together, were girls together, had done most everything together. I’d always just taken their closeness for granted. I never had a sister. Maybe that’s why I latched on to Sukey and Renée and why they latched on to me. Because we all need sisters. My M’Dear and Aunt Helen had been so lucky to have each other. But now they would have to let each other go.
Day after day, my girlfriends held my hand as I tried to let my mother go.
Chapter 10
WINTER 1969–1970
I had been so worried about M’Dear. I kept waiting for her to start getting well, but as the months went by she didn’t seem to be getting any better. I knew she was fading away when she was too weak to celebrate much over the holidays. She had always enjoyed Christmas the most and had always worked to make it special for us. Now she barely noticed its arrival. And when I thought about that, my throat closed up and my stomach felt twisted inside.
One night M’Dear and Papa knocked on my door to ask me to join them in the studio to dance. I looked at my alarm clock and it was three in the m
orning. We danced all the time as a family, but even for us, starting at 3:00 a.m. was a bit surprising.
We went to the boys’ room and said, “Y’all, wake up! We’re going to the studio.” The boys looked at us like we were crazy, M’Dear in her nightgown, and even in January, with no shoes on. I looked at her bare feet and wanted to cover them up immediately. I didn’t want any inch of her body to get cold or be in any way stressed. M’Dear must have read my mind because she looked at me and said, “I want to feel my bare feet touch the floor, to touch the ground.”
Sonny Boy and Will got up out of bed in their striped pajamas and followed us through the hallway that connects the house to the dance studio. Papa turned on the big industrial heater, and M’Dear slowly walked over to the stereo player and put on “Clair de Lune.” I knew that song because we danced to it in a summer concert that M’Dear planned when we were little. She held it outside in the park under a full moon because we lived in the moon’s hometown. That was what she told us.
Now M’Dear took my hand and Papa’s hand, and Sonny Boy and Will linked theirs with ours. We stood there in silence, nobody moving, all of us waiting for M’Dear to start. M’Dear who we loved so much, who looked so tiny now, but who had all her radiance shining through. M’Dear squeezed my hand, and I stood there with my eyes closed until I absorbed all the energy I could from her squeeze.
Then M’Dear dropped our hands and began to move by herself. “This is a dance to honor the Moon Lady.” Then her body changed, like it was charged somehow with new energy, and she went to Will and pulled him close to dance with her. Fluidly moving his thin muscular body, Will kept his eyes on M’Dear the whole time, not imitating her but moving his hands to the beautiful music that was like moonlight, like turquoise water flowing over white rocks. Then M’Dear stepped up to Sonny Boy and took his hand. Sonny Boy, over six feet, towered over M’Dear and looked down at her like he wanted to remember this moment forever. Then she stumbled and held on to his shoulders. She stood there for a moment. We could see her taking a deep breath, seemingly to get some strength back.
The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder Page 9