by Fannie Flagg
La Shawnda took the things and went into the utility room and pulled out a large white plastic bag that said PERSONAL EFFECTS, and in the process of refolding the robe she felt something soft in the pocket. She reached in and pulled out whatever it was, wrapped in a large white napkin with the letters D.S. embroidered in gold thread. She opened the napkin and saw the lump was a big piece of cake. “Huh,” she thought, “that poor lady must have put it in her pocket before she left home.” She poked it with her finger and it was still light and moist, like it had just come out of the oven. “It’s not stale yet.” She stood there wondering what to do with it. She knew they would not let the lady eat it while she was a patient. The hospital dietician, Miss Revest, was dead set against anything made with white flour or sugar. But still, La Shawnda hated to throw out a perfectly good piece of cake. And after all, it wouldn’t be stealing, they were instructed to throw out any old food, so she went over to the drawer and pulled out a Ziploc bag and slipped it inside. Her mother would just love to have that piece of cake. Her poor mother had been so sick lately, and hardly ever got out of bed. La Shawnda had had to bring her to Kansas City from her home in Arkansas. She knew her mother was unhappy having to live in a small apartment in the city, but she had no choice. She carefully folded the underpants and the robe, each smelling like fresh-baked cake. For a second there she was tempted, and thought about eating that cake herself, but didn’t. She placed the old lady’s things in a white plastic bag and took them downstairs and gave them to the woman’s niece.
When La Shawnda arrived home that night, she found her mother asleep in the living room, still in her nightgown. La Shawnda looked at her and thought, what a way for her to wind up, old and riddled with arthritis, with no insurance and not a dime to her name. Thank heavens the hospital had let her put her mother on her policy, or she would not have been able to afford any of her medications. Her poor little mother had worked as a domestic all her life, had raised five children by taking in washing and ironing after she got home from work and on weekends, and had never made more than seventy dollars a week in her entire life. Her only joy had been attending her church, but now she was too weak and feeble to go anymore, and it was all La Shawnda could do to get her to eat and keep her strength up. Her mother had brought up all her children in the church, but now with them all scattered across the country, only one sister still went. La Shawnda didn’t go anymore. No matter how much her mother insisted that God was good, she didn’t see it. It seemed to her that any so-called God that would let one of his so-called children suffer was not a God she cared to know. After she put her things down she went straight to the kitchen and took out a plate from the cabinet, pulled out a clean fork from the dishwasher, and walked back into the living room. “Momma,” she said, shaking her gently. “Wake up, honey. I have a surprise for you.” Her mother opened her eyes. “Oh, hey, baby. When did you get home?”
“Just now. Did you have much pain today, Momma?”
“Not too bad.”
“Look what I have for you.”
The old lady looked over and saw the piece of cake and said, “Oh, doesn’t that look good. And it smells good too!”
The next morning the alarm went off as usual at four AM and La Shawnda forced herself to get up and get ready for another day. After she dressed and went to the kitchen, she got the surprise of her life. The light was on and her mother was standing at the stove cooking. “Momma,” she said, “what are you doing up?”
Her mother said, “I just woke up, and I felt so much better this morning I thought I’d get up and do you some eggs.”
“Have you taken your medicine?”
“No, not yet. I had me the bestest dream last night. I dreamed I looked down and saw hundreds of little tiny golden hands rubbing all over me, and it felt so good, when I woke up I felt tingly all over. I tell you, honey, I think that cake must have cheered me up. I’ve been sick so long I forgot how good homemade cake is. I think it done woke up my taste buds. I’ve been thinking about making us some good old corn bread. What would you think about that?”
“Corn bread?”
“Yes. Maybe you could find some collards or turnip greens, or maybe some butter beans. Wouldn’t that just hit the spot?”
The Recipe
7:20 AM
Three days after finding the cake, La Shawnda was on the bus headed for work, and was amazed at how much her mother’s health had improved. Last night her mother had even fixed that pan of corn bread! She made up her mind to find the lady who the robe had belonged to, and tell her just how much her mother had loved that cake, and how it had cheered her up so. She might even see if she could get the recipe.
At around seven-twenty AM on Thursday she knocked on the door to Elner’s room and saw that the white-haired lady was sitting up and awake.
“Mrs. Shimfissle? May I come in?”
“Sure,” said Elner, “come on.”
“How you feeling today?”
“Just fine, thank you,” said Elner, looking to see if the woman had a needle in her hand.
“Mrs. Shimfissle…you don’t know me, but I’m the one who packed up your personal effects.”
“My what, honey?”
“Your robe and house shoes.”
“Oh, yes. I was hoping somebody had done that. I was wondering what happened to them.”
“I gave them to your niece the night you came in.”
Elner’s face fell, and she said, “Uh-oh. There goes my robe. Norma has just been itching to sling it out for years. Oh well. That’s what I get for not minding her, I guess.”
La Shawnda came closer to the bed and said, “Mrs. Shimfissle, on Monday night when I was folding up your robe, I found a piece of cake in your pocket.”
Elner’s eyes lit up. “Oh, good. I was hoping it made it back.”
“Yes, ma’am.” La Shawnda looked around to see if anyone was coming in. “I was supposed to throw it out, but I didn’t.”
“You didn’t?” said a hopeful Elner, who was happy to think she might get it back. She could stand another piece of Dorothy’s cake right now.
“I hope you don’t mind, I took it home to my mother. She grew up way out in the country, and I thought a piece of homemade cake would cheer her up.”
“Oh. I see.” Elner was somewhat disappointed but said, “Well, bless her heart. I grew up in the country too, so I know just how she feels, and if they weren’t going to let me have it, I’m glad she got to enjoy it.”
“Oh, she did, because the next morning she felt better than she has for a long time.”
“It was good cake, all right.”
“I wanted to ask you where you got it. Did you make it?”
Elner laughed. “No, I didn’t make it, mine don’t turn out near that good.”
“Where did it come from?”
Elner looked at her and smiled. “Honey, if I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.”
“Did you buy it at a bakery?”
“No, it’s homemade all right, a friend of mine made it.”
“That’s too bad. I was hoping I could get the recipe from you…she sure loved that cake.”
“Oh, I’d be happy to give it to you. Just give me your address and I’ll send it to you. I have the recipe in the Neighbor Dorothy cookbook at home…. Oh, and here’s a tip: make sure to always check your oven and make sure it’s preheated to the right temperature. Dorothy told me that was the secret to a good moist cake.”
La Shawnda quickly jotted down her name and address on a piece of paper and handed it to Elner.
“I sure appreciate it, Mrs. Shimfissle.” Then La Shawnda looked over at the door and whispered, “And I sure would appreciate it if you didn’t tell anybody about me taking that cake home the other night, or I could lose my job. They’re just looking for excuses to fire people around here.”
“Ahh, I see. Well, no, I promise I won’t mention it. But tell your mother I said I’m glad she’s feeling better, OK?”
As
La Shawnda said good-bye, a nurse wearing rubber gloves and pushing a tray came in and said with a big smile, “Good morning, Mrs. Shimfissle,” and from her smile Elner knew she was in for something she wasn’t going to like.
Going Home
After the nurse had checked and rechecked Elner, Dr. Henson, her emergency room doctor, was handed the report. He had come to visit with Elner several times a day since she had been there, and the more he got to know her, the better he started feeling about the human race. All findings had cleared him of any negligence, he was not being fired, and evidently the hospital was not being sued and his patient was doing great, and he was in a great mood.
He opened the door and walked into her room with a big smile. “Good morning, Sunshine.”
“Well, hey,” she said, happy to see him.
“I hate to tell you this, because we wish we could keep you, but I’m sending you home today, young lady!”
“You are? Is my niece coming to get me?”
“Nope. We just called her and told her not to come, because there is someone here who wants to escort you home in style.”
After the nurses packed her up, they put her in a wheelchair and Nurse Boots Carroll and Dr. Henson rolled her to the elevator and downstairs, through the lobby, and then through the big double glass doors. And parked right out in front was a long shiny black limousine. When Franklin Pixton had reported to Mr. Thomas York, the head of the hospital board, about the old lady who fell out of her tree, Mr. York had been fascinated and had replied, “Now, there is someone I’d like to meet.” And so when the chauffeur opened the back door, a distinguished-looking older man stepped out of the back and said, taking off his hat, “Mrs. Shimfissle, I’m Thomas York. I wonder if you might allow me the privilege of accompanying you home?”
“Well, sure,” she said.
Elner and Mr. York chatted away as they drove toward Elmwood Springs, and she found out that even though he was a retired CEO of a bank, he had a fondness for chickens as well. His grandfather had been a chicken farmer. They had a grand time all the way home discussing the superior qualities of the Rhode Island Red versus the blue speckled hen. As they neared Elmwood Springs, she looked out the window. “I just hope Merle’s out in his yard to see me come driving up in a limousine. I don’t remember the trip to the hospital, but I sure am enjoying the trip home. I never dreamed I’d ever get to ride in the back of one of these things.”
When they drove down her street, she asked if the driver could slow down so maybe some of her other neighbors would see her. When they pulled up to her house, Norma and most of her neighbors were waiting for her, and she was so happy to see that Louise Franks and her daughter, Polly, had come to town to welcome her home as well.
After Mr. York had come up on the porch and eaten a piece of welcome home Bundt cake and visited for a while, and before he left, Cathy Calvert took a picture of him and Elner standing by the limo to put in the newspaper. When the limo drove off, Elner turned around and said to Norma, “Where’s old Sonny? I can’t wait to see that old fool.”
“He’s inside,” Norma said. “I locked him in, I knew you’d want to see him the minute you got home.”
Elner walked in and Sonny was in his spot on the back of the couch. She went over and picked him up, and sat down and petted him. “Hey, Sonny, did you miss me?” But Sonny acted as though he didn’t even know she had been gone, and after allowing himself to be petted a short while, he jumped out of her lap and headed to his dish for a snack. Elner laughed. “Cats, they don’t want you to know they care a thing in the world about you, but they do.”
That first night home all the members of the Sunset Club gathered in her side yard with their chairs, and it was a particularly beautiful sunset that evening. Verbena remarked, “Elner, I think that’s the good Lord’s way of saying welcome home!” And Elner was glad to be back home again, until the next morning when she opened up her dirty-clothes basket and looked in.
“Uh-oh.” Never in a million years did she figure someone would go rooting around in there. “Now what?”
Elner walked over to Ruby’s house and knocked on the door. “Yoo hoo.”
“Come on in, Elner,” Ruby said from the kitchen. “I’m still doing my dishes.”
Elner walked back and said, “I just came over to thank you again for feeding Sonny and the birds and straightening the house and all.”
“Oh, you’re more than welcome, honey. Glad to do it.”
Elner nodded, then as casually as she could, she inquired, “You didn’t happen to find something in my dirty-clothes basket, did you?”
“Like what?” asked Ruby.
“Oh, nothing…just something.”
“No, I didn’t find anything but clothes. Why?”
“I just wondered.”
“Oh.”
“Well, OK, then.”
Ruby hated to lie, but she and Macky had made a pact. And as a registered nurse and a good neighbor, she knew it was for the best. Old people and firearms do not mix. Old Man Henderson who used to live up the street shot half his lip off fooling around with a loaded weapon.
As she walked back home, Elner was worried. If Norma had found it, she was in big trouble again.
Luther Comes Home
5:03 PM
That afternoon when Luther Griggs drove back into town after his Seattle run, he wondered if anybody had missed him at the funeral. He had felt terrible about not being able to go, but there had been nothing he could do about it. He thought about driving past Elner’s house before he went home, but changed his mind. It would be too sad not to see her out there on the front porch. He would go home, and after he had a nap and a bath, he would go over to Mrs. Warren’s house and tell them why he had not been at the service, and find out where she was buried. He knew where to get some nice flowers for her grave. He had seen a bunch of different arrangements the last time Bobbie Jo had dragged him through Tuesday Morning right next to the picture frames. He would get some as pretty as the ones he put on his own mother’s grave, nicer even, he thought. After all, she had been nicer to him than his own mother. But as he turned off the interstate and approached Elmwood Springs, he changed his mind and decided he would drive by her house. He realized that as fast as they were tearing down all the older houses in town, he better go by before it might be too late. As he came down First Avenue, he was relieved to see the house was still standing. He was thinking that he might try to buy the old house himself; he had saved some money over the past couple of years. He was thinking this when Elner Shimfissle walked out onto her porch with a watering can, and waved at him.
“Goddamn it, Luther!” yelled Merle. Luther had just run his eighteen-wheeler truck up over the curb, had almost run Merle over, and had taken out almost all of Merle’s prize hydrangea bushes. Merle ran up to the truck and banged it with his green and white plastic lawn chair, but Luther was so badly shaken up by seeing Elner on her porch that he wouldn’t get out of the truck. By this time Elner had walked across the street, and she stood looking up at him in the cab of his truck, which had landed in a ditch in Irene Goodnight’s yard.
“Hey, Luther,” she said. “What are you doing?”
Macky had just walked in from work when Norma met him at the door, with her car keys in her hand. “You are not going to believe what just happened. I was just getting ready to call you.”
“What?”
“That crazy Luther Griggs didn’t know Aunt Elner was still alive and ran his truck up in Merle’s yard and took out all his shrubs, and half of Irene Goodnight’s. They just called Triple A to come over and pull him out of the ditch.”
“Good God, was anybody hurt?”
“No, evidently just the shrubs. He was just scared to death I guess but we better go over there and make sure everything else is all right. What else is going to happen?”
They drove up in time to see the truck being lifted and pulled across Irene’s yard, taking out most of her rosebushes.
Ir
ene was standing beside Cathy Calvert, who had walked down with her camera. “Dammit,” said Irene. “Why couldn’t they have pulled that truck back across Merle’s yard? His yard was already ruined. He isn’t even a Triple A member! I’m the one who called, and they take out my yard!”
Poor Luther was still shaken up pretty badly and was over at Ruby’s porch. Ruby had just brought him a shot of whisky. Elner sat with him and said, “I’m sorry to have given you such a fright, honey.”
He shook his head, almost in tears. “Whew. I had you dead and buried, and then to see you come out of your house like that…Man…it almost scared me to death.”
After Macky had walked over and surveyed the damage to both yards, he told Merle and Irene to come out to The Home Depot garden shop in the morning and he would make sure to replace what he could. Then he walked back over to Elner’s and sat on the porch.
After a while, when Luther had pulled himself together and was able to talk without bursting into tears, Macky said, “Luther, let’s take a little walk, OK?”
“Sure, Mr. Warren.”
“Excuse us, ladies,” he said. As he walked Luther around to the side of the house, Macky said quietly, “Let me ask you something, Luther. Did you leave a gun at Elner’s house?”
Luther seemed surprised. “A gun?”
“Yeah, a gun. I’m not going to turn you in or anything. Just tell me if you left a loaded .38 at her house.”