“I’m likely to do both if you boys come back here stealing out of my garden again. How old are you children anyway?”
The big boy said he was ten but his brother was only seven and wasn’t allowed to be out at night. Grandpa took both boys by the hand and walked through the garden, the little one dragging a burlap bag behind.
“You tell me what you want, and I’ll show you how to harvest so it won’t damage the crop,” Grandpa said.
Soon the boys filled the bag with potatoes and onions and carrots and ears of corn. Grandpa showed them how to tie their sack in the middle of a long pole so they could share the heavy load on the way home.
“A load is always lighter if it’s shared. I want you to remember that. You want more, you knock and I’ll give you what can be spared. I want to show you something else before you leave,” he said, leading the boys over to where Queenie was tied.
He unhooked the leash, and Queenie, grateful for freedom, ran to the boys and started jumping up. Grandpa gave a hand signal and the dog sat down, watching Grandpa and waiting.
“This dog is part of our family, and I won’t stand for her being tormented. She wants to be your friend. Go on over there now and get acquainted with her.”
The smallest boy approached Queenie and put out a hand. Queenie closed her teeth gently over the dirty little arm, leading him around the yard and back to Grandpa.
“Her name is Queenie, and we’re right fond of her. She’ll do your bidding if you just ask her. Tell her to sit and she’ll sit right down.”
Recognizing the command, Queenie sat. The boys looked up at Grandpa wide-eyed.
“Okay, hold out your hand and she’ll shake hands with you.”
The older boy held out a hand and Queenie extended a paw.
“Now, boys, I don’t want to hear tell of you mistreating this dog or any other living thing for that matter.”
Grandpa put Queenie back on her leash and led the boys out to the road.
“You go straight home and don’t be dallying along the way. And you remember that we have us a gentleman’s agreement: You are welcome on my property anytime as long as you knock on my door first. Get along with you now.”
I was wide awake after all the excitement, so I sat with Grandma and drank milk coffee while Grandpa told and retold the story of how he’d shot into the air to scare the boys.
“I hated like the dickens to have to scare ’em like I did, but them little hooligans needed somebody to get their attention. I’m hoping they’ll think twice next time, but there’s no telling. What they need is somebody at home to jerk a knot in their tail and straighten them out, but I expect that’s where they’re learning their thievery.”
“If you caught me stealing, you’d more than likely wring my neck,” I said.
“More than likely,” Grandpa agreed, “but that’s because you been taught right from wrong. Maybe them little fellows don’t know better.”
Grandma said she didn’t want to hear any more foolishness from me and Grandpa about wringing people’s necks. She had her no-nonsense face on, so Grandpa aimed a yes ma’am in her direction.
“Tell it again,” I begged.
“I figure you know it well as I do, you do the telling this time. I’ve plumb wore my teller out.”
Every week or so after, always just before dawn, we heard a tapping at the front door, getting a little louder if Grandpa didn’t hurry down. He pulled pants and suspenders over his long johns and went out to help his new friends fill their bag. Grandma followed him downstairs and put a pot of coffee on the stove. Sometimes she gave the boys a sack of oatmeal cookies or a pint of damson preserves, and a time or two she gave them a basket of eggs.
We never had another chicken disappear.
Carlotta didn’t play with me at school, at least not much, but one day at recess she joined me at the seesaw. When the girl on the other end hopped off, Carlotta caught the board and held it until my feet were on solid ground. I liked that about her—she wasn’t the kind of person who’d get off the seesaw and leave the person on the other end to hit the dirt. She held out her closed hand and passed something to me, folding my hand around it before she walked away. I opened my fist and saw a citronella nut like the one her grandmother carved that day. She didn’t come back to school after that. And one night soon after, the camp disappeared.
I never saw Carlotta again.
But I still imagined myself dancing with her, chin up and eyes flashing, mirrored skirts swirling in the light of a gypsy fire.
19
Birds of a Feather
Aunt Lila was a beauty operator, Licensed and Board Certified. My mother’s older sister by five years, she came to live with us because she was between husbands again. Eddie Kamphey hadn’t suited her, at least not for long, so she’d left him in New York where she’d found him.
Absentmindedly rubbing at the red mark her hairnet had left on her forehead, Aunt Lila stood gazing out the kitchen window. She needed to come up with a showstopper for the big hair styling contest being held in Charleston, the state capital, the following week. We watched as Buttermilk, my scruffy orange tomcat, dodged a pair of blue jays that dived at him, protecting the nest they’d built in the cherry tree. All of a sudden she clapped her hands together, stirring up a whiff of the Lucky Strikes she tried to hide with dabs of Evening in Paris secreted in her purse along with a slim black cigarette holder.
With a perfectly manicured hand she reached for a cup and saucer and poured the last of the coffee that was keeping hot on the stove, waiting for the grounds to settle before taking her first disappointing sip.
“This stuff could choke a horse.” She made a sourpuss face as she glanced at me.
Hunched over the kitchen table, she started to sketch, but I couldn’t see. I begged, but she wouldn’t even let me peek.
Aunt Lila didn’t drive, so Mother was taking her to pick up my brother’s girlfriend, Rayjeana, who would be Aunt Lila’s model for the contest.
Rayjeana got in the backseat with me, hair the color of honey hanging halfway down her back. I noticed her eyes were robin’s egg blue. While I watched, she squeezed a little Vaseline on her finger and flicked her lashes with it. She told me not to tell about the Vaseline, and I wouldn’t. Well, nobody but Sissy. After all, she was my best friend and we told each other everything.
Or maybe I’d simply slick the Vaseline on my eyelashes and wait for Sissy to notice. Lately I’d been thinking I wanted to grow up to look like Rayjeana instead of Lana Turner, but the spattering of rusty freckles across my nose gave me cause to worry.
I snuck an admiring glance at Rayjeana’s unspattered summer nose.
Aunt Lila led Rayjeana into the sitting room off our downstairs bedroom. She’d set up shop there, littering the room with shoeboxes overflowing with brushes and metal clamps and bobby pins. After a couple of hours, she hollered for us to come see. Mother walked in first and gasped. Grandma said, “Oh my word.” Vonnie, just ahead of me, stopped so sudden I bumped into her. I stood on my tiptoes so I could see over her shoulder.
Rayjeana sat with her back to us, facing a big oval mirror borrowed from the mahogany dresser in the spare bedroom. When I saw her reflected back at me, I had no doubt.
Aunt Lila’s hairdo was bound to call attention.
We got up early on the day of the contest and started driving the sixty or so miles to Charleston, little more than a two-hour trip if the weather and our luck held out. The weather was fine, but before we got halfway, one of the back tires started making a thumpity-thump sound. Mother eased into a Gulf station that advertised “MECHANIC ON DUTY—DAY & NITE.”
“I knew I should have checked about that tire,” Mother said to herself.
“Then why on earth didn’t you?” Aunt Lila asked. “You know I can’t be late.”
“Maybe I have better things to do than keep this car running to cart you around.”
“Hogwash,” Aunt Lila said. “If you did, you’d be doing them.”
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A man ambled out, adjusting a dirty sling on his arm as he eyed our sorry-looking tire. “Mechanic ain’t showed up. Off hunting’s my guess.”
Mother looked over at the sign, then back at the man.
“Yes ma’am, I know what it says. But it don’t mean diddly to that boy during squirrel season.”
Without another word Mother pulled the jack from the trunk and positioned it so the weight wouldn’t bend the frame. She jacked the car up until the wheels cleared the ground, loosened the lug nuts with a wrench as long as her forearm, and wrestled the faulty tire off, replacing it with the spare, which didn’t look all that much better but would have to do. She placed the jack back in the trunk and threw the old blanket she’d used to protect her nice skirt and blouse over it. It wasn’t new, but it was one of her favorite outfits, a jade-green skirt with a soft ivory blouse printed with ivy leaves. Green was the color she looked best in—everybody said so.
“Y’all go on to the restroom so we don’t have to stop again,” she told us, “but don’t be dawdling around in there.”
Vonnie went in while I waited outside. There was a big old horsefly buzzing around when it was my turn. After shooing him out, I put the seat down and spread layers of toilet paper on it to keep from sitting on the wood, although I still just crouched over it. The seat sprung right up again and smacked my bottom, layers of toilet paper drifting onto the floor. I yanked my underpants up and pulled my dress down, my slip still bunched around my waist. The soap container was empty, but I didn’t care—filling station soap always smelled like tar anyway. I ran my hands under the spigot, not even singing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” to make sure I’d washed long enough. I cranked the cloth-towel roll on the wall looking for a reasonably clean place to use. Giving up, I dried my hands on my dress.
“You notice anything in there?” Vonnie asked.
“You mean that big old fly?” I was a little peeved she hadn’t warned me about the toilet seat, not that I would have warned her, but still, a big sister had an obligation. Grandma said so.
“No, dummy, that toilet seat!”
“Oh, I’ve seen those before over at the Black Knight Country Club,” I lied.
I’d forgotten to cross my fingers, so I had to count that as a real lie.
Vonnie looked suspicious, but since it was half true, she couldn’t be sure I was lying. Ann Nuckols, a classmate whose father was a state senator, had invited a bunch of us to attend her birthday party at the Black Knight Country Club. I had been there, but Vonnie hadn’t, so she didn’t know they had ordinary toilet seats like everybody else.
Once we got on the road again, Aunt Lila doled out buttered cornbread with peach preserves and whole deviled eggs made from halves she had stuck back together and wrapped in waxed paper for the trip. There were jars of sweet tea with lemon and a bag of ginger snaps. She passed us a wet washcloth when we finished. Rayjeana got carsick so we had to stop two more times for her to throw up. Mother said more than likely it was just a bad case of nerves.
The contest was held in a school auditorium on the edge of Charleston. The master of ceremonies, a tall, skinny man whose pants were so short I could see flashes of his bright yellow socks, introduced the first model. Her hair was finger-waved back into a cascade of silver blue curls. The style was “Niagara Falls,” but he pronounced it “Niagara Fallth.” Vonnie looked at me and rolled her eyes. Then came a blonde woman with her hair braided into a lattice design. That hairdo was named “Heidi,” which he could say just fine. The next model had black hair lacquered into a smooth fat bun, with chopsticks crossed in it. She wore a red satin housecoat wrapped with a stiff wide sash to look like a kimono. This one was called “Geisha Girl.” He said “Geitha Girl.” There were a bunch more hairdos, but “Geisha Girl” was the only one I was worried about. I noticed her wood shoes were the kind I’d seen on pictures of Dutch girls. I didn’t know if that would count against her, but I hoped so.
Finally Rayjeana, wearing the long lavender-blue dress she’d made for prom the year before, floated onto the stage. Her hair was back-combed into a bird’s nest swirled high on top of her head. She curtsied, dipping low to show off three egg-shaped curls inside the nest. A blue-feathered bird, one I’d last seen on our Christmas tree, perched on the side.
“Thith lath one here ith ‘Bluebeard of Happineth,’ ” the man said.
Vonnie kept digging her elbow in my side, but I didn’t dare look at her for fear I’d bust out laughing.
There was a smattering of applause.
Huddled together, the judges looked at index cards they’d made notes on and shook their heads up and down or sideways, depending on which hairdo it was they were talking about. Finally the man with the yellow socks asked the beauty operators and their models to line up on stage for the winners to be announced. I don’t remember who got honorary mention or third place, but Geisha was the second place winner. I held my breath.
“And the firth plath winner . . . Bluebeard of Happineth!”
Mother and Vonnie and I let out a big whoop and embarrassed ourselves when people turned around to look at us. Aunt Lila and Rayjeana, still on stage, were more ladylike.
On the way home we imitated the yellow-sock man saying the words all funny and getting the name of the hairdo wrong. Mother told us to quit it right now, that we ought to be ashamed of ourselves for mocking somebody’s affliction, but she had laughed too, although she claimed it wasn’t about that at all.
I thought Aunt Lila’s trophy was a beauty, but she said that wobbly thing was so tacky she had half a mind to let them put “Bluebeard of Happineth” on it. I said oh, no she couldn’t, but oh, yes she could if she wanted, she declared, now mocking me. We laughed at that and at Mother’s imitation of the look on the slack-jawed man’s face when she changed the tire. And when Vonnie told about getting whacked by the commode seat, we laughed some more.
Mother said we were all right giddy from the excitement.
Rayjeana said if she laughed anymore she was going to pee her pants. “That’s just your nerves again,” Mother said, but she pulled into a diner called Karol’s Kupboard just in case. Since we were already stopped, Aunt Lila offered to treat for supper. I ordered a fried baloney sandwich on white bread with potato chips and a cherry coke, foods Grandma wouldn’t allow. Mother gave us each a nickel to play the jukebox attached to the wall of our booth. She wouldn’t let me play the Andrews Sisters singing “Drinking Rum and Coca-Cola,” although I didn’t know why not; it was on the radio all the time. So I played something else, but I don’t remember what.
I yawned wide.
Mother said for me to close my mouth before a moth flew in.
Words blurred into faraway sounds that made no sense. Something about remembering to check the oil and yellow socks and the sandman. My eyelids closed over gritty eyes, and I soon fell asleep with my head on Vonnie’s shoulder.
I dreamed I was just like my Aunt Lila, except I was driving the car as I waved to Lana Turner and Rayjeana, a long black cigarette holder between the fingers of my perfectly manicured hand.
20
The Living and the Deaf
Grandpa was just back from a trip to the Beaver sisters’ general store. He watched Grandma pull sugar and flour and coffee and Crisco out of the paper poke and set it on the table. The last thing out was a can of Clabber Girl baking powder.
“Clev, surely you know I don’t use anything but Rumford.” There was an accusing edge to her voice.
“Couldn’t be helped. They were all out.”
“Well, don’t ever buy that Clabber Girl again. That stuff’s not fit to eat.”
With all the baking that went on at our house, it wasn’t long before me and Grandpa were sent to the store for more baking powder. When we got back, Grandma unpacked the Ipana toothpaste, Jergen’s lotion, cornmeal, Goody’s headache powder, and a jar of Postum, a powdered hot drink made of roasted grain. Grandpa had grown fond of it when coffee was rationed during the War and s
till drank it from time to time. “Easier on the gut,” he said, rubbing his hand over his aching belly.
“They won’t get any Rumford until the end of the week,” Grandpa explained before Grandma had a chance to ask.
“What did you get me then?”
“Didn’t get none of it. You told me not to.”
“For goodness’ sake, Clev, you know I can’t make biscuits without baking powder. I don’t see why on earth you didn’t bring me what they had. I could’ve made do.”
Grandpa winked at me.
“Guess me and you better go get your Grandma some of that sorry old Clabber Girl if we want any biscuits around this house.” He chuckled as he went out the door, me right behind him.
Somehow Grandma managed to make biscuits despite having to use the Clabber Girl.
“Not fit to eat,” she muttered, dumping the pan of biscuits in a big bowl. She folded a napkin over them, either to keep them warm or hide them. I wasn’t sure which. When the biscuits were passed around, I could not see one bit of difference.
But I kept that to myself.
Hursey had been home from boarding school all summer, filling the house with his friends. How word got around I didn’t know, but it never failed. Half a dozen teenage boys, most a few years older than him, soon had their feet stuck under Grandma’s supper table, their hands soaring and diving like birds. You’d think a table full of deaf boys would be quiet, but not so. Our house soon filled with their boisterous laughter and grunts, their fists slapping into palms for emphasis, faces contorted into exaggerated expressions of anger and joy and surprise. Those who could speak often talked out loud while signing, sometimes all at once, and those who couldn’t speak mimed the words. My brother had started at West Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind in Romney, West Virginia, when he was seven, coming home only for Christmas and summer vacations. Grandma said it was a crying shame families had to send little children away to boarding school where they didn’t know a solitary soul. But Mother really didn’t have a choice. It was the only place Hursey could get an education. He had started school late like most deaf kids we knew, but even still, he excelled there, skipping several grades.
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