He simply snorted, then tucked his hands behind his head. He couldn’t have looked less concerned. “I didn’t ask you to roll around. You can’t count stars that way.”
I frowned. “Count stars?”
“Anyone can count sheep. You good at math, Red?” He nodded toward the star-drenched sky above. “‘Cause we got our work cut out for us.”
For the life of me, I could not seem to figure him out. The endless faces of Valentine Bonham drew me in deeper than I knew it was wise to go.
But he didn’t scare me. Unh-uh. No sir.
I lay back and started counting. The sky was like Lorena’s pastry board when she’d spread flour all over it. I never knew there were so many stars up there.
“Some people believe the stars are pathways, you know,” I told Val after a while. “Portals where you can communicate with the departed.”
Hmm was all he said.
“You have anyone up there you want to contact, Val?”
“Not really.”
Okay, so he wasn’t feeling talkative. Suddenly I was. “Guess what?”
“With you, the possibilities are endless. Care to narrow it down?”
“Lorena and Ray, the reason they don’t talk. It’s not just the driver’s license. He cheated on her with Glory.”
A flicker of a frown, but he didn’t say anything.
“I wonder if there’s something I can do. I like Lorena and I feel sorry for Glory. Ray . . . I don’t know. He’s so closed in. He doesn’t seem the type. Anyway, I don’t get Lorena and Ray wasting what they have by refusing to speak to each other. Living like strangers.”
“You think infidelity’s no big deal?”
“Absolutely not,” I said. “That’s part of how I got started on this trip.”
“You were unfaithful?” He stared at me.
“Of course not. My boyfriend and I disagreed on whether being faithful meant all the time or just if you didn’t get caught.”
“Ouch.”
“It’s okay. I really only miss his mom.” I waited a beat. “And his bathroom. It was a seriously great house. Big whirlpool tub, the works.”
“No wagon wheel headboards, I bet.”
I had to giggle, remembering his face as I’d tried to hide behind a kitten. “Nope. His mom decorated his place. She’s a Dallas socialite.”
“I get the picture—equal parts Botox, silicone and money. Met a few in my time. Doesn’t seem like you’d go for the son of one.”
“I had no idea when I met him. Jelly’s her wastrel, but he’s also her baby. She keeps thinking she’ll reform him.”
“What’s his dad think?”
“Whatever Big Lil tells him to.”
“Poor sap. Fall for the glitz and pay forever.”
“You ever been married, Val?”
“Are you kidding?” He was clearly horrified. “You?”
“Nope.” I hesitated. “No one has asked. Not sober, anyway.”
“Don’t tell me. While you were wearing stilettos.”
His playfulness removed some of the sting. “My customers liked me a lot.”
He patted his heart. “Can’t blame them.”
“But no proposals except from drunks.”
He clasped my chin and turned my head to face him. “Then you’ve been going out with idiots.”
I had a silly urge to cry. “Thanks.” We lay there in a comfortable silence for a while.
“It’s not a stupid risk, you know,” I said finally.
“What?” He swiveled his head toward me.
“Searching for Sister.”
His lack of response was damning.
“It’s a gamble, yes, and I know that.” I fixed my gaze on the stars once more. “But I have to try. I—”
When I didn’t finish, he prompted me. “What?”
Another step would have led me into treacherous territory, for I was not proud of how I’d handled things with her at the end. Val’s listing of his past sins, though, had made me feel like not such a freak. “I was mad at her.” I shook my head. “Mad isn’t right. I was furious.” My throat tightened, just remembering the last time I’d really lost control.
It was the day she fell and snapped a femur honeycombed with cancer as she was stalking away from me after an argument I’d provoked. A stupid one, at that. One I wouldn’t have dared to start in the early years when I was still terrified that Sister would abandon me if I wasn’t a perfect angel. Over time, though, she made me believe that we were stuck like glue.
Mostly, we were. So I became a teenager with a mouth full of sass. And Sister, God love her, still didn’t toss me out on my ear. Or strangle me before I grew up. We had some rough times, but we weathered them, due in no small part to Sister’s patience.
Then cancer came to visit and decided to make itself at home. I was mad, then, you betcha. I used that fury to propel me through the doctor visits where I’d demand answers to questions Sister was too scared to ask. I was full of myself then, flexing my muscles, sure that if I pushed all the right buttons, yelled loud enough, then God Almighty Himself would have no choice but to listen. To fix her.
Because He would not dare take her from me. Better not or—
Well, I never managed my way past the or. Anyway, it was on one of those days when I was stomping around, making calls, demanding results, badgering everyone Sister didn’t have the strength to push . . . and Sister asked me to clean the top of the refrigerator. I stared at her like she’d lost her mind. She might be dying, for Pete’s sake, and she cared about whether anyone could see the film of dust on top of the refrigerator? I told her I’d take care of it later, after the next call, and she insisted that it needed to be done right then. When I refused and started dialing, she made her way to the kitchen and, while I was deep in another harangue, dragged a chair over, planted one foot on the seat and began to mount it.
The snap of bone, I swear to you, was as loud as a gunshot.
I never let my mad go like that again. Not when Jelly was screwing around, not when Big Lil smirked at me, not at my most aggravating customer. I had precious little to cling to after I lost Sister, and not the slightest scrap I was prepared to sacrifice.
An irony, given that I’d lost everything I’d been clutching to me since.
“Why were you angry?”
“She gave up. I was still fighting.” And flat refusing to listen to the one thing she begged of me at the end. My regrets still ate at me every single day. After all she’d done for me . . .
The stars above me got wavery, but I had not earned the right to cry.
Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe. I leaped to my feet and put some distance between me and Val. I stared up at the sky, praying that somehow she’d hear me. “I am so, so sorry, Sister,” I murmured. “I just couldn’t give up like that.”
Behind me, I heard Val start to gain his feet, but I didn’t want to talk anymore, not to him or anyone unless it was Sister. If only I could have the chance to meet her just once more, face to face. I’d told her this a thousand times in my mind. Lit candles in churches. Meditated under trees.
But I’d never known if she heard me.
I took off running and left Val behind.
Frances Marie Sparks Brown
(October 17, 1849-January 1, 1934)
Frances Marie Sparks, a native of North Carolina and daughter of Daniel and Kezziah Sparks, married Thomas Brown in 1865. They lived in Grayson County, Texas, before moving to a 410-acre farm near here about 1876. During the 1880s and 1890s, Frances served as a midwife and lay doctor for families in the area. Known as “Aunt Fanny,” she often rode 6-8 miles by horseback at night to deliver a baby. Despite her husband’s death in 1912 Frances skillfully managed her farm and reared 12 children while continuing to nurse many of her neighbors back to health.
CINNAMON TOAST DREAMS
Morning found me in the store long before Lorena. I’d made one more attempt to go to sleep then given up so that Alex would stand a chance of
getting a good night’s rest. I tiptoed around the trailer gathering clothes, then took a sponge bath in the bathroom of the café.
I only turned on one light over the sink in the kitchen for fear of waking somebody up. By the glow cast into the dining area, I spent some time rearranging the salt and pepper shakers, the assortment of Tabasco sauce, ketchup and sweeteners at each table, trying for something that would put some pizzazz in the joint.
Then I crawled into a booth and catnapped a little until dawn’s first faint light woke me up. Ragged and weary, I brewed a pot of coffee and started dragging out the ingredients for pancakes, hoping I remembered everything I’d seen Lorena set out the day before. She hadn’t taught me how to do pancakes yet—yesterday had been a lesson on potato salad.
I poured myself a cup of coffee and drank it while dancing the steps of Lorena’s minuet, trying to cement in my mind the order of the lunch prep. I thought about going ahead and peeling potatoes, but they’d have turned brown long before time to boil them, I feared. Okra, though—I thought I could maybe chop it and put it in the fridge in baggies until—
No. I’d be lucky to remember the order of things. I was far from ready to wing it. And anyway, I’d have needed to turn on more lights or risk losing a finger. The mental rehearsal would have to do me.
Chop potatoes. Check.
Ditto onions and dill pickles. Check.
Boil potatoes for—
Oh, lordy, I’d have to ask her how long. I did recall that I had to turn the burner down right after the water came to a boil, and—
“What on earth are you doing, child?”
I bobbled my coffee cup and barely avoided spilling it all over me. I whirled to find a bemused Lorena inside the back door.
“I, uh, couldn’t sleep. Thought I’d get a head start. Want some coffee?”
She gazed at me so long that I got antsy.
“I set out all the ingredients for pancakes. At least, I think I did. Maybe today you could teach me about making them.”
She wasn’t going to get distracted. “Why couldn’t you sleep? You certainly worked hard enough yesterday.”
If I started talking about Sister, I would cry. I had never seen anything that crying improved. “I just had things on my mind. No big deal.”
If only she wouldn’t study me like that. I busied myself pouring her a cup of coffee. “Only cream, right?” At her nod, I added cream, then stirred. When I walked over to hand the cup to her, the sympathy in her eyes nearly undid me.
“You’re lonely, aren’t you, child?”
If she kept going in this vein, I would be blubbering. “How could I be? I’ve got a car chockfull of company.” I managed a weak chuckle. “Shoot, I’ve hardly had a minute to myself since the day I left Austin.”
Those too-seeing eyes never left me, until I was ready to beg for mercy. Finally she turned away and tied on her apron. “For pancakes, you begin with the dry ingredients. Come over here and watch.”
I breathed a huge sigh of relief and approached her side. “How much flour do you need?”
“I couldn’t tell you; I don’t measure when I cook. I just eyeball it, then judge by the consistency when the batter is mixed.”
I resisted a groan. That left way too many points in the process for me to screw up. “I’ll get some paper and a pencil. Maybe you could let me measure what you assemble.”
She placed one hand over mine. “No, dear. You’re a smart little thing. You’ll catch on. Just trust yourself.”
So much of my life had been winging it, and I was weary of the constant need to dance around, trying to find someplace to light.
But Lorena was demonstrating confidence in me, and I hated to disappoint her. And anyway, she’d called me a smart little thing. Shoot, the novelty of that had to be worth something. No one had called me little in a very long time. “All right,” I said dubiously. “I’ll try.”
And so the day began.
That evening, after closing, I should have been exhausted, and I was, but I was also jazzed. I’d messed up half the batch of pancakes I’d made, but the other half were dadgum near perfect. I’d also started making plans to rearrange some of the stock on the store shelves to increase sales, though I hadn’t discussed that with Lorena yet.
I had the itch to brag, to celebrate, but there was nobody to do it with. Lorena knew, of course, and she’d puffed up my chest with her compliments. Val was nowhere in sight, and when I’d asked Alex if she wanted to hang, she’d said she would, but I could tell she really wanted to be with Jeremy.
So it was just me, and I needed to move around. I decided to explore this odd little burg I’d landed in. I snagged Isis from the RV and took her along. She and Alex were so tight these days that I wasn’t sure whose cat she was now, but I wasn’t ready to give her up.
I went in the opposite direction from where we’d driven, well, okay, been towed, into town. The evening was still quite warm, but trees lined the road, and the shade was more than welcome. It was a novel experience for me, just to walk with no particular destination. There was little traffic, but I got a particular thrill when two different pickups and a car passed me and inside each one was someone I’d met at the café. They nodded at me or waved, and a little further down the road, a lady whose house I passed called out to me from the porch. I couldn’t remember her name, but she sat in her rocking chair and told me how glad she was that I was helping out Lorena.
Visiting, I was visiting. Just like we were neighbors. I couldn’t get over the feeling.
Maybe a mile down the road from the café, I spotted a little cemetery and wondered if that might be where Lorena’s people were buried. It was a sweet place, small and tree-shaded, neat as a pin. I was not comfortable with death and had never voluntarily entered a cemetery, but this place was different. Peaceful and serene. You could almost feel the love, the respect for tradition.
I wondered if Sister would have liked to be buried in a place like this.
Which was just stupid to think about. If she’d wanted a headstone, she wouldn’t have insisted on being cremated. I did as she’d asked, but I hated those ashes, couldn’t wait to be rid of them. I couldn’t bear the thought that the woman who was everything to me had been put through fire after everything else she’d suffered. Trying to figure out what to do with them had made me about half-crazy. I couldn’t stand to keep them and think of her that way, but I didn’t want to part with her, either.
Big Lil, of all people, had solved my problem. She’d taken charge when Jelly had told her how paralyzed I was by the decision and had made arrangements for me to spread them over the ocean off South Padre Island. Had actually chartered a boat and ushered me out there and, when I faltered, had helped me survive sticking my fingers in there and holding what was left of Sister in my hand.
The letting go was awful.
She’s free now, Big Lil had told me. In the end, that’s all any of us want. I latched onto her reasoning with everything in me because I thought I’d lose my mind if I didn’t.
Whatever complaints I might have about Big Lil, however little we had in common or how eager she was to see me go from her son’s life, I will always owe her for that one act of kindness. It isn’t always the best thing to go easy on folks. Big Lil made me face a hard thing, and I learned I could survive it.
As I looked around this place, I wished Sister’s body could have rested somewhere like this, nestled in the bosom of family. Some place I could have visited and cared for. Put out poinsettias at Christmas and a flag on Memorial Day and July 4th. Special flowers on her birthday in January. I guess Mama had been cremated, too, because we never visited a grave, but then, we were always on the move. I was too little back then to know what all was going on, and I never asked Sister when I got older, so once she was gone, it was like I never even had a family. My pitiful store of memories was all I possessed.
Folks in Jewel took good care of their loved ones, I could see. Many of the graves had flowers planted, not just
plastic ones stuck in a vase. Some of the graves were really old and gone wild, but very few of them.
I decided I would ask Lorena about her maiden name so on my next visit, I could locate her people. Maybe pull a weed or two, if she hadn’t beaten me to it.
In the meantime, I found some Cashwells and stopped for a minute to pay my respects.
Then, ready for sleep at last, I retrieved Isis from her prowling and headed home. Or back, more accurately.
I could call it home for a little while, though.
The next morning was a banner day for me. Lorena actually sat out front and visited with customers for a few minutes at lunchtime.
I only managed to scorch one batch of okra. The potato salad was pretty dadgum good, if you ask me.
Lorena had an interesting system set up. The price was the same every day, five dollars, so folks paid at the beginning, inserting their money in a metal box decorated with cowboy-on-bucking-bronco cutouts right next to where the plates were stacked at the beginning of the buffet.
People could have cheated, maybe, but I could tell by watching that they didn’t want to. Lorena had the respect of one and all. I watched her and marveled. She knew everyone’s children and grandchildren and parents, always took the time to chat with each one while still keeping the food coming.
Every dish on the buffet line was cooked fresh, and the smell was out of this world. Somehow there was always okra, golden and crisp, and rolls hot from the oven. Most of the vegetables were grown in Tommy’s and Charlie’s gardens. Once they’d all been grown in Lorena’s, but she admitted that the demands of the lunch trade had gotten beyond her. During the winter, she told me, she counted a lot on produce she and her children and grandchildren preserved during summer weekend marathons. That’s where all those rows and rows of jars of corn, green beans and tomatoes in the storeroom had come from.
She set a hard pace for herself, that woman. I understood completely why the store closed at six. Even a force of nature, as Lorena clearly was, could only put in so many hours on her feet.
The Goddess of Fried Okra Page 15