A Place at the Table: A Novel

by Susan Rebecca White

  “Keisha, this is Bobby’s brother Hunter. Hunter, this is my neighbor and Bobby’s friend, Keisha.”

  “Hi,” Hunter mutters.

  “Hey,” she says.

  If Hunter weren’t standing there I would remind her that “hay is for horses.”

  “Our church is having a picnic next week if you wanna come.”

  “Where do y’all go to church, sugar?” asks Meemaw.

  “Zion Baptist.”

  “That’s a nice place. Nearby, too. I’m sure Bobby would love to go with you, wouldn’t you, son?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Is it a potluck? Should I get my mama to fix something?”

  “We’re bringing soda. You don’t have to bring nothing.”

  “Daddy said to hurry,” says Hunter.

  I glare at him but follow his order, going to the bedroom to get my bag. Keisha, Hunter, and me all walk out the door together. Meemaw’s phone rings just as we are leaving, so she waves good-bye instead of hugging and kissing me and watching me walk to the car like she usually does. Outside the house I wave bye to Keisha and tell her I’ll see her next week for the picnic. She tells me not to go strawberry picking without her, and then she picks up her bike from the front lawn, straddles it, and starts riding home.

  She isn’t ten feet away when Hunter asks, real loud, “Why are you playing with that nigger girl?”

  I know Keisha heard because I see her back jerk as she pedals toward her house, but she doesn’t stop or turn around or anything. I want to say something. To stand up for her. To tell Hunter he is a bully and a jerk. To tell Hunter no one likes him anyway. And I try. But I can’t make the words come out. And now she is farther down the street and I know that if I want her to hear me I’ll have to yell, and what if she didn’t actually hear Hunter? What if what I thought was her back jerking at his bad word was actually just her sneezing or something?

  Daddy has popped open the trunk of the wagon so I can shove my bike in there. By the time I get it situated Hunter has already taken the front seat. I get into the back and, without meaning to, start crying, crying like the time I got separated from Mama at Davison’s Department Store downtown.

  “What in the world is the matter?” Daddy asks, switching off the game and turning to look at me.

  “He called my new friend a nigger,” I say, pointing at Hunter.

  First time in my life I have ever tattled on my brother.

  “You mean that little colored girl y’all came out with?” Daddy asks.

  I nod.

  “Is that true, son?” asks Daddy, turning his attention to Hunter.

  Hunter just looks down at his lap, not saying anything.

  “Tell me the truth, son. Did you call her that name?”

  “Yes, sir, but she didn’t hear me. I said it soft, and she was already walking away.”

  “Doesn’t matter if you whispered or shouted it, it’s unacceptable language and I will not have it. When we get home you and I are going to discuss this further in private, you hear?”

  Oh boy. Hunter is getting the belt. Daddy doesn’t spank all that often, but when he does, he makes sure you remember it.

  Hunter mumbles, “Yes, sir.” And then he shoots a backward glance at me that is so full of evil the hairs on my arms pop up, as if they are soldiers standing at attention.

  2

  Gracious Servings

  (Decatur, Georgia, 1975)

  How, Mama asks, could she say no when Mrs. Lacy Lovehart herself asked Mama to host a luncheon for The SERVERS (Sweet Earnest Reverent Vessels Enjoy Respect and Salvation)? This is Lacy Lovehart, for goodness’ sakes: confirmed Christian, former Miss America, and current spokeswoman for the Central Georgia Peach Growers Association. Still, the upcoming event has Mama nervous as a cat in a carrying case. Sure, Mama says, she herself did publish Gracious Servings, a book on Joyful Christian Entertaining, and sure, she has both hosted a thousand luncheons and instructed other women on how to do so, but still. Mrs. Lovehart is famous and a legendary beauty, and there’s going to be a photographer from the Atlanta Journal covering the event, which means Mama’s homemaking skills will be on display for everyone who gets the paper.

  But Mama knows how to cope. “The best way out is through,” she says at breakfast, the top of her hair covered in a blue and white bandana. Hunter, Daddy, and I all know what this means—Troy would know, too, but he’s gone, a sophomore at Duke.

  Cleaning Lady has arrived.

  “Cleaning Lady” is an official term that Daddy came up with, way back during the early years of his and Mama’s marriage, before any of us were born. Daddy loves to tell the story of first “meeting” Cleaning Lady, after six months of wedded bliss. Usually, he says, Edie was sweet and fun, easy to be around, albeit mighty energetic. But when Mama’s parents called from LaGrange to say they were coming to stay in Mama and Daddy’s new house in Decatur for a week, boy howdy did Cleaning Lady arrive. Daddy said Cleaning Lady was beyond energetic, manic even, pulling everything out of every closet, every cabinet, every drawer: cleaning, sorting, and rearranging. And Cleaning Lady did not dress to impress. Usually Mama changed her blouse and applied fresh lipstick each night before Daddy came home, but Cleaning Lady met Daddy at the door with a bandana still tied around her head. She did not even stop her cleaning to eat dinner with Daddy but instead fixed him a peanut butter sandwich—not even taking the time to spread on jelly!—and a glass of milk.

  Daddy says that after each of Cleaning Lady’s first few appearances he and Mama would argue and be cross with each other. But, Daddy later realized, Cleaning Lady was a part of Mama, and when he married Edie he agreed to love her, warts and all. Cleaning Lady even became a topic in the seminar he hosts each year for married couples, called Keeping the Spark Alive!

  Hunter hates Cleaning Lady. Maybe I should, too. And I do hate how snappy and irritable she makes Mama. But I love how the house sparkles after a good deep clean, and I don’t mind helping out. After breakfast I ask if Mama needs help scrubbing the kitchen. Mama chews on her lip for a minute but then quickly takes me up on the offer, as if it might go away if she doesn’t say yes real fast.

  • • •

  “Have you decided on what you’re wearing?” I ask, spraying Fantastik on an emptied shelf of the refrigerator.

  “I’m half-tempted to wear that Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress I got on sale at Davison’s,” she says, dumping a Tupperware container of old tuna noodle casserole into the garbage disposal. “Though I have a feeling Lacy Lovehart might disapprove. Not of the dress so much, but the message behind it.”

  “That a woman can easily slip out of it?” I ask.

  Mama laughs but then cuts a suspicious look at me. “How you come up with these things. . . .”

  “Wear your St. John suit,” I say.

  Daddy gave her that suit for Christmas, and it is her pride and joy.

  “You don’t think it’s too much?” Mama asks.

  “Too much of everything is exactly enough,” I say, stealing a line I heard on a soap opera.

  Mama lets out a little laugh. “Yes, but the St. John is so severe. Lacy Lovehart always looks so sunny and colorful when she’s photographed.”

  “Well, sure. She’s trying to look like a peach.”

  Mama laughs again and I feel myself inflate with the air she releases.

  “Should I toss these hotdogs, or are they still good?” I hold up a leaky plastic package with two remaining Oscar Mayer wieners in it.

  Hunter walks in from the living room, where he was watching Hollywood Squares. “I’ll take em,” he says.

  “No, sir, you will not,” says Mama. “I’m using them for pork and beans tonight.”

  Hunter grunts, then disappears into the walk-in pantry. “Did someone eat all the potato chips?” he calls.

  I ignore him and keep talking to Mama. “What about that pink suit you bought at Mark Shale? With the little linen jacket with the bone buttons?”

  “Potato chips?” yells
Hunter.

  “Excuse me?” says Mama, though she heard him perfectly.

  “Please, Mama, where are the potato chips?”

  “They’re in the bread box!” she calls. “And put them back when you’re finished. I don’t want them going stale.”

  I hear thrashing around in the pantry, and then Hunter comes out, holding a bright yellow bag of Lay’s in one hand, stuffing them into his mouth with the other. Mama glances at him and frowns.

  “I’ll tell you what the problem with that suit is: If I get hot and want to take off the jacket, the little silk blouse that goes with it is practically see-through. It absolutely requires a camisole.”

  “So wear a camisole,” I say.

  Hunter squints his eyes. “What’s a camisole?” he asks, pronouncing it “cam-saw.”

  “Nothing you need to worry about,” answers Mama.

  She turns her attention back to me. “I can certainly do that. The problem is, I don’t have an undergarment that works well beneath it, and I absolutely cannot host Lacy Lovehart . . .” She pauses, then whispers, “While not wearing a brassiere.”

  “Wear the Mark Shale suit. And the camisole. And go buy a bra that works. Is it that the cups are too big?”

  Hunter makes a noise of disgust and stomps out of the room.

  Mama reaches out, rests her hand gently on my cheek. “Darling, how do you know about such things?”

  Because I love looking at the pictures in your Vogue magazines, Mama. Because I notice anytime a woman’s slip shows. Because I know pink is a good color on you while yellow makes you look sickly. Because I’m me, Mama, and I’ve always been this way.

  I smile, shrug my shoulders. “I dunno,” I say.

  • • •

  For parties, Mama always has everything ready in advance. “Ladies,” she warns in Gracious Servings, “when it comes to entertaining, take a lesson from the Boy Scouts: Be Prepared.”

  The day of the Lacy Lovehart luncheon, Mama is nothing if not prepared. The crab dip, which will be served hot with Club Crackers, waits in the refrigerator, a sheet of plastic wrap adhered to the dip itself, so it won’t dry out. The toast cups—buttered pieces of crustless white bread, baked in muffin tins so they hold the shape—are stored in a large Ziploc bag. The chicken salad—all white meat, with fresh tarragon and peeled white grapes—is piled high into a pretty yellow bowl in the refrigerator, the sides wiped down so no signs of mixing remained. The Jell-O salad with bing cherries and pecans quivers in its mold. The crudités are cut and chilling in cold water to keep them crisp; the curry dipping sauce is mixed. And dessert, a fluffy, frozen, lemon thing made with Cool Whip and condensed milk, waits in the freezer atop its graham cracker crust.

  I am in the living room watching The Price Is Right when I hear a loud gasp coming from Mama’s bedroom. And then she appears before me, her natural prettiness exaggerated with extra blush and mascara, her hair stiff with Aqua Net, her panty hose and one-inch white pumps visible beneath her terry-cloth housecoat that zips up the front.

  “Where is Sofie?” she demands.

  Sofie, our sweet and slobbery eleven-year-old yellow Labrador retriever whose hips are as bad as her breath, was once full of energy. Sofie and I used to spend hours playing fetch in the backyard, or tug-of-war, or ride the doggie-horsey. But now all Sofie does is dig holes in the backyard, lie on the patch of monkey grass she’s claimed as her own, and sit under Daddy’s chair on the nights he is home for dinner, knowing that he has the most tender heart of all of us when it comes to animals and will often feed her scraps.

  I shrug, not taking my eyes off the screen. An older lady with blue-white hair is trying to figure out how much a matching washer and dryer would go for retail.

  “One hundred eighty five,” I say.

  Mama walks to the television set and mashes the power button with her finger. The picture dissolves into silver and black static, which fades and then disappears.

  “Robert Banks, listen to me. Where is Sofie?”

  “She’s outside, I think.”

  I must have given Mama a wounded look, because she sighs and her tone softens.

  “I don’t mean to be short with you. Today is a big day. You know that. And everything is ready, everything is prepared, but I can’t find the undergarment I bought that works with the camisole. I know it was in my lingerie drawer last night, because I checked. It was curled up right beside the camisole, its price tag still on. But now it’s not there. I feel like I’m losing my mind. The only explanation I can come up with is that I somehow took it out of the drawer this morning when I woke up early to make coffee for your father and Sofie got hold of it.”

  Sofie is famous for stealing underwear from the dirty-clothes basket. Over the years she has eaten through countless pairs of Mama’s panties and our briefs. But Mama has never complained of Sofie stealing bras.

  “It probably got shoved into the back of your drawer somehow,” I say. “You just can’t find it because you’re nervous.”

  “I’ve turned that drawer inside out. And I can’t find it because it’s not there. I don’t have anything else to wear besides the Mark Shale suit. My nails are painted to match. I bought a lipstick especially for it when I went to Davison’s for the bra. And I haven’t checked my other clothes for wrinkles or stains. Lord knows what shape they are in.”

  Mama’s clothes are never wrinkled or stained.

  “I need you to go outside and see if Sofie has dropped it in any of those holes she’s dug up. If she has maybe I’ll have time to wash it quick in the sink with Woolite and put it in the dryer on Delicate.”

  I hoist myself from the plaid couch and walk through the kitchen to get to the back door. At the little breakfast nook in the corner, where two benches and a table are built into the wall, sits Hunter, wearing swimming trunks and a white Fruit of the Loom undershirt, stuffing a heaping spoonful of Cap’n Crunch and milk into his mouth.

  I don’t say a word to him and he doesn’t say a word to me, either; instead he just stares ahead as if we aren’t even in the same room. That’s just what we do—ignore each other. But then out of the blue, he’ll attack. Like at the beginning of the school year when I opened my science book and discovered an index card, planted between the pages, that read, “FAG.” My brother hadn’t even bothered to disguise his handwriting, a small, slanted print I’d recognize anywhere. Soon after I made him a batch of brownies with two squares of chocolate Ex-Lax melted into the batter. Hunter pretty much ate the whole tray, which I left out on the counter, knowing Mama wouldn’t touch the brownies for fear of the calories and Daddy wouldn’t be home to eat them. All night Hunter kept getting up to run to the bathroom while I just smiled in the dark.

  We have nearly an acre of land in our backyard, starting with grass that eventually leads to woods, which a creek runs through. Between the grass and the woods is a border of high monkey grass. This is where I find Sofie, in her special patch, where the blades lie flat, pushed down by her weight day after day. I walk to her, kneel beside her. Man, does she stink. Like mud mixed with dead animal. But her eyes, her almond-shaped eyes—they are human. Daddy swears she’s a person trapped inside a dog suit.

  “Hey, girl, have you been a little thief?” I ask, using the stubs of my nails to scratch beneath her collar. I push up on her where her chest hits the grass, making her stand. There’s nothing underneath her, no bra cup or chewed-up elastic strap. I put my hands on her mouth, forcing it open so I can look inside. It’s possible that she ate the bra, but there’s no sign of it in her mouth. All I see are the brown stubs of what once were sharp, white teeth.

  I guess she could have buried it. She follows me as I walk to the old swing set to look around, peering into the little holes she has dug in the ground, when I hear my full name being called. I look and there is Mama, standing in the frame of the back door, still in her heels and housedress, her hair covered in the silk scarf.

  “Now! Get in here now!” she barks.

  It
is official. The stress of throwing the luncheon for Mrs. Lovehart has driven Mama plumb crazy.

  “I’m coming, I’m coming,” I mutter. I walk but do not run to the house.

  At the door Mama grabs my arm, not even loosening her grip once she yanks me inside. She’s hurting me and I start to tell her so, but I can’t speak in the face of the awful look she is giving me. In her left hand is the bra.

  “You found it,” I say, as if the fact that she found the bra has not yet caught up with her mind. As if the moment she realizes the bra is no longer missing she will loosen her grip on my arm and stop looking at me funny.

  Only then do I notice Hunter, standing behind Mama, still in his swim trunks and T-shirt. His hip is cocked against the side of the avocado-colored refrigerator. His arms are folded across his chest.

  “It was Hunter who found it. But I believe you can tell me exactly where it was.”

  “I have no earthly idea,” I say, wincing as soon as the words come out of my mouth. Even I can hear how prissy I sound.

  Mama starts crying, her tears messing up her eye makeup.

  “Oh, Bobby,” she says. “Why would you hide my underwear in the back of your dresser drawer? And not just my bra. Hunter said there was also a pair of panties in there, a pair I lost months ago and had just assumed Sofie had gotten. And Hunter said he found this—”

  Mama lets go of my arm and pulls a wrinkled, glossy page from a magazine out of the pocket of her housedress. She holds it out for me to see. Even wrinkled, I recognize the picture of the skinny, naked man, grinning as he holds his erect penis in his hands. I found the picture blown up against a curb in the parking lot behind the 7-Eleven. Ripped out of some porn magazine, I guess. I stuffed it into my pant pocket, bicycled home, and hid it in the space between the dresser and the drawer, taking it out only when I am sure no one else is home.

  Hunter must have found it when he was planting Mama’s underwear. Or maybe he found it beforehand and planned this whole thing in response.

  Seeing it in Mama’s brightly lit kitchen makes me turn all wobbly, like I need to grab onto something or my knees might buckle. No one was supposed to see that picture but me.