The jury’s still out on whether I believe this could be a blessing, but Boone was right about one thing: Chulahatchie sure does have more than its share of characters.
Take Scratch, for example. He’s a puzzle inside an enigma wrapped in a mystery. To all appearances, he’s a fry cook, busboy, and general gofer, but there’s something else to that persona. Whenever I look at him—and especially when I talk to him—I get the impression of a Brooks Brothers suit disguised behind a T-shirt and apron.
If I were writing him as a character in a novel, he’d be an artist or a musician—immensely talented, but haunted by something in his past that keeps him locked inside himself. Some pain that no one understands, some hidden heartache. A love gone wrong, perhaps. A dream unfulfilled.
Every now and then you see it—the spark, the tenderness. Like when he talks to Purdy Overstreet, who’s nearly lost herself to Alzheimer’s. She’s got a thing for Scratch; flings herself at him every time she waltzes in the door. He is always so kind with her, so gentle and understanding.
Now, Purdy is some kind of character, that’s for sure. I can imagine her as somebody’s little white-haired grandmother who all of a sudden had a personality transplant. She dyes her hair orange and wears miniskirts and fishnet stockings. And always a feather boa wrapped around her neck. She reminds me of Lola the showgirl in that old Barry Manilow song.
And to complete the triangle, of course, there’s Hoot Everett, who might be eighty-something and toothless, but is nowhere near passionless. He’s got the hots for Purdy, that much is certain. He’s a love-struck puppy who can’t understand why she spends all her time drooling over Scratch. If I were writing their story, the two of them would get together and prove to the world that love outlives beauty and brains and physical stamina.
I’m going to take Boone’s advice, and in addition to the journaling I’m doing for therapy, I’m also going to start writing fiction. Just small stuff at first—character sketches, brief scenes. Some from observation, some from my own experience, maybe. I’ll see how it feels and go from there.
What do I have to lose? I got nowhere to go and nothing but time.
And if this does turn out to be a blessing, I’ll gladly eat my words—with a little butter and brown sugar, if you please.
“You’re going out almost every day,” Mama said.
With Mama, nothing was ever just an innocent comment. It was either a criticism or an interrogation, but always phrased so that she could claim that she meant nothing at all by it. If you took offense, it was your problem, not hers.
We were sitting on the back verandah drinking coffee in the cool of the morning. Autumn brought with it the anticipation of change—that apple-crisp snap, when the air tastes like Granny Smiths, when you can smell leaf smoke on every breeze. Fall was my favorite season, and even being in Mississippi with Mama couldn’t diminish the sense of well-being that came with cooler weather. The sense of something around the bend, something exciting and challenging and—
“Priscilla, I asked you a question. Do give me the courtesy of answering.”
I stifled a sigh, let go of the sense of well-being, and watched as it thinned like smoke and then vanished into nothingness.
“I didn’t know there was a question on the table,” I said.
Mama gave me the look. “I said—”
“I know what you said,” I interrupted. “You said I’d been going out every day. That’s not a question, it’s a statement.”
“It amounts to the same thing, and you know it,” Mama said.
“If you must know, I’ve been hanging out at Dell Haley’s diner—the Heartbreak Cafe, down on West Main.”
Mama stared at me, opened her mouth, and then shut it again. She sipped her coffee and pondered. “I suppose she didn’t have much choice, with her husband dying so sudden, and all.”
Something jerked in my gut like a twenty-pound bass on a ten-pound test line. “Dell had a husband who died? Recently?”
“This past spring, I think. I never really knew them, not well. They weren’t, ah, part of our circle. But after he died, that’s when she decided to open up that dismal little cafe, I guess. Make ends meet.”
For some reason I felt the need to jump in and defend Dell. “It’s not dismal. The food is great. The people are nice. And she seems to be doing a booming business.”
No response.
“She’s been very kind to me,” I went on stubbornly. “I sit in there and write, and—”
“Yes, well.” Mama shrugged. “She’s not your friend, Priscilla. It’s her job to be nice. Just keep that in mind and don’t make a nuisance of yourself.”
Don’t make a nuisance of yourself. Act like a lady. Make sure you’re invited. Keep your own counsel. Don’t get too close to the wrong kind of people.
It was just the sort of thing she might have said to me when I was four years old. My whole life long she had spoiled everything I held dear.
When was I going to learn to keep my big mouth shut and keep my treasures to myself?
15
I didn’t tell my psychiatrist about Dell and Scratch and Boone Atkins and the other folks at the Heartbreak Cafe. I don’t know why; perhaps the experience with Mama soured me. I didn’t want him thinking I was desperate and pathetic, the way my own mother seemed to.
But if truth be told, maybe I am desperate and pathetic, I wrote in my journal. Maybe I am a loser.
Loser. The word I’ve been avoiding all these months. The word that brings me back to the part of my childhood I’ve intentionally repressed.
Perhaps I knew, deep down, that I wouldn’t be able to avoid it forever. But hope springs eternal, as Mama used to say. Did she know the context of those lines, the way Pope originally wrote them? “Hope springs eternal in the human breast; Man never is, but always to be blest.”
Lord, the old fool would love that. Not exactly a “glass half full” philosophy.
I look back through the pages I’ve written in the months since I returned to Mama’s house, and there’s so much I hadn’t remembered until I began to put it all down on paper. Maybe Robert was right—maybe the umbilical cord is the primal wound inflicted by our mothers, the one that runs all the way through us to our very core. Maybe all those therapeutic stereotypes have their roots firmly in the truth of mothers and daughters.
To all external appearances, it might seem that I didn’t have it so bad. My parents didn’t abuse me or abandon me or neglect me. We weren’t poor—just the opposite, in fact. I always had everything I needed and most of what I wanted.
Except the thing I needed and wanted most.
A mother.
From time to time various shrinks have talked to me about the principle of intermittent hope—how our psyches can be seduced by a fleeting moment of gratification into believing that a miracle has occurred, that change has come to someone we desperately want to love us. When the object of our longing reverts again to the old ways of cruelty or indifference, we cling to that shred of hope and make ourselves believe that we are loved, even with a lifetime of evidence to the contrary.
We never are, but always “to be” blessed. . . .
And somewhere along the way, we turn the finger of blame onto ourselves and call ourselves by the only names we know: Lost. Unlovable. Unworthy. Loser.
Naming is a powerful force. It defines us, charts our destiny—if not in the stars, then in our very souls.
I read and reread the words a dozen times or more as the truth sank in. Mama had named me, all right—but it wasn’t the Bell name that was important. I had been named with her expectations, with her training, with her narcissism. The universe revolved around her, and I was a helpless bit of flotsam caught up in her vortex.
It didn’t matter that I had taken to wearing ragged sweatshirts and no makeup and refused to go to church. That kind of outward rebellion had no effect on the inner child. Deep down, I was still a little girl who wanted and needed her mommy’s approval.
“You will go through with this,” Mama said.
After years of forced forgetfulness, I now remember it so clearly. Not “Are you all right, honey?” or “Do we need to go to the doctor?” but “You will go through with this.”
It wasn’t the first time I’d heard those words. Lord help me, in every pageant since I was six years old, I always panicked when the spotlight came up and it was my turn to perform. I hated it, all of it—the uncomfortable dresses, the tap shoes, the curlers and makeup and hair spray. Over the years I’d made up in looks and charm what I lacked in talent, and the voice lessons Mama forced on me had paid off, at least enough that I wasn’t booed off the stage. But none of this was natural for me the way it seemed to be for the other girls. The way it seemed to be for Mama.
That night, the evening of the county preliminaries for the Junior Miss Pageant, it occurred to me for the first time to wonder whether or not Mama had ever dreamed of doing this herself. Maybe she had desperately longed to be Junior Miss or Miss Mississippi, but the pageant circuit didn’t come cheap, and I was pretty sure GiGi and Chick couldn’t have come up with the money.
Perhaps, at sixteen, I had grown up just enough to begin seeing my mother as an individual with her own hopes and dreams and unfulfilled longings.
I was not, however, mature enough to follow that thread to its logical conclusion.
We were coming up to the final talent competition. I had been secretly hoping that someone would show up who might be my generation’s version of Mary Ann Mobley, but alas, it was clear from the dismal offerings at the county level that I only had one significant competitor. Her name was Astrid, a whip-smart but socially inept girl whose talent involved a dramatic reading from the “Decree on Serfs,” by Catherine the Great.
“We’ve got this sewn up,” Mama said to me at dinner that night. “Don’t eat that; it’ll give you gas.” She flicked a couple of broccoli florets off the top of my salad.
I toyed with the lettuce and tomato.
“Come on,” Mama said. “You need to eat.”
“I’m not hungry,” I said. “I don’t feel good.”
“You don’t feel well,” she corrected automatically. “It’s just nerves. Never mind dinner; there’ll be a reception afterward.”
But it wasn’t just nerves. I could tell the difference. My gut was churning and I was fighting a cold sweat. By the time we got back to the auditorium, I knew I was in trouble. Big trouble. I ran for the ladies’ room and barely made it, and when I came out again, Mama was consulting her watch.
“You’ve got fifteen minutes,” she said. “Go fix your makeup.”
“Mama, I’m sick.” I leaned against the wall. “I don’t know, it’s food poisoning or something. I’ve got really bad diarrhea, and I feel like I’m going to throw up, too.”
“You’re not going to throw up,” she said. “And it can’t be food poisoning; we ate the same thing.”
“No, we didn’t. I had the Thousand Island dressing—”
She jerked me up by the elbow so hard I heard the joint pop. “It’s just nerves,” she said through gritted teeth. “Now, go.” She shoved me in the direction of the dressing room.
I went. I patted cold water on my face and repaired my makeup. I took deep breaths. I tried to remember everything I’d ever learned about calming myself.
And then I heard the emcee: “And now, singing ‘I Have Dreamed’ from The King and I, let’s give a warm welcome to Priscilla Bell Rondell, from Chulahatchie.”
I headed for the stage. The accompanist had already begun my intro, and Mama had taught me how to make a sweeping, elegant entrance in time with the music. Everyone applauded. I made it to the microphone beside the grand piano.
Almost.
Bile rose up in my throat, and I fought back the gag reflex. The pianist ran through the intro a second time. It was coming, and there was nothing I could do about it. I turned on my heel and ran for the wings, where I deposited the remains of the Thousand Island dressing on the stagehand’s shoes.
Someone reached for me and held me up. For a moment I thought it was Mama and envisioned a tender scene where she apologized and promised never to make me go onstage again.
But it wasn’t. It was Daddy, who had dashed from his seat the moment he realized something was wrong. He held me while I retched again, ignored the stench, and rushed me off to the emergency room.
Mama never came to the hospital. She never apologized, not even when the doctor said I did have food poisoning and kept me overnight to make sure the medicine was working and I wasn’t getting dehydrated. Daddy stayed, sleeping in an uncomfortable Naugahyde chair next to my bed.
The next day when we got home, Mama informed me that Astrid had taken the Serfs to victory and would be representing the county at the state Junior Miss Pageant.
Something told me Astrid didn’t really need the scholarship money. Maybe her mama and mine had read out of the same book. Maybe at this very moment her mama was celebrating while Astrid was in the bathroom throwing up at the thought of having to do it all over again in front of a larger audience.
For years I tried, but I could never manage to forget what Mama said to me that day:
Priscilla, there are two kinds of people in this world—winners and losers. And I didn’t bring you up to be a loser.
Naming. It’s powerful. The name of Loser spurred me on to win the title of county Soybean Queen and brought me as far as second runner-up to Miss Mississippi. I was determined to prove Mama wrong. To prove them all wrong.
In the end, I proved her right. Second runner-up is still loser.
Close only counts in horseshoes, and it never counts at all with Mama.
16
The week before Thanksgiving I was sitting in the back booth, my customary vantage point for observing the activity at the Heartbreak Cafe. I was just thinking maybe I ought to give up my booth and go on home, because the place was busier than usual. One family of out-of-towners had been bending Dell’s ear for fifteen minutes now, totally oblivious to her need to wait on other tables.
The bell over the door jingled and Purdy Overstreet came in on a waltz, twirling a skirt that was bright orange and covered with turkeys in pilgrim hats. Her hair was exactly the same color orange as the skirt, and she was wearing slinky black stockings and patent leather tap shoes that tied in the front with ribbons.
The cafe went silent—as it usually did when Purdy showed up. She bowed and waved to her audience, and a few people laughed and applauded. Then her eyes fell on her regular booth, where the out-of-towners were still dawdling, talking about their granny in Milledgeville, Georgia, who had known Flannery O’Connor and been to the farm to feed the peacocks.
I could tell from clear across the room that Purdy didn’t give a damn about Flannery or her birds; she just wanted her booth back. She glared at the strangers and stood there tapping her foot on the floor, a clicking sound that resonated throughout the room like the tick-tick-tick of a bomb about to detonate.
I was just getting to my feet to let Purdy have my booth when Hoot Everett saw his chance and took it. He raced through the crowd, bowed in front of Purdy, and invited her to join him. It was no secret, of course, that Purdy had eyes only for Scratch, but since Scratch was otherwise occupied in the kitchen, she accepted Hoot’s invitation as an acceptable second choice, and Hoot led her in triumph to his table.
“There’s a couple of characters for you,” I said when Dell came around with coffee. I motioned toward the two lovebirds.
“About time,” she said. “I thought she’d never give up on Scratch.”
“Maybe Hoot’s got something Scratch doesn’t.” I pointed to Hoot, who was handing a bottle across the table to Purdy.
Just then the door opened to admit Marvin Beckstrom, who held the lease to the Heartbreak Cafe, followed by his ubiquitous guard dog, the sheriff in full uniform, complete with pistol and handcuffs.
“Oh, Lord,” Dell said. “We gotta do something fast. I
don’t have a liquor license, and if that bottle contains what I think it does, the sheriff could shut me down in a heartbeat. There’s nothing that little turd Beckstrom would like better.”
“Go,” I said. “I’ll distract them.”
Dell headed off toward Hoot’s booth, and I slid out of my seat, swiping all the dishes off onto the floor and pretending to slip and fall. It was a pretty good performance, if I say so myself. Marvin Beckstrom and the sheriff came rushing over, while Dell intercepted Hoot and Purdy and tried to wrest the bottle from them.
The sheriff lifted me to my feet, and Marvin proceeded to give me a lecture on how I should sue Dell and the Heartbreak Cafe for negligence, since it was obviously Dell’s fault that I slipped. Scratch came out and started cleaning up the broken china. Across the room, the noise had escalated. Hoot was shouting, “You give that back! It ain’t yours!”
Marvin and the sheriff both turned. Hoot was grabbing Purdy by the arm, and both of them looked pretty far gone. Purdy wobbled and weaved and then, as if in slow motion, went down howling.
Everybody made a beeline for her. Scratch got there first and began to palpate Purdy’s twisted leg from ankle to knee joint.
“Is it broken?” Dell asked.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “It’s probably just a sprain. But at her age you can’t be too careful. Better get her to the hospital.”
I called 911, and in a couple of minutes the ambulance showed up, along with a gathering crowd of onlookers. Folks in Chulahatchie have entirely too much leisure time on their hands, if you ask me.
Purdy went into the ambulance. Hoot, determined to go with her, tried to fight the paramedics when they refused.
“I’ll take him,” I said. I ushered Hoot into my little blue Honda, and we took off following the ambulance the half mile to the hospital. Hoot sank into the passenger’s seat and let out a sigh that filled the whole car with the odor of fermentation.
“What’d you have in that bottle, anyway?” I asked him.
The Book of Peach Page 10