Jackie, Jr. either shut up or developed an early case of throat cancer, because at last we could lower our voices.
“Would you like coffee or soda or something?”
“Coke.”
She went into the kitchen and pulled out of an enormous decorator-brown refrigerator a 16 oz. coke. As she walked back to hand it to me, I noticed her body had lost its coiled suppleness and she dragged a bit; her breasts sagged and her hair was dull.
“What are you doing up there in the big city?”
“Finishing up at N.Y.U. I’m in filmmaking.”
She was so impressed. “Are you going to be a movie star? You look a little like Natalie Wood, you know.”
“Thank you for the compliment, but I don’t think I’m movie star material. I want to make the movies, not be one of the pawns in them.”
“Oh”—she couldn’t say any more because it was a mysterious process and all she saw in the end were the movie stars anyway.
“Leota, have you ever thought about that night we spent together?”
Her back stiffened and her eyes receded. “No, never.”
“Sometimes I do. We were so young and I think we must have been kind of sweet.”
“I don’t think about those kinds of things. I’m a mother.”
“What does that do, shut down the part of your brain that remembers the past?”
“I’m too busy for that stuff. Who has time to think? Anyway, that was perverted, sick. I haven’t got time for it.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Why did you ask me that? Why’d you come back here—to ask me that? You must have stayed that way. Is that why you’re walking around in jeans and a pullover? You one of those sickies? I don’t understand it. I don’t understand it at all, a pretty girl like you. You could have lots of men. You have more choices than I did here in this place.”
“I thought you said you liked your husband.”
“I love my husband. Love my children. That’s what a woman is made for. It’s just you living in a big city and being educated—you could marry a doctor or a lawyer or even someone in t.v.”
“Leota, I will never marry.”
“You’re crazy. A woman’s got to marry. What’s going to happen to you when you’re fifty? You got to grow old with somebody. You’re going to be sorry.”
“I’m going to be arrested for throwing an orgy at ninety-nine and I’m not growing old with anybody. What a gruesome thought. Christ, you’re twenty-four and you’re worried about being fifty. That makes no sense.”
“Makes all the sense in the world. I have to think about security. I have to save our money and plan ahead for the children’s educations and our retirement. I didn’t get an education and I want to be sure the kids get them.”
“You could go to school if you wanted to—there are community colleges and all that.”
“I’m too old. Got too much to do. I don’t think I can sit in a classroom and learn any more. It’s fine that you’re doing it, I admire you for it. You can meet a lot of people that way and someday you’ll meet the right one and settle down. You just wait.”
“Let’s stop this shit. I love women. I’ll never marry a man and I’ll never marry a woman either. That’s not my way. I’m a devil-may-care lesbian.”
Leota took her breath in sharply. “You ought to have your head examined, girl. They put people like you away. You need help.”
“Yes, I know people like you who put people like me away. Before you call down the acolytes of Heterosexual Inquisition, I’m splitting.”
“Don’t go using those big words on me, Molly Bolt. You always were a smartass.”
“Yeah—and I was your first lover, too.” I slammed the door and was down the street by the used car lot. She could have died on the spot for all I know.
Now to retrace my steps to Babylon on the Hudson. Back to the place where the air destroys your lungs and the footfall behind you might belong to the hand that slits your throat. Back to where glitzy Broadway hosts the suburbs nightly and calls it the theater. Back to where slick glossies pounce on flesh and serve it up monthly to the nation’s subscription cannibals. Back to where millions of us live side by side in rotting honeycombs and never say hello. Polluted, packed, putrid, it’s the only place where I have any room, any hope. I got to go back and stick it out. At least in New York City I can be more than a breeder of the next generation.
New York City didn’t greet me with open arms on my return but that didn’t matter. I was determined to deal with all eventualities, even indifference. The remainder of the summer droned on. Fall came as a relief because it would be my senior year and in our senior year we were expected to produce a short film, an accumulation of all our years of study at N.Y.U.
Professor Walgren, head of the department and dedicated misogynist, called me in his office for the routine consideration of a project.
“Molly, what are you going to do for your senior project?”
“I thought I’d do a twenty-minute documentary of one woman’s life.” He seemed unimpressed. Pornoviolence was in this year and all the men were busy shooting bizarre fuck scenes with cuts of pigs beating up people at the Chicago convention spliced between the sexual encounters. My project was not in that vein.
“You might have trouble getting the camera out for weekends. By the way, who will be in your crew?”
“No one. No one will consent to be my crew.”
Prof. Walgren coughed behind his fashionable wire-rim glasses and said with a slight hint of malice, “Oh, I see, they won’t take orders from a woman, eh?”
“I don’t know. I hadn’t noticed they were too good at taking orders from each other.”
“Well, good luck on your film. I’ll be eager to see what you crank out.”
Sure you will, you fake-hippie, middle-aged washout.
The cameras were booked for the next decade but that always happened whenever I asked to use one out of the studio. So that afternoon I casually dumped the Arriflex into a tubby wicker tote bag with Jamaica sewn across its side in multicolored thread and waltzed out. I had also ripped off as much film as I could carry in the bag and the special inside pockets I had sewn in my pea coat. I went home and asked my neighbor to water my plants for the next week, gave her the extra key, and went up to Port Authority—home of the nation’s tearoom queens—where I caught a bus for Ft. Lauderdale. Thirty-four hours and five grilling conversations later I was behind the Howard Johnson’s on Route One. The sun was so bright after New York that everything seemed harsh to me and my eyes hurt. The equipment was too heavy for me to carry the four miles home so I hired a taxi.
Ten minutes later we were zipping up Flagler Drive by the Florida East Coast Railway, next to the house. The pink had faded from flaming ugly to mild grotesque. The queen palm in the front lawn had grown at least fifteen feet and all the shrubs around the house were busy with flowers and chameleons. I hadn’t been home in six years. I wrote Carrie once or twice to tell her I was still alive but that was about it. I didn’t tell her I was coming home to see her.
I knocked on the door and heard a slow shuffle behind the half-opened jalousies. The jalousies were turned open and a scratchy voice said, “Who is it?”
“It’s me, Mom. It’s Molly.”
“Molly!” The door flew open and I saw Carrie. She looked like a yellow prune and her hair was stark white. Her hands shook as she reached out to bring me closer and give me a hug. She started to cry and she couldn’t talk very well, her tongue seemed heavy in her mouth. She swayed from side to side as she tried to walk back into the living room. I put my hand under her elbow and guided her to her old rocker with the swan’s heads for armrests. She sat down and looked at me.
“I guess you’re surprised to see your old mother after all these years. My sickness caught up with me. I’m drying up like grass in the drought.”
“I’m sorry, Mom. I didn’t know anything about it.”
“No, and I didn’t want
you to know nothin’ about it neither. After you left, I decided to keep things to myself. You didn’t care, anyway. I told Florence never to write and tell you about my condition. I can hardly write anymore ’cause it’s got my fingers too. What are you doing here? You’re not living under this roof and laying back there in that bedroom with naked women. I hope you know that.”
“I know that. I came back to ask you to help me with my senior project.”
“Not if it costs money, I ain’t.”
“It doesn’t cost anything.”
“And what are you doing in school? You should have graduated in 1967. You’re two years behind time. What, those Yankee kids too smart for you?”
“No, I had to work full time most of the last three years and it slowed me down in school.”
“Ha, good. I’m glad to hear those snotty-nosed, Jew-brats up there ain’t smarter than you.”
“Well, will you help me with my project?”
“No, I don’t know what it is yet. What do I hafta do?”
“All you have to do is sit in that rocker and talk to me while I film you.”
“Film me!”
“Sure.”
“You mean I’m gonna be in a movie?”
“Right.”
“But I got no clothes, no make up. You got to be decked out for something like that. I’m too old to be in a movie.”
“Just sit in your chair and wear your housedress with the black poodles on it. That’s all you have to do.”
“What am I going to say? You writ some play for me to make a fool outa myself in? You used to write things like that when you was little. I ain’t doing no play, you put that in your pipe and smoke it.”
“No play, Mom. All I want you to do is to talk to me while I film you. Like we’re doing now.”
“Well now, I think I can do that.”
“Good, then you’ll do it?”
“No, not until I know what you’re gonna do with it.”
“It’s my senior project. I need it to graduate. I’ll show it to my professors.”
“Oh no. I ain’t talking for no professors so’s they can laugh at my English. Nothing doing.”
“No one will laugh unless you say something funny. Come on, please. It’s not such a big thing to sit there and talk.”
“If you promise not to make a fool outa me, then I’ll do it. And you have to buy your food while you’re here because I ain’t got the money to feed you.”
“That’s okay. I brought along enough money for a week.”
“All right then. Go put your stuff in the back room but mind, no women are coming to this house while you’re in it—not even the Avon lady. You hear me?”
“I hear you. Hey, where’s ole Florence?”
“Florence died a year ago last May. High blood pressure’s what did it. Doctor gave it a fancy name but it was high blood pressure just the same. Her being so nervous, all the time worrying about other people’s business. Poking her nose where it don’t belong. That kind of carrying on will kill you. But she was a good sister and I miss her.”
The Mouth dead. It seemed impossible. Even dead she must be babbling in her grave. Carrie continued, “We buried her in the same lot as Carl. You remember, over there by the drive-in theater? Oh, it was a lovely ceremony. Only thing that spoiled it was the advertisement for the movie—some sex film, something like Hot Flesh Pots. Well, it was a good thing Florence was dead because if she had seen that it would have killed her. She must have been turning over in her casket. You shoulda seen the casket. Shiny black, next to the most expensive kind. You know how she hated suggestive things. They could have taken that nasty sign down when they saw her shiny casket coming down the road. This time I rode in a black Cadillac. Wasn’t as nice as the car we rode in for Carl’s funeral. What kind of car was that?”
“A Continental.”
“Let me tell you that Cadillac got nothin’ on those Continentals. If I’m ever a rich woman I’m getting a Continental. Who makes them?”
“Ford.”
“Ford. Your father told me never to buy a Ford motor car. Said they were made outa cardboard and he knew what he was talking about. But I still think a Continental has a smooth ride.”
“Daddy probably never rode in one so use your own judgment when you make your millions.”
Carrie cackled and flicked her wrist at me. “Go on, put that junk back in your room before I trip over it and break my neck.”
I picked up the equipment and carried it down the terrazzo halls to the back room that used to be mine. Carrie had taken all my ribbons and trophies off the walls and put up a picture facing the double bed. It was Christ kneeling at Gethsemane with a ray of heavenly light coming out of the night to hit him full in the bearded face. Over the head of the brown-painted, iron bedstead she had an enormous dayglo cross. On the sagging dresser stood a ceramic chipmunk wearing a University of Florida freshman beanie. I deposited the stuff in the closet and went into the front room.
Carrie was pushing herself in the rocker with one of her feet and getting very animated. “You want a cup of tea, honey? How about a coke? I always keep coke in the refrigerator. Leroy’s little boys like it so much. You should see them. Ep the second is five and a half years old. Leroy got the girl pregnant, that’s why he’s so old, if you know what I mean. Leroy married her in the nick of time. But they seem happy. Accidents will happen. Look at you. Ha! Maybe they’ll come by sometime this week and you can see them. I don’t get out much any more other than what they take me. Lost the car. Had to sell it when the city put main sewage pipes in. Didn’t have money so I sold the car to pay for the price of having the yard dug up so I could connect. Damn crooks. City, state, president, they’re all damn crooks. Terrible to be without a car but I’m too old to drive I guess. My illness, you know. Can’t get my hands and feets to do right together. Leroy said it was the best thing that I sold the old Plymouth. Said he was afraid I’d get myself killed on the highway. So now I go out in the backyard but I miss driving up by the beach. Leroy takes me up with the kids now and then. Kids make too much noise. I don’t remember you making all that noise. You were a quiet child. Did you tell me how long you’re gonna be here?”
“Around a week, if it’s okay.”
“That’s fine so long as you buy your own food. Meat prices are fierce these days. I only eat meat once or twice a week now. Not like when we lived in Shiloh and got fresh meat whenever we wanted it. For the killing. I don’t see how people with big families live.”
“How are you living? You don’t look like you can work.”
“Oh yes I can. I certainly can. I take in ironing and I sit down so it don’t tax me so much. I ain’t on handouts. I get forty-five dollars from social security and since I’m over sixty-five I get Medicare but that’s no handout. I earned that. I paid years of taxes so those things belong to me. When I get too old or too sick to work I’m walking over to the ocean to let the fishes eat me. You don’t have to worry about taking care of me, girl.”
“I’m not worried.”
“See, you don’t care. You don’t even write me when you’re away. I could die down here and you wouldn’t even know it. You don’t care.”
“Mom, when I left I understood that you didn’t want any more to do with me. Besides, I did write once in awhile.”
“Angry words, angry words. You should know a mother don’t mean angry words to her child.”
“You said I wasn’t your child and you were glad of it.”
“Oh no, I didn’t. I never said such a thing.”
“Mom, you did.”
“Don’t go telling me what I did. You misunderstood me. You’re a little hothead. You flew outa here before I could talk to you. I never said no such thing and don’t you try to tell me I did. You’re my baby. Why in 1944, when I was worrying over whether to adopt you, Pastor Needle, you remember, our old pastor up north, he told me you were born to be my baby and that all children come into this world the same way and I wasn’t
to worry about you being a bastard. No sir, all children are the same in the eyes of the Lord. I don’t know where you get such ideas in your head. You know I’d never say a thing like that. Why I love you. You’re all I got left in this world.”
“Yeah, okay, Mom.”
I went out in the kitchen and got a soda and some big, hard pretzels out of the breadbox. Carrie wanted some but she had to soak them in her coffee because her teeth were going bad. We sat in the living room with the t.v. turned on full blast and talked during commercials in the Lawrence Welk show. She told me how she thought Lawrence Welk was a wonderful man and his show was wholesome. She wanted to dance to all that beautiful music, but she’d fall over because her inside ear was out of whack.
I filmed Carrie through the week. Once over her initial fright she relaxed in her rocker and talked a blue streak. Whenever she’d get excited about anything she’d start pushing the rocker harder and harder until she’d be whizzing away and running her mouth as fast as the chair. Then when she’d finished her story she’d let the rocker coast back to idle and she’d answer questions with a yes or a no. She thoroughly enjoyed the attention and she was thrilled that I could work a camera. It didn’t take her long to figure things out because when I took a shot of her revving up her rocker she snapped, “What are you doing taking pictures of my feet? People wanna see my face not my feet.”
When I wasn’t filming I did household chores for her—cut the grass and ran errands since she couldn’t walk anywhere. And Leroy did come over with his wife and kids. He and Mom talked about little things while the kids ran through the house and Leroy’s wife, Joyce, eyed me uncomfortably. She had her hair in a teased beehive and her makeup preceded her in the room by three inches. She was afraid Leroy would find me attractive. Nervously she told me, “Why you look like one of those models in Mademoiselle magazine with your hair and wearing pants and love beads. You must be a real hippie.”
“No, I looked like this before it became fashionable. Poverty’s a great trend setter these days.”
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