Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!

by Fannie Flagg

  Sookie had cheered her up, but at night when Dena was all alone in her room, she was still filled with that old black dread. Dena knew she could not stay in New York. She had to get out, get as far away from Capello as she could. She needed time and distance to try and figure out what she was going to do. She had to do something or the fear would eventually kill her. Sookie begged her to come back to Selma for a while, but Dena found herself saying the oddest thing, something she had never even thought of saying. “Sookie, that is so sweet. But I really want to go home, can you understand? I really need to go home for a while.”

  She asked Dr. Diggers about it and she had agreed. “Dena, I think that’s the best possible thing you could do right now.” And, like a good omen, the next morning a telegram arrived:

  YOUR ROOM IS READY. WHEN ARE YOU COMING?

  LOVE, NORMA AND MACKY

  The day before she was to leave, she heard a knock on her door. Gerry O’Malley came in the room with an enormous bouquet of roses.

  “Hi. How are you doing?”

  “Hi, come on in. I’m fine. Or nearly fine.”

  “I heard you were pretty sick.”

  “Yes. I was … but I’m leaving tomorrow, going to Elmwood Springs.”

  “Yes, that’s what I heard.” He put the flowers down on a chair.

  “Thank you, they’re beautiful. I’ll get a nurse to put them in some water.”

  Gerry was happy to see that she looked a hundred percent better than the last time, when she was still unconscious. Color had come back into her cheeks and the sight of her sitting there in bed looking like her old self took his breath away. He was suddenly nervous.

  “So, I heard you were pretty sick.”

  “ ‘Yes, I was. Bleeding ulcer.”

  “That’s what I heard. Elizabeth Diggers said you were really sick.”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “Well, you look good. How do you feel?”

  “Much better.”

  “I just dropped by to see how you were doing. When do you think you’re coming back?”

  “I don’t know. I’m really not sure.”

  “Ah … well. If there’s anything I can do for you while you are gone, just let me know. You have my number. Just call … and, uh, call me and let me know how you are doing. If you think about it. Or call Dr. Diggers. Keep us posted, OK?”

  “I will.”

  Gerry left the hospital, aching. He knew by looking in her eyes that she was a hundred miles away. He had no idea when he would see her again or if he would ever see her again, and there was not a thing he could do about it. He had the feeling it was hopeless, but so much in love, he still hoped that maybe someday, some year, she might give him another chance.

  That night Dena could not sleep. As she lay in the room, waiting for daylight to come, she thought about what Elizabeth Diggers had asked her that first time. Who are you? She thought she had known then. But who was she now? She had no idea. She had lost herself somewhere along the way.

  She was like the front of a bombed-out building, still standing but empty inside. All she knew was the truth of what Dr. DeBakey had told her. If she didn’t slow down, she’d be dead. She had come close.

  The next morning, good old Buck flew to New York again and picked her up and flew her home. To Elmwood Springs.

  Good-Luck Clover

  Elmwood Springs, Missouri

  1978

  It was good to be here. It was quiet in her room. The weather was warm. She went to sleep with her windows open and slept soundly all through the night. On the fourth day she awakened at seven and felt strong enough to get up. She went downstairs to the kitchen. Norma said, “Baby Girl, what are you doing up so early?”

  “I couldn’t go back to sleep, but I feel better.”

  “Well, the kitchen is a mess, but come on in if you can stand it.”

  Dena noticed one cup and a saucer in the sink; other than that it was, as usual, spotless, but Norma, horrified, quickly rinsed them off and put them in the dishwasher.

  “Sorry the place is such a wreck but I got a little behind this morning. Aunt Elner has already been on the phone three times wanting to know how you are doing. She wants you to come over there and see her. She’s all excited because she found a four-leaf clover in her front yard and she wants to show it to you, as if you have never seen a four-leaf clover before in your life.”

  Dena sat down and a red and white plastic mat was placed in front of her. “Actually, I don’t think I ever have.”

  “Really? Well, she’s all worked up about it.” Norma opened the icebox and pulled out the eggs and milk. “I don’t know how she can see well enough to find one. Imagine, at her age. I couldn’t find one even with my glasses on, but she has eyes like a hawk. She keeps saying she doesn’t need glasses, but I wanted her checked so last year I carried her to see the eye doctor, Dr. Mitton. He sat her down and said, ‘Mrs. Shimfessle, just how far can you see at a distance?’ And she said, ‘Well, Doctor, I can see all the way to the moon, how far away is that?’ ”

  After a big breakfast, Dena decided to walk over to Aunt Elner’s house. People waved to her as she went by and said, “Good morning.” As she paused on the porch, she could hear Aunt Elner in the kitchen singing away. She knocked on the screen door. Aunt Elner and Sonny, the cat, came to the door.

  “Well, hey, there, Baby Girl, come on in!”

  Elner was wearing a faded floral blue and white housedress and white mesh tie-up shoes. The house smelled like bacon.

  “Have a seat if you can find one. Let me go in and turn my bacon off.”

  Dena went into the living room and sat down. Elner came back. “Would you rather go out and sit on the porch? I’m a terrible housekeeper; Norma says it looks like someone had an epileptic fit in every room. She won’t come over here anymore, says it makes her a nervous wreck. She says if I won’t let her clean the house, she won’t come, but whenever she cleans up I can’t find anything for a week. I’d offer you bacon but I have strict orders not to feed you. But I do have something I want to give you.”

  Aunt Elner came back with a little white bowl full of water with a four-leaf clover floating on top.

  “I found it this morning and I said, I’m giving it to Baby Girl, for good luck.”

  “Thank you, Aunt Elner, that’s very sweet.”

  “Well, that’s all right, honey, bless your heart. You need a little good luck to come your way. How are you doing? You look good. But I worry about you; are you getting enough to eat? Is Norma feeding you?”

  “I’m getting plenty to eat, and more.”

  “Well, good. I was worried about that. I can fix you a biscuit.”

  “No, I’m fine, Aunt Elner.”

  “Norma doesn’t eat enough to keep a twig alive, and on top of it she runs around all day cleaning and scrubbing and sweeping.”

  “She’s a good housekeeper, all right.”

  “Too good, if you ask me; she’s a neat-aholic. I told her, I said, ‘Norma, if you were to have a heart attack before you’d done your breakfast dishes, you’d wait until you did them to call the ambulance.’ I’ll tell you, when the chips are down, you want to get in her boat. Little things drive her crazy, but in a natural disaster, she calms right down when everybody else around her is falling apart. That’s when Norma is at her best.”

  “What kind of natural disaster?”

  “Any kind, you name it. A while back when we had all those terrible floods and so many people lost their homes, Norma went down to the high school auditorium and had it organized into a shelter and a hospital in no time. She had it up and running. Set up a hot line for people to call, organized groups of men to go out in boats and find everybody that wasn’t accounted for, handled all the food supplies and medical supplies, saved all kinds of lives.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, yes. When the Red Cross finally were able to get in, she had it all under control. She got awards but she won’t tell you. But take my word for it: in
a natural disaster, Norma Warren is who you want to be with. She has an earthquake kit that you wouldn’t believe.”

  “Are there earthquakes here?”

  “There was one a hundred years ago but if there is ever another one, Norma’s ready. She’s prepared for a tornado, a drought, floods, the atomic bomb, germ warfare; you name it, she’s ready for it!”

  “Well, that’s good to know.”

  “You’re not gonna run off back to New York, are you?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “I wish you’d stay here with us. Nobody’s gonna bother you; Macky Warren has seen to that. In fact, the whole town is gonna see to that. This is your home. You don’t need to be pestered to death in your own hometown.”

  As Dena walked home with her four-leaf clover she wondered to herself just what she was going to do. So many people had offered her a place to stay. Lee Kingsley had offered her their guest house in Sag Harbor for the summer, the Hamiltons had a place on Sea Island, Georgia, and Sookie’s brother, Buck, and his wife had offered her their house on Mobile Bay. She had thought it might be good to be alone, but now she was finding that it was … sort of nice to have relatives around. She began to toy with the idea of maybe staying in Elmwood Springs for a while. Maybe she would even find some place she could rent for a few months.

  When she got back to Norma’s she looked in the phone book and saw an ad in the small, two-page business section. It had a picture of a woman in a hat, talking on the phone, that said FOR ALL YOUR REAL ESTATE NEEDS, CALL BEVERLY. Two weeks later, when Macky and Norma had gone out of town for a hardware convention, she called Beverly.

  Beverly showed up wearing a huge hat and driving a big blue Lincoln. The passenger seat was cluttered with brochures, newspaper ads, signs, and listings books. She was elated to have a potential customer, especially Dena, and quickly made room for her by tossing everything into the backseat.

  “Well, am I happy to meet you. When my husband and I first moved here, we heard this was where you were from and I always hoped you’d come back.”

  Beverly was a dynamo and within an hour they had seen everything. They looked at a duplex, even a condo, and several new apartments way out by the mall, but Dena did not warm to any of them. They were too cold and sterile. Beverly was stumped. “We just don’t have that many apartment rentals here.”

  Dena said, “Do you have any houses?”

  “Houses? Would you want a whole house?”

  “I don’t know, maybe. Are there any for rent?”

  “Let’s see. I do have a little one … but it’s way out in the country. And you don’t want that. I have one in town. I can show you that if you like. Now, I don’t know what kind of shape it’s in but we can look.”

  They drove to the older section of town. Large elm trees lined the street and Beverly stopped and parked in front of a white frame house with a green and white awning around the front porch. Beverly rummaged around in her large black purse, searching through what looked like hundreds of keys. “The other girl in the office has the listing. The owner’s a friend of hers.… I’m sure that key is here somewhere. Anyhow.” She rattled on about the place as she continued looking. “The house stayed in the family. The daughter and her family lived here up until a couple of months ago, but her husband got emphysema so bad they had to move to Arizona—I’ll kill myself if I have lost that key—anyhow, they said they would rent it.…” She finally gave up. “I don’t have that darn key but I’m sure we can get in.” They got out of the car. “It might be a little big for you but it’s in a nice old neighborhood. You don’t see many houses these days with two swings, do you?” As Beverly tried the door, Dena noticed something written on the front window that she could barely read. She walked over to look closely and could just make out WDOT RADIO STATION, NUMBER 66 ON YOUR DIAL. Beverly, who was rattling furiously and pushing on the door, noticed what she was looking at. “They say a woman who used to live here had a radio show but that was before we got here.” Finally, with one more push the door opened.

  “Here we go. I didn’t think she locked it. Come on in.” It was dark inside, all the curtains drawn, and as Beverly quickly went around the front room opening them, Dena noticed a certain smell, a sweet smell, as if someone had been baking. The house still had the original venetian blinds. The curtains in the living room were thick and floral, green and yellow and maroon, with what looked like palm leaves. There was some furniture left. A small desk was in the living room over by the window; and a little telephone table in a small alcove in the hall off the living room; and several old Aladdin lamps, yellow with white flowers; and a stand-up lamp in the living room that still had the original shade, maroon, and with a maroon silk ruffle around the top and the bottom. Beverly switched it on and the old lamp gave off a soft yellow light, almost golden in color, not like the harsh blue white glare of all the new lamps.

  As Beverly turned on more lamps, all the light seemed to glow in a soft, muted way that somehow Dena found soothing. They walked down the hall and Beverly turned on the single hanging lightbulb. “Look at that old cedar chest. I just love the smell of those things, don’t you?” They had walked into a bedroom and Beverly had some difficulty opening the closet door, but a pro, she made light of the wobbly, old glass doorknob that had come off in her hand by cheerfully pointing out another feature. “One of the wonderful things about these old houses is that all the closets are cedar, too.” Dena looked inside and the closet was huge and dry and the mothball smell was still there, fresh after all these years. Beverly pointed to a small white saucer with a dozen large mothballs in it. “Look at those, I haven’t seen those in years.” It was obvious that Beverly had never been in this house but was doing such a good job of faking it that Dena had to admire her for trying. “The great thing about these old houses is that they built them to last.”

  “When was this built, do you think?”

  “Oh, I’d say probably around 1925, no later than the thirties, I would guess by the transoms over the doors and the wallpaper. I think this is the original wallpaper. I remember my grandmother had this same paper so it had to be somewhere in the twenties.” There was one chest of drawers in the second bedroom. Dena opened a drawer and the scent of old-fashioned talcum powder came to her. The ceilings were about twelve feet high. Dena had lived in apartments and hotel rooms so long she had forgotten about high ceilings. It seemed so strange to have all that space up there. The floors were in excellent condition, a beautiful oak. All the rugs were gone but she could see where they had been. She noticed a few brown stains on the wallpaper in some of the bedrooms, but other than that the house was in pretty good shape. The bathrooms all had the huge claw-foot bathtubs and large pedestal sinks.

  The dining room’s brass chandelier had four milk-glass shades with Dutch scenes on them, and the living room had a round, pink glass ceiling fixture that Dena liked.

  They walked to the back of the house. As soon as they entered the kitchen, Dena said, “Smell that? Someone has been baking a cake or something in here.” Beverly sniffed a few times. “No, I don’t smell anything.” The kitchen was huge; a lone lightbulb hung over the white wooden table. There was a big white enamel sink and drain board with a floral-print skirt around it, a huge icebox, and a 1920s white O’Keefe & Merritt stove in perfect condition. “Look at this pretty stove,” Beverly said, and she turned on one of the burners. The flames popped right up. “And it works, too!” Dena looked in a drawer and there was an old O’Keefe & Merritt cookbook still there. They walked out of the kitchen onto a large, screened-in back porch and saw that beyond the backyard there was a field. Beverly said, “Oh, look, there’s an old sweetheart swing. I just love those, don’t you?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Dena, not having any idea what a sweetheart swing was.

  “They say there used to be a big radio tower out in the backyard and that people could see it for miles around.”

  “Really?” Dena went back to the front porch and sat on the swing b
y the window with the writing on it and waited for Beverly to finish locking up. When Beverly emerged, Dena said, “I’ll take it.”

  “Oh. When would you want it?”

  “Today, if possible.”

  “Oh,” said Beverly.

  That afternoon after Dena had signed the lease, she went through the house again. She still could not believe she had actually rented an entire empty house, never having lived in a house that she could remember. She went from room to room. She opened the cabinets in the kitchen and found a few white cups and saucers, and three little plates that had TROLLEY CAR DINER around the edge. There were several pictures hanging on the walls and a few small blue glass violin-shaped vases in the windows that had some sort of dried-out plants hanging over the sides. On the wall outside on the back porch was a 1954 calendar with a picture of a little boy in his pajamas holding a tire and small candle, and the name of the sponsor, Goodyear Tire Co. In the living room was a picture of a cottage with flowers covering a white picket fence, and in the room off the front porch there was hanging a movie-magazine picture that someone had framed of Dana Andrews. Down the hall was a print of an Indian on a pony sitting on the top of a cliff with his head hanging down, captioned END OF THE TRAIL.

  Up in the attic was a dog’s bed, boxes of Christmas decorations, and a few diving trophies that read, FIRST PLACE, CASCADE PLUNGE, 1947, 1948, 1949. Other than that there was little trace of the people who had once lived there, only the smells that had somehow permeated the walls and the floors. The back porch still retained the pungent, sweet smell of grape Kool-Aid. Dena sat in the living room in a chair she had found and looked at the stripes of sunlight on the floor, shining through the old venetian blinds. She sat there until it got dark and turned on a lamp. She hated to leave. There was a feeling, an atmosphere, something in the air that calmed her. The house smelled familiar, it felt familiar, almost as if she had been there before. The air inside that house held the faint memory of a dream she might have had.