Billie Standish Was Here

by Nancy Crocker

  The more I thought, though, the more sure I was the Jenkinses came from elsewhere. Mama had never mentioned any of Curtis’s wrongdoings growing up and that meant they hadn’t gone to school together. She could recite a catalog of every misstep her schoolmates had ever made and was never shy about doing it.

  I knew Miss Lydia’s husband had passed sometime in the last ten years and she had a green thumb with the gladioli.

  That was about it. Not more than a sketch and a guess or two. I’d just have to try and make it through lunch without doing anything too stupid.

  At ten to noon I locked the house again and walked up to the little shack that had been our post office as long as I could remember. Lewis McEntire barely looked up when I started twirling the combination on our box. He just grunted when I asked for Miss Lydia’s mail, and already had his nose back in somebody’s new Reader’s Digest when he slid her bundle under the grate at the window.

  It was kind of like at home when I wasn’t looking in the mirror. Like I wasn’t really there.

  Chapter Two

  B  ut I sure was accounted for at Miss Lydia’s. I could hear her singing “Little Red Wing” while I wiped my feet at the back step, and when she threw open the door it was like a party started. She had fried a chicken and made potatoes with milk gravy and she pointed me toward a paring knife and a pyramid of tomatoes while she took up the food. And she kept on singing.

  Then she took the platter of tomatoes from me and said it looked pretty as a picture. That started my ears to burn because I knew Mama would have complained that the slices were ragged and I didn’t peel them. Funny how she could criticize me even when she wasn’t there.

  I couldn’t remember the last time I’d sat down to a table. I ate alone in front of the TV before my folks got home at night, then went to my room after I told them hello and reheated what I’d cooked.

  Miss Lydia sat across from me and, after we’d exhausted just about everything that could be said about the weather, she started telling stories about people in town. I only knew them as grown-ups, but she knew a lot of the boneheaded things they’d done when they were kids. And her stories sounded funny, not mean. She wasn’t looking to cut anybody down.

  She told me one she said she’d heard from my Grandma Standish—how my dad and a bunch had it up to play a prank on Mr. McCombs one Halloween, but somebody tipped the mean old so-and-so off. So when Daddy stepped foot on his front porch, the old man’s voice rang out in the dark: “Okay, men, shoot to kill.”

  I was taking a drink when she said that Daddy nearly shit his drawers, and I laughed so hard lemonade came out my nose. But she didn’t get mad. She just handed me a paper towel and laughed along with me. I wasn’t used to anything like it.

  I wasn’t used to talking so much, either, but once my lid popped open the words just seemed to spill out. Like when Miss Lydia motioned me to dab at the corner of my mouth and I explained that was a scar and didn’t wipe off. She asked how I got it and, without even thinking, I told the whole story—how we were all driving to church one Sunday when I was five and I asked when I was going to have a baby sister or brother. How Mama reached over the seat to backhand me and her ring caught, just at the corner of my mouth.

  Miss Lydia looked as shocked by my question as Mama had been. But all she said was, “It cut deep enough to leave that scar?”

  I told her, “Oh, no. But it got kinda infected and that made it worse.”

  I had said too much, judging by the way she was staring at her lap. And I wanted so bad for her to still like me. “I was just a little kid then,” I told her. “I know better now than to ask grown-ups about their personal business like that.”

  She looked up and said, “Yes, I suspect you do.” Then she asked if I had seen Ed Sullivan Sunday evening, and I was pretty sure everything was still okay between us.

  While I was drying the dishes after lunch, she stopped with her hands in the soapsuds and turned to me like she’d just had a big idea. The way things turned out, I guess she had.

  “How’d you like to earn a little pin money?” she asked.

  I shrugged.

  “Seems to me it wouldn’t hurt to get the house a little bit ready, just in case the river’s got different ideas than your daddy does. And I got too much junk settin’ around anyway. How about helpin’ me wrap up some of my knickknacks and haul ’em upstairs in boxes?”

  Miss Lydia had one of the few two-story houses in town. That little fact seemed quite a bit more important now, with the river flexing its muscles six short miles away.

  “Uh-huh,” I said, “sounds pretty smart to me.”

  “No need to tell your daddy, of course,” she said and she winked. “I don’t suppose even with the two of us we could move the furniture . . . .”

  “Couldn’t Curtis do that for you?”

  Miss Lydia shot me a look that would’ve made a big dog tuck his tail. I dropped the glass I was drying and my face went hot while I stuttered how sorry I was.

  “So am I,” she said. We knelt down together to pick up the big pieces, then she went for the broom and handed it to me. When she emptied the dustpan into the wastebasket, she started humming “Red Wing” again. Something had happened, but I didn’t understand what.

  She came back to the sink smiling at me and brushed the hair out of my eyes just like Mama used to do when I was little and cute. We didn’t talk anymore until after we had finished the dishes and started wrapping and packing her stuff.

  Things being pretty dusty in an old person’s house, we decided we might as well wash everything before we wrapped it, so we had barely made a dent when her clock chimed seven and I said I needed to go home and start thinking about supper.

  “You’re a good’un,” she said. But it was the second time that day she lost her smile. She got her purse and handed me two dollars.

  “Oh, Miss Lydia, that’s too much.”

  She shook her head. “ ’T’isn’t.”

  “You fed me.” I held one dollar out to her.

  She finally smiled again. “Fair enough. How about tomorrow, then? Still plenty to do.”

  I said, “Sure, what time?” and she said if I’d bring her the mail at noon, we’d start right over like it was yesterday. I was almost asleep much later when I remembered I hadn’t needed to look in the mirror all day.

  The next morning I took my first bath in a week and washed my hair. I guess even a castaway tries to clean up when he finally sees a ship on the horizon. I’d been wearing the same shorts and shirt for nearly that long, so I stuffed them into the bathroom hamper and pulled the last fresh clothes out of my dresser. I had been saving them for some reason, and it seemed like this must be it.

  With a little shine to it dry and brushed, I saw my hair almost had what you could call highlights. Huh. Usually it just looked the color of mud. Something about the light made my eyes look greener than usual, too. The Mount Olympus of zits didn’t look quite as angry as the day before and hadn’t invited any friends to join it. I dabbed on a little concealer and managed a smile for the mirror. I didn’t look half bad, for me.

  Miss Lydia had cooked ham steaks, fried potatoes, and green beans. It all tasted better than anything I’d ever had. She even complimented me on my appearance.

  I said “thank you,” then said, “But I’m afraid this is about the end of the clean clothes. Mama just hasn’t been home . . . .”

  “Well, why can’t you do it? You allergic to laundry soap?”

  For some reason that struck me so funny I started giggling hard enough to pee my pants. Almost. Then Miss Lydia got tickled at me laughing. We were both wiping our eyes before we could quiet down.

  I remember every little thing because it felt strange to be laughing so much. In my folks’ house, you’d have thought laughter was an expensive commodity. Payable per use.

  Finally I was able to answer. “No . . . I offered to, but Mama told me to stay away from the wringer. I don’t know how to run it and she doesn’t
want to come home and find me tangled up in it, bleeding to death. She says that’s all she needs.”

  Miss Lydia laid her fork down. “Well, you just march yourself over there after dinner and bring those clothes over here. I can sure as hell show you how to push the buttons on my machine.”

  I was flabbergasted. Not at her swearing—that didn’t even register until later. I gurgled trying to get the words out. “You got an automatic?” Mama had told me we couldn’t have one because Cumberland had no town water line for it to drain into.

  “Yessir. Best thing I ever bought.” She thought for a minute. “ ’Cept maybe the color TV.”

  I was used to feeling in the way whenever anybody could see me, but just then I felt three times the size of an elephant. “I’m here to help you, not make you do our work,” I told her.

  “Land’a livin’, child,” she laughed. “You don’t put the clothes in and set there watchin’ ’em go around for half an hour. I expect we can do both things. Bring your own soap, if it’ll make you feel better.”

  I did seven loads while we worked that afternoon and Miss Lydia seemed pleased watching me fold clean clothes into boxes to carry home. When I came back for the hamper, she asked what I was cooking that night.

  “Oh, salmon cakes, probably. We’re pretty much down to canned and frozen stuff.”

  “You can fry a chicken, can’t you?”

  I thought so. “But I don’t know how to cut one up,” I told her.

  Her eyes started shining. “Well, you lay one out to thaw tonight, and bring it over here when you come tomorrow at noon. Ain’t had a chicken outsmart me yet.”

  That was the last discussion we had about me coming back. After that we just assumed I would.

  Mama started to bawl me out that night for going near the wringer, but after I explained what I’d really done she didn’t know what to say. All the while she put clean clothes away she kept opening her mouth and then changing her mind, like she was arguing with herself. Open, shut, open, shut. She looked like a big fish that wasn’t happy but wasn’t sure why.

  I had hidden the frozen chicken under my bed before she got home, which felt kind of stupid even as I did it. But I’d never fried a chicken before and didn’t want to be criticized in advance of trying. Mama could warn me not to make a mess, not to waste anything, not to ruin something, not to not do anything with so much authority I sometimes felt like I couldn’t blink without screwing that up.

  So she was positively wary of me the following night when she came home to fried chicken with all the fixings warm on the stove. I hadn’t shown my hand before it was played—and hard as she looked around she couldn’t find anything in the results to complain about.

  I was starting to feel like I was there, even in my own house. Even when my parents were around.

  I was way past knocking at Miss Lydia’s when the day came that I got the surprise of Curtis sitting at the kitchen table. An empty Coke and a full ashtray sat in front of him and he looked up from the newspaper through a stinky blue haze. I stood there just inside the door.

  He said, “Well, hello there,” and his face split into a grin. His teeth were yellow and he seemed to have more of them than most people did. The smell of smoke made my stomach churn.

  I wondered where Miss Lydia was and if I should leave. About the time he said, “What’s a matter? Cat got your tongue?” and started laughing at his genius originality, Miss Lydia appeared at the foot of the stairs out in the hallway.

  When she saw me she hurried in as fast as she could, which meant it seemed like it only took a month. She had some papers in her hand and started swatting at the air.

  “Lord, Curtis, how many times I told you I don’t want you smokin’ in here?” She quick-hobbled over to the window above the sink, cranked it open, and started fanning her apron like she was scooping the dirty air outside.

  “Well, now, Ma, I got to stop taking orders from you right around the time I turned free, white, and twenty-one,” Curtis drawled. He winked at me while he clasped his hands and stretched his arms above his head.

  Miss Lydia harrumphed at the stove, then turned and set a full plate in front of him. “Curtis appears to have the day off work and has decided to grace us with his presence,” she told me, “so would you get silverware for all of us, please?” And one second after she sliced those words off the edge of a tight little smile, she threw him the hateful look I’d seen once before. The one that had made me drop a glass and break it.

  Then she turned and started filling the next plate.

  I swallowed the bile rising in my throat. This was worse than home with Mama in one of her moods and I didn’t know if I could choke down food at a table with the two of them.

  I was trying to conjure up an exit line when Miss Lydia said, “Billie Marie?” Both of them were looking at me, waiting. I got the forks and knives, dealt them out, and slid into my chair.

  It was a different house. Miss Lydia was tuned up tight as a fiddle string and I was vibrating in close harmony. My knuckles went white holding my fork and I wasn’t doing much with my plate but rearranging it. Miss Lydia looked to be doing the same. She kept her eyes down and never looked at Curtis again before he left.

  He ate faster than any person I’ve ever seen, but even so, his manners were neat almost to the point of finicky. Outside of TV, I had never seen anyone raise their pinky as they lifted their glass and I never could have imagined it with a dirty fingernail. For all his hurry, I didn’t see a speck of food go anywhere it shouldn’t, and his napkin was a white flash between his mouth and his lap.

  For some reason, I remembered the wolf in “Little Red Riding Hood,” who put on clothes and talked and was a good enough imitator to pass for a human being. That had scared the bejeezus out of me as a little kid.

  Nobody had said another word when Curtis laid his folded napkin beside his plate and stood up. He took one last drink of tea, pushed his chair in, cleared his throat and said, “Ladies.” Without looking at either of us, he stalked out the back door as hunch-shouldered and bowlegged as any cowboy heading into the wind.

  Miss Lydia closed her eyes for about five seconds, then opened them and smiled. “Clear that plate for me, would you?” She nodded toward Curtis’s place. “I’d do it myself, but my food would be cold by the time I got myself up and back into my chair.” We both chuckled and I jumped up and piled his place setting in the sink.

  When I sat down again, it was like nobody else had been there. Miss Lydia made some comment about the weather and we fell to talking like we always did while we ate. Things were back to normal until I asked in the course of things when it was that she had moved to Cumberland.

  Just like that the air was almost too thick to take in and Miss Lydia seemed frozen, staring at the spot Curtis had occupied. Her mouth moved without sound like she was trying on words. I didn’t know what to do—it had seemed like such a nothing question.

  Her words came slowly. “Mr. Jenkins inherited this house about the time Curtis left for college.” She cleared her throat. “It seemed like a good time for a fresh start. . . .”

  Curtis went to college? Maybe I wondered out loud, because she went on to say, “. . . for three months. Then he showed up here one weekend . . . there was an accident. . . .”

  I tried to help her along. “The one with the girl.”

  She nodded and it was all there on her face.

  My heart was pounding to beat the band and I knew I should change the subject, but I just had to ask. “But why . . . Miss Lydia, why do you take him in?”

  She shook her head. “Guilty conscience, I suppose.” She looked at me with eyes that held no life.

  I started sputtering. “Oh, but Miss Lydia, no—you—I mean, it’s not—”

  She waved her hand halfheartedly. “No, I know I didn’t do right by him. Not ever. I’m not proud, but it’s God’s own truth.” Her bottom lip was stretched to a thin white line.

  I couldn’t imagine how somebody as good
as Miss Lydia could think she had done wrong by somebody as ornery as Curtis. But whatever she was remembering was about to make her cry, and I wasn’t about to ask anything that might knock a hole in that dam. So I did change the subject then.

  I stared at my bedroom ceiling that night thinking about how every single person on earth, no matter who they turned into later, started out as somebody’s baby.

  Everybody started out a blessing or a disappointment. A prayer that had been answered or nothing more than another mouth to feed. All by the time they’d drawn their first breath.

  I tried to imagine Miss Lydia with a little baby and had a hard time believing she wouldn’t do right by him. Didn’t she rock Curtis and sing lullabies and think he might grow up to be president? Didn’t she teach him nursery rhymes and ring-around-the-rosy?

  I could only imagine what might have made a fresh start in Cumberland seem like a good idea to Miss Lydia. Then, within three months, Curtis had brought shame and scandal down on her house. I wondered just how much fuel was in those looks of hers that could burn down a house. What a woman like Miss Lydia felt when her baby grew up to be a . . . a Curtis. And why she would blame herself.

  I didn’t know then. But I did start to see better why Miss Lydia was being so nice to me. Women like her always seem to need someone to mother. And it was pretty clear her first pass at it hadn’t turned out very well for anybody.

  Of course there was also the fact I was about as close to a motherless child as she was going to find.

  The next morning around eleven, I was home alone like usual when someone started banging on the back door. The way our house is situated, when you step out onto the back porch anybody at the door can see you at the same time you see them. That had never mattered to me until I went out and found Curtis Jenkins grinning in at me.