Rita Will_Memoir of a Literary Rabble-Rouser

by Rita Mae Brown

  People mumbled that Dad, ancient at fifty, would never get hired. I was becoming aware how frightened most people are of change, how negative they are, too, when someone makes a break for whatever happiness they can grab in this life. I wanted to say, “Shut your fat trap,” but Mother would have washed my mouth out with Grandpa’s Tar Soap, a particularly virulent brand. So as neighbors and false friends painted a dark picture for my parents, I acted as though I were concentrating on other things. No one said much about me other than that southern schools were dreadful and I wouldn’t learn a thing.

  Mother, in a rare burst of discipline, kept her own mouth shut. Not that Mother didn’t have good manners, she did, but she also had a low boiling point. If you heated her up that far, she’d describe the full extent of your stupidity.

  Sis cried and waved us off. The boys were jealous, of course. Eugene, now married, said he’d visit.

  The minute we crossed the Mason-Dixon line, which was less than fifteen minutes from home, my mother let out a war whoop that would have made Tecumseh proud. We sang the whole way to Florida.

  Our first day in Fort Lauderdale, Mom found an efficiency off Fifteenth Street NE. Sparkling white with aqua trim, nothing could have been more Florida. The owners, a young couple named Skula, had a son my age. In one day we were all best friends, and Mom and Dad remained friends with the Skulas after we found a home to buy. I bought a push mower and hustled a few jobs, which was a lot harder than in York since lawn maintenance companies sewed up most of the business. I undercut their rates, begged people to give me a chance. I was a convincing eleven-year-old. I was also reliable and I liked plants. I got my library card at the Middle River Library, the only library in town then, so I could read about hibiscus, lantana, bougainvillea, citrus trees and the awful crabgrass everyone calls a lawn in Florida.

  Mother, feeling I was big enough to take care of myself, took a job at Stevens’ Bakery. Dad found a job within a week at Crossroads Market.

  Isn’t it funny how when you finally break out and do what your heart wants to do, everything falls into place? Within seven days of moving to Florida, and without knowing one person, both my parents had jobs, I had some work, we’d found the Skulas and we had more time together than ever before.

  The bakery proved to be a godsend because the Stevens brothers, who owned it, were politicians. Fred was the commissioner of Port Everglades and Bill sat on the city council. Mother was in her element. She adored these men, who were about her age, and she liked learning the bakery business. She’d worked in a silk mill before I was born, and she liked working, meeting people and solving problems. Dad dropped her off at the bakery in the mornings and then drove on to work. He’d pick her up about four-thirty or five o’clock. We spent every evening and the weekends together. In Pennsylvania Dad used to work through most of the weekends, often even on Sunday. Now he took Sundays off. My parents were so happy. We’d hurry to the beach, day or night, where we’d walk, chase sand crabs and breathe in the salty air.

  I wanted a cat and dog. Mother promised me I could have pets, but only when we bought a house.

  We looked around. Finally, not far from where we were renting, a new small house was being built. They put the money down and three months later—things go up fast in Florida—we moved into a house that was diaper-rash pink with black wrought-iron shutters.

  Mother and I planted palm trees, hibiscus, ixora and a small orange tree. We settled for a queen palm, which had a gray base but was smaller than the royal palms, and I got a coconut palm. The deal was I had to trim the dead fronds, which I did, but the palmetto bugs, brown bombers, that zoomed out of there tried my nerves.

  Skinks with electric blue stripes on their sides scurried in the crotons, in the flame hibiscus, everywhere. Land crabs trooped by. Those suckers are formidable.

  Every time Mom saw a land crab she’d holler, “Get the shovel.” Her reasoning was that they’d undermine your house, and if they grabbed hold of you, you’d lose digits.

  It was my job to kill them. She wouldn’t. The brittle thwack when I’d nail them would bring a cheer from Mom.

  Killing snakes, another job of mine, required subterfuge. Unlike most people, I like snakes. They eat pests, as do bats, owls, praying mantises, ladybugs, etc. Why kill a friend? I’d grab the snake behind the head, make a commotion, then release the creature away from Mother’s gaze.

  The only time I backed off from this mission was if the intruder was a rattler. Fortunately, I only crossed one, and I distracted him with one hand while I cut him clean through with a machete.

  If you’re really fast, you can grab a rattler’s tail and snap him, literally snap him like a whip, cracking his head on the ground. I’d seen a guy do that, but I was sticking to my machete.

  I hated living in the suburbs, but I loved Florida. Herds of Brahman bulls roamed a few miles inland—we were only three miles from the ocean. They intrigued me. I knew Holsteins, Herefords, Angus, Red Angus, Jerseys and Guernseys, but the light-colored Brahmans kept you on your toes. For one thing, they are fast. For another, they can be mean as snakeshit. Angus can be mean, too, but not like the Brahmans. I tore across more than one field of Bermuda grass and sandspurs with a bull charging after me. Maybe I was stupid, but I wanted to get close to them, really see how they were put together and how they moved.

  Animals that adapted to the semitropical environment were all new to me. I’d never seen a manatee, also called a sea cow. They are so sweet. We used to jump in the canals and swim with them.

  I discovered garfish, alligators and barracuda, all to be meticulously avoided. I saw my first sea turtle, as big as I was and weighing more. It was as though Noah had dropped the gangplank from his ark and bid the fabulous creatures disembark in Florida.

  Flocks of wild parrots screeched. Ibis, white and black, stalked the canals. Occasionally we’d glimpse a flamingo that had taken a hike, from Gulfstream, I guess.

  Foxhunting didn’t exist. The only hounds I saw were coonhounds, a nice hound, mind you, but not a foxhound. That upset me.

  However, Mother more than made up for it by dragging me to the shedrows of Hialeah and Gulfstream on her odd days off. I’d sit on an overturned bucket watching everything and everybody trooping up and down the shedrow. Taught to look at a horse from the hoof up, I did just that. I bet I looked at as many Thoroughbreds as the people racing them did.

  I looked for a good hoof, a short, heavy cannon bone, well-sprung ribs, a big chest (for a big heart), big eyes, big nostrils and room at the throatlatch. The best conformation in the world is useless if the horse can’t breathe.

  I also learned that some flaws didn’t bother me much. A little toe-out or toe-in, what the heck. An offset knee, well, that’s a bit worse but the horse doesn’t know it; they adjust to their flaw. Some of the greatest racehorses in the world, like Seattle Slew, would not have passed a conformation evaluation.

  I also learned who was doping horses, who was fleecing their employer and who was honest—not many of the last, but there were some. The trainers who knew what they were doing had the best feed and exercise programs. Since I couldn’t watch the races, I watched horses breeze down the track. If I was lucky, I would be allowed to towel off a horse or hot-walk it.

  Sometimes we’d go up to Royal Palm, where I hot-walked the polo ponies. Mostly they were small Thoroughbreds and mostly they were kind, willing animals. Polo ponies taught me a great deal about how tolerant horses can be. Many of those polo players used their horses like bumper cars. That the ponies put up with it just amazed me. I hated those guys.

  However, the really good horsemen were like the really good Thoroughbred trainers—they paid attention to the hones’ nutrition and training. They rode light. A good polo match is one of the most exciting sporting events in the world. I saw a lot of good polo, and once I learned to separate the wheat from the chaff, I came to respect polo players.

  In all equine sports there are people who should not own horses or ride th
em; it’s just so obvious in polo, that’s all.

  I wanted a horse. I saved my lawn service money but I couldn’t begin to get there. Dad bought me a gold English racer. He said the bicycle would have to take the place of a horse until I made enough money to buy one.

  Dad always knew how to handle me. Mother would say no, berate me or, worse, remind me I should be grateful and not ask for things. Dad said nothing, but he came up with alternatives.

  I still worked on the typewriter he had given me. I graduated to writing stories about what I saw around me. No more talking Easter eggs that hatched brightly colored chicks. The English language, easy for me, nonetheless presented problems. You could drown in the pool of words, we have so many. You could also show off. I was at the show-offstage. If there was any way to sound intellectual, I did. Mother threw the stuff in the trash. She was my first and harshest critic—and the most accurate.

  “Be clear.” If she said that once, she said it a thousand times. Ranked right up there with “Blood tells.”

  About this time we marched down to Fort Lauderdale High School, where I had to register for seventh grade. The high school was a beautiful old Spanish-style series of buildings connected by graceful arched breezeways. The red Mediterranean tile roofs reflected the glare of the sun, and palm trees dotted the acres of ground. One quad, where kids could dance, contained a mosaic with the school symbol, a blue flying L. I’d never seen anything so beautiful at a high school.

  I wouldn’t be attending classes there, however; I’d be bused to the Naval Air Station, site of the takeoff of the famous Lost Squadron. Even though I was officially attending Sunrise Junior High, classes were held at Naval Air. They simply hadn’t built the new junior high school yet. Another school used the Naval Air barracks, too, Rogers Junior High. That wasn’t built either.

  Anyway, I accompanied Mom down to register, armed with my birth certificate. Here I might add that I tan to a deep brown. My eyes are dark brown and my hair is black-brown. Now there’s some gray in it, nature’s frosting, but then it was all black.

  The lady behind the desk, no doubt hot and tired, checked my birth certificate, saw “adopted,” looked me over and wouldn’t let us sign up. She said I might be “mixed race.”

  Mother, stunned, stood there for a second.

  “You’ll have to move, madam, there’s a line behind you.”

  “She’s white.” Mother’s jaw set.

  “Well, now, Mrs. Brown, you’ll have to prove this girl here isn’t part Negra.” This was how she pronounced the word Negro.

  I leaned over the desk, put my face right in hers and growled, “I’d rather be part Negra than all stupid like you.”

  I stormed out.

  Mother, speechless, followed me out of the building.

  “I’ll go to the Negro school,” I said.

  “Oh, no, you won’t.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Well, I do!”

  “I thought you didn’t care about that.”

  “I don’t, but I know they get the short end of the stick, kid, and I’ll be damned if I let someone cheat my kid out of her proper place. And honey, the Negro folks don’t want you. You don’t belong there even if you want to go there.” She put up her hand to stop the tirade that was building. “I’m your mother and you’ll do as I say.” Then she sat down because she had started laughing so hard. “Oh, God, the look on that biddy’s face!” A flash of propriety. “Don’t you ever sass an adult like that again in public, you hear me?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Then she laughed again until she cried. When she finally pulled herself together, we walked into the big church across from the school and Mom asked a woman in the office if she could use her phone. The woman, young and pretty, gladly let Mom dial.

  I thought she was calling Dad, something she rarely did because Mom said we shouldn’t bother Dad or anyone else at work. Instead she called Bill Stevens at his office. Briefly she recapped the event, then hung up the phone.

  The young lady at the desk scrutinized me and blurted out, “She certainly has Caucasian features.”

  “She ought to, her people came here in 1620. Buckingham.”

  Most southerners know the name Buckingham.

  “Aha.” A new emotion crossed the young woman’s pretty face. “She sure does tan.”

  “That she does.”

  And we left.

  A few days passed. I received in the mail my notification of when I was to start school, my bus number, eighty-four, and the time I had to be at the bus stop, 6:30 A.M. I have no idea what Mother told Bill Stevens when she saw him—I guess the whole story about my adoption. But I know he fixed it.

  Mother took to calling me “Pick,” which was short for pickaninny. I didn’t mind it; it was better than being called “the Ill.” She still called me “Buzzer,” but “Pick” was reserved for when she was feeling devilish. Then you knew something was going to happen—like maybe she’d throw a water balloon at you.

  Ugliness leaves a mark. I had knowingly encountered racial ugliness only twice up to the age of eleven. If it left a mark on me, what in God’s name does it do to children who face it every single day? And how could someone like that absurd registrar’s assistant act that way? How sad, miserable and pinched must someone’s life be for her to need a crutch like the color of your skin to feel superior to you. Makes me sick.

  Offsetting this was Aunt Mimi’s announcement that she was moving to Fort Lauderdale. No wonder she hadn’t carried on like Aida, or even Bette Davis, when we moved away. She’d been already working on Uncle Mearl. And a few months after that, down came Ken, Ceil, Kenny, Wadie, Terry, Julia Ellen and Russell.

  Again, magic held. Everyone found work and everyone was happy.

  And, of course, Aunt Mimi called up or marched through the door at the crack of dawn each morning, either on her way to mass at St. Anthony’s or on her way back. The Buckingham girls were together again. Could Florida survive them?

  29

  Top Dog

  Butch, Aunt Mimi’s glorious Boston Terrier, joined the Big Hound in the Sky. After a suitable period of mourning, she needed another creature to order about. Her daughter, married, could be bullied but not as frequently as before she entered into wedded bliss. Her sister fought back, which provided equal parts irritation and excitement. Her husband, her loyal ally, was not a suitable candidate. I failed the obedience test as well. Surely another dog would fill this void.

  Dad brought me a white kitten with gray spots, Skippy. An excellent murderer of skinks and the occasional sloppy blue jay, Skippy followed me around like a penny dog.

  I wanted an American Foxhound but ran into walls of resistance. I begged for a Chow Chow, but Mother said that heat would be cruel for such a heavy-coated animal. She was right. I tried for an Airedale, but Mom reminded me we’d need to strip the fur twice a year.

  I volunteered to ride around with Aunt Mimi as she searched for the perfect pet. We’d cruise up and down the straight streets—the land was flat as a pancake—and stop by breeders. She’d check out the puppies, we’d climb back in the car.

  “Too small. If I stepped on one, I’d kill it.” Her verdict on Chihuahuas. “Doggy odor.” Her response to a Wire Fox Terrier.

  “Why not get another Boston bull?”

  “Can’t do that.” She shook her head sadly. “There will never be another Butch. The dog would suffer by comparison.”

  I thought about how Aunt Mimi used to stand on the porch and call, “Butch! Come here, Butch!”

  Dad and Butch the dog would both race around the corner and up on the porch to greet her. No matter how many times we witnessed this spectacle it made us laugh.

  Dysfunctional families grab attention today. Our family carried its share of mishaps, mistakes and outright fights, but in the main, we were happy; we expected to work hard, and whatever good fortune came our way was celebrated. After all, Mom and Dad’s generation lived through two world wars and the Great
Depression. Those calamities framed their sense of life. They knew horrible things happened for no special reason. Carpe diem. And they did.

  Our corny jokes, like Aunt Mimi calling the dog and Dad showing up, drew us closer. We played pranks on one another, worked together and buried our dead together.

  Aunt Virginia had died young and then Mother’s brother, Bucky, died too. The last person anyone expected to go down young was George Buckingham. Colon cancer ate him alive.

  Maybe that’s why our passions drive us, why our sense of humor is so sharp; we each know we could be erased on the great blackboard of life without leaving but a speck of chalk dust.

  Aunt Mimi’s passion right now was a puppy. After a few weeks of the canine search of the century, still no pooch. Following each of our forays, I’d report to Mother.

  “She doesn’t need a dog. She’s naturally vicious.” Mother would laugh, and sometimes she’d go on to reverse herself. “She wants a dog because she’s too chicken to bite someone herself.” Like confetti, the put-downs floated harmlessly to the ground. Mom needed to throw things.

  A whirl through Burdine’s in downtown Fort Lauderdale always enlivened Mom. That woman moved through a department store like an army scout on a recon mission. Rarely purchasing anything, she folded garments back to check the seams, tapped crystal with her fingernail and plopped into every chair, testing them.

  This day she found a sundress with a flared skirt and short sleeves cut on an angle. It fit her perfectly. Jumping black poodles decorated the fabric.

  “What do you think?”

  “You look great. Mom.”

  “Not bad for an old lady.” She spun on the ball of her foot.

  She bought the dress after a small period of agony over the cost. We hopped into the car. She’d had it with shopping for the day and the next thing I knew she was roaring up Dixie Highway, turning left into the northwest section of Fort Lauderdale. She pulled up at a lime green house with white trim and shutters. I tagged along.