“Maybe they thought he wouldn’t be noticed if they stuck him someplace out of the way,” I suggested.
“They were ashamed of him,” said Aunt Minnie. “They gave him a real plain marker compared to everyone else’s.”
“Why were they ashamed of him?” asked Ray.
“Because he married one of us,” said Aunt Cleo.
“Plain dumbness,” said Lola, “that’s what it was.”
After that, how could I keep my secret? I was still afraid, but hadn’t Aunt Minnie been afraid? Besides, I wanted them to know me, to know me as well as I was getting to know them. By keeping my love for Lissa a secret from my aunts, I was keeping myself outside of the circle. I was keeping myself apart from what I wanted, a family.
I chose a rainy afternoon when Ray was at his own house and Aunt Minnie couldn’t garden. She was sorting flower seeds at the table in front of the stove. It had warmed up enough so that we no longer needed a fire during the day. Aunt Cleo and I had just finished a round of tic-tac-toe. I put down the pencil and stood up.
“I have something to tell the two of you.”
Aunt Minnie looked up from her sorting. I was facing them both.
“I’m gay. That’s the reason I came here. There was no problem with math. I had a friend named Lissa. We fell in love with each other. Rupert found out and got really angry. He said we didn’t have people like that in our family. I acted kind of crazy. So Rupert and Ruby drove down and dumped me here.”
I waited for what seemed like an eternity.
Aunt Cleo broke the silence. “Why didn’t you tell us before?”
“Rupert told me not to. He said you were righteous.”
Aunt Minnie grunted. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That you think it’s a really bad thing, even a sin. Ruby told me to forget my feelings. But I can’t.”
Aunt Minnie got up and walked over to me. “My definition of righteous is different from Rupert’s.” She touched my cheek. “You’re family, honey child. The fact that you’re gay, as you call it, doesn’t take away from that.”
“Uncle Jed was gay,” Aunt Cleo sang out.
“Someone else in our family?”
“At least one someone else,” she said, wheeling herself over. “Bookworm Jed, we called him. He was so good to us. Never got married. Didn’t talk much about being gay; people didn’t talk about it then. But everybody knew. And it didn’t make a bit of difference in the way we felt about our uncle.”
Relief washed over me. “You don’t think I’m unacceptable?”
“Of course not,” said Aunt Minnie. “I worry about how other folks who don’t understand these things might treat you, though. But you’re strong. You know who you are.”
Hearing her say that, I began to feel stronger.
“Daddy would probably roll over in his grave—that’s what Rupert said.”
“We’ll never know,” said Aunt Minnie. “I do know that your mother would have loved you even more, if that’s possible.”
“How do you know?”
“Nadine was a free spirit. She’d never judge a soul.”
“She wasn’t in the position to,” Aunt Cleo added. “She lived her life just the way she wanted to.”
“But she wanted to sing opera—she gave up her dreams for Daddy. That’s the way it seemed to me.”
“It may have looked that way to you when you were a little girl, Orphea, but I don’t think that’s true. Nadine’s dream was to marry Reverend Apollo Jones and to have a little girl.”
“Don’t forget going to Kenya,” Aunt Minnie reminded her. “If Nadine had wanted to leave Apollo, she wouldn’t have hesitated.”
“Do you really think she would have still loved me?”
“Would you let something stop you from loving her?” asked Aunt Minnie.
“No. Never.”
“There’s your answer.”
Aunt Cleo fanned herself. “Knew there was something on your mind. Glad you finally came out with it.”
“You didn’t believe the story about math?”
Aunt Minnie hooted. “We weren’t born yesterday, pumpkin.”
“This calls for a soda pop,” said Aunt Cleo, crossing to the refrigerator case.
“No ginger ale, root beer, or orange,” I told her.
“Fine. I’ll take black cherry. Want one?”
I sat down at the table. “Sure.”
“Minnie?”
“No thanks. I’ll just have me a chaw.” She pulled out her tobacco pouch. “So, where’s Lissa?”
“That’s the other piece. She died in a car accident, just before I came down here.”
“Oh, my …,” murmured Aunt Cleo. Aunt Minnie put her arms around me.
“You’ve been through a lot, girl. But we’re here with you. You’re home.”
The following day the sun was out. I went over to speak with Ray and asked him to wake up his mother. I wanted my aunts to see Lissa in the daylight. Aunt Minnie and Aunt Cleo got into their best clothes for the occasion. Though Lola didn’t know the whole story, she was excited about the plan.
“I’d love for them to see Ray’s horses! I haven’t checked in on him myself in months.” She even insisted on making punch and opening a bag of cookies for the event. “This is a regular art opening,” she said with a giggle.
Ray and I wheeled Aunt Cleo out onto the porch. She was wearing a pearl necklace. Aunt Minnie was carrying a big red pocketbook, which she gave to Aunt Cleo to hold while she, Ray, Lola, and I lifted the wheelchair off the porch and pushed it across the road.
“I feel just like a queen,” chirped Aunt Cleo. “Leaving the store twice in the same month.”
We set the wheelchair down in front of the root cellar and Ray opened the door. Aunt Minnie stepped inside and stood out of the way, so that Lola could squeeze in. There was just enough space left in the doorway for Aunt Cleo to poke in her head. Ray and I waited outside. The first voice we heard was Lola’s.
“What happened to the horses?”
“I painted over them, Mama.”
“Where did this girl on the wall come from?”
“That’s Lissa,” Aunt Cleo said quietly. “She’s lovely!”
“Orphea’s friend,” Aunt Minnie explained.
“She showed me a photo,” Ray chimed in. “Do you like her, Mama?”
“Like it a lot!” said Lola. She came outside beaming. “First time you ever painted a person. Good job!”
“She died,” Ray told her.
“That’s awful!”
“She wasn’t only my friend, she was my girlfriend,” I said.
“You’re queer?”
“If you want to call it that.”
She shrugged. “Oh, well. Can’t help who you fall in love with. I thought I was marrying a guy with his head on his shoulders, turned out to be a space cadet. Sorry about your friend, though.”
“Thanks.”
When we carried Aunt Cleo back to the store, there were tears in her eyes.
“That girl could walk off the wall, she’s so alive. It’s like she could start speaking.”
After supper, I went to Nadine’s room and turned on the light. I looked at her baby pictures. It was hard to believe that my own mother had once been a baby. I picked up the doll on the nightstand and gave it a hug. Then I opened the drawers of her dresser. In one of them was a photo of the two of us standing in the snow with a boy. The boy was holding me in his arms. It took a minute for me to realize that it was Rupert. The photo appeared to have been taken on the same day as the one I’d always kept of me and my mother. Strange how I’d forgotten that Rupert had been with us. In the photo he looked like anybody else’s big brother. What else didn’t I remember? Who had taken the picture? I wondered.
In the second drawer I opened, I found a strand of pink pop beads and one of those diamond rings from a bubble gum machine. I put the jewelry on and sat down on the bed. I was waiting for some kind of sign from my mother. None cam
e. So I got up and opened her closet. On the floor stood a small pair of white rubber boots. At that moment I heard a voice. I’m sure it came from my mind, but it was so strong and vivid; as if it came from somewhere else outside of me. But it wasn’t Nadine’s voice. It was Lissa’s.
Hey, Duckfeet!
I smiled.
Maybe Lissa and Nadine would meet up someday, I thought. I took comfort in that.
While I slept a river grew
A winding road of roots and gloom
Wading to the other side
A splendid horse gave me a ride
From his back, I spied a cavern
The entrance cloaked with hands unfurling
Tossing off a light too bright
Your face the center, beauty blinding
I heard a whisper, turn around
My horse stepped in
I will not drown
FAME
Mrs. Graves kept her word and paid a visit. She brought her daughter with her, a much younger version of herself wearing great big rhinestone earrings and a long flowered skirt. She seemed cool, so I invited her over to Ray’s museum. She couldn’t stop snapping pictures. Me and Ray standing side by side; Ray, Lola, and me; Ray with the paintings he’d done of Saint on the other walls. The last one she took was of Ray and me standing on either side of Lissa’s portrait.
“Tell me about the young lady in the painting,” said the journalist.
“She was my best friend,” I explained. “After that, she became my girlfriend,” I added shyly.
That was the photo that appeared in the Handsome Crossing Gazette. The caption read:
Orphea Proud and Raynor Grimes of Proud Road have recently discovered that they are distantly related, having put together their genealogy with the help of family stories handed down by Orphea’s great-aunts, Minerva and Cleopatra Proud. Raynor is the son of Mrs. Lola Grimes, an employee of Chaise and Sons Furniture Factory. Orphea and Raynor are shown here with Raynor’s painting, “A Portrait of Lissa.”
Lola bought ten copies of the paper and gave three to me and the aunts. Aunt Cleo cut the article out and Aunt Minnie hung it over the counter.
“First time anybody in my family has ever made it in the paper. Fame! Nothing like it,” Lola crowed.
We have the thickest, sweetest purple lilacs on either side of the store. They bloomed and bloomed that spring. Even Aunt Cleo had to admit they went well with the new yellow paint job. The straw man came from the paper factory to make the delivery so that we had straws to hand out with sodas, and toilet paper and paper towels to put on the shelves, and paper napkins to go with the sandwiches my aunts made to sell. The night before the delivery, Lola took off from work and permed her hair. It seems that once he’d made the delivery, the straw man was going over to Ray and Lola’s house for dinner.
“Not as if she doesn’t see him every chance she gets in town,” Ray told me confidentially.
After the straw man made his delivery, a big order of canned goods arrived and some other stuff that Aunt Minnie had ordered from a catalog. Lola went to a neighbor’s farm and brought us back some live chickens. Right on cue, the customers started coming. Until then, I hadn’t known other people lived on the mountain.
“There are hollers around here,” Ray explained. “Folks stay put in the bad weather. But then they stretch out of their homes. Kind of like bears.”
“What do they do for a living?”
“Fix roofs, pick fruit, paint houses …”
I helped Aunt Minnie behind the counter, waiting on the customers. We averaged about eight per day. They came in all shapes, colors, and sizes. Each and every one of them noticed the newspaper clipping. Aunt Cleo thought it was good for business. But one day a man with a big bushy mustache started asking questions. “I hear that girl in the painting is queer. That true?”
I looked up in surprise. There was nothing like that in the newspaper caption.
“What if it is true?” growled Aunt Minnie. “Would that change the taste of this sandwich you ordered?”
“Expect not. But I don’t believe in gays.”
“And I don’t believe in mustaches,” she said, slamming his sandwich down.
He left the sandwich on the counter and walked out, muttering a cussword.
“Where did that come from?” Aunt Cleo asked with a sigh. “Somebody’s been gossiping.”
“Some folks don’t have enough to occupy their minds,” said Aunt Minnie. “Got to put their noses in other people’s private lives.” She patted me on the shoulder. “Don’t let it worry you, honey child.”
“I won’t.” But it did. What if because of me, Proud Store lost its few customers? For a few days, I was on edge. Thankfully, there wasn’t another incident like that one.
Out of the blue one day, a couple came in and asked for a portrait! I didn’t know what else to do so I took them over to see Ray. Right away they headed for Lissa. They’d seen her picture in the paper.
“She looks like she could walk right off the wall,” said the woman.
“Very nice,” said the man. He turned to Ray. “Think you could do something like that for us?”
“I ain’t never done a portrait of people.”
“But you did this girl on the wall.”
“That was from a snapshot. I never painted from a live person.”
“You can do it, Ray,” I said.
“Nope, I can’t.”
“Come on, Ray. I dare you.”
“We’ll pay you five dollars,” promised the man.
Ray’s eyes popped. “In that case, I’ll give it a shot.”
He brought his paints and colored pencils and some paper over to the store. Do you know that boy did an awesome sketch of that couple in twenty minutes? They liked it a lot; maybe because the sketch made them look about ten years younger than they actually were. Ray was pleased, too, especially when they gave him the money. But when the couple was on their way out with the picture, he stopped them.
“Wait! She can write a poem for you.”
“No, I can’t. I don’t write poems for people.”
“You write them all the time about Lissa,” said Ray.
“The lady and gentleman do not want to have a poem about themselves!”
“Sure we do,” said the man, settling back. He and his wife ordered two ham sandwiches and some sodas from Aunt Minerva and paid Aunt Cleo at the register. I sat down with a pad and pencil. I hardly knew where to begin. I didn’t know a thing about them. I finally hit upon a short format:
You climbed the mountain
Your faces lifted
Lovebirds fly home with full stomachs
They gave me a dollar for it.
Suddenly Ray and I were in business. People were coming up the mountain for a portrait and a poem. We settled on a price of $5.50 for the set. Ray was very good at the portraits. This particular poetry that I was writing then—I wouldn’t want you to judge me on it. After all, these were quickies. But here are a few of my better ones:
Though you bury the dead
You are very well read
The sun also rises in China
I wrote that for Mrs. Graves when she came back a second time. I heard her tell Aunt Minerva that she wanted to go on vacation—that’s where the part about China came from. I wanted her to go someplace really different.
Once a young couple brought their baby with them. They wanted Ray to paint the baby’s picture, but she wouldn’t keep still. So the whole family had to be in the portrait. Ray painted them eating tuna fish because that’s what they’d ordered from Aunt Minerva.
A family hike
Preserved forever
Somewhere is a school of dolphins
Somewhat obscure, I know …
One day the mail carrier wanted his portrait and poem just like all the other folks. This particular guy wore two pairs of glasses at the same time, one pair on his nose and the other pair on top of his head. Aunt Minerva explained that one was proba
bly for reading the names on the letters and the other pair was for distance while he was driving. I thought he looked like a Cyclops.
Master of the mountain
You have the Cyclops eye
Barking dogs flee in the distance
I gave it to him for free, since he didn’t seem to like it. He didn’t get the part about the barking dogs; how he didn’t have to worry about them like mail carriers always do, because even a dog would be scared of those glasses. In any case, he was crazy about Ray’s portrait.
Around that time I got a note from Marilyn telling me that Club Nirvana was open. She and Icky invited me to come up. They wanted me to perform my poetry and anything else I wanted to.
I explained about Marilyn and Icky to my aunts and told them about the poems I owed them. By this time, I had written a lot of stuff. The idea had been taking shape inside me that I could turn the material into a show, a show with poems in it. I would dedicate the show to Lissa. But now that it seemed like the show could become a reality, I got cold feet.
“I’m calling Marilyn and Icky and telling them I can’t come.”
“Are you sure?” asked Aunt Minnie. “Maybe it’s time you had some fun, child. You told us about that open mike you used to go to.”
“I haven’t done that in so long. Besides, everything I’ve written lately is about Lissa and me and how we fell in love. I can’t share that with anybody.”
“Why on earth not?” said Aunt Cleo. “I’m sure your poetry is good.”
“Lissa might not want me to talk about what happened between us in public.”
“Well then, make your show about something else. You owe it to yourself to carry on. Or do you want to spend your whole life with Ray as the only company your age? We want you to do things with your life, Orphea. Don’t you want to go back to school?”
Orphea Proud Page 11