by Dori Sanders
Mae Lee glanced up at Church Granger. He was steadily writing something down on paper. Maybe what he was doing was trying to out-figure her on the land. Thinking of Jonah Walker made her lift her eyes and stare straight at him. Maybe he was like his daddy, after all. But working at the plant had changed her. One of the head men over at the plant had said he knew he could always trust Mae Lee Barnes’s count on everything. So Church wasn’t going to be able to out-figure her. She and her daddy had figured and counted the money most of the night. Now she held on to her pocketbook with both hands, wishing her daddy was there with her.
Church Granger stood up and walked toward her chair. “If everything here looks agreeable to you, Mae Lee, Mr. Rayford will witness your signature.” He handed her some papers and a fountain pen. Mae Lee read through the papers carefully and allowed herself a small inner smile when she saw the final figures. This was really going to be her home and her land with the help of her parents.
When she piled the money on the desk, a startled but pleased looked crossed Church Granger’s face. “That looks like a pretty big sum of money, Mae Lee.”
“It’s all there, sir. Every penny of it.”
He flashed a grin. “Now, you are sure you don’t want to wait for your husband to come home from the war to do this?”
“I’m sure,” Mae Lee said. “I want it to be a surprise. A real big surprise.”
: 4 :
Jeff Barnes returned from the war without a scratch. Mae Lee was in the kitchen washing her hair when she heard someone knock. She wrapped a towel around her head and answered the door, and there he stood, with his duffel bag slung over his shoulder, smiling down at her. His handsome face was stronger now, but he still had his easy, boyish grin. He was so clean and trim in his crisp uniform, he was so perfect, even more handsome than she’d remembered. She started to cry. Her husband put his duffel bag down and pulled her into his arms covering her face with kisses, saying, “Don’t cry, baby, I’m here, I’m home. We’ve got a lot of catching up to do.” He pulled an arm free and picked up his duffel. “I need to get unpacked. Are we staying here tonight?”
Mae Lee smiled. Her eyes glistened through the tears. She wiped her eyes, and looked up at Jeff. “We won’t have to stay at anyone’s house tonight. We’ll be staying in the little house above Catfish Creek. The Jenkins family moved out months ago. Mama and Daddy helped me get the house all fixed up. It’s ready for us to move in.”
Jeff Barnes’s face broke into a wide grin. “That’s great, baby.” He pulled her close and kissed her again. “I wouldn’t mind sleeping on a pallet on the floor with you tonight.”
Through the open bedroom door, he watched Mae Lee get her things together and move from his view to change her dress. When she stepped into the doorway she had combed her still damp hair and put on natural Tangee lipstick.
“You’re still pretty, Mae Lee,” he grinned. Then his face eased into a frown. “I guess I’ll be able to stay on at Jay Granger’s place. But the man isn’t Rising Ridge’s best landowner. The war changes a man, baby, changes the way he thinks.” He shrugged his shoulders. “It’s good farming land. I guess I can tolerate Jay Granger until we can get on our feet.”
A warm feeling of satisfaction swept over Mae Lee. “The house isn’t on Jay Granger’s land.”
“He died?”
“No, he’s still alive.”
“I guess he started turning things over to his son after the war?”
Mae Lee dug her fingernails into the palms of her hands and clenched her teeth to keep from telling him that they now owned not only the house but all the land that the Jenkinses had farmed as sharecroppers. She wanted to tell him it was theirs free and clear. But the time to tell him wasn’t right. She would know when it was. Every woman knows the time to tell really good news, she thought. At the proper time she would tell him everything from start to finish.
The proper time to tell her good news was a few seconds later—the time that it took to pull the shoebox with the land deed in it from beneath her bed.
Jeff Barnes was overwhelmed. He kept shaking his head, “I can’t believe it! Now I know why I love you so much. I knew that you were special when I told you that the name Barnes suited you better than Hudson.”
Nine months and four days after Mae Lee’s husband returned from the war their first daughter, Dallace, was born.
As much as it had pleased Jeff Barnes to have his own land to farm, it was not enough to hold him there in Rising Ridge. Once the season’s harvest was over, he left home to look for work in a nearby city. Mae Lee blamed the war. It was the war, she decided, that dried up all his interest in farming. But at least he had tried, she thought to herself. His first year back on the farm was a failure. It had rained so much during the growing season, the crops were sometimes underwater for days. And, of course, she blamed herself. She felt she had been of little help. Instead of going away, the first month’s morning sickness hung on, stretched into day sickness, and kept up throughout her pregnancy.
Mercifully, her daddy was able to get his longtime friend Hooker Jones and his wife Maycie to farm the land for her on shares. Hooker Jones had moved from a big landowner’s farm after a heated dispute over a few bales of cotton. They were getting older, so the smaller farm suited them well.
Jeff Barnes planted a tree the day their son, Taylor, was born. It was one of the rare occasions of his presence whose date she could later pinpoint exactly. It was not as easy to pinpoint the planting of the seeds for her three other children, Annie Ruth, Nellie Grace, and Amberlee. Four years went by during which time Mae Lee gave birth to four children. Three girls and one boy. Jeff would come home for a few weeks, she would conceive a child, and then he would be off again. He never announced when he was coming, he just showed up. If he was earning a decent salary where he worked, it almost never took the form of bringing money home. Mae Lee knew that her parents were disgusted with her husband’s failure to provide or to help on the farm, but they said nothing to her, and she made a point of never expressing even the slightest impatience or dissatisfaction with him in their presence. Eventually, she told herself, Jeff would settle down with his family for good. After his years in the army he was restless, that was all. For now, she only knew his pattern. He would come home, and then after a few weeks announce that he’d heard of a better job someplace else, and would look all lovesick at her with his strange-colored eyes and say, “Baby, we are going to have to move on. I won’t go without you. I absolutely refuse.” And each time he’d stand there waiting for her answer, knowing full well she wouldn’t go. As in times past, she would only look at him and hold her body stiff, aware that while he might be leaving, a very real part of him remained with her, his newly conceived child.
After their youngest child, Amberlee, was born and she’d survived a few visits from him without getting pregnant again, the next time he offered to take her with him she took him up on it. She meant it, and was so excited by her decision that she misread the pained disappointment in her husband’s eyes, the crack in his voice, as signs of his surprise and pleasure.
She ran to her parents’ house to tell them about leaving with her husband. Jeff had only one room in the town where he lived, so they thought it would be best to take only the baby until they found a house. She turned to her daddy, her face took on a soft glow, her eyes danced with delight. “I know you won’t like the idea of our renting, when the same money could be buying, Daddy, but it’s what my husband wants to do. You have my word, though, well hold on to our land.”
Her daddy frowned. “Talk is easy, baby girl, very easy.” Mae Lee hadn’t heard. She turned to her mama. “Mama, I hope it’s not asking too much of you to take care of the older ones until we can come back for them. It won’t be for long. Just make them behave, Mama. They won’t be too much trouble. You know they’ll mind you.”
Vergie Hudson looked out her window at her grandchildren playing in the yard and smiled. “I have them at my house all day even
when you are home, Mae Lee. But maybe you do need to write out some instructions for me on how to care for my grands.” She grew serious when her daughter broke into laughter. “Just don’t move too fast with that husband of yours. Take a little time to sort things out”
“I’ve got to move fast,” Mae Lee put in. “We’ll be leaving in a few days. Just think, Mama, I’ll be living in town. Living like a lady. Jeff said he was going to send me to the beauty shop. ‘All the women in town go,’ he said.”
The next few days Mae Lee was up early, washing and ironing and baking sweet goodies for her children. They were as excited over moving to their grandparents’ as she was over her move to town.
Dallace, her oldest, watched as Mae Lee ran a hot iron over a small bunch of cedar tree branches piled on the makeshift ironing board. Mae Lee explained that the cedar branches not only cleared away sticky starch from the iron, it also made the clothes smell good.
On the day they were to leave, her husband worked outside on his old car, fixing something under the hood, while she dressed. Mae Lee packed what she felt was her best, and searched through her old dresser drawers for a piece of taffeta ribbon to try and anchor a bow in her baby’s few strands of hair. “We want Daddy to let people see his baby is a little girl.”
Mae Lee heard Jeff’s car crank up. “Come, baby,” she said, wedging a soft little foot into a freshly polished white shoe, “Daddy’s waiting for us.”
She paused to look in a smoke-stained mirror with splotches of peeling in the back. She turned her head until she could see her face, adjusted her navy straw hat with the red plastic cherries to just the right angle. And with baby in one arm, a suitcase closed and tied with a leather belt in the other, she turned for a final look in the mirror.
She no longer heard the car running and she guessed Jeff had only started it to make sure it would crank, and was coming inside for her.
She heard footsteps on the porch. “Jeff,” she called out, “come and get the suitcase. We have to stop by Mama’s. I forgot and left the new baby blankets down there.”
Her mama’s image, not Jeff’s, appeared in the mirror. “What ails you, child?” Her mama frowned. “Talking to yourself like some addle-minded woman.” She didn’t wait for her daughter to answer. “Guess I’d be a little ‘off’ too if I had to put up with the likes of Jeff Barnes.”
Mae Lee held her baby close. “Mama, he’s taking us with him this time. We’ll be back for the children as soon as we can get settled. I promise. They won’t be too much trouble. You know they are good children.”
Vergie Hudson sat on the foot of the iron-poster bed. She hugged her arms tightly across her chest and pulled her mouth in at the corners. She always did that when she was making serious talk.
“Go see for yourself,” she said quietly, then moved quickly to take her grandbaby from her daughter’s arms. Mae Lee did not move.
Her mama relaxed the tightness of her lips. She cradled the baby’s pretty, perfectly shaped head in both hands. “We’ve shaped it just right,” she said, as if she’d ever allowed her daughter to dare touch the baby’s head. All Mae Lee had been told to do was to turn the baby every so often when it lay in its little homemade crib, and never to drop it.
“Well, anyway,” she went on, “your daddy just happened to glance out the window and saw Jeff turning his car around in the front yard. He didn’t think a thing till he turned it off and started pushing it, then jumped in and let it coast down the hill. Then, hold the lamb, the fool cranked the car up and took off like the devil chasing lightning. Your poor daddy shook his head. ‘That snake in the grass is slipping off from my baby girl,’ he said. ‘He is leaving her. And I’ll bet my baby don’t even suspect, don’t even suspect.’” Mae Lee’s mama licked her lips and rubbed her pointing finger across them. “Now, what do you have to say to that?”
“Jeff’s probably gone to buy some gas, Mama.”
Mae Lee’s mama shook her head, “Honey, honey. At the end of the dirt road is the highway. If you turn right you’re headed north, if you turn left you’re headed south to town. The gas station’s in town. Jeff Barnes was heading north.”
Mae Lee didn’t turn to face her mama; she just closed her eyes and gave herself a good personal silent cussing out. To think, she told herself, that I actually prayed, prayed day and night, for him to return alive from the war.
She stood there, her eyes fixed on her own image in the mirror, a grown woman with tears making paths down through a layer of Sweet Georgia Brown face powder, crying when no one was dead. A grown woman crying over a man who no longer wanted her. She made no effort to straighten her navy straw hat, terribly crooked on her head because of her baby’s attempts to reach the red cherries.
She wanted to run beyond the small branch of water just below her house to the banks of the big river and throw herself into the flowing waters. She wanted to scream out to her mama to leave. But she stood and listened, ashamed to turn and face her mama, forgetting that the mirror fully revealed her intense pain and shame.
Her mama laid her grandbaby on the bed and stood beside Mae Lee. She looked at her daughter’s tear-streaked face in the mirror. She wanted to take her child in her arms and comfort her, but Mae Lee’s eyes told her no. It was the time for both of them to be strong.
Her mama started pulling her mouth in at the corners again. “I tried to warn you about that Barnes boy,” she fussed. She hadn’t, but Mae Lee was not about to say so. You don’t tell your mama to her face what she did or didn’t say, not even when you are old enough to be a mama yourself. Not even when you know for a fact she didn’t say it.
“You were not the only one. There was your friend, Doris Ann. Her mama tried to tell her about them Barnes boys, too. But no, you both wouldn’t listen. Good-looking boys with eyes that light color, a high-brown complexion and good hair on their head don’t spell nothing but trouble. Everybody knows it. Everybody but young girls who won’t listen to their mamas and go fool crazy over them. You know what happened to Doris Ann—well, it’s happened to you.”
Mae Lee wanted to remind her mama that she didn’t exactly have dark eyes, either. White folks called Mae Lee’s eyes hazel. At least that’s what the woman put on her job application. But still she said nothing. You didn’t talk back to your mama. A daughter wasn’t supposed to.
Mae Lee watched her mama in the mirror. The cracked mirror gave extra anger lines to her mama’s face, already blown up with contempt. She wondered what her mama would have done if her daughter’d been like a certain war bride down the road. With a husband away at war, there she was, stealing every forbidden moment she could to be with one of the handsome young German POW’s brought in by the hundreds to harvest seasonal crops. Now, you talk about strange-colored eyes. It was a good thing the girl’s mama hurried up and got her out of Rising Ridge. No telling what color of eyes the baby that girl was expecting would end up with. If that had been her—her mama would have had something to see. She would have died.
Vergie observed her daughter lost in thought and eyed her suspiciously.
“Is there another young’un on the way?”
“No, ma’am. I don’t think so.”
“Well, there is one on the way. You’ll find out soon enough.”
“Oh, Mama, do you really think I’m pregnant again?”
Her mama raised her eyes upward. “Why certainly. You married a Barnes, didn’t you?” She turned to look at her sleeping grandbaby. She shook her head. “But, oh Lord, them Barnes boys do make pretty babies.”
Mae Lee started undressing her baby girl. Her tears still flowed. She cried not for him but for herself. Nobody used Mae Lee. “The war changed him,” she said slowly. “It was the war, Mama. After the war, Mama, there was this new way about him. I could never get used to it. He was always on the move. Always in a rush to go someplace. He was shell-shocked. And you know what that will do to any able-bodied man.”
It had not all been bad. There had been times when things were g
ood between them, warm and easy, like well-worn soft leather gloves. And there were her babies. Five healthy, beautiful children.
Vergie Hudson looked about her daughter’s small room. She fingered the fringed dresser scarf and looked at the fancy pincushions, the round, cardboard Coty dusting powder box, the comb, brush, and mirror dresser set, and the blue bottle of Evening in Paris perfume. “Your husband may not have written you letters but he sure was thinking about you. He bought you some right nice presents,” she said.
Mae Lee’s voice quivered, she was crying again. “He said he did write letters to me, Mama, but his spelling was so bad he was ashamed to mail them, so he tore the letters up.”
“Huh,” her mama grunted, “like you couldn’t have made out what he was trying to say. I wish he’d have mailed them. Oh, how my heart ached for you.”
“Jeff has been shell-shocked, Mama,” she repeated. That was safe. Mae Lee didn’t tell her mother that during all the years Jeff Barnes was in the army he had never left the supply department where he sewed on buttons and rank stripes. And that she, not her husband, had bought those things.
Mae Lee’s mama started to moan softly. She moved to her daughter’s side and put her arms around her daughter, patting and rubbing her back as if she were a baby needing to be burped. “He’ll come back, baby,” her mother soothed. “He will come back to his little sweet family.”
Mae Lee pulled away. She no longer cried. “Maybe he will come back, Mama, but he will never come back to me,” she said firmly. She took her hat off and pulled her long hair into a braid. “The first thing I’ll do tomorrow is ask Daddy to put new locks on the doors. I don’t ever want to see Jeff Barnes again in this life.”
The next morning, Mae Lee’s daddy changed the locks, and said flat out, “Get yourself dressed, young lady, we’re going down to lawyer Gaines’s office to see about getting you a divorce. He’ll know where you have to go and what you have to do to make it legal. You don’t need the likes of one of them Barneses trailing in and out for the rest of your life.”