Her Own Place

by Dori Sanders

  Lost in thought, Mae Lee leaned back in her rocking chair. Ellabelle sat quietly nearby; her grown children had always lived away from Rising Ridge. The two widows had come a long way. Both lives had often been a long hard row to hoe. Mae Lee’s children were all grown and away. Dallace and Nellie Grace were still in New York, Amberlee just across some river in New Jersey. Mae Lee didn’t think she’d have to worry about a wedding for Amberlee anytime soon. They all had good jobs, Mae Lee thought, and for the time being, two of them had good husbands. Annie Ruth, bless her heart, quit her job to stay home with her children. Taylor had decided to accept a teaching job in his wife’s hometown, Overrun, just outside Concord, North Carolina, a little more than an hour away. With Annie Ruth in Greensboro, North Carolina, at least she had two children reasonably close by.

  The women were quiet for a long time. Finally, Ellabelle spoke. “For right now my children are all doing well, really well. I think we should be very content and happy, but I’m not. Wonder why?”

  Mae Lee swallowed hard. “Maybe, because like me, you’re lonely.” Mae Lee quickly brightened, though. “I won’t be lonely long,” she said. “My little grandson Tread is coming this summer.” Her thoughts shifted to the farming season just ahead, and she asked her friend if she’d be available to carry her a few places to take care of some business the first of the week.

  On Monday morning, Mae Lee woke early and called Ella-belle on the telephone. “You didn’t forget me, did you? I know it’s early but you know how long it takes to get waited on down at the Farmers Center this time of year.”

  “I’m still in my bed, but I guess I’ll be there by the time you’re ready,” Ellabelle said.

  Later that morning she stopped Hooker Jones from his plowing to tell him that the fertilizer and soybeans were ready for him to pick up from the Farmers Service Center. “It’s all paid for,” she said.

  Mae Lee’s days were filled with happiness during the summer her grandson spent with her.

  “I want to be a doctor, grandmama, a medical doctor,” he announced one day, clear out of the blue. She was getting ready to shell peas and he was playing in the sand.

  It had pleased her, so she put off her peas, summoned Ella-belle, and they drove into town in search of a toy medical bag. As they drove along in the late afternoon, the outline of the sun’s rays streamed down through the clouds, fanning out like an oversized pleated lampshade. “The sun’s rays are drawing up water from the earth, collecting moisture,” Mae Lee pointed out to her grandson. “It’s going to rain in a few days.”

  The little boy let go of her hand and gazed out the window at the sun. The clouds that had seemingly anchored around the edges of the sun had slowly worked loose and were drifting away.

  “Don’t look too long at the sun, Tread. Not even when it’s cloudy. It’ll cause you to go blind.” She told him the things her mama had told her.

  Her grandson reached for her hand again.

  “Ouch,” she screamed out in mock pain. “That finger is going to need a Band-Aid, doctor.”

  He loved her world. She loved his.

  After they had gone looking in every store on Main Street, they returned empty-handed to the car where Ellabelle was waiting. Mae Lee glanced at her watch. “We’ve got to hurry and find that bag. The stores will be closed before we know it. That little variety store that opened up across town might have a little doctor’s kit, but I don’t know if we can make it before they close,” Mae Lee fussed. “With your slow driving, Ellabelle, we walk wherever we go, even when we are riding in your car.”

  Ellabelle handed her the car keys. “Why don’t you drive, since you think you can wheel it so fast?”

  All they were able to find was a little plastic nurse’s kit. Mae Lee bought it anyway. She cut a picture of a little boy from a catalog and pasted it over the little girl’s face on the kit. If only they had gotten an earlier start that day, they could have driven to North Carolina where they had the big stores and would have found her grandson a male doctor’s kit.

  In time her little Tread’s medical practice went a little too far. One day she found him instructing his playmates to take off their clothes. So she took his nursing kit away.

  : 9 :

  Mae Lee looked across the fields of smooth ground. During the winter she had worked with Hooker and Warren to clear and burn off the strips of brush and undergrowth that crisscrossed her farmland. Now the seventy-some acres, including the portion leased from Warren, stretched out before her. She inhaled the clean smell of freshly plowed soil and listened to the din of tractors plowing or disk-harrowing throughout the countryside. Warren and Hooker had been right that she should buy a tractor. It could do more work in an hour than a mule could in half a day.

  Mae Lee liked the way the land spread out before her. If her cousin Warren ever decided to sell, she sure wanted his land. She thought of asking him about it, then changed her mind. Warren had retired and might want to sell, but she didn’t want to put the idea in his head. What money she had hidden away was doubtless enough to cover his asking price.

  She turned to look at the land near the house where her children were born, where Hooker and his wife lived now. That was the farmland where the sweet potatoes should be grown for the current farm season. She would be sure to remind Hooker of that—once he had planted the ground crop in the same spot as the year before and all the sweet potatoes developed rotten spots.

  Farmers need to stay close to their land, not only because they love it, but because they have to be there. She thought of how she’d almost lost her entire crowder pea crop to worms the summer before. She’d been called to New York to take care of her little sick granddaughter, Sheila, while her daughter Dallace was away for some work conference. Poor old Hooker had been anxious to get ahead with his planting and had planted the crowder peas before June. And unless one uses a powerful amount of pesticide sprays, worms will eat up peas planted so early in the season.

  Mae Lee slowly made her way back up to her house. The old dirt road was paved now. There was a stack of letters in her mailbox, one from each of her children. She knew before opening them that they were to remind her about the trip to Greensboro, North Carolina. The letters were brief.

  Mother,

  If you need anything before Annie Ruth’s kid’s graduation, let me know. I’ll call you on Sunday. Hugs and kisses from Tread and Sheila. See you in North Carolina.

  Love, love,

  Dallace

  Dear Mama,

  Can’t wait to see you at Travenia’s graduation. Don’t buy a dress, I am bringing you one. I think it’s just right for you. I luv you, Mama.

  Nell,

  oops . . . Nellie Grace

  Dearest Mama,

  Great news! There is talk that I just might be named head librarian here! Of course, it’s only a small branch, but it’s a step in the right direction. I told you that a master’s degree in Library Science would pay off.

  Love you,

  Amberlee

  Dear Mama,

  Can you believe the great graduation day is almost here? I’ll pick you up at nine in the morning on the Monday before, and we’ll be off to Greensboro.

  Bye Mama,

  Your son Taylor

  P.S. I may be a little late.

  The last envelope was the fancy graduation invitation from Annie Ruth. Inside was a note and two crisp twenty-dollar bills.

  In case you have to go to the beauty shop or need a little something. We await your visit.

  Your daughter,

  Annie Ruth

  The day they were to leave for Greensboro, Taylor arrived at his mama’s house an hour early. Mae Lee was still in her robe. “I’m hungry, Mama,” he announced.

  “I know,” she said. “I fixed your plate and put it in the oven. I thought you said you were going to be late.”

  “I was up early so I just left.”

  After Taylor finished his breakfast, he pushed his plate back, dropped his head into hi
s folded arms resting on the table, and went to sleep. Mae Lee woke him up when they were ready to leave. “The baby kept us up most of the night,” Taylor explained. “She’s teething again. I really hated to leave Bettina with the baby so fretful.”

  Mae Lee patted Taylor on the back. “You are a good husband, but you can rest easy with your mother-in-law there. She knows how to care for babies.” Later, having thought more about the baby, Mae Lee told Taylor, “I really feel I should have kept my grandbaby and let Bettina make this trip.”

  “Bettina wouldn’t have come, Mama. She’s a homebody. I have to beg her to visit you, and even then she always finds some excuse, and you know how much she cares for you.” Taylor sounded unhappy.

  “Well, if you want to know how I personally feel about this trip, son, I think it’s a waste of time. All this fuss over some little old grade school graduation. You’d think the child was graduating from college. It’s a waste of money,” she fussed. “And I’m going to tell Annie Ruth so, ‘deed I am.”

  Taylor reached to turn his radio down. “I wouldn’t say nothing, Mama, you know how Annie Ruth is. She likes to do things in a big way.”

  After they arrived at Annie Ruth’s house it wasn’t so easy for Mae Lee not to say anything. “My son’s daughter is the first black child in this town to graduate from Knowlton Hills Academy,” Lottie Pierce, Annie Ruth’s mother-in-law, bragged.

  “And she just happens to be my daughter’s child as well,” Mae Lee added.

  Mae Lee watched Lottie Pierce walk away, her arms held straight out from her body like the arms of a homemade corncob doll, stiffly held in place by bulging pillows of fat. She looked down at her own thickened body. “If I weren’t constantly cooking for my children’s parties, I wouldn’t be in this shape,” she complained to Annie Ruth.

  She spooned damson plum custard into fancy pastry shells. “Let me tell you something, Annie Ruth, you better gag my mouth when your mama-in-law comes back to pick up the desserts. If she starts up with this debutante talk, and how a real lady never changes to a different perfume from one day to the next—and how she only wears one fragrance, and how she, unlike a lot of ‘us,’ saw to it that her other granddaughter wore braces, I am going to have to ask her while she was doing all that, why didn’t she have them work on that child’s bowlegs when she was a baby? They had braces for them, too. Right off I made sure my Dallace had them for her son Tread so he wouldn’t be bowlegged and pigeon-toed.”

  After her daughters finished fussing with her hair, Mae Lee looked in the mirror. Much as she hated to have to say it, she could remember only a couple of times when she’d looked so good. From the moment she laid eyes on the dress Nellie Grace bought for her, she’d loved it. That soft mauve had always been a good color for her complexion.

  Long before the graduation exercises were under way, Mae Lee’s thoughts of the waste of money had vanished into thin air. She was unquestionably the proudest person there. “My granddaughter is the third from the left on the second row,” she pointed out to the woman seated next to her.

  Afterward, at the reception, she hurriedly pulled out pictures to show anyone she met.

  Amberlee looked at Nellie Grace. “Promise me if I ever have children and start from day one trying to put them on the phone to talk, and start showing their pictures to every stranger I meet, promise you will cart me off to see a shrink as fast as you can.”

  Nellie Grace grinned, “On my Girl Scout’s honor I promise, even if I’ve never been one.” The childless sisters shared a private giggle.

  : 10 :

  During the early 1980s, the exodus of the blacks from the rural farming area to the North after World War II ended was reversed by their return. Mae Lee Barnes watched and listened to much-changed speaking voices shifting in and out of varied accents when they told questionable stories about their very successful northern jobs and businesses.

  Within a few years a small black section near the edge of town was dotted with the new construction of modest, two-bedroom brick homes with wall-to-wall carpet and carports or two-car garages—houses that for the new owners defied any description short of a mansion, although to Mae Lee’s way of thinking they were awfully tiny and crowded together. Still, Mae Lee had to confess to herself that she was a little jealous, especially after Ellabelle made the decision to buy a house in the subdivision.

  When Annie Ruth and Dallace visited in 1985 along with their husbands and children, they sensed how lonely Mae Lee was out there in the country by herself, especially since Warren and Lou Esther had started staying on and off in town with Lou Esther’s aged sick aunt, while Hooker Jones’s wife Maycie was in and out of the hospital most of the time.

  When her daughters were ready to leave Mae Lee seemed so uneasy and lonely that they stayed on for another day. Earlier that year, Taylor had mentioned to his sisters how lonely it was for their mama living all alone in the rural countryside, and suggested that they encourage her to move to town. But she’d always seemed so cheerful when her daughters called or visited, they believed Taylor had misread her feelings. Still, when one of her sons-in-law spoke about a move to town, Mae Lee surprised everyone by agreeing that it might be worthwhile to buy a small house in town, closer to where Ella-belle lived.

  Mae Lee’s Realtor son-in-law Bradford shook his head. “Mrs. Barnes, you don’t want to buy a house in the section of town I believe you’re thinking of.” He turned to his wife Annie Ruth for verification. She nodded her head, yes. Bradford continued, “I can see you building a house at the end of that section, Mrs. Barnes, but not buying and living in one of those little boxes in it. They’re too cramped, and they won’t hold their value for very long.”

  Taylor had said the same thing when she hinted she might buy like Ellabelle did. In Ellabelle’s whole neighborhood there was in fact no house, new or old, nice enough for her to leave the country to live in. But just at the edge of the section, where the street widened and became a road, there were several large lots where a house could be built that wasn’t so small and boxy and jammed up next to its neighbors. It was inside the city limits, yet there was land, and trees, and room to plant a garden, and maybe even a few fruit trees. It could be a nice house, with several spare bedrooms for when the girls and their families visited.

  To all the people she grew up with who had moved away, Mae Lee wanted to prove that it hadn’t been a bad idea to stay in Rising Ridge. Maybe continuing to live down in what some called the boondocks hadn’t been the fashionable thing to do back in the 1950s and 1960s, but now, when her old friends and classmates would come back to Rising Ridge with all their city airs, looking upon her as down-at-the-heels country, she’d have something for them to see. She’d show them.

  Mae Lee was surprised that her children moved so quickly in getting the land and the new house under construction. A bank loan was easily granted, but she hesitated signing off on her land until Warren and Taylor assured her she wouldn’t be liable for too much, because her children had put down a sizable down payment. She had not known at the time that a big chunk of it came from Nellie Grace’s divorce settlement. That, coupled with the children chipping in on the monthly bank payments and a son-in-law who was a builder, made it possible.

  Mae Lee asked Bradford, her son-in-law, to please put a lightning rod on the roof of her new house, and while they were up there to kindly put up the rooster weather vane she’d saved for years.

  On moving day, in the summer of 1986, Mae Lee’s children and grandchildren were on hand to help her make her move from the farm to the new house in town.

  Mae Lee’s daughter Dallace had forewarned her not to be overly concerned when she saw her grandson Tread. “Tread has had an earring put in his ear,” she said. “But the earring doesn’t imply what you think. It’s in the left ear,” she’d explained.

  Mae Lee had been so angry. “What am I thinking?” she questioned. “What am I supposed to think? So, it’s in the left ear. Left ear, right ear. It doesn’t amount to a
hill of beans what ear it’s in, Dallace. He’s wearing an earring, isn’t he? What difference does it make where he wears it? I’m like the Ninevites in Jonah’s day. I don’t know my right hand from my left. What am I supposed to think, is he or isn’t he?”

  “Don’t be silly, Mama,” Dallace had said. “You don’t know anything about kids nowadays.”

  The first time Mae Lee saw the earring in her grandson’s ear she had pretended not to notice. Anyhow, Tread worked pretty hard to keep the earring out of his grandmother’s sight. One evening at the dinner table, he leaned near her. “Grandmama,” he’d said softly so everyone wouldn’t hear, “I don’t think I’ll care for a helping of summer squash, thank you.” And, as always, she’d put a spoonful or two on his plate, and like always he’d made a teasing face and had eaten them. He was the same old Tread, earring or not.

  The next day, after they had all gone home, she felt at loose ends. From dawn until time for bed the house was quiet. Mae Lee was lonely. There were too many empty beds. Too much, too late, she thought. Reminders of her children were scattered throughout the rooms, Amberlee’s doll, Taylor’s baseball cap, the things her grandchildren left behind. She wished her children were still there, still little and underfoot.

  She gazed half-interestedly at the television, half-listened sometimes to medical advice that nearly always left her with what she thought was a new ailment in her body. I’ll have to talk with my doctor Dallace about that, Mae Lee thought to herself. It didn’t matter to her that, as Dallace more than once had reminded her, she was not a medical doctor.