by Dori Sanders
Then she thought about the lemon sweets her mama had made for her “silver teas.” She’d called them lemon biscuits and Mae Lee remembered after all that her mama would serve them with hot tea and homemade ice cream in the summer months, after the farm women finished picking wild blackberries. She would have her home-canned berries, jams, and jellies all in plain sight for the ladies to see. Mae Lee grew up thinking that showing off her efforts was the only reason for the silver tea.
It got Mae Lee to thinking. Since the ladies at the hospital seemed to be so curious about the silver teas, Mae Lee decided to invite them to one. She’d been going to their parties as they gave them, but she had hesitated to give a party of her own. It wasn’t that she was afraid of giving a party; she knew she could throw a good one. It was rather that she felt that the hospital ladies would feel obliged to come, whether they wanted to or not, for fear of insulting her. But as she thought about it some more, it seemed to her that it was the same old thing holding her back as before, as if someone somewhere was telling her what she, Mae Lee Barnes, ought and ought not to do. If she were not the only black member of the group, wouldn’t she have long since given a party for her friends, just as they had invited her to their parties? If so, then why should she allow that to prevent her from taking her turn?
She talked to Taylor about it. “Mama, you’re right,” he said. “Look at it this way. The only way it’s ever going to come to be so that those ladies won’t feel they have to come to a party when you give it, is for you to start giving parties just like they do. The first time or two it might be a little awkward, but after that nobody will think twice about it. Including you,” he added.
Even so, when the day came for the silver tea, she was nervous. It was a blazing hot afternoon, it seemed as if she’d made a deliberate effort to pick the hottest day in the year for it. She’d asked Taylor and his wife, Bettina, and her daughter Annie Ruth to come down and give her a hand.
“I’d ask one of the other girls,” she’d said, “but they all live so far away.” Still, Annie Ruth asked her sister Amberlee to come anyway. They all hurried about in the midafternoon heat, getting the food ready and tables set up. Mae Lee was nervous, very nervous. She kept biting her lower lip.
“Annie Ruth,” she called out, “where is Amberlee? The glass bowls for the ice cream are still in the cupboard.”
“Helping Taylor with the ice cream, Mama.”
She opened the back screen door. “Amberlee, help Taylor to hurry up and get another churn of ice cream cranked up and going. If I wasn’t going to use all those ice-cream churns, I wouldn’t have borrowed them. Don’t lag behind, children. Taylor, repack that last churn with ice. You didn’t allow enough time for it to ripen to suit my taste.”
“We’re clean out of ice, Mama. Better have somebody run and get some,” Taylor called back.
“Somebody help Taylor,” she urged her daughters. “Help me get this little silver tea together. When I do something I want it done right. I sure wish I’d made my same strawberry and lemon tarts. I couldn’t let myself do what I know how to do best. No, I had to up and show off when I was invited to Their little dinners and parties. I had to say I just luhhved to bake, and was even fool enough to claim I always used the same old recipe handed down from my mama for my delicious lemon biscuits. And bragged how my mama used to serve them on summer afternoons with hot tea and homemade ice cream. The truth is, Mama did make the things, but I’ve never made a lemon biscuit in my life. If I hadn’t found that recipe Mama used, I think I would have died.”
Annie Ruth shook her head. “Poor Mama.”
Mae Lee was near tears. She stood wringing her hands, “How I got myself into a mess like this I’ll never know. Only the Lord knows. But if the good Lord pulls me out of this crack, I’ll never get into another one, that’s for certain.”
She remembered her lemon biscuits in the hot oven. She rushed to the stove. They hadn’t burned.
“Slow down, Mama,” Amberlee urged. “You’re gonna mess around and have a stroke. You are putting yourself under too much pressure . . .”
“And us, too,” Annie Ruth cut in.
“Mama,” Amberlee continued, “you don’t need to stress yourself out for that hospital volunteer group. I don’t care if they are white women.”
“Yes,” Annie Ruth agreed, “you never did knock yourself out with anything this fancy for us.” She turned to look at Mae Lee. “I hope you told the fancy ladies how to get here, Mama. Take Center Street all the way through town, just short of ‘where the dirt road begins’ in ‘colored town.’”
Amberlee and Bettina laughed.
Mae Lee didn’t think it was particularly funny. She turned to Bettina and Annie Ruth struggling to center a cloth on a table. “Annie Ruth, tell your mama that you are not going to put that wrinkled tablecloth on a table. Tell me that you are going to iron it first.”
Taylor entered the house and answered a ringing phone. He cupped his hand over the receiver, “Mama, it’s Miss Reid. I don’t think she’s coming. She says she’s not feeling well.”
Mae Lee wiped her hands and took the phone. “I understand,” she repeated, “I understand. Now, if you take a turn for the better, please feel free to come on over at any time, you know you are more than welcome.”
She hung up the phone and returned to her cooking. “Bettina,” she said, “make some sort of sandwich for Nora Reid. She’ll be here shortly claiming she’ll die of hunger if she doesn’t put a little something or other in her stomach right away.”
“But, Mama Barnes,” Bettina protested, “I thought Taylor said Nora Reid was sick.”
“Sick, my foot,” Mae Lee grunted. “Nora Reid wouldn’t miss this silver tea unless she was dead.” She smiled, adding, “and you know something, I wouldn’t be surprised if even then she’d come. All Nora wanted was for me to beg her. And did you hear me beg? Mae Lee Barnes doesn’t beg anyone, for anything!”
Mae Lee put her right hand on her hip and with a folded newspaper softly fanned her face. “If black women are going to mingle socially with white women, you know Nora Reid, our proper retired black schoolteacher, will be here trying way too hard to impress, making sure she finds a reason to use every big word she knows. She thinks she’s needed because black people won’t be properly represented unless she is present.”
“African-American, Mama,” Annie Ruth corrected.
Mae Lee glared at her daughter and shook her head, “Listen, I’m just barely getting used to black, Annie Ruth.”
When Amberlee walked into the kitchen her mother looked over the eyeglasses on her nose and studied her dress. It was the kind of cotton dress that would have been starched, ironed, and worn over a cotton underskirt when she was that age. Now it hung on her daughter’s body soft and unironed, topped by hair combed to look a little uncombed.
Mae Lee didn’t have to speak her opinion for Amberlee to hear it. “Yes, Mama,” she intoned, “things have changed. What you wouldn’t have been caught dead in is now downright fashionable.”
“You should have at least put on a pair of pantyhose, Amber-lee,” said Mae Lee.
She glanced out the window at Annie Ruth and Bettina in the yard. They were both bare-legged, with smooth, shaved, hairless legs, like the legs of older women that no longer required shaving.
Amberlee rushed from the kitchen and then back. She pointed to a young man dressed in black, unloading folding chairs from a black hearse. “Mama,” she gasped, “he’s bringing funeral home chairs to our house!”
Mae Lee gave her youngest child a “so what?” look. “Who else would have that many chairs that matched? Now go round up Annie Ruth and Bettina and tell them to finish setting up before Ellabelle gets here. I don’t want her to have to help. Today she’s company. Tell them to come into the kitchen as soon as they finish. I have a little gift for each of my girls.”
When the daughters were done, Mae Lee proudly handed each one of them a clear plastic bag with the five-dollar �
�First Lady Pearls” she’d ordered inside. Her daughters exchanged quick glances.
“Well, put them on,” Mae Lee urged. “That’s why I ordered them. There was a limit—four per address, but since I ordered early, they allowed me to go over the limit. So I ordered one for Bettina. I also ordered me one, too. I still can’t get over how much that money order cost.”
“Mama, you have a checking account,” Annie Ruth asked. “Why didn’t you send a check?”
“I forgot where I put my checks. I couldn’t find them anyplace.” She stopped short. “Lordy, Lordy. I forgot all about Ellabelle. I don’t always remember her. If Ellabelle asks where you all got your matching three-strand pearls, don’t lie—but don’t tell her where you got them.”
Mae Lee pulled open kitchen cabinets and drawers, searching for something. She sighed. “I just tucked my picture pin somewhere a minute ago.”
After their mama left the room, Annie Ruth fastened the pearls around Amberlee’s neck. “Ellabelle won’t even ask, she’ll be so glad not to have to wear these,” she whispered.
Annie Ruth pointed to pictures on the wall that she had so painstakingly hung at eye level, but now were hung almost up to the ceiling, “What if Mama had fallen off that ladder?”
Amberlee grinned. “I bet you won’t find me taking anything down that Mama puts up again. Remember the time the two of us took down the patchwork quilt hanging on the wall at the head of her bed, and she made all five of us, including Taylor, hang it back? She went on about it for a solid week, ‘That quilt belonged to my daddy’s grandmama. A lot of hard work went into that quilt, mine included, I quilted the border. And just because the colors clashed with some five-and-ten-cent store sheets, one of my daughters takes it down and puts it in a box.’”
“‘And I never, ever,’” Annie Ruth added, mimicking her mama,” ‘want to know for sure which one it was. Of course, I have a pretty good idea that it was Annie Ruth, but I don’t want to be absolutely certain, beyond a shadow of doubt. You see, the Lord is my shepherd who watches over me, and I don’t want him to see what I might do to my own child, my own flesh and blood if ever I found out.’”
They stopped laughing when Mae Lee entered the kitchen. “I found what I was looking for,” she said as she held up her picture pin. She smiled shyly at her daughters and daughter-in-law. “I wonder if this and my first lady pearls would be a bit too much. I’d like to greet my guests with it on.”
“Yes, Mama,” they all hurriedly agreed. “It would be a bit too much. Actually, much too much.”
Mae Lee gazed down at the picture. She was glad it was made before her little Tread had the earring put in his ear. Grudgingly she put the picture pin of her grandson in a drawer.
Taylor brought in a freshly churned container of ice cream to put into the freezer. He took one look at his mother, wife, and sisters, pearl-adorned, grinned, then smothered a laugh when he caught his mother’s eye. He read the satisfaction there. “The Bobbsey twins multiplied,” he said, smiling broadly.
He turned to his mama. “Miss Reid said you should stop and get a little rest so you’ll be refreshed when your guests arrive.”
Mae Lee dabbed at the perspiration on her brow with the corner of her apron. “Tell Miss Reid to eat her sandwich. I promise I won’t embarrass her.” She looked out the window. “I wonder what’s keeping Ellabelle and Clairene?” Ellabelle’s car was in the shop for repairs and she was coming with her friend Clairene.
“They’re coming down the street now,” Taylor said, reaching for a lemon biscuit. Mae Lee slapped his hand. “Get back to cranking your churn, child.”
Ellabelle met Mae Lee in the kitchen doorway. “Hey, Mae Lee, do you look pretty! I was coming to get you. Your guests are starting to come.” She blocked the doorway. “One car just pulled up. Look who’s driving Mrs. Wells: that handsome grandson of hers. He’s home for the summer. I guess the young women in his circle will go crazy.” Amberlee moved to take a look.
“Whoa,” she said, “he is drop-dead gorgeous.”
Mae Lee watched him open the car door for his grandmother. “He is kind of cute with his no-socks self,” she admitted. “But you should have seen his daddy when he was about that age. The man was so good-looking he didn’t look real. The talk among the women down at the hospital this week was about how Brandon Wells was coming home from some fancy college in the North. All I can say is as long as he’s in town, all of them with daughters had better lock the pasture gates at night.”
Mae Lee took off her apron and brushed past Ellabelle to greet her guests. They all arrived within minutes of each other. Mae Lee stood with her children near the front porch steps. She greeted everyone, introducing her family to them, along with Ellabelle, Clairene, and Nora Reid. The ladies began set-ding into chairs around the tables. There was a certain amount of awkwardness. Mae Lee moved about the group, accepting their compliments on how nice her children looked.
It turned out that Ellabelle and Linda Salter had known each other. “Didn’t you work at the munitions plant during the war?” Linda Salter asked.
“I sure did,” Ellabelle replied. “Didn’t you work in the paymaster’s office?”
“Yes indeed!” Linda Salter said. “And you used to come in to pick up the checks for your shift!”
“That’s right,” Ellabelle laughed. “‘Course I quit early and moved away. Mae Lee was there the whole time, though.”
“Oh, Mae Lee,” Bethel Petty said, “don’t tell me you worked there too?”
It turned out that not only had Mae Lee and Linda Salter and Bethel Petty worked during the war at the shell factory, but so had a half-dozen others, even including Mrs. Wells.
“It’s too bad we didn’t know each other then,” Linda Salter said. The reason they had not, as all present knew only too well, was that the white women mostly had been employed as secretaries and clerical workers, while the black women had been able to get jobs only on the production line or the cleanup crew. Even during the war, they had worked as they had lived, in two different worlds.
It was time to serve the ice cream and tea and lemon biscuits. Mae Lee ushered her children from the porch and into the kitchen. “I guess they didn’t know each other,” Annie Ruth said to Amberlee in a low voice. “How could they have known Mama, when on the bus riding to work and back they couldn’t even do something as simple as sitting next to each other to talk?”
“We’ve been talking about your vegetable garden, Mae Lee,” Fran Bratton said when Mae Lee returned. “Ellabelle said you do all the work yourself except the plowing. Let me tell you, I haven’t seen tomatoes that size since before my daddy died.”
Mae Lee laughed. “Well, you must help yourself to some. All of you,” she added. “Everyone around here has so many, I can’t give them away.”
Jeanne Nelson walked to the edge of the porch. “I have tomatoes,” she said, “but oh, Mae Lee, I would love a cutting, if it can be done from this beautiful plant. What is it?” She studied the plant’s exotic pink flowers. “It’s the most beautiful flower I think I’ve ever seen.”
“It’s called the hummingbird plant,” Mae Lee said. “Ill give you cuttings, they’re easy to root.”
“Every time someone gives me a cutting it dies on me almost before I get it home,” one of the ladies said.
“Maybe it’s because you say ‘thank you’ when it’s given to you. The older people used to say that cuttings wouldn’t live if you do,” Nora Reid answered.
Mae Lee’s daughters served helping after helping of Taylor’s ice cream and her warm lemon biscuits and poured the tea. Every time the plate was passed, Mary Lou Rice and Pamela Rhoades reached for another biscuit.
“Linda Salter,” Melanie Findley called out, “you swore even homemade ice cream couldn’t pull you off your diet and now you’re on your second helping.”
Linda Salter flashed a pretty smile and dropped her head. “I guess I’ll just eat crow for supper. Crow again.”
Mae Lee was
about to comment. Amberlee walked over to her side. “I think your lemon biscuits are burning, Mama,” she said, taking her by the arm and pulling her in the direction of the kitchen.
Mae Lee looked over her glasses. “I just put them in the oven.” But she went anyway.
“Please, Mama,” Amberlee begged, “please don’t tell these women how your mama used to cook crow all the time. How she would smother it in brown gravy and cook beaten biscuits to sop up the gravy. Having to ‘eat crow’ is just a slang expression, Mama. It means you’ve misspoken, it’s like having to eat your words. People really don’t eat crow.”
Mae Lee eased her oven door open for a quick peek at her biscuits. She didn’t turn to face her daughter. “We did. And we were lucky to get it sometimes.”
“Don’t tell those ladies that, Mama, please don’t,” Amberlee urged. “Not now. Sometime when you’re not serving food to them.”
Mae Lee started taking dishes down from a cabinet. “Well. . . ,” she started, a little smile on her face.
“Oh, Mama, there’s that look that never makes me sure if what you’ve said is true or not,” Amberlee groaned.
“Go pick up dirty plates, baby.” She waved her daughter from the kitchen, “Shoo, shoo, scat clean out of my kitchen, little pest, out of my way.”
It occurred to Mae Lee that she hadn’t seen Taylor for a while. “Where’s your handsome husband gone to?” she asked Bettina, who was serving cakes to Linda Salter and Mrs. Wells at a table near the side porch.
“Last time I saw him he was out on the side porch,” Bettina said. “You know what he’s doing out there.” She winked.
Mae Lee went out onto the porch. The television set was on, with the Braves game. Taylor was seated in one chair, and in another was Bethel Petty. The two had their backs to her, watching intently.
“Don’t throw him a change-up,” Taylor said. “Not now.”
Mae Lee could recognize who was pitching for Atlanta. She watched as Zane Smith glanced back toward second base, then came in with his pitch. The batter swung and missed.