Millard laid down the newspaper and looked at the TV.
SUGAR TRIED TO HIDE her concern, but with every passing day, she grew more and more worried. Her Millard was a good man. Better than most. If he could reject his own flesh and blood, she shuddered to think how other people would react to her first grandbaby. Even though unwed motherhood was no longer uncommon, certain tongues were already wagging at the fact that Shonda was pregnant without a husband. Sugar cringed to think about how the community might treat the baby.
As Shonda’s delivery date got closer and closer, Sugar, at her wit’s end and believing that Shonda’s baby would have an easier time of it if she had some kind of edge, took to praying for God to make the baby either pretty or smart. “Lord, give her brains or beauty. Amen.”
NO ONE EXPECTED MILLARD to be the one to take Shonda to the hospital. But as it turned out, Sugar was off running errands when, three weeks early and without a single warning contraction, Shonda’s water broke. When it happened, Shonda was standing at the sink, rinsing off supper dishes. For a moment, she just stared at the warm puddle between her bare and swollen feet. Then she put her face in the dishrag and started to cry.
Millard, who’d been sitting at the kitchen table, eating a piece of pie, heard her sniffle, then looked down and saw what was the matter.
“Shonda?”
“Daddy—”
“Where, uh, honey . . . where is your mother?” He couldn’t remember where Sugar had gone.
“She went to run some errands, I think.” Shonda didn’t move from her spot in front of the sink. “Daddy, I think I better go to the hospital. Can you take me?”
Millard sprang into action. “Of course I can. Come here. Sit down and I’ll go get your bag. You have a bag packed, don’t you, Shonda? And what about shoes? Shonda, honey, where are your shoes?”
Millard got so worked up and they left the house in such a hurry that neither he nor Shonda thought to leave Sugar a note.
By the time Sugar figured out where they were, it was all over. Shonda had a quick labor and a dramatic delivery. Millard, so squeamish that he rarely flossed his teeth, had stayed with Shonda the whole time. When Sugar walked into the birthing room, Shonda was dozing and Millard was standing by the window, holding his new granddaughter.
He could not take his eyes off the baby, nor could he stop exclaiming over her. “Sugar, look at her! Isn’t she beautiful?”
She was.
“Look at her eyes. They’re so big! And those lashes!”
They were soft, long, and gently curled.
“Such perfect skin.”
Like coffee with cream.
“See her hands and feet—ten perfect little fingers and toes.”
Like dimpled, curled starfish they were.
“When can we bring her home?”
THERE IS NO WAY folks can keep from falling in love with Shonda’s child, Millie Tonette Fry. The whole town of Ella Louise loves and claims her, as it does all its children. Yet folks agree there is something special about Shonda’s girl. Little Millie is so pretty that strangers stop and ask to take her picture. She is so smart that last year she skipped third grade and went on to the fourth.
As for Millard—there are no words except to say that he is not the same. From the very moment he laid eyes on his granddaughter, Millard knew that he would and could fight a bear with his own two hands for the sake of little Millie.
At the hand of a child, Millard Fry became a changed man.
8
BLIND MAN’S BLUFF
BABY DOCTOR ED R. MEESE, in all his years of taking care of children, did not recall seeing two babies who looked as much alike as did his new patients, six-month-old twins Polly Ann and Molly Jan Pierce. During their first visit to his office, while he examined Polly Ann, Dr. Meese inquired of their young mother, Sally Pierce. “Even identical twins generally have something different about them. Surely one of them has some sort of birthmark or identifying coloration that distinguishes her from her sister.”
“No, sir. None that I’ve found,” said Mrs. Pierce.
“A freckle, perhaps?” He shone a light into the baby’s left ear, then her right one. After that, he pried open her rose-petal mouth with a tongue depressor and looked down her throat.
“No, sir.”
“Hmm. Have you checked them for a cowlick, a widow’s peak, or a swirl in their hair?”
“Neither of them has any of those, doctor.”
“How do you tell them apart?” he asked.
“It’s not easy.” Sally laughed a nervous laugh. “When they were first born, I kept a little pink ribbon tied around Polly Ann’s wrist, but then she got to where she could almost pull it off.”
“So what do you do now?”
“See the bottoms of their shoes?” She turned one up so that he could see. “I took India ink and marked ‘p’s’ on Polly Ann’s and ‘m’s’ on Molly Jan’s.”
“They don’t pull their shoes off?”
“I tie the laces in double knots.”
He nodded approval. “You’re a clever mother to have kept these two little gals straight. No doubt as they get older, they’ll develop some differences, and you’ll learn which girl is which. Of course, by the time they’re three or four they’ll know their own names. But for now, I’d have to say that these two are as much a matched set as I’ve ever seen.” He set Polly Ann to the side and reached for her twin. “You’ve got a healthy little girl here. Now let’s take a look at Miss Molly Jan. Or are you Polly Ann?” He looked at his record. Scratching his head, he was suddenly confused.
“That’s Molly,” said Sally.
At home, Sally Pierce’s shoe-marking system effectively kept her babies straight. She was careful to undress only one twin at a time, and she knew which baby slept in which bed. First thing every morning, she diapered and dressed one girl at a time. Before she put their shoes on, she checked the bottoms to make sure that the ink was clear. If the ink looked the least bit worn, she marked it again and blew on it until the ink dried.
The system worked well until one Sunday morning shortly after the twins learned to walk. In preparation for Sunday school and church, Sally bathed and dressed the girls in pink ruffled dresses, matching bonnets, socks, and their ink-marked shoes. Leaving the two of them standing by the back door (“Don’t you two look pretty! Wait right here, and Mama will be right back.”), she went back to her bedroom to get her Bible, where she took the time to stop and put another pin in her hair, change into a different pair of gloves, and wipe a smear of lipstick from her front teeth.
Taking full advantage of their mother’s two-minute absence, Polly Ann and Molly Jan toddled to the bathroom and climbed, fully clothed, into the tub that their mother had neglected to drain.
That’s where Sally, her Bible in hand and her hat on her head, found them. “Girls! Oh my goodness! What are you doing in the tub? Look at you. You’re all wet!”
And they were. Soaked from the waist down. Dresses, petticoats, diapers, socks, and shoes—all of them wet.
SHOES?
No. Surely not. Please, God, no!
Sally plucked one girl from the tub, grasped her little ankle, and turned her foot over to see the sole of her shoe. Nothing but a smeared mess. She willed herself to stay calm. Maybe the other girl’s shoe would be readable. Perhaps she hadn’t been in the water as long as her sister. Maybe the ink on her shoe had set better. Sally set the first twin down and lifted the other out of the water. But her shoes too were marked only with a black blur of ink.
Mrs. Pierce sat down on the floor with a wet girl on each knee.
“Polly?”
“Molly?”
The girls gurgled and cooed. What now? Which girl was which? She had no idea.
And the honest truth? Neither do eighty-two-year-old housemates Molly and Polly. Oh, they thought they did. They’d never given their identity a bit of thought until twelve years ago, two months before their spry-till-the-end mother died at the age of ninety-six. On
that day, their mother confessed to the unfortunate fact that the girls could have lived their entire lives mixed up.
“You mean I might be Molly?” Polly said.
“And I might be Polly?” Molly said.
“Girls, what was I to do? I was all alone with you two—your daddy was overseas in the service. There was no one to ask. You looked as alike then as you do now, and you sure didn’t know your own names. After studying about it for a while, all I knew to do was to re-mark your shoes and put a pair on each of you.”
“How did you decide which shoe to put on which one of us?” asked Polly.
“I sat you down, one on one corner of the sofa and one on the other. Then I got out the broom and drew two straws. I decided ahead of time that the first straw would be for the one on the left and the second for the one on the right. Whoever got the longest straw would be Polly, since she was born first. Whoever got the shorter straw would be Molly.”
Molly didn’t say anything, but she couldn’t help but feel a bit cheated, getting the short straw and all.
“I felt real bad about it.” The twins’ mother twisted a tissue between her hands. “I reckon I should’ve told you the truth before now, but what kind of a mother doesn’t know her own children? I never told anyone, not even your daddy, God rest his soul. I was too embarrassed.”
The thought of the mix-up made Molly and Polly each a little dizzy, but not wanting to hurt their mother’s feelings, they didn’t let on.
“It’s all right, Mother, we’re still the same people as we were before,” said Polly, patting her mama’s hand.
“Nothing’s changed,” said Molly.
“May as well go on as before.”
And so they did, living together in a pink house with faded lime-green shutters and a sea-blue-painted front porch. In their fenced yard they kept half a dozen peacocks that raised their heads and screamed, sounding just like panicked women, every time someone had the audacity to walk in their yard. “Watch birds” was how Molly described their feathered pets. “Better than a dog any day. Don’t dig up the flower beds or tear up the newspaper.” Every morning she sat on the porch and fed them peanuts from her flattened palm.
The Pierce sisters have lived together in Ella Louise for their whole lives and are a common sight around town. Both of them are slim and trim as a result of their daily walks to the post office, the Wild Flour, the grocery store, and the bank. Visitors who don’t know Molly and Polly tend to be startled when they first cross paths with the red-haired pair. The sight of the sisters, zipped into identical, brightly colored wind suits, shielded from the sun by matching umbrellas held at the same jaunty angle, chewing their favorite Big Red gum in near-perfect synchronization, causes folks’ jaws to drop. Long-time citizens, of course, don’t give the girls a second thought.
“Good morning, ladies. Nice weather we’re having, don’t you think?” Mayor Tinker greeted them last week.
“Hello, Mayor. No, no problem with our sink,” answered Molly. To her sister in what she intended to be a whisper, Molly said, “Town must not be paying him enough. Gone to doing plumbing on the side.”
“You ladies need a lift?” asked Rochelle’s husband after the pair had finished their once-a-week lunch at the Wild Flour. “Awful hot out there, and I’m going your way.”
“Thank you, son, but we really don’t need any hay,” said Polly. “Could you come by later and change a couple of lightbulbs for us though?”
“Yes, ma’am. Got to pick up the children after school, but I can come by about three.”
“Free? Of course you’d do it for free. That’s what neighbors are for,” Molly said as she winked.
The sisters, deaf as crackers, are entirely too vain to wear hearing aids. When their physician, Sarah Strickland, suggested they each get a set, they refused on the grounds of good health.
“I heard of a woman who wore them for just a week before she went so crazy that they had to put her away,” Polly said. “Traced it all back to her hearing aid. She was normal as can be before she put it in.”
“Cancer. They give you cancer. I read that somewhere. Good Housekeeping, I think it was,” said Molly. “If God intended for folks to have mechanical instruments in their ears, he would have put them there. No siree. I will not be getting a hearing aid anytime soon. ’Sides, Sister and I can hear each other just fine.”
“No, I don’t have any dimes,” said Polly. “Will two nickels do?”
With the exception of tasks like changing lightbulbs (neither of them had knees inclined to climb) and repairing the places in the fence where the peacocks could almost get out, Molly and Polly got along pretty well on their own. Their neighbors assured them of their willingness to help out, but Molly and Polly liked to do things for themselves.
Late on a recent Saturday evening, though, Molly and Polly admitted that help would have to be called.
Seems that Molly, who is plagued with dry skin, had accidentally poured in too much bath oil when she was taking her bath. After a long soak, she tried to get herself out of the tub but slipped and fell backwards. She wasn’t hurt, but every time she tried to get up, she slipped back down. After thirty minutes of trying, she was so worn out that she could hardly move.
“Polly!” she called. “Polly, come here and help me!”
In about ten minutes, Polly finally heard her. “Oh my goodness! What happened? Are you all right? Did you go and break a hip? I hope not, because I am not about to go visit you in some home.”
“Shush now. My hip’s not broke. Come and help me get out of this tub.”
Polly tried. With all her eighty-two years of might, she tried. She pulled. She pushed. She braced her feet and let Molly pull on her. All to no avail. No matter what they tried, Molly still could not get out. She would be almost, almost out, but she repeatedly slid back down.
Polly sat down on the toilet, exhausted but set on reasoning through the problem. “Sister, we’ve got to figure out what we’re going to do.”
Molly leaned back in the tub and covered her face with a towel. “I guess I could just live in the tub.”
“I don’t know as we have a choice but to call someone to come get you out,” Polly finally replied.
“Don’t you even think about it!” said Molly. “I am not going to have anyone come and see me like this. Besides, who would we call?”
“911.”
“No! I won’t have it.”
“Mayor Tinker?”
“Sister, are you crazy? I’m naked!”
“What’s your solution then?”
Molly studied for a minute, then said, “Call Tim.”
“Tim? Tim who?”
“You know, that new fellow who’s staying with the little girl who runs the Wild Flour. Her cousin, I think. Nice boy.”
“The one from New Jersey? Sister, what are you thinking, having me call on a stranger for something like this?”
“Have you met him?”
“No. But I did see him come in and have lunch down at the Wild Flour. I didn’t have occasion to speak to him.”
“I saw him that day too, and while you were in the restroom, I met him. Rochelle made me acquainted with him. She said to me, ‘Molly, I’d like you to meet my cousin Tim. He’s from New Jersey. He’s blind.’”
“Blind! Bless his heart.” Polly was touched by the man’s plight. “He sure gets around good, doesn’t he?”
“Well, sure. They’ve got all kinds of schools and such for people like that up in New Jersey.”
“I suppose so. As I recall, he didn’t even have one of those white canes or a dog with him. Do you know how he lost his sight?”
“Got hit by a car or something. That doesn’t matter. I want you to go in there, dial up the Wild Flour, and get the number where he’s staying. Since he won’t be able to see whether I’ve got on any clothes or not, he’s who we’ll get to help me out of this tub.”
“You reckon he’ll just come over here like that?”
Well,
he did.
A strong, handsome man of twenty-seven, Tim had Molly out of the tub on his first try. Didn’t even have to strain.
“You don’t know how much we appreciate this.”
“No problem,” Tim said. “I used to be a paramedic. Did this kind of thing all the time. Happens more than you think, you know. You ladies really ought to put a rubber mat down in your tub. Next time one of you could break a hip.”
“That’s what we’ve decided to do,” Polly gushed. “Get us a mat for our tub. Won’t you stay and have a piece of cake—German chocolate?”
“Sounds good.”
“Coffee? It’s decaf.”
“I’d love some.”
“So,” Polly said, taking Tim’s arm and guiding him to a kitchen chair. “I guess you can’t do that kind of work anymore since you . . . since you . . . well, you know.”
“I suppose I could, but I just got burned out on it. That happens to a lot of paramedics. The hours are long. The pay is good, but let me tell you, you earn every penny. After a few years, the stress got to be too much for me. That’s when I went to drama school to be a mime. Not much call for that here in Ella Louise, but if I decide to stay, I might start holding classes for it down at the Chamber of Commerce.”
Molly, dressed by then, was confused. “Classes? For the blind?”
“No, ma’am. For mime.” He spoke up so she could hear. “Mime. You know. Acting?”
“You mean you’re not . . . ” Molly turned pale.
“Not what?”
“Oh, sister. He’s not blind.”
“Blind? No, ma’am. I’ve got twenty-twenty vision. I don’t even have to wear contact lenses.” He took a big gulp of coffee. “I don’t mean to be greedy, but can I have another piece of cake?”
ON MONDAY MORNING, Esther down at Dr. Strickland’s office got the call. “Yes, ma’am. Yes, ma’am. I understand. Today? Well, I don’t know. You’ll need to call and see if they have any openings today. Emergency? Well, hold on a second, and I’ll get you the number. Here it is. Have you got a pen? All right. The place that you’re calling is the Clear Sound Hearing Aid Company. Dr. Strickland recommends them to all her patients. Says that they do good work and sell a fine product . . . Hello?”
Watermelon Days and Firefly Nights: Heartwarming Scenes from Small Town Life Page 8