by Cynthia Webb
I took a glass out of the cabinet and filled it from the iced tea pitcher in the fridge. Without looking at her, I said, “I’m sorry I was rude, Momma. I know you just want me to be happy.” Then I looked at her out of the corner of my eye to see how she was taking it.
She kept looking in the pot she was standing over, but the tightness around her mouth relaxed a little. “Well, honey, I’m sorry, too. You know, there’s a sale on down at Burdine’s. Let me finish up my chicken and dumplings here. Then I was thinking we could go find you some clothes. Something a little more appropriate for this climate. My treat.”
I sighed. “I don’t think so, Momma. Listen, I have to make a phone call. Can I use the one in your room?”
Her jaw tightened again. “Why do I even keep trying?” she murmured to herself as she turned her back to me to get something out of a drawer.
I could ask myself the same question, I thought, as I left the room.
Sammy answered on the second ring. When I heard her voice, I nearly screamed with joy. I had almost been afraid that I’d made her up. That she was some dream I’d had some lonely night. But there she was, on the other end of that long, long wire, real and calm and warm.
I told her everything that happened. She made me feel like I wanted to feel. Appreciated, understood, special, loved. Then she was quiet.
“What is it, Sammy?”
“I shouldn’t have sent you there, Laurie. It was stupid. I did it because I couldn’t face it myself. The hole in the center of my life. Not knowing anything about my father. I was afraid I wouldn’t like what I found out. Or I was afraid I’d be too afraid of that to look hard enough. And I thought you would tell me the truth, however painful. You’re like that. But I shouldn’t have asked you. I should have known that once you got started it would be uphill work to get you to quit! You’re really something, Laurie. But listen to me, now. Since you’ve been gone, I’ve changed my mind. I’ve been thinking that it really doesn’t matter what kind of man my father was. The living people in my life are what matters now. You matter. Whether Elijah was a drunk, or was messing with someone’s wife, what difference can it make to me now? I miss you, Laurie. Just forget about it, and come home.”
My heart skipped. When Sammy said “come home,” did she mean to her, or to my own apartment? And which was really home to me? But I had no intention of abandoning my quest yet. And I was irritated that one more person in my life was telling me what to do. For my own good. I pointed out to Sammy that my run-in with the Klan had nothing to do with her. It was my own past I had been researching at the rally that night. I wanted to know something more about where I came from, too. And as for Elijah Wilson, I wanted to finish what I’d started. It might well be that there was nothing I could find out this many years later, but I was damn well going to prove that to myself before I quit.
When I told her that while I was down here I wanted to speak with her mother, she protested, “I want to keep her out of this. I don’t want to upset her! If it was that easy, you know, I would have done it a long time ago.”
“Sammy, she’s the one person who might know something. Maybe she’ll tell me things she won’t tell you. That she’s afraid to tell you.”
Sammy didn’t say anything.
“Come on, be fair,” I coaxed.
“All right, go ahead, talk to her. But Laurie, one thing... she doesn’t know about us.”
I kicked hard with the toe of my boot against the leg of Momma’s French provincial night table. “You’re ashamed of me!”
“Never.” Sammy’s voice was so firm and certain that I felt the anger drain away.
“So, why haven’t you told her?” To my horror, I could hear myself whine.
“Have you told your mother about us?” There was amusement and warmth in her voice. God, how I loved her right then.
“No,” I admitted. “But I told my brother,” I added quickly.
Sammy laughed. “What’s amatta, you ashamed of me, or something?”
I laughed, too.
“Okay,” said Sammy. “I wish that I had told her. But I haven’t. It isn’t you. I’ve never told her about any of my lovers. Unless she happened to meet them, which is rare, because I have trouble getting down to visit her, and she hates the city. She was a widow when I was born, Laurie. She gave her life to raising my sister and me. And then after my sister died, she worried herself sick over every little detail of my life. I quit telling her about my lovers, male or female, to give her that much less to worry about.”
I wondered if that included the girls’ fathers. I wanted to ask if I was just one in a line of Sammy’s lovers. Someone making a cameo appearance in her life. Maybe I was just an extra, not even listed in the credits. At any rate, I was someone her mother hadn’t needed to know about.
That’s the way it was. That’s the way I’d wanted it once. But I didn’t want it to be that way anymore. And I didn’t like to hear Sammy say it.
She gave me her mother’s phone number. I felt a little better. She trusted me that much, anyway. I remembered to ask about the girls before we hung up. I was actually interested in what they’d been up to. Then, just before I said good-bye, Sammy said, “I want her to know who you are. When you’re there, in front of her, she’ll see. She’ll understand how good you are for me.” Those were awful sweet words to hear. The she added, “And you can tell her as long as you tell your mother first!”
After I hung up the phone, I sat there for a while, staring at the half-dozen framed photographs of my brothers and me Momma had hung on the wall over her chest of drawers. Professional portraits, very formal. Typical sibling poses: five children, in their best starched and ironed clothes, lined up straddling a bench, or arranged in a stiff grouping. Corny to the last degree. My brothers were wearing slacks and blazers, button-down shirts. They all had crew cuts and those friendly, innocent, boyish grins of the fifties and early sixties. I don’t think anybody in history grinned like that anytime before or after. You can estimate the date of any male photo- graph, just by that kind of grin. I guess you can only smile that way if you’re the male offspring of the guys who just saved the world for democracy. If you are the ones who are being groomed to tame space, “the last frontier,” by wearing coonskin hats, singing “Davy Crockett” and playing Little League while your entire family cheers from the bleachers. Do I sound bitter? Jealous? You better believe it.
I, on the other hand, am visibly sulking in every single shot. I’m wearing fussy dresses with puffed sleeves, lace collars, the whole bit. And my hair was teased, puffed up, and styled. Like cotton candy. Momma had tried so hard to round up the five of us, make sure we were dressed and cleaned, every hair and button in place. Every detail in every portrait fits the scene she was trying to set. Except me. My strong features, brooding eyes, and thick brows were out of place, all wrong.
I appeared about eleven years old in the most recent picture. I didn’t know why my mother stopped with the portrait nonsense after that. Did she just admit failure? Give up the idea of trying to make us look like we belonged together?
I had gotten up to leave the room when I was startled by a thought that had never occurred to me before. My mother’s first and last vision of me every single day was of that awkward child, frozen in a dress and hairstyle which didn’t suit her. No wonder she was desperate for me. She really didn’t know that there are places in the world where I fit just fine. And I didn’t think she’d believe me if I told her.
In the kitchen, Walter and Josh were sitting at the kitchen table, drinking beer and talking. Momma was serving chicken and dumplings. The boys looked up and said “Hi.” I got a beer and sat down at the table with them.
They were talking about the Tashimee Fiesta, something else on the long list of things I hadn’t thought about in a long time.
“The Fiesta? They still have it? I can’t believe it!”
The boys looked at me, surprised. “Why can’t you?” asked Walter.
“Well...” I
thought for a minute. “It’s so corny. For one thing. And it’s so tacky. Fake. I just can’t believe it still goes on.”
I had offended Walter. “Right. You’re calling us tacky. Talk about the kettle. Well, Miss Sophisticated New Yorker, to us poor old country boys, the Fiesta is a hell of a good time.”
Momma stopped her cooking and walked over, a potholder in her hand. “The Fiesta is a god-send for the local businesses, Baby. Wait until you see how big it’s gotten. You won’t recognize it. It’s advertised like a big tourist attraction. Why, it brings in people from all over and they come spend money in Port Mullet.”
Josh spoke mildly. “Every town has some sort of founder’s day celebration. So what if it’s corny?”
I knew I should just let things be, but when have I ever done that? “That’s just it! I was wrong to say I don’t like it cause it’s corny. Actually, that’s one thing I really do like about it. I’d love an authentic corny founder’s day celebration. But this whole thing is so fake!”
Momma turned away and went back to the stove, talking to us over her shoulder. “It’s not fake. It’s educational. All about the Indians and the Spanish explorers. I would think you’d appreciate notice being taken of the Native Americans, Miss Politically Correct!”
I was stunned. Floored. When had she learned to say “Native Americans” and where had she learned the phrase “politically correct”? Had my mother actually been reading or was this something she had picked up from watching t.v.?
While I stood there in silence, Momma continued. “They were Calusa Indians, anyway. I know that from the pageant. And that’s why the club that plans the fiesta is called the Calusa Tribe. They were here, they built their mounds—Mrs. Pierson has one in her backyard, you know—and we have a fiesta to celebrate them.”
Walter and Joshua nodded.
I didn’t know if she was right or not. That was what I had always heard, but lately everything I had always heard and thought had turned out to be wrong, or twisted, or incomplete. My insecurity made me even more argumentative than usual. “I thought you said the fiesta was about the Spanish explorers.”
“That’s right,” she answered. “It honors the Spanish explorers. They discovered Florida, you know.”
“What did they discover? This place was already here. The Indians had been living here for thousands of years. What did the Spanish ever do for Florida? Nothing that I know of. We don’t speak Spanish, we don’t have Spanish names. Nothing. And, hey, what happened to the Indians that the Spanish found here anyway? Did they just disappear? Are they in a reservation somewhere?”
“The Seminoles are down in the Everglades, Baby,” said Walter impatiently.
“I think they weren’t originally from here,” said Josh. “Didn’t we learn in school that they are a mixture of various tribes that were pushed out of other parts of the country?”
Instead of being grateful for Josh’s help, I plowed on. “So, why didn’t they teach us what happened to the first Indians, the ones that were here when the Spanish arrived,” I demanded. “Maybe the Spanish killed them all. Maybe that’s what the fiesta celebrates.”
“They were missionaries,” interrupted Momma. “In the Tashimee pageant, they show the priests converting the Indians to Christianity.“
“To Catholicism, Momma. You’re the same woman who sent me to Sunday School where I learned the Pope is the anti-Christ.”
“I didn’t know they would tell you nonsense like that! Now you’re blaming me for trying to give you a good Christian upbringing? I never saw or heard tell of ingratitude like this.”
Momma turned away from the stove, crying. Walter leapt to her side, putting his arm around her. I felt bad. I hadn’t really meant to criticize her for my childhood. I hadn’t really meant to make her cry. Not that I have a clue as what it was I did mean to do. I moved awkwardly towards her.
Walter pushed me away. “Grow up, Laurie. You’ve turned into one of those whiners who blame everything on your parents. Momma did the best she could. As far as I’m concerned she did a damned good job. You just work out your own problems and leave her alone. Don’t go blaming your own failures and your own lack of direction in life on her.”
I shook my head, unable to respond. I walked past Josh and went to the rear of the house, out the back door into the backyard where I hadn’t come since arriving home. There I stood out on the patio, looking at the clear, still water of the pool, then sat at the shallow end, took off my shoes and socks, and dangled my legs in. The water felt cool at first, but almost immediately turned lukewarm, soft and comforting against my legs.
I was in the shade from the live oak tree, protected from the worst of the sun. A pretty tree, the full branches made a canopy over half the back yard. Bird feeders hung all over it. I remembered the day the tree had been planted. I was about nine, I guess, and it had looked like a dry stick, no taller than I was.
Momma had wanted a shade tree for her backyard. Daddy had said he’d get around to it, but he never did. One Saturday, she had pitched such a fit that he’d gone to the plant nursery. But he came back saying oak trees were too expensive. So she’d gone out in the woods, herself, and come back with this stick she planted. She watered it carefully every night, along with all her plants and the orange and tangerine and grapefruit trees.
After dinner, Daddy would come out of the house, sit himself down in a lawn chair, and smoke a cigar. He’d laugh at Momma, watering her tree. He’d say, “I never seen the like of anyone watering a dead stick before.” I didn’t say anything, but my smirks made it clear whose side I was taking. I had grown tired of my mother’s disappointment in me by then, and had begun to return it with my own harsh judgments of her. I was already fading fast from my father’s favor, and I hoped the distance I set between my mother and myself would raise my value in his eyes. It didn’t work of course. He was fond of her, but his affection was mixed with mild contempt. Meanwhile, I had refused my place in the class of Southern ladies, and there was no other place for me in his scheme. To my father’s mind, one test of a strong man is how well he manages his womenfolk.
And that’s it, the absolute dirty truth. I had admired my father for his power and freedom, and I had hated my mother for her oppression. Her struggle to create something beautiful, something with her own mark on it within the small sphere allowed her, to fill us with her good food, and the yard with flowers and fruit and birds and butterflies, I had seen as contemptible, pathetic.
Now and then, when the breeze was just right, I could just catch the scent of roses from the trellis against the house. The birds sang. I leaned back on my arms, face to the strong sun, my legs slowly stirring the water.
So why was I so hard on my mother over the Tashimee Fiesta? It wasn’t like she’d come up with the crazy idea herself. She didn’t write the stupid pageant. The whole idea of it was so absurd, so full of unintentional camp that I ought to love it. If I wrote an article about it, Jerry would eat it up.
As a kid, I had been fascinated by the pageant. Our daily lives were so pale, so lacking in drama. Our churches had no crucifixes, the blood and the wounds deemed unseemly. The history we learned was only dry pages in a book. But once a year, after the orange blossoms bloomed, and then the wild phlox, came the Fiesta and the pageant.
It was a very un-Protestant story. In the days of the early Spanish exploration, a captain, Don Alfonso, along with a priest, Father Hernando and a small contingent of well-armed soldiers, set out from the fort at St. Augustine on the Atlantic coast. They set off into the dangerous wilderness to investigate reports of a cruel tribe of sun-worshipping Indians who sacrificed human victims to their blood-thirsty gods, offering up the still-beating hearts. The arrogant captain brought with him his handsome young son, a youth of fourteen, and his ward, his exceptionally beautiful niece Theresa, a few years younger.
When I thought about it, I could see why they needed to give themselves a history, explain to themselves how they came to be here. Port Mullet w
as no family’s first destination on this continent. Nobody had ever emigrated directly to Port Mullet. They came from somewhere else first. They came from all over: Ohio, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia. They were white, almost entirely Protestant, heavily Baptist and Methodist. Their ancestors had arrived in some other city, Boston or New York or someplace in the Carolinas. Some of them stayed, some moved to places where there was more opportunity like factory towns, or ranches in the west. But a lifetime of bad luck, or a sudden bankruptcy or even simple despair had driven these people on. They must have been desperate for a fresh start, those who came to Port Mullet in the twenties and thirties and forties and fifties.
The West already long won, had been turned to dude ranches. But Port Mullet was a wilderness. No good roads in, long, difficult miles to the nearest city, abundant mosquitoes, rough terrain, poisonous snakes of several varieties, alligators, hurricanes.
They were a mixed bunch. They brought little in the way of traditions. They found none here. Or none they knew of, the last natives having left or died more than three hundred years earlier.
The Tashimee pageant gave them something more exotic and exciting than the old First Thanksgiving story. Something more suited to the down-on-their-luck folks who ended their wandering here. Who could picture the pilgrims, in their heavy black garb on the west coast of Florida?
And, of course, the pageant served the greater purpose of encouraging tourism. You’ve got to admire the sheer audacity of people whose thinking went like this: New Orleans has its Mardi Gras, and Tampa its Gasparilla, why not some grand festival for Port Mullet?
Their ingenuity was almost as breathtaking as their ambition. But the fabulous multi-cultured atmosphere of New Orleans with its scent of coffee and bourbon, the music in the background, and underneath it all the memory of those exotic establishments once filled with half-caste girls devoted to the service of sensuality, that was one thing. And Tampa’s Gasparilla had that city’s large Cuban and Spanish population with their spicy foods, Catholic mysteries and guilty, exciting abandon before the deprivations of Lent. Port Mullet was Port Mullet. Named for a fish.