A Southern Girl: A Novel

by John Warley

  But physical likeness pales in fascination on the day you notice a biological child’s character flaw. Like the caveman who bends over the lake for the first glimpse of his own image, you are stunned to see reflected back flaws, unseen until that moment. “Don’t procrastinate,” you instruct as you inventory the projects lying fallow on your own to-do list. “And don’t be a hypocrite.”

  But a clear picture of a fuzzy image is fuzzy, and the melding of two genomes is a fuzzy matter indeed, a reality Elizabeth and I remarked upon many times as she also saw herself in them, as though the caveman had glanced down at the precise moment a jet ski roiled the water below. As with most, our boys are identifiable blends of their impassioned architects. So what to make of Allie?

  An orphan adopted at birth is not so much a mirror as a prism. Look at her directly and you will not, cannot, see yourself looking back. Instead, you will see refracted in facets cut by her unknown jewelers the pale inks and dyes of your behavior, culture, and station melded among and into the iridescent hues of her genetic weave. Trace the rainbow to its source and behold nothing more varied than a sanctified shaft of light, God’s random sunshine beamed at another’s cradle but diverted by grace to yours.

  Now, put a mirror and a prism together and the result is a light show, and I have enjoyed the fireworks between these two for years.

  Mother is bedding azaleas along the front when we arrive, taking advantage of weekend temperatures forecast to remain mild until midweek. At sight of us she steadies on the weatherboard siding and raises to full height, waving gaily as she shuffles toward our car with a rheumatic limp, stiff-legged from the time on her knees among the plants. Although we see her often, she embraces us as prodigals.

  Today, a load of topsoil delivered during the week must be distributed among patches of ground worn barren by winter winds off the Atlantic. We four encircle the mound, assessing our task. On the perimeter, two long-handle shovels are embedded like giant candles in a mud pie. Nearby, the old wheelbarrow awaits. I walk to it, grab the handles, and maneuver it into position. Allie and Steven begin shoveling.

  The wheelbarrow is heavier than I remember as I cross the yard with the first load. Its service as a beast of burden is less heroic than a legacy of improvised amusement. When the kids were small, a heartier, more virile me would load them in this wheelbarrow and push them all over this same yard. Each clamored for “my turn,” and once seated would begin laughing and squealing in anticipation. The bulbous balloon tire and the physics of momentum combined with my by-gone strength to produce a passable version of a theme park ride.

  At the start I kept the angle acute, lending a magic carpet effect as we passed over the lawn. But as we gathered speed I raised the handles and made a point of steering toward every bump and irregularity presented by the landscape, thereby increasing my passenger’s happy anxiety over the probability of being bounced unceremoniously onto the ground. A microscopic examination of the sides today would probably show their fingerprints embedded into the metal, so fiercely did they cling.

  The climax came as we traversed the apron of the yard where tended ground bleeds into crystalline dunes, beyond which lies the ocean. At the highest speed attainable, I stopped suddenly and simultaneously jerked the handles to ninety degrees, thereby propelling my passenger into the forgiving sand of the dune. After three or four individual rotations, they would insist on one tour together and by this point, near collapse, one tour was all I was good for. The ejection at the finish was worth it.

  Elizabeth tolerated this juvenile delectation with amber ambivalence, torn between the risk of dissolving into a wet blanket and her sound, primal judgment where the safety of her children was at stake. She sometimes called out what I think of as her “yes-no.” This was a “no” for the record, leaving her free to mount, however subtly, the high ground of “I warned you” should a broken arm or concussion ensue. She relied on me to ignore or override a yes-no. This, never discussed between us, was nonetheless an ingrained modus operandi in dealing with the children, and even between us when, at bedtime, a no-yes made an occasional appearance.

  The work today is therapeutic. My muscles unlimber with the first loads and a cleansing sweat breaks out on my chest and forehead. Sarah is humming softly in my wake, spading the imported earth to her specifications and content to have us around her. Over the dunes, sea gulls screech their glottic gossip before gliding seaward. Steven alternates with Allie and me on first, the shovel, then the wheelbarrow, and the work goes quickly.

  Near noon, Sarah disappears into the house to prepare lunch. No manual labor goes unrewarded here. She summons us to a feast: oyster bisque, shrimp salad, soft shell crabs, red rice, asparagus, and chocolate cake. An hour later I am immobile. Except for the rice, Allie has eaten as much as I have and feels the need for exercise.

  “Let’s go, Dad,” Allie says, grabbing my hand and pulling me out of my chair. “Take your favorite daughter for a walk on the beach.”

  As we are leaving I hear Sarah defining for Steven her incessant torment at the hands of a particularly dexterous raccoon. All efforts to secure her garbage against this intruder have failed.

  I love this beach and so does Allie. The tide is ebbing. We roll our pants to knee level and shed our shoes at the dunes. At surf’s edge, cold water washes over our feet and runs up our ankles. She will let me hold her hand out here, away from possible sight by friends, the way she did as a young girl.

  “I had dinner at the Red Dragon the other night,” I offer. “Mr. Quan says a job for this summer is yours for the asking.”

  “That’s really nice of him. I’ll pay him a visit. I have to work to stash away some bucks.”

  “Clothes shopping for college?”

  “That, plus I’ll probably blow all my savings in Korea—we are going to Korea—so I’ll have nothing left for my surgery.”

  I stop. “For a moment I thought you said surgery.”

  She grins and pulls at my hand. “C’mon, walk. Eye surgery. Nothing to it, but since it’s cosmetic I feel I should pay for it myself. You have enough on you with Princeton.”

  “Hold it,” I command, stopping again and digging in. “What eye surgery? What are you talking about?”

  “Dad, haven’t you noticed my eyes?”

  “Of course. Almost every day for seventeen years. They’re beautiful. So what?”

  “You’re prejudiced. They have a flaw that Asians notice. Here,” she says, closing her eyes in front of me. “See it?”

  “No.”

  “My lids are smooth. It’s not attractive. It’s too … Asian.” She opens them again. “There is a simple, safe procedure to put a tuck in the lids. It’s called upper blepharoplasty. It adds depth.”

  “How much depth?”

  She grins. “About $2500 worth of depth.”

  “Impossible. I absolutely forbid it. No, no, a thousand times no.”

  “Dad,” she says in her plaintive voice, “how will I ever get to look like Madonna?”

  “A million times no.”

  We turn at the far end of the beach and retrace our steps, the breeze now in our faces and the sun warming our backs. There is no further talk of surgery, or of Korea. It is a quiet, reflective stroll.

  At the house, neither Sarah nor Steven answers our announced return. Some noise in the side yard draws me around the house. Steven is hammering some wire mesh over the garbage bins. At my approach, Sarah beams.

  “Your son, my clever grandson, is setting a trap for the raccoon.”

  “Why not put a brick on the lid of the can?”

  Sarah scoffs. “It doesn’t slow him down for a minute. I suppose five or six would keep him out, but I can’t take off and lift up a half dozen bricks every time I deposit garbage. I know this critter,” she adds, glancing toward the adjoining lot, still wooded and one of the few undeveloped parcels left on the island. She raises her finger and points. “He lives over there and comes here for food at night.”

  “W
hat will you do when you catch him?” I ask as Allie comes up behind me.

  “Call the dog catcher. They’ll put it down.”

  “Ohhh …,” says Allie, her sympathies with the raccoon.

  “You wouldn’t say that if you lived next to one,” says Sarah, turning her attention back to Steven. “They play havoc with the sea turtle eggs and they carry rabies. They’re cute to look at but a nuisance.”

  Allie winks at me mischievously. “I guess I’ll stop worrying. With Steven building the trap there’s not much chance of catching one.”

  “I heard that,” Steven says, not looking up. “And you’ll eat those words one day soon. Grandmother, do you have a recipe for coon stew that will make my sister’s humiliation a little tastier?”

  Sarah looks down thoughtfully. Sarcasm is to her a foreign tongue, as decipherable as Shawnee smoke signals, and I can see her going over her recipes in search of coon stew.

  “I think Steven was joking, Mother,” I say gently, then ask him to explain his device.

  The enclosure for the garbage cans is set off to the side of the house. It resembles a small fenced yard, with one side all gate. Wooden pickets five feet high border a square concrete slab on which the cans rest, hiding them from public view. Steven holds the head of the hammer and points with the handle. “She always keeps the gate closed but of course the coon climbs over. By covering the top with wire, the coon will have no way out once he springs the gate closed.”

  “How are you going to spring it?” I ask.

  “Watch,” he instructs. He opens the gate wide, attaches a wire to an eye-hook he has embedded in the gate’s wooden frame, and runs the wire through several pickets to the lid of the can. He attaches this end to the raised handle of the lid itself, which he has rigged with a weight from an old barbell set he found in the garage. He places the lid on the can. “Go ahead,” he says to me. “Play coon and go for the can.”

  I hunch slightly to duck under the wire mesh on top and lift the lid. As I push it aside, the weight brings it down hard, tensing the wire and pulling the gate shut with a decisive clang of the latch. Without doubt, I am imprisoned. “Very clever,” I say as Sarah applauds. “Rube Goldberg is smiling in the hereafter.” The pickets are set too close together to permit my hand access to the latch, so Steven must spring me. Free again, I lead us back into the house. He stays to apply the finishing touches and clean up.

  I flop on the couch with the current issue of Southern Living. In the kitchen, a jangle of pans tells me Sarah is preparing to bake. She and Allie are chatting about Princeton, about Dad, about things. I hear Christopher’s name, then Adelle’s, and join them just in time to hear Sarah remark that she remembers when Chris was born and that he seems like a fine young man. To be called “a fine young man” by Sarah is to have the royal seal pressed into hot wax on your forehead.

  “Yeah,” agrees Allie, “he’s pretty cool.”

  “Will he come visit you at college?” Sarah wants to know as she extracts a flour sifter from a cupboard.

  “Hard to say. That’s still a long way off. I’d like to come to USC for a weekend; maybe see him play a tennis match.”

  “Oh, yes,” says Sarah, “he’s a star at tennis, isn’t he?”

  As they talk, I say a small prayer of thanks for Christopher. He is her first real boyfriend, a frosting on her high school cake. She has had a few dates and lots of friends, male and female, but nothing like this. At first, I attributed it to intellectual intimidation. Drawing on my own experience, I remember how girls with straight A’s made me nervous. Allie’s smart, but hardly brilliant. She works hard; it’s that simple. But gradually, from listening and observing her at school functions and around her friends, I realized that intimidation of another sort was at the root of her romantic isolation. It was her different appearance, and although that seems quite obvious looking back, it was unclear at the time because she was so familiar to us, so normal, so ingrained into the fiber of our family that we ceased to notice. By the time I mentally rejoin their conversation, they have moved on. Allie has said how much she enjoys yard work.

  “Perhaps your people were farmers, dear,” Sarah suggests. “Mine were, back in the plantation era. They came from Virginia.”

  Allie and I exchange imperceptible glances, wondering if Sarah has been inspired to launch one of her genealogical salvos. She pauses, walks to the sink decisively, and rinses the flour from her hands. Without a word she disappears. Drawers open and close in the living room followed by a triumphant, “Here it is.” She returns with “the book,” which she places on the table in front of Allie.

  “When you were younger,” says Sarah, “you spent hours with this, remember?”

  Allie nods and grins in recognition. The Carter genealogy, published by the University of South Carolina Press twenty years ago, is dog-eared among the pages covering our branch of the family. Mother is correct; Allie seemed fascinated by it and would spend literally hours looking at the photographs and reading the biographical sketches. Now, she opens it and thumbs pages with the same reminiscent smile which she will one day direct at her high school yearbooks.

  Sarah, hardly a student of irony, cannot miss it in Allie’s prepubescent absorption with generations of white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Finding a genetic link between us may require stepping back to Lucy some three billion years ago, but Allie’s interest in all things Carter helped build a bridge between her and Sarah that strengthens each year. Another plank in that bridge was Sarah’s VHS copy of Gone With The Wind. Years before, Sarah had seized upon a rainy afternoon at the beach to suggest she had a film Allie might enjoy. Mother rarely missed a chance to proselytize for the South, and I’ve often wondered what might have been her reaction had Allie found GWTW to be silly, sappy, and inaccurate. But she loved it, watching it over and over while Sarah beamed, sometimes from the kitchen and at other times seated beside Allie with popcorn. By loving what Mother loved, Allie endeared herself in ways none of us could have envisioned, and the sight of them huddled on the couch, eating popcorn and waiting for God to witness Scarlet’s promise she would never go hungry again, brought Elizabeth to tears.

  Steven returns as the cookies are placed in the oven. Thirty minutes later we are all doing our best to insure that stale cookies are not among Mother’s problems in the week to come. I suggest to her that she spend the night with us in town and attend St. Philip’s in the morning, returning her to the island Sunday afternoon. She is packed and poised in ten minutes.

  In my reflexive offer to host Mother for the evening I have forgotten that I have a date with Adelle, that Allie has a date with Christopher, and that Steven has plans as well. I have inadvertently invited her to spend the evening alone.

  “I’ve spent many an evening here by myself,” she reminds me. “I’ll be fine.” She is fixing coffee when I go upstairs to shower and dress.

  I am standing in front of my bureau, brushing my hair, when Allie appears in the doorway, dressed for her evening.

  “How do I look?”

  “Much too good,” I say somberly. “Go back and try it again. Find something old and out of style with a high neckline and for God’s sake do something with your hair. It’s perfect.”

  “Just what I wanted to hear,” she says, smiling and lingering.

  The doorbell rings and Chris’s baritone can be distinguished from Steven’s.

  “Sorry, Dad,” she says. “No time to change. I’ll have to go like this.”

  “All right,” I say. “Just be home by 9:30.”

  “Right. We could come back here and sing hymns with grandmother.”

  “An excellent idea.”

  “Where will you be?” she asks skeptically.

  “Out, but I’m an adult.”

  “I’m almost one,” she says. “As Natalie reminded me.”

  I stop brushing and turn to face her as she innocently holds my gaze.

  “Natalie Berman?” She nods. “Where did you run into her?”


  “In the school parking lot. I got out of my car yesterday morning and there she was.”

  “How did she know who you were?” I ask, prickling at this intrusion.

  She laughs. “Dad, when someone shows up at my school looking for a Korean the choices are pretty limited. She says she knows you.”

  “Oh, yes,” I say, turning back to the mirror and resuming my brushing with aggressive strokes and already rehearsing the phone call to my pal Natalie. “We’re old chums.”

  “Then you don’t like her.”

  “I hardly know her. Once I get to know her I predict I’ll detest her.”

  “Yeah, she said you were pretty hostile.”

  “Hostile!” I say, my face flushing at the jowls. “She strolls into my office uninvited, trolling for plaintiffs in a lawsuit she wants me to file against my friends, and she calls me hostile. She should be on a leash.”

  She whistles softly. “Wow, you are hostile.”

  “What else did she say?” I demand.

  “Some other stuff. There’s no time to get into it now. Chris is waiting.”

  “Well, I’ll be waiting, too; for a full account of every word she uttered. She hasn’t seen hostile.”

  I turn to find her staring a bit nonplussed. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you like this,” she says slowly.

  “Enjoy your evening,” I say, regaining whatever it was I lost. “I’ll be right down.”

  The kids are in the den moments later when I enter. Chris is seated, a USC baseball cap pulled low over his eyes, his leg dangling over one arm of the chair, and a beer in his hand. He and Steven are talking sports.