The Reading Lessons

by Carole Lanham

  THE READING LESSONS

  by Carole Lanham

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without the permission of the publisher. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

  Copyright © 2013 by Carole Lanham

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 978-1-938750-87-8

  For Jake and for Ellie

  The most beautiful, amazing, and beloved works of art that I’ve ever had a hand in creating.

  Always and forever

  For Chris

  How lucky I am to be learning life’s lessons alongside the one I love.

  “There are darknesses in life and there are lights, and you are one of the lights, the light of all lights.”

  ―Bram Stoker, Dracula

  Geri Buss, Emily Thoroughman, Jeanie Thies, David Rush, and Curt and Karen Hoffmeister for their early attempts to make my work shine; Leslie Brown, Mike Norris, and Jeremiah Sturgill for their patience, dedication, and guidance in the work of smoothing out the lumps; and Shana Raywood for her superb editing, attention to detail, and faith in Hadley and Lucinda. Big thanks as well to my parents, Gary and Jeannette Kralemann, and to the rest of my family and friends whom I owe all. And to Chris, Jake, and Ellie whose creativity and support never fail to make me look better than I really am.

  God bless you all!

  Love her, love her, love her! If she favours you, love her. If she wounds you, love her. If she tears your heart to pieces – and as it gets older and stronger, it will tear deeper – love her, love her, love her!

  Charles Dickens

  Great Expectations

  Beattie’s Bluff, Mississippi 1920

  Five minutes after Dr. Mangrove announced that Hadley Crump was going to die, Lucinda walked into the bedroom stirring a cup of chamomile with her finger and smiling as though it was Christmas. Mama had rushed off to the kitchen to fix up a pair of healing socks for his feet, leaving Hadley all alone. Lucinda bumped the door shut with her hip and poked that tea-stirring finger in his mouth as though she meant to feed him the whole cup one lick at a time.

  “I brought you something,” she said, and she wasn’t talking about tea. Hadley followed her gaze to the little strip of violet paper on the rim of the saucer. He didn’t let himself look at it until her daddy called her off to work on funeral plans.

  I could hear the churning sound of her tongue as it licked her teeth and lips, and I could feel the hot breath on my neck . . .

  About the time Hadley got to the hot breath part, his fingers let loose, and the words loop-the-looped away with all the devilish momentum of a broken promise.

  Had he not been dying at that particular moment, Mama would have spotted the purple scrap on the floor and wondered why Lucinda Browning was writing notes to her seventeen-year-old son. Then again, had he not been dying at that particular moment, Hadley would have tucked the violet paper in his pocket and hid it away like he hid all of Lucinda’s secrets. As it was, he waited with onions in his socks, curious to see which would take him first, Lucinda or his festering wound.

  Because Hadley was the cook’s son and Lucinda Browning was a Browning, she was careful to return later and search for her note under his bed. “Did you read it?” she asked.

  Hadley nodded.

  Lucinda balled up the words and pitched them in the stove. With a sigh that seemed to say, Well that’s that then, she ran her teeth around the curve of his ear. “I’ll be back after your mama falls asleep.”

  A few minutes later, Mama returned in her nightgown, but before she had a chance to fall asleep, Hadley asked her to open up the right-hand door on the washstand.

  “There’s nothing in here, son,” she said. “Nothing but your Whoops Jar.”

  Whoops Jars were a Crump family tradition that dated back to slave times. For every misstep he made on the road of life, a Crump was obliged to put a nail in his jar to remind himself that a single moment of poor judgment could amount to another nail in his own coffin. Hadley came from a long line of mis-steppers.

  “Hand me the jar, Mama, and that box of nails, too.”

  Mama reached for his jar like it might sprout teeth and chomp off a piece of her.

  Some Crumps favored jelly glasses. Others liked a soup can. Hadley’s jar was a spiced-fish jar with the word WHOOPS painted across the glass in pale blue egg-yolk tempera. Except for the stink of sardines, it was entirely empty.

  The nail dropped with a doleful clink, spun twice, and settled in under the “OOPS”. Mama wiped her nose on his blanket and cried her ever-loving heart out.

  It started with the advertisement for Experienced Negro Cook. Mama had circled another one in that same paper too. That one said:

  WANTED — An active girl to do the general housework of a large family, one who can cook, clean plates, and get up fine linen. — No Irish need apply.

  Mama preferred to stick to cooking, but she had a lot of skills. She’d also circled:

  Hardy souls wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, safe return doubtful.

  That’s how desperate Mama was.

  Hadley was a boy of nine back then, and this was their second week looking for work. Mama wasn’t taking any unecessary chances. She’d tucked a lucky cat bone into her apron pocket and spit on her lucky penny before dropping it into her lucky shoe. Browning House was their third stop of the day. Mama really needed that penny to work.

  Stop Number One shut the door in her face before she even said hello. Stop Number Two was kind enough to offer an abbreviated explanation regarding Mr. Brampton Tripp’s ironclad policy against hiring jigaboos with skunk babies. After Stop Number Two, Mama told Hadley to quit looking so white.

  Stop Number Three turned out to be a man sitting in a zinnia bed fanning himself with the morning edition of the Beattie’s Bluff Dispatch. His house was by far the most elegant of the stops. The front porch was flanked by six big white columns, the lot of which happened to be serving at that particular moment as the Coliseum for the great Lucinda Augustus—First Empress of Rome. It was there, in the shadows of the Coliseum, that Hadley first locked eyes with Lucinda’s bright monkey-flower blue eyes, and oh what a memorable day that was.

  Making yourself look more nigger-colored can be a terrible task when only part of your blood knows how. Hadley was doing his level best, but when he spotted the girl with the crown of leafs on her head, he forgot about trying to be anything but his old mixed-up self. Mama gave him a swat and tried to hide him behind her good blue dress.

  “Quit staring,” she said.

  It was typical of her to make such impractical demands. Once the words were spoken, Hadley wanted nothing so much as to stare at that girl. Beads of consternation popped out on his upper lip. His heart got jumpy. His eyes would not stay put. He tried focusing on the man in the zinnias. Failing that, he dipped his toe in a puddle and stirred it around, trying to get up a whirlpool. Finally, he rolled up his sleeves and checked his arms to see if they looked browner in the sun or the shade. To decide, he had to step back and forth several times. The answer was shade. In the end, it was all too much. Before Hadley knew it, he was shooting looks everywhere. Zinnias, girl. Puddle, girl. Girl, girl.

  “Quit!” Mama hissed.

  Only once before had Hadley ever attempted a feat more difficult than looking away from that
girl, and that had been when he tried to lift a Guernsey with his bare hands based on some misinformation given to him by a fellow called Tibbs Deets, who claimed that a milked cow was lighter than air. He couldn’t lift the the Guernsey anymore than he could keep his eyes off the girl.

  She sat, knees apart, on a chipped wicker throne with an embroidered sheet knotted over one skinny white shoulder. Three red letters stood out on her front: l.B.m. Hadley particularly admired her curtain-pull belt. Even though he’d never had a single day of schooling, he knew instantly that the girl was an emperor. His daddy had been a Heart of the World salesman and, according to Daddy, Heart of the World was the most important, comprehensive, and artistically illustrated book of recent times. Thus it happened that Hadley knew more than his fair share about Romans. He’d looked at the pages with swords at least twenty or fifty times and considered himself an expert.

  While Mama and Mr. Browning talked about the fundamental joy of a good Jezebel sauce, the girl looked him over and raised her thumb in the air as though a deadly Spatha were poised at his throat, awaiting her decision. Hadley pretended to watch the little Leafwing butterfly that was fluttering around his foot, but secretly he was watching that thumb.

  Before Mr. Browning concluded that he might possibly be able to stomach an Experienced Negro Cook with a half-breed son, Mama had to promise him a pot of Hoppin’ John so peppery he’d cry for his mother. She also had to agree to work for a nickel less a day. The Empress was not so easily convinced.

  Lucinda Augustus looked from Hadley to his mama, then back to Hadley again. With a royal shake of her butter-yellow head, she slowly turned her thumb down.

  ###

  “I’d like to write a poem about you, Hadley Crump,” the girl said. “But the only words I can think of to rhyme with Hadley are ‘badly’ and ‘madly,’ and those are awfully sordid words for a child.”

  Hadley looked around, sure that she must be speaking to some other Hadley Crump. It was his first day at Browning House, and he’d been told to collect shoes for polishing. There were five doors on the second floor with shoes lined up in front of them. The first door was open, and a row of tap shoes formed a scuffed black border between the hallway and the girl.

  At first, Hadley only noticed the shoes, most of which were so small and so tapped out that they could be of no possible use to anyone as tall as Lucinda Browning. He kicked a pint-sized one with a broken buckle across the floor, and that was when she said his name.

  Mr. Browning had introduced him to her while Mama was looking over the new Glenwood cooking range, but never in a million years did Hadley think that Lucinda Browning would use his name to his face. A funny thing happened inside his stomach when she said it. If he didn’t know better, he would have sworn he’d swallowed a whole lit string of Atta Boys.

  “How about ‘gladly’?” he suggested, for there was a book called A Girl’s First Poetry Journal spread open on her flowered carpet, and it was clear she was a poet.

  “You do look like the glad sort.” Lucinda Browning smirked in a way that would have got him slapped.

  Hadley knew for a fact that she was nine years old, same as him, but her mouth was at least twenty. She stood with one hip against the chimney of her dollhouse, swigging a bottle of Miss Loody’s Muscle Tonic like the stuff didn’t cost six dollars an ounce. The label on the bottle promised rounder, more shapely calves. Hadley wouldn’t have dreamed of checking.

  “Have these washed.” She picked up a pair of bloomers off the floor and threw them at his face. “And I better get them back.”

  Hadley and his mama had worked for a family called Tweeb before coming to Browning House. A Tweeb who came into a room where Hadley was working would freeze in place and wait for him to skat. The Tweeb boys, Penrod and Pomeroy, had a regular talent for standing stiff as a corpse. They never let on that anyone was being made to pick up their dirty things. That was their system at Maple Lawn. The family communicated through Sargent, the head butler, and Mr. Tweeb would sooner starve than ask a lesser servant to bring him a second helping of turnips.

  Standing there with Lucinda Browning’s underwear on his head, Hadley tingled with self-importance. He breathed her bloomers in and out against his face as she proceeded to recite The Hadley Poem.

  The Hadley Poem

  There once was a boy named Hadley

  Who wanted a girl very badly

  She was out of his reach

  But he hung on like a leech

  Loving her madly and gladly.

  At the time, Hadley thought it nuts that he would ever love any girl other than his mama. Even so, those bloomers made his brain swirl to such a degree that he became convinced the poem was some sort of witchy incantation. Lucinda’s underwear smelled like Ivory soap and the deep dark depths of a cedar drawer. He liked them so well, he decided he might never take them off his head.

  “Worm!” Lucinda growled, yanking them away.

  It was all very queer. Lucinda Browning was wearing a look on her face that Hadley found oddly familiar. It was the same look Uncle Pink got just before he scarfed down a plate of fat pullets at the supper table with such blind rapture that he choked to death with a smile on his face.

  Seeing how he was only nine, Hadley promptly forgot about those bloomers until some weeks later, when Lucinda whirled around the toy room while he was building up a fire. “Wheeeeeee!” she cried, taking off like a top. Hadley got so transfixed watching her, he singed off half an eyebrow.

  “It’s hopeless you know,” Loomis Sackett informed him when he caught Hadley watching her one day on her swing. Loomis was the lay-about hoeboy who knew everything there was to know and didn’t do much of anything at all. He was ten.

  “What do you mean?” Hadley asked. With every pump she made, big whiffs of Ivory soap floated past him, and he was too young as yet to believe that anything was ever hopeless.

  “Look at your hands,” Loomis said. “You’d muss her up good if ever you got too close.”

  “Could be I might wash ‘em,” Hadley said, and he spit in his palm to demonstrate his plan.

  “Shoot.” Loomis laughed. “You can’t never get ‘em clean enough for a girl like that. Unless she likes things dirty, you ain’t ever gonna do nuttin’ bigger than peep at her from behind this hedge.”

  What Hadley and Loomis didn’t know back then was that Lucinda liked things dirty.

  ###

  Browning House was unique in that it was built around the original log cabin home of Parnell T. Browning, a coal miner who struck it big when he married the daughter of a rich Northerner and opened Browning & Beeson Coal in 1822. The house had twin parlors, twin staircases, and twin verandas, but at the center of its fancy, polished heart was a little room with mud-daubed walls. From the start, the log-cabin room was Hadley’s favorite in the house.

  There was something about that dusty, piney smell that made him go off his tiptoes the instant he stepped from the marble tiles onto the puncheon floor. Lucinda complained that the room smelled like Abe Lincoln, and if anyone even said the words log-cabin room, she would sneeze three times. Due to his daughter’s allergy, Mr. Browning had ordered the two doors to the room kept shut at all times.

  Upon finishing the mansion in 1822, Old Parnell T. hung up his felling axe over the chimneypiece and hammered a plaque on the wall that read: NEVER FORGET WHERE YOU COME FROM. Hadley once over-heard Mr. Browning tell the head butler, Mr. Sweet, that he’d pay any man a hundred dollars who could pry that old sign off the wall.

  Apparently, it was connected to the logs in such a way that it threatened to tear the place down if you pulled on it too hard.

  “Someday,” Mr. Browning said, “I plan to put up real walls in here, buy a velvet settee, and turn the place into a Kewpie-doll room for Lucinda. Every girl deserves a room for her Kewpie dolls.”

  Lucinda possessed a powerful love for Kewpie dolls.

  Hadley’s second favorite room in the house was the canning closet turned Cook’s Q
uarters that he shared with his mama and nobody else. At Maple Lawn, they’d had to double up with Mumbling Willodean whose feet reeked of spoilt cheese even on bath day. The canning closet smelled like bread-n-butter pickles and cracked black pepper, and they had themselves a parlor stove, two cots, and a washstand to call their own. Better still, Cook’s Quarters was located next to the kitchen instead of behind the washhouse like at Maple Lawn, so there was no getting wet on rainy mornings. Yes indeed, the canning closet was brimming with all manner of peppery warm luxury.

  Every day, at five a.m., Mama whistled up her redeye gravy in the kitchen, singing songs and stirring the air with a wooden spoon, happy as a lark. Mama said folks liked a Negro cook to sing, so she’d learned as many Negro songs as she could. It was as important to the job as good cooking because people liked waking to a soulful tune:

  Yo daddy ploughs ole massa's corn.

  Yo mammy does the cooking;

  She'll give dinner to her hungry chile,

  When nobody is a looking;

  Don't be ashamed, my chile, I beg,

  Case you was hatched from a bussard's egg,

  My little colored chile.

  Mama was a stern woman when it came to most things, but the bubble of mush and the smell of corn cakes browning in the oven brought out her sunny side. For Hadley, those early hours didn’t feel like work, what with Mama singing and spinning from pot to pot, her apron pinched up between two fingers like it was a velvet dress. The house creaked awake with the sound of her voice, creating a comforting symphony of honking noses, slamming doors, and muffled groans. Pipes gurgled behind the striped wallpaper, shuttering the spice bottles. Footfalls thumped overhead. Mama ladled food on the shiny blue plates and poured cups of coffee, bellowing out her niggery songs . . .

  AIN’T BUT ONE TRAIN RUNS THIS TRACK.

  IT RUNS TO HEAVEN AND RUNS RIGHT BACK.

  SAINT PETER WAITIN’ AT THE GATE.