Winston couldn’t recall ever seeing Willie Lee so sad. He found himself upset at the boy’s pain and unable to form an instant comeback, something that did not often happen. Thinking on it, he finished his ice-cream cone, took napkins from his shirt pocket and cleaned himself up.
“Yes, my little buddy,” he said finally, “I’ll admit that you do not think just like everyone else, and the term slow is used and quite accurate by many standards. Nevertheless, as in all things, it is a matter of perspective. Maybe the world and people in it go too fast. Did you ever think of that?”
Willie Lee looked up, frowning in thought. In Winston’s opinion, and that of a number of observant people, the boy had pockets of rare understanding inside of him that had nothing to do with intellect.
“Being slow is not such a bad thing and has nothing what soever to do with havin’ a girlfriend. Girls prefer boys who are not so fast.”
He reached over and began to wipe up Willie Lee. Suddenly becoming aware of his actions, he handed the napkin to the boy, saying, “The female human is somethin’ I know a bit about. I’ve had a bunch of girlfriends from the time I was younger than you, and two wives, and the first of those was a doozie. I’ve learned from experience that as long as you speak to a female’s heart, she isn’t gonna care how well you think or how tall you are.”
“I can-not re-ad. I will not be a-ble to take the test and get a dri-ver li-cen-se and take my girl-friend on a date. That is what a boyfriend does.”
“Aw, you got somethin’ better than readin’, Little Buddy. You have that trust fund, son. You can buy a car and hire someone to drive you on a date. You won’t ever need a driver’s license. You could go on a date right now, if you wanted.”
“I co-uld?”
“Yes, sir, you could.” Winston was proud to solve that problem. He was counting up Willie Lee’s assets and became happier by the moment.
“I can absolutely assure you, son, that you are more than qualified to have a girlfriend.” He rested a hand on the boy’s small shoulder. “You have everything going for you. You’re a healthy and even handsome young man with a secure future, and there are pitiful few people who can say that at any age.
“But most importantly, Little Buddy, your heart overrules your intellect, and that is the main necessity for gettin’ along with girls.” Then, after a moment, he added, “Really, for successful living, I’d say.”
11
Mothers and Daughters
From the Valentine Voice:
June 3, 1998
Kinney—Berry
Mr. And Mrs. John Cole Berry of Valentine are pleased to announce the engagement of their son, Johnny Ray Berry, to Miss Gracie Louise Kinney, daughter of Mrs. Sylvia Kinney of Baltimore, Maryland.
The prospective groom serves as a manager and vice president of the Berry Quick Stop Enterprises.
The bride-elect is a regional manager for the M. Connor chain of women’s apparel.
A September wedding is planned in Valentine, where the two plan to make their home.
When young Paris Miller, who was clerking at their Quick Stop No. 1, called to let Emma know that the Wednesday after noon edition of the Valentine Voice had arrived, Emma went right down to get four copies. John Cole had wanted to know why she didn’t just make copies from one clipping, but she said it wouldn’t be the same. Men simply did not understand these things.
Just as she entered the store, a boy running out about knocked her down, followed by Paris yelling after him. Emma stood there watching the dark boy in a baggy T-shirt, with a girl with splotchy-crimson spiked hair hot on his heels, disappear around the corner of the building.
Emma went into the store, which was totally vacant, and realized that Paris had abandoned the cash register. She forgot about the register, though, as her gaze lit on a newspaper lying on the counter, folded back to the engagement announcement. Paris was a kind girl.
As Emma started to read, Paris came huffing back through the door. “Oh, Miz Berry—I’m sorry I forgot about the store! I didn’t really…I just wanted to catch that little creep. He shoplifted a handful of candy bars. I gotta call the sheriff.”
“Oh, no, honey. Let him go. He’s only a little boy, and it was just candy bars. All children want candy.” Emma generally did not believe in pursuing children, and in any case, her attention was totally on the picture of Johnny and Gracie. “Didn’t their picture come out great?”
Paris agreed about the picture, and then protested that it wouldn’t be right to let the boy go. “He is old enough to steal, and we might be the ones to save him from prison when he’s older.”
Taking full note of the girl’s upset, Emma looked up to see Paris’s frowning furrowed brows—each one pierced through with a gold ring. She was such a lovely girl. It was a shame that she felt the need to poke so many holes in her body.
Emma said, “Perhaps he’ll return, and you can catch him in the act and instruct him. That would be the best thing. I doubt if the sheriff could find him now.”
“Yeah…I guess.”
Emma’s attention returned to the announcement. Reading it aloud, she winced. “Oh, dear. I used the word plan twice.”
Paris peered at the paper. “No one’ll notice.”
“My mother will,” said Emma. “But maybe no one else. Their picture just captures attention.” She grinned at the teenage girl. “Johnny is just so cute.”
“Yeah, he is,” said Paris, grinning back.
Emma took up four copies of the paper and headed out the door, then came back and got two more.
Paris waved as the woman left. She wished that she had a mother who thought as much of her as Mrs. Berry thought of Johnny. For an instant, in which she blinked hard and looked downward, she wondered what having such a mother would be like.
Paris’s mother had left her years before, just gone off and left Paris, who had not yet turned ten at the time. Not even knowing who her father was, Paris lived with her grandfather, a Vietnam vet who was in a wheelchair. Because she was only fifteen now, she’d had to talk Johnny Berry into giving her the job at the Quick Stop, and it was only part-time for the summer. But Johnny had already given her a raise and said she did a real good job. It was a start on her goal to pull herself and her grandfather up out of poverty of the sort where that little thief probably came from, by the look of him.
That boy might have gotten away this time, but Paris would keep a sharp eye and catch him the next. With the zeal that only a reformed shoplifter herself could feel, she determined to set the boy straight.
As it turned out, Emma did not need to worry about getting extra copies of the paper, because she ended up receiving them all over town.
When she got gas at the Texaco, old Mr. Stidham, who was always sitting out front in a frayed lawn chair and talking to all the customers, gave her his copy of the newspaper, and she picked up another at the bank, from two young tellers who told her that they thought Gracie was sure a lucky girl.
“Probably can’t have too many of these,” said Julia Jenkins-Tinsley at the post office, passing over a paper.
On her way out of the post office, Emma encountered Charlotte Nation, manager of the Voice, coming in, who passed her a manila envelope, saying, “I was just goin’ to mail this to you. It’s a couple of clippings of the engagement announcement. Congratulations.”
“Oh! Thank you.” She had not realized the newspaper attended to such personable details, or even that Charlotte Nation, a bare acquaintance, would recall who Emma was.
As she headed down the sidewalk, she was further congratulated on Johnny’s future by Bonita Embree, who was washing the windows of her bakery, and two women, who were power walking and slowed only a fraction as one called, “Congratulations on Johnny’s engagement!”
“Thank you,” Emma said, being a little embarrassed that she did not know who the two smiling women were, although they obviously knew her.
Continuing along the sidewalk, she became faintly aware of being reall
y happy. It seemed that the sun on the old brick buildings was brighter than normal, and the late spring air sweeter. The early days when they had first moved to the small town came in quick, fuzzy snapshots across her mind, and mixed in with fantasies of the wedding and the future with her son’s family all around her. She picked up her pace as she headed for Blaine’s Drugstore.
The bell over the door rang out as she entered the store. The musky scents came to her—those of old building mixed with that of Evening in Paris sold at the small perfume counter. Belinda called a greeting from the soda fountain. Delighted to find the woman in, Emma cast her a hello and a wave. “I’ll be right over. I’m goin’ to get pantyhose first.”
She selected two packages of hose from the rack. She felt a little guilty, because the Quick Stop No. 1 carried hose, too, but of a cheaper variety than Emma liked. She had told John Cole this and recommended the brand she preferred, and he had told her no one would pay that price at the Quick Stops.
The only people at the soda fountain were Belinda, leaning against the freezer, and her mother, Vella, who sat on her tall stool, smoking one of her thin cigaroos.
“Our slow time—business will pick up around five, when people head home from work,” Belinda explained, dropping a copy of the newspaper atop the stack Emma had laid on the counter. “Saved the announcement for you.”
“Those pantyhose are on sale—half price,” Vella instructed Belinda. Then, to Emma, “What else can I get for you, sugar?”
Emma ordered a glass of cold tea, with lemon. No place in town had better cold tea, which Vella herself made several times a day. The idea occurred—perhaps Vella would not mind sharing the recipe for Emma to serve at the bridal-shower barbeque. Emma was about to pose the question, when Vella turned the subject back to pantyhose.
“I remember when those came out. You know what I like best about pantyhose? You don’t have to wear panties with them.”
“You don’t wear panties with your pantyhose?” Belinda said. Her eyebrows rose, and she blinked.
“Well, nooo. Why would I do that?” replied her mother.
Belinda shrugged, saying, “Well, I do.”
Emma watched the two women, Vella wearing a frown and Belinda a bland expression.
“I don’t know why you would do that,” said Vella, speaking with some vehemence. “The panty is made into them. That’s why they are called pantyhose. That is the purpose of them, so you don’t have to wear panties.”
“I don’t think that is their sole purpose,” was Belinda’s calm response. “They are hose that come all the way to the waist is all, so you don’t need garters…but you do need panties.”
Vella took that in for about three seconds, then turned to Emma. “Let me just ask you. Do you wear panties under your pantyhose?”
“Well…no.” She really didn’t, but in the face of the woman’s sharp expression, she thought she might have said no even if she did.
Vella smiled in satisfaction, and Belinda’s eyebrows went up, then came down in a skeptical frown.
“I told you. The reason they are called pantyhose is because the panty is made in,” Vella stated. “I don’t know why anyone would wear panties with ’em. Not havin’ to wear panties is the point.”
“Okay, Mama. It’s your choice.”
“It is also common sense. I don’t know why anyone would want to wear drawers all bunched up under pantyhose. Do you?” she demanded of Emma.
“I imagine some would.”
“Well, the panty is right there—there is even a cotton crotch. I don’t know why anyone would want to wear two panties, because that is what you have with panties under ’em.”
“Not all pantyhose have the cotton crotch,” Belinda said.
“They don’t?”
“No, Mama.”
Emma was a little surprised. She had not known this, either, which seemed telling, somehow.
Vella said, “Well, I don’t know why anyone would wear those, and I don’t know why anyone would wear panties with pantyhose. Lord, before we had pantyhose, we had to wear panties, and garter belts or girdles. They were just for the birds.”
Belinda crossed her arms and addressed her mother and Emma. “All right…what if you two get in a wreck and have to go to the hospital, and you do not have any panties on?”
“So?” was Vella’s reply. “Then they don’t have so much to take off in an emergency. Just rip the pantyhose off and it’s done.”
Emma said she had never considered it.
“My pantyhose are clean,” added Vella. “I put on clean pantyhose when I wear them.”
Belinda, who moved back and looked down at Vella’s legs, said, “You aren’t wearin’ pantyhose now…are you wearin’ panties?” There was ripe curiosity in her voice.
“Yes, dear. I almost always wear panties.”
“Almost?”
“Since when did you get so straight-laced?” Vella asked. “And I just do not believe most women wear panties under pantyhose. It is redundant. I don’t know why you would do that…I just don’t.”
Having apparently reached an impasse, the two women shut up long enough for Emma to change the subject to finding a theme for her bridal-shower barbeque. The three of them batted around a number of ideas—country and western, floral, items reflecting family. Belinda was very good at such ideas. She watched an inordinate amount of television shopping channels and the Home and Garden channel. Emma got the times from her of several programs that could be of help with her plans.
Then Charlene MacCoy, who was Emma’s hairdresser, came in. As she slipped up on the stool beside Emma, Vella got right to the question about panties under pantyhose.
“Oh, yes, I do,” Charlene replied, blinking with a bit of surprise.
“You do?”
“Uh-huh…when I wear pantyhose. I don’t wear them much in the summer, just if I get really dressed up.” She went on to explain that she had just always worn panties under pantyhose, just like she always wore panties. Except for a time when she tried going without, at her sister’s suggestion, as a way to loosen up.
“All it did was make me tighten up,” she said. “I got so nervous about my skirt blowing up in the wind, or gettin’ in a wreck and havin’ to go to the emergency room, you know.”
Belinda said, “These two don’t wear panties.”
“You don’t?” Charlene cast a surprised look from Vella to Emma.
“Just not under pantyhose,” Emma said quickly. “I wear panties as a rule.”
“There’s just no need to wear panties with pantyhose,” Vella said emphatically. The phone rang, and as she reached to answer, she added, “I just don’t know why anyone would wear panties under pantyhose.”
With Vella taking an order on the phone, Charlene looked at Emma and asked, “What if a wind came and blew your skirt up?”
Emma admitted that she had never thought of that. “But it hasn’t ever happened. And I wear the shapers. They are dark at the top and down the thigh. See.” She held up one of the packages of pantyhose to display the picture, as if to present documented evidence.
Then, as Belinda and Charlene talked over the matter, she more thoroughly examined the picture and print on the package. She had always believed, as Vella did, that they were panty and hose combined. The picture did not show panties underneath. She wondered if there were instructions that she had missed all these years.
Suddenly Vella hissed and waved at them, drawing their attention. Then she said into the phone, “Listen, Lori…” and Emma got a mental picture of Lori Wright, the receptionist from the sheriff’s office, thirtyish, bleached hair and fancy fingernails “…I want to ask you somethin’. Do you wear panties under your pantyhose?”
Vella’s expectant smile slowly fell. “Oh, you do…thin no-line…well, okay…it was just somethin’ we’ve been discussin’….”
When she hung up, Belinda said, “That is three to two, Mama.”
Vella said, “You get two vanilla and one choco
late shake ready to go over to the sheriff’s office. I’m gonna call Marilee,” and she reached again for the phone.
Marilee was Tate Holloway’s wife, and the conversation was short. Vella’s disappointed face reflected the answer. “Marilee says that she wears panties under her hose, unless she’s out with Tate…and then she doesn’t.”
They cast each other mystified grins, and then Vella added, “I suppose I’ll ask her about that later.”
“I’m puttin’ her down as a with,” said Belinda, who had pulled out a note tablet.
Twenty minutes later, Emma left the drugstore, carrying with her friendly goodbyes and well-wishes for all the upcoming bridal affairs, a piece of paper with Vella’s instructions for making her delicious cold tea in quantity, the phone number for the construction company that put in Charlene’s pool, and the knowledge that she and Vella were in the definite minority concerning wearing pantyhose without panties.
A few women had volunteered reasons. Fayrene Gardner, whom Belinda had encountered on the sidewalk while taking the milkshakes over to the sheriff’s office, had said, “I sweat, honey.”
And elderly Minnie Oakes whispered, “Oh, yes…in case I pee.”
Vella had even telephoned her other daughter, Margaret, who lived all the way over in Atlanta, and who reported in as a “with.” Margaret had her mother’s voice, and they could all hear her through the phone as she said, “You made me wear ’em, Mama. I learned it from you.”
Mother and daughter had an argument about this, and when she hung up, Vella swore, “I did not teach her that. She says I did, but I didn’t.”
And she repeated her refrain, “Why would anyone wear panties with pantyhose? That is why they call them pantyhose—the panty is built right in.”
When Claire Ford and Sherrilyn Earles came in to get strawberry milkshakes to go and both said they wore thongs underneath their pantyhose, not only did Vella say, “Why would anyone do that?” but so did Emma and Belinda.
Chin Up, Honey Page 8