I wouldn’t reach down and rub my foot and leg, feeling the hard edges of plates and screws, a rebuilt lower leg that hurt so bad at times I wanted to hack it off with my bare hands.
My last thought before sleep’s sweet ease was of my two children, and how those babies are the very reason I’m alive. The only reason. Without them, I’d have died on the sidewalk at BI-LO in front of the display windows advertising chuck roast, windows my airborne body had shattered.
Chapter Seven
Hey, Pru, I Mean Dee: It is better to live in the corner of an attic, than with a crabby woman in a lovely home. Proverbs 21:9
Bonus Proverb: A constant dripping on a rainy day and a cranky woman are much alike! You can no more stop her complaints than you can stop the wind. Proverbs 27:15-16.
Mama’s Moral: It doesn’t pay to be a crab. You’ll never get a good, decent husband.
Early June in South Carolina can be one of two things and is typically a combination of both. This time of year every shade of pink a girl could envision blazes throughout the greenways and meticulous lawns as the dogwoods, redbuds, azaleas, rhododendron and impatiens turn the town into visions sweet enough to take minds off the building heat.
We can almost forgive the relentless South Carolina sun if we gaze long enough at the Upstate’s generous beauty, as dolled up as if the whole region took itself to the Merle Norman counter and asked for the works.
Daisies, wisteria, jasmine, peonies, butterfly bushes and the front porch favorite—geraniums—all thrive in the state known for heat and storms. Its people, incidentally, are a replica of the weather and flora.
One minute they can act sweet as honeysuckle, and the next caught breath they could very well fire up and rage like an August sky.
This is how it is and the price one pays for living in a place of four seasons, mild winters and women who are, for the most part, about as lovely and painted as the spring and summer blooms.
But even with their quirks and misguided priorities, South Carolinians are warm and gracious, typical Southerners who will give neighbors everything out of their cabinets or gardens but won’t wince if a time comes that a neighbor must be properly put in her place. Vengeance is as alive as repentance, and quite often the two hold hands.
During this time of intolerable heat and floral loveliness, the tree for which our people is known—the great majestic magnolia—spreads a perfume through its wedding-white blossoms that no designer could bottle. Every child with an ounce of energy climbs up in the magnolias, generous with their stair-stepped branches and propensity to shed romance on most any situation. While the Palmetto is officially our state tree, few pay that hybrid palm much mind. Quite frankly, the only places I’ve ever even seen one is along the coast.
The coast is what we live for, is how we get through the long, hot summers. The South Carolina shoreline is a stretch of sandy paradise where we often flee when the rest of our state becomes a stifling, breath-robbing burden. We’re like a bunch of crazy people flocking to the Atlantic, bumper to bumper, as if trying to outrun a lava flow.
This is the time it all starts, when the sun’s burner is cranked to high and when the strong hint of another unbearably long season blows a hot yawn down our backs and across our faces. Some evenings it’s like walking inside someone’s mouth, even as late as dusk when I stroll Miranda in the neighborhood or play basketball in Mama’s driveway with Jay and Daddy.
At least it’s not Columbia, I tell myself. There’s no place on earth hotter than Columbia, South Carolina. That town is the foyer of hell, all its pretty flowers just vases of color to decorate the entrance.
Spartanburg, an hour and a half away from Columbia, may be only a few degrees cooler, but those degrees are of life or death importance. People get mean in the heat, start mouthing off, even killing each other for nothing. I once knew a girl in high school who suffered a tragedy during a family reunion held in Columbia on an ungodly July afternoon some 20 years ago.
One day at lunch she sat across from me, opened her milk carton and slipped in the straw. Calmly and matter-of-factly, she said, “My uncle killed my aunt this past summer.”
“Do what?” I said, uncertain I’d heard correctly.
“He asked my aunt, said, ‘Hon, could you get your guitar out and sang us a purty song?’ Aunt Faye was a’ fanning herself with a big old flap of cardboard and told him, ‘I’m too hot to move,’ and he picked up his shotgun and blowed her right off the porch and up to Jesus.”
My friend took herself a giant bite of peach cobbler soon as those words fell from her lips, as if it were simply a matter-of-fact, steamy South Carolina showdown.
It wasn’t as bad in the mountains of Asheville, where I’d absolutely fallen in love with the gorgeous views, vistas like wave after purple wave and temperatures mild and relenting. Even though Asheville wasn’t but an hour or so away, it had a completely different climate, and I suspect I’d still be living there if my husband hadn’t held his private Revelation in a parking lot. As it was, when we lived for a year in Mama’s rancher in the upper-middle-class suburbs on the right side of town, we were blessed she had a pool where we could swim off our heat and bad moods every afternoon and evening.
Since we moved out last month, I’ve sure missed that pool, and there’s no way we can afford a membership to one of the private clubs. This is why I’ve decided to surprise the kids. When they get home from their summer enrichment programs today, I’m going to have them the nicest plastic pool money can buy. I saw them at Kmart, complete with built-in molded sliding board, separate deep end, and an object through which water will shoot like a spray of exploding fireworks.
I put on some jeans, my padded Miracle Bra—that quit providing miracles after I breastfed my last child for 18 months and my assets turned into two long trout—and sat by the bay window to put on makeup in the good, natural light.
Lord, my face was puffy. I wet some paper towels and put them in the freezer, took them out after two minutes and applied the cold compresses. Seems as soon as I turned 35, I began swelling for no reason. It didn’t have to be PMS time for me to retain water like some desert camel loading up for a long, broiling march across half the globe.
Everyone says, “Drink eight glasses of water. That will help.” I’ll tell you what happens when I drink eight glasses of water. This. This puffy-eyed, upper thigh, fat-ass and stomach swelling. I’ve also noticed that if I stand up a lot, or I’m doing a lot of walking, say at a county fair or the mall or a street festival, I’m lucky to manage a trickle, a mere two ounces of tee-tee.
I can go all day without eating so much as a Slimfast or half a sandwich, but if I’m required to stand, the heaviness sets in. I can leave home weighing 140, and then I come home, having not eaten a fly’s serving, and weigh 145. Seriously.
Not that 145 is swamp-sow material, considering my height of 5 feet, 8 inches, reduced after the Murderous Rampage and subsequent foot and lower leg surgeries to just under 5 feet, 7.
A frozen Bounty paper towel always works its magic within a few minutes; then I’m able to put on my makeup, which, most days, includes the full arsenal of cosmetics, another South Carolina trait most of our women have clung to since the state had its first contestant in the Miss America pageant.
I pour on the foundation, then act like a crop-dusting plane with the powder and spread on liner, eye shadow, mascara and, the most essential of all cosmetics, lipstick. My personal motto is, “There’s nothing in the world a new tube of lipstick can’t make better.” I went through three tubes during Bryce Jeter’s five-day trial.
My all-out favorites are the pinks and peaches, especially the frosts, which may sound trailer-park trashy to some people, but if you can swallow your false pride and buy a tube, prepare for a flood of compliments. Something about the glimmer of the frost wipes five to 10 years from the face.
I put on two coats of Shimmer Pink every year at the State Fair and the midway man never guesses my age. This is how I easily win my kids nice stuffed animals that smell like B.O. and cotton candy.
By the time I arrived at Kmart, it appeared plenty of other mothers had beaten me to the pool selection. Those left were lined up outside and propped against the building, along with the swingsets and gas grills, the Miracle-Gro potting soil and a few rickety patio sets and umbrellas. The pickings were slim, every mother in town buying $30 worth of blue plastic relief.
I pulled up right as a woman was leaving, her pool strapped to the roof of her car, a smug smile on her perspiring face. I aimed my car at the angle best suited for pool loading, and within a few seconds a purposeful young man in his standard red Kmart vest skipped to my car window, boogying to tunes playing only in his head.
He was jumping and jiving, trying to be all pumped about his sidewalk job, but I could tell the heat and mothers had whipped him to worn-out shreds with the rush on kiddie pools.
“Can I help you, ma’am?”
“First, you can drop the ‘ma’am’ business,” I said, and lowered my black Ray-Bans so he could see my clear and unpuffy, Bounty-blessed eyes. “I appreciate your manners, but save those ma’ams for the vast numbers of unfortunate and unattractive women you are most certain to come across today.” Oh my God. Who is this woman saying such things to a man? Could it be I’ve grown one or two vertebrae in my Bryce-induced spineless back?
“Yes’um. I mean, okay.” He cast his eyes down and grinned a sly smile. “You here to get you a pool?”
“Well, I’m not here for a facial. How about that big one there? You think I could cart it home on top of my Accord?”
“I reckon I don’t see no problem there. I got some string and we’ll just tie her up there and say a prayer or two.”
I went inside and took the ticket, paid for the pool and bought a tube of Preparation H because I read somewhere it would get rid of wrinkles and bags, which is definitely a must if you are post-35 and find yourself with no husband or prospects and likely morphing into a five-humped camel due to massive water retention.
When I returned, the Kmart man-boy was already hopping around my car like a red-vested crow, had both car doors open as he tugged and tightened, trying to get the pool snug and secure on my roof minus a luggage rack.
“She’s good to go,” he said, and I wondered why men always had to call objects “she.” Why is a plane a she, a car a she, everything but their precious and highly over-rated wee-wee a she? That’s the one thing they’ll call Mr. Big or the Blue-jeaned Bass. I once had a boyfriend who called it his “Heat-Seeking Missile.” He was a big Gulf War enthusiast so what could one expect?
I offered Mr. Pool a sun-sapped smile and a dampened dollar bill that I’d had wrinkled in my hand for the past 10 minutes. He took it and put it somewhere in that red smock, said thank you, and then pogo’d away, playing air guitar, one skinny leg straight out in front of him.
Typically, in Spartanburg, a gentle breeze is not one of our amenities. We get strong winds during killer thunderstorms; otherwise, the Upstate saves its breath to brew up deadly tornadoes that take the tops off everything but homes and buildings constructed with bucks and stamina.
Today, for some reason, call it Murphy’s Law, the wind picked up just as I was easing onto I-85 to cart my load home. I had gone about a quarter of a mile down the highway before I heard a noise, a loud banging on the roof and thought any minute it would cave in. I checked the side mirrors and saw a flash of blue. Good, the pool was still up there.
All of a sudden the wind gusted, lightning flashed, thunder cracked and roared and my pool copped air, rising from the roof, higher and higher, the slack rope tightening as if I’d caught a Marlin. I heard a loud pop like a gun going off and checked my mirrors, noticing a huge line of cars backed up behind me, the dropped jaws on the drivers’ faces, their horns blasting and their frantic hands motioning for me to get off the road. I searched for blue. It wasn’t there. The pool was gone.
Oh, shit a thousand times. I’m just trying to be a good mother. I’d gotten a note from Jay’s teacher on Friday saying he was “acting odd,” sulking and wouldn’t play with the other children at recess, that he wanted to stay inside and read books on dissection and that I might want to address these “issues” during the summer vacation. She had given me that old teachery glare and said, “Why does your kid want to know about the inside guts of every living thing on earth?” I guess she had a point.
At home, too, Jay was behaving strangely and had been for the past week, though when pressed, he told me, “I’m fine, Mom. Don’t I look fine?” and made a monster face, showing me all he had in the tongue and tonsils department. He had been doing fairly well since I got him back into therapy and, all things considered, including the letters, left me to wonder: How can progress unravel? How can an entire year of therapy and tenderness and stepping as carefully as if one were on a bed of spears reverse itself in a few weeks?
I made a mental note to watch him closer, but for the time being, I could at least buy my fatherless, heat-sapped children a cheap plastic pool. We could pretend to be a happy family. We could swim and splash and make believe we were like everyone else, that Daddy, the inner-city surgeon with Labrador eyes, would be home in time for supper to tell us about the orphans from Nicaragua he had spared from disease and deformity.
Until I can find this make-believe dream man, I’m aimed to let my kids know that their mother can do things most daddies do. That a person can be both Mom and Dad. I understand now why some single women feel the need to overcompensate after their divorces. Add to that mix a woman who’s trying to make her children believe that it’s really okay to have a daddy in prison for trying to kill their mama, and that it doesn’t matter that their mother is on the verge of bankruptcy or a major mental breakdown, according to Dr. Capped Teeth therapist, who I quit seeing months ago, damn her and those stupid predictions.
If a swimming pool would take their minds off the “Where’s Daddy?” questions I’ve had to field for two years, then, by God, I’d get them the biggest plastic pool money could buy.
A car horn blasted behind me and wouldn’t relent. I slowed to 20 miles an hour, rolled down my window and let the driver go by.
“You fuckin’ idiot,” a man shouted as he eased past me in the other lane. “Crazy ass bitch of a woman!”
I stuck my teeth out like a mule’s and shot him a bird, even going as far as pumping it a couple of times, though Mama would have disowned me and said only trash shot birds. Who was I to care? I was no longer a minister’s wife, so I did not have to put on a sorry-ass public front. Bird, bird, bird. Birds to all those honking SOBs for not understanding motherly love. They probably beat their children, put them into bed with dirty feet and mossy teeth.
Goodness, where was that pool? I heard a horrible noise and veered into the emergency lane as the cars whizzed by and the people either honked or gave me the “Crazy Lady” head shaking. I leaned over and checked for the pool’s whereabouts. There it was banging against the driver’s side door and as crumpled as a car wreck. The nearest exit put me in the parking lot of a car dealership where a half-dozen men stood outside smoking while waiting for customers. My pool scraped the ground as I parked next to their fine gleaming Nissans.
I stepped out to make some adjustments, hammering out the dents with my fists and trying to get plastic to regain its shape as I, too, regained a sense of purpose and self. One of the men whistled. That greaseball. You’d think, it being 2010, that even primitive males such as certain car salesmen types, would get a politically correct clue. While I’m not opposed to the well-placed and pleasantly-pitched catcall, I don’t want to hear them when under great distress such as right at this moment. The whistling grew more fevered.
I stood and caught a glimpse of myself
in the car’s windows. Holy crap! Lord have mercy on my soul! My right breast had completely fallen out of its Miracle Bra and was dangling pendulously from the scoop of my shirt. I wanted to die. I wanted to cry and crawl under the car. I thought of Aunt Weepie and how she would have turned the moment to her complete advantage.
What would Aunt Weepie do?
Another whistle and some laughter.
“You jerks never seen a D&D bosom before?” Two of them turned purple with heat and embarrassment and a midday hangover. “You know what D&D means? Means Dented and Dated. Get it? Now while I busy myself tucking titties back into position, please get over it and come around and help me with this pool. You might see more if you behave yourselves and get the thing rigged correctly.”
They shuffled over to the car as sheepishly as school boys caught smoking around the back of the building. Dutifully, they began fidgeting with the pool, all the while waiting on the next breast to find its way out of Spandex captivity.
“You need to be driving a Nissan,” one of them said, mind always on sales, even when bared breasts are in the picture. “Can’t very well count on a Honda, can you?”
They all laughed in that way of men in groups who tend to act much naughtier and more irreverent than men alone. It seems when they are in wolf packs, all good taste and decency, all respect for women, go straight down the disposal.
Chimes from a Cracked Southern Belle Page 11