by Jane Gill
Miss Pearl reached across the table, lifted the pitcher, and refilled Lu’s lemonade. “Well, then, as you said, ‘with due respect’, can you let an old woman say some things that might make you feel better?”
Without waiting for Lu’s response, she began, “First off, chile, you come from good stock. What Preacher Parker said was all true. Your great-granddaddy Eli surely was a brave man. But don’t you see, child, he wasn’t so different from you!”
She explained. “He was living a life he couldn’t live. He wanted it better for hisself and his kin, so he ran off.” She reached across the table and took Lu’s hand in both of hers. “So did you.”
“And your granddaddy was cut from the same cloth. Lordie, I don’t know how Mayetta ever put up with him! Stubborn, hard-headed, he was,” she scolded. “He worked out in those fields plowin’ up tree roots and rocks until he near exhausted hisself, broiling in that hot sun. Mmm hmmm. I know, I seen him. Mayetta carried water out to him, dipped a rag in it, and put it on his head to cool him down some, but he just keep workin’. He worked from before the sun was up until after it was down. I swear, he put hisself in an early grave making a living for his family off that land.”
Lu started to pull her hand away, but Miss Pearl held it tightly. “Now I want you to face the fact that you are a Stovall, through and through. No matter what you think. You’re stubborn and hard-headed, just like the rest of ‘em, including your daddy. And, you think you know everything there is to know, just like him,” she said smugly. “Full of pride, the both of you.”
The words stung, but Lu could see the wisdom in them.
“You were just a child when your momma passed. Lovie was an angel, just an absolute angel.” Miss Pearl winked ever so slightly at Lu. “That’s why everybody called her ‘Lovie’. Did you know that? Why, seein’ you just brings her face back to me like she was right here. She only had you and Martin, but she had some other babies that never got born and it broke her heart. That’s why there were always so many chilren’ over to your house all the time. She took care of everybody’s. She had so much love to give that it spilled over onto everybody she knew.”
“I didn’t know about the miscarriages!” Lu was surprised, but then she remembered her mother bleeding and going to the hospital.
“No, I expect you didn’t. That’s why I’m telling you now. Your momma was loved so much, especially by your daddy. He was a strong, proud man who felt he could fix anything, but he couldn’t fix your momma. It near killed him when she died.” Miss Pearl paused. “For a time there was no talkin’ to him. I guess never knowin’ what happened to his brother, Jerome, and then losing Lovie, he was mad at God, I think, for a long time. Lovie was the only one who could ever reason with him, and then she was gone. We all felt so helpless. She was a smart woman, like you. She’s the one taught him to read,” Miss Pearl explained. “And she had just about talked him into turning that old farm into one of them places that grows ferns and things, you know for the flower shops, when she got sick.
“After that, he wasn’t willin’ to do nothing except go out in those fields like his daddy a’fore him and work hisself near sick all day long. He shut everybody out. He shut out his dreams, too.” She lowered her head sadly. “And, Luella, I seen how he shut you and Martin out. I seen it, but there wasn’t nothin’ could be done.”
Lu pulled her hand away from Miss Pearl’s and roughly swept a tear from her cheek. The memories were hard to relive. She wished she had kept the car so she could leave. Run away. Suddenly, she realized that’s what she had done before, like her Great-granddaddy Eli—run away. She had to acknowledge Miss Pearl’s wisdom, “This is hard, but you’re telling me things now I didn’t think anybody knew.”
“Oh, I knew. I knew,” Miss Pearl assured her. “And he would come over here and help out, but he never would set a while. It was like he was holding back a big dam, and if he had let go even for a second—I think he was afraid it would drown him. Proud mens, mmm mmmm, they are sure somethin’.” She smoothed her napkin with her fingers.
“So, I waited,” she said. “It took over a year. I think he and your Grammy probably had a few words. She wasn’t one to hold back but for so long, you know. He kinda got better a little bit after that, but he never was the same as he was when Lovie was alive.” Miss Pearl paused before going on. “It’s hard on a man to be left alone. They don’t know what to do without a woman. They just keep goin’ through the motions of livin’ without livin’. I think he pretty much left the raisin’ of you and Martin up to your grammy. But I think, as much as she loved you, you were still just sad, little ol’ children who’d lost your momma and your daddy—pretty much at the same time.”
Lu pulled a tissue from her purse and blew her nose. She was trembling, losing the battle to contain her emotions. “But when I won the scholarship, why wasn’t he happy for me?” she stuttered. “Why couldn’t he be proud of me?”
“Oh, my, girl, but he was proud of you!” Miss Pearl beamed. “He showed me and Jerome every picture you ever sent, especially of those grandchildren! He was proud of you right up until the day he died! But he lost his brother and Lovie already, and when you wanted to go so far away, I think maybe he was afraid he’d lose you, too.”
“No, no, we fought!” Lu protested, “I told him I was going up north and I wasn’t never coming back here, that I was going to make a life that wasn’t at the end of a dirt road.” Lu clenched her fists on the table. “Miss Pearl—I told him that I hated him!” she confessed.
“Oh, my, oh, my.” Miss Pearl’s dark eyes were soft. “And do you think you were the first child ever to say that to their daddy?” She rose and turned on the ceiling fan. “Hmmmm, when that sun comes around, it sure do get hot out here.” She came up behind Lu and put her arms around her shoulders, resting her cheek on the crown of Lu’s head, comforting her.
“Now I see. Oh, now I see. Luella, you got to forgive yourself, too,” she murmured. “You got children of your own. Are you going to be mad at them when they tell you they hate you, or are you going to understand that’s how children are sometimes, huh? Your daddy didn’t turn against you because you said that. He always loved you. He just couldn’t say the words, chile. Not because he didn’t want to, but because he didn’t know how.”
“But then, oh, my God,” Lu blurted out. “But then, I didn’t come home but a couple of times. It was so expensive to get here, and I shared an apartment with a girlfriend. After a while, there just wasn’t enough money for school and for coming home. So it got easy not to come.” Lu continued without stopping, the words tumbling out. “I would’ve come, too. I would’ve come if he had asked me to, but it didn’t seem to matter to him. Even when Grammy died. He said on the phone, he said, ‘You can come if you want to.’ Like he didn’t even care.” She blew her nose again, noisily.
Miss Pearl sat back down and rested her doughy forearms on the table. Her eyes bore into Lu’s.
“Now, Luella Sue, you are married to a man yourself. So you think about it now,” she demanded. “Them mens is just their own breed. They won’t ever ask! And your daddy, why, he wasn’t goin’ to have you come home lookin’ at him like he was gettin’ old and you had to come take care of him. No, no.” She shook her head. “He didn’t ask because of you. He didn’t ask because of his own self! And the years went on, one by one, and he walled his old heart off from lovin’ and missin’ you just like he done walled it off when Lovie passed.”
“His heart must have been broken. I never saw it like this. I really never did,” Lu said struggling to control her tears.
“Well, now you do, and you need to, ‘afore you go wallin’ your heart off, too,” Miss Pearl cautioned. “I see a lot of Stovall in you, little Miss, a lot of pure stubbornness. But I don’t think you broke Sebastian Stovall’s heart. Oh no—he wouldn’t let you. He was a good man, but he was too damn proud!”
Lu was shocked that Miss Pearl would say ‘damn’.
“Why, if you had bro
ke his heart, it might have been better. Then maybe we’d have known what was inside!” she clucked. “So, see darlin, it’s not your daddy you need to forgive. It’s yourself. Hmm?” She stroked Lu’s hand and at that moment Lu felt more cherished than she had in her entire life.
Miss Pearl stood and, in one step, moved close to Lu’s chair once again. The air was still as Lu dabbed away her tears, the afternoon sun painting long, thin shadows on the floor.
“For a long time now, you’ve been embarrassed of your family, Luella,” Miss Pearl said softly, her hand on Lu’s shoulder. “And you let that embarrassment turn into anger. Um hmm. Honey, everyone wants a better life for their children. But you can’t have that, lessin’ you honor those that went before.” Lu could only stare straight ahead as she bit her lip and struggled to quell her tears.
“Uh oh, I hear a car comin’,” Miss Pearl said. “Now, when Susan gets here, you need to go back over to that house.”
Lu rose quickly and looked at Miss Pearl, a question in her eyes.
“There’s a little colored girl waitin’ over there behind that screen door.” Miss Pearl nodded. “She needs you, Luella. You go on back over there, and you put your arms around her and you love on her—you hear me?” Lu nodded as she blew her nose and swept a stray tear with the back of her hand. Susan pulled the rental car into the driveway.
Miss Pearl threw her soft arms around Luella in one of her bone-crushing hugs. She slipped a piece of paper out of her apron pocket and handed it to her. “Here’s Reverend Parker’s phone number and address,” she said. “Now, git!”she ordered gently, her lips a straight line of purpose.
For a long moment they stood together, laughing and swaying like mother and daughter.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Lu steered the car carefully down the old shell road. ‘Stovall Road’. She was proud of the sign, it would last forever. She pushed the scan button on the car radio, and strains of “How Great Thou Art” wafted softly from the speakers. She looked at Susan. “I’m so glad we came back!”
“You really seem happy, Mom,” Susan said, a hint of caution in her voice. “I can’t wait to get home and go through that box of papers we took from here last time,” she said. “I’m sure Miss Pearl’s story is in there, don’t you think?”
“No, honey, I’m afraid it isn’t,” Lu said. “I went through that box when I was searching for the deed. It’s just full of old papers and ledgers about the farm crops and farming expenses really. Nothing else. I think we need to take another really good look around the house. I can’t imagine where it might be.”
Her father’s pickup was still parked at the side of the house, a bed of brown pine needles covering its hood, almost as if it were waiting for him to come out and crank the ignition. “That truck’s probably got a dead battery by now,” Lu commented. The house looked no different today, but the air was fresher, and the shrubbery around the porch, although it needed trimming, was lush and green. She turned to Susan as she shut off the ignition.
“This past twenty-four hours here have been amazing,” Lu explained. “I’ve learned so much that I didn’t know. It’s like all the secrets have dissolved! I feel fantastic, Susan, I really do!”
While Susan opened closet and cupboard doors in search of the writings Miss Pearl told them about, Lu headed straight to her father’s room. She looked around again, as she had only a few weeks earlier. Everything was as she had left it, except now the walls were papered with memories of steamy summer nights when violent thunderstorms had shook the house and she and Martin lay safe, huddled between their parents in that very bed. How small she had felt when lightning flashed, but Daddy shushed their fears.
“That’s just all them baby angels up there raisin’ a ruckus!” he would say. Momma held them tight and sang hymns until they fell asleep, lulled by the sound of her voice and the rain on the tin roof.
Those baby angels were probably her unborn sisters and brothers, Lu reflected as she sat on the floor and pulled open her father’s bottom dresser drawer. Lu bit her lip against the moisture in her eyes.
The manila envelope was stuffed and Lu carefully extracted photo after photo: her high-school graduation picture, a wallet-size photo of her when graduated from Temple, all the school photos of her children marking their school years. Every check she had ever sent him was in there, uncashed. “Stubborn old coot!” she said to the air.
Finally, she stood and emptied the envelope onto the bed. Her childhood paper dolls with their Sears and Roebuck catalog clothes rained out, wrinkled almost beyond recognition. She was deeply touched to know that somehow he’d found them and saved them. She remembered whenever the new catalog came, Momma gave her and Martin the old one to use for cutouts. She remembered, too, how her little blunt scissors frustrated her efforts to cut the dresses out just right. Lu never had real paper dolls, so she had cut out the people and the clothes, and she sat in the parlor by the hour, creating a pretend family and changing their clothes. Here, too, were pictures of toy trucks and cars, probably cut out by Martin.
She turned the envelope upside down. A tiny gold wedding band slipped out. Her mother’s, she knew. She slipped it on her pinky and fell to her knees beside the bed, overcome with the memory of how sweet her father could be and the sadness of the great losses he had borne alone. After a few minutes, she gathered herself together. She walked to the bathroom and splashed water on her face. Looking in the mirror, just for an instant, she saw her mother’s reflection. It startled her. Placing her hand flat against the mirror she whispered, “Momma, I love you.” She looked toward the ceiling, her hand now over her heart. “I’m sorry, Daddy, I’m so sorry!”
She wiped her face on a towel and went to find Susan. Her heart was lighter than it had been in days, maybe even years.
“Did I ever tell you,” she said. “April and May have always been my favorite months in Florida. The weather is perfect, and all the flowers are in full bloom. I just love it!”
Chapter Thirty
Lu steered into a parking spot near the lobby of the Holiday Inn. She and Susan grabbed their bags out of the trunk. “Let’s get checked in and freshen up before we go to dinner,” Lu said. In just a few minutes they were headed back to the car.
“Are we going to the same restaurant where we had dinner with Uncle Martin and his family?” Susan asked.
“No, actually,” Lu responded, “I was hoping we’d find someplace along the beachfront this time.”
She started the car and pulled out toward the strip along Flagler Beach’s section of A-1-A. While Susan looked at the front of restaurants along the road trying to judge which might be the best, Lu noticed she’d driven out of Flagler Beach without realizing it. She pulled off the road and turned the car around. “Let’s just park the car up by the Pier and walk around,” she suggested.
After a very brief walk they decided to have dinner at the restaurant on the pier. It was not crowded which surprised Lu. The hostess said it was because it was close to the end of the snowbird season, a phrase that was new to both Lu and Susan. She sat them near the window where they could watch the waves foam the sand and then slide back into the Atlantic.
“I’m starving,” Susan admitted. She eagerly ordered a steak with loaded baked potato.
“Me, too,” Lu said, ordering the same for herself.
“Mom, Barberville was really fascinating, especially after Miss Pearl shared her story.” Susan said. “It just meant so much more after she told us about her life.”
“Do they give tours, or it is just a museum?” Lu asked.
“It’s a historic pioneer settlement, actually,” Susan said. “They have a museum there, an old school house, but they also have a log cabin and a little house from one of the turpentine camps. It was exactly the way Miss Pearl described it! It’s a self-guided kind of tour, so you can take all the time you want walking all around. I took a lot of pictures.”
Lu stared out the window at the rolling surf and nodded. She was t
oo choked with emotion to voice a reply. When the waitress brought their meal she ordered a glass of wine hoping it would calm her. As she pushed her plate aside, politely complaining that she had eaten too much, she suggested they take a walk on the beach. As they descended the steps of the boardwalk, Lu could taste the salt in the wind.
“I wish I could get your father to take walks after dinner,” she complained. “It’s good for digestion.” She wanted to talk to Susan, but her fears kept getting in the way. As they walked along, she found the rhythmic pulse of the surf and the mild glow of the wine relaxed her.
“Oh, we left Granddad’s house so quick, I forgot to ask you,” Susan said. “That big old pine tree in the side yard—is that the kind of tree they used to get the turpentine from?”
“That tree has stood there as long as I can remember,” Lu said. “It’s funny, when we were kids Martin and I carved our initials in it. We called it our ‘family tree’. I should have looked to see if our initials were still there.”
“What kind of pine is it? Is it the kind they used for turpentine?” Susan asked.
“Gee, honey, I don’t know. My father always said it was a ‘Florida pine’. They probably could have gotten turpentine from that tree, though. I remember it being really sticky,” she laughed. “I didn’t notice. Was the cactus still growing all around it?”
“Yeah,” Susan said. “There’s some kind of prickly cactus growing all through the limbs, almost to the top. It’s probably going to kill that tree.”
“No, it won’t kill the tree.” Lu said. “That cactus has been there for years, too. The tree and the cactus are friends, I think. I remember once my father was going to chop the cactus down, and Grammy Mayetta had a fit. It’s a night-blooming cactus that only blooms once a year. She said her mother used to know how to do something with cactus blossoms and they ate them like fruit. Do you believe it?”