“Is that your mother’s Ford?” says Charles.
“Where?”
“There.”
“Oh, in front of the house? I think it might be.” That long silence from the dinner table last Sunday came back, and I hoped Mama was out in the back yard picking up apples because I knew I couldn’t stand another scene within a week. I couldn’t think of a thing to say. I didn’t want to fuss at Charles right before he talked to Mama, and I certainly wouldn’t dare fuss at Mama.
Charles got out of the car not saying a word and started for the house. I was about three feet behind, trying to keep up. The front door was wide open.
Charles stopped just inside the door. I looked over his shoulder and there was Mama coming through the arched hall doorway. She stopped. She was dressed for shopping.
“Well, where in the world have you all been?” she says.
“We been to eat,” I said.
“Eating out?”
“Mrs. Bell,” says Charles, “please do not come in this house if we’re not here.”
I could not believe what I was hearing. It was like a dream.
Mama says, “Charles son, I was only leaving my own daughter a note saying to meet me at the mall at two o’clock, at the fountain. The front door was open. You should lock the front door if you want to keep people out.”
“Mrs. Bell, a person is entitled to his own privacy. I’m entitled to my own privacy. This is my—our—house. I—”
“This is my own daughter’s house, son. My mama was never refused entrance to my house. She was always welcome. Every day of her life.”
I was afraid Mama was going to cry. I opened my mouth but nothing came out.
“Mrs. Bell,” says Charles, “it seems as though you think everything you think is right, is right for everybody.”
“Charles,” I said, “that’s what everybody thinks—in a sense. That’s even what you think.”
Charles turned half around so he could see me. He looked at me, then at Mama.
Mama says, “Son, I’ll be happy to buy you a new monogrammed glass if that’s what you’re so upset about. Naomi didn’t mean to break that glass. I’m going over to the mall right now. And I know where they come from.”
Charles walks past me and out the front door, stops, turns around and says, “I didn’t want any of those damned monogrammed glasses in the first place and I did the best I could to make that clear, plus that’s not the subject.” (I gave him a monogrammed blue blazer for his birthday and he cut the initials off before he’d wear it.)
So now Mama’s at the mall with her feelings hurt. Charles is in the bedroom with a blanket over his head, and I’m sitting here amongst eleven broken monogrammed glasses, and every door and window locked from the inside.
Evidently Charles throws things when he’s very mad. I never expected violence from Charles Shepherd. Thank God we don’t have a child to see such behavior.
We didn’t speak all afternoon, or at supper—I fixed hot dogs, split, with cheese and bacon stuck in—or after. I went to bed at about ten o’clock, while Charles sat in the living room reading some book. I felt terrible about Mama’s feelings being hurt like I know they were; I hadn’t known whether to call her or not; I couldn’t with Charles there; and I couldn’t imagine what had got into Charles.
I went to bed and was trying to go to sleep, with my mind full of upsetting images, when I heard this voice coming out of the heating vent at the head of the bed on my side. I sat up. I thought at first it was somebody under the house. I let my head lean down over the side of the bed close to the vent. It was Charles—talking on the phone in the kitchen.
Now if we’d been on speaking terms I would have told him I could hear him, but we weren’t speaking. And besides, I won’t about to get out of bed for no reason at eleven P.M. And so I didn’t have no choice but to listen, whether I wanted to or not.
Charles was talking to his Johnny friend. I could hear just about everything he said. If we had been speaking, I wouldn’t have hesitated to tell him how the sound came through the vent. But we weren’t speaking, as I said. He was talking about—you guessed it: Mama.
“. . . She just broke in, in essence . . . just walked through the door when nobody was home. . . . It’s weird, Johnny. . . . What am I supposed to do?”
Now why didn’t he ask me what he was supposed to do? He didn’t marry Johnny Dobbs.
I agree that some things need to be left private—but the living room? The living room is where everybody comes into the house. That’s one of the last places to keep private on earth. I just can’t connect up Charles’s idea about privacy to the living room.
He went on about Mama for awhile and then said something about everybody saying “nigger,” and that when Johnny came to see us for him not to drive in after dark—which I didn’t understand until it dawned on me that maybe Johnny Dobbs was a, you know, black. He didn’t sound like it when I talked to him over the phone at Myrtle Beach. Charles and his other army buddy, Buddy Shellar, at the wedding kept talking about “Johnny this” and “Johnny that” but I never thought about Johnny being anything other than a regular white person. They were all three in the army, which of course everybody knows has been segregated since 1948, according to Charles, so I guess it’s possible they roomed together, or at least ate together.
He didn’t sound, you know, black.
I’ll ask Charles about it when we’re on speaking terms and I tell him about how the sound comes through the vent; but if he is a nigger, he can’t stay here. It won’t work. The Ramada, maybe, but not here.
IV
Aunt Flossie called last Wednesday—said to come by and pick up some fresh peanut butter cookies. She lives in a little four-room house between Listre and Bethel—and cooks apple pies for Penny’s Grill on the side. Her kitchen is always smelling like cinnamon and sugar-cooked apples. Charles can’t get over how good her apple pies are. He asked her for the recipe and he don’t even cook.
“I’m cooking an extra apple pie,” she says. “I’ll be done in a few minutes and you can have a hot piece with some ice cream.” Aunt Flossie has a way about her that makes me feel free to talk. She seems like she’s used to talking, even though she lives by herself. When something hard to talk about comes up, there’s a little sparkle in her eyes—and she loves to tell stories almost as much as Uncle Nate. I went right over there.
“You know,” she said, “when Frank and me got married it was like starting to school—the things I had to learn. I guess I’d never had an argument with a soul in the world—except a few squabbles with Mama.” She was making up cookie dough. (Now, how could she tell that Charles and me had had a argument?) “I don’t know about Frank,” she said, “but I don’t guess he’d ever argued with a woman, certainly not his mama. We had to learn to argue. I’d get so mad at him. We’d stay mad for days, not speaking. I finally figured out that that kind of business scared me. Scared me bad. And that’s why I was so mad. Like with old man Wiley’s bull, Red—us being scared and mad getting run together at the same time.”
“Old man Wiley’s bull?”
“I shot old man Wiley’s bull one time. Named Red. I couldn’t have been over twelve. He was always getting loose and chasing us up a tree. Mama told Mr. Wiley to keep his bull locked up, else she’d shoot him. Course I heard all this talk—so one day all of us were down in the woods when Red got out and started pawing dirt, throwing his head around, and snorting, and I ran to the house and snuck the shotgun out the back door. Everybody was up a tree when I got back. I shot him. He turned and run and I shot him again. We hated that bull. And the reason we hated him was we were so scared of him. Why, the bull won’t doing nothing unnatural. And the whole point is, we were mad because we were scared and I never figured that out until me and Frank figured out about our arguments.”
“Whose bull was it?”
“It was old man Wiley’s bull. One day I told Frank that our arguments scared me and—”
“What hap
pened to the bull?”
“Oh, he won’t hurt none. The gun had birdshot. Ah, the pies are ready.”
There’s no apple pie in the world better than Aunt Flossie’s, especially with cold vanilla ice cream melting down over it.
Uncle Frank died when I was about seven. He was a car salesman. I don’t remember much about him. But I’ve seen lots of pictures of him and Aunt Flossie, Mama and Daddy, and Aunt Naomi and Uncle Forrest, who died sometime before I was six. They all went to the beach, the fair, and the mountains together and took bunches of pictures.
“How old was I when Uncle Forrest died?”
“Four. Three or four, I guess. Frank used to call him ‘Woody.’ What a card he was. Always kidding. People always liked that about him though. I never saw him embarrassed but once. Did I ever tell you about the time we all went to the beach before him and Naomi were married?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, me and Doris were swimming in the ocean when here comes Naomi and Forrest from the bath house. They don’t get no farther than about a foot deep—where the waves are breaking for the third or fourth time—and Naomi is holding onto Forrest’s hand and jumping every little wave and screaming like nobody’s business when Doris—who’s standing behind me—says, ‘Lord have mercy.’ I look and there’s Naomi just jumping up and down over those little waves, laughing, and one of her breasts—just as white as flour—was out of her bathing suit and Forrest—they weren’t married yet—was looking off down the beach, like he hadn’t noticed. Doris says, ‘Lord have mercy, Flossie, one of Naomi’s dinners has fell out.’ Well, I thought I would die. I started walking toward them, motioning to Naomi, and she just kept jumping up and down. Forrest was pretending he hadn’t noticed—looking off down the beach. Naomi saw and turned away from Forrest and bent over double and got everything tucked back in. Forrest was standing there embarrassed to death and I said, ‘Tell us a joke, Woody.’ But the funniest thing was your mama saying, ‘One of Naomi’s dinners has fell out.’”
A pan of cookies was done—and Aunt Flossie wrapped me up a bunch in wax paper and put them in a cookie can.
“Anyway, honey, try not to worry too much about the rough spots.”
“What rough spots?”
“With Charles—if and when.”
“Oh, there ain’t no rough spots.” I couldn’t get into all that about Charles. Even with Aunt Flossie. If it got worse: maybe.
“I mean any you might have.”
“Oh. Well, Charles is just as sweet as he can be. We been working up some new music. We learned three new Carter family tunes last week. I’ll let you know if there get to be any rough spots.”
“You be sure to do that,” says Aunt Flossie. “It never hurts to have somebody to listen.”
A week or two ago, Charles said he wished he had a Aunt Flossie in his family. His aunts are all out West, or in Connecticut.
V
Aunt Naomi called me this past Wednesday was a week ago and upset me terrible. She called to find out all about our upcoming trip to the beach: when, exactly, we were coming back, what food she needed to take, and so forth. She also said Mama was upset about the argument with Charles—they had talked about it on the phone—but that Mama wouldn’t say nothing to me about it for the world. She said Mama felt betrayed and couldn’t understand why it all had to happen to her.
Well, it just made me sick. I don’t know why Charles had to react so. Mama would never hurt anything in the world, and Charles knows it.
Now Aunt Naomi, as well as Mama, has got something against Charles. The problem is that nobody has seen the good side of anybody else—in the whole family, since the wedding—except, I guess Daddy has pretty much seen the good side of Charles, and has took to Charles better than anybody else. Except me, of course—and maybe Aunt Flossie.
So anyway, when we drove to the beach last Sunday (we left right after Sunday School), Charles insisted on sitting up front with Daddy, so they could talk about surf fishing. They had these great long fishing rods, and some short ones, tied to the top of the car. I don’t know why they don’t just use the short ones, which are way less expensive, and fish off the pier like other people. They can get their line farther out in the ocean that way. Those big rods cost a fortune.
I wanted Charles to sit in the back with me and Aunt Naomi so they could get to know each other’s good sides a little better, and so Mama and Daddy could sit up front where they could argue by themselves. But oh no. Charles gets up front before anybody else has a chance. Me, Mama, and Aunt Naomi sat in the back. Uncle Nate, Aunt Flossie, Mary Faye, and Norris followed us in Aunt Flossie’s Oldsmobile.
The funny thing is this: Charles has not gone anywhere with Daddy driving—and Daddy don’t always chew tobacco when he drives but last Sunday he did; and what he does when he chews tobacco and drives is use a drink bottle, usually a short Coke-a-cola bottle, for a spitoon. When I saw Daddy bringing a Coke bottle to the car I figured it served Charles right for not wanting to ride in the back with Aunt Naomi.
See, Charles has a repulsion about anything gooey and slimey. He won’t eat boiled okra and he thinks somebody spitting is just awful, whereas I don’t see nothing wrong with it as long as it’s not on somebody.
Sometimes if Daddy takes a chew while he’s driving, and a Coke bottle’s not around, he’ll open the car door at a stop sign and spit on the road—which might have been better for Charles on this trip—but when he does that, the tobacco spatters up, and the car door gets to looking like a speckled dog until Mama goes out and cleans it off with Ajax.
So Sunday, as soon as Daddy gets settled behind the steering wheel, he cuts off this big hunk of Brown Williamson. I buy him four plugs every Christmas and I buy Mama a bottle of Jergen’s lotion. Of course that’s not all I buy. Last Christmas I bought Daddy a pair of ceramic bird dogs and I bought Mama a off-white shawl which she took back. She takes back most things she buys or you give her. She’s always hard to buy for. She’ll tell you she’s hard to buy for. One Christmas, Ferbie Layton told Aunt Flossie that Mama was pretty and Aunt Flossie told me and Aunt Naomi that she was passing along the compliment to Mama as a Christmas present because for sure Mama couldn’t return that. If she does keep something you give her, she’ll alter it. One Christmas I gave her a free-hanging plaid blouse which she said she believed she’d take up even though we all told her it was the right length. So she finally said she wouldn’t take it up. Aunt Flossie said she bet she would. (I think she did, but we never knew for sure.)
We hadn’t got as far as Paulsen’s Gulf when Daddy pulls his Coke bottle up from between his legs and spits in a long string of brown juice. He breaks the spit off by flicking the mouth of the Coke bottle against his bottom lip. Comes clear every time.
Charles squirmed. I wanted to say Charles if you weren’t watching out for yourself so much, you wouldn’t have to be up there; you could be back here in the back seat getting to know Aunt Naomi a little better, and Mama could be up front with Daddy so they wouldn’t have to argue back and forth across the seat.
Then Mama says what she always says at the Oak Hill intersection when we go to the beach: “Thurman, you’re going to turn to the right here?”
“Yes I am, Doris.”
“You’re not going by the interstate?”
“Doris, I’ll be glad to let you drive if you want to.”
“I just asked, Thurman. Remember we clocked it.”
“I remember we clocked it.”
“Well, it was longer when we went this way.”
“That was early of a Friday morning when the traffic was thick.”
“Thurman, the point is you don’t have all them little towns to drive through on the interstate.”
“Doris, I’ll be glad to let you drive if you want to.”
“Well, I’m just thinking of how not to take so long to get there. I declare,” says Mama to Aunt Naomi, “the ‘blacks’ stop in these little towns in the middle of the street and talk
to whoever happens to be on the sidewalk and you can’t blow your horn lest one’s liable to come back for all you know and cut your throat.” (Mama has started saying “blacks” when Charles is around. And I guess I have too.)
“I’ll be glad to let you drive if you want to,” Daddy says.
“Okay.”
“What?”
“Okay, I’ll drive,” says Mama.
There was a long pause during which the car didn’t slow down a bit.
“I’ll drive,” says Daddy.
“Well then,” says Mama, “you shouldn’t say you’ll be glad for me to drive.” There was this other long pause. “When you’re not.”
Daddy just looked at Charles, shifted his tobacco from one cheek to the other and says, “You got any connector sleeves in your tackle box? I’m out.”
Charles said he had plenty.
For the past ten years, every time we go to the beach, we eat at Hardee’s in Goldsboro. So when we got close, Daddy says, “Ya’ll want to eat at Hardee’s?”
“Any place is fine with me,” says Mama.
And do you know what Charles has the gall to say? He says, “I’d rather eat at some place we can sit down to order, if it’s all the same.”
I could not believe my ears.
One reason Charles had to speak up is because he took a course at the college called Aggressiveness Training. It teaches you to say what you want to say when you want to say it. The thing is: Charles never needed any aggressiveness training. He’s never had any problem being aggressive. But he thinks it’s the modern way or something.
“I want to eat at Hardee’s so I can get a apple turnover,” I said.
Daddy said he didn’t care, someplace to sit down and order would be fine with him, but Mama and Aunt Naomi sided with me.
You see, Charles tries out his aggressiveness training when in his heart he really don’t care. He just wants to keep it in practice—keep it working, like when you break up a flower bed in winter just to keep it loose.
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