Raney

by Clyde Edgerton

  “Dirty water?”

  “I don’t like to get gunk in the dishwater and then keep washing dishes as if nothing happened.”

  “Charles, it does not work that way, and you know it.”

  “Yes, it does.”

  “You rinse them off with hot water first. Besides, dishwater don’t get that dirty, and besides that, Charles, food’s not dirty. What makes you think food is dirty?”

  “Raney, if you want to wash your dishes with tomato sauce and little bits of meat and grease floating all around in the water, then go ahead, but I’m not about to.”

  “Think about how much water you’re wasting. You run enough water in there to take a shower in.”

  “I just won’t take a shower on the days I wash dishes.”

  “Well, I can’t make you wash dishes the way I do, but I—”

  “No, you can’t.”

  “I think it’s a waste of water.”

  “Do you think America is going to fall to the communists, Raney? Over this? Are we going to dry up and blow away? Will there be no tomorrow?”

  “Well, I—”

  “No, don’t answer.”

  What I want to know is how can you take a hard-headed man and teach him the right way to do something in the kitchen?

  And it’s not much different out in the yard. Take Mr. Edmonds next door. He has this tool shed with all these yard tools and things and he has a garden every year. Not Charles.

  But on the other hand, I don’t suppose Mr. Edmonds cooks, and then too, there is Charles’s mental ability and his potential and all.

  I went to bed while Charles was still cleaning up in the kitchen and about time I got settled in good, I heard Charles talking on the phone to Johnny Dobbs and of all the things in the world: Charles was asking him did he want to be our baby’s godfather! I don’t know what a godfather is supposed to do, but if a black gets legally kin to my family, we’ll have to move to Hawaii. Charles and me will just have to have a heart to heart talk about it. I’ll have to explain about how it is. And I’ll have to tell him about the vent so he’ll understand that I was not intentionally listening in.

  VIII

  This pregnancy has been the most amazing thing—five months now, and I’ve been through different stages of feelings about it all. I had a nightmare right away during the first month. There was this tiny mean thing in a black hood and it came in the night to the foot of the bed and rose up and said in a raspy voice, “I’m going to kill you, Randy.” It called me Randy. And it started for my stomach and I grabbed to push it away and got my hands tangled in the covers and the covers were the monster so even after I was awake I was still screaming and pushing at it. Charles was holding me, telling me everything was okay and for a minute I thought he was after me too.

  It was the worst thing in the world. When I got straightened out I was all weak and shaky and out of breath. Charles turned on the light and we sat in bed and talked. He hadn’t figured out that I was nervous to death about this baby, this live thing, in my stomach—that it had given me a secret tremors that I hadn’t been able to talk about. We sat there in the bed and talked about it and I felt so much better. Charles said any kind of feelings were normal and that if I was scared it was for one of the best reasons in the world. I’d been trying to push back the thought of maybe I don’t want this baby, especially when on the day I found out I was happier than any day of my life. It didn’t fit together.

  What it all came down to is I was trying so hard to feel what I was supposed to feel I mashed down all the real feelings and then they sprung up in that nightmare. I suppose that’s what happened. That’s what me and Charles finally figured out sitting up in bed. But Lord knows what Mother and Aunt Naomi would think if they found out I had thought about not wanting a baby.

  Other than that, my body has been going through changes which Charles and me have read are normal. He’s found some real good books about all this. I’m gaining weight; I love to smell leather all of a sudden; I’m getting these little urges—I took the doors off the kitchen cabinets and it makes things so much nicer in there. If you live in a house where the cabinet doors come open and pop you in the head, then you should just take them all off. Spice cans and vegetable cans are right colorful—especially if you get canned tomatoes. We’ve got curtains on the kitchen windows that match tomato cans and Campbell soup cans.

  The other thing is I get constipated all the time and feel like I have the flu in the afternoons. But the nice thing is I’m not sick in the mornings.

  Saturday night I came into the kitchen for a drink of water and Charles says, “When the baby’s born don’t you think we ought to have it baptized?” Well, that surprised me to death. It’s common sense that a baby don’t need baptizing. A baby can’t think, so how in the world could a baby make a decision about Jesus? But the main reason not to have our baby baptized is that Free Will Baptists do not have babies baptized.

  “Charles,” I says, “that’s something Catholics and Methodists and Episcopalians do. Free Will Baptists don’t baptize babies. Besides, what the others do is sprinkle, even though it says in the Bible as plain as your face, ‘when Jesus came up out of the water.’”

  “Raney, Free Will Baptists are not the only denomination recognized in America.”

  “I certainly don’t want to get anything done to our baby that’s not done at Bethel Free Will Baptist. Where would you have her baptized?”

  “Her?”

  “Well, whatever.”

  “At the Episcopal church in White Level.”

  “Charles, did your mother get you started on this?”

  “No, my mother did not get me started on this.”

  “Well, that’s not my church so I can’t see getting my own flesh and blood baptized over there.”

  “I’m thinking about joining,” Charles says. “And I’d like for you to think about it too. Wait a minute. Just think about it.”

  I was flabbergasted. I never dreamed of such a thing. I didn’t see how I could consider such a thing; and the prospects of him going to that rich Episcopal church and me going to Bethel Free Will Baptist and a dear child growing up in the middle of that split was almost too much for me to bear.

  “Charles, you can’t go to a Episcopal church. They’re against some of the very things we believe in most.”

  “What do you mean by that, Raney?”

  “We talked about this with your mother.”

  “Oh.”

  “Sometime before the baby’s born we need to sit down and have a long talk about this whole thing.”

  “Okay. I’ll listen if you will.”

  We’re having a good time at Sunday dinners over at Mama’s. We take our instruments and play music. Norris is learning some banjo from Charles and I’m teaching Mary Faye a few guitar chords. Charles just learned “Soldier’s Joy” on the banjo. I don’t know why he hadn’t learned it before. I play it on the record player all the time—it’s on the Circle Album. It’s the best instrumental recording I’ve ever heard. Frailing and three-finger picking together. It works on your insides. I listen to it five times straight sometimes.

  Mama and Aunt Naomi have been coming up with names for the baby. Mama bought a book with two hundred real cute names and every Sunday she comes up with three or four.

  Aunt Naomi dug up all the family names reaching back into the 1800s. She wrote them all down and circled the ones she likes best. I’ve been waiting for Charles to complain.

  When I go to bed at night, the baby wakes up and kicks; it feels like a rabbit trying to kick out of your hand.

  Yesterday I worked my last day at the store, until well after the baby’s born, anyway. Charles likes Johnny Carson and he sat up to watch some of that. The baby was still kicking when he finally came to bed.

  “Charles, put your hand on there.”

  “I’ll be damned,” he says. He says that every time he feels the baby kick.

  “I’ll bet its little footsies are about a inch long
,” I said.

  “Footsies?”

  “Yes, footsies.”

  “Raney, they are feet. Feet, not footsies. What are you going to call its breasts?”

  “Well, I’m certainly not going to call them ‘breasts.’ That’s for a grown woman.”

  “What are you going to call them?”

  “I’m going to call them the same thing my mother called them: ninny-pies.”

  “Ninny-pies. Raney, what in the world?”

  “What’s wrong with ‘ninny-pies,’ for heaven’s sake?”

  “Raney, that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “Well, it won’t too dumb for my mother and her mother and on back down the line to England.”

  “Raney, I don’t want my little girl growing up telling her best friend that she just bought her first brassiere for her ‘ninny-pies.’”

  “By then maybe she’ll be calling them ‘dinners.’”

  “Oh, no. Raney, please.”

  Charles has no imagination, sometimes. He’d rather call things by their book names. “Charles,” I said, “there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s what I grew up with.”

  “Raney, if what you grew up with was all right for everyone, the world would be quite different.”

  “I’ll say. And for the better.”

  “What are you going to call the baby’s natural functions?”

  “‘Natural functions?’”

  “Going to the bathroom: urinating and defecating.”

  “‘Defecating?’”

  “Taking a crap, Raney.”

  “Well, I’m certainly not going to ask a two-year-old girl with pigtails if she has to go ‘take a crap.’”

  “What will you ask her?”

  “I’ll ask her if she wants to go grunt.”

  “Go grunt? Go grunt? Raney that’s ridiculous.”

  “Ridiculous? It certainly is not. What would you say?”

  “Well, I don’t know; this is not one of the things I’ve planned out. Maybe I should have. What have you got for urinate?”

  “Wee-wee. What else is there?”

  “That’s what I figured. How about if we compromise and come up with ‘pee?’”

  “I think we ought to start out with ‘wee-wee’ and when she gets a little older, ‘pee-pee,’ and then finally ‘pee.’”

  “Are you going to start out with ‘gruntie-gruntie’ and work up to ‘grunt?’”

  “Well . . . that doesn’t sound like such a bad—”

  “Raney, I wasn’t serious.”

  “Well, I think you should be serious. This is serious business. We have to call all those things something. And my family must have put a lot of thought into this sort of thing.”

  “I’ll say.”

  “Well, I haven’t heard you come up with a single thing yet but ‘breast.’ Why can’t we use our God-given imaginations and come up with something that’s not so shocking when we talk about it. When I was growing up I could talk about going to the bathroom in front of whoever I wanted to and nobody batted a eyelash.”

  “You know why nobody batted an eyelash, Raney?”

  “Why?”

  “Because they didn’t know what the hell you were talking about.”

  Then Charles got into something about euphoniums or something and finally drifts off to sleep. But he had this little whistle going in his nose which got louder and louder until I finally woke him up and told him to turn over. He turned over but the whistle kept going. I don’t know what time I finally did get to sleep. But I slept late the next morning. Charles was real quiet when he got up.

  JUNE 20, 1977

  FROM THE Hansen County Pilot:

  BETHEL—Thurman “Ted” William Shepherd, born February 24 in Oakview Hospital and baptized yesterday at St. John’s Episcopal Church in White Level, is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Shepherd of 209 Catawba Drive in Listre. Charles is the head librarian at Listre Community College, while Mrs. Shepherd is a housewife.

  Mr. and Mrs. Thurman Bell, of Bethel, the maternal grandparents, were in attendance. Mrs. Bell gave a reception in the Bethel Free Will Baptist Church education building following the baptism.

  The paternal grandparents, Dr. and Mrs. William Shepherd from Atlanta, Georgia, were also in attendance and are spending the week with Charles, Raney, and Ted in their home in Listre.

  Mrs. Madora Bryant, of Bethel, was named godmother. Mr. Johnny Dobbs, from New Orleans, was named godfather and is visiting for a few days. He is staying at the Ramada Inn.

  ALGONQUIN BOOKS

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  Chapel Hill, NC 27515-2225

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  WORKMAN PUBLISHING

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  © 1985 by Clyde Edgerton.

  All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles and reviews, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher.

  “Give Me the Roses While I Live”—A. P. Carter

  Copyright © 1980 by Peer International Corporation

  Used by Permission. All Rights Reserved

  E-book ISBN 978-1-61620-213-2