by Tena Frank
Mazie cradled the photograph and turned it over gently in her wrinkled hand. The scrawl on the back, barely visible now, read “Mazie and Baby 1932.”
Memories of that moment came back to her clear as could be. She was 12 years old, and her family had just returned from church services. Cora Jenkins met them as they approached their house and, with great excitement, insisted they pose for a photograph she wanted to take with her new Beau Brownie camera.
“It’s gonna be so beautiful!” Cora exclaimed. She had recently received the camera as a gift and she now went around the neighborhood taking pictures and selling them for five cents each.
“Don’t fuss so,” Mazie’s mother had admonished, but she smiled and blushed a bit as Cora issued instructions on where and how they should position themselves. Moments later Cora snapped this picture, the first ever of Mazie, standing there with her mother on the porch of the little house in Stumptown where she had grown up.
Ancient history. God knows I never did think I’d get to be this old! And now I got this ol’ box full of memories and don’t know what to do with ‘em all.
She continued sifting, item by item, sorting things into various piles. Pictures and souvenirs from the years of raising her three sons, various keepsakes of her own life from childhood through her married years and a sparse few reminders of her parents.
She kept coming back to the first faded image, reaching not only for the memories it held but also for the old feelings of happiness and hope. Mazie and Baby. Mazie and Mazie, really. And I’m the last one. She shared her name with her mother, her grandmother, great-grandmother and on back for at least six generations. By family tradition, the eldest female child of a Mazie became Mazie, too.
But her children were all boys, and while they promised their first girl would bear the family name, they had fathered only boys as well. From birth, she had been called “Baby,” and the name followed her throughout her life within her family circle. Even her children called her by the nickname, though the outside world knew her as Mazie, a moniker she carried proudly.
She spent the next half hour hunched over the box and moving through the feelings elicited by the artifacts. Sadness, joy, grief, pride, regret, disappointment, surprise—they all lived there in the pictures and clippings and in her heart. Finally she stood up and stretched out her back and shoulders. She stepped gingerly around the clutter in the hallway on her way to the kitchen and put together a small lunch from leftovers in the refrigerator, then shuffled out to her long, narrow porch to sit in the sunshine. She leaned back in her chair and lifted her face to the light, allowing whatever thoughts came to drift through her mind unrestricted.
She awoke with a start when her plate clattered to the floor, and as she reached to pick it up, she heard Tate Marlowe calling up to her from the sidewalk.
“Mazie! Everything okay?”
“Must have drifted off. Old women do that, you know!” she chuckled. “Come on up, honey.”
Tate climbed the steep cement steps slowly, favoring her left knee, which always felt like it might give out on her at any moment.
“Beautiful day, Mazie. See you’re getting your sunbath in!”
“Yes, indeed.” And they both laughed. Mazie’s sunbaths had become a shared joke between them. For Mazie, anytime outside, regardless of the reason or the weather, counted as taking a little sunbath. “Got to keep my looks up for the gentlemen, you know.” A sly wink always followed.
“The gentlemen, eh? How many of them are after you now, Mazie?”
“Only one special one. But I keep telling him I got no time to be flirtin’ with him. I’m too old for messin’ around anyway.”
“Really? Just how old are you, my dear?” Tate arched her eyebrow, not expecting a straight answer from Mazie.
“Now a lady don’t tell her age, Tate. You should know that.” The wink again. “All I’ll say is had black people been allowed to vote when I was comin’ up, I would of happily voted for Mr. Truman.”
“Well, that makes you older than me, Mazie.” Tate smiled and sat down in the comfortable chair next to her friend. Both closed their eyes for a moment and took in the sun.
Their uncommon friendship had sprung out of mutual curiosity and close proximity. They met shortly after Tate purchased the two houses on Maplewood. Mazie lived in a rambling old structure just two doors down and across the street. Mazie initiated their contact, offering Tate a warm welcome and a glass of sweet tea as she moved into her new apartment. They chatted briefly the first day, and it quickly became routine for Tate to look for Mazie whenever she headed out for a walk.
They discussed everything from the weather to the state of Mazie’s love life. She kept busy volunteering at Irene Wortham—a local agency providing a variety of services to children and adults with developmental disabilities—and she had more than one avid suitor at the place.
“I know I look old, Tate, but those mens still find me attractive. I don’t understand it, but I like it.”
“I understand it, Mazie. You’ve got a spark.” Mazie’s drooping old eyes twinkled, and a playful, almost cocky, look spread across her features.
“See, that’s what I mean, Mazie. You always look like you’re about to spring a surprise on me. You’ve got an impish quality about you that’s quite fetching.”
“Oh, I’m just playin’ with you, honey.”
“And that makes you interesting, Mazie. Really fascinating. No wonder the men are after you.”
Tate shared with Mazie her disappointment that some of the neighbors seemed upset about her buying the duplexes and fixing them up. Her “For Rent” signs were routinely pulled down, and the woman directly across the street from Tate’s place stopped speaking to her after Tate asked a long-time tenant to move so the current renovations could begin.
“You’d think they’d be grateful I moved the rabble-rousers out and the cops aren’t here half the time in the middle of the night to break up knock-down-drag-out fights,” Tate complained.
“Oh, honey, that Lester who used to live in your place? More times than not he’d fall down drunk in the street right outside his door and he’d still be sleepin’ there in the mornin’. Can’t tell you how many times he’d be rantin’ and ravin’ about somethin’, fightin’ his demons and wakin’ me up from a sound sleep. I’m sure glad he’s gone, and all his kind with him. All these neighbors ’round here be thinking the same thing, whether they say so or not.”
“Glad to hear you say it, Mazie. The guy right next door to you? He told me one day it’s too bad the people who grew up here in Asheville can’t afford to live here anymore, because people like me are buying up property and forcing the price up.”
“Well, he’s got a point there, Tate, but . . .”
“‘But’ is right! I asked him where he’s from and you know what he told me? Miami! And I found out he bought his place from a woman who owned it for only a year and sold it to him for twenty thousand more than she paid for it. Talk about hypocrisy!”
Mazie broke out into laughter and Tate bristled. “Now don’t get me wrong, Tate. But you gotta chill out a little bit ’for you give yourself a heart attack!”
Tate looked hard into Mazie’s face and noticed the slight grin and gentle yet firm gaze. This is a woman who knows what she thinks and doesn’t hesitate to say it. Just like me.
“You know, Mazie. You’re right. And don’t start expecting to hear me say that very often!” Their mutual laughter rang clear, dissipating Tate’s anger and softening her heart.
“You been pretty busy lately, Tate. What you up to? How’s the work coming along over there?” She nodded toward Dave as he carried supplies from his truck into the apartment under renovation.
“Oh, much slower than I want, of course! His work is wonderful, and the place will be beautiful when it’s done. I just hope that happens before the first snow!”
Mazie’s laughter at the comment confirmed her ability to quickly pick up on Tate’s sarcasm and dry humo
r, one of her most charming qualities as far as Tate was concerned.
“Actually, he’s been working steady for the past couple of days. I’ve been on him, you know. He’s finally putting the new windows in the kitchen. Hard to pin him down, but when he’s there, he’s working hard.” Tate paused for a moment before changing subjects.
“But what’s really got me going,” Tate continued, “is an old house on Chestnut Street. Did you hear about it? It was on the news last night. They want to tear it down and build some cottages over there. It’s a strange old place, empty a long time apparently, and . . .”
“You mean Mr. Freeman’s old place?”
Tate gasped. “Mr. Freeman’s place? Yes, a man named Harland Freeman built it decades ago, but how’d you know . . .”
“About Mr. Freeman? Why, honey, my momma mostly raised him when he was a boy. I growed up with him at my dinner table ’til he got too fancy to ’sociate with us no more.”
“You grew up with him?” Tate struggled to comprehend Mazie’s message. “You have to tell me everything you know, Mazie!”
They spent the next two hours locked in deep conversation, Mazie reliving her youth, Tate trying to keep up as Mazie told her fascinating tale.
Baby’s birth coincided with the dawn of the Roaring ’20s, setting the stage for a childhood filled with expectations that remained largely unmet. A happy and animated little girl doted upon by the rest of her family, she arrived seven years after the youngest boy. The one exception to the universal adoration of Baby visited frequently but did not live with them.
Harland had become a fixture in Baby’s family by the time she arrived, and he openly resented the perceived lowering of his status triggered by her birth. At 10 years old, he had learned that with sufficient effort he could usually get what he wanted. And he wanted badly to maintain his position in Mazie’s family.
He had always felt equal to Mazie’s sons—two older than he, one younger. He had his own place at the dinner table, just like the others. The boys included him in their brotherly roughhousing and generally treated him as they treated each other. Of course, he had begun to understand his superiority, being white and all, but he hid that knowledge when in their presence, and his deceit seemed to go unnoticed.
The arrival of a girl changed everything in ways Harland could not comprehend. They coddled her, fussed over her, showed her off to everyone in the neighborhood. He had never been treated in such a deferential manner. Until then, he did not know what he had missed. Seeing her so joyful as she basked in the limelight ignited jealousy and anger.
Harland found a variety of creative ways to draw attention away from Baby and onto himself, once even going so far as trying to push his way onto Mazie’s lap as Baby suckled. Sometimes his attempts garnered the desired outcome; other times they went unrewarded. Only when he became menacing did Mazie set strict limits on him. He remained welcome in their home, but he had to be kind to Baby.
Thus a tenuous truce established itself early on and held throughout the years. Baby wanted desperately to be loved by Harland, just as everyone else adored her. Harland wanted to retain the sustenance his life depended on, so he became adept at pretending he liked Baby. Every child has the innate ability to understand the difference between being cherished and being tolerated, and Harland’s fake affection for her left a permanent scar on Baby.
Still, in those early years of Baby’s life, most everything seemed possible. The country thrived in a period of economic prosperity that reached even into the corners of Stumptown. Baby’s father skimped and saved until he had the funds to buy an old Model T from Mr. Milner, for whom Mazie had worked for nearly twenty years. The purchase put him in a position to strike out on his own, and he made a decent living for himself and his family hauling trash, cutting down trees for firewood, which he sold throughout the neighborhood, and performing a variety of other odd jobs. Work came to him easily, and his business continued to grow.
Then the crash of the stock market began eroding his success. Even before all the local banks failed about a year after the economic disaster, most of the jobs Baby’s father depended on began to disappear. The two oldest boys had already struck out on their own, but the youngest one scrounged for whatever work he could find to help support the family. Even with Mazie’s wages and what the men brought in, Baby had to work. At the tender age of 11, she took on menial tasks at the homes where her mother worked and eventually found more work with the wealthy folks in Montford. Some of them had managed miraculously to salvage much of their fortunes. Not only had her childhood ended abruptly, but all her dreams had died in the process. A maid, not a jazz singer. A maid, not a teacher. A maid, not a hope in the world now of anything better.
“That’s an incredible story, Mazie. Obviously things got better eventually.”
“That’s how my life worked. Can’t do nothin’ but let it be the way it is.” A deep sigh said more about Mazie’s feelings than her words.
“The first part disappointed some,” Mazie said, “but the next part was purty good. My second husband treated me real nice. We had this big ol’ house to live in and for my boys to grow up in. I married late the first time, you know, and had my babies late, so they was teenagers when we moved over here. We had a big yard for them to play in back then, ’fore they took most of our land to widen Broadway.”
“Mazie, we can stop if you want, but I’d like to know more . . .”
“Honey, I can talk all day. Not many people around want to hear these old stories. My boys sure don’t. My grandbabies listen to some, but they lose interest real quick. What do you want to know?”
“I still don’t know how Mr. Freeman came to build that house over on Chestnut, or why it’s been empty for so long. What happened to him, Mazie?”
“Well, Mr. Harland . . . now he had a way with money for sure. After his Momma died and his ol’ shack burned down, he sold his piece a land for top dollar. Don’t know how he did it, but he managed to keep all his money when everthin’ crashed. Had a nice nest egg, and just kept on growin’ it. Course he didn’t need us no more then, so he just stopped comin’ around. Broke Momma’s heart, he did. He’d been like one of her own, then it got to the point where he acted like he didn’t know none of us.”
Mazie filled in some more of the puzzling gaps about Harland that Tate had struggled with ever since she first saw his old house. Apparently he climbed the social ladder yet never gained the status he longed for.
“But he was successful, wasn’t he? I mean he had the money to build a mansion in Montford.” Tate tried to reconcile the image she had of the man with what Mazie told her.
“I s’pose you could call him successful, yes. But he was a lonely man, I think. Musta been. Never got married, had no babies, no real friends to speak of. He had his business and a big ol’ house, but that’s not enough to make a life, is it?” Mazie did not wait for Tate to answer.
“Don’t no one really know why he blowed his brains out, though.”
“What?” Astonishment overtook Tate yet again. “He blew his brains out?”
“Sure did. Sat himself down on his porch in fronta that big old fancy door, stuck a pistol in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Did it day before Valentine’s Day. Hadn’t been livin’ there mor’n a few months.”
“Well, that confirms the story I’ve been piecing together. That’s why he owned the place for only two years. He bought the land, built the house and then killed himself almost immediately. He sure had some demons!”
“Lotsa demons, goin’ way back to being a tiny baby with a crazy momma and worthless daddy. I coulda’ loved him but he wanted no part of me. Course that was a different time, and we couldn’t a been together no ways. Still, I wanted him to love me and he didn’t. Guess it was the good Lord’s way of protectin’ me from harm. Anyway, my life turned out good enough.”
Mazie sat back and closed her eyes, exhaustion obviously weighing her down. Tate sat quietly for a few moments before speaking.
>
“I wish I knew what to say, Mazie. I can’t thank you enough for sharing all this with me. You may not know it, but you’ve just given me a precious gift.”
“You must be tired, listenin’ to an old woman ramble on like this.”
“Actually, Mazie, I’d like to talk more, if you don’t mind. But maybe we’ll do that tomorrow, after you’ve had some time to rest.”
“We surely can, honey. You welcome to sit and listen to me goin’ on and on any ol’ time. You come back whenever you fancy.” Then Mazie dozed off and Tate headed out for her walk.
After leaving Mazie, Tate made a quick stop to check in with Dave. A gaping hole in the kitchen wall greeted her, and she saw Dave’s head peeking through from the outside.
“Hey, how’s it going?”
“Pretty good. Got the old windows out and just need to add some bracing in here, then I’ll install the replacements and it’ll be good to go.”
Tate saw shafts of light filtering through the exposed work area and realized no buffer of any kind separated the outer surface of the house from the inner kitchen wall.
“Can we put some insulation in there?”
Dave gave her a quizzical look. “Well, we could . . .”
Tate sensed his hesitancy. “Any reason we shouldn’t?”
“No, but they never did that back when this house was being built. None of the other walls have it.”
“Well, let’s put some in there anyway. I know it won’t make much difference if the rest of the place doesn’t have any, but I’d feel better about it.”
“Okay. Will do.” Tate knew Dave considered her request wasted effort. Maybe he’s right. I don’t really know anything about this stuff.
“Thanks, Dave. You’re very patient with me.” Tate smiled at him, and Dave sent a knowing nod her way as she headed for the door.
“Hey, one other thing . . .” Dave called to her.
“Yeah. What?”
“These old windows are beautiful. It’d be a waste to throw them in the trash.”