The Dry Grass of August

by Anna Jean Mayhew

  “She’ll be back in a while.” She stared at me, then looked out the window over the sink. “Your father’s in the bedroom. He wants to see you.” As I left the kitchen, she said, “What you did is unforgivable.”

  Puddin had told.

  I knocked on the bedroom door, my mouth too dry to answer when Daddy called out, “Come in.”

  He sat in the upholstered lady’s chair in the corner, sunlight streaming in the windows on either side of him, bouncing off the drink in his hand. He took a sip and set his glass on the bedside table with a clink that made me jump. My punishment was always worse when he was drinking. He crossed the bedroom in two steps, grabbed me by the upper arm, steered me into the hall. With his other hand he unbuckled his belt. It slithered through the loops as he took it off.

  “Daddy, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” My voice squeaked. I looked at Mama as Daddy opened the basement door. She turned her back.

  Daddy shoved me ahead of him down the stairs. At the bottom, he said. “You’ve broken your sister’s heart.” He took off his glasses.

  “I didn’t think about what I was doing. I’ll never do it again.”

  He put his glasses in his shirt pocket. “You won’t?” His voice was soft, reasonable, but I knew what was coming. My confessions never stopped him.

  “No, sir, and I’ll carry out the trash for a month with no allowance, and I’ll—”

  “Take off your jeans.” His words made me shiver. I smelled bourbon.

  “I didn’t mean any—”

  “You didn’t mean to read your sister’s diary?”

  I was still clearing one foot from the leg of my jeans when the belt hit my bottom. I gasped so hard I couldn’t cry, and fell to the concrete floor. I scrambled with my feet caught in my jeans, trying to get away. He struck out again and the tip of the belt stung my belly below my T-shirt.

  “Get up.” He strapped me across my thighs.

  “Don’t, Daddy,” I cried, my back against the cinder-block wall.

  He reversed the belt, wrapping the end of it around his hand, then whipped me again. The buckle bit the inside of my left leg.

  “Daddy, the buckle!”

  He raised his arm, his red ring sending out shoots of fire. I got to my feet and he kept hitting me. I tried to run to the laundry room. He caught me by the arm, shoved me against the wash sinks, and raised the belt. I fell against the folding table. A bottle of bleach turned over and the lid popped off. The belt wrapped around my legs and the buckle bit my knees and thighs. I thought: He’s killing me. This time he’s going to kill me. I began to scream.

  “Mr. Watts!” Mary’s voice, sharp and shocked. “Mr. Watts, you stop that now.” She stood beside Daddy, still in her street clothes, holding a new uniform on a hanger. She hung it on a nail and touched Daddy’s arm. “You’re all het up, Mr. Watts.”

  Daddy jerked away from her.

  I sank to the floor. Bleach stung my legs. I pressed my hot face to the cold concrete.

  Mama came down the stairs. “William.”

  “Paula, leave this to me.” Daddy sounded tired.

  “She’s had enough.”

  Mary was going to say something, but Mama shook her head. Mary got the uniform and headed for her bathroom under the stairs. Mama said, “Leave us. You can change later.” Mary hung up the uniform and climbed the stairs.

  Mama bent over me. “You did a truly awful thing, Jubie, but you’ve paid for it.” She touched a cut on my right calf. “I’ll get you some cream. Ye gods, William, what did you hit her with?”

  But Daddy was gone. Mama tried to put her arms around me. I pushed her away, sobbing and hiccupping. “If Stell—if she read my diary, he wouldn’t beat her.”

  “Stell would never do what you did.” Daddy’s heavy steps pounded over our heads. He stomped around their bedroom above us, opening and closing bureau drawers. Then his footsteps went off toward the kitchen, and the cowbell jangled as he slammed the back door.

  Mama stood. “He’s gone to the club.” She straightened her back. “Just think how Stell felt when she heard what you’d done.”

  Standing over me, Mama looked as tall as Daddy. She had never beaten me, never even spanked me, and she never would, not as long as Daddy was around to do her dirty work.

  “There’s a basket of diapers by the dryer. Dampen one and wipe your legs. Come up to my bathroom and I’ll give you something to take the sting out. Is your white skirt clean?”

  “Huh?”

  “Your white circle skirt. If it’s dirty, we need to wash it, then you can iron it for church tomorrow. You can wear your loafers and crew socks, so your legs—”

  “Socks and loafers to church?”

  “Or you can stay home. Maybe that would be best.” She sniffed. “Why does it stink of bleach?” She spotted the overturned jug of Clorox. “I suppose that happened in the tussle.”

  I nodded.

  Mama went up to the kitchen and said, “Mary, there’s a mess on the basement floor.”

  I pulled myself up the stairs, one hand over the other on the rail.

  Mary was standing at the bar when I walked into the kitchen, tears on her face. She opened her arms wide and pulled me to her. I sobbed against her shoulder and she whispered into my ear, “That was a mean, wrong thing for your father to do.” She held me tight, rubbing my back. “You’re a good girl, Jubie. Sometime you do a bad thing, but you’re a good girl. You remember that.”

  Mama called from the hallway, “Hurry up, June.”

  “Your mama got something to help.” We both looked down at my legs. The red stripes and cuts were swelling into angry welts.

  In her bathroom, Mama gave me ajar of cream to put on the cuts. She turned to leave.

  “Would you do the back of my legs?”

  She dabbed half a dozen places, then handed the jar to me. “You can get the rest. It’s greasy. Put a towel under you when you sit.” She looked at my underpants. “Why are you all wet?”

  I had peed myself. “I think it’s Clorox.”

  “Take off your panties before it burns you.” She closed her bedroom door behind her.

  After I put the cream on my legs, I climbed the stairs with a towel wrapped around my hips. When I passed Stell’s room, I saw her lying on her bed, her head in her arms. Puddin was sitting beside her, patting Stell, her back to the door.

  I screamed at them, “Look at me!”

  Puddin turned. Stell raised her head. “Get out,” she said, her voice hoarse.

  I dropped the towel. “Look what Daddy did.”

  Stell stared.

  “I gave Puddin half the money Carter paid me to read your diary. She took it, fifty cents, then she told anyway.”

  Stell pushed Puddin away. “You took money not to tell?”

  Puddin nodded. Stell shoved her. Puddin fell on the floor, sobbing, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

  Stell turned her back to me. “Get out, both of you. Leave me alone.”

  I sat on the edge of my dressing stool, careful so the cream wouldn’t stain the flowered print seat. The first time Daddy spanked me, I was seven. I’d spilled a bottle of ink on a stack of Mama’s clean white sheets. He never laid a finger on Stell or Puddin, only me.

  I looked at myself in the mirror. My cheeks were splotched, my eyes swollen. But the beating didn’t show on my face. There was a tube of Revlon lipstick on the dresser. Stell had thrown it out because it was too bright, what she called floozy lipstick. I twisted the tube until the slanted top stuck out a half inch, then applied it, going outside the lip line. I read the label on the bottom and mouthed the words at the mirror, my lips full and pouty like Marilyn’s, Fire and Ice.

  CHAPTER 3

  Mama stood in the courtyard of the Sleep Inn Motel, smoking and looking at her watch while Stell held Davie, and I helped Mary pack the car. Then we lit out like somebody was on our tail, Mama half awake and so nervous you’d think we were going to be arrested for spotting a mattress that was already stained. We
were even more crowded in the car because Mary hadn’t been able to fit the picnic basket back into the trunk. Mama said for me just to hold it, that we’d need it when we ate breakfast on the road. I sat behind Stell, the basket on my lap, the wicker scratching my legs through my jeans.

  We passed a sign: WICKENS TOWN LIMITS. Y’ALL COME BACK NOW! Mama said, “Not likely.” I looked through the back window to see if there was a curfew sign on this side of town. There was.

  Mama smoothed her hair, which she’d put up with a tortoiseshell barrette. “We’ll have breakfast as soon as I see somewhere to pull over. Watch for picnic tables.” She kept glancing into the backseat and smiling at Davie, trying to make up with him after smacking his hand for wetting the bed. He sat on Puddin’s lap, holding Mary’s arm and sucking his thumb.

  We’d only been in the car a few minutes when Mama wrinkled her nose. “What’s that stink?” Mary had washed Davie’s soiled pj’s in the motel sink, and I’d spread them in the shelf over the backseat to dry. They gave off a sour smell in the morning sun. I pretended I was dozing.

  I peeped at Mary through my half-closed eyelids. What did she think of Mama? I’d heard Mary talking with her daughter when Young Mary came to our house before we left Charlotte, telling her how to take care of Daddy while we were gone. “He wants a light starch in his shirts, and you got to iron them while they still damp.” Mary’s voice was soft and low. “And white vinegar on the table for his greens.” She put her arm around her daughter’s shoulders as they stood in the pantry. “This Boston brown bread is good with baked beans and pork chops.”

  “Bread in a can?” Young Mary’s voice was high-pitched and timid. She’d jump if Daddy asked her the time of day. What was she doing as we traveled across Georgia?

  I said, “I wonder how Young Mary’s going to get along with Daddy.”

  Puddin looked at Mary. “Your daughter?”

  Mary nodded. “She doing the cooking and cleaning a couple days a week.”

  “Your father’ll be just fine,” Mama said. “He always could get someone to take care of him.”

  Mama wasn’t calling Daddy anything but “your father.” She had always called him Bill or William or, when she was teasing, Willie. She hadn’t called him Willie in so long I could hardly remember. Maybe not since we’d lived in the house off Selwyn Avenue.

  In Alabama we passed towns named Opelika, Loachapoka, Notsaluga. I said the odd names to myself. I couldn’t remember seeing signs back home like the ones we saw in Tuskegee: SOME THINGS DON’T MIX! OIL AND WATER. COLOREDS AND WHITES! and, in front of a school, FOR WHITES, NOT BROWNS!

  In Andalusia Mama pulled up to a café for us to have lunch. We’d just passed a grill with colored people standing in the doorway and on the sidewalk. Mary said she’d walk back there to eat. Mama was fixing her face in the rearview mirror when Mary asked for the keys to the trunk. “You mind if I freshen up before lunch?”

  Mama rolled her eyes but handed Mary the keys.

  “Jubie, get the keys when Mary’s done.” Mama took Puddin’s hand and Stell carried Davie into the café.

  Mary got her flowered bag from the trunk and took out a rose knit hat I’d never seen. She unfolded it, fluffed it, and pulled the brim over one eyebrow, checking her reflection in the car window. In quick strokes she put on glossy lipstick, then reached in her bag for red earrings and a matching necklace. She changed her navy Keds for red patent leather heels, making her snazzy, even in her ordinary blue cotton dress. With her handbag dangling from her fingertips, she started down the street, click-clacking on her heels. I watched her go, my mouth hanging open.

  She looked over her shoulder and winked. “Feels like Sunday.”

  Before Mama pushed her plate away and reached for her cigarettes, I worried that Mary wouldn’t be back on time, that Mama would be mad at her for dillydallying. For once in my life I didn’t ask for dessert, but Mama didn’t notice. I excused myself and went to the car. Mary was coming down the sidewalk, humming, her pocketbook swinging at her side. “Hey, Jubie girl, you glad to see me?”

  “I am, Mary.”

  She had already taken off her hat and earrings and was removing her necklace. She scrubbed her mouth with a Kleenex the way I did when I came home from school after wearing Tangee all day. I unlocked the trunk, and Mary scuffed off her heels. In a minute she had on her Keds. Mary again, as if she’d never left the car. Mama came out of the café carrying Davie, with Puddin and Stell behind her.

  “How was your lunch, Mary?”

  “Just fine, Miz Watts, just fine.”

  “Not too expensive?”

  “Not too bad.” Mary squeezed my hand as we got in the car.

  Mary came to work for us when I was five, the first colored person I’d ever known. I studied the tall woman who occupied our kitchen, busy at the sink or the washing machine or the ironing board. Her thick-fingered hands, brown on top and light underneath, wove lattice crusts on apple pies, diapered my new baby sister, and hefted baskets of wet wash. When she caught me peeking at her from behind the kitchen door, she waved.

  I observed her from the queen chair when she vacuumed, or through the window as she pinned my pajamas to the clothesline. One morning while she mopped the kitchen, she hummed “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” adding words to the tune as she rinsed the mop: “Little mousy, are you there? Watching from a fine old chair?” She turned and caught me staring.

  I broke my silence. “Why are your feet so big?”

  “To keep me from falling over.”

  It pleased me that an adult took me seriously.

  Once, when I asked her what she thought of me when we met all those years ago, she said, “Seem to me you were struggling to give up being the youngest.”

  I touched her arm and she turned to me. “Hm?”

  “Do you remember the little house in the woods off Selwyn Avenue, where we lived when we first moved back to Charlotte?”

  “I remember.”

  “That’s where you started working for us. I was five.”

  “Uh-huh. You had a head full of blonde curls. Always following me around.”

  As we drove through Pensacola I tried to take in everything about the town where we’d be spending the next week. We whizzed by a sandwich-board sign with a shimmering, come-hither eye in the middle of it. The only words I caught were “Three-Legged Girl.”

  “Ye gods,” I said, “did y’all see that sign?”

  “Watch your tongue, young lady,” Mama said. “We’re almost to Taylor’s.”

  We were passing an amusement park, Joyland by the Sea. A Ferris wheel turned in the afternoon sun, and lively music filled the air. “Oh, Mama, look. We’ve got to go while we’re here. It’s fabulous.”

  “They are always fabulous from the car.”

  Stell Ann read directions from a map Uncle Taylor had sent. “Take ninety-eight over Pensacola Bay and Santa Rosa Sound.”

  We rode in silence across the water. It only took a few minutes, but I looked out on the wide expanse of sparkling blue, no land in sight, and pretended our car was a ship, skimming the waves. I glanced at Mary. Her eyes were large in her solemn face.

  At Uncle Taylor’s, Mama set the brakes and said, “Three thirty! We made good time. Grab something to carry, and be sure . . .” We scrambled from the car and ran up the front walk. Only Mama knew what she wanted us to be sure of.

  Nobody answered the bell, and Mama went right on in. There was a note on the table in the shadowed foyer:

  Pauly, we’re at the beach. Ring the brass bell on the back porch so we’ll know you’re here.

  Welcome!!!

  Taylor

  The Welcome was scrawled across the note. Beneath it, Uncle Taylor had signed his name in neat script. Puddin ran through the house to the back porch and rang the bell, which sounded like ships’ bells I’d heard in movies. “We’re here!” she yelled. “We’re here!”

  I went back out for the luggage. A strong wind lifted my hair, smelling of
salt and sun and far-off places across all that sparkling water, so much bluer than the Atlantic, the only other ocean I’d ever seen. Ocean? No, not an ocean, I remembered from my geography lessons. The Gulf of Mexico.

  I brought in Mary’s cloth carryall, Mama’s vanity case, and the paper bags of stuff that wouldn’t fit into our suitcases, piling everything in the front hall until Uncle Taylor could tell us where we’d be sleeping.

  Was his house always so neat, or had he straightened up because we were coming? No toys, no books on the coffee table or newspapers on the sofa, none of what Mama called clutter. How would it feel to live in such a neat house?

  Mama cleared her throat. “Mary, please get me a glass of water. I’m parched.”

  Mary looked uncertain where to go, but she went.

  In the living room, I sat in a sloping green chair with no arms, low and comfortable. The room was filled with angles and circles, blond wood and pastels. Had Aunt Lily decorated it from a picture from House Beautiful? A beige sofa with a curved back was more inviting to lie on than Mama’s burgundy velvet Sheraton. The end tables with slanted legs looked like robots, and a chrome floor lamp near Mama seemed to make her jittery. She walked back and forth with Davie on her hip, the vertical blinds moving in her wake.

  I thought of our living room, the baby grand, the oriental rug and brocade drapes, the queen chair by the mantel.

  Stell said, “This is a delightful home.” She’d been talking that way ever since she got saved.

  Mama shifted Davie from one hip to the other. “You girls are going to have to mind your p’s and q’s. Taylor keeps things shipshape.”

  Mary came back to the living room and handed Mama a glass of water. Mama took a long sip and wrinkled her nose. “Beach water, such a horrid taste. I’ll drink tea the whole time I’m here.”

  Puddin ran into the living room. “Uncle Taylor and Sarah are coming up from the beach. That bell works great.”