The Dry Grass of August

by Anna Jean Mayhew

  “How many is that, Bill?”

  “I’m just having a toddy before we eat. Let’s get along, okay?”

  “Okay, Billy Boy. How can I be rude to your mother when I have no idea what she’s saying?” She smirked at Daddy and said, “I mean,” in perfect imitation of Meemaw.

  Stell motioned me with a jerk of her head. I took Puddin’s hand and pulled her out the door.

  In the hallway, Stell said, “Lord, help us make it through the night.”

  We went to the living room. Stell sat on the sofa and crossed her legs at the ankles, adjusting her skirt so it covered her knees, just the sort of prissy thing she did when she was nervous. She had on her new bracelet. I sat in the queen chair, and Puddin squeezed in with me. She leaned against me and asked, “Why does Meemaw call us June and Carolina instead of Jubie and Puddin?”

  “Old ladies don’t use nicknames.”

  Mary lit the candles on the dinner table. “The other Miz Watts, she hasn’t showed up yet. Somebody better fetch her.”

  Mama came to the living room. “Jubie, run tell your grandmother supper’s ready.”

  I knocked on the door to the garage apartment, and Meemaw called out, “Come on up,” in her whiny old voice.

  “Hey, Meemaw. Supper’s ready.”

  “Why don’t you all begin without me?”

  She was on the sofa, plaid blanket spread over her, exactly as we’d left her, except for the half-empty carafe on the coffee table.

  “We’d rather wait for you.”

  “Maybe you’d better bring me a tray. I’m worn out from traveling and climbing those stairs.”

  “Mama thought that you’d rather have this apartment all to yourself, with your own bathroom. I’ll help you with the stairs. We could work out a signal—”

  “June, I believe I’m too tired to—just fix me a tray. I’m an old woman.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And not much food—delicate appetite.”

  As I went through the garage, I wanted to go on out to the street and cut through backyards to Maggie’s house and hide under her bed. When I walked into the dining room alone, Daddy said, “Where’s Mother?” at the same time Mama said, “Well?”

  “Meemaw asked if we’d fix her a tray. She doesn’t feel well.”

  “I do not believe this,” Mama said.

  “She told me the stairs were too much for her,” I said.

  “Her bedroom’s on the second floor at home.”

  Daddy pushed back his chair and got up. “Is she sick?”

  “I knew she’d pull something,” Mama said.

  “She’s old and tired. She’s not pulling anything.”

  “She’s only sixty-seven. And she has never liked me. You know it.”

  “Oh, come on, she’s just—”

  “She never calls me by name; have you noticed?”

  Davie clinked his silver cup on the tray of his high chair.

  Stell looked down at her plate.

  Daddy stood in the den doorway, holding his linen napkin. “I really think I should go up and see—”

  “That’s exactly what she wants.” Mama’s voice was sharp. There were tears in her eyes.

  Daddy threw his napkin on the buffet. “I’d rather have a crust of bread in peace than a feast in strife.” He stormed out.

  “Where are you going?” Mama called.

  “In search of tranquility.” The breezeway door slammed shut.

  Mary walked into the dining room. “You want me to carry a tray to the other Miz Watts?”

  Daddy’s car door slammed.

  “I don’t care.” Mama stood. “I just don’t care.” She left the dining room.

  “Oh, Lord,” said Stell softly.

  Out in the street, Daddy’s tires squealed as he turned onto Queens Road West.

  I looked at Mary. “Meemaw said she didn’t want much.”

  “Much? Hmph.” She went to the kitchen.

  “I’m hungry,” said Puddin.

  Davie banged his high chair.

  I moved to Daddy’s place and sliced the ham. Stell ladled pineapple sauce over the slices as I passed the plates around. I put a heaping spoonful of creamed corn on Puddin’s plate, knowing how she loved it, and Stell dished out the Kentucky Wonders that Mama had cooked especially for Meemaw. We ate our supper by candlelight, droplets of water making tracks down the crystal goblets and pooling in the sterling coasters. The flames flickered when Mary walked through the dining room with a tray covered by a linen tea towel.

  CHAPTER 11

  Mary came into Uncle Taylor’s kitchen with Leesum. He was dressed in his own clothes again, which were in pretty bad shape, even clean. He was barefoot, and his hair, now that it was dry, stuck out from his head worse than ever.

  “This Leesum Fields, from Charlotte,” said Mary. “I will cut his hair in the morning.”

  Nobody said anything.

  “Or this evening.”

  “That would be nice,” said Mama. “Now. What is he doing here?”

  “He in my church family back home. He a boy with trouble and we come on him and I wouldn’t leave him to fend for hisself and we got to let him sleep here till—”

  “Mary!” Mama took Mary’s hand. “Calm down. What are you talking about?”

  “At that carnival, we—he the son of a lady in my church. He got no place to stay nor nothing to eat. He only fifteen. Can sleep on a pallet on the floor. . . .”

  “Y’all please have a seat,” said Kay Macy Cooper.

  “Not you two,” said Mama to Stell and me. “Go watch TV. Or put Puddin and Davie to bed. Something. Just stay out of here.”

  An hour later, Mama went to her room and closed the door. I looked for Mary. She had Leesum on a stool on the back patio, a sheet tied around his neck.

  “Wisht you’d let me see what you doin’,” Leesum said as Mary cut off the snaky ropes of hair.

  “And I wisht I had me a pick and some barber shears. Pomade would be real nice, come to it.”

  Stell walked past, toward the cabana.

  I asked Mary, “Do you mind if I stay and watch?”

  “Not if Leesum don’t mind.”

  “S’okay.” He tried to look at me, but Mary grabbed him by the chin to keep him still.

  She had a rat-tailed comb and a pair of kitchen scissors. She stuck the rat tail into a rope of hair and pulled it as far from Leesum’s scalp as she could before cutting. His eyes followed the pieces of hair to the flagstone patio.

  “You snatchin’ me bald?”

  “I’ll even it out. I believe you’ll be right pleased.”

  “I be pleased to be done with them locks, that’s for sure.”

  Mary took the cloth from around Leesum’s neck and snapped it in the gulf breeze.

  I had little hope for the recovery of his hair, which stuck out from his head in short prickly points.

  Mary pulled a nylon hose from her pocket. “Before bed, damp your hair good. Then slip this stocking over your head and sleep in it.”

  Leesum nodded like he knew all about nylon nightcaps.

  “I’ll get a broom so’s you can sweep up this mess.” Mary went through the back porch to the kitchen.

  Leesum looked toward the gulf, a deep blue-green in the dusk. “I’m gone get up before anybody tomorrow so’s I can go in that water. Been wantin’ to, but Mr. McCurdy never gave me time off, said they wasn’t no colored beach nohow. But I’m goin’ in it.” He stared out at the gulf the whole time, not talking to me.

  I heard Mary coming through the back porch. “Scratch on my screen.” I pointed at the cabana. “I’ll go with you.”

  At six thirty in the morning Leesum scratched on the screen. I grabbed my bathing suit, waved to him, and went into the bathroom. When I left the cabana, Stell and Sarah were still sound asleep. Leesum was waiting, a tall silhouette in the early light.

  “Hey,” he said. His curly hair was smooth and neat. Mary had done a good job.

  “I
’d still be sleeping if you hadn’t waked me.”

  “I’m a mornin’ person.”

  I couldn’t think of such a grown-up thing to say about myself. I ran ahead, over the dunes. “C’mon!”

  Before we got to the water he stopped. “I’m a good swimmer.” His eyes were large and round, his skin tawny. “Ain’t never been in no ocean.”

  “It’s smooth this morning. Easy to float in, once you get past the whitecaps.”

  “What’re them?”

  “The foamy water where the waves break.”

  He studied the surf. “You go on. I’ll watch a bit.”

  I dove through the waves, coming up on the other side of the breakers, and stood in chest-deep water, beckoning him. He ran toward me, doing exactly as I had done, pointing his arms above his head and diving into the breakers. He came up beside me, sputtering. “You dint tell me ’bout no salt.”

  I grinned and swam away from him. He came right after me and I saw that he’d told the truth about being a good swimmer. I flipped onto my back. “See how easy it is to float in salt water?”

  He spread his arms and legs. “That’s really sumpin. Can’t never float in the Catawba, where I goes swimmin’ back home.”

  Silence settled on us while we floated. I could have hung there in the water with Leesum forever. He broke the spell. “Miss June?”

  “Ye gods, call me Jubie.”

  “That don’t seem right.”

  “Because I’m white?”

  “Yes’m.”

  “Don’t ma’am me. You’re older than I am.”

  “Some things matters.” He treaded water, facing me.

  “Call me Jubie when we’re alone, okay?”

  “Okay, Miss—okay, Jubie. Can I ax you sumpin?”

  “Sure.”

  “Why’s you legs so banged up?”

  His question surprised me as much as my answer. “My daddy whipped me.”

  “How come?”

  “I read Stell’s diary to her boyfriend.”

  “What’s a diary?”

  “A book where she writes her private thoughts. It was a terrible thing to do.”

  “Ain’t like you broke a commandment.”

  I laughed. Leesum was saying what I did wasn’t all that bad.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Just nothing. Is Leesum your nickname?”

  He dove under. I felt him brush by my feet and he came up on the other side of me, blowing like a whale. “My mama gave me that name. She say I was the nearest thing to heaven so she call me Leesum, get it?”

  “No.”

  “Leesum Fields. Another name for heaven. Paradise. Sumpin like ’at.”

  “You told Mary your mama was a hoe.”

  His face got hard. “What of it?”

  “I—well—it doesn’t make sense. A hoe is a garden tool.”

  “We been in different places, Miss June—Jubie. I been right here on earth and you been on the moon.” He dove underwater again and was gone for quite a while, long enough for me to get worried. He surfaced fifteen or twenty yards away, kicking his feet and blowing spray into the air. He swam hard using several different strokes before he turned a wide circle and swam back to me in a strong, rhythmic butterfly with a double-dolphin kick. His muscular shoulders gleamed in the sunlight. When he got to me, he was breathing hard.

  “Where in the world did you learn the fly?”

  “Boy where I worked at Rozzelle’s Ferry House . . . he were a student at J. C. Smith . . . the college . . . he showed me.” He caught his breath. “Say I were a natural.” I put out my hand to touch his oddly dry-looking hair. He jerked back.

  “I wanted to see if your hair was as dry as it looks.”

  “Course it ain’t dry. It just don’t slick down the way yours do.”

  “May I feel it, please?”

  “Yeah, since you ax me so nice.”

  It was wet and soft. I’d thought it would be wiry, like a Brillo pad. “So what’s a hoe?”

  “You know what a prostitute is?”

  I felt a tingle of shock. “A whore. So your mama—” I couldn’t finish the sentence.

  He shrugged. “I was born when she was seventeen, and she ain’t but thirty-two now. She has took care me best she could; wouldn’t never put me in a orphanage.”

  “And the tea and coke?”

  “Marijuana and cocaine. You ever done ’em?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “No, no, no-no-no-no, NO!”

  “And what would your daddy do if he found you smokin’ tea and sniffin’ coke?”

  “He’d kill me!”

  “He the one bad.” He went under again and came up a few feet away.

  I heard Davie and saw him playing in the surf with Mary, who was dunking him up and down in the shallow water. Every time a wave came in, they whooped and jumped over it. She had kicked her shoes off. Her uniform was wet halfway up her thighs.

  “Hey, Jubie girl!” she said when I got to them. “We gone make us a sand castle.” She looked past me. “You and the boy been swimming.”

  I glanced over my shoulder. Leesum was walking toward us in the shallow water.

  “We came out early.”

  “Uh-huh. Don’t reckon nobody else would’ve gone with him.”

  Davie grabbed Mary’s hand. “Mary! Shell.”

  Leesum and I started gathering shells. We all got outside of Uncle Taylor’s beach. Mary was at the edge of the water, bent over and digging at the wet sand with her hands when Mrs. Willingham walked up. “Be careful, Mary. This is a white beach, you know.”

  Mary straightened and left the water. “Yes, ma’am.” She looked up and down the beach. There was no one else out.

  “Not that I mind,” said Mrs. Willingham, “not one bit. But others’d get mighty upset if they were to see you or that boy.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And he needs to get some clothes on. Almost naked.” She looked at Leesum like he was a bug she wanted to step on.

  “I’ll tell him.”

  “I understand Taylor’s sending him home today.”

  Mary looked at me. “We making arrangements, yes, ma’am.”

  “Well, that’s good.” Mrs. Willingham smiled her fake smile. “The law’s the law. We’ve had troubles here with folks forgetting who they are, so it’s better if we just keep things separate.” She looked at the shell in Mary’s hand. “Now that’s real pretty.”

  “For the castle.” Mary put her shoes on. I didn’t see her outside the fences for the rest of the week, and not once again did she take her shoes off.

  CHAPTER 12

  Uncle Taylor and Mama were talking about Leesum as I came up from the cabana.

  “He can’t stay here, Taylor.”

  “I know, but I want to help him.”

  “How? Adopt him?” Mama’s lighter snapped open, clinked shut. “Mary’s going to call her pastor—preacher, whatever he is. It’s all arranged.”

  Mama wouldn’t believe how sad I was that Leesum was leaving. All summer I’d wanted to meet a nice boy, and the ones I’d seen were creeps or stuck-up. Now there was Leesum, with those mystery green eyes, golden skin, and curly hair that looked dry in the gulf.

  After breakfast Uncle Taylor took Leesum to the naval base to buy him clothes and a bag for the trip to Charlotte. We didn’t have a chance to say another word to each other. I went to the kitchen and asked Mary, “Is Leesum going back to Charlotte?”

  “He is. I’m going to talk to Reverend Perkins. The boy’ll be just fine, don’t you worry.”

  “Okay.” I left the kitchen and went to Uncle Taylor’s den, where I’d seen a thesaurus. I sat in his easy chair with the heavy book in my lap and looked up synonyms for heaven and paradise .

  I was sitting in the damp sand, dribbling it through my fingers into cone-shaped towers that became shapeless mounds when waves washed over them. Sarah came over the dunes and said hey. She shook out her blanket next to my towel and took a pair o
f binoculars from around her neck.

  I got up and went to her, startled by her friendliness. “Hey.”

  Her hair was pulled up into a knot, and her ears stuck out above her skinny neck and knobby shoulders. She had on a bathing suit and voluminous Bermuda shorts that enveloped her matchstick legs.

  I said, “I don’t remember you wearing glasses.”

  “I’ve only had them six months.”

  “Did your eyes get bad all of a sudden?”

  “I’ve been nearsighted for ages. Nobody figured it out until Mrs. Cooper.”

  “How’d she know?”

  “I kept bumping into stuff. Daddy thought I was just awkward, but Mrs. Cooper . . .” she pushed at her glasses. “Sorry I’ve been a pill.”

  “That’s okay.” I smoothed my beach towel.

  “I just don’t want to talk about it.” Her voice had the same final tone Mama used. “Look over there.” Sarah handed me the binoculars and pointed at Mrs. Willingham in her canvas beach lounge.

  I focused the binoculars. “What’s she eating?”

  “Candy.”

  I couldn’t think of anything more boring than watching a fat lady eat candy. I handed the glasses back and told Sarah how mean Mrs. Willingham had been to Mary and Leesum that morning.

  “She can be horrible, but Daddy always takes up for her.”

  I’d left out the part about me swimming with Leesum. Sometimes I didn’t want to talk, either. I put my head down on my arms, letting the sun soak into my back, thinking about him.

  “She’s reaching in her bag for a Coke,” Sarah said. “You should see her lounge. Stains all over it.”

  A voice thundered, “Sarah Dolores!”

  I shaded my eyes against the sun and looked up. Uncle Taylor loomed over us. He took the binoculars. “Spying on Mrs. Willingham?”

  “We were watching her eat candy,” I said.

  Uncle Taylor held the binoculars to his eyes. He was in uniform—a short-sleeved khaki shirt and trousers—standing like an officer on the deck of a ship, fiddling with the focus ring, making a sweep of the beach. “Trash patrol.”