The Dry Grass of August

by Anna Jean Mayhew

  The commission is also investigating rumors that the Watts brothers diverted corporate funds to support a recently formed White Businessmen’s Association (W.B.A.), with the intent of restraining Negroes from registering to vote. Although no names have been released, there are apparently a number of Charlotte professionals who were members of the W.B.A., which met in a storage room beside Watts Concrete Fabrications. Duplicate sets of financial records are being audited to determine the extent of any fraud. William Watts, a well-known civic leader and father of four, was not available for comment.

  The glider clanked back and forth on the breezeway. Maybe Mama hadn’t built the diving board that caused Richard’s death, but she loved the Packard, the country club, her charge account at Montaldo’s. And she was looking a little shabby, like the house. Suddenly I couldn’t stand the sound of the glider on its rusty slides. It needed oiling, like the bills needed paying and the hedges needed trimming. The glider squeaked and squeaked. I put my hands on the damp newsprint, one on either side of Daddy’s picture, and pressed and pulled until the paper tore through the bridge of his glasses, down his nose, splitting his smile. I left the paper sticking to the bar and went to the breezeway, where Mama sat in the glider, drinking and rocking and smoking. A strong wind blew through the screens.

  “It’s your fault, too,” I screamed.

  “Oh, Jubie, calm down.” She took a drag from her cigarette.

  “What did Daddy do to Young Mary?”

  “I don’t really know. I was bluffing.”

  “You’re right, what you did for Mary wasn’t enough.” I grabbed the glass from her hand and threw it on the slate floor, where it shattered. The smell of Scotch filled the breezeway.

  I yanked open the screen door. The wind caught it and slammed it back against the wall.

  I ran through the grass and climbed over the redwood fence into Mrs. Gibson’s backyard, inching past the thorny pyracantha to sit in her garden with the marble angel, beside the burning bush, everything drab and gray in the diluted light of the approaching storm.

  I gazed into a cave created by the branches of a giant magnolia, where shadow shapes formed as the wind picked up, bringing on rain. All around me, tree limbs and flowers swayed, the red and orange berries of holly and pyracantha, dying mums and marigolds. Pansies that bobbed like drunken clowns. I read the tattered tag hanging from a gardenia bush that still had a few drooping flowers: CARE AND FEEDING OF GARDENIAS: FULL SUN WITH SHADE IN SUMMER. MOIST SOIL, NEVER SOGGY. HEAVY FEEDING. Why didn’t people come with instructions?

  I was so mad at Mama, at Daddy, even at Uncle Stamos, who knew or should have known—those words stuck in my mind. I sat there getting soaked as the rain and wind battered me. The edge of Hurricane Hazel. Bedraggled daisies lashed my legs and I snatched one from the ground. Even half dead, it was stronger than anything that grew wild by the road. You could do loves-me-loves-me-not on the petals of Mrs. Gibson’s daisies and get at the truth. I cupped my hands around it and sniffed the sour citrusy scent that smelled like Mary when she’d been working all day, an odor I sometimes had, too, and never minded. When Mama caught Mary smelling that way, she went to her bedroom to put a touch of perfume on her upper lip. The more I thought about the small meanness of that, the sadder I got, until I was crying all over the limp daisy. Daddy was gone. He’d wind up in jail or an outcast—that was the word that came to me. No matter what, he would never be back with Mama, with us.

  The rain pounded me, needles stinging my face, a downpour driven by the wind until it was horizontal. Through the boards of the fence I saw the lights in our house go out. If Hazel stood still, we’d be without power for days. Why did hurricanes only have female names? I’d have to find out about that. Before I left the garden, I picked the last of the gardenias to give Mama.

  What I had was Mama and Stell and Puddin and Davie. Maybe they didn’t know that as clearly as I did, but I could tell them.

  CHAPTER 33

  In January of 1955, I woke in my pink bedroom for the last time, in a sleeping bag on the floor, the sun streaming through the open Venetian blinds. The harsh morning light made me feel ready to move out of this bedroom I’d been sleeping in for two and a half years, now strange and empty. I unzipped the bag. I couldn’t imagine Mama spending the night on the floor, but when I’d asked her if she minded, she said, “Oh, pooh, it’s just this once.” I looked behind the door, where a piece of carpet had come loose months ago. Last night I’d tucked a handwritten note under it, then pushed it back in place. Someday when the carpeting was pulled up, someone would find a small paper, folded many times: To Whom It May Concern. My name is June Bentley Watts and I lived here from September 1952 to January 1955. I dedicate this room to the memory of Mary Constance Culpepper Luther, 1906–1954.

  I got dressed and stuffed my pajamas into my sleeping bag, along with Mary’s slippers, which I’d taken to wearing around the house. Mama had looked at them when I came down for breakfast one morning, but she hadn’t said anything.

  Stell was sitting on the floor in her bedroom, her sleeping bag rolled up and ready to go. The honey-colored carpet was indented where the furniture had been. Would the marks disappear when Stanley Steemer cleaned the rugs and drapes?

  I sat beside her and took the ragged stuffed animal she was holding. “Where’d you find him?”

  “The top shelf in my closet, where I hid him from Puddin.”

  “She cried for days, I remember.” Our voices bounced off the walls.

  Stell flipped one of the filthy ears. “Can you believe Mama ever let her suck on those?”

  “I’d forgotten.”The ears felt stiff and papery.

  “Sweet Bunny, they called it, the ears coated with sugar.”

  “Yuk!” I tossed the crusty rabbit. It landed in a square of light under the front window.

  “Are we still going to be members of the club?” I asked.

  “Grow up. We’ll be lucky to have groceries.”

  “Mama’s going to get a job.”

  Stell picked up the rabbit. “Who’d hire her? She’s never worked.”

  “Girls?” Mama’s voice echoed up the stairwell.

  “Coming!” Stell called down. She walked into her closet and tossed the bunny onto the top shelf. “Back where he’s lived these many years. A Cuthbert will find him and commit him to eternal rest.” She closed the closet door.

  “Have you met them?”

  “Only Lucy, at school.”

  “Maybe she’ll have this room.”

  “Who cares.” Stell headed downstairs.

  “I’ll be right there.” I walked back to my room, which felt enormous without furniture. The dusty rose carpet was pockmarked the same as Stell’s. A path of my footprints had worn the rug between the bed and dresser, the bureau and closet. I picked up a bobby pin from the floor by the side window and looked out. Carter was dribbling a basketball in his driveway. He threw the ball toward the hoop on his garage. Swish.

  I picked up my bedroll and went downstairs. Mama called from her room, “Jubie, the paper bags in the kitchen need to go to the car.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I got the bulging sacks and went out the kitchen door, which was oddly quiet without the cowbell.

  Carter held the basketball at his hip, sweat trickling down his freckled face. “Y’all leaving now?”

  “Yeah.”

  He twirled the ball on his index finger. “I’m glad your dad’s not going to jail.”

  I put down my bedroll, shifted the bags. “He sold his business to pay the fine.”

  “Stell told me.” He bounced the ball.

  “See you at school.”

  He nodded.

  By late afternoon, everything was done. Mama was in the kitchen, moving her hand back and forth on the bar as if she were wiping it. She’d taken off her wedding band and there was a mark on her finger like the dents in the rugs. “A small kitchen will be a relief,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  Stell stood by the Packa
rd with Carter, who kissed her on the cheek and said, “I’ll see you in a couple of days, okay?”

  She put her head on his chest for a moment, then got in the front seat of the Packard. I sat in the back, next to piles of clothes. No one spoke as we pulled out of the driveway. When we turned onto Queens Road West, Mama said, “Rita’s bringing Puddin and Davie over after supper. We need to get their beds ready. The linens and pillows are on the floor by the beds, towels and washcloths in the bathrooms. Get used to living without a maid.”

  “We already are,” Stell said.

  “I mean permanently. And no yard man. There are leaves left over from the fall, a lot of work.” Mama drove with one hand while she rooted in her purse. I heard a familiar sound and Mama laughed. “The cowbell. I forgot it was in my bag.” She cracked the wing window and lit a cigarette. “I’ve got a job. I interviewed last Thursday and I’m going back Monday to meet the staff.”

  “Mama, that’s great,” I said. “Where?” Cold air and cigarette smoke wafted into the backseat.

  “The Center for Rehabilitation, off East Morehead, as a receptionist in the free clinic.”

  “What’ll you do?” Stell asked.

  “Answer the phone, open the mail, make appointments. The free clinic is for people who don’t have insurance.” Mama took a drag from her cigarette.

  I thought about Leesum. Surely he didn’t have insurance. Who would pay if he got sick?

  Mama flicked the cigarette out the window. “I have no illusions about the job, but at least someone hired me.”

  From then on we called it the center for the disillusioned.

  On Selwyn Avenue we drove into the sunset, passing the road to the house in the woods where we lived when Mary came to work for us. Right after we moved there, Mama had talked about getting a job. Daddy hit the roof and Mama never mentioned the idea again.

  She set the brake in the steep driveway of the yellow house. “If we weren’t just renting, I’d paint it. The color is revolting.”

  “I think it’s cheerful,” I said.

  Mama sniffed. “Don’t go in without carrying something.”

  The house was tall and narrow, on a skinny lot that sloped down to Sugar Creek. The neighbors had warned us not to plant anything in the backyard because the creek would rise in the spring.

  Mama opened the front door, turning on the outside light over the tiny porch. I carried my clothes up to the room I’d be sharing with Davie. “Just until I get his ready,” Mama had promised.

  I went back downstairs. Stell was standing by the front door, her hands on her hips. “Mama?” she called toward the kitchen. “Where are the dinner table and chairs?”

  “I sold them.” Mama walked into the living room. “We’ll use the dinette from now on.”

  “I can’t believe we don’t have a dinner table.”

  I went through the kitchen and out onto the back stoop. The grass was hidden by leaves that had been rotting there since fall. I couldn’t imagine how we’d get rid of them. Mama opened the back door and hung the cowbell on it, then said, reading my thoughts, “We’ll rake them into the creek, no big deal.”

  Lately Mama had answers for everything.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  At age forty-five, I left my hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina, for the backwoods of Chatham County, seeking perspective: I couldn’t write about Charlotte until I left it. That providential relocation resulted in my friendship with novelist Laurel Goldman, a fine teacher who is both a tough critic and an admiring fan; this skilled combination has brought out the best in the many writers who’ve studied with her for the past thirty years, including current and past members of her amazing Thursday morning writing group: Cindy Paris, Fabienne Worth, Melissa Delbridge, Mia Bray, Cat Warren, Eve Rizzo, Carter Perry, Christina Askounis, Jackie Arial, James Ingram, Carolyn Muehlhause, Maureen Sladen, Mary Michael, Phaedra Greenwood, Charles Gates, Betty Reigot, Mary Caldwell, and the late Wilton Mason and Knut Schmidt-Nielsen.

  Thank you, Lee Smith, Angela Davis-Gardner, and Peggy Payne for your critical feedback and generosity of time. I’ll pay it forward.

  And the writers on whom I cut my teeth in Charlotte, NC: J. R. McHone (water brother), Dennis Smirl, Dick Bowman, Jerry Meredith, David Frye, Greg West, and Bill Barfield—to you, I say: “Aardvarks forever!”

  In New York: John Scognamiglio, my editor at Kensington Books, who guided me with care and consideration through the publication process, and my agent, Robert Guinsler, who continued to believe in my book when I’d all but given up. Thanks to you both for taking a chance on a seventy-one-year-old first-time novelist. Now there’s a marketing angle!

  Pat French, confidante and mother-confessor, thanks for hiking with Jean-Michel and checking on him when I’m away, for not telling me what you think I should do unless I ask you, and for sharing your editorial talents. I’ll never forget your call from the airport when you finished reading my manuscript.

  Thank you, Diana Hales, for packing your bags when I holler, “Road trip!”

  Institutions: The North Carolina Writer’s Network, for keeping wordsmiths connected in the Old North State; The Weymouth Center, for providing the peace and solitude scribblers need; The Carolina Room at the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, and the Orange County Main Library, Hillsborough, NC.

  For careful reading and critique: Kay Bishop, Robin and Mae Langford, Penny Austen, Kathryn Milam, Traci Woody, Tiffany Wright, Sofia Samatar, Richard Hoey-Bey, Gwendolyn Y. Fortune, Nancy Rosebaugh, Aimee Tattersall, and Daphne Wiggins-Obie. I’m grateful to Bob Conrow and Jamie Long, who gave me the use of their lake home, where my embryonic novel matured into a newborn. And to Taylin, the precocious strawberry-blonde angel who patiently asked me, in the locker room at SportsPlex, when she was eight, then nine, then ten, “When can I see your book?” She never doubted that she would see it in print someday.

  Other writers from whom I learn so much, on Tuesday mornings: Mary Harrison, John Manuel, Leslie Nydick, Patricia Owens, and James Protzman; on Tuesday evenings: Beverly Meek, Jennie Ratcliffe, Sally Schauman, Virginia Tyler, and Cynthia Zava; on Wednesday mornings: Gabe Cuddahee, David Halperin, Ron Jackson, Susan Payne, and Sarah Wilkins; also to Joyce Allen, Poppy Brite, Sidney Cruze, Ray Harold, John Rhodes, and Mary-Russell Roberson.

  My gratitude to the women who brought order to our home when I was a child, and when I matured into an inept house-keeper: Mary Leeper, Elizabeth Cureton, Verta Price, and Atlanta Feaster.

  Family is all. Thank you, my children—Homer Jackson Faw III, Teresa Colleen Faw, and Scott Mayhew Pharr—for your everlasting acceptance of the oddities that make me a writer, for putting up with my inattention and vacant stares, for accepting my absences when I’m off somewhere musing. I am likewise deeply grateful for the ongoing faith and support of my sisters: Mary Jane Mayhew Burns, Linda Mayhew Gore, and Susan Mayhew Devine.

  Jean-Michel, you rock!

  Please turn the page for a very special

  Q&A with Anna Jean Mayhew.

  Q. Was there any one thing that compelled you to write the novel?

  A. In 1957, something happened that changed the way I saw things; thirty years passed before I could write about the feelings it evoked in me. I was seventeen, working as a lifeguard during the summer, and had a deep tan (my hair was bleached almost white by the sun, and my eyes are pale blue; there’s no mistaking my Caucasian genes). When the “color line” was removed from the Charlotte city buses, my parents told me that if “one of them” (a person of color) got on the bus and sat next to me, I should get off or at least move to another seat. One day a black woman sat down beside me, and my parents’ words flashed through my mind. But I felt riveted to my seat, like it would have been so rude to move. So I sat there and eventually looked down to where our arms rested side by side. My skin was a lot darker than hers. That made a lasting impression on me.

  Q. How long did it take you to write your novel?

  A. Eighteen years
from conception to final draft; while I wrote, I was working full-time as well, but I believe the novel would have taken me many years, regardless of the circumstances. It had to percolate, to find its center, and I had to be patient. I did not know, when I started writing the book, how it would end; I didn’t know most of the characters, and only knew a few of the events.

  Q. Were you writing in isolation, or did you have support from other writers?

  A. Tremendous support from writers in a small group I’ve been in since I began the novel in 1987. Several books have been published by other members of the group, and in one of them (The Dream of the Stone, Christina Askounis, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1993) the acknowledgments say, “This book might have taken half as long to complete without the help of writers in Laurel Goldman’s Thursday-morning group, who drew the best from me through draft after draft. . . .” That’s true for me as well.

  Q. Did you start with an idea, with a character, setting?

  A. Character, first and last. The narrator, June Bentley Watts, aka Jubie, was in my head long before I began the book. She’s a year younger than I was in 1954, so readers might assume she’s me at that age. Perhaps she was to begin with, but she quickly took on her own personality and led me through the story, as long as I was willing to listen to her. The false notes occurred when I stopped paying attention to Jubie or tried to write my own story. When I lost her voice, the book lost its heart, and I got back on the right path only by paying attention to her.