by Mary Morony
As I lay there in bed achin’ ‘bout everywhere a body could ache, I thought about what people said ‘bout Early when they thought I couldn’t hear ‘em. He killed his wife. I knew that wasn’t so. He beat ‘er and that’s why the baby came early. That could be the case. Befo’ his wife died he was a no good drunk. Her dyin’ sobered him up. Now I had never been one for confrontation, but I looked over at that man, who I loved with all my heart, and suddenly I wanted to kill him. Never mind that I was hittin’ the bottle pretty hard myself. Suddenly I was mad as hell that he’d let hisself slip with me.
“Look here,” I said, not turnin’ to look at him, just facing the wall; my voice hard as stone. “I know what they says ‘bout you. They says you was a drunk afore. They says you beat yo wife. They says you cleaned up because she died. Well, you listen good. I’s your woman now, and if you can do it for her, you can do it for me, and befo’ it’s too late this time. I ain’t sayin’ you cain’ drink. But if you lay a hand on me again, Lord, I swear I’ll put your sorry self outta yo’ misery.”
Now, Early hadn’t turned around, but I could see his head shakin’ back an’ forth on the pillow, and I could hear his breath comin’ out in sobs as he said, “I cain’ be drinkin’ at all, I know that now. I’m makin’ a solemn promise to you right chere, righ’ now.” He got outta bed and shook worse than a colicky horse, his right hand on his heart and the other in the air jest like he was standin’ befo’ the judge. “I ain’t never takin’ another drop a alcohol. I love ya too much, Ethel. An’ thas a promise,” he added, “that I aims to keep. I ‘spect ya to hol’ me to it, too. I ‘spect ya to leave me high an’ dry if’n I drank another drop.”
“You ain’t gotta worry ‘bout that,” I said. He got back in bed. The sheets was rough as sandpaper ‘gainst my sore, bruised skin, and the shifting mattress felt like a fast ride on a bumpy road. “I’ll do more than be leavin’,” I said tryin’ my level best not to move any more than I had to.
I sent word to Miz Sinclair that I had broken my leg and wouldn’t be able to walk for a good while. She sent word back that she was sorry and would be lookin’ forward to my getting back as soon as I was able. After I mended, I helped Early round the farm; did his chores and mine. When Early finally got hisself right, I went back to nursemaidin’ Billy Sinclair.
It turned out that quittin’ drankin’ for Early wasn’t simple. He had to do more than just put up wit’ a powerful hangover for a day or two. That man suffered worse than starving while he was quitting. He was laid up for days with the heebie-jeebies and throwing up. I’d go out in the mornin’ to milk, take care of the stock and vegetable patch. He’d be sleepin’ fitful, sweatin’ like he done run a race; legs and arms goin ev’ry which way. When I come back ‘round lunch time, he barely be done got outta the bed, an’ the chamber pot be jest fulla puke and pee ‘cause he couldn’ make it to the outhouse.
I took to sleepin’ in the sittin’ room, myself. Between the vomit and sweat, the sour smell coming outta that room made my eyes water—like walkin’ into a wall of stink. I had no interest in spending any mo’ time than I had to in that room. He was even crazy in the head sometimes, mumbling one minute, yellin’ the next. It scared me straight for a good while.
He finally pulled hisself together, and good as his word, he went right out and got that job. He tol’ me he didn’t ask me to quit drinkin’ ‘cause he wouldn’t make a dog go through that hell. He also said it wouldn’t do no good no how because if’n he knew one thang, it was that a body couldn’t quit until they was ready, no matter how much beggin’ and pleadin’ you did.
So I kep’ taking little nips now and again. I didn’t have the heart to ask Early to get me a drink, but I still had a taste for it, so I would get Ham Bone to get me a pint every now an’ again. Early never said nothin’. He knew I was drinkin’, but for the most part it was only now and again and only when things just got too hard for me to handle.
I had a rough spell after Miz Sinclair let me go. She said, “Ethel, you don’t need to come back to work after next week. Billy is in school now and I really don’t have the work for you.” It took me by surprise. On the way home from work that night I asked Early to drop me off at the store while he did some errands. I bought myself my firs’ bottle an’ tucked it into tha groceries so Early wouldn’ know. I got pretty tight and stayed that way for ‘bout a week. Early might have been a little chilly, but he didn’t say a word.
Then one clear April morning Mama came by with news. “Ginny Stuart gettin’ married an’ she be looking for someone to keep house for her. I tol’ her ‘bout you, an’ she say you to go up there an’ talk wit’ ‘er tomorrow. Lord, honey, don’t be going up there like you is. Come on now, less you get cleaned up.
Chapter 17
Sallee
August rolled around and my ninth birthday came and went without much fanfare. My mother invited the usual neighborhood kids over, but fewer of them showed up than in previous years. Then, in the second week of August, the most exciting thing that had ever happened occurred: my mother said yes when Uncle James and Aunt Lizbeth asked me to the beach. I was going to spend two whole weeks with my older cousin by four months whom I got along with better than practically anybody. No four-month-old baby brother to watch when nobody else had the time, none of Gordy’s pestering or Helen’s—just me and Jilly. Ethel scurried around getting me ready as I got more and more excited. During the two days leading up to my departure, I nearly made myself sick with anticipation—I thought they would never end.
Finally, after what seemed like a whole day of driving, Uncle James’s station wagon pulled to a stop, and Jillian James Stuart jumped out of the car before I could reach for the door handle. “Come on, I’ll race you to the beach,” she shouted behind her. She was already past the cottage. Jilly was dark-haired like her mother with enormous brown eyes. Next to her I looked like a white lab rat.
I struggled with the door. “It’s locked, honey. You have to pull that button up,” Uncle James instructed. Finally free, I took off. I caught up with Jilly only because she waited for me at the dune. “I won,” she declared, laughing.
“No fair. I couldn’t get the door open.” We stood together on the dune surveying the deserted beach and soaking in the salty sea breeze.
“Finally,” she said with a little jump of excitement. “Doesn’t that smell good? I can’t believe how much I miss the ocean when I’m not here. Isn’t it great that Aunt Ginny let you come with us this time by yourself? We are gonna have so much fun.” She took my hand and we ran down to the water’s edge. As we ran in and out of the surf, my mood lightened a bit.
“I’d forgotten how long it takes to get here. I thought we were going to die of old age before that trip was over.” I was only half joking. Aunt Lizbeth, a chronic complainer, found something wrong with every little thing we did or said for the entire trip. She made my mother sound like Mary Poppins—well, maybe not quite like that. I had been spending the night at Jilly’s house for years but had never been subjected to Aunt Lizbeth for that long without interruption. I wasn’t sure I was looking forward to two weeks of it before the rest of my family arrived to join us. As much as I loved Jilly and being at the beach, I was a little apprehensive about being so far away from home for the very first time by myself.
“You’re funny,” she said. “It wasn’t that long. I think it went faster because I had you to play with.”
She must be used to Aunt Lizbeth’s complaining, I thought.
“Wasn’t it fun when we stumped Daddy at I Spy?”
The way I remembered it, we didn’t have anything to do with stumping him. We had been commanded to stop playing because Aunt Lizbeth had a headache. She’d said, “If you don’t shut up right now I am going to put you out of the car and leave all of you right here.”
I had immediately glanced out the window to get some idea of where we were and how we got there.
Uncle James patted his wife’s leg playfully. She pushed his ha
nd away and it didn’t look much like she was playing. “Now, honey, you wouldn’t want to go and do that. Who would take care of you like I do? Sugarlips, you know you couldn’t get along without me and old Jilly Dill.”
What about me? I wanted to shout as I pictured myself on the side of the road watching as the car and trailer disappeared into the distance, and kicking myself for not having paid attention to which roads we took to get right here.
Then he added, “And would you want to call my big sister and tell her that you had misplaced her little Sallee? I don’t reckon so.” I breathed a sigh of relief, though I wasn’t completely taken with the idea that Aunt Lizbeth had even thought of leaving us on the side of the road. You never can tell with grown-ups.
“Aunt Lizbeth wouldn’t have left us would she?” I ventured.
“No, she was just fooling. She does that sometimes for fun. Let’s go see Ben and Carrie,” Jilly scampered up the dune.
Some fun, I thought as I followed.
Carrie and Ben worked for, I guess, the house. Before our grandmother died they had worked for her, and after she died they just kept on working at her house. The house belonged to my mother and her three brothers now. Uncle James and Aunt Lizbeth were the only ones who used it, though. They came down every year, sometimes staying all summer. We used to come down and stay with them, but Uncle James and Daddy got mad at each other, so we hadn’t been down for a couple of years. Aunt Lizbeth would call Daddy the “arrogant ass” when she thought I couldn’t hear her. Even when I was around she wouldn’t say his name. She’d just say things like, “What is the AA doing now?”
Ethel told me that, once when Aunt Lizbeth was at our house, she and Daddy got into a fight about the shopping center. He told her to leave. She said, “You can stuff it where the sun don’t shine.” With that he picked her up, chair and all, put her on the front porch, said, “Go home,” and shut the door. She hadn’t been back until he left.
When Ben and Carrie weren’t working at the beach, they worked at a colored school, I think. Ben was tall and dark-skinned. He had a jolly, easy way about him. He liked teasing and laughing; he was always ready with a chuckle. As Jilly and I rounded the corner of the cottage, we caught sight of him: a huge trunk was hoisted on his shoulders and a big suitcase was in his other hand as he headed for the main part of the cottage. He broke out in a wide grin, leaned over to free himself of the load, and crouched down. Jilly ran into his open arms.
“Well now, Carrie, look at how ol’ Jilly Billy has grown. Lord a mercy, girl, you had better stop or you are gonna be as big as me.” He wrapped her up in his long arms. “It’s so good to see you child. We did miss you so.” Ben smiled in my direction over Jilly’s shoulder. “I hear we’re having a guest, too. Hey there, Sallee, nice to see ya. I don’t think I’ve seen you since you were knee high to a pickle.” He and Jilly laughed.
“To a pickle?” she giggled as she hung on to his hand. “Pickles don’t have knees.”
I smiled back shyly. “Hi,” I said.
Carrie came up to me and placed her hand lightly on my shoulder. “Hello there, honey,” she said to me, and then to Jilly, “Hi sweetie, Ben is right, you sure have grown. Come on over here and let me give you a hug.” She put down the suitcase she was carrying and gave Jilly one of those stiff little hugs that grown-ups give—the kind where they stick their butts out in the air like they don’t want to get something on them. Then she picked up my suitcase and said, “Let’s put your stuff away. I’ve got lots of work to do. Ben, take that trunk into Miz Stuart’s room and then go back and get the frozen food and put it down in the freezer; the one out in the storeroom. Better hurry up too—you got to unpack the trailer and there’s dinner to fix. “She started barking orders like a spoiled terrier on the wrong side of the door. Ben picked up the heavy trunk as if it were filled with nothing but air and yes’umed his way into the cottage.
Jilly, jabbering like a crow, fell in line behind Carrie, and I followed them into our room. As she opened the door, a blast of cool cedar-scented air hit us in the face. “Don’t you just love that smell?” she asked then turned to Carrie. “Did you get here this morning?”
“Lord, child, no. We’ve been here for two days getting this place ready for you.”
“Lucky you,” she said as she flounced down on the already made bed.
It didn’t seem to me that Carrie agreed with Jilly’s assessment. Carrie was light-skinned like Ethel and had freckles, but that was where the similarities ended. Her dark brown hair was short and fell in pretty curls around her head. Shorts and a sleeveless blouse were as close as she came to a uniform. She kept her feelings to herself, though she had enough sour opinions to make up for it. Never once did I hear her giggle or chuckle. When she did laugh it had a hard, raw edge to it—and I was never quite sure if we were laughing at the same thing. I guess you could say that Carrie was the housekeeper. She did the laundry and cleaning. She also made sure we went to bed on time, brushed our teeth, and picked up after ourselves mostly by telling us to do it. After dinner, Carrie was on her own time.
“Guess what we’re havin’ for dinner tonight?” Ben asked as he headed toward the kitchen with Jilly and me skipping behind him.
“Beanies and weanies,” Jilly said.
“Nope, you guess, Sallee.”
“Fried chicken,” I said hopefully, “like Ethel makes.”
“Last time I saw Ethel she was the only thing fried.” Ben said to Carrie with a chuckle and she laughed. “We’re gonna have fried fish and hush puppies. Carrie caught these fish just this morning.”
Jilly and I jumped up and down hugging each other, and then Jilly hugged Ben. “We love hush puppies,” she said. We ate in the kitchen with Carrie and Ben. I nursed the little dig he took at Ethel. I don’t even know why. It just hurt.
Carrie asked, “How’s Ethel? She was having a hard time the last time she was here.”
Ben twisted up his lips and turned his head to Carrie. “Hard liquor, that’s for sure,” he said in a low voice. Carrie laughed quietly and slapped Ben’s arm lightly while they kept on giggling like it was the best joke in the world.
“She’s OK. I don’t think she likes the beach much,” I said. “She can’t swim, and I think she misses Big Early when she’s here.” I didn’t understand why Carrie and Ben didn’t like Ethel. It didn’t make any sense to me.
“Things haven’t been too easy from what I hear.”
“Not so good I guess.” I started pushing my food around on my plate, wishing we could move on to another topic. My family life had become anything but my favorite topic of conversation.
Jilly piped up. “Are the bikes here yet? Did you bring them over?”
“Ben spent all morning cleaning up your bikes and getting them ready for you. They’re out in the carport,” Carrie said as she started clearing the table and resetting it for Uncle James and Aunt Lizbeth’s dinner. While Ben cooked their meal, we finished clearing the table.
“Aren’t they coming?” I asked. “Do you want me to tell them dinner is ready?”
“Who?” Ben asked.
“Uncle James and Aunt Lizbeth.”
“No, I just leave it here and they eat when they get ready. I’ll come back before I go to bed and clean up.”
Ben and Carrie had a room with their own bathroom at the end of the wing. It was a pretty big room with windows on two sides that had views into the carport and the cars on the cement drive. They spent all of their spare time in their room, which made no sense to me because it was hot and a fan pushing around hot air was pretty useless in my book. After dinner we would ride our bikes around the circle while Ben and Carrie played pinochle on the table between their beds. Every time Uncle James and Aunt Lizbeth went out the breeze that had been blocked by the car would waft into their room—the only one without an air conditioner.
That first evening around seven o’clock, the ocean breeze died down and the mosquitos came out in full force. Jilly continued riding her b
ike, undisturbed by the swarms of invisible, angry insects. But I found myself slapping and scratching my skin like a crazy person. I stowed my bike in the carport and went inside for a warm bath.
Half an hour later I emerged from the bathroom with a towel around my head and a smattering of red welts on my arms. Ben was turning down our beds. “Look,” I said, extending one arm to him for inspection.
He shook his head as he took my arm, “Mmm mmm. You must be mighty sweet. Look at them, and they are hot too.” He placed his enormous hand on one of the bites. I noticed how pink the inside of his hands were. “Make sure you put some medicine on ‘em.” I nodded my head in agreement and wondered how on earth I was going to know what kind of medicine to put on them. I wished Ethel was here.
“Well, go on in there and get yourself ready for bed,” Ben ordered on his way out the door. “Carrie will be up in a minute.”
I got in bed, towel and all. Jilly peeled her clothes off leaving them on the floor in a bunch where they fell. “Aren’t you going to brush your teeth?”
“Naw.”
“Isn’t Carrie gonna get mad?” I asked as I scratched a bite and imagined how much trouble I would be in if I tried to get away with not brushing my teeth when Ethel was on duty.
“No, Carrie doesn’t get mad about stuff like that.”
“Oh,” I said, amazed but feeling like I needed to defend Ethel to my cousin. “I think Ethel gets mad at us because she cares about us.”
“Carrie and Ben care about me, too,” Jilly protested.
I blushed. “Well, sure,” I agreed lamely.
Jilly gave me a funny look. “How come you don’t like them much?”
She stumped me. I wanted to like Ben as much as Jilly did. “I do. But I don’t know them like you do. I haven’t seen ‘em in two or three years and besides…” I rolled over and pretended to have fallen asleep. I had to admit Ben was fun. I liked his easy way. I wanted to like him as much as Jilly did, but I felt so disloyal to Ethel.