A Penny Urned

by Tamar Myers

  Robert Louis Stevenson made numerous references to Savannah in Treasure Island. Some of the book’s action takes place in what is most likely the Pirate’s House, and it is commonly believed that old Captain Flint, who originally buried the fabulous treasure on Treasure Island, died here in an upstairs bedroom. Many folks swear the ghost of Captain Flint haunts the place on moonless nights. It was broad daylight when C.J. and I arrived, and the forecast called for clear skies. Still, I would not have been surprised to see the pegleg himself clomping about the ancient inn.

  We didn’t have reservations, but because it was still early, we managed to be seated right away. Unfortunately we had to settle for a table in the Treasure Room, a small, busy thoroughfare that leads to the bar. The rough plank walls were decorated with framed but yellowed pages of the Stevenson book, and we amused ourselves by reading these until our server arrived. C.J. nursed a tomato juice while we read, and I had a little Mary with my blood.

  After a few minutes C.J. stopped reading and cleared her throat. “You know, my great-granddaddy Ledbetter was a pirate.”

  “You don’t say.” I kept reading.

  “Yup, he sure enough was. Captain Hook Ledbetter was his name.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Had a black patch, a wooden leg, and everything. Even swallowed a clock.”

  I took a deep draught of Mary. “C.J., dear, I think maybe you’re a tad mixed up. Captain Hook was in Peter Pan, and he didn’t swallow the clock, the crocodile did.”

  C.J. scowled. “Don’t be silly, Abby. Why would a croc swallow a clock?”

  I got acquainted with the bottom of my glass. “Why would your great-granddaddy swallow one?”

  “To keep track of the time, silly. Pirates had lots of sword fights and didn’t have time to look at clocks, that’s why.”

  “Well, they could wear watches.”

  “They didn’t have them back then. Besides, a watch could get damaged in a sword fight. So, Great-granddaddy found him a little clock and rubbed it all over with butter.”

  “Why?”

  “So it could go down real easy. But then the butter smelled so good Great-granddaddy licked it off. Of course he had to put more on, only he licked that too. Had to butter that clock five times before he got around to swallowing it. That’s where they got that saying, you know.”

  “Which saying?”

  “‘Takes a licking but keeps on ticking.’”

  I groaned. “That’s a Timex ad, and it’s about a watch, not a clock.”

  “You sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “Just the same, I know for a fact Great-granddaddy swallowed something that ticked. Even when he was dead, you could hear it ticking from his coffin.”

  I decided to fight fire with fire. “My great-granny was Tinkerbell.”

  C.J. nodded. “I always wondered why you were so short.”

  Fortunately for C.J., our server finally arrived. She was an attractive but tall woman about my age, and she started speaking well before she got near our table. Fortunately I still have a mother’s ears.

  “My name’s Judith and I’m sorry to keep y’all waiting, but Janet got sick and I had a flat tire, even though it was a new one I just bought, so there was a slight backup in the kitchen, but Cassandra just arrived so from here on out it looks like smooth sailing and oh darn I forgot to check the specials, but I can highly recommend the medallions of pork with the black-eyed pea salsa and of course the swordfish steak with Savannah rice and peaches.” Believe it or not, she said it all in one breath.

  C.J. clapped her hands. “Wow! That was good. Say something else.”

  “Crystal!” I hissed. C.J.’s new moniker was satisfyingly sibilant.

  Judith smiled warmly. “That’s okay, I know I talk fast and sort of run on, but I guess I come by it honestly because my mama always talked that way, only now she doesn’t anymore on account of her stroke, but if you ask her questions she blinks her eyes real fast, you know, two blinks for yes and one blink for no, except that sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference and can be right confusing, like if you were to give her a true or false test or—”

  I waved both arms like a referee. “Please, if you don’t mind terribly, could we order?”

  “Of course, but like I said I didn’t check the specials, although I think I overheard the chef telling Cassandra we had fresh tuna on tonight’s menu, in which case I’d recommend that as well, because you know most folks have never even tasted fresh tuna, just that stuff that comes out of a can, although I’m not saying that’s bad, and it certainly is nice that all those tuna companies have started to care about saving dolphins, which might well be every bit as smart as us, only they can’t talk like us, because of course they don’t have the same vocal chords, although I guess they could blink their eyes like Mama—”

  “Medallions of pork with black-eyed pea salsa,” I said firmly.

  “Good choice, because—”

  I kicked C.J. under the table. Unfortunately in order to do that I had to slide under the table and practically lie on my back.

  “Uh—I’ll take the swordfish,” C.J. said.

  Judith nodded her approval. “The swordfish is wonderful, which is not to say that the medallions aren’t too, but of course they aren’t seafood, although some folks just don’t like seafood at all, which really surprises me because I’ve basically liked everything I’ve ever tasted, except for liver, but that isn’t so much the taste as texture, because I do like pâté de foie gras, which tastes a little bit like liver, because it is liver, only it comes from geese, but that was until I learned they force-feed the geese by stuffing corn down their long necks which is pretty cruel if you ask me, just not as cruel as what they do to calves to produce veal, which I refuse to eat under any—”

  “Oh, miss!” a man mercifully called from an adjacent table. “Can we get some service over here?”

  Judith gave an embarrassed little gasp, blushed, and excused herself. Try as we might to tune her out, we could hear her regale her new audience with an explanation of the term “medallions” as applied to meat, and the real medal her daughter won at a science fair in junior high.

  “Geez,” C.J. moaned, far too loud for my comfort. “That woman’s a few pickles shy of a barrel.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “She’s got some loose shingles on her roof.”

  “I know what you meant, I just can’t believe you—”

  Judith interrupted me just in time. “Sorry I forgot, but you ladies get a salad with that, although personally I don’t eat a whole lot of raw greens because they require dressing, and even if you use a low-fat dressing, it can all add up, like it does with elephants, which most folks don’t realize eat nothing but greens, only of course they eat up to three hundred pounds of the stuff a day, which is probably more than most people could eat, although I’ve seen a few folks over at the Shoney’s salad bar—”

  C.J. rolled her eyes. I had to order mine not to do the same.

  “We’ll both have the low-fat ranch dressing.”

  “But Abby,” C.J. whined, “I prefer blue cheese.”

  “Then blue cheese it is.” I handed the menus to Judith. “Say, you wouldn’t happen to know if a Mrs. Gabrenas works here.”

  Judith’s gray eyes widened further. “I’m Judith Gabrenas, except of course Gabrenas is only my married name because my maiden name was Tatweiler, which isn’t too common in these parts, although come to think of it Gabrenas isn’t either, and since we only have a daughter—”

  “Named Amanda?” Sometimes one just has to be rude.

  “Why, yes! How did you know? Although I guess I shouldn’t be so surprised, since most folks think we look so much alike, even though Amanda is adopted—”

  “She is?”

  “Yes, she is,” Judith said, her voice suddenly very defensive, “but I assure you I couldn’t love her any more than if I’d given birth to her myself.”

  I smiled. “I do
n’t mean to sound patronizing, but what you did was very admirable.”

  “Thank you, but I don’t think of it that way. Amanda has brought a lot of joy to our lives.”

  “I’m sure she has. But adopting a biracial child, that takes a certain amount of guts. Especially here in the South.”

  Judith Gabrenas’s mouth hung open so wide she could have swallowed Jonah and the whale. At first she seemed incapable of speech.

  “Spit it out,” C.J. said, not minding her own business.

  “H-h-how d-d-did you know?”

  There was no need to lie. “My aunt’s attorney told me,” I said gently. “Mr. Dewayne Kimbro.”

  “W-w-what ex-ex—”

  “Come on, girl,” C.J. said with the callousness of youth. “You can do it.”

  I flashed C.J. a matching set of daggers. “Mrs. Gabrenas, please don’t be upset with Mr. Kimbro. Apparently he didn’t think that information was confidential. Personally, I think it’s wonderful.”

  Judith smiled weakly. “I want you to know that we are very proud of Amanda. It doesn’t make a bit of difference to us that her birth mama was black, or perhaps I should say African-American.“

  “Of course not.”

  “Although actually Amanda’s birth mama was only half black, which is just the same as far as most people are concerned, but it ought not to make a lick of difference because people are just people after all.”

  “Amen to that.” I was affirming both her statement and its brevity.

  “Of course it does make a difference because Amanda’s birth grandpa got into all kinds of trouble trying to raise her on account of she looks so white, so that’s why he put her up for adoption, which is the best thing that ever happened to my Marvin and I, except maybe for us finding each other, which is a miracle in itself, because—”

  I was going to have to get used to being rude. “What happened to Amanda’s mama—I mean birth mama—if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “Her name was Rose, and that was so tragic what happened to her, not that every death isn’t, especially when it involves a young person like that, but to have your car get stuck on a railroad track and your baby right beside you—” She paused on her own, tears welling up in the large gray eyes.

  “How awful,” I said, quite sincerely. “Now, you said Amanda’s birth grandpa was black, but what about her other grandparents? And what about her daddy?”

  “Oh, he was white, but what you’d call a ne’er-do-well, and it’s a lucky thing he and Rose were never married, and as for his parents, well, they were real bigoted and wouldn’t even look at the little tyke, much less take her in, on account of she had “the wrong sort of blood,” and as for Rose’s mama, well she was just so damned eccentric by then—pardon my French—that letting little Amanda be raised by her was out of the question, but the old lady still got to participate by sending her to Juilliard and—”

  “What? I mean, how can that be? It was Lula Mae Wiggins who sent your Amanda to Juilliard.”

  Judith Gabrenas nodded. “Yes, and she was Rose’s mama and my Amanda’s birth grandma—”

  “Wait just one dang second. Are you saying Lula Mae Wiggins had a child?”

  “Miss? Oh, miss,” the man at the next table called, “do we get to be waited on, or what?”

  “Or what!” I screamed.

  19

  “Ooh, Abby, you’ve got yourself a black cousin.”

  I stared at C.J. “So what? Do you have a problem with that?”

  My protégée shook her head vigorously. “I always wanted to be African-American. Ebony is my favorite magazine, and I think Denzel Washington is the cutest man who ever lived. But”—she sighed deeply—“I’m one hundred percent Scotch-Irish.” She giggled. “Granny Ledbetter says that when she drinks she’s twenty percent Irish and eighty proof Scotch. That’s funny, Abby, isn’t?”

  I was barely listening. The Wiggins’s family secrets were being peeled away layer by layer, just like an onion. And I don’t mind sharing that this onion, although only metaphorical, was causing my eyes to tear up in a major way.

  What kind of a world was it where skin color kept families apart? And not even just skin color but minute amounts of “the wrong sort of blood?” It was a ridiculous world, that’s what. If a tongue of flame appeared above the head of every native southerner who had a drop of African blood in his or her veins or that of some other unsuitable ancestor, the entire region would go up in flames. And from what I hear, folks in the North wouldn’t miss out on the conflagration either. We humans are but one species and have been mixing since the beginning of time. Recent anthropological finds even suggest that some of us, Europeans in particular, may even have a little Neanderthal blood in our veins.

  “Ooh, Abby, you’re crying!” C.J.’s voice was loud enough to cause a spring avalanche all the way up on Mount Mitchell. It certainly turned every head in the Pirate’s House.

  “I am not crying. I’m merely weeping.”

  “But why?”

  “I’m weeping over the inequities of this world.”

  C.J. nodded. “Yeah, life isn’t fair, but Granny Ledbetter always says—”

  “Stifle the Ledbetter stuff!” I wailed.

  “All right. It’s just that Granny says we usually really cry for ourselves, even when we say we’re crying for others.”

  I dabbed at my eyes with a nice soft cloth napkin. The Pirate’s House is, after all, a classy joint.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Maybe you’re really crying for yourself, Abby.”

  “What?”

  “Well, if Amanda is your Aunt Lula Mae’s granddaughter, then shouldn’t she be the one to inherit the house and that fabulous coin collection?”

  I recoiled as if struck by a snake. “But that’s ridiculous. She’s just a young girl. Someone that age—well, it just wouldn’t be right.”

  “Why not? I bet you Amanda’s only a year or two younger than me, and I handle my own financial affairs, don’t I?”

  “But you’re a special case.” I meant that in the kindest way possible. C.J. may knit without yarn most of the time, but she’s no nitwit when it comes to money. How many other twenty-three-year-olds do you know who own their home and business outright?

  “It’s only natural to feel this way about it, Abby.” C.J. sounded uncannily like the counselor I hauled the family to when Buford announced his intention to get a divorce. “I mean, you’ve already gotten used to the idea of owning a house in Savannah, and that coin collection is enough to knock the socks off a goat.”

  “Goats don’t wear socks,” I said archly.

  “Yes, ma’am, Granny Ledbetter’s goats wear—”

  “Can it, Crystal. You’re forgetting that Aunt Lula Mae wanted me to inherit her estate. She didn’t even mention my brother in her will.”

  C.J. regarded me placidly. She may as well have been a cow and I the moon.

  “Maybe she thought you would do the right thing by the money and Toy wouldn’t. I mean, wasn’t he always kind of a selfish guy? And a touch on the vain side?”

  “He’s studying to be a goddam priest,” I snapped. Although C.J. had never met Toy, she was right about his character. Tall and blond, the man inherited all the looks in this family and has never met a mirror he didn’t love—he is always looking for a mirror—and may have, in fact, made love to a few of those mirrors. Such intense vanity is, of course, just one of the many forms of selfishness. One Easter my Aunt Marilyn, bless her clueless spinster heart, gave us a basket of candy to share. Because he is younger than I, Mama decided Toy should be the one to do the divvying.

  Well, Toy divvied all right. He gave me one broken chocolate bunny—hollow, no less—while he took the rest. And lest you think I’m being hard on my kid brother, allow me to inform you that we were both in high school at the time. All I can say is, thank heavens for karma and caramel. Aunt Marilyn’s gift ripped the braces right off Toy’s teeth, and he got to spend several more hou
rs in the orthodontist’s chair than would have been necessary otherwise. What’s more—as long as I’m telling tales out of school—he got a horrible bellyache and enough pimples to scare a flock of geese silly.

  Of course, I somehow managed to get blamed for Toy’s metal mishap and had to turn over my babysitting money for an interminable period of time to help pay the additional expense. This should prove once and for all that you may be able to take the boy out of the mama but not the mama out of the boy. Or is it the other way around? At any rate, C.J.’s bland expression never altered while I pondered her hypothesis.

  “Well,” she said at last, “if I were to leave my money to anyone other than Granny Ledbetter—and Cousin Horace and Cousin Melba Lou and Aunt Pickney’s stepsons by her eighth marriage, although I guess they aren’t exactly related to me because Aunt Pickney isn’t either—I’d leave it to you.”

  “You would?”

  She nodded vigorously. “Yeah, because even though you’ve already got plenty of money, you would know how to do some good with the money I left you.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence, kid, but I don’t think Aunt Lula Mae was thinking that far. She didn’t even know me. In fact, I’m surprised she’d even heard of me.”

  “So, you going to do the right thing and leave it all to her granddaughter?”

  I recoiled again. Clearly the striking serpent was greed.

  “I don’t know. Let’s drop the subject, okay? My food’s getting cold.”

  C.J. sighed. “Yeah, there’s nothing worse than cold swordfish, unless it’s cold shark. I read somewhere that in Iceland they bury shark meat in sand for three weeks to ripen it. It’s considered a delicacy.”

  “Shut up and eat,” I said gently.

  The meal was delicious despite C.J.’s gross comment, and we chatted pleasantly about girl stuff. You know, is bigger really better, is it safe to do it in the tub, and is every day too much. In the end we agreed that the new pocket-size hairdryers out on the market were adequate, but you’d have to be a fool to use them while in the bathtub, and the only people who should wash their hair on a daily basis were teenagers with exceptionally oily skin and auto mechanics.