by Bev Marshall
Papaw swerved around a mongrel dog running across the road, and then patted my leg.“I wish you could, too, but we’ll see each other a lot. Louise is going to come by every day to check on Frieda and help her with her therapy.”
We were on Broadway Street turning onto Fourth and my heart was pounding with anxiety. I dreaded seeing Mama in a wheelchair in her house. “I know, and I like Miss Louise. She’s really nice.”
“Made some lasagna this morning and it’s in your icebox ready to heat up for your dinner tonight.” He pulled into the drive behind Wallace’s new Ford Galaxie.“Looks like they beat us here,” Papaw said, shutting off the engine. I started to open my door, but Papaw held my arm. “Wait, I want to say one more thing before we go in.”
“What?” I knew this was the important thing, the last “one more thing” always is.
“If this isn’t working out, if he mistreats your mama or you, or well, just anything makes you upset, I want you to tell me. Promise me you’ll ask for help if you need it.”
His face was so white and his grip on my arm so firm, I wondered if somehow he knew what had really happened between me and Wallace in this house we were about to enter. I hadn’t told a soul, but Papaw was a shrewd judge of not just cows and horses, but of men as well. I kissed his cheek. I tried to smile, but I could only spread my lips a little before I said, “I promise. Don’t worry, Papaw. I’ll be fine.”
Mama wasn’t fine. Her speech improved rapidly, and the ugly black stitches that had marred her body turned to bright pink scars, but she couldn’t stand up without someone holding on to her. I brought her coffee, fluffed her pillows, and smoothed her sheets because she preferred staying in bed to being lifted into the wheelchair. Wallace, Miss Louise, and I suffered through her loud protests daily when we insisted she get out of bed. Occasionally, she’d forget she was God’s gift to Wallace and yell out cuss words, but then she’d put her hand over her mouth and say, “Sorry, that just slipped out.”
I have to admit Wallace was a good caretaker. Mama’s wheelchair wouldn’t fit through the bathroom door, nor could we wedge it beneath the kitchen table, so Wallace got cinder blocks to lift the table and carried Mama down the hall each day to her chair. He filled Mama’s prescriptions at the drugstore, he did the grocery shopping, he even cleaned the house a couple of times before Mama told me to take over those chores.Wallace read to Mama until she felt well enough to read the Bible herself. She was fascinated by the biblical tales, and would read passages out loud to me. “I never knew the Bible was so interesting,” she said to me. “There’s a lot more in it than just rules to follow. Have you read about David and Bathsheba? What a romance!”
“Yeah, I know the story,” I said. We were sitting on the front porch and I looked across the yard and waved to Miss Graham, who was watering the gardenia bushes beneath her front-room windows. Wallace had gone to New Hope to write his sermon and counsel a couple who were thinking of getting a divorce, but before he left, he parked Mama beside me, telling her some fresh air was what she needed to feel better. We were expecting Papaw and Miss Louise, and they would help me get Mama back to bed when she got tired.
“Layla Jay, don’t you feel grateful to the good Lord for giving Wallace back to us? I think of all those terrible awful days when I was out sinning, getting drunk, and fornicating, and taking His name in vain. Why, I was headed straight for hell, and Wallace has changed my direction to the path to heaven.” Wallace had also changed our phone number because, when Mama came home from the hospital, quite a few of her old boyfriends didn’t know that Wallace had moved back in with us.
I watched Miss Graham pulling the hose down the yard toward the bright yellow mums she’d planted around the water oak. Their lacy leaves drooped in the heat and I doubted they were going to last the season.“I don’t think you were going to hell before he came back,” I whispered.
“You don’t? How could I not?”
I wiped the sweat from my forehead with the tail of my shirt.“I just don’t. I can’t explain it, and I wish you’d talk about something besides God and Wallace.” I saw the hurt expression on Mama’s face, and I felt terrible. I thought of Grandma, how we’d talk about God and the Bible and people getting saved, but I hadn’t minded those conversations.Why was I feeling annoyed, maybe even a little bit angry, when Mama brought up the same topics? “I’m sorry,” I said. “I guess I’m just bored now that school is over. I don’t have any friends now that I don’t see June anymore.”
Mama reached over and squeezed my arm. “Oh, Layla Jay, I’m so selfish. I had forgotten about your fuss with June. Why don’t you call her? God wants you to forgive her.You know that.”
I jumped up so fast my chair tipped sideways and I caught it just before it crashed into Mama’s wheelchair. “Forgive her! Never!” I yelled. “She’s a liar and a bitch. I’d rather be friends with the devil himself.”
Mama’s eyes filled up. “Layla Jay, don’t say such things. God is listening.”
“Yeah, well, I hope He gets an earful because I’ve got a lot of other things to tell Him about.”
“You’re not making sense, and you don’t mean that. You’re only fourteen and you just don’t understand what you’re saying.”
Just then Papaw’s truck jumped the curb and veered toward the drive. “I understand more than you. And I know things you’ll never know,” I said, leaping down the steps to greet Papaw and Miss Louise.
It was Miss Louise who came up with a solution for ending my isolation on Fourth Street.“Why don’t you take swim lessons? I saw a flyer at the grocery store that the lifeguards at the Zebulon City Pool are giving lessons for fifty cents for a half hour. Swimming is such good exercise, and maybe you’ll meet some friends at the pool,” she said.
Wallace was against the idea. He didn’t think a young girl should parade around in public half-naked. I promised to get a one-piece suit and not the hot pink bikini I coveted in Salloum’s department store window. Mama was on my side. “Wallace, she needs to have something for herself. She spends all her time taking care of me and the house, and now that I can walk a few steps, I can be left alone for an hour or so if you have to go somewhere during lesson time.” She looked at me and smiled. “Layla Jay deserves to have some fun. At her age she should be thinking about makeup and boys and going to the movies, not what time Mama needs her pills.”
I was so grateful to her I could hardly keep from jumping up and down, not just because she was fighting for me, but because the old mischievous light had flickered in her eyes for just a moment or so. Maybe Papaw was right; she might come to her senses when she was fully recovered.
Wallace gave in, and even though I was afraid of drowning, I decided I’d rather drown in a pool than die a slow death in my pious home.
My suit, though not a bikini, was cool. It was the color of a fire hydrant with white straps that matched the two white strips around the legs and across the low vee-cut bodice. Now that I had breasts, I filled out the top just fine, and even had a small line of cleavage to show off to the unlucky girls who didn’t have any.
I fell in love with the swim instructor the first day. His name was Roland and he had sun-bleached hair and a dazzling white smile on his dark tanned face. The muscles on his upper body rippled when he leaned forward with his palm beneath my stomach, holding me up as I flutter-kicked my white legs in the aquamarine water. He was too old for me, twenty-one, a Mississippi State graduate, and he would be leaving to attend law school at Tulane University in New Orleans. But I didn’t think about any of that. I thought about the light pressure of his palm on my stomach, the feel of him pressing against my back when he encircled my body with his arms and lifted mine to demonstrate a stroke.
Thirty minutes flew by, and after each lesson I would reluctantly knot my beach towel around my waist, slip into my thongs, and trudge the eight blocks back home where Mama would be waiting for me to get her a Coke or
a cup of coffee or something to eat. She was gaining weight sitting in the chair all day, and Miss Louise told her she needed to try harder on her exercises. Mama got mad at Miss Louise two or three days of every week, but no matter what Mama said or how much she cried, Miss Louise was always serene and spoke to her in an even-toned voice, repeating her instructions to bend the knee and extend, bend and extend. I admired Miss Louise more than I can say. I wished I could be more like her and less like myself. Things with Mama weren’t going as well though. When Mama cried, I cried. When she got mad, I got mad back. We just weren’t getting along anymore, and while I wanted to blame our troubled relationship on her accident, I knew it was more about Wallace than anything.
Wallace was still preaching at New Hope and he worked part-time at Vest’s, so he wasn’t home all that much, but when he was, I looked for excuses to leave. He didn’t make me go to church since Mama would be alone if we both attended, and I was glad I didn’t have to see him parading around another pulpit. I could imagine his tearful testimony about the miracle God had performed when He healed Mama.Wallace was so sure she was alive because of him. I wanted to tell him that maybe it was my prayers that God had answered and not his. How could he be so sure his prayer was the one?
One day when Papaw came over and Mama was napping, I asked him what he thought of the story about the night in the hospital when Wallace had prayed over Mama. We were eating lunch at the kitchen table, and Papaw lifted his head from the paper plate in front of him and laughed. “Bullshit. All that concoction about God rocking Wallace like some big baby is just bullshit, Layla Jay.Your mama got well because she’s got mine and Zadie’s blood in her.We don’t give up, and even in a coma, she was fighting to come back to us.” He took a bite of the tuna fish sandwich I had made for our lunch, and with his mouth full said, “Forget about it.”
“But don’t you believe in prayer, Papaw?” I asked. “Grandma sure thought praying made the difference in the outcome of things.”
Papaw’s voice softened. “Yeah, Zadie was a real Christian, not a fake like Wallace.” He leaned over and kissed my cheek. “You start thinking about having fun and learning to drive, and dating silly boys instead of dwelling on your mama’s business.”
It was good advice, and with Papaw’s blessing, I asked Mama if I could stay at the pool for a few hours on Wednesdays. Mama didn’t mind, and Miss Louise’s shift was now from three to eleven, so she would come by and check on Mama while I was out.
I had learned to swim an awkward crawl, and I could float like a life raft, so Roland terminated our lessons, which was a big disappointment, but I could still watch him as he gave lessons to the other kids, all way younger than me. The Zebulon public pool was lined with fourteen white lounge chairs that tilted back so you could lie on your stomach and tan.There were at least thirty kids at the pool every time I went so I hardly ever got a chair, and usually wound up lying on my navy blue beach towel on the hot concrete. Every now and then all of us sunbathers would jump into the pool to cool off before returning to our chairs and towels, which we saved with personal belongings.
It was during one of my cool-off swims that I saw Jehu and Lyn walk though the turnstile into the pool area. Lyn, in a sheer lime green beach coat flapping out over a matching bikini, strolled down the side of the pool and swung a canvas drawstring bag with her initials monogrammed in big loopy letters. Jehu, in a T-shirt with the Cougars’ logo on it and a red swimsuit the exact color of mine, carried a rolled-up brown towel under his arm. Both were wearing sunglasses to die for. By the four-foot marker, I ducked under and held my breath for as long as I could before I burst out of the water with a big spray that splashed droplets onto Lyn as she walked along the edge of the pool.
“Damnit!” She squealed. “My sandals!” I brushed my wet hair back from my face and saw that, unlike most of us who wore rubber thongs, she had on green leather sandals with gold seashells glued on top.
“Sorry,” I said.
“You ought to watch out for people,” she said. She lowered her sunglasses down on her nose. “Oh, Layla Jay, it’s you. I’d think you’d be home helping out with your mother. She’s still in a wheelchair after that accident she caused, isn’t she?”
Before I could answer, Jehu squatted down by my bobbing head. “Hi. How is your mother?”
“Doing good,” I said. “Our maid is with her.” I directed this up to where Lyn stood taking off her wet sandals.
“Sure was sorry about her trouble,” Jehu said. “I remember how much fun she was at your party. I liked her a lot.”
Lyn had gotten her sandals off and tapped Jehu’s back with them. “Come on. I see two vacant chairs.”
I looked to where she pointed and saw that both chairs were saved with T-shirts thrown on them, but as I hoisted my body out of the pool, Lyn snatched them up and tossed them on the concrete a few feet away. I knew she’d try to tell their owners that they had blown off or been knocked off by a kid.They’d never get those chairs back.
My towel was laid out across the pool from where Lyn and Jehu were setting out their things, so I lay down and watched Lyn shrug off her cover-up. I smiled when I saw that the top of her bikini laid in folds around breasts the size of tennis balls. Mine were definitely better, and now it occurred to me that Jehu must have seen my cleavage when he squatted over me in the pool. As I breathed in the scents of suntan lotion and chlorine that rose up from the sunbathers and crowded pool, I turned onto my side where I had a better angle to observe him as he pulled his T-shirt over his head. Even though he was blond, a nest of curly brown hair curled on his chest between his nipples, and now I noticed the bulge in the front of his suit. I blew out a long stream of air and felt sick. He should be mine, I thought. He was mine, if only for a little while, and I hated Lyn almost as much as June.
Hoping to divert my attention from the agony of watching my love with another, I picked up my book and tried to read. I had stolen a copy of Lolita from the cabinet beneath Mama’s bedside table where bottles of pills and a medical dictionary had replaced her nail polish, colognes, and the costume jewelry that she would toss there after a date.The foreword was hard to read and I almost gave up, but the first lines in part one got my attention. “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta.” Fire of my loins. I remembered loins and loincloths in the Bible, and had always skipped right over the fact of them, but now I pictured loincloths and all that lay beneath them. Like Jehu’s swimsuit, they probably didn’t hide the fact of those biblical loins. As I read “... the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth, ...” I licked my lips. I was hot, needing to take another dip to cool off. So what if Jehu was rubbing suntan lotion on Lyn’s back now. Who cared? I was in love with Roland anyway ... but he had barely said hi when I waved at him earlier.
I backed down the metal ladder into the deep end and hung there for a moment before I lay back and rowed with my arms to the side of the pool. Keeping my hand on the tile, I lodged myself there to keep from bumping into the other swimmers. Overhead, tiny wisps of clouds like pulled taffy stretched across the sky the same color blue as Mama’s favorite dress. The heat of the afternoon sun made me feel languid and soft and I closed my eyes, imagining I was floating on one of the soft clouds where Daddy laid his palm beneath my back and gently we bobbed along across the heavens. Then suddenly I was spiraling down into the water, gulping, kicking and thrashing for air. I shot up, coughed, and snorted water out of my nose. “You okay?” I looked up into Roland’s blue eyes.
“What happened?”
“Some kid,” he pointed to a giggling freckle-faced boy around ten or eleven years old, “grabbed your ankle and pulled you under. I blew the whistle. Didn’t you hear?”
“Uh uh. I guess I fell asleep.” Looking around I saw that I had drifted down to the diving area and Jehu was on the board jumping up and down, springing the board so we
could hear the thumping of wood hitting metal. He dove in, a perfect jackknife.
Roland was holding out his hand. “Here, I’ll help you out.”
Just as I came out of the pool to Roland and my breasts rubbed against his chest, Jehu swam by and gave me a look that maybe said he was jealous, or maybe he thought those rumors about me were true. Whatever he thought, I had his attention, and I threw my long wet hair back and breathed as deeply as I could so that my breasts were slightly lifting out of my suit.
But it wasn’t Jehu who spoke; it was Roland.“When you’re ready to go, how ’bout I take you home in my Mustang?” he said.
“That’d be cool,” I said, flashing my Sandra Dee smile. But as I knotted my towel around my waist and glanced one last time at Jehu and Lyn holding hands across their chairs, I knew that I had outgrown Sandra Dee. It was Lolita I wanted to be now, fire of Roland’s loins.
Chapter 12
ROLAND DID DRIVE ME HOME, ALONG WITH FIVE OTHER KIDS who lived in my neighborhood. I was stuffed in the backseat between the Banacheck twins, and the acrid smell of chlorine was so overpowering, I felt sick by the time he let me out on the street in front of our house.
Wallace’s puke green Galaxie wasn’t in the drive, so I was surprised when I walked into the kitchen and saw him standing at the sink. He told me he was getting the tires rotated and had walked home from the garage, intending to pick it up later. Too late, I realized that, with my towel still knotted around my waist and nothing over my suit above it, my breasts were on display.Wallace noticed them immediately. Ever since he moved back in, I had taken care to wear floppy shirts around the house, fearing this very moment. But now his eyes were on my boobs that had popped up like jack-in-the-boxes.